after months in the making. my tma-inspired tapestry is finally complete :’) designed and handmade by me, crochet with embroidered lettering <333 some close ups under the cut
excuse the dog hair lol. might try some more blocking to see if i can get the bottom to straighten out but i was too excited to see her finally finished not to share!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
+ bonuses of one of the sticky note doodles i made for the spiral panel when i first had the idea all the way back in MARCH!!!! and also the very first test panel!!!!! yes i did design and physically test how things translated to crochet entity by entity!!!!!
ok last thing i would love nothing more than to info dump about this whole project so if there’s anything you are curious about pls feel free to shoot me an ask and i will ramble 👉👈
i love that one of jonathan harker's first reactions to being trapped in a terrible horrible no good very bad situation is to compare it to what is essentially pop cultural fiction for him. the arabian nights and hamlet would've been wildly popular at the time (especially given stoker's very close pals henry irving and ellen terry had just staged a successful run of hamlet in the west end & the rise of 'eastern' literature in victorian england)
it's the 1897 equivalent of blorboposting when you're going through it and being like "oh this is just like me fr"
You may go anywhere you wish in the castle, except where the doors are locked, where of course you will not wish to go. There is reason that all things are as they are, and did you see with my eyes and know with my knowledge, you would perhaps better understand.
Once again, the "Dracula acts as the masculine gothic figure of the suspicious nobleman or the abusive husband" counter starts! Today we have, verbal limitation of space framed in a way that would make Jonathan feel like it's his fault if something horrific happens to him because he was told to not do so, on top of claiming that whatever reaction he could have is not worthy enough since he doesn't have the "correct" knowledge to understand it.
Antoine stirred in Arthur’s lap, and spoke before Arthur could slap his hand over his lips.
“Who’re you?” Antoine asked warily, then coughed and turned to spit out a mouthful of blood. His shirt was in tatters, and the dark ink clearly visible across his exposed chest was shiny with sweat.
“Fuck,” John whispered almost inaudibly.
“Who am I? I’m a fr—no, that’s been overused. Ack! Nevermind. Better question, little peasant, do you know who you are to me? My present. Thank you so much, Arthur darling, for delivering him.”
~~~
What if Arthur had used the talisman to revive Antoine, and then Kayne showed up and asked for the stone anyway? You know, in case you wanted to be even more sad about Antoine.
“Okay, you’re just—this looks like a panic attack so I don’t think we need to call anyone, Christ, just… listen to me, okay friend? I’m gonna—” Something heavy slumped to the floor, along with jingle of something metallic. “—Sit here with you, and maybe we can breathe together.”
The stranger’s voice had become closer, suddenly, and something about its gentle insistence started to permeate Arthur’s skull. The presence of another person made itself known in his mind alongside the white-hot static of mindless panic.
---
John accidentally runs into Arthur having a panic attack and stops to help out. I’ve heard reports that this might hit especially hard if you have complicated feelings about music lessons in your childhood
a moodboard for "Blinky", the glowing creature Arthur/John encounter in Part 16: The Path. A friend said it couldn't be done for a creature without spoken lines... challenge accepted
sorry about your boyfriend. yeah we kept putting him in really awful situations and we also gave him Horig’s Virulent Plague. yeah he’s coughing up blood. we also killed the one doctor character so hopefully he recovers
Nine to Midnight IV (<- link!) just released!! It’s an annual anthology of spooky audio fiction short stories by horror podcasters. I’m not affiliated in any way, but I wanted to compile a list of everyone involved to celebrate the wealth of talent that came together this year and make it even easier to check out all their other projects.
Full credits under the cut but just to whet anyone’s curiosity, some exciting callouts that I personally recognized include stories from the creators of @malevolentcast, @hellofromthehallowoods, @thestoragepapers, @hinaypod, @re-dracula, @ethicstownpod , @woebegonepod , @wakeofcorrosion , @thenightpost , @hellgatecity , @ostiumpodcast , @souloperatorpod , and more and more!
HEAVY FLOW
Motzie Dapul (Hi Nay)
Nathan Lunsford (The Storage Papers)
PODDINGTON
Kevin Berrey (Hell Gate City)
David Ault (SO many shows, including NoSleep, The White Vault, RE: Dracula, Woe.BeGone, and more.)
