How to Be a Geek on a Budget

As the content landscape becomes more fragmented, consider your options carefully

It’s getting hard to remember what life was like for geeks prior to Netflix. I could say streaming services in general, but I think it was specifically the advent of Netflix — first in DVD rental and later through content streaming — that heralded the modern age of geekdom.

For years, the running joke in our extended family was that everyone rented from the “Schock Video Library” — as we had an extensive collection of first VHS and then later DVD copies of numerous movies and TV shows within the genre that we freely shared with family and friends. We still have a cute, card-catalog-style DVD storage system containing offerings ranging from the Bruce Timm/Paul Dini DC cartoons to various early MCU movies to shows like Fringe, The Big Bang Theory, Sherlock and Doctor Who. But our accumulation of physical media — of outright content purchases — certainly waned as it became easier and easier to simply access content via Netflix.

When our older child developed an interest — on separate occasions— in Star Trek and The X-Files, we were able to simply stream them. When our younger child wanted to snuggle up and watch Toho’s kaiju films, we simply streamed them. There was even an ill-conceived rental of the full series of the original Flash TV show —not the Arrowverse show but rather the John Wesley Shipp/Amanda Pays vehicle from the 1990s which, I’m sorry to say, didn’t hold up to the way I remembered it from my youth. So as I’ve watched Netflix slowly lose access to content — beginning with Doctor Who a few years ago and accelerating with the development of competing streaming services from Disney, Warner Bros. and NBC Universal — I can’t help but wonder if we aren’t seeing the sun set on a golden age.

Most of the competing content outlets won’t be expensive individually, but the shared global geek culture that has flourished over the last decade can’t help but be impacted by the collective cost of fragmentation. Increasingly, most people will have to become more selective about the content they choose to rent given that less and less of it will be baked into diverse and expansive bundles — each major franchise becoming the tent pole for a separate streaming business. As such, many of the strategies that budget-conscious geeks employed 15–20 years ago will remain applicable in this brave new (yet somehow old) world. They just need to be rediscovered.

Consider Your Purchases as Investments
When my wife and I were young and (very) poor, we had to think of our entertainment in terms of our overall spend. We could go to a movie in the theater and spend $X for perhaps 2 to 2-and-a-half hours of entertainment. Or we could wait to rent the same movie for a third of the cost. Or we could buy it outright for roughly the same cost as seeing it in the theater and then we could watch it on numerous occasions. Similar logic applied to new and used video games. Books were easier because rental wasn’t really a concern — you’d either buy a book or sign it out at the local library. In any given month, we’d have $X to spend and Y number of hours of entertainment we could hope to cover with it.

While the options are a bit different now with the rapid decline in physical media, the decision-making process is pretty much the same. If you love a movie, TV series or game enough that you think you’ll want to watch it repeatedly, do the math — you could well save money by buying over renting if you believe that you’re really going to enjoy that content throughout coming months. Just remember that you’re locking those dollars in — and also be careful to be sure that your access to any digital media is secure, as you don’t want to try to watch that movie 6 months from now only to find that it’s been pulled from the cloud by the content retailer.

When You Do Rent Content, Rent Strategically
Unlike cable companies, streaming services aren’t currently tying people down to long-term contracts. So it can be prudent to time your subscriptions to allow you to binge multiple properties in the same subscription period. The downside can be timeliness, of course — if you’re trying to avoid spoilers for one show that’s ending, it might not be feasible to wait until a second one drops — so that’s something to keep in mind.

On a related note, think of your fandoms collectively when choosing which services to patronize. And that doesn’t just apply to your existing favorites. Consider some of the other shows that these services are creating — as they’re actively trying to keep you on their sites and are increasingly developing compatible content to supplement the tent pole offerings.

Also think of your subscriptions holistically. Your Amazon Prime membership comes with a variety of perks aside from access to streaming content — at least if you’re someone who uses Amazon.com a lot. And there are other content-related subscription services not centered on video — digital comics and other text content, for example. So think carefully about the combination of options that delivers you the most entertainment for your dollar.

Remember That Analog Is a Viable Option
If you’re a reader, I’m sure I don’t need to sell you on the merits of physical books. But you should also consider physical games — specifically tabletop board games — as a cost-effective diversion. While elaborate European-style board games can be as expensive as modern video games, you don’t need to keep up with the ongoing console arms race to play them. They’re made to have a lot of replay value — with games like Betrayal at House on the Hill having literally 100+ scenarios you can encounter. And while many require multiple players, that’s hardly a detractor — as you’re essentially multiplying the value of the purchase in terms of collective player-hours of entertainment.

