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S5E9 Trans People in the Zoo Community 2023
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Thoughts About the Episode
I startled awake one night in December with the realization that, in my haste to get the episode out before MFF, I’d forgotten to write a blog entry! December was a lot, so I’m only just now getting to it. More on that next entry.
This episode almost didn’t happen! As we approached the end of writing week, we hadn’t heard from any trans people who wanted to be involved. I wasn’t about to do an episode about trans people without trans people involved, and I wanted fresher perspectives than the people we already have in our crew. Fortunately, Amoronauts saw our request right here on ZooCommunity and got in touch just in the knick of time! Eggshell and I took time to meet with her and come up with an idea of what we wanted to talk about. We had a very robust conversation, so finally we had the confidence we needed to go ahead with this topic. Right around recording week, as we were struggling to decide who should host, Harvey got back to me about being involved, and everything fell into place. I felt it was also nice to have a trans-masc perspective represented — we hear a lot from trans women when it comes to these topics, so that extra bit of diverse perspective was welcome. Plus, it was his request in the first place!
Recording the topic was tough, though — mostly because we had a TON to cover, and I was wary of taking too long to do it. I tried to strike a balance between moving things along and letting the actual trans people speak, but I still kind of feel like too much of it is me talking and trying to guide us through everything we had to touch on. Overall, I think it went well, I just would have liked to speak a bit less.
However, disaster struck during the recording process. We’ve been in the process of moving over to Squadcast, as it’s a service that’s provided free with other tools we’re using. However, we ran into two major issues. First, Amoronaut’s audio for the topic discussion was completely fucked — something that wasn’t evident while actually recording. We didn’t hear all those audio issues during the session, but rerecording a two hour discussion isn’t really feasible, so I had to make do. I only hope that your ear started to tune it out after a few minutes like mine did.
And then, when Harvey and I did the introduction, we ran into a technical issue that prevented Harvey’s audio from uploading. No problem, we’ll use the online backups, right? Think again: the back-up audio is mixed down into one channel, which means a nightmare for post editing, and it sounds like crap to boot! And if you want it separated, you’ll have to settle for audio at a pathetic 48kbps. This was entirely unacceptable. So we re-subscribed to Zencastr and rerecorded the entire 20 minute intro session a second time. That’ll teach us for trying to save money and change tools! Thanks to Harvey for being’ a good sport with a grumpy rat.
By the way, HUGE thanks to Eggshell for taking our loose notes and compiling them into an outline. That was a major relief for me and can’t be overstated.
Amoronauts mentioned she had some skits and stuff she’d written that we might like to use for this episode and sent over the Kiss and Tell script. It was very silly, and we liked it a lot. As you can hear, Amoronauts’ audio is much better there, so no idea what the deal was during the topic discussion. I also think it’s kind of cool to have the special guest contribute creatively to the episode as well! Finding animal noises for smooching was surprisingly difficult!
Finally, I don’t know whether or not the author wanted to be credited for the On Beauty and Euphoria piece, so I’ll leave that out for now. They told me they wanted some kind of 90’s music in the background, but they hated the original, upbeat grunge piece I picked at first. Their original manuscript was a bit longer and included some darker moments, so that may have contributed to their desire for a slightly darker background tone, but it was kind of funny how we had to go back and forth because I just didn’t get it x3 Much appreciated for them contributing this perspective. I think it ended up being a positive addition.
Finally, we took our original song for Howloween by zipwok and featured it here. Somehow, it still doesn’t feel out of place :3
Everything fell into place, and I think things turned out well. I’m pleased we didn’t get up to the 2 hour mark, as well, despite all the extra content. We ended up getting some transphobic pushback from one or two zoos, but fuck ‘em. We got a ton of emails from trans zoos in the following month, so it seems this one resonated the way we wanted it to.
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Did you learn anything new about trans issues? Have your own perspective as a trans person? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
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S5E8 Howloween 2023
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Thoughts About the Episode
I wanna start with a small apology for three things:
1) The length of this episode got away from us. We had a lot planned without knowing how long the segments would actually be, and it ended up being a 2 hour episodes.
2) This episode is incredibly dog-centric. All the contributors really really love dogs. I hope other zoos still get something out of this one, though!
