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X-Men 101: Like a Phoenix, From the Ashes! Featuring an interview with Seanan Mcguire! · Graymalkin Lane the podcast

• 0:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hey everybody, good morning and happy new year.
• 0:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a great walk in lane to view for 2020, six.
• 0:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're recording this in November, so I'm putting forward the good foot faith to assume the world will still be around in January.
• 0:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, that was a bleep place to begin.
• 0:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: That was a fun day.
• 0:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: At it around.
• 0:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm glad to see you all here.
• 0:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: I can just start my year by review.
• 0:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: What we're jumping to new places, the show opened last year with giant size X-Men number one.
• 0:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: And this year we're opening with X-Men number 101.
• 0:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: We are fully in the land of the Phoenix Force forever here, forward.
• 0:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we have some new cast members joining us.
• 0:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: I am Chad Anderson.
• 0:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'll be playing your narrator today.
• 0:51
  [SPEAKER_10]: I'm Michelle Wafford, I will be the Phoenix port.
• 0:55
  [SPEAKER_10]: I'm Alicia Wilde, and I'll be Marvel Girl.
• 0:57
  [SPEAKER_16]: Seth Martell back as Cyclops.
• 0:59
  [SPEAKER_17]: Just a while there as Professor Xavier and O'Donnell.
• 1:02
  [SPEAKER_17]: I'm Kevin Canary, and I'll be Nightcrawler and Crumin One.
• 1:06
  [SPEAKER_15]: Uh, I'm Sean Beverage, and I'll be Banshee and Crumin Two.
• 1:09
  [SPEAKER_12]: My name is Robert Mosfe, and I will be a Moida McTaggart Blacktop Cassidy.
• 1:14
  [SPEAKER_19]: I'm Mike Doven, and I'm the Peter Double Feature today, doing Colossus and Corbot.
• 1:18
  [SPEAKER_05]: I am a conquest, and I am doing the juggernaut and Dr. McCabe.
• 1:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm here in Scaram, and I'm doing Storm.
• 1:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm Sean Rouhani, I'll be reading Wolverine.
• 1:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Here we go.
• 1:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Previously in X-Men on Graham Alkin Lane, the X-Men of defeated Stephen Lang on his orbital sentinel base, but upon re-entry to the planet, Jean Grey kept her teammates alive as the ship fell apart.
• 1:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: But as they re-enter, she has cried out in pain, seemingly dying, her teammates helpless to help.
• 1:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: And thus begins one of Marvel's most epic stories of all time, maybe the most popular Marvel comic, the fetic saga begins here, friends.
• 1:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: But we're going to open in an odd place.
• 1:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: We've been doing bonus stories from classic X-Men's, so listen to the story from classic X-Men number eight, which was published in April 1987 by Chris Claremont, John Bolton, with Glinnis Oliver on Inks, Tom Orzikowski on letters, and Annie Nissenti and Terry Cavanaugh on edits.
• 2:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: The story is simply called Phoenix.
• 2:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: On the back cover, we see a massive image of the fiery Phoenix in the sky, like an exploding supernova against an endless expansive
• 2:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: We open on an endless expanse of space, lit only by stars.
• 2:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: The angle shifts to show various planets.
• 2:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: And in the distance, one blazing, burning sun.
• 2:34
  [SPEAKER_11]: All that is, I am.
• 2:36
  [SPEAKER_11]: I was born with the first fire and shall remain until the last celestial spark is extinguish.
• 2:43
  [SPEAKER_11]: Nothing lives that is not touched by a part of me.
• 2:46
  [SPEAKER_11]: The stars are my children.
• 2:47
  [SPEAKER_11]: And nothing is more cherished than those, which have in turn spawn life.
• 2:51
  [SPEAKER_11]: High above the third orb called the Earth, a construct tumble through the dark while another smaller vehicle plunges recklessly towards its homeworld, fleeing the wild energies of a solar flare, surging invisibly outwards from the sun.
• 3:05
  [SPEAKER_11]: There are no bull souls within and doomed as well, among them, the reason for my presence.
• 3:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: White ships spirals toward Earth in seeming freefall.
• 3:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: And within, Night Trailer and Colossus, both wearing seat belts are doing their best to restrain Cyclops.
• 3:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: Storm, Peter Corbot, Banshee Wolverine, and Professor X are all strapped in nearby.
• 3:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Jane!
• 3:26
  [SPEAKER_16]: Scott, no!
• 3:27
  [SPEAKER_16]: If you open to life, sell!
• 3:28
  [SPEAKER_16]: Shh, you kill us all!
• 3:30
  [SPEAKER_16]: Let me go, Blast you!
• 3:31
  [SPEAKER_16]: I can't stay here safe in the cargo bay!
• 3:34
  [SPEAKER_16]: Well, she's a balloon there on the flight deck!
• 3:35
  [SPEAKER_16]: Let me go to her Nikolar, help her!
• 3:38
  [SPEAKER_16]: Before it's too late!
• 3:39
  [SPEAKER_17]: It's all ready to late my friend!
• 3:41
  [SPEAKER_17]: She knows that you must accept it!
• 3:43
  [SPEAKER_17]: Please, Kurt, I beg you!
• 3:45
  [SPEAKER_17]: Zyclops, why would you have her sacrifice be in vain?
• 3:49
  [SPEAKER_17]: Please, I love her!
• 3:50
  [SPEAKER_16]: I don't want her to die!
• 3:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: And in the cockpit, Jean Grey sits in her shredded dress, which is colored here with a green hue.
• 3:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's like the old green mini dress Marvel girl designed in the 60s almost.
• 4:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Her gaze has focused her brow furrowed.
• 4:03
  [SPEAKER_10]: 27 minutes to Earth's atmosphere.
• 4:05
  [SPEAKER_10]: Not long at all, just the rest of my life.
• 4:08
  [SPEAKER_10]: Nothing like going out in a blaze of glory, so long as I don't take the X-Men with me.
• 4:13
  [SPEAKER_10]: Keep it up with the jokes, girl.
• 4:15
  [SPEAKER_10]: Anything to keep from screaming.
• 4:17
  [SPEAKER_10]: I'm telepathically monitoring the X-Men's condition.
• 4:20
  [SPEAKER_10]: They're handling this pretty well, except for Scott.
• 4:23
  [SPEAKER_10]: He's in such pain.
• 4:25
  [SPEAKER_10]: It's like I'm tearing out his heart.
• 4:27
  [SPEAKER_10]: But with the automatic pilot wreck to the shuttle needs a human hand at the controls or will burn up during reentry.
• 4:34
  [SPEAKER_10]: My psychic powers make me the only one, even a margin of hope, with even a margin of hope of flying this bucket and surviving.
• 4:43
  [SPEAKER_10]: One life for many.
• 4:44
  [SPEAKER_10]: Moment of truth, we're intercepting the leading edge of the solar flare, and the radiation sensors are already at the tops of their scales.
• 4:53
  [SPEAKER_10]: I'd have a better chance standing at Ground Zero of an H bomb.
• 4:57
  [SPEAKER_10]: I'm committed, all or nothing.
• 4:59
  [SPEAKER_10]: Throw off the dice for the X-Men's sake.
• 5:01
  [SPEAKER_10]: For Scots, I have to win.
• 5:04
  [SPEAKER_11]: The child will far outstrips her strength.
• 5:07
  [SPEAKER_11]: She knows this and the beginnings of fear as well.
• 5:09
  [SPEAKER_18]: When he more minutes at least, I've never seen rad-count so high.
• 5:15
  [SPEAKER_18]: For what it's worth, outside of this shielded compartment, any of the rest of us would be dead in seconds.
• 5:22
  [SPEAKER_18]: Gene Graves are only hope, X-Men, and a slim one at best.
• 5:27
  [SPEAKER_18]: It's a miracle she's lasted this long.
• 5:29
  [SPEAKER_10]: Just stubborn, I guess, Dr. Corbob, old family trait.
• 5:33
  [SPEAKER_10]: But thanks for the vote of confidence.
• 5:35
  [SPEAKER_10]: Some days, it just doesn't pay to be able to resigns.
• 5:39
  [SPEAKER_10]: This is bad.
• 5:40
  [SPEAKER_10]: I counted on the telekinetic side of my powers to screen out the bulk of the radiation, but the pressures too great.
• 5:46
  [SPEAKER_10]: See your Lord, hear my prayer, and help me.
• 5:48
  [SPEAKER_10]: The flare, my side shields, collapsing.
• 5:52
  [SPEAKER_10]: It hurts.
• 5:53
  [SPEAKER_10]: Scott.
• 5:54
  [SPEAKER_11]: flesh where there's under the savage onslaught, yet her spirit soared, iron, more fiercely defiant than ever, so quick, so brutal.
• 6:01
  [SPEAKER_10]: Can barely see ultraviolet occluding my eyes with cataracts, bleeding inside and out, massive hemorrhaging is cellular bonds dissolved, using my hair, too, which that was the worst of it.
• 6:15
  [SPEAKER_10]: Lucky I'm waitless, heart would burst under the straining of gravity.
• 6:19
  [SPEAKER_10]: My bones would crumble to powder.
• 6:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Jean Grey's face is bathed in yellow light, and as it fades, she looks skeletal.
• 6:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Clumps of red hair come out at the slightest touch.
• 6:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's withering, dying, and she knows it.
• 6:32
  [SPEAKER_10]: This isn't fair, it isn't right.
• 6:34
  [SPEAKER_10]: Not when I thought so hard, huh?
• 6:37
  [SPEAKER_10]: Light behind me and an explosion, are we on fire?
• 6:40
  [SPEAKER_10]: Don't be foolish.
• 6:41
  [SPEAKER_10]: Can't be anything I can see because I'm blind.
• 6:44
  [SPEAKER_10]: What then?
• 6:45
  [SPEAKER_10]: Pollutionation?
• 6:46
  [SPEAKER_10]: Payne, it's gone.
• 6:47
  [SPEAKER_10]: No, no, no, no, I won't die.
• 6:50
  [SPEAKER_10]: I won't give up.
• 6:51
  [SPEAKER_10]: Not well so much still depends on me.
• 6:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Withered and emaciated.
• 6:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: Gene rises from her seat, floating in the air, and her skull visible through her withering face.
• 7:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Gene sees a being of energy, take form beside her.
• 7:05
  [SPEAKER_11]: be not afraid, no harm is meant.
• 7:07
  [SPEAKER_11]: Voice like music in my mind.
• 7:09
  [SPEAKER_11]: Who?
• 7:10
  [SPEAKER_11]: What are you?
• 7:11
  [SPEAKER_11]: The sums and substance of life.
• 7:13
  [SPEAKER_11]: And hope and dream, all that is, is known to me.
• 7:16
  [SPEAKER_11]: I have known Eugene Gray from the moment of your conception.
• 7:20
  [SPEAKER_11]: As I have known the universe, you cried out for aid.
• 7:23
  [SPEAKER_11]: I heard, I came.
• 7:24
  [SPEAKER_10]: This is crazy.
• 7:25
  [SPEAKER_10]: I'm crazy.
• 7:26
  [SPEAKER_11]: No more than any finite being confronting the infinite.
• 7:30
  [SPEAKER_11]: Your form child is so fragile.
• 7:33
  [SPEAKER_11]: How can you possibly endure?
• 7:34
  [SPEAKER_11]: I must to save the X-Men and most especially Scott.
• 7:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: The light being shifts to the form of cyclops, startling the skeletal gene gray.
• 7:44
  [SPEAKER_10]: That image has from my soul.
• 7:46
  [SPEAKER_10]: Oh, my love.
• 7:47
  [SPEAKER_10]: I've never seen you look so beautiful.
• 7:49
  [SPEAKER_10]: The essence of my hopes and dreams.
• 7:52
  [SPEAKER_10]: All that always was will never be.
• 7:54
  [SPEAKER_10]: My innermost secrets, yearnings.
• 7:57
  [SPEAKER_10]: How could you possibly know?
• 7:59
  [SPEAKER_11]: My consciousness.
• 8:00
  [SPEAKER_11]: My form and its ability to communicate on this plane of existence.
• 8:04
  [SPEAKER_11]: Derive from you.
• 8:05
  [SPEAKER_11]: They provide and...
• 8:06
  [SPEAKER_11]: awareness of your dominant emotions and memory.
• 8:09
  [SPEAKER_11]: Oh great.
• 8:10
  [SPEAKER_11]: You mean your figment of my imagination?
• 8:13
  [SPEAKER_11]: You just.
• 8:14
  [SPEAKER_11]: And yet, what is imagination?
• 8:16
  [SPEAKER_11]: Save the ability to conceive of that, which is beyond reality.
• 8:19
  [SPEAKER_11]: You are human-gingray.
• 8:21
  [SPEAKER_11]: I am a creation.
• 8:22
  [SPEAKER_10]: What's happening?
• 8:23
  [SPEAKER_10]: You're changing, assuming a tangible shape.
