CSB352: I Need the White Man's Money to Resurrect Jojo Fridays

Yo, yo, happy holidays, Wolves. How you doing, man? Merry Christmas, one and all.
Merry Christmas to you and your house. Merry Christmas to everyone listening.

Yeah,

I think, well, we could have stalled this for maybe

a little bit later in so that by the time people who let these podcasts last for the week get to it, they'll actually get it on Christmas Day.

Yeah, doing.

It's already started. The holidays are upon us.
Haramby.

Yes, right.

Harumby. Haramby.
Have you been singing some carols around the house, Woolly?

I have not been singing some carols. However, I can say that some new.

Okay, so

there's lessons that are being learned. There's new developments.
There's all kinds of things going on here and and feelings are being had. There's feelings.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Oh, you go ahead and bop my camera.

Give me a on-off. I'm horribly desynced once again.
Oh, actually, you had to do that last time. It is me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did I have to do it? Okay.
By you bopping. I did.
There you go. Did you bop? I bopped it.
All right. Now we're talking.
There you are. Willie, tell me about your new feelings.
Okay.

So

Father, so you're discovering brand new feelings every day. Well, they're more, they're evolutions of previous feelings, but I'll start with the,

there's two things that come to mind. So one, there's a development, and that is something that you did not experience.
So what? Oh, okay, all right, all right, okay, okay.

What

before you left, you remember how, you know, a lot about how Montreal is.

Do you remember what happens when Montreal winter begins to pick up steam? Yeah, life is over.

Okay.

And

when the snow.

I will do anything it takes to stay inside my cozy house. And when this, because when the snow starts falling, shit gets out of control, right?

Cars decide the gravity doesn't apply to them.

It's nuts. There's so much snow here, but there's so much snow here that we have developed literally world leading tech on snow clearing and snow plowing, right?

We have the three vehicle system in which that that that was developed here where um

it's pretty ingenious stuff when you see it the coordination is pretty impressive a sidewalk clearing small snow um whatever

little little yeah whatever the the one-man things will go down and like push all the snow off the sidewalk right into where the the edge of the sidewalks go right? Yeah.

And then right behind it comes a big snow sucker plow that

sucks all that piled up snow and sucks. It vacuums it up.
For those of you who are unclear, it is, it sucks it up. Yep.

So you have sidewalk scooper plow, puts it off sidewalk onto the corner of the road.

Then you have the one on the road that's pushing it off the road towards the same pile, and then the scooper that sucks it, and a second truck right right behind it that is it's just shooting it all into the back of that truck.

And then that truck gets full, and then they replace it with a new truck. It's kind of incredible.
I still, I admire the setup, it's it's great.

Now, anybody who doesn't understand part of this system, the most important part of the system is you gotta have a fucking crazy amount of trucks.

Like, like crazy

amount of trucks because the because the

main truck that's sucking and throwing it back, like, um,

will

continue, but you got to have another, like, the catcher that has to pull up to get the. And when one one fills up, then the next one comes and, you know, keeps going, right?

So

that is the big snow clearing system that we've got there, and it works really well.

Okay. Now, do you have a flaw, though? It has a big flaw.
Okay. Okay.

What is the flaw? Really big fucking flaw what's the what's the flaw so let's see

and or pickup truck usually will roll down your street blaring a horn all at the same time by the way yeah yes it will be blaring a horn and or lights and or a recorded message or a guy on a megaphone or you know it's loud noises

and uh what that message will be will be you have like one hour to move your car or it will be fucking towed so and montreal has the worst parking of any city in the country.

So, you go, well, where am I supposed to park my car? To which the answer is, fuck off.

I don't give a shit. So, I describe this as a three-vehicle system, right? But that's a lie.
I lied. It's actually a four-vehicle system.
And the fourth vehicle is the truck that comes up ahead.

It's the fucking William Tell truck that's going down the street going

at like what time in the morning? You know?

six maybe

who knows and it's going loud because if you're parked and you didn't check the schedule

right

because don't be an asshole that ruins the whole process for everybody because if you park your car and then you don't pay attention to when you're not supposed to be there

They just won't do it.

So what they do actually so they they it takes like extra long I forgot what the extra amount of time is it's like an hour or something insane It's like a super crazy amount of time to work around your car to and then continue the process.

But the delay is

bad

on your windshield.

So, if you're that asshole that kept your car parked and you didn't move it when the clearing process was happening, you're going to be also the one who they're blaring their horn at six in the morning or five, whatever the clock.

It's insane, right?

And that has to be loud enough that everybody on the street can hear it and know that you're the asshole.

Okay,

So you left and had a child

before

these two experiences had to coalesce with each other. That's right.

Hey, Wooly,

hey,

hey, let me ask you,

you ask me a question. Ask me what I did so far this winter to deal with our cars and the snow.
Pat, what have you done to deal with all the snow this morning?

Damn.

Damn.

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay.

So

maybe,

maybe two

days out of the year. Maybe.

So I am full in like

the routine is like

to the second and millimeter at this point, right? I know, guys.

She gets her night bottle, and then she gets back in her little snooze snooze swaddle, put her in the burrito, and then we let her get a little drowsy. And then, you know, I mean, mom's out.

So then we go and what has been working miracles is just on a little bouncer, you know, just little, little bounce ball.

And you get that gravity going. And like, we're talking the level of precision that is like, like, she wants to be in the crook of my elbow and like, like, literally bicep and forearm.
She wants to be

right there. And if it's a little bit not there, then it's like it's not as you're not getting as sleepy, you know?

And you want to also, while bouncing, you want to get a little bit of that head bob going because the liquid in between your ears bouncing is actually what helps put you to sleep as a baby, turns out.

So you want to, you want to get a little bit like this.

That's so interesting because when my guy was your girl's age, that shit didn't work at all. I had to like grab him with both arms and do like full on

like like 270 degrees up into the air like like march super hard and my wife would be like oh my god oh my god don't drop the milestone out the window and like this is the only way he'll go to sleep this is the only way i'll go to sleep you're doing sonic blades

like fucking yeah okay so i'm new i'm doing that and the the one and what she will what she likes besides when the ball is around is um squats you can't just rock rock with your arms.

You got to drop your knees.

That works out. So

sitting down is for bitches. God

fuck that. You dare sit down.

She will not accept. She will not accept sitting down.
What is this? Static imagery? What are you crazy? Fucking deal.

You're going to get to that. It was like, okay, I got this.
Okay, I'm just going to sit down for a second. Ah,

I've wasted all your progress.

I'm wide awake again. You dare comfort me while the background is static, you fucking asshole, right?

So, so, so that's, I'm just, I'm bringing up this level of precision to say that that's what's going down as I'm like, and then, and then, and like, okay, once the actual sleep is happening, the tech, like, because mom has her own version and I've got mine, but the tech of how you transfer from arm into snoo, into crib is, you gotta, you gotta master this, you know?

So it was crazy because I was pretty, I was pretty pretty great at transferring into the snoo

But Paige was a million times better at trans once he got older than transferring him into a bed Okay, I'm not nearly as good at that So we both have our own versions and they both work really well because I was asking so but it's it's different levels of like time and because basically the setup is like what I'll do is I'll use the the the ball and then she'll get drowsy and then I'll go for head first,

right?

Head first, and then soft lay down and keep some elevation off body and butt so that you can slide your arm out.

And if you fuck this part up, the head rotates, and then the cuss pops out, and then you're fucked. So you get that,

right?

Whereas what Punch Mom does is she goes like opposite, where she goes back to front and like full leans over and then waits and slowly pulls both arms out, right?

I'm getting some nostalgia off of this. I'm playing a more dangerous game, but it's working, right?

And then, of course, once you, once, and then you let you, you pull one of these, you go hands off, you wait,

you stamp it, and you stare, and you don't breathe, right? And you don't breathe.

Don't move. And then you look for a little stir, and then

every kid has a different thing. So for my guy, he has like a really specific, like, deep breath.
And then

yeah out his nose and I'm like all right We're good. We can talk as loud as we want Everything's like this kid's in unconsciousness land But so what what I what I need to see is the eyes open and then

Right, it's that's good right there's that and so if you see that eyes open and then back to okay, we're good

You grab the little hooks you get them on right and you can even lightly pick up the arms to tuck them underneath and she's um

you know, she's four months now, so she's arms out, by the way, right? So that's comfort. That's good.
She can comfort herself.

She can put her hand in her mouth if she needs to, if the cis falls out or whatever.

But the arms out is a little bit more volatile because every once in a while, babies do a thing when they sleep is they do this. They throw their arms up and go.

And then they wake themselves up. Right.

So you want to be sure that you get those arms pointing downward if possible,

but the little hooks to snap them

safely in are underneath that.

This is all what we're down it sounds like from what we've talked about that your girl is like a pretty good like sleeper in like going to sleep

so

yes and no and maybe because she might be teething now and she's groaning

i'm gonna tell you right now once teething starts You're gonna blame literally every single off day on teething for over a year. Sick.
Good to know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Everything goes. Is she teething? I don't know.

Maybe. And the answer is that half of the time you'll be right.
It's like you'll have like teething for a month and then no teething for two weeks and then teething comes. It's back.

I stubbed my toe. Must be the goddamn teething.
Yeah.

So you do all this

and then you hear the fucking snow plow horn at five in the morning go,

and you're like, wow, wow, my shit is fucked now.

And the panic sets in. Yeah.

And she sleeps through it. Oh, yeah, no, kids don't care about that type of noise.

I mean, and I remember that moment of just being like, oh,

when I was younger, and I used to hear this because

living here my whole life, it's always been the case of like, yeah, there would be these, the, the whole system, you'd hear it.

And I'd like be like, what is a newborn baby family doing when this thing is going nuts outside?

Because because it's trying to it's telling you wake up and move your car fuck your family fuck your baby

right so fuck whatever's going on and and you know what if your baby doesn't sleep because you didn't move your car that's your fault right like your baby is now your is your problem for not sleeping because you should have moved your car says the city and you know what i get it i do get it right because you are holding us all back but um

i i remember thinking way back when what the fuck this is the most inconsiderate thing ever if you have a kids get clean but the streets get cleaned and would you believe she actually tanked through it that's really lucky i couldn't believe it she didn't wake up you're so my guy a little bit older than than what you're dealing with now, discovered that if he pulled his own hair and like bit his own fingies, he could stop himself from going to sleep.

Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.

So,

what's the deal, actually, what's actually the deal with, I'm tired, I am sleepy, but I fucking don't want to sleep right now.

Like,

no.

It's the same thing as when your wife

wanders past you at the ass end of night and goes, you You should really go to bed. And you're like, But right after this match.

Okay, but but this match, but it's not even like this match, it's literally that, Wooly. One more once.

Don't don't you with your nightmare sleep fucking schedule tell me, I don't understand not wanting to go to bed. One more once.

I will like wake up in the, like, I will wake up early and I'll be like, Wooly is online playing fucking whatever on Steam.

So,

so, so her,

is her i'm up at stupid o'clock i don't want to go to bed yet see the thing is i had that when i was doing shit or whatever playing games or whatever but i guess for her just like staring at you making stupid faces ceiling is crazy yeah yeah that's what i'm saying like that's that's as exciting as running your 2xko set you know sure like just

well yeah okay that's it that's it it's because i'm like

some babies aren't like that oh

god like i have a i have a super fomo baby baby. Like the FOMOist.

It's crazy. And you know she's tired.
You can see the eyelids drooping and she's passing the fuck out and just like stopping herself like fucking Little Mac in

We Punch Out before the knockout. The foot comes down like no.

So I refuse this sleep. There are

where from where I'm at right now.

There are multiple more phases. The phase after what you're dealing with is if I pull my own hair, I'll wake up.
Okay. And I'll keep myself awake.
Yeah.

The stage after that

is

the scariest one, and it's the most disruptive by far. And it's around a year, year and a half.
And it's like, did they go down for a nap?

No.

Let's go put them down for a nap. They don't look sleepy.
They're not.

Okay, so they've just decided to skip naps at random. Oh

The regression no, it's no, no, no, no, it's not a regression. I'm not talking about sleep regression.

This is a totally different thing at some point Your toddler will just go I don't need a nap and that means around seven o'clock. I'm gonna turn into a monster nightmare now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, okay, okay.
So we're here. We're we are we're getting a version of that.

The version we're getting is like if she fights the nap long enough, she'll just ride it through. Yeah, well, well, we've had that.
Yeah, they'll fight it like and scream

and succeed.

And then the next feed comes and she successfully skipped a whole nap and you know that like the session after that is going to be nightmare, absolutely nightmares. Right.

Because yeah, now you're getting the compounded lack of sleep.

Hey, hey, got him down at his regular nap time, two to four, crushed it, no problem.

Why is he still up? It's 11.30 p.m. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
What the fuck is this? Yeah, there's a four-hour window where you don't know which was the last one, you know?

And like when you're coming. It's now midnight, and this kid is literally running circles around the bedroom.

And like, there's, there's fussing, there's like super fussing, and then there's you missed two plus naps today, and it's all crashing at the end.

It's all hitting the wall, and you're getting this, the goat just

like you're getting, you're getting the goat, and you're getting like the full arch, and just yeah.

And it's like, oh man.

So I am now in what I would probably consider the final phase of this sleep journey, which is, or at least the final phase so far, which is

dude is

literally

like drooping his body into his plate of food, falling asleep at 6. Yeah, yeah.

hey, buddy, you tired? No.

Like, eyes fully closed. Yeah.
Lolling in a side. No, don't want to go bedroom.
No.

Right.

And then just no, no nap time.

Right.

And just passing out in the high chair. Just straight up, just falling dead ass asleep in the high chair with like a Cheerios dug in his mouth.
Right?

Or

a wakeful, alive, alert child will walk up to you and go, I want to go upstairs to the bedroom now. And you go, okay.

