#i never got to really draw a lot of wtnv stuff when it first came out so i wanted to do some drawings from older episodes!

[asimovsideburns]

Okay I /think/ I've asked this before but I can't find the original question if I did: What are some of your all-time favorite podcasts and what makes them stand out to you?

OKAY OKAY OKAY

LOVE to talk about podcasts!!!

(not in any particular order)

1) Welcome to Night Vale. A classic. The first podcast I ever listened to, and in fact I didn’t even really know what a podcast was, I just used my computer to go to the website and play the episodes there. I dropped off at some point, but then eventually got into podcasts and actually knew what they were, so I picked it back up again. I still am not current.

WtNV was an amazing, incredible thing to me! It had surreal horror-comedy, which I had never encountered before; it was a way for me, a person who hates scary stuff, to finally enjoy what other people loved so much. It had music I’d never heard before! It had a canon gay main character in the first episode!!! WtNV was, in many ways, a formative experience for me. It also has the single scariest moment I’ve ever experienced. I do miss the days when it was all over tumblr, honestly, it was so incredibly fun.

2) The Adventure Zone (and, in spot 2.1, My Brother, My Brother, and Me). If WtNV was my introduction to podcasts, this was the beginning of my personal podcast explosion. Seeing all the animatics for this, along with the clips from the MBMBaM tv show, is what got me to figure out things like “what is a podcast actually” and “how do I listen to podcasts easily” and “who the fuck are these mcelroy guys”.

I decided, okay, everybody’s talking about them. They seem pretty funny. I’m going to check them out. So what did I do? Did I treat it like a normal person? Of course not! I listened to every mbmbam up until the first taz episode, then I listened to every taz episode, and then I finished the mbmbam episodes. I listened basically every waking moment of every day. TAZ is the second thing I’ve ever written fic for (and the first podcast). I will, for the rest of my life, fondly remember the weeks I spent with the constant company of the podcasts in my ears.

3) Not Another DnD Podcast. I think this was my second actual play podcast. It’s extremely good! You just… really do have to power through the first bit, which is… something. Like, “I put the podcast down and only came back to it because of podcast withdrawals” something. I was just very uncomfortable! It’s a podcast that is often funny, often crude, and, surprisingly, often very touching. If you’ve ever seen the full “what an honor. what an injustice.” quote, this is where it’s from, and if you told me that while I was listening to the first episode I would never have believed you. Fondest moments are watching the campaign 1 finale in a livestream with just so many other people and texting my mom the truly unbelievable amounts of damage one of the characters was doing to the final boss every single turn, and the incredibly wild charity livestream they did where they had a bunch of CR1 or less creatures fight in an arena, tournament style, with donations affecting what happened—draw from the deck of many things and the animated armor gets banished! someone else draws the wish card and brings it back! it gets annihilated again! resurrected again!

It really is just a lot of fun, and the cast’s chemistry and friendship shines through at every moment.

4) Let’s Make a Music. Brian David Gilbert, Laura Kathryn Gilbert, and (depending on the season) either Jonah Scott or Karen Han take tweet suggestions themed around a prompt word and turn them into songs. Very fun, and they’re pretty dang good at the music thing, too.

5) Wow If True. This is a pretty recent one! I don’t usually go for podcasts where it’s just, like, people discussing things and sometimes interviewing people, but I follow one of the hosts here on tumblr so I was willing to give it a shot, and I’m glad I did! The concept is that it’s all about memes, but in practice it’s really more about just… existing on the internet? It’s not a comedy podcast, like most of the other stuff I listen to is, but it’s super interesting!

The hosts have great chemistry, they’re fun to listen to, and the editing and audio quality is quite frankly way better than any podcast I’ve listened to that isn’t making a lot of money and/or done by Professional Recording People (whether that’s musicians or people who do many podcasts or whatever). It’s a great way to 1) hear about the New Memes that are going on outside your bubble (or figure out what the hell is going on inside your bubble) and 2) get some interesting info on how other people interact with the internet. Recently they talked about disability and accessibility both on and off the internet, which was really cool.

6) Second Star To The Left. Alright, bringing it back around to WtNV-style audio dramas, SSTTL is my newest podcast. It’s also the one I’ve been the best at keeping current with so far, but that’s mainly because I started listening when there was still only one episode. It’s funny how you find things—I followed someone for her fanfic, and then years later read some of her original work, and then like literally a couple of weeks later she revealed that she had co-written a podcast, so naturally I had to give it a listen.

