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The Middle of Culture is what happens when two siblings with too many opinions and not enough chill dive headfirst into movies, music, video games, and whatever else is rotting our brains this week. It’s part pop culture podcast, part sibling rivalry, and fully unfiltered. Expect passionate arguments, niche references, unsolicited rankings, and the occasional moment of unexpected insight. If you’ve ever wanted to eavesdrop on the kind of argument you’d hear at the family dinner table—only with better audio—this is your show.
00:00-00:03
I just got off the phone with my Arch Nemesis Megatron.
00:03-00:04
We zoomed into each other.
00:04-00:07
We were Skype for business calling each other.
00:07-00:09
And we were like, hey, I got a bitch.
00:09-00:10
Do you have a bitch?
00:10-00:11
Let's have our bitches fight.
00:22-00:24
Welcome back to the middle of culture.
00:24-00:26
I am one of your co-hosts, Peter.
00:26-00:30
And I'm your other Eepie co-hosted.
00:31-00:34
So ee- What what is EP?
00:34-00:35
Sleepy.
00:35-00:35
Oh sleepy.
00:35-00:37
Don't you know the internet slang?
00:37-00:38
I'm also EP.
00:38-00:41
No, of course I don't know the internet slang.
00:42-00:44
I am too old.
00:44-00:45
I'm so eepy.
00:46-00:49
Although you are you are you are a little older.
00:49-00:53
You're getting you're getting well, I would say you're getting closer, but you're not really getting closer.
00:53-00:54
I know.
00:54-00:56
Listen.
00:56-00:59
Listen, one day closer to death.
00:59-00:59
You know?
00:59-01:00
That's how it works.
01:01-01:05
I I saw a funny little clip of a a comedian.
01:06-01:19
who uh it was a little sad how much this sort of spoke to me this week, but he was talking about how he has just a functional amount of depression.
01:19-01:26
He's like, I'm not thinking about killing myself, but I am thinking about when I'm gonna die.
01:26-01:28
And he's like, could we plan that day?
01:28-01:31
That would be okay to get on the calendar.
01:31-01:43
He was talking about, said something about, I think he had a line about, you know, if if I'm on a plane and it's going down, I won't be cheering.
01:43-01:47
I'll scream just enough that nobody gets suspicious.
01:49-01:51
I was like, I hear you.
01:51-01:52
Truly.
01:52-01:52
I hear you.
01:53-01:53
Truly.
01:54-02:03
But anything else going on or uh just getting a little bit older and trying to survive this hellscape that we currently live in
02:02-02:02
Just that.
02:03-02:04
There's nothing more to do, you know?
02:04-02:06
I mean that's all we can do.
02:06-02:09
It does feel some days like a full-time job.
02:09-02:10
Really.
02:10-02:12
But what you been checking out?
02:12-02:18
Anything to uh anything distracting you from from reality adequately?
02:18-02:18
Oh.
02:19-02:20
Doing my darndest.
02:20-02:24
Doing my darndest to distract myself in a billion in a billion ways.
02:24-02:27
Um let me pull up my my magical list here.
02:28-02:31
So first off, first thing I want to mention.
02:32-02:37
So yesterday as well, I'll get to the yesterday in a minute.
02:37-02:47
So I have been, as we have discussed, for many weeks now, reading a lot of uh funky books, funny light novels and stuff like that, many of them villain-esque themed.
02:48-02:58
And that led me to revisit I'm in love with the villainess, which is the one that kicked off my entire villainous, you know, streak.
02:59-02:59
True.
02:59-03:08
Um, because I recently found the audiobooks and I was curious about listening to them because I'm, you know I'm a I'm a big podcast listener.
03:08-03:17
I listen to a lot of podcasts, but you reach a point where you're just kind of through all of your main podcasts, and there are some where you're like, well, maybe I could go back and listen.
03:17-03:23
But I didn't really feel like re-listening to anything, and I was all caught up basically on what I wanted to listen to.
03:23-03:25
But I needed something.
03:25-03:27
You've got to keep the demons at bay somehow.
03:27-03:28
Oh yeah, totally.
03:28-03:33
And so uh Yeah, and so again again you gotta distract yourself from the hellscape.
03:33-03:36
So I was like, well, why don't I try audiobooks?
03:36-03:37
I've never really been an audiobook person.
03:37-03:39
Are you an audiobook person, Peter?
03:39-03:42
Um Yes, kind of sort of.
03:42-03:44
Like, do I like an audiobook?
03:44-03:45
Yes.
03:45-03:51
Do I I would like to listen to audiobooks more?
03:51-03:52
than I do.
03:52-04:01
And so every once in a while I look at my list of podcasts and I go, man, I should trim some of these down and I should swap that audio, that podcast time in with some audiobook time.
04:02-04:04
And then I don't generally do it.
04:05-04:06
But I do like audiobooks.
04:07-04:10
I have been I have been thinking the same thing and uh I finally did it.
04:10-04:13
I finally ding dang did it this last couple of weeks.
04:13-04:13
Very good.
04:14-04:17
Uh because I was just tired of uh My podcasts.
04:18-04:19
I guess I'm over most of them.
04:19-04:20
Yeah.
04:20-04:26
Um, hopefully hopefully that interest will rekindle, or maybe I'll just be on an audiobook kick for a while.
04:26-04:33
But so that, like I said, it led me to go back to I'm In Love with the Villainess, which is a book series I've talked a lot about on this podcast.
04:33-04:34
I really, really like it.
04:34-04:46
It is For my money, the best Isakai style story I've ever read, probably the second best light novel series I've ever read after Adachi and Shimamura.
04:46-04:52
It After a relisten, it's a pretty close, close second to Adachi and Shimamura.
04:52-04:55
Um, because it is just, it's very, very good.
04:55-04:59
And I talked about how fucking buck wild the back half of that gets.
04:59-05:06
I finished it uh I I finished it a couple of days ago and I was just like, man, this just whips so much ass.
05:06-05:11
It's so much better than every other one of these villainous stories I've ever read.
05:11-05:13
But I still do like a lot of villainess stories.
05:13-05:14
So I've been reading some other stuff.
05:15-05:19
Um, one that I am about three-quarters of the way through has a killer name.
05:19-05:23
Which is prison life is easy for a villainous.
05:24-05:24
Okay.
05:24-05:26
And you might be asking yourself, prison life?
05:26-05:27
What do you mean?
05:27-05:34
Um, well, let's just uh uh uh picture this The prototypical thing has happened.
05:34-05:41
The uh villainess is engaged to the prince, but the prince has found a new girl who he likes more.
05:41-05:50
So he decides to defame her, besmirch her honor, and throw her in prison, in the dungeon of the castle.
05:50-05:55
But She found out about it a couple weeks beforehand, so she made plans.
05:56-06:04
And so since no one had been in the dungeon for years at this point, that's basically just there from an old time, from a a vestige of the olden days.
06:04-06:12
Uh, she basically had all of the people who work for her smuggle everything she would need to survive for three months happily into the dungeon.
06:12-06:16
So then when they go and throw her in the dungeon, they're like, what are all these boxes?
06:16-06:17
The guards are like, I don't know.
06:17-06:19
Some people came and said they needed to store them here.
06:19-06:24
And then she locks herself into the cell with magical unbreakable chains and is like.
06:25-06:27
I'm in here for the next three months, bitches.
06:27-06:28
I'm on vacation.
06:29-06:31
And so she's on vacation in prison.
06:31-06:32
It's pretty stupid.
06:33-06:39
And like it is so clearly a send-up of so many of these other series, these these ideas.
06:39-06:44
that kind of are reiterated throughout so many of these villainous uh stories.
06:44-06:45
But I kind of like it for that.
06:46-06:57
I like its audacity that it is explicitly playing with the expectations of the tr of the genre a and and heightening them for comedic purposes.
06:57-06:57
Okay.
