SI #139 – Where Does The Time Go?

In which Erica completely forgot to upload the podcast because of the holidays. Enjoy!

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/subtleinterference/membership

Theme Music:
Chill Wave Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Episode Transcript

(00:26):
[Alex] while there she went short hair and some people can rock the short hair some people it takes a certain
[Erica] kind of face and
[Alex] she cut her hair short like a man's and it was like wow you've aged 40 years it's not it's not working you know who else it didn't ever work for i always remember this it was I don't know how you say her last name, but Kaylee Cuoco on the Big Bang Theory. She does

(00:53):
[Erica] the voice of Harley Quinn. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[Alex] On the Big Bang Theory, at some point, she cut her hair, like, really short. And I just went, hmm.
[Erica] Bad call, babe.
[Alex] Now, you don't care what I think because you have hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank. Right. Right. But this doesn't work.
[Erica] In your humble estimation.
[Alex] Yeah. In my very humble, unbiased opinion. of my my great fashion sense as i sit here in my sweats with a t-shirt on

(01:20):
[Erica] hey man i wear the same i have two versions of this shirt and varying shades of gray and black leggings and that's what my ass wears
[Alex] so if you have clothes you like you like them and i wear them till the whole start
[Erica] I want to be comfortable. Yeah. I'm not wearing jeans all day. If I've got like a thing, I'll throw jeans on. You're in your house. Who are you trying to impress? Nobody. And if I'm going to my parents' house, if other people are not going to be there, I am like, sorry, you're lucky I'm wearing a bra.

(01:51):
[Alex] You're lucky I'm here.
[Erica] There's that too. But, you know.
[Alex] What is going on? I've had multiple people bring this up to me. What is going on with these drones in New Jersey? I know there's some speculation that they're scanning for radiation or something like that. No, that's not
[Erica] what's going on. The same thing happened. I read an article because every major news organization is rolling over for the great dictator coming in. I'm trying to find other places that aren't just right-wing shit rags to get some of my news from. Mm-hmm. So I'm subscribing to, is it 404 Media? Have you heard of them?

(02:30):
[Alex] No.
[Erica] But they had an article on it and they talked about how the same thing happened in Colorado like four years ago. And it's essentially, it's just the planes coming in to like the airports. But then people are like, oh shit, there's something up there. So then there's a bunch of like civilian drones up there trying to check shit out. Just contributing more drones. Yes.

(02:55):
[Alex] Yeah, I thought maybe it was just people fucking around or something.
[Erica] It's essentially idiocy and people fucking around. And now they're talking about it in the Senate, and it's like, guys, we got some bigger shit to worry about. No,
[Alex] that's the best beach ball to bounce around.
[Erica] Oh,
[Alex] my God. Well, here's my thing. If you had drones, and now let's say they were either our governments or another government's, and you want to do some drone spying, or you want to scan for radiation or whatever, you wouldn't put lights on them.

(03:27):
[Erica] No. No, and you wouldn't be that low, right? Like, the technology that these places have, they don't need to be that low. They'd be so high, you don't even know it's fucking... You know how many spy satellites there are that you have no idea about?
[Alex] Yeah, I just... I mean, I enjoy some good conspiracy theories and some nonsense as much as the next guy. Oh, you know

(03:52):
[Erica] what though, Alex? It's been painful. And I don't know, maybe I'm just paying more attention. Or maybe I just didn't notice before. Everything's just getting stupider. And it's really upsetting. Like
[Alex] when people say stupider.
[Erica] Yes. Pretty much. I was at Costco yesterday. I was at Costco and I stopped at Target yesterday. And Costco, at least when I go there, you're buying a lot of big stuff in bulk. There's a guy, he backs into the spot. So the trunk of his giant SUV is not facing out where it would be easier to load up your shit. So I'm sitting in my car, I just pulled in. He brings his cart in between all of the cars. And I'm like... Please don't scratch my car with your shitty cart. Just park like a normal human being. Like, what are you doing?

(04:48):
[Alex] I hate the backing into a spot. If you can pull through and you want to, go ahead, pull through. Backing into a spot in the middle of a parking lot is so inconsiderate to everyone else around.
[Erica] Well, no. No one gives a shit about anybody. And we've established that as just baseline. Yeah, that's a good
[Alex] baseline. And Target...
[Erica] Well, the only reason I ever back into a spot is that when I'm dropping Izzy off at school, if I get there early enough, because I like to be able to pull out because there's a lot of kids around. I mean, I've got the camera, I've got the back sensor, but it's like... But you never know. I don't like backing up. And little kids are fast. Yes, they are. And erratic. They're like cicadas all over the place. So I'm like, if I get there early

(05:29):
[Alex] enough... A bird flies by.
[Erica] Right. But if I get there early enough and there aren't a bunch of cars behind me, I will back into a spot. But if I'm going to a busy parking lot in the middle of the holiday season, I'm just pulling in. But at Target, so they have those, you can drive up and have them bring your order out. They started that like right before COVID, I think. And it was like a lifesaver when we were trying to get diapers and stuff for Izzy during the pandemic. They didn't have to go in. You just bring it out. It's great. Somebody backed into that. And I'm like, and they had the person come around to put it in their trunk. I'm like, what are we doing? What is going on? Are you trying to make it even harder for like, just back in. Wait, what are you backing in for? Just pull in.

(06:19):
[Alex] I think one of the, if maybe the only good thing that I've seen about Twitter being turned into such a ridiculous shithole and there being almost no moderation seemingly now. Mm-hmm. It's actually a very good representation of society in a way. It's not a society you want to be in. It's not a society you want to interact with. And I don't have a Twitter account. When you see it, you're like, you know what? These people are out there and maybe I don't interact with them in my day to day life, but they exist and, you know, they vote. So, you know, and that's that's the thing is, you know, unfortunately or unfortunately, however, when you look at it, however way you want to look at it, no matter whether someone is extremely intelligent or dumb as all fuck, they still get to put their finger on the scale to a certain degree.

(07:22):
[Erica] oh did you see that uh he said though that it's really hard to lower grocery prices did you see that
[Alex] you know erica i am shocked alex can't lower the i saw it and i
[Erica] just started i laughed so hard i started to cry because i was just like yep there it is
[Alex] of course there he is but this is why i've said i mean i swear i've said this on this podcast just why everyone's lying there and it's not like the democrats are anti-lying they just are obsessed with not telling the lies that people want to hear

(07:53):
[Erica] well no they're rolling over no we're just rolling over now oh fascism sure let's go bring it here and here's bring it on
[Alex] you can look i don't think we've actually gotten to talk about this this guy again I'll leave conspiracy theories
[Erica] oh uh Luigi
[Alex] my guy Luigi yeah we haven't talked about and I say my guy unironically because this man's an American hero

(08:15):
[Erica] oh I don't disagree with you at all
[Alex] so
[Erica] I was it was I think at the we had a family party over the weekend and somebody was talking about it and I came up and they were like well you know you really can't condone murder and I was like you can't What was this executive doing?
[Alex] We're okay with the CEO indirectly murdering people.
[Erica] Indirectly? That's not even indirectly. That's directly murdering. That's okay?

(08:39):
[Alex] It's like social murder, right? Where you don't, you're not actually pulling the trigger.
[Erica] Oh, but still, your decisions are actively killing people who are paying for the service. You're a murderer. I'm glad you're dead. He had it coming. Yeah. Cue the
[Alex] music. It's vigilante justice, and people don't like vigilante justice, but that starts up because the system has failed.

(09:01):
[Erica] And it has. Did you see they're charging him with terrorism?
[Alex] That's so ridiculous. I think that's one of those things that's going to end up getting dropped in court. They're going to try, and then they're going to go, okay, we'll drop the terrorism part. Or the jury's going to be like,
[Erica] what are you fucking talking about, dude?
[Alex] Because you're just not, I don't understand how you'd be able to prove that. He didn't set out to blow up a bus.

(09:24):
[Erica] No, it's not terrorism. He
[Alex] didn't set out to even really scare people unless we're considering CEOs as a protected class or something.
[Erica] Which in this country we do. Yeah, sure. Because New York State is now like trying to like placate everybody. oh the
[Alex] ceo threat hotline or whatever oh my god it's so embarrassing
[Erica] like really this is what we're doing like this is

(09:44):
[Alex] what we're dedicating you know what you don't keep
[Erica] acting like this hopefully more of you will get gunned down in the street that's what i'm hoping for And I say that unironically.
[Alex] I have no sympathy. That's the
[Erica] thing. Why are you going to roll up? And I don't watch the news like some people do. Speaking of people I know who have it on from the fucking moment they wake up to the moment they go to bed, where it's just, oh, manhunt, fifth day. Keep running, Luigi. Fuck that guy in McDonald's who called it on you. He's a fucking class traitor, that asshole.

(10:17):
[Alex] That's how I feel. But my thing is... I think he wanted to get caught because otherwise his actions don't make sense. Because when you look at the actual...
[Erica] Well, and we should say something, too, here. This man is not... He's been charged. He has not been convicted.
[Alex] Sure. So... For all we... Again, if you want a conspiracy theory, this man does not look like those initial photos. Remember those first pictures of, like, that were shot from above, like, of the guy at the counter or something?

(10:51):
[Erica] Vaguely, yeah.
[Alex] He doesn't look like that guy. He definitely looks like the guy who they were taking pictures of in the cab or something, those pictures they found. I'm sure some of
[Erica] that, though, was just they were like trying to just we're throwing all the pasta at the wall and trying to see if something will stick because they had no fucking clue.
[Alex] Oh, yeah. One of the
[Erica] highest fucking like budget police departments in the world. And it had to be some schmuck at McDonald's. They didn't call in. They never would have got him.

(11:19):
[Alex] Who's probably not even going to get the money. So I hope it was worth
[Erica] it. Of course he's not.
[Alex] But. My thing is, just for the sake of argument, let's say this is the guy. He was the one who pulled the trigger. I think he wanted to get caught because otherwise nothing makes sense. Because if you look at the actual act... He waits for the guy. He waits for the guy. He plans it out. Drills him in the back. No panic. Nothing. He was ready. He did it. And then he just moves on with his day, jumps on his bike, and he's out of there. And right there, first of all, just as a... I mean, I know that they claim they have smudges of his fingerprints on the casings. We'll see what happens in court. Well, it's

(12:10):
[Erica] smudges. Okay. Yeah.
[Alex] Yeah, I mean, we'll see exactly what they can tie to
[Erica] him. And can I just throw two words at you? Jury nullification, friends. Let's look up what that means.
[Alex] But here's the thing. He had like five days or something, however long it was. He could have dumped that. First of all, he could have dumped the gun in a river somewhere. He could have dumped it in any garbage can. They would have never tied it back to him. He's carrying around the frickin' manifesto with him. You know, and obviously, I mean, you could just make the argument that this is someone who's had a psychotic break or something. You

(12:45):
[Erica] also don't know how much pain the guy is in, though.
[Alex] Right. And
[Erica] that shit'll push you to do, like, bonkers-ass shit. For sure. If you're in chronic pain and you're in pain... Because, you know, there's the pain that we wake up with every day where your body is just like, oh, you're getting older and I fucking hate you now. So your back's going to hurt a little bit. Your knees are going to hurt. I'm just speaking from experience here. This is a guy who had back surgery and was in severe chronic pain.

(13:12):
[Alex] Well, and when your back is jacked, your whole body hurts. hurts
[Erica] dude when i was pregnant and it was only like the last couple weeks because as he came early there was this spot in the center of my back that would not stop hurting no matter what i fucking did kept me up at night i try to do stretches you can't take anything because you're fucking pregnant and it makes you crazy

(13:36):
[Alex] yeah oh yeah you can't do anything when your back hurts um and yeah like you said i don't know how much pain the guy is or isn't in or whatever um I just think the way the crime was so well laid out, like almost to the point where you're thinking this is a professional hitman, the way this dude just vanished into the night.

(13:57):
[Erica] Well, that was the way they were kind of framing it those first couple days,
[Alex] right? And then he just vanishes. I mean, literally, he could have just tossed the gun in an alley or tossed in a garbage can or something, and they would have no and not have the manifesto. And what physical evidence would they have?
[Erica] I mean, I think you could even argue like what they do have is much.

(14:20):
[Alex] And, you know, the person, the woman or whoever was that was standing there when this all went down, I think any quality lawyer could tear apart that eyewitness. Oh, sure. Because it's like you're telling me that someone who was watching someone get shot in the back had a perfect view of their face and has a complete recollection of what they look like. Because the human brain just doesn't work like that when you're not used to things like that happening. You panic.

(14:45):
[Erica] no and he had a mask on didn't he
[Alex] yeah and and and that's the i mean distinctive eyebrows
[Erica] though alex very distinctive eyebrows does
[Alex] have very distinctive eyebrows i would have shaved the eyebrows if i was him after doing
[Erica] plucked at least
[Alex] yeah you got to pluck the eyebrows or something afterwards because then you look like a completely different person um but he definitely has the very distinctive italian eyebrows um my guy

(15:06):
[Erica] the fucking tony soprano like memes they've been amazing
[Alex] i haven't laughed so much italian hero
[Erica] in the last few weeks i don't think i've laughed as much as i have
[Alex] yeah
[Erica] oh my god
[Alex] and i think honestly um you're gonna have a hard time i mean we'll see what kind of jury they come up with This is going to be one of those where you're going to have a really hard time getting an unbiased jury. I would think so. Because this is not a... Again, this is where... This is one of these things... The sympathy for... Maybe not for this guy, but there's certainly no sympathy for the CEO. That extends across ideologies and party lines and everything. Oh, I saw. Nobody likes their health care insurance.

(15:54):
[Erica] I think you sent it to me. It was Ben Shapiro was trying to be like, the left is cheering for murder. And all the comments at the bottom were like, no, no, it's all of us, Ben. We're all cheering for it.
[Alex] Yeah.
[Erica] Because fuck those people.
[Alex] No, you don't. I mean, this is the thing. You don't get to have it both ways. A lot of people want to have it both ways, but you can't actively set out to ruin people's lives and withhold medical care that they need. And then on the other hand, say, oh, please have sympathy for me when the CEO who is overseeing all these evil things happening gets drilled in the back. Oh, it's

(16:33):
[Erica] beyond that. It's beyond that. It's... You want to at the fucking near weekly school shootings. I'm supposed to thoughts and prayers. Nothing we can do. Sorry. I'm supposed to feel sympathy for this rich motherfucker. Yeah. Fuck off. Okay. Fuck you. How's that? I'm glad you're dead.

(16:54):
[Alex] And then it's like literally the next day that scumbag piece of shit Musk is dragging his little kid around. And we haven't seen... When is the last time you saw a picture or a video with Musk anywhere with one of his kids?
[Erica] Oh, we know what he's doing.
[Alex] And then the next day he's dragging his little body shield around.

(17:17):
[Erica] Yeah, because he is a monster. You know what? Somebody should do it. The kid would be like, thank you. Thank you so much. Little three-year-old can't even speak properly. Speaks perfect English. Thank you. Thank you so much.
[Alex] yeah i just i got no sympathy for the ceo and obviously i think in a functioning society gunning people down in the street is not good but i think this just goes to show you that the status quo isn't working for a lot of people and you know if we want to tie it all back this is what got donald trump elected a second time is the status quo is not working And he tells people now, he relentlessly lies, but he tells a certain group of people what they want to hear.

(18:07):
[Erica] Well, and you know what this would have been a great time to do? Like, oh, look, an issue we can grab onto and perhaps, you know, bolster our political movement. Nah. Nah. We're just going to sit here and continue to roll over because we're the Democrats and we don't fucking do anything.
[Alex] And the whole thing, I mean, this is a perfect example. If the Democrats this election cycle just do what the Republicans do. I think I've said this on here. Just lie. Just say we want to do universal health care. But we want to do Medicare for all, whatever. And then when you actually get in there, just don't do it. But they won't even do that, Alex, because

(18:49):
[Erica] they're so fucking stupid. Did you see like I actually called my rep this week because they were trying. AOC was trying to get on like the oversight committee, I think. And instead of, you know, voting in someone young who's eager to fight and actually, like, stand up to Donald Trump, we elected a 74-year-old man who has cancer. Oh,

(19:12):
[Alex] sweet.
[Erica] Like, okay, yeah, that's the guy. Okay, cool. Like, you guys just don't fucking care. You actively don't care, and you're not willing to fight. And then there's this defense bill that just passed today. I was looking, because I was like, okay, who do I got to call and yell at now? Both the senators from Illinois, Duckworth and Durbin, voted for it, even though it's like stripping away... Queer rights, medical rights. So you just don't, you're just throwing people under the bus. What I don't, okay, I'm getting hot. What you don't understand, and I've said this before, the Republicans are not going to vote for Republican light. They're not going to do it. So fucking stop. That's not going to win you an election.

(19:58):
[Alex] Well, and you can equate this to anything. I mean, for how many years? Look at the history of pro wrestling in the last 20 years, let's say. TNA, when they were actually starting to get hot as an alternative to WWE. Mm-hmm. Was doing pretty well and the ratings were climbing. And then all of a sudden they're like, let's bring in Eric Bischoff and let's bring in Hulk Hogan and let's make it WWE light. And their ratings cratered and they killed that company. Because if you want to watch WWE. Oh, watch WWE. You'll just watch WWE. And AEW, I think, is at its best when they're not trying to make a WWE like product. Because that doesn't. Again, it's the same thing. If I just want to see the same match 10 times on a show, and yes, done with varying degrees of technical ability and everything, but if I want to see that same match 10 times, yes, I will watch WWE. And I think, if I'm being fair, that's less of a thing now. But that's how it was for a very long time. Yes, when

(21:02):
[Erica] Vince was in charge, that was what it was. It was the same... It was the same cadence. And if you got people in there who were good what they that good at their craft.
[Alex] Right.
[Erica] It would be entertaining at least. And they'd find ways to kind of make it work. Right.
[Alex] Right.
[Erica] But if it's just your bog standard regular degular guy it's going to be boring as fuck.

(21:25):
[Alex] Yeah. And I like to I like to see variety. And it's the same thing when it comes to the Republicans. You know, you're not going to win campaigns as the Democrats moving towards the center and inevitably moving to the right. And, you know, talking about the most lethal military in history and yada, yada, yada and all this horse shit that doesn't work. And by the way, have you seen they're trying there now that some Democrats are apparently pushing the idea that they roll out Harris again in four years? America right now couldn't be more irate.

(22:02):
[Erica] No, because you know what, Alec? I'm not irate. It's
[Alex] so stupid. I'm
[Erica] tired.
[Alex] It's so stupid.
[Erica] Because it's just like, guys, can you just like, what do you... There's no one else. There's no one else. Well, and again,
[Alex] I honestly don't even think at this point it really matters who the person is. I mean, to me, if you want to avoid a lot of the general racism and sexism issues, I think you just find the most boilerplate straight white man you can.

(22:32):
[Erica] Have walls run.
[Alex] Well, I think that he's already been tarnished now. He's
[Erica] tainted now.
[Alex] But, yeah. But I think, for example, if you were to roll out Pritzker and you actually came out with a platform that people like, if you said universal health care and so on and so forth, things that people actually need, not talking about giving, like, loans to small businesses or whatever, like horse shit like that that nobody cares about. Well, and rolling out Liz

(23:00):
[Erica] fucking Chaney.
[Alex] Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I mean, I just if you actually run a platform that resonates with people, I really don't think it matters who the candidate is. And I think that Trump perfectly exemplifies that because you'll see even his supporters. I mean, outside of the people that are like deep in the cult, even his supporters don't like Trump. They just think they like his platform. Right.

(23:27):
[Erica] That's been my favorite, too, is like you see these news stories now like, oh, the farmers. Yeah, we're old Paul Trump. But please don't deport our workforce. That would really make it hard for us. Can you exempt them? Can you not do it to them?
[Alex] Well, and again, I mean, if you can't, if your business is reliant on underpaid illegal immigrants to do the work, then your business shouldn't function.

(23:52):
[Erica] I agree with you. A thousand percent.
[Alex] I just don't know what else to say. And the idea that you can't pay people to do a job is just hilarious.
[Erica] Well, because then there's not enough money for the shareholders, and we can't share it with the rich. This is the thing that was really heartening to see with my man Luigi here, is that people were like- Our

(24:15):
[Alex] man.
[Erica] Our man.
[Alex] Luigi. Our man. And by the way, did you see the picture of him with his shirt off? Goddamn.
[Erica] Keeping it tight, Luigi.
[Alex] I saw some posts. It was like, it was some woman naming all the ways she would have Luigi fuck her or something.
[Erica] somebody i was messaging with they were just like erica his name is luigi i'm like dude like i'm down oh the luigi have you seen the

(24:42):
[Alex] luigi halloween costumes are selling out yes i
[Erica] have yes somebody was like this is the new v for vendetta mask and i lost my shit it
[Alex] really is
[Erica] Oh, my God. But no, because it's not. Here's the thing. As much as I disagree with, you know, a bigoted, misogynistic, you know, fuckface who thinks immigrants are ruining everything and that they're putting things in the water to turn the freaking frogs gay. I have more in common. That part might

(25:12):
[Alex] actually be true, but go ahead. I have
[Erica] more in common with him than I do with a fucking billionaire. And we need to do something about the billionaire class. That's what the problem is. Yeah. Because now the country has been bought and paid for, and we're going to be the ones who suffer for it. Because here's the thing. I don't mean to interrupt you again. Elon is not the genius people seem to think that he is. Can we agree on that? I know we agree on that, yes. This is a man who has... The only reason he is where he is is because he has bought... What was it? Tesla. Like, he bought the word creator. Like, the people who actually created it or found her or whatever. He's like, well, I own that now, so you guys can't use that. I'm the one who started it. And it's like, no, you're not, fuckface. You bought it from somebody who did it better than you. And now you're running it into the ground because you suck.

(26:10):
[Alex] Well, and I... I said before, you know, I think Elon is at least smart enough to create a company that's very appealing for people who do want to work in these segments on stuff that's forward thinking. Because if we're being honest, these auto manufacturers, they had no interest in making electric cars. I'll

(26:38):
[Erica] give that to you. I'll give
[Alex] that to you. And so he has disrupted industries. God, I hate that fucking word. But- That said, I still think he himself is a moron. Like, and I don't think, I mean, maybe, I'm sure there are people out there who think, like, Elon's with the engineers building the rockets. There are 1,000% people out there. I don't know,

(27:01):
[Erica] maybe not anymore, but there are definitely people who think that, Alex.
[Alex] I mean, I think those people do exist, but I more take it from the perspective of here's a person who had a shitload of money from his family and he was at least smart enough to create a cult of personality around himself and make an appealing product that very smart people want to work on. Right. And I think that's his success. Yeah. Basically everything else, I think he's a fucking idiot.

(27:35):
[Erica] You don't hand the reins of the country over to this guy, though.
[Alex] Sure. And, you know, like, you got people out there who, like, apparently his account is, like... the number one Diablo 4 account or something. I don't, for a second, believe that's actually him playing.
[Erica] Well, even if it was him playing, okay, motherfucker. That even
[Alex] shows you that he has like...
[Erica] Then what? You're not working. This is all you're doing, dude.

(27:58):
[Alex] And apparently his account...
[Erica] I'm the CEO of three companies. Okay, babe. Okay.
[Alex] Which actually shows you how little CEOs do. Right.
[Erica] All right, sweet pea. Sure.
[Alex] Sure. But, you know, and apparently I saw he got banned off Path of Exile 2 for something or other. Transphobic
[Erica] statements, perhaps? I
[Alex] don't know. But I just, if he has, if that's actually him and he has time to do all that, that just shows you how little he has to do with the day-to-day operations

(28:28):
[Erica] of these companies. Oh, he's got nothing to do with it. Please. the cyber truck that was all him it was all eli
[Alex] i do think it's like this funny it's this wacky where everything's backwards situation where the higher up you get in a company and the more money you're making the less you actually do yeah correct it's so it's so it's bonkers i suppose would be the word I don't know. Yeah, I mean, I saw something today where there was some bill to avert the government shutdown that even the Republicans were pushing in the House and Mike Johnson was behind it and everything. And then Elon goes on Twitter, throws up a couple posts like being against the bill or something. And that's it. The bill's killed. And it's like the dude... isn't elected he has nothing to do with any of this but you guys are still just sucking his dick everything he does says it does

(29:28):
[Erica] yeah so yeah good shut the cut let's shut the government down okay cool
[Alex] so i just uh i don't know man i don't know And we're still in, like, the before times. Trump's not even president yet.
[Erica] Yeah, people seem to forget that. In that, you know, there could be a lot of things you're doing and things that you're passing to inoculate, you know, a little bit. It's still going to be bad. But there are things you could be doing. But nah, it's fine. They'll be fine, Alex. What could happen? They'll all be fine. Well, and they can't stand against him because then he might primary them. And, you know, if you were an actual, like... you know, good at your job and did things for your constituents, you wouldn't have to worry about that.

(30:11):
[Alex] No.
[Erica] But you suck. So... I'm just tired of it.
[Alex] Yeah, I mean, I try to. I'm kind of at the point now where I'm just waiting. So I don't really read about a lot of this stuff as much as I was, say, six months ago. I mean, there's a
[Erica] few things that come across my feed and I'll kind of look into. But for the most part, I'm not on... Because I can't. I can't be like it was before. I can't. My mental health cannot take it. So it's like, I'll try to pay attention when he gets in. But for the most part, we're in get fucked, I hope you choke on it. Unless something is directly affecting me and the people that I give a shit about.

(30:55):
[Alex] Yeah.
[Erica] So I've got my list when I got a call, like my senators, yes, and my rep to be like, what the fuck are you doing? You know, I'm a staunch, was a staunch Republican or Democratic voter. And, you know, like, I'm going to do everything I can to primary your asses then. It's not a lot. I'm one person. But...

(31:19):
[Alex] Yeah. I'm
[Erica] going to start a radio show. I'm going to go on YouTube and just start being like, I'm angry. That sells, right? People want to
[Alex] hear that. Yeah. Well, the thing is, you're going to have to take on a more popular stance. You know, um...
[Erica] My stances are popular, Alex, just not with all the right-wing chuds that exist in the spaces these days. There

(31:40):
[Alex] you go. Yeah, you're going to have to take on a, I hate other women. Everyone should be a, what is it, a trad wife or whatever. See, I can't do that, Alex. Oh, see, I could run the grift.
[Erica] Can't do that. I could do the grift, Erica. Absolutely not. See, the problem, this is the problem, especially if it's video. One, not a face for video. Bad idea. Wow. I do not have a poker face either. So I'd be trying to say this stuff and I'd be looking as if I was going to vomit. You ever see Izzy try something like vaguely new? Oh,

(32:09):
[Alex] yeah. And
[Erica] she gets that face.
[Alex] any well anything that's not like a peanut butter yeah or uh she gets the puss it's exactly what would be happening
[Erica] yeah no poker face at all
[Alex] ritz she likes a ritz cracker
[Erica] well because ritz cracker is like the perfect food
[Alex] i would argue that's the oreo
[Erica] I can't eat too many Oreos, though, because then I feel like I want to kill myself.

(32:32):
[Alex] That's a you problem.
[Erica] Indeed. We can't keep those in the house, though. That's a food where, like, there has been historical precedent of, like, oh, they're on sale. Get two packages. And those fuckers are gone in 24 hours. That is a bad time, Alex.
[Alex] So someone can eat the whole package.
[Erica] Someone certainly can.

(32:55):
[Alex] Oh, my God.
[Erica] Oh, also, this is subtle interference. Thank you for listening.
[Alex] That's right. Hey.
[Erica] Hey. Hey.
[Alex] Hey.
[Erica] Hey.
[Alex] I'm Alex.
[Erica] I'm Erica.
[Alex] That's Erica. Siri Beatty Enthusiast.
[Erica] The noise I made, Alex. I was so excited. And then the even happier noises I made when it was like, oh, look, all the incels are crying because it's a woman main character. How about you

(33:25):
[Alex] suck a dick? Well, first of all, what we're talking about, if you didn't pick it up there, is it's not like this was a secret that The Witcher 4 was in development, but this is the first time it's been very publicly announced.
[Erica] Well, and I don't think anyone was expecting any kind of a trailer.
[Alex] Uh, maybe not so soon. I mean, I feel like that game is still like three years off at least.

(33:45):
[Erica] I was going to say at least two, like we're not getting anything anytime soon.
[Alex] No, I wouldn't think so. And I actually did crack up at the, when that trailer started at the bottom of the trailer, it said something like, I mean, of course all these trailers are made up horseshit. There's these in no way, not in
[Erica] game or whatever.
[Alex] Yeah. These in no way ever represent what the game's going to end up looking like. I mean, sometimes they do, but that's, it's like you're years away. So at the bottom, it says something like in engine footage. running on an unannounced nvidia gpu i was like so essentially what you're telling me is is if i have like a three thousand dollar gpu i too could play a game that looks like this one day yep

(34:31):
[Erica] yep
[Alex] but
[Erica] it got you hyped though and we totally talked briefly about it the last time we were recording uh uh because they had announced only like maybe a month ago that they were like all hands on deck fully like
[Alex] full production
[Erica] So we spoke a little bit about it, but confirmation, you're going to get to play as Ciri, which is rad.
[Alex] Yeah, and I mean, that makes sense. Yes. Right? Yes, it does. I think it makes complete sense. But she's a woman! I also think people are flipping out because she doesn't look how she looked in The Witcher 3. She looks like more weathered.

(35:03):
[Erica] You know what happens? She got older. When time passes, you age,
[Alex] motherfucker. She got a little bit older, first of all. I mean, we don't know how much older. But the other thing is, I think if they go with the look that's in this trailer, it's to me more of a they're going for more of a realistic look rather than Witcher 3, which I would say is a little bit more on the cartoony anime-ish art style direction a little bit.

(35:31):
[Erica] ish ish i would say
[Alex] and and partially that's just a product of its time right because you can't you just it's hard to make games that look realistic now let alone
[Erica] i would hardly call it stylized but there's
[Alex] a little bit of that
[Erica] maybe a little
[Alex] yeah so i mean a siri isn't gonna look like your waifu I mean,

(35:54):
[Erica] she's out there. Even if she was like, if it was only like five years later, if she's been like actively fighting monsters, look how fucked up Geralt is. Like, yeah, man, you're getting brutalized.
[Alex] I think there's interesting ways they can take it, too, because it just looked like from that trailer that she doesn't appear to have her powers. And so I'm wondering if maybe she's lost them for some reason. And maybe you'll do like a Metroidvania style thing where you regain your powers throughout the game or something. I would

(36:27):
[Erica] imagine that they're going to have to nerf her a little bit because... I mean... She was,
[Alex] like, teleporting all over the place. Exactly.
[Erica] Exactly. At least in, like, in the books, she's able to jump into different universes, which would be very cool if we could, like, delve into that a little bit. That would be neat. I did read Geralt will be back in some capacity. Well,

(36:49):
[Alex] and I think that's, like, of course. I did see
[Erica] somebody say, though, they were like, he should only appear as, like, the big boss at the end of the Gwent tournament. Like that's who you have to be. That would be amazing. But no, I just want him chilling at the vineyard, like hanging out with his buds. Just like, this is what I do now.
[Alex] Well, and I mean, I don't really know what's canon or whatever, but I mean, in theory, him and Yennefer are chilling somewhere, right? So you

(37:16):
[Erica] can have canon in the games. I think like his isn't the canon. And I'm
[Alex] talking about the games because the games don't follow the books. They come
[Erica] after the books and they don't really like they take stuff from them, but they are not following them as if they're.
[Alex] But I'm just saying like the the games aren't considered canon, are they? Like Witcher 3 is Witcher 3 considered canon

(37:38):
[Erica] in like the book canon.
[Alex] Right.
[Erica] If you went to the author and asked him, is this canon?
[Alex] He'd probably kill you.
[Erica] He'd punch you in the face. Yeah, so that's what I'm saying. He hates the video games. I
[Alex] don't know why, because they've made him so much money. Oh, he's into the
[Erica] money, but he's like, no, fuck this shit.
[Alex] Yeah,
[Erica] so... No, they're their own canon. They take inspiration from the books, but the books are like... I don't want to say like proper canon, but the book is like the... The books are the book canon. The video games are their own canon. The show is its own thing that kind of pulls from the books, and that's all fine.

(38:12):
[Alex] And what's the I've never looked into this. What's the deal? Did CD Projekt Red just buy like a perpetual license to make video games for the Witcher franchise? Like, does he not get any say on what's done with them or whatever? I
[Erica] mean, probably. I don't know if he gets say. I mean, I guess it all kind of depends. Because,

(38:35):
[Alex] like, he may have
[Erica] just been like, yeah, go ahead. Whatever. Pay me. I don't care.
[Alex] I've definitely heard him bitch about the games before. And you would think if he had the option, maybe he would, like, withdraw that license or something. Yeah, but he just
[Erica] might not be video game guy. Like, he doesn't give a shit about video games to begin with. And he's just kind of like, yeah, I'm happy for the check, but fuck video games.

(38:57):
[Alex] Right. Sure. It could be that. That's kind
[Erica] of what I think it is. A little different from Mr. Martin, who will jump in.
[Alex] no yeah a little bit here and there when he's not writing his 15 million page fucking his own manifesto over there you hear apparently it's too big for one book now i
[Erica] don't even care anymore i don't give a shit you know what i'm getting from sepkowski i'm getting a young gerald prequel this next year all right i haven't gotten a new book from the other guy in i think it'll be 14 years next year at least in the he's done other stuff but not i just want to

(39:33):
[Alex] see the binding on the book you know they've printed it somewhere oh
[Erica] yeah
[Alex] it's like it's gotta be like
[Erica] and they're sitting there like mother guy come on we just
[Alex] want the easy money you just give us the free money that's his publisher but
[Erica] his publisher's just like weep well because they know it's gonna well i don't know though is it gonna like
[Alex] it's still gonna sell like gangbusters

(39:55):
[Erica] one would think maybe
[Alex] not as much as it would have if it would have released like well this tv show was still gonna
[Erica] I'm just kind of like, I got a wiki of ice and fire. I'll poke the head in there. Because one, I don't remember much of what happened in those first five books. And I'm not going back and rereading them. Well, that's the
[Alex] other thing. When you wait so long, you're not going to have that fresh memory and emotion.
[Erica] And there's so much that happens. And there's so many characters. Do you have to remember? Dude, I got other stuff going on. I'm sorry. I only got so much space up here.

(40:27):
[Alex] So here's the thing. I think Ciri, I mean, does she look the same as she did in The Witcher 3? No, but she still looks fine to me. I don't know, like, what's the... Like, there's this whole thing. Here's the deal, okay? I play Nikkei. I play Zenless Zone Zero. And you know what? If you want your perfect, tiny waist, big ass, big boobs, waifu of your dream... They're all over these games. And go play those games. You can

(41:01):
[Erica] have
[Alex] that.
[Erica] If you want to be like, well, I don't like when they make games, then don't fucking buy the game, stupid. Don't play it.
[Alex] And people flipped out that the sequel to Ghost of Tsushima is the ghost of Yotai. It has a female lead. It's like, I just don't. What is
[Erica] the problem? Why is that a problem? No one was bitching when it was Lara Croft. Well,

(41:24):
[Alex] yeah. They were bitching that, like, her boobs weren't big enough in the latest trilogy.
[Erica] But, like, is that really, like... Is that... Do you have nothing else going on in your life?
[Alex] Yes. That sounds
[Erica] amazing. That sounds wonderful. I have nothing else to worry about. So I'm going to bitch about this.
[Alex] But I just think... I think, one, it is like a segment of people who are going to bitch no matter what. It's just the usual grifting. It's just in a different space.

(41:54):
[Erica] Oh, well, the whole point is it's like... It's rage bait grifting. It's what's accepted. Like, well, I have to say it. I have to bitch about it because that's just what you do. These are the same people who were bitching about Baldur's Gate 3 and then, like, Veilguard came out, the Dragon Age game, and they were like, well, Baldur's Gate 3 wasn't woke like this. And it's like... You guys were bitching about all of this shit nine months ago. What are you fucking talking about?

(42:16):
[Alex] Well, and that's the thing, is a lot of these content creators or people on Twitter or whatever, this is their brand. So they have to do that. It doesn't matter what they believe or what they think. They have to do that. That's the product they're essentially selling. So, you know, I just don't... I think what this comes down to a lot of the time is you have a lot of people... Who, you know, you're used to what you're used to. If we're taking the most favorable... outlook on this as you possibly can what you're used to is the normal stuff right so what do you see is normal if you look at the history of any movie tv show video game book whatever the main character is almost always a white dude and you know but if you look at history erica i'm just saying

(43:18):
[Erica] sure
[Alex] I'm just saying. So I think what happens is... I
[Erica] don't know. Maybe with the shit that they play. Because there's been plenty of female protagonists.
[Alex] But that's what I'm saying. So I think even if you have... 20% of video game leads be female protagonists. Well, that's still 80% that are men. That's the thing though. So I think the, I think the abnormal stands out even if it's done so infrequently.

(43:54):
[Erica] Sure. But then like, I don't game as I used to. I used to game a lot more. I wasn't like, I wasn't bitching about it always being a guy. Whatever. You just play the game. Is the game fun? Who gives a shit?
[Alex] Right.
[Erica] I don't... It kind of annoys me, just in general, and it's not just in these spaces, because I think this is another thing that, like... Maybe it might be more of the younger generation a little bit, but it's like... You can find meaning in stories that aren't explicitly about you. Right. Right? Like, I can get something out of a queer story. I can get something out of a story about a white dude. I can get something about an African-American person. It's... that you need to do that or else you get stuck in this like tunnel vision and it's it's it's like that's it's and a lot of people are either well i don't do that i just need my my my little view or people are like i'm wrecking up the fucking place you can't like you can't find meaning you're not queer you can't find meaning in like queer spaces and it's like well one you know fucking know me but also two like what that's ridiculous Like, that's all of, like, art. You find meaning in art, like, done by other people. What are you fucking talking about?

(45:14):
[Alex] Sure.
[Erica] This all comes back to just the everyone's dumb now, and it's annoying me because I'm noticing it more now. Well,
[Alex] and I think, you know, for a little while there, especially it seemed like there were suddenly, and I'm blanking on a lot of the good examples right now, but I think you had a lot of dudes who grew up and they... they maybe had issues with their fathers and then they became you know writers or lead designers or something on a video game and so you saw suddenly there be a lot of the god of war type stuff where if you look at like kratos in this new god of war trilogy i mean that's really not the same character as kratos from there's not a trilogy sorry but these two latest god of war games That's really not the same Kratos as the Kratos that was in that original trilogy. Sure. But they've kind of grafted this personality of like, you know, this this old dude who had a son who's got a lot of problems trying to raise a son while being the effing god of war, you know. And a lot of the games are about kind of their dynamic and trying to be a better father and everything. So I think a lot of times people, you know, they write and they want to be representative of their experiences, right? And there were other games like this, too. Which is

(46:41):
[Erica] totally fair. But then I find I get something out of that. Even before I was a parent. It's like you can definitely get something out of... somebody struggle to do right by their kid despite the chaos going on around them
[Alex] right
[Erica] male or female
[Alex] yeah and i think it's like it's i don't know

(47:02):
[Erica] and you should write to your experience i think that's you get better shit that way and it's grounding in a game where you're like fighting the norse pantheon i never finished that first dad of war i really liked it oh it's
[Alex] a great game i haven't played the second one but the the first one of these latest two are you know it's a really great it's what

(47:23):
[Erica] god of war ragnarok is that what it is
[Alex] uh well ragnarok is the second one
[Erica] right yeah yeah yeah yeah the first one was just god of war
[Alex] right
[Erica] yeah i don't remember what happened but yeah i got pretty deep in and then something happened and
[Alex] Well, I can't ever stop a game. If I stop a game for some reason, it's very hard to go back to it at that point.

(47:45):
[Erica] No, same. Because it's just like...
[Alex] Especially if it's an open world game.
[Erica] Yeah. It's like, I don't know where I'm going. I don't know what I was doing. It's like, okay, we may as well just... We're either going to start from the beginning or I'm just never playing this
[Alex] again. It's the same thing with a Souls game. Once I start a Souls game, I got to see it through. Otherwise, I'm done. Because you get into that cadence of the combat and the rhythm and everything... And once you're out of that and suddenly you try to come back and you're fighting some endgame boss, it's like this guy is pushing my shit in because I can't even remember how to dodge. That is

(48:15):
[Erica] exactly what happened with Dark Souls 3 to me. For whatever reason, I walked away from it for a few weeks right at the end. I came back and I was like, I have forgotten how to play this.
[Alex] That was one of the things that got announced at the Video Game Awards. I think I said that to you. It was like an Elden Ring spinoff, essentially, from FromSoft that is a three-player co-op Souls game, which to me sounds fun as hell. Get your ass

(48:43):
[Erica] spanked together.
[Alex] Well, the co-op in these Souls games is always kind of poorly implemented. And since it's been done like this like eight times, I have to assume it's on purpose. Because don't you have to
[Erica] like call somebody in?
[Alex] Right. So the way you would work normally is you can summon somebody sometimes in like some of the games you can only summon them for the boss fight. And then once you win the boss fight, they just get like they

(49:06):
[Erica] go away,
[Alex] teleported back home. And some of them, what would happen is you could teleport. You could pull someone in. for a section but then once you beat the boss of that section they would then get removed from your game again and then you would have to get to like another point where you could summon them in again so it was just not a good none of these souls games have ever been good co-op experiences whereas this one actually looks like it's designed of hey you play the whole game together which To me, sounds cool. And I hope that means we're going to get some bosses that are more designed for co-op. Because that's one of the other issues. Like, whenever you do summonings in a Dark Souls game, you're pretty much admitting you suck. Because... Well, because the bosses aren't designed for another person to beat.

(49:58):
[Erica] Right. So, it's just... So, it's
[Alex] just the second person just gets to stand behind them and just beat the shit out of them. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, I thought that was a cool announcement. Obviously, I thought, you know, The Witcher 4, even though that's about a billion years away, was a cool announcement. I mean, that Elden Ring co-op game is coming out like early next year. Oh, wow. I don't know how FromSoft, like it's one of these companies, like FromSoft and the Yakuza developers, they're just pumping games out nonstop. I don't know how they do it.

(50:28):
[Erica] What else? Did you have anything? Because I know you said when I was talking with you, it was still going on. Yeah,
[Alex] so I didn't watch it live because I just can't. Who could possibly care? I'll actually come back around to that because I just don't understand why you would care about awards in a developer show like voted on by journalists or something. Journalists, quote unquote. But... yeah they uh speaking of i don't know how you say like a dragon in japanese but that's the name of the studio ryu gagatoku or something like that i'm just butchered the fuck out of that if you

(51:05):
[Erica] didn't know this we're white from america and thus terrible people cannot say anything that is not just bog standard american
[Alex] um but they're i don't know how many teams are internally at that studio now but they're making a new virtua fighter they announced that they're making a new it seems like a totally new universe that's right now it's called project century um and they're obviously i'm assuming there's another yakuza game there's

(51:35):
[Erica] several yakuza games so i
[Alex] mean that there's that yakuza pirate game that's coming out sometime soon but oh yeah samoa joe's in that oh
[Erica] i did not know that rut row
[Alex] but um yeah like uh majima's the lead in that so it's gonna that probably be a joy but uh you know i don't know how many people are working at studio but at that point that studio at this point that studio is like sega's crown jewel i mean they're they're pumping out a ton of successful games um what else did i see i mean there were a lot of announcements did you watch that trailer for that intergalactic

(52:14):
[Erica] i don't think that i did because i'm a monster
[Alex] so I don't really know what the game's about or whatever, but it's some sort of future thing. The trailer starts off, you're in like a ship and the spaceship. And, um, I'm trying to think of how to describe the aesthetic, but it was very like if you just pull up the video and look at it, it was very it was very like sci fi futuristic, but also comfy. And I think there was some I think there was some clear like Akira influence in the art design of this game. like it's it's it's very i love the art design and the art direction of this game like it looks so retro and cool like the like the stuff like the panels she was typing on and the tv and the screen all at a very very retro like 80s sci-fi look to them kind

(53:19):
[Erica] of like aliens about it
[Alex] yeah like a little alien ish Like you could tell it was very like alien and Akira. Like that
[Erica] ancient scripture from 1980 something. That's great.
[Alex] But it was all, it was all, you could tell it was all very inspired by that. And I don't know, this story seems to be you're like a, maybe you're like a bounty hunter or something chasing down someone who's gone onto a planet that no one's ever got off the planet or something like that. so you take the bounty but you're kind of being told don't take the bounty but right

(53:54):
[Erica] you're gonna go down there you're never gonna come back
[Alex] right but just this the ship looked really cool and it was product placement but it like actually kind of worked where there was like Sony and Porsche and Adidas all over it but
[Erica] When you get futuristic like that, I mean, look at the fucking hellscape we live in right now. You got advertising and everything.
[Alex] Sure. Oh, no,

(54:14):
[Erica] it's a woman, though, Alex. It
[Alex] is a woman. Ruins. And that's actually a real actress. I don't know her name, but that's a real person. and of course like yeah of course the chuds came out for this one too oh look sure she shaves her head and she looks masculine and everything i was like have you ever
[Erica] seen a woman before do you know what like you know that word means

(54:38):
[Alex] people were literally using ai to edit images of her to make her boobs bigger
[Erica] like i don't i i don't know what to do i don't know what to do with that
[Alex] alex i don't know what to say Play gacha games, you fucking losers. Just
[Erica] go play that, right? If you want it, it's out there. That's what I don't understand. I don't understand why it has to be out there. This looks straight out of Alien.

(55:03):
[Alex] Yeah, I love the aesthetic. It looks so cool. It looks like
[Erica] you could be on the Nostromo, and that jacket is a thousand percent inspired by Akira.
[Alex] Oh, there was a lot of it. And I'm
[Erica] fine with that. At the
[Alex] end, the way a disc got picked up was right out of the jukebox in Akira. They know
[Erica] what they're doing.
[Alex] Yeah, it's not an accident.

(55:25):
[Erica] They look familiar. And the guy,
[Alex] it looks like the guy she's chasing is the actor from, you know, the Indian guy from Silicon Valley. Yeah. No, no, no. Wow. You're more racist than I am.
[Erica] There's a really small picture of him in this frame and I'm trying. No, it's the guy from
[Alex] Silicon Valley. What's his name? I

(55:47):
[Erica] watched like a season of that.
[Alex] I'm looking it up, people. I'm sorry. This is terrible. This is awful. Oh, my God. I can't say his name. What's his name, Erica?
[Erica] Oh, Kumail Nanjiani. Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is that Sigourney Weaver also? I'm not sure who that

(56:09):
[Alex] is. I'm not sure who that is on the TV. It
[Erica] would be really funny if it is. It's smart because that's, like, younger looking than a bit, but...
[Alex] No, but it looks cool. I don't know what type of game it's going to be or whatever, but you know what? It's Naughty Dog. They made The Last of Us. They made Uncharted. Uncharted games aren't my favorite games ever, but the Last of Us games are. Oh, yeah.

(56:32):
[Erica] Pet Shop Boys? Come on.
[Alex] hook it
[Erica] to my veins motherfuckers
[Alex] but the the last the last of us games are just excellent to me and so i've got proven studio yeah neil druckman let's go so i think it's gonna be great but who knows how long we'll be waiting for it probably a while um oh and i the the soundtrack's being done by trent resner so that's pretty cool all right

(56:57):
[Erica] yeah they know they know what they're fucking doing
[Alex] um but yeah i mean that looked awesome i'm trying to think there was this great trailer for a hell divers update where they had like this shot straight out of terminator 2 or like there's like a little teddy bear and the alien steps on it like it all hell divers like just knows well

(57:19):
[Erica] they revel in that shit don't
[Alex] they it's so funny so
[Erica] intergalactic the heretic project okay we'll have to keep an eye on that
[Alex] um But it just basically it's like there's some new alien races invaded and they've enslaved some humans. And, you know, the whole trailer is like, oh, they've taken away this and that and the other. But more than anything, they've taken away our freedom.

(57:45):
[Erica] And that's like the trigger word. Everybody's activated then.
[Alex] so i don't know hell divers is awesome and uh just i love i love like how in on the joke they are it's so well done i mean
[Erica] you kind of have to be right i mean i'm sure there's some idiots who are playing it like yes they are shaking away our freedoms but um that looks good though that whole yeah i

(58:09):
[Alex] mean it's it's naughty dog it's gonna be great it's just a matter of how great it is yeah
[Erica] what did bob tell me the other day that they're uh re-releasing like a 4k holy shit edition of akira and i was like we were buying that instantly i think i
[Alex] i feel like i have akira on blu-ray already maybe not
[Erica] i think because you brought it over i thought and that's how we showed it to bob i thought

(58:34):
[Alex] because he had never seen it and we were
[Erica] like you must don't we fixed that though
[Alex] Of course he hasn't, Erica. He's never seen anything.
[Erica] We're slowly working through the catalog. What a
[Alex] piece of shit Dead Bob is.
[Erica] We still need to do the Street Fighter and RoboCop.
[Alex] How has a man, and I mean this unironically. In the most misogynistic way, yes. How has a man not seen RoboCop? I

(59:04):
[Erica] don't know.
[Alex] Just for the music alone. The music.
[Erica] I don't know. I
[Alex] love that fucking song. It's not even a song, it's a beat. Yes. But that beat works for me. I
[Erica] mean, we're getting into the cold, horrible months here, so we should definitely just do... We should force them. We should do the movie night. We should force them. Because Street Fighter is a delight and a half. That's just a fun fucking movie. It's not good, but it's fun.

(59:29):
[Alex] I got so much good stuff that I could force Bob to watch. And the great
[Erica] thing about that is it's like, that's
[Alex] maybe,
[Erica] it's like three hours and you're done.
[Alex] Yeah, it's like one movie now.
[Erica] Yeah, it's beautiful. You're
[Alex] having a real problem with that cable today. Here, we're going
[Erica] to push that a little farther away.
[Alex] Um, but I don't, so anyways, it cracked me up. Uh, you know, the video game awards is all their various awards, best action adventure game, best this and that and the other. But the big one of course is game of the year. And I don't know who votes on this fucking shit. I don't give a fuck about it, but apparently some people really do. And which

(01:00:12):
[Erica] is just like, go from the bottom of my heart, go touch some grass. So, So what was the problem?
[Alex] What happened? So I can't remember every game that was nominated. Because I'm assuming there's a problem. Oh, there was a problem. Big problem. So I can't remember every game that was nominated. Sure. But it was like Wukong, Astro Bot, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, something else. I don't know. Maybe that Baltro game or something. I can't remember everything that was nominated. But Astro Bot ends up winning. Mm-hmm. and wukong won for some other stuff like i think they won one like best action game or something and

(01:00:49):
[Erica] what is what is that
[Alex] wukong uh wukong it's like wukong fallen dynasty or something like that it's it's uh it's like a third person action game sort of a little soulsy not really soulsy now every game that's like a third person it's kind of soulsy now yeah now But it's big. What got it to kind of take off, I think, more than anything. One, it's another retelling of that Journey to the West story. That we've done. A million times.

(01:01:20):
[Erica] Several, like, get another story, read another book. But
[Alex] the Chinese love that story. Sure. So... um it's it's a chinese developer who had never made like a triple a game before and from everything i read the game is good it's not great from my understanding but the game's good and because it got hyped a lot and pushed a lot and everything it sold like crazy especially in china sure i mean wild success um and they made a shitload of money And I think all this studio had made before then was kind of like a mobile mobile games. Right. I mean, it's sort of like the same thing with, you know, shift up with Stellar Blade and Nikkei and all that. Not to the same ridiculous level of success, but every game isn't going to sell like 20 million copies or something. so anyways so apparently i was reading um alana pierce was there who's like a youtuber slash until recently she was one of the writers on god of war and um like she was a writer on the last game and uh She was at the Game Awards and she said she was sitting near the Wukong developers. And when they lost Game of the Year, they started crying. And I was just like,

(01:02:42):
[Erica] I... Maybe because they just didn't, like, they didn't know? Like, this, maybe they, like, it's... But you're
[Alex] just... I don't know. I mean, I just... I get, you know, you make something, you're really emotionally invested in it and everything. But why do you care what some American or European or whatever, again, quote unquote journalists, think about your game?

(01:03:13):
[Erica] Well, and it's sold like gangbusters and people really like it. Isn't that
[Alex] enough? You're a success. Why do you got to win awards
[Erica] for? Who gives a fuck?
[Alex] Yeah. Yeah.
[Erica] I don't get that at all.
[Alex] And again, just the fact that, I mean, I'm sure Astro Bot is like a really good game. Everything I've read is that Astro Bot's a really good game. But is that really game of the year? I don't know. I think it just appeals to...

(01:03:39):
[Erica] I think you
[Alex] can make
[Erica] that argument, though, for almost every year, at least like five different games.
[Alex] Well, and the truth is, from a single player game perspective, the video game industry has been on fire for a while now. So there's a lot of really, really great single player games coming up, single player games coming up all the time.

(01:04:02):
[Erica] Right.
[Alex] I mean, look,
[Erica] it's enough to be nominated. Right.
[Alex] Wasn't Final Fantasy seven rebirth. I mean, I haven't played it. I'm sure it's an incredible game. I don't
[Erica] see them sitting there just playing
[Alex] Final Fantasy seven remake. I just think there's no way they made a bad game.
[Erica] Right.
[Alex] So, I mean, I don't know who won that year with remake, but I'm sure for a lot of people, Final Fantasy seven remake was probably the game of the year, the year it came out. And I'm sure rebirth was probably the game of the year for a lot of people this year. And maybe there's some people who don't play anything except Wukong and that's their game of the year. I mean, I don't know.

(01:04:40):
[Erica] It's so subjective and it's like, like you said, you don't know who's voting on this shit. And like, who fucking cares?
[Alex] I did, this is unrelated, but it's crazy sometimes to think about how many people actually work on a given game. And I read, there was some interview that got translated from like the lead. I think their title is like lead scenario designer or something, which is actually lead writer on Nikkei. And they were asking a bunch of questions about certain storylines and how things kind of piece together and all that and things that haven't really been covered yet. But yeah, of one thing i thought was interesting is he i think it was a guy he said um there's 10 writers on the nike team yeah and i was like isn't that just crazy to think that some mobile game and again i think the story is actually very good you have said good things about but it is crazy to think that there's 10 people writing story for nike you know like it's just kind of it's just crazy to think about that

(01:05:42):
[Erica] I just remember sitting when I beat Final Fantasy VII on the PlayStation. And I just don't like this. I do like to sit through the credits because I think you should just...
[Alex] I like sitting through the credits. It's a good tune that I'm playing. Even now, when you beat a game now and you sit through the credits and it's like, well, let me go grab the popcorn because I'm going to be here for 20 minutes. Oh, no, that Final
[Erica] Fantasy VII credit roll was like...

(01:06:03):
[Alex] Are you talking about new Final Fantasy 7? No, from like
[Erica] PlayStation. Yeah, the old, old, old one. The original one. Oh no, yeah. You're sitting there like at least 10 minutes. Oh yeah. Like there's a ton of fucking people working on these games. It's crazy.
[Alex] Well, and everyone gets listed. I mean, like, the translators, the this, the that, the guy in marketing who probably didn't have shit to do with it, but he got his name onto the fucking credits. But that's like with

(01:06:27):
[Erica] movies, too. Like, they've got the catering people around there. Sure. They've got the folks driving people around around there. And it's cool to
[Alex] have your name on something. Even if you didn't have shit to do with it. I'm trying to remember. It's still cool to have your name on it. I don't
[Erica] think we sat through the Deadpool Wolverine credits. maybe we did
[Alex] you might have because you might have figured there was some sort of after credit
[Erica] i mean usually with a marvel thing you're gonna you're gonna hang because there's gonna be something you could who could possibly care about at the end these days but yeah i don't remember did you end up watching that or not yet

(01:06:58):
[Alex] no i keep forgetting okay not yet
[Erica] that's okay because i haven't re-watched it so but i want to i just need like a reason to
[Alex] You know what I did watch, Erica? What
[Erica] did you watch, Alex?
[Alex] All of Arcane.
[Erica] Oh, yes. What did you think?
[Alex] Have you watched all of Arcane?
[Erica] I am completely caught up, yes.
[Alex] Okay. Well, I mean, I guess there's going to be spoilers in here if anyone's worried about spoilers. Well, and I will

(01:07:21):
[Erica] say it's been out for like a couple weeks, so if you're not caught up. Oh, the second
[Alex] season kind of only just came out.
[Erica] November, though. Okay. It's a couple weeks. Sure. Let's go. Get on board. It's 2024, man. We don't give you time to watch shit. You got to watch it, regurgitate, and then forget about everything that happened and then move on to the next thing.

(01:07:43):
[Alex] So I quite enjoyed it overall. I think it petered off at the end. I think my one criticism would be is they went back to the Vander Well at least one too many times.
[Erica] Vander coming back, like, as one of the, like, the gloriously evolved, I was like, okay, like, come on.

(01:08:15):
[Alex] It's just, it got, it was like, you know, I think the best moment in the whole show from just an emotion standpoint was, I mean, there was a lot of good stuff, but the one that really stood out to me was when vander's been brought back as this like werewolf type thing and you know vi and uh jinx have been at war for how god only however many years or whatever i can't remember the exact timeline but it had been a while and you know jinx goes and finds vi because vander's alive or something and um

(01:08:57):
[Erica] after she's been pit fighting because you know because she's not a good decision no we don't make good decisions and the hot girl left us so we got to go make some poor decisions and dye our hair black
[Alex] yeah the hair looked bad too the hair looked bad Um, but she did get, she did get even beefier though, to her credit. Very beefy.
[Erica] Yes.
[Alex] Um, but, and I mean, you had the whole thing where like, you know, she's like choking jinx out against the fricking wall. And, but anyways, they go and find him and they're in the tunnels or the whatever. And. um you know vi's just like fuck it i was like whatever he's my dad i'm not fighting him and then you know they come out of the whole cut scene and they're hugging and vi just like turns and reaches her hand out to jinx and says like come on

(01:09:45):
[Erica] waiting for something like that what are
[Alex] you waiting for he's your dad too and it's like that was probably their best like moment in the whole run um but after that They should just like let the dude die or let him be back or something. The whole like back and forth and, you know, just especially at the end when he's like a hulking like automaton or something. I was just like. That whole thing just got to a point where it's like you've pulled on this same thread at least one too many

(01:10:17):
[Erica] times. Now, can I ask you, is it Isha? Is that her name? When she popped up, did you see the dead meat counter above her head as well? Which one is that? The little girl that was hanging out with Jinx.
[Alex] Oh, yeah. I mean, she was fucked. Yeah. She was fucked. The fact that she was never actually speaking... It was like, you're just... The second
[Erica] she appeared on screen, I was like, oh, no. There's that timer.

(01:10:44):
[Alex] But, I mean, I'm trying to think about the whole show. I mean, one thing that did crack me up in the second season is you have the whole thing where... Vi goes off and she's doing her cage fighting shenanigans and Caitlin goes off and she does a
[Erica] fascism. Yes, she
[Alex] is. She's doing a fascism. As you do. She's banging one of her subordinates, which is a bad idea. And who

(01:11:08):
[Erica] turns on her? That was great.
[Alex] But I was also like. wait so were you always a member of this other faction or did you get turned or something i think that was a little bit too out of nowhere for me for my taste i
[Erica] like because i think she was the first one who started like what is it a messa is that her name genocidal mom i can't

(01:11:30):
[Alex] remember the
[Erica] I loved her also. She was glorious. I can't remember half the names. No, there's lots of names. But she was the first one who started doing like that chest beady thing. Sure. So I think she just kind of bought
[Alex] in. Yeah, maybe she bought in hard. And it
[Erica] was like, oh, you lost the faith or whatever the hell.
[Alex] But then, okay, in that same... But here's the thing. Mm-hmm. What I don't like is in the same fight, she's in the tower with Caitlin helping her like spot out the mom and shoot at her. Mm

(01:12:02):
[Erica] hmm.
[Alex] So right there then, shouldn't you've already gutted her like a fish?
[Erica] In theory.
[Alex] Like you were with her then, shooting at her then. No, but we've got to make a spectacle of it though, Alex. But then three minutes later, oh, now I've popped you in the back of the head. We've got to
[Erica] make a spectacle of it.
[Alex] I get it. I just think it's one of those things like, I don't think you really laid the groundwork for this turn here. Well, I don't

(01:12:24):
[Erica] remember if they were saying it was supposed to, excuse me, originally be three seasons. So I do think some of the stuff in season two feels a little rushed.
[Alex] Yeah. I
[Erica] don't know if you'd agree with that, but I don't know. It all kind of landed for me. I was having a glorious
[Alex] time. The other funny thing to me of the fascism turn is she's all in. right we're going to uh want to be jesus's home we're gonna take his powers we're gonna kill him we're gonna do whatever and then vi shows up caitlin judo throws her and then they're like best friends again

(01:13:01):
[Erica] well because alex i mean good shit going on there
[Alex] there was some good shit going on there i'm just saying i just think it's funny it's like oh vi you're here i'm on your side again what you were just down the fascism rabbit hole all it
[Erica] all it takes is the love of a good woman alex and you're back and you're back

(01:13:22):
[Alex] i guess so you just need to judo toss your woman and then you'll be you're just all in again but uh no
[Erica] i mean
[Alex] i enjoyed it overall what did you
[Erica] think of like the jace stuff
[Alex] Um, I like Jace just because even though he, you know, made a ton of mistakes, he had a good heart.

(01:13:44):
[Erica] Oh, but that's half the fun of him though. Is it's like, oh no, you do have a good heart, but everything you choose is the wrong thing. That's why I love him. Because it's like, oh, you big dummy. You just keep ruining everything. Keep going. The
[Alex] only thing he actually did choose right on, to be fair, was he pushed them to make peace with the Undercity. And then Jinx immediately fucked the whole thing up.

(01:14:07):
[Erica] Yep, yep, yep.
[Alex] As she is ought to do. That is her thing.
[Erica] I can hardly
[Alex] blame her. To be fair, the little kid who was, like, wanting to be Vegeta, like, with that hair or whatever, remember, like, in their band of... oh yeah yeah he dies pretty early on yeah they come back in the good time yes yes yes yes i know who you're talking about i don't know the names but he was like rocking a vegeta haircut

(01:14:34):
[Erica] i've been meaning to go back and re-watch i know like the main characters names i don't know the all the side people's names
[Alex] I did think one of the funnier lines was they go and they find Vi on the streets drunk with the other dude. And she's like, how'd you know it was me? They're like, well, you have your name tattooed on your face. I did like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. um i mean um i enjoyed a lot of stuff i think the second season for me got a little over the top and self-indulgent with some of the animated scenes like the stuff where like suddenly it's like a fucking music video and the style of animation has changed completely

(01:15:20):
[Erica] all in on that shit yes i think it
[Alex] was like a little i think over
[Erica] indulge yes We're in the darkest timeline. Give me the pretty pictures. Thank you.
[Alex] Okay. Well, just for me, it was a little bit much. No, I'm trying to think what else. I mean, again, I've enjoyed the show, but it was just like, it's easier to shit on things than to compliment them. Well, of course it is. Right. I think the voice acting was pretty good overall.

(01:15:50):
[Erica] Because that's something we've talked about, or you've mentioned a couple times, is you really feel that
[Alex] Well, Japanese voice acting is unmatched.
[Erica] There's no, there's just really no comparison.
[Alex] There really, there really isn't. And I watched it in English just because I assume that's the language it was originally produced in.
[Erica] Yeah, I don't think it was. I mean. Because it's

(01:16:10):
[Alex] not an anime. Yeah. It was made in like France or something. Yeah, but it's
[Erica] got, I forget the names of the actresses for like Jinx and it's like Haley Stadfield. Is that it?
[Alex] Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. But
[Erica] yeah, it's all like folks, you know, from here. Yeah. But I thought everybody did a really good job, especially the two sisters. They did really good.

(01:16:35):
[Alex] Yeah. I mean, I think the show was at its best when it was like focused in on Jinx and Vi and on Jace and Victor. I think that was always the best stuff. And when it got, like, too big scope.
[Erica] Tumblr would agree with you.
[Alex] Politicky and everything. Mm-hmm. Like, the stuff with the big bruiser mom from the other country or whatever. What's her name? Odessa or something? It's

(01:17:05):
[Erica] Amisa, I think.
[Alex] And, like, her daughter. Mel? It's like, I just don't really care about either of you. That's fair. And the daughter magically getting superpowers one day was just like...
[Erica] As you do.
[Alex] Yeah. Why has this never happened to me, Erica? I don't
[Erica] know, man.
[Alex] Maybe I need to be chained up. But I was just like... I just don't really care about these characters. Again, I think I really like Jace. Because I thought Jace was almost... Like I thought he was going to end up doing some sort of like heel turn in a way where it's like, oh, everything I do like turns to shit. So let's just lean into that.

(01:17:48):
[Erica] Yeah, sure.
[Alex] But he was actually earnestly trying to help people the entire time. Yeah, I don't know. I thought it was cool, though. I mean, I thought it was a cool show. I enjoyed it.
[Erica] Yeah, I enjoyed the hell out of it. It was a lot of fun.
[Alex] I mean, I'm a little surprised if they are only doing two seasons, because obviously, I mean, look, let's be honest, Jinx doesn't have to be dead.

(01:18:13):
[Erica] She's not. I have a firm belief, I think, at the end, where there's that explosion at the end where she and Vander die, you can see there's like, you know how she has like the super speed or whatever? Right. You can see her leaving. OK. And then that skyship flying away at the very end, the final shot. She's on there because she had made that. There's that comment from I think it's the first season when they're kids. She's like, oh, I always wanted to ride on a skyship and that kind of shit. she's 1000% alive and still out there she's just leaving she's breaking the cycle is how I took that

(01:18:53):
[Alex] okay and I
[Erica] think I've read that they are doing more stuff like more miniseries but I don't know there might be some characters that carry over but I don't know if they're like still hanging out in what is it Piltover and Zahn or whatever
[Alex] yeah and i really liked um who was the guy with the one i fucked up

(01:19:14):
[Erica] silko
[Alex] silko i wish silko wouldn't have died so soon because i just thought that was such a compelling character because like yeah he's a basically a mobster and he's a bad guy but he also does truly want independence for his people
[Erica] You can understand where he's coming from and kind of why he's doing what he's doing. He's still like an evil piece of shit, but you can kind of, you get it. You understand like how and why.

(01:19:42):
[Alex] And him actually, in his own weird way, actually being a great father to Jinx. Oh
[Erica] yeah, that was
[Alex] great. And being like, you know, I never would have turned you in, you know.
[Erica] Which really he proved over and over and over again.
[Alex] Right, he always sided with her over even his own best interests.
[Erica] Right.

(01:20:03):
[Alex] Oh,
[Erica] what's the line? There's nothing as like... Oh, I don't remember. There's nothing as arresting as a daughter or disarming as a daughter. And it's like, why you gotta hit so hard, League of Legends? What the fuck?
[Alex] But I mean, I think it goes to show you once again, the fact that there's never been an Overwatch series like this is just criminal.

(01:20:27):
[Erica] It really, like the more you think about it, it don't make no sense, Alex. Do you
[Alex] not like money? Are you anti-free money?
[Erica] like you have the assets you make those little like vignettes just make a do a season of a series
[Alex] yeah and i
[Erica] do it in house

(01:20:50):
[Alex] i feel like what's gonna end up like in a way i mean arcane obviously got there first i'm trying to think of like other video game like adaptations in terms of more like animated stuff not uh like i don't really i don't really care about like fallout or whatever um
[Erica] didn't they do a bunch of like cg animated uh resident evil things like there's a couple yeah but i

(01:21:13):
[Alex] don't think those are really i've never i think i've maybe
[Erica] watched one and i
[Alex] watched for some reason it was on netflix it was like resident evil death island or some bullshit like that mr
[Erica] mercer doing the voice Because he was Mr. Kennedy for a while there.
[Alex] Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's him in that. And it's just fucking terrible. Yeah. It was really bad. And all I really remember out about it at some point is, like, a licker, like, borderline sexually assaulting Jill. Oh,

(01:21:43):
[Erica] well, that's fun.
[Alex] Yeah, like, that's all I really remember.
[Erica] For the fans, Alex. For the fans. This
[Alex] isn't even, like, the good fan service. This is just, like, weird. This
[Erica] is upsetting fan service.
[Alex] But... No, I don't know. I think who's going to end up making a lot of stuff is probably miHoYo with the Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero and all that because they already do a lot of animated stuff for those games. And it's like... why not just make a tv show or make a movie or something i

(01:22:15):
[Erica] mean why not right if you do it correctly i know i arcane kind of steered people towards league of legends and i was like you could never get me to play that
[Alex] game that's just pure suffering who
[Erica] could possibly fucking care but if you do it well and you do it right you can steer people i mean we talked about that during halo
[Alex] yeah well anything the witcher cyberpunk i mean you could argue that cyberpunk anime resurrected that game yeah and got a lot of people to give it a chance they weren't going to

(01:22:46):
[Erica] no and you look anytime one of those witcher seasons comes out like numbers the game spike the books end up on the bestseller lists again it's halo just couldn't figure it out
[Alex] i uh i don't know if i said this in the last podcast i don't know when it came out but that marvel rivals game came out did i tell you about this

(01:23:07):
[Erica] That sounds vaguely familiar, but it's us. Go ahead. Maybe
[Alex] I did. It's sort of, like, supposed to be, like, an Overwatch-like game, but it's really not. Like, it's much more... Like, Overwatch is very, like, objective-focused and teamwork-based. Marvel Rivals is almost, like, the opposite, and, like, it's much more, like, it feels much more casual and the balance is really bad. And it's very, like, Team Deathmatch-y rather than, like... let's all work together towards a common goal type thing um there might happen to be a goal there but you're not really playing for it if that makes sense sure so right now what it kind of is is they've they've just like thrown a ton of characters in and and theoretically like there's tanks and there's damage and there's healers sure but as what happens with a lot of these games everyone just wants to play the damage characters i was Um, well, there's I mean, I don't even know who this is or where they're from, but there's cloak and dagger. Oh,

(01:24:11):
[Erica] okay. I know cloak and dagger.
[Alex] Yeah. So it
[Erica] might be like X-Men adjacent.
[Alex] Maybe. I don't know. So like, I think cloak is the woman.
[Erica] Yeah.
[Alex] and so it's kind of a it's kind of a neat character they can kind of do both so the cloak heals and it has a bunch of healing related abilities and then if you like someone comes and attacks you you could switch over on the fly to dagger and then like more damage oriented um mantis is a healer mantis you know uh from guardians of the galaxy

(01:24:47):
[Erica] oh okay yeah yeah yeah
[Alex] Uh, there's like Luna snow or something, or I don't, I don't know. I mean, Loki's a healer. Really? Yeah. Interesting. Well, because it's a lot of, like, deception. So, like, he heals, but then, like, if you jump him, he can, like, put down a decoy of himself. Okay. I'm trying to think who the other healers are. Yeah, I can't remember.

(01:25:12):
[Erica] What is this called? Marvel Rivals?
[Alex] Marvel Rivals. So it's, I mean, the art style is cool. You know, you've got, like, all the characters. A lot of the characters. Not all, but you've got a lot of the characters you would expect. There's Iron Man. There's Wolverine. Yeah. hawkeye scarlet witch uh you know magneto i would assume
[Erica] deadpool's fucking around and no he's

(01:25:33):
[Alex] not deadpool's not in there yet but if the game i mean they'll bring him in he'll be there at some point i mean they've got a lot of people they could add spider-man's in there you know iron fist whatever um so the game's okay i mean my main criticism is the controls on an actual controller i don't know how it plays on mouse and keyboard but on a controller the controls are just like awful oh yeah i just feel really bad they feel very floaty it's hard to aim a squirrel

(01:26:02):
[Erica] girl a healer
[Alex] uh i think she's a damage she's so what they've done is a lot of the characters are like obvious overwatch knockoffs like squirrel girl is literally junkrat like she's got his whole kit and um uh
[Erica] i'm looking at this luna snow and i have no fucking idea who this is yeah i don't know oh first appearance in like 2018 that's why

(01:26:27):
[Alex] Oh, okay. So she's like some brand new character that no one's ever seen.
[Erica] That I've never heard of because I'm old and don't watch new things.
[Alex] But yeah, I mean, the funniest... One of the most ridiculous tweets surrounding this game was from this moron, Mike Ybarra, who used to be the head of Blizzard. And he used to work at Microsoft as well. I'm noticing you're saying, used

(01:26:50):
[Erica] to.
[Alex] Yeah, well, so... I mean, the game is very much Chinese Overwatch knockoff in a lot of ways. But Black Widow's in there. And her kit, I mean, the actual gameplay of her is basically Widow from Overwatch.
[Erica] Oh, yeah.

(01:27:10):
[Alex] And this guy was like, oh, look, they just copied Widow from Overwatch right down to the name. And people were like...
[Erica] buddy
[Alex] mike
[Erica] black
[Alex] widow has um she's been around for a while preceded widow maker by quite a bit
[Erica] yeah yeah yeah bud just a little just a little just a skosh

(01:27:33):
[Alex] now that being said black widow doesn't have to have widow's entire kit
[Erica] sure
[Alex] sure but in terms of the name
[Erica] right babe babe baby doll
[Alex] So it's okay. It's all right. Aggressively fine? It's fine. I'm interested to see where it lands like six months from now or something. If they kind

(01:27:56):
[Erica] of stick with it. Because
[Alex] right now the game feels very casual when you play it. But what happens to every multiplayer game, especially shooters... is people min max and then they figure out the meta they figure out what characters you should be running in what situation and where to attack points on maps and everything sure and this information spreads like a wildfire and before you know it the game is super sweaty so that's what i'm expecting to happen i just don't know how long it's going to take to get there um but we'll see it's okay it's all right i mean i i'm hoping it stays like relatively successful because right now a lot of people are trying it just because it's the marvel brand sure right not that that guarantees success because there's

(01:28:43):
[Erica] but been
[Alex] plenty of marvel games that have failed
[Erica] these are characters you know and love yeah in a in a game style that you know and love so i get wanting to try it out
[Alex] and i think it kind of does play into that hero fantasy element a little bit that they're all kind of busted in their own way and not balanced at all against each other because it's like hey if i'm spider-man you know what i want to do i want to swing around on some webs i want to kick some people i want to shoot some webs out that's spider-man right yeah It's like if you're playing whoever, the Punisher, what do you want to do? You want to shoot at people. I mean, like that's the characters play as you would pretty much

(01:29:19):
[Erica] kill brown and black people. Right. Because that's what the Punisher is all about. According to a lot of chuds out there with the sticker on their car. Yeah. And the black, then blue line nonsense. So I assume that's what, right? That's the Punisher character.
[Alex] Scumbag cops wearing the Punisher logo is never not funny.
[Erica] Alex, all I want to do is have like a little like thing of posties in my car. And whenever I see it, like as a bumper sticker, I just want to take the postie and put it on there and be like, the Punisher hates cops. You know that, right? Like, do you know that? Do you not know that? I need to know if you know this or not. So I'm going to make you aware, you fucking moron.

(01:29:59):
[Alex] But yeah, it's okay. It's all right. It's nothing special.
[Erica] You know, it was also just all right. So last or just this last Sunday, we went and took Izzy to see the Broadway Frozen show.
[Alex] Okay.
[Erica] And aggressively fine, Alex. Like, I think I'm one of the only people in the universe who just does not like that movie.

(01:30:20):
[Alex] I've never seen it.
[Erica] It's, you're fine. You don't need to. It's, they wanted to make Wicked, but they didn't have the rights to. So they did this instead, is really what it feels like. Okay. It's Adita Menzel is the voice of Elsa in the movie. And she's the one who originated the role of Elphaba in Wicked. who's the main character who's the wicked witch of the west um and it just kind of had that feel and it's just so it's just so like okay i don't understand like everyone loves this shit and i'm just like i what i what do you guys look at it that i'm not that i'm not getting here

(01:30:58):
[Alex] Sometimes I find it's actually worse to, when you go read a book or watch a movie or watch a TV show or play a game or something, it's actually worse to hear a lot of what other people think about it. Because then you're coming off of their expectations rather than going to something fresh and just taking in your own feelings and opinions. I

(01:31:24):
[Erica] mean, I feel like I saw the movie because it's become a juggernaut. And the movie came out a long time ago. I remember I saw it in the theater and had heard like some good word of mouth. And I was sitting in there and it was one of those like 10 minutes in. I looked at my friend and I'm like, this is bad, right? Like, it's not just me. Like, this is bad. And he was like, yeah, I think this is bad. And we're like the only two people who happen to think that. But Izzy never really... Like Frozen is like the thing for little girls and she it's never really hit for her. which is good because I don't like it so you

(01:32:00):
[Alex] don't have to watch it like 16 times then
[Erica] exactly but like you know in in most musicals there's like a little bit of a lead up to that like like in Defying Gravity for Wicked it's not just Idina Menzel doesn't just walk out onto the stage and start singing the song like that's what happened with Let It Go on this it almost felt like completely divorced from the show she just walked out and started singing it and it's like there's no okay all right and she wasn't that good at the singer you really gotta have wow you gotta be able to belt and she wasn't really she didn't get there for me

(01:32:39):
[Alex] you notice like somehow every actor and actress can sing to some degree Like, why is that? I
[Erica] think that's one of those things that you just kind of got to have in the back pocket just in case. Especially because, like, musicals are kind of a thing now.
[Alex] Yeah.
[Erica] And you, too, could star in Cats. That
[Alex] worked out great for Joker, too. Well,
[Erica] yeah, that just kind of, like, tanked, huh? That just went away.

(01:33:00):
[Alex] I just, I'll never not think it's funny that when they're watching it at Cannes, they got the camera on Joaquin Phoenix and the movie ends and he turns to Lady Gaga and he goes, you just see a mouth. He goes, it's terrible. Yeah. And like, you know what I appreciate about that? It's like, here's a guy who probably put in a lot of time and effort to try to make something. Sure. And he's not bullshitting himself. He just says, that shit sucks. You know?

(01:33:34):
[Erica] But so much of it is, it's like, he went in, he did his work. and it's ultimately not really in his hands is the unfortunate thing yeah it's in the hands of the director and the editor and if the edit's bad or if there's just nothing like you can't pull in a coherent movie you can get a great performance and be in a shithouse movie sure it happens all the time that's hysterical though

(01:34:00):
[Alex] uh yeah it's it's i should try to find the clip it's so funny
[Erica] That's like on par with that final season of Game of Thrones and they're doing those interviews with everybody and you can see the
[Alex] like
[Erica] in their eyes. They're like, it's great.
[Alex] Well, nothing's ever going to be better. I can't even believe they even aired it. But that behind the scenes stuff where they're doing the table read. And they're doing the table read. And everyone

(01:34:26):
[Erica] is just like, oh, Jesus Christ.
[Alex] Because I think it's crazy in a way to be able to just read the script and go, this shit sucks. yeah right
[Erica] because in theory you could be like okay like you can there's stuff you can do right to like elevate like a bad script for sure or make it fun at least like in the hands of the right actor could be great but no they all like all of them

(01:34:53):
[Alex] they're all
[Erica] sitting there with their hands up on their faces
[Alex] the guy the guy who played was embarrassed just like the look on his face tosses the script towards the center of the table and i'm done this trash yep And you know what's funny, too, is... And this is where, like, the director and the writers and the producers, their hubris was so out of control because they were sitting there. So they're seeing the reaction from every single actor in that room.

(01:35:26):
[Erica] All of them. Like, legitimately, if you have the means, go find this.
[Alex] They all knew.
[Erica] Because it's legitimately, everyone is like... Oh, wow. wow,
[Alex] does this suck? And for some reason, there's no panic. There's no reaction. Like to me, if I were the writers or I was the producer or whatever, I'd be sitting there watching this and I'd go, we got to stay up all night for however many nights it takes to try to figure out what the fuck we're going to do. But

(01:36:00):
[Erica] that's not the mentality. The mentality is the sweat hogs are going to watch it either way. And yeah, sure. They'll be mad about it. But who cares? They've watched it. We got the views. That's all it is.
[Alex] But they didn't. I mean, their ratings were crashing towards the end, so... I don't know. I think they... They really tarnished that show in the last, like, two to three seasons. I mean, if you think about it, like... I think The Sopranos had one season that was just kind of OK, which is that whole season where Tony gets shot and he's like in the hospital in a coma. Oh,

(01:36:36):
[Erica] I like that went on for a long time. But some of that stuff was real good. There's some good stuff in there.
[Alex] And but what I'm saying is like even that was like it didn't tarnish the whole show. No, not at all. If you didn't enjoy it. and basically all of sopranos throughout its entire run is incredible and all of the shield throughout its entire run is incredible and most of breaking bad is incredible and it's like these shows never did anything to tarnish their legacy and game of thrones was like

(01:37:06):
[Erica] oh game of thrones took a big shit on it yeah it was like
[Alex] incredible takeoff but blew the landing
[Erica] everybody talking about it like when was the last time you remember literally everybody everybody's
[Alex] watching a show at the same time
[Erica] like water cooler television when you're talking about it like something you could talk about with anybody at work because everyone was watching it that doesn't happen anymore

(01:37:30):
[Alex] Which is funny because, you know, like everybody didn't watch The Sopranos or everybody didn't watch The Shield. And I don't know, maybe just didn't appeal to certain demos or something, whatever the deal was. But it did kind of feel like everybody watched Breaking Bad. And it definitely felt like everyone watched Game of Thrones, which is funny because that show, especially in the first season, had a boatload of nudity. And it was pretty violent, too. Because

(01:37:57):
[Erica] here's the thing. We're actually, as a society, perfectly okay with that kind of stuff.
[Alex] I know.
[Erica] We like to pretend we're not, but nobody cares.
[Alex] No.
[Erica] Bring on the dicks and titties. And you didn't even see that many dicks.
[Alex] No, it needed to be more dicks. There's
[Erica] maybe, like, a dick through the whole series.
[Alex] I think it's a real... I think it's a... I think a lot of dudes don't want to do nudity, would be my guess. Well, you don't want to, like, right? Yeah. Well, if you're not... Especially if you're not packing anything, it's just like...

(01:38:26):
[Erica] Well, and here's the thing. If you're not comfortable doing it, then don't do it.
[Alex] Right.
[Erica] Like, that shouldn't even be, like, a... Like, I know... Well, you know what they need to do. The woman who played, uh... Daenerys, I think, after that. She didn't want to do it after the first
[Alex] season or something. Yeah,
[Erica] she started being like, I'm not into this. Well, I
[Alex] think her problem specifically was I'm not against doing nudity, but I don't want to just be doing, like, gratuitous where I'm just, like, topless in every scene for no reason. Right, which was a lot of Game of Thrones that first season. Like, if you have a reason for me to be topless, I'll do it. But I'm not getting topless just because you want to see my boobs. Right. And... I think what they should do, this is the solution. You know how for women, they want to do like full frontal nudity, but the woman doesn't want to do it, so they do like the giant ridiculous merkin, you know? They should do that for men, but it's like the giant ridiculous prosthetic penis. Like it just hangs down to their knees. It just looks comical.

(01:39:29):
[Erica] We're cool with nudity, but you can't have a female showing any pleasure. That's bad. We can't do that. Because the female orgasm is actually a myth. It doesn't actually exist.
[Alex] That's true. So. That's true.
[Erica] Yeah. Not a thing we can show. The huge just like tripod dick. Yeah. I
[Alex] think it would be so funny. Like every scene. Like every scene.

(01:39:53):
[Erica] Just kind of like, I'm sorry. What the fuck is that? This is all this really important like plot shit going on. You're just like. Or what
[Alex] they do is this is what you do. You do it like for the women. You know, sometimes they do like the body double for women where they're shooting like a sex scene and all of a sudden you never see her face again. And it's a

(01:40:14):
[Erica] different person. It's like a different build entirely. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[Alex] Yeah. They should do that for men. It should be like whatever. Who played Jon Snow? Yeah.
[Erica] He's got a name. He's
[Alex] got. Yeah.
[Erica] Wait, wait. Kit
[Alex] Harington. That's right. Kit Harington's doing a scene and all of a sudden he's about to fuck. What's her name? The crazy, the crazy witch with the red hair starts with an M.

(01:40:41):
[Erica] Miss Lander. Is that her name?
[Alex] No, that sounds wrong. Damn. Damn, that sounds wrong. I don't
[Erica] hear you fucking coming up with anything.
[Alex] I don't know her name. But all of a sudden, he's about to fuck her. Did they have
[Erica] sex? I think they did once. I feel like
[Alex] they did one time. I
[Erica] mean, everybody was fucking everybody on that show. But anyway, go ahead. Go ahead. I keep interrupting.

(01:41:01):
[Alex] Didn't she bring him? Well, she definitely brought him back to life. Did she fuck him to bring him back to life?
[Erica] I don't think so. I feel like I would remember that.
[Alex] Did she do any necrophilia?
[Erica] I don't think so. I remember how he came back to life and it was just kind of like, for no reason.
[Alex] Yeah.
[Erica] It was like, oh, but then Arya's gonna gank the leader of the White Walkers.

(01:41:24):
[Alex] Oh, God. Everything. I hated so many of those storylines. She goes off to like... the some other fucking city for a billion years to hang out with the masked ones that whole because
[Erica] that's where george rr martin left her and then it was like oh fuck we have to come up with our own shit oh no
[Alex] yeah everything that happened in that other city with like the masked ones or whatever that was fucking terrible that was all bad and i liked that character too previous to that that dude

(01:41:55):
[Erica] the guy i know who you're talking about but the who always yeah yeah yeah yeah
[Alex] um but yeah i think it'd be funny if they're about to fuck and they just cut to like it's just like a waist down just a porn star stand-in it's it's just some huge black dude so
[Erica] very clearly right like different like wait a minute john snow's not black

(01:42:18):
[Alex] And then they come back to Jon Snow. It'd be so funny. I'd
[Erica] be here for that. Let's go. Let's go. It'd be so fucking funny. That's great.
[Alex] What else you got? Let me think. Oh, I know. You're not going to give two fucks about this, but I thought it was entertaining. What do
[Erica] you got?
[Alex] I was trying to play Cyberpunk the other day and I'm playing on my PC. And I've always had like a little bit like you just tell like something's off performance wise. Yeah. Like and I'm real sensitive to stuff like input lag or whatever.

(01:42:55):
[Erica] Sure.
[Alex] So for some reason I got on there and it was so bad. I was like the screen is tearing like crazy. It's so stuttery. Like literally I was just panning my camera up fast just so I could really see it. And like this bridge was like intersecting with parts of the sky. That's how much the screen was tearing. And the frame rate wasn't bad. Like I turned ray tracing off. So the frame rate was like 120. This was my

(01:43:24):
[Erica] question. Did you turn off the ray tracing? I know what ray tracing is now. You explained it to me a few episodes ago.
[Alex] Okay. So, yeah, ray tracing is a massive performance hit. But as I had already turned it off, I was trying to figure this out. I'm playing with settings. I'm like, and now some other context to this is I'm playing on my TV. So the TV's native resolution is 4K, just like almost any TV you would buy now, right? But it supports a bunch of various resolutions, right? So, just to keep some, like, stress off my graphics card so I could, like, run other features higher, I had it on 1440p. Because 1440p is, like, dramatically, like... the actual resolution of 1440p is like 2560 by 1440 that's how many pixels it has to render 4k is like 3820 by

(01:44:23):
[Erica] something insane it's
[Alex] it's like literally four it's like two and a half times as many pixels as 1440p it's so many more pixels to render so it's a lot more stress on your computer right sure So I was like, you know what? I don't know what the fuck's going on, but let me try switching the resolution to 4K. Just for shits

(01:44:43):
[Erica] and giggles, yeah.
[Alex] I switch it to 4K. Gorgeous. Well, first off, the game does look better, which I hate to admit. Because I've often rallied or railed that 4K is not really necessary. But, um... All of a sudden, the screen tearing is completely gone. All my performance issues have vanished. The game's running smooth as fuck. And because it's 4K, the image looks sharper. And I'm just like, this doesn't even make sense. I know this TV supports 1440p.

(01:45:19):
[Erica] Right, because if the television's supposed to support that and it's a lower resolution, you would think that
[Alex] that wouldn't be happening. Yeah, I don't know what was going on, but now the game's on 4K, I turned off ray tracing, because like... this is essentially how much of a performance hit ray tracing is at 4k. And this is with like stuff like DLSS on to help, you know, and yada, yada, all the other settings with everything else being the same. If I turn on ray tracing, it hits about 60 FPS, which is still great. You could play any game at 60 FPS, right? Um, If I turn ray tracing off, now it's like 120 FPS, which is how much of a performance hit ray tracing is. Yeah, that's

(01:46:05):
[Erica] bonkers.
[Alex] And I just was sitting there and it's like, look, if I sit there and I toggle between the two, I can see the difference. Like the example I was given, The Ghost of Bob. I walked up to a window because this is when I was actually looking for it. I walked up to a window on the outside of a building. And let's say you walk up to most windows on the outside of a building. Well, what do you kind of see on that window? You see a reflection to some degree of what's outside. Sure. Right. So, with ray tracing on, well, with ray tracing off, it's just kind of like a semi-blurry window, which is just, looks like a window, right? Mm-hmm. With ray tracing on, this, like, reddish, like, pattern that was against the wall on the outside, like, here's the window on the left, here's the window, here's the wall on the right. Mm-hmm. The reddish pattern that was on the wall was being like partially reflected off the window. So it's like... And that's cool.

(01:47:09):
[Erica] Right. But... It's not necessary.
[Alex] And I'm never going to notice that while I'm actually playing. Sure. And the truth is like I was in a room once toggling ray tracing on and off. And there was like cube lights on the ceiling. And when ray tracing was off, these lights aren't casting a shadow on the ground. Okay. So it's like there's stuff like that. But... Well, I'm actually just, like, playing through the game normally.

(01:47:33):
[Erica] You're not noticing that
[Alex] stuff. I'm not looking for any of this stuff. And it's not... It's just not worth a minus 50% performance hit. Right,
[Erica] right.
[Alex] It's just a... I can't even begin to describe to you what a massive performance hit that is.
[Erica] No, that's a little bonkers. Yeah.
[Alex] And that's not even the tippity-top of ray tracing anymore, because now there's path tracing. And I was talking about this with someone, and they were like, oh, well, I play with path tracing on. And I was like, well, what do you have, a fucking 4090? And they're like, oh, no, I have a 3090, but I just play it at, like, 30 FPS. I'm like... I can't.

(01:48:10):
[Erica] I don't understand you, sir. I
[Alex] can't play games at 30 FPS anymore. I've gone full-blown snob. I can't play a game at 30 FPS anymore. Hey, that's all right. I just can't do
[Erica] it. We all have our snobbery. There's nothing wrong with that. I
[Alex] can't do it. So yeah, changing the game to 4K has magically fixed the performance issues, and now it's like buttery smooth.

(01:48:32):
[Erica] Nice.
[Alex] And the image is noticeably sharper, which is like... And you're annoyed. Well, it's just like... I get it. You know, you know what I mean? Like I get it. Yes. 4k many more pixels than 1440 P and it's on a 55 inch TV. So it makes sense. The difference would be much more noticeable. Sure. Like I would still argue, I don't think you need a 4k, you know, 27 inch monitor. I mean, I'm sure again, I'm sure I could see the difference. Sure. Really sat there and studied it. Sure. But do I need that? I don't think so. Um, But yeah, it's like the moment, literally the moment I switched it over, I was just looking at things like elements of the HUD and like the lines are so clean. And I'm looking at this tree in front of me and the tree is like, like the little strands coming off of this like tree looked fucking incredible.

(01:49:32):
[Erica] I'm laughing because I'm reminded of when I played Bioshock on the shittiest television possible. Like when I first had moved out of my parents house, I had this it was called the Daewoo. I don't even know if they make this brand anymore. It was maybe like
[Alex] That sounds knockoff as fuck. Yeah, it was
[Erica] a... I don't even remember where I got this fucking TV, but it may be 15 inches. Maybe. And I'm shocked that my Xbox even hooked up to it. But I played through... I want to say it was Bioshock the first time on that. And then when I got it on a better TV and I replayed it, I was like, oh, wow, I missed a lot. A lot of shit, man. There was a lot of detail here I just couldn't see. Just the dialogue of like, I don't know what the fuck that says, but sure, let's try.

(01:50:19):
[Alex] Yeah, I mean, it's like, I think we talked about this on a recent podcast, but... Some of the stuff that we grew up with really were transformative leaps and stuff like going from VGA cables to S-video to component or whatever. Just changing the cable type would result in a noticeable improvement in image quality. I remember getting those first S-video cables for an original Xbox, I think. I was like, oh shit god damn this looks nice and then y'all are playing a different game here i think it was like components started to come with um i think maybe there was component cables for the original xbox at some point but they were those ridiculous overpriced monster cables sure and i don't think those were like the biggest leap from this video at the time anyway but i definitely remember and component cables were a pain in the ass because you had to plug in like seven things they were terrible the right color yeah well and then for some reason whatever genius made them was like you know what we're gonna do we're gonna have a red video cable but we're also gonna have a red audio cable we're so smart you

(01:51:38):
[Erica] go back and you look at like what like when i first was like oh like plugging in a video game says this isn't that hard to set up but it is annoying and i remember now why my dad would be like i'm not doing that right now like i'll do it later
[Alex] Apparently, there's a new version of the HDMI cable that might get approved soon by whatever magical fucking consortium is in charge of this

(01:52:01):
[Erica] stuff.
[Alex] Illuminati that decides, yeah. HDMI 2.2. And maybe that might bring another form change. Because one thing that is annoying about it... Much like USB-C, you know how USB-C, you just plug it in and it works, whether or not you've got it plugged in either way, it's round.
[Erica] It is nice, yes.
[Alex] Essentially. It's oval-shaped. That's how everything should be. Just like HDMI, make a new cable. Don't do this bullshit where, like, one side's shorter than the other. No, just

(01:52:29):
[Erica] make it the same. Just make it the same. What, like, just...
[Alex] i shouldn't have to like inspect the cable every time i plug it in to be like okay i've got it going in right agree the right direction and is this a big deal are you unplugging hdmi cables every day no this is the most
[Erica] first world of first no yes i'm bitching just a
[Alex] bitch yes yes that's the most fun type of bitch

(01:52:49):
[Erica] that's the show yeah but that's what we do here
[Alex] Yeah, anyways, it was just, you know. So the game looks much better now. And it runs better. So I need to actually play more. You know, that'd be ideal. It's funny. Um, one of the, I mean, it's not funny, but you know, like the, there's been like a video game voice actor strike for a going a while now and it's affected a lot of stuff, but what it's most noticeably affected is a lot of these live service, like gotcha games, because they're pumping out new content all the time. Um, so for example some this has already happened a few times but some new event came out in nike like a winter event and like in the patch notes it's like the english voiceovers for like eight characters has been temporarily recast you know because they they can't use these people who are union you shouldn't be fucking

(01:53:50):
[Erica] scabbing though
[Alex] well i mean if you're not in the union and you need the work or whatever i mean you know i agree look i agree that you shouldn't be scabbing but i also think there's a lot of people out there who aren't in the union and they're trying to get their foot in the door yeah um So anyways, there's been a lot of that on Nikkei, and what's been going on with a lot of the miHoYo games is they're just not...

(01:54:15):
[Erica] And miHoYo is...
[Alex] miHoYo's Genshin Impact and all that. They've done some recasting... But they're also weirdly just not having stuff be voiced in certain situations. Like, they had this whole big new story addition to Zenless Zone Zero, and there were three characters that just...

(01:54:41):
[Erica] straight up didn't talk
[Alex] when they talk
[Erica] or just their dialogue their
[Alex] dialogue plays their mouth moves but there's no audio so um and you could switch to like japanese or whatever and then everything would be voiced but it's like i've i've i generally prefer japanese dialogue and when i'm playing like a nikkei or whatever nikkei it's like okay it's essentially a visual novel gameplay so sure I'm reading the dialogue either way. But with something like Zenless Zone Zero, I prefer English just because, you know, a lot of the dialogue tends to happen while you're playing in combat. So having dialogue happen and then having to look into the corner to read the subtitles while you're fighting enemies kind of sucks. You know, like when you're like playing like a turn based game or something, it doesn't really matter. No,

(01:55:34):
[Erica] you can do that because it's not
[Alex] right. When it's like a shooter, it's a fighter or something like that. I just even though I don't prefer the English, I do prefer the English in that scenario.
[Erica] No, I feel that.
[Alex] But it is kind of funny just being like you're going through a scene and like five people talk. But then the sixth person talks and their mouth just moves and there's no there's no audio. So, yeah, they've been dealing with that, and that strike's been ongoing a while. But, I mean, obviously, I side with these voice actors who are like, hey, we don't want to be replaced by AI. Oh, a

(01:56:09):
[Erica] thousand percent. Yeah. I mean, we could go into the AI rant, but I feel like we do that every week.
[Alex] Yeah.
[Erica] And no one's listening, so...
[Alex] No. The only... Honestly, I really think, and this is, like, something that doesn't hurt anybody, this use of AI. The only... ai i've seen that's like truly transformative and as far as i can tell isn't harming anybody's livelihoods is stuff like dlss because you know it's just essentially at the end of the day it's just better image upscaling and you know doing like whatever and because dlss is just i know i've explained it before but if you're like render let's say you say i want a 4k image but you turn on dlss well what it's doing essentially is it's creating a 1080p image like the gpu is actually making the 1080p image of the game and then ai upscaling is rendering out in 4k it's like that's not is that hurting anybody is that is that like harming an industry or something right i don't think so so that i mean and dlss is just space magic i mean dlss to me like actually looks better than native rendering anyway so it's just crazy um but you know that's to me is a good example not stuff like I've, you know, scraped the internet for 50,000 hentai images and now I'm producing my own hentai, you know, like, and I'm a, and I'm a quote unquote artist. I'm an

(01:57:51):
[Erica] artist. Yeah. That's what I don't, the, the. disrespect of expertise that you're seeing nowadays. Like, I'm sorry that everybody can't be an artist. I'm sorry everybody can't be a doctor or a scientist. Like, there's stuff you have to study to get to be. And that's fine. That's fine. Like, half of the thing with art is it's like creating it is the journey is most of the fun. I don't understand why someone would ever want to like, oh, I want to look at X. Okay. I want to look at Yaskier. You know what I do? I jump on Tumblr and I look, I type in the name and I get images of amazing fan artists who have been like drawing.

(01:58:36):
[Alex] Yeah. Of course. Fan art. Classy fan art. I assume.
[Erica] Very classy, Alex. Very tasteful. Tasteful.
[Alex] But yeah, you don't go on Twitter and throw in show me pictures of Yaskier on the AI bot or whatever and it pumps out a bunch of AI images. No, I don't

(01:58:59):
[Erica] want to look at that.
[Alex] It's like, no.
[Erica] No, thank you.
[Alex] And they all have the same bullshit, like shiny appearance. It's so obvious.
[Erica] Well, and there's no soul to it. I want soul to my smut, Alex. Like, what the fuck are we doing here?
[Alex] If someone didn't suffer for this porn, then was it really worth it? No.

(01:59:21):
[Erica] Not even, I don't know. It's just like, if you couldn't, I saw somebody put this better than I ever could. I don't think it was on Tumblr where it was like, if you're not going to be bothered to write it, why would I be bothered to read it?
[Alex] Right. Like that's true. That's got to be such a crazy thing now to deal with, like for school teachers, because, you know. So many kids are just going on chat GPT or whatever and being like. write out a paper about so and so thing and if you even have two brain cells to rub together you get whatever it pumps you out and then you start like making minor alterations so it doesn't look like oh

(02:00:02):
[Erica] you know they ain't making alterations you know that's not happening
[Alex] and you do read these stories about like um these kids who turn in like an assignment and like four kids have turned in the exact same paper it's like gee i wonder where this came from these
[Erica] poor fucking teachers man But it's just, it's more of the, we want everyone to be stupid.
[Alex] Yeah.
[Erica] That's all it is. And we're watching it happen in real time and it's really upsetting.

(02:00:26):
[Alex] And dude, like, again, I don't think I'm particularly dumb, maybe on certain things, but, you know, writing papers when you're in, you know, middle school or high school or whatever, it can be hard. You got to cite all the sources. You've got to try to make everything kind of flow and read well. It's not, no writing is hard
[Erica] writing is hard yes but it doesn't have to be like perfect but it's the whole point is the journey like you're learning something as you go and if you're just not like sure you're not going to be like writing like a fucking book report you know if you're getting into an office but you do need those skills You also need to know how to use Excel and stuff, but apparently kids can't get into programs anymore either on PCs.

(02:01:13):
[Alex] I think we spoke about that. Yeah, I don't know what you're going to do about that. You can't even set up a basic equation in Excel.
[Erica] Fucked, Alex. That's a conversation Bob and I have had where it's just like, no, we want to make sure Izzy's able to navigate on a PC.
[Alex] Yeah.
[Erica] Because I think that's, one, it's just important to know. And it's
[Alex] not even hard. It
[Erica] really isn't. It's really not. It's not at all. And it's the kind of thing that you should be able to like sit down and figure out. Because we did. No one showed us how to use a computer.

(02:01:43):
[Alex] No. You said to figure it out. Right. Right. You had to tinker and you had to fuck things up and you had to accidentally delete some stuff. But
[Erica] here's the thing. You had to learn. No one wants to take the journey. I want it now. It has to happen now.
[Alex] I think we've talked about this, but I think it's the same thing with a video game where a lot of video games now... You'll be playing like a God of War or Horizon or something like that. And you walk into an area with a puzzle. And within, if you don't figure that puzzle out in legitimately four seconds, the game starts wanting to give you clues. Like Aloy will be like, Why don't I go tug on that rope? And it's like, shut the fuck up, Aloy. Can I just look around for

(02:02:28):
[Erica] a second? Like, give me a second. Like, I'm trying to figure it out. I
[Alex] think what they figured out is most people are so impatient and so dumb that if they don't put stuff like that in there, either people get stuck and they can't progress and then they get frustrated and they quit or they just go look it up on YouTube anyway.
[Erica] But it's just like.
[Alex] And don't get me wrong. Some things are very obtuse. Oh,

(02:02:48):
[Erica] especially when we were growing up. Like, one, I don't mean to be like old man yelling at Cloud, but y'all fuckers don't have any idea. It used to be just like you'd rent a game from Blockbuster and there was no internet to help you. No. You'd put that fucker in and you'd get stuck and you'd be like,
[Alex] well, fuck.
[Erica] All right. Well, this was the game I was supposed to play this weekend. Guess I just.

(02:03:09):
[Alex] Dude, you used to like buy or rent some really hard Japanese game and you were happy just to get out of the first level.
[Erica] Do you remember that it was for the Nintendo, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game? Which one? The very first one.
[Alex] Yeah, I think so. That
[Erica] fucker was impossible.
[Alex] There were a lot of games like that. The Japanese truly believe in suffering.

(02:03:33):
[Erica] Oh, yeah.
[Alex] They love it. They love to make you suffer.
[Erica] Oh, so I was away a few weekends ago up to Door County with my buddy, and there's a brewery up there that has a, is it Raspberry Pie? Is that what it is? Like the jailbroken,
[Alex] like, little

(02:03:55):
[Erica] SNES guy, and they have literally all of the games on there. We sat at this brewery for four hours and just played Dr. Mario, and it was my favorite part of the vacation. Yeah. it was amazing like can we just
[Alex] go back there yes like take this over
[Erica] absolutely we just no one else wanted to play because we definitely would have like abdicated but no we sat there for four hours and played video games and i was the most happy i've been in a long time

(02:04:18):
[Alex] see video games bring joy
[Erica] they do it was a lot of fun
[Alex] um you know i was reading this is completely unrelated but i'm always curious about stuff like um you know ozempic and what what is that general class of drug called like gpl1 or something like that i'm not
[Erica] sure
[Alex] um something like that but i was reading there was some study done that apparently um

(02:04:41):
[Erica] melt your eyeballs or something
[Alex] No, it's something like Ozempic can cause your heart muscles to shrink, which on some people could be a good thing, actually. Like, apparently this is actually... Apparently a lot of bodybuilders are using
[Erica] Ozempic
[Alex] because you use the steroids and it enlarges your heart. And then you use the Ozempic and not only does it help you burn fat, but then it also kind of... counteracts the still so i'm gonna snort some

(02:05:13):
[Erica] cocaine to really you know go hard tonight but then i'm gonna drink some alcohol to bring me down yeah
[Alex] i'm not saying it sounds like it's a good idea long term i'm just telling you one of the uses but um no i was reading yeah and it's on some people yeah if you've already got like cardiac issues or something this could be like devastating
[Erica] maybe don't do it then

(02:05:33):
[Alex] yeah um but and the other thing i was reading that happens to a Because you eat so little and you have no appetite, because that's one of the things it does is really suppress your appetite from what I understand. See,
[Erica] that's not even a problem, though. I'm like, I'm bored. I'm going to go eat. It's never, oh, I'm still hungry. It's I'm sitting upstairs watching TV and I'm like, I'm going to make myself a vat of popcorn.

(02:06:01):
[Alex] Sure.
[Erica] But anyway, go
[Alex] ahead. Yeah, no, I know what you mean. I agree. Okay. But apparently what happens is people are eating so little and they're especially not eating anything with protein that their muscles just get destroyed.
[Erica] That's no good.

(02:06:21):
[Alex] Because they're just not eating anything and the weight's flying off so fast.
[Erica] Right, but you don't want to be losing muscle mass, even if you're not a bodybuilder. That's bad news bears. Well, yeah, you don't
[Alex] want to be, like, frail.
[Erica] Right.
[Alex] It's
[Erica] the thing with this stuff, man. Like, I'm sure it, like, I know a few people on it, and they're like, oh, yeah, it's really flying off. And I'm just like, I don't know, man. I don't know.

(02:06:44):
[Alex] Well, anything that sounds too good to be true almost always is. And the way I feel about it is, like, look, if... I want to see this is one of these things I want to see where things stand 10 years from now. Yeah. You know, and if it's 10 years from now and for some reason I'm like 350 pounds, let's say I'm just making up a number, but I'm way overweight. Let's say 10 years from now. Yeah. You know, and the side effects you read about, maybe they don't sound as potentially harmful as being 350 pounds. The stuff that, right, could come

(02:07:21):
[Erica] with being that overweight. Sure.
[Alex] Right. And it's like then that's. That could.
[Erica] Not guaranteed to because just as your fat doesn't mean that you're unhealthy, folks.
[Alex] Sure. And so I just think, you know, I'd like to I'd like to because I know this stuff's been around and I know a lot of people have been taking it for a long time. But you know what? There's a lot of guinea pigs out there beta testing it for all of us, you know, and let them be the guinea pig. And maybe it'll work. I'm sure it's working out incredibly well for some people. Maybe it is.

(02:07:51):
[Erica] That's great.
[Alex] But I would just be scared to take it. And now you've got some new problem that you didn't have before.
[Erica] Well, and the other thing is you just have to stay on it in perpetuity.
[Alex] Well, that's the other thing. Unless you're going to change your eating habits. Right. Because it's essentially forcing you into changing your eating habits by completely suppressing your appetite. Right. But if

(02:08:12):
[Erica] you stop taking it, that I would assume comes roaring back.
[Alex] Right, if you just start eating pizza and hot dogs and hamburgers and everything. And you
[Erica] haven't changed anything, so you're just going to gain everything back and then some.
[Alex] Because it's not a fucking secret. Everyone knows what you need to do to lose weight. Work out more. Be miserable. Work out more and eat green beans and brown rice and chicken for every meal with no spices or anything on it. And the weight will come off. I mean, it's not like I mean, of course, obviously, there are some people out there who like their metabolism. It's not as simple as that.

(02:08:53):
[Erica] Sure. But ultimately, they have
[Alex] other issues or something. But for most
[Erica] ultimately, it's calories in calories out.
[Alex] Yes. And if you mix in some exercise with that, you will probably lose weight. Yes. Most people. uh again i just i feel like and that's hard like look it's fucking hard it sucks no one wants to eat chicken for every meal no you know what tastes good anything with sugar

(02:09:20):
[Erica] right like well if you buy anything processed it has sugar in there potato chips have sugar in there everything has sugar and
[Alex] that's why it tastes good
[Erica] because that shit's addictive and it tastes good right they know what they're doing you know
[Alex] I'm telling you, if I ever had a kid, I'd Finn Balor this bitch. I would never let the sweet taste of sugar. Or your
[Erica] child doesn't eat anything else. So it's like you really don't have much of a choice in the matter.

(02:09:44):
[Alex] I'm Finn Baloring it, Erica.
[Erica] You want to hear? No sugar. No, listen to this.
[Alex] Here's lettuce, kid.
[Erica] Listen to this. So I pick her up from school today, right? And the teacher kind of pulls me aside and she's like, what does Izzy eat for dinner? And I was like, what the fuck? I didn't say that, obviously. But she's like, yeah, we were talking about it. And she was just like, goldfish. She's like, she doesn't just eat goldfish for dinner. And I'm like, kid, you're going to get like, don't get on the fucking radar. What are you doing to me here? Like, are you serious?

(02:10:13):
[Alex] You're trying to get child protective services knocking on my door? No, we
[Erica] don't only, like, obviously not. She like was, yeah. I was just like, what the
[Alex] fuck? No, ma'am. What happened, ma'am, is yesterday what I did was I made her a nice, you know, steak. And then I made some, there was some lettuce on the side. A beautiful meal. There was some mashed potatoes. It was incredible.

(02:10:37):
[Erica] And she picked up the plate and she threw it at the wall and was like, what is this swill?
[Alex] and she was like goldfish bitch right i heard that actually about a mile away goldfish bitch yeah
[Erica] clearly
[Alex] and so yeah she ate goldfish but we tried
[Erica] no i had to be like yeah you know we're taking her to an eating therapist which we are and it's just like he's tricking them into trying new things that's all child psychology is tricking them

(02:11:05):
[Alex] Yeah. Has that worked at all? Like, the strategy of just, like, putting food in front of her and not saying anything or whatever? No.
[Erica] No, actually, though, what was it yesterday? Because they've said you've got to do, like, small incremental changes. Like, minuscule shit. So, her peanut butter sandwich last night, I put a little salt on. Like, salt bae. Little salt. Real little. Okay. And the person we're working with is like, well, you have to tell them that it's different. So they know it's different and different is fine. So I waited though. I was like, let her eat a little bit of it. So she knows it's good. And then I was like, okay, Izzy, you know, I put a little salt on that just to change it up a little bit. And she's like, I'm like, child, you just devoured half of that sandwich and then I told you it was a little different and you're like, now fuck that. This is what I'm dealing with, Alex. When I tell people... That's frustrating. I never knew I had these deep wellsprings of patience. I'm not a patient person. but you have to be you have to be yeah because i've been like i'm um yeah it's hard it's hard guys

(02:12:20):
[Alex] here's what i'm gonna do and uh child protective services is not gonna come visit me for this here's what i'm gonna do with my imaginary child okay when put in that situation i'm gonna take a big ball of cabbage and i'm gonna shove it down their little fucking throat and they're gonna eat it no sugar bitch and i'm gonna say that as i shove it down as you choke them yeah i think that's a good call

(02:12:46):
[Erica] you'll be fine
[Alex] yeah i think that's gonna work i think you'll be fine i think i think the strategy it has legs
[Erica] good strat good strat
[Alex] Not my child's legs. They'll be limp after they've choked to death. Oh,
[Erica] my God. It's just so hard not to just be like, eat the fucking food. Just eat the fucking food. Like, no, we're going to sit here for four hours until you eat the fucking food because you can't do that. Because that doesn't work. It just creates trauma. Look, Erica. And we're actively trying not to do that this generation.

(02:13:17):
[Alex] Look, Erica. I don't know what you mean, but as far as I can tell, trauma has had no ill side effects.
[Erica] Oh, no, not at all. It's all great.
[Alex] Yeah, I honestly can't think of one thing that's wrong with my personality in the least.
[Erica] Me either. I'm perfect. It's all
[Alex] good. That's what I think. That's when I tell people about you, Erica. I say, hey, you should really meet my cousin. Perfect, Erica. Oh, yeah. That's what I tell people.

(02:13:43):
[Erica] Not aggressively fine, Erica. Perfect. Perfect.
[Alex] I was playing some Age of Empires IV the other day. And I wish I could get you on this because it is really a lot of fun. But I'm actually pretty good now. I really hadn't played for a long time. But see, what happened is... When I play strategy games, I don't know how you play strategy games, Erica, when you did play them. But what I always like to do is make no army, no army at all, build up your economy, get to the last age or whatever, you know, where you have all the best stuff.

(02:14:20):
[Erica] Oh, and then? And
[Alex] then make all the army and take my big dumb army and throw them at your big dumb army and let's see whose big dumb army wins.
[Erica] see i never play with people and i always just play against the computer
[Alex] okay
[Erica] and it would be let me build up the biggest stupidest army that i can and just march across the screen

(02:14:41):
[Alex] yeah just run i would never
[Erica] do like sometimes the computer would send like one guy like a tester and i'm like that's really just to annoy you yeah no no no no now i'm gonna send every horse in the universe to trample over everything
[Alex] yeah no that's that's that's really what you're supposed to do is like send a little raiding party over here and try to keep them off the gold and send a little raiding party over here and try to kill some people on the wood line that's how you're supposed to play i

(02:15:10):
[Erica] don't play that way but i like
[Alex] to i always like to build my big dumb army i like
[Erica] yeah
[Alex] what you learn very quickly when you're playing against other people is big dumb army strategy that don't really work Now I'm playing with the wire. Big dumb army strat is actually quite ineffective if someone else's brain works, you know, at all. Right. So I've had to learn over time stuff like, you know, actually using the scout for its intended purpose, which is scouting the other guy's base to see what production buildings they've put up so you... know what's coming and then when you see units start to get built now you see what type of army they're making so you can counter build them you know that's something i've had to learn um putting up towers on your gold oh i was a big fan of the towers when you do get attacked you can put your villagers into the towers so they can like not die

(02:16:09):
[Erica] yeah
[Alex] you know i would
[Erica] also build towers as i marched just to be like just for an added little fuck you
[Alex] Well, you'd like a civ like the English because the English, one of the bonuses they get is if they're fighting near a town center or a tower or a keep, they get an attack speed bonus from fighting around their own stuff.

(02:16:32):
[Erica] Nice.
[Alex] So if you're playing the English, that is what you actually want to do is you push out and then you start building keeps and towers to fight around so you get that
[Erica] bonus. Colonizing! Yeah.
[Alex] Yeah. colonization so and they get this one they get this one keep it's like an a it's a it's a building you build for your last age up to get into imperial and it's the berkshire palace and the range on this keep is disgusting like it's the most annoying building to play against because it has triple the range of any other keep and literally outranges the siege like So you have to actually build stuff to intentionally just knock this building down. Cause it's so annoying. Cause it's just like, we'll cut down armies by itself. But, uh, But anyways, I've been playing this one civilization. They're called Order of the Dragon. And in Age of Empires IV, they added variant civilizations later in the game's life. So you have the Holy Roman Empire. That's a base civilization. And then Order of the Dragon is a variant of that civ. And what Order of the Dragon is kind of known for is they're very population efficient. So their units, like one of their knights is basically like one and a half of every other civilization's knight in terms of health and killing power. Oh, wow. But they cost twice as much. So... they're a lot harder to get a big army going but if you can get that big army going they are ridiculous so there's in the game there's this unit called the hand cannoneer and this is like your ranged gunner right and they're really good especially killing like knights um and in other infantry and stuff like that but the order of the dragon gets the dragon hand cannoneer and it's a hand cannoneer but it attacks like one and a half times as fast as the other hand cannoneer

(02:18:41):
[Erica] nice
[Alex] so we're playing a game this is like a 4v4 team game we're playing a game and like my friend and i are in a fight we're basically like a two on three fight but the order of the dragon are very deceiving because their units are so strong that even though it looks like they have a smaller army they really they actually have a bigger army it just looks like it so we walk into a fight and they kind of create a front with like their knights and i'm standing in the back with like 40 dragon hand cannons and they are absolutely rampaging everything like you've never seen something so beautiful erica as watching like 30 nights run at your hand cannon ears and they just all fall

(02:19:34):
[Erica] over that actually honestly like with the mood that i've been in in the last like couple weeks oh yeah destroying something beautiful that sounds nice
[Alex] and literally just rolled up with like them and a bunch of cannons and the cannons start demolishing all the buildings and then you just stand them around the cannons when they just defend the cannons and it's it's beautiful And a lot of this siege has been nerfed. Like, another strategy I like to do was very similar that was a lot of fun, was this other civilization, the Ottomans, had the Great Bombard. And there's a siege unit in the game called the Bombard, and it's just, like, it shoots out a, you know... whatever cannon or you know what i mean i don't know what it

(02:20:21):
[Erica] shoots out cannonball
[Alex] yeah and but it hits like one thing okay so it either that shot hits one building or it hits one unit on the other team
[Erica] devastating
[Alex] well and it does a lot of damage right but it's hitting one thing well the ottomans have the great bombard which is it hits an area
[Erica] ah
[Alex] so i
[Erica] love that aoe

(02:20:43):
[Alex] So, and it does more damage than a regular bombard. So, but they're very slow and they're super expensive and they take a while to set up and shoot. But when they shoot, my God. So, um, I used to love the Ottomans. Their version of a hand cannon is called the Janissary. And what was special about them was, one, they do extra damage to knights. But two, they could heal the Great Bombard.

(02:21:10):
[Bob] So
[Alex] you'd roll in with the Great Bombard. And then if the Great Bombard started taking damage... you'd have your Janissaries healing them like they're villagers or something while still massacring everything that comes with them like a five mile radius.
[Erica] Gorgeous.
[Alex] And just the joy, Erica, of watching these great bombards just like cut down waves of enemies is pretty much unmatched, I would say. So what was funny was my friend and I are in like this battle on one side and then our other two friends are in a battle on the other side and they're running into like... like legitimately this guy on the other team had like 12 great bombards lined up and they just couldn't get to them and they're just getting massacred wrecked but we're massacring on the other side and we end up winning the game and at the end of the game My friend and I, like, we're positive on the KD. Like, I'm telling you, my hand, can, and ears were going crazy. I had, like, 450 kills and, like, only 80 units lost, which is just disgusting. That's bonkers. And my friend had, like, 160, like, 100 killed, 60 lost. And on the other end, our friends had like 150 units killed each and like 350 units lost. And we won this game. But it's just, it was like, I was watching just like on one side, you've got my hand cannon ears just going off. And then the other side, you got the great bombards just having a field day. And it's like, it's a lot of fun sometimes, you know. Now when you're on the losing end, that can be frustrating. But you know, it's... I had to learn so many lessons to actually get okay at this game. Because I'm still not good. Don't get me wrong. I'm not good at this game. But I'm okay. And one of the things that's the hardest to do is not panic. Because... you know whether you walk into a bad fight or your base is getting beat up or something you got to keep working right that's the most important thing is to keep building things keep trying to find a way to react and push back and everything because you know when you're bad like a year ago if you would have got on me and started breaking down buildings or stuff i would just been like

(02:23:24):
[Erica] fuck it
[Alex] well i'm fucked i lose
[Erica] right
[Alex] Now, I mean, obviously it gets to a point where it's like, okay, I'm fucked.
[Erica] Sure. But you can't just roll over right away.
[Alex] But now it's like, okay, I got to run villagers over here and build this. Or I got to try to pump this unit out to counter this thing. And you're just constantly doing things and doing things. And that's a lot easier said than done.

(02:23:45):
[Erica] Oh, sure.
[Alex] Especially on a controller.
[Erica] Because
[Alex] it is hard to play that game on a controller.
[Erica] Oh, I didn't realize you're playing on the PC.
[Alex] Well, you can play it. It's cross-play, and you could play it on the PC, or you could play it on a mouse and keyboard hooked up to your Xbox if you want to. Oh, nice. But the controller gets some help. So, I mean, you could do everything manually if you want to, but the two things you can turn on to help you on controller is you can turn on... auto building of villagers at your town center which when you're bad at these games is one of the hardest things to do which is to remember like hey every 12 seconds i gotta queue up a villager

(02:24:26):
[Erica] yeah
[Alex] um and it's especially hard to do on controller and the other thing is auto economy which is you can essentially set up like what amount of each resources you want so you can say like hey i want 30 of my villagers on food and 15 on gold and so on down the line and then your villagers will kind of get spread out across that objective as long as they can see things if they can't if you have no gold in your vision

(02:24:53):
[Erica] stand there
[Alex] they'll just they'll just go do something else but um so you have to like still kind of do some stuff but uh in general that stuff does help with playing the game but the general you know um opinion is still at the top end you know any high end mouse and keyboard player is going to shit on a controller player

(02:25:13):
[Erica] but
[Alex] you could play a lot better on a controller than you used to be able to like I remember playing games like Halo Wars on a controller and just being like this is ass
[Erica] or
[Alex] playing like Red Alert 3 on a controller and this is ass but the these two like aoe2 and aoe4 are really well designed like i think they've done it as good as you possibly can in terms of playing these games on a controller

(02:25:39):
[Erica] good to know
[Alex] So, yeah, it's a lot of fun, but it is a lot to learn because it's not, it's just not the way, you know, I like to play. But, you know, if you want to play online against other people, you got to, just like I said for... Well, you
[Erica] got to adapt, right? You
[Alex] got to, you've got to learn, you got to figure out what works and you got to figure out how people are going to play. Because sometimes you can just, sometimes the other guy wants to just go to Imperial and he doesn't want to build any army. And in that situation, you can do that if you want to, or you could say, hey... This guy isn't building any army. Big dumb army,

(02:26:13):
[Erica] here we
[Alex] come. Let's go. But that stuff's fun. And it's an enjoyable game. Nice. And it's fun to get yelled at by your friends.
[Erica] Indeed.
[Alex] Anyway, you got anything else?
[Erica] No, I think that's all I really had.
[Alex] All right. Well, great to be here in your home. Hug me. Hold me tight.

(02:27:13):
[Bob] This has been a Puma Knife Production.