Binary System Podcast Archive

This episode originally broadcast on February 13, 2025. The original podcast post is here: https://pixelatedgeek.com/2025/02/binary-system-podcast-445-arcane-series-finale/

It took two, maybe two-and-a-half months longer than everyone else, but the Binary System Podcast team finally watched the final episode (ever?) of Arcane: League of Legends.

Ten out of ten. No notes.

Of course it takes us an entire episode to go into detail about why we think this episode was the perfect way to wrap up a series that's beautiful, powerful, exciting, beautiful, heartbreaking, and have we mentioned beautiful? You'll probably want to watch the finale before listening to this episode, partly because you really need to experience this series, but also because we spoil the hell out of all of it.

This week's outro is a clip from Shadows by Beat Mekanik. 

You have to see this Instagram Reel Elizabeth found, showing all the subtle differences in Arcane's intro for each episode of season 2.

Looking for a present for that hard-to-shop-for person? Want to buy them (or yourself) a square foot of a castle in Scotland? Look no further! You can support the restoration of Dunan's castle, legally call yourself Lady or Laird, AND if you use this link to get there, you can support this podcast too! ScottishLaird.co.uk.

For updates, fan art, and other randomness, come follow us on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram!

This episode originally broadcast on February 6, the original podcast post is here: https://pixelatedgeek.com/2025/02/binary-system-podcast-444-wtnv-261-brought-to-you-by-flakey-os-beastars-and-lower-decks/

Welcome to Night Vale is back from hiatus this week so we’ve gotta talk about the Flakey-O's employees as they celebrate their return from a Season of Unstoppable Churning Death. (Otherwise known as corporate takeover.) Totally understandable that they'd want to cut loose for a bit, and what's a little grave robbing among friends?

After that we go over two more episodes of Beastars that were equal parts harrowing and freaking bizarre (oh my god the bit with poop, c'mon you guys why you gotta be THAT weird?) and everything we loved about the season 2 finale of Star Trek Lower Decks: dramatic rescue missions! Badass piloting! Horny Beluga whales!

This week's outro is a clip from Ohms by Beat Mekanik.

Looking for a present for that hard-to-shop-for person? Want to buy them (or yourself) a square foot of a castle in Scotland? Look no further! You can support the restoration of Dunan's castle, legally call yourself Lady or Laird, AND if you use this link to get there, you can support this podcast too! ScottishLaird.co.uk.

For updates, fan art, and other randomness, come follow us on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram!

This episode originally broadcast on January 30, 2025. The original podcast post is here: https://pixelatedgeek.com/2025/01/binary-system-podcast-443-arcane-star-trek-lower-decks-and-bojack-horseman/

Wow, we've got a real rhythm going with these posts! We're back again this week to discuss the second-to-last episode (ever!) of Arcane. What can we say about this show that we haven't said before? It's beautiful, it's terrifying, it's powerful, it's violent. We finally get the backstory on what's been happening with Mel, but we still don't have a handle on exactly what she is now, or how her mother's been lying this entire time.

(SPOILERS!) Oh, and Vi and Caitlyn have sex. Finally!

We're also still talking about Bojack Horseman, this time about the nature of apologies and how they don't, by themselves, actually fix anything. But first we have to get to Star Trek: Lower Decks, specifically Season 2 episode 9, which has instantly become Kathryn's favorite episode. We get to see the lower decks crew of not one, not even three, but five different spaceships, in an episode that isn't afraid to ask "What does the awkward, eager-beaver, go-getter ensign look like when they're in a crew of Vulcans? Or Klingons?"

This week's outro is a clip from Battle Glitch Bot by TeknoAXE. 

We didn't get the pronunciation right, but the Japanese artform that involves fixing pottery with gold is called Kintsugi.

Looking for a present for that hard-to-shop-for person? Want to buy them (or yourself) a square foot of a castle in Scotland? Look no further! You can support the restoration of Dunan's castle, legally call yourself Lady or Laird, AND if you use this link to get there, you can support this podcast too! ScottishLaird.co.uk.

For updates, fan art, and other randomness, come follow us on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram!

This episode originally broadcast on January 23, 2025. The original podcast post is here: https://pixelatedgeek.com/2025/01/binary-system-podcast-442-star-trek-lower-decks-beastars-and-bojack-horseman/

Second verse, same as the first: we’re back this week to talk about Star Trek: Lower Decks (the Star Trek future is the best future: good hearted and occasionally sexy!) and Beastars (okay but WHY did Louis say he was a virgin, does having sex with Haru not count? Did they actually HAVE sex?), and fangirling about the 1980s cartoon Mighty Orbots (yes it’s often silly but we love it and despite the shortcuts the animation is surprisingly good)

We finish up with Elizabeth’s rewatch of Bojack Horseman, and the downright scary similarity between his public “apology” and Neil Gaiman’s response to the allegations against him. I mean, the episode is five years old and it’s like Neil was taking notes…

Keep an eye out here for Kathryn’s upcoming crossover with the Mid-Life Crisis Task Force!

