Eskew by Episode II: Reproduction

In which Jon and Muna offer commentary, anecdotes & random thoughts on every episode of I Am In Eskew.

This week, we're talking about Episode II: Reproduction, where David Ward explores his taste for modern art.

Jon:

OK, this is still one of my fondest-remembered episodes - even though, like its predecessor, I think it takes too much work to get through the set-up. 

We need to meet the Architect, we need to get to the gallery, we need to understand the concept, the concept needs to become darker and nastier, all before we can get to the fireworks factory.

But I really like the use of the space, and the sting moment of the monster appearing on the map. The stuff with the shifting rooms is high-concept, I guess, but structurally it's also quite traditionalist horror, in the sense of the protagonists entering an abandoned space and realising they're in deep, deep trouble once they get right into the middle of it. 

And I don't think we go back to that well as much, or at all, later in the show.

It was also the first episode I began writing, and in another world I think it could very easily have been the start of the series; it probably lays the groundwork for the show in general better than Episode I did. 

It starts to give a more coherent view of Eskew as a monstrous place that is often sincerely trying to follow the rules of being a real city, but is completely incapable of doing so.

Muna:

I am less of a fan of series that spend too much time setting up. I much prefer the reader being dropped into the action, or the thoughts of the protagonist. So for me, although this episode sets up the story much better, the initial episode works better thematically. Much of Eskew is about the reader/listener trying to figure out where they are, similar to David trying to figure out where he is.

So we have to agree to disagree here!

Jon:

That's really interesting, and I'll be keen to hear the episodes that pick up in media res best for you. 

We visit a lot of distinct locations with their own rules which need to be established, and we usually need to introduce new side-characters as well (because we've killed the old ones off), but we also do have continuity and context that needs to be included in terms of what's happening to David between episodes.

So we definitely do have a lot of set-up and baggage per episode on average, whereas other horror shows like, for example, Knifepoint Horror, can just pick up and go.

Jon

Oh - and I do think the fakeouts between episodes (‘last episode, I was talking about airports’...) are fun, to give us the sense that only some of David’s messages are getting through to us. 

We do inevitably drop that pretence that this is a 'real' podcast later on, of course, when David becomes more personally involved in the action of the show, but I don't regret that irregularity - I think it's fairly harmless, all things considered, and once the narrative speeds up it's easy to forget and forgive.

That sense of unreliable reality is also a great cover for any continuity screw-ups, of which there are more than a few, and which I'll try to reference here where I can.

When you’re dashing off episodes to a weekly deadline on your cracked iPhone in Google Docs during your morning commute, it’s useful to have a get-out clause for mistakes.

For example, some extra early-installment weirdness: I think I completely forget the name of the Eskovian mob (the Nine-Fingered Hand) from this point on.

Jon:

There’s a moment at the start of this episode which is really off-handed, but which I dwell on a lot, going back and forth on whether I should have removed it - David mentions taking risperidone as medication.

I meant this to drop a kind of marker early on for something quite serious that becomes a lot clearer over time.

‘This is going to be a horror story which tries to articulate the experience of certain mental health difficulties: it’s going to be about how awful it feels when you’re completely isolated and you don’t think you can trust the reality of your own senses or the world or the people around you, and you’re constantly reaching out in vain to try and find some kind of anchor.’

‘How it feels when you absolutely don’t feel normal, but you have to fake that everything is OK, and keep trudging on day after day and weathering whatever comes at you, just to survive.’

And I think - I hope - that future episodes back that up and demonstrate where it's coming from with a sufficient amount of thought and insight.

But listening back, it feels way too playful as a hint; it can clearly be interpreted as a tease that Eskew is all in David’s head, which was something I definitely didn’t want or intend. (It also raises unhelpful confusions and questions about how Eskew works - the nightmare city produces medicine? How and why?)

So part of me wishes that I’d just taken it out.

But on the other hand, we have received a couple of distinct and really lovely emails from people speaking explicitly about this moment, saying that it made them sit up and pay attention, because they realised David’s story was going to try and speak sympathetically to feelings and experiences which they’d had themselves.

That was incredibly cheering. 

Because writing about anything halfway meaningful is a trust exercise, right?

You have to be self-aware about all the consequences of getting it wrong, for yourself and for others (if I put this too clumsily or crudely, I could hurt someone, I could offend someone, and unless you're some asshole writer who thinks the 'integrity' of their art is the most important thing in the world, that's not anything you ever want to do). 

