Deep Space and Dragons

From Hospital Halls To Hunter Exams: Nerd Life, Grad School, And Dinosaurs

• Richard Kevis & Karl

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We start with Karl’s medical saga, an MRI, a string of specialists, and the relief of returning to work, then veer into adaptations, fandom, and why some worlds are easier to live in than others. Along the way we argue for better theme parks, smarter ethics, and monsters that make your party sweat.

• third nerve palsy scare, MRI, neurologist referral, hospital recovery, back-to-work reset
• platelet whiplash, vaccine necessity, RFK Jr rhetoric critique
• Jurassic Park book vs film, adaptation trade-offs, Hammond and Malcolm contrasts
• product placement ethics, advertising to children, immersion vs commerce
• grad school survival, double-speed audiobooks, slash fiction and gender lenses
• Harry Potter immersion, Star Wars breakpoints, Jurassic Park core fantasy
• Netflix One Piece wins through ocean, ports, and pirates
• research threads on Gattaca, eugenics, Neuralink, Ghost in the Shell
• worldbuilding that does the homework, Fullmetal’s alchemy nods
• Daggerheart design: split-the-party golem, flexible builds, four humors flavor
• civic rant: school lunches, inequality, practical fixes through design
• immersive park pitches: Digimon AR world, Hunter Exam live run, Duelist Kingdom LARP

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SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to Carl and Richard present Deep Space and Dragons, if you're dyslexic enough. I'm Richard, not quite dyslexic enough.

SPEAKER_03:

And I am Carl, and I mean I don't think I'm dyslexic at all, but I mean maybe I do randomly mix up numbers sometimes. I hear that's pretty common though.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean you never actually got checked, so you could be crazy. So as we get into today's episode, for those listening in, congratulations. You've listened to us talk a lot. I'll get a bit in a bit more into a monologue about that when we get to the what's new with me. But I'm gonna start with my zombie vampire survivor colleague. What is new with Carl with a K?

SPEAKER_03:

Uh well, you know, um So I I I had the policy of the third nerve in my eye, which caused double vision and and eye droopiness and blah blah blah blah blah whatever. Uh but according to the doctors, I'm fairly young. Um I like how that's it like full stop. Well, according to the doctors, I'm young. That's it. Anyways, uh you know, that's a medical diagnosis, you know, anyways, uh but the the issue cleared up fairly quickly. Uh I haven't had any repeat issues issues, but uh my surgeon referred me to an optometrist. Ophtometrist, neuro ophthalmologist. Uh and I'm I maybe I should look it up and see what specifically a neuro ophthalmologist does that an ophthalmologist doesn't. Because it seemed like they ran all the same tests and told me all the same answers, but whatever. But you don't know you're not a doctor.

SPEAKER_00:

I am not a doctor, that is because before this you thought you were old, but now game changer. I mean I would enjoy a medical professional looking me dead in the eyes and telling me I'm young. I think that would be good for me psychologically.

SPEAKER_03:

So, um I I see the neuro ophthalmologist, they don't really have any actual concrete answers for me about what what happened. Uh they refer me to get an MRI. Um and I I don't know if it was someone's misfortune or what, but there was a cancellation, and so instead of in two weeks, I got the MRI in about like four days.

SPEAKER_00:

Nice. For those unaware, MRIs involve magnets.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, yeah. So I mean if you want to hear uh uh the full details of the MRI itself, I mean you can listen to our our uh Carl and Carl and Richard play Daggerheart podcast.

SPEAKER_00:

I I I need to clarify. So your sales pitch was, and imagine if McDonald's did something similar. If you're interested in this answer about my medical problem, go watch us play a TTRPG, would be like a McDonald's commercial going, and if you're interested in our Big Mac, you should go to McDonald's's opera, and I'm like, what that's hilarious because it's true. I go watch an opera put on by McDonald's out of sheer academic curiosity.

SPEAKER_03:

But but anyway, um, so the results got to the neuro ophthalmologists, right? So I'm like, uh, I'm laying in bed, my phone rings, private name, private number, it's like uh either this is whether I live or die, or it's spam, it's impossible to tell which. Yeah, impossible to tell. I mean, at the time I wasn't thinking that it could even be a doctor, I was just like, uh, someone private numbers calling me, it's whatever. But they left me a voicemail and they're like, yeah, no, we we need to talk about your results. I'm like, oh, okay, well. Uh, and I was actually just about to call them back when they called me back, you know, several hours later. Um, and they're like, okay, uh, you know, nothing too concerning about your uh results here. Uh but uh I did refer you to another specialist, a neurologist. Um and I was like, oh, okay, uh that's that's good. She's like, yeah, yeah, I just I really wanted to let you know, uh, because he works for like the MS Society or something like that. I I maybe I should have been paying paying more attention to written. We just don't want you to get we just didn't want you to get freaked out when you receive a letter uh from the MS Society saying you got an appointment with this neurologist, because you know we don't think you have MS, but we wanted the second opinion.

SPEAKER_00:

To be fair, you'd be like, oh no. Like, because you're a pretty subdue person, your reaction would be like, oh. And that's about as far as it goes, because you lack a dramatic flair. But I would have freaked the hell out. I would have freaked the hell out for you receiving the MS letter.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I haven't actually uh received said MS letter yet, uh, but I do think it's funny that it looks like the optomagist referred me to the ophthalmist, referred me to the neuro optomologist, ophthalmologist, referred me to a neurologist. Uh it's like it's it's a chain of uh specialists. Uh but I mean, besides that, well, what what's actually like new with me and not just kind of general nerdy stuff that I've just been watching lots of movie and TV shows during my time off, uh, is that I uh I returned to work. Why? And uh well the the sooner I get back to normal, the sooner I can get back to normal. And actually, the first two days were kind of rough. Uh, but today I'm I'm feeling great, which is good because uh today is is a very spooky day, no matter what day you're listening to this podcast.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, now we actually have to mention as Halloween in the title, but moving on from that. I do have to say though, so like I'm anti-capitalist to a certain extent because I'm in the liberal arts and it's corrupted me. And my first thought is like, how many organs do you have to lose to get two weeks off? Because one wasn't enough. And just think about that for a second, that you didn't lose enough organs to take as much time off as the average CEO takes off every month.

SPEAKER_03:

No, I I I I took a full two weeks off. I don't believe you. I mean the first week was was spent mostly in the hospital.

SPEAKER_00:

It's not time off if you're in the hospital. It's being in the hospital.

SPEAKER_03:

Ah so I I I went into the hospital on uh the Friday before Thanksgiving in Canada.

SPEAKER_00:

The real Thanksgiving.

SPEAKER_03:

Which is important because because it's it's different than Thanksgiving in the United States.

SPEAKER_00:

But it has an equal amount of genocide behind it.

SPEAKER_03:

Anyway. I don't know if I'm if I mentioned this at all, but apparently on long weekends, uh the hospital gets uh really overcrowded. Yes, the stick gets messed up. So then there are are lots of people who end up on hospital beds in like the hallways. Uh fortunately for me, my operation was scheduled like months in advance, and they had an uh observation room set up for me so that I can, you know, maybe they would make sure I'm not dying or whatever. Uh but like the nurses and stuff were like, yeah, it's a good thing you're not in the hallway of tears.

