#dubrach

[tiniernbcat]

Ok I just listened to The Secret of St. Kilda and I have A LOT OF QUESTIONS but the question rn is 

Is the Narrator actually Dubrach or Solasaich? I see people saying the latter but I think the last episode basically confirmed the former. Am I wrong?

[thekilda]

[thatcakelovingwitch]

Omg Lockie‘s daughter Amy can hear Solasaich!

Im relistening tho all episodes and finally realized who they meant with the „light man“

[smallmediumproblems]

Propaganda under the cut

Why isn't John/David/Cecil/Obituary Writer/etc here?

I'm specifically excluding narrators who are also primary characters in the story. There are a lot of really good unreliable main character POVs, and some that are very, very popular. There are also a LOT of found footage / "documentary" shows, so the pool of "main character who is technically also the narrator" is monstrously large. This is for narrators who have things to say about the story but are moderately to severely removed from it. You'll notice I've also excluded the Documentarian from The White Vault, because by the time she's commenting on the story, she's also a main character.

Madeleine can stay because she's very polite.

Madeleine the mouse

Madeleine doesn't exactly serve a narrative so much as she plates and seasons it before bringing it out. Part plot device, part confidante, and all bohemian authoress. But please, consider the other candidates long and hard before you vote. She's not really too unreliable, she's just incredibly biased.

The Voice of HartLife

You have to be a special kind of unreliable for one of your characters to break down the fourth wall into your recording studio to kick the shit out of you.

The Historian

*Gesturing at a lithograph of Eisen and Telesphore making out sloppy style* "Truly, it is tragic that the men of our generation have lost such deep platonic bonds as are depicted here. So secure were they in their brotherhood that our contemporary idea of friendship fails to-"

The Narrator

No, not Leon. The other guy. I can't possibly describe what his Whole Deal is without spoiling a major plot twist of the show, but guys. He killed Matt Damon, guys. He killed Matt Damon while trying to murder dozens of other people at the same time. (Hundreds? I don't know how trains work.)

Dubrach

Yes, I know it's not really confirmed. That's what unreliable narration is all about. But what could be more reliable than the literal word of god on the puny machinations of his flock? :) :) :) Also he's voiced by Alisdair Stuart, our dad.

The Malevolent Patreon Hastur

...is specifically not included, because a) people are going to think I'm talking about John, and b) brand recognition is going to skew the whole thing, as if Madeleine isn't going to sweep for that very reason. But I'm mentioning him here because of the time he made people so angry that the actual real live writer had to come out and remind them that this is a fictional character. iykyk.

[3584-tropical-fish]

“LOCKIE: (out of breath) You not gonna help, then?

NIYATHI: Oh, I'm not allowed to grave rob, remember? I'm only supervising the desecrating.

LOCKIE: Oh, great. I'm going to hell. Alone!

NIYATHI: Oh, wah. We used to come down here when we were teenagers. Should have been terrified, but oh, the bravado of youth.

[ANOTHER TOMB IS OPENED AND SIFTED THROUGH]

LOCKIE: Oh, aye? Doing weird rituals and sacrificing shit, huh? Lord Dubrach I offer thee a half can of Holyrood lager for my sins.

NIYATHI: (serious) Hey, these traditions are important, you should know that by now.”

Day 21: Open

Woah what’s this a bonus thing?? Holy shit

Day 21: Harvest Moon

[ollieofthebeholder]

I'm going to read the chapter later (looking forward to the emotional devastation) but I already looked at the chapter notes, and I actually would like the lecture/rant on Chekhov's gun.

I don't doubt that it's the appropriate term there, but I'm curious and incapable of not asking for information when it's offered :)

Happy to rant!

So, bit of context for anyone reading this post who isn't familiar with the concept of "Chekov's Gun": Anton Chekov, a Russian author and playwright, frequently gave the same bit of advice (with some variation in exact wording) to young playwrights he was mentoring: "If there is a gun hanging on the wall in the first act, it must go off in the second or third." In at least one of his letters with a variant on this advice, he said to cut any "unnecessary details".

