The Penumbra Podcast

It takes skill to juggle two wildly different series at the same time and make both absolute bangers. But they pulled it off. Haven’t started thirst yet but I bet it’ll stand on equal footing.

I would recommend this show to anyone looking for a well-crafted fiction series in a serial style. I would describe it as an anthology, but it seems more like they tried some different worlds and characters to see what would stick for themselves likely more than the audience I’m assuming. Sometimes characters don’t stay as well as others in the creation process. It does seem like a labor of love. I would warn that sometimes characters will kiss and there are mouth noises. Not a big deal, but I know it makes my skin crawl to hear mouth noises. It isn’t very frequent though. I think some stories in this podcast are better than others. I just found the development of relationships between characters slightly rushed in some. It’s not the worst thing, my preference is slow burn and seeing a relationship form over time. Not saying that is mandatory of course, I do understand there is likely a struggle with time as it is in a serial style as opposed to a continuous story arc between episodes. Overall I enjoy the stories in this. They’re fun to listen to while I work. The settings are colourful and the characters are wonderfully queer. I would be interested in more worldbuilding, but that is quite difficult as the style is first person with characters monologuing and punctuating sound effects. There is obviously a balancing act of trying to keep a character in character while also expanding the world around the character in ways that don’t result in exposition dumps and other pace destroying interludes though. As someone that likes writing myself, I like writing all my worldbuilding in a book to flip through so I just like other people’s processes of creating worlds as well from that standpoint.

Didn’t listen to much of TSC, but avid listener of TPP. When I started listening to this show, I was in a bad place mentally. I related to Juno Steel a lot in the first bit of the show, but I thought that he was way cooler than me because he had worse trauma and worse coping mechanisms. Since then, I’ve healed, I’ve gotten better, and *spoiler alert* it is absolutely incredible to have followed Juno Steel as he healed as well. Knowing by the end of the show that we both had aged, healed, and gotten closure and were content with where we were healed something in me. On top of this, there were excellent quotes throughout the whole series and incredible relationship advice in the last couple episodes which I will absolutely apply in my relationship. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for everything you’ve done, because you truly helped me get through some really rough patches. I can’t wait to relisten and hear how he grows and heals in a shorter time-frame, that’s the best I can word it. Again, thank you.

This podcast is insightful and decently well written, interesting characters and delightful world building. I enjoyed the earlier seasons much more than the later ones though, and found that the later seasons tried to do too much, and lost some impact.