Around the Long Fire

Kind of split on this episode of Berlin Alexanderplatz, but we manage to have a good time anyway as Autumn and Niamh watch one of Em’s favorite movies and we have a big long chat about Agnes Varda! Also, Autumn is playing Persona 4 now, so we’re talking about the investigation team and how we approach RPGs. Things Discussed: Passenger ( yahoo anime rules but here it is on youtube ), One Sings, The...

We meet Reinhold and the homosexual quotient goes off the charts. For Berlin Alexanderplatz. Long Fire remains about as gay as usual (read: very). A great time with a fantastic episode this week. Things Discussed: NANA, vtuber corner including shipping thoughts, therapy talk, The Farthest Shore with broader Earthsea talk, Dune, Studio Ghibli, Cathode Ray Dude's telephone video , boomer shooters, c...

Slaughterhouse! We have a great time talking about Franz’ terrible time, and talk about a bunch else besides. Em undergoes SMT madness. Things Discussed: Good news to open the show, listen to And Then An Aeroplane, vtuber corner, Hotaru and Kamiyama's Pondering Pootan, GGP talk including Gundam the Origin Spoilers, Niamh does tai chi, getting mad at Elon on a podcast finally, no more Garf Read Alo...

Berlin Alexanderplatz gets sad, Franz shops for flowers, Niamh and Em attack Autumn for bad game takes, and we all talk some gender. Also, more Metaphor and the end of How Do We Relationship! ALSO NOTE: Autumn’s audio is just going to have radiator hiss until winter breaks. It’s fine. Happy birthday Niamh and Em, Export Audio returns, grilling Autumn about their bad Export takes, is Em a member of...

Berlin Alexanderplatz keeps cooking, we chat about a bunch of this and that as this episode it’s quite as full of Things We Finished as last week, and we get back to Metaphor: ReFantazio with a huge update as the plot really begins to pick up and Niamh makes a bunch of predictions that all instantly come true. We’ll talk about it next week. ALSO NOTE: Autumn’s audio is just going to have radiator...

We begin the enormous Fassbinder television miniseries adaptation of Berlin Alexanderplatz and immediately find it much more representative of our feelings about the book and its structures. Also, Fassbinder is just incredibly good at shooting some handsome if unpleasant television. Biberkopf might be suffering, but we are not. ALSO NOTE: Autumn’s audio is just going to have radiator hiss until wi...

We begin season 4 with a third host joining for the next few months and some surprising new announcements as we begin to cover the adaptations of classic novel Berlin Alexanderplatz, starting with a movie made only two years after the book was released. After that we get into our usuals, including tons of manga talk this episode! Please enjoy! Things discussed: Ornate Stairwells corrections, A new...

Egil’s Saga ends quiet and melancholy as we wrap up our season with a shorter episode due to illness. We did rank all the sagas, however, and talk about that, and also there’s a short manga segment to round things out. Sorry for the short one, hopefully things will be back at full energy next week! Things discussed: the ranking of sagas, Magic Knight Rayearth See the show schedule here! This’ll te...

We continue to enjoy Egil’s Saga even though he does the grossest possible thing this week. Then, we have a big chat about rereading Paradise Kiss (we’re only through chapter 14 or so), a little talk about the state of the world, and then the Metaphor game club returns as we both tackle an enormous new dungeon! Things discussed: The Pondering Pootan Existential Crisis, Name Change Update, Sick Kid...

A shorter saga paradoxically means a longer saga chat as we cut our reading and increase our happiness. We spend the middle portion of this podcast mostly talking about each other’s podcasts, in the most self-indulgent fashion, but the last third of the podcast covers Em finishing the Evangelion manga and they had a lot of thoughts about it, their own feelings about The Soup, and much else besides...

Em’s back from vacation, but we’re both too tired for sagas this week so instead we mostly talk about some movies we watched. The main event, of course, is Adolescence of Utena, but on either side of that is a lot of other fun stuff I hope people enjoy! Things discussed: FWMC new outfits, Em in Chicago!, Bluebeard's Castle, Evangelion manga, Pondering Pootan debrief, Nerissa's new outfit and vtube...

We’re tired and busy so this one is not us at our best and brightest, but we try to have a good pod anyway. Next week we’re actually taking off reading the saga, ignore what we say in this episode, we’ll mostly just talk about some movies we watched probably. Things discussed: legal name changes, How Do We Relationship (through to chapter 127), scheduling, Evangelion manga, Eyes Wide Shut (spoiler...

