Episode 56 - Transition

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Welcome back to the podcast! Welcome back to another iteration of a sort of… Entering, as it were. You pulled up this episode and pressed “play” on whatever app you use to listen to this podcast and all of your other podcasts, and with that, you stepped into this world. You stepped into my vague recollections of an almost indescribable past. You stepped into something you might know, but you also might not. You might not have been on those parts of the internet. Or even been alive during that era of online life. I’ve never done an audience survey, and in the absence of that, I cannot get a sense of who you might be. Either as a person with distinct demographic traits or as a listener with hopes and aspirations for what you might get out of this podcast.

In the same vein, you don’t know me. You know pieces of me, you might want to say. Or maybe you just know my story. You know the parts of it I have told you anyway, with details obscured to protect myself and the innocent, or so the expression goes. And to you, that might be enough. I would think it has to be enough. Or else, why would you be here? Why would you invest the time required to listen to this podcast if you didn’t think so? Well, I suppose there are ways to reduce that commitment. You can do something else while this podcast plays. I often do. Or I often do when I’m listening to other shows, I should say. Just to be clear.

I don’t know why I need to be so clear, though. It hardly seems to matter, and you probably already knew what I meant. I guess it’s just proof that I can do it. That I can deliberately lay out details when I think the story requires them. Because that’s what stories are, you could say, construction.

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So at this point in the story, Jade is on her journey. She has just started it with cautious steps. And I think those steps are only cautious because she has been seated for so long that her legs need to be warmed up. You know, get the blood pumping again. Then again, I don’t think kids suffer from those impediments in the way adults do. Their muscles bounce back quirker. They are less burdened by the momentum or lack of momentum that their body found themselves stuck in when they were seated for an extended period of time

Beyond just that speculation, though, Jade’s face didn’t show any signs of apprehension. Her expression, as I said, was largely blank. The trance itself might be more noteworthy than I am treating it here, but I am also unsure what else I could add to that discussion. I don’t know how else to pick it apart. I just know it was there. It was a sort of natural reaction, almost. Or anyone’s reaction. It was the only way things could fall into place.

Or that’s what I think. And I’m not entirely sure where my conviction is coming from.

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Honestly, though, when you just think about it in terms of storytelling as opposed to trying to get too deep into the character’s head, you get a different explanation for the slow steps, one that makes more sense or is easier to believe and accept. It doesn’t require a lot of hoop jumping on your part. But simply out, those slower steps could have just been a way to build up tension in the story, to build up the excitement ahead of the big reveal of the world we would spend the episode in. Maybe it was a medieval-esque town plagued by a dragon of some kind or maybe Jade would find herself on a distant planet trying to deliver a critical piece of technology to wherever it needed to be. Honestly, it’s not the sort of thing I remember well. Plot only loosely stuck in my mind, and it was able to do that because the show went on some sort of journey every episode. Not just the crossing the threshold moment. There was direction and movement along an arc or a predictable line. There was a road to walk down, and even if I didn’t understand the story, I could understand that part, that we were moving some place, that we had a reason to. And honestly, even if that level of understanding isn’t great, it can get you a long way.

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You know, if the subject of the show–the idea of a runaway getting so far away without anyone knowing and having that behavior somewhat encouraged by the narrative–wasn’t concerning enough for a cancellation, there is the issue that the story didn’t really serve the purpose it was probably meant to. Or, I suspect it didn’t.

Here’s the thing. Children’s stories have a point, mostly as a foundation for what is to come. There’s a conversation to be had about children’s literacy, I suppose. But I’m woefully ill-equipped to participate in it. I know children need narratives. It’s critical to… some sort of learning. The specifics allude me. It’s just a conversation that came up during the rise of AI-generated children’s books, a grift that might seem harmless but has far reaching consequences that we might not fully know. After all, we take certain things for granted. Many of them are related, in some way, to childhood and all it contains. It’s a time of learning and growing, but we struggle to fully acknowledge or conceptualize those things not going well or according to some sort of plan.

But I’m losing sight of what I need to say. I promise, it is relevant, though. I mean to say that only in the absence of coherent children’s books or the threat that children might receive the opposite–a narrative that makes no sense with drawings that twist limbs if not reality itself into unrecognizable forms–that we really have to sit down and think about how important children’s stories are to the adults these children will one day become.

Extend that conversation from books into television. The amount of labor involved in making a TV show has saved that medium from the first round of AI shenanigans, though it is likely coming. But until it does come, we haven’t really sat and had that conversation, have it? We’ve gotten close a few times when specific YouTube videos or channels, TV shows of a different form one might say, seem to push our kids to our breaking points by being far too stimulating.

But what about a narrative that they can’t understand? Is that something to be concerned about? Should we just trust in osmosis–the idea that they will learn what makes a cohesive narrative by being exposed to a story even if they don’t fully understand the narrative or is it detrimental in some way? A too much too soon sort of phenomenon.

It seems obvious by some counts. Or I suspect it does, but the stakes are so high, I’m hesitant to call it. Cohesive narratives are written into our DNA. They make us human. They are a part of us. Even if we aren’t ready for them just yet.

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I will admit that I never learned to write formally. It was just something I had always done. Ever since I was a child.

So when it came time to actually take classes, or when the chance to take classes actually arose, I couldn’t stomach it. I was bored. I was annoyed. I was so many things, none of which was ready to learn or a good student. And I normally pride myself on being those things, so that was a very clear problem. And I ended up leaving that class.

So maybe I don’t understand narratives in a classic or standard education sort of sense. I always told myself I did. But if I really get down to it, can I explain what I know or is it just a cloud of knowledge swirling in my head? And what does it mean for this to just be a cloud of knowledge? Is it better or worse?