• 8:27
  [SPEAKER_10]: You're becoming me?
• 8:28
  [SPEAKER_11]: A shell, nothing more.
• 8:30
  [SPEAKER_11]: And only for the present, your own physicality cannot easily be restored for its own protection.
• 8:36
  [SPEAKER_11]: Your mind refuses to acknowledge the full extent of your injury.
• 8:40
  [SPEAKER_11]: Your existence is far closer to its transition than you realize.
• 8:44
  [SPEAKER_10]: Not dying then.
• 8:45
  [SPEAKER_10]: Already dead, hanging on barely by force of will alone.
• 8:50
  [SPEAKER_10]: What do you want of me?
• 8:51
  [SPEAKER_11]: You called child of man and I, mother of stars, answered.
• 8:56
  [SPEAKER_11]: It is for you to name your heart's desire.
• 8:59
  [SPEAKER_10]: And I'll get my wish, just like that.
• 9:01
  [SPEAKER_10]: Why do I suspect that's too good to be true?
• 9:04
  [SPEAKER_11]: All things have their price.
• 9:06
  [SPEAKER_10]: What's mine?
• 9:07
  [SPEAKER_11]: Does it matter?
• 9:07
  [SPEAKER_11]: Yes, I am glad.
• 9:09
  [SPEAKER_11]: Take my hands child.
• 9:11
  [SPEAKER_11]: That we too may become one.
• 9:12
  [SPEAKER_11]: Your humanity, my power, bonded by passion, tempered by love.
• 9:17
  [SPEAKER_11]: The ultimate force at last giving means to express itself.
• 9:20
  [SPEAKER_10]: I can't wait.
• 9:21
  [SPEAKER_10]: Times almost gone.
• 9:23
  [SPEAKER_10]: I have to choose.
• 9:24
  [SPEAKER_11]: be warned the fire I offer can burn as well as warm, destroy as easily as heal and it always consumes.
• 9:32
  [SPEAKER_11]: The glory I offer is transcendent, likewise, the danger and the flame once taken can never be extinguished.
• 9:39
  [SPEAKER_10]: The power is too much beyond comprehension.
• 9:43
  [SPEAKER_10]: Suppose I can't handle, I'm not worthy.
• 9:46
  [SPEAKER_10]: How can I accept?
• 9:48
  [SPEAKER_11]: You know the answer already.
• 9:49
  [SPEAKER_11]: I'll see you will not have some in me.
• 9:51
  [SPEAKER_11]: I'm afraid.
• 9:52
  [SPEAKER_11]: With good reason, death is the certainty, the end to all burden, all responsibilities, life, the greatest of unknowing.
• 9:59
  [SPEAKER_11]: Each day, every moment contains rest, safety, and perhaps peace,
• 10:04
  [SPEAKER_11]: be found only in the grave.
• 10:06
  [SPEAKER_11]: I may be salvation, or demation, or both, which now is your heart's desire.
• 10:11
  [SPEAKER_10]: If the choice was for me alone, I, I, to save the X man, I dance with the devil himself and I want to live.
• 10:18
  [SPEAKER_11]: All things are possible child and you may get dance with the devil without and the far more terrible one within.
• 10:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: As they speak, Jean withers away, growing smaller and more skeletal by the moment.
• 10:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: As the Phoenix begins to take on a more womanly shape, taking the form of Jean herself, finally they grasp hands and...
• 10:39
  [SPEAKER_11]: I am a lie, more so than ever before, this is fantastic.
• 10:43
  [SPEAKER_11]: I can see the solar wind shuts its radiation streams aside with ease.
• 10:47
  [SPEAKER_11]: I hear the star song, the language of the Milky Way itself.
• 10:53
  [SPEAKER_11]: Oh, is this me?
• 10:55
  [SPEAKER_11]: I didn't think there'd be a body and it's still alive only a spark, but so bright some stubborn piece of my soul still fighting on its own terms refusing the gift that was offered Who knows?
• 11:07
  [SPEAKER_11]: Perhaps that's the right choice or maybe it's a second chance in case things go wrong.
• 11:12
  [SPEAKER_11]: I don't know.
• 11:12
  [SPEAKER_11]: There's so much I don't know.
• 11:13
  [SPEAKER_11]: Well, I have time to learn.
• 11:15
  [SPEAKER_11]: This is me as much as I am in this new form.
• 11:18
  [SPEAKER_11]: I can't abandon myself.
• 11:20
  [SPEAKER_11]: all unfold the body in a cocoon.
• 11:22
  [SPEAKER_11]: That will sustain it while it heals.
• 11:24
  [SPEAKER_11]: And when it does, what then?
• 11:25
  [SPEAKER_11]: I don't know.
• 11:26
  [SPEAKER_11]: I wonder, was this how God felt in his first moment with all creation to play and with nobody to tell him how to do it?
• 11:34
  [SPEAKER_11]: I am fire, the soul and spirit of life and carnit.
• 11:37
  [SPEAKER_11]: I am no longer the woman you knew.
• 11:39
  [SPEAKER_11]: Forgive me, X-Men, now and forever.
• 11:41
  [SPEAKER_11]: I am Phoenix.
• 11:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: The Phoenix glowing in white against a yellow backdrop wraps the emaciated skeletal remains of gene, folded into a fetal position, in a glowing cocoon, and then the Phoenix's form fills with star stuff itself.
• 11:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then the Phoenix manifests around an image of gene, red hair against a fiery bird in the sky, green bodice, with a black neck trim, and an inlay of the Phoenix symbol, gold gloves and sash and boots, and nothing will ever be the same again.
• 12:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to jump to X-Men No.
• 12:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: 102, which include the bonus pages from the lead story and classic X-Men No.
• 12:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: 9, later editions by John Bolton with Chris Claremont.
• 12:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: This was published in October 1976.
• 12:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Chris Claremont, Dave Cockram on Pencil's Frank Kiramonti on Inks.
• 12:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Bonnie Wilford on colors, John Castanza on letters and Archie Goodwin is the editor.
• 12:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: On the cover, Jean Grey in a newly manifested Phoenix costume, her red hair is spread like fire as if the cosmic energy extends like lightning off of her hands.
• 12:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: She is triumphant, she is above.
• 12:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: In the water below her, Nightcrawler's storm and Cyclops are overwhelmed with shock and grief.
• 12:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: In the mutant heroes,
• 12:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: We opened on the X-Men jet rushing through the atmosphere on fire as it re-enters the planetary atmosphere in red and white.
• 13:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: This guy has filled with a psychic image of Jean Grey and red behind her.
• 13:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Prologue.
• 13:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to the last moments of a young woman's life.
• 13:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Her name is Jean Grey.
• 13:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: For 20 minutes now, while her fellow X-Men sit helplessly in the ship's radiation proof life cell, she has been piloting the StarCore space shuttle toward Earth through the worst solar storm
• 13:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: It was an all-or-nothing gamble that her telepathic powers would protect her from the cosmic radiation long enough for her to fly the shuttle into the safety of the Earth's atmosphere, and for her friends, it may have paid off, but for Jean Gray, the blipped dropped onto the deep park radar from out of nowhere, 200 miles downrange and heading for Kennedy Airport at better than 1500 knots.
• 13:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: An alert air traffic controller slapped his panic button, immediately clearing all traffic from the unknown flight path while he tried and vane to contact it.
• 13:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: There was no time to get ready, one minute the bogey was on the outer edge of the radar plot, the next it was screaming low over Long Beach and Cedarhurst, and a desperate attempt to land before coming apart in midair.
• 14:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Not that it made much difference in the end, the X-Men hadn't expected to make it this far.
• 14:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: When the solar storm hit, and the radiation sensors went off their scales, all of them knew that Jean Grey was as good as dead, and so were they.
• 14:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: But then they were in the atmosphere.
• 14:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: The ship, obviously, under human control, they began to think they might have a chance after all, until the landing.
• 14:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Plain comes crashing to a halt and breaks into pieces on their runway.
• 14:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Karam, Scorac, images of the X-Men float through the air looking scared, it's over quickly now.
• 14:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: The shuttle scattering wreckage and burning fuel across the heart of Kennedy's runway complex is that slams through the last crash barrier and arcs out over Jamaica Bay.
• 14:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: To land once, twice, thrice, spang, thawed, fathod, fathom, and then star-core eagle one is gone.
• 14:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: It sinks beneath the water with only a spreading oil slick to mark its passing.
• 14:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: Here, perhaps our story should end, except for the fact that the X-Men have always been notoriously hard to kill.
• 15:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: Slowly, our heroes rise above the water, having escaped from the ship.
• 15:07
  [SPEAKER_16]: Ugh, made it!
• 15:09
  [SPEAKER_16]: Cyclops, I was the last one out.
• 15:11
  [SPEAKER_16]: Then we are all safe.
• 15:12
  [SPEAKER_16]: I'll accept the lady who got us down, and I'm going back for her right now.
• 15:16
  [SPEAKER_16]: Zekops, are you mad?
• 15:18
  [SPEAKER_17]: You cannot save Jean now!
• 15:19
  [SPEAKER_17]: The radiation!
• 15:20
  [SPEAKER_17]: The crash!
• 15:21
  [SPEAKER_16]: You stopped me once before, Nikronler.
• 15:23
  [SPEAKER_16]: Get my way this time, and I'll kill you.
• 15:25
  [SPEAKER_16]: Cyclops, all of you, work!
• 15:27
  [SPEAKER_16]: Something is happening in the water!
• 15:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Right over with a shuttle sink, but... What?
• 15:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: What, indeed, Cyclops, as the scummy garbage strewn water glows with iridescid rainbow fire and then explodes, Jean Grey emerges in golden green.
• 15:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: The Phoenix symbol emblazoned on her chest.
• 15:44
  [SPEAKER_11]: Hear me, X-Men.
• 15:46
  [SPEAKER_11]: No longer am I the woman you knew.
• 15:48
  [SPEAKER_10]: I am fire.
• 15:50
  [SPEAKER_10]: And life incarnate.
• 15:51
  [SPEAKER_10]: Now and forever, I am Phoenix.
• 15:55
  [SPEAKER_10]: I, I, my mind, burning so many memories, sensations, pain, inside tearing me apart, happening to me.
• 16:04
  [SPEAKER_10]: What have I done?
• 16:05
  [SPEAKER_10]: Scott!
• 16:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Jean!
• 16:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: As suddenly as she bursts out of the water, Jean Grey falls back in, overwhelm, Scott swims over to help her.
• 16:12
  [SPEAKER_16]: Take it easy, hun.
• 16:13
  [SPEAKER_16]: I've got you.
• 16:14
  [SPEAKER_16]: You're safe now, Jean.
• 16:16
  [SPEAKER_16]: The flight's over.
• 16:17
  [SPEAKER_16]: We're all back on Earth and you're going to be all right.
• 16:19
  [SPEAKER_16]: But she's lying so still.
• 16:20
  [SPEAKER_16]: Early breathing.
• 16:21
  [SPEAKER_16]: Almost no pulse.
• 16:22
  [SPEAKER_16]: Stop thinking like that, mister.
• 16:24
  [SPEAKER_16]: She'll pull through.
• 16:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: The X-Men crawl out of Jamaica Bay, they're clothing dripping wet as Cyclops crales the now unconscious Jean Grey, Peter Corbot and Storm, Aid Charles Xavier, Cyclops, or costume.
• 16:37
  [SPEAKER_16]: I know Colossus are more questions here than we can handle right now.
• 16:40
  [SPEAKER_16]: Jean's creating a costume out of nothing, using powers she'd never had before, very fact that she's still alive, but she is still alive, I'll settle for that.
• 16:50
  [SPEAKER_14]: For the moment, students, let us not compound our problem.
• 16:53
  [SPEAKER_14]: Perhaps the fewer costume super beings present when the police arrive, the better.
• 16:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: With a toggle, Nightcrawler activates his image inducer.
• 17:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: And sets it to change the clothing appearance of the entire team.
• 17:04
  [SPEAKER_17]: It's good his doesn't help, Professor.
• 17:06
  [SPEAKER_17]: courtesy of my image inducer.
• 17:08
  [SPEAKER_17]: I'll expand its range to the maximum extent to cover a solid, clocus completely from view.
• 17:13
  [SPEAKER_18]: We'll become invisible.
• 17:14
  [SPEAKER_18]: Better leave me out a bit, Nightcrawler.
• 17:17
  [SPEAKER_18]: Someone's going to have to explain this mess and perhaps take that up for it as you wish, Dr. Kobo.
• 17:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: And as fire trucks rush in, emergency personnel are quick to follow.
• 17:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: One of them grabbing Corbou.
• 17:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: The X-Men stay out of view as Colossus picks up Xavier.
• 17:31
  [SPEAKER_17]: Yeah, I need a medic!
• 17:33
  [SPEAKER_15]: Got a survivor here!
