Podcast / Binary Break

Left to right: Cate, Sophie, Penny

We fall into a Digital World
Our adventure's just begun!
We've made some brand new monster friends
Some are scary, some are fun!
Sometimes I think it's just a dream
Am I ever gonna wake?
'til then I guess we're a pretty good team -
Binary Break!

— Opening Theme

Binary Break is a Digimon-based Actual Play podcast that began August 1st, 2023. It plays using the Digidice system, an original system developed by GM Claire Mulkerin, and features Sky Ertl, Ann McShane, and Christina Woods as players.

The story begins on December 15th 1999. The town of Columbus, Indiana has been beset with strange phenomenon and unseasonable weather. In the midst of this, six children are trying to handle their own problems. Cate Perez (Ann) finds herself at odds with her friend-slash-rival Kat Payne, who insists that she's better both on and off the soccer field and is sick of Cate not acknowledging it. Mark "Penny" Penwell (Sky) is convinced that he can detect extra-dimensional beings, much to his friend Billy's embarrassment. And Sophie Battle (Christina) has accidentally angered her younger brother Jordie after wrecking his new backpack in an attempt to make him a Christmas gift. But all these struggles are put on hold when Cate, Penny, and Sophie are whisked away to the Digital World.

It's there that they meet their Digimon partners: the electric turtle Aomon for Cate, the bombastic dragon Heirmon for Penny, and the pleasant mushroom Capmon for Sophie. While the kids are excited to meet their new friends and explore this fantastical world, questions still remain - why are they here? How do they get home? And what's happening to their friends while they're gone?

