MOONBASE THETA, OUT Cast Special
Featuring D.J. Sylvis and Claudia Elvidge
D.J. Sylvis
Hey Moonbaseians; Deej here and we are doing a little special thing for you here. As you know, and this should be falling in the feed between episodes 17 and 18. So between the last regular episode of the season and the big series finale, which is 18 and 19 together, while we’ve got you waiting for that, we wanted to do a little special, we’re going to do like a bigger Q&A after the final episodes have aired, because I don’t want you to ask things that are being answered there and so on. But I thought that I would spend a little bit of time and talk about the cast. Now, we thank our cast, like we mentioned our cast a lot, you get to see the credits in every episode and everything. But you might not know that unless you’re a big fan of audio fiction already, that a lot of our cast has their own projects that they produce or write or act in, or all of the above usually, because this is audio fiction. And that’s what we all do. Yeah. So I wanted to go through person by person, and so that it’s not too boring for you, I have a co-host. So let me bring to you an introduction for Claudia Elvidge who plays Lark in our show, and does quite a few other things that we’ll talk about when we get to Claudia’s listing.
Claudia Elvidge
Oh!
D.J. Sylvis
Hello there.
Claudia Elvidge
Yes, it’s me big audio drama nerd and also maker sometimes here to talk about audio drama.
D.J. Sylvis
Well, that’s what I figured considering your extensive social media presence as a like fan, as well as a creator, that there was no one better to discuss the field with. So yeah, we’re just gonna go through actor by actor and character by character and just give you some other stuff to listen to. And some other things do look up in your podcast app of choice. Although we are starting with the one and only Leeman Kessler, who has appeared on a few other podcasts, but doesn’t really have another podcast right now. So for Leeman, who, of course, is the founder of the feast, the like main voice in the show, there are some accounts on other social media to point to. First of all, of course, his long running project as “Ask Lovecraft” on YouTube, which is actually finished now. So you have – oh god, there are hundreds, if not a thousand episodes out there of him portraying H.P. Lovecraft and answering all number of questions, in the most outrageous ways. So look for that, “Ask Lovecraft” and on Tik Tok, he has a pretty significant presence there as well, where his username is @MayorLovecraft; he is also the mayor of a small town in on Ohio, Gambier. And he has a interesting little following there for some of these mysterious little posts that he does about weirdness in Ohio and it’s called “Always Has Been” so you can look for those.
Claudia Elvidge
How many people do you think are learning just now that Lehman Kessler is also a mayor?
D.J. Sylvis
That’s a good question. I think nobody will follow him anywhere online of course. But yeah, he is actually an actual mayor and an actual town. And yes, for all of you like Adventure Zone nerds, he also had a character named after him in a story arc there because he like answered them on social media. And this was back before he appeared in MTO or anything so we get people every few weeks or so it feels like asking Is this the same Leeman Kessler as in Adventure Zone and it is so now you know. Yeah. And that is Leeman. Our next actor in the list is our Alex you can’t go for Roger and not go for Alex that right next. Who is Gabriel Taneko. Gabriel Taneko is a voice actor and audio production specialist in Brazil. As such, I don’t have a whole lot of projects to share with you. If you know Portuguese, poke me and I might have a bit more for you. But if you look at our website, and for any of these, any of the people we’re going to talk about the links are also on our website, we have a MTO Cast and Crew page. And for each actor, we list their social media or whatever. So you can find them to like, explore these options that we’re giving you that way as well. But under Gabriel’s name, we have a link to his SoundCloud which should give you some interesting like little clips of stuff that he has recorded and or produced. He’s just smooth and flawless. I mean, Taneko just –
D.J. Sylvis
I gave that one a brief look over when I was getting ready for this and the first recommended post on there is very funny and also very appropriate for this Pride Month.
D.J. Sylvis
He’s really great and just, like Taneko’s just been … I’m gonna babble a bit about the actors too as we go through I skipped Leeman because I talk about him all the time, but Taneko has just been such a joy to work with. He just obviously like this is his life so he knows recording down to a tee, but it’s just, we rarely need more than one take from him. He just slides in there and just gives us Alex flawlessly and it’s just always so wonderful. You know by now because this is coming out after 17 and – well, 18 actually, not 18, sorry, 17 – I’m losing track of episodes. You’re feeling you know now after after episode 17 that he is awake, that Alex is awake again. So you actually get to hear Taneko a few more episodes before the very end. But yeah, you should definitely look his stuff up. Next on the list is Addie, Journee LaFond. Journee is just such a fucking master of so many things. Journee is a speaking professional, a activist of a dozen different types, and produces the show Witchever Path which with their husband, Steven, and we’ll talk about it again some more with Steven when we get to Steven’s list, to Steven’s name on the list. But Witchever Path is this lovely little, it sort of bounces back and forth between like horror and dark fantasy.
Claudia Elvidge
And more importantly, it’s also choose your own adventure, the listeners get to vote on what decisions the characters make and how that affects the story going forward.
D.J. Sylvis
Yeah, that’s the biggest thing. And I really don’t know how they do it and how they put on a show regularly with that concept. Because I mean, I’m I’m a little bit behind what I’m writing MTO like, I’m usually writing like seven or eight episodes down the line or something like that, at least this season. But I can’t imagine like waiting for the audience response to know how you’re going to tell the next part of your story.
Claudia Elvidge
Yeah, I get that there are some writers that are ‘pantsers’ just riding by the seat of their pants, they can go whichever way as the story goes. But you know, just having not even the control over which way it’s going exactly. And having likely at the end, hundreds of different possible outcomes based on all those decisions. That’s, and you know, doing that on a production schedule. That’s just impressive.
D.J. Sylvis
And you’ve got to sort of run into the the D&D, the Dungeon Master thing to where you prepare this, like elegant idea, this elegant like plot moment that you never get to use, because the audience makes a different choice.
Claudia Elvidge
Yeah, because the people vote, hey, no, we want to go talk to this funny goblin instead. So let’s do that.
D.J. Sylvis
So yeah, you definitely need to listen to Witchever Path and it has an awful lot of actors that you’ll find familiar from Moonbase, including yours truly, in a season arc, a bunch of people, you know, will show up on that show, including MJ Bailey, who is the new addition to our cast that I’ll be talking about at the end. Sorry, before we leave Journee, they also, I think they have a podcast associated with it, too. This weekend, as we’re recording, they’re doing a festival of arts and activism and called Decolonize and Discover, which you can look up as well. And I know that there are some online portions of it and some things that I’m sure they’re recording for future, sharing wherever they share things. But yeah, the Decolonize and Discover does have a podcast associated with it as well. I can’t remember off the top of my head if it’s called the same thing or not. But I’m sure that’ll be listed on all their social media.
Claudia Elvidge
I’m pretty sure it’s under the same name.
D.J. Sylvis
Yeah, I’ve been listening to that, and it’s pretty cool. It talks a lot about their past in their community, the activism they do. The festival itself and the purpose of it. So yeah, check that out. Next up, is just, oh, my heart, is Jen Ponton. Jen Ponton, who plays Tumnus, who plays herself in a couple of episodes, who plays all of the new baby artificial consciousnesses that we’ve shared this season. Jen is just such a joy, is just one of my best friends. Jen; I mean, there are podcasts and we’ll get to the podcasts too. But Jen is a film and television and theatre actor who has been in just any number of things. You could have seen her in Dietland when that was on. She was in an episode of 30 Rock a few other fairly big name things but just a host of really cool like indie projects and things that she has written and produced. Right now her most recent thing is there was a film broadcast puts get put all on Tik Tok called Caretaker that she’s in and I’ll make sure that there are links to that but it’s also of course all over her social media as well. And it’s easy to find the Tik Tok account is @Caretakerfilm. And it’s an entire little, I think it’s like ninety second, or one minute or two minute clips. But there are like fifty of them or something. And it tells an entire movie length story over the course of that. And it’s just really, really cool. So you can find that and you definitely need to watch that. Jen also has a podcast with her friend, Lillian Bustle called All The Fucks, which is just like them talking about things that they care about, and things that are important to them. And they’re both really interesting people. Lillian is a burlesque artist and theater professional in a bunch of other fields, airways as well. So they talk a lot about the arts and about how it feels to try to continue to be an artist when the world is literally on fire, you should definitely take a look for that.
