chip-and-ironicus

[chip-and-ironicus]

Space Puppets is complete!

Early last year we began Bizarre Podcast: Space Puppets, a podcast walking through television's cult classic Farscape. Last week, after a 53-episode run, it ended. You can find it all here: https://www.patreon.com/collection/383131/

The other big announcement is it's all free. This started as a premium show, which is why it's hosted on Patreon in the first place, but as a special gift we decided to drop the paywall and commemorate Farscape's 26th anniversary and open the show to all. Please, take a listen. Please, share the show around. We go wide, deep, and long. That's a show with dimension.

You can also find Space Puppets, along with every other podcast on the patreon feed, in this RSS feed.

[chip-and-ironicus]

The long-awaited Zork LP has begun! This is the first of three parts, making good on the pledge we made on Ranged Touch's 2022 Prepare to Give stream benefitting The Brigid Alliance.

A lot of people are more familiar with this game than we are, and have said some very intriguing things about the sequels. Grant has promised to play (not Let's Play) Zork 2 for himself if another $5,000 is raised for The Brigid Alliance between now and the end of the day part 3 is posted. Just share an image of your donation confirmation and we'll total them up. At time of posting we're over 25% of the way there already!

[chip-and-ironicus]

New Podcast!

Grant and his wife Alaina launched a new show about one of her childhood joys: seaQuest DSV from 1993. Each week we're talking about an episode of the finest near-future, submarine-based adventure and "Science Fact-ion" that NBC and Steven Spielberg had to offer. Yes, this is the one with the talking dolphin.

seaQuest DSV was an ambitious show that had a lot riding on it, and never found its audience. At least, not enough of one to be financially viable. So it was continually tinkered with to the point each season is essentially a different show. We're telling those stories, and connecting them to the end result broadcast into people's homes. And every few weeks, we visit one of the films of legendary actor Roy Schieder to see what led him to take the starring role of Captain Nathan Bridger.

Look for it Thursdays on its RSS, or Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you choose to listen.

[chip-and-ironicus]

Final Warning! 48 hours remain!

As I write, automated reminder emails are being sent to everyone who hit the "remind me later" button on the Kickstarter campaign for The Disappearances of Lydia Fountayne. What will they find? A fully funded campaign! That's right, we now have the necessary funding to make an additional 7 episodes for a full 8-part season.

But we're already knocking on the door of our first stretch goal to make that a 9-part season. With your continuing support we can reach even beyond that in these last two days. Our story is a mystery, it's character based, and there's a secret world to explore. All of those things benefit from a little extra room in the run, a little more time to sit and experience and take the side roads. That's what is so exciting to me about hitting the stretch goals and lengthening our series.

So again I implore you: take a listen to the show, take a look at the KS page. And please, share this with anyone you think might be interested. Let's make this show the best it can be, together.

[chip-and-ironicus]

Guest Spot Roundup part 2!

As mentioned in a recent post, I've done a total of 8 promotional guest spots to help spread the word about The Disappearances of Lydia Fountayne. Here's some links to the second half:

Hardcore Gaming 101: Mario Kart: Double Dash!! I join the crew to sort Double Dash into its scientifically accurate place on the list of the top 47,858 games of all time. Who will stand for Baby Park? An underappreciated detail: two exclamation points in the title. That's commitment.

Board the Windows: Cabin in the Woods The world was a different place in 2011, particularly in media metacommentary (and the public stock of Joss Whedon). I joined the show to talk about how the aspects of Cabin in the Woods that were so exciting then have aged much worse than the solid horror fundamentals that ground them.

Party of One episode 413: What's so Cool about Doomed Self-loathing? This might be my favorite of all 8, Party of One is so much fun to do. Jeff Stormer had me on to play a Doom Patrol-inspired game that has it all. Broody, angsty people with powers, set against a threat that might not be a threat, that can only work in the medium of comics. You ever make up a character and your first thought is "man, I wish I could draw"?

Extra Credit: A Bad Judge of Character The snakes in the ballpit invited me on to read some of the fine D&D homebrew materials available on DnD Beyond. Unfortunately there is no potion of quality control.

And while these have been a joy to make, and I really should invite myself on more shows more often, the impetus is the Kickstarter campaign to make a full season of DoLF. At time of posting, there are only 4 days remaining to collect pledges. Over 90% of the funds needed to make this show a reality have been pledged, (less than $1000 to go!!!) and your support will take us the rest of the way. So listen to the premiere, spread the links to the show and the Kickstarter around, and be part of your new favorite audio drama series.

