#Inco

[aarlone]

In no particular order, these are some of my top audio dramas that kept me company during 2024.

1 Breathing Space: This is one of my favorite flavors of sci-fi. It is a series I have been savoring, and I do intend to relisten through at some point - because I listen to podcasts while working, it's easy for me to miss things. I haven't finished the whole series, but Breathing Space is definitely worth coming back to.

2 Monstrous Agonies: Monstrous Agonies was one of the few podcasts I didn't only listen to while on the clock. It is the perfect length for me to put on two episodes while chopping veggies for dinner, and an absolute delight every time.

3 InCo: Another podcast that shone, despite my inability to pick up on all the cool things going on. Another one I look forward to returning to.

4 StarTripper!!: Just thinking about StarTripper!! makes me smile. It is utterly charming.

5 Gastronaut: Incredible premise, executed beautifully. I'll be thinking about this one for a long time.

6 Paired: Paired is a longtime favorite of mine, and was one of a handful of relistens I did this year. I love Pairy. I hope she got to set a deer on fire.

7 Travelling Light: How much do I love Travelling Light? Every morning, I update my podcatcher and decide what to listen to based on that morning update. Travelling Light is the only one that gets downloaded as soon as I see an announcement that it's out. It's the only one that gets bumped to the next pod in the queue when listening.

8 The Green Horizon: Please I need to know where I can find more Irish-made audio dramas, this show fills the Motherfocloir-shaped hole in my life and I'm going to be finished with it soon.

9 Birds Of Empire: This show deserves better than for me to listen to while I'm at work. It's outstanding on several levels.

10 Metropolis: The first few episodes of Metropolis have set a high bar for this series. It is starting off strong, and I'm quite glad to be along for the ride.

11 October Jones & Fish With Legs: I've said this before, but OJ&FWL will fundamentally alter the way you say "mimosa" and that is just the beginning of this show's delights.

12 World Gone Wrong: The dialogue, both in terms of the writing and its performance, is so goddamn fluid and natural, if it weren't for the subject matter, I could have been convinced that this is a nonfiction chat pod between two besties.

[acepodcastweek]

Don't know any of these podcasts? Pick one and go listen!

Wondering where Sally Grissom and Jet Siquliak are? They're too powerful and will be featured in another, upcoming poll

Did I forget your favourite? Are they a canon aspec character from a scifi podcast? Let me know! There might just be a part 2...

Want to know more about the event? Click here!

[clonerightsagenda]

Crossing the streams of Podcast Girls Week and BIPOCtober to shout out some female characters of color from BIPOC-led audio dramas who I particularly enjoy:

Evelyn Wai from Hi Nay: Livestreaming college student turned paranormal researcher. She's great and I wish her well in whatever her career trajectory ends up being. Plus she's canonically aspec which I found out after I already planned to claim her for my aspec quota, which goes to show that when I turn my aspec beam on characters I am never wrong. (Ignore all the times I have been textually wrong.)

Jane Gonzalez from The Pasithea Powder: Presumably Chicana like her VA and podcast co-creator; all the Cassandran and Medean characters seem to live in a heavily Hispanic-influenced culture. (Take that, generically white Western spacefutures.) Support #women of color in STEM committing malpractice. I love her so much.

Nova NoStar from InCo: A crotchety information seller who rescues a prince from a fairy tale planet and ends up overthrowing a kingdom while on leave for personal reasons. Having made extensive study of hygiene in spaceflight, I would like to give a special shoutout to the wash day minisode. She and Lovelace should swap spaceship natural hair care tips.

Marisol Montgomery from Small Victories. Marisol is an excellent chef fighting a back and forth battle with addiction after the loss of her beloved brother. She makes a lot of bad decisions, but the show's excellent writing puts you in her head so you understand why she does everything she does. I'm rooting for her!

[boombox-fuckboy]

Hey!!! You commented on my post about limetown haha which is why I’m here. You offered to give podcast recs! What are your favorites?? I’m looking for some new ones

I completely forgot I had this ask, excuse the delay. Here's a selection of 30 podcasts I enjoyed from a broad range of genres: hopefully at least one appeals.

Let me know if you're after something more specific.

Arden: (Investigative, Comedy) On the 25th of December, 2007, heiress and young actress Julie Capsom crashed her car into a tree and fled into a nearby forest clearing, leaving a trail that seemingly vanished into thin air, and a dismembered torso in the trunk. A decade later, Bea, the first reporter on the scene, and Brenda, a detective on the case, are hosting a true crime podcast about it, and neither is remotely impressed with what the other has to say. Arden is also a retelling of various Shakespeare plays.

Desperado: (Supernatural, Adventure, Horror Elements) In a modern world of gods and magic, three young people, all under the patronage of death dieties, embark on the same adventure for different reasons: for safety, for revenge, and to kill The Old Man in the Sky. Fantastic banter and killer action sequences.

The Far Meridian: (Magical Realism) An agoraphobic young woman wakes one day to discover her lighthouse home has travelled to somewhere entirely unfamilar. As this continues to happen day after day, she uses the opportunity to search for her missing brother. A really unique and charming piece of fiction.

Gastronaut: (Sci-Fi) Interstellar travel audio blog of a former food critic as he travels to an active warzone to get firsthand experience with unfamilar cuisine. ft. Disgruntled martian nobility, sinister businessmen, explosive mushrooms, forbidden snacks, rogue revolutionary artists, and the consequences of your actions.

Girl in Space: (Sci-Fi) The Girl In Space lives alone on a space station, doing science, making cheese, rewatching Jurassic Park, and tending to the plants, animals, and artificial sun entrusted to her. It's a little lonely, but not a bad life. Would be a shame if someone came along to ruin it.

The Goblet Wire: (Microfiction, Weird Fiction) A surreal microfiction with horror elements, taking the form of phone calls to an audio-based game in which the voice of the mysterious Dictator leads each player through fantastic and horrific world and story.

Hello From The Hallowoods: (Horror, Supernatural) A dramatic entity beyond your comprehension visits your nightmares to tell stories of the people (in varying degrees of human and alive) that inhabit the strange, deadly, and beautiful Hallowoods, as they find meaning and sometimes eachother.

Hi Nay: (Supernatural Horror) A year after moving to Toronto, sound designer Mari finds herself drawn into helping people around the city with various horrific supernatural encounters due to her babaylan (shaman) family background. It quickly becomes apparent that there's something much more sinister and complicated happening in the background.

Inco: (Microfiction, Sci-Fi) A perpetually exausted interstellar information trader and her peppy AI find a mysterious (read: bratty) boy floating in space and are inadventently pulled into a world political intrigue.

Inn Between: (Fantasy) Ever curious about what the D&D characters get up to at the tavern between sessions? A generally lighter-hearted (with some exceptions) with richly-written and always-growing characters. A really interesting format, too: a lot of the adventure appears in the "next time" and "last time" segments which makes it all flow really nicely. Not a tabletop podcast.

Janus Descending: (Sci-Fi, Horror, Tragedy) A xenoarcheologist and a xenopaleontologist are sent to a study a dead city on a distant world. Nobody likes what they find there. A unique format, with one set of logs presented first to last, and the other last to first. I'd recommend listening to the supercut for this one.

The Kingmaker Histories: (Steampunk, Weird Fiction, Adventure, Fantasy Elements) In the Valorian Socialist Republic 1911, on her 25th birthday, tailor's apprentice Colette experienced the worst headache of her life. As a result, she fleed from town with a human artificer and a fae chef - both now smugglers - pursued by an utterly furious flesh-crafter. I'm not sure I'm selling how good this podcast is but it's very good.

Life With Althaar: (Sci-Fi, Comedy) A human repairman moves to a space station on the edge of human territory that is perpetually on the edge of self-destruction, and ends up with a less-than-ideal last-minute roomate. Althaar is polite, friendly, deeply interested in human culture, and eager to be friends. Unfortunately he belongs to a species that sends humans into a visceral panic at a glance.

Lost Terminal: (Sci-Fi, Hopepunk) Seth is a very lonely AI living on a satellite. His crew were left stranded aboard with no hope of return, and it's been longer than he can count since then. The Earth below him has changed dramatically, and with only a few other AI down there to talk to, he's very lonely. But! He has a plan to make some new friends.

Love and Luck: (Romance, Slice-of-Life and Urban Fantasy Elements) Voice messages cataloguing two young men falling in love and opening a queer dry bar together.

Midnight Radio: (Light Supernatural, Romance) Sybil McIntyre, host of the ever-popular 1950's nightly radio hour, begins exchanging letters with an old fan who has reluctantly returned to visit Sybil's beloved town.

