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Podcasts are driving me up a wall. I loved Night Vale right up until the end of the first season when they went full hog on pandering to the fanbase, and I've never been able to recapture the magic. Every single one I try, and I've tried most of the ones in the OP, have at least one big annoying thing that bugs the hell out of me or generally isn't to my tastes.  Magnus Archives seems okay, but it's so unironically overdramatic it's hard to take seriously, and the first person narration tends to fall flat. Actually, I may be biased against first person narration in general, because it almost always comes across as a bit insufferable. I guess I really have no one to blame but myself for what I like and don't like in media, but I feel compelled to keep looking for a podcast I like despite even the best washing over me in a wave of apathy. Maybe I just really, really miss the Night Vale I liked.
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Sep 12, 2017 23:17
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Jurgan posted:I really hate that if a creative project changes as it gets more popular, they are accused of "pandering" or "selling out." Fink, Cranor, et. al. changed the format gradually based on what they wanted to do. Certainly getting feedback will have an influence, but they shouldn't force themselves to keep things exactly the same for five years if they want to do something different. You're welcome not to like it, but accusations about their motives strike me as unfounded. The specific ways it changed was mirrored by the fandom, but since it's not worth arguing about I guess I'll just say "okay, it started sucking, I was a fan until it stopped being good". doctorfrog posted:I got tired of Night Vale myself for similar reasons (not gonna argue about pandering, but it definitely drifted away from what I liked about it, and everything else Fink does has a similar touch), but I just listened to something else instead. You might just wanna try audiobooks. ...I'm not sure why I didn't think of this before. Good idea. doctorfrog posted:or Dragnet. See, I actually loving love the Dragnet television show, but it never occurred to me to check out the original radio series.
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Sep 13, 2017 16:03
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Jurgan posted:Also, just gonna say it, most of the time when people say it's "pandering to (Tumblr) fans," what they're really saying is "why did it have to get so gay?" Maybe that's not what you mean, but you didn't really say what your objection was, so... The relationship between Cecil and Carlos is indeed part of it, in fact. But I'm seven different varieties of queer myself, so I feel entitled to not like the execution of gay elements, Originally, the joke with Carlos was that (A) Cecil was creepily obsessed with him in a completely one sided way and (B) Carlos was an absent straight man, the kind of normal guy who came to this weird town to investigate weird stuff, and is saving the day offscreen as though he was the protagonist in a series we're not watching. Putting Cecil and Carlos together like they did and the subsequent treatment of Carlos as someone who's pure and innocent and has quirks nearing if not equal to the quirks of others in the town kinda hosed the whole thing up. On a note I'm not sure is related or not, his voice actor makes my skin crawl because he's got the whole "precious cinnamon roll lil teddy bear" vibe that my eyes roll out of their sockets. It's like, the fandom couldn't take a joke, everything has to be serious and emotionally complex and oh my god Carlos is so cute and etc. CecilxCarlos is just one facet of that. I also really hated Dana, and don't get me started on the absolutely unnecessary deepening of Steve Carlsburg, which was just painful. Hiram was obnoxious the second he got a voice actor and Cecil started to read things in mimicking voices. Tamika Flynn, though introduced after the decline had already started, went from being a funny background badass to giving an actual sincerely meant "awesome" speech that was more embarrassing than anything else. It's like, the show stopped being vague and mysterious and detached to immerse itself in a wacky but heartwarming cast that connects better with the obsessed fandom that cares too much to let things be darkly vague. I mean, why was there even an evil bad guy arc? Originally, Cecil would casually mention the government killing, brainwashing, and enslaving people, and that was that, but suddenly there's Strex who everyone has to awesomely rally against because they are, maybe, slightly more evil? I've had people say "that's the joke" but it was definitely not played that way. It was totally unironic because the fans are invested in these people, so let's have them fall in love with each other and kick rear end. TenCentFang fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Sep 13, 2017 |
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Sep 13, 2017 17:21
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HIJK posted:Yeah, your enjoyment of later Nightvale depends on how much you can tolerate fluff. It's legitimate to drop it if the fluffy melodrama doesn't appeal to you, that's what I did Mmhm. I wasn't intending to come across as like, rabid about it, but since I was pressed for elaboration I went into it. You summed it up way better and in less words, though, drat. I'll keep watching Magnus Archives for awhile to see if it grows on me any better. Jurgan posted:I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt and assume you don't know that that is Dylan Marron's real voice, as evidenced by his youtube videos and his personal podcast. Criticizing gay men for having girly voices is a common homophobic attack, as I'm sure you well know. In fact, he explicitly described being bullied as a child for being gay and having a high-pitched voice, two things that are clearly link in popular imagination. So, regardless of your intent, you are literally reciting homophobic attacks against a gay man. Like I said, I can't imagine that was intentional, but it's still pretty drat offensive. I think it's alright to find some people's voices inherently grating for non-bigoted reasons, but it's really as much how the character is written and acted as the voice itself, if not more so, because it's not nearly as irritating when he's not playing Carlos. The narrator of Passage also made me wanna put a pencil through my ear at first but she, at least, gets better eventually. TenCentFang fucked around with this message at 21:02 on Sep 13, 2017 |
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Sep 13, 2017 20:49
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The only thing I would recommend is to keep pushing through the Magnus Archives, which is extremely creepy and only gets more so the more you go in. And it doesn't devolve into happy clappy sweet water taffy nonsense.