D.J. Sylvis
Next up, we come to Tina, to Wilder. Tina Case who I just can’t even, Tina was the second was the third sorry, the third actor that I brought on Moonbase (because the second was David S. Dear, who we will be getting to next) and just has become probably the biggest like heart of this outside of Leeman. Tina is one of the co-producers of the show at this point as well as Cass. Tina has been in a couple of different episodes of MonkeyTales now, our anthology series; probably will be in more, god knows when I get back to doing that; has been in a few other, has made appearances on other shows; has been on David’s show, Ninth World Journal; has been on Witches of the City which is a fun little paranormal show that you should check out; is going to be in our next show, which I don’t think we’ve actually officially announced at this point. But –
Claudia Elvidge
Oooh, foreshadowing!
D.J. Sylvis
But our next show is going to be a – I hate to call it paranormal, but a little monster, we’ll call it a monster-focused show called Waiting For October. And Tina is going to be on the leads in that. And right now Tina is working on a video game project. It’s kind of cool how many of our actors are doing video game stuff as well. And she is voicing an NPC in the game called Text Me Back has been sharing links to that all over her social media. So you can find it that way. But it’s called Text Me Back. It’s a cool little, sorry, Tina gave me this description of it, naturally, I didn’t put that in my notes. But …
Claudia Elvidge
Yeah, Tina, I was just gonna say is such a rock both from the production side. And as the voice of Wilder, like she just brings so much character to Wilder’s performance. And like, I can’t imagine how this show would be running without her. And you know, those things. She’s in MonkeyTales. I’m sure a lot of you have already heard it mentioned on this feed at some point. But if you haven’t listened to that, go listen to that. Because, you know, it’s just an anthology made with so much care about the things people care about and the things people think will bring people hope and make them feel comforted. And it’s just a really sweet show.
D.J. Sylvis
And I found the stuff here as her description was she said, “It’s a story rich 3D adventure with a similar play style to Life Is Strange,” which everybody I think most gamers know about, it’s a pretty cool, you sort of wander around and try to solve, try to dig deeper into the mystery of the main character. So she’s one of the NPCs in the game, their social their website and all of their social medias are @playtextmeback. So it’s playtextmeback.com Or else playtextmeback on all of the social means. So you can find more information there.
D.J. Sylvis
And we are already getting longer than I expected. So let’s jump to the next one, which is David S. Dear. David S. Dear the very first actor I cast after Leeman because we needed Dr. Just for one of the bonus episodes in Season One. Before he was Dr. Just, when he was just a random voice and I thought oh, we’re never going to use that again. But how can you not use David S. Dear once you have him working with you? So David is just a wonderful performer and a wonderful voice actor who you can hear in just about everything, honestly. But his show is Ninth World Journal, which is set in a role playing world, set in the world of Numenera, which is sort of a far far far future tech and magic role playing game. But the story that he tells is just like a completely original story set in that world and has been running for a number of seasons and just gets deeper and more interesting as it goes. And again, you’ll hear an awful lot of familiar voices in there. Leeman was, he was on there for a few episodes. I think Cass was on there for a bit; Tina has been in it; I was in it for a few episodes. Practically everyone when you get to it.
Claudia Elvidge
I really love Ninth World Journal as like a serialized but still episodic adventure like there are some arcs that take Got a couple episodes. And you know, there’s a whole overarching plot of this character just trying to get home trying to get a hold of these strange powers he has. But, you know, it’s also, you know, much like a role playing game, you come to different places, you explore them, you solve problems and interact with the different characters as they come up and then move on to the next thing, which I think gives it a, you know, fairly unique flavor amongst modern audio drama where things tend to have like, bigger overarching serialized things, or, you know, just anthology overall. So it has, I think, a real special place in the scene.
D.J. Sylvis
Yeah, it really really does. And I don’t know anyone who has ever, who has beat up their main character more than David, either. Januae has gone through so much, like you think that I do terrible things to my characters, but oh, goodness. And David also co-writes and co-produces the show Deconstructive Criticism, which is a really fun comedy show. Tal Minear is on in that as well; Shannon Perry co-creates it. Shannon we’re not gonna be mentioning on this list because Shannon was a guest voice but Shannon does Oz-9 and is one of my favorite people as well outside of MTO. So you should go listen to that too. But continuing on to another one of my favorite people in the entire world. Tau Zaman; Dr. Ashwini Ray. God, Tau is just again, just in so many things and the good part of so many things that that they’re involved in, but the two shows that they create and run themselves are Caravan and Rogue Runners. Caravan is a dark paranormal Western-typed show. It’s fucking incredible. I can’t, you can’t talk about Caravan without swearing, so. It is fucking incredible. And in some season some episodes there’s incredible fucking, so …
Claudia Elvidge
Yeah, on top of being an awesome supernatural Western, it’s also just, you know, queer as hell and a little spicy at times. And I think that also makes it stand out amongst the scene a little bit because, you know, there’s some more mature stuff, some erotica stuff, but it doesn’t tend to, you know, bleed over into the PG-13 and below kind of stuff. So I Yeah, it does have that special place in the scene, I think.
D.J. Sylvis
It’s the only show in audio fiction I know of with a canonically fat main character, which is awesome. And like fat and brown, which is even cooler. And that’s just spectacular. The voice cast is absolutely top notch. Josh Rubino is in it, which is really great. Josh Rubino should be on this list as well. Josh did a guest guest bit on the show, and is the partner of our Doctor Ringling, Dallas Wheatley, but just definitely shows up in everything. And it’s just a classic voice actor.
Claudia Elvidge
Pretty much the whole voice cast for that is amazing.
D.J. Sylvis
But Tau’s other show, which I’m sure they’re working on the next season of right now, is Rogue Runners. Rogue Runners is just; there has never been an actual play show like this. Like I just don’t even know how they manage to do it. It’s so, it’s like you can hear that it is role playing, and you can hear that the character, that the actors are making choices. But other than that, it just feels like a scripted story the entire time. And Tau does every NPC, every like little like monster and character with just this wide and incredible variety of voices. And it’s just it’s set. It’s set in the world of the video game Hades if you know Hades, and it’s really popular indie game, which is like it sounds set in the underworld and you’re trying to fight your way out. But just takes that and just deepens the mythology of it and deepens the backstory of it and just creates so much more than the source material. It’s just an incredible story.
Claudia Elvidge
Yeah, so while you’re waiting for Hades 2 to to come out, you’ve got Rogue Runners to tide you over?
D.J. Sylvis
Yeah, keep them going down the list, our Doctor Semaan; this list is in kind of an odd order, I suppose. But it’s in the order that my character spreadsheet is for the show I have this massive spreadsheet that I use to keep track of everything. It has a tab for scripts being turned in; a tab for like contracts being signed; just tab after tab after tab. It takes so much work to run a show the size that ours has become. But yes Dr. Semaan, Shereen Lani Younes. Shereen I met; well didn’t meet, I became a fan of on her show Ethnically Ambiguous, which is a nonfiction show. It’s sort of like goes goes back and forth between interviewing people and just the two hosts Shereen and Anna just talking about stuff that’s going on in the world. From the point of view of, they’re both women with Middle Eastern, like various Middle Eastern backgrounds and talking about how that ethnicity and that history just comes into their view of culture and their view of art. And they talk to a number of people from like, all sorts of backgrounds, just non like mainstream white folks, their work, their art and about their activism and it’s just a really incredible interview show and a really incredible show for anything. And so, I became a fan of her from there and actually, like reached out to her specifically to play Doctor Semaan. But Shereen is also an indie film director and writer. Shereen writes poetry, has a second book of poetry that’s out right now, that’s really incredible, you should definitely just go and find her everywhere that she can be found. You can see her short films on her website, which is linked on our cast and crew page and find her poetry books. She actually had a poem in our show as well. And definitely, like listened to Ethnically, Ethnically ambiguous. The next one on the list is Jaxon, Cole Burkhardt. Oh, god, Cole.
