BRAIN LOG
Hello, and welcome to my unofficial blog! This is the wordier version of my scrapbook page. It probably won't get updated quite as frequently, but it will hopefully be a nice little exercise in journaling!
WHAT THE HELL IS THE MAGNUS ARCHIVES?
Well, it was bound to happen at some point. If you know me outside of this site, you're likely already quite familiar with how I feel about this damn podcast. If you don't, then sit back enjoy the spectacle I shall surely make of myself.
So what even is The Magnus Archives? Well, for one, it's a podcast. For two, it's a horror podcast. And for three, it's been my particular brand of brainrot for approximately 3 years running off and on.
I could probably fill up this whole damn page talking about what the series is actually about (worms, evil clowns, worms, some guy being really gay for his coworker, spiders, worms, the apocalypse I guess, does fear make us human or is it humanity that makes fear, more worms) but the long and short of it is this: some nerd (Jonathan "Jon" Sims) gets a job he's super unqualified for, proceeds to get sucked into an eldritch fearscape way over his head, gets kidnapped a handful of times, almost dies another handful of times, does die, comes back to life, gets the shit beat out of him repeatedly, kickstarts the apocalypse, and somehow gets a boyfriend out of it all. Basically that "he lived, served cunt, died, got resurrected, served even more cunt" meme but with like 99% less cunt serving (Jon has never served cunt in his life, sorry).
Okay Milk, I hear you say, so what's it *actually* about? Well, the whole thing's basically a horror anthology, so it's about a lot of weird and horrific things happening to weird and horrific people all narrated to you by a guy who sounds like a BBC broadcaster is disappointed in you, personally.
And it fucking rules.
So, yeah, that's pretty much the gist of it. I started listening to this in very early 2020 (February, I believe?), then proceeded to binge the majority of it during Covid while I was locked in my room teaching myself how to draw anime boys. It holds one of those weird spaces in my heart that came from a very lonely time in my life, but has managed to bring about a lot of great friends and memories over the years. It sounds a little silly to say about a podcast, but I do truly love it dearly.
A few major factors were at play in my early 2020 life: for one, I was in my second year of my undergraduate degree, which was probably about the worst semester yet. For two, my best friend and roommate at the time was doing a semester abroad, which meant it was my very first time living completely alone. It was...a very weird time in my life, to say the least, but it left me alone to do a lot of self-reflection, and a lot of time to go digging through the fandom side of the internet, which I had really only touched surface level before then.
I think starting in high school I had a feeling I was queer, but I just never had a name for it. Sure, I knew things like being gay or lesbian or bisexual or asexual existed, but I never quite felt like I was any of those things because I wasn't one to have crushes, one to date, one to think about marrying and having kids. I was 15 for god's sake! Who is thinking that far ahead!
I think that's probably why I never really resonated with the big "coming out" stories that populated queer media of the mid-2010s. So while I kinda had a vague understanding that I wasn't straight (I mean, the fact that I told a friend I would be cool with dating a woman at some point probably should have tipped me off sooner), I didn't exactly know what I was for a long time.
The main character in The Magnus Archives is asexual. It's only ever brought up in passing, there's no big deal made about it, and yet it's a canon fact. Jon's ace. He's also bi. He's also the Archivist, and he's the hot topic of every eldritch horror in England, and he's weird and unpleasant and he still loves and is loved despite this. I always feel a little bit silly telling people "oh, a podcast character helped me discover my sexuality," but it's the fact of the matter that I really had never really seen ace representation before The Magnus Archives that resonated with me (1. because it's rare, 2. because most ace characters are also aro, of which I am not, and 3. because it's treated like it's normal and not a big deal for a person to be ace), and discovering such in early 2020 really made me do a lot of self-reflection.
So, yeah, I like The Magnus Archives because it's a damn good podcast. It's spooky and it's funny and it's got a lot of charming characters, and to me, personally, it's taught be some significant things about myself. Go listen to it, if you haven't. It really is a great ride.
december 28 2023