Here's the thing, y'all. He was talking to playwrights.

I've studied a bit of script writing - not as much as I have narrative fiction, but some - and the thing about writing scripts is that you do not put any more information into the stage directions than is absolutely necessary.

SCENE: A feast hall. SCENE: A forest clearing. SCENE: A parlor room.

It's up to the director, and the stage manager, when the play is actually being put on, to figure out what the set is supposed to look like. This is why you can go to seventeen different productions of the same play and the exact same scene will be designed and staged differently.

Now let's say there's a good reason to get more specific. You only get as specific as you need to get in order to accomplish what you need in the scene.

SCENE: The feast hall at Castle Dubrach. SCENE: A campsite in a forest. SCENE: Colonel Mustard's parlor room.

That's a little more particular, and tells the director/stage manager a little more about how they need to set the scene. The feast hall doesn't just need to have food, it needs to look royal. There shouldn't just be a ring of trees, there needs to be some kind of tent, maybe a cooking fire. The parlor should look like it belongs to a military or ex-military man. You still have a lot of leeway in designing, but you need it to fit the scene.

Now, take something like this:

SCENE: The feast hall at Castle Dubrach. A roast bird sits in front of the king's plate, ready to be carved. SCENE: A campsite in a forest, with a cooking fire. SCENE: Colonel Mustard's parlor room. An antique rifle hangs above the fireplace under a hunting trophy.

If you're being that specific in the stage directions, there has to be a reason. Maybe the bird is actually a five-bird roast (a goose stuffed with a turkey stuffed with a chicken stuffed with a pheasant stuffed with a lark) and the new king has never seen one before, or maybe it's a reference to the badge of another household the king has just conquered. Maybe the spit is going to break and drop the pot into the fireand scatter sparks and cause an inferno, or maybe someone is going to be pushed into the fire and badly injured by the soup and flames. Maybe someone is going to playfully pretend to be a hunter and accidentally shoot someone, or maybe Mrs. Mustard is going to grab it and use it to defend herself from a home invasion. The point is, if you, the playwright, have specified that a scene must be staged a certain way, there has to be a reason. You can't - or shouldn't - just put unnecessary detail, it's only going to piss people off.

You also have to keep in mind how much detail needs to be kept. If the point of the roast turkey is that someone is going to stab the king with the carving fork, it doesn't necessarily have to be a turkey. If the pot isn't involved in the incident, it doesn't necessarily have to be a cooking fire. If the gun is just going to go off, it doesn't necessarily have to be antique. Just stick to what you absolutely, positively need any future directors (even if you're staging the first play yourself) to be sure to keep in.

Now. Here's the really, really, really important bit:

The audience should not know whether you put these things in the stage direction or not.

Are they serving that particular food at this feast because that's what the director thought the king would have served, or is it crucial to the plot? Is the fire just there to say "hey, this is a campsite", or is it going to cause problems? Does Colonel Mustard have a rifle hanging on his wall because he's an ex-soldier and that was the gun that saw him through the Boer War, or is it loaded and waiting to fire?

I blame TV Tropes (not exclusively, but they're a big part of it) for putting that phrase in people's minds and making them think it applies to every single running gag or small reference in a story. I think it also makes people tend to complain that something is "bad writing" if the gun doesn't go off, when a lot of times it isn't.

Just...the big thing, for me, is that you can't always anticipate Chekov's gun. It's something you can only apply retroactively. It's okay to wonder if the gun's going to go off, but it's not okay to complain that she used a knife instead when the murder didn't even happen in the parlor.

TL;DR Chekov's Gun really only exists in plays, it only matters if you're writing the play, and if you're sitting in the audience it's supposed to catch you off-guard when it goes off.