• 17:35
  [SPEAKER_15]: All of the toxic response team have the police caught in off this section of the airport and do you make a ban to we determine what dangers posed by the show's fuel?
• 17:41
  [SPEAKER_15]: All of the squads as well!
• 17:42
  [SPEAKER_15]: There could be more survivors trapped aboard!
• 17:45
  [SPEAKER_18]: No, I'm the only one.
• 17:47
  [SPEAKER_18]: Corbou, director, project star core.
• 17:50
  [SPEAKER_18]: Terrace, hijack, space station.
• 17:54
  [SPEAKER_18]: My crew murdered her.
• 17:57
  [SPEAKER_06]: They get anyone who'll buy Corbou's yarn.
• 17:59
  [SPEAKER_15]: Who's there to gain stay at Ladi?
• 18:00
  [SPEAKER_06]: We're still a long way from out of this mess Irish.
• 18:03
  [SPEAKER_06]: Night crawlers toy me hide us from everyone's sight, but it won't do any good if we get run into.
• 18:08
  [SPEAKER_09]: Light, glory, stars, worlds, all creation, a part of me.
• 18:15
  [SPEAKER_14]: Wolverine's point is well taken, storm.
• 18:18
  [SPEAKER_14]: Summon a wind to fan the smoke in our directions, so we may slip away under its cover.
• 18:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Don't explain as the area is covered in fog.
• 18:25
  [SPEAKER_11]: so much, too much reality, already slipping away.
• 18:29
  [SPEAKER_06]: That gets us off the field, Charlie, where the heck do we go from there?
• 18:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: Time passes.
• 18:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: In full costume, storm sores across the skies over the x-mentioned, deep in thought.
• 18:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's our homes, how peaceful and sweet it looks, if only our lives were the same, and must be quick.
• 18:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: The others are depending on me.
• 18:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: What happens, Jean?
• 18:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: In Africa, I was called a goddess.
• 18:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: I wonder, mad as it sounds.
• 18:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Swiftly, the wind rider moves to each X-man's room in turn, gathering a change of clothes for them as she does.
• 19:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Her mind far less on the task at hand than the deer-stricken friend nestled protectively in Scott's arms.
• 19:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: She takes two disguise with her packed bag.
• 19:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: My own mutant power gives me a special awareness of life and empathy with its strength and its quality within a person.
• 19:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: She is like nothing I've ever sensed.
• 19:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: A full
• 19:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: but how can any human wield such transcendent power perhaps I worry needlessly if anyone can?
• 19:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's Jean Grey.
• 19:28
  [SPEAKER_06]: Not bad, made an 80 mile round trip to our place in the same time it took us to reach Manhattan.
• 19:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Storm descends from the skies back to her teammates.
• 19:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: I am a skilled with my abilities while the rain as you are with your own.
• 19:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: My crawler, I brought close for you.
• 19:42
  [SPEAKER_17]: I appreciate the thought storm, but as long as I have my image in Dusa, I don't need them.
• 19:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: As Kurt changes into an arrow-flin look alike, the X-Men get into a limousine and Xavier has mental control of the driver.
• 19:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: He takes money into the man's pocket.
• 19:56
  [SPEAKER_14]: Jean is our paramount concern, X-Men.
• 19:58
  [SPEAKER_14]: I have friends on the staff at New York Hospital who will admit her on my say so without any awkward question.
• 20:04
  [SPEAKER_14]: Ah, the old boy Netflix strikes again!
• 20:07
  [SPEAKER_14]: Precisely, Nikreler.
• 20:09
  [SPEAKER_14]: As soon as all are ready, we shall proceed.
• 20:12
  [SPEAKER_14]: This shall cover the cost of the limousine driver's service.
• 20:15
  [SPEAKER_14]: My mental powers will ensure that he remembers this is no more than a normal everyday fare.
• 20:20
  [SPEAKER_16]: Professor, we can't show Gene like this.
• 20:22
  [SPEAKER_16]: Her costume's bound to stir up talk.
• 20:24
  [SPEAKER_16]: It's weird, not like normal cloth.
• 20:26
  [SPEAKER_16]: There doesn't seem to be any way to remove it.
• 20:29
  [SPEAKER_16]: Wolverine pops a single cloth.
• 20:31
  [SPEAKER_16]: Snicked that buff.
• 20:33
  [SPEAKER_16]: Will be my pleasure.
• 20:34
  [SPEAKER_16]: She that claw mister.
• 20:36
  [SPEAKER_16]: Before I ram it, well, Professor, how the devil?
• 20:40
  [SPEAKER_16]: Ram it, huh?
• 20:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: As Cyclops looks at Jean and his lap, her clothes changed to a green sweater over a white colored shirt.
• 20:49
  [SPEAKER_14]: Fascinating.
• 20:50
  [SPEAKER_14]: Fundamental reorganization of molecular structures, and telecomesis of the highest order, and until now, beyond even Jean's potential, let alone her capability.
• 21:00
  [SPEAKER_16]: She's unconscious.
• 21:01
  [SPEAKER_16]: How did she know what needed to do?
• 21:03
  [SPEAKER_15]: Easy lad.
• 21:03
  [SPEAKER_15]: Let's get her into the hospital, then we can try to put her out the rest.
• 21:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Examine your proofs true to his word, and within the hour Jean Grey is admitted to the special research wing of New York Hospital.
• 21:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: The news is full of the Star Cruise Shuttle Crash, with Peter Corbot telling the dramatic tale of a battle in deep space between his crew and a band of terrorists who'd seized the deactivated shielded space station, and from which he'd emerged the sole survivor he claims, headlines read things like JFK mystery deepens, but that matters little to the X-Men, nothing matters, really saved the young woman who brought them all safely home.
• 21:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Wolverine stops at a news stand outside to buy a gift.
• 21:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: The shop owner takes his money while smoking a cigar.
• 21:42
  [SPEAKER_13]: Well, I was in my dial of a bunch, like the science says.
• 21:45
  [SPEAKER_13]: You buy him for a sick friend?
• 21:46
  [SPEAKER_06]: That ain't not your business, Bob.
• 21:48
  [SPEAKER_06]: Here's your book.
• 21:49
  [SPEAKER_06]: I'll take the flowers.
• 21:51
  [SPEAKER_06]: Man, I gotta be crazy.
• 21:53
  [SPEAKER_06]: I know that.
• 21:54
  [SPEAKER_06]: Actin' like a school kid still wet behind the ears.
• 21:57
  [SPEAKER_06]: And for some broad, what's jean great of me anyway?
• 22:01
  [SPEAKER_06]: Someone I like and want.
• 22:03
  [SPEAKER_06]: And what Wolverine wants?
• 22:05
  [SPEAKER_06]: He gets.
• 22:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Not this time, Bob.
• 22:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Wolverine re-enters the hospital and approaches Jean Grey's room.
• 22:11
  [SPEAKER_06]: He'd never felt like this before, though.
• 22:14
  [SPEAKER_06]: All hot and bothered over a frail.
• 22:16
  [SPEAKER_06]: He'd never cared about anybody.
• 22:18
  [SPEAKER_06]: I always liked being a loner.
• 22:20
  [SPEAKER_06]: What the hell?
• 22:21
  [SPEAKER_06]: I'll surprise her with these flowers.
• 22:23
  [SPEAKER_06]: Maybe get to talk in.
• 22:25
  [SPEAKER_06]: What the?
• 22:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: We told you so, Wolverine, because you really should have expected that Gene's friends would stay as close to her as possible until they knew her fate.
• 22:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: Also, don't you have super senses as well?
• 22:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: One way or the other.
• 22:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: But then again, maybe you shouldn't have after all you've never had any friends.
• 22:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: The room he sees Cyclops Xavier, Moira McTaggart, Banshee, Storm Knight, Crawler, and Colossus all waiting.
• 22:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Life and death, it's all the same to you Wolverine, as meaningless, as casually disposed of as a bunch of flowers Wolverine throws the bouquet at the trash.
• 22:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: Meanwhile, Moira McTaggart in a deep red house dress with white collar and white sash pulls Xavier aside.
• 23:02
  [SPEAKER_12]: Doc has been with you such a long time, Charles, are you sure there's nothing you could do?
• 23:07
  [SPEAKER_14]: Perhaps he isn't your telepathic powers.
• 23:10
  [SPEAKER_14]: I only wish I could, Moira, but I can't.
• 23:13
  [SPEAKER_14]: Every time I try to use them to any great extent, my mind is savaged by my cursed dream.
• 23:24
  [SPEAKER_14]: No, Moira.
• 23:25
  [SPEAKER_14]: I cannot help this girl.
• 23:27
  [SPEAKER_14]: I once thought I loved as much as you.
• 23:29
  [SPEAKER_14]: I cannot even help myself, said the quiet power out loud.
• 23:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, sorry, lost my place there for a second.
• 23:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so the hours drag day moving in tonight and in today again with no new word on jeans condition, they know she's alive, but that is all.
• 23:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Benchy takes Moira's hand.
• 23:45
  [SPEAKER_15]: Oh, Moira, it'll be over soon.
• 23:47
  [SPEAKER_15]: I'm thinking, I can feel it.
• 23:48
  [SPEAKER_17]: Oh, Scott, he's such a man of action to send listvating must be a living nightmare for him.
• 23:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: If only you knew Kurt Wagner, Cyclops sits alone in the waiting room dressed in a full-brown suit with black tie.
• 24:01
  [SPEAKER_16]: All those wasted years when I loved Gene, and she loved me, and neither of us had the sense to tell the other.
• 24:07
  [SPEAKER_16]: But now, if she dies, it'll all have been for nothing.
• 24:11
  [SPEAKER_16]: I mean,
• 24:11
  [SPEAKER_16]: What do you do when the light goes out of your life?
• 24:14
  [SPEAKER_16]: When Jean moved down to the city to build a life for herself outside the X-Men?
• 24:19
  [SPEAKER_16]: I let her go because I thought that the X-Men were what gave my life meaning.
• 24:23
  [SPEAKER_16]: But they're not.
• 24:24
  [SPEAKER_16]: It's Jean.
• 24:24
  [SPEAKER_16]: It's always been Jean.
• 24:26
  [SPEAKER_16]: Wait, I never realized it till now.
• 24:28
  [SPEAKER_16]: When I'm about to lose her forever.
• 24:30
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's not like you're to argue with reality, Corbot, or to deny the evidence of your own eyes.
• 24:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Huh?
• 24:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: Dr. McKay in his lab coat with a blonde beard exit the room with good news.
• 24:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: Peter Corbowe is at his side.
• 24:41
  [SPEAKER_05]: Face it by friend.
• 24:42
  [SPEAKER_05]: A Sherlock Holmes Austin said once you do eliminated being impossible, whatever it means, however impeccable must be the truth.
• 24:48
  [SPEAKER_05]: Dr. Corbowe, Dr. McKay.
• 24:50
  [SPEAKER_05]: How is she?
• 24:51
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's going to be touch and go for a while, Mr. Sanders.
• 24:54
  [SPEAKER_05]: But with rest, copper hair, friends look after her.
• 24:57
  [SPEAKER_05]: Dr. Corbowe and I think this grade is going to be just fun.
• 24:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: What happens next is quite understandable given the circumstances.
• 25:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: Put simply the X-Men go wild, arrow-flin leaps into the air, Colossus lifts storm to the sky, Moira hugs Banshee, Wolverine grins ear to ear, and Xavier cries into his hands, rather most of them go wild.
• 25:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: One goes off by himself, Cyclops steps into the next room to sob.
• 25:20
  [SPEAKER_17]: I saw Scott Slipper wave when we were started cheering.
• 25:23
  [SPEAKER_17]: The good news rocked in pretty hard, which isn't surprising to me the strain of the last few days has been eating at him.
• 25:29
  [SPEAKER_17]: I hope he's... Oh, I understand my friend.
• 25:32
  [SPEAKER_17]: There are times when everyone needs to be left alone.
• 25:35
  [SPEAKER_17]: Gene, you're going to be alright.
• 25:37
  [SPEAKER_17]: Oh, Gene, thank God, thank God.
• 25:40
  [SPEAKER_17]: Scott's in the next room professor.
• 25:43
  [SPEAKER_17]: He will be a long in a moment.
• 25:45
  [SPEAKER_14]: No matter Kurt.
• 25:46
  [SPEAKER_14]: I don't need Scott to say what I have to say But I can only say it's if the rest of you will do me the courtesy of quieting down Xavier turns to the X-Men tense Benchy and Moira are holding hands now
• 26:01
  [SPEAKER_15]: No need to snap jobs.
• 26:03
  [SPEAKER_14]: I'm sorry, Sean.
• 26:04
  [SPEAKER_14]: The pressure is of the last week, so you're getting to tell on me, too.
• 26:07
  [SPEAKER_14]: Which is part of the reason I'm sending you five X-Men on an enforced vacation.
• 26:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Displeased Wolverine pops his claws.
• 26:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Snicked!
