Diaphora presents: Side Effects May Include…

Earlier this month we released our second episode of Diaphora called “Side Effects May Include.” It’s an original story in a Blackadder/Monty Python-esque style about two scientists doing routine testing of a seemingly normal drug. Of course things go wrong!

Fun fact: I wrote the story in two evenings! I sat down with the idea to write a zombie apocalypse story with bantering characters. My main inspiration was Blackadder, a British sitcom from the 1980s, while the words flowed onto the pages. Another fun fact: This was one of the last stories we wrote for Diaphora’s first season.

For this episode we turned to our fellow voice actors from the Path of Dragons Radio and Legends of Khampiohn discord servers. Seeing as the story found its inspiration from British sitcoms, I specifically had Brad J Taylor and Chris Highwell in mind for the two scientists. And as their female test subject had to be versatile in normal, crazy, and creature performances, we immediately turned to Raven Anderson. Together, they made the perfect assembly of characters in a silly story written in two days.

The experimental part of this episode was the writing itself. I never wrote comedies before, and my humor is mostly eye-rolling (just ask my kid), so I’m doubly excited my efforts paid off! And to top it off, I wrote it with audio in mind, so if something would usually be a visual cue on television, I made sure you could either clearly hear what it was or have somebody comment on it. I did miss one cue though…