Guys, I had such a weird week. I was sick, things were buck wild at work, I wrapped up a three-year D&D campaign—very emotional. Luckily, audio drama was there the whole time.
🍦 This week’s episode of Small Victories from @wgc-productions was comparatively bare bones. Little meta, just the fallout from our big reveal last week. What we get instead is somehow more heartbreaking: an outside view of how Marisol is acting through her dad. He uses the word “lucid.” Thank God she’s finally getting help, but I can’t help but wonder if she’ll see her past and future selves again, or if getting help for her ills means engaging with those parts of herself in a less visceral way. Where does the story go from here? I can’t wait to see.
🫶 This might be weird, but I love the way Wellman talks about religion in @hellofromthehallowoods. It is so easy to write off Kelly-Anne Wicker, but the great strength of Hello from the Hallowoods is that no one ever is written off or ignored. We always get to see their point of view, at least for a minute, and Kelly-Anne’s brief moment is shockingly compassionate. We also get to see how Kelly-Anne’s bigotry and hatred evolved into the beliefs of her daughter Johannah, for whom it is harder to be compassionate; but then again, even Johannah loves and lost someone. As an additional note, I’ve been waiting for that argument between Percy and Diggory forEVER. So cathartic. I love this show.
🧨 I haven’t talked about @theredactedunit for a while simply because what they do is kind of seamless—a monster-of-the-week procedural style audio drama is actually incredibly hard, especially writing it in the way we’re used to tv shows doing them, slowly building character beats and overall plot into the weekly stories. Like listen, i like the Magnus Archives/Protocol as much as anyone, but they do not do this. The plot building in TMA is relegated to separate scenes from their weekly monster, and that monster sometimes references back to the overall plot, or else the plot later tells you that it was relevant all along. That’s fine, but I think the skill lies in the integration. [Redacted] never tells a story unless it builds the world, or tells us something about the characters we didn’t know before, or reveals a little more about what Jordan was and Jacob has to become. It is so deftly woven and good, especially in this week’s episode. I need to know everything about Val right now immediately please? There’s a new player on the field?? Sea Monster friend??? It’s really good, guys.
🟢 catskull is ending this week, and folks, if you want a horror story that’s truly harrowing, a tragedy that Could Have Been Prevented, this is it. I was so honored to be a small part of this show; the real talent lies with the writer, actors, directors, sound designers. It’s so good, please check it out.
That’s all for me, y’all have a good week!