Rýne Scrin
Shaun Pellington (Wake of Corrosion)
David Ault (davidault.co.uk)
The Earth Will Determine
Emily Kellogg, Alex Nursall, and Ian Boddy from Woodbine and Parkdale Haunt
Day 153
From the The Grotto Pod
Specifically: Athan, Derek Moreland, Joshua, ARI, Bryce, Ava, and Violet
Out of Hot Water
Dylan Griggs (Woe.Begone)
Sibling Rivalry
Rae Lundberg (The Night Post)
Cleanup on Aisle Two
Shelby Novak (Scare You To Sleep)
Pacific S. Obadiah (SCP Archives, RE: Dracula, and more)
CONTENT
Tal Minear (many things, such as RE: Dracula, Sidequesting, and more)
The Birdcatcher
Michael Alan Herman & Josie Eli Herman of Acorn Arts and Entertainment (Silvertongues, The Call of the Void, and more)
Tatiana Gefter (The Department of Variance of Somewhere Ohio, Woe.Begone, Nowhere On Air, Soul Operator, Wake of Corrosions, and more: tatianagefter-va.carrd.co)
111
From the creatives behind Ethics Town
Specifically: Ollie Bannerman, CL Hendry, Cai Gwilym Pritchard, Ollie Bannerman, Evan Gwen Davies, Cai Gwilym Pritchard and Eli Labat-Angstadt.
Home
From the 400 Words A Horror Team
Specifically: Lyssa Jay, Gem Aydin, Just Jenah, Prax Kilowatt, Shaun Pellington, Taylor Michaels, and more
Hungrier
William A. Wellman (Hello From the Hallowoods)
Going Down
Jesse Syratt (Nowhere, On Air)
Tatiana Gefter (Soul Operator)
Taylor Micheals (The Grotto)
Motzie Dapul (Hi Nay)
Tal Minear (RE: Dracula)
The Witch of November
Three Fates (You are the Ghost in This House, Points of Articulation)
Specifically: Fiona Clare, Paige Elizabeth Allen, and Hannah Semmelhack, additional materials by C. Luke Soucy; recording, mixing, sound design by Rhea Patil; performances from Fiona Clare, Paige Allen, Nora Aguiar, C. Lucy Soucy
A Thousand Cuts
Alex C. Telander (The Ostium Network: Ostium, Circe, Manifestations)
Puppy Play
Jamie (The Cellar Letters)
Specifically: Grinner Media, Nathan Lunsford, Jeremy Enfinger, Nathan Lunsford, and Tatiana Gefter
The Sound
Harlan Guthrie (Malevolent, Deviser, Dice Shame)
The Feed
Ryan Joseph Murphy (Your Horror Show)
Brady Flanagan (Rogue Life)
Hopefully this is a helpful reference for fans looking for an easy reference to see which stories their favorite artists have worked on and help discover new ones! (Happy to make edits upon request!)
(*I wrote the following essay for a college class in April 2023, but in doing so discovered to my disappointment that there wasn’t much writing on Alice Isn’t Dead! So I'd like to contribute this.)
Tracing the Gothic to New Mediums & Subgenres – a case for Alice Isn’t Dead
The Proposal:
“America has weird things in it. It has so many miles, so much space to put the weirdness in.” - Alice Isn’t Dead, Part 1: Chapter 10
One of the strengths of [this course*] is in how it traces gothic tropes from its historic roots to contemporary variations, like Parasite being called “Neo-Gothic” or Get Out “Post-Racial Gothic”: in doing so, the course argues for the relevance and importance of the genre’s history, lineage, and permutations, which also facilitates a discussion of what factors contribute to such differences. I propose tracing yet another modern branch of the genre to that of “American gothic,” or specifically “midwestern gothic,” which would enable a focus on how the gothic genre was adapted to address regional-specific settings, histories, and anxieties, such as the different facets of the American experience. Allan Lloyd-Smith writes in American Gothic Fiction: An Introduction about how the “frontier experience, with its inherent solitude and potential violence” especially shaped the midwestern iteration of American gothic; this framework still holds for modern stories confronting endless flatness, nowhere towns, the destructive force of capitalism on communities (4). The medium of audio drama also provides new ways to think about framing, point of view, and immersive storytelling.
