Teen Talk (Season 2 After Show)

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Welcome, welcome, Faithful Listeners, to Teen Talk, a show about a show that just had its second season.

Yeah.

Yay!

We did it.

We landed the plane technically.

Hey,

any landing you walk away from is a good end landing.

You know, it's a good ending.

So I guess this is going to be a retrospective, not just on the finale episodes, but on the series as a whole.

Yeah.

But I guess let's start with the finale in general.

How did you feel about the finale?

It was so fun to be able to drop a big long one right at the end.

You know what I mean?

Oh, you want a finale to have something.

You want the juice on you.

You know what I mean?

Nothing would disappoint me more.

The show I'm listening to.

And I'm like, all right, here's the finale.

42 minutes.

Yeah, it's like when you're watching like an HBO show and the finale is like 42 minutes.

I'm like, come on.

Come on.

Just give me something.

Come on.

Give me something.

You know what I mean?

Something more.

Fuck this HBO trend.

I don't know what HBO show you guys are watching that had a 42-minute finale because they're all like seven hours.

I know, yeah.

But even sitcoms nowadays are like, oh, this storyline just can't possibly fit the 22 minutes.

This finale is 35 minutes long.

I'm like,

I'm like, what are you doing?

I'm sorry.

Do you understand that he's invited two separate dates to the same restaurant?

We have a full 35 minutes to explore this to its full potential.

But I mean, it was,

I'll tell you what, this one felt like, like, when did we start this one?

My sense of time for the first time.

episode or the season?

The season, but also, like, I mean, well, so just to give you a background into sort of the way that we record the end of it, season one, we recorded, we all sort of got an Airbnb and we all powered through like five episodes of something.

That was a lot.

And it was like the three-part finale and stuff.

And we didn't do that for this one, but we knew that we were like, as we were approaching the end, we were like, all right, let's start.

We kind of did.

We just kind of get stretched out.

Like, over the course of three weeks, we did a lot of banking, both of MBIX and SEAL.

Yeah, because you guys had the tour coming up at South by.

So it was like, okay, let's get this stuff wrapped up.

Yeah, yeah.

And it was like, I remember going through the series of them and feeling like it was very different than like, oh, we're out in a place and we're all like just really, really focused on it.

It felt more like what you would expect from a second season of thinking.

Like, okay, the machine is a little more well-oiled.

We kind of have a sense of where we're going.

We have a sense of how we've done this once before.

There's a confidence going into it.

I actually really enjoyed it.

It actually felt like it was a very clean, smooth process, especially compared to season one.

We had a lot of pickups after the fact.

We recorded those like anticipating a lot more duct tape on the back end, and we really didn't have much at all.

Yeah, it basically came out fully formed.

Our pickups were like little tiny character beats.

We're like, oh, let's change this little thing here.

Like small stuff.

It was like Scary says a different song for the epilogue dance.

We're like, oh, maybe actually the other song.

I'm driving home.

I'm like, oh, no.

It was Dead and Gone originally, right?

Yeah, and then it was the end of the game.

That was the first one that came to mind.

But on the ride home, I was like, that's not what it would be playing.

When you also change the way that Scary reacts to Willie's Death, yeah.

And it's like, I feel like people listening to both versions would be like, why did you change this?

But it's just important to me that like she just didn't care.

Now she'd weaponized her not caring into what like Willie's death would be rather than weaponizing it on herself.

That's cool.

So I mean, yeah, it was just like a very small beat compared to season one where we were like, oh, we were like,

we came in and patched stuff together.

In that sense, I just had such a blast with it.

It was simpler also, like the combat as defined was simpler.

They both essentially end with a big fight.

In some ways, the first season is like a more epic, like larger scale fight.

It was also more complicated because we had multiple parties in different locations and like the teens were in one place.

It was like a whole, we really needed like a whole whiteboard to even track it.

It was like massive.

It was like a whole thing.

Whereas this is rather straightforward in terms of we're just going to try to kill Willie.

I also thought then the stakes were like also in a weird way like clearer and maybe more immediate.

Like the stakes of season one was like, you know, you got to get through the portal.

But like the fact that the parents were at his feet and could get killed at any moment, like, at least as a player, the tension I thought was like really fun in this final,

yeah, it was like an extra element that maybe not, and we were having bad roles, which again we added at the last second, basically, yeah, in recording, yeah, the previous episode.

Yeah, I think it was maybe after Willie became God, or at a certain point, there was just like a time where like the last three episodes did, there's a lot of like stress getting up to it, but then like the last three episodes I felt like were at least for me, was like kind of just like a pleasure record, like it was just fun.

It was a really good record, except someone did make someone else cry.

We're not gonna say who.

We're not going to say who said what.

We're not going to get back into it.

But I just like, I want you guys to know that I remember who it was.

Oh, my God.

Okay.

And I bet they still feel bad about it.

I was like, the finale went so smooth.

Yes, I'm not going to talk about how I had to take a 10-minute break in the middle of it just to cry.

Do you remember what Matt said to you that made you so upset?

She remembers.

She'll never forget what I said.

I remember well.

I was just bringing

joke.

We all know I'm very nervous about bringing up jokes now.

I was like in the bathroom trying to pull myself together.

I'm like, they're never going to make a joke again.

I was like, Will's never going to make a joke again.

Give him a race.

So basically,

my thoughts changed the way the three of us act around you.

Yeah, don't worry, Beth.

When I did my mean joke about Beth rolling a natural one on her joke, I was like, ha ha, I'll be like Freddie and just roast someone right now.

And then, like, it hit harder than I thought it would.

And I could tell.

I'm going to give the context for this now that it's all over.

In January, I I got a concussion and it had some pretty bad, like, snowballing kind of effects because instead of going to the doctor, I just smoked a bunch of weed.

And so was in the hospital for two weeks, had to take about a month off the podcast and wasn't able to record.

And then finally, like, you know, got back to it.

Your most vulnerable stereotypes.

It's not making me look any better.

You just needed us to be friends and supportive for you, right?

I was like feeling like kind of like myself again.

I was feeling kind of normal.

Like, I was like, okay, you know, I'm like talking to my therapist.

I'm like, I'll never be funny again.

I'll, like, I literally was like saying that to my therapist.

I'm like, I don't think I'll ever be back where I was.

And so, we were all picking up on this.

We were all like, this is really supportive.

Again, three of us.

Again, three of us.

Like, fucking, you guys were, you were a dream.

You let me have all the time I needed off.

You did Kingdom Dad Monster to fill in the, you know, truly, if I had any other job, I would be like fucked.

So, yeah, it was great.

And then, um and then I was like finally feeling like a little bit kind of like myself again and then I was noticing as in the beginning of the finale I was like none of my jokes are landing I fucking suck and then Will's like you rolled a natural one on humor and I was like I'm fucked

everything's fucked

to our credit we fucking pulled it I fucking pulled it together

you did and I thought you were being very funny before I said what I said I realized that you wouldn't have said that if you thought I was actually like fucked up.

So this is what's fucked up is that like normally it's like if something bad happens to someone on the podcast, they'll be like, oh, let's give them a card.

Let's do something.

And then you guys will be like, send them a card that says like, you stupid dumb bitch, pull yourself together.

Like, I hate you.

Why don't you fucking crawl up and die?

And I'll be like, that's really mean.

Are you sure they're going to think that's funny?

Be like, trust me, well, they're going to think that's really funny.

That's going to mean a lot more to them than like it being like some sort of forced thing.

It always works.

It's all like, all right, you know, like, it's, you know, like, let's just trust each other.

And then it's like, I can't do it.

I can't do it.

I'm bad at it.

Maybe you're too good at it.

Maybe you're too good at it.

You know, maybe.

Perhaps your scalpel is too sharp, my friend.

Perhaps your cutting insight is a little bit too sharp.

Maybe you're too funny, Will.

Maybe I'm too funny.

I think it was nice that Beth crying did give us like a nice break for a long episode.

Like, we just burst into tears into every episode we just had.

By the way, which is why, Anthony, when you make the joke, we're like, oh, natural one.

It's so much fun.

It's so funny.

That's why everybody's reaction to that joke is like at 11 because it was was straight up the funniest possible thing you could say.

It's a perfect icebreaker.

Perfect, perfect.

You're okay, Will.

No,

it's not.

It's fine.

I'm fine.

He brought it up.

He brought it up.

It's true.

I did bring it up.

I knew it would be funny to talk about it.

But things that we liked about the finale.

I've got a couple of favorite moments.

Go for it.

I completely missed this, but when somebody asked, like, what's your favorite position?

And Will sang doggy style, it was like a throwaway.

Oh, it says, it's Willie's least favorite position to be in.

And then you're in.

Least favorite position.

And I was like listening to the live listen.

And I was like, I had never heard that in the room.

And I was like, fuck, donkey style.

That is fucking hilarious.

I wrote down no womb for me from Matt, but I have no idea what the context is.

Oh, that was Matt's whole thing with like the, it was just running joke of every time we'd come out of one of the angels, he'd be like, a rebirth of sorts.

And then, yeah, then he was like, no womb for me, please.

And then she'll jump out of the angel eye or whatever.

I think the $42 scissors have to be like my favorite part of of the fucking thing.

That's, I think, one of the funniest riffs.

That was mine, where it's like, Will being like, it's in your mind and you decide to match me.

Like, I cannot describe to you how much you're just describing rock, paper, scissors.

I've never seen like a less funny bit become more funny.

Yeah.

Yeah.

An argument, a funny amount argument really has a danger of like going in the wrong direction, but this one just held on just enough, it escalating into an actual game of rock, paper, scissors, and then me winning on the laptop.

And then there's a lot of things.

So yeah, if you're not in the Patreon or the Discord, you wouldn't have heard this.

Yeah, I'll tell a story.

So, you hear it in the podcast where I say, fuck, I just bought these scissors.

I don't know why they're $42.

Because I just searched scissors in Amazon.

I clicked on the first image of scissors.

And then I did not click on any of the follow-up images of those scissors.

Nope, I just clicked on the image and I showed it to Freddie.

And I won the scissors.

And I said, Well, I won with these scissors.

I'm going to buy them.

So I clicked buy now.

If you know anything about Amazon, buy now means buy now.

They don't wait.

They don't wait anymore.

One click purchase, dude.

Yeah, one-click purchase.

There's one thing I know about Amazon.

That one-click purchase.

So it was good to go.

So I forgot about this.

Beth cried.

So, like, I forgot.

So, I forgot about buying the scissors.

And then, like, a week later, my wife is like, Matt, do you buy, what are these for?

Are these cut?

What are these?

I look, and she has this massive box.

It looks like a poster, like a movie poster-sized box.

And she's pulling out this pair of scissors.

And my daughter's looking at them.

And they're like those three-foot-long ceremonial terrific scissors.

You remember Clock Tower?

Yeah.

The Clock Tower

classic.

That's why I was telling Freddy that for our tour,

we need to cut a ribbon.

We need to cut a ribbon.

Yeah.

So I got these incredible red, massive, huge scissors, ceremonial cutting scissors.

That is, that will forever remind me that I beat Freddy in rock, paper, scissors on the podcast.

It's pretty great.

Yeah, we'll definitely bring them on tour.

