u/Creaturefeature01

Guys, am i tripping or does the start s5 imply that the only reason our Arthur is a special anomaly is because of the fans deciding where the story goes and all the other universes either go badly or don't go anywhere at all because that factor specifically is not present...

(I just started s5, please no spoilers.)

Ok, seems like we've gone through most of the exposition in episode 1. I enjoyed the dialogue a bit more this time around, the action scenes were very cool as well. The idea of Arthur slowly loosing parts of himself is terrifying and it's got me vert curious.

Mistery-wise, what we know is the book was in the abandoned house, the missing girl took it and probably left it to the bookstore before being killed, it was intented for the guy who had the leace for the office before Arthur and was the father of a girl who similarly went missing 10 years ago. Arthur read the book, killed his partner and it bound him to the Voice-Entity-Thing that comes from the Dark World. I think it's pretty safe to assume the burgler from the last episode was after the book, probably a cultist, but now i don't remember if they mention leaving it at the office or if by the time Arthur came to his senses it was already gone. I'll have to skim through ep 1 again.

I was told the episodes are built in sections where the patreons decided what would happend next and listening to it through that lense, yeah i can see it. Still, this show has so much to process.

The soundscaping was kind of strange in the forest cabin scene, though. The baby started crying just as Voice-Entity-Thing said there was a baby and the fire starts crackling just as Arthur says he can feel the fire. I don't know how to explain it, but it comes across so weird. Maybe it would've been better if they were talking but are suddenly interrupted by baby noises, Arthur asks something like "Wait, was that a baby?" and then it starts crying. Or have the fire crackling already in the background but as really subtle ambiance and it becomes louder as Arthur comes closer to it.

Decided to go and share my thoughts as i listen to the show, so here we are.

Right off the bat, that's a VERY interesting premisse. The first scene is so good and really anxiety inducing, love it. The mistery is intriguing as well.

I think the idea of having the Voice-Entity-Thing seeing through Arthur's eyes and narrating everything is creative as hell, since it is so hard to convey certain things through audio alone... But the episode is 40 minutes long and it got pretty exhausting about the last third of the episode.

In general, i think this show would benefit a lot from having shorter episodes. It could've ended when Voice-Entity-Thing says the burgler from the book shop knows where Arthur works and can find the body, leave it a little hook for the next episode.

But at the same time, shit happens SO FAST and Arthur moves on from them so quickly. He's a cool protagonist but because 90% of the dialogue is description and exposition dump, i didn't get much of his personality.

Still, the show's got me interested so i will keep listening. I've got high hopes for it.

This is one of the few cases of a Protocol episode really getting stuck with me. Sam and Alice have to be one of the most tragic cases of right person wrong time i've seen lately.

Firstly, Alice's statement on her dream is very, very interesting. The way she describes being trapped within herself, feeling that there is something inside her deeply wrong, awful and painful just to try and reach it and find out *she* is that thing is a pretty gruesome alegory for being trans. It's beautifully writen and it's a kind of horror i wish was tapped into more in media as a whole.

But that's not all that that statement is about, because this episode is about her relationship with Sam. He comes in and Alice's body becomes *their* body, they come undone, melt into each other and loose themselves in one another. It doesn't make things better, it doesn't comfort them, but it's all they have and they have nothing else to do but cling onto each other. That's just the most sickening description of a co-dependent relationship i've ever seen – not being able to let go of each other and completely loosing sight of who you are in your partner.

And then what happens when you loose someone you were already so integrated with like that? You inevitably loose a part of yourself as well.

Tma is for the most part (at least until s4) an antology series first and an audio drama second, the meta plot is being developed but it takes some time and the statements are the main focus. Now, i understand that tmp is supposed to be an inversion of that. The characters and the plot are the main focus, not the cases.

And yes, the characters are great. The dialogue is very well writen, the plot is entertaining, i'm invested in what happens to them.

But to be quite frank, the majority of the tmp cases are so mid. Very few of them stuck out to me and even fewer were actually spooky. It's hard to explain but i feel like most of them don't stick the landing with what's meant to be scary at all. A lot of them fail to build tension or get me to be invested in what happens to the pov character, a lot ot them are very all over the place. Also, there is an element from Jonny's writing in tma missing in most of the cases that i believe is one of the reasons the statements are so good: Ambiguity; there are so many moments in tma where the horror is built by being very vague about what happens and leaving you with the implications.

Someone give Sam and Alice a vacation cause those guys must be so exhausted from carrying the entirety of s1 on their backs.

For me, it's Fix-it's. I think people like it because they find comfort in the idea of an au where everything worked out, specially because tma is such a devastating show and some of them have very cool ideas, such as using the open ending for timetraveling and other fun concepts.

But honestly? The best way i can explain it is that at least the ones i've read tend to be very conflictless? Tma is a show where a lot of bad things happen, and most of the time there is no backing out, work arounds or anyone to swoop in and save the characters from said bad things. That's part of the appeal to me, it's one of the reasons i find the show very well writen, it feels like decisions have very real stakes to them.

So yeah, tma Fix-it's are not my cup of tea.