For All Intents and Purposes

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Week in Geek: Andrew buys a Playstation Vita to play the 20 year-old game, Suikoden, but only so he can play Suikoden II, eventually. Dan gets mad after watching the documentary, GTFO.

Wild Arms 3: Before getting to the topic of the influence of westerns, Dan and Andrew look at a very specific––and, perhaps, out of the blue––instance of this with the 2002 JRPG, Wild Arms 3.

The Western Evolution: Rather than simply talking about the Western as a genre of storytelling, Andrew and Dan instead discuss how the western persists past its cultural prime and, despite seeming like a withering genre overall, is more alive than ever.

Listeners on the Range: To help flesh out the conversation, Dan and Andrew turned to the listeners and asked what westerns or western-influenced media deserves a closer look, with great response!

Question of the Geek:

What is your favorite use of ninja(s) or superspies (in any medium)? Which do you feel have been particularly influential? Why?

Leave your answer as a comment on the page for this episode at forall.libsyn.com. Be sure to also join the official Facebook and Google+ pages. You may also e-mail the show at forallpod [at] gmail [.] com. If you subscribe to the show on iTunes, help the show out by leaving a review on the iTunes store to help spread the word of the show through the magic of Apple’s algorithms.

For all intents and purposes, that was a podcast recap.

Featured Music:

-“Stayin’ in Black” by Wax Audio

-“Finish Today, Then…” by Michiko Naruke (from Wild Arms: Advanced 3rd Original Soundtrack)

-“A Fistful of Dollars” by Ennio Morricone

-“When I Was a Cowboy” by Leadbelly

-“Shadow” by Nobuo Uematsu (from Final Fantasy VI)

-“Fanfare” by Nobuo Uematsu (from Final Fantasy VII)

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Week in Geek: Andrew plays a megagame while Dan breaks down watching Jon Stewart’s last episode of The Daily Show and ponders what, exactly, Stewart was to a generation of viewers.

Meta-Listeners: Our listeners chime in on meta-texts that really piqued their interests while Dan and Andrew chime in on those suggestions.

Meta-Fiction: Andrew and Dan delve deep into the world of stories about stories, movies about movies, tv shows about tv shows, and games about games and ask what the heck do meta-narratives do?

Hercules/Xena Meta-Episodes: Dan and Andrew spend the better part of an hour (or not) discussing a few episodes of these classic tv fantasy shows’ use of meta-fiction for some fun one-off episodes…or not.

Question of the Geek: 

Next week, we’ll be discussing how despite the fact that the genre of the Western is relatively dead, it has been repurposed in nearly every other genre of fiction. So, with that in mind:

What is your favorite Western-themed fiction (in any genre and in any medium)? Why? Or what is a western that you think has been particularly influential and needs more attention? Why?

Leave your answer as a comment on the page for this episode at forall.libsyn.com. Be sure to join the official Facebook and Google+ pages for the latest updates. You may also e-mail us at forallpod [at] gmail [dot] com. If you subscribe to the show on iTunes, be sure to leave a review to help boost our status in the eyes of Apple’s algorithms.

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

Featured Music:

-“Stayin’ in Black” by Wax Audio

-“This Song’s Just (Six Words Long)” by “Weird Al” Yankovic

-“Hook” by Blues Traveler

-clip of “Guantanamo By the Bay” from Boston Legal 3.22.

-“Main Title” by Joseph LoDuca (from Xena: Warrior Princess)

-“Animaniacs Theme” by Rob Paulsen, Tress MacNeille, and Jess Harnell (written by Richard Stone & Tom Ruegger)

-“Before the Storm” by Jeremy Soule (from Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim)

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Week in Geek: Andrew watches John Carpenter’s They Live to honor the life of Rowdy Roddy Piper while Dan listens to the podcast, Top Score with Emily Reese, discuss the ludomusicology of Final Fantasy VI.

BTAS: Dan and Andrew wrangle a new television show to talk about, Batman: The Animated Series. They use the classic episode, “Perchance to Dream”, as a way to kick off the discussion about dreams and dreaming in nerd ficiton.

Dreams and Dreaming: Andrew and Dan weave through a variety of media as they discuss how (and why) dreams are used as a narrative tool (or crutch, in some cases).

Listener Dreams (and Star Trek): Some listener responses brought up great uses of dreams in fiction while Andrew uses the opportunity to discuss a fantastic Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, “Phantasms”, which features Data having nightmares.

Question of the Geek:

What are effective instances of meta-narrative––when a text is acutely aware of the fact that it is a text and brings the reader in on the joke?

Leave your answer as a comment on the page for this episode at forall.libsyn.com. Be sure to join the official Facebook and Google+ pages. You may also send us any comments, questions, or concerns to forallpod [at] gmail [dot] com. If you subscribe to the show on iTunes, be sure to leave a review to help spread the word!

