Episode 161: Transcript
Episode: 161: How to Raise the Stakes Without Ruining Your Story
Transcription by Alexander
Charlie Jane: [00:00:00] Annalee, what have your cats taught you about narrative structure?
Annalee: [00:00:06] So when you told me you were going to ask me this question, I immediately did the thing that I often do, which is I'm like, “Oh, that's such a funny, silly question.” And then I was like, “How can I take it very seriously?” So I actually think that this is a deceptively goofy question, because interacting with other life forms really does teach us a lot about narrative. And my cats and I do have some stories that we tell together. And I would say that they're kind of like interactive, like dialogues almost.
[00:00:38] And so one of them that I've learned a lot about is the dialogue that we have when I get up in the early morning hours to like pee in the bathroom. So the bathroom is a place the cats really like to go.
Charlie Jane: [00:00:52] I'm glad you're peeing in a bathroom.
Annalee: [00:00:53] I'm just saying like the bathroom is really the site of this dialogue. OK, so it's you know, I could be doing lots of things in there, but I'm peeing. OK, so I get up and one of my cats, Ultraviolet, loves the bathroom because it's like often the door is closed. And so I'll open the door to the bathroom and she'll come racing out of wherever she's been sleeping. And she'll like greet me like, “Bloobloobloo” like a happy cat noise and then like race into the bathroom so that I can't prevent her from going in.
[00:01:21] So then I'm like, as I'm doing my stuff, she's in there like rolling on the floor and stretching and like giving me all this information. Basically like “I love this room. Hello, good morning.” Then when I leave, we now have a routine because I can never get her to leave if I just open the door. She's like, “no, I'm going to be in here all night.” So I gently pick her up, which she immediately starts purring. So I know she likes it. And then I go and put her on her favorite cushion and pet her and then she'll like lie down and go to sleep. And then I go back to sleep myself.
[00:01:56] So it's kind of this weird like dialogue where it's like, “Hello, play, now I'll put you to bed.” And I always think of it as like kind of a sequence and there's a beginning, middle and end. So that is one of the stories that one of my cats and I tell to each other, which is the morning whiz story. So…
Charlie Jane: [00:02:15] Well, and we should point out that the reason the cats are not allowed in the bathroom is because they think that the toilet paper is a cat toy.
Annalee: [00:02:21] Well, yeah. And also they like to knock over the trash can and like, yeah, it's not I'm not truly preventing them from going in there. There are actual safety issues at stake.
Charlie Jane: [00:02:31] I mean, toilet paper objectively looks like a cat toy. It like unrolls in this really entertaining way. You could shred it with your little claws.
Annalee: [00:02:38] Oh, yeah.
Charlie Jane: [00:02:39] It goes all over the floor. You can roll around it once it's all over the floor.
Annalee: [00:02:43] And indeed they have. And because both Ultraviolet and her sister, Infrared, are jet black cats. And so when they roll around in the toilet paper, they get covered in little tiny white snow, toilet paper, snow, which I feel like they kind of like. It's extremely annoying because it gets everywhere. So yes, that is why the bathroom is like the forbidden room of joy. It also has a heated floor, so it's naturally attractive.
Charlie Jane: [00:03:07] It's ridiculous.
Annalee: [00:03:08] So as you can tell, we've unpacked a whole narrative out of this tiny interaction. So, okay, tell us about Dr. Sassy, the cat who lives in your house with you.
Charlie Jane: [00:03:18] So Marcus Aurelius Sassifrass Vespasian IV, AKA Dr. Sassy. He mostly goes by Dr. Sassy these days, I'm going to say.
Annalee: [00:03:26] Yeah. Well, since he got his PhD…
Charlie Jane: [00:03:27] He prefers that name, I feel like. Yeah, so he's taught me a lot about narrative. Like we play games like hunting. He likes really elaborate hunting stories where like there's a thing that's hiding and he can hear it kind of moving around. And I'll have to like stage like an elaborate thing so that he can be like, “Oh, there's a thing hiding.” And then he'll like try to sneak up on it. And the thing he'll do is he taught me a lot about the power of anti-climax because he will start wiggling his little butt as he's going to run and attack the thing. And then he'll kind of stop and be like, “No, actually, I'm going to wait.”
[00:04:01] And like he'll do this like a few times. It's actually, it's very entertaining and also a little bit frustrating sometimes when you're just like, chase the thing so we could have the play. And then I can do some other stuff. He likes to kind of be like, “Oh, am I going to attack? No, I'm not. Oh, now I'm going to. No, I'm not going to attack.” He likes the false climax. He likes the anti-climax. He likes…
Annalee: [00:04:20] …the delayed gratification.
Charlie Jane: [00:04:23] The delayed gratification. He likes to really build the suspense. He's a master of building suspense. I think the suspense is really what he loves. I think the actual like act of chasing the toy and attacking it and bringing it down and like killing it with his teeth and claws. You know, he loves that. He gets really excited. He gets this look in his eye. But he really loves to build the anticipation and the suspense a lot to make that as like exciting as possible. And sometimes he'll run and attack the thing and then just run away immediately. Like, “I attacked it. I'm running away.”
[00:04:59] I feel like he has like very complicated narrative structure that he wants to impose on our play. And so, you know, he's taught me a lot about writing, actually, this cat.
Annalee: [00:05:08] I feel like that Dr. Sassy is kind of living inside of a psychological thriller and Ultraviolet, my cat, is in a portal fantasy. She's like, “Yeah, I got inside the magical realm of heated floors and toilet paper. But then the giant creature like picked me up and put me back to bed.”
Charlie Jane: [00:05:30] So you're saying your bathroom is Narnia, basically. Your bathroom is Narnia.
