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I’m 34 episodes into the Magnus Archives and while I’m wary of the steadily growing metaplot, their hit-to-miss ratio is still really impressive given their output. Also I usually burn out on podcasts due to their length and sprawl, and certainly up to this point they’ve had many, many opportunities to become indulgent that they’ve passed up to keep things tight and disciplined (the studious commitment to Lovecraftian storytelling format helps). It’s a marvel of project management if nothing else.
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Feb 17, 2018 19:54
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Idk if it’s good (podcasts usually come to editing and length for me and actual play podcasts are usually short on the former and long on the latter) but in the MA season one Q&A they mentioned that they played Deadlands, which I’ve always been interested in. It’s a magical western setting that uses Texas Hold Em poker hands to resolve actions instead of dice rolls.
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Feb 18, 2018 19:02
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I don't necessarily mind the "everything is connected" bit, but I do mind that a show hewing so faithfully to the strengths of Lovecraft-style fiction decided to make its Great Old One analogues sentient and at least somewhat knowable. Cthonian gods tended to be essentially mindless (or so alien in consciousness as to be effectively mindless) even as their servants and cults were not. It's like all the minions of a given book / God are their own supervillain faction.
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Mar 15, 2018 04:51
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Every season gets infodumpy toward their ends, but S3 has been focused on metaplot to an unprecedented degree. There are now few if any stories that don’t relate to what’s happening at the institute.
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Mar 16, 2018 05:44
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Last week’s was alright. The end-of-episode metaplot was much more interminable than usual, though. Some “spheres of influence” (which are really just the more creepypasta-influenced, direct targeting of phobias) are more engaging than others and I’ve never been freaked out by dolls.
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Mar 21, 2018 22:10
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They’re in a weird spot right now where they have their “spheres of influence” / recurring elements, some of which seem decidedly retired (darkness cult, the falling / abyssal thing, parasites) and some which are just now being pushed to the fore and developed (fire cult, caves and entrapment, taxidermy / living dolls). Which is probably smart in the long term to keep things from getting too static / repetitive, even if the darkness cult in particular was dispatched in a kind of offhand way. But now that the cat’s out of the bag re: Elias / The Beholder... I’m not very excited about Cult Warz as a storyline, and the Scooby gang realizing they’re now enslaved will demand either a near-term resolution that would radically change the premise of the podcast or an extremely drawn-out metaplot that I don’t think is sustainable. It’s not a matter of them losing their touch - they’re still frequently clever (the in-universe accounting for the contrivance of the tell-all witness statement format, and Jon flexing the Jedi mind tricks associated with it are still impressive), but they are getting more ambitious, and TMA has been successful for so long largely on the strength of its restraint and economy. That said, the weekly stories are still typically good-to-great. Even this season, while it’s had some weaker stories (didn’t much care for “Body Builder”, “Dig” or any of the fire cult ones) it can still provide a striking yarn when it hits the right subject matter and tone.
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Mar 21, 2018 22:33
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There’s some of TMA making fun of itself and its format, which is self-indulgent but can be fun if you’re in the mood for it. But it also feels in some way like a sop to people who miss the metaplot-light heyday of the show. The idea is that all four testimonials are being dismissed by the Magnus staff as insignificant / cranks but they are all actually paranormal and connected to the forces already revealed within the setting (the burning woman connected to the Lightless Flame, the stone circle and lost time connected to the Spiral / UnKnowing, the guy in the tunnel connected to the Church of the Divine Host,* the spider dude connected to the spiders obviously). So weird stuff is happening out there beyond the drama of the Archives, basically. Otoh they might also be establishing something about how Jon’s ability to compel testimony is special. I think there’s definitely something there about how Jon is the only living human person (other than us the listener) to really understand the scope of what’s happening. He would have connected the dots that everyone else dismissed. * Which is promising as it seemed for awhile there that the cops had shut that whole thing down Anyway, I think it was probably a good idea to go on hiatus on a relatively lighter note, but different strokes etc Basic Chunnel fucked around with this message at 02:59 on Apr 6, 2018 |
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Apr 6, 2018 02:56
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Homecoming sucked out loud so I’m not rushing to hear it
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Apr 30, 2018 21:45
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Gimlet had Oscar nominees and Star Wars leads on its tepid audio dramas so that’s objectively untrue
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Jun 14, 2018 20:48
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David Schwimmer was there, also
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Jun 14, 2018 20:48
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Magnus’ VA usually does well with what it has due to the writing tending toward the formal and declarative. When they have to break out intense emotional dynamics they stumble a bit and this week was no exception. The story itself wasn’t a straight ripoff of Prey (2017) but it was getting there. Horror dudes really ought to play Prey (2017) btw
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Jun 21, 2018 20:37
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Just looks like an audacity fuckup, nothing there. I’m happy to be surprised but it does look like Elias is either going to conspire with the void / isolation god to throw the unknowing / taxidermy god and its apocalypse dance harmlessly into the nega-zone or have them destroy each other
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Jul 5, 2018 17:32
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Good news for fans of white bread: Amazon's making a streaming TV show out of Homecoming. Julia Roberts will play the Catherine Keener character
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Jul 22, 2018 02:44
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It could be any Online Film dude tbh. But I vaguely remember people saying Tarantino’s cinematographer / DP was extremely unsung and if so it does seem to point in that direction For a sec there I thought we were gonna get crossover between the Spider + eating old one and the circus + madness + puppet old one (via the animatronics guy) but it was not meant to be. Anyway is the Spider the same entity as the one in the patterned table and / or the cannibalism + meat entity? I liked this week’s MAG as much as I liked the early hot streak standalones. A lot of Junji Ito in this one.
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Jul 22, 2018 07:38
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Maybe it’s part of the iOS 12 beta but I’m pretty sure the podcast app has a list view now. Not that the app doesn’t suck, it really does.
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Jul 25, 2018 01:12
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There are only so many way to convey info in a radio play. You can’t really have characters talking to each other about things they both know. So Jon has to be flustered. I didn’t mind the summary of the setting this week.
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Jul 26, 2018 20:06
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tbh you could consolidate that into a list of 10 easily
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Jul 31, 2018 01:20
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Elblanco posted:I'm really jonesing for some fictional true crime/mystery stories right now. Thinking like a fictional version of serial. Anyone know a good one? Or something else that might be similar? I hear decent things about Arden
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Sep 24, 2018 18:18
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I’m sure there are actual BBC radio plays / maybe some Audible productions to that effect. Don’t know if they’re podcasts though. That does remind me that on the pulpier end, years ago someone had uploaded all the old The Shadow radio serials as a podcast.
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Sep 26, 2018 18:35
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I really tried with Limetown, but I took the mysterious CEO’s extremely florid / portentous Congressional testimony as a canary in the coal mine and got the gently caress out of there before I started giving my free time to another LOST
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Dec 11, 2018 01:04
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Mostly I think they pick their constraints and stick to them, even when choices made outside of those constraints might be more flashy or gratifying to the writer
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Jan 27, 2019 06:39
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Better to just read The Trial
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Mar 8, 2019 03:29
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It’s bad
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Mar 8, 2019 22:11
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Hes right It’s an insult to the memory of Anthony Askew
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Mar 13, 2019 16:56
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That sort of Radiolab poo poo is only really fun if you’re high.
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Mar 16, 2019 17:00
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The Bright Session dudes broke down #s on podcast production costs https://hotpodnews.com/making-money-part-one/
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Apr 10, 2019 01:54
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There’s a lot of VC money going toward consolidation and exclusivity, expect it to become the new standard. It was really something that Gimlet paved the way for, and Homecoming wasn’t even very good!
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Apr 10, 2019 15:41
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Arrhythmia posted:It takes a certain kind of delusion to say "you know how well radio is doing these days? well what if it was only marketed to internet nerds, and you needed to pay for it" and expect anyone but the most desperate to go along. It's not sustainable at all but venture capital is all about inflating new bubbles to see what doesn't pop. They might make a mess of the podcasting landscape but by the time it all collapses the money folks will be long gone and anyone with investment in the medium will be left to pick up the pieces.
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Apr 10, 2019 16:07
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I'm generally up on TMA but I don't care for the metaplot at all and it takes up more and more of the more and more infrequent MotW episodes
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Apr 11, 2019 16:17
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It’s a radio play
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Apr 13, 2019 17:13
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*goon spends several days trying to open a book of short stories correctly before throwing it away and picking up the Silmarrillion again*
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Apr 14, 2019 17:28
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The real answer is that weird fiction generally and good horror specifically lives in suggestion and mystery. It’s actually good that we never really get an answer for what the derelict ship on LV-426 is or where it came from or what precisely happened to it, or where the eggs came from. It’s good that nothing in Blair Witch Project is explained. Bloodborne is good. MotW X-Files was good. Was mythology X-Files good? You tell me. Basically this. It is typically good for the person writing to know rules and background of whatever they’re creating but if they’re writing horror or fantasy, the reader doesn’t need to know most if any of it. It’s a credit to Magnus that it still maintains as good of quality as it does when it has set itself to the task of dismantling its mysteries. I skim the metaplot episodes because they’re either about explaining things or about the relationship drama of the staff, which doesn’t interest me. Things only really happen in the last few minutes. Incidentally, this problem is why the short story / novella length is ideal for written horror. Basic Chunnel fucked around with this message at 17:58 on Apr 14, 2019 |
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Apr 14, 2019 17:43
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Pope Guilty posted:Yeah I don't get how "this isn't just a few isolated incidents- something bigger and more sinister is going on and it's beyond most people, including us, to really understand" is less frightening than "well, some poo poo just happens sometimes, IDK".
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Apr 14, 2019 17:45
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J. Robert Lennon’s “Pieces For the Left Hand” is also p good for that
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Apr 14, 2019 18:43
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New Leaf posted:The primary difference here is that those all presumably in different "universes". All of Magnus is happening in the same "universe".
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Apr 14, 2019 19:54
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It is good for the writer to know the grand conspiracy, but not necessarily for the listener to know it.
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Apr 14, 2019 21:21
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Oh it's definitely intentional, that's what makes it a mistake rather than an accident.
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Apr 14, 2019 22:51
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I can’t really judge the Circus stuff fairly because of the facets of that primal fear the show dips into, creepy dolls with sing-song voices are pretty low on the list of things that work for me. Does it fail because it’s not scary or because it’s the TMA equivalent of a late-period X-Files mythology episode? Hard to say. I would wager that the best TMA episodes are from the early seasons and not coincidentally, just so happen to be the first inklings of a given Power, before the bigger picture was laid out. The cave diving one being the most obvious example, but the first infection and vampire episodes were on that level. The show keeps a good par even when you know the templates (as is the case with good horror in general) but I can’t say I actually care about the Institute staff and their grudges against one another / failures to communicate. I’d much rather hear other people’s stories, which is why the statement format works as well as it does. I don’t relish the idea that the staff will always be centered in the end.
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Apr 17, 2019 21:17
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Yes, it’s been mentioned specifically in a few episodes, particularly ones related to the space station
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Apr 18, 2019 22:48
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Not a podcast, but Audible's got the original unproduced Alien 3 screenplay developed as an audio drama, not a terrible way to spend a few hours even if it makes you afraid that Lance Henriksen could keel over dead at any moment. Tried listening to the NoSleep podcast, people approaching horror writing like it's a fuckin erector set
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Jun 12, 2019 02:47
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