#dreamgirlcity

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Growing up is realizing that your podcast quality is decent. Spotify just sucks at promoting smaller podcasts to people who'd like them.

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Selene says she's willing to sacrifice everything to reunite with her lost love.

Marina says go to therapy.

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If King Falls doesn't come back, I'm jut going to keep sliding those characters into my own world for my own nefarious purposes.

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Please be okay.

This week has been so difficult for many of us, especially our American LGBTQIA+ listeners. But you are not alone. Here are some resources for those who might need someone to talk to, guidance, or a safe space. Take care of yourselves and each other, and know that we're with you.

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Quick Question:

Let's say that writers are like kids in a playground, and a couple of these kids had some really cool toys that they were meddling with. Well, there was a fight and these kids abandoned those cool toys in the sandbox. The toys are just going to sit there, so would it be so wrong if the local racoon stumbles up and starts playing with them?

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Blaine Cho

Just a they/them causing a little may/hem.

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B I R D M A N

He sits on the steps of the old Opera House, plucking the strings of his guitar. One by one, they come-the birds. In a cacophony of corvids, they come to his call. They are the voice of his song and the harmony to his melody. He is the bird man. There is no need to make a request. The bird man knows what you need to hear.

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The Jack Wright Journals (part seven)

I made it to the Doorstep.

The hike was long and grueling. Several hours through a thin and narrow trail, all of it mostly uphill. Even with the shadows pushing me onward, it was still exhausting. I was buried in sweat by the time I reached the top.

Voices were calling from all around me. The air was freezing-cold enough you could see your breath. There was an opening in the rocky overhang-it looked wide enough to be a doorway. Blinding blue lights flickered from it. The whole thing radiated with power. I felt drawn towards the door. Something inside was pulling me forward. I approached. I reached out my hand to touch the light, and the brightness dimmed. Everything went quiet. I looked to the other side of the doorstep, and I saw him-the real him.

Sammy Stevens, alive and well.

He looked different than what I remember. Just how much time has passed since new years? Weeks? Months? More? I don't know how long I've spent in the Void, but it must have been a while. Sammy looked tired. He had a messy bun of hair on his head-so much more weathered and worn than the snarky, put together shock jock I used to know.

I reached out for him. He reached out for me. I could hardly believe he was there. After all this time spent wondering if he cared, wondering if he'd listen, here we were. He came after me. More than that, he found a way to join me. I wanted him, I needed him. I reached out to grab him, but my hand was stopped at the barrier.

I tried again, and again-over and over, but there was an invisible wall keeping us apart. Sammy started to bang against the border, begging this unseen line to let him cross over, let him be with me. But it was all for nothing. Sammy was stuck; and there was nothing I could to help him.

I watched the man I love break down in front of me. He was desperate for a way to be with me once again, and failing that, a way to end his suffering once and for all. It felt like daggers through my chest. How could we come so close, and yet have nothing? I wish I could've held him. I wish I could've pulled him to the other side, but there we were. There we were. I watched him until the shadows came back and leaked their way to his side of the portal.

Before I could act, something pulled me away from the Doorstep. I was engulfed in darkness. A comforting voice came, singing my pity. He told me that I wasn't strong enough to cross the border, but there is a way. He could help me, just like how he had helped so many others. Together we could cross over, free the Waking World from its lies. I could have Sammy again. All it would take was just to let him in. And so I did.

I am a part of the Shadow Maker now, and he is a part of me. We stand at the doorway, ready to cross through. Soon the Waking World will fall. They will try to fight back. The One will rise up, but it doesn't matter. Nothing can stop the shadows. Nothing can stop the monster. I will have my Sammy again.

No one can stop me.

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Fun ideas going into Season 4

(In no particular order)

-Meditation Tapes

-Hot dogs

-Beat Nic Poetry night

-Movie night at the local Block Buster

-Surprise! King Falls AM closure (looking at you, 10 year Sammiversary)

-A marathon?