We'll have to do some sort of throw them into the crowd at the end of the show.

Run around with them.

We'll do the Exorcist 3

kill.

Matt saying, the it?

I fucking died.

Holy shit.

You're talking about the book it.

The it.

I'm such an old man.

Oh, my God.

The it.

Lose the the.

And then Link at the end saying, don't hug me if you're not going to try.

Like, that fucking killed me.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

What a great kind of full circle moment for Link and the whole like cycle of brokenness kind of thing and then fucking link and scary being married holy shit that was such a

when we hit the epilogue you know and you can kind of feel it too everyone's a little bit tired been a long record day we feel like we're uh finally we're done so then there's that loose energy and then that loose energy that the amount of just like yes say ending just chucked across the room like fast

runs that epilogue

qb1 over here fucking i mean like to gas mat up a little bit like i was a deer in headlights when we started that scene and i think the edit is essentially what it was like which is i know we all knew we were going to do an epology but i felt like that too because i actually forgot i just yeah i thought yeah i thought we were gonna take a break or something and he's like all right we're gonna do the epilogue now we're all like uh what which is drink but so matt immediately jumps in with you like oh link is the soccer coach which was like already like the sweetest possible grown-up link thing you could do and then like i'm literally like trying not to look at anyone because i'm trying to like frantically think of what to do with normal and they're like oh i see you there norm and it's like which is what i needed because i needed to not overthink it but then it was like i'm still there and i'm like i was emotional so then i was like all right normal's going to be emotional.

And then like, it all started to go from there in terms of like, oh, he's sad.

He doesn't want to be here.

And then you being like, oh, hey, go help this kid put on the mascot costume was like such a generous move as a scene partner to be like, this is meat on the table for you to like play something off of.

And like once I got to that scene with the kid, it was like, I knew exactly what to do with that.

Yeah, perfect.

Appreciate it.

What went into the idea that Normal shouldn't be happy?

He's the only one that sort of stands out as like not having a good time at the end.

I have a lot of thoughts on this.

When we kind of maybe circle back a little bit, we can get into a little bit more, but like Normal, I don't think he gets closure with his father even afterwards.

One of my favorite moments is Sparrow turning into the love wolf.

As normal, I'm like, I think that's this beautiful moment for Sparrow, but I think it's like one of the worst moments in Normal's life.

Like, cause it's this feeling of like, this is what it takes for you to love me.

Do you know what I mean?

It's like, this is the level I have to be operating it at to earn my father's love.

Which is not necessarily the right thing because that's not necessarily what Sparrow is feeling in that moment.

But I think for Normal, like, this has been his whole struggle.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, it's interesting because like we almost get into this in the version of the scene with him and Willie, where Willie's pretending to be Sparrow.

And then like he says to Normal, like, I'm proud of you.

And then like he cuts Normal off, but like Normal's about to be like, I'm glad you're right now proud of me, but like, where the fuck have you been?

And I feel like.

Normal never gets that.

And then I think that that affects him deeply going forward.

I think it like kind of fucks up his ability to kind of heal from what's been going on.

I think it kind of is probably something that affects his relationships going forward.

Like, in terms of like, once someone says that they love him, he gets his guard up and stops trusting that.

It just like he has like a really raw feeling that he doesn't get the kind of like psychological closure that I think some of the other characters do from the adventure.

Like, he winds up angrier at the end of it, especially because this whole thing was like he was just stuffing his emotions in a drawer the entire adventure.

Yeah.

And then it's like, now it's time for it to come out, but it's like everyone's already kind of moved on.

Like everyone's happy.

So he doesn't feel like he wants to bring it up.

You know, even though I think Link is like the scene master of the epilogue, I think like norm is the way in.

Like, you know, I feel like when you're listening to like any sort of party, I don't know, maybe I'm just a freakazoid, but I feel like you have no choice but to identify with the person that feels like a weirdo and it feels left out and it's not quite connecting with the other people.

And so, yeah, again, like when I was listening to the episode, this was like even before the live listen, I was like listening to to it in the edit.

Yeah, your moment, I was like crying.

I was, I was like, God, this is dope.

You know me, you love, you know, I love a cry no matter what.

But yeah, I was fucking crying.

With these epilogues, it's always interesting because, you know, it's very easy to kind of assume like, oh, this is the whole arc.

of the character.

But like, right, I saw people being like, oh, were they not together?

Did they not hang out anymore?

But it's like, well, it's like 20 years later.

Like, this is just a moment in time of this character.

I didn't necessarily read it as like, Norm is sad or has no good relationships.

I read it as like the experience that we went through in season two probably is maybe something Norm is still working through and it's not something that he likes.

Like the memories aren't great for him when he comes back.

Like some people you go to, you can have a great life, but you go to your high school reunion and high school is not a thing you want to remember.

Yeah, it wasn't going to necessarily be like, what I listened to, I was like, man, this time for Normal was harder for him than it was for the other characters.

That's essentially, for one, it was also like, if you're going to do a scene in those high school reunions, someone has to not want to be there.

There's no such thing.

Spoken like, everybody's at the beginning.

If that scene was just four people being like, and I'm a therapist and I ain't got married.

And then we'll be like, dude, this sucks.

I hate this.

For me, it is like this feeling of like his post-high school, post-college years were very hard.

And I feel like he hit the bottom at some point.

Yeah.

And this is like you catch him on his first step up.

Do you know what I mean?

Like, I feel like if he's in therapy, he was probably like, I've got a fucking high school reunion coming up.

I really don't want to go.

So if somebody told him he wasn't funny, like,

it would be hard to

persevered like you, babe.

To me, it was very much like he feels like this is something he doesn't want to do, but he knows he needs to do.

And like, that was kind of the energy that it started to make sense to me when we played it.

I know we're on this epilogue, but I loved everything.

I mean, the epilogue was by far.

I was so, so happy.

But Ben took it on too.

Like, once it threw to you, it's also your thing to Freddie of like, you finally got out.

It's like also like a perfect

doubling down on the Jerry being our kid.

Like, as soon as his name rhymed with scary, I was like, that's my kid.

That's my scared.

I think you'll hear it in the uncut, too.

But, like, I want to talk about that because we were all laughing when i said honey and then you responded but then you said you weirdly thought the same thing you were going to do the same move right

maybe they were just dating instead i thought that they had dated and had broken up and then when you said honey i'm like we're married

I don't know what it was.

I was never like a big goth cleats person or anything.

Sorry, Matt, explain what that means.

Oh, Goth Cleats is the Tumblr

name.

Because Matt was, by the way, we were on this movie tour.

Matt's like, I don't know.

The Goth Cleats fans are going to be psyched tomorrow.

I'm like, Matt, what the fuck did you just say?

You're not Tumblr enough.

I was like, what the fuck is Matt saying?

But yeah, since it was so spontaneous, and I was just like, feeling, I sent the thing over to Norman.

Then I was just like, oh, okay, he's a coach.

I really want.

And then just the moment you're describing.

I love this image of Scary just rocking out.

You literally just land on, maybe this is how I think of my wife, too.

You just land on like my love, which is like, Scary was just this confident woman dancing on the dance woman, like, Link's in love with her.

I was like, Link would marry this woman.

I just said, Yes, honey.

She is fine now.

I just thought it was so funny.

I'm glad you went with it.

Beth, you then established that, you know, Taylor, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Everyone going to jail in that family.

I wasn't even thinking about that.

I was just like, what's the dumbest thing I could fucking say about Taylor?

No, that was really perfect for Scary.

I feel like that really resonated to people who really identified with Scary's art because, like, Scary has such a hard time, like, thinking that she could love somebody or that even accepting love for her family and seeing her be this confident person, not worried about how she's looking in front of their family.

And

then just having all this care and like not only like having a child but like just clearly being this like very loving like mom i just i don't know i just loved it thank you yeah it was important to me that like i think i went in kind of the opposite direction that you did will where it's like i imagine scary is still like kind of a fucking you know down on herself or has a hard time being happy but for this moment it's like high school meant something different to her too.

And so for this moment, she's letting it all go.

This is where she met her hubby.

Yeah.

I wanted so bad to get choked up during when we were recording the epilogue, but I was like, I can't cry again.

It was like, you know, Will was getting a little choked up.

Anthony was getting a little choked up.

I was like, man, this is such a touching moment, but I got to keep it together.

I got to keep it together.

I don't know where Taylor having an Apple Vision Pro came from.

That was so good.

Oh, yeah.

In the NFTs.

But the reveal of three angle tracking monitors was great.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I saw a couple of theories.

One was that, because Link says when we're all trying to figure out what we're going to do, when we're God, and Link's like, I never want to pay taxes again.

One of the great jokes in the episode.

But someone's like, yeah, you know what?

They get back and then Taylor thinks that that happened and just never pays taxes and gets arrested for it.

Definitely.

Becomes a sovereign citizen.

Taylor manages to get blue-collar and white-collar crime.

And someone else said that the three ankle monitors, one is from heaven, one is from hell, and one's from Earth.

Like, he's got arrested on all the stocks everywhere.

That's really good.

I was a big fan of...

It's okay.

We're just jumping around because not technically epilogue, but I was a big fan of taylor's like before the epilogue ending like i was the same it's so consistent i love oh my god yeah and that was a pickup a lot of the stuff with nick was a pickup right

but the initial yeah you and me are perfect was perfect

i love that well because i love that it's like no arc you're both perfect but it is like a realization to it but then pairing it with the nick stuff being like nick sucks like it is this like it becomes an arc yeah you break the cycle of drama i guess like you do your own weird thing now

it's just me and mom we just i no longer have daddy issues i have mommy issues exactly i'm crazy and the fact that you like you improv glenn is being like i don't know we'll see if i want to hang out with my grandkids

that's my favorite line of the whole episode i love that like glenn's the only like original dad that we see in the

what's this streak of silver don't you want that's your

dude don't you want to hang out with your grandkid let's find out like what does

like it's just glenn saying like a tropey line but in the context like how how are you gonna see if you want to go see your grandkid what does that mean The vibe between Nick and Taylor of just like, no.

And then, like, my favorite little beat with Nick in the episode is then, like, when Taylor's like, mom, you and me, we're perfect.

We're an amazing family.

And then, like, Nick still tries to, like,

yeah, we are.

We definitely are.

It's like, no.

He's very, very good.

Yeah, Nick is really owned.

I feel like Freddie and Anthony have the same like plot graph in their head where the hotter a character is, the stupider they have to have.

Because it's like, that's like, again, Nick is like the funniest of the Sundads.

He might be my favorite just because it is like his entrance is this incredibly cool.

Like he shows up and kills all these FBI guys.

And it's just like every moment with the character, he gets dumber and dumber.

He's like the tuxedo mask of the season.

He's so fucking funny to me.

I just love it.

Well, there's two sort of beats that I was thinking about with Taylor on the way coming out, which was I was like, all right, well, everybody seems to be going through some pretty interesting, pretty nuanced character stuff.

And I had even like, in terms of my brainstorming, I had like just written out one night, just be like, what would Taylor say?

It didn't end up in any of the uncuts or anything like that.

And he never says it.

But in my head, it was like in his head, he was thinking he's this like main character thing.

