Podcast Friday (on Saturday)

[radiantfracture]

I've been exploring fiction podcasts again, and having better luck with them. There are more of them now.

Midst

So this is "an immersive, semi-improvised, sci-fantasy podcast recounted by a trio of playfully omniscient, mysterious, and unreliable narrators. " (Third Person, picked up after production by Critical Role).

I've only listened to the first three episodes, but I found them pretty charming. There's a lot to like here. The dynamic between the three narrators, they way they effortlessly pick up from one another and layer ideas, is really pleasurable. I think there's some truly skillful editing and great sound design focusing that effect, but it means I can enter the world without tripping over any doorsill of awkwardness -- the weird just flows. There's almost none of that improv-cringe vibe where the performers go in on a digressive bit way too hard -- and where they do kind of do that, it's very funny. (Ex. the bit with the ice.)

In the beginning the episodes feel almost standalone, though it sounds like they come together into a narrative later.

The Left Right Game

The blurb: "Tessa Thompson stars as an idealistic young journalist trying to make a name for herself by following a group of paranormal explorers obsessed with a seemingly harmless pastime known as the Left/Right Game. The journey takes her into a supernatural world that she and the other members of the expedition can neither handle nor survive" (QCode).

I liked this. Highly listenable. I worked through all of Season 1 over a few days, and the quality stayed high from start to finish.

The cast is terrific -- not just well-known actors, though many of them are, but well-known actors who can voice act. Tessa Thompson is one protagonist, Alice -- lots of Alices in these stories -- and she's great: compelling, both vulnerable and steely. She's playing a character almost twenty years younger, and she really nails the voice. Ami Ameen gets the frame narrative as Tom, and he plays bewilderment with great nuance. I knew John Billingsley's voice immediately, of course: he doesn't get a lot of airtime, but when you hear his voice you know something otherworldly must be involved. Other highlights: W. Earl Brown doing his best Bobby Singer; Inanna Sarkis and Jojo T. Gibbs as Lilith and Eve; Dayo Okeniyi as Apollo. But there were no vocal rough spots -- well, except one, which I'll get to, but that I think is more a writing/direction issue.

If you've listened to other surreal fiction podcasts you're going to recognize some of the story beats -- Alice isn't Dead would be a reference point, or maybe Rabbits, although I haven't listened to all of that. Maybe Archive 81? I watched that rather than listening to it.Someone goes missing, leaves strange records behind. Internet message boards, weird alternate-reality games.

Seems like a genre, one that I don't know the name of exactly -- portal-disappearance-quest story. Maybe we call them Alice stories? This is a very good version of that.

Because this is good, I thought quite a bit about its narrative choices as they unfolded. A couple of things tripped my own particular -- not do-not-wants, but don't-prefers. These might not bother another listener at all:

• I happen not to like stories where the protagonist is the only one who remembers someone or something that has vanished from the world. I understand why this trope has great horror possibilities! I just don't enjoy it. On the other hand, they used the trope to create a truly beautiful scene about family that I think was the highlight of the series for me. What happens if a person is disappeared from the world and from everyone's memory, but you are their parents and spent your whole lives making sacrifices and choices to nurture that person? And now there's a hole in your life and it makes no sense any more? That was devastating and gorgeous writing. I don't think I've seen anyone else find that possibility in this kind of supernatual editing, to use it to think about actual loss and grief, not just "the protagonist is gaslit by the universe."



• There's one character who is written to be a grating antagonist, but is so one-note and yelly that I skipped over sections of their dialogue because I figured I wouldn't miss anything and they were so irritating to listen to.



• The story-within-a-story shape of this feels a bit convoluted to me, and one side of it was more compelling than the other. But there again, I see the logic of such a choice when you are telling the story of a disappearance -- either you embed that disappearance into a frame story, or you have to make an awkward shift to a new POV when you switch narrators and narratives. On the whole, this is probably the better choice. Are there other options?



• I might need to re-listen to be sure of this, but I felt that the structure didn't come together quite as elegantly as the writing hoped it would at the end. Similarly, I felt like some emotional reactions were underplayed, and some choices felt plot-driven rather than character-driven. But these were mild objections to an absorbing listening experience.