Remember That Content Doesn’t Have to Be New to Be Interesting or Compelling
The surge in interest in all things geek is still subject to the law of supply and demand. So another avenue to consider is to dive into these various franchises’ back catalogs — as the continuous influx of new content tends to drive down the demand for (and associated cost of) some of its precursors.

Here are some budget-friendly quests that promise to be entertaining yet easy on your wallet:

• Hit up the bargain bins at your local comic shop: If you’re looking to purchase comics for the purposes of collecting, then you likely turn your nose up at the yellow, dog-eared pages of the comics sitting in the dollar bin. But if you’re buying comics simply to read them, that doesn’t need to be a consideration. And there are plenty of full story arcs — great ones — sitting in the bargain bins either because the comics themselves aren’t in pristine shape or because the characters are (currently) obscure. I once bought my younger child an almost two-year-long run of a beloved series from my childhood for something like $10–12 during a sale — a great way to stretch those content dollars. Oh, and remember to just check out sales in general — for both individual comics and TPBs (trade paperbacks)/graphic novels — as that will likewise help to stretch your dollar.
• Ditto for your local gaming shop: Same philosophy as above save applied to gaming books and modules.
• Don’t forget your local public library: New video and book releases tend to be in high demand, but you can typically get your hands on them if you’re patient and thoughtful about it. Also, be aware that many libraries now have sections devoted to comics compilations and graphic novels in addition to their science fiction and fantasy holdings.
• Don’t forget the public domain: I’ll never advocate pirating because that hurts content creators. But you’d be surprised by how much content is out there for free because the copyright on it has simply lapsed. When my kids first got their respective Kindles, I remember that they were able to download a lot of classic science fiction, fantasy, and horror novels at no cost. And there are more than a few classic sci-fi and horror movies from the early days of cinema that can likewise be found for little or no cost.
• And last, but not least, never forget that used can be as good as new: If you don’t mind going a little old school, physical media are still an option — and a very inexpensive one if you’re willing to buy used. Used books are usually pretty safe, of course. And while I’ve had a handful of bad experiences buying used games or DVDs, it’s hardly been common enough to dissuade me from the practice.

Ultimately, it comes down to making the best use of your limited entertainment dollars. Consider what your priorities are — what you absolutely need to have when it’s hot off the presses — and then work backwards from there. You’ll likely find that your fervor for certain fandoms exceeds others and that the urgency to get access to that latter content isn’t great enough to warrant it being a big part of your overall spend. Once you’ve drawn that line, it won’t be too hard to reconcile your content consumption strategy to those priorities without reducing your enjoyment. And doing so might even put you on the path to discover some great guilt-free options that you might not have encountered otherwise.

Want to Become a Better Storyteller? Join a Role-Playing Game.

You might think that improv troupes are hard to find, but odds are good that an acquaintance of yours is conducting one around the dining room table at least a couple of times per month.

I suppose I was about eleven when I first discovered Dungeons & Dragons and the world of role-playing games in general. It was at the now-defunct Kay-Bee toy store in my local mall, where there were perhaps half a dozen different modules sitting in a white wire rack along one of the aisles. Having successfully cajoled my parents into buying me one — and then eventually another and another — I was soon picking my way through the ruins of the Ghost Tower of Inverness and plumbing the many secrets of Saltmarsh.

At first, I was just reading the modules. It took a while to romance my friends into playing some of the adventures with me serving as the “Dungeon Master” (DM). Unfortunately, it quickly became evident that they much preferred to just throw the football around in the backyard — something I enjoyed also — and it wasn’t long before my D&D modules were buried like detritus under a growing pile of comics and other pre-teen memorabilia. But the hobby marched on around me. Our local Waldenbooks dedicated an entire shelf to an increasingly diverse assortment of RPGs to suit a variety of tastes — space operas, tactical, horror, etc. And with changes in my friend group over time, I was back into RPGs again when I hit high school.

My second go wasn’t with Dungeons & Dragons however. No, I was a huge comics fan and TSR, Inc. had wisely chosen a different and even more irresistible infection vector — a Marvel Comics role-playing game. I didn’t buy every single game module and supplement that they created for that variant, but I’m sure I came close. And while my friends and I didn’t play RPGs all the time — we had other interests — the games were remarkably memorable, to the extent that certain situations and catch phrases have achieved a somewhat legendary status within my family to this day.

I know that RPG groups are typically portrayed as insular and their participants as reclusive, but I’ve always found the exact opposite to be true. When I gamed in high school, my girlfriend was part of our crew and others brought their girlfriends as well. It was a genuinely social activity. And when I went off to college, my then-girlfriend — now my wife — enjoyed participating too. In fact, we often muse that we first realized that our relationship might be on the serious side when I retrofitted the ending of one game scenario after seeing she’d been upset with the conclusion. (I’d inadvertently killed off a character she’d enjoyed designing — and when she got teary-eyed, I kind of bent the rules to give her an out. Probably makes me a bad DM — but a better boyfriend.)