-Horse girl problems

-Sassy Blaine being sassy

-The wedding of the decade

-Horror of the personal and intense variety

-Coupons for half off pancakes

-Somebody's dark and tragic back story

-A noble sacrifice from a very important person

-Therapy! (hopefully for the ones that need it)

-A couple decent poems, maybe more. Idk, I'm kind of my worst critic.

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The Jack Wright Journals (part six)

It's only been a few days, and I've covered so much ground. I hardly stop to rest anymore; I don't need it. For whatever reason, I just don't get tired anymore. It's like something else is sustaining me now, pushing me forward, keeping focused and moving forward. In only a couple of days, I've made it down from the mountain and through the ruins of some old town. I don't know where I'm going, but yet the directions are clear. The shadows tell me where to go.

Why did I ever fear them? They're the ones that brought me to the Void, listened to all my theories, made me feel seen. That isn't a feeling I had back in California. Sammy didn't care about my thoughts. He never took any of it serious. I tried to show so many times, I begged him to look. But he never did. He was more focused on keeping up appearances, surviving, hiding everything that matters. It broke my heart to see him do it to himself. Sammy said he was just putting on an act, but I knew better. It was killing him a little bit more every time he stepped into that persona. I tried to help him, but he just pushed me away. You can't save someone who isn't ready to be helped. And so here we are.

The shadows comfort me. They assure me that there was nothing I could have done to help him-at least not in the form I was in. I didn't know the things I know now. I didn't have the power the shadows now give me. Things are different now, and I am growing stronger.

Every day I feel the shadows' influence more and more. They whisper secrets and knowledge to me with every step. I've already learned so much about life, love, and the workings of the reality. The Waking World I came from was a place of lies and illusions. People are forced into roles, forced into boxes and lies they have to uphold in order to survive. It's suffocating. I see that now more than ever. Out here in the Void, I'm free. I can breathe easy, express myself without restraint. I can be everything I am and so much more. There is so much promise in the Void. There is so much freedom in the Void. The shadows talk of spreading our influence further. They talk about a vessel that can open the doorstep to the Waking World. Humanity could finally be freed from its shackles. The shadows sing and buzz with excitement for the world to come; and I'm a piece of it all. I don't have a lot of details, but I'm pretty sure I'm being drawn to the doorstep, to the Waking World.

I'm not sure what I'll find waiting for me once I get there. Other people, monsters, maybe even Sammy. Doors go both ways. If I'm being drawn in that direction, maybe I could call to Sammy on the other side. That of course depends if he's nearby and willing to listen. He never really listened to me before. But maybe that's changed. Maybe I can reach him.

I'm standing on the edge of a forest now. Towering trees, mountains of sharp and jagged rocks-it's going to be quite the hike up, but that's fine. The shadows are sustaining me, and they are so very strong here. Their presence is thick and dense like a fog that hangs over everything. Voices are calling me up the trail and through the trees. Everyone is waiting. Sammy is here. He's here-or at least so close that all I need to do is reach out and grab him. I'm not sure if this is just another trick, or the real thing. But I need to know. I need to see the doorstep. I need to do this. My body burns and aches to start the climb. It's like a magnet pulling me in. I have no other choice, and so we begin the hike.

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The Jack Wright Journals (part five)

Head spinning, ears ringing, covered in bruises and strange marks. I barely know what happened, and if I'm being honest I don't think I fully understand. Something hit me from above. It looked like a thick, dark cloud-like a tumult of dark flames that oozed and dripped chunky black liquid everywhere. It sounded like a buzz, like static from a lost signal. The cloud grew and grew until the door and windows were all but covered. It pushed me down. I had no escape. I tried to keep my distance, but the cloud descended. It ripped and battered at my body, flooding me all at once. I tried to scream, but it went down my throat and all over me. Inside and and out.

It felt like drowning. It felt like being thrust below the waves of an ice cold sea. A tumult of darkness enveloped every piece of me, dragging the remains further and further down. The light faded. The static soften to a hum. I felt the life dim out of my body, and that was when the voices started to speak.

