alexanderdanner

[alexanderdanner]

Very relevant to @greaterblogston, but mostly I just want to express my profound disappointment that it never occurred to me to call the Molasses flood a "Molassacre." That's some top-notch portmanteau work by the OP!

As I gaze at the structural column in Copley Station, cracked nearly in two and held together with zip ties that have been carefully painted over to match the column underneath, I feel my soul intertwined with that of a small Italian boy of days gone by, who also stopped to look up at a large, groaning, newly painted tank full of molasses

#greater boston podcast #greater boston #mbta

[alexanderdanner]

It really didn't know what to do with me.

D&D Class Test

Results:

You were tied between multiple classes.

#D&D class test

[alexanderdanner]

i feel so bad for vampires like i would be evil too if i couldn’t eat garlic bread that’s so fucking sad. what a miserable existence omg.

[alexanderdanner]

New Winslow is a small town in a mostly forgotten part of Massachusetts. It's a modern paranormal story. A queer rural urban fantasy. It's a story of love and fear, of the complicated ways in which we connect with each other. It's about accepting the consequences of our choices, about how history is always intertwined with the present.

It's also an online serial, released seasonally. Originally it was supposed to be an audio drama, but that was so not in the cards.

But if you're an audio fiction fan, you might dig this too. If you're a fan of vibes and character, you might dig this. If you like Noah Kahan's brand of sad New England shit, you might dig this.

(Btw I love noah kahan but new winslow was 5 seasons in when stick season came out. So the many connections between the album and new winslow are coincidental, but in a lovely way.)

Seven seasons are already available to read as free ebooks and season eight is coming later this year. Find it on most ebook platforms, your local library, or enfield arts dot com.

So with one season to go, what better time to start promoting it on tumblr for the first time in like 5 years?

Plus I can use this for spoiler chats that might not fit so well elsewhere. And give little teasers for season 8 and side stories

[alexanderdanner]

So recently I've been seeing a lot of posts in the audio drama community of either 1. People asking for advice on editing their shows or 2. Giving advice, but usually it's through text without any audio examples. I love both of these posts, but have been thinking that since Tumblr is the only social media site that lets your share audio without visuals, that it might be a good place to do some sort of audio drama show and tell with audio from shows. Like each week there would be a prompt like "how have you created tension through sound design" or "what was one of the most challenging scenes you directed" and people could answer with clips from their shows. I think it could be a cool way to learn from each other since formal education for audio dramas is rare, plus it might help people find new shows. It's still an idea at this point, but I may or may not have started writing some weekly prompts lol.

PS I'm absolutely terrible at naming things, so if anyone has any suggestions on what to call something like this, I'm all ears 😅

[alexanderdanner]

Oh damn, we got seriously dragged by AMTRAK.

A guide to different types transit of systems

[alexanderdanner]

Oh man...I used to teach a course on The Automobile in Society, and one of the units we covered was how cars changed American dating practices, and oh I WISH I'd known of this then...

Feather River Bulletin, Quincy, California, March 20, 1924

[alexanderdanner]

Hey all- the team behind Unwell: a Midwestern Gothic Mystery are launching our new big podcast project!

World Gone Wrong: a fictional chat show about friendship at the end of the world!

Right now- you can subscribe on all major podcast platforms in advance of the March 12 launch of episode 1 (a few convenient links are at the bottom of the post).

It's about a pair of former roommates who have to move across the country because of an apocalypse, and decide to try to stay in touch by making a podcast. We like to shorthand the apocalypse as "every episode of The X Files and Supernatural happen at once" - so we'll get to play with vampires, aliens, existential horror, and more~

Staring Michael Turrentine and Hilary Williams (Wes and Joey from Unwell), created by Jeffrey Nils Gardner and Eleanor Hyde, with this amazing first chapter written by Jessica Best (writer on Unwell), podcast art by Karli Fairbanks, and theme song by Olivia and the Lovers!

Here's a few places you can find the show:

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/world-gone-wrong-a-fictional-chat-show-about/id1733343393

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3QEbKgVcmVxvuo4OsjWMWv...

Or search "World Gone Wrong" wherever you listen to podcasts, and let us know if it isn't there!

[alexanderdanner]

Station Eternity by Mur Lafferty and the Monstress series by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda.

(I usually have one book in progress for my commute, and something else in progress to read at home, so I'm in the middle of both.)

If you see this you’re legally obligated to reblog and tag with the book you’re currently reading

#amreading #fiction #comics

[alexanderdanner]

Exciting news! Our show and our event have been featured in this awesome write-up by @alexandrialivingmag.

Read more and come join our live premiere TOMORROW on 2/24 at 6PM: https://alexandrialivingmagazine.com/upcoming-events/the-ortiz-twins-are-coming-home-u-s-mexico-border-audio-drama/

[alexanderdanner]

OH NO MY SECRET IS OUT

hey you're doing a great job, just remember: a semicolon can be used to combine two sentences where you might otherwise use a period; this allows you to create longer and longer run-on sentences

#writing #punctuation #I do love semicolons #but man I wish they had a less upsetting name #; #the name certainly doesn't capture how cute they are.

[alexanderdanner]

Propaganda under the cut

Why isn't John/David/Cecil/Obituary Writer/etc here?

