The Ringer-Verse - Ringer-Verse Recommends: October 2024

Episode Date: October 30, 2024

Before you put on your costume, put on the latest edition of 'Ringer-Verse Recommends'! Join the 'Ringer-Verse' and 'House of R' crews as they hand out Halloween treats of tasty nerd-culture content in the latest installment of their monthly mini-pod about fandom favorites from TV, anime, movies, video games, books, comics, and beyond that were released recently but not yet covered in-depth on a full-length episode. Host: Ben Lindbergh Guests: Jomi Adeniran, Steve Ahlman, Charles Holmes, Zach Kram, Van Lathan, Joanna Robinson, Mallory Rubin, and Arjuna Ramgopal Senior Producer and Video Production: Steve Ahlman Additional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopal Social: Jomi Adeniran Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Yeah, you'd be pretty happy about those WeatherTech seat protectors. So just to be clear as the mud, you're inevitably going to step into the summer. You don't need WeatherTech unless you plan on doing summer. Visit weathertech.com today. Hello and welcome into the Ringerverse, your nexus feed for all things fandom. I am Ben Lindbergh, your friendly neighborhood Buttmash host and steward of Ringervorce recommends. Before flipping the calendar, we gather again for a monthly Ringerverse ritual, the one where all the hosts of House of Our, the Midnight Boys, Buttmash and Mint Edition,

raise our banners and declare content king. But not just any content. The kind of content we've enjoyed when we're off the clock, just for fun. not for a full podcast, at least not yet. These are the movies, video games, TV shows, books, comics, graphic novels, and more that came out this month, or close to this month, that we think you won't want to miss, even if we may have missed them on our main shows. It may be spooky season, but this is not a house of horrors.

No tricks, just treats, spanning several formats in media. Are all of our recommendations this month, strictly speaking, nerd culture content? Not necessarily. A couple of our regulars have gotten into costume as perhaps hosts of the big picture or ringer dish. You'll see what I mean. But hey, it's Halloween, so we'll let it slide. We're just here to have fun. We have more fun when we're together, much as we were last week in Los Angeles when we all took a class trip to see Venom the last dance.

The movie may have been flawed, but the friendship was flawless. Thus, we always aim to get the whole group together for Ringerverse Recommends, and this time our aim was true. Perfect podcast attendance. Every host is here, plus some dear friends. And as usual, you can see us all at Ringerverse on YouTube or on the Spotify app if it's not enough just to hear our recommendations. I'll be back at the midpoint of the pod to make my selection. And then again at the end, to recap the picks, tell you what's in store for our feeds in November and share a listener nomination, which we always welcome at Ringervverse recommends at gmail.com.

Now let's toss it to the explainer to get us started. Jomey is our man on Dan to Dan. Even UFOs and aliens and that kind of stuff. There's no such thing as ghosts. Huh? Military admitted UAPs exist and reform their space force. Don't you see everyone's gearing up for war in space? I don't care.

I just got dumped. How are you? I forget all about getting rid of me. What's up, Ring of Verse? It's another month. That means another Ring of Verse recommends. And this month, I'm the one recommending the anime. That's right, Charles.

You can suck it. Dan to Dan. That's right. I love me some anime. But Dan da Dan has got to be one of the best animas I've seen in a long time. The action, the animation, the voice acting. That theme song. Dan-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

I mean, it's just an incredible time. If you love having fun, if you love engaging in some occult stuff like ghosts and aliens, the whole thing, this anime is for you. I could not recommend you watch something enough. This show is The Bomb. There's only have four episodes so far, but each episode gets better and better. It is a hoot of a time. If you are under the sound of my voice, go watch Dan to Dan on Netflix and Country Roll right now. It's the Bomb. Go now. Hey, guys, it's Mal. I am here for Ringervverse Recommends October 24. And I am here just like like our listener pick from September of 2024 to recommend The Wild Robot, a movie so good,

we had to recommend it twice. Because since the Wild Robot was mentioned in the last Ringervor Vers recommends, a bunch of us has seen it. We hadn't seen it yet at the time. Now we have. This movie is still available for you to go see in theaters. It is also available for you to watch at home on demand, which is how I recently saw it. And this is a beautiful movie. I wept I believe that you will weep. It is a gorgeous, both visually and emotionally, story based on, as I understand it, beautiful books that I have not read, but look forward to discovering in time. And this is a story about, I'll spare you the specifics, don't want to spoil it for you,

found family, believing in yourself, discovering community and connection in surprising places. It stars and features a genuinely loaded and sensational voice cast and features a robot named Ross who makes her way to an island inhabited by craters and creatures who have torn each other apart for eons on end and out in the wild with the elements and all sorts of forces opposing them. our little gosling bright bill, Roz, our Fox Fink, and many other wonderful and instantly indelible figures, forge a bond that will not only stand the test of sequels, but stand the test of time in your hearts.