And you go upstairs and you hold his hand and you go up to the top and he goes, okay. And crawls into bed and pulls the cover up to his chin.

Damn.

Damn. There is no way to understand which version of the child you're dealing with until they do it.
Oh, man. I'd kill for that.

You know, because we're past, we passed, you know, there were some phases of even just like, hey, yo, are you drinking this bottle? Are you drinking this? Hello? Are you there? Girl?

You know, just done.

But

when we're talking like...

middle of the nap and like active sleep is a term you start to learn of course right where they freak out and they're terrifying they're they're they're inhabited

i mean i mean that's it right so you read about active sleep and you're like oh okay i stir i'm a turner you know sure Oh, man. And, you know, and you're like, you hear a couple noises.

You're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's not it.
No, you look at the baby monitor and you watch her like full-on exorcist possession, like eyes open and a kick and a

and then back to sleep, like nothing happened. Yeah, so you're just like, you just defeated some 1800s, 18th century ghost, like something just happened and you went back down

occasional somambulism, like sleepwalking, slash, he's had some night terrors. And so, like, every now and then, you'll, you'll, you'll, he'll get up and he'll look at you, and you're like,

that little dude is dead ass asleep right now

and walking around.

And then becomes the fun little game of like, all right, we must now transport him to an area with a locked door and soft surfaces because he could just bolt into a wall or freak out or see ghosts that aren't there because he is unconscious

no it's crazy i mean literally the the tech there's tech called dream feeding i think we might have talked about it before i believe we did right where it's this where you just you fuck it you feed and baby can like eat while asleep oh yeah totally man you know like the the reflexes are already in there they're super pug

yeah like they're pug

um it's it's hilarious because like the instinct to like root into things

like like even when not hungry it's like a trick where it's just like oh you put their forehead against the surface and they're going ah where's the food god damn it you tricked me um

anyway so like that's happening uh and then beyond that is just like uh the evolution of

essentially like you know remember remember how i described in the beginning the like where's the milk dad get the fuck off me yeah right so that just deepens as time goes on oh yeah you yeah you want to hear some fucking shit you want to hear some fucking shit

last night, that little man, that perfect angel, fell asleep at 6.45, which is the wrong time. Okay.
Okay. Okay.
That's a bad time.

But he takes a two-hour nap so he can wake up at 8.45 for his 10 p.m. bedtime?

Fuck. So, fuck it.
Just let it rock. Just let it rock.
Put the baby monitor on and

pray,

right?

At 9.30 p.m.,

he starts to come out of it. And we got, he got him on the monitor, right? And we got the audio and the video.
And what does he say? He goes, mama, mom, mommy. You know, Lawrence is mommy.

And then he's like, and we're like, oh, right. And we're getting ready to go upstairs and go get him.
And then I hear, data, det-da. I'm like, oh, aw.
And he goes, deta, where's mommy?

Deta, go-get, mommy.

See, see, I don't, see, it's bad enough that you can read the body language, but now you got the words confirming intent. There's words confirming the intent.

Holy shit, bro. The deep fear.

The deep fear is now confirmed with language.

Fuck language. Fuck English.
Fuck the

first person that grunted to communicate a rock to somebody should have fucking croaked. What an asshole.
He's asleep.

Like this, unless, unless he, like, gets up and opens his eyes, like this process of asking for mom, he's asleep. So this is my child's truest unconscious desire is dad, go get mom.

Oh my God.

Yo,

just, yeah. Like, I, the, that is, as this escalates, you know, and then the term that you, you know, people use this term a bunch is like essentially this default parent.
Yeah.

That's one where you're like, it, it makes sense because you are both people, and one of them provides food.

And you've got to fight against that. So default parenting doesn't really fit into this because default parenting is about responsibility changing, right?

It's supposed to describe scenarios in which you and I would not know their allergies or birthday. Okay, no, no, no, no, no.

That's not the context.

That's not the context I

was referring to more so. It's more just like the preference point for comfort, you know,

and

knowing that like

trying to comfort, you know,

during the worst of times, doing your best. And it's like, there is a hard limit to how much comfort you can offer, right? There's a threshold of

like frustration where it just doesn't work anymore. And those times, it fucking sucks.

Dude, there's like, there's a, a point where Paige was playing D ⁇ D and I was like, I'm going to, I'm going to handle the baby and you go play D ⁇ D so you can have your night out away from mom life once a week, right?

Because I come over here and do the fucking show like five, six fucking days a week, right?

But like mom's doing mom stuff all the time. Like you do that.
And there are moments where like, you know what? It's one of those nights. And you know what one of those nights is?

Three-hour walk around the kitchen kitchen island night. Right, right, right, right, right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
This dude, pissed as fuck with me existing.

Nah, fuck you, dad. I mean, here's the thing.

So during a late night, when, um, when it, during a late night bottle, when mom's knocked out, it's totally like I get woke, like I wake her up and I get smiles and I get, hey, you're the food guy, right?

The correct association for this specific time of night. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Hey, what's up? I haven't seen you since last night. Yo, how's it going? Hey, I'll give you, I'll flash you a smile.

What's up? And then you change the diaper and then we go do the thing, right? Okay, cool. You're right on time.

Especially because I had a chance to wake you up instead of the other way around, you know, because now that you're sleeping through the night a lot longer, we can, we can actually let the clock run.

But like during the day, baby hours, it's like, yo, where them titties at, though?

Right. You know, this is bullshit.
Yeah, it really is. It really is.
And I mean, you know, there are times where it's like, okay, what can we do when you're entering tantrum territory?

You know, and it's like, you can shake and you can, you can bounce, but like at maximum, you're just stalling for time until the boobs get here, effectively, you know. Um,

and yeah, it just that watching the increase

shake,

yeah, yeah, I raw, I'm talking about rocking yes no bart just rattling them like bart right through throttling um

getting getting your little squats going and doing all your best techniques you know um in fact one little trick i feel has been like burp position she's associated with like comfort yeah you know so she will relax from crying and stuff if you put her in burp position just because she's like oh yeah this is when the good feeling thing happens and i go burp and then i feel you know like tension release in my stomach or whatever.

But no, so, you know, and then even when it's just like, hey, so this is, you know, when she had,

when she had her, she was very brave yesterday. Yeah.
Right.

She had her big inoculation.

And that's a problem.

Was that the first one?

Second. Second, second.
Second. They're not fun at that age.
They're not. They're actually kind of the worst.

And, you know, I mean, the people that work there i'm kind of like yo all you're hearing all day is the worst thing that's ever happened to this that's yeah but they're doing a good thing so you know they get to they get just getting their soul with that and that's also where you learn about the most insane levels of distraction tech i've ever seen because the things that i immediately went home and bought were like i like first the first i saw like a ball that just went

and the baby just locked in

you know and then the second one was like one that whizzed with a little light on it like this

man. And you're like, holy shit.
Like literally, baby goes, ah. So like our shit.
What the fuck? Yo, did y'all see this shit? You see this shit? Look at that ball going. Like, you know.

Our trick for those that age was, okay, we'd have, because, you know, the double shot, was this a double shot? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, the double shot's fucking crazy.
Yeah.

Because you have to pin their arms together. Yeah.

It's a two-person job. It's a two-person job.
And so, like, two nurses come in and they blast them.

And the thing that we did is that mom would be be on deck locking eyes, singing a song and like literally in the process of taking a boob out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The first time around, the first time around, that was a proper distraction, you know. Second time around, it was like, okay, hold on.

Can I, like, can we do this so that, like, can it, like, will it work? Can I comfort? Can we try this out? And, like, doing it. And

there's a level of like, oh, wait, hold on. What's she, is she going to associate the, the, the, the bad memory with like this random person or is there any gonna be any yeah I don't know I don't know

I know too young yeah but you're just but you're just like but what if but what if you know and everything and um and no and in the end like um

that's one of those things where it's like okay obviously this sucks and let's go comfort and let's do the best we can but like it yeah it hits a point where it's like you can get a little bit of soothing done but there is you're we're now over we're at a nine we're at a 10 we're at an 11 and unfortunately at this age dad can only bring her down from a 7.5.

Yeah. You know, and you're like, oh, that feels awful.
That is,

well,

it's just the way it works.

They got to learn how to freak out and calm down. No, I know, I know.
It just, but it just feels bad, you know. But

I had a situation this morning, just this morning, little man wanted some more milk, but he wouldn't say please. Boy,

boy, was he fucking pissed at the idea of saying please,

right?

Impasse. Fucking, and like he says please 99% of the time, but every now and then he's like, I don't want to.
I'm like, well, then you're not good, bro. I have taken a vow of silence.

I will never say please for the next 99 years. Yeah.
Right. And so it's like, he's having his shit.
And it's like, it's good for him. He's got to freak out a little bit.
Learn how to calm down. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

I won.

I defeated him with my my will because I'm an adult. That's important.
It's good to establish that that was the result here.

But, but, um, you know, and I, and I inoculation is better than me now. I'm so serious.
Okay. I don't like needles.
I don't like to get stabbed by a needle. So I'm kind of like a big baby about them.

And like, he doesn't like it getting stabbed. But then, like, five minutes later, he's like, totally chill.
And I'm like, I'm so brave. And my wife's like, yeah, you were really brave, buddy.

You did a good job.

I mean, we like we do, I

do

have the material that is ripe for clowning, which is a punch mom

once when she was younger passed out after, right?

And it was like, was that from the like the worry and everything built up? And it was like,

no, it was more like a, it was kind of just like, oh, that wasn't as bad as I thought. Everything's okay.
And then, whoop, you know, I had a,

some kind of muscle seizure once when I got blood drawn, which was not fun. Okay, okay.
Like, I had to go, like, lie down on a bed, and like, my whole body had the terrible shakes.

And it was like, it's because one of those blood tests where like, you can't eat for 12 hours beforehand, and I'm like 10, and I'm terrified of needles. And then they took like a lot of blood.

And so I just had a total anxiety attack. And then my body was like, ah, yeah.
Yeah.

That makes sense.

It's just, it's just one of those bits, though, where, like, it's like to this day, it's been like fucking however many years later, decades. And when they go, hey, so has anything ever happened?

You're saying, yeah, like

yes, once, technically, and I still have to bring it up, you know, is what she does. But anyways, all this to say that,

again,

extreme bravery and kudos on her part.

What a beast. But also just, okay, I'm able to see exactly where the cutoff for comfort is right now.

And I'm reading, and I'm reading online and stuff, and I'm seeing people describing how it's like, yeah, give it a minute.

Eventually, like they just 180 on that preference, and then shit just starts flying, and then you don't know who you're going to get for each month.

The whole process is like.

Hold on.

Okay.

The whole process

is like you're holding this dog and you're like,

yeah.

yeah, I got this.

And they're going to just change the whole game up on you, and all your shit sucks, and it no longer works. And you have to use and learn an entirely new set of skills.

Congrats, you've learned the matchup. It's worthless.
You ain't shit.

But that's

what you're going to do. So

I got to experience a super fun experience, which was in in hindsight now, fun,

but

it will be fun for you too, dad.

So, you know, we got a lot of books. We got a lot of toys for the kids.
So what do we do? We get shelves. We get like a rotating little bookcase and stuff like that.

Well, let's put it together. No, put that screw down.
No, no, no, put that down. No, no, put that.
No. And like, you're helping.
You're helping turn the screw. Yeah.
Thank you. No, don't eat that.

No, don't eat that no don't eat that that's styrofoam that's poison okay can you hand me that no that one no no no that one no no no that one no no no that one no you're looking right at it you're looking right at it you're looking right at it no not that one

yeah yeah yeah okay okay i'm hoping like lego can clear some of this up you know find motor skills and and all that eventually but um

or or rather mega blocks i should say right?

When you get there,

you start bigger.

And, like, it's so important that you remain rock solid and totally chill.

But, like, if this was an adult, I would have blown my top. But instead, it's like a little baby.
He doesn't know not to eat a screw.

That doesn't even, if you eat a screw, that doesn't even like show up as a problem until later.

I mean, hopefully you're catching it, right? But yes.

So you have a fun little extra part where you count everything and then at every part of the process, you count everything again.

Right.

I mean, I will say that, like, right now, I'm like,

I'm at the phase of being proper impressed because it's like, yo, that

teething thing that you have, the little teething pineapple is like, you can actually get both hands around it and coordinate to aim it into your mouth.

And it's like, you got that? You have that skill now? When did you get that? That's crazy. It's it's like

take figuring out what skills you take for granted is really interesting.

So, like, my dude can throw a ball and he can roll a ball pretty good, right? But then I'm like, all right, buddy, catch it.

And I underhand toss like a big old rainbow ball at him, and he just stands there in an A pose and it bounces off his chest.

I'm like, oh, right. Yeah.

He doesn't know what the fuck fuck catch is. Yes, yes, yes.
All right. Let's do some pantomimes.
Let's do.

That's a different skill. Right, right, right.

And, you know, feeding a bottle, I got one hand

wrapped around it, you know, and it's one of the smaller ones. And, you know, so it's kind of like, okay, we're starting to get there.
Maybe we can get this going and then get the, you know.

But

no, it is, it is cool to see that, that develop as well and kind of just be like, you just, you just pulled that out. You leveled up and it came to you.

It's really weird how I've had this two and a half year old for only about six months.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, sure. Right.

It's really strange how I've only been a dad for about six months, but the kid's two and a half years old. I don't know.

It's getting weird. That's crazy.
Damn. You know, I mean,

you only have like 30 days on me, really, you know? Barely.

Yeah, my child's just larger and talks more, and that's it. But no, like like when mine showed up, like yours just reset.
So like there's a whole new, like, it's just

so strange.

Anyway, anyway,

that's going on. And

yeah, obviously this week is going to be some big old Christmas stuff going on. So no streams till a little later on Friday

for me, at which point I'll be picking back up with

Dispatch and

Claire Obscure.

Oh, okay. Sorry.

