thesiltverses

[thesiltverses]

Is there any reason why your horror is wet (rain in eskew, evil river god, saltwater and hands dripping from a throat) or is it just coincidence? Or being British, i guess that could be the reason as well, given how much it rains there

When I was a small child I had a near-drowning experience (no fratricide involved, I was pottering about and fell backwards into a pond) and I'll always remember the strange comfort and eerie wonder of that moment - the world of the living becoming a small, distorted circle of golden light, surrounded by reed-tendrils and a greater darkness and incomprehensible noise rising up on all sides around me.

But on the other hand - even in your question, I think you spell out the thematic richness and complexity of water as a horror element. Rain as a soundtrack for the monotony and relentlessness of depression in Eskew. Rivers as symbolic of natural cycles, human exploitation, offerings and takings. The ocean as the embodiment of vast and uncaring cosmic horror, but also a lure for the adventurous amidst the very human desire to try and find ourselves in the unknown. Bogs and marshlands as devourers and preservers, lurking wounds of the past. Flooding as the shattering of our social and architectural boundaries. Water is reflection and abyss, lifegiver and source and ending.

Wet horror fucking rocks.

[thesiltverses]

Hello tsv/Eskew people, as members of the so called “British”, do you have any advice?

On avoiding us? It's hard, we're basically roaches with funny accents.

Muna is Somali, not British, and I'm doing my best to hold her back right now so RUN WHILE YOU CAN

[thesiltverses]

hello hello funny tumblr audiodrama people! I see you have turned off anonymous asks. this is very distressing for I, who struggle being Perceived in this dimension of reality.

I'm sorry! We'd got a few anon asks that read like attempts at wind-up acts from the same person, and ultimately it's not very enjoyable responding to messages if you first have to stop and second-guess whether people are sincerely asking you a question or doing a bit.

[thesiltverses]

was thinking recently about how the endings to both of your podcasts have people walking into supernaturally transformed landscapes with an ambiguous sort of hope for the future, tinged with grief. there's plenty i could write about this sort of ending, but i was wondering if there's any insight you'd like to share about what makes it compelling to you.

Well, I think that you could fairly describe both podcasts as different depictions of exactly the same state of unease, caught between two realities: on one side, the hypernormalised horrors and rapidly-escalating collapse of an unsustainable, cancerously-greedy system keeping up an awful performance of stability and security under increasingly absurd circumstances. On the other side, the rapidly-approaching and terrifying inevitability (?) of total systemic collapse, which we will likely not survive and which we certainly cannot imagine ourselves surviving, but in which state of ruin and abjection exists, so it seems to us, the only honest hope of escape or rebirth or something else flowering out of our ribcages once we're gone.

Why is this unease compelling to me? Well, you know, we're all living it.

But I think that a lot of great 20th century writers saw this coming, and weird fiction and absurdist fiction specifically have played about very powerfully with that choice between two realities: an increasingly parasitic and false state of normality that eats away at us versus a terrible abject truth that will surely destroy us and which we may be incapable of facing.

That really speaks to me as a writer, and the nuances and uncertainties involved - how much of us will be left in that collapse? is there any other possibility? are we fooling ourselves, falling in love with easeful death, by imagining apocalypse as inevitability? - are some of the most pressing questions to explore right now, I think.

[thesiltverses]

Hello I finally got the chance to finish tsv on a long haul flight last week and I'm not sure that any piece of media has ever made me cry so hard at 4am in a room full of people /pos

the whole podcast is so beautifully written, and the sound design absolutely impeccable! carpenter really made me feel seen, as someone who has had struggles with their faith after growing up in the church, and her story helped me work through some things, i think.

Thank you for birthing this story into the world! It has altered my own approach to storytelling, and made me love weirdfiction even more <3

That being said, I can't believe you would do this to me, and also of course you would do this to me, because there is no other way the story could've ended. Thank you, and apologies for the long message :)

Thank you very much, this is really kind and thrilled you enjoyed the ending to the show! (also hope it wasn't a problem that you were listening to the stuff with a plane crash while on a long-haul flight.)

[thesiltverses]

Hello!

I loved your Magnus Protocol episode! It was truly horrifying 🥰

Did you enjoy writing a one-off short for another show? I believe you'd been attached as a guest writer since the Kickstarter - when did you have the idea for the statement and when did you write it?

Are there any episodes of other pods you have written?

Thank you <3

Hey and thank you very much, thrilled you enjoyed it! I'll answer for myself (Jon) and let Muna know in case she wants to pitch in.

I definitely did enjoy writing a one-off; obviously when you're working to a stricter format for a client and everything ultimately needs to fit into a bigger metanarrative it's a very different experience to our usual Do Whatever The Hell We Want approach (so I think the final product has probably been tweaked and trimmed down a fair bit from the last time I saw it, which is exactly how it should be)

I have not written other episodes of other pods, although I've done consultancy / editing on a few. Would definitely be keen to do more though.

The statement was actually the RQ team's idea (as guest writers, we could pick from a substantial list of options or pitch our own) - I think we both wrote ours in the autumn of 2023.

[thesiltverses]

walking down the street muttering feverishly to myself "sick, sick. they're all sick."

Not an ask but I felt the need to share: I believe I may have classically conditioned myself into thinking about TSV whenever I smell hotdogs. I listened to it while working as a student researcher (no money, hotdogs are cheap, can be combined with many non-perishables). Every day I’d eat hotdogs, cooking/eating while listening to TSV. multiple times per day. So fast forward, I’m in costco and suddenly I’m like “hmm.. the silt verses”. Then again at a BBQ. Even frying bologna (flat hotdog) compels this response. The association is burned into me. You’ve made costco a place of infinite grief.