06:58-06:59
It's fairly funny.
06:59-07:00
I'm enjoying it quite a bit.
07:00-07:03
I should probably finish it up in the next couple of days.
07:03-07:13
But so between re-listening to I'm in Love with the Villainess, having just listened or read I'm a though I am an inept villainess, reading Prison Life is easy for a villainess.
07:13-07:16
Reading the villainess's stationery store, all these different things I've been reading.
07:17-07:22
My friend, I I mentioned before we got on the call, yesterday I was at a friend's birthday party.
07:22-07:27
And that friend for his birthday had a PowerPoint party.
07:27-07:30
Have you ever been to a PowerPoint party, Peter?
07:30-07:30
No.
07:31-07:32
Do I go to parties?
07:32-07:36
I don't go to parties, but please tell me about the PowerPoint party.
07:36-07:38
Are you familiar with the concept?
07:38-07:39
No, not at all.
07:39-07:48
Oh, well, these became really big in the early days of COVID because it was a thing that you could do on Zoom with your friends.
07:48-07:48
Okay.
07:49-07:57
Um And basically what you do is you create a PowerPoint about whatever your particular hyperfixation is at the moment.
07:58-08:10
And then you present it as if you were at a conference, or as if you were doing like a sales pitch to your job or whatever Um and so that is the that's that's the idea of the the PowerPoint party.
08:10-08:15
You come up with a slide deck about whatever you're interested in.
08:16-08:18
uh and then you share it with your friends.
08:18-08:28
And so for the PowerPoint party yesterday, I did a slide deck that let me uh oh I deleted it so I don't have it handy really quickly.
08:28-08:34
But basically the title was I I I put it in the OneDrive and then I deleted my version on my desktop.
08:34-08:37
I oh I have it I have it here I can pull it up.
08:37-08:42
Because i I I specifically wrote the type of title that you would expect me to write.
08:42-08:44
You know, I am an academic.
08:44-08:47
I did, you know, I have a degree in cultural studies, those sorts of things.
08:48-08:58
And so the tit the presentation I gave was entitled Villainous as Protagonist: A Meta-analysis of Current Media Trends.
08:58-08:59
I love it.
08:59-09:28
And so basically I just talked about this trend in uh in pop culture of you know, creating these villainesque characters, whether or not they are uh textually villainous in their behavior, um the world around them, the milieu, the cultural society in which they find themselves does see them as villainesses, which allows them to operate outside of the the social boundaries because they're seen already as wicked.
09:28-09:30
And so I did a a fun presentation on that.
09:30-09:36
Um, you know, talked about how the three superior character types are, of course, maid, nun, and villainous.
09:36-09:39
Those are the three best types of characters you could ever have in anything.
09:39-09:53
And that's part of why I Love the Villainess is so good, because Claire Francois is a villainess, Ray Taylor, the protagonist, becomes her maid, and Lily Lilliam is a cardinal of the spiritual church, which is basically just a nun.
09:53-09:55
So it it just hits on all cylinders.
09:55-09:57
It's truly one of the greats.
09:57-09:58
Cool.
09:58-10:00
So so that's been a lot of fun.
10:00-10:09
Um some other things uh that are worth mentioning It has been a big month in the arena of gacha games.
10:09-10:13
A whole lot of them are coming out here in late October.
10:13-10:21
And so being on the lookout for something new to play, try wanting to try some new things out, I was like, okay, maybe I'll try some of these out.
10:22-10:26
So the first one that came out here at the end of the month was one called Stella Sora.
10:26-10:31
And it is basically kind of a roguelike top-down action-y game.
10:32-10:35
It's like what if Hades was kind of shitty and slower?
10:35-10:36
Okay what the combat is like.
10:36-10:39
Which like pretty good.
10:39-10:40
Hades is pretty good.
10:40-10:42
Hades is very good.
10:43-10:50
But so what if it was slower and and a little bit shittier uh and dependent on your gotcha pulls because that's how you get better stronger characters, of course.
10:50-10:55
Um the game came out It's not very much fun to play.
10:55-10:58
And the economy is d-da-dog shit.
10:58-10:59
Oh.
10:59-11:06
Uh they expect you to have so much of the premium currency to be d to be able to do the gotcha pulls.
11:06-11:15
Like Most the the most common number of whatever the premium currency is that you've seen, especially in the post-Genshin era.
11:15-11:26
is 150 to 160 because that is 160 of uh 160 primo gems, which is what they're called in Genshin, is what you need to do a single pull in the got in the gotcha, right?
11:26-11:28
Okay
11:26-11:32
So that has kind of become an industry standard, 160, and then you'll sometimes see 150.
11:32-11:35
Girls Frontline 2 has 150, and you're like, oh, a bargain.
11:36-11:38
Ten 10 less than every other game.
11:39-11:47
Um, but there are still some older games that are kind of holdouts where they want like 300 premium currency for a poll.
11:47-11:54
Like Goddess of Victory, Nikkei wants 300 currency, which is nearly double what you'd expect.
11:54-11:59
And so Stellasaur, a brand new game, came out on the 20th, wanted 300.
11:59-12:03
of the premium currency per pole, which is absurd.
12:03-12:05
That is some 2015 numbers.
12:05-12:09
So between the fact that the game's not very fun to play kind of looks like ass.
12:09-12:11
The character design ain't that great.
12:11-12:13
And the uh gotcha is shitty.
12:14-12:17
I played for maybe 45 minutes and then I said, uh I think I'm good.
12:18-12:19
And I deleted it.
12:19-12:20
Okay.
12:20-12:22
So that's all I have to say about Stella Sora.
12:22-12:28
Then two or three days later, Chaos Zero Nightmare came out, and I was like, sure.
12:28-12:30
I'll try I'll try another one.
12:30-12:31
What do I care?
12:31-12:32
I'm sitting around.
12:32-12:33
I'm in between these.
12:33-12:38
I I I come home exhausted because I've been doing all of these accessibility presentations.
12:38-12:44
And at this point I'm going to specific uh uh departmental faculty meetings.
12:44-12:53
So instead of these being people who are interested in accessibility coming to me to get trained, this is me going essentially to people who want nothing to do with this accessibility.
12:54-12:57
And these are very hostile meetings often.
12:56-12:59
Like I get a lot of pushback there, not very much fun.
12:59-13:02
So when I get home, I'm like, I just want to relax.
13:02-13:04
I want to drink a beer and play a video game.
13:04-13:04
Totally.
13:04-13:10
So I'm like, okay, I'll try, I'll try Chaos Zero Nightmare It looks like a a roguelike deck builder.
13:10-13:13
Like what if Slade the Spire also had a gotcha in it?
13:13-13:15
And I was like, I like Slay the Spire.
13:15-13:16
That's a pretty good game.
13:17-13:34
I could play a Slay the Spire gotcha And then they wanted me to download a separate launcher for some weird mobile game thing called something totally innocuous, like square or something.
13:34-13:35
I don't remember.
13:35-13:43
It was something I'd never heard of, and they wanted me to make an account there, download that launcher, then download the game, then make an account in the game, and I said, that's too many steps.
13:43-13:45
Fuck you very much, Chaos Zero Nightmare.
13:45-13:47
I Game doesn't look that good.
13:48-13:52
Game does not look download two separate launchers good.
13:53-13:54
So I did not even try that one.
13:54-13:56
So what are you gonna do?
13:56-14:04
I mean, you know This this next week, all of these games have the fucking worst names in the world.
14:04-14:07
Duet Night Abyss.
14:07-14:08
comes out this week.
14:08-14:09
Duet Night Abyss.
14:09-14:10
I think that's what it is.
14:10-14:10
It's short.
14:10-14:14
DNA is how it gets shortened and you're like, oh, okay, I see what you're doing here.