3) It came out about 20 minutes too late to be on time, due to several last minute changes that came through on the last day. Worth it, though.
And also, 4) sorry this took so long to post. Writing this takes time, which I haven’t had a lot of since the episode came out.
We came into this episode having no idea what we were gonna do for Howloween. Our regular contributor for The Eigen Ground hadn’t been able to come up with something this year, and we flirted with the idea of a Scooby Doo themed episode, but that was going to prove difficult. Then, early early in the month, Eggshell toyed around with a parody of Welcome to Nightvale, starting by using the framework of The Eigen Ground as a way to transport into an alternate place. I ran it by the EG writer, and they felt it didn’t really fit the universe they wanted to create. Their suggestions for changes didn’t sit with our writer in terms of the points they wanted to make, so we went with what we had and elaborated on the idea of this radio station from an alternate plane of existence and put some ideas for EG in the tank for next year.
Welcome to Nightvale is familiar to me as a quintessential example of “popular podcast.” Back when I never had heard a single podcast episode before in my life, this was the only podcast I knew existed, so it was interesting to hear this one come back up. I listened to it for the first time to prep for this episode, and once I heard it, I told Eggshell, “Kyon would be the perfect person to give this kind of delivery,” and they agreed. Kyon definitely delivered, and he was available for feedback and retakes, and I really appreciate his work this episode.
If you haven’t heard it before, it’s a strange narrative fiction podcast masquerading as a public news radio station that revels in traditional American horror tropes like aliens, clandestine government agencies, and inexplicable supernatural occurances. While there’s a canon, a lot of it feels like strangeness for the sake of strangeness, though occasionally it seems to touch on something profound, perfect for a Howloween episode.
We had a couple of skits in the bank, including this wonderful tabletop sketch that I thought was pretty touching. Aqua had suggested doing a Rear Window parody some months back, and Eggshell also tried their hand at a more traditional horror skit, but I didn’t feel like that one landed. Rear Window was also one I wasn’t personally familiar with, and at first the idea of Peeping Toms felt a little uncomfortable, but once I had the context, I thought the subversion at the end was pretty good. Eggshell mentioned that Hitchcock’s Rear Window heavily relies on visual storytelling, so translating that to audio came with its own challenges. I also considered cutting a couple of lines suggesting that the non-zoo couple might wanna get a dog, but it felt really more like banter than anything else, and the ending didn’t quite work without it. In the end, the performances were solid for all the skits, and I think they turned out wonderfully. I’m consistently pleased with the voice talents at our disposal. You’re all wonderful. I wanna take a moment to really thank Kynophile for contributing both his vocal performances in a pinch, as well as our convention crew from the last episode making another cameo appearance in the cold open.
During writing week, a friend of mine sent me a skit he’d written about dealing with the loss of a partner. I reckon as his dog gets older, it’s something on his mind, and it was a pretty impactful read. He gave us permission to use it, and I felt it was perfect timing, but we had to figure out how to work it in. I had a random idea of having the narrator begin with something absurd, and then get interrupted by static and start over with something more absurd, and things get more distorted and more horrific and nightmarish until it cut to silence, and the narrator would say something like, “There are some nightmares that are much closer to home.” Eggshell ran with that idea and came up with the running “choir of doom” story beat that ties the whole episode together and ends in this giant, emotional cacophony, and all of it came together.
The Losing a Friend skit was the last to come together, at the VERY last minute. I had a friend who was going to help put it together, but they got really sick and didn’t get a chance to do it. I had a couple of people read for Sal, and I want to take a moment to thank the other people who took the time to do readings for me this episode that didn’t end up getting used. Your help in a pinch was super appreciated. In the end, I went with the performance that I felt captured the subtlety of the emotions I wanted conveyed. Some folks gave great narrative reads, but I needed the sense that this was a conversation between two actual people. Angus’s performance was great, especially in that he took some more awkward lines and changed them around to feel more natural. A very moving skit all around.
I spent some time touching grass this month, and in that time, I wrote a sort of guided meditation to enter into the Samhain ritual. I wanted to link the idea of this outer-planes radio show with the ritual and put it in a physical place people could go, so it wasn’t just tacked on without working with the narrative we created. I also liked the idea of letting people be swept away with it, or letting them just sit and listen if that was more comfortable for them. I think a big part of those kinds of things being successful is a willingness to participate and having some agency in the scene.
