#podcast that gives you psychic damage

[pisscreant]

what if Harry and Kim made a podcast. how fucking wild would that get. two batshit guys with nice voices having the most incoherent conversations that you could imagine

[mxjackparker]

If you, like me, are someone that developed brainworms due to BBC Sherlock many years ago and who received permanent psychic damage from it, I really recommend the Sherlock & Co. podcast that's currently coming out.

It has a canonically autistic Sherlock, where his being autistic is consistently acknowledged (with discussion of things like sensory issues and masking!) and it goes through all the old Sherlock Holmes stories in a modern way that's really fun!

I've found it genuinely soothing and I think other BBC Sherlock haters should give it a shot!

[dawsonscreekwasalwaysbad]

funniest parts of inside job pt 2

mommy likey drinky

“santa is fake! but student debt is real!” “you had to learn sometime, brayden”

“this is gonna be the most globally damaging midlife crisis since elon musk” oh that is APT

“ok boomer”

“are you poland? because that german guy straight-up owned you”

reagan saying that alex jones “looks like an orangutan fucked a fire hydrant”

“i’m the only one left who will listen to me!”

spending the whole episode confused on why oprah is back and then seeing her yell “i’m not the first oprah!”

“our missions do feel suspiciously like b-stories”

“why is my wallet on a metal leash? where would it be trying to go?”

lights being mothman’s kryptonite is a very obvious joke but it still works every time

KEANU FUCKING REEVES

“MOTHERFUCKER!” “well, he is fucking reagan’s mother, so yes. motherfucker.”

*takes out a lotus* “i don’t put these in my pocket. they grow there spontaneously.”

“i’m feeling drained from staring meaningfully into the distance”

“after dating so many billionaires, his millionaire lifestyle keeps me grounded”

the pussy posse being amazed and confounded by brett’s respect women juice

the real reason leonardo dicaprio only dates women under 25

“someone on the internet found out margot robbie is cgi” FINALLY SOMEONE WHO AGREES WITH ME

reagan accidentally imitating owen wilson

“when i’m done with you, men will look at you the way they look at me: briefly!”

gigi’s reaction to her make-under: “i wanna cyberbully myself!”

tamiko’s reaction to rand turning into a literal manchild: “way to turn subtext into text, rand”

myc’s absolutely SAVAGE comebacks at the constitution heist

“how would the founding fathers feel about this?” “probably the same way your father feels about you”

“ok, give me the word and i’ll blow the hell out of this thing” “said your ex-wife to brett’s dick”

“aliens? a woman being in charge of a team? nobody’s gonna believe this!”

“it’s a psychic union where everyone thinks the same and acts the same like fucking marvel fans” HGFHJGSDHKJHSJGH

“the last time i saw a white guy that generic, he was on a don’t walk sign!”

“fresh dirt is brought to you by blue apron. do you only care about the environment when it’s super convenient?”

INCEL STEVE

“how did he get that hoodie?”

“WE’VE BEEN FUCKED BY THE POPE!” “for the love of god, CONTEXT!”

saying “when in rome” is half the reason people come to rome

the gay dog weddings

“i now pronounce you two very good boys!”

“that’s me in the corner, losing my religion.”

reagan offending the italians (again)

“oh man, if god is real, i’m fucked”

“in the name of the father the son and the HOLY SHIT”

in a vow to make air travel as inconvenient as possible, the third wright brother invented sharing an armrest

“i deserve to be punished. i still quote borat sometimes”

“look! a woman’s ankle!”

*takes one look at hell* “those flamin’ hot cheetos commercials really nailed it.”

“i love cable news. it’s like watching the apocalypse in slow motion.”

gigi describing brett as “the comic sans of people”

andre reminding us how old millennials are now

“destroying your brother’s political legacy. what are you, a bush?”

the ayn rand tattoo

brett accidentally unionizing and legalizing sex work

“the solution just seemed so obvious”

“because faking your own death worked so well last time, reagan. redundant much?”

“maybe all conspiracies are real!” “oh, that’s not good.”

brett’s lil brett puppet

lil brett dying

lil brett going absolutely batshit crazy during the entire end credits of that episode

“you look like a white girl at burning man!”

the coughing and face-touching station

“the only way you’re associated with the number 300 is in pounds.” “you calling me fat?” “explicitly!”

“i literally have no idea what you’re going to say next!” “vagina egg.”

“i feel like we have the same interests. wanna start a podcast?” “no! this is like a siren song for straight white men!”

reagan once used cheetos as croutons

*route 96 turns into route 69* “haha, nice”

the fact that andre is just the original text of the “one fear” meme

“fun for ages six to six and a half!”

berenstain bears originally being berenstein makes SO MUCH SENSE

“and finally the rich white underdogs became the rich white ruling class. an inspirational story”

jr refusing to put his shirt back on

brett gives a tinfoil hat to the shazaam poster and it WORKS

“turns out i wasn’t pregnant, i just had way too much del taco” “i’ve been there”

“you said something nice, but it felt mean!”

mothman’s alternate timeline was a reverse of the fly

andre is canonically into tentacle hentai

lampshading the plot holes

“me? in charge of a whole workforce, like santa?”

“how many oscars is meryl streep supposed to have? three seems kinda low”

andre, just having shoved nixon back into his grave, now covered in blood and holding a shovel: “i don’t wanna talk about it”

air bud!!

“i could beat a dog in chess! probably.” same, brett, same

[blysse-and-blunder]

 in lieu of a commonplace book

10pm sunday, jan 29, 2023

your gentle blogger has entered her next decade of life, thank you to @dying-suffering-french-stalkers and @redstar-winterorbit for the good birthday wishes last week!

reading not a ton if i'm honest, i've been deluged with gift books and library loans while at the same time crashing back into the semester, and the overall effect has been, uh, to freeze my recreational reading a bit. stuck trying to finish things like my audiobook of through the whispering door and ebook of maybe you should talk to somebody (have i talked about this one? it's a memoir of a therapist and reading it is like reading an episode of the gossip podcast, but i can also tell it's giving me occasional useful ideas and perspective on things to think about or ask for in therapy. but i can only take so much of it at once). the gift book i'm most into right now it lindsey ellis' axiom's end, which is a first-contact, aliens are real and the government has been hiding them scifi-- it's quick and readable, lindsey does a great job for a first novel, and i'm loving the alternate-history flavor of it being set in the Bush era and the southern california details i actually appreciate now. also the way the aliens are described, i love the design of them. beautiful and terrifying. but i haven't made progress in a few days.

through the whispering door is perplexing me right now, in that the gentle romance has developed pleasingly (predictably), but there's been a lot of talk about the main character 'having changed' and 'not being the same as he was when he arrived' and i can't actually. point to why or where that happened. this is part of the problem with me and audiobooks, i think, because i don't care enough to go back and re-listen to the parts where i tuned out.... there's been a new heightening of the stakes now that there's a time-limit, and i always like the flavor of an eldritch stag character.

EDIT: finished the monster baru cormorant, still recovering, immediately checked the third one out of the library though the psychic damage this series does to me without warning (dear seth: i'm taking away the word 'clotted' from your lexicon for a bit. also ‘lobotomy’.) is hard to rectify with how smart and good some of the new narrative details are. the introduction of ‘trim’ and its associated reliance on / trust in other people, to a story where the main character's stated weakness is thinking about things from others' perspectives? or anticipating others' reactions? chef's kiss. and the navy full of rugged, determined, salt-weathered women is just very good to me, personally. aminata my incredibly violent beloved. the end of this book was- devastating. not in the same way as the last one: this time i have the kind of fascinated-horrified-sickened-fixated feeling that i get about horror stuff sometimes, and i’d say body horror is what i expect from book three.

watching i got unlucky with weather-based flight cancellations last week, and spending a night in a random detroit hotel room created a great opportunity to check out my university's criterion collection access. for some reason i decided that this was the right moment to experience wong kar wai's in the mood for love (2000), which i have since finished in slightly calmer circumstances. despite knowing that tony leung and maggie cheung were both active in the 90s i somehow totally thought that this movie was like. actually a historic film and not a period piece? probably because of how much the visuals / how it’s shot and colored / the overall design feels so classic, feels like old school film in the best possible way. having now read the wikipedia page for this film i can tell i missed a lot of the actual plot, or rather, thought that there was more experimental / nonlinear story-telling going on than there might actually have been-- but that’s okay, it just means i’ll have to watch it again.

listening i don’t remember when this song first popped up in my spot ify, possibly on a discover weekly playlist a while ago? but it landed for me last week, somehow brand new and meaningful as i was contemplating the musical direction of my next playlist. listening to it with better headphones revealed lots of nice layers, depth and harmony, i like that bass throb under the chorus, it’s produced well and rewards paying attention to the extra stuff-- the contrary motion of the background vocal line in the opening to the chorus is nice.

something something i will get up regardless. currently repeating to myself, all you gotta do now is walk.

playing had the pleasure of hanging out with my Dnd friends on my birthday last week and playing a whole new style of game with them! Y introduced us to gloom, which is very Edward Gorey-core and therefore was delightful, and got our game-design nerds all excited about the cards themselves, and then K skunked us all at anomia. the adrenaline in this one is addictive? it is somehow so fun and yet so infuriating, and I have yet to regret suggesting it to a group or party.

making cleaned my room finally (somewhat) and have a stack of mail to send and cards to answer, now with the help of the beautiful fountain pen my roommates gave me for my birthday! It’s one of these, and while I can try to promise not to become a fountain pen nerd, time will tell…

working on this award letter for a prof is somehow the hardest thing to just fucking finish. I think because I want it to be better than just okay, and am worried that it’ll counteract its own message if it’s not? But also—I have palaeography homework now! and the abstract of a talk to finish, and that talk + associated chapter to outline! not to mention finishing reading and commenting on a friend’s chapters! taking it slow last week was nice and probably needed, but fuck.

[peregrineroad]

🦄, ☕️ and 💌, for the meme!

🦄 - You are gifted a mythical creature as a familiar: what creature are you choosing?

I love dragons first and best, although a griffin would also be tremendous. I don't know what I would do with either! I'm afraid of heights, so flying is probably out, and I don't have any enemies I currently wish to destroy. I guess I could send them to protests that for health reasons I can't go to myself. Imagine an angry dragon holding up a sign! 'Down with this sort of thing.' 'No more ballads at Eurovision'.

☕️ - Plan a tea party! What will you be serving and who are you choosing as guests?

Hmm, I don't drink tea, so I would personally be drinking hot chocolate, but I would be delighted to provide fancy teas for other people! Also lots of baked goods to snack on. Cupcakes and shortbread and cream horns and so on. I don't know what goes with tea, I've just been watching a lot of celebrity bake-off recently. As for who to invite...the obvious answer is friends in other countries I'll never get to meet in person irl, assuming this is the magical sort of tea party which exists across time and space. Alternatively I might invite notorious wits and notorious jackasses to the party and then not show up myself, just record them talking/engaging in combat and turn it into a wildly lucrative podcast series.

💌 - Have you ever, or would you ever, give(n) someone a handwritten love letter?

I'm thirty one and have never been in love or even had a serious crush on an actual living human I know personally, so I feel like there's a possibility I might be aro, or something along those lines? But I am also horribly shy and very private and may just never have had a wide enough pool of friends to develop those feelings for someone compatible. If I did, I think a handwritten love letter would be a lovely thought. Unfortunately my handwriting is rubbish. My paramour would take psychic damage.