If you are a young person, this will be a formative viewing experience. You will learn something meaningful about life. If you are, like yours truly, washed and old, you will find this to be not only a deeply moving and nostalgic experience, but something that allows you to think in new ways about the way that we share these stories with each other. It is a genuinely lovely, lovely story that I recommend you share with anybody in your life or on your own. And who knows?

Maybe it's so great that we'll recommend it again next month, too. I just want this to be a good film. If you care too much about this job, it will kill you. What if we all just lost our minds out there? Watch! Oh, it's happening. Hey, everybody. Orjuna here.

From my October Ringiverse recommends, I'm going to recommend Max's new original show, The Franchise. You know, it's been a busy month of different shows with Agatha All along and The Penguin, which are shows that are, you know, very detailed, you know, require a lot of kind of active viewing. And I think the franchise is just a nice palette cleanser, honestly. It's just a fun, light type of satirical show that is very much within the space that we talk about, you know, at the Ring ofverse. A lot of, you know, superhero type of content, you know, the show is about a fictional superhero movie that's being made and the kind of the behind the scenes process and the crew that's working on it. It's fun, you know, it's not a show you need to necessarily be, like, fully invested in looking for different Easter eggs or a really kind of like serious crime thriller-like. the penguin. So I feel like it's a good show to kind of break up some of the, some of the

programming that's currently on and some of the stuff that is coming, kind of like Dune Prophecy and Silo and some of these other kind of heavier, really great shows. So my recommendation for this month is the franchise. What's up, baby? This episode is brought to you by Spectrum Business. Fast, reliable internet means everything for your business. And even this podcast, that's why I trust Spectrum Business. They keep companies of all sizes connected. with internet, advanced Wi-Fi, phone, TV, mobile services, plus 24-7 U.S.-based support, millions of business owners already trust Spectrum business. So visit Spectrum.com slash business to learn more. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. This episode is brought

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your October Ring of Verse Recommends. I'm slightly bending my own rules. Usually, I try to pick a new book that came out the very month for recording these Ring of Verse Recommends, but I'm here with a September pick for my October Ring of Verse Recommends. And I just want to write, I miss this book last month, and I really think it's a perfect thing for House of Our listeners,

for a gift for someone who you might know who's a huge, maybe Lord of the Rings or Narnia fan. It's called The Myth Makers. It's by John Hendricks, H-E-N-D-R-I-X. And I don't have a copy with me right now. But it is about this friendship between J.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. It's a graphic novel. It's very cool. It's beautiful.

It is a beautiful object to own, to hold, to love to read. And so I think you would make an incredible gift if you're looking for early holiday gift guide sort of thing. But it's about C.S. Lewis and J.R. Tolkien, who created Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia and their friendship, their 20-year friendship, the beginning of it, the flourishing of it, the ending of it. And it's about how the similarities between the two of them, the differences between their work, and how each one, each one, the flourishing of it, the ending of it. And how each. one's work couldn't really exist without the other. And it just makes me think a lot of my friendship with our fellow Ringervor's pals, my friendship with Mallory, our love of story, and the way that all of you listeners and all of us as podcasters love to share stories together. So Myth Makers, by John Hendricks, incredible, incredible book for all the fantasy author lovers amongst you. Enjoy. Bye. In 1991, when two college students named Alan Adham and Mike Moorheim decided to start a video game company, they couldn't have imagined that one day it would spawn an event like BlizzCon.

