#A Podcast to the Curious

[fredbensonenthusiast]

The Benson family spook-fest podcast episodes and free audio versions of the ghost stories

Now that I have listened to all of them, I just wanted to give another shout-out to the MR James specialists at 'Podcast to the Curious' for their Benson family podcast episodes discussing Fred, Arthur and Hugh and their ghost stories. Of course Fred gets the highest rating, but all the episodes contain a summary of the story and some interesting discussion and speculation.

The relevant episodes are:

Episode 70: Negotium Perambulans EF Benson

Episode 73: Out of the Sea by AC Benson

Episode 75: The Traveller by RH Benson

Episode 76: How Fear Departed the Long Gallery by EF Benson

And, now that I have actually sampled them, Richard Crowest's readings of Fred's ghost stories are definitely worth a listen, and are merrily leading me down the ghost story rabbithole 😉

The Ghost Stories of EF Benson - all episodes available to download

Please share any comments or favourites in the tags/comments, as usual Fred was very prolific......

[feedergoldfish]

As I came towards the iron door, there was another distinct (I had almost said hurried) sound. The impression on my mind was one of great haste. When I reached the door, and held the candle near the lock to take out the key, I perceived that the other one, which hung by a short string to its fellow, was vibrating slightly. I should have preferred not to find it vibrating, as there seemed no occasion for such a course; but I put them both into my pocket, and turned to go back to my work. As I turned, I saw on the ground what had occasioned the louder noise I had heard, namely, a skull which had evidently just slipped from its place on the top of one of the walls of bones, and had rolled almost to my feet. There, disclosing a few more inches of the top of an archway behind, was the place from which it had been dislodged. I stooped to pick it up, but fearing to displace any more skulls by meddling with the pile, and not liking to gather up its scattered teeth, I let it lie, and went back to my work, in which I was soon so completely absorbed that I was only roused at last by my candles beginning to burn low and go out one after another.

------------

Let Loose by Mary Cholmondeley. Discussed on A Podcast to the Curious, ep 91.

I should have preferred not to find it vibrating, as there seemed no occasion for such a course...

[mx-paisley]

PRIVATE EYES AND DANDELIONS RAHHH 💥💥💥💥

close up shots below

I rendered it sketchbook style !! honestly i really love how this turned out. I'll make more art in this style again

[sokkas-therapist]

NOBODY BOTHER ME the writers of the Boiling Rock episodes said that Sokka and Zuko fight like an old married couple

[thegaydepressedone]

I don’t even have to babygirlify that man, he does it all by himself

[samcarter34]

Since people seem to once again be having trouble remembering the order of operations, let me just remind everyone:

The ability Laudna possesses to feed Delilah is Hunger of the Shadow. In the fight with Bor’dor, Laudna used that BEFORE Orym’s head nod. Bor’dor attacked them and her response was to do the thing she knew would give power to Delilah. Matt even makes the sound of Delilah’s heartbeat.

The spell she used after the head nod? Whither and Bloom. The same spell she later attacked Orym with, which isn’t even a warlock spell.

And speaking of the head nod, you want to know what’s it’s prefaced with? ‘Laudna you can do whatever you want.’ And Marisha responds by saying that Laudna is ‘barely present’ because she’s having ptsd flashbacks to all of the times something horrible happened to her and she couldn’t do anything about it. So she kills Bor’dor because it makes her feel in control of the situation.

And yeah, the 4SD where Liam says Orym thought Delilah might come back. Except y’all somehow took that and made it seem like he’s the one who shoved Laudna over the edge when what actually happened is that Laudna flung herself off it because betrayal is triggering to her.

And the sword. The sword which apparently wasn’t triggering enough that Imogen contemplating whether the Vanguard were good guys didn’t cause any reaction. Or for that matter, make her object to Ashton’s ‘this is permission statement.’ But she saw Orym wearing it, got uncomfortable and then all it took was one sentence from Delilah for her to decide to steal it. Delilah, who mutilated her, murdered her, has been possessing her for decades, and who basically held her soul hostage when BH wanted VM to resurrect Laudna. But what Delilah didn’t do? Tell Laudna to steal the sword.

I wasn’t around for campaign 1, but in campaign 2 I definitely noticed a trend that people who were all ‘I love women! Female characters rock!’ would, the second one of their alleged faves did something controversial (or just something they didn’t like) would find a way to shift the onus onto someone else so she could remain blameless. And that is definitely continuing this campaign, and if anything is getting worse (which, not to get into speculation, but I wonder if it’s because all of the female characters this go round are more traditionally feminine than last campaign.)