Annalee: [00:05:34] Oh, 100%. Yes, absolutely.
Charlie Jane: [00:05:37] And you're - what is - who's the person who keeps kicking the kids out of Narnia?
Annalee: [00:05:40] I think actually my bathroom is much more filler than Narnia. I'm going to just go for that.
Charlie Jane: [00:05:44] Maybe it's Oz. Maybe your bathroom is Oz because they get swept up in all the excitement.
Annalee: [00:05:49] And it has like kind of a critique of capitalism.
Charlie Jane: [00:05:51] Right. Well, it has heated floors, which are kind of magical. Yeah. So you are currently listening to Our Opinions Are Correct, which is the podcast that set out to save the universe, but ended up just saving a tiny kitten instead.
[00:06:05] I'm Charlie Jane Anders. I'm a science fiction writer. My next book is actually a fantasy novel called Lessons in Magic and Disaster. And it comes out August 2025.
Annalee: [00:06:16] And you are going to love it. I guarantee I've read this book. I've read multiple versions of this book. It is incredible.
[00:06:22] I'm Annalee Newitz. I'm a science journalist who also writes science fiction. And my latest book is a nonfiction book called Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind.
Charlie Jane: [00:06:34] So amazing. And in this episode of the podcast, we're going to be talking about a specific aspect of narrative structure, one that my cat has not really grasped very well at this point, which is raising the stakes. Like how do you make things in a narrative more urgent or feel pressing without ruining your narrative in the name of kind of narrative escalation? And later in the episode, we'll be talking to the admins of Women of Noise, an online music blog that highlights women in experimental music genres.
[00:07:07] Also on our mini episode next week, we'll be talking about our new favorite anime series, Ramen Akaneko.
Annalee: [00:07:14] And by the way, this podcast is entirely independent, which means that it's funded by you, our wonderful listeners through Patreon. That's right. So if you become a patron, you're helping to make this podcast happen. Plus you get audio extras with every episode. You get access to our Discord channel and we hang out there all the time and talk about everything from food to new sci-fi books, to politics, to weird technical things happening in the world of science. It's delightful. So think about it. All that could be yours for just a few bucks a month. And anything you give goes right back into making our opinions more correct. You can find us at patreon.com/ouropinionsarecorrect.
Charlie Jane: [00:07:58] Okay, let's raise the stakes.
[00:08:01] [OOAC theme plays. Science fiction synth noises over an energetic, jazzy drum line.]
Annalee: [00:08:33] So you are really the master at raising the stakes. I feel like I've learned a ton from you about this. I mean, I've raised a few stakes, but oftentimes they were more like plant-based steak, if you know what I mean? What do we mean when we say stakes? Like what is a stake in a narrative?
Charlie Jane: [00:08:54] I love that. That's a really good question because I feel like this is something that people get tripped up on all the time. And you know, part of it is that the notion of stakes and raising the stakes comes from like poker and things like that, where it's just like a big pile of chips, I guess.
Annalee: [00:09:07] Right.
Charlie Jane: [00:09:08] And so I was like, “Ooh, I'm raising you 20 or whatever it is.”
Annalee: [00:09:11] It's a bet.
Charlie Jane: [00:09:12] It's a bet kind of, but I feel like in a story, when we talk about stakes, what we're really talking about is what the characters care about and what we, the reader, are supposed to be invested in, what we're supposed to care about. Like the outcome of this thing is going to be what we're going to be like rooting for or rooting against in the story or worrying about what's going to happen or, you know, curious about what's going to happen. Even if we don't root for the characters, we still want to know what's going to happen with the things that the characters are caring about.
[00:09:41] And like, you know, I feel like one of the things that happens with stakes is that people sometimes confuse the stakes for like the context. Like, okay, let's say you have a story about an alien invasion. Aliens are invading the planet. They are like melting all of the world monuments. Roland Emmerich is getting his Roland Emmerich on. And, you know, the White House is being melted down, blah, blah, blah.
Annalee: [00:10:04] Oh, no.
Charlie Jane: [00:10:05] And there's like a woman trying to get her wife and kids out of the city to a safe place. Like in that story, the stakes are probably this woman trying to get her wife and kids to safety. The stakes are probably not the aliens are invading. Can we stop the aliens? Can we like defeat the aliens? Are we going to survive the alien invasion? For the purposes of that story, the stakes are this woman and her family, unless we do the full Roland Emmerich thing. And there's like the military and fighters and all this other stuff. And we're like building a computer virus to infect the aliens. But, you know, in the story I just described, the stakes are actually fairly small, but there's a huge backdrop.
Annalee: [00:10:43] Mm hmm. That's really interesting. I also liked what you said about how the stakes are what the characters care about. And I think you're right that we often get confused with it's like, “No, it's what I care about.” So when we talk about raising the stakes, does that mean that things get bigger? Like you were talking about, you know, a woman trying to save her family. But does that mean that if we want to raise the stakes, we have to show the whole galaxy being at stake? Or is there another way to raise the stakes without having that big backdrop?
Charlie Jane: [00:11:15] Yeah, I mean, I feel like a lot of when we talk about raising the stakes, it is that thing in like poker where you've - I don't know anything about poker, so I'm just going to I apologize.
Annalee: [00:11:24] Say you bet a dollar and then you raise it.
Charlie Jane: [00:11:26] You bet a dollar.
Annalee: [00:11:26] Two dollars.
Charlie Jane: [00:11:26] You put in another dollar and then you're like, “oh, I'm all in. I put in five dollars.
