I didn't expect that with the first episode this series would be able to transmit such intense fear and terror to me.
The idea of an Anglerfish is quite clever, imagining a creature that takes advantage of a human appearance to hunt its victims by asking them for a cigarette, makes me think that perhaps the creature be smarter than might initially appear
Favorite lines of the episode:
"I’ve managed to secure the services of two researchers to assist me. Well, technically three, but I don’t count Martin as he’s unlikely to contribute anything but delays"
Jonathan Sims is so funny, and I'm sure he'll grow fond of Martin. I've set my words in stone, and if it doesn't work out, I'll be pissed.
“Can I have a cigarette?”
Literally the line that represents the episode
“check out this drunk creeper lol”
IT'S SO FUNNY HOW JONATHAN SAYS IT
I loved the first episode, i can say that this is gonna be a great audiodrama
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if this Magnus Archives and Fallout: Far Harbour inspired Anglerfish plush made from repurposed stuffed animal pelts asks you for a cigarette, do not give him one
it's bad for his health and he only wants to steal your skin anyway.
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I watched Coraline and Kubo and the Two Strings and got inspired to think about stuff I have no money to make-- but think of the character designs--- THINK ABOUT MICHAEL he'd be fucked up and twisty,,
episode one would be kinda like this:
[TAPE CLICKS]
[ARCHIVIST PERSPECTIVE]
Episode Starts, showing Jon in his office, giving the introductions to everything-- this is just the first few minutes of MAG001. the camera would be showing the details of the office, whatever those details might be, while he's talking, and of course, the tape recorder will be sitting on his desk, next to Nathan Watt's statement.
Once Jon starts to actually read the statement, the story would shift to Nathan himself, with Jon's voice being less present as the encounter and experience itself starts to play out.
[STATEMENT BEGINS]
We'd see a portion of Nathan's life, getting ready for the party that evening, maybe bumping into the later victim of the Anglerfish (John? I think his name was?) and overall giving some life and personality to Nathan.
As night falls, the students start to party at the albanach, showing them drinking and partying, displaying the events that Nathan described; celebrating Michael MacAulay's acceptance into a master's degree, primarily, showing Nathan drinking more than he should have, growing a bit more vulgar, until finally he decides to leave the party and walk home.
We see Nathan start to walk, with the camera showing the tilted-ness of Edinburgh, before he inevitably falls and takes his tumble, stopping not far from the alley, where, as he takes out his cigarette, we hear, from the alley:
"Can I have a cigarette?"
Nathan looks over in surprise to see the figure in the alleyway. While Nathan is enough in the light to be visible, the figure is hidden slightly, hiding the fine details. Nathan holds out the cigarette, trying to talk to the figure, to no avail.
The figure asks again, "Can I have a cigarette?" and Nathan starts to think that something might be wrong. The figure can be seen to be swaying now, with Nathan paying closer attention to the figure, holding out the cigarette now, not stepping any closer.
The figure is in frame now, the swaying unable to be missed, when we hear, for the third time, "Can I have a cigarette?" clearly seeing the fact that the figure's mouth does not move.
Nathan catches on, dropping the cigarette and fumbling with his phone to turn on the torch. At the same time, the figure gets pulled back into the alleyway, with a long thin hand being the "string" that pulls it taught.
The phone light illuminates the alleyway, showing it to be completely empty. Nathan scans around it for a moment, before powering his phone off and heading back up to the party to call in a taxi.
We see Nathan sit in flat the next morning, drinking lots of water, making the "very greasy breakfast" he mentions, and overall keeping himself busy while thinking about the previous night. This section would be eerily quiet, with little to no music to distract from the unsettled feeling that Nathan has for what he's seen.
After a moment, he'd pull out a laptop and do his best to look into whether or not anything has cropped up, do the research he mentioned in the statement, coming to the initial conclusion that that hadn't ever happened before, or been any kind of myth.
Perhaps any flatmates he has see him looking into this and we get a short conversation where they suggest he might've been drunk, where he retaliates and says he's never hallucinated while drunk, and keeps insisting that something was wrong with the man in the alleyway. The flatmate gives "one of those looks, halfway between pity and concern" mentioned in the statement, and he stops talking about it, leaving the flat to investigate the place in daylight
Unsurprisingly, he doesn't find anything at the alleyway, making his way back home.
Cut to a few days later, where at the campus, he sees a missing poster for John Fellows. Nathan walks up to and studies the photo they used, eventually seeing the pack of Marlboro Red cigarettes in his pocket.
The statement ends with Jon's words coming into focus once more;
"I haven’t quit smoking, but I do find that I take a lot more taxis now if I find myself out too late."
[STATEMENT ENDS]
[ARCHIVIST PERSPECTIVE]
Here, Jon gives the conclusion to the statement, with little variation from the original audio. It's simply animated over it now.
