CSB331: No Autism Yet!

Hello.

Good morning, or good afternoon, rather, actually.

Hi, good afternoon.

How are you doing?

I'm doing all right.

You're making a grimaced face.

You're making like a mmm.

Yeah, yeah.

Just I've been making this face for

a little bit now.

Let me just be clear.

All right,

let's see this.

This is gearing up to something.

It's actually not.

Let me be clear.

I have consumed zero media this week.

Oh, zero.

I have consumed zero media.

I have played nothing.

I have watched nothing.

I have done nothing.

I have not looked at a screen outside of my phone and the one in front of me.

There is nothing.

Okay.

Is anything else going on?

Yeah, I'm still, I'm just,

I'm building shit.

um okay yeah

i'm no no this is not my way of saying holy shit she's here yeah no but that's that's just the question every week now i guess so but hey buddy

yeah oh i mean you'll you'll hear it

you know

uh but no um um i i just have not i'm not none of that is happening none of the internet like internet game like nothing um

i've um i've been this rule so hard yeah i was like sitting here going, Man, I didn't do anything this week.

Hopefully, Wooly's got something to talk about.

I have looked at zero screens, and I mean, look, I'm going to, we'll wing it, you know, we'll figure it out.

Um, I've been, I've been driving,

yeah,

I've been, I've been getting that down, been trying to figure that part out and getting more comfortable with it.

Um,

you know,

feeling, feeling all right about that.

There is a definite just

time to learn on hard mode that comes from living in the city.

Oh, yeah.

And you know how a lot of people that grow up in like, let's say, a suburb or a quiet neighborhood, sleepy, you can like go out and, you know, learn how to do this in a parking lot.

Sellers parking lot on a, on a Tuesday.

Nobody down there.

That's it.

Go down to the parking lot and then do some roads and then you're all fine and stuff.

And it's just like, yeah, here, I mean, you can go off islands essentially, but if you're on island for the most part,

you're dealing with agro

fucking shitbags and wild people swerving.

You're basically doing twisted metal until you're dealing with

famous traffic.

So I've been, so I've been, you know, I've been exiting the

Montreal island and going into some of the outside areas to try and ease my way through it, you know.

But

yeah, I think I'm just, you know, there's these little things that I've always disliked, I guess, about, I mean, so for the most part, you know,

we've said many a time, but like when you live in a city where, you know, you can get around by public transport or Bixie bikes and walking everywhere because stuff is very interconnected, it's it's very common for a lot of people that to not really drive because it becomes an expensive liability in many cases.

But getting it

at this point in time, a little bit later,

there's these things where I'm like, oh,

there's a part of this that's completely separate from the logistical reasons that I've disliked for a long time.

And,

you know, there's cool stuff about cars, but

I just didn't have, I think,

No one really went like, yo, cars, though, when I was younger and got me into that as a particular thing.

I always thought motorcycles were cool.

And my mom was also somebody who was like, no one is allowed anywhere near my steering wheel under any circumstances.

She was just that type of person.

So there was never even any like, hey, let me show you something type of vibe to it.

Yeah, no, they, my, my,

like, in my family, every single time my sister got into a car, there'd be like some massive kerfuffle because my sister was like four and a half feet tall and would just jam every single fucking thing to the absolute maximum for tiny people.

And then my dad would get in and get stuck

between the chair and the wheel.

No, the annoyance, I'm sure the annoyance of just having to recalibrate everything stopped a lot of people from

getting a shot at it.

But my mom was just extra paranoid about anyone driving, you know, or so.

There was like one person, like my older, older stepbrother who, or half-brother who was like a preacher, was like the only person that was responsible enough that you would trust, type of thing, you know.

But anyway, because that was Jesus driving.

Of course, like take the wheel, you know.

No, but really,

what this kind of meant, though, is for me at the very least, I've always disliked how little you can feel of your surroundings because of the size of the vehicle you're in.

It's an obvious thing when you've been doing it for a long time and you just know instinctually where things start and stop.

But I genuinely do not enjoy

that sort of invisible space.

You're supposed to kind of understand about what you're in.

And depending on the type of car you're into, like that becomes extra difficult.

I know that it's a matter of time and just getting used to it.

But this is why I've always liked bicycles and motors, even motorcycles as well, because I can tell where I am in space.

Of course, the safety factor is not rolling into this, but in terms of just like looking around and you know where you are outside in the environment.

And, you know, and I would even say like a convertible probably kind of like makes you feel a little bit more outside for the situation, but being inside a large thing where like you're gauging just how far from the curb you are in a blind spot to as you make a wide right is always just like, yeah, I don't like that part of this, you know?

Um,

I mean, I know that newer cars certainly have like the little screens that you can fully see the scans and the multi-surrounding cameras around them and stuff.

But essentially, yes, I have a giant hurt box and hitbox, and it's invisible.

Mostly hurt box.

It's mostly a hurt box, and it's very invisible.

Unless there's a cyclist.

Yeah, and

there always is.

It's a hurt and hitbox.

And I'm, you know, trying to feel exactly

the range as I go around the corner here and make sure that I'm like, okay, well, before you turn, there's a bike path, but there's also the parked cars.

And then you're getting into that one.

So like, you got to extend out a little bit.

And ah, you know.

And I've been actually doing like pretty fine.

And everything's like weirdly

like,

there is a part of this where like the sounds and feeling of being in a passenger for years, plus as much as I get a shit for it, video game driving as well.

Like there is a little, there is actually a little bit of that to it where you're like, no, you, you know, round this corner a certain way and, you know, accelerate here or like do that and pull up at the stop signs in this way, check and do all all these things.

Um, there's a, there's an overall thing to this where I'm like, yeah, I, I,

I, I would have like probably always hated this aspect of it, even if I learned many, many years ago, you know?

What do you think about driving?

I honestly haven't made as much progress as I'd like because I'm a, um, I'm kind of a pussy.

I'm kind of terrified to get behind the gotcha.

We got to be honest.

Gotcha.

We're not that far from each other, though.

I have a mental thought process that the instant I get behind the wheel and I don't check my mirror, everyone in my family dies.

Yep, yep, yep.

So, so there's that, there's the feeling, there's the feeling of like

with the car seat right there, you know, and that's the extra level of like, fucking, hey, you're right, you get this is a this is a real responsibility.

Um, but

I suppose to,

you know,

there's an element to this where

in my situation, for example,

like I'm going to be, you know, the one that's getting her to

the hospital, right?

So there's not much to, like, there's a direct mission.

that needs to be accomplished on a specific timeline for a specific range of time, you know, and I can kind of look at it and go, all right, well, in general, getting comfortable and being able to be someone that can get, you know, the kid to soccer practice and all that, like, there is a timeline for that, that overall general vibe, but in the immediate future, there is a direct one mission that needs to occur on a specific path that I need to learn.

So I'm like kind of locked in on just that.

And I'm like, I can do that.

I can get the one thing, you know?

So I'll start there.

But yes it is absolutely a real thing to be like yeah

the consequences of your decisions are

right there and you and you gotta fucking find a way to parse that

not fun

what if

There was a way

if there was something I could eat or drink that would just make all of my anxiety just go away before I started to learn to drive.

Wait, what?

Oof.

Just got to take the edge off.

This is

really good.

Isn't this safer, really?

This is anxiety-inducing.

Let's just cool it down a little bit, you know?

Get a couple road sodas.

No.

Oh, man.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But no, I guess that's sort of, you know, that that's going to continue.

And man, I can't believe the fact that they have that video footage of people complaining about drinking and driving and seatbelts being mandatory.

That video is so wild.

I can't speak to the drinking and driving, but my dad was absolutely one of those guys that

was like fucking pissed off about seatbelt laws.

He fucking fucking hated it.

He absolutely would get like low-key pissed off every time he went anywhere with me, my brother, my sister, or my mom.

And every he would get in and he'd start the car and he'd get a block and someone would go, hey, yeah, yeah, you should put your seatbelt on.

And he'd murmur.

Like literally every single time

up until like I was like

22,

he got into the

habit of it.

Man, so

there's a moment that occurs that, you know, if you don't, if you're fortunate enough to avoid getting into like a horrible accident.

And it's the same thing that kind of like, as I was talking about.

Oh, and he's been in tons of horrible accidents.

Well, fuck.

But the part, the part that like, it's the same thing that kind of like made me think more or twice about the motorcycling thing, which is I love bikes.

I think they're rat as shit.

But

it doesn't matter

what

your decisions are.

It doesn't have to be you.

It just has to be the idiot next to you, right?

Or the wind.

Sure.

But the whole thing being like, I'm fine on the the basis of how much you control of the equation is like your control over the equation is so much smaller in that piece

of what causes the accident.

It's so, your influence is so minor, all things considered, you know?

And

again,

the quote is something to the effect of like, there are tons of

dead pedestrians that have had the right of way, right?

Oh, yeah.

And that same kind of attitude where it's just like, you can just be doing everything right and still someone else's absolute

madness and

complete inability to make decisions properly.

That's really helping a lot.

This is doing a lot

of good for me right now,

specifically.

That specific thought process of doing everything right and then you're dead, that's, oh man, is that exactly what I needed to hear?

That was so good.

Thank you for that.

You know,

I really appreciate it.

You know, there's like

swimming's totally safe, except when you go to swim, there are 1 million sharks in the water.

That's crazy.

My pleasure, bro.

I mean, you know, just

here spitting facts.

Listen, listen.

All right.

It's.

Did you know for a fact that if you don't see how your food is prepared, you don't know what's in it?

Did you know?

Just take comfort in the fact that you have no control over the situation.

and the best you can do is guide it

somewhat towards the outcomes you prefer, but overall, you're on someone else's path.

I mean, that's just what it is, you know?

And every time you get in a plane,

it's infinitely less likely compared to car accidents.

All right, look.

I never understood the fear of flying personally.

It's just because of

height and the feeling of it.

It's just the complete lack of control and the like,

you know, when you do hear about it, it's so like, like, this is a discussion I had with my dad because my dad is, like, was a professional drug driver for a long time, right?

That's why he hates the seatbelt

because he would do deliveries in Montreal.

So, if you put your seatbelt on, that's lost time,

right?

Um, but like, my dad's been in a bunch of accidents, and one of them he definitely caused on purpose.

He wanted to fucking finish his shift early.

And so him and his buddy were like, we're going to fucking plow the delivery truck into a snowbank, but there was a fucking fire hydrant in there and they totaled it.

Fucking moron, right?

Okay.

Won't get on a plane.

Yeah.

Because they're dangerous.

No.

Won't do it.

Okay, so won't do it.

So we should and probably

you know ought to have been thinking of planes as the same way you think of getting on a train or a metro.

Like it's, you know, it's just like, this is a set thing you have no control over.

It's going and it's probably like statistically overwhelmingly going to be fine, except for fucking Boeing.

Except for recently.

Yeah.

But

my dad doesn't like, he doesn't like trains either because he's not driving.

You're not driving.

When I point out, dad, you've been in like a bunch of accidents.

He's like, yeah, but

I could do something about it.

Yeah.

I'm like, but you didn't.

No,

it's numbers don't matter.

You know what I mean?

It's, it's, it's also looking out of a, the, uh, a 50th story balcony, you know, versus being on like a third or fourth story balcony where it's like, they're both certain death, but like, or

but like one is just extra, you know, your brain is just feeding all the fear into it.

Um, and you know, it's, it's that, like, yeah, you're, you're in a tube and it's, it's fucking propelled and it's going.

And, you know, you see

every once in a while one of those news stories where you're like, Did an EMP go off?

Because that thing just went straight down.

And oh, like that guy in Italy, or that other one in Philly.

Oh, yeah.

You know, there's some dude in a propeller plane that just like dive-bombed a fucking freeway just straight up.

Christ.

Um, so you know what?

I have okay, so similar to um

hey, you know, uh, um,

fucking a Mon Golfier, uh, uh, uh, a hot air balloon?

Would you ever get in one of those?

I've been in one of them.

Really?

You got in one.

Holy shit.

Did it go up?

I was like 10 years old.

Oh, my God.

And was it tethered or like free?

I

don't remember.

Because some kind of

field trip thing.

I think it was tethered and it just went straight up.

Because I don't, I have not consumed any hot air balloon media except for just the disasters that occur that I feel like I've seen.

Like the last couple memories I have are just like, oh no, oh, it went horribly wrong.

What are you worried about?

The ones where the fire goes up and it plummets down and it's always at some place that had terrible safety regulations and the disaster is just nightmarish.

Or the ones where somebody's hanging out the basket because it's too burning hot inside and they're chancing them the drop.

You know,

I gotta tell you, if there's a single balloon-based scenario that I am personally threatened by the most,

it is without a doubt one million times more over any other balloon-based

situation,

bouncy castles.

Oh, yeah.

That is new, though.

Bouncy castles just kill your kids.

I did not,

like, there was that one horrible disaster, I want to say, like, maybe five or six years ago.

It was in Australia.

Yep.

And then there was.

Hit by a tiny cyclone is once drinking.

Yep.

And then there was like two more, right?

And then ever since that third, like that first one was like nightmares, but I'm like, okay, no, now all I think about when I see a bouncy castle is just fucking, yeah, typhooning into the air death drop.

So to those of you who are going, huh, what?

So here's the thing.

A bouncy castle is really light because it's basically just a big balloon, but it's also extremely large and wide.

So it's basically just a like a square kite,

which is why if you get a bouncy castle, they're like, you must stake this to the dirt super hard.

But sometimes some guy forgets a stake or there's just too much wind

and it just goes.

Yep, there's just too much wind.

You know,

that's been a thing.

I've

had.

Like the disaster in Australia was properly staked down to the ground and it just got hit with a bad gust of wind.

Exactly.

I have properly like had um like you know rooftop kind of umbrella like patio umbrella things set up where it's like, no, no, no, there's tons of counterweight on this thing, but it's just a windy day.

It's like it doesn't matter, you know.

Um, there's a point where the weather will just take it over, even if you've done the uh, I don't, I don't know if the engineering principles of like 200%

strength apply to a bouncy castle necessarily.

Um, I imagine not.

But recently I was at an event where there was one,

but it was indoors.

Yeah.

And I was still looking at it sideways.

Oh, come on.

I was still like, I don't fucking know, man.

These things.

That's ridiculous.

These things cannot be trusted.

It's horrifying.

And of course, yes, there's the part of it where the people who are on them are very small people.

They're children, in fact, and they're not able to get off that thing in time.

Um,

nah, nah, that's that's over with to me, in my brain.

Bouncy castles are super over.

I've never been in one, and I'm old now, so I'm never going to be in one now, but I'm definitely not going to let the boy in one.

Like, there's a thought where you'd be like, oh, but like, what if you just jumped off in time, you know, and then you see like the castle that has like every netting on the side and the big roof, and it's a labyrinth inside, you know?

I gotta say, dude, every single person in the history of the world world that said it's fine because I'll be able to jump off in time was wrong.

No, no.

See,

when I see the problem start to happen, I'll have enough time to react.

Right, no, right before you hit the ground, just jump off, and then you'll be like landing off a normal, high, a normal jump, and then everything else behind you will take the impact.

I don't know how accurate this was, but I remember seeing like a breakdown of like, if you jump right before your elevator hits, all you're likely to do is just shove your feet up through your ass

that like

because you're just you're just you're turning like a flat fall into like a pointed fall sure or smash your head against the roof higher you know yeah trying to time that shit yeah if only physics worked that way um

you know you could always just sit in seat 11a

right

That was the one seat that survived that play crash recently.

Yeah, but it can't always be the same seat, right?

Well, no, but then I that would be highly suspicious, but no, but that's the one we're all thinking about now.

And prior to that recent one, I was always thinking about that one from Jojo Part 6 because there's that one.

There's that, they bring up the plane underground, and there's one seat that's the seat that Jolene's got to get to.

And I've been thinking about that seat.

But then, hey, if you're listening to this on a flight right now, I really apologize.

This sucks.

This is bad listening.

This is not fun.

It's fine.

Just don't look at the thing on the wing.

You ever,

are you a window open

for comfort?

Absolutely.

Okay.

100%.

Because I think they're cool to look at.

It is.

It is.

And it actually helps you feel better and grounds you when turns are happening and stuff.

I feel like that's a better thing.

But there are some people who are not.

And that's big fights.

Yeah, Paige is a window closed.

Yeah.

Kind of person.

I don't want to know.

I just want to feel the sensations.

I'm like, nah, man, nah.

If I can see the horizon shift wildly while a turn is happening, I'm like, I feel totally fine with that.

But when you can't see it,

I don't mind it either way.

Like, I actually find takeoff and landing really relaxing.

Like,

just like, well,

like, well, because like pilots probably know what they're doing, right?

That seems like an important job.

Yeah, but they're doing less and less.

Like, I'll be like, like, so if I'm really nervous about, like, you know, if I had to go to the hospital, right?

But if once I'm in the room and a doctor has like looked me in my eyes, oh yeah, I know, they got this.

Yeah, not too worried about it.

You've right?

Yeah.

But everything before that that's under my control, I'm like, well, what if I trip and die in the waiting room?

That would be really embarrassing.

You've also could happen.

Sounds like you've never had a really bad takeoff and or had one of those

like when I was a kid and I remember like flying to and from Grenada

alone or with my brother at least we were kids uh doing them doing it uh

like massive ear popping pressure cabin shit you know that just made the whole process suck

you know that that that yeah no that's not fun i mean that's unpleasant but i don't find it like scary

Also, in my mind, if a plane crashes, it's just going to touch the ground and just explode and I'll die instantly.

But it's only attack happening during takeoff and landing.

Like, it's almost never happening mid-flight, right?

That's the other bit.

Yeah,

whatever.

All right, all right.

Anyways, transportation and how much control we have over it.

My preferred amount, zero.

But here we go.

That's also my preferred amount.

My fucking feet.

Life finds a way.

Life, it does find a way.

But yeah, no, that's that's that's like I said, that's pretty much been it.

I've just been doing that that stuff.

Um,

looking into some of these devices because there's all kinds of, you know, machines and tech and things that have lights and bells, whistles, make noises.

Fucking like.

Are you at the parts of looking at baby stuff and you're like, wow, this one looks really good.

Let me check the reviews.

Recalled.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Or getting the paper note about that.

Oh, sick.

Good, good, great.

