The Magnus Archives - MAG 100.5 - Assistants Round Table

Episode Date: May 10, 2018

Happy last week of hiatus! Join us behind-the-scenes as the familiar voices of the Magnus Institute's archival assistants break character to discuss their thoughts on performance, inspiration, and horror. As an added bonus, here is a short must-read (or play) list from Alex, Mike, and Lydia:Alien Isolation - Creative Assembly (not read but play!)Blindsight - Peter WattsDracula - Bram StokerSwamp Thing - DC Comics (Alan Moore)The Dunwich Horror - H.P. LovecraftThe Shadow over Innsmouth - H.P. LovecraftStay tuned for a shiny new Magnus episode next week!Content Warnings for this episode are at the end of the show notes.Thanks to this week's Patrons: Rob Sheridan, Andrew Bushell, Quintin Walker, Dylan Parkhurst, Linda Jean, Neongrey, Holly Aitchinson, Andrea RoarkBatt Momar, John DonderoIf you'd like to support us, head to www.patreon.com/rustyquillEdited by Elizabeth Moffatt & Alexander J Newall.Check out our merchandise at https://www.redbubble.com/people/rustyquill/collections/708982-the-magnus-archives-s1You can subscribe to this podcast using your podcast software of choice, or by visiting www.rustyquill.com/subscribePlease rate and review on your software of choice, it really helps us to spread the podcast to new listeners, so share the fear.Content Warning for:Spoilers!Gruesome horror prop discussion Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. Hi everyone, Ben here. I'd just like to take a moment to thank some of our patrons. Rob Sheridan, Andrew Bushell, Quentin Walker, Dylan Parkhurst, Linda Jean, Neon Grey, Thank you all. We really appreciate your support. If you'd like to join them, go to www.patreon.com forward slash rustyquill and take a look at our rewards rusty quill presents The Magnus Archives. Your worst. Right. Hello and welcome to our assistance special of The Magnus Archives.

We're in our season break at the moment and we thought we would take the time and catch up with some of the assistants for the archive because we all listen to a certain Jonathan Sims rather a lot on The Magnus Archives. So I thought we might spend some time with people other than Johnny. With that in mind, who have I got with me today? Well, you've got Mike, who plays Tim Stoker. And Lydia, who plays Melanie. So first things first then. Obviously, you play Tim, Mike.

You play Melanie, Lydia. Well done. And I play Martin. Solid remembering. Good job there. So what do you actually think about your own characters? I knew the heavy stuff was going to come out first. I'm happy to lead the charge and say,

whilst Martin's lovely, I think he'd drive me completely up the wall. I think I'd be like, no, you're lovely. Stop, stop, stop. Just go visit pets at home and stroke some animals for Martin and you'll feel better.

But for the rest of you, what are your actual takeaways of the characters that you play? Well, go on then. I'll go next. So my character, I've always found, well, since season two, I've found a bit of a struggle. Mostly because it started off very happy-go-lucky and sort of you know very lively very chipper and then uh yeah well without i'm am i allowed to give spoilers yeah you are yeah amazing well towards the end of season two uh everything kind of goes to pot and tim becomes horrendously depressed um to the point where my character was the polar opposite of what I was originally brought on to do. It's a bait and switch, really.

It literally was the best bait and switch. I think it worked really well. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy it. I do really enjoy it. It gives me a moment of quiet contemplation so I can consider my life decisions at least once a month. But at the same time, if I were to meet Tim, I'd just slap him. I'd fall backhand as well he's had a rough time of it he's had a very rough time of it but

come on look at his support network yeah lack thereof lack thereof yeah i think that that is the main problem is that there is no predefined support network for tim he needs like something to pull him out anyone and after that happens if that happens it things will probably get better for tim but hey we'll have to see yeah it's a horror podcast i'm sure that getting a wonderful support network yeah and the tools to work through his hisas and lots of hugs and puppies is exactly what's going to happen. Well, the thing is, they'll be readily available,

but never accessible. Oh, like Tantalus's support network. Well, that's still brighter than what I was thinking. The tools to deal with your problems in the Magnus universe generally consist of some kind of book or like a gun or a knife or fire.