A big thanks to everyone who submitted their eulogies this year. I really hope hearing them was cathartic for folks. I don’t know what to say here. It feels weird to expound on this part, but the ritual isn’t a ritual without people to participate, so we’re thankful that this community feels this is important enough to contribute to.
Originally, I was going to use Zipwok’s “Zooey Ways to Die” song as a silly Halloween song to play early in the episode, but once the script was done and the song was put at the end of the Samhain ritual, I felt the song he submitted last November, “I Need You So,” better punctuated the themes of loss and memory. We waffled back and forth, with Eggshell liking a change in tone to end the episode, but in the end, there was overwhelming support for “I Need You So” among the crew.
Incidentally, I should mention that “The Weather” is always Nightvale’s musical segment, which is why this section is introduced that way. If you haven’t heard the podcast before, it’s like 20 minutes long per episode, so it’s an easy listen.
All in all, “Equal parts horny and heartrending” seems to be the perfect tagline for this episode. So far, people have seemed to find the execution successful. Big thanks to everyone who contributed, participated, and took the time to listen to this long episode.
Timekeeping was weird for this one. It’s somewhere around 50 hours, but I fucked up several times keeping time.
I suppose that’s it! We’re really looking for trans perspectives for this next episode, so if that sounds like you, please reach out!
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Is there someone you were thinking about during the Samhain ritual who’s special to you? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
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S5E7 Dear Non Zoos - Pirate Radio
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Thoughts About the Episode
Holy shit, I was not prepare. This has been a rough production cycle, at over 51 hours not including work I did on the song prior to this month. We were editing things down to the very wire, and I’m up much later than I want to be writing this blog entry. But it’s done! And I’m happy with it! Let’s break it down, I guess!
Canis had an idea a long time ago to do an interstellar pirate radio podcast, but never had the time to put it into production. They brought it up again, with the idea being to have a 24-hour streaming radio station of old ZooTT segments along with zoo music. It’s still a cool idea, but not one we’re ready to implement. However, we thought it would be cool to shift from a college radio station to pirate radio for this year’s Dear Non-Zoos episode.
I wanted to try to get stuff done well in advance, but that just didn’t happen. I was too busy in my last month of hiatus, and things just weren’t lining up. Me, Aqua, and Eggshell got together and watched The Boat That Rocked for inspiration. While Pirate Radio was a term well before the 1960’s and referred to any illegal broadcast, it’s interesting to me that the pirate radio stations in Britain were on actual boats! I was originally gonna be broadcasting it from the Allegheny River here in Pittsburgh, but Aqua had the idea of actually broadcasting to Eurofurence, since it was just a few weeks ago. We weren't sure what to call the radio station at first, but The Ark was so incredibly fitting we knew immediately that no other options stood up to that standard. I chose 106.6, since The Flood story begins in Genesis (Book 1) Chapter 6. Also, the station isn't being used in Hamburg.
Since we were basing our pirate radio station off of The Boat That Rocked, I decided to revive our rock theme song and completely re-mix it, and I switched out our typical jazz and lo-fi themes with rock music.
At Anthrocon, I had the distinct pleasure of meeting our charismatic Australian friend who played Stuart and André, and he was the first person who came to mind to host our pirate broadcast. His style of delivery is a bit cooler than a lot of American radio broadcasters, but he’s got a swagger about him that sells the role, in my opinion.
Writing this episode was pretty labor intensive for me. I had help from co-writers throughout the process, and I couldn’t have done what I did without Eggshell’s framework and Aqua’s foundation, but man. I forgot how much work this is. It’s… a lot of work. Holy shit. I’m letting Eggshell handle the Howloween episode this year. She’s got a great work ethic and an even better turn around time, and it’s a real asset to be able to rely on that.
We knew we were gonna bring Brad back for this episode. Originally in the cold open, it was just gonna be hidden in the background, but it was both too gold to not feature, and the cold open was a bit stale without a little humor to spice it up. Lovecat is upset I didn’t get in one of his favorite lines, but I couldn’t cram the whole bit in. Maybe I’ll release it as a bonus.
