‘The Parabatai Podcast’ is an account dedicated to all things Shadowhunters. In weekly episodes, Poppy (29) and Meredith (33) discuss, analyze, and share their love for anything and everything Shadow World related, whether it’s the television series, the books and their extra content, or 2013’s The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones film.
What inspired you to start doing this podcast?
M: During Season 1, Poppy and I would spend a good part of every Wednesday talking about the previous night’s Shadowhunters episode, and one day, she asked, ‘Hey, if Shadowhunters gets renewed for Season 2, do you wanna host a podcast with me?’ I thought, what better way to share our Shadowhunters thoughts than broadcasting them over the internet? And obviously, yes. We had talked about potential names for the podcast, and while Cassandra Clare was discussing the origin of the ‘Parabatai’ term during her Lady Midnight event, I texted Poppy that we should go with ‘The Parabatai Podcast.’
P: When Meredith texted me that name, I knew she was in, and I immediately set up the social media accounts. I was at a hockey game actually, at the time, but it was very important to do right away. I also got in touch with my good friend and artist Justine (@ficklemuse), and she agreed to do our artwork. Once we decided on our name, everything else was very easy. Meredith and I are Parabatai, and we’ve been in sync about this show from its inception. It’s work, but it’s fun work. I have a background in podcasting that’s boring, but I like them, so this is a proper fandom outlet for me.
How long have you been involved in fandom and what brought you into it?
M: I picked up City of Bones in the summer of 2009 and immediately read it, City of Ashes, and City of Glass in the next three days. I fell in love with the world Cassandra Clare created, especially Jace Wayland. I was studying for the bar exam during this time, and I proceeded to read the trilogy two or three more times that summer. I kept up with Cassandra Clare’s other books, saw the movie more than once or twice in theaters, and was so excited when I learned they were making a TV show of it. Like Poppy, I watched from the pilot and have been here for it ever since.
P: My origin story is the same as Meredith’s – I picked up the first three books in summer 2009, and read them all in a weekend. Time jump to 2016 and the premiere of Shadowhunters on Freeform, and I was as hooked by the show as I once was by the books. It was fun and I loved it. I waded in and out of the fandom in those intervening years, but it’s safe to say I am firmly entrenched here now.
What has been the best part of your fandom experience so far?
M: There are so many amazingly creative people we’ve met through this experience, and I’m constantly impressed by the art and work they turn out – I recently learned one of the art prints I have in my office was designed by one of the artists we follow on Twitter! As Poppy also mentions, the weekly realization that people like listening to us talk about this fictional universe we love is still so much fun.
P: This is a selfish answer, but: when I realized that people who are not our immediate friends listen to this podcast of ours. This is a very fun and creative fandom, and it’s genuinely the best experience to be creating something within this community. We started this podcast because we like to talk about Shadowhunters with each other, and it’s been really inspiring to be embraced by the larger fandom and have conversations with other fans about this thing we all love.
How much time do you commit to your account per week?
M: A significant amount? We probably shouldn’t count the hours because there are undoubtedly more important adult things to be doing with our time, but the perk of being an adult is getting to do what we want with our free time, and for us, it’s this podcast. On an average week, we watch and live-tweet the show; we write the script; we record our podcast episodes on Thursday nights, which is a few hours of time; and the podcast is edited and airs on Mondays! In addition to all of the above, I curate our Tumblr, which has both our podcast posts and general Shadowhunters content and fanart from the show, movie, and books. As anyone who hangs out on Tumblr can tell you, it’s very easy to lose track of time on the site! Poppy is mostly the one who keeps track of our Twitter (though we do trade off live-tweeting when the show is on), so it balances out pretty well in the end.
P: I hang out on Twitter almost exclusively. As she said, Meredith handles our Tumblr, and I am indebted to her for that. Besides all the official work, most of our conversations tend to be about Shadowhunters (except when they’re about Teen Wolf), and that’s how we ended up here in the first place.
What sort of planning goes into each podcast? How do you decide on which topics to cover?