[finnickodaiir]

brief lore dump pt 2 :)

-idk if you've reached the podcast episodes with felony steve yet but I'll explain it anyway, basically in their pre-fame days awsten had this alter ego soundcloud rapper persona called lil kidz bop, he made another one during....2017? called felony steve who is bisexual and tries to steal cheese from a jewelry store and is some supernatural being and has a big dick, he even released a mixtape under felony steve called money mountain vol 2 (don't listen to it. unless you want psychic damage) but then he had to take it down because...

-record label conflict. yes this gives me deja vu to taylor sorry. their first label equal vision records was well. let's justr say. not great. messed up release dates, made him take down the felony steve mixtape because it didn't go through them first, when they jumped labels after entertainment they didn't let them have the rights to cluster double dare and entertainment which is why they recorded the two medleys of double dare and entertainment. but guess, what evr was Not happy about them rerecording them and took them off spotify and apparently sued them for it as well. after that they haven't been able to stay on one label for more than one album which is probably a good thing why they went independent, they're still on good terms with hopeless records though (fandom era label)

-have you found their demo album that awsten dropped because people won a game yet you really should

[poetryasreligion]

HEARTBREAK

The first time I reached for stories as conscious scripture was after the end of my first relationship, freshman year of college. The rupture was so intense and all-consuming that I left school for six months. During this period I scrambled for every possible spiritual antidote to the ache that would not leave my chest: I tried meditating and attending Catholic mass, saw a questionable psychic twice, started manifesting on full and new moons, spent $50 on a moss agate crystal necklace. (I also developed an eating disorder that left me hospitalized a year later, but that's a whole other chapter.)

The only lasting salvation for me was stories—songs, poems, movies, long form literature, internet miscellany. Scroll down and you'll find a list of the most important ones.

While I read them, I gave myself permission to live in the words completely. To rest in the soft crook of someone else's life experience that could parallel my own at any serendipitous moment. I'd collect these storytellers' sage reflections like a frenzied squirrel gathers and hoards acorns, repeating quotes like “time heals all wounds” (someone forever ago) and “how empty of me to be so full of you” (Jody Yeary) and "sometimes you get so close to someone you end up on the other side of them" (Richard Siken) until their words turned into my mantras, sacred texts. Something to latch onto while my world eroded.

I once heard that to love is to be changed. Through heartbreak, I want to give us permission to hold onto all of those changes, really feel the weight and texture and temperature of them in our hands. It's painful and it's proof that something real and worthwhile occurred. I give us permission to lean into the ache of another person's absence and fill it with our own words—write a letter we'll never send (at least not now), talk to our friends or the mirror or the sky, document it all for ourselves or maybe someone else who will need a warm jumble of words to wrap themselves up in one day. I give us permission to hold on and accept that some kinds of love we never quite "get over" (and so what if it makes us soft? Isn’t the softness what makes us human? For the record: it’s been 3 years and I still wake up with things to tell you.)

On Sand (pg. 15) by Caroline Cappelletti (poem // time and loss)

The Fist by Derek Walcott (poem // letting go)

The Long and Short of It (hybrid poem/essay // rumination, to be changed)

Excerpt: I’ve been rereading your story. I think it’s about me in a way that might not be flattering, but that’s okay. We dream and dream of being seen as we really are and then finally someone looks at us and sees us truly and we fail to measure up. Anyway: story received, story included. You looked at me long enough to see something mysterioso under all the gruff and bluster. Thanks. Sometimes you get so close to someone you end up on the other side of them.

The Weight of It All (podcast episode // immediate aftermath of a breakup, moments of great comedic relief too)

Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory by Raphael Bob-Waksburg (short story collection // love in all its forms)

The Unsent Project (website // browse unsent messages and submit your own -- beautiful and cathartic)

Good Riddance by Gracie Abrams (album // woodsy breakup rumination from all angles)

History of A Feeling by Madi Diaz (album // parting in its entirety)

Crushing by Julia Jacklin (album // a cpmplete relationship arc)

Playlist by me about being broken up with (compiled over 3yrs!)

How'd you get away? Cause oh, good heavens, we abided by the night But there are darker things than the absence of light And they still creak through our halls

I would build a city out of you and me There would be crime, but still a local grocery If you'd stay

Maggie Rogers, "Blood Ballet" (on playlist)

Playlist by me about being the one to call it off

Playlist by me about reaching for closure and forgiveness

(Bonus: Here and here are poems I've written about my own breakup experiences.)

[thenightlymirror]

This couple in this story on this podcast, it feels like they’ve perfectly compartmentalized every fault in their relationship into this haunting. It’s so effective. They talk about each other with perfect love, unfailingly. But when they talk about these haunting episodes, they clearly have had very miserable lives and fight a LOT. But it’s always the poltergeist’s fault.

There was this family in an earlier story, well, a few poltergeist families, where clearly they are projecting their anxieties onto the house. They’ll be like, Dad or Mom was full-on in the throws of addiction and was constantly taking it out on us in violent abusive ways, as was my boyfriend and my peers at the time, and there were some really bad vibes in the house. Total mystery!

I know the feeling! My main take away right now is that: people have very interesting relationships to their dwellings. A house is never just a house. Its insides are your insides. Time is allotted to rooms. It’s basement is your basement. Its liminal spaces are your liminal spaces.

Almost every one of these stories is told as a sleep event. If I insisted that every strange night of sleep I had was a haunting of some kind, I’d be pretty psychic. There are certain experiences that guests on the show will describe, and for me it’s like, Yes, I know exactly how this feels. And I wonder, there must be certain kinds of events that are basically on the seizure spectrum, that have a certain epileptic affect I recognize, but not necessarily every supernatural event would have that same affect. There are all the artifacts of dreaming one might experience, jumps in time, forgetting, stories with vague endings or that involve “coming-to”. And the ubiquitous sleep paralysis stories, which, account for a surprising amount of supernatural experiences.

As I might have wondered here a few times, to what extent could some of these hauntings and all the lifestyle changes that occur with them be explained by long-term viral infections? Like, what if Epstein-Barr or flu varieties or some viruses we don’t even know about were giving people low key neurological damage? You barely get sick, but you get tired, deep feelings of dread, sleep disturbances, paranoia, hallucinations. I often think, ah, there’s some kind of mold in these houses. But the weirdness of Long Covid makes me wonder if other things could do that.

If a person could have a somewhat objective distance to contemplate the strangeness of dreams, especially lucid dreams and how artificial any feeling of verisimilitude really is, I think a lot of supernatural experiences could be recognized in that light. If you have enough deja vu and seemingly clairvoyant dreams, you realize, we just have no authority at all on the causality of our thoughts or recognizing the order of things. When I think about how many times I was dreaming about something that was happening shortly after I awoke, it’s clear what “I” experience is in no clear linear order.

This is not even broaching the peculiarities of shared memories. A group of friends, or a family, remembers through stories. I remember my own life through stories. They are so malleable. As I get older, my most potent emotional memories are so played out, they’ve been replaced with vague corruptions of tertiary events I can’t even be sure ever took place. Granted, I’ve had a very traumatic life. And I talk about it a lot more than most people. There’s bound to be some displacement.

More to the point, there is a whole range of experiences which are really just relatively common exotic retreats of the mind. And people just aren’t very good at self-reflecting about things like how it feels to listen to a song, or the slightest sadness or mortal seriousness, or depression and trauma, which is not to difficult to come by in this life. But it’s taken me so much to be able to have some kind of idiosyncratic vocabulary to talk about dreams or ecstatic or transcendent experiences, to be able to talk about entering and exiting a dream, or the sometimes arbitrary signification of profundity or truth in certain experiences. The most powerful experiences you can have as a person, are exactly what they are, and can also be examined skeptically. Those feeling are just little glands squeezing out their final juices to convince you of something. Something “ineffable”. Either it’s ineffable because its content is in fact nil, despite the fact we always have some deity in our arsenal to take credit, or the content is the division between that excited state and everyday life.

One opinion that still annoys me is the particular angle of this argument that “You can’t just believe that this is all there is.” As in, we should take it for granted that everyday life is nothing but a hell of work and consumption, small talk and anxiously averting authentic communication, because of course that’s all the natural world could allow. No, we must also have spirits. Without noticing all that argument forecloses. Yes, everyday life is horrifying. Change that and then show me ghosts.

[thrythlind]

This is the second post.

First Post

Third Post

Continuing with this game with Alpha's play and power phase.

For a card play, I have Alpha do a Furious Slash which causes her to Discover 1 Aspect, which is Bloodcurdling How

Now that there are two Aspects, she hits two targets with her card. The Hunter Drone and Ambuscade himself.

And then I choose to deal some damage with her Prowl innate power.

Ambuscade is starting to show some wear and tear and that drone is gone.

One thing to note, if at any time Alpha has 3 or more Aspects, then she starts dealing chip damage to the lowest HP target on the field. This could be good when there's a lot of minions or devices. But I'm keeping good control of Ambuscade, and I'm cautious about things that harm my team mates (I'm less cautious about hurting myself, as you'd see if I had chosen to field Fanatic.

But, all of Alpha's aspects do useful things like damage, card draw, and recon at the start of each of her turns. So it is tempting to play a lot, but I'll hold off until I know how to control them.

So, in the older edition, Master of Magic allowed you to heal whenever you cast a spell. This one instead lets you discard from your hand whenever you're forced to discard from the top of your deck.

Why is that useful? Controlling the number that's on top of the trash.

See that the Phial of Exomna there has a 2 and Master of Magic has a three. Suppose that you were casting a spell that dealt damage to you and you pulled a 3 or 4, you could instead discard something from your hand with a 1 or 2. Or if you were trying to damage the enemy, you'd want that higher number.

In any case, Nightmist is now in a bit more control of her magic.

Case in point, she uses her Innate power Incantation to cast Essence Transfer and the card discarded was Mistform with a 1.

Using Master of Magic, she instead pulls Tendrils of Talontus and discards that to use its 3 for her spell.

She then drains Ambuscade of 3 health and uses it to heal Alpha 3 points.

So, Harpy's flocks demand her attention, which is simulated by her need to discard 2 cards for each Flock in play at the start of her round. If she doesn't do this, the Flock gets angry and disperses, causing her to suffer psychic feedback.

I've noticed that a lot of Harpy's cards alleviate this by giving her lots of Card draw, such as this "Reservoir of Power" here. (Re: the art. At one point, Harpy had a dalliance with Countess Bathory and considered going vampire, but stopped short of killing someone, she'd killed people as The Matriarch and has no wish for a repeat of that, so she knows the techniques, but isn't a full vampire.)

Side Note, this is something I love about the game. They have a deep, deep lore including both the world the heroes live in and the fictional publishing company that created their comics. They have whole bits of lore about what the company and writers were thinking for each of the story arcs.

So while there aren't real comics around, only the Letters podcast discussions, the art, and the quotes... the lore is surprisingly deep and a real love-letter to comics in general.

In any case, Harpy has played her Reservoirs and also used her innate power "Seeking Order" to attack Ambuscade. Now that his armor's gone, she and her birds can start to go to work.

Now we come to Expatriette and it's time to put her tactical skills to work with "Backup Plan"

She decides to Discover a Gun for the first line and pulls up her signature "Pride and Prejudice" - these used to be two cards in the prior edition and as much as I appreciate the streamlined gameplay (new Expat is so much more efficient than prior Expat), I miss the matching art from those two cards in the past.

See below.

Back to this edition.

For the Second Line, Expat chooses to let Wraith deal 3 damage, this is upped to 4 damage because of her Smoke Bombs.

A second hero can regain HP and she chooses that to be Harpy.

A third hero, she chooses herself, recovers an item and she brings her Shock Rounds back from the trash.