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HIJK posted:I understand your hesitation regarding Magnus fwiw, the melodramatic readings bothered me too at first. But then the stories themselves started getting better and once you hit the decomposing residents of the old folks' home beating on the windows screaming for help you're either in or out, and man I was IN It's definitely got the right atmosphere, and I enjoy how well the narrator gets across the main character. Somewhat dark stuff is the best to listen to when relaxing, and podcasts have a more limited selection than other kinds of media, so there's not an overwhelming sea of stuff to dive into, although I've still got getting an Audible account as a backup. I should also listen to more Psudopod. I used to like Midnight Marinara a lot, but they apparently aren't doing stories anymore in favor of analysis videos instead. TenCentFang fucked around with this message at 21:19 on Sep 13, 2017 |
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Sep 13, 2017 21:13
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Len posted:He could have the deepest most stereotyped macho voice ever and I still would find the character of Carlos grating. The best episodes were the early ones where it was just weird stuff happening in the town. ^precisely They just totally lost the unique spark in favor doing whatever would make teenage fans happy.
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Sep 14, 2017 00:58
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I like how Magnus occasionally mentions ongoing or previous supernatural cases. It's some good fuckin world building.Jurgan posted:TCF: Fine, maybe it's not "pandering," but they're still acting just like their fanbase. I never actually said it wasn't pandering. Like, I didn't backpedal on that. Clarifying this is all I feel like contributing further, I stand by what I said in previous posts and there's not much to add. Slamhound posted:If you dinguses want to hear someone pander to a fanbase, listen to The Blood Crow Stories. (Don't listen to The Blood Crow Stories, it's loving terrible) Could you elaborate? I love hearing about terrible media.
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Sep 14, 2017 16:47
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I didn't like Black Tapes from episode one, though.
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Sep 14, 2017 19:13
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Personally, I've always been the type that prefers Monster of the Week to metaplot episodes in regards to things like The X-Files(and with The X-Files specifically I think it's a generally agreed upon opinion that the MotW episodes are tighter). That said, I think if TMA can keep the quality at least where it is, it shouldn't be a big problem.
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Sep 15, 2017 02:18
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vortmax posted:I started the Magnus Archives not long ago (just finished ep18), and I'm enjoying it so far. There have been little bits of a larger plot dropped in that you guys say will develop into something; I'm looking forward to that. You're five ahead of me and I now feel the need to race you to the end. Curse my competitive streak. Jurgan posted:I want to apologize for getting out-of-hand a few days back, especially to Ten Cent Fang. I remember in the last version of this thread it somehow came up that there are a lot of LGBT characters in podcasts and a pretty heated argument came up about whether that was "pandering." So I think I overreacted when I thought we were going there again and tried to nip it in the bud. Ironically I started the argument I was trying to avoid, and in the process acted like a jerk without realizing it. It's very Oedipal (the "self-fulfilling prophecy" part, not the "boning your mom" part). Anyway, sorry about that. I'll try not to let it happen again. Don't worry about it, we're cool. 
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Sep 17, 2017 03:53
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For me personally, podcasts verge on meditational as much as anything else, so I prefer a single speaker droning about something interesting. Otherwise it's too chaotic, and more characters just means more ways for it to gently caress up.
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Sep 17, 2017 04:53
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New Leaf posted:Magnus is the one nice thing that we have that practically all of us can agree on. Don't start poking holes in it now! I'm burning out on it and what yall are talking about now sounds dire.
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Sep 20, 2017 19:35
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Jurgan posted:Is it possible that you just don't have the patience for serial fiction? I don't mean that as an insult, honestly. There are people (my wife is one) who just naturally get tired of series after a while. It could be that you just aren't inclined to enjoying long series. I could be wrong about that, of course, but if not I might recommend Secrets, Crimes, and Audiotape. It's an anthology series, so if one of the stories isn't doing it for you, then you can just skip to the next. The three-parter "Severed Threads" is probably my favorite, but there's a lot of good episodes. At least in terms of production quality it's one of the best out there. I think I just have really, really high standards. It's hard for me to ignore minor annoyances, which might relate to my OCD? It's like a beautiful painting with a wine stain in the corner that I can't stop noticing. I'll check out your recommendation, thanks. I feel bad when I ask for suggestions tbh because I feel like I'm unpleasable and people will just get fed up with me constantly having petty reasons for not liking everything.
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Sep 21, 2017 16:34
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Hughlander posted:I went back and looked to see what your minor annoyances and reasons for burn out where for TMA and don't see any details. What are they specifically? I feel like to some degree some of the wine stains could be no that's just the red color in the palette. One of the big things is that the narrators are always so verbose. This wasn't a big deal when it was all written down, but then the girl came on and the purple prose felt less justified. I'm also finding the main guy kind of annoying. He does a great job selling a stuffy British guy, but sometimes his condescending tone borders on Actually Obnoxious, and the generally over dramatic atmosphere doesn't help. I mean, when he's reading, that's one thing, but the way he spits out lines of his own feels like some bad overacting every now and then. I also think the stories are a bit too vague, but I really wanna know how everything fits together. I'm not sure if I'll survive the apparent shift in status quo, since it sounds like the same kind of departure that turned me off Wolf 359:and Archive 81. This contributes to making it harder to march on because it feels like everything is gonna get worse(for me personally) anyway so it's hopeless regardless. Aghhh. The worldbuilding is so enticing, though. TenCentFang fucked around with this message at 03:26 on Sep 22, 2017 |
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Sep 22, 2017 03:24
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I had a dream last night that was an episode of The Magnus Archives where some furries pissed off the dragon mafia. It even had the bit at the end where he goes over why it might not be true. I'm sorry if my clairvoyance just spoiled a future episode.
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Sep 26, 2017 08:31
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