Fire's a good one. Being oblivious seems to be the only power you know what so far yeah being completely oblivious there's there's your solution yeah how about you lydia playing melanie how have you been finding it how do you what do you think of your character like i still want to know why and how she was shot by a ghost i want to know i don't know. None of us do. None of us do. Genuinely, the only person who... That wanker Johnny will not...

He won't tell me. The only person who knows is Johnny, and he has abjectly refused to tell us. It's a little frustrating. It's only a major defining character moment that drove you back towards the Magnus archives. Yeah, exactly. It's not like you need to know what your motivations are all right so i started out obviously i started

later than you two and uh she came in i thought it was probably going to be for a one-off early on and uh the only characteristic that i gave her really was that it was you know how far is the rod up her ass on any particular given day. And since then I've sort of developed that into, well, it's very important to her that she seems competent and she seems to lash out the moment that she doesn't really know what's going on or that she thinks other people think

she doesn't know what's going on. And so, yeah, that's the one way you could hurt her the most it's probably like yeah i think probably her her ideal torch would be something like the spiral where it's like she's given a test and she hasn't studied for it or potentially like ikea furniture when she's the only one and doesn't have a handbook yeah like the alum key doesn't quite fit yeah there's other people doing it who do have all the bits and are doing really well. And it's fine.

And everything's okay. And they keep offering to help. Yeah. I wanted help and ask for it. Exactly, exactly. Non-branded he, man, slash screen thing smash, right? Smash anger, yes. Smash anger.

Yeah, so she's still got some cheer in her which is ridiculous i think the last time that i played her she was inviting mine to the pub yes so there's actually some some happiness which is obviously a cruelty playing the character so obviously we know like what you think about them and stuff like that but when it comes to actually playing the characters obviously like for all of us these aren't us like they're really really not us as people i mean like tumblr you would have absolutely no sympathy with alex in real life he's awful no kittens for alex but in all seriousness obviously like you have to have an in you have to have an in for your have to have an in for your character. You have to have a way to get in and actually, like, portray that.

So I'm curious, because Mike, starting with you, you've had the most change. Because your in initially, when we were sort of going over character stuff, was very much, yeah, that positivity, and it was that. It was almost like if the Magnus Archives needed to have a PR face. Like, it'd be Mike, you know, come join the Magnus Archives. We've got books.

Yeah, who does the finger guns and everything, like points. And yeah, you know, just look at our merch. We've got merch. And most of the characterisation for that just consisted of reining it in a bit. Yeah, exactly. But now that's kind of gone. So what's your in now? Because I'd actually say that you're getting really good at just switching as a character, Tim, on and off.

Well, I feel, I mean, this is a horror podcast, but I feel like I'm going to bring the tone down now. So basically in the season one stuff, like you say, it was very, it's very easy for me because my character outside of the character is very, I feel it's very lively and bubbly. And if you saw the Christmas live stream, that that basically is who we are as you know as people um and having to make that switch around season two was very very difficult that was tough to the beginning for the beginning of it literally you know you guys probably don't know who are listening but we have show notes at the at the in the middle and at the end of everything that we do and alex sits through and takes us through a couple of his thoughts and we discuss ideas about how we could have played that scene differently or better or whatever it's almost like respecting your actors but but not

yeah exactly yeah almost like giving a helping hand but with the helping hand is also a whoopee cushion. So what we actually, what we ended up doing, Alex and I, during the beginning few times was that we'd sit down and Alex would be like, you have to be less of that. She was just, yeah. Have less fun. Yeah.

