When people usually recommend something to take up your time, they mostly go for the mainstream things — TV shows, movies, books, obvious choices. It’s very rare that you ever get somebody telling you to watch or read something other than that, unless you specifically ask.
Well, whether you specifically asked for it or not, here’s an article about some alternative media — things you wouldn’t normally consider to be recommended, but that I’m telling you to give a chance, because it deserves it!
Podcasts
As most of you know, podcasts are another way of saying "radio show I can download and don’t have to listen to live’. This medium has grown in the past few years, but it’s taken a huge leap forward with the story-telling kind of podcasts. Among them is the very popular, very successful Welcome to Night Vale, which has been going on for about two years at this point, and has gathered quite the world wide following.
WTNV is a podcast in the guise of a community radio for a small town, Night Vale, located somewhere in the desert in North America (we believe). A lot of strange things happen in Night Vale, strange things that are reportedly normal and shouldn’t cause alarm to anyone who has lived there all their lives, as we who listen to it have. It is brought to us by Commonplace Books’ Jeffrey Craner and Joseph Fink, and narrated by the smooth, loveable voice of Cecil Baldwin.
I recently had the pleasure of witnessing Cecil Baldwin perform a Welcome to Night Vale live show in The Olympia Theatre in Dublin, and I can honestly say that I never thought a person I had only heard and never seen could actually sound as great in real life as he does on my iTunes. The man is a great talent, and the writers do a wonderful job of keeping the suspense and the humour at an all-time high, whether it’s a live show or a recorded one.
Web Series
YouTube is a great, thriving community. From YouTubers who gain recognition all the way down to funny videos, somewhere along the line we find web series. A recent and very popular trend with these type of shows is the adaptation of classic novels into a series of short videos that follow the story as closely as possible, with modern influences of course. Web series are a great way of getting a quick, 5 minute fix of something, and they also tend to update at least twice a week, which is great news for all of us impatient folk!
The most popular one, to date, appears to be The Lizze Bennet Diaries, a retelling of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. However, 2014 has also seen the birth of two great new such shows — Frankenstein, MD and Carmilla.
Frankenstein, MD follows the exploits of young Victoria Frankenstein as she seeks to accomplish the impossible, with the help of her trusty lab-partner, Iggy. It’s a fresh way of looking at the classic Frankenstein story, especially considering the fact that our hero has been turned into a heroine.
Carmilla is a college adaptation of the novel by Joseph Sheridan le Fanu, and is told by Laura, who finds herself stuck in the middle of a bunch of mysterious disappearances, a love triangle between her tutor and a vampire, and that same vampire being her roommate. The series boasts a majority female cast, and even the tagline should be enough to convince you to watch it (“Love will have its sacrifices”…shivers!)
Web Comics
Web comics tend to be a great way of getting a momentary lapse of boredom out of your way. Usually about 4 panels long and updating regularly, there’s something out there for everyone — whether you’re looking for absolutely random and making no sense, to a character driven story that takes up years of your time.
Wolf Puppy and Cyanide and Happiness are the perfect examples of "totally random and unexpected’, with the latter being extremely popular worldwide and updating every day for over ten years.
Poorly Drawn Lines and The System are also seemingly random, although they do sometimes follow a bit of a plot with each other, in that some comics reference each other. While not as random as the two mentioned above, they are still a delight to read, and maybe a bit better drawn as well…
For a good mix of random and plot, Battle Dog is the story of a princess who must battle evil (reluctantly) with her chosen companion — her pet dog. However, we’re still not entirely sure if Battle Dog has some sort of magical powers that help him help his owner, or if he’s really just a dog who’s great at doing dog-like things…
However, the winners of "great plot’ go to Go Get A Roomie, Something Positive and Girls with Slingshots, all drawn by independent artists with great stories in mind, that probably didn’t start out being this great!
Go Get A Roomie follows Lillian and Roomie, a mysterious friend she makes who tends to sleep in her house a lot, but who won’t reveal her real name. In the midst of all their adventures in domesticity, we also see various relationships being struck up, friendly, romantic and otherwise.
Something Positive follows the adventures of a group of friends living in Boston, who get up to all sorts of adventures — it’ll pretty much leave you either wheezing with laughter, clawing your eyes out with frustration, or sitting in a heap in a corner of your room crying. There is no in between with this masterpiece. (Also, one of the main characters is a boneless cat. For comic relief, of course!)
Girls with Slingshots also takes place in the Boston area, and in fact, it and Something Positive have collaborated in the past to give us combined comic pages! Girls with Slingshots is primarily about Hazel, a woman with no plan in life, who ends up trying her best to waddle her way through life, love, and a self-employed gig. One of the main characters is a Mexican cactus with a Scottish accent that only the drunk characters can interact with. It’s basically the personification of everything every 20-year-old feels, with a talking cactus added.
So there you have it folks! Rather than, next time, asking for a new TV show, movie, or book to save you from boredom, try one of these on for size, and you probably won’t be so disappointed!