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Transcript

Bonus Patreon Release: Big Bertha! With Harum Scarum and DManda Martini! · Graymalkin Lane the podcast

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Green Walk and Lean Patreon channel where I get to hang out with friends and talk about characters.
• 0:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's my favorite thing.
• 0:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love hanging out with these two friends, specifically, Demento Martini and Haram Scarborough with me today.
• 0:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now, we're going to open, this is problematic characters.
• 0:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love the show Patreon.
• 0:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, today we get to talk about a character that I've always had feelings about, but I really fucking love her.
• 0:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to talk about Big Burther today, and I'm going to open with a historical anecdote.
• 0:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you ever heard of a 42-centimeter short naval cannon used as a German sea chowitzer in World War I called the Curse of Marine Kona, 14 L-12, it's also called the Mininver for Great.
• 0:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're known by their more popular terms, the Big Burther.
• 0:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: The reason they're called this, first of all, it's a really big gun, and men love to use feminized names for their machines.
• 0:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: The designer of this gun is again named Friedrich Krupp.
• 0:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's a German industrialist who had a huge, huge industrial firm through World War I.
• 0:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's a weapons designer in the, uh, in the Vayne of Tony Stark, and his eldest child, and the heir to his empire is Bertha Krupp.
• 1:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Her married name, Bertha Krupp Vaughn Bohnen owned a hot
• 1:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now, a birthed group, her father, his entire company, was acquired by Adolf Hitler in the 1940s.
• 1:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: He sees control of the entire group empire and used it to build a lot of the German weapons.
• 1:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: And he ended up later arrested as a war criminal, but was declared mentally unfit for trial.
• 1:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: He ended up dying at a family estate in 1950.
• 1:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: but he did serve time in jail and they did use concentration camp slave labor to manufacture a lot of the weapons.
• 1:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: But after the war, birth a group, reclaimed the company, completely stopped doing weapons designs and became a pretty beloved figure in her community.
• 1:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: When she died, all five of her children refused to use the group name because it has Nazi associations, and it's just kind of died off.
• 1:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we're going to open our conversation there.
• 1:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: As we talk about the character Big Bertha because this is where this name comes from.
• 1:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let me welcome both of my guests today to with my very favorite people.
• 2:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'll let me have you introduce yourself with your name and pronouns.
• 2:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: And let's hear your initial thoughts on chat invites you to do a Big Bertha episode and you think what?
• 2:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let me welcome Aaron, so you have to the show first.
• 2:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hi, Aaron.
• 2:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: with a free and param-scaram pronouns, are they them?
• 2:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: When I heard that you were going to invite me for a big birth episode, I immediately thought, okay, so we're gonna give some really good press to big birth in how she can be a good character if utilized by the right writing hands as it were.
• 2:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: As long as there's no, there's none of the problematic issues, which of course we have to also talk about the problematic issue, so that's what I'm really here for.
• 2:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: The three of us got to do an episode on Black Mariah, a while ago, which we had some of that conversation about representation that, and this was the perfect setup for Big Bertha.
• 2:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let me also welcome to Amanda Martini back.
• 2:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: Amanda, we've got like three times this week.
• 2:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love you.
• 2:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: I know, and we can see each other next weekend.
• 3:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: I know.
• 3:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm tomato martini.
• 3:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: She heard the journey that Chad and I have had in the episodes that you've had me on we've talked a lot about body positivity and representation on the show which is crazy that I keep for I like I forget how many times I have been on your show.
• 3:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it only made sense when you that said that you were doing big birthals like, oh, yes, like this is the natural progression on the journey.
• 3:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: I still find her extremely problematic.
• 3:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to lie.
• 3:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't have a fondness for her yet.
• 3:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm hoping that maybe in this journey will hit a story that really sort of makes me think.
• 3:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh yes, she is great and not necessarily like I shouldn't say her as a character She is very nice like she is a very nice person.
• 3:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: I will say like bertha herself But like the way that she is used in the way that she is portrayed is very itch to me
• 3:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, I don't know that she's ever been written by a woman.
• 4:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let's start there.
• 4:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love how this is our adventure.
• 4:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, we gotta go to Big Birth and Popular Culture for just a minute because this is where my brain goes.
• 4:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: I grew up thinking that the name Big Birth that was hilarious when we were little white kids in America
• 4:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's something about like an overweight woman when you're watching things like Nickelodeon and you know oh they just want to eat so much food Go back and watch anything on you can't do that on television or any of the shows we grew up with it.
• 4:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're just it's always this hilarious kind of trope
• 4:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: In my brain, it wasn't fat shaming, it wasn't like thinking of someone as lazy, it was thinking of someone as hilarious, but that's its own problem.
• 4:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Big Bertha, one of my, like, seminal games from my youth was a Super Mario Bros. 3.
• 4:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: There is a fish named Big Bertha that comes in in Swalo's Mario Hole, not to be confused with boss bass, who is another, the male version of that fish in the game.
• 4:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Big Bertha is also a term used for plus size women, for big vehicles, for giant steam trains.
• 4:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a line of tunneling machines called Big Bertha's.
• 5:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a line of golf clubs, but here's the seminal memory and we're gonna begin here.
• 5:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: I just sent you both a clip of this if you were unfamiliar.
• 5:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: I grew up going to Chuck E. Cheese.
• 5:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: and a check-in cheese you spend money and you get tokens while you eat their shitty pizza and watch their shitty animatronics and you go around and you try to win tickets so that you can claim them for shitty prizes and one of the games was called Feed Big Bertha and there's this kind of weird
• 5:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: blow up doll looking lady with like pig tails.
• 5:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: She kind of looks like an opera singer.
• 5:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's wearing a moomu.
• 5:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's got the giantest, I'm just gonna say it because it looks like a sex doll.
• 5:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: She has the giantest mouth with like red lips and you activate the machine and you're trying to throw balls into her mouth.
• 5:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: And while you're doing this, she's yelling things and there's a meter at the bottom.
• 5:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: So every time you throw balls in the mouth, it adds pounds.
• 5:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the character, if you listen, you can find clips on YouTube.
• 5:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's going like,
• 5:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hey, feed me, I'm hungry, I'm only 300 pounds.
• 5:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Feed me more, I'm only 400 pounds.
• 5:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, please, baby, I'm so hungry.
• 5:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then you get to a point where you're doing well in the game.
• 5:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: She's like, oh, no, I can't eat anymore.
• 6:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not 100 pounds.
• 6:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then, like, it deflates at the end and you get a handful of tickets to go trade for prizes.
• 6:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: When I first met the character Big Bertha, this is what I thought of, from fucking Chuck E. Cheese and that's where we're gonna open.
• 6:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, let's begin with the problems.
• 6:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: How we all do it after that story.
• 6:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: I have never seen this game at Chuck E. G. than I swear that was my entire child who had going to Chuck E. G. Be a big birthday.
• 6:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, please frame me.
• 6:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, Chad and I are not that different in age and I don't remember this at Chuck E. G. G. G. G. G. G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G
• 6:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right, right, um, so like, before we get to Miss Ashley Crawford, I think that, like, when I hear big birthday, I, I think more of like machinery that, you know, like a nickname for like some kind of big tank van, like something like that, and I guess that makes sensing is how like she had a whole gun named after her.
• 7:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: So like that's usually where my mind goes, I don't think of an actual person.
• 7:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, obviously like the connotation is still there of being a big woman and also like coming from a plus size family with a plus size mother and all of that like all of this and I think that kind of that's where I am like starting at this where it's like the fat jokes are not hitting so like rereading some of these issues.
• 7:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was like
• 7:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not like it.
• 7:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: Even the term plus size, we imply that there is a normal size that we must add a plus to that to make it something that we culturally accept.
• 7:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, I interviewed Maria while all you day, a couple of weeks ago on the show for the character Manate.
• 7:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I brought up big birthed because he just used big birthed in his storm series.
• 7:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: And he went on for kind of a while about like, oh, I really like big birthed.
• 7:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's like in my culture, big women are like fully celebrated.
• 8:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're like beautiful and gorgeous and powerful.
• 8:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's like, this is a character that I see fitting right in with all these other super.
• 8:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, she's, she's, she's an incredible character with tons of potential.
• 8:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: I've also been doing a ton of Nazi research for my show lately.
• 8:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: So finding the story of birth that group was crazy.
• 8:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: This isn't a red skull episode, like you've been hearing, but do you have any thoughts on that origin story for the name of the gun and the weird Nazi reclamation part of this?
• 8:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, good for her for you know, get, you know, reclaiming her family's company and trying to turn around but also good on her kids who are being like, we're done with this name.
• 8:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're not we're not doing this anymore.
• 8:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's really interesting how these problematic names can come up for vastly different things that you don't really think towards.
• 8:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: So for those of you that are listening, you're like, are we three minutes in and we've already gone to concentration camps and checki cheese?
• 8:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, yes, we have.
• 8:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let's begin.
• 8:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let's begin episode of Grey Mocking Lightning.
• 8:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let's begin with the Great Lakes Avengers.
• 9:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, it's West Coast Avengers 46.
• 9:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: John Bern is both writing and drawing.
• 9:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's 1989.
• 9:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we have introduced the Great Lakes Avengers.
• 9:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: As a franchise, we have the East Coast Avengers, although they're usually just called the Avengers, and we have the West Coast Avengers.
• 9:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Hawkeye, who's in his most misogynistic era, baby.
• 9:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: And his new wife, Mockingbird, have left the team for reasons, it's a lot.
• 9:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: And they decide to go with a new team into shape.
• 9:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: and there's a team in the Great Lakes, it's supposed to be hilarious because they're in Milwaukee Wisconsin, and they're kind of tri-hard heroes who are kind of all cool with their own like potential, but also all kind of weird, and also their all mutants, which is also interesting Craig Hollis or Mr. Immortal.
• 9:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's blonde, he's in red-white and
• 9:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: blue and he's got a huge white shirt with an eye on it.
• 9:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: Sometimes the letters MR are on the eye and little tiny letters so you know it's Mr. Immortal.
• 9:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: And his power is that he can't die and boy do writers love to murder him.
• 10:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: It seems like it's a cool pair of like oh he can't die and just like with the new character Granny Smite that they introduced an ex-factor it's like
• 10:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's see how we can murder this person, the absolute most.
• 10:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's the gimmick with him, and to be honest, it gets old really fast.
• 10:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's one of the reasons that I don't like Deadpool.
• 10:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Then we have Demar Dewitt, or Dorman, DDD.
• 10:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's a black man.
• 10:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: He is dressed in all black with white patches over the eyes.
• 10:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's a mutant whose power is, you can walk right through him and never know he's there.
• 10:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's Mr. Cellophane, everybody.
• 10:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's got a gimmick where he stands at a wall and then all the team passes through him.
• 10:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: In more recent years, he's got no huge power upgrade as the death urge entity will get there.
• 10:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: I was honestly going to get into his abilities as what is essentially an avatar of oblivion at this point.
• 10:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: But his character reminds me of a pastiche of Deadpool as well in regards to the mental faculties, how he presents his personality, how he's kind of just kind of little everywhere in his head.
• 11:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: Also Blackman, who's a doorman and who's power
• 11:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: Oh, really bad.
• 11:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Guys, we're going to be laughing a lot today for all the wrong reasons, but what else do you do sometimes?
• 11:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Valve into a flatman who is gay.
• 11:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: We learn later.
• 11:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's too dimensional.
• 11:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: He basically looks like a sheet of paper and he can stretch out like Mr.
• 11:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: Fantastic.
• 11:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's kind of odd.
• 11:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's got like a weird flattop hairstyle that's kind of signature for him.
• 11:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: flatman, so he's also a doctor.
• 11:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's Dr. Valventura, and he tries really hard to be serious.
• 11:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's also a sort of like a trope of an absent-minded kind of doctor.
• 11:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like he's not the most smartest.
• 11:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like you know what I mean?
• 11:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm a, again, if the most of these kids is just not really a fan.
• 11:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: He kind of goes for like a joke part of it, but then also like his powers are literally just he's flat.
• 11:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: cool.
• 11:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then we have the next look that Haram Scaram has promised to cosplay.
• 12:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: The incredible dinosaur, dinosaur is a pink lady.
• 12:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you remember the hidden years content, dinosaur came first, but we talked a lot about the weird character, Avia of the Nugarai, and dinosaur looks a lot like her.
• 12:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: She flies around and she speaks in whistles and we aren't quite sure what the fuck she is.
• 12:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm loving the sharp bald head and I was kind of doing a cosplay and it's going to figure this out.
• 12:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: But the name alone.
• 12:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: So these are all joke characters.
• 12:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're all gimmick characters, but they all take themselves very seriously, which is where the magic is.
• 12:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: They all deserve their own episode because they're kind of great.
• 12:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then we get Ashley Crawford.
• 12:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let's hear your thoughts on the name Ashley Crawford first of all.
• 12:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: And she also has a mutant power to like bulk up to blob size.
• 12:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: So she's the super model who gets thick, basically.
• 12:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: And she's got immense super spring, immense power before we get to the power set.
• 13:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was trying to think, because obviously Crawford is a new Crawford.
• 13:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like that, like that's the sort of joke there.
• 13:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I guess actually is just sort of like a popular girl's name from the 80s or whatever.
• 13:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's actually like girl name.