I'm specifically excluding narrators who are also primary characters in the story. There are a lot of really good unreliable main character POVs, and some that are very, very popular. There are also a LOT of found footage / "documentary" shows, so the pool of "main character who is technically also the narrator" is monstrously large. This is for narrators who have things to say about the story but are moderately to severely removed from it. You'll notice I've also excluded the Documentarian from The White Vault, because by the time she's commenting on the story, she's also a main character.

Madeleine can stay because she's very polite.

Madeleine the mouse

Madeleine doesn't exactly serve a narrative so much as she plates and seasons it before bringing it out. Part plot device, part confidante, and all bohemian authoress. But please, consider the other candidates long and hard before you vote. She's not really too unreliable, she's just incredibly biased.

The Voice of HartLife

You have to be a special kind of unreliable for one of your characters to break down the fourth wall into your recording studio to kick the shit out of you.

The Historian

*Gesturing at a lithograph of Eisen and Telesphore making out sloppy style* "Truly, it is tragic that the men of our generation have lost such deep platonic bonds as are depicted here. So secure were they in their brotherhood that our contemporary idea of friendship fails to-"

The Narrator

No, not Leon. The other guy. I can't possibly describe what his Whole Deal is without spoiling a major plot twist of the show, but guys. He killed Matt Damon, guys. He killed Matt Damon while trying to murder dozens of other people at the same time. (Hundreds? I don't know how trains work.)

Dubrach

Yes, I know it's not really confirmed. That's what unreliable narration is all about. But what could be more reliable than the literal word of god on the puny machinations of his flock? :) :) :) Also he's voiced by Alisdair Stuart, our dad.

The Malevolent Patreon Hastur

...is specifically not included, because a) people are going to think I'm talking about John, and b) brand recognition is going to skew the whole thing, as if Madeleine isn't going to sweep for that very reason. But I'm mentioning him here because of the time he made people so angry that the actual real live writer had to come out and remind them that this is a fictional character. iykyk.

[alexanderdanner]

Mostly Google docs these days specifically because it facilitates collaboration and Scrivener doesn't. Also, since I've moved to a Chromebook for most of my writing, I don't really have access to Scrivener. But I still absolutely prefer Scrivener, and really wish that's what I was writing in.

i'm genuinely curious so it'd be cool if you could reblog this!

[alexanderdanner]

Recently had a call with a couple of showrunners about a fight scene I'll be designing for them, and my #1 request of them was "give me an exertion reel." Get me a whole separate recording of each actor improvving every oof and ah and moan and gasp and yelp and heavy breathing they can manage, because now matter how much of this you think you've written into the script, *IT'S NOT ENOUGH.* I can conjure all sorts of things in the design to create the action of the fight itself, but as the second post says in their first point, none of it feels real if we don't have the voices of the actors reacting and conveying *effort* through the whole thing.

I honestly cannot say enough about what a wonderful resource an exertion reel is to a sound designer. When I worked on @unwellpodcast, right from the start the designers were handed a folder with exertion reels for all the main cast characters, and I dipped into those recordings routinely throughout all five seasons. Having those recordings available gave me so much freedom to embellish and elaborate on the actions actually in the script, in ways the actors couldn't have anticipated--and didn't need to, thanks to having already made those recordings.

Hello! I’ve been thinking about fights & action in audio dramas so here’s some random unsolicited advice about how to make your fights land:

Give your actions the weight they deserve. Instead of just dropping a “punch” effect into your scene, layer a punch with a shove or other impacts against flesh so it sounds larger than life - and probably more convincing in your audience’s mind

And speaking of impacts, it’s not just physical attacks that need them - magic gets better translated when you tack an impact on at the end, whether that’s smacking into a body or blasting through a tree

Consider the setting your action takes place in and how the action interacts with it. Are you trampling undergrowth? Splashing through shallows? Skidding on shiny floors? Throw some of that in to make the fight environmental as well as physical

You know what else makes sounds in a fight? CLOTHES. Grabbing and grappling them, tearing sleeves, rustling with the rush of movement. Put some clothing sounds in there to help give your fight a really bodily feel

Uhhh that’s all I can think of for now but I can talk more about hacking together sound design if that would be helpful for anyone

#audio drama #sound design

[alexanderdanner]

This is my whole creative aesthetic.

I have realized that the perfect form of media must have a delicate balance between absolutely heart wrenching pure emotional devastation and the most ridiculous nonsense you have ever seen in your whole life

[alexanderdanner]

This is exactly how I always answered this question. Basically, whatever direction the water is going, it's halfway there.

when i was a kid i used to respond to the "glass half full/half empty" question by asking how the liquid in the glass got there in the first place. nobody ever gave me a chance to explain my reasoning so i'm doing it now

if you have a glass and it has some liquid in it, up to the halfway line, whether it is empty or full depends on what happened before the question was asked. if you started with a full glass and poured half out until only half remained, the glass is half empty, because if you continued pouring it would be fully empty. however, if you started with an empty glass and poured liquid from another container into the glass up to the halfway line, the glass is half full because if you continued pouring it would be all the way full. logical, no?

i was 13 years old when somebody finally told me it was supposed to be some kind of optimism/pessimism thing. i always thought it was a riddle that nobody let me solve

[alexanderdanner]

Hello fine folks of tumblr! Sky Full of Pods is a blog which features and talks about fiction podcasts, and has been running since July 2020. The goal of the blog has always been to highlight the creations of the community, and to introduce folks to new shows!

Find me at skyfullofpods.com!