We start our final saga of the season and whew it’s a long one! Egil doesn’t even show up in this reading! But we cover all the goings on leading up to his birth, the fickleness of kings, and then spend our time catching up on what we did over the holidays. Things discussed: holidays, what we've been up to, Tokyo Godfathers, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Sonic 3 (the movie), Hack/Slash Back to School,...

We’re back for the end of this wild ass saga about elk men, bear men, bad men, and dead men! We had a great time with this one, to the point we finally suggest doing what I never thought we would: ranking the sagas, at the end of the season! Then, Em talks about their favorite episode of Utena so far watching it, and some of the things it brought up for them that they don’t feel other people would...

We read the first half of the first new-to-Niamh saga this week, and have a great time with awful men, questionable gender politics, and high drama. Also, some violence is done to a bearman, don’t really like that but so it goes sometimes. Our chat about everything else continues as usual, as Niamh overtakes Em in Metaphor, we watch and read some stuff, and a conversation started last week gets fi...

We’re both a little run down and we just read the intro to a book, so very short saga this week as we just kind of have a small chat and take it easy. Some days are just harder than others. Hope you enjoy nonetheless. Things discussed this episode: Thanksgiving, Trivia Games, being a student, Look Back (the film), Multiple Maniacs, Even Though We're Adults, Nana, Ranma 1/2, Ravencroft news, Ceres...

We talk about Ref, a man who is pretty chill until you call him gay so much his family begins asking questions. Then he’s going to end your whole bloodline. We have a good time with this relatively light saga, and then talk about our usual manga and vtuber spread, including some extra time with Nerissa for her birthday stream. Things in this episode include: Ref's Saga, Even Though We're Adults, L...

We finish Arrow-Odd’s Saga, and then Em has a few more Icelandic things to talk about that end up taking up a good portion of the episode. Things in this episode include: Arrow-Odd's Saga, Independent People, Godland, Even Though We're Adults, Holocure, Duklyon: Clamp School Defenders, Shirahimeshou: Snow Goddess Tales Check out the Ghost Divers on Independent People! See the show schedule here! T...

We begin Arrow-Odd’s saga, and talk about being back in the land of prose and strange Giantess fanfic on this week’s episode. Bonus talk includes: Independent People, I Am A Cat, Tokyo Babylon, But We’re Both Adults, and the usual Metaphor talk. I probably missed a few things, but I’m editing against a deadline today so that’ll have to do. Please enjoy! See the show schedule here! This’ll tell you...

[taking a very deep breath] On this enormous episode of Around the Long Fire, we finally finish the Poetic Edda! It ends really well, but with a surprising difference between our two versions. The cartoon Em mentions is Zack Snyder's "Twilight of the Gods", for the record. After an extra long Saga segment, we briefly talk about the election ( please read Em's friend Madiha's blog about waking up t...

We continue with Gudrun’s vengeance against her family, for better or worse, as we begin to wind down the Poetic Edda. On top of that, we have the usual vtuber corner, a big talk about How Do We Relationship?, a health update … and then decide to spill our next season an entire week early because we both finished some prep work we’d done for it! Then, in our Metaphor Game Club, we wrap up the seco...

We have an absolutely jam packed episode this week as not only do we talk about the return of Gudrun and her sorrows, but we also talk a bit about vtubers, we both watch some movies (some classic, some not), Niamh continues to read How Do We Relationship?, and we continue to talk about Metaphor: ReFantazio through the next two hours or so of game (up until you get the 4th party member, which Niamh...

We revisit some of the first stories we read on this podcast, this time in verse form! They’re pretty pleasant, even if they’re a bit disjointed. We take care of some odds and ends before getting into our main event: our Metaphor game club begins in earnest, which contains a few surprises including a new challenger, some mechanical decisions that surprise, and putting the Persona fandom on notice....

The sagas finally begin to cook as we talk about tragic love and reincarnation and what exactly is a Valkyrie. Also, speaking of tragic love, Niamh watched Twilight movies and Labyrinth, so we have plenty of misplaced sexual angst to pick over. Finally, Em celebrates Kiara’s big day as she had her fourth anniversary live this past week. See the show schedule here! This’ll tell you whis versions of...

The sagas aren’t exactly setting our world aflame this week, so we instead talk a bunch about Licorice Pizza (building off of Ornate Stairwells), vtubers, and video games. In fact, some night say this is the beginning of our lengthy Metaphor game club, to be performed over the next 6-12 months! See the show schedule here! This’ll tell you whis versions of books and which sections of those books we...