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Bonus Patreon Release: Goblyn and Pathway! With Harum Scarum and Chapman Blake! · Graymalkin Lane the podcast

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Green Walken Lane Patreon channel where we get to analyze often overlooked characters.
• 0:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: And today, we get to journey into the world of alpha flight, which is a title that I love.
• 0:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: On the Patreon channel and even on the show, I think the only time we've really cracked open the alpha flight book was when we did that weird episode on a wire with Simon Ferment and Scott for you, which was a great time.
• 0:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: But in this episode, I got to jump away farther back in the alpha flight run and read some comics I haven't looked at in a very long time.
• 0:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: I read stuff for my show trials all the time, but we're not gonna get to any off of light characters for a minute.
• 0:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it's always a nice opportunity to open some old books.
• 0:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: Today we're here to talk about the mutant twins, Goblin and Pathway.
• 0:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, it's the 80s, so Goblin is with a Y, G-O-B-L-Y, and Pathway gets her name later on.
• 0:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's mostly called Laura D.
• 0:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: as we go.
• 0:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm really happy to be joyed by two of my favorite people to hang out with on this show, the incredible harem, scaram, and the incredible Chapman Blake.
• 1:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Chapman, I'm going to have you open for us today.
• 1:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Tell us a little bit about yourself.
• 1:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: You need even pronouns.
• 1:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Where we might know you from.
• 1:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: And you're the one that initially suggested this duo.
• 1:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: I would love to hear your connection to the character's goblin and pathway.
• 1:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so my name is Chapman Blake, pronouns are they them.
• 1:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: You might know me from a couple of experiences on this show, did an interview with Alejandro Arbana and the recent read throughs, I played Kirok the Damned.
• 1:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm in connection with these two.
• 1:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I've been going through what I like to call the full game that, if you will, which is, I've been reading all of the appearances of all of the meetings, pretty much all of Marvel history.
• 1:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: It was half of like definitely fell under the banner of what I wanted to cover just because they're,
• 1:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: kind of more X-Men and Jason, I picked it up, followed a map over at the pages of his own story, watched him sort of immediately go up in flames, and then watched this weird team scrap its way through its its whole run.
• 1:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, the best way I can describe Alpha White to people is they are the best superhero team who is also the worst.
• 1:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: Every character, like in the way that a lot of the X-Men characters are nuanced or complex, every character of Alpha White is kind of a horrible person.
• 2:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's so wild all of their stories aren't they take them to hell and back like every 30 issues They're on a completely different life journey and half a different roster and the government may or may not be trying to hunt them down or funding them completely It's a wild ride and it's also so unique and so there's a throughout the different authors There's so many wild life.
• 2:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm gonna.
• 2:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm gonna bat for the the
• 2:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: I guess I don't know what that is.
• 2:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm gonna shoot for the stars.
• 2:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm gonna try to get these like like you said really new ones to really complex stories Some of them are they got some good bits here and there and some of them are wild and wacky and you just kind of redo like did this Series was no one at Marvel paying attention to what was happening to it was no one did they have an editor?
• 2:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: Did the editor just think you know what this is the this is the line that we can get them through and so it's this
• 2:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like from all 130 issues are just balls to the wall.
• 3:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: Some of the wildest things you ever seen make it into a marvel.
• 3:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like a comic labeled marvel and I just every time I cracked it open and I read through and came back to another section.
• 3:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: I was like, this is bonkers.
• 3:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: I love these people.
• 3:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: I hate half these people.
• 3:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: They're the like the soap opera factor is.
• 3:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: times a thousand in comparison to what we think of the X-Men soap opera.
• 3:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's absolutely wild.
• 3:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: And in the midst of it, you get these two twins who it's on the service you would think like a young black autistic girl and her twin who is nonverbal and almost animalistic in ways.
• 3:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: And you would think, oh, that's going to be one of the worst storylines handle.
• 3:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's there's there's so many ways to kind of stick your foot in your mouth.
• 3:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's so many options to do that.
• 3:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: And while it does happen here and there, it is one of the, like in my opinion, one of the best handled and two, like two of the best representative characters of the group when you really boil them down and re-reading through T.S.
• 3:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: Their story, I realized like,
• 3:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: as much as the ball gets dropped here in the Europe ridership and things like when you really lay it all out it's these two really well-written characters who have so much potential and like honestly I'm shocked that they have not been brought back because they are such a well-spring of beautiful representation and such a necessary representation who also have such a stain power throughout the series I completely forgot how many times they are just brought back into the fold and new riders really tried to kind of push them forward
• 4:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, there's a lot of crazy characters and then they're like, let's put two small children in there and see how that goes and let's watch them and try to like maybe be raised by this super group that can't really none of them are functioning adults and yet all of them are like, we're your legal guardian this question mark.
• 4:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: I definitely stayed for the drama because this is honestly my first dip in South of light.
• 4:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, oh, he had that much experience with this team.
• 4:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've like seen some of the members outside of the South of light title.
• 5:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I know some of them especially Sasquatch and T's on one of the monster teams when it comes to Marvel and always shows up when it comes to Hulk in a lot of his body horror series.
• 5:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Would you fuck Sasquatch?
• 5:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's like that's good.
• 5:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: This Sasquatch is hot.
• 5:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Also getting to see the specific Sasquatch that, because I'm so, again, reading through alpha flight, trying to just get into Goblin and Pathway for the first part.
• 5:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then I get introduced really to bear the specific Sasquatch and pretty sure this is Sasquatch, but in white.
• 5:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: a woman once danger comes around turns into giant hearing buff monster and like yeah yeah okay hang on because this is worthy of a longer conversation but we'll do this really quickly Walter Lenkowski is Sasquatch.
• 5:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's a gamma scientist connected to the Hulk.
• 5:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: He becomes Sasquatch but the body that he uses for Sasquatch is actually a mythological beast from another realm called Tannerac.
• 6:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: Another member of the team is a woman named Snowbird, whose name is Narya and Snowbird's power.
• 6:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's like thwart, right?
• 6:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like her.
• 6:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's the daughter of God.
• 6:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Her power is to turn into different art creatures.
• 6:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: So there's a certain spot where Snowbird turns into a white Sasquatch, even though Walter is a brown Sasquatch.
• 6:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: But then there's a whole thing that happens where Walter gets brought back in the white Sasquatch body.
• 6:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then when the white male turns back into his human form, he's like a hot chick with boobs and he's like, my name's Wanda now and I'm a girl and that lasts for a while.
• 6:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then suddenly you want to go back to being Walter again.
• 6:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a whole thing.
• 6:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: Every character on this team is fucking crazy, so these stories are insane.
• 6:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: And that is that is Chad skipping the two to three extra bodies, multiple appearances of those gods.
• 6:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's if we get started on Wanda, I will be here for another three hours.
• 6:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: I adore that whole storyline as messy as it is and I can't I can't I can't even imagine I live Sasquatch in like 2032.
• 7:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'll be running out when he's in here.
• 7:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'll be presenting one of his case for the whole group.
• 7:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: It'll be a thing.
• 7:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: So alpha flight is I grew up with sisters.
• 7:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: We only had one TV in the house.
• 7:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: And every day after school, my two older sisters would like VCR record soap operas.
• 7:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it was the only TV in the house.
• 7:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Also, I'm a gay kid, so I was kind of into it.
• 7:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I probably would not have chosen to watch all my children in one life to live every day through my entire adolescence.
• 7:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: Alpha flight is that.
• 7:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you watch one life to live or all my children, it's like evil twins and multiple personality disorders.
• 7:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: It is crazy, 1980s, like dynasty and sanity, and Alpha flight is that even more than the X-Men is.
• 7:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: Every character is nuts.
• 7:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm just remembering one likes to live some niki and viki and then all like because I used to watch this in my grandma, she used to run a daycare and she put on one like to live when all the kids were asleep and we finally got to the art where I think Niki kind of was on her deathbed just a little bit and then she seen her alternate in heaven.
• 7:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's like, I don't think you get here.
• 8:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: You make so much havoc in my life and everybody else is like, I'm you.
• 8:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: What can I say?
• 8:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is not the first time I have brought a Vicki and Niki on the Grey Malkin' Lanefall.
• 8:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: I just think we're seven little parts of my youth.
• 8:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's some crazy, crazy stories through all of this.
• 8:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: And everyone's awful.
• 8:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: And somehow the worst person on this team is Heather Hudson.
• 8:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: who is this weirdly judgmental moody.
• 8:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's just yelling at everyone, even when the kids are around.
• 8:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, I'm trying to fuck my boyfriend to these children should be smashed or murdered.
• 8:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, get them out of my way.
• 8:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're gonna hear some crazy shit from Heather.
• 8:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: The best thing Heather ever did was get replaced by a black alternate reality girl version of her and the exiles.
• 8:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is the best thing that ever happened to Heather.
• 8:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well character, but I love her for it.
• 8:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: I really do.
• 8:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: Chapman, do you have any particular favorites on the alpha flight team?
• 8:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, even just going to this run and I was like, oh, yeah, feedback exists.
• 8:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: And like there's there's I love all of just the tiny bit characters.
• 8:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm kind of one of those collectors.
• 8:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: So like a stitch in the first version, I'm a go-hard for stitch.
• 9:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: Obviously, like I said, the deans.
• 9:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's why we're here today.
• 9:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: But,
• 9:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: Going back through, I mean, I love the witchfire stuff as weird and wild as it is.
• 9:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm shocked that she hasn't been roped into more stuff being literally Velasco's daughter, which was a whole thing I had forgotten about.
• 9:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yes, she does like ex-infernes, I guess, which I'll get to.
• 9:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm back at the weed and run, so I'm way behind where we are currently.
• 9:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's plenty of things that I'm discovered.
• 9:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm really fond of mannequin.
• 9:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm really fond of purple girl, although she's a problem.
• 9:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of characters in this friend.
• 9:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm a big fan of
• 9:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Honestly, purple girl did end up standing out to me just because of the connection that she kind of had with Laura and Goblin and trying to like, you know, understanding of this little girl they thought, which is one person with alternates and then suddenly, oh, no, that's that's two different people.
• 9:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let me try to get her trust and let me try to just help them out as much as I can because I understand how much it sucks to be looked down upon in life as a mutant with very different.
• 10:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: looks to everybody, physicality to everybody.
• 10:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: So did you ever watch Jessica Jones?
• 10:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: I didn't, yes.
• 10:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the purple man from Jessica Jones?
• 10:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's his dog.
• 10:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so one time he took over, took over a lady's mind and like raped her for a while and then she had got pregnant and then he left.
• 10:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: But her baby was born with her rapists mind controllability.
• 10:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: Look, it's her rough story.
• 10:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: I saw Kilgra, even I'm like, that can't be the same.
• 10:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: That mom continues to be a mom for every child in alpha flight.
• 10:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: She's literally the only functioning adult for a good 30 issues.
• 10:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so we're going to be introducing the characters of Goblin and Pathway here.
• 10:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: And let me give just a little bit of preamble.
