#unfortunate penumbra podcast post

[legendary-dumpster-fire]

goddamnit it DW why did you have to drag an innocent into this

(op you can blame a very specific discord server for this one)

req'd by @azdesertwillow

right i haven't actually listened to penumbra, is uh. is costco a strong part of the lore?

text: Juno Steel and the Costco Hotdog

[dolly-is-cool]

i’ve seen a couple posts that are like ‘there’s no way there can be a happy ending to this’ but i don’t think that’s true. there can be a happy ending to this podcast and i will cling to this hope like my life depends on it.

explication (spoilers) under the cut <3

nureyev is in a room with a brain-dead slip jackson, juno is about to be killed by the dokana group. where do we go from here?

I AM SO GLAD YOU ASKED

nureyev needs to get out of his own head and realize that slip is gone. slip wouldn’t be brought back, just a worker who bears slip’s face. he needs to either

break/unplug the machines keeping slip “alive”

leave the room entirely (remember, he needs to be speedy bc juno’s life is literally hanging in the balance)

both of these options give the same result, number 1 being preferable because it would give some closure, but whatever works. nureyev then needs to file this under ‘for future consideration’ (just for the moment. he’ll be unpacking this later)

nureyev, either through the magic of plot armor or coincidence (or a secret third option idk), needs to find juno. it would be preferable to find him in the hallway, but to find him wherever they’re going to kill him is both more likely, and doesn’t necessarily make it harder.

based on ‘the thief’s honor’, there is only one executive who is responsible for juno at any give time, meaning it should be relatively easy for nureyev to kill the executive, scoop juno up, and run out.

counting on the fact that most of the executives are either dead or dealing with dead executives, nureyev and juno can either

go to the escape pods, (one person per pod, unfortunately)

reunite the ruby 7 with the other half of the ruby 7 and use it (the ruby will probably still be weak at this point, so maybe no

they can go to another planet, maybe io, or even mars and begin the process of healing. all of this could happen in ‘the thief’s honor pt.2’, leaving the last two juno steel episodes to basically be tagged hurt/comfort and/or a time-skip wedding/domestic fluff.

i swear to god penumbra podcast i will write your scripts

[haveyouheardthispodcast]

400* Completed Polls!

I have noticed that we get tags from people shocked that so few people have heard of specific podcasts, and overwhelmingly these tags are left on polls that have a much higher heard-of-rate than normal.

So here's some stats about what has been "normal":

The mean "Haven't heard of this podcast" results is 75.1%.

The median is 82.1%.

(The mode is 91.1%, but this type of stat isn't particularly relevant for this data. It represents 5 datapoints.)

According to Microsoft Excel, if more than 69%** of our voting base has heard of a podcast, then it is an outlier.

The first quartile (which means 25% of the polls are under this number, and 75% are over this number) for "Haven't heard of this podcast" is 67.0%. The third quartile is 91.0%.

Only 54 podcasts have been recognized by half or more of our voters. Below the cut are the 30 podcasts that have been recognized by 60% or more of our voters.

There is a loose correlation (r²=0.427) between the number of votes a poll receives and the proportion of people who have heard of it. This correlation could be messed up with outliers — that is the polls about podcasts that leave our normal audience are often ones that are very well known on Tumblr. Unfortunately, Google Sheets does not have an easy way to recognize outliers, like Microsoft Excel does. Additionally, what is considered an outlier for how many votes a poll seems to change with how many polls we posted that day.

So frankly I do not know how do control for these outliers to give a more accurate r².

If you want to see the other stats I've compiled, a copy of the Google Spreadsheet is here.

Without further ado, the thirty podcasts that at least 60% of our voters have heard of:

The Magnus Archives

Welcome to Night Vale

Critical Role

The Ben Shapiro Show

My Brother, My Brother, and Me

Dungeons and Daddies

Alice Isn't Dead

The Penumbra Podcast

Wolf 359

I Am In Eskew

Friends at the Table

Malevolent

Not Another D&D Podcast

The Silt Verses

The Bright Sessions

Sawbones

Within the Wires

The Daily

Dateline

Wooden Overcoats

The Last Podcast on the Left

You're Wrong About

Hello From The Hallowoods

Where Do We Begin

Hello from the Magic Tavern

Stellar Firma

My Favorite Murder

SCP Archives

The Orbiting Human Circus

The White Vault

*Not counting the accidental 24 hour poll that is currently being rerun (although those stats are included in our averages, it lowered the minimum votes from 168 to 135 and is an outlier that should not have been counted for some stats but I want to keep it for other stats, so it's still in the data).

**Technically 68.8%, but a) 69% is a funnier number, and b) most of our polls get between 200 and 400 votes, so Tumblr's rounding to the first decimal is already too precise to be frankly accurate.

***This chart is not actually by how many posts were made that day, but by the date ranges surrounding the queue rates. The 24-hour poll has been removed from this data.