14:14-14:29
Uh the interesting thing about Duet Night Abyss, and one of the reasons why I'm interested to try this one is because these folks said, yo, what if we made Warframe, but it was anime instead of weird biomech?
14:30-14:32
Which like I've played Warframe a bit.
14:32-14:33
You ever played Warframe, Peter?
14:33-14:44
You know, I fired it up a while back, and even then it already seemed uh too too involved for me.
14:44-14:51
And then I went away and I've gone back, and every once in a while I look at it and I go, oh, oh, no, oh no, no, no, no, no.
14:51-14:53
This is nope, not even gonna try.
14:53-14:55
Not even going to try.
14:56-14:57
This is what happens to me too.
14:58-14:59
I like the idea of Warframe.
14:59-15:01
I think the combat is very fun.
15:01-15:02
It's very fluid.
15:02-15:03
It's very flashy.
15:04-15:10
But there's so much there because that game's been coming out for 13 years or some shit.
15:10-15:10
Yeah.
15:11-15:21
And so it seems insurmountable to me So if you tell me, hey, what if there was a warframe that was starting this week instead of 13 years ago?
15:21-15:22
So you can get on the ground floor.
15:23-15:23
I'm like.
15:24-15:24
Okay.
15:25-15:30
And it was going to be basically, you know, when they announced it a year or two ago, it was going to be Warframe meets a gotcha.
15:30-15:33
And you're like, okay, I get it.
15:33-15:38
And then four or five months ago they were like, actually, why are we doing this like a gacha?
15:38-15:43
Why don't we just do it like Warframe, where you can buy the skins?
15:43-15:46
Or you can grind them out just like you can in Warframe.
15:47-15:49
You don't have to do a gotcha for the shit you want.
15:50-15:57
And that piqued my interest as well, because I do feel like gotcha as a system, which we've discussed on this podcast plenty of times.
15:57-16:00
I think it is inherently predatory because it is inherently gambling.
16:00-16:06
So it deals with the same it's the same dopamine centers in your brain that hit you when you gamble, and that is what it's doing.
16:07-16:11
So the fact that they said Actually, what if we don't make it a gotcha?
16:11-16:21
What if we make it a thing where if you want this cool new character, sure, you can pony up and give us 20-30 bucks for it, or you can grind.
16:21-16:22
I like that.
16:22-16:23
I like that a lot.
16:23-16:24
And we'll see if it's fun to play.
16:24-16:26
Maybe I'll grind out some characters.
16:26-16:29
If it's really fun to play, maybe I'll buy a character and give them 30 bucks to say.
16:29-16:32
Hey, thanks for making a fun game I'm having a good time with.
16:32-16:32
Yeah.
16:32-16:34
Or maybe I'll play for a couple hours and delete it.
16:34-16:35
We'll see.
16:35-16:37
But I'm excited to try it in the next few days.
16:37-16:39
Yeah, cool.
16:39-16:41
And then I have one last thing to mention.
16:41-16:42
Please.
16:42-16:47
Because I I have a surprising confession to make, Peter.
16:47-16:48
Okay.
16:48-16:50
My friend Jackson and I.
16:51-16:53
went to Tron Aries on Friday.
16:54-16:55
Okay.
16:55-16:59
And I'm not uh listeners, I'm not here to tell you it's a good movie.
16:59-17:00
It's not a good movie.
17:01-17:03
It's i it is objectively a pretty bad movie.
17:04-17:11
Again, let's just briefly let's just briefly remind everyone that the two previous Tron movies
17:10-17:10
Not so bad.
17:11-17:11
Good movies.
17:12-17:12
Fun to watch.
17:13-17:14
Well, they've never made a good Tron movie.
17:14-17:21
Like can be interesting, a few interesting ideas here and there, and and I may have a very soft spot for those movies.
17:22-17:24
But not good movies.
17:24-17:25
So just No, no, no, no, no.
17:26-17:26
Yes.
17:26-17:27
There we go.
17:28-17:35
As we discussed when I was talking about the Nine-inch Nail soundtrack to Tron Ares, all three of these are movies that are carried entirely by their soundtracks.
17:35-17:40
Wendy Carlos Williams writes one of the great soundtracks of the 80s on the original Tron.
17:40-17:46
It soars, it's incredible, one of the early synth soundtracks that really blows your mind.
17:46-17:52
We've talked about how the Daft Punk uh record for Tron Legacy is really incredible stuff.
17:52-17:55
And this 9-inch nails album is a very good 9-inch nails album.
17:56-17:58
But I thought to myself, surely this movie's gonna suck.
17:58-18:02
I'm not gonna make I'm not gonna make an effort to go see it, is what I thought to myself.
18:03-18:07
But if anybody says, hey Eden, you wanna go see this movie?
18:07-18:09
Fuck yeah, I'm gonna go see a movie with him.
18:09-18:10
Yeah.
18:10-18:14
And so my friend Jackson said, Hey Eden, do you wanna go see Tron Aries?
18:15-18:18
And I said, Hell yes, I want to go see Tron Aries.
18:18-18:20
So we went on Friday night to see Tron Aries.
18:20-18:24
And let me say, uh, it's not a good movie.
18:24-18:28
It's maybe the best drawn movie.
18:28-18:29
All right.
18:30-18:31
Here's my case.
18:31-18:34
Jared Leto is miserable in it, but he's miserable in everything.
18:34-18:40
He is so rarely a good actor, so that when you do see him as a pretty okay actor like Dallas Byers Club, it's a good performance.
18:40-18:41
American Psycho.
18:41-18:42
it's a good performance.
18:42-18:45
Those are the only two good performances of his I can think of off the top of my head.
18:45-18:56
Everything else he's ever done has been miserable because he's a a terrible, vapid, empty suit of a person who can't make a good film if his life depends on it.
18:55-18:57
How uh ver.
18:57-18:59
The rest of the cast is pretty good.
19:00-19:05
The female lead, uh, who was not a character or a person I was familiar with.
19:05-19:06
I had never seen her in anything.
19:06-19:09
She's been in a lot of stuff, but it's a bunch of stuff I'd never seen.
19:09-19:11
was really great.
19:11-19:23
Um uh the guy I can't think of his name the guy who played Quicksilver in the X-Men movies plays baby Dillinger, the grandson of the bad guy from the first Tron movie.
19:24-19:24
Okay.
19:24-19:26
And Gillian Anderson plays his mother.
19:26-19:30
He is chewing scenery as an evil dude with the best of them.
19:31-19:38
And most importantly, and maybe why I thought it was such a fun movie, boy them action scenes look cool.
19:38-19:38
Okay.
19:38-19:41
They really nailed the aesthetic in this bad boy.
19:41-19:43
They look real cool.
19:43-19:56
And whoever I wanna find whoever mixed the sound for this movie and shake their hand because the score is so loud.
19:56-20:02
It's like you're watching a Nine Inch Nails music video and not a bad Jared Leto movie.
20:02-20:03
And that was so cool.
20:04-20:06
It was great In that respect.
20:06-20:12
And so, I it was one of those things that I got out of it, and I was shocked how good of a time I had in it.
20:12-20:15
And as I've been thinking about it for the past few days, I've thought.
20:16-20:23
more and more fondly about it rather than what usually happens to me, which I leave a movie and then I think I I think less of it as time goes on.
20:23-20:27
I'm thinking more and more highly of Tron Aries as time goes on.
20:27-20:41
Um, and there was a part of me, I I I'm not, this is not what we're gonna do, but there was a part of me that was going thought to myself as we were going to come to this episode, should I propose that the next three episodes be watching all three Tron movies.
20:41-20:43
But I'm not gonna do that to you.
20:43-20:45
You know, I I would totally do it.
20:47-20:52
I will totally be down to do it once I don't have to go to the theater to see Tron Aries.
20:53-20:55
Well maybe maybe next year then.
20:55-20:55
Yeah.