• 26:15
  [SPEAKER_06]: Stick it in your ear, Bob.
• 26:17
  [SPEAKER_06]: Cause none of us is going anywhere till duty is better.
• 26:20
  [SPEAKER_14]: Control yourself Wolverine and for once in your life listen and think you heard the doctor Jean's recovery depends on the care and attention she receives Care that Scott and I are prepared to give her Unfortunately, we can't look after Jean and run the X-Men at the same time Therefore, a brief and well-earned holiday is in order Whatever happens, I won't have you staying around the hospital You'll just get in the way The claws go back in Snacked And Banshee pulls out a letter
• 26:49
  [SPEAKER_15]: I'm not sure I agree with what you're saying, Charles, but you're the boss.
• 26:52
  [SPEAKER_15]: And if you're still on the site about where to send us, I think I can fit that bill.
• 26:56
  [SPEAKER_15]: It seems, so my lawyer Mr. Flairty writes me, that I even heard of the Cassidy ancestral home.
• 27:01
  [SPEAKER_14]: Let me see.
• 27:01
  [SPEAKER_15]: It's in a remote part of County Mail, out on the Atlantic coast.
• 27:05
  [SPEAKER_15]: Few conveniences, fewer people.
• 27:07
  [SPEAKER_14]: All in all, the most excellent suggestion.
• 27:09
  [SPEAKER_14]: Thank you, Sean.
• 27:10
  [SPEAKER_14]: You'll all leave as soon as arrangements can be made, and I hope you have a good time.
• 27:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Nobody echoes Xavier's sentiment, not in the hospital, and not at the X-Men's West Chester Mansion headquarters, where they discover that all have that they all have American identities and American passports.
• 27:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Authentic and so the professor tells them quite in order, but their mood begins to change once they flown into Europe to spend a week sight seeing and winding down in Ireland's capital Dublin.
• 27:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: Before heading west towards County Mayo.
• 27:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: Indeed, by the time they detrained to Belina and switched to a hired car for the last leg of their journey, some of the X-Men are actually beginning to enjoy themselves.
• 27:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Some of them, however, are merely getting sore.
• 27:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: We see images of the plane flying to Europe, then banche-smiling, driving storm, night-crawler Wolverine and Colossus, in an open-top red car licensed plate MXY421.
• 28:00
  [SPEAKER_06]: Hey, Irish, what's with the bumps?
• 28:03
  [SPEAKER_06]: Didn't you ever learn to drive for crying out loud?
• 28:06
  [SPEAKER_15]: Don't be kidding yourself into an upper-or-mentioned.
• 28:08
  [SPEAKER_15]: That's how we build our roads out here with character.
• 28:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: If so, then you should build automobiles to match, say, with springs and softer seats, I would have done better to fly.
• 28:17
  [SPEAKER_15]: All right, it's a beautiful day for it, but Charles did tell us not to draw attention to ourselves remember.
• 28:22
  [SPEAKER_18]: Professor is not writing this four-wheeled torture chamber, Conrad Shon.
• 28:26
  [SPEAKER_15]: Is that a joke, your crack, and Peter has sped and what do wonders never cease?
• 28:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's almost over now because my friends, we have a really... Cassidy Keep, first built by Liam Cassidy over a thousand years ago to defend this stretch of coastline from Viking Raiders, rebuilt a score of times over the centuries as it stood against every invader who tried to conquer it.
• 28:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: ever proud, ever defiant, it's tall forbidding walls stained with the blood of a hundred seizures.
• 28:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: But in all the castle's glorious history, these walls have never fallen to force of arms.
• 28:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: The Red Car drives up a long curving road to an enormous castle on a craggy hill against a cloudy sky.
• 29:03
  [SPEAKER_17]: Unglaublich!
• 29:04
  [SPEAKER_17]: Bunchy!
• 29:05
  [SPEAKER_17]: This is incredible!
• 29:06
  [SPEAKER_17]: And you say you grew up here?
• 29:08
  [SPEAKER_17]: That only dead card Wagner.
• 29:10
  [SPEAKER_17]: Oh, it must have been marvelous.
• 29:12
  [SPEAKER_17]: No, Phil, I suppose it's time for me to switch to my human guys.
• 29:16
  [SPEAKER_06]: Oh, I don't know, Bob.
• 29:17
  [SPEAKER_06]: Place like this.
• 29:18
  [SPEAKER_06]: I figure you'll sit right in the way you are.
• 29:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: As we said, Cassidy Keep is never fallen to force of arms, but, treachery, now that's something else again.
• 29:26
  [SPEAKER_15]: How do we get in?
• 29:27
  [SPEAKER_15]: Simple, I rang the doorbell, and we wait for Mr. O'Donnell to lower the doorbell bridge.
• 29:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Watching on a series of monitors is Black Tom Cassidy, wearing a dark purple jump suit with a red corset belt and gloves, his hair styled, his mustache waxed into points.
• 29:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: He carries a long chelaly in his hand, nearby as the aforementioned O'Donnell in a white
• 29:50
  [SPEAKER_12]: So, cousin, you've come after all, rock friends with you, as expected, five flies within their ways and the black tombs were never just keep alive.
• 30:00
  [SPEAKER_12]: You have your order, Zeban O'Donnell, escort them in, make them comfortable, forgive them no inclin that anything amiss.
• 30:08
  [SPEAKER_14]: No, Tom Cassidy, I'll not do that.
• 30:10
  [SPEAKER_14]: I've done evil things in your service, but I don't know being no party to the murder innocent people.
• 30:15
  [SPEAKER_12]: Before I meet, well, yeah.
• 30:16
  [SPEAKER_12]: Have you forgotten the lies I hold for Pomemehats?
• 30:19
  [SPEAKER_12]: The lies of those you hold dear?
• 30:21
  [SPEAKER_12]: How hostage?
• 30:22
  [SPEAKER_12]: For your good behavior.
• 30:23
  [SPEAKER_12]: And you dare to fight me.
• 30:26
  [SPEAKER_06]: Wack!
• 30:27
  [SPEAKER_12]: Tom strikes Eman O'Donnell on the head with his stick.
• 30:30
  [SPEAKER_12]: Y'all be party to whatever I tell you little man, or you'll watch those lovin' trust you die in agony.
• 30:36
  [SPEAKER_12]: Because my meaning is clear, Eman O'Donnell.
• 30:38
  [SPEAKER_14]: I curse you butchers heart.
• 30:40
  [SPEAKER_14]: Sclare is crystal.
• 30:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: And just off camera, another man enters the room.
• 30:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Shush, but it's Kane Marko, the juggernaut.
• 30:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's been a little while since he visited Great Malkin' Lane Friends.
• 30:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Tom watches the monitor as Eman O'Donnell greets Banshee in the castle entrance.
• 30:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're a fool that's resting.
• 30:56
  [SPEAKER_12]: That's where you're wrong, my friend.
• 30:58
  [SPEAKER_12]: As long as the families are in my power, he'll do whatever I can, man.
• 31:02
  [SPEAKER_12]: He'll even betray a man.
• 31:03
  [SPEAKER_12]: He loves like his own son.
• 31:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: The X-Men will look into an austere castle filled with hanging chandeliers, tipped with candles, suits of armor, long stone staircases, and coats of armaments on the walls.
• 31:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: How can anything live here grow here?
• 31:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: This place is nothing but cold, dead stone pressing in on me,
• 31:21
  [SPEAKER_15]: Not to me, it isn't a raro.
• 31:23
  [SPEAKER_15]: My boyhood here was the happiest time in my life.
• 31:25
  [SPEAKER_15]: Young Sean Cassie fought more dragons and rescued more damsels in distress.
• 31:29
  [SPEAKER_14]: Lord Cassidy, if you don't mind, sir, it's time for you to get instead of it.
• 31:34
  [SPEAKER_15]: They don't aim, and Aminodornod here is the castle's center Charlotte, the steward of the house.
• 31:38
  [SPEAKER_15]: If you need anything, just ask him, by the way old friend, I order families, the little ones.
• 31:43
  [SPEAKER_14]: They are, well, my Lord.
• 31:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: And yeah, they're talking about leprotons.
• 31:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: We'll get there next time.
• 31:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, Donald leads the X-Men up the stairs to a room filled with wooden furniture.
• 31:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: They failed to notice some small creatures and the rafters watching.
• 31:57
  [SPEAKER_14]: This is your room, Mr. R. I trust it's such a factory.
• 32:01
  [SPEAKER_14]: Seems alright.
• 32:02
  [SPEAKER_14]: Very well.
• 32:03
  [SPEAKER_14]: Dinner would be served properly at 8th.
• 32:04
  [SPEAKER_14]: This way, gentlemen.
• 32:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: The door closes and storm takes the opportunity to summon the winds and to divest herself fully of clothing, letting rain wash over her naked form right there in her room.
• 32:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Worst Airbeard B-B-B-B-A-S, ever.
• 32:21
  [UNKNOWN]: Oh my god.
• 32:22
  [UNKNOWN]: Okay.
• 32:22
  [UNKNOWN]: I'm sorry.
• 32:22
  [UNKNOWN]: Oh my god.
• 32:22
  [UNKNOWN]: Ah, Benchy.
• 32:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
• 32:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sorry.
• 32:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh my god.
• 32:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Ah, Benchy.
• 32:27
  [SPEAKER_07]: I'm so happy to be home.
• 32:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I will only be happy that day I leave the castle forever.
• 32:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Jean would say, Casti Keep has bad vibes for me and it does.
• 32:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: but I will not be ruled by my fears and was forced myself to relax and I know precisely how to do but when the goddess of the storm wishes to refresh herself and call her nerves, how better than by summoning her own summer shower, goddess how I needed this.
• 32:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: If I close my eyes, I can almost imagine myself back again.
• 33:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: But this isn't Kenya, it's Ireland, and there's a formal dinner plan for eight.
• 33:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: Everyone who puts on a yellow dress covered in flowers and styles her hair in an updough, or it was just preparing to leave when... MAMF!
• 33:13
  [SPEAKER_17]: Behold, fiatamzu!
• 33:15
  [SPEAKER_17]: The furry fellow!
• 33:17
  [SPEAKER_17]: I beg your pardon.
• 33:18
  [SPEAKER_17]: I've come to escort you to dinner.
• 33:20
  [SPEAKER_17]: After all, why should good losses have all the fun?
• 33:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why, indeed, are you going dressed like that?
• 33:27
  [SPEAKER_17]: Ah, but you forget my handy-dandy image in Dusa.
• 33:30
  [SPEAKER_17]: Vittit, I could go as whomever I wish.
• 33:33
  [SPEAKER_17]: He switches to Rhett Butler, click.
• 33:35
  [SPEAKER_17]: Right, please, Skylet, can I have the first dance?
• 33:38
  [SPEAKER_17]: No?
• 33:39
  [SPEAKER_17]: Fred Astaire, click!
• 33:40
  [SPEAKER_17]: So, how about a fast-flight-on-a-real, then, sweets?
• 33:43
  [SPEAKER_17]: Groucho Marks.
• 33:44
  [SPEAKER_17]: Click.
• 33:45
  [SPEAKER_17]: Never all.
• 33:45
  [SPEAKER_17]: I can reo with the bezel.
• 33:47
  [SPEAKER_17]: You know what I mean?
• 33:47
  [SPEAKER_17]: Arrow Flynn again.
• 33:49
  [SPEAKER_17]: Click.
• 33:50
  [SPEAKER_17]: Uh, that again.
• 33:50
  [SPEAKER_17]: There's always the usual.
• 33:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: But Storm slips off her house dress and reveals a sexy red dress underneath.
• 33:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, now that your show is overcoat, it is my turn for a quick change.
• 34:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: How do I look?
• 34:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh uh, uh uh, uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh
• 34:19
  [SPEAKER_15]: nearby, then she puts on a green turtleneck and a green hat as he smokes his pipe.
• 34:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Wolverine, meanwhile, has a brown cowboy hat, red-colored shirt and blue suit.
• 34:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Colossus, the white shirt, red-tive, and blue suit jacket.
• 34:44
  [SPEAKER_06]: Hey, what gives Irish?
• 34:45
  [SPEAKER_06]: The old man said this was a formal shabang, so once with you coming to the table, looking like a stable hand.
• 34:51
  [SPEAKER_15]: It's like this, short stuff.
• 34:53
  [SPEAKER_06]: Watch the mouth, bub.
• 34:54
  [SPEAKER_15]: Right, and my name's Sean.
• 34:56
  [SPEAKER_15]: Not all Irish.
• 34:57
  [SPEAKER_15]: Anyway, since all he happened to be the Lord of this matter, I get to come to dinner dressed however early please.
• 35:02
  [SPEAKER_17]: I am no one's date current.
• 35:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: I enjoy being with both of you, which means that the three of us will go into dinner together as equals agreed.
• 35:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then throw some back in my room, the floors are wet.
• 35:20
  [UNKNOWN]: That's it.