D.J. Sylvis
Oh, Cole. Cole is amazing.
D.J. Sylvis
Just absolutely wonderful. And there were so many shows I could have picked to talk about because Cole has made, I think, seven or eight at this point, it feels like. But –
Claudia Elvidge
And they’re in even more.
D.J. Sylvis
Yeah, for sure. Like Cole just appears in so many things, too. But the most recent ones are Null / Void. Which is shows up in like listings as Null-Slash-Void. And Ritual Six. Yeah, Null / Void is sort of like this techno conspiracy and stuff. Yeah, very conspiracy type thing. And it’s really again, just really fascinating and really, like, deeply intriguing as it gets, as it goes through the show. Ritual six, I am …
Claudia Elvidge
Ritual Six is, the pilot episode is out. And it’s, we already know that it’s going to be a sort of time loop of the main character going through, I believe, the same day repeatedly. And it tends to end in their death. And it’s all set in this very ominous, uncertain culty background. So there’s a lot of mystery surrounding how all that gets started. But you know, even recently, I’ve seen people on Tumblr asking for podcast recommendations about time loop stories. So I think this will be really interesting to see how it works out in the end.
D.J. Sylvis
And I mean, anything Cole gets involved in it’s just like intricately, like researched and plotted and designed and is always a joy to experience.
Claudia Elvidge
You know, let’s plus they’re also Null / Void is one season and done it’s a completed series. And I think Ritual Six will be the same once it’s completed. So if you like stories that have begun and are completed, then those will be good things to check out.
D.J. Sylvis
I always admire people who can do that just like one tight season, because of course, that’s what I planned originally. And look what happened?
Claudia Elvidge
Yeah, then it was like, “Wait, people want more of this. I can do more with this world?”
D.J. Sylvis
Next on our list is Dr. Ringling, Dallas Wheatley, and I have mentioned Dallas a minute ago when I was talking about Josh. But Dallas is; again, like you hear Dallas on so many shows across like the entire like range of the field. Dallas has been in a little bit of everything. His main show right now that he’s creating is Fireside Folktales. Fireside Folktales is queer and deeply like, more intriguing versions of classic stories. Their first season was sort of had a like, Hades-Persephone kind of thing going for it. And I think that, I think the second season is Robin Hood, which is being produced right now and should be out probably sometime before the end of the year. Dallas is doing pretty awesome things and also is going to have a part in our next show as well. Dr. Day, Sarah Rhea Werner. I don’t even know if I need to say anything about Sarah. Like seriously. Anyone who listens to this show knows Sarah knows who she is, and knows what she does probably more intricately than our show. But Sarah, of course, is the brain and production talents and voice talent for the main character for Girl in Space. One of the like, top audio fiction shows you’re likely to have listened to especially if you’re into sci-fi. And also does the writing focused nonfiction show Write Now, which I don’t know how many times I have been inspired or just felt comforted by listening to Write Now. It’s just this very frank, very open discussion about how hard the process of creation is; how hard it is to keep yourself motivated and to continue to do the work that we do. I sincerely, if you create anything or even if you’re just interested in how things are created …
Claudia Elvidge
Yeah, I can confirm as also a creator. Sometimes when the creating is hard, what helps the most is just hearing affirmation from someone else that creating is hard. And, you know, Girl in Space. Probably one of the most iconic modern audio dramas in sci-fi. I don’t need to say much about that. But I will say I do still have my hashtag, no murdering tank top.
D.J. Sylvis
Yeah, I think it was one of my first because, and I’ve told the story before and like different interviews for the show … But I started Moonbase before I actually started listening to audio fiction, because I’m like dumb like that, I just don’t know what I was thinking. The first two shows I really listened to I think were Girl in Space and Greater Boston, they’re still really big favorites of mine. Next on our list is Elissa Park, Nessa! Nessa who still manages to pop up on the show once a season despite having been dead since Season One.
Claudia Elvidge
Nessa who you keep finding new and creative ways to kill in our hearts.
D.J. Sylvis
Just to twist that knife. Does all sorts of stuff does, like anime, does, like dubs, does video game work. Like they’re in My Time At Portia, is it Portia? I think, which is a game that I have on my Steam library I’ve never played, but it’s a very popular game. Is in a lot of other podcast work, the big one that I would throw out there is Me and AU, which was just a wonderful, incredible little show about fandoms. And about queer romance. And it’s just incredible and just made me so happy.
Claudia Elvidge
Yeah, Me and AU is one of my top all time comfort audio dramas, even if sometimes it feels like a direct call out, especially if you are a person who grew up with fandom and with making friends online and having weird semi-online romances in your head with someone else and that sort of thing. And it’s just like, it’s just incredible.
D.J. Sylvis
And it’s Canadian, which makes it even better. Like all the best things in life, it’s Canadian. Moving on to Dr. Serano, Hazel Stapp. Hazel is another person who I listened to and reached out to you directly to play a character when I created Dr. Serrano, Hazel Stapp and her partner do a series of different shows and in a connected universe called Chel. The main show and my one of my favorite things is called Interference. Interference was at the same time a sort of vaguely RPG-like, like bringing RPG characters into our world. The main character is an orc, one of the main characters, the other main character is human. And it’s a romance and it’s about like their universes colliding. And it’s just a really like fun and well created story. And then the other main show is Land of Chel (editor’s note – actually Legends of Chel) which is an actual play set in the entire the same universe. So –
Claudia Elvidge
Yeah,Iinterference is also so cute and so sweet. And if you like queer romances that start with yearning, these two characters who obviously have feelings for each other, and then, you know, are not able to be together immediately because of circumstances, not because of the feelings. But then they do get to be together and actually build on that relationship instead of just being like, story over, they’re together. It’s it’s very nice.
D.J. Sylvis
It is! It’s one of those things, it’s so satisfying when they finally like, get together. It’s like, it kind of reminds me – and there’s actually a crossover as well – it kind of reminds me of Love and Luck in the way that just how happy I was, and just how happy I was when the characters finally got together.
Claudia Elvidge
Yeah, I was thinking of that, too. When I was thinking back on Interference, like they share a similar space in my brain.
D.J. Sylvis
And of course, the two main actors from Love and Luck play minor characters in Interference. So … yes, next is Harold McVett, Steven LaFond, who, unfortunately, we’re going to jump past pretty quickly, because we already talked about Witchever Path which is his main show. But again, Steven has just been wonderful to work with. And I like spent a lot of time working with him closely on the arc of Witchever Path that I acted in. And of course, Journee has always been, has been a part of Moonbase for a while for for two full seasons. And so when I brought in McVett, when I decided I was going to bring in McVett for the final season, because we talk about him the entire show; I thought we had to at least like bring him in and have some fun with him. And so Steven was the person I immediately asked and has really enjoyed taking him in a …
Claudia Elvidge
You gotta love a character who exists mostly as an idea throughout most of the series, and then you finally actually get to see them and they do not disappoint.