20:55-20:59
All I know is Tron Aries was worth well I didn't pay for it.
20:59-21:00
My friend Jackson paid for it as a birthday present.
21:01-21:01
Thank you, Jackson.
21:01-21:12
It was worth going to see with him and see it in the theaters and hear that very loud score, uh, shake your seat as you watched some really goofy hard light uh action scenes.
21:13-21:13
It was pretty good.
21:14-21:14
Very cool.
21:15-21:16
Very good.
21:16-21:17
Well, anything else?
21:18-21:19
No, what you been up to?
21:19-21:21
You know, not a whole lot.
21:21-21:25
Um, so I'm gonna give a quick rundown of things.
21:26-21:31
Let's look talk about a little music because you know I always got me some new music to talk about.
21:31-21:35
I do want to go back and revisit Testament Parabellum.
21:35-21:43
The Further out we've gotten from the release of that album, the less I find myself listening to it.
21:43-21:44
It's interesting.
21:45-21:51
It is Still like it's a complicated thing.
21:52-21:58
Part of it is the fact that because they were as experimental as they were.
21:58-22:03
And we have a lot of different types of songs and elements throughout.
22:03-22:13
It really lacks any sense of cohesion And so as I'm listening to it, it feels like a bunch of different singles that every once in a while don't even really sound like testament.
22:13-22:14
So it's a little weird.
22:14-22:17
It hasn't really been drawing me in that much.
22:17-22:21
Again, not bad, but it's not sticking with me.
22:22-22:25
Have you ever listened or heard of Author and Punisher?
22:26-22:26
No.
22:26-22:42
So Author and Punisher is one of those bands that every time a new album comes out, I think to myself, I should check them out It's kind of noise, industrial, post, drone doom, uh kind of all over the place in that regards.
22:43-22:51
The the most recent author and punisher album, Nocturnal Birding, came out a couple weeks ago, and I finally thought to myself, hey, look, this one's only 38 minutes.
22:51-22:52
I'll give it a listen.
22:52-22:54
And it's pretty good.
22:54-22:56
It's pretty good.
22:56-23:02
Again, this is like dark, kind of heavy, intense.
23:02-23:08
Uh there are guitars, but it's a lot of other th sounds making the music.
23:08-23:10
Uh it's pretty cool.
23:10-23:16
I I don't know if I'm ready to start digging back into previous albums yet, but uh the this most recent one's pretty cool.
23:16-23:24
And it's it's spooky season time, so it's time for me to dive back into my uh Vision Bleak playlist.
23:24-23:25
Uh love those guys.
23:25-23:35
Great gothic horror metal from I think Germany or something like that that Just goofy, over the top, kind of campy, but but legit.
23:35-23:36
Very, very good music.
23:36-23:43
Uh their most recent album that came out last year, Weird Tales, is again what I've been really lift listening to.
23:43-23:47
It's one song broken up into 12 chapters.
23:47-23:54
Each chapter title is the name of a story from the old pulp magazine Weird Tales.
23:54-23:57
and and lyrically deals with whatever was in that story.
23:57-24:02
So it's it's fun and going back and listening to it again, I'm reminded just how much I like them.
24:03-24:14
The final music thing I'll mention is the UK band Conjurer released a new album on Friday, Unself Haven't had a ton of time to get into it, but I've been listening to it quite a bit because I like it.
24:15-24:19
Conjurer is kind of brutal, moody, post-sludge.
24:19-24:23
This is really heavy stuff, very atmospheric, but at the same time really intense.
24:24-24:25
Uh and I've been liking it.
24:25-24:27
Unself is a really, really good album.
24:27-24:31
Uh have you heard of the game Megabonk?
24:31-24:32
No.
24:32-24:37
Megabonk was all the talk a few weeks ago and I looked on Steam and it was $9.
24:37-24:39
99 and so I went ahead and got it.
24:39-24:47
Megabunk basically is what if vampire survivors but in more of a Minecraft looking 3D type world.
24:47-24:49
We've already talked about these kind of games.
24:49-24:50
There's plenty of them.
24:50-24:53
But this is another good entry in there.
24:53-24:54
And again, it was $9.
24:54-24:55
99.
24:55-25:08
So I haven't put a ton of time into it, but uh it it was kind of it's been scratching my itch right now to play games because all I really have in me is to play 15, 20 minutes at a time.
25:08-25:10
I don't have time to dive into anything bigger or deeper than that.
25:10-25:12
So Megabunk's been a good thing.
25:17-25:17
Yep.
25:17-25:18
So it's been a fun one.
25:19-25:20
I've been playing that some.
25:20-25:24
And then finally, uh a little bit on the book frunk, book book frunk.
25:24-25:28
Book front, I finally finished Wind and Truth.
25:29-25:30
Congratulations.
25:31-25:33
The evil is defeated.
25:33-25:36
It felt it felt monumental.
25:36-25:38
And here's what I'm gonna say.
25:38-25:40
Not the best stormlight book.
25:40-25:42
Not the best Sanderson book.
25:43-25:46
And it pains me a little to say, I still enjoyed it.
25:46-25:47
I still enjoyed it.
25:47-25:48
Let's just get that out of the way.
25:49-25:51
But I can't quite tell.
25:52-25:58
If Sanderson's prose is gradually getting a little worse, or if I'm just becoming more aware of it?
25:58-25:59
Porque no los dos.
26:00-26:01
Porque no los dos.
26:02-26:03
Here's the thing.
26:03-26:10
I feel like Sanderson Sanderson has me and I mean uh I feel like editing is already a problem when it comes to epic fantasy.
26:10-26:14
They all need better editors because no book should be 1300 pages long.
26:15-26:16
Which we've discussed.
26:16-26:17
That should be seven books.
26:17-26:18
That's not one book.
26:18-26:18
That's seven books.
26:19-26:32
But regardless, all of them need better editors But there is a Rubicon that you cross when you become a really successful author where the editor stops doing anything but proofing.
26:30-26:37
You can tell it's what happens to King in the late 70s, early 80s when his books get real long in the tooth.
26:37-26:41
You can tell it's what happens to the terrible transphobe J.
26:41-26:41
K.
26:41-26:43
Rowling when book.
26:43-26:47
Book four comes out and suddenly it's twice as long as any of the other books.
26:47-26:54
And all the books kind of suck in the back half of that book series because clear I mean, they all sucked, but They're worse because they're not editing her anymore.
26:54-26:58
The editor is not engaging with, hey, these don't really work.
26:58-26:59
Let's take these out.
27:00-27:00
Let's tighten this up.
27:00-27:03
They're just saying, okay, fix the typos.
27:03-27:04
Put the fucking book out.
27:04-27:07
Because it's gonna sell the same regardless, so why put in the effort?
27:07-27:07
Yep.
27:07-27:17
And it feels like Sanderson has maybe crossed that Rubicon where the editor says, I mean It's gonna sell a cajillion copies because people love Storm White.
27:17-27:20
So I'm not gonna okay, Brandon.
27:20-27:20
Thanks, bud.
27:20-27:21
Yeah.
27:21-27:23
I'm gonna fix your fix your spelling.
27:24-27:27
Yeah, I I think that there's some of that going on.
27:27-27:30
I still think I really I think he does a good job with characters.
27:30-27:36
He he gives you pretty characters, pretty good characters and and manages to really get a lot of depth into them.
27:37-27:44
I mean, I think Dalinar is still a great tragic character and and I again I like a lot of his characters.
27:44-27:48
He really goes hard on the world building and and I like it.
27:48-28:06
I like his magic systems and the fact that again He has very very specific and hard rules that he adheres to, which uh I I'll I'll respect that because so many fantasy authors do not either adhere to rules or just don't bother inventing them in the first place.
28:07-28:09
So I still like that aspect of it.
28:09-28:10
But I don't know.