I think you were thrown by just how hard a change the character had to go massively because at first it was very much like okay so you want it still to be sort of like tim just maybe a little bit sedentary like no no no this is like broken completely broken there is nothing left no hope left about anything and that in the beginning was very difficult but now if going back to the original question my in to getting there is actually to think about everything in my life that has gone wrong all at once yeah pretty much and then that is how i hit the tone of tim when i come into the recording studio because i mean from tim like the way we were discussing as a character was like we only really started making progress and we realized it was best to just

you are not playing tim anymore no you're playing another person who is still called tim almost like because it was just yeah we had to take it right back down to zero i mean like you said it's very much a case of we had to go back beyond zero i feel to to kind of get to where i am with tim now because i have to remove everything from my mind that was what tim was in season one and know that that character is still there underneath everything else as someone that listens it feels like there's still there's still like the shape of the character there because it's coming out now in very dry humor yeah yeah and what's sort of clever about there because it's coming out now in very dry humour. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And what's sort of clever about it is it's not an empowered dry humour.

It's not a, I'm laughing at what's happening to me yet. It's a really bitter dry humour. Lydia, playing Melanie, what's your in? Because again, I think we had a harder time with it at the start, but you've gotten really good similarly at just sort of adopting that persona now so i am not a voice actor like i've done quite a lot of recorded stuff but it's always been me doing the work and i really struggle with a lot of kinds of performing because i essentially don't have a poker face and i've worked quite hard on a lot of things like improv skills and presentation skills. Like you're a very skilled speaker.

Yeah, that's things I do as me. And so it's actually quite strange. I haven't actually acted as another character. In terms of how the character themselves is, I tend to think of like, is she doing work that she's proud of right now? So in the first thing where they're in the old hospital, the frustration is her job didn't work. Yes. And she doesn't understand why.

Yeah. And so that's almost more of a problem than the fear. I saw this thing and I don't have the answer whereas like she's she's the producer right like her whole character is that she's a producer she makes stuff happen and she makes stuff work and she knows people and she gets things to um and then in quite a few other things like all the things that have happened since there was something spun out like where she went broke into that train carriage it's all very planned. Like she's a producer. She works out how to do it.

I had to go there. There was a lot of security, but I found a way in. And then it all spirals out of control. And so this is horrible for her. That's why I actually think that she quite enjoyed the time that she read the statement of the guy in the bed. Because there she's doing her job. And at the end, she's going through all the files.

And it's just like, well, this this is okay this is a working day and you know similarly i'm not going to spoil her too specifically but you know there's a lot of things where there's okay here's a terrible threat to you that someone's made a horrible threat what's the obvious solution take out the threat um like i actually was a bit annoyed that it was done so clumsily. There's a bit of you that... We did have a big discussion about, well, I mean, if I was Melanie, which I sort of am, I'd have done it a lot better because I happen to know that what she's using wouldn't really work in that way. Yeah, yeah.

Like, I sort of, you know, you think, well, she's under a lot of pressure. But, yeah, and that's why i think that you know it makes sense for it to click with basira so yeah when it comes to playing martin there's a bit of a weird juxtaposition there because on the one hand i'd argue that he's been used earlier for a lot of the comedy like again he was he's a foil he's a foil to to the the dour archivist but on the flip side that isn't enough for a character so it meant that we've had to sort of dial up things other than just oh waka waka waka how inept but part of that means that when it comes to playing martin i basically

looked back picked all of the things about myself that i left by the wayside in a younger version and then just make that the entire person. Oh, mate. No, genuinely. This is an insight into all of the worst bits of Alex about 10 years ago. But obviously the caring thing, I mean, that's a weakness. Obviously caring is a weakness. But I just mean like that nervousness,

that obsession with trying to make things work and so on. Like I basically just hunted down a bunch of negative characteristics. Yeah, it's true that needing to fix everyone is definitely something that you. Oh, it's something that I. It's so common. And then you do genuinely have to kind of like sometimes you just be like, yeah, Martin, not everyone will like you all of the time. And that's OK. Martin's very much an 18 year old oh like that's what martin like i realized

the character is not a good 18 year old but you know what i mean but it is an 18 year old where someone older comes along and goes listen one people are gonna hate you yeah yeah two that's okay yeah and three you can't fix everyone. No, exactly. Yeah. He has the best of intentions. But yeah, that's so I like, that's me just hunting down for all of the hard lessons. I just want to give him a hug. You just need a hug.