Enjoy the chapter. :)

[monstrousproductions]

i know im supposed to be off making my own actual podcast rn but instead...

if it's a tie, they have to sleep with each other i guess 🤷

[tryerofpods]

Let's talk about The Secret of St. Kilda @thekilda from @haggisanddragons productions. The Secret of St. Kilda was a 2022 Audioverse finalist y'all! And has 2 of my favorite podioverse people, @alanburgon (as main protagonist, Lockie) from The Amelia Project, and Alesdair Stuart (as the Narrator) voice actor and co-owner of @escapeartistspodcast and main host of Pseudopod. But I digress, The Secret of St. Kilda is a British, spec-fic, heartbreaking, dark-cozy(is that a thing?) podcast about the tiny British island of St. Kilda. St. Kilda is a small, close knit community and not everyone is welcome. It's more like a commune and they believe in an Old God, Dubrach. Lockie MacGregor is the new arrival. We discover that the community helped Lockie to fake his death so he could begin again on St. Kilda, but not everyone agrees he should be there. There are some dislikes and jealousies, one being rather prominent, but the community leader, who can speak with Dubrach, Andromeda, gets the final say, and she says Lockie stays. As time passes we find two things, Lockie's past, and that Old Gods sometimes demand terrible sacrifice. When you've found a community that (mostly) accepts you, and gives you a chance to start over, will you make those sacrifices? It's a fascinating dichotomy of light and dark played beautifully by the whole cast. I can't give you warnings without giving away plot points, but if the description isn't clear enough, this story does deal with death in various forms, so please consult show notes, as needed. 10, 30ish minute episodes in Season 1, and Season 2 is in the works! So if you like, well acted, dark fiction, cultist vibes, and Old Gods, then The Secret of St. Kilda is for you! #speculativefiction #specfic #oldgods #oldgod #island #cult #deathfakers #fakeyourdeath #supernatural #darkfiction #sacrifice #Fictionpodcasts #podcastsunday #trypod #podcasts #podcast #podcastrecommendation #podcastrecommendations #recommended #podcastsunday #audiodramasunday #darkcozy https://www.instagram.com/p/CmVvrtoO7UZ/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[misstrashchan]

Only three episodes in but a theory I feel pretty confident in already is that our "Narrator" (voiced by the lovely Alisdar Stuart) is actually Solasaich, Dubrach's brother.

We only ever hear him narrating when following Lockie, never any of the other characters on the island. We know from the end of the first episode "Trust" when Andromeda is possessed by Dubrach that Lockie is very likely a descendant or host of Solasaich, as Andromeda is for Dubrach, and this is likely why she takes such an interest in him in the first place.

Andromeda/Dubrach (addressing Lockie): I have seen you Brother! And I will claw my way out of my very grave to find you!

At the start of episode two, "Honesty", while Lockie is having a nightmare, the "Narrator" seems to adress him directly:

Lockie: No, no, I can fix this!

Narrator: Can you?

And the way he speaks at times as if they are the same person:

Narrator: Solitude is not a gift afforded to us this morning, however

And again in episode three, "Justice" the Narrator adresses him directly as if talking to him personally and seems very concerned about keeping him alive:

Narrator: The past can't be changed with wishing. You need to focus now. Where are they taking you Lockie? Where are they taking you?

...So our "Narrator" definitely has an agenda of sorts, and I don't know who else it could be other than Solasaich, talking to Lockie as a voice in his head.

(also yeah Salem from RWBY has primed me to be suspicious of narrators secretly being the main villain, while also still being one of my favourite plot twists because it's so badass)

[rosered2018]

The Secret of St. Kilda

I love being in on the ground floor of a new fandom. I just listened to the first episode of the Secret of St. Kilda, and I have thoughts on it.

First of all, Lockie. I haven't quite made up my mind what to make of him. He seems like a nice enough guy, but considering that he apparently faked his death and left behind a wife and kid to come to St. Kilda's makes him a bit questionable. He's a nice guy with just a hint of menace about him. Andromeda seems to trust him, but so far, we haven't really seen any reason as to why.

