I finally got to listen to a few episodes of the podcast I chose, and I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I've been living under the impression that I don't like podcasts for a while, so I was a bit apprehensive to listen to this one. The basic overview of this podcast is that they read bad books (or watch bad movies or other things) so that 'we' don't have to. And by bad books, they generally mean books that had very opposing opinions where some people loved them and others hated them.
In looking through their roster of episodes, I wanted to see what their first selection was, and they had chosen Twilight. I immediately was interested because I really love Twilight, and I know the majority of the world hates it, so I wanted to see what they had to say about it. Since it was the first episode, I don't know if it was their normal podcast format, but I also listened to another one and it was mostly similar. There are over 100 episodes on the podcast app. They didn't have advertisements, but they did talk about their Patreon pretty often (more in the later episode I listened to)
When the podcast started, I was not excited because the first person to talk hates Twilight. She used to work at a YA bookstore, so she remembers the initial surge of popularity when the books first blew up. That, on top of other reason most likely, has led her to have a negative view of the series as a whole. But then, another of the hosts (there are three total I believe? Or two and a guest?) admitted that she was Twilight fan, so I settled down. I liked the range of opinions among the hosts which helped it not be swayed in one direction for the whole time. They were all very open and weren't like, married to hating or loving it. They discussed in depth the main characters and their interactions. They also talked about the differences and similarities between the book and the movie. Their banter was really entertaining, and it was actually a conversation I wish I could have joined in on. (side note- one of the hosts had a voice that sounds exactly like a friend of mine, who would never be talking about Twilight in that much detail, or at all probably, so it was very distracting thinking it was her lol...) They gave recommendations for people who liked Twilight, including a lot of other vampire related content. At the end of the first episode, they played a game of would you rather (mostly questions about Twilight vampires vs Dracula) and gave a recommendation for a candy pairing for the book, which I found very entertaining.
The second episode I listened to was out of personal curiosity as well. It was about the movie Christian Mingle, which if you haven't seen it, please don't watch it. Or do if you want a good laugh. It's like a Hallmark Christmas movie, but worse. As a Christian I had a real good laugh though. This episode was a bit different from the first for three reasons: 1) they called it a 'bonus' episode in honor of reaching a funding goal through Patreon; 2) it was about a movie; and 3) they were all tipsy. It had a similar flow to the first episode, where they discussed the characters and plot, as well as their opinions of the movie as a whole. The combination of the ridiculousness of the movie and the Strawberr-itas consumed made for a fun time as a listener. This episode was a bit more of a collective roast than a debate.
My last thought is that I think these episodes are way too long. I am not a podcast expert, so I don't know what the norm is, but each episode was an hour long and by about 35 minutes I was ready for them to wrap it up. Despite that grumpy take, this podcast made me realize that made my original disliking of podcasts was maybe too quick of a judgement. I didn't know a lot of the other books they were talking about, but I would definitely consider getting into it more.
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