Let’s talk music. I wrote the riff for Worlds Apart several months ago, and it sort of sat in limbo for a long time. I wanted to make sure to include Kynophile in the writing process, so I started by letting him come up with a melody, and then I refined it. He also chose the them and wrote the first draft of the lyrics. I passed back my ideas for changes, and I wanted to give him the final word on the end result. Alas, life got in the way for Kynophile, so I finished it up this month and we got it taken care of. I had a bit of a eureka moment with the bass line late in production, which was previously bland and boring. I’m pretty fucking happy with the end result. I’ve basically finished 4 tracks for the upcoming album, which is looking like it’s gonna just be an EP. I’m trying to finish two more. I had more planned, but time is not on my side.
Konny of Shiv sent me his first draft of Sheep Shagger Blues, and I really liked the lyrics. I took the time to help him refine the mix. He’d send me progress, and I’d give him some suggestions, like doubling the guitars and EQing the guitar and bass, and I processed his drums with my drum programs. I would have liked to refine it even more, but Eurofurence cut our time short. Frankly, though, having heard how far it came from start to finish, it turned out really fucking well.
Zipwok sent me a few different songs, including a short version of the one I used which had some extra arrangement. I’ll use one of them next month for Howloween. I really like the sleeping dog song, though.
I needed one more song, and a couple of people I asked either turned me down or didn’t get back to me. So I reached out to another friend of mine, who I was surprised was very excited to contribute. They wrote an original song for the podcast in a mere couple of days, which is pretty impressive considering it’s quite lovely.
Dear Non-Zoos was inspired by a bunch of things that happened this past year, involving a puppet-wielding fox with some bad habits, an animal control podcast who wasn’t prepared to deal with us, and a criminologist who appeared on said podcast and completely showed her ass. These segments were the very very last to come together. Typically we have a production cycle to keep things on time, but we didn’t actually start on writing these until production week, which is not ideal. I literally spent the past 24 hours putting them all together. I’m just glad they actually came out as well as they did!
There was a phrase that Aqua picked up from another zoo that he used to succinctly describe what our podcast says: “You are not sick. You are not alone. And You are worthy of love.” I repeated it to my therapist the next day, and she said, “You should put that front and center so people can easily find that on your website.” So I did! And some adaptation of the phrase is repeated three times in this episode. I don’t know if the zoo wants me to shout out their name, so I won’t, but thanks for the inspiration!
Also, I got FULL use of some AI voice actors, and they turned out pretty fucking well! I used EVERY allotted character I had in the bank for this month, down to the very last one, and JUST finished the lines I needed without having to pay for more. This can’t replace all voice acting, but it DOES help pad out voices we can’t do ourselves, and it’s really great when I need something at the last minute and I have no one I can call upon.
Finally, say hello to our shiny new website, at long last! Same layout, new foundation. We’ve shed our annoying Wordpress site, which had become a liability, and now we’re completely static. This allows us to turn off CloudFlare’s Attack Mode, AND it loads way faster! Let us know if you find something broken. I’m really pleased, and incredibly relieved to have this finally taken care of.
We also have finally made the jump off of Twitter! We’re now on Bluesky @zoo.wtf. We’re still looking for a Mastodon server to join. We want one that’s too large for people to block federating with, but whose Terms of Service we can unambiguously follow. Let us know if you know of any!
Remember, Samhain is around the corner! If you have a lost loved one you want to dedicate a message to, reach out at howloween@zoo.wtf! We’re also interested in speaking with trans zoos for an upcoming episode!
Alright, I think that’s it. Being back in the swing of things is… hard.
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Which song was your favorite from this episode? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
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SHE6 Oops! More Emails!
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Thoughts About the Episode
The final hiatus episode is finished, and I got it done in a reasonable amount of time. I’m pleased with that. Thanks for all your emails!
Unfortunately, I think this experiment ended up failing. I don’t really feel like I was able to rest during the hiatus, and without the impetus of a task at hand, we weren’t able to really bank any work either. While the workload was lighter, I still ended up having to typically spend a full week every month doing the part of the work that’s the most labor intensive — the production. And when I’m doing production, getting anything else I want to do done doesn’t really happen.