SPEAKER_00:

And it's like, oh yeah, stealing that for a TTRPG location, that's good.

SPEAKER_03:

But uh but anyways, um initially when I got the surgery, I thought that um I was going to be uh in the hospital for like less than a day, you know, going for my surgery, and then like, okay, you can go home now. Then I have my pre-surgery meetings like, oh no, no, you'll be in the hospital for two to three days.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, because you had an organ removed, idiot. Not for getting the organ removed, but for thinking it's like, oh, I can walk it off. You're not a Chia Madara. You don't can't just take eyes and plug them in USB style and continue mid-conversation. I'm still mad about that.

SPEAKER_03:

But so then I ended up being in the hospital six days, and then uh I I actually had to ask them if I could be discharged on the sixth day, because I was like, no, I'm I'm not eating a lot, but I'm actually eating solid food and and like I'm not in that much pain. I could just take Tylenol, so I'll be fine, okay, at home. Because, you know, in the hospital, uh it's like a the hospital isn't a terrible place to spend time, but it's also not a great place to spend time uh overhearing all these other people's horrible medical diagnoses and problems and stuff, and it's you know, it's not super private, and you're wearing a hospital gown that has an open back for like weeks on end.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, I get it. No one enjoys being in the hospital. And if someone does enjoy being in the hospital, they really need to worry about their home life.

SPEAKER_03:

I mean so I mean the hospital wasn't like absolutely terrible, but again, uh you know, the sooner I can return to normal, the sooner when I can return to normal and then like get back to living my life and hopefully being uh cured of the the spleenic curse.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, where you're a better person than me, because my first thought is oh, if I'm going to the hospital to get an organ removed, I'm staying on like my EA to recover as long as possible because I've been paying into this service, and fuck 'em. And then I'd write another book.

SPEAKER_03:

Uh but I mean, so I mean I am I am slightly concerned about the whole neurologist thing because uh the the curse on my splene seems to be uh kicking back, and now instead of having low platelets, I have uh high platelets. Uh but the uh hematologist hasn't actually called to say that he's concerned or anything yet, so maybe it's just part of the normal process of restabilizing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

You know what my first thought is, which is objectively funny to me though, is I'm like, oh now you have too high of platelets, and the solution is leeches. Maybe. Like obviously, clearly, the solution now is bloodletting, because the problem before is if you got cut you'd bleed to death. So clearly the solution now is to make you bleed, right? Is that how that works?

SPEAKER_03:

Uh but so anyway, so so I've I have returned to work because again, uh, you know, like uh just laying around for a month is like going back to work was uh I was less painful for my actual like the area that it I had my surgery on than it was just for my back because I had been like literally laying down for like two weeks. That makes sense. And hadn't really done much for the two weeks prior because I had that time off too, or than the actual surgery pain. Uh I mean I am still being careful not to overstring myself for the surgery purposes, but it was like, ugh.

SPEAKER_00:

Um I for one am glad you're alive, but we don't actually know our audience's thoughts on this. So please comment whether or not you're happy that Carl survived below the episode, so we'll know that you appreciate him being alive still.

SPEAKER_03:

Uh but I mean besides that, yeah, I mean I'm basically just returning normal and you know I I had a lot of time to to well I only read one book while I was off from from work. Uh watched a few TV shows, uh, but only read one book. Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

And I'm assuming that book was The Waltz of Blades by Richard A.J. Givis.

SPEAKER_03:

No, I've already read that book. I read Jurassic Park.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh man, that came up in class yesterday. Jurassic Park is my own work. Never my own work.

SPEAKER_03:

Well why was your class talking about Jurassic Park? Is it because of the cool touchscreen idea they had where it was a laser lattice?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh unfortunately no. So the what's new with me is just this week it'd be me sharing random antidotes of the ridiculous stuff I've done in class. Cause I wasn't expecting Master's program to be like, how can I put this? My classes have been AD as ADHD as my own brain for just going all over the place. Huh. So I've recently switched to listening to audiobooks at double speed because of the sheer amount of reading I have to do.

SPEAKER_03:

Makes sense. And I think I've I uh sorry, just as Yeah, go ahead. You have to pay extra if you want to listen on YouTube uh at faster than two times speed. Uh but I I have actually taken the habit of watching boring videos at double speed because then it doesn't take as long to absorb the information.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so like I've been talking about it like I'm carbo loading. Like I'll absorb this book on the commute. So wake up at five, waterboard myself in the shower so I'm functional, feed the cat, feed the me, make coffee, if I'm lucky there'll be food left over in the fridge, and then throw on these audiobooks, being like, Do you want to learn about Watson's book on the double helix? And I'm like, sure. Class is in four hours. If I go and I'll literally set the speed so the book finishes when I arrive at campus. Because I basically just shoved a float-long sub of knowledge in my brain, and now it's just kind of dissolving. Because I'm like, I'm doing this every day, right? Like, this isn't like uh once a week I absorb a book, it's every day I absorb an entire Borkus of content on my way to the campus. And I kind of want to know if I can maintain this power, because absorbing an entire book a day would like actually put a reasonable debt in my reading list.

SPEAKER_02:

If I don't go mad.

SPEAKER_00:

So we're doing this week's class, which the class is like emerging topics, childhood, culture, something, something, something. And for context, I think I told you last week we were doing like fairy tales and food and fairy tales, and I baked a plethora of different eras of gingerbread to give my in presentation on how the different how good the gingerbread is affects the meaning of Hansel and Gretel. So I think I briefly mentioned this in the other podcast that toasting bread crumbs and pouring boiling honey into it and using cinnamon and pepper doesn't make delicious tasting gingerbread.

SPEAKER_03:

Right, right. So it's uh it was a medicine rather than a uh treat like it is nowadays.

SPEAKER_00:

So they go to this witch and are given this medicinal terrible cookie gelatin cube, and you're like, oh, this isn't about Hansel and Gretel being fat kids and being punished for it. This is them trying to not die. Cause like, when you tell here someone be like, and then after this, I'm gonna go to Disneyland, you're like, oh, that's heroic. You're after this, I'm gonna go to Moose Jay, you're like, mmm. I I feel like their life is a little harder, and this is supposed to be read as sad, not glorious. So this week was on Slash Fiction for some unexplicable reason. So we start by So we start by talking about pairings and Harry Potter. And one of my classmates gives this delightful presentation on the different levels of like sexuality and gender dynamics and things like Harry X Ron vs. Harry X Draco versus Harry X Snape, which is deeply problematic. Deeply, deeply problematic. But also makes up a decent percentage of the internet. Right, right. So we do this big presentation on Slash Fiction, and then they have like this selection of videos they pull up where people would take clips from the movies and make like their fan narratives by putting different subtitles and special effects and heart emojis and things.