Or, you know, even just the stuff where it's like, oh, this, like, puts out a sound that, like, simulates being in the womb.

And you're like, ooh,

is that what that sounds like?

I'm not a big fan of the womb white noise.

Yeah, that's a, some, then you get, some friends are swearing by it.

You know, I'm like, let me, let's look into some.

Oh, babies love that shit.

I just like, I'm not a big fan.

Yeah.

I've been out for too long.

Mm-hmm.

I just, the one thing I'm concerned about is just like any of these like things that are really like help or aid sleep aids and things like that.

I'm just like, I don't want it to become a dependency where it's like you need this optimal, perfect, quiet comfort solution as opposed to just, you know, fucking sleeping on the

dirt floor of the forest.

No.

Babies

typically did not sleep on the dirt floor of the forest.

No, no, but as

you know, as a person who can sleep under all conditions, I'm glad that I have that ability.

But no, realistically, I'm just thinking of the anecdotes of like,

there's two kids

of friends and family have had recently, and one of them has been raised and has been sleeping on their own in a big, large, empty library style room that's perfectly quiet at all times.

Oh, no, oh, shit.

And the sound of someone coughing or laughing a couple rooms away and the baby's up.

Versus.

You can overdo that in the other direction, by the way.

You can actually make babies that can't fall asleep unless there's a significant amount of ambient noise.

So, that's, yeah, we don't want that.

That's crazy.

But I do have another one.

I think I've mentioned before, a cousin who just passes out in a room full of people yapping.

And I'm like, that's great.

That's super cool.

That kid can fucking adapt.

You know?

Right now,

we're not at the baby stage of going to sleep.

Right now, we're at what I would call the demand stage of going to sleep.

What's that?

Dad, dad, mama.

This is a paraphrase.

Um, you're gonna read these fucking books, and if you do not read me these fucking books in the right order,

I'm just not gonna fall asleep, bitch.

Yeah.

I, uh, I, I, a friend was telling us about like they um they recently broke the contract, which was

one book and then um a bonus book sometimes, but they they made a no three

rule and then they did did it once, and now it has to be three every time.

Oh, that's that's oh, you fucked it.

You fucked it.

You brought in the third, and now there's no going back.

You gotta read three books.

Page have a system where we each grab a book.

He'll be like,

I want Feelings, or I want Prince of the Night, or I want

Pete the Cat, or

Fuck, what's the other one?

Those are the ones that or Good Night Goon.

Good night, Moon.

No, Good Night Goon.

It's the Halloween version.

I know.

It's about ghosts and monsters and Frankensteins and shit.

That's unfortunate.

And we got him a new one called Pig the Pug,

which is about an evil pug that steals all of his other, all the dog toys.

And he points at it and goes, caboose.

It's awesome.

Okay.

But yeah, no,

me and Paige, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So me and Paige will go like, okay, which ones do you want?

And he'll like list off a bunch of them.

And then, oh, Good Night Bear.

That's the one.

I don't know how I forgot that one.

I read it damn near every single day.

And like, I'll read one and then mom will read one.

Or mom will read one and then dad will read one.

And then as the second person is finishing up,

the first person will start hitting lights.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then so that as soon as that book closes, all lights off.

Okay, it's time to go to sleep now.

Yeah, yeah.

No,

you cannot entice a deal for a third.

I can see that negotiation going very poorly forever.

Yeah.

Like,

the moment you finish the third book, it's like eyes glow red.

The contract has been sealed.

The real terror,

the terror.

that has only started to happen in the past couple of weeks is

the word again.

Oh, it's in do it again,

Which is in just do it again.

Oh, and that's not a danger at night.

That's a danger in the morning.

Oh, yeah, no, because everything is new for kids.

There's nothing that's old.

Nothing gets tired.

Everything's fresh.

Like the same thing can be enjoyed infinitely for years

because it's all new the whole time.

Oh boy, that's a dangerous word.

It's just as good right in a row.

I think Paige read him pig the pug five times in a row yesterday.

It took like 25 minutes.

Oh, that's a dangerous word.

Eventually, like, she looks over at me and

she hits me with like, dad dad wants to read it.

And I'm like, I sure do.

I sure do.

Again, too bad.

Yeah.

Okay.

Oh, he's the best kid.

Oh, man.

We just went through like a milestone or some shit.

Cause like, like, we went went from like four word sentences to six word sentences and prepositions in the course of like a couple of days.

Everything's a jump.

Every day, the little drunk man that lives in my house is slightly more sober.

But as concepts are being introduced, again, danger.

is coming into the situation.

Control over his realm is being exerted.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah.

There's another world here that like...

It's the best.

There's another world here that I'm kind of delving into, but like

I'm I generally prefer for the most part to get the things we need

in advance and plan out for what, you know, what anticipate what the needs are going to be.

But there's some stuff that some.

I mean, best laid plans, right?

Of course.

But there's some stuff where some recent friends and family and folks who've had kids of their own have been able to like you know share stuff they're not using anymore and be like here you go here's a thing that you could use and stuff like that it's like oh cool thank you so much that's been really uh um nice uh and handy for

baby clothes are a racket man there's a lot of the whole thing but the younger they are the bigger the racket So there's a lot of temporary shit that like, you know, it makes sense that that gets passed on and such.

Sometimes, though, you get kind of when you're when some of the things you inherit, you get kind of locked into that brand and its

And at that point, then you're not necessarily going out to get a new thing that you need, but you're kind of having to look for things that already exist for what you have.

And that means potentially diving into the Facebook marketplace.

Oh, yeah.

And I don't know how much of that has been an experience.

Yeah,

we've done a little bit.

Okay.

Not a fan.

And then every now and then you run into like,

I don't even feel safe picking picking this fucking shit up.

Yeah, that.

I don't feel safe looking at this crap.

Just not a fan, you know,

and playing the games of communication to begin with, you know, and

you feel like you're like trying to date somebody back in the day, like, getting left on red.

You know,

like, uh, is the price so are you waiting for a negotiation?

And the, what, where are we meeting?

Under what circumstances?

And did you include all the pieces?

And then you get what you get.

And then you're like, can I dip this in acid?

Is acid safe for children?

Is there baby safe acid to disinfect everything with?

My favorite version of this is like, okay, okay.

So how much is it?

It's this.

Okay, cool.

When can we pick it up?

Hello.

Yep.

Yep.

Yep.

Hello.

What?

We just agreed to the price and the thing.

Yep.

Why won't you get back?

Don't you?

Because

15 other people are sending the exact same message in the exact same.

It's just Tinder, dude.

It's just you going, hey.

And them being like, yeah, everyone else said, hey, what else you got?

You're like, oh,

in the photo, it looked like you were vacationing somewhere cool.

God damn it, dude.

I can't.

I'm out of this.

Like, I can't be

pulled back, you know, into

this trying to say the right thing.

Social media for purchasing

nightmare.

It's the worst.

Sometimes you get a great deal because you run into like a human person.

Yeah.

That's like a normal, normal guy.

That's nice.

That's nice.

They're totally chill.

Yeah.

No, that is nice.

One time.

And that's the trick because that's like, oh, wow, that was like a really positive experience.

And we got a first deal.

Let's do that again.

Okay, so done it again.

So, like at in one particular instance, I'm gonna just be real.

There was like a snoo fret new in the box, yeah, and I was like,

Okay, fuck it, I want that.

That's that we use that, yeah, we recommend that that if you can, it's pricey, but you can rent it.

Yes, well, that's pricey if you rent it, and like, holy shit, that thing's crazy, yeah.

And I was like, no, no, no, I want to get one.

And looking through trying to get it other ways, and some of the other stuff, I just, there's some stuff that was annoying, difficult to do, hard to deal with, whatever, but essentially it's just a, you know, a sleeper bassinet for your kid.

And saw one of those and I was like...

It rocks the baby when they get mad.

Great.

It's very

advanced.

The hoops and hurdles to jump through for the rental or secondhand process and such were full of treacherous pits falls, some of which included subscription services that you needed that, or like a stolen snoo.

It locks when you plug it in in because the service knows that this is a stolen one, and then it like doesn't use the services anymore because it's a whole it, it's crazy.

Yeah, it's fucking crazy out here in these streets.

Um, so but there was one that was fresh in the box, and I was like, Yeah, okay, done, run it.

And you know, didn't hear much, and then they said, Hey, I'll take that, we're ready to go right away.

It's ASAP, as soon as you can.

Hello, hello, yeah, hello, and then

I will, I, I will, if, if, if we can get this today, ASAP, I will pay extra.

Yeah.

I will pay this much extra.

Hey, we can pick it up real today.

We're here.

We're home.

We're right here.

You can come get it anytime.

Sounds great.

Thank you.

And I'm like,

I can't, by the way, this is tangential.

I cannot recommend the snoo enough if you, if, if that's something within your range.

And like, here's the thing.

You are going to, like the weaning off the snoo when they're a little bigger, right?

Yeah, moving to a bed that doesn't move and soothe them automatically.

Yeah, no, there's a there's a weaning process for that, but I and Paige, we were like, Yes, we would like to go through baby his having trouble sleeping at six, seven, eight months instead of zero

because that zero month period,

that's the most stressful part

Anticipating.

I just, um,

as you're looking into it, you're like, yeah, that all works and does its thing.

And that's why

this company is like, hey, you need a license for that sleep.

You got a license for that nap.

You know, you got to fucking, the whole, the whole thing is

just, I don't want to deal with the

amount of people talking online about like getting one secondhand or renting it and then it not having its features working or requiring some extra bullshit or whatever.

And I'm just like, yeah, fuck it.

Just fresh in the box.

I think this is part of like a larger thing that starts to happen as you have children, which is that you, you, so, Wooly, you, you're, you're, uh, uh, you're a, you're a nerd/slash geek, slash fighting game guy, slash content creator.

You know, these are all the hats that you wear, right?

Humongous dork, unforgivable.

By having children, you are more or less forced to reintegrate with the parts of society that you left behind long ago

and

are reminded that, oh, yeah, no, there's like a million different types of people that I don't want to ever have to deal with ever in my life, but I'm going to have to deal with them now.

You know, to me, I knew this day was coming.

I've been preparing for it.

You know,

I can put on that hat.

I can style shift into

just, you know,

oh, you know, old dad, you know, new dad energy, and and just put on that.

Well, that's, that's where you like, that's where you, you, you, you, you cover yourself in, in judgment.

It's like,

man,

get a load of these kids.

Right, right.

Well, that's the bit, right?

Currently, we're not in that.

Those parents must be dog shit.

Holy fuck.

So we're not in that situation just yet, but there are.

Not yet, but soon.

There are some folks, some, again, other people in the same situation that we're starting to meet, and I can be like, oh, yeah, there's some future tea to spill.

You know, there's some future judgment coming with some of these

neighborhood moms.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Oh.

I mean, I bet you I know what's coming right now because I told some of you.

Because I told, yo!

Woo!

I told Punch Mom about that one.

You told her.

And we lost our shit.

Yep.

Yeah.

So just, and you, we're going to, we're going to, that's for you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No.

So there's all kinds of just, you're, there's some judgment to be put on some

people out there, some parents out there.

There's some, some real righteous judgment you can carry out on some motherfuckers

as you look around you.

And if you can bond with other parents while judging that one.

Oh, it's, it feels good.

That would be sick.

Oh, it feels really, really good.

I think I look back on, like,

I look back on like my mom telling me something that was supposed to be like pro-social and pro-kindness, which is me being like 10 years old and seeing like

Eric's mom just completely lose her fucking mind in a Zealers and just scream at him.

You know, like when you saw that shit happen,

right?

And me going, that seems horrible.

That lady seems really awful.

And a family, like for me, it was my mom, but like a family member would materialize near you to tell you, now listen,

you don't know what's going on with them.

You don't know what their family like.

You can't judge.

You don't have kids of your own.

Now, take your pick.

Do you want the Simpsons version of this where Gavin is complaining about Bone Storm?

Yeah.

Where did that parent go wrong?

Or do you want the Boondocks version where grandpa reaches for the belt?

Don't do that.

Don't reach for the belt.

And then I look back.

And now

I have like a fucking two-year-old now, and I can like mentally catalog like all the really crazy ones I saw through my life.

I'm like, no, no, no, I was right.

I was like eight years old, and I had it locked in.

No, that was a bunch of fucked up, stupid shit.

That was nonsense.

Man, like

there's like that boondock scene I just mentioned, like

you, you can't, you just, you can't.

There's nothing to talk about.

But the energy that it represents does come from a particular thing in your childhood or my childhood where I'm like, I

yeah, okay.

Yeah.

I get it.

I get it.

I get what this scene is trying to convey.

It's fucked.

You can't do it.

It's a horrible idea.

There's infinite studies that say it's just the worst thing.

But I get what they're going for.

Anyway, anyway, yeah, I, you know,

there's no way to just be like

everyone in my family,

we all got our licks.

We all got our licks and we're like, yeah, no, that's what it is.

And I can tell it now with this tone of voice.

And, but, but, but of course, not everyone got their licks, right?

Again, I, a kid down the street that didn't get licks, he got the one boot.

And you're like, oh, that, that's not the same thing, you know?

So, nope, don't chance it.

Don't do it.

No, that's very different.

But still,

you can't go in that direction in any way, shape, or form.

There's a million studies that say that it's a terrible idea.

But I just, I get

that scene, you know.

Anyway.

I was going to say, there's a thing here as well when talking about the Facebook Marketplace bit where you're like, you know, specifically stuff of a certain age range is likely to be covered in all kinds of horror and

your own babies is the cleanest most it's from you it's from you and your baby it's the most it's like whatever who cares it's gross absolutely but whatever who cares but the the remote idea of it coming

from anywhere outside the premises is so nightmarish

that i'm like i just that's the thing right is just like i

how much is is it worth saving over the idea of

just contamination?

You know, what is that worth?

What is the monetary value of permanent contamination, Pat?

It's significant.

Right?

Like, if I'm going to grab something that's like used.

So like, you know, we'll go down and we'll

grab, you know, some hand me, you know, some

hand-me-down clothes, at a community center, right?

And then when our guy grows out of his clothes, we'll drop his clothes off at the community center.

But you bring them home and then they're like, we washed them.

I'm like, that's cool.

We're going to wash them.

We're going to wash the fuck out of them.

But that shit's free.

Right?

And like, particularly in the really early one,

like, dude, this kid wore some outfits for like literally, literally a week.

Like, like,

but how much damage can you do?

To get the brand new good stuff for the photo you said to grandma that says daddy's little best guy on it or whatever, right?

And immediately putting it on and coming out of the outfit, blowouts,

blowouts just going in all directions.

And I'm like, I just,

hey, you know,

sometimes, not my child,

my child would never do that, but sometimes

you just gotta like

it's

just give up on the scenario and be like, everything within five feet of me just needs to be thrown away.

Other than the baby, the baby can stay.

Right.

But this, this all just, the thing is that all of this stems from, you know, inheriting something someone's very generous kind of hands you and locks you into the aftermarket as opposed to just being like, I'll take, just, I'm just going to get it fresh and I'll just not have to think about this part of it.

Yeah, like one of the things that it's like, I'm well aware it's safe, right?

And I'm well aware as long as you check the dates and you test it and all that shit, you could totally buy a used car seat.

I could never handle having my kid in a used car seat.

I would be absolutely convinced that they actually totaled the car when I wasn't looking and the car seat is like barely holding together internally.

I mean, so fortunately, you can take it to, it used to be a fire station, but there's like people that can verify and look at it and be like, yeah, this is a certain seat.

They might be on the take.

They might be in the pocket of big car seats.

Okay, well, I don't know that.

The certification person we went to go see was quite nice and did examine and see that like, oh, the date says you're good to go.

There's an expiration on them.

And, you know, we were fine.

But ultimately, yeah,

that is a thought.

I'm more so thinking about the parts where it's like

this, this

stroller or bassinet or whatever is

lay flat and part of what you're supposed to do is,

you know, if you could, if let's say all the poop is going one direction, you're like, okay, well, I know which side that's on.

But rotating the baby is an important part of making sure that they sleep properly and their head doesn't have any issues and that everything is clean.

Yeah.

So that means at some point that where the danger zone happened becomes where the head is going to be.

Oh, you just, you just really need to tilt their head over.

You don't have to fully 180 the whole guy.

We were told to 180 the whole guy.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

So, yeah.

But in any case, you know, also for like changing what you're looking at in certain situations and everything.

So, you know i'm kind of just uh

as somebody who was very recently a brand new dad and also more incompetent now than you've ever been in your entire life

um

i hear a lot of

i think you've mentioned it three times i've heard some poop planning ideas

You're going to want to just completely give up.

No, no, no, no.

On that.

Please, please understand the poop I've been referring to over the last 10 minutes is exclusively the poop from the previous children that owned the thing it has nothing to do with the poop that is forthcoming from within from our own kid okay that is safe poop that's green poop i have no issues with that poop whatsoever i'm gonna tell you right now that is not safe poop okay it's not safe poop but nonetheless it's poop that must be dealt with there's just no way around it

You know what's a fun thing I didn't know about until it happened?

And I'm going to tell you right now.

One of the vaccines makes your baby's poop dangerous to handle.

The fucking, which one is it?

It's around six months.

Oh,

not RSA.

It's the gastro something.

I want to say MSV or RSV.

I forget which one it is.

Okay.

But they'll give them the shot.

Okay.

And they're like, by the way,

if this poop

touches you in any serious way,

you will get sick.

You will get very ill.

I don't like it.

Coronavirus.

I think that's what it was.

Oh.

And so

there's like a three or four day period in which changing the baby went from, hope I don't get poop on me, to, ah, shit, careful, careful, careful, careful.

Well, there's an easy way to avoid all these situations, isn't there?

That's right.

Be careful.

Oh,

fuck.

Yeah.

You know what I got to say, man?

You know what?

You know what?

My local,

so we go down to the vaccine place to shoot him up with his stuff.

And you know what?

Joke I went with every single time.

And no one liked it but me

no one thought it was funny but me and i did it every time and they would go over the vaccine schedule and they would be like are you sure you want to get these and i'd go like no autism yet

So yeah, blasted.

Yeah.

And like Paige would just like, then they're not fucking like that.

Oh my God, shut up.

They're not going to like that.

Patrick.

Yeah.

They don't.

Yeah.