• 10:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: They first show up in alpha flight 48.
• 10:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: The writer on the book at this point is Bill Mantlow.
• 10:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: and Bill is great at writing super hero soap opera.
• 10:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Bill does some incredible runs on a lot of different characters and there's so much juicy, got key like oh my god these people are horrible.
• 10:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: His run on alpha flight is really amazing.
• 11:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Bill just handful of years after this was hit by a car and even 30 years plus later is still alive but remains in an assisted living facility unable to communicate.
• 11:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: very loved by his family, but infamously wrote some of the best superhero stories that Marvel for a long time.
• 11:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Sometimes they're a problem.
• 11:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: We'll talk about that too.
• 11:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: But it's kind of like, I don't know, you create these characters, they're diverse, and there's a lot of mental illness, and you make horrible things happen to them.
• 11:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: And you know, we're kind of here for a superhero fans, sometimes.
• 11:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: But artists on this book is Terry Shoemaker.
• 11:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a
• 11:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: One of the hero's medicine Jeffries, who I just mentioned, who can shape metal with his hands.
• 11:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's immune.
• 11:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's constructing ships and suits of armor, and he's adopted the box identity.
• 11:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: So Iron Man in Canada is just box B-O-X, and the original creator is Roger Box B-O-C-H-S.
• 11:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, we'll talk about that guy another time.
• 11:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, actually, I'll do a pretty early announcement in September on my show.
• 11:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're doing what we're calling problematic character month on the Patreon.
• 11:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Go back and see Haram and I's episode on Black Mariah for an example of what that would strike.
• 12:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: But we're going to take some of Marvel's biggest problems and talk about them with an analytical voice and Roger Box's on the list.
• 12:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we're going to come back to talk about that, guys.
• 12:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Anyway.
• 12:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: So Madison has a crazy brother.
• 12:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: His name is Lionel Jeffries.
• 12:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: And he goes by the name Scramble.
• 12:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: And his power is to shape flesh.
• 12:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think like mask from the more locks except the way way creepier.
• 12:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: So Scramble and Jeffries, and there's all this drama, and Scramble wants to create a new race of monstrous beings under his control.
• 12:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: So he's gathered a whole bunch of mutants together and he's captured them all.
• 12:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: And one of them that is there is like this Ebon kind of black,
• 12:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: eldritch looking creature.
• 12:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's like a small little demony thing.
• 12:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: And this is goblin, which we will learn later.
• 12:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: The only thing we really get in this first issue is Aurora and her very, very affected like you know how like Chris Claremont writes like Moira and McTaggart so ridiculous.
• 12:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: Matt Lou writes Aurora's French and she goes
• 12:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Easy, inhuman!
• 12:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we're saying EETE, EES, EETE's ridiculous, or ex-eds terrible through the slow run.
• 13:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the mutants and the mutates that are gathered by scrambled are called the derangers, and Laura ends up sending them free.
• 13:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: And a few issues later, we meet a creature named Bedlim the Brain Blast, who's a truly horrible character, who has captured the derangers and elf of light.
• 13:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: And there's one single comic book page where we're seeing with no words a bunch of different characters origins fleshed out.
• 13:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's literally like 40 panels on one page.
• 13:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we get vindicator, freak out, Sasquatch.
• 13:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Janis, purple girl, breakdown, mannequin, and goblin.
• 13:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we're gonna talk about goblin and goblin's complicated mutant origin story in just a minute.
• 13:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: But before we get there, I wanna talk a little bit about the sensitivity related to the topic of the way a mental health is portrayed in comics.
• 13:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: autism is a very diagnosable, when I say treatable in this condition, people who have autism or learning disabilities who are on the aspect drum.
• 13:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Under the right circumstances and with the right support, they live full, happy, wonderful lives, depending on how severe the degree of autism is.
• 13:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of tropes in fiction speaking as the, here's my mental health side for a minute.
• 14:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of tropes in fiction that like PTSD will result in autism.
• 14:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: which can be a correlation, but there doesn't seem to be a direct causation in the way the diagnostic works.
• 14:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: But this character, Laura Dean, we're about to talk about, has a traumatic origin in the way that Charles Xavier and Cassandra Nova had a traumatic origin.
• 14:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, there's lots of butan twins out there.
• 14:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it has resulted in her appearing to be autistic, although I don't know that it's ever quite stated out loud on the page.
• 14:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: She struggles with social cues, she has kind of restricted affect and the way she processes information is very focused, but a lot of her story seems to be related more to PTSD.
• 14:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a developmental disabilities, is a separate category for autism.
• 14:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: And this is when we have kids who have behavioral problems.
• 14:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: And when we call them problems, there's situations.
• 14:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: These are the types of kids that need special types of learning environments.
• 14:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: So when we call it special education, that's what we're referring to.
• 14:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: We need particular types of resources and teaching methods.
• 15:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: When I was a little kid, my mom worked in, my mom was the first grade teacher, but she took a job working in a group home for a period of time.
• 15:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I would go see her when I was young and she was working with kids and adults who had some of these severe disabilities and I developed a compassion but also kind of a confusion I didn't know how to process the information very clearly as a child and it's one of the things that spark me to want to study mental health later on I don't think I've ever shared that story here actually.
• 15:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: The Goblin almost gives that kind of energy.
• 15:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: So where Laura seems to have kind of a social affect struggle, related to PTSD, Goblin seems to be portrayed almost as a child with a developmental disability.
• 15:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: The other way to read this though is that Laura is not mentally ill and has a trauma onset related to her powers and the unique way that she sees the world and Goblin sees the world like a Goblin.
• 15:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: In the way that Reagan acts like a wolf or Sharon Smith acts like a cat
• 15:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: So there's some interesting components and those are certainly part of the story but I wanted to have that conversation right up front.
• 16:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let me hear from both of you, your thoughts on portrayal of these two children who are like nine years old until they get bizarrely aged up.
• 16:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: We'll talk about that later.
• 16:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think it's interesting that you bring that up because I actually interpreted the two of them in a slightly different way.
• 16:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: I interpreted that the autism is sort of an innate genetic predisposition that was always there for either Laura or Laura and gobble.
• 16:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's sort of a involved as language tends to in especially in spaces in which we're trying to self-identify.
• 16:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: The autism community at large and different groups within the autism community are kind of moving away from the
• 16:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: old functioning style labels to more of a support meets style of labels.
• 16:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so I almost viewed it as both sisters are indeed on this spectrum.
• 16:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: And it's just that Laura has more of a level one that she's able to communicate.
• 16:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: She's able to sort of take care of her.
• 16:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: various needs on her own, such as a bathroom dressing, things like that.
• 16:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: Whereas Goblin is actually the opposite end of that sort of scale, which would be the level free, which is high support, which is just meaning more assistance in doing things such as understanding those social aspects, meaning help with, like, the set dress.
• 17:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: It also goes back into Goblin presenting a sort of almost a non-verbal autistic, which is a very, very compact aspect of autism, is difficulty with
• 17:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: lots of different reasoning in some ways.
• 17:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: These characters, we almost wonder if like if like a Bill knew someone in his real life that he inspired the characters from and wanted to give them like a superhero story, right?
• 17:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's kind of interesting.
• 17:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: And it's like I think it's fascinating too because it ends up being kind of a dichotomy between the sisters that bonds them together, where it's that you kind of understand each other and there seems to be almost like a telepathically
• 17:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's kind of, in different issues, it's played as more like a lassy, like, what is it girl, which is not my favorite time of it's written, but there are other times in which definitely Laura and even to a certain extent Kara, purple group, is able to kind of sort of understand a telepathic thing, but it's also, it's very much a different light and emphasis on different forms of communication and then finishes on different ways to communicate with people that aren't so language-focused or language-based for those who might have those struggles.
• 18:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: Very much interpret sort of them from that perspective, offering kind of a, I guess, a two-fold representation.
• 18:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: We'll talk about these two girls and their shit parents in just a minute, but the parents sent the girls, it was sent Laura specifically into scramble's clinic and an attempt to kind of cure her and you're wondering if they're trying to cure her mutant nature or her autistic nature or maybe both and that's uncomfortable also.
• 18:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Honestly, I fully agree on the regarding where they are on the autistic spectrum because definitely you can see that Goblin has fully formed like very cohesive thoughts that she just can't bring to vocalization and that is very fair that you see that in a lot of autistic children that they'll they know how to present it in their own way but possibly
• 18:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: not an verbal manner and as long as you know how to like kind of get them to express these thoughts, then they'll be able to teach them different ways of expression, then they'll be able to when that's definitely goblin as a character when it comes to pathway, Laura definitely does give something.
• 19:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: what's the word for it?
• 19:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hollywood autism.
• 19:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like there is definitely an attempt made more with showing the autism from her side if that makes sense because we have a human face as a word.
• 19:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: You have a more recognizable.
• 19:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, yeah, that's a human child.
• 19:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: I can recognize it.
• 19:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: this is the specific disorder that they may be dealing with, but it's definitely presented in a very Hollywood lens because as you know, they have usually once you see it in Hollywood and it's a little bit true to life as well.
• 19:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: You'll see that they have different kind of special interests, different adherences to routine, sensitivities, and regards to the sensory way, and you see that a lot with Laura.
• 19:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: And like you do see the nonverbal aspect of it, but then every time I read it, it's like this seems, it definitely does jumping off from a point made earlier, definitely does seem more like trauma based just because she received that trauma in the womb, as we know, yeah, whole kit to that when we get into the parents.
• 19:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 19:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
• 20:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we're going to jump into some of the history with these characters.
• 20:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Pay attention to the way they're portrayed.
• 20:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: And there's a lot of depth in nuance to it actually.
• 20:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Manicin is a bizarre character.
• 20:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's a mutant who's a doctor.
• 20:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: And his power is to summon a far past, a less far past, and a future version of himself.
• 20:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: So he can summon either an amoeba, a caveman, or like a future guy with like specs and like,
• 20:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: So thank you for your time.
• 20:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Instead, it's a bizarre character.
• 20:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: So you're going to hear me reference mannequin.
• 20:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: The name mannequin alone is bizarre.
• 20:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a truly crazy character.
• 20:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we just talked about the flashback panels, all the 40 panels on one page.
• 20:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: When we look underneath Goblin and Laura Dean, we see a little girl of color who is Laura Dean, lonely and a bed.
• 20:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: We see a portal opening and an eldritch black creature jumping out of it.
• 20:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: We see the little girl being taken to a doctor.
• 20:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: We see the little girl walking out of the doctor.
• 20:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: We see the little girl getting taken by Bedlim and then the two superhero teams, the derangers and the alpha flight teams have to fight.
• 21:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: At the end of this fight, Laura Dean ends up kind of curled on the ground and purple girl goes over to check on her.
• 21:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: Laura's eyes glow green and goblin emerges.
• 21:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: You almost kind of wonder if they transform if they swap places if she turns into something else.
• 21:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: but she's surrounded by purple bubbles and like backlit by like a dimensional portal.
• 21:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we're gonna learn that Goblin and Laura will change places.
