The Milkman of St. Gaff's is a surreal, dark fantasy/horror podcast hosted on the Rusty Quill Network, told from the perspective of the titular milkman, Howie Coxwell. Set in in a bizarre world that is not our own, but not unlike our own, it delves into the life and responsibilities of being a milkman on the small island of St. Gaff's. Suffice to say, there's a lot more to the job than simply early mornings and delivering dairy.
Provides examples Of:
- Ambiguous Disorder:
- Howie's general demeanour, childlike internal monologue and the sorts of assumptions he makes in interacting with other people suggest that he certainly isn't neurotypical. And then there's the hallucinatory/disassociative episodes he's had since childhood.
- Due to the setting being roughly equivalent to early 20th century North America, psychology and psychiatry are still in their infancy. He goes to a doctor for the first time ever some time in his 20s, and is diagnosed as having something called "ecstusius" note , though whether this is an accurate diagnosis, or what it would refer to in our world's medical terminology, is unclear.
- Angels, Devils and Squid: A sort of literal version in that the majority religion St. Gaff's, and the mainland, revolves around worship of giant extra-dimensional whales with glowing bones and, in opposition to them, Lovecraftian horrors of the deep born of human sin. More Angels and Devils are Squid than a straight version of this trope.
- Conditioned to Accept Horror: Howie's lifetime of horrifying visions, alongside his possible sociopathy, mean he comments on some objectively horrifying situations like they're the weather.
- In episode 18, while being chased by an otherworldly magician with a knife, who's just stabbed his companion (and stabbed him earlier that week) he takes a tangent to cheerily get excited over finding some vacuum tubes in their hiding spot.
- Crystal Dragon Jesus: The Church has a distinctly Christian flavour to it.
- It calls its houses of worship "churches" (complete with bell towers and naves), that hold sermons on Sundays, with choirs, and are led by a priest referred to with the honorific of "Father".
- However, it is described as a "maritime religion", there are references to a prophet called "The Great Whaler", and the objects of veneration are special, mystical whales. Demon equivalents, called Bogorich, live deep below the waves, where all human sin apparently collects.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Howie's past is often discussed in a relatively neutral tone but seems to have been pretty horrific.
- His hallucinatory episodes, and the demands of watching over him, put incredible strain on his parents lives, culminating in his dad losing his job (twice) and, drunkenly telling Howie he wishes he hadn't saved him from drowning years earlier.
- His general weirdness meant other children did not want to hang out with him.
- He may well have ended up running away from home and lived on the streets, after possibly causing his father's death.
- His reasons for coming to St. Gaff's in the first place are stated to be "unfit to tell about right off", and it's implied he's running from something sinister back home.
- Dirty Cop: The police on St. Gaff's certainly aren't a picture of honest police work. Threatening and beating civilians, and quite possibly committing straight up murder are not at all beyond them.
- The Ditz: Howie is not an intelligent man, shading into Too Dumb to Live at times (see below).
- He manages to take the corpse of a man he helped murder on a romantic holiday with his girlfriend because, instead of immediately disposing of it as he was meant to, he took a nap instead.
- Draft Dodging: Subverted - young men of Howie's age are expected to go to the frontlines as there's a war on, however becoming a milkman is one of the jobs that can excuse you from service. Howie, despite also having no interest in becoming a soldier, assures us in the first episode that his reasons for becoming a milkman on St. Gaff's is not about that, rather it's to do with him fleeing from something else entirely. Considering his lifelong hallucinatory disorder, he would presumably (hopefully) be disqualified from service anyway.
- Giant Animal Worship: The Church of this world worships the Falena, giant whales with luminescent green bones.
- Government Agency of Fiction: The Department of Lactic Affairs (D.O.L.A.).
- Hallucinations: Howie has suffered from some sort of hallucinatory episodes since childhood, in which he sees and hears things that aren't real, and has been known to come too hours later and far from where he started with no knowledge of what actually happened during these episodes. In episode 6 The Church, Travis suggests that Howie's hallucinations are not a medical issue. Rather they are the religiously important, psychic abilities of a Seeker, those able to find and hunt the Falena and are actually the ability to peer and/or step into other dimensions.
- Lethally Stupid: Howie, just...wow.
- The Men in Black: The D.O.L.A. are up to something secret, involving breaking proscriptions against digging or going underground.
- Milkman Conspiracy: A very literal one. Milk delivery was nationalised decades ago, and the service has apparently become a sort of Secret Police or spy network, alongside ensuring you get your two pints of semi-skimmed and the whipping cream you need for tonight's dinner party.
- Mood Whiplash: Both internal to the show, and external.
- Howie's narration, due to his lightly cheery flat effect, means he'll discuss life or death situations, childhood trauma and finding a cool box in the same breath and barely a change from his tone of voice.
- No matter how dark, dramatic or emotional the end of an episode is, it will immediately be followed by the theme music, an extremely jaunty, whistled tune.
- No Blood for Phlebotinum: The war, that has been going on for a decade at the start of the series, is over access to metal. For (initially) unexplained reasons, Towlaw cannot safely mine metal from underground, and has exhausted their mountain ore deposits. Struggling to obtain it from further afield through "peaceful" note means, they went to war to claim it from The Republic of Weyland, an adjacent country to the north.
- Physical Religion: The giant whales (see Giant Animal Worship above) are known to exist, or, more accurately, to have existed. They are worshipped as deity-like creatures, however this didn't stop people hunting them to extinction and using their bones as a standard part of church architecture.
- Secret Police: The Department of Lactic Affairs and milkmen in general are not the police, however they appear to have governmentally approved powers to root out "subversion", and are encouraged to act as spies and engage in a number of clandestine activities not normally associated with milk delivery.
- Settling the Frontier: Somewhere in the background of the world, apparently what Towlaw did to The Republic of Weyland before it's independence. This is presented by a character as having been some great favour they did for them, "kindly" gifting them their language, religion, civilisation and law, and characterising their refusal to give up their metal as "ungratefulness".
- Too Dumb to Live: At one point, Howie forgot to fill the van up with gas before a long journey to a remote radio post, leaving him trapped in the middle of nowhere, after dark, on a winter's night. His solution? Get out and walk, find an occupied farmhouse he might be able to get help or shelter in, and, instead of knocking on the door (in his easily recognisable milkman's uniform), peer through the window until spotted by the couple who live there, leading to him nearly getting shot and having to return to the van to nearly freeze to death.
- Unreliable Narrator: Hallucinations aside, Howie starts the first episode by telling us he's withholding certain bits of important information about his own past and motives. Beyond that, his oblivious tendencies and poor ability in reading other people means that the listener can only know what Howie notices, which is far from the whole picture.
- Villain Protagonist: Howie initially seems simply to make some poor choices, but as the series progresses it becomes apparent that a lot of his actions are ethically unjustifiable and actively malicious.
- He's very quick to jump to maiming and/or murder as a solution to minor inconveniences.
- He's still an idiot but there's a line and mass poisoning is quite a way on the other side of it.
- War Comes Home: Howie at one point casually reminisces about his childhood, when the war reached his home city of Mingsbight and some new children joined his school after the part of the city their school was in was annexed. In the same episode he feels genuinely surprised at how the people of St. Gaff's feel genuinely affected by the war, as from his experience growing up in the war zone the island has been practically untouched by it.