A few were familiar-Selene, Howard, Debbie. I've heard from them before this whole thing started, before I first crossed over. They were the "people on the other side" that I managed to make contact with. We had had many a conversation in the past. They were friends-at least they were supposed to be. Debbie's voice spoke softly and gently to me. She seemed to vibrate through my skeleton somehow. Calm, firm, and assured-she sounded a little different from the first time I saw her call late one night. She was so afraid back then, but now things have changed. Debbie told me to relax, to give in and let it happen. I had been chosen by the shadows. They saw me and the potential I had, my ability to see what others don't, and they summoned me here. The shadows needed me, though Debbie wouldn't say for what. I tried to push her voice away. She tried to talk to me, over and over. It was suffocating, but somehow I managed to fight her off. Everything went silent, and then, everything changed.

I woke up in a radio station, head slumped over the sound board. The display was really nice-mics and all the rest of the gear brand new, even from a few years in the future. Everything was clean and fresh out of the box. I've never seen a radio studio to have this new and nice of a set up. A notepad filled with show notes sat to my side. So much of it was filled with all the paranormal stuff that I used to look into. There was a ring on my finger-not the same engagement ring I have, but what looked like a proper wedding band. I scarcely had a second to process before arms wrapped around my shoulders and pressed a kiss to the side of my head.

"Hey Beautiful. Have a good nap?"

His voice traveled down my spine. Sammy Stevens: my fiance, the man I love most of all, my heart and home. You don't really realize just how much you miss about a person until it's right there in front of you after so much time apart. His touch, his smell, the little snarky twang in his voice that came from years of practice-I couldn't believe it. Sammy slid his arms off of me and settled into a chair by my side. He started talking about all the plans for the show, everything we were going to do, even how excited he was to dig into all the interesting stuff about the shadow people I've managed to gather. I asked him what he was talking about. He said it was for our show, the show we had been doing together for the last three years-ever since we got married and moved to King Falls. I told him we never moved. Sammy insisted we did-because I wanted to be closer to the paranormal, and he wanted to support me.

That couldn't be right. Sammy would never-he never believed in any of the paranormal stuff. No matter the proof I had or the evidence I'd show him, he never believed in it. He never believed in me. When I started getting messages from the shadows, he thought I was crazy. When I wanted him to come investigate the shadows up north, he refused. Every single step of the way, it was always a fight. He never listened to me, he never believed me, and at times I wondered if he ever even wanted me.

This new version of Sammy reach out for my hand. I pulled back and told him he wasn't real. Sammy looked confused for a minute, and then he sadly chuckled.

"It could be real, though. Some day. You just need to open his eyes."

I woke up with a jolt. Head spinning, ears ringing, covered in bruises and strange marks-I was back in the old dusty cabin. The shadows were nowhere to be seen. Black liquid was spilling out of my noise and eyes like ink. I coughed up a big chunk of it not too long ago. It's awful. I feel worn. I feel violated, and yet.....and yet somehow my head is clearer than it was before. I feel an understanding with the world around me that I didn't have before. I'm not wandering around in the dark, I know where to go.

On the other side of this mountain, I'm going to find the remains of a small town. Keep walking through the streets, down towards a darker set of woods that sit not too far from an old abandoned mansion. From there it's going to be a bit of a hike through the woods, but it will be worth it. You see, the doorstep is there. I can feel it calling to me, drawing me like a magnet. I need to go there. I need to bring the shadows to its steps. Because once I'm there, I can reach him.

Once I'm at the doorstep, I can pull Sammy over to my side.

I don't know if he'll follow this time, but I hope so. He has to. I love him so dearly, and he deserves so much better than the lies we were living back in California. If I pull him to this side, he'll be free from all of that-we'll be free from all of that. It can be just him and me. We can start over, build a family, live the dream that I saw in that vision. It's possible; I can feel it, I know it. A brighter future is waiting. I can finally Save Sammy from himself. All I need to do is make it to the Devil's Doorstep.

Soon, my love. We'll be together again soon.