After we were married and started to lean hard into adulting, I figured all of that was behind us. Dog-eared game modules and squashed-flat boxes languished at the bottom of plastic storage tubs moving with us from apartment to apartment and then our first house — retained for the sake of nostalgia, something to be smiled at when found and then just as quickly repacked. Occasionally, we’d play with our kids — both of whom expressed some level of affinity for RPGs and both of whom have moved on to play with their respective friends. But even then, I’d seen this as a seeding activity — a “nerding forward” situation, if you will — and not as any sort of prolonged re-engagement on my part.

And then something really curious happened — role-playing seemed to go through a very visible renaissance. As some of my friends have since explained to me, an underground of die-hard gamers had continued to flourish as a lot of dads quietly replaced “poker night” with an RPG night. These weren’t teens in heavy metal tee shirts crouching in the basement under a dim ceiling light with pencil and paper. These were accomplished professionals sitting on their decks with beer or other spirits in hand using apps on their smart phones to track their stats. They would come to gaming events with velvet dice bags carrying high-end brushed bronze dice or perhaps dice they molded themselves. (They could roll dice on their smart phones too, but if you don’t like the tactile feel of a twenty-sided die — or d20 — well, then you just might be a monster.)

How the media portrayed RPGs began to change as well — first by rediscovering them with ironic hipster fascination and then later by embracing them more wholeheartedly as a legitimate form of entertainment. Simply put, RPGs as a subset of overall gaming culture got well… sexy. Serialized RPGs would pop up in content on YouTube and Twitch and in podcast form. Entire auditoriums would fill to capacity to watch live celebrity gaming events — like the “Acquisitions Incorporated” series conducted annually at Penny Arcade’s PAX Conventions. While I won’t attempt to summarize all of that content here, you can easily find recent gaming videos including the likes of Vin Diesel, Joe Manganiello, Terry Crews, and Deborah Ann Woll. Some televised campaigns like Critical Role have gone on for years now at this point.

So why should you, as an aspiring storyteller — as a writer or photographer or film-maker — care about any of this? Because this resurgence in role-playing isn’t a casual phenomenon — another turn of the culture wheel, another capricious shift in the zeitgeist. It’s a fundamental recognition of shared narrative as a distinct and novel form of performance art.

Being a DM (or game judge) is an enormous undertaking and I’m always very impressed by — and grateful to — my friends who are willing to assume that responsibility. While I suppose that you can still buy game modules, most of the DMs I know generate their own scenarios based on any number of game systems ranging from D&D to Pathfinder to Dungeon Crawl Classics. So that is clearly a great opportunity for self-expression — a literal world-building activity. Nevertheless, even just being a participant in a RPG offers near limitless opportunities for creativity and improvisation. In fact, the better DMs I know specifically build their campaigns to promote those activities.

I’ve heard it said that Gary Gygax — the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons — didn’t intend for it to be a “fighting game.” Characters weren’t just outfitted with weapons and hit points. The rules were crafted to allow numerous paths to victory — through stealth and persuasion and cunning and guile. In a day before modern video games, it was the first “open world” game — taking place in the theater of the mind. And while I’ll admit that I love to hear the words “roll for initiative,” some of the best games I’ve joined involved very few battles.

In one recent one-shot hosted by one of my friends, my character didn’t need to unsheathe his weapon once. We ended up making a mutually beneficial deal with the monster and his family that saw them relocated to greener pastures. (Picture Beowulf meets Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.) But the fact that we could have engaged in a fight — one that likely would have gone quite badly for us — is part of what makes participating in a RPG such an ideal form of shared storytelling. Our DM had a few different outcomes in mind and reined us in ever so slightly — ensuring a measure of structure — but we had the latitude to pursue a wide variety of paths. And we weren’t the only players; because dice decide the success of actions proposed by both the DM and the gamers, Lady Luck always has a seat at the table as well. I recall one game where my wife just kept punishing the game judge with one improbable “crit” (when you roll 20 on a d20) after another — driving the game and the story into uncharted territory for hours.