30 years later, their little startup had evolved into one of the largest tech companies on the planet, part of a hooking conglomerate called Activision Blizzard that would have been unrecognizable to its young founders. Then, in the summer of 2021, California sued the company for sexual misconduct and discrimination, eventually leading to the company's acquisition by Xbox as part of the biggest video game deal of all time. Some of Blizzard's history has been documented over the years, but even the most attentive fans have been left with massive questions along the way. Hi, friends, it's Ben back again to recommend a new book by Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier.

Play nice, the rise, fall, and future of Blizzard Entertainment. That's right, Joe isn't the only Ring Reverse host to Reeds. The rest of us still have healthy attention spans, too. Not that I needed that long an attention span to read Play Nice, because I ripped through it in one weekend, a lot less time than people tend to spend playing Blizzard games. There's never any shortage of great games to play, but good books about games are as rare as an X-45 Heartbreaker and Wrath of the Litch King Classic. That's very rare. It's probably because as crucial to the culture as video games are and as big a business as they are and as rabid as the button mash fan base may be, there's still a lack of crossover coverage of gaming and legacy media. But Blizzard's best games have broken containment.

If you don't play games, you've probably seen or heard of something by Blizzard, whether Warcraft or Starcraft or Diablo or World Warcraft or Harthstone or Overwatch. This is Shriar's third, deeply reported book about the games industry following Blood, sweat and Pixels and Press Reset. If you're listening, but not watching, know that I brought props. I'm holding up all three of these books to the camera to prove I did the reading. Blood Sweat and Pixels was about how games get made. Press Reset was about the toll that work takes on the people who make them.

Play Nice is about both of those things. but whereas those earlier books were anthologies of behind-the-scenes stories about many different games from many different studios, play nice as a portrait of how a single studio evolved over more than three decades. Now, the subtitle says the rise, fall, and future a blizzard. But there's very little in the book about the future, which is understandable because the future hasn't happened yet. Just letting you know that if you're hoping to hear about Starcraft 3 or Warcraft 4, don't hold your breath. But this is the place to go if you want to know how Blizzard made so many milestone games, how it lost a lot of its mojo, and how the company practices that made its virtual worlds welcoming for so many players

also made its office an exclusionary place for plenty of employees. I'll leave you with three broad takeaways. First, it sounds a little TED talky, but inspiration is iterative, which is true of all art, but might be extra obvious in video games. Warcraft was Dune 2 plus multiplayer in a fantasy setting. World Warcraft was EverQuest with quality of life improvements. Harthstone built on an earlier card game called Battle Spirits. Even incredibly creative people hardly ever started.

start from scratch. They draw on their influences, put their personal spin on them, and hope they wind up with something slightly better than or different from what's out there. Then they hope to get a little lucky. Second, art and commerce tend not to play nice, but they need each other. Sometimes the suits know what they're talking about. Sometimes they think too small. Sometimes the dreamers have a vision that can change the world. Sometimes they need a dose of reality. You've got to have the hoard and the alliance. Third, decisions dictate destinies for decades to come. It's tough to re-roll your character. in real life. In 1994, before Warcraft came out, the founders of Blizzard sold their small studio to a company called Davidson and Associates. Years later, that company merged with Vivendi. Years after that, Vovendi merged with Activision, and years after that, Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard. Those corporate reshufflings led to lots of battles with Lizards' corporate overlords, and all of those consequences stemmed from that fateful decision in 94. If the founders hadn't sold, they might not have had to deal with those headaches, and they might have been free to make whatever they wanted. Alternatively, they might have run out of money before they made anything,

and we would never have known they existed. Did they make a mistake? We'll never know. I can tell you this, though. You probably won't regret the decision to read Play Nice. What's up, Bringerverse Recommends? Steve Allman here with another recommendation for you for the month of October. And this month, I'm going to be recommending the new comic book from the Absolute DC series, Absolute Wonder Woman. I know we talked about this on Mint Edition about Absolute Batman, and Absolute Wonder Woman just came out. out this past week. And I got to admit, I like this even better than absolute Batman. It follows a new origin story for Wonder Woman with amazing story by Kelly Thompson,

art by Hayden Sherman, and color by Jordie Belair. It basically takes an entire new evil twist on the character that we love so much that I was immediately captivated. This art is incredible. I think the new story and direction that we're coming to with a Diana that wasn't raised on thin miscaria that has a little bit of evil in her and has got a lot to say about what really can make Wonder Woman heroic after an incredibly tough life

and I think this is something that's absolutely worth checking out. I hope you guys check it out. Absolute Wonder Woman, issue number one. I'm going to be reading this for the entirety of the run. I write for Grey's Anatomy. I was like, what?

