You are listening to Books, Ballads, and B-roll the podcast with your hosts Bee and Alastair.

In this episode, we’re going to discuss: connections between media related to witchcraft, religion, and persecution. Also, we have some special guests on this episode: our friends Fox and Tommy!

Trigger warning

• Rape
• Religious critique
• Spoilers

The book Good Omens is a 1990 novel written collaboratively by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. It’s a comedy about the birth of the Antichrist and the coming of Armageddon that centers around a demon named Crowley and an angel named Aziraphale who become unlikely friends and ultimately team up to try to prevent the end of the world.

• Fox discusses the magic system used in Good Omens, and how it relates to the powers of the different characters
• Alastair discusses the connection to historical depictions of witches and differences from more modern ones
• We talk about the comedic plotlines, religious commentary, and different characters in the novel
• We compare the novel to the show adaptation

Her Ghost in the Fog was released in 2000 by Cradle of Filth, a metal band. The song tells a story from the perspective of a man whose love was killed and raped by a group of men while picking herbs. They excuse their actions by claiming she was a witch. When the narrator comes across his love, who is at this point barely alive, he is devastated. After they make a vow to each other and say their goodbyes, he burns down the church where the men have gone, killing them before then killing himself.

• Tommy talks about the history of church burnings in response to the Christian erasure of Pagan religions, a phenomenon that may have inspired this song
• Tommy discusses the emotion of the vocals and explains the appeal of black metal, a uniquely raw genre

WandaVision is a miniseries by Marvel featuring the characters Wanda Maximoff (aka the Scarlet Witch) and Vision. The show follows Wanda and Vision’s life together in the idyllic suburban town of Westview, New Jersey. As the episodes progress, it becomes clear that something is off. It seems that their life only exists inside a strange magical bubble, which is being observed from the outside by SWORD (Sentient Weapon Observation and Response Division) by being broadcasted to television as a fictional sitcom. It seems like Wanda is semi-intentionally, semi-unconsciously using her magic to create an alternate reality in which Vision survived the conflict with Thanos.

• One thing that makes the show so fun is that each episode pays homage to a different decade in sitcom history, starting in the 1950’s and continuing until the present day
• The show also incorporates the 1600s, as one of Wanda’s neighbors turns out to have been a witch during the Salem Witch Trials. This is an interesting contrast to the futuristic technology that frequently appears
• WandaVision is more nuanced than some Marvel films where there’s a heavy emphasis on “good” vs. “evil”; Wanda is both the hero and villain

• Flowers and Weeds (Acoustic Guitar & Penny Whistle) by Axletree
• Marty Gots a Plan by Kevin...

You are listening to Books, Ballads, and B-roll the podcast with your hosts Bee and Alastair.

In this episode, we will discuss three different media that incorporate poetry. Just a warning: this episode will deal with themes of suicide, mental health struggles, and violence, as well as events that may be upsetting or fraught.

Another warning: this discussion contains spoilers. If you haven’t seen the movie, we greatly recommend it, although it’s a heavy watch!!

The Dead Poets’ Society, directed by Peter Weir and written by Tom Shulman, came out in 1989, but the movie is set in 1959. It’s set at an all-male boarding school in Vermont called Welton Academy and centers around two students, Neil Perry and Todd Anderson, who have been assigned each other’s roommates. Neil is confident, outgoing, and charismatic, but hampered by an extremely strict father who seems more concerned with his son’s academic and financial success in life than his happiness and wellbeing. Todd is more shy and has trouble speaking in front of groups, but he starts coming out of his shell with the help of Neil’s firm friendship and the encouragement of their new English teacher, John Keating (played by the renowned Robin Williams). Keating surprises the class with unorthodox teaching methods that prioritize creativity and independent thinking over memorization of facts, and he instills a new appreciation for poetry in them that prompts Neil and several of his friends to found a group called the Dead Poets’ Society. Under the cover of night, the friends meet in a secluded cave in the woods beside the Welton campus, and read poems aloud. Keating and the club encourage them all to live their lives on their own terms. Todd starts writing poetry of his own, and Neil discovers his love of acting and successfully auditions for the role of Puck in a local production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. However, things take a turn for the worse when Neil is confronted by his father’s disapproval of his participation in the play, wanting him to prioritize the career in medicine already planned out for him. Mr. Keating advises Neil to convince his father how important acting is to him, and he successfully persuades his father to let him stay in the play. However, his father unexpectedly shows up to watch the performance and disapproves of it even more as a result; immediately after, he angrily tells Neil he’ll be disenrolled from Welton and put in a military academy, and will no longer be permitted to act. Neil is devastated, unable to express his feelings to his father, and receiving no support from his mother. That night, feeling extremely trapped and distraught, he ends up taking his life.

