Latest / Fandomonium! A Fandom Comedy Game Show / Cast Interviews - Aaron Randolph: A Life Through Fandom

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Cast Interviews - Aaron Randolph: A Life Through Fandom · Fandomonium! A Fandom Comedy Game Show

• 0:00
  Hello leap Frogs, and welcome back to our cast interview series. It's been
• 0:05
  a couple months. We took a month off, but now we're back with
• 0:08
  brand new cast interviews across the next three months, so I expect one every
• 0:13
  four weeks. We're kind of taking the gaps in releasing so that we can
• 0:18
  have this series spread out across all of twenty twenty four, so that we
• 0:22
  can kick things off next year with some new bonus series on the main feed
• 0:27
  when I've got a bit more time for gate Leapers in yeah, twenty twenty
• 0:31
  five and beyond, a lot more time devoted to gate Leapers as I wrap
• 0:35
  up a few other things in my life. So that's like a that's a
• 0:37
  very exciting thing. But of course we couldn't do all of this stuff without
• 0:42
  our fantastic cast, and that's why we've made this series so that you the
• 0:45
  listener the leap Frogs can get to know them just a little bit more.
• 0:50
  And this interview is with the brilliant author, podcaster, fellow games master Aaron
• 0:57
  Randolph. He is the host of ba YW because fuck you, that's why
• 1:03
  our sibling show in the podcasting sphere. Actually, I should give I should
• 1:07
  give a quick thank you and shout out to cjaka DJ Zanthus of Radio Dash
• 1:14
  Airwaves. I think when we recorded with CJ a couple of years ago,
• 1:18
  I think it was our viewsk Universe episode. I kind of did that thing
• 1:23
  that I usually do with new guests where I say, hey, look it's
• 1:26
  not this is a bit of a weird podcast. Just trust us. It's
• 1:29
  it's got a nice flow to it, but it's not like a traditional podcast.
• 1:33
  It's kind of like a game show, but it's also not a game
• 1:34
  show. Just just go along with it. I promise you won't have recorded
• 1:38
  anything like this before, but it'll be it'll be fun. And then CJ
• 1:42
  was like, oh, I've I've recorded something like this very recently. Actually,
• 1:47
  you're not the only one making British style panel game shows in the in
• 1:52
  the podcasting sphere. And that's when CJ put us in touch with the guys
• 1:56
  over at BFYW, which has just been a brilliant a brilliant thing. I'm
• 2:01
  going on their show as a player is it puts me in my place,
• 2:07
  for one, but also it's one of the funnest things that I get to
• 2:13
  do in podcasting and it's an absolute blast every time. So if you love
• 2:16
  what we do at gate Lea, because you absolutely should be subscribed to b
• 2:20
  FYITW and Aaron is a big part of making all that happen. He is
• 2:24
  also an author of the wonderful sci fi mystery novel Thane, which I've read
• 2:30
  myself and I highly recommend. And he's currently hard at work off the back
• 2:34
  of a successful Kickstarter campaign with some fantastic actors and audio producers to make the
• 2:42
  Thane audiobook a reality, and I believe it's It's not too far away in
• 2:46
  the grand scheme of things. So what I will say to you, the
• 2:50
  listener, is if you prefer to read your books like it's like it's the
• 2:54
  twentieth century or something, then you should absolutely pick up a copy of Thing
• 3:00
  right now. I will put a link in the show notes to where you
• 3:02
  can do that. But if you're look, if you're one of these hip
• 3:06
  twenty first century people like I'm trying to be, then maybe you prefer consuming
• 3:12
  your fiction via audio book. I've heard it's the hip new thing that's been
• 3:15
  around for well since since cassettes, maybe even vinyl. Then I don't think
• 3:23
  Aaron would mind me saying just just hang fire a second, hold on,
• 3:27
  wait until the Thane audiobook is released later this year, and then pick up
• 3:30
  a copy of that, because it's got a full cast. It's it's not
• 3:36
  just Aaron reading all of the parts. He has cast all of the roles
• 3:39
  within Thane. And yeah, I can't wait to hear it. Like it's
• 3:44
  like it's an old school radio play. Old school is new school, New
• 3:47
  school is cool. No one's ever said that before, and it was a
• 3:51
  very uncool thing to say. Okay, I've done enough waffling. I'll be
• 3:53
  back at the end of this episode for some more probably also a waffle,
• 3:59
  but for now, please enjoy this conversation I had with Aaron as you hopefully
• 4:01
  hear a lot of things that you might expect from Aaron, but also some
• 4:04
  unexpected things as well. And it wouldn't be two games masters getting together to
• 4:10
  record a podcast if one of those games masters hadn't prepared a game for the
• 4:15
  other one to play and for you to play along with at home. So
• 4:18
  this is this is perhaps our most engaging interview for more than one reason.
• 4:24
  But I'll let Aaron set up the rest. Let's get to it. Hello,
• 4:31
  Aaron, how are you doing? Amen, how are you? I'm
• 4:35
  doing good. Thanks. We're here on a very early on a Sunday morning,
• 4:40
  earlier than we've usually recorded together. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's
• 4:44
  a little strange, but I got up. I made sure to get up
• 4:46
  early enough to go run out and get breakfast and nice, have it early
• 4:51
  enough so I could take care of certain business details that wouldn't interrupt the recording,
• 4:58
  you know, So I'll accept that. I'll accept that one little victory
• 5:00
  to start the day that that feels bright. Yeah. Yeah, we've both
• 5:04
  had some wins to start the day. This is this is very good.
• 5:06
  Yeah. Yeah. I actually, before we get into into, you know,
• 5:11
  our pre prepared format of the same questions that we've asked on our previous
• 5:15
  cast member interview episodes, I kind of wanted to ask you, sort of
• 5:20
  games master to games master a little bit about your game development process for b
• 5:25
  f Yit w because with gate Leapers, I do it by the seat of
• 5:30
  my pants more than I should. I wish I thought about it like four
• 5:34
  or five six weeks in advance, but generally speaking, it tends to be
• 5:38
  the two weeks before a recording where I finally go Okay, what's what's happening
• 5:43
  on this episode? So what's it? What's it like for bfyit w Well,
• 5:47
  I hate to say it, but it's actually very similar. Like with
• 5:51
  there are there are exceptions, like we do every now and then we do
• 5:55
  like a charity game show to have you know, people actually play for actual
• 6:00
  that we then donate to whatever charity they choose, and those are usually a
• 6:03
  lot of fun, but those are so much work that those are generally planned
• 6:06
  out, like I want to say, like like a month in advance at
• 6:12
  least, especially if it's a new game. If it's a new game,
• 6:15
  then everything needs to be nailed down well ahead of time. Like I like,
• 6:18
  if there are visual elements that the players need to see, then I'll
• 6:24
  write up a program that will take care of that for us and not not
• 6:28
  have us like running like I don't know, slide shows or anything. It's
• 6:31
  a far cry from like an actual game show like you would see on TV,
• 6:35
  but I show, but I do still try to give the players everything
• 6:40
  they need to play the game fairly and accurately. You know, Oh yeah,
• 6:43
  you do. You do a great job of that. For for the
• 6:45
  last one of those we recorded together, there was a huge visual element that
• 6:48
  worked really well. Yeah, and you say, like a far cry from
• 6:54
  actual TV game shows, but like we are kind of a far cry from
• 6:57
  actual TV game shows, and I think we do a we do it.
• 7:00
  We do a great job considering that fact, Like we don't have access to
• 7:03
  hundreds of thousands of dollars in production budgets. That's true, But I mean
• 7:09
  podcasts when it comes down to it, like podcasts just just sort of carry
• 7:13
  on the spirit of radio absolutely, and radio is where like game shows pretty
• 7:18
  much started like before TV even you know, there were game shows on radio
• 7:26
  back in the twenties, thirties and what have you, so you know it
• 7:29
  kind of it kind of has come full circle. But now any old person
• 7:33
  who wants to run a game show can do so, and we just do
• 7:39
  so through the medium of podcasts. Yeah, which takes, as we both
• 7:43
  know, takes so much more effort than oh yes, just producing a chatting
• 7:46
  based podcast. Yes, oh yes. Can I tell you, like running
• 7:51
  the two task Master episodes that we have done, yes, that that have
• 7:56
  been pretty much like full task Master games. They're like two of the most
• 8:01
  rewarding episodes we've done, but also required so much work. Like I can
• 8:09
  only imagine, uh, you know, the the the designing games ahead of
• 8:13
  time, planning them and then like uh you know, actually recording them ahead
• 8:20
  of time with each individual contestant and then editing them all together in a way
• 8:24
  that is both visually you know, easy to follow, but also funny.
• 8:28
  You want, you want to make sure that the comedy comes across, and
• 8:33
  then doing one massive recording with everybody and showing them the footage and so whatnot.
• 8:39
  And then to make things even harder, on our second go around,
• 8:43
  we decided to do it in front of a live audience. Yes, so
• 8:46
  so that just made it even harder because we had to schedule everything perfectly and
• 8:50
  have everything ready to go and you know, show up an hour early and
• 8:54
  set everything up and like it was wild. It was, it was.
• 8:56
  It was a lot of work just to do that. Like and yeah,
• 9:00
  even even even the the individual episodes of bfy tw usually like a good hour
• 9:05
  of work goes in ahead of time, just figuring everything out and coming up
• 9:09
  with games and what to play and what topics cover and so forth. Oh
• 9:11
  for sure that that pre production time, it really does take a while.
• 9:16
  Yeah, Yeah, I'm hoping to do our first like live streamed gate leapers
• 9:22
  this year, and then our first like live with an audience episode next year.
