A Podcast & YouTube Channel
Where literary history meets fandom chaos — and two sisters with zero shelf control figure out why the books we love hit harder than they have any right to.
"Four books into Dungeon Crawler Carl, I realised someone needed to talk about what this series was actually doing. Kara said yes almost before I finished the sentence."
Dannea · Canon & Chaos
The Archive
Smart analysis, genuine fandom enthusiasm, and the occasional literary revelation. New episodes every two weeks.
About the Show
The idea for Canon & Chaos was born over the Christmas holidays when Kara, a couple of nephews, and a Dungeon Crawler Carl audiobook pulled Dannea into the series. Four books later, deep in Easter eggs and literary rabbit holes, the podcast idea proposed itself.
The books that fandoms go absolutely feral over — the ones that generate thousands of Reddit threads, fan theories, Discord servers, and more than a few tears over a cat in a death dungeon — are often doing something genuinely remarkable as literature. They're just not always recognized as such.
We think that's worth fixing.
"Every episode, we take a book you already love and show you something about it you haven't seen yet. Not to make it feel like homework — but to make it feel even more like yours."
We cover speculative fiction — epic fantasy, LitRPG, progression fantasy, science fiction — and we bring the occasional classic along for the ride, because the best stories have always been in conversation with each other. Brandon Sanderson knew his Tolkien. Matt Dinniman knows his Homer. And Jane Austen, it turns out, would have had opinions about the Cosmere.
Every episode features our signature Canon Connection segment, where we draw a line between the book we're discussing and something older — something from the literary canon — that illuminates it in a new way. It's the part of the show we're most proud of, and the part listeners quote back to us most often.
An enthusiastic, spoiler-conscious introduction to the book — the version that makes a non-reader want to clear their weekend.
One literary lens applied to the book in a way that feels like a revelation, not a lecture. The PhD is showing and we're not sorry.
Hot takes, fan theories, shipping discourse, and arguments that occasionally get out of hand.
Our signature segment. One unexpected line between the book we love and a classic text — and why that connection changes how you see both.
Dannea is a literature PhD candidate whose academic work lives somewhere in the overlap between genre fiction, narrative theory, and the question of why certain stories refuse to let go of us. She has read more Austen criticism than is probably healthy, has strong opinions about the picaresque tradition, and firmly believes that LitRPG deserves the same close reading as anything on a university syllabus. She is the reason this podcast has footnotes. Figuratively. Mostly.
Kara is the reason Canon & Chaos actually sounds like a podcast instead of a seminar. She is a lifelong convention-goer who introduced Dannea to the world of fandom events — she's been attending BlizzCon and FanX Salt Lake City for years, has volunteered at Dragonsteel since its very first year, and is the reason this podcast exists at all. It was Kara, a couple of nephews, and a Dungeon Crawler Carl audiobook playing over the Christmas holidays that started everything. She brings the fan theories, the emotional reactions, and the very important reminder that we are, first and foremost, people who just really love these books.
We disagree about a lot. Whether Princess Donut is the real protagonist of Dungeon Crawler Carl. Whether The Way of Kings is too slow or perfectly paced. Whether Jane Austen would have been a Cosmere fan or would have found Brandon Sanderson's prose a little much. We quote this line at each other approximately four times per episode, and we are never going to stop. If you've made it this far, you already understand us better than most people do.
New episodes every two weeks. Find us wherever you listen to podcasts, or watch on YouTube. If you love books, fandoms, and the occasional literary deep-dive — you're exactly who we made this for.
Get In Touch
Whether you have a book recommendation, a hot take you need to share, a question about the show, or you're interested in working with us — we read everything that lands in our inbox.
Message received! We'll get back to you soon — probably after we finish arguing about whether Princess Donut is the real protagonist.