As the statement ends, we see the final shot of Jon's office, where he reaches over to the tape recorder, and..
[TAPE CLICKS]
Don't know what came over me to write all of that, but yeah, if I somehow get the materials to create this, I fully want to dedicate the time and effort into making episode one. If I was really ambitious, I'd want to do the whole series, but on account of there being so many characters and 200 episodes..... I don't think that'll happen any time soon..
I might be thinking a bit too ambitious for this project too, on account I've never done anything even remotely close to this. I've never worked with puppets like I'd want, I've never made any kind of set before, I've barely made any stop-motion animations with even LEGOs.
Still, it's been going around in my brain for a little while, and I think it would be really cool to do something like this in the future.
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one single minute into mag 1 and I’m grinning and giggling because Jon is SUCH a cunt and I love him. start recording and he’ll immediately talk about how he’s better at his job than a dead old lady
Case #0122204, Nathan Watts
Release date: 24th March 2016
First listen 13th Oct 2020, on the walk into work
Oh boy, here we go.
- I can’t quiet remember what my thoughts before the first episode was. I think I’d seen some fan art and had my interest piqued. I think @dodgylogic had tried to explain it to me but there was a lot of communication done with eyebrows and general alarmed expressions coupled with strangled noises. I think I went in expecting something between maybe X Files and Buzzfeed’s Unsolved.
- So we’re introduced to Jonathan. Jonny Boy. The Boss. The wee bastard man. This dry motherfucker spent 4 years as a research assistant only to get yeeted to Head Archivist. I mean, it’s a terrible twisted pseudo-nepotism but damn if it’s not career progression.
- It’s so strange hearing it back again, hearing him lament Gertrude’s efforts. At this stage I was taking his word for it, assuming Gertrude had been aging in the job and it was over whelming her and the archive’s slide into almost being unusable was an accidental tragedy.
- ‘I don’t count Martin.’ As I’m writing this, it’s striking me how many character’s I hold dear have been written off as ‘not counting’. We’ll no doubt cover it, but I came to care about Martin very, very deeply. But we get our first mention of the archival assistants. When they were fresh faced and naive. Bless them.
- But into the body of it. This episode let me know right out the gate that this podcast wasn’t what I was expecting it to be and it wasn’t going to let me go.
- I’ve visited, lived and worked in Edinburgh. I wouldn’t go as far to say I know the city well, but I know my way around. I’ve been to 2 Fringe’s there and I worked a contract at Edinburgh Zoo. But if there’s one thing I know about Edinburgh, it’s that it is lousy with ghosts and spirits. There are so many ghost walks and tours, I have visited the Edinburgh Dungeons a few times, the place is dripping with history and blood long spilt. I thought this was going to be a statement about a sighting or an apparition and as I listened to the street names and mapped it in my head, I was trying to work out who we’d see. And in many ways, that makes this all the more eerie; that despite this city having scores of ghosts that are named and attributed, this presence was all the more The Stranger for being an unknown.
- I’ve never been one for partying or drinking, but I’ve vaguely familiar with some of the establishments, if only by name. And looking at a map, I was walking down Cockburn Street only a month or 2 ago, right past the Albanach, But yes, Edinburgh is steep. I used to complain about work because Edinburgh Zoo is pitched on the side of a hill, I gained about an inch on my calf after 3 months. About the only 200 meter stretch that’s flat is the Murrayfield stadium. And so many of the stair ways and side alleys are narrow and dark, even in the day.
- And the choice of Old Fishmarket Close is appropriate and all, but this could have been another Entity’s story all together. Down the side of the Albanach runs yet another tiny alley, by the name of Fleshmarket Close. Could have just as easily been a The Flesh story. Now that I’m thinking of it Burke, Hare and Knox could all have made worthy avatars for The Flesh or The End. Jonny, if you’re reading this, you can have that one for free.
- The Anglerfish, as a monster in itself, made me think of two other examples of ‘lure’ hunters that I’d seen in media. The Grand Fisher was a hollow in the anime series BLEACH which had a very similar drive to our Anglerfish, if perhaps with some more autonomy and the capacity of human thought. It held grudges and liked to gloat, but in many ways the Anglerfish is more chilling because who you are has no importance to it. It will lie in wait. The other was the emergency protocol hologram in the Doctor Who episode ‘The Lodger’, which was killing folks but in a misguided but repeated method of returning home. Both ‘hunters’ used people’s instinct to help against them, much in the same way the Anglerfish does.
- And of course we get that list of names, some of which we will hear from again of course.
- Sasha finding all the things. Yes girl. Finding all the things relating to a creature and to a case which is very much the purview of the Entity that will be your demise. No girl. Girl get outta there.
- Having an eerie, beckoning hand as the last image to leave you on at the end of the first episode… rude.