Annalee: [00:11:33] You start sweating and shaking…
Charlie Jane: [00:11:34] You're like, you're going to win the grand slam. I don't know. So I feel like that's our very kind of like thumbnail idea of raising the stakes is that you're in for more money. Yeah, there's more on the table. But I feel like that's not always the best way to raise the stakes. And I feel like when I think about raising the stakes in a story, it's often more just that like the consequences of things going bad get worse or the reasons why we don't want things to go bad become more salient. And OK, take the example I gave earlier of the woman and her wife and kids tried to escape the city during an alien invasion.
Annalee: [00:12:13] Yeah.
Charlie Jane: [00:12:14] Let's say suddenly one of the kids has a cold and it's like, “Oh, shoot. In addition to fleeing these aliens, we have to get this kid some I don't know, I think about medicine either. So I'm going to say some penicillin or we have to get this kid to a doctor. We have to get this kid some aspirin.”
Annalee: [00:12:30] Or you just have to deal with the kid being really whiny and like crying all the time, you know?
Charlie Jane: [00:12:35] The kid is sick. It makes things harder. Now you're worried that the kid is going to be really sick and that you're not going to get away from the aliens. So in that example, raising the stakes did not mean that like, “Oh, instead of just one family's life being at stake, now it's the whole city. And they have to save the city from the aliens like, oh, instead of fleeing the cities to get away from the aliens, we have to like find this like thing in the city that will put a force field over the entire city and protect it from the aliens.” No, it's still about this family and their survival. But now there's an added factor that makes it harder.
[00:13:05] Raising the stakes could just be like things get a little bit worse than the situation that was always already bad. It could be that we tried to do something to fix the situation and it failed or it even backfired. Like one of my favorite things that raises the stakes is when we have a plan to make things better and it actually backfires because I think that that makes it more interesting than just like, “dah, dah, dah, things somehow got worse.”
Annalee: [00:13:26] Or the plan has like unintended consequences. Like we unleashed a computer virus to stop the aliens, but it turns out that the computer virus actually makes the aliens stronger or it gives them intel on the way that we fight. You know, it gives them more insight into our defenses. And so in fact, our weapon has now become our vulnerability. I kind of love that.
Charlie Jane: [00:13:51] Exactly. And like, I feel like that makes it dynamic and interesting. The thing that we thought was going to save us actually doesn't save us and maybe makes us worse off or, you know, kind of puts us in a more complicated situation. I feel like it makes our heroes more fallible. It makes the situation more kind of dire and it just makes things more interesting.
Annalee: [00:14:11] It can be interesting to introduce that element of chaos, too. Like the kid suddenly has a cold or someone we trusted betrays us. Like we thought that this guy was going to like lead us to safety, but in fact, he just wanted to extort us for a bunch of money.
Charlie Jane: [00:14:26] Yeah.
Annalee: [00:14:26] Or he didn't really have a safe place. He thought we had a safe place. Also, one of the other things is that sometimes you can raise the stakes by just saying the thing we thought was scary is actually catastrophic.
Charlie Jane: [00:14:42] Yes.
Annalee: [00:14:42] You know, we thought that the aliens were here to steal potash, but it turns out they're here to literally rip the entire province of Saskatchewan out of the ground and turn it into like a planetoid.
Charlie Jane: [00:14:58] Oh my God.
Annalee: [00:14:58] And so suddenly…
Charlie Jane: [00:14:59] [crosstalk] …it's finally happening.
Annalee: [00:15:00] I know. I'm trying to make this happen. I really am. I don't know how big of a planetoid that would be. I mean, it would depend on like how deep you go to…
Charlie Jane: [00:15:09] [crosstalk] … there’s like a radial core of the earth going all the way to the other side. So it's going to be a very tubular planet and then they're going to reshape it.
Annalee: [00:15:18] So then they’re gonna reshape it, right? So if they go all the way through the planet, it's not just Saskatchewan that's in danger. I don't actually know what's on the exact opposite side of the planet.
Charlie Jane: [00:15:26] I mean, you're definitely raising the stakes. And like that potash, we needed that potash.
Annalee: [00:15:30] We actually do need that potash. But, you know, again, that's raising the stakes, right? Like I love the idea that there is somebody out there that is like, let's have a movie about the aliens who came for our potash. Quick, call…
Charlie Jane: [00:15:42] I mean, I'm sick of aliens always coming for water.
Annalee: [00:15:46] Yeah. What if they needed just kind of like a salty mineral?
Charlie Jane: [00:15:49] I mean…
Annalee: [00:15:50] I just smacked my mic because the stakes got so high that I smacked my mic, Charlie Jane.
Charlie Jane: [00:15:56] Oh my God. We can leave that part in. That was pretty funny. The mic smacking. Anyway, another thing that I feel like happens a lot in stories that I've written, but also many, many, many stories that I've consumed is there's a thing where we're trying to prevent our antagonist from doing something.
[00:16:15] Like if the bad guy gets their hands on this thing, it's game over. Like there's nothing we could do if that happens. If, you know, these people connect this thing to this other thing, then we're just, we're out of options. They've won. It's bad. And like, I feel like you will often see right before the final sequence of a movie or, you know, a TV episode or whatever, the bad guy will achieve their goal. Like the bad guy will achieve their goal. It's like, “Oh shoot, this thing, we've been trying to prevent the bad guy from doing the bad guy has accomplished it. We've lost it's over.” And then that's when you have like, the Hail Mary thing where it's like, “But wait, there's one last ditch we can do.”
[00:16:53] I feel like this is one of the most common tropes in like any kind of story with an antagonist. The antagonist will achieve their goal right before the third act or the big climax. And it's like, now that they've achieved their goal, all hope is lost. Except it turns out there's one last thing that we can try that miraculously succeeds.
