#culture podcast

[yeiwing]

a quick presentation on my findings as a casual podcast consumer

[serglesinner]

recently I've been infected by her and it's bad

[menacewithawolfcut]

if this post reaches 500 notes, i will start a podcast where i will talk about my fictional crushes in a totally unhinged manner, like britanny broski talks about masked men, traumadump without anyone asking for it, and about various topics that make my serotonin levels go brrr (mostly about art, history/culture and queer stuff), video essay-ish-style, but executed in a worst way possible

[kiitoskiitos]

new dream. (original)

[greaterblogston]

With all due respect:

Given what our show is, our show should be much, much bigger on tumblr.com

Tumblr.com, we are Greater Boston: an urban fantasy fiction podcast unlike anything you've ever heard before. Get to know us. I dare you. If you do, you will be fans.

[sleepsucks]

[clubhoops]

Mariah the Scientist + Big Latto on the set of Angel Reese's podcast, "Unapologetically Angel".

[lilaccatholic]

Man, I feel like every clip I see from Pints with Aquinas lately Matt Fradd is demeaning women. Really sad to see it, I used to love his interviews :/

[smoosey]

WIP Wednesday

Recently I've been spending time with a history podcast that has me 👀 excited to try out writing War, for once.

He loses contact with Cody for four weeks on Moxil VII. Four weeks of sweating in the desert, fighting their way back to the Capitol that Cody’s companies are holding for him.

In the moments before sleep and the moments after waking, it's crushing – thousands of souls, his own men, without food, without ammunition, without medical supplies. Dead, perhaps. Suffering, certainly. For four weeks in the desert, he breathes past the weight of it, and carries on.

There's a hungry rend of desperation in him, the day he catches sight of him again – his Commander, across the field of battle, against the outer wall. Holding his ground, somehow, still. Gaunt and injured, yet – upright, grounded as a stone in the sunlight. Something steadfast for Obi-Wan to break his foes against. Obi-Wan's blade sings on every swing, and the Separatists are caught between them – hammer meeting anvil, the scent of blood and hot metal in the noon light.

The aftermath is a grim blur of heat. The men he meets are less numerous, less well than they appeared across the field. Thin, sick, and thirsty. Were they standard, natborn soldiers, Obi-Wan doubts they'd be on their feet at all.

And his forces, too, find the shells of men. Armor, empty, stacked and staked into the ground, cleverly placed to make their forces seem more numerous. An old trick, a grim and effective defense for the living. But it is some kind of nightmare, in the noon heat, to move through the field and hear armor rattling in the wind. This is the marked armor of men he knows – men he knew.

He wonders what it cost Cody, for the peoples of this planet to let his forces bury their dead in the city. The land outside the city walls is marked with a cunning series of trenches and shelters, but he sees no trace of the mass grave he knows they must have dug. A quick survey of the field tells him they'll have further need of it before the day is done.

[cade-space]

Tma is wild because Robert Smirk was a real ass dude and certain buildings are just real ass locations and it's really cool because it highlights modern London history but imagine if it was set in the states? Like Andy Warhol paintings can be manipulated by Leitners and all of the cryptids of the Appalachian mountains are manifestations or avatars of the Fears and considerably more characters would have guns

[kiarpennington]

Name a tv show you wished HADN’T gotten cancelled so soon. I’ll go first; for me that show is Star Wars: The Acolyte! Let me know yours!

[thoughtportal]

In this episode we explore a relatively new subgenre of science fiction called Solarpunk, which aims to imagine better, more ecologically harmonious, futures on earth. In many ways Solarpunk is a reaction to both the real-world climate crisis and to the many apocalyptic visions of collapse filling our screens. Andrew Sage from the YouTube channel Andrewism joins host Jonathan McIntosh and friend of the show Carl Williams for this conversation.

References & Links • The Andrewism YouTube Channel • Walkaway by Cory Doctorow • Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach • Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation • Fighting for the Future edited by Phoebe Wagner  • Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler • Princess Mononoke from Studio Ghibli • The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin • Emergency Skin by N. K. Jemisin • Monk and Robot book series by Becky Chambers • Dear Alice from THE LINE • Dear Alice’ Decommodified Edition by Waffle To The Left • Our History Is the Future by Nick Estes • 3000-Year-Old Solutions to Modern Problems by Lyla June  • Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher

[hexpositive]

Hex Positive, Ep. 047 - What My Granny (Weatherwax) Taught Me

Now available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all major platforms!

