Happy Audio Drama Sunday! I am desperately trying to Not Do Things this weekend. So far it’s working, and I’m nearly caught up with my listening. While I’m tackling the most recent episode of Something’s Amiss at Juniper’s House, would you like to check out my reviews?
🩸 I Cannot! Get over! @last-dance-audio-drama!!! What a way to wrap up the season. I could go on and on about this episode and this show, about the muddled morality of each character, about the worldbuilding around alchemy, about how the first question asked about the Screaming Spear is “Who was it?” My favorite thing about this episode, though, is Jericho at the very end. Sometimes a powerful plot twist is too much, but this one felt earned, through grit and blood and the skin of Jericho’s teeth. I just had to sit there and marvel at it at the end. They told us this would happen all along! Almost every episode starts with the reminder! There are no gods here; only what we make of ourselves. And he did.
🦁 The crowdfund for the Lion and the Adder from @monstrousproductions does not need my help, because they’re not even a week in and 75% of the way to their goal, but nevertheless I was so excited to hear the extremely talented Méabh de Brún as a socially indifferent psychic in this week’s teaser. Between this and the last teaser, I am so excited for this show. The Victorian supernatural mystery is such a good genre.
👻 Every week I’m like, @midnightburgr surely will not end up on my audio drama Sunday post this week. And every week I am Wrong. This week they got me thinking a lot about Flat Doug, who is more three-dimensional by the day over there. Flat Doug whose anxiety is debilitating, who is scared about every new alien who visits Hood’s Pocket, who willingly shot up the invading force of brainwashed ghosts to save himself and the ashleysaurus. Who might consider him her husband maybe. He’s just one facet of this show, but Doug gave up hunting for pacifism, and then picked it up again during a very long night. I love him. I love them all.
❤️🩹 I love the way Dracula: 2004 from @starstrider-productions adapts to its setting. Dr. Abrianna Van Helsing is Jewish in this story, and that adds so much. The canonical Van Helsing lost a wife and child and has encountered evil before, but his backstory is vague and undefined; this Van Helsing lived through the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam, survived the Holocaust, and uses a Hebrew prayer to see Lucy off. She uses communion wafer to seal a door not because she’s Christian, but because she’s a scientist and this works the best. It makes the “special dispensation from the church” make more sense, it fills in a backstory that’s thin and missing, it’s GOOD. It’s such a powerful choice and I love it. Dracula the novel doesn’t actually focus on Van Helsing that much, but this episode does, and it’s perfect, because now there’s something to focus on.
⚔️ The Bardic Hearth is so good at celestial politics guys. And the music is so good. This show does gray morality in such a skillful way—how do we know which gods are on the right side? Obviously framing a god for murder to start a war isn’t great, but we like both the people doing these things. What’s their motive? Why is Hogwin doing this? Jump on board now for all your high fantasy needs, this show rules.
That’s all for me, have a good week!
