I’m sticking this here becaise we don’t have a podcast thread yet, and it’s a podcast that scared me shitless.
I started watching the magnus archives a long time ago, and I’ve long since finished the archives and gotten up to date, but I’ve only recently come to realise why it was so good or why it completely terrified me so much.
Because these stories aren’t about cursed people, they aren’t about arseholes or idiots asking for it to happen making stupid decisions constantly, the stories are about perfectly normal people, who make sensible, rational decisions, and who rarely had any direct part in causing what happened. Often things happen related to their likes or hobbies, becoming or starting out as situations completely beyond their control. People’s lives are ruined or destroyed, and simply because they were unlucky. Often, we’re just seeing the aftermath. The characters don’t feel like archetypes or tropes, they feel like perfectly oripdinary people, with quirks and uniqueness to them that make them feel like anyone you might meet on the street, or become friends with, or be.
These stories are so scary because if you were in the setting of the world, your life could be destroyed forever or you could witness something truly horrifying entirely because of bad luck, and often literally nothing else. And that’s how good horror is done.