• 21:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a portal to another dimension called live world.
• 21:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: And whenever Laura feels like she's in danger, she'll open it up and Goblin will jump out.
• 21:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then they'll swap places later when things feel safe.
• 21:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: More on that and a little while.
• 21:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: So Goblin is here, she slashes it, Kara, Heather Hudson thinks of Goblin as the most terrifying of the derangers, and Kara runs for it.
• 21:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think in Goblin's tearing at me, my mind manipulative powers out of no effect on her.
• 21:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's scared to think of a plan I've got to, but mannequin summons his cave man self and punches Goblin.
• 21:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: and soon both groups turn on Bedlam, who screams when Goblin shreds his armor on the back.
• 21:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Some people end up dead.
• 21:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Goblin is alive and alpha flights, oh, I both suppose we better take this child that we punched and put into danger, back with us to our government base to put them on our sanction superhero military missions.
• 22:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: That seems like a good plan.
• 22:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: When the superhero's walk out of the chaotic fight in issue 54, Goblin rushes out into the world and wants to be away from the others as quick as possible.
• 22:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: thinking only in terms of survival and protecting her twin Laura, who is in live world.
• 22:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: The goblin can't change places with Laura or Laura will die.
• 22:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: She can only do it when it's safe to do so.
• 22:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: So when Alfa Flight comes looking for goblin, the goblin stabs Sasquatch in the eyes with her claws.
• 22:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Turns out she's like around the eyes, but there's like blood dripping over them.
• 22:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's quite savage.
• 22:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: And when goblin sees Heather Hudson coming, she then trades places with Laura Dean, who's now lying unconscious in the snow.
• 22:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: But when she switches places,
• 22:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: back she slashes a Heather makes her bleed and her sound effect her only like verbal exclamation is like oh it's very like a-w-r-w-r multiple-os.
• 23:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Heather blasts goblin with like a laser or something and then goblin goes running for it and box traps her and brings her inside but goblin breaks
• 23:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: free, and then harms Madison Jeffries, and then makes Madison bleed, and then turns to the helpless purple girl, and Goblin slashes, and it takes all of Kara's like mental strength to enter Goblin's mind and see their history.
• 23:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: None of this team knows how to vangle a child.
• 23:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that worries me a little bit in these scenes, but like I get it, the child's a terror at this point, but that's how I'm gonna be honest.
• 23:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's how a lot of adults who are not used to autistic children, first kind of view autistic children.
• 23:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: They are tears that for some reason they cannot control, which is like, they're honestly, it's a really good allegory if I'm gonna say, please.
• 23:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: in this time frame, even with the problematic like storytelling regarding how to present autistic children.
• 23:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it does kind of, it's almost nuanced in a way.
• 23:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Also, goblin, very tactical, got to say like again, very smart knows what she's doing, knows how to get through like, hey, I'm going to trick these people and also I'm going to hide out here and I'm going to attack here.
• 24:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: I got this down all to protect my sister and
• 24:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I kept wondering, so who kind of initiates the switch?
• 24:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because I get that initiated when one is in danger, or when the other feels like the others in danger, also how can Goblin initiate this switch?
• 24:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so it seems like it used to me like they're mentally connected.
• 24:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's like some sort of psychic bond, but Laura's power is still the dimensional portals.
• 24:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: Where Goblin's power is the heightened sense of healing factor, right?
• 24:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: So one of them is a mental mutation, the other physical mutation.
• 24:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, let's talk about this origin story for a moment.
• 24:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's painful.
• 24:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: And you know, we've read a thousand mutant stories, but this is one of those you're like, oh no.
• 24:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we get some captions.
• 24:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'll be interspersing it with my explanations of the dialogue.
• 24:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Once a man loved a woman, they married.
• 24:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: We see this cute little black couple.
• 24:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: Susan Dean soon realizes she's pregnant with twins, but the doctor detects that at least one of them is a mutant.
• 25:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it turns out that Mr. Dean, the dad, is a huge anti-button bigot.
• 25:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so the doctors try a procedure where they hit the mutated twin with radiation in the womb, but they have to stop when one twin seeks to protect the other twin.
• 25:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Holy shit.
• 25:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: Six months later, quote, one child was born to the deans.
• 25:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: Autistic with drawn from the world, there was no indication of what happened to the other twin.
• 25:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: So Laura in the womb, like opened a portal and sent her fetus to live world some out to protect it, because that's what they do.
• 25:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: They protect each other.
• 25:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's the opposite of Charles and Cassandra.
• 25:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: which I think Charles consumed her.
• 25:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is a rough story.
• 25:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's honestly kind of a very true to life if I'm gonna be honest, seeing in the black community how a lot of mental disorders are kind of looked at as something that is old, bad boy any right, anything like that.
• 25:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've seen it even in my own family when it comes down to what I've seen how like certain family members have been spurned in that way because of certain mental disorders that they have grown with, even into adulthood,
• 26:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: some of my family members are now dealing with it unchecked as it were.
• 26:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it was very interesting to once again see this as a black person who is very much neurotypical not wanting a neurodivergent child or being worried about having a neurodivergent child in some way.
• 26:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's going to be honest, it's again, it's very true to life where it's that step up of privilege as it were.
• 26:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: like you're very privileged to be neuro-typical versus someone who is not.
• 26:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's very much the same in this universe as well.
• 26:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're very privileged to, yes, you are black, but you are not a mutant and black.
• 26:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: So think about these stories about like mutant children being a band and they're always rough.
• 26:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: But this is radiation on your child in the womb.
• 26:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like holy shit, what does it happen to these people?
• 26:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: To me that is the most striking aspect is we get that that Darby Dean the father is he says do you realize what you're saying Who I am should my organization discover that one of its foremost anti-meat and advocates is father too So he's not even just like he's not even just like your your typical one of the mill All I'm listening to some big literary on the radio he is high up in an organization and then also at the same time This is coming out 87-ish
• 27:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: If we want to avoid the nuts and bolts of the Marvel time crunch and Franklin Richards and how time works in all that, he is joining an anti-mune business advocacy group.
• 27:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: This is around a little bit before the Alback era for our X-Men fans out there.
• 27:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: So this is way before the school has come out.
• 27:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: Obviously when a Charles goes on in the 60s to do the debates with trash and all that.
• 27:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: So we know that there are pro-news.
• 27:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: it's by this point in time.
• 27:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: But for him to already have gung-ho and Charles and Moira are releasing their research in world.
• 27:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: And he automatically is there as an anti-human advocate.
• 27:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's there from the get.
• 27:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's ground level.
• 27:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: This news has come out.
• 27:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: I have now joined an organization and I am studying ways to end this.
• 28:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is Reaganism.
• 28:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'll just talk this out quickly.
• 28:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: So this is the same here that Louis Simonson introduces their right who are like those smiley face soldiers literally called the right who are trying to shoot mutants down Cameron Hodge is like just inspired angel to commit suicide, but he comes back as the angel of death.
• 28:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: Exfactor's discovering bodies, pits full of mutant bodies in Russia, you know, like the stakes are raising and Mr. Sinister shows up right now, but this is a version of that really rough story.
• 28:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's, it's crazy because then it's like finished hopping that one of the things that Charles comes out early on and is very open about is we believe that radiation is a huge source of mutation.
• 28:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like that is an open secret at that point when Charles is going to debate things when when that is hopping it is
• 28:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: from what I understand with all of Chad's coverage.
• 28:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: That is a, that is an open fact.
• 28:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: So these two anti-meaton advocates are saying, I would rather subject my non-mutant child to a mutating agent in order to eliminate the child that I know for a fact has a mutation.
• 29:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: So Darby is doubling down
• 29:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: is ignorant of in the passion of the moon, but it's a full on, it's like it's not only make that kid straight, but also the straight one, if they're not straight enough, give him extra dose, so we can always throw them out and get a couple new ones in.
• 29:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's so, it's so nausea-fair in the way that he's like, well I'm informed about this knowledge and yet I'm going to turn around and fully turn my back on that.
• 29:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: which is just so astounding.
• 29:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so covering the next section.
• 29:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Goblin ends up slashing out at everyone.
• 29:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
• 29:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: Then she flees towards some machines that might endanger everyone, they want to kill her, Sasquatcheos, you mindless little beast, she'll be the death of us all, and mannequins says, not if we neutralize her first, and Cara says, not if we kill her, you mean, don't be polite about murder, and Heather Hudson says, purple girl, that's enough.
• 30:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: It was your bleeding heart that caused us to spare the creature in the first place, Goblin had her chance.
• 30:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's talking to the teenager about wanting to murder the child, and Cara says, maybe she needs another chance.
• 30:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe she's not willing to trust a race that tried to waste her before she was even born.
• 30:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe we'll just have to take some risks and try again.
• 30:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Heather is all powered up like ready to fire.
• 30:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Karen, get out of the line of fire.
• 30:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: No, you want a kill goblin, you're going to have to kill me.
• 30:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Karen covers goblin with her own body and Heather fires.
• 30:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: And some of the plasma burst hits them.
• 30:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: Fuck her!
• 30:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh my god, this is crazy!
• 30:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Goblin starts to cry, of course.
• 30:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Keras says, you'll be okay.
• 30:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'll protect you.
• 30:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: I promise.
• 30:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: No matter what happens, you do understand.
• 30:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Don't you do, you do, you do, you do, you do, you do, you do, and Kera means it because they like become sisters later out in the story.
• 31:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: They have a huge hug and she is ready to protect this mutant kid who fucking has nobody.
• 31:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: This story is heartbreaking and Heather Hudson is a monster.
• 31:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Honestly, it's just so wild because how did this child get here?
• 31:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: I know how the child got here, but also this child should not.
• 31:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: be here.
• 31:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's very interesting again to see the swap between Goblin and Laura, Laura and Goblin, and seeing Cara go into the mind of both the children and just see the kind of life that they had the experiences that they had to go through, that kind of brought them to this point that brought
• 31:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Laura, it's being basically non-verbal kind of, but not just help us as you think as it were, and how protective both of them are of each other, even if they've never occupied the same space at the same time.
• 31:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's really quite entertaining all the way through.
• 31:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: So in the very next issue in 55, we have a team called BetaFlight.
• 31:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is a team that's existed.
• 31:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: We get AlphaFlight BetaFlight GammaFlight and or OmegaFlight at various times.
• 32:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Betaflight is the trainees.
• 32:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's like the new mutants to the X-Men in a way.
• 32:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Goblin and Laura Dean are both officially signed up, even though they are children.
• 32:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: But we got to train them, right?
• 32:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, they need that opportunity to learn about their powers.
• 32:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe don't put them in danger anyway.
• 32:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's not how it works.
• 32:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, Cara says, where do you go, Laura?
• 32:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: When goblin emerges.
• 32:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: Goblin hides me.
• 32:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like you hid her inside you while you were both inside your mother's womb.
• 32:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: So you protected goblin and she emerges whenever your threat.
• 32:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Laura says, Goblin hates the dead world.
• 32:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: We both do.