• We talk about societal constraints and hierarchies, how they often crush the individuality of those they claim to uplift, and how this relates...

You are listening to Books, Ballads, and B-roll the podcast with your hosts Bee and Alastair.

In this episode of Books, Ballads, and B-Roll the Podcast, we share our favorite winter-holiday-themed media!

1. Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy - Karen Foxlee
2. Spinning Silver - Naomi Novik
3. Girls Made of Snow and Glass - Melissa Bashardoust
4. The Nightmare Before Christmas - directed by Henry Selick and produced by Tim Burton
5. It’s a Wonderful Life - Produced by Frank Capra
6. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, the Muppets version

1. Jingle All the Way - animated film (2011) directed by Chel White and written by Allan Neuwirth
2. Breadcrumbs - written by Anne Ursu
3. The Littlest Christmas Tree - by R.A. Herman and illustrated by Jacqueline Rogers
4. Rudolph The Rednosed Reindeer - 1964 film directed by Larry Roemer and Kizo Nagashima
5. The Little Drummer Boy - 1968 version directed by Arthur Rankin and Jules Bass
6. Also the Little Drummer Mouse - by Mercer Mayer

The Spotify playlist can be found here! It includes:

1. Let it Go - Frozen
2. Into the Unknown - Frozen
3. Hark! The Harold Angels Sing - Choir of King’s College, Cambridge
4. tis’ the damn season - Taylor Swift
5. Christmas Tree Farm (Old Timey Version) - Taylor Swift
6. The Christians and the Pagans - Dar Williams
7. All I Want for Christmas Is You - Mariah Carey
8. Christmases When You Were Mine - Taylor Swift
9. White Winter Hymnal - Fleet Foxes
10. Winter Song - Sara Bareilles
11. ALL the Nightmare before Christmas soundtrack
12. Basque Carol - Heavenly Angelic Light Orchestra
13. Basque Carol - Transcendental Light Orchestra
14. Ivy - Taylor Swift
15. Do You Hear What I Hear - Perry Como
16. The Little Drummer Boy - 1965 version; Harry Simeone Chorale
17. Carol of the Bells
18. Nutcracker soundtrack
19. Swan Lake soundtrack

• Flowers and Weeds (Acoustic Guitar & Penny Whistle) by Axletree
• Marty Gots a Plan by Kevin MacLeod

• @theHVSPN

You are listening to Books, Ballads, and B-roll the podcast with your hosts Bee and Alastair.

In this episode of Books, Ballads, and B-Roll the Podcast we discuss media related to themes of remembering, recovering from, and dealing with the past.

In this fairly short yet incredibly touching book, a Black teenager named Jeremiah (or Miah) is shot by police in a case of mistaken identity. This happens in the first chapter, and the following chapters alternate between perspectives of different characters who were impacted. For example, his mother, a famous author, and his father, who left her for another woman, comb through memories of their son and the family they used to have. His friend Carlton, who struggles to come to terms with the death of the one person he felt understood him, ends up becoming friends with Ellie, Miah’s girlfriend whose house he had just left before he was killed. They form a deep bond due to their connection to Miah as well as a mutual feeling of being judged and misinterpreted. Ellie feels that her white parents never accepted her relationship with Miah or the depth of her sorrow. They continuously urge her to recover and move on, and don’t approve of her spending time with Miah’s friends and family, claiming this is a hindrance to her mental health. Carlton is just coming to terms with being gay and fears rejection of his father and certain friends, especially now that Miah is gone. Ultimately, a lot of the people whom Miah left behind form unexpected relationships with each other due to their shared grief and a desire to hold onto his memory.

What we found the most interesting is that some of the chapters are from the perspective of Miah’s ghost. In the afterlife, he spends his time with his dead grandmother, who encourages him to let go of the living world. But Miah was taken too soon, and he is not ready to let go, at least not until he knows his loved ones are going to be okay.