That's all the card play, so now she moves to power and decides to use Modified SMG because it gives her a chance to draw an extra card.

Note that I'm turning them to the side to indicate which I power I use, that's not normally a thing in this game though.

Next, the environment plays the Edifice of Respite, which... doesn't really do anything for now. There's no Ongoings in the Environment area, this Relic hasn't moved areas, so this isn't affecting matters. But I can definitely see issues where this could be either a boon or a bane.

Now, Ambuscade does his start of turn damage and draws a One-Shot, causing him to switch to his cloaked form.The One-Shot itself causes him to attack the 4 highest HP people: Harpy, Nightmist, Alpha, and Expatriette.

He then does the Cloaked form's end of turn damage to the character with the lowest HP. This is Expat.

There's also fewer than 5 devices in play, so he Discovers a device.

This is Auto Stims, which has an End Phase effect.

Note that it is STILL End Phase, so even though it was just played, it now takes effect. (End Phase for villains and heroes can get very harrowing for this reason).

Auto-Stims heals him and causes him to reveal the top card. This is Unavoidable Explosive, which is a One-Shot, which kicks him out of Cloaked state and damages Wraith.

Also, the Bloodless Reliquary moved to Expat's area.

Now it's Wraith's turn.

Wraith uses Leverage again.... and brings her Smoke Bombs back into her hand.

Ta Da!

Apparently I played Combat Prowess the round prior... I can't remember the specifics... sigh (the flaws that happen when you try to report by memory and photos instead of live)

In any case, that must have reduced the explosive to 0 allowing her to play a card due to Combat Prowess, which would have to have been Stun Bolt.

Then Smoke Bombs were destroyed at the start of her turn and she used Leverage to bring it back.

Then her Power Phase came around, and she used Utility Belt to put the Smoke Bombs back out and then used Stun Bolt to both deal 2 damage and reduce the damage Ambuscade does by 1.

In the prior edition Stun Bolt wasn't limited so you could have multiple in play. And it became possible to reduce enemy damages twice by shooting with both via the utility belt extra power use.

Can't do that now. But reducing enemy damage is still strong and Wraith has been consistently able to keep Smoke Bombs in play, meaning she's able to reduce damage by 2 in general and 4 to herself because of her Combat Prowess.

Now it's back to Alpha, and while Ambuscade doesn't have any Ongoings for her to break, she still is able to damage both Ambuscade and his Auto-Stims device.

Alpha has been able to consistently chip at Ambuscade. I would have liked to get her Lupine Senses into play to control his card plays a bit, but was unwilling to risk losing control and having her damage my team.

For Card Play, Choose to use Maintain Control for some card draw and to drop Bloodcurdling in the hopes of Discovering a copy of Lupine Senses (initially thought I'd be able to play it from my hand... nope).

Instead, I get Insatiable Hunger... which I initially didn't think was useful, but it starts digging up some very useful Ongoings.

Not doing much of her reporting stuff right now, sorry Alpha, still good job just keeping constant damage on.

On to, Nightmist, I choose to play Astral Premonition to look at the top of 4 decks... (sorry the second photo is fuzzy) I played the Astral that had the number 2 and the one with the number 4 is the one that fueled the spell. I believe this happened because of Master of Magic again, lots of control from that.

I look at Ambuscade, The Harpy, Alpha, and Expatriatte.

Then I place those back on their decks, choose to discard from one deck and play from another.

I choose to discard Run and Gun from Ambuscade so he doesn't get to activate his Cloak again.

Then I choose to play one of Harpy's cohorts (two special familiar ravens) giving her more card draw and some ability to heal players at the start of her round.

I also now know that Fatal Feast is on Alpha's deck (though the deck gets reshuffled before that matters) and Hollow Points are on the top of Expat's.

I then use her Incantation innate power to play a spell and go Mist Form.

Mist Form used to just stay out and give Nightmist extra draws and immunity to damage, but while she was in that form, she could neither use powers nor play cards. We sometimes would have her recharge in Mist Form and draw fire as either the highest or lowest HP character. We used to call it "Mist-Tanking"

Mist-Tanking is what I want her to do here. Ambuscade is currently targeting the highest HP character and that's her, so in this form, she will ignore all his damage.

At the start of Harpy's turn, Huginn heals Expat.

And then she discards two cards to keep the Starlings in play.

I then bring out Eldritch Training, which immediately let's her either draw two cards or destroy a Flock card.

She draws Lash of the Elements and Magical Bequest.

Huginn lets her play a card and though I forgot to take a photo, she plays Avian Aid and brings in Muginn as well as another Flock card.

But that photo with have to be at a new post.

This is the second post.

First Post

Third Post

[copperbadge]

Just reread the bit about Michealis's countdownbefore he bemoans his lack of grandchildren and I'm curious if Eddi and Gregory are planning to have kids, whether by adoption, surrogacy, or Eddie leaving some monstrous concoction on a window sill and attracting a lovable street urchin they they take in?

Totally cool if you have no thoughts, I just thought of the whole window sill street urchin and so had to ask.

Lord, I hadn't even considered the "booby trapped pastry to catch an urchin" method of parenthood, Eddie probably likes that one best.

I've got in mind a story about it, which involves them asking Eddie's sister to be their surrogate; the child would be hers and Gregory's, but that way there's a blood connection to Eddie, which could be important for a number of legal reasons and very important when one of your dads is a celebrity and the other one is literally a king.

But I think also there's...it feels like there's a gap in popular culture surrounding adoption and its "legitimacy" and more importantly the joy that can come of it. I know people who have adopted and people who are adopted and the psychic damage both subsets take from stuff like the Thor movie jokes about "He's adopted" is pretty real. In Infinite Jes, Lachlan's story about adopting his daughter is based in a real life adoption story that a real life podcaster has told that was deeply touching and emotional. Which is why it was important for me to both have Lachlan say she's adopted and to have his partner's mother love her no differently than she would a biological grandchild.

And so I haven't taken the idea of adoption off the table, particularly adoption of older children who get drastically diminishing returns once they leave infancy. Especially since Gregory was raised in the legacy of "You have to want to be a king" -- it's lovely to have children whatever they want to do with their lives, but adopting a smart older kid who's interested in and good at politics, who might want to follow in the family business, and who also needs love and care from people who desperately do want to be parents, is a smart move all around.

I do also have a subplot in mind where the media keeps insisting that Gregory's going to adopt Noah and make him the next king, and Michaelis is irritated but Noah thinks it's hugely funny.

"Gregory's going to adopt me," Noah announced at breakfast the next morning when Michaelis walked in. "I'm going to become the royal heir and be super fancy. I'll go to some really good ivy league school after all and give up all this podcasting nonsense." 

"You can do better than Ivy League," Michaelis said, playing into the joke, and also recognizing when Noah was honing his impression of him. "Gregory went to the Sorbonne. And from there to the London School of Economics."

"A whole school of economics? I've had nightmares like that," Noah said. 

"It is a real place full of extremely serious people," Michaelis said.

IDK, I'm still thinking about it. There's plenty of time yet, at least in my world. (Michaelis is tapping his watch.)

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

if u dont mind asking, how do you identify streaming websites to use? there's this one show where a few episodes r practically unfindable to me. how do u find what you once thought was nearly unfindable? (like the josh series haha)

Funny you should ask that right now, as I have just tried stepping away from that and fucking hell I hate it. Listening to Mark Watson on a podcast recently made me decide I want to hear his radio stuff, and I downloaded his Address to the Nation and Mark Watson Talks a Bit About Life shows easily, but while looking for the first of those, Mark Watson Makes the World Substantially Better, I saw it was available as an audiobook on Audible. And figured I do try to pay for things when paying for them directly is an option, so I should do that here. So I bought it on Audible on my laptop, download it there, but I want to hear it from my phone. Sign in on my phone, find that my account on my phone doesn't have it. Sign out and sign back in using the same email address and password that I used when I bought the thing on my computer, it still gives me different library that doesn't have it. Try to manually take the file on my computer, transfer it to my phone with a cable, and open it with the Audible app. Doesn't work. Look up options for turning the aax file into an mp3 so I could play it with my normal music player, and they're all either more expensive than just buying the book again from my phone, or they're incredibly complicated. Everything I try just leads to something telling me to sign up for an Audible membership for a bunch of money per week or linking me back to Amazon. Every moment of it is not just frustrating but also depressing, looking at how Amazon is connected to everything and our world is nothing but pushing people into signing up for regularly payments to big corporations to get media curated by those corporations, making me have trouble remembering why I thought paying money to Amazon was the more ethical option and this is dealing me more psychic damage the more I try to figure it out. Jesus Christ I hate it.

Okay. Anyway. Sorry about that, I realize you were not looking for that rant with your question; your message just happened to come in after I'd spent 90 minutes losing my mind over this to no avail and remembering why I just download things directly. Finding things that are hard to find is often just a matter of persistence, having a list of streaming sites and going through them. You can find a lot of others by just searching the first name. Like if one version of [streaming site] doesn't have it, search the name of the site and you'll get a page full of results with slightly different versions of it, that all have slightly different collections. Options tend to get sketchier as you go down the page. That's mainly the strategy I use - I start from a few main sites, and if it's not there I start looking for their other versions.

I'll avoid mentioning the sites by name, but this is a really good place to start if anyone doesn't know how to find them. There's lots of useful stuff in that link, and from all of those options you can find similar ones. You can also Google "alternatives to [site]" and you'll get long lists and can try all the options on those lists. That's how I finally found the show Josh - it was about the 15th version of one site that had it.

As a general rule, adblockers are pretty much mandatory for this sort of thing, and a VPN is a generally good idea for added security. Some of the sites can be sketchy, but none are as soul-destroying as trying to navigate a system in which Amazon will not let you have access to a file you've paid for, and even if I do figure it out I'll only have the file in a special format that can only be played in their special app that's full of ads pushing a monthly membership on me, and I hate the state of the world. I just want to listen to Mark Watson and his friends say nice things in 2008.

[cadomoisspokenfor]

Legion Rewatch Notes,

Chapter 8:

The Revolution

Aw man, how unfortunate what’s happened to Clark. I feel soooooooo bad. I mean he was just humble div 3 agent, doing his job, gaslighting marginalized individuals, participating in a genocide. How cruel of those bad bad mutants to injure him so badly. He was only actively about to kill David. What could he possibly have done to deserve any of this?

In other words, the Clark propaganda is not working on me this time. At all.

Maybe don’t participate in a genocide? Idk :/

I normally hate when people type in the passive aggressive way I have been for the past few paragraphs, but goddamn, Clark deserves it.

He’s not quite as damaged... but he’s kind’ve like old David here, from the over-medicated living with Amy timeline. Again, not quite as damaged as that though.

Clark considers mutants a “threat to democracy.” 🙄 “Moral panic” I guess?

“The second I walk outta this room, i’m going to war.” There’s that word again. Clark could just... not, and they’d probably have more time to figure out how to safely eradicate Farouk. But because he doesn’t and David busies himself with peace treaties, Farouk escapes and continues to be a problem for the next year. Clark has a family. A husband and child who love him to death. And he chooses war over them. This pattern will repeat in other character. Technically this isn’t even the start of it.

Suit change, new cane, same Clark. This really doesn’t change anything, does it? He could go through the rest of the series in the suit he wore before and it wouldn’t make difference. The valiant hero dressing for an expected victory over their long time (relatively) rival, only to be stopped immediately by an unforeseen development. This pattern will repeat... tragically.

