Camp Here and There: Your New Favorite Fiction Podcast

By Rhianna Koppes

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            Are you looking for a new fiction podcast to listen to this year? Then stop reading immediately! Seriously, based on my own personal experience, Camp Here & There is best experienced completely blind. Go and listen. Now.

Still not convinced?

Yeah, that’s fair. I rarely trust people when they say “Read/watch/listen/etc. to this thing completely blind with no context! It’s good, I promise!” Honestly, calling my experience “completely blind” wouldn’t be exactly truthful. The reason I decided to listen to this podcast is because one of my favorite music artists composed the soundtrack, and I wanted an excuse to listen to more of his music (more on that later). I doubt I would have listened had I not known that, which would have been a downright shame, because Camp Here & There has very quickly endeared itself to me. And you, dear reader, deserve to have that same opportunity.

Also, I will do my absolute best to avoid both major and minor spoilers, but if something manages to slip through the cracks, consider this your warning. You had your chance to bail already.

Now, without further ado, let’s get into it.

Camp Here & There is a horror comedy podcast that follows Sydney O. Sargent, camp nurse for the titular Camp Here & There, a summer camp in Ohio. I imagine you’ve got some idea of what a summer camp in Ohio might be like. Forget that. This camp, and this world as a whole, is… very weird. To paint a picture: the sky is every color but blue, a day is twenty-five hours long, and a completely incomprehensible object hovers ominously above the surface of the lake. It’s very Welcome to Night Vale-esque in a way, where strangeness and absurdity is their normal. It’s actually quite fun, trying to deduce what is and isn’t “normal” for the people of this world, especially when that normalcy is question right out the gate. We’re introduced to the antagonist of the first season, The Pink Elephant Man, within the first five minutes of the very first episode. When I was first listening, I didn’t know what to make of The Pink Elephant Man. He’s a dirty, mangy man living in the woods outside of camp who is always wearing a pink elephant mask to hide his face because anyone who looks at his face is filled with an incredible sense of zeal or, if Sydney’s case, lethargy. He’s weird, no doubt about it, but no weirder than anything else at this camp. He doesn’t seem like much of a threat, considering Sydney gets kidnapped by penguins the very next episode. Yet there is something off about him, and it was like a puzzle trying to work out why. If that puzzle was on a roller coaster and it kept taking an excessive amount of loop-de-loops.

Speaking of puzzles on  coasters, one of my favorite elements of Camp Here & There is how the episode descriptions are utilized. Essentially, there are two ongoing plots. The first it whatever is happening in the actual episode, as told through Sydney’s mealtime announcements to the campers and the audio journal he keeps. The second comes from the episode descriptions, which are actually a part of the story. Each description is formatted like someone taking notes on the events of the actual episode. It becomes quickly apparent that multiple people, seemingly all a part of some kind of organization or agency, are watching and studying Camp Here & There. The notes they take are very clinical and detached, which provides an interesting contrast to the touchy-feely-ness of the actual podcast. The second puzzle on the roller coaster comes from interpreting these notes. Why is this agency watching this camp? Why are all the people referred to as “entity number whatever” instead of by their names? What does the order of numbers mean? It took me at least halfway through Season One to figure out which numbers matched with each character. I also love how it recontextualizes the events of the actual episode. Despite repeated complaining about unprofessional behavior from his colleagues, Agent 7 (the person behind the notes) is very opinionated and often feels the need to voice these opinions in the episode descriptions. For example, as I mentioned earlier, we are introduced to The Pink Elephant Man in the first episode, and if you were only to listen to the episode and not read the description, it’s unclear how much of a threat he is. However, under the Important Notes section of the description, Agent 7 is much more concerned about The Pink Elephant Man, promoting him from Entity 9 status up to Entity 4. Both plots are telling the same story, but the perspectives are so wildly different it feels like two separate stories.

At this point, I want to address something that you might be thinking. I previously used the self-ascribed “horror comedy” genre to describe Camp Here & There, but based on the various plot elements I’ve mentioned thus far, this podcast seems to be leaning more comedy than horror. Which is totally fair; if you had asked me what genre this podcast fell into at the end of Season One, I’d have said something along the lines of “absurdist-magical-realism-suspense-comedy?” However, I can tell you now that Season Two more than earns the “horror” title of the horror comedy genre. For those of you who love the horror genre, Season Two will be right up your alley. For those of you who are more hesitant when it comes to horror, the horror is rather mild for the most part, and the more extreme episodes have accurate content warnings. As someone who is finally dipping their toes into the horror genre after years of being anti-horror, I find that Camp Here & There strikes a good balance between horror and comedy.

