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So I've not been around much on dreamwidth the last few months, what with all the bereavement. But I do have a fannish thing I want to talk about! (Surprisingly, not Star Trek, though I did watch the first two episodes of Discovery and love them.)
I've fallen head over heels for a Dungeons & Dragons podcast called The Adventure Zone. Given I've never played a tabletop RPG and have only ever kept up with one podcast before (Welcome to Night Vale), this was an unexpected delight.
The Adventure Zone is a podcast with the McElroy family, who are dad Clint and brothers Justin, Travis and Griffin, who also host My Brother, My Brother and Me and who I'd been vaguely aware of before because they're friends with Lin-Manuel Miranda (this is how I understand a lot of US current pop culture tbh). They start a DnD campaign, and it's very funny, and over time it also becomes an intricate narrative with amazing characters and a lot of feelings.
I started listening because the campaign ended recently and friends were talking about what a satisfying conclusion it was. Can confirm, it was a great ride.
The podcast is partly a family lovingly making fun of each other and partly the narrative itself, and as it goes on the characters get a lot more developed and then suddenly oh no I'm crying. It is very much a found family story, and also a cool fantasy/scifi blended verse, and also about the importance of stories, and the triumph of platonic love over the forces of evil.
I marathoned through the many hours of audio and cried my heart out in the most wonderful happy cathartic way and then went back and started again basically immediately.
Although the creators/player characters are all male, there's a great range of major, really well developed female characters. There's a few unnecessary tropes they tread in - a fridged-in-backstory a woman and the first queer couple we meet die - but they course correct as time goes on, and by the end there are a bunch of introduced/revealed queer and trans characters. Race and ethnicity is pretty much always left open, which has its pros and cons I guess. If anyone wants any specific info/content notes, please do ask.
There are links to listen here and if audio isn't your thing, a small army of volunteers have transcribed everything in google docs via![[tumblr.com profile]](https://www.tumblr.com/favicon.ico)
tazscripts. I would say that this is a story with quite a few Big Reveals that have gone on to inform a lot of the fannish output, so I wouldn't recommend browsing fandom wikis/tumblr tags/ao3 etc if you want to avoid spoilers.
I'm sure it's not for everyone but I love it lots and I bet some of you would too. It has helped me tap into some of those big excited hopeful inspired feelings that have felt too out of reach too often in this shitty year.
I've fallen head over heels for a Dungeons & Dragons podcast called The Adventure Zone. Given I've never played a tabletop RPG and have only ever kept up with one podcast before (Welcome to Night Vale), this was an unexpected delight.
The Adventure Zone is a podcast with the McElroy family, who are dad Clint and brothers Justin, Travis and Griffin, who also host My Brother, My Brother and Me and who I'd been vaguely aware of before because they're friends with Lin-Manuel Miranda (this is how I understand a lot of US current pop culture tbh). They start a DnD campaign, and it's very funny, and over time it also becomes an intricate narrative with amazing characters and a lot of feelings.
I started listening because the campaign ended recently and friends were talking about what a satisfying conclusion it was. Can confirm, it was a great ride.
The podcast is partly a family lovingly making fun of each other and partly the narrative itself, and as it goes on the characters get a lot more developed and then suddenly oh no I'm crying. It is very much a found family story, and also a cool fantasy/scifi blended verse, and also about the importance of stories, and the triumph of platonic love over the forces of evil.
I marathoned through the many hours of audio and cried my heart out in the most wonderful happy cathartic way and then went back and started again basically immediately.
Although the creators/player characters are all male, there's a great range of major, really well developed female characters. There's a few unnecessary tropes they tread in - a fridged-in-backstory a woman and the first queer couple we meet die - but they course correct as time goes on, and by the end there are a bunch of introduced/revealed queer and trans characters. Race and ethnicity is pretty much always left open, which has its pros and cons I guess. If anyone wants any specific info/content notes, please do ask.
There are links to listen here and if audio isn't your thing, a small army of volunteers have transcribed everything in google docs via
I'm sure it's not for everyone but I love it lots and I bet some of you would too. It has helped me tap into some of those big excited hopeful inspired feelings that have felt too out of reach too often in this shitty year.