Papa? I thought today was going to be the Dispatch Spoilercast.

Oh, no. We didn't play yesterday

because aforementioned baby appointments.

So. Okay.

We're going to...

I haven't

played since the second session, and we'll do that.

Yeah, well, obviously, Wednesday is speed.

Well,

this week, there would have been a chill stream on Monday, but instead, the baby had a very important appointment that I went to. Yeah, absolutely.
Today is the podcast. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve.

Thursday is Christmas, therefore leaving Friday the first opportunity to record something.

So that's when we'll be doing it. And then Saturday, instead of doing a Fighting Game thing, we'll be doing Claire Obscure just so we can get a little more progress in that.

So that's the plan for this week.

Speaking of me, I'm streaming later tonight around 11 p.m.

Me and Paige are going to watch the Fallout TV show with y'all again.

And I am going to be streaming Christmas Day and Christmas Eve

and

Friday and Saturday and Sunday.

So you can check my schedule out for that on Blue Sky.

The Christmas ones are going to be short, though. They're not going to be long.

All right.

Yeah.

That's over twitch.tv slash pat stairs at and youtube.com slash pat stairs at

uh

yeah

not

much

uh uh um in terms of playing stuff this week because i mean i've been it's been pretty busy

um that we didn't already cover except for you know uh clarobscures is moving pretty quickly um like the decision to kind of mainline and and take big steps of progress and then save the wandering for afterwards is like big

more effective.

I've been thinking a lot about like how badly I fucked up the curve on that game.

Every single time I was given free reign, I did every single thing I could. Yes.
And I'm like, oh, that is the opposite path.

What it wanted is for me to go to like an axon and hit like a dead ass wall and then go do that shit until it was no longer a wall.

But we've talked about this, right?

You do what is fun and you're enjoying what's going on and then you save the meat, the main meal, the progression for the end after you've done the side bits, right? You play anything.

You have side quests, you've got main quests. You know that the side quests are probably not as good.
You don't know for sure, but in most cases, you're treating it as such.

So then you save the best for last, and that's the kind of mentality you progress.

E33 is a little silly because a lot of the side stuff that's like just a fight is like a weird ass gimmick fight with like a really cool weird ass gimmick.

Also, there's a mod out on the Nexus for E33 that gives you the like it gives you a level range, like the internal level range associated by the game with each area. Interesting.

And supposedly, the

I'll just type it for you.

That is the level range for the power.

I believe, you know what? I believe that.

Because, again, by just avoiding everything but the critical path and watching as it's still been kind of a cakewalk in scenarios and certain fights, just with good defense that Reggie's been doing, it's like, yeah, they're not taking it on you that hard.

Like,

I'm going to go ahead and

replay that game myself at some point, and I will institute a rule on myself, which is not allowed to go into red loading areas.

Just not allowed. That's not enough.

And also,

if the main story area is anything but red, I have to go to it first.

Okay. Okay, sure, sure, yeah.
Right.

Again, I still doubt it'll be enough. And furthermore, like.
And then in Act 3, I'm going to kick on the 20 times XP, the health.

Okay.

For everything but the super bosses. Because there is a big crucial key here.
It's just like, if you have defense, you're doing it, you know? And

counters are building break and they're doing so much for you that it's like, it doesn't matter if you can't nerf that, you know?

But yeah, yeah, yeah.

Hey, I would like to ask you a question about a discussion we had last week that has nothing to do with video games. We're talking about Christmas carols.

And

I tried to look up to listen to A Piece of Corn for Christmas

and failed.

Oh.

Because that song doesn't appear to exist.

Okay.

Instead, I found the YouTube

of a person professionally singing A Piece of Pork for Christmas

filled with comments about

people from our podcast going there and wondering whether or not your parents fucking censored it to not include pork.

So

this did pop up because I saw some people saying pork a couple times. And all I can say is my mom had a cassette tape.

It had lots of Christmas music on it and one of the tracks that would play oh yeah it wasn't an official real it was a cassette it was a cassette tape she played a cassette

not i don't believe it was because the other song all on it was all i want for christmas is my cali herb so i can smoke up the herb and red

i don't think i don't think that was a oh adventist track i can't find

piece of corn for Christmas. I cannot find it.

It was a cassette tape she played every holiday, every Christmas. And on that, you know, you got your, I'll make one for Christmas.
Cali herb, a cali herb, oh, my cali herb.

You know, and I'm like, I don't know what a cali herb is, but smoke up the herb and red, sure,

whatever that might mean.

Like, custom tape that she put together.

I think it was. She had the technical ability to make her own Christmas tape.

I think she definitely had her own, like, she had her own, like, mixtapes of various gospel music and stuff, but it sounded like this was just a Christmas mix that was recorded from someone else's official Christmas mix.

And that was, that was the sound of my childhood. I have no further details on it, but fascinating.
But there was a very produced musical rendition of I Want a Piece of Corn for Me Christmas.

You know, that, that, that, I, I, I, that's as far as I can go.

You know, And the mystery stops here.

I can only tell you what sounds entered my earholes as I sat there as a child. Um, and uh,

yeah, I'm sure she still plays it. I'm sure I can track it down, you know.
Um, I can probably call her right after this and get the details. Um,

in fact,

let's find out. He's gonna text his mom.
Let's find out. No, don't call your mom on the show.
It's fine. It's fine.
It's fine. You don't know what swears she's going to say.
It's fine.

It's fine. We can find out.
We can get to the bottom of this mystery right now. Right here.

If she's free.

It's okay. I edit this.
We're not live. We're live, buddy.

I don't think I'm getting an answer. Never call my mom on the phone.
Hi. Hi.
Never.

Hey, I'm currently recording my podcast, just so you know.

Hi, no, I'm just talking to you. Hey, so you're not being heard right now, but I'm talking about

I want a piece of corn for me Christmas.

That song,

I want a piece of corn, I want a piece of corn, me want a piece of corn for me Christmas.

We don't want many cool, you can keep the callaloo.

Okay,

but the ver the version that you played was corn, right?

And so

where did that version come from? Because when people were looking it up, they're saying that they were just seeing the pork version. And so

it's unclear.

Your version you were playing yesterday.

Okay.

Okay, okay, okay. So the version that she was playing yesterday, it has pork.

Okay, so I just misheard it all these years.

Okay, all right, all right, there you go.

All right,

you're you're playing, you're playing it off a CD, but it's it's I want a piece of pork,

okay.

But when you were singing it, you were saying corn.

Okay, that's all I wanted to know. All right, thank you.

All right. I'll see you.
I'll see you. I'll see you on Christmas.
All right. Bye.

And

solved. Fucking on you.
And solved.

Holy shit.

In one fell swoop, she went, no, no, it's pork. And then, but when I was singing it, like an insane person.
And I was watching as you and everybody were going,

and then immediately the next sentence. But when I was singing it, I was replacing it.
I was saying something else like that or so. And then here we go.
That's it. Oh my God.
That's it.

That's all it takes. Hey.
Psyoped by your mom as a child. For 40 years.

For 40 years. And guess what? People out there, all right? If you didn't,

anyone out there who doesn't have a microphone in front of them and this type of situation to immediately fact-check you, you will just go to your grave thinking what you think, not knowing.

Isn't that crazy?

Dude, I was quite, quite too aged. That's crazy.
My parents told me that brown cows and chocolate

is a lie.

Gaslit by the corn.

I mean, but why? Because pork is

for

pork is, pork is against our religion. Who couldn't eat pork? Yeah.

That's why. You're not supposed to eat pork

when you're following what the Bible says, according to us. Yeah, well, now we know, you know.
But I mean, holy shit, that's exactly. There's your answer.
There's your beginning,

middle, and end.

What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to fight against that? Okay, so here's the whole thing, right?

What defense

could I possibly have had?

Told me many things that I know now to be not only incorrect, but like legitimately, completely divorced from reality.

And every time I, I'm like, it is, it literally does not go by like every two or three months. I discover that something my parents told me, they were just dead ass wrong about.
Right. Right.

The way the fucking world works, how something happened, whatever.

And like, I kind of live in fear of like the amount, like, like, like, good 18 years of like, oh, I'm listening to mom and dad about, and how many of those things are just hiding under the surface.

And, and what's going to happen? I'm going to say something, and somebody's going to be like,

fucking what?

I'm like, yeah, everybody knows that. In fact, not everyone knows that because it's fucking bullshit.
And it's just something that my dad offhandedly mentioned to me when I was nine years old.

And it's never come up again. Again, ever.
Yep. Never got the patch notes.
Fuck off on that.

It's just a fringe knowledge scenario. That has just no reason to come up in normal conversation.
In fact, in fact, dare I say that probably

nine times out of ten, you and everyone else who heard that song last week would just go, I don't know, that's some weird Caribbean fucking shit. I don't know what that is, but that's crazy.

Okay, and moving on. But because you heard it and were like, oh, I'm interested to hear more of what you were singing there.
Can't find it. That's why this happens because of that interest.

And if you didn't have that curious question mark,

none's the wiser. We stay in the dark.
I never heard any Caribbean Christmas songs. I'm like, all right, I'll listen to some Caribbean.
I'm like, because

my house is a Christmas playlist, like literally 20 hours a day right now, by the way.

Okay.

I'm being hit with the phrase, the well-articulated phrase, dada, what happened to the Christmas songs?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Hold on a second. I got you.
Right? So I'm like, oh, let's try a different Christmas. I can't find it.
Huh?

Weird.

I mean, it just.

And the thing is, it kind of like the Christmas Soca goes into Christmas Calypso, and the Christmas Calypso goes into, you know, eventually you start getting the Felice Navidad, and you're going into the Spanish as well.

Like, it's just, it's kind of like Islands collective playlist type of thing is happening there.

I saw someone saying, but hold on, the New Testament said Jesus reset that so that everyone could eat pork.

And I said, no, because according to what we believe here, that verse you're describing, where he's describing the various types of things, eat ye all of it, is talking about how you can now go and preach to the Gentiles and that it's more about teaching the gospel to people who are from all walks of life.

And it's a metaphor describing that. It wasn't literally about the food, is the interpretation you see.

You have to look look at the, you have to read the Aramaic and study the scriptures and go back to the original.

As somebody who's never been a part of any organized religion at any point, I gotta say, if I'm gonna be referred to as an out-group term,

I'm a big fan of the term Gentile. Gentiles, yeah.
It is, I'll, I'll take it. I like it.
Okay. It's, it's, it's nice.
Yeah.

Yeah.

Um,

I mean, it, it's, I'll take that.

There's certainly other out-group terms that are not. Yeah, I've heard many, which we will not repeat here.
There are, you know.

Although, there's one in particular that we will repeat that is more like people who work in a profession that then refer to people who are not in that profession as civilians. Oh, it's fucking crazy.

Is the most fucking,

you know, like wrestlers talking about civilians or like

non-carnies? Yeah, or like, yeah, podcasters talking about civvies you're like yo get the fuck out of here bro

um yeah yeah yeah no that's that's that's that's what that is um

anyway anyway it's it's kind of incredible it's kind of incredible um now i feel like i need to go back and verify the lyrics of all my christmas music just to find out you know that's what happens when when when you find out some minor detail that doesn't matter was like you actually got like dead ass wrong now you're like okay wait

did that even like you go back to old memories like did that even happen

and that's how your parents get you well see the other but the other cd that played regularly was the african children's choir and you know they sing a bunch of songs that are like classic known christmas carols but then they'd also sing some songs in you know um in an african language i'm not sure which one but you know at that point you're like okay, well, yeah, fair enough.

It's like me reciting my favorite fucking anime OP at this point, right? I don't think it's like that at all.

You're

I, I, I,

I don't, I think that might be the biggest cope I've ever fucking heard out of your,

you're doing your best to recite the language that you've, you've been hearing for a long time, and you're probably getting some of those pronunciations wrong, but you've heard it enough that some part of it is baked in there.

Specified,

narrow use case you've described. I don't think singing foreign Christmas songs is the same as you belting out like Naruto opening.
Zankoku Watenshinoyoni. You hear that in your brain, in

the same brain that hears Hasadiga Ibawai.

Like, it is what it is. It is what it is.
You try your best. Who knows?

Anyway, I'm going to need to go back and fucking do some lyric digging now. I'm questioning.
I'm questioning everything I've ever heard. It's your job to pass it on to a new one.

Right?

Incorrectly at that.

So, like, me and Paige keep having this thing where I'm about to open my mouth to explain to the kid, and then I have to think about: wait, who's the person who told me that that was the way it was?

Was it my dad? Okay, hold up.

Hold up. Is that even true? true? Was it? So here's my favorite version of this.
Was that even true then?

Yeah.

Did you have

the zeitgeist of ignorance to cover you? Well, because sometimes it changes, right?

My parents, both of my parents, told me that they when they smoked after having kids, they didn't know it was bad for you. And we are talking about like 85, 86.

That's not true.

That wasn't true.

Something just occurred to me, and I need to know. I need to know.

Okay. Hold on a second.
Hold on a second. Oh, my God.
You're so nuts.

It's not working. It's not working.
I would be filled with terror

to call my mother on the phone.

calling my, I was not calling my mother. I was calling my brother.
I would definitely, I don't know how my brother's phone numbers.

I want to know if he

was in the exact same boat as me just now, up to a second ago. I wanted to know if we were both there, right? But yeah, okay.

The idea that I would call my mom on either the stream or the podcast is so terrifying to me because I'm pretty sure,

in fact, I am certain she still

does not understand

what this is

at all. Right, right, right.
Like, even

my description of it's like a radio show somehow doesn't punch through.

I mean,

look, all I know is we got, I got there eventually with the internet radio show bit that did, that, that did work. And it kind of resets every once in a while.
But

the most recent one was, hey, hey, here's a, I got a plushie. Check it out.
And that was a, whoa.

Oh, this is a big deal, huh?

