It is The Kinda Nerdy Girls at PopCon Louisville. Oh my goodness, we are surrounded by all of the happiness that PopCon brings. And I am KJ, surrounded by my ladies. I've got Gamer Katie. Hello, how's it going? So good. You are fresh off the Grand Theft Auto panel. It was fun. I want to talk about it if we have time. Oh, absolutely. And then we've got assistant producer Michelle here with us. with your big old title? What is this, like your 12th title?
You have like a laundry list of them. It's like assistant producer, news director, CEO, CFO, chief emotional support officer. Pretty much. That's actually probably the most accurate of all of Michelle's titles. I don't know, the amount of times this weekend that Michelle has gone over my schedule with me again. And I'm like, I have that at one, right? And she's like, no, that's at three. And then I'm like, I'm doing this thing at two, right? And she's like, no, that's at five.
Somebody's got to rein you in. Yeah. And it's so easy for you to get pulled 1,000 different ways when we're here. I know. That you need somebody to be like, hey, over here. Nope, this is a three. OK, good. Yeah, so that's what Michelle has been doing and a stellar job. Thank you very much, Michelle. She always does. I hope that, you know, the cheese curds last night sufficed for payment. No, the bar at the Galt House had like this Wisconsin girl approved cheese curds. They were super good.
I'm going to turn your mic up a little bit, Michelle. Am I whispering? No, Michelle is a little quieter than the rest of us. It's like ASMR. I don't have producer patches to produce because he's over on the podcast stage. Oh, he's doing his own podcast? Lame. Hi, guys, if you have any questions, please let us know. I'm down here on the floor doing a podcast.
It is weird to do a live podcast at a convention because you're like, OK, one eye is over here and making sure anybody at the booth is good. Hey, listen, if we look like anyone wants to buy anything, we will stop this show and you will hear us sell because one of us just disappears. I'm actually gonna look and just make sure I'm really recording. I think so There's a red dot. Okay, you're good. Yep.
So, okay. So let's talk some some kind of nerdy stuff Katie I wanted to ask you Borderlands Did you go see the movie? I have not and now I will not. Because it did not do well at all. What I have seen and what I have heard is that it was another disappointing video game to movie. Oh man. Like they, for whatever reason, and I don't get it, and I've tried to like psychoanalyze armchair psychologist it, I don't understand why video games aren't translating well to movies, because they
have beautiful, in essence, stories. But I think the problem is that we try to cram too much in. We try to hit all the side quests. We try to reference all the things that people are going to get. And a lot of the things that tend to catch for video games, like Claptrap, or those kinds of things, are side things that are unimportant to the main story of the game. Okay. So, like, great example. It's been out for more than a decade, Skyrim. Mm-hmm. What is the one line from that game
that everybody knows? You guys might not. We have no idea. My husband's played that game, but I don't know that. If T.O. is here, she can answer that. I used to be an adventurer like you, but then I took an arrow in the knee. Oh, okay. And it is just some random throwaway dialogue filler line that guards say when your character walks by going somewhere. So should they ever try to make it a movie, and they tried to shoehorn that in somewhere, it may not work. Gotcha.
So I think Borderlands kind of fell victim to that. I know it's a fun franchise. I know it's wild, and it is a very aggressive and intense and fun game, and the art style is very unique, and the cell shading and all that kind of stuff. It doesn't translate. I think it's a PG-13 movie and that is an M-rated game. That's not going to work. So that was my first red flag that I was like, oh, we're toning it down. Okay. So no. That
makes sense. So it makes me nervous for future things like Netflix or whoever's working on a Bioshock movie. Oh, no. That is one of my most beloved franchises. Yeah. Don't mess with that game. Hi little ladies! You guys can have a free decal if you want. Any free stickers! Yeah, see those stickers right there? That pile right there? You can take whatever you want. Oh yeah, and because we got somebody signing up for our, we've got a merch pack from Conquest Journals. It's worth over a
hundred bucks. It's the Hogwarts tote bag and the student agenda, journal, and all this cool stuff. And we're giving everybody Sabrina prize packs when they sign up. They don't know they're getting a free prize when they sign up. I like your Return of the Jedi shirt. Return of the Jedi, classic. Wolverine. Go ahead and make a sale if you need to there, Michelle. Michelle's all business. We love watching her work.
I know. Well, we're just trying to raise some money for Indy Neighborhood Cats while we're here. We love the cats. I've appreciated that the people in Louisville haven't been like, oh, you're raising money for cats in Indianapolis? No, I'm not going to help. They've been like, oh, sure, I'll donate some money. Cats benefit. That's what's right.