Considering Farouk!David woulda just dusted them, it’s probably nice for his friends to see the real him is much less violent. He just stacks em like a Jenga Tower, no need for anything more.

Also, Wilhelm scream from one of the soldiers.

He’s also talking strangely. In an almost too calm voice. Measured. He talks like this a few other times, but I think those times have sadder context. Maybe they reflect on this moment. He talks like how he talked when Farouk was mind-melded with him, but his intentions aren’t evil this time around. I guess this is just his “fully in control” voice.

Clark’s literally shaking where he stands.

The zoom in to Clark’s blind eye is reminiscent to previous zoom in’s to Walter’s foggy eye. I guess Clark has taken on the role of Walter, artificially. Makes sense since he’s now the main D3 representative/antagonist like Walter was before.

“I don’t care if you save me, or the world, if you don’t save yourself.” David will eventually choose himself over the world, and Syd. And Syd will hunt him for it. Goes to show how much things change in s2.

“You know the most dangerous thing about schizophrenia?”

“You’re not-“

“The most dangerous thing is believing... you don’t have it! That’s the trick, the mind killer, your disease convinces you you don’t have it. So, for example, one day in the hospital you meet a girl and she has some friends, and they tell you you’re not sick. You have superpowers. And more than anything you wanna believe it because that means you’re not crazy! That means you can fall in love and live happily ever after. But you know if you believe it, if you surrender to the hope and you’re wrong, then... you’re never coming back.”

“I’m here. I’m real. The power is real. You gotta accept it, otherwise we can’t move on.”

“I was in Clockworks for six years. Drugged, doing nothing. Contributing nothing. And now, finally I can be useful! I can help! Don’t you get it? I am so sick of myself. This only works if it’s not about me.”

“David...”

So... that’s a lot. David believes being crazy means he’s not allowed to fall in love, or be happy. He said the same sentiment to Amy before Clockworks. This whole season and this episode especially push David into his full “I’m not insane, I won’t believe you if you tell me otherwise” mindset. At the very least that’s the stakes we’re playing with. If David fully gives into the hope, even for a moment, he believes there’s no possibility for recovery. No possibility for love or happiness. Why even try after that? It’s life or death for him. “If the choice is between life and death, I choose life.”

I know this is all already known and talked about and circulated 100’s of times over in various fan circles, but it’s probably the most important line for David’s character (the speech, not the Farouk quote). It’s very ableist, yes, but at least in the moment it’s coming from someone who’s just being too hard on themselves, and not ya know, being actively validated by the show.

2 episodes ago David talked about being worried about an “invincible” feeling. The dangers of mania.

We also know from that episode that David is more at peace in a calm, responsibilityless setting (with Syd) than he is out in the real world. David’s gonna take on a ton of responsibility, some of it’s gonna draw him away from Syd. At multiple moments throughout the show David has known his own mental health better than any of the others, and even warned them about potentially dangerous slopes he could fall down without their help. Despite this, David is pushed further down a path he tells them is dangerous and is still blamed for what happens in the end. I feel like Oliver’s line from ep4 is relevant here again, “We are the root of all our problems. Our anger, our confusion, our fear of things we don’t understand.” Everyone wants David to be something other than... David. A hero, a god, there projected image of a perfect partner. Not just... David.

Man, the more I realize about David’s self-awareness in s1 the madder I am at Syd for saying all that ableist stuff to him in s2 as if he wasn’t already down on himself 24/7. “It never occurred to you that you’re the problem not the solution?” It’s occurred to him like 5 times by now and has been shut down by you at least 3 of those times. I don’t understand.

What’s strange is... to my recollection David doesn’t believe he’s invincible at the end of s2. Or that he’s not sick.

“Saint David.”

“I’m not saying that. I make mistakes.”

“Say you’re gonna let them kill me if I don’t let them turn me into something different. Something easy. Something clean.” He sounds sinister here, but it is an indication that he knows he’s not perfect. In fact it sounds like he’s trying to appeal to Chap 1 Syd’s mentality. Your disorder is what “makes you you.”

So what’s the message here?

“We can’t just kill people. Or is that who we are now?”

“That’s who they are.”

The justification for killing here is that they’ll kill them if they don’t. Div 3 will kill Summerland if Summerland doesn’t kill Div 3, is what I meant. David has a similar justification for killing Shadow King in s2. Well, he has a LOT of justifications for it, but that’s one of them. Syd doesn’t hear it then either. She does attempt to kill David herself though. I don’t quite understand where the line is.

“He was gonna kill you, twice.”

“With that kind of thinking wars would never end.”

So... he shoulda just talked to The Shadow King when they were both powerless? Talking is what ultimately ends their fight in s3... hmm...

Cary is more humane to their POW than Melanie and Ptonomy are.

The show doesn’t necessarily say it was Cary’s fault for leaving Kerry. Either way though, Kerry needs some space.

Melanie calls David a “world breaker” and outright says now that he knows that’s what he is, div 3 doesn’t stand a chance. I suppose... knowing that... is why they so readily team with Farouk. They stood no chance otherwise. Even then, at least hide him away till after the intervention.

David’s floating meditation pose is seen more in s2 and A LOT more in s3.

He puts the onus of ending the war on Div 3. As if to say, “If things get violent again, it’ll be on you, not us.”

People keep talking about “gods” “waking up” and “realizing they don’t have to listen to us/them anymore.”

When Clark says it David’s first response is, “Isn’t that the history of the world?” But it’s a red herring (or something else) cause he follows it up with, “People of different nations, different languages, learning to live together?”

Clark is afraid if mutants gain power they won’t show humans mercy or equality. This is a common belief among fascist. The “they’ll treat us like we treat them” argument. Only it’s rarely self-aware, and it isn’t here either. Clark genuinely believes he’s not doing anything wrong. It’s all somehow in “self defense.”

Ah, so Farouk and Syd are connected psychically. He entered her mind whenever she entered David’s. He psychically affects her at multiple points throughout the series.

Syd here is convinced to help The Shadow King by The Shadow King. And while he’s wearing a mask at that. Yeah yeah, this pattern will repeat. But still, Syd gives in relatively quickly here. Perhaps she just... doesn’t fully trust Summerlands capabilities? They are legitimately trying to get rid of Farouk, but Farouk has proven time and time again how dangerous he is. Or maybe the “unmake soup” thing is just that convincing to Syd.

Clark’s still standoffish, but he’s slowly becoming more cooperative.

Syd rolled a 4 on that hero speech. She needed at least a 7.

I legitimately NEVER noticed before that Syd secretly turns on the lab camera feed for Clark to watch. They weren’t trying to show him that.

David gets a chance to look back at his whole life and recontextualize everything.

David straight up halts Farouk’s theme. If Clockworks Podcast is right and he can hear that whenever Farouk shows up, this would be evidence of it. Alternatively, he was halting Farouk, and the music halting was for the audience. A fun subversion of expectations.

David describes him and Farouk as, “The Sun and Moon.”

Division 3 sees it. The monster they saw on infrared. Clearly a separate entity from David Haller. Clearly of a different disposition than David Haller as David Haller has acted very differently and non-hostile compared to when they saw him roaming those HQ halls. The monster and David are not the same. They see who their real enemy is now.

It seems evident there was no chance of David beating Farouk on his own here. I wonder why? Was it true? Is Farouk just too ingrained in his mind? Cary said he was like a, “Computer virus. Learning his systems, bypassing his defenses.” Maybe Syd remembered that, and that’s why she believed Farouk. Cause Cary had already said something similar before.

Clark could've escaped, but he stayed, then tried to help fight Farouk.

I feel really sad Oliver got possessed. It never occurred to me before he could even tell Melanie he remembered her. Melanie’ll just go on thinking he never remembered her for a year.

And thus it’s established. There are “good mutants” and there are “bad mutants.”

No one checks on Ptonomy :(

The Lenny that’s talking to Oliver here is still just Farouk.

Did the orb go back as far as it could? Or was this time specifically chosen? If it was chosen, it was probably because it’s very soon after Farouk had been expelled from David’s head, and before the big race for his body starts.

[tsurangaconundrum]

PLEASE talk about kfam spn

your can of worms monsieur. under the cut.

(warnings for attempted suicide and the show has a plotline involving gaslighting, plus this, that i’m writing, has spoilers for major plot twists. if you’re for some reason listening to a podcast that will likely never be finished and has been on hiatus for nearly two years, maybe don’t click) 

For the uninitiated, King Falls AM is a podcast starring Sammy Stevens, new in town radio host, and Ben Arnold, his producer. King Falls is a small mountain town that doubles as a hub for the supernatural, with werewolves, rainbow lights abducting people, Abe Lincoln's ghost in the library, and perdition wood. Sammy and Ben have the cynic/believer dynamic as they deal with the misadventures of the town, it’s solid. 

Now, before I get into plot. I’m going to outright say it, Sammy Stevens and Dean Winchester are the same character. Every non-hunting au of Dean just gives me one Sammy Stevens in my grubby little hands. I’m opening on a list of sammy actions that dean is capable of.

1. fistfighting a politician on a public stage 

2. mhm dad voice compilation

3. upon being asked “who is sammy stevens,” because he’s so repressed and secretive about his past, he doesn’t ever explain himself but is very hurt by the idea that people don’t trust him

4. growing his hair out and eventually ends up with a manbun. It’s so terrible to think about looking at but post confession dean i know you have it in you sir. I just know it. 

5. hating cops (self explanatory)

6. inexplicable giddiness about santa and general enjoyment of the holidays

7. diner food appreciation

We are now entering spoiler and tw territory if you chose to click in against my advice. Sammy is just Dean post canon. If you follow his character arc you just get every Dean rescues Cas from the Empty fic I’ve read this year. Listen to me LISTEN. Love of man’s life is stolen from their home by a mysterious dark entity. Man gives up macho act to go search for him. Man gets so caught up in solving other people’s problems he doesn’t even say why he moved to town for nearly three years, even then only coming out because he was outed. Man attempts suicide via throwing himself into the void that took his lover. It is revealed that the dark entity can take the form of people it has, and mocks man with it. I love you baby please come home. Home is where the heart is and my heart is in the void with jack fucking wright. Like he was never even there like he was never mine. Tell me sobsicles didn’t write any of this. to remind sammy what he’s fighting for, they play an old speech of jack (his fiance) talking about the power of love. like okay cas-coded. 

I have changed no facts about the story. I would love to do a kfam au of spn but it literally already is one. I need to do 0 (zero) work. If you say the words “dean changed his name and moved to a small town calling himself sammy stevens” you’ve done it. That’s it. You’ve got your king falls au. Makes me insane. I can’t write kfamnatural because it’s already written. balls to the walls. anyway anon i hope you’re seeing this and having a nice day. i know i didn’t really say anything new but i sure had fun writing about it! maybe one day i’ll relisten to kfam to do psychic damage and then write destiel parallels because they really write themselves. 

[acepalindrome]

So Critical Role is on hiatus this week, and they’ll be taking another break over Christmas and New Years. Are you bored and needing another tabletop show to scratch that itch? Yes, there’s TAZ too, but they’re biweekly so you’ll still have off weeks. And everybody knows about Critical Role and TAZ. Don’t you want to try some of the lesser known but still very very good roleplaying shows?

I hope the answer is yes, because I’m gonna rec some of my favorites! Please feel free to reblog and add your favorites too! There are so many very good D&D/tabletop podcasts/web shows that get overlooked and a Critical Role hiatus is a great time to shine some light on those gems! And without further ado:

Not Another D&D Podcast: the campaign after the campaign! NADDPOD is set in a world that has already been saved by a team of legendary heroes...except maybe the legendary heroes didn’t do such a great job saving the world as we thought and fucked up quite a lot and left mountains of problems to be solved in their wake! NADDPOD has a great story and drama and heartbreak, but mostly it’s wildly hilarious. The Band of Boobs consists of Hardwon Surefoot (a human fighter raised by dwarves who left home for adventure and is used to be being a big fish in a small pond,) Beverly Toegold V (halfling paladin boyscout and Very Good Boy who’s trying to earn his merit badges) and Moonshine Cybin (wood elf druid, hillbilly and chaotic bi who flirts with every woman she meets. She has a possum companion named Pawpaw. I love Moonshine.)

Dungeons & Daddies (Not A BDSM Podcast): Four dads from our world gets transported into the Forgetten Realms on a quest to rescue their sons! This podcast is extremely goofy and if you thought the McElroys played Calvinball, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Dad jokes cause psychic damage, and there are a LOT of dad jokes. It’s 90% hilarious shenanigans and then 10% feelings (I cried about a character called Lizardboy Scales McStuffins.) The dads are Darryl Wilson (barbarian and stay at home coach dad, big softy on the inside,) Henry Oak(druid and mega crunchy hippie dad,) Glenn Close (bard and rock’n roll pot-smoking dad,) and Ron Stampler (rogue, emotionally detached stepfather and honestly probably a cryptid. What the fuck is Ron? We just don’t know.)

Dimension 20: Escape from the Bloodkeep: this is a fairly short webshow, just 6 episodes long, and I admit that I only checked it out because Matt Mercer and Erika Ishii were on it, but I absolutely loved it! Escape from the Bloodkeep follows the subordinates of the Lord of Shadows right before the great final battle of good vs evil that they were totally going to win...except a couple halflings threw some magic jewelry in a volcano and fucked everything up. It’s wildly funny as a LOTR parody but the evil villains end up becoming a found family at the end, because of course they do. The vile villains include Efink Murderdeath (elven grave cleric who turned evil to rebel against her dad,) Sokhbarr the Boglord (half orc ranger and basically the Steve Irwin of monsters,) Kraz-Thun AKA Leiland (anxious insecure Ringwraith warlock,) Lilith (queen of the spiders and wine mom to thousands of tiny spider kids,) Maggie (tiefling barbarian and daughter to the Lord of Evil) and Marcus St Vincent (human pirate who sided with evil to get rich.) Dimension 20 has some other shows like Fantasy High and The Unsleeping City that I’ve heard good things about, but I haven’t gotten around to watching them yet!

Rusty Quill Gaming: I’ve only just started this one but I love it already! It’s set in an alternate 19th century London that has magic and all the usual fantasy trappings, but also Lord Byron is there? It’s a lot of fun so far but I’ve been told that there’s a lot of pain coming and I’m very scared. The squad (at least where I’m at) includes: Sasha (socially awkward human rogue,) Hamid (halfling sorcerer and Fancy Lad,) Zolf (dwarf cleric, has a peg leg and possibly the owner of the team’s only brain cell) and Bertie (human fighter and loud, flashy buffoon.)

And it’s not a tabletop/roleplay podcast but I only got into Rusty Quill Gaming because of one of Rusty Quill’s other podcasts, The Magnus Archives, which I can’t recommend highly enough. It’s a horror series that follows the new head archivist at the Magnus Institute, which is an organization that documents all manner of supernatural and spooky shit. What happened to the last head archivist? It’s a ~mystery~. At first it seems like a bunch of stand alone stories but soon you start to realize that there are all these threads connecting everything and I can’t really say much more because a big part of the fun is seeing how the overarching story comes together. Also lots of LGBT+ characters. The main character is canon ace. Please listen to The Magnus Archives.

Hope you’ll give some of these a try, and again, feel free to add your own! Give some other shows some love!

[untitledtallgeesepodcast]

[TRANSCRIPT] EPISODE 12: SPACE IS (STILL) THE PLACE

Kat  0:03  

Hello and welcome to Untitled Tallgeese Podcast, a podcast where Kap, which is me, Mallory, Caitlin, and Cathy all get together and watch Gundam Wing and talk about Gundam Wing. This is episode 15, where we'll be covering episodes 23 and 24. 

Kat  0:20  

So I'm going to start off with an episode summary of Episode 23: Duo God of Death Once Again. We open with Sally Po salvaging Wing Zero from the bottom of the ocean with a band of rebels. In space, a now recovered Duo is hanging out, shit-talking OZ without even wearing a disguise, and that gets him noticed by newly-minted OZ soldier Hilde Schbeiker, who tells him to enlist. Instead, he steals a mobile suit, prompting a space battle with Hilde. During their own psychic hot pink moment, Duo realizes they're both fighting for the peace of the colonies! So he saves her from becoming collateral damage, and his capture conveniently gets him a ride to the moon. Duo is so hot that Hilde defects and helps him break into his target, the Lunar Base. Duo again allows himself to get the shit beat out of him and captured -- this time strategically -- and is thrown into the brig with Heero and Wufei, who are immediately jerks. He tells them the doctors have begun building a new Deathscythe and Shenlong. Lady Une makes Trowa listen to her monologue about Treize-sama and we fade out. 

Kat  0:21  

Episode 24: The Gundam They Called Zero starts with a mysterious Gundam attacking an OZ resource satellite, piloted by a traumatized Quatre, who then sets his sights on an actual colony. Lady Une orders Trowa and Heero out with the Mercurius and Veyeate, ignoring Chief Engineer Tsuberov's argument to use the mobile dolls. But with Une distracted, Tsuberov overrides her and orders the air to be cut off to the cells holding the pilots and the doctors, leaving them to die... slowly. Trowa is amped as hell to hang out with Quatre and get the band back together, but Heero is more cautious. Trowa loses half a suit in the ensuing battle and learns that Quatre may not be the ally he thought; he's decided the only way to stop war in outer space is to destroy the colonies themselves and Quatre and Heero prepare to face off as the episode ends.

Mallory  2:03  

Yeah, these episodes were really fun.

Kat  2:06  

They were really fun and I think they were really straightforward. There's, I don't know, there's like just everything was happening not symbolically. 

Caitlin  2:14  

Yeah, I love these episodes because they, they contain the entire spectrum of like, Duo eroticism. So 

Mallory  2:21  

[laughter] All right! 

Caitlin  2:24  

you have Duo being like cool, for a second, to Hilde. He's got the glasses, he like tries to break into the volunteer group or whatever, the soldiers. He does, he does get some like blows in and then he gets beaten up a bunch? You have cool Duo who we love and then you have beaten up Duo, who we also love. His voice is just so sexy to me throughout this entire thing. Sorry to like, confess my desires here but Duo is really like, working it. 

Cathy  2:56  

To add on to this in Episode 24 you get moe, cheerful-even-while-dying-but-also-resenting-his-death Duo. And then there's the little bit of like, almost flirtatious but also kind of serious fighting with Heero over who gets to go out of the jail cell and him calling Heero 01, which is a lot of fun. And you know, you get all the little pairings like Trowa beats up Duo so you get your 2x3 and then Wufei is stuck with Duo after Heero leaves you get your 2x5. Heero and Duo are the two that interact once Duo gets caught so you get your 1x2, like you got, you, there's everything.

Kat  3:37  

And you get a new female love interest with Hilde.

Caitlin  3:40  

Yeah, Duo gets a girlfriend at last he gets his own like mini. He gets mini Noin, as as we call Hilde.

Cathy  3:46  

I really had forgotten how much she is like Noin until I rewatched these episodes, like she seems like a younger Noin, including sort of her naivete, and obviously that she's part of OZ. She has the same kind of, you know, I know what's right, and I know what my morals are, and I know what my values are, and I know what my mission is, that Noin had when we were first introduced to her at the Victoria Training Base. And then of course, that gets turned on its head by a man the same way that she does with Zechs. 

Caitlin  4:19  

Mmhmm.

Cathy  4:20  

And then she sort of abandons that original kind of mission statement to seek her own meaning, which is also adjacent to the man's meaning, [laughs] but in a in a fun way.

Caitlin  4:32  

And I will say that, in terms of like convincing speeches about politics we see in the show, Duo's points to her do make a little bit more sense than the average one.

Cathy  4:44  

Yeah. And I I was trying to pay attention to the narration we got at the beginning, and I think this is consistent with the last two, but it felt more poignant here, where they were saying, you know, we're at this point where the Gundam pilots are trying to find a reason to exist in this changing world. And I thought that was a really great way of explaining, you know what Duo is doing and why I feel like that's so inspiring to Hilde, such that she essentially does a pivot and becomes a free agent in terms of how she is thinking about who she's fighting for. Because, you know, if you think about Duo and the other pilots at this point, the scientists who they've been getting missions from are captured. So it's been radio silent for months and months and months. Their Gundams are gone, they really have never been particularly good about organization or trying to get to a central mission, or if they even know what that central mission is. So they're working so hard and being so bad at it in terms of like, like doing to the best of their ability, something. And I really do think that that speech he gives like, there are some truths that he finds self evident. And it's just really hard for him to understand, like how to get there. And he is like, you can always feel him struggling with that while he talks to Hilde. And so I did find that really moving and really human.

Kat  6:04  

When he says, "You remind me of me when I was sent back to earth and decided to fight for the colonies alone," which was really poignant, but also kind of funny and brings up a common complaint, which is I have no idea how much time has passed between things. Sort of like, was that how many months ago was that? When you say months and months and months, they've had time to build all these mobile suits. So and it does appear that OZ now has a pretty good infrastructure on the ground. Hilde's part of like, the OZ Student Volunteer Corps, who I don't think they should be handing mobile suits off to, that seems not like the best way. [laugh]

Caitlin  6:42  

But you know, in the logic of this universe that 15 year old are the best piloting mobile suits so [laughs]

Mallory  6:48  

Right, you know, why not give a hot headed teenager awash with hormones and rage a mobile suit?

Kat  6:56  

I do think Hilde fulfills a really good role that we've been talking about in past podcasts about how we really don't see the colonists' perspective. And it gets very direct with that when she goes, "this is outer space's decision." Like nobody bullied us into arming ourselves and militarizing, we had to make the decision ourselves.

Mallory  7:16  

Yeah, we did it for our own protection. She says we weren't going to just sit back and let them take over. She feels. I think. like OZ is giving her some sort of agency in this like feeling of powerlessness that we've kind of talked about and how the colonies feel powerless and insecure, and so if they feel insecure, they want to be armed. 

Kat  7:38  

There's this phrase she uses, and she says the colonies have "a history of humiliation," that I thought was really interesting and a kind of a perspective that we haven't seen so directly before. 

Cathy  7:49  

Yes. And also the scientists at the very beginning, remember, I think it's Dr. J who says, basically, well, OZ is treating all the new space colonies just like, and I have in quotes, "old world colonies to be plundered." They were talking about the history of the colonies and how they've been treated and I think in Episode 23, you kind of get that whole spectrum of it, right? You get they're just being exploited. Well, they feel like they need to assert themselves by getting armaments. But no, actually, according to Duo, this is all just hogwash and propaganda. And, you know, this is like this whole spectrum of reasons and thoughts about why this sudden militarization is happening and who's really behind it and who it actually is serving.

Kat  8:29  

I'm gonna pick up a thread there when you said propaganda, because something we haven't mentioned, was Zech - er Milliardo Peacecraft inexplicably just hanging out in another conference room with a bunch of old colony dudes in suits. And they mentioned that the engineers or the, the Gundam doctors have been killed, and he thinks, oh, that's the kind of falsehood that could really do a lot of damage. Like he's already noticing that the OZ machine is running.

Mallory  8:54  

Right, it was a line that struck me because it's frankly, kind of a terrifying lie in the age of things like Qanon and sort of foreign misinformation campaigns that we are seeing on Twitter and Facebook. 

Caitlin  9:07  

Zechs pointing out the dangers of fake news?! 

Mallory  9:11  

Yeah, unmitigated rumor. And I don't know, I think as a journalist it just really strikes me that in a children's TV show there's this like, warning like, "Be careful of lies that you are being told by adults." We only really see, we see news but we only, really only see Une or OZ representatives speaking. We don't really see like, like an independent journalist standing with a microphone or whatever, which tells you where like news and what news is going out and the spin that is being put on that. Like when Une assassinated Septum early on, and she comes out and she's like, Oh, it was the work of those dirty Gundams, right?

Caitlin  9:53  

Right. We do know, so one of the, one of the notable like news sequences that we have seen recently is the OZ theatre of destroying Deathscythe, right? We see that they do it. And then we see Duo reacting to it?  So we know that like part of their like news cycle right now in the colonies at least is like expelling this, like the Gundams as terrorists,

Cathy  10:17  

I almost feel like, because all the players have, or are connected to the military or Romefeller or OZ or Alliance, and the reactions we see about these news documents, be they press releases or broadcasts, are from those players, it feels less like some sort of point about propaganda, or fake news. It feels like to me that OZ released that information to the colonies for a reason, even though there might be backlash from the colony, the individual colonists, but it really was about trying to get colony leadership to agree to the OZ takeover.

Caitlin  11:01  

Yeah, you think, you think it's about the people who are making decisions, not about trying to control public opinion? 

Cathy  11:08  

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Caitlin  11:10  

I think that might be true. Like, to a certain extent, that is what they're doing. But we also do see that public opinion has shifted, and that there is a real, a real effect to this. That's what, that's sort of what the point of Hilde is, to know that there are people in the colonies who have changed their perspective on how to fight, that they've joined up with the OZ Volunteer Corps.

Mallory  11:33  

Exactly. And sort of it shows the hold that OZ already has, and the sort of foundation that OZ has already built within the colonies, in that they already have, you know, like Kat was saying earlier, they already have a Student Corps. You know, like that these structures kind of pop up really quickly.

Caitlin  11:51  

The ease with which these structures arose, speaks to the, the things for which the colonies are usually used? Like they're already sort of like primed for manufacturer. They're primed for like the sort of intense sort of governmental control because you need somebody inside each of these colonies managing each moment. There's something about them that lends them very quickly towards this militarization process.

Mallory  12:18  

Right, like it's easy to trade one dictator for another one.

Kat  12:21  

Because the structure of the colonies is already so not necessarily militaristic, but -

Caitlin  12:27  

- authoritarian, maybe? 

Kat  12:28  

Yeah. 

Caitlin  12:29  

Just, just because like in order to keep a colony running, you have to have sort of an unquestioning -

Mallory  12:34  

- like a really strong hierarchy 

Caitlin  12:36  

Right, because if somebody starts questioning their orders, you could destroy the colony.

Kat  12:41  

When Quatre is, puts his actual Gundam inside the colony and is like, "colonies don't need things like this!" about a ferris wheel -

Mallory  12:49  

Right, or a playground.

Kat  12:50  

I feel like that's sort of underscores that that idea of like, colonies for one thing versus another thing, like the way people view the utility of colonies.

Cathy  12:59  

Yeah, and one thing to remember is that most of the population that are on the colonies are technicians and workers. So it's already built in, I think, to their history.

Caitlin  13:11  

So one thing that came to mind for me was that we know the colonies are mostly laborers, and mostly people who are working very hard to stay alive in this very precarious space. But they need that entertainment, they need that fun in order to actually do their jobs. Whereas like Quatre's model, besides destroying the entire colonies, has been is now to reject anything to do with that, like, glorious joy of life. Like he's now like, switched entirely to being like, No, we only need war, we only need destruction, we only need work. I think it's also very poignant, because like he must have grown up in the colonies, he must have gone to places like that.

Mallory  13:53  

But it felt out of character from the few, the previous episodes where he spends a lot of time saying like, but we were good to them. We we gave all these resources, we help people live and we wanted them to be happy and all of that, like we shared our resources and our wealth. And now he's like, Oh, they don't need these, like small pleasures! A Ferris wheel? Get out of here.

Caitlin  14:15  

Right. I think that's, I think that's exactly why this is the form his psychosis has taken. It's because he has this idea that his family really helped the colonists and like made their lives better. And now now that he's entered his like, crazy mode, which I love, that he's like, No, we don't need to help them. We all, I don't care about them anymore.

Cathy  14:35  

I love that scene where he rampages through the colonies and Caitlin knows that we had just finished watching Shin Godzilla. And 

Kat  14:44  

Oh!

Mallory  14:44  

Mmm.

Cathy  14:45  

- and this scene was extremely Godzilla-esque, right like, it really shows the sheer power and horror of how large the Gundams are and what they can do when you just want to be recklessly brutal and recklessly violent on anything and it is really, it's really interesting the kind of like care they take with this scene. Everything's quiet, there's no people, you just see this Gundam like, crushing things slowly, like destroying them, because Quatre wants to destroy them. And it's really good.

Caitlin  15:21  

You get really good shots of the colony's slope because like, those the colonies are curved and this is one of the distinctive things that makes you know that they're in a colony is that you can see like the city like rising up behind you because it's, it's circular or it's a loop. And so you get this sort of like extremely enclosed space that like because the colonies are shaped the way they are, it, it feels like they're, they're both spacious and claustrophobic. And so that that giant Gundam being there really interrupts the space. It really like, disrupts the perspective. 

Kat  15:42  

The animation overall, was I think, better. It like, it seems like slowly the budget is increasing, or... Everybody looked great enough.

Caitlin  16:04  

It's Episode 24ish. So they're, this is like the season finale. Sort of.

Kat  16:10  

Oh, true.

Mallory  16:11  

Right. So they're pulling out all the stops.

Caitlin  16:12  

Yeah, so they've saved money for this.

Cathy  16:15  

I think a really fun thing about Episode 24, especially the animation, is I think how carefully they construct it. Like you start off with this frame of what you slowly realize is a colony outpost, and it looks like this hideous floating horror thing with like tubes coming out of it and it's like vaguely alien and vaguely tentacled. And then this menacing shadow comes and you know, you can tell immediately that it's Wing Gundam. But because you don't see into the cockpit like you almost always do when a Gundam appears on screen, you don't know who's in it, and it feels very supernatural? like a vengeful ghost? And then it destroys this outpost. You spend that whole time as the audience thinking, Who is it? Who is it, it can't be Heero, you know, it's not Heero. And then that wonderful shot of Quatre, the utter silence as he breathes, and then they slowly reveal his eye. Like, that... Not only was the animation amazing, but just like this cinematic quality of that opening sequence. It just felt like a slasher film. It was so good,

Caitlin  17:22  

So good.

Mallory  17:23  

The pacing of that scene is so good. Like, I had really no idea what to expect. So when you see like the shuttle approaching, and then the music starts and it transforms into a Gundam and you're like, Oh my god, this is so cool! I'm 31 years old and this is still so cool to me! This would have blown my mind.

Caitlin  17:45  

Did you know about like the Quatre-goes-crazy plot.

Mallory  17:48  

I did know that Quatre has a turn but I didn't know that he goes crazy.

Kat  17:53  

We managed to not spoil it this entire time.

Caitlin  17:56  

That's really exciting.

Mallory  17:57  

Look, I thought he was dying of space tuberculosis, so. 

Cathy  17:59  

He could, he could still be dying of space tuberculous

Caitlin  18:03  

I have convinced several people that that is canon. [laughter]

Mallory  18:08  

So basically, we're just making up our own canon.

Caitlin  18:12  

Yes, as we do in fanfiction as well. I do remember like, there being like a genre of fanfic that sort of talked about Quatre's like, crazy phase. But then a lot of the like basic, 3x4 stuff would, would sort of gloss over it. [laughs] Just because it's a little bit too dark to deal with, for your happy flute playing romances.

Mallory  18:36  

I started reading one and just, I was like, Oh, no, this is too dark. I don't, this isn't the Quatre that I want, shoo. Not my Quatre. So I avoided those.

Caitlin  18:46  

And it's too bad because there's a lot of good three times for evidence sort of in these episodes where you have like, yeah, Trowa's the one who really believes in Quatre. He's the one who says, "Oh, if it's Quatre, we're we're gonna to be okay. He's an ally. He's, you know, my boyfriend from the, from the desert." [laughter]

Mallory  19:04  

Like, he just, he spends the whole first part of the episode just wanting to get to Quatre. Like, "I'm ready to go meet my space boyfriend."

Kat  19:12  

"It has to be Quatre and he's going to be on our side, and he's going to help us defeat OZ and everything is going to be great!"

Mallory  19:18  

And Heero has to be like "Oh, hold on. He just -- D-didn't you just see him destroy a colony? Like he might not be the dude you know. It's been a while since you play violins with him."

Caitlin  19:29  

What's funny to me is that we know, the audience, we know that Quatre has gone crazy because of, probably because of what we saw with his dad and his sister and all of that. We sort of remember that. But nobody else has any has any awareness of that. Like did it not play on like, the news or on like the radio or anything, that this major like colony financer was killed in like a horrific terrorist incident where he self-destructed a colony or a satellite? Like nobody else knows.

Unknown Speaker  19:58  

As it turns out his son is one of the five major terrorists that we consider the number one threat to the colony safety? 

Caitlin  20:05  

Yeah, it's like, it's like everything that happened in that situation is totally separate from the rest of the colonies. Right now. 

Mallory  20:11  

Right. But if OZ doesn't want people to know about it, then OZ just simply won't tell people about it. And so nobody would know.

Unknown Speaker  20:19  

I think that Une would know and then maybe Trowa would know, right?

Mallory  20:24  

Maybe Une is keeping it close 

Kat  20:26  

True.

Mallory  20:26  

to the chest.

Caitlin  20:28  

And so Zayeed Winner's sacrifice was all for nothing, which is what we thought when it happened.

Mallory  20:35  

Completely unnoticed. 

Caitlin  20:37  

Yeah, nobody even knows.

Mallory  20:39  

I had a question about a shot on screen where you see the.. each Gundam pilot matched with their engineer. 

Cathy  20:48  

Yes!

Mallory  20:48  

And I couldn't tell, is that an OZ record? Is that just the show reminding me that Quatre is the only one of these four that is unaccounted for? Like I really couldn't tell. 

Cathy  21:01  

I think it's an OZ record, and what is really also funny about it is, I don't understand why they would know... I guess they matched each of the scientists to the Gundam they developed so that's how they're perfectly in number order? But it was, it was really interesting. It was another one of those moments that felt vaguely like horror-esque. You know, like when you're trying to find the killer and you go through and you like, find a yearbook or group picture and all the pictures have been slashed, and you leave just one.

Mallory  21:28  

Oh my god yes!

Cathy  21:28  

 And that one is Quatre. [laughter] And like that's how I felt about that scene. [laughter]

Unknown Speaker  21:32  

Oh my god, he's even like sent in the like specs for Sandrock, so he could put a little signature on it.

Caitlin  21:40  

Yeah, it's clearly him. I don't think he's trying to cover that. 

Cathy  21:44  

No, no, no, he's not.

Caitlin  21:45  

But they don't, they don't even know who he is. They don't know who the pilot of 04 is. Like that's the point, they don't have his picture.