It was one of those kind of like

to that effect, to that effect, that energy. So, wow.
You deserved a bigger pop for that. No, no, no.
It was a big, you know,

it was a big pop. It was a big pop.
I'm not, I don't want to, I don't want to undersign it.

Oh, but you, you know what I mean.

But it was one of those bits, you know. Oh, my God.
Well, I mean, again, there's always the, there's this energy of like, they don't understand it.

And then there's the, the Reggie energy of, yeah, I don't really even want to tell her.

And then I think, and then he did, but I forgot how it went, but it was just like, just, it was like, oh, aren't you still. Weren't you going to talk about going back to school?

Or it was one of those just like, like, oh my God, what is he doing type of responses where he's like, yep, okay, fair enough. So I think, I think the one that got me is like, so, okay, so I

have moved away to British Columbia and I have married my darling wife from America and I have a baby. And I send my mom a photo.

I sent my mom that photo of me coming out of the hair appointment with my shit all purple.

And

she was like, Oh,

why?

And I'm like,

Oh, you actually think

that I just do this?

That's actually... Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, again, I do feel that. It's like the water, ma, don't you get it? To be fair, as my tattoos appeared on my arm, I want to say there was a large, like, she pretends she does not see it.

Is that a non-Seventh-day Adventist cool thing? No.

No, no. You're not supposed to be like, like, staining your skin with stuff like that, marking your skin.

It is difficult to ignore how much tattoo is on you.

You're not, that's a no-no.

That's a big no-no. I mean, yeah, but you know what? So is like wearing your hair along and wearing pants if you're a girl, if you want to get technical on it.
So, I mean, shit's fucking,

you know, but that's one of those ones where only that one elder at the church was like,

I don't know about those pants, you know, years later.

It's fascinating when there's like a, you know, like a fairly intense religious group and then there's a couple of the stated rules that even i mean in the diehards are like ah that one's hard yeah yeah like i don't know why i don't want to do that one but like and it was but and it's just the thing is too is that everyone was just like okay whatever even the most like die hard but there was that one old dude who like you can live that life like he he's the old guy at the church that did this

A bunch, right? Picture that guy, you know?

I don't know what's up with that.

With the big, and just, and you know, and he, he was not fond of the wrong attire being the

judgment by the wrong person. The judgment.

You know, to the point where, again,

my older brother, who was preaching, would be like, bro, relax. I'm preaching and I'm telling you to relax.
Like, actually, chill, though. You know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Any ways.

That was a fun detour. Yeah, sure.
What's up, Wolves? What's going on? What's going on?

You want to talk about this week? I mean, I hit the points, and then, you know, I'm

going to be, yeah, like I said, wrapping up

Dispatch and E33.

Other stuff that

I'm thinking about throwing up on deck. But, you know, I'll talk about whatever else I'm going to play

when the time comes.

But, yeah, you know, Woolly versus tune in youtube and and uh twitch for more

uh i played more routine

um

that game has a middle-of-the-game remix to its content interesting that is really

really strong

like

Really strong, and that's all I want to talk about it. Cool.
Routine is very good. Cool.
Very, very good.

I also started and played and beat Lisa the Joyful.

Okay.

Okay.

Interesting.

I have like relatively complex thoughts about it. Okay.

I think

that its own story

about Buddy

is really,

really strong.

And it is also like an incredibly direct response to the events of Lisa the Painful.

Like it is like, it is,

it is, a lot of people do a lot of crazy things in the joyful.

And it is like eminently reasonable that they would act in that manner. No matter how insane they may appear,

you go, well, yeah, that makes sense, though.

I cannot possibly blame someone for acting in this way. This is a, this is so the Lisa.
Okay, so it's been a while, so a lot of the details are fuzzy, but I remember the broad strokes. Yeah.

And what I remember is the character arcs in the full trilogy or whatever. I mean, whatever, barely the first one.

Yeah, exactly.

And to be fair,

also, like, there's a lot of stuff where Dingaling

literally goes, yeah, I was a dumb edge lord being edgy, you know,

straight and see that. yeah, and he goes, yeah, I wish I wasn't so edgy about some of the stuff, even answering questions about the painful.
He was like, yeah, I was being edgy.

Just to do it. Wish, I wish I could have wrote that with more nuance, you know, later on.

So I'm like, interesting to

even hearing that after the fact. But yeah,

with the broad strokes, what I recall is this is definitely a setting where you're looking at everyone going, yep, here are the dominoes. Here are the dominoes that lead to these outcomes.

And everyone who's making these fucked up decisions and actions are doing so basically

on the backs of a giant trauma domino piece that knocked them in their direction. And it's a little bit,

it kind of reminds me of like, well, I don't know much about Fear and Hunger 2 at all, but Fear and Hunger has a little bit of this too, where the creator was like doing an edgy thing being younger, and then, you know, it evolved into something more than that.

Fear and 2 is a lot.

There's a lot more craft. Yeah.

Even from the little that I watched page play of it,

they spent a lot more time putting the pieces together. But there's so little nuance

to a lot of what's going on in the first game.

And in the case of Lisa, I feel like the joyful, like as a DLC continuation of that story,

you can see this, like, oh, we can improve, we can do a bit better, we can write a bit better, we can make things stronger.

The gameplay is really weird.

It is a really fascinating

switch-up.

Like in The Painful, you are drowning in like dozens of party members, right? And they are disposable. And their disposability is thematic.
In Lisa the Joyful, you don't have nothing.

It's just you. And that works as a really, really

strong thematic kick. Very thematic.

And I think it works out. I think it's overall really solid.
I think it's pretty simple, but it's also very short.

I feel like it's kind of

like its existence is fine. It's good,

and I am glad to have played it, and I like what it was doing.

I think that its existence harms the painful's ending more than it is good.

Interesting. Lisa, the painful's ending, is fucking perfect.

Interesting. Okay.
And

anything that comes after that kind of steals some of its thunder.

And the additions are good. Like, Lisa the Joyful is really good,

but I miss the ambiguity and the terror and the awfulness of Lisa the Painful's ending. And I actually lament that I didn't get that ending back before Lisa the Joyful even existed.

Because there would have been a point in time in which the painful's ending was definitively, well,

you don't know.

Okay.

So, so

this is interesting because, again, it's going back some time, so I'm not remembering everything, but I do remember feeling like the, for me, it was, I had the exact opposite feeling.

I had a feeling where after playing the joyful, I thought, oh, this is a great closer

to the story, to the journey that went through the painful. And I liked the

epilogue. And I thought that

it was a stronger finish. Now, the question, I guess, is like, what endings did you get? You know, how did yours play out? And this is going to have to go into some detail.
I took joy.

I took a lot of joy. I took zero.
Yeah.

I took zero joy in the painful. It's hard.
Right? So I took drugs. Yeah.
I, I, I, I, you know, and so I had, so that was one thing. Um, I also,

um, I mean, again, so spoilers for Lisa, if you're listening to this and you don't want to get spoiled on things. I remember choosing to lose an arm instead.
I lost all my arms and all my boys.

Okay.

I chose every possible

harm Brad option. Yeah, right.

Harm anyone else, yeah.

Don't you dare harm buddy. Right.
Go go fuck yourself, right? I remember that. And

a lot of that was kind of like, to me, I remember that as well was something where you're like, yeah, this is the way that not only is it like something where you're like, I don't want to in-game lose my shit or whatever, right?

Like your party members, all these things, et cetera, life, but there's also the part where you're like, this guy. I'll take all your items or kill your boys.
Oh,

here's my items. And based on what we know about Brad, guess who would be willing to punish himself that hard? Yeah.
Right. Given the circumstances of what we're talking about with his past.

And I think that leans into those choices a bit. And then you get, and then you kind of wonder the whole time, what kind of person is Buddy going to be?

And I kind of felt like you find, you find, and it makes sense. I remember being like...
It's a direct result of the unavoidable reality that she lives in. That's it.

I remember looking at that going, oh, if you're going to do a children of man slash why the last man type scenario, and then you have to like actually play it out to this chosen one, What type of person would they become in this kind of setting?

And you know, kind of crazy warlord shit aside, you're like, This is somebody who would absolutely fucking hate the idea of I was just trying to protect you, I was just trying to keep you safe.

I will fucking kill you if you say those words to me, you know?

So, one of the things that I kind of expected us to split lines on this is that as I'm getting older, my tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity ambiguity is increasing dramatically.

My, so, and Lisa is kind of a perfect example of this because, like, there's super bosses I could fight, and alternate paths I could go on, and little Easter eggs I could find where, and, you know, chat tells you about it as you're going through something like this: about what is joy?

How did it happen? And it's like, I don't care,

I don't give a fuck what joy actually is, it doesn't matter. All that matters is Brad and Buddy's relationship with Joy.
Yes.

And I would say as well, in the same effect too, like Brad and the relationship with like Marty and all that shit

is the, that's the point. And when you start to get those details about like Buddy's actual past and the fucking...

I actively don't care about that.

So it's there and it's like, it's nowhere, it's not the point, but it's all, and it's also something where you're like, oh, there's just, you know, when you can have like just raw evil and then you just kind of have like this unnuanced, like

Satan for Satan's sake in a way.

There's, yeah, you're looking at these situations where the people that come in with like buddies pass and everything where you're like, oh, there's no ambiguity to this.

These are just people that are like,

again, just the extreme ends of the slider with fuck the dominoes. You don't even have to describe a domino that knocked these people into where they are.

And I think you, like, there's, there's, there's stuff you can discover in

either the painful or in the joyful, I forget, about, like, buddy's mom and stuff, where it's just like. Yeah, if you play in

a painful mode in the painful, you can find buddy's mom. Right, right.
There you go, there you go. Yeah.
Don't care.

Because the relationship. I don't want to encounter

Yeah, the relationship between these two is what matters, right?

Like running into Yado in the joyful.

Yeah. I don't give a fuck about this.

For me, it was like, for me, it was like, okay, cool to know that's there, but this is, but like, well, just again, Hardy, fuck you, and all that, and the trumpet shit and everything, you know?

And there, you know, the bit of like where he's chilling out with the trumpet and everything is like a little just weird thematic thing that continues. That's like nicely done.

But yeah, what matters is this relationship. And hey, guess what? Jesus, Joel.
It's for this for the exact same reasons.

For the exact same reasons.

Arguing for like hours about the viability of a vaccine in Last of Us. I'm like, that the fucking vaccine

doesn't have shit to do with that.

It's Joel and Ellie. That's all that matters.
Yep. Yep.
So I'm curious now

with

the

well, basically, I think it's like the three big choices, right, in

joyful are we only had two, but as somebody in the chat points out, we actually played different versions of the game because I played them quite late, and so I played the definitive of versions, which changed parts of the game.

Okay, so I don't know what those changes are, but I also don't know what changes those changes are.

Okay,

what was Buddy's in your playthrough? What was Buddy's relationship with Rando?

Positive and then highly not positive.

Trust

and then

reveal. Yeah.

Okay.

And

what did you do about it after?

I mean,

I trusted until I could trust no longer. Okay.

And there was no extra after?

I

okay, okay, okay. Basically, there's a...
Yeah. There was a very definitive ending to that story, okay?

Because

essentially, you can get like a

third

afterwards,

what's going on, you know, after that trust moment occurs. Yeah, that is like another super fucking crazy, you know,

um, thing that goes into your endings. But uh, okay, and then the ending you got,

I did take the drugs,

Yeah.

What was your what happened with Buddy? Let me just see there because I'm curious.

Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. You got that.
Okay, you got that ending. Okay, okay.

Cool. But yeah, all in all, it's very strong.
I really like it. I kind of wish I lived in a world in which Lisa the Joyful didn't exist at all and it was just the painful.

Yeah, I just disagree. I just disagree.
But I

knowing

again, knowing that the relationship between Buddy and

Brad is

the focal point there,

this as an epilogue to the story and like developing Buddy more and sort of showing, you know, some of her agency, I didn't feel it detracted in that way.

I know what you mean, though, but like, I enjoyed seeing that growth and seeing the fact that it's like, this is not who you were hoping she would become, but you have to acknowledge that it makes sense that she became this person.

Okay, so here's how I feel about it.

Here's a movie adaptation way of explaining

how I feel about Lisa the Joyful. So I'm watching the thing, and at the end, McCready and Giles and Mark are about to touch each other.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you don't know if either of them or both of them or one of them is the thing. And they just say, I guess we'll just wait it out.

And then the movie just ends and leaves you going, I don't fucking know. And then the sequel to the thing came out.

And it's, hey, it was McCready was the thing and giles is the new main character and the movie's really really excellent

but all the ambiguity of the first movie is now gone i i will say the difference i guess for me there is that i don't know how john carpenter feels about it but like we feel that the thing is a fucking perfect film yeah so that whereas the the the situation i'm describing actually did literally occur no i i remember

the game yeah the game exactly um and you get and you get answers where you're not supposed to get them yeah the answer is they neither of them were the thing and then we also get the fucking

and we and we end up we talk about the sopranos ending every time we go into this conversation but um the difference to me i guess perspective here is that lisa the painful is not the thing because like the thing is fucking perfect and lisa the painful to me is flawed you know and by the creator's own words there's things where he's like yeah i wish i didn't do that and i'm like i can see that i can understand that in the same way that like um talking about uh the flaws of fear and hunger one while in while you know ultimately i'm like this is this is a cool game this is a cool uh thing but there's flaws here where i can understand the creator wanting uh to add more to elaborate on and to you know perhaps um

build out some scaffolding to support some of the weaker parts of what came what what was happening in the in the the main entry you know um i also think that the the painful could have been a really full-long thing that it like like they could have made the mistake of stretching it out too long,

but they didn't.

I gotta say, Lisa, both games, completely fucked on me. It's the maybe the

you're on kudo terms now, aren't you?

You're on full fucking

like

you've been using how long to beat.

How long to beat.

And you know, when you look up like,

I don't know if you do this, but what I'll do is I'll look up like game I'm playing full playthrough, and then I'll skim until the spot that I'm at, and then I will see how long is left on the bar as like a fucking, like the okay, okay, I'm 60%, right?

Um,

how long to beat can't be trusted with uh Lisa the Painful and Lisa the Joyful because, and neither can the in-game fucking clock. I'm imagining the branches are wildly variant.

Well, it also doesn't uh, it doesn't um

accommodate for uh the times you fall off cliffs

and game overs against bosses,

right?

It took me like twice as long to beat the painful.

Yeah, that game's willing to let you just fucking die.

Yeah, yeah.

There are a lot of the, I, there were like two or I think maybe three streams where I just threw up my hands and went, okay, stream's over because I fell off a cliff after like a 45-minute sequence with no saves.

I was like, no, okay.

Not doing it. Fuck it.

Also, just Lisa in general, like

proper

what, like, one person's weird vision of things that I can see, kind of like looking at Toby Fox, I can see where

the Earthbound started and where their own vision, you know, took over. And the version you get in

the

Undertale and Deltarune is like, you know,

it's a

large fantasy departure, but still you can see the bones of Earthbound in there and mother, you know? And here you're going into horrible mutant freak territory.

But when you see those mutations and the absolute nightmarish shit going on, it's doing so in a way where you're like, I can see that in an Earthbound sprite. You know,

it's interesting.

I should probably

play Earthbound to completion at some point.

Like, I played maybe three or four hours of earthbound at a friend's house and like man, it did not do a thing for me at all So here's what I'll say is Playing it now it might be a little bit like RE4 Gears of War, you know going back in time seeing the the thing that inspired everything else

You I don't think you

I don't think you are immune to the charm. I think you can still appreciate the vibes it puts out charming.
I just yeah, it's all vibes though, right?

It's all vibes at this point And, like, the vibes are going to have to make up for some.

It's old gameplay, and you're going to be struggling with some bits, but the vibes can carry you because they're fucking immaculate. Didn't appeal to me at all.

That's the problem. Okay.

What I will say is for the maximum impact to enjoy Earthbound today, especially without any knowledge of what's going on,

you'd have to go mother right into mother three,

right? You'd want to play both games. And

I'd say

combined strength of both games doing what they do and the effect that has on everything it inspired afterwards is like unavoidably,

you're going to get hit by it, you know?

Maybe. I don't know.
Cause like some of some of the problems I have with Earthbound are problems I maintain now.

And don't like in all the games that do them. I don't like it when you can't see your party on the screen.
Yeah, that's a feeling.

really

really

don't like it when you can't see your party on the screen i hated that before i even knew what rpgs were bro like what because one of the first games i got on the nest was dragon warrior you know um fucking dq1 when it was called dragon warrior on the physical cartridge and a slime appears command and i'm like where's me oh i'm on the map and i can get elric's armor but i can't see me attacking the slime.

That's not like the other Nintendo games.

Someone in the chat says, Pat, but you love Undertale. Yeah, the little heart that you use in the gameplay sections, that's your character, and they're on the screen.
There you go.

And then, and in Deltaru, you got your party on screen doing shit, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's, it's, no, it, it's, it's the same thing as me playing FPSs and then Overwatch versus Marvel Rivals, etc.

I want to see my, ever since I was a kid, I fucking want to see my characters doing things. And Dragon Quest, immediately, I was like, I don't like that you just see the slime shake.

What about Eye of the Beholder, Pat? Don't you love Eye of the Beholder?

Yeah, you mean Eye of the Beholder, where your entire party is on the right side of the screen where you can see all their weapons and their portrait, and you click on them, and then it gets translated to the left side of the screen where the gameplay is?

That one? Yes, that one. So what I remember being charmed by with Earthbound was the things like crack of the bat as it smashes against, you know, the the, the, the, the rat or whatever.

And you see a big comic book like style text speech bubble, you know?

Shit like that's really cool. Like, I think it's really cool in a first-person shooter when you point your fucking camera down and you see your character's legs.

That's not a deal breaker, but I like it. Shout out to the trespasser, Jurassic Park, right?

But,

but the, the, the feeling of your spell being cast and you can't see it properly, you know, Like, even back then, I'm just like, I don't want to just see the screen turn orange and do like a little shake.

Give me some fucking spizzazz on that shit, you know? Cast fucking flame, you know?

Maybe I'll play Earthbound like once, and then when everyone just like just screams at me on all my social media platforms that I didn't enjoy it enough, I'll be like, well, that's enough of that.

I mean, I'll just say this.

Like, again, the writing is hilarious, the vibes are immaculate, and like for for maximum power, you tag team it with Mother 3 and you get, like, you understand why and where everything else said.

I'm inspired by this. Right.

You know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of back in the best friends era when there was supposed to be a fucking Psychonauts LP and like.

It got started and like no one wanted to do it because no one, no one in that whole group wanted to fucking play, play Psychonauts, like on the controller, because it fucking sucks.

It's like this beloved, wonderful game. Yeah, until you have to play it.

Didn't get off the ground there.

And, you know, as someone who

has extolled love and virtues of fucking Jet Set Radio and shit over the years, you know that's me.

Like, I'm down to praise a game's bold aesthetic while being like, yep, this gameplay has some massive problems and you gotta go in knowing that's an issue.

with uh, uh, uh, it's so there's been games where I'm trying to think of, there's been games where like I went back and kind of saw, oh my god,

I got a phone call from the vet. Hold on a second,

I'm just gonna tell my wife to call the vet. Okay,

um,

yeah, it's it's what I will say is that, like, what you're describing, this is not one of those cases, though, where like the gameplay is so rough and bad that you're like,

um,

fuck this, like, entirely.

When Earthbound gets annoying, it gets really annoying, though. I will say that.

And the combat and the difficult, the spike of it and like the persistence and the, there's all, it gets really rough in some dungeons and they slow down to a fucking crawl.

You know what?

I should tell you.

I just remembered. This is really stupid that I'm only bringing this up now.
I just remembered what one of the core reasons for me never even bothering to play Earthbound was.

Not that it was on the Super Nintendo.

I could have borrowed one from a friend, right?

It's because I knew that friend who had a Super Nintendo, I didn't, and would play all these RPGs, and we'd go to hang out at his house. And he was like, hey, man,

check this shit out.

It's the final dungeon and boss.

Isn't that funny? Oh, you had no chance.

Oh, you had no chance. You had no, there was not a no.
You had zero chance. So that was the first time.
Oh, my God.

My first

thing that I ever saw of Earthbound was,

yo, look how this guy named Jeff and Pooh can jam a bunch of bottle rockets into this swirling vortex.

Oh my god.

Dude, yeah. And then after that, I grabbed it on an emulator and was like, what? This is like a, you're like a school child.
Did he show you the whole fight? The whole thing. Oh, my God.

It's, yeah, you're cooked. You're cooked.
It's done. It's done.
Like, you're just stomping on the emotional journey.

Oh, that's incredible.

That guy also.

Also did that to me with Final Fantasy VI with Kefka's Tower.

And that was the first thing I ever saw of FF6,

which has led to the scenario of why I've never actually personally beaten FF6 because I've gotten up to Kefka's Tower three times, and I know,

oh, well, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Hey, Wooly, there's this new sick anime you should check out. Ava, dude's robot is his mom.
Oh, that's my favorite one ever. Nothing's gonna top that.

So we're like, yeah, that's really, really rough. Um,

That's a big vibe killer,

I will say.

Doesn't weaken Mother 3, though. Yeah.
Doesn't weaken Mother 3.

Yeah. But anyway, anyway,

that is

the Lisa series, though, is, yeah, you're playing it after all this time. I'm glad that you still liked it, though, because

it's great. Because it's been so long that I'm just like, I don't know how much of this still stands up or holds up, but I remember really liking it.
I think the parts

that don't hold up now didn't hold up the day the game came out. Exactly.
Exactly. Yeah.
Yeah.

I'm going to say most of the stuff like surrounding, not most of it, but a bunch of the stuff surrounding the titular character. You know,

never mentioned once in either game.

By name, ever. Yeah.

It's really funny.

And some

I got to ask you, because I was streaming it. You were just playing it, right?

It took until the last 25 minutes of the game for me to stop calling Buddy Lisa. Oh,

no, I didn't have that.

Because I went to check out the original, the first. Oh, well,

but follow me here.

Buddy is like an informal

game is Lisa. So like I would just constantly, constantly, constantly, oh man, Lisa's sword attack is really cool.
Oh my God. Yeah.
Okay. And then be like, right, right, buddy.
It's buddy.

Link is Zelda. Yeah.

Yeah. And the thing is, buddy has an actual name, but it is not Lisa, you know? So, yeah.
Anyway,

that's cool.

Also, I don't know. I feel like there was a

stupid, like, there's a big wrestling energy going on in

pro wrestling was like a big

all over it. That was exactly that was a part of like the enjoyment of fighting wolfman Big Lincoln.
Oh man, that's cool. Big Lincoln and Dusty, you know.

I gotta say,

probably

my favorite cool guy moment ever that I've ever seen in anything is finding one of your targets, a Sin Sidney Gallows,

hung and shot to death with arrows.

And then you defeat the archers that killed him, only to walk away and him go, hey, I didn't get to be number two by being a fucking pussy. And his course

while still being lynched and shot with arrows, fights you, and it's like the toughest boss in the game.

God damn.

Yeah, yeah. Awesome.
Oh, man. Yeah.
It's fucking awesome. Buzzo is just a fucking Legion of Doom

member, you know. Well, I mean, obviously, but I don't want

Well, you will, yeah, Domino's. Dominoes.
He's a bad guy.

Yeah, he's not a good guy. He's not a good guy.
And I would say, too, as well, that

you kind of know what

era you're coming from with

the Marty finale, right?

You're like, okay. I see where this is coming from.
I know what's up. I know, I know where, you know.
But anyway,

interesting. Well, you know,

glad you checked that out because, yeah,

it's narratively one of the weird ones worth talking about. And the music is weird, and the writing is weird, and the names are weird.
Music is penis music to the max. To the max.

Sometimes that fucking fart trumpet is plot fart trumpet. Yeah, sometimes.
Sometimes.

What else did I do this week? Me and Paige watched the first episode of that Fallout TV show, the second season. How that's doing?

They really are taking advantage of the New Vegas area quite strongly.

You see a lot of places, a lot of people.

They're using cut content from New Vegas as new locations to effortlessly weave it in.

Are we cranking up that

Rule 34 number as we speak?

Am I becoming more and more wrong by the episode? Okay.

They are exploring a bunch.

So they do this interesting thing where they introduce us to Mr.

House as a character in the second season of Fallout, and he is a significantly different character than the one you encounter in New Vegas

in terms of his personality.

And

it's really smart that they can do a lot with him because there's no reason that anything he has to tell you in New Vegas is the truth. Because the only source for anything Mr.

House tells you in New Vegas is him.

And you just have to take his word for it. Okay.
And that's it.

Like, he acts a certain way, and he tells you that things happened a certain way, and you just have to take his word for it.

So they actually have plenty of room to play around with his character in the second season

and still accommodate what actually occurs in New Vegas.

Is this the kind of adaptation where they've got to like bend over backwards to fit what's currently happening into that setting?

Because New Vegas doesn't have a canonical ending, so they have to like just juke and weave around all the permutations of what could have happened at the end of New Vegas. Okay.

And

the other thing,

it really looks like the second season of Fallout is going to have a fairly huge incest arc,

which

was not

on my bingo card for this TV show.

Okay.

All right.

Like, and you go back and look at the trailers and you look at some of the posters and you're like, oh, this is going to be like a whole

season spanning storyline.

Okay.

Not a whole lot of

genetic diversity in the vaults, huh? Yes, that is, that is,

there's a poster on the wall in one of the trailers that's efficiency at its finest, keep it within the family.

And it's like, oh, boy.

Okay, okay.

Aside from that, I did a sponsored stream for Skate Story, but it was not by Skate Story or the publisher. It was about their music company.

They sponsored me to play Skate Story for an hour and talk about the Skate Story soundtrack being good, which was really easy.

What a good idea. Because the Skate Story soundtrack is good.

That's a weird premise for a sponsored stream, but also. This is the only music company that's ever reached out to me.

But if more games with killer-ass soundtracks want me to tell you that the soundtrack is good, then yeah, hit me up. This LP is sponsored by the Maniac Agenda.
Well, it's

because

Blood Cultures is the band that does almost all the music

in Skate Story, and they have all four of their albums in the game. So I just listened to all four of their albums and went, yeah, it's good.
Sick. It's good music.
Good for skateboarding.

I think the way that I described it is a great soundtrack to get shot at by Judge Dredd.

okay okay right

so you're you're smoking cyber drugs and then judge dredd rolls up in the squad car and then you skate away so is the call to action then to get the soundtrack bundle with the game no call to action

okay

just play it and fucking yeah listen up yeah all right yeah all right Skate Story is also really good.

It's like, that's a non-sponsored opinion. It's also a really fucking good game about eating the moon in hell with your skateboard.

What a weird scenario.

Is there anything else that I did? I can't even remember. Not really.
I don't think so.

This week, this weekend, rather,

I'm going to go back to beat the backlog. There are a hundred new submissions.

I have to install all of them on this computer this week. So that'll be fun.

I might have to cut it into two batches of 50 because I don't think I actually literally can install all of them on this computer. It's 100 games.

And that's it.

Aside from the fact that I watched the Indie Game Awards, but I have a feeling that is a news article.

It's in there. It's in there.

I mean, what I can say,

hold on.

Do we need our break yet? I could go for a piss. You want to take it? All right.
Let's take our break.

All right, let's take our break. BRB.

All right, let's take a quick word for our sponsors. I love our sponsors.
I would kiss them like this.

Big, big smooches.

Big smooches.