In the best gaming circles, players identify with their avatars and craft reactions to suit both evolving circumstances and the world view of their characters. Likewise, the game judges — expressing themselves through numerous non-player characters (NPCs) — aren’t ever really in opposition to the gamers; they too are simply playing out the personalities and interests they’ve built into the characters forming the infrastructure of the game. The result is a mélange of ever-changing story elements with a narrative created jointly by every player at the table, the DM and the dice. And while it might not be Colin Mockery and Ryan Stiles playing “scenes from a hat” on Whose Line Is It Anyway, it can be an extremely fun, challenging, and oft-times amusing combination of improv and problem-solving.

There has probably never been a better time to get into the hobby either — both because of its recent rise to prominence and also the ease with which people can game collectively over different communication platforms even at a distance. And if you’re not a big fan of science fiction or fantasy, there’s enough diversity in the gaming world that you can likely find a lightly themed campaign that suits your tastes. So the next time you want to take a break from more traditional creativity-building techniques like story prompts, consider probing your social network to find out who is involved in a gaming group. You’ll note that such groups are usually quite open — even evangelical — as RPGs thrive on new blood and new perspectives.

I can only speculate on the impact it will have to your creative process. You might walk away with inspiration for your magnum opus or just a fond recollection of sharing some mead with a bunch of rowdy orcs. Ultimately, art depends on shared human experience — even if, as in this case, shared in an unreal setting. Most RPGs revolve around character growth — building XP, as they say. As luck would have it, so does being an artist. So given the opportunity to satisfy both needs, there’s really only one obvious choice — you roll with it.

What Does The MCU’s Sinister Six Look Like Now? (**CONTAINS SPOILERS**)

Assessing the impact of Far from Home on Spider-Man’s rogue’s gallery.

From the cover of volume 5 of the trade paperbacks compiling Marvel’s Ultimate Spider-Man (“The Ultimate Six”). Credit: Marvel Comics.

While the Sinister Six may be among the most classic examples of a super-villain team-up, few people realize that they assembled relatively infrequently in the first 40 years of Marvel Comics continuity. Introduced in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1 in 1964, a group consisting of Doctor Octopus, Electro, The Vulture, Kraven the Hunter, Sandman and Mysterio put the wall-crawler through a deadly gauntlet to save the lives of Daily Bugle co-worker (and then love interest) Betty Brant and his Aunt May. But this was treated as a special event by the publishers — one that, for as memorable as it was, wouldn’t be repeated for almost thirty years. However, that hasn’t prevented the team from capturing the imagination of fans of both the comics and the other media they’ve inspired. So it’s really less a question of whether they’ll appear in film than how and when.

Each of Spider-Man’s cinematic adventures has expanded his rogues gallery and therefore the odds of various scenarios playing out — and Spider-Man: Far from Home is no exception. Here are some observations regarding how this latest movie may or may not facilitate different incarnations of the villain team. As noted in the title of the article, detailed spoilers from Far from Home are discussed below; if you haven’t seen the film, you might want to read this after you’re caught up.

A Sinister Six That Includes Mysterio Is Now Much Less Likely — and Not for the Reason You’d Think

If you’re reading this, then you’ve presumably seen the movie and know that Quentin Beck appears to perish at the end of the film. Given that this is a character who leans heavily on deception, that doesn’t preclude his reappearance in any one of a variety of ways — he could have faked his death, the mantle could be assumed by someone else, etc. But what makes me think that his inclusion in the Sinister Six is now less likely has more to do with the character’s MCU origins and nature.

Rather than Mysterio simply being a special effects wizard with an ax to grind, I think of the MCU Mysterio as a troupe rather than an individual. Simply put, the MCU Mysterio is the combination of Count Olaf and his band of actors from A Series of Unfortunate Events — only on a grander scale. While we’re introduced to a handful of his accomplices, we really have no idea as to how many former Stark Industries employees have supported this cause — and it really comes across as a cause, the usurpation of Tony Stark’s legacy.

As a result, Beck is essentially a megalomaniacal director in the movie’s third act. And I don’t see either the leaderless troupe or this directorial portrayal of Beck jibing with the version of Mysterio who would join a group like the Sinister Six.

I Also Believe That A Variant of The Sinister Six That Includes The Vulture Is Now Less Likely

This opinion is largely based on the implications of the movie’s mid-credit scene — perhaps the most impactful mid-credit scene we’ve seen in the MCU to date. While you can debate Adrian Toomes’s motivations for not spilling Peter’s secret identity at the end of Spider-Man: Homecoming, you can’t deny that the villain is observing his own complicated moral code and that he isn’t hell bent on Peter’s destruction — something he could have easily facilitated. Now that the hero’s secret identity has been exposed and he’s going to be on the run from various law enforcement agencies, I’d find it hard to picture Toomes joining the hunt. In the end, The Vulture is still a villain and will still want to face off with Spider-Man — so I don’t see this as part of some redemption arc where he’d join the Sinister Six to sabotage them. But if/when they do cross each other’s paths, I’d see it happening on Toomes’s terms and not as part of a massive manhunt.

