Living In A Cave: The Simpsons

Pop culture is vast, and it is impossible for any one person to catch every important Movie, Show, or Game that comes down the pipeline. However, some pop culture works are just too crucial to miss, and blind spots must be corrected. That is where this feature will come in. Every once in a while, one of the nerds will catch up on something that has been, up until this time, a huge gap in their cultural knowledge. Essentially, they have been living in a cave, and have missed something important. This feature is inspired by the Onion AV Club's Better Late Than Never.

For the inaugural entry into this series, I will be covering one of the largest pop culture phenomenons of the past 20 years, The Simpsons. Now, I am by no means finished with the Simpsons... there are almost 500 episodes and a film for me to watch through, but I currently am standing on the precipice of what is considered the show's Golden Age (Seasons 3-8), and felt that this was an appropriate time to reflect on what I have seen so far.

The first seasons of the Simpsons was... different. The animation was crude, the stories simple, and the characters not yet fully formed. There were a few quality episodes (the show's Pilot/Christmas episode springs to mind) but by and large it felt like a prologue, a taste of things to come.

The second season is where things started to get stronger. This is the season that introduced one of the show's big traditions, the Halloween anthology "Treehouse of Horror." This collection of three scary stories loosely tied together with a framing story, is where the series came together for me. The episode was fun, fresh (for its time), and had some amusing allusions to other horror anthology shows.

Also notable in the second season was "The Way We Was" a flashback story that tells the story of how Marge and Homer met and fell in love. The episode managed to capture what has become a hallmark of Matt Groening shows, the melding of humor and sentiment. This echoes on in his other show, Futurama.

The slightly sentimental trend continued in the episode "Lisa's Substitute" which explores the strained relationship between Lisa and her father, a theme that has shown itself a couple of times in what I've seen of the third season.

Finally, before I conclude this post I'd like to make a list, a list of my favorite characters thus far. I imagine, with a cast this large, the list will not stay the same for very long, but here goes.

Patty and Selma Bouvier - Marge's chain smoking, raspy voiced, bitterly sarcastic twin sisters. Thus far the twins (who cannot be separated even for this list) have had one of episode dedicated to them, and while not a fantastic episode, it was good for some laughs. Patty and Selma, for me at least, provide some of the best humor on the show. Their borderline evil quips at Homer's expense have me rolling nearly every time.

Bart - Probably no list would be complete without the show's breakout character. At first, based on my limited experience, I expected Bart to be something like Eric Cartman from South Park, devious, sociopathic, and pure evil. Instead, I got something a lot more complex. Bart is a troublemaker, for sure, but he's also a realistic child. He has fears, he cares for his family, and he doesn't always come out on top. It probably helps that Bart, along with Homer, has the most episodes dedicated to expanding his character. Plus, his antics are just funny.

Lisa - I have a feeling this one might be considered odd, but as of my current point in Season 3, Lisa is my favorite character. She is clearly meant to be the moral center of the show. Lisa is always willing to stand up for her principles, and is the member of the core family most likely to make sacrifices for the family. Despite this maturity, she also has a number of childlike qualities, such as her constant desire to own a pony and her enjoyment of the Itchy and Scratchy show that make her a realistic character.

So... that's all for now, but not forever. I'm not out of the cave yet, there are still hundreds of episodes for me to catch up on, and this means further write ups in the future. Until then, Tom out.

If you were a basic D&D character

Hola ya´ll. This is Michael, or as the students spell it, Mikle/Mikul/Mikel.

Have some time before my next class so I decided to make the fellow Warp Zone Nerds into basic D&D characters. If you want to do the same look up srd20 ( http://www.d20srd.org/indexes/classes.htm ) on google or contact me for help. I made the character's abilities using a 32 point buy using the point buy calculator found here http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-legacy-discussion/169520-how-does-point-buy-work.html . Also, I will try to give each character a flaw/benefit that will both help and hurt the character and make them more unique.

First, and foremost. Thomas.

Thomas the Wordslayer, also known as Thomas the Bat Man, is a Lawful/Neutral human Wizard. Thomas does his best to enforce the law by settling disbutes. He often feels that taking the law into his own hands will be better but he does his best not to. He is fully capable of feats that allows him to do things from convincing someone that they need to obey what he says to simply fireballing a room. He has an extremely high Intelligence and uses his photographic memory to his advantage. He tends to lean towards using magic instead of brute physical strength to get things done. While he has an average Charisma score he is able to substitute that with his high Intelligence score when it comes to debate, easily being able to manipulate others, and this is before his use of magic. He will, however, have to be able to sway the argument into an intellectual manner of facts. In other words he would not be able to convince someone to leave his guard post, just because. However, depending on the situation, he could convince him that he is fighting for the wrong side by giving the history of whom he is working for. The Ability change used will have to be approved by the DM per scenario. Also, he can only do this once successfully per gaming session.