He needs to grow up. I did it. So could he. Genuinely, genuinely. When I listened to Martin on the Magnus archives, I just want to give him a hug. And then I have to come in and play a character

that snubs him constantly and I'm just like but I like you but I'm obliged to hate you contractually obliged to be a the narrative gods require me to ruin your life is that what you want us to call you now

you and Johnny oh I didn't say it wait i did you kind of did it's on everything now you got evidence yeah twice so what were your favorite character moments then so we've been sort of discussing a few specific examples in any type whether it was horror just good acting funny whatever for your character specifically what would you say are the bits that you actually like really enjoyed because certainly from my perspective i find it really hard to do that because for me it's always i'm looking at the work so i'm starting going i could have done that i probably should have tweaked that oh i could have improved that so i found

it quite difficult to hone in on i really enjoyed this now i hated all of it fair terrible terrible experience wouldn't do it again cut there yeah i'll do right we're done um production meals um well we started with me a few times do you want to go first oh um i'm happy to go first i was gonna say you go first all right go on alex so there were a few of mine that i liked i liked doing dig um because doing the statements is a nice moment where you can kind of lay aside the character that you normally play and play sort of someone else and i'm especially been enjoying them recently because i'm it's almost like i'm not doing the statement i'm doing an impression of how johnny would perform the statement right yeah i see what you mean so there's an added layer to that which

makes it quite fun and quite interesting um from a like from a comedy perspective i know a lot of people it's cringe humor and i personally hate cringe humor trying to pay the um statement giver was um improvised so whilst the statement like we had a couple of bullet points to hit and one of them was that that she's under the impression that she's going to get paid but pulling out money and paying for it was just off the cuff and that entire take that we finally used was basically lori desperately trying to not react out of character as she's crying with laughter, suppressing it, because it came from completely left field. So that was good fun because we got a great take.

But literally on the other side of the microphone is I have her biting her lips desperately trying not to laugh. So it was quite nice. I enjoyed that. I can't wait. If there's offcuts of that, I really cannot wait. I did enjoy that a lot uh so my favorite would be i can't even remember which episode was but the first time i came in and had an argument with johnny on yes so at that point you were still quite early on oh yeah yeah and we were still recording on the blankets yeah yeah yeah yeah and the fact that so me and johnny have known each other 10 years

and from the beginning that was through comedy theater at university and like we just could not keep a straight face i think it took you a long time like an well over an hour i think a long time for like five minutes yeah um i can believe it but but that i mean that actually means that the energy in the thing is two people that are frustrated and are really wound up and that's and that's because like we're both looking at each other daring each other to crack up i think there was, by the end of it, there was just the complex web of in-jokes about the fact, because the light on the corridor as well. The backstory as well.

So we were recording under a blanket in Martin and Sarah's corridor and the light in the hallway was a disco light. Yeah. So you're under a blanket shouting at each other and then you take it off while alex is reviewing the sound and working out how to direct your next take and you're like and then you just start dancing then you put the blanket back on and you're shouting at each other and trying to wind each other up in as different characters while also winding each other up as real people it's a total roller coaster ride it was it was brilliant i don't miss the disco corridor

i really miss the disco corridor i loved that corridor dance party yeah all the time every take so what was yours then after hit after hit favorite hit after hit. What was one of your favourite moments, Ben? There were a few. There were a few that stick out. I think one of my favourite scenes to shoot was the one where Martin and Tim, and the backstory to this was the recording that we were doing at that point was in the corner of a room.