Hey, you know what's cool? I learned that

I've been doing a bunch of like

holding baby while looking in the mirror, trying to figure out if she can figure out what's going on.

So there's tricks to like help like make it make sense. And one of the ones that I read was like

have them like get close and like touch it and then also like kiss them while they're looking in the mirror.

And like things like that all are like, oh, there must what?

Okay. Like there's a, there's a, things like that help build the idea of what you're seeing at looking into it.
So um, that's fun

trying that out because I'm not doing any of that shit. One day, I was just pointing at a mirror.
I said, Hey, buddy, who's that? He went, It's me.

Oh, wow, okay.

So, I was like, Okay, yeah,

I mean, she's only been here for like a second, you know, but I'm just swinging by, going, Can you tell what that is yet, or is that just another dimension with some other fucking baby? You know,

anyway,

uh,

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Okay.

What's going on this week?

Oh, there's mainly one big news story, really. Well, there's actually a bunch of stories going on.

Let's hit all of it. Let's try to

exactly.

Let's be efficient with our time here, you know.

But like, as far as

like,

there's a bunch of AI follow-up stories. A ton, like a weirdly enormous amount of them.

There's stuff that I find infinitely more interesting going on as well, besides all that.

But if you want to just lump them all together

in the big bunch,

what do we got? Okay, so Larian's going to do an AMA

to clarify what's going on with the generative AI. Not good.
Not a good idea.

Swen Vink

is going to be doing that,

I mean, I guess the option is that, and then the other option is just say nothing

and

bunker down. I'm 100% convinced they will say something worse than nothing in that AMA.
Well, effectively,

what I was saying last time is that this conversation is going to have to get very nuanced very quickly to figure out where devs are willing to draw the line.

I don't think anyone you will ask about any of these questions will give you a a good answer in any way. I think they're all going to just look like kind of dumb.

Well, I well, ultimately, the idea of burning through the you know favor that people feel from everything that they delivered with Baldur Skate 3 is something that is like probably not going to be fixed unless they basically just back down from what they're doing.

No, they're not going to. They're not going to be.
Yeah. So here we are.
They might back down on the next project. In fact, I probably bet they will, but

we'll see.

I have an internal list in my brain.

Over the past week,

Larian did its thing,

as well as

Level 5 came out and was like, We fucking love AI Professor Layton. I brought them up.
I brought up Level 5 before because they showed off the Captain Tsubasa stuff and then they showed off the

Megaton Musashi stuff. And basically, we're like, Yeah, we're using it for more and more and more.

And this time, and like they've went from initially showing some of those things to going, no, we're going 80 to 90 percent AI.

Which doesn't actually like that actually doesn't make any sense at all. Like, I think they're glazing.
I think they're actually glazing themselves.

It's well, it's all it's basically saying, hey, if you want to come work for us, you got to be comfortable and ready to do this and also be ready to be a prompter more than anything.

So, we got that. But you can also see, and it's one of those things where you kind of indicate how much of a true believer

the given CEOs are, right? So, that's what they're doing.

Sandfall got their indie award rescinded.

So that I need to talk about slightly more at length. So I watched the Indie Game Awards, and the Indie Game Awards was very, very anti-AI.
And then they had Expedition 33 up for

Game of the Year, and then one Game of the Year, and then they had a speech afterwards thanking the winner of the Game of the Year for not using generative AI and for championing human-made content, which my mouth dropped because I'm like, there was a whole scandal about the host.

How come you guys didn't know about that? The host of the Indie Game Awards did that? The host of the Indie Game Awards. Oh, I didn't see that.
I'm just like, what the fuck? Well, that's a bad one.

And then, like, a day or two later, they're like, okay, so here's what happened. They did the clarifier.

We asked Sandfall, does your game have any AI in it? And they said no.

Because right now, it doesn't.

But it did.

So they say that Sandfall lied and Sandfall's like, no. We told them the answer that was true at the time.
And then they got disqualified.

And then the follow-up question is, hey, indie games people who ran this thing, do you have brains? Do you not read about video games that you are included in your awards?

And then they gave the subsequent awards that E33 had won to

Blue Prince and Sorry Were Closed, which are great games and totally deserve their awards. And my issue with this is that I think they should have done their due diligence.

I think they should have awarded Blue Prince Game of the Year on their show not like

basically put Blue Prince's win in like the retractions column of an obituary in a newspaper where no one will see it. But then over at The Escapist,

someone over there decided to make a big old article about how Blue Prince uses AI too. Oh, wait, there's no sources.
That's completely made up. We have to pull that story within like an hour.

But guess what? People read it. And now,

in articles articles on Blueprints and my YouTube videos that are talking about the E33 AI stuff, there are comments of people who read that and didn't see the retraction and go, Well, Blueprints used AI.

That is materially damaging to Blueprints and Raw Fury, and they are probably going to sue the Escapists. Wasn't there, didn't I just see a thing where it was like the Escapist then?

It was like zero punctuation stuff or whatever, and then

now it's like I see.

And every single person on the content team left and formed a website called Second Win.

And now, what the Escapist does is it takes videos of XQC and other big streamer streams where they play gambling mini-games and supercut them into

reels. I saw a lineup of like five articles that were all like how to get max win, gamble wins, and then pros tips for fruit fucker.

You know, like fucking just, I was like what happened that that site with the with the cursive E

not that I ever went there outside of you know

for years but from sandfall about the E33 AI stuff in which they said that in 2022 a couple of our guys messed around with it and then decided not to go for it and they should have been taken out which is interesting because

I still think that game should have been disqualified on its own like numerical basis and the rules.

However, back in 2022 was when everyone was laughing about the dummy done

face cam morphs and people were playing that AI fucking story generator because there was no environmental labor catastrophe occurring.

So

it's complicated. I don't know.
Yep. Yep.

I mean, there was certainly were a time where shit was just like, oh, it's a meme generator. Yeah, right.
It's a meme machine.

I remember that.

And yeah, I think the

in for what Sandfall's bit is on it, it's like the accidental texture thing was like, it was not intended to be front-facing, but it ended up being so.

So whether or not you want to talk about it on the usage of it being used

not front-facing, or whether it's on a technicality, there was one used, and so that does discount it, and then they can resist it.

Yada, yada, yada, yada, yada. Exactly, right?

So, in addition, we got

level five, we got

Sega, Capcom, Square Enix,

Warhorse, who make kingdom come deliverance. Their CEO was like, oh, yeah, I fucking love AI.
I got to use it on the next one.

It came out that Falcom used it a bunch on Trails in the Sky remake, which everyone I know has been playing.

And they just said it like three days ago.

so

but it but it but it it comes down to just exactly what I was saying before, I believe, which is the line that um

people have well it depends because there's i guess there's us as individuals there's people that listen to this there's the game industry in general in different bubbles but the line that a lot of the studios have is we're using it but not for front facing and that's what we're comfortable with and the line that others have is that gate that players have or that people have consumers is actually we don't want it anywhere near it And then some others are more gray and in between, but

this clarifies also CD Project Red and Bethesda. Yeah.
So this line is different for what people thought versus where these studios actually are at. That's that's what I think.

I think Chris Wolfhart

on that internet pretty much summed it up well.

We are in a time period in which over the next three to five years, every single company that you like to buy games from is going to use use it to some degree and then be like, man, that didn't pay out how it was supposed to.

Let's not use it again without any ethical or moral consideration whatsoever.

And so we are essentially in the AI for development era of the online pass

right now.

You remember the era of the online pass? Of the online pass?

Oh, as in like Mortal Kombat and shit like that?

Yeah, right, right, right, right. Okay.
Yeah.

no and you know i mean i i feel like uh uh uh

in in you know the the the titular castle super beast clip

you know uh uh uh in in the the great crash out um this is one of those things where i'm like i this is why i i always i'm like god i wish i could fucking my brain worked faster because there's there's points that that whiz by and go and like one of the large ones that i only thought about after the discussion was that's how it always is right is you always think of the best stuff long past something should have said to that guy something that

20 years later

right so something that would have that should have come up there is like one of the big ones while we're describing all the things that are bad feels or whatever is for is uh tick tock it the one of the obvious one of the big ones the one that i'm still

i personally am just like yeah i still don't fuck with it because i'm i remember was it 2019 or so where it was just like did you see that the that bite ByteDance uses facial data from people using TikTok to

make it so that the surveillance that the Uyghur Muslims are forced to use is extra effective at tracking them everywhere they go. And everyone using it is directly making that.

And it's like, that was one where I was like, okay, yeah, that fucking's dog shit. Right.

You and I upload videos to YouTube, which uses the data out of our YouTube videos to just

do it anyway.

A million percent. Right.
But that, I just, and so I'm just like,

that was one thing I'm like, I wish I could crowbar that back into the clip, you know?

You're right. That's what, that's the phase we're in.
And then we're going to see these other companies coming up to speak about it. I went into a little circle over the past week of like, oh, man.

And I just, I went into the place of like,

oh, I can't escape nothing. And then I eventually, I went into the place of like, I had a moment of like, I should stop eating meat.

Like, that's, that's where my, like, that's where the fucking spiral went to. Pat, Pat, I already answered this.
Hug that dog. Oh, yeah, he's cute.

Hug that dog. Do it right now.

Hug him. Do it.

I'm telling you to do it. He's squishy.
There you go.

Solved. All right? Yeah.

You fucking squish that dog.

All right.

What else is going on?

Well, the first game I cover that uses AI on my channel will probably be Trails in the Sky, the remake, because I bought it like months ago for backlog purposes. Oh,

you bought it a while.

I bought it the first time it went on sale. Yeah, that's interesting.

Because I was going to put it in the thing so I could do a trails video.

Speaking of, how about

the video going, hey, this shit has AI. If you want to poop on it, poop on it from a great height.
But I already fucking bought it.

Speaking of buying things and not getting what you wanted out of them,

there has been an update to the Kotor 2 Switch

of the Kotor 2 Switch lawsuit.

So, if anyone has been following the story at home,

okay, so

you know, to recap for everybody, Aspire announced Kotor 2 for the Switch, and in the trailer, at the end of it, they teased restored content mod DLC coming. Yeah, I remember.

And everybody that is a fan that was like, holy shit, the official, an official restored content mod that makes the game the better version? What the fuck?

And so a lot of so people went out and bought it immediately going, yeah, fucking, let's go. And then they said, actually, never mind, Lil JK.
And then there was no restored content mod.

It says it on the back of the box.

And that led to a lot of people who were like, okay, I cannot even get a refund for the purchase I made here. I never even booted the game, but I bought the Switch game

and you're not giving me the thing that you advertised. So thus began the lawsuit against Aspire for false advertising.
And that has been going on in the background. So that case has been continuing.

And

the legal battle has had some updates where the arguments being made by Aspire's lawyer are

some of them are being are coming out.

One of which is

the claim that the restored content would be in the game has no economic value.

And the reason why it has no economic value is because

many YouTube viewers skip after the first five seconds of watching a video, anyways. So barely anyone would have seen it.

Thus, there was no real, no big deal to saying that the content mod was coming at the end of the trailer because it was the last dark part of the video.

Uh, yeah. So, you know, we got good legal defense coming in against lying about what's going to be in your, in your game, just refund the fucking

things could we possibly be talking about? Nope,

never

die on the hill. Um, also, there's some other dumb shit in there, like, um,

the, the, there's a redaction in in the um

of an email in one of the that that they're like oh whose email was this and they're like it's a special contact at lucasfilm and they're like we want the to you know why is this redaction here we want to question it and then they're like well no because this is a special contact and it took us years and years of schmutzen to get to the right person who can approve um green lighting Star Wars licensed games.

And that's a trade secret that if we allowed allowed other people to know this about this email or who it was that was reached out to, it would damage us as a company.

So, it's like literally, we fucking schmutched and elbowed, and you know, and we played it, we played the right networking game to get this email, and this email now has monetary damaging value if other people find out who they can ask about a legal, about an official licensed Star Wars game.

Um, anyway, so

uh, that was funny.

And

that is related. Okay, okay, moving along, moving along.

What if I told you

that you could enjoy all the classic retro games you wanted?

on a Game Boy made of attack drone metal. Would you be excited about that?

So when you say attack drone metal, you obviously mean

the metal that would otherwise go into a Predator drone or something of that nature because there's a partnership with the game company manufacturing the Game Boy-like object when a defense company.

that actually

drones. I'm not talking about like, you know, like an Xbox with like army fatigues on it or like a gun metal.

Defense company manufactured retro gaming. Yeah, yeah, no, not like a PS5 with a plate on it that's like gunmetal colored or just like a bunch of little like things like that.

I mean one that has the emblazoned logo of the actual defense contractor company. Like a black water controller kind of thing.

I was about to say blackwater. Yeah.

Like it's not the it's not the Xbox with the armor fatigues on it that like I got from Ari back in the day or whatever. It's the one with the blackwater logo emblazoned by the company officially.

That's correct.

So yeah,

Palmer Lucky is a retro gaming company. Hey, isn't that that guy who's like a fucking asshole? Am I crazy? According to a mutual of ours, he doesn't wash his hands after he uses the bathroom?

That's crazy.

Am I insane? Or are we... Did we not call him Lucky Palmer for a billion years? I don't know what I called him.

I feel like... I don't know what I could call him right now, but we should.

I feel like for years, maybe it was just a Liam thing, but the name Lucky Palmer is in my brain. And

now I'm reading Palmer Lucky, and I'm like, is that backwards? Are they doing like

a surname first time? It's not Lucky in Japan. Yeah, well, that's what I'm trying to figure out.
Because I just remembered for years on Friendcast, it was Lucky Palmer. Anyways,

yeah, you got some fucking attack drone metal being used on a fucking like.

It's just like, that is so grim. It's flagrantly disagreeable.
That's so grim. That is insanely grim.
With the fucking, with the, with the, yeah. All right.

Um,

uh, uh, uh, you got that going on.

Get this Tom Clancy statue of a marine made out of the ruins of a hotel in Kosovo.