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The Jack Wright Journals (part four)

I'm a smart enough guy. I'm good with my hands. Back in the day I was in school for mechanical engineering. My parents were really excited to see me graduate and go into NASA, build rockets, stuff like that. For a while, that's where I thought my life was heading. I've always been good at figuring out tech-but it was never really my big passion. Engineering is handy, but it was never "the big thing" in my life. It was just a tool I'd use to get me to the stuff I really cared about; like the supernatural, or building ghost hunting gear, or helping out my sister with her radio job.

She's the reason I got into radio in the first place. I was fresh out of college and exhausted. I didn't want to go into an engineering job right away, or do anything like that. It just didn't have any appeal, and everything else felt kind of dull. The only things I knew I liked was playing rugby, looking into aliens, and hanging out with my sister, Lily. She was starting up her big journalism career and a tiny little radio station in our area. One day the station lost a producer and needed someone who could work the sound board. Lily talked me into it, and the rest is history. I got really good at fiddling with the old broadcast stuff, to the point where I made that old 80's radio tower sound just as good as anything new. I have a knack for making old radio equipment work, but I've always been good with my hands. You'd figure that I'd be able to work through anything without a problem. That's what I thought, at least up until the last several hours happened.

I've spent countless hours trying to get something in this old radio station to work. The equipment is old, the power lines are wonky, and the infrastructure of the whole building has been fighting me on every step. This place isn't built like a normal radio station, which is normally designed to maximize your broadcast reach and let things flow smoothly. Instead this feels a lot more like somebody strapped a radio tower to an old cabin and called it a day. There's barely any soundproofing on what could generously be called the studio, and as for the power-well that's my biggest problem. Despite being old, most of the equipment is doable. With a little fiddling, I could get something out there, maybe even boost the signal. The problem is that it's pointless without a power source. Everything's dead out here; and I don't know what to do.

I don't want to give up on this place just yet. It feels important somehow. I can't explain it, but I feel Sammy here, somewhere. His voice brought me to this place, his presence is here. But I doubt that really makes much of a difference when I can't do anything about it. I'm going to do another sweep of the station and see what I can find. After that, it might be time to leave. That show in the corner is growing-has been for the past couple of hours. It's bubbling and swirling like a storm. Multiple red eyes watch me work. It reminds me of the strange shadows I saw from my trip up north to King Falls. I don't like it. I don't like the way that thing is watching me. I'm going to try to work fast and maybe find something to salvage. If I can find something to make a power source later on, I'll be able to come back. Maybe by that time the thing......it's gone. I don't know where it went, or what's going on, but the room is colder now. Everything is looking darker. I should probably go befor-

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Post Season Three Update:

Happy Holidays, and thank you so much to everyone who's been so patient with the break in Season Four to take care of the issues I had with Season Three. There were a lot of challenges with writing Season Three that I frankly did not have the time or skill to properly tackle at the original time of publication. I did the best I could, but it just wasn't the right move. Everything was clunky and awkward, and it got to the point that I realized that I couldn't continue the story until I sorted out the mess. So I took the time, a year later, to fix the problems and reorganize the podcast. The plot and conflict of Season three is more in line with the original plan now-fully addressing Selene and the problems she caused in the city. It's been foreshadowed and built to in previous seasons, and now I feel it's more coherent. The main conflict is now wrapped up. Consider Season Four more as an epilogue of sorts. We're dealing with the characters finding closure, as well as addressing the psychologically traumatized Jack Wright in the room.

I realized that it would be more effective to just give Jack and the Institute their own arc than trying to smush it together with all the previous story stuff-so that is the plan! We are going to see worlds break, shadows go crazy, and finally find out what happens once Jack Wright realizes that it's not 2015, and it hasn't been 2015 for a solid decade. So stay tuned! Things are going to get real intense and real interesting.

Also you can consider some parts of what's to come as the spiritual successor to the long dead podcast King Falls AM-or not. I'm not the boss of you, so do with that what you will.