SPEAKER_01:

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00:

So after we cover that for a bit, we start talking about immersive theme parks. And they start talking about the difference between Harry Potter Land, which is designed to be immersive, and Disneyland, which isn't really as immersive. So in Harry Potter Land, because of the nature of how Harry Potter's written, you can do a lot of things that happen in the books, because a lot of the books are shopping. You can go buy your wand, you can go try your butterbeer, you can run through the woo fake wall, like all of the things that happened because it was a narrative constructed to take place in a world like our own but British, it becomes very easy to emulate that in a theme park. Where if you try and do the same for Star Wars, the immersive Star Wars experience isn't as good because people can break your immersion much easier. It takes one dude in a wife beater and a MAGA hat to realize, oh, I'm not in a galaxy far, far away. Because, like the fundamental fantasy that drives engagement with Harry Potter is escapism. I am an abused kid literally in the closet, and I want to go to a place where I'm accepted.

SPEAKER_01:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

Is Harry Potter a gay narrative? Well, they put it enough straight splaining to balance it out. Can it be read as that? Kid comes out of the closet to a magical world of flamboyantly dressed people? You can make that reading. That reading is fair. That is a fair reading. The terabytes of fan fiction would back that reading. So we're talking So the second presentation is being given on immersive experience and narratives that go outside the source media, right? The idea of like having a show, but also having a theme park and a movie and Twitter accounts and whatever to kind of like raise the scope so it's multimedia immersive. Well, they're making the argument that Harry Potter was immersive and Disneyland was not, but the Jurassic Park experience at Universal Studios is much more immersive. Because the core fantasy behind that is people you hate being eaten by dinosaurs. So if you go in a Jeep and you see animatronic dinosaurs eating people, you've extended past the original text and gotten there. So of course the final question I asked at the presentation is like, well, after this presentation, do you believe we should clone dinosaurs and make a theme park? And they say, without missing a beat, so the last four people lacked vision. But I got this. Because the joke about Jurassic Park is it's like the classic sci-fi, don't want to build the Torment Nexus, and then the tech company announces the Torment Nexus the next week. It's like, yeah, the idea of a dinosaur theme park is objectively sick. And like, even though the core message is don't build a dinosaur theme park, everyone takes away, I want a dinosaur theme park. Well, it would be awesome. Okay. So I got there. I got there.

SPEAKER_03:

There are a lot of uh there are a lot of changes uh that you have to make to adapt uh a novel into a movie. Um and uh the the book uh is definitely um a lot more uh anti-tech giant bioengineering kind of stuff. Um so like the the uh John Hammond character um in in the book he does in fact get eaten by dinosaurs and it feels like his just desserts because even at the very end uh it's he's uh he's blaming all the problems of the park not on his own uh tubris but on the lack of vision of the people that work for him. Um uh I just thought that was a very like it comes off a lot more uh likable in the in the movie. But then the poor lawyer uh in in the book he's like he's kind of a hero. Uh but in the movie they basically reduced him to a joke that gets eaten on a toilet, which I don't even why was that toilet even there? I mean I guess I I don't understand how the car ride ride is supposed to work because people are going to like need to use the washroom on this multi-hour tour.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean you can put a toilet on a bus or a train, GoTransit has toilets.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I know. I mean I I think it was actually about the product placement for for uh those where Ford Explorer Oh we did talk about product placement in a class yesterday too.

SPEAKER_00:

But we were talking about the ethics of advertising to children and how instead of commercials which were more ethical, we've switched to the less ethical strategy of just oh man, we gotta hear about Peter Parker talk about his new Jordans for some reason. And my argument is that is simply worse. Like, if you give someone a tell a child you should buy this is more ethical than a child just watching this and be like, man, I'm gonna be a pro babe later. Uh someday.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. But so it's a spoiler alert for the end of the book. Uh the Ian Malcolm, uh played by Jeff Goldblum in the movie, uh, the Chaostician. What a title presented that right, but it's a dope title nonetheless. Uh so at the end of the first Jurassic Park book, uh, he actually he dies of like sepsis. Uh actually, well side tangent, I'm I'm not sure if we talked about this before.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh but that you came very close to dying of septus and didn't tell me?

SPEAKER_03:

No, no, no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_00:

Because you would.

SPEAKER_03:

That's true, I I would do that, but no, this has to happen. Um but no uh the the scene in the movie where the dinosaur the T-Rex breaks out of his uh cage, right? And uh he the the kids are in the one car, the adults are in the other car, and the T-Rex like is pushing cars around and and he drops the one car off the edge into an enclosure, and I'm like I you know the first time well numerous times you watch the movie, you don't realize it's like Where did this cliff come from? It needed to be there for the movie to happen, but you're you're watching the scene and it's like no seriously, where where are they now? Uh in in the in the book, uh the the T-Rex actually like just throws their cars like picks them up and throws them, and uh you know Malcolm gets picked up by the T-Rex and and the T-Rex isn't really actually interested in hunting him, so he doesn't like actually like try and eat him or anything, just picks him up and throws him, and then he has a broken leg and dies of sepsis at the end of the move of the book. But then then so um so T-Rex shows up as it stomps around and makes like waves in the puddles and whatnot, and it's like, oh man, this is a big dinosaur. Uh and then as Ryan George put it, the T-Rex has an arc where he learns how to be sneaky uh and brick into the information center without being noticed to save the protagonists from the Velociraptors. Anyway, the movies have to deal a lot more with object permanence, and apparently the human brain is will just not notice these kinds of details if it's you know rule of cool enough.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, it's funny, because like my brain's so not tuned in that like I will notice a narrative structure beat and I will harp on it, but I will not notice a color. Like, you're right, you're like, I never would have noticed the cliff. Never in a million years would be like, where did this cliff from from? Because I'd be too busy being angry about the fact that they gave a save the cat moment to a character that didn't have any narrative payoff later. Like, I'm more mad that the cliff didn't represent someone overcoming a struggle. Like, I'm mad that they fell off a cliff and then have to climb up another cliff than I am mad about the existence of a spontaneous cliff. Like, I'm like, Chekhov's cliff needs to have payoff, and you're like, why is there a cliff there? I'm like, you know what? That never occurred to me.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, and then like like like I say, uh the T-Rex shows up uh like like you say initially it's this big scary thing where it stomps and you can hear it coming and it causes like basically mini earthquakes, because it's just this big dinosaur. Rahra. And then suddenly it just it it appears out of nowhere with there's no doorway big enough for this T-Rex to get into this building. Uh like how did he even get into the building? How did it get there unnoticed? Like, how did they not see it until the exact dramatic moment? But at the time when you're watching the movie, um, it just you just accept it because it's like, oh, the heroes needed to be saved, the T-Rex comes back, kills the the Velociraptors, and it kind of becomes a staple of this series in in movie form where the T-Rex shows up at the last minute and does something cool.

SPEAKER_00:

Which I mean to be fair is uh I have such a deep hatred of trailer baiting where it'll be like we wrote the scene in the movie so it looks cool, like in the trailer. And then that scene just shows up at the very end, and you're like, oh, this wasn't anything. Hiss.

SPEAKER_03:

But so anyway, in the book, uh, Ian Malcolm dies of sepsis uh at the very end. And then apparently, I haven't actually read the second book yet, uh, but apparently, uh his editors or someone were upset, so he had to retcon it that Ian Malcolm didn't die and he comes back in the second book.