Lozzie’s back, friends and neighbors! And this month, we’re sitting down to talk about everybody’s favorite coven - the Witches of Lancre, from Discworld. Longtime fans of the show have heard the works of Sir Terry Pratchett (RIP) and the wisdom of Granny Weatherwax quoted many times on the show, but what other lessons might the Lancre coven have for us over the course of their many odysseys, quests, holidays, and general mucking about? (Tangents include which fantasy character is Legolas’ hot grimy dad, why certain tourists are so bloody annoying when they go abroad, which Discworld quote made Lozzie snarf tea out her nose, and what Bree and the sainted Sir Terry’s origin stories have in common.)

If you love Discworld, this episode is for you. If you’ve never heard of Discworld or are only passing familiar, consider this your introduction. Bit late for the Glorious 25th of May, but all the same - Here’s to Truth, Justice, Freedom, Reasonably Priced Love, and a Hard-Boiled Egg! 

The Witches of Lancre 

Equal Rites - Wyrd Sisters - Witches Abroad - Lords and Ladies - Maskerade - Carpe Jugulum

The Tiffany Aching Saga

The Wee Free Men - A Hat Full of Sky - Wintersmith - I Shall Wear Midnight - The Shepherd’s Crown

(GNU Terry Pratchett)

Upcoming Events:

Sunflower Witch Market - https://www.facebook.com/events/191005147387320

Free Spirit Gathering - https://www.freespiritgatheringmd.org/ 

CritWitchCon 2024 - https://criticalthinkingwitches.com/events/ 

Follow Bree and Lozzie on Instagram at @breenicgarran and @bihexualhistory. Visit the Willow Wings Witch Shop on Shopify and check out this month’s featured items. Make sure you also visit the Redbubble page for even more cool merch!

Check my ⁠⁠Wordpress⁠⁠ for full show notes, as well as show notes for past episodes and information on upcoming events. You can find me as @BreeNicGarran on TikTok, Instagram, and WordPress, or as @breelandwalker on tumblr. For more information on how to support the show and get access to early releases and extra content, visit my ⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠.

Proud member of the ⁠⁠Nerd and Tie Podcast Network⁠⁠.

MUSIC CREDITS

Intro & Outro – “Spellbound” & “Miri’s Magic Dance” Host-Read Ads – “Danse Macabre – Violin Hook” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

[solar-halos]

tbosas except that there’s another district kid there who also moved to the capitol as a kid. instead of them and sejanus becoming friends they actually end up really disliking each other due to how differently they adjust to the change. while sejanus still considers himself district, the other kid makes themself into a class clown sort of vibe by making fun of district people and perpetuates the myth that they’re weird and gross and primitive. sejanus doesn’t like them and neither do the kids in the capitol but goddamn do they like keeping that kid around and keep inviting them to things for cheap laughs

[charliejaneanders]

The new episode of Our Opinions Are Correct is about amazing libraries in science fiction and fantasy. We also talk about real-life libraries, which are under threat from would-be censors. Plus we talk to author Ken Liu about his new translation of the Dao De Jing!

[passerkirbius]

Where are all the Audio Fiction Fandoms?

To be clear, this isn't me complaining, and I know, there are plenty of fandoms for audio fiction podcasts and the like.

But I have always found it weird how few shows get the big, self-sustaining kinds of fandoms, the ones where there's always at least a little trickle of fanfic and fanart. So weird, in fact, that I've been thinking about it on and off for the last 5-6 years, and I have a few theories I'd like to share with y'all as to why, and to see if I can't get some feedback from the audio fiction fans on Tumblr.

Theory 1: Audience Size

The first theory is mostly about demographics - fundamentally, a fandom has to be large enough to sustain itself, and only a certain number of audience members are going to become the kind of fans who make fan works, so ultimately, an audio fiction show needs to get popular enough before fan works start appearing.

There's plenty of support for this theory, of course - Welcome to Night Vale, Wolf 359, The Adventure Zone and The Magnus Archives are titans in the fiction podcast space, and indeed they have big fandoms. But, with that said, there's plenty of other podcasts that are just as big that don't have fandoms, so this can't explain it all.

Theory 2: Audience Distance

This one is similar to the first, but subtly different. A few creators in the space I've talked to have noted that they'd never make fan works of their friend's shows - that feels weird, like deliberately treading on their friend's work. They don't have this feeling when playing in big fandoms, or fandoms where they don't know the creator. This implies to me that fans need a certain level of distance from creators in order to feel comfortable playing with that fictional space. While this is less the case now with the fall of Twitter, a lot of shows, for better or worse, used social media as the primary pillar of their marketing, as well as using Patreons with special access as part of their monetization strategies.