They, like, because they don't they can't tell if they're for real or not.

No, you can't and that's

yes, that's

and that's the problem because I've noticed in the talking about it with from the healthcare professionals, they don't know where you're at.

So they're just taking their chances to deliver things in a way

that is just like,

are you fucking nuts?

Or are we cool?

I don't know.

So yes.

Oh, fuck.

Absolutely.

And

every time,

like, I would think it was really funny, and then everyone would be mad at me, and then I would think it was so much funnier.

God damn it.

God damn it.

Including,

and you know, much less, like, one, we don't know if you're, where you're at.

And then there's a second part where it's like,

also, the way the immune system works is the more you load up in one shot, the stronger and more robust

the effects are.

So waiting for subsequent shots is actually worse compared to just fucking getting through.

Oh, absolutely.

So our guy was like an absolute champ with all his vaccines.

There was only one day that he felt like genuinely unwell.

And it was like a double day.

It's one of the ones where,

and man, this sucks because you're like, oh, this is like really good for my little guy.

And it's going to be like good for him in the long run.

But there's the moment where they're like, okay, dad, hold both his arms to his sides as hard as you can so that he can't squirm while both nurses jab both arms.

Yeah,

that's it.

Just know, bait it up, you know, 100%.

And it's like, oh, man, this feels really bad in my chest, but ah, it's good for him.

You see those videos where it's like, here's this doctor in China that's really good at being like, oh, we're playing a game.

Bopdoop.

Look at my hands.

There he's dead.

Hey, whoa, oh, you didn't even see the shot that happened.

Wasn't that crazy?

And the kids like, huh, what happened?

Like, cool.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Now try that again while you're landing ackey's level three

my magnum opus

you know like it's just not gonna work at that level man

anyway

oh right right paige just reminded me relatively early but but he was like he was walking

The lady gave him his shot and he got down and then he ran away from her And then he ran to Paige, and he grabbed her hand, and then looked back at the lady and went, No.

Just

you just got to think about the insides getting stronger, you know?

That's it.

Just go on a little osmosis Jones adventure.

Oh, see, I don't think about that at all.

It's for me, it's like really, really, really, really easy.

See, we live in British Columbia, right?

And I love living in British Columbia.

but British Columbia has a higher proportion of people that I have met that believe that the crystals are going to do just fine.

And

you're like, what?

And like, oh, the crystals.

And I'm like, oh, okay.

Yeah, blast this kid with everything you got, Doc.

Just give him everything.

It'll suck, but then it'll be great.

You know, that's just the way it is.

My kid's not going fucking deaf from the measles.

Thank you, you fucking freaks.

Yeah, I mean, anyway, I don't even know if the word crunchy applies to

that range of it because then you're just getting into like full-on woo.

I love the term woo-woo.

Woo-woo.

Yeah.

That's what I knew before Crunchy, and now I kind of distinguish them because Crunchy does evoke the idea of granola.

You know, a Crunchy mom is very much about the healthy things, but the woo-woo is like the spirits coming down from the smoke.

You know, it's like we're going into another realm entirely.

Anyway,

that's a whole other bit.

The

I don't know if I brought it up beforehand, but like part of the reason why that perpetuates in a lot of cases too is because from learning about like the childbirth process, right?

There's,

did you know the babies come out of that thing?

That's fucking crazy.

It's wild.

Anyway,

part of the right out the belly button.

Part of that process has a lot to do with the

oxytocin you're feeling and versus the anxiety you're feeling and

the process speeding up with good vibes and the process slowing down with bad vibes overall.

And if you're somebody who gets good vibes from holding a crystal, then there are some circumstances where still like telling somebody to hold a crystal will actually improve

birth journey experience.

And it's like

physical.

We've never been more open to the damners.

God fucking damn it.

Because you get calmed down by the Reiki energy.

It's actually beneficial to bring the Reiki energy into the room.

And it's like, oh, I hate this so much, but fine.

It is what it is.

Good vibes only actually applies during pregnancy.

Crazy.

Yeah.

And I'm like, this makes me upset that the world works this way.

I'm upset at reality for giving you a moment of validation here, but so be it.

It actually does.

You know,

that placebo shit, man, is real.

Placebo is good.

I like like placebo.

Especially when I'm being placeboed.

I hate placebo when I'm not being placebo.

When you're

a tough one, right?

When you're not in the control group.

This reminds me.

Basically,

Paige will be

hanging out with some moms, and they'll all be talking about their all-natural mystical birth experiences.

And she'll be like, oh, they they gave me so much fentanyl.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I was fucking flying, and they cut that shit out.

Oh, yeah,

and like, who needs some crystals?

I just saw it like, give me some fucking drugs.

I'll shit this baby out.

It was sick.

No, that's that's that shit.

Like, hook me up to the machine from Prometheus and just let it go.

Let the machines do their work.

The most artificial shit ever, you know um getting the epidural was very obviously a really rough time for my darling wife having the epidural was a great time

like not like it made it easier i mean like great

great time with the epidural i mean

that list of ingredients that gets used you know during during labor of of things that are help that are helpful includes some shit i was like huh

word

Yeah.

Straight fit.

And then you have the discussion where it's like,

well, you know, will it affect the baby?

And they're like, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah.

Blast it.

Way too late for that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's coming out way too quick.

Go, go, go, go.

You're like, damn.

It's like that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Absolutely.

You know,

as opposed to just

fucking,

whatever.

I

have been.

Yeah, you're, I can see you scrolling through your Rolodex of nonsense to pick one out at random.

The most recent one I heard was TikTok lady with twins who decided to go into the river and deliver alone with no help from anyone.

Yeah, that turned out exactly as you can expect it turned out.

Right?

Yeah, I bet.

I bet.

But hey,

you hope your feelings are

intact and justified from the.

I can't.

Okay.

I can't.

I can't.

I can't.

I can't.

So, like, so under the jail, man.

Under the jail.

I don't know.

I just.

I'm going to go.

I'm going to go slightly.

I'm getting explicit permission to talk about this on the podcast.

But

Paige and I know somebody

who is way overdue.

Way overdue,

like

crazy, crazy overdue.

Okay, the furthest overdue I've ever heard of anyone in my life.

Okay, so

about 20 minutes ago when I screamed, it was because the number appeared

in the chat.

And

Paige looks at me and goes,

Where do you think that person is right now?

And I go, you know what?

I don't know.

But I don't know anything about this situation at all.

I'm just gonna,

I'm just gonna throw down in a dirty river.

Sure enough,

here comes the Instagram post.

Oh, miracle of life and shit in like a dirty ass fucking unsupervised river.

And we're oh my god.

It's

you just, I hate, I hate you so much you just oh

man woolly now here's here's here you're you're fucking your listen your attempt to control reality

no wait wait hold it hold it hold it hold it hold it

this is important

it is not you or I's place

to judge how a pregnant lady handles her pregnancy.

It is our jobs to relate this story to our spouses and feed off their judgment.

And just

oh, y'all, I knew it.

There is a very large threshold.

And through the process of learning about everything, I've even increased it further.

uh as to the plethora of ways that it's like

whoever is has to deliver has to deliver in the way that they feel the most comfortable whatever works for them absolutely because holy shit that thing is that's a crazy process and you go there's so much going on that we on the outside can't possibly relate to or even begin to fucking comprehend

at the point when the medical team is screaming at you Yeah, but you don't care because you just want reality to be the thing that it's not, but you hope it is, and everyone's life is in danger,

fucking hate you.

Hate you forever.

You're the worst.

I can't possibly, I can't stand in your presence and not freak out the entire time.

You sound like some kind of stupid bitch who got tricked into drinking fluoride and getting brain damaged.

Oh, man.

You dumb idiot.

You know, if only there wasn't like.

I can't listen to this fluoridated nonsense.

if only it was just like self-inflicted and there was no like baby attached to the scenario you know if only if it was just a classic case of just you doing it to yourself you know like like one of the things is like you know like you'll take measles right so uh if my baby is vaccinated uh and i think he's got the measles shower that might be a little later but regardless i'm gonna get him everything right um

And he could still, even with the vaccine, he could still catch it, but having the vaccine like dramatically decreases the likelihood of him getting any ill effects, right?

They just get sick instead of going fucking deaf or having long-term problems, right?

But like, you can still fucking catch measles because your dumb fucking bullshit wouldn't vaccinate your kid against the fucking measles.

And I want to just shake this person and be like, your kid could go fucking deaf.

Do you not give a shit about?

But you see, and this is where, you know, like, no, because the decision, like, there's a moment where you kind of go, like, oh,

when you're faced with the wall of your decisions, the weight of your decisions, there might be a moment where you snap out for a second, right?

Perhaps there's a possibility.

And it's like, no, because the previously mentioned TikTok twins mom,

no longer a mom.

was basically, you know, already on her poetic journey about the brief, you know, meeting

of life and how quickly it fleets.

And, you know, it's just, and going into the spiritual whatever, as opposed to the responsibility of the thing that you have caused.

And like you've, you've already found a way to flower out the fact that you did this.

You created this outcome instead of acknowledging what actually happened there.

It like...

It just

wasn't in God's plan or the spirits or whatever.

You blew right past the red light.

where you were supposed to stop and take reflection of what you just did.

I know you haven't played this game.

Every time vaccines come up on my show when I'm streaming, I play this game.

It's funny every time.

Okay, you ready?

You ready?

We can play right now because we have a live chat, right?

Okay, chat.

Get ready.

This is going to be really good.

Okay, how many of you didn't get any vaccines because your dad didn't want you to catch autism

and you still got the tism anyway?

Come on.

Come on.

Every time.

Yeah, it is.

That's a thing.

Oh, you have shingles now, dude.

Oh, that sucks.

Oh.

Oh, there's two.

There's three.

Oh, we got people that grew up

unveiled.

Oh, man.

That sucks.

Yeah,

okay.

Yeah, no shot, literally.

Oh, yo, yo, yo, yo.

That's depressing.

Okay, cool, cool, cool, cool.

Yep.

Yep.

So, anyways, you know, maybe it's the delivery.

Maybe the way you say no autism yet, maybe you got to just find a way to like, ah, ah, do the little like,

that's it, right?

You do the little, do the little elbow, and then they'll get, then they'll get what you're trying to put down.

Well, see, no, now I can't do it anymore because the next shot the kid's going to get, he's going to be like a fully talking, like, aware four-year-old, and he's gonna be like, What?

And I'm gonna be like,

Nothing

to worry about it,

right?

Like, we're already in the repeats every single thing we say stage, so like bravery and fun times are getting are just getting a little, you know, just dialed back a little bit.

Yeah, yeah, good luck creating the fucking drawing that line in the sand where it's like, hey, like, you can, it's chill with us, but with the outside.

No, no, no, listen, listen.

Dad only says those things at work.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

All right.

That's cool.

Yeah.

Don't worry about that.

No problem.

No problem.

It's fine.

Anyways, anyways, anyways.

Beyond that,

I suppose, hey, look at that.

We actually, with zero media consumed, we did it.

That's crazy.

Incredible.

Well, you know what, Wooly?

Depending on how you think about it, pretty soon you're going going to be consuming the best movie ever for the rest of your life.

Yes.

Called Being a Dad.

There you go.

Oh.

No, but coming in here going fully, like, I don't fucking know.

I was like, let's stretch this shit.

And we successfully did.

It's a really long movie with no intermissions, though.

That's the only issue.

There's an intermission wherever you want it to be.

You can.

Based based on my timeline, based on my history,

based on my past, you can take an intermission at any time, Pat.

Oh, no, I don't think that's, I don't think that's how the movie's supposed to go.

Oh, yeah, no, you can come back for part two

way later.

Woo!

Oh, boy.

Um,

let's all go to the lobby to get ourselves a snack.

Some delicious cigarettes in this lobby.

In Jamaica.

So, so, so, so.

Uh, that, that aside, the only other thing I wanted to mention is: uh, hey, uh, in the meantime, it's a great time on the channel to put out some best ofs.

So, the best.

Oh, yeah, it would be, yeah.

The best of Silent Hill just dropped.

Go check that out.

Shout outs to Civ Sarcast for putting that together.

Nice little journey through.

My first time playing through it.

The GHA

playthrough.

As well as tomorrow, we'll be premiering Silent Hill 3.

So the best of Silent Hill 3 is coming out there.

God Fears Japanese Steel.

Tune in for that as well.

I like that Silent Hill has just enough stupid shit in it that that can totally be canon.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

And yeah, I'm going to be seeing if we can get other best ofs done in the gap in the meantime as well.

Because, you know, we got most stuff done, but there's a couple that haven't.

And it would be a perfect time for y'all to catch back up on some of those.

So keep your heads eyes peeled for that.

And

I'm going to

take this opportunity to promote as well on August 1st, which is Friday, is when

the little

wolves in the lab plushie

available.

So I'll put a link, but basically over on makeshift,

yeah, it's makeship.com slash products slash wolves dash in dash the dash lab.

So if you want to get in there,

and I think it's going to be a limited run as well.

So like, you know, get it, get it while I'm talking about it now, while you hear about it, because, you know, these things are

limited for

how often

they'll be available.

And once we pass that threshold, I think it takes another threshold before we can do any kind of re-ups or so.

So just letting y'all know, as of Friday, that's going to be up.

I'll post it everywhere.

But it's a really cool one.

The little arcade stick is going to be a good thing.

I can't wait for Tiny Woolly to be on my show literally every single day.

There you go.

And

the, yeah, little, little, little wireless arcade stick as well.

You can, you can fucking throw.

That's adorable.

You can throw and it won't break.

So

that's.

You should give one of those to Sanford Kelly.

I mean,

it would be ideal, you know.

Or perhaps go back in time and give one to Gutex.

I don't think.

Nah, that's good.

Listen to the earlier part.

There's a lot of people.

There's a lot of people that could benefit from

a plushie stick.

Maybe that's what Sony should be releasing instead of this new one they're just putting out.

In any case,

that'll pretty much be it.

And yeah, I mentioned it earlier, but the French word for hot air balloon is Mongol Fierre.

Isn't that fucking goofy?

What?

Isn't that some pompe le mousse type shit?

What?

No.

Type the word Mongol Fierre into Google.

Oh,

okay.

And take a look at what the images

turn into.

That's dumb.

Yeah.

It's on some Papalamouche.

Why is it the Golf Mountain?

That doesn't make any sense.

Omelet du Fromage.

That's just a silly language.

I read it as like fiery Mongol, you know, but.

Or fierce.

Well, that doesn't make any sense.

Though, to be fair, it makes just as little sense as like potatoes and ground beef being called peté chinois and being made by my French-Canadian grandmother.

Well, the problem is that that actually makes way too much sense for the context it was used in.

That's the problem.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, I didn't know that.

Yeah.

It was used when, you know,

some folks that were working on the rails over here that were being

treated not too kindly were being fed

shepherd's pie.

What?

That's crazy.

But they were, but they instead called it pate chinois instead, after who they were giving it to.

So,

not great.

Anyway, how's your week?

My week was alright.

I did slightly more with my week than you, but not all that much.

Me and Paige finally,

and I mean finally, so we...

So let me give you a piece of advice.

This is a...

So you're familiar with virtual audio cable?

Max uses it for all of his audio stuff.

No, but I can infer from the name.

Okay, so it's basically a way to jam multiple inputs together, together, right?

It's a free

utility.

It's extremely useful, right?

On the virtual audio cable website called VB Audio Software, there is something called voice meter.

And I don't know what the fuck voice meter is supposed to be used for, but you can use it to do one really specific thing, and that is send your PC audio to

a phantom input, and then send that phantom input to as many Bluetooth devices as you want.

Oh, okay.

Which means if your PC is set up, is your home media set up, and your wife and you have two Bluetooth sets of Bluetooth headphones,

you can connect both sets of Bluetooth headphones to your PC and actually listen to a single input

so that you don't worry about wait.

So early, we were like, if we put the TV down to like

four,

there's no way it could wake him up.

That don't even bother.

Don't even fucking bother.

Don't even, don't, don't even fucking bother.

Okay, okay.

It's a fucking waste of time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You're going to try it two or three times, and then on the third time, you're going to be like, what am I fucking stupid?

Why would this work the third time?

So, no.

Get your Bluetooths.

So.

Your headphones.

Hook that shit in.

So I've already got.

I've already got the like, you know, me and Reggie like splitter thing going on and yeah like i have the the headphone like wire plugged in thing ability but for a while the um the boss quiet comforts the the 35s had a split source audio so you could both connect to a device and listen but then they took it away for the 45s i don't know why it sucks but they used to be able to do that so that sounds really good stuff if you want to do that again you can use uh a voice meter okay on the vb audio website and as a result this is me and paige's way to watch a movie in deathly silence, or at least deathly TV silence.

So we got the guy down real early the other night.

He passed out like 9.30.

And we got to sit down and finally watch fucking No Sferatu.

Oh,

the new one.

Yes.

The

Willem Dafoe

vampire movie.

Yo, that is a goddamn film.

That is a fucking piece of cinema.

I heard from people that hated it and heard from people that loved it.

The people that you okay,

so you can watch it, and then you can immediately put those people into two groups, and it's taste and no taste.

And you can decide which group is in which fucking camp.

I see.

Because I can see it.

That movie's incredible.

Okay.

That movie is incredible.

It is shot like an old movie.

It is staged.

It is gorgeous.

The acting in it is fantastic.

I'm not.

Me and Paige got to the end of the movie, and we're discussing at length what scenes we thought happened in the movie and what scenes didn't actually happen in the movie.

Okay.

Because it's intentionally obtuse and confusing as to which events are actually occurring.

Ah, this would explain.

Okay, so for the folks that didn't like it, they're kind of simple, popcorn-eaten.

I just want to turn the brain off type.

This is like a fucking philosophical treatise on monstrousness and love.

Well, that would explain why they hated it.

Yeah, okay.

The film might as well be in fucking Swedish

and in black and white, but like made by a modern American production with Baldwin.

It has the little wreath that says it was rated number one at Cannes.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, gotcha.

It is a fucking film.

Incredible acting.

Like, absolutely incredible acting, particularly from.

Oh, Paige, if Paige is listening to this, she'd know the actress's name, but the main character, Ellen.

Was it up?

There are a couple absolutely insanely manic fucking crash outs in this movie that

she does an incredible job being mentally ill.

Lily Rose Depp.