Synopsis:
Alice Isn’t Dead is an audio fiction podcast which follows a Black lesbian truck driver, Keisha, as she drives across America in search of her missing wife, Alice, whom she had long presumed dead. On her harrowing road trip, she deals with grief, anxiety, and depression, comments on aspects of American culture she encounters on his travels, and encounters supernatural phenomenon and larger conspiracies—such as regarding a group of dangerous creatures called the “Thistle Men,” a factory owner who ages a whole lifetime before her eyes, a day in which her straight drive passes through the same town over and over, and billboards that seem to speak to her directly, to name some examples from the first episodes.
The series, written by Joseph Fink and voice acted by Jasika Nicole, is composed of 30 episodes total of about 25 minutes each. The show’s format is that Keisha makes audio recordings on the road, either as a diary of her thoughts, speaking directly to Alice, recording live events, or recounting events after they happened.
(More) Key Terms:
The style often “intercuts” a longer, dramatic narrative of what has just happened to Keisha (more plot-focused sections) with shorter observations or memories she speaks aloud in the present (more thematic). Intercutting, or cross-cutting, is a narrative technique used in Alice Isn’t Dead to build tension by cutting between scenes with differing intensity levels or stakes, highlight connections between seemingly unrelated characters or events, or help maintain narrative momentum (Chen).
Liminal: “characterized by being on a boundary or threshold, esp. by being transitional or intermediate between two states, situations, etc.” (OED). We see liminality in Alice’s status between being “dead” and being “found,” in the road between towns, in the towns that themselves are only a bathroom stop on the way to the next destination, the destinations that themselves are only one of many stops.
Rationality and Irrationality: Although we also see Jonathan Harker’s attempts to rationalize events through his journals in Dracula, Lloyd-Smith writes in particular about the influence of Enlightenment era thinking on American literature in the idea of trying to rationalize the irrational, which is amplified by Keisha’s contemporary first-person narration in trying to comprehend the seemingly impossible things she witnesses (95). In episode 10, Keisha prefaces her story with: “I can’t drive while I tell this. Too much to say. I’m going to tell it all Alice. Even the parts you know. I’m going to describe the shape of the monster that is devouring me” (Fink).
Lloyd-Smith describes “frontier gothic” or “gothic nature” as “a terror of the land itself, its emptiness, its implacability; simply a sense of its vast, lonely, and possibly hostile space” (93). In the Part 1 finale, one of the Thistle Men says: “America. A country defined as much by distance as culture. America embraces its distances. Empty spaces and road trips, but there is always a price. We are that price. We are creatures of the road. We feed on distance, on road trips, on emptiness, bodies by the side of the highway” (Fink).
Uncanny refers to an unsettling kind of strange or mysterious, which is a perfect way to describe the revulsion one feels from the odd behavior of the Thistle Men, even without directly witnessing their acts of violence. “Every one of them was like the Thistle man. All of them. Loose skinned, odd movements…none of them spoke, although sometimes one would laugh, long and loud, and then return to monastic silence” (Fink). Getting at the German root of the word, “unheimlich,” Lloyd-Smith elaborates: “it can be understood as equivalent to the ‘domestic terror’ which so aptly describes much of the work of American Gothicists… The house, not the castle, becomes the site of trauma” (75). When Keisha temporarily gives up on her journey, overwhelmed by all she has been through, the Thistle Men follow her home and cause intense paranoia, which ultimately drives her to flee her house and take to the road again.
Works Cited
Chen, Jeff. “Intercut: Everything You Need to Know.” NFI, 14 Mar. 2021, https://www.nfi.edu/intercut/.
Fink, Joseph. Alice Isn’t Dead.
"liminal, adj." OED Online, Oxford University Press, March 2023, www.oed.com/view/Entry/108471. Accessed 19 April 2023.
Lloyd Smith, Allan. American Gothic Fiction: An Introduction. Continuum, 2004.
Penumbra fans! I’m teaching a class on the queer history of audio drama, but haven’t had a chance to listen through Penumbra yet. Is there a 2 min clip from any episode you’d recommend that highlights the kind of diverse queer rep this show is known for? (My initial idea is from Midnight Fox “I’m more of a lady myself” but that’s like just one line.)
origamiaround
ellievsbear
annaxmalina
romaincrisis
vaporwave
kaledo-art
tangentwithtanner
areudirty