And so it was Martin and Tim running away from Not Sasha and then having to run down corridors, by any means, and then pant and be out of breath. Oh, we did so many takes. Literally, me, Alex and I were stood in a corner for about eight takes, literally just going... And that was before we set the audio running so that we would actually be out of breath

by the time we got to shooting. See, that's the thing. Everyone likes the exciting episodes, you know, where a lot happens as a way of breaking it up. I cannot stress enough, there is no better way to feel like a complete burp than pretending to have fights or pretending to run. Recording combat's the worst.

It makes you feel such an idiot. But I'll tell you what, it was flipping good fun. Sprinting at a wall over and over again. And we were actually jogging on the spot as well to try and get ourselves in the mind of the character. It was just nonsense. I mean the the

production level like quality level on the magnus and gaming i like i can say it's absurdly high because i don't do any of the work like it's alex and his team of extraordinary editors uh that do that but it means that like the stuff that they end up demanding of us in order to produce the right foley or the right kind of attitude or the right like you get some very bizarre asks finishing up then with the last bit of like how what is your relationship with horror so you as a person not your not your characters let's not get like really meta with it or anything but for each of you how are you engaging with horror how are you interacting with it even if it's just i hate horror which i don't think is the case for either of you but nonetheless like how do you engage with it as a genre so i have no interest in being upset scared

by media sure but i have a long relationship with horror as a thing to make and a thing that is that has an interesting kind of commentary on the world yeah so but like we were talking earlier actually today about like the british horror tradition which um from vertigo and alan moore and karen berger uh which i see the magnus archives as being like it fits very nicely within that tradition because it's a very politically aware, clever, psychological horror that is of its time and reflects kind of ideas and fears of the current kind of era.

So we were talking earlier about the Ark of Swamp thing where it starts out as a B-movie type. Guy turns into a compost heap. Yeah, basically Guy turns into a compost heap. Guy and his wife are in a place they get blown up and the wife dies because motivation, that's what we're good for. Guy turns into

a compost heap and then wants to avenge her because that's where we are. It's a pretty B-movie, it's a good B-movie but then alan moore comes in and it changes like there's this incredible kind of shift as it becomes about identity and bodies and psychology and your real connection to the earth and it has all those weird lsd sex scenes see i for that specifically i was always fascinated with um because it was alan

moore that really dove into it the whole he's fine unless you're afraid and then the fear like hurts so then he gets like aggressive like that's that was a lovely way of exploring a lot of stuff absolutely because shocker people who work on the magnus archives are interested in the fear and fear as a mechanism and yeah etc yeah a little bit yeah so yeah i love horror as a mechanism to talk about interesting scary things it's good lens yeah but i've got absolutely no interest in watching horror films and getting freaked out you know i find i find that really interesting actually because coming on board with the magnus Archives was a massive step change for me because I don't know about all the awesome writers that you guys know about

and I'm sort of starting to learn about it because I'm interested. You know, and I'm interested in Johnny's motivations and Alex and Lyd's motivations and all the other guys on the cast as well. And for me, I used to deal with comedy. You know, my YouTube channel was a comedy channel and coming into the Magnus Archives and then editing it

and playing a character in it was just the polar opposite of everything that I'd ever known or was used to. Because like you, Lydia, there is some horror that I enjoy watching, but I don't really enjoy being scared, inverted commas, by media and what have you you know there's enough of that in the world already um so i'm i'm very much of the opinion that i prefer things that aren't horror so then playing playing a character in a horror podcast for me gives me that that perspective of

what would happen if someone came in and they didn't have the first idea about any of this lore. I mean, obviously, I know about things like the Eldritch Horror and stuff like that. I'm familiar with it. I've listened to a few of the audiobooks now. That was introduced to me by a friend of mine and his brother. That was my entry into a lot of the things that I think you guys have been thinking about for a while and some of the sort of stuff that's sitting in the background and i'm actually learning about this stuff as i'm going through playing the character listening to the stories listening back to everyone's work and

