The Heroine's Journey

This week, LC gets her geek on over two of her favorite things: board gaming and romance novels. It's all about Pandemic: Legacy and the works of Zoe Archer, including:

Board games with plot: What makes Pandemic: Legacy different than vanilla Pandemic

How a board game can evolve with its players

Adventure romance, competency porn, and why Archer's heroines are so appealing

Many of you have asked after my health over the past several weeks, for which I can’t begin to express my gratitude. I’ve had a hard few months, and your messages of love and support have really picked me up on some dark days. Which is why I finally feel it’s safe to share with you the reason I’ve been feeling so crummy.

I’m pregnant again.

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We’re back, baby! This week, LC digs into two of the things that have kept her sane over the past few weeks: Naomi Novik’s Uprooted and Trespasser, the final DLC for Dragon Age:Inquisition, including:

Uprooted and the the dark, bloody history of fairytales

Why friendship as a fairytale motivator is so unusual

Trespasser as humanism porn

How Trespasser gives Inquisition a much-needed change of perspective

This week, LC solos a short, mostly spoiler-free show about Hatoful Boyfriend, the post-apocalyptic pigeon dating sim (yes, you read that right) that’s eaten her brain. Highlights include:

A quick update about LC’s health and posting schedule

How did a dating sim about birds get to be so good?

How does one romance a bird, anyway?

I hate to do this, but The Heroine's Journey will be going biweekly for the remainder of August, possibly even into September.

Grief is a funny and terrible thing. Some days you throw yourself into whatever project you can find. Other days you can barely find the motivation to brush your teeth. You can't really predict how it will touch you day to day. But you can plan for it, at least.

I love The Heroine's Journey, but putting together the podcast on a weekly basis is just too much work to expect myself to accomplish right now.   So I'm dropping the whole "weekly basis" thing.

It was either this or go on hiatus, and I enjoy doing the podcast too much to just stop. Plus, I don't want to let all you wonderful listeners down. So don't worry. The podcast will still be updated -- just once every two weeks instead. And as soon as I'm back on my feet, I'll raise the frequency back up again.

This week, LC geeks out with Sylvia Monreal, creator of @comosedicenerd, over The Terminator films. It’s an extra-huge episode to contain our extra-huge feels, including:

The Terminator as humanity’s case for existence

The man in the machine, the machine in the man: Where does Kyle Reese – or Sarah Connor – end and the Terminator begin?

Dissecting the hell out of that love scene

Why The Terminator and T2 have to be watched together

Why the rest of the franchise never quite achieves what the first two movies did (SPOILERS for Terminator: Genisys starting at 55:35)

This week, Feminist Deck creator Kiva Bay returns to the show to talk about The Triplets of Belleville, the 2003 dark and weird animated French movie about road racing, grandmothers, and 1920’s movie stars, including:

How a movie without words can communicate so much about family, aging, and horses

Why do grandmothers and aging starlets threaten the French mob?

Exploitation and the inexorability of change as running themes

Why a bunch of monkeys made LC so uncomfortable

In honor of our 20th episode, LC welcomes our first guest, Jay, back to the show to talk about Jurassic Park films, including:

Ellie Satler: Fending off velociraptors and gross male academics since 1993

How Lex Murphy got a generation of girls interested in STEM

Our lasting impressions of The Lost World: Crushes, gymnastics and LC’s embarrassing childhood confession

Jay reviews Jurassic World, and gives LC a heart attack about Chris Pratt

This week, we record live (sort of) from Rabbitcon!  LC pulls in some of the women in attendance to talk about what they're reading, watching and playing now. Join Jen, Kate, Kittylexy, Ariel, Sam, JennSka and Lola as they talk about:

Nadia comes back to the show to geek out over Portal, the 2007 first-person puzzle platformer by Valve and source of a thousand memes, including:

Looking back on Chell as a heroine, eight years later

GLaDOS as the dark mother, and how a computer got to be so good at emotional abuse

Why LC never finished Portal 2

The loneliness of first person shooters, and Portal as a purgatorial crawl

This week, LC is joined by Sylvia Monreal, creator of @ComoSeDiceNerd and one of the organizers of Geek Girl Con, to dig into Jane the Virgin, the CW’s awesome foray into the world of telenovelas, including:

Drama with heart, characters without shame: How Jane the Virgin subverts stereotype

How women propel the action, while men struggle with emotion

Magical realism, and how fate is in the eye of the beholder

Sylvia’s blog for Geek Girl Con on Jane the Virgin

LC is joined by Tess, one of our Patreon patrons, to geek out over Ms. Marvel, the new Kamala Khan-led line that’s taking the comics world by storm, including:

Why we love Kamala Khan and the parts of her that are “too big, too weird”

Why so many adults struggle to write believable teenagers

Kamala Khan’s family and the second-generation immigrant experience

In defense of teenage girls searching for their “authentic self”

Editor Sana Amanat’s TEDxTeen Talk: Myths, misfits and masks

Plus: When Marnie Was There (big spoiler at 5:35); From Up On Poppy Hill (big spoiler at 4:40); Grave of the Fireflies; the worst anime we’ve ever sat through; Steven Universe; magical girl anime; Madoka Magica; and your emails!

This week, LC is joined by the fantastic Kiva Bay, creator of the Feminist Deck, to deep dive on The Secret of NIMH, Don Bluth's dark and weird and weirdly dark 1982 animated flick, including:

What makes Mrs. Brisby such an unusual heroine for a kid's movie

Women are from the field, men are from NIMH – gender and community

Behind the toxic yet necessary friendship between Brisby and Auntie Shrew

How Don Bluth respects both the magic of childhood and its dark and fearful things

Due to technical difficulties, there won't be any episode of The Heroine's Journey this week. Personally, I blame the holiday. Yeah. That's it. It's all your fault,  Memorial Day. Phhhhbt!

This week, LC is joined by the delightful Apple Cider Mage, cohost and editor of the Justice Points podcast, to talk about The Fifth Element, Luc Besson's deeply problematic yet deeply awesome 1997 futuristic classic, including:

A strong disclaimer -- is The Fifth Element really a good example of a lady story?

Our problems with Leeloo, and why we love her anyway

How Besson's bright and colorful futures serves an antidote to post-apocalyptic malaise

How Ruby Rhod and Korben Dallas turn masculinity on its head

In less than ten minutes, the inaugural Heroine’s Journey Hangout starts! Come one, come all! Patrons, get the link here!