Midst: (Weird Fiction, Western, Sci-Fi and Fantasy Elements) The old-western planetoid islet of Midst floats, rotating steadily, in a sea of reality-warping darkness. Down in the town of Stationary Hill, things are in movement, and vistors from the light above are about to bring unanticipated change. ft a monocycle-riding monster-hunter, radio-famous airship paladins, deadly mica, the universe's peppiest cultist, good dogs, and a really strange businessman.

The Mistholme Museum of Mystery, Morbidity, and Mortality: (Weird Fiction, Supernatural, Urban Fantasy and Horror Elements) A friendly AI tour guide leads you on a tour of the Mistholme Museum, explaining the strange and often alternatural story behind each item.

Monstrous Agonies: (Supernatural, Relationship Advice) An interpersonal advice show for supernatural entities and other people living liminally in the modern world.

Night Shift: (Urban Fantasy, Investigative) Set in a modern world with the addition of magic, which manifests in small inherited skills/traits, can warp people in horrific ways, or can be manipulated with the right science (and intense work) to induce superpowers. Sebastian Fenn is a barista at Night Shift Coffee, but since things are slow he's decided to start a podcast to talk about various mysteries, crimes and conspiracies around the city, and of course finds himself deeper in them than he'd intended.

The Pasithea Powder: (Sci-Fi, Thriller Elements? I think?) The last major interplanetary war was full of atrocities, but none more infamous then the creation of Pasithea Powder, a memory altering drug which was used to horrible effect and landed it's entire team of creators in prison. So when decorated war hero Captain Sophie Green sees one of them wandering free, worlds away from his prison, she gets in touch with a very old, estranged friend: one Dr. Jane Gonzalez, who's behind bars for the very same reason.

SCP: Find Us Alive: (Weird Fiction, Supernatural, Horror and Slice-of-Life elements) You don't need to know anything about SCP to enjoy this. A research team gets trapped in an underground research facility when the complex collapses and the building is dragged into a pocket dimension. The tear it was designed to study begins creating tiny copies of itself, generating strange entities the team needs to deal with. And as if that wasn't enough, the entire situation physically resets itself every 30 days. And yet, this is genuinely also an office comedy.

Second Star to the Left: (Sci-Fi) Audio logs of a scout sent to explore and establish early infastructure new world, and the communications with the minder in charge of keeping her alive.

Seen and Not Heard: (Slice-of-Life, Drama) Seen and Not Heard follows Bet, who's still adjusting to life a year after a bout of severe illness, and the resulting hearing loss it caused. It's about the ways we make connection, and food, and art, and different kinds of grief.

The Silt Verses: (Horror) In a modern world where gods are abundant, frequently both commercialised and restricted, two devotees of an outlawed river god go on a pilgrimage.

SINKHOLE: (Sci-Fi, Weird Fiction) Forum posts from a data restoration community in a near future where the human brain is its own computer and one city hosts a massive void.

Starfall: (Fantasy) Seeking to escape her mysterious past and find some purpose, a young swordswoman joins a travelling actor's troupe. This new life is unfamilar and sometimes stressful, but she's taken under the wing of stagehand Fel, who's determined to help her feel welcome as she experiences the figurative and literal magic of the theatre for the first time.

The Tower: (Weird Fiction) A low-key, meditative podcasy about a young woman who decides to climb a seemingly endless tower. Gorgeous sound design.

The Vesta Clinic: (Sci-Fi) New GP Dr. Fae Underwood, with the expert transcription skills of resident AI Sec, writes up patient reports on human and alien patients of The Vesta Clinic, a medical clinic on the edge of human space. Really comfy and creative.

Victoriocity: (Steampunk, Mystery) Set in the steam-powered Victorian city of Even Greater London, an aspiring journalist and a tired detective find themselves working together to solve a strange murder. I say Victorian but as queen Victoria is now an extensive grandiocity of cyborg components following seven only-kind-of-successful assassinations, you may need to adjust expectations a little.

[azenzeph]

More gator mood doodles...

[saiscribbles]

I Wani Hug That Plush

As the unofficial official voice of Olivia I of course had to make a short for Cavemanon's new plushie promotion.

You got like 2 days left to pre-order it go do it now! I already did! 😂

[paperloops]

"Just keep your eyes on me, Inco."

one of the cutest scenes i've ever seen

[synth-phonie]

I saw this on twitter and had to do it.

[darkraventombstone]

Olivia quiere abrazar su pequeño gator🐊

[specialagentartemis]

Reflections on the finale of InCo:

I love Nova. I think she's really fascinating as an aroace character who is neither a loner with few social contacts nor a social butterfly with a lot of friends and a lot of love in her heart for people and humanity: she's sort of both. She wields friendship as a tool and a weapon. She's an InCo, she couldn't do her job without having lots of contacts and integrating herself into lots of social situations; she likes to get drunk and have fun on the planets she visits without telling anyone anything about herself as a person. With Nova, information flows one way. But she sees very clearly the practical value of friendship as well! Befriending the royal family and palace guards and ordinary communities near the palace and the shipping merchants alike on Eolara, getting their stories, piecing together the truth - and, as she told Chel at the end, getting to know the palace guards well enough that they warned her that the coup was happening and to get away. They did not warn Chel. "You need to make more friends, Chel."

And at the same time, she keeps herself closed off. She doesn't talk about her feelings or anything personal to anyone - except sometimes SAWA and maybe Jean. She keeps these friendships at arm's length and doesn't let them become real. They're business. The last person she was close to, truly close to, trusted and saw herself having a home with, was Alula. And Alula is dead.

Hatov was an accident, but her friendship with Hatov was real even before he was useful to her, and it was a significant turning point.

I like that we never really learn what happened to Alula - we can read between the lines, but it's a story Nova still never tells anyone in its entirety, something that's hers alone - and we also never learn what happened to Wilm. Sometimes you don't ever know, and you need to deal with that. Nova is healing over Alula. Hatov is healing over Wilm. Nova accepting that what's done is done and she deserves to have friends and a home and a life again, and it's neither betraying Alula nor helping her stay emotionally safe anymore, it's just hurting herself; and Hatov realizing that he's never going to know what happened to Wilm, but that waiting for answers is keeping him stuck and he has to say goodbye and accept that Wilm is gone in order to move on, too.

(I also really like Hatov's development from sheltered self-important awful little prince to responsible politician and king to his people!! It was Great. And part of that WAS accepting that Wilm wasn't perfect, and that his family isn't always right and shouldn't always be obeyed, and that there aren't good answers, sometimes.)

And Nova slowly letting the cracks form, the business-friendships with Kora and Zahlia become real, reaching out to Hatov's mother and giving her the space to open up about the things she's been suppressing in the hopes of doing everything Right and getting the correct rewards... Nova letting herself stay too long and getting attached to this place... and the people. Nova's healing from the pain that Alula's death left does include letting herself have a home and friends again! Despite her denial to herself that any of this is real or she could ever want it!

And I really like at the end that she does get her ship. She does have the ability to leave. She does leave the planet - it's been five years, and she belongs here, more than she's ever belonged anywhere before, but she also has a wanderer's heart and I think she needs proof that she can leave, if she wants. Spend a year out in space travelling like she used to in order to prove to herself that that option always exists for her, that her choice to come back to Eolara is a choice, and that when she makes it she makes it freely. I don't think Nova can ever stay planetbound for good, but having a home and a place to come back to is freeing in the same way that having her ship is. (And now being a royal advisor to the Eolaran government gives her a lot of protection against the GU she never had before.)

InCo!! Is good!!!

Also, I really hope Chel got a better job after this, because damn.

[5am-the-foxing-hour]

Witch Logan: It's very important for a witch to have a familar. Some random person: Why? So they can help in your evil schemes? Witch Logan *with his lap full of a napping Janus in wolf form*: What?

[skyfullofpods]

I is for @itmeblog's InCo!

Nova works as an Information Courier, transporting and selling information between different planets. When we meet her, she picks up a very unusual package - a person floating out in space without a suit. Hatov turns out to be a prince from Eolara - a planet which only exists in stories.

Completed series of three seasons, a total of 153 episodes.

[alihylton]

@podcastgirlsweek

[kadalsaurus]

Liv, inco & guts

[boombox-fuckboy]

Don't know anyone here? Pick one and go listen!

Am I missing your favourite? Are they from a sci-fi? Let me know!

[azenzeph]

Happy 1 year Waniversary~