[qpr-competition]

alright, so i dont have the energy to make Information Posts for every contestant right now (i will try to draft several but its gonna take a while), but i do want to give you the list

in alphabetical order (including the "the"s) of the media theyre from:

Phoenix Wright and Maya Fey

Hideki Hinata and Yui from Angel Beats

Achilles and Patroclus from Aristos the Musical (i have been asked to emphasize that this is specifically the musical portrayal)

Chalco Yong and Ikora Rey from Destiny 2

Senku Ishigami and Gen Asagiri from Dr Stone

Hawke and Varric from Dragon Age

Edgin Darvis and Holga Kilgore from Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

Joan Watson and Sherlock Holmes from Elementary

Peri Dubois and Abel Moreau from Entropic Float

Zagreus and Dusa from Hades

Polly and Yaretzi from Hello From The Hallowoods

Nepeta Leijon and Equius Zahhak from Homestuck

Serene-Heart-In-The-Chaos-Of-Battle and Luke Sunborn from In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan

Jay Ferin, Gillion Tidestrider, and Chip from Just Roll With It

Sakuko Kodama and Satoru Takahashi from Koisenu Futari

John Doe and Arthur Lester from Malevolent

Venus McFlytrap, Rochelle Goyle, and Robecca Steam from Monster High (the ghoulfriends book series)

Criss and Cross from Roleslaying With Roman

Anzu, Kazuki, and Junta from Romantic Killer

Zolf Smith and Oscar Wilde from Rusty Quill Gaming

Jas Emari and Sinjir Rath Velus from Star Wars Aftermath Trilogy

Blind and Sphynx from The Gray House

Camilla Hect and Palamedes Sextus from The Locked Tomb

Tim Stoker and Sasha James from The Magnus Archives

Jet Siquiliak and Buddy Aurinko from The Penumbra Podcast - Juno Steel

Moraine Damordred and Lan Mandragoran from The Wheel Of Time

Chongi-Re, Numeri, and Butler from Tropical Rouge Pretty Cure

Chance and Shadow from Woe.begone

Alana Maxwell and Daniel Jacobi from Wolf 359

Joe and Sasha from Wonderlab

Dairine Callahan and Roshaun ke Nelaied from Young Wizards book series

Joe Tazuna and Sara Chidouin from Your Turn To Die

i dont have any dates for you regarding either the introduction posts or the polling starts; i hope to be able to do the latter within the next week, but unfortunately for all of us i have adhd

[damienthepious]

did you know that it's a full moon tonight? because that fact has shaped ALL my writing progress today.

i fucking hate this new editor by the way. i can BARELY fucking post fic at all anymore and it's fucking banishing me to the phantom zone. go read my fic on ao3 instead im begging you.

raised by wolves

[ao3]

Fandom: The Penumbra Podcast

Relationships: Lord Arum/Sir Damien/Rilla

Characters: Rilla, Sir Damien, Lord Arum, The Keep

Additional Tags: Second Citadel, Lizard Kissin' Tuesday, Established Relationship, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Werewolf!Rilla specifically, Secrets, (look i think rilla deserves to have some angsst explored for once), (uhhhh god there have GOT to be more tags uhh. i don't know i'll add more later), (In later chapters there will be), Implied/Referenced Harm to Children, Implied/Referenced Violence, Mild Injury

Summary: Rilla is keeping secrets.

Notes: This didn't exist this morning and now i've got a new fucking multichapter to worry about jesus fuck. hopefully (LMAO) this one won't actually be that long? if it goes according to.. plan???? yeah. right. fine. okayfine.

~

Rilla has always liked straight lines. Consistent rules. Categories, into which data points will neatly fall.

This might, possibly, have something to do with all the categories she falls between the cracks of, herself. Or maybe she was always going to be like this. Who knows? She doesn't exactly have a control group to check with. Life doesn't work like that; neat and tidy like her experiments. Life is messy. Her life, in particular, is messy. But, hey, at least it's messy mostly on a predictable cycle. Mostly.

Rilla packs her usual bag, false bottom carefully in place with her new tinctures alongside the old standbys. She pulls her hair out of her face and into a braid, and picks her way down to the greenhouse to say her goodbyes.

A newer wrinkle in the routine: saying her see-you-in-a-couple-days, I-promise-I'll-be-safe, try-to-remember-that-I-love-yous in the Keep, now, and not in her own hut. Saying them to Arum, too.

Arum hasn't questioned her absences, yet, because she goes off on her own all the time anyway, and because he never really seems to question her about leaving the Keep. She can tell that he doesn't want to remind her of being kept here, and... that isn't necessary, really, but it's sweet, in a way.

He and Damien can keep each other company while she's gone, too. Which is nice. Damien doesn't have to be quite so lonely when she's gone, anymore (and Arum doesn't have to be lonely at all, if she can help it).

She kisses Damien deep, distracted by the way his skin smells, this close to the moon, and when she pulls back Arum nuzzles his snout into her neck in a way that makes her want to growl, though she manages to suppress the urge into just a shudder as she wraps an arm around him and squeezes. No time for fun, just now, unfortunately. She kisses Arum's cheek, light and sweet to make him scowl, and then she peels herself away with a casual wave.

The Keep's portal drops her in the front room of her hut, receding back into the wide planter to the left of the hearth with a gentle farewell warble from the Keep (or at least... what she assumes is a gentle farewell warble), and Rilla grabs another one or two things to stuff into her pack before she steps out of the hut, locks up, and marches into the jungle.

Damien thinks that her monthly disappearances have to do with harvesting rare medicinal plants with very particular blooming cycles, which is... partly true. There are flowers and herbs to be harvested during the day, when she can. She doesn't like being less than honest with Damien, but she's been less than honest with every single person she's ever known since her parents were Exiled. And- it's a medical condition. Sort of. She's allowed to keep a medical condition private if she wants to.

Arum...

Arum complicates things. He's good at that.

Arum complicates her excuses for not telling Damien, specifically. Because if Damien can, in fact, put aside his animosities and find room in his heart for a monster...