This book is by Jacqueline Woodson, author of Brown Girl Dreaming. This book is less well known, and it’s actually, we just realized, a sequel to the book If You Come Softly, which is about Ellie and Miah’s relationship, which starts when they meet at a private school in Manhattan, and the scrutiny they face from friends and family. We really wish we had read this book first since it would have given us a lot of context, but we had no idea Behind You was a sequel!

The Secret of Kells is a movie by the same animation studio as a movie we included in an earlier episode, Song of the Sea. It is a fictional tale but based on real events, as it involves the story...

You are listening to Books, Ballads, and B-roll the podcast with your hosts Bee and Alastair.

In this episode of Books, Ballads, and B-Roll the podcast we discuss the role of transportation in different media.

The Red Convertible is a short story from Love Medicine, by Louis Erdrich. It’s narrated by a boy named Lyman and it revolves around his relationship with his older brother, Henry. The two are very close and bond over their shared red convertible, but when Henry returns from the Vietnam War, he is traumatized and closed off, something Lyman really struggles to understand.

• Bee suggests that the changing setting at the beginning of the story creates a freeing and adventurous feeling, which contrasts with the limited and claustrophobic setting after Henry returns from war. This movement from a setting that is a literal blur to a setting that is extremely limited is one way in which transportation, particularly the red convertible, is central to the story.
• Bee and Alastair discuss how the red convertible may represent the brothers’ relationship with one another or perhaps Henry himself.
• Bee and Alastair examine the symbolism of the red convertible’s fate.

Howl’s Moving Castle is, like in our previous episode, a movie by Studio Ghibli. Are we going to apologize for our perhaps over-heavy focus on Miyasaki films? No, no we are not. We will shamelessly defend Studio Ghibli’s status as one of the best animation studios out there. Although, actually, this movie is based on a book of the same name by renowned fantasy author Diana Wynne Jones—which we strongly recommend as well. The movie changes some aspects or focuses on different things from the book, but I think this is what allows it to be equally as good even though it’s not an original story. The book is almost always better than the movie in my opinion, but this may be an exception.

But anyway, the protagonist of Howl’s Moving Castle is Sophie, the eldest of three sisters and heiress to a hat shop. She feels resigned to a life of quiet drudgery and loneliness there, but then the feared Witch of the Waste comes to her shop in disguise. Sophie unknowingly stands up to the witch when the latter disapproves of her shop, and the witch casts a spell that turns her into an old lady. Sophie must leave home in search of a cure for the spell.

She somewhat accidentally finds herself taking shelter in the castle of a notorious wizard named Howl, who supposedly eats young women’s hearts. (There are a lot of supposedly scary witches and wizards in this movie. Most of them turn out less scary than they originally seem though!)....

You are listening to Books, Ballads, and B-roll the podcast with your hosts Bee and Alastair.

In this spooky scary special episode of Books, Ballads, and B-Roll the Podcast, we discuss connections between halloween-themed media.

This book is one that we were both quite excited to read. It takes place on another planet and is centered around Gideon, a skilled swordsman, and her sworn enemy--and later her lover--Harrowhark. Harrowhark is a necromancer, an expert at summoning the dead to do her bidding. Gideon’s initial hatred towards Harrowhark is fueled by the mistreatment she endured from Harrow’s parents and her harsh life of indentured servitude. Harrowhark’s hatred seems to stem from immense pressure she feels as a necromancer, and the fact that she blames Gideon for her parents’ suicides. In the solar system of Gideon the Ninth, there are nine planets, which each have a powerful House of necromancy. All of these Houses answer to the all-powerful Emperor. Now, much to Gideon’s dismay, she and Harrowhark end up being forced together when the Emperor summons a necromancer of each House, along with a swordsman, in order to compete for role of Lyctor, extremely powerful and immortal necromancers. Much later, as they struggle to figure out why people are being mysteriously murdered on the Emperor’s planet, they discover that the creation of a Lyctor is a very sinister process, which requires the spirit of the swordsman and necromancer to become intertwined.

