transcript
Speaker 1:
[00:00] Gollum is like sneaking around, he like goes into like nests and steals eggs, and goes through windows to snatch things out of cradles.
Speaker 2:
[00:07] He eats babies, he eats babies!
Speaker 1:
[00:09] And I was, I remember like hearing that and being fucking petrified, I was like, I'm sorry, what? And then like, and he just kind of like, like sunk into the substrate of my psyche. And then Andy Serkis said that, and I was like, it was real, so.
Speaker 3:
[00:25] I'm sure your dad didn't read that again on repeat. What read-throughs of the book? He just skipped over that line.
Speaker 1:
[00:32] No, certainly not. That would be dishonest. Knowing my dad, there's no way he skipped that line.
Speaker 2:
[00:37] It's like elf babies, if you look at the way he is, because he's in like fucking Mirkwood.
Speaker 1:
[00:41] Oh yeah, he's in the woods. Oh God, yeah, yeesh. Elves are, elves probably aren't even having that many babies. They're sort of going extinct at this point.
Speaker 2:
[00:49] This is the point why they're going extinct. Gollum's eating the fucking kids.
Speaker 1:
[00:52] He's like a fucking outdoor cat. He's devastating the local songbird population.
Speaker 3:
[00:56] Elf Baby's Gollum is an outlier and should not be counted. Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Overly Sarcastic Podcast. I am Blue, and I'm joined by Red.
Speaker 1:
[01:14] Hello, it's Cold Brew with Nutella again, because I didn't sleep well last night, which has nothing to do with all of the Nutella Cold Brew I've been drinking for the rest of the week, I'm sure.
Speaker 3:
[01:24] Join the club. And here to also maybe join the club of people who slept bad last night, our good close personal friend, Dominic Noble. Welcome back to the pod, Dom, good to see you.
Speaker 2:
[01:33] Hey, yeah, I'm so excited to be back on here. I actually slept like a baby last night, so I was walking around all day in 25 pounds worth of chain mail and leather at the RenFest. So I was tired.
Speaker 1:
[01:45] Oh, dude. Nothing makes you sleep better than profound exhaustion.
Speaker 3:
[01:48] I can claim with confidence that you are a liar because I have a baby and she did not sleep well last night.
Speaker 2:
[01:54] I slept like a baby that's been very drunk. How's that?
Speaker 1:
[01:57] I've been trying to psychically beam my good sleep to you. I mentioned, everyone on this call is watched for their breakfast, right? There's one plot point where it turns out that the reason why Ed is so short and tired all the time is that because his body is quantum entangled with Al's, he's sleeping and eating for both of them. That's how I feel with Blue right now. It's like I have to get all this extra sleep and then beam it to him so that he doesn't just die.
Speaker 2:
[02:23] This is a great and perfect solution that will definitely work.
Speaker 3:
[02:26] It is. One day Red was like, I beamed my good sleep from last night to you and I was like, how did you know? And you were like, I didn't. I just guessed.
Speaker 1:
[02:35] I'm like, fuck man, You've had two good nights of sleep since baby Aquamarine has been born and that is kind of the bag of new parenthood.
Speaker 3:
[02:43] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[02:45] Ain't got the way.
Speaker 3:
[02:46] Red.
Speaker 1:
[02:46] This podcast has a purpose, right?
Speaker 3:
[02:48] Why don't you start us off with your trope talk from-
Speaker 1:
[02:50] Oh, me start off.
Speaker 3:
[02:51] Not last week, but the week before.
Speaker 1:
[02:53] Yeah, wait, was it? I think it was last week.
Speaker 3:
[02:55] Tragic Monsters.
Speaker 1:
[02:56] Yeah, at this point, it is last week. Anyway, wait, right, right?
Speaker 3:
[03:00] No, it was last week. I, listen, the amount of sleep I'm not getting. Also, the fucked thing is I was expecting it would get better bi-weekly to bi-weekly. It's been getting worse. It's somehow been getting worse. I didn't think that a baby could have sleep regression at six weeks when there is theoretically nothing to regress from, and yet.
Speaker 1:
[03:23] I feel like everything I've heard about every stage of baby development is that there's some new bullshit happening at all times and it's like, oh, it's terrible twos and the terrible ones. Also, terrible threes, terrible zeros to six months. Anyway, Tragic Monsters. I had fun making that video. It was neat. It's always a good excuse for me to just kind of dish about characters that I really like. The inspiration for this was I was watching Spectacular Spider-Man with a friend of mine who's watched all of the DC shows but almost none of the Marvel-based shows. I was like, oh great, Educations. We got through that.
Speaker 3:
[03:56] I have two good ones for you. Is that Earth's Mightiest Heroes, baby?
Speaker 1:
[03:59] We watched Earth's Mightiest Heroes. We watched some of X-Men Evolution, which is less good pound for pound than I remembered it being, but still very fun for me. Or I was like, yeah, let's watch season one, but not the season one finale. It's inexplicably the worst thing in the entire show. And then I was like, maybe let's switch over to... Anyway, so we were watching Spectacular Spider-Man. I was like, it's kind of fun how all of the bad guys are like tragic monsters. And then I've stopped for a beat and then I was on my phone taking notes, Tragic Monsters, List of Traits. But it was fun. It ended up turning into like a little mini diatribe about the Del Toro Frankenstein movie, which I thoroughly enjoyed despite it abundantly being very Del Toro-esque fan fiction of the original book, which is fine. It's so faithful in certain ways and then in others, it hits every element of the Del Toro bingo card. It's like, we've got this whole thing is actually about parenthood. We've got actually our protagonist is immortal, just like the Pinocchio movie he made a few years back. Uncannily similar, in fact, in the mechanics of how that works.
Speaker 3:
[04:59] This is like Del Toro's version of sexy Icelandic Dracula, you know, powers of darkness. Have we all talked about this on the pod before?
Speaker 1:
[05:07] We talked about sexy Icelandic Dracula. Dom, you look confused. Have you not heard of sexy Icelandic Dracula?
Speaker 2:
[05:12] I have not heard of sexy Icelandic Dracula, do tell.
Speaker 1:
[05:15] The news broke on this some years back that there was an Icelandic translation of Dracula that was not a translation. It was actually full-blown fan fiction, way sexier, way hornier. Because basically the person who translated it was like, I could take some liberties with this bad boy. I saw Bram Stoker at a shop one time, so I think I understand his creative vision. Then it turned out to be like this super turbo-horny, not accurate at all translation.
Speaker 3:
[05:40] They really tightened up the pacing. That's one of the things that they did. Yeah. Anyway, sorry. It's like I'm reading it as Del Toro's version of this, maybe not quite so horny, but replace that with parental trauma.
Speaker 1:
[05:52] Actually, yeah, I guess it is less horny.
Speaker 2:
[05:54] I actually discovered recently, because spoilers, I'm also covering Frankenstein very shortly.
Speaker 1:
[05:59] Yes, good.
Speaker 2:
[06:00] But wanting to fuck the monster is actually as old as Frankenstein itself. I was looking at some of the very earliest play adaptations all the way back in the 19th century and that was a fucking hot monster, apparently, according to the script.
Speaker 1:
[06:13] Doesn't surprise me. Because I've occasionally gotten flack for the, in my summary of it, I was like, the monster is just described as being physically beautiful, but just kind of unsettling with weird looking eyes. And I believe that is textually supported. I didn't pull that shit out of nowhere, but the main thing the book highlights is that he's so creepy. He's so unnerving to look at that he ends up being horrifying regardless. There's nothing, he's not one of those stitched up, bolted together monsters like in the old Universal Horror Movie versions, but there's something wrong with him.
Speaker 2:
[06:43] It's Uncanny Valley, I think.
Speaker 1:
[06:44] He's supposed to be in the Uncanny Valley. And they ended up doing that a little bit in the Del Toro Frankenstein, where they took this weird looking but overall perfectly proportioned actor and then covered him in the stitches and the weirdness.
Speaker 2:
[06:57] They just gave him a gotye pink job.