She was co-executive producer and highly paid, but that wasn't enough. Her writing was so highly regarded, because Finch had been through so much. She fought cancer. She went public about sexual assault. She lost a friend in the Tree of Life shooting. She would tell me, like,

maybe I'm suffering this way so that I can write this way, too. How is it that so many awful things keep happening to this poor woman? I started to realize things are not notching up. Oh my God. Oh, my God. It was all a lie.

What's up? Ring averse recommends. We're back again. It's fantastic. Look, I'm going to take you guys out of the sphere of fandom and video games. And I want you guys to get into the sphere of true crime-esque mess stuff with something called Anatomy of Lies. This is a story of a woman named Elizabeth Finch, who's a real. writer on Gray's Anatomy.

It's fucking insane. Okay? You're not going to want to miss it. You're going to burn through it. I like true crime stuff. And if you're not into that, go on YouTube and start watching videos of interrogations. It's very great. All right? Just get away, get away from the Wanda Maximoff stuff for a second and let yourself fall into

the underbelly of the world. That's for this month. and I hope that you like it. In the end, it was four words that changed the course of our lives and the history of the world. Perhaps it wasn't really so surprising. They were, after all, the most important words in any language. What are you reading?

Hi, everyone. This is Zach Cramm with another Ringiverse Reading Recommendation. With some books, you just know right away that they're special. You might encounter a relatable character, or fall into an immersive world or savor a beautiful line of prose. With The Scholar and the Last Fairy Door, a new fantasy book by H.G. Perry out this month, I found all three special qualities only one paragraph in. You just heard it in the introduction to this recommendation, ending with. They were, after all, the most important words in any language. What are you reading?

The Scholar in the Last Fairy Door is a book about reading, about learning, about the desire, for discovery. It's about the limits of friendship and the joys of found family. It's about magic, wild, and untamed. This book is in the historical fantasy and dark academia genres, and it follows a teenage girl named Clover who lives in the English countryside. Clover learns about the existence of magic after her older brother is wounded by the stuff on a World War I battlefield. She's eventually accepted to a magic school called Camford, a portmanteau of Cambridge and Oxford, where she befriends a trio of fellow scholars. As the lovely first chapter concludes, quote, that was how it started the four of us. We never meant any harm. Harm does follow,

of course. Probably every student has been there. You're with your friends late at night, you conduct a risky experiment, and, oops, something goes wrong and you accidentally put the entire world in danger. Hopefully you didn't lose any vengeful, powerful tree spirits on the world as a result of your college and discretions, but Clover does. The result is a story with shades of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell, a dash of the night circus, one of my favorite soft magic stories, and hints of Naomi Novak's best work. It's one of my favorite books of the entire year. And the next time someone asks you the most important words in any language, what are you reading? You should answer, the scholar and the last fairy door. Hello, this is the beautiful Annie. Hi, I'm Annie. I'm

I'm Ivan. It was really weird. And I love him. No way. Yes, way. And I'm seeing him again tonight. Will you, man? Seriously.

Seriously. Three carrots? What about four? All right. So, because Jomi stepped in my anime corner and stole Dondodon from me, I'm going to another beloved anime. You guys should go see In Nora in theaters now, directed by Sean Baker. a great, great, like, I had a great time.

It's a intense movie. A Cinderella story about a sex worker who marries the son of a Russian oligarch and just the crazy shenanigans that those two kooky kids get into. Great fun for the entire family. So my Ring Reverse recommends is probably my favorite movie of the year. Anora. Things are getting worse around here, aren't they? Boyd.

We're out of food. Too many things are changing here. I have to remember. Remember what? What's missing? Nothing that I've been through as possible. If you're here for what's in the basement. This place will not break us.

We can still win. But the only way we go home is together. All right, it's Ben again. We hope you enjoyed our book reports and other recommendations, even the ones that fell a bit beyond the bounds of what we typically cover following in the footsteps of Jomey's Emily and Parrish shout out on a previous pod. Love you, Jomey, love you, Chuck, love you, Van. Before I bid goodbye to you and to October, I'd like to relay our listener nomination.