Kat  21:52  

They didn't realize that it was the Maguanac Corps.

Cathy  21:55  

But I don't think they have a picture of Quatre... Which is kind of weird because I feel like shouldn't the son of the Winner family have a record somewhere?

Caitlin  22:04  

I think they don't know that it's him. I think they don't know it's the son of the Winner family. Otherwise, they'd have the picture. He's the most prominent person out of the pilots. [laughter] He's the only one who had who would have existing photographs. 

Kat  22:15  

Well, you think somebody would have noticed Trowa Barton saying his name is Trowa Barton right since that family tree...

Mallory  22:21  

Speaking of Trowa Barton though, I do want to talk about how he's the MVP of these episodes, because he's the only one doing anything of sort of strategic usefulness? 

Kat  22:32  

Okay, Duo tried 

Mallory  22:33  

Well Duo tries, yes.

Caitlin  22:35  

Wufei tries! 

Mallory  22:36  

Okay,

Caitlin  22:37  

I know that everybody is a Trowa fan. But let's, let's stop with the Trowa exceptionalism. 

Mallory  22:44  

Wow

Caitlin  22:44  

Everybody is doing their best

Mallory  22:46  

Trowa is in a spot where he like, he's in a high ranking spot in OZ, he is so trusted by Une that he gets Heero to be allowed to pilot the Mercurius because Trowa's going to be controlling him. And he's feeding the engineers information and like finding things out. 

Caitlin  23:03  

He's just lucked into that spot. And he's doing the best he can. Anyone would do the same in his position,

Mallory  23:09  

But like, nobody else did that though.

Caitlin  23:12  

Duo tried. [laughs]

Mallory  23:15  

Well, very, unsuccessfully. Very stylishly, but unsuccessfully.

Unknown Speaker  23:19  

Wufei's big plan was to get captured. [laughter]

Cathy  23:23  

It worked! 

Caitlin  23:25  

Waitwaitwait, I think the capturing is an actual plan, like I feel like Wufei's received a mission from somebody. I was assuming that the scientists are still sending out missions to get them to all get captured, so they can give, give them their Gundams back,

Cathy  23:39  

I think Wu Fei

Kat  23:41  

No, Wufei got captured because he wanted to be taken to a place where he could destroy Treize.

Caitlin  23:46  

I think that's just what he thinks, like he still had a mission, right? He was he was given some instructions. 

Kat  23:52  

I thought he was working on his own and sort of like, "Oh, well, this seems like a strategic place that I should be."

Cathy  23:57  

I agree with Mallory, and that's why he's going around because remember, he attacks the Barge during Lady Une's weird thing.

Caitlin  24:03  

Duo had a mission too, right? Duo it was given some instructions at some point. 

Cathy  24:08  

When?

Caitlin  24:08  

I feel like Duo at least in these episodes, there was some line about how you're, Heero says to him something like, "Oh, you you tried to complete your mission."

Cathy  24:18  

I think it was metaphorical. Like I think Heero means, "Oh, you came here with an objective. And you didn't meet it." 

Kat  24:23  

Agree.

Cathy  24:24  

Yeah. And I always thought that was kind of funny, because I wasn't sure if he was being ironic, or if he was seriously asking this question. Like, I was wondering if it was like, "Well, clearly, you're here."

Caitlin  24:33  

Wait, I definitely thought that somebody was manipulating them to get captured. Like I thought that that was, this was a plan.

Cathy  24:38  

My understanding was that they're all there because they know that the lunar base is like a big manufacturing center and core for OZ. 

Kat  24:45  

For mobile dolls, yeah.

Caitlin  24:46  

Right. No, I mean, like there's, so there's their choices. And they're there to blow up the lunar base in their minds, but they've received instructions about that from somebody and the real goal of those instructions was to get them in the same place so they could get back with their Gundam. 

Kat  25:02  

No. 

Mallory  25:03  

No. 

Cathy  25:03  

I disagree. 

Caitlin  25:04  

Okay, then they just really lucked into that. 

Cathy  25:05  

Yeah. 

Cathy  25:06  

I was assinging them much more strategic planning

Kat  25:08  

'cause I don't even think there was like a full lunar base when Wufei got captured. He was literally just like, "Where might Treize be? This is a good try." But I think they're all independent actors who all... like Duo was there to destroy the base. I think Heero was there to kill the scientists. 

Cathy  25:24  

Yeah. 

Kat  25:24  

So they couldn't be forced into working for OZ.

Mallory  25:26  

Exactly

Kat  25:26  

He sort of assumed that's what Duo was trying to do. But Duo was just there to bomb the base. 

Mallory  25:31  

Right? And so his joke is, to him it's funny, like, "Oh, you came to do this too and you failed?" 

Cathy  25:37  

Yes exactly! [laughter]

Mallory  25:39  

And Duo's like, "I don't know what the hell you're talking about."

Cathy  25:41  

Well I thought it was really funny but I wasn't sure cuz he delivered the line so deadpan. Like, there was like no, there was like no joke emotions. Like it was just like, "you botched your mission. You tried to kill them. And you didn't." I was like, are you? Is this funny?

Kat  25:55  

He's making a lot of like those jokes when Wufei's like, "Oh, do you think they're gonna let us test out the suits?" and he's like, "maybe as the target." [laughter]

Cathy  26:03  

Oh god that's true, he's actually really funny. 

Kat  26:05  

The mysteries and vagaries of Heero Yuy.

Cathy  26:07  

I really thought that I would have a better grasp on his character as like a 32 year old person but I'm watching this [laughs] and I'm still like, I feel like Duo in a fanfic like, "is he joking? Is he serious? Does he like me?"

Cathy  26:18  

[laughter] Like that's how I feel about Heero in these two episodes.

Mallory  26:21  

"What does that smirk mean? 

Caitlin  26:24  

Wait, I had one more Quatre point, which was that his voice actress who is Orikasa Ai was really crushing it these episodes.

Cathy  26:32  

Yes! 

Mallory  26:33  

Yeah!

Caitlin�� 26:34  

This sort of like dead cheerful baby voice? He sounds really innocent and pure. But also, like he's about to kill a bunch of people.

Cathy  26:42  

Yes. And especially there is a line where he says, "Oh, you're afraid of dying, aren't you?" Which was so chilling.

Mallory  26:52  

I do want to talk about this because last episode, I brought up that there's a lot of talk of the noble sacrifice. And I feel like in these episodes, there's just, it is hammered over and over and over, you have to be willing to die for your mission. You shouldn't be afraid of dying, or why the hell are you fighting? It just seems like there's just this constant sort of theme of being willing to lay down your life for "the mission," you know, at the back of my mind, like, what are we teaching kids that you should be willing to die for your work and your job? [laughter]

Kat  27:31  

Like, bringing some feelings to this episode.

Mallory  27:34  

Like maybe I'm projecting here, but 

Caitlin  27:35  

Do you mean like Japanese children watching the show or like the kids in Gundam?

Mallory  27:40  

No I mean, like, in general, what is the message that this show is sending to kids? You know, because I talk a lot about how I think I would have related to Heero being like, "oh, I've messed up now I'm going to die." But like, that isn't really healthy. I guess I'm I'm just wrestling with this as the show goes on because I keep noticing it over and over the idea of the noble sacrifice and how that is like something that you should be willing to do if you are passionate enough, or you feel enough for your cause. 

Kat  28:14  

It's also very tied into the idea of being like a noble warrior, which keeps coming up, it's like, to me, those two things are very intertwined. And when we hear like Heero going, like, "space is crazy, I'll just keep fighting and believing in myself." It's not that he will believe in himself, he will keep fighting.

Caitlin  28:34  

I think that it's trying to show that this is the attitude you develop in war. That fostering these beliefs in young child soldiers is bad, and ultimately leads to a society that just perpetuates war because it's the only thing that the people involved can understand. And that ultimately, the goal of the show is to find a way out of that thing. That's the common Gundam universe theme is this, like, how the war machine like perpetuates itself and creates like this situation where you can never escape like an eternal war. I think it draws a lot on currents of like Japanese pacifism, and the idea of like, going against the Japanese militaristic approach of like, you must sacrifice everything for the country, for Japan. In order to like be a true citizen, you have to give up everything. Because that's very much like the military propaganda that was fed to the citizens during World War II and that feeds into the creation of the original Gundam and gets sort of like complicated, watered down in some ways, but also sort of like typified? :ike turned into a such like a, like a rote recitation of a theme in later versions of Gundam  that it's not always fully articulated. So I think Gundam Wing is sort of in between those where it's like, it's dealing with that like sacrificial concept. I think it wants to say, "No, there's a better way." But we haven't yet gotten to the point where it's like, "there is a better way."

Cathy  30:15  

The term that I keep coming back to is like the Japanese concept of junjou, which is like sort of pure-hearted, like a pseudo naive kind of feeling. A lot of child characters in this show are just so pure-hearted, that they don't have any way out, to what Caitlin was saying, other than just throwing their bodies and their lives into it? Like they're given no mechanisms to have any other agency or express their feelings or be able to achieve the goals that they want. And they're so pure of heart that they get essentially taken advantage of, and warped into thinking that the only way into it is to sacrifice their bodies. And I think like Hilde is a great example of this here and I think that's also why Duo says to her, "that you remind me a lot of when I first came down to earth," because when he first came down to earth, the only thing he felt like he had was his ability to pilot this Gundam and sacrifice him and his Gundam to serve the cause of why he dropped as part of Operation Meteor, and Hilde is the same way, you know, she feels like the only way that she can solve solve the issue with the colonies is essentially to throw herself into this war machine and give her whole life to it because what else does she have

Kat  31:25  

When Hilde at the end defects, but then says the same thing like, "I am ready to die for my cause," she still has this enthusiasm and has decided that there could be a different path but that different path is still just fighting? which I like. I mean, I like that it's it's complicated and thorny

Cathy  31:41  

To me, I don't really know if the die or not dying is good or bad. Like I don't know if the show is actually trying to comment on that at all. It's almost just like a shorthand to what you're saying Caitlin earlier ,to demonstrate that they really care about pacifism. Like that's really what this whole "I'm willing to die for my cause" thing is trying to say. 

Caitlin  31:58  

No, I think this is a really good point. Like a lot of it is like the show performing these sort of like typical archetypes, these typical themes in a way that the fans will recognize.

Kat  32:11  

So I did want to talk about 2x5, only because we've been talking about 2x5 this whole time 

Caitlin  32:17  

Yes 

Kat  32:17  

And this the first time they've really gotten to hang out.

Caitlin  32:19  

There's very little interaction you guys. I feel like I live in like a desert where I am just fantasizing 2x5, like did I hallucinate the whole thing? 

Mallory  32:29  

Yeah, it, was it a mirage? 

Cathy  32:30  

I had that exact same feeling, and then I remembered that this bit actually continues on and we are actually thinking of stuff that happens in Episode 25, so

Caitlin  32:39  

Yeah

Cathy  32:40  

there's for next time.

Caitlin  32:42  

Let's rehearse the 2x5 section that we got, which is Duo and Wufei are trapped in a cell together, while Heero and Trowa are going to do things, like, that's a fic!

Mallory  32:53  

As they're running out of air! 

Caitlin  32:55  

Yes! 

Mallory  32:55  

And Duo is complaining and panicking and Wufei is just like, "I need to shut you up and the only way to shut you up is to kiss you." That's what happened after the cutscene. 

Cathy  33:04  

Yeah, that's actually what happened [crosstalk, laughter]

Cathy  33:05  

That happened in the episode. 