We all win. We all win when the cats win Well in you know in terms of like what happened with Borderlands it did make me think like this is definitely if there was any You know consideration of let's do a Red Dead Redemption movie. They've been like now let's not Would not work as a movie I think that's probably why it's been so long, right? Because it's just so long, and it takes so long to get to the point of the game. Because you're building all this tension,
you're building this emotional drama. The game's been out for a decade, so I'm going to spoil it. He's getting sicker the whole time, and you're supposed to catch these subtle little hints as you go and as you progress. You could fly through it, but you miss so much of the emotional depth of it.
that like okay unless this movie is going to be like four titanic lengths you're not going to hit everything right it would be maybe passable or pretty good as like a series so that's what i was going to ask like what they did with fallout maybe that's the maybe that is the uh that seems to be the only the success video game that translated well and i think it's because they chose The world, not the characters, if that makes sense.
So they used the world and all the world building that the game has built, and all the things that just exist in this sphere, but they did not pick any characters that people already knew. Hello, welcome to our booth. We're the kind of nerdy girls. Take a decal if you'd like. They did not pick any characters or locations or stories that we already knew. Because when you play these games, it is very choice driven. So like, whatever my decisions were, that's how I feel this game went and how
this game ended. So it is very conflicting if, you know, oh, I said, I want an independent New Vegas at the end of Fallout New Vegas, but they chose to go with Mr. House instead. Or like, gosh, Caesar's Legion, you know, those kinds of things. So I think season two may gamble a little bit because they're going to Vegas, which is somewhere that exists in the world already, and we know what happened there. And it's 10 years later after the
game. So whatever you did in the game has this effect on this show that you now cannot change. So I think it has to decide what happened, like which ending is the real true ending. Sometimes that upsets people. Ah yes, there's that with the gaming world. But also like, if you enjoyed the game, it is not time wasted, right? Right. Enjoy it. Consume it. Go watch the show. And if you like it, you like it. If you don't, you don't. You don't have to marry yourself
to these things. And I struggle with that because I'm like, I don't want to do anything new. I want to just keep doing the same thing that I've been doing. So every six months I play Fallout New Vegas. And I have played that game. 100%, like 30 times. It's been out for 13 years. Wow. Right? I just souped up my computer to play Starfield. First thing I did was boot up New Vegas. Aww. I'm like, oh yeah, new specs, and it's going to be all nice. I bet this 13-year-old game would look really good.
Oh, yeah. Well. You know, I mean, I'm the same way with, you know, with TV. I mean, people are always like, you should watch this, and you should watch this. And I'm like, you know, I do the Captain America thing. I'll put it on the list. And then I re-watch Doctor Who. Well, they're like your comfort shows, right? Yes, yes. Because these things are comfort games for people, I think it's really hard sometimes to let what I think should have happened go, because I am driving the narrative
in my game. I can go whatever pace I want, I can set whatever story I want, I can kill whatever characters I don't like, I can take whatever loot I want. And within reason, you tend to have an effect on the world around you. Whereas movies and TV shows and limited series don't necessarily Like it kind of decides for you what's going to happen and you you have to kind of be married into that idea Sure, it's but you know if you're yeah, I've been watching these things without being a gamer.
So wherever it takes me I'm just happy But when you I can imagine from the mindset of like I used to be able to say no don't go there Go do this thing instead and you're watching it. You're like, oh you shouldn't have done that like that would be Frustrating and like you said you can't fit these big long games into one movie and make everybody happy. We try to pick what's important and sometimes we don't necessarily pick all the things
that are important, right? Like, it is so easy to be like, oh, we'll just do the main story. Except the main story is, like, 30 hours long. And it has a lot of stuff in it, you know? So we are at PopCon Louisville right now, hanging out at the KJ Today and Kinda Nerdy Girls booth. And any moment, no, in a little bit, any moment now, the Mike Coulter panel is going to start. So Mike Coulter is here.
Luke Cage from the Marvel world. Yes. And the star of Evil, which is like the big trending show on Netflix right now, but because it started on Paramount+, it actually just had its series finale. So on Thursday, the last episode of Evil dropped, and now Mike is here, and I'm sure he's just got fans that are going to be like, what do we do? How do we get it back? How do we cope? So I talked with one of his co-stars. I haven't posted the interview yet, but it'll be going up.