D.J. Sylvis
I gave, the main character creation note I gave him when we were creating McVett was I made him watch a lot of videos of Steve Wozniak. I said, this is the kind of nerd you are. And we’ve had fun with that.
D.J. Sylvis
Next on our list is Michell, Michell L’Anglois; Cass McPhee, co-producer of the show. And he’s spending so much time on our show that he doesn’t have a lot of chance to work on anything else right now; I feel so bad. I brought Cass in as an actor. I’ve known Cass for a long time, Cass lives here in Toronto. And we have had mutual friends for a long time. And I’ve always sort of like known each other as like a friend of a friend before that. And then he just auditioned when I put out the open audition for Michell, and did an amazing job and how could I not be happy I made that choice. The first co-producer I brought on, took over when when we lost our editor for the season, our sound designer, just jumped in there and just offered to take that on as well and just has done an amazing job. You can hear Cass a few times here and there and things; he was just in the season finale of Greater Boston as a matter of fact, but Cass is and has acted in Sidequesting as well, but he’s written an episode of Sidequesting this season. That’ll be coming up later in the season, which is really awesome getting, he’s starting to get branch out and do, like he’s always done … He’s been a performer, a, like improv actor and a bunch of other things here in Toronto as well. But is starting to like, tell, like write some stories of his own. And that’s really cool. He was also in an interesting little sort of cybery show called Sticks Shift Incorporated, that has, I think, ended at this point, but he had a fun little role in, he was like this voice of like, a computer voice in it. And that was awesome. But yeah, and I think he’s been on Ninth World Journal as well. And everybody’s been on Ninth World Journal. But yeah, Cass is just incredible. And I can’t say enough good things about him. And anything that I work on, he’s gonna have a place if he wants it.
Claudia Elvidge
Yep, we love Cass.
D.J. Sylvis
And we go immediately from Michell L’Anglois to Maria L’Anglois, who is the one and only Cat Blackard. Cat’s main production outside of this in the audio fiction world is The Call of Cthulhu Mystery Program, which is kind of what it says on the box! Is a very like sort of paranormaly mystery show, has been running for a long time. It’s got a very sort of like, old timey radio drama feel. But does that with like cool queer characters and cool like monsters and stuff. Leeman had a pretty big role in the most recent season. And right now is doing a sort of half fiction, half nonfiction show called “Mother,” She Wrote, which is about a series of video games called the Earthbound series that has a pretty huge cult following. And the show is this really interesting, like combination of the first part of each episode is audio drama based on like the story of the show of the games. And then afterwards, like halfway through, that’ll cut out and then they’ll just discuss that part of the show like, like, they’re telling the actual story of the video game, like they’re not like, it’s not like real renderings where they’re like creating a story set in the world. They’re telling the actual story, but they’re dramatizing it. And it’s just a really cool thing to listen to. And it’s a really cool experiment.
Claudia Elvidge
Yeah, I think that’s one I’m interested to get into. Because, you know, even though I’m familiar with some parts of gaming culture, I don’t actually play a lot of video games, I just tend to not have the patience for them when there’s other things I could be doing. So, you know, hearing this both as like a partial adaptation of the game to get the story beats, and then to learn more about the cultural impact of it. That seems like a really interesting idea.
D.J. Sylvis
Yeah, it’s been really cool to see them. See her talk about that, in particular, because they spend a lot of time on the show talking about like, the background of it and the universe that it exists in and the like, the impact that it had on the world at the time. So … the next one on the list is Dr. Andie Kashyap, which is Anjali Kunapaneni, who again, you can hear on so many things across the entire world of audio fiction just shows up in all sorts of things. Does a lot of video game work as well. When I think of stuff that I’ve heard Anjali on, I think of Kalila Stormfire, where she was on for a while and of course she was also – I’m sorry, they were also one of the characters on Y2K, which Y2K is a good one to bring up created by Karin Heimdahl which is who is another big friend of the show, featuring Robin Howell who is of course you know, from a bunch of things, but also Reception Bot in Moonbase and just bunch of other people who you would find familiar. And it’s just a fun little show that is actually complete now, so you can hear all of that. So definitely look for Y2K and Kalila Stormfire as well. Kalila Stormfire as well, because Lisette Alvarez makes an appearance on Moonbase as well. And that was because I’m such a huge fan.
Claudia Elvidge
Yeah, those are both two really great shows. I know, Kalila Stormfire was one of the first ones I listened to back in the day. And, you know, it’s a show that feels like it has a similar trajectory as Moonbase Theta in that it starts with a very limited perspective on the events happening, it starts with mostly single person narration. And then it grows with larger problems and bringing in more voices and more perspectives on how to handle these problems. And it’s also a three season arc completed series. So if you want something similar to that, like a story that really builds on itself and on the concept of community and solving your problems together. It’s a really great show. And then Y2K was always interesting from the start, because it was being released weekly, I believe, when it could, yeah, across an entire year. So there were 52 episodes in the first season, released across 52 weeks. And corresponding to the times that they were talking about, so like, the first episode was the first week of January and second episode was second week of January. And it was just like, you know, interesting see a story like that developing in real time.
D.J. Sylvis
And it was just so much fun too; it was like really, like well created, obviously Karin had put a huge amount of time and art into it, it was a hugely important project to her. And it just, again, just sort of like to have that entire arc come out and carried out over a year. I just can’t imagine the work that went on behind the scenes to make that happen.
Claudia Elvidge
Yeah, the amount of recording that they would have had to do ended in advance and then just continuous production either beforehand, or across that year, just to make sure everything was coming out on time. Plus the series is you know, very grounded in reality slice of life addressing the issues of, you know, people that could be living on our world. So if you ever get burnt out on sci-fi or magic or that sort of thing, it’s just a nice thing to go to for a while.
D.J. Sylvis
Next on my list is our Medic Keegan, Anna Godfrey; Anna Godfrey is another person who I had fallen in love with their show and reached out to them. They’re, they created a show called Glass Letters, which was a limited series about … it’s sort of like there’s this conceit that the each like episode was a letter found in a bottle. But it’s just these like, really incredibly, just deeply, emotionally raw, and just touching just sad, lonely little letters, and just so many characters that I couldn’t get out of my head after I heard an episode. And I just couldn’t help but like ask them to become a part of my show as well.
Claudia Elvidge
Yeah, you love a show with a framing device, especially one is where it’s as specific as, “I moved to this island, but these letters and bottles keep showing up but I guess I have to read them. Oh, darn. They’re beautiful.”
D.J. Sylvis
Next on our list is Rissa Montanez. Who plays Val Narvaez on our show. Rissa is again, one of those people you hear in a huge number of things. Does, has done voices for a bunch of the Bloody FM network podcasts. SCP, Mayfair Watcher’s Society is out right now … has done voices for The Kingery which is like one of the biggest shows I’ve never listened to.
Claudia Elvidge
Yeah, that’s been running since I think 2007. I’ve checked on it briefly; 12 seasons since then.
D.J. Sylvis
But yeah, Rissa does that; Rissa is very active on social media talking about the process of voice acting and looking for work and making sure that you continue to be like respected by the people you’re working for and keep your like heart intact and it’s all really great stuff to pay attention to. Next on our list is another actor who entered about the same time as Rissa, Alicia Atkins, who I think you know a little bit!
Claudia Elvidge
Yeah! Yeah, Alicia is just so amazing. She’s always been so eager and easy to work with. And I just love the heart and character that she brings to her characters.
D.J. Sylvis
Alicia, of course, played Capy in your show The Beacon, which we need to mention at least probably five or six times in this list, really. But we’ll mention it now and then later when we get to you. And probably the show they’re best known for other than that, that she’s best known for other than that is Copperheart. Copperheart is another really like intricately designed sci-fi show it’s more of a – not really post-apocalyptic it’s sort of mid-apocalyptic.