{rf}

Comments

[sabotabby]

The second one sounds really good. I loved Alice Isn't Dead. And while "protagonist has amnesia" is a trope I mostly dislike (unless it's done really well and given narrative weight, like in The Memory Police,), "protagonist is the only one who remembers something" is a trope I find good and intensely relatable.

[radiantfracture]

And while "protagonist has amnesia" is a trope I mostly dislike ..."protagonist is the only one who remembers something" is a trope I find good and intensely relatable

Then I think you'd like this, because they aren't ham-handed with it -- some people are sympathetic and others judgemental, but the characters react like normal people would to you asking about someone they don't remember.

I also loved Alice isn't Dead! Kind of wish I'd gotten the t-shirt. This isn't quite as shaggy-dog-story, which for me is a strength. But there's a very Alice episode I think you'd recognize when you got there.

[radiantfracture]

I'm thinking about amnesia vs. sole memorist, and I think -- I don't love amnesia -- it's so overused -- but I do like the sense of discovery and possibility in that scenario -- the world made new -- whereas in the subtracted-person scenario it's having to contend with an incomprehensible loss that no one recognizes -- which, to be fair, is a lot more like life.

[sovay]

I don't love amnesia -- it's so overused -- but I do like the sense of discovery and possibility in that scenario -- the world made new -

That double-vision quality of amnesia is used very well in Margery Allingham's Traitor's Purse (1941), which on the one hand is the eleventh novel in its series, but on the other hand by premise kind of has to fill in the reader from scratch and therefore I actually know someone who read this one first and it seems to have worked out.

[radiantfracture]

Thank you! I actually strongly prefer coming into a series in medias res and being kind of disoriented, so that's perfect for me

[sovay]

Thank you! I actually strongly prefer coming into a series in medias res and being kind of disoriented, so that's perfect for me

Have a wonderful time! The Campion books are overall one of my favorite series, potentially full stop. I have mentioned them occasionally. Especially the early novels have some of the period-typical pitfalls of Golden Age mysteries, but I have been bitten by them less often than by Ngaio Marsh or Agatha Christie and I tend to re-read them all in one go, growling each time at the one which contains unmissable meta-plot but also all the random sexism the rest of the series somehow manages to eschew and trying to remember to skip whichever one has the equally atypical racism baked in at book-destroying depth. One of the signal features of the series is that Allingham first introduced Albert Campion as a character in 1927 and ran her characters in real time up to her own death in 1966, which means that everyone changes over time and supporting characters spin off lives of their own and the world alters around them in ways which arguably add up to an accidental slight AU, but I don't mind. I like her prose; I like her ways of looking at people; I like the central romance of the series, which continues to thrive as a relationship past the point where most writers would settle for the HEA. There is not really anything else like the series from its time and Traitor's Purse is one of my favorites within it.

[sabotabby]

I think that's it.

And also that for most writers, especially in genre fiction, amnesia is never treated as something horrifying so much as it allows a character to be a blank slate discovering the cool world they've built. Whereas to me it's the most terrifying thing.

I think The Rook (book version, haven't seen the show) did it reasonably well? I just think a lot of these authors have never had to interact with someone with dementia, basically.

[radiantfracture]

amnesia is never treated as something horrifying so much as it allows a character to be a blank slate discovering the cool world they've built.


-- And real amnesia is generally a product of either severe head trauma or severe emotional trauma, and in neither case does it occur in tidy narrative isolation.


I just think a lot of these authors have never had to interact with someone with dementia, basically.


Oof, yeah. That's something you've lived through? My uncle's not too bad over Zoom, but my brother says he can't really interact with any depth any more.


Do you know Gareth Gaudin's comics about his mother's dementia? He lives in town. (Funny, irreverent, sad. Totally understandable if they're not for you.)


There seems to be a dubious subgenre of mystery that involves a protagonist with dementia or other memory loss, but I've never read any.

[sabotabby]

Oof, yeah. That's something you've lived through? My uncle's not too bad over Zoom, but my brother says he can't really interact with any depth any more.

No one that close *knock wood* . My great-aunt, if I remember correctly. Definitely a lot of friends' parents in recent years. And I've dealt a lot with people close to me who've had their cognition and personalities severely impaired by drug and alcohol use such that they seem like they have dementia. And, in one case, a brain tumour.

