Rod, Karen, Sterling and DPalm discuss listener feedback, entertainment, Matrix Resurrections, ScarJo suing Disney, Dr. Disrespect says he’s suing Twitch, Activision Blizzard accused of shredding evidence, The Old Guard 2, Jungle Cruise getting sequel, PS5 smaller heatsink, Horizon Forbidden west PS5 upgrade, China limiting gamers to 3 hours a week, Merry Little Batman, Toshiba chips, Game Boy games coming to Nintendo Switch Online, Nickelodeon fighting game, Funimation Spanish subtitles and dubs, Mercedes-Benz psychic car, Hulu raising prices, TripWire CEO fucks around, PS5 pro rumor, Switch price cut, Apple fires employee for snitching, Google Stadia loses director of games, Pirates movies on Disney Plus now, Shan-Chi may not get China release, 24 in talks to return, Apple loses judgement on in-app purchases, Twitch viewership dropped and Twitch sues two users over hate raids.
The Nerd Off: (Protected Content)
What up Rod and Karen and whatever great guest is on today I wanted to start off by thanking ya. I’ve been a premium listener for about a year and some change now and to be honest it’s probably the most content I consume daily. If you guys aren’t coming out with a new pod one day, I’m most certainly listening to at least a couple of pregame, balls deep or nerd off episodes, while either working or getting my kiddo to sleep. Shit to be completely honest you guys are my saving grace as I am a transplant from Queens New York living in Maine with my family. Whew, that’s a different convo.
Y’all have put me on to so many shows but I honestly have lost count starting with the 100, Into the badlands and some others. I started listening to you guys in the middle of season six of Game of Thrones recaps and to be honest I didn’t get a chance to appreciate the full scope of your reviews As as I was a bit late to the party now with some extra time on my hands I get to venture back and listen to the very beginning of you guys recap. And holy shit what a ride; quick questions for y’all. Was Justin on just to be a troll? With some years past now since the finale do you guys have any different thoughts on that last season? Looking back on these recaps you guys were super sound and astute about all of the shit you guys were saying about the series. i’ve also listened to every marvel recap after watching every Marvel film during this pandemic along with a random other Spoiled movie reviews that you guys have put out over the past 10 years or so. It’s crazy how I’m changing my perspective on movies and concepts that I was consuming when I was probably 17 or 18 and and now I know why my best friend and one of the smartest people most people I know is the way he is because he was listening to you guys when he was in his early days in MF high school!
On another note; WHAT IF…? I watch the new rockstars breakdown of that last episode and it’s quite possibly the scariest threat the MCU has ever faced. I watch Westworld but I’ve never been Been more scared for Jeffrey right in my goddamn life. But he was dropping some bars on him. That “ you cannot compute my power“ kind was gold, then he almost got his egg head cracked haha. Doom patrol is also hitting that motherfucking striiiide. And there’s so much more new cards and coming back from before the pandemic oh I’m ready for this fall and winter.
PS — may not be TNO reading content —but I saw that you were Reading The Sellout by Paul Beatty which is a strong recommend for anybody in my circle another book that he has written is the White Boy Shuffle — my homegirl put me on in college and top 5.
-K Louis
Hi y’all Felix here, thank you guys for watching the trailer for jobless reincarnation last episode. Made my day, That’s the trailer they sent us when recruiting for the show and it’s ridiculously cool. It’s definitely more of a tone piece as it represents what the show is like at its earnest moments when it’s not being horny. The main 2 folks behind it, Shingo Fujii (director of that trailer) and Ryo Imamura (Animation supervisor) are industry legends, Fujii is known for being able to create action scenes with complex rotating camera work and Imamura is just one of the best draftsman in the game. Both are also known for being the most horny animators alive at the moment lmao. I’ve been a huge fan of theirs for years so working on one of their joints is an honour. Something I forgot to mention last time, the first half of the show aired at the start of the year so 11 episodes are out right now, when Part 2 starts airing this Sunday it’ll be with episode 12 and my first episode is episode 14. Hope you enjoy, knowing you managed to get through prison school when it was too much for me, I think you’ll be ok going through the horny parts of the show haha.
Secondly gotta just say I completely agree with everything Linda said in their comment. For me I definitely was still figuring myself out at the time but I definitely saw the vibes between Korra and asami in book 3 then was taken aback they actually went through with the relationship in the book 4 finale. As a bi person it definitely hit me way harder than I expected but I’ll always appreciate what Bryan and Mike did. I still remember folks clowning them saying “y’all don’t have to pat yourselves on the back that hard lol, they didn’t even kiss”. Knowing how much goes into working to convince the folks with money to let you do a thing they definitely didn’t get the credit they deserved at the time and even with the backlash on Korra online nowadays by “leftier than thou” folks and racist incels no one now denies Korra’s paving the way for the representation we see now in cartoons.