Caitlin  33:06  

I remember that.

Kat  33:07  

Yeah, you're actually psychic. Wow.

Caitlin  33:11  

It's just good. They're, they're a good pairing because Wufei's kind of an ass

Kat  33:16  

Well Duo looked amazing. And it was really nice to see them hang out. His braid: great. Getting beat to shit: great. 

Caitlin  33:24  

Duo's voice actor Seki Toshihiko: really great these episodes, very charming [crosstalk]

Caitlin  33:25  

Wufei's voice actor's also very good I think and I think that he's underrated. Ishino Ryuzou, I think.

Cathy  33:33  

I think he's amazing, because you can tell, he's radiating in every single second of his lines, "Shut up Duo," but never actually says it. 

Caitlin  33:45  

And then I also found out that Midorikawa Hikaru who plays Heero had originally auditioned for Wufei. 

Cathy  33:52  

Oh that's interesting.

Caitlin  33:53  

Which I think would have been maybe a misfit. He auditioned for both Wufei and for Heero, but he didn't think that he'd get the lead role.

Kat  34:01  

I think we're now at the point where it's time to pivot. 

Caitlin  34:04  

Yes 

Kat  34:05  

to this podcast's fandom artifact. So Quatre flipping out and blowing stuff up. And then sort of dealing/not dealing with his trauma in the middle of space makes its way into Toonami promo, which was haunting me until Cathy came through and knew exactly which one I was talking about, so. You've heard us talk about the Toonami promos and commercials before on the podcast so I'm gonna kinda split this up into one, there's the pre-airing, like two and a half minute trailer:

Toonami Promo  34:40  

[rocket engine noises, space noises] In the distant future, mankind has reached the stars, but the galaxy is troubled. 

Kat  34:48  

[the commercial is still playing quietly, you can hear yelling and more narration] Which was like so popular that Bandai took it to use to promote it in Japan. And they were like, so happy with how like the Toonami people created the promos for it that they were like, yeah, you can run some other Gundam too. 

Toonami Promo  35:02  

[The sound of a Gundam laser weapon] Narrator: Battles are waged with mobile suits, the key to military dominance. [the commercial fades but is still playing quietly, you can hear muffled narration and sound effects]

Kat  35:14  

People have managed to remaster a lot of the Toonami bunkers and stuff because anime nostalgia cannot be beaten.

Caitlin  35:14  

That's what runs this podcast.

Kat  35:24  

[the beginning of another promo begins, quietly underneath] It's 100% true. But the promo that I was thinking about was not the long promo, but it was called "Spaces is the Place."

Toonami Promo  35:25  

[lo-fi beats begin, with a guitar riff] Narrator: Human beings leave Earth. 

Toonami Promo  35:27  

Quatre: To outer space, every one of us! [fades but contious to play, the music audible]

Kat  35:29  

And it's of part of a series of promos that Toonami did that sort of combined shots from different shows, to kind of create themes.

Toonami Promo  35:30  

Women's voice: It'll be, it'll be dangerous 

Toonami Promo  35:30  

Lady Une: Commence operation! 

Toonami Promo  35:31  

Man's voice: We'll commence operation in six seconds [?]

Kat  35:32  

But Cathy, you have some good thoughts on it so I want you to talk about Space is the Place.

Cathy  35:46  

[promo continues to play -- battle noises and yelling over more low-fi music] Well, so this should really go in the canon of anime music videos. I don't think we talked about it enough. I really wish we knew who edited it, because it's just this perfect pairing of all these disparate stories to like form this one coherence, really cool narrative that manages to say something without ever saying anything. [laughs]

Cathy  36:08  

And they have that moment with Quatre breathing.

Toonami Promo  36:19  

[Quatre panting heavily, a low thrum the only other sound]

Cathy  36:20  

And I have never forgotten it.

Caitlin  36:21  

[low music continues with long chords played by brass instruments, then speaking] What ,what it's basically like, what this reads to me as is like they have like, it's, the characters are essentially Gundam characters, and they fleshed out the Gundam Wing world with all these other like space shots. So it's addressing our complaint that we don't get enough space colony [laughs] in Gundam Wing, like it's like an it's like an alternate universe vid where they've like created more of a, of a world around a particular set of characters.

Mallory  36:51  

Yeah, I mean, I like them because, you know, as a kid watching Toonami, but not really ever catching those shows, because that's just not where I was, like, I saw those promos a lot. And they told me exactly what I needed to know, but actually didn't tell me anything about the show at all. 

Caitlin  37:08  

Yes!

Mallory  37:09  

Like absolutely nothing. But it left me with a really good impression of what Gundam Wing was like.

Caitlin  37:15  

One of the things that is like, kind of a kind of an issue in, like Media Studies, film studies, like trying to analyze film or anime or TV shows as texts is that when you analyze them in isolation from their viewing contexts, you lose a lot of what was going on in terms of their interpretation. So like, I mean, with film, obviously, you can talk about the audience and going into theater and the theatrical space. But with TV, you especially lose this sort of programming flow is like the like, the concept that's often brought up. It's like this idea that you have programs moving into each other. With Toonami, you have a block of programming, so there's all this marketing around the block. You lose the commercials. So it's very hard to sort of like, analyze a show in isolation, which is why I'm glad we talk about things like Toonami's Space is the Place because it's part of it's part of the context of how we were watching it, and how we watch TV, TV back then.

Cathy  38:16  

And for those of you who didn't watch the Toonami block, you know, the host of Toonami was, [sigh] it was either an alien or 

Caitlin  38:23  

TOM

Cathy  38:23  

TOM, I don't know what TOM

Cathy  38:25  

He was a robot.

Cathy  38:25  

was a robot or an alien or something like that. And 

Kat  38:28  

He was a robot, he lived in a space station. 

Cathy  38:29  

Yes. And so that's the other thing about Space is the Place is that it wasn't just about the shows that were on Toonami, in a way it was discussing 

Caitlin  38:38  

Yeah

Cathy  38:38  

the whole meta universe of Toonami. And the story behind Toonami. I mean, rather famously in around 2000, they had an invader of the total immersion event come in and kill TOM. 

Caitlin  38:52  

Yes!

Cathy  38:52  

And so we had a new host TOM II, so this whole idea of like Space is the Place, going into space, discovering these new things, you know, that that was speaking to the cohesiveness of that whole Toonami universe that we were living in as we watched it if you caught that block while it was broadcasting on TV. so when I watched this, you know, I'm not only seeing Gundam Wing, I am seeing all these other series and that host and his voice and the animation at that time.

Kat  39:23  

Shout out to the voice of TOM who is Steven Blum who is a great American voice actor 

Mallory  39:29  

Yes, 

Kat  39:29  

Spike Spiegel.

Caitlin  39:30  

Always been great. These extra programming touches like Tom, like the space station, like these music videos. They not only were they like, absorbing us in a world that we continue to want to see to keep us watching. But it also always signaled to me that there were like, fans behind the construction? Like at the very least sci fi fans, if not explicitly just anime fans.

Kat  39:56  

There's a good interview on IGN that came out this year with Jason DeMarco, who is, he's currently the Senior Vice President and creative director for Adult Swim. But at the time, he was working for Toonami and he was the one who wrote and cut the trailer before Gundam Wing aired. And he wanted to create like a cinematic film trailer, like, kind of elevate it from what they were doing to something that was really like epic. And he's definitely a giant robot anime fan. I will also link this interview, but I think it's really interesting to see kind of the fans that were working in the background, he talks about how you have to get fansubs at conventions and stuff. So you know, he's, he's got that sort of similar anime background. He also talks a little bit about how they had to edit Gundam Wing for the daytime block and how the unedited version was sort of the prequel to the Adult Swim block. [quiet midi music of "Just Communication" beginning to play] So Toonami itself changed a lot about the whole environment of animation and how that's played on television, I think in America. [midi drum break as the volume increases.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

[shy-magpie]

RQG Roman Rogues Sidequest 3

live blog under the cut

These kids are so much fun, wonder how much more we'll get to learn about them before the sidequest ends. Still can't believe Alex actually sent Sasha to live on a nice farm and it actually works. Glad Lydia kept the plot to a simple fetch quest, from what I understand that will give her more flexibility to adjust for them playing unpredictably. Enlisting Bryn in character to help herd the cats was a good move, plus both he & Alex have been good at being helpful without taking over. Azus is already crying. Thank you Helen, for the "Wilde's fine" joke. Sugar sounded a bit emphasized, did someone have a little talk with James re:family friendly podcasting? Riz is the responsible one, but the bar is low Oh dear, bad noises! Oh Azus tried to break the slide and hurt himself. Amidus & Wilde destroy it so they won't be followed that way Mosaic? I wondered if it was just flavor. Yes and this is why no one trusts you Alex. James might be reigning himself in but its still him and a special so I may need to re-calibrate where to expect the humor to go. No Alex we aren't letting Azus go first. How his characters can be so endearing while being so *gestures vaguely in the direction of annoying except the point of the sentence is their inexplicable failure to annoy*. Riz is going first and aiming to walk only on the lily pads. Oh no! a natural 1 that hits the mini, the dice have spoken. A bolt of darkness misses Riz. Azus runs after Riz, Wilde runs after Azus. Bryn falls into Hamid's voice again. Poor kid goes first to keep the others out of danger now they're hardly watching their feet as they go after him. Thank goodness they've been trained so well acrobatics is as natural as walking to Wilde.  They really do care so much. Amidus critical fails to go after them. Fortunately the bolts of darkness can't roll. Azus would try to help everyone and make things worse. Facts re:Bertie Riz climbs back with the help of Wilde Ok but the thing is at Azus' age you really do think everything is wonderful or horrible and you *have* to react this second. Amidus is showing off. Wilde! The bolt hits, oh is that what the types of damage are for? That makes sense, you'd defend differently if you were expecting fire vs psychic attack. Oh Lydia! Wilde now thinks Riz is her enemy. Riz leans over to help Wilde, Azus goes to help Riz help Wilde. Amidus thinks the others have this in hand. Wilde stabs Riz for 4 damage. Alex don't sound so happy about the concept. Wilde yells a threat and Riz tries to hold her back So thats that answered, Wilde sees Azus as an enemy too. Good, would have broke my heart if she thought Riz was a threat to the party (yes I have weird priorities, what of it?). Piles of shiny stuff? Amidus is furthering the plot while his siblings fight, having either the perception or priorities of Bertie. Poor Riz is stabbed again Riz and Azus grapple Wilde, but Wilde can still... Azus attempts to shove Wilde to the ground. Alex would be the one person who enjoys grapple rules. Wilde stabs Riz again. It would be now Helen rolls well. Oh finally! Wilde might not kill her brother today. Break time Poor Wilde, Riz hugs her. Riz takes a healing potion. There is only one left Alex sounds disappointed Azus got across safely. Lydia sounds like she can't recalibrate down to their level fast enough. Oh Azus is now committed to helping everyone. Ok but putting the contract in the place of the statue would be perfect, too bad they don't have time for it Riz finds the pressure plate for the exit by accident. Dragon!?! Blue dragon, which one is that? They try to sneak past the dragon and are spotted so they just run. Riz trips again. The dragon disappears. Nice pitch from Riz. Amidus is a dick about giving the statue back. Oh Lydia you did fine, they just trust you enough to play like that. Oh Sasha, she would have a hard time figuring out appropriate ages to do things. Sasha group hugs, my heart! Oh dear, no one asked for the knock out gas back from Azus! Aww And we have the letter as their epilogue. That was a nice & needed interlude.