And then very quickly, both the momentum of the story and also the normal stuff.

It's just like, oh, he's not the main character.

But then what is he then?

Because that's a real source of tension for someone who's got main character anime kid energy.

And I was like, oh, the funniest thing would be like to talk to the other teens, the felt teens, and be like, I see now that on this journey, I was tasked with the most important job to bring all of you to your character realization, to actualize all of you, your growth as human beings, a solemn task that I undertake with great seriousness,

which is like its own brand of insufferable.

So it's like, that was kind of the energy.

But then I was thinking about like, okay, well, what's he going to talk about with his mom?

Because it's like very quickly be like, hey, mom, I don't know about the guy that you picked and all this stuff.

But I'm like, nah.

Nah, Taylor actually is like a true just like, no, no, no, nothing is wrong.

Forgive everything, which is its own problem, but it's like, nah, that's fine for Taylor and his mom.

They just think, nah, they're precious.

They deserve everything.

They deserve everything.

Which then, to me, is like, well, of course, he's going to end up in jail at some point.

The person with this kind of attitude is not the kind of person that's like,

yeah, exactly.

How about you, Anthony?

Yeah.

And the doodler.

And you got a little choked up at the end.

Oh, we're going to talk about that.

Yeah.

With a bounty for you.

Being a little bitch-boy.

I thought I had forgotten about the doodler because he had this like nest anyway and honestly, my favorite part of the epilogue is the Dudler coming back.

And I thought that was so sweet.

And I know it's like, yeah, it's, but I also just appreciate the way all four of us, like,

almost like a surrogate to you.

I was like, no, you don't get me sad, Anthony.

Yeah.

Like, we're bringing you in to this.

But I was just wondering what the, I mean, you did the most work.

The season's the hardest for the DM.

I thought with the doodler thing, part of the reason I was crying because I was thinking about what I wanted it to be, which is the moment from Toy Story 3 where.

Ellie is like waving to Andy with Woody.

And for a second, Andy's like, like, Woody's real.

Like, you know, he's saying goodbye to his childhood and that kind of stuff.

And to me, that was like dude waving goodbye to all of you or whatever.

And so that was, I think, the main reason I was tearing up is just because I was thinking about Toy Story 3.

So I'm like,

what?

That's a good reason to tear up, though.

And yeah, you pulling him in and being like, no, you have to dance with us.

You're here in the scene now.

I thought was a really, really funny little moment.

I think we've talked about the finale a lot, but like, holistically, how do we feel about season two of Dungeons and Daddies?

Which are we going to call it Legacy?

Is that what we like?

I don't know.

Legacy is pretty good.

We don't have to decide on right now.

Yeah.

Okay.

I mean, I guess guess it'll be a good idea.

I'm talking about.

I guess the reason I liked the finale so much is like, I thought it was fitting for the season.

And I think the season is fitting for what we were exploring with.

I don't know if it's chicken or an egg.

I don't know how, if the form of the season made the characters are the other way around.

But like, I liked that.

At least to me, it felt fittingly high school.

It felt messy.

It felt very character-driven.

It felt like the characters were trying to explore themselves and not knowing exactly what's going on.

And like, yeah, sometimes I think it made it more confusing or some of the, it wasn't like as tight in some ways as the first season or all these other things.

But at least as a player and listening to it, like it'd be hard for me to even compare them or like one more the other because it's been so long since I played Daryl in a real way.

And like I've grown to really love Link and all of his friends.

And the ending felt, it felt very appropriate.

Like, I don't know.

Like, I felt better after the end of this finale recording than I did after season one.

Yeah, like it really felt perfect for me as a player.

I just felt really satisfied.

Like, weirdly enough, for it being all kind of like more messy in some ways, like, I thought the very end was a lot tighter and simpler and like cohesive.

Like, everybody only needed like a tiny little moment with their dads.

And it wasn't like after the battle and everything else, like when the moms come in, it was like, it was a little moment was all we needed to kind of feel like we had been through a journey of high school.

And then that epilogue was just felt so organic and like unstrained and just like fun.

Like, I don't know.

It just felt, yeah, I thought it was great.

I love it.

I think it's a much better finale than season one's finale.

And for me, when I think about the season as a whole, it does what I respect the most in the artists who I love, which is like people heard me make this comparison before, but when we talk about anime, to just give you, you'll see where I'm going here.

But like when we talk about anime, right, Miyazaki's the goat.

Everyone acknowledges that.

But for me, I like Masaki Uasa better.

And Masaki Uasa has done a whole bunch of range of things.

And I would sum up their bodies of work as follows.

Miyazaki.

It's never below a B plus A minus, right?

It's always an A minus, at least if not A, right?

And then if you look at Yuasa's work, some of those movies are dog shit.

Like some of them are these wild swings, but because he's going wild, some of his movies go higher.

They reach greater heights than anything that like Miyazaki has done, in my opinion.

And so to me, I'd much rather be the kind of person and do the kind of work where it's like taking big swings.

And to me, season two was this like big swing, and it's different.

And I think it's very easy to look at and be like, oh, yeah, okay, here's what we have this formula in season one.

Let's just copy this.

Let's just do it.

And let's just run this this as long as we can.

And even philosophically, I've been fucking doing this game since right out of college.

I've seen rises and falls of empires, of entire like I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.

And I've seen so many things, both individuals, groups, they fall into the trap of we made something cool and it's working and we got to run this as long as we can.

And like, I've seen the end of that road for a number of my peers in this space and it's a horrific road.

It never never ends well.

Nobody ends up happy.

And it always leaves a bitter taste in your mouth.

Whereas I think for everything that we've always tried, and something I'm so proud of with season two and something I'm so proud of with this group is the bravery of being able to like take a weird swing, not knowing where it's going to go.

And that's like, I can tell you, it's so much harder when you have like a baseline of success that you're like, okay, hey, this is already kind of working.

Why shouldn't we do this?

It's like, yeah, but like, there's a trapeze artist risk-taking that happened in season two.

And I found myself in in playing Taylor having so much more fun, I think, than playing Glenn.

You know, I love both characters dearly, but for me, there was something about like being able to play Taylor and to be able to like bounce around in this space and to have that feeling of like, ooh, I don't know what's going to happen here.

I don't know where we're going.

Wait, you're bringing in someone to do stand-up in front of?

Like, well, this is, you know, like, I think that having...

that feeling and that is something I value very greatly when it comes to creative work because I think it's way too easy to get stuck doing one thing and trying to chase that because you're never going to chase it.

So instead, try something different and try to like zag out a little bit and see like where, where it goes.

That's what I think I'm most proud of when I look back at the sort of body of season two is that it is so distinctly different.

And I just, I loved it.

But that's sort of my subjective take on.

So I'm really proud of,

I'm proud of everything that we do.

I'm proud of the ways that we continue to experiment.

And I like that we're willing to like just go for a thing and see how it goes and do our best on it.

And it's going to be different.

I think that that's the only way you survive in in this weird creative world.

There's only one constant I've seen over and over again, which is people get sick of things.

And I think the worst thing that can happen is not that your audience gets sick of something, it's when you get sick of something.

And I've seen the people get sick of something.

And like, I think over and over again, when I think about this show, when I think about the directions that we push it, when I think about like the directions that Anthony, you were pushing things in season two, that gets me excited.

And if you're not excited, I think as someone who creates something in this very, very saturated world of visual and audio media that you can consume, if you yourself, the creator, isn't excited about, then what the fuck is the point?

Go find something else that you can do.

I just had a blast and I really enjoyed just the whole process from beginning to end.

Something I think is really interesting about season two, and looking at this as a person who hasn't been doing this since college, who's, you know, only became kind of a publicer person, you know, since season one of Dungeons and Daddies is that, you know, in comparing the two seasons, season two had pressure to live up to season one and stuff like that.

But it's like, we're playing kids who are pressured to live up to the legacy of their parents.

And so it's like,

it's like a weird, like, I remember something that stressed me out about season two was like having to contend with all of the knowledge of the season that came before, like having to hold all of that in my mind as a character and as a person, like just knowing facts and like feeling the weight of season one on top of me.

And I thought that's even cooler than that we were able to create something new and kind of just like, yeah, get out under the shadow and form our own kind of thing.

Cause at the end of the day, you're your own person and you're not your parents as much as society would have you think otherwise.

So it's an interesting kind of a zag.

Yeah.

I think that's why the epilogue was so fun.

It's like the other dads weren't in there at all.

Like it really felt like the four of them were just like them now.

Coming into their own.

Yeah.

To me, the metaphor is that season two felt like raising a teenager.

Like it was like this kid, you have like a bunch of your own conceptions of what they're going to be like, how they're going to grow up, all based on, you know, like your own distorted rose-tinted version of your own childhood, which for me was like my version of like whatever season one was.

So yeah, you watch them and then you're like, oh, this isn't, they aren't what I thought they were.

They're making mistakes that I can't control.

And they are doing things that are you know their own thing and they're failing and learning their own lessons but it's like you watch a kid grow up and make friends and like have experiences that you've never seen before and then like they come into their own and you're so fucking proud of them and that was like kind of my arc with it like i think i came in with way too much baggage like the same kind of pressures you were talking about beth like being very nervous about living up to season one.

I know I was excited to do something different, but I don't think I was quite ready to really.

I was like, I knew that that was something we should do, but I wasn't quite ready for everything that that was going to take.

Yeah.

And then I think at a certain point, like it was just you kind of surrender your control of it and you go with it.

And then it was like, I don't think there's a funnier run in the entire show than finding Tori into

the Apollo space mission episode.

He's like, I think the funniest one-two punch in the entire show.

And then fucking like, then Terry dies the next episode.

Yeah.

And so it's like, I love it just as much as season one.

I'm just as proud of it.

I think I might be more proud of it.

I'm really, really, really going to miss playing normal.

I'm going to miss playing

the other characters.

Yeah, I don't know.

It was a journey.

I think it was definitely a harder process than season one for me.

And it was a, it was a struggle.

And, you know, like at the end of the day, I'm extremely proud of it.

And I'm extremely proud of all you guys.

And I am.

You're going to roll natural wanna not crying?

I am extremely proud of Anthony.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which I know he doesn't want to hear, so we won't press it.

I just,

you took on so much fucking work this season.

Yeah.

And it was so hard.

And I know that a lot of the, a lot of it was especially hard for you, which again, we don't have to get into if you're not comfortable with it.

It's fine.

That's fine.

Like, I,

the way you showed up every day, the way you, you put your whole effort into it, um, and the originality you brought to everything and the vision you had for it and the the way that you were able to keep going and just carry us to this fucking ending that was amazing.

Like, I'm in awe of it.

And last thing I wanted to talk about from the finale itself was the

choice to have, I was just so stunned by the simplicity of it, but having the kids sit on the throne of God and get to make one choice, essentially just turning the keys completely over to the players for one moment is such an incredible act of trust in your, in your collaborators.

And it was also just like, it makes sense.

It fits in the thing.