In short, it's never been easier to get close to the creators of your favourite shows, and for smaller shows, the most exuberant fans - the kinds who might make fan works - are also the kinds of fans who will take those opportunities to get closer to the creators. In short, there just might not enough social distance for fans to be comfortable creating works, not at least until the audience grows sufficiently that a creator simply cannot be that close with their entire audience.

This theory I'm not so sure about these days - this one is probably a lot more dependent on the generation of fandom you belong to. Older generations of fandom are more likely to have this queasiness around creator closeness, because they were creating in a time where fandom was a shadow realm, desperately hidden from The Powers That Be, and "No Copyright Infringement Intended" was carved into fan works as an eldritch attempt at legal protection.

Theory 3: Audience Age

To be clear - there are fans of all ages out there. But it is clear to me that fandom trends young, and part of that is just the time needed to participate in fan culture - creating and consuming takes a lot of time, time that tends gets scarcer and scarcer as you get older (there are obvious exceptions of course - stay-at-home mothers have consistently been a major force in fandoms!). It's possible that audio fiction fans just tend to trend older, and thus don't have the time available to create and consume fan works.

Honestly, I'm not sure how relevant this one is - Audio fiction is becoming more popular with younger audiences and slowly shedding the "old fuddy-duddyness" that surrounded it when I was first getting into the space. And, ya know, there are audio fiction fandoms out there, so obviously either the youth aspect of fandom isn't a thing, or it is, but audio fiction audiences are still trending young anyway.

Theory 4: We're getting what we need!

A lot of academic discourse often focuses on the idea that fandoms create for a reason - and that reason is often to focus on parts of a fiction that the original text, for whatever reason, doesn't. The most obvious form of this is the many, many, many examples of ships and erotic fanfiction. You, as a fan, watch a show, see something between two characters, and get frustrated that the show isn't giving you more of that, won't make what is clearly obvious to you, explicit. So, you consume and/or create fan works that help relieve that tension instead.

Or, in shows where the focus is primarily on plot advancement or action, you feel a desire to get to know the characters better - you see the stirrings of these characters, you want to know them better, but the show just isn't the type of show to give you that slow, character-heavy scene/episode that you know would give you exactly what you need, so, again, you go consume and/or create fan works to fix that.

It's very possible that a lot of audio fiction is already built to give these sorts of fan audiences what they want. There's already romantic relationships, characters are openly queer, the nature of the audio medium means that character-heavy scenes are something that the medium directs creators towards, so there's already a lot of character engagement. So, for many fandoms, there just isn't much need to create fan works - there's no tension between what the show is and what it could be.

Theory 5: We can make our own at home!

One interesting theory is that one reason that people make fandom is because, fundamentally, the creators understand that they're not going to be making a film, or a TV show, or a book. They have creative urges, and they're not in a situation in life where they're likely to overcome the enormous barriers to entry in mainstream media, so, in combination with the stuff in theory 4, they play in other people's worlds instead. They know that there's already an audience who will consume their work (they're part of that fan community, after all!), so they can get that validation of creation without needing to create their own TV show or film or book, etc.

Podcasts, however, are different. Now, it's not true to say that podcasts have low barriers to entry - to create a podcast, there's a lot of skills you either need to learn yourself, or find collaborators with those skills. But, those barriers to entry are much lower than visual media. At the very least, audio production is significantly cheaper and less complicated for an equivalent runtime.

Better, podcasts have absurdly low barriers to publication - There are no gatekeepers to satisfy, no distributors you have to convince. Once your thing is made, pretty much no one can stop you from distributing that work. You don't even really need to pay for a podcast host - there's a few free podcast hosts now. So, once you've done the work, pretty much nothing stops you from publishing said work.

So... If you're a creative fan, who loved a show but thinks you can do better? Well, you can! You don't need to play in other people's spaces, you can be inspired by the podcasts you listen to to create your own original work, in the same medium and genre.

What do y'all think? Which of these feel right, which of these feel obviously wrong? Are you part of a audio fiction fandom? What does your fandom feel like to you on the inside? As a audio fiction creator, it's kinda hard for me to get into the inside of fandom culture, so insider perspectives would be super neat for me, so please reblog this to anyone you feel might have an interesting perspective on the whole thing!