This week’s outro is an oldie but a goodie, a clip from Calm the Fuck Down by Broke For Free.

Looking for a present for that hard-to-shop-for person? Want to buy them (or yourself) a square foot of a castle in Scotland? Look no further! You can support the restoration of Dunan’s castle, legally call yourself Lady or Laird, AND if you use this link to get there, you can support this podcast too! ScottishLaird.co.uk.

For updates, fan art, and other randomness, come follow us on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram!

This episode originally broadcast on January 16, 2025, the original podcast post is here: https://pixelatedgeek.com/2025/01/binary-system-podcast-441-star-trek-lower-decks-beastars-and-arcane/

This week it’s thirty minutes and three topics as the Binary System Podcast team does an in-depth recap of…okay, so the first two topics are gonna be kinda fast. Kathryn watched Season 2 Episode 6 of Star Trek: Lower Decks (foley artists, take a bow), and Elizabeth and Kathryn both watched Season 3 Episode 3 of Beastars (“Shit gets weird.”) But what we really want to talk about is Season 2 Episode 7 of Arcane.

We’re on the third-to-the-last episode ever, and this one is a tale of both time-travel and alternate reality. It’s beautiful, terrifying, and bittersweet in the best way. The writers keep showing us the hidden depths of the characters and the meaning of Hextech itself, the animation keeps knocking our socks off, and the heartbreak that the showrunners promised to deliver is still arriving, but in ways we never quite expect.

This week’s outro is a clip from Patience by Grumplefunk

Looking for a present for that hard-to-shop-for person? Want to buy them (or yourself) a square foot of a castle in Scotland? Look no further! You can support the restoration of Dunan’s castle, legally call yourself Lady or Laird, AND if you use this link to get there, you can support this podcast too! ScottishLaird.co.uk.

For updates, fan art, and other randomness, come follow us on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram!

This episode originally broadcast on January 10, 2025. The original podcast post is here: https://pixelatedgeek.com/2025/01/binary-system-podcast-440-beastars-and-star-trek-lower-decks/

Wonder of all wonders we actually managed to watch another episode of Beastars season 3. Never mind the fact that Elizabeth only finished watching it five minutes before the recording, it got done and that’s what counts. (Keep telling yourself that, slacker. ~ Kathryn) (Oy! ~ Elizabeth)

After recapping the various Beastars heartbreaks (poor Juno just can’t catch a break) we get into 4th and 5th episodes of Star Trek: Lower Decks season 2, because that series never stops being delightful.

We also have a brief word about Tenet (Elizabeth doesn’t understand most of it, but she really liked it) and some tangents into Bojack Horseman and the apparently dreadful Megalopolis.

This week’s outro is a clip from Atmospheric Guitar by Pufino.
Music track: Atmospheric Guitar by Pufino
Source: https://freetouse.com/music
Copyright Free Music (Free Download)

Found it! Check out this Slashfilm.com article on why audio in movies suck (and what we can do about it.)

Looking for a present for that hard-to-shop-for person? Want to buy them (or yourself) a square foot of a castle in Scotland? Look no further! You can support the restoration of Dunan’s castle, legally call yourself Lady or Laird, AND if you use this link to get there, you can support this podcast too! ScottishLaird.co.uk.

For updates, fan art, and other randomness, come follow us on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram!

This episode originally broadcast on January 2, 2025, the original podcast post is here: https://pixelatedgeek.com/2025/01/binary-system-podcast-439-wtnv-260-the-december-monologues/

Happy New Year everyone! Hope everyone's 2025 is already shaping up to be calm and stress-free and completely absent of any kind of drama. This week's recap is actually way late, but we've got to get through a whole month of Welcome To Night Vale being on hiatus, so why not wait until January to cover a story with December in the title?

The three monologues this year feature a decent cross-section of Night Vale. The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your Home talks about the best way to handle a bullying situation, ie: LISTEN TO YOUR CHILD. Or have a ghostly apparition remove the teeth from the bullies while they sleep. Your choice. Meanwhile Michelle Nguyen has a surprisingly insightful argument for why you should only listen to your favorite song once. And Steve Carlsburg is having the weirdest job interview. (Did...did we know that Steve did time for robbing the bank where he currently works? Because it's pretty clear that his bank doesn't know that.)