Asif Manvi, he's been the Magnificent on the show. He is magnificent. I love him. And honestly, the whole interview was like, because it was the day before the finale was dropping. And I'm like, why are you calling to talk to me about how you're losing your job? Like, that seems weird. Like, hey, watch tomorrow for the last episode. I'm no longer employed. I hope you enjoy it. But he was. optimistic that if the fans try hard enough, that there could be a way to keep this show
going. And I think because it's it's it's interesting to just kind of look at this big picture and beyond evil of how fans do have a way to revive and keep shows going for Jericho. Yeah. I mean, in the studio, all those peanuts from if I complain enough. Yeah. Right. Don't hear me. I mean, we got more Lucifer, there was more Arrested Development. It has worked. So in some ways, it's like, well, let's try it.
It's not always going to work, but like, let's try it because it might, you know, and if Netflix goes, okay, y'all seem to really be liking this on our streaming channel, why wouldn't we greenlight, you know, six more episodes and see what happens. But you also have to play to the algorithm. We know Netflix, number one, cares about how many people watch it in the first 24 hours it's dropped and how many people watch in the first week. Which is so frustrating
because like... Because I'm old and I don't watch things right away. Right. And I'm like, okay, I want people to stop talking about it and then I'll watch it. That was, I was watching, did you, you watched Dead Boy Detectives, right? Yes. Yes. It was like... I watched it like two weeks after it Me too, and it was already, like, it didn't do well enough in the first two weeks, so that's all you get. And that, I think, is the curse of the binging
and the streaming, right? It's like, people can consume things so fast, so they do, and then it's just wiped from your mind. But now they're doing it in parts. Yeah. And I hate that too, because I'm like, I want to be impatient. five episodes. Well, but I think the reason they're doing that, Michelle, is because of this phenomenon where they're like, they expect us to, like, log into Netflix and Netflix says, we recommend this. And you're like, oh, I'm going to watch
it right now. No, I'm going to finish what I'm watching and I'll get to it. Typically when you log in, you're like, I'm going to watch X. And then you see things, you're like, oh, that's cool, add to my list, I'll come back to it. Yes, so I think by the time anybody caught on to that show, Dead Boy Detectives, which I highly recommend, and it hasn't been canceled,
but it also hasn't been renewed. So it's like sitting in a world where it's like, yeah, based on what Netflix usually does, we're not getting any more of it, but you know, maybe. We retain the ownership rights. We're just not going to do anything with it. Yeah. So it'll be interesting. I am not moderating Mike Colter, but I am going to be in the room for that and probably be a fan and ask some questions. Are you too? Yeah, I'll be in there. All right. You got some questions
for Mike Colter, Michelle? I don't know if I have any questions. All right. You got any? Are you single? Well, I'm married, so. Listen. Listen. He's cute, though. He is. And he seems so charming. He is. I've worked celeb photo ops with Mike before when they were doing, I think it was an Ace Comic Con when we had, it was like all of the Jessica Jones people were there, all the Daredevil people were there, and he is as charming in person as you would
expect him to be. It was a little hard to not do his panel, but we've got our friend Abdul Hakeem Shabazz, who's a big deal in Indianapolis, media personality, and he came to Louisville to help moderate after getting a taste of it in Indy. Everything I can't moderate anymore. Somebody had to pick up the slack. Right? I'm like, oh, Katie just had to go and this seven months pregnant during PopCon Louisville. I'm eight months pregnant, girl. Eight months. Oh, that's right. Yeah. 32 weeks today. Oh
my. Also, I learned pregnancies are 10 months, not nine. And the math is wild. 40 weeks is 10 months. Four weeks a month. Are you still showing bigger than what it was like two weeks ahead? Yeah. You're still doing that? Yeah, it's not fun anymore. At any moment you could have a baby. It's getting scary. Like we could be like talking right now and it could be like, oh baby time. I don't, I don't, you know. Stop, baby time. No, I don't think that, like this kid's pretty
comfortable in there. Okay. So I haven't heard a peep and I hope to keep it that way. All right, and you've got a kind of nerdy theme going for this baby, which we don't know. We're waiting to find out if it's a boy or a girl, which I love. It's sort of the old-fashioned way. We love the surprise of it. I love it. But you've got a space-themed nursery going? We do. Yep. And based on the cost of daycare, this kid better come out a rocket scientist. Daycare is expensive.
Hello, guys. Welcome to our booth. We're recording our podcast right now. Oh, not at all. Your cosplay is fantastic. You're welcome to any of those decals. If you have questions on anything else, let us know. And if you sign up for our newsletter, you have a chance to win all that cool Harry Potter stuff from Conquest Journal. So you don't have to be here to win. We'll ship it to you. We make it nice and easy. What's that? We're from Indianapolis. Yeah, yeah.
