#hello new fandom i'm here to listen to podcasts and give fictional characters my own anxieties

[just-your-average-tangerine]

This is reviews and ratings for the narrative/ fiction podcasts I have/ am listening to. This is mostly for me but if you want to use this as a recommendation go for it but be warned I'm not talking about plot or giving a description, there's no mentions of potentially triggering material so do your own research first if that's something your concerned about.

Welcome to Night Vale

-Night Vale owns my entire ass, no one does it better. I've been listening since the beginning and while I do think the quality has dipped a bit in the last few years its still really good. 9/10

The Magnus Archives

-Nearly perfect. Holds up and even improves with subsequent listens. The final season drags a bit imo but worth it in the end. 9/10

Old Gods of Appalachia

-really good story, gives you a lot to keep track of character wise but is written well enough that its not too hard and you can still follow the story if you forget some. 8/10

Moonbase Theta Out

-I can't wait for this to be over. Unfortunately, the storyline has a chokehold on me, and i need to know how it ends. Otherwise, i wouldn't be listening anymore. While there are several pretty good voice actors, there's enough bad ones that it's hard to listen to. Took the idea that characters should be flawed a little too far and made nearly every character completely insufferable. Nearly everytime a character is being given critical and emotional information it cuts away, in what I assume is an attempt to save the audience from listening to the same information over and over again, but instead it deprives the audience that look at how the character reacts to the information, which could go a long way in making them seem more fleshed out, instead you only see them emote in angry outbursts or melodramatic soliloquies (which is not helped by the subpar acting). 2/10

Death By Dying

-pretty funny but I don't think there's been enough episodes to make a educated review or rating

Hello from the Hallowoods

- very good overall. Good story, heartfelt and well written. Percy's story hits close to home for me, which sometimes makes me mad because he comes across as very weak and insecure and it gets on my nerves. But honestly that's less of a problem with the Percy or the writing and more of a problem of him being one of the very very few trans masc characters in existence so its extra disappointing when i find him irritating. Polly owns my ass, I would die for him. 8/10

Where the Stars Fell

-I binge listened up to the current season which I feel wasn't the way to go but it's still pretty enjoyable. 6/10

Midnight Burger

-Very funny. I love the characters and their dynamic and just the idea of a time a space traveling diner, it's beautiful. The beginning of this new arc confused me a bit but it's starting to come together. 7/10

We Fix Space Junk

- Very funny but with the underlying terror of what's going on with automnicon. Looking forward to new episodes. 6/10

The Sheridan Tapes

-started really strong but has been spending too much time on the characters agnst and not enough time actually progressing the story. At this point I'm just looking forward to a conclusion. 4/10

Camp Here and There

- it was pretty good, nothing exceptional but not bad but then I took a single glance at what was going on in the fandom and it was so obnoxious that it immediately ruined it for me. I feel bad lowering the rating due to the fandom but like, yikes. 2/10

SCP Readings

-very entertaining, easy to follow even if you don't have any prior knowledge about scp, which I do not. 7/10

The Amelia Project

-I think I'm to early in this one to make a solid judgement but I enjoy it so far. Venerio haunts me.

[goblin-gardens]

It’s after midnight, and the lobby of Amnesty Lodge is only barely less dark than the cloudy night outside. The red glow of the legally-mandated “EXIT” sign above the front door and the faint light from the kitchen don’t do much to illuminate the only person in the room. Aubrey sits cross-legged in a big chair next to the cold fireplace, unusually still.

Not entirely still, of course. Her right hand is in motion– rubbing against the threadbare arm of the chair or the zipper of her vest, twisting at a coil of hair or passing a small red flame absently from thumb to forefinger and back again. In her left hand, she holds her mother’s necklace, and she stares into the gem’s gold-orange depths, looking for answers.

Dani stands in the shadows on the staircase, reluctant to break the silence for a reason she can’t quite name. Aubrey looks small in the old blue chair, her back hunched, her expression hidden by the unsteady light of her flame. Dani should go and comfort her, or turn around and give her privacy, but instead she watches. Things have been strange between them since they placated the Quell. Good– Dani’s never felt such a sense of home and belonging– but strange, punctuated by these sleepless nights and unanswered questions.

The light in the kitchen shuts off and the door swings open. Dani retreats further into the darkness.