Incredible job.

Johnny Depp's kid?

Lily Rose Depp.

Yes, that would be the potential Depp Nepo baby.

I'll tell you that Nepo baby or not, she fucking killed it in this movie.

Okay.

This is a weird one because I also didn't see any marketing for it at all.

I didn't encounter any in the wild or scroll past anything.

There was like one trailer and it was like a shadow going over a city and then it was Nusaratu.

Yeah.

So I only heard about its existence from like podcasts talking about it initially before when it came out.

Like I didn't catch that this was a thing.

Oh, it's fucking incredible.

It is, it is absolutely fantastic.

Okay.

Depo baby.

Yeah, that's it.

Depo baby.

Yeah, depo baby is really good.

I like that.

But like, no, Lily Rose

Depp does an absolutely amazing, amazing job.

Is it one of those cases, I guess, where it's like, okay, so yes, you were, but part of being raised in this opulence is also that you have access to the best acting coaches.

As a result, you are super talented because you fucking.

All I can tell you is that it is the Nepo baby's responsibility to be fucking peak.

To crush it.

Okay, yeah, yeah.

Right.

So, like, I think of, I think of, like, the Nepo baby over at fucking Capcom, the director of Monster Hunter, got to be director of Monster Hunter because the CEO of Capcom is his dad.

Don't fuck it up.

But then he put out Monster Hunter World and Monster Hunter Rise.

And I'm like, well, okay, I'll fucking,

shut the fuck up.

Yeah, okay, okay.

I've also been playing

this and that

in my non-stream.

So I've been streaming Donkey Kong.

That's Donkey Kong Bonanza.

That's like

top three Nintendo game.

Damn, okay.

It is.

I feel when you hit it.

It is like everything I ever wanted out of like Odyssey and Mario 64 and Galaxy in one.

It's so fun.

By the way, okay, it's a Donkey Kong game.

This is a fucking fucking Mario game with punching.

It's a fucking Mario game.

You were also,

I feel like all their recent things, like with Tears of the Kingdom and stuff, like you loved that too as well.

Like each of these was hitting pretty strongly.

This is the big Nintendo game.

Tears of the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild, I had complaints.

Nothing.

Okay.

Not a single,

not a single irk,

not a single annoyance.

Every single moment playing Donkey Kong is going,

yeah, video games.

Yeah, yeah,

yeah.

Did you, I forget if you touched Astrobot at all.

I did.

I did not get it.

Ah, because that is video games as a feature.

Yeah, no, Astrobot was fun, but it was also a really simple platformer.

And I played it for a couple hours.

And I'm like, I don't get why everyone's jizzing their pants over the Astro Bots.

It's just simple platforming.

That's it.

It's just, you know, it's chill.

Vibe.

Yeah, but you didn't get a banana and

it didn't say, oh, banana every single fucking time.

No, but I did get fucking like Solid Snake and Soul Bad Guy.

Yeah, but that's not its own merits.

No, but it's just enjoying a simple platformer with some video game references in in it.

That's all.

Like for me,

I got like Alicard and I was like, yeah, cool.

But then I went back to

decent platforming.

I don't know.

It didn't.

Okay.

Didn't really.

It also tried to kill my PS5, which didn't really engender myself to it.

Fair enough.

It tried to kill it.

I've also been playing.

Is that Horizon story in the world?

Oh,

boy, is it?

Okay, so I'm going to touch on it a little bit.

Horizon Zero Originality.

Yeah, Horizon Zero Dawn I beat last week completely, and I've started playing Forbidden West.

Man, that's just a good-ass open world game.

Okay.

And, like,

it's just, like, uniformly excellent.

I think I like it a good deal more than God of War Ragnarok

for context.

And it's one of those things you play the sequel, and he's like, wow, this is like a universal improvement in nearly every single way.

And then I got, I'm starting to get to some of the story stuff that I saw people complain about.

I'm like, oh.

Yeah,

I see why

people wouldn't like this.

I'm down for it.

Okay.

But like, yeah, no, I can see why this would be a problem.

Well, it's a great map slot.

Yeah.

Let's push it.

Let's push it.

Let's get that one created.

I'm going to go ahead and say that like that is like a term that that gets created distinctly in the fanbase comments does not necessarily mean it's part of the nomenclature, but you can make it that if you push it hard enough.

Yeah.

I was curious with.

Oh yeah, it's map slop as fuck though.

It's fulfilling the same urge that I did when I was playing it as

Assassin's Creed's

2 Brotherhood and Revelations did.

Well hold on now.

Are we map slopping or is it map fucking with with like friend slop?

So

it's it's not map it's map fucking.

It's not map sloppy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And like, yes, am I climbing a tower to unlock points of interest on my map?

Yes.

That is now even Nintendo fucking does that now.

Like, it's just become a thing.

But

climbing that tower means that I am climbing a big, cool, weird robot giraffe.

Sure.

And I have actually a really hard time climbing up on top of it.

And the reward for climbing it is fun and

stuff.

Um, I was, I mean, I feel like when we first talked about Forbidden West, you were mentioning the effect of like knowing the world and the setting and the reveal and all that stuff.

Oh, yeah.

So, here, yeah.

So, I, I have been, uh, I have been uh spoiled on both of the major plot points of the first game and the second game.

Um,

before I even ever played them.

Like, uh, uh,

like, like I was, I played Horizon Zero Dawn in the like the first week, and before I even got out of the starting area, I was spoiled on like, what's the deal with the horizon location?

Um, and then after going through the entire thing, I was like, Yeah, no, actually going through the reveal is just as good as the actual detail of the reveal, okay.

But um, but this is very, very close to a like Death Strandings 2's type of situation, right?

Um, where

you have a, I guess, world revelaton that is already out there, and now you're just going into a sequel on it.

This is such a this is such a good comparison.

Thank you for bringing it up because I'm going into

Ferizon.

Yes, Ferizon,

Forbidden Well, Forza Motor Horizon.

And I do also know

the proper twist, but the twist is not what's the nature of the world.

The twist is what's the nature of what's going on in the second game, right?

So that core mystery isn't as there.

And knowing that and playing enough of it now, I can easily see the problem with the sequel is that there's a certain percentage of people that will look at what the new story development going on in Forbidden West and going, that's stupid.

Like, that's just not as interesting as the first games,

but it's told better.

Very similar to Death Stranding 2.

The difference is,

and this is like the only game I can think of that I've encountered this in a long, long time.

So, I talked to you about how, like, by the end of Horizon's base game, I had like solved all the combat encounters, right?

And then I played the DLC, and the DLC like really cranked it up a notch and like made a lot of those tactics like non-viable.

So, I had to re like

integrate myself with the way the combat works.

Um, Horizon Forbidden West, as soon as you get out of the tutorial, assumes you beat the first game last week.

Like, the

the fucking difficulty complexity curve just starts where the last game ended.

It does not like redo its own curve.

It just goes, so you beat Horizon Zero Dawn, right?

Let's go.

I think.

Which is the opposite of what happens in Death Stranding 2, where I feel like Death Stranding 2 never got as hard as the first hours of Death Stranding 1.

The challenge is nullified the entire time.

Okay, okay.

Also,

I said it again last week.

Forbidden West does an incredibly bad job catching you up.

Like you get

a 90-second, two-minute, here's what happened last time on Horizon that just fucking flies over every single detail.

Now's the best time to get into the Horizon franchise.

And then before you go out onto your mission, they go, hey, let's have a walk and talk in like a hub area of like all these characters you met from the first game and like when i when i played that originally i bought the game on ps5 a million years ago and i played that sequence

uh before beating the first game i was like i don't know what a single fucking

what the who the are these people what are they talking about and then you go to the notebook and the the fucking you know the little bio and like it'll be like this guy was part of the shadow karja but like nowhere in the thing does it tell you what the fucking shadow karja is.

So you're just like, I don't fucking, I don't know what the fuck that is.

So like, yeah, no, that, that franchise like just assumes that you're keeping up to date.

Just absolute, like,

the attempt to get in on the second game is ridiculous.

I feel like there's a, um, there's a seat, there's a way to approach sequels when, like,

when the world is so established and unique and pushing forward in time is extremely difficult to do.

There's a sequel thing you can do where you'll be like, okay, the sequel is actually just taking place during the main game, but with a different person over here as a side story.

That's its own separate thing.

And in a lot of cases, if that's emotionally resonant, that can do the job.

I kind of like,

I think I prefer some of those, especially when it's like too much to take the responsibility of pushing forward that first, you know, games, whatever it did for its world, and then going somewhere else significant with it.

You can tell someone else's story and be compelling about it.

There's a really good way that I would say,

for example,

Earthbound, right?

There's Earthbound, and then there's like Mother 3, and those are games where it's like sequels, some other shit going on with some other people,

compelling in its own place,

and you don't have to

push the world of the first one

drastically forward to find find what's good about this other thing over here.

So that can totally work, except the call to adventure in Horizon Zero Dawn, like literally the first thing that ever happens in that game is that the main character Aloy is literally like a virgin birth

like

like

messianic figure that the mountain gives birth to her.

Okay.

And that is like the start of the game's.

I cannot think of many games that, like, the nature of the main character is so integral to the plot.

Yeah, okay.

You're, you're stuck here.

Camera

cannot travel more than a couple feet away from her.

Got it.

Like, like, every single part of the Horizon setting, it revolves around this character.

Well,

now then, perhaps it's time to complete the trilogy by beginning light of Motiram.

Bro, it's so like, oh, oh man.

The Horizon trilogy ends.

They had a fucking, they had a goddamn Horizon game that was going to be a live service, and that was one of the ones that got canceled.

Oh, was it?

During Sony's bullshit.

So like that third Horizon game.

Okay, this is going to sound strange.

Have you ever played a game that doesn't have a number on it, but within the first 15 minutes of starting the game, you're like, oh, they're going to make another game.

You can feel what they're going for.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Oh, this is part part two of a fucking trilogy.

Oh, my God.

10 Cent.

Like, holy shit.

I mean,

even, it's not even just like the ripoff of the gameplay, the promotional art itself.

Like, it's a free, it, it wants to trick.

We'll get there.

We'll get there.

Okay, okay, okay, okay.

We'll get there.

But yeah, no, Horizon Forbidden West, very good game.

Apparently, it's sold okay, but we'll, we'll talk about that in a second.

Uh, and then, um,

last but not least, I am doing the opposite.

I love how

doing this forever, we accidentally do the opposite thing sometimes simultaneously without talking to each other at all.

I am doing the opposite of your best of

compilations.

So I was talking recently.

I was talking, did you watch Tim Rogers' Final Fantasy VII Remake review?

No.

Okay, so in the FF7 remake review, he describes, I think it's called called the Trinket Conundrum, in which he describes like being in the Shinra man, the Shinra building and like Jenova's attacking, right?

And it's super dramatic and you're slow walking and all that.

But all he's doing is spinning the camera and running into corners during all these dramatic moments so he can get accessories that don't matter and he doesn't care about.

But what if he missed them?

Okay.

Right.

What if he missed them?

And I was talking to people about

like

someone said you don't have to 100% every game you play, even if you're never going to play it again.

Like, especially if it keeps you from playing something else.

I go, but what if the part that I skip is the best part of the game?

You know, the usual thing that we go through.

Yes.

And this led to a suggestion.

I don't have the name.

but

I can go back and I'll talk about it on my show, which is, what if you just played through a bunch of games and just refused to do any side content at all?

Oh,

the main line.

Yes.

So on Thursday, I'm going to be playing Xenoblade Chronicles on a new idea I have called B-lining, in which I'm going to try and get through the entirety of Xenoblade Chronicles without doing any side content

of any kind.

Okay, Okay, okay.

Now,

this is hilarious, and I think this is really funny, and this has got

some legs.

You have to inherently, of course, be okay with like ruining, quote unquote, the experience if it's a game you would have otherwise enjoyed.

Absolutely.

100%.

Yeah.

Okay, okay.

So I put, so, and here's the thing.

This is, this is like naturally come about

because over the past like couple of months, I have had like one major complaint over and over and over where I play FF7 Rebirth or fucking Death Stranding and go, wow, I tried to do everything and then I got super bored and then it fucking sucked at the end.

And then Gene messages me on Discord going, yeah, dude, I didn't do nothing.

Oh, man.

10 out of 10.

Oh, man.

Okay.

And I'm like, I'm just creating a video series where I pretend to be Gene Park.

I, this is, I, I, like, I respect the hustle on this premise.

I also know that it's like

the, there's a level of,

you have to have an energy that is kind of

belligerent

about the content.

And I know as somebody who's going to, like, play some a moment and then ask a question, and the answer to that question is in that side quest over there.

And it's like, shut the fuck up then.

Just keep it going.

No, we're not doing it.

Oh, man.

No, I'm not going to be the kind of, I'm not going to be the type of person who's going to be like, I won't pick up any quest.

Because some side quests, you can grab them and they will just naturally happen.

Yeah, yeah.

As you get there.

But like, I've been, I've been like

100%ing almost every game I play.

Like, um.

Do you remember a long, long time ago where I explained that I thought the way that art worked is that people fucking drew a picture like a Xerox machine just line by line?

Yeah, yeah.

Because I'm an insane person.

That's how I play games.

I have a fucking grid

and I just go by fucking numerical grid in my brain over the map.

You should see how stupid the Horizon Forbidden West map looks like in my game right now because it's just like an advancing wall of completed shit from east to west.

Now, here's now, like, I'm not going to pretend that the way I played like cyberpunk was any more natural, mind you, because that was just like, let me just try to save time and maximize the shit I care about for impact.

But

what the normal quote-unquote experience is supposed to be is arbitrarily giving a fuck about some things and not about others, you know?

The other thing is, uh, one of the reasons I'm picking Xenoblade is Xenoblade is a game that, like,

I actually was talking with people the other day.

I'm like, you know, I got to the top of the, I got to the head of the Bionis in Xenoblade way back in the day on the Wii.

And it felt like I was at the 80% mark, which is why I'm like so upset that I did so many side quests that I got bored of it.

And I was then informed, like, dude, you weren't even halfway through the game.

Like, I wasn't?

I wasn't.

I burned out and I wasn't even like halfway through the game.

Oh, fuck that shit.

Okay, so now I need to know then: what is your selection criteria for games that you care enough about to beeline, but not so much that missing details would be an issue?

Slash, slash, games where

you would never have touched it anyway.

So, this is going to be a case-by-case basis because

right now, the criteria, Xenoblade DE is a really good example.

Games, I'm like, oh, I should stream that, but it's too long to stream.

Yep.

Yep, yep, yep, right.

So I'll never play it.

Yeah, okay.

This is your solution to, yeah,

you're approaching the same problem I have from a different way.

You're coming at it from a completely different angle, 100%.

It's like, okay, the only way I'm going to be able to fix this is via an antagonistic, self-destructive process.

Yes, yes, understood.

Like, all right.

There's no, there's no compromise here, you know?

Um, especially because I look back at FF7 Rebirth as like, man, I would have probably been singing that game's fucking praises to the moon if I had just ignored every single side quest in the game.

And that, that was like the game that like kind of broke me on it.

That and doing every single quest in the game for like 16 or 17 Yakuza games.

Yeah, I was going to say it.

And then not finishing multiple of them because of doing that.

Yeah, you play one of those and you go, oh, fuck, right?

Or again,

I mean,

if I be like, I'm thinking of this cyberpunk no side quest experience, and it's not miserable, but it's deeply unsatisfying because the thing about that game that makes it worth playing is how much the world is living, and not getting to experience that living world just feels like you're watching a movie for a couple hours, you know?

Yeah.

The first game that I can remember ever this happening to was Lost Judgment, where I was doing everything in Lost Judgment.

And Lost Judgment has like the most side content of any, like a dragon game.

And woe is me.

The second school club.

the robot club in Lost Judgment was horribly broken on release.

It was just like completely,

completely fucked up.

None of the robots dropped any of the items they were supposed to drop.

It was like crazy.

And I did it.

And it took like, I spent like as much time on the robot club as I think I spent on the rest of the fucking game combined.

Okay.

And then I dropped it because I was exhausted.

Right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, this is especially going to be wild for if you pick anything that's like as an aforementioned map fucker.

You know?

Yeah.

yeah

um

i'm i'm curious to see the the lab results put them in a beaker boil that shit up and and tell me what happens because an antagonistic

you know it's like hey

do a side quest no

yeah i don't yeah i

no don't talk to me and and that's the thing is because viewers are like oh you would love this bit if you did

no i wouldn't we're not i'm not doing it no i'm not gonna okay so but it's not race to credits, right?

It's not.

No, no, no, absolutely not.

Okay, it's still, it's like experience like the natural flow,

but not like actively.

Let's take like the little baby example, which I tried this morning.

So I have turned into my father.

If the dog had to go out at 2.30 in the morning, so I took him out and then I got back into the house and was like, oh, well, I'm just fucking cooked then.

No sleep for me.

I'm fucked.

I'm fucked.

So I've been up since 2:30.

Okay.

And so I played a shit ton of Horizon Forbidden West this morning.

And

I got the map point and it, you know, showed off the whole map area.

And then you can see where all the collectibles are.

And I went,

okay, so normally what I would do is I would just do every single collectible in like a fucking Xerox pass

from east to west as I did this.

And the main quest

sends me past like 40 map activities.

Like it zigzags in between them, right?

But it's a really low-level quest.

And I'm like,

okay, I have to trust that the main quest will probably make it worth my while to actually do.

And so I did it.

I went past all that shit and I didn't touch it.

And then I got to the main quest.

And what did it do?

It unlocked like a settlement.

It gave me a bunch of weapons and it unlocked a map traversal item

that would have been really frustrating to not have because half of those collectible points were things that I wouldn't have been able to unlock because I wouldn't have had the main story progression item.

Okay, okay, okay.

I have questions.

I have so many questions.

Okay, okay.

What if you're playing a game and you're beelining, but the game is like, all right, well, time for you to go waste time until that happens.

We're ready to move on to the next objective.

And then I will wait, then I will waste time and

do things okay till the the thing pops okay and right so like xenoblade chronicles de is an rpg right if i absolutely straight line it and then run into a place where i'm like well i literally can't beat this boss i've tried 15 times and i can't beat this boss okay i'm gonna go get some of them that's it right under being underleveled as well because like a lot of games are based on yeah if you beeline you will be underleveled i also did that to myself uh playing monster hunter rise where i did every single low rank quest in the entire game of which there are many and then when i got to high rank i'm like i'm bored okay i can't do it but for this to work in general, it needs to be the type of thing where there's a big objective part to make it to one after the other, right?

