The grandest railway this side of Nowhere

NOW IS THE TIME TO START!!

Podcast description:

To existing Penumbra Podcast fans who haven’t listened:

ABANDON THE IDEA THAT YOU HAVE TO CATCH UP ON JUNOVERSE OR SECOND CITADEL BEFORE YOU START LISTENING TO THIRST.

You can just start it! No one can stop you!

If you enjoy other stories from The Penumbra Podcast, you will almost certainly enjoy this one. The creators of the show clearly learned a lot of lessons from their time making the Junoverse/Second Citadel series, and the experience shows in Thirst. The sound design quality is well-done, there’s a vast variety of talented actors involved, and the writing is engaging and balanced

To non-horror fans:

As someone who is certifiably not a fan of horror and gets scared very easily, I promise that there is not a single episode of this show that has left me feeling overly frightened or anxious. The show definitely has dark themes and a general feeling of existential dread, but instead of giving me nightmares, my reaction after finishing each episode is always just excitement to see what’s going to happen next

That being said, obviously you can check content warnings, which are provided alongside every episode, with timestamps

To horror fans:

I can’t speak to this a ton as I’m not a horror fan, but from listening to behind the scenes content I can safely say this podcast has a lot of work put into the horror elements, and it does some really interesting exploration of many different themes, ranging from existential dread, psychological horror, death games, and even some other elements which have been recently foreshadowed…

Anouk Kalhara is THE haunted final girl protagonist

Somebody else could probably talk more about this than I could, but at least from seeing horror enjoyers talking about the show, it seems to really deliver on its themes and genre references

Reasons to listen (for anyone):

Genuinely compelling and nuanced female protagonist (Anouk Kalhara my beloved)

Relevant political themes and exploration of those themes

A cast of varied and unique characters with a range of personalties that you can pick your favorite from and get unreasonably attached to

An intriguing mystery that is still in the process of unraveling

Queer characters and themes, including a bisexual protagonist, lesbians, and a trans man as one of the primary characters

Lotssss of ingrained criticism of heteronormativity and amatonormativity

A very fun conceit of a fucked-up death game disguised as a cute romance-themed reality show

And more!

Why NOW is the time to start listening:

The show just announced it will be going on a two-month hiatus, which means now is the perfect time to catch up while no new episodes are being released

Because it’s good and deserves more fans PLEEASSEEEE 🙏🙏🙏

So that everyone can start posting about Anouk Kalhara immediately

If you're out there and you haven't given it a shot yet, please dip a toe into these wild waters! It's made by the same people who make the Juno and Second Citadel series you like, and we need early adopters like this lovely person to help get the word out.

I know in the streaming and binging era it's tempting to wait until the end of a season or series to binge the whole thing, but shoestring indie projects like ours can't survive long without regular listeners. I know it sounds hyperbolic, but we mean it in the most literal sense when we say that without you listening and talking about it, indie art can't survive long-term. The Netflixes and Amazons of the world can afford to wait four years and release a season all at once because they're so big and wealthy; we have bills now, and those bills can't wait until the end of the season or series. If you wait until then, the grim reality is that it will probably be too late to help us keep telling our stories.

So please: even if you can't afford to help fund us on Supercast or Patreon, try Thirst out and tell your friends. Word of mouth is the only advertising that has ever worked for us, and it's also the one kind we can't do ourselves. We need your help.

Thank you for the kind words... and thank you to anybody who gives Thirst a shot! We're on the same podcast feed as always and you can find us on Youtube now, too. See you there!