Claudia Elvidge
Yeah, it’s like we’re waiting for the apocalypse to be post before we come out of this bunker.
D.J. Sylvis
But it’s really cool and Robin has a big part in that too again, Robin Howell, but Alicia just I think that was really the reason that I cast her as Trina because it’s sort of the sort of a similar like, hard as nails character but with – and Trina is obviously like got more of a like softer side to her. But Alicia just could do anything. It just seems like just really has this incredible range. And now we’re up to Elena; Leslie Gideon. Leslie, again is someone you hear across all sorts of things, and Leslie’s on Greater Boston, Leslie just shows up in all sorts of things. But looking at her own shows, the two most recent things that that she’s created was The Path Down; The Path Down is sort of a college-age slightly people with powers story, but it’s really more about like the relationships than anything else. And just finished Hallway to Nowhere, which is a really interesting little horror experiment.
Claudia Elvidge
Yeah, and it’s a micro fiction. So I think it’s less than 10 episodes. All the episodes I think are less than 10 minutes long. So if you want a very quick listen to something that just really puts you through the ringer with this character. It feels like sometimes. It’s a really great show.
D.J. Sylvis
Yeah, Leslie’s always just amazing. Nashwa is next on our list. Our Nashwa is Dalia Ramahi. Dalia hasn’t done a lot of audio fiction yet but has done audiobooks and narration, has done games like, did a voice for Zombies, Run which everyone in the world knows about at this point. A, I think it’s a mobile game called SMITE: Battleground of the Gods. And just again, you should really go check out her site and listen to her reels because just has this amazing like range of stuff that she can do. Including Arabic, which was very important to our show. Like it was hard to find people within the space who, who I already like had any like way to reach out to who could speak Arabic so we did general calls specifically looking for that and just found some really incredible people for the NAC and the Palestine storylines. And Dalia has just been a joy to work with, and just got really like invested in the show as well. And speaking of people who were a joy to work with and got invested in the show, Ahnung – Robin Regalado, Robin has just just brought so much to that character and just loved being a part of this so much and just has been an absolute joy. I can’t wait for you to hear the bonus episode for the end of the show, at the end of the show, which was completely unplanned in like my overall plotting, but then was chosen by one of our backers on the crowdfunding and just has been a joy to like deepen that story and it’s gonna be really fun for you to listen to. Robin also had a really nice part on Desperado, Desperado is a really great show anyway, and you should be listening to that Desperado is like the, the much bloodier version of any of the paranormal stuff we talked about for up to now it’s like more like gods and like –
Claudia Elvidge
Yeah, it’s three gods of death on a boat together. And they’re going off to kill the big man in the sky, aka God, and good for them. And it’s just an incredible, it’s an incredible experience in its own, they have such a unique narration for it, where the three main characters, they sort of round-robin describe the things they experienced together or on their own, but they’re also in the same space in current time as they’re narrating it. So they just, you know, sort of argue about what exactly happened sometimes, or their interpretations of it, or they dunk on each other for their bad interpretations or bad decisions. And it’s a really incredible show and especially in second season. The way the fight scenes are sound designed are just absolutely incredible. It’s a great listening experience.
D.J. Sylvis
So much of it, so much of the parts where they’re telling the stories is done in monologue and you know I love a good monologue. It’s even more fun when you’ve got like other people, they’re making snarky little comments about it while they’re trying to monologue. So … next on our list as we’re going through the NAC storyline, it seems like right now is Serena Rahal. Serena has just been such a joy to create the story with; Serena is really the reason why I felt like I could tell part of the story in Palestine, it’s so important to me. Serena is Palestinian-Canadian, and gave me so much assistance and research gave me so much input on what made sense to talk about and what didn’t, of course, did our translations into Arabic for the show. And Nima is just such a great character too, so has just been a huge part of the season. And their other project right now is Signed, Venus – coming back soon, I have been assured! And Signed, Venus is a really cool, it’s set up as a travel serial, but it’s about them traveling to find this, this author that they’re big, they’re big fans of and like this, like the background of this, like author, this, this travel writer who they’re like main characters are following around trying to like learn their story. And trying to sort of like, work out the mystery behind them. And it’s just a really just beautifully, like, fun show about like these two friends traveling around together and trying to like ferret out exactly what happened to this person. And –
Claudia Elvidge
Yeah, it’s a show that it has so many elements I love specifically in shows. It’s like a young adults setting out into the world on their own for the first time, finding out the way the world works and finding out things about themselves. It’s looking for your own heroes, and learning that heroes may not be all you build them up to be in your mind. And it’s also a travelogue show, which is something I’m really fond of just getting to see characters in different locales, finding little things that are beautiful or things that are ugly about these places and just experiencing life in different ways.
D.J. Sylvis
Next on our list is Elio who sort of made their way into the made her way into the NAC storyline this season. Elio is played by Becca Marcus, Becca Marcus is another person who shows up here and there and a lot of things. The main show I think I’ve heard them in recently is The Way We Haunt Now, which is a really like touching very ghosty audio drama.
Claudia Elvidge
Yeah, I, it’s just different perspectives on being a ghost and the afterlife. And just the way that it both the afterlife is not all either eternal suffering, or all your problems solved forever, based on the perspective of society, of what your problems are like. There is a ghostly character who still uses their mobility aids in the afterlife, because, you know, they had those for most of their life. So why wouldn’t they still want to use them in the afterlife, just because they’re a ghost. It’s an important part of who they are both in life and in death. And it just has some unique relationships between the living and the dead. And also just these funny asides with the college characters who just keep trying to get into the ghost fighting business, but just don’t quite have a handle on it.
D.J. Sylvis
Yeah, it just combines a lot of different things. Really like, touching emotional storytelling and comedy and, like some fun like solid paranormal stuff, too. And it’s just a really nice little show. The amusingly-named Free Folk 1 because I don’t always name my characters. Is, and despite the fact that they’ve been on the show for I think two full seasons now is played by Tal Minear. I could spend like the next hour listing Tal’s shows.
Claudia Elvidge
Yeah, Tal Minear who has been in everything.
D.J. Sylvis
Tal also did an episode of MonkeyTales with me, which was a lot of fun. And I have written with Tal before I’ve wrote an episode of Sidequesting, wrote the Sidequesting crossover that we did in our holiday special; wrote an episode of Someone Dies In This Elevator for them, but without making this all about me, Tal’s main show has always been Sidequesting. Sidequesting is the gentlest and most lovely like, fantasy podcast you’ll ever listen to. Despite the fact that delves into science fiction later on as well and is just this wonderful little like sort of story of the of the week or the month thing where very rarely is there an ongoing storyline But it all sort of just ties together of this non-binary character named Rion, who is just going around trying to help people.
Claudia Elvidge
Yeah, it’s like all the comforting bits of adventures that you don’t always get to see in big fantasy things like, fantasy can be either very grimdark, or very epic and dramatic. But both of them tend to be focused on the big moments of these characters. But Sidequesting focuses on the little things, because that’s how the character wants to live their life. And just thinking of it in my mind, it reminds me of when I started playing Breath of the Wild, because, you know, that’s got your traditional heroic story, save the kingdom, fight the big bad all that. But when I started playing it, most of what I wanted to do was like, collect apples and make food and chase down horses to ride and catch chickens and all that. So, you know, it’s just those little bits of life with a little extra fantasy to them.
D.J. Sylvis
And Someone Dies In This Elevator is again, an anthology that is exactly what’s shown on, listed on the box. In every episode, the conceit of the show is there has to be an elevator and someone has to die in it.
Claudia Elvidge
Wow. Spoilers.
D.J. Sylvis
But happens in increasingly interesting ways over the course of the show of. And right now, they’re doing possibly the most massive sound design project in the audio fiction space as the main sound designer for Re: Dracula, which is telling the entire Dracula story in like little, like 20 minutes or so pieces, 15 or 20 minute pieces. Over the course of I guess, however long it’s going to take them to tell that story.
