(Patreon Exclusive) AT THE WELL featuring Ally Beardsley!
Before we kick off our brand-new Kaiju campaign (title to be revealed at a later date…), we wanted to whet your appetite with a tasty little sampling of monster and kaiju-related At the Well with Lou, Erika, and Ally!
We hope this gets you stoked for the new campaign, which officially releases next Tuesday, 9/1!
We’ve got lots of fun surprises headed your way here by the Fireside, so make sure you’re subscribed — and go recruit all the Ally fans in your life to come join us for the ride.
And keep your eyes on our socials this week for a sneak peek at the incredible characters our cast will be playing, plus a first look at our beautiful campaign poster.
Something big is coming ashore.
Theme music courtesy of Twilight Symphonium.
Comments (58)
Too late, I think we’re family now.
The absolute CHARACTER ASSASINATION of Brennan in this episode is crazy.
Fun fact (maybe fake) about godzilla ‘98, they wanted the point of the film to be about the social fear around sexuality and intimacy, and wanted godzilla to be very sensual and attractive in a way that viewers would find uncomfortable, but weren’t allowed to from some corporate higher-ups.
So brennan’s into vore, Lou’s into macro, and erika and aabria are into everything else
The bit of Brennan having his mouth too full to talk about all of these movies set in New York was hilarious, because I feel like he would struggle not to interject even with a full mouth of food 😂 Pac-Rim is my favourite kaiju universe, but I think Matthew Broderick’s Godzilla was probably my first experience of the genre 😅 Love the At the Well series but I feel like it’s too short, though maybe that’s just because everyone has so many wonderful insights and stories to tell that I never want it to end. It’s such a great concept for Patreon too, as you get those intimate nostalgic tidbits from everyone’s lives, but also really interesting discussion on stories, character and culture. Thank you Lou 🙏
Spoiler Alert at ~11 minutes for the 1998 masterpiece American Godzilla featuring Matthew Broderick. Goddamn, Lou. I loved Erika’s squeeing enthusiasm which Lou immediately crushed like a kaiju. 🦖
Is Godzilla Minus One comparable to Grave of the Fireflies? Because I went into that one thinking I was about to watch a Ghibli 🙃
Love Brennan's recurring gravy bit. Had a great time . I'm gonna enjoy this Beebee cempeeign
Lou, "we used to make great big things" is from Aaron Sorkin in Newsrooms in the middle of the America isn't the greatest nation but it sure used to be speech https://youtu.be/fJh9t9h6Wn0?t=173&is=1ThvuHqauS298DVL
Fully forgot until minute 29 that the campaign was Kaiju themed. My brain just accepted how far from ttrpg the conversation had gone 😄 like, "helluva tangent lads..."
😂 I have tha Godzilla cupholder holding up my tooth brush
Watch Monarch Legacy of Monsters on Apple TV+ if you like Kaiju!!!!
Baby Kaiju campaign come on!
Welcome Ally!
the talk about pacific rim & the world building there reminded me of the book Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao
I felt so incredibly seen be the Pacific Rim discussion 🥹
Ally guest yippeeeee!!! Baby Campaign...
I will spare everyone my infodump on Japanese traditional sericulture, Mothra, Hellboy’s Conqueror Worm, etc. and just bask in the shared joy of souvenir LOTR glasses. Looking forward to Ally’s stint on the show, always a favorite:)
does the infodump exist elsewhere? i for one would read it
All I need from this campaign is an Evangelion reference and it will be PERFECT
I shipped those gay scientists so goddamn hard
anyone know where i can find that grant smash or pass session? lmao
i gotcha: https://www.patreon.com/worldsbeyondnumber/posts/horner-corner-133443030 it's iconic (and if you like it, check out grant's excellent though not-recently-updated interview show, What Have You Been Drinking)
is now the time to mention the Ana and Din books written by persistently underdiscussed SF/F author Robert Jackson Bennett, who seems finally to be getting some recognition for his excellent //kaiju detective series//? they're out there solving //kaiju cases//
Shin Godzilla is absolutely top tier for me. My wife finds it boring, but I find it thrilling. Also, young Godzilla with their freaky eyes and squirmy walk is iconic.