It’s about a scout who goes to an alien world to make it habitable for human life. She’s canonically disabled (prosthetic leg) and her scout-minder, who is the only person in the universe with a direct voice line to her, is a nonbinary person who uses they/them pronouns—and all this in the first episode! I hear they’re supposed to fall in love, too. So far the vibe has been… slice of life long-distance annoyances to lovers in space with occasional emergencies and science that is, while sometimes a bit improbable, not actually impossible/wrong given what we know right now. Also, I absolutely love the way they treat disability—Gwen has a prosthetic leg, and that didn’t stop her from becoming a scout; another character has an issue come up that causes a possibly permanent condition, and the way it’s handled is with incredible care and compassion.

Speaking honestly, SSTTL is probably my favorite podcast right now, and I encourage everybody to check it out so I’ll have people to talk to about it. I’m not sure how long it’s planning to run for, but I hope it’s a while, because I want to listen to it forever.

#mine #podcasts #ask #catcomixzstudios #scheduled post #because otherwise this is going to go up at 1:20am and literally nobody will see it #THANK YOU for this question gage I fucking love talking about stuff I like

[thedreadvampy]

there's nothing specifically BAD about white jon, it's just kind of... weird sometimes? for fans of color to see a character so universally portrayed as brown be portrayed white. it's more due to the universality of the headcanon than anything. we get comfortable thinking of him as "one of us," so to speak, so seeing him as white can be anywhere from mildly jarring to actively upsetting. it's obvs not actual whitewashing, but it sometimes evokes a similar emotional response, if that makes sense

First off, sorry if this is a bit addled, as I said me and Tumblr got in a bit of a fight so this is the third time I'm typing a response to this.

This makes a lot of sense to me, and it hadn't really occurred to me previously (because I am, as I have said, hWHITE). I feel like I don't know what to say here that doesn't sound more casual than I mean it - yes. I don't want to say "I get it" bc I probably don't have a full picture of how it feels to have people who look like you be so rarely shown as whole people in media, but it makes perfect SENSE how much of a gut punch that could be.

That's my whole response directly to this ask, is yeah, that makes sense and it's a shitty way to be made to feel. Little preface to this next bit - it's going to be self indulgent word salad and it's not as much a reflection on what you've said (which I wholeheartedly accept and I'm angry at myself for not thinking of tbh). so it's not aimed at you, it's sort of an into the ether continuation of the thoughts this started in me.

(And it's definitely meant as an explanation rather than a justification, it's not an 'I'm sorry you feel that way but I'm right' but I kind of wanna feel out for myself what it is that made me come on so strong and get so on one about a white Jon headcanon when I'm normally pretty quiet about fandom stuff.)

I kind of hate fanon? Not specifically TMA fanon, I've just always found it...irritating, I guess, that noncanonical appearances become very rapidly The Correct Thing and everything has to be done in reference to that (sometimes even when it runs directly counter to established canon). I think the obvious non-TMA example is Cecil and Carlos from WTNV - one of the big reasons I never engaged much with that fandom is that the Correct Cecil was drawn with white hair pale skin third eye skinny bod sweater vest etc etc, and if you drew a Black Cecil or a chubby Cecil or an Unknowable Eldritch Entity Cecil, then it was an AU, it was being viewed in RELATION to this Default Cecil who everyone was drawing without really knowing why except that that's What Cecil Looks Like, and when you came in having listened to the podcast and started engaging with fandom, (I felt) you were expected to drop however you had been visualising the character and start visualising this very specific look with no real reason?

And that's very much how I felt, correctly or incorrectly, coming into TMA fandom (or rather, as TMA fandom started spreading far enough that it came to me) - I started listening to TMA in probably like early 2017, because I had a lot of late studio nights and it was this thing Jonny was doing etc, and I doubt I saw a single piece of fanart until at least 2018/19. So it's a bit...I turned round and suddenly there's This Way Jon Looks, which doesn't at all relate to how I imagined him (and by the way possibly more significantly for me personally, This Way Martin Looks, which for reasons I can't exactly explain just sets me off, I HATE the ubiquity of Cute Little Shy Ginger Chubby Sweatervest Martin) and that's absolutely fine! It's a podcast! There is no right answer here! Except there seems to be a singular right answer. I don't think I've ever seen a Black Jon, an East Asian Jon, a Latino Jon, a South Asian Jon, a fat Jon, a bald Jon, whatever. (Also very few unhot Jons which. let this man be a nebbish weirdo) It's the homogeneity I find kind of alienating and at the same time I do get that that established image is functionally providing representation for a lot of people. It isn't that I don't think Jon should be brown (although I own that I've come a long way on that over the last few weeks and I did come in pretty stridently WHITE JON initially which was....hm. at best thoughtless.) but I do think I'm a bit...baffled, I guess? by the idea that there is one Correct Jon who should be treated, effectively, as canonical.

#i think I'm going to tag this stuff #white jon #because it's giving me a lot to think about and i want to be able to come back to it