Ultimately, I wasn’t able to devote time to the things I wanted to, and I didn’t really get the feeling of having a break. Luckily, I at least have one full month with no production work whatsoever, so that should be helpful.
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What kind of content do you want to hear when we come back from our break? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
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SHE5 Zoo Pride 2023!
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Thoughts About the Episode
Happy Pride! Sorry for the delay. Since I wasn’t at home, our YouTube account wouldn’t give me access.
I definitely went over my 10 hours, even if you don’t include all the time spent finishing up the song for this episode — which I don’t, because it was just convenient timing that I was working on it anyway at the same time. I’m at AC typing this, so I don’t really wanna spend to much time here. Still, very pleased with how the music is turning out. Awooo!
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What kind of content do you want to hear when we come back from our break? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
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SHE4 A Zooey Crossover Episode!
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Thoughts About the Episode
This is the first time ever that anyone else has taken over production of an episode. Tarro from Zooey.pub organized and produced this episode, with a little oversight and help from me. I’m still clocking in at 6-7 hours, but considering that this could be the clocked time for a regular episode, it would be nice to do more often.
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What kind of content do you want to hear when we come back from our break? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
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SHE3 Oops! All Emails!
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Thoughts About the Episode
I went WAAAAY over on my hours for this month. Over 20 hours this time. Ahhhhh! Well, hopefully I can make up for it next month.
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What kind of content do you want to hear when we come back from our break? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
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SHE2 Zoo's Line
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Thoughts About the Episode
This was fun to do. It’s been a busy month, so I’m glad I’m still on break. Pushin’ that 10 hour limit this month. I’d like to get more of my own shit done this month, but next month is gonna be kind of labor intensive for the podcast.
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What kind of content do you want to hear when we come back from our break? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
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SHE1 Calzoo Interview
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Thoughts About the Episode
Hiatus is going well, really enjoying myself. Clocking in under 10 hours, so this is working out well!
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What kind of content do you want to hear when we come back from our break? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
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S4E12 Over the Hill
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Thoughts About the Episode
This will be my last full blog post for a while. Six months to be exact. I’ll still update and let you know a new episode is out, but in the spirit of taking a break, I won’t be getting into the nitty gritty of production or thoughts about the episodes.
This was a good episode to ease me into hiatus. I’ve spent just over 20 hours on it, which was mostly spent recording and producing. Our new writer had sent in a really absurd but touching “Airplane Sketch” a long time ago that I’m glad we were able to work in, because it turned out really well. Also, just got access to a cool new tool: competent AI voice acting. Check out the stewardess. She’s pretty impressive, no? Outside of producing the skit, it was just shooting the shit and going over emails. Nothing taxing or overblown. I hope that you enjoy what we have, as simple as the content may be.
I apologize in advance for the long political discussion during the emails. It seemed as good an episode as any to tackle that kind of email, and I hope you’ll appreciate how significantly I pared down what was originally a 30 minute discussion on the topic.
We’ve already recorded the next episode featuring Underdog and Gar of the original CalZoo from the 1990’s. It was a pleasant conversation, and I’m hoping that the appeal of hearing their stories of zoo history is a good signal that the hiatus doesn’t mean it’s time to tune out.
Beyond that, the goal is less than 10 hours a month, so don’t expect a whole lot of production, but I hope we’ll still be able to entertain in the interim. I really, really hope this hiatus is enough to recharge the batteries and kick into high gear for season 5. I’m nervous it might not be enough time, or that I’ll end up pushing too much with getting an episode out every month that it won’t feel like I took time off. But I’m hopeful. The first thing I’m going to do is clean my friggin’ house from top to bottom so I have a restful space to spend the break in. I also plan to travel and see folks throughout the year, so that will be nice.
We’re also considering a radical format shift, in terms of how we release episodes. No announcements yet, but based on some feedback about what people have enjoyed this year, we wanna make sure we continue providing really high-quality content.
Well, I guess that’s it. I’ll see you in 6 months, my friends! Stay defiant!
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Are you a fan of the easy breezy conversation episodes? What kind of content do you want to hear when we come back from our break? Let us know in the comments, or e-mail us!
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