• 35:21
  [UNKNOWN]: Fuck!
• 35:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: Such a gentle, bantering interlude, too bad it has to end.
• 35:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: A trapdoor opens and the X-Men shift back into their costumes bizarrely quickly, during the fall.
• 35:31
  [SPEAKER_15]: And against Bob, the flower, it's a trapdoor.
• 35:34
  [SPEAKER_15]: If you're falling, in the costume, all he is.
• 35:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, well, it was a nice vacation, Valid lasted.
• 35:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the X-Men land before Black Tom and full costume, a red bird emblem on his chest, as he sits in a throne, and next to him juggernaut in his full costume.
• 35:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Geez, how long was that fall?
• 35:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Many storms slowed them with the widdens, and they could trade, like switch it all the way down.
• 35:55
  [SPEAKER_12]: Well, I dare cousin Sean, how nice you to shall we say, Robin?
• 35:59
  [SPEAKER_12]: In case you're having guessed, why most of your friends and I,
• 36:02
  [SPEAKER_12]: are the villains of the piece?
• 36:04
  [SPEAKER_12]: I'm Black Tom, he has today.
• 36:06
  [SPEAKER_05]: And now I'm shooting some Charles Xavier, my dearly hated stuff, brother.
• 36:10
  [SPEAKER_05]: Oh yes, we know who you are, X-Men.
• 36:13
  [SPEAKER_05]: I am not done or not.
• 36:15
  [SPEAKER_12]: And together, we too are going to do with no other villains in the history of the world have been able to do.
• 36:20
  [SPEAKER_12]: We're going to kill the X-Men.
• 36:23
  [SPEAKER_15]: That meant to scare us to him.
• 36:24
  [SPEAKER_15]: Do you plan to talk us to death then?
• 36:26
  [SPEAKER_12]: Lost her away, cousin.
• 36:27
  [SPEAKER_12]: It'll do you no good.
• 36:28
  [SPEAKER_12]: You're in the dungeons, and I.
• 36:30
  [SPEAKER_12]: Keep in sight, Cassidy Crag.
• 36:32
  [SPEAKER_12]: With pointless puns of rock between you and freedom.
• 36:35
  [SPEAKER_12]: Give no chance, Banshee.
• 36:37
  [SPEAKER_12]: This place will be your tomb.
• 36:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: To close them, walk around me.
• 36:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: No way out.
• 36:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Rock, bring me.
• 36:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Cushie me.
• 36:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Can't breathe.
• 36:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Take my, help me, no!
• 36:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: And storm collapses on the ground in screams.
• 36:52
  [SPEAKER_06]: I ain't got that scream, it's storm, she's flipped out!
• 36:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: To be continued, next issue, who will stop the juggernaut or who shall stop the juggernaut I mean?
• 37:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, epic script read.
• 37:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: We have to of course open with that incredible beginning between the Phoenix Force and Marvel Girl.
• 37:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Michelle, what's the Phoenix force?
• 37:15
  [SPEAKER_11]: I mean, she's, she's my cosmos.
• 37:18
  [SPEAKER_11]: She's like the body of the universe.
• 37:20
  [SPEAKER_11]: That's a trick question, Chad.
• 37:22
  [SPEAKER_14]: She's gene-grave, of course.
• 37:24
  [SPEAKER_15]: She literally says it herself.
• 37:25
  [SPEAKER_15]: She is fire and life incarnate.
• 37:27
  [SPEAKER_15]: She is Phoenix.
• 37:28
  [SPEAKER_15]: She's an entire town in Arizona.
• 37:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 37:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Does anyone have any insight into Claremont's original intentions for this character?
• 37:36
  [SPEAKER_15]: a little bit, I know that the more of the ending thing.
• 37:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, so there's some connotations between the idea that she is gene allowed to be fully realized.
• 37:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: What is it if we have full access to our powers, our potential, we're able to manifest all of it.
• 37:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: When you read the original story, it's sort of like gene redefining.
• 37:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: And these stories came out in an era of second wave feminism,
• 37:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Where in the mid-1970s, women were really coming forward with different kinds of stories, and Claremont was writing really powerful women for the first time in a lot of Marvel's history.
• 38:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the X-Men characters, seeing Jean realize her full potential, redesigned her costume with her omega telekinesis, you know, right on her body, all of the other stuff was added later.
• 38:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: So even though she's calling herself fire and life incarnate, there's something about Jean
• 38:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now, later writers are going to call this a whole bunch of things.
• 38:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's Jean manifested at the ultimate of her mutant powers.
• 38:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's a cosmic force of the universe, like alongside eternity and infinity and death and oblivion.
• 38:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's Jean Grey's menstrual cycles.
• 38:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's the child of Jean Grey.
• 38:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's hope summers in her full form.
• 38:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: So she's Jean's granddaughter, but also Jean herself.
• 38:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: She exists outside of space and time to kind of pop in and out.
• 39:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: But the other piece I'll throw at you really quickly.
• 39:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: That classic X-Men story that we opened with was published in 1987.
• 39:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: 1986, the year before is when Marvel brought Gene Gray back against Chris Claremont's will.
• 39:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Forced, the Dark Phoenix saga results in Gene's death.
• 39:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: They took the original X-Men characters, put them outside of the X-Men line, and Chris had had the book for well over a decade at this point, but they took the main five characters and gave it to a different editor and office, and they brought Gene back in the Avengers and the Fantastic Four.
• 39:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now,
• 39:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: The baby Nathan had already been born at this point and now suddenly Jean is back and the red con is that the phoenix force Took her form so Jean is not the phoenix and never has been instead It's this cosmic entity wearing Jean's body while Jean's in a cocoon at the bottom of Jamaica Bay So I'm fast forwarding to the end of all of that, but the phoenix question becomes quite tricky when we delve into the continuity of it So there's a little history lesson for everybody
• 40:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let me hear from Michelle and then Alicia, what was it like to play out this so powerful interchange between a woman and kind of her mother God, if you will?
• 40:09
  [SPEAKER_11]: I feel like it's pretty epic.
• 40:11
  [SPEAKER_11]: I mean, I've never been asked to play the Phoenix Force.
• 40:14
  [SPEAKER_11]: It's always, always gene, never the Phoenix Force, you know, always the bridesmaid, never the pride, kind of a situation.
• 40:21
  [SPEAKER_11]: So this was a lot of fun to be like,
• 40:25
  [SPEAKER_11]: a cosmic entity, and then to play off of it with my girl Alicia, like, oh my god, like this was a dream.
• 40:33
  [SPEAKER_10]: There was this really nice like sisterhood element that happened because Michelle and I already have that with each other, so like being able to have this like moment of like Jean feeling, should she do this for herself, should she do this for the X-Men, like what's going to happen to her and like they eerie like
• 40:49
  [SPEAKER_10]: comforting that the Phoenix Force has while also being like very terrifying because you've no idea what it is, but there's just like the way that Michelle's voice was still like soothing, but then when she would say those like, but I also could destroy you lines that are kind of like in there where you're like having this internal struggle where you're like, okay, like,
• 41:08
  [SPEAKER_10]: You're soothing me, you're making me feel comfortable, but also I'm pretty terrified of what I'm about to do.
• 41:12
  [SPEAKER_10]: It was really fun and it's just such an epic story point for Jean as a character that it's cool to get to dive into those moments and sort of like internalize them a little bit.
• 41:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's giving very heavenly messenger almost, right?
• 41:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's been not afraid.
• 41:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's this kind of element in storytelling where people are kind of looking for themselves in God all the time.
• 41:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: So if we amplify this to the anthropomorphysis, we want to give God or the divine human characteristics.
• 41:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: But then we always write the God discovering what it is to be human.
• 41:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: So as the Phoenix takes on genes form, there's these, oh wow, I have a body.
• 41:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: What I typed into the chat is she's like, I have a body and then I type,
• 41:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: like she's all about herself as she manifests.
• 41:56
  [SPEAKER_11]: Recognizes the change in gene as well.
• 41:58
  [SPEAKER_11]: She's like, oh, is she a goddess too?
• 42:01
  [SPEAKER_11]: Like, just kind of playing on those themes of like something all mighty, something like some kind of like,
• 42:06
  [SPEAKER_11]: having me forced.
• 42:07
  [SPEAKER_11]: Like storm was the first one to kind of pick that out.
• 42:10
  [SPEAKER_10]: Well, it's interesting how Jean questions her worthiness at a point in it and just sort of like this realization of like am I crazy or is this thing really here to help me and like sort of questioning her own faith in herself?
• 42:24
  [SPEAKER_10]: that moment as well as like whatever this cosmic entity or god energy is that's like coming to her and like kind of finding the connection between like when you're when you're just in like self-doubt and you're looking for guidance in some way and then that guidance appears and you're unsure if like you're did you make that up or is it really there because you need it to be there but it's just interesting for me to kind of witness.
• 42:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: I feel like there's a whole years worth of stories and that early X-Men's life that we've never read, because no one's ever written them yet, right?
• 42:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's the it's the Red Constuff, but Jean has stopped being the good girl.
• 42:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: After Cricula, she left the team, she got her apartment, she's recently been a bikini model, she's like figuring out her life, she's dancing in the previous issue with her boyfriend's animated clothing before going on epic date in the best dress ever, and then as like, Scott, you love me, right?
• 43:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's Christmas, look at me, and then the setinals attack.
• 43:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: And now she's having that like, holy shit, what is my life even mean, what matters to me?
• 43:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's flashing before my eyes moment.
• 43:22
  [SPEAKER_10]: I really like this journey for Jean.
• 43:24
  [SPEAKER_10]: I think that, you know, my biggest gripes always when I'm thinking about Jean Gray that like, she's so powerful and she's so amazing and she's, I don't want her to be the damsel in distress.
• 43:33
  [SPEAKER_10]: So this arc for her kind of like finding herself and tapping into her true potential and her true power and like self-sacrifice in of itself is just
• 43:42
  [SPEAKER_10]: It's a really cool journey to be a part of and like reading it and kind of embodying it.
• 43:47
  [SPEAKER_10]: And I think that I just always want more of this for Jeanne and I always want her to be like her fullest without maybe needing to even rely on the Phoenix like I so, you know, I don't know.
• 43:59
  [SPEAKER_10]: Jeanne, she's growing on me.
• 44:00
  [SPEAKER_10]: Don't tell anybody.
• 44:01
  [SPEAKER_14]: I could hear it.
• 44:02
  [SPEAKER_14]: I could hear it in your answers.
• 44:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: 1987 we get the added story and again it jeans back from the dead at this point but now we're seeing definitively her like emaciated body turn skeletal if any of you've read that classic xman story it's really visceral it's like your heroine you're like this beautiful woman is like withering away through radiation it's it's a tough and kind of jarring body horror read and it's way as well and then she lights on fire and builds a new costume you know I need fashion
• 44:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do we have any thoughts on the body horror?
• 44:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then I'd also love to hear any thoughts on the epic design of Dave Cockramps Phoenix costume.
• 44:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: One of the most beloved costumes of all time, what makes it glorious?
• 44:45
  [SPEAKER_12]: Well, even when they get to a metaphysical place of talking to each other, Gina's still an emaciated corpse.
• 44:52
  [SPEAKER_12]: And I think that's really interesting because I think it would be such an easy decision artistically to be like, okay, now let's make her pray again.
• 44:58
  [SPEAKER_12]: But no, we still see her weathering body.
• 45:02
  [SPEAKER_12]: really feel that even back in like the 80s, we were not glamorizing and sexualizing her in a moment like this because I think that would have been a really easy choice.
• 45:10
  [SPEAKER_12]: So I just have to get props to it.
• 45:12
  [SPEAKER_12]: If you've not read it, Gordon, we did it is horrifying.
• 45:14
  [SPEAKER_12]: She looks disgusting.
• 45:15
  [SPEAKER_12]: I'm going to cosplay this for Halloween next year.
• 45:19
  [SPEAKER_14]: I love thinking about it, compared to what happens to Madeline much later on, and like the nothing woman, the nowhere, like the features removed from her body, and also just thinking about this in time, and basically clear amount just tidying up the mess that was made by bringing Jean back, and saying, like, okay, I'll make it work.
• 45:39
  [SPEAKER_14]: I'll make it all a part of the story that I wanted to tell, and I'll make it be okay for me to go forward by adding this in.
• 45:46
  [SPEAKER_15]: I do there's a certain element that I've seen pointed out regarding the costume that for the most part the way superhero costumes are drawn is you draw a naked person and then color in the costume over it type of thing because it's It's supposed to be form fitting and there's a certain element of the Phoenix costume the sash which somehow makes it feel more so that it's just a nude body with colors painted on
• 46:10
  [SPEAKER_15]: and I always find that sort of an interesting design element in any superhero costume that little extra flaps somewhere that just makes it feel a little more naked.
• 46:19
  [SPEAKER_15]: It's just kind of interesting, like it's basically Phoenix sing.
• 46:22
  [SPEAKER_15]: No, here's my full naked power.
• 46:24
  [SPEAKER_15]: Fuck you.
• 46:25
  [SPEAKER_10]: Well, it's also interesting thinking about the idea that like in this moment the Phoenix is realizing what it is to have a body and it's like almost like a
• 46:33
  [SPEAKER_10]: Oh, quick.
• 46:34
  [SPEAKER_10]: I have to cover that up.
• 46:35
  [SPEAKER_10]: So I'm going to make my body appear to be something different, then it's just my naked body and also like let me cover my crux for a second with a sash.
• 46:43
  [SPEAKER_10]: What are you doing?
• 46:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: What are you doing?
• 46:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: The coloring alone.
• 46:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a green and gold theme, which is often associated with royalty, right?
• 46:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's this idea of green and gold together, but green is not a costume.
• 46:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: We see featured prominently in a lot of superheroes in the early 70s, right?
• 46:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's usually a villain color quite frequently.
• 46:59
  [SPEAKER_11]: You can find me on Instagram at Michelle Waffelow.
• 47:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: So good to see your beautiful face.
• 47:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: Tell Justin Hello and thanks for joining us today.
• 47:07
  [SPEAKER_11]: Thank you so much for having me as the Phoenix Boys.
• 47:11
  [SPEAKER_11]: Yay!
• 47:11
  [SPEAKER_11]: So nice to meet you all.
• 47:12
  [SPEAKER_11]: Everyone like killed it too by the way.
• 47:14
  [SPEAKER_11]: Like, oh my gosh, I was very fully invested in everyone's part.
• 47:18
  [SPEAKER_11]: Like, oh.
• 47:19
  [SPEAKER_11]: Oh my God.
• 47:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: Staying on feed.
• 47:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let's talk about Cyclops's journey here.
• 47:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Cyclops is going through it in this issue.
• 47:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: Seth, you gave us some gas and some cries and... Yeah, this water coming out of me.
• 47:33
  [SPEAKER_16]: I'll come and out from water.
• 47:34
  [SPEAKER_16]: Yeah, that's what we're saying.
• 47:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it sounds like you're describing tears.
• 47:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: There was water coming out of me.
• 47:42
  [SPEAKER_16]: I'm sure Cyclops does not like to cry very much, but yeah, he runs off to have a little moment alone and Kurt is very kind to him and gives him his time to recover, so it's a lot for him.
• 47:53
  [SPEAKER_16]: He's usually so in control and he has absolutely no way to help or control anything this issue.
• 47:59
  [SPEAKER_14]: I think that element of still trying to be strong and be the leader and hold composer but being overwhelmed by his emotion is such the struggle that he goes through especially through this issue and last issue and just the the ability to let it all down for a second and you're like no I can I can breathe she's alive that build up and just release sounds insane.
• 48:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then we have his odd, sheath that clomester before I ram it.
• 48:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's this gentle flirting with Wolverine who also is realizing he's got it bad for Jean.
• 48:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'll buy her some flowers and then she'll love me.
• 48:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's always fun playing the caveman, the little caveman that could have, and I'm finding it's affecting my opinion of Cyclops, even outside of playing Wolverine.
• 48:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm always like Cyclops, it's just being a whiny little brat, you know, crying me at River Cyclops, but he's just, Wolverine's just super jealous.
• 49:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: We've seen snicked before, I think this is the first time we see snacked, which is the opposite sound effect when they go back in the clause, less commonly used.
• 49:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Then we go to Justin as Professor X, who I did not even realize that moment was so funny, as you just turn you're like, Shut the fuck up, I need a glass of wine and some green porn, everyone go on vacation, get out of here.
• 49:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: I get so much.
• 49:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
• 49:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: Why does it taste?
• 49:25
  [SPEAKER_14]: It's one of those moments that like, okay, I see it.
• 49:28
  [SPEAKER_14]: I understand what the joke is, and I just need to stick the landing.
• 49:32
  [SPEAKER_14]: And it's just, I loved how everybody reacted.
• 49:35
  [SPEAKER_14]: Those moments of just getting to play in the ridiculous over the top.
• 49:40
  [SPEAKER_14]: Like, I'm the dad.
• 49:41
  [SPEAKER_14]: I'm in charge, do as I say.
• 49:43
  [SPEAKER_14]: But also, I'm lusting over one of my students and saying it plainly to my ex.
• 49:49
  [SPEAKER_14]: I have everyone.
• 49:50
  [SPEAKER_14]: I just feel like those are the moments that really give me joy to play this ridiculous person.
• 49:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: If we're taking our step back and caught new, he was just trying to take a lead to the absence from the team, right?
• 50:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's been having these intense nightmares of a space woman.
• 50:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's something going on in his brain.
• 50:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so now like he went through this and was like,
• 50:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: captured by the sentinels and dumped in the ocean and you know what like I get it well I'm I'm more frustrated with what he does to the cab driver in this issue that really bugs me when you see him like openly using his powers and unethical ways it really bothers me because he's supposed to be hero and he's pulling all the strings he's like I've got a ride I've got a place no one's going to ask annoying questions I'm in charge like I've been told
• 50:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: report to me.
• 50:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: So bossy.
• 50:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then we had Colossus bat.
• 50:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Colossus didn't have a ton to do in this issue outside of celebrate Jean being okay.
• 50:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: But do you also got to play the incredible Peter Corbot?
• 50:51
  [SPEAKER_19]: Yes.
• 50:51
  [SPEAKER_19]: Well, you know, he serves a word for that line in there.
• 50:55
  [SPEAKER_19]: All of the causes and is beautiful.
• 50:57
  [SPEAKER_08]: I love the juxtaposition of that line with Wolverine's like, do you think anybody's going to believe him?
• 51:02
  [SPEAKER_08]: Like, just lift him back to back with so
• 51:08
  [SPEAKER_08]: Blow it up, things.
• 51:10
  [SPEAKER_14]: Oh, good.
• 51:12
  [SPEAKER_14]: While he's in space, it just sounded like he was having a real groovy time working through it.
• 51:17
  [SPEAKER_14]: And he's in charge, I love this man.
• 51:19
  [SPEAKER_14]: I would follow him everywhere.
• 51:20
  [SPEAKER_19]: Yeah, as you should, because he is Dr. Corba and the best and everything.
• 51:24
  [SPEAKER_19]: Right in the hospital fixing Jean on top of after all that he's good at everything And then you are an actor.
• 51:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: We know and you're delightful every time and that run of Accents from Grouchville Marks to Errol Flynn like that was amazing was it good because it comes too fast I was like, I don't know what's gonna happen.
• 51:43
  [SPEAKER_17]: It's like a steam train.
• 51:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: It was like, oh
• 51:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: No, it was wonderful.
• 51:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Nightcroller gets a lot of really sweet moments in this issue, including Storm like dropping her clothes.
• 51:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's like, he's trying to shock her, right?
• 51:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: He like, Bamsen do a room and has like, he's going, but I can do and she's like, well, look what I can do.
• 51:57
  [SPEAKER_17]: It like drops her dress and he's like, oh, it's the pull moment all over again.
• 52:02
  [SPEAKER_17]: But now like, Nightcroll is looking for it.
• 52:04
  [SPEAKER_17]: So I don't know what's going on.
• 52:05
  [SPEAKER_17]: And he's like desperate to like fit into the threes of him, class is in storm.
• 52:09
  [SPEAKER_17]: There's something going on there.
• 52:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe, Haram, I delight in making you laugh on my show.
• 52:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to talk about Storm's journey.
• 52:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: We have the got to stuff we talked about.
• 52:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: We have her in this castle wearing her sexy dress.
• 52:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, do you think I look pretty in this little slutty number?
• 52:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm wearing, and then we have her claustrophobia moment for the first big time.
• 52:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: So today she would really worried about her friend, her sister, Jean Gray, but also like, wow, she's arrived this.
• 52:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is amazing.
• 52:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And again, as we said earlier, she definitely senses something more in Jean than what was previously present within Jean's being because, or just she just knows.
• 52:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: at the end of the day.
• 52:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: She is connected to life in that way.
• 52:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's very much her forte.
• 52:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: As to coming to this raggedy ascastle for a row, she doesn't like this.
• 52:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: First off, it's cold.
• 53:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's wet is damp in here.
• 53:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's very claustrophobic.
• 53:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's not a row of style.
• 53:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: She needs open, just open concepts, honestly.
• 53:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I feel like she would love and open concepts like house and everything,
• 53:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: everything kind of opened for her windows to the ceiling.
• 53:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: How would love the idea for her?
• 53:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: I already see how she lives in the many in her series going on right now.
• 53:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's grand.
• 53:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's everything.
• 53:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is ready for her.
• 53:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: She don't like that.
• 53:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, it's very funny to continuously see her disrobing in front of people to their shop and like, or you know you're pretty, are you just doing this so people will tell you you're pretty because like I feel that, you know, I connect with that on a certain level she likes to draw an eye for sure.
• 53:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: I like her ego a lot actually.
• 53:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I love that I love that for her because honestly, yeah, let me just drop the anesthetic grandmother's knee anesthesia that kind of drop in the coat So much and so sorry The claps on the different screens
• 54:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is kind of the most we've ever gotten of Banshee to this point.
• 54:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: We get to see the castle where he grew up, the people that he loves.
• 54:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: We learn some family history.
• 54:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love that little narrator above all where it's like the castle's never fallen, but to subterfusion to see that's a totally different thing.
• 54:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: My favorite interchange in this whole comic book today.
• 54:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, we see in Banshee Macon Moira a little bit more and like, you know, check on the people at home.
• 54:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: But when they're in that fucking Jeep on the cobblestone,
• 54:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a lot of the fuck is going on in stores like could you put some springs in this He's like we build our roads with character.
• 54:51
  [SPEAKER_15]: That's maybe my favorite interchange in this whole story today You know, I gotta say stones do it a whole lot of bitching about my castle, you know The roads bumpy and there's so many cobwebs here.
• 55:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's so many rats in here.
• 55:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: What are you doing?
• 55:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Clean up a so cool that what it was dry until you pull the shower on a nowhere
• 55:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I'm sorry.
• 55:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm trying to make it more comfortable for me.
• 55:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you should learn some hospitality here.
• 55:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
• 55:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, for a person that she storms going to win bet she I'm just going to say that.
• 55:21
  [SPEAKER_15]: Yes, yes, she will.
• 55:22
  [SPEAKER_15]: Just go look at him.
• 55:23
  [SPEAKER_15]: There's me like, yeah, I'm sorry.
• 55:25
  [SPEAKER_15]: No, no, no, no, I'm out.
• 55:26
  [SPEAKER_15]: You're good.
• 55:27
  [SPEAKER_15]: You're good.
• 55:27
  [SPEAKER_15]: Welcome to Cassidy or look at it's no longer Cassidy.
• 55:30
  [SPEAKER_15]: Keep us down when we're all keep.
• 55:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, now we got to talk about the power couple from today's episode.
• 55:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: The fact that we have the gay couple, Black Tom Cassidy and Juggernaut, played by a transberless performer and a gay porn star, makes me so delightful.
• 55:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 55:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: No, no, think it through for a minute.
• 55:59
  [SPEAKER_12]: He will be played by me playing to him.
• 56:01
  [SPEAKER_12]: Crawford.
• 56:02
  [SPEAKER_12]: Thank you.
• 56:04
  [SPEAKER_12]: Honestly, there is no character grafting to do.
• 56:07
  [SPEAKER_12]: He has just been placed wholesale onto the comic book page as the campus, rag, hang, and existence.
• 56:13
  [SPEAKER_12]: And I'm just like, well, F had years of experience here at a window and just is golden.
• 56:18
  [SPEAKER_12]: Wonderful.
• 56:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's so can't be a smashing people.
• 56:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's it's fed on a way as Joan Crawford as Black Tom Cassidy.
• 56:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: It makes me I don't know.
• 56:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's how I read this character with a really affected accent.
• 56:30
  [SPEAKER_05]: He's like the definition of blouse like the frilly is top you never met.
• 56:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: And he's like, here's my muscular friend.
• 56:39
  [SPEAKER_05]: Kenny, I know you have a particular fondness for
• 56:48
  [SPEAKER_05]: just a big enough gum idiot, he was just his worst quality is that he's loyal to a false.
• 56:56
  [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, murder, probably, but like, so loyal.
• 56:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 57:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm kind of wondering if Professor X had just received word that Cain Marco was in Ireland.
• 57:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's like, oh, I could send the experiment over there really fuck up his day.
• 57:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, I'm kind of like, that's fucking funny.
• 57:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: I would not put a toss in, he's such a dick.
• 57:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: So this sets up a lot of delightful stories.
• 57:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love the tone shift in the story as well where we go from the very serious to the very silly campy superhero stuff all over again, right?
• 57:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Ireland is a fun place for them to visit.
• 57:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're gonna jump into this coming up in May.