• 13:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, it just kind of has like fairly girl shopping mall connotations for a real name for a superhero, especially when you're going for like what you're evoking like yeah, it makes sense.
• 13:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, and then her super powers for mutinability is she's pretty fucking powerful actually, but she can bolt up right.
• 13:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now it's a problem when we have fat characters.
• 13:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're using fat as a descriptive term, not as a derogatory term for the purpose of this show, unless we're quoting white writers who have used fat as a derogatory term, directly in the dialogue.
• 13:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: But she's a fat character whose powers are fat.
• 13:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, this is blob.
• 13:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is the character fat Ph.A.T.
• 13:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: or his daughter Fatty Ph.A.T.
• 13:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: T.Y.
• 13:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: from the
• 13:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Being birth is kind of the most impressive one, although I do like blob and I do like the character fat and fatty as well.
• 14:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: But we need powers that like it's just a character whose power is not fat necessarily.
• 14:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: This character has a ton of potential.
• 14:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Part of the problem with this character is her visual.
• 14:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: She wears like a stretchy yellow leotard and like teeny tiny shoes which are really trying to play up making her look ridiculous and her shortbread hair like shrinks on top of her head and then she's got this like larger face so she looks like a baby like she's like she's like she's like a big fat baby the way she's drawn a lot of the time.
• 14:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a ton of gags with her like jumping off a building and landing on someone beneath her or getting stuck in a doorway, which again is the blob and fat stories all over again.
• 14:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's crazy.
• 14:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: We can have, I think, that conversation like once up front and then just talk about all the instances of how she's treated poorly for her size through history.
• 14:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: But if we just give the conversation about a plus-sized or fat women and their portrayal in comics,
• 14:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: I would say as far as someone who actually wants to be a hero for the right reasons and like uses their powers the way that they quote unquote should be used in order to like do the right thing.
• 15:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I feel like Big Bertha is the one who sort of gets it right.
• 15:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Her gimmick is the visual otherwise I think she does what she's supposed to.
• 15:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: everyone else's powers or some or some also somehow like part of their joke in their gimmick, but the problem, one of the problems is in order to defeat bad guys, I have yet to see her like actually like punch someone out and like defeat someone in a fight.
• 15:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's usually, she sits on top of them.
• 15:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: Or it's stuck in the doorway, but the gimmick is not only the visual, it's the fact that she's a hot, she's hot when she's a super model, but her like, that's her
• 15:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that's the secret identity right like her secret identity is that this fat woman has a super model on the inside She also chooses the name big birth.
• 15:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if it's assigned to her.
• 15:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe she named herself after the tank.
• 16:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know, but so for one
• 16:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: on the visual aspect of her on the Liatar tiny shoes in the big red and this tiny red hair that kind of shrinks as she gets bigger.
• 16:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: It does kind of visually evoke blob in a lot more ways, which like continues to cement herself as that past East kind of joke.
• 16:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: of the blob as is, in regards to how her powers work, I do want to figure out how the conservation of mass is working in her favor.
• 16:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: I know that mutant powers just work in that way where you can kind of do anything with it, but the shift of mass atoms, everything, that's big displacement there.
• 16:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: in regards to physics.
• 16:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: Otherwise, I don't like the way I don't like anything about how she was first presented with her powers because it's one thing to like, you know, size her up.
• 16:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's the way of how she sizes back down, which is just purging at the end of the day.
• 16:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like, you know,
• 16:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, we'll get there.
• 16:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's the 2000s portrayal.
• 16:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: But here's the thing to understand about this character, is she's fucking powerful, first of all.
• 16:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's very competent.
• 17:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's rich.
• 17:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's kind of a powerhouse.
• 17:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's the person financing the entire team.
• 17:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: She never hates herself for being fat.
• 17:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's like very in love with her power set, but she's constantly the butt of the joke based on the superheroes around her, not usually from her team.
• 17:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: Her team really seems to respect her, but we watched this advance by the decade.
• 17:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's not often in the spotlight,
• 17:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: it's usually as the joke character, but she's got a ton of competency to her as well.
• 17:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: So in her initial appearance, it's where we first meet her.
• 17:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're very first foe, the Great Lakes Avengers, our bank robbers who shoot Mr. Immortal Dead.
• 17:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: Big birthday comes bursting through a wall, coolademan style.
• 17:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: She gets shot by a bunch of bullets, and then like bounces them off of her, like the blob does.
• 17:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hock eye and mocking bird come to check them out.
• 17:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: They stage an attack at the Hort Historical Germania building.
• 17:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: which is a real place in Namilaki, a big birth-up puts Mr. Immortal on her back and we get like a power circuit where she bounces off of the ground, like a bouncy ball into the air with a literal boing sound effect, drops him off at the roof, and then she's like laughing as she falls down back below.
• 18:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's soon back at her very, very posh apartment.
• 18:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Pock, I says, this is some shack.
• 18:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: How birth-up put together the dough for a place like this?
• 18:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Very simple Hawkeye.
• 18:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: I earned it.
• 18:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: And she comes out in her supermodel form wearing like a bathrobe dress and he goes, you're a big bertha?
• 18:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: What the heck happened to the rest of you?
• 18:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh my God, Clint Barton.
• 18:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Harry, will you read Mockingbird?
• 18:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: Wait a minute, I know that face.
• 18:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: I've seen you on about a million vote covers.
• 18:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I'm actually Crawford.
• 18:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not too long ago, I was the highest paid mannequin in the country.
• 18:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, I'll bite.
• 18:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: How do you go from being a professional clothe this horse to playing super?
• 18:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: hero says Hawkeye.
• 18:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think if it is playing Hawkeye.
• 18:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: None of us do.
• 18:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're all just as serious about this as you are.
• 18:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Hawkeye's like, look, I'm a big deal.
• 18:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: You guys, I can really help you be a really big deal.
• 18:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: The next issue, the title changes to from a West Coast Avengers 2 Avengers West Coast.
• 19:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: So as we jumped up issue 48, we see Hawkeye running the Great Lakes Avengers.
• 19:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: Big Bertha has fallen over while in combat training and flat man has wrapped all around her.
• 19:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: H-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-
• 19:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now, listen here, Bertha.
• 19:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: It may be your money that's paying for this gig, but then they get interrupted by a distress call.
• 19:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: We jump to the next issue, 49, where Ashley Crawford is a pilot of a private aircraft that she owns herself.
• 19:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, this is a very competent woman, out of million vote covers, first of all.
• 19:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: They aircraft toward the action.
• 19:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's like, you know, he's not even have a quinge.
• 19:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, of course they don't, first of all.
• 19:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: This crate happens to be one of the finest private aircuff money can buy.
• 19:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, remind you, even though we call ourselves Avengers, we do not have access to any of their more sophisticated hardware.
• 20:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: So they end up sparring with She-Hulk and Big Bertha ends up like shaking up a huge hit from like machinery that bounces off her with again a boy-yoy-yoying sound.
• 20:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: which is super unfortunate.
• 20:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: She is not an inflated bouncy ball from Walmart, but she also lands on she hook and pins her down.
• 20:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: She hooks her large butt and throws her off.
• 20:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we have our first incident of fat shaming directly from a character, even though John Burns been doing at the whole time.
• 20:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: I will say good for actually for not only being competent and a pilot, but also when Hawke is like being a shit-do switch, he usually is.
• 20:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not just mockingbird who gives a back to him.
• 20:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: She's like, uh, excuse me.
• 20:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're doing the best we can and we're using all of my money.
• 20:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: So shut the fuck up.
• 20:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: I can never see she Hulk saying this.
• 20:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is actually the most mischaracterized I've ever seen she Hulk and I John Burn one day.
• 20:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we have a supermodel who's super powerful, very competent, very rich, very self-possessed, who's a pilot, and like can tell shot Hawk at it shot the fuck up.
• 21:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Big Bird was amazing, despite all the Boeing sound effects.
• 21:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: We see them in Avengers 309, where Hawk I and Mockingbird are training the GLA, and he's really pushing Big Bird that'll work on her agility.
• 21:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: but it goes all wrong when Mr. Immortal calls her Lardo.
• 21:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: Nope, we jumped to Avengers annual 19 where the Great Lakes Avengers get to join the big Avengers teams for a huge fight with terminus and then at Big Bertha just basically gets to cushion some teammates from landing in this fight.
• 21:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: They land on her and it makes a blomp sound effect.
• 21:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Nope.
• 21:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then we jump to Avengers Lessco 64, and there's a super weird kid who gets the crimson gem of Citerac, yep, that one, and somehow animates a bunch of wax figures of superheroes with it, and Captain America and Jim Hamm and the human torch get involved, and the Great Lakes Avengers attack, Captain America at one point comments on Big Bertha being very big, which is a nicer way than the other people that praised it so far.
• 21:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then we jumped to the first recurring gag for these characters, which is every few years they changed their name.
• 22:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: When we jumped to Jo Kelly writing Deadpool in the late 90s, I fucking loved this book.
• 22:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: I loved it when it was coming out.
• 22:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: Deadpool's hilarious.
• 22:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of humor that in the late 90s was very like jackassy that was okay at the time that's not fondly remembered, but this book still holds up.
• 22:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's got a lot of great shit in it and it's the premise for what the movies
• 22:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: So in Deadpool 10, all the heroes have gone missing, and the new team, the Thunderbolts has launched, and so the GLA wants to capitalize on this.
• 22:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: So they've already called themselves the Great Lakes Avengers, and now they're like, oh, why don't we be the lightning rods?
• 22:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: And they decide to go to the base city aquarium for fun one day, and we get a note that Big Bertha eats 17 quote kelp cones, whatever the fuck that is, but I don't think that sounds very good.
• 22:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: and the cellar calls her skinny in quotations when he's selling her something.
• 22:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: Deadpool draws some guns, they attack, and Mr. Immortal Yeos.
• 23:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: You just got struck by the lightning rods.
• 23:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Big Bertha says, I've been meaning to mention, Mr.
• 23:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: I.
• 23:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Lightning rods don't actually strike anything.
• 23:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't make sense as a battle cry.
• 23:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Deadpool murders Mr. Immortal, and then he goes, I left his face to an intact for an open casket, though with the large and lovely bride steps on him, you're gonna have to mail him to the funeral home in an envelope, fuck you Deadpool.
• 23:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: So then Big birthday is chasing him, and he goes, careful honey, if you trip you'll fall straight to China.
• 23:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: What's your blood type, Raghu?
• 23:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hey, I heard you sat on the rainbow, and Skittles came out.
• 23:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: So this is the era in the 90s where all the kids at school were cracking your mama's so fat jokes and Jokelli's literally just putting on the on the page in a deadpool's mouth here doesn't hold up well, but in the 90s kids in my school that this was hilarious.
• 23:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then apparently big birth of breaks the walls of the shark tunnel in the aquarium while chasing deadpool and so there's like a wave of
• 23:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: fish and sharks and property damage, and Deadpool and Blindall run into Door Man and they end up going back in time because of a weird space-time thing.
• 24:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: And this is a fucking rad issue.
• 24:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: It really is Deadpool 11.
• 24:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: The Deadpool goes back in time and poses as Peter Parker in an old
• 24:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it's so funny.
• 24:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's so funny.
• 24:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: I know there's problems in these stories But it's really funny storytelling.
• 24:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's interacting with like Mary Jane who's like dancing Did see all back in the 60s like what the fuck is wrong with you?
• 24:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: He sees like Harry Osborne's hair and he's like, oh my god, what the fuck is wrong with your hair like this?
• 24:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's been a really funny shit in here.
• 24:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: While they're waiting for Deadpool to come back through the time stream, Weasel, who is a character, whose real name is Jack Hammer, that's all you need.
• 24:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Little nerdy in Cell Guy, he flirts with Ashley and her skinny form.
• 24:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: Flatman mentions that he studied fashion back in college your first real hint that he's gay.
• 24:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: A big brother realizes he's gay in this moment and goes on to let him know privately that she cares about him no matter what.
• 24:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: But he doesn't quite say he's gay.
• 24:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: So she just calls in like sailor.
• 25:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: So she's supportive, we love her.
• 25:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Later she grows back to her big size and the cops all yell, look out, she's gonna blow.
• 25:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, let's talk about the lightning grudds.
• 25:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I threw a lot out, you I know.
• 25:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: I hate it so much, I hate everything about what they're saying there.
• 25:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: I, everything is so,
• 25:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: Deadpool, all one day if I get my hands on you.
• 25:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: Brad, go!
• 25:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: At the moment, I get my hands on this man.
• 25:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's it's over.
• 25:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're laughing not because it's funny.
• 25:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean 90's in the 90's.
• 25:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: It was funny for white kids.
• 25:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm telling you, but it is not funny.
• 25:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's super not okay.
• 25:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: And it's unfortunate because people still make these types of jokes these days and it's like it's getting it's starting to get worse again as it were like we were in a timeframe where we kind of had that body positivity area where people were a little more accepting of larger bodies of fat bodies and again reason fat as a descriptor not as a derogatory term.
• 25:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: But now I've seen it happen within the past maybe four or five years where we're once again getting right back to all of this and I don't like it seems as though at least her teammates aren't doing it, but and I think that might be one bit of like maybe mischaracterization of Mr. Immortal when he calls her Lardo because I
• 26:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Otherwise, it doesn't seem like the teammates are like making like the mean jokes about her.
• 26:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: It seems like it's other people who don't know her if that makes sense.
• 26:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like the one from Mr. Immortal definitely like kind of.
• 26:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, I was like, oh, he said it too.
• 26:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Kill him again.
• 26:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like.
• 26:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, do it again.
• 26:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: The the Lardo line specifically is from Avengers 309 written by John Burn.
• 26:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we've had Lardbot and Lardo.
• 26:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is why I'm saying John Burn played that Chuck E. Cheese game one time.
• 26:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm focusing on the lightning rods for just a moment.
• 26:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love the gimmick of the team changing their name and like trying to stay relevant.
• 26:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: And in like the exact guys to like whatever's present, that part makes me happy.
• 26:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then I would love to hear your comments on a big birthday handling flat man kind of coming out and she's super sweet about it, right?
• 27:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: So that's what I'm saying.
• 27:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: These issues are problematic, but big birthday's amazing at a lot of them too.
• 27:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I think it just sort of speaks because actually as a person, I do like, and it's like, obviously a super model of the 90s is like, hello homosexual, how are you like, you know what I mean?
• 27:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, of course she would like,
• 27:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's no way that she's gonna be like this terrible homophobic person because like that's that's all she does And especially like the biggest supermodel of a mil walkie.
• 27:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's all of the gaze that are in no walkie You know working all of those shoots like of course.
• 27:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: She's gonna be like hey girl.
• 27:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: I see you I mean the sailor comment is kind of wild, but you know whatever.
• 27:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you went you studied fashion all right Sailor I'm here for you
• 27:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, we're gonna jump to Thunderbolts set a 15, so we're back over in the main title.
• 27:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is Kurt Bucy at Writing the Team.
• 27:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love Thunderbolts.
• 27:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love this early run.
• 28:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is like one of my sweet spots in comics that I loved so much.
• 28:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the Thunderbolts have been revealed to be the masters of evil.
• 28:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the lightning rods are like, God damn it.
• 28:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: They just, I had to go after these, these like, reformed criminals.
• 28:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: So this is where like songbird and moonstone and these characters are running around.
• 28:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: So in Issue 16, the Lightning Rods are attacking the Thunderbolts, Moonstone punches Big Bertha, who just bitch slaps her into the rocks, and she says, That quite a pushover you thought, huh?
• 28:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sweet cheeks.
• 28:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: I know I know you see a fat girl.
• 28:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: You think she's a nobody, but let me advise you.
• 28:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Big Bertha's hard to dismiss.
• 28:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then she does that blob move where she jumps on you and just lands, and she goes,
• 28:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, look, big birth of fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,
• 28:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, Kirby is like, I, you can do more with this power set than that.
• 28:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, but also, she's so exasperated in this issue by her male teammates being horrible.
• 29:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: In time, Moonstone does a thing where she like phases through the bulk of Big Bertha and like phases out of her and then like blasts her in the face and like, oh, geez.
• 29:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, Carl, Carl is a con.
• 29:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
• 29:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then Graviton attacks.
• 29:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Graviton is an insel character, horrible, horrible.
• 29:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: What if the worst person got Superman powers basically?
• 29:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, and he's fighting both teams and an issue 17 he throws big a big birth of throws herself at him and she says yeah well I used gravity at time or to myself as you're about to learn I didn't say I used gravity you grow test
• 29:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: cow, I said I controlled it.
• 29:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: I can make you a freakish body as light as a feather, or as heavy as solid lead, and he throws her into a rock pile.
• 29:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the one thing that makes this okay is this is the first time we're seeing a bad guy, a fat shame, Big Bertha.
• 29:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Usually it's from her fucking teammates and allies, and that's what makes me crazy.
• 29:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know, not that it's okay, but like if it's amazing, at least he's a villain, villain, right?
• 30:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah, I have to tell you.
• 30:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: What every her name is, terrible person, and Superman would not like you.
• 30:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: We see them in Deadpool 61 at Deadpool's funeral, and then the team gets their first big glow up.
• 30:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is the Dan Slot Paul Pelleteer series from the late 1990s.
• 30:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: I bought this off the shelf.
• 30:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: Again, I didn't know better at the time.
• 30:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: I thought a lot of this was funny.
• 30:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's very jackass humor.
• 30:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's very strangers with candy, like Amy Sedaris kind of humor if you look at what was funny on Comedy Central at the time.
• 30:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: And even the problematic should in this series they note on the page that it's problematic, but holy shit are there some fucking problems.
• 30:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Have you read this before?
• 30:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I knew like from reading because I've said this probably a million times before, but I used to have a desk job where they were just like, you know, read a book or whatever in the front.
• 30:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I used to just read comic book character profiles on Marvel on, you know, I'm from the xman.net on Wikipedia.
• 31:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, and on the appendix where I was writing in this.
• 31:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, exactly.
• 31:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: So actually Chad again, you can cut this out if you want to but actually when you first mentioned that you wrote for the appendix I was like wait, and I like went back to a lot of the profiles that I write and I was like, oh, this was written by Chad My name on the site is Chad man.
• 31:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, Chad man
• 31:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: So anyway anyway anyway, so I knew what some of the story was like I knew like some like the big beats of it But I'd never read it before so I will say pointing out that something is going to be problematic in a humorous way because you already know that it's problematic So you're trying to be funny about it doesn't make it any less problematic
• 31:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: I need a lot of South Park fans to learn this if I'm going to be right, it's not South Park isn't yes, it's it's it's it's it's it reminds me a lot of South Park it reading this and some of the things that happen in it made me feel uncomfortable and having squirrel girl.
• 32:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: at the beginning of each issue, go, hey everybody, just so you know, I read a head and this book is a problem.
• 32:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like that doesn't make me feel better and having the little squirrel pop up every so often to be like, kids don't do this, kids.
• 32:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
• 32:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: So there's a couple gimmicks.
• 32:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to focus on this on Big Bird, but there's a couple gimmicks in this.
• 32:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is Doring Green Squirrel Girls, like first kind of big thing after her first appearance.
• 32:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: She has a squirrel named Monkey Joe, who pops up and like has things to say, who gets murdered by a sex guy named Leather Boy, and then Tipito replaces the turtle.
• 32:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: A little turtle.
• 32:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Good lord.
• 32:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: The squirrel.
• 32:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's one line in this book that lives in my brain and infamy where Squirrel Girl is trying to find some nuts.
• 32:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: to replenish.
• 32:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: And she's like, let me look inside my nutsax and one of the characters starts bursting out laughing like squirrel girls got nutsax and it's still amazing.
• 32:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: So to focus on Ashley.
• 33:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: So overall the the story overall it's really a mister immortal kind of story about how the death erges kind of his best friend through childhood and everybody keeps dying around him because Mr. mortal is going to live forever.
• 33:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so the death erges trying to
• 33:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Cool, got it.
• 33:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's some, you know, villainous hijinks, whatever, whatever.
• 33:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: But when we finally get to like the big birth, uh, sort of centric part, which is issue three of the four issue many series.
• 33:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, we've pretty learned that Azure kind of losing her way.
• 33:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, she doesn't feel like the team is doing anything.
• 33:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: So also to sort of preface this, this mini series happens like coinciding right after Avengers Disassembled.
• 33:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: So again, everybody on the teams like,
• 33:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what we're doing.
• 33:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: This may not be a good idea.
• 33:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: We probably shouldn't do this.
• 33:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then a vendor disassembled happens.
• 33:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: And Mr. Mortals like, hey, you guys, this is our big break.
• 33:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like there's no more Avengers.
• 33:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: We need to, you know, go avenge stuff.
• 33:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Which proves not so great for them.
• 34:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because Rip Dinosaurs, sorry.
• 34:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sorry, Garoff murdered in this series.
• 34:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: By the supervillain maelstrom, who we just don't have time to go to today.
• 34:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: And again, you finally actually get to hear her talk and that you actually know that Mr. Immortal can hear her and she actually does communicate to him right before she dies.
• 34:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, Ashley's kind of like, is this worth it?
• 34:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: You find out that her modeling career because she's not taking the big gigs that take her out of Milwaukee, like she's losing out on a lot of opportunities.
• 34:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: And her manager is like, hey, Ashley, like, I've got so many people who want to work with you and so many people who.
• 34:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: want to like bring you along, but you need to like leave here.
• 34:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he even says to her, I've checked your books, you could use the gigs.
• 34:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, whatever is keeping you here, it's bleeding you dry.
• 34:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is a running guide for this character, basically.
• 34:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, because she keeps spending time doing this hero thing, it hurt like her career is suffering as a result.
• 34:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right.
• 34:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, so, you know, when we first get introduced to her, mockingbird is like, oh, I've seen you on a million vote covers.
• 35:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, she's just the biggest model in Wisconsin.
• 35:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, it's kind of like the photographers that they get to work with Ashley's like, who is this guy?
• 35:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: This guy's such a creep and he's like, well, he's the best photographer in Wisconsin.
• 35:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: But,
• 35:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, she is very steadfast and no, I really want to use my powers to help people.
• 35:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: I really feel like this is what I want to do.
• 35:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, this issue also reveals how she shrinks, which is bulimia.
• 35:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: And having the squirrel at the bottom of the screen where you see the title of the issue written in her vomit all over the bathroom wall,
• 35:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a full page image of like a toilet with like vomit splatter covering the entire bathroom and words are written in the vomit to introduce the issue.
• 35:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's really gross.
• 35:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: They don't play it up after this very much, but yeah, the squirrel's like, this is a problem everyone.
• 36:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: She stopped the truck from hitting children and she is running to go make a modeling gig.
• 36:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the people at the modeling gig are like, oh, she's such a diva.
• 36:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: She why is she always late?
• 36:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, a typical kind of Clark Kent kind of thing.
• 36:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're like, where is Clark Kent?
• 36:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why is he never here on time?
• 36:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so she runs at the bathroom and throws up and then is skinny again.
• 36:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's okay.
• 36:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Pause here to talk about the boys.
• 36:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Have any of you seen the character in the boys who, like, has to do?
• 36:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yes, oh my god, in the, in the, in the generation V. Yeah, there's the character there.
• 36:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so I cannot remember her name right now, but I know she's called little something.
• 36:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: And it's mostly, um, a lot of it is that her mother basically is forcing her to kind of do because of course all the kids are getting these powers due to being treated with um, v as a word compound v when they were young.
• 36:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: as a lottery kind of thing of, if they get powers, we can get them famous, we can get them into these programs.
• 37:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: Her mother, once she got these powers, that could help back and shrink, and she found out that it's like, oh, you shrink by purging.
• 37:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: Her mother just kept her on these various specific diets and everything, restricting her nutrition and everything to make sure that she stays a certain size.
• 37:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: And it's it's really messed up and she has a lot of like it's not that she explains it in like I think the first or second episode that she doesn't have body issues as a word, it's just that this is how her powers work, but as we get through the series, we do find out that's not actually how her powers work, it is all in her head about how it works, but like we have to deal with first her doing the purging if she wants to shrink small or mass eating if she wants to.
• 37:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: gait ties and it's it's portrayed quite graphically, but there's another character whose power is to manipulate her like menstrual blood in combat That's just her menstrual blood any blood.
• 38:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I know, but they really play up the menstrual thing
• 38:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Also, it's the boy is one of my least favorite books that I've ever had to read for a podcast.
• 38:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: A terrible, terrible comic.
• 38:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: A terrible, could, could not get into it.
• 38:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, right at a patient though.
• 38:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm sure the TV show adopts it great.
• 38:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: I got to the point where the guy's girlfriend got gets murdered.
• 38:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, you know, nope.
• 38:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: I remember why I didn't like this book.
• 38:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the character's name is little cricket.
• 38:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yes, thank you a little cricket, but yeah, she does like, and unfortunately it gets out how her powers work and it becomes a campus kind of it kind of tanks how people view her on campus unfortunately it's really sad because of course it's from this girl who she kind of trusted as somebody that she could like,
• 38:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: give this story to.
• 38:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's not the main girl, not her, but like this other very insignificant character who I, I don't just don't like in the series, but she like, you know, she comes over to her and it's like, why would you release that information?
• 39:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: And she's like, well, you know, I thought I was doing something good by telling people, so then maybe you can get the help that you need, which isn't the case, like this girl's just a bitch if I'm going to be honest.
• 39:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: she utilizes people to get more fame or to make sure that she can knock down their ranks, so she can go up a couple of ranks if possible.
• 39:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: And it's a little cricket holds a very special place in my heart.
• 39:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: This boy.
• 39:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: I hear you.
• 39:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: I hear you.
• 39:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: The problematic stuff is kind of owned, but also you're just like, why?
• 39:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: At the end, or I should say at the beginning of the next issue, Ashley is just kind of like, no, you know, fuck my job, fuck these people, fuck being a model, I really want to be a part of the of the Avengers or the Great Lakes Avengers and when
• 39:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: and she gets back to her house.
• 39:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's when we find out that leather boy in the guys of Dr. Doom has killed Mr. Immortal, which again, whatever, he'd been killing himself because he's super depressed anyway.
• 39:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: And murdered the fucking squirrel, which is wild.
• 40:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then we found out that it's another boy.
• 40:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: I did actually appreciate the joke when they were because in the series, when they flash back to them first all meeting, you find out that Mr. Immortal put it out in the paper saying, men and women of action wanted.
• 40:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so this guy leather boy shows up.
• 40:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Mr. Immortal is like, oh, so yeah, everybody has powers except for this guy named leather boy who just read the ad wrong.
