Fandalite Academy

In this episode, Bug uses the Dark Triad--the personality traits of Machiavellianism, Psychopathy, and Narcissism--to analyze the other Animorphs and David. She argues that while David is definitely a bad guy, his presence also reveals to the reader why the Animorphs aren't always the good guys. Cates adds helpful (sometimes) commentary about why David fails at recruiting Marco as his minion, if there are any saltwater amphibians (turns out there are,) and why unplugging a computer to stop an online sale isn't actually as hilariously implausible as it seems.

Here it is at last.  Editing this episode was a heck of a time — things that didn’t make the final cut include me repeatedly referring to A Wrinkle in Time as “a wrinkled of time,” several rounds of human sneezing and chihuahua barking, Cates accidentally classifying Wuthering Heights as a sci-fi adventure story, and me actually (presciently) saying the words “this fucking episode is going to be a bitch to edit.”

Things that did make the cut include a breakdown of good and bad and ugly portrayals of trauma in pop culture, defending Cassie’s decision not to kill Karen (including the process of how we both came around on that decision), Cates nitpicking the random leopard, me nitpicking Jake’s narration, and me repeatedly calling this book “The Departed.”  Anyway, enjoy.

We’re baaaaaaccccck!

Here we are with Episode 18.

Hello all!  Sorry for the unplanned hiatus — which I’ll choose to blame on my dissertation — but we are back.  Cates is talking about aetonormativity and the childist perspective, I am talking (between cold-induced wheezes) about extreme process loss and why it’s not called groupthink anymore, and we’re both gushing about our love for this book.

Hello all!  I finally crawled out from under the mountain of work that buried me this semester long enough to get this episode edited and posted — sorry for the delay.  Also sorry about the amount of (sometimes audible) wheezing I did while we were recording this episode, thanks to the chest cold I was fighting at the time.  As always, I blame all extraneous noise on the dog, who doesn’t know to defend herself from such egregious slander. 

Here is the transcript for Episode 4 of Fandalite Academy.  All thanks to @c-rowlesdraws for keeping us accessible.

Sorry for the delay, gentle listeners.  The bottleneck has been entirely yours truly, and the labor keeping this going has been Cates and our transcriber @c-rowlesdraws.  More transcripts are coming soon, as are more episodes that I really must get around to editing and uploading.  In the meantime, please listen to (or read) Episode 3 of Fandalite Academy. 

@pendingmetamorphosis  Our thanks for transcribing this episode for us.  More transcriptions are forthcoming.

Honey, Cates’s chihuahua.  Mascot for our podcast.  Weighs nine pounds soaking wet.  Favorite pastimes include building herself blanket forts, stuffing herself into the backs of couches, and inducing humans to carry her around in a tote bag like she’s a Paris Hilton accessory.  Living proof of the reason so many contemporary Americans are somewhat lacking a healthy fear of dogs and other animals, as we discussed in this most recent episode.

Cates and I are posting slightly out of order, turns out, because The Andalite’s Gift doesn’t quite fall when we thought it did in the release order.  We’re psychology and literature students, not mathematicians, so what’re you gonna do.  Tune in this week for evolutionary psychology, ecological criticism, Jurassic Park, and chihuahuas.

Please note: we grew up in Baltimore, so there’s a lot of us pronouncing the word “water” approximately like “wuhtuh” throughout this ep.