And it's like the perfect climax of the show because it also is like, again, like so much of it is us trying to undo our parents mistakes and like wrestling with the choices that they made and then it's like okay now you have the ultimate choice what are you going to do with it and it just allows the characters to kind of like have this you know sort of like to me like a really satisfying conclusion where again like we choose to you know love instead of date and without spelling anything at all it wasn't like you know like you have your choices or a or b was like do whatever you guys want i thought it was so fucking cool man and um anyway i just uh thank you It was an absolute joy and one of the greatest creative experiences of my life playing this game that you laid out for us.

Thank you very much.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I had a really hard time with this season.

I came in super excited for it because I was like, ooh, I've got these twists planned.

I've got the code purple thing and I've got all this stuff with the dads and I've got, you know, this entire basically lost season that is an entire story about just the season one kids and this is now the season two dads.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think the awkwardness of elements of this season is me trying to force that into a story that should be yours or I don't know.

I have a lot of very mixed feelings about this season, but I generally think that we did something really cool, generally speaking.

Um, I think it ends well.

I think all the character stuff that you guys did was really, really smart.

I think we found a couple of little set pieces that were really, really fun and really, really different.

I was basically in a pretty bad emotional space for a lot of this season for a variety of reasons, but mainly because I read too much commentary online about like the show.

And so I was like, oh, I'm ruining it.

Like, I'm ruining the livelihood of five people.

And

it was a big weight on me.

But the thing that ultimately made me feel like

okay about this season is I realized like, oh, this is our Legend of Korra.

Like

nobody likes Legend of Korra as much as they like Avatar.

But everybody's like, yeah, it's a pretty good show.

It's probably worth watching.

And if I'm going to do a rewatch of all of Avatar, yeah, I might as well do a rewatch of Legend of Korra too.

You know, hey, why not?

And to me, that's sort of where I sit with this season.

I think there's a lot of mistakes I made early on in the season that I think we got away from, thankfully.

And I think we've we landed the plane in a nice place ultimately.

But yeah,

I think going forward, the next season that I DM is going to have less direct connection to the season prior to it, because I think that was a lot of the stuff that made me really interested in the season, but also it's a lot of the stuff that made some of the difficulties and some of the imperfections sort of show up.

But I think generally speaking, it was a big swing.

I'm glad I made the swing.

It didn't always hit, but I'm glad that we did it.

And I'm very proud of all of you for the work that you put in.

I'll give you one more.

I'll give you one more compliment.

No.

Because we talked about it.

No, because I think it's important.

It's something that, you know, I think everybody learns and at once, because

it's not like this is the first thing you've had a long and varied career in video games and writing and so forth and so on.

But I think it's not easy, but it is, it is definitely easier to be creative and keep going when you're having a good time and when it's going well.

Like that is, that's the height.

That's like the most fun part about creativity.

And it's the most fun part about this job.

But I think real artists and people who will stay in an industry or career, the harder thing is to keep going when you don't feel good about it, when you're not sure about it, when you're doubting yourself.

Like that's the hardest part.

And the longer you do this, the more you will have those times.

And the way a lot of people deal with it is just to put their head down and go through the paces and just get through it.

You're just putting your head down.

You're just hoping you get to the other end.

But like, I never saw that with you.

No.

And like, that's the hardest thing to do.

And it's the thing that I always struggle with and always try to make sure.

And honestly, like, your job is a lot harder.

Like, for me, like, I co-write a lot.

I co-direct.

Like, it's nice when you have somebody in that little bubble with you because you can push each other a little bit if one person's feeling down like that.

But even when you're at your lowest, like, you're always trying to find something creative and interesting and new to do.

And to me, that's what makes a real artist and a real creative person.

So I was just very impressed with you the whole season.

I know it's hard, but you did a great job.

Thank you very much.

And like, your humility is a clock.

We don't all need to jump on.

You know, that's how the show works.

We do a circle now.

We all just say our favorite part about Anthony.

We do it.

Fucking.

You only got to deal with this once a season, bro.

I won't go.

Yeah, I will be very surface level and bitchy about it.

But, you know, it's like, I fucking get my feelings hurt all the time.

Like, if somebody's like, this idea is better.

I'm like, fuck, what is wrong with me?

Your ability to take ideas from other people and incorporate them and say, let's do this differently.

And let's, I think it takes much more strength than anybody would admit to.

So, yeah, I'm an all-UV man.

And I also think a lot of the legacy stuff, just to talk about the show in general, the last season, I think, is actually super cool.

Like, and I think it actually, like, it winds up being a hard thing to integrate.

I think you're absolutely right.

And, like, there were times where I felt like it's very appropriate for the show because it's these, there was no other way to do it.

We're the fucking kids of the kids who went on the thing.

So, like, what those kids were doing, how they grew up is an integral part of A, both the fact that it's a sequel season and that people are very, again, people got really attached to Lark and Sparrow and grant and terry which is a credit to your work but like people really wanted to know what happened to those guys when they grew up so like the story of their broken friendship is like a huge part of what influences the story this season so it is a lot of the like sort of the meat and gristle that the kids themselves are wrestling with the sins of their fathers so like it's essential and it's a hard lift to figure out how to work that in but it is like i think a lot of the really compelling moments throughout the season came out of that stuff.

Like I really loved everything we did with normal and like with like finding out what happened with Code Purple, which was devastating.

Like I really liked the time jumpy episode where the dads show up and we're seeing that stuff.

It wound up being a really interesting and fun element of the show.

So that was all I wanted to say about that.

To speak sort of broadly about this weird space that we get into, like I want to also make sure that we acknowledge we're in such weird territory right now.

I mean, this isn't like we're sitting here writing a TV show and there's been how many hundreds of thousands of TV shows and writer Zooms you can look at or feature films or dramas or plays or three act, whatever, right?

The thrill, the tightrope walk of this genre, which is what excited me about it when we first started.

And it was what is, I think, exciting to so many people who listen to it and a reason why it has grown even as a genre in the five years that we've been doing it, going from a niche of a niche of a niche of a podcast genre to something that we can do and have this be almost like a career of source for us.

This is weird territory.

And it's almost like it's a writer's room where it's like, cool, you get one shot at your idea and it's live and we're working it immediately in.

It's a tightrope walk.

It's a fresco painting, right?

It is.

And it's like, again, I always have been listening.

I've been quietly listening to other shows as well.

And again, there's different styles.

There's other DM styles who are like, okay, you get a sense that they've written out the whole lore and all that stuff.

But like, I think.

So we go against that by me preparing nothing.

Well, no, but I think, but I think that like brings nothing into the drift.

But like, there's something like really

interesting and really exciting and unique about that approach, right?

Because I think we know the world of like, okay, it's written out.

And to me, it's like, this is something that's live on its feet and it's evolving and it feels way more like free jazz.

As a writer, it definitely reminds me of a first draft is what it always feels like.

I think like your first draft of a screenplay is usually pretty weird and kind of like all over the place.

But like also the rowdiest ideas are in the first draft.

Exactly.

Like the crazy designs and the stuff that you remember from it.

To me, a lot of the fun of like surrendering yourself to that and then just fucking going for it like has been.

Yeah.

Anyway, it's just been really

fun.

It's a terrifying process.

And I'm proud of us for being able to just be like, no, again,

keep going at it like this, right?

Like on the spot, what can you come up with?

What are you evolving in the moment?

What's everyone in the room?

There's like an energy, which is, by the way, like, I think one of the reasons why this show.

We felt such a difference in this show season one when we switched, when the pandemic hit and we switched to remote, right?

Like there's something very much that I value about this weird living room setup that we have that feels so much more immediate and like this live fucking ball of electricity that we're throwing around to each other.

There's, I don't know, I never would have thought getting into movies that the process of storytelling could express and manifest itself in so many different ways and different approaches that yield such interesting end results.

And I think that like for me, the last five years of this has been a real like lesson in being like, hey, all this stuff that you went to film school, you think you know about narrative and and all this stuff.

It's like, take all that bullshit.

And like, no, no, no.

There's even other ways of looking at that.

There's even other ways of approaching the fundamental things that we think we know about storytelling and look at how it works and look at the flavor and look at the angles that you can get from this that you can't even touch in the world of like if you had written this all out and you had this all planned out and it was all every idea had 10 different iterations and we bounced it around for two weeks pounding our head in a writer's room.

It's like, it's been such a great reminder of like the ways that storytelling can shift and have all of these really really interesting outputs.

Anyway, yeah, it's like, I mean, there's permission to play and there's permission to fail.

And I love that.

If we could zoom out for a second, I've got some questions to cut in line for maybe some of our listener questions.

Do we have listener questions?

I'm sure we do.

Oh, okay.

What do you think your most memorable record was of this season?

Who asked that one?

Oh, no, this is just Beth questions.

These are Beth questions.

She's definitely from the audience.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, probably doing stand-up for Tori.

Gotta be Tori.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's the most memorable.

It's like burns in my mind.

Oh my God, Matt with the Garfield movie.

I remember my insides coming out of my body.

It was like, it was horrific.

I loved every second of it.

I still think about your joke about like, you wish you had a time travel machine so you could go back and tell more sexist jokes.

I think that the Tori thing was like a crazy therapist in a movie would do to you.

And especially for me, like, again, I have a ton of anxiety.

Like, I very much have a perfectionism thing.

So, like, Anthony just shoving us out the fucking airlock and being like, this person has not seen the show.

They don't care.

They're just fucking here.

It's like, this is a stranger.

And like, do an in-character stand-up bit in front of them.

Like, again, it's like, it's exposure therapy for failure, right?

And like, after I did that, it was like, I don't have any fear about this character.

This is like, I can fucking do anything now.

Like, it was a really, really fun.

It still doesn't feel like that actually happened.

Like, we brought that up.

Like, I'm like, that's right.

This season's wild.

Like, we did stand-up in Family Guy, we universe to a stranger.

Yeah, that's definitely the most memorable.

For whatever reason, I think the one that really still still sticks in my mind was an early one when we end up teleported into the FBI and we're stuck in that room.

And I remember just like, not the whole record, but that section there being like, oh, what the fuck am I going to do now?

And ending that episode and then getting into the next one with that feeling for a whole week was very memorable to me in the

I remember the one where Elise showed up.

Yeah.

Was like, that was the one where I think the season two tone like locked in.

Yeah.

I go back to all the time the trumpet acid joke.

Yeah.

Where like the trumpet acid joke was like, this is not a season one joke.

Like I don't think we would ever do the the trumpet acid joke in season one.

But it's like, oh, okay, season two is playing by different rules.

That is the pilot.

Like, I remember just coming in with such a fucking nervous energy.

And like, once we hit the ground running and like the elevator bit, like, I think was like.

The whale.

Yeah, the whale.

Like, the, do you want to see the whale?

Like, I just remember laughing so fucking hard in the room with that stuff.

Yeah.

Fave intro.

Ooh, the intro.

Favorite intro.

We went much more musical this season.

Yeah.

We do a disservice to ourselves by only replaying the musical intros before our live live lessons.

I often forget some of our non-musical intros because of that.

I mean, I really like the Ladybird one.

The what?

The Ladybird one?

I totally forgot about that one.

Yes, because

that one has like the very specific beat from the trailer.

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

We should put a gang of like the L turns into a gun.

Yeah.

Sing like Ladybird 7.

No, it's like a gun as usual.

We should do a compilation of all the non-musical ones.

We should.

It would be fun.

Because it's probably like, what, 45 minutes?

It would be fun to.

Yeah.

I'll answer it to two different versions of the musical ones and the non-musical ones.

The non-musical ones, we've done several Metal Gear parodies, but Link and Taylor doing the mission briefing about Kegels.

He's like a real-the fact that you can hear when it goes into live-action footage.

Yeah.

That you can just hear the audio quality change is like the most specific joke for the smallest amount of people that I hope appreciate it so very much.

It's two lines.

Fucking Matt does this perfect Link as David Hater as Solid Snake fucking voice, which is so funny.

And then, like, I just re-listened to this one.

Tell us a couple specific beats that crack me up.

One, just the like, after World War II and the defeat of Emperor Hiroshita, which has nothing to do with Jekaska.

Is that?

And then there's this one line where you're like, Link.

And it's like exactly how the colonel's a snake.

Like, it's just, it was just like, these guys have played so much fucking metal game, they know exactly what they do.

Oh,

that was a fun.

I had one of my favorite ones to write was the one where Tony Pepperoni dies and the queen had just died.

And we do Tony Pepperoni's funeral.

And like, I remember like I found like this like 30-minute BBC video of the queen's funeral procession.

And I like, it was like the most pizza puns I've ever stuffed into anything.

I just had a ton of fun writing that.

Yeah, that one was fun too because I was for the reverb of that.

I was trying to match the actual church reverb to like, which is like such a weird little.

But it makes that joke.

It wouldn't work without like everyone's been in a church and heard the echoing microphone.

And then in terms of the song ones, we hit the ground running this season with the music parodies to the point where I'm like, we should

this is becoming too easy.

We should be doing less musical parodies next season.

Huge fan of All-Star.

Yeah.

That was the first one we made Anthony sing on, and I was like, oh shit, Anthony fucking killed it.

That was another one where it was like, I think I had another idea, and then it was like, all right, let's just fucking

and was like, oh, this is like once I heard, I didn't think it was sad when I wrote it, and then we heard it, I was like, oh my gosh, we're gonna pressure it.

People are gonna cry listening to this all-star.

I'll be watching you from the stars.

Fuck off.

The most fun I had was definitely the Bill Nye one because of just how loosely we recorded it and how just perfectly it ended up and just being able to go into and play with like okay what are the effects they would have had in like the 90s they wouldn't have any of these nice effects it would all be really pretty oh they're like wow yeah and then i mean like to me Far and away, the best intro was the redux of See You Again.

I was like, nobody liked that.

The fact that people were mad at it is why it's my fucking favorite.

Don't you understand?

I'm just a fucking troll.

It's so good.

It's so funny.

The audacity of it.

I'm proud of that one.

I'm so proud of that one.

It's so much funnier.

I'm still in love with the idea that this character that was in there for half a second

is as much of a thing as Payton did.

Yeah, I'm a big fan of that one.

My favorite is that one.

And then my other favorite is just Black Parade with you, Beth.

Oh, yeah.

Holy splash.

That's a good idea to this.

Oh, but like, I never care.

That song's whatever to me.

You won't fuck yourself for whatever to me.

What really?

That sounds whatever to me.

It never hit me.

That's best singing it.

I get the song now.

And I would always rather listen to your version than the real version.

Yeah, I prefer best version.

I think the voice, again, it's not about the specific scene quality or what.

Like, your voice and the way you perform it to me is, I don't care,

is better than whoever.

I don't even care who's

definitely respect on his name.

It's better.

It's better.

Do you feel like those early ones, because we did that and then we also did Mr.

Brightside?

Do you think that got you ready for Stop Wars?

Yeah, okay.

Yeah, like, I will, like, for some reason, it had never like occurred to me that I would be doing like sophomore slump until I very vividly remember like Freddy coaching me on the

screaming parts of

Black Parade and stuff like that.

And then like driving home and be like, I think I can do this.

Like if I fucking put my mind to it.

So yeah, it was like a big pivotal intro for me.

I also, I'm fucking this last intro.

I'm sorry.

I just loved playing Jessica so much.

It was so good.

The line of that, what is still to me is Anthony is just being like, I've asked you several times not to call a gum.

Fuck, it's I just had a blast with it.

There is a vast difference between is like,

I don't know how that joke is laid on the table for all of human history, and you're the first person to make that because it's crazy.

What's crazy, too, is like, and I love that we kept this, is like, because it still kind of works, but if you listen to it, you can absolutely tell.

It's like, is that you're breaking

as you say it?

Because it's so insane.

We didn't really have a script for that one, so I was like, calm and peepee.

Like, I was losing my mind.

We broke many times in that recording.

That was a fun.

That was, yeah, that was a cool, like, uncut record.

I think my favorite little bit, not to bring it back to Schmegan, but like, I can't remember, I think it was your idea, Matt, to have Henry show up.

I can't remember.

We were like, and then Henry shows up and does a verse.

And then I was like, oh, would it be funny if Henry showed up?

And then you're like, give him like a fucking kid.

Give him a new kid.

A new kid.

And then which is how we came up with Birdie Oak, fan favorite, who was supposed to show up at one point, but did not show up, which I like more than she's just out there.

Is she a bird?

Is she a person?

We'll never know.

But that was very fun.

That was a real troll energy.

I think it was originally like, I was like, put a lore in this intro.

Nobody will like put a lore jump in there.

This is a pure troll energy intro, which when I heard that intro, I was like...

Here's one more thing I can either ignore or try to wrap up.

Speaking of theme music,

some intros and music and all this stuff.

Stay tuned, folks.

We got Maxton Waller in the live waiting room, waiting to come on to talk about the theme song.

Well, he's mugging to the green room, Cam right now.

We'll see him after the break.

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Should we introduce our special guest for this guest

from the wall show?

Hey, you just walked into the studio.

Hey, y'all.

You know, I was thinking actually we should talk about first is our confusion about the certain lyrics of like classic rock songs that we listen to and songs from musicals.

We got that in the video.

We got a good video of using it.

We got a really great video of us.

Max and Maxon, you're here to talk about the music video.

Yeah, yeah, Mike.

Fuck me.

right?

Hey, Maxie, why don't you stay in the summer night?

We shot a really good video.

I'm still cutting it together, but just like a really good video of us doing our gang vocals, our teen vocals for the end song.

But let's talk about the intro song and the end song and what was different this time around.

We interrupted.

Anthony had like a good intro.

That was a good question.

And we just talked over him.

So go ahead, Anthony.

I was going to ask, at what point did you decide, instead of doing the typical season one sad acoustic version of the theme song, to do a marching band version instead?

Well, Freddie texted me and said, start thinking about a different version for end of season two.

I think I was like watching TV or watching trailers at home and I was like, epic trailer version.

What if?

What if they don't blink at the beginning?

And Freddie just didn't respond.

I was like, all right, so no on that one, I guess.

Yeah.

And then we.

He was compiling the drone shots, you know, for the other trainer.

Yeah, and then we texted back and forth a little bit about it.

Marching band was actually your idea.

I had a dream.

And then you and I had this.

And then I saw you in the Discord said the same thing.

So we met in the Dreamscape, my brother.

Wait, what?

I don't know.

Yeah, I was just, I met Freddie in the astral projected over to Freddy's house.

And I was like, what about a marching band version?

And then, you know, I turned into a big galligator and Freddy.

No, I was traveling the astral plane.

Freddy was traveling the astral plane at this time.

No, I did wake up.

I think it was on the tour.

Matt and I, we just, you know, we got back from this film tour showing our movie.

And then I was like, one of the mornings, I was like, hmm, something different.

Marching band.

Yeah.

I figured we were going to do another acoustic one.

And then you were like, let's do something different.

And then you said, Martin, yeah.

It literally never occurred to me that it would be an acoustic.

I don't know why.

I was like, it's got to be something different.

I remember because Freddy, we were on the plane.

Freddy was like, Matt, sometimes...

When I dream, good ideas come.

I'm like, where's this going?

And he's like, this is why I listen to myself in my dreams.

Like, okay.

He's like, a marching band version, not acoustic.

We can't do the same shit again in marching band.

It's going to be good.

It's good.

Was he doing the It's why you hand gesture like that?

Yeah, he was.

He was like, this is why I listened to my dreams.

I was like, no, that is a good idea, Freddy.

Good job.

You should dream more.

That was very good.

So, yes, they did come to you in your dream and you were very excited by it.

And it was perfect.

Yeah.

Alex, can you tell us a little bit more about how much you liked Freddy's idea?

Did you mean this one or all of them?

No, I love this idea.

I mean, it was.

So Wednesday at Vidiots, some people came up to me and they were like, hey, are we going to get an acoustic version of On My Way?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I was like, Uh, I don't think we had figured it out yet.

And I was like, No, no, probably not, but I don't know.

You know, like trying to be kind of this was a little bit last minute.

And I have to give you a lot of credit for jumping on and being like, Oh, hell, yeah, you know, and turning it around very, very quickly.

It was a wild weekend, but it was fun.

Yeah, so that was the only thing that was kind of stressful was like, because marching band is like to make it sound real with software instruments, you need a lot of tracks and you have to kind of put them all in a space.

And the space has to be the same kind of across all the tracks.

So then you're for like the music nerds out there, you're stuck determining like, okay, am I going to use like the microphones that are built into the software instrument tracks, or am I going to use a reverb that sounds like a room across the board?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I went with the first one because the mics sounded pretty good, but the most time-consuming thing was the dialing in of the.

Well, I would imagine, too, because there's actually quite a bit of horns in the original.

So, like, making that distinct, which I think you did a great job of, like, that is another challenge in terms of like, because it sounds like a marching band, which is super cool.

But yeah, that's awesome.

It's deceiving because in the original, there's actually

three tracks that are stereo horn tracks.

And on each one, I'd say there's about like three or four horn parts.

And one of them I just muted because it wasn't working.

Interesting.

There's a thing that happens in the chorus.

It's like a bow, bump, bump, bada.

and I just muted that because I was like, that's not really.

So, the other thing about the room sounds of the marching band instruments was that with the way that these samples were working, there's like a much longer delay.

And because I was doing it in Pro Tools, figuring out the delay compensation was like sometimes literally dragging over the so like timing everything up, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and all that stuff.

What is the room like, what is it that you eventually ended up on?

Like, is it like you know, studio hall three?

It was like whatever they recorded it in.

So, but they get different mic positions when they do it.

And a lot of it was a Spitfire library called Drumline for the drums.

Oh, cool.

And a lot of the Spitfire stuff is recorded at Abbey Road or

Air Studio.

So it's like actual instruments that are recorded as samples, and then you can kind of line them up yourself to make what you want out of them.

That's kind of dope.

Yeah, exactly.

That's really cool.

How many times did you have to watch the Nick Cannon movie Drumline between

the space?

Okay.

Yeah, it's burned into my mind.

The only question I had, and this was the only note I had on an early draft, which was, where did the library of the one guy blowing the whistle at the beginning come from?

Because, you know, I mean, all the marching bands are like,

and then there's this where, tweez!

You know what I mean?

Like, what's that guy doing?

Is there a special library just for him, or was that you with a whistle outside?

I thought about it.

I thought about the whistle library.

I just couldn't justify the $49 whistle library that I was only going to use one time.

