Deep Space and Dragons
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Deep Space and Dragons
When helping someone becomes your entire relationship, is it still friendship? Also prequels.
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Richard and Karl explore the philosophical question of analyzing relationships objectively, debating whether approaching friendships with analytical detachment is valuable or potentially harmful.
• Karl describes a relationship where he's helped someone significantly but feels minimal emotional connection
• Richard explains how he evaluates friendships based on whether they add value to his life
• Both hosts agree on having limited capacity for deep relationships and needing to prioritize connections
• Different approaches to measuring friendship value, from emotional support to shared interests
• Richard shares his misadventures, including accidentally taking a train to the wrong city
• Extensive discussion of what makes prequels successful versus disappointing in various franchises
• Analysis of Star Wars, Final Destination, and other notable prequel examples
• The importance of exploring new perspectives rather than simply setting up known events
• Random question segment about projecting sensory experiences onto others
• Final thoughts on sounds that instantly make the hosts happier
If you enjoyed our Daggerheart gameplay from last week and want to see more, let us know in the comments! Visit daggerheart.com to try the game for yourself.
Follow all things Richard and Karl, and check out "The Minuet of Sorcery"
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Carl, get to it, do your job.
Speaker 2:I thought it was your job to introduce Deep Space and Dragons. It is Richard and Carl Presents, after all.
Speaker 1:Good job. Now I won't have to hire a union scab to replace you. As my esteemed co-host mentioned. It is Carl, and Richard Presents Deep Space and Dragons. I'm Richard this week, I'm Carl this week, alright, so what's new in the Carlverse?
Speaker 2:Okay Well, so I guess I have a sort of philosophical question for you. I'm not sure how that.
Speaker 1:Last time this resulted in me complaining angrily about tipping for like 20 minutes. So you've just been warned like I have like a whole bit prepared with the what's new with me, but please go. That has something to directly in favor with that train of thought, but go ahead okay.
Speaker 2:so, um, I, I know someone and, uh, we were co-workers. I try to be polite, respectful, friendly, friendly, whatever and they showed that I could trust them and that they respected me Right.
Speaker 1:Seems fake but please continue.
Speaker 2:So so then you know, when they needed help and I had the capacity to help, I would help them, and so I probably have done more for this person than the average friend would do. Like you know, I helped them get a car, I helped them get a job, I helped them find an apartment, and every time it's like they proved again and again that they respected me and that I could trust them. And you know, I talked about unequal relationships when I was talking about the being invited to that funeral. Yes, and, and I inadvertently, uh, created an unequal relationship because to me, the entire foundation of this relationship is that trust and respect. But I'm looking at it and I'm like I'm not really that emotionally involved. It's, it's. It's just about the fact that they need help. I have the capacity to help them, I can trust them, they respect me, so I will help them this must be so fascinating to people who click subscribe because they listened to us play dnd last week.
Speaker 1:We might be doing that more in the future and we may put it on a separate channel. We might not, but I don't know. Click that like Send us messages. That can affect the future. But please continue to give it a disclaimer that there will in fact be no Daggerheart after this story this week, because, oh man.
Speaker 2:Well, so, um thinking about it analytically, um you know, we don't really have that much in common. They don't like.
Speaker 1:D&D or magic. I love how I know exactly who this is, but please continue.
Speaker 2:So they don't like D&D or magic, they don't like anime or manga. What are they? 60? We're not part of each other's core emotional support. Like you know, don't message to see how our days are going. Sometimes it'll be months or maybe even years where we don't talk to each other.
Speaker 2:But I mean, you know, at the end of the day there's that core foundation of the relationship which sounds like a solid foundation of trust and respect, except that the relationship, at least on my side, isn't very personal that's an interesting statement, right but obviously I've helped them out a lot, I've made a huge impact in their lives, and so they would go so far as to say I'm a best friend, even though those last three categories of things that we actually have in common and how often we talk to each other, it's like I I don't know if that's actually best friend territory, as much as it's just like I've helped them out a lot I'm about to say something very savage, okay.
Speaker 1:So if someone's running the analytics, bleach is probably the anime I talked the most about on this show for some reason, and it just makes me think of when momo got stabbed and eisen goes. Admiration's the furthest thing from understanding. We weren't friends, we weren't anything. And I'm like, yeah, they're, they're, you're momo. You're like, yeah, carl, yeah, you're Momo. You're like, yeah, carl's amazing. And you're like, no, what.
Speaker 2:Well, ok, so I mean, my philosophical question is I've noticed that it seems that people get upset when I talk about relationships in this analytical way. I talk about relationships in this analytical way and I'm just wondering do you think there is value in approaching relationships analytically like this, or do you think it's just hurtful and you just shouldn't say anything and just try to be kind, polite and respectful?
Speaker 1:So I need to give a bit of a disclaimer for long-time listeners. So I'm neurodivergent, I am motor dysplexic, adhd on the autistic spectrum. So, as a general rule, the idea that Carl came to me, an autistic supervillain, for whether or not you should judge people analytically, is an interesting choice. I mean, I'm also like a lit major who's like it's like.
Speaker 1:I study emotion so scientifically, like that's my thing, like I got honors for my ability to hear a story and analyze the people in it, cold and impartially, like one of my literal day jobs is listen to upsetting things and restructuring it to cause a emotional reaction I want out of things. So, yes, emotionally analyzing relationships is a thing I do. My support group and friend circle are actually amazing. They make me cry with cry with relative frequency, with good-hearted, nice gestures. So the thing is, in my old age I have like, especially after spending four years in college with various people, both likable and not.
Speaker 1:I have zero tolerance for people who don't add value to my life and I don't mean it just like in a financial social battery system. I mean, does this person improve some aspect of my existence and approval could be a friend of mine? Mess message me today that said, hey, just a heads up. I was at an event and I started dancing because somehow that's when I don't feel shy, when I'm doing belting out pink pony club, that is value to my life. That is objectively adding value as I'm living my life, working on my project to get this message and I'm like this message added value to my existence because stories are valuable. Right, like someone who gives an entertaining.
Speaker 1:Quality of life is a value to me but, like I said, I'm never gonna pass the. Do you judge people objectively? Are you a good person, bad person? Do you analyze people? It can't be me I'm. Yeah, I judge everybody all the time.
Speaker 1:I can't help it, my brain I have to add humanity artificially back into my text to not flag an ai detector. My brother has watched me walk him through. I'm like, all right, we'll re-edit this paragraph to this. It's like that flag the ai detector. I'm like, okay, I have to be 4% sassier on it to not flag the detector. So like for me, yeah, like talking about people objectively, that's how I make sense of the world.
Speaker 1:Like I can easily list the things I like about my friends. I can list the things I dislike. I can list whether they add stress or remove stress One of my best non-Carl friends, who occasionally beats you in the ranking board. Also, you ask the guy who has a hypothetical ranking board of people whether or not it's ethical to judge people.
Speaker 2:But like the person who occasionally beats you on the ranking board.
Speaker 1:This is philosophical, not ethical, yeah, not ethical, yeah, but like, philosophically speaking, the person in my number one place for like my favorite person on earth is also the most reliable person I've ever met. The person in second is you, and you're often tied with the person in third, who's like how can I put this? They're not cold and logical, but they're like a very impassioned person about their causes and we have great arguments, okay, but we also have like a massive overlap of like nerd interests. This is a friend I've mentioned in passing before where they have like a, not a rule, but it's like avoid watching things that don't have any kind of LGBT representation, because it's not that hard when you have a cast of 100 characters to have at least one gay one, right. So it's like that's a person I'll back and forth politics with, but like, yeah, I have no problem if someone should be like, oh, this person, they consider me one of their best friends.
