I started Season 7 of the podcast inspired by the subreddit "Am I the Asshole?" In this subreddit, posters present a story in which they have a conflict with another person. They then ask the commenters if they are the asshole in the situation, or if the other party is. Sometimes, both parties are at fault (Everyone Sucks Here) or no one is at fault (No Assholes Here). Although the stories are supposed to be true, there really is no guarantee of that. Therefore, this form of storytelling has become a new genre of short fiction.
I love it.
So I wanted to write a season which was all posts with a story like these, with a wildly one-sided story, and a low stakes conflict, and there would be something supernatural involved. Then there would be comments debating who was the asshole. It sounded so fun, and I was stoked about writing the podcast for the first time in a long while.
But there were several problems with this.
The first stumbling block was fairly minor, but just using the word "Asshole" would lose me the "clean" label on iTunes. I've had to work fairly hard in a few previous episodes to avoid swearing, and it feels like a waste to throw that away by doing a whole season labeled as "Explicit." So I needed to change the name, and I changed it to "Am I in the wrong?" which works, but doesn't have the same pizazz.
The second stumbling block was making the format make sense in an entirely audio medium. I can change my voice for different commenters, and I was planning to put in a little ting noise each time there was a new comment. I think that would have worked, but for a while I was considering bringing in some voice actors. That would, however, require that I have everything written WELL ahead of time, and then I would have to wait on the turn around as they recorded. It seemed that it would be less time, less of a logistical struggle, and cheaper to do it myself. Someday, I might look into it further, but not now.
The final issue (and the nail in the coffin) was that my usual short stories have a chronic tension (a problem that the character has been having for quite a while) and a situational tension (the event that sets off the story). Stories that work well have these two tensions work together and the situation will make the chronic tension more prevalent and the chronic tension will make the event hit harder for the character.
Am I the Asshole posts are specifically about a situation. The relationships between characters are often unclear, and the background (if it's given at all) is either given as an info dump at the beginning, or comes out in bits and pieces in updates or comments. The background info is often VERY important, and when it shows up, it makes the original poster the asshole. But the narrators are not reliable to clue you into the chronic tensions they're experiencing. They're here for advice about this one single situation. They often aren't self aware enough to realize that the situation is the straw that broke the camel's back. And often, knowing more about the situation and the poster's life makes it too real to be a silly distraction. There was a girlfriend who was mad that her boyfriend buried beans in the back yard. That's so strange and ridiculous. But if we knew more, it might turn sad. What kind of insecurity is the boyfriend going through to bury food stuffs?
I wrote four episodes, then decided it wasn't working, and scrapped the concept. Luckily, around the same time, a friend introduced me to a radio show where people called in to apologize. This felt related, and the show changed theme to "The Apology Hour". Several of the story concepts have been preserved, but with the change of format to prose, it's easier for me to weave in that chronic tension and get at something deeper.
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