omg the entire Jane statement episode is just!!!! giving it all away!!!!! AND ON FIRST LISTEN YOU/JON DONT EVEN KNOW IT!!!!!

seen from Malaysia

seen from Australia

seen from Malaysia
seen from Hong Kong SAR China
seen from Türkiye

seen from United States
seen from China
seen from Martinique

seen from Malaysia

seen from Malaysia

seen from Malaysia
seen from Philippines
seen from Israel

seen from Poland

seen from Czechia

seen from United States
seen from Belarus

seen from Netherlands
seen from Singapore
seen from China
omg the entire Jane statement episode is just!!!! giving it all away!!!!! AND ON FIRST LISTEN YOU/JON DONT EVEN KNOW IT!!!!!
MAG031 – Caso 0100912 – Primera Cacería
Testimonio de Lawrence Mortimer, sobre su viaje de cacería a Blue Ridge en Virginia.
[Disclaimer/ Aviso]
[MAG030] | x | [MAG032]
the parallels between the beast from the magicians singing a-hunting we will go and the fucking hunt werewolf from mag31 first hunt whistling the same fucking song is terrifying
well first I was laughing bc. there are no elk in Virginia ahdkahsks THEN laughing about Jon not looking more into it “because it’s stupid AND in America” meanwhile I know full well he will go to America and get kidnapped in the same area 💀 but then I heard Jon be notably shaken for the first time……… then I laugh again bc “Martin is still living here and I’ve been leaving less and less” yeah I’m sure you have been 😏
MAG031, First Hunt
Case #0100912, Lawrence Mortimer Release date: August 11, 2016 First listen: 5th November, the walk home. Remember passing the diary farm yard gates at ‘a-hunting we will go’.
Ok, so. I’ve had a thought. If we exclude The Extinction, and just stick with the original 13, The Hunt is the last Entity to get a dedicated statement of its own. It’s at the very back at the pack… Feels appropriate.
Supplemental: No, you absolute donut, you forgot Trevor Herbert’s statement, MAG010! Ok, we’re gonna work this out, hang on. Ok, I think it’s between The Eye, not getting a solo shout until MAG023 but hinting at in MAG012 or The Spiral that does a lot of heavy lifting in MAG019 but doesn’t get a solo until MAG026.
- I have limited knowledge and understanding of America, so quick google of Blue Ridge, Virginia and the geography and ecology. Blue Ridge, Virginia is a bit of a vague description but the vibe is deciduous forest, snow caped mountain ranges, and big ol’ wildlife.
- ‘I always wanted to go hunting. It always seemed such a manly sort of pursuit.’ sigh Oh no… I’m not going to have much patience with this guy am I? There is merit to being able to sustain yourself in a wildlife survival situation but this feels like a bit of a fantasy fulfilment lads on tour. I don’t like it.
- I am mollified by the knowledge that he intends to be ‘cooking and eating what (he) kill(s)’, so at least it wasn’t big game trophy hunting.
- ‘…shooting pheasants with shotguns and riding down foxes all seemed too much the domain of, uh, nitwits in tweed.’ I am having so many feelings and none of them are favourable to this man. The fact that he feels he can throw this sort of judgement around is fucking baffling. Considering he’s got the money to travel to the other side of the world to play at being a ranger. I mean, don’t get me wrong, a lot of them are nitwits in tweed, but he’s got a lot of stones and that glass house looks awful delicate. Yup, so, full disclosure, yes, I’ve been fox hunting. When I was young and saw it as a big hack out with my friends rather than, y’know, hunting. But yeah, now I avoid meets and I’m the one standing between the hounds and the gosling field gate when the local hunt rolls over the estate. But this guy gets to retirement, with all his life experience and knowledge, and ths is what he does.
- ‘…where they had a few animals worth going after.’ I wanna slap this guy. You know what’s a fantastic alternative to trophy hunting? Photography. You’re still out in the sticks, you’re roughing it, you’ve got to look after your equipment, you need to track your quarry, you need to blend into the environment like a flipping sniper. And you can track anything and everything. And when you pull the trigger, everyone walks away.
- ‘…I thought, ‘dash it all,…’ I want to punch this man.
- ‘We’d met on a sceptics message board and got on like a house on fire.’ What sort of ‘sceptics message board’ exactly? I don’t think my lip has uncurled since I hit play on this episode.
- ‘I wasn’t exactly expecting the Grim Reaper to come knocking in the intervening months…’Oliver Banks? Babe? Do you take requests?
- ‘…see if we could find a deer or an elk for me to shoot. Nature, seclusion and guns – to my ears it sounded just perfect.’ I actively hate this guy. This isn’t about survival or adventure, this is a power fantasy.
- ‘I normally live in Torquay.’… This mother fucker’s got a second home, hasn’t he? He’s got two homes and one of them is in a coastal area that is famous for the fact that locals are being priced out of their own communities by people buying second holiday homes and hiking property prices.