Our thoughts on the book:

• The blurb is really bad and does NOT do it justice
• The writing style is really interesting—not at all like modern pulp fiction
• There’s modern humor and dialects, but also an ancient vibe
• It includes a substantial amount of graphic depictions of injuries and pain—very appropriate to halloween
• Necromancers animating bone constructs causes them to break out in “blood sweat”
• Duels between cavaliers result in painful injuries
• Mysterious murders and other deaths occur in hideous ways
• We love Gideon
• She’s a bit dramatic which is relatable
• We enjoy the development of Gideon’s and Harrow’s relationship
• Originally they both appear to be very tough and a bit ruthless, but you watch them start to let their guards down around each other and their relationship feels very delicate at

You are listening to Books, Ballads, and B-roll the podcast with your hosts Bee and Alastair.

In this episode of Books, Ballads, and B-Roll the Podcast we discuss: media that are controversial or that we might have some controversial opinions on. Specifically, we’re going to talk about George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the three Star Wars Prequels, and Taylor Swift’s song Better than Revenge.

George Orwell’s 1945 novella is a satirical allegory critiquing the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union that followed. It involves anthropomorphic animals who rebel against human farmers, in hopes of creating a farm where they can live in freedom, equality, and happiness. However, the rebellion degrades as it is taken over by autocratic pigs, first Snowball and then Napoleon, who mislead the other animals and ultimately bring the farm to a similar state as it was when under human control. The story overtly criticizes the Russian Revolution as failing to live up to its ideals, and its leaders as having become the same as the rulers the revolution tried to escape.

Our opinions on the novella:

• The Russian Revolution symbolism is very obvious. Farmer Jones represents Tsar Nicholas II; Snowball is Trotsky; Napoleon is Stalin; and Old Major likely represents Karl Marx, though some say he represents Lenin.
• We agree more with the Marx interpretation of Old Major, because he was painted in a more positive light, and wasn’t interested in ruling himself, unlike Lenin.
• However, Orwell’s intent is somewhat unclear.
• The book read more like a commentary on authoritarianism than an accurate critique of communism, and it seemed like it was only directly applicable to specifically the Russian Revolution.
• Because of the positive portrayals of the animals’ initial dreams for their farm, maybe Orwell’s intent isn’t to say that communism is inherently bad.
• However, there definitely is some anti-communist agenda behind the book.
• Orwell gave the rights to his work to the Information Research Bureau, a British anti-communist propaganda organization.
• He makes the animals seem foolish, incapable, easily manipulated, and overly idealistic, pointing to a possible critique of communism as maybe a good idea in theory,...

You are listening to Books, Ballads, and B-roll, the podcast, with your hosts, Bee and Alastair.

In this episode, we discuss: the theme of loss in relation to the book The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green; the movie The Song of the Sea, directed by Tom Moore; and the Song The Ghost of Virginia, by Justin Townes Earle.

In John Green’s famous novel, two teenagers, Hazel Grace and Augustus Waters (aka “Gus”), meet through a cancer support group and fall in love. Their relationship is complicated by the fact that Hazel’s disease is terminal, and the characters grapple with ideas of death and oblivion and what this means for their legacy.

Our opinions on the novel:

• Bee sympathizes with Hazel and Gus but does not feel their relationship works well—she finds them to be pretentious, finds Gus to be overly direct, and finds the speed at which they fell in love unrealistic.
• Alastair somewhat disagrees, feeling that Gus and Hazel’s direct demeanor and the way they fell in love were a realistic result of the fact that they both know they have limited time, and want to make the most of it while they’re alive.
• Bee thinks Hazel’s character is somewhat flat, not noticing substantial character growth over the course of the novel.
• Alastair agrees that Hazel could have changed more as a character, but disagrees that she did not grow; she realized throughout the book that loving someone is worthwhile even if your time with them is severely limited, and goes from thinking of herself as a “grenade” that other people shouldn’t get too close to, to accepting that other people are happy with their choice to love her even though it may result in grief.

In this beautiful animated film, a young boy named Ben navigates a complex relationship with his younger sister, Saoirse, and his father who’s been distant ever since the loss of his wife. It’s kind of unclear what happened to Ben’s mother, Bronagh. She began having pains when Saoirse was about to be born and had to go out to sea to give birth. Saoirse was washed up on the shore and returned to her father safely, but Bronagh never returned. It seems like she may have died during childbirth, but there is a heart wrenching scene in the end where she comes back and says goodbye to her family once more, before returning to sea forever. As it turns out, Bronagh is a selkie and Saoirse is part selkie.

Our opinions on the movie: