Deep Space and Dragons
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Deep Space and Dragons
Episode 85: Purple Ninja;, Cyber Noir
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What do you do when a purple ninja wielding a shotgun crosses your path in broad daylight? Join us as Richard and Karl tackle this wild encounter, laugh through the absurdity of it, and provide some real-life safety tips along the way. Karl also gives a quirky yet critical review of "Beetlejuice 2," lamenting its missed opportunities, while Richard shares his latest binge-worthy obsession, the hilariously dramatic "Kangan Asura."
Ever wondered what it's like to be transformed into a crime-fighting cyborg by a date who thinks you're soulmates? We brainstorm this bizarre sci-fi scenario, diving into the ethics and potential noir narrative twists. Our conversation flows seamlessly into analyzing unreliable narrators in storytelling, referencing both serious and comedic examples like "Black Butler." We even take a nostalgic trip to an experimental noir episode of Samurai Jack, mixing in insights about how to craft compelling narratives with genre elements.
Finally, we celebrate our favorite cartoon characters as hypothetical best friends, debating the merits of having everyone from Robin Williams’ Genie to Pikachu as a sidekick. We also explore the evolution of noir in modern media, drawing parallels between "Altered Carbon," "Cowboy Bebop," and other iconic series. Wrap up your day with our whirlwind of storytelling that blurs the lines between fiction and real life, filled with humor, wild anecdotes, and thoughtful analysis.
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Welcome across the cosmos to Richard and some guy present Deep Space and Dragons. I'm Richard.
Speaker 2:And I am some guy whose name you may or may not know. If you've been tuning in the past, you know like two years.
Speaker 1:You know, I would love it if someone made it this far into our show and it was Richard and whoever the other guy was. That would just be great, especially if, like those two fans meet each other the one with the full Carl tattoo and the one who has no idea who the other co-host is and they just get in this huge fight. It'd be like making it to the end of Naruto and not remembering who Sasuke is. Peak Peak entertainment value. Or like who's your favorite character in One Piece. Oh, I really like the Marines. The Marines.
Speaker 1:Like I, really like the Marines, the Marines Like I just hate how this one kid keeps taking up the screen time that's supposed to be going to Garp and Pals Love the Garp show.
Speaker 2:That would be pretty funny.
Speaker 1:What's new in the Some Guyverse?
Speaker 2:Well, okay, so I got a little short and a true mini review. Um do I? Get a time no, no, I don't. I don't have a rating system, so I it's.
Speaker 1:I guess maybe it's not a true review, but to be fair, beetlejuice now I'm gonna pause you on that one and completely distract your episode as someone who's taken many courses on writing reviews taught by literal reviewists, scores are the worst thing you can do when you're a reviewer Actual critics and actual reviews. Don't give scores. But then you'll put out your review for Iggin and then they'll give it a score based on what you said. Scores aren't actually good reviewing they're the shallowest way to do it. It's like power levels in Seven Deadly Sins. They mean nothing.
Speaker 2:Anyways, I went and saw Beetlejuice 2.
Speaker 1:I almost got you. Can I make you restart one more time?
Speaker 2:No, maybe.
Speaker 1:You almost got it what that?
Speaker 2:I went and saw Beetlejuice 2?
Speaker 1:Gotcha, you said 3. Ha ha, ha Trapped you.
Speaker 2:Ah, I see, I see what you did there. Please continue now that you're going to die tonight. Beetlejuice doesn't just like kill people. Who knows, maybe he'd be attracted to me and want to get married to me. You know what that tracks, anyways. So the original Beetlejuice was quirky and I mean it's old and some of its concepts have been recycled, but it's still actually, I think it feels fresh.
Speaker 1:So I need to throw a new word Macabre-dy. Macabre and comedy, because that's a genre consisting of Beetlejuice and the Addams Family and occasionally Ghostbusters. Macabre Because, like I'm sure, they call it like a gothic comedy, like what we do in the shadows, but I know those two words can combine. We've got a C in there, but please continue while I try and solve this linguistics puzzle there, but please continue while I try and solve this linguistics puzzle.
Speaker 2:Uh, but um, be able to use two is quirky, still for sure. Um, and the a plot has a lot of potential, uh, but the b plot was a complete waste of time. Uh, like it had no impact on the overall story. Um and uh, it's just. I think they really missed the mark there, like I thought it had a lot of potential and then they just wasted so much time on the b plot. Uh, and overall I I think the first beetlejuice was was actually better than the second one, it's. So you know what's amusing?
Speaker 1:So you've been going through a lot of classic things. You're like oh, I once saw this play, I watched this movie and then me out here with my I don't know 40-plus lit glasses.
Speaker 1:You know what I'm watching? Kangan Asura. The single dumbest thing. When they made the dramatic reveal last episode that one was the kangen and the other was the azura, paired together. That is a line I am not paraphrasing. It turns out the old dude is the kangen because of his bloodline and he's paired with the azura. So of course the legend of the kangen azura strikes new. I love when an anime yells out the title, the dumber, the title of the anime. The better that moment, please continue.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, I don't want to give any spoilers, I don't want to go into too much detail. What I actually want to talk about, which is more of a public service announcement, Nice Note.
Speaker 1:the values and views held by this show are Richard and some guy and should not be taken seriously by anyone.
Speaker 2:Don't sue us Well, okay, in 2009, there was a story that was circulated about a bank teller that his window was getting robbed, that his window was getting robbed and he like jumped over the counter and beat the guy up and then the guy ran away and they tackled him and held him until the police got there, right.
Speaker 1:Never do that.
Speaker 2:And then afterwards he was fired because he didn't follow protocol. Yeah, which would be to just give the guy the money.
Speaker 1:The money is federally insured and like you don't want to escalate the situation, people and other people do it. People die right. Like you don't mess around, you do not under any circumstances want your staff members heroically dying over company profits. Like no.
Speaker 2:But so what's new with me? You know it was.
Speaker 1:Is you tackled someone through a window?
Speaker 2:No, no, no, it was a slow Saturday evening, early evening.
Speaker 1:Twilight golden hour.
Speaker 2:The sun was still up, it was all right. And my boss he was bored because it was slow and he's kind of just pacing back and forth.
Speaker 1:Has he considered reading the Waltz of?
Speaker 2:Blades Doing things to annoy his wife who was making pizzas. Wow, you're not even going to dignify that plug with a response.
Speaker 1:But fine, go on. That was such an organic advertisement and everything.
Speaker 2:You know he likes to do things like squeak his shoes or, like you know, scrape them on the floor to annoy his wife, or he'll like hang bills upside down, or he'll make them print really, really long with long gaps. Anyways, he was bored, he was just messing about. Uh, the door beeps and he sees customer come in. Uh, but this particular customer, uh, was wearing a purple sweat, purple sweater wrapped around their head with like the hood over their upper head, and then the rest of the sweater wrapped around their head with like the hood over their upper head, and then the rest of the sweater wrapped around their, their like jaw.
Speaker 1:So I am like picturing the most generic final fantasy ninja enemy uh, he, definitely. He did kind of have a generic ninja look like not a good ninja, like a bad, like you got eight bits and you did what you could, ninja yeah I mean, he didn't really, didn't really do uh, the full outfit, the full ensemble he's.
Speaker 2:He was just wearing like black clothes otherwise. But um, as my boss rounds the corner, uh, the guy pulls a sawed-off shotgun out of his, out of his pants you know this was going.
Speaker 1:What so the thing is you tell me, because you think like, oh, this should be said off stream because this is important. And the things you don't tell me. I've once said that carl's special power is he universally rates all things as equally interesting. Because then I didn't get a heads up about this. No, please, why would we have a backup talking for this episode At work, someone pulled a badly dressed ninja pulled a sawn-off shotgun on your boss In your actual real life In Canada.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I mean firstly the front door, there's like the long counter and you have to come around the side and then you have to go all the way around the counter to get into the kitchen because the door is on the opposite side of the opening on the counter. Ok, and the guy didn't wait very long, he just as soon as he saw someone coming to serve him, he just started like trying to pull it out of his pants. And so my boss immediately was just like oh, everybody run. And he like kind of shuffles everybody and we all, we all kind of go through, go through the door and head outside, except for our, my poor co-worker, uh, james t kirk perfect.
Speaker 1:But also I don't really want to joke about this because someone might die in this story in the next 10 seconds okay.
Speaker 2:So I I it is serious like I say, um, yes, earlier the, the, the guy that worked for the bank, got fired because it is unsafe to try and be a hero. Oh no, and it's just not worth it. And so, like poor poor James T Kirk, he was bent over picking something up off the ground right behind the line as my boss shuffled us all away, and by the time he stood up he had the gun pointed at his face. What Now? Luckily James is a pro. Apparently he's been involved with like six or seven armed robberies. So he just puts his hands up.
Speaker 2:By pro do you mean cursed? He might be cursed, but so he puts his hands up and the robber directs him to the till. He opens the till, puts the money on the counter and then the robber takes the money out the front door. And so then we see the robber leave out the front door. We kind of follow him a little bit to see where he's going, but then everyone kind of heads back inside. The police show up pretty much right away, because especially gun incidents are a high priority for the police.
Speaker 2:They will respond very quickly if there's a gun involved, a little bit less quickly if it's like a knife or a baseball bat, and then if there's no weapon, then you'll get a response eventually.
Speaker 1:What is this?
Speaker 2:world you live in. No, I'm just saying that, logically speaking, there are degrees of severity of crime and it's like I think a domestic abuse case would probably be pretty high up on the scale. But, like, gun violence is like their number one priority. They want to put a stop to that.
Speaker 1:Can I give a weird mini rant? I just have to give a weird mini rant. Stop trying to rob low-income poor people. So the law office. I'm at a law office which deals with triple digit, quadruple digit, million dollar cases. Our door's wide open. A door's not plugged in it. There's cake at the desk. We offer you a coffee. There's a self-serve mini fridge. We have no like magical protections going on, but they choose the pizzeria.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, and I mean Supper Rush is a somewhat reasonable time. I mean it was still light out, which is a little bit of like. Ok, you don't understand.
Speaker 1:Your pizzeria will never have as much money in it as a law firm. You're probably right Ever come close.
Speaker 2:We only had like a couple hundred dollars in the till at the time.
Speaker 1:Kind of my point, not that much, but we got the footage.
Speaker 2:They radioed the description of the suspect and the guy was caught within 10 minutes.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, he dressed as a purple ninja and pulled a shotgun on someone. This was not a perfect crime.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like I say, middle of the day he didn't even have enough time to take off his ninja headband.
Speaker 1:Well, the thing is say he actually dressed as like Itachi in the Akatsuki, right? Then what you do is you go to the bathroom, put on makeup remover, take off your outfit and they'll never know who you were, because they'll be looking for the person with the red spiral eyes instead of regular eyes. That is so crazy.
Speaker 2:Your life is insane um, but the the the moral of the story is, uh, that, like a lot of people, the story from 2009 about the bank teller that got fired a lot of online responses were the outrage that this guy got fired for being a hero, uh, but I mean, in my personal experience, he could have got everyone killed. Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, apparently, uh, the weapon was not loaded and he didn't have any ammunition on him. But you don't want to find out. Yeah, you, you don't want to find out. Well, like and like, property damage could have happened if, if, uh, like, like, if he had fired his shotgun at the oven, uh, and hit like a gas line or something like geez so, like once upon a time when me and you were walking down the street with swords, we got pulled over by the police for walking down the street with swords.
Speaker 1:Right, they were props yeah, they were wooden swords, they were props, no real, no real swords in the story, but they should have pulled us over because we were walking down the street with what looked like swords. Like I'm a firm believer in sensible choices. If someone puts a gun to your face, do not think you're john w in that moment. Think you're John, just a guy named John, like John Arbuckle. Default to John Arbuckle, not John Wick, is the takeaway here. Be like I got a cat at home. No risks to be taken today.
Speaker 2:But yeah, so I mean that's what's new with me. Is that my work got?
Speaker 1:The shotgun story being like the B plot and the A plot being Beetlejuice. The musical is just wild. Like I don't even know how to process this information Because we're comedy. I'm like, well, I'm glad no one got hurt, but no warning from my delightful co-host here, so he could have been like so I'm in the hospital right now, my arm's gone, and I'd be like, yeah, you would do the podcast if your arm shot off. Why would you not? What else would you do? You're stuck in this bed armless. You might as well do a podcast.
Speaker 2:Might as well, I'd say. Fortunately no one was hurt and the assailant was apprehended very quickly.
Speaker 1:So what's funny is so I live in Brampton Spoilers, they figured this out. I have an author profile my face is on the book, anywho and people in Brampton like to say Brampton's sketchy, right, because they've never lived in reality, right. So they'll be like, ooh, brampton's sketchy. I'm like, oh no, someone got held up by Knife Point and it's like what? Saskatchewan wasn't that sketchy. I'm like Purple Ninja pulled shotgun out of his pants. That is the thing I get to tell people happened Unironically, it just happened, people just take picnic tables there.
Speaker 2:It's crazy lawless hellscape it is a lawless hellscape. Oh that is just so wild Now that I've made my public safety announcement, you know, just like like say, if you're ever being in a violent confrontation, it's best not to resist.
Speaker 1:So here's the thing about my life over the last five years now.
Speaker 1:Since returning to academia and working primarily academia-related jobs like law firm editing, podcasting, school events, pathway fairs. It's funny because I have such a state of zen, because no one pulls shotguns on me, because it's like I'm in this law firm looking up some papers doing my thing and boss is like oh, you haven't taken a break today. I'm like, yeah, I have a chair, I have smooth jazz playing and I'm reading through a redacted about redacted. This is the least stressed I've ever. The fridge is stocked. You don't understand. This is the least stressed I've ever. The fridge is stocked. You don't understand, sir.
Speaker 1:We work a job where I can get up, have a cupcake and drink this and I don't have to tell anyone I'm doing this. I can just do this at my leisure. The book will wait for me when I get back. I can just go to the bathroom. I don't have to announce it, I don't have to check in with anyone, I could just go. Like our entry-level jobs are so savage. Who decided that cashiers don't get chairs? Because I don't know if there's a bad enough afterlife for that person, like Soul Society is too good for the person who decided that cashiers work slower if they have a chair.
Speaker 2:Ooh, I mean, that does sound like it might be the Beetlejuice afterlife, but that's neither here nor there.
Speaker 1:Or what was it, I think I don't remember the name of the movie. I think it was something like Wrist Cutters, where when you die, you just go to a slightly worse version of reality. If you kill yourself, oh, as like punishment, it's just the same life but blander, like the colors are just washed out more and the food tastes more like redacted fast food workplace, because it's like. This situation is just so crazy to me because, like I said, some of these places I worked have such higher stakes but such lower intensity that it causes a weird dissonance. Like, for example, the registration office at Redacted School I go to was behind on everyone's registration paperwork, so everyone doesn't get their student loans for a couple weeks longer. So, if you think about that, if you assume that if you miss a payment I have to take out a payday loan, that's 200 bucks and every student's payment payday loan.
Speaker 1:That's 200 bucks and every student's payment was late. That's like $200,000 lost over that bureaucracy and no one cares. Imagine if one of your co-workers cost your franchise $200,000. Because they didn't click send on a button. You think they'd care right, but they don't send on a button. You think they'd care right, but they don't Because they have money. Why would they care?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's pretty crazy, so it's like wild to look at just some of these contexts. Like it'll be. Like we've started this new green trash can initiative, dropped $10 million on new trash cans and I'm just like. The world is insane.
Speaker 1:So I mean mean that's enough about the wild west of Saskatchewan let's meet you there, richard well, I kind of weaved a bit of news with me kind of into it casually. So for the summer I've been volunteering at literary magazines, working at a law firm, living my best life. Tomorrow I'm going to a magazine launch. Tomorrow I'm going to a magazine launch. No, Thursday I'm going to a magazine launch. Good luck hunting me down. Then Sunday I'm going to a book festival. Then.
Speaker 1:I'm working on this big student initiative project that I can't really talk too much about. So I have a bunch of high-end projects going on, working on my next book See, my little nerd brain is very happy. So my new project with the school means I have to go in person three days a week and I think that's really good for my mental health, because I think I've spent too much time at home over the last couple months and I'm starting to go mildly insane. It's starting to go mildly insane. It's like I need to leave the house and not be working on projects to get inspired for projects Like while reading through the Rental Properties Act, boom, entire psychic power system comes to my mind clear as day, Because my brain is trying to escape reality. But since my life isn't sad and traumatic anymore, I need to force myself into escapist situations to trigger my imagination.
Speaker 2:Nah, but in all honesty it's been like pretty.
Speaker 1:Escapism. Like not actually Like it's been a very low-key but good summer. Like people like to be like don't you want a guy who's adventurous, enjoys travel, wants to see the world? Like no, why would I want to be that guy? That sounds terrible. I like my comfort zone. It's so comfy, I didn't spend five years making a cozy life to then leave it to explore. You people mad I'm like a new Baldur's Gate patch launched and they added in official mod support. Yeah, why would I leave? But nah like.
Speaker 1:I'm going to some literary events and a book launch this weekend, which is pretty cool, and other than playing some Gundam Breaker and that's pretty much all I've been up to really is being chill because it turns out studying for LSATs and being a lawyer is a time-consuming endeavor, Even as a volunteer capacity.
Speaker 2:Are you allowed to say what book launch you're going to?
Speaker 1:I am actually so an acquaintance of mine. Another Branton author has written a new book called Countess. It's Susan Palumbo and it is a sci-fi, anti-colonial Count of Monte Cristo in space. Yeah, a post-colonial space opera, take on. Dumas' novel moves at a whiplash-inducing pace, spends a specular of reamps of classics. We'll find plenty to enjoy.
Speaker 1:Quote Publisher Weekly so you know the things I enjoy in book form. Yeah, yeah. So like it's a good, solid lgbt plus sci-fi retelling of things, which makes me happy and it's right in my genre. So I'm like this is good stuff. Like plus, I'm always happy to see an author like make it, make it be like oh, look at you with your English degree hitting it and getting the interviews, going on the book tours and watching your career skyrocket. That's inspiring to watch that happen to a human being. That makes me not regret my life choices at all. It shows possibility in the craft. But seriously, seeing an acquaintance of mine start winning rewards for a piece of science fiction makes me happy.
Speaker 2:Understandably so.
Speaker 1:Because it seems to be doing mainstream good, not just sci-fi good. The press that does it ECW Press typically does more non-fiction essays and culture pieces. I believe.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to remember what the press was originally called, but like it was like entertainment, culture and writing or something like that. Okay, so it's. They don't actually have a ton of science fiction in their catalog. Yeah, entertainment, culture and writing. So they try and like build to the cultural capital of canada through their things, so they're can Canadian publisher. So for a sci-fi piece to take it off, that means the core undertonings, the actual messaging behind it, has to be really strong. So I'm excited to go. Plus, when they were doing their book touring they were cosplaying the cape and the aesthetic and I just respect the idea of showing up to a book signing in a cape. That's like I regret that for watching my first book I didn't like show up to plate mail for book signings. Like that is like clearly lesson learned. Why would I not do that?
Speaker 2:it's an excuse to be awesome well, speaking of sci-fi, um mean, it's not exactly a perfect segue, because the intended topic is noir fiction.
Speaker 1:Is that where we're going with this? Because I thought like speaking of.
Speaker 2:You see, I chose the topic of noir fiction for a couple of reasons. For a couple reasons, but the first one being, as Richard knows, I have written a sci-fi short story of my own which I'm planning on submitting to a magazine, the FF magazine.
Speaker 1:Yes, Fusion Fragment magazine. They're excellent. They're open for submissions. Check out their latest issue Support literary magazines. They're a stepping stone between new and established writers. Yeah, that's my plug. They do not sponsor this show.
Speaker 2:But so, as Richard has said, off-stream and maybe on-stream too, but there are a lot of literary magazines and I was thinking it's like well, even if I don't get submitted, even if I don't get published in the magazine that I'm going for, there's other options, but it would be better to write a different story.
Speaker 1:You're right. Well, you are to a certain extent. You're definitely like. So literally. Magazines will often say if they accept simultaneous submissions or not. Zines will often say if they accept simultaneous submissions or not. If they accept simultaneous submissions, usually aiming for like three or four in your genre, is completely reasonable to do so for your story. It's like not everyone will accept it and sometimes people can get over, fixated on a singular goal. So if I were you, I'd probably send your story to. I have like a list of five science fiction ones.
Speaker 1:But you're right, you don't just wait on that one story and keep trying. Once that's out there, you continue writing, because writing is how you write your craft. But I am deeply curious where you're going with this.
Speaker 2:Well, okay, so I'm trying to think of another sci-fi concept and I came back on a random question I have, which actually. Okay, I'll ask you there, Richard.
Speaker 1:What. You're not going to bring a third person in the middle of our episode.
Speaker 2:Say you meet someone on a dating app right.
Speaker 1:What that's so hard to believe.
Speaker 2:What that's so hard to believe. You go on the date. It's fantastic, and then you wake up in their laboratory and they've turned you into a crime fighting cyborg because they think you're their soulmate.
Speaker 1:Would you fight crime with them? So you've definitely asked me this question before somewhere.
Speaker 1:Probably it's been in my mind for a long time. As much as I can't figure out the pipeline to how this ends up being about noir fiction, because I'm super on board with random sci-fi short story pitches. That's my vibe. I will happily entertain sci-fi pitches the wackier the better, but because of who I am. So in the terrible Mega man 90s cartoon back when they just felt like Mega man wasn't sexist enough, it's like okay, we're going to give Roll a vacuum cleaner and have them be a robot housekeeper while Mega man goes and fights crime. I'm like Mega Man's supposed to be 12. Why are we playing into any who? I would most definitely, when made a cyborg to fight crime, end up as a house husband. When made a cyborg to fight crime, end up as a house husband. It might not be instant, it might not be overnight, but if my nature is a being, my Upgrader would become clearly apparent that my fingers turning into knives is better suited for sashimi.
Speaker 1:How much my culinary abilities would improve if, first off, thank you for turning me into a robot. I'm giving partial consent to this, if you know what you're doing, because my body sucks.
Speaker 2:This is a well-established fact like if I end up a dysgraphic robot.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna be very displeased it's so terrible so like, realistically, the robot upgrade, like if I'm getting dr gerode, it's probably helping me out. But you know I am super big on consent, so like there's couples counseling. That needs to happen here for this to be an acceptable choice unless it was some weird culture thing.
Speaker 1:So, hot take, there was an animated series about an old man where aliens accidentally kill him and they rebuild him as a super cyborg. The aliens didn't know better. So the person who makes me into a cyborg is literally an alien or a time traveler or from a very cyborg culture, and simply has never been explained that you need consent to cyborg people and then, after we have this talk, they solemnly swear to never cyborg anyone else. They didn't understand, understand. They thought they were helping. I'd give them a pass because I have issues and deep-seated loneliness problems, okay, but so?
Speaker 1:So the answer is yes, with several asterisks, because they really cannot be going around doing this to people, people, okay, but so then, uh, I realized, um, that's more of an event and not really a story, so it's interesting. So when I was giving this, while my professor was giving this talk a few years back weeks back I think, I mentioned a previous episode. He was talking about the. What is the catalyst to start a story? Right, your first 10 ideas down that you think would be a good start of a story.
Speaker 1:Now erase the first 10 because they've been done before, so like coming up with an original start is tricky and sometimes I'm always on the fence whether or not I really think originality is that important right because I'm a fine of refining the craft and I read a lot of derivative things. Most, most things are just based on John Carter on Mars after all. That I enjoy, so whatever. But, like as you said, it's a catalyst to start a story, but that's not actually what the story's about.
Speaker 2:Right If the story was about it.
Speaker 1:it would literally be they start dating this person and you would make that be like the climax of the story, as they wake up in the basement as a robot and it would become a really Robotcom, rombotcom, rombotcom.
Speaker 2:No, no. So I started thinking of ways to actually make this into a story and I settled on. Instead of focusing on the kidnapper robot dynamic, I'm more so focusing on it being a missing person's case that's being investigated.
Speaker 2:I mean you could go that way and I'm like you know, yeah, well, I mean, the investigator probably has a cybernetic eye. I'm toying with the idea that it was like an AI that got implanted into them and the AI is actually taking over their brain, but they're still trying to fight crime. Anyways, I don't know, there's lots of ideas on the table, but the main thing is that I was like well, I mean, Richard mentioned a while back that he might want to write a noir story.
Speaker 1:My idea no stealing Swipe or no swiping.
Speaker 2:It seems like an interesting idea.
Speaker 1:Swipe or no swiping?
Speaker 2:And then I realized I don't know what noir is.
Speaker 1:So here's what's really interesting about noir, because this is a good pivot. Whenever I think noir, my brain goes to a weird episode of Samurai Jack. Okay, there's an episode of Samurai Jack about a robot I think it was X-23 or something who was sent after to kill the samurai because his dog got taken. But they completely frame it as a noir style black and white, dark, eternal monologue to himself trying to track down this person to get his sweetheart puppy back. And they use like as many noir film tropes as they could. And then your protagonist you've been following just gets uncereimoniously ended by jack. Oh, and this episode's like 90 darker than the rest of the show and was like samurai jack was good for just doing weird experimental things with their episodes. A week format, right, and I'm like, yeah, they're just like let's just steep this in tropes because you can absolutely have robotic noir.
Speaker 1:So here hereby, because I was researching this myself recently, the definition for noir is a dark, gritty story about, typically framed in a 1960s urban setting, where a morally ambiguous character narrates their actions, typically evolved around a bad-hearted dame or a good-hearted dame, and about the moral ambiguity of crime and effect, and typically is resolved as a as, not a melodrama. Bittersweet ending. So like cowboy bebop was easily noir themed because you got spike narrating it being morally ambiguous as he argues like good and value of a human life, and then spoilers for Cowboy Bebop getting shot at the end has noir film vibes because, like noir, films really like Casablanca energy, and it's one of those tropes where I've probably seen parodied more than I've seen originals because, it's easy to do the hardball Detective episode in black and white.
Speaker 1:Even Ruby Chibi does it a couple times.
Speaker 2:Well, so interestingly, I looked up a website. I was like how to write noir? All right, I'd love to hear your definition. Well, no, I mean my definition. The main difference between my definition and your definition is that everything is done on the backdrop of systemic corruption.
Speaker 1:Oh, I missed that yeah.
Speaker 2:That's really the only difference between what you described and what I found as a definition, but I'm reading through this list of all the different beats of noir and how you should design your character.
Speaker 1:Also 90s Batman Batman the anime series is one of the most noir things ever created. Also blimps, for some reason.
Speaker 2:But the website itself wasn't actually all that helpful. It was like oh, usually there's detectives, but not always. Usually they're a male protagonist, but not always.
Speaker 1:I was like, hey, like, so I think so I think part of my explanation that might help your clarity is it's the gritty internal monologue. That's actually why it's usually detectives, but sometimes isn't. You need a character who's disillusioned, gets shown a silver lining and then that silver lining gets taken away. So detectives are such a natural device for the okay, I'm morally ambiguous in a morally ambiguous situation, trying to find the truth, and then the truth can't be satisfying in noir, the truth, and then the truth can't be satisfying in noir.
Speaker 1:So like when you go to sin city, or even batman, for example, batman ended up as a detective, not because he beat anyone with prep come at me, bro, but that lets him. Looks at, oh, this psychiatrist broke trying to save him and there's no happy ending here. Or oh, this former socialite has fallen down our times and the girl I was seeing turns out to be a cat burglar. It lets you have that like dissonance of like, trying to find silver lines where there aren't any right. So detective naturally leads you to a character who monologues, because you need that internal monologue or external monologue as the framing device. Who?
Speaker 1:does case studies, and that's why noir is usually typically really, really episodic. Does that help at all? I'm legitimately trying to help here.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, I've also been been doing my own, my own researching, and at the end of this list of 11 elements of noir they're like here's some classic noir to read and actually I gotta grab it and make sure. The first book that they recommended which I was able to find it on the Libby app for the public library is by Raymond Chandler and it's called the Big Sleep. Yeah, and it's about Detective Philip Marlowe. Apparently, in film, he is most famously portrayed by Liam Neeson.
Speaker 1:Ha.
Speaker 2:But Liam Neeson seems like a natural fit for this detective internal monologue thing like I just I so it's kind of interesting.
Speaker 1:So sherlock holmes isn't noir because a bad guy did it right like, I like.
Speaker 2:I think the thing that like separates noir from detective is a good guy doing bad things rather than a bad guy doing good things but so I, I'm, I'm reading through, uh, I'm looking at this, I'm like it turns out that this is part of a series with about philip marlowe, and I'm I'm like two-thirds of the way through the first book, the big sleep, uh, and I was like, well, I kind of thought I mean, obviously, as you pointed out, with batman, um, uh, it doesn't necessarily have to be like a fatal tragic ending.
Speaker 1:Well, I do have to clarify batman's only noir in early batman things when he's the main character. So in the batman animated series where he's going around being detectives or Batman year one type stuff, it's noir. The moment Superman enters it's no longer noir because we're no longer following from his internal and external point of view, Right. I just need that clarification that Batman quickly stops being noir when someone makes a giant green glowy fist and punches someone.
Speaker 2:That's definitely true. Um, and I just it surprised me that something considered noir could be a series, because I kind of I felt there's like it made it sound like they basically had to die at the end of the series or at the end of the story. I was like huh, and so then I looked into it and it's like, apparently, a lot of what we consider noir is actually hard boiled. I could see that, which is basically the same as noir, except for at the end of the story everything is resolved and the morally ambiguous character basically comes away with clean hands basically comes away with clean hands.
Speaker 1:So it's interesting because I'm on TV tropes with film noir pulled up, because that's what you do right. And the tropes they bring up are the bittersweet ending that anyone could die, the black and gray morality emerging from the shadows. Everyone smokes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's probably true Police are useless.
Speaker 1:Police brutality, private eye monologues Screw the rules. I have connections. Screw the rules. I have money. Screw the rules. I make them. Sherlock scam. Smoking is cool, snow means death. Social service does not exist. Sympathy for the devil Too good for the sinful earth. Unreliable narrator, weather report opening and who watches the Watchmen?
Speaker 2:Oh and photo identification denial. I have no idea how to really pull off the unreliable narrator. I don't know how you would do it. It sounds like it'd be a really interesting challenge.
Speaker 1:You kind of have to be first person, so I have an interesting talk with someone who is helping edit one of their books a while back, where, when you have a third person narrator, if that third person narrator isn't a character, you assume they're telling the truth. You assume facts are facts because your brain is shorthanding the prose and the exposition, right? So yeah, if your narrator's not a character, they can't be unreliable or reliable and you just get mad because then the book was just wrong, right?
Speaker 1:so there's no narrator when it's doing third person. But you can do a limited third person and give that a bit of voice to it.
Speaker 2:So ironically, Fullmetal.
Speaker 1:Alchemist was narrated by Father Okay, and there's a bit where he voices all the title change cards except the last one because he's dead, oh. So if you go that oh, this was the character that was like the Horatio that framed the story, then you can add a bit of unreliable to it. But for written noir I just got to feel like first person or limited third person, where you slide just into his point of view is how you would do it. But I also am weirdly like I'm not a fan of unreliable narrators. In serious settings, like in comedy, it makes sense. But I do find like the unreliable narrator is less interesting than just you're in this person's internal world and you're just limiting what they see in the information they have.
Speaker 1:Like if you make sure your narrator only knows things that they should know because you've zoomed the camera of sorts in, then you can slip in details subtly. But as I've said before, plot twists that aren't foreshadowed aren't interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1:So like it really depends on the kind of unreliable narrator you want, because there's unreliable narrator as in the book's lying to you, right, and then there's information missing narrator, where they put together the pieces because you've limited the pieces, and then there's glass onion, where you just have the mystery. Be so stupid, the character's like this is so stupid. It's like a glass onion. The layers mean nothing because you can see right to the middle. It's just dumb. It's not so dumb, it's brilliant, it's just just dumb. I just like Glass Onion. Just shout out to the Knives Out saga, which did not need a sequel but somehow crushed it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I did enjoy that sequel, but I'm not necessarily saying that I want to use an unreliable narrator in my story. Of course not. I just that is one of the elements that the website I looked at was like yeah, sometimes the narrator is unreliable because, uh, they view their actions as pure and heroic, but then the actuality of what they're doing is is brutal and and uh, and the secret is definitely cognitive dissonance by taking their point of view and framing it so what they're doing sounds good while it's brutal.
Speaker 1:So a line actually came up. I was watching a review of Black Butler recently.
Speaker 2:A review okay.
Speaker 1:So in this review a character is about to for lack of a polite term beat his fiancée, Like, just smack her. And then the character, the evil demon butler, as it were, is like here and goes to hand them a cane so they don't hurt their hand. Okay, so that's insanely dark, right, Right. But like, oh, I get it. This character who's evil, with a smile, is like, oh, I get it. This character who's evil, with a smile, is like, oh, if you're going to be bad, do it wrong. And it's a way to kind of show that the character is super in the wrong. Because, well, you're going to hit them but you draw the line at using a stick. I think you're a terrible person. But the reader reviews that without actually taking direct information from the story. Right, use that without actually taking direct information from the story, right? So that's kind of how you would do.
Speaker 1:It is say I was writing Evil, Carl, let's go with Jarl. So, Jarl, you have Jarl be about to kick a puppy. And then you have Jarl, think these beasts unclean, untame everywhere, and I just know of a flick of my boot I could protect someone from it. And then the corgi coasts through the air and slams into the wall Because I said the corgi, not the dog.
Speaker 1:I've made this narrator super unreliable because they described this ferocious beast, and with a single word I pointed out this ferocious beast was the size of a capybara at best and was the most harmless breed of dog. So that's kind of how you do it. It's like you have the details not quite match the dialogue in the setting. That's at least how I'd go about. It Is, if you want someone who thinks they're doing the right thing but they're not, you have them confidently and you, as the narrator, confidently describe it with details that are just deeply upsetting. Like if you're doing like Shau Tucker's point of view, it would be and I finally got it a solution I can get the money she needs to live and then she won't leave me and I'll advance science by a million years and save on pet care and child care.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's awful.
Speaker 1:But you see what I mean. Right, it's about the confidently stating things that are horrible.
Speaker 2:Hmm, I mean honestly, I said I wanted to do an episode on noir fiction and I mean it is an interesting topic, but I realized after reading the definition of hard-boiled versus the definition of noir because, like I say, hard-boiled is basically noir but it actually has a moderately happy ending.
Speaker 1:Are we turning into a Denny's Like? Where are you possibly going with this? Because I followed you onto this noir train because you promised me robots, and now we're here. Where are you going? What stopper are you getting off on, sir?
Speaker 2:Well, this all comes back to the story, the sci-fi detective story.
Speaker 1:I thought you were about to come back to the shotgun guy. So where I'm going with this is the camera has it in black and white. I'm trying to decide if I release it as a noir film where I just voice over the guy.
Speaker 2:I do have the footage, that's true.
Speaker 1:In black and white, specifically probably.
Speaker 2:But no Like. The idea for the story now is basically that the detective figures out that all these people are missing and the missing link is that they liked this profile on the dating app and then catfishes that profile in order to get a date with them so that you can go and confront them.
Speaker 1:See, it's kind of funny because, like, noir is such a vibe. So, like you bring up dating apps and I'm like, is dating apps noir? But I'm looking at this list of noir anime and you know what's sitting here, like six down, ghost in the shell. Ghost in the shell is very noir in its style and themes, especially like the movie versions, but absolutely has digital dating apps well, yeah, sci-fi and noir are not mutually exclusive.
Speaker 2:Actually, I was going to ask you I don't know how well you remember the series Altered Carbon.
Speaker 1:So good. Watched it last week. You watched it last week, no two weeks ago, when my mom was visiting. I'm like what's a good show to throw in for me and my mother? And we ended up doing For All Mankind, the Foundation and Altered Carbon throwing for me and my mother and we ended up doing for all mankind, the foundation and ultracarbon okay, uh, well, I mean that's, that's great, because I was going to ask you uh, I, I ultracarbon is noir as heck yeah, I think.
Speaker 2:I think it shifts away from noir as you get into the later seasons, where he's actually fighting the systemic corruption and he becomes a genuine hero. But the first season for sure, oh yeah, he's a hard-boiled detective who has self-loathing and is morally ambiguous.
Speaker 1:His butler is Edgar Allan Poe. Dude could not be more noir if he tried Also for brilliant writing choices, to switch out your actor, oh yeah, switching the stack to a different body.
Speaker 2:Oh man, alter carbon was like sick.
Speaker 1:Just yeah, so good but yes, I see what you're saying. Like I feel like the episode's not actually so much about noir, is about sci-fi noir, because I feel like we both have more grounding in that.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean I just the whole point of the conversation. It was just like, yeah, you mentioned wanting to do noir and I was like, hey, yeah, that sounds interesting, and then realizing that I don't really know what it is. Well, I mean I do. Now I've obviously done some research.
Speaker 1:Well, what's interesting is, at the end of the day, genre is a checkbox that your publisher or your self-publisher clicks. For example, I was having a talk with one of my professors about the difference between YA novels and new adult novels and it's really about the difficulty curve. And I had the same conversation later with one of my mentors about the same topic of. It was a genre that was popular for a while and just kind of faded away. But Canada's just getting it because we're just behind America, and the idea is that it has different themes. It's about people who are just becoming adults and entering the world, where YA is about teenagers up and the new adult is about. Now that they've grown up, they've realized they haven't learned anything. But the reason I say that is like I'm looking at this anime list for noir.
Speaker 1:And yes things like Monster and literally noir. Yes, that is the name of the series. It fits the feeling. The Big O is like a noir thriller about a Batman who has a giant robot. What the Big O is amazing. It is an animated series. That's a mecha series but framed like a noir. So you're literally following a hard-boiled detective who, once he finds the criminals, summons his Gundam to punch them. Okay, it is amazing. Is that on Crunchyroll? I wonder? I hope so. It is so good. So, like oh man, it's not very many episodes, but like the poster's in black and white, it's 12 episodes and it's just majestic. That's it.
Speaker 2:It's just majestic.
Speaker 1:They're trying for a vibe so hard.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it doesn't look like it's on on Crunchyroll.
Speaker 1:But yeah, like, so we got like Cowboy Bebop, Darker Than Black, ergo Proxy Ghost in the Shell, golgo 13. I'm like there is a lot of sci-fi noir and I didn't realize, until you brought this up, not only how common that is, but how good it is Like if I were to write my next masterpiece. Sci-fi noir is a sick genre for it.
Speaker 2:Well, okay, would you go noir, or would you go more hard-boiled, where the ending isn't necessarily so bittersweet?
Speaker 1:Depends what I'm trying to accomplish. So if it's for the light novel contest, for example, I can't go hard-boiled. Death Note tried that and when they killed one of the two characters, it stopped being interesting. Right, you can't go hard-boiled if you want to serialize it. However, most of these went hard-boiled because when you go hard-boiled, you hurt people Like you do the most emotional damage by giving it. The hard-boiled ending, like Cowboy Bebop's ending was just brutal for no reason, and that's what made it so good.
Speaker 2:That's more the noir ending right no Cowboy Bebop. He just gets shot, collapses on the stairs and says bang yeah, see, hard-boiled would be, would be him not having the bittersweet ending. Yeah, that's, that's what I'm going for, like so I think, the bittersweet ending is really good for a standalone work.
Speaker 1:And the thing is, if you're committed to knowing you're having that bittersweet ending day one, even if you're planning to do six books in a movie, but you know that's how you're going to end it, it affects the pacing and the tone and makes it better. So let's go back to Death Note, for example. They knew from the first chapter that Light was going to get killed off with the Death Note. That's the only way that could possibly end. That could possibly end, and them splitting it over two seasons lost some impact, but it still had a strong ending, even if it came later than it should have. Ghost of the Shell cheats, because they absolutely have their main character die at the end to then just go to the cloud. Okay, they like keep doing the noir ending for them repeatedly, which is some shenanigans, but also, you know so, to kind of loop back around to darker than black felt pretty noir, I don't know Because, like I said, hard-boiled no one is going to call you out of your books, hard-boiled or noir.
Speaker 2:People often use both interchangeably.
Speaker 1:What they are going to call you out for is if you somehow don't write it monochromatic, like you have to write your book in black and white to have the vibes. I know that's weirdly specific and like Cowboy Bebop wasn't in black and white, darker Than Black wasn't in black and white. But like the light trick, contrast, like you literally want to create mood lighting in your work to carry those vibes. It's one of those things where tropes are overused, but they're also narrative shorthand. You describe people in pinstripe stroops with Tommy guns and boom, you got that energy.
Speaker 1:If you're going sci-fi, you can't quite do that. So you then have someone smoking a cigarette in a brothel, even if you're going cyberpunk with it, because the only difference between cyberpunk and noir is the age of the protagonist, like the big difference between punk and noir is your protagonist in noir has to have been around the bush enough to know that it's morally ambiguous. So it's like, even if they're 20, they have to be a super mature 20, where a punk is rebelling against society and might not know. Because, as we mentioned earlier, the whether or not you're trying to make societal change shifts how noir you are.
Speaker 1:Like. The fact that Batman doesn't achieve anything at the start is what makes him noir. When he actually starts accomplishing things, he becomes a family man with a sensible SUV.
Speaker 2:Joins the Justice League.
Speaker 1:Also Speedgrapher. Would you call that noir?
Speaker 2:Ooh.
Speaker 1:It feels like it wants to be.
Speaker 2:It definitely has that bittersweet ending and it is very first person. It's interesting because of the photography theme.
Speaker 1:Because I feel like protagonist guy Saga I think it was is a noir protagonist, but when the series isn't following him it kind of slips out of noir, a bit Like Mr Swatengu is busy being way too good of a villain for that show, like he's not a noir villain but he is Like he's more a classic tragic Sephiroth villain and then kind of pivots at the end. It's like the protagonist feels noir and the villain feels a little too shonen.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, it is also a little bit interesting. It is a little bit interesting.
Speaker 1:Like if he didn't have superpowers he'd be a great noir villain, maybe Because he made a difference.
Speaker 2:You say he's a noir protagonist but at the same time he is a little bit more of that traditional righteous hero, like he gives off more vibes but he doesn't really like he's not an anti-hero.
Speaker 1:Like he's definitely in. Like it's like he got thrown in a noir setting. Like the city is a noir city. Like the rich are literally gambling on superpowers in their underground sex clubs. Like it city is a noir city. Like the rich are literally gambling on superpowers in their underground sex clubs. Like it's problematic. But like yeah, he has a bit of that. Life is in shades of grey, kind of nihilistic goes through an arc like it wouldn't have been hard to tilt Speed Graffer into being noir. It sits there on the cusp.
Speaker 2:I would say it's like directly.
Speaker 1:I think it's directly between noir and shounen, which is the weirdest genre because shounen is just superhero comics, but just straight up, marvel and shounen are the same genre.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they definitely are, yeah, they definitely are.
Speaker 1:Weirdly enough, some parts of kagura buchi that come up once in a while, like we were talking about what feel more like mafia-esque and it's like mafia and noir are similar not quite, but kagura buchi definitely has more noir energy than some actual noir things have, but it's that one seems to be pivoting to more classic shounen now that they're starting to team up and number your villains like you do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, numbering the people they have to rescue and who's going after them. Yeah.
Speaker 1:They're just kind of doing the setup. They're doing the Kenshin which, to be fair, kenshin was great. You know, they're doing the Kenshin which, to be fair, kenshin was great. So you know what so did you ever see the Samurai X movie they did where it was just like his sad backstory as a movie.
Speaker 2:I don't know that I ever watched the movie.
Speaker 1:Because his sad backstory. I don't know if I'd call Kenshin noir, but like, definitely he was in a nihilistic world where everyone was against him. But I think the thing is the noir character doesn't usually kill people, except as a last resort, usually like they're trying to. It's like part of it's almost like you're trying to be lawful, good from your perspective, even if you're not.
Speaker 2:I don't know, have you ever seen dirty Harry Touche? I mean so technically, uh, neo-noir apparently only applies to film. Uh, and it's only like anything made in the noir style post, like 1960 or something like that.
Speaker 1:If you want to be one of those guys, sure I was just saying I was reading.
Speaker 2:I was doing a lot of reading on this because it became your life.
Speaker 2:Well, it might be, I don't know. Coming back to the story that I'm trying to write, though, my number one problem I'm having with the story as it is is one of the people commented on my other short story that I'm going to submit to the magazine, and they said that one of my opening paragraph about the mirror was being a screen that projects outfits onto the reflection. They said that was a good way to make sure that the readers know it's speculative sci-fi and fiction right at the get-go. I'm like hmm, how do I? Because the sci-fi is the person kidnapping people and turning them into robots. But if that's the twist, how do you even know that it's sci-fi until you get there?
Speaker 1:Oh. So if you want it to be sci-fi, so here's what Cowboy Bebop did. So you got two characters in a metal room that looks kind of like a ship. You got one dude with a robot arm smoking a cigarette.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's it. You want something to be sci-fi. Nor you have a dude with a robot arm smoking a cigarette. Well, another character laments that it's just another day in paradise, typically by saying literally, it's another day in paradise and then cut to some poor children dying on the street or something. But yeah like sometimes it can literally just be the smoke-filled room, the inexplicable blips in the background.
Speaker 2:Include the robot arm to make sure people know it's sci-fi.
Speaker 1:Well, a lot of it's setting right, like let's take Ghost in the Shell, for example Pretty early on we have people in their sci-fi room and then their fingers split open to a bunch of little typey fingers. And then that scene instantly you know exactly what this piece is going to be, because their fingers split open and started typing on a keyboard, which is deeply upsetting but also kind of functional. Yeah Well, and like the thing is a lot of it opens with the monologue too.
Speaker 1:And the thing is a lot of. It opens with the monologue too. So, for example, here's the paragraph that describes the Samurai Jack episode I was talking about, about the robot X-49. The episode opens deep in another nondescript city. Rain falls over the branches, hovels and lampposts. An old-fashioned-looking car with a red-eyed robot driver sits in the side of the street. He slips the CD into his radio and techno trumpets starts to steal the air, which seems to slow to a car. Lulu sweet thing, he says, following by why he hates the rain, how it makes him sentimental.
Speaker 1:If that didn't immediately go tone function location, literally listening to jazz music, but techno in an old-fashioned car, while being a robot, complaining about the rain because it makes him think about how it makes him sentimental. And then the next scene you see is the robot he talks about. Initially, robots were wobbly, uncertificated, but then we have robot assassins in coats, hats and wingtips. Their job was to seek out dissidents and eliminate them. He was different. He was built by an eccentric engineer to learn, understand and, worst, feel Right. And that's just like that one episode of Samurai Jack. Sometimes, samurai Jack just feels like being better than it deserves to be. There's some episodes where you're like, oh, this is a skip and a miss. And there's other ones where you're like, oh, we're just going to play with the dynamic lighting in this scene and go hard on it for no reason.
Speaker 1:Well, I think I've gotten everything that I wanted to know out of you as it relates to hard-boiled and noir fiction. Well, yeah, I had to make sure to use up our entire hour that I was trying to prevent.
Speaker 2:Do we still have time for a random question?
Speaker 1:Absolutely, we do which. At some point I'll make you look through our comments and find random questions, but that time is not today. So here is our random question which cartoon character would you?
Speaker 2:like to be best friends with. Oh, which cartoon character would I like to be best friends with?
Speaker 1:Man, I'm so torn on this one Oof. So like Robin Williams' genie is just the rigged answer, right, like not only is it Robin Williams, it's also a literal genie. Like my brain also went like Cosmo from Fairly Oddparents would be hilarious. But now I'm just trying to like it's an exploitive friendship and I'm not okay with that. I need a best friend on my level. Yeah, that's a good point. Can I just say Pikachu?
Speaker 2:Is that, like fair game here, best friends with Pikachu? That still seems like it might be exploitive A little bit. A little bit. I'll let you answer while I try and find a less exploitive cartoon best friend that I would just get along well with. Uh, well see, I think I would like to be uh like jimmy neutron's friend I mean, it's very dangerous.
Speaker 2:That seems exploitive. His inventions backfire and stuff. But no, I mean, he's huge. I would actually really enjoy uh, being his friend, helping him test out these things, like I would enjoy being Carl in his universe.
Speaker 1:First off, that makes sense. Second off, though, I think you picked the wrong genius Because it's like Jimmy's kind of insufferable Right. He's just like you might be right. I'm going Dexter, because Dexter knows he has other flaws and is, quite frankly, alarmingly similar to some of my friends. So I can get that, but I also kind of want like a ride or die cartoon character, best friend and I'm like, hmm, I'm still not sold. You know, I think I nailed it. It took me a while, donatello.
Speaker 2:Donatello Ooh Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, donatello, donatello Right. Like for characters not only is Donatello a seven foot tall ninja turtle, but he'd also actually play Gundam Breaker with me 100%.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, but would he be any good at it? He only has like three fingers on his hands.
Speaker 1:You think he doesn't have like some crazy pressure compensating, compensating tool controller he built for this.
Speaker 2:He's got this. That's a good point.
Speaker 1:He's got this. Not only that, but he's just the most chillest of turtles. I'm sorry, Party Dude is not the chillest turtle.
Speaker 2:No, definitely not.
Speaker 1:So yes, I'm going Donatello the Ninja Turtle, because I think that'd be a good mutual friendship, like I can go out in daylight and he's a ninja. Like it balanced nicely. You are right that Jimmy Neutron is a bit insufferable, but I'm you can commit just because I find someone insufferable, Because, remember, I'd be the Jimmy in this situation, right, Like I would be the one who was insufferable, not the other way around.
Speaker 2:Like really you should have said.
Speaker 1:Jimmy and I should have said Carl and all balance would be set.
Speaker 2:but that would have been pretty funny. Now I'm going to lock it in, jimmy Neutron.
Speaker 1:Alright, and with that, that is this week's episode, I don't know Support some local literary magazines. Go buy a copy of Fusion Fragment, like I mean, like you can afford it. You can afford it you know how you already trade yourself to your pumpkin spice latte. Go buy a literary magazine with your money. That would be your second pumpkin spice latte. You can do this. I believe in all of you.
Speaker 2:I kept wanting to say Fusion Frenzy, but I knew that was not the second F, so I Fusion Fragments, yeah.
Speaker 1:So go check them out. They're awesome.
Speaker 2:Not sponsored.
Speaker 1:Not sponsored, but like you can just download free issues or buy a nice paperback one, so like it's one of those things where it's like it's weird to advertise free services to people, because it's like you have to push energy to sell people on things they get like I worked enough time in student service to be like but seriously, you should go use your free gym and they're like I don't know.
Speaker 1:I'm like it's free, why would you not? But it's like you almost have to like upsell, be like yo check out this cool magazine. I sure probably shouldn't tell you this, but they're open for submissions. But don't tell anyone, right like just between you and me and the internet. Just check it out. Oh, what a random episode. Like we kind of touched on noir. Like noir. Sci-fi would probably be the episode title. Nor Nor sci-fied and shotgun ninjas. How is that your?
Speaker 2:real life.
Speaker 1:Like it's just insane. Your real life was the most wacky thing we talked about. Batman came up multiple times and your real life is the most wacky thing that actually happened. How are you alive? How are you a living person? I don't get it sometimes.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Also, I should probably stop recording.
Speaker 2:Bye.
Speaker 1:Bye.