[chip-and-ironicus]

One Week Left!

There's one week to go on the Kickstarter for the full season of The Disappearances of Lydia Fountayne. Lots more news and information have dropped since my last roundup, so here it is!

There's an update on the campaign regarding the Suspicious Envelope add-on reward. It's an intriguing mix of lore, ARG trailhead, and in-universe artifact. Of all the pledge rewards it's the one I'm most interested in, personally.

Three more of my promotional guest slots have dropped. I'll do a more complete rundown when the final one comes out, but you can get ahead of the game and listen to me on Hardcore Gaming 101 talking about Double Dash, Board the Windows talking about Cabin in the Woods, and Party of One playing a Doom Patrol-inspired game of self-loathing and superpowers.

The show's socials have been very busy. On twitter and Instagram you can see cast and crew bios for many people involved, myself included, with more to come. The Tiktok account is... well I'll be honest I'm not really plugged in there. But Sarah seems to be having a great time with it.

But as always, the most important thing you can do is listen to the first episode, and share it with other people! Everyone I've gotten to listen to the premiere has immediately gone to back the campaign because they just have to know what comes next. Our story has to be made, so we have to be funded. It's that good.

[chip-and-ironicus]

Grant's Recent guest spot roundup!

The first four guest spots I’ve done to spread the word about The Disappearances of Lydia Fountayne have come out. (First five technically, but that one will kick off the second roundup). Let's take a look!

Do You Remember Robotech Episode 33: [A Rainy Night]'s Knight For A [Rainy Night] Plight We compare the 33rd episodes of SFD Macross and Robotech, and find a lot to say about how slight differences lead to large divergences. Also, my fullest retelling of the saga of Pie Girl.

Lightning Strikes Thrice: Radio Manga: Ghost in the Shell We talk about one of the best examples of a “guy explains the cool thing he read to you” book, with a mix of fantastic art, action, and ideas that never manage to gel into something that meets its potential. That's what the adaptations are for, I guess.

Flash in the Pan Episode 110: A Soupçon Of Hitler Flash videos! Star Wars! Branded content and CGI Dragon strangling educational media! What is the difference between making a fan video out of love and making one out of mockery?

Out This Guy ep 46 - Big Chest Exposed Knees This one is a treat for 6FU listeners, and hopefully entices a few people to become listeners. I'm talking about the big blue boy: Izer Munn. He's grumpy, he's got skeletons in his closet, and he's bad at emotions. But doggone it he's there for his crew. And for those listeners in the know, there are some previews of coming attractions in Izer's yet-to-be-posted future adventures.

These, and those to come, have been so much fun to make. But please remember, this whole tour is in service of spreading the word about The Disappearances of Lydia Fountayne and its currently live Kickstarter to make a full season. Give it a listen! Spread the links! And please, add your pledge so we can deliver on what the premiere episode promised.

[chip-and-ironicus]

DoLF Kickstarter Update!

Today we're 1-week into the 30-day Kickstarter campaign for The Disappearances of Lydia Fountayne. We've also crossed the 50% mark. That means we're on pace to not only reach our goal and make a full season, but possibly to reach our highest stretch goal of extending that season with 5 additional episodes!

In the last week we've had a listen-along premiere stream with a visualizer, a lo-fi beats playlist based on the show's soundtrack with original pixel art, and the first set of partially-redacted character profiles (below the cut). But the way to turn a trend into reality, and a hope into a season, is to help us meet that funding goal. Go and listen to the premiere at lydiadisappears.com; or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or your podcatcher of choice; and make sure your friends know about the show and listen to it to! Then, take a look at the Kickstarter page to see how your pledges will be turned into the rest of the story, and the rewards you can claim in return.

[chip-and-ironicus]

This is so much fun to be in! And I think you're going to like listening to it. Which you can do right now. So you should.

I think you're going to like it so much that you tell people about it. And you'll want the story to continue, which means helping us fund the rest of the series. And the people, who you shared it with, will also want that too.

Look, if you like our LPs you like uncles and uncle-esque figures. I play an uncle in this. It's made for you. Getting in on the first few days will even get us all bold new Uncle Content, so there's no point in hesitating.

Lydia Ryan never knew her mother's family. But when she returns to her childhood home to find it ransacked, her parents gone, and a book that shouldn't exist waiting for her, Lydia's insatiable curiosity leads her into a world of mystery, paranoia, and danger.