I have received a very nice nudge from a friend of yours asking me to reply to this, and it's honestly hard to know what to say, because I've never been to a costco and my only sense of costco from US media is that it may well already be a place of infinite grief. I have also never had an American hot dog and I really hate mustard and ketchup* so probably never will.

So in short, I am the worst person to comment on this subject and I really have nothing constructive I can add to this fascinating experiment other than 'thank you very much for twisting your own psyche into an inescapable torment, it's very on-brand for us'

*the sausage already tastes of sausage. Why am I covering it in sugary fake-tomato goop so it tastes of that instead? What's the point? Just drink the ketchup directly out of a cup if that's what you want from your meal, you monsters, you loons.

[thesiltverses]

Not an ask but I felt the need to share: I believe I may have classically conditioned myself into thinking about TSV whenever I smell hotdogs. I listened to it while working as a student researcher (no money, hotdogs are cheap, can be combined with many non-perishables). Every day I’d eat hotdogs, cooking/eating while listening to TSV. multiple times per day. So fast forward, I’m in costco and suddenly I’m like “hmm.. the silt verses”. Then again at a BBQ. Even frying bologna (flat hotdog) compels this response. The association is burned into me. You’ve made costco a place of infinite grief.

I have received a very nice nudge from a friend of yours asking me to reply to this, and it's honestly hard to know what to say, because I've never been to a costco and my only sense of costco from US media is that it may well already be a place of infinite grief. I have also never had an American hot dog and I really hate mustard and ketchup* so probably never will.

So in short, I am the worst person to comment on this subject and I really have nothing constructive I can add to this fascinating experiment other than 'thank you very much for twisting your own psyche into an inescapable torment, it's very on-brand for us'

*the sausage already tastes of sausage. Why am I covering it in sugary fake-tomato goop so it tastes of that instead? What's the point? Just drink the ketchup directly out of a cup if that's what you want from your meal, you monsters, you loons.

[thesiltverses]

Will everyone hear back on the OWHE auditions, or only if a part was given?

We're aiming to get back to everyone but expect it to take a while - at last count we had just over 1200 people audition with us!

[thesiltverses]

HAPPY THE SILT VERSES FINALE ANNIVERSARY!!

this is the piece I made for the @zineoftideandflesh , a free zine full of super skilled folks and put together by a wonderful team in a very short time, thank you so much for this opportunity ❤️

[thesiltverses]

happy finaleversary guys! have my favourite closeup from last year's illuminated manuscript piece

[thesiltverses]

my piece for @zineoftideandflesh !! go check it out, all the works are amazing

happy finale anniversary!

[thesiltverses]

... well, the river is vast, and no dam can block every channel, and ours is a world of miracles.

[thesiltverses]

Tie me up in my callow belief / Someday I’ll make something out of me / Years of imitating mastery / Only made me a better thief

Empty Page (The Crane Wives)

My submission for @zineoftideandflesh! Closeups under the cut.

[thesiltverses]

Stories are snares, someone once told me. And by now, mine will be tightening.

This has been a piece I’ve wanted to make for ages and I’m so happy it came together in time to commemorate one year since @thesiltverses ripped my heart out of my chest. TSV is unquestionably the best piece of fiction I have ever encountered and I think it’s going to stay with me until I die.

This is also the full version of my submission for the @zineoftideandflesh which only Val and Shrue made it into by virtue of these files being ridiculously large (and also by virtue of me being Valshrue vice president, I have an ecological niche to fulfill). If you haven’t checked out the zine yet, do it immediately, its absolutely jaw-dropping.

(also if you're feeling niceys please please please click through the pieces to look at the details. tumblr compressed them to hell and back)

[thesiltverses]

my piece for @zineoftideandflesh!

[thesiltverses]

"What am I seeing?" cried her mother. "I do believe that I saw pearls and diamonds dropping out of your mouth? What have you been doing, my daughter?" (This was the first time she had ever called her her daughter.)

—Les Fées, Charles Perrault

Artwork submission for @zineoftideandflesh, comparing VAL's different selves through the two sisters in the fairytale Les Fées to explore speech, value, and her relationship with her mother.

Some details about the fairytale allusion:

The cursed daughter, who was supposedly favoured by her mother, had been forced to visit the fairy at the well in hopes of attaining the blessing of speaking in jewels, and was later abandoned for her curse. I cast her as VAL who is birthed of her former self's decision to join the military to become someone who would gain her mother's favour, and to highlight the abandonment she experienced during her transformation. Her speech comes to life in indiscriminate violence, lashing out as wild animals, ultimately robbing her own voice.

The mistreated daughter on the other hand was awarded with the 'blessing' of producing jewels — but within the fairytale, she was never able to use the ability for herself. Instead, her reward amounts to gaining the favour of others (her mother, the prince) through her ability to produce value for them, at great discomfort for herself, choking out sharp edged jewels whenever she tries to communicate. I cast her as the former self of VAL, as the daughter who yielded to her mother out of a desire for validation that never came, who signed away her body to create and become value, in various respects.

The false dichotomy of the blessing and the curse (which both rob them of speech), the favoured and mistreated daughter (both abandoned), the false competition that these characters are placed in as fairytale archetypes represent also VAL's divided, antagonising sense of self.