Speaker 1:
[07:00] Yeah, a little bit. He's a patchwork dude. But he ends up being so soulful and dough-eyed that it works regardless. But, oh man, I could go off on so many interesting things about that movie. Like, I have no eye for costume design and fashion and clothing in general. And even I can tell that the stuff they're doing with Elizabeth's dresses in that movie are so incredible.
Speaker 2:
[07:24] Wild costuming there. I was like, is this Dune again? Like, what is...
Speaker 1:
[07:28] Everyone's in diaphanous gowns. Everyone's dying in weird situations. When Elizabeth came out in her wedding dress and she had the Bride of Frankenstein mummy wrappings down her arm, I was like, oh, this is gonna go badly for her. But anyway, no, a good movie. Definitely recommend giving it a watch. I should just make a Del Toro bingo card at this point, if I haven't already. I feel like I did one years ago.
Speaker 3:
[07:50] I was a little surprised you didn't actually have a visual of a Del Toro bingo card on the thing. It's like, we all know what the bingo board points are, but it was like, yeah, it could be a good, yeah.
Speaker 1:
[07:59] The monster is hot. The monster human girlfriend. Interesting dynamic. Man is the true monster. Daddy issues, daddy issues, daddy issues, daddy issues.
Speaker 2:
[08:09] My biggest issue with the film is I feel he did it better in shape of water. He did who was the man who was the monster and who was the sexy monster.
Speaker 1:
[08:16] Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[08:16] So much better there. This was like, it's the same thing again, but with a different IP slapped on top.
Speaker 1:
[08:22] I think that he did the immortality and the fatherhood narrative better in Pinocchio, which is also a huge deviation from the original book. In fact, it's a purposeful inversion because the moral of Pinocchio is like, obey, you earn the right to be a real human being by doing everything that is told to you and being a good little boy. I think it's from the Dimension 20 season, Never After, Lou Wilson plays Pinocchio and he talked about as a black man, how interesting it was for him to see a character who is never allowed to make a mistake, a little boy who's never allowed to do anything wrong or he will be fiercely punished, and he thought that was a really interesting perspective. It's clear that Del Toro looked at that and was like, yeah, you have a little boy and he's told in order to earn the right to be seen as a person, you have to be perfect. He says, your rules are bullshit, I'm already a person. It's a complete inversion with an overtly anti-fascist message that the idea that being a good little boy means doing what you're told and following orders, and then he sets it in like fascist Italy is like, okay, yeah, unsubtle, cool. And taking Geppetto, who's normally this sort of like saintly do-no-wrong fella, and turning him into this like deeply troubled, traumatized alcoholic who really was not prepared to have a complicated like problem child puppet boy show up with his dead son's soul being like, oh father, I'm a real boy, wee. Like, it's just, it's so messy and so interesting. And then it's clear that Del Toro was taking that same idea and unpacking it through the lens of Frankenstein. And I think it works a little less well, because with Pinocchio, it's like, he was clearly playing with the Frankenstein imagery. Like when Pinocchio was created, it looks like this sort of visceral, like brutal, almost like hacking apart this tree, lightning crashing in the background. So just doing that verbatim in actual Frankenstein almost feels like it hits a little less good. Cause it's like, yeah, I've seen this movie, you know, back in like the thirties or something.
Speaker 3:
[10:14] It's like one fewer layers. Oh, that's just, that's just the thing. That's just what it is.
Speaker 1:
[10:18] Yeah, it's shaped like itself, hat on a hat. But no, I thought the movie was interesting. I did have a fun time watching it. I do think it did Elizabeth a little bit dirty, but I think that was the point. And the video was also about other stuff, but I've talked about Frankenstein this entire time instead. So hey.
Speaker 3:
[10:32] We can talk about the Spider-Man Tragic Monsters, maybe in the after after show show, because goddamn there are so many good ones in that show.
Speaker 1:
[10:39] And my boy Mr. Freeze, who I did not give enough time in the video because he's so tragic, but there's just not, he's less visually clear with it than a lot of others. Anyway, you also had a video that came out in the last month.
Speaker 3:
[10:50] I did also have a video. This was a video that, on review, I should have done later, because in advance of Baby Aquamarine showing up, I buffered a little bit of stuff ahead of time to have ready to go so that I could jump into the pits of childcare and know that I had like two months of stuff taken care of. And that was a great idea. One of those videos was a basically like developer diary dev log of like how I made The Veneziad, this big dumb epic poem thing that's been on the collective community radar for like two years and still isn't out yet, because I thought it was going to be out by now, but apparently the printer that Wraithmarked is working with has just had like problem after problem after problem such as the joys of doing high quality small batch indie boutique publishing type stuff. So it was like, oh, I got to like two weeks beforehand, I'm like, this book's not going to be out yet. So I kind of went back into the last minute, like I made this thinking the book would be out by now. Here's an addendum on da da da da da. Anyway, buy the pens.
Speaker 2:
[11:57] Not to rub it in, but I think I have moved house twice since I've used it.
Speaker 3:
[12:00] Oh no, certainly. I've, yeah, I feel like every time there's an update, it's like, how do I change my address? I've moved house and I'm like, oh fuck. The final print run is nearing completion, so like theoretically it should be done. But I don't want to put a date on it because it's always wrong. But it was fun to talk about the process of like, okay, this whole big thing that I've been working on, like in the background for at this point, like eight years, six from time of initially announcing it. Like how did this wacko story come together? How on earth did it turn from a school project into an actual like book? Why Wraithmarked? Why in this particular format and all that stuff? So it was really cool to like talk about that. Admittedly, I can't go into like much of like the story construction without giving away the plot of the book. And I want people to be able to like experience it on their own. But it should be out hopefully within like a couple months allowing for time for the books to be finished, get shipped over to the states from the UK, and then get packaged in and fulfilled out. That's the idea. But they have gotten test copies, so the final like versions of the book have been approved. There was a problem with the edge printing. We had this like floral Venetian flag pattern going up the pages of the books on the side. I know there's like sprayed edges where you like do them gold or a solid color, but this was like a pattern, which means it's really easy for that to get fucked up. It was all like wavy and desaturated and fucky, so they had to take a couple extra rounds to fix that. But in the process of getting those test copies done, they had an extra signature, which is, I guess, like all of the pages of the book unbound in like the case, and they sent it to one of the people on the team's moms who does bookbinding as a hobby, and I'll post pictures of this. We can like attach it with the pod promo. I'll put it on like BlueSky or Instagram, but they made a like special leather-bound like bronze clasp having marble paper on the inside, copy of the book, so I now have a copy. It's basically a one of one completely different from everything else, and it's absolutely gorgeous, and I only want everyone else to have theirs now.
Speaker 1:
[14:22] We gotta recount, though, the roller coaster you experienced of opening that box in the mail. Because I was over while that happened, and like, we were sent you a box, and we were like, if this isn't the Veneziad, I'm going to scream. And then you open it, and it was like wrapped in like red and gold paper, and I was like, it's gotta be.
Speaker 3:
[14:42] It was underneath a lot of like packaging paper, so I could see through it like, oh, there's something red in there, and I know the Veneziad is red. And then you flip it out. And then I opened it up, and it was like this black leather thing, and I'm like, it's a notebook?
Speaker 1:
[14:57] Because it looked like what it was.
Speaker 3:
[14:59] They said there's a surprise on the way, so I wasn't sure what it was gonna be. I knew it was something. And then Cyan also has the photo, so we'll be able to post it along of me opening it, like looking askance, like, okay, like, oh, it's an avocado, thanks. And I open it up, and I see the front page with like my title card, and I'm like, oh, it's a thing, there it is. So it was a very, very up and down.
Speaker 1:
[15:23] They've taken a picture of it with the newspaper. We know the book is actually getting printed.
Speaker 3:
[15:28] Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[15:28] I love that it's just something someone's mom made.
Speaker 3:
[15:30] Yeah. I think they've done a few of these so far. I think I'm like the third where they just had an extra stack of the signatures, the interior pages that they were able to do up all fancy. And you can tell, like, looking at it, it's not bound in the same way that the proper books are. All of the little individual like packets of 20 pages are like kind of askew from each other. So it's got that handmade look, whereas the real pages are going to be very much like machine perfect. Also, because if they're not machine perfect, you can't do art on the edge because the pages don't line up. So that is really cool. And then I didn't post about it for two weeks because other stuff happened. And then I was like, I feel bad, like posting about this book when everyone else is like, where the fuck is mine? So now that I'm talking about it on the pod, I'll post the images on Blue Sky and Instagram. But it's really gorgeous and I'm so excited to have it. And I just so desperately want everyone else to have theirs so that I can actually fucking talk about what happens in the story. And not just be like, I wrote a book. I promise there's a story in there. Right now all you know is the names of three characters and the title and theoretically the setting. But soon you'll have the plot. You'll be able to talk about all the fucked up things that happen in the fourth chapter.
Speaker 1:
[16:43] It's funny.
Speaker 2:
[16:43] This is where we find out you're just a sick, sick sadistic writer.
Speaker 3:
[16:47] I hope I'm a bastard. I tried to be really fucked up in how I went about this. We'll see. Hopefully, I can twist the knife. Sorry, Reg, you had a thought I kept interrupting you from.
Speaker 1:
[16:58] Well, I just feel like this leather-bound book thing, it's not dissimilar to something I've seen you do in unrelated contexts. How much of your video game collection has custom-made covers that you did now? Because I know for a while, that was just a thing. You were like, I want these to look more coherent, so I've just made my own and printed them out and put them in little slip cases.
Speaker 3:
[17:17] Yeah, they're very much like graphic design is my passion because it's one minimalist with one accent color and it's like I, this is about as much talent as I with Photoshop have the capacity to do. But it is very fun and I like giving custom covers to things. It feels like a special way to be like, this is the book that everybody else has and now I've made it look like mine. So it's cool.
Speaker 1:
[17:36] Yes.
Speaker 3:
[17:37] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[17:38] The urge to customize your own version of a thing that a lot of people have. But yeah, I'm excited for The Veneziad to come out so people can actually read it. It's been mildly heartbreaking getting the Kickstarter update comments because they're not aimed at you, you know, like everyone who's waiting on the book knows like you're not the one who you do not control the speed at which the printer prints. And everyone knows that and is being very lovely about it. But we do still see all the emails where it's like, hey, where is it? And then like 17 more people are like, hey, I also have this question.
Speaker 3:
[18:09] Yeah, wait a minute. Where the fuck is it? Yeah, they didn't talk about this in the updates for The Veneziad, but the printer that they're working with, they have like 20 irons in the fire at once, Wraithmark does. Books that are in development haven't launched yet, books that are launching right now, books that they're working on, fulfilling and doing all the backend stuff, which is where like I am right now. Three books were done at this printer, one of which was VE. Schwab's Shades of Magic, or like a Darker Shade of Magic, whatever it is. And apparently, and Bryce, Wraithmark boss, sent me this. Like this is in the public updates for Shades of Magic, but you wouldn't have seen it because you didn't back that book. But we basically got a run of copies from this printer that fucked up so badly. They didn't have like the little piece of silk that they bind in the top of the pages, in the top and bottom of the book. And we got all these copies, like several thousands of them, and notice it didn't have those two little pieces of hardware attached. Normally, it's like, ah, fuck, that's incorrect, but okay. But they're like, no, this is like a special edition. We can't ship a bad product, you know, print or go back and print it again. And they had to do like, oh, we were like, we're so sorry. Here's a test, we're doing it right. And they're like, no, you did it wrong. Write an apology so that I can send it to our backers. So like a whole fucked up thing with, and if you're in the shades of magic, you'll have seen all of this. So like the same printer that's just been like string of fuck ups has knocked out the Veneziad. But hopefully I will have good news to share sometime in the next couple of months. But that is enough of that. I had a great time writing it. I'm so looking forward to people actually getting their hands on it. But Dom, tell us about books that already exist and are already in the world. You I think our audience knows who you are, but your most recent video, if you want to talk about that, was the Night of the Seven Kingdoms adaptation. I see you're wearing the Game of Thrones shirt right now. The floor is yours. You're welcome to talk about whatever you'd like, but yeah, books. Books, yeah.
Speaker 2:
[20:13] Well, yeah, it's the Night of the Seven Kingdoms video was feels like a thousand years ago at this point.
Speaker 3:
[20:17] Three weeks, that's forever in YouTube time.
Speaker 2:
[20:20] Yeah, you caught me. I've been reducing my content a bit recently just for various reasons. I'm down to like one a month at this point, so I'm just trying to put the finishing touches on the Frankenstein script. I think Frankenstein may have diverged into two different videos at this point. There's the three movies I actually want to compare the book to, and then there's why is Frankenstein like this? Because I don't realize just how little every single film adaptation has in common with the book at this point. Spoiler, the answer is about 100 years worth of stage plays has been evolving.
Speaker 1:
[20:55] Stage plays?
Speaker 2:
[20:56] Interesting. There's hundreds and hundreds of different versions of Frankenstein before film was even invented. So like, it's the endpoint of a century of evolution.
Speaker 1:
[21:06] Because I knew they already had all these tropes that it felt like they had locked in by the time they started doing the Universal movies. Because they were like, Frankenstein, a doctor in a castle with lightning technology. And it's like, why would you do that in the book? He's a student. He doesn't finish his degree. He makes this shit in his dorm.
Speaker 2:
[21:23] He's super vague about how he does it. Like, I used an instrument and he opened his eyes eventually.
Speaker 1:
[21:28] It's implied that it's almost like alchemical. Like, he's creating a homunculus or something.
Speaker 2:
[21:32] Yeah, he's a chemist. It's a lot of bubbly things. But yeah, a lot of the tropes about Frankenstein came about because people wanted to show off pyrotechnics on stage. So lightning, zappity things, and everyone was really scared of electricity when it first came out, but that was slightly after Shelley's time. So it's a whole thing. But yeah, The Knights of the Seven Kingdom, I said, I'm trying to remember what the fuck I said in that video at this point.
Speaker 3:
[21:56] We can talk about whatever you want. I just brought it up because it was your most recent one.
Speaker 2:
[22:00] No, I mean, it was a lot of fun doing it. I think I missed the beautiful period where anyone gives a shit when we're releasing that video, but that was-
Speaker 1:
[22:09] I know, this is the most relevant Game of Thrones has been in a while.
Speaker 2:
[22:13] I'm really glad it worked out because this one is my favorite off main series Game of Thrones book.
Speaker 1:
[22:19] It's been so nice seeing the Game of Thrones fans have hope again, you know?
Speaker 3:
[22:21] I know.
Speaker 1:
[22:22] Because it's been so heartbreaking.
Speaker 3:
[22:24] I feel like we've been through this before because obviously, you know, the show ended, you know, whole train wreck tragedy type thing. And then the fire and blood got turned into House of the Dragon, and everyone's like, oh my god, you guys, this show is amazing. I'm like, I think we've, like, Red and I were on podcast, like, are you fucking kidding me? Like, we're doing this again? Why do you think this is going to turn out good? And the first season people really liked, and the second season apparently was nowhere near as good. And I'm like, yes, that's what we knew was going to happen. Why are we acting surprised?
Speaker 2:
[22:56] In season two, there's this one episode which is basically all dragon fight, and it's fucking epic. But that's the only good one, really.
Speaker 1:
[23:02] I mean, I've said before that I think most stories can be subdivided into good with bad bits or bad with good bits. And it sounds like House of the Dragons started off good with bad bits and became bad with good bits.
Speaker 2:
[23:15] It's a combination of flawed concept and the writer's strike happening exactly at the wrong moment because they weren't allowed to do any reshoots or rewrite anything as they were filming it. They had to stick with it as is. So when they realized that the script didn't really make any sense, they had to just stick with it.
Speaker 1:
[23:30] Got it. That's unfortunate.