M: While the show airs, our episodes are always recaps and discussion of the most recent episode, so that schedule is predetermined. But during hiatus time, like right now, we choose what we want to do from the books. We started the podcast with a read-along of the first three Mortal Instruments books, and then hosted a rewatch of Season 1 of Shadowhunters before diving right into Season 2. We’re covering a read-along of The Bane Chronicles at the moment.
We write a script for every episode, and some of that script is generic – our intro and outro, for example – but a lot of it is episode-specific, like the recap and the discussion points. We use a script because we’re talkers, and if we don’t, we’ll run on for hours. For the show episodes, we also mix up themed cocktails and share the recipes on the podcast and our Tumblr page.
I take notes for our Shadowhunters TV recaps because I also provide a section of the ‘Forever Young Adult’ Shadowhunters recaps. I watch the episode live when it airs without taking notes so I don’t miss the experience of watching the episode. Then, sometime before we record (usually that same night), I’ll rewatch the episode and take notes, which also has the benefit of catching foreshadowing and important points I may not have caught during the initial viewing. Poppy is then tasked with summarizing my notes into a summary for our podcast recap.
P: Meredith does the heavy lifting of translating all the important bits of an episode into notes, and I wrangle those into a script. For the books, we tag-team this more, tackling chapters or stories for recap and discussion points. Our discussion doesn’t follow a script, but we do make bullet points of topics we know we want to talk about so we don’t leave something out of an episode.
What is your favorite thing about Shadowhunters?
M: If you’ve listened to the podcast, then you already know I have a lot of feelings about Jace Wayland, and Jace Wayland/Clary Fray. (If you send me Clace fanfiction recs, I will love you forever, as good ones are way too hard to find.) Jace and Clary were the primary reason I fell in love with the books, and that love has not lessened with time. I also dearly love Will Herondale from The Infernal Devices, and our eventual covering of those books on the podcast will be very entertaining based on both mine and Poppy’s feelings about it. Generally speaking, The Infernal Devices is a trilogy I tend to tell people is one of the few trilogies I think has a nearly perfect conclusion; I have Clockwork Princess on audiobook as well as in hardcover and have listened to it a handful of times now (which is only very slightly also do to the narrator).
P: My favorite series of the larger chronicles is The Infernal Devices, and I’m impatient to cover that on our podcast. (Tentatively, we’ll get to these books in 2018. And yes, we have a rough sketch of our schedule outlined for the next 18 months.) The depth of feeling Meredith has for Jace, I feel for Jem. One of the things I love about fiction, be it books, or television, or film, is how I relate to the same things differently with time. When I first read these books, I was in college; when I read them again last summer, I was firmly an adult. I picked up different things; I loved different things. But they still mean a lot to me, and I connect to them in the same ways and also different ways. The show gives me a different avenue into a world I love, and I love the show for that. It’s important to carve out time to love things, unabashedly, and I get to do that every week with Meredith on our podcast about these books and this show. It’s just fun. It makes me happy.
Have you had any interaction with the cast or Cassandra Clare?
M: I’ve met Cassandra Clare on book tours for Clockwork Angel (as part of a larger group book tour) and Lady Midnight, and she was lovely and signed multiple books each time. Kat McNamara liked our tweet about our Clary Fray-inspired cocktail – ‘Not a Little Girl’ – and Alberto Rosende liked one of our tweets from our 2×06 episode live-tweet. Cassandra Clare has also liked one of our tweets about our read-along of The Bane Chronicles.
P: I have met Cassandra Clare on a book tour (at the same group book tour as Meredith, though we didn’t meet or know each other then), and she’s incredibly kind. She signed a book and a shirt for me and gave me several signed bookplates. Harry Shum Jr. retweeted our Magnus Bane-inspired cocktail – ‘The Cat’s Meow’ – and that blew up our mentions for a solid week.
If you’re a fan of podcasts and in-depth Shadowhunters discussions, you can find the Parabatai Podcast on iTunes or on their website. You can also follow them on Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram!
