Hey guys, this week I review Echo Chamber’s second season.

So, first a quick recap. Echo Chamber is a show starring Tom Pike, Dana Shaw and Zack Wallnau made for and about one of my favorite websites, TvTropes, a site about the conventions of all fiction. The plot follows the three main characters, also named Tom, Dana and Zack, as they attempt to, and this is the fun bit, make a show for and about TvTropes. 

The first season was very fun and charming. It’s scale was small but it hinted at larger and stranger things going on in the background. The second season scales up in a big way, and makes some bit additions.

In this season, a rival webshow for The Other Wiki, the TvTropes nickname for Wikipedia, pops up and starts to dwarf their own show. When they go to see about a possibly merger with the new show, called [Citation Needed] after the popular memetic expression, the host named Steven Tonti hires Dana as his own producer, thus putting her in the crew of two rival shows. However the [Citation Needed] camerawoman, Gaelyn, develops a crush on Zack and acts as an innocent sort of double-agent herself. 

The addition of new characters was a very good stroke on the part of the crew. Since character and development comes from interaction, having the three begin to interact visibly outside their little dysfunctional circle allows all of them, particularly Zack, to develop.

One interesting move was both the addition of Gaelyn’s camera and a new fourth wall cam, allowing Zack to be part of the visible action. While I enjoyed having the cameraman himself be a character, this new development shows that the crew won’t milk a single interesting facet of the show and turn it into a gimmick, which is reassuring. 

Speaking of interesting facets of the show, in season one we were left with a strange revelation: Instead of just being heavily backlit on a strange camera, Mr. Administrator really is in a white void room, and can somehow project images with his hands. This strange element pervades the background of the show, giving a sense of mystery and unease to overlay the more conventional character dramedy, getting gradually more and more relevant to the main story as it progresses. Without spoilers, the season’s final twist makes me both excited to watch and hope that another call to tropers will be made to contribute to season 3’s writing because it starts to go far more up my alley.

The show is available for free to watch on youtube and TvTropes itself, so definitely go check it out. In all, it’s a good show with interesting characters and a rapidly escalating plot. I personally can’t wait to see where it goes.

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Now for my own update. As some of you know, the free preview of my story, King of the Water Roads: The Violet Scar has been updated with edits to what will hopefully be the final version. My intent is to release it on Libboo’s pilot program, so feel free to spread the word about both. Draft -1 is now well over 10,000 words and counting, and my editor is preparing the spiked whip and thumbscrews.