Cosmic Donut Holes

⚠️ FULL SPOILER WARNING: All eight books, plus kinda sorta REALLY major spoilers for Mistborn Era 1 and The Stormlight Archive at around minutes 24-25. Cascadia voice — Sorry bout that.  YO! DADDY! What the actual frick frack snick snack did that coming out party mean?!  A Parade of Horribles contained a significant lore dump about the true nature of the dungeon, primals, and the history of the un...

We're alive!! Welcome back to Cosmic Donut Holes. It's been a few weeks since we've recorded, and since then, Kokaina moved to a new city, went to Puerto Rico for a birthday, survived a wedding weekend, and is now back to cosplaying as a sourdough baker that totally has their life together. Tyso fell hopelessly in love, went clubbing more than a few times, ate fried cheese, and received the most a...

After realizing a single deep dive into book 8 would’ve been approximately 8 hours long, we decided to turn this into a series — because too much happened in A Parade of Horribles to cover in one sitting, and we refuse to half-ass this. Vol. 1 is crawler character arcs. We start with Donut's two prophecies, digging into her motherhood arc, the cost of her insane level of power, as well as what her...

We have opinions about conspiracy theories, and Tyson wore his Illuminati shirt for the occasion.  This week, we are running through a stack of conspiracy theories — mainstream, weird, plausible, and deeply unhinged — and rating each one on a scale of Nah, Hmm, Actually Though, and I Need to Lie Down. With a special bonus category Tyson invented on the spot: I Just Really Want This to Be True. Bef...

Picture this: a 15-year-old girl walks into a high school cafeteria for the first time, sees everyone already deep in their friend groups, and quietly takes her lunch to the bathroom instead. That girl was Kaina. And yes, we're blaming homeschooling…at least partially. This week we're doing something we've never actually sat down and done before: comparing notes on what our homeschooling experienc...

⚠️ FULL SPOILER WARNING : If you haven't finished Book 8: A Parade of Horribles, SCRAM. SKERDADDLE. We’ll see you after you've recovered. Still here? Good….NOW WTF WAS THAT?! After the early access version Dungeon Crawler Carl Book VIII on Matt Dinniman's Patreon left us reeling, we decided to open up the recording studio, pull up our Kindle highlights, and just…ramble at each other in a state of...

We gave each other books. We couldn't read the back cover. We couldn't Google it. We just had to start reading and trust the other person completely. This is either a beautiful act of sibling love or a war crime, depending on the book. Tyson handed Kaina The Descent by Jeff Long, which is a 1999 horror-thriller-sci-fi hybrid that begs the question: what if hell was literally underground, humanity...

In true Cosmic Donut Holes fashion, this episode is unhinged, unplanned, and unscripted. It's sweet. It's us. Now…get in the van. This episode starts strong with Kaina getting a phone call mid-recording that sends her into orbit — she's leaving the hellscape that is rural Louisiana. From there, it's the kind of hang we live for: A debrief of Tyson's weekend at Filthy Dirty Southern Fusion (a birth...

After last week's two-hour deep dive into masculinity left us in a full state of brain salad, we decided this one was going to be a cozy hang. A palette cleanser. A little treat. And treat it was — because this episode is (mostly) about the unsung heroes of the bookish world: audiobook narrators. The people who take the words we lose ourselves in and make them feel even more real. We break down wh...

Strap in guys, we are talking man stuff and it’s a long one ;) The manosphere is not a fringe internet problem anymore; it’s a radicalization pipeline spurred by algorithms and expanded by recruitment tactics that two cult survivors recognize from a mile away. As the old-school script for being a “man” burns in the streets, young men are being left to drift in an identity vacuum created by a rapid...

No agenda. No rules. Just two people that have spent an irresponsible amount of time thinking about this series. We’re back in the dungeon for a loosey goosey session – the type where we just crack open the lore and start poking things until they move. We get deep into some unhinged theories: how changelings and primals might be related, the breadcrumbs left in item descriptions by an unhinged AI,...

We need to talk about magic. Not the vague, hand-wavy "she summoned a glowing orb and won the battle" kind — the good kind. The kind that is detailed, complex, and fits perfectly into the world.  In this episode, Kaina and Tyson break down what actually makes a magic system work. We’re debating the manual labor vs. mysticism scale: is it more satisfying to watch a character like Carl or Vin "grind...

Sarah J. Maas walked into the Call Her Daddy studio and handed us two release dates, a therapy session, and more questions than answers. Let’s talk about it. This episode kicks things off with a full debrief of the interview — what SJM actually told us, why A Court of Silver Flames is more personal than we realized, and why calling her work “smut” is a choice people should really reconsider. We al...

Pull up a chair in the “Next Step” clinic, because we’re going deep on something Brandon Sanderson has been doing better than almost anyone (other than writing books in his sleep): representing mental health realistically in fiction. We break down the Cracked Spiritweb – the spiritual blueprint that lets Investiture seep in precisely because adulting has shattered the soul – and why this metaphor...

Title: Creativity in the Age of AI Series: Scary Shit, Vol. I Is AI a creative partner or a corporate scavenger? In this episode, Kaina and Tyson step away from the fiction to discuss the actual dystopia being built in real-time: Generative AI. We’re unpacking the ethics, the environmental cost, and the "Uncanny Valley" of AI slop. We explore the transition from "it's not real art" to industry sta...

What the fuck is that??? Oh, it’s just us doing a massive deep dive into the absolute unhinged masterpiece that is the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. If your brain is currently 40% dungeon lore and 60% Princess Donut quotes, you’ve found your people. Seriously though…"The Oak Fell," and so did our productivity once we started theory-crafting this episode. We’re breaking down The Scavenger Hierarchy,...

Welcome to the first of many installments in the Sibling Spice Chronicles – a segment where dedicated romantasy scholar Kaina “forces” her brother Tyson to confront the world of shadow daddies, faerie porn, and ham wallets (MONGO IS APPALLED). In this episode, we tackle the elephant in the room: Is it weird for a brother and sister to talk about smut? Probably, but we’re going there. We dive deep...

What happens when you take a brother and sister who grew up in a cult, give them unrestricted access to the internet, and hand them microphones? You get the brain-child of two siblings where a fire breathing bitch queen, gunslinging allomancers, and an apocalyptic AI with a foot fetish collide. Join the hosts of Cosmic Donut Holes as we peel back the layers on who we are, why our logo is a meatbal...