28:10-28:23
There was something about this one where I just felt like it felt uh so much of the dialogue and everything just felt very colloquial in a in a way that It just it it it felt almost anachronistic.
28:23-28:29
It was so familiar in the way in the way some of the characters interacted and and spoke to each other.
28:29-28:32
Um But but I finished it.
28:32-28:33
I was glad.
28:33-28:34
I'm glad it's over.
28:34-28:35
I'm glad I finished it.
28:35-28:36
I have no regrets.
28:37-28:39
But now it's time to move on to something very different.
28:39-28:47
And so I'm taking a break from Epic Fantasy, and I started reading the book Murder Your Employer, The McMaster's Guide to Homicide.
28:47-28:49
It's funny.
28:49-28:50
I am thoroughly.
28:50-28:52
I mean, I'm here for it.
28:52-28:55
I am thoroughly enjoying it so far.
28:55-28:57
I'm not very far into it.
28:58-29:03
But it's basically uh it's kind of a mystery novel.
29:03-29:04
It came out in 2023.
29:04-29:06
It was written by Rupert Holmes.
29:06-29:22
Uh it's sort of I get the impression because again I've only really hit one uh character, but it's The McMasters School is a school where basically they teach people how to how how to actually commit murder and get away with it.
29:23-29:36
And the main character, the first part, he tries to murder his boss and bumbles about it and has some sponsor, mysterious sponsor, we don't know who it is, who Pays to get him admitted to the McMaster School.
29:36-29:44
Uh, and and he's at the McMaster school and he's starting to uh learn, he he has to learn how to actually uh kill someone.
29:45-29:47
It's it's pretty funny so far.
29:48-29:48
I'm enjoying that.
29:49-29:54
And then on the nonfiction side, uh there was a theme going on here you may sense.
29:54-30:08
The nonfiction side, I started reading the book Work Won't Love You Back by Sarah Jaffey, who, you know, her main thesis is that the idea of loving your work has been weaponized.
30:09-30:23
And that saying, if you love what you do, you won't work a day in your life is again, has been weaponized by corporate America to convince us that if we are dissatisfied with our jobs in any way.
30:23-30:24
That it is our fault.
30:25-30:25
Your fault.
30:26-30:32
And this really struck a chord with me and and has an idea brewing that I'm going to share with a little bit here.
30:32-30:42
But I'm beginning to think that maybe I need, maybe there's a project here I need to undertake in looking at uh how does how does that apply to to healthcare?
30:42-30:52
And and so I actually already have a working title for a potential future nonfiction book that I'm just this last week literally have started toying around with the idea of.
30:53-31:00
And the working title thus far is something along the lines of Connecting to Purpose, the moral dehumanization of healthcare in America.
31:01-31:03
Because nice.
31:04-31:10
Because I realized, you know, we get these emails from corporate and they always start with this connect to purpose section.
31:10-31:15
And we start all our meetings, and we're supposed to start our meetings with we're gonna start with the connect to purpose.
31:15-31:21
And this is somebody sharing something meaningful, a connection with a patient or something that touched their lives.
31:21-31:26
And I realized that again, in a similar way, connecting to purpose in healthcare.
31:26-31:28
has been weaponized.
31:28-31:41
It is the it is the bullshit from corporate that basically is if you feel burnt out, if you don't like the abuse we're dishing out, it's because you don't care enough.
31:40-31:42
You don't care enough about your patients.
31:42-31:44
You don't care enough about your coworkers.
31:44-31:46
You haven't connected to your purpose.
31:46-31:48
So the connect to purpose starts everything out.
31:48-31:49
And I realized, oh.
31:50-31:52
This is literally a here you go.
31:52-31:57
We're gonna stick a lollipop in your mouth and then we're gonna bend you over and you're gonna like it.
31:57-31:57
Mm-hmm.
31:58-31:59
And so I'm I don't know.
31:59-32:01
I've started workshopping this idea.
32:01-32:04
I think I'm gonna start reaching out to a bunch of healthcare workers who I know.
32:04-32:06
and ask them for people I don't know.
32:06-32:11
I'm gonna start doing interviews and I'm gonna start talking to people about what was healthcare like 30 years ago?
32:11-32:12
What's it like now?
32:13-32:13
How has that changed?
32:14-32:21
How is it, you know, let's look at this and let's let's Let's really dive into this because um it's bad.
32:21-32:23
It's really, really fucking bad.
32:23-32:26
And I know it's bad across the board.
32:26-32:38
But I hear enough things on a regular basis from people who assume that it's not bad for us.
32:39-32:43
That, well, doctors are still, no, it's not bad for you guys.
32:43-32:49
And so my thought is, again, let's look at this through the lens of, hey, look, here's how bad it is for physicians.
32:49-32:55
And if you think If it's this bad for us, think how much worse it is for everyone else.
32:55-32:56
That's the thing.
32:56-32:57
Here's the thing.
32:57-33:00
Here's clash consciousness for you, man.
33:00-33:03
If you are not the owner, you're getting exploited.
33:03-33:03
100%.
33:04-33:05
End of.
33:05-33:10
And yes, you could, you know, that you can make the case, well, you know, doctors are paid so much more than blah blah blah blah.
33:10-33:11
Okay, yeah, that's true.
33:11-33:11
true.
33:11-33:13
It doesn't mean that your work is not being exploited.
33:13-33:20
It doesn't mean that you're not being manipulated by the owners of capital in order to work overwork.
33:20-33:27
to overextend yourself, to put more of you into your work than it will ever give you back, in order to extract more wealth from you.
33:28-33:34
And that's true of a doctor, that is true of a teacher, that is true of a janitor, that is true of every single fucking one of us.
33:35-33:35
It is.
33:35-33:36
It really is.
33:36-33:41
So I'm finding myself becoming radicalized recently.
33:41-33:42
Hell yeah.
33:42-33:43
So hell yeah.
33:44-33:49
Anyway, I think that's all I've got to go for go go over today.
33:49-34:03
But uh well I I'm excited to see where you uh take that project because I think that is important work to uh to do and I think that it is important conversation to be having in every single industry because it affects every single industry.
34:03-34:04
Whether we want to admit it or not.
34:04-34:06
We are all being exploited by our boss.
34:06-34:09
And if we are a boss, you're probably exploiting your workers.
34:10-34:10
It's true.
34:11-34:11
It's true.
34:12-34:12
So.
34:12-34:14
So think about that, bosses.
34:14-34:20
Think about none of you that listen to this podcast because I scared you away with my communism earlier.
34:20-34:22
Well, you know, they can go suck it.
34:23-34:23
That's all we care.
34:24-34:24
about.
34:24-34:29
So let's talk about something that we already have talked about.
34:30-34:34
So as has been hinted at, we have a lost episode.
34:34-34:38
And I still to this day cannot figure out what happened.
34:38-34:45
Everything is there on the transistor site except a little red thing that says missing audio file.
34:46-34:54
And my automatic general sort of workflow is as soon as I finish editing, it gets uploaded to Dropbox and it's not there.
34:55-34:56
So weird.
34:56-35:04
A few episodes ago, we talked about the UK Transformers, and we went and we read the first four issues of the UK Transformers Compendium.
35:04-35:10
Now You had some really good background and and everything on the UK Transformers versus the US.
35:10-35:20
I don't want us to necessarily relitigate that whole thing, but you could you give us a distilled version of that sense the the longer conversation is is is gone.
35:20-35:21
Absolutely.
35:21-35:31
So in the UK, uh Marvel UK comics came out with shorter pages weekly, as opposed to more pages monthly, which is how American comics come out.
35:31-35:40
And so Marvel UK Editorial were getting these uh Transformers comics, but they weren't coming in a timely enough fashion.
35:40-35:45
For them to simply put them out because they basically started simultaneously releasing them.
35:45-35:47
They didn't build up a backlog.
35:47-35:54
And so then they reached a point where they were gonna run out of new issues of the uh US-produced comic.