Annalee: [00:17:13] Yeah, I know. I love that. It's always like, and now the bad guy has assembled the weapon or has gotten all of this the stones for his gauntlet or whatever. What are the Infinity Stones?
Charlie Jane: [00:17:24] Yup. Thanos.
Annalee: [00:17:26] Yeah, that's a perfect example, actually. Okay. So I have a question, which is kind of a world building question really, because do we have to know what the stakes are in order to raise them? Like, do we have to have that moment where like, “As you know, Bob, the aliens could in fact, take all of our potash, which would leave us bereft because of all of these products that use potash.” Do we need that? Or can we just say like, “Oh my God!”
Charlie Jane: [00:17:52] I mean, I actually think that's a really deep question. And I feel like it's part of why people trying to raise the stakes in a story often fail. Because, you know, if the stakes are not made clear originally, if we don't really know what the stakes are, like, and I feel like a lot of stories, you'll see people trying to kind of have it both ways or a few different ways. It's like, “Oh, you know, it could be really bad, but we also like, I don't know.” And like, if you're doing that intentionally, if you're preserving some kind of ambiguity about like, “Oh, my gosh, we don't know how bad this could get,” and “Oh, it turns out it's going to get really bad.” That's fine. But like, I feel like when you don't make it clear, what is at stake in terms of like, “What are we trying to protect? What's kind of the ballpark bad thing that we're trying to prevent happening? What's the vaguely good thing that we're trying to create?” If the characters should have some idea in their heads of how bad things are, how bad things could get, and like the characters should know for themselves, even if they don't have perfect information, they should have some idea of what's going on and why it's bad.
[00:18:51] And the reader, the viewer should have some idea about what the stakes are, because otherwise, raising the stakes is just going to feel incoherent. It's like, well, you didn't really know what was going on before, and now you still don't know what's going on, but now there's more stuff. And I feel like this is something that you often see in like things where there's just a lot of VFX crap floating around, like raising the stakes will just mean, “Oh, now there's more VFX crap on the screen, whereas before there was less.” And that means that things are somehow more urgent or worse or bigger.
Annalee: [00:19:22] Right. More explode-y.
Charlie Jane: [00:19:23] And it's like, I have no idea what's happening now. I never knew what was going on. And now I really don't know what's going on. And I feel like conversely, if you make the stakes fairly clear, you can do some foreshadowing without tipping your hand too much. You can do some foreshadowing where you're like, “Okay, this is what we're trying to prevent. This is the stakes, but it could get even worse than that if we're not careful,” or just like even hint that there's like an even darker side or an even scarier aspect to the thing that we're fighting against or, you know, something even more threatening to the thing we're trying to protect. I think that clarity is really your friend when it comes to having stakes and kind of ratcheting them up.
Annalee: [00:20:03] Yeah, I was just thinking that, you know, one way to raise the stakes is in a sense to clarify the stakes. Like I'm going to keep going with my potash idea. It's already scary that aliens are invading and they're going after our potash, but then like slowly throughout the film, or the show, or the whatever, the book, we learn like, “Oh, if we didn't have potash, we wouldn't have all this fertilizer, which could lead to food shortages.”
Charlie Jane: [00:20:28] Yes.
Annalee: [00:20:28] And it's like, that has to be a moment where you're like, “Oh, it's not just about like preserving our precious minerals. It's like actually about starvation.” And then you like learn a little thing about potash, but also the stakes are raised. One of my most hatey-est things is when a story, I feel like substitutes a twist for a raising of the stakes.
Charlie Jane: [00:20:52] Yeah. I mean, we talk about this all the time and I feel like I have become more and more anti-twist as time goes by. Like, I feel like twists can be good if they're done well, like anything can be good if it's done well. Sure. And I feel like a good twist is like knife twisting kind of like, oh my gosh, I am like floored by this. Like, I feel like a good twist is amazing, but I feel like what you often get are twists for the sake of twists or twists that feel like you're on a schedule and someone's just like looking at their watch and they're like, “Well, we're X far into the story. It's time for something shocking to happen that's going to make things even more upsetting or scary for our characters.”
[00:21:30] And like, my feeling is that, you know, a twist where the characters have been wrong about something all along and the characters realize, “Oh, we read this situation wrong or we've been making the wrong choices and it's biting us in the butt” or, “Oh, we thought we knew what we were doing and we actually didn't.” That can be really, really rewarding and awesome, especially if the reader viewer has at least had some reason to believe that these characters might not have perfect information. I think a twist where it's just like trying to pull the rug out from under the viewer or the reader by being like, “Haha, I, the author writer, misled you into thinking that this is a jelly bean, but it's actually a jelly baby and like, whoo,” you know.
Annalee: [00:22:13] Yeah. Or this character who we literally had no reason to suspect of anything all along, suddenly is the bad guy.
Charlie Jane: [00:22:21] Yeah.
Annalee: [00:22:21] Or suddenly is like actually just been invaded by nanotech and like now is a nanotech robot or whatever. Yeah. That super annoys me. And I liked your point about how sometimes twists feel like somebody's on the clock and they're just like, “Okay, well, we need to like flip this around now.”
[00:22:40] I think there's this idea that audiences only want to be surprised, which is why I think there's this fetishization of spoilers.
Charlie Jane: [00:22:46] Yes.
Annalee: [00:22:46] Because, you know, anything that can be spoiled, you know, obviously it has to be protected. But also I just think it's like what you were describing about like the characters realizing something. That's a kind of turnaround in the story, but it's not just like a thing where you couldn't see it coming. You know, I just hate that narrative jump where it's like, “Oh, you didn't realize there was a dead grandma in the closet because we never told you or even hinted there was a closet.” And it's like, okay, come on. At least tell us that there could be a thing in the closet so that when it happens, we're like, “Oh!”