SPEAKER_00:

Editors be a thing that people just simply forget exist. Like, this comes up a lot in our lit classes of how much was the author and how much was the editor being like, no, you need to adjust this to sell this to an audience. So I don't know if this made into a podcast. And I'm not sh and Disney might sue me for this statement, but there was rumble is going around that when they wrote The Frog Princess, that they had to tone the music down because it was too ethnic and the white kids wouldn't vibe on it as much.

SPEAKER_01:

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00:

The movie where they could proclaim this is our first black Disney princess of all time, they then had to go in and de-ethnic the movie. Just fundamentally, that's that's the kind of editorial oversight you get on these things. But like, on the top of adaptations a bit. So I started going through the Netflix uh Netflix One Piece again because I needed brain soap and I'm tired. But I was watching it after this conversation in class about theme parks and the core fantasy and media products provides and how to like build immersion and build out stories. And you know what the Netflix One Piece does really well, which I think is actually the secret to its success, other than One Piece wasn't that good, so it's easy to make better. Okay. Because they actually filmed on the ocean. So you watch the Netflix one, and the boats are being hit by cannonballs, and they're going to these ports, and you're like, this they added pirates in. Because much like Naruto, One Piece was about pirates, but not really. Like, it was more set-dressing. Like, he never actually did pirate things for most of it. It was, I'ma be a pirate, and this is an excuse to basically One Piece is closer in structure to Star Trek than Pirates of the Caribbean, where like you take your ship, you have your drama on it, and then you go to a wacky planet where adventure happens and you leave to the next wacky planet. Which is why, like, the Island of Hats thing we talked about with magic sets a while back of I'm gonna go to Christmas land. Now I'm off to Desert Land. It's like One Piece was going through all the Mario Worlds. Which for the record, you could make a sick 2D One Piece platformer because they do just go through the Mario Worlds. Like, they literally go to Spooky Land at one point, which is just a boat full of skeletons and like I think we gave I gave the rant too about how like the different biomes are structured a while back, where it was like, yeah, you start in forest land, and then you want the opposites to go to desert land, and like, yeah, no, One Piece follows the platform structure completely. But by adding in like pirates and bars and like they added in a lot to it to make it like more piratey. Weirdly enough, by not whitewashing the cast and being like, look at this character who looks like they're from the Caribbean because they're in the Caribbean because they're pirates, and I'm like, nice. So, like, if you made a One Piece land, for example, you can make a really immersive theme park if you make there be enough water. Like, One Piece land would be lame if it's like a Disneyland one-to-one, you should buy a random One Piece merch. One Piece land would be sick if you had your little island set up and you rode your little boat to your little islands to do your little adventures, and had a was basically a pub crawl between these locations would be sick.

SPEAKER_03:

So funny enough, it's like uh like they even managed to make a 2D platformer out of Aladdin, and Aladdin just doesn't have enough like different scenes to even really do it. Yep. Uh so the idea that it's like One Piece like literally has like what is it, like fifty different at least fifty different islands in over their thousand chapters?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh yeah, and they mention it's a plot.

SPEAKER_03:

I mean how many different islands are there?

SPEAKER_00:

So One Piece has over a hundred named and confirmed islands. And how plot part one of One Piece's structure, this is actually written into the story. So you start on the reverse waterfall, right? Coming from one of the four seas. And each island is a special compass that points to the next island, and there's five routes you can take that give you through a different route of islands to get to the halfway point. So it's literally a like the actual canonical story of One Piece is it's a roguelike to go through the one uh through the first half of the Grand Line. You're literally playing a roguelike of pick one of three islands to go to, to jump from island to island to island, to get to the halfway point, to go island to island to island, and if you find the four glowy rocks, you get to go to the special last island. I think the only reason that platforming game doesn't exist is One Piece isn't done yet, so you wouldn't know what to put on the last island.

SPEAKER_03:

What is the One Piece?

SPEAKER_00:

I'm pretty sure it's a fruit tree or a library or a spaceship. Or a rock with the word friendship on it. Because the real friend the real treasure was the friends you made along the way.

SPEAKER_03:

Oh man.

SPEAKER_00:

But yeah, like on the to- I've been saying a lot of but yeah since this podcast. No, I just realized I probably said but yeah enough times to make a drinking game out of it. Cause that's me trying to segue weird concepts together. So the what's new with me?

SPEAKER_01:

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00:

So I've been in grad school for the last three months? Time has lost a lot of meaning. And one thing I didn't expect about grad school is each class is basically structured the same I give a presentation, I write an outline, and I write a big ass paper. What I wasn't expecting was the sheer breadth of nerdiness that was allowed to me in these classes. So I give my first paper on RFK Jr. and anti-vaxxers and their toxic rhetoric. Because, even though I might get sued from his foundation here, he has no credentials whatsoever and doesn't know what vaccines are. He simply is unaware. Right. At one point he goes on stage and goes, they put a liter of liquid into babies. They don't. The baby would be dead. You can't just put a Pepsiful Pepsi bottle into a child. Also, vaccines work. Just hot take, I know, but people would literally kill for a vaccine. Like Bill Gates, what, just straight up eliminated malaria in his lifetime by vaccinating people?

SPEAKER_03:

Uh just as as a little anecdote for myself here, I'm I'm sure this has made it on another another episode. Um, but uh your spleen protects you from uh certain viruses, uh including meningitis, which um sounds pretty scary. Apparently, your brain gets infected and then you get it.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, at least it's not meningitis.

SPEAKER_03:

Not good.

unknown:

Anyway.

SPEAKER_03:

Oh, well, I'm seeing I'm protected from meningitis, so vaccines are good. Uh the point of the matter is uh that yeah, I I had to get like all they gave me like four vaccines in one day. It was awful, two in each arm. And it's like, okay, thank you. Now my arm, both my arms are gonna be sore for like a week.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, Deku arm going on. But I I I am also definitely uh like pro-vaccine uh just because it's like they they do serve a purpose, they do help protect people, so I think my issue is actually more with if you're anti-vaccine but don't have an alternative, you can shut the hell up. Like that I think is my bigger issue, is people are like, well, what well, children in schools aren't being taught what I want them to, and I'm like, are you gonna give more money to the school? No, then shut the hell up.

SPEAKER_03:

Like Well, yeah, okay, so if someone was an anti-vaxxer and they're like, actually, you know, people should just eat boogers because they have tons of half-digested bacteria in them and could help potentially help auto-immunize people through eating snot.

SPEAKER_00:

If they can show me the paper, I have to accept it though. Like, if they show me the paper and the results, then yes, I'm pro-booging it if the data is in.

SPEAKER_03:

I don't I don't know if we've been over those on the podcast or not. Uh, but there is not actually enough scientific data to to support that point. Don't go around eating people's boogers unless you're doing it for science. Uh, but there aren't enough people willing to participate in that experiment. I think that's true. I think you're wrong.

SPEAKER_00:

I genuinely believe that if you had a presentation and you had like a solid thesis to back it, and you reached out to Canadian uh research grants, you absolutely could get the grants to give people a gift card if they're willing to volunteer to eat booger boogers if you have enough evidence to back this. Or even like like this is a thing you could just do. That is the world we actually live in. You could just do a study, but then people on the fucking news will be like, We're wasting money on these studies. And I'm like, well, too bad that Carl was one person away from learning that eating boogers would cure cancer. He was this close, but you cut the funding because you don't know enough about it, so it makes you angry to know people are researching eating boogers.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, I mean, the the other the other thing is the social stigma around eating boogers. I mean, I don't know if this is actually true, but I heard that those actually one of the barriers to the studies being done is that there aren't people who want to eat it or admit that they eat boogers.