• 57:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: We will continue the next X-Men story where we get the Juggernaut Black Tom kind of escapades in X-Men 102 103.
• 57:40
  [SPEAKER_17]: I just have to call out the fact that the narrator has now turned on Wolverine as opposed to Cyclops as being the person
• 57:48
  [SPEAKER_17]: And that color a little bit, too.
• 57:50
  [SPEAKER_17]: A little bit, but really hard on Wolverine.
• 57:53
  [SPEAKER_17]: I was like, he's like, Cyclops is crying in corner.
• 57:55
  [SPEAKER_17]: I'm going to be nice to him for a moment.
• 57:57
  [SPEAKER_17]: But fuck you, Wolverine.
• 57:58
  [SPEAKER_15]: Seth, the level of empathy you bring to Cyclops, not just the commanding presence, but also the feeling is phenomenal.
• 58:05
  [SPEAKER_15]: And did anybody else notice in Michelle's performance?
• 58:08
  [SPEAKER_15]: Like, when she put when Phoenix puts Gina in the cocoon, all of a sudden she went from this monotone performance, like, oh, no, here's what feelings are like.
• 58:17
  [SPEAKER_15]: Oh, my god, feelings.
• 58:18
  [SPEAKER_15]: love it.
• 58:19
  [SPEAKER_10]: I also just wanted to call out Seth because so people know I have a tumultuous relationship with Gene and Scott as characters but like being able to do these script readings with Seth I feel like it's like taking me to a new level and I really appreciated what you gave to the character because the beginning lines like gave me more inspiration for like
• 58:38
  [SPEAKER_10]: Oh, I actually am breaking sets heart a little bit.
• 58:41
  [SPEAKER_10]: I mean, Cyclops, but like it was just like nice to have that to play off of.
• 58:46
  [SPEAKER_10]: And even later in the in the issue, when I wasn't like speaking, and I was just listening.
• 58:51
  [SPEAKER_10]: There was like the whole crying section, and I was over here like, oh, my heart is breaking.
• 58:54
  [SPEAKER_10]: So yeah, I just appreciate that.
• 58:56
  [SPEAKER_10]: And I think you did a great job.
• 58:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's really funny to me that your husband in real life has been cast kind of as your dad while you've like flirt with all these boys and these calls Well acting Chad Speaking of I just want to say real quick again everybody killed it and it was fun hearing some new characters, but just to go back to that specific Xavier line where he loses his shit the reason I think
• 59:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: It was it was performed so well was because like it's a little short paragraph of a line and for 98% of that paragraph He was still like, you know, prudent calm dad Xavier and it was like the last two words that he was anger slipped in a way that was so delightful to hear
• 59:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: I had a delight producing this.
• 59:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's so fun revisiting these stories from my childhood with like talented nerds.
• 59:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: It brings me so much tremendous joy.
• 59:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot of really fun things happening in January on Great Malkin Lane.
• 59:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's nightcrawler month on the show.
• 59:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: So over on the Patreon, we're going to be doing major nightcrawler themed characters.
• 59:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: We've got nightcrawler stories on the main show with some excellent talent lined up, ending with the trial of Kaird Wagner at the end of the month.
• 1:00:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love this character.
• 1:00:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: I've always loved this character.
• 1:00:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's been really fun to reread his history.
• 1:00:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now, stay tuned immediately after this interview.
• 1:00:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: I have a conversation with the incredible shot in the choir after this.
• 1:00:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Follow the show at Grimmel, and under score lane, will Steve's deliver?
• 1:00:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I'm on most of the soap, we'll Instagram and Facebook and Twitter, and maybe one more than I'm forgetting, just as Sean Rohani.
• 1:00:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, always happy to,
• 1:00:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: to connect with people that way, things going on for any adventure time slash Fiona and cake fans.
• 1:00:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: I got to do some fun stuff on the second season of Fiona and cake.
• 1:00:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's out now.
• 1:00:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: So feel free to give that a watch if that's your thing.
• 1:00:37
  [SPEAKER_05]: Don't know if anything happened.
• 1:00:39
  [SPEAKER_05]: I don't know if I'm kind of grateful for it.
• 1:00:41
  [SPEAKER_05]: But are you going to find me on Instagram, can Chris?
• 1:00:44
  [SPEAKER_05]: I have links there to my wholesome content and spicy content, whichever floats your boat more.
• 1:00:51
  [SPEAKER_05]: Always, always a pleasure being on this show.
• 1:00:54
  [SPEAKER_05]: And I can't wait for the next one.
• 1:00:56
  [SPEAKER_19]: I might do, but if you're in Salt Lake and need a haircut, your butt hole waxed hit me up.
• 1:01:00
  [SPEAKER_19]: I'm on Instagram at Wambarber.
• 1:01:02
  [SPEAKER_19]: And you can find me there.
• 1:01:03
  [SPEAKER_19]: Bye, bye, my friend.
• 1:01:04
  [SPEAKER_19]: Give me a hug.
• 1:01:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks to all the things you could plug.
• 1:01:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: Not a die job.
• 1:01:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: right there.
• 1:01:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let's go, let's go harem scare them and then set.
• 1:01:15
  [SPEAKER_19]: I don't, I don't die about holes.
• 1:01:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean on harem scare us all day, it's my every, for my IG, as well as harem scare them costs on TikTok.
• 1:01:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if you guys are excited for any wicked things, I think the wicked is tapering off at this point.
• 1:01:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'll introduce, I'm going to be showing up in a few places as
• 1:01:39
  [SPEAKER_16]: I was thrown by all the bottles, just I, you can look at some X-Men art on my Instagram at a Cmart Hill.
• 1:01:46
  [SPEAKER_16]: I have no idea what I'm doing in January, so we'll stop there.
• 1:01:49
  [SPEAKER_14]: We are the X-Wife podcast.
• 1:01:51
  [SPEAKER_14]: You can find us on Instagram and do a spill it.
• 1:01:54
  [SPEAKER_14]: A THEXWIFE, like X-Men, not former wife.
• 1:01:58
  [SPEAKER_10]: Yeah, that's right.
• 1:02:00
  [SPEAKER_14]: It's delicious, line.
• 1:02:01
  [SPEAKER_10]: Right now, we would be in the middle of our inferno coverage where every month we're chatting with friends about three issues of inferno.
• 1:02:10
  [SPEAKER_10]: So if you want to join me as I read that story for the first time.
• 1:02:13
  [SPEAKER_14]: And we're probably looking back at the age of revelation event as a whole.
• 1:02:18
  [SPEAKER_14]: The current comics chaos of activity 10 years in the future.
• 1:02:23
  [SPEAKER_10]: Yeah.
• 1:02:24
  [SPEAKER_10]: And if you want to follow my cosplay, you can follow me on Instagram and TikTok at Wilder Moves.
• 1:02:30
  [SPEAKER_15]: Like you said, I'm Sean Beverage.
• 1:02:31
  [SPEAKER_15]: You can find me on Instagram at Cool Beverage.
• 1:02:34
  [SPEAKER_17]: Kevin Canary.
• 1:02:35
  [SPEAKER_17]: I'm on Instagram currently, but I don't really post much.
• 1:02:37
  [SPEAKER_17]: It's K-A-K-I-N-I-R-Y.
• 1:02:40
  [SPEAKER_17]: But more likely you'll hear me on podcasts or see me in person.
• 1:02:43
  [SPEAKER_17]: So, I force myself on to all these comic book podcasts now, making sure that I show up on gray mocking laying on a regular basis.
• 1:02:50
  [SPEAKER_17]: I'll be there for the trial of night crawler, which I've excited for.
• 1:02:54
  [SPEAKER_17]: Chad and I are doing something on the Patreon.
• 1:02:56
  [SPEAKER_17]: So if you're not a Patreon, you should be spending all the money for that.
• 1:03:00
  [SPEAKER_17]: Well, three dollars.
• 1:03:02
  [SPEAKER_17]: All three dollars, you are gonna get your money's worth it.
• 1:03:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Kevin and I are doing a weekly feature on the Patreon, called TimiWimey, where we talk about time travel stories.
• 1:03:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's been a blast so far.
• 1:03:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, stay tuned, we're having a good time.
• 1:03:15
  [SPEAKER_12]: Hi, so if you want to follow me on social media, I pray much Josh's bliss guy these days, it is a red-breasted Robin with a Y. I have already announced this on the Captain Britain read-alongs, which you must already be listening to, but if you are new, I will be moving to Japan and Mark as over our next recordings.
• 1:03:33
  [SPEAKER_12]: I will be coming to you for a completely different time zones, but if you follow me on social media, you will get to hear all of my experiences moving to the other side of the world.
• 1:03:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you did it.
• 1:03:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm so happy congratulations my friend.
• 1:03:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, look at you.
• 1:03:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: I can't wait to hear more.
• 1:03:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: All right, everybody.
• 1:03:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
• 1:03:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
• 1:03:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: We will see you back here in a few minutes for my interview was speaking of Sean McGuire.
• 1:03:55
  [SPEAKER_15]: It's not ex-related, but definitely check out her run on spider web.
• 1:03:58
  [SPEAKER_15]: That was also really good.
• 1:03:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Sean, it's incredible.
• 1:04:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: I get to talk to you about kinds of things.
• 1:04:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm excited.
• 1:04:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hello, I'm Sean and McWyer.
• 1:04:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: My pronouns are she her and this episode is actually dropping on my birthday.
• 1:04:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: So happy birthday to me and I what I love about night crawler is that he is in a sideways sort of way some of the most positive room or representation we've ever gotten in comics they are almost always going to be bad guys or aligned in some way with which craft when they show up at the big two.
• 1:04:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: and Kurt is just Kurt.
• 1:04:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love him.
• 1:04:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's been one of my favorites since I was reading X-Men comics as a child since I was watching, you know, the cartoons.
• 1:04:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: I used to tape my fingers together so I could try to figure out how his holding of things worked.
• 1:04:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: And by the way, it should not be nearly as good as it is.
• 1:04:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think one of his mutant powers is improbable dexterity.
• 1:04:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love people with tales.
• 1:04:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: I am closely enough aligned to the furry community that I've spent way too much time thinking about how do you redesign furniture for people with tales.
• 1:04:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I appreciate that most artists who work with him really understand the assignment.
• 1:05:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're like how detailed can we get with the tale bullshit.
• 1:05:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's
• 1:05:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's, there's, you know, you got to put like a hole at the top of the back of the pants for clothing.
• 1:05:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, there's, do we just need a hole in the back of all chairs?
• 1:05:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's where it's actually, it really so much depends on how the tails biologically function like are we talking lizard tails or we all get night crawler tails?
• 1:05:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: What?
• 1:05:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because that's going to influence how they bend and how they bend will be.
• 1:05:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do we put a hole?
• 1:05:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Can you sit on it?
• 1:05:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: What's going on?
• 1:05:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're looking at you Doreen Green for your squirrel girl fans out there.
• 1:05:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 1:05:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now you opened, let's, let's begin kind of where you began.
• 1:05:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that crawler being kind of the best, tangentially Romani character out there.
• 1:05:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Tell us what you mean by that.
• 1:05:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: What I mean is that a lot of the time in comics, if you have a Roma character show up at all, they've got to be tied to witchcraft, they've got to be tied to fortune telling, they've got to be tied to a lot of things that are ethnic stereotypes.
• 1:05:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: There are sometimes based in truth, but are not necessarily the only things the community wants to have repeated or wants to have reinterpreted by people outside the community, because Kurt grew up with Magali and Amanda, he is functionally in a lot of ways culturally Roma.
• 1:06:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think that's fair, even as like, uh, I mean, he's an adopted child basically, I don't think it's ever formalized legally, not that that matter much, but he's found or traded, depending on the story that you're spending on the market origins and grows up in a circus.
• 1:06:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Some portrayal of Romani life in Nightcrawler's childhood is usually one of two things.
• 1:06:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: We have a very happy childhood where he's performing with the circus.
• 1:06:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're not officially related.
• 1:06:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's performing for crowds that are cheering for him and then there's the other side where he's locked in cages.
• 1:06:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's beat up.
• 1:06:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's chased by people with torches.
• 1:06:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I think there is no way to avoid shifting origins with comic book characters because your childhood is not a fixed point.
• 1:06:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: There is no birth year associated with most of these characters.
• 1:07:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: I also think that I'm American Roma, so he was European, very much in that European area for his childhood, so it would not match up with anything I experienced.
• 1:07:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: That said, if you look at the art for some of the stuff with the crowds on the cages, they do dive pretty deep into racial caricatures for the background characters.
• 1:07:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: The happy childhood is closer to my experience, growing up with my family's carnivals and just sort of seeing how the people interacted we were there to make people happy.
• 1:07:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: But that can also be a sort of otherizing
• 1:07:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: necessarily a good thing.
• 1:07:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: So let's go back to your comic book origins for a moment if you would.
• 1:07:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I grew up well below the poverty line in in Western America.