So when I get the sense that it's given narrative weight, I'm into it, but if it's not, it just makes me angry.

Do you know Gareth Gaudin's comics about his mother's dementia? He lives in town. (Funny, irreverent, sad. Totally understandable if they're not for you.)

At a cursory glance, that looks awesome.

[radiantfracture]

I don't think I know The Rook -- have you talked about it in a reading post?

[sabotabby]

Oh, I read it ages ago, before I started logging these things. It's a fun urban fantasy that was apparently turned into a shit TV show. IIRC it plays the character's memory loss and disorientation pretty well.

[sovay]

I don't think I've seen anyone else find that possibility in this kind of supernatual editing, to use it to think about actual loss and grief, not just "the protagonist is gaslit by the universe."

That sounds emotionally agonizing to me, but I am glad that someone did it so thoughtfully and meaningfully. (I have a lot of trouble with stories where people are not believed, which I realize sounds weird in light of my affinity for film noir and its fondness for nightmare scenarios, but it makes a difference if the character can find some purchase on other people's trust vs. whoops, the truth of your history has just been vaporized from the universe. I also hate memory erasure as a trope unless it is used extremely intelligently, which is the case in the TV series Homecoming (2018), for example, but has caused me to consider the ending of Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising Sequence (1965–77) non-canonical since before I knew what the word meant.)

[radiantfracture]

it makes a difference if the character can find some purchase on other people's trust vs. whoops, the truth of your history has just been vaporized from the universe.

Thank you for putting it like that -- I think that's very close to my feeling.

in the TV series Homecoming (2018)

I haven't seen the TV series, but I liked the podcast -- that's the first podcast narrative drama that mostly worked for me.

[sovay]

Thank you for putting it like that -- I think that's very close to my feeling.

You're welcome. Feel free to repurpose if useful.

I haven't seen the TV series, but I liked the podcast -- that's the first podcast narrative drama that mostly worked for me.

Oh, that's neat! I've never listened to the podcast. Should you be inspired to check out the series, I'd love to hear what you think.

[skygiants]

Thank you for the recs, I've been looking for more fiction podcasts!

[conuly]

Well, I'll leave this comment here then, though it was intended as a top level comment:

If you want fiction podcasts shoved at you, you can do worse than to pop by reddit.com/r/audiodrama and ask for recs. They will have recs. They're also a generally nice sub.

[radiantfracture]

Thank you! Can you recommend any series you've found this way?

[conuly]

Well, virtually everybody loves The Strange Case of the Starship Iris and Wolf 359 - for the latter, the plot really thickens after the nightlight.

If you're not feeling spaceships, right now I'm waiting on tenterhooks for the next season of Mission Rejected, and I really did enjoy Homefront, which is a BBC production taking place during WWI.


And if you're just still invested in magical boarding schools (I mean, who isn't? How many books and series growing up did I read that were set in one?) I've been really liking Electromancy, though the writer doesn't quite seem to have the balance yet between "school shenanigans" and "yes, but this school is run by an evil powerful and conquering empire and all these children are juggling being baby revolutionaries against the magical army they've been conscripted into". Or maybe they're just not interweaving the two plots properly.

Also, one note, and I mean this very seriously and with absolutely no criticism: Audiodramas are 100% the gayest media I've ever consumed. You can hardly turn around without realizing another character is LGBTQ.

[flowersforgraves]

Have you read the original r/nosleep Left-Right Game story? I liked it better than the audio drama, personally, but I did also enjoy the podcast version.

[radiantfracture]

I read the last chapter to see if it would help me make sense of the end of the podcast -- as you know, it's famously murky.

What feel like the big differences to you?

[flowersforgraves]

Mainly, I found the otherworldly aspects more effective written than in audio. I also thought the narrator had a larger role that I didn't particularly care about in the podcast version.

[radiantfracture]

Yeah, I think I see what you mean -- you have a lot more options for narrative pacing on the page, I think, than in audiodrama, which tends to push you into realtime.

And yeah, I wasn't that into the audio frame story, except the scene with Alice's parents.