SPEAKER_00:

Whoever told you that is bullish. You have no any college student when offered 20 bucks will do anything. Do you think I Do you honestly think if someone offered me a$20 Tim's card to weekly eat my own boogers, I wouldn't say yes to that? Are you kidding me?

SPEAKER_03:

Uh we weekly eat someone else's boogers. Well, I mean, I don't know. We would need a control group, so you're right. You might you might be in the group that eats their own boogers.

SPEAKER_00:

But the point be, or the ones that eat fake boogers that are just made out of laffy tappy, because we have to double plug this. No. Genuinely think that if you couldn't get enough people to do the study, that's some convenient bullshit. That is someone being like, it's true, but I just haven't got no, you could just go do this study. Go get your license, go to your school, get your bachelor's degree, put out your grant funding and test this. That's how this works.

SPEAKER_03:

Alright, I'll get I'll get started on this multi-year process, but if it ends up curing cancer, uh I'll let you know.

SPEAKER_00:

And if it ends up doing nothing, it should forever shut up people, which is equally valuable. Learning something isn't true is really useful. Fair enough. Uh but yeah, rants aside, like, a lot of my life right now is like there's a conference coming up, and I need to pitch a presentation for this conference, but I also want to multitask and make it my presentation for my science, literature, and art course. And like So, because of how I'm in literature, a lot of my research papers are I pick a work of fiction or non-f like I pick a source text and then build an argument around it to be like Like, for example, I could be looking at Ghosts in the Shell in Neurolink and how Elon Musk is making Ghosts in the Shell of the reality. Is it ethical to put chips in people's brains to fix their disabilities? So, like, a paper like that would be something completely reasonable I could write.

SPEAKER_01:

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm briefly considering writing a paper on whether or not the destiny system from Gundam C Destiny, where we look at people's genetics and put them in jobs, is actually we basically someone in the 1600s wrote about wrote a paper that's the same concept. I kind of want to compare the two and be like, here's the destiny system then and now, and why eugenics simply doesn't work.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, and then there's uh that movie Gattaca. That I like that movie.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, snaps, that's a great thing I could focus on. Like Gattaca would be a good one for me to do a paper on. Yeah, I mean it'd like say it's the same same basic concepts, but more well, I I don't I don't think eugenics papers, but like less giant robots, like Gattaca is definitely a better Ah man, like I put it that on my list, because I'm kind of like putting together a list of like sci-fi things I can write about for this upcoming seminar. But yeah, like my class, for example, had a week on alchemy, and someone gave a presentation on actual Full Metal Alchemist, where I learned that von Hohenheim was an actual alchemist, which is hilarious to me. Like, that's just delightful knowledge to be like. Like, the more I watch this presentation, the more I realize that the author of Full Metal Alchemist actually did her research. Which is the biggest blot twist, because you could just lie to us about alchemy. We're not gonna check.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, I mean, on on the one hand, um, you know, if you're gonna write something, you should just start writing something and get some ideas on the paper. Uh, on the other hand, uh, the greatest and most endearing pieces of fiction, uh, like Lord of the Rings or Full Metal Alchemist, uh, they do have a huge amount of research and forethought put into them, uh, and that makes that world seem much more believable despite the unbelievability of the the contact.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So in my like science, literature, and art class for last well, this week, we talked about this book called The Double Helix, which was written by a Nobel Prize winner. Where he tries so hard to make himself sound like the underdog. And it is wild. Okay. Because like there's a lot of controversy about the book because he like paints all his like scientific coworkers in not flattering lights and makes kind of like the sciences sound like a frat party for some reason. Cause he's just after being like, everyone's writing their equations, but really it's simpler than that. You just have to build a model. So I was at the pub drinking a beer surrounded by hot women, I started piecing together the double helix. People are like, What are you talking? So it's a fantastic read, because it's like we read this book from this guy's point of view, it's like self-biography of why he's a Nobel Prize winner, and he's like trying to frame himself as the underdog, and it's fascinating. Is this book good? No, but it is delightful. Like you get to a bit where he's like, I was so close to figuring out the structure, but then I had a stomachache.

SPEAKER_03:

Ooh, yeah, that's that's quite the underdog moment right there.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Also, he just straight up steals this female scientist paper and calls her like no one wants a feminist in their office. Women are unhinged. And anyway, after she graciously gave me her photographs of the DNA, I was able to build this. It's like, you stole these, didn't you? Y yeah, you stole this, right? Like, you basically confessed on this page, like you said it was a coincidence that you just saw the pictures there when you went to go visit her and then she attacked you. Yeah, she attacked you, and as a side effect knocked you over and your eyes looked at this phot No. No, right? Uh but yeah, grad school is delightful because I wasn't expecting. I just wasn't expecting where things were going. Like, next week, one of our presentations is on gender identity in the Legend of Zelda. Because they made Link the least masculine and least feminine character of all time, so people just project themselves onto Link.

SPEAKER_03:

That makes sense.

SPEAKER_00:

And like Princess Zelda was just the first trans character in a video game. It's kinda hard to argue that Zelda Sheik was not a trans experience. Come on. They literally changed their gender to blend into society.

SPEAKER_03:

Uh uh as a as a funny side note, uh, in the original Zelda game for this uh Nintendo, uh, if you put in uh your character name as Zelda, uh it unlocks hard mode.

SPEAKER_00:

Which is sick. And then what's people are still frustrated that they finally made like a Legend of Zelda game where you played a Zelda and they didn't call it the Legend of Link and forgot to make it good. I know a lot of people were very disappointed when Breath of the Wild came out and you couldn't just choose your character's like body type. And I'm like, yeah, why can't you? Link being male has nothing to do with this narrative, because he doesn't have any voice dialogue, Nintendo. And Nintendo, if you're too cheap to voice your protagonist's dialogue, why not let them be any character?

SPEAKER_03:

So stepping back, that cool Zelda game where you like create shadows of monsters and whatnot, like that wasn't actually good. I I thought it looked super awesome, but it never ended up buying it.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh no one that I know of actually played it or talked to me about it, so I'm assuming I could be wrong. It could have been sick, but no one I I don't know anyone who played it. I know a lot of people. Like, it is wild to hear nothing about something. And then I'm not gonna give my rant again about the new Pokemon game. The new Digimon game was sick. I stand by that. The new Digimon game lets you be whatever gender you want, because they don't care. You can actually just change it from the menu whenever you feel like it. Yeah? So it's like, yeah, you can just push a button and change from bot character type A to character type B. We don't care.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I mean, it doesn't really actually affect gameplay, so why not?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So, like, it's funny because it's like, oh, it's the first game I've ever seen to be like, hey, maybe you don't want you're sick of this voice, and you just want to change it, and you just can. But then Nintendo's just behind on all technology at all times. Uh, my rants on Nintendo aside. So, yeah, a lot of what I've been doing is researching science things, and then researching nerdy things in equal measure. And it's I wasn't expecting this. I really thought I'd be doing more Hemingway and more Dead Poet this and famous author that, and they're just like, hey, want to read this paper about Pokemon? I'm like, yes, what? Hey, what do you mean I get a talk about fanfic pairings? Yes, I want to talk about fanfic pairings. It's great.