• 1:07:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was born in California.
• 1:07:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: My mother lived in crappy little apartments with lots of cockroaches and two younger sisters.
• 1:07:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: My father lived in traveled with our families carnivals and during the summer I would go and live with him and live in a trailer and and do all of that.
• 1:07:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: But for most of the years with my mom and we
• 1:07:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: We were the kind of poor where you were legitimately choosing between my youngest sisters as my medication and being able to buy deodorant.
• 1:08:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Not fun, do not recommend it.
• 1:08:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: But when I was nine, a comic book store opened near my aunt Debbie's house called Flying Colors comics and up there cool stuff opened by Joe Field.
• 1:08:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: creator of free comic book day.
• 1:08:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: And Joe was very firmly of the opinion that some children were asshole, but children were people just like anyone else.
• 1:08:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so he didn't throw out unaccompanied minors if they were being respectful, if they were not trashing the store, he hired women to encourage more women to shop at his store, all of that.
• 1:08:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: And because he allowed unaccompanied minors, it was the first comic book store I could go to for more than five minutes.
• 1:08:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: because my youngest sister was seven years younger than me.
• 1:08:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: As nine, you can't really take a toddler to a comic book store for as long as the nine-year-old wants to browse.
• 1:08:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: It just doesn't work.
• 1:08:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I started shopping at flying colors with, again, no money.
• 1:08:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: I would dig quarters out of the couch periodically.
• 1:08:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Joe started when he saw me coming, slipping back issues of the X-Men into the quarter comic box.
• 1:08:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I would go digging through the quarter comics for hours on end and find every issue of X men he had hidden in there.
• 1:09:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: And with my two dollars, I would take home eight issues and just dig through those.
• 1:09:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And Joe absolutely cultivated a lifelong comics fan and not just me, but in a lot of people.
• 1:09:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I promised him when I was about 12 that when I was writing for Marvel, I would have my first signing at his store and I did.
• 1:09:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that is my comic book origin.
• 1:09:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: That and my mother brought home a giant steamer trunk of old Warren magazine from a yard sale once.
• 1:09:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: You mentioned the carnival in your upbringing as welcome to sometimes stereotypes or real my dad's side of the family runs carnival.
• 1:09:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: That is what we do as
• 1:09:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: a family business.
• 1:09:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I would travel with them during the summer.
• 1:09:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: I know how to take a part and put together most common forms of Ferris wheel.
• 1:09:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: I know what if you're ever at a carnival with me and I tell you you can't ride something in that moment I am the boss of you.
• 1:09:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because I am aware of how the maintenance needs on most of our major rides work and can probably tell you whether or not something has been maintained properly.
• 1:10:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: The difference between a carnival and a circus is animal acts.
• 1:10:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Circuses have animal acts carnivals do not.
• 1:10:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: So while you may occasionally get some of those hitch trailer side shows, the common see the world's biggest snake, those are almost all privately owned, and they just kind of hook up with us for state fairs in the like.
• 1:10:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I was functionally feral for most of my childhood ran away to join the carnival every year.
• 1:10:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: I assume you're talking about feral, the furry character from X-Borse.
• 1:10:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, I'm totally completely uncontrolled and uncontained.
• 1:10:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: You were a wild child, I love it.
• 1:10:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: So let's begin today then with your first night crawler work.
• 1:10:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: You got to do a five-issue night crawler solo series during the bizarre age of ex-man event.
• 1:10:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: The age of ex-man for listeners, Nate Gray, I don't don't worry about it, has revamped the entire world and rewritten reality.
• 1:10:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: To create one where characters have a different way to shine, but there's a lot of things going odd here, mutants are on top, but intimacy is not permitted and Kurt is living his best life.
• 1:11:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: He is Errol Flynn in this world, which is always something that's been very true to the heart of this character.
• 1:11:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: There is real mancing megan.
• 1:11:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's some really great character usage here.
• 1:11:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I want to take just a second to defend the age of X man, which you call the bizarre.
• 1:11:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love it.
• 1:11:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: I really love it.
• 1:11:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it's the age of X man.
• 1:11:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you look at the writers on that whole event, that was the most diverse writers room the X man has ever had multiple people of color, multiple queer people, you know, all coming together to make this big, weird, wonderful world that I don't think would have been nearly as weird or nearly as immersive if it had been a narrower writers room.
• 1:11:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: But unfortunately, age of X man happened right before the Hickman crossover.
• 1:11:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: We all did it kind of thinking there would be time to dwell on the ramifications and maybe dig a little bit into some of the things that we had done to these characters.
• 1:11:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is who you could be under very different circumstances.
• 1:11:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is what you had the potential for and we're done with that.
• 1:12:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the work is the work and the quality, though, I agree.
• 1:12:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm a friend of several of the people who were working on those books, amazing creators.
• 1:12:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, the work on those books was just spectacular.
• 1:12:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Everybody was putting their whole heart into what they were doing.
• 1:12:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was approached to do that.
• 1:12:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: I had been doing one shot with the ex office for a little while there.
• 1:12:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And they asked, yo, hey, do you want to be part of the age of X-Man event?
• 1:12:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: And pretty much any time I am asked if I want to do anything X-Men related, I have said yes before they finish explaining what they want me to do that sounds fake, but really the first time I got an email saying, hey, would you like to write for the X-Men?
• 1:12:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: I couldn't speak for two hours afterward.
• 1:12:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: I just kept making a high-pitched bat noises.
• 1:12:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: So they asked me do you want to write a nightcrawler mini?
• 1:12:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I said yes, I would like to write a nightcrawler mini, of course.
• 1:12:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then we got to pick who our teams were effectively out of the people that had been pulled into the event, but I was very lucky and got pretty much everyone I wanted.
• 1:12:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: I specifically wanted a couple co-coos because one of the rules of age of X-Man was that families didn't exist anymore.
• 1:13:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Children were all built in a factory, and if you had pre-existing familial relationships from before the start of this perfect world, because there was a point of divergence in the past, which means that all of these old concepts were still there if you dug back,
• 1:13:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: far enough, you were supposed to ignore them.
• 1:13:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: You were supposed to deny them.
• 1:13:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the nature of the Kukus powers didn't make that possible.
• 1:13:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I kind of wanted to bring that in since we were in a way unothering Kurt by making his mutation no longer a function of what kept him separate from society.
• 1:13:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: but we sat in a little diner outside of New York Comic-Con, having breakfast and arguing with each other about who was gonna do what?
• 1:13:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: I kept being the least popular kid in the group project by pointing out that in a world where there is no God, you can't say my God, that does not work.
• 1:13:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Also, not Kurt, I know that this is your book, honey, I know that I'm only writing Kurt's book, but you have Kurt popping in and calling someone frontline, which is absolutely lovely and very accurate to Kurt,
• 1:14:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: The conflict that Curtis facing in your book.
• 1:14:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do you want to talk a little about the hero's dirty hands up on here because Curtis always want to fight against the establishment And he's learning things about himself in this new reality.
• 1:14:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: So Kurt in the amazing night crawler mini series has everything he's ever wanted
• 1:14:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: he is this great film hero and he's getting to act to do the celebrity form of heroism rather than necessarily the going out and punching people form of heroism where he can change lives by being kind and acknowledging people and helping them get into the gala or making sure that they're not being socially picked on.
• 1:14:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: That was really nice to let Kirk have his moment of
• 1:14:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's a very social man.
• 1:14:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: He likes people, which is great.
• 1:14:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: But Megan is right there and they were as they always are kind of being pulled toward each other.
• 1:14:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And inevitably they stumble, which is great fun.
• 1:14:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: But we also got to deal with the question of how often has this happened before because it is heavily implied if not actively stated that this is not the first time Kurt and Megan have broken through their brain washing and started banging.
• 1:15:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: and they just get brainwiped every single time, and it's all taken away.
• 1:15:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: But they have it some point in the past, had a child.
• 1:15:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: And she has just been sort of vanished.
• 1:15:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And she shows up again, and it's a great, great fund.
• 1:15:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: We got to reference the exiles run with nocturn a little bit, though, obviously.
• 1:15:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is not nocturn, wrong mother, a wrong timeline.
• 1:15:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: But it's...
• 1:15:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Wonderful, it's a great read, and when you put it in the wider event, it's just a really fun, very alternate world for our heroes.
• 1:15:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now, Shonen has written a bunch of content all over the place, focusing just on your Marvel work.
• 1:15:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think you're best known probably for taking the reins on Spider-Gwen and bringing her into kind of a new era of storytelling.
• 1:15:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: She's been a very lasting character for several years, but for X-Men fans, Shonen has written what if one
• 1:15:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: We've got the campfire songs that you did in Fearless, we're Storm and Aurora show up.
• 1:15:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: We've got X-Men Black Mistique, which I think is my single favorite issue that I've read of yours.
• 1:15:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we even have Kitty's Summer Camp friend, Asher Cross with your X-Men Unlimited story.
• 1:16:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: You seem to really enjoy Summer Camp.
• 1:16:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's one thing my notice.
• 1:16:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: So interestingly, the only one of those summer camps that I pitched is the fearless one, where they said we would like you to come and do the lead story for this female centered, many series that we're doing.
• 1:16:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's all about the strong women of Marvel.
• 1:16:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: We really want you to include Miss Marvel and focus on a setting where you can bring all these people together.
• 1:16:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so that kind of turned into the female empowerment summer camp.
• 1:16:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: The Kitty Pride's first kiss at summer camp was the pitch given to me by the editors of what they wanted done.
• 1:16:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: That was an interesting job, both because it was my first time as completely overwhelmed the whole time.
• 1:16:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: When I wrote the description for panel number one, I literally started crying just because I am a very weirdly emotional person.
• 1:16:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like I am Romeo and And Juliet over here.
• 1:16:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I will cry at the drop of the hat.
• 1:16:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I literally wrote page one panel one and just sat there weeping for a little while because I was actually getting to do this.
• 1:17:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Everyone I've ever known who's got a job at Marvel is felt the same.
• 1:17:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: I remember getting my first paycheck with Spider-Man on it and like tears breaking out in my eyes.
• 1:17:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's like a very special feeling for people.
• 1:17:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: I find that most of the time there is a core of something I understand in anything I write.
• 1:17:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: When they had me come in to do the Mistique One Shop for X-Men Black, which was a
• 1:17:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: whole series of issues focusing on individual villains.
• 1:17:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I was very glad that Leah Williams got to do the Emma Frost for that because if it had been anyone other than Leah and not me, I would probably have had a very small riot.
• 1:17:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: I worked for Magic the Gathering now a lot of the time and we joke that I will start hunting other magic authors for sport if they get assignments that I would
• 1:17:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: wanted, but when I was brought in to do Misty, that I really leaned on my time in a musical theater program, and the length some people would go to to hone their art.
• 1:17:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was thinking of Sophie Devaro really from leverage most of the time when writing raven.
• 1:17:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Just, you know, oh no, commit.
• 1:17:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Just commit.
• 1:17:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's all that matters.
• 1:17:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it was all about the intricacies of her art.
• 1:18:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: I do wish we'd ever gotten to see Collier Brena again, the little mutant who poisoned everyone.
• 1:18:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: She didn't mean to.
• 1:18:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: X-Men Black Mystique is excellent.
• 1:18:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think it's hard to write a good Mystique.
• 1:18:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: You write Mystique as tongue-in-cheek, as messing with people, as like very purpose-driven and causing chaos along the way.
• 1:18:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think it's very very smart.
• 1:18:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Did you enjoy getting into the head of Raven Dark home?
• 1:18:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: I really did, it was a lot of fun.
• 1:18:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, you mentioned what if Peter Parker and Wanda Maximoff were siblings, which is not a comic, it is part of the Marvel novel line, but that is really a great illustration of how I work in basically all contexts, which is I am purely character-driven.
• 1:18:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: I will take any given character and follow what they're doing to its logical outcome, even if that doesn't cover them in glory, and even if it makes them look kind of horrible.
• 1:18:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Though ironically, there is a similar outburst in both age of expanse night crawler in what of Peter Parker and Wonder Mac's mom for siblings, which is there's a point in night crawler where Kurt and Meghan are talking and she's talking about how even before the world changed.
• 1:19:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Even when he still had to hide because he was a mutant, she knew what it was like, and now she still has to hide even though he doesn't, because racism is a factor.
• 1:19:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Marvel did not blink at Meghan basically breaking down why the most commonly used colloquialism for the Roma people is a slur and explaining it in detail on the page.
• 1:19:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Penguin Ranna House did a little bit when there was a similar breakdown with Wanda because a boy at school calls her a filthy slur and she shows him down a flight of stairs and they didn't have a problem with her acting violently.
• 1:19:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: They had a problem with pointing out the racism.
• 1:19:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: That was interesting.
• 1:19:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, let's take a break to talk about Romani people.
• 1:19:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Recognizing you have your own journey here, I am not Romani.
• 1:19