I got it off a split.

Every song you do from now on has a whistleblower.

Gotta make it work.

I gotta get my money.

What do you think about whistle whistle right here?

We have a guy just to hype everyone up, blew a whistle really hard at the beginning of this song, too.

And then I was gonna go buy a whistle and do it, but then I forgot and I ran out of time.

So, so whistles were $49 also.

And you're like, Yeah, it was like, I mean, if scissors are $42, it's the same size as your scissors.

Yeah, and you know, it's just gonna end up in a fucking landfill anyway.

So, like, you know what I mean?

I found one on Splice, which is like an online sample library.

Oh, cool.

Online whistle store.

Yeah.

And I searched drill beats and then I found they have like all the different layers of different beats in there.

And I found a whistle and I just cut it and like

I think I tuned it up.

So is that a custom drum line that you put together yourself or was that like, cause I was like, how, where did you like, do you have a lot of

cooking up a drum line part?

Because that feels like an incredibly specific type of percussion thing to do.

I texted this to Freddie.

It was just individual samples that I kind of like programmed in, but I was in drumline

in high school.

But don't get excited he played the whistle we didn't have real drums because our teacher you know god bless him like didn't have his stuff together too great so we were hitting trash cans and okay like it was like a stomach yeah

nice and i remember we went in this parade there's like a lot of parades in tampa and like right on bayshore and we went in this local like kids parade and i was holding this hefty 50 gallon plastic garbage bin upside down and like hitting it with an actual drum mallet.

And by the end, my hand was just so blistered and like messed up from the

walking like two miles doing this for like an hour.

You know, it sucked.

But no, I,

I mean, like, as far as that goes, it was pretty straightforward.

If you know what it's supposed to sound like, sure, yeah.

Is drum lines just like you take the beat and then you just put a lot more in there?

And it's like, it's like it's like,

it's like

a drum line now.

There are drum managers out there shaking

Yeah, I mean, you're not entirely wrong.

He says there's too many notes to solidarity.

Yeah,

that's kind of the gist of it.

But yeah, that's probably going to upset some people.

Matt's already pissed off farmers.

I'm going after photos.

He just says what we're all thinking.

Yeah, it's a lot of like knowing what the rhythms sound like and then layering them in.

And there was, I think twice I would walk away and go get a coffee and come back and listen to it.

And I'm like, this is unhinged.

Like there's way too much going on.

So I mute a bunch of stuff.

The idea was to like get it to sound as big as possible using as few tracks as possible.

I guess.

So it won't just sound like a coffiny of noise.

Because it will very quickly, especially with like 800 snare drums, you know,

all playing.

Also for this one, by the way, just sort of to keep talking about this track, everyone got a second verse that wasn't in there before.

Well, before we talk about the second verse in particular, can we zoom out a little bit and talk about like, you're kind of like a creepo because you somehow wrote a song that made more sense after we completed the story that you did not hear you.

Oh, yeah.

So like, how, I know this is your job.

How did you do that?

Like, what was your approach to the second season theme in general?

Because I don't even think we've had you on to just discuss the second season theme.

You know, we, when we did the season two theme, Freddie and I talked like at length about what the characters, who they were, like, what this season was going to be like, as much as we knew at that point, there's like a lot of,

I used to tell myself it'll be all right.

Like, it was intended to kind of be an evolution of the first, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, yeah, that comes through, I think.

Yeah.

Um, is that maybe it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy because that song

much

that like no, I mean, I actually genuinely think that's partially the song becomes part of the identity of the show to me.

So then like I have to say,

also there's an alternate version.

You guys did a ver like a first version of the season two theme that was like way more like upbeat.

It had like a lot of like

the who kind of input.

Like maybe I was like much more optimistic.

It's about time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was like really, really hard rock at all, which I loved.

But like once we did the second one, and like, I remember when we all listened to it, it was like, holy shit.

And it kind of like

flavored how I was thinking about the season for sure.

We were also just coming off of like the fetch quest theme.

So I was fucking.

Oh, yeah, that's right.

So, I mean, as far as influencing the show, like, does that mean I get an EP credit or something?

Yeah.

Yep, I just said it.

Cool.

Matt says what we're doing.

Once you unionize, you'll get whatever credit you want.

And then as we said, we get the whole song at the end here.

Yeah.

So are you saying that because you're not playing the you know, there's a podcast edit, and if you recall, for those of you who remember season one,

the dictum of season one's like intro was very specific and it was designed entirely around the fact that at some point something needs to drop out and we need to do an intro to a podcast.

So like structurally, it's not like what you're full song.

It's not full song.

It's a podcast song.

Right.

With a little bit of a verse that dips out for a little bit as the background music goes.

So it's like it's fulfilling needs beyond kind of the typical just like, I want to make a three and a half minute Yeah catchy song Similar to this, you know like there's two verses and then we were like oh, but like you know, it's a podcast So we gotta get into the show, you know So we duck and then we don't hear and we haven't heard until this point, which is I think kind of cool.

It's always hidden there.

Yeah, it was always in the except for people who went to band camp to download the full version.

Yeah, the full version.

The true version.

Yes, that's true.

That's true.

That's true.

Yeah.

And it's funny you talk about that too.

Cause like, as far as all right goes, it's like the most positive response I've ever had to anything I ever did in my life oh really yeah like you said it's like you'll be so surprised it's like a minute and 30 seconds long and I'm just like maybe I should just write songs that are a minute and you and I talked about that one time actually you were talking about tick tock or something yeah the kids are popping off with that song have you seen this like hyper music

no is that what it's called I love it I saw a YouTube video the other day that was basically they're like yeah so you're gonna take this EDM song and speed it up 30 BPM and then you're gonna chop this up and then speed it up again and it was crazy but it was really fun And I don't know.

I really dig it, you know?

I think we're entering this like Dada is deconstructivist era when it comes to pop music for the first time.

You're getting like just absurd sounding stuff.

Stuff that makes you feel like old for the first time, dog.

Yeah.

Damn.

It's such an interesting kind of like combination of our attention spans are so short that we need like two minute songs.

But then when you find a song that you really like, you just want it to be longer.

So this is kind of an interesting little situation there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Totally.

Weren't songs shorter, though?

No.

No, no, like the Beatles and the Monkeys.

Yeah, back in the day.

Because there's that sample that Kanye uses that, like, whatever that famous guy's like, here's all you need for a two-minute song.

And then as streaming got, before they realized that it was all about the number of tracks, it's like songs like as concept albums started becoming again as all long game.

But I feel like whenever I listen to the monkeys, like every song from the monkeys is like two minutes long.

Yeah.

There's some jazz songs that are like old jazz standards that if you just listen to the old recordings of them, yeah, they're like a minute and a half.

Yeah, I guess like classic rock is all like 11 minutes anthems.

But like, oh, I think that's the thing.

The Beatles songs are like like 22 minutes long also.

I was thinking of the ultimate too long song, which is Led Zeppelin's Whole Out of Love, which has that whole shitty section in the middle.

It's like, it's literally like, they go from the hardest rock riff of all time to just noodly bullshit for 10 hours, and then the greatest guitar solo you've ever heard, and then back into just the hardest rock riff.

I feel that way about Rush.

Rush endures because they are the only artists capable of making a song that like 10 seconds in, you're like, this is the sickest song I've ever heard.

And then 10 seconds later, you're like, this is the dumbest dumbest shit that's ever been recorded.

And then

10 seconds later, you're like, nah, nah, it's good again.

In that realm of like songs that feel like they go too long, for me, and I get why it is, Metallica is the ultimate, like, I get it, man.

Seven minutes in.

I ain't my guy, you know?

Yeah, I'm really glad you said that.

Casey Edwards and I are in like a constant feud about Rush.

He loves Rush.

And I'm always like sending him pictures of like.

my trash can.

I'm like, that's where Rush should be.

Oh, shit.

He's like pretty mad at me about it.

Well, we are going to want a rush-themed theme song for season three.

That's the tonal song.

Season three is rush.

It's probably crushed.

17 minutes.

It would be prog rock epic.

I feel like sometimes when people make something based around something they hate, they crush it.

I feel like if we told you to do a rush song, people making Dungeons and Dragons podcasts.

Exactly.

I feel like you would crush it.

I feel like if a minute and a half worked, like, why wouldn't 22 and a half minutes work?

It's 22 times as good.

Yeah,

exactly.

Yeah, I guess it all comes back around.

It's like fashion.

Yeah.

That's true, that's true.

Maybe we're entering our prog rock era with all of the shortened songs.

Oh, god, when is um, when's Scott coming back?

Can you tell us so I can be ready?

I don't know if Scott ever left, or left.

Yeah, yeah,

always with us.

Have you heard my Tapatillo tweet?

No, I don't.

I don't understand what you said.

Somebody did a tweet that said,

I ain't got no Tapatillo, I ain't got no spicy sauce.

I think about that constantly.

Are you a hot sauce head?

I am, yeah.

I mean, I don't know the difference between hot sauces.

I just like burning myself.

What are your sort of final thoughts here, Max, in terms of where the season

song went?

Like, what do you think?

What are you doing?

Your final thoughts in terms of how we ended the season.

So I'm actually, I put like a compilation together of all the theme songs and iterations for the show so far.

Oh, sick.

And I'm putting it out on Spotify on April 12th.

Oh, fuck you.

Hell yes.

Yeah, so I wanted to plug that, obviously, but I'm super excited because like people have been messaging me about like put it out on Spotify.

Yeah, yeah.

That's great.

And I think like finally, I just felt like there was enough stuff to do a, I didn't want to just do one, another one.

Super mini, but that's the way it worked, but that's the way Spotify gets played.

Yeah, it totally is.

But I'm also just like really stubborn.

When was the decision to have all of us characters sing?

Yeah, that was another thing that we talked about in that same text message where it was like, I had mentioned like doing a choral version

and

Gregorian chant.

Everything.

I think like

the backdrop of you all against a choral version may have rubbed a little bit.

I felt like with the marching band thing, it made a lot more sense.

This is not exactly what I'm trying to say.

I'm just trying to say.

Hardly.

What do you mean?

Totally cool.

No, you guys nailed it.

That was like the most fun.

That was one of the the most fun recording sessions I've ever had.

And you got to meet my mother-in-law, too.

That was cool.

She was a nice lady.

She was like, they were so nice.

She's like, they're all so nice.

I'm like, yeah, you know, you just met them.

So give us a

second.

Sell them at their best.

Yeah, right.

No, I really, I thought that was great because I feel like, to me, that's like the Marching Bang India was really good.

And then once it was like hearing all the characters sing at the end.

Yeah.

It's very emotional.

Yeah, it was really hard thought.

I think it fits really well for, especially since all the characters have this like baggage, other than maybe Taylor, who's like pretty much expresses himself at all times.

But the other three characters are like hard to express themselves.

So like hearing everybody like singing just like all out, like this like kind of like triumphant song was like, I thought that was like perfectly fitting.

I was actually going to ask, how did you pick the final arrangement in terms of who got what line?

Because we had like thoughts on it originally, and then we were like, you know, let's all just sing the entire thing and then let Max and Freddie kind of figure it out.

I really liked that like Normal and Hermie come in as like together.