This wouldn't work with a fucking Elden Ring ass, like teleport to Brazil type situation where you have to just find your content.

And someone pointed out that in Morrow Wind,

a game I've never played, but like you get to a point in the main quest where

the guy you're dealing with just goes,

you're not level three.

Fuck off.

Okay,

yeah, yeah, get out of here, right?

Go play

because there's, yeah, there's a lot of ways that that's what it kind of comes down to: there's a lot of ways in which games will be like, No, you have to go do some stuff now.

Uh, so yeah, okay, you will be doing those.

Okay, um,

it's like I have to believe that the actually important gear will be given to me by the game's primary focus.

Okay, what if there is like a what if there's a side quest that is basically a DLC style chunk of main content?

Nah?

No.

Nah, okay, okay.

Okay.

I suppose it depends on how loud everyone is screaming at me.

Right?

If my own audience is like, no, stop, like, break the rule on this one.

Then like, okay, maybe.

But like,

the point is to just fucking.

Yeah.

Go.

Okay.

No, there needs to be a fucking

a list of rules and regulations.

Because like,

you know, what's a really bad thing that sucks is when you're like, oh man, I'm really enjoying this.

I want to clear out the map.

And what you end up doing is going to every single major location in a game,

just wandering into it instead of the narratively purposed set piece event that's supposed to show that location off and integrate you.

So like when I played Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and I would hit the map, I would be like, okay, time to just do every single side quest and explore the entire map.

And then I would be like, okay, done.

And then it would go, okay, do the main story, which will have you discovering it.

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yes.

That's annoying because that's different styles of game design.

Some game designs are like, we will take you on the adventure for you.

Like the rail.

to these different cities is part of the rate the trip.

And others are going to be like, we'll never take you there.

Why would you go there?

That's over there.

Yeah.

I prefer that example where you literally go for yourself.

In Expedition 33, I walked into Yellow Forest and think and just did almost all of it despite not having any reason to be there or do anything.

And then it was like, hey, good for you.

You did it.

Whatever.

Didn't amount to much, but you fought some cool shit.

But

to then get brought back and forced to do it later sucks.

If they bring you back and go, oh, you already did the thing.

All right.

Well, we're cool.

That's pretty rare.

That's pretty rare.

The object you're looking for, you already got it, huh?

Wow.

Look at you.

You know, then cool.

We can move.

We can move beyond it.

Dude, Horizon,

Horizon Zero Dawn has like...

I just remembered it has like one of the worst ones of those ever because there is the

final important location in the world is like on the map, but it's like hidden away.

It's like really, really, really far off the beaten path.

But if you get like the collectible map that shows you where collectibles are, there's a collectible near it.

So, in my goal to get all the collectibles as I got through those areas,

I

climbed this mountain and then fought a bunch of bosses and then got like this cinematic fucking shot of like a busted-up mountain in a that's supposed to be the location of a quest called the mountain that fell, and then ran forward and like started climbing it.

And then I'm like, I couldn't climb it anymore.

I'm like, what?

Why?

There's just like a ladder missing.

Oh,

and

I'm like, oh, I thought this was like a really cool location.

That's so much.

And that was at like hour 20.

Oh, man.

That's the location of like the final quest in the game.

So when I went back there, I just fast-traveled to the bottom of the mountain.

And then the story that's supposed to play as you go up the mountain started to play.

And I'm like, oh, I fucked this up for myself.

I absolutely take this shit.

But that that is dog shit game design.

Super screwed this shit up.

The ladder's missing type shit.

I hate that so much.

Punished for exploration.

Yeah.

This is.

And I'm like,

getting into that building is supposed to be like this big triumphant thing because you fought a ton of monsters and robots and a storm bird and shit like that.

But instead, I was like, oh, it's over there.

Oh, yeah.

I did that

in my real life, like six weeks ago.

Yeah.

Let me just fast travel to the quest location.

Okay, done.

Oh, man.

This, this has potential for like catastrophic, never-before-seen results.

Because

I foresee myself just be like, like, because Xenoblade, you remember Xenoblade has like a relationship chart?

And, like, there's an entire system with like S-Links that is like labyrinthine, and you have to grind.

And I'm just going to not do it.

I'm just going to not do it.

Because this is all carried on your energy.

Your energy is what is the entire determiner of how this goes.

You are

driving.

Says, I think chat wants Pat to suffer.

And I think that person was right.

Like, you're driving the bus and people are on the bus and they're like, oh, look at that cool.

And you're like, I don't care.

We're going.

You're never going to pick up anyone on this bus.

And these buses, the passengers that got on at the start only.

And people that are like, they want to enjoy their tour through the city and see all the sights and sounds.

And you're like, we're not seeing any of that shit.

This is going to result in like one of the strangest conversations ever at some point where I'm going to play the equivalent of Expedition 33

and somebody's gonna be like, What's your favorite character?

And I'll be like, Lune, and they're like, Oh, really?

Not CL?

And I'm like, Who's CL?

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, again, if you're like, you're driving through fucking Disney, you're driving to Disney and you're like, you're not looking at anything else, you on the fucking, you in the driver's seat needs to entertain more than the sights they're not seeing and the crying and frustration of not pulling over so that they can go to the bathroom.

Yeah.

No, you guys, you don't understand.

You don't get it.

Also, part of that discussion led me to some really absolutely fucking unhinged how long to beat entries.

Oh, yeah.

Because I put out on social media, hey, what game has like the shortest main path and like the longest main plus extract completion?

And Dragon Quest 9

is fucking...

Was it it at 30 main?

46

on main and 784 on completionist.

I looked at Dragon Quest back in the day as a potential LP.

Yeah, I remember that one.

Botan Kaios

is

at like fucking 46 versus like 120 because the game forces you to wait

three weeks.

in game in game to get certain things

your audience will continue to feel the ramifications of you not LPing 13 Sentinels forever.

Oh, I know.

Well, 13 Sentinels doesn't really have any options.

No, but I just mean like

but just the idea of like enjoying that off camera for yourself while you could have been filming it.

Yeah, but here's the thing.

That was a different time in my life.

Yeah.

Like I like.

Like I used to have tons of time to do things off camera for Pat.

Now, hey, do I really want to play Xeno Xeno Blake Chronicles DE?

Well, I better gimmick up a fucking reason to put it on the show.

Incredible.

Because it's too big.

I

await with bated breath the results of this, you know, and any other attempts to circumvent

the LP bloat time.

You know, I am so, so curious.

Like, I'm looking at Horizon Forbidden West, and it's like, let's look at my fucking game time on it.

Let's look at my fucking hours on Steam.

Horizon Forbidden West Completed Edition has 16.2 hours.

How long to beat says that the main quest is fucking, what, 22 hours long?

I'd be almost done with the game if I was just going for it.

I have done

two main quests so far.

Two.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

God, Xeno, the Xeno series.

Anyway, we'll have to see.

Outside of the big cool robot stuff,

I'm very hot.

That's not even in most of those.

I know, and that's, I'm very hot cold on the Xeno things, you know?

Hey, guess what, dude?

Aggressive is also hot cold on quality.

Okay.

A lot of people talk about them, and they don't talk about Saga these days as much as they talk about

those other ones.

Now, Woolly, I know now that you've said Xeno Saga, their greatest warrior is going to just manifest.

There he is.

I've seen him.

I still see it.

Hey, there.

It was simultaneously

right there.

Right there.

Yep.

Yep.

No, I just,

yeah,

I haven't felt the pull towards the Minato, you know?

Yeah.

So.

I just think it's really funny that they're so British.

They're so British.

I'm so glad that game like now that those games are coming out in in English everywhere, right?

It's it's fine

It's good that they sound like that.

It's really funny that they all sound like that.

Oh, I just flashed back to years ago when

you were talking about like Xeno gears and stuff.

And then I want to say Josh just like went on the Xeno Saga rant about everything wrong with Cosmos and all of that.

There's a lot.

And

basically the

just putting off the idea of even beginning or jumping into any part of that

franchise at that time, at the very least.

Even though they're not related or whatever, but just...

The Xeno Saga.

It's not good.

I'm just going to say it's not good.

It's not.

They're not good.

But like, you can really see how not good they are when they decided to completely change the full art style of their three RPG series, like one game in.

Just completely change it.

I did some cool.

Fucking weird.

I did some cool Cosmos combos in Namco X Capcom.

I bet you did.

She was strong.

Fucking, she's so boring, dude.

Some robot lady.

She's got nothing going on.

Literally, God or something.

I don't care,

okay,

anyway.

Like, Xeno Gears had a lot of like Evangelion-style religious nonsense going on, but it was like backed by like a really strong character story.

And then you get to Xeno Saga, and it's like, oh, there's a lot of fucking

stupid Gnostic shit all over this fucking thing.

I don't know.

I would probably jump straight to the one with the robot just to see it transform, though.

I feel like that would be the most enjoyable for me.

X.

Chronicles X.

That one is totally separate from all the other Xenoblades.

So that's the one that you would jump to.

Although the whole thing with the setting of the other one being like two

frozen gods as a big fighting thing is also, that's a cool setting idea.

So I think one of the funniest things about the Xenoblade saga is that one

and two are like really similar, but have nothing to do with one another.

Right?

One is like, oh, the Minato, and then the second one is like, my girlfriend's the sword, and all that shit.

Oh, yeah.

And then the wife and the third one.

And then the third one, like,

seems like a fully standalone story.

And I remember after it came out, it was like,

yeah, this is a fully standalone story.

Don't worry about it.

But then the epilogue DLC for Xenoblade 3 came out.

And the fucking photo on the store page is all three main characters' swords plunged into the fucking field.

And then all of a sudden, it was like, okay, no, but you probably should play all of them, actually.

It seems important

that that beautiful Windows desktop, yeah, with all the lore going on.

You ever, um,

you ever go through Last Story?

No, okay,

because I think the only time I've ever played it was actually at your house.

Okay, okay, because yeah, I picked it up and just didn't.

And I was just like, Yeah, that's fine.

Gotta weighs in, but it was that other Nintendo British RPG at the time that it was okay.

They were all just really, really, really, really highly British.

Very much so.

Okay.

Okay.

If that's what's going on with the

shit, go down to twitch.tv slash patstares at B-lining is on Thursday and Sunday.

There are some games that'll probably...

Okay, okay, yeah, yeah.

There's some games.

There's like games that you look and you're like, ah, I wasted my fucking time doing anything on the side of this shit.

No, there's some shit shit where this could pay off real, real well.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And there's some stuff that is just like, oh, the game is like completely falling apart because they really did expect me to do shit on the side

without any, without any pushing.

I would beeline a Grand Theft Auto game.

They're really short if you do that.

Yeah, I would super, I would super beeline a Grand Theft, a Rockstar game in general.

You know?

Oh, they're super short.

Yeah, I would fucking Red Dead fucking Critical Path my way.

I can't even imagine how short Red Dead 1 is if you just go from point point to point to point and just never deviate.

Oh, I would be so down to just hit the crit, hit the crit, and never ever swerve off.

But then, like, if you do that too often, you become that guy, and like everyone's favorite part is you're like, I don't know what that is, I don't know what that is.

Yeah, like, did you even play it?

You know, like, I

says I did.

Why is this playlist for videos?

Yeah,

all right.

Uh, let's take a quick break.

Yeah, let's take a quick break.

BRB.

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excuse me, got a little lost over there.

Whoa, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Oh, no.

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Yeah.

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I have discussed before how a thick wallet can not only be a lame feeling in your side pocket, but if you are one of those people that puts it in your back pocket, you can be doing spinal damage to yourself because a fat wallet tilted on one side of your butt cheek when you sit down actually

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Okay.

And now that we're out of the sponsor thing, I have a question about Ridge wallets.

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I was hoping you were going to say no, so I could go, yeah, that's right.

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It absolutely tanked my joke.

Damn it.

Sorry.

Yeah.

That was a 50-50 shot.

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So so this week on China don't care.

China doesn't give a shit.

Boy.

Doesn't give a shit.

Boy.

Do this.

Does China not give a shit?

So this is we're talking about light of Motoram, which is the most obvious ripoff of the Horizon Zero Dawn conceivable.

I remember this got announced like a long time ago.

And

we, I think we even talked about last year then as just be like, look at this fucking shit.

Oh my god.

But the whole like eight months ago.

The whole Horizon at Home bit like was so bad with this game, especially when you look at its concept art and everything going on.

And it has like, it has

the destiny ghosts hanging out next to the characters too.

I don't know if you caught that.

I wouldn't recognize them.

Okay, so I'll hold on.

I'm going to grab some screenshots for you as you continue the story.

So you go ahead.

But it was so bad that Sony said, fuck this shit.

We're suing Tencent.

They filed a lawsuit.

And

yeah, like

it was that bad.

Reports.

So the craziest part is that Tencent approached them a while ago.

To collaborate.

Can we make a Horizon game for you guys?

Yeah.

And Sony said, nah, which now makes them look a million times double guiltier.

By the way, here's the screenshots I'm sending you of how much

destiny ghost.

Okay, okay, okay.

The thing that follows you around, yeah, and resurrects you and says the wizard came from the moon.

You also got a little simple one of those in

Thousand Times Resist, but yeah, this is this is this is bad.

No, they they wanted to make a Horizon game officially.

Sony said no, and they went, Oh, yeah,

okay,

all right,

we'll see about that.

I mean,

fuck.

And it's been, and here's the thing.

It's one of the most blatant ones I've ever seen in my that's that's what's crazy, right?

It's one of the most blatant, but it's at a time where Tencent and NetEase and all these like uh companies have been like putting out a bunch of you know, um um just quadruple A,

you know, uh high octane uh

action games and things like that, and, you know, making a

noted name, you know,

and like Chinese games are getting much more

like prominent, and you're seeing trailers for tons of these of them.

But I just kind of am like, the era of the full-on blatant Chinese rip-off game has been, it's been a minute since we've seen that.

But it's still around.

So similar.

Like all the design elements, the colors of the plastics and the synthetics and the way that the carbon fiber muscles like it's all like

like explicitly horizon it makes me think that they approached them to talk to them after they had already started working on it

and it was too late by then yeah i could see it i could see it because it's also like like this is not just a random dev this is fucking tencent you know like a humongous publisher that's just going like ah what if we just did did it, though?

What if we just fucking did it?

Kind of, kind of nuts.

So, yeah, we'll see.

We'll see where this goes.

But, like, yeah, with so many other things coming out, original that are, you know, doing well and getting on the board there, the absolute shamelessness here.

You know, and they're like, like, unless you show me some sort of like palwhirl ass like parody trailer where there's something else going on here.

No, it's being played like straight.

Fuck, man.

Light of the multi-ram.

There's a hidden little news story inside this news story, which was of dramatic shock to me, which I think is actually more interesting than the rip-off.

Is that this is the first time Sony has ever admitted in their filing how many copies the Horizon series has sold.

Oh.

Did you catch that?

I didn't know that was a detail they hid.

Yeah, they just never, they put numbers out.

So, Woolly, don't look it up.

I want to try something.

So, Horizon has been plagued with being overshadowed by way bigger games on both of its releases and also on its re-releases, right?

Like Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring, but also there were other games

that were huge that came out alongside their remastered versions, right?

And the joke about

the joke about like industry plant, right?

Like it said Sony keeps pushing it, but yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

How many copies do you think those games have sold?

Franchise, franchise, yeah, franchise.

Okay, so it's a four versions.

Yeah, okay,

when something hits like a million sold or shipped, they always put out a celebration thing.

And not that I'm looking for it, so I didn't see it, but I feel like I would have had it in the brain or so.

But then again, as a mainline thing, as a big triple-A front, like console console push official thing it's kind of like expected in some cases but even inside insomniac celebrates that when like spider-man does it or yeah ghost of tsushima will celebrate it all right so like

i i i could see it being like both titles like maybe

So it's Horizon 1, Horizon 2, and then the remasters of both.

PC,

PC Ports is all together, all together.

Yeah.

And the Lego game and a VR game that sold nothing.

So don't worry about that.

All right, let's say

plus or minus half a million on four, call it four million, 38 million.

Oh,

well,

the Horizon series has sold 38 million games.

Well, wow.

The Horizon series that no one talks about and has zero cultural impact has sold 40 million fucking games.

Wow.

Okay.

Well, sure.

I severely underestimated that.

Yeah.

I think.

Fucking weird.

Well, and I'm playing them.

They're quite good.

They're excellent.

But they have like zero cultural impact on video gamers at all.

Like nothing.

So I think I can't like the ability, it's difficult to assess whenever there's like, yeah, bundles, whenever there's a game that is a like front of shelf product,

there's a level of that that's like, it's people are going to just grab it because it's quintessentially thought about with the console, you know.

Um, people who are not looking at game releases are like, oh, well, there's that box that stands next to it with God of War and Spider-Man and you know, Ghost of, and so on.

Like, it's one of those things.

It's just not the one that people are particularly talking about that much or caring about because of, yeah, all the comparison of what it gets released next to.

Um, also, you know, fucking, I would say that from the way you talk about it, at the very least, I mean, it's good, but like, oh, they're excellent.

But, like,

I feel like, you know, I imagine one of those Spider-Man games or one of those God of War games is going to like, like, people like those more, it feels like it's a bigger deal when it hits.

I think it's about intensity of

belovedness,

right?

Like, a lot of people

really enjoyed Horizon,

but a good amount of people are fucking crazy for God of War.

You know, like

there's also not much in terms of, like, I guess, meme currency online.

There's one, there is literally one meme for Horizon, and it is the same thing you see every single time you ever talk about Horizon.

And I'm going to look in there, and I'm going to see someone yell out, fuck Ted Farrow.

Oh, that one.

Okay, okay.

And

no.

There it is.

No, what stuck in my mind was

the shitty era of the, like, look at her and her freckles.

She's not a beautiful woman.

That's so hard.

And that's

that picture of her face.

That's the one that lives rent-free.

That I'm like, that's, that's what I remember being shared around years ago.

Yeah.

Anyway, interesting.

Interesting number there.

Hmm.

So it makes sense the 10 cent was like, hey, can we make one?

We're already making one.

We already made it.

Okay, so while I have been consuming no media and completely

as out of the loop as I have been,

I took a look and I get like, so it's,

are we just going back to fucking moral panic shit?

We're going back to

the era of...

Oh, no, no, this is a different thing altogether.

Okay, because it sounds like we're going back to that lawyer.

I forgot his name.

Jack Thompson.

Jack Thompson and Mass Effect Blue Titties and Pearl Clutching.

Giant Australian Pearl Clutching appears to be

fucking up the market.

So the typical reaction

of moral panic is generally

from the older generation, right?

Going, I don't know, I don't understand this new fucking media.

This new media is degenerate, whatever.

Um, this is this, this is not that.

You're talking about the collective shout, uh, shitheads out, I think, on Australia, who has sold a Visa and MasterCard to pulling shit off Steam.

Uh, no, this is like a dedicated

um

freak, bitch, loser group that is trying to enact political change by being annoying shitheads.

And this, uh, this is very different from old people going, I don't get it, right?

Um, and I guess they're powered up by being shitheads.

And

did you play Yakuza 7?

Yeah, a little bit.

Do you remember Bleach Japan?

Yeah.

Yeah, it's the old guy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's them.

Literally that.

Yes, yes, yes.

Okay.

Oh, God, that piece of shit.

Those fucking t-shirts.

Yeah, no, that is a real guy, and he lives in Australia and the U.S.

and Canada, whoever, wherever, right?

And these guys are screaming about how your creepy guner games are ruining society.

Yeah, so, you know, from what I understand here,

the collective shout group has

decided to

pressure and petition Visa and MasterCard

over what initially appears to be the going after incest, rape, whatever games, guner game, et cetera.

And then, of course, with that pressure, it never stops there, does it?

Yeah, well, it's straight up.

I mean, it's a group of people who probably doesn't like sex with hitler 2

because they believe that sex with hitler 2 is not respectful enough of the source

material

didn't get right rather than any you know issues with its content yeah um so anyway and from from that initial push then uh it extends to itch.io and steam and and everywhere they can they can harass and so on um to the uh itch.io de-indexed all not safe for work content period um and they basically put out a message going, Hey,

we can't fuck around when MasterCard and Visa threaten to delist us or not work with us.

It's too

much of an impact.

They'd be cooked.

Exactly.

So, what we have to do is delist everything right away and then sort out how to deal with that later.

And that type of shitty

pressuring from the smaller groups that know how to be absolute asses about it is,

yeah, that's a huge, shitty trend to have to

start following because, of course, anybody can do that for any reason.

Yeah.

And

if they start listening, then who the fuck knows what else gets sidelined?

Now, to be clear, Visa and MasterCard as payment processors in the United States have a long, long history of

being extraordinarily quick to

withhold financial services from any content they find to be distasteful to their own thing,

which is fucking nonsense.

Payment processors are a public utility despite being private companies.

It's a pile of fucking shit.

It's an easy target people have shot at before.

It's just nonsense.

It's like, oh, we want the purity of MasterCard.

Like, fuck you.

You don't know what I buy with MasterCard.

I buy, fine, I buy a hundred pieces of candy and eat them all in one day, and that's more wholesome than looking a porn.

Yeah, shut up.

It's the digital Westboro Baptist Church approach.

Yeah, so like like

the far-right shitheads, yeah, they'll yell about it, and this is obviously having an effect.

But Visa and MasterCard, they're ready to just hit that button to do this shit regardless.

As a result,

there has been a very, very

well-organized campaign that I've been seeing, which is basically, hey, just call Visa and MasterCard and ask to talk to somebody and escalate it and be like, you're not happy about this.

And describe that that's why you're calling.

because it's always a fucking group of it's it's always the most insignificant amount of people deciding to

literally steer the ship for everybody and of yeah i one would have to imagine that like millions of upset people letting their voices be known would drown out whatever bullshit collective shout is putting out there yeah so um people have been doing that and apparently visa and master card has gone from taking people's feedback to begging them to email them instead to

responding on the phone, like, are you guys calling about the video game thing?

Oh, cool, sick, sick.

I didn't catch that.

And that's been in a couple of days.

Nice, nice, nice, nice.

Yeah.

No, because the more annoying it gets for them,

the more they are likely to not listen to shitheads like this in the future, hopefully.

Yeah.

Basically, the idea is that you want to create a monetary cost in annoyance that is higher than the monetary cost in annoyance for the other.

Yeah, the absolute insufferable Cold War.

So from what I've seen as well, this group has not, this is not their first rodeo.

You know, there have been efforts in the past.

There have been previous causes that they have been behind as well.

For example,

attempts

unsuccessful efforts to ban Snoop Dogg and Eminem from Australia.

Yeah.

Good luck with that.

An attempt to prevent Tyler the Creator from touring Australia.

It's just so, it's so incessantly like, oh, you guys just hate all art and good taste and fun times and sex and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

A campaign to pressure Target and Kmart to stop selling GTA 5 in Australia.

Yeah, like, come on.

And this is where we get, that's where like the Jack Thompson era comes back into.

A petition to ban No Mercy from Sale, which ultimately led to the developers pulling it from steam and an unsuccessful petition to ban detroit become human from sale in australia as well the last of which apparently was because of the everything with the fucking fake uh uh uh child abuse plot line right and so on um

so yeah just

that's that's nice to hear um though oh there needs to be a clarification made so one of the things that has been going around is that mouthwashing was delisted from itch.io, but that's not true, right?

As a result of this, no, that's not true.

Mouthwashing had been delisted off of search there for a long time because the itch.io page for mouthwashing is literally just a Steam link.

That's

unrelated.

So because I was coming to this story so far into it, it was the same thing for what was the other game?

There was another game that people thought was delisted for this, but it wasn't because of that.

Consume me.

Apparently, the creator thought that it was part of the delisted games, but it was not for that.

The itch.io founder confirmed that it was for a different reason.

So there are games that are being delisted.

Those ones in particular were not over that case.

But overall, the itch.io version of this is, yeah, they're a smaller company and they've got,

it's much harder for them to, you know, deal with this and figure it out on the back end.

So it sounds like their approach is like, we'll not have these on MasterCard mad at us and figure it out later.

you know?

So

this is also like a fairly

clear attempt to

dismiss and delist games that have like queer people in them.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, for sure.

Well, that's it.

Because

you start with the easy target, right?

You go with.

But the gays, by their very nature, are pornographic.

Yeah, no, no, no, no, for sure.

You start with the easy target and go, well, who would want to defend the rape incest game, right?

That's where you start.

And then immediately, seconds later, you go after literally anything with sex in it-anything not safe for work, anything queer positive, literally all of it.

Well, right?

But you have to open up the door with the rape incest game.

It's always the thing, it's like, who would defend sex with Hitler, right?

And then, as soon as you get rid of sex with Hitler, you go, you know, who loves sex with Hitler?

Those people.

Everyone in collective shout on their Steam accounts.

Yeah.

So

it's just, I'm like, hey, cool.

It's the updated version of this story that we've lived through

a million times already.

A bunch of loser-ass buzzkills just trying to buzz-kill everybody else's shit.

Sick.

Just straight up just haters.

Can't wait for the next round of it.

But

it is always coming down to the payment processor, right?

That's kind of,

that's what it always ends up.

You can't argue it on on like an ethical or ideological ground with the store because they don't give a fuck.

Fuck you.

You don't have any purchasing power, right?

There's a lot of people.

One of the things that happened is, do you remember there was that massive accuracy in game translation fucking nonsense around like a bunch of Sega games like Infinite Wealth?

And then some translators came out afterwards to go,

you know, we don't even talk about you guys in our meetings, right?

Like you guys represent like 0.0001% of all sales.

Like nobody gives a shit.

The Lycan Dragon games games are more successful than ever.

Shut the fuck up.

Always, always, always a fan of when a group like this,

they can't tell you the real reasons, but the real reasons are, you know, they're over here.

But we got to create some reasons that can be discussed publicly.

But the real, I mean, yeah.

But the real reasons that I want to control what you consume.

We don't,

no.

You'd make fun of me if I told you those.

So we won't bring those up.

I think I should just start making fun of you right now.

Well, see, here's the thing.

This is like the saddest version of this.

There are so many people who are hiding their real reasons behind

plausible reasons that whenever I hear the plausible reason, I just assume that that's fake.

Yeah, well, that's it.

That's exactly it, you know.

But it's why, but it's why the argument or debate or whatever it is, the conversation never makes any sense because the person is is lying about why they are pushing their, what they believe in.

They're really holding on to something that they can't share with you.

That's the real thing.

It's just too embarrassing to bring it up, you know, or to force you into it, right?

So, yeah, cool.

Good stuff.

Love that.

I just think taking a girl swimming on a first date is really smart.

Yeah?

Tell me more.

Why?

Why do I?

Oh, why?

Why?

I saw a quote that was

celebrating victory over

porn-sick brain-rotted pedo-gamer fetishists.

So it's like, oh, yeah.

Wow.

String them together.

Every

accusation, a confession.

That's a that's a

that's a

you get a full skate on that comment.

Oh, yeah.

All right.

Well, anyway.

Speaking of

a return to fucking prudeness,

hey, Brits.

Hey, Brits, how you guys doing?

Might I suggest you obtain a copy of Death Stranding?

Yeah,

maybe.

What's going on over there, y'all?

You got a license for that internet.

Well, hold on.

Isn't it Brits and like Texas?

isn't like I don't know about the Texas part?

Well, there, I believe Texas has to like fucking.

I believe you have to dox yourself to jerk off in Texas or something like that.

I thought he had to shoot a gun at you.

And that's not like a law.

That's just how

we just, that's just how we get it done.

South of the Mason Dixon, baby.

Oh,

man.

Yeah.

Love it when a fucking

congressman

gets out

a telescope and fucking stares at my junk and tries to figure out what's going on.

What you got going on in there.

Listen, apparently,

yeah, in the UK,

there's aggressive age verification

getting implemented all across the board.

It's to protect the children, Wooly.

Mm-hmm.

Well,

Discord has implemented it as well.

But the robust age checks that are coming in to stop people from accessing online content can be sidestepped with

fucking just selfie mode Sam

in Death Stranding.

It can also be sidestepped with like a draw ring.

Cool.

Like it can be sidestepped with a huge variety of things.

Well, the thing in particular I saw that was like in the Death Stranding sidestep solution was like it asks you to open your mouth or so or close your mouth at one point to do like a verification, and you can do that with selfie mode.

So, yeah, it verifies that you are an adult.

You could probably just use like a picture of the dead ass Queen of England with her mouth closed and open, and it would be like, oh,

glory to the royal family.

Here's your pornography.

Well, I don't think that would pass the human check.

I don't know.

Oh, man.

That's so good.

That's so good, Woolly.

You are so ready for that.

Oh,

I'm jealous.

So, you know, stiff upper lip and all that.

Carry on, soldier on.

Up and at him.

I uh,

yeah

it seems like Xbox is also looking to implement this too so yeah well Xbox is willing to implement all sorts of nonsense

oh Yoko Taro had some things to

he had some opinions okay oh yeah

I'm fucking shocked dude

the guy who wanted the two bees ass dot zip sent to him is upset

all right degenerate pornographer has this to say

i don't think this is a good idea noted noted famous and has made his his house and paid his mortgage on on said degeneracy mind you

um all right so that aside there were a couple of announcements

uh

they finally showed off the two-player mode trailer in night rain

so duo campaigns duo expeditions is a thing.

Like, it's a bit odd because it's essentially just like a rebalancing for the existing content, but it's coming alongside some other stuff.

But they've, but it's like, here's a whole new trailer to show you, like, you can do two.

Um,

should have been in the game at launch, should have been there, should have been there, but cool.

This is one of those patches that you can't even give it a thumbs up.

You just shrug and go, okay, cool.

Now the game's released.

Well, it's just the part where like one and three more were more functional, but like two was just not as strange.

Dude, you know that that game was originally just three people

until someone said, well, what about offline players?

I appreciate at the very least that perhaps the um

there could have been a simple scale number, which is like this many players equals damage goes up by this much, you know, and and health goes up by this much, but they're balancing it a little bit more than that.

So

that's cool.

There was

a

game called Generic Fighter Maybe

that someone made.

I mean,

there will be some delays between now and then, but in the meantime, I think it's a fun little MS paint with effort style going on with this little fighting game over here.

Looks kind of, looks like some fun stuff.

Combo happen.

Yeah, this looks all right.

Yeah.

It reminds me a bit of Tough Love Arena in its approach.

And you know what?

I always am down for like confidence behind an art style.

If you're going with that, you know, wild old.

No, that's not true.

That's a lie.

There is one time I can think that you were not behind confidence in an art style.

For the most part, but Nidhogg is always Nidhogg.

All right.

So glad you knew exactly what I met.

We can put Nidhogg aside.

There is, for the most part.

We can put it on a pedestal is what we can do.

Because, you know, for any game that has like, it's like kind of goofy with it, but you're like, nah, but you believe in it.

You're going for it.

You know, the, again, the old cartooning of PC cartooning of

Pizza Tower and shit like that.

You know, I'm like, yeah, go for it.

If you can convince me...

you know, that you believe in it, then I'll believe in it.

Right.

I was originally.

I remember when I first saw like, ah, real monsters, and I was like, what?

Oh, man, that's hideous.

And I was like, what the fuck is happening with this art?

Or, you know, or the guy holding his eyeballs.

That's my favorite.

Yeah.

Or like Santo Bugito, you know, and these old cartoons with really weird, like, art styles.

But I grew to appreciate them.

Like, I was like, I don't know.

I have a, they're doing a thing.

This is a wild tangent, but I have a suggestion for the only game I would ever put alongside Nidhogg as guy who spent the longest on a game's art that I'm like, you made a huge mistake, which is an Xbox Live arcade game they released like 10 years ago called Dust and Elysian Tale.

Oh, I remember that thing.

Yeah, yeah, I do.

Just the slickest, most well-animated shit you've ever seen

behind just the single most unappealing, generic, furry art style ever.

It was

unbelievable.

It was just unbelievable.

It was

fine.

It was unapologetically furry, but it was fine.

No, it was unapologetically generic furry.

Ah,

you need, you need fur plus.

I don't know what that means.

You know what it means.

I don't know what it means.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you do.

You do.

No.

The good, the good, the good kinds.

The good ones.

Oh, yeah?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Or what about what do you, how do you feel about those ones where it's like, it's not even a furry, it's just a literal mouse with a sword and shield.

That's hilarious.

Like, yeah, like, I'm thinking about, uh, I'm thinking about

what's that fucking game?

Is it Small Saga?

Mm-hmm.

Have you seen that?

Mm-hmm.

It's got like a mouse that, like, their buster sword is like a pocket knife.

No, no, again, coming off that red wall type shit.

That, you know, Martin the Warrior and so on.

That's that's exactly where I was going.

Yeah.

Um,

all right.

We had a little bit of that.

Um,

speaking of art styles, I just saw this and I was like, when the fuck, how the fuck, why the fuck?

Apparently, production IG

were going to make a Spice Girls anime years ago.

They should have done that.

And it never came to fruition.

But that's really disappointing that they didn't do that.

But there's some concepts.

They should have done that.

But there's some concept art from what they wanted to do.

Oh, hell yeah.

Send me that.

Look at this shit.

Oh, man.

Look at that.

Put that in the chat.

Look at Production IG

Spice Girls.

That's awesome.

Oh, they should have done that.

It's so cool.

It's so cool.

Sporty's doing her kick and baby's jumping from the T-Rex and something

somewhere in there.

Like, Scary is probably like leading the group.

Yeah.

Fuck.

This could have been great.

Yeah, I'm...

I'm sad at this alternative.

That could have been something, you know?

I wish the only thing I didn't get is what year, because I would love to know if this was like

was this

at the tail end, you know?

It's got to be within a very, very specific.

But is it peak spice world,

or is it like,

you know,

when Victoria Beckham is making a standout name for herself on her own

with the soccer guy?

You know, is it, is it

what's the range we're talking, you know?

It's it's

it's crazy that you called that dude the soccer guy.

It's

that

that's

that is the most out of touch thing you have ever said on this podcast.

The one without the rape, the other one.

That is

that is insane.

No, not that one, the other one.

Beckham.

Yeah, that's the one.

World famous for

world famous

for leaning out of the bathroom and saying, tell the truth.

Oh, I love that.

Tell the truth.

What car did your dad drop?

Oh, such a good one.

No.

There we go.

Be honest.

That thing's incredible.

Anyway.

You know, rip to an alternate reality

where somewhere...

That would have been so good.

Spice World would have taken over if that was the case.

Late 90s, right?

If that was 1998, it would have taken over.

We would still be in Spice World.

Yeah,

anime went Spice World in 1998, would be the newest person in the Spice World.

Yeah, yeah,

it would become like the AKB 48.

AK-B48.

Yeah, yo, it would be a rotating cast that would still be going, right?

Uh, and somewhere second in second place would be like S-Club 7 on their on their fourth generation.

I mean, shit.

That would be, that, that's a real uh canon event that was dodged there.

Anyway.

Stop eating that, bud.

I mean, shit, if Spice World itself was just anime to begin with.

Anyway, anyway.

Okay, only other thing.

Somebody in the chat just said Spice Girls Bizarre Adventure.

That already happened.

Yeah, Stone Ocean.

What are we talking about?

That's literally just Stone Ocean.

Yeah.

But it's also Vento Oreo.

Like, it's like it's right there.

Like, it already happened.

I mean, they're fucking.

They're serving.

You know?

They are indeed.

They're serving.

No,

I don't mean that.

I mean that Spice Girl the Stand is in.

Oh!

Oh, I thought.

I don't mean Pescione is the spice girl.

Oh, no.

I thought, I thought that Pasione was slutting it up, and you were like, look at them, spice girls go.

And I'm like, yeah, work.

You know,

do what you got to do.

Pascion is serving cunt, bro.

I'm telling you.

Talking about trickster.

All right.

Let's just.

Yeah, I don't think that's going to work as a title.

No.

No, don't do that.

Probably not.

Probably not.

Just put up Victoria Beckham and the soccer guy.

Just.

Because British people haven't gone through enough this week.

For maximum rage points, you know, and they can't get the...

And they can't.

They're already all pent up and they can't do anything about it.

Just spitting out your beans and toast in a rage.

Um,

anyway, I was just gonna say that the official Sony arcade stick is uh called the Flex Strike,

and they put out a trailer which showed off its features, all of which were like pretty much what you'd expect, you know, wireless stick, etc.

There was one feature which was really, really sick, actually, which was at the bottom of the stick, you can change the gate without having to open it up.

Like, there's a straight-through hole.

There's a hole going straight through that lets you change the gate right on the outside, but that motherfucker is going to get dusty if you're not careful.

So the design is really cool for quick switching, but it better have some dust protection on it because I can see that being a massive liability with a actual hole going straight through the tech.

Cool idea, though.

Paul Markman worked on it, so I'm sure it'll be fun.

I would like to.

I would like to.

And yeah, they also.

Arcade sticks are so insane.

Like, every discussion of arcade stick, you just go Markman?

Markman.

Yes, good.

Good stick, Markman.

Well, I'll have to feel the buttons to see how they feel.

You know, if they're not sideways, I'm always got an eyebrow raised.

I'm always skeptical, but I trust.

We'll see.

Then they note latency reduction as well.

They note that, like, you know, hey,

this can go wired if you need to as as well.

So that's what everyone wants to hear, at least competitively.

But the most interesting feature showed off in that trailer was new footage of Tokan.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

In fact, all of them.

I didn't know that.

There's a couple of like fake generic voxels doing tatsumakis, but then they show you some brand new footage of tokan in the trailer.

You see a super, you see a launcher, you see a couple, couple moves, a couple hits here and there.

And it was, yeah, a little bit of new, a little bit of new token footage snuck in there.

That's crazy.

And somebody's pushing the fuck out of that game.

It looks cool.

It looks cool.

I'm curious to see,

you know, now that we're looking at that whole life bar thing and we're seeing the,

you know,

the soul transfer and the, the, it's got like, you know, air combos, it's got these things, but I'm curious

what they're going to do for the like modern sort of equivalent, slash the

you know, appeal to casual gamers, right?

To casual fighting game players or beginners.

I'm curious to see how much of an approach they're going to take, leaning towards that, because

this is the kind of game that, of course, you want to put every fucking like Marvel Rivals, you want to grab as many beloved characters as possible and give everyone that's excited for these characters a reason to just jump on and have fun with it right away.

And,

you know,

we've already talked to death about how it doesn't matter how easy it is to play, losing feels bad.

It's true, losing does feel bad.

So, you know,

I'm wondering what they're doing because they're playing it real close to the chest on like systems and

like overall extended play, you know.

But

then again, it was announced like two seconds ago.

So we'll see.

When's Evo this year?

Literally this weekend.

Oh, seriously?

First, second, and third.

Oh, this upcoming podcast will probably have news in it.

It most likely will.

I

am waiting on

some confirmation about whether or not I'm going to do something.

But if there is something to announce, it might be very last minute.

I might do something in regards to Evo.

Can't wait for them to announce not Timo for 2xKO.

Like, no, they're not going to announce a character.

They're going to announce no.

Not that one.

Okay.

Gotcha.

What about Heimerdinger?

Bro, you.

If Timo ain't getting in, Heimerdinger is fucking difficult.

No.

Alright.

Let's

Let's take some emails.

Oh, yeah, that new avatar.

I was going to say that new Avatar Seven Havens thing.

There's a new Avatar coming out, and they showed off the characters and some Promart, and I'm like, oh, cool.

New Avatar.

Post-Cora.

Which Avatar?

Yeah.

Avatar.

No, which...

No.

Yeah.

Like...

Like Kung Fu Magic Avatar?

No.

No, because you see,

they made post-Kora Avatar announcement, and then when I went to go grab it, two hours later, James Cameron was like no mine though and literally and announced in the same the same couple of day span I think it was like a day or two later so like you just can't fucking it gets the avatar well I'll just focus on the one that's like elementally based

well

that'll that'll

yeah yeah that there you just you simplified it um no it sucks and feels deliberate it feels deliberate but like I went can't be because James Cameron was talking about avatar like fucking 25 years ago no i know but the timing of when i went to go grab the the story for this new

post-corra season and i couldn't get to it because cameron released some shit yesterday about fire and ash that's really funny was like oh you assholes and they're just legally they just don't care i you'd think one would go like you like let me clarify the brand by pushing airbender more or something but they're like nope we're not moving i am avatar and you are avatar and legally we are where we are

so is the new avatar

is the new avatar uh it was a tv show yes

okay uh do you think they're gonna be able to make a tv show that isn't on the verge of being canceled four years in a row

because like Like Korra had some issues, but like the fact that they thought every season they were making was the last season they'd get to make was like literally the core of every single problem that showed.

I mean,

maybe

write it to be self-contained.

I don't, I don't know.

Um,

I guess we'll find out.

I mean, there's also the adult

Aang movie, and I think um, Steve Yuan

got cast as Zuko.

So there's some other stuff coming out in relation to Avatar.

I mean, we'll see.

Sure.

Sure.

And none of them are as good as the Shyamalan

movie.

That's, but that was the one that had the clarity to call itself the last airbender and separate itself completely from James Cameron.

Yeah, though, dude.

This media franchise is like such a fucking confusing fucking mess, dude.

Like multiple live-action adaptations that have nothing to do with one another alongside like

cartoon releases and oh my god.

What a fucking confusing mess.

All I know is if the

if the original creators walked away from that live action show and then said, we're going to start making our own animated things.

I'm hoping those are good because I trust that the original creators still fucking got it, you know?

Anyway, let's take some letters.

Hey, if you want to send it a letter, send it to castlesuperbeastmail at gmail.com.

That's castlesuperbeastmail at gmail.com.

Oh, yeah, by the way, I forgot to mention, I literally hurt myself this past week and went down to urgent care.

What happened?

I pulled my rotator cuff.

Oh,

that hurts.

It looks like in primarily my right shoulder, but it's like extending out to like most of my back.

Damn.

You want to guess how I did it?

How'd you do it?

I was washing my hair in the shower,

and I, and I, you know, okay, hold on, you know, that slip you do in the shower where your foot goes, but then you catch yourself,

like you don't fall, you're just like, oh, right,

tweaked my fucking shoulder.

Oh, man, stand like this for like four days.

I feel like shit, dude.

How are you the one showing up to this podcast injured?

And I'm fine.

I was like, I'm, dude.

I, I had like a whole People were taking bets on.

I had

a whole fucking like routine ready for you coming in with like a broken figure or a black eye.

I had like a whole thing.

Damn, that's crazy.

But now I'm going to now I'm going to have to like chop up some of those bits and just sprinkle them.

Sprinkle them over.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There we go.

And over the next, when I surely stub my toe and or hurt myself in some other completely benign way, You can you can get it in there,

yeah.

No,

but yeah, no, dude.

I was at urgent care because I was doing the Batman neck shit.

And because Paige made me go, she's like, You look like shit, go to urgent care.

And then I, I'm like, I'm I'm like, I the I do the triage, and then the doc comes out.

He's like, So I heard you fell in the shower, and I'm like, Not really.

I was so embarrassed.

I was so fucking embarrassed.

I mean, I do.

I didn't even fall down.

I didn't even fall down.

But, okay, the one plus is a rotator cuff injury.

Like, that's some big athlete shit.

So you can, like, see a physio, and when anyone asks, you can just pretend it was, like, yeah, you were doing big sports.

Bro, I was washing my bald head.

Like,

come on.

Like, holy shit, dude.

It's, it's.

No, I'm all right.

I'm on the mend.

Like, you know, I felt really okay the first day.

Okay.

And now I'm, like, 30% better.

Okay.

That's cool.

Yeah.

There's.

Though I am enjoying the period of Paige being like, I go to pick up the baby and I go to pick up the, and I pick, I pick the little guy up, and I go, oh,

and Paige goes, are you okay?

And I get to be like,

I'm fine.

I'm completely fine.

She's like, you don't look fine.

And I'm like,

and she's like, like, you really look, you sound like shit.

I'm like, no, I'm fine.

I'm completely fine.

I'm telling you, just come up, come up with a good cover story, you know?

Well, the cover story, because Paige got to the internet first, was that I tore my asshole.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

Right.

And then I was like, you, and then I was like, it's actually more embarrassing than I tore my asshole.

It's actually that I heard it in the shower washing my hair.

I mean, I guess it depends.

There's a lot lot of ways one can tear their asshole.

You can tear it, sizing up, or

you can tear it, go in the bag.

I tripped.

I tripped.

One in a million shot, Doc.

Yeah.

One in a million.

Or you could just have a lack of fiber and, you know, I mean, shit.

I mean, we've all been there at one point in our life.

I regretfully can say that, yes, we have.

Unfortunately, I think every single person

has had a moment in their life and you're like, oh,

I've been off more than I can.

I've made a mistake.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'll look, man.

I'll say this: you know, those

Japanese-style traditional toilets, so the Chinese-style traditional toilets where you're squatting,

those things are nightmarish and scary.

And I'm so afraid of them.

I'm so afraid of them.

I'm so afraid, dude.

Deathly afraid of them.

And I saw one once

and i was like oh god oh jesus oh dear

what do we even know

but there is there is something to at least the squatting part of it that's healthy for you you know

yeah

i mean the fact that we sit there um

at an unnatural angle is doing all kinds of

stool bro it's got the stool okay because i'm saying it's doing all kinds of unnatural damage but the embarrassment of falling in is too scary that I'm like, I don't care.

I got, no, I don't care.

Not only do I take that risk 10 out of 10 times.

I bought the fucking squatty potty off Amazon, the wooden one, the fancy bamboo one for, you know, classic.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Not only that, but

I remember the week that I bought it.

The week that I bought it, you came over to my house and saw it.

And we're like, look at this fucking guy with a fucking stool.

We can't get him with his legs.

And I was like, please do not make fun of my toilet stool.

And then the very next weekend, we were in Atlanta

and we were in a cab.

And I was teasing you about some shit.

And it was you, you, me, Matt, Liam,

and George

in the cab.

And I was on your shit about something.

And you were just like, yeah, well, this motherfucker has a tiny little stool in his toilet because he's too short to reach the bowl.

And I was like, please don't don't make fun of my toilets i mean you hand me a bullet you know what do you want me to do with it not shoot me

don't shoot me with the bullet

uh and now and now now yeah that's we're in the we're in the toilet stool world all right there you go it's good to do

i'll tell you and if you're young right now and you don't know what we're talking about you'll get there don't you worry Yeah.

This will catch up to you.

It might take a couple of years, but you'll feel it.

You know, one day you'll be like, ooh,

ooh, what's going on?

And then like, you'll think back to this podcast and be like, shit, they were right.

One day,

one day, young man, young woman, you're going to be like, ha, another, another uneventful day on the toilet.

I'm completely done.

And then you'll stand up and you're going to be like, I'm not done.

And you'll sit back down and you'll be like, I'm completely done.

And you'll stand back up and go,

what is happening?

What is happening?

I need a stool

because of the biomechanics.

I love my toilet stool.

I had to use a public restroom recently and I was like, what has happened?

Oh my god.

Oh my god.

I forgot the toilets don't come with these.

Oh yeah.

Oh yeah.

I mean, I've talked about.

Depending on the public toilet, I swear to God, yes my fucking legs will dangle off the side of the bowl i've already described life without a bidet is just not worth living you know at this point in time um

you just

you can't go back to a world

of

tarnished

a world of being unclean and um no this this also helps with that because uh you know you got a little bit of an early warning system on on the aforementioned problems you know let me let me ask you.

Let me ask you.

This might be a little personal.

This might be a little personal.

Do you prefer a soft bidet or like the scraper?

I have settings.

I have configurations.

Yeah, yeah,

there's the button for like, oh, that's relaxing.

And there's like, no, now scorched out on this.

Now, now, by default, by default, when I just, when I walk in that room,

that setting is on power washing.

we are power washing right if i'm gonna be using a hose i'm gonna put my thumb over the tip of the hose and really get that pressure going thank you you ever see someone just doing like their driveway and just getting just like all like oh the the floor is so clean just

yeah

yeah ever get caught watching pressure washing videos on on youtube oh caught i mean i'm in there i'm telling you yeah no you know what my favorite thing about a pressure washing video on youtube is?

The tons of comments that are like, man,

I bet my neighborhood could use a pressure washer.

How much does the machine cost?

It costs $1,300.

I bet I could make that back and just power wash driveways on the weekend.

Yeah, no.

I mean,

I want my bidet trying to stop a civil rights march.

I want

to figure out what will harm me

and back it off a little.

Agreed.

Agreed.

That's how I do shower heat.

Yep.

I go, what's going to boil my skin off my body?

All right, now let's back it off a little.

Castlesuper Beastmail at gmail.com.

CastleSuper Beastmail

at gmail.com.

Um, hey, look at that.

Art style changes you just weren't into.

Oh my god, are you fucking serious?

Dear human canvas Woolly and don't tattoo me, I'll come pat art style changes.

That's not that's that's funny.

That's that's funny.

I'll cry.

It's different.

Um, you draw art, I see art, you think, I like that other art, and bam, your art's different now.

Often a good thing.

Charlie Brown and Bugs Bunny wouldn't look the way they do until about five years.

Araki style is now so unique that it's redefined, um

that it's uh refined and it'd be hard to mistake.

But

in what little we've seen of Kingdom Hearts 4, Sora just looks like a guy.

A very pretty guy, but a guy, and that kind of sucks.

In the same vein, if Square ever did an FF9 remake, I'm worried they'd suck the whimsy out of those designs.

So, aside from Nidhogg 2, what's an art style change?

Damn it, you motherfucker

work for you

with the easy one off the table.

No, that's like the easiest ever.

Oh, man.

I've talked about it, so it's kind of a layup here, but I've always been just turned off by EverQuest.

I don't even care what's happening.

I just.

You dislike EverQuest's art style so much that it leaked into like adjacent art styles for reminding you of EverQuest.

Foolishly so.

From a place of ignorance, not knowing what the true contents were.

Now,

I'll tell you, though, Wolves,

as silly as that was at a time, EverQuest's art is really bad.

EverQuest II's art is maybe the worst

video game I've ever seen in my life.

Oh, boy.

Oh, are you not, is it not ringing a bell?

EverQuest II is like the absolute worst decision was made at every stage of development.

It's the game on the cover of your video card.

Yeah.

It's that.

It's that game.

It's the fucking

like every sound blaster

product

from years ago with these characters on it.

God damn.

It's just, it looked, it looked god-awful the very first day it was shown.

Look at it.

And

by comparison, it was coming out alongside World of Warcraft, which was called the game.

Oh, all stylish.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you got this Lion-O reject over here.

Look how much more detailed the EverQuest characters look.

And the whole world decided,

no,

man.

Well, now WoW is kind of like a, it's become genericized because of how quintessential it's been.

But looking at these screenshots, I'm like, oh, no, that distinct armor and glowing purple and green and pink and such shit, like, would have looked way more unique if this is what you're comparing it to a hundred percent the most generic ever um

it tangential and probably a little more divisive on this because i know that the contents are appreciated by people but i've i've taken um issue with binary domains appearance in the past I've

I've taken uh uh what's the word is it umbrage or i've taken yeah you can say umbrage yeah i've taken umbrage with it.

You know?

So I say to you, person taking Umbridge in binary domains art style,

that game's art style has two parts.

One is literally every single screenshot you've ever seen of it.

Yeah.

And the second is how good the robots look when they completely fly apart into a million pieces when you shoot them.

Okay.

Because people are saying.

Because that part looks fucking unbelievable.

Okay.

Because people are saying, no, no, Wooly, you just mean Big Bo.

And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no.

Not just Big Bo.

The robots, I think they look lame.

No, they look like iRobot.

They look like lame iRobot dumb shit.

Exactly.

And I'm looking at screenshots of it.

And

it looks like shit to me.

The tough one, right?

Because now we live in a new context in which so many more people have played Like a Dragon games.

And like

that game could be happening in the background of Yakuza 5.

Right, right.

Okay.

Okay.

No, it couldn't.

But

like,

now that everyone in the whole world has the context of what it feels like to play a Yakuza game or a like a dragon game, man,

that is just a fucking third-person shooter or like a dragon.

Version of it.

But robots.

Which I have the context to appreciate now.

And instead of secret Koreans or secret Hawaiians or secret Koreans,

again, it's secret robots.

It's secret robots.

Yeah.

And so, no, with that context and all that, I get it.

Plus, I understand every time as it's come up that people are like, nah, I ruled.

I'm like, yeah, yeah, I'm not talking about.

It's actually a superb.

I'm not talking about that.

I'm just saying I think it looks like shit.

Like,

that's what I'm saying.

It does have a robot with a scarf, though.

Is it a long flowing scarf?

Yes.

Oh.

East France, you see.

Oh.

But not like Strider scarf.

No, more like Common Rider the First.

Okay.

Itchy Go.

Common Rider of the Second Scarf.

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

I see you.

Let's see.

Let's see.

Here's one coming up.

I'm going to scroll through my Steam list right now and just pull out a shit-ass art style in a few minutes.

All right.

In the meantime, Steve asks, Dear Castle Super Dads, on the subject of waiting for the full release of early access games,

I'm holding off on Hades 2 with patient but eager anticipation.

Deltarune, is that early access?

Would I be better off waiting till chapters are out or jumping in now?

Does the game acknowledge or play into its piecemeal release?

Or would that hurt the experience?

I played a complete release.

Oh, should I play a complete release at a later date?

No, it's an episodic game.

Meant to be played on release.

It is absolutely an episodic game.

It is not early access.

Okay.

These parts are not meant to be played in a row?

Oh, no.

Three and four obviously are because they release simultaneously.

But no, the games seem to be.

How do I put this?

The games are built with the assumption that you are going to theory craft and fan art yourself into a stupor for a year plus in between releases.

In between releases.

Okay.

It is not.

It is like a Telltale Walking Dead-like style episodic release that is just all over the place in terms of timing.

Okay, it is, it is definitely not an early access game.

Because the feeling of the first, especially, I mean, with the second, it came along, but with the first, I remember the feeling of like, this is a demo for a preview of a full thing, and the intention

is for Toby to have you sit and play it all together like another Undertale when it's done, was what I kind of thought was happening.

Okay, so, so here it's the strange.

