I hate horror. I have never seen a thriller movie, refuse to listen to ghost stories and I even get creeped out by an episode of “Criminal Minds.” My least favorite month is October because of the horror film trailers.
To sum it up, I’m the “world’s biggest wuss.”
And yet I spend my nights going to sleep to the terrifying stories narrated by the dulcet voice of Jonathan Sims, both the voice actor and writer of “The Magnus Archives,” as he explains the paranormal sightings of London.
“The Magnus Archives” is a horror fiction podcast centered around the archives at the Magnus Institute, which researches the paranormal. Jonathan “Jon” Sims — yes, the main character has the same name as his voice actor and yes, it gets confusing — is the newly appointed Head Archivist and also extremely skeptical of anything paranormal.
The podcast’s episodes are framed as cassette tape recordings of the Archive’s visitors’ paranormal encounters. Sometimes this includes an in-person interview, but it usually takes form in the narration of a letter or previous interview that was recorded. At the end is a supplemental detailing the follow-up investigation by the archive’s employees, which often include sarcastic conversations between Jon and the other archivists.
Every episode is gripping and horrifying, eventually coalescing into a series of realizations as the main cast finds themselves stuck in a string of events that are much bigger and far-reaching than they ever anticipated.
What intrigued me about “The Magnus Archives” was not the supernatural tales themselves — although those were so wonderfully written that even an anti-horror enthusiast like myself could enjoy them — but rather, the wonderful cast of intriguing characters that you meet.
In the beginning, we only see snippets of the Archive Assistants, who Jon often disparages as being incompetent and annoying. Their voices are occasionally featured in the supplementals, usually interrupting Jon’s dry comments, but we only get a good grasp of who they are later on, when sh*t starts going down.
Although I hate the terror of thrillers, I have two best friends whose bread and butter is horror. They have sleepovers where they binge-watch horror movies. One of their fashion styles is based on the elements of horror. So over the course of our friendship, I have been forced to learn more than I care to about horror tropes and the plotlines of classic horror stories.
One thing I think is unique about the horror genre as an outsider looking in is the inherent connection between horror and queerness. Think Dr. Frank-n-Furter from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” Deena from the “Fear Street” trilogy or, of course, the classic lesbian vampire trope.
The cast and world of “The Magnus Archives” is wonderfully queer. While it takes place in mid-to-late 2010s London, the world is akin to that of “The Owl House,” where most discrimination based on gender, ethnicity or sexuality is nonexistent. Its queer characters are simply allowed to be themselves, and their actions and character arcs are largely separate from their sexualities or gender identities.
While I certainly love a queer story that dives deep into what it means to be queer, I think there should always be space for queer characters to casually exist in both the real world and fictional worlds. Even most of the couples we see in “The Magnus Archives” are queer, including our main couple, but the creators never marketed the story as a queer one.
The queer characters in “The Magnus Archives” are also very flawed — they make mistakes, they’re morally gray and are neither all good nor all bad. A large problem of queer representation in the past has been the queercoding of villains, such as Ursula in “The Little Mermaid” or Freddy and Jesse in “A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge,” which often leads to the correlation between queerness and villainy.
“The Magnus Archives” allows all its queer characters the same opportunities as the other characters — that is to say, they’re at an equal risk of being killed. And don’t worry, if you do enjoy your choice of flamboyantly queer villains, there’s still a good cast to pick from.
The thing that first drew me to “The Magnus Archives” was a fan animated clip online of Martin, one of the Archive Assistants, and Jon’s first meeting. I did not know until I finished the first episode that it was a horror podcast, but by then I was hooked.
If you’re looking for a queer horror story to get you in the mood for Halloween, “The Magnus Archives” has you covered, although with 200 episodes it’ll entertain you far after this year’s Halloween. While not explicitly focused on queer themes, sometimes it’s just nice to have queer characters there. Even if they are under the constant watch of supernatural entities.
But then again, aren’t we all? I, for one, like to think that Oscar Wilde watches me write these reviews.
Sinqueerly Yours,
Kal
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