Featured Image

The main image for this episode’s show notes contains the logo for Trek Profiles. If you’re a fan of Star Trek, or a fan of slice-of-life style interviews, then I’d say that you should check out John’s podcast

Players

Squidge

Jay

John K

If you wish to support the Waffling Taylors, and the other shows in the network, you can over at Ko-fi.com/jayandjaymedia. However, supporting us is completely voluntary and not required at all.

Another way to support us is to shout out about us on social media or give us a rating on your podcatcher service of choice. The more people who listen to the show, the more shows we can do.

Show Notes

We’re back with part two of a discussion with John Krikorian

if you haven’t heard it yet, here’s a like to part one

We jumped straight into the conversation about the BBC America adaptation of Terry Pratchetts The Watch characters

remember, we recorded this back on August 15th, 2020 - some of the facts we cover might be out of date

especially the representation that Cheery brings to those stories. Cheery initially presents as a Dwarf - in Pratchett’s world Dwarves don’t really have a gender until it’s required - but decides that she wants to present her femininity to the world. This brings about some wonderful discussions about gender politics and how people are perceived in that world. Pratchett was able to capture the discussions that society has only started having about trans people and their rights, but a decade and a half before it became mainstream

Feet of Clay was released in 1996, btw

And the BBC America production of The Watch looks to have done away with all of that by hiring a non-binary actor to play someone who vehemently identifies as a specific gender. Pratchett’s daughter has distanced herself from the production

Due to the recent changes at Twitter, we are unable to embed tweets at this time. We apologise for the inconvenience.

This leads us to a discussion on how Gene Roddenberry was a very inclusive writer and director, and how it would have been trivial to undermine what he was trying to achieve by having the original series of Star Trek be as “inclusive”

quotes are intentional, you’ll see why in a moment

as the other TV shows of the 1960s, which starred white men, walking around in groups of white men, being white men

see? I told you so

That, naturally, brought us to Aliens: Colonial Marines. And John recommended watching Carnival Row - something that I haven’t seen, but it sounded like I should.

John’ EverQuest Story

Whilst intro-ing John’s EverQuest story - which includes discussing how we met John - I fired some cheeky shots over at Arcade Attack. They really are lovely folks, and great friends of the show

even if we do keep having the same ideas at the same time

But that was all pointless, because I wanted John to tell his EverQuest story. It isn’t some kind of fan fiction

although there’s nothing wrong with fan fiction

it’s the real story of how he… well, you’ll hear it in the episode.

On top of his story, John provides us with a lot of background information on some top tier strats

Squidge assures me that "strats" means "strategies"

for playing EverQuest and having a great time.

Apparently, there’s a divide between the “classic” version of the game and the contemporary version. So much so that there are folks who are emulating the older rule-set and content through the current version of the game client - which is what Project1999 is all about.

reminds me of the folks who still play Phantasy Star Online… online

johnKrikorian's Avatar John K

Even though I spent all this stupid money on this gaming computer, I’m still playing this game from 1999 and I have no regrets and will not apologise

Based on John’s point about buying a stupidly powerful computer to play a game from 1999, I wanted to share the story of playing Sonic the Hedgehog on my first PC - which would have been super expensive at the time.

Considering that it’s a FREE MMORPG, I’m throw by the fact that it’s survived for as long as it has

who said that you need to make money constantly?

and I must say that “The Icebound Avatar of War” sounds pretty bad-ass.

Music

Links to the music used in the podcast can be found below. Definitely check them out, because they're amazing tracks by awesome musicians.

All copyrighted material contained within this podcast is the property of their respective rights owners. Please see the above list for copyright details pertaining to music used.

Games Covered

We mentioned 7 games in this podcast. In the following order, those games where: