208: Cohen Edenfield Goes Guesto Mode

[00:00:26] It's the podcast for geniuses and the only podcast where we look at the four pillars of modern misery being, here's what they are, anime, gaming, posting, and jobs, that's what they are. I am Tom, an anime sicko.

[00:00:38] I am Joe, an anime sicko.

[00:00:41] We gotta guess, but first we gotta say patrons names. These people give us money for nothing. No, they will, not for nothing, but we do have a religion about them because they give us money.

[00:00:52] Yeah, that's true. We will give you little bonus. I'm working on a thing that the patrons are gonna get, don't worry, but mostly it's money for nothing, which just makes us all the more grateful because what the fuck, what a decision to have made. Our first patron is Scott Turner. Thank you, Scott.

[00:01:10] Thank you, Scott. Normal name, love it. Our next patron, uh, oh, we wrote for his, uh, RPG, uh, module. Do you remember that? When we wrote a bunch of funny MMO jokes?

[00:01:25] Yes, because we had to come up with a bunch of, like, NPCs. I think the, the running gag we had is, like, a bunch of glitched people from other MMOs were in the game.

[00:01:34] Yes. That made the cover of the module. It was so, I was so proud.

[00:01:38] Oh, I didn't, this is new to me. We crushed it.

[00:01:41] Yes, and this, this is Duffo, to be clear. Thank you, Duffo.

[00:01:44] Thank you, thank you. Uh, oh, shit, this next one, what's, this, this is, this is a true homie. This is Sarah McClintock.

[00:01:51] She drew a manga adaptation of a scene from the tragical history of MMOs.

[00:01:56] That is one of the most incredible things I've ever seen, uh, cause it's our shit come to life.

[00:02:02] Also, she is the producer of The Disappearances of Lydia Fontaine, which is the audio drama that I'm gonna be a lead character in.

[00:02:10] It's gonna start producing soon, uh, cause it had a really successful, what's that thing where you get money? Kickstarter.

[00:02:18] Thank you, Sarah.

[00:02:19] An IPO.

[00:02:20] IPO.

[00:02:21] Yeah, the, the show had a great IPO and, uh, thus I'm gonna get like, I'm gonna get like money to like talk words.

[00:02:27] I'm playing a college student, can you believe it?

[00:02:30] I don't, I don't know, I don't know.

[00:02:32] I wouldn't have cast me, but not my decision.

[00:02:34] And our last new patron is ActualPerson084.

[00:02:39] That's not, that's not, that's not.

[00:02:41] It's one of those names that like, kind of makes me think it's not real, you know?

[00:02:46] Yeah, my shirt that says I'm not a replicant, etc.

[00:02:51] I don't know, what, what says ActualPerson more than including your serial number?

[00:02:55] I do that all the time.

[00:02:57] I guess it's an early model, too.

[00:02:58] Because it's only three digits, so it's like a, like a robo.

[00:03:02] Like robo was an early model.

[00:03:04] Yeah, okay.

[00:03:05] Prototype.

[00:03:05] It's like one of those guys in the body socks who comes out on the Tesla stage and is like, I'm a robot.

[00:03:11] Trust me.

[00:03:12] Don't look, don't look too hard.

[00:03:13] I'm a robot.

[00:03:14] Um, those are our patrons.

[00:03:16] You can patronize us at anime sickos.

[00:03:18] Nope.

[00:03:18] Patreon.com slash anime sickos.

[00:03:20] And, uh, give us money for nothing.

[00:03:23] Because the podcast, I gotta tell you, the podcast is free.

[00:03:26] You can just listen to it whenever.

[00:03:27] It costs no money.

[00:03:28] But speaking of the podcast, we have to do it because we have a guest.

[00:03:31] They spoke briefly before.

[00:03:34] Uh, this is our first ever ghost guest.

[00:03:37] All of our guests have been human people before this.

[00:03:40] This is a ghost.

[00:03:40] At least that's what I am bled to believe from social media.

[00:03:44] It's Cohen Edinfeld.

[00:03:46] Cohen.

[00:03:46] That's right.

[00:03:47] That's right.

[00:03:48] It's me.

[00:03:48] Hello.

[00:03:48] Cohen Edinfeld.

[00:03:49] How you doing?

[00:03:51] So thrilled to be here, fellas.

[00:03:52] Uh, oh my God.

[00:03:54] You're from the internet.

[00:03:55] Like, this is fun.

[00:03:56] Uh, I will.

[00:03:57] Yeah.

[00:03:57] I will say this has occurred on the show to us before, but it's someone who's

[00:04:01] who, uh, my understanding of was only like an avatar online.

[00:04:07] Yeah.

[00:04:07] Uh, in the, in your case, a ghost, a very cute ghost, like a very, uh, one

[00:04:12] with a lot of personality.

[00:04:14] Uh, and now turns out there's like a whole person behind that little icon.

[00:04:19] And here we are.

[00:04:20] And it seems wild.

[00:04:23] Uh, and I only say this because we, we mentioned this with, uh, when he had

[00:04:27] Casey on, uh, Tom and I, like we first started working together.

[00:04:30] Like I had telecom job and early on Twitter.

[00:04:33] Like I remember like sending posts to him from you just, and it's so funny

[00:04:37] now, uh, that this is where things are.

[00:04:40] Yeah.

[00:04:40] Yeah.

[00:04:41] It's, it's, you'd think that eventually it would, it would, this would happen

[00:04:45] enough times that it would like sink in, but it's still like the people whose

[00:04:49] avatars I recognize, but haven't met in real life are like natural resources.

[00:04:53] It's like a little icon of gold on a map and civilization.

[00:04:57] It's not like a person.

[00:04:58] And then like you meet them and it's like, Whoa.

[00:05:01] Yeah.

[00:05:01] Oh.

[00:05:02] And you, and you have to picture their face like doing this just to sullen

[00:05:06] down for the, yeah.

[00:05:07] Yeah.

[00:05:08] For the folks at home, I was looking down at an imaginary phone, uh, twiddling

[00:05:12] my thumb, which was not on camera, but that's my commitment.

[00:05:15] Yeah.

[00:05:15] Uh, go, go.

[00:05:17] What's your, if people don't know if we know, but if people don't know,

[00:05:21] what's your deal?

[00:05:22] Uh, Hey, I, as you said, uh, I am, uh, I am a person who's on the internet.

[00:05:28] Uh, I mean, who is it these days, but you know, that's sort of.

[00:05:31] We're trying not to be though.

[00:05:32] Right.

[00:05:33] Collectively.

[00:05:33] Are we in agreement?

[00:05:34] Like for our, for our process and projects.

[00:05:37] Yes.

[00:05:37] But like.

[00:05:39] Philosophically.

[00:05:39] Yes.

[00:05:40] In practice.

[00:05:41] No, I gotta be there.

[00:05:42] I gotta be there.

[00:05:43] Cause, uh, I am a, I'm also a game writer.

[00:05:46] Uh, I got it.

[00:05:47] I, I, I left grad school to pursue video games.

[00:05:52] Well, I finished grad school.

[00:05:53] I left PhD program.

[00:05:54] Uh, and I, I did, I realized I could dip out with the masters, uh, and not have to do

[00:05:59] a bunch of the other stuff.

[00:06:00] Uh, and then I, uh, like a couple of days after I made that decision, I got an email asking

[00:06:05] if I wanted to write on a video game.

[00:06:07] I was like, well, all right, I'll take it.

[00:06:09] Uh, and I, I entered a famously stable and not exploitative.

[00:06:16] Industry.

[00:06:16] Yeah.

[00:06:17] Uh, the one thing I know about video game industry is that they consistently turn profits

[00:06:21] and thus jobs.

[00:06:23] Well, they do that.

[00:06:24] They do that.

[00:06:25] They do actually consistent.

[00:06:26] They make money.

[00:06:27] They just, uh, I think it's maybe it's, maybe it's different in other industries, but it's

[00:06:32] like when the project takes four, four or five years, it's easy to forget you are in

[00:06:36] a project based industry.

[00:06:38] Yes.

[00:06:39] And a lot of places.

[00:06:40] Full time job.

[00:06:41] Like it is because it is.

[00:06:42] Yeah.

[00:06:43] And then, uh, and then they're like, well, we got to start saving some money.

[00:06:46] Uh, and so they just fire a bunch of people and it works out really well for all those

[00:06:51] companies to lose all the tribal knowledge and all the, how to do everything again.

[00:06:56] That's why.

[00:06:56] And again.

[00:06:57] Yeah.

[00:06:58] That's why the companies that don't do that, like valve or Nintendo or famously failures.

[00:07:03] Yeah.

[00:07:03] Don't get me started.

[00:07:04] But, but I also have a little, I also have a little, uh, little, not going to, I'm not

[00:07:08] going to low status myself.

[00:07:10] I have a, a huge, tremendous and fantastic podcast called skull tenders that I am the

[00:07:15] DM of, uh, stop me.

[00:07:18] If you've heard this one, uh, we're playing D and D on a podcast.

[00:07:21] Uh, I don't know.

[00:07:22] Yeah.

[00:07:23] It's never been done before.

[00:07:25] I thank God, because it was a really saturated market.

[00:07:29] Uh, we'd have to, you know, it'd have to be written by like a real game writer and then

[00:07:34] have like really tight editing and like all original music.

[00:07:37] Oh wait, it's we, it is all that.

[00:07:39] And, uh, well you need to have a cast of like great performers who have, who are, who were

[00:07:44] already well known before.

[00:07:47] Oh yeah.

[00:07:47] But how could you have that?

[00:07:49] We got, uh, Amber Carr, AKA blood, berry tart.

[00:07:52] We got, uh, Jess O'Brien, who you might know as void burger.

[00:07:56] And of course we have Casey green who has the dignity to have gone by his actual name

[00:08:01] in most places.

[00:08:02] Uh, Seth Boyer does our music and we've also been having some editing help from Kodiak

[00:08:07] Sanders.

[00:08:07] And I bet if you listen to the whole episode of this episode, there might be a trailer

[00:08:11] at the end to give you a little taste.

[00:08:13] We'll see.

[00:08:15] We'll see.

[00:08:16] All right.

[00:08:17] Yay.

[00:08:18] So here's, this is me.

[00:08:20] I'm, I'm like becoming vulnerable here.

[00:08:23] I'm exposing my foibles folks.

[00:08:25] I've, what am I saying?

[00:08:26] I was talking about this a fucking billion times.

[00:08:28] Uh, previously I found it crazy hard to listen to podcasts because I would work from home.

[00:08:33] So I have no commute.

[00:08:34] And then my job is an email spreadsheet job.

[00:08:37] So even though, even when I don't have to do a lot, I have to look at text on a screen,

[00:08:42] which means I'm listening to a podcast.

[00:08:45] And then I realized it's been over for half an hour.

[00:08:47] I didn't retain any of that shit.

[00:08:49] Um, I'm so jealous of artists.

[00:08:51] They're like, what do you listen to while you work?

[00:08:53] I'm like, I write words.

[00:08:54] I can't, I can, I listen to video game music.

[00:08:57] I listened to, uh, the same Mozart song that I, every year my Spotify wrapped.

[00:09:04] The number one song is the same one.

[00:09:05] I have a playlist called, that's just called the song.

[00:09:09] Uh, it is, uh, piano sonata number 16 in C major.

[00:09:15] Uh, that's a great key.

[00:09:16] It is.

[00:09:17] And it is, uh, played by Lang Lang.

[00:09:20] And I think I am the only person because his, like, they do the thing on Spotify where they're

[00:09:24] like, there's the video of like the artist, like, thank, it's just this like guy in his

[00:09:29] apartment with, I think, I think I'm probably the reason they had, he had to make one, but

[00:09:35] he's, he seemed so excited and so touched.

[00:09:38] I was like, oh, hell yeah.

[00:09:40] Hell yeah, bro.

[00:09:40] Does it tell you like the top listener of this guy?

[00:09:42] Yeah.

[00:09:43] Cause I listened to it about three or 4,000 times a year because it's five minutes long

[00:09:47] and it's my work song.

[00:09:49] It's just on permanent loop.

[00:09:51] Yeah.

[00:09:52] It's a bop.

[00:09:52] Well, it took about two months of unemployment for me to realize, wait, I'm unemployed.

[00:09:57] That thing that distracts me is gone.

[00:09:59] So I've done the unthinkable and extended my guests the bare minimum of courtesy, something

[00:10:06] I've never done before and listened to their fucking podcast.

[00:10:10] I listened to the first three episodes of Skulltenders and I'm going to give this the big

[00:10:14] old sicko approval stamp.

[00:10:16] Boy, oh boy.

[00:10:17] It's fun to hear jokes.

[00:10:19] It's fun.

[00:10:20] We love it.

[00:10:22] Listen to it too.

[00:10:24] Yay.

[00:10:25] Thank you.

[00:10:26] That's really sweet.

[00:10:27] I really appreciate that.

[00:10:28] I forgot to do, I forgot to say what it's about.

[00:10:30] It's about the players play restless ghosts in the land of the dead who get like a day

[00:10:38] pass to go to the land of the living and hunt down ghosts and necromancers and stuff.

[00:10:44] If there are other things with this premise, I didn't see them before we started it.

[00:10:49] So I'm safe.

[00:10:50] But it's a lot of fun.

[00:10:51] Well, you invented the idea of ghosts.

[00:10:53] Yes.

[00:10:54] I do have a claim on that.

[00:10:55] That goes back to when I changed my Twitter avatar and name for Halloween in 2012 and never

[00:11:02] changed it back.

[00:11:03] And that's where it started.

[00:11:05] Cohen is a ghost.

[00:11:06] Thanks.

[00:11:07] Yeah.

[00:11:08] Thank you.

[00:11:08] I mean, the premise is the premise.

[00:11:10] We did an RPG show where the premise was like we switched to different, like the characters

[00:11:15] are in the multiverse and they go to different licensed RPGs.

[00:11:20] And play the very bad licensed games, which like we complained about.

[00:11:24] But, uh, and yeah, I was like, oh, I can't believe no one's thought of this.

[00:11:28] This is great.

[00:11:29] And then almost as soon as we did it, uh, a game designer, Riley Hopkins, also in Chicago

[00:11:33] came out with, uh, their own custom, uh, system that was actually designed well.

[00:11:39] That is just explicitly about that.

[00:11:42] Uh, but it ended up being fine because we're homies now.

[00:11:44] Riley's the best.

[00:11:46] If, uh, if you listen that, I know that feeling.

[00:11:49] If you listen to the first three episodes, then you may have heard the word veil guard

[00:11:52] thrown around a lot in the third episode.

[00:11:54] Now with that, now when we recorded that last fucking February, I was like, that is the

[00:11:59] sickest name.

[00:12:00] I am so good.

[00:12:01] And then eight months later, it's bad real estate.

[00:12:04] It's bad real estate.

[00:12:05] Surprise.

[00:12:05] We're going to drop a fairly mid RPG on this.

[00:12:09] I'm going to say something that should, that should never be said because I'm going to

[00:12:14] get hunted down.

[00:12:16] I played Dragon Age Origins when it came out and I thought, here's what I said to myself.

[00:12:21] I said, oh, that game was pretty good, but that setting had absolutely nothing interesting

[00:12:26] in it whatsoever.

[00:12:26] And I bet it will never get, uh, any big fans who are rabid for it.

[00:12:33] Uh, so when I saw people like caring about the new Dragon Age, I'm just like, what is

[00:12:38] what is going on?

[00:12:39] They don't care about the setting.

[00:12:40] You're right about the setting.

[00:12:41] It is just all about the characters.

[00:12:43] That's all.

[00:12:44] Like the setting is there to drive the characters.

[00:12:46] My guy died at the end of Dragon Age Origins.

[00:12:49] Like, like, like you could sacrifice yourself.

[00:12:51] And I was like, all right, well, I guess I don't play these games anymore.

[00:12:54] I guess my guy's dead.

[00:12:56] Cause I was thinking it was like a mass effect.

[00:12:58] It's like you, you carry, you could carry your guy forward.

[00:13:00] But I was like, I, so when the next, you know, the next one came out, they're like,

[00:13:03] you can bring your guy.

[00:13:04] I was like, I don't know.

[00:13:05] You know, I don't, he died.

[00:13:06] I don't even think that's true.

[00:13:08] I think that might've just been the DLCs, but that was enough to knock me off playing

[00:13:13] more of them.

[00:13:14] Uh, it is a, it is the setting does not, it's a, it's like, it seems like, I don't know.

[00:13:20] Bioware settings.

[00:13:21] Generic.

[00:13:21] I, I, I didn't beat all of it.

[00:13:24] I played it for a while until I sort of tapered off and the setting had a lot to do with it.

[00:13:29] It just, uh, struck me as generic fantasy.

[00:13:31] Kind of, uh, the, the, the one thing I did like is I thought the war dog stuff was cool.

[00:13:37] And it's not like unique to that, but like, I just, that was like the most interesting

[00:13:40] element.

[00:13:41] It's, it's, it was, but it also runs completely contrary to like the big selling point of the

[00:13:46] game was just your characters doing chit chat.

[00:13:48] Yeah.

[00:13:48] When you're on a mission and the dog takes up a slot and does no chit chat.

[00:13:53] Yes.

[00:13:53] Uh, yeah, it's, I love that.

[00:13:56] It's fun persona when he's got a knife in his mouth and it's like, it's our little guy,

[00:14:00] but, uh, he's not contributing to the conversation.

[00:14:03] Uh, so Cohen, I gotta, I gotta ask you.

[00:14:06] Ask away.

[00:14:07] This is a question that, uh, I know the answer to.

[00:14:10] We always tell our guests, so answer how you will, but we know how you're going to answer.

[00:14:14] Are you an anime sicko?

[00:14:17] Born in Brad, baby.

[00:14:18] Yeah.

[00:14:19] Absolutely.

[00:14:20] Come on.

[00:14:21] Come on.

[00:14:22] Anime.

[00:14:23] Absolutely.

[00:14:24] Sicko.

[00:14:25] Double.

[00:14:26] Absolutely.

[00:14:27] Pay for that with double dollars.

[00:14:28] Yeah.

[00:14:29] You have a podcast.

[00:14:30] Come on.

[00:14:30] Try good money.

[00:14:31] Try good money.

[00:14:32] So cool.

[00:14:33] I love that.

[00:14:33] They never explain it.

[00:14:34] It makes our dollars look like shit.

[00:14:38] It's well, it's like they were on the second planet, you know?

[00:14:42] So it's like, cause they're, it was like, and so earth had single dollars and it's like,

[00:14:46] how do we distinguish this?

[00:14:47] Well, this is how we're going to deal with inflation.

[00:14:49] I think it's eventually it's, you know how like stocks do the split sometimes.

[00:14:54] I don't know why they do that or if that's good or bad, but that's going to happen with

[00:14:58] dollars, but backwards.

[00:14:59] So instead of splitting, it doubles.

[00:15:01] I think that's how it goes.

[00:15:03] I've been reading recently, uh, speaking of anime or manga, I'm going to segue hard into

[00:15:08] do it, do it.

[00:15:09] So this past weekend, I read like two, about two or 300 chapters of Kaiji gambling apocalypse.

[00:15:18] Gambling.

[00:15:19] Yeah.

[00:15:19] He's the gambling guy.

[00:15:20] Uh, and it came out in like 96.

[00:15:23] And it's also like, oh, this is like the keystone for like a lot of other things I've read.

[00:15:27] It's like, oh, this is where Yu-Gi-Oh came from.

[00:15:29] This is where liar game.

[00:15:31] Another one that has like a lot of the same beats.

[00:15:33] This is like, oh, this is invented like a whole thing.

[00:15:36] This is the OG high stakes gambling thing.

[00:15:39] Like people gamble their lives.

[00:15:41] Yeah.

[00:15:41] Yeah.

[00:15:42] At first.

[00:15:43] At first.

[00:15:43] And then it, and then it, it, and then it gets to the, it gets to a point where like,

[00:15:48] they have stat, like he loses so much of his money that he is like, uh, forced into subterranean

[00:15:54] like mining labor.

[00:15:55] And he has to like gamble his way out.

[00:15:57] And at that point, just being in debt becomes life threatening.

[00:16:02] Cause they're like, they don't have to be like, and if you lose, I'll cut off your fingers.

[00:16:07] Like they would be like, well, you'll have to go work in that mine again, Kaiji.

[00:16:10] Uh, but all this to say it came out in 96.

[00:16:14] So I, I had to figure out like, Oh, I would be like, Hey, you know, Hey, Hey Siri, what

[00:16:19] is 300,000 yen in dollars?

[00:16:22] You're like three, 10, you know, whatever.

[00:16:24] It's whatever.

[00:16:24] And then I be like, no, that, that doesn't sound right.

[00:16:27] And then it's like, what was this amount of yen and dollars in 1996?

[00:16:31] And realizing that since 1996 inflation has actually just straight up doubled.

[00:16:36] You can just do it that easy.

[00:16:38] Things cost twice as much.

[00:16:39] It is that.

[00:16:40] And I'm like, shit.

[00:16:41] Yeah.

[00:16:42] I remember when going to the movies cost $10.

[00:16:44] Now it's 20.

[00:16:46] Now it is 20.

[00:16:47] That, um, huh.

[00:16:50] That's probably fine.

[00:16:51] When I was a kid, I thought it was so, I thought it was so foolish.

[00:16:54] I thought the past was like a realm of idiots.

[00:16:57] But I was like, Oh, Oh, you tell you a movie was 50 cents.

[00:17:02] Ridiculous.

[00:17:03] They had better deals in the past.

[00:17:04] That was literally my thought.

[00:17:05] Like when I was a stupid child and they were like, yes, uh, this is what 50 cents got

[00:17:11] you, uh, in groceries.

[00:17:12] And I was just like, they just had better deals back then.

[00:17:15] Yeah.

[00:17:16] There was extreme couponing on a level.

[00:17:18] We've like the institutional knowledge was lost.

[00:17:21] We don't have that dog in us anymore.

[00:17:23] Nowadays.

[00:17:23] What do you, what do the extreme couponers get?

[00:17:25] They get like the off brand of those little round juice things with the, with the foil

[00:17:29] top.

[00:17:30] They don't even get the name brand hugs.

[00:17:32] Oh God.

[00:17:33] Hugs.

[00:17:34] I was like, what the hell are you talking about?

[00:17:35] Oh yeah, man.

[00:17:36] Man.

[00:17:36] Hugs are weak.

[00:17:37] That was some weak stuff.

[00:17:38] It was that you were not at a good function when the hug, I shouldn't say, but I will,

[00:17:43] you know, it's like there was the, you could do the socioeconomic tier from like what schedule

[00:17:49] two plastic producing, uh, snack drink.

[00:17:53] It's like hugs.

[00:17:55] High C box.

[00:17:57] Okay.

[00:17:57] You're going Capri Sun way up there.

[00:18:02] I feel like Capri Sun looked like it was from the future.

[00:18:04] That was a big part of it.

[00:18:05] The, the, the commercials are very clear that if you drink Capri Sun, you're going to incredibly

[00:18:11] increase your skateboarding skills on account of you will become fucking visc skull tenders.

[00:18:16] You'll become a living goo being.

[00:18:18] Yeah.

[00:18:19] You get the Alex Mack power.

[00:18:20] Yeah.

[00:18:21] And you just miss the, you miss the, like, you know, the thing at the bottom of the screen

[00:18:24] that says it's like, this is actually how we are choosing to artistically render a

[00:18:28] lifestyle based diabetes because you're drinking like a pouch of sugar water.

[00:18:34] Did you have Mondo?

[00:18:35] I'm sorry.

[00:18:36] I'm thinking about Mondo's.

[00:18:38] Because I had Mondo, like Mondo's was one of those foods that like, I know now.

[00:18:43] Mondo cooler.

[00:18:45] Good God.

[00:18:46] Oh my God.

[00:18:47] Yes.

[00:18:47] Okay.

[00:18:48] Sorry.

[00:18:48] I had to look it up.

[00:18:49] As a kid, I thought like what mom bought at the store was like, that was like from God.

[00:18:54] Like she doesn't make choices.

[00:18:55] So like if mom doesn't buy Mondo's, it means like Mondo's just aren't around.

[00:18:59] So like when I would have a Mondo every once in a while, that was like going to the moon,

[00:19:04] dude.

[00:19:05] I couldn't believe it.

[00:19:07] You'd finish it and then you'd go back for that little, that single drop that would still

[00:19:11] be in the cap.

[00:19:13] Yes.

[00:19:13] Chewing that cap like a prospector trying to get a chunk of gold.

[00:19:17] Oh man.

[00:19:18] The other move then is to then take the cap and jam it into the top that's empty just

[00:19:25] nervously until you're bored.

[00:19:27] That's a good move too.

[00:19:28] That's the childhood version of peel in the beer bottle.

[00:19:31] Yes.

[00:19:31] Yeah.

[00:19:31] It's something to fiddle faddle around with.

[00:19:33] God damn.

[00:19:34] I hope kids still have fun ways to absolutely fucking like slam microplastics down like Mondo's

[00:19:43] give you back in the 90s.

[00:19:45] I think just holding, holding a phone that is on TikTok, it just gets absorbed into your

[00:19:50] palm.

[00:19:50] Like it just produces it like sound waves.

[00:19:53] I was looking at that the other day.

[00:19:55] Well, TikTok.

[00:19:56] I keep trying to like, cause I'm like, I got an, I should know more about this.

[00:20:00] No, I don't.

[00:20:03] I have no interest in it just because like it is, it never ends and all feeds never end.

[00:20:10] I understand that, but there's something so clearly infinite scroll about it.

[00:20:15] That feels evil that I don't want to touch.

[00:20:18] I also don't like when people are like, I don't like watching a bunch of successive front

[00:20:24] facing videos of people talking to him.

[00:20:27] It's just like not how I want to like communicate or like view things.

[00:20:30] Like I would, I would, I have autism.

[00:20:32] Yeah.

[00:20:32] Don't give me an app that produces endless eye contact with incorrect strangers.

[00:20:37] Like every worst thing you could have done.

[00:20:39] What they all should be is just like a screen grab of their desktop, even if they're not

[00:20:44] doing anything on the computer.

[00:20:45] You know what I mean?

[00:20:47] That way I can focus, but I don't like it for that reason.

[00:20:51] Yeah.

[00:20:51] And it just kind of sets off my fight or flight because it's just like all these people are

[00:20:55] just staring at you and like, they're telling you insane shit.

[00:20:58] Yeah.

[00:20:59] And the thing is like, it's the most, I don't want to say influential, but it's a cultural

[00:21:04] phenomenon, the likes of which I have trouble articulating.

[00:21:07] Uh, it's just like to say it's everything seems stupid, but like it fucking is.

[00:21:16] Did you see that James Carville quote where he says he doesn't know what it is like from

[00:21:20] a couple of days ago?

[00:21:21] And he's like, I don't know what he literally says.

[00:21:24] I don't know what tick tock is.

[00:21:26] One of my kids had to tell me what it is.

[00:21:28] And so what he is, yeah.

[00:21:30] What he's proposing is that we, what we need to do is just do a, we need to, we need to

[00:21:35] do a big study.

[00:21:36] Cause for me, he says like for me and for, I think a lot, he says, I think most people,

[00:21:43] I think most people, the news comes from, uh, like he said, he described it as like the

[00:21:49] nightly news, newspapers and the, and the web.

[00:21:54] Yeah.

[00:21:54] It's okay.

[00:21:56] So when they said, did you see that James Carville quote?

[00:21:58] My immediate thought was no, but I bet it's the stupidest thing anyone's ever said.

[00:22:02] And I was still blown away.

[00:22:04] A young man of 80.

[00:22:06] Yeah.

[00:22:06] That is an extensive articulation of, I do not understand the problem.

[00:22:12] Uh, but I'm also tasked with it, uh, to fix it, I guess.

[00:22:16] Well, he's got an idea.

[00:22:17] He's got it.

[00:22:18] He's got it.

[00:22:18] He's got a good idea from 10 years.

[00:22:20] Yo, this man, it's the thing y'all guys said a couple of 10 years, when's the best time

[00:22:24] to plant a tree?

[00:22:25] It just, I mean, just sounded like a boondoggle of like, how do we keep funneling money into

[00:22:29] the consultancy class?

[00:22:31] Uh, now, now, now we're going to put, we're going to put an entire class of consultants

[00:22:35] on a, like a performance improvement plan instead of just getting some new ones.

[00:22:40] It's like, well, we're, what we're going to do not pay the people that we give all

[00:22:44] this money to.

[00:22:44] Even if they do a bad job and, uh, make us lose, that's no reason not to continue.

[00:22:50] They work relationship with that vendor.

[00:22:52] Really hard to make all 50 states get more Republican.

[00:22:56] That is what is like so frustrating.

[00:22:58] It's like, when I do a bad job, I get yelled at by everyone.

[00:23:01] Uh, just, I get immediate feedback.

[00:23:04] Uh, and I'm unemployed right now.

[00:23:05] Like people just yell at me through the window, you know?

[00:23:08] Uh, it's just, they get to just fuck up and like, it doesn't matter.

[00:23:13] Like James Carville will be around forever because why he helped Clinton win in 92.

[00:23:20] And because of that, he is a Pope.

[00:23:23] Like, I don't know.

[00:23:25] Yeah.

[00:23:26] Got poked up.

[00:23:27] Uh, in 92, was there a guy like this who helped somebody win in 1960?

[00:23:33] Like, is that, I think this is the forever nineties problem that people say that we are

[00:23:39] in, which is just like all cultural production kind of stopped at the nineties, which is

[00:23:43] why like, it's so funny that like Donald Trump clearly doesn't like remember things that

[00:23:48] didn't happen in the night, like past the nineties, but it doesn't matter because he

[00:23:52] lives in a permanent present.

[00:23:53] That is correct.

[00:23:55] He gets rewarded for it.

[00:23:57] It's case in point.

[00:23:58] Remember that huge catastrophe?

[00:24:00] Big reward for him.

[00:24:01] Uh, I mean, to, to be fair to the evil rot that ruins our lives, the nineties chrono trigger

[00:24:09] came out in the nineties, right?

[00:24:11] Like that was a good period.

[00:24:12] It was.

[00:24:13] If you're going to be obsessed with one period of time that you, you constantly look back

[00:24:17] to, uh, and refuse to, uh, admit the truth that you're no longer in, you've got to want

[00:24:24] the one that chrono trigger came out in.

[00:24:26] Yeah.

[00:24:26] And the first mortal combat movie, which was also pretty, that's, I think that's a perfect

[00:24:30] movie.

[00:24:31] There's no fat on it.

[00:24:32] It's lean.

[00:24:32] It just gets you from A to B to C.

[00:24:34] The only part I get a little bit tired of is when he starts fighting reptile.

[00:24:38] I'm like this fight.

[00:24:39] We're because they, they needed to have a fight in out world before he fights, uh, Shang

[00:24:44] Song, but it's like, come on, man.

[00:24:46] That was the movie that had like the fight with scorpion and he's snaking his arm.

[00:24:50] Yeah.

[00:24:51] Barb.

[00:24:51] Yeah.

[00:24:51] I remember thinking between the trees.

[00:24:54] Yeah.

[00:24:54] You go to hell and you see us.

[00:24:56] Oh, it's like, this is, it's like the game.

[00:24:57] This is cool.

[00:24:58] This is the coolest thing that's ever happened.

[00:25:00] Uh, he says, get over here.

[00:25:01] Yeah.

[00:25:01] He says the thing.

[00:25:03] Yeah.

[00:25:03] Uh, that movie, I actually watched it recently was hugely influential on me.

[00:25:08] Uh, cause I used to rent it regularly as a kid, but it's like, I straight up unintentionally

[00:25:14] just like cribbed several pieces of iconography, uh, for skull tenders because it's just, that's

[00:25:20] what I think about.

[00:25:21] Yeah.

[00:25:21] This is, this is the coolest shit I could think of.

[00:25:23] Absolutely.

[00:25:24] Absolutely.

[00:25:24] I mean, I was just talking to Tom McHenry about, about the whole project we're working

[00:25:29] on and he was like, only an idiot doesn't steal from the things you think is cool.

[00:25:34] And it's like, yeah, that's like what, like what else is being alive for?

[00:25:38] I have a perfect segue actually with what just, what just said Cohen, my understanding is that

[00:25:43] you have dead with thoughts.

[00:25:44] You need to get out of your head.

[00:25:46] And the reason the connection here is, uh, the quote that is bubbling to the top of my

[00:25:51] head again and again that I did not say on the actual episode is when Al was talking about

[00:25:56] EB doing some shit.

[00:25:57] And he's just like, look, I wouldn't trust a man that wouldn't try to steal a little.

[00:26:02] I wouldn't, I wouldn't trust the man who wouldn't try to steal a little.

[00:26:05] Yeah.

[00:26:05] And, or is it side, but the point is, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

[00:26:09] because he's Barnum is saying I spent, I offered, I offered the full 20,000 for the, uh,

[00:26:15] yeah, the gold and Bullock bus.

[00:26:18] It's, it's when Bullock is getting a shave and he kind of, he's kind of doing a victory

[00:26:22] lap at, at, uh, the gym.

[00:26:24] He's having a shave and he's like, if 2000, if you know, your man was looking to skim

[00:26:29] a little cream and Al is like, sort of trying, he's like, well, I can't let this guy fucking

[00:26:35] catch me with that.

[00:26:36] He's like, oh, that's actually fine.

[00:26:38] Yeah.

[00:26:38] And then, and then later it's like, then we'll never know EB if that last 200 would have

[00:26:43] been the difference.

[00:26:44] Like it's, uh, I, I, I, it's true though, because if you like the thing I like about

[00:26:51] Al is like, there's all this character stuff and there's also just like practicality.

[00:26:54] It's just in the sense that like, if you know, someone's going to fucking try to steal,

[00:26:57] you know what they're going to do.

[00:26:58] So therefore you can include them in your schemes because they are a solved equation.

[00:27:05] Do y'all, do y'all know about the fact that it's like, I don't know if y'all talked

[00:27:09] about this.

[00:27:09] Uh, I mentioned this before, but like, I can't, I have a hard time listening to people

[00:27:14] talk about a topic that I have a lot of passionate feelings about because it's like, if anything

[00:27:21] is off that, and I know that's a bad, it drives me crazy.

[00:27:24] I know that's a me thing.

[00:27:25] So I just remove myself rather than listen to it and get, uh, weirdly frustrated, autistic

[00:27:30] as I mentioned.

[00:27:30] But, uh, they had, they did, they had to do like, they did basically like a hard pivot,

[00:27:35] David Milch, a few episodes in when after it's like, uh, like you can kind of see it.

[00:27:40] Doc Cochran in the first episode has a kind of a creepier vibe.

[00:27:43] Yes.

[00:27:44] Uh, and he, he was trying to like edit it to make him like, when he's trying to get the

[00:27:48] little girl, he's trying to get Sophie, like what he, he's doing all the running around,

[00:27:52] like trying to protect her from Al so he won't just come stab her.

[00:27:57] Uh, and like David Milch was like in the editing bay, like we got to make this guy look creepier.

[00:28:02] And, uh, the people were talking to him.

[00:28:04] They're like, why?

[00:28:05] He's a doctor.

[00:28:06] He's like, he's like risking his life to save a little girl who he doesn't know.

[00:28:10] Like, this is not, this is not the vibe.

[00:28:13] Like I get why you wanted to have a creepy doctor.

[00:28:15] And the same with, the same with, uh, Al who was originally supposed to be just straight up a villain,

[00:28:20] which is why, you know, he is introduced, uh, with his foot on Trixie's throat.

[00:28:26] You know, either way this goes, we'll only have to do it once.

[00:28:29] Yike.

[00:28:30] Uh, and threatening to murder a child, but Ian in exchange is just way too charismatic.

[00:28:35] And people were like, they, it was not coming across.

[00:28:38] And that's why powers booth moves in on like the fourth or fifth episode to be like, I'm worse.

[00:28:43] I'm worse and not fun.

[00:28:44] Like I don't have the good jokes.

[00:28:46] I say Dago, but like, that's it.

[00:28:49] He does.

[00:28:50] Well, bye.

[00:28:52] It's like, we got to get the guy people really hated from tombstone.

[00:28:55] That's the, I heard that powers booth was originally going to be Al,

[00:29:01] but he couldn't do to, uh, what do you call it?

[00:29:05] Scheduling or whatnot.

[00:29:06] Uh, and so they had to like cast Ian in exchange instead, which like, correct.

[00:29:12] Wow.

[00:29:13] Think about that.

[00:29:14] Wouldn't that have been something?

[00:29:15] I think it would have been not as good.

[00:29:17] I think it would have been not as good as show.

[00:29:19] It's a hundred percent.

[00:29:20] Oh yeah.

[00:29:21] Because casting him.

[00:29:22] But it is fun to think about.

[00:29:24] How different would, how like he couldn't have played out anything like that.

[00:29:28] He can't carry the charisma of the show that is needed.

[00:29:32] Cause it's, to Cohen's point, it is funny that like he is introduced as the villain.

[00:29:37] And the reason they can't keep up with it, it's because like,

[00:29:40] but everyone in the town knows he's got the best stories though.

[00:29:43] And they love hanging out with him.

[00:29:45] So there's just like this disconnect.

[00:29:46] So they have to pivot towards the charisma.

[00:29:50] And I don't think they could have played the character differently,

[00:29:53] but like how he is, I don't think it works as well.

[00:29:57] Well, and, and you've get it.

[00:29:58] If you get into sort of the philosophy of the show and what he represents,

[00:30:01] which is it's a show about greed and, and it's a David Nils show.

[00:30:06] So it's a show about community, which what it comes down to what he represents is,

[00:30:12] uh, he realizes in a way that powers booth doesn't, uh, powers,

[00:30:16] but Cy Tolliver doesn't that pure selfishness, pure self-interest,

[00:30:22] the highest level of that requires that you, that you, that you like contribute to a community.

[00:30:28] Yes.

[00:30:29] Which is, and it's wonderful.

[00:30:30] Like he's obviously a murder guy, but he's also like, what's the big picture here?

[00:30:34] Yes.

[00:30:34] Yes.

[00:30:34] Yes.

[00:30:35] I, I, I will be able to do the most lucrative crime in a self-determined community that is

[00:30:40] not beholden to outer power that, that sucks up all of its wealth.

[00:30:45] Yeah.

[00:30:45] Or the, and the vaccines early on.

[00:30:47] Yes.

[00:30:47] Cy Tolliver knows about the vaccine.

[00:30:49] He knows that the plague is there first.

[00:30:51] He keeps it a secret because he's like, his main worry is, oh no,

[00:30:56] people are going to find out that the plague was in my casino.

[00:30:59] Yeah.

[00:30:59] That's what Matt, that's the big threat here.

[00:31:01] And then oppose that.

[00:31:03] It's good.

[00:31:04] It's good.

[00:31:04] It's good.

[00:31:05] Cause like more and more, you know, Alma Garrett is, it's like, well,

[00:31:09] is there such a thing as a noble banker?

[00:31:11] And it's like potentially, but the world will not let it, will not let that last.

[00:31:16] Yeah.

[00:31:16] The other bankers, all the serpents will come down from Yankton.

[00:31:21] Yeah.

[00:31:22] Yankton.

[00:31:23] It's the town.

[00:31:24] It sounds like you jack off at that town.

[00:31:26] It's like, it's all jag offs and Yankton.

[00:31:29] Also that like today, the town is like three people.

[00:31:31] It's so funny that it's talked about as like this cultural fucking economic force.

[00:31:35] Yankton.

[00:31:37] It just, it did.

[00:31:38] It didn't last.

[00:31:40] Yeah.

[00:31:40] Try, try to have more famous gunslingers killed in your town.

[00:31:44] There you go.

[00:31:45] I've been watching on YouTube, like behind the scenes featurettes with David Milch.

[00:31:52] And there is footage of them writing scripts in the writer's room.

[00:31:58] And it like, I'm glad that he did it because like, obviously we get Deadwood out of it.

[00:32:04] But just the process fills me with so much like nauseating stress that I like, I'm glad someone else was doing it.

[00:32:14] Because one, they are writing the scenes for that day, like that day.

[00:32:20] So that's, that's too much pressure.

[00:32:22] I could do, you are in charge of so many people's day that way.

[00:32:25] That stresses me out.

[00:32:27] Mm-hmm.

[00:32:28] And the weight and, oh, talking about stress.

[00:32:31] Here's how he's doing the writing.

[00:32:32] There's a bunch of people in the room.

[00:32:34] One person on the computer, which is being projected on the screen.

[00:32:36] David Milch is lying down on the floor because of his ouchy back.

[00:32:40] And he is just talking Deadwood.

[00:32:43] Like, he, like, he just, he just recites the script like he's reading it.

[00:32:48] Except that he's not reading it.

[00:32:49] It's coming from his brain.

[00:32:51] And it's not like a normal reading of a script where you move on to the next line.

[00:32:55] He just says every line 20 times until, and the typist has to fucking type each version until he moves on to the next one.

[00:33:06] And there is, like, the rest of the writing staff in there just, like, every once in a while.

[00:33:12] Like, wow.

[00:33:12] Yeah, every once in a while.

[00:33:13] He's just like, what do you think about this?

[00:33:15] What do you think's, what do you think's going on here?

[00:33:17] Do you think he thinks this or that?

[00:33:19] And they're just like, I think he would think that.

[00:33:21] And he's like, yeah.

[00:33:22] Yeah, he's thinking, okay.

[00:33:23] And then he goes back into just, like, lying on the ground and talking Deadwood out.

[00:33:28] Holy shit!

[00:33:30] That makes me understand a little bit how he did, like,

[00:33:34] because he did NYPD Blue, right?

[00:33:36] That was his, like, big...

[00:33:37] Yeah, I think so.

[00:33:37] And he did that, like, entire show while addicted to heroin.

[00:33:42] With, like, a daily heroin habit.

[00:33:44] Wait, Deadwood or NYPD Blue?

[00:33:46] NYPD Blue.

[00:33:47] And then he kicked, and then that's why everything after that that he's ever done has had a major addiction plot in there.

[00:33:55] You know, there's, like, several people kicking different things in Deadwood.

[00:34:00] And it's about greed.

[00:34:00] It's about addiction to wealth.

[00:34:01] It's about, you know, what it does to you.

[00:34:04] You know?

[00:34:05] What you'll do for the color.

[00:34:06] Anything, in fact.

[00:34:08] There's no, uh...

[00:34:09] I think it was...

[00:34:10] I think it was Aristotle who was talked about who said, like, there's...

[00:34:13] Anytime you can just pull money out of the ground, something's gonna go wrong.

[00:34:18] And then it's like, you look...

[00:34:20] And then you look across, it's like, yep.

[00:34:21] It's like...

[00:34:22] Gold.

[00:34:23] Oil.

[00:34:23] Oil.

[00:34:24] Venture capital.

[00:34:26] Lithium.

[00:34:26] Like, yeah.

[00:34:27] Whatever it is, it's gonna...

[00:34:29] It's gonna...

[00:34:29] This is a pervert...

[00:34:30] This is like a giant thumb in the eye of anything that could ever be good as long as you're doing that.

[00:34:36] Because people are just gonna, you know, they're gonna squid game.

[00:34:39] They're gonna do the...

[00:34:40] Somebody's gonna do it.

[00:34:41] And then once one person does it, everybody else has permission.

[00:34:44] I mean, that was one of the things he said in an interview, which is like, the reason these people are how they are, you gotta consider that, like, what they're doing, the reason they're there and doing...

[00:34:53] You know, the reason there is a town is because they are taking.

[00:34:56] Like, they're stealing and removing from the world.

[00:34:59] It's smash and grab.

[00:35:00] I mean, all settlement stuff is, because it's...

[00:35:03] Yeah, yeah.

[00:35:03] It's what it is.

[00:35:05] But, like, you know, there are manufacturing towns that make things, but, like, Deadwood is a taking town.

[00:35:12] Nothing is being made.

[00:35:13] There already is all the gold, and they are taking it all away.

[00:35:17] And that's why no one lives in Deadwood anymore, because ain't no more gold.

[00:35:21] So, like, fuck it.

[00:35:22] Bye-bye.

[00:35:23] It's a cowboy theme park at best.

[00:35:25] It is a ghost town, so to speak.

[00:35:28] I love Deadwood.

[00:35:30] It's real good.

[00:35:31] And DS9.

[00:35:32] Same.

[00:35:32] Hits a lot of those same beats.

[00:35:34] It's the...

[00:35:35] Y'all DS9 heads?

[00:35:36] I love that shit.

[00:35:38] It's the same thing.

[00:35:39] I have not fucked with that.

[00:35:40] Oh, it's a...

[00:35:41] It's a frontier town in space.

[00:35:44] Because in the first episode, a wormhole opens up that takes them to the opposite side of...

[00:35:52] Like, there's four quadrants of the galaxy in Star Trek.

[00:35:55] I've only seen DS9.

[00:35:56] But there's, like, four quadrants, and they're like, this...

[00:35:58] You can go through this wormhole, and you will instantly be on the opposite side of the galaxy.

[00:36:03] Which takes them normally in the show, like...

[00:36:05] That would take, like, 20 or 30 years.

[00:36:08] So it's, like, this immediate, untapped, huge amount of wealth and culture and everything that springs up.

[00:36:14] It's even quark.

[00:36:14] My understanding was that it would take, like, forever.

[00:36:16] Like, it would take...

[00:36:17] So, like...

[00:36:18] Because, like, the whole thing is that, like...

[00:36:20] Like, anything could be through the wormhole.

[00:36:22] Like, untold new stuff.

[00:36:25] Fraggle Rock is on the other side.

[00:36:28] Yeah, Fraggle Rock.

[00:36:29] And so, like, now, DS9, the crappy Cardassian space station right next to this wormhole is now, like, the most important place in the world.

[00:36:38] It's Deadwood.

[00:36:39] Yeah, and it's right after they gave...

[00:36:41] It's like if right before they found the gold in Deadwood, they had given the land back to the Native Americans.

[00:36:46] And, like, brought some people in to, like, try to, like...

[00:36:48] Okay, we're gonna try to fix this.

[00:36:50] And they're like, hey, we found a bunch of gold!

[00:36:52] And it's like, ooh!

[00:36:53] We're gonna put a pause on the respect.

[00:36:55] Ooh!

[00:36:56] So, okay, you can still have it, but the U.S. government would like to post someone here to help you keep an eye on it.

[00:37:02] And it's, you know, the tension there.

[00:37:05] And it really punctures the idea of, like...

[00:37:08] You know, and this is what some people didn't like about it, and it's why they got to watch Voyager.

[00:37:11] And, you know, if you want dog food, eat dog food.

[00:37:14] But if it's...

[00:37:15] The idea of the Federation is not realistic.

[00:37:18] That's not how humans work.

[00:37:20] It's, like, purely altruistic.

[00:37:22] Nobody...

[00:37:22] We're gonna do this just...

[00:37:24] We're gonna do this just to go, man.

[00:37:26] We just gotta go see.

[00:37:27] Because our culture is...

[00:37:28] It's like, how did we get here?

[00:37:30] Because it skips over all the hard stuff.

[00:37:33] And DS9 doesn't.

[00:37:34] DS9 is like, okay, how do we actually get there?

[00:37:38] We're doing the space troubles.

[00:37:40] Yeah, yeah.

[00:37:42] Man, imagine if they had Deadwood words in DS9.

[00:37:46] That would be the show of all time.

[00:37:48] Ooh.

[00:37:49] Ooh, my God.

[00:37:51] Because there are some fucking clunkers.

[00:37:52] Are you egg-hatched?

[00:37:54] Are you...

[00:37:55] No.

[00:37:56] The thing is, in Star Trek world, someone very well could be egg-hatched.

[00:38:02] Oh, absolutely.

[00:38:03] I think Quark is...

[00:38:04] I think Quark came out of an egg, for sure.

[00:38:06] I'm pretty sure.

[00:38:07] They eat bugs.

[00:38:07] They live on a swamp planet.

[00:38:09] I don't think they're doing live births.

[00:38:11] Yeah.

[00:38:11] And Quark, same deal.

[00:38:13] Same deal.

[00:38:13] Talk about...

[00:38:13] He's Al.

[00:38:14] He's Al.

[00:38:15] He's like a villain.

[00:38:16] He shows up and he's like, I suck ass.

[00:38:17] I run the casino that sucks.

[00:38:20] Fuck you.

[00:38:21] I love crime.

[00:38:23] And then at the end, it's just like, you know, if we didn't have Quark here, fascism would

[00:38:27] have won long ago.

[00:38:29] Well, because you realize, he says, you know, it's like, you know, it's a bad deal.

[00:38:35] You can't sell...

[00:38:36] You don't make good money with fascism because nobody wants to have a good time.

[00:38:41] Nobody's having a good time.

[00:38:42] No one's buying pussy.

[00:38:44] Yeah.

[00:38:45] Price of Pussy goes through the fucking floor.

[00:38:48] Yes.

[00:38:49] You're fucking up my business downstairs.

[00:38:51] It's like episode one.

[00:38:52] I love it.

[00:38:53] You see a slide uptick in whiskey.

[00:38:56] Price of Pussy fucking plummets.

[00:38:58] There it is.

[00:38:59] God.

[00:39:00] No, the real Deadwood experience is you're lying on the ground and you say about 30 more

[00:39:06] very slight variations on that line over and over while someone struggles to type them

[00:39:11] as fast as they can.

[00:39:12] I'm now thinking about what was said earlier about how Doc Cochran was framed to be like

[00:39:17] Chucky again for some reason.

[00:39:19] Originally.

[00:39:20] Yeah.

[00:39:20] Well, if you think about the other stuff he was in around that, it's like Chucky, Wormtongue.

[00:39:26] Do you think it's just like he has the creepy guy?

[00:39:28] It's got to be creepy.

[00:39:29] Like there's a line in the first episode where they're talking about disposing of a corpse

[00:39:34] and he brings up that it's going to like get fed to Mr. Wu's pigs.

[00:39:38] But like it's said in like the most like evil.

[00:39:42] Creepy look at the camera.

[00:39:43] Yeah.

[00:39:43] It's like I have a boner right now.

[00:39:47] Of course, either way, it won't make much difference to Mr. Wu's pigs.

[00:39:50] Yeah.

[00:39:51] Yes.

[00:39:51] Yes.

[00:39:52] He has like a wormier affect that is not there later.

[00:39:55] He never smiled.

[00:39:56] It's the only time he smiles on the whole show.

[00:39:58] Like he never does that again.

[00:40:00] Well, I'm glad that didn't get taken on because I think.

[00:40:04] Doc Cochran's a great cantankerous warm hearted asshole.

[00:40:09] Oh, yeah.

[00:40:10] Civil War doctor.

[00:40:11] If that doesn't put some stink on you, if that doesn't make it hard for you to get through the day,

[00:40:16] something's wrong with you.

[00:40:18] It's like just a just a human deleter.

[00:40:21] I'm trying my best.

[00:40:22] But like, oh, every one of these fuckers is dead.

[00:40:26] A 10% clear rate.

[00:40:27] That's awesome.

[00:40:29] It's got it's got to be hard being in a profession that will later be discovered to have

[00:40:33] done more harm than good.

[00:40:35] Like before they did before they discovered antiseptics, you were like going to a doctor

[00:40:39] statistically was more likely to do you harm.

[00:40:43] Yes.

[00:40:43] Because he was going to put his shit covered hands in your gut.

[00:40:46] Yeah.

[00:40:46] Because it is.

[00:40:46] Yeah.

[00:40:48] That's it's really great on dead.

[00:40:50] When they actually show him sterilizing the tools and washing his hands anytime he has to do surgery.

[00:40:57] And he was like, I read this study that found forever.

[00:40:59] It's like, okay, sure.

[00:41:01] Yeah.

[00:41:01] All right.

[00:41:02] I'm doing this new thing.

[00:41:03] Cleaning.

[00:41:04] Like Doc is such a fastidious freak.

[00:41:06] What is he doing?

[00:41:07] I also love his Morrowind house.

[00:41:10] I don't know what else to call it.

[00:41:11] It's just like.

[00:41:12] Oh, yeah.

[00:41:13] Yeah.

[00:41:13] He's got all the sage and everything.

[00:41:15] Yeah.

[00:41:15] All the lootable materials.

[00:41:17] Yes.

[00:41:18] Yes.

[00:41:18] If you just crouch around.

[00:41:20] And press E a bunch.

[00:41:21] You can take it all.

[00:41:22] I brought you.

[00:41:23] You got any more of that nightshade, Doc?

[00:41:25] Get out of here, Johnny.

[00:41:28] Johnny.

[00:41:28] We didn't talk at all about Johnny.

[00:41:29] He's just a good idiot.

[00:41:30] Johnny is so fucking good.

[00:41:32] It's a character that really never has a moment of weight.

[00:41:35] It's just like there's an idiot that's always funny.

[00:41:36] Oh, he does at the end.

[00:41:38] Oh, yeah.

[00:41:38] Yeah.

[00:41:39] I shouldn't say that.

[00:41:40] But he's there to just be like a modifier.

[00:41:44] Like the one episode where he just loses his voice.

[00:41:47] And he's just like he's bumbling around signaling at people.

[00:41:51] Like it's just like wonderful.

[00:41:52] Like that is how you do an ensemble show.

[00:41:54] It's really good.

[00:41:55] I mean, there's the classic bit where Wu is drawing a situation.

[00:42:00] And Alice like, what are you trying to say, Wu?

[00:42:03] What is this drawing?

[00:42:04] And Johnny is just like, well, Al seems to me like he's got 100 men in Custer City ready

[00:42:10] to be recalled for war at any time.

[00:42:13] And Wu's just like, yes.

[00:42:15] And Al punches Johnny in the face.

[00:42:18] It's great because he punched.

[00:42:19] I think he's punching him that time for all of the other times that he didn't punch him

[00:42:24] when he said something stupid.

[00:42:26] It's like he's like you've gotten you've gotten away with a lot, Johnny.

[00:42:30] God, I fucking love that show.

[00:42:33] Do you guys play any video games?

[00:42:34] Oh, yes.

[00:42:35] I play a video game time to time.

[00:42:37] What's y'all playing?

[00:42:38] What's y'all cracking into?

[00:42:40] Me too.

[00:42:41] So right now I've been, as I said on the show, I love the roguelikes, the single session

[00:42:47] games.

[00:42:49] On here you have Vampire Survivors, which I want to talk about later.

[00:42:53] But very much in that same vein, I've been playing a thing called Talented.

[00:42:58] It looks like a Game Boy game.

[00:43:00] Here's the very basic pitch.

[00:43:02] Imagine a tower defense, but there's only four lanes.

[00:43:04] You're just sitting in the middle of a d-pad and guys come at you.

[00:43:07] Okay.

[00:43:08] The game is in between rounds.

[00:43:10] The talent tree is insane and a huge map.

[00:43:13] And you change the talent tree as you go around and you upgrade your guy.

[00:43:17] And the whole point of the game is to just basically make this talent tree as nutty as

[00:43:20] possible.

[00:43:21] And what I like about it is a game session is like 20 minutes long.

[00:43:25] The classes are all distinct.

[00:43:27] And the size of the game is perfect.

[00:43:30] By which I mean, sometimes you play a game that is not like expansive and you're just

[00:43:35] like, this is perfect.

[00:43:37] It has the bow on top.

[00:43:38] This is sized correctly.

[00:43:40] And that's how I feel after every session.

[00:43:42] And unlike other roguelikes, which like Vampire Survivors will have this where it's like, you

[00:43:48] know when things get so fucking complicated and there's so much shit going on, like it

[00:43:51] doesn't matter.

[00:43:53] There is some of that, but it doesn't do the thing where you just turn your brain off.

[00:43:59] Like that's the problem I have with like a certain roguelikes is like once you get to

[00:44:02] that point where it's like you can't lose or it's like very easy.

[00:44:05] I cannot play well because I can only play like a lazy idiot.

[00:44:09] This doesn't have that as much.

[00:44:11] And I really like it.

[00:44:12] And I'm just a fucking sucker for the Game Boy aesthetic.

[00:44:15] It's just, it's, it's just indie slop for that reason.

[00:44:20] But I really like it.

[00:44:21] Where are you playing it on?

[00:44:22] Where is it?

[00:44:23] PC.

[00:44:23] And I've been playing it on, the reason I have re sort of engaged with it is because

[00:44:28] they made it actually correct on the Steam Deck and it's perfect for that.

[00:44:32] And then also the other reason I kind of like these sort of games, and I've said this

[00:44:37] on previous episodes, it's like with roguelikes or games that are run based, when these games

[00:44:42] get developed, you get to see like these tweaks to the process and like really see how

[00:44:45] like one change really changes the flow of a thing.

[00:44:47] And like one of the things they change is they added like these talent nodes.

[00:44:51] It's like when you hit this, you pick a wacky modifier that just changes all the shit in

[00:44:55] the tree near you based on what you just picked.

[00:44:57] And like that was a recent choice.

[00:44:58] And it used to be you just picked what you kind of wanted to start.

[00:45:01] This is so much fucking better.

[00:45:03] This feels so much better.

[00:45:04] And I like to see that little progress.

[00:45:07] That sounds dope.

[00:45:08] Also, it seems to be like $3, which is an easy.

[00:45:10] Yes.

[00:45:10] It's not a big buy.

[00:45:12] Hell yeah.

[00:45:13] I know what you mean about vampire survivors.

[00:45:15] I had played it on the PC as like I got it in early access and I played all this stuff

[00:45:20] as it came out to the point where like Queen Sigma, like the thing that was like, this is

[00:45:24] the last thing.

[00:45:25] And I beat that and I was like, all right, you know, clap, wash my hands of this.

[00:45:28] Uh, and then I, okay.

[00:45:31] Play it on the switch cup, you know, a year and a half later, uh, cracked into it.

[00:45:35] I was like one thing I was like, oh wow.

[00:45:37] I just burned through a lot of it really fast because I already have the, in my brain, like

[00:45:42] I know how it works.

[00:45:44] Like, yeah, no, I had to re-unlock everything cause it was a new file, but it was like,

[00:45:47] I know how it works.

[00:45:48] I know the order.

[00:45:49] It's like, okay, you got to do this.

[00:45:51] And then you go, bam.

[00:45:51] This is how you start really making the money.

[00:45:54] This is how you get the, you know, you got to get these things first.

[00:45:56] I got one of the DLCs.

[00:45:58] I got the, the, like the first one that like, I don't know what else is the Japanese one.

[00:46:03] That's not the Castlevania.

[00:46:04] It's the one where they're like, we have this big mountainside and all this, like all these

[00:46:08] like yokai inspired things.

[00:46:10] And it immediately was like, I like the extra levels that they've released for free to the

[00:46:17] main game.

[00:46:17] But that was like, I, it was, the whole vibe was different.

[00:46:20] It was like a huge map that was not, not huge.

[00:46:23] It was actually a lot smaller than, cause it's not infinite.

[00:46:26] It had, it's like limited.

[00:46:28] And it was more like, oh, do you go up to the mountain?

[00:46:30] Do you go over to this place?

[00:46:31] Do you go down to the village?

[00:46:32] Everything is very fixed every time.

[00:46:34] Like a big treadmill, like the game normally feels.

[00:46:36] Yeah.

[00:46:37] Yeah.

[00:46:37] Yeah.

[00:46:37] Where the only distinctions are like you have at the compass rose points, you have the

[00:46:41] four things that you need to do to kill death.

[00:46:43] You need to pick them up.

[00:46:45] I keep, I kept, I keep getting to a place anytime I pick it up.

[00:46:49] And if it's not a thing I've never done before, it's like, it hits the thing of like, and I

[00:46:54] know you can put it on hyper mode.

[00:46:55] I know you can change it from half an hour to 15 minutes, but I don't, I never do that

[00:46:59] because that feels too frantic at the beginning, but I get to about 17, 18 minutes and I'm

[00:47:03] like, all right, well, this is on autopilot now, but I have to play it out.

[00:47:08] Cause I want, I don't know, eggs.

[00:47:11] Once you unlock everything except the really expensive stuff in a game that is only there

[00:47:16] so that you will have something to keep doing.

[00:47:19] It starts to money sinks, you know, it starts to on that same note.

[00:47:23] Talented does have the thing going forward that like monster train and Slay the Spire

[00:47:27] have, which is just ascension levels, you know, that forever sort of burn on a game.

[00:47:31] Every class has ascension levels.

[00:47:34] It just makes the game harder and harder.

[00:47:35] And you can put that in any game and you just inject so much more life into that sucker.

[00:47:41] The thing, it's just talking about like how, especially like attention levels keep a game

[00:47:46] interesting cause you never gets autopilot and fucking vampire survivors.

[00:47:49] That's why I like, obviously because it's a fucking addiction machine, I played it insanely.

[00:47:56] But the reason I was able to like make a clean break is cause I realized like you have to

[00:48:01] play for half an hour, but at 20 minutes, the game is over.

[00:48:05] Like at 20 minutes, it is very clear.

[00:48:07] Either I am winning or not.

[00:48:08] And if you don't know, you've lost.

[00:48:10] Yeah.

[00:48:11] It's, and it's also so funny cause I haven't kept up with the DLCs and the new stuff, but

[00:48:15] it's so funny that like they add the idea of adding new stuff to vampire survivors.

[00:48:21] It seems like such different colored come out of the guy.

[00:48:25] Like, what are we doing?

[00:48:26] Like you're, you're, you're dancing around the fact that the entire gameplay of the game

[00:48:31] is, is this going to be the chest that has five things in it or not?

[00:48:35] Like that is the game.

[00:48:36] The game is like, am I going to get the chest with five things in it?

[00:48:39] And like winning a run, it's not like you got to the end of the run and you lived and beat

[00:48:43] death.

[00:48:44] Winning a run is like, I got a chest with five things in it.

[00:48:47] Like that's the, that's the thing that you're pulling the slot machine lever to get.

[00:48:50] At least that was my experience.

[00:48:51] It's the best sound.

[00:48:52] Like I talk about wonderful visual and audio feedback on that five chest.

[00:48:57] You can't skip it.

[00:48:59] You can skip the first one in three, but it won't let you skip the five.

[00:49:03] They're like, this is why we're doing this.

[00:49:05] Five weapon chest is really good.

[00:49:07] If you play it enough, you get to the ability to tune your stuff so much that it becomes like

[00:49:12] I've dropped it.

[00:49:13] I picked up a Octopath since the start of this year.

[00:49:16] So it's got like laid off in November last year.

[00:49:19] And I've had some like some freelance set, I think for like from like January to June,

[00:49:23] but I was like, okay, I'm not, I'm not going to buy any video games for a while.

[00:49:26] I'm just going to play what I already have.

[00:49:28] And I turns out I had a lot.

[00:49:31] I went back and finished Alan Wake two.

[00:49:34] I had never gotten very far in Octopath Traveler one, which is another one of those.

[00:49:38] Like you can tune this to hell and back.

[00:49:40] You can go in and like, you got eight guys and they all got different jobs, but here's the

[00:49:45] thing.

[00:49:45] Each of them can equip one of the other's jobs as a sub job.

[00:49:50] So there's synergies.

[00:49:51] There's all this different shit.

[00:49:52] If the game has a job system, it gets my tism in a tizzy.

[00:49:56] Like I could just go like, like I could, like I could just think about that in my car.

[00:50:00] Yeah, exactly.

[00:50:01] It's better than like watching a movie.

[00:50:04] It is better than playing the game frequently.

[00:50:06] Yeah.

[00:50:06] To be honest, like just thinking about it.

[00:50:09] So I wrote this in our doc.

[00:50:11] I got to say it on the fucking mic is Octopath.

[00:50:16] The Octopath series.

[00:50:16] I played two because I hear like, oh, it did the narrative better.

[00:50:20] And if that's true, holy shit.

[00:50:23] Octopath one's got to have the worst narrative.

[00:50:24] It has.

[00:50:25] It is.

[00:50:26] The thing that it promises, which is is so funny because the basic thing that it promises

[00:50:31] in the first was like eight different stories.

[00:50:33] And yet they all interweave.

[00:50:35] It's like, OK, let me stop you.

[00:50:37] That is every RPG ever.

[00:50:39] Yours specifically doesn't do that because you you go to a town and it's like one of your

[00:50:44] eight characters.

[00:50:44] They're like, oh, that's right.

[00:50:45] I have a story beat here.

[00:50:47] Should I engage in it?

[00:50:48] And then all of the cut scenes, everything, they will be by themselves.

[00:50:52] Not at all acknowledging.

[00:50:53] Yes.

[00:50:54] However, you may, if you're lucky, walk into the right area with the right configuration

[00:51:01] that they wrote dialogue for every one of your characters to have a scene with that guy,

[00:51:09] with whoever you're playing in that moment, like your other three you can have will have

[00:51:13] a thing to say and like a little character thing.

[00:51:16] But you have to you have to have that character in your party and you have to go to the right

[00:51:21] location to get it to go.

[00:51:22] And if you miss it, you just miss it.

[00:51:24] They feel more sequestered from each other than any other game I've ever played to the

[00:51:28] point of like, why did they even know each other?

[00:51:30] It is almost unthinkably bad to continue on that same sort of vector, the same problem.

[00:51:35] The other thing that sucks about it is you are starting an RPG eight fucking times, which

[00:51:40] is which is an inhumane task that you shouldn't even like make prisoners do because you start

[00:51:46] completely fresh.

[00:51:47] You have a level one character who's got their tedious introduction scenes and the way they

[00:51:51] do the cut scenes where the sprite work like it's like you can't you can't just mash

[00:51:57] a to get through the thing because not only is everything voiced, it's like that's fine.

[00:52:02] But they the sprite will like move across the screen and tip their head down and then look

[00:52:07] back up and then say their line.

[00:52:08] And you can't you can't just jump them to the next thing.

[00:52:11] And so it makes it makes everything take so long.

[00:52:15] And every fight when you start an RPG is you hit attack and then you have like another command

[00:52:21] that you do maybe, you know, and it's going to because it's a tutorial eight times doing

[00:52:27] a tutorial eight times sucks.

[00:52:29] And it's they teach you the week.

[00:52:30] The what it's like, well, you're everything you're going to fight has a weakness to your

[00:52:33] guys.

[00:52:33] One attack.

[00:52:34] Yeah, because we're teaching you the weakness system eight times in a row.

[00:52:37] Once you get past that, it is kind of off to the races, I will say.

[00:52:41] But that's 10 hours minimum.

[00:52:44] Yeah, this is this is why this game so infuriates me like a bad or mid game.

[00:52:50] Who cares?

[00:52:50] I don't give a shit about that.

[00:52:51] The thing that makes this go makes me go absolutely nuts when I think about Octopath Traveler is

[00:52:57] Square Enix is just saying like, hey, you might have thought that we like forgot how to do

[00:53:04] a really interesting and rich turn based system that's like it's and it's not just like Dragon

[00:53:10] Quest where you just pick the it's like there's this one's not Dragon Quest.

[00:53:15] This one's different.

[00:53:16] Every one of your characters has a different thing that only they can do.

[00:53:19] But there's like there's another person.

[00:53:22] One of you can do it.

[00:53:23] But there's like a good or evil version of it.

[00:53:25] And in execution, it's just like you need to get this object from this guy.

[00:53:32] We'll use the guy whose ability is to ask nicely and get everything he asks.

[00:53:36] Or will you use the guy whose ability is to fucking sneak up behind people and choke them

[00:53:42] out and then scream a bunch and everyone attacks you.

[00:53:45] It's like, well, I'm going to just ask.

[00:53:46] Oh, I use it.

[00:53:47] I started with the thief.

[00:53:48] I started with the thief.

[00:53:49] That makes the game a lot easier, too, because you just steal everything from everyone you

[00:53:53] encounter because your level is way higher than the rest.

[00:53:56] You can't have a balanced party because you can't swap out your starter until you finish

[00:54:00] their quest all the way all four beats, which is like you're in the end game.

[00:54:05] So one of your guys is going to be 20, 30 levels higher than the rest, no matter how evenly

[00:54:09] you're doing.

[00:54:10] So you go get to go shopping in every new town for free.

[00:54:13] Yeah.

[00:54:14] Yeah.

[00:54:14] You just steal.

[00:54:15] I just steal everything from everyone because his success rate is tied to his level.

[00:54:19] Which means you just take everything.

[00:54:21] It really trivializes a lot of the stuff, which is fine.

[00:54:24] The point I was making, though, is that you'd think like, you know, it's been so long since

[00:54:30] Square Enix has put out a turn-based RPG, a classic turn-based RPG with a unique and innovative

[00:54:36] and interesting turn-based battle system.

[00:54:40] And it's probably because all the people who know how to do it have left.

[00:54:44] Well, it turns out, no, we still have the touch.

[00:54:48] We never lost it.

[00:54:49] In fact, we've only gotten better.

[00:54:50] This is to prove to you we don't want to do it.

[00:54:53] The only place you can ever experience it is in a game with writing so apocalyptically bad,

[00:55:01] it's going to make you go insane to sit through.

[00:55:05] It sucks so bad.

[00:55:07] The first time I played it, I started as the dancer.

[00:55:09] I was like, oh, this will be fun.

[00:55:11] And her story is pitch fucking black.

[00:55:13] Her father was murdered.

[00:55:15] And so she sold herself into sex slavery, hoping because it's like, well, in this harem,

[00:55:19] I'll be able to hear information.

[00:55:22] She was there for like 15 years before that pays off.

[00:55:25] And it's like, this is such a bummer.

[00:55:27] Everybody else like that.

[00:55:28] That's part of why I put it down when I played it the first time, like five or six years ago.

[00:55:33] I was like, this is a fucking drag.

[00:55:34] I wish I hadn't spent 60 bucks on this.

[00:55:36] They really overcorrected him, too, because the dancer story in two is the most boringest show on earth,

[00:55:41] which is like, I want to be the greatest dancer.

[00:55:44] I'm going to go to a bunch of different towns.

[00:55:46] I'm going to go to a bunch of different towns and dance for them and become famous.

[00:55:50] But the most famous dancer does not want there to be another famous dancer.

[00:55:55] So she's like, that other dancer is no good.

[00:56:00] And you got to convince the people that you're actually are.

[00:56:03] You're actually pretty good at dancing.

[00:56:05] And you're thinking like, no, when's the twist?

[00:56:07] There isn't one.

[00:56:08] That's the whole story.

[00:56:10] I'm in everybody's like chapter four stuff.

[00:56:12] And I'm like, OK, these are the this is the end of their stories.

[00:56:15] Are they going to like I had this idea of I had that they were going to start connecting to each other.

[00:56:19] No, it's like, oh, I'm going to find out that this.

[00:56:22] Oh, her missing dad is actually this guy in the part.

[00:56:24] That'd be cool.

[00:56:25] You should you should write that game.

[00:56:27] It sounds a lot better.

[00:56:28] It's harder.

[00:56:29] It's harder for sure.

[00:56:31] It just feels like there's a bunch like it literally feels like everyone is like in a salad and not like like mixed in story wise.

[00:56:38] Like everyone is just like channel surfing.

[00:56:39] Yes.

[00:56:40] It feels like.

[00:56:40] Yes.

[00:56:41] Yes.

[00:56:41] It feels like or if the only way to read back read manga is that you had to read all of Shonen Jump volume by volume.

[00:56:48] Yes.

[00:56:49] Fuck.

[00:56:50] Yes.

[00:56:50] All right.

[00:56:51] You want to find out what happens in one piece?

[00:56:52] You're going to have to read Ruri the dragon.

[00:56:55] Man.

[00:56:56] Pedophile bait.

[00:56:57] Great.

[00:56:59] I shouldn't.

[00:56:59] I shouldn't spend too much time on this because I did spend a lot of time on this in a previous episode.

[00:57:04] But again, one of the most insane plot points I've ever seen in a video game in Octopath 2.

[00:57:10] There's the thief and her deal is that she's from the thief's guild and she's been in the thief's guild.

[00:57:16] They're all orphans who are in.

[00:57:17] It's like your family.

[00:57:18] You know, the bosses are mother and father.

[00:57:21] So it's like your family.

[00:57:23] And she wants to get out.

[00:57:25] But it's hard.

[00:57:25] You can't get.

[00:57:26] It's like a gang.

[00:57:27] You can't get out.

[00:57:28] She has to kill mother and father so that she can undo the thief's guild.

[00:57:32] And you're like, okay, this is a very boilerplate story.

[00:57:37] And everyone's sort of like generic fantasy.

[00:57:39] You know, like there's magic.

[00:57:41] But like it's just like normal.

[00:57:42] You know, magic is magic.

[00:57:43] But like everything is pretty grounded.

[00:57:45] In only the thief's story, there is a reveal that actually there's a ghost town that's like a fucking Skulltender's building that was destroyed but still is around because of the memory.

[00:58:01] And in the ghost town lives an immortal cum man.

[00:58:05] And every single person in the thieves' guild is his offspring.

[00:58:11] He has been throughout history coming and jizzing and blasting.

[00:58:15] And every single person in the thieves' guild is your blood sibling.

[00:58:20] Because they're all.

[00:58:21] How does the thieves' guild get people?

[00:58:23] Well, if he blasts a rope and it finds purchase, that child will be in the thieves' guild.

[00:58:30] Because he's the real leader.

[00:58:31] And it's just like, I'm sorry, an immortal cum man?

[00:58:34] The thief does not tell the rest of the group about this man.

[00:58:37] No.

[00:58:38] Because in the exact same way.

[00:58:40] That's irresponsible.

[00:58:41] It's irresponsible to not tell a bunch of people who live closely together that they're related.

[00:58:47] You should get, you should, there should be a big sign on the wall of every room of that building that says, hey!

[00:58:53] Hey!

[00:58:55] No.

[00:58:56] You're all half-siblings.

[00:58:59] It is, again, I think the most upsetting plot development in any game.

[00:59:04] And of course, in classic Agnopath fashion, is written like a high schooler did it.

[00:59:10] In an extremely facile and lame way.

[00:59:14] The one with the scholar in the first game is like, oh, this guy gets falsely accused of assault.

[00:59:22] And it's played fully for jokes.

[00:59:25] And they're like, well, he kind of, he kind of shouldn't have been so nice to his student if he didn't want his other student getting jealous.

[00:59:33] And like saying, like, I think this guy's trying to fuck the princess.

[00:59:37] And like, potentially getting him killed.

[00:59:39] And it's like, oh, when will, men sure do have to be careful around women.

[00:59:44] It's like one of those things where it's like, stuff bleeds over from another culture in a way that like, oh, this is, oh, I didn't even know we were different, this different in this way.

[00:59:53] In this particular way.

[00:59:54] It's like, oh, oh, yeah, golden week.

[00:59:58] No, we don't have that.

[00:59:59] Like, it's one of those.

[01:00:00] We have to go to work.

[01:00:01] All this, all this is true.

[01:00:03] It sucks.

[01:00:04] But also, the late game Octopath battles where you have like the fully kitted out eight guys with their special sub jobs and all their special equipment.

[01:00:14] Secret jobs.

[01:00:15] And the secret bosses.

[01:00:17] Oh, my God.

[01:00:18] Fuck.

[01:00:18] Yeah.

[01:00:18] And like, you're using the boost system and the special move.

[01:00:22] And then, of course, the late game bosses have gimmicks that like, frustrate and complicate.

[01:00:27] It's like, oh, this is actually, this is the best game in the world.

[01:00:31] Yeah, it rules.

[01:00:31] That's where I'm at.

[01:00:32] That's where I'm at in it.

[01:00:33] Crunchy, mechanically speaking, slam dunk.

[01:00:36] Do not read the words.

[01:00:38] If you want to just skip, straight up skip the cut scenes, there is a little thing like in the journal.

[01:00:44] It will tell you the big, the points that were covered.

[01:00:46] Because you can go back and watch them again if you're a masochist.

[01:00:50] But it also is like, blah, blah, blah.

[01:00:52] And discovered this and now needs to do this.

[01:00:54] Like, oh, okay.

[01:00:55] If I weren't a masochist.

[01:00:57] Yeah.

[01:00:57] No, like I want to see it.

[01:00:58] Like, I want to see it throughout.

[01:00:59] It's like, I am a game writer.

[01:01:00] I feel compelled to like, you want to see all of that to judge it.

[01:01:04] I get it.

[01:01:06] I've done all of their, I've done three quarters of all of them.

[01:01:09] I kind of, I dipped out for a little bit because I had to play something else for a thing I'm planning for.

[01:01:17] I had to like, dig in on a different.

[01:01:19] Yeah, yeah.

[01:01:20] But it's, you know, video games, man.

[01:01:23] Video games.

[01:01:25] How y'all feeling about politics?

[01:01:27] Feeling good?

[01:01:28] Oh, yeah.

[01:01:28] No.

[01:01:30] I love bringing a life into this thresher.

[01:01:34] Yeah, the thing about politics is I'm like, the chances that I'm going to live to see the end of human civilization, I don't think it's high.

[01:01:49] It's not zero.

[01:01:50] It's not zero.

[01:01:51] Higher than it used to be.

[01:01:53] Higher every day, baby.

[01:01:54] It's weird because like, usually Republican presidents wait until they're in office to fuck up the economy.

[01:01:59] But he's like, he's coming to New Game Plus.

[01:02:02] Like, yeah, I'm going to do all this tariff shit.

[01:02:04] The tariff stuff, I mean, if just taken at face value and we just say that this will happen the way he says it is with, I mean, it's pretty clear that like, they've never thought about this because it's just like a flat, like there's no decimals on anything.

[01:02:18] You know, it's just like 10%, whatever.

[01:02:20] Whatever.

[01:02:21] That's the kind of thing that just like, I'm not exaggerating.

[01:02:25] I'm not an economist, but that's the thing that turns off the economy.

[01:02:28] Where do vegetables come from?

[01:02:30] Not here.

[01:02:31] We make them here, but they don't get eaten here.

[01:02:34] Everything comes from Mexico.

[01:02:36] Yeah, yeah.

[01:02:37] And Canada.

[01:02:38] It's like trade war with Canada and Mexico.

[01:02:40] Not just two of your biggest allies, but the two people next to you.

[01:02:43] And all that being said, if I can selfishly insert myself into this now, it makes the idea of searching for like work when like, is this going to happen?

[01:02:54] Very funny because it's just like, that's the type of decision that like does not just impact the direct industries.

[01:03:01] That's fucking everything.

[01:03:02] I mean, like it really, like we would Brexit ourselves.

[01:03:05] We wouldn't be leaving anything, but it would be like the same sort of like own goal.

[01:03:09] Yeah, it's just like I'm going to companies being like, hello, can you please pay me money?

[01:03:15] And it's like, sorry, money's off.

[01:03:17] Like money got set to false in the code.

[01:03:20] And money is not even talking, like we're talking strictly about like material circumstances.

[01:03:24] There's also like the hate element.

[01:03:26] It's just like I'm just been obviously very, I just think about getting a job all the time.

[01:03:30] Getting a job and then like the Great Depression 2 happening immediately.

[01:03:34] And it would of course be very funny.

[01:03:37] Like it would be deserved.

[01:03:39] I deserved it, sure.

[01:03:40] Yes, yes.

[01:03:41] And in fact, I probably caused it by getting a job.

[01:03:44] It's like, that's the same way that we caused Trump to win by having our fun launch.

[01:03:48] A wonderful show the day before.

[01:03:50] The day before Skulltenders launched, I got laid off from my job.

[01:03:56] I used to, I was the lead writer on Disney Heroes Battle Mode.

[01:04:01] It was, yeah, it was, it was a really funny and kind of fun job where I would just, it was a hero battler.

[01:04:08] It was a, it was a classic, your classic.

[01:04:11] Everyone, every new one that comes out is the most powerful because that's how they get you to do the freemium stuff.

[01:04:16] And it, it was like, okay.

[01:04:21] And it's like, I joined when the game had been going for like four years.

[01:04:25] So it was starting to get into, it was getting into the weird stuff.

[01:04:29] It was getting into like, all right, we already have like Hercules and Mr. Incredible.

[01:04:35] But how about American Dragon Jake Long?

[01:04:37] I was going to say, did they have the cantankerous old man from Fox and the Hound who says next time I won't miss?

[01:04:45] Because they, my favorite one, there, it was, we would get notes that were specifically stuff not to reference or from Disney.

[01:04:53] Like, okay, none of the, none of the VHS sequels.

[01:04:56] But then it would be stuff like, no Atlantis, the Lost Empire, even though that character, we gave you the character.

[01:05:02] And it's like, it would always be fun of like trying to figure out why.

[01:05:05] Yeah, like what's the baggage here from a lawyer perspective?

[01:05:08] Yeah, and it's like looking at it, it's like, oh, maybe this is because like Doja Cat or somebody cosplayed her for Halloween.

[01:05:14] Halloween cosplayed, dressed up as her for Halloween or something.

[01:05:17] It was like, my favorite one I wrote was, I guess, we added Statler and Waldorf because we got the Muppets.

[01:05:23] Oh, fuck!

[01:05:23] Yeah, that was great.

[01:05:26] Yes.

[01:05:26] So they'd be added and you would have to, okay, they have a friendship quest with two existing heroes.

[01:05:31] So I get to pick two of the others and it'd be like, okay, what do they have in common?

[01:05:35] What is their thing going to be?

[01:05:37] You know, what is that, what is that going to be like?

[01:05:38] One of the hardest ones, it was Pegasus and the cop horse from Tangled.

[01:05:45] Neither of whom could talk.

[01:05:47] Because I was like, we're adding Pegasus.

[01:05:50] I was like, I got this.

[01:05:51] I'll do the other horse who can't talk.

[01:05:53] And I sat down to write.

[01:05:54] I was like, oh, fuck.

[01:05:55] It was like, what have I done?

[01:05:58] This is going to be a lot conveyed through asterisks.

[01:06:01] But my favorite was I got to do Statler and Waldorf and they were hanging out with Carl from Up, who was starting to get nervous about dying.

[01:06:14] And all these different Disney villains are trying to get him to sell his soul.

[01:06:20] Or they're promising.

[01:06:22] It's like Hades and the big Davy Jones and the Dr. Facilier.

[01:06:28] And it was just Statler and Waldorf roasting those guys in the middle of their pitch.

[01:06:34] So that Carl's like, hey, yeah, you're right.

[01:06:35] Get out of here.

[01:06:36] Get them with his cane.

[01:06:38] I know you said Carl from Up, but I keep picturing Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, which is incredible.

[01:06:44] You want to get out of here and all that fish on your face.

[01:06:49] Salad.

[01:06:50] You got to write for Salad.

[01:06:51] I did.

[01:06:52] And the other one I did.

[01:06:53] They were teamed up with Fozzie.

[01:06:55] But that was just so he could emcee a thing where a bunch of other characters came in and did a thing for a show.

[01:07:01] And they got to roast them.

[01:07:02] It was fun.

[01:07:03] It was fun.

[01:07:04] But yeah, day before.

[01:07:05] Day before the podcast dropped.

[01:07:08] We'd been working on it for most of the year.

[01:07:11] I'm on the toilet.

[01:07:12] I get a text from a buddy of mine.

[01:07:16] He's like, hey, man, check it out.

[01:07:17] They're making a Dune Lego.

[01:07:20] I was like, oh, sick.

[01:07:21] I wonder if I'm going to be able to afford that.

[01:07:23] Hey, why am I getting an unannounced Zoom call request from my manager, HR, and the project lead?

[01:07:33] Son of a bitch.

[01:07:35] To tell you you're doing a great job.

[01:07:38] Yeah.

[01:07:38] Yeah.

[01:07:39] And we were right.

[01:07:41] That last round of layoffs we had to do, it means we won't ever have to do them again.

[01:07:44] That's why we did them.

[01:07:45] That was the truth.

[01:07:46] This is a small thing.

[01:07:48] This is just a fun fact.

[01:07:49] So the company I got laid off from prior to the layoff was having a lot of difficulty making payroll.

[01:07:56] Payroll was like a couple of days late, like three days late, four days late, two pay periods in a row.

[01:08:02] Don't like that?

[01:08:03] That's the big...

[01:08:05] You cannot do that.

[01:08:07] Do you smell burning toast?

[01:08:09] Like, that's what that is for a company.

[01:08:10] You think that's bad.

[01:08:12] So my severance payments, of which they are required to give me four, are tied to payroll.

[01:08:19] So I get paid when the people still employed get paid.

[01:08:22] My third severance payment was 26 days late.

[01:08:29] Dude, they're selling the furniture in there.

[01:08:30] I do not think this company could possibly continue.

[01:08:34] Anyway, that's all I wanted to say.

[01:08:35] So here's the thing about politics is that in the U.S., it's going to be illegal to be a doctor.

[01:08:41] It's going to be required that doctors say that the only medicine that you're allowed to take is conspiracy poison.

[01:08:48] And if anyone mentions real medicine, you're required to say that shit makes you gay.

[01:08:55] It doesn't cure anything.

[01:08:56] So that's going to be really fun for us when that happens.

[01:09:01] Yeah, I mean, we're in this stage right now where it's clear that the goal is to remove all of the federal regulatory agency in every capacity.

[01:09:08] And the states that want to live in a society where those services function will spin up their own thing.

[01:09:14] But we're just sitting around waiting to think, how bad is it going to be?

[01:09:18] It's going to be so bad in Mississippi.

[01:09:20] I know that.

[01:09:21] It's going to be so bad.

[01:09:23] Because I grew up in the South.

[01:09:24] I grew up in Georgia, which is like, yeah, but it's like the fucking, it's the Washington, you know, not Washington.

[01:09:32] It's the New York of the South.

[01:09:34] Yes.

[01:09:34] It's like, it has, especially because it's become like the little Hollywood.

[01:09:40] It's become the Vancouver of like, so much stuff is shot in Georgia because huge tax breaks.

[01:09:47] Weather is reasonable.

[01:09:49] Yeah.

[01:09:50] And it's not a union state.

[01:09:52] So you can pay people less.

[01:09:56] It's SAG stuff.

[01:09:58] It's just, but like, there's so many places that are just like, have been in the red to like, for those services.

[01:10:05] And the people who are going to eat shit are people who, you know, it's like, ah, these, these red state idiots.

[01:10:11] They shouldn't have voted for it.

[01:10:12] It's like, well, a lot of them didn't.

[01:10:13] And even the ones who did, it still should, bad things shouldn't happen to them.

[01:10:16] I can't stand, like, obviously, uh, I don't like people that voted for this.

[01:10:23] Uh, but to just be like, oh yeah, the state, because of the electoral college system is doomed to like my scorn forever.

[01:10:32] And it's like the biggest voting group is non-voters.

[01:10:36] So, uh, if you're using that logic, you're not even punishing the, it's stupid to think like that, but even by your own stupid, like they deserve it.

[01:10:45] It doesn't pan out.

[01:10:47] The thing that's driving me nuts about this is obviously we're all in blue sky, blue sky better than Twitter now.

[01:10:54] But, uh, blue sky has been lately getting way worse because a lot of the resistance libs are getting on there.

[01:11:00] And one of the things that resistance live people love to say is like, I hope that he does all these things.

[01:11:06] I hope he does everything he says.

[01:11:08] And it, it burns the country down just like we all think because it'll show those people who voted for, I want those people who voted for him to hurt.

[01:11:15] And it's like, motherfucker, fire doesn't only burn evil people.

[01:11:20] Like, I'm, like, I'm here too.

[01:11:23] Like, are you, like, and not even me.

[01:11:26] Like, what about you, you dumb fuck?

[01:11:28] Like, do you want your life to get worse to spite people?

[01:11:33] A fundamental aspect of Americanism and Americans, I really think this, is that we just don't believe we die.

[01:11:40] Uh, I don't know how else to explain it.

[01:11:42] Yes.

[01:11:43] Uh, it's just, like, risk is a thing for other people.

[01:11:47] That's why we have the cars we do.

[01:11:49] The, that, that shit about, like, I hope they, you know, I hope it happens and I hope they, I hope they know they deserved it.

[01:11:56] It's such an evangelical Christian perspective.

[01:11:59] It is such a, it reminds me of, uh, I did, uh, when I was, when I was in, when I was in grad school, I did a lot of reading of consent.

[01:12:06] I was like Southern lit was my thing, like Flannery O'Connor.

[01:12:10] But I, I also got, yeah, yeah, she rules.

[01:12:12] Uh, I also got into like the 19th, like 1950s Cold War psychology.

[01:12:17] Like what, what was this doing to people and how are people reacting to it?

[01:12:20] And what you saw a lot of was like a huge surge in, uh, revelations, revelation, the, uh, what is it called?

[01:12:27] The thing when it happens, the rapture, like rapture and tribulation, all that just like detailed descriptions because it's like, of like what would happen?

[01:12:36] Like what would be happening to the people left behind and like how they were going to suffer.

[01:12:40] And like how, how much of that was the driving thing was this spite towards like everything is going to burn.

[01:12:49] I'll be safe in heaven and they'll know that they deserved it.

[01:12:52] They will, they will have time to repent, but they won't get to.

[01:12:56] They'll know they were wrong and they'll still have to suffer.

[01:12:58] And it's such a, like, it's such a spiteful, childish idea of how anything should focus.

[01:13:05] We should, that's how fucking Cy Tolliver thinks he can't see past the reach of his own arms.

[01:13:11] Yeah.

[01:13:11] Yeah.

[01:13:11] It's pure, it's pure spite.

[01:13:13] It's pure.

[01:13:14] I hope things get worse.

[01:13:16] So people I don't like aren't happy.

[01:13:19] Not, I hope things get better so that I can be happy or, or strangers can be happy.

[01:13:24] It's take the, take the evil of that rapture shit and remove the part where the good people get raptured away.

[01:13:31] And it's like, now that's just fucking, that's way worse.

[01:13:35] But it comes down to the same thing, right?

[01:13:37] Cause it comes down to, and it's the people who like, whose main thing that they're excited about with Trump getting elected is how they're making AI videos of the triggered libs.

[01:13:46] It's like, oh, this is all, it's like, they're mad that people left Twitter cause they want to, they want to kick them.

[01:13:52] Yeah.

[01:13:52] Yeah.

[01:13:52] It's a, the other thing that has spawned out of this, which is so stupid is this op-ed sort of push about echo chambers, which is so stupid.

[01:14:02] Uh, because blue sky is getting users.

[01:14:06] The idea is like, oh, you, you can't be in your echo chamber.

[01:14:10] And to say that you have to assume that the reason you look at a feed is because you're trying to like learn something.

[01:14:17] No, people want to look at pixel art.

[01:14:19] You fucking moron.

[01:14:20] It's, it's like, it's, it's not, you are instilling this brainless activity with like this civic thing.

[01:14:29] And it, it, it, it's obviously not real cause it wasn't happening on Twitter, but it's just like this, like, it's like Santa is real on the internet type belief.

[01:14:38] It's just stupid.

[01:14:39] It makes, it makes posting into praxis, right?

[01:14:42] It's like, I'm here to, I'm here to be, oh, I'm here to engage in the battlefield of ideas and the town square.

[01:14:48] No, you're not.

[01:14:49] You're here to retweet things that you're here to retweet things you like and you're here to get into fights if that's what you're here for.

[01:14:54] Yeah.

[01:14:55] I want to see a picture of, uh, fucking Tara, final fantasy six and the blue haired Gohan from, uh, dragon quest six being friends.

[01:15:04] Yeah.

[01:15:04] Yeah.

[01:15:05] I, I, it's, it's people, you have another big thing that people come in blue sky.

[01:15:09] That there's this thread of people, not thread there.

[01:15:12] I didn't mean thread in the literal sense.

[01:15:14] I mean like a through line of resurgence of people say like, Hey, you've got a, and this is, this sounds follower, high follower privilege, whatever.

[01:15:23] This is one thing I can do.

[01:15:25] Uh, I, they're like, why are you only following 200 accounts?

[01:15:28] If you've got all these followers is like, cause I, that's the number of people I've seen who I either remember or want to regularly see more of.

[01:15:37] I, what do you want from me?

[01:15:39] It's also cause like, cause I want the site to be usable.

[01:15:43] Oh my God.

[01:15:44] Uh, the flip side of that though is I've spoken about this on the sickos account on blue sky a bit, but, uh, we're actually experiencing kind of a renaissance of our social media, uh, presence.

[01:15:58] We've never been great at it, but the sicko show account is really going gangbusters because I'm getting a lot of follows, uh, from people who are following 60,000 accounts.

[01:16:09] And so, you know, what you're saying, you know, only following 200, that's legit, but you have to consider that the people who follow 60,000 accounts, they're like Malcolm Gladwell, 10,000 hours.

[01:16:21] They're masters of following.

[01:16:22] So if they choose to follow us, a master of following has picked anime sickos podcast out of all the shows to follow.

[01:16:32] And I think this is what this means is that we're about to become, uh, 10 times more popular in comedy bang, bang.

[01:16:39] And also 10 times better.

[01:16:41] Uh, yeah, that's, I think you already are.

[01:16:43] I think you're, I think don't, don't, don't, don't go so low.

[01:16:46] It is wild how all of a sudden we've had a similar thing on skull tenders because I've had people reply.

[01:16:51] I've been like, Oh, I didn't know you were doing this.

[01:16:53] And it's like, this is all I've talked about on Twitter for a year and a half, but you don't get to control how you get out there.

[01:16:58] So they haven't seen it, but all of a sudden it's just a raw, a raw algorithm, free feed of people.

[01:17:05] They follow and they see their stuff.

[01:17:07] Uh, and that's been a good feeling.

[01:17:09] Siggle mode.

[01:17:10] Siggle mode.

[01:17:10] Siggle mode.

[01:17:11] Siggle mode.

[01:17:12] Siggle mode.

[01:17:13] Siggle mode.

[01:17:14] Siggle mode.

[01:17:14] Siggle mode.

[01:17:15] Siggle mode.

[01:17:16] Siggle mode.

[01:17:17] Siggle mode.

[01:17:17] Cohen.

[01:17:17] I wanted to take some time to specifically discuss skull tenders, RPG podcasts and DMing them.

[01:17:25] Uh, because some listeners might not know because this shit concluded years ago.

[01:17:31] Uh, but Joe and I, we, we did with, uh, Gwen and Ali, who you may recognize from acting in our fucking audio dramas.

[01:17:39] We did an RPG podcast for Uncle Shovel Quest and man, oh man, that's just so fucking hard.

[01:17:45] Like it's the hardest thing on like GMing a game period.

[01:17:50] It's like the hardest thing on earth.

[01:17:52] And then the, the, the, every, everyone who's done one of these podcasts knows like, oh my God, I have to both make a game that's fun for the players.

[01:18:02] And also is listenable.

[01:18:05] Yeah.

[01:18:06] Even the best designed game will still probably involve looking at dice and kind of counting, which is just, oh yeah.

[01:18:16] Oh yeah.

[01:18:16] To me, unlistenable.

[01:18:18] Uh, so it's, you, you have to make the sort of like editorial choice.

[01:18:22] Do we like, just like cut it out?

[01:18:23] It's just the result, which is fine.

[01:18:24] But this is the thing that blows my mind.

[01:18:26] It's like some people like that.

[01:18:28] They, they enjoy that.

[01:18:29] They get the sense that they're at the table.

[01:18:31] I do not, uh, agree.

[01:18:35] Well, it's a, it's a trick.

[01:18:36] It's a trick.

[01:18:37] And the trick is to leave in enough.

[01:18:40] Yeah.

[01:18:41] That it feels like you're at the table, but what you feel like is that you are at the best of all possible tables.

[01:18:47] You're at a table that has, that cuts out the rule lookups.

[01:18:52] You're at a table that cuts out pauses, long pauses of people like doing the math unless it's funny.

[01:18:57] Jess, our editor, Cody X centers has recently joined us to do some more.

[01:19:01] Jess O'Brien is sort of like the, the main brain behind that in terms of like, we'll record an episode and I'll just, I'll talk more about the planning a little bit, but just for this, we'll record an episode.

[01:19:13] We'll have the raw, which will usually come out to about two and a half hours.

[01:19:18] Uh, and then Jess will go in and cut and cut and cut.

[01:19:23] It's like, okay, this wasn't relevant.

[01:19:25] We'll make a doc.

[01:19:26] That's like, here's what all the cuts are going to be.

[01:19:28] Here's my plans for all the cuts.

[01:19:30] Here's things that need to be a rerecorded pickup because somebody bumped the mic because they were gesticulating.

[01:19:37] They mumbled, they might want to take another pass on something.

[01:19:40] And, but that has to sort of like, that has to go into a doc because sometimes I'm also like telling a story.

[01:19:45] Yeah.

[01:19:46] That, and I have like plans for stuff and like, I see things and those might not, you know, something that seems trivial or irrelevant and easy to cut might be like, oh no, don't cut this.

[01:19:57] Cause I have a thing for this later.

[01:19:58] I'm doing something with this.

[01:19:58] Yeah.

[01:19:59] It's like, remember the can of dog food from before?

[01:20:02] And everyone's like, no.

[01:20:03] This is load bearing actually.

[01:20:04] Yeah, absolutely.

[01:20:05] And it's, it's tricky.

[01:20:08] Uh, planning, the planning is like, I've been playing fifth edition Dungeons and Dragons.

[01:20:15] That was the first one.

[01:20:16] I played like fourth edition a couple of times.

[01:20:19] It didn't really grab me because it is just so much a tactics RPG.

[01:20:24] It is the final fantasy tactics.

[01:20:25] It's the, what if your chess pieces had guns and knives and that's fun, but it's not, it's like, it's so mechanically driven that, and so much about the little people on the little board and like how far they're the number of exact paces they're allowed to.

[01:20:41] It gets back to being that like war gaming stuff that D&D originally came from.

[01:20:46] And I'm sure that sold a lot of models.

[01:20:48] I'm sure it sold a lot of sets.

[01:20:49] And as fun as it is to play, it is unlistenable as a viewer.

[01:20:54] Yeah, it's like, it's crazy, it's crazy boring because you have to, you have to constantly be setting the stage, uh, which there's, I don't, so I don't, I don't do, this is something that people have asked.

[01:21:06] And it's something that the party originally was like, Hey, could we do like roll 20 or something?

[01:21:11] Could we have like, we use one of these websites where you can see your position on the map.

[01:21:14] And I said, no, for two reasons.

[01:21:15] One, that's a lot more work for me to set those up.

[01:21:18] And I don't want to, uh, and two, I need to like, they, they're the litmus test, the party.

[01:21:25] If, if something is not communicated from the way I describe it, and that's not clear and comprehensible to them.

[01:21:32] Your audience is not going to have this cheat sheet, so.

[01:21:33] Yeah, exactly.

[01:21:34] We're going to be leaning on this map and I'm going to, I'm going to, because that's just, that's just how it goes.

[01:21:38] We're not going to realize it until later.

[01:21:40] So I, so I've like, anyway, I've been, I've been playing for about five, four, five, uh, four years before I started DMing in like 2019.

[01:21:48] Um, maybe God, actually maybe like 2018.

[01:21:52] Jesus, it's been like six years.

[01:21:55] Home games mostly, you know, I mean entirely.

[01:21:58] Yeah.

[01:21:58] And then, uh, you know, I'm a, I'm also a game, a game designer, game writer.

[01:22:03] Uh, and then I owe a lot to Rude Tales of Magic.

[01:22:06] Uh, I don't know.

[01:22:07] Um, they're, they're a very good podcast with some friends of ours on there.

[01:22:10] Oh yeah.

[01:22:11] Who, and they like listening to them was like, oh, you can do it like this.

[01:22:14] Oh, it can be fun in this way.

[01:22:16] It can be looser.

[01:22:17] I play things a little tighter than they do, but just like the, oh, like.

[01:22:20] You have the slack.

[01:22:22] Yeah.

[01:22:22] Yeah.

[01:22:22] And people aren't necessarily, people aren't just going to show up for another adventure on the sword coast with Grimjaw Thunderdick and Bizzile Velvet Snarr.

[01:22:36] Yeah.

[01:22:37] A big, strong guy.

[01:22:38] Uh, bard who's always, uh, seducing.

[01:22:41] And it's very clear that the player is like too excited to be a seducing bard.

[01:22:48] And it's just like, can you do another thing, please?

[01:22:51] Can you read this without a boner?

[01:22:53] Yeah.

[01:22:54] It's, it's the first joke problem.

[01:22:56] It's the thing that everybody, you know, the first people do their first joke.

[01:22:59] And then a big, a big thing for us too, is we, our first, uh, the first episode that you hear is not the first one we recorded.

[01:23:06] We just recorded.

[01:23:07] Like I said, like, I want us to record, you know, we all, and we all agreed on this.

[01:23:12] Cause we'd all, we were all people who've made stuff and put it online.

[01:23:15] And I said, uh, you know, I've never DM'd.

[01:23:19] I've never D I've never done remote stuff.

[01:23:22] I'm used to having a table and having a little map I can draw on.

[01:23:25] Uh, so there's going to be adjustment for me.

[01:23:28] It's also going to be an adjustment to record because record like getting natural.

[01:23:32] We had all, everybody had on the, on the cast had done streaming a lot.

[01:23:37] So there was, you know, there's comfortable being on my comfortable riffing, but like getting the, you know, about you have to get the rhythm at a distance.

[01:23:43] It's different than in person and being on a mic puts you in a space of, oh, this is less ephemeral, even though it's all, it's all ephemeral, but you know what I mean?

[01:23:52] It's, it's so we had to get over that.

[01:23:53] So we recorded these burner apps until like, okay, this feels natural.

[01:23:58] And then, you know, figuring out where the fun was, where the, where the comedy was, how much like guidance players need, because there is a, every table is different.

[01:24:08] Every group of players is different.

[01:24:10] Some players optimize some, some, they want to do the right thing every time they want to find, they don't want to, they don't want to waste time on it.

[01:24:17] Some players really like to role play.

[01:24:20] Some players really like to just do something that's wacky.

[01:24:24] You know, some people, if people are coming from more of a video game thing, they're looking for the big video, they're looking for the guy with the big yellow exclamation point.

[01:24:32] You know, they're, they're looking for the right thing to do.

[01:24:36] All of that was stuff we had to like calibrate.

[01:24:39] It's so tough.

[01:24:41] I, so, so my experience doing this shit was, I always felt like I was really railroading too hard, but also like, well, this is just what we have to do to get the fucking shit out the door.

[01:24:53] Like for example, like talking about like combat, it became very clear to me after like running a combat or two, like straight up that like, okay, actually what's going to happen is everyone, we're going to go around the horn twice and then it's over every time.

[01:25:08] Like, and if the enemy has HP left, no, he doesn't.

[01:25:11] It says zero.

[01:25:12] Trust me.

[01:25:13] And like our group, I was the one who likes combat the most and I don't even like it that much.

[01:25:20] It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a trick.

[01:25:22] It's a, you know, you, it's, it's a one big trick, I think.

[01:25:26] And I think this is, this is something I've talked to other podcast DMs about, which is only, only five.

[01:25:33] And this is something I do at home games too, is only one monster.

[01:25:37] Yeah.

[01:25:37] One big thing, not five guys, because my first DM, God bless them.

[01:25:42] Love to throw out.

[01:25:44] Here comes seven guards and they all get a turn and they all get something to do.

[01:25:50] And it's like, the thing to always keep in mind, this is also why when we started going,

[01:25:54] I was like, I only want three players, three players maximum is can have a guess.

[01:26:00] That's great.

[01:26:00] But every, every player's turn minimum takes about like one to two minutes.

[01:26:07] And every player, every additional player or enemy adds another one to two minutes to the time between each person's ability to do anything.

[01:26:19] Yeah.

[01:26:19] And so it's like, you know, I was in a six party, six person party where you'd fight seven things.

[01:26:26] It was like, this is like 15 or 20 minutes between.

[01:26:28] And it was just, yeah, it's a nightmare.

[01:26:29] It's like, and then when you fuck up, that's the worst.

[01:26:31] It's like all that happens and then you miss.

[01:26:33] Yeah.

[01:26:34] It's like, oh, okay.

[01:26:35] Well, yeah.

[01:26:36] Also people start tuning out.

[01:26:49] That's why, I mean, that was one of the things about shovel glass that was good is because we were constantly switching systems.

[01:26:54] A lot of the systems used for dog shit, but like a lot of them, even the dog shit ones they had, like, like if you fail, you don't miss, like something goes wronger.

[01:27:03] And that was always fun for me to have to like come up with on the fly.

[01:27:07] Oh yeah.

[01:27:07] Oh yeah.

[01:27:08] That's my, I love that shit.

[01:27:09] That's like, that's all, that's all.

[01:27:11] It's all, it's, it's a constant stream of prompts of like improv comedy prop.

[01:27:16] It's like, okay, how do you comedically describe this?

[01:27:19] And it's like, how do you justify, what's your justification for the fact that they missed?

[01:27:22] It's like, oh, that's the, the, you almost get it in there, but the scales are just too thick.

[01:27:27] You know, it's like, he's so annoying that you are too distracted.

[01:27:32] It's some of it comes down to how it's structured narratively.

[01:27:35] Like there's a, there's a reason the first episode, first episode is a two parter and it happens on a train because the train, you get on a train, go cart to cart to cart.

[01:27:45] Like each, each one is a just, it is a just, when you get on the train, you know, you have to go to the end of the train machine.

[01:27:50] Yeah, exactly.

[01:27:51] So there's only one direction to go and it's a direction that is a series of discrete experiences.

[01:27:57] It's like, okay, this one is full of people.

[01:28:00] We're talking.

[01:28:00] The next one is a kitchen.

[01:28:02] You're going to have to do something in the kitchen.

[01:28:03] Next one is a social encounter.

[01:28:05] Final, you know, kitchen had the combat in it.

[01:28:07] It's like, it's, it's progression, but they're also like the doors are being locked behind them as they move forward.

[01:28:13] So it's not like, Oh, maybe we got to go back.

[01:28:15] It's like, Nope, keep, keep going in that direction.

[01:28:18] Keep, uh, keep moving forward.

[01:28:19] That's the big, that's the big trick is you just got to keep lighting a fire under them all the time, all the time, moving them forward.

[01:28:26] One tension at just doing this, that is, it's really just a me thing, but it's, it's funny because I never got over it.

[01:28:33] Even like a very on top of it, really good chemistry group in a situation where like the players are funny and the DM is the thing.

[01:28:42] You will still run into this, this thing, which I hate, which is also very funny, which is, I'm trying to like tell a story.

[01:28:48] Can you shut up for a second?

[01:28:49] Like, I'm trying to like, please.

[01:28:50] Uh, and like, even if you're doing like a good job, uh, it's, it's, you run into that and it's not like it actually sucks, but it's just funny that there's like this, this tension where it's like, this is a storytelling thing.

[01:29:02] And the people I have brought here are going to get in the way.

[01:29:05] I mean, a part of that is also, and this is happens in every group that I've ever played with or seen is that when, when a player is playing an RPG, they become so much ruder to everyone on earth than they ever would be in real life.

[01:29:23] Like they come up to someone who is like, has a lot of authority and gravitas and like deserves respect.

[01:29:29] And like, they say one word and it's like, I'm immediately going to riff on how you fucking suck.

[01:29:33] And it's like, this would never, you would never do that.

[01:29:36] Please shut the fuck up.

[01:29:37] There was when we, when you ran a cursive stride game, there was one time, like at the start of the session, like we were just getting information out of this priest and you were just like, can I just stop?

[01:29:46] And like, can we just reflect on like how insane you're treating this guy?

[01:29:49] Like, it's just like, you're so mean.

[01:29:50] You're just being dicks.

[01:29:51] This is why I make a, this is, this is my trick.

[01:29:55] So two things.

[01:29:56] First is every episode begins in ghost town, begins in the afterlife and they get their, uh, they get their mission from planchette who is not the mayor.

[01:30:05] But the mayor is, the mayor is enigmatic and you can't have an enigmatic, mysterious character who is also the character who is giving the quest because that is the character who they are going to be like asking, like asking like, Hey, but what about it's like, and that, that just cuts right through that cuts right through authority.

[01:30:23] You need a number two who is the actual go between and planchette will just like shit on them.

[01:30:29] She'll just, she'll just immediately like give them the business right back.

[01:30:33] Uh, her voice is halfway between friend Drescher and, uh, Linda Bob's burgers.

[01:30:39] Yeah.

[01:30:39] Cause that's, that's what I had in the, on the day when I came up with that character.

[01:30:43] That's how it works.

[01:30:44] And then they get, they get the sillies out.

[01:30:47] This is something I learned from, uh, the game Soma, which is, um, like a masterpiece.

[01:30:53] It's a horror game.

[01:30:54] Uh, came out like eight or nine years ago, but it's still like best in the genre.

[01:30:57] But one of the things, what the first thing it does is, oh, you're a guy who has to find a, like you're missing like pain medication in your apartment and you're looking around in your apartment and you're like flittering around things.

[01:31:11] And it takes you through a couple of little sequences before it throws you into the bottom of the ocean nightmare base science research facility.

[01:31:20] Cause you got to get that out.

[01:31:21] You got to get that energy.

[01:31:23] And also, so I'll, I also make a lot of my NPCs, uh, confrontationally annoying.

[01:31:29] And that's the big thing is like my guys eat or they're either nice and they like them.

[01:31:35] They're confrontationally annoying and it's fine if they don't like them.

[01:31:38] That's part of the deal.

[01:31:39] Or they will just kill them.

[01:31:42] That's, and that's the big trick about having every episode start in the afterlife is they, the players die.

[01:31:47] That's how they get back.

[01:31:48] Yeah.

[01:31:48] At the end of the episode is they die.

[01:31:50] So they can die in the episode so that there's like a narrative.

[01:31:55] Sorry.

[01:31:56] You're coming in like in a loop.

[01:31:58] I love it.

[01:31:59] Yeah.

[01:32:00] We would do a little bit of this.

[01:32:02] It was Riley's game.

[01:32:03] Uh, the game started and because that game was shuffle quest with like a system.

[01:32:07] It's called interstitial.

[01:32:08] That's the game.

[01:32:09] That's if you want to look it up.

[01:32:11] Yes.

[01:32:11] Interstitial.

[01:32:12] Uh, the start of the game was just like, yeah, just tell everybody like the missions you just came back from real quick.

[01:32:17] And that's just so much better than like, we are at a tavern for the first time.

[01:32:22] Yeah.

[01:32:22] The loop is good.

[01:32:24] The loop is so smart.

[01:32:26] I, it keeps, and it's, and it's set in a hub and they can be sent anywhere in the land of the living, which means that we don't have to worry about travel and they can run into people again.

[01:32:37] Cause it's like, oh, you're just sent to the same location again.

[01:32:39] We don't have to justify, oh, you run into this person again.

[01:32:42] They've all, they're also here.

[01:32:44] Uh, a lot of, a lot of the, like the design of the world and backstory is just there is like there to facilitate me running the game.

[01:32:51] Mm-hmm.

[01:32:52] And narratively, it like sort of serves the themes, which is like the deal is you, uh, you die.

[01:32:59] If you had a bunch of baggage, uh, you don't get to just go straight on to the ever soul.

[01:33:05] You, you are tossed up out of the river of souls and you have to, you just exist in ghost town for a while until you gradually forget everything from your life.

[01:33:16] And then you go on, but a couple of the characters don't want this to happen.

[01:33:20] They want to keep being alive.

[01:33:22] They want to keep having, you know, consciousness and a sense of self.

[01:33:25] So they are, it's like, okay, the only way to like arrest this process of disintegration basically is, uh, you go up to the land of the living to do this job.

[01:33:37] It is like, you, you can, you have to do this job, which is hunting down other ghosts or necromancers who want to keep living.

[01:33:45] So that you can keep doing it.

[01:33:47] You could run up the clock forever this way.

[01:33:49] Yeah.

[01:33:50] Yeah.

[01:33:50] You get to just keep going as long as you are bringing in other people, which is, uh, you know, it's, it's, it's capitalism, baby.

[01:33:57] It's, it's, it's the only game in town.

[01:33:59] It's, it sucks.

[01:34:00] Uh, everything goes down as there is, it is sort of, uh, it is based on like, uh, the mayor is based on a cross between, uh, Walt Disney and, uh, Daniel Plainview is like he's, he's.

[01:34:13] So he's, he's a combination of these two characters and the basic idea of ghost town is it's there to distract you while you wither away.

[01:34:22] It's, it's everything, everything is there as, as it's meant to be fun and entertaining and to take your mind off things.

[01:34:28] Don't worry about all that.

[01:34:30] And it's like, oh yeah, this is how.

[01:34:31] Yeah.

[01:34:33] There he is.

[01:34:34] It's like, this is what it's there for.

[01:34:35] This is what, you know, this is why the only thing, the only thing that's gone down in price in the last, what, uh, 20 years.

[01:34:42] TVs, baby.

[01:34:43] Yeah.

[01:34:44] Yeah.

[01:34:44] Which is great for me.

[01:34:45] Cause I accidentally knocked mine over.

[01:34:46] Uh, it's, it is.

[01:34:50] What are you going to do?

[01:34:50] You know, it's.

[01:34:52] So, uh, okay.

[01:34:53] So, but, but you were talking about, you were talking about story.

[01:34:55] You were talking about story.

[01:34:56] Yeah.

[01:34:56] I want to ask you, uh, and this sort of goes to that.

[01:34:59] Uh, I mean, Joe and I were discussing this, uh, off mic.

[01:35:05] And like, luckily to my great joy, Joe was like, this is actually the preferred way that I would have wanted it to be.

[01:35:10] And I'm like, thank God.

[01:35:11] This is the only way I was capable of.

[01:35:12] Uh, when we were doing our show, obviously when we have an arc, it's like, okay, the arc is going to be, this is the theme.

[01:35:18] It's going to have a theme, obviously.

[01:35:19] And it's going to foreground one of the characters and it is going to grapple with some emotional facet of them.

[01:35:27] Uh, great.

[01:35:29] This will be, this will be, the fact that I've thought this up in advance means I'm a genius and it's going to be great to listen to.

[01:35:34] But, uh, that often meant like, I felt as though I was leaving so little space for collaboration.

[01:35:43] And it was just like, hello, thank you for joining me for the recording session.

[01:35:46] Here are your scenes.

[01:35:48] Uh, it's basically like as close to like, here are your lines as you can get while technically being, you know, improv.

[01:35:55] What, what are your thoughts?

[01:35:57] That's real tempting.

[01:35:57] It's, it's like, because you want to tell a good story.

[01:36:00] You want people to get to be participate in a good story.

[01:36:03] Uh, my, one of my big tricks is, uh, in character creation.

[01:36:07] Uh, I do that way.

[01:36:09] I do that once I have a, I general idea for the world and what's, and stuff that might happen.

[01:36:16] But then I use character creation like a, like a Minecraft seed, you know, it's like, okay, tell me whatever you want to do.

[01:36:24] I'll make this work.

[01:36:25] I'll, and I will build a world that makes this make, makes this make sense.

[01:36:28] So they're in the DNA of the world from the jump.

[01:36:31] Like Jess wanted to play a goo character.

[01:36:34] So now there are goo characters in the afterlife who facilitate.

[01:36:38] They're like the, they're the bureaucrats of the afterlife.

[01:36:41] The big trick for me is a couple of things.

[01:36:45] Half the most, half the episode, probably two thirds at this point, but eventually half of the episodes are one-offs.

[01:36:51] They are discreet to a location.

[01:36:54] And the goal is not like the story is woven into because it's ghosts and because it's often like what happened to get us to this point.

[01:37:06] And what happens next is going to be how they solve it.

[01:37:09] And I will throw them, I will throw, I'll scatter a bunch of tools around, but how they deal with this problem is up to, is up to them.

[01:37:16] That's the story that they're telling is that way.

[01:37:20] Um, for the arcs that will be a few more, like those are usually like one to three episodes.

[01:37:27] That's a little bit more, a little bit tighter and it, it requires, but it requires like more like between episode adjustment.

[01:37:36] And, and sometimes they'll be like, okay, I need to do a pickup where I explained this because I forgot that this is going to be a thing later.

[01:37:43] I wanted to see because it's going to be in the next episode, but it's, it's collaborative storytelling.

[01:37:49] Is a big part of it is like, I, I'm just creating the problem.

[01:37:54] That's the part I'm bringing.

[01:37:56] I'm creating the problem, throwing some tools on the ground, the solution and how they solve it is the story.

[01:38:02] It's the story.

[01:38:02] Cause it's the story of the players, not a story.

[01:38:06] The players are participating in.

[01:38:08] That's the big, and we had to rerecord like the second episode because I fully came into it with that.

[01:38:16] I fully came into it with like, we got to have the train train episode was the first two of the train.

[01:38:21] It's great.

[01:38:21] Um, but we had one where it was just, you know, I was like, okay, now I got to get all the plot and the war and the lore and everything.

[01:38:28] And it was just, it was the Fred Flintstone, big meat on the side, car falls over way too much.

[01:38:36] They, they, they were, they felt like super, like they had to get, Oh, what am I supposed to be doing?

[01:38:42] And I was getting frustrated to be like, I'm afraid to touch anything.

[01:38:45] Exactly.

[01:38:46] Exactly.

[01:38:46] They're like, Oh, I don't know how to get to, I don't know how to activate the next cut scene.

[01:38:50] And that's, and then we ended up recording, like I pivoted hard away from that.

[01:38:54] And in the next one and into the, and they, they fight like a, like a headless motorcycle, like a headless, you know, headless biker.

[01:39:01] Who's like carrying around a Sonic, the hedgehog head, like looking for, looking for him.

[01:39:05] And it's like, deal with this.

[01:39:06] I don't, I don't have a solution for you, but here is a, uh, here's a biological mechanics.

[01:39:13] What is it called?

[01:39:14] Works garage.

[01:39:15] Here's a bio garage full of a bunch of stuff that you can use to try to solve this problem.

[01:39:20] And good luck.

[01:39:21] And then we, you know, we was like, Oh yeah, this is where the fun is.

[01:39:23] And then we recorded most of the rest of the season and then went back and rerecorded that second one.

[01:39:28] Uh, and there's, there's some fun stuff in there because it's a, it's a, they end up going up against a guy whose deal is that he is in the past, but he is seeing the future.

[01:39:37] So he made a robot that they are interacting with who is responding to what they're saying.

[01:39:42] And he can see the future past this.

[01:39:44] So he's like alluding to stuff they do in later episodes.

[01:39:47] Cause I already know it.

[01:39:48] And it was, but it was in, in the timeline.

[01:39:51] It's earlier.

[01:39:52] It's fun.

[01:39:53] That's good.

[01:39:53] Yeah.

[01:39:54] It was, I was like, Oh God, well, how am I going to get around this?

[01:39:57] It's like, Oh, I'll just lean into it.

[01:39:58] I think the difference between our groups is that, uh, the shovel quest crew did not really care about like discovering solutions to problems.

[01:40:07] The thing they wanted to do was, was yammer and yap, uh, with the people, which, and, and, you know, having to solve a little puzzle on top of that was annoying.

[01:40:16] And to that end, the best, I think our best arc and the best game we played was Wuthering Heights where there was, we, I found a French Wuthering Heights RPG.

[01:40:28] Written by like a teenager in, I think like the eighties.

[01:40:31] And it is so fucked.

[01:40:33] Cause the only, what do you roll for in Wuthering Heights?

[01:40:36] Do you roll to have combat?

[01:40:37] Do you roll to succeed at things you try?

[01:40:39] No, the only roles are, will you give in to an overwhelming sense of rage or give in to an overwhelming sense of despair?

[01:40:48] So they would roll and I'd be like, well, your role says you have to cause a big fucking problem right now.

[01:40:55] Do it.

[01:40:56] And they would, they would have to do it.

[01:40:58] It was great.

[01:40:59] And like, it's, it's even fun when you're like, I can't even think of like a good thing right now.

[01:41:04] So I'm going to just do what I was going to do, but I will just be breaking every table in the house.

[01:41:09] Yeah.

[01:41:10] That rules.

[01:41:11] I will have to check that out.

[01:41:12] I don't, I've done like lasers and feelings and like, that's about it.

[01:41:19] I have not played a lot of other, uh, I, it's, it's, and this is going to make me sound so ignorant, but I think about D and D fifth edition the same way I think about English, which is like, I've dabbled in others, but this is, I'm really good at this one.

[01:41:33] And it, and it makes the idea of like doing a bad job and another one less appealing.

[01:41:38] Like, I don't, I don't want to, I don't want to start over at another system where I don't just immediately know, like, you know, it, it all runs a lot smoother.

[01:41:46] Cause I know all the goddamn rules.

[01:41:48] Or if I don't, I know the part of the book they're in.

[01:41:50] I can flip to real quick.

[01:41:51] You know, I had previously only run D and D when I started the thing.

[01:41:55] And the thing that switching systems open for me is with, at least with our group, the sort of scales fell for my eyes.

[01:42:02] And I was like, Oh, fuck this.

[01:42:04] Like, fuck a system.

[01:42:06] It's like, what, like, what are we doing?

[01:42:07] Like, what is the thing that we do that makes us have fun is playing pretend with our friends.

[01:42:12] And like, Oh yeah, I can do that without a book.

[01:42:16] Uh, and for sure.

[01:42:17] That's like when we realized like combat, just go around the room, like have everyone do two things.

[01:42:23] Like, Oh my God.

[01:42:24] Uh, and that, my trick was just like, fuck RPGs.

[01:42:28] Who cares?

[01:42:29] We're just gaffin'.

[01:42:30] A lot of people get there.

[01:42:32] I get it.

[01:42:33] Uh, it's, it makes sense for, for me.

[01:42:36] The cheat is that it's the narrative stakes is that it is that it is, it is the God that is the, it's like, well, that's just how it breaks.

[01:42:44] I'm sorry.

[01:42:44] Like it's, it, it, it makes the pretend that like a little bit more real and it makes it easier for people to buy in.

[01:42:52] Uh, having combat music helps.

[01:42:54] That, that was, that was one of our big early things of like, you know, we have, there's a lot of music on the show.

[01:42:59] Our composer, Seth Boyer is, they're amazing.

[01:43:02] I, we're so spoiled.

[01:43:04] Uh, like we have a member of our team.

[01:43:05] That's all they do.

[01:43:06] They just write music for us.

[01:43:08] And, uh, it's great.

[01:43:09] Uh, and like combat music.

[01:43:11] It's like, really?

[01:43:12] Okay.

[01:43:12] This needs to be a song that, and then like Jess has different stems of the music.

[01:43:16] So she can score the, she can actually score the fight.

[01:43:20] So stuff is, you know, when somebody gets a big hit, it goes, it plays the big stinger of the guitar riff.

[01:43:25] And it, it makes it more exciting.

[01:43:27] Uh, listening to it dry, uh, is like, and this is fine, but this, it really, you know, there's a reason RPG fight music has to be exciting.

[01:43:37] It's the main part of the game.

[01:43:38] It's the thing you're going to hear for 80 hours.

[01:43:40] It cannot drive you insane.

[01:43:42] It should actually give you a sense of purpose and joy.

[01:43:45] When the combat music changed in Octopath Traveler 1, when I got to the second, like, ring of things, I was like, oh my god, the standard combat music changed.

[01:43:54] You get to a different one song that you're hearing over and over.

[01:43:57] Um, man, talking about standard combat music, can I just briefly say that in the Persona 3 remake, if you do the sneak attack to start combat,

[01:44:06] you don't, you don't hear mass destruction, you hear the second one, and it's not random.

[01:44:12] It's like, if you make a normal, if you start combat normal, you hear mass destruction.

[01:44:15] If you do the sneak attack, which you have to do, it's just more efficient, then you don't get to, that's like, oh, talk about punishing the player for playing good.

[01:44:25] Uh, that sucks.

[01:44:27] I, I played Persona 3 Fez, a chunk of it, like, years and years ago,

[01:44:33] and both times I dipped out when I realized I had, like, done something.

[01:44:38] I, I can't do time, I, I've, I can't do these time management games.

[01:44:41] I can't do these games where it's like, I, I, it stresses me out so goddamn much.

[01:44:45] It's like, oh, you're not gonna get the Lucifer Persona,

[01:44:48] because you didn't go on Sunday afternoons to the Yakisoba house.

[01:44:51] It's the opposite for me.

[01:44:52] So you didn't run into the men.

[01:44:53] It's just like, oh, fuck off.

[01:44:54] I, I, I get the same thing where I'm like, oh, there's like a kid that's kind of chubby.

[01:44:59] That's a whole social link I didn't know about.

[01:45:00] So, like, I understand, like, the missing, but I also just love it because I will dither forever unless someone's, like, move it along.

[01:45:09] If you could just do everything, I'd be, I'd love it.

[01:45:11] It'd be my favorite game.

[01:45:12] The fact that there are, when you start, a certain number of time units that can only be spent on certain days.

[01:45:22] You know what I mean?

[01:45:22] It's like you have these many, it's just, the, the, it stresses me out because it feels like I have to play it with a, um,

[01:45:29] It feels like, what is this?

[01:45:30] Like, don't worry, you'll get them on your next playthrough.

[01:45:32] It's like, how many hundred hour playthroughs do you think I have in me?

[01:45:38] And the answer is, aren't you a Japanese teenager?

[01:45:40] And the, no, I'm not, I'm not anymore.

[01:45:43] It's like, then why did you buy this fucking game?

[01:45:45] Don't you know what it's about?

[01:45:47] Fair enough.

[01:45:48] The thing that got me there.

[01:45:50] It doesn't stress me out that much except when there is, like, some, like, week, like, it's like, oh, I'm doing great.

[01:45:57] And, like, I have a plan on what I'm going to do the next couple days of March.

[01:46:01] And then it's like, as you know, in March, we have finals for a week where you don't get to do anything but take a test.

[01:46:09] And it's like, how the fuck?

[01:46:11] I didn't know about that shit.

[01:46:12] What are you talking about?

[01:46:13] And then that's, like, a week just taken from me.

[01:46:16] Oh, you thought you were going to return your videos?

[01:46:18] No, it's golden week, idiot.

[01:46:21] You can't go, you can't, it's, we're just, we're in a montage now.

[01:46:25] So, that's, yeah, that shit, that did stress me out.

[01:46:28] It's like, but which is fine.

[01:46:30] It's just not for me.

[01:46:31] It's not for me.

[01:46:31] You know what it is for you is being the great DM of the Skulltenders podcast.

[01:46:37] Anyway, that's the end of this little, of this segment.

[01:46:40] New segment.

[01:46:40] Bye-bye.

[01:46:41] Love this.

[01:46:42] Bye segment.

[01:46:43] We'll see you next time.

[01:46:44] Never been horny.

[01:46:47] Never been horny that I ever got horny.

[01:46:54] Folks, that's been Cohen Edenfield going guest-o mode on Anime Seikos.

[01:46:59] Cohen, thank you so much for joining us today.

[01:47:01] Thank you so much for having me.

[01:47:03] It has been an absolute pleasure.

[01:47:05] First, you know, first time, long time.

[01:47:07] So, it's been a delight.

[01:47:08] Thank you all so much for having me.

[01:47:10] This was.

[01:47:10] Hell yeah.

[01:47:11] And indulging my, the Deadwood coda.

[01:47:14] This is, we did the Dead, we didn't watch the Deadwood movie.

[01:47:17] I still haven't seen it.

[01:47:18] I'm afraid to.

[01:47:19] Even if it's good, it can't be the right kind of good.

[01:47:23] Yeah.

[01:47:23] It would be depressing even if it were good.

[01:47:26] Yeah.

[01:47:26] There we go.

[01:47:27] Also, if it's like B plus good, that's devastating.

[01:47:30] Yeah.

[01:47:30] Also, the amount of passion I have for Deadwood eclipses how much I care about any anime

[01:47:35] or manga, especially at this point in my life, by like a factor of 10.

[01:47:39] We could have a Deadwood podcast that's only Deadwood.

[01:47:44] We won't because that's too much work.

[01:47:46] But, again, the point being, I'd like to talk about it more.

[01:47:49] I was saying you could call it reconnoitering the rim.

[01:47:52] You sure fucking could.

[01:47:53] Just to make sure in the perfect podcast fashion that it sounds off-putting to people who don't

[01:48:00] know what it already is.

[01:48:01] Yes.

[01:48:01] And if you bought a sticker of it, you would be afraid to put it on your laptop because

[01:48:05] someone's going to ask, why does it say that shit?

[01:48:08] Mm-hmm.

[01:48:09] And you'd have to be like, well, there's this podcast I listen to.

[01:48:12] And then God would kill you.

[01:48:15] Anyway, that's all the time we have for Animated Sickos.

[01:48:18] Cohen, if people want to follow you and your work, what will they do?

[01:48:22] What's the thing they do?

[01:48:23] Ah, Skull Mandible.

[01:48:25] Skull Mandible, all one word.

[01:48:26] That'll get you to me on Twitter, on Blue Sky with the standard at bluesky.social.

[01:48:32] Skulltenders is the big thing.

[01:48:34] That is what is getting all my energy.

[01:48:37] Give it a shot.

[01:48:38] I think we might hear from it here in a minute.

[01:48:41] We'll see.

[01:48:41] We'll see.

[01:48:42] If the fellas liked me, that'll be the way to go.

[01:48:45] Wait, Jay, shut up.

[01:48:45] We like it.

[01:48:47] It's here.

[01:48:48] Stop necromancy.

[01:48:49] How?

[01:48:50] Yeah, that's what you're here to figure out.

[01:48:52] Bye.

[01:48:53] How dare you?

[01:48:59] Fuck you.

[01:49:00] Fuck you?

[01:49:01] Fuck me?

[01:49:02] Yeah.

[01:49:04] Where's the drinks?

[01:49:06] Oh, hey.

[01:49:07] She arrives.

[01:49:08] Let's see.

[01:49:09] We got the tequila be killed for...

[01:49:13] This raises a hand.

[01:49:14] There's like 13 fingers on the hand.

[01:49:16] Oh, wow.

[01:49:17] Okay.

[01:49:17] Right there.

[01:49:18] I hate the pickle man.

[01:49:20] I want to grab the barrel and mime as if I'm going to tip it over and let all the brine run out on the ground.

[01:49:26] Oh, you're edging me, are you?

[01:49:28] Well, whatever.

[01:49:28] I let go immediately.

[01:49:30] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:49:31] I hate this guy.

[01:49:34] In like the front of the camera reality series part, doodoo's there and it has like his name at the bug at the bottom.

[01:49:39] I am here to make friends.

[01:49:44] It looks like it's about to run into the wall behind you, but instead right before it makes contact, six huge thick horse legs erupt in a hexagonal formation like the legs of an ant and it crawls right up the side of the wall with the same speed that it was rolling along the ground on.

[01:50:01] The horse DNA is taking control.

[01:50:03] Fuck him up, buddy.

[01:50:04] Okay.

[01:50:05] Can I roll for how many donuts I do?

[01:50:08] Yes, you can roll for how many donuts you do.

[01:50:11] I'll do a d4 so it's not too much.

[01:50:13] No, it's a performance check.

[01:50:16] Roll 20.

[01:50:19] How about a natural goddamn 20?

[01:50:21] Fuck yeah!

[01:50:22] Fuck, all right.

[01:50:23] Let's fucking go.

[01:50:26] Watch out for them, would you?

[01:50:28] All of them.

[01:50:29] The living and the dead.

[01:50:32] Listen to Skull Tenders anywhere and everywhere.

[01:50:36] Now it's over.

[01:50:37] What a great trailer.

[01:50:39] Anyway, I've been Tom and Anime Sicko.

[01:50:41] I've been Joe and Anime Sicko.

[01:50:42] I've been Cohen and Anime Sicko.

[01:50:44] We'll see you next time.

[01:50:45] Bye-bye.

[01:50:46] Bye.

[01:50:48] Thank you for listening to Anime Sickos.

[01:50:50] I've been Tom, a sicko.

[01:50:52] You can follow me on Blue Sky at Tom Harrison.

[01:50:54] Joe was also a sicko.

[01:50:56] You can follow him on Blue Sky at Sharia Uncle.

[01:50:58] You can follow Anime Sickos on Blue Sky at Anime Sickos.

[01:51:02] Or email us at AnimeSickos at gmail.com.

[01:51:05] You can give us money at Patreon.com slash Anime Sickos if you want.

[01:51:09] Uh, please leave us a review or something.

[01:51:12] I don't know.

[01:51:13] Tell a friend.

[01:51:14] Uh, anyway, until next time, bye.