Content warnings: This episode discusses media which portrays trans characters experiencing suicidal ideation, murder, violence, deadnaming, transphobia, drug abuse, self-destructive behavior, and abuse. We also reference real-life attempted su

Episode 8: Video Games Are Bad, Actually

Apr 9th, 2019 1h 25m

Content warnings: Anti-black racism, antisemitism, mentions of the Holocaust, mentions of slavery, domestic violence, references to sexual assault, murder, death, violence, mentions of stereotyped drug abuse, mentions of android body horror, fa

Episode 7: Universally Panned

Mar 26th, 2019 59m 1s

**Content warnings**: discussion of children stabbing things, shitty dudes, homophobia, anti-Native racism, and gender essentialismSummary: In this pantastic episode, Austin and Amanda disagree on the particulars of their drunken book buying

Episode 6: My Son Is Not a Jerk Jock

Mar 12th, 2019 1h

Amanda Jean(-Luc Picard) talks about the myth of Kirk vs Picard and *Star Trek*'s very impactful, if flawed, ethos. (Seriously, she will fight you about James T. Kirk.) She gets real tl;dr about how both captains were shaped by the eras they we

Episode 5: Who Was the Man Who Betrayed Harry Styles

Feb 26th, 2019 1h

Austin journeys through the annals of revisionist history with Monique Truong's The Book of Salt and Ron Hansen's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Amanda has a meltdown over a man named Bobert. This episode tackles bi

Episode 4: A Layer Cake of Metaphor

Feb 12th, 2019 1h 2m

Amanda takes Austin and listeners to wurch (witch church) with a breakdown of the subverted fairytale elements and treatment of puberty as witchcraft within Margaret Mahy's *The Changeover: a Supernatural Romance.* She delves into why fourteen-

Episode 3: Egg Yolks are Magic

Jan 18th, 2019 56m 58s

Austin takes Amanda on a whirlwind tour of Magictown and the weird, trophy, twisty worlds of Diana Wynne Jones to answer the following questions: What makes a good magic system? What makes fantasy feel real? And what do wizardry and the culinar

Episode 2: Thomas Harris' Very Special Man

Jan 4th, 2019 1h 3m

Austin accompanies Amanda as she revisits twenty years of fannish enthusiasm and exasperation to discuss the Hannibal Lecter tetralogy by Thomas Harris. Specifically, why are the first two in the series so good despite their pitfalls? Why is th

Episode 1: The Cold War of Gender Theory

Dec 21st, 2018 52m 54s

In the first episode of The Red Pen, Austin drags Amanda straight into the radical gender theory of queer and feminist sci-fi/fantasy from 1960 to 2018. Topics of discussion include: Is a genderless society a utopia? What about a society in whi

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