Speaker 1:I'm like I'm such you've heard me give rants off stream. I'm like people who will be like I'm so proud of you and I'll be like what's the name character in my book? And they're like well, I promise I'll read it. I'm like, yeah, you're not. No, like you have a surface level interest in me, and that's fine. There's not that many people on my day off. I'm going to text the message chat to you so I can talk about a subclass homebrew I'm working on, or whatever it is I'm talking about so it's like yeah I have people I'll occasionally message on, like holiday special occasions.
Speaker 1:One acquaintance who, after being like your book, made me no longer care about fiction I kind of fell out of touch with because it's I'm off to be an artist and I'm like well, that's silly, I'm like well I think that fundamentally means we don't really mesh as people, cause, despite being often broke, I legitimately don't care about money, like I need enough to survive.
Speaker 1:And then I'm like, yeah, as mentioned before, as a professional writer I don't make more money right now than I did as a kitchen manager, but I am a way happier being. I am like profoundly better mental health. Went out for a couple hour walk today. Got a bit of sun on me like sunshine and birds singing. Even when I'm like having a rent related meltdown, I'm still in better mental health than when I had relatively stable income.
Speaker 2:So I think I didn't answer your question, but I'm passing the spotlight back to you oh, I like that oh, I got that from dagger heart and it's great um, well see, uh, this relationship is is in peril because of personality conflicts and, uh, I'm just like, am I rationalizing the potential end of of a what I would consider a friendship? Yes or, uh, am I actually logically and impartially judging a relationship and being like, hmm, this is very one-sided and I don't know if that's healthy?
Speaker 1:Also yes. So I found a contact with a couple of my college friends over the like four years of college, around here too, and on my last day I thought to to myself do I go up to them? Do I try and add some closure? Do I be like it was? We had a really good two years and a shitty third year and a decent fourth year. Do I give like an amical goodbye? And then I had an epiphany looking at my friends who are there to support me and my friends, and the epiphany and I'm gonna use up my f-bomb earlier this week was to quote veget Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z, Abridged Broly Movie Fuck them, they can live their life, I'll live mine, Literally.
Speaker 1:I learned today that if you Google my first name author in Brampton, I show up in the top search results. Yeah. So the reason I say this is anyone on earth can reach out to me with relativies. It's not hard. You, there's a good chance. I show up in your youtube feed, like it's really not hard to get a message to me if you're really trying, right. So I kind of live my life in that way. We're like I'll reach out to people I care about and if people reach out to me great, but I'm not going to put in more energy into a system if it's not worth the system. Like I keep like a cap of 10 friends. Some people just kind of phase out and sometimes it's like I really like you as a person. We get along pretty well. But I don't have it in me to take a two hour bus ride to hang out for half an hour than take a two-hour bus ride home on my day off. Sorry.
Speaker 1:And it's like such a cold, analytical thing to be. Like how long of a bus ride would I go out to hang out with this person? So to go play D&D this weekend it took me a half-hour bus to an hour train to an hour walk. I really care about those people. That is enough time to make it most of the way through to the original Digimon Adventure. That is enough time to beat Mega man X, 1 and 2. So I would rather go spend time with them than beat the original Final Fantasy. They're pretty good people.
Speaker 2:Right, that makes sense.
Speaker 1:I only have enough lifespan left to do everything I've ever done in my life, twice more. I gotta start being cautious with this.
Speaker 2:Anyway, I mean, that's really all that's new with me this week, aside from a mini series review of Final Destination, but that ties into our main actual topic, so I was going to shift the spotlight to you and see what's new in your stage.
Speaker 1:So somewhat prepared remarks, but not really. I want to be an edgy badass, like I've always want to be the Steins Gate guy who's a needlessly elaborate supervillain or Dr Horrible. But I'm not always like, want to be the steins gate guy who's a needlessly elaborate super villain or dr horrible but I'm not right.
Speaker 2:You did flick mud at me one time, then got mad when I tried the same technique against you because your shirt was white yeah, but my problem is so some people are how can I put this?
Speaker 1:I don't want to say defective, that's mean, but some people are boring, inept. And then there's people who are sitcom inept. So in a boring inept person's, like, oh, they're trying to be nice, but they tell you you pick the wrong structure, jack. So odds are, because you have a worst legendary creature, you're not going to win the tournament and they're trying to get your mood down before the tournament starts and it's just level. That ineptness isn't entertaining for anybody involved, right, it's just like oh, they fumbled their social gut crisis. I'm sitcom inept, which means that things that happened to me are too comical that I could ever be an actual villain. Who isn't dr Doofenshmirtz, right? So I'm trying to get to a book, signing a book launch on Redacted Day, right, redacted Day, all right.
Speaker 1:I messed up my previous transit trip to meet up with a friend for an open mic because I missed my train by like three minutes, bummer. So this was a new week, a new location. Location. I'm volunteering at a thing with a friend. I see the train leaving. I run to get on the train. It was an express train in the wrong direction. I ended up in the wrong city and it took me about two hours to get back to my starting point. So I like, sent them a selfie being like. So I ended up going the exact opposite direction and it's mathematically impossible for me to get there in time. I did not intend to ditch you.
Speaker 2:Here I am frowning a selfie with the Welcome to City of Kitchener sign behind me. Did you stop for Krispy Kreme donuts?
Speaker 1:No, because I had to like then get on because the next train wasn't for three hours. I had to because I was like directly between the end of the morning rush and perfect for the evening one, so I had to like get on my go bus that was there immediately to take my hour and a half back bus ride through the countryside home, and it was like a beautiful ride.
Speaker 1:like it was a beautiful breeze I'd never seen this part before like it was no one on the bus. It was a lovely failure home. But whilst I was chilling on my lovely failure at home, reading a book, feeling bad that I let a friend down but also knew that I'd get away with it because they knew I was suffering more than them, because it's not that I ditched them, it's that, instead of being with them to do the fun thing, I'm spending an equal amount of time achieving nothing Right right.
Speaker 1:That was my epiphany today. I'm like man I want to play the antagonist. But I also am the kind of person to just get on the wrong bus and end up in the wrong city on my normal commute like.
Speaker 1:That is an episode of seinfeld that happened to me. I'm the kind of person to lose a boxing match in an inflatable jumpy castle, so I don't get to just be like. I don't get to be be like I don't get to be cool and I don't get to be lame because I'm too busy being ridiculous so to be fair, I did have some uh amateur boxing training uh from a from a friend. I was with you.
Speaker 2:I did the same training well, obviously it stuck better than with me so so where I'm going with this?
Speaker 1:So I ran three Daggerheart one-shots over the last couple weeks. I ran the one with you, I ran one on the weekend and I ran a second solo one, to judge how bad you are at Daggerheart.
Speaker 2:Oh, how bad am I.
Speaker 1:They lived, but that's because I let them tell me what animal their mount was for the cart. And then they brought their mount with them, which absorbed some damage.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:So the difference between success and failure was they brought the NPC.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I had a chance and I did not.
Speaker 1:So honestly, it came down to a single dice roll with you, which made it more epic. I'm happy it ended the way it did.
Speaker 2:Right, I digress so.
Speaker 1:I'm running this session, I'm describing the city that's taking place and I drop the line. It's a kind of city where it's cold and gray, where you just feel the wind. It's basically a glorified rest. Stop along the road and you look across the street and watch a couple people steal a picnic table and one of my friends goes. Oh, it's funny when you tell this story because I know you committed the crime. So it's like you went to chicago, pulled out a gun, shot someone like what's with all the crying here? And I laughed so hard. There was tears in my eyes because it's like, yeah, that's kind of the story is. I'll be like, oh, saskatoon sure sucks. There's just people getting high on the streets.