35:54-35:57
but still wanted to put the mag out month or weekly.
35:57-36:10
So they got their folks in-house in the Marvel UK offices to start doing some other uh Transformer stories that would basically appear in between and woven into the US release.
36:11-36:13
So that is basically what happens in the UK.
36:14-36:19
The weekly broken down versions of the first four issues of the US publication came out.
36:19-36:26
It ends on a heck of a thing because it was only supposed to be a four-issue series and then it was way successful.
36:26-36:31
It ends with Shockwave appearing, blasting everyone into unconsciousness.
36:31-36:44
And then if you were in the US, the next month you got issue five, which explained what happened, and if you were in the UK, the next week You got a story about the Iron Man, the metal man.
36:44-36:47
And you were like, what the hell is going on?
36:47-36:48
It was so weird.
36:49-36:58
And so that was what we read last time was the first the chap the four chapters of the metal man, the iron man, uh whatever it was called.
36:57-36:59
Uh and it was the man of iron.
36:59-37:01
Yeah, Iron Man and Man of Iron.
37:01-37:02
All the same thing.
37:02-37:03
Exactly.
37:03-37:13
And then immediately following that, there was another five uh five-chapter uh Marvel UK entry called The Enemy Within, which is what we read for today.
37:13-37:21
And at the end of what we read for today is when the UK reader would have then started getting the stuff that came out in issue five of the US release.
37:21-37:29
Which is Shockwave being like, ha ha ha, I decapitated uh Optimus Prime and I killed Megatron and turned him into only a gun.
37:29-37:33
All those fun things that we read comics about when we were kids because we had a few issues of that book.
37:33-37:36
It's true, we did.
37:36-37:37
So that is what we read for today.
37:37-37:38
So perfect.
37:38-37:39
Enemy within.
37:39-37:41
Thank you for that recap.
37:41-37:45
And and as I hinted at Boy, the man of iron, that was that was weird.
37:45-37:46
That was a weird trip.
37:46-37:47
It was real weird.
37:48-37:55
It was it was the art is very different from what we were getting with the Americ the US Transformers.
37:55-37:58
The story was this
37:57-38:10
v very odd little story of of a transformer that was buried underneath some castle in the UK and pops out every I don't know, hundred few hundreds of years.
38:10-38:11
Two hundred years.
38:11-38:12
Yeah.
38:12-38:27
And and a little kid who's the the the son of the the caretaker of the museum around the castle who gets kidnapped by jazz because I still don't quite know why he was the one they felt they needed to to to to take advantage of.
38:28-38:34
And then it was interesting because then we jumped to this one, the enemy within, completely disconnected.
38:34-38:37
Taking place in Oregon.
38:37-38:38
In the US, yes.
38:38-38:39
In the US.
38:40-38:41
So Eden Brooklyn.
38:41-38:43
Which is where which is where those first four issues took place.
38:43-38:43
Correct.
38:44-38:49
Which is why it felt so weird for us to suddenly be in the UK.
38:48-38:56
And now we're back basically, you know, uh pretending that first arc didn't happen, and now we're doing arc, arc, the new arc.
38:56-38:56
Yeah.
38:57-38:57
I don't know.
38:57-38:57
It was weird.
38:58-39:01
So what did you think of the enemy within?
39:01-39:11
Um I thought it was uh uh it felt a lot more predictable than the uh Man of Iron did, because Man of Iron really did feel like, what the fuck is this thing?
39:11-39:20
It's so this one was like This one was, hey, we need a filler episode for episode seven of the first season of Transformers.
39:21-39:24
What if Braun gets brain damaged and fights his friends?
39:24-39:26
And Star Screams evil.
39:30-39:31
Which that's what happens.
39:31-39:35
Bru Brawl gets brain damaged because he gets shocked by something and then he's fighting everyone.
39:35-39:45
This is I I went and checked because I was like, okay, we all know everyone knows what's one thing there's two things everybody knows about Starscream.
39:45-39:47
Caddy gay man, obviously.
39:47-39:48
Sure.
39:48-39:50
Obviously, a caddy gay man.
39:50-39:50
Yep.
39:51-39:53
And extremely traitorous.
39:53-40:01
Willing to turn on uh uh willing to turn on Megatron at the drop of a hat for any reason, anywhere, any why, anyhow.
40:01-40:02
Always.
40:02-40:06
That, you know, that is who we see in the film that we both watched when we were kids.
40:07-40:16
You know, he throws Megatron's half-dead corpse out of Astrotrain and c declares himself king, which is why when Galvatron comes back, he blasts him and takes the crown.
40:17-40:20
You know, this is who this is who Starscream was.
40:20-40:26
And so then I thought to myself, okay, so if this came out after issue four.
40:27-40:31
And this was the first Transformers media that ever existed, was the Marvel Comic.
40:31-40:33
It was before the show by two years.
40:34-40:35
Is this the Genesis?
40:36-40:38
of Caddy Bitch, Traitorous Starscreen?
40:38-40:41
And the answer to that is I think so, dear listeners.
40:41-40:42
Okay.
40:42-40:44
He he is Mr.
40:44-40:50
not doing anything of note in the first four issues of the US book, which I read this morning.
40:50-40:56
He's there and they name him Starscream, but he's not the traitorous catchy cat catty gay that he is here.
40:56-41:04
But this is Quintessential star scream, him being like, ha ha ha, I'm going to turn on Megatron and I'm going to shoot the cat.
41:05-41:07
Yeah.
41:05-41:06
No, it totally is.
41:07-41:07
It totally is.
41:08-41:13
It's it's fucking star scream, the way that he appears in everything from here on out.
41:13-41:21
And so I have to wonder, is Simon Furman the reason why Starscream is the catty bitch that he is?
41:22-41:26
We probably never know, so I think we should just say yes, that that is in fact.
41:27-41:28
I guess I'll give him the dub.
41:28-41:29
I think I think we need to.
41:30-41:33
But yeah, it's uh I thought it was less interesting than Man of Iron.
41:34-41:37
I thought the art was less uh evocative.
41:37-41:39
It was more just like, yeah, it's Transformers.
41:39-41:42
But but still not great great.
41:43-41:52
Yeah, the the the faces are still weird and the explosions are still like the the colors are still far more vibrant than in the US release.
41:52-41:55
Um clearly they were doing a different type of printing, I think.
41:55-42:00
They must not have been doing the four-colored, you know, dot printing they were doing in the US.
42:01-42:06
Uh, I think Brawl is one of the funniest looking little guys that's ever existed.
42:06-42:08
Can we talk about Braun?
42:08-42:10
I I want to talk about Braun.
42:10-42:12
We had that toy when we were kids.
42:12-42:13
Why?
42:13-42:15
I mean, come on.
42:15-42:17
Why does he look like that?
42:17-42:19
Why does he because that's what his toy was like?
42:19-42:20
The original.
42:20-42:24
But it did not take them very long to make a better looking brawn.
42:24-42:24
That's true.
42:25-42:26
Like they eventually got there.
42:26-42:31
I just this is one of those where I'm like, I guess I see what you're doing, but come on.
42:31-42:36
That was like Braun is the laziest transformer toy.
42:37-42:39
That maybe ever lived.
42:40-42:43
His legs pop out the bottom, his sides pop out, and then his legs.
42:44-42:45
And then little teeny arms come out.
42:45-42:47
And his face is on the underside.
42:47-42:51
His head on the doesn't even
42:50-42:52
His head doesn't even like come out of anything.
42:52-43:01
It's just if you pick up the Jeep vehicle, whatever, look at the bottom, you just got Braun's face fucking staring at you from the bottom of the thing.
43:01-43:03
It is the laziest ass toy ever.
43:03-43:09
It is you can tell this was a a bad design, I think.
43:09-43:11
Braun is a bad design.
43:11-43:11
Yes.
