Call for Comments: There’s a TV Show About an English Department… So We Have to Discuss It?

From Hannah: On August 20, Netflix will release its new mini-series The Chair featuring Sandra Oh. It also happens to be about an English department at the fictional, elite Pembroke University. A new trailer dropped a few weeks back and, well, I already have thoughts: https://youtu.be/eOqtBtWGl1Q There’s a conversation that goes beyond this one show.…

Call for Comments: Narratology v. Ludology

From Katya: I recently saw a TikTok from Dominic Myers (@gamestudies101) that summarizes the narratology v. ludology split in game studies. Check out their summary because it’s a good one but, simply put, ludology argues that games are a unique medium because they include interactive game mechanics that are distinct from other representational forms. Narratology,…

Call For Comments: On Multiple Readings and Variant Interpretations

From Mav: I was having an interesting conversation with friend-of-the-show Andrew Darowski the other day about the idea of multiple readings. For those who don’t know, in addition to the Protagonist Podcast, Andrew is host of a podcast called Disney Animation Minute Essentials where he and his wife Kestra step through classic Disney films one…

Call for Comments: Podcasting Yankees in King Arthur’s Court

From Hannah: I can trace my first encounters with the King Arthur mythology to two (very different) Disney adaptations: The Sword and the Stone (1963) and A Kid in King Arthur’s Court (1995). That my interest in King Arthur began with these, er, interpretations of their source material (not to mention the earlier texts) is…

Call for Comments: Summer ____, Had Me a Blast!

From Hannah: There’s this odd category of media that is seasonally appropriate: Summer ___. We have summer movies, summer television, songs of the summer, summer beach reads … But what makes a piece of media a good “summer movie” or “song of the summer?” When I proposed this topic, Mav asked if I meant blockbusters…

Call for Comments: Photo Sharing isn’t for Photos?!?

From Katya: Instagram recently announced that the photo sharing app is no longer a place to share photos. The actual design implications aren’t clear nor is the actual goal. Instagram head Adam Mosseri says that the app’s goal is “to…entertain” with a focus on “Creators, Video, Shopping and Messaging.” Which reads as a pretty accurate…

Call For Comments: Serialization Technology

From Katya: It is a truth universally acknowledged that if a game scholar, comics scholar, and Victorianist walk into a bar, they must instantly bond over their shared study of serialization. Except… we never recorded it. It’s rather astounding that we haven’t already; serialization cuts across all of our fields from comics to games and…

Call For Comments: We Always Said “With Drinking…”

From Mav: The promise of our show was always that it was “a weekly pseudoacademic pop culture analysis round table with drinking and swearing.” It’s never really THAT much swearing and honestly… but the drinking has never been all that explicit. It’s more that I just kind of drink a beer during ever show to…

Call for Comments: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love F9

From Mav: I’m a guy who loves movies. I really love going to the movies… A LOT! Not being able to go out to the movies was actually one of the things I missed most during the last year and a half of lockdown. I remember a time early on when Chris Nolan decided that…

Call For Comments: Why Are There Still Superhero Costumes?

From Mav (with Monica Geraffo): This is going to be about superheroes and fashion. But it’s not going to seem like it at first and there are a billion concepts that I want to tie together, so bear with me. So, it shouldn’t be a surprise at this point that I love superheroes. I love…