Speaker 1:Was the person you that's funny but yeah, so that's kind of what my thing has been of reading a lot of dagger heart homebrewing stuff, failing to transport myself to places twice in a row. Like I've been doing a lot of dagger heart homebrewing stuff, failing to transport myself to places twice in a row. Like I've been doing a lot of events, doing a lot of writing, doing a lot of research, doing my work and jobs and things. So like my summer's been pretty awesome. Like I got a birthday present today. That's a punko, fop pop, gundam Epion. That's sitting on my ledge.
Speaker 2:Gundam Epion.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Funko Pop Gundam.
Speaker 2:Epion, but does it have an oversized head?
Speaker 1:Yes, I love it so much Okay.
Speaker 2:So it's like I was. So here's my problem. I'm imagining the SD Gundam at beyond from SD Gundam Online and I'm just like how does that even work? But no, no, no, I can see how regular Gundams would transition to Funko Pops.
Speaker 1:Yeah, ironically, turning a regular Gundam into a Funko Pop gets it pretty close to being the SD Gundam.
Speaker 2:But with an oversized head.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, so long story short, other than it's like. It's so weird because I've been in a good mood. My normal misfortune has become comical to me while it's happening, because it's like you fail to get there twice. I'm like I did, but I managed to pay my rent by writing. I was able to turn words into groceries. That's great. That is an awesome feeling. So, of course, I'm in the middle of, of course, on terrorism, fired, I'm inhaling smoke because I missed my train. That's balance, I can handle. That that's great. But yeah, pivoting from that, I do, although I do find it funny that I keep running this Daggerheart intro adventure and then being to like people. It's like it's funny because we predicted it, like how long the adventure would take. It's like, oh yeah, when you add five people, it definitely took the full time in the session, zero and then straight.
Speaker 1:So I had to invent a guard for them to have a dramatic backstory with, for them to assassinate, and it was beautiful and one party member played a clank, which is a little robot man that was a horrifying brought to life toaster, and they ended up chopping up the body outside the barrier of the town and feeding it into the toaster. Jeez, and I'm like, oh, wow, wow. And the thing is, I don't mind when parties murder, hobo together, right, like they're fighting on the half of the empire, and then they take this guard. And then they had a flashback where the guard beat up one of their, one of their uncles, when the farms got taken over. So then they killed and executed this guard and I'm like this is this is the most competent teamwork I've ever seen.
Speaker 1:You're not sitting in a room debating how to open. You're doing stuff, yes, and at one point one part of members like do I, do they smell it? I'm like, well, I did say it was a barrier around the town. So no, you just toasted this man. There's no remains left because they're not going to think. You shoved it into a human-sized toaster oven and walked away.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, and even though I gave, them two murder wraiths.
Speaker 1:The fight didn't quite like. The fight went pretty well for them. I don't think anyone was in too much damage of dying. There was a moment where the rogue dodged five attacks and they basically goku ultra instinct around some swords. Nice, like they're playing this frog assassin. That was from captain laser hawk, a blood dragon remix. So it's like literally like an assassin, creed assassin, but a frog and his name is bullfrog. Okay, so the player was like just assassin and then had like a full monologue when they got jumped by these frog ambushers and the party called them assassins. It's like they don't have formal training. What are you talking about? You have to earn this title. So it's one of my favorite sessions I ever ran and I'm like part of it is new game engine makes me happy, but part of it is people were in top form.
Speaker 2:Oh, I actually I do have something else new, uh, I mean, it's a couple weeks old now already, but, um, I don't know if you've ever heard of the game system mutants and masterminds yes uh, character creation was incredibly complex and I had no idea if I had done what I wanted to do.
Speaker 2:Uh, but my DM was very competent and so, after session, zero, uh, we, we did our first session and, um, I really love uh, uh, parasite. Yeah, parasite X, I think, is the enemy Parasite, the maximum Parasite, the maximum, that's what it is, where the guy gets the parasite in his arm, yeah, and then, yeah, it's like extendy whip arms. So I basically I made that character very.
Speaker 1:I like that so my weird DMing hot take is I kind of love when players are just like I'm going to run this fictional character but change just enough details to fit in the setting. I'm like that is such good advice for new players to just be like I'm going to be Sterling Archer. I'm like awesome as a DM, I can work with that so easy.
Speaker 2:And the first thing to note about Mutants and Masterminds I find it very interesting that there's no hit point system.
Speaker 2:Okay, minds, I find it very interesting that there's no hit point system. Uh, like I, I appreciate the hit point system in dagger heart, uh, but a whole like it. It made it feel a lot more tense than mass mutants and mutants and master minds, uh. But then at the same time it was like I felt like I mean, I guess maybe I'm not, because Mutants and Masterminds is kind of like a superhero-focused idea. You know, you're supposed to feel like you're this epic hero and then you're getting bruises instead of taking hit points, and then the bruises make you more likely to fail the checks and get the worst result when someone hits you. Yeah, so it's very interesting. It's like you roll for your attack, they roll their check to see how bad the damage is, and then, if it's not that bad, they just get a bruise that subtracts from their check for future attacks, and then, if you fail by like 15 or more, then you basically are out of the fight okay.
Speaker 1:so like um to mini tangent is one of the things I really like about how daggerheart's set up which doesn't get talked about at all, because it's a weird thing to like is it really restricts my dm powers and I love being able to blame the game for being mean, because if it's like I have these many points, like my friend literally 3D printed me an abacus so I could show my fear points.
Speaker 1:So when I get to say things like I get these many moves. I only get to make moves in these situations. This fight's completely fair. I'm running at balance, da-da-da-da-da, then I can kill everybody. Or if your rocks fall, everyone dies. As a DM, there's no fun to that. So it's like I enjoy, like it being gamified on my end too. Like me trying. Oh, I almost successfully stole. I successfully stole the carriage. When I ran it one-on-one with the other person. They managed to like 360 no-scope them from the tree, but then the thug actually got away. Oh, yeah, okay. And then my other group just like so they blew the cart up with the person on it and then store the package inside this toaster man. The funny thing is I had the enemy force push the cart and then the player force pushed the cart afterward and it's like look, they force pushed it twice. There's nothing I could do. See, it's like I think that's the most dead I've ever described a player is when someone force pushed a cart into a frogman. But I digress, you were talking mutants.
Speaker 2:Well, no, I just that was the number one thing that stood out to me and also I just thought it was interesting that it's like normally D&D 5th Edition is just the most accessible tabletop RPG, but now, within the past month, it's like I've played Mutants and Masterminds and I've played Daggerheart and it's actually refreshing to see the genuine differences, with Daggerheart actually being surprisingly different than D&D, where Mutants and Masterminds still uses the D20 plus stats well, it's one thing I learned when I was running TTRPG Club is I stopped trying to organize games.
Speaker 1:I started declaring when I would be doing games and if people came or not, that was their problem. Like it's like I'm not hitting you, I'm just going to spin my arms and if I walk into you and you don't move out of the way, it's your fault. But I've kind of like taken that approach to gaming where it's like I want to run this game, who wants to host me running this game and who will be there? I mean, well, not so much my group. There's full group consent, a running joke when people are making their backstories. It's like I want to make a connection with you, the other person has to consent. So one character's, one player's husband literally went oh, we should do this, I don't consent to knowing your character like that. And I'm like yes, that is the rules. I'm like sucks to be you. You're lucky, you're married. Because that was savage.
Speaker 2:That's so funny.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, so prequels.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean that's our actual topic for this week, and I do, like I mentioned Final Destination, the movie series. Apparently there are books too. I don't know if I'm invested enough to try and find and read said books, but apparently it's a whole multiverse. Not multiverse, but a whole cinematic universe, I guess I don't know.
Speaker 1:You have time to read an entire cinematic universe of books. I was about to say, but haven't read mine, except that I know you have, and this doesn't work on you. I love when people haven't read my book. It's such weird extorting energy.
Speaker 2:But so it's like Final Destination 1 had some and then storytelling, but overall was a creative and original idea when it came out.
Speaker 1:Debatable, but yes, it was very creative. It was bad Minority Report.