• 40:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're talking a gay boy in leather with like a ball gag in his mouth who like he's they reject him from the team so later He comes back to attack them for revenge and murders squirrel girls squirrel monkey Joe.
• 40:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, no
• 40:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: When the other great exhibitors come back to the hideout, but Ashley has gotten big, but in her tube top and pencil skirt that she was wearing before and is sitting on top of leather boy because that is apparently how she uses her power.
• 40:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: I bet leather boy liked it.
• 40:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: To be honest, like he doesn't seem to be that face by it, but squirrel girls, squirrel does.
• 40:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: So then, yada yada yada,
• 41:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: You guys are only listening to us, but I'm watching Haram Scaram very carefully decide how they feel about each of these stories.
• 41:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you have Marvel and Limited by all means, please pull up the full image of the vomit title with her being skinny.
• 41:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's seriously, it actually makes me so angry.
• 41:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I will also say, again, in the sort of fair play, is at the beginning of Ashley's issue, Squirrel Girl and Ashley are doing like the PSA at the beginning of the issue.
• 41:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: And they're like,
• 41:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: We hate the way that women are portrayed in comic books these days, and Ashley is holding these comics that are obvious, like, parodies of comic book covers that had come out one being dazzler on the cover of the Age of Apocalypse issue, where she's wearing the infamous Bockelotop, you know, like the lady's nastermined Emma Frost.
• 42:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: you know, titties down to naval top.
• 42:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then they like reference back to their old gag of at the beginning where they talk about how all fanboys are these 30 year old balding men who live in their parents basement.
• 42:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so then Ashley says, well, you know, all comics are written by bald 30 year old who live in who never got any action in high school.
• 42:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then also, like, there's a running gag of if you hate the things that you're seeing in this comic book, here's the address to the editor of, you know, Marvel comics and it's kind of like, I know that you're trying to be like self-referential and like, see, we're not being a problem.
• 42:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're pointing at it being like, see, that's a problem.
• 42:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, but you're still perpetuating the problem while also pointing at it.
• 42:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, that's, that's not solving the problem.
• 42:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: The nomina of trying to be in on the joke that all the readers are in on.
• 42:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: when it's like you can't be because then it's just kind of it does ruin the joke in some ways but also it ruins the experience of the reader.
• 42:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the team ends up like defeating Mailstrom who's a big-time batty.
• 43:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's complicated to describe.
• 43:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: We'll go look about if he's a quasar villain and an adventure villain.
• 43:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: They end up defeating him.
• 43:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a moment where it's quite funny.
• 43:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Mailstrom like disappears in like a big black hole and Big Bertha's trying to hold on to flat man and she's like oh no he's missing flat man you're god oh I'm so sorry.
• 43:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: and then flat man who's paper thin, like turns and was like, what are you talking about?
• 43:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: I've been here the whole time, but because he's sideways and nobody can see him.
• 43:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: So this is the mini series that canonically flat man comes out.
• 43:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: So there's in flat man and door man's episodes.
• 43:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's this running gag of them going to like every and any superhero trying to get them to be on the team.
• 43:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: And there's just like a whole,
• 43:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: you know, image of all of them, saying no, no, no, no, no.
• 43:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so flat made a standing there and the living lightning shows up.
• 43:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he's like, oh, I'm just so glad to be here as a part of the GLA.
• 43:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, yeah, welcome.
• 43:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then living lightning realizes that they're not like a galeague.
• 44:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then living like, like, um, never mind.
• 44:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: I gotta go.
• 44:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like you guys,
• 44:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: seem cool and has been flatman's like, well, is living lightning can come out to me.
• 44:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: I feel like I can too.
• 44:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then right after, right after flatman comes out, and everyone's like, oh, that's so great.
• 44:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: We love you flatman.
• 44:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: While all of that's happening, Mr. Immortal is having like his epiphany of that.
• 44:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: He is not homo sapien.
• 44:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: He is not homo superior.
• 44:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's homo supreme.
• 44:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: And but anytime he talks to the death urge, he's talking like in a corner to himself because
• 44:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: While wearing dinosaurs top, by the way, wearing her full unit hard and just turns around and goes, hey everybody guess what?
• 44:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm almost a preem and flatman's like, you always have to, what not me?
• 44:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why are you such a dick?
• 44:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Then there's a moment where like I'm a mutant, so am I, so am I actually I'm a mutant too, and they decided at the end of this issue to change their name to the Great Lakes X-Men, so they're
• 44:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're re-appropriating.
• 44:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: I just posted the image.
• 45:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to assume this is Haram's first time seeing this image.
• 45:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: They've all dressed themselves like the early 2000s X-Men.
• 45:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, great.
• 45:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: So like literally Mr. Mortal has Cyclops's visor on.
• 45:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're all in black stripes and like yellow gear.
• 45:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then big birth of puts on and Emma Frost's costume.
• 45:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: Haram, your thoughts.
• 45:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, good call forward.
• 45:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: So I guess Mr. Mortal and her is relationship later on.
• 45:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: for the sex-ups of a dynamic.
• 45:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's wearing that, like, infamous, like, how does this stay on her boobs costume?
• 45:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
• 45:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: The white collar that's not connected to the, like, bra.
• 45:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm expecting that button to, honestly, because it's, like, it's, it's obviously two sizes too small, as well.
• 45:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: And that's something that they do a lot of the time with any female superhero in comics or female, like, just women in comics, when it comes to their costing, I'm kind of expecting for the button to pop at some point, because it's just, it's just held by that button right there.
• 45:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: I can see it.
• 45:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: The problem, and this as well, is the way they draw her teeny tiny hands and feet in head.
• 46:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, I really dislike it.
• 46:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then, you know, fat is drawn the way of that is drawn.
• 46:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we celebrate all bodies.
• 46:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: But this is not drawn in a flattering way for this carrot pound.
• 46:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it's because the panty line is also like very teeny tiny.
• 46:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: And like the artist, I like popularity a lot, actually.
• 46:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: But the artist goes to a lot of length to make the stomach like extra girthy, which is in its own problem.
• 46:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: But they're the GLX men at the end of this, which I fucking love.
• 46:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: How are we doing so far?
• 46:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: do an amazing buddy.
• 46:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we later get the GLX Miss special number one, which is a series of kind of anecdotal tales.
• 46:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: It really not a lot happens, but we do get to see big birth addresses Santa Claus in this.
• 46:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: She gets a present from Tipito in it that's an acorn necklace and the team fights Docte Town in Bound, who's like, I don't know, think of that like evil Santa Claus from Futurama.
• 46:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's kind of like that kind of billed.
• 46:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: In thing number eight, the team is already off of the X-Men kick, and they have changed their name to the Great Lakes Champions.
• 46:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now, Big Bertha does have a two-page profile handbook style from a book that came out while I was working on the handbooks, but I did not work on this book.
• 47:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a Deadpool core book.
• 47:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: Instead of rank and file, it's called the rank and foul book.
• 47:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: and it covers a bunch of characters who are supplemental to Deadpool.
• 47:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: Big Bertha has a two-page entry with some original art in it, and in this entry where the handbook guys would often have to fill in the blanks between things.
• 47:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: The handbook, which is canon, tells us that Rachel Gray, we all know Rachel, Eskani, convinced the Great Lakes team to change their name away from X-Men.
• 47:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: Mentally course, you're like, you know, if you're not going to use our name, which is kind of alarming to me.
• 47:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.
• 47:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Rachel was just so offended by all of them.
• 47:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: She's like, nope.
• 47:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sorry.
• 47:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not gonna happen.
• 47:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
• 47:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're gonna jump to cable Deadpool 30.
• 47:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're not gonna like this one.
• 47:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Although it's Fabian.
• 47:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: You see as a writing and I love New see as a there's a big fight with Deadpool.
• 47:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: Big birthday traps him inside her like fat roles, but he's like flirting with her and kind of into it.
• 48:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: He calls her sturdy.
• 48:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: and he's like, hey, the weight really works for her.
• 48:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then Deadpool always has this weird crush on B. Arthur from the Golden Girls, which is hilarious.
• 48:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: He calls her B. Arthur.
• 48:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's like, I don't know what you're talking about.
• 48:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then again, she's in his fat roles.
• 48:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: And she, it's implied that he touched her in an inappropriate place while in that space.
• 48:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: So she like repels him and yells how dare you.
• 48:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: And he says, how dare I not Lady Volstag?
• 48:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: In case, as I was in a warm, fleshy womb, I felt very loved.
• 48:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'll have you know.
• 48:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: Deadpool takes it too far sometimes.
• 48:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't like it.
• 48:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: I just don't mind if every creepy deadpool cosplayer that I never met.
• 48:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, oh my god.
• 48:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah.
• 48:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so we don't do the deadpool Great Lakes initiative team up, because now they've changed their name from the champions to the initiative.
• 48:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're now on like team name number five.
• 48:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: But there's the deadpool Great Lakes initiative Summer Fund Spectacular number one.
• 48:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: that the cover gives us big birth in her plus size, like in a bikini, and flat man is her hammock.
• 49:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Inside we see them fight aim dead pools here.
• 49:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: They have captured the Greek god of wine Dionysus, and they're like putting him in a machine that's making everyone drunk.
• 49:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: But big birth is immune to the drunkenness because her, like she's increased her mass, so that the alcohol doesn't affect her, then we're not gonna like this one either, but kind of also we do.
• 49:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's any see as a slot Paul Pellett here story called a date with density, not destiny, where Deadpool is being lazy, and so he's part of the team in this era for a minute, and Big Bertha invites him on a date, and he's so thrilled he's so into her.
• 49:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: So he goes in and gets to dress up in a touch with like swords and guns, but she shows up in her skinny supermodel form, in like a sexy golden dress, and Deadpool is like, oh, havin' a havin' a havin' a havin' a havin' a, and then he takes her to a restaurant called the Chubby Whale for all you can eat seafood, and they fight a guy named Fat Carlo, and he basically says, I'm into you more when you're girthier, and she says the following dialogue, demand a would you please?
• 50:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're...
• 50:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: a chubby chaser.
• 50:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: You see me as some kind of fetish?
• 50:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's no better in its own way than how people look at me when I'm actually Crawford.
• 50:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not what's on the outside that counts Wade.
• 50:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Fat or thin, can you look past all that and see me for who I really am?
• 50:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's like so inspired by this that he pulls off his mask and shows her his like raw hamburger face and then she vomits and the story ends.
• 50:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
• 50:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: I have had some female friends who definitely feel this when men are interested in sometimes it's because of like they're being very very fetishized and so I'm kind of happy to see this dialogue in her mouth but the term Chubby Chaser makes me angry anytime I see it.
• 51:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, so as a fat person, like I 100% get this, but also as a trans person and like a trans and fat person and also I'm going to say this and if we find it to be a problem, we can cut it out and maybe we need to have a conversation after.
• 51:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: but also as a fat white trans person, the amount of like married black men who fetishize that in particular is very, very uncomfortable because of the way that they talk to me like online, and it's it's it's very it's
• 51:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: it's very much like I kind of don't care who you are like this is a like it's very fetishized talking the way that they talk to me it's very it's very weird and it also again it makes me feel like not a person and obviously I know that like there are not all of the apps are not dating apps like we're not it's not about being a person
• 52:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, kind of, but it's, it's very, it's very weird when someone is actively talking to you like a fetish.
• 52:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: And it does kind of happen a lot.
• 52:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like this is just some intercommunity view point.
• 52:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: This does happen a lot with black men when they fetishize specifically white plus size women.
• 52:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I think it's because I don't know what it is.
• 52:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: I have my theories on it.
• 52:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: My friends talk about it every now and again, because it's just like a, is it because they can also, like it's, is it because they can also cook or is there a desumption that,
• 52:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: these bigger white women can cook just as well as a black woman.
• 52:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: And it's a way, it comes down to them then starting to use it as a way to put down black women.
• 52:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: And it's just like it's very, there's, there's so much to that conversation.
• 53:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I'm positive it happens for a black and black trans, a black women and black trans women with white men as well.
• 53:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Sure.
• 53:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
• 53:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: Different different connotations.
• 53:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: Very different.
• 53:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm happy leaving this conversation in unless tomato you feel later that it's not something you want out there So I'll let you feel that out as as you go by the coast like from to that in my life is I get fetishized for being at Father sometimes and my children used to call me daddy so whenever someone says daddy to me on like a hook up up I'm like no
• 53:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: know what I meant to.
• 53:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: It is not the same thing but I like it.
• 53:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right.
• 53:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: Again, I think it comes down to like when people use language to make to make you a fat-ish that then it's like okay so there are now the Great Lakes Initiative and the 50 states Initiative happens and the Great Lakes Initiative gets pointed to be the official state superheroes working for the government of Wisconsin for a minute in that Avengers the Initiative book which is another book I really love.
• 53:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: They fight some scrolls, gravity joins their team for a little while.
• 54:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Not Graviton.
• 54:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is a different character.
• 54:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Then we jump to Deadpool volume 4 36.
• 54:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is a weird fucking story.
• 54:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: It makes no sense.
• 54:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I feel like it's a weird sex stream.
• 54:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Deadpool had maybe.
• 54:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: He Deadpool is like being hunted down by a bunch of people who've been hired to assassinate him.
• 54:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: The group includes blind owl, who is a blind elderly woman.
• 54:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: A slug-o from the Weapon X.
