This fiction podcast is often mentioned in the same breath as Limetown and Black Tapes. Indeed it is an example of the conspiracy/horror story so popular amongst fiction podcasts. The male protagonist is deliberately an “everyman”. He works a mind-numbing office job, has no appreciable social or family life, and finds himself addicted to an odd online game. He hops onto a mystery glitch in the game; this is attributed to the ineffable siren call of the eponymous town, but he doesn’t seem to have much to lose.

Unbelievably, the writers of Ostium chose to go with the narrative of a chosen/special one for the male protagonist, whose first reaction to meeting a badass woman is “Does she like me?”. Why are we still entertaining such stereotypes? The town has “some special connection” with him – exact nature unknown, naturally, but certainly he has few emotional stakes in risking his – and her – life exploring the town.

What was ultimately the most frustrating for me was her validation with the “maybe he's not like other guys” stance. I would rather listen to her perspective: her motivation may be clichéd, but at least I can understand its importance to this character.

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The unnamed protagonist is out to search for his cat. But the lengths he must go and the secrets he will uncover are quite, quite unusual.

There is a gentle comedy in the narrator’s singleminded focus on his cat. Lovecraftian sensibilities feature significantly – all dark clouds and unspeakable monsters in the heart of the earth – but are tempered by good humour. “Horror” doesn’t quite cover it, but neither does “comedy”.

Each episode also features lengthy musical interludes – your mileage may vary, but I sometimes fast-forward through them as I find it disrupts the flow.

The first and fourth season feature separate, but contiguous storylines; the ones in between can probably be listened to separately, but feel more like unconnected vignettes of the strange world this cat-owner lives in. There are not as many cats as one might imagine.

My masterlist: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSNNpcKEuKDwRJv1yF2SgE81-17wp1soEszHz3oZ2p_4YIjStTkDtA0yHUwbVnnxB222I7KZsRUIDPr/pubhtml?gid=1846929478&single=true

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