Speaker 2:I'm pretty sure Final Destination came out first. I don't think it did. Now I've got to look it up, I've got to fact check. We don't fact check very many things, but Minority Report and release dates is something we got to Okay. Minority Report came out in 2002, and Final Destination, I believe, came out in 2000. Yeah, final Destination came out first by two years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the short story, the Minority Report by Philip K Dick, was first published in January 1956.
Speaker 2:Okay, but I mean the movies.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, no one writing a movie has ever read short stories from famous authors.
Speaker 2:Anyways, I liked the idea. I thought it was a creative and original premise.
Speaker 1:I knew that Minority Report was a short story because I literally did the class on this and I'm like I'm going to get them.
Speaker 2:So good, take damage, dang you well, I mean, we're each welcome to our own opinions.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the correct one in Carl's.
Speaker 2:Sometimes it's both. Final Destination 2 was a pretty decent sequel, but it didn't really add anything genuinely new to the idea. So it's a little bit worse than number one to the idea. So it's a little bit worse than number one. Number three I'd actually talked about this already on a previous podcast, but I thought it was going to be campy. It turns out it wasn't campy, but it didn't quite hit the mark in trying to add something new to the franchise or the tone of the other ones and didn't connect to one and two. Final Destination 4 is just straight up the worst one Terrible CGI, no connection to the other stories. I mean interesting ways for people to die, but like that movie was garbage.
Speaker 1:So, like thinking about this episode all day while it's going my leisurely stroll for my free ice coffee, I was thinking about what makes a good prequel and a bad prequel right because, like star wars, episode one, two and three are famously bad prequels.
Speaker 2:People are right or right on that movie, but they're famously okay just I. I guess I should uh get get to the actual point where this connects to that short topic, because final destination five, hereination 5, is a high point for the series and is an excellent prequel, and one of the ways that it does prequel well is it's completely different characters. And then spoiler alert. It's an old movie already, but it ends with the disaster from the first movie.
Speaker 1:See, that is a good solid thing. So I was kind of trying to set you up for that where when I was going with so Star Wars, episode I, ii and III are terrible prequels.
Speaker 2:Right, because there's no stakes. We know that there's characters that are contractually obliged to be in the next movies.
Speaker 1:Well, not just that, but they didn't grasp the tone of the original movies. Instead they were history textbooks read like telenovelas, that didn't have the motif of Scrappy Underdog versus the world. They were just weird, pseudo, weird, pseudo political thrillers, right. Right, you know what's? One of the best prequels ever made is star wars rogue one. So rogue one added a bunch of characters and the only character who lived was darth vader, who killed a bunch of people, right, but? But it was a fantastic movie, even if it only existed to fill a singular literal plot hole. Right, and I think it's because it captured the energy better than any of the prequel or sequel trilogy did, because it was absolutely scrappy, no-name underdogs versus the evil empire at its most powerful way.
Speaker 2:And it's the only time Darth Vader ever got to be cool outside of CG animation yeah, I mean so, like, like I said, um, not specifically about prequels, but Final Destinations 3 and 4. They kind of failed to capture some of the energy of one and two. But then you get to number five and it's like it was super on point. It added one, added new stuff to the idea, which was then picked up by final destination six, which also is probably actually the strongest written movie of the whole franchise. Like final destination six was just such a good movie, but that's a topic for another day, because that it's not a prequel, it's a Well, but you know what is one of the most pointless prequels ever made?
Speaker 1:The four Gundam Origin movies that never made it to Gundam.
Speaker 2:What they never made it to Gundam.
Speaker 1:They were the most convoluted thing I've ever seen. So like we get it, char's the cool character, he's the marquee character. They love to put Char on things Right. I get it. He sells us everything from hot rods to hamburgers. I think Char is an interesting character concept and what they did with him in the time in the 60s 70s was like pretty groundbreaking stuff.
Speaker 1:But when they had him fight a bunch of assassins in knight armor to force a fight scene in a movie that didn't have one, because they needed four movies for his childhood, because apparently every year of his childhood was a John Wick movie, which is just asinine, that's just the worst way you can do a prequel and it's like, yeah, every character in this because they just used only existing characters had to be in a specific starting point. So it's like you're not setting up anything, you're just doing random crap. Where a different kind of Gundam prequel even though it's more of a side story is it in Gundam Thunderbolt, which followed nobody, it was just about us. The people being sent to die on the battlefield probably did a better job. Like one prequel I know that's much better than the original series was Fate Zero. So Fate Stay Night is deeply problematic, which is probably what happens when you get your funding for your game by being pornography and then removing the pornography of CGI dragons later In an artistic choice that can only be considered correct. They did the right thing, doing that Right, right. So it's like they had cool concepts, but like it was a visual novel.
Speaker 1:Then you go to the prequel movie. You're like, okay, we know that this war ended terribly and we know his dad was a badass. But for the prequel movie they like alternate around like five points of view where it's like, ok, we have the villain of the sequel series, we have his dad who dies at the start of it. We have a couple of new characters who we don't see in the sequel but we don't know are dead or not. So it's like we don't know who Weber is is, but we don't know who weber is. He's not in the list of dead bodies either.
Speaker 1:So it's like you're watching and you're like I know half these people die, I know half these people become terrible people after this and I have no idea who the hell these people are. And it was like they did like a gripping, political, magical thriller, murder mystery miniseries. I'm like this isn't just the superior version of this story by like a lot like. This prequel is just better than the original and I've never seen a prequel where I'm just like. This is the superior piece of media Because you took the ideas and the themes and you pulled the teenagers in the high schools out of it and did a serious, grounded piece with it instead.
Speaker 2:Okay, um shift gears a little bit.
Speaker 1:Um.
Speaker 2:Lord of the Rings uh the movies, widely considered one of the best films ever made.
Speaker 1:I am not paid enough to say anything. Contrary to that, I haven't seen something as good as the lord of the rings trilogy until the dune duology came out, and I'm not actually sure that's as good so much as the lord of the rings is just slowly, through time, taking up less bandwidth in my brain.
Speaker 2:That's fair, but so, in a similar vein to Minority Report being written as a short story before Final Destination, the Hobbit was made as a movie, as a prequel, but the book was actually written first. Does that movie as a prequel, but the book was actually written first?
Speaker 1:Does that count as a prequel? So we're counting as a prequel because they did the same thing as Char the Origin, so like yes, Char had a backstory that was shown in original Gundam, right.
Speaker 1:And then if you read the Char, like Gundam, the Origin manga, the first like 20 chapters are like the Char stuff. Okay, but it's a prequel because they did all this stupid bullshit, like they literally went out of their way to have scenes to set up Lord of the Rings that weren't in the Hobbit. They wrote new scenes to retroactively add to the Hobbit to strike this connection with its direct sequel. They put Legolas in it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they did.
Speaker 1:Why would you? We know who Legolas is. He's better than you. We know who Legolas is. He's from the other movies. So, yeah, it's a prequel, because they rewrote it to be worse.
Speaker 2:I mean prequels. It is really hard to do a good prequel and, like I say, one of the best ways to do a good prequel is to approach the beginning of your series from a different point of view that hasn't really been explored in the original series. I agree, which is why I really really like Final Destination 5. I thought it's a really solid movie and it's an excellent addition to the Final Destination franchise.
Speaker 1:Well, like I was saying, with my deep hatred of Gundam, the Origin never getting to Gundam versus Fate Zero just being the better version of the story. I think prequels are allowed to keep the villains Okay. They're not allowed to use the hero and they cannot mention side characters that interact for the setting in the first time in their actual piece. So many things, like the Han Solo movie, for example, feel the need to introduce things that would have no logical overlap. It's like if a prequel is trying to sell merch, it's doomed Right. Let's take the Captain Marvel movie, for example.
