I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
#extradirty
gracie abrams
occasionally subtle
Aqua Utopia｜海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
trying on a metaphor
PR's Tumblrdome
Show & Tell
No title available
Mike Driver
Today's Document
❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
tannertan36
The Bowery Presents
No title available
Claire Keane
pixel skylines
almost home
roma★
Sweet Seals For You, Always
seen from Switzerland
seen from Bangladesh
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Canada
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from China
seen from France
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Bangladesh
seen from United States
@fandaliteacademy
Hey Bug and Cates! I’m on episode 16 of the podcast (looking forward to new episodes!) just wanted to say I’ve really enjoyed your respective analysis of the books and the characters, I also feel like I’ve learnt a lot of new and interesting concepts!
Thank you so much! It's a lot of fun, and I'm hoping we get back to it soon.
In this episode, Bug uses the Dark Triad--the personality traits of Machiavellianism, Psychopathy, and Narcissism--to analyze the 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.
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.
— Cates
In this week's episode, Cates describes the ways that Cassie uses the Ethic of Care to break the mold of what it means to be a hero (in the Western, masculine, Campbellian sense) through defeating her enemies by making them friends. Bug argues that the Mere Contact theory would suggest there's more logic to back up Cassie's decision to befriend Aftran than a lot of fans give her credit for, and that this book does a better job of portraying mental health than the overwhelming majority of SF depictions of post-traumatic stress.
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.
— Bug
Hey! You posting the latest podcast reminded me that I wanted to thank you guys so much for making an effort to transcribe your episodes. I've loved reading them, and as a deaf person it's so rare that I get to access that sort of fandom content. So kudos, and if you ever feel like posting a paypal to make transcription more affordable, I'd be glad to contribute.
Thank you! We’re pretty new to podcasting, so we’re doing what we can.
In terms of a PayPal, I think we’re probably not going that route. Cates and I do Fandalite Academy for fun, because we constantly talk to each other about Animorphs and Cates figured we might as well record ourselves as we’re doing it. I need money as much as the next carbon-based lifeform, but I worry that a PayPal sets up an implied contract that we’d be unable to fulfill. In case it wasn’t already obvious, our episode posting schedule is *ahem* sporadic at best. I don’t anticipate it ever becoming un-sporadic, and I don’t anticipate us ever achieving professional quality. Ergo, I doubt I’ll ever be comfortable charging money for it, even on a “suggested donation” basis.
On a related note: we’re probably never going to post on Sonos/iTunes/Podbean/GrooveShark/ other places mentioned in “can you post on my preferred podcast app instead?” asks. Hosting content there costs money, and Cates and I are just a couple of poor academics without cash to burn. We’re doing this for fun, y’all. We hope our fun is entertaining for y’all as well.
— Bug
It's our longest episode to date, and our episode with the worst sound quality to date. We tried recording over Skype. We're not trying that again. Anyway, in this episode Cates and Bug look back at the Dinosaur Renaissance (it's a thing) in the 1990s. Bug explains how humans process different situations in different ways, and why you don't want to overthink yourself in a survival situation. Cates talks about hunter/gatherers vs agriculturalists, and concludes that the Mercora went extinct because they spent too much time growing their broccoli.
Sorry about the sound quality, y’all – just blame Skype. Anyway, here’s our discussion of Megamorphs 2, AKA The Cretaceous World Learns That Anything Which Eats a Berenson Will Choke on It and Die.
In this episode, Bug talks about biculturalism (and no, mosquitos don't count as their own culture.) Cates talks about the differences between individualist and collectivist cultures and concludes the Leeran are the ultimate collectivists. Both Cates and Bug share their disappointment that the frame story takes so much time it cuts into the adventure on Leera, especially the part with the cave of falling snakes. (Bet you didn't even remember that was a thing!)
We’re baaaaaaccccck!
Here we are with Episode 18.
— Cates
No pressure whatsoever, but do you think we can expect a new episode of the fandalite academy anytime soon? Or is that off the table for now? Asking because I’m in love with this thing you’ve created (CANNOT stress how weak I am for literary/psychological theory) and I’ve replayed my favorite episodes so many times I’ve effectively lost count lol. I understand if it’s not possible to make new episodes right now, but I needed to express my appreciation for what you and cates have done!
Thank you!
The tl;dr answer to the question of “When more podcast?” is “it depends on a bunch of boring RL stuff.” The explanation of the boring RL stuff follows:
Keep reading
In this week's episode, Bug explains why the Trolley Problem is useless in empirical studies, and Cates covers such light-hearted topics as WWI poetry and how a misunderstanding about cleaning schedules kicked off the French Revolution. Cates feels that this book's ending leaves too much unanswered, while Bug thinks leaving everything unanswered is the answer.
Here it is, the (in)famous oatmeal book!
Tune in this week to hear Cates talk about the importance of Animorphs and other children's books adopting a childist perspective, while Bug talks about groupthink in the Animorphs' decision making and why it's actually important that the strict category of "groupthink" is no longer in use.
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.
—Bug
Hey, hope you don’t mind me adding on, but I did a little searching after listening to this episode and found an article that was briefly referenced (“fifty psychological and psychiatric terms to avoid: a list of inaccurate, misleading, misused, ambiguous, and logically confused words and phrases”) which I found to be a really interesting read. I thought others might be interested in seeing it too, so I included the link!
Tune in this week to hear Cates talk about the importance of Animorphs and other children's books adopting a childist perspective, while Bug talks about groupthink in the Animorphs' decision making and why it's actually important that the strict category of "groupthink" is no longer in use.
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.
—Bug
Tune in to this week's episode to hear Cates talk about Marco's use of situational and irony, Bug argue that Marco really is intelligent under all the bad jokes, and both of us debate the meaning of metaphor as it relates to Marco's sharklike nature.
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.
— Bug
Shared with Dropbox
Here is the transcript for Episode 4 of Fandalite Academy. All thanks to @c-rowlesdraws for keeping us accessible.
— Bug
Shared with Dropbox
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.
— Bug
In this episode, Bug and Cates discuss toilets and the US government (that can't be a coincidence, can it?) Cates talks about how the book covers are a liminal space where we see our own disgust and d
Aliens, monsters, and school administrators, oh my! In this episode, Bug is cynical about the U.S. government's policies on learned helplessness and Cates is cynical about the world of children's book publishing.
@pendingmetamorphosis Our thanks for transcribing this episode for us. More transcriptions are forthcoming.
In the meantime, this is Episode 2 of The Fandalite Academy, transcribed.
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.
— Bug
In this episode, Cates and Bug both talk about what makes the veleek such a scary monster for the Animorphs to fight, Cates from the perspective of ecocriticism and Bug from the perspective of the evolutionary psychology of easily conditioned phobias.
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.
— Bug