- I find the fact that he finds Arden a bit too much hilarious, considering that Arden goes on to lose his life. So either Lawrence feels guilt for any unkind thoughts he may have had about the man, or he feels nothing and shows himself an arsehole.
- ‘Still, all was forgiven when he showed me his gun cabinet … To see a dozen, well-cared for weapons displayed proudly, well, it was just lovely.’ wretch
- Crabtree Falls gives us a start point on the Blue Ridge Parkway, Marion.
- ‘I was very excited to don my hunters orange, and to take up my rifle.’ He’s a kid… playing dress up…
- The Winchester Model 70 is a bolt-action sporting rifle, worth upward of £900 new. The Remington Model 673 was a bolt-action rifle that only was in production for a year before it was discontinued in 2004, again worth about £900 used.
- ‘I was something of a blundering presence … I was sure that it was my own crashing footsteps scaring away the creatures.’ All the gear, no idea. It really feels like he’s come into this, expecting the environment to bend around him.
- Having someone wondering around with no tools and no resources and nonchalantly reject assistance would be highly unnerving. It suggests to a skill set, an unusual skill set.
- ‘We answered as vaguely as we could without being rude, since neither of us felt comfortable near this man.’ Welcome to the female experience mother fucker.
- ‘Sniffing us,’ ‘Tomorrow will be a good day for a run’, let the dog see the rabbits.
- ‘Around two o’clock in the morning I could have sworn that I heard someone laugh, slow and softly, outside my tent.’ Like a beater worrying the undergrowth, sending the spaniels in, setting the birds on edge.
- ‘…I felt ten times better with the weight of the gun in my arms…’ distressed noises
- ‘… when I saw my elk.’ Oh heck, I’ve worked out what the vibe is that’s so wretched. It’s a Gaston energy and I’m breaking out in hives.
- ‘I could have sworn it looked me in the eye as I prepared to pull the trigger.’ There’s something powerful about a wild animal making eye contact with you. And deer species have culturally been so intrinsic to the mysticism of an ancient forests; the Great Forest Spirit of Princess Mononoke, the black hart and white doe in The Hobbit, the stag that grants wishes when caught in The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, in Celtic and Arthurian legend. There’s part of me that hopes this forest weighs and measures him and finds him wanting.
- ‘…there was a messy hole in the centre of his throat, as though it had been torn out entirely. His rifle lay next to him on the ground…’ The shot that he heard was possibly fired in self defence rather than being what killed him, fired from a third weapon. The throat looking ‘torn out’ suggests that whatever was used, wasn’t a sharp edged instrument.
- ‘Then I heard that whistling. That infernal whistling…’ Who needs a hunting horn or the baying of hounds when a whistled child’s tune will do the job just as well.
- The zigzag running is a little odd. It could be that he’s moving to avoid any attempts to shoot him, but you tend to see zigzag running patterns in prey species, trying to out run predators.
- ‘I know I should have picked up my gun, but you can’t understand just how frightening it is to have something like that, a true predator, running at you full pelt.’ Enjoying that power dynamic flip, you enjoying it? But what if you were simply his human the same way that elk was your elk? It’s it all part of this manly pursuit?
- ‘You can’t understand what it is to be prey.’ … Ask anyone who isn’t male, white, cis/het and able bodied. Ask anyone…
- ‘I think he did it deliberately, you know. To let me know he was still there.’ It’s the chase, not the catch. It’s the chase.
- The psychology of sending him in a circle, it’s a chase but Lawrence may as well be in a snare.
- ‘…everything about him was sharper. His fingers, his teeth, his face, his eyes. His skin.’
- Never seen or read The Duchess of Malfi so giving it a quick google. Premiered 1613, written by John Webster, it’s… it’s a bit messy. Like ‘Twelfth Night levels of misidentification plus MacNope levels of murder’ messy. Incredible description though, ‘a wolf’s skin is hairy on the outside, his on the inside.’
- ‘I forget, did I mention my military background? Well, I used to be an officer in the Air Force.’ Oh my fucking god, that explains so much… Oh fuck, what ‘sceptics message boards’ were you on!??
- ‘I know the thrill of power that comes with the ability to end the life of something weaker than you-’ HISS, TEAR, REND, KILL, BITE, NO, NO, NO.
- No Jon, you’re not being hunted. You’re being besieged.
MAG031 - Caso #0100912 - “Prima Caccia”
[Episodio precedente]
[pdf con testo inglese a fianco / pdf with english text on the side]
ARCHIVISTA
Dichiarazione di Lawrence Mortimer, riguardante la sua battuta di caccia a Blue Ridge, Virginia. Dichiarazione originale rilasciata il 9 dicembre 2010. Registrazione audio di Jonathan Sims, Capo Archivista dell’Istituto Magnus, Londra.
Inizio della dichiarazione.
Relisten thoughts:
Jon’s accent in Episode 31 is sending me.
Also in 31, Arden was legit flirting with the statement giver. I was joking about the hunting trip euphemism and then I listened closer and—he really was flirting. Poor Arden.