• 9:26
  It's kind of like, it's so cool my general goals and it's like,
• 9:28
  yeah, there's there's there's so much I'm gonna have to rethink about,
• 9:31
  Like a live format. I'm gonna have to like keep some things the same
• 9:35
  but change others to make it work in sort of a live theater space.
• 9:39
  But I will tell you like having that audience, Like our audience wasn't huge,
• 9:43
  it was maybe like twenty people at most, but like the the energy
• 9:46
  in the room is like twenty people could create a lot of energy. Yeah,
• 9:50
  it really did jazz the whole show up, and we got lots of
• 9:54
  laughs and we had a great time. Like I I recommend trying at the
• 9:58
  very least in if it doesn't work, then it doesn't work, yeah you
• 10:01
  know, then you just try again. You know, failure is just you
• 10:05
  know, success training. As they say, so, oh yeah, I
• 10:09
  have very little doubt you're gonna succeed. I'm sure, hey, and luck
• 10:15
  if we fail, it'll just be success training. As you say that your
• 10:18
  show is your show is fun and funny enough that I feel like it's gonna
• 10:22
  be fine. It's gonna be fine. Oh that's that's very kind. But
• 10:26
  we'll see because I do panic in a stage based format, so we'll see
• 10:28
  how it goes. Well, that's why you have Odra and Jason there exactly.
• 10:35
  They they'll get you back on the rails, no problem. They both
• 10:39
  calmed me down in different ways for sure. But yes, I certainly understand
• 10:43
  that freak moment of like time stands still and you're like, h yes,
• 10:48
  yeah, oh I I orchestrate it, this entire thing. I have to
• 10:50
  make sure it goes smoothly cool. Yeah, yeah, all right, Well
• 10:54
  that sounds like some good wisdom that you've you've gained over the cost of a
• 11:00
  life Aaron, perhaps a lifetime fandom three pop culture. Yeah, yeah,
• 11:03
  And I just wanted to just jump in and just because we are both games
• 11:09
  masters, like, you know, we can't do this without playing some sort
• 11:13
  of game. Oh yes, please, right, you know we can't.
• 11:16
  So I've decided to have a little fun and I'm going to try and sneak
• 11:20
  in twenty references to a specific fandom over the course of this interview. I'm
• 11:26
  going to try and sneak in twenty references to one specific fandom. Now,
• 11:31
  I will mention this fandom at some point over the course of this interview.
• 11:35
  Okay, we'll have something to choose from. But if I can sneak those
• 11:39
  references past you, and at the end of the episode, we'll see if
• 11:43
  you can guess what the fandom is, and if you can't, I'll have
• 11:45
  you guess what the references were. Okay, okay, I like that,
• 11:48
  and I've got already. I have to tell you, out of fairness that
• 11:52
  the game may have already started. Oh oh, you said something in our
• 11:58
  opening chat, did you? Oh? God, damn it. Everything will
• 12:01
  have been recorded, so everything from the point where you hit record is fair
• 12:05
  game. Yeah. Yeah. Can I submit an answer after I edit it
• 12:07
  and like carefully pour over all the audience. No, this is fun.
• 12:13
  Thanks for preparing this extra elements. Yeah, why not? Why not?
• 12:16
  Let's have a little fun with it. Hell yeah. But also, just
• 12:20
  to make sure I don't give anything away. Every now and then, I
• 12:24
  will just look down and scratch something off on my paper, even if I
• 12:26
  didn't say one of the things. Yeah, just to throw me off.
• 12:31
  Just to make sure I don't give anything away, all right, that's that's
• 12:33
  fair. That's fair. Okay, Well, I'll get on with my regularly
• 12:39
  scheduled interview questions and myself and the listeners can slowly try and figure out this
• 12:43
  mystery. Everyone at home, you feel free to play along. Maybe you've
• 12:48
  caught one of the things I've said already, but keep your ears open.
• 12:50
  We'll see lovely stuff. Okay. Well, with that, let's let's flash
• 12:56
  back right to the beginning of your life, and I'm going to ask you
• 12:58
  the question, what was the first pop culture media you were obsessed with.
• 13:03
  This couldn't be like a piece of home media that you watched on repeat,
• 13:09
  a toy that you couldn't put down or had to collect, or a book
• 13:11
  series that you couldn't stop reading. See. I had like six answers to
• 13:16
  this. Yeah, Like, there's there's no way that I just could have
• 13:20
  one, just one thing. But I'll be honest. The very first thing
• 13:22
  that I remember being, you know, in awe of as a child,
• 13:28
  and this makes so much sense all things considered were game shows like I would
• 13:33
  watch like the bright lights and the pretty colors, and the contestants would get
• 13:37
  excited and I'd get excited, you know, and my family loves telling stories
• 13:43
  of me being like two or three years old and going up to you know,
• 13:46
  my family members or guests and saying that they just want a brand new
• 13:52
  car, you know. So game shows had me hooked from very young and
• 13:58
  it got even worse when the game show Press Your Luck came out and that
• 14:03
  show incorporated cartoons. At three or four years old, I was obsessed and
• 14:13
  I absolutely loved that game show and still continue to love that game show to
• 14:16
  this day. My parents also got me into reading mystery stories at a young
• 14:22
  age, including Encyclopedia Brown and The Hardy Boys. And my dad was also
• 14:30
  a huge Anglo file so he watched a lot of British television shows on PBS.
• 14:37
  So I grew up watching Are You Being Served? Yes? In the
• 14:43
  classic sitcoms Yes and Oh. I can never remember the name of the actual
• 14:48
  show, but it was No. It was keeping up Appearances, Oh show
• 14:50
  Yeah, Yeah, with Hyacinth Bucket Yes. And as a as a little
• 15:00
  I don't think I appreciated Hyacinth and her husband pottering around the garden so much,
• 15:05
  but as an adult I got a much greater appreciation for it. And
• 15:09
  uh and I I still every now and then we'll go back and like,
• 15:13
  thankfully a lot of these things are preserved on YouTube to this day, so
• 15:16
  I can still go back and watch like an old episode. Uh so yeah,
• 15:20
  there there's there's a lot. Yeah, I mean I got obsessed with
• 15:24
  a young age. Yeah, that makes total sense. That's very adorable.
• 15:28
  You approaching guests and being like you you've won a car, You've won a
• 15:31
  speedboat. I imagine like some maybe more distant acquaintances of the family might be
• 15:37
  like, really, really, I get a car. I get a car.
• 15:39
  I'll have to do is interact with this toddler and I get a car.
• 15:43
  That makes so much sense as well, with the whole your dad being
• 15:46
  an anglophile, uh and wanting to been showing a lot of like bray stuff
• 15:50
  in the house. That makes sense. And then I imagine a love for
• 15:52
  British game shows then comes from that, the combination of those two. I
• 15:58
  mean not at the time, because PBS didn't really show British game shows.
• 16:02
  They just showed like a few sitcoms and a few dramas. I think it
• 16:07
  wasn't until the Internet came around and I got to experience like that I already
• 16:11
  enjoyed and experienced a lot of American game shows, but not a lot of
• 16:15
  British game shows at all. And then the Internet comes around and a lot
• 16:19
  of things that I wasn't, you know, exposed to, I suddenly could,
• 16:22
  like even older shows like you know, fifteen to one or Going for
• 16:27
  Gold. As silly as those might seem today, I still really enjoy anything
• 16:34
  that's got like a really good game at its heart, and there have been
• 16:41
  some outstanding games along the way. At least, I should say in Britain
• 16:45
  they continued to like innovate and experiment with game shows even to this day,
• 16:49
  whereas I feel like America got into like the big money game show when I
• 16:55
  was in my twenties and thirties and then just kind of gave up. Now
• 17:00
  we're just doing like, you know, retreads of old of old game shows
• 17:03
  and not really trying to come up with anything new nowadays. So it's kind
• 17:07
  of disappointing, but yeah, you can, Yeah, at least I have
• 17:08
  British game shows to try new things, and they see what they're coming up
• 17:14
  with, because they're still coming up with some great ideas for sure, for
• 17:17
  sure, And you can see America was just like but look We've done big
• 17:19
  money. How can we go bigger than big? We can't do bigger money.
• 17:25
  I mean America is all about the big money for sure. But I
• 17:29
  mean even though they might control half the world like they're not, you know,
• 17:33
  America definitely doesn't do everything right. Not by a long shot. Oh
• 17:37
  yeah, yeah, every every country has its problems for sure. But yeah,
• 17:41
  I think that is a is a start to your pop culture consumption that
• 17:45
  explains a lot about you, Aaron, in terms of where you're at now.
• 17:48
  The mystery, the mystery novels, and the game shows. Yeah,
• 17:52
  I think that's a perfect start to who you are now. So now I
• 17:56
  kind of want to ask you about when the people got involved with the small
• 18:02
  love of entertainment, of media, of pop culture. So what was the
• 18:06
  first fandom you remember being a part of. I remember, I would have
• 18:11
  to say it's video games as a whole. I got a and I've talked
• 18:18
  about it on my podcast for I got a TI ninety nine for a home
• 18:23
  computer when I was very young. This was a Texas instruments like very bare
• 18:30
  bones, very like. Yeah, I've not heard of this before. It
• 18:33
  was I think it was only released in America. I think that might be
• 18:37
  what the A stands for. I don't know, but it was. It
• 18:41
  was a home computer, and it was mine, and it was it was
• 18:44
  It was the first like quote unquote game system that my family had that specifically
• 18:49
  belonged to me. Sure, so I spent a lot of time on that.
