Around the Long Fire

Mar 03 2025 89 ep. 172

Around the Long Fire Podcast artwork

A weekly quest by Niamh to guide Em and the listeners through the Icelandic sagas fae loves so much, as we all sit in the dark and feel mortal and small.

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Around the Long Fire 89: Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980), part 2, "How Is One to Live if One Doesn’t Want to Die?"

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 go

Around the Long Fire 88: Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980), part 1, "The Punishment Begins"

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 radi

Around the Long Fire 87: Berlin Alexanderplatz (1931)

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 cor

Around the Long Fire 86: Egil's Saga, ch. 79-END

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 sched

Around the Long Fire 85: Egil's Saga, ch. 65-78

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 Chan

Around the Long Fire 84: Egil's Saga, ch. 57-64

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

Around the Long Fire 83: Adolescence of Utena

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 n

Around the Long Fire 82: Egil's Saga, ch. 29-56

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, Ey

Around the Long Fire 81: Egil's Saga, ch. 1-28

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/Sl

Around the Long Fire 80: Hrólfs saga kraka, ch. 21-34

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 fee