(image via nightvalepresents)
The first episode of Alice Isn’t Dead Season 2 is here, and it’s just as interesting as I hoped it would be. It seems like some of my assumptions about who was playing Alice was wrong, but that just gives us more questions than answers. The episode also does an excellent job at exploring the psychological effect of police brutality on people of color.
Spoilers for Alice Isn’t Dead’s “The Last Free Place” below.
(image via nightvalepresents)
I may have mentioned before that Alice Isn’t Dead is one of my all time favorite podcasts, and it’s finally back! The second season of Alice Isn’t Dead will begin on April 4th, but until then we have been treated to three short four minute segments to build up to the Season 2 plot. Each segment introduces us to what our protagonist Keisha has been doing since the events of Season 1, and we finally meet the elusive Alice, letting us get a sense of who she is. These segments also start to allude to a new evil that might be even more dangerous than the Thistle Man.
art by Margherita Barrera (x)
A couple moments ago, I was finally able to listen to the season finale of the podcast Alice Isn’t Dead. We have already discussed how much we love this podcast, but now, I want to specifically talk about how it portrays disability. Usually stories show someone’s disability as a weakness they need to overcome in order to be “real heroes”, or they are portrayed as gaining extra supernatural abilities that more than “makes up” for their disability. But Alice Isn’t Dead did something wholly different: the podcast showed how someone can use their disability to help them get through a situation.
Major spoilers for Alice Isn’t Dead and a trigger warning for anxiety & panic attacks after the jump.
Recently I have been embracing my queerness more and more. I’ve always been open and proud about my pansexuality, but circumstances have made it so that I couldn’t be as out and as proud as I wanted to be. For example, even now I can’t talk about or even mention my sexuality at my job, or I could be fired—the hazards of working for a Catholic church. I was nervous about going to my local Pridefest because if someone saw me I could have lost my job just for attending. This is an obstacle that is sadly still in my life, but other obstacles have since fallen away. Before this, I hadn’t come out to my father; however, I have now, with thankfully very few obstacles. I have also been engaging more with the queer community: something I was previously afraid to even attempt because of how prevalent I heard the bi and pan-phobia was in the community. But so far, to my delight, I haven’t personally encountered any such issues. Now I can be somewhat more open in my life, and the recent Pulse shooting prompted me to be even more open in defiance of all the hate. Together, this all has led me to want to engage more in the queer community and queer culture.
Of course, being a nerd, I naturally wanted to look into queer stories in sci-fi and fantasy. Sadly, as you can guess, there are very few.
Recently I started listening to the Night Vale Presents Podcast: Alice Isn’t Dead and I will say that it might be one of the greatest things I have listened to in a while. I found myself relating a lot to our nameless narrator. Not only is she a queer protagonist searching the strange and terrifying world for her wife, she is also a character struggling with an anxiety disorder, and that is something I certainly can identify with.
All transcripts of Alice Isn’t Dead are from Alice Scripts.
Spoilers up to Episode 8.
We live in dark and difficult times. And while it may seem trivial compared to, say, the reality that Donald Trump is still running for president, one symptom of these times that’s really starting to get to me is the ongoing prevalence of the “bury your gays” trope. This trope, as the name suggests, highlights the ubiquity with which queer characters are killed off in our popular fiction. It’s 2016, people; it’s time to stop using it.
That’s where Alice Isn’t Dead comes in.
Lady Geek Girl and Friends 