Speaker 1:That's chronologically a prequel because it's supposed to set up like Nick Fury's backstory, yeah, but they just fill it with random references to other marvel movies, to things that rationally wouldn't have connected yet in any meaningful way. So it's like, yeah, does this change how you think of nick fury? And I'm like no, because nick fury doesn't become important yet and trying to make it important in the future is some weird. Like the idea that you're trying to like look at references that don't exist yet is just so baffling. It's like they actually did a little bit of that dragon ball daima. So dragon ball daima is a prequel to dragon ball super. Yeah, okay, weird way to word it, but it is so like they know things that happen after daima, that happened in super, like beerus and the universes and things right so they stopped for like a full episode in dragon ball daima, where they just explained the comology and the kais and the universe and the beeruses and things.
Speaker 1:And I'm like, why are you referencing things that we, the audience, know about and don't care about? Like? Why are you explaining that the we, the audience, know about and don't care about? Like, why are you explaining that the Kai's head out to other universes in this prequel, goku, wouldn't know this yet. But also now you've like wrecked the continuity to inform us of something we already know.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Now, a good prequel I watched a while back was they did a prequel called macross zero, which is a prequel to macross and right. The thing about macross zero is they like show that these aliens from macross were already kind of on earth on ancient relics, because, like, there's this proto-culture that's mentioned throughout the series okay and the main characters are test pilots because they're building the first of those sick transforming planes.
Speaker 1:What's interesting about this prequel is no one knows that there's aliens yet, except like the special ops team that know aliens are coming because they found the macross ship and are like reverse engineering it to build their sick fighters. So it's an interesting story because it's like you see this pilot wash up on this island with the native people and this is like an uninhabited island for the most part, and they know about aliens but they think they're the gods. Ah. So it's like, okay, we're looking at the cosmology, but they're not being like the aliens are coming, hint, hint. They're no. This is all about the context of this movie as a standalone, hmm, which made it very interesting.
Speaker 2:Huh, macross Zero.
Speaker 1:Disney Plus added a bunch of Macross stuff which they still couldn't get the original because Harmony Gold's more powerful than Disney. That's funny. So here's a prequel that completely failed its job, even though it didn't break any of the rules I just listed. Okay, so JJK Zero. Because they released JJK Zero after season one of JJK, I saw it as a prequel. Right who introduces a character that then they shove into the main story later, who they like, just like tries to shove in as the dual agonist in the original JJK as a prequel. I don't think it was a bad movie as a prequel If I didn't know what was happening later in the series.
Speaker 2:Well, so I mean so as a prologue. I don't know everything about it, because in the original manga, the Jujutsu Kaisen, that was like a chapter zero.
Speaker 2:Jujutsu Kaisen, that was chapter 0, yeah it's like a pilot or a prologue and then that character is just basically not in the series until suddenly he's a main character and in that context it was like it was a weird prologue. But even as a prequel it's like it's a pretty solid little arc. But the fact that it feels like it doesn't connect to that character, even though he's so important to the story later at all, I think the thing is that character's so important.
Speaker 1:But also what's weird is it shows Ghetto Like JJ Zero's, like we're going to give all this information about Ghetto, right, yeah? For then the villain to turn and be like surprise, it's not actually Ghetto. But also they do like the hidden inventory flashback as soon as they start season two. So they give us JJK Zero and then they immediately show us an even further back prequel slash flashback.
Speaker 2:So it's like this is just weirdly structured yeah uh, but uh yeah, as far as prequels go like I don't know that jjk0 would, was uh not bad it's weird, like it's not bad, but it's weird.
Speaker 1:It's not bad, but it almost would have been better if he wasn't in it, like I almost wish that JJK didn't bring anything from Zero into it. Jjk finished and then they fused the two together, kind of like how Chainsaw man took his two antagonists and then mixed them back together. Yeah, so here's just a funny prequel though Cruella DeVille's prequel, where they had Dalmatians kill her parents to try and make her an empathetic character.
Speaker 1:Laughing, laughing, laughing, laughing so funny it's so hard to make a prequel if you're a company, because you want to sell birch and like the idea, we're like oh, you're trying to, but this is a person who kills puppies you're using as your protagonist in your movie. What are you even trying to do here?
Speaker 2:yeah, very uh bizarre choice, um, I don't know. Okay, actually, I'm just going to look up most popular.
Speaker 1:Oh, I got a list of prequels in front of me to do this. Oh yeah, Alright, so here's some prequels. So we already covered Star Wars and Lord of the Rings on a row. Didn't take much effort for us to get into those. So, yes, the Hobbit is a prequel if it's on my list of prequels. Did you watch the Fantastic Beasts trilogies? Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:No, they had five movies in total, and the third one did so badly that I don't think the four and five are ever going to get made.
Speaker 1:So here's the thing that drives me nuts about it. Ignoring how JK Rowling is a terrible person, that's not important. I'm divorcing the artists from the media here and just talking about fantastic beasts. The first fantastic beast movie is a good prequel. It's a standalone story about a man finding his fantastic beasts and going on his little adventure with his human buddy. Shows it right, america.
Speaker 1:Dumbledore makes a cameo but it doesn't fuck with anything. Fine movie then right next to try and set up shit and that's my biggest rant about prequels. Don't set up a movie I've already seen. I don't need to know about voldemort's precursor and his homoerotic relationship with Dumbledore and this ghost shot Like stop setting up plot points in your prequel because we know none of it will matter, because by the time this series of prequels end, the darkness has been defeated and every main villain then meets up with Voldemort later when he gets resurrected and every main villain then meets up with Voldemort later when he gets resurrected. So we don't need three movies about some guy named Grindelwald or Dumbledore. We don't. I would have been fine with three movies about a dude who catalogs fantastic beasts and where to find them. You get where I'm going with that. We don't need a trilogy to set up a seven book movie. We've already read seven books, right, alright. The next prequel we got on here is X-Men, first Class, days of Future, past, apocalypse, dark Phoenix.
Speaker 2:See, those ones are interesting because, like I don't remember if we talked about them on our reboot, well, where they're like sequels, but reboot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we did a little bit, but we can go into it but I mean like they're like pre-boot quills so first class was really good right but it was also really good it was also three unrelated movies. It was like magneto, nazi hunter, which was a great movie right xavier welson privilege, which was an okay movie, and mystique in the justice league for some reason. Yeah. So it's like the magneto xavier stuff was fascinating. Everyone else didn't really matter then. Days of future past was doing a lot of setups that wouldn't pay off ever right right and apocalypse was just kind of boring.
Speaker 1:And then dark phoenix. By the time that came around, I simply didn't care anymore. I didn didn't care about Dark Phoenix is hilarious because it released or was written.
Speaker 2:It was way too close to Endgame and way too similar in theme and style to Endgame, so they rewrote it to make it worse, because they didn't want it to be thought of as an Endgame knockoff. It's funny because they keep botching the dark phoenix saga like most popular comic run yeah, uh, and so you know that that one is a bad, bad prequel because, uh, it's external forces so the thing about the X-Men quadrilogy here is I don't know if they were bad prequels or bad movies, because like First Class was a great prequel Dated Futures.
Speaker 1:Past wasn't really a prequel. It was like half prequel, half sequel.
Speaker 2:That one was super interesting in that way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and Apocalypse was just a bad movie. Apocalypse was a bad movie and Dark Phoenix was a bad movie, but I don't know if there are bad prequels. Now here's a good prequel Monster University. And the reason it was a good prequel was pretty straightforward we know nothing about the main characters of Monsters Inc whatsoever. Let's learn about them, right, and they only did it once. Yeah, all right, so our next on our list is Prometheus.
Speaker 1:Oh, so, here's my problem with Prometheus and it's kind of a hot take. Alien vs Predator had a fake backstory for both. That was better. So it's like you made a prequel that doesn't line up with the better movies you've made. Just give up. Just give up. What are you doing? Like prometheus was just a terrible movie I did not enjoy prometheus and I also think it was a bad prequel because it didn't know what alien was about no, no, it really did not.
Speaker 1:Alien is badass. Woman kills alien while living in a horror movie. Like Aliens was a Resident Evil movie in space.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1:It also has Alien Covenant on this list. I'm not even going to dignify that with a discussion, alright. So next we have Bumblebee the Transformers prequel movie. Did you watch that?
Speaker 2:No, I did not.
Speaker 1:So here's what's wrong and right with Bumblebee. Bumblebee was actually one of the better Transformers movies, but also is completely unable to reconcile with the canon of these movies. It simply doesn't work. But it does have the best line in the franchise where I think it might've been John Cena Someone was playing cop dude. Might've been John Cena, might've been Vin Diesel, I don't remember Goes. Why are they're called Decepticons? I don't remember goes. Why are they're called Decepticons? Why are you making a deal with a group that calls themselves Decepticons? So it's like that was a great movie, bad prequel. You know, like some of those were okay prequel, bad movie.
Speaker 2:that was great movie, bad prequel because it just doesn't reconcile with the canon. It doesn't reconcile with the canon.
Speaker 1:It doesn't reconcile with the canon. No one needed a Bumblebee origin movie. They would have been better off If it was a reboot quill. It would have been great If they were just like no, we're just going to start Transformers Fresh here with this Bumblebee movie. Yeah, so then we have Red Dragon the Silence of the Lambs prequel.
Speaker 2:Ah, so then we have Red Dragon. The Silence of the Lambs prequel. Silence of the Lambs and any related media are on my list of movies to watch, but I just I don't know why they just never actually come up. Anthony Hawkins is an amazing actor, but that doesn't really have anything to do with prequels, and this is a weird one.
Speaker 1:Have anything to do with prequels, and this is a weird one. Indiana Jones and the Temples of the Doom, set before Raiders of the Lost Ark, is terrible at being a prequel, because I wasn't aware.
Speaker 2:Uh yeah, I mean the chronological order doesn't really matter, Matter.
Speaker 1:Yup, and then we got. Apparently there is a King's man prequel that I never saw called the King's man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I thought that looked like an interesting movie, but I also didn't actually watch it either.
Speaker 1:Here's one Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
Speaker 2:Is that the one with James Franco?
Speaker 1:Yes, and the talking monkey who screams and talks of the Apes. Is that the one with James Franco?
Speaker 2:Yes, and the talking monkey, who screams, talks for the first time and Melville gets bullied by a monkey. I enjoyed that movie. Actually, I thought it was pretty good. That's just a good prequel, but I've never actually seen Planet of the Apes.
Speaker 1:It's also a reboot quill Straight up yeah that's true, so wrong episode so a pre-boot.
Speaker 2:I think that counts as a pre-boot.
Speaker 1:Cool Sure, but then because they have, like Donna, planet of the Apes and then like world, like it turns into Planet of the Apes, Eventually they get there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't think you watch Game of Thrones, Warhouse of the Dragon, so this will mean nothing to you.
Speaker 2:No, I did not watch either of those.
Speaker 1:Ha ha, lightyear, the prequel story for the fake buzz Like ah, the pitch meeting for Lightyear. Please just go watch Rian Johnson instead of hearing us talk about Lightyear, because I cannot put it better than him about wait, wouldn't you want to socks the cat toy? And isn't he over the top action character?
Speaker 2:and because money light year exists, because money, yeah uh, light year is definitely a example of a bad prequel. Bad movie, uh, it does not make. If that is the movie that andy watched as a child that made him love buzz lightyear, he, buzz lightyear, didn't do anything noteworthy to make him the the de facto action figure for that movie.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Now on. Something that is interesting is that so they did Godzilla, Then they did Godzilla, King of the Monsters. Then they did like they went further back in time to do a King Kong movie, so they could do Godzilla vs Kong. So they could do the Monarch spinoff show, so they could do Godzilla vs Kong 2, where a monkey with a robot arm throws another monkey at a giant ice lizard.
Speaker 1:Right, Great prequel but weird context Because they had to do a prequel to Godzilla that was a reboot of King Kong. To put them in the same universe, mmm, and I'm going to say it did both its jobs perfectly. Because they're like, okay, we need to change King Kong into a kaiju movie so we can have Godzilla versus King Kong Right. It's kind of like in the same way that like calling Captain America prequel to Iron man is technically true but like not at all.
Speaker 2:Right, I mean they're. They're in the same universe, but but it's not really related at all.
Speaker 1:Oh man, we have another Godzilla vs Kong movie coming out and then the licensing has went through to have deals with Pacific Rim and it's incredibly possible that we're going to get Godzilla vs Kong vs the Kaiju of Jaegers. As a thing that happens, they've been slowly wrapping up the technology in all these Godzilla vs Kong movies, so having Jaegers wouldn't make not sense, and they've set up the portals. This makes me so happy. This makes me so happy, carl. I like when giant monkey get punched by giant lizard. That's bad. I read way too much deep, complex, beautiful literary fiction to not just deserve a giant monkey punching a giant lizard. All right. So here's some weird ones. So we got Andor, which is just Rogue One, the series.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I mean, people don't really like Andor that much People love. Andor, really, yeah, all right, I thought it wasn't doing that well, although I guess it did actually get to season two yeah, we already complained about obi-wan?
Speaker 1:well, because it's just terrible yeah we have batman begins, which is a reboot quill, not a prequel. Nice try, nice try list we're on to you. But then we have batman year one, which was like an animated one, and that one I'm gonna get prequel to because, like, oh man, I never watched the movie, but I did read the comic and yeah, it is.
Speaker 1:It is great it's funny because it's a prequel to every batman story, right like they all start after that, except batman begins. So calling year one a prequel, it's like well, what's a prequel to? It's like pick one works pretty well for all of them yeah, it told a nice, neat, self-contained story.
Speaker 2:Uh, that shows you where batman was in the first year of his career and the main character is jim Gordon.
Speaker 1:I think that's really important. Hmm, I wrote a paper on this.
Speaker 2:Like you were saying earlier, one of the best ways to create a proper prequel is to explore the narrative from someone's point of view that has not been explored so far. Exactly so making Jim Gordon the main character just makes sense if you actually want to be able to a slot it into any of the other timelines or, b just make a you know solid story agree, you know what's a weirdly good prequel.
Speaker 1:History of bardock history of bardock it was the best dragon ball z movie. History of bardock though I can see the future one. Uh, history of trunks, you mean? No, so there's history of trunks. And then there was legend of bardock or something. I don't remember what they called it, but it was like bardock. It literally just follows bardock, gets punched by the I can see the future aliens and then tries to warn the saiyans he's gonna blow up the planet. Then See the Future aliens and then tries to warn the Saiyans that he's just going to blow up the planet. Then runs at Frieza and then Frieza blows up the planet. Right, the Bardock story.
Speaker 2:It was pretty good For some reason I thought that was oh, no, History of Trunks. Is Trunks fighting the androids in the future?
Speaker 1:Also a prequel, though? Alright, yeah, follow prequel though. All right, yeah, follow me on this one. It takes place before trunks joins the show. It is absolutely a prequel, somehow you want to disagree, but I'm right no, no, you're, you're right, it's.
Speaker 2:It's like this weird future prequel because it's like he's. It's like this weird future prequel because it's like he's from the future, but it's a prequel to him showing up in the show.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I'd say it is one of the better prequels.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, Everybody loves one arm to go on, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:But if Bulma built him a robot arm, it would have been cooler Well that version of Bulma was dead at that point. No, she was there, she just was busy building a time machine which, admittedly, was a better use of her time. That's what the machine would have been for. Alright, I'm just going to fire through a couple quickly before we get to our wrap-up. And random question Did you ever see Better Call Sal or Breaking Bad?