This podcast contains the following tropes

• Accessory-Wearing Cartoon Animal: Heirmon wears a little crown and red cloak.
• Accidental Misnaming:
  • People often refer to Cate as Kat and vice versa because of their similar names.
  • Sophie and Cate refer to Birdbastic and Bird Blaster almost exclusively, much to Penny's chagrin.
• Acting for Two: The players control both their chosen child and the partner of a different child.
  • Sky plays Penny, and also Cate's partner Aomon.
  • Ann plays Cate, and also Sophie's partner Capmon.
  • Christina plays Sophie, and also Cate's partner Heirmon.
• Alternate Identity Amnesia: After being purified, Nekomon not only doesn't remember attacking the kids when he was corrupted, but staunchly denies having done so and says it must've been somebody else.
  Nekomon: I think these woods are pretty dangerous so I'm gonna, I don't know, try and find somewhere safe to be. I heard there were these weird monsters in here.
  Penny: Yeah you were one of 'em!
  Nekomon: Mm, I don't know about that.
• Always Second Best: Kat developed this attitude towards Cate by the time the series begins, feeling that Cate is so good at everything and doesn't even try whereas Kat tries so hard and rarely gets recognized.
• Animalistic Abomination: The corrupted Nekton from episode 2 looks like a large black cat at first glance, but it has too many eyes, mouths and tails, and they're spouting out at odd places - like it's glitching.
• Anyone Remember Pogs?: Since the show begins in the late 90s, naturally there are pogs. Penny a canonically infinite amount shoved into the pockets of his vest.
• Appropriated Appellation: Penny's birth name is Mark Penwell, but when he was younger bullies would call him Penny. He either liked it more or didn't realize it was supposed to be mean, so he now goes by that exclusively - even by teachers.
• Artifact of Hope: As usual, the kids' Digivices (here called a D-Coder). Each one is unique for each kid - Penny's is a square that he can wear like a wristwatch, Cate's is a triangle she can clip onto her belt, and Sophie's is a circle that she hangs around her neck like a necklace.
• Awesome Mc Cool Name: The Sophie and Jordie Battle.
• Calling Your Attacks: As is tradition in Digimon.
• Creepy Doll: Capmon's champion Fenumon is a wooden ball-jointed doll with red eyes, moth wings, and mushrooms growing out of her.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Penny and Sophie are both happy to let their freak flags fly. Penny's a bit of a conspiracy theorist and loves telling people about the secret worlds he thinks are out there. Sophie loves fairies - she wears fairy wings to school, draws pictures of them in class, and chased after Birdbastic with the others because she thought it was a fairy.
• Condescending Compassion: Cate suggests that she could skip the last game of the season so that she doesn't overshadow Kat, and the latter could potentially get noticed more easily by the photographer from Teen Soccer Quarterly. Kat reacts poorly to this, because even if this matches her own feelings she wants the game for the opportunity to best Cate.
• Congestion Speak: Penny's arrival in the Digital World lands him in a field of large flowers, and the pollen immediately start clogging up his sinuses.
• Cool Gate: The Large Arch functions as one for the kids after chasing Birdbastic through it.
• Crappy Homemade Gift: Sophie works really hard on painting and decorating Jordie's backpack so it has a pig picture of his wrestling OC Phantom Tiger. Unfortunately, when Jordie said he wanted a wrestling backpack he wanted a real wrestler and doesn't appreciate Sophie wrecking his backpack (and not even spelling the name right - she painted "Pantom Tiger").
• Creepy Good: Capmon is Sophie's cheerful and protective partner, who also loves decomposing plant life and creepy bugs. Her charming little home is a rotting log in the middle of the Witch Woods.
• Dissonant Serenity: Capmon speaks with a calm voice no matter what, even if she's in the middle of battle or describing poisonous mushrooms.
• Don't Go in the Woods: The Witch Woods that the kids find themselves in in episode 2 have gained a reputation lately for having monsters prowling within them. Ironically, when they actually find Witchmon, she herself attacks them because of those same rumours and accuses them of being said monsters.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Columbus, Indiana's most notable landmark: The Large Arch. It's an arch that's large.
• Geo Effects: Heirmon's Element Breath is an adaptive attack that has different effects depending on the environment. In a forested area, it's a burst of pollen that causes entangling vines to sprout.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Billy desperately wants to be normal and not draw too much attention to himself, and he wishes Penny would do the same. Unfortunately, Penny loves telling everyone about his conspiracy theories and doesn't register when he's being made fun of.
• Leeroy Jenkins: Heirmon wasn't present to meet Penny when he landed in the Digital World because he rushed into the woods early hoping to take care of the monster problem and keep him safe.
• Life Drain: Capmon's Mycospear attack can drain an opponent's energy.
• Mushroom Maiden: Capmon is a little pink and white mushroom Digimon.
• No More for Me: When Penny first sees Capmon, he assumes her and the events of the morning are because of him somehow doing drugs.
  Penny: I think D.A.R.E. was right and I got - is that mushroom talking? This is a gateway.
• Portal Slam: Even though the kids find the Arch again after their battle in episode 2, it's just a carving and doesn't take them back home - no matter how fast they run through it. Which Cate does try. Repeatedly. For several hours.
• Power Echoes: A voice filter over all the Digimon's attacks, and the humans calling for "Fractal Code Purify", makes them echo dramatically.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Kat and Cate.
• See the Invisible: Sophie has a little bottle of paint on her that Penny squirts at whatever invisible force is holding Heirmon in episode 2. Unfortunately it attacks him before he's able to get a look at it.
• Shock and Awe: Aomon has electrical abilities, namely his Shell Shocker attack.
• Shout-Out:
  • Billy's first introduction is explaining the Buffy episode "Hush" to Penny.
  • Penny made a Birdbastic detector out of a Ninja Turtles LCD game.
  • Penny calls his slideshow about Birdbastic "Birdemic".
  • Kat and Cate watch Jurassic Park during dinner.
  • When Claire describes a messed-up cat-like monster with too many limbs, Christina calls it a displacer beast.
  • When Penny goes looking for clues and finds some trading cards, Ann and Sky joke about them being a Sandshrew and a Swamp respectively.
  • Claire gives Mycomon a voice similar to Werner Herzog
• Significant Name Overlap: Kat and Cate. Their full names are both Katherine/Catherine, and they're right next to each other in the roll call (Payne and Perez), so they begrudgingly became friends.
• Skewed Priorities: When Cate lands in the Digital World and meets Aomon, her confusion quickly fades and she spends a long while explaining to him all her middle-school drama, and then tries to teach him soccer. He actually doesn't get a chance to give her her D-Coder until the middle of a battle.
• Small Name, Big Ego: When Heirmon introduces himself to the others, he declares that the entire Digital World is his kingdom. This is after he got attacked by a corrupted Nekomon.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: Anne and Annie are quick to insist that all the feelings young Cate and Kat have for each other are super normal and heterosexual.
• Theme Music Powerup: An instrumental of the main theme starts playing when Capmon digivolves for the first time.
• Trapped in Another World: Naturally, being a Digimon story. The show begins with Penny, Cate, and Sophie being thrust into the Digital World.
• Unhand Them, Villain!: In the fight in episode 2.
  Capmon: Heirmon would like you to put them down now.
  Heirmon: Lemme down! Lemme down!
  Claire: Heirmon, you're gonna get thrown through the air.
  Heirmon: Aaaagh!
  Capmon: Thank you!
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Sophie takes the weirdness of the Digital World in stride compared to Cate and Penny.
• Year Inside, Hour Outside: After they realize they can't get back home, Cate tells Sophie that she had an important thing to do the day they landed in the Digital World and it's already night. Trying to reassure her, Sophie tells her this trope might apply. Unfortunately she references the tale of Urashima, which is Year Outside, Hour Inside, and scares Cate into thinking they'll get old and die when they get back home.