43:12-43:12
Fundamentally.
43:12-43:16
No, like I feel like Braun is what you got.
43:16-43:20
When you went and got the happy meal that had the Transformers toy in it.
43:21-43:24
Braun feels like the knockoff you buy at Dollar Tree.
43:25-43:29
Not like the real transformer you spent fifteen dollars for at at Walmart.
43:30-43:30
Hundred percent.
43:31-43:33
Hundred percent.
43:32-43:33
He's so bad looking.
43:34-43:35
And they just draw him like that.
43:35-43:40
They just fucking draw him like these stupid little hooks.
43:40-43:42
Yeah, he's got hooks.
43:42-43:45
Uh he just looks like garbage.
43:45-43:56
And it's so funny to see him next to Starscream, which was one of the very good early toys where it's like, yeah, you guys really uh you you engineered this sucker.
43:55-44:04
And so to see him, especially alongside Starscream, which is an impeccable design, and then you see this goofy ass motherfucker.
44:04-44:05
It does not work.
44:05-44:06
It does not work.
44:06-44:06
He looks terrible.
44:07-44:07
He looks so bad.
44:07-44:11
He does not seem like the threat that he becomes during part of this.
44:11-44:14
So Let's come back to something.
44:15-44:17
In my head, we're gonna come back to it.
44:17-44:21
Maybe, maybe, maybe we didn't mention this.
44:21-44:25
I can't remember in that lost episode because I can't go back and listen to that sucker.
44:26-44:30
But I'm reading these again, and you know what I came away with?
44:30-44:30
What?
44:31-44:32
Optimus Prime.
44:32-44:33
He's a fucking dick.
44:33-44:36
Oh yeah, no, this version of Optimus Prime sucks.
44:36-44:38
Like he's such a dick.
44:39-44:40
So I hate him.
44:40-44:48
And I'm gonna give a really brief because there's not that much the the there is not a lot of meat on the bones of this skeleton of the of this story here.
44:47-44:51
So we've got Braun is holding something heavy because he's strong.
44:51-44:55
And all of a sudden, something he gets zapped and the heavy thing falls on him.
44:55-44:59
And when he comes to, everybody's talking to him and he's not answering.
44:59-45:09
And he's got some little internal monologue going on where he's And all of a sudden, just boom, he just gets out of there because no, he doesn't want anybody to tell him what to do.
45:09-45:10
He he's just gonna go and do his thing.
45:10-45:12
And so he goes out, stomps through the local town.
45:13-45:14
Get it I get it, Bron.
45:15-45:16
Sure, sure.
45:16-45:29
He goes out, stomps through the local town, uh, smashes up some cars because they're just normal cars, and he thinks that he's like encouraging Transformers to not be slaves to the human and And and anyway, smashes some stuff up.
45:30-45:32
He's trying to start a revolution, except these are just Fords.
45:33-45:34
These are not Transformers.
45:34-45:34
Exactly.
45:35-45:37
This is just a Chevy Nova, bro.
45:41-45:48
Take him down, zap him again to knock him out, take him back to to the I think it's the ark is where they're at again.
45:48-46:08
On the at the other on the other side of it, we've got the Decepticons over here, and Megatron is saying we need to learn more about these humans and about this planet, because he does hint at They had a run in with Spider-Man and they're like, oh, these they're not all of these humans are just soft, squishy, disposable things.
46:09-46:11
So he's like, let's learn more.
46:11-46:13
And Starscream's like, let's just go attack him.
46:13-46:15
And Megatron doesn't want to.
46:15-46:16
So Starscream takes off.
46:16-46:19
And he thinks, being the brilliant tactician that he is.
46:20-46:23
I'm gonna go and attack this Air Force base.
46:23-46:25
The Autobots will come to stop me.
46:25-46:29
So then they'll have to come and attack the Autobots.
46:29-46:32
So he goes and he starts attacking the Air Force base.
46:32-46:38
And the Decepticons Well, the Autobots are busy stopping Braun from smashing cars, so they don't come.
46:39-46:43
And the Decepticons show up to like take him out.
46:42-46:45
So the Decepticons come, they get Starscream, they take him back.
46:45-46:49
And now we've got Starscream, the traitor, with the Autobots.
46:49-46:50
We got Braun.
46:50-46:54
in Optimus Prime's head, the traitor, now with there.
46:54-46:57
And so how do you solve this problem?
46:57-47:03
You pit the traitors against each other in a gladiator combat, motherfucker.
47:03-47:04
You thunderdomed those babies.
47:05-47:05
You do.
47:05-47:06
You totally thunderdome it.
47:06-47:08
Because two bots enter, one bot leaves.
47:09-47:18
Like straight up, Optimus Prime is just like, well, we've got to make sure that because when he cut because when Bron comes to from getting zapped again, now he's back to himself.
47:17-47:20
And Optimus is like, well he's so ashamed.
47:20-47:21
He's so ashamed at what he's done.
47:21-47:24
He's like, how can I make this up to you, Optimus?
47:24-47:28
And he's like, I guess have a gladiatorial match against Starscream.
47:28-47:32
Cause I just got off the phone with my Arch Nemesis Megatron.
47:32-47:33
We zoomed into each other.
47:33-47:37
We were Skype for business calling each other.
47:35-47:37
And we were like, hey, I got a bitch.
47:37-47:38
Do you have a bitch?
47:38-47:39
Let's have our bitches fight.
47:40-47:41
And that's what happens.
47:41-47:46
He just throws him out there and it's like basically, well, we'll find out if you're really who you are.
47:46-47:51
If you you know, basically if if you win then you're not a traitor.
47:51-47:54
Like so bad.
47:54-47:55
Oh my gosh, seriously.
47:55-47:57
So anyway, fight, fight, fight.
47:58-48:00
Uh was it who was it?
48:00-48:01
Was it uh Mirage?
48:01-48:13
Mirage Mirage is basically there as the uh Observer for the Autobots and our dear sweet catboy Ravage, who had almost got killed by Starscream earlier in the story.
48:13-48:15
Is the observer for the uh Decepticon.
48:15-48:16
Is the observer.
48:16-48:21
And so In Mirage's case, he has uh clearly been tasked with, I gotta help.
48:21-48:23
I gotta make sure things turn out okay.
48:23-48:28
Meanwhile, Ravage has been told by Megatron.
48:26-48:29
If you see a chance to rat fuck this guy, don't rat fuck him.
48:30-48:30
Go for it.
48:31-48:34
We I hate I hate Starscream.
48:34-48:34
Get him.
48:34-48:37
And Ravage is like, well, I hate him too, because he tried to kill me earlier.
48:37-48:41
The only reason I survived is because I'm I'm good at my job.
48:40-48:42
So yeah, I'm gonna rat fuck him.
48:42-48:43
And so that is what happens.
48:44-48:49
Mirage saves Braun because he can do Mirages.
48:49-49:00
He can apparently this is I don't think has ever been established in any other version of Mirage I've ever read or seen, but uh he can do holograms, so he makes Starscream think he won.
49:01-49:04
And then Ravage just like
49:03-49:06
Gank search with a missile.
49:06-49:06
Yep.
49:07-49:10
So and he's like, that's what you get for trying to kill me.
49:11-49:12
And there we go.
49:12-49:13
It was fair.
49:14-49:15
Very weird story.
49:15-49:16
Very weird.
49:16-49:17
It was much worse.
49:17-49:19
It was much worse than the other one we read.
49:19-49:20
Oh yeah.
49:20-49:21
So much worse.
49:21-49:39
I mean the other one was very weird as well, but it was this weirdly I mean this almost like ex existential, you know, there's oh there's this transformer who's been here for millennia and and comes out every once in a while and it's it's documented to the annals of history and And all this kind of stuff and and here it's a little bit more.