But no matter how conscientious you are, sooner or later you’re going to have to go ahead and put your work out there...and just trust that other people will understand what you’re trying to say.

And as Eskew as a whole spells out, this is something that specifically really terrifies me every day, the fear that I will be misunderstood or miscommunicate myself if I try and reach out to other human beings, and I’ll end up victimised or humiliated.

Putting anything out into the world is terrifying, including this episode commentary. I hold my breath every time.

Muna:

I really struggled with this bit as well - I’m very familiar with risperidone, having had family members take it for some time. Mental health (or ill-health) is something very important to us both, so I was wary that readers and listeners would think we were making light of it. 

I didn’t want people to think we were just trying on a jacket for the sake of writing. But how honest could we be about our own experiences while writing this entirely anonymously?

When we did start getting emails saying that the tackling of these topics was important to the listeners I did breathe easier.

If we were to go back, we would both have added content warnings on every episode from the beginning, even if it wasn’t as relevant in the first couple of episodes. I know that listeners appreciated these warnings in later episodes. 

Small changes like that can ensure a better listening experience for everyone.

Jon:

Yeah, absolutely, and I think this is something that's going to come up a few times with future episodes - especially that balance of where you should be placing warnings and emphasis when your show is habitually gory in an over-the-top and fantastical way, but can also have more everyday but genuinely traumatic feelings and storylines explored as well.

We added the content warnings to ep descriptions on particularly rough goers, and we ended up breaking the show's fiction to offer one up-front content warning for Cruelty, which I think was the right choice if any episode was.

But at this point we were really just figuring ourselves out, we weren't thinking through the consequences of actually having listeners (!) as much as we should have.

On another note - a great tip for first-time audiodrama creators is to remember that the names that look cool and resonant on paper may very easily turn to mumbled mush in your mouth. For example, the perpetually garbled ‘Comm-emm-or-ation Gallery’.

Muna:

Ha! The best part of this is if your co-actor is actually from another country and also speaks other languages, so I really struggled with pronouncing some of these words as Riyo in later episodes. 

One day we should release the bloopers of Jon patiently correcting my pronunciation as we recorded.

Jon:

The Gallery’s interior, with whitewashed walls and very distinct rectangular rooms, is probably reflective of pretty much any modern art exhibition. But for the lobby, I was primarily imagining the central hall of the British Museum, which has that specific style of white and glass and not much else.

I understand the underlying logic, that this kind of environment allows the visitor to focus on the art without distraction. But it’s a very eerie, sterile kind of space, I think, for all of its grandness - a building that refuses to admit the existence of shadow.

Jon:

I do love the ‘punchline’ approach to horror - really giving the audience a kick in the teeth right in the final moments or the final page - but it sometimes leaves you feeling nervous that you need to get in a little bit of awfulness in the early stretches, to keep people on the hook.

The stuff about the maimed hands and vanishing workers is perhaps a bit of a contrived attempt to fit in horror ahead of time.

Jon:

This episode plays with an idea that shows up far later, in Episode 24: Festivity - the notion that if Eskew is constantly evolving to imitate the patterns and shapes of a ‘real’ city, it may be possible to effectively hack the system by sabotaging the blueprints (or maps, or street signs, or history books) that dictate these patterns.

David never thinks to really try this tactic to escape, but let’s be honest - it’d probably end badly for him, the poor schmuck.

Jon:

OK: is it four steps to safety or five steps? I wish I could remember if this was a deliberate ‘you can’t trust reality’ choice, to switch the number over halfway through.

So many of these early episodes were written on the run, knocked out on my commute into town. I was trying to do too much. 

Muna:

Haha! I remember addressing this in one of my edits, but I was knocked back. We ended up quite passionately disagreeing on some editing choices. (Read: Jon passionately disagreed).

Jon:

Oh god. And yet we’re still married!

Yeah, OK, I think this might be a pretty giant slip-up or at least a hefty error of judgement on my part then. Thank you for trying. I'm an obstinate man.

Jon:

I really wanted to genuinely come back to the Botanical Garden at some point for vegetation-horror, something Triffid-y  - I never came up with a good enough concept for it.

But David does end up becoming a gardener for the episode Episode 20: Cruelty, and some of the same underlying concepts about swarming roots that don’t seem to die establish themselves there.

And we're going to keep coming back to the earth itself as a natural and comforting place that people are constantly tunnelling into, attempting to escape into, burying themselves into - but which is as poisoned as the rest of Eskew. Not least in next week's episode.

Look at that! A perfect segue.

Next week: the digging sickness comes to town with Episode III: Excavation.