SPEAKER_03:

So I mean, it's it's kind of the whole idea that you need to know the rules before you can break them. Um so like even even in like music, it's like you you start with basic music theory, um, but then like you start exploring how other composers have uh tweaked different uh like chord structures or things like that, and how that created new genres of music, and and you can see this progression, but to really truly understand something like in that way, you have to know the basic structure of what it was. That's what I did, right?

SPEAKER_00:

I fully under I was fully expecting to be allowed to write what I wanted to write about in grad school. What caught me off guard is the props being on the same level. So I expect that I can go write a paper on Pokemon or Ghosts in the show or what have you. What I don't expect is when I say the sentence, oh I'm thinking about writing on Ghosts and Show, and them going, Oh yeah, I taught that last year. That's what's catching me off guard, right? Like, when I get into grad school, I was expecting to do what I want because of who I am as a person. I wasn't expecting the same wavelength. I wasn't expecting to go up there and be like, so Naruto and Sasuke is the obvious ship, and then the prof go, well, yeah, that makes sense because a lot of things written for show and jump audiences gives them a chance to project their subconscious desires. So the reason that the author wrote this really intricate relationship between Naruto and Sasuke is largely because Japan is so culture replessed about relationships, and he admits in his own interviews that he doesn't know what male-female relationships are, so he romanticized the shit out of a bromance. Thus the bromance is better written because he lacks relationship experience, as evident from these interviews, and I'm like, I thought you'd have no thoughts on Naruto and Sasuke. Not well thought out, constructive, cited thoughts. Like, it's I just didn't expect to go into a room and be like, here's what I think about Cyberpunk 2077, and the prop be like, uh, actually, you should check out this reading and this reading about it. That's what caught me off guard. Like, imagine you go into your music theory class and be like, my favorite song is Requiem uh Requiem for a Spiral from Guren Logan, and then they're giving you four other references to that.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, and that's true. My uh my music professors when I was in university uh were very much those sticks in the mud.

SPEAKER_00:

So, like in my undergrad, even one professor caught most of my things I was talking about, and the rest of it would just go over their head. And now it's just like, oh, I get handed a silver platter here. One of my profs, like, yeah, I'm gonna take a one-year sabbatical to talk about choose your own adventure novels, and I'm like, oh, that's been my recent hyperfixation. Neat.

SPEAKER_03:

Meanwhile, I'm back here returning to work, which which means uh you know, people smoking crack out our back door and then flashing at the Dairy Queen across the street.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, it's funny because like the people I interact with are more paranoid than the ones you interact with, because like, as you mentioned, yeah, people smoking crack at the street, and people are like, oh, you're going out late in Toronto, and I'm like, I have literally no fear. Like, none, none fears, because it's like, yeah, no, life is great. What are you talking about? It's like I'm so like one of my classmates will be like, I'm so stressed, I have this paper due and then this grading due in my day job, and uh, and I'm just like, Cool, I'm doing the same stuff as you, have two more jobs, and have never been more well rested in my life. What are we talking about? Like, you know what I actually have to do this weekend that I'm procrastinating by having this episode happen? So, I want to get in draft three of that ghostwriting project by midnight because our contract's over, and I want to start up my next contract, and I don't want to have two contracts going at once. So I have to make sense.

SPEAKER_03:

Then tomorrow it's Halloween, so you have to finish the ghostwriting project.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. So I have no Halloween plans. A bunch of my cohort went out to this like holiday spook thing yesterday while there's like outdoors. So I, despite saying I have no fear, have a ton of fear. But not healthy fear. So, Carl, you know me pretty well. What would happen if someone jumped up behind me with a knife and yelled boo?

SPEAKER_03:

Oh, they would they would get punched in the face for sure.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So I'm like, I should not put myself in this situation where people are jumping out behind me and going boo, because there's fight, flight, fawn in the other one. And I'm pretty coded to flight fight at this point due to various dramatic backstory moments.

SPEAKER_03:

So I think it's if there was blood, you would probably throw up and then run away.

SPEAKER_00:

No, if there's blood, I'd probably like make there be more blood, then throw up. Like, they die first, and then I throw up on the corpse of this poor this poor drama intern just trying to like build the resume, gets hit by a fan, and then thrown up on. Because as we know, if spooked, I will hit people with a fan. Not like a fun folding one, like a floor fan. Yeah, well, I mean anything you can get your hands on, really. So, like, they would have been hit by an umbrella, and I'm sorry, that's just a reaction. So, like, they're off at this Halloween thing yesterday, and I'm like, hmm, they're like, You going it? I'm like, nope. It's like you said that so positively. I'm like, yeah, I'm meeting up with my friend to watch the couple new episodes of Hasben Hotel, eat some fajitas, and then go to bed and sleep for 12 hours, it's gonna be great. So that's my life today, is I have to ghost write. My life tomorrow is I have to write these two proposals for this conference and this science literature art class. And had I warned you and like sent you details on this conference, we probably would have spent this episode brainstorming what I can write about. Right, right. So I'm leaning towards an idea. The Gattaca point's really good, actually. That's like, that is a top contender. And then Sunday I have to write some stat blocks for my next ghost writing project. And I am stoked about that. They liked my demo creature. So, the version I didn't use, because I don't want to talk about things in an upcoming project and spoil myself. I'm not under an NDA, this is just like courtesy. But the version I didn't use was this stone golem that when you get it down to a quarter health, it creates a wall of force around you, trapping you in the room with it. And it's designed to like split the party, so half of you is stuck in the bubble and the other half are stuck outside the bubble. And the bubble breaks in three hits. So you have the strategy of do you try and kill the creature you know is half dead because it put up this bubble, or do you try and escape and reunite the party? That's pretty sick, right? Especially since Daggerheart, you get to choose the turn order of who does what. Right, right. And then the final version being like I misinterpreted what they wanted the creature to do, but I gave them a different version anyway, because I wasn't sure.

SPEAKER_01:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

So I have to put out like 20 Daggerheart creatures every couple weeks, and I'm like, sweet. It's not academic writing. I actually get a player out with numbers. And Daggerheart put out the Blood Hunter class for Halloween. Ooh. Which has the werewolf subclass, the ghost hunter subclass, and the other subclass. So I'm probably gonna like and a bunch of blood domain cards.

SPEAKER_03:

Um maybe I should have let uh Leroy Leroy die and created a new character. It could have been interesting.

SPEAKER_00:

I will say though, if you ever want to just switch characters and let your backup character like, if you want to make a new main character, your backup character just turns into an NPC till needed. Because I think it would be kind of funny to start next session with you being a new character who climbs this mountain and finds an abandoned little girl.

SPEAKER_01:

Like there is some pretty funny.

SPEAKER_00:

There is some narrative satisfaction to you making a new character, finding the NPC, while your old character is just off doing side quest-y stuff. Like, there is some fun narrative toys we can play with. It like makes me think of Final Fantasy 8, uh 6, where the party splits into three and you just follow the other characters for a while. So I would absolutely allow that, since it's one-on-one DD, there's a certain like flair to that.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, I don't know. For for now, I'm I'm still happy with Leroy. I'm happy that he did that he did not die in our last session. Sorry, spoiler alerts.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, I am saying though you could make a wolf man character that's aware human that turns into human mode.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

I don't know how that would really work or if it would be cool or not, but I wouldn't stop you. I'm actually been playing around with the blood domain a bit today, because I kinda want to put out a plague doctor class that's Splendor for Healing and Blood for Being Evil. Mmm. And give them like powers themed on the four humors because the more research I do into random crap, the more like inspiration I get for other random crap.

SPEAKER_03:

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00:

Like I did a Pokemon-esque type chart based on 16th century alchemy, and like one of them was like sulfur type, and another one was like Mercury type, and it was like They have this whole thing of how the elements interact that's fascinating. And I do think like more scientifically based than Pokemon, which is funny because there's no science in alchemy, but they think there is. So it was strong against poison, but poison corrupts the moon to make it into the sun. I'm like, what is this math you're smoking? Outside of the pizza place. So yeah, I've just been up to projects, and it's like, time is blint. Like at some point, someone's like, there's like four weeks worth of the term, and like the fuck you just say to me.

SPEAKER_03:

Hmm. Uh the radio station that I listen to the most often in in here is uh they're doing um bag lunch countdown, or how many uh more times you'll have to make lunch for your kid if they go to elementary school in the area.

SPEAKER_00:

That's funny.

SPEAKER_03:

Uh I I think the last I think today is like 135, 135 bag lunches left till the end of the school year.

SPEAKER_00:

So I firmly believe we should just up taxes on everybody and pay for school lunches. So let's put it this way. Say taxes go up, t straight up taxes go up 10%. That doesn't actually affect my day-to-day survival in a meaningful way. I lose like 60 bucks a check. However, that same damage happening to like rich people means children just get to eat, which then takes a massive burden off parents because there's just one less male they have to care about.

SPEAKER_03:

That's true. If you could actually save someone 60 bucks over the course of two weeks, then losing the 60 bucks would be the net same, but they would have less things to worry about.

SPEAKER_00:

So if it we worked out, A, it's a quality for children, because then equally nutrient children mean they're able to study better, do better in school, takes the stress off parents. Most of the funding then comes from rich people because of how percentages work. So I'm like, if I was told I lose$60 a paycheck, so children just got fed. I'm fine with that.

SPEAKER_03:

And that's why you're a communist.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I'm fine with that. Remember the part where you mentioned someone's there's a risk of people just smoking crack near your life? Fun fact, if they were fed through school, they might not be on the street smoking crack right now because they finished school because they weren't hungry every day, they didn't have to drop out to feed themselves, and then end up with like debilitated crack addictions. Like, yeah, I'm not a communist. I just believe that the rich people could pay the poor people more. Like, you still get to be rich in this situation. I want to be very clear. Like, the percentage you lose, you still get your yacht, which I watched this beautiful Josh Johnson special yesterday. So imagine you will. You're a billionaire, right? Billions of dollars. And you drop a billion dollars on a boat, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00:

And then you have a pool on your boat because you're surrounded by water. You you're in a bucket. You bought a bucket. The ocean's around you, you can swim it. No, that water's not good enough. Imagine your dumbass has a billion dollars so you could literally buy yourself a giant robot. But you spend it on a boat to have rooms on it that are crappier than an average apartment because they have to be on a boat. For the privilege of being in water, but not the water around you. And there's like a kitchen on it, it's like crappier than my kitchen in my real-world apartment. It's like a billion dollars, a b billion dollars to have a kitchen net on the ocean. And it's like, uh, these are the people people are like, oh, you're a billionaire because you're a genius. You're like, a genius wouldn't spend that much money to have a crappy apartment on the ocean.

SPEAKER_03:

I I've always kind of wanted a houseboat, though.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. But then you live in it, and it you didn't put a pool on your house boat because you're surrounded by the goddamn ocean. But my point being that I am not saying capitalism's bad. I'm saying people who whine to lower taxes who then would directly benefit off of those taxes suck. It's like I need to I want that$60 because it's more important to me than every child in Canada being fed. I'm like, screw you. I think most of your friends would be like, no, I'm not paying the$60, so less people stab me on the street for food.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, well. But I think uh we're coming up with about an hour here. Alright, so I do have a random question, or I do, but it's not one that was submitted.

SPEAKER_00:

It was one that came up in class yesterday that may extend the length of this podcast drastically.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_00:

What work of fiction do you believe would make the best immersive experience? So, like, say anything work of fiction gets a theme park, and everyone in that theme park are part of the players. Like Harry Potter Land, where everyone's dressed as wizards, and it's like a mix of like LARP and theme park. What work of fiction do you think would make the best immersive experience? That not only is fun to enjoy, but expands the text. Let's you be like a character in the story. What work of fiction would you use? And you can't use Jurassic Park, because that's easily the best idea. That's why they keep trying.

SPEAKER_03:

Um the the very first thing to note is that it it has like you say, it has to be a work of fiction uh that fairly closely mirrors uh our actual day-to-day life, so that other people just wearing their plain clothes won't break the immersion.

SPEAKER_00:

Or the counterpoint is if you go hard in on making people follow rules. So in Disneyland, if you show up dressed as a Disney princess, they will not let you in the park. They will just beat you because you ruined the immersion for other people. So, like, you could go hardcore with it. Like, you could be like, I'm doing Star Wars Land, but you need to come in for a full screening, and if you're not committed to this LARP, you cannot come in.

SPEAKER_03:

I mean, I s I suppose so. If if you're gonna force people to actually like dress up and and be in some sort of character.

SPEAKER_00:

So, like, my first thought for this one, and also in this situation, like the amazing staycast, you have tons of disposable income to set this up. So I am really partial to my Digimon land idea, where we have this theme park, right? That's mostly like a regular park park. Grass, water, biomes, but you're given AR goggles as soon as you go in that show the Digimon around, like Pokemon Ghost style. So when you're wearing the goggles, you interact with the Digimon and they like fuck with the lights and things. So you're given like your Digivice and you're given your like VR partner Digimon. And like if you like like it would be a very AR experience, but part of why I think that IP specifically would work well is it's an IP about creatures living in a parallel world to yours.

SPEAKER_01:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

So like when you have your goggles on, you get to see like the actual digital world stuff. Like you'll like, oh, this is a lovely gondola, and you put your eyes out and you just see a C Demon crushing it to death. I think I could make a really cool Digimon world. Which is ambitious, but a dude in the regular polo shirt's fine because they're not engaging with it, and then you just like watch like this bird thing start eating them. You're like, ha! It's eating your soul. I mean, there's also the obvious one at the Hunger Games theme park where I just kill 12 people.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, I mean, that would be very immersive.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, Mr. Beast is all about watching the Squid Game and realizing, yes, the takeaway for Squid Game is I should run a Squid Game.

SPEAKER_03:

Uh, well, you know, interestingly enough, uh, they're trying to do an American version of Squid Game.

SPEAKER_00:

Of course they are.

SPEAKER_03:

Um And uh Film Theory did a did a theory video about you know what country would actually be best to do a Squid Game. And they're like, oh, actually, you know, the crushing societal debt that is in in Korea is kind of close to the crushing societal debt in North America, so they probably uh probably actually chose a good parallel for their their uh American.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, amazingly enough, America you could probably just do it. That's the thing is corporations have so much legal power right now after Citizens United passed, that if a corporation said you signed a waiver for me to legally kill you, like that's the country I think that's the closest to just being legally around to hunt people for sport when you're rich.

SPEAKER_03:

Oh hmm. So what franchise do I think would make the the best immersive experience?

SPEAKER_00:

I gotta say, 2000 Leagues Under the Sea, you just shove people in a submarine. Pretty cost-efficient way to do it.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, funny enough, I've never actually read 20,000 read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It's a book I do want to read. Uh, but I did read the sequel, The Mysterious Island. Um, that was actually a pretty interesting. You don't actually need to read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to understand what's going on on the Mysterious Island.

SPEAKER_00:

Kind of like you can read the menuette of sorcery without reading the Waltz of Blades, which is available on Amazon. I don't know why I feel self-brooe today, but I do. Or probably because I opened with that MRI bit. Yeah, that would do it. Note to self give someone MRI powers. MRI powers was a sick concept and a terrible concept, and they happened so close together that week. So I saw one where they did a real-world hunter exam. So Hunter Hunter itself would be hard to make an immersive experience of all the Nen and the nonsense. But the first plot arc wouldn't. Right, right. Because you just run a hunter exam. You have them run, you have them steal people's badges. Like most of the things that happened in the first arc of Hunter Hunter, you could just do. So it would be kind of sick to sign up for this three-day hunters exam where you do like a dramatic forest run, you build the quiz tower, you have the badge stealing thing. Like you could you skip the fight tournament at the end because that doesn't really fit well. Instead, I'd have them probably do like four you know, like the Wii fencing where you're on like the foam source on a platform. So I'd probably give them soccer boblers and a platform for the fight at the end. But you could just do a hunter's exam.

SPEAKER_03:

Hmm, that's true, that's true.

SPEAKER_00:

If Aaron is there being like, I don't think this is dumb and I'm not gonna participate. Okay, well you still had to jog for an hour, so guess you're kicked out then.

SPEAKER_03:

I don't know, maybe maybe I'm being too small brained, but I I just uh apparently because like you could just do a Battle City tournament.

SPEAKER_00:

Where you just hand out a bunch of duelists and have to find someone else with a duelist to play cards against.

SPEAKER_03:

Actually, yeah, you're right. I th I think I think Yu-Gi-Oh would actually probably be one of the one of the best most immersive experiences where you're just like wandering around in the island because modern technology, aside from the holograms, can actually uh affect. But yeah, yeah, yeah. I I Yu-Gi-Oh! I I think I would go with Yu-Gi-Oh!

SPEAKER_00:

Awesome. I gave a few examples, and I do think I'm actually leaning towards the hunter exam, because I do think that would be like with no AR, no fancy, if you like. Straight up ran it, but did your sets really well. And I would absolutely pay professional cosplayers to just be in the hunter exam in character. Like, it would be sick to do John Your Log and just see like a couple really good Hunter Hunter Killia and Lirio cosplays just mixed in with the regular competitors would be kind of awesome.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, but I mean, I think it would also be kind of awesome, like Yu-Gi-Oh has kind of gotten ridiculous, um, but the idea that if you could do some sort of immersive like trading card game, and then at the end of it, you actually get to keep the cards that you get through the through the uh arc and stuff, like yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Like, Duelist Kingdom would be sick, especially like I said, you'd put in some pay cost players and actors to be the characters with their decks, and then let in a bunch of regular ass people. And you have to like go find like the dueling stations in this like island you rent out. Like, you rent out like a big chunk around Banff to set up this with like your sets and things.

SPEAKER_03:

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, you could do a sick Duelist Kingdom.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I think so. I think that'd be pretty fun.

SPEAKER_00:

But with that, thank you everyone for listening to Richard and Carl present Deep Space and Dragons. Carl is still very much alive. I've reclaimed the title position because I think I answered the random question of the week better. And if you would like to submit your random question of the week, just Google Richard Kievis. Like, I am so easy to stalk it is absurd.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I I don't know how easy I am to stalk. Um I've never I guess that's fair. Carl redacted. I I don't know that I actually have much of an online presence, but let's see.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh, it led you to a German economist.

SPEAKER_03:

Ah, yeah. Yeah, see that's the thing. I I have the German spelling of of my name, uh, which means that if you're searching in North America, you're just less likely to find me because most people will hear Carl's to see.

SPEAKER_00:

And apparently there's a different Carl and Richard, which most notably Australian TV personalities. Alright, so you're harder to find. I'm real easy to find. So if you go Carl and Richard Chemis, we show up instantly. The closer you get to me, the easier it is. Oh man. Episode 8 being called on the wings of the beetle.

SPEAKER_03:

I'm just riding on your coattails. Uh but one one last thing that was new with me that I forgot to mention. Ooh, spicy. Well, no, I I sent you a picture of of my my pumpkin carving. Um Pokemon.com has uh stencils for different Pokemon. I uh I'm not actually a fan of them uh because a lot of them are too intricate. Uh but the Rowlett one was very cute and I carved it. But now I I kind of regret it because it's not a well-designed stencil for an actual pumpkin. It kind of it kind of is like sagging and drooping, but I carved it and it was cool and I liked it.

SPEAKER_00:

You know what's really, really funny and troll worthy? So I Googled Pokemon Stencil, right? And the first one that popped up was an Agumon stencil. You had one job, internet, and you failed so well. They failed so successfully. Uh but yeah, I think I told you for my gingerbread cookies for I did Pokemon Stencils, uh, Pokemon Cookie Cutters, so they were little gingerbread Charmanders.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Because I'm a cool person with cool interests.

SPEAKER_03:

But anyways, I uh I should probably you know your audio. Okay, so thanks again for for all to all our listeners uh for just hearing us rant about our lives.

SPEAKER_00:

I am so sad the cutout didn't commit there because you wanted to. You can't even hear me right now. Oh man, that's gonna be a messy episode ending.

SPEAKER_03:

Oh, I can hear you.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, like you cut out for a second, and then I was like talking, and then it was like playing or like a sign out, so like they're gonna hear as I talked while you talk simultaneously.

SPEAKER_03:

Bye! Bye.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm really surprised you didn't have pull some wild theme park concept out of your butt. I always expect you to be like, guys, listen. If you're willing to kill some people, Frankenstein Land would be sick.

SPEAKER_03:

I haven't read Frankenstein yet. I w I've I've been meaning to, but I haven't I haven't read it.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh or like a Kirby Dream Course where you like throw Kirby's and play minigolf with them.

SPEAKER_03:

Dang it! Sometimes I'm really bad at being put on the spot, but the Kirby Kirby's Dream Course was a great game.

SPEAKER_00:

Maybe it's just a platelet problem and they're reducing your ability to be creative. Because you have too many platelets now.

SPEAKER_03:

Maybe.

Head Shot

Karl

Host
Head Shot

Richard Kevis

Host