Goblin Monday

Hazel McCallah (The Unexplored Places: Ruin's Gate):

Middle aged woman who now uses her fighting skills to defend people.

Rescues a girl without a mother and gets so absorbed in teaching this girl how to ride a horse she misses a job.

Probably a lesbian.

Died and came back wrong. :)

Made me cry.

No but seriously if you want a Cowboy With A Hard Past Who Wants To Get Home To His Family But After Decades Realizes He Has A New Community He Wants To Stay For but with a woman, Hazel delivers in spades.

definitely a lesbian

has terrible horrible visions of Doom

occasionally gets possessed by a supernatural force that makes her better at fighting demons and also makes smoke pour out of her eyes

described as "if Charlize Theron in Mad Max didn't have a celebrity skincare routine"

fights with a fucking sick axe with a red stone head

wears an old flight suit but with the arms tied around her waist like a classic hot scifi lesbian

died and came back wrong!!!!!!!!

her link to the world of the living is the motherless 12 year old girl she rescued from a mine collapse and taught how to ride a horse and who loves her sooooo much

almost got turned into a centaur made of plant and bone one time

has a horse named Freddie

can engage a small gang on equal footing

Hazel is literally a hot middle aged butch cowboy who died and came back wrong it does NOT get sexier than that

what's sexier than a middle aged butch cowboy with a shady past born out of desperation to survive on a harsh and unforgiving planet who makes the conscious decision to not only become a better person and use her strength to help her struggling community, but also who willingly sacrifices herself to atone for her past and then COMES BACK FROM THE DEAD, resurrected by the spirit of said planet, to continue to protect that community and the people in it?

is it a middle aged butch cowboy who rescues a young girl—who, grieving the loss of her own mother in a mining accident, ran away from home and got trapped in the same haunted mine where her mother died—and decides to become a mentor to that young girl, and is motivated by the desire to make the world into a kinder place for that girl than it was to her when she was a child?

or maybe it's a middle aged butch cowboy who, when she fights supernatural monsters with her cool hellstone axe, has smoke come out of her eyes and succumbs to prophetic visions of doom???

also she's HOT

Listen, I'm going to be honest here. I don't think I'd ever found a podcast character hot before Hazel. Now Hazel is the metric against which all other podcast characters are judged. I've never listened to that other show, but how Hazel isn't just absolutely running away with this thing is beyond me.

Emmy Acero (Tidal Wave Games Podcast: SEE YOU SPACE COWBOY...):

Latino trans man, college student turned movie stunt double turned space bounty hunter. Father blew his entire college fund on a cryptocurrency scheme, now trying to raise enough money as a gig worker to pay off his debt before his school's tuition office's hitmen come after him. And that's before he finds out about the whole "secret destiny" thing…

Might be inexperienced (don't worry, he's a consenting adult) but he's a very quick learner. Just look how quickly he learned the saxophone!

Accidental rizz levels off the charts. Canonically has the most romantic/sexual success of any character in the podcast, almost entirely unintentionally on his part

You float the idea of knife play and he says "omg I thought you would never ask". Next thing you know you're sitting in a chair watching him perform actual knife tricks for two hours

Special skills: "True Strength is in the Core", "Can Fit in Spaces Most Can't", "Resting Innocent Face" (aka puppy dog eyes). I think you can fill in the blanks

There's just something about this guy, I can't quite put my finger on it...

Moenbryda Wilfsunnwyn (Tidal Wave Games Podcast: Interstitial 2E):

Summoned by Gwonam the wizard to Castlevania to kill Dracula because she (along with Lt. Worf of the Starship Enterprise and Squirtle, the Pokémon) was supposedly a distant relation of the Belmont bloodline, and was immediately like "yeah cool sounds great" despite not knowing what a Dracula was

FELL CLEAVE

I voiced this version of Moen. I do drop the accent after the first episode but whatever. Vote Moen. Give her the win.