julsbo
Travelling Wordsmith
Posts: 30
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Post by julsbo on Aug 1, 2017 6:35:30 GMT
YAY, I have finally caught up!
So enjoying everyone's character development (Hamid seems to be adjusting to impending dragonhood rather well, isn't he?) and the overall storytelling. I'm not sure how I'm going to adjust to not having a big pot of episodes to dip into at will.
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julsbo
Travelling Wordsmith
Posts: 30
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Post by julsbo on Jul 27, 2017 14:05:02 GMT
This second bout of sibling resentment is certainly feeling noteworthy, isn't it? Especially as Laura Popham also described a clingy-sounding sibling whose behaviour seemed to "justify" a trip that results in an uncanny disappearance. I wonder if there's an equivalent "take her not me" hidden behind this statement, too?
I wonder if there's a motivation our possibly unreliable narrators aren't telling us about. Did Laura gain something from sacrificing her sister to someone/thing? Has Stephen Walker?
Feels like the string is already connected in this episode, so now there are only more questions...
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julsbo
Travelling Wordsmith
Posts: 30
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Post by julsbo on Jul 20, 2017 7:55:00 GMT
More connections: Michael, hypnotic fractals, teeth (this time a child's AAAGGHHH), and references to being out of time/in another dimension. The "short story" describe struck me as the clearest explanation of where this is all heading than anything else we've heard so far. Unless it's a careful bit of misdirection...
Help. I'm getting paranoid about a podcast's intentions!
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julsbo
Travelling Wordsmith
Posts: 30
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Post by julsbo on Jul 8, 2017 22:22:19 GMT
Is the name of John Haan's murdered (and butchered) wife Lan Ying? I have been relistening to try and catch her name as I noticed it was similar to Jennifer Ling from MAG42. I was following a strand of red string that notes that John's wife's body had signs of injuries that were "self-inflicted" as well as those caused by being dismembered & mixed into burgers* by her husband, which put me in mind of Ling's death after listening to her recording of Grifter's Bone.
*As a decent cook and fully paid up foodie, my view is that she had to be in the burgers. Donars are bought in and seem difficult to form for the average takeaway owner, but anyone can form a burger & mix it with a bit of standard-issue beef to avoid detection. Yes, please do contact me for all your culinary homicide-masking needs.
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julsbo
Travelling Wordsmith
Posts: 30
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Post by julsbo on Jul 7, 2017 16:46:49 GMT
That was great. Definitely a return to form after last week's (though I appreciated the theories about the flat statement delivery possibly indicating a not-person). I did pick up on the matching Haan surnames straight away.
I also found myself thinking about the bin bag of identical teeth found not so far away in Leytonstone a year later. And I thought about the fact that they were all in varying stages of decay, which - in light of this episode - is really quite disturbing.
Finally, thanks to Jonny. I was listening to this episode absolutely intently, with damp palms and and a racing heart, but even so the incongruous "low level racism" line genuinely made me lol.
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julsbo
Travelling Wordsmith
Posts: 30
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Post by julsbo on Jun 27, 2017 18:48:53 GMT
Hello. I'm julsbo, and I found my way here from the Interwebs. I stumbled across the Magnus Archives as a fun way to distract myself from my commute and have somehow ended up completely entangled in red string. Having binged my way through Magnus I've now started on the RQ gaming podcast too, so I thought it was time I emerged to say thanks to you clever people for the hours of in-transit entertainment.
One day, I aspire to no longer be an Alphabet Squire.
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julsbo
Travelling Wordsmith
Posts: 30
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Post by julsbo on Jun 27, 2017 18:41:45 GMT
I hope he's not careening toward a bad end. "Careening toward a bad end" could be the tagline of the series, to be honest. Having relistened to MAG5, I think you may be right. (Which means no-one will enjoy Martin's tea EVER AGAIN.)
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julsbo
Travelling Wordsmith
Posts: 30
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Post by julsbo on Jun 27, 2017 17:31:13 GMT
I am relistening to the archives from the beginning (yes yes, I have a bit of a train commute, okay?), and now that I've reached MAG5 it occurs to me that the truly interesting bit of this statement isn't the dolls heads, or the prayer paper, or even the creepy bag of teeth - it's Alan Parfitt's obsessive "need to know" what's happening at Lancaster Road.
He goes from being interested and a bit excited about the spookiness of the rubbish bag finds, to starting to become so focussed on Lancaster Road that he begins losing sleep and snapping at his coworkers, to finally screwing up badly enough at work to get fired. (All sounding a bit like someone we know...)
And then he suddenly sends an ambiguous text (or does he?), and is never seen again. Except for the weird metal heart.
So what exactly is it that these obsessive seekers find? Or maybe more to the point, what finds them?
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julsbo
Travelling Wordsmith
Posts: 30
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Post by julsbo on Jun 22, 2017 16:24:12 GMT
Oh dear, our archivist has not only been down in the tunnels again, he's actually explored the entire accessible first level and started poking around the second. I hope he's not careening toward a bad end.
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julsbo
Travelling Wordsmith
Posts: 30
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Post by julsbo on Jun 8, 2017 13:37:40 GMT
Well, so far we've had Pestilence (everything Amhurst, the Snow syringe, the blood bag) War (WW1's bone flute-playing piper), and Death(s). If we could just find Famine, we'd have a full house for the Apocalypse.
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julsbo
Travelling Wordsmith
Posts: 30
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Post by julsbo on Jun 5, 2017 14:57:23 GMT
Yes, I do indeed mean Rosa Meyer. (Principled stand on a bus, hijacking a van and filling it with petrol - you can see how I'd confuse the two, right?)
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julsbo
Travelling Wordsmith
Posts: 30
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Post by julsbo on Jun 5, 2017 12:49:46 GMT
Which leads me to a few questions: How many people with flames inside them exist? Are they born that way? Is it compulsive for all of them, or do some more enthusiastic members drag the less willing into it? Well, we know of at least one person who ended up with "flames inside him" pretty unwillingly, and he also self-immolated. Which makes me wonder if the ritual circle he stumbled into in Scotland was indicating that Gertrude was being targeted to become a human torch as well. (And just think of everything she would have taken with her. Rosa Parks certainly seemed to be aware of that, too...)
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julsbo
Travelling Wordsmith
Posts: 30
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Post by julsbo on Jun 5, 2017 11:43:46 GMT
I noticed that this is the third (?) time we've heard about someone compulsively eating something (Graeme was observed tearing out and eating the pages of one of his many notebooks before he became Not-Graeme, Father Burroughs' gruesome "host.").
Spooky flat mate also Natalie seemed quite keen to get her friend eating something unpleasant in the name of "worshipping," though we've still not really worked out what it was.
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julsbo
Travelling Wordsmith
Posts: 30
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Post by julsbo on Jun 1, 2017 20:19:34 GMT
What I want to know is, why is Elias so adamant that Jonathan cannot be replaced? Coming on the back of the Tim/John argument when they both suddenly realised they couldn't quit, it all seems very suspicious. Is the Archivist playing a part in some sort of ritual? And is his need to go back into the tunnels part of it, or is it some sort of... compulsion? There are quite a few spiders down there, after all...
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