And she's talking about a haunted house. So I'm just going to sit here and let Katie and Michelle talk to her about her haunted house. She's a chicken. She would never. I don't know what your haunted house is, but I'm already scared just to hear about it. Michelle, will you put a microphone in front of her so I can hear what she's saying? Come on, come join us. Come on, come on on the podcast. Tell us about your haunted house. Oh, yeah. We're a hospital theme. So it's
just like we're very interactive. We're very theatrical. So there's a lot of interactive scenes that you can, like, press a button and put gas in the room and stuff like that. No, thank you. Electric chairs. Nope. It's very soft. Oh, no. What's it called? America Horrorplex. America Horrorplex. And this is in Louisville? Okay, what's your website? How do we find you? The website? Yep. It's at megahoroplex.com. Alright! 2012 Northwestern Parkway. Nice! Awesome, there you go. You got a plug on
our podcast. When do you guys open for the season? September 13th. Oh, it's coming up! September 13th. All right, Katie and Michelle keep talking to her and all I'm thinking is this is going to take so much editing on my part if they keep talking to her. It's fine. It's fine. We want people to be happy here at PopCon. It's KJ today and the kind of nerdy vets live at PopCon Louisville. Thank you. You're a Waverly Hills girly. I'm a what? Waverly Hills. Am I? You did
the whole TV show about ghosts. Oh, OK. Yes, I did. Your other venture. Oh, yes. Paranormal Crossroads. Yeah. Waverly Hills, one of the most haunted places in the US. Almost the world. Oh, that's right. I've never done that. I grew up down the street from there. I did the nice paranormal show. I didn't do the scary stuff. Listen, I argue, if I were a betting woman, that if I was a little ghosty, I would be lonely. I think so, too. It's just an empty
building all day. So if people do show up and they're nice and they're polite to you, absolutely. Right? I'd be all about that. Michelle, what time is it? Are we good on time? I'm not paying attention to... What's that? 124. Okay, we're good. You won't miss him, I swear. I won't let you. Okay, thank you. I did want, well I wanted to hear a little bit about, this was the second time that you were with the GTA guys. First time with Steven Ogg. Yep. Thank you,
you too. Thank you! So, how was that? Any insight, any new information that changed your brain? Panels are so much fun. I feel like you learn so much about people as people versus their characters. So yeah, we did, it was Indie PopCon, we had Ned and Sean, so Franklin and Michael from GTA 5. And then this time was the first one where we completed the
trio and we had Steven slash Trevor. And they just have this chemistry amongst them because like it takes three years to make one of these games You really end up knowing
these people. Yeah, like they're almost like they act like brothers a little bit where it's like they're making fun of each other and like the entire panel we're talking about the motion capture suits that you have to wear for these games and how they have all these little balls on them so that you can the camera can track their motion and And how they made him run for a full day so they could catch the animations. And how you had to wear sandbags on your legs so it looked
like you were walking appropriately. They talk about the science behind it, and I love the behind the scenes stuff, where it's, you know, how do these games get made? And is it harder to act as a motion capture actor because you don't have a set? And it's all your imagination, because it's just foam with balls on it, and you have a camera straight in your face. because it needs to capture all the motion on your face as you say things.
So how hard is it to get in somebody's face and have a conversation when it's two cameras right in front of each other? And you're rolling around on the ground, crawling and going through these missions, and you're laying on these hard plastic balls all over your body because you're wearing what amounts to a wetsuit. And you talk about all the fun and the challenges of those kinds of things. He was like, there's this one guy on set, and he was the motion capture animator.
And if you saw him, you were going to have a bad day. Because he was the one that was going to make you run 3,000 times up and down the way until he got exactly what he wanted. Or you had to shoot the guns a particular way. Or there's one where one of the characters is stomping on someone's head, and you have to just do it for hours and hours and hours.
But then you get to the actual character component, like the heart of the acting of it, where they talk about, like, so this panel today, one of my favorite questions was, what were the emotionally difficult scenes to do, you know? What were the ones that were, like, hard for you as an actor? Not just physically or, like, because you have a camera in your face and you have to kind of ignore that. Is there a lot of emotion in GTA?