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

Featured Music:

-“Stayin’ in Black” by Wax Audio

-“Batman: The Animated Series (Main Title)” by Danny Elfman (arranged by Shirley Walker)

-“Dreaming in Dortmund” by Ewan Dobson

-“Dreamland” by Hirokazu Ando (from Super Smash Bros.)

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We start a (slightly) new form of the podcast this week, and we kick it off with the theme of “Gateways to Geekdom.”

Week in Geek: Andrew plays Commander (aka Elder Dragon Highlander) with a custom 30 Rock deck while Dan plays Journey which was recently released for the Playstation 4.

Listener Gateways: Thanks to listener input, Dan and Andrew discuss the classic gateways to geekdom that are Star Wars and the Atari 2600.

Gateways to Geekdom: Thanks to a listener suggestion from an earlier episode, Andrew and Dan discuss the various gateways to geekdom have been as well as the impact those gateways had on geeks and nerd in general.

The Farpoint Gateway: Dan and Andrew discuss a gateway to geekdom that was especially important to Andrew, the Star Trek: The Next Generation pilot, “Encounter at Farpoint.”

Question of Geek:

What do you think is an effective use of dreams or dreaming in a fiction (in any medium)?

Leave your answer as a comment on the page for this episode at forall.libsyn.com. Be sure to join the official Facebook and Google+ pages to keep up to date with the fans and content. You may also e-mail the show at forallpod [at] gmail [dot] com. Be sure to leave a review on iTunes of the show to help the show out.

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

Featured Music:

-“Stayin’ in Black” by Wax Audio

-“Main Title” adapted from John Williams’ “Main Theme” from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (from the Atari 2600 game, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial by Atari)

-“Iron Man 3” by Brian Tyler

-“Star Trek: The Next Generation – End Credit” by Ron Jones

-“Come On, Come Over” by Jaco Pastorius

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We’re back after a few weeks of Shortcasts and this week it’s all about space, keeping all of the recent NASA news in mind.

Week in Geek: Andrew plays and ponders the mechanics and morals of Endeavor while Dan geeks out over The Art of Mad Max: Fury Road.

Boast of Bethel: With the new images of Pluto, Dan wonders how HP Lovecraft, a devoted amateur astronomer who was writing when Pluto was first discovered, would process these high-definition images. Then he laments the divide between science and creativity.

The Influence of Space: With everybody looking up again, Andrew and Dan discuss how humanity’s reach into the great unknown has influenced our use of it in fiction.

Browncoat: Dan finally gets Andrew to sit down and watch the pilot to the short lived, but deified, sci-fi western television show, Firefly. 

Question of the Geek:

What was your “gateway to geekdom”?

Your answer could be read on next week’s episode! To contribute, leave your answer as a comment on the page for this episode at forall.libsyn.com. Be sure to join the official Facebook and Google+ pages. You may also e-mail the show at forallpod [at] gmail [dot] com. If you subscribe to the show on iTunes, be sure to rate the show on the iTunes store in order to help spread the word to new users through the magic of Apple’s algorithms.

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

Featured Music:

-“Stayin’ in Black” by Wax Audio

-“Uncertainty” by Reber Clark (from At the Mountains of Madness – Sketches for the H. P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast)

-“Firefly [Main Title]” by Sonny Rhodes

-“Victory” by Ben Prunty (from FTL: Faster Than Light)

-Excerpt from “The Whisperer in the Darkness” read by Dudley Knight for KPKV Radio

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Week in Geek: Andrew watches the classic Italian film with tenuous ties to the Metal Gear Solid franchise, Sacco y Vanzetti while Dan can’t drive in Batman: Arkham Knight.

Star Trek: The Next Generation: With this week’s theme being about death, they watch antoher TNG episode titled “Tapestry” where Captain Picard…dies?!?!

Death (and Defeat) in Gaming: An extension from last week’s topic about violence in gaming, this week Dan and Andrew examine how death is used––and how it has changed––in gaming.

The Death of Optimus Prime: Looking away from gaming for a bit (while staying on topic), Andrew and Dan discuss a prominent nerd death from the 1986 classic, The Transformers: The Movie.

Question of the Geek:

What has been the most impactful fictional death for you and why?

Leave your answer as a comment on the page for this episode at forall.libsyn.com. Be sure to join in on the conversations happening at the official Facebook and Google+ pages. You may also e-mail us any questions, comments, or concerns at forallpod [at] gmail.com. If you subscribe to your podcast on iTunes, be sure to leave a review to help spread the show to new potential listeners.

We won’t be posting full episodes for a few weeks as we take a summer break, but we will have Shortcasts going up in our absence, so keep checking the feed!

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

Featured Music:

-“Stayin’ in Black” by Wax Audio

-“Star Trek: The Next Generation – End Credits” by Ron Jones

-“Rogue Legacy (Main Theme)” by Tettix

-“Death of Optimus Prime” by Vince DiCola (from The Transformers: The Movie)

-“Dare” by Stan Bush (from The Transformers: The Movie)