• 32:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: And dead world is how they refer to our Earth.
• 32:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: Cara says, the dead world, this world, is there another you both go to then?
• 32:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Laura says, live world, can you tell me about live world, Laura?
• 32:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: No, I can only show you, and she takes Kara into her mind, but also maybe through a portal.
• 32:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: It looks like something out of a Dr.
• 32:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: Strange comic book.
• 32:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's floating bodies and rock over vast valleys, filled with blue and purple waterfalls, silver bubbles floating through the landscape.
• 32:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Goblin sees her there, and when Kara comes back out, she says, there are worlds inside you, Laura.
• 33:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: I saw them.
• 33:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: I also saw your alter ego, Goblin.
• 33:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: She wouldn't let me in.
• 33:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Laura says she's not so sure about you yet, Cara.
• 33:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: She likes you, but she's not sure we should trust you enough to allow you to see live world.
• 33:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then Laura huddles in on herself because the fucking great beasts are attacking.
• 33:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: another time.
• 33:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: And when we jumped to 56, box is panicking because there's some crazy cancer going on and he flies into space with vindicator and saskwatch and goblin inside of his own body.
• 33:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so Madison Jeffers can like form a starship, but it's like physically him.
• 33:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's like his form.
• 33:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: In the exiles on cracoa, he turned into a boat and then he got blown up.
• 33:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you remember it's
• 33:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: That happened.
• 33:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, he's a starship on the teams inside and and Thoblin is freaking the fuck out because they just launched into space and she's like hack-an and a machinery But also this is Madison's body and Heather if I can hate this kid I hate to be and I told you so about goblin being too peaceful to be allowed to join us, but I told you so good Lord And then Sasquatch has to be the reasonable one and says she's more than a mindless beast vindicator
• 34:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: Somehow, she's linked her Alderigo, the autistic Lord of Dean, who disappeared along with the purple girl.
• 34:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Seconds before Tundra was about to crush them both.
• 34:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Tundra's one of the great beasts.
• 34:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: So does that mean we've got to put up with any erratic behavior this creature cares to inflict on us until we learn the fate of our missing beat you?
• 34:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: No way!
• 34:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Goblin hacks her way into boxes interior and Heather's all.
• 34:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: This Starship is the first man I loved since my man died.
• 34:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's truly, really.
• 34:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Goblin finds tanks of parasitic monsters and hacks into them, but it turns out they're like leftover creations of that bedlam guy when you have a little bedlam guy here.
• 34:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: There you know, it's cute.
• 34:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then a goblin hacks away at the creatures because they're infecting boxes, brain and helps save the day.
• 34:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Meanwhile, in live world, Lord Dean is holding Cara's hand and skipping around all happy and Cara describes this place as a psychedelic Disney land but someone is watching and it's the dream queen, uh, Chapman, can you give us the like two sentence version of who the dream queen is?
• 34:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: And yes, I know that's a challenge.
• 35:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: The dream queen is weirdly enough a daughter of nightmare, you know, everyone's favorite debilister.
• 35:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so, the result of nightmare fucking a succubus.
• 35:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: who then becomes pregnant and turns into her daughter.
• 35:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: Exactly.
• 35:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, all demons become their child.
• 35:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: He raped her story.
• 35:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: Precisely.
• 35:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so, yes, she is, she is a spawn of nightmare.
• 35:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: She has, she's been trapped in the dimension we know as life and world.
• 35:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: And she is essentially a god in this domain, but is unable to leave classic, classic, put me in a pocket dimension type step.
• 35:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: So she can go anything with her mind in this world.
• 35:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: She can create anything evil or good, but she cannot escape.
• 35:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: So she's trying to pull people there to like open portal so she can invade other realms.
• 35:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: And we learned she's been here hundreds of years.
• 35:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: She has attempted various tricks to get out and we'll follow up on those later.
• 35:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: But for the most part, she is now focused in on the fact that
• 35:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: uh, one day, a little, little goblin decarcinably a fetus, but we don't need to worry about how that function was was brought to her by her little dream demons.
• 36:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: If someone out there wants to write a little uh, three dream demons in a baby story for the first like six years of how it doesn't challenge me.
• 36:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'll do it.
• 36:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: I want to know how I want to know the incubation period.
• 36:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: I want to know what happened in this room.
• 36:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: Goblin is brought before the dream queen realizes, oh, this is not something I've created out of my own mind.
• 36:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: This is not something I've made.
• 36:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: This is finally a sentient being that is coming to mind you, my rep, which is the only one who has done to this point is nightmare to come back and talk her and all.
• 36:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: At this point, the dream queen sort of white witch, almost white witch and Edmund, very yeah.
• 36:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: Chronicles and Mary are here.
• 36:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: Very much sort of like raises Goblin, which presumably is why she freaks out in the spaceship, why she's all terrified to be in the great Arctic North, all of the very reasonable things to be freaking out posts.
• 36:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's very the Goblin Prince from Labyrinth, like, let's take the baby and we'll make everything pretty and beautiful, but then they'll reveal their darker nature later.
• 37:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Stay tuned everyone.
• 37:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: There will be a dream queen episode on this show this fall.
• 37:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: I rereading her.
• 37:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: I needed we need she needs her own space.
• 37:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: So running through this 57 we see the Madison Jeffrey ship land on a foreign planet and mannequin who wants to know where purple girl is calls goblin a freak so she slashes that ever on which I you know.
• 37:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: and then he summons all three of his time forms to fight her back.
• 37:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then Heather fucking shoots Goblin in the back with an energy pulse and Bucks calls her out.
• 37:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: He says, you don't want Alphins fighting among themselves, but the only one you aimed your plasma burst set was Goblin.
• 37:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's been clear from the start you don't like having her here.
• 37:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Heather says she's an animal!
• 37:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh my god, good lord, I added the wine myself.
• 37:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Madison says, yeah, uncontrollable savage, all those things, but she saved our butts at least twice.
• 37:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: And since we did indoctrinated, we got a duty to make her understand how to behave and to try to understand her.
• 37:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: We go back to live world where Kara and Laura are hanging out.
• 37:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Kara says she feels scary things in live world sometimes.
• 37:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: So she trades places with Goblin, and Goblin climbs into the lap of the dream queen and is like purring.
• 38:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Laura, back in the main world, is back to being silent on autistic.
• 38:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: So there's the interesting thing, and that's why I wondered about the autism.
• 38:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because when she's in live world away from the trauma, she's super open and social and comfortable.
• 38:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: But when she's back in dead world, she quits up again.
• 38:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: So that's where I'm like a little bit confused about it.
• 38:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: But she doesn't get to play with Mamanicans Amiva, which is funny.
• 38:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Then on the planet, Goblin helps battle the alphins understand a like a foreign life form and Heather's like, okay, Goblin, I'll stop blasting you and I'll try to understand you instead.
• 38:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: I will say, this is one of my favorite issues for that, because basically this large crystalline structure, they, they sort of reawakened this, this, this, whatever entity is.
• 38:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: as everyone in their space suits runs out to figure out what is going on fight off these like tentacles that are now taking over the ship.
• 38:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: As everyone gets into their spaces, everyone is preparing.
• 38:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: Laura is the only one that we have seen that caption says, either no one hears Lordine or no one cares and she screams out.
• 39:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: But what if this planet is somehow a lie?
• 39:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: If we have created life here, don't we have some sort of responsibility to try to understand it rather than trying to destroy it?
• 39:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: Which is the entire thesis of these two girls.
• 39:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: because he sums up their entire thesis.
• 39:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: He also grippedly illustrates the dichotomy between Heather and Goblin and how what Kara is trying to do in understanding her, to me it's fastening into that she is repeatedly shown throughout either sensing danger in the pattern recognition of live where she senses her sister or she is the one to reach out to this entity.
• 39:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: But it reinforces to me how much of a AP pattern seeking brain, a very autistic thing in and of itself.
• 39:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: And someone who is watching all of the sort of inns
• 39:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: danger of the people around them, and the ways to understand the world, even if she's not participating, she's constantly watching, which is one thing you hear from a lot of autistic people, as you said long.
• 39:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: I wasn't reaching out, or I wasn't people to communicate in these ways, but I was always there, I was always watching, and I was always paying attention, and I always knew what was going.
• 40:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'm fully on board for the autism read, but it almost reads to me, do you know that trope like especially in 80s and 90s films?
• 40:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're like the kid has been kidnapped and they've been rescued but now they won't talk and like the whole movie is about the kid being silent and tell they finally talk at the end.
• 40:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: That almost seems to be how Bill is writing Laura to me in some ways because she has full like sentences and speeches sometimes.
• 40:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: This is to me it is very much how my my autistic brain looks, but it's very much a if I don't have anything to say, especially in a group setting I will sit back I will watch I will enjoy the camaraderie and the second that I feel I have something that is worth saying I will spout out minutes and minutes and minutes nonstop and monologue and monologue to so many.
• 40:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: people around me because I'm like, what, these are my thoughts.
• 40:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so to me, and that's kind of where I was taking this is more of like a Laura doesn't the joke of the I'm the person at the party will always find the cat and will spend time hanging out with the cat sort of a thing where she is she's off with Proto.
• 40:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: She's off with Laura.
• 40:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: She's in her own.
• 40:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: how a little headspace, but she's always watching and the second that she realizes.
• 40:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: Because she's also saying this to the adults that have not really introduced themselves to her, not really taking care of her so much and yet she's like, hey, Dr. Langeauce, Heather, who has shot my friends in front of me.
• 41:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't care what you're doing.
• 41:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm gonna scream after you and I'm gonna call out to you and say, hey, you're messing up.
• 41:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: Some of us, this is clearly something alive.
• 41:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: And to me, like, sure, she isn't fully get there.
• 41:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: She's a little hesitant with it.
• 41:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: But she's right on the notes.
• 41:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: The creature ends up being sent to you.
• 41:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: something they can sort of, uh, if they a chosen to communicate with.
• 41:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it's better than the leader of a national super hero team, blasted to child with lasers.
• 41:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: And that child says, you know what?
• 41:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm still going to tell you who are wrong.
• 41:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: Woman, I'm not fair.
• 41:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we jump to 58 in the little world, the dream queen finds Lordine and chokes her with a whip around her neck and demands that she open a portal back to earth.
• 41:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: Again, this is a child.
• 41:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Goblin is freaking out and Heather yells, purple girl, can't you control that creature?
• 41:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: And mannequin goes, keep it away from the warp relay set circuit and Kara yells back.
• 42:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Goblin's not an it and she's not my pet.
• 42:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, you know what, pervogirl, I am here for you in this story.
• 42:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love it, you're love for this character.
• 42:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, Laura has some mental talents too.
• 42:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: We've seen her and Kara like combine mine a little bit.
• 42:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we get to see Laura merge her mind with like goblin and box here.
• 42:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: And he takes this ship toward live world.
• 42:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: Where goblin goes bounding off to find the dream queen who has created monstrous versions on like dream forms of like Laura's parents in order to torment her.