Claudia Elvidge
Yeah, except I saw someone on Tumblr doing calculations about how long some of the biggest chapters would be like comparing word count in this Dracula day versus this Dracula day. And some of the episodes it seems are going to wind up being hours long, it’s entirely possible. So some of them are like 48 seconds, and some of them down the line for like, the big days, could be several hours. So good luck to them on that. If you liked the Dracula daily craze of last year, but have trouble keeping up with reading things yourselves, then just subscribe to Re: Dracula and get it read to you every day.
D.J. Sylvis
All right, I need to start going through these a little quicker. And down after Free Folk 1 we have the amusingly named Tecno 1; another person that didn’t expect to bring back but then wanted to, played by my friend Tom Zalatnai. Tom lives in Montreal and is a big role playing person, a big foodie. And their are two shows reflect that. Their main show; well, now it’s now coming to an end unfortunately, because it was too huge to produce, but Natural Toonie, Natural Toonie is possibly my favorite actual play show after Rogue Runners, or maybe even tied with Rogue Runners. Natural Toonie is a Canadian fantasy role playing game. So it’s still very D&D, but it’s very D&D with a very Canadian flavor set in a fantasy version of Canada. And was just just my absolute favorite thing. And again, this was someone who I just loved so much from what they’d created that I wanted them to join the show, they narrated an episode of MonkeyTales for me as well. And the main show they actually produce constantly right now is with their partner Teffer, they do a show called No Bad Food, which is a food podcast, just sort of digs deep into like the history of a certain foodstuff or a certain food story or maybe like sometimes they talk about movies that are focused on food, but just have managed to, like keep that going for an absurdly long time. And it’s fascinating and enchanting to listen to every time. Sometimes you listen to shows just because the people are fun to listen to. Even if like sometimes I don’t care. Sometimes they’re talking about some aspect of food that I have no real interest in, despite the fact that I’m obviously a big fan of food too, but it’s just so much fun to listen to them talk about it.
Claudia Elvidge
Sometimes it’s just fun conversations with people you like regardless of what they’re talking about.
D.J. Sylvis
So Tom is awesome, and you should definitely listen to No Bad Food. Next is Monica; Shade Oyemakinwa. Shade is just wonderful and I can’t imagine anyone else doing the voice of Monica now. Shani is on – Shade’s done a voice on Inn Between, right? Was that the one that –
Claudia Elvidge
I do believe so, yes.
D.J. Sylvis
I think so. Yeah. But their main show is called Come On In, The Water’s Fine, which is this mermaid anthology show that is just these like lilting, poetic just hauntingly beautiful monologues. And you really have to hear it. You just can’t there’s no real way to describe it. Because they’ll each season changes things. I think in the next season, they’re going to be in space. We’re going to hear space mermaids. But Shade is just a wonderful person to work with, a wonderful creator. Come On In, The Water’s Fine. You can also check their website and get on their mailing list. They write poetry, prose fiction, and you just you really want to hear like everything that they’re creating.
Claudia Elvidge
Yeah, Come On In, The Water’s Fine is so sweet and soothing. And, you know, such a specific topic, just mermaid fiction, but you love it. And like, you know, if mermaids are your thing, then why do we have an audio drama for you!
D.J. Sylvis
Next on our list is our Reception Bot, Robin Howell. Now, I had three shows written down on my list for Robin, two of which we’ve already talked about at length, Y2K and Copperheart, but the other one is the show they created themselve, Seren. And Seren is just this heart-wrenchingly beautiful, just sci-fi drama about this, again, non-binary character who is escaping into space, has been thrown out of their community and their people, and is just overwhelmed by the situation they’re in and just trying to figure out what they’re going to do with their lives and how they’re going to get past all of this. And it’s just so raw, and so touching. And so beautifully written. Both main roles are acted by Robin, there are a few guest voices here or there, but it’s almost completely just them. And it’s just one of the most touching things I’ve ever heard in audio drama.
Claudia Elvidge
And one of the other voices they do for that is in fact an AI. So if you’re one of the people who really loves AI and audio drama and really empathizes with them, you get to hear a bit about how the ai on their ship, Pearl, was even how they were damaged by this society that casts Seren out too, so another thing out there for the AI lovers among your crowd.
D.J. Sylvis
Next up is Officer Daniels, Kristi Boulton. Kristi can be heard and all sorts of things and all sorts of places around me because she’s a very talented and very successful improv and regular actor in Hamilton and Toronto. But in the audio fiction circle, you’re mostly going to know her from Civilized, Civilized is … I still don’t understand how they do this. I don’t understand how Sean does this with all of his shows. But Civilized is an improvised sci-fi audio drama. They go in there with a very vague like idea of the plots and the actors who are all like, like improv actors from the area. Like they’re all they do this but still just imagining like, what it must be like to create and edit. But Civilized is just this really like fun, wonderful. It’s kind of interesting, because the other like shows of the same sort that like Sean works on have sort of become deeper and more emotional as you go on and you get more invested in them; Civilized is kind of at that point now where you’re starting to get more invested in the characters. Like the earlier seasons were more sort of slapstick and more sort of like …
Claudia Elvidge
Antics, odd couples living together, except it’s on a planet they’re trying to colonize.
D.J. Sylvis
It was still more situation focused, but then they have gotten deeper into like the pain of the situation and everything as they go on. The idea is that the main characters are stranded on a fairly barren planet, a planet, they have no real way to, like, get off of. And anytime something happens to them, there are like, not really stasis pods, they’re like revival type pods, where if they die anywhere out on the planet, they are immediately like recreated back at the base.
Claudia Elvidge
So you also get to hear these characters die in some truly horrible ways, especially early on.
D.J. Sylvis
And that’s one of the ways that like things have deepened too, because they’ve had to sort of deal with that they’ve had to deal with like seeing their own dead bodies, they’ve had to deal with, like sort of knowing that this is just going to keep happening to them. And you can feel how that’s sort of like worn on them over the course of the seasons. And just the character development is really interesting. And Kristi as well does voices for Marsfall which I’m surprised hasn’t shown up on the list before this talking about somebody, because Marsfall is one of the other like sort of like juggernauts in sci-fi audio fiction circles.
Claudia Elvidge
Yeah, Marsfall is one of those shows I can’t entirely get into not because it’s bad because but because it’s like too good at what it’s trying to do like, like sort of survival drama show and they’re done well just stressed me out to listen to consistently and Marsfall is just like, these characters are in so much peril and the stakes feels so high. So if you want a high drama, very well written characters, a very interesting AI character and especially that I know –
D.J. Sylvis
Possibly the best AI development that I’ve ever heard in any form of fiction.
Claudia Elvidge
Yeah, Marsfall is incredible sci fi.
D.J. Sylvis
And now we’re up to Lark! Lark is played by Mx. Claudia Elvidge. And I’m gonna let you talk about your shows instead of like telling people about them since you’re here.
Claudia Elvidge
So the first major project I did in the audio drama scene is The Beacon, which is a, it’s set in college, it’s very people with powers, discovering the power they have, like the main character has fire powers and gradually growing control over how well she can actually use them.
D.J. Sylvis
Somewhat, somewhat control –
Claudia Elvidge
And a lot of yeah, and a lot of anxiety to match and just like, trying to deal with that in the face of a world that keeps throwing problems at her, including other people with powers and whether they want to use them for good or not. And just doing that, and also being a college student. It’s just, yeah, a lot of what I was feeling as a young adult in, just trying to do something with the world.