• 18:53
  And about a year later I got a Nintendo Entertainment system. And this
• 18:59
  is also about time that I started going to school, and I remember vividly
• 19:03
  sharing like tips and tricks with other kids in lunch, telling each other the
• 19:10
  cheat codes to Contra three for the end Super Nintendo in middle school, or
• 19:15
  bringing in my copy of Game Pro magazines remember when video game magazines were a
• 19:19
  thing. Oh, so that my buddy could copy down the list of fatalities
• 19:25
  for Mortal Kombat too, for the Genesis. So you're like a walking videogame
• 19:32
  magazine in some ways. I learned very quickly that like I mean not to
• 19:37
  be like, knowledge is power, you know. And and when I had
• 19:45
  what the other kids wanted, which was info about the games that they wanted
• 19:48
  to play, or that they wanted to cheat at, or what happened,
• 19:51
  yeah, you know, I very quickly was like, okay, now I
• 19:56
  need to learn as much as I can, as fast as I can,
• 19:59
  so I can so I can continue to be, you know, the person
• 20:02
  that people want to talk to, because it was very it was. It
• 20:07
  was. It was an exciting feeling, you know, having people who wanted
• 20:11
  to It was probably my first like experience of being the limelight, if that
• 20:15
  makes any sense. Yeah, like like like, oh, I'm the person
• 20:18
  people want to fuck. Oh my goodness, hello, yes, yeah,
• 20:22
  how can I help you? You know, my time has come. Let
• 20:23
  me share my bye my adoring fans, let me uh yeah, yeah,
• 20:32
  pretty much, pretty much exactly. Yeah, but yeah, it was,
• 20:37
  it was, it was, and it was an engrossing feeling and I really,
• 20:41
  uh, I really relished that that feeling power now, mind you.
• 20:45
  It also made me a little bit of a target for bullies and what have
• 20:49
  you. But different times. Geek Geek wasn't a chic back then. Yeah,
• 20:55
  well, I mean, you know, I wasn't. I wasn't the
• 20:56
  biggest kid. I wasn't the strongest kid for sure, But I did get
• 21:00
  bullied, and it was It wasn't usually because of video games. I'll say
• 21:04
  that, like, it wasn't you know, it wasn't something to blame,
• 21:07
  but it didn't it didn't necessarily make it easier. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 21:12
  but those bullies are just like I'm really I'm jealous that he has all
• 21:17
  that knowledge and has all those people around him. He's in the limelight right
• 21:19
  now. I want to be fidlight, but I don't want to work any
• 21:22
  kind of knowledge, So I'm going to I want to be I want to
• 21:26
  be in the camera, you know, I want I want I want people
• 21:27
  to pay attention to me. But like, it wasn't it wasn't just having
• 21:32
  that knowledge. It was also the world that video games and specifically like the
• 21:36
  Nintendo Entertainment System opened up to me. Like before that, like the only
• 21:41
  games that I had played were like the Atari twenty six hundred, which was
• 21:45
  very limited, Like games were all about having a high score. The plot
• 21:48
  of the game could be described in a single ten word sentence, you know,
• 21:53
  it was. It was very you know, basic, and there wasn't
• 21:56
  a lot to it. Whereas like the Nintendo you started having having these like
• 22:00
  open worlds like the Legend of Zelda gave you, for the first time,
• 22:04
  at least for me, the free will to explore wherever I wanted. Now,
• 22:10
  now granted some of these places where like you know that they'd have enemies
• 22:14
  that were like too tough for you and you'd have to back out and run
• 22:17
  away. Just even even the idea that like the virtuality of being able to
• 22:22
  go wherever you wanted in a video game and just explore was like it was
• 22:29
  it was mind blowing for like a six year old, you know what I
• 22:32
  mean. Like I was in I was incredible, Like like I had no
• 22:36
  idea what it was doing, and it took a lot of issues of Nintendo
• 22:38
  Power to figure out what I was doing. But it was still it was
• 22:42
  still an engrossing experience, and I got serious into video games from that point
• 22:48
  forward. So video games became a very big part of my life at a
• 22:53
  young age and stayed that way until I was well into my thirties. Hell,
• 22:57
  yes, that's I mean, that's a perfect age. I think a
• 23:00
  lot of longtime video game fans would say, oh, yeah, to be
• 23:03
  that age when the NES comes out, uh, and to start exploring those
• 23:07
  three D worlds. Yeah, that's a that's a that's a good time.
• 23:10
  That's a good time. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, I I adored it.
• 23:12
  This could be at any point during your childhood. It could be a
• 23:15
  little later on, maybe in your teen years, But was there ever a
• 23:18
  time that you met up during those years as like an organized group in either
• 23:22
  a physical space or like the early message boards maybe organized group. No.
• 23:29
  No. The first the first organized group that I can remember being a part
• 23:34
  of as like an actual fandom, like a fandom community was Tex Murphy.
• 23:42
  And I've explained before on the PC Games episode. Yes, the text Murphy
• 23:47
  games were they were they came out nineteen eighty four. Was Under a Killing
• 23:52
  Moon, and uh, it's it's a detective game that has real three D
• 23:57
  spaces that you can explore. You can find clues, pick things up,
• 24:02
  look at them, you can click on something and text will say something funny
• 24:04
  about it. But it's also an adventure game, like you pick up objects
• 24:07
  and you rub them together to see what sticks, and you know, try
• 24:11
  and solve inventory puzzles and all that. But it also had full motion video.
• 24:15
  It had at real live actors in front of a camera in front of
• 24:18
  a cheap blue screen, like getting put into these three D spaces and Under
• 24:25
  a Killing Moon made like headlines. It showed up in like all the gaming
• 24:29
  magazines. It was. It was big enough at least in gaming press to
• 24:33
  get some attention. But I feel like after that, like Text, Murphy
• 24:37
  just kind of disappeared from the public consciousness. So the follow up game,
• 24:42
  in nineteen ninety six, the Pandora Directive, came out, and that game
• 24:47
  was like one of the greatest games I've ever played. It is still in
• 24:49
  my top three and it it did everything that Under a Killing Moon did.
• 24:55
  Had an engrossing mystery, had these three D spaces to explore, great logic,
• 25:00
  great inventory, puzzles, great like cut scenes and stuff, so much
• 25:03
  stuff. There's still stuff I'm finding to this day. And it had a
• 25:07
  brilliant conversation system like mass effect, where it didn't tell you what you were
• 25:11
  going to say, but how he was going to say it. And it
• 25:15
  was such an engrossing experience that I was like, why is Tex not bigger?
• 25:18
  Like why isn't he massive thing? But the thing is they just called
• 25:22
  it the Pandora Directive and didn't link anything to Text or Under a Killing Moon
• 25:26
  at all on the boss Okay, so I think people didn't understand that this
• 25:30
  was a sequel to Under a Killing Moon. Yeah, franchises hadn't been perfected
• 25:34
  yet yes, yes, the idea of a gaming franchise wasn't wasn't nailed down
• 25:41
  in stone at this point. This was still nineteen ninety six, and some
• 25:45
  companies were still trying to figure it out, and unfortunately Access Software, which
• 25:48
  is a company that made these games, was one of them. They made
• 25:52
  another game, Texmurphy Overseer, in nineteen ninety eight, but I believe that
• 25:56
  game sold even less than Pandora or did oh wow, which is a crying
• 26:02
  shame. But this was also around the time the Internet became a thing,
• 26:04
  and I found a group online called the Unofficial Text Murphy Forums Nice and I
• 26:11
  became a member and hung out and this was my first and only foray into
• 26:15
  the world of fan fiction. Yes please, yeah, you wrote, you
• 26:19
  wrote some text Murphy fiction. I have written one piece of fan fiction in
• 26:25
  my entire life. Okay, So back in nineteen ninety eight, Tex Murphy
• 26:27
  Overseer came out and it ends on kind of a terrifying cliffhanger Texts and his
• 26:33
  girlfriend Chelsea get shot with a dark gun. Fade to black, fade to
• 26:38
  black credits, oh wow. And we didn't get a resolution to this for
• 26:44
  sixteen years. The next game didn't come out until a successful Kickstarter campaign funded
• 26:49
  it in twenty fourteen. That game became Tesla Effect. In the meanwhile,
• 26:55
  the fans, especially the people on the Unofficial Text Murphy forum, were hungry
• 27:00
  for anything, so the original developers released a set of six Radio Theater episodes,
• 27:06
  with the original cast playing all the characters and revealing some of the things
• 27:10
  that happened after the cliffhanger from Overseer. And I love the Radio Theater episodes,
• 27:15
  but they also end with a cliffhanger. Oh and they didn't come out
• 27:18
  with any more, so I just out of desperation, I guess I actually
• 27:22
  tried my hand at writing a seventh non canon Radio Theater episode yea, and
• 27:29
  you can only find it by looking up the Unofficial Textmurphy forums on archive dot
• 27:34
  Org's Wayback from Shit Yet, and it's under the fan fiction section anytime after
• 27:41
  November third, two thousand and six. Okay, well, obviously I'm going
• 27:45
  to go try and find that that's gonna happen. But it's it's not my
• 27:51
  best writing ever, but I am proud of some well I am tech Smurphy
• 27:56
  fan fiction wasn't as good as the novel you wrote. I am proud of
• 28:00
  some of that writing. I think some of those jokes, I think some
• 28:03
  of those jokes are spectacular. Hey, Like, fan fiction writing is definitely
• 28:08
  like formative early work for a lot of people of this age of just like,
• 28:14
  yep, this is how I'm gonna I did like Lord of the Rings
• 28:17
  fan fiction as like at eleven, twelve year old, just not even knowing
• 28:22
  that I could come up with my own ideas yet as well that was not
• 28:25
  allowed or something. So I totally get fan fiction being a formative thing to
• 28:30
  getting into I'm not gonna say real writing because I don't want to disrespect fanfic
• 28:34
  writers, because it still is absolutely writing. It's still creative writing, absolutely,
• 28:40
  and like novels and stuff come out of that. Like people write a
• 28:44
  full fan fiction and they're like, well if I just get rid of all
• 28:45
  the copyright stuff and place it in my own thing, then they write a
• 28:49
  novel that way, like you know, they become full fledged authors. So
• 28:52
  you know, fan fiction can be a powerful tool not just for practicing writing,
• 28:59
  but actually be I'm a writer, so absolutely I have no shade against
• 29:03
  it whatsoever. It's just that is that is the only time I've ever done
• 29:07
  any fan fiction now? Is there a temptation to do more? Yes,
• 29:11
  but I just I just haven't gotten around to it. Really, Yeah,
• 29:14
  yeah, the era will come back in again. I'm sure, I'm sure
• 29:17
  the yeah, sure, all right maybe Speaking of speaking of moving through eras,
• 29:25
  let's let's move on to your teen brain obsessions. Now, this is
• 29:30
  a pretty intense time of anyone's life. A lot of changes, a lot
• 29:33
  of trying to fit in a lot of those kinds of things. So what
• 29:37
  was the what was the media franchise or property that you remember needing to know
• 29:41
  everything about being obsessed with? Oh? God, there were so many.