Mathias has been described as being kind of a dick, and I can see that. He really didn't need to sick those boys on Lockie. But on the other hand, I kind of got the impression he has a thing for Andromeda. I mean, he did kind of ask her to marry him in that first conversation they had. He's neurotic as hell, probably runs himself into the ground trying to micromanage stuff he shouldn't be worrying about, and is just so damn earnest about it. And I love him.

Andromeda, the high priestess of the cult of Dubrach. She just comes across as so down-to-earth, and seems like she's little Hari's cool aunt. I get the feeling that she's new to leading the cult and worried about whether she's going to screw it up. She did great right up until things went wrong at the wake, and I did not expect her to end up cussing someone out in grand style in Scottish Gaelic.

The impression I got was that something (possibly Dubrach himself) was speaking through her. I ran the Gaelic through a translation program, and this is what I got: "Brother, you imprisoned me and stole my name and power. And now I see your descendants coming to stop me, But I will not stop until our presence..."

Something is happening on St. Kilda, and I can't wait to see how it unfolds.

So, what do I think is going to be important in the future?

Andromeda has some kind of skin condition that apparently her mother and grandmother had, too. It's not healing, and she thought it was getting worse. It has the potential to be a factor in things, but I don't know how it fits in yet.

For my money, Lockie's past is going to come back to bite him in the ass. I have my reservations about the guy because he's a con artist, and because of a story an old friend of mine from college wrote (pre-MCU), where a man named Locke turned out to be a particularly malevolent incarnation of Loki.

I have the feeling that the description of Mathias as having the spiritual sensitivity of a pancake is going to come into play at some point here. Either that's going to turn out to be dead wrong and he's going to end up doing Andromeda's job, or he's going to end up in serious trouble because of it.

I think there's going to be some kind of love triangle between Lockie, Andromeda, and Mathias in the future, and at this point, I don't know who I'd cheer for.

I think whatever possessed Andromeda is definitely going to show up again, and that whatever it was talking to will turn up, too. I have a feeling that the little island of St. Kilda is going to turn into a battleground for ancient gods before this is over, and the town is going to be caught in the middle.

This is going to be a wild ride.

[mathias-st-kilda]

Thought of the Day - 13 Feb '22

The title is The Secret of St Kilda, not The Secrets of St Kilda. This of course implies there is one big secret rather than multiple smaller ones. Now if I had to guess this has to do with one of the following:

The possibility that everyone on the island is already dead.

The possibility that who the islanders see as Dubrach and Solasaich are actually the same entity OR the other way around from what they believe.

Yes, I will elaborate on these points further in the following days!

[mr--spider]

Not me just now realizing St. Kilda is a real place and not a fictional island made up for a funky little gay podcast

[thekilda]

Who would win in a fight? St Kilda edition - ROUND 1

AMY vs MATHIAS

LOCKIE vs SACHA

SOLASAICH vs GEORGIE

ELDER ELI vs WEE MARY

NIYATHI va ROBBIE

ELDER GRACE vs DUBRACH

ANGELIQUE vs ANDROMEDA

ELDER FINDLAY vs LOCKIE'S DA

I FORGOT THAT YOU CAN'T EDIT POLLS SO NONE OF THEM LINK BACK HERE I'M SORRY

[rusalkaandtheshepherdgirl]

Lockie is so associated with Dubrach it isn't even funny. Dubrach is trapped in "a prison of earth" per Andromeda's speech in Episode 1, and then the beginning of Episode 2 in the dream Lockie gets told that he's "trapped here in the dirt like a worm"

[bantarleton]

The last attributed Jacobite survivor of the battle of Culloden who reputedly met George IV in 1822 while on his jaunt to Scotland. In ‘45 Peter Grant, or Auld Dubrach as he was known, served in Farquharson’s Rgt, under Col Francis Farquharson of Monaltrie

[laevateinn]

[ID: An edited shot of John Mulaney captioned "Mathias is a bitch and I like him so much."]

mathias voice when i was the right hand of the voice of dubrach i had a crush on the newcomer with the designer cardigans and jawline that i didn't know how to deal with so i tried to haze him and told him to get off of my island