I like to think that Elias is boring on purpose. he spends his time and effort when he should be working on boring his employees instead. he’s perfected it to an art. every day, he visits each department and tries to find the time to talk about spreadsheets whenever there’s the most people in one room at a time. then he tallies up how many of them visibly and/or audibly react with some form of disgust, and compares it with other days. he’d have realised how sad that really is if he hadn’t been found out, but at least now he gets to be as deranged as humanly possible. you go, Elias. I love you you stinky rat whore, can’t wait for you to show up in the new protocol episode <3
Strap in, fuckers. This is a long one.
I’ve seen a lot of discourse and discussion recently about why TMAGP isn’t resonating with listeners as much as TMA did, with a lot of people pointing towards the infrequent structure of each episode and the lack of subtlety that TMA had once excelled in. And while both of these are true, I think the main culprit that has caused these problems for listeners is one thing: the pacing.
TMAGP is only going to be 60 (Edit: 90) episodes long, compared with TMA’s absolute behemoth of 200. When I’d found out about this, I’d assumed that it meant TMAGP would have a much smaller story - not having to establish as much information as TMA did, and allowing the story to have lower stakes as a result. This certainly wasn’t a bad thing, as many sequels that have tried to one-up their predecessors have gone disastrously wrong, but I knew that the structure would be different to TMA as a result.
However, from the 12 episodes that we’ve seen so far, it appears that TMAGP is going to have similar levels of stakes to TMA - not the same stakes, of course, but they’ll likely be on close to equal footing. This means that TMAGP has to establish the same amount of information to listeners with significantly less time to do it in, and the pacing has to speed up to adhere to that. In the first 12 episodes of TMA, we had established one possible recurring statement character (Gerry), a disturbing worm woman (Prentiss), and the fact that Jon doesn’t like his assistant and refuses to believe any of the statements. In the first 12 episodes of TMAGP, we’ve established every important protagonist and what they sound like, two recurring statement characters (Bonzo and Ink5oul) with one that has already physically appeared, much of Sam’s backstory and his ties to the Magnus Institute and the fact that something is deeply wrong with their workplace. That is a big difference.
This difference in pacing is what I believe is turning listeners away from what they’d originally enjoyed about TMA, because there’s no longer that warm, comforting atmosphere when you listen to it. Its sound isn’t designed to come from a tape recorder and a tape recorder only anymore; it’s no longer a sit-down and listen to the Archivist tell you spooky stories for 20 minutes anymore; and, like I mentioned earlier, the structure is no longer the same throughout each episode. The horror anthology aspect, whilst still being there, has now taken a back-burner to the metanarrative because so much has to be established in so little time. To many, that’s a bad thing. They listened to the original because they liked the statements, and the little things connecting them hinted to a much larger story at play. When this story was revealed, we got to see Jonny Sims and his brilliant prose at its best, because there was no longer anything to hide and the statements were in their purest forms - no longer having to establish information to the audience, and simply basking in the fear.
I’m sure we’ll get to see the same thing in TMAGP once the narrative reaches that point, but the current pacing has uprooted a lot of listeners’ expectations for the show. I’m going to listen to the entire thing, personally; yeah, it’s different, and it doesn’t deliver the same vibes and comfort as TMA did, and I probably won’t be able to fall asleep whilst relistening to the more obscure episodes like I could before, but in a frankly disturbing way, I’m still fascinated with what Jonny, Alex and the other writers have created. This type of horror is the only kind that I genuinely enjoy, and I’m excited to see what direction Protocol goes in.
Edit: I feel like I should clarify that I don’t see this comparison as something that takes away from TMAGP. Alex has said that it’s going to be different from the get-go, and I do think that comparing it to TMA is an exercise in futility to an extent. I just wanted to talk about the shows together because I feel like they complement one another, and the narrative beats that I’ve talked about are less to do with TMA on its own and more to do with general narrative structure. We have buildup, payoff and pacing no matter what show it is, because that’s what makes a story. I think TMAGP could be taken a little bit like Deltarune in terms of its relation to the original source material: separate entities with some overlap in character and themes. At the end of the day, it’s still early days for the show and this entire spiel could just end up gathering dust - I just think it’s a cool thing to think about, and it gives me an excuse to infodump about how pacing can affect a narrative and the audience’s response to it.
I wrote this while my cat was laying on me. Have a picture as a reward for reading this whole thing.
Hi so I may or may not have forgotten to actually post these on here. Ofc the original concept goes to the brilliant @wolfythewitch, I’ve just leeched off of it because I wanted to see Elias in the Hermes suit. Also I wanted to see Jon and Martin doing a little dance. And the way I drew Tim as Orpheus is just…. so similar to how regular Orpheus looks. I am sorry. He has a boob window so it’s more accurate to his character.
As I talked about in my ask to Wolfy (which I believe to be what drew quite a few people here? idk at this point), I have quite a few reasons for why I think Elias would fit the role of Hermes. Obviously he’s a much more sinister Hermes, but it’s a neat little concept to play around with. I think the little things Hermes says (like the line above) can be interestingly recontextualised when you view Hermes as an antagonistic force, rather than a guide/mentor. I thought it’d be interesting to see Elias as someone who helps Tim/Orpheus because he knows that it’ll end in tragedy every time, and finds enjoyment in the helplessness that the audience faces knowing how it ends and being completely unable to change it. Get Beholdinged, babey!
Maybe I’ll draw some Gertrude!Hermes….? Who knows - I’m currently in the middle of doing a shit ton of work at the moment, both for school and for personal reasons. I’ve got Mechanisms fanart happening, some concepts for myself as a Corruption avatar (nature!), ideas for animatics (which I admittedly don’t have much experience in, but I will try to do it), and some other random ideas. Only time shall tell.
Anon asked me about anatomy and I deleted the post (my bad)
The question was regarding what I use to study anatomy so I figured I’d just post it anyway, since I think it could be broadly useful for people getting into art and character design.
I have a couple of tips and tricks for studying anatomy, so here goes!
- Zephy.fr on Instagram. Their stuff is everywhere for good reason - they’ve got exhaustive looks at muscles and anatomy, along with tricks to help you remember what it all looks like if you can’t handle all the fancy names for things (like me). Just Google their name, and their Instagram will be there. I pinky promise.
- Photo reference! You can find cool stuff literally everywhere, but my main source of reference is Pinterest. I have a behemoth of a Pinterest board with over 2000+ pins on it - I don’t use it all, but it’s a very useful thing to have nonetheless. Build your own library of references, and using Zephy.fr’s tips (or anyone else’s, if you come across them) study the muscle blocks and facial structures within them. It’ll give you a good foundation for your own work later on.
- Study from other artists that you like the look of. It’s not a crime to trace over their anatomy - just don’t claim it as your own work, and if you want to post it, ask the artist for permission first and credit them if they say it’s okay. Figure out what it is about their anatomy that you enjoy, and apply it to your own work/style.
- If you’re unsure about a certain bit of anatomy whilst drawing and you don’t have the energy to study it, just cover it up with clothing and folds. That’s what I do - just make sure that you’re decent at folds. You don’t want to make it too obvious that you’re avoiding it.
I hope I can be of some help! Although if I’m really honest, I haven’t properly studied anatomy since I learned the basics 6-7 years ago. I’m not really the right person to ask about this kind of stuff :’)