• 29:48
  You can rattle them off in a list if you'd like. I mean,
• 29:51
  I can try, But I mean. I was introduced to the music of
• 29:55
  Rush by my high school best friend. We don't talk anymore. He turned
• 29:59
  out to be a dead beat dad, but still to this day, if
• 30:03
  I ever talk to him again, I will thank him for introducing me to
• 30:07
  Rush, and then turn around and walk away and never say another thing.
• 30:12
  It's genuinely the greatest gift he's given me, and I still do appreciate it.
• 30:17
  It's also around this time that I got hardcore in action movies like I
• 30:19
  don't know what it was, but maybe the adrenaline of it. I think
• 30:23
  I saw Diehard like one Christmas and while I was like I'd always ignored it
• 30:26
  as a kid before, but like now as a teenager, I was like,
• 30:30
  wow, this makes me feel some Yeah, I'm like, I'm like,
• 30:33
  oh, I kind of like this rush of adrenaline. What is this
• 30:37
  feeling of? Like you know, like my heart is racing. My god,
• 30:41
  so so much action is happening. I know, it's crazy, like
• 30:45
  give me more. I want more. So I started watching all sorts of
• 30:49
  action movies from all different eras and genres, and then like the turning point
• 30:55
  was college. Uh and I do a show at a a amusement park and
• 31:00
  one of the people in the show says, hey, have you ever heard
• 31:03
  of Jackie Chan? And he gets me turned onto Jackie Chan movies and not
• 31:08
  not just like the ones we get America side he brings in. I think
• 31:14
  the first one he brought in was Drunken Master Okay Yeah, which is like
• 31:18
  nineteen seventy eight, and it's it's full like Chinese like it. It's got
• 31:23
  the bad dubbing, it's got the cheesy sound effects. But the fighting is
• 31:30
  unreal. Like I'm like watching this, like, holy shit, this is
• 31:33
  incredible. It's it's like a Mona Lisa being surrounded by like being surrounded by
• 31:42
  trash art drawings by six year olds. You know that we're on somebody's freezer,
• 31:48
  you know, just just just like this incredible art form, but it's
• 31:53
  it's surrounded by all this garishness. Like it's so so I got I got
• 31:57
  hooked on watching these credibly intricate, incredibly like impressive choreograph fights like and and
• 32:06
  I was I was just starting my theater run at this point. I was
• 32:10
  a theater major in college. I went to a university for theater. I
• 32:14
  didn't didn't work out. I'm just a working man now, but you know,
• 32:17
  I I wanted to be in theater. I really did. Theater was
• 32:21
  definitely closer to the heart. But but it didn't wind up happening. But
• 32:25
  but I got big into Jackie Chann and I got big into stage combat,
• 32:30
  and I tried to recreate some of that magic in stage combat class, like
• 32:36
  especially when choreographing my own fights for like the first time, like like I
• 32:39
  really dug, I really dug all that stuff. And I could never get
• 32:44
  as close, but I still have at least one or two I think that
• 32:47
  are online that I can point you to, like my my college years attempting
• 32:52
  to put together cheesy kung fu fights. Yeah, that are just they're they're
• 32:58
  magical. They're magical to this for how shitty they are. And yeah,
• 33:02
  I'm still proud of them, Like I still love them. Oh yeah you
• 33:06
  should be, especially at that age being a theater kid in college, trying
• 33:08
  out for the things that you that you've been inspired by. For sure.
• 33:12
  Oh. Absolutely, Like a college was when I actually started like putting fandoms
• 33:16
  into practice. I guess where I would try it, where I would actually
• 33:20
  try to imitate the things that I love and and Jackie Chan was a big
• 33:24
  one, Like I loved the sneak and Eagles shadow like And when my buddy
• 33:30
  brought in and he the same guy, he was like, he was like,
• 33:34
  he was very like ritualistic about it. He was like, this is
• 33:37
  going to blow your mind, and he was. He was absolutely correct.
• 33:42
  He brought in a doved version of Drunken Master two, which I believe came
• 33:45
  out in nineteen eighty six. It's a little less cheesy, the production values
• 33:50
  are much better, okay, But the fighting, oh my god, in
• 33:54
  heaven, Like, there is a thing in Jackie Chan movies where he picks
• 33:59
  up a bench and rex people with it. It's always like a little small
• 34:04
  bench. He just picks it up and uses it like a full weapon.
• 34:07
  And it's just something that like a it's like a reoccurring theme and a lot
• 34:09
  of his movies back in that era. In Drunken Master two, in the
• 34:14
  I believe it's the restaurant fight, he picks up two benches when in doubt
• 34:21
  double And when I tell you that, my jaw dropped to the floor and
• 34:25
  my eyes grew wider than they've ever been. And I watch as he wrecks
• 34:30
  an entire like one hundred man strong gang of people trying to take him down
• 34:35
  with these two benches. It is absolutely incredible. Yeah, that whole movie
• 34:42
  is outstanding. The final fight at the end is incredible. But I mean,
• 34:45
  that moment stuck with me forever, like it will it will stick with
• 34:50
  me forever. I will never forget that as long as I live. Yeah,
• 34:52
  like a high spot in an action movie that you just like you almost
• 34:57
  had the trope established within the Jackie Chan vis of like, this guy's gonna
• 35:00
  pick up a bench and fight with it at some point. As soon as
• 35:04
  you see it, Yeah, you just like foot and then do the two
• 35:07
  yeah, and then you're like, oh no, oh no. It's like
• 35:09
  the recent like Wrestlmania forty when Undertaker came back and everybody lost their minds.
• 35:15
  Yeah, that was That was my reaction to him picking up a second bench.
• 35:20
  I can pick Oh no, oh no, two benches. Oh my
• 35:22
  god, what's happening. Yeah, what's happening? My god, I'm gonna
• 35:27
  black out. Yeah, I'm glad you. I'm glad you mentioned pro wrestling
• 35:34
  and made a contemporary comparison that because I was just thinking, like the fight
• 35:37
  choreography in action movies, like it can only get so good in pro wrestling
• 35:43
  because you're you're trying, you're playing to like a live audience. You're doing
• 35:45
  it live. You're in a through sixty arena where you're on all sides,
• 35:49
  so you can't hide things like pretty much, so the action choreography of Like,
• 35:53
  I'm not the biggest action movie fan, but the choreography is the part
• 35:57
  I appreciate the most about it. I love the fight scenes and just the
• 36:00
  amount of detail that put into them, the storytelling through body language. It's
• 36:05
  it's fantastic. Yeah, And I will say that I was a minor fan
• 36:08
  of w W back in that time, because that was when Steve Austin and
• 36:14
  the Rock really and got like a lot of mainstream attention. And I can
• 36:19
  actually thank uh the Sony PlayStation. That's another one of my teen brain obsessions.
• 36:24
  I got obsessed with the PlayStation when it came out. I as a
• 36:28
  video game fan like that system is still my favorite game system of all time
• 36:31
  to this day. But one of the one of the games I spent the
• 36:35
  most time with was ww SmackDown Yes, then SmackDown one and two, both
• 36:39
  of them. Loved them quite a lot, played a lot of them with
• 36:43
  my friends, with my buddy jo and we'd made our own wrestlers and whatnot.
• 36:47
  But I also got to know like a lot of the the the actual
• 36:51
  wrestlers through that, and then actually started watching some of the pay per views
• 36:55
  with with my buddy Jorge as well. Mm hmm. Yeah, there were
• 36:59
  there were a lot of teen brain obsessions. I mean there's probably more I've
• 37:02
  forgotten, to be honest. Yeah, It's it's a time where we're just
• 37:07
  moving from obsession to obsession as we as we figured from them, like frogs
• 37:12
  on a hot rock. Yes, yeah, well you know what, I'm
• 37:15
  going to assume that is one of your references. I have no idea what
• 37:19
  that means, so it hasn't helped me in any way. So sorry.
