Transmission Folklore · Lavender Lemonade Collective

S1 E12: Iowa Battery

December 18, 2020·22 min·1 clip

Carter tells Sarl how a bad breakup ended with them calling the police because their ex said the relationship was all they had to live for.

The episode opens with a dark existential monologue — described in-story as a manifesto — in which a character (not Carter or Sarl) philosophises about entropy, self-liberation, and becoming a monster. Their companion compares them to the Unabomber. The character reveals their target is a former partner named Sorrel, a fellow Siren who left the relationship; they drove a truck into Sorrel but the Fae saved them, which they find personally insulting. They express secondary anger at Horatio for taking Sorrel's side and admit they dated Sorrel partly out of loneliness as the only known Siren outside school. The scene shifts to Carter and Sarl stranded in an Iowa cornfield with a dead car battery. Sarl talks Carter through jumpstarting the car. While searching for the battery, Carter begins confessing to a series of past interpersonal failures: telling a partner they were unhappy but staying anyway, missing Rowan's art show because they were too depressed to go without saying so, and hurting their former roommate by failing to show up. Carter also confesses they inadvertently 'killed' a friend named Maeve during a LARP when Maeve got lost and suffered frostbite, then came back via a revenant ritual Maeve had performed on herself beforehand. Maeve is apparently still angry. The car restarts. Carter then brings up their ex Emery, who told Carter during their breakup that the relationship was all they had to live for. Carter called the police, unsure what else to do. Carter names this as part of why the current storyline feels personal. Sarl reassures Carter that having discovered magic — including wings — does not make them broken. Carter worries about accidentally taking people's names or abilities without consent. Sarl offers Carter their full true name — Sarl Sparrow Huckson — as a willing practice subject, stating that three months in a car earns that level of trust. Carter accepts, shaken but grateful. The episode closes with Carter noting they want to find Bianca again to learn about Fae things, Sarl agreeing to continue traveling with them, and an exchange about Carter pursuing a character named Sock romantically.

As heard by us

A bleak, intimate episode that finds tenderness inside panic and regret.

Transmission Folklore turns an end-of-the-world monologue into something smaller and harder to forget: a study of guilt, care, and people failing one another while trying to help.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Press play for an audio drama that opens with an existential monologue about the end of the world, then keeps circling depression, guilt, and care.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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