yeah that's yeah where i pitch in see i'm a bit of a weird one when it comes to horror so shocker teenage boy likes horror stop the presses how weird i was i know this has never happened before literally ever so i was shocker i was a little bit of an obsessive kid in certain ways and one of them is if you introduce me to an author i'll read every single thing they ever read and then i'll move on to the next author and then read every single thing they ever read move on and so on yeah but for me with horror i'm a little bit broken in that i've genuinely never found any piece of horror media that's really or very rarely at least found anything that actually has an affect on me like i don't get that kind of emotional response it just doesn't really work

for me yeah but i've engaged with horror a lot both like writing myself or in making like it's been a while like film and so on but i'd say my main in has been sort of cinema and so on but for a lot of it it comes down to horror is an excellent technical example for working in fiction oh yeah because there's a reason that if you are starting a new production company or you're trying to break into film yeah almost everyone makes horror yeah and there's a reason for it and it's that it has a lot of very very clearly codified tropes trend and techniques yeah you know if you want to do horror oh is your character is your character feeling psychologically unbalanced chuck in a dutch angle in there rotate the camera by about you know 25 degrees and then maybe do a tilt shift to mess around with like some distances and so on but i think horror is one of the genres

more than any other where it allows technique to shine absolutely because if you are bad it does not matter how good your monster is or how good your conceit is your thing will be garbage yeah exactly it's peculiar in that everyone always goes to horror because they know horror best but it's also in a lot of ways the least forgiving i think comedy and horror actually have quite a lot in common yeah they're all about you you have to be playing with the audience's energy like you have to be exactly aware of where they are on any kind of arc to yeah yeah break the tension at exactly the right point. So I think the fact that most of us of the wider team knew each other through comedy and were trained in comedy,

like comedy is the hard, I think it's the hardest thing to do well and to do really well. And that means that you're, and I think in many ways you have to lose your ego to be good at it because you have to be willing to mess up in the most embarrassing ways. Your first 105 minutes on an open mic night are going to be horrendous. Yeah. And that allows you to then play with energy and timing.

We've got to draw to a close. I think we've had a lot of discussion. I know we'd like to go into stuff in some more detail but you know time is a thing that we have to factor neither that nor space does this mean part two so what i would ask then is what if you had to recommend one piece of horror for listeners not necessarily like you love the magnus archives so you will like this but something more like if you want to know horror you should try this i think already this podcast but uh reading that early vertigo stuff um that british psychological horror twist and there's only you you probably only need to get through a bunch of like, you know, maybe 100 rather short comics.

It can be read in a relatively short period of time and you begin to see this. You see this whole world change. And I think it's a really interesting direction shift that changed a lot of horror that came after it. But I'm not an expert. So it could well be that other people be be like, no, this other writer came well before. But reading through the early Swamp Thing and then how that exploded into Sandman and Hellblazer and a lot of other related characters was super valuable to me. How about you, Mike?

So from the way that I've engaged with horror, I guess, like Lydia said, there are lots of different styles and there are lots of different styles and there are lots of different elements but if you want a pure in my opinion kind of perspective on different kinds of horror that exist within one place or one universe or one thing alien isolation sure is a fantastic way to get into it because having having a think about other gaming titles there are a lot of gaming titles like Dead Space and things like that which give you

weaponry to be able to deal with whatever threat is coming after you which is, it's horror but it's a once removed kind of, because you know that the threat is always at arm's reach if you need it to be unless that's taken away from you and in Alien Isolation

it is, there is a constant threat and it will never go away and it follows you throughout the entire game i'm generally too terrified by the very concept to think about picking it up it's an excellent examination of tension yeah well not just tension though i'd say it's more than that building on your point is that it's tension but it's also the subjugation of an individual within a tense environment and and there are points where you have weaponry but you still can't do anything to get rid of the main threat so you know and then there are other elements as well like you know stealth bits and you know there's things in there it's a really good example of of taking those those important bits

that we think in like western horror especially in horror sci-fi obviously yeah obviously but because it has to turn them into mechanics it highlights them in a really interesting way yeah so it does like if you go into it with a with a critical eye yeah like trying to like engage yourself and learn you can learn a lot just by playing that game by going oh i see what you're doing with the music yeah yeah exactly look at how you've set this space out to focus on. I see. Yeah, totally. It's a good demonstration if you choose to interpret it that way.

