Four Of Swords. Art By Jesse Lonergan, From The Unveiled Tarot.

Commission for @sieveyourtea for the fic "Blood of the Covenant"! Thank you for the support!

i love you like all-fire

Snow's influence in the gradual erasure of the Covey from District 12's culture. In TBOSAS, they're well-known as performers. In Sunrise on the Reaping, they no longer sing in public. Lenore has to cut a deal just to be able to play the piano. In Hunger Games, Katniss, a singer herself, doesn't mention the Covey once.

today's warm up: cosmic whales are done, cosmic sea slugs? they're in baby

rip maysilee donner you would have loved johanna mason

Something that I think is important about Wyatt as a character is how he highlights the stupidity of the district system. I know that the human love of sorting ourselves into categories meant that every YA series for a while had a bunch of different groups with associated traits that tweens could take uquizzes about, but The Hunger Games isn't like Divergent or Harry Potter where young adults get grouped based on their personalities. Sure, the districts all have industries they're known for and the tributes are clearly shaped by wherever they grew up, but being born into District Four doesn't actually mean that you'll like fish. Wyatt is brilliant when it comes to numbers, but in District Twelve he can only channel that into gambling. Imagine if he'd been born into District Three with a father like Beetee, what he could have done with his mathematical talents. There's mention of it with Maysilee too, how she doesn't want to run the candy store but her options are that or the mines.

I guess what I'm saying is that the district system is great for keeping people oppressed because they see their fellows as "other," which is why it is a tool of fascism and not a practical way to run a society. It doesn't matter who is in what group, it matters that they internalize their group identity to the point that they ignore the similarities between them.

Hi April!

I have some of questions about the public-facing transcripts of Magnus Protocol.

They have a very “shooting script” vibe. Are these the same as what’s given to the cast, a very close derivative, or something else?

If they aren’t what’s given to the cast, when in the process do they get made?

A weird copyediting question: What drove the change from the monospaced font (I think Courier New) to the bolder sans serif font? And is there a reason the headers and footers are the old style?

An esoteric “my masters is in rhetoric” question: The scripts contain quite a bit of content that isn’t in the audio. In the other hand, I hear that The Magnus Protocol is a podcast. Are you able to talk about your personal opinion on their relationship to the text? I’m not asking for an answer on authorial intent or the “on high” answer, but I’m curious how various people involved in making Protocol think of them. (As an example, I’ve been thinking of them, to go back to the as “apocrypha”; I think of them as true, but also not as part of the text, if that makes sense. More like annotations or marginalia.)

Anyway, welcome to the public Tumblr stuff! It’s cool to have you here.

Oooooh very happy to answer this, mostly because I think it’s a neat example of how we work as a team.

The short answer is yes the transcripts are derivative of the shooting scripts but they aren’t the same.

Alex and Cathy are both very sensitive audiophiles who have worked together to make those layers and layers of interesting audio bits some people catch but others don’t (the lie glitches are an example as well as the whispers in episode 10) Conversely, I have mild progressive hearing loss and handle the transcription.

As I am also the producer, I know all of the plot points, beats, and important bits that need to be communicated for the story to work. I use the shooting script as a guide and listen to the final release audio along with the shooting script and make edits as I go. Sometimes different takes are used, sometimes audio cues change etc. I also try to obfuscate information that’s not yet revealed in the timeline.

I will admit I don’t catch everything, and definitely make mistakes, but ideally the transcripts are designed in such a way as to make sure people who may not be as keyed in to the highly detailed audio execution can get a similar experience by reading the transcript. I have such respect for Cathy for the work she puts in artistically, we want to make sure people know what they’re hearing.

Our audio team are exceptional in such a way that they are constantly trying to balance creative narrative with accessibility. You can get all of the information in the audio, but we recognize that’s difficult and we are often people’s first experience in audio drama, so we balance it with the extra information in the transcripts.

The layout and design of the transcript was influenced by external guidance for the visually impaired who recommend 14 point bold Ariel as the most readable. We also release Word versions so people can use dark mode or adjust font size and style if needed. Accessibility is different for everyone, we do our best to make sure we have options available.

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For amusing behind the scenes mistakes I know I have made:

People may have remembered the old pilot had ‘Norris’ labeled as ‘Martin’ this was because we changed Norris’s name so many times I didn’t know what to call him and accidentally forgot to change the Martin placeholder. 😬

So yea. I’m not perfect and nor are the transcripts but we try our best.

effie was the last person he saw before entering the games and the first person he really saw upon getting out. and then he had to see her. on his birthday. as they sent kids to die. every. single. year. how much he must have hated how much he liked her