Charlie Jane: [00:23:21] Yeah, I feel like it should be organic. And I feel like it needs to come out of character. I feel like the more it kind of comes out of what we've experienced so far, the more it feels like, “Oh my God, I could have seen that coming and the characters could have seen that coming.” The other thing that drives me nuts, like the thing of like watching the watch is like, you know, you don't have to like mechanically raise the stakes, quote unquote, right when it's time for your climax.
[00:23:42] You can do it like a third of the way through the story. You could do it halfway through the story. I feel like halfway through the story is a really, really, really good time to do that. And I also feel like, why are you raising the stakes? Are you raising the stakes in order to kind of put more pressure on your characters and make them have to like really work for what they're dealing with? Or are you just raising the stakes because you're like, “I need to have a big CGI action sequence right now.” Sorry, I obviously have watched too many like big Hollywood temples lately and I'm feeling salty about it.
Annalee: [00:24:12] No, but it's real. I was saying earlier that chaos can be kind of productive in a story, but it can also be really just a morass. Like you introduce so much stuff, whether it's CGI or whether it's like, “Oh, here's a character that you didn't even know about suddenly enters the picture.” You know, it can get just crowded and it doesn't feel satisfying. It doesn't feel like the stakes have been raised. It just feels like a bunch more yarn has been added to the ball and you're like, “Okay, I guess that's nice. But like, I kind of just, you know, wanted a coherent narrative.”
Charlie Jane: [00:24:44] Yeah. My final thought is that maybe instead of thinking of stakes as high and low, we should start thinking of those other ways. Like maybe we could think of as like urgent, more urgent, less urgent, closer, further away, scarier, funnier. Like think of them in terms of like how invested we are in what's happening, how bad are the consequences of failure.
[00:25:08] Sometimes it really does feel like a small town being destroyed. It feels like a higher stake in a certain way than like the galaxy being destroyed because it's harder to connect with the idea of the galaxy being destroyed. And don't get me wrong, I love saving the galaxy. That's one of my favorite things as a writer and as a reader.
Annalee: [00:25:24] Yeah, you may have done that in a trilogy recently.
Charlie Jane: [00:25:26] I might have written a trilogy about saving the galaxy, but at the same time, I feel like let's get away from thinking of stakes as high and low and start thinking of them in other ways that are just more about like how invested are we and how excited are we and just all that kind of stuff.
Annalee: [00:25:43] I love that so much. I like the idea of thinking of them as scary or funny or distant or close. Like is this something that's going to happen right away or is it like we need to prevent this so that in a hundred years something doesn't happen. And you can have a bunch, right? You can have like multiple stakes in a story. In fact, you probably should. So yeah, we have now transformed the stakes for raising the stakes.
Charlie Jane: [00:26:07] Hell yeah. Okay, we're going to take a quick break and when we come back, we're going to talk to the Women of Noise.
[00:26:13] OOAC session break music, a quick little synth bwoop bwoo.
Annalee: [00:26:17] Now, we are speaking to the admins of the blog: Women of Noise. Here with us, we have Dora Robertson, Daisy, and Julia Grachik.
[00:26:27] Julia is a visual artist and graphic designer born in Poland. She's currently based in Florence, Italy, and she runs a monthly ambient ethereal music show on Radio Capital called In Translation: Whispers, Hums, and Russells.
[00:26:41] Daisy is a musician and contributor to Women of Noise from Baltimore, Maryland. Her project, Dickgirl, spans digital hardcore and noise with energetic performance.
[00:26:50] Dora is a writer, curator, and musician based in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She became a moderator for Women of Noise back in 2017 and took over as administrator in 2018. And she's also behind the solo noise power electronics project, Leperwitch, which I can highly recommend because I've been listening to it a lot. So thank you guys so much for coming and being here.
Dora: [00:27:10] Well, thank you for having us.
Julia: [00:27:11] Nice to be here.
Daisy: [00:27:13] Hi, thank you. Hi.
Annalee: [00:27:14] Yeah, it's so great. You guys are coming in from all over the place. So, Women of Noise started as a Tumblr blog in 2014. It has interviews with artists, it has reviews, it brings together collaborators for special charity albums. So could you tell us a little bit about your journeys to working on it, what you were doing before, and what brought you together to work on this project?
Dora: [00:27:35] Sure. If you don't mind, I'll go ahead and start since I've been involved the longest.
Annalee: [00:27:40] Yeah.
Dora: [00:27:40] Women of Noise first started in 2014. It was originally run by another woman. And around 2017, she was looking for additional help running a blog because it had grown a lot in popularity and she couldn't do everything herself. I had been following for a couple of months and said, you know, hey, I know a little bit about experimental music, I can chip in and do some stuff. And in 2018, she asked me if I would take over like me and the other moderators at the time. And I was like, yeah, sure.
[00:28:09] So I kind of became the de facto admin. And Julia and I, I think, first ran into each other on a Tumblr post where we were mutually talking about how much we hate Boyd Rice.
Annalee: [00:28:24] Me too.
Daisy: [00:28:25] That's a good one.
Dora: [00:28:26] I made a post about how much I hated Boyd Rice and then she reblogged it from me and was like, “Hey, I hate him too.” And then we started talking and I liked the visual art that she was doing. You know, she's a very good graphic designer. And I'm like, “Hey, do you want to hop on as a moderator?” And she was like, “Yeah, sure.” And thankfully she stuck around. Fast forward, I think to 2020, wasn’t it? Is when Daisy hopped on.
Daisy: [00:28:52] Yeah.