“Aubrey?” Barclay looks tired. They all do, these days, though as time goes on it’s a more honest, contented sort of tired. This is the sort of tired a man who cooks for twenty Sylvans, a biker gang, and retired FBI agent should be, and not the sort that looks like he’s wasting away from being cut off from his home, or worn down by the stress of secrets and war. “Why’re you sitting in the dark?”

Aubrey shrugs. Dani grips the banister. Barclay pulls a chair away from a table and sits backwards in it, folding his arms on the top of the back. He waits for Aubrey to speak, and when she doesn’t, he puts a hand gently on her upper arm.

“You know if you’re gonna be up this late, Ned would want you to be watching some crappy horror flick that’s three times as old as you.”

That gets a laugh out of Aubrey, even if it’s a little watery. She lets go of the necklace. It reflects the red light of the EXIT sign, sort of. The warm orange color of it always does strange things to light. It draws Dani’s gaze for a moment, before she looks back to Aubrey’s face. Her eyes are the same color, Dani knows, but far more compelling.

“Can I ask you a weird question?”

“Do you know how to ask another kind?” Aubrey smiles again, then they lapse into silence as she searches for the right words.

Finally, she sighs and leans her elbows on her knees. “What does it feel like to be around me?” she asks Barclay, her voice almost too quiet for Dani to hear. “Is it like… home?”

Upstairs, someone snores loudly, then turns over. Dani recognizes her own words and feels her pulse begin to rush, confusion adding to her mounting fear of discovery.

Barclay rubs the back of his neck. “Well, I’ve always thought of home as somewhere relaxing. Calm, you know? Calm’s a bit hard to get in our line of business, of course, but– a kitchen where there’s always enough of whatever I’m looking for, even if Jake’s been in my cupboards stealing my baking chocolate.”

Dani can’t see Aubrey smile, but she can picture it perfectly. “And I don’t make you feel calm?”

“You’re a great girl, Aubrey, but no, that’s not the first word that comes to mind.” Barclay’s back is mostly towards the stairs, so Dani has to guess his expression from the tone of his voice and the curve of his back. Rueful? Comforting? “Why d’you ask?”

Aubrey fiddles with her mother’s necklace again. “When we went to fight the Quell,” she starts. She stops, and takes a slow, shaky breath. Dani takes an instinctive step downwards, then changes her mind. 

“When we went to fight the Quell, it recognized me. Janelle told me, and I didn’t believe her, not really, until the Quell told me too– my magic, Barclay–” she holds up a new flame, flickering blue and orange. “It’s not just magic, I’m magic. I’m Sylvain.”

“Huh,” says Barclay. “Well don’t that just beat all.”

“And,” Aubrey continues, her words starting to fall over one another, “I’m scared of what that means, because if I’m like, the source of life for all of you, does that mean I have to go live in that castle and bestow blessings on everyone or some shit? Do I have to sit in meetings and wear ceremonial robes and be some big important person? If I’m Sylvain, then it’s my job to take care of everyone, right? And it would be wrong to play favorites, and if everyone needs me, then can I still… is it right for me to stay here? They want me to go back there, you know.”

Dani knows the thoughtful way Barclay scratches his beard very well. “Alright,” he says, “I was going to say you better have a damn good reason to be sitting down here when I know Dani’s gonna be missing you upstairs, but that’s about the best reason I could think of. Still, unless you were tossing and turning so much she kicked you out of bed so she could sleep, this seems like the sort of thing you should be sharing with her, not brooding over in the dark all by yourself.”

When Barclay say’s Dani’s name, Aubrey deflates. “That’s exactly the problem,” she tells him. “How am I supposed to talk to Dani about me being the literal wellspring of life and magic for her and everyone else on her world? How is that fair to her?”

On the steps, in the dark, Dani holds her hands over her mouth, willing her feet to stay still as she wishes desperately that she could rush down into the room and gather Aubrey in her arms the way Barclay is hesitantly starting to do. She can see Aubrey’s shoulders shaking, and hear the trembling hitch in her voice that means she’s about to cry but fighting the tears back– and the only thing worse than standing here and doing nothing would be seeing Aubrey’s accusing face when she realizes that Dani’s been listening this whole time. 

“What if something happens and we get in a fight and I cut her off from Sylvain without meaning to?” Aubrey continues, her voice rising in panic. “Or what if I do mean to? I’ve hurt people before, what if I hurt her somehow? What if my magic is making her care about me, and if I wasn’t Sylvain–” Aubrey’s fully curled into Barclay’s chest now, her voice muffled against his flannel shirt. “What if she only loves me because I’m Sylvain?”