Speaker 2:I watched most of season one. I didn.
Speaker 1:I've heard it's pretty good, but I've heard it's pretty good. Did not give it the light of day. We have Young Sheldon Objectively Awful.
Speaker 2:Objectively Awful. Don't tell that to my fiancée. She loves Young Sheldon. She probably loves Big Bang Theory too. She also liked the. There's a spin-off of Young Sheldon Mandy's First Marriage or something like that.
Speaker 1:Okay Thing is off of Young Sheldon, that Mandy's first marriage or something like that.
Speaker 2:It's like a prequel to the prequel.
Speaker 1:I'm going to put this out there. I like things that are stupid. Sometimes it's a thing you're allowed to do. You're allowed to like bad things Young Sheldon's bad, just a fact. That's funny, just the fact that it is bad pokemon legends arceus, despite having a tedious startup time, was an amusing pokemon prequel and then to rapid fire a few more. To get into random question gotham everything I hate about a prequel the show five years of foreshadowing things I already knew.
Speaker 2:And then it's like that one also fell prey to the external forces thing, where it's like they're not allowed to specifically name drop certain characters, so it's like, oh, is this guy the Joker? We can't actually say, because nobody can actually be the Joker.
Speaker 1:And then Smallville, not as bad, not as bad Like it had the same problem, except Superman's kind of lame, Not really like Superman. It's like, yeah, he never got to Superman and Smallville was just his own show.
Speaker 2:But it's also more practical to film young clarkett like, I enjoy a lot of the arrowverse stuff that like camped its style, as it were I, I would say I, I, the smallville, overstayed its welcome, having way too many seasons, uh.
Speaker 1:But uh it was also much more willing than Gotham to use its characters.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it used a lot of characters. It had a lot of interesting twists of like him learning his powers and actually exploring his life, growing up and the things that shaped him into the hero that he becomes. But I don't, I don't think it did so much work to set up as much, largely because there aren't that many long running plot arcs outside of the comics uh, for superman to like have set up, I guess well, I think the thing it did that gotham was afraid to do is it's like oh, we're just gonna use brainiac.
Speaker 1:Oh, we're just gonna show dark side. Oh, we're just gonna use lex lewis, like it was willing to just use the superman villains and rewrite them to fit. It was like, oh, we're just going to use Brainiac. Oh, we're just going to show Darkseid. Oh, we're just going to use Lex Luthor, like it was willing to just use the Superman villains and rewrite them to fit into Smallville. So it wasn't like oh, we're not going to do this. Like, oh, no, we're just going to let this Javier kid be the Flash. Oh, we're just going to have Green Arrow in this. We like they put in characters that would have been post superman being superman and just use them like, oh, we're just gonna put in weird kryptonian witches, I don't know like. I see like it was their way of trying to like sitcomify a superhero show and I actually kind of like those shows.
Speaker 1:Like, I'm gonna be honest, the flash went for too many seasons, but I actually really liked it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. But Smallville, like I said, it overstayed its welcome win for too many seasons as well. But at least the first few felt like they were genuinely telling a prequel story of him exploring life growing up.
Speaker 1:And the last couple ones we have. So to jump back to the anime's fear for a bit, we have rion and kenshin, trust and betrayal, which was the ova where they showed kenshin's past.
Speaker 1:So that was cheating because they just took the flashback arc from rion and kenshin and made it into a movie. That's just cheating. That was the best part. And anime if you're listening, because we do manifest things on the show do that like the anime movie of a weird filler villain and the three minions defeated in sequence. Why does naruto have 12 movies and none of them are? We take the kakashi flashback arc that was three episodes worth of stuff and flush it out into a solid two-hour movie. That is by far the best naruto movie they could put out. If it was just kakashi's movie about kakashi with the things they already know happened, and you just animate that and you win, yeah, and then we have, and, and then we have, and then we have the Evangelion 1.0 prequel, sequel, reboot, quill, pseudo canon. It somehow ended well and I'm just.
Speaker 2:I like to give it praise every chance I can that it actually ended well but it's some sort of weird time loop where it's a reboot, sequel, prequel, all wrapped in one. Yeah, and I'm giving it bonus points Fair enough.
Speaker 1:And I don't think there's any video games that immediately come to mind that were video game prequels to other games, like Skyward Sword, I guess, but it was bad. Halo Reach, but it was bad. Red Dead Redemption 2 was a prequel, but no one played that game for the story. Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core was bad. Yeah, every video game prequel that exists is just pointless Like. I searched best video game prequels and it suggested Borderlands, the pre-sequel to me. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:When they're suggesting like amazing video game prequels, like god of war, ascension, kingdom, hearts birthed by sleep, I'm like okay, we're doomed. Video game prequels are just bad. There's just no point in trying to fight it. Yeah, dead space extraction gained nothing for being a prequel. It could have just been a sequel. Could have been nothing, all right. So let's get into our random question. Oh, tales of Symphonia Dawn, of the New World, boo, anywho. Random question time Monologuing it while I find this list. Oh, you have one.
Speaker 2:I have a random question for you. Okay, so not exactly telepathy, but if you had the power to make anyone within, I'm going to say, 60 feet of you and they will hear what you're hearing, or you can swap any sense where it's like, instead of seeing what they're seeing, they will see what you're seeing, what would you do?
Speaker 1:with the sort of sensory projection power. So my immediate first thought is let someone try my driving ability and they'll stop asking me, telling me oh, you can just practice. Be like here, I'm on a bike, we'll switch senses. You're in my body, you're controlling my body, you're piloting my body, I'm in your body, they don't get to pilot your body.
Speaker 2:You're still piloting your body. They just see exactly what you see or hear exactly what you hear, and just don't don't see or hear what their body would be hearing okay.
Speaker 1:So I'm like they're familiar in this situation, kind of sort of yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Like you basically project yourself onto them and then become like they're familiar.
Speaker 1:They see through your eyes I really want to do it to miko. I want to just watch my day, like just check in for a bit to see like what I do outside and what I do inside. Like I I'm really curious like what would happen if a pet just observed things from my point of view for a while. So, checking in on miko, I think I'd just be out, I'd be at the office and just like eyes roll back and miko gets to look around for a second and see what I'm seeing Because he's statistically probably napping. So yeah, I would use that to let pets experience what I experience. And the thing is I have a very rich internal life and a really boring external life. So it's like, yeah, no, most things I'm sensory experiencing are the boring stuff. Now, if I could give someone the uninterrupted stream of consciousness while I'm lying there in bed structuring my D&D campaign, oh the spam I would send you my friend Like, no, no, you don't get this fight sequence and you get to actually see it when I'm picturing.
Speaker 2:Uh, yeah, yeah, that would be.
Speaker 1:uh, that'd be interesting, like if I could get someone with a typing speed a direct feed of here's what I'm thinking now. Type it Like the reverse power would be great. This power sucks and I'm mostly just using it to check in on my cat.
Speaker 2:Well, okay, so like if you were able to see what someone else was seeing.
Speaker 1:Still probably not. Like I don't actually care for this particular power, like normally I can abuse the system. But like, yeah, sensory projection, we have cell phones. Like this power is the equivalent to me just telling you to turn on your fucking camera. We all carry gps cameras with audio capture with us at all times. If I really wanted to be like hey, carl, what experience, what I'm experiencing'd just turn up my phone and hold it up and he'd realize I was at his desk.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but wouldn't it be amusing to hear what someone else's voice sounds like when they say it, or if you're in a fight with someone and then they have to watch themselves and try and punch you while technically punching what they're seeing Like they're punching at your face, but they're seeing their fists come at your face Like that'd be funny.