• 42:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: And these creatures are like really creepy monsters with like these ugly white masks that they rip off and then it's like for the faces it gives me very much the movie us like the the people from the underground like looped in the
• 42:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: In 1560, alpha-flight battles the Dream Queen's Warriors, the portal to Earth gets opened in like a middle of a very complicated battle.
• 42:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: China is here, Russian is here, a puck is here, but also at full size because there's a whole story.
• 43:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the Dream Queen wants to invade dead world, but it turns out Loro gets the full revelation that she's immune.
• 43:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: She can open portals.
• 43:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: She closes them.
• 43:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: The Dream Queen has trapped in live world forever.
• 43:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Wahahah the end.
• 43:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: We see her later in a Scarlet Witch comics many years later.
• 43:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: Here are my love to hear some of your thoughts on the Lord dynamic and particularly on the Dream Queen's creepy monster forms of her parents.
• 43:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're so scary.
• 43:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how to explain this, but it gave me like the character design of the false parents gave me a little bit of, hey, somebody watched the whiz recently.
• 43:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: and they looked at, they looked at the flying monkeys, biker gang, they looked at Eveleem, somebody had to have watched the whiz before making these characters.
• 43:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Would you fuck these monsters?
• 43:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, absolutely not.
• 43:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: These are like.
• 43:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: of being loved.
• 43:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm seeing a buzer monsters under these masks.
• 43:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: These ones aren't for me, but drinking was the go ahead and conjure up a little bit more of the warriors that she did around the end of the issue.
• 44:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm good with those.
• 44:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: 61 alpha flight is part of an inquisition.
• 44:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: The government who is so corrupt, right?
• 44:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: Weapon X and Department H. We don't have time to get into all that today.
• 44:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I'll play it's being questioned for their actions.
• 44:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Kara, Whitman and Wander are watching over Laura and Goblin at the hotel.
• 44:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: They go outside and they have to push Goblin around and a little pink baby carriage to keep her under cover so they can go get some food and it's really quite cute, but also well.
• 44:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then when it reports the TV, Darby and Susan Dean noticed their daughter Laura with
• 44:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: alpha flight on TV and they're like, oh, that's our child, Sasquatch throws some fits.
• 44:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: In the next issue, Kara goes home to visit her mother and she wakes up with a nightmare and Laura and Goblin are her little roommates there.
• 44:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: And they end up fighting the reanimated corpse of Zebedai Kilgrave, the purple man, and they hack through a bunch of zombies he's controlling.
• 44:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Goblin gets to really like go to town because these are undead monsters.
• 44:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: She just gets to slash everywhere, which is super fun.
• 44:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: school, but Goblin, who they imply has more than the mind of a cat, can't go to school for obvious reasons, and mannequin has to hold Goblin behind.
• 45:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: No Goblin, I'm sorry, but you can't go to school with Kara and Laura, and Goblin says me, you, and Kara says that if you're real good, we'll both take you to obedience class later.
• 45:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Laura says, she almost hit the litter box this morning, and Kara says, almost, and Laura goes, well, she is getting better since she and I came to live with you in your mom after Alpha's breakup.
• 45:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: So Kara uses her powers to make the bus driver stop and all the kids get scared and they are off to school.
• 45:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: And this is kind of where we have to assume they still are.
• 45:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a few more appearances we'll recover.
• 45:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I kind of just hope they're living with Kara's mom and having their best life these two.
• 45:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Herum, did you have thoughts on these scenes?
• 45:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so on to continue treating Goblin like she is.
• 45:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: somebody said, I get it.
• 45:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: This child has not really lived in this world and has not been socialized in this world.
• 45:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: It has not been raised by anybody in this world to know, I guess will be seen as proper social activities, proper social cues, but oh my god, a little box.
• 46:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: I, it got a little uncomfortable, especially since Goblin is at the end of the day of black child, like just a moon, but that's still a black child right there.
• 46:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is giving me an awful, like, far right debate, like, if we met children be trans, then what if they decide their cats and we have to put a litter box in the corner of the kindergarten.
• 46:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, no.
• 46:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: There are already furries out there, and doesn't really matter anywhere.
• 46:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: Just a moment like this, the times of Matlow drops the ball.
• 46:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think it is.
• 46:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: He goes for the humor and it's like, we, sir, you've set it up.
• 46:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: We've set up quite a detailed cast here, and then that one liner is a little sour now, because these are real people, or at least fully flesh out people.
• 46:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Especially when you know how complex goblins thoughts are, where it's like, why are you still treating this girl like an animal?
• 46:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: It cracks me up though because we've seen these kids get like shot thrown into walls and like been Oh, got with a whips and we're like, no, be nicer.
• 47:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: Give her a real toilet.
• 47:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: That girl deserves real bathroom.
• 47:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's the other thing with that dialogue is maybe there's actually not a litter box, but they are like shaming goblin with their words by inferring that there is, which is worse.
• 47:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe worse.
• 47:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's the element too of like the parents a few issues back had had masks on top of themselves that were white masks So there's also like you're doubling down on the metaphors there and then flip it around in this.
• 47:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's like oh That's not it's not my favorite after taste.
• 47:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's a little it's a little biter.
• 47:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a little Okay, so in 65 every time Laura goes off to school goblin chases her and like runs after the bus and then sits outside the school all day
• 47:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's snoopy.
• 47:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's very snoopy when we go to 67 through 71.
• 47:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: The dream queen is back.
• 47:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a really great story.
• 47:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: The dream queen story.
• 47:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's phenomenal.
• 48:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: And there's all these portals open.
• 48:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: And dream queen makes everyone face their worst fears.
• 48:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the fear that's projected to Laura and Goblin is that they have to have dinner with their parents who then turn it turn into demons and throw Laura off the roof.
• 48:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, well, this is a childhood trauma of the redacted in very real ways.
• 48:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: A shotman and sub-saving are in 71, Laura and Goblin, go back to live with Kara and, you know, I think the idea is that they're just gonna have a happy life.
• 48:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's not until 10 issues later in 81 and 82, we see them back and Laura is like oddly aged up at this point.
• 48:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's like she was nine and now she's like 16 maybe.
• 48:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Or she like really, you know, I have a friend, she's okay with me talking about this, but I won't say a name.
• 48:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: who she's like, when I was 10, my boobs grew and everyone noticed, and no one else's boobs grew for like three more years.
• 48:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know, that's what happened in Laura, or if this is her secondary mutation, or maybe she went off in a portal somewhere, and like stayed there for a few years and came back, but it's a bizarre age-up.
• 49:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's honestly really bizarre because it's like, I, A1, she was definitely a child.
• 49:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, that was definitely a child there.
• 49:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, very oversized shirt doesn't show any kind of form.
• 49:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, that's, that's a child.
• 49:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then suddenly, okay, 21, right?
• 49:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: What happened here?
• 49:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I assume the same thing that maybe she went through a portal, maybe she stayed on a,
• 49:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: world where time runs a little bit faster than what it does here.
• 49:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was cool with accepting that.
• 49:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: I cannot remember if Goblin really aged up at this point with her because Goblin is just cobbling.
• 49:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: I thought it doesn't lose her hooves at this point, which is wild to me.
• 49:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: I loved her hooves and she just has normal people feet, which was maybe an inclination of ageing, but possibly maybe like the mutation kind of grew with her in a sense.
• 49:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: She's were bursting.
• 49:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: She's she's
• 49:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: cat forms and going more human.
• 49:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's also later Heather will say something on lines of like that is a 10-year-old girl Which would be so funny to me if the whole point is she has age that bully is like going time at a different pace in her Fortunals and Heather just not paying attention to her is like that kids what 10 maybe 12?
• 50:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know if it's like just bully doubles down on it later, but yeah, her age is a is a big old sliding spail with this boy
• 50:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I shouldn't say, I absolutely say that's how I feel about kids, like, I don't know kids ages.
• 50:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how you're working with a teacher in your age.
• 50:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: Lara is connected primarily to live world at this point, but she can't open portals to other dimensions.
• 50:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we get to see that Goblin is like hanging out in a new dimension where there's like these little tiny green horse guys that are her friends.
• 50:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Cara takes on like a sleddy new costume.
• 50:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's no longer the purple girl, now she's persuasioned, the sexy, purple, mine mistress, I don't know, she's gross, she's fun.
• 50:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: So she and Laura and Goblin end up getting gathered by, quote, the spirit of time and space, and united with Aurora, and then they go to Azgar Dorescu, North Star and Fight Trolls.
• 51:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: We jumped to 85 through 87.
• 51:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a giant battle with Land the Source for her.
• 51:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Land has spelled L-L-A and Laura gets to open some portal's wild child who I love is going berserk and Goblin gets hurt and Laura sends her through a portal but then Laura gets slashed as well.
• 51:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: In 89, she's now in the hospital unconscious and wrapped in bandages and she needs a new kid me and they're going to have to ask her parents.
• 51:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
• 51:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: Two characters will introduce very quickly while child is Kyle Gidney, who is the feral, like younger version of Saber Tooth from the Age of Apocalypse.
• 51:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: In our comic reality, if he takes like this certain pill, he's like this very calm chill heroic hot guy.
• 51:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: But if he doesn't take the pill, he goes like full savage.
• 51:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: And if you read
• 51:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Wild Child went full savage and like SiLock became his alpha by breaking his neck and this is where Wild Child went crazy and both children get hurt and Laura ends up in a coma as a result.
• 51:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: The other character we have to introduce very quickly, Land the Sorcerer.
• 52:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: Land the Sorcerer is a as Marble does generically indigenous type entity.
• 52:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: The writer of this period, James Hudnell, who did some right-bart stuff.
• 52:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's that's an interesting Wikipedia diet I'll let you guys join
• 52:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: But he is the big bad of that writer's arc.
• 52:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: He is retroactively told that he was responsible for everything that has happened up to the series.
• 52:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: We are retroactively told that it's a whole thing.
• 52:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's a big magic guy.
• 52:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's not going to attack the world once every like 10,000 years.
• 52:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, they're talking about the matter.
• 52:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: Right.
• 52:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I was just asking.
• 52:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is he the one from Atlanta?
• 52:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Does I remember a limb of the sort of sort?
• 52:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, that's what the one, okay.
• 52:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's a few friends out of the world.
• 52:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: I wanted to make a big bad, and here he is now kind of down.
• 52:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, but alpha-flight in particular, I mean, X-Men too.
• 52:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of like appropriation from indigenous traditions that is used very frequently.
• 52:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: It land seems to fall into that.
• 52:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
• 52:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: The queen has some too, but we don't need to worry about that for now.
• 52:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: So Laura's been her.
• 52:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: She needs a kidney.
• 52:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: They call the parents who've been looking for Laura anyway.
• 53:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we meet them in 91 and they're like, we were so wrong and we want to make things right.
• 53:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Heather's like, alpha flight are now like Laura and Godwin's legal guardians.
• 53:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, I love your children in a way that you never could.
• 53:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: I take care of them.
• 53:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, I'm their mommy now.
• 53:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: all of you get out of the room and let that purple girl's mom come and take care of these children.