Of course, I’m not just either laughing or terrified while listening to Camp Here & There, although I am frequently both of those things, sometimes at the same time. No, I have run the full gambit of emotions with this podcast. Don’t get me wrong, every time I listen to a new episode, I am having a blast, the absolute time of my life. However, for a horror comedy podcast, this story sure is tragic. The best example I can give to demonstrate how I really feel about this podcast is this: I have cried twice (so far) while listening to Camp Here & There, once out of laughter and once out of crushing sadness. And yet I still continue to have a good time, I swear!

As a queer person, I’ll be honest, I strongly dislike when media reviewer declares that you have to watch/read/listen to whatever because it’s gay, you’ll love it! More often than not, it comes off as a bit shallow and detracts from any criticism of said media because if it’s gay, it has to be good (not always true, unfortunately). However, I do want to take a moment to talk about Camp Here & There’s representation and how it fits into the narrative. Yes, Camp Here & There is very queer (a queer horror podcast? Fork found in kitchen.) But I bring it up not to coax you into listening, but rather because the representation enhances the story. Blue Wolfe, writer, director, and co-creator of the podcast as well as the voice of Sydney Sargent, is a trans gay disabled man writing about a trans gay disabled man. Wolfe frequently talks about how creating this podcast was freeing for him, a way to take control over something in his life when he doesn’t often have control, and that feeling is evident in the way he writes Sydney. Sydney’s autonomy is a frequent theme of the podcast. Despite being an adult and holding what should be a position of authority in camp, he is rarely allowed to make choices, and when he does, seemingly every other adult in camp looks down on him for it. Episode after episode, we see Sydney struggle for a chance for autonomy and control, even when it harms him. This theme of autonomy only continues into Season Two, and I would love to discuss it more, but unfortunately, to do so would involve possibly the biggest spoiler ever, so for the sake of your listening experience, let’s move on.

Another thing I appreciated about the representation in Camp Here & There is that people aren’t held to a gold-standard. Thankfully, it’s not as big of a problem as it has been in the past, but often times I’ve seen arguments that in order to be “good representation” (whatever that means), queer people and relationships in media have to be as morally pure and healthy as possible. However, the relationships in Camp Here & There are often times far from that. And not just the romantic ones; there are plenty of toxic and unhealthy familial and platonic relationships too. I want to take a moment to touch on the central relationship/conflict of the podcast between Sydney and his co-nurse/childhood friend Jedidiah A. A. Martin. At the beginning of Season One, I would describe their relationship as a particularly difficult “won’t” phase of a lifelong “will they, won’t they” relationship. A lot of it falls on Jedidiah, who spends more time in his office working on his mysterious project than with Sydney, but neither are particularly great at communicating. They both keep secrets which lead to resentment and distrust, and even now, about two-thirds of the way through Season Two, it seems like it’s only going to get worse. And while it’s awful to listen to Sydney go through this rather unhealthy relationship, it makes for a good story, and in a way, it’s refreshing to see a queer relationship be so complex.

I said I would bring it up later, so I’m doing it now. The soundtrack is phenomenal and aligns tonally with the vibes of Camp Here & There. It was composed by Will Wood, best known for being a staple of the “weird kid in middle school” music genre. I say that positively, of course; I am both a big fan of Will Wood and was a weird kid in middle school. If you’re familiar with Will Wood’s music style, then you’ll have a good idea of what listening to this podcast will be like. I couldn’t imagine any other music as the soundtrack to Camp Here & There. If you aren’t familiar with Will Wood, you are in for a time and a half. In addition to the instrumental soundtrack, Will Wood also wrote four original songs with lyrics about certain Camp Here & There characters. How often do you see multiple canon songs written about characters and their plotlines outside of, like, musical theatre? I hardly see it, at least. All four songs are very musically different too, so even if you’re not a fan of Will Wood’s typical style of music, you’re bound to like one of them.

I know I could keep talking about this podcast for literally hours, but I am choosing to stop myself here because I doubt I can keep myself from spoilers any longer. If you’re looking for a new fiction podcast to listen to, Camp Here & There is the one for you. If you’ve never listened to a fiction podcast before, now’s a great time to start. Season Two is still in the process of being released at a weekly pace, so between the ~60 previously episodes and the rest of Season Two, there’s quite a bit to listen to.

Did Camp Here & There change my life? Hard to say. Do I think about it basically every hour of the day? Absolutely. If you consider that changing my life, then Camp Here & There is a life-changing podcast.