#in the context of the show Jason was incredibly fucking scary and also evil

[ap-trash-compactor]

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Having seen the entire season now, I can comfortably say that the scene where Erica, the middle school aged child, keeps trying to close the door to her own house after saying her brother isn’t home and Jason, the power tripping, murder-minded, athletic high school senior who is like 2 feet taller and at least 100 lbs (probably more like at least 150 lbs) heavier than her repeatedly refuses to let her? Was far and away the scariest scene of the whole season. The one where Erica is literally fighting for her life against one of Jason’s goons only ranks lower because Genre Savvy(TM) told me she wasn’t actually in danger there, that her peril was just to amp up the tension but she’d be fine because the real focus of the scene was elsewhere — whereas the doorway scene was focused entirely on the two of them and his threatening behaviors, and really felt like a fork in the road between two different directions the story might go, and one of them was significantly darker than the other.

[ncfan-1]

ncfan listens to the Magnus Archives: S1 EP037 (’Burnt Offering’) & EP038 (’Lost and Found’)

In which the shape of future events becomes a little more visible to us, and also: Gaslighting, the Episode!

No spoilers past Season 1, please!

EP 037: ‘Burnt Offering’

- Jon’s getting very particular about making an audio record of everything that could be of the slightest importance, isn’t he?

- Martin’s “S-sorry” in response to Jon’s muttered “Useless” is genuinely very sad.

- And we have a statement by another person who is clearly not in a good state of mind. He makes a good point about the passivity of the Institute, though. All throughout this season, I haven’t seen them get proactive even once. Jon’s calling people about Timothy Hodge and trying to get Elias to do something about the Leitner books still floating around is the closest he’s come to being proactive. He doesn’t even show any concern about Lee Rentoul’s disappearance, given what his disappearance almost certainly means.

- Actually, Jason, I think the job of trees is to produce oxygen so we don’t all suffocate.

- And you missed an opportunity with the pine marten. How about “It’s a weasel, just like all of you!”

- And Jason comes across the ritual site in a clearing. I could make a comment about what an incredibly bad idea it was to go into the clearing, but he talks about that too, and he paid a far higher price for it than he deserved.

- The water boiling in his water bottle puts me in mind of ‘First Aid’. I assume we’re dealing with the same entity as in that episode.

- I do wonder what was preserving the animal corpses in the clearing, because I don’t assume that they all died within a few hours of Jason North’s stumbling on the clearing, too soon to have seriously begun to decay.

- Jason inspects the trees in the clearing, and finds them adorned with bottles hung from nails and curiously clean thread. In each of the bottles is a photograph. I assume that whatever was done here was some kind of binding; if breaking one of the bottles released the entity enough for it to “infect” Jason, I assume the effect of having the bottles intact was to imprison it, or at least dampen its ability to influence the world.

- I assume what happened to Lucy is what would have ultimately happened to Lesere Saraki and the patients who couldn’t walk out of the hospital of their own volition if Gerard Keay hadn’t been admitted with the other man in ‘First Aid.’

- “I didn’t do anything wrong. […] I don’t deserve this. […] There is no reason this is happening.” Yeah, I know. The thing about that is, these entities that influence the world, they don’t care. They don’t care about what you do or don’t deserve, they don’t care if you want to be touched by them or not. You could be a saint or the worst kind of sinner, and it would make no difference. The only motivation they need to fuck up your life is to take notice of you. To see that you’re there. What you want makes no difference to them.

- And Jason wound up self-immolating to escape what was happening to him and everything around him. Ouch.

- The photograph was a photo of Gertrude Robinson, our first real evidence that she was much more deeply involved in the goings-on of the supernatural world than simply being a disorganized archivist.

EP 038: ‘Lost and Found’

- Here we have the return of Mikaele Salaesa, who played a tangential role in ‘Piecemeal.’ His sketchy business practices are pretty consistent with the kind of man who would have dealings with petty crooks, isn’t he?

- “Actual antiques don’t sell to the mass market anymore. Oh, young people will snap up vintage clothes or have any number of cheap, faux replicas strewn about their living rooms, but as soon as they get a look at the price tag for the real thing, they’re out of there like a shot.” Well, excuse us for having the gall to grow up in a crappy economy and having to start out with jobs that pay even crappier wages.

- That said, my sympathies are firmly with Andre Ramao this episode, because this entire episode is basically him being gaslit by a supernatural stalker, and gaslighting tends to put my sympathies down firmly on the side of the person being gaslit.

- I wonder if any of the books in Mikaele Salaesa’s inventory have a familiar plate on them.

- The design of the vase is a geometric pattern that forms an optical illusion. I assume whatever entity is responsible for optical illusions is also the entity responsible for gaslighting.

- Andre’s shoes go first. Then a signed book he was very fond of. Then more stuff, and more, and more. And no one remembers them ever being in his possession. It would be more irritating than frightening, if not for the gaslighting aspect of it, and not for what happens after a certain point.

- I assume Mikaele was having some troubles with the vase, too, for him to let Andre keep it with no charge.

- The part where Andre suspected his husband, David, of preparing to have him “sectioned” (which given the context I’d assumed was UK English for “involuntarily committed”, and sure enough, it does) is the part where this gets properly scary. Being involuntarily committed because of the actions of some supernatural threat is not trivial.

- One night, the things Andre lost come pouring back out of the vase. But it’s not a sign that something’s over. These things are being expelled because the thing that lives in the vase has to push past them to get out. And then, after Andre runs out of the house, he comes back in the morning to find David gone, and no one remembers him ever existing.

- (If it turns out that the answer to what’s going on here is that some entity with a strong perception filter is just a klepto and decided to swipe Andre’s stuff—and his husband—to have for its own, Andre has my permission to go medieval on this thing’s ass.)

- I hope David shows up again someday.

- Seriously, taking David erased his name from Andre Ramao’s marriage license, but didn’t get rid of the license itself. It’s like it’s just removing things—and people—from reality.

- How much of Salaesa’s stuff is now under the Institute’s roof? I’d worry about that, if I was you, Jon.

- I’d laugh about Jon accidentally breaking a wall trying to squash a spider if this didn’t wind up letting the evil worms into the building.

- I do wonder why the tunnels were cut off from the Institute proper.