Charlie Jane: [00:28:52] How did you all get interested in the electronic and like experimental music?
Dora: [00:28:56] For me, I've always had an ear, I guess, just for weird music in general. You know, when you're a little kid and you hear all the music and like, you know, old Looney Tunes cartoons and everything and you're like, “Hey, yeah, this is weird, but it actually sounds really cool.” And I grew up in the 90s and we had all these little toys, you know, like yak backs and whatever, where you could record your voice and manipulate it. And I love toys like that. And I guess it just kind of stemmed from like a childhood interest in manipulating sound.
[00:29:29] And I was started out as more of like kind of a metal person. And then as time went on, noise and extreme music based in electronics won me over. So it was kind of a gradual progression.
Julia: [00:29:42] Yeah, it was very similar for me. I started out as a metal head in middle school. And then I couldn't stand listening to guitar music. I just had to put it away for a while. And then high school, I got interested in like the 80s German industrial and stuff like that. From then on, I was just very excited about music and very excited about finding new stuff that sounded like this or sounded even weirder. So it was kind of like a natural progression. And similarly, just always liked weird stuff.
Daisy: [00:30:19] Yeah, for me, it was definitely around the same time that I was like really developing an actual taste in music was like nine or so I started finding like breakbeat oriented music. So like some early 2000s breakcore. Then eventually I got into the late 90s stuff and more like kind of trance-y stuff. So like club music and club oriented music that like pushed the envelope and would delve into like very noisy sections kind of set the tone for me to eventually become a lot more interested in noise than anything guitar based.
Annalee: [00:30:58] Listening to your stories of like what you brought you here, like there's kind of a universal feeling of like we felt a little bit less interested in guitar music, which is funny that all of you were kind of like, “Yeah, and then I didn't like guitars anymore.” But like, how would you define experimental music right now? Like what are the different genres? Like what are the boundaries of it?
[00:31:19] All of you are shaking your heads.
Julia: [00:31:20] Well, I just feel like I need to say that there's a huge portion of experimental music that is guitar based and they have their fans is just not on our team.
Dora: [00:31:31] Yeah.
Julia: [00:31:33] I think we had some conversations or at least we had to think about it when kind of describing our blog and figuring out what the blog is about because noise can be treated as very narrow genre. But then there's so many other things that are just similar. Yeah, we just decided not to limit ourselves to publish only artists that play harsh noise wall and noise, but also add other stuff and then it kind of developed and now at least I feel about what we do as this kind of umbrella for all the alternative experimental… We even go to like free jazz or modern contemporary genres. So it's very broad.
Charlie Jane: [00:32:28] Like it could be all kinds of stuff, but it's just anything that you consider noise, like anything that defies kind of conventional expectations of like melody. Is that right?
Daisy: [00:32:37] Yeah.
Dora: [00:32:37] I know the way that I describe it and this is going to sound like a really silly sort of comparison, but like you say that you have, you know, like a department store and they may have a certain item in the title of that store, but that doesn't mean that's all they sell. But I don't give them enough noise. Like there might be noise in the title, but it's not strictly noise. It's kind of just a broad spectrum of experimental music.
Daisy: [00:33:02] Yeah.
Charlie Jane: [00:33:02] Yeah. A hundred percent.
Dora: [00:33:04] When you think about it, experimental music in itself is kind of just boundless. It's limitless. And I really try to convey that.
Charlie Jane: [00:33:10] I love that. So there's this amazing tradition of women in kind of electronic music specifically, like Bebe Barron, who did the soundtrack to Forbidden Planet, Delia Derbyshire, who did all this incredible electronic music, including the original Doctor Who theme, and of course, Wendy Carlos. And, you know, how do you all see yourselves as fitting into that tradition? And do you feel like you're facing some of the same challenges as those women faced in the past?
Daisy: [00:33:35] I personally don't feel like I do because a lot of those, specifically the women that you're talking about, like, and you could even like throw in Pauline Oliveros or like Éliane Radigue into that. And it's like a lot of studio-based musicians who were working in professional or commercial studios. I guess more of the barriers of entry to the music, the stuff that they did for their personal fulfillment, as well as like, you know, they were career musicians as well. Those barriers were often about like the workplace or the studio environment.
[00:34:11] But zooming out from that, I do find a lot of kinship to that because beyond what they're doing in terms of music is living as a woman. You know, or in the case of Wendy Carlos, living as a trans woman. You know, she certainly existed in a different zeitgeist of transness and what queerness was at the time and how it was received and everything. But I think when I look at that music, I do feel this connection to the underlying things beyond the... I don't know why I kind of went back on myself on that one. But yeah, I mean, I guess as a musician, I like kind of more in like a punk DIY scene. So it's like the stories I have of like navigating weird fucking shit and like shitheads or people who are just acting like shitheads. You know, I don't know. That is like different than like what Delia Derbyshire had to deal with walking in the studio at 6 a.m. to record on a reel to reel tape.
Dora: [00:35:15] I guess from my personal experiences and I've got some incredibly negative ones for my past, which is part of the reason why I'm a solo artist. A lot of women who go into noise and start noise projects: one of the reasons why they're solo artists is because like me, they started out trying to be in bands, you know, maybe like a noise rock thing or even like a metal or hardcore thing. And they kept getting in bands with men who did not see them as equals or wanted them to join the band for nefarious reasons. I have been in, oh, God, you don't even want to know, like 52 year old burnouts who wanted me to join their little, you know, like death metal band or whatever. And as soon as I joined as the vocalist, they're like, “Hey, so are we gonna start going out or hooking up or whatever.” And they just get really brazen with it. Like…
Charlie Jane: [00:36:10] Oh, my God.