Due to his high dependence on Magic, he has a high Intelligence and Wisdom with a average Charisma. However, due to this he has a lower Strength, Constitution and Dexterity. He is an important person to have in a fight and in other varying situations but he will need to stay in the back lines when it comes to a struggle. Still his enemies will have to get close to him first in order to make him worry.

For his use of word manipulation he is known as Thomas the Wordslayer. In some circles he is known as Thomas the Bat Man because of his unusual choice for a familiar, a bat.

Thomas's Ability Points and bonuses before any modifications are made are:

Str 9 - 0

Dex 10 - 0

Con 10 - 0

Int 18 - 4

Wis 15 - 2

Cha 11 - 0

He has a custom made flaw/benefit:

Photographic Smugness:

He has photographic memory which allows him to be able to skip the preparing spells in the morning process. He will still have a limited amount but he will have to keep track of the scores just like a sorcerer. However, he knows he has a photographic memory and is smug about it. In gameplay the character should play this smugness in an "I'm better than you" attitude. Because of this, the character receives a -3 in Charisma.

Well, more to come. Hope you enjoyed this. Until next time, when we see Chase the Wise, our mighty Bard, I'll see you.

Michael

It has begun! - Welcome

Welcome to our official blog spot. The Warp Zone Nerds started as a radio show that could be heard in Fayetteville on 88.3FM. Over time as they left the University radio station and the University itself they continued their show through podcasts. Our show is about all things media and all things nerd. We cover N
ews, Reviews, and Previews and also have topics, such as Censorship in the Media, Portrayals of and What it Means to be a Hero (or Villain) in the Media, Star Wars, Marvel vs DC, etc. Our previous guests include Web Comic Creator Mookie (Dominic Deegan) and Comic Creators Conor McCreery (Kill Shakespeare [IDW]) and Erik Northfell (Mercy Me). We are always looking for more guests and if your are interested email us at WarpZoneNerds@gmail.com. Also, please check out twitter.com/WarpZoneNerds where we tweet reviews and whatnot as well as previews to our future shows. This blog will also share any relevant news and topics as well as more in depth reviews that are too big for twitter.

I am now in the process of updated our website to make it more efficient and easier to find what you are looking for. There will be a News section, Reviews section and a section for each of us to write any article we would like to share with you. If you want to submit a story and contribute to our website we will have a section just for that, as well as for episodes that we have special guests on. More importantly I am in the process of making separate episode lists for the shows

included in the Warp Zone. This will take a while to update so please be patient, and as always, thank you for visiting and stay tuned for more!

Michael

(from left to right: Corey, DJ Roboto, Michael, Chase, Thomas, Bobbie)

Michael - Co-Founder of the show. The comic guy and knows a bit about many other things too. Likes to argue and is completely awesome. Also, if you follow our twitter it's probably him tweeting and if you couldn't tell this is him making this first post (back when this was the website´s first post. Michael is currently teaching English at a bilingual school in Spain and has a double bachelor´s degree in English, with a Concentration in Creative Writing, and Communication. (M)

Thomas - Co-Founder of the show. The gamer guy. Thinks he's always right, and he usually is....USUALLY (just don´t tell him that, it´ll go to his head more than it has already). He has graduated from the University and has continued his education to get a Law degree. (T)

Chase - The movie and Myst guy. He also either knows a great deal about everything or is making it up and likes to hear himself talk...haven't decided yet. We invited him on and now he won't leave, so we decided to recruit him. ;P. In all seriousness though he is an invaluable part of the team. He records and edits all our podcasts and I honestly do not know how we would get by without him. (C)

Bobbie - The journalist of the show. Well rounded knowledge of a great many things. If there´s something going on in the world she´ll know about it. She is the journalist of the group. (B)

Corey - Another movie guy in the group. Why? Because we can´t have too many, that and he just to awesome not have. Knows a great deal about a great deal and brings it all to the table. (Co)

Feel free to make as many copies of this and advertise the life out of our show.