Next Episode April 30 Blue Flickering Street Light, a horror mystery podcast told through the perspective of the curious, the doomed, the unreliable, and the by-standers within a seaside town
you've heard of death of the author, now get ready for death of the audience: where instead of basing your reaction on a thousand uninformed opinions online, you actually read the text and engage with it
hey podcast creators, or anyone this may apply to, what kind of sound effects do you need? what kinds are hard to find? I'm looking to get into making (free/pwyw) sample packs so if you could let me know what kind of sample packs you think you'd get I would appreciate it + I think I could help make those happen 🙏👀
stop. analyse that text through the lens of its author's intentions and original historical context. okay now take the author out back and kill them dead and analyse that text as though it were published by your mutual yesterday and is in direct conversation with the contemporary discourse that's most relevant to your life. okay now pick your favorite angle of interpretation and come up with the strongest possible argument against it. now imagine that the text is your best friend and that it means you well and that you naturally give it every benefit of the doubt because you're on its side and you want the best for it. now imagine that the text wants you dead and it'll eat you if you don't eat it first. now pretend that you found this text locked away in a cave with no evidence of when or where it came from and you have to divine its meaning solely through its internal coherence and nothing else. okay now address the elephant in the room aspect of the text you've been ignoring because you find it boring or confusing or uncomfortable and become the number one expert on it. now spend forty minutes assigning all the characters dnd classes with at least three sentences of reasoning each. okay now do the cha cha slide.
love it when audio drama leads, be it they have canon names or not, go by these special monikers: the archivist, the voice of night vale, the obituary writer—long live vague and mysterious titles for protagonists.
MY FRIEND MADE A DOPE HORROR AUDIO DRAMA, AND IM GONNA REACT TO EACH EPISODE HERE BECAUSE honestly what other social media site truly appreciates analogue mystery shows—none, that's what.
Wanna listen along? Go follow @blueflickeringstreetlight wherever you listen to podcasts!
Emoji Key:
⭐ = 1 star
✨ = Half a star
*️⃣ = Lower than zero for when I'm being a hater
The Show Title:
Blue Flickering Street Light
Show Title Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
I'm a big fan of long-but-not-too-long names. Blue Flickering Street Light might be a mouthful, but it's catchy, intriguing, and I'm also heavily biased. BFSL is an excellent abbreviation, especially if you're me and pronounce it "bee-ffs-ell" like an idiot.
The Description:
"A horror mystery podcast told through the perspective of the curious, the doomed, the unreliable, and the by-standers within a seaside town."
Description Rating: ⭐⭐⭐✨/5
A perfectly good description, especially for a platform like Spotify where absolutely no one reads long descriptions (at least I don't). It's a bit vague—the only story-specific detail we get is that our setting is a seaside town, which wouldn't be enough for me if it wasn't for the title doing heavy lifting (it's about a flickering blue street light!) and the genre literally being Mystery.
It also tells us that the narrators are either A. Curious, B. Doomed, or C. Unreliable, but that—in my personal opinion—is pretty synonymous with the horror/mystery genre as a whole, so doesn't win any points in favour or against.
‼️ Spoilers Ahead ‼️
Episode 1 - "The Old Woman Statue" Reaction:
It's weird listening to an audio drama and being able to recognize the person behind every single voice—not because they're famous, but because they're your silly goofy internet friends. Weirdness aside, the voice acting is solid! Karma's voice is the kind I'd like to hear reading bedtime stories, and has an almost-meditative quality to it that fits nicely with the story. It's great at putting the listener at ease before the jumpscare sound effects remind you what genre BFSL is—not exactly bedtime material.
The VAs are a snug fit with their characters, at least until you get to the old woman's voice. Trashy, dear god, never voice an old woman again. 0/5 I was laughing too hard to pay attention to the story.
The story and writing itself is stellar. Karma puts together the perfect blend of weird-but-not-quite-unusual vibes, chill until it's super not, and nameless characters that I'm already (unfortunately) invested in. Can't wait for them to all be killed off in strange and horrific ways!
Also, that thing? Having too many teeth to be human? In the best way possible: fuck off, Karma. /Pos
Episode 1 Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
Overall; an excellent episode 1. It was both soothing and exciting in all the right places—exactly what I was hoping for as my new sewing podcast!
(-1 star for Trashy's old woman voice. I would pay to never hear that again. It inspired the same hatred in me as Sean McGarry's Corrin portrayal)
I think a lot of writers might benefit from giving themselves permission to get weird with format.
Use second person, drop classic rising action and climax format, write backwards, just sit in a moment, tell all you want and refuse to show, make an entire book that’s just one run on sentence, reject tropes, use all tropes, cliche yourself to death, produce something that’s completely gibberish. Break all the rules of marketability. Become ungovernable.
It’s the middle of the night and I should be sleeping but listen. Listen. Just get weird with it. Open your soul up a little bit. Like actually don’t worry about it being palatable. I’m serious. Get weirder. Get weirder right now. I’m demanding that you get weirder right now. It’s not your responsibility to make your reader feel good. It’s your job to make art, goddamnit. Make art. Make weird art. Open up your third eye and eat an entire cheesecake.