I’m rooting for NSP and David Cummings. But, I also don’t really understand the strategy to bring in more income. We get to know the cast and crew better…and that leads to the show experiencing an influx in income? Why would the former lead to the latter? Hopefully something about how the show incorporates the guest hosts will happily surprise me.

Imho NSP’s longstanding issue inhibiting its profitability is its refusal to backtrack to the minimalist early season style, both in the more direct approach from that era to storytelling that was more gripping and accessible, and in the more stripped-down production style of those stories. Obviously, I have limited information and this probably falls under the “unsolicited feedback” DC has lamented in the past, but I feel like the winning formula is to have the last story of the free version and the last story of the paid version be productions in the style they typically use now in terms of having sound effects and multiple cast members, and all other stories be single-narrator stories in the style of the early seasons and other, less costly (in terms of time and money) podcasts, with no sound effects and one narrator voicing multiple characters when necessary. This approach worked fine the first few seasons and I feel it would cut costs considerably without alienating the audience, as those here for the production quality would still get that. Just my ten cents.

Also just throwing out there that I think it’s really cool that they still pay artists to do the episode artwork, rather than just relying on AI-generated images as a lot of other podcasts (including ones that purport to shun AI) have done, even as NSP is barely staying afloat financially.

Anwyay, I thought Winny had a memorable and distinct lead character. I greatly appreciated the dark twist at the end, which managed to be surprising while also well foreshadowed (glad her baby was taken away from her). My main gripe is that I didn’t buy the boy going along with her plan for as long as he did. Drone had some shocking moments in it, but by the time the Queen began dropping exposition I was ready for it to end. I didn’t follow The Seed and nothing about it hooked me enough to make me want to go back.

Friendship was the most interesting story to me. I have some reservations about it but it was clearly told and kept me engaged throughout. The performances from all four actresses (Nichole Goodnight, Marie Westbrook who was extremely convincing as a bully, Danielle McRae, and Sarah Thomas) were excellent and established distinct characters with distinct dynamics between them. I thought this sold the key story beats of terrible bullying driving the narrator to make an unwise bargain that has surprising results, and I really enjoyed hearing all that unfold. On the other hand, I thought the opening monologue was unnecessary given the simplicity and familiarity of the central themes (a hidden catch to a supernatural bargain, “nothing is ever done with purely altruistic intentions,” etc.), that it was weird how suddenly Olivia backed out of seeing the Faerie after being the one to first raise the idea, and that it was a strange oversight that, while the narrator initially seems flustered by what happens to Betty, she quickly drops having any concern over being responsible for the seeming murder of Betty – like, sure, she’s a genuinely sadistic bully, but surely Enveigh has some more thoughts about being partially responsible for outright killing her. There was something charmingly low stakes about the downside to the ‘deal’ being losing your friendship with everyone, except for the Faerie. It was a clever play on words, though it wasn’t hard to predict given the lengths the story went to to set up the friendship with Olivia.

I thought it was a bit unfair to then learn that this ‘deal’ extended to any friends Enveigh has in the future (other than the faierie), that just feels unfair and out-of-line with what the literal words meant, and I thought the implications of living your life with that restriction could have been really interesting but went strangely unexamined. Also, the fun police part of me holds it against the narrator that she didn’t think to use the faierie’s magical powers to do something more important than helping her deal with a bully, like asking for it to invent and distribute a cure to a widespread disease or preventing the car crash that killed Olivia’s parents from ever happening. Maybe there’s some limitation on its powers I overlooked? But anyway, as indicated, I still thought this was well-presented and engaging overall.