Speaker 2:
[23:32] So that was, yeah. But yeah, Night of the Seven Kingdoms is a new way of hope. I'm scared to hope too hard, especially because I know the middle book, because there's three short stories that make up the book, and the middle one is probably the weakest. I like it, but it's not as interesting as the first or third one. So we're going to try and get through season two with some grace. And then hopefully my close personal friend, Georgia R. Martin, will have, because he's one of the reasons he's not working on Winds of Winter right now, is he really wants to write another Duncan Egg novel before the series catches up.
Speaker 3:
[24:03] Yeah. So now you say short story, but we're talking about Georgia R. Martin here. So like 500 pages, 400 pages?
Speaker 2:
[24:10] No, it's genuinely a pretty contained story. Like he wrote this in like the 80s back before he lost control of his writing pen. Oh, man, the last episode or second to last episode of Game of Thrones has one more fucking tragedy that it's responsible for because I downloaded a random clip of Daenerys going crazy, listening to the bells. It's an Indigo to put in the video and it melted her computer. Apparently this flow was so cursed.
Speaker 4:
[24:42] Completely crashed. I could not open the Adobe project that it was in. I could barely get the files in that folder on my hard drive to open in any other software. I ended up having to just take a cut I had already made and edit on top of it because it was just simply melting.
Speaker 2:
[24:58] The video was like 90% done when we released it because I was like, you know what, fair. I'm sorry that I sent you this fucking Trojan horse.
Speaker 1:
[25:05] What kind of cyberpunk black ice bullshit is this? What did you do?
Speaker 3:
[25:10] The computer also heard the bells and shows violence.
Speaker 2:
[25:16] So that was the whole thing. But yeah, I'm much more excited about working on Frankenstein. It's one of those scripts where I've rewritten the entire thing so many times now, which is usually something I can resist doing. But I keep finding new information that completely changes everything I've said so far.
Speaker 3:
[25:32] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[25:34] Yeah, that's always fun. I think it's going to be really interesting though.
Speaker 2:
[25:38] Doing three movies. I'm doing 30s, 90s, and Guelmo del Toro, so.
Speaker 1:
[25:44] Yeah. I think del Toro is the only actual movie adaptation of Frankenstein that I've ever watched. I know the Universal ones by reputation, and because of the irreparable damage they did to how everyone pictures Victor Frankenstein and the creature. But no, I think this will be really cool. I had no idea. It makes sense that they would be doing stage plays. I remember from when I was doing mummy research that there was a stretch of time where every single story was like, with the power of galvanic electricity, we have raised the dead. I was like, it makes sense if at the time they were doing stage plays. Also, they were like, it's pretty easy to make a big battery go zappy. It looks very cool.
Speaker 3:
[26:23] It's like their version of Big Blue Skybeams in the third act.
Speaker 1:
[26:28] Yeah. Just giant fuck off batteries going zz. Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[26:33] I mean, the 90s one is unique in that they use electric eels instead of lightning, which I thought was quite funny.
Speaker 1:
[26:39] Oh, okay.
Speaker 2:
[26:41] Yeah. That movie is weird. There was like a tent.
Speaker 1:
[26:43] Like Amazing Spider-Man 2?
Speaker 2:
[26:46] I don't know, man. There's a scene that's like a good five minutes long where Kenneth Branagh tries to help Nero get up. They're both naked and covered in oil, and they're just trying to stand up because the monster has just been born, and Kenneth Branagh ripped off all his clothes before he does his science. I'm not into it. He's a very sexy man in that.
Speaker 1:
[27:06] Sorry. So Kenneth Branagh is Victor in this movie? Yes.
Speaker 2:
[27:08] He's Victor Frankenstein.
Speaker 1:
[27:09] And he also directed the movie, I'm sure. He also directed the movie, I'm sure, because he always cast himself as a leader. Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[27:15] This is another classic Kenneth Branagh Everything project. But there's just this scene that goes on for an awkward amount of time where they're both covered in what I believe is supposed to be birthing after birth that he's collected.
Speaker 1:
[27:26] The 90s was the gooeyest decade for movies, so it makes sense.
Speaker 2:
[27:29] Yeah. He's doing all this in someone's attic, so I'm just thinking there's poor people below him. They're just getting ambiotic fluid dripping on their heads. They're hearing De Niro and Branagh slowly rubbing up against each other as they try to stand up. It's a scene.
Speaker 1:
[27:44] Fascinating, Captain.
Speaker 3:
[27:46] Branagh's like, it's my vision.
Speaker 1:
[27:49] Don't cut. We're really in character right now. Keep it rolling.
Speaker 2:
[27:54] Keep it rolling. No, I don't know how De Niro felt about it, but Kenneth is clearly into him.
Speaker 3:
[27:58] Damp. Oh, boy.
Speaker 1:
[28:02] I should have known that Kenneth Branagh couldn't resist a good old Frankenstein adaptation once he ran out of historical Shakespeare plays.
Speaker 2:
[28:08] It is by a huge margin the most accurate to the book.
Speaker 1:
[28:12] Really?
Speaker 3:
[28:13] Yeah. That is the thing that you have to give him, is his Shakespeare's are always pretty on it.
Speaker 1:
[28:18] Yeah. I'll admit, he really only takes liberties when he's allowed to. I think it's the ending of Hamlet where it's not written how Claudius is killed, so he just goes ham on it. He's like, I hit him with a chandelier. I pour the poison wine down his throat. Also, I stab him somewhere in there. He's dead.
Speaker 3:
[28:38] It's like when a D&D party gets an evil NPC captured in the middle of Fantasy High Season 1 where they just kill the evil coach. Anyway, speaking of books and junk, my book is in Ether Printing Jail. But Red, you've got a book coming out at time of upload yesterday.
Speaker 1:
[29:02] Yeah, I think that's right. I've actually seen, because I guess rollout for books to bookshelves sometimes happens sooner. So some people have already gotten their copies of Aurora Vol. 2, but they have officially hit shelves. The pre-order window is closed. Yeah, so now it just exists. If you didn't pre-order it and you get it now, that will also still be helpful for me. I don't really know what complex arcane mathematics the publishers do to determine how good a book is doing. But I know they like it when you buy it. So that must count for something. Heck yeah.
Speaker 3:
[29:37] All right. Well, with that, let us hop on over to the Q&A portion of the podcast.
Speaker 4:
[29:46] Hello and welcome to the Q&A portion of the Overly Sarcastic Podcast, where we answer your questions from Ask OSPod on Discord. This first question comes from one of our lovely patrons. If you'd like to support the podcast, support the channel, consider becoming a patron for a chance to have your question read first on a future episode. This question comes from 7catwitch, for Red and Dom if he's there. Dom, welcome to the show. You mentioned in Reginald's book club how the members of the fellowship became lifelong friends. How do you feel about knowing that the actors of Jackson's trilogy have that same lifelong friendship? They still casually pull pranks on each other, which I find delightful. So do you enjoy the narrative mirror that is the fellowship and the actors who played the fellowship bonding over their shared experience?
Speaker 2:
[30:30] I'm dead inside, so that doesn't enjoy every day.
Speaker 1:
[30:33] I hate it when people are friends.
Speaker 2:
[30:35] I hate it when everything's just really nice in this dark, dark world. Fuck that shit.
Speaker 1:
[30:39] Sucks that Aragorn adopted that horse.
Speaker 2:
[30:41] Yeah, and just dumped woman's horse in.
Speaker 3:
[30:43] I think it's really, really fake, and it shows a lack of commitment that Elijah Wood did not, in fact, get on a boat and go straight into the East. Or was it the West? I don't know.
Speaker 1:
[30:56] He sailed into the West, bro. He went to California, obviously.
Speaker 2:
[30:58] Some of you can have a podcast now.
Speaker 1:
[31:00] No, I think it's really sweet. I feel like I don't tend to seek out this kind of information because I feel like it's so easy to get a little parasocial when it comes to like, oh, these movies were so meaningful to me. I need to eat them or something, but failing that, I guess I'll just watch all the behind the scenes content to get really into the actors and stuff like that. And I feel like that's kind of, it's sort of a doomed venture. It's like battering yourself against a reflection because if you want depth in the story, you can't find it by seeking out depth in the actors and their real lives because they're human beings. They did a job, they acted a role. If you want depth, you go back into the story and you explore that or read like 10 million pages of fan fiction or something like that. So I don't tend to like seek out these interviews and stuff like that because I'm like, if I want depth from Tolkien, I'll just read The Silmarillion for a third time and be disappointed again. But it is very heartwarming to me that they are actually all friends and continue to hang out and like meet up and do Zoom calls and stuff like that. I think that's very sweet.