So, I don't

Deltarune kind of like fights classification because um the first half of the so right now there's four chapters.

The first half of the game is a demo.

Yeah

and only exists in demo form.

Yeah

the middle third of the total game came out simultaneously but it's two different episodes

and then the fifth part is coming out in like a year.

And it's just like strange.

Yeah, he's putting it out when he's putting it out.

Okay.

There is a mini-game that in chapter four that Toby Fox showed some family members and asked what they thought.

And they said, I think you are having a mental breakdown about how long your game is taking to come out.

From the outside.

Toby was like, yes.

Yeah.

From the outside, I'll say that this doesn't feel like what Steve is kind of worried about is the idea of early early access progress getting erased and content getting improved over time.

It doesn't seem like Deltarune is being released in such a way where, A, you'll ever have that happen, where the game will get updated

to include new things

or remove things.

Yeah.

But what you're getting is meant to be played when he releases it, right?

Like, chapter one is done.

Chapter two is done.

Chapter three is done.

Chapter four is done.

The only changes that will ever be made is like, oh, I found a soft lock.

Or this boss fight actually ended up being being like way harder than I anticipated for the playtesters.

And I would even say the proof is that if three and four released with a massive patch and overhaul to one and two,

then you would have had a like a thing to worry about.

Nah, that was very minor.

But they didn't do that, right?

They didn't add any new content or like

one and two into the new engine, the new version of uh RPG, and then they they fixed the soft lock here and a visual bug there.

Yeah, yeah.

So Hades 2, by the way, is a really good example of like, if you've been playing Hades 2 up until now, now is the time to stop

because they announced that the very next patch will be the final.

Will be 1.0.0.

Yeah.

And that upon 1.0 release, there is some kind of resource that I'm not familiar with.

But they're like, yeah, we're going to junk all of those resources in your save files into other resources so that you can't just walk up to a character and see the credits.

Okay, okay.

Yeah, I mean, we learned it the first time, right?

I've definitely was like, okay, they

are going to give you a whole lot of lead-in and fun, but if you fall into temptation, you will only self-affirt later when 1.0 releases.

So I've steered clear.

But that's a game that's telling you, like, it will change as you go.

And placeholder characters are showing up and shit.

Yeah.

Delta ruin ain't that.

Like, Narcissus didn't have a piece of art until like a couple months ago.

All right.

Here we go.

Let's take one

over here.

Dear Super Dad, Man of Castle, Super Beast.

I recently learned in a video from F4AME on YouTube that during the Wii era, developers on the Wii Shop were only paid upon releasing, on reaching a threshold of copies sold.

This changed when the Switch launched, where every dev got paid for every copy they sell.

I feel like these changes have contributed to a lot of spam on the eShop.

However, the previous model caused losses for indie developers who published on the platform and didn't get enough sales.

Like, it happened to the devs from Retro City Rampage.

What do you think?

It's a better system, it's a better system to manage the eShop.

Congrats to everyone on the podcast.

Keep on keeping up.

I don't give a fuck about what it means to the eShop, but if you sell a copy, you should get paid.

That's literally it.

Like, this is a very, like, the fact that you're asking, like, oh, what's better?

It's like, what about the spam that comes to the it's no i don't give a that's insanity somebody makes a thing and they sell it and then they don't get the money or nintendo is gonna hold back that threshold or fuck that no you get a copy for everything you sold because someone bought a thing that you sold like it's it's crazy there's no justification for sold it give me money there's no justification for that um the spam or the print the the the the shovelware or whatever the case is it's like yeah if if it sucks when that happens when a platform goes from something where it's curated quality feeling to being more open-ended, but if you're trading off people who deserve money not getting it for arbitrary shit-ass reasons, that's insanity.

Yeah, nonsense.

So, no, you know, Steam is full of the most shovelware of any platform of all time, but it's also just like where people put their shit out.

And like,

you know, there's a, there's an open-endedness to that that is, is, it's just more important that you get paid for what you make.

There shouldn't be any part of the vibe that

I feel like.

i have a really strong political stance and that political stance is you pay me

also those guys too they they can get paid too get pay pay people good stance it's good it's good

you should pay for things

i did it i solved society or you can be like uh freddie wong who put out that his movie and was like if you're gonna pirate my movie then i'm gonna upload the forest k freshest sickest version of it ever and i'm gonna put a video in front of me going, Hey, so you pirated this.

That's cool.

Here's the best version of it.

Also, if you want to throw me something, you can over here.

Thanks.

And he torrented it himself.

You know, and he's like, I've been waiting my whole career to upload this, to do this, you know, with a

full-on

release.

But yes.

All right.

Last one over here.

All right.

Someone.

The best one.

Hello, Woolly.

Saddam is a freak pick, and Pat

Kane/slash Senna are freak picks.

With the response on the Reddit to V's trailer being so mid, and people crying about the freak picks instead, I've now become anti-freak.

It is my understanding that pick rates for freaks have been relatively low in both fighting games and League of Legends simultaneously.

Most people do not like playing against these characters either.

You said that a freak pick can just be mechanically weird amongst their peers.

Pat has claimed that there must be a non-human element.

Could Braum or Alawi not be argued to be freaks in mechanics, even if not in looks?

Diversity is good.

Diversity is good for spicing things up, and I understand that there are many non-human humanoids on the league roster to pick, but will Yumi really be the one to save 2XKO?

Long-winded, I know, but my deepest congratulations.

Thank you very much.

Someone, sign someone who waited nine years for Vi in Project L.

So

I feel like when we talk about freak picks, like realistically, like we're we're do, we're just we're being goofy and we're talking about what we think is rad and should exist for fun in a roster.

But I think there's that stat that shows you like

whether it was League, most popular characters in Asia versus in North America.

And in Asia, it was all the humanoid, super pretty, cool looking characters and in North America there was a lot of like edgy cool freaks but not quite like full-on freak it was just kind of like you know fire-headed armor guys and stuff like that you know um

realistically it just needs to have the most popular characters and it needs to have a whole lot of them realistically right so this is only a discussion that we get to have because there's only 10 characters on launch if there were 40 characters then

make like five of them abject weirdos mechanically,

right?

And like 35 normies, and the discussion would go away.

Yeah, like, and again, this is this is a I want to say this is a specific angle we're taking on because the roster having fun, wild stuff going on is more interesting to talk about in the end and to play.

But for us, for the game to be successful, it's more about the number at that point and then getting all the beloved ones in there.

I think if we're going to keep using it as an example because of how well it's doing things, and if it's not the same genre, but Marvel Rivals, Marvel Rivals is not particularly rife with freak picks, but they got all the beloveds in there, and they got a few left field characters, certainly, but they're all just pretty cool, generally beloved characters.

And then you get like Jeff as

a left fielder there,

but everyone else is like pretty safe

and and it's doing that's what people want

the other thing is that like in league of legends like there there are some obvious exceptions like this is the like don't take this as a as a um

as as sacrosanct because but like freak weirdos tend to have freak weirdo mechanics right like temo is a cute little guy right but temo also like floods the screen with bullshit trap nightmare fuel right?

Like he's a mechanically weirdo asshole character to play against, right?

But even within that context, there are a ton of cool-looking human characters that have weirder movesets or mechanics

that are also not in 2xKO.

Like

2XKO.

feels like it's not quite as bad, but it's giving like SVC chaos energy of like, well, what if,

like, you know what the most popular archetype is?

Shotos.

What if it was all Shotos?

What if 19 Shotos?

Now, if you dial the knob all the way up to 11 on Freak, you get an Arakune-style character, which makes you not want to play the video game.

Yeah, that would be Timo or Fiddlesticks.

Would Temo be Arakune?

Would it be that bad?

Yeah.

I got to tell you, dude, dude, the fun in playing Timo is like feeling a person who you've blocked from talking to you piss their pants just by seeing how their character moves.

Like just like, you know, you know what I'm getting at here?

Like just absolute like crash out rage, shit yourself.

Like placing bombs on your inputs?

Like...

Well, no, no, because

in League, right, you have your lane, and Timo's entire game plan is turning invisible and sniping you as you walk into invisible minds, right?

Right, right, yeah, yeah,

and it's awesome.

So it is actually very, very similar to Arakune.

It's like just flood the screen with garbage, yeah, or or a testament, um, old testament would put a lot of invisible traps on the screen, um, or even um, Nauto, invisible traps on screen while sniping no, Nauto is in P4A, is absolutely what Timo would do.

Okay, yeah, there we go.

There we go.

Mine was bombs.

I was

gun also.

Yeah, yeah, there you go.

And

she was the, I loved fighting Nauto.

That was, that was my favorite matchup in that game.

It's just like the 2xk roster doesn't have anybody that has any,

like, like, Ilaui is the strangest character on the roster, and Ilaoi is also like very normal.

The other thing about the 2xK roster, not even in terms of freaks, but it also is really poorly divided between the game's geographic regions, and it's also poorly divided between lanes.

Oh, who represents what lanes of like there's absolutely no rhyme or reason?

Like, if you had 15 characters in that game or 16, you could have three for each

lane.

Should that factor, though, or should it factor for who would be best for a fighting game?

Something from the original game should factor into it in some way.

The like the most popular that would work for this for the genre, you know, feels like the priority.

I mean, they did literally talk about this in that one developer thing where they said, like, yeah, a mixture of, you know,

popularity and variety and

all that.

Like, there are zero characters from The Sunken Isles.

There's zero characters from Bilgewater on that.

There are zero characters from the Yordel area.

I think there are like five from Zound.

But listen,

take it from me,

writer, you know, as somebody who is very happy with Vi as a cool boxer in Project L,

as somebody who's like, that's all I wanted.

I got what I wanted out of that.

I forgot about it.

Yeah, you know.

Then

I still say here that like what you're describing, freak pick or not, it's just about the numbers, right?

If the numbers go up, this conversation becomes irrelevant.

The other thing, and this is a genuine, I know we're kind of overdoing it, but like this is one of those things.

It's like it is a victim of its own development cycle because

League has a huge roster, like, and a lot of those characters have really cool mechanics.

And you've gotten to see a lot of those mechanics in the MOBA, in the turn-based RPG, and in Rune Terra, right?

And be like, okay, how would this character work across multiple things?

So people have had like five, six, seven, eight, nine years to theory craft how fucking awesome Tam Kench, the evil catfish, would be in a fucking fighting game.

And then you get like Vi.

And you're like, well, what's Vi?

Oh, she's going to punch you.

She doesn't have any jungling nonsense going on.

She's going to hit you like a boxer.

Right?

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, I mean, I'm sure they're, I wonder what designs were like on the cutting room floor for like some version of the fighting game that had lanes or, you know, something a little more wild and aggressive and

harkening back to the original

MOBA style.

But at the very least, I can say this:

this is one of those games that we I love and have fun with how it plays, and I'm at least looking forward to that part of it.

The

thinning, the race for the crown has thinned immediately.

And the games that have been announced just yesterday are already gone before tomorrow because Nenpact is like the the worst, I believe, the worst review like the worst stuff

it was the bottom was it's a game for no one it's a game for no one man you know um that was not nine years in development uh

closer to nine months it felt like but holy shit you know

talk about the opposite end of the spectrum on that one i made a i made a tweet on blue sky that was like if the final roster comes out and the last two characters are blitz and temo and i can play blitz and teemo that means the game's good and i will i will remove all complaints about 2xko and say it's a good game.

And I feel like that's like because the roster is so small, a version of that exists for everyone who has ever played League of Legends, where it's like, if I say, if okay, when can I play the team of characters that I want to play that I kind of expect to be able to play?

I can't.

Okay, game sucks.

I will come back to this when I can play the characters I want to play.

The part of this conversation that I always am like, it's just the part where it's like, but it's not, it doesn't suck.

It's a fun fighting game to play.

But they just, you need roster.

Yeah, but the promise of a Dragon Ball game is I can play as my favorite Dragon Ball characters.

The promise of League of Legends is

the League of Legends.

And guess what?

There's a billion of those.

Completely.

Completely true.

In fact,

there are.

I can't think of a larger...

roster

IP to pick from that's not just like every single comic book character from Marvel or DC.

That's not Marvel.

Yeah, you know, like a stable, you know, in terms of just like it's a game with characters in it.

Like, that is the one with the most to pick from.

You know, like, I have a list of like five to because I made the joke about Blitz and Timo as like a team, but like I could give you a list of like 10 characters right now that if one of them got in, I'd be like, game's good.

Right?

If Fiddlesticks or Senna or Bard or

Timo

or

fucking Ophelios or Morden Kaiser

got in, or Nautilus, I'd be like, oh, that game's great.

That's a great game.

Everyone should play.

Or Thresh.

Like that.

Right away.

I'd be like, oh, the game's good.

So here's the problem, right?

Because that's so relative.

That list I...

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

It's totally relative.

Half the people in here probably go, I hate those fucking characters, Pat.

Your taste sucks shit.

It's all about set

and jin and Lee Sin and Lux.

So, like, three of the characters I called out from, like, four or five years ago showed up in this final roster, being Yasuo, Vai, and Ilawi.

Like, I was like, I would love for those characters to show up.

And they did.

So I'm like, well, that's cool.

And I got what I wanted.

You know what, dude?

There is also

a list of characters that if they get announced, I'm like, this game is dead forever.

Like, there's the opposite.

Oh.

Like, if Garen or Lux or fucking Yasuo's brother get announced,

oh, this is the sister.

Yasuo's brother.

Wait, isn't it Lux the most popular, like, pick or the most picked?

She's one of the most popular.

Yeah, she's also boring as shit.

And she's Garen's sister.

But if she's the most popular, I mean,

you gotta feed the fishes.

I don't know.

I don't care.

Okay, well, I might.

That old list, I still have it.

I don't care for Lux.

Don't care for her.

I

also, they seem to be like aiming for older characters, which they should stop.

They should be aiming for newer characters because newer league characters are more interesting than old league characters.

The rest of my list was Riven, Udir, Blitzcrank, Volleybear, Lee Sin, Thresh,

Master Yi

Mast if Master Yi is in that game that game sucked

like

like dude you might as well you might as well put ash in there okay

I don't even I don't even know what that means I just yeah dude I just I like let's I'm gonna ask the live audience if Master Yi gets in that game as like the next announced character are is that game fucking cooked or is it fucking cooked dude Holy shit.

I don't know what that means, but I was like, damn, that looks cool.

That could work.

Oh, my God.

It would be the funniest fucking thing in the world, dude.

Oh, shit.

That's great.

All right.

I need Tom Cannon to tell me how many characters are going to come out a year.

Like, every version of this conversation could just die in its crib if he said eight characters a year.

So what you could just get is a roadmap with a bunch of silhouettes.

Right?

You can't do that.

Everyone, league people will fucking know every single character on that list.

You can't do a silhouette.

A bunch of question marks then.

And they have

with colors.

A bunch of colored question marks.

That one's pink.

What does it mean?

There.

That'll do.

That will do.

It means it's Ionia.

That's what it means.

Does it have to be?

Yes.

That's what it fucking means.

It'd be Irelia, the bitch with the knives.

Or...

That's what it would be.

If it was like light yellow, it means Azir is coming.

Like, I can tell you.

Or Renectron.

There's no way to hide these characters outside of giving people nothing.

I swear to God.

I mean...

We've talked about the part where, like, someone from Arcane, someone like Ambessa, feels, you know, like they might cut the line.

They might cut the line.

Ambessa would feel like genuinely the worst character in the entire world to put in.

Because it's just from the show.

I know, I know, I know.

That's what I'm saying.

Like, that would be the worst.

The skipping of the line with 100 people waiting to be like...

Like 200, man.

Like, oh my God, dude.

Oh, there's no winning.

There's no winning.

You have to just throw them out.

It is crazy how there is no winning on this roster.

Like,

everyone's waiting for the final two, and it will disappoint everyone.

Like, literally, everyone will be disappointed with the final two characters on this roster, which is probably going to be Akali and Blitz.

And Blitz is the most boringest weirdo they can have.

And it's like, no,

there are like multiple other chain hook characters that are more interesting, like Thresh and Not, dude

fucking hell or Pike even this is this is fucking Poken is what it is oh yeah absolutely it's Poken this is Poken

absolutely

okay sure all the fighting types but you can't be all fighting types

I have to agree that that decision was fucking stupid Like, I get it, but fuck off.

That's so dumb.

Pokemon has, like, fucking 17 types, and you're going to limit them to one.

Shut up.

No, they don't.

No, no, no, they didn't.

They didn't.

That's why you got it.

No, no, but that was like the original expectation.

Yeah.

No, no.

But then it's like, of course, you're going to get fucking Lucha Pikachu and,

you know,

whatchamacallit.

Anyway, yeah.

All of that.

But it's that.

It's that, again, that no winning off the roster thing.

All right.

I should never have announced this game.

The nuclear x i can't follow you into the nuclear escalation all right okay as somebody who loves the way it plays and is looking forward to playing it i i cannot follow you they should never have announced this game until uh they were gonna do playtests like let's say a year ago right

Because like I like they're trapped in the expectation of time.

Do you remember when I made a big, big list of the worst possible roster ever and put it on Twitter?

And that roster was like 40 characters.

And I was like, there's no, like, this is the worst picks they can ever do.

And like, now I'm like, oh my God, I wish they had that fucking roster.

If I could go back in time, I would say actually hide the acquisition of Radiant Games by Riot.

Oh, that's a little tough.

Make it.

That kind of fucked on them.

Actually make it so that nobody knew they got bought and that this then got announced as a game that was just happening, you know?

They need to.

Your schedule is fucked after that.

I really want like a statement that's like, hey, we are willing to cut corners to get characters.

Okay, listen.

Okay, okay.

The model will show up on the character select screen and you can pick them, but they have no moves.

All right.

They'll just be there, though.

Just look at it.

Well, here's the thing.

And I really mean this.

They should have made the game simpler.

The characters in league have four special moves and a passive.

So you could have a game.

They should have made these characters with four special moves and a passive and be like really simple and just churn them the fuck out.

I can't wait to fucking run some Vi combos.

I don't give a shit, man.

And you know what?

It should have been teams of five.

Sure.

It should have been teams of five.

Yeah.

And it should have launched with 200 plus fighters.

I got half of my list, so I'm satisfied.

Your list is for bitches.

I got my puncher.

I got my fucking my big girl.

We're good.

All right, later.