49:40-49:53
It ends with them uh executing the the like dormant Autobot that the iron the man of iron was protecting because it's that or maybe uh uh Megatron might get him.
49:54-49:56
So we have to put this guy down essentially.
49:56-49:58
And it's like, wow.
49:58-50:01
What the the vicissitudes of war, man.
50:01-50:03
Look at what it makes us do to ourselves.
50:03-50:11
Look at the choices we have to grapple with as wartime, you know, uh
50:09-50:27
uh combatants and then this one they're like yeah just go have a gladiator fight it's fine it's cool let's just let's just make you suck us fight so Anyway, uh it is I I'm I kind of want to hold off on reading more of these until I get my physical copies so I can sit down with these things.
50:27-50:40
And and really kind of go through, especially the Till All Are One compendium, where I can read how they have these organized in order between US and UK because Boy, it's weird.
50:40-50:40
It's weird.
50:41-50:42
These first two have been really weird.
50:43-50:49
They've been odd, but it's it's been a fun it's been a fun little exploration.
50:49-50:49
Yeah.
50:49-50:54
No, uh the thing is, is they're they're bad, but it's not a bad time reading them.
50:54-51:01
You're like, you know what, that's a Uh uh Starscream brought a bunch of bombs and says, Tremble humans, for today you die.
51:02-51:04
And you go, hell yeah, Starscream, kill them humans.
51:04-51:04
That's what started.
51:05-51:05
Go for it, bud.
51:05-51:06
That's what Starscream does.
51:07-51:08
That's what he do.
51:08-51:10
Um Ravage is there, Ravage is cute.
51:10-51:18
I've always it's always been I've always had a soft spot for all of the mini cons because What do I love more than a miniature tape?
51:19-51:20
I was so obsessed.
51:20-51:24
You remember how we had that big weird box thing?
51:24-51:29
that had the tiny like three-inch TV and the ejectable mini cassette.
51:30-51:34
Oh 100%
51:32-51:34
I was obsessed with that thing when I was a kid.
51:35-51:37
And so I've always loved micro cassettes.
51:37-51:49
I still love the idea of the micro cassette, even while I understand that the cassette is not great technology in terms of like long especially long-term uh you know storage of information because tape wears out.
51:50-51:52
I love the idea and I love the shape.
51:52-51:55
I love that they were the exact size.
51:55-51:58
I still have the ravage toy that we had when we were kids.
51:58-51:59
It's in the drawer right over there.
51:59-51:59
That's awesome.
52:00-52:03
He can't stand up because his joints are so loose.
52:03-52:06
His joints are way too loose, but I can transform him.
52:06-52:08
So he's always been one of my favorites.
52:08-52:11
So when he shows up here, I'm like, oh, it's Rabbit.
52:11-52:12
I love that little guy.
52:12-52:13
He's so cute.
52:13-52:14
He is.
52:14-52:15
He's adorable.
52:15-52:19
He's just he's just a little guy.
52:19-52:22
Well, it was interesting to go back and read some more of these.
52:22-52:28
And again, and we thought we could talk about it and I'll do everything in my power to make sure that this does not get lost.
52:29-52:32
I do one thing I have to give them credit for.
52:32-52:37
Well, credit on one side and uh criticisms on the other.
52:37-52:37
Okay.
52:37-52:40
Megatron's face, incredible.
52:40-52:40
Yeah.
52:41-52:44
Optimus's face, d-dog shit every time.
52:44-52:45
Yes.
52:45-52:46
Optimus looks terrible.
52:47-52:50
And Megatron.
52:48-52:52
Because he's got his gob out, it's always making these evil, evil faces.
52:52-52:53
Oh yeah.
52:53-53:04
And then Optimus just has his stupid covered mouth and he just looks like Uh there's no expression, there's no juice, and Megatron's out here making the most fun faces you've ever seen.
53:05-53:05
It's true.
53:05-53:06
It's true.
53:06-53:08
So what are you gonna do?
53:08-53:11
Well, anything else before we wrap it up?
53:12-53:17
I think that they should make the minicons cheaper to buy.
53:17-53:18
Yeah.
53:19-53:27
They do have they just announced they that so for those of you who don't know when it comes to Transformers, there's obviously a lot of different toy lines.
53:27-53:46
The studio series is the toy line that they are specifically trying to create toys that are as as similar as possible or that look as similar as possible to whatever it's from, whether it is the cartoon or whether it is the uh the Beast Wars cartoon or Energon or the movies or all those sorts of things.
53:46-53:51
That's the studio series are mostly geared towards more adult collectors rather than the kids ones.
53:51-53:54
And then the other lines are more for kids.
53:53-54:04
They just announced a studio series of uh Soundwave that comes with like four of the Minicon tapes.
54:04-54:04
Ooh, nice.
54:05-54:10
And I know that thing's gonna be like 80 bucks, but I am sorely tempted by it.
54:10-54:12
I really am truly tempted.
54:12-54:19
Buzzsaw is there, which is the cool uh um or vulture, which we also had when we were when I was a kid.
54:19-54:22
Um, Ravage is there, Rumble is there.
54:22-54:27
I I'm very tempted, but I know it's gonna be very expensive, so I really have to think about it.
54:27-54:30
I've already spent the we haven't talked about this.
54:30-54:37
I spent too much on a on a transformer just a couple of weeks ago because my missing link RC.
54:37-54:39
I don't know if you can see it in the Zoom call because I got the background.
54:40-54:42
Oh yeah, no, I can see it.
54:42-54:45
Because the thing about RC is, she's in the movie.
54:45-54:47
They never made a toy of her.
54:47-54:51
They made a toy of every other motherfucker that was ever in the movie.
54:51-54:55
They never made a toy of RC because they were like, girl toys won't sell.
54:55-54:57
It's a girl, which is stupid.
54:57-54:58
It she would have sold just fine.
54:59-55:03
But then they never made an RC toy until 2003.
55:03-55:08
It was the first time they made a toy of one of the main characters from the movie.
55:08-55:11
Uh and the first toy they made was a boat.
55:11-55:12
It wasn't even a car.
55:12-55:19
They didn't make a car toy that looked like the character RC from the movie until 2015.
55:19-55:20
Goodness gracious.
55:20-55:40
And And they made but importantly, they made a prototype of RC back in the day that just never got sent to production So as part of the missing link line, which is a line that Takara, which is the company that makes uh uh transformers from Japan To Karatomi.
55:40-55:50
They're as the law, the missing link line is them saying, what if we take these guys and we make them look like the toy that came out in the 80s?
55:51-55:55
But they're a good toy this time instead of a terrible one.
55:55-56:06
So, you know, the Optimus Prime in Missing Link has a waist swivel and ab crunches and hands that are not separate, so you lose them.
56:06-56:11
And all of these th he has like hips that you can make him stand in dynamic poses.
56:11-56:14
while still looking like the toy you could have bought in 1982.
56:14-56:15
Correct.
56:15-56:17
Like it just looks like that toy still.
56:17-56:26
And so as part of that line, they made a version of RC where they basically took the original design.
56:24-56:27
Retooled it to be a more modern figure.
56:27-56:30
That that fucking toy cost me a hundred dollars.
56:31-56:34
And it was worth every It was worth every penny, listeners.
56:34-56:35
It was worth every penny.
56:35-56:39
It's maybe the best figure RC has ever gotten.
56:39-56:39
It's great.
56:40-56:40
Nice.
56:40-56:41
Yeah.
56:41-56:42
So Transformers.
56:42-56:42
They're fun.
56:42-56:44
I like, I like to make them transform.
56:45-56:46
There you go.
56:46-56:48
Well, we'll go ahead and wrap it up here.
56:48-56:54
If you uh want to reach out, go ahead and reach out as we uh have mentioned before, feedback at the middle of culture.
56:54-57:01
com Go ahead and subscribe, share, leave us a rating or a review, and we'll be back again in another couple of weeks.