(Maybe she could have told him ages ago.)

(Or maybe not. Maybe it would have been too much, before. Maybe he would have been terrified. Maybe he would have felt betrayed. Maybe he would have told the Crown. Maybe he would have-)

No one knows about the second hut, the same way no one knows about her condition. Though... "hut" is generous. Her home is a hut, cozy and carefully cluttered and warm and welcoming. This building is more of a shack, really. It's a fair hike from the hut, but she can get there before dusk with time to spare, which is pretty much the point. Technically speaking, she could just overnight here and then come back home during the day, if she really pushed it, but that would be a lot harder to explain than just saying that she needs to travel to a distant grove for botanical purposes.

It looks abandoned and ramshackle, but the door and the lock are sturdy, and Rilla has the key.

Sturdy, reinforced walls, a wooden locking bar to make certain that nothing gets in and out, no windows. Bare floors, excepting a chair and a desk in one corner for a little bit of reading or writing during the day, and a chest to keep her things in. Mostly open space, where Rilla spreads out the blankets she brought, right in front of the metal hoops for the chains.

She cut her timing a little close today, mostly because she wanted to actually enjoy her morning with Damien and Arum. She sighs, stretches, and unpacks her extra clothes into the chest so she can get to the false bottom of her pack and pull out her medicine.

First night. She'll go with her standby tincture, this time. She has a new experimental blend she wants to try, but she'd rather save it for tomorrow, the full moon, and see how it affects her on the day that hits her with the most severe symptoms. This one, she at least knows that it'll keep her mostly placid.

She sighs, uncorks the vial and slams it back like a shot, wrinkling her nose at the taste.

The medicine makes her memory a bit... muddy? But even before she developed this particular treatment regimen, she couldn't remember much about what happened, what she would do on the nights immediately surrounding the full moon.

She does know that she hates it here. Hates the chains, hates the wood against her claws, hates the drowsiness from the medicine. Hates being alone.

She packs her kit back up. She undresses to her underclothes, then stows her dress and shoes and the tinctures into the chest before she closes it with a click.

She goes to sit on the blankets on the floor, then, fixing the harness around her neck and chest and adjusting it to the marked positions. Rilla has been alone in one way or another since her parents left, she reminds herself as she settles in to wait, her skin already prickling and her eyes adjusting far too quickly to the dark.

The wolf will just have to cope.

[just-a-multi-fandom-mess]

intro post!!

i've been on tumblr forever idk how i've never done one of these lol

name(s): jam, janus, or january, i don't really care which pronouns: they/them, dæ/dæm, it/its, he/him sometimes ig labels: nonbinary, polyromantic, demi/grey asexual, polyamorous (there's a whole bunch of neogenders too but i can't be arsed putting those here)

i mostly reblog other people's stuff, but when i do post something original it'll probably be fanfic or fanart this is definitely not just because i'm not funny enough to make proper tumblr posts, nope definitely not

other socials: ao3: just_a_multi_fandom_mess pinterest: jam.fm spotify: ✨jam✨ discord: dm if we're mutuals and you want it

list of fandoms i'm in under the cut (there's a lot lol)

all (well, most) fandoms in alphabetical order: - ace attorney - the addams family - amphibia - buffy the vampire slayer - dead end: paranormal park - deadpool - don't hug me i'm scared - ethics town (my beloved <3) - good omens - gravity falls (very obsessed with billford atm) - heathers - his dark materials - house md - the hunger games - inside job - the magnus archives/the magnus protocol - malevolent - the mechanisms - miraculous: ladybug - our flag means death - the owl house - the penumbra podcast (mostly junoverse but some citadel) - the princess bride - riordanverse - a series of unfortunate events - she-ra and the princesses of power - spiderman - the stanley parable - stardew valley - warrior cats - welcome to night vale - wings of fire

[butchaurinko]

earlier i was thinkin about the significance of the names that peter picks for his false identities (rex, shah duke - ESSENTIALLY they all mean a man that’s in a position of power, correct me if im wrong) but then I became curious about his actual name. peter. a v plain name. but it means rock, more specifically meaning a person that’s as tough as a rock! if that ain’t peter!!!

[sky-fire-forever]

The Penumbra Podcast (Junoverse) Playlists

I've been making character and ship playlists for The Penumbra Podcast basically since I first started listening to it. I decided I would share them! Some are longer than others since I just add to them as I hear songs that I feel fit a character. These playlists are made up of music that I listen to. Enjoy!

Character Playlists

I have more, but I have reached the limit on a post, unfortunately. I also have playlists for M'tendere, Sarah Steel, Benzaiten Steel, Alessandra Strong, and Mag. And for ship playlists I have Jupeter, Vesbud, and Benmick. I also have an Oldtown Trio and an Aurinko Crime Family playlist.

[caedogeist-rights]

Podcasts ranked by the amount of kissing/gross sounds in it (and also how romance-repulsed/aromantic-friendly it is), by me, your neighborhood aro and hater of Body Sounds. Spoilers ahead for every single podcast listed!

(also, this got long, so uh. see under the break for the full list.)

1. Time:Bombs: The Perfect Podcast, not a gross foley, kiss, or romance-heavy plot in sight. I’ve got nothing bad to say about it, im sorry. It’s perfect.

2. Northwest Footwear Database: It is beauty, it is grace, it has got no Weird Sounds (unless you count a banging song and in-depth discussions of shoes. which i do not). A weird fiction podcast, so not Perfect in the listening, but... still #2 for a reason.