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And Jack just so HAPPENED to pop up in a fun lofi town, with his memory stuck on the year he disappeared. Where did he come from? How did he get here? I don't know, King Falls AM died so the answers no longer exist.

since king falls isnt coming back im hereby now just using the characters as my ocs. Jack was never in the void he was on vacation and comes back and everyone's fine. Pete Meyers is the Dark. Fuck you

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Cool pic of Marina my friend Theo drew for me!

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The Jack Wright Journals (part three)

I heard him!

As clear as the day I left, just up the hill in a little cabin that seemed to have a radio tower, I heard my Sammy. It was incredible. You don't really realize just how much you miss a person until you hear them again. I ran up the hill. I screamed his name. It's only been a couple of of weeks, and yet....and yet...

It sounded like he was in the middle of a radio broadcast-some sort of late-night AM show like we used to do back in Florida. Sammy was going on about the development plans for some small town, I wasn't paying that close attention to the details. To me it didn't matter. Sammy was here; he was right here, and he sounded good. He sounded healthy. He sounded better than he had in a long time. There was a lot less of an edge to his voice than there was in the last few months. Maybe he's finally let down his guard a little. Maybe he took a step back from the city, finally found his place with me in the void. It would save me a whole lot of headache to have him already here and on board. We could finally make a life together, finally be together-no hiding, no pretend, just us. Just us in the way I always wanted.

It's bad etiquette to barge in while someone's on air, but I couldn't help myself. Sammy's voice was loud and clear from inside. I could feel him there. So I threw the door open and dove in. I was so ready to see him again. I was so ready to finally be a family, but that's not what happened.

The cabin was empty; there was nobody there.

At one point it seemed the place had been retrofitted to be a small radio station-probably back in the 70's by the look of the equipment-but it had since been abandoned. Windows were broken, floorboards were missing, and everything was covered in a thick layer of dust. There was no Sammy; there was no anyone. Nothing. I found nothing, and it was only a trick of the mind that led me here. I kicked a table over. I screamed until the noises from me turned to thick and violent sobs. Everything felt bitter. Everything felt dark. Once again, I'm left alone and helpless.

I've been alone before. I was just barely getting my bearings out of college when I first met Sammy. My older sister, Lily, managed to get me a producer job on a small community radio show. She'd help with journalism stuff, and I'd make sure the sound equipment worked. I didn't really talk to anyone back then. Sure, Lily liked to act like she was there for anything-but there's limits to that. She's a protective older sister, and there's only so much you can tell someone like that. I didn't really have a full grasp on my talents, my sexuality, or anything like that. Then one day we were asked to take over for the late AM night show. It was a simple thing to handle-sports, a little news, caller interaction-nothing too crazy. The station put Lily and me on there, along with another guy who had more experience with the phone lines. We had a meeting to sort everything out, and that's when I first met Sammy.

He was confident, strong, just as sarcastic as Lily was-but a lot nicer to me. We laid out our plans, and it all went pretty smooth. Lily and Sammy became fast friends. I thought it'd end up being the two of them running the whole show while I stay in the background and make sure the mics work. I was fine with that. I told myself I'd be fine with that-but Sammy wouldn't have it.

He set up a third mic just for me, insisting the show needed someone to keep him and Lily on track. I was nervous, but Sammy encouraged me. He told me that the world needed the things I had to say, and that if anything went wrong, he'd be right there by my side. He coaxed me on the air, and honestly, that was when I first started falling for him. We made a great team, and now...now....now....

There's someone else in this old cabin with me, maybe something else. It's been standing in the corner, watching for the past hour or so. No idea what it is or what it wants. It's whispering stuff now, all while staring me down with glowing red eyes. I don't think it's dangerous. If it was, it probably would've attacked by now. Instead, I think it's waiting to see what I'll do. That is the question-what will I do?

The equipment in this cabin is really old, but I have a few scrap parts and a knack for getting things to work. If I heard Sammy from in here, maybe there's a way to broadcast a message out to him. It's a long shot, but hey, it's not like I have other options. I miss Sammy. I miss my family. I need to hear his voice again.

Any cost, any price, I need to hear his voice again.