It’s one of those questions that really can’t be answered in the grand scheme of things. But in this context, as I try to make sense of a show I only half remember, I don’t know how useful whatever I have will be. It might not be much help at all, frankly. Especially if I’m making bold claims that maybe this show was canceled because the narrative wasn’t clear, and we need clear narratives, especially when we’re young. Or maybe that’s self explanatory. Or maybe it isn’t. I really don’t know.

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See, there is a place in the grand scheme of things for twisting narratives, for altered or denied expectations. There are rules, sure. And I think to an extent they are binding, but if there is no space beyond them–on the other side of that fence–then they don’t really mean anything, do they? If there was no way to disregard them, then there was no reason to have them at all. If there was no pasture beyond that, one that maybe some or many cannot handle, there was no need for the admonishment. So there is something out there. And I think I’ve been there a time or two.

Admittedly, I tow the line sometimes, so I might just be defending myself when I say these things. But can you see my point? Sometimes a story does better when it doesn’t follow the rules. Sometimes it’s easier to understand the truth when it takes on a form that we don’t immediately recognize. Not a lie, per say. But I would recognize that it might look like one. Hypothetically speaking of course. Strictly hypothetically.

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With one step, the world around Jade transforms. She enters what we might think of as the boring physical world and into some sort of storybook world. The texture of the art style might change. The line work might become more crisp. Sometimes less so. The color inconsistencies that I’ve mentioned will almost certainly not be there. But on the whole it’s a different art style entirely.

So maybe these were like… guest episodes? Or maybe you just had the set crew working on the bookends of the episode and you brought different artists for the meat of each episode, giving it a different flare, a different style. Which… Well as an adult, I like that idea. I would love to have a podcast with that many different contributors. If I could figure out how to handle that logistically and with everyone still getting paid. In that case, I would definitely do it. And those are the sorts of hurdles that would be easier for someone working in television to figure out. In theory, at least. But also, I like the idea because I like variety. I like the idea of shared creation and cooperation. I like the idea of many hands coming together to sculpt something towards some shared point. I like the idea because I am an adult who understands the world and the many ways in which it often lets us down. I understand that these small collaborations are tastes of community and solidarity, something we don’t get a lot of.

But for a child? Well, it’s just unpredictability. It’s a lack of stability. They don’t understand guest contributors. And sometimes they don’t even understand guest episodes. Those are more for the parents’ benefit than anything else. Give Mom and Dad a reason to prefer that show over all the other ones. It is a competitive market after all. You can’t fault the player in that case.

But it’s not the sort of thing that would entertain children, right? Or maybe it would. Maybe I was the only kid who was desperate for consistency.

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We’ve established earlier that Jade would have some sort of art or craft with her. Let’s say crayons, just to keep it easy. Well, when she crossed over into this new world, she would have that with. These crayons, or whatever it was, would be tucked into her pocket or a bag of some kind that would appear at her side as her entire outfit transformed into something more appropriate for the world she found herself in. Let’s say she was on a space colony of some kind. So you would expect the more sciency type outfit. There will be extra buttons, maybe an arm band with gadgets that she could press to get tools or something of that nature. But regardless of how she was dressed or what would appear on her body, her hair would remain up and with her green ribbon tied into place. Her face would remain the same as well, no matter how everyone around her looked. And in some way, no matter where she was or what kind of world she was in, she was always out of place. Not unlike those actors in historical fiction shows or period movies who have definitely seen an iPhone, and you can see it in their eyes despite the time period they are supposedly in. But also it wasn’t exactly like that. If it was that sort of thing, she wouldn’t seemed out of place in the more futuristic stories or worlds or the like. Those would have been right up her alley. But even in them, even in those instances, there was something off about her. It was something in her eyes.

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That’s partially what’s so interesting about stories to me. It’s like… Well, we created our own windows to our souls and each other’s souls. Which isn’t to say that books can’t be about the way we relate to the larger world or the political order. It’s just that there remains a touch of us in all that we do or in all that we write. There’s an aspect of us that remains there. At the core of it, art is interaction. It’s a shared interaction where we might not come to the same points but are working at the same core. We’re all coming around the same table.

So would it matter then what the exact set dressing of that table is? Within reason of course. There are lines. There are always lines. Somewhere. But where, I guess, is what I’m trying to figure out.

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At that point, Jade and her sorrowful eyes have to find some sort of conflict, some sort of need in the larger universe that she has to address or help with. Something else just unfolds in front of her as she continues to wander through the world. She walks through city streets or through the cold, unfeeling world she found herself in, completely unfazed by what has just happened. Even the transition from one world into another didn’t deter her walking, that movement away from… something the show never showed us. Her point–her intention, I guess–was in the movement somehow.

So does it make sense that the show’s central conflict wasn’t about her or for her in some way? It wasn’t about her learning a lesson or finding something she needed. Does it make sense that she was essentially solving other people’s problems and leaving her own unaddressed? I mean, it’s a form of flight, you could say. So it would be thematically on point. But I don’t want to say, really. It seems unfair to her. Or at least in my mind, it does. We have an entire show, of however many episodes, of this young girl serving everyone else. Never herself. I can’t think of a single episode in which she took care of herself. And that bothers me. But I guess the jury is out on whether or not that matters.

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Aishi Online is a production of Miscellany Media Studios. It is written, produced, performed, and edited by MJ Bailey with music from the Sounds like an Earful music supply. If you like the show, please leave a review, tell a friend, or post about it on some mysterious online forum. You do you.