3. RQG: it is a ttrpg podcast. theres very obviously no kissing foley here. Thank G-d, is all im saying. Also has a QPP with a PC, and i give every budding romance an aro thumbs up!

4. Wolf 359: I don’t remember any terrible sounds, there’s no explicit romance- overall, a Good One! 1/2 a point taken off for the mental image of freezer-burned doug.

5. Kaleidotrope: oh, if there ever was a good podcast! This podcast is also kinda obsessed with love, which is nice, but focuses on romantic love for 90% of it, which is less so. Oh kaleidotrope... you need some aros.

6. TSCOSI: I adore this podcast! this is a wonderful podcast with wonderful characters, and I enjoy the ace rep! However, the torture scene in the s1 finale was... less enjoyable. 1 minute of Terrible, but it counts. (we have entered one-strike-territory)

7. The College Tapes: I am filled with adoration, but also, the book and cult chanting is creepy and unnerving. Also, the sheer volume of romantic pining was... overwhelming. Didn’t hate it, but not The Aro Friendly Podcast of my dreams.

8. Mabel: I do not remember much of this podcast, except I enjoyed it and there was some foley that was uncomfortable. Overall, not bad, but... a romance-focused plot, no matter how much I love it, with uh. Weird Sounds.

9. Archive 81: behold, my favorite podcast! Why, you may ask- oh, it simply is the Weird Shit Aro Haven of my dreams! Not a kiss or romantic plot to be found (some of yall ship chris and lee, and i support you, but i never interpreted them as romantic, so It Doesn’t Count on this list). However. the heart-eating scene. the s2 surgery scene. the concept of half the characters? the definition of body horror. Gross! (we have entered into the couple-strikes territory)

10. Stellar Firma: much like a81, perfect except for just one thing, and in this case, its the foot kink shit. Please listen to stellar firma, but also. Hartro’s Foot Kink. I give it my aro sign of approval, though! (I have also only listened up to s2 finale, so uh. idk after that).

11. The Bright Sessions: there are xactly two reasons why this podcast is rated so low on this list. One, there’s quite a bit of romance in this podcast. I’m not against 80% of it, but like... Romance Exists. Two, Safehouse! I do not want or need to hear a man beaten half to death, no matter how much I hate him!

12. TMA: but, you might ask, why is TMA so low? It’s got not a kiss in sight, an a canon ace! Yes, I say, that all is true. It’s why TMA is in its special little category: As An Aro I’m Fine But What The Fuck Bro. An ace main character cannot erase the experience of listening to jon’s hand be burned while I was on a public bus, my Actual Physical Repulsion to michael’s voice, and also all the gore. It’s Gross, Bro! Edit for post e200: yeah.... i must admit the kiss was gross and the sound design really only got more disturbing, so its staying at #12, but... keep in mind that this podcast is simply quite terrible on the ears.

13. Junoverse (Penumbra Podcast): Didn’t mean to make these three popular podcasts the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th worst ones, but what can i say! these fuckers have foley. Junoverse is one of two podcasts in the special category Make Room For Jesus, and juno gets here primarily because of the downright ridiculous amount of making out in it, plus a Giant Subplot being romantic, and also the multiple scenes of torture/a character getting Hurt, Badly. However, not the worst, since while kissing is gross, I can deal. Torture/death/screaming/gore, however...

14. The AM Archives (including Order&Chaos): behold, the pride of the Make Room For Jesus category. I love this podcast/s more than life itself, but I also used transcripts for most of it, so I was able to actually get through it. But from what i could get from transcripts/listening to the finale/asking fellow listeners, its... well, #14 for a reason. And what I can say: this podcast has everything! Burgeoning romance thats, ngl, kinda uncomfortable to listen to! A Kiss (thank you, Order&Chaos, for giving me lovely poly content, but... Kiss Gross)! Copious amounts of screaming and torture! Emotional distress of many varieties (mine included)! Extended Death Scene! I’m sorry, i feel like doing tama a disservice by ranking it last, but unfortunately... it ain’t easy on the ears, and I’m incredibly glad I avoided a lot of it! (...i still did listen to owen’s death, tho. which. aaagh i’ll never be over that one, huh). I love you, TAMA and O&C, but you are hard as hell to listen to.

ty for reading to the end! please, i take aro-friendly podcast suggestions! again, this is based on memory and memory alone (tama excluded), so uh... whoops! if i forgot something important

[damienthepious]

ahhh dunk here we go again, ,,,,, poor lizard hours,,,, payyy attention to the tags/notes for cws

The Beast In On His Chain (chapter 2)

[ch 1] [ao3] [ch 3] [???]

Fandom: The Penumbra Podcast

Relationship: Lord Arum/Sir Damien, Sir Damien/Rilla, Lord Arum/Sir Damien/Rilla

Characters: Sir Damien, Lord Arum, Rilla, Sir Absolon

Additional Tags: Second Citadel, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, prisoner/guard dynamic, Dehumanization, (which feels like a weird word to use for a nonhuman person bUT. it’s what i got.), Despair, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, (EVENTUALLY!!!! it’ll take a while), Captivity, Suicidal Thoughts, (that will be a theme throughout. inescapable in this particular fic. alas.), Eventual Romance, (Yes the dynamics in this one are fucked. honestly i’m kinda Stretching my limits these days.), (having fun with it. fucking around. it’s fine.), Recovery, (eventually), Self-Reclamation

Chapter Summary: Damien learns more about one of the trophies he is assigned to guard.