I Think It’s Also Becoming Increasingly Unlikely That The Sinister Six Will Be an All-Star Team

The comics have a huge advantage over cinema when it comes to team-ups because of simple math. Movie series need to summarize, in perhaps a dozen hours of run time or less, character introductions that could span literally thousands of pages of story arcs in the source comic material. Even with contract extensions, Tom Holland’s tenure as Spider-Man is going to be finite. And the fact that he has appeared in five MCU movies with minimal foundation for an ongoing rogue’s gallery doesn’t hold a lot of promise for an all-star roster for the Sinister Six.

As the original Batman movie series demonstrated, it can be tricky to feature more than one major villain in a film. In villain duos, it’s not uncommon for one to represent the brains and the other to represent the brawn — often to the detriment of the establishment of one or both characters. So the chances that Marvel Studios could slip 5 or 6 major Spider-Man villains into its next few films — while doing them any justice — seem unlikely. This is especially true when you consider that, where the Sinister Six are concerned, this would require the reintroduction of powerhouse fan-favorites Doctor Octopus and/or the Green Goblin (if the MCU chose to interpret the “Ultimate Spider-Man” version of the team).

One alternative would be to revisit an idea that Sony had been considering prior to its collaboration with Disney — and that’s to develop the roster of the Sinister Six in a stand-alone movie, an Ocean’s Eleven with super-villains as it were. This idea has a lot of merit given that it would allow the filmmakers to devote 100% of the allotted screen time to development of these rogues prior to their first encounter with the webslinger. But the same partnership that has made Spider-Man: Homecoming and Spider-Man: Far from Home possible would also create logistical issues for such an approach. For example, would this movie be an MCU movie or an MCU-adjacent Sony movie? And would any of these characters be hinted at or shown in other MCU movies first? Because otherwise, why would they have any specific rivalry with Spider-Man if most of them wouldn’t have encountered him previously?

None of the above considerations would need to be blockers, however I think that there might be a more practical — if perhaps less satisfying — way that Marvel could subvert expectations while introducing a Sinister Six into the MCU.

The Best Chance for Seeing a Sinister Six May Now Lie with a More Modern Roster

If you read a recent Marvel comic including the Sinister Six, you’re not going to see the classic roster. Several years ago, that team disbanded following the apparent death of their nominal leader Otto Octavius. And while Octavius’s demise was short-lived, it was still long enough for the moniker to be picked up by a group of B-list villains that had previously called themselves “The Sinister Syndicate.”

While the members of the Sinister Syndicate are also classic villains including the likes of Boomerang, Rhino, and the Beetle, they definitely represent a second tier of characters that might not require the same level of character development that would be expected for Doctor Octopus, Kraven or Electro. And that could offer a loophole — a cheat — that Marvel and Sony could exploit. Because no one ever said that the Sinister Six need to be the primary villains in the story where they’re introduced. They could essentially serve as shock troops in the employ of a master villain who could even join them in battle to flesh out their ranks.

This approach might not be the most satisfying for fans, but it seems like the shortest path available given the current status quo in the MCU. As it is, it seems like Marvel and Sony are currently leaning towards opposing Spider-Man with humans leveraging technology rather than super-powered individuals. So a group of technology-enabled, animal-themed mercenaries would match this aesthetic while also paying off on a concept first introduced in the now out-of-continuity Amazing Spider-Man 2. And it would give them the flexibility to continue inserting their more major villains selectively and on their own timeline.

One Thing Is Certain — The Clock Is Ticking

For my part, I really liked Far from Home. However, it did help to remind me that the clock is ultimately ticking where this incarnation of Spider-Man is concerned. Every Tom Holland movie appearance that doesn’t help to set up the Sinister Six removes a chunk of runway from any future attempt to leverage the concept. What remains to be seen is whether Marvel is doing this because they’re playing the long game — holding onto this card for Holland’s eventual swan song and a handing of the mantle to a Miles Morales Spider-Man — or if they’re simply not as invested in the group as many fans are.

Mac Gargan’s heavy hint from Homecoming’s mid-credit scene, that he’s got “friends” who’d like to demolish the wall-crawler, would seem to suggest it’s not the latter — and would also align with my belief that The Six might fall somewhere on the continuum between henchmen and minor villains when they do make their MCU debut. Given that Spider-Man will be a hunted man when we next see him, having a group of augmented mercenaries tracking him down would make a lot of sense. So I think that the simplest solution remains the most likely — even if it won’t necessarily be the most satisfying for every fan.