After the recap we continue our trend of actually watching things. No, not Beastars yet. And not the last three episodes of Arcane. Elizabeth finished watching the surprisingly violent Blue Eye Samurai. Kathryn finished watching the surprisingly free Epic: The Musical. And Elizabeth has juuust about finished watching the all-around surprising Christopher Nolan's Tenet. And we liked all of it. (Well, Elizabeth hasn't seen the ending of Tenet just yet. But liking a movie she still needs to watch feels pretty darn appropriate for this film, doesn't it?)

This week's outro is a clip from A Simple Glitch by TeknoAXE

You can find Jorge Rivera-Herrans youtube channel with all the different Epic: The Musical sagas here, or if you want you can skip right to the watch party where he plays the entire musical here.

Looking for a present for that hard-to-shop-for person? Want to buy them (or yourself) a square foot of a castle in Scotland? Look no further! You can support the restoration of Dunan's castle, legally call yourself Lady or Laird, AND if you use this link to get there, you can support this podcast too! ScottishLaird.co.uk.

For updates, fan art, and other randomness, come follow us on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram!

This episode originally broadcast on December 26, 2024. The original podcast post is here: https://pixelatedgeek.com/2024/12/binary-system-podcast-438-holiday-travel-edition/

Hope everybody is having safe and happy holidays! This week’s episode is super short because one: at time of recording we were on the road, and two: we haven’t caught up with much In the way of TV, movie, and books this week. Elizabeth’s only finished the second to last episode of Star Trek Lower Decks, most of Blue Eye Samurai, and the Beetlejuice sequel, and Kathryn’s in the middle of Valente’s Space Oddity. So, yeah, uh, kind of a lot actually? More on that next week!

This week’s outro is a clip from Auld Lang Syne ( Synth Wave ) by HoliznaCC0.

Looking for a present for that hard-to-shop-for person? Want to buy them (or yourself) a square foot of a castle in Scotland? Look no further! You can support the restoration of Dunan’s castle, legally call yourself Lady or Laird, AND if you use this link to get there, you can support this podcast too! ScottishLaird.co.uk.

For updates, fan art, and other randomness, come follow us on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram!

This episode originally broacast December 19, 2024. The original podcast post is here: https://pixelatedgeek.com/2024/12/binary-system-podcast-437-arcane-season-two-beastars-season-3-episode-1/

Happy Holidays from the Binary System Podcast team! Our present to everyone this year is an extra-long episode, because there is just so much content. The final season of Beastars dropped while we were looking the other way, so we have to talk about the first episode and how this season seems to be tackling some really serious themes, like how segregation may only provide temporary peace while making everything worse in the long term.

But what's taking up most of our time this week is the second arc of the final season of Arcane: League of Legends. There's moments of humor and strategically-placed slo-mo, betrayal, loyalty, and an almost relentless stream of heartbreak. And despite how tragic things get we're gonna keep on watching because you guys? It's so pretty!

One day we will stop using spinningmerkaba's Christmas On Mars as the outro at Christmas, but today is not...oh who are we kidding, we're never gonna stop using this.

Looking for a present for that hard-to-shop-for person? Want to buy them (or yourself) a square foot of a castle in Scotland? Look no further! You can support the restoration of Dunan's castle, legally call yourself Lady or Laird, AND if you use this link to get there, you can support this podcast too! ScottishLaird.co.uk.

For updates, fan art, and other randomness, come follow us on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram!

This episode originally broadcast on December 12, 2024. The original podcast post is here: https://pixelatedgeek.com/2024/12/binary-system-podcast-436-wtnv-259-chrysalis-and-star-trek-lower-decks/

"…the chrysalis is showing signs that it may soon open…"

It's Night Vale, so that could either mean Steve Carlsberg leaving his old life for a new one, or it could be the VERY LITERAL chrysalis with a monster inside. Obviously, it's both, but between the thing in the cocoon and Steve's employers, maybe we should go stand somewhere else.

After the recap we jump into Star Trek: Lower Decks and discuss one of our favorite characters, Dr. T'Ana, possibly the least sexy cat-person Star Trek has ever produced. We love her.

We also take a moment to talk about the January return of Severance, television schedules in the UK, being nice to cashiers, and then ask the important question: why DID they make Gladiator II?

This week's outro is a clip from Revved Up Energy by Universfield.

Hugh's (very unimpressed) review of Gladiator II is here.

Looking for a present for that hard-to-shop-for person? Want to buy them (or yourself) a square foot of a castle in Scotland? Look no further! You can support the restoration of Dunan's castle, legally call yourself Lady or Laird, AND if you use this link to get there, you can support this podcast too! ScottishLaird.co.uk.

For updates, fan art, and other randomness, come follow us on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram!