cSeal wrote: ↑Tue Feb 15, 2022 7:47 pm
The earlier and middle bits of the magnus archives are really interesting to me, lost interest near the end but I still go back and give it a listen every now and again
Fuck man, this is exactly how i felt about the Magnus archives. I binged three quarters of it during summer and somewhere around the middle it decides to stop handing out tiny clues in favor of dumping the entire setting over like three episodes. I haven't found any storytelling besides it that quite delivers the Cultist sim atmosphere. That feeling of uncovering something strange and monumentally profound but just not understanding the whole picture. I hate how it turned into vampire schlock with a romantic subplot. The guy who wrote it fucked up massively on three points: unveiling the mystery at the center of the setting, turning his protagonist from the scholar unearthing eldritch secrets into a fucking superhero who eats people but is entirely human and understandable, and pandering to the fandom with le epic gay romance despite it taking so much away from the atmosphere. I appreciate that he seemed to be trying to portray humanity's response to this unknowable force, but everything just made too much sense to work as Weird Fiction, which is about our logical frameworks breaking down and the nonsensical causality of the nightmare taking its place. The worst part is that the creator clearly knew this in the first half. I can only assume he didn't want a successful series to end.
It should have ended with none of the big questions unanswered, speculated about on forums and social media. the pantheon he built wasn't interesting, and lacked the dream-logic that other Weird Fiction authors employ to give their creations a terrible life in the utmost edges of comprehension. I hear he did another similar project called I am in Eskew, but frankly the ending of the Magnus Archives keeps me from checking it out. I'd hate to be dissapointed like that again.
Sorry for the rant. I just haven't come across anyone else who listened through the series and isn't part of the "fandom"