I thought that was really cool.

Like there's a lot of nice little choices in how that worked out.

It's like, what was your instinct?

What were your instincts on that?

I knew that I wanted to start with Beth.

And then I knew that, like, I was going to basically go through all the takes and pick like the best couple words from everybody.

And Freddie and I had talked a lot about, like, is somebody doing a whole line versus a half line?

And then panning was another thing.

Like, where are they in the mix?

And so it was kind of like, you know, Will, you and Anthony sounded.

like your voices together worked really well.

And then like Beth and Freddie's voices worked together really well.

And I knew Matt was like a standalone, and he wasn't going to work with anybody,

right?

Just because, like, it was like in the middle, and I was like, that's the timing of it, and everything, like, it's going to hit right there, you know, just like dynamics, basically.

It was fucking cool.

Like, it was really awesome hearing it come together.

Yeah.

And I had listened to it when Will found it in the drop.

Yeah, we were like asking for it.

We're like, where's it cut?

Where is it?

Where is it?

You fucking nothing.

I was like, goddamn it.

I had to dig through the Dropbox and pull out like the max mix.

I was like, here we go.

I was like, thank God Will did this because I would have done the exact same thing.

And I heard it and I was like, this is amazing.

But, you know, I had like been at the recording, so I didn't think it would like affect me.

And then when I heard it in conjunction with like having just listened to the finale, and then when everybody's like credits came in at the end, yeah, I teared up and I was like, I did this.

I don't know why I'm crying, but yeah, it really touched me.

Dude, you guys crushed it.

I even like texted Beth afterwards and was like, punk band?

Like, are we starting a punk band?

band or something?

And I don't know if the world would be down, but I would be down.

But I think the whole idea is that who cares if you're down?

Because that's like punk rock.

No, I don't know.

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, what is more punk rock?

You think the sex pistols were like, I don't know, people are going to like this?

I don't know if we should put sex in our name

or a gun.

I just know there was this moment where, Freddie, you were standing off to the side of my desk.

Beth was in the booth.

Beth started to sing, and you and I looked at each other.

Yeah.

And we both had the same thought at the same time, which was like going from pre-sophomore slump talking to you about singing and like how you felt about it versus now.

I was like, holy fuck, like Beth is a really

process.

You know, you can see a video of it that we did for an MBIC, but like recording sophomore slump, you get to see you at the start of that process, your time out taking vocal lessons.

And then in that booth at the end, it was like, oh, shit.

This is somebody who's had a little bit of mic experience, a little time on the booth.

You can tell.

Yeah, she kicks the fucking door down.

That's great.

Yeah.

It was great.

And the grit, which is like not easy to do for a lot of people.

So, yeah, it was a total treat.

And like, get just getting to hang out with you guys and stuff.

Yeah, we are really funny.

In my studio and everything

to be transparent, I was a little nervous about that because the first time I've had like a group session in there.

So I was like, oh, I don't know what this is.

Good space.

Good space.

The vibe feels pretty good, right?

Vibe feels like

it's cozy, but it's also just like you could get in the work zone.

I felt safe and taken care of.

You did wonderful.

Yeah.

But being spooned by rooms.

Yeah.

Well, a good natural light.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And

you're going to press buttons on.

That's how you know, by the way, when you're in a real spot, when you just

air conditioner remote turn.

It was weird that you required no pants while working there, but other than that, that's just a thing I do.

Yeah, yeah.

That's just sort of just got to keep it free and just a rule, you know?

No inhibitions.

Like jazz, it's about the clothes you don't wear.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, thank you so much for spending time with us talking about the songs and your incredible contributions to the show, Max.

What's your instinct for season three?

What's my instinct?

I know, I know.

Just what do you think?

What do you want to do, baby?

Like, what do I want to do?

Dude, I would really love to do something that is at least like hip-hop adjacent.

I knew you were going to say no.

Oh, yeah.

I felt in my bones, man.

Yeah.

It was one of the things that I had actually texted you about this season two and theme song where I was like, maybe we should do a hip-hop version of it.

Good news.

The next thing that I'm DMing is set in the 1950s.

So

get ready to think in exactly the opposite direction.

Yeah, that's great.

Yeah, but here's the thing, right?

Like, I think that, like, one of the fun things about when we do the theme song, I felt this in season one.

I felt like we were like, all right, we just got to get a show.

We need to get a theme, whatever, right?

But then as we did Fetch Quest, as we do season two,

it sort of becomes its own little weird creative thing.

I would say that, like, I think I'm pretty confident that Fetch Quest went in the direction that nobody thought it would go.

And I think

I still think about how insane the Fetch Quest theme is.

And then dog.

The Miley Samuel.

Yeah.

R.I.P.

R.I.P.

to a real one, but immortalize forever in the FetchQuest theme.

To the fucking heavy metal blast beat into the...

trap beat at the end.

Yeah.

And it was just like, I just remember you sent me the first cut.

I was like, this is, I just like, my brain just went on a whole journey.

It's 30 seconds.

Yeah, Fetch Quest from the 50s.

What's that like?

Yeah, interesting.

Interesting.

Anyway, that sounds fun.

That's some synths.

Maybe,

yeah, maybe some synths.

Maybe some.

Maybe go like old.

If we were old, not that we are necessarily, but if we were all playing like grandparents, we were old folks, what would you think?

What's your right away?

What would we bring up?

Old folks?

Grandparents in SpaceX.

I think you still probably think hip-hop.

Yeah.

I was thinking, do you do it like, this is classics are from?

Because 2000 years in the future.

Yeah.

I have this buddy who Freddy has met named Chel Strong, who's just like a fucking incredible rapper.

And like has, he's one of those people, you record him and then you don't have to time correct anything he does.

And I've done that where I like move something onto the grid and he's like, no, that's not right.

Move it back.

And I'll move it back.

And I'm like, oh, he did that on purpose.

Like he's in the pocket constantly, which is an unbelievable.

talent.

Yeah.

That is like super rare.

I would love to do something, maybe bring him in and like do something.

He's the best.

But 50s, grandparents, I mean, that's fucking rad.

It won't be grandparents.

Great grandparents.

I'm doing a thing in between that's a 1950s.

Give me a hint next time.

Can you give me a hint?

We don't know yet.

Oh, well, no, it's his thing.

So my thing is we're doing a Call of Cthulhu thing set in like Leave It to Beaverville.

Oh, dude, then you know what it is.

Monster Mesh.

No, it's like

mid-century modern Palm Springs, lots of like, what's that instrument?

Oh, like the Wurlitzer mood organ.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh,

that sounds so fun.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, no, it's like a horror 1950s.

Rhodesy.

Fuck, what is a Heyman vibraphone?

Vibraphone, and like, uh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Like some lounge kind of thing going on a little bit.

Interesting.

I like that.

That could be fun.

Yeah, like going zagging a little bit from like the way you think the like 1950s horror with the synth or whatever the

pheromon.

Yeah,

that would be the most obvious thing to do, but it's like hear me out, though, a fucking Cthulhu version of the Monster Mash, but it's like about Cthulhu and Riley and all those guys.

I was racist in the lab.

Shit, that's good.

I mean, give me any excuse to buy a theremin.

Oh, yeah.

That's, I feel like every component.

You can make one.

I could technically make any of the money.

I don't know if I could make it.

You could.

They're not hard to make.

Well, I can't make it.

Matt, wait, wait.

Okay, hold on.

Bitch, go home.

Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.

Matt, they're not hard to make a theremin.

So where are you pacing that off of?

Like, your extensive musical

Ed Wood came out.

I may or may not have made a theremin in high school.

You mean a theremin in high school?

Yeah, it didn't work very well.

I'll show you.

It's not that hard.

It's just a fucking like electrical circuit between like two pieces of metal next to each other.

I'm obsessed when you watched Ed Wood and you're like, I need to make a therapy.

Matt was the sickest kid in high school, dude.

It was pretty fucking cool.

Pretty fucking cool.

That's great.

Well, thank you guys so much.

Thank you.

Thank you for being here.

I love you.

You're like a quality multiple.

I love D-Max.

And where's the Spotify?

What's your Spotify, bro?

Oh, it's just my name, Maxin Waller.

All right.

That's so sick.

So fuck yeah.

Yeah,

April 12th.

And you're going to get all right, the acoustic version.

It'll be the 1930s version that we did with the brass section.

And then it'll be the season two theme and then the renditions thereafter of that.

Oh, and an instrumental one, just in case people are curious.

You can throw a fetch quest on there too, right?

FetchQuest is on there.

Nice, sick.

Yeah.

See, that's an example of a song.

I'm like, I wish this was 10 times longer

thank you max thank you

max

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So, Quick Outs Breakfast asks, Are we happy with where our characters wound up?

Extremely satisfied.

That little detail that Beth, you added of Taylor absolutely went to jail.

Yes, absolutely.

Fucking hilarious.

Of course, this feral child who thinks he's perfect goes to jail.

Like, yes, that's absolutely.

It does not affect his confidence in himself at all.

Yeah, because by the way, we've seen those guys.

The guy who did Fire Festival still run around trying to do Fire Festival again.

Jason Taylor tried to do a Fire Festival.

I think he tried to start his own anime con.

Or a cult.

An anime convention.

Like his own convention.

And he got all the money first and then didn't know what to do with it.

He got fucking Dash Con 2.

Dash Con 2.

He got the ball pit from Dash Con.

Yeah.

I'm really, really, really happy with where Normal wound up.

I like that it's not a tidy little bow.

I miss that little goofus so much.

Yeah, I had a ton of fun playing the character.

And I, yeah, this it's is a simple answer, but yes, absolutely.

Yeah, I'm so stoked.

The fact that Matt gave me such a gift in that Link and Scary being married, not just because it's funny, but because I think, you know, in order to not saying that all marriages are good, but to be in love with somebody, you have to love yourself.

And there's an implicit like love for herself that Scary has found along the way here.

And I think that that was so sorely lacking at the beginning of the season.

So to see her find that, it was really important to me for her arc and stuff like that.

So I'm stoked.

Yeah, I wasn't sure we're going to the very end but you know i always like that these coming of age stories are not about like having an ending so much as like understanding where the character is going to be putting their efforts as they move forward and i thought that last moment with lincoln and grant was just like the right amount of acceptance of where they are in a bad spot but they both decide that they're going to work together as in a different relationship than it was before like not that they're not father and son anymore but it's a different age like you're older like now we have to work more as like peers and that we're in a relationship together and like you need to work with me if i'm going to you know be your son and so forth and then I thought all the ending was just really fun like it's not that it needs to be like happy per se but I thought so much of it was so rough that like yeah I just like that Lincoln had a nice you know he doesn't have to be a pro soccer player or any of the stuff like I just like him being around town and I feel like Lincoln just wants family in the first place so like him having a son and just being at the school and you know his coaching just felt felt right and fun.

And then he, you know, he fucking, he landed the hottest girl in school.

What do you want?

What do you want?

Link in one.

The lowest two is Peter.

No, I thought it was really funny.

And it's funny because I didn't even think about him having a kid and then adding Jerry was just, I think in my head, him being there as a soccer coach was maybe a little sadder.

But then it's so funny, the coach lineage, too.

