Statement Begins (Magnus Archives listen-along)

[Fetian]

(if you need transcripts they exist here: https://snarp.github.io/magnus_archives_transcripts/ )

[knightofcups]

Oh this is fascinating! your interpretations of events are /vastly/ different than mine!! both yours and mine make sense! and k think yours are probably closer to the intention of the writer, but it’s interesting!

tonight when i’m on my computer i’ll reply with actual details and info.

also, i don’t think the acting is bad at the start, for what it’s worth. a tiny bit unpolished, but that’s compared to where it ends up, and other stuff i listen to.

no idea if it’ll be your thing, Erika, but would also love more opinions and thoughts.

[knightofcups]

Oh, also. The proliferation of ads on their shit has almost caused me to just stop listening. To Protocol especially. But i like the story and want to know what will happen, so i complain about it, and also will never use a product advertised by them.

there’s no mid-roll that i can remeber from my last listen through a year and a half ago, but who knows if that’s changed.

[Fetian]

The acting isn't terrible, but it's very one-note and Sims doesn't yet differentiate between his Archivist and his Statements very much but is clearly trying to. More to the point, I know he does get a lot better (both in and out of Magnus Archives specifically)

[erikavonkaiser]

Ok I'm gonna listen to the first episode on the way to the post office and back

My understanding of this show as someone who knows nothing about it except secondhand vibes is it's like eldritch investigation or a uhhhh-- what's that thing people like that I also don't engage with, SCP? Like that? So let's see how far off I am

[erikavonkaiser]

I listened to the first two episodes!

My overall thoughts:

• I third the complaint about ads, I get you gotta hustle but five minutes straight of ads (+ the first episode has two Boost Mobile ads literally back-to-back) is pretty painful

• I don't dislike the narrator but I do find him a bit dull to listen to; his tone is very flat, which is effective for some parts, but there's no character added to the perspectives of whose letters he's reading, if that makes sense? so his neutral affectation is helpful when describing creepy things, but loses me when he's doing the build-up of like..... describing hanging out at a bar with his friends, etc

  I guess it's a kind of storytelling decision of is this the character of the narrator reading these letters as he, himself, would read a factual statement, or are we kinda slow-fading into a suspense of disbelief where he briefly becomes the letter-writing character for storytelling purposes

  I think the latter would be more interesting but that's personal preference!

• The writing is good, I can see why this hooked people in, especially when supernatural investigation stuff was really popular (I mean, it still is, but there was definitely A Boom)

• I actually liked the box one more than the angler fish one because I thought it was an interesting (affectionate, not derogatory) narrative choice to have the character with Pandora's Box decide to not open it and how that affected him, kinda an inverted version of that "this is a story about a box" episode of WTNV

I'd be interested in trying a few more episodes, although it's tough because I just don't have a lot of space in my routine where listening to a podcast slots in well. Early 20s Erika would've been nuts for this, mid-30s Erika thinks it's just alright so far (tho I am only on episode 2 out of, like a million or whatever)

[erikavonkaiser]

oh I did have a "wait, what?" oopsie that was entirely my fault as a listener, which is because of the vibe and probably because I'm American and I assume anything spooky happening in Europe must be happening on the moors in the 1800s, but in the angler fish one when the letter-writer says he pulled out his cell phone to use the flashlight on it I had to completely reroute my mental picture of what was going on lmao

I'm positive they said the date at the beginning of the letter and I just didn't catch it, though

[erikavonkaiser]

• I actually liked the box one more than the angler fish one because I thought it was an interesting (affectionate, not derogatory) narrative choice to have the character with Pandora's Box decide to not open it and how that affected him, kinda an inverted version of that "this is a story about a box" episode of WTNV

imho this story has similar energy to this short comic by Abby Howard

'what if we just ignored the eldritch horror because we don't want to deal with it and have shit to do'

[erikavonkaiser]

Listened to the third episode on the way back from a scene and it was pretty dull, definitely my least favorite so far

[erikavonkaiser]

The tl;dr of it was "a man acts weird and then gets replaced by a creature but no one really notices" and it needed more compelling writing or a stronger premise imho, I like not over-explaining things (was his antique table....haunted? Idk) but this was a bit watery