• 53:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so in 97, Laura is stabilizing.
• 53:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: We presume that she got the kidney.
• 53:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's much more responsive, but she's still at a coma.
• 53:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: In 98, she wakes up in screams that goblin is in danger.
• 53:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then she opens a random portal.
• 53:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I love this thing in comics where like the portal opens and whoever's nearby gets sucked into it.
• 53:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Shaman, persuasion, witchfire, and the deans are all pulled in.
• 53:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: and then we don't see them again for 11 issues.
• 53:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's so long.
• 53:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: We do get a little flashback of them.
• 53:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: Puck at one point is like, hey, shouldn't we worry about our friends?
• 53:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: And everyone's like, well, Puck, other plot is happening.
• 53:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: So you should probably stop.
• 53:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's not right.
• 53:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: In 109, we finally get to see the dream queen is back.
• 53:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: And there's a portal and there's a big attack at department age.
• 54:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it's fine, we're just gonna skip through.
• 54:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: The deans have been, it's an unknown amount of time that they're writing through these portals, but the deans have been like fully livin' it up in this world with them and like, I guess at this point, maybe we're supposed to have forgiven them for all that other stuff.
• 54:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's very unclear.
• 54:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: I need to see some dialogue on the page.
• 54:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: I want a resolution so bad for what is their relationship now because that was like a they the big flight members that are portal the way with the deans they are like running threats there's demon boards chasing them it's like a we are running for our lives we kind of we all crashed on the island like eight 16 kind of lost stuff so it's there they're all to get over you're a parental child trauma to get over because like they have to work this out to somebody do therapy while they were gone
• 54:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: No, Persuasion is not a qualified therapist.
• 54:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't care what it says.
• 54:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so we've never really seen them again at the deans.
• 54:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know what really what happened to them.
• 54:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: So anyway, they're all back on earth.
• 55:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: And they fight some aliens called the SCAR SK apostrophe AR.
• 55:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: And there's more.
• 55:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: Laura gets to like open a portal and send alien somewhere else, so that's never a great resolution.
• 55:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: Who knows?
• 55:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Who's problem now becomes?
• 55:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: But then they form a new beta flight.
• 55:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: And this time it's Talisman Persuasion, Manican, which fire, Laura Dean, and goblin.
• 55:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I fucking love this team.
• 55:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's five girls in Manican.
• 55:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: gives me the way to your queer energy.
• 55:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: I can write that to you all fucking day.
• 55:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Talisman and Witchfire come on.
• 55:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, one 14, this is where again, it's very uncomfortable.
• 55:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you look up an image of Laura Dean as pathway, this is the one that's going to pop up.
• 55:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: And she's in like a very red and black form fitting alpha uniform and she looks like she's like 20 years old.
• 55:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I do like the name pathway.
• 55:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think that's great.
• 55:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: Goblin gets a red and black suit as well.
• 55:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then beta flight fights the jackal.
• 55:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Who's maybe the evil son of
• 55:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: the Miles Warren, Gwen Stacy, Jackal.
• 55:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, in 120, Canada has passed like a superhero registration act, and the heroes are super upset, and in 122, Beta Flight are training against each other, and which fire briefly traps Goblin in a time loop, but Heather comes in and just like yells at them.
• 56:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Pathway and Goblin, you are supposed to be in school, and there's schools like a virtual reality program, so she's like, go sit at the computer.
• 56:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: So they ended up getting attacked by the goddess who's like the feminine version of Adam Warlog.
• 56:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: We don't have time for that story today.
• 56:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then in 130 there's a final battle with the master of the world who's the big alpha flight villain who's a ton of fucking fun.
• 56:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love this villain.
• 56:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Pathway and Goblin get to help but then the team disbands and we have never seen them again.
• 56:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of characters in the alpha flight we've seen.
• 56:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: We have never seen Pathway and Goblin ever again.
• 56:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: So let me hear your thoughts on any of those kind of final appearances for the kids who are like in their full superhero mode now.
• 56:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's intricate because I feel like they wanted to use the characters more, especially since they aged up large.
• 56:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like there's every time you see a child being aged up significantly, that's a sign that the writers are like, okay, we need to put them into more things.
• 57:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it really does just stop after one-thirty of this like this first volume of alpha flight.
• 57:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: The editor goes, hey, these characters seem fun, but do you realize you have superheroes like choking children on the page?
• 57:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's the exact reason we got lucky Barnes aged up when May brought him back as the winter soldier.
• 57:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's the reason we got Jason Todd aged up once they brought him back as Red Hood.
• 57:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: But also read any power pack coming from the late 1980s.
• 57:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so it's like you can I think you guys can find a way to use these kids.
• 57:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, now I guess adults.
• 57:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't it's so confusing.
• 57:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: They need to explain it.
• 57:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: They need to bring them back explain.
• 57:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hey, this is how they aged up, but also I get it Lara and goblin are kind of off and living their own life at this point who knows what kind of life that they're living.
• 57:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: It would have been nice to see them in the Cricula era because they are
• 58:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: you in the state would want to get away from the persecution of the world, but maybe they're trying to make it work with their parents.
• 58:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I really love these characters.
• 58:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: It makes me wonder what's happened in the subsequent years.
• 58:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Where are they out of the coma?
• 58:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Did they lose their powers on M-Day?
• 58:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Are they living off on another dimension?
• 58:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: Somewhere very happy.
• 58:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Are they off at school?
• 58:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: Are they roommates at college?
• 58:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Are they part of a super team?
• 58:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think there's a thousand ways they can be used and I'm happy for all of those ways.
• 58:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think they're so much to explore with them both.
• 58:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: What are your thoughts?
• 58:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're on the final years of Laura and goblin and where do you think they are now?
• 58:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: No, it's interesting because when I went back and like read the whole, the whole appearance went on.
• 58:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: They start off so strong and they when they when the writers which happens, they first get shelved in that first like writer switch, every writer subsequently wants to bring them back, but doesn't really know what to do with them or made a flight sometimes.
• 58:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so it's this weird thing of they keep coming back.
• 58:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: They keep getting these beautiful moments here and there.
• 58:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: And there's all these like 20 fun little moments.
• 58:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: Laura very much continues to be that sort of empathic sensor.
• 59:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: She's always the one who's kind of either suggesting a non-violent way.
• 59:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: student with a threat or she's advocating for the rights of being to make sure that we're not dehumanizing them, but she's continuously pops up as this little voice of reason in the back of beta flight, but then she also spends a lot of time being the transport unit for the adults that get more of the story.
• 59:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so it's this thing where I love her out the gate.
• 59:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think she is given so much so many appearances that she has such a runway.
• 59:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: I just I want to see
• 59:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know, there's not a character that can grow up in this situation in this world and not do the superhero thing of, as much as I try to have a normal life.
• 59:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: I grew up for 15 years, or for 10 years, or however long time, in alpha flight, in a superhero school, in a superhero school.
• 59:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: Can you escape it?
• 59:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: Can you just walk away?
• 59:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I don't think it's that simple.
• 59:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: I also remember.
• 59:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: they're living a different dimensions.
• 59:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'd love to see them using their powers because that we get a lot of that we get a lot of cobbling that's to go off on our own during the day, explore a and idyllic scene.
• 1:00:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: So there's lots of moments like that where I'm like, give it to all I needed on cracoa.
• 1:00:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: All I needed on cracoa was for the two of them to show up like in the background on the sword station where they're like working with the team.
• 1:00:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm like, oh, that's perfect.
• 1:00:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think these two characters have a ton of potential for like superhero stories.
• 1:00:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: I would love to see like Laura run for office on like a pro mutant platform.
• 1:00:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think that'd be fascinating.
• 1:00:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Also, especially since we're getting mutants in the politics right now in the comics, it's a perfect time to get her in half her advocate for like just for any kind of mutant rights, especially for like special education for certain mutants as well, especially after having
• 1:00:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: experience, like the way that she did as a child and having known how goblin experience, like the way that she does as a child is.
• 1:00:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we can bring Laura back as like a very competent adventurer who's like been through a bunch of dimensions, and she and I don't know, goblin has her own life somewhere.
• 1:00:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: I want to definitely see goblin's like capabilities and mind explored.
• 1:00:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Also, she never got a name.
• 1:01:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Her twin sister's name is goblin, like what's her name?
• 1:01:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I think that there's a rich interior world for both characters and the duality, but I love like them having their own lives, but they're also twins and connected, and I think there's a ton that can be done with them.
• 1:01:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'd love to hear any final thoughts or like resonant feelings as we're wrapping up.
• 1:01:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: I know we want to touch long so thank you both for your patience.
• 1:01:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm really fascinated by these two characters.
• 1:01:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think they're really interesting, and it's another set of mutant twins that I never think about.
• 1:01:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: because they're so, if that's very, it's very interesting how many mutant twins there are.
• 1:01:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: I know that technically Pietro and Wanda aren't exactly mutants anymore, or that we're the writers exactly, they're the blueprint.
• 1:01:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then we have Charles and Cassandra, who are their own very interesting dichotomy that's going on.
• 1:01:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: there and then you've got Laura and Goblin I think would be very interesting to bring them in as kind of a mirror but not exactly to some of the other meat and twins that have been in this universe so far like there's so much good stuff they could do.
• 1:01:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: Two women of color the only other two women of color twins that show up in my brain are double trouble from weapon prime.
• 1:02:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: How do you have any final thoughts?
• 1:02:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: Honestly, I just, I love these characters.
• 1:02:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think they're two of the most diverse characters, especially in the out-of-life roster.
• 1:02:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, there's they are on the team with guys like Windshear, with Jay Dragon for a little bit, with all sorts of different people, but to have two young autistic blackwoods.
• 1:02:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: and have them be such a staple of this team that even when Nemesis leads, even when wildharts slash wildchild leads, even when all these characters are swapping and out, these two are repeatedly kept back on the team and brought back.
• 1:02:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: And sure some of that is the classic like, you'll every team needs a teleporter, every team needs a brawler, but
• 1:02:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: like these two have such a connection to this team.
• 1:02:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: It is shocked me how many times we try to.
• 1:02:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, even in the very next volume of alpha flight, they don't show up and we get a sibling pair that gets a huge focus.
• 1:02:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: We get a radius and oh, he's like, oh, he's like, he's like, yeah, um, poor flex.
• 1:03:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: I of course I would forget him.
• 1:03:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: But it's another example of if we're allowed to live and be treated in unique and diverse ways and thrive.
• 1:03:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Look at what's capable, right?
• 1:03:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: And again shout out to Purple Girls Mom.
• 1:03:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, Haram, you have to have your mute off for this because I want to hear everyone hear you react.
• 1:03:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to show you the other two mute and twins I just referenced.
• 1:03:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Their names are double trouble.
• 1:03:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's two black girls.
• 1:03:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: These are from some 90s exports comics.
• 1:03:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I just want you to describe it to everyone what you see, because I know you've never seen these characters before.
• 1:03:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're ready?
• 1:03:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: Here's double, here's double trouble.