Annalee: [00:36:11] Yuck.
Dora: [00:36:12] And I wanted to not just be the vocalist, like, “Hey, I don't want to just be the face of the band. I'm a writer and I'm a good writer. Like, I want to write lyrics. I want to contribute to the songwriting.” And then when I started asserting that kind of authority, they decided they didn't want me in the band anymore. And I feel like that's a very big gender thing, too, because a lot of men do not like assertive women, especially women that don't take shit. And I've always been that kind of person. I'm very firm in what I say.
[00:36:40] The reason why I'm sharing that is that, yeah, maybe I don't know exactly what some of those women back in the day went through. But I think there is like this shared thread of constantly feeling alienated in predominantly male spaces.
Julia: [00:36:54] I mean, every genre has their own problems, but there is some layer of universal issue, which is a feminist issue. I don't know. I'm not a musician, but I was just kind of always alert to those stories and to those things. And that's something I've read in memoirs or biographies, just those kind of stories of lack of recognition of some artists and struggles of women artists in music spaces.
[00:37:24] I don't know, as a music fan and as a woman, I just kind of felt drawn to the subject and wanted to explore it and maybe do something that will help the case.
Annalee: [00:37:36] So this is a podcast where we talk a lot about science fiction and fantasy and horror. That's kind of our jam. And we see a lot of elements of those genres in experimental music. Why do you think that is? Why is there this overlap between these themes?
Dora: [00:37:52] I think it's just both are very open ended. You have a very open ended genre that's very imaginative, where you can do whatever the hell you want. And then you have literary genres or other media that's very much based in fantasy and the idea that everything is kind of boundless and limitless and your imagination can just run wild or whatever. So having two open ended mediums kind of coming together in the middle doesn't really seem that strange. At least not to me.
Julia: [00:38:25] I pretty much agree with Dora and I think also I could add that both can be also explored in other areas of art. But they're all a bit drawn towards the darker side or something. We like to explore human weaknesses and darker themes of our world. They're like the common themes and fans of weird horror and science fiction will be fans of weird music. And the aesthetics kind of overlap. Like you will have soundtrack to Terminator or Matrix or like Cronenberg music. They will be very close to or even made by alternative musicians.
Daisy: [00:39:11] For me, the surface level kind of diagnosis of it is that we're all just nerds. Yeah, that's so nerdy people. And it's like even I'll go to like punk shows or like hardcore punk shows and just start talking about dungeon synth and like fucking like aliens with someone like came from halfway across the world. And it's like, “All right, chill. OK, that's we're just all. Yeah, we're all nerds,” but…
Charlie Jane: [00:39:41] Relatable.
Daisy: [00:39:42] Yeah, I think another part of it is that the reason why I like horror specifically, like just thinking about that or like sci fi – fantasy is a bit of a different relationship for me. But I think it's just this subversive thing that specifically like horror makes you think about your body and your lived experiences in a more visceral way. And for me, like noise, especially what I'm doing now is very involving my body in a very visceral experience because that's something that I kind of have constantly happening. So I think that there's a lot of meat to chew out of that carcass.
Annalee: [00:40:21] Yeah, that's really interesting. It is true because I feel like with noise music, especially like there's ways that you feel it in your body that you don't necessarily with other kinds of music. And it is it's almost like body horror, like music as body horror. So, yeah.
Charlie Jane: [00:40:34] Yeah, I feel like there's this sense of strangeness and kind of like alienness that you get with like really good electronic or like really kind of unconventional experimental music. I mean, I grew up watching sci fi where the soundtrack was kind of like a lot of like synthesizer noises and stuff that wasn't really necessarily a tune, per se. And like theramin back in the day, like I feel like it does kind of make me feel like science fiction is happening if the soundtrack is kind of like, “wow, wow”, kind of.
Daisy: [00:41:04] Is that conditioning, though? Is that like?
Charlie Jane: [00:41:07] No, I think it actually is something about like, you know, when you're watching a romcom, it has romcom music. It has like, you know, twangy guitars and like heartwarming strings and stuff.
[00:41:17] So, yeah, so Women of Noise, you're more than just a blog. You've recently put out an actual physical zine, which feels like a big step from just doing a blog online. I miss physical zines. And you also recently released a compilation album benefiting the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund. And you have a sample pack benefiting Doctors Without Borders. Why do you want to go beyond just being a blog? And why does it important to you to kind of have that presence in the world and support these causes?
Dora: [00:41:46] I guess I'm thinking about when I took over in 2018, I really had a couple of goals. One was to diversify the kind of artists that we covered, you know, not just in terms of, you know, all experimental music, but just demographically people of different races and, you know, orientations, backgrounds, different countries, like I was really trying to expand.
[00:42:12] And the second thing that I really wanted to do since Tumblr around that time was kind of a dying platform. I decided, “Okay, you know, just try different social media and see what happens.” So we started an Instagram in 2019. And after a couple of months, it just exploded. And we really did not expect that to happen.
[00:42:34] And somewhere along the line, we just kind of realized, hey, now that we have this kind of reach, we can start doing things for the greater good. And yeah, it was Julia that first came up with the idea of us doing compilations. And the first one that we did was for Ukraine. And then the second one that we did was for Holler Health Justice, which is an abortion fund for people in Appalachian states. Since, you know, I'm from East Tennessee, that's a little more personal to me.
Charlie Jane: [00:43:04] Hell yeah.
Dora: [00:43:05] Yeah, all of us have had different ideas for compilation. Sometimes things that are personal to us, sometimes it correlates to things that are happening in the world. And it's just important to have that reach and not only just talk about music, but also do something good with it.