Ok so what if has definitely grown on me now that we’re up to episode episode 8 now. Episode 6,7 and 8 were all great. It really hurt my soul hearing Chadwick in episode 6. You can tell he sounded noticeably weaker in that episode but was still bringing the pathos. I cried during those scenes. The party Thor episode was just a lot of fun and then the Ultron episode was complete insanity. Love how I finally got to see Hawkeye die this time. Always brings a smile to my face. The watcher was just so funny in that episode 2. He was so tired of everyone’s shit. The dude playing Ultron has been doing a decent job doing impression’s of folks in multiple episodes of the season. He was also red skull. His impression’s feel ok especially because he has the acting chops to stay in character while emoting in interesting ways. That’s a real talent.
Next up, I have to say, I really loved star wars visions overall. While I didn’t think some shorts met the bar storywise for a star wars joint and some kinda died production wise, the heart was there. I hated the twins episode because the story didn’t do the bare minimum of having the defecting imperial say empires are bad (I’m from a country formerly colonised by the British empire so it’s a thing that irritates me when star wars media fails to do that one basic thing I usually appreciate about it). The animation in it was good however so no complaints there. Trigger has a tendancy of trying really hard not to be political (they have english staff who were gamergate adjacent anti-sjw people who heavily work with that specific team at trigger so not surprising) which in this case just ended up being stupid because bruh it’s star wars but whatever.
The other trigger short with the Jedi and black padawan was way too basic to me. There wasn’t even an interesting twist or anything to it.
My favourites ended up being the one with the rabbit eared furry girl, Lop and Ocho (because it had all the politics and all the fighting), The ninth Jedi (I feel like this one was strong enough to continue into its own series. The character designer is the man who does designs for Naruto and boruto and the director/writer gave us ghost in the shell stand alone complex), and Tatooine Rhapsody (I feel like this one felt the most like what I’d want from a project like this. The padawan wanna be punk rocker was fun. Also felt like something George himself would write be which was neat and it had a lot of heart and was really cute).
The duel was the other one I’d really like to see continue just because I want a new show with afro samurai character designs and action. It’s been too long since we got something like it.
Ok I’m already going long so last thing will be brief. I read the first issue of Inferno and goddamn Hickman’s done it again. I laughed for a whole hour after reading the last page. How is he so good. I’m sad he’ll be leaving the X-Men books for a while but al Ewing is around so that’ll make his absence hurt less. Ok love y’all, Felix out.
Yo… why these niggas always about to die in these “What If?” episodes? Swag surf Ultron and the Infiniti Boyz ’bout to set it off.
Yo,
Long time listener, just became premium subscriber, wanted to write in abt what you were talking about in TNO173 about Legend of Korra. Tl;dr I totally agree w Rod about how trailblazing that show was for LGBT representation on cartoons, wanted to talk about my experience watching it for the first time as a bisexual person. I’m still not over it tbh.
So I’ve always been a MASSIVE fan of ATLA, in my (correct) opinion, it’s the best TV show of all time just, in general. So obviously I watched Korra religiously when it came out. Now I dont remember a lot of it anymore, been a while, so I’m currently rewatching it, but I do remember that at some point in the last season I started shipping Korra and Asami. I knew there was zero chance it would be cannon, gay people on a kids show, are you kidding me? Absolutely no fucking way. But, I was thinking either all the fans would just secretly ship them within the fandom, like us millennial gays always do online. Either that or it was like sorta what queer baiting ACTUALLY is, where they sorta tease it as much as they can on TV but never actually do anything to show it being cannon, and we all get disappointed while also try to be as happy as we can be cuz we all know we cant ACTUALLY have real representation. Too scandalous, cant have that. I’ll also note that this was just before gay marriage was legalized, which was a big turning point for how people view LGBT issues in my opinion.
The last few episodes got hella delayed, if I remember right, it only actually aired in Canada, and in America it eventually released online only. I think because of all this delay, the last frame got spoiled for me before I saw it, but I didn’t totally believe it? Then when I watched it, there was absolutely no doubt that there was some gay shit going on, even though they couldnt show a kiss. I absolutely couldn’t believe it, think I cried on and off for a few weeks? Also, not only was it gay, they’re both cannon BISEXUAL. We especially don’t get a lot of representation, and when we do, it’s often dismissed as lying, being hypersexual, or “nah they just turned into a lesbian.”
Afterwards, what I’ve heard is that the creators pushed absolutely as far as they could, even to the point where the show literally got taken off the air and honestly I appreciate that so much. Personally, I’m not mad that they couldnt show the kiss, because I understand the pressures they were under and understand that they did as much as they could, which was super impactful to me as a baby gay in a very conservative environment. Also, they literally showed it on the very first panel of the comic that came out afterwards from what I hear LOL. I remember when Korra ended too, a lot of my straight friends were very confused that that relationship came out of nowhere, and it gave me an opportunity to talk to them about their biases regarding heteronormativity, which was neat. Cuz like, all us gays saw it coming from a mile away.
I’m really still not over Korra doing that, and I absolutely cannot believe how gay cartoons are these days. I haven’t watched a lot of them in part cuz I’m afraid that all they hype people talk about is really gonna just be queer baiting? After a lifetime of that, it’s hard to believe things being different. Korra absolutely walked so Stephen Universe, She-Ra, etc could run <3
Anyhow sry for the super long email, just had to get that out after hearing you talk about that, been on my mind a lot too since I'm rewatching Korra right now.
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-Linda Leben (she/they)