• 1:03:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: They don't have real names.
• 1:03:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're just, they're just called double trouble.
• 1:03:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're just called double trouble.
• 1:03:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: All right, Grace Jones.
• 1:03:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'll be as interested as you.
• 1:03:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, I love these two.
• 1:03:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: I love them.
• 1:03:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you said they have no names at all, right?
• 1:03:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're just, there's on this team.
• 1:03:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: They have this headpiece, this like the hips are out.
• 1:03:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like everything about this is really giving Grace Jones back in the day.
• 1:04:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like still to this day, if I'm going to be honest, but it's like, if I'm going to be real, they look like they were supposed to come out at the Renaissance tour for Beyonce at some point during one of the stops.
• 1:04:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: If I would have seen this outfit, maybe like a few months before I got to go myself, this would have been exactly what I would work to go and see Beyonce in person.
• 1:04:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: These characters, I don't know why this design lives in my brain.
• 1:04:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's from a 90s comic when I was a teenager.
• 1:04:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm like, wow, these two are fucking great.
• 1:04:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: All right, everybody, I had a great time today.
• 1:04:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm very fond of these characters.
• 1:04:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm really interested in seeing how much more there is to explore with them.
• 1:04:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm looking forward to dipping my toes into alpha flight more and more as we're doing patreon in the future because I'm opening this can and eventually I'm going to have to do a weapon ex episode on my show because Wolverine's on so we'll we'll get into all those as we go.
• 1:04:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: Having such a good time producing the show it remains such a joy and a light in a very heavy rough world.
• 1:04:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: world where people that I though and love are leading this country more and more frequently as queer folks seeking refuge and its better, their lives are better.
• 1:05:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I give hearing stories, it's kind of crazy.
• 1:05:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know, man.
• 1:05:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: I've had a crazy time here as a therapist in Utah in 2025, so the show brings a lot of joy.
• 1:05:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: So thank you, everybody, for your ongoing support.
• 1:05:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm having a blast.
• 1:05:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: If I'm very multilingual, I'm also an underscore lane on Instagram.
• 1:05:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: The next Patreon episode coming out after this is the first one in Pride Month.
• 1:05:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to be doing all queer characters.
• 1:05:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: One L, one G, but one B, one T, and we're going to open the month with the character.
• 1:05:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: I cannot believe we have not done this on my show yet.
• 1:05:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: Jonas Grimmolkin, my show is Grimmolkin Lane, and Jonas's creator, Mark Guggenheim, will be joining me for that episode as well as my friend Tom O'Codder.
• 1:05:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: Over on the main channel, opening Pride Month, we have the monthly script readings for Avengers number 138 and Champions number two, both of them are so queer.
• 1:05:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's so many lines of dialogue, you're like, what the fuck?
• 1:05:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a lot.
• 1:05:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: I had such a good time with you both.
• 1:05:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: Where can people find you both online?
• 1:05:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Anything you'd like to plug for the end of May?
• 1:06:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let's go harem and then, Chapman.
• 1:06:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um, so again, you guys can always find me at any of my socials.
• 1:06:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Usually starting with harem's garrom.
• 1:06:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Um, mostly ending with cosplay.
• 1:06:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Can't find me on Twitter anymore.
• 1:06:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Everybody keeps setting me Twitter links, though.
• 1:06:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I'm not on there.
• 1:06:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Send me blue sky links instead, so I can see posts from theirs.
• 1:06:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: I can't be in that echo chamber over on Twitter.
• 1:06:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Also me and my friend might be bringing back our little podcast, um, the vulgar balks so we can go ahead and talk about if I know this is like probably coming out way after this movie has already shown that sinners we're going to be talking a lot about the great film and we're hopefully we'll get things started there again.
• 1:06:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's so good to see you.
• 1:06:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Can't wait to hang out again.
• 1:06:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Love you, Love me.
• 1:06:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: It makes for me here.
• 1:06:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's Chapman.
• 1:06:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: You can find me at Blue Sky.
• 1:06:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: We've Kevin Seablake, Instagram, Kevin Carter.
• 1:06:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: You'll find me eventually.
• 1:06:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm around.
• 1:06:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm following a lot of deep stuff.
• 1:07:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: If I'm not, I'm in a discord trick.
• 1:07:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: So looking up, in terms of things to plug, I don't really have anything right now.
• 1:07:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'll say, you know what, if you were listening to this, go see if you can track down the issues that we talked about, specifically the gym lead drawn issues, because somehow,
• 1:07:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: And skip my mind, this is some gemli's earliest work, and it's why the original dream queen, the live world stuff, looks so fantastic.
• 1:07:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: I was scrolling through these as we talk, and I was like, oh my god, this part is amazing, and it's good.
• 1:07:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: So check them out, especially in early stuff, with these girls, they're fantastic.
• 1:07:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: All right, everybody.
• 1:07:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: I had such a good time tonight.
• 1:07:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you again so much.
• 1:07:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: A chatman has been really lovely getting to know you.
• 1:07:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm so happy to have smart, talented, like insightful friends who aren't afraid of homework.
• 1:07:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: You guys are among my favorite people.
• 1:07:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: So expect an invitation back and back.
• 1:07:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: So happy to see you both.
• 1:07:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: All right, everybody.
• 1:07:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for listening.
• 1:07:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: We will see you back here next time on the Greymonkin Lane Patreon channel.
• 1:07:51
  [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.
• 1:08:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: In July 1944, Nazi Germany was unraveling.
• 1:08:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: The Allies had landed at Normandy the month before, and were steadily pushing inland, while on the eastern front, the Soviet Union's massive operation, bugration, was tearing through
• 1:08:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hitler's resources and attention were stretched to the breaking point.
• 1:08:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: On July 17, Field Marshal Irwin Rommel, one of Germany's most respected commanders, was gravely wounded when his car was strafed by Allied aircraft and France, leaving Hitler without a key strategist at a critical moment.
• 1:08:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Even as those battlefield disasters were unfolding, an internal storm was brewing within Germany's own ranks.
• 1:08:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: For months, a group of high-ranking officers and civilians had been plotting to overthrow Hitler.
• 1:08:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: Their plan was called Operation Valkyrie.
• 1:08:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: You can look it up.
• 1:08:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Their plan was to exploit an existing Nazi emergency protocol that was meant to suppress revolts.
• 1:08:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: By assassinating Hitler and blaming the SS for an attempted coup, the conspirators theorized that they could mobilize reserve troops, seize communication centers, and arrest top Nazi leaders before anyone realized what had happened.
• 1:09:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: At the heart of the plot was Colonel Plousevon Stelfenberg,
• 1:09:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: a decorated war hero who had lost an eye and a hand in combat.
• 1:09:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: Believing Hitler's death was the only way to save Germany from total destruction, a Stauffenberg personally carried a bomb into a military conference at the Wolf's Lair on July 20th.
• 1:09:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: At 1242, Kim the bomb exploded, tearing apart the conference room, killing, foreman, and injuring many others.
• 1:09:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: But by a twist of fate, Hitler survived, protected by a heavy oak table, and the fact
• 1:09:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now, I did reference this briefly on the show as we talked about assassination attempts once, but this is the details around this particular one.
• 1:09:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: So believing Hitler dead, the conspirators then openly launched Operation Valkyrie, sending out coded orders to seize Berlin.
• 1:09:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: For several 10 hours, Germany's capital descended into confusion as some units arrested SS leaders,
• 1:10:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: While others hesitated unsure of the truth of Hitler's death.
• 1:10:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: By late afternoon, Hitler was then able to make direct calls to prove that he was still alive, and the entire coup collapsed, based on one failed assassination.
• 1:10:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Stauffinburg and several fellow conspirators were executed by firing squad before dawn the next day.
• 1:10:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: While thousands of others were arrested in the following weeks, and as always with the Nazis, the fallout was swift and brutal.
• 1:10:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: and 5,000 were executed in the crackdown, including prominent generals and aristicats.
• 1:10:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: Even Rommel, though not directly involved, was later forced to take his own life.
• 1:10:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: The single week from Rommel's injury at under July 17th to the failed coup on July 21st was one of the most chaotic of the war on the German side.
• 1:10:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: It laid bare the crumbling foundations of the Nazi regime, armies collapsing on both fronts internal conspiracies reaching a climax, and Hitler himself, surviving by mere chance.
• 1:10:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: Though he emerged alive this time,
• 1:10:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: The events of that week revealed how close his grip on power had come to slipping at how desperate and paranoid his rule would become in the final months of his leadership.
• 1:11:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now we're going to jump to Nick Fury, agent of shield number 20, written by the incredible Dan Chai Chester who has looked me today.
• 1:11:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: The red skull, and we're focusing just on this character for these conversations, is dressed in his old wartime uniform.
• 1:11:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: He gathered some agents to undertake a very special quest in a stone room full of Nazi memorabilia and swastikas.
• 1:11:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: he speaks of honoring the past, and then raises his arm.
• 1:11:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: High on Hitler, he says, and then he sends them forth to find the sunken hydra island, where they revive Baron von Struker to life due to his mutation from the deathstore virus.
• 1:11:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: The long-term listeners of the show were recalled down and I got to talk about his work with Struker once before, which I'm so happy to have you back for today, my friend.
• 1:11:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hydra, the undying terrorist group, based on the third Reich, perhaps the longest running in most enduring legacy of Adolf Hitler in the Marvel Universe, has fallen into so many factions they are split across the world, and Strucker is just the man to whip them into shape.
• 1:12:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: But the Red Skull also wants to destroy shield from within.
• 1:12:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: The Red Skull disguises his own image, and convinces even Agent Kevin Ramirez to turn against shield.
• 1:12:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Intel is leaked
• 1:12:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: from shield to different governments ruining the group's reputation, and then Ramirez leads a coup within the hell of carrier, and their own weapons are turned against the government agents.
• 1:12:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: And as the Red Skull causes mass hysteria, and shield rushes to handle it, the Red Skull kills Ramirez, and then Fury becomes aware of the depth of their deep fake technology, their psychological warfare,
• 1:12:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: and the media manipulation that the Red Skull has been using to destroy democracy around the world.
• 1:12:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Some of these plots have been decades in the making he says.
• 1:12:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then there's a culmination of a bunch of plots all together as thousands of new shield agents graduating from the Academy at the Armored at the Hands of Baron Strucker.
• 1:12:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: And as Hydra reveals its new power structure to the public, the Red Skull joins Strucker for a secret meeting.
• 1:12:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: They meet in a former brothel
• 1:12:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: one that Struker remembers fondly from the war, and the Red Skull is outraged.
• 1:13:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Struker says, never wear one for pleasures of the flesh where you yohan.
• 1:13:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: Two busy being the Reich's number one zealot crossing swords with that star-spendled buffoon.
• 1:13:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: The Red Skull insults Struker's facial scars, and Struker insults him right back for his emaciated red face.
• 1:13:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then the Red Skull officially turns intel over to Struker and says, go with Pement Chaos with Hydra, we'll see you later.
• 1:13:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'll let you welcome the incredible Dan Chichester for this particular conversation.
• 1:13:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Dan, are you a red skull fan, my friend?
• 1:13:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hello, Chad.
• 1:13:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, thank you for having me back on, man, that was amazing.
• 1:13:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: That was a new, of course, Operation Valkyrie, but your whole summation and your accents, you know, were quite entertaining.
• 1:13:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm using a lot of this voice on my show lately, yes, you know.
• 1:13:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm giving rid of a lot of tons of prawns energy.
• 1:13:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's got a lot of fat.
• 1:13:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: So there's some flashing back to young Frankenstein.
• 1:13:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: The one thing I would alter there for what it's worth, you know, is, you know, my mindset was always at those three zealots, you know, at the beginning of that story, you know, and what you sort of outlined was like the long, you know, sort of semi-ark of what happens after they go in action.
• 1:14:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I always saw them as dedicated to the mission of Hydra, you know, Morse, and they were using the skull versus the skull being like the driver there.
• 1:14:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like the skull was providing them, you know, the assets they needed, but they were really devoted to struckers, you know, vision of Hydra.
• 1:14:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, so it's sort of apples and oranges and in your white supremacist, you know,
• 1:14:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, march to a domination, but the skull I don't like, you know, the skull, I know we're sort of like splitting hairs on this.
• 1:14:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: The skull has this sort of a, you know, he, to me, he's, he's, he's the personification.
• 1:14:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's nothing good about fascism and, and all its permutations, even in the comic book world, but the skull is a lot harder edge to him for me than struck her who I always played with a lot more charisma.
• 1:15:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, when I used him and that's not necessarily a good thing, but I could sort of get into, you know, his head if you will.
• 1:15:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Whereas the skull was just reprehensible, you know, to me on all levels.
• 1:15:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that was on your face.
• 1:15:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: Dr. Fieldsmore like a general where the red skull feels more like a butcher.
• 1:15:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, if we're basing these on like Hitler's actual allies, right?
• 1:15:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like the rights people want that's taking joy and suffering where we're Strucker always feels more like the military general who's feeling fulfilling the commands.
• 1:15:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Although both are crazy narcissistic assholes.
• 1:15:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then struck her as I continued to play him out and even more recently sort of played him out.
• 1:15:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, he used him in a Daredevil story.
• 1:15:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, was, you know, had taken command.
• 1:15:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, now he was, you know, he would be, he would have been the one, you know, to sort of look at,
• 1:15:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: the situation, you know, much as sort of like the general you described, you know, in Valkyrie.
• 1:15:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, said, I'm better.
• 1:15:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: I know how to do this.
• 1:15:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: I know how to achieve what's right.
• 1:16:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And Hitler has, you know, been used for up to a point, whereas I think the skull was the zealot.
• 1:16:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, he was the personification and the follower, you know, of that mission, you know, all the way through.
• 1:16:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: What's making these stories so valuable for me as a person is it's helping me understand the world around me as I'm researching these anecdotes from history, right?
• 1:16:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: The idea of this failed coup.
• 1:16:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: We look back to this world war two story, which is infamous, but there were thousands of people ready to rise to power.
• 1:16:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: but only if Hitler was dead.
• 1:16:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's like everything we're getting for that like a simple confirmation we can't do what the risk is too high but they were so close.
• 1:16:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: A couple of gunshots and everything goes differently.
• 1:16:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: The bomb blast being over the table instead of under the table and history is changed forever.
• 1:16:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: it's crazy to me and then we reflect this on your story where we have a villainous coup that arises to the top and it works.
• 1:16:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's successful and then the Red School is able to manipulate that one guy and then he kills him as the as the coup is successful.
• 1:16:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now this is also during a time when Mark Greenwald and others are writing the Red School all over the place.
• 1:17:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: He has his
• 1:17:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: the watch dogs and all these different like, you know, white supremacist groups.
• 1:17:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's funding the Viper, which Gregory Wright's going to join a different episode soon to talk about that story, you know, he's got the new world of order going on in the hall of collection.
• 1:17:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: Evil is everywhere.
• 1:17:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: What was it like for you to hear this kind of reflection on history?
• 1:17:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I would also then love if you're willing to share, like what your family connections to this kind of World War II era are?
• 1:17:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 1:17:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I love the history.
• 1:17:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think there's so much, you know, I love history.
• 1:17:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I wish more people love history because then we wouldn't necessarily be repeating it.
• 1:17:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I think there's, you know, fascinating things that happen there.
• 1:17:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Valkyrie was one, you know, if you're doing your research right now, which you are, you know, another, there's a book that I think it's called,
• 1:17:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Blitz, and it was written in German, and then translated in the English, and I read it.
• 1:17:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: It listened to it as an audiobook on a family trip a few years back, but it was really about how basically the entire German culture, especially the military, was probably fueled by meth, you know, and how they were able to achieve the Blitz Creek and all the other things, not because they were necessarily fabulous military strategists, but because they were tripping out of their minds, you know, they were so hopped up, and the whole culture was.
• 1:18:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that sort of partly would drove it, Hitler, and everyone around it.
• 1:18:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's kind of a fascinating pharmaceutical read, you know, on history as well.
• 1:18:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I think those fuel stories, you know, they make, they make for good reflection.
• 1:18:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you don't, you know, get caught up in, look, I'm making a point.
• 1:18:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, they inspire certain things.
• 1:18:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, there were certain aspects of, you know, ritual and the,
• 1:18:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: the brothel, you know, for an example, you know, I can't remember where I pulled that from, but that was some specific, you know, military history, you know, things that I pulled out when I wrote that scene later, you know, between the skull and and strucker.
• 1:18:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I don't think we have much direct, you know, connection, you know, my family, you know, in terms of that, there was never any really talk of of so and so it was in
• 1:18:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, my mom was born during the war, and she had a cousin, a prisoner of war.
• 1:19:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if you've ever heard of the do little raiders, one of my mom's cousin was like one of the prisoners of war who was like, wow, do little raiders that ended up getting captured.
• 1:19:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's only like eight that survived, right?
• 1:19:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: So like my family has some small connection, but even just the experience of like growing up in the war years for her and yeah, it was a pretty big deal.
• 1:19:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: I would imagine.
• 1:19:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think that that's, you know, an important, you know, um identity.
• 1:19:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you have that, you know, coming forward in family stories, you know, my, the tri-chester end of the side of the family was over here and well established.
• 1:19:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: My grandmother, my paternal grandmother.
• 1:19:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: had been brought up by a German family like her, her maiden name was from.
• 1:19:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: So she had a hard view of the Germans, you know, because of the German role in the war, but she did not have any direct connection, you know, there.
• 1:19:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: She just disliked that.
• 1:19:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then my maternal side of the family, which is Bechetto, you know, is Italian and over the top, and was probably much more influential
• 1:20:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: maternal grandparents, certainly my grandfather was, I think, fresh off the boat, you know, an Italian with nicknames based on where he came into the country.
• 1:20:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, his name was Peter Pichetto, but everyone knew him as Pete London because he came through New London, Connecticut, but there was never any stories, you know, of that, you know, in any way.
• 1:20:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: What are your thoughts on the real world comparisons of what's happening now?
• 1:20:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: But we talk about coups, we talk about resistance, we look at what's happening in the world around us.
• 1:20:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's good to learn from history, but it feels like the operation balcony story, that hesitation to act, that like fear.
• 1:20:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: If I act, there will be reprisal and there was, right?
• 1:20:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Five people murdered for one attempt.
• 1:20:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Right.
• 1:20:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Erie, scary thing.
• 1:20:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, 2025 is the worst timeline ever.
• 1:20:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I think it puts 2020 to shame, you know, give me a good COVID, you know, give me a good plague, you know, again, as far as I'm concerned.
• 1:20:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think we've grown, you know, there's been so much time between history now, you know, from World War II and the evils there.
• 1:21:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Unless you're a student of it, unless you're looking things up like you are, people have no sense of comparison, right?
• 1:21:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: They have no sense of what that meant, you know, world at war, you know,
• 1:21:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: evils of, you know, of Nazism.
• 1:21:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, when I was growing up, I at least was exposed to movies, you know, and fiction, and, and if I wanted to go down the road of like history, I could, I felt it was a lot more palpable and a lot more closer at a time.
• 1:21:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, now you're 80 years out, you're 90 years out, and I don't think people have any sense of it.
• 1:21:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's a terrible thing.
• 1:21:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: They've literally forgotten history or they sort of feel like, well, it was a war and whatever, like the Iraq war or something like that, where we could bolderize over an entire group and civilization and not feeling the sense of repercussion and what all that means.
• 1:21:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that's a direct reflection of the old adage, those who forget history doomed to repeat it.
• 1:21:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we see what's going on now.
• 1:22:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: You've got people, a country that
• 1:22:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, with all of our many foibles and all of our many failures and all of our many, you know, truths, hidden truths to our history, I will still stand behind the fact that we got into the war and we were part of defeating Nazism.
• 1:22:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: We were part of turning back the tide of something, you know, truly terrible.
• 1:22:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: And now you've got people embracing it.
• 1:22:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: you've got people wearing it as tattoos on their skin who are in charge of, you know, now the Department of War, you know, not the Department of Defense, you know, you've got people who are waving these flags as if that is some kind of sign of honor.
• 1:22:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a scary time.
• 1:22:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Tim Snyder, you know, wrote on tyranny and on freedom, you know, on tyranny, you know, is a thin little volume.
• 1:22:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, if you haven't read that, you know, it's 20 little tiny chapters, you know, compliant, do not comply.
• 1:22:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And in advance, and that's what's happening.
• 1:22:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right?
• 1:22:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: People are just rolling over because of a sign of a force or aggression.
• 1:22:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's disappointing.
• 1:22:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's disheartening.
• 1:22:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's scary.
• 1:23:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, we should be talking about these things.
• 1:23:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's an odd comparison.
• 1:23:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm a sociologist, right?
• 1:23:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's not comparison between like the extreme arrogance of I have a right to do this because I'm a
• 1:23:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: kind of extreme dissociation and helplessness on the other side of like there's nothing I can do.
• 1:23:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I think those are dangerous for their own reasons.
• 1:23:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: So as always, there's a make sure you're taking care of yourself.
• 1:23:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: For me, the speaking of truth in this way is oddly healing.
• 1:23:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: It helps me see things clear of you forward and it is always an incredible joy to be joining with friends and and recording this kind of content.
• 1:23:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: So Dan, thank you so much.
• 1:23:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do you have any final thoughts you
• 1:23:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, Chad.
• 1:23:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think this is fascinating.
• 1:23:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're doing this and finding these points of, you know, connection and bringing them forward in your in your program.
• 1:23:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, props to you as always.
• 1:23:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 1:23:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much, my friend.
• 1:23:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Excellent.
• 1:23:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Excellent.
• 1:23:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Be good.
• 1:23:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for listening.
• 1:23:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you, Mr. Chachester.
• 1:23:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: We will see you all back here next week.
• 1:23:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Take care yourselves.