thanks for the kind words! I'd really appreciate if you could go into more detail about which parts you most enjoy, or if you think the show has a coherent aesthetic.
chai tea latte, April 28, 2019, 01:44:15 pm
Wow, I've never had anyone ask me that about anything after receiving a compliment. That is so cool. You're right, I know as an artist specific feedback is more helpful. The things I like about it:
Choice of topics: The topics you pick are novel, peculiar, or inherently attention grabbing enough to be worth 20 minutes.
Your clinical tone: It adds a lot to the effect hearing about weird, stupid, unusual, etc things hearing it presented objectively and flatly. While, like you I'm (obviously) a huge fan of the FPlus, I don't think that style of mst3k riff fest would work for the topics you pick. It's impossible to tell a joke about Rocco's basilisk because it's already literally the stupidest imaginable idea. Any attempt to present it in a more foolish manner would fall flat because it's less extreme than the actual content. You just reading off things like this reminds me a lot (positively, since I know the snakes here like to use vice as a punchline) of the vice reporters who interview weird dumb people. Rather than make snide comments when they talk to people who pour piss in their eyes or wear crowns made of bullets, they'll just hold the camera on them for a few seconds after they're done speaking to underline how stupid the person is. The show isn't putting words in anyone's mouth or editorializing, it's just letting the poop in the museum speak for itself. That's one thing that makes your show really funny.
Speaking voice: Even, smooth, I can't hear you breathe, and you're not too close to the mic, NPR style. Audio quality aside (which is pretty good) your evenness and natural pitch is perfect for podcasting. Unobtrusive if I have an ep on to cook or fold laundry, but good to be the sole point of stimulus on a car ride.
Scope: Each episode is exactly as long as it needs to be. You do a good job of providing the necessary background for niche topics, but don't assume the listener doesn't know anything. You know the people listening to this are nerds and know basics about computers and otaku shit, so don't spend too much time going over info I could just get off wikipedia. This is why when I see an article on an interesting topic like the kind of thing you might cover in Time or Newsweek or whatever other lamestream media outlet, I don't bother, because it'll be 200 words and 190 of them will be "So you see, a 'computer' is a box you can play games on. Crazy, I know, fellow boomer" You also don't drill down too fractally and get into minutae I don't care about, like in your emoji episode. You know I don't care about the coding or whatever, and focus on the aspects that will be appealing to someone without specialized technical knowledge.
I don't understand what you mean by "aesthetic" in a purely auditory medium. Could you explain? I'd be happy to answer. Please let me know if there's anything you'd like me to go into more detail on. I'd be happy to elaborate
