Fiction Frequency

Today we're celebrating one of our canonically queer characters in Dominus, Father Jonas Katigbak, for HIS month and HIS day as a baklang aktibistang pari (Gay activist priest).

(art by wolfythewitch and jaradraws)

I won't spoil too much for the series at large, but I can confirm that Jonas is canonically gay.

He was gay long before he became a priest, and this fact did in some small way contribute to him becoming a priest in the first place.

It's also one of the reasons he almost didn't become a priest at all.

His favourite director is Lino Brocka, a gay radical antifascist filmmaker and national artist of the Philippines, and his favourite film is Brocka's "Macho Dancer", which is what helped him come to terms with his sexuality.

(which just released a 4k restoration trailer on Youtube LAST WEEK??? complete coincidence btw I had no idea it was happening)

And while he doesn't talk about his queerness publicly due to his position, it's not exactly a secret among the nuns in his parish. Jonas can definitely be heard chanting a familiar chant at protests alongside other queer radicals:

MAKIBEKI! WAG MASHOKOT! 🌈✊🏽🗣️

Malevolent THRESHOLD is out now...

Shadows at the Door Productions is an audio drama production company based in the North East of England, specialising in immersive atmosphere that tugs at the heartstrings as much as it chills the spine.

Our productions:

Our main production, Shadows at the Door the Podcast, is a horror anthology where each free standing story is followed by a discussion hosted by Mark Nixon and David Ault. Along with occasional guests they dissect the story's themes, the production process, related thoughts and recommendations, and whatever else comes to mind. Think of it as the chatter around a campfire after the ghost story ends! Available wherever you listen to podcasts.

Earworm: a Ghostly Audio Drama Musical is... exactly what it sounds like. Featuring Geoffrey Troughton, a recurring protagonist from SatD's main feed, this powerhouse of a production is fully canon and will lodge itself in the back of your head as you nod and hum along – exactly as the insidious Ethan Nilsson planned it. Earworm was funded separately through Kickstarter, and the whole production is available for download here. If you just want the enticing beats, the soundtrack is on Bandcamp.

Future projects:

At time of posting we have just announced our upcoming crowdfunding project: Beck's End, coming later this year. Stay tuned for updates, this has been a long time coming!

The people behind it all:

Mark Nixon, creative director at Shadows at the Door Productions. Lead writer, casting director, producer, director, voice and sound editor, co-host and occasional voice actor on Shadows at the Door the Podcast. Likes Earl Grey tea a normal amount.

David Ault, lead actor and co-host of Shadows at the Door the Podcast. If you think you recognise his voice from somewhere, you're probably right (he has appeared in many things) but around these parts we know him affectionately as The Entire Cast even if that is no longer an accurate title.

Nico Vetesse, composer of all the amazing music you'll hear on Shadows at the Door the Podcast. His music, including three soundtrack albums from SatD, can be found on Bandcamp under the name We Talk of Dreams.

Useful links:

Find us on Patreon!

Support us on ko-fi!

Join us on Discord!

Visit Mark's website!

Find us on Twitter and Bluesky!

Check out the SatD Instagram!

And the Beck's End one!

G.O.B.L.I.N.S merch is here!

You can now buy these amazing designs from Andrew @cloudyappleart on anything your heart desires, from t-shirts to phone cases. Visit our RedBubble store and make your life complete. 

The perfect answer to literally all your gifting and personal styles needs forever

This has been a long time coming, we're beyond excited to finally have reached the point where we can say:

Please join us on Kickstarter to help make Beck's End, our atmospheric folk horror audio drama, a reality!

We're working with some fantastic people to make this happen, and we are absolutely certain you'll love what we're making. Once the show is made it will be released for free, in full, for everyone (the Shadows at the Door guarantee!) but in order for that to happen, we need some help in the coming month. Please support our campaign if you can, any amount you can spare will help, and if you cannot – trust us, we know what the times are like – a reblog, or a share, or a "hey look at this thing I found on tumblr" to a friend or a discord server will all be massively appreciated too. The AD community on here is one of the best corners of the internet, and we can't wait to bring you a brand new show to love!

the new season has been out since mid-April and we are already halfway through it. i know the WTNV team has been posting about it on their social channels for months leading up to it. i dont think we are doing anything differently, promotion-wise, than we did with the first three seasons which seemed to find their audience much more quickly.

personally i find it rather frustating given the amount of work we put into this show, but im not really sure what to do about it. i know part of it is down to the fact that audiofiction is a far more competitive field than it used to be, and there's also so much noise and chaos in the world these days that its hard to find anything, and so many terrible problems that fiction feels less important.

The death of all "social" media didn't help either. Whenever I people watch now (and I do it myself) it's just doom scrolling to death, with the algorithm feeding me, not getting what I actually want to follow. (Bluesky and Tumblr behave better, but they have nothing like the numbers twitter did.)

the new season has been out since mid-April and we are already halfway through it. i know the WTNV team has been posting about it on their social channels for months leading up to it. i dont think we are doing anything differently, promotion-wise, than we did with the first three seasons which seemed to find their audience much more quickly.

personally i find it rather frustating given the amount of work we put into this show, but im not really sure what to do about it. i know part of it is down to the fact that audiofiction is a far more competitive field than it used to be, and there's also so much noise and chaos in the world these days that its hard to find anything, and so many terrible problems that fiction feels less important.

1.) a mild oversaturation problem in the audio drama space. back in the day, and by that i mean the early 2010's, night vale/night vale presents projects were a dime a dozen and made people aware that podcasts could even be used as vehicles for storytelling. nowadays, there's SO MUCH stuff coming out on a monthly, and, dare i say, weekly basis at this point that getting lost in the shuffle of new content is inevitable

2.) alice isn't dead came out about a decade ago, around the same time as night vale's peak in popularity, so people losing track of a sequel being in production is mildly understandable

3.) a harsh truth is that the general fascination of the audio drama space has almost always been about white men with either heavily implied or canon homoerotic relationships with other white men. wlw, especially if they're woc, are treated as a divisive niche in the long run and just don't attract the tumblr hordes always looking for their new white boy of the week

4.) social media has changed. a lot. i blame all of this on the twitter takeover that used to be one of the best places to advertise audio drama back in the day (i would know, i was there) but ever since the change in ownership, people had to gravitate more to different platforms and rebuild their following from scratch on websites that aren't quite suited for promoting shows (that's not to say you can't build a substantial following, of course. it's always possible.)

Find me an audio drama that matches this vibe.

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Meet Moeen: widower, father, teacher, and long standing member of the community.

Moeen does his best, but things have never been the same since he lost his wife. When his daughter Bailey went off to university it was like a piece of him had left too. But she's back now, he needs her, and he'll never let her go again...