Yeah, there's a whole section where one of the trio betrays the others to the feds, you know, and because he's he's trying to get out of the game and he's you know, he's whatever or you have, you know, like he's got this family back home and like his teenage kids and he he wanted to be done with this and then they dragged him back in and now
he wants to be done with it again. Or you have characters that are just like balls to the wall crazy and then they crack and they have a moment of clarity and like emotional maturity that like oh this is it we might actually die here. Yeah. You know those kinds of things. Okay. And you have emotional depth just like you would with any character in any role. Okay. And then you talk about the fun things, right? Like, what are your favorite lines? And, you know, what were your favorite
things to film? And, like, what was the behind-the-scenes like for you? And these guys talk about how Steven, the guy who plays Trevor, so you're wearing this wetsuit all the time. This gentleman would just fart all the time on the set. And you're in the zone, and you don't want to do the take again, so you have to, like, ignore it all the time. That's the fun stuff right there. And I don't know that I could be an actor. I absolutely could not. I don't know that I have the chops for that.
No, I could not do that. I mean, the amount of like you see, you know, they'll release stuff and they show the actors in the green screens and you know, especially like you want the Marvel stuff and they're having their fight scenes, but they're not fighting anything. And it's like, pow, pow. I would just be laughing the entire time. There is no way. I could not pretend like that. But I think they do too, right? They do,
yeah. You've seen the behind the scenes for like the prequels to Star Wars, where they're making the lightsaber noises and they keep telling them not to. Yeah. Because you're messing up the recording. Yeah. Hello, welcome to our booth. We're recording our show right now, but if you have any questions, let us know. You can sign up for our newsletter and win all that Harry Potter stuff as well, if you want. If you don't, I'm not offended.
I don't have the chops for it, man. I don't know that I could take myself seriously. I'm crawling on, like the Red Dead guys tell it all the time, the horses were not horses, it's like a foam drum. Yeah. It's like a set piece and you have to pretend it's a horse and you're like, yeah, giddy up. You know, I don't know that I have it in me. Yeah. Well, that was in my interview with
Benjamin Byron Davis about Borderlands. He talked about how working with Kate Blanchett, like she was super excited to work with him because she had spent the two weeks prior talking to a trash can, like she was doing all of her scenes and she had to And he's like, I don't know if she liked me or if she was just happy that she wasn't talking to a trash can anymore. And I'm like, how can you do that? Like, I just can't. How do I look at a foam ball on a stick and be like, oh, yes, this
is Groot and I need to act seriously. You have to have an imagination and that's hard. We have a great deal of appreciation for the actors that entertain us. It's hard work, man. Yes. Anything else going on that we should be talking about in the nerdy room? Oh my gosh. I don't know. World of Warcraft dropped their new expansion, so I haven't seen my husband in three days. Okay. He was like, good, go to PopCon. He did. Well, he pulled me aside two weeks ago. He's like, I have to talk to you about
something. And I was like, uh-oh, what? And he's like, I'm going to be unavailable the weekend of the 23rd. And I was like, are you going somewhere? He's like, my WoW expansion drops, and I'm going to be playing all day long. Like, all day long. And I was like, oh, well, I'll be at PopCon. So he's like, yes. I mean, oh, no. Like, no. Oh, no. You know? So it ended up working out that he's at home playing The War Within right now. But he like paid the extra money
to get three days early access. You couldn't be patient. He's like, I don't want to be patient. I want to be better than my friends. Because if you play early, you know, you get all the goodies first. Sure. Like bragging rights. He's just been obsessed with it. Listen, popcorn is just a whole convention about people who completely understand that. Like, yeah, I want to get my game early. All right. Well, I appreciate you both being here with me this weekend and we appreciate
you listening. Of course, all of the usual, you know, rate, review, subscribe, tell your friends. I don't think we've had a review since like 2020. So if you could give us a review, that'd be great. We have no reviews. We have no reviews. We haven't reviewed our own show. You've never even reviewed our show, Katie. Have I left a review? No, you have not. No. People don't understand. I think it's just gotten to where you hear it so much. You're like, yeah, whatever, rate, review, and subscribe.
Literally, that's the only way that Apple and Spotify will put our podcast in front of other people is if it gets ratings, if it gets reviews, and if it gets subscribed. It's like, even if you don't do it for us, like, if there's a podcast that you really like or your friend has a podcast, rate, review, and subscribe. You'll make them so happy. Thank you so much. Follow us on the social medias. Easiest way to find us is actually if you go to kjonsocial.com. It'll
connect you to everything we do. the KJ Today Show, the Kinda Nerdy Girls, all of our socials. There's a special 10% off code that you can get to shop at Conquest Journals, and we thank them for all the cool stuff that they have given us to make our booth so cool. At PopCon Louisville, this has been the Kinda Nerdy Girls. Thank you. Poo-poo, ba-chow, ba-chow. Poo-poo, ba-choo, ba-bow, bow. Thank you. Good night.