#mag173

oooh, I love the concept

well, it's obviously awful, don't get me wrong

but to be fair, we tend to think of children as inherently good and pure

and as someone who was a victim of bullying K-12, I feel strangely validated by this?

children are egotistical by nature

and it's not that hard to twist that ego into something monstrous

like Martin, I too would've preferred to help them

jon vs callum FIGHT

one of my favorite parts about this episode were all the callbacks to previous episodes where the event happened when the statement-giver was a child, so i wrote them out as a list here

the twisting shadow behind the swings: marcus mackenzie (146), who was tormented by the distortion beginning in childhood. his first encounter with it involved his favorite toy, his jumprope, which he specifically mentions bringing to school (presumably playing with it near the school’s playground)

the tree in the back garden that will “bite off [jack’s] hands to wear like apples”: hill top house. this is my favorite reference here because it brings together that mysterious tree, the rotting apples connected with the spider, and the whole weird thing with raymond’s hand being found around agnes’s waist when she commits suicide. my tinfoil hat brain is going nuts trying to figure out if this has/ties into any larger meaning or if it’s just a reference

the drum from the old drying machine with the big slimy worm underneath that will squeeze him til his eyes pop out: adrian weiss (84), whose landmarks when approaching old maggie’s house included a washing machine without a drum (interesting that it’s the missing drum in this episode) and who finds a mask of his friend gordon in the yard with worms crawling through the mouth

lives in the drain and pops up when you’re washing your hands and bites off your fingers one by one and can be stopped by flashlight: this one is a little less direct. i’m thinking it might be julia (in ep9), given the whole thing with the dark water flowing out of the taps in her house and the water’s connection to the Dark (ie light is its antithesis) but it also puts me in mind of lester chang from ep93, whose father-in-law had mold in his drain (though he wasn’t a kid so i don’t think this was the intended connection)

kaitlyn hiding in the wardrobe: benjamin hatendi (86), whose friend hid from the Dark monster in his wardrobe until he died there (technically benjamin wasn’t a kid for this but it was a childhood fear and the event was quintessential Dark so it still counts ok)

spiky fish with big eyes and pointy teeth in the picture book: this is also a bit more abstract, but it reminds me of little jonathan sims being marked by the Web after reading a picture book (81)