Dani’s cried on Barclay a few times over the years they’ve lived at Amnesty Lodge. It’s always been comforting, but he looks as unprepared for Aubrey’s tears as he’s ever been for Dani’s. He pats her on the back, careful and a little awkward. He doesn’t say “There, there,” but it’s a close call.

“First off,” he says, “I’ve known you for a good while now, Aubrey Little, and the very last thing I can imagine you doing is hurting anyone– especially Dani– to get back at them for a fight.”

“I told Keith I’d burn him alive,” Aubrey mumbles.

“But did you?” Barclay asks. Aubrey shakes her head. “And did you mean it? And wasn’t it to stop him from telling anybody about your magic, and the goatmen, and the gate? I might be biased, but that sounds more like protecting us than using your powers to settle a score.”

“I guess,” Aubrey sniffles.

“And I’ve know Dani even longer,” Barclay continues. “She’s not the sort of person to let a bit of magic boss her feelings around without her knowing.”

Aubrey takes a deep breath and leans back away from Barclay. Her face is turned away from the stairs, but Dani’s hands itch to brush away the tears she knows are there. “Before we opened the gate up, she told me I feel like home. She told me she wanted to stay with me, even if I never went back to Sylvain, because I feel like home. I thought she was just being romantic, but what if– what if the thing that’s her home is Sylvain? Because that’s not me, I mean, I guess it is, but I’m not Sylvain. I’m Aubrey. Dani doesn’t know that I’m both! What if she only loves Sylvain? What if when I tell her, she chooses Sylvain?”

It feels a lot like being shot, Dani imagines, to listen to Aubrey’s desperate whispers. Or like being starved of magic, but colder. She knows that Aubrey doesn’t want her to hear this. She can’t go down to her. She can’t leave. She can’t do nothing, but somehow, that’s what she does.

Aubrey’s crying in earnest again, and Barclay’s rubbing soft circles on her back. He glances up, for just a moment, and Dani holds her breath, terrified that she’s been found out.

“Don’t tell me I just need to talk to her about it,” Aubrey tells Barclay. “Because I know that’s what I need to do but it’s also probably the scariest thing I’ve ever had to do. And I’ve been fighting monsters as a full time job for a year and a half.”

“I won’t,” Barclay says. “But she’s the only one who can answer all those questions for you.”

“Probably.” Aubrey rubs at her face. “Well, I guess– do I feel like home to you, Barclay?”

He glances at the stairs again. Does he see her? Dani wonders. Or is he just thinking about his bed?

In the silence, Dani can hear the buzz of the EXIT sign over the front door.

“No,” Barclay says. “Not like that. You’re part of my home, because you’re part of the Lodge, and I’d be sad if you left, but I’d still have Mama and Jake and the rest. I’d still have the springs. I miss Sylvain sometimes, sure, but this is my home, here at Amnesty, and I wouldn’t follow you back over there.”

Aubrey sniffs loudly and nods. “Thanks, Barclay.” 

He rubs her back a few more times and kisses the top of her head. “You know what else my home has, Aubrey? It’s got my bed in it.”

“Yeah?” Aubrey chuckles. She doesn’t make a move to get up, though.

Carefully, barely daring to breathe, Dani takes a step backwards up the stairs. Barclay looks straight at her then, over the top of Aubrey’s head.

He hadn’t lied to her. After all these years hiding their true selves from the people of Kepler, Dani knows when Barclay’s lying. But the look he gives Dani carries a warning. He wouldn’t follow Aubrey, but he’ll fight for her. He’s spent so long fighting for Sylvain, to protect their home from prying eyes and trouble, it’s hardly a surprise. Dani knows the feeling.

Now that she knows it’s there– yes, there is magic that calls that same protective anger up in her. Faced with Sylvain personified, returned after so long, of course she would fight for her as well. But the magic isn’t everything. She thinks she would be happy to die for Sylvain, but she’s lived without it for long enough. She’d keep living, on either side of the gate, with Aubrey. Just Aubrey. She nods at Barclay.

He nods back. Dani slips back up the stairs into the room she shares with Aubrey almost every night, and turns the light on. She has a lot of questions to answer, and they scare her too, but she knows what she’ll say when Aubrey asks.