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Week in Geek: Andrew heads to the Emerald City Comic Con at his base of operations in Seattle while Dan watches, for the first time, First Blood, and was pleasantly surprised.

Sympathetic Villainy: Noticing the trend over the last few decades of villains in popular culture becoming rather humanized, flawed, and tragic characters, Dan and Andrew investigate this movement and what it says about popular culture.

Metal Gear Solid: Andrew and Dan take a look at this series again, but specifically at how a surprising majority of its antagonists are, in fact, quite sympathetic, especially when reflected in the moral ambiguity of the various protagonists of the games (but especially the protagonist in Metal Gear Solid 3, 4, Peace Walker, V: Ground Zeroes, and the upcoming V: The Phantom Pain.

Antiheroes: Dan and Andrew take a look at the flipside (or side step?) of the sympathetic villain, the antihero.

Here’s the Psychology Today article Dan read from in this segment.

Question of the Geek:

Who is your favorite sympathetic villain and/or antihero?

Leave your answers in the comments for this episode at forall.libsyn.com. Be sure to also leave your comments, and join in on the conversations, at the official Facebook and Google+ pages. You can also e-mail any questions, comments, or concerns to forallpod [at] gmail.com. If you subscribe on iTunes, be sure to leave a review to help spread the world of For All Intents and Purposes to even more nerds and geeks.

For all intents and purposes, that was an episode recap.

Featured Music:

-“Stayin’ In Black” by Wax Audio

-“A One-Winged Angel” by Nobuo Uematsu (from Final Fantasy VII)

-“‘Metal Gear Solid’ Main Theme (Metal Gear Solid 3 Version)” by Harry Gregson-Williams (from Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater)

-“Theme from Dangeresque II: This Time It’s Not Dangeresque I” by The Brothers Chaps (from Strong Bad Sings and Other Type Hits)

-“Titles” by Masaru Satoh (from Yojimbo)