• 54:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Dregs, taskmaster, weasel, macho Gomez, and Big Bertha, and Deadpool just blows them all up.
• 54:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's no point to this fucking story.
• 54:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't understand it.
• 54:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, all of these characters that are listed make sense.
• 54:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, indeed, we're hiring people to kill dead.
• 54:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Big Bertha?
• 54:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: And blind at all, that doesn't make sense.
• 54:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, like, but, but, but I don't only make sense because like, like, like, it's the main everything.
• 54:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 54:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, like, that's, that's why that makes sense.
• 54:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: And also obviously that lady has some history that no one wants to talk about.
• 54:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: But like, a big birth, uh, again, who wrote this?
• 54:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, who approved this?
• 55:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: It has to be.
• 55:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: because of the date comic at that point.
• 55:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like it has to be that, I think that specific comic of them going on a date, especially the last page there, it did get a strong reaction from a lot of fans out there.
• 55:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like a lot of people reference that these days.
• 55:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: So I think it's because it's like, oh, she's recognizable in the scope of Deadpool.
• 55:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: Let's start in there.
• 55:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Um, okay.
• 55:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to jump forward.
• 55:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: The fear itself, the home front number six during the events of fear itself, the local populists attacks the headquarters of quote, the Great Lakes Avengers X men champions defenders power pack Big Bertha is blocking the attacking civilians from coming through the door with her but when there's a civilian who says they've got some kind of force field blocking the door a soft yellow force feels not funny.
• 55:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, why is this in a comic book?
• 55:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's what I'm going like it doesn't make sense to me.
• 55:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: uh so the team ends up escaping without harming civilians and then they help defeat the elderly and sick character the esbestos man who we just don't gotta take time to talk about.
• 56:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is a guy who used to fight the human torch wearing esbestos and now he's got cancer because of the esbestos.
• 56:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because he wore a backpack he really came up in one of those weird deep dive youtube videos that i've been watching lately and i'm just like oh yeah i forgot he was a thing.
• 56:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're also at the wedding of Deadpool and Shikla, and then we jump to the modern series with Art by Will Rubson, who's a friend of mine through the show.
• 56:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: A great lake's Avengers 1-7.
• 56:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is a weird story and you're kind of wondering where it's going the whole time.
• 56:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: But there's an amazing trans-coated character named Good Boy in this series that I really like.
• 56:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let me put a hand on to talk about this one.
• 56:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: I don't worry, I'm focused on big birthday for the most part, but I love first sona because her first sona she as she states is a just a dude, but also a way out.
• 56:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: Sorry, my cat just jumped a full bar.
• 56:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Are you okay?
• 56:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Is the cat okay?
• 56:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: The cat's okay, the cat ran away.
• 57:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know what made it amazing is your cat jumped as you said the word first sona.
• 57:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: The guy was like, don't talk about me.
• 57:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: He doesn't want any conversation about theories in this house or you know what?
• 57:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: I get it.
• 57:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: Sure.
• 57:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: Um, but basically in this in this new series of Great Lakes Avengers, we're seeing them like I'm going get into the birth of stuff, but I just want to set up what's going on here because the Avengers lost their trademark on the name the Avengers and they have their lawyer Connie, who is also a former love interest of Steve Rogers, where she cannot get over, go out to Steve.
• 57:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: Connie Ferrari, everybody.
• 57:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's a funny, funny Ferrari.
• 57:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: I love her.
• 57:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: I don't know.
• 57:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: I also love her assistant Amy.
• 57:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: I believe her name is wonderful assistant.
• 57:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: She goes out to try to negotiate with flatman to basically get those rights back to negotiate that back.
• 57:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: Only way he'll do it.
• 57:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: We had to be in addition to the Avengers.
• 57:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: So that's what she does.
• 58:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: And now he's scrambling to get everybody back together because nobody's here anymore.
• 58:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: Really, you know, by he's part of the team anymore.
• 58:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: And the first person that we of course see is big birth
• 58:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: Now, this is where we get the more, I think they're trying to do like a more positive spin in regards to big births.
• 58:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: They allow her to be a plus size model.
• 58:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: You don't see her at any point in any of these issues, shrink down to what would be, let's say, the size zero.
• 58:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: She's stayed in her curvy,
• 58:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: form for the entirety of it.
• 58:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: And she will never go back to that.
• 58:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's like this is that gorman writing with a certain amount of sensitivity, but yeah.
• 58:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Wow.
• 58:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we'll get there.
• 58:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: Absolutely good there.
• 58:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: And you start to notice that there is like a little bit of tension when they mentioned Mr. Immortal at any point that's coming from Brazil, like there's absolutely a problem that we don't get to figure out what it is.
• 58:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: until issue four.
• 58:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: But the main three that we have for the first people on the team are going to be flatman, door man and big births.
• 59:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: to these some of the most problematic characters better in the great lakes of vendors.
• 59:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: We get to see big birth in her new outfit.
• 59:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: Instead of the yellow one unit hard with small tiny shoes, we get her in like a nice little two piece that I very much appreciate.
• 59:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's like a, what's that?
• 59:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: Not a halter.
• 59:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: I kind of want to say it's a halter top a little bit.
• 59:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like a crop halter top with a little bit of an orange brawlet under it.
• 59:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: And in the back, there's like a corset type deal and I don't know, I like this outfit.
• 59:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's certainly more it's more supportive of her body type.
• 59:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think it's a way to raise that.
• 59:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: We learned later in the series that she's been dating Mr. Immortal.
• 59:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: No, not just made for this.
• 59:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: gauge to him.
• 59:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 59:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 59:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Sorry.
• 59:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: I jumped ahead.
• 59:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: Oh, no, you're fine.
• 59:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: Because honestly, there's not much that happens with her until like you get a little bit further into the issues.
• 59:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: A lot of it is circulated around what's going on and Detroit's gentrification issue, lower income families being moved out of neighborhoods, but you get to big birth around five where an issue five where she finally takes a central center stage.
• 1:00:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: But in issue 4, we do learn that she was previously engaged to Mr. Immortal before he came home in a drunken stupor at about 3 a.m. stating that the engagement wasn't stake in breaking it off entirely.
• 1:00:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: We also have like this big argument between them.
• 1:00:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: it sounds like he's applying the reason that he broke off the engagement is because she decided to no longer pursue her supermodel career and instead start from the bottom by becoming a plus-size model instead.
• 1:00:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: And like
• 1:00:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, you deserve to marry her from going to be honest, you don't deserve her.
• 1:00:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's like how you view her as just making that financial decisions when it's like she wish they're obviously trying to do decision that made her feel better in her body at the end of the day.
• 1:01:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: So fuck you, Mr. Immortal, you don't deserve big birthday, which also I do want to mention this as well because I forgot she changed her name to birth.
• 1:01:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Um, legal it is just birth and I'll just want that.
• 1:01:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and I think it's because like what did it say that she was just trying to make sure that she like a stream line for image as it were just make sure that everything lined up.
• 1:01:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: So it was, you know, it was nice to see that they're kind of trying to go towards that area of body positivity.
• 1:01:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: You of course do get like again, you still get the moments of them kind of making fun of her weight.
• 1:01:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: the issue.
• 1:01:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: There is a specific moment and I believe it is issued to, I want to say, where they are, like very much settled into trade.
• 1:01:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: We see this club that's like across the street, like bumping music, all these people are allowed and everything.
• 1:01:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: So the whole team that is currently comprised of, again, flatman, door man and big birth ahead over there to talk to the person who runs the
• 1:02:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Nick Snurt, everybody.
• 1:02:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: Nick Snurt.
• 1:02:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: God, everything that happened to him in later parts of the issues so deserved, hate Dixner.
• 1:02:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: If you guys can, go and read this and just get that same hatred for Dixner that I now hold in my heart.
• 1:02:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: I contracted Dixner one time, but antibiotics help.
• 1:02:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm sorry.
• 1:02:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Anyways, you had one time sometimes.
• 1:02:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: I just...
• 1:02:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: We don't know that Dick's nerd is the guy running the cloak because he's wearing this like this devil mask and he's going by the name name Rouge but he's talking to Big Bertha when she comes up to the table like oh yeah I heard there were some new heroes in the series in the city firebrand and shrieked told me I'll see would you like a drink on me and you turn to the board there aren't
• 1:03:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is honestly one of the worst parts because all of them are derogates, all the drinks, are specials for derogatory names for the superheroes.
• 1:03:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: One of them is absolutely calling flatman a fruit as it were.
• 1:03:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: Another one is door man and I just know there's like I don't like this because there are some implications of having him seen as a drunk with a obvious bottle of
• 1:03:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: and birth had a very valid crash out at that point.
• 1:03:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: She immediately attacked, she broke the walls of the bar.
• 1:03:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, they got arrested, but honestly, worth it, he shouldn't.
• 1:03:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's terrible.
• 1:03:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like, you see the disrespectful things, but they were trying to at least, I guess, acknowledge how this terrible and this tasteful it is in regards to the reactions.
• 1:04:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: of the character.
• 1:04:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: But it's only a big birth.
• 1:04:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: I really reacted.
• 1:04:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: I feel like flatman was trying to stop her from making the scene from what I saw in the comic panel because it didn't like he was very up on what was happening in that interaction.
• 1:04:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: But anyways, as we get further into the comics, you know, a big birth that has a lot of interaction with goodness, AKA Good Boy.
• 1:04:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: I really like their interaction together.
• 1:04:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: It is
• 1:04:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: for one thing in the jail when good boy came in and was about to like honestly tear apart these police officers which work girl, go get it.
• 1:04:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: She tried to diffuse the situation after she like came out of the jail so like hey hey hey let's not make this worse.
• 1:04:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know
• 1:04:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: There's nothing that could make it worse at that point, you know, like police are going to do what they're going to do, especially to brown people that they see, but I did like the ensuing interactions that we continue to have with good good boy and birth throughout the issues like it was just chill conversation really it was kind of almost like a big sibling will sibling kind of relationship going on there almost.
• 1:05:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Bertha's written is very competent and very kind, and very over Mr. Immortal in this series, we can show what she should be like, again, that's Mr. Immortal.
• 1:05:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then at Great Lakes of Benders, five through seven gives us our most big Bertha's centric story.
• 1:05:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's the center of the story for the first time.
• 1:05:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: And
• 1:05:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: She gets a photo shoot.
• 1:05:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: She gets a photo shoot at court town meats.
• 1:05:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: And it's so problematic because what's her agent's name?
• 1:05:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: I think it's Jen or something.
• 1:05:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: So that's her up in regards to this photo sheet for a doctor nods.
• 1:05:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Doctor nods what's up supplements.
• 1:05:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: So they wanted to use her powers to like make herself bulked up for a photo and then to make herself skinny for an after photo and she's like nope.
• 1:05:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: But then they say, we're going to pay 20, okay, and we know that you're doing really bad in funds right now, and it's like it all of it is like really discussing because you know, at first she's trying to like sell it as, yeah, I'm very comfortable in this big body type, I'm like, no, can you, can you look a little bit more sad and depressed and like you hate your life for being this big and it's like, oh, okay, so.
• 1:06:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: We get a lantern doctor nod where he says, I'm the developer of Dr. Nod's good bod as well as Dr. Nod's hot cod, a microwavable fish oil sumpable bit.
• 1:06:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: Gross.
• 1:06:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then we end up finding out that the entire photo shoot was actually a setup.
• 1:06:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: in order to be able to extract whatever it is that powers big birth as well as put in a little bit of mutant growth hormone into that little batch.
• 1:06:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: So then they can basically sell these supplement pills for people to be able to control their weight for an entire 24 hour period.
• 1:06:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: You can make yourself as big as you want.
• 1:06:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: You can make yourself as small as you're one, but it only works for 24 hours.
• 1:06:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: So you're going to need to buy potentially continue to buy this
• 1:07:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: there's a really interesting scene too where she decides to do the before photos and they make her put on kind of baggy clothing and she's bulked herself up and they're giving her specific instructions for a whole page like okay can you hunch your shoulders can you frown you need to look really miserable when we have you in this fat photo so that you can look amazing afterward which is a real thing that happens when people take these before and after photos it's
• 1:07:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's an appropriate nod toward the industry that shows you how bad it is.
• 1:07:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: And it's continues to be bad to this day because of course you see now that there's the ozempic trend.
• 1:07:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're consulting a doctor everybody is what we're saying.
• 1:07:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 1:07:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
• 1:07:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: We're looking at this issue with supplements and everything that were being used for weight loss in like based off of powers that are being extracted from birth.
• 1:07:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: They're looking at the mutant growth hormone, which I don't see the much to the mutant
• 1:07:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then we also see that the everybody who was a part of the shoot, which includes the agent who was a part of the set up, she's terrible, all of them have also taken on birth as powers and I'm pretty sure this is because, more than likely, they took one of the pills that doctor not doctor not had when it had been developed with her powers in the mutant growth hormone.
• 1:08:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, basically this is an issue Wolverine like we're going to steal your power.
• 1:08:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to inject it into other people and watch what they can do.
• 1:08:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: So big birth is victimized by this skinny white woman in this evil crazy doctor and this awful photographer and then has to like fight all of these people that have booked up with the power that she possesses naturally as a mutant.
• 1:08:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then there's this point in the comic where we see that she breaks out for one thing out of this whole situation.
• 1:08:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: But Dr. Nod is very much.
• 1:08:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm going to go after her and decides to take down as many pills as he can in that moment.
• 1:08:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: And he grows to, I don't know how to describe these things.
• 1:08:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: He looks like that old movie from the 1950s like the blob.
• 1:08:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's this like rolling massive flesh like bursting through walls.
• 1:08:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 1:08:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's like, Kaiju size, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh,
• 1:09:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: Very much, not brain damage.
• 1:09:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's what Leo William called him, and that's all I can hear now.
• 1:09:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: He likes, I will say, I feel like Hulk felt a little bit better than this guy, even without using proper verbage and everything.
• 1:09:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: And he continues to make his little sales pitches as well as he's going forth destroying things.
• 1:09:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: I think at one piece, you're kind of eating people.
• 1:09:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: He definitely crush his question people and birth a response by taking the supplement herself.
• 1:09:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
• 1:09:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: Again, the way that they draw him is like, it's absolutely terrible.
• 1:09:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's like, he's grotesque.
• 1:10:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: While the way that they draw Pertha is a little bit more flattering in a sense.
• 1:10:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's fucking pissed.
• 1:10:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's very pissed.
• 1:10:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: Very pissed.
• 1:10:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know what I don't like about you, Dr. Nod.
• 1:10:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: She says well battling him at giant size.
• 1:10:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Everything, basically.
• 1:10:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then we see his, um, you tell the prisoner, you steal my DNA without permission.
• 1:10:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: And worse yet, you plan to market it as a dangerous, miracle weight loss cure to desperate people, people who should, who you shame and lie to, anything to make a buck.
• 1:10:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: But what really gets my goat is now that I, is that now I have to fire my agent.
• 1:10:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, hard it is to find a competent modeling agent in the Midwest.
• 1:10:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's very, very.
• 1:10:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: And of course, Jen comes with the other people who've been helping Dr. not out to try to, you know, uptip the scales in the fight.
• 1:10:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: Because both of them was absolutely about to kick this guy's ass.
• 1:10:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then we have my, again, my favorite character.
• 1:10:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: Good boy shows up and I don't know if the panel is suggesting that good boy has grown to a size that is not normal for a good boy.
• 1:11:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: But yeah, this one is for the furies for sure.
• 1:11:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: You love a fuckable monster, Haram.
• 1:11:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: Listen, really good monster.
• 1:11:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: It made me sad to learn that her brother were not actually where wolves or families just a bunch of shape shifters that may take on certain forms.
• 1:11:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: Dr. Nod keeps growing to like just bizarrely, bizarrely, huge, huge, huge.
• 1:11:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: I think keeps taking more of the supplement.
• 1:11:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the team has a maneuver they call maneuver 33, where flatman slingshot, Bertha is used to pull the slingshot back as far as possible.
• 1:11:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: On top of flatman is Mr. Immortal, who has Dorman sitting on him and then both Mr. Immortal and Dorman are flung forward so that when it lands against the monster, Mr. Immortal can pass through Dorman into the creature's internal organs.
• 1:11:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is a crazy popsicle as Mr. Immortal gets into what is basically his internal vascular system and everything he is able to then I just they don't show it on the panel but I'm pretty sure he punches his heart and Dr. Nod just kind of dies and there's a moment where a new newsman comes over and he's like when do the real Avengers arrive and she's like fuck yeah and like destroys the brand she's so over everything
• 1:12:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: But it's definitely, there are still so many problematic elements in this in regards to Big Bertha, how they showcase weight, but they do try to address the problems with how weight loss is unfortunately sold to people who are of a bigger size than everything.
• 1:12:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: And the predatory nature of it.
• 1:12:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's almost a commentary.
• 1:12:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's the cover of Issue 5 is a full size image of Bertha.
• 1:12:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: That'll be the cover art for our episode.
• 1:12:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: where she is bursting through her own name.
• 1:12:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: The word big is on the floor ready to be trampled on.
• 1:12:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's almost as though this character is ripping through and being like, can you let me be more than a fucking fat person?
• 1:12:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, I am, I have so much potential that's not related to my size.
• 1:13:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: We need different stories, obviously, but I like this for her character in a lot of ways.
• 1:13:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: you know, it's a big leap forward to say the least.
• 1:13:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: Well, not a big leap.
• 1:13:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: I would say like a significantly forward if anything.
• 1:13:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: Unfortunately in media, you don't see a lot of good positive representation in regards to people who are fat in regards to people who are bigger.
• 1:13:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: You, there was a time frame that you kind of used to in some ways, but it was still geared more towards the comedy aspect of being that size.
• 1:13:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like I think a lot of, um,
• 1:13:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: I don't know if anybody's ever watched this movie, but this one was like something that it I think this was like one of the most positive representations of a big people that I've ever seen.
• 1:13:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: Has anybody ever watched Monique's Big Girls?
• 1:13:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: I believe it's what the movies is such.
• 1:13:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: I did.
• 1:13:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was a big Monique fan for a long time.
• 1:13:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: as was I, as was I.
• 1:13:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: Maybe my mom would watch that movie every now and again.
• 1:13:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: And it was just it was such a such a big difference as to how usually that woman are portrayed as like the undesirable because even in her own show, the parkers, you see her portrayed as kind of the undesirable in regards to Dr. Ogleby, but seeing this movie and seeing her being desired,
• 1:14:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: by these men that are like, oh, I really love big women and seeing her friends that were also big being desired and also seeing her get accolades for her different like her different fashion-wise designs and everything because she was also a fashion designer in that movie.
• 1:14:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: She had a whole portfolio and actually got, if I remember correctly, a raise from her, the bigger boss because her manager was trying to get her fired for what she was doing.
• 1:14:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: And once the actual boss boss of the place came in, he was like, um, so where's the person who did these designs?
• 1:14:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: Because I would like to see more of that.
• 1:14:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I've been rewatching the series this is us with my 16-year-old who is just in that phase of like needing some drama stories because he's my gay kid, right?
• 1:14:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we've been really exploring and having conversations about the character Kate Pearson played by Chrissy Mats.
• 1:15:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Chrissy, the only time I ever saw her before this is us, she was cast in American Horror Story Freak Show as the Fat Woman.
• 1:15:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: And like very, very strongly portrayed as like Evan Peters is so desperate.
• 1:15:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: The guy at the cute guy with the lobster hands, he's so desperate.
• 1:15:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: They feel fucked the fat girl and like everyone gets horribly murdered.
• 1:15:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: But then she's brought in in this show that's all about family.
• 1:15:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: And her storylines are all about, oh, I hate myself for being fat.
• 1:15:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then it turns into, I have so much fat because I have so much.
• 1:15:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: trauma and she loses a baby because she fell in the tub and then she has another baby but it's born blind because it's her fault because she's fat and like eventually you see her climb out of those storylines she gets stories about being a singer and being a love interest and like it just takes the show a long time to get there.
• 1:15:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: But stories like that weren't really told in popular media at the time.
• 1:15:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: You certainly did not see people like Chrissy Matts, who's a very talented singer and actress and performer, but she deserves more than just having stories about her being a fat person.
• 1:16:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: And birthed captures that for me in some ways.
• 1:16:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like there needs to be more to this character than that.
• 1:16:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let me wrap up her final appearance and let's really pause to talk about this for a minute.
• 1:16:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: The GLA shows up in fantastic 4.643 fighting the proceedings during the reckoning war.
• 1:16:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're in Avengers unlimited infinity comic 26 where they fight their rhino.
• 1:16:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Big Bertha is part of the big Lucy out of Etio, seen in Rise of Powers of X number 5, where all the mutants are manifesting the Phoenix forces together.
• 1:16:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then most recently we see her written by Mariah Daley in Storm, where she's in like a huge powers competition with super strong people, and she gets to fight armor and defeat armor in combat, which is really fascinating.
• 1:16:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: The last thing I want to mention really quickly, when you go back to her entry, the two-page entry I mentioned in the Deadpool handbook, there's an allegation or an insinuation.
• 1:16:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Again, I suppose this is canon.
• 1:16:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: written, I don't know which of my combat or my handbook friends wrote this, so I don't not mean an economy buddy out, but the first two lines of her entry, with her inborn mutant ability to reshape her body, Ashley Crawford gave herself the perfect figure, allowing her to pursue a successful career as a world renowned international fashion model.
• 1:17:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the implication here is that she is redistributing her fat to be able to be desirable to men for these photo shoots.
• 1:17:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: It lists her as six foot one, but when she powers up she's seven foot four, when she's skinny, she's 120 pounds, when she's big, she can go up to 750 pounds, and her power set is written as this.
• 1:17:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Ashley Crawford can shape her bodies at a post tissues, allowing her to assume and maintain an ideal physique.
• 1:17:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: She can also instantly summon several hundred pounds of additional fat from an unrevealed source to transform into a super obese form.
• 1:17:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: During this process, she gains the
• 1:17:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: skeletal and muscular structures needed to adequately support the extra mass.
• 1:17:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: In this form, Ashley has superhuman strength lifting 50 tons and durability.
• 1:17:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: Her skin is also highly durable and elastic, allowing it to repel small arms fire.
• 1:18:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: She can envelop a pair of opponents in her bulk, immobilizing them.
• 1:18:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's surprisingly nimble and acrobatic in this form, and frequently leaps on top of opponents or obstacles crushing them with her bulk.
• 1:18:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: return to her normal form, Ashley must vomit up her extra mass, a formidable unarmed combat in train by Hawkeye and Mockingbird, Ashley is also a skilled pilot and card player.
• 1:18:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: Amanda, how you do it?
• 1:18:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: We just got it.
• 1:18:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: So while you guys are talking about like representation, it reminded me that a lot of the reference representation has that comes around big people, especially any sort of
• 1:18:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: romantic way is that it's the oh poor me and no one's going to love me and so then they'll take any sort of attention that they'll get and then when they get good attention they don't know whether or not that person's sort of either playing a track.
• 1:18:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: on them or when it's going to end or is this person fetishizing me?
• 1:18:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is a recent movie that came out that I have not been able to watch yet that I want to called things like this where it's about a fat character when and then when like a quote unquote hot guy starts flirting with him, he kind of doesn't know what to do.
• 1:19:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's kind of like where our representation is and and media right now.
• 1:19:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's it's still one of those things and again, we can even see in comics like people don't quite know what to do with or handle fat characters yet.
• 1:19:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Have you ever seen nocturnal animals?
• 1:19:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: No.
• 1:19:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a 2016 film starring Amy Adams and the opening she goes to an art piece where the artist has fat women dancing nude behind like glass panels for the crowd and it portrays them as like relatively beautiful and kind of awe-inspiring.
• 1:19:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's meant to be kind of an art piece.
• 1:19:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if there was derogatory intent at all, but I remember seeing that film and being like, almost like, whoa, okay, this is not something I've ever seen before.
• 1:19:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: It felt like art in kind of the beautiful way.
• 1:19:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's celebrating different forms.
• 1:19:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: But again, I don't know what the intention of the director was.
• 1:19:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: But it seems to, I don't know, there's themes of kind of like beauty and artifice and emotional emptiness and revenge, like explored in the film.
• 1:20:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: I feel like this last story that Haram got to read is definitely a way of trying to put her more on a positive light because again, actually Crawford herself and now legally birthed.
• 1:20:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: She is a good person.
• 1:20:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: She is someone who is capable.
• 1:20:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: She is someone who has run her own, you know, female own small business for, you know, which is herself for for a long time and is
• 1:20:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: So like she is capable and I'm glad that she's that she's kind of always shown as being capable.
• 1:20:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's just everyone else around her just still sees her as a joke.
• 1:20:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: And like that's that's kind of what her her story has been for.
• 1:20:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it takes one writer to reclaim this character and just launch her into her own like incredible superhero era.
• 1:20:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is a she-holt character.
• 1:20:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's super fucking powerful.
• 1:21:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: What's the codename you give her?
• 1:21:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think I'm kind of fine with Bertha for now, but I would actually love to see She-Hulk Bertha and like, Tatania, like, do a girl strip and like, have them be like, let's do this model photo shoot with, you know, to pay for this trip.
• 1:21:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: And also, like, I don't know, if Black Mariah's, like, on one of her, like, better behaved times, because she's still not a great lady.
• 1:21:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: But like, you know, like, you're hanging out with her white girl friend who has, like, cornrows.
• 1:21:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: White Jenny.
• 1:21:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Again, also super, but like, but yeah, like I, again, I think like those like those three characters would be would be fun to see interact and kind of like that Marvel Diva's Ask where it's like girls trip kind of fun.
• 1:21:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think I think yeah, I was trying to be still fun because I feel like actually is still like a fun character But not making her be a joke, but her just enjoying being with them
• 1:22:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: I was chatting with Seth Martel who's my best bud about this character earlier and I'm like I want to put her on like a team on Critoba where she's almost trying to do with great likes of Andrew's team.
• 1:22:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let's get a bunch of weird characters and she's like the the powerhouse and we give her a codename like knockout that's like referencing her looks but also her strength Seth just before we recorded like did it like a character sketch of her like with a read design
• 1:22:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: where it's giving kind of like Anna Kanda or like Amazon Warrior woman.
• 1:22:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's like a headpiece and she's grown her hair out and it's fucking great, right?
• 1:22:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like I want I've been wanting to write blob on a team forever, but big birthday might be my top choice.
• 1:22:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like you give her a name and you give her some penash and you don't make the fucking stories about her weight.
• 1:22:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's a competent, incredible, educated woman and a powerful superhero.
• 1:22:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: I like her a lot if you write her right.
• 1:22:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: So also, there's the other character who is fairly similar with Thumbalena, who is a small person.
• 1:22:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: I believe technically she is a little person who then can change your size.
• 1:23:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: So like her default form is of a little person.
• 1:23:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so I think that could also be a fun team up of, of Bertha and Thumbalena being like, you know,
• 1:23:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: two, two gals haven't haven't fun on Cricola.
• 1:23:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: And you don't make it about their size at all.
• 1:23:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, yes, they're there.
• 1:23:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: William Williams on this character, stat.
• 1:23:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Good Lord, right?
• 1:23:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: Haram, what are your thoughts on Bertha?
• 1:23:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: I think there's a lot to still be reconciled with Bertha as a character.
• 1:23:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: And this comes from how, when it comes down to house art and portrayals are of any sort of body type of any sort of, what's the word, characteristic in a person that has been,
• 1:23:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: mocked or derided for quite a long time.
• 1:23:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: There is always then there's always the period of time like the era of time where it's like a lot of writers are coming behind these different characters, these different portrayals and everything to try to basically figure out first off where they went wrong and first you like you just kind of start out without actually getting the people who live
• 1:24:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: judge where they have had to deal with whatever maybe issues they've had with their weight whether it be social issues or anything of that sort.
• 1:24:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: They don't never really get there say on it, so then they can write a better story.
• 1:24:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: So then you're trying to reconcile the issue without having those people at the table to actually assist in reconciling the issue.
• 1:24:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: I feel like we're in that we're still kind of in the middle of that era where it's like,
• 1:24:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I open with this, but this character has never been written by a woman.
• 1:24:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's crazy to me.
• 1:24:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: But Mariah will recently wrote her and is clearly very fond of her, right?
• 1:24:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, writer has a plower house, but change her visual a little bit.
• 1:24:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't have to be the short little hair on the tiny head.
• 1:24:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, like, there's so many ways to do this.
• 1:24:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think she's fucking great.
• 1:24:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think she's so has so much potential.
• 1:24:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: Also, we covered some really problematic shit today and smile and our way through it.
• 1:25:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: But also, there's feelings here, like, I don't know.
• 1:25:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'll say this.
• 1:25:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've come around to being like, I like Big Bertha.
• 1:25:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I like the character of Big Bertha.
• 1:25:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: I would just be very nervous about someone using her much like in the era of them being around Deadpool.
• 1:25:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, some writer who is writing Deadpool to, you know, pull out all the, all the slapstick jokes is going to be like, let's throw a big worth in there because fat babies are funny like that, like that, that's what makes me nervous about the character not necessarily the character herself, but the way that other people are going to treat her and the way that other people are going to use her in a story like that's that's kind of where I am with like being nervous about her.
• 1:25:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I want her in like a real superhero era.
• 1:25:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: Although she'd make an amazing villain too.
• 1:25:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: You heard me reference Anaconda before.
• 1:25:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like that's almost the energy I want here.
• 1:25:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: She needs to beat the shit out of Deadpool.
• 1:25:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I really still makes me laugh that time.
• 1:26:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Deadpool pulls off his basket and she throws up.
• 1:26:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: Aaron how are you doing pretty good like this was an interesting episode to come in on for one thing an interesting character to really get to read up on again and again like writers can do better artists can do better in regards to how they portray these characters and we're just worked towards it at the end of the day and get the right people in the rooms.
• 1:26:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: that's what I'll always say.
• 1:26:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: As I create this show, I'm a dad, I'm a social worker, I want to create safety.
• 1:26:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: I never want anyone to feel tokenized.
• 1:26:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't want the two of you to feel like, oh, I was invited on to talk to Big Bird about Big Bird for any specific reason.
• 1:26:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're both welcome on my show for all characters all the time, but it was mostly because based on our episode about Black Mariah, where we had covered a lot of the sensitivity that I thought, you know, this is a character that I really love, and we can talk about the problems along the way as well.
• 1:26:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it's always my goal to create safety, not to leave people like logging off and being like, fuck, what did I just do?
• 1:26:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, the thing is that like for me, like I mentioned at the beginning, you know, one of the, so it wasn't the first, but like one of the early episodes that we did was about body positivity, where we had different kinds of different people on.
• 1:27:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: After the trial of the blob, yeah, it was like we need to talk about this.
• 1:27:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, so so like so we have this body positivity episode and I feel like that sort of been a journey for me on this show and also just you know in life, I I'm not someone who was like I would say a body positive advocate meaning that like all of my social media is about this and like I'm you know sort of promoting this agenda or whatever.
• 1:27:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I will say, you know, one of our friends, Connor Goldsmith, last year at FlamCon, really paid me a very, very nice compliment, and it really stuck with me for a long time after.
• 1:27:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: So as I was leaving the after party, I was like making my rounds of saying goodbye to everyone and I ran into Connor and was like,
• 1:27:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, hey, we'll see you tomorrow, you know, great to see you tonight.
• 1:28:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And he was like, hey, I just want to tell you that I, I fucking loved your electroshoot that you just posted from the Kong you were at and the fact that like you are a big girl and you were like, no, I'm gonna wear like the song like outfit and I'm gonna put my body out there and I'm gonna be hot and I'm gonna show these people what being sexy is.
• 1:28:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that just like really made me feel like a certain type of way and like made me feel good like I don't like quote unquote intend or like post things like that intentionally to be like I want to be an inspiration but when people say things like that it's like oh that's right I do sort of represent a certain type of people and yeah it needs to be recognized without being fetishized or pigeonholed right like absolutely and I fucking love the both of you
• 1:28:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: We are less conversations, we're about Nazis or scripted readings, right?
• 1:28:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, we're here having fun all the time, but I think this is important, and if I can give advice to all my listeners, pay attention to how you interact with people of different sizes.
• 1:29:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Don't say things to someone like, oh, you look so great because you lost weight.
• 1:29:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do we have to compliment people's size at all?
• 1:29:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: Can you compliment someone's eye color or their earrings or their choice and fashion?
• 1:29:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: how the scarf compliments their hairstyle can you be fine without making it about this because everybody in this world there's so much shit and can we just learn how to love ourselves you know the queer community especially so mean all the time what did you say Harab?
• 1:29:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm sorry
• 1:29:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: You can also just say that they have a nice ass.
• 1:29:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, depends on the person.
• 1:29:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if you heard my interview with with Pady Cochrome.
• 1:29:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: I asked how she met Dave Cochrome and she's like, oh, he was making copies over at the Copping Machine.
• 1:29:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I walked him over and slapped his ass and said, hey, nice ass.
• 1:29:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm like, oh my god.
• 1:29:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: But you know, she's they were buried for a long time and so just for her with sometimes it works.
• 1:29:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Although I do not recommend I like Big Bertha a lot.
• 1:29:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love the two of you even more.
• 1:29:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for joining me for this conversation on a long Wednesday night I appreciate you so much these episodes take work and sensitivity
• 1:30:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: and really kind of challenging.
• 1:30:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's been some feelings I think showing up for all of us.
• 1:30:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm recognizing biases, I'm recognizing like parts of my past that maybe are not super okay.
• 1:30:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think that's something we're all reckoning with, but this character deserves more love, and the people reading this character deserve more love.
• 1:30:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Leo Williams, if you're listening, please write Big Bertha for us.
• 1:30:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think you'd be fucking amazing at it.
• 1:30:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: As we're wrapping up, where can people find you online, any final thoughts, and anything you want to plug before late September 2025?
• 1:30:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: You can follow the show at DreamAlk and Under Score Lane.
• 1:30:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're closing out the month on the Patreon with a conversation about the Quadriplegic Character Roger Box, who is an amputee.
• 1:30:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: with some crazy, crazy stories through the alpha flight run.
• 1:30:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: My dear friends Darrell Lawrence and Gabriella Garbarra are joining me for that one.
• 1:30:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Over on the main show, you can watch for the trial of Agatha Harkness to close out our month on Marvel Magic.
• 1:30:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can sign me across most social media at Demand and we're a teeny dm a and d a m a r t i n i.
• 1:31:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have a bunch of other content kind of planned and for the end of September, we're going to be wrapping up Academy X characters with on to me.
• 1:31:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: My X treats as we gear up for October, which is going to be all villains.
• 1:31:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: So very excited for all of the recipes I will be creating there.
• 1:31:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: For those of you that are following the newsletter, we're also celebrating the Academy X characters in my new X-Men trolley problems story that we're releasing with Seth.
• 1:31:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: The next, well, the one at the start of September will feature Dustin Preview, they won the vote.
• 1:31:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I'm very excited about that.
• 1:31:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: And here I am.
• 1:31:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: Hi there, I am Haram Skaram Kossley.
• 1:31:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: You can find me at most places as Haram Skaram H-A-R-U-M-S-C-A-R-U-M across social media platforms.
• 1:31:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: Um, I'll be at New York Comic-Con more than likely at the beginning of October around that time frame.
• 1:31:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: I don't know if I will have the cosplay that I want to have done done by then, but let's, let's see if I can pull it out my ass, you know.
• 1:32:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: I can't afford it though.
• 1:32:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'll only be there too because fuck it.
• 1:32:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's 2025.
• 1:32:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: I just gotta do something to push away the existential dread that's going on right now.
• 1:32:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: You can also I'm starting to post more on tick talk again.
• 1:32:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: Most of my posts are going to be about DC comics.
• 1:32:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm so sorry everybody.
• 1:32:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: I am just kind of getting back into my DC era.
• 1:32:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: Superman has really changed my life in a lot of ways.
• 1:32:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I just hope to continue to be kind like he is I could just be a little bit more like I can.
• 1:32:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: I don't know.
• 1:32:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: My favorite part of this whole conversation is that I get to hang out with you both again soon.
• 1:32:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: The most fun we have on the show, which is saying something are the X-Men script reads.
• 1:32:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: I can't wait to see you all there.
• 1:32:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks everybody.
• 1:32:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you both to Amanda and Herum for continuing to create a safe space for me as your friend.
• 1:32:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm loved that we got to have this conversation today.
• 1:32:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: And thanks everyone for listening.
• 1:32:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: We'll see you back here next time.
• 1:32:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: And now stay tuned for some thoughts on fascism, as a special guest tonight talked about a red skull story, and it's modern applications.
• 1:33:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Horst Vessel was born in 1907 and died in 1930.
• 1:33:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: He was a young storm uptight moonward, or essay officer in Berlin, whose death was transformed into one of the most powerful propaganda tools of the Nazi movement.
• 1:33:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: He served as a local essay leader in the working class districts where Nazi street politics clashed with communist and social democratic networks.
• 1:33:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: In January 1930, Vessel was shot in his apartment by Albrick Tali Huller, a criminal associated with communist circles.
• 1:33:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: Vessel died three weeks later from his wounds.
• 1:33:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: So just kind of a random political killing, but watch what this becomes my goodness.
• 1:33:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: The killing was rooted in the violent political atmosphere of the Vymar Berlin, where armed intimidation and street fighting were common, but not see propaganda quickly recast vessel as a martyr murdered by the Red Evan enemies of the nation.
• 1:33:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: After the death of Horsed Vessel, the Nazi Party aggressively mythologized Vessel as a symbolic fallen soldier of the movement.
• 1:34:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Joseph Gervels, then the Galatier of Berlin, helped shape this narrative, presenting Vessel as the idealized Nazi activist.
• 1:34:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Discipline, self-sacrificing, and loyal, his name was attached to ritual commemorations, marches, and speeches, and the movement built a cult-like reverence around him as a political saint.
• 1:34:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: This murder story wasn't incidental to Nazi strategy.
• 1:34:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: It served to morally justify street violence as heroic struggle and to portray the party as the victim of a murderous conspiracy, even as the essay was itself deeply involved in terrorizing opponents.
• 1:34:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: And listeners, I know you're already driving parallels to Americans when it does.
• 1:34:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: Next, we'll talk about it in a minute.
• 1:34:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Vessel was also linked to the song that became the Nazi movement's most famous anthem.
• 1:34:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's called the, the horse to Vessel lead.
• 1:34:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Vessel did not compose the melody, but he was widely credited with writing or adapting the lyrics, which praised the essay and framed Nazi street violence as a righteous battle.
• 1:34:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: The song became the official party anthem of the NSDAP and was performed at rallies and state ceremonies
• 1:35:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: after the Nazis took power.
• 1:35:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you've seen the man in the high castle television series, they perform this on the show at a certain point.
• 1:35:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: During the third Reich, it was commonly treated as a kind of co-national anthem.
• 1:35:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: It was sung alongside Doitschlandlied, the and public performance carried heavy political symbolism.
• 1:35:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Although it's frequently described in short-hand as the Nazi National Anthem, technically Germany's National Anthem, remained the other song with the first Stanza heavily emphasized by the Nazis, go look up the lyrics on your own if you'd like to, and the horse vessel lead functioned as the party's anthem and their central ceremonial song of the regime.
• 1:35:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we're going to jump into the political aspects very quickly.
• 1:35:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: The culture of martyrdom and ritual music helped legitimize the Nazi self images of mass movement entitled to rule and it merged seamlessly with the regime's rapid seizure of power in 1933.
• 1:35:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: So after Hitler became chancellor, the government used violence, intimidation, and emergency powers to crush opposition, and then move to formalized dictatorship through law.
• 1:36:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: So on March 23rd, 1933, the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act, and you guys have heard my reference to the Reichstag fire before, this act allowed Hitler's cabinet to enact laws with parliamentary approval, effectively dismantling democratic constraints while retaining the appearance of legality.
• 1:36:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's like wartime powers for a United States president in other words.
• 1:36:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: The essays presence in the streets and the exclusion of arrest in the communist deputies helped create the political conditions for the vote.
• 1:36:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: And in this way, propaganda icons like Horst vessel and rituals like the Horst vessel lead were not just cultural artifacts, but pieces of a broader political machine that fused myth, coercion, and legislation into a consolidated authoritarian state.
• 1:36:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Alright, we're gonna jump into the next issue of the incredible red skull incarnate series by Greg Pock.
• 1:36:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is issue number three.
• 1:36:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: It opens with a quote by Frederick Nietzsche, what doesn't kill me makes me stronger.
• 1:37:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: You might know that from a certain pop star.
• 1:37:05
  [UNKNOWN]: So...
• 1:37:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: But doesn't kill me amazing, that's what in the show.
• 1:37:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: Another war propaganda put posters on the cover of the Red Skull Space in the Sky flanked by tanks and planes.
• 1:37:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: In 1933 in the issue, we're in Berlin, the ranks of the Nazis have grown from 12 to 200 and just five years, they were anti-Jew and anti-Marxist and a fringe thinker named Adolf Hitler.
• 1:37:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: is finding traction among them.
• 1:37:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: In fact, he's become the chancellor.
• 1:37:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: The Nazis start using violence against deposers and killing some Hitler leaves town for a few weeks due to being blackmailed by an accountant.
• 1:37:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is real history.
• 1:37:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hitler's one of those wielding a blade and completing the killings.
• 1:37:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: He sees his excuse me, Red Skull is one of the people in the street wielding a blade and completing the killings.
• 1:37:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: He sees his old friend, Dieter, who's now a communist, and he fights Nazis to defend Dieter and ends up taking a blade to the arm so he isn't
• 1:37:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: Dieter references the rise of the Nazis, the murder of Horst Vessel, which I just taught you about, and how the Nazis were losing seats in the public election, elections while the communists were gaining.
• 1:38:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hitters caught his way to the top of a dying regime, he says.
• 1:38:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: The Nazis began planning a fake assassination attempt against Hitler to gain attention.
• 1:38:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: also real history.
• 1:38:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: Opposers attempted to burn down a welfare office and the Imperial Palace and sure enough the building is set on fire and Dutch leftist mariners van der Lube.
• 1:38:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: Again, a real person is arrested.
• 1:38:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hitler and Goring claim it is a copianist uprising.
• 1:38:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: The Brown shirts start more an organized rally and President von Hindenburg signs the Reichstag fired decree resulting in the arrest of thousands of communists.
• 1:38:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Due to his own manipulations,
• 1:38:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: And in the next elections, the Nazis win 44% of the vote, the communists get 12%, but they've all been put in jail.
• 1:38:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Hitler soon gets the ability to make laws himself through the enabling act, which I also just referenced.
• 1:38:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: And in the first concentration camp, Doc Ow opens just after that, a plan that had been in place in plain sight the whole fucking time.
• 1:39:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: So shortly after this, the social democratic party is banned, hundreds of thousands are arrested, thousands are murdered,
• 1:39:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: and 1.6 million Germans joined the Nazi Party, swearing fealty to aid off Hitler.
• 1:39:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Johan Schmidt is among them.
• 1:39:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let me welcome a new friend, but a long time on line friend.
• 1:39:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Jared Jahada is here to join me for this crazy conversation.
• 1:39:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Jared, hello, are you a red skull fan, my friend?
• 1:39:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hello, Chad.
• 1:39:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: And like many people, no, the guy is a jerk.
• 1:39:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I do like to have someone to hate and I'm usually a villains guy, but red skull is not one
• 1:39:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 1:39:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: So tell me a little bit about your relationship with like Captain American comics.
• 1:39:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is the first time we met.
• 1:39:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: It is.
• 1:39:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: It is.
• 1:39:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: And it's a pleasure.
• 1:39:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: And a joy.
• 1:39:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: And thank you for all that you do for the community.
• 1:39:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's good.
• 1:39:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm so happy to hear.
• 1:39:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for being part of the community.
• 1:39:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: I was never a huge like Avengers cap fan.
• 1:39:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: However, one of my very best friends is which has led to a lot of discussions about cap.
• 1:39:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: But I did have the super Nintendo Avengers game where you got to play is like cap vision and I think Hawkeye And maybe someone else I don't remember so my travels to Red Skull though I vividly remember because I saw the like 92 Captain America movie.
• 1:40:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think it was David Hasselhoff
• 1:40:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 1:40:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 1:40:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 1:40:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: And Red Skull in that movie was, I mean, it was horrible and terrifying, but it was so cool that I kept watching movie over and over again, because of, I couldn't comprehend how this like piano playing virtuoso became this horribly disfigured mass murderer, my like little nine-year-old brain couldn't handle it.
• 1:40:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: We love a disfigurement story in the early 90s.
• 1:40:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Any soup you really knew?
• 1:40:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: Any soup you've been dealing with a two-face origin story?
• 1:40:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: We automatically have sympathy.
• 1:40:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, absolutely, but when I like read some red skull comics later on, I was like, this is very different.
• 1:40:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: And this guy is even worse than the guy from the movie and then we had the cap films with Hugo weaving playing red skull.
• 1:40:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's quite an imposing villain.
• 1:40:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: Have you read many comics with him in it?
• 1:41:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I've read a few the first like one so I really read was like the access storyline because it's next Men and that's my main jam.
• 1:41:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're getting there in my reviews.
• 1:41:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're all yeah with the red onslaught.
• 1:41:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, fun But I was like okay, I've heard about this guy a lot.
• 1:41:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: I've read about this guy.
• 1:41:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: I've seen this guy And so I did I have a little more deep diving
• 1:41:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: and just he's so gay coded that I was intrigued and I was out by this point.
• 1:41:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I was like did they make this villain gay and he's not really gay?
• 1:41:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: He just it was like that thing where you make villains gay to show that gay is bad.
• 1:41:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's that thing where one man is obsessed with another man so much that he wants to die so that they can battle each other for eternity.
• 1:41:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're always being together like it's really hard not to.
• 1:41:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: And once his body so much that he goes into a clone of
• 1:41:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, yes, that one is a little bit more frightening though because the Germans had this like idea of the Aryan ID and like the perfect man there's a lot of this so Captain America is the result of a German defector coming to the states and using Nazi scientists to create the perfect Aryan weapon like there's there's some weird layers to that story.
• 1:42:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, which is, which was it had to be a conscious decision when they when they made cap, right, to be like we're going to make the defender of the U.S.
• 1:42:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: The Aryan ideal and he's gonna stand against everything the Germany is saying when I first started these red skull episodes Things like this started showing up and I'm like, oh my god, I because I've read it a hundred times and didn't realize those layers, but I'm learning I'm applying things to history at this point.
• 1:42:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now, Red School, the incarnate, is a follow-up to the Magneto Testament series of you have a Red Magneto Testament.
• 1:42:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: I love Magneto Testament because I'm a big magneto find like I said, I like villains.
• 1:42:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: So similar to that, it follows Magneto through the development of the early part of the war.
• 1:42:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is following the Red School's story.
• 1:42:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: And where Magneto series seems to be very largely about here's what happens to innocent people who have to scrape by to survive.
• 1:42:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, here's what, you know, this hard life has done to this person.
• 1:43:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: The red school series is kind of the opposite.
• 1:43:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Here's what happens when we allow this little shitty little fucker shit head.
• 1:43:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: I hope you're okay with sharing your, or sharing your, or yeah, go for it.
• 1:43:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: What happened when we allowed this monster who likes killing puppies with a blade to develop into something frightening?
• 1:43:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: What are your thoughts on the red school number three?
• 1:43:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: I read the whole series just to like, get it in and so I could focus in on this.
• 1:43:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's good.
• 1:43:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's really good.
• 1:43:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: It is really good.
• 1:43:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: In a way that I hate it so much because you can really see how the red skull psychology kind of developed over the course of the series, which is terrifying because once you begin to understand it, you realize he could have made other choices and he just chose not to.
• 1:43:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: He gave into every bad decision that he was co-opted with.
• 1:43:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: And this issue, uh, what's an in-detrick
• 1:43:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: Hey, come join with me and my buddies and maybe you can help us out.
• 1:43:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: And he takes the first opportunity to not only abandon him but just like punches him in the face when he tries to like help him.
• 1:43:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: Red skull in this is that like 20 year old shithead who maybe he did have a hard life going up but he just doesn't care and wants everyone to be miserable because he's miserable.
• 1:44:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, there's a certain point where you really run out of sympathy for this guy pretty fast, you know, like whatever society created, he made his own fucking choices along the way to a really brilliant use of color and art in this series really beautiful real world history and I tried to capture some of that history in the early part of the the episode where I'm talking about horse vessel and not the national anthem and the enabling act.
• 1:44:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, beyond the obvious historical counterparts, yeah, some of it I had actually known, I did a stint in Germany where I worked there for a couple of months, about like 12 years ago, so not recently.
• 1:44:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: They're very cool.
• 1:44:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's great.
• 1:44:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: But we did spend a weekend in Berlin and we did all the touristy stuff.
• 1:44:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: We went to the Holocaust Memorial, all these things.
• 1:44:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: So we heard some of these
• 1:44:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: stories and some of the history but like how this all kind of stacked up and all the dominoes fell and seeing an artistic team take what was a dirty bad time and a country that was having a rough time since the previous war people started embracing all these nationalistic ideas because they couldn't get over the fact that they were lost and they were so badly treated after the war and it's the perfect place to embrace the people embraced their privilege
• 1:45:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
• 1:45:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: They use their pain to push privilege forward by pushing other people down.
• 1:45:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: Exactly.
• 1:45:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
• 1:45:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: It really does.
• 1:45:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: Which is terrifying.
• 1:45:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: But it's the perfect spot to put in a horrible person and show how their environment helped shape them to be the worst villain in all of Marvel comics.
• 1:45:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, this anti-DEI stuff is this very clear trend.
• 1:45:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: The Reichstogs fire is the storming of the capital in January, right?
• 1:45:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: We use this like martyrdom complex to then pass acts like the enabling act, where we can suddenly weaponize instead of the brown shirts here.
• 1:45:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's ICE, and they suddenly are allowed to get violent with no prosecution.
• 1:45:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we're recording this in mid-January just about a week after the killing of Alex Pretty and things are shitty and everyone's fucking struggling, which brings me to my question, Jared, how are you doing in 2026, my friend, these are crazy times.
• 1:46:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: It is absolutely crazy.
• 1:46:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I live in a quote unquote sanctuary city, like I live in New York.
• 1:46:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: We are very aware and luckily we have a new mayor who's like making things a little bit better and it's definitely on our side against all these horrible fascist things that are going on.
• 1:46:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: But it's rough and without going into too much detail, you have to talk about it with people you trust and you have to ignore it for a little while and you just kind of got to go through the cycles of like processing what you can but knowing when you need to step away.
• 1:46:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, the way I phrase it, I'm a therapist, the way I phrase it with clients and myself often is like this is the right amount of blank to feel this is the right amount of pain to feel and then I got to be done this is the right amount of grief to feel with we make it too little it overwhelms us and if we make it too much we go crazy and so it just has to be the right amount at all times and that's a burden we're carrying as queer people as immigrants as the disabled as the trans community like it it's a shitty time.
• 1:47:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely.
• 1:47:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: And like I have friends who are like I only let myself look at social media the news for an hour a day because I can't take all the whatever that's happening in that horrible day to go on.
• 1:47:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: And the past week with Alex Pretty being murdered and executed, it's been rough for a couple of really close friends of mine.
• 1:47:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, what are you doing to create joy in the world?
• 1:47:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: How are you getting by?
• 1:47:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I'm a huge nerd and I play a lot of D&D.
• 1:47:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's what I do.
• 1:47:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: I have my own little world that I run for some friends of mine and then there's a game that we actually play on Twitch that I run.
• 1:47:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: So pay people a really bored they can watch that.
• 1:47:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: But it's really just for us.
• 1:47:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like, we are just having fun and playing in a different world where the rules are different and
• 1:47:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, and that's where our comics always land and that's where our X-Men comics always land But do and I already have some plans to talk X-Men on the main show, which I'm excited Yes, I am super excited.
• 1:47:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm so excited about that It's always wonderful to make new friends and the people that I love hanging out with just get invited back again again So Jared if you're delightful, just be prepared We're going to be cool.
• 1:48:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: All right The pen sure you ask, but I think I'm all right.
• 1:48:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm just
• 1:48:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, thank you for your time today.
• 1:48:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks everybody for listening.
• 1:48:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: Please take care of yourselves.
• 1:48:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Remember that taking care of yourselves, living joyfully, not making yourself small.
• 1:48:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: All of these are a direct act of defiance in this crazy world, but also stay safe out there.
• 1:48:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: These are intense times.
• 1:48:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for listening.
• 1:48:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: We'll see you back here next week.
• 1:48:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Bye, Jared.
• 1:48:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Bye.