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equalseleventhirds · 3 years

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@femmedionysus mentioned needing lighter, fluffier, less-ultimately-tragic podcasts than the magnus archives, and do u kno what? i think a lot of ppl can benefit from this. and i can help! a little! maybe!! generally these have at least some emotionally difficult moments, but they are lighter and appear to be heading towards a not-too-tragic ending.

(sorted into categories and lists, bcos who am i without categories and lists?)

podcasts i am fully up to date on and can vouch for up until their current end point, altho most of them are not quite done yet (there's like, potential for them to turn super sad, but in general the direction they're going in is Not That Tragic):

unseen (a series of one-character episodes all taking place in the same universe, a magical world hidden behind ours. a couple of eps are linked character-wise, but a lot of them are unrelated, individual stories. fairly gentle, tendency to end eps on a high note, cohesive & interesting worldbuilding.)

wooden overcoats (a funeral home sitcom. no, really! the funn siblings run the only funeral home in their village, until charismatic golden-boy chapman shows up with his own, better funeral home. lots of morbid humor but usually humor, altho a few episodes ARE sad and hit hard. those sad arcs do resolve with eventual happiness and found family stuff tho.)

victoriocity (features one of the actors from wooden overcoats! an alternate steampunk reality where queen victoria, um, never dies. ever. and london gets some seriously weird tech! follows an inspector and a reporter trying to solve Mysteries. there's like murders & death & stuff but the main characters do wind up safe & more or less content, even tho fleet's grumpy. kind of like, Extremely British, with the colonialist issues that 1800s london implies, but like, they try to address it sorta? it's not a major plot point)

welcome to night vale (i know i KNOW everybody knows this one....... but Things Are Generally Fine, u kno. i mean there's the occasional upsetting part. but things are fine. do skip 'a story of love and horror' to avoid what imo was one of the MOST upsettingly tragic things tho.) (confession: i have two episodes of this to catch up on, but i'm not actually THAT far behind, so i'm comfortable with its place here)

midnight radio (this one's all done actually! there is a ghost on the radio, and she starts receiving letters from a living woman. and yes ok it STARTS with a dead woman with a tragic past. HOWEVER it ends hopefully so like!!!) (in good conscience: not fluffy or funny at all. gets very serious at times. but goes towards a genuinely hopeful ending, which was why it's on here.)

the strange case of starship iris (found family revolutionaries in space!!!! shit gets heavy but they! get! through it!! i like when they get through it.) (to be super clear, it does get VERY serious, but they do get through it and judging by the narrative vibes and how the creators discuss it, they’re gonna be okay by the end. and they are mostly okay now.)

khôra (based on greek mythology, but In Space! the witch medea is... recruited by the hero atalanta to find the golden fleece, which her dead husband jason hid. once again we start with tragic pasts, but it is heading so fast for found family, and given that the premise of the show is giving women from greek mythology better than what they had in myth..... I Think It Will End Happy)

kaleidotrope (college radio hosts talk about love on their possibly-slightly-magical campus. god it's so. it's so fluffy. full of fluff. like, legit i think the least serious audio drama i've ever listened to, it's simply just. soft. very romantic. occasionally embarrassing. FILLED with fluff.)

time: bombs (a three-episode podcast made by long story short productions after w359 as like.... an experiment? i think? about the shenanigans of a bomb squad, who are remarkably funny for... a bomb squad. there's literally bombs & stuff and some injuries, but nobody dies, nobody is tragic, one guy does not get to beat a record he rly wants to beat but he learns stuff abt Being A Better Person or w/e so that's nice.)

podcasts i am NOT fully up to date on but what i have listened to is not too horribly tragic:

inn between (fantasy found family! you know how d&d podcasts are? well, between adventures, d&d characters rest and recuperate; this is those between adventure moments, taking place in a lovely little inn.)

sir rodney the root (once again fantasy! once again found family!! funny & sometimes kinda weird podcast about some folks on a Quest that goes off the rails, god i need to catch up on it...)

interference (oh hey another d&d-inspired fantasy podcast....... huh. but! one side of the podcast happens in a reality not unlike our own! that and a d&d-ish world are colliding, and we hear two women talking to each other as their worlds connect...)

the amelia project (there's an agency that will fake your death, for a price.... no, not money, they want an interesting story! and oh boy do these clients deliver. last time i was listening there was some hubbub about secret government agencies spying on the amelia project itself...... hm.)

alba salix (okay yes another fantasy podcast......... it's a comedy, with occasional drama, abt the physician for a magical kingdom and the shenanigans of her and her two unruly assistants, and also the royal family, and also....... i was actually v fond of the mini-series between seasons, abt an orc who runs a pub, more than the main story? altho i am not caught up on either so it's possible this could reverse.)

there's also a few from the podcast marathon which, if ur not aware, was me running through the first episodes of a bunch of podcasts to see what sounded good (i will get back to that eventually....), but this means i cannot vouch for them past the first episode. nevertheless, from general tone they seem to be Not Very Tragic, so.