• 37:25
  Actually, just before we move on, speaking of like all the obsessions and
• 37:29
  stuff, is there anything that you look back on at that time being obsessed
• 37:32
  with that's kind of like cringe inducing now but ultimately growth reflecting where you're like,
• 37:37
  why was I obsessed with that? Well, I mean back in the
• 37:42
  back in those days, it's hard to say. I mean, I think
• 37:46
  there might have been a point at which my my love of video games became
• 37:52
  cringe inducing, but it wasn't at that time. It would have been like
• 37:57
  like later in the twenty fifteens, and you know, we're we're gonna get
• 38:01
  to that point and talk about why that came of thing, but okay,
• 38:05
  yeah, yeah, we get to that. But as far as like at
• 38:08
  at the time, like and and a lot of the things I look back
• 38:12
  on as being obsessed as a teen, I mean I was, I was,
• 38:16
  I was driven to explore most of these things, Like I I eventually
• 38:22
  went through and like consumed Russia's entire catalog of music. I consumed every single
• 38:28
  Texomurphy game back to Front. I. I consumed as many PlayStation games as
• 38:32
  I could get my hands on, Like, I still have a massive collection
• 38:37
  of I think over two hundred PlayStation games in in like these little bibles,
• 38:43
  I call them pibbles, the PlayStation bibles, they're just they're they're just CD
• 38:49
  you know, albums. But you know I I I made the very stupid
• 38:53
  monetary decision to throw away the cases and just keep the discs, which I
• 38:59
  still still regretting a tiny bit. But you don't know what the future is
• 39:02
  going to hold. You don't know how these ts are gonna going to increase
• 39:06
  in value. The idea of having a pible is just too tempting. Yeah,
• 39:12
  but uh as far as look back on and cringe, No, not
• 39:15
  really, that's probably a good thing if a lot of these a lot of
• 39:21
  these things still influence my identity today, and I'm still proud of them.
• 39:24
  Yeah. Like the only like, the only thing that I'm that I'm not
• 39:29
  under one hundred percent proud of anymore is video games as a whole. But
• 39:32
  there's there's a good there's a good reason for that, you know. In
• 39:37
  and twenty uh twenty fifteen, I want to say, was it? Was
• 39:40
  it twenty fifteen or twenty fourteen. Yeah, there's a rather famous harassment campaign
• 39:47
  that started up surrounded video games. I was already kind of moving out of
• 39:52
  video games and into board games in my thirties, mostly because video games had
• 40:00
  stop being this thing to share with friends and started becoming this money grubbing online
• 40:06
  thing where you get slur shouted at you by children. Yes, but this
• 40:10
  this this famous harassment campaign starting up in twenty fourteen, I was, I
• 40:15
  was done this gam of gates that you're referring to. Yes, yes,
• 40:21
  And I am not afraid of saying it. I just didn't want to like
• 40:24
  bring any undue harassment your way. Yes, I have, Yes, I
• 40:30
  have zero fear of these people. And I use the term people in quotes.
• 40:37
  Nobody's here over there, so it's it's a I've rarely played anything new
• 40:45
  or even purchased a console while it was still being produced since, like,
• 40:50
  I think the Switch is the newest thing I own, and I only bought
• 40:53
  it because the new Dengen Ropa game came out on it, not the new
• 40:59
  danan Ropa game, but well yes, that and there's a new Danga Ropa
• 41:04
  esh esque game that came out on it. But that's about it. I
• 41:07
  no longer like, I no longer use gamer as part of my core identity
• 41:10
  because I'm so disgusted with what that identity became. And I'm also I'm also
• 41:16
  much more into experiences that can be shared between people. Yeah, I feel
• 41:21
  that completely. Yeah, that is that is that is definitely part of my
• 41:24
  core identity at this point. Is like, I love games when you can
• 41:30
  share them with multiple people, with your friends, with people you love,
• 41:34
  and it just brings so much joy. And I'm not just talking board games.
• 41:37
  I'm also obviously talking about my podcast like that's yeah, yeah, that's
• 41:42
  one of it is legitimately one of my favorite things. Yeah, playing games
• 41:45
  with people is so much I knew you'd understand. Yes, it is so
• 41:52
  much fun. It is like the closest thing I've got to that feeling from
• 41:57
  gate Leapers and from b F y t W in your life in recent memory
• 42:00
  is playing like a four player boulders Gate campaign, where is it is interacting
• 42:06
  constantly with your friends, and that's the that's the most I felt like a
• 42:09
  return to like the quote unquote gamer for a long time, for a long
• 42:13
  time. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, one hundred percent. Here's my thing.
• 42:16
  Sorry, i just got a nasty little edch. I'm just going to
• 42:22
  take care of the Yeah, now you're making me think this could be some
• 42:24
  kind of clue, like, is there is there like could be scratching,
• 42:30
  scratch scratch that, scratch that it write down something notes. Let's let's move
• 42:37
  on to maybe maybe a more difficult question here. I'll set it up a
• 42:44
  little bit, but my question broadly is which media, text or fandom has
• 42:47
  been your source of comfort in difficult times. And I'll clarify this with sort
• 42:54
  of comparing it to like food. I think I've used this analogy in the
• 42:59
  past with question where it's like I'm not necessarily talking about junk food, like
• 43:02
  some people just really need to disassociate with some media and sort of just like
• 43:07
  escape the world. I'm not necessarily thinking that as much as I am like
• 43:12
  mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, like really delicious, hearty comfort food.
• 43:16
  What is your media equivalent of that during tough times? Game shows are a
• 43:22
  big one specifically trivia or puzzle based game shows. And I have to apologize
• 43:29
  because I think there was a little bit of a misunderstanding when we did the
• 43:32
  gately Bris crossover on game shows because I was specifically referring to shows that invite
• 43:38
  regular people to be contestants and they can win money. Yes, when I
• 43:44
  use the word game shows, like, that's a separate thing to me from
• 43:46
  panel shows, and I do agree. And any vision that I introduced to
• 43:51
  it being nervous, Yeah, no, that's fine, that's fine. It
• 43:53
  all worked out. We all still had a great time anyway. But I
• 43:57
  was a little concerned when everybody started bring up panel show and I'm like,
• 44:00
  that's not what I'm talking about. But the show still turned out great,
• 44:04
  So no complaints. Uh. And and that's just a stupid thing that I
• 44:08
  have in my head. And it's thanks to reality TV shows because I remember
• 44:13
  when reality TV shows first started coming out and people would call them game shows.
• 44:15
  I would get upset. I'm like, those are not game shows.
• 44:20
  Yes, those are absolutely not game shows. Those studio where's the lights,
• 44:23
  where's the gas are in the suit? Let's humiliate people as much as possible
• 44:29
  to get ratings, Uh, and maybe give one of them prize at the
• 44:31
  end. Yeah are we talking. We're talking things like facta stuff like that.
• 44:37
  Yeah, fear factor, the mole, the all stuff like that.
• 44:43
  You know, just like it found it so cheesy and just like, no,
• 44:46
  those are not game shows. Game shows to me are fun, like
• 44:50
  these are These are not fun. These are humiliating, Like why would people
• 44:52
  do these things? I don't know? Anyway, So when I when things
• 44:57
  get difficult when Because I struggled with depression for very long time, probably from
• 45:01
  when I was about fourteen or fifteen, right up until my I want to
• 45:06
  say, my mid thirties. It's not gone gone. I still occasionally have
• 45:09
  bouts of it, but like I think I hit a certain point in my
• 45:14
  mid thirties where I was like, this is my brain lying to me.
• 45:17
  Every time I every time I feel like this, it is my brain lying
• 45:22
  to me. And once I figured out how to accept that, like,
• 45:24
  it got a lot easier to deal with. And so I say that it
• 45:30
  impacted me the most because I let it impact me the most during that time.
• 45:34
  Now I don't let it impact me as much, which is very very
• 45:37
  nice. But having said that, whenever I did feel bad or whenever times
• 45:42
  were really hard, I would turn to these game shows either watch them on
• 45:47
  YouTube, didn't matter if they were twenty thirty years old, didn't care,
• 45:52
  Like I just just enjoyed, you know, trying to solve the puzzle,
• 45:55
  trying to answer the trivia, and whenever I'm getting particularly lonely, I tend
• 46:00
  to play the you Don't Know Jack games. I loved those as a teenager.
• 46:06
  I played the living crap out of those. Those were so much fun.
• 46:08
  It was the closest thing to like being on a game show on your
• 46:12
  PC at the time. Okay, like they tried making like Jeopardy and Wheel
• 46:15
  of Fortune stuff, but you Don't Know Jack was like on a different level,
• 46:21
  Like the host would berate you and make fun of you for silly things,
• 46:24
  for getting you know, stupid questions wrong and what have you. And
• 46:30
  yeah, so I tend to turn to those, I think sometimes just to
• 46:32
  have another voice talking to me. Yeah sure, even though it's berating me
• 46:37
  for being stupid, but it's just that's the voice you want. It's still
• 46:42
  oddly comforting, you know. It's it's like there's somebody else in the room.
• 46:46
  When I'm lonely, I'll take it, But I also tend to turn
• 46:51
  to my favorite serialized TV shows. Yes when like and I'll just start over,
• 46:55
  even though I've seen it like maybe two, three, seven times from
• 46:59
  start finish, I'll just watch it again. Like Star Trek the Next Generation,
• 47:04
  which my dad was heavily into when I was young, and I did
• 47:07
  not understand until I was much older, but I love it now. Far
• 47:12
  Escape came out when I was in my late teens early twenties. Absolutely loved
• 47:16
  how that turned sci fi on its head, changed gender roles for like the
• 47:22
  main character and his love interest John and Aaron, Like it was so cool,
• 47:27
  so cool. I love that show to death to this day. Buffy
• 47:30
  and Angel of course, massive fan of both of those shows. Loved him
• 47:35
  to pieces. And the newest one, the newest obsession is Leverage, which
• 47:39
  is a shame show that came out in the two thousands, and it was
• 47:44
  about this group of thieves, hackers, like a you know, a hitter
• 47:50
  and the Mastermind all all like basically stealing from the rich and giving you the
• 47:57
  poor like after like some mega company like screws, you know, a small
• 48:00
  family over or gets their daughter killed or something like that. They basically take
• 48:05
  revenge and wind up giving the whole company to the family or what have you.
• 48:09
  It would be Catholtic in this day and h oh my god, dude,
• 48:14
  it feels so good like it. It is such a feel good show
• 48:19
  and just the moment when they outsmart the bad guy and make them do something
• 48:23
  they didn't want to do. Oh it's magic. Yeah, it's magic.
• 48:28
  It feels so good. It is definitely one of my favorite return to for
• 48:32
  you know, when I'm when I'm feeling crappy, like, that's a really
• 48:36
  good one to turn to because it is so good. Unfortunately stars well,
• 48:39
  the original run stars Timothy Hutton, but the newer episodes don't. There's been
• 48:45
  some allegations unfortunately, but he does a good job as I separate the art
• 48:51
  from the artist, and I still enjoy it. I'm not going to follow
• 48:53
  Timothy Hutton or watch anything he makes now, probably, but but there's a
• 49:00
  reason there's thousands of conversations and think pieces on the whole art from artist thing,
• 49:05
  for sure. Yeah, absolutely one. Yes, that's a good set
• 49:10
  of a good set of comfort media. I think, yeah, yeah,
• 49:14
  I like, all right, we'll move away from the more downer times.
• 49:19
  Even though that was comfort during the downtimes, and I think we'll bring things
• 49:23
  to the present day and I'll ask what is your current favorite fandom or community
• 49:30
  to be a part of now in twenty twenty four, what shared hobby is
• 49:34
  bringing you joy right now? Dangan romper Nice, I kind of thought you
• 49:38
  might say one, one thousand percent, no question, no question whatsoever.
• 49:45
  This series of video games changed my life for the better. Incredible, And
• 49:51
  I'm not being like, I'm not being over I don't know what the word
• 49:54
  is, overbearing or you know the supercilious, or I don't know what word
• 49:58
  I'm looking for. Yeah, yeah, pyperbolic. I'm not being hyperbolic right
• 50:00
  now. I'm being legit. These games changed my life for the better.
• 50:06
  I played them in the late twenty tens and fell absolutely in love. For
• 50:10
  those who don't know, the game series is about a group of high schoolers
• 50:15
  who you know, are going to school for the first time. They pass
• 50:20
  out, and they wake up and find themselves in the school, but the
• 50:23
  school is now barricaded from the outside so they can't escape, and then a
• 50:30
  teddy bear appears on the screen calling himself Mona Kuma and tells them that if
• 50:34
  they want to leave, they have to murder each other and get away with
• 50:37
  it. Oh wow, is this really dark? This really dark premise,
• 50:43
  and it's it's very anime ish. But the thing that I love about Danian
• 50:46
  Rompa is it has a it has a history of taking anime tropes and turning
• 50:52
  them on their head. Okay, I was I was never big into anime
• 50:54
  to begin with, and I think part of the reason is the tropes of
• 50:58
  the anime. I get that, but dang and Rompo like flips these flips
• 51:01
  these tropes upside down. Like I don't want to say anything for it,
• 51:06
  because if you say anything about the series, it is a spoiler basically so
• 51:10
  much. It's basically murder mystery after murder mystery. I was going to say,
• 51:14
  is it just lots of mysteries? Yeah it is. It is literally
• 51:17
  just like six murder mysteries in a row with an ever shrinking cast of characters.
• 51:22
  Yeah. Yeah. And the more that this is this is this is
• 51:27
  the thing that I think sucks a lot of people into these games and in
• 51:30
  this series is the more you fall in love with the character, the more
• 51:34
  likely it is they're gonna be a victim or worse, a murderer, because
• 51:38
  if they are the murderer and you catch them, you solve the crime,
• 51:43
  you figure out how they did it, and you you stop them. They
• 51:46
  get executed in a brutal fashion, and it just it just gets worse as
• 51:52
  the games go on, they just get more and more brutal. But I
• 51:54
  fell head over heels in love with this. This to me was the first
• 52:00
  ever pitch Perfect murder mystery game that actually put you the player as the detective.
• 52:07
  Like a lot of games say that, but what they actually mean is
• 52:12
  you will like click on something and the main character will figure it out.
• 52:15
  Sure not you not you. You're not the one who put those pieces together.
• 52:19
  You're not the one who gets to say no, that's wrong. And
• 52:22
  this is why Danian Rope actually makes you the player solve the mystery. You
• 52:29
  have to know why this is false. You have to know why this is
• 52:32
  a lie. You have to know all this stuff. You have to be
• 52:36
  able to prove that this person is actually a double agent like you. You
• 52:39
  have to do all these things, and the game does not necessarily hold your
• 52:44
  hand, like if you get it wrong, the game will give you a
• 52:46
  hint, but otherwise you still you're the person responsible. So for the first
• 52:52
  time ever, like I had something in video game form that felt a lot
• 52:58
  like the Agatha Chris novels that I would read as a youth and a teenager
• 53:04
  because I was trying to solve them alongside, and I usually didn't because Sagatha
• 53:08
  Christie was brilliant. This is the first experience I think I ever had that
• 53:13
  that ever made me feel like a detective for real. And here's why it
• 53:17
  changed my life for the better. When they were over, because because they
• 53:22
  only made three games and a side game, I was desperate for more,
• 53:28
  Like I was still hungry. I needed more of this. It's all over
• 53:32
  again. It is really possibly worse. So I searched out Dangan Rumber related
• 53:39
  content and I found The Ultra Hope Girls, a podcast, a podcast covering
• 53:45
  each chapter of each game in extreme detail, covering literary references, themes,
• 53:51
  characters, and it's hosted by Caroline Orgueila, who has been on the show
• 53:55
  before. She's been on My show multiple times. She just did one yesterday
• 54:00
  which I'm so excited I got wait that. And she hosts this show with
• 54:05
  Maren Holtzlander and Mattie Sarlow. And not only are these three ladies extremely intelligent,
• 54:12
  They're funny as hell. I absolutely adored their show and I joined their
• 54:16
  Patreon and became part of their discord community. And this community is one of
• 54:22
  the most supportive and welcoming I've ever come across. Dangan Ropa is pretty much
• 54:30
  like it is, it is primarily embraced by people who are now in their
• 54:36
  twenties. Sure, I'm I'm forty three, So so you were welcomed into
• 54:44
  the space. I was concerned about how awkward it would be. Yeah,
• 54:47
  this forty three year old creeper just rolls the bones and tries to join this
• 54:55
  disc group of twenty year olds, and surprise, surprise, they were so
• 55:00
  welcoming and supportive that they all cheered me on as I wrote Fane, which
• 55:07
  which again I think partially came about because of that hunger, that need for
• 55:14
  something like Dangane Rompa. I'm I started writing Fane, and I got stuck
• 55:22
  and I lost confidence, and I sent the first eight chapters to Caroline and
• 55:28
  I said, please, is there anything in here that that like, is
• 55:32
  valuable? Is this worth pursuing and do you have any any thoughts or ideas
• 55:37
  for me? And she wrote back such incredible, incredible advice. I'm convinced
• 55:45
  the book wouldn't exist without her. Like if she'd said, no, thanks,
• 55:47
  I'm busy, I might have given up. I might have just said,
• 55:52
  you know what, it's not good enough and I'm just going to quit.
• 55:54
  But she has become one of my biggest supporters. She has read everything
• 56:00
  I've written, and she has supported basically everything I've done, and I am,
• 56:07
  as a result, one of her biggest supporters. And I have this,
• 56:12
  I have this incredible friendship and this incredible accomplishment of actually writing and publishing
• 56:16
  a novel, and neither would exist without these silly games about high schoolers killing
• 56:22
  each other. Yeah, that's amazing. It is so weird. It's the
• 56:28
  beauty of fandom though, Like it is so good and can be so it
• 56:32
  really is. It absolutely is, one hundred percent. I'm still in awe
• 56:37
  of like, how like this thing her her advice was so good. Like
• 56:43
  she she's the reason that the book is as good as it is because a
• 56:45
  lot of her ideas came and she was very quick to tell me you know,
• 56:49
  show don't tell you know. It was a big thing. And she's
• 56:52
  like this character is strong, but they don't have quite their own individual,
• 56:55
  unique voice and try and work on that. And like all of her advice
• 57:00
  was so good, Like it's she's so literarily gifted. A part of me
• 57:07
  thinks it's almost a shame that she's a voice actress. I mean, she's
• 57:13
  incredible at it. She is absolutely an incredible voice actress. But I mean
• 57:17
  just she's so smart and I'm so impressed by her. You never know what
• 57:22
  happens. It could happen in the future. She could have a turn at
• 57:25
  writing a mystery novel and it and it wouldn't exist without without Danie Romper.
• 57:30
  It just wouldn't. Yeah, it wouldn't exist without this fandom. It just
• 57:35
  it wouldn't. It's amazing, so good and exactly what that's the that's the
• 57:39
  best answer we've had to this question. I think that's that's just exactly what
• 57:43
  I love to hear. Yeah, that is so good and obviously, like,
• 57:46
  even though it might be a touch more of a niche thing, dangan
• 57:49
  Romper might be something that maybe listeners a hearing for the first time when you
• 57:52
  were explaining it. Yeah, but it is it is closer to having a
• 57:57
  gate Leapers episode Kiss of Yourself and Caroline and how that wouldn't actually take a
• 58:02
  lot of people to like there's the ultra hope girls like I feel like a
• 58:06
  dangan Rumpa gate Leapers is not too far around the corner in the grand scheme
• 58:09
  of things. If you do it without me, I will kill you.
• 58:13
  I would I would never. I would never. No, no, no,
• 58:19
  I'm teasing. If you do it without Caroline, I would kill you
• 58:22
  because that would be a mistake of the highest order. Yes, absolutely,
• 58:27
  Oh fantastic. Yeah, it's it's it's tough, and I understand why you
• 58:30
  wouldn't why you would think twice about doing it, because there is no more
• 58:35
  dangan Ropa content coming out, Like the creators essentially moved on and said,
• 58:39
  you know, we're gonna work on different things, but they're still making dangan
• 58:43
  Rompa s content, like they made rain Code, which is basically dang and
• 58:47
  Rompa, but not like it's literally the same game for all intents and purposes.
• 58:53
  So you know, there's still a lot of people out there who who
• 58:57
  love this stuff. So I think you could reach some people with it.
• 59:00
  But like I said, there's no new games coming out. That's kind of
• 59:05
  okay. Like I think with gately because it's either things that are very hot
• 59:07
  right now, like that very hot this year, or things that have had
• 59:10
  the book closed on them that are like they're completed, because then I know
• 59:15
  what I need to research. It's a it's a Orpenman shut thing. Gotcha.
• 59:20
  So yeah, that's something that could happen in the future. Okay,
• 59:23
  as I as I quickly think about references that you've made, as you approach
• 59:29
  the final couple of questions here, sure I have a couple of choices,
• 59:34
  but I've not narrowed it down. Is where I'll say it's that at the
• 59:36
  moment, all right, Okay, so let's we might have touched on this
• 59:40
  already actually because this might be linked to the kind of gamer gates stuff.
• 59:44
  But there could be another answer. What fandom or community are you conflicted over
• 59:49
  being a part of but you can't quit? Or which fandoms have you quit?
• 59:53
  Like like peak gaming, peak gamer times last decade. There's a couple
• 59:59
  of sides. Video games. I like I said, I switched from video
• 1:00:02
  games to board games in my thirties. I now have a massive board game
• 1:00:07
  collection. We play at least once a week. Nice, but uh yeah,
• 1:00:10
  yeah, I've already explained pretty much why I left video games. The
• 1:00:15
  other fandom that I can think of off the top of my head that I
• 1:00:20
  enjoyed being a part of at first but have decided to move on is Rick
• 1:00:23
  and Morty. Oh sure, I get that. I know a lot of
• 1:00:27
  people really love that show, and I genuinely think it is incredibly well written.
• 1:00:30
  But I also think that it's fandom is all is like toxic, yes,
• 1:00:36
  just not not great for humanity as a whole. Yeah, I get
• 1:00:42
  that. I remember watching the first the first season, and thinking, like
• 1:00:45
  a friend of mine showed me and I was like, this is incredible.
• 1:00:47
  This is the best adult animation there's been in a while, so funny,
• 1:00:52
  so original. I loved it. And then, as I think it was,
• 1:00:54
  as soon as season two came out and there was like a much more
• 1:00:58
  of an internet fandom, and it turned out to be a lot of i'll
• 1:01:01
  say, I'm I'm an older guy now, a lot of annoying jen z
• 1:01:04
  Eda's just like say saying very offensive things, and just like deciding that that's
• 1:01:10
  what the show was was just like, okay, yeah, maybe it's yeah
• 1:01:15
  to move away, Yeah, yeah it's not. It's not really fairer because
• 1:01:20
  like two of the people who write it, I think Dan Harmon and father
• 1:01:24
  Ann Campbell are two of my favorite comedians and writers of all time. Yeah,
• 1:01:29
  I think they're I think they're both geniuses. Yes, But unfortunately Rick
• 1:01:35
  and Morty has become a little too, a little too unfriendly for me.
• 1:01:38
  So I kind of walked away and stopped watching. I feel that, I
• 1:01:43
  feel that. All right, let's we've looked at your life, Aaron.
• 1:01:45
  It's a fantastic life, full of excellent media consumption and lots of beautiful fandom
• 1:01:50
  moments. But let's look to the future. Now, what's a fandom or
• 1:01:53
  media property that you want to get into but you haven't yet. Most of
• 1:01:59
  the time, that just could be you know, life is busy, it's
• 1:02:00
  a lack of time. You'd love to be able to get into it,
• 1:02:04
  but you just don't have the time. Well maybe you feel like you know
• 1:02:07
  gatekeepers exist it could you could feel blocked from this fandom. Okay, so
• 1:02:12
  I'll just cut to the Chase Squid Games. So everybody, everybody and their
• 1:02:17
  mother has told me that it's essentially it's essentially Dangan Romba, but bloodier and
• 1:02:22
  also less murder mysteries and more children's games, and I'm like, it's not
• 1:02:29
  really the same thing, and so I I don't know if I ever will
• 1:02:35
  get into it. I did. I did read a plot synopsis of basically
• 1:02:38
  the first season just to see if it would be something I'd be interested in,
• 1:02:42
  and I was like, Oh, it sounds good, but I don't
• 1:02:45
  know, but I'm glad people like it. Basically, there's a lot of
• 1:02:49
  things I've tried Dean into and just couldn't. I tried. I tried getting
• 1:02:52
  into Breaking Bad, but I didn't make it past the second episode. Oh
• 1:02:55
  yeah, yeah, okay, fair enough. Yeah. Despite despite currently writing
• 1:03:00
  a fantasy novel for the first time, I have absolutely no interest at all
• 1:03:05
  in Game of Thrones. It sounds like its like the opposite of what I
• 1:03:08
  enjoy in my fantasy. I like the fantasy novels of David Eddings. I
• 1:03:15
  think the worlds that he creates are much more like friendly fantasy, like the
• 1:03:20
  kid It's I tried to read The Lord of the Rings growing up and I
• 1:03:22
  couldn't. I think I may have actually mentioned this on one of our episodes
• 1:03:25
  before, but I tried to get into the actual book of Lord of the
• 1:03:30
  rings, and I couldn't. I was like, this is so staunchly boring
• 1:03:34
  and everything the characters have to say is like end of the world super important.
• 1:03:38
  Yes, yeah, Like, whereas in David Eddings novel, like the
• 1:03:42
  characters joke with each other, the characters make fun of each other, the
• 1:03:45
  characters feel much more like friends and actual family. And for some reason,
• 1:03:51
  that's that's another one of my comfort foods. I probably should have brought that
• 1:03:53
  up earlier, but that's that's my fantasy sort of world of choice. And
• 1:03:59
  it sounds like Game of Es is absolutely not Yeah no, that already.
• 1:04:02
  I mean, it is funny in places. There are like funny characters that
• 1:04:05
  are witty in this world, but for the most part, it's how do
• 1:04:10
  we backstab you? How do we kill you? Everything? Serious? Yeah?
• 1:04:13
  Yeah, yeah, exactly. Uh. And I've tried, I've really
• 1:04:17
  tried to get into visual novels as a whole. There are some that aren't
• 1:04:24
  dangan Ropa that I've enjoyed, like the Zero Escape series and Raincode, which
• 1:04:30
  I mentioned is basically dangan ropa but not. But the other attempt there are
• 1:04:33
  other attempts, like Stein'sgate. A lot of people recommend Stein'sgate for some reason,
• 1:04:40
  and I I was so bored. Yeah, but by like the the
• 1:04:46
  like I couldn't even get through the first scene. I was like, what
• 1:04:49
  is going on? Why do I care about any of this? I also
• 1:04:53
  tried. It was heavily recommended to me by someone on the dangan Ropa sorry
• 1:04:57
  the Ultra Hope Gural forums. Ever seventeen is a visual novel. It's supposed
• 1:05:02
  to be really really good. It's made by the same guy who did the
• 1:05:06
  Zero Escape series, and I really like those, but ever seventeen for some
• 1:05:11
  reason, ended the same way. Just like I got really bored because it's
• 1:05:15
  basically just a choose your own adventure novel. Like for me, even like
• 1:05:19
  visual novels, there has to be some gameplay for me to get invested.
• 1:05:25
  For dang and Rompa, there are the class trials, which are you know,
• 1:05:29
  the game parts where you have to solve the mystery yourself. The Zero
• 1:05:32
  Escape is like a visual novel that's wrapped around several escape rooms, so you
• 1:05:39
  have to solve puzzles and figure things out to get out of these escape rooms
• 1:05:42
  carry on the story, so there's gameplay involved, whereas these other ones really
• 1:05:46
  don't so I'm having a really hard time with them. I have succeeded at
• 1:05:49
  some others, Like there was one I can't remember what was called, but
• 1:05:54
  it was on the switch and it was like it was like Dang and Rompa,
• 1:05:57
  but instead of actually solving the mystery, you played a board game.
• 1:06:00
  It was kind of bizarre. I don't even remember what it was. But
• 1:06:06
  to actually answer your question, like, all of these things are things I
• 1:06:09
  tried to get into, but yes, here's one that I really do want
• 1:06:13
  to get into but I haven't yet. Okay, I, and this might
• 1:06:15
  surprise you, I really want to explore the Nancy Drew series of PC games.
• 1:06:21
  Okay, now you speak in Odra's language. Yes, especially as my
• 1:06:27
  very good friend Caroline does another podcast about them, and I have listened to
• 1:06:30
  them, but I would like to re listen to them and this time understand
• 1:06:34
  what the hell they're talking. Yes, yeah, you get the references this
• 1:06:39
  time, yes, exactly. But they're also solid adventure games from back in
• 1:06:44
  the day, so so I think I'd enjoy myself playing a whole bunch of
• 1:06:47
  those, even even if they are Nancy Drew, so to speak, catered
• 1:06:51
  to women, but not really anybody can enjoy them. I played, I
• 1:06:57
  have played one of them. I played uh, what was it called,
• 1:07:00
  uh, The Curse of blackmore Manner. And this was a very puzzle heavy
• 1:07:05
  game, and that's the reason why I dug it, and it's the reason
• 1:07:09
  why I gave Caroline's podcast a chance, and it's probably the reason why I
• 1:07:13
  want to play the rest of the games because that one was really good.
• 1:07:16
  So yeah, there, there's there's enjoyment to be had, even if you
• 1:07:19
  don't think Nancy Drew is aimed at you. Yes, definitely, everything is
• 1:07:25
  for everyone, or everything should be for everyone, exactly, it's if you
• 1:07:29
  enjoy it, it's for you story exactly. Couldn't agree more. And yeah,
• 1:07:33
  I hope that's something that you get into down the line, because it
• 1:07:36
  sounds like it would fit into that. Not that I'm wishing difficult times upon
• 1:07:41
  you, it sounds like it would be a good comfort playthrough to be like,
• 1:07:44
  all right, let's let's engage with a new soft murder mystery video game
• 1:07:47
  series. Yeah, why not? You know what I mean? It wasn't
• 1:07:50
  it was. It's not a cheap thing to get into it after you.
• 1:07:54
  No, No, they like some of the some of the games are available
• 1:07:58
  on Steam. But I mean the cheapest way I found was to like find
• 1:08:01
  a cheap like Windows XP era computer. I have like a lap I have
• 1:08:06
  a laptop from that era, and I bought like a pack of like the
• 1:08:10
  the Nancy Drew games on CD from like Goodwill, Yes for like for like
• 1:08:15
  fifty bucks, and I was like, that's a deal compared to I think
• 1:08:18
  it's like twenty bucks a game on the Steam like that. Her Interactive are
• 1:08:23
  just like milking their fan base of like, Okay, there's these hardcore fans
• 1:08:28
  who were into it. We're not going to produce many new games. Let's
• 1:08:30
  just let's collect that money. That's what I found out that research. No,
• 1:08:41
  this this was fantastic, Aaron, This was a This was a great
• 1:08:43
  conversation. I think you've you've shown that you've lived a rich life through fandom
• 1:08:48
  and shown how beautiful fandom can be as well. Yeah, I really can.
• 1:08:54
  I'm going to ask you one final question that will sort of undercut this
• 1:08:58
  excellent hour of chat that we've had and ask you to ask you to break
• 1:09:00
  it down into a simple flow chart of the fandoms and media properties that have
• 1:09:05
  defined each decade of your life. So far. So, if you could
• 1:09:10
  list what defined your childhood than your teenage yeers, than your twenties, then
• 1:09:15
  your thirties and the present day. Okay, game shows for childhood, video
• 1:09:20
  games for teens, action movies for twenties, board games for thirties, and
• 1:09:26
  Dan Rumpa for now love, although dayan rumber could be tied with a return
• 1:09:30
  to game shows. Honestly, yes, ycause it becomes such an important part
• 1:09:34
  of my podcast and therefore my life. That's that's a fantastic flow chart.
• 1:09:41
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good stuff. Okay, So now I
• 1:09:45
  guess it comes time to take your best shot and see if you can tell
• 1:09:48
  me which of the many many fandoms that I mentioned you reference the laws I
• 1:09:55
  did manage to sneak in each and every of the twenty that I planned on.
• 1:09:59
  All Right, I think I've got an answer, and I think the
• 1:10:02
  references were very clever, because it was only really two of them that stood
• 1:10:08
  out and made me go, oh, no, I know what that's linked
• 1:10:10
  to, and we're not talking about that right now, so that that must
• 1:10:14
  be a clue. And a part of me wishes that we were recording this
• 1:10:17
  podcast at twelve minutes past nine in the PM, because I think the fandom
• 1:10:25
  you're referencing is Rush, and you were referencing Rush. Yeah, well done,
• 1:10:30
  Well done. I only know about Rush because one of my big teen
• 1:10:36
  early twenties obsessions was rhythm gaming, and that was how I got introduced to
• 1:10:41
  Rush, was playing Rush songs on like rock Band and Guitar Hero and stuff
• 1:10:44
  like that. So when you said closer to the Heart, I was like,
• 1:10:48
  hang on a second, that's a Rush son. Yeah. Oh that
• 1:10:56
  was the mistake one probably, but I tried it every the other referen every
• 1:11:00
  single reference was a Rush song, working Man, Limelight, closer to the
• 1:11:05
  Heart, as you mentioned, Roll the Bones, cut to the Chase,
• 1:11:10
  Time, stand Still, Free will the Camera, Ie, the spirit of
• 1:11:15
  Radio, the enemy within Show, Don't Tell, Where's My Thing? Oh
• 1:11:25
  yes, I was just like Backscratch It, Nobody's Hero, Double Agent,
• 1:11:33
  Driven, Half the World, Virtuality, One Little Victory at the very top
• 1:11:39
  of the show, Far Cry and the Garden are Those are the twenty Rush
• 1:11:45
  songs that I tried to sneak past fan and I couldn't. Well done,
• 1:11:48
  sir, Very well done, Thank you very much, and thank you for
• 1:11:53
  including a gamified element from one game's master to another during this interes, I
• 1:11:59
  had to. I had to. It was absolutely perfect. Aaron, thank
• 1:12:02
  you so much for the game, thank you for your time, thank you
• 1:12:04
  for your stories. This was beautiful. Thank you for having me. I've
• 1:12:11
  enjoyed everything we've done together and this is no exception. So there we go.
• 1:12:18
  There's our cast interview with the wonderful Aaron Randolph, and I've got to
• 1:12:23
  thank Aaron one more time for not just his amazing stories and journey through life
• 1:12:28
  via fandom, but also for that game that genuinely throughout the whole interview,
• 1:12:32
  I was maybe not paying as much attentions as I should be for the role
• 1:12:36
  that I had, as I was busy writing down every single thing that could
• 1:12:40
  possibly be a reference, and I got a couple, but the rest were
• 1:12:43
  not things that I wrote down, and I just invented a load of rush
• 1:12:45
  songs, I guess. But Aaron I was able to beat you and find
• 1:12:49
  the real relation, the underlying theme, So I guess that's one nil to
• 1:12:54
  me in the Battle of the Games Masters. Please do you check out BFY.
• 1:13:00
  It's an absolute blast of a show. You really should, and of
• 1:13:03
  course Thane as well. Keep your eye on socials for when the audiobook will
• 1:13:09
  be released, but I'm sure we'll mention it across gateleapers as well, and
• 1:13:13
  hopefully we'll have Aaron back on as a guest around the time that the audiobook
• 1:13:16
  is released so we can do a better job of promoting the brilliant things our
• 1:13:20
  cast make. But for now, Patreon dot com forward slash Gatesleepers, if
• 1:13:25
  you'd like to support what we do here, we are so grateful and so
• 1:13:29
  thankful for our patrons. It's because of you that were able to make extra
• 1:13:32
  shows like this and that we'll be able to go ahead and make even more
• 1:13:35
  content next year. So if you love what we do here, if you
• 1:13:39
  love our fandom game shows, and you are able to support us financially,
• 1:13:43
  consider going to Patreon dot com forward slash Gatesleepers, where you get full unedited
• 1:13:48
  video recordings of each of our episodes, as well as bonus monthly game shows
• 1:13:55
  called the Fandom Flashback, where we look back at the previous month in pop
• 1:13:59
  cult fandom and play a few games along the way as we explore what the
• 1:14:04
  last month in media has been like. And I think there's almost two years
• 1:14:08
  of those fandom flashback episodes now. So if you're look into binge some new
• 1:14:12
  Gateleapers content, myself, Audra and Jason are waiting for you over at patreon
• 1:14:16
  dot com forward slash Gatesleepers. If you're not able to support us financially,
• 1:14:21
  do not worry at all, someone else will pay it forward for you.
• 1:14:25
  Just continue to enjoy our show that we put out for free every two weeks
• 1:14:30
  and with that, there will be a new game show next week, our
• 1:14:32
  third and final episode in May. And because you've stuck around to the end
• 1:14:36
  of this cast interview, I'll go ahead and say that we're going back to
• 1:14:40
  the world of Middle Earth. We are doing a Hobbit themed episode of Gate
• 1:14:45
  Sleepers with a fantastic new guest as well as our brilliant cast. So really
• 1:14:50
  looking forward to you hearing that one. It was such a wonderful episode.
• 1:14:54
  And yeah, we've got more in the pipeline. June looks to be really
• 1:14:57
  exciting, and there'll be a cast interview next month month two. So it's
• 1:15:00
  all happening here at Gatesleapers HQ. Follow us on Instagram at Gatesleapers Pod to
• 1:15:06
  keep up to dates with everything we're doing, and I hope you enjoy the
• 1:15:10
  final weeks of spring. Summer is almost here. Summer is so close.
• 1:15:14
  We've almost made it, guys, we've almost made it.