The Cellar Letters

Unfortunately, turns out his twin brother worked a secret agency called the redacted unit, which hides "aberrations" (basically anomalies) from the public eye! And now, if Jacob is discovered, he'll probably be "disappeared". Even worse, turns out his brother was an absolute ass that everyone hates!

Theatre Kid types are performers first, podcasters second. They're making podcasts because they want to make juicy roles for themselves and their various theatre kid-esque friends. Many of them are also into TTRPGs because their idea of fun is getting together with their friends to do silly voices and pretend to be a talking sword or whatever. I'm going to be cheeky and tag @thekilda here because Naomi Clarke is a Theatre Kid to her bones 💕

Hermits, meanwhile, are writers first, podcasters second. They're making podcasts because they wanted a way to get their stories out to an audience, they probably started out in single-voice shows that they begrudgingly voiced themselves because they didn't have a gang of pals to call on. And my cheeky tag for that is @thesiltverses - I Am In Eskew is a classic Hermit Podcast imo, and the fact Jon didn't cast himself as Faulkner in TSV, for example, says he's got pretty low Theatre Kid tendencies.

fwiw, I'm firmly on the Hermit end with some latent Theatre Kid. I started out on my own, but refuse to give up the spotlight now I'm in it!

So now I'm curious! Podcast writers, where do you think you fall?

Talking podcast production, the start of their friendship, and a few surprise tools that will help us later.

they're dumbasses your honor

Eli's been implied to be send out to field work a lot (consistently even), so I feel like he would be pretty fit. Jacob on the other hand, is not at all ready for this new job

I've lurked in the Cellar Letters discord for a bit and am so surprised and shocked that I haven't seen anyone make a connection that the entity behind the Cellar Letters could very well be Nyarlathotep.

First and foremost. Jamie has stated that the Cellar Letters is inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft

Due to the Cellar Letter's mention of Egypt, so many people have jumped the gun into thinking that the series is about Egyptian mythology despite having no other connection to it aside from Egypt, forgetting that Lovecraft has rooted some of his own mythos in Egypt, namely Nyarlathotep.

The Cellar Letters recalls a story of a class of students going on a trip to Egypt, there, the class finds a black, egg-shaped stone and sacrifice themselves.

This story is a parallel to the "Haunter of the Dark" which depicts taking a stone, called the Shining Trapezohedron, from the tomb of Nephren-Ka, to summon Nyarlathotep. Then, in order to gain knowledge from Nyarlathotep, he requires human sacrifices.

The Cellar Letters also holds some similarities with "The Dreams in the Witch-House" in which as man is living in an old house with a hidden room and he slowly goes mad as he has hallucinations and sleep walks. Throughout the story, he is being tricked and led by Nyarlathotep to sign his name in his book (like the book of the devil).

Most stories of Nyarlathotep portray his ability to make others crazy and lose awareness of themselves and the world around them until they fall into submission as a servant. The narrators of these short stories can be deemed as unreliable narrators, much like Nate can be. Nate lacks a lot of memory of events that occurred to him, he loses track of time, and the events that he experiences are different from how others hear it.

Jamie utilized The Complete Cthulhu Mythos Tales as research.

I also own this complete series and I think there are also influences from "The Thing on the Doorstep" in The Cellar Letters. First, I should mention that this story takes place in Maine like The Cellar Letters does.

Here is an excerpt from "The Thing on the Doorstep:"

"What he said was not to be believed, even in centuried and legend-haunted Arkham; but he threw out his dark lore with a sincerity and convincingness which made one fear for his sanity. He talked about terrible meetings in lonely places, of Cyclopean ruins in the heart of the Maine woods beneath which vast staircases lead down to abysses of nighted secrets, of complex angles that lead through invisible walls to other regions of time and space, and of hideous exchanges of personality that permitted explorations in remote and forbidden places, on other worlds, and in different space-time continua"

I don't think I need to emphasize the points of scary Maine woods and secrets at the bottom of staircases. While this story features references of Shub-niggarath and azathoth and not of Nyarlathotep, I still find it indicative of the Cellar Letters ties to Lovecraftian Mythos.

There is also another podcast featuring Nyarlathotep as the antagonist, and that is Malevolent by Harlan Guthrie. u/romychestnut posted on reddit asking if there was a connection between Malevolent and the Cellar Letters since Harlan joined the cast as a police officer named John (which is also the name of a character in Malevolent.)

BOTH creators replied to this reddit post. u/TheCellarLetters responded with "TEEHEE" while Harlan (u/thelirivalley) responded with this:

In Malevolent, it's version of Nyarlathotep, "Kayne" explained how there are many variations of himself across dimensions. Even though Kayne claimed to have killed every other version of himself, it does not mean that a version of him could not have existed in The Cellar Letters before he had hunted them down. (And wouldn't it be funny to have John in the Cellar Letters be Nyarlathotep after Kayne asked what great old one would name himself John?)

The start of Episode 79 of the Cellar Letters really hit the nail on the coffin for me. At the end of the previous episode, Nate is reading a letter and when he comes across a name, he blacks out. At the start of Episode 79, he wakes up in the back of John's car and the second he wakes up, he utters "-Tep" as if finishing the word that first caused him to black out the episode before.

I am still currently trying to find the part this next part, but I *think* that in one episode Nate says the word "Mi Go," which is a direct reference to a bug-like Lovecraftian creature that worships Nyarlathotep. This part is still uncertain as I have yet to find the episode that I heard this and I don't have transcripts I can quickly scan through so this is unproven.