Speaker 1:Don't get me wrong, I'd love to give a character that power. In my Esper story I'm working with Like that's a cool power conceptually and little things like is blue the same through my like. It's just weird that I'm giving my sensory feed Cause I can't really research on that. I would much rather the reverse power of being able to receive information. Yeah, because my body sucks Like ooh you get to know that I'm blind and kind of deaf. I probably send cases to people once in a while.
Speaker 2:Ooh, that would be funny.
Speaker 1:Like don't get me wrong. If you want to fuck with someone, the potential is, like if I add this is my quirk and I need to be a hero. Like I just close my eyes and project it to someone so they go blind while I kick them in the face. Like your ability to like cause car crashes is nearly unlimited, because I'm just sitting in my chair and then someone's driving and suddenly they're just looking at a wall that I mean that's fair, like there's so many ways to kill somebody like here's what you do.
Speaker 1:You go bungee jumping and you jump first. So you, once you go off, you send all those senses to somebody you don't know. You're bungee jumping, you just see the ground and sound of falling to your death. You can probably give people heart attacks that way, like if a certain tariff, tariffy. Just felt himself bungee jumping out of nowhere. He'd assume he was dying right? Yeah, probably so.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you give me this power, I'm a villain instantly oof okay or like I see someone going through or I could be nice with it, like if someone's going through like painful surgery and I just sense them, send them my sense of pain, which is fine, yeah, oh, and any employer who ever said you're not that sick, come in gets the feeling of explosive everything. They just get to live through that. So, like you've sold me all this power for its ability to like mentally sabotage and traumatize people, especially if I can send mental imagery. But like there's definitely the version where I just slam my thumb into a drawer, like the time I broke my thumbnail while you're feeling my sense of pain, like, oh, especially, if it's like limitless range.
Speaker 1:It's like, technically, a death note.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean I haven't put that much thought into the power. I said 60 feet, but Alright.
Speaker 1:Well, 60 feet makes this way worse. Oh, 60 feet, like if I. Well, 60 feet makes this way worse. Oh, 60 feet, like if I could do it to anyone anywhere. It is an insane villain power. 60 feet means I have to, like awkwardly, sneak up on people to start messing with them and torturing them, like the empathy one where I just send them my positive sensation so they don't suffer. Like I'll just give you my sense of taste while you're eating lettuce. Oh, they don't suffer. Like I'll just give you my sense of taste while you're eating lettuce. Oh, like it's a pretty good yeah, I mean skill, although that moment where I'm like, yeah, you can just have my senses, you're like you feel this pain all the time. Oh god, it ended up like, uh-oh, I should go to a doctor, as you're saying the other day. It's like what if I'm just always in constant pain, but I'm toned it out and I give it to a normal person and they just drop to the floor and start convulsing?
Speaker 2:I mean it's foolish to think that I am a supreme human that can just survive something that normal people find unbearable. But at the same time I always kind of wonder, because sometimes people just seem like they're little bitches.
Speaker 1:I don't fuck with people so much so. So then the sensation of my teeth, where I have an extra tooth. Because my brain is absolutely just toned that out at this point, Right right. That was a good random question.
Speaker 2:Have you found an official random person? I mean, I guess I am an official part of this podcast, but yeah, this is a fun one.
Speaker 1:What is a sound that makes you instantly feel 10% happier?
Speaker 2:A sound that makes me feel 10% happier.
Speaker 1:Coffee maker for me. First thing in the morning I hear my roommate making coffee Beautiful.
Speaker 2:Hmm.
Speaker 1:The Game Boy Advance starting jingle dude, uh yeah. A birthday present I got was one of those like retro Game Boy Advance starting jingle dude, uh yeah. A birthday present I got was one of those like retro Game Boy-shaped emulators that has like all the Game Boy and Super Nintendo games on them, but it's shaped like a Game Boy and I was playing around with it on the couch yesterday. I'm like, yeah, no, every time I hear the Game Boy ting, I instantly get 10% happier.
Speaker 2:Um, this one. It doesn't come up very often, but the hidden GameCube startup sound, the one that's like the monkey yeah, you hold this button as it's starting up and then it's like a weird different thing. It's like why, what's up with that Easter egg? I've never looked into it, but I think it's funny and it makes me happy when, when it does come up yep, all right, I think that is it.
Speaker 1:So, for those tuning in, if you listened to our entire episode and we didn't play any dagger heart, I'm sorry, message us about that, because that'll let us know where your hearts lie and I mean there may be more Daggerheart in the pipeline, because that was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:We at least talked about it for a while. Also, we have a random question segment for new listeners. Send me a random question, either email type Richard, into Google. You have a decent shot Like Richard Arthur Canada. You might get me Post it on the comments. Click the button in every video description and you can win possibly Deep Space and Dragons merch, which I need to get updated at some point. Also, if you just send me the phrase send me a free copy of the Waltz of Blades. I will Just straight up.
Speaker 2:Richard Kivis, k-e-v-i-s Yep Author. Let's see what comes up. Richard A J Kavis, canadian author. A leading Canadian sci-fi and fantasy author. Games, stories, games, tips and services. That brought me right to your website, oh.
Speaker 1:I was hoping another website had all those nice things on it.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:The one that shocked me today is if you go, richard Brampton, author, I show up, you don't actually need my last name. You just need the description of where I am and it works.
Speaker 2:Richard Brampton. Author. Well, I mean, hmm, maybe it's just See. So I specifically actually to prove a point, mostly to myself, but I use DuckDuckGo on my phone instead of Google. I don't really have a good reason. They're like, yeah, we're a privacy browser, so I'll allow it, and because it's a privacy browser, their algorithm doesn't really know anything about me, and so like, obviously I talk to you a lot and so, uh, google's algorithm would know that I am connected to you in some way, but duck duck go does not.
Speaker 1:So well, actually you're over explaining it because I actually have to set up google to find me. So if you use google, it would worked. It's not like secret police data. I click the button to be registered on Google.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, but I mean, like I, being in Canada and having an active connection to you, my algorithm is more likely to find you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I'm saying it hurts my feelings for you to be like hey, we're giving a shout out to you at the end of our episode. Yeah, you're not that famous if you put a privacy blocker on it. I'm like why why?
Speaker 2:are you doing this? You are that famous because I found you on DuckDuckGo. That's my point. Oh, I thought you said you did. Wow, I thought you said you didn't and I felt bad.
Speaker 1:Now I'm just a dick. No, no, I deserve to go on the wrong train, like my one friend's. Like how are you in the wrong city? I'm like because I deserve it, because of the things I say and do, in any event, to all of our listeners.
Speaker 2:Richard is easy to find, even if you're using some sort of uh, obscure I got so defensive for no reason.
Speaker 1:Uh, this is what happens when you bully people in junior high they never recover. I got called rat tooth rich once and I'm now a professional author to undo the psychological damage that caused. I will never be mentally healthy, despite monthly therapy, jesus. But seriously, drink water, live good lives, support local literary magazines, I guess. Oh, also, shout out to Daggerheart, go to daggerheartcom and you can get free play stuff to try the game. I don't know, they don't sponsor us, but I've been using their stuff all week.
Speaker 1:Yeah, shout out to Daggerheart, because that was a lot of fun and it's something new and fresh, uh, compared to the the daggerheart grabbed both mike murrells and another one of the lead 5e developers that recently stopped working at wizards for their dev team, huh. So they're just like oh, that's such a flex, such a funny flex. Hey, 5e was your bestselling version. Good thing we took the people who did that Idiots.
Speaker 1:Wizards, please hire me someday, if you still exist. Oh, now, if Daggerheart wanted to hire me, I would like abandon my life and go do that. Just me, miko, on a carry-on and hoping for the best, bye, bye. You know how wild it would be to go to the States right now, miko, on a carry on and hoping for the best, bye, bye.
Speaker 2:You know how wild it would be to go to the States right now. Yeah, oh, that would be.