D.J. Sylvis
Yeah. And it really like brings that across really well. I mean, that was my obsession with that show was why like, we sort of became social media friends, and then eventually I asked you to do this, as it was because I was one of the like, biggest Beacon fanboys out on the social media –
Claudia Elvidge
Yeah, the fun thing about being an audio drama creator is that like, eventually, even if you’re not actively auditioning for things, sometimes people just ask you to be in things like, I don’t think I’ve auditioned for like half of the roles, I wound up doing an audio drama. And so it’s like sometimes yeah, I’m just going to be the cybernetic prostheticist today, tweet tweet.
D.J. Sylvis
But speaking of other shows, where like other audio drama creators have been brought in? Dot dot dot …
Claudia Elvidge
Yeah, my current show is called Starfall. And the brief description of that is, it’s a, it’s a show about a magical traveling acting troupe that uses illusion magic to bring their shows together, it set in this very fantastical world that’s also actively clashing with the capitalism and the empire it lives under. And there’s also a main character who has a mysterious past and a very big sword and fights danger for this acting troupe.
D.J. Sylvis
And is just about everyone’s favorite, like big cinnamon roll in the entire audio fiction community.
Claudia Elvidge
Yeah, and I could probably point to about, like, half a dozen other people on this list of actors who have been in Starfall, because it was like, oh, yeah, I love that voice. And I think probably some of them, even I, I was probably even thinking of them when I was starting to cast the roles, because, you know, I just got a lot of feel for the character voices they could do based on Moonbase Theta. And so they’re very interconnected in that way.
D.J. Sylvis
I am in the show.
D.J. Sylvis
Yes. Yes, very important role.
D.J. Sylvis
A very, very key role. But no, Starfall is amazing. Like, I, it’s an idea that like, once you hear it seems so obvious, like, oh, yeah, that’s gonna be an amazing story. But I can’t imagine anyone creating it but you.
Claudia Elvidge
Yeah, the whole thing about, you know, basically using illusions to tell a story, within another story was probably actually the first idea I’d had for an audio drama. But when I originally started writing that back as something completely different in like, 2017, or whatever I was, like, I don’t know how to format this or how I would sound design it or how this would even work. So it took me a couple of years of like, working on other stuff and being in the scene before I was like, oh, this is how I would do it. And so now it’s just like this big collection of tropes and stories and voice actors that I love all rolled into this, you know, little traveling acting troupe.
D.J. Sylvis
But it’s so fun. It’s so lovely. And I can’t wait to be in it again. So make sure that you know, a certain someone shows up. Yeah. Next on our list is our Enclave Announcer, Evan Tess Murray. Evan just shows up everywhere as well, Evan is just one of those people who is just so like busy with life that I don’t know how they managed to tell stories on top of it, but still does. Main show is This Planet Needs a Name, which sort of was somewhat inspired by conversations that I had. Well, the show wasn’t inspired, but producing it was inspired by conversations that we had during PodTales, Evan came up and had long like talks with me about audio fiction. And that was just so awesome. And then came out with the show like six months later or something. And This Planet Needs a Name is this really like touching very personal audio drama, about relationships, about trying to create a new … if you like the more sustainable like, interest, like happy aspects of Moonbase, which there aren’t that many, but then you would see a lot of resonance in This Planet Needs a Name. It’s very hopepunk. It’s very, like there are definitely some harder, more difficult issues they talk about too. But it’s a very, like loving, hopeful, intriguingly positive look at developing a new civilization on a new planet.
Claudia Elvidge
Yeah, It honestly feels for me kind of, on the opposite end of the spectrum of Marsfall … of comforting, instead of just absolute terror and uncertainty at the issues you are facing. It’s definitely designed to be comforting to the listeners and the characters. And it’s also I believe, very collaboratively created; like all the voice actors are partially responsible for building the characters that you know, reflect their identities and their views and how they would handle this situation. So you know, it’s something that’s very much built together by that community.
D.J. Sylvis
Yeah, and you can tell when you can tell when you listen to it too, but you can tell when you look look at any part of it. Like they have probably the most active audio fiction Discord I’ve ever seen. Just a huge like bunch of really invested fans and like friends of the show and all of the actors are really invested in their characters and it’s just something that like, I definitely want to try to do more with my work as well. Another show you should definitely listen to that Evan co-created is Light Hearts; co-created with Tal who we mentioned already, and Caroline Mincks, Caro is, again one of those voices you hear in everything. Light Hearts I mostly want you to listen to – it’s a sort of like, vaguely supernatural sort of found family drama, but the main reason I want you to listen to it is to tell them that they need to keep making more episodes because I wrote a spec script for them! It hasn’t been produced, but yeah, it’s a fun little show as well. Danyelle Ellett, our Barnett Bell. Dany is just absolutely wonderful. And Barnett Bell has been such a huge part of pulling this season together. You’ve heard her in every episode, and will continue to. Dany is works with her husband as producers and directs and acts in episodes on Good Pointe shows like The One Stars, The Subjective Truth … their most recent their current show is Two Flat Earthers Kidnap a Freemason, which all of those are pretty much as odd as they sound and are really cool … Subjective Truth is a very like sort of – wild rumors, wild like this really like the story about this person who mysteriously disappears and weird like sort of semi-paranormal stuff and but not really it’s just sort of like … dammit, I’ve lost the, I’m not even gonna try to put this together. Two Flat Earthers Kidnap a Freemason is exactly what it sounds like. And is just freakin’ hilarious, and just has like all of the conspiracy theories and all of the like secret society stories that you could possibly imagine. All tied up in that story. The One Stars is sort of also sounds like The One Stars is more of an anthology thing where it’s just a bunch of like, reviews of various things and various like stuff and they’ve gone out of their way to like carry that conceit through into the reviews of the show where people have played along really nicely and given them a lot of really like amusing one star reviews and all of the podcast apps and so on. But Dany acts in a lot of interesting shows as well. Dany is in Chaika, which is the show that Karin Heimdahl did after Y2K, it’s a science fiction show, which is also partially based on the moon and also partially based on a moonbase. So he has good reasons there. It’s also very poetic. There’s poetry woven through it. It’s honestly, if you listen to Moonbase, you have you should listen to Chaika. There’s no question about that.
Claudia Elvidge
And then also Margaritas and Donuts. So I will fully admit that there were some items on this list I wasn’t familiar with either because I just hadn’t come across them yet. Or they’d been on my to listen list for a while. Margaritas and Donuts was one of that, one of those that I’d heard about but just hadn’t gotten into yet. So I wanted to listen to at least the first episode, so I could have kind of a feel for it. And then I just had to listen to every single episode after that, because, you know, first of all, it’s a relatively short show, I think it’s only six episodes, there’s also a supercut of all the episodes, if you just want to go through that I think the runtime is only about two hours long. And it’s a very grounded, heartfelt sort of rom-com. And it just, the relationships between the lead and her love interest feel very grounded. Like they have very real issues they need to address between them before they can like, Be together together. And they actually, you know, address and resolve those instead of just kind of dealing with their own things separately and then coming together at the end which is one of my pet peeves with romance when they don’t actually address why they had to like break up or be apart in the first place. It’s a really well produced show great voice acting and very satisfying ending I’d say.
D.J. Sylvis
Absolutely. No, I love that show. I’m glad that that got you into it. Okay, we have been at this for quite a while now, we’ve only got a few names left. Slipstream who had, Glory Duda, who had to do so much acting with me this season, so I feel bad for them. Glory has done bits and pieces on other shows as well and created the show Ibby which only had a few episodes come out but I’m hoping they’ll get back to eventually; Ibby is a really cool sci-fi audio drama about AI, evil corporations. I mean, you know, it’s again, gonna feel very familiar to Moonbase people. There’s some really interesting like different AI voices and different AI backgrounds in it, which is kind of cool and Glory did some great work on it. So definitely check that out. Payload who you haven’t heard since the beginning of the episode for some of the season for some reason, for some reason, the begining of the season is the last time you heard Payload, but Philomena – Mena Sherwood, who again, I’m just gonna say Mena was one of the people behind Me and AU.
