the yule goat has left the building

[kindkit]

1. In the end I didn't sign up for Yuletide. For one thing, the whole sign up process seemed more onerous than I remember it being. For another, work has been kicking my ass for about three weeks, and will kick my ass harder during the holiday season, so I had to seriously consider whether I wanted to come home feeling dead tired and then be obliged to write an exchange fic. For yet another and probably the most important, I found myself only interested in writing quite specific kinds of fic for the fandoms that interested me. I could've offered Taskmaster, but what happens what I get matched to someone who really loves the show's kinky implications when I'm that weirdo who's mostly uninterested* in Taskmaster kink? I could've offered The Left Hand of Darkness, but I don't want to write Estraven/Ai romance or a fix-it where Estraven lives, and those are popular requests. So I thought it was better for all concerned if I didn't play.

(*By "uninterested" I mean, "interested in idiosyncratic ways, with a whole collection of anti-kinks and squicks some of which are apparently very popular in the fandom; most of what interests me about kink does not interest other people, including and perhaps especially those who are kinky in their own lives.")


2. Apparently the first episode of The Magnus Protocol has dropped? I feel a depressing level of indifference. I'm still very fond of Jonny and, despite everything, Alex, but I'm finding it hard to get past the sense that this is overhyped and cannot possibly match up to the original.

I'd be happy to be proved wrong.


3. Relatedly, can anybody rec me some audio drama? What I'm looking for: genre stories such as horror and sff preferably (I'm flexible on this); focused on or prominently featuring queer stories and characters, including queer men (I'm not at all flexible on this); writing that besides the usual good characterization etc. is appropriate to the audio medium (no trying to shoehorn a visual story into a podcast); decent acting and production values. By the way, while I want queer stories, I don't need the stories to be cheerleader-y about it. I know it's okay to be queer! I don't want to be relentlessly affirmed by fiction like it's a fucking support group session.

I said audio drama but I'm also fine with gaming/actual play podcasts provided they're ideally audio-first, or edited for audio. I've bounced off a couple of actual play podcasts that were just unedited audio tracks from a video stream.

Podcasts I like/d a lot: The Magnus Archives, Rusty Quill Gaming; Old Gods of Appalachia despite some reservations.

Podcasts I have tried that didn't work for me: The Secret of St. Kilda, Malevolent, Wolf 359, The White Vault, Folxlore, and sadly also Pseudopod because while I love Alasdair Stuart, every one of the stories I have listened to was terrible. Quite possibly I just got a bad sampling. I did like many aspects of Neighbourly but it started to feel too derivative of TMA without being as skilled at dealing with all the red strings.

I'm picky, sorry. Please help a picky person find something to enjoy?

Comments

[starlady]

The Magnus Protocol premiere is a rough draft that's locked to certain Kickstarter backers -- the public premiere will be in January. I think it will be…different. More of an X-Files vibe, if I'm interpreting correctly what they've said about being influenced by the video game Control. But I haven't listened to the rough draft because I'm not at a high enough backer level.

[kindkit]

Ah, I saw some discussion and assumed it was out, which shows how much attention I've been paying.

[sovay]

I have no recommendations for podcasts, but I continue in my support for Gethenian pop culture.

[kindkit]

Someday I might actually get around to writing it!

[rydra_wong]

The Silt Verses has predominantly queer lead characters, but none of the narrative threads are about romantic/sexual relationships or about being queer per se, so it depends what you're looking for.

Carpenter is aroace, Faulkner is a trans man (played by a transmasc actor; his trans-ness hasn't been confirmed in canon yet but is due to be this season, according to a Q&A), and Paige is a trans woman. And there are multiple important recurring non-binary characters.

If "very young trans guy who is the self-appointed prophet of an illegal river god, schemingly-ambitious, murderous, way more naive than he thinks he is, and somehow weirdly lovable despite everything" would be of interest, Faulkner's your man.

My post about it from a while back: https://rydra-wong.dreamwidth.org/918623.html

Jonny Sims cameos in one ep.

[kindkit]

I'd forgotten about it when I made my list, but I listened to most of the first season of The Silt Verses, then stopped listening for reasons I can't recall. I should give it another go. Thanks!

[rydra_wong]

WOE.BEGONE (horror/sf) never quite hooked me, not sure why, but the central character/narrator is a gay man. ETA: and does have an important relationship with his boyfriend (or did last time I caught up on the show).

[kindkit]

Thank you!

[princessofgeeks]

I wonder if "The Fourth Tower of Inverness" is still available in some form. A long running radio drama with gothic/fantastical elements.

[kindkit]

It seems to be available through the Internet Archives as well as some other sources. Sounds interesting!

[princessofgeeks]

It was quite amazing. Not like anything I had heard before on radio.

[cyprinella]

Jar of Rebuke, maybe? Scientist with amnesia who doesn't stay dead investigating a location's cryptids.

Not Quite Dead: A nurse and his vampire boyfriend try to solve a mystery of vampire ghouls showing up in uh, Manchester? I cannot remember what English city it is for the life of me. Not London!

Everything else I've got at the moment that I'd rec probably doesn't have enough queer focused content to qualify. But if you're desperate:

I've been really enjoying Ghost Wax which sounds like a Magnus rip off when summarized but has a different vibe and a much more active/proactive protagonist. Anthology horror series where guy raises the dead to ask them how they died and records it on archaic technology.

First season of Dungeons & Daddies is very enjoyable in the "this is funny and dumb" well-acted way but none of the player characters are explicitly queer. One of the NPC sons is. Second season is suffering some sophomore slump.

Eeler's Choice is just two eps in so hard to say. Character in the first ep is ace. B. Narr (Silt Verses) is in it, and Fay Roberts. The writers were in RQ fandom, or at least one of them was (Lou Sutcliffe). I've liked the first two eps a lot.

Mistholme Museum and Hotel Daydream are both "here's weird stories about a place and it's stuff and also the people, whoops I developed a plot" pods.

[kindkit]

I can't tell you how disturbed I am that a show called Dungeons and Daddies does not have queer characters. What were they thinking?

And thanks for the recs!

[cyprinella]

They do call out on the regular that it's not a BDSM podcast so at least they're aware of that implicatio. There's some goofing early on about kisses between characters that kinda is played for laughs and then ignored, but yeah. But the storyline about the son being gay is treated kindly, just "embarrassing dad tries to make kid look good in front of his crush oh no" that's pretty cute outside of all of the plot trauma.

[cyprinella]

Okay so having gotten to the end of the first season of Ghost Wax I can say full of queer dudes! However, it has an unfortunate case of Same Voice actors making it hard to tell who is who and a production staff who is NOT good at action scenes which killed a lot of the season finale for me. Interesting idea, so-so execution.

[silveradept]

Depending on whether you click with its "found audio" style, you might be able to give Within the Wires a try. While there is a lot of simply-present queerness in there, it's not the focus of the stories. From the seven series I've listened to so far, though, only one of them has a man narrating (he's a trans man).

[kindkit]

Cool, thanks for the rec!

[rydra_wong]

Hello From The Hallowoods is a notch too far towards what I think of as the "cosy ambient horror" end of the spectrum (e.g. Welcome to Night Vale) to really hook me personally, but it does that very well, and is deliberately focused on queer characters and queer stories. Also William Wellman's got a great voice.