Like,

stop it. We got the, we got the brick dust.
We got the brick dust from Kosovo shipped right over. You can smell it.
You can smell the sadness. Get it now.

Um,

I don't know why that somebody last hazard typing in W O W wow

tilde exclamation point.

It's like I don't know why that's like the funniest wow wow wow

yeah

um other crazy shit going on um

for anyone that's interested uh there is

there is a

project called Daytona USA VR, which is a full recreation of Daytona USA in VR chat

by Zone Archive. I would never, and I really mean never, want to exist in a VR headset version of Daytona USA.
That's a barf simulator. That would be so sick.
But here's the thing.

I played the Jet Set Radio Festival, which was a Jet Set Radio VR chat world, and it worked because of the third person.

The fact that you could look at yourself in third person makes all the difference. Playing Daytona first person is an absolute barf simulator, but seeing the car

zones on it, zones on the case.

I can't believe this is what Zona's been up to for all this time.

That's kind of nuts. I feel like Daytona USA is a really, and I mean really incredible encapsulation of like a certain era of video games.

Oh, not just because of its like vibe or its sound or even the way it looks, but like, man,

I used to spend so much money playing this game that had three racetracks and two cars.

Yeah, but the song, though.

But the song.

And one of those racetracks was an oval.

You just want to hear the song forever. Daytona.

All right, we got that.

Remember that? Remember

Horizon at Home?

I do remember Horizon at Home.

Tencent presents Horizon at home. 10 Cent presents Resharam Horizon.

Light of Moratam. Moratome, man.

They have reached a confidential agreement. The game is no longer listed

anywhere. So now you got to wonder,

is this the grift? Is this the hustle? Run.

Hey, hey, can you just run a game that looks so blatant that you got to sign a deal behind the scenes to just be like, I'm going to pay you a couple thousand, $100,000 to fuck off?

Right?

How about you? Here's a million dollars. Fuck off with this game, Tencent.

They definitely, they definitely lost a bunch of money developing that game for sure to have to pull it. I can't believe Sony just, they got a deal going.
Well, hey, I guess that's...

You got to make way for Horizon Steel Dawn, the upcoming Horizon game coming to not the playstation right

i think too as well they kind of just pointed at pal world and went do we like

you know do you really want this to be us nintendo and fucking pal world right now no here's what here's what happened i don't know if you remember this but this was 10cent was like hey sony i we want to do a horizon game can we do a horizon game and sony said fuck off then they started making this game anyway

and then they sony found out and was like hey what the fuck and then went do you guys want can we buy the horizon license off you? And they went, no.

Why would we say yes now?

No, you may not. And then they sued them.

No fucks given.

Super bummed news, but Vince Zampella, co-creator of Call of Duty and Respawn Entertainment, died in a car crash.

A particularly like, like gnarly car crash, like the passenger also was like launched out of the car. Oh, Jesus.

I didn't catch the details there. Fucking sucks.
Um, that you just literally never know what life's going to have in store, obviously.

And, um, yeah, that's one of those things where when you line up everything that he did, it's like, oh, my God, first-person shooters were just literally, were never the same from all the projects he's worked on over the years.

Yeah, Kajima put out a statement talking about how when he was going independent, he ran into

him and helped him get on his feet and figure out the reality of independent game publishing.

According to everybody that I've seen that has known him, he was like this really stand-up guy and did a lot of stuff, both for the industry as a whole, but also to protect his team from layoffs and stuff like that.

That's amazing. Yeah.
No, I mean, obviously, Modern Warfare 2 is the fucking titan of

everything, of the genre of state took over the industry. But speaking of Titans, obviously Titan Fall and everything that responded afterwards, especially that's where I'm more familiar.

Yeah, just did incredible things with first-person shooters. And,

you know, folks are saying that, like, yeah, he had more ideas and more things he wanted to work on specifically in

that realm. You know, it's like when you know what, when you know that, that, that, that, uh, uh, genre inside out, you know, um, there's a few other people that had this type of accomplishment.

So, um, that is shitty news to wake up and read.

Um,

other stuff going on this week.

The Legend of Aang, the last Airbender movie, skipping theaters, going straight to Paramount Plus. Crazy.
Yeah.

So it begins.

And it's like, I don't know that this would have been a massive, like, get everyone to go watch, go out to the theaters type of film, but it's just like

it would. Yeah.

Yeah.

but it's it's just it's the kind of thing where I'm like, it, it's, that's, that's a bummer, man. The idea that things are fucking straight to the streamers from now on, you know.

I don't know, man. That first movie was not good either.
It didn't do well either. Oh, no, but this is the animation of Adult Aang.

I believe this is. This is the animated movie? Oh, this is animated.

No, no, no. This is the animated movie of like Aang and the gang as adults that was announced some time ago.
Oh, this is never going to hit a movie theater.

Anybody Anyone who thought this animated avatar thing was going to go to a theater, even when they said it's going to a theater? They said it was going to a theater. They lied.

They were lying big time right there. Yeah.

So

that was literally what they announced.

Wooly. Why would you put an animated movie in a theater? Now, let's ignore the fact that James Cameron gets super mad

when you say that Avatar is an animated movie.

Super fucking mad like he gets fucking pissed I just read a headline

animated I just read a headline that's like um that's like stop asking me about avatar four

I just gave birth to I just went through labor and gave birth to avatar three

and you're just like

you're the one that said you're making avatar two through seven that was you you did that like 20 years ago what the fuck man

I feel like Avatar might be the thing that makes, that has the most money being made and seen by the most people that I'm seeing the least of.

I'm, you know, like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. I know what you mean.
The normal person's culture is like just not reaching me at all on Avatar.

So the way the world felt back then, with Avatar 1, it felt like the clout

could allow him to coast for the rest of our lives on projects like this and let them be just the biggest lost leaders of all time. And we're finding out, I feel, that that is not in fact the case.

And also, a lot of legendary directors and people who were putting out shit that we always thought was amazing are starting to fucking flub it and fuck it up, as discussed with the goop

the other day. And Ridley,

I can't stop gooping Scott.

Fuck, that's the shittiest nickname ever. Yeah, well.
That's what they call him?

That's what they're calling him these days, you know?

Did you see, I mean,

the alternative

could be,

I don't know if you saw the trailer for the Odyssey? I did. It looks not good.

Like, the idea of making an Odyssey film is obviously pretty straightforward and cool. That could be a thing.

It's kind of an old, good story.

But Chris Gray Bois Nolan, who is, like,

ostensibly a good director and has made some fucking amazing shit. Hey, let me ask you.
Doing future tech armor and

like black and super dark gray tones. And you're kind of like,

why not just... If you take the coolest, if you take the actual historical shit and use it, you can do some cool stuff with that too, man.
It doesn't have to be fucking Magneto Helmet.

Chris Nolan feels like one of two things. Either somebody who desperately misses seventh-gen video games really bad, or somebody whose parents were killed by a color wheel.

Like, I don't know what his problem is.

Anything outside of like six shades of earth tones.

Chris Nolan used lighting on a movie challenge, difficulty impossible.

I just wanted

him just beating down a DP, just beating down a director of photography on his set for daring to turn a light off.

Anyway, anyway.

Yeah, there's a trailer for that.

Did you see, though, the trailer for fucking Steelball Run? I did. Yeah.

And it looks like we're going to get sequential weekly releases.

I didn't see that confirmation.

First part on such and such a day. Yeah, I think that's no, it's an extended episode one that's 45 minutes long.
I don't know that we have confirmation of it not being binge dropped.

I still, I legitimately still have not watched all of part six. Okay.
Because the specifically because of the way they

drop because they released it in too much to watch in one day.

And then I said, oh, I'll get back to it. But then it was also too much to watch in.

And

it sucks.

Like, so much amazing detail and cool shit going on with like heavens falling down, like the second OP to part six, which is a great part, but it's all binge dropped and you just, you took away JoJo Fridays from us.

Just give us back JoJo Fridays, Netflix. That's it.
That's all.

The world will heal.

The world will heal if

you give us back JoJo Fridays. We can have it again.

I was finishing work in QA, and I would go to get to the beer fridge. They'd open it up, and then I'd fucking sit down and watch press play.

And then, holy shit, this end of the world week is the one where the time stop happens and nine seconds of slow walking like what's the likelihood with deal turning

end of the world

it's so good

that 12 episodes come out in one batch like zero

like seriously like I think it's it's just they're trained on the model of like, hey, we binge drop Making a Murderer and everyone went crazy. We binge drop Tiger King and everyone goes crazy.

We binge binge is.

Binge is how

binge is how we our model works and they experimented with like live stuff like live talk show things and whatever and it's like it's weird not quite and people don't want to do appointment that much but like the anime drops have just been a different world man yeah weekly it's not doing the batch shit so every single week we get like we get like a fallout episode and we get to you know jibber jabber about it and then we can add things to the report and revise our projections it's important to take the time to digest you know?

I want everyone collectively marking out over the stuff that's going to happen in this part. I want that to have the time for people to choose

two or three days to go, man, how the fuck are they going to get out of this one, Batman? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know,

I want them to get introduced to some of these characters and go, what the fuck?

Like, back when I was a child, you know, long ago in the 80s, I would watch the Batman TV show from the 60s with Adam West and Burt Ward, And then there would be an episode

in which

Robin got eaten by a giant clam that the Joker set in a room for him. And then Robin's eaten by a giant clam.
You can see his feet sticking out. Oh no, Robin's cooked.

And then I'd have to watch five minutes of commercials. And during that five minutes of commercials, I'd be like, oh my God, what could possibly happen?

And then they'd come back and Batman would just give the clam some fucking AIDS or something and you'd spit at Robin right out. And then it would be completely fine.
And with JoJo,

every single fucking episode of that show for like like 10 seasons is a cliffhanger. I want everyone.
I'll just watch it right now. I'll just watch it.

I want everyone who's listening to my voice right now to go, is that a fucking dinosaur? And to not get the answer to that question until seven days later.

I want you to hang on to that question for a week.

Yes, it is. No.
Yes, it is. Maybe.

It's complicated. What the fuck is that?

Oh, man. There's some cool shit I cannot wait for.
I hope they do the right thing when it comes to

a lot of things.

And

I can say watching that trailer, I'm already happy that I heard a little more Western sounding music, right? It didn't just give way to big band.

It was going until like some guitar twang was happening. I'm like, that's what I want to hear.
Give me that fucking cowboy music. And we got to see my boy.
We got to see the fucking Sandman.

Like Reggie's like, is that dude running with just his two feet? And I'm like, he's only

white money.

I'm going to use these two feet to win the race. All I need is the white man's money.

I need the white man's money. Let's go, Sedman.
Oh, I swear to God, I'm such a fucking easy mark. You show me the gunfight? Is that guy holding a sword?

I'm on that guy. You show me the sword fight.
Is that guy just got his fists? I'm on that guy.

I'm always on that guy. And a lineup of horses.

that say woolly on them get ready to jangle them in front of them. Oh, here he goes.
You show me the lineup of horses, and this guy's like, yo, fuck a horse. I'm a run with my feet.
Yeah,

you have an innate,

like, almost, it feels like genetic imperative to root for the guy who says, fuck you, I don't need that.

Gearless Joe. Whatever that is.
Gearless Joe.

I don't need a car. I don't need a horse.
I I don't need a gun. I don't need a sword.
I don't even need my fists. I'll just kick.
Like, whatever the fuck it is.

Like, I believe the moment it started, the moment it happened for the first time in my life was I was watching Escaflone.

And in the first episode, you see a bunch of Gaima lefts that are all these mechs going to fight the enemy mechs. And then the commander, Vargas, just has no mech.

He just pulls out a giant longsword and fucking fights the mechs.

I'm going to fight you with my sword. Fuck you.
And he's doing it. I'm like, oh my God, that's the coolest thing my child brain has ever seen.
Like, that was it.

That was the moment I went, I want the guy that's doing the other thing, though.

Escaflote changed it. Soon, soon, you'll, soon you'll get to experience that for real.
As your little girl is like, I want this, or I'm going to climb on you, or whatever the fuck.

And they're using every tiny muscle in their body to do like some trivial baby shit and you're like i don't i don't even need both arms to pick up this cup whatever i'm so strong i'm so strong compared to you like

like my guy said daddy i'm so fast you'll never catch me and i was like i will always

catch you

i will like it and and like i felt it in my chest

for a second i was a kira yuki and i'm like like, it will be like 15 years before you can outrun me.

Allow them to feel the accomplishment for a moment, and then I will teach you the power of Gearless Dad. That's it.

Yeah, so anyways, I thought that shit was dope as hell.

I love it. Steelball Run is going to be fucking great.
And

whatchamacallit?

David Production is at the peak of their abilities, too, man. Like, they're crushing it.
Those horses are a mixture of CG and 2D.

Looks like they figured it out.

Okay, this is a wild story that is very quiet, and I don't think a lot of people have heard about it.

What do you got?

Apparently,

a couple years back, there was, in 2021, there was an animated FF9 series that got announced. I remember that.

And a French studio has apparently had the rights to FF9 and was working on an animated series, but we haven't heard anything about it.

There's an update to that today where Final Fantasy IX animated series is, yeah, it's being worked on by a new French studio, and there's details on what they're going for and what it's about.

So it's being worked on at a new studio in France. They're looking for a 2028 release date.
And it's not an animated FF9 series. It's an animated FF9 sequel.

There was

an extract they got from a French magazine that covers the business side of film and TV. And there's a summary on this new show.

It's aimed at a younger audience. It's aiming for 2028.
It's going to be about 11 episodes. And the summary apparently is, where is it? Right here.

Mel, Colm,

Lucilola, Thea, Fala, and Doc are children of the hero Vivi, and they're the last black mages on the four continents.

Today, they live happily in the city of Alexandria, guarded by its rather friendly, though sometimes very curious, inhabitants. Unfortunately, this peaceful existence was not to last.