Yeah, that was just cute about it.

But then it's specifically, it's just having a kid that's at the school that's also like, clearly he's well-parented enough that we're like engaging him to like, go out there and be the mascot and he's struggling.

I don't know.

It's just, I fit really well.

I was like, this is wonderful.

I just love the addition of Jerry being the kid.

And it's funny because in retrospect, I don't know, it's just a good parenting moment for Link.

Like, Link takes his friend who is a good mascot and like the first thing he's thinking about is like, go, hey, my son's having some trouble.

Yeah.

Like, I don't know.

He's just like,

now my sad friend is going to tell him something really depressing about being a mascot.

I feel like in that moment, you made Link like a good dad, too.

So it just worked really well.

I thought it was really fun.

I loved it.

Nikita asks, after season one, playing characters around your age, then digging through memorability to make younger season two characters, how is everyone feeling about making season three grandparents who will presumably be quite a bit older than all of you?

Or are you still of the teen mindset and the due date is the due date and you haven't thought about it yet?

This is the latter for me.

Because we have like another season before that.

Yeah.

I got to be thinking about this new character I need for Will's thing.

I've definitely vaguely thought about grandparents.

To me, I know like the general angle I just want to do.

And just in terms of like, I want to have a character that's just like in the prime of their life, you know, like fucking ready for the big ride, baby, you know, a little looser, like a little bit more.

I've been very much, I can't remember if I bitched that.

I was like, like somebody should play like a 35 year old who married a widow you know what i mean and it's like i'm a grandpa now and like his kids are like his age and they're like do not call me grandpa you are two years older than

that

i was thinking it would be fun to do a valley girl grandma like it'd be an old person voice but also a valley girl voice that would just be a fun challenge i was also low-key thinking about playing a grandma so we'll see how it goes there's this fucking song bonnie rait song called angel from Montgomery, which is one of my favorite songs, but it's about this old woman living in Montgomery.

It's a fucking awesome song about like womanhood from this perspective of this, you know, like from an older perspective, which we don't hear a lot.

And then I found out it was written by John Prine, who's like a 30-year-old dude when he wrote it.

I'm like, how the fuck did he write this song?

This is insane.

So I was like, if John Prine can do it, I can do it.

I can play it.

So a 30-year-old man wrote an older woman that responded really well to another 30-year-old.

Exactly.

This guy really gets what it's like to be an old woman.

I think I could play such a funny crotch of the old person.

I'm still looking forward to that.

But yeah.

For our last question, let's go for Torby.

Torby says, is there anything you wanted to accomplish for your characters that couldn't happen in a story?

That couldn't happen.

No.

Is there anything you want to do?

I would say my mildest regret is that, and it's not even necessarily a character thing.

I wish we had done an intro that.

was like a parody of some of the music I listened to in high school.

So meaning that like maybe 23 people have heard of the song.

You know, it's just like a real deep cut, 30.

Real deep cut, like 2009 sort of song and done a parody of that would have been my dream.

But maybe next time.

I think I said mine, which is I think Taylor definitely had an insufferable monologue to his friends where he recast himself, of course, as the R-biter and the fucking guide shepherd for their world.

It's like, damn, to me, very funny.

It wasn't either for the season.

I guess the only thing, and I always tried to find ways.

I think one of the intros I even, we did when like the Schmegan captured us, I like made him me talking to Marco.

I was like, I wish we had, like, he never really solidified, and we never really had a, like, the most time we have with him is in the Titanic, and even then it's not really.

So, like, it would have been fun to

do something

with an ILA.

Son of the Ambassador of China.

Sorry, Matt.

Oh, no, no.

I had a lot of ideas for Marco.

But again, he didn't really, it's not like really regret, but that would be the only thing I can really think of them.

Like, stuff I had thought about that never really, we never really did anything with.

I am bummed.

I couldn't find a way to sneak Birdie oak in there.

I thought that would have been fun with normal.

I'm trying to think if there was anything.

The whole time I was looking at my spell sheet, normal has an ability called divine intervention where you can like ask God to do something for you.

And so I was like, I had that in my back pocket, like normal will at the most desperate possible moment.

I can pray to God and see what happens.

Or normal's God, or figure out like he's going to pray to this.

When I rolled him as a cleric, I was thinking that obviously like school spirit became like a big thing with him.

But like, I was thinking that, like, oh, like, there's this fun motif of like school spirit being the sort of like religion that he has that I didn't really explore as much.

But that was the one spell I was like, oh, I've never got a chance to use this.

But we got that great moment on the throne of God, anyways.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's true.

If we became God, my big moment is, uh, I regret that the Kellogg can knife never came back.

No, it's not your bad, it's it's the group's bad.

I was really hoping that would be a really good brick joke of like, hey, remember when we said that if you didn't masturbate, this would be useful.

Well, they haven't masturbated for the entire 25 episodes between, you know, introducing it to

kill Willie in one shot with the Kellogg Ka knife.

But it's no big deal.

It's better that he died for a long time.

It's lying somewhere, sitting there gathering.

The Kellogg Kaif is the same.

Gathering infinite power.

Well, no, but think about it for a second.

It's so interesting that we have the duality of the Kellogg Ka knife and the JO crystals as like cannon because they both kind of are like two sides of the same coin.

You know what I'm saying?

Fascinating.

Well, that's it for season two, I guess.

Now, now, before we wrap it up, there's a baton that's about to be handed.

Oh, no.

One man to one DM to another DM.

Oh,

I'm taking out the baton now.

Oh,

it's shining.

What's a deal?

What a kind of baton you have, Anna.

A little floppy.

A little floppy.

It's a fleshlight on one side.

I'm passing it over to William.

Thank you.

William!

I am putting the fleshlight on my penis.

You have sheathed the baton of DMing.

Tell us, William, what secrets can you reveal?

So it looks a little roomy.

Oh, my God.

It feels a little roomy.

The next thing we're going to do is for about a year, we're going to be running another game in the Call of Cthulhu system.

Our favorite system.

So we're taking a little break from DD, and so it's going to be a horror campaign set in the 1950s.

The name is the Peachyville Horror.

Think Leave It to Beaver meets Call of Cthulhu is all I will say for now.

Love it.

We're very excited for that.

So, yeah, you guys all got to email me your 50s.

Yes, yes.

I have absolutely 0% of my character done.

So that is my job excellent this week.

I'm very excited, though.

Will wanted me to play a Confederate soldier.

I want to know.

Hold on.

I told Matt, I was like, you know, 1950s, like you could be a hundred-year-old Civil War soldier is all I said.

That's true.

And then Matt was like, Will, the only way I would do this is if I got to play Confederate soldier to make you uncomfortable.

And I was like, it's fine if you do it.

I'll just kill you off very quickly.

That'd be the only way it would be funny, but I could never do that.

No, I'm not going to be a Civil War soldier.

I don't want to be an old man.

ghosts.

But what?

Only time will tell.

Do any of you know your characters yet?

No.

Yeah, I know.

Yeah.

You know,

and by the way, I want everyone to know.

Freddy, if you workshopped your next female star station screen name that you're going to be not yet.

No, no, no.

I come into it.

I have some options for you.

So just let me know.

Excellent.

And I want to say one of the things I'm most excited about.

Can I just pitch one to you?

Yeah, it's here.

Tony Colette.

That's really good.

Tony Collette.

Holy shit, dude.

Holy shit.

That's better.

I was going to say Ashley Judd, but Tony Collector.

Tony Cole.

Ashley Judd, I really like that.

I love Ashley as a male name.

Yeah.

One of the things I'm most excited about here as the show continues for our next arc is for the world to meet Anthony Birch as a player.

People on the Patreon have gotten hints of Birch as a player.

But secretly,

but I'm saying like in a long form, like really, like, I'm psyched because I think secretly...

Full look at him.

Like, come here.

Yeah.

Come here.

I think secretly.

show me what you got.

I think secretly we've been harboring a fucking killer.

A fucking weapon.

Don't

anticipate the best at both parts of the job.

Don't raise your hand.

We fucking put this cannonball on ice for five years and now we unleash it.

Come on, man.

Give a little bit of a hype to yourself, you know?

All right.

Beth, would you like to take us out?

Sure.

Yeah, taking it out.

I want to thank you, the person listening to this.

whether you're a casual, a filthy casual, just like tuning in sometimes, maybe like letting the episodes pile up and then you're like, oh, maybe I'll listen to this fucking podcast while I'm emptying the dishwasher or whatever, or whether you're in jail for stalking one of us.

One of us, I'm guessing.

I just want to say thank you so much to coming on this wild ride with us.

Something that becomes very apparent to me when I read comments and stuff like that about like different parts of the show is that I've listened to maybe every episode of the show like no more than two or three times and I you know still find people who are like yeah I'm on my eighth listen through or something and I'm like wow that you know a lot of people know the show better than maybe we do and they're more familiar and they've really sometimes grown up with the show and stuff like that so that is like kind of take about for that.

I think when you make something and put it out in the world, there's a part of it that doesn't belong to you anymore.

And so to embrace the other people that take ownership over the show and kind of like help it grow and spread the word and stuff like that means so much to us.

And we really truly couldn't do it without you.

So thank you to everyone listening.

Yeah, thank you.

So this is Teen Talk, the summary episode of season two.

But we've done episodes of Teen Talk for every episode of the season as well as every episode of season one.

We have a little show called Talking Dad, same format.

Afterwards, we talk about it.

So, if you're interested, that and a whole lot of more audio and video content available for you, check it out: patreon.com/slash dungeonsandads.

Support the show directly.

How hours of content do we have yet?

I should tally it up, but it is

at least like 300, right?

Yeah, it's a lot.

That'll be at least 300 hours of content.

Yeah, waiting for you on patreon.com/dungeons and dads.

What's coming two weeks from now?

And then, coming from two weeks from now, we're going to give you a little sneak peek, a little taste of one of the probably the biggest fan favorite Patreon response things we've ever done, which is a little side

gamer comedian called Kingdom Dad Monster.

Matt has this, I would say, a cult classic Kickstarter board game called Kingdom Dad Monster.

He loves it.

Kingdom Death Monster.

Kingdom Death Monster.

He's called Kingdom Death Monster.

He loves it for the intricate miniatures that you can paint.

And that's something that he's been doing for Diddy Anime.

Okay, well, now people are going to Google it.

Certain miniatures will give a certain impression of me, and other miniatures will give a different impression of me.

Neither of them are great impressions of me, but let's just be clear: it's a scary monsters part.

Yeah, so kind of a little bit of an experiment.

We've decided to run it.

We've tried to play this game maybe three times, four times, but we've never been able to get it all the way through.

And I said, you know, there's a way you can get something.

It's my favorite board game ever.

And we started this campaign and it's been a hit.

And we're already three episodes in.

And I think it's just going to be a continual monthly Patreon bonus campaign that we're just going to keep doing until people get bored of it.

But so far, that's not been the case.

Honestly, if one of the things you were missing from Dungeons and Daddies is like crunchy combat, where we actually follow rules, this might actually be a series for you.

Probably the crunchiest we'll ever get.

Yeah.

So look forward to that in two weeks.

And then after that, Will takes the reins.

Thanks so much for listening.

We'll see you next time.