Julia: [00:43:23] In 2022, the war started on Ukraine. And of course, I lived in Poland. It was just very personal and important to me at the time. Still is. Where I lived was this big energy of everybody felt like they needed to do something. There was this urgency to help. And I started thinking, “What can I possibly do?” And I realized that we have this whole platform and I see other similar platforms making compilations and concerts for charity. And I realized that it's something that we can do as well.
[00:44:02] And yeah, then Dora did the Holler Health Justice, then Palestine. And Daisy has one compilation in the making, I believe.
Daisy: [00:44:11] Yeah, it's going to be a physical release and similarly to all the other compilations. All the proceeds are going to go to mutual aid funds. And I think that comes from just kind of a natural reaction to the spaces that I associate with music. Different spheres of music that I've been in and grew up in. It was not just the music itself. People weren't just there for the music. They were there for each other. And if someone was struggling, they try to pull together money in some way. And that still happens.
[00:44:46] Or if someone's coming through on tour, you host for them in your apartment, even though it's kind of inconvenient for you. But that's the only way that these people can have something nice in their life that won't burn a hole in their pocket. And breaking even is the best thing that you can do like touring, especially as a noise artist. But it's still worth it. It's something that for me, I don't really do anything outside of music that is for my life. I work, like spend time with loved ones and do some sort of music thing. That's the thing that fills me with a lot of joy. So having the opportunity to spread to a larger audience just means that you do that same thing, but with a different reach.
Annalee: [00:45:35] I wanted to finish up by asking you guys how you find new music. I know you accept submissions on the blog. Like, how do you pick what you want to feature? How do you find new artists?
Daisy: [00:45:47] I just dig like a rabid dog. I don't know. I just try to go in different websites and different archives and whatever, or just asking. Like, I'll just go to a friend who I don't even think listens to noise, but I'm like, “Hey, you're in a city that I don't know. Like, what noise musicians are there?” And they're like, “I don't know, but I know a friend who does.” And then I just have more friends from these conversations. Like, usually just talking to people and digging through the Internet.
Dora: [00:46:21] I find a lot of artists by going through tags on Tumblr. Like, I'll follow, you know, the noise industrial, you know, like different tags. And a lot of people, you know, I'll find what they're posting about. And I'm like, OK, cool. Then I also have friends here locally on the Chattanooga music scene, which, by the way, the Chattanooga noise and experimental scene has really exploded in the past few years. And I'm very proud to be a part of that.
[00:46:48] But, you know, now I belong to this scene with a lot of people who know about different artists, you know, and tell me, “Hey, you should check out so and so.” And sometimes I just kind of find people by accident. You know, I'll be scrolling through Instagram and artists that I'm following will feature some other artists. Like, they'll go to their concert, take a video and it's like, “Oh, this person's cool.” And then I'll go and check them out. And it kind of just goes from there. And Women of Noise having to kind of reach, but it does now. A lot of artists will message or email us and introduce themselves wanting to be featured. And we find people that way.
Julia: [00:47:20] For me, it was always pretty natural. I mean, I just liked finding out new artists. I liked following music blogs and checking out every single person they write about. Or these days I will see a leaflet of a show from abroad and I will check up on what the bands are. So it's just kind of this natural interest and will to explore.
Charlie Jane: [00:47:44] Nice. Where can people find you all online besides the Women of Noise blog?
Dora: [00:47:49] I'm Leperwitch on pretty much every social media platform. You can find me on Bandcamp. You can find some older embarrassing recordings on SoundCloud if you dig around enough. You can find me on Instagram. I have a Facebook page, even though it's not really taking off as much, but you know, it's Facebook, whatever. And yeah, that's where you can find me.
Julia: [00:48:11] You can find me by Zmijowka or like the spelling is more English. Zmijovka. It's really hard to... I'm not going to spell it out, but...
Annalee: [00:48:25] We'll link to it in the show notes.
Julia: [00:48:25] Yeah. As of Women of Noise, because we are on multiple platforms, we have an Instagram blog, which is pretty much our biggest platform. We have a WordPress blog, womenofnoise.blog. There you will be able to find all the other links and links to the podcast and Zinn and compilations on Bandcamp.
Daisy: [00:48:47] The podcast, which is kind of the thing, that I'm most involved with, is available on all the streaming services, RSS feed, the Women of Noise podcast, and then me. Good luck, because I'm shadow banned on everything. Searching up “Dickgirl” does not, you know, you'll find some stuff. Yeah. I mean, you can Google me. It's just, you're not going to find me.
Annalee: [00:49:11] It's going to be an adventure though.
Daisy: [00:49:13] Yeah. Anyway, Fur Affinity, I don't know. Instagram, find me. Have fun.
Annalee: [00:49:18] Awesome. Well, thank you guys so much for joining us. This was awesome.
Daisy: [00:49:22] Thank you.
Julia: [00:49:22] Thank you very much.
Dora: [00:49:23] I'm glad you had us.
[00:49:25] OOAC session break music, a quick little synth bwoop bwoo.
Annalee: [00:49:27] Thank you so much for listening. Remember that you can find us on most of the social media platforms, including Mastodon, Instagram, Bluesky, and of course we're on Patreon. If you'd like to support us, it's patreon.com/ouropinionsarecorrect.
[00:49:43] Thank you so much to our brilliant and insightful engineer, Niah Harmon. Thanks to Chris Palmer and Katya Lopez Nichols for the music. If you are a patron, we'll talk to you in your ears with a mini episode. Otherwise we will be in your ears in two weeks with a brand new episode.
Both: [00:50:03] Bye!
[00:50:04] [OOAC theme plays. Science fiction synth noises over an energetic, jazzy drum line.]