Chapter Notes: mmmm continuing warnings for captivity, dehumanization, basically kinda torture, malnutrition, isolation, nightmares, inaccurate pronoun use unrelated to gender, canon-typical and canon-extrapolated monster treatment. let me know if i missed anything PLEASE. I'm awful at suspense so i'll say up front (if the angst-w/happy-ending tag didn't give it away) that this will become a recovery story, eventually, and i am pretty goddamn eager to get there. Also, side note, Damien's inaccurate-pronoun-use should NOT be read in any way as my own position on folks using it/its pronouns. Y'all kick ass. Damien himself just doesn't have a context for it/its besides the inanimate and the inhuman, unfortunately. He hasn't met the Keep yet, lol

~

The boredom is an issue, about as soon as Sir Damien expects.

Marching in the same exact circle, surrounded by the same exact trophies, hours and hours in the gloom by torchlight...

Damien thinks of Sir Angelo riding off north, valiant and grinning and promising gleefully to break their tie while he travels, laughing off Damien's somewhat blustering protests to the contrary.

The twin-faced head by the swamp lord's plinth whispers if it cannot prove itself, what is it even good for? and Damien pretends not to flinch.

The swamp lord himself seems to be sleeping again. Sleeping most of the time, in fact, so far as Damien can tell. He would wonder if the creature is simply nocturnal (Damien has not yet been assigned any overnight shifts), but- how would the thing even tell when it was night, down here? Not a flicker of sunlight pierces this deep. There aren't any timepieces, either. Damien himself loses track- the next shift arriving at their posts is the only way Damien knows that enough time has passed to end his own shift.

"Who feeds that creature?" Damien asks the knights at the entryway, curiosity taking command of his tongue. "The swamp lord, I mean."

The pair of them meet eyes, and then one of them shrugs. "No one does."

At the obvious confusion on Damien's face, the other wrinkles his nose. "It's a familiar, Sir Damien," he explains. "The familiar of the swamp. It's made of magic. It could eat, it can, but it doesn't need food or drink to survive. Not really."

So. Why would they bother? It makes... enough sense, an efficiency that Damien acknowledges, though the idea of it- it is difficult not to think it as starving a prisoner, even if that isn't the case in truth.

The question floats through his mind, later that night as he rolls over on his cot in the barracks, and Damien stares hard at the stone wall beside his bed for at least a quarter hour as he tries to make the question go away.

How, exactly, the did lizard's captors first discover what he did and did not need, to survive?

~

He brings his poetry drafts with him for his next few shifts. His notes are bound only loosely, easy to rearrange when he makes connections between two pieces, or when he needs to add more sheets as one of his ideas expands, or if he wishes to look at two budding poems side-by-side.

Obviously he can't walk around his patrol effectively with his notes and a quill and an inkwell - for a moment he envies the swamp lord's extra limbs - so he borrows one of Rilla's clever, narrow, wrapped charcoals. They're better for sketching than for script, but Damien has gotten used to the way they write by now and he doesn't particularly mind the thickness of the lines. Rilla even seems pleased that he isn't complaining quite so much about the inertia of the assignment, so long as he can stretch his mind with other tasks.

He finds himself speaking aloud as he composes, after a little while. It is an old habit, and besides- the creaky, chittery noises of the room are somewhat distracting, and he finds that if he keeps his focus more firmly on the poetry, the twin-faced head in particular is far less likely to try to get under his skin.

At times the poetry shifts, dissolves somewhat, and Damien realizes belatedly that he has fallen into prayer rather than poetics. The line between the two is rather thin, on occasion. A decent number of his poems come in the form of entreaties to his saint, anyway.

Perhaps he requires the prayers, here. This place seems to unsettle his Tranquility. It turns his stomach, if he thinks about his surroundings too deeply. He almost wishes that he requested the dungeons, instead. Speaking to Saint Damien helps, as it always does, although-

The feeling, the sensation of his saint within his chest, that slow pulsing wave of cool affection and protection- it feels strange here, as well. Less certain. Damien suspects that it is the melange of fragmented magic that surrounds him, causing the disruption, but he is unsure. He prays all the more fervently in response.

He does not notice the attention of one of the trophies upon him as he speaks, not until he hears the creature growling in its corner again on the fourth day after he began bringing his drafts along.

Damien blinks as the words die on his tongue, his gaze fixing on the incongruous vivid purple glaring out from the storm-gray monster crouching on his little platform.

His first instinct, oddly, is to feel embarrassed. Which is foolish in the extreme. He clutches his papers close against his stomach, careful not to drag the charcoal over the page as he does, and the monster growls all the louder as Damien meets its eyes.

The creature bares its teeth, when it sees that it has his attention, and then it rolls itself slowly to stand, taller than Damien expected even with his horns shorn down, the entire weight of its body pressed against the chain at its neck and the ones on its wrists. It uses its own weight to help keep it upright, Damien realizes, hanging forward against the chains pulling it back.

And then it- it opens its mouth, and coughs harshly, and then-

He speaks.

"Do you," the monster grates, face screwed up with effort, a hand curling against his collar, "ever... shut... up?"

Damien- Damien stares, lifting one hand to cover his mouth and watching the creature glare at him, panting with a vicious sort of effort.