saffron and peri

the godshead incidental

the one stars

solutions to problems

the rest is electric

the prickwillow papers

and 195

sidequesting

come on in, the water's fine

#algie's podcast marathon #algie recs podcasts #pls note that these are not necessarily my FAVORITE podcasts #but they are more CHILL podcasts. so.#hmu for specific content warnings abt some of them if u need to #or to outline how sad they may be before the hopeful ending #a couple of them DO start sad and then build towards a hopeful end so like #they are Eventual Hope podcasts #which was what max was after specifically! so that's what i did!!#...........tbh mabel and dbd aren't even on here even tho i THINK they are going to end all right #bcos both of them actually their most recent season ended on a low note cliffhanger #when they start back up again we'll see tho

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orsinium-scholar · 4 years

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Biography of an Orsinium cave-guard

Names Agra gra-Mogul. Sergeant gra-Mogul. I've been a member of the Cavern Patrol for ten years now I reckon. Ten years tramping up and down between Orsinium Major and Orsinium Minor. That's how it works, see? Minor out in the open for the rest of the world to trade with, all nice and friendly, Major tucked away safe in the Dragontails. Got the palace and the archives there. Makes sense to me. Even if the damn Redguards take out Minor, the heart of Orsinium ain't gonna be touched.

Only two ways into Major. You can get there from the air, but that fancy floating magic ain't allowed, and dragons ain't my job. They got crossbows for that.

And there's the caves.

That's my job.

Dragontail is full of 'em. Whole damn mountain range is riddled with tunnels like maggots in an apple. They say in the archives up in Major there's secret maps of all the tunnels they know of and it's only like, what, ten percent? If that.

There is one, and exactly one, tunnel that leads to Major and about a million that don't. Our job as Cavern Patrol is to guard the places we do know of and keep people from getting lost in the places we don't. Not many go in the caves if they can help it. Mostly carts bringing in goods from Minor. Our job to guide those too.

It's dark down there. Real dark. When you first go in the entrance it seems fine. They got huge caves carved in, I ain't saying where, that are all set up for refugees if Minor is attacked, like a whole town underground. But you go further in and it starts getting...

Unfriendly.

There's things under there, you see. Things that don't like the light. I don't mean the ogres, those things are trained. You know the right way to move around them they don't bother you. I mean the other things. Things that don't sound like nothing you ever heard of, lurking down in the caves. You gotta walk it in the dark, nothing but the weird blue glow from the odd mushroom, makin’ all kids of crazy shadows. And all the time, you're counting in your head. Counting every step, every turn, every pause.

Six months it takes to train a cavern guard. Six months to memorize every step of the path between major and Minor. And it is a HARD fail if you can't hack it. Me and my sister signed up together. We always were pretty close.

She lost her grip on the guide rope two months in. We don't even know what section she got lost in.

Six months, and the last test they do is strip you of all your equipment, stick a blindfold on you, and tell you to get your big green ass into Major.

It's about a three hour walk to Major. Alone. In the dark. Counting. When you got your eyes it ain't so bad. Those mushrooms glow enough you can kinda see the path if you squint. But when sights gone, all the other senses catch up. I'm a tough woman, but even thinking about that long dark trip makes my skin crawl.

You hear things. Movement out in the depths.

Whispers.

Sometimes it sounds like voices. You can't make out what they're saying but by Trinimac, that just makes it so much worse.

There's two ways to fail the last test. Either you never show up, or you do show up. Raving. Some people, the whispers get into their head and don't come out. We got a little asylum attached to the barracks. When the winds right some nights you can hear the screaming.

They're the lucky ones.

My old commanding officer used to tell us “you ever hear a voice you recognize, you get your ass outta there. I don't care what you're doing, just go.” Good advice. Till he went missing down there. He lost his whole family in an avalanche a few years back. Guess he forgot to take his own advice...

Where was I? Oh yeah. The caves. They change you, the caves. They really do. Even in small ways. 1346. That's how many steps it takes from the barracks to my favorite bakery in Minor. From there, it's 125 to the pub. Exactly. Even when you're on leave and having fun out in the sunshine, there's a part of you always counting, always scared you're gonna lose count and get lost. And sometimes the caves...

They eat you.

They say that sometimes cavern guards just walk right in and don't come out again. Like something called them. Sometimes they just slip away from patrols or you wake up in the morning and they ain't in their bunk. Ain't something we like to talk about. But it happens. Longer you spend down there, more likely it'll happen. I've been a cave guard the longest out of all the orcs in my squad. “Grandma” they call me. How we laugh.

I don't think I have long left.

I've been hearing her, see. My sister. Out in the caves. Calling for me. Can't make out what she wants, but I know her voice. I can tune her out most days. But when I'm down there, in the deepest depths, nothing but blackness around me?

My sisters waiting for me out there.

And someday I know I'll go to find her.

#orsimer #orsinium #the elder scrolls #TES #apocrypha #books from the library

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