Presented through found-footage style surveillance recordings and the voluntary panopticon of social media in an interconnected near-future world, Disappearances of Lydia Fountayne follows the bookish teenager and her friends - lovelorn Ethan and wannabe internet sensation Dee - as they try to discover the secrets of Lydia's identity before they are consumed by the decades-long feud for control of her grandfather's supernatural dominions.

The full season of DoLF is Kickstarting this month, RIGHT HERE, and pledging will get you fun rewards like tote bags, early episode access, and Suspicious Envelopes. You can also watch/listen to a fancy visualizer version of the pilot on Moonshot's YouTube channel!

[chip-and-ironicus]

The Kickstarter is now live!

There are thirty (30) days remaining for you to help us make something wonderful. Tell your friends, tell everyone you know. And while there's a lot to love about this project, but can I just mention the stretch goals real quick? Pledges make the show. More pledges makes more show. That's it, no funny business.

The Disappearances of Lydia Fountayne is a new audio drama! I (Grant) have been cast in it, I'm so glad you can listen and enjoy the first episode, and I'd love for this team to make more. Let's go through those points one at a time.

DoLF (DiLF if you're nasty) is a "magical surrealist" story about a young woman and her friends caught in adventure and intrigues they never imagined. It's about big data, surveillance, and the global, digital panopticon. It's about scheming uncles (I play one of those). It's about a talking bird. According to Dee, it's about Dee. You can listen to the premiere and learn more here

Today we announced the launch day watch-along premiere, set for Monday the 3rd at 6pm eastern, 3pm pacific, and 11pm for our friends in Ireland and Great Britain. Spooky. It will be on the Moonshot Podcast Network's youtube channel.

Our website also has a link to the Kickstarter campaign. That's how we get to make the rest of the story. It's also launching on Monday, and running for a month. Available rewards include advance access, outtakes, scripts, a suspicious envelope, and more. But the most important reward is making a full season of an independent, original, and exciting audio drama possible and viable.

So listen now, and listen again with us on Monday! I've been talking about this a lot on podcast guest appearances, and soon I'll be collecting those once they're all out. For now, I'll leave you with one last link to https://www.lydiadisappears.com/ and our video trailer:

[chip-and-ironicus]

The Disappearances of Lydia Fountayne is a new audio drama! I (Grant) have been cast in it, I'm so glad you can listen and enjoy the first episode, and I'd love for this team to make more. Let's go through those points one at a time.

DoLF (DiLF if you're nasty) is a "magical surrealist" story about a young woman and her friends caught in adventure and intrigues they never imagined. It's about big data, surveillance, and the global, digital panopticon. It's about scheming uncles (I play one of those). It's about a talking bird. According to Dee, it's about Dee. You can listen to the premiere and learn more here

Today we announced the launch day watch-along premiere, set for Monday the 3rd at 6pm eastern, 3pm pacific, and 11pm for our friends in Ireland and Great Britain. Spooky. It will be on the Moonshot Podcast Network's youtube channel.

Our website also has a link to the Kickstarter campaign. That's how we get to make the rest of the story. It's also launching on Monday, and running for a month. Available rewards include advance access, outtakes, scripts, a suspicious envelope, and more. But the most important reward is making a full season of an independent, original, and exciting audio drama possible and viable.

So listen now, and listen again with us on Monday! I've been talking about this a lot on podcast guest appearances, and soon I'll be collecting those once they're all out. For now, I'll leave you with one last link to https://www.lydiadisappears.com/ and our video trailer:

[chip-and-ironicus]

Bizarre Podcast: Space Puppets!

LISTEN HERE

The hotly anticipated successor to Dogs Must Die has arrived. This time around I’m leading Chip by the hand through Farscape to celebrate its 25th anniversary. The Sci-Fi Channel’s dampest, foam rubber-est, most subversive and tangible original series is our topic for the next 50 or so episodes.

First we start at, and before, the beginning; with a look at Season 1, Episode 1: Premiere, and some highlights from its years of development.

This will be a premium show available to any donors in any amount on the Chip and Ironicus patreon, with the episode on each season’s premiere available for free. But, once our Patreon reaches $2,600 per month, the show will be free in its entirety.

[chip-and-ironicus]

Have you checked out RENEGADE SCUM yet? It's really fun. And it has really cool art now. We're doing Star Wars our way, and so far that involves a lot of close escapes from crashing ships of increasing size.

The full-cast lineup is here, the big finale of RENEGADE SCUM art week. All cast portraits are by Sari Reina, who you can find and support at http://ko-fi.com/sarireina

[chip-and-ironicus]

Have You Ever Seen Anything So Blue?