Speaker 2:
[32:02] Yeah, they just have more gifts to give because without that, we wouldn't have gotten the will you wear wigs viral sound.
Speaker 4:
[32:09] The classic.
Speaker 2:
[32:10] I also found out about this prank that Col Urban pulled on Viggo Mortensen quite recently. I mean, this was a while ago that he did this, but apparently he knew that Viggo Mortensen was coming in to do the same sets of interviews that he was doing the next day to talk about, I think it might have been Green Book, but he started spreading this story about how Viggo Mortensen had just bought a goat farm in Eastern Europe and he wouldn't stop talking about it. So the next day, no one wanted to talk about Viggo Mortensen's film. They would only ask him about the goat farm over and over again. And I just love this acts of petty professional sabotage between friends.
Speaker 3:
[32:48] That's really funny.
Speaker 1:
[32:49] Oh, God. That's so cute. Oh, sorry. I think part of the reason why my slightly weird answer was top of mind is I recently went to C2E2 and I saw a ton of big main stage interviews of actors in major movies and stuff like that. The Uncharted crew was in there. Half the cast of the early 2000s Fantastic Four movies were there, that kind of thing. And so I just got so used to seeing all these very professional actors getting asked questions by fans who are clearly deeply kind of parasocially into the characters that they played and seeing these actors expertly shut down a lot of this stuff. The one that really stuck with me, I might have mentioned this I think probably in an after after show show, was that Ewan Grawford, probably not how you pronounce his name, I'm so sorry, who played Mr. Fantastic was an expert at defusing the Molotov cocktails that the fans kept chucking at him and a lot of them were like, how do you guys feel about being included in all the recent really successful Marvel properties? And they were like, I feel very happy for the actors that are carrying on the legacy of these characters. We were honored to be able to play for a stretch of time. And it's like, fans want them to be their characters and they want them to be attached to their characters in a way that I think a lot of these actors kind of aren't. The actor's like, yeah, I am an actor. I did a job. I liked being in this job. I made friends with people. But I am not like Legolas in real life or something like that. I'm not sailing into the Grey Havens.
Speaker 2:
[34:15] I absolutely agree in principle. In this particular case, they do seem to love each other as much as the characters did.
Speaker 1:
[34:20] Oh, for sure.
Speaker 2:
[34:20] And they do seem to be genuinely, I'm setting myself up for a massive this age poorly, but they all seem to be genuinely good people.
Speaker 1:
[34:27] No, I think you're absolutely right, but they're also all actors.
Speaker 3:
[34:30] Sauron's tweets from the second age unearthed.
Speaker 1:
[34:33] Hey, he changed his username, Morgoth, who was Melkor. But I think that it's just, I don't know. I think, like you're absolutely right. They all seem to love each other. They all seem to be very fun. But there's something so interesting to me about how the atmosphere on a set and the atmosphere you get from watching the final movie are frequently exact opposites. A bunch of the Arrow actors did an interview and they were like, yeah, we had so much fun on set. It was so silly. And I was like, silly? Arrow was the most self-serious thing I've ever watched, but they were having a blast. And that's kind of how I feel about this, I guess. It's so easy to see the actor and see the character that you know them as and then be like, yeah, of course, they're all friends. I mean, the fellowship is unbreakable. I mean, pimpin a ride or die, and it's like, no, no, no, those are human men.
Speaker 2:
[35:15] Like I said, in any other circumstance, the stars seem to have aligned in this one particular case. That and the cast of Next Generation, they all seem to fucking die for each other.
Speaker 4:
[35:25] I think it can't be discounted that the Lord of the Rings particular was filmed mostly on location, which meant you were kind of, not camping, there was nicer accommodations, but you were kind of just also camping with all the other members of the fellowship that kind of has a different attitude than if you were on a sound stage. There's a Wet Hot American Summer very famously. To film that, they just all stayed at the summer camp while they were filming. So there was a big vibe of like, well, we're all also just participating in summer camp while we're on this set. And so that helps with the final tone of the movie. But yeah.
Speaker 2:
[35:57] But yeah, no, 100% behind Red's, like let's not conflate the character and the actor. Any other circumstance, in fact, just in general, it's good to have that philosophy. And like I say, it does bring me so much joy that in this one particular case, these guys, no one is more excited to meet the cast of Lord of the Rings than the cast of Lord of the Rings.
Speaker 4:
[36:16] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[36:16] I find it very, very heartwarming. I think it's extremely sweet. It still throws me for a loop anytime I see any of them in something that isn't Lord of the Rings. Oh my God. Did anyone here watch Carnival Row? I promise this is the last digression before we can ask another question. It was this like urban fantasy, like Victorian, like noir detective thing. And Orlando Bloom plays this like hard-boiled detective. And I'm going to spoil a plot point, but it turns out that he's half fairy, like this dead fairy he finds in episode one who like had a kid at some point. It turns out he's that kid. And I was like, oh my God, he's the perfect person to cast as this sort of diaphanously beautiful yet still ruggedly hard-boiled Victorian sad detective. Of course you get the guy who played an elf. Anyway, all done.
Speaker 4:
[37:04] Great. Well, we'll go to more questions. This one comes from Sylveon to all. Are any of you interested in nail art or wearing nail polish?
Speaker 2:
[37:12] I mean, I do. I'm not at the moment. It usually reflects how busy I am. I have nail pens basically. So I just, I don't have a lot of time for doing art or doodling. So I just use myself as my canvas a lot. That sounded more artistic than it actually is. Like, you know, drawing tiny like butts on my finger tips. It's not sure. Yeah. So yeah, now I deeply enjoy doing nail. It originally just started as a way of stopping me from my anxiety tick, which was picking away the ends of my nails. So the nail polish helped protect me from that a little bit. But now I just think it looks fucking awesome. Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[37:49] I used to like draw on my arms with ballpoint pens and stuff. And then my mom, who is an artist was like, listen, just because it says non-toxic doesn't mean it's actually non-toxic. Please stop drawing on yourself with ink you don't know what it's made of. And I was like, okay, fine. I'll get makeup pens and draw on myself with that instead. And it worked. Anyway, to answer the question, not really. I did go through a phase in middle school where I wore nail polish, and texturally I hated it. It was so specific, but the thing that really got me is whenever I would make myself my box lunch, and I had to pull out a cling wrap or whatever, it would adhere to nail polish and feel weird. And I was like, this sucks, man. Also, it did the opposite of helping me, because I also pick my fingernails, but the problem is when I had nail polish on them, I had way more to pick at, so it's counterproductive on my end.
Speaker 3:
[38:38] I've never done nail art or anything like that, and the reason that I would hate it is that as soon as one thing starts to chip, it's like, well, now all of this is ruined, and I just rip it all off immediately. So it's the same reason that I can't let my facial hair grow for more than four days or I want to rip my neck off. It's like, nope, clean.
Speaker 4:
[38:59] Yeah, I do like nail polish.
Speaker 2:
[39:00] I have a technique of painting the gaps with gold to make it look like I've done repair work.
Speaker 4:
[39:05] It's kind of a Kintsugi.
Speaker 1:
[39:08] Yeah, yeah, Kintsugi, we've all seen it.
Speaker 2:
[39:10] I know what we're talking about.
Speaker 4:
[39:13] It's that Japanese pottery technique where if a jar has shattered, you fill it in with the cracked gold.
Speaker 2:
[39:18] I did know what you're talking about. I just didn't know the name.
Speaker 4:
[39:20] Yeah. I'm smart. I do like nail polish, but I consistently throughout my life have done activities that are not conducive to having done nails in any capacity because I used to fence and do large scale paintings like murals and sets, which means I was either afraid of breaking a nail when someone hit me in the hand with their sword or was constantly covered in paint for most of the other rest of the time. Recently, I've gotten into pottery, which you really shouldn't have long nails for because it'll make it more difficult to work with the clay. You'll leave little nail marks and stuff. So as much as I would enjoy painting my nails and keeping them nice, generally, I just settle for clean and short. We're going to make that work.
Speaker 2:
[40:02] I constantly make the mistake that I do my nails and then think, what am I going to do now? I'm going to do some blade work. I don't know why I did this in this order, but oh well.
Speaker 1:
[40:10] I think I also remember I at some point had to make the call between painting my nails and being able to play guitar without feeling clumsy and weird on the strings. So pretty easy choice to make.
Speaker 4:
[40:22] Cool in concept. I like to paint my nails on occasion, but it's one of those things that I think it just doesn't always logistically work out. But you know what does logistically work out? Questions that we have from you guys, the listeners, like this one from Shadow. To all, did your parents ever read to you when you were little? If so, what was your favorite book they read? If not, what would you have liked them to read? Do you guys have a favorite book to be read as a child, or did your parents read you anything in particular when you were a kid?
Speaker 1:
[40:50] My parents read to me a lot when I was little, and my mom did all the voices. She really liked reading me the Discworld books, and she did all the accents. For death, she had a yogurt container that she put over her mouth, so she could make it echo and resonant.
Speaker 2:
[41:04] That's amazing.
Speaker 3:
[41:05] Like Bane. I know.
Speaker 1:
[41:06] The reason why I'm like this, all of the voice stuff I do is because my mom just casually did it, and was like, yeah, it's not that big of a deal, what? It's hard. My dad also read me a bunch of different things. He read me Journey to the West, definitely very formative experience. Part of why I wanted to summarize it was because I was like, this shit rules, everyone needs to know about this. What do you mean nobody knows about it in this entire continent? He read me The Lord of the Rings, which was fun because I remembered. I've been listening back through the Andy Serkis audiobooks of them, and there was a line where I was like, oh my God, I didn't imagine that because there's a bit early on where it's like, oh yeah, Gollum is sneaking around. Like goes into like nests and steals eggs and goes through windows to snatch things out of cradles.
Speaker 2:
[41:53] He eats babies, he eats babies.
Speaker 1:
[41:55] And I was, I remember like hearing that and being fucking petrified. I was like, I'm sorry, what? And then like, and it just kind of like, like sunk into the substrate of my psyche. And then Andy Serkis said that and I was like, it was real.
Speaker 3:
[42:11] I'm sure your dad didn't read that again on repeat read throughs of the book. You skipped over that line.
Speaker 1:
[42:18] No, certainly not. That would be dishonest. Knowing my dad, there's no way he skipped that line.
Speaker 2:
[42:23] It's like elf babies if you look at the way he is, because he's in like fucking Mork Woods.
Speaker 1:
[42:27] Oh yeah, he's in the woods. Oh God. Yeah. Yeesh. Elves probably aren't even having that many babies. They're sort of going extinct at this point.
Speaker 2:
[42:34] This is the point why they're going extinct. Gollum's eating their fucking kids.
Speaker 1:
[42:38] He's like a fucking outdoor cat. He's devastating the local songbird population.
Speaker 3:
[42:42] Elf baby's Gollum is an outlier and should not be counted.
Speaker 1:
[42:47] But yes, no, both my parents read me many books and I love them all equally. I will say my dad reading me Harry Potter is what made me choose to learn how to read for myself because he was going a little slow for my taste. This is part of the reason why it's such a fucking personal slap in the face that JK Rowling has turned out to be such a tremendous piece of shit because there is a genuinely very formative part of my past where Harry Potter was so engrossing to me at an early age that it inspired me to want to learn how to read because they were trying to teach me and it just wasn't sticking. I was like, why do we need to read grocery signs? Why do we need to read the co-op? And then it's like, no, I want to know what's happening. Out of the way, old man. But anyway, unfortunately, she sucks absolute shit and nobody should give her money. So to hell with that.
Speaker 2:
[43:31] My dad, we read a lot of the Redwall books. The mice who stab each other with swords.
Speaker 1:
[43:37] Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[43:38] So he was big into doing accents. We actually met the author before he passed away and he was very surprised to hear that he'd given all these regional British accents to all these things. I think the authors were Australian for some reason, because everyone else was either from the York show or like Cornwall or something. And all the rabbits were like upper class British guys who sound like they're in the French, you know, in the Foreign Legion or something.
Speaker 1:
[44:01] Of course, of course.
Speaker 2:
[44:02] So yeah, those were big. But he also read Lord of the Rings to me, which I think was my favorite childhood experience of being read to, because it was pretty epic. So I think you got to read to your kids if you want them to be into books when they're adults.
Speaker 1:
[44:15] Absolutely. Yeah. Again, like the specific book that got me isn't necessarily good, but a kid being like, I want to read this for myself. I'm curious to know what happens next. I want control over how fast I see the story. That's huge. And you don't really get that if you don't read to your kids.
Speaker 3:
[44:31] Yeah, I didn't have a lot of reading experience when I was younger. My dad was very much a cartoons guy, so that's where I got all my Looney Tunes knowledge from, but it wasn't so much reading. I had a few Greek kids' books that my mom read to me. So there's like, if you ever played the putt-putt games, that little purple car that solves children's puzzles. There's a Greek version of putt-putt, but it's like a red car or whatever. And there were five or six books. Ah, it's not that important. The reading books to your kid is the part that I'm really excited to get to for Aquamarine. Right now, all she does is shit and scream. So it's like, I want to read to you about Rome. There was a solid like three weeks where I was actually able to do like, like an hour at a time of like, I have a book, I'm reading this for like a separate thing that I'm working on something else for. And it's like, well, I might as well use this time that I'm reading this book anyway to read to you. And it was amazing. And then she's just become impossible to put down to sleep and like hold without her crying. So it's like I was, I was reading you this Rome book we left off at Hannibal. We need to talk about how they conquered the Hellenistic Kingdoms.
Speaker 1:
[45:38] She's actually just really upset that you left off on a cliffhanger and she wants to get back to it.
Speaker 3:
[45:43] Oh, God. So it's like, I can't wait to read shit. But like, I can't.
Speaker 2:
[45:49] Both both my siblings had kids in the last couple of years, and I can see the same look of manic and love in your eyes. It's this unique blend of I would die for this creature, and also I would put them in a catapult if I knew they'd get back safely.
Speaker 1:
[46:09] Yeah. I want to dig to reading her The Hobbit when she's old enough to understand all the nuances though.
Speaker 3:
[46:12] Yeah, sure. Whenever you want. Cyan and I have been joking, we will hold the baby and be like, I will eat you for brunch. So that's what we've been saying whenever she's giving us a hard time.
Speaker 2:
[46:27] Brunch in particular, I like it.
Speaker 3:
[46:28] Brunch in particular, there's something very charming and nonsensical about it being brunch specifically. Like it's much more of a social affair than any of the other meals intrinsically. Like you can eat lunch, breakfast and dinner by yourself. You can't eat brunch by yourself. That's an event. That's an event.
Speaker 1:
[46:46] There's some interesting semantics here. Like to eat something for breakfast implies that it's easy and frequently there's an ass-kicking implication. But to eat something for lunch is kind of a different vibe. Or to eat someone's lunch usually means that you're winning over them in some way. Like eating someone for dinner, I don't think I've ever heard said. Eat someone for a snack is more like that person's hot.
Speaker 2:
[47:08] It's kind of like I'm having a friend for dinner.
Speaker 1:
[47:11] Yeah. It's creepy. Yeah. Having a friend for dinner is only ever used in either cannibalism threats or misconstrued cannibalism threats. Yes.
Speaker 4:
[47:20] Dinner is just inherently more goth. You know, it's something gothically horrifying about it.
Speaker 1:
[47:25] And if you're ever like, oh, I'm having them for supper, that always means you're eating people every single time.
Speaker 2:
[47:31] Or it might be a sex thing. I'm just throwing that out there.
Speaker 3:
[47:33] Could be.
Speaker 1:
[47:35] I'll believe it. I haven't heard that specific one, that the snack thing is more a sex thing in my opinion.
Speaker 3:
[47:40] Sweeney Todd takes a very different meaning.
Speaker 1:
[47:43] A bit of a priest.
Speaker 2:
[47:44] I hadn't quite realized the nuances of which meal you select for threats before.
Speaker 3:
[47:49] Yeah, that's a big difference.
Speaker 4:
[47:52] My parents did read to me as a kid. Mostly The Hobbit is the one I remember, but also when I was very, very little, we would read more like little golden books, and particularly a lot of Dr. Seuss's. I guess when I was very, very young, I really, really liked before I could physically read, I loved The Cat in the Hat. We would read The Cat in the Hat every single day. My mom would always tell the story of one time she left me with babysitter and I asked, can we read The Cat in the Hat? Babysitter got the book out and before the babysitter started, actually saying any of the words, I just started reciting from memory the entire text of The Cat in the Hat. She's like, is this a genius baby? It's like, no, she just really likes The Cat in the Hat, it turns out.
Speaker 1:
[48:31] I would also do that thing where before I could really read, I would memorize things. For me, it was music. That carried me through so many music classes. I never got good enough to cite, read fast enough to play, but I would just memorize the song and play from memory instead.
Speaker 2:
[48:46] I mean, that sounds more impressive.
Speaker 1:
[48:50] If it comes from being lazy, I'm not sure it counts.
Speaker 3:
[48:53] On the subject of music, Aquamarine does really like Byzantine and Gregorian chants because there's always that low rolling note through everything. So we've been pulling up church music on our phones. It's like, go the fuck to sleep and then singing the Easter Proclamation in Latin for her. So it's like, you better appreciate this. You better develop a really strong taste for chants music because, God, we're giving you a lot of it.
Speaker 1:
[49:18] It's good news to me that she likes lower voices because I'm a contralto. So when I was over singing her to sleep, I was like, I could just go Basie and it works.
Speaker 2:
[49:27] You know what's really terrifying? As a parent, you have the power to shape this child to a certain extent.
Speaker 1:
[49:33] That's...
Speaker 4:
[49:34] What's up with that?
Speaker 1:
[49:36] Scariest thing about parenthood is that you are responsible for a whole new human being. A fresh tabula rasa who has no idea what's coming.
Speaker 4:
[49:44] I hope that you guys know what's coming next because what's coming next is another question. This one comes from Georgie, They, them, to all. You've mentioned you own swords. How many and where did you get them?
Speaker 3:
[49:56] Dom, you go last because you're going to smoke us all.
Speaker 4:
[49:59] I own no swords currently, so I feel like that's a good place to start. I used to have fencing equipment, but then the pandemic happened and it got locked in my college gym. And so it was my donation to the BU Fencing Team.
Speaker 1:
[50:09] Yeah, I own no real swords. I have a wooden sword. I recently got a prop master sword because I cosplayed Link one time, and I might do it more because it's intoxicating and I actually have the hair for it. I do own two bows now, that's fun. And I have a dagger because I got bit by the bug at a ren fair and I couldn't resist. And immediately after I got it, I was like, there's nothing I can do with this.
Speaker 3:
[50:33] What do you have there? A knife? Where'd you get a knife? I have exactly two swords, not counting the fencing ones, because those are somewhere buried in our basement and need to be doused in acid because they're probably rusted to hell. But Cyan and I got a pair of swords for our wedding, engraved with a phrase in Latin from the song that we danced to. And with the date of the wedding and a little insignia with our initials and stuff like that. So it's two swords, both kind of like leaf blade shaped. One is a hand and a half sword and one's a single hand arming sword. They are stage blunted, so they're still pointy on top but the blades aren't sharp. And yeah, those are the only swords that we have. I was contemplating a long time ago, like, oh, when we have a kid, we can get a sword for them. And it's like, that's a waste. Okay, hit me out.
Speaker 1:
[51:31] A waste is the only problem with that? That it's a waste?
Speaker 3:
[51:35] They won't be able to use it.
Speaker 2:
[51:36] Hit me out. Godparent obviously has a lot of religious overtones. I have been trying to pitch to people, sword bearer. You get the child a sword at birth, and then someone holds it for them until they're 18, and that was their child sword bearer.
Speaker 3:
[51:50] I like this.
Speaker 4:
[51:50] I'm this child's second in case they get challenged to a duel at some point before their 18th birthday.
Speaker 3:
[51:55] That's the original premise of the best man, was a best man with a sword, so when you get accosted on the road to your wedding, the best man is going to keep everyone safe.
Speaker 1:
[52:04] What happened to us is a culture that this stopped being a thing.
Speaker 4:
[52:06] I know.
Speaker 2:
[52:07] The degradation of Western society is what this is.
Speaker 1:
[52:10] What we really need is more swords. I mean, I'm just going to say it. My parents got rid of most of their weapon collection when they knew they were going to have me.
Speaker 3:
[52:16] Cowards.
Speaker 1:
[52:16] And the rest of it, they hid in a trunk that I wasn't allowed to open, and then when I did, I found a crossbow and multiple stilettos. And they were like, yeah, we got rid of most of it. We obviously wanted to keep the crossbow and the ray gun.
Speaker 3:
[52:27] John Wick ass, treasure trove of weapons.
Speaker 1:
[52:30] Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:
[52:31] So I have about 25, 26 swords in California, and then about the same again in my parents' attic in the UK.
Speaker 3:
[52:40] And how many of those have you made yourself?
Speaker 2:
[52:44] Six or seven. I tend to give away the ones I make to other people. Most of them are a combination of either me buying them when I'm depressed or gifts from people.
Speaker 1:
[52:54] Ah, right, because once you're a sword guy.
Speaker 2:
[52:58] And I'm never sad to get one. So I mean, a few I sort of picked up from like porn shops and I've been renovating them because they were rusty and stuff. So, yeah, I have considered having my British collection shipped to the US, but then I will have something between 50 and 60 swords. And that is a psychotic amount. I even I cannot justify that many swords in one place. That's not right.
Speaker 3:
[53:22] That is an on a list amount of swords.
Speaker 1:
[53:24] Yeah, when they x-ray the package coming through customs, they're like, I don't know, it's blowing out the scanner.
Speaker 2:
[53:30] Yeah, I mean, apparently this guy's gonna start the medieval revolution and he's arming the peasants.
Speaker 1:
[53:34] He's trying to harm the peasants, yeah.
Speaker 3:
[53:36] There is a deleted scene in the Steve Martin Pink Panther movie where he gets arrested at the airport because someone switches his briefcase and it's just full of weapons. Yeah, so yeah, that's-
Speaker 1:
[53:49] There was a stretch of time where, oh, sorry.
Speaker 2:
[53:51] No, I mean, that's, I have had dates where I was like, if they were coming up to my place, I was like, okay, I have to explain that you are about to walk into a house decorated exclusively with swords, but I am neither a psychopath nor an incel. I swear to God.
Speaker 1:
[54:07] I thought you were gonna be like, hey, listen, I've got too many. Why don't you take a couple home with you?
Speaker 2:
[54:10] It's all with you. It's fine. Yeah, it's like a little package.
Speaker 1:
[54:13] There was a stretch of time where every gift I got was a knife. And Blue, you're not exempt from this.
Speaker 3:
[54:20] Yeah, I got you one from Greece.
Speaker 1:
[54:21] Yeah, you got me this replica bronze letter opener, but it was a knife.
Speaker 3:
[54:26] Very much an artist invention. It's not a replica of anything, but it was cast in bronze, so that was cool.
Speaker 1:
[54:31] And I think that was around the time we were graduating high school and a friend of mine was like, hey, for self-defense, and she gave me a pen that had a knife in it. And I was like, okay, thanks. I don't know where it is now, but it is kind of flattered.
Speaker 3:
[54:41] You wanted to get me a sword cane for my wedding, which was very kind.
Speaker 1:
[54:43] I was trying to figure out how to do that. The problem is technically there are like state by state concealed carry laws for blades, so I couldn't think of any other way to.
Speaker 2:
[54:50] Yeah, they're the only sword that's super illegal in California, is what I discovered. Like all my, I can walk around the street with oath keeper on my back and it's not technically illegal, but if I have a sword cane, I could go to prison for five years.
Speaker 1:
[55:02] You can open carry as vihander, but God forbid you have a cool pointy thing in your stick.
Speaker 4:
[55:09] Yeah, which is to say that if we average it out, there's a lot of swords between all of us, but Dom Noble is now my Roshanat of encounter. Well, this next question comes from Throngler Wielder, to all, if any of you have any food allergies or intolerances, how do you navigate around them?
Speaker 3:
[55:30] Did you pick this question so we can talk about my pants and die?
Speaker 4:
[55:34] I'm a good producer, Blue.
Speaker 1:
[55:36] I know what the fuck I'm doing, okay? My favorite string of words in the English language is back from the war.
Speaker 2:
[55:43] I was so, I was like, oh, I made it into their end of year funniest thing they've heard list. Oh, it's for that.
Speaker 4:
[55:50] I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:
[55:51] It's just, it actually puts me in hysterics every time I think about it. It's the deadpan delivery with which you say it that really makes it work.
Speaker 2:
[55:59] It's because it's exactly what will happen if I eat gluten.
Speaker 1:
[56:02] Of course, yeah.
Speaker 3:
[56:03] And I've got Crohn's, so it happens to me too. It's just in a less specific context. It's more kind of like a general overtone of my diet rather than any particular switch that flips.
Speaker 1:
[56:15] Lou, I showed you, I think it was the first episode of D&D Court, the saga of the pooping cleric. And for three days after that, your shorthand was just like, yeah, I'm gonna do cleric stuff. If this happens, I'll have to do cleric stuff. And I was just like, I can't let this become a thing of vernacular. I have no known food allergies. I think I've got the very slight banana allergy that's commonly comorbid with a latex allergy, but it doesn't stop me from eating banana bread or bananas or anything like that. My mom's allergic to walnuts and to her, they're kind of spicy and I've eaten walnuts rarely and it's kind of the same way. So probably also that, but I don't tend to care because it's not a big deal. And I just kind of eat whatever.
Speaker 2:
[56:57] What's that like?
Speaker 1:
[56:59] It's a pretty rare occurrence for you to have to worry about shit in my pants at night.
Speaker 2:
[57:03] I mean, to answer the actual question, I don't deal with it particularly well. And I would have thought California would be pretty good. You know, I live in LA and I thought they'd be on it with health foods and allergies and stuff. But I actually, I did some traveling recently and others, even other states are better than here. Like the waiters and stuff are way more aware of it. And they think to ask the question, they know the difference between it doesn't have gluten in it and we put it in a deep fat fryer with all the gluten things. I mean, the Huntington Gardens, this fancy botanical gardens that's not far from me, straight up tried to kill me recently by assuring me multiple times that what I was eating was gluten free when it was not. There was some shitting, pants and dying in that beautiful garden that day. But Britain, Britain's actually way more on board with it. So like I basically live my life as like interrogating the weight staff, unfortunately, at this point. So I'm just like, okay, are you sure? Okay, like is that, is it put in the fryer? Is it kept on the same surface? Like I'm not as sensitive that like any cross contamination will fuck me up. But what people don't seem to realize is gluten is insane.
Speaker 1:
[58:13] Yeah. I think that you run into a problem of by being in California, you are sort of surrounded by a lot of people who for less medical reasons are like, is there gluten in this? And they also don't know what gluten is. So I think you might be running into sort of a boy who cried wolf situation, where there's no fault of your own, you are simply surrounded by other people who also don't know what gluten is. And the end result is that everyone is kind of insufferable. Because I've got a couple of friends with shellfish allergies, and whenever they're like, I'm allergic to shellfish, the amount to which, waitstaff would rather you leave the restaurant if you can't eat anything that was in the fryer than to let you risk it and then potentially be on the hook for your medical bills. But with gluten, it's like, oh yeah, do you also fry gluten things in the deep fryer? And they're like, probably not. You should be all right, big man. It's like for a while when people were like, we have a gluten-friendly menu, and it's like, does that mean it's gluten-free? And they're like, no, obviously not, idiot.
Speaker 3:
[59:12] What's it called?
Speaker 2:
[59:12] Made without gluten-containing ingredients. Like, what is that? Like, I've seen the same bakery label something gluten-free, gluten-friendly, and made not in the room with, or like made with gluten in mind.
Speaker 3:
[59:24] Like, what does that mean?
Speaker 1:
[59:26] We whispered gluten-free over it when it came out of the fryer.
Speaker 3:
[59:30] The chef was baking a gluten-free bread, but he was really thinking about the other bread instead.
Speaker 2:
[59:36] God, I had one person tell me that the flour, the bread was gluten-free because she only used the purest of flours. And I'm like, get your hippie ass out of my face.
Speaker 1:
[59:44] Do they think the gluten is like dirt?
Speaker 4:
[59:46] Like, in 10 minutes?
Speaker 2:
[59:47] I don't know what they thought gluten was, but it was another, yet another attempt to kill me.
Speaker 4:
[59:52] Yes.
Speaker 1:
[59:52] I worry that people are treating gluten like toxins, where they're like, oh, this removes toxins from your body. It's like, which toxins? Name them. Show me. Point to the front of the map.
Speaker 2:
[60:02] I think you hit the nail ahead by saying because it was a fashion for a while, it has been really devalued as an allergy, which is-
Speaker 1:
[60:08] Yeah. Super unfortunate because like gluten intolerance and like celiacs is one of the most like deadly kinds of, like it's less dramatic necessarily than like an anaphylactic shock. But it's like, no, I will starve because my gut will stop working. Like it's like a sea turtle with a stomach full of plastic. It's really bad.
Speaker 4:
[60:27] Yeah. So our sympathies to everyone out there who shits their pants and dies, but we are at time on the podcast. Red, would you like to take us out?
Speaker 1:
[60:38] I mean, if it's that or shit my pants and die, you know, you know which way I stand. Thank you all so much for listening.
Speaker 4:
[60:42] This is my legacy now.
Speaker 1:
[60:43] This episode of Overly Sarcastic Podcast. We will be back in two weeks with another OOPSOL Q&A episode. We will also, if you are a patron, be recording after after show show immediately. So hop on over there for another 30 to 40 minutes of the four of us hanging out, which is going to be super fun and funky, I think. I could do the rest of the outro, but before I do that, Dom, where can people find you?
Speaker 2:
[61:07] Oh, well, yes, you can find me on YouTube. Just look for Dominic Noble. I think I'm the most famous Dominic Noble now, so you can just Google it. There was a UK, I think I probably mentioned this before, there was a UK domestic terrorist who was beating me out for a while, so that was super fun.
Speaker 1:
[61:21] Congratulations for calling ahead.
Speaker 2:
[61:23] I'm an adaptation critic, so if you have a thought, I wonder how this movie ties into the book. I can save you the horrible effort of reading the book yourself.
Speaker 1:
[61:34] Yes, yeah, we're very familiar with that vibe on this call, but I think that is everything. So until next time, I have been Red.
Speaker 3:
[61:42] I have been Blue, and Dom, thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 2:
[61:46] My pleasure.
Speaker 3:
[61:46] Woohoo!
Speaker 4:
[61:51] Thanks so much for listening to this week's episode of the Overly Sarcastic Podcast. We'll be back on April 22nd with another thrilling installment, but if you missed us before then, be sure to check out Overly Sarcastic Productions on YouTube. Got a question for the pod? Head over to AskOwIsPod on Discord for a chance for your question to be featured in a future episode. If you enjoyed the show, please write us a review on your preferred podcast platform. And if you really enjoyed the show, consider becoming a patron for even more exclusive benefits, like access to the After After Show Show, the Show After the Show Show, where we talk about things after the show. Thanks for listening.