And do you know what as well? For those of you who aren't gamers and are listening to this, if you want a get in, I would recommend the film version of 2001 Space Odyssey. Yeah, definitely. Because again, well, it has a total removal of power 2001 Space Odyssey. Yeah, definitely. It certainly has its elements. Well, it has a total removal of power that then becomes horrifying. But if you haven't seen it,

I won't spoil it. Just saying. I think it hasn't been out long enough for people to have caught it. It's been not that long since it was originally released. So yeah, I agree with you, Lyd. I worked really hard to make sure i read that

in the year 2000 and as basically a child went eh so my recommendation is going to be a bit generic but it comes with an addendum which is i recommend reading a random selection of lovecraft but with a very very key consideration which is yeah lovecraft did a lot for cosmic horror and so on but the guy was really problematic author really really problematic for his time as well yeah that's an important thing for his time he was a bigot for his time it is easy to read his stuff and go well you know it's the past like no no no like even at the time he was extremely problematic author but what i would say is if you choose to engage with it critically, and again, this is me, the soulless robot man, who's always concerned with the how, but if you actually really dig into

it and you want to wrap your head around horror, it's a good way for you to read it and go, I see what should have been different there, or i see how this could be problematic and there's a very important aspect with horror that people forget especially on the creation side which is when you make something you are telling people something you are not just telling a story you are telling someone everything everything that you make has a message and sometimes that message can either be not what you thought or can be the opposite yeah if you want to tell a story about a strong female character in in bunny ears except at the end of it all the audience thinks is wow that was a really flat one-dimensional character congratulations your message is

almost certainly not what you hoped no and lovecraft is a really great one to dig into especially the um insmith fish people one as one of the examples where it's like, interesting. I get I get the horror and I get why it's scary and there's bits I to take. But it's a really good example of something that you can read and you can't just go, oh, yes, that was brilliant. Job done. You have to engage with it and you have to go okay if you were wanting to make something as horror as this yeah what bits do you leave behind what bits are not appropriate what bits do not fit our modern world or even let's be frank the world that he was writing um but it's just it's very easy to read passively and it's very easy to watch something and go that was scary therefore it was

good it's like ah i'm inclined to agree. Having very recently been introduced to the actual, the written version and the audio version of, I think it was, what's it, the Dunwich Horror? Yes, the Dunwich Horror, yes. Yeah, the Dunwich Horror. I recently heard the audio version of that

and having listened to it for the first time, I totally agree. Yeah, I totally, you can literally see the points where you can go, ah, right, yeah. so i think we will wrap up there yes we're gonna have to put a reading list on these shows we actually are we will we will put together a reading list so that it's things that we think that you should probably

give a go uh apart from that i think that we're done here i think we've covered assistance i think that we've covered out of his house i am tired, yeah. I am tired. But no, thanks for both of you coming. And thanks so much for listening. And thanks for bearing with us over this season break. Next week, we should be returning to our previously scheduled programming. Exciting signs. It's coming back. I might just decide to hold off the cliffhanger for another six months just to see what happens.

That's the true horror. That really is, yeah. But yeah, I think we'll wrap up there. Thanks from me and thanks from everyone else. Bye! Thanks for listening. chart from the Magnus Archives, letting you know about our sponsor, Audible. For fans of heart racing, bone chilling and mind bending stories, Audible has everything you need. Audible is the leader in audiobooks, so you'll always find the best and freshest selection of mysteries and thrillers to choose from. Sometimes you just want to get lost in a classic whodunit, and sometimes

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