[Reposted from Grant's Cohost page]

This August, as I walked a gravel trail toward Au Sable point, I thought about the change in the people of northern Michigan. We drove to the trailhead along a county road that dips in and out of the jagged border of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. The inhabited parts outside show the pivot of an economy based on mining and fishing to one based on selling lunches and renting kayaks to people curious about historic mining and fishing. And for a second, I fell into the romantic thought that no matter how life changes, it's the same rocks and the same trees.

This is false. As I discovered on last year's trip, the vital thing to remember is how everything is constantly changing. The composition of the now-protected forest is permanently changed by the logging industry. And without that logging industry, the dune at Log Slide Overlook continues to grow taller and forever cover the spot where logs were slid to the lake. The people, the rocks, and the trees are all changing, all the time. The hope is that they change together, and can support one another. The National Park service is something I believe in.

But the lake, god willing, is forever. I remember last year, sitting in the cabin my aunt rented, watching the sky dim out the window, as the lake grew darker and darker. The waves seemed to spread in every direction. The biggest thing I've ever seen and it was growing, pushing beyond the boundary of the shore. I was a few dozen feet away, up a small hill, behind a window, and there are moments I thought I might fall in from my seat on the couch. I've lived on the Great Lakes and the waterways that connect them most of my life, but Superior is somehow different.

There is no center and no end. None you can perceive. There is only breadth and depth and expanse and blue. It's commerce and wilderness and ecosystem and postcards. Storms and harbors. Constant sound in variable volume. To see, every day, an accident of glacial geology that bore a wonder of creation, to know it supported centuries of history, and eat its fish fried in the back of a truck. Have you ever seen anything so blue?

[chip-and-ironicus]

I was asked to create an audio drama adaptation of a chapter of The Book of the New Sun, so I did, and it's here, and I'd really like people to listen and enjoy it. But like I was saying to a friend earlier this week, the content is not really interested in onboarding you, the listener. So I thought I'd make an introductory post to give people a handle on what this is and what's going on:

Listen to the audio drama Production Diary posts so far Poster by Gryme

Why it exists In the early 1980's Gene Wolfe published a dying earth/science fantasy cycle called The Book of the New Sun. It's presented as a memoir of the main character, Severian the Torturer, and contains a few other stories he encounters or tells along the way. Chapter 24 of the second volume, The Claw of the Conciliator, is in the form of a script for a play he performs in, written by a supporting character he encounters several times on his journey. This is a mostly word-accurate adaptation of that script into a dramatic presentation, which, as far as anyone involved knows, is the first of its kind. That's really exciting!

What's happening in its context In his journeys, Severian performs in this play twice, once each near the end of the first and second volumes of BotNS. The author, Dr. Talos, sees his play as both an outlet for his creative drive, a means of communicating more profound truths than he could in another medium, and part of a scam. They end their performances by having a cast member seem to go mad and attack the audience, then the troupe picks over and loots whatever the crowd left behind. The world of the greater narrative is in decline, a slow apocalypse of stagnant millennia, which informs the work.

What's happening in the play Eschatology and Genesis is about the rebirth of the world, and is set during the final death of the one its characters and audience live in. Religious and mythic figures arrive to witness and influence the new world coming, and mortals of various social positions are left to deal with the facts one way or another. The language is archaic and dense, but I think the cast's performance brings out what's meant, or at least the interpretation we settled on. A lot of the conventions of pre-modern and early modern theater are here, so if you remember anything from a Shakespeare unit in high school then parts of this will be familiar.

Please enjoy the show. And if you do, please spread it around. A lot of people worked very hard to make this possible, and I only hope my audio production didn't let down their contributions.

[chip-and-ironicus]

Hey I didn’t intend to make the opening of this trailer sexy as hell, I hope you enjoy the happy accident.

SIX FEATS UNDER IS BACK! AND IT’S STAR WARS!

Coming soon to Six Feats Under, RENEGADE SCUM, a Star Wars miniseries Actual Play. RENEGADE SCUM is played in Galactic 2e by Riley Rethal and The Scum and Villains Expansion by Jess Levine, available together in a bundle over the month of May 2023.

More information to come. Be the first to hear the episodes by subscribing to the podcast. Follow along at sixfeatsunder.com

The cast for RENEGADE SCUM is Action Shakespeare, Grant, Six Dettmar, Medibot, Pauline Ragny, and Vel Mini.