We got several submissions to Ringiverse Recommends at gmail.com this month, including Anders Drew on Netflix's Lego Ninjago Dragons Rising, Andrew Epstein on Matt Dinaman's Dungeon Crawler Carl, Book 7, this inevitable ruin, and Elizabeth Butler on the YA fantasy novel Air by Sabah Tehir, the first book in the sequel, series to an ember in the ashes. But the one and only official listener selection for October comes from Dean Shoot. Who writes? My suggestion for October's Ringiverse recommends is the TV show From on MGM Plus, currently wrapping up its third season. With ties to lost, but a spookier, seasonally appropriate theme, Frum breaks down the humanity of isolation in a whole new way.

It deals with interpersonal relationships in a town that traps all who enter. No one knows how they arrived why they're there or why the monsters come out at night, but the town seems to make it work until the screws start tightening at the behest of some sort of mysterious external entity. Lost Vans will know Frum's main star Harold Perrinow. He plays Sheriff Boyd, a man who does everything he can to hold the town together while keeping his own mental health in check. We also follow a diverse group of characters beyond Boyd, watching them grow and sometimes fail to adapt to their new surroundings. The entire town works together to survive until the stresses of the situation inevitably put them at odds.

From shares a couple of producers with Lost and elicits a lot of lost comparisons. Bring a group of strangers to a place they can't leave and force them to work together to stay alive and gather resources and how could it not feel that way? Season 3 even has a version of the We Have to Go Back scene from Lost Season 3, albeit with a twist. In other respects, From feels like the 2006 show Jericho, about people in a Kansas town surviving in a post-apocalyptic world, as well as the sci-fi channel original U.S. Eureka. And as with any horror show, it's hard not to draw parallels to Netflix's Mike Flanaganverse. With two 10-episode seasons complete and the third wrapping up November 24th, now is the time to binge from for spooky season.

Excellent suggestion, Dean. I was hoping someone would pick that. All right, let's do the ceremonial recapping of picks. The official, Ringiverse recommends selections for October 24. From Jomea Deneron, the Netflix anime Dandadanadan. From Mallory Rubin, the animated movie The Wild Robot, already available via video on demand. From Arjuna Ramgapal, the franchise on HBO. From Joanna Robinson, the graphic novel The Myth Makers, the remarkable fellowship of C. Hess Lewis and J.R. Tolkien by John Hendrix. From me, Play Nice, The Rise, Fall and Future of Blizzard Entertainment, a book by Jason

Schreier. From Steve Allman, the DC comic Absolute Wonder Woman number one. From Van Van Van Vanity Fair, Lathen, the documentary Anatomy of Lies on Peacock. from Zach Cram, the fantasy novel The Scholar and The Last Fairy Door by H.G. Perry. From Charles Holmes, Sean Baker's Oscar contender and Nora, still in theaters. And from, Dean Shute, the show from on MGM Plus. Quite a lineup. Thanks for listening and or watching, and please keep your emails coming to Ringiverse Recommends at gmail.com,

both because we want to know what you recommend and also because we thrive on positive reinforcement. And so I'll offer some to myself. Look at us posting this pod with a whole day to spare in October. Granted, we had to do that because the rest of this week is pretty packed. On Thursday and Friday, respectively, the Midnight Boys and Hasabar will react to and dive deep into the Agatha All Along finale. On Friday, I'll be back on Buttmas to talk about the new Like a Dragon Yacazza series on Prime Video and some recently released games. And on Saturday, I'll join Jomi and Steve on Mint Edition, where we will revisit season one of Arcane, and also discuss the first few episodes of Star Trek Lower Decks,

Lada Lindbergh this week. You're welcome slash, I'm sorry. More recommendations are on Tap for November, and we hope you'll also stay tuned to the Ring ofverse and Haas of our next month for continuing coverage of the Penguin. Arcane Season 2, Gladiator 2, some major video game debuts and anniversaries, Silo Season 2, Dunn Prophecy, and more.

Thanks to Arjuna Ramgapal for his senior podcast management to Steve Allman for producing this episode and to you for supporting our podcasts. I'll talk to you first thing in November, and in the meantime, I hope you'll recommend the ringerverse.