One day, Colm discovers Mel frozen like a statue in the inn where he works. Could this be the tragic legacy of their father catching up to them?

I will

have a thought on this

when I am watching it.

We'll find out. Like, like

we'll find out. There's so many projects that you see, and part of your body just goes,

I don't think that's going to come out.

Yeah.

So

I'm just like,

it's also surprising that like

they would go with like, I guess, like a French studio as opposed to like an anime studio from Japan, you know? But well, you know, anime, it means La Francais.

La béte.

Bro, there

you did a great Werner Herzog impression last week. Well, thank you.
Like genuinely fantastic. You still thinking about that? Yeah, well, no, no, hold on.

And as a result, somebody sent me a clip of Werner Herzog talking about speaking French.

I know how to speak French, but I will never do it. And in fact, you should never do it either.

The only time I would ever get speak French is if I'm at gunpoint, which totally happened once in Africa where a bunch of soldiers were screaming at me in French and they were going to shoot me.

So I had to speak French to them and I regret it. I regret speaking French.

It's an absolutely incredible story. What a fucking beast.

Oh, wow. That's, I mean, holy shit.

Where's the lie? I don't know. I don't know, man.
I don't know. All right.
What else is going on? Hey,

here's this news story for Woolly and Woolly only.

Tepin announces end of live service. I saw this.
What a bummer. So,

okay. But,

and here's the thing.

This is for the second time.

It is a live service mobile game. that has announced that with the end of service, they're creating the offline version, which you can continue to play and keep everything and so on for indefinitely.

And it's not just shutting down and going away forever. So, the cards, the games, and whatever, you can't still play against, you can't play against other players, which sucks.

But at least there is an offline version that you get to keep, which the only other game that did this was Capcom's Mega Man Cross Dive.

So, they appear to be the only ones that give a fuck about giving you an offline version. But,

but

that offline version will be available for one month. One month, one month.

And you will have to use a program to transfer your existing owned cards into the offline version.

Which is

preparations for data transfer. Yeah, there's a PC and/or the phone version, and there's a data transfer.

If you download the offline version, but you never played Tepin, you will be using your starter decks for okay.

So you can do the data transfer from Christmas of this year until March 31st of next year.

And

then

as of April next year,

March to April is when the offline update is going to occur. So basically, from now until March, you do all your data transfer to get it to where you want to be.

And then from March to April, you update the final time and then it turns it into the offline version. Yeah.
So

the very important note here, here, this is not, hey, there's an offline version of Tepan that everyone can play as like a real video game.

This is so that the Tepin super freaks that have tons of cards can continue to play with their Tepan cards and

offline version. I appreciate the effort.
I don't know that like they're I'm imagining it. You can just say fuck it.
Fuck you. I don't give a shit.
We're done. I imagine they deal.
Exactly.

And like you delist it off the shop and you just can't get it anymore. Fuck you.
Thanks for the money. Bye.

Crossdive Crossdive did come out and sell the offline version as a separate thing, you know, after.

But yeah, again, for someone who I enjoy a bunch of this game and I haven't played it in quite a while,

you know,

I appreciate that they're not just saying, fuck you, buy. I appreciate that I can still go and get some of that stuff.
It's better than literally nothing. Yeah.

And Capcom's the only one that seems to give a fuck about turning the mobile game into the offline version. So

if there's a downloadable version that's offline, the possibility that somebody figures out how to flip some zeros to ones is probable. Yeah, that's what I would hope.

Because, yes, allowing you to continue fighting against the CPU and doing everything else in the game is nice, but

if you can play against other people locally, then slam dunk, we're done. You know?

Yeah.

So that's cool.

All right. And let's just get the last couple bits out there.

There was the

92-year-old woman in Japan won a Tekken 8 esports tournament, becoming one of the oldest esports winners ever. Hell yeah.

Hisako Sakai won the E-Club, the event setup. So there's a seniors Tekken tournament that took place.
Yeah, 65 plus and over, but

65 to 100 is a pretty fucking wide range. So at 92, shout outs to her, Hisako Sakai.
But then I saw that she's a Cloudio main, and I said, Yo, fuck this battle axe. Get her out of here.

What are you going to do? You can't wheel her out of here. You can't stand them, Claudio players.
Forever, Woolly. Fucking Claudio players.
Some point in the nursing home. Fuck Claudio players.

Get out.

Never mind.

Wooly, I have this vision of you in a nursing home, like on your oxygen, like having to be held back from somebody who says tick throws are cheap in the ward.

Like, like, just like, like just this shit will never end

uh like like like hector salamanca just fucking shaking

oh man um

good stuff

um i don't know much i've been i've been slowly catching up with hunter hunter i guess but uh there's a trailer for a character named finks bro and in the finks trailer

just i just want just tell me one thing as someone who knows what happens in Hunter Hunter, this Finx character,

all he appears to do is do an arm crank and then like eight moves, but he just does this. He just does an arm crank.
Does he do anything besides crank his arm at all?

I literally, literally don't even remember who this guy is. I had to look him up.
That's how of

a character he is

from the Phantom Troop. Like, I feel like back when I played those great Ninja Clash games for Naruto, and they had to take a character who showed up like

Mizuki, the fucking teacher from the first episode that's like evil, and they had to give him a full move list. And you're like, he didn't do enough to gain a move list.

So real for you, man. As much as we dogged, as much as we dogged on 2xKO's roster, Net Impact has like the worst roster for like an anime fighter I have ever seen.

It like not only is it super tiny, there's a bunch of straight dog shit picks. Like bad picks.

I could not make out any moves besides the one arm animation crank. And maybe it's just because they rant and are running out of budget on it.
I don't know.

But it's so, it's a fucking Mugan-esque, weird trailer for a character that, unless this is all canon and he does this and it means something based on his official appearance or whatever, shit's weird.

Yeah,

that's about it. That's about it.
That'll do.

Hey, you got any emails in there? Yeah, let's take some letters. If you want to send in a letter, type it in your electronic mail client of choice and send it to castlesuperbeastmail at gmail.com.

That's castlesuperbeastmail at gmail.com.

All right, Zeke asks,

Happy holidays. What's the hardest you've ever been absolutely rinsed and dogwalked in a a competitive game? For me, it was the first time fighting add-on in SF4 when I was just starting out

in my first match in Elite Smash

against an Ultimate against Forest, one of the best Game and Watches in the world.

Okay,

I'm going to have more than one answer. So I'm going to give one answer and then I want to cycle back after yours.

I walked up to a Killer Instinct cabinet

in like 1990 something.

And next to, I was a child, and the person person standing next to me was a teenager. And I picked Saberwolf, I think.
And the guy picked Idol

and

the boss.

And then he comboed me into the corner and then hit me up in a way that would launch me to the other corner.

And then did that again and again and again and again and again until the time ran out. Yup.

I mean,

my answer

comes in the form of a song.

That was pretty rinsed. The big band into the That's All, folks, was quite rinsed.

Back in the day, I played Project Justice, and there's a bug in that where you can float in the air and grab your opponent, and they can't do anything about it.

And someone just took my quarter and as I sat there and just got thrown and couldn't fight back because they were floating off screen throwing me and I just yep quarter stolen that's all you you're gonna learn today that's it yeah um

and yeah those those are the correct answers not I

see people saying Daigo no no not really I again I had a match with him you you lost but like there was a match that got played that that is not that is not the answer it is absolutely getting fucking big band into the theme song Um,

yeah, the other one is when I started playing Day of Defeat, um, that was in the era of the proper server browser.

So, the skill differential between you as a 12-year-old and well, it'd be 99, so I would have been 13, uh, and a proper adult playing fucking mouse and keyboard ass video games on their weekend.

Uh, the skill differential could be infinite.

Um, and I remember starting up Day of Defeat, and like my first match, I physically could not leave the spawn area without getting a headshot.

Like, it was literally like, it was literally like poke my head up over the spawn, pop

like just immediately. And I was like, holy fucking god damn it.

That's crazy.

Let's take one over here.

Let's see.

Okay.

So we got one from Mr. Soyboon.
Mr. Soybean says, their command grab and dodge button.
Sakura and Dan are my favorite Street Fighter characters.

The fact that they used fucked up, wacky, or just playing bad versions of Shoto moves make them super fun to play.

Sakura's moves are better than the moves they're based off of.

Her tatsu is ridiculous, and she can do a lot with it.

Shaw, shaw, shaw, shaw, shaw, shaw, shaw. Yeah, depending on the game.
Be careful.

Naturally, you wouldn't have to texture without the this texture without the familiarity of Ryu and Ken. I'm thankful for them, them, too.
What's your favorite of I'm you, but weaker?

Oh, yeah, I'm you, but bad.

So

it's it, it, it, it's more of a parallel, because I think it could be argued power-wise, but there is a character, there's an alternate universe

dude named Spider's Man. Oh, I love the Spider's Man.

And Spider's Man is just what if you fell, what if you didn't get bitten by a radioactive spider, but fell into a colony of spiders, and devoured you?

But your consciousness lives on within them and you are just a walking colony of spiders.

You have all the powers. You have all the powers of a living colony of spiders.
That's Spiders Man.

That's great.

Call him fucking Spider's Jorg. I don't know much about Grappler Backy.

I don't. I only know bits and pieces, but I do like that we have Baki the perfect, like, you know, follow-up to Yujiro.

And then over here, we have not as good

brother Jack, who's like, I'll just do tons of drugs and have tons of surgeries to cheat to become stronger. That rules.
I like that.

There you go.

And let's see here.

You remember fucking Spider's Jorg?

Spider's Jorg? Spider's Jorg.

We learned about Spider's Jorg a couple years ago. Many years ago.
That's early. That's deep internet.
You know how the average person eats three spiders a year? Is the stat?

That's not true, but okay.

No, it's not true. The average person eats zero spiders a year.
Spider's Jorg, who lives in a cave, eats 10,000 spiders a day, and he's an outlier. That should not have been counted.

Oh, you know what?

I know exactly who my favorite

like you, but bad character is. That would be Caboose the dog, like regular pug, but much worse.

Much weaker.

You're doing a good job, buddy. All right.
And let's take one last one here.

Spooky Giuseppe, the ghost of Christmas Past, says, Dear Castle Super Dads, been listening a long time. One of those freaks that goes back to the old episodes sometimes.

Couldn't help but take some choice morsels coming out of Pat's mouth with regards to having kids. Willie didn't have strong enough opinions on it for me to take note of.

Not to be shitty, just thought it'd be funny in hindsight.

How are you both treating Christmas in your household now with kids? There's a number of excerpts, but the main one up here is Pat said

he'd handle it by going, Why would you tell your kids about Santa?

If I have kids, I want the credit. That's me, not magical bullshit.
I spent that money on your Transformer or whatever the fuck. Yeah, no, we're going to go see Santa later today.

Okay, okay, okay, okay.

Yeah, yeah, all right. I think it's pretty clear.
Like, I got, I can't do the long podcast today because we got to go hang out with Santa Claus. So, the literally,

I think the mission becomes what, no matter how you feel about Santa, you cannot have your kid be the shit kid that ruins it for every other person.

But more than that, it's like there's like a magical joy that comes out of the kid. And I'm like, oh, I don't want to take that from him.
I'll just, you know, he'll figure it out later.

We got to wrap the presents. We still haven't fucking wrapped the presents.
That's going to be fun. The irony of like literally having to end the podcast right now because

this exact question answer

has completely 180'd is all the character development you need. Dude, my boy is crazy obsessed with Christmas music.
There you go. Like, he, no, no, no, no.

Like, this house isn't going to be playing Christmas music until like

probably like April. March.
Like,

we're like,

yeah.

Yeah.

There we go. So, have a happy back down

and to all a good night. Oh, my God.
I just realized at some point we're going to have to put the Christmas tree away, and he's going to fucking go nuts.

Oh, no.

Oh, he's going to lose it.

Are you a late tree holder?

In my family, we take it down by the end of January. Okay, let it linger.
Yeah.

Yeah, I guess this is the first year he's appreciating it. Yeah, well, last year he was like a goo-goo gaga baby, right? Yeah.
This year he's like, yay, Santa, gonna bring me presents, right?

Like, literally out of his mouth.

April. April, bro.
If I'm lucky. If I'm lucky.
You know what's true? Paige is like going nuts because of all the Christmas music. And she's like, oh my God, it never ends.
I'm like, oh, yeah.

Well, I used to work in the store. Retail.

I do like a 10-hour shift of fucking the same six French Christmas songs. So this shit's cake by comparison.
Just get the fucking Mariah.

I don't even hear it. I don't even hear it anymore.
I have a switch in my brain that just goes

to ambient music. I actually feel sad and empathetic extra hard for everyone working retail during the season because I went to a fucking pharmacy and heard the all I want for, and it was like, yeah.

It's, I feel, I feel sadness for them. Like, yeah, if you can develop the immunity, then break it.
Back in the glass.

Put her in the ice.

And she leans into it because she's getting fucking paid every time, you know. All right.
Somebody asked, like, how much do you make?

And she said, whatever you think I make off that song every year at a zero.

I was like, fucking Jesus. Yeah, no.

Like, stop whatever you're doing and just make basic celebration of holiday albums that get played forever or make a move, make a Christmas movie that gets played forever.

How many, you want to know? I can't even begin to imagine like Will Farrell's money before Elf and after. Like,

just the, it must be a pie that's like everything he's ever done in his entire career is a fraction.

Lots of people are like that. Like, you think about the life that anybody who worked on a good episode of Star Trek and before and after, they got their royalties, right?

Like, fucking Patrick Stewart was like a broke-ass Shakespearean actor, and then he did a couple seasons of Star Trek, and now he can do whatever the fuck that goes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

All right, everybody, Merry Christmas. Happy holidays, everybody.
Have a good one. Be safe, Rombie.
Take care. Rombie.