"You..." Damien swallows. "You can speak," he says, the emptiness of his tone turning the question into a statement, and the monster bares his teeth again, snapping them together and growling as he turns his head away. "This whole time? You could speak this whole time, you could understand me, and-"

"Is this the newest torture your queen has devised?" he snarls, and then he whines, closing his eyes and digging his claws into the collar again, tugging uselessly at the metal as if trying to pull it away from the scales of his neck. "Deprived- deprived even of- of silence, deprived of my own thoughts, tormented by your- your relentless chattering for days on end-"

The creature's voice gives out, his throat moving for another moment as he cringes, stuttering into a painful sounding round of coughs.

"Oh Saints," Damien hears himself say, faintly. Too startled for any proper response, yes, but also-

Deprived of-

Silence, freedom. Food. Water. Deprived, apparently, of his own voice. Deprived of words, and Damien can tell from the coughing and the choking, forced tone in his voice. He can tell, from the way Damien can feel a pulse of strange energy from the monster's heavy collar with every word, and from the way the monster seems to respond to that energy with visible pain.

"I have endured much," the monster spits, his body swinging fractionally forward as his expression twists in fury, the collar at the taut end of its chains pressing deeper indentations into the scales of the monster's throat. "I will endure- endure more, certainly. But if you c-cannot find a way to hold your tongue, then I will find a way to pluck it from your head."

Damien only stares, too stunned to truly comprehend what is being said to him for a long moment, and then-

The absurdity of this creature, cowed and collared, attempting to threaten him- it strikes him as strangely humorous, suddenly and perhaps somewhat grimly. He feels his face twitch, a half-breath of almost-laughter slipping from his lips, and the monster only contorts the expression on his snouted face even further, looking more alive than he has for the entirety of Damien's post here.

"I... will... kill you, little knight," the monster says, visibly struggling to force out the words, his vivid violet eyes locked on Damien's with obvious hatred. "Someday the cage will crack, someday the guard will be sloppy, someday I will again curl my tongue around a shred of magic and then-"

The monster spasms, the collar apparently paying him back for speaking so long against it, and the creature collapses back onto his little plinth with a pained exhale, and Damien-

Damien holds his breath for a moment, shocked by the sharp, strings-cut drop of the creature. He can't help the way his eyes widen in alarm, uncertain whether or not the monster has just injured himself on Damien's watch or- or worse, perhaps, but- no. No, he seems to be- he's still breathing, at least, and there doesn't seem to be any blood around the collar, at least, so.

Not that Damien is- concerned, exactly, but- he is meant to guard these... trophies. That certainly includes keeping them from harm- from damage, at the very least.

(and he knows, of course, that this beast in particular must not be allowed to die)

"You'll forgive me," Damien says slowly, eventually, his tone blank and oddly dry, "if I am not quite terrified of such threats from a creature in your position."

The monster sort of... curls in on himself, two arms around his head and two clutching at his stomach, his tail wrapping up into an almost catlike circle, hissing ineffectually through his teeth, but he does not try to speak again.

"Though..." Damien pauses, paces a few steps, and watches the poison-bright gleam of one of the monster's eyes follow him as he goes, glaring out from between his arms. "I certainly will know to mind my tongue a bit better, here, in the future. For my own sake, you understand, and not yours. Of course, I should not care if you find my prattling an annoyance. You are a prisoner, after all."

The creature glares at him, and even with his face still mostly hidden behind his arms, there is enough venom in his eyes that Damien has to force himself not to take a step back in response. He still remains silent, though. Aside from the pained panting.

No reason whatsoever to feel threatened, Damien muses. Despite the overt threats.

Damien opens his mouth, as if to say-

He does not know.

It seems pointless at best to mock the creature, needlessly cruel at worst. What good would it do? He presses his lips closed after a moment, then reshuffles the pages of his drafts in his hands. He pulls his gaze away from the monster, and he continues his patrol.

~

In silence, this time.Damien dreams the weight of cold iron around his own throat. Dreams a prayer trapped in his lungs, begging for deliverance, begging for voice and sky and any gentle touch. Cold fire curls beneath his jaw, scorching away his words before they can bloom from his lips, the pain sharp enough to pull tears from his eyes, streaming hot down his cheeks.

Across the room, lazing on an identical plinth, the monster watches him wail soundlessly, his violet eyes the only points of color in their grey prison, his own chains slack with hopelessness.

Another knight shoves Damien awake to stop him screaming. Damien can hardly hear the rest of the grumbling complaints from the other cots over the furious thudding of his heart. His throat hurts, ragged as if he were swallowing thorns.

His pillow is wet with tears as he tries to find sleep again. When he closes his eyes, he sees the monster staring back.

[theradioghost]

Can you talk more about the history of the language and storytelling techniques/conventions of audio dramas? That's an incredibly intriguing concept but I wouldn't have the first idea where to look for more info about it. It reminds me a lot of the idea of video game literacy and how a lot of games aren't accessible to people who are brand new to video games because there are so many established conventions that aren't explained to new players

It has taken me nearly a month to reply to this, which I know is in reply to this post, and I am sorry for that! But also, yes!!!!! Hell yes, yes, I see exactly what you mean about the video game stuff.