I love the Godzilla movies because my dad was a huge fan. he would play the original movies dubbed into english all the time, and those silly puppets and rubber suits, and I fell in love with Mothra. I wish they would make movies about other kaiju, and as wonderful as Godzilla is, there's so much more that hasn't been remastered and spread as much! so much of the meaning behind many kaiju isn't as explored because they haven't expanded past godzilla! so, im so excited for this nowww
little soldier reporting for duty 🫡
Well, they did have to scale up King Kong for the new movies. They’ve also been scaling up Godzilla in every movie since the first one.. if you search for Godzilla scale on YouTube, there’s a ton of videos showing how they’ve subtly grown him over the years from the first movie where he was about the size that King Kong was to now when he’s massive and huge in fact, there’s even that cartoon set in the future where Godzilla sticks off the entire planet
Is Lou maybe thinking of McAvoy's rant from episode one of The Newsroom?
Pretending Brennan is there with weird interjections is so funny 😂 who brings mashed potatoes to a podcast?? lol
I started out feeling bad for the younger generations not getting the *proper* kaiju introduction: seeing the original Toho rubber suit Godzilla movies on Saturday afternoon UHF broadcast television. But then I was converted to full "you kids get off my lawn!" mode by the claim that Idris Elba was introduced to American audiences by Pacific Rim and NOT The Wire (which they kept quoting unattribited: "we used to make shit in this country, build shit")
it's an interesting question about Idris Elba... on a quick look, The Wire's live US viewership seems to have peaked around 4.5m views, so let's roughly estimate less than 6 million distinct viewers while it was airing. obviously, lots of people have seen it since then. Pacific Rim actually underperformed domestically when it came out; based on box office, probably 9 or 10 million distinct US viewers (unless a whole lot of people were seeing it more than once). The Wire feels earlier and more like an essential introduction to me too, but i'm not sure it was. of course Thor came out in 2011, two years before Pacific Rim did, and, most significantly for US audiences, so did the Merry DriisMas Holiday Mixtape
This is a fun interlude, but does anyone else feel like this subscription is rapidly becoming 5 dollars per episode? Early WBN was stacked, and slotted bonus stuff amid a very solid release schedule. These days it's about one actual play per month, and we're lucky if we get a talk-back. I love these performers, and want to support them, but the value of this subscription has massively fallen off, no?
A bunch of stuff has happened recently for folks so that would slow things down. Plus Brennan is also working on the new D20 campaign too
Giant, inexorable, and coming to get you? So, Jaws?
Minus One is good but Shin Godzilla clears, I’m afraid.
I really want to know if Erika has seen Guillermo Del Toro’s animated children’s show ‘Trollhunters’. Very, very good and the later seasons have A LOT of kaiju action. Started it with my kids and ended up highly invested.
YES PACIFIC RIM!!!! Oh my god easily one of my favorite movies ever, and all the fan content it inspired on tumblr. That was probably one of the films that really left me feeling electric with all the world building. We didn’t get to do it, but this came out when my husband and I were still dating and we joked that if we sent out engagement announcements it would be us as jaeger pilots saying something like “we’re going into the drift together” or something like that 😆
I googled Erika's interview with Charlie Day and it brought me to the nerdiest website featuring the worst embedded media player I've ever seen it ran four ads on mute and I gave up. So if anyone has Dan Casey's contact info tell him to hold that footage to YouTube.
fun game to play. in Shin Godzilla, count the times they have a meeting, change outfits, and go to another meeting.
Lou might be thinking of Frank Sobotka from The Wire? "We used to build shit in this country."
The 1998 Godzilla! Honestly Brain Stew by Greenday from that album changed my brain chem.
90s movie music licensing was something else!!! i cannot agree with Jessica enough: anyone who only knows the version from Insomniac should PLEASE seek out Brain Stew (Godzilla Remix) as soon as possible. it's almost unbelievable that it exists
I've seen most of the Godzilla moves, especially the original, it was one of my all time favorite movies growing up. Godzilla Minus One hit in such a way that I'm still grappling with to this day. It's an incredible movie that I've never felt so hopeless watching but I'd watch it 100 times in a row.
Godzilla Minus One is probably top three best Godzilla movies of all time IMO
It’s so good to be back here! I have a lot of catching up to do ❤️💪🏼
So incredibly excited for this
The movie Final Wars had the Japanese Godzilla fight the American Godzilla. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPxhdo4HDgg
This is the quality content I come to the comments for. A+
I still have Ghostbusters 2 tie-in drinking glass that was available at a now defunct gas station chain here in Canada.
Sunoco?
It might just be Apple pods being weird but it looks like only the preview uploaded to the fireside stream!
Crazy pull from frank sobotka
yes, and i fear i have bad news about the labor conditions those godzilla car cup holders were likely made under
At the Welly Beardsley
Perhaps it's already been said but... Lou Wellson? 👀
Can't wait for this. This is going to be big. Huge even.
Is monstrous too far?