Claudia Elvidge
Yeah, the other half of the main couple in that show.
D.J. Sylvis
Again, just sort of like a wonderful, wonderful show, and just so much fun to listen to them together. Jumping on to Ursula Francisco who only appeared three or four times but is one of my favorite people, Beccy Stirrup. Beccy does a wonderful, wonderful show called Diary of a Space Archivist. And you really need to just go just don’t even I don’t even need to tell you anything about it. Just go open your podcast app right now. Type in Diary of a Space Archivist and listen to it right away. It’s a hilarious little sci-fi comedy. It’s obviously like British humor inspired without being like too like traditionally British humor. Like you can sort of feel the like Monty-Python-Douglas-Adams-esque behind it. But it’s doesn’t like, play to that too much anymore. But it’s just really got a wonderful sense of humor. And it’s really touching and it’s got like, probably the cutest little alien character in the history of audio fiction. Thinking about that now, and again, that was the reason why I asked Beccy to be a part of the show, and gave her a character that I thought would play to those same skills.
Claudia Elvidge
Yeah, you’re you’re listening to audio drama you, you love space. You probably love archivists too, so listen to this.
D.J. Sylvis
We’re almost at the end here. Next episode. You haven’t gotten to hear them yet. But next episode MJ Bailey joins the cast. MJ Bailey will be in the series finale both parts as a character to be named later. Actually, the character isn’t named later when it comes down to it, but a character you will find out more about later. And MJ Bailey is again sort of like a minor legend in this field –
Claudia Elvidge
Incredibly prolific
D.J. Sylvis
MJ just creates like a host of intriguing really personal like important audio dramas, Aishi Online, Oracle of Dusk, which are both sort of like intertwined about internet communities and internet relationships; The Mountain’s Heart, which is a very personal like, background story that I think very much follows like MJ’s own, like background and story. There are just a host of things if you again, just go to just look for MJ Bailey anywhere that they can be found, and just listen to every show they’ve ever done. It’s just incredible work. They did a really fun part in the lot one of the last storylines for Witchever Path as well, which is the other thing that I’ve sort of heard them on. And it was cool to hear them outside of their own work as well. But really, just MJ just creates these really important intricate stories of of her own, and you should just go and listen to that.
D.J. Sylvis
And before we close this out, and we’re getting close to closing this out after what is it been like an hour and a half or something?
Claudia Elvidge
Yeah, just about.
D.J. Sylvis
There are a few members of our cast who I asked and begged to tell me what else they’re working on. And didn’t really have anything give me at the moment but just to say hi and say thank them anyway, Teddy Hannah-Drullard who played Medic Pacey throughout the show and has just been like so much fun; Teddy is the best person to like have in a rehearsal session, is just a constant joy to like, hang out with and just talk, tell jokes with and has done a really great job. NayMyo Win who played Zhong. And Zhong, I think you’ve heard it by now; the really great Zhong moment. I think it’s in 17 where he like sort of like launches himself at Maria, in 16 or 17. And just sort of like it’s the culmination of everything for Zhong. And that’s fun, like NayMyo is a voice actor as well. And you can find more information on like his social media. Corey Spruill, who plays Stephen in the NAC scenes, has done a little bit of other voiceover work, but not a ton of audio drama yet. And that obviously should change you should all consider giving him work. But you can find more information on his website, which is linked on our cast and crew page. So again, go to our cast and crew page, you can find information on every one of these people and what they do and what they have done and just follow them and listen to them and find them.
D.J. Sylvis
And I’ve been your host DJ Sylvis and I produce Moonbase Theta, Out which you might have heard of, and –
Claudia Elvidge
Yeah, once or twice.
D.J. Sylvis
Yeah, MonkeyTales occasionally although MonkeyTales is kind of dormant at the moment. It’s surprisingly hard to work on a second show when you’re in the … the way the final season of Moonbase has turned out, and starting to develop again this new show that will be coming in the future called Waiting For October so I can’t tell you too much more about that yet but keep the name in your, in your head. I’m gonna jump into the outro in a second here, but Claudia, did you have anything else you wanted to add or anybody else you wanted to plug or any shows we haven’t mentioned that these people are involved in that you really think that we should?
Claudia Elvidge
If you want to see more audio drama ramblings from me, if you haven’t gotten enough of it in the past hour and a half year, you can always follow me on @fyeahaudiodrama on Tumblr where I yell a lot about shows like Pasithea Powder, Fawx and Stallion, Kingmaker Histories and you know, all the things I really love right now.
D.J. Sylvis
Yeah, Pastithea Powder didn’t show up in this list, mostly because the main person who has crossed over from Moonbase into that is just me. Pasithea is one of my favorite shows. It just finished. I’ve plugged it in the end credits of Moonbase several times, and will keep doing so. So you really have to go listen to that. Yeah, if we if we start talking about like all the shows that I want you to listen to, it’ll be another hour.
Claudia Elvidge
Yeah, save it for the blog.
D.J. Sylvis
But yeah, so this was just sort of, I hope that some of this has been entertaining or interesting to listen to; I was giving you a list of new shows to check out. We will be back two weeks from when you hear this to begin the two part massive series finale, each episode is at least an hour, massive series finale for Moonbase where every storyline gets tied up, sort of … every character gets the end of their story sort of –
Claudia Elvidge
Sort of –
D.J. Sylvis
Sort of, and then … so that’s two huge episodes. And then there’s an epilogue after that. There are four bonus episodes after that, but we are so close to the end of the show. Like I can’t even you know, handle it right now.
Claudia Elvidge
it’s so hard to process that the show has built up to so much over the course of its run and the fact that it’ll soon, soonish be over. It’s still, you know, it’s one of those shows, I’ve always looked forward to coming back to each season and one of the ones that keep up with most consistently so the fact that it’s ending, it’s, it’s really something,
D.J. Sylvis
I’m glad that you are invested, because I’ve definitely felt like that about your shows. So yeah, we’re gonna be getting to the end of that soon. I also wanted to mention, I never mentioned on the show our Patreon, which our Patreon community is really important to the show. I mean, we do crowdfunding campaigns for the individual seasons. But the day to day, the extra stuff, the bonuses are really paid for by our Patreon backers, and we try to give them a lot of special stuff. Patreon backers get early access to the episodes, they’re getting commentary tracks now; we’ve done commentary tracks on Season One, Episodes 1 and 20 and Season Three, Episode 1, we’re gonna keep doing some of those when we get a chance, just talking about what went into creating the show. I’m starting to tease out stuff to our Patreon backers about what this next show is going to be like. And they’re going to get a first view very soon, of the big cast surprise that I have been like talking about for a while. I had a special poster commissioned for the cast. And, and I have all like already got it was created by by Peter Chiykowski, the same artist who did our cover art. And it is like full poster size. It’s beautiful. I’ve already printed out copies to mail to all of the cast with a little thank you card that we’ve made up, too. And we’re going to be doing at the time you hear this we should be doing a giveaway at the same time so that a few of our fans can get a copy of that poster as well. So please check our social media and find information about the giveaway I’m not exactly sure how it’s gonna be handled yet. It may be like a rate and review kind of thing, because always fun to get more eyes on the show when you hit the finale. But regardless, we’re gonna be doing a giveaway, so you will have a chance to get one of those for yourself.
D.J. Sylvis
So please, thank you very much for being a part of this, for listening, for enjoying the show, for talking it up … for just being a part of our little moon thing. And I’m going to have a bunch more to say in other episodes and we’re going to do a huge Q&A when the show is over. But for now, thank you very much for listening to this.