Unfortunately I think there’s not much out there already written about the developing conventions of the new wave of audio drama. In large part, I think, because coverage of new audio fiction from outside the community has been so notoriously poor. But maybe also partly because there seems to be a strangely negative take on classic radio drama from a lot of the US sector within that community? Which I think really comes down to exactly the things I was talking about -- Old radio drama feels wrong to a lot of people now, because its storytelling language just doesn’t exist in our culture the way it once did; and even fewer people are familiar with late-20th-century American audio fiction like ZBS that might feel more comfortable or closer to other present-day mass media storytelling techniques. I see it claimed sometimes that there’s something inherently unsophisticated about old time radio storytelling, which is just flat out untrue, and I would highly encourage anyone who’s wondering to check out something like the “Home Surgery” episode of Gunsmoke or “The Thing on the Fourble Board” from Quiet, Please to see just how effective and well-done a lot of those old shows were.

(Leaving the UK out of this, because audio fiction stayed way more prominent there and I do not think the same problems exist, and leaving everywhere else out because unfortunately I just don’t know enough about how the medium fared elsewhere, or how it’s doing now. Alas.)

I’ve been thinking lately about parallels to this in other media that I have been able to study and read other people’s writing on, and I think a good comparison is possibly novels? The western ��novel” as we think of it is really something that didn’t exist at all until about the 18th century (there are earlier works that have been kind of retroactively labeled ‘novels,’ some of them centuries earlier, but even if they have the characteristics of what we now call a novel, they’re very much disconnected from the evolution of the novel as something we have a name and a definition for). There are no novels from the medieval period, from the Renaissance. There are books as long as novels, but they’re not novels.

The thing is, when you read 18th and even 19th century novels, it shows, because the techniques for telling a story in that form hadn’t been really figured out yet. What you get is a lot of meandering, episodic doorstoppers, some of which have hundreds of pages before the main characters even enter the picture. A lot of writers at the time, and into the 19th century, actually hated the whole concept of novels. I think it’s a bit like going back and watching Monsters, Inc. and then watching Monsters University. The first one was revolutionary, yeah, and it’s a good movie still, but it’s not hard to see the visual difference between the two just in terms of the tools that the people making them had available to them. Before you can write a story or animate hundreds of thousands of individual hairs on one character, you have to figure out how.

One of the big, obvious things about novels from that period, though, is that many of them are first-person, and many are epistolary. It’s hard to find one that isn’t supposedly a memoir or a journal or a set of letters. The third-person perspective in long-form prose was something that had to be figured out; it didn’t just exist in the void, automatically summoned into existence the moment we started writing novels, which I think is really fascinating. There’s a lot of work in those early novels that’s being put into explaining why, and how, and to whom the story is being told. Because otherwise, how does it make sense that the book exists? It’s not a poem, or a play; it’s not taking the form of a traditional story or myth, not attempting to be an epic. Those early novels were about contemporary, real-seeming people, so the writers and audiences wanted an explanation for how the story had been recorded that relied on other existing forms of writing -- letters, journals, memoirs, sometimes claiming to be older texts that had been “found” (gothic novelists seemed to like this one). Sometimes the narrative voice is just the author using first person to actively tell you the story. They hadn’t yet bought into the presumption that we take for granted now, that a novel can have a voice that knows everything, without being the voice of any character in it.

And I think that it’s fascinating how similar that is to the heavy use of recording media as frame narrative in modern audio drama. It’s worth noting: classic radio drama doesn’t do this like we do now. By far, the standard for OTR is the same as the third-person omniscient perspective, the film camera; the storytelling presumes that you’re not going to need an explanation for how you’re hearing this. The audiences those shows were made for were used to fiction told solely in audio, in a way that a lot of modern audiences are not, and so that narrative leap of faith was kind of inherently presumed.

There’s also a way more common use of omniscient or internal narration in old radio drama that I feel like I mostly see now only in shows that are deliberately calling back to old styles and genres. A good example is The Penumbra; we hear Juno’s internal thoughts, just like so many of the noir-style detectives from the 40s and 50s I grew up listening to, and we never really ask why or how. (Except, of course, when the show pokes fun at this affectation, which I think really only works because it feels more like lampshading the stock character tropes of noir, as opposed to the actual audio storytelling technique it facilitates.) To take it further, there are some old radio shows like the sitcom Our Miss Brooks which go so far as to use an actual omniscient narrator to facilitate a lot of the scene transitions, but do so in a much more confident and comfortable way than modern shows like Bubble, where the narration reeks of “we’re making this audio drama in the hopes we can finally make the TV show, and we actually hate this medium and don’t know how to work in it, so rather than learning how to make what’s happening clear with just audio, we’re going to tell you what’s happening and then reference that we’re just telling you what’s happening.”

Bubble’s narration doesn’t work, because it’s actively pushing against the show, telling you things that sound design could have told you just as easily, sometimes actively acknowledging that the narration feels wrong instead of just not using narration. Our Miss Brooks is admittedly not one of my favorite old radio shows, but its use of narration is much smoother, because it’s written with a confidence that it’s only being used to clarify the the things that would be the absolute hardest to show with audio alone; confidence that they know how to tell everything else with sound. Internal narration from the likes of Juno Steel or Jack St. James or my favorite classic detective Johnny Dollar works because noir as a genre is inherently tied to the expressionist movement, where the (highly idiosyncratic) personality and worldview of the characters literally shapes how the world around them appears to the audience; it works to hear their thoughts, because we’re seeing the world through their eyes. We don’t have to know how they’re saying this to us, they just are.