I think the reason Orym’s been getting raked across the coals so hard by certain parts of the fandom is actually because of this. Because Imogen’s repeatedly gone ‘what if the Vanguard have a point’ and Laudna agrees with everything she says, whereas Orym’s been pretty consistently ‘no, the murder cult that murdered my family are bad guys.’ And well, can’t go around admitting that our faves did something wrong.’

And so we have a situation where Laudna attacks Orym, but somehow that’s Orym’s fault because the possibility of Laudna doing something wrong ruins people’s lesbian cottegecore fantasy. But the thing is, that whole thing was all Laudna. She chose to listen to her first murderer when Delilah said ‘maybe it’s cursed’ and then she chose to blanket the room in magical darkness (sorcerer ability, not warlock) chose to cast an area of effect spell to destroy the thing Orym was using to sheath the sword (sorcerer spell, not warlock) and, upon hurting Orym, chose not to drop said darkness, which meant Orym couldn’t see who attacked him. And when she got caught, she tried to downplay what she did, tried to say that because she didn’t mean to hurt him it didn’t count, refused to apologize for actually hurting him, kept shifting her argument (and even low key got called out on it by Imogen when she asked Laudna why she’s want its power inside her if she thinks it’s so evil.)

There is an alternate universe where Laudna wakes Orym up and they have what probably would have been an intense discussion about the sword (and that might even have been what Marisha was aiming for before Delilah got involved) and THAT truly would have been the ‘both sides are equally right’ scenario, but that’s not what we got. And you can say Orym shouldn’t have taken the sword unilaterally (but somehow Laudna’s allowed to unilaterally steal and absorb it?) or that she’s being manipulated by Delilah, but the fact is that Laudna’s an adult and is responsible for her own decisions. Yes, Delilah is a powerful and malign presence that they all downplayed/ignored, but, to use Marisha’s addiction metaphor, making amends with those you’ve harmed is a part of recovery for a reason. Because ultimately, you are the one who did that. Yes, it does immensely suck for Laudna that she’s been handed the cards she has been, but it’s up to her to make the best play she can.

Wow this got long, but my overall point is that Laudna is a character with her own agency and makes her own decisions (well, Marisha makes them, but at this point y’all should know she’s not conflict averse and is willing to have her characters make controversial character choices). And really, take all that away, what’s left? How much onus can you take from a character before you might as well go look at a painting?

[vpstrange]

Jon on his way to make something incredibly rational🪓

[podcast-bookclub]

Audio drama creators: what moment made you feel like you were *actually* a creator?

[congregation-of-the-spiral]

how old do we think arthur was when faroe was born? in the flashback where he's talking to daniel, they allude to the influenza pandemic that lasted from 1918-1920. given that he's stated (at least on the wiki) as being born in 1900, that puts him at 20 OLDEST when she died. then in that dream sequence w scratch, he talks about taking her to the park when she was 2, so he'd at least have to be 18 when she was born, if not younger

[fredbensonenthusiast]

".....I did read….that when his mother died, EF Benson then had access to her diaries, and they showed that really the relationship between his father and his mother, exactly how bad it was, and how difficult his father was, and I wonder whether, if that was a revelation to him, and I’m sure they knew their father was a pretty dark character prone to really bad moods and so on, that if that was a little bit of something that he didn’t quite realise, then you could reach for that sense of a golden childhood that actually was never golden.  Which is what this story is about, it’s a village that was perfect, you thought was perfect, and then you turn up there, and not only had it become bad, but actually it was always bad......"

Transcribed from episode 70 of 'A Podcast to the Curious'. I wanted to post this excerpt because it makes me wonder if they've somehow captured the essence of Fred here.......

[ethereal-w0lf]

Most of us know about the almost hour long TMA whimper comp. I want someone to make a Malevolent one because I bet that whimper comp will be AT LEAST an hour long.

[actualmagus]

TMA and TMAGP FANS, IMPORTANT QUESTION

Do you think, like how elias called basira "detective" and jon "the archivist", as their roles to the eye, we would be "the listeners"?

[escapentropy]

logan talking about coco!

[wardensantoineandevka]

Who's in charge here, anyway?

[friday-answers]

‼️‼️UNIVERSE CITY WAS FIRST UPLOADED ON MARCH 25TH, 2011‼️‼️

this marks it to have been uploaded just around the time higgs had burned down. explanation found here:

the years don't matter, but it helps with placing it in line with solitaire. more importantly, the anniversary of universe city is march 25th, for everyone who cares (me).

the benefits of rereading radio silence!!! i've been discovering a lot of little details of universe city, if people are interested i would love to randomly post them lol ^_^

[eluminium]

I think with today's podcast we finally have the two pieces needed to sum up Imp and Skizz in 10 words or less

Skizz will kiss his bestie just to annoy him Impulse will kiss his bestie if it means he wins

man friendship at its finest