None of which is at all to say that there’s anything inherently wrong with using framing devices! Actually the opposite, kind of. First of all, because I genuinely do think that it’s a sign that we are actively, at this moment learning how to tell these stories, and how to listen to them, which is just so, so exciting I don’t even have words to express it. And secondly, because as a person who loves thinking about stories and storytelling enough to write this kind of ridiculous essay, I am obsessed with metafiction. I’m a sucker for the likes of Archive 81, The Magnus Archives, Welcome to Night Vale, Station to Station, Greater Boston, Within the Wires. They’re stories that take the questions that framing devices are used to answer for writers and audiences who don’t feel comfortable not asking them -- Why is this story being told? Who is telling it? Who is it being told to? -- and use those questions to the full advantage of the story, exploring character, creating beautifully effective horror, creating a bond with the listener. (Hell, one of the admittedly many things that Midnight Radio was about for me was exploring how much value and comfort I have found in listening to stories that acknowledged I was listening to them.) I think, though, that not all stories necessarily are their best selves when they feel like they have to address those questions, and as fiction podcasts become a bit more mainstream I’m really hoping that writers will feel more comfortable in trusting the audience to suspend that disbelief, and that audiences will feel more comfortable doing it, and that framing devices will be less unjustly maligned.

Of course, all of that is focused on writing techniques, and I think that’s because I’m a writer who has studied writing! I know very little concretely about the part of audio storytelling that relies on sound design, so while I have a definite feeling that classic and modern audio fiction is using different sound design languages, or that the audio language of British audio drama (where there’s much more continuity in the history of the medium) is different from audio fiction from elsewhere, that’s a lot harder for me to put into words like this. It’s something I would desperately love to see explored by someone who did know that field intimately, though.

[gh0st-tits]

this is a sample post bc I have no idea what is going on this website. unfortunately i was super active on here back in 2012-ish and uh...wtf. 

ive been known to be horny on main so listen

the magnus archives

penumbra podcast

critical role

the adventure zone

palimpsest

PODCASTS

[pencilwritesshiz47]

Fandoms

Quick disclaimer: Some of these I’m really into and could go into rants about them, others I am only a bit into and just like a few fanart posts here and there. But my level of interest can often change, so don’t ever be afraid to send me an ask regarding ships or characters or anything! please i really love talking to y’all you have no idea. Also, if you have recs? Give.

Books

Harry Potter (screw JKR)

Heros of Olympus

Keepers of the Lost Cities

Little Women

Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard

Percy Jackson

Red, White, and Royal Blue

Scythe

A Series of Unfortunate Events

Shows/Movies

Adventure Time

Avatar: The Last Airbender

BBC Merlin

BBC Sherlock

Carmen Sandiego

Doctor Who

Good Omens

Gravity Falls

Marvel (entire franchise)

Sanders Sides

A Series of Unfortunate Events

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

Star Wars (entire franchise)

Star vs the Forces of Evil

Steven Universe

The Good Place

The Legend of Korra

The Owl House

Podcasts

Alice isn’t Dead

Ars Paradoxica

Death By Dying

Gay Future

Hello from the Hallowoods

Micro-Cosmos  

Welcome To Night Vale

Wolf 359

Stellar Firma

The Magnus Archives

The Orbiting Human Circus of the Air

The Penumbra Podcast

The Two Princes

Unseen

Zero Hours

[chadlesbianjasontodd]

I saw your posts about the Penumbra podcast and thought to give it a try on my lunch break from studying and now it’s 7 pm and I just finished episode 10 oops.

that is an experience i am (fortunately? unfortunately?) very familiar with. my congratulations and condolences!

[prydon]

I just wanted to let you know that you're responsible for getting me into Penumbra, and The Magnus Archives, and Night Vale, so thanks for that. Also, since you're clearly a person of incredible taste, do you have any other podcast reccomendations?

yoooo, really??? i saw and appreciated your notes on my podcast posts but i didn’t realize i was the one who got you into them!!! that’s wonderful omg <3 i love them a lot so it makes me more than happy to share the love!!

unfortunately i’m not actually as much of A Podcast Person as i may seem- those three are some of the only narrative podcasts i’ve listened to. i listened to tma and tpp one right after the other and while i intend to listen to some of the other popular ones i’ve seen around, i haven’t started them yet bc i’m still processing all my Big Feelings about tma and tpp haha.

that being said as soon as i AM able to process those feelings enough to listen to some more, you’ll know, bc i’m sure i’ll start reblogging a ton of content from the ones of them i end up liking too :”D so when that inevitably happens, consider it a recommendation!

....oh! here’s one: alice isn’t dead. it’s by one of the night vale writers and is a lovely, spooky, thoughtful little series (only three short seasons, and it’s completed) that i definitely recommend. it’s good stuff.

[radio-star-still-alive]

Full fandom list

Hello! I just made myself this podcast blog, and I thought to list every fandom you might find content for here.

Wolf 359 one of my all time favourites, as you can tell by Lovelace as my icon

The Penumbra Podcast well known around Tumblr and not without reason.

King Falls AM actual definition of problematic fave. I just like the characters!

The Bright Sessions I really like it, but I haven’t listened to the AM Archives, so interacting with fandom is a bit tricky

The Adventure Zone (Balance and Graduation) A bit different than the rest, but so fun!

The Vanishing Act A new podcast, but I really like it (and they post great memes)

Me and AU Fandom! Tumblr! Falling in love with an internet friend! Werewolves! Really, what else could you ask for?

Zero Hours such a good collection of stories

This Planet Needs a Name I love the characters in this so much!

ars PARADOXICA One of the first fiction podcasts I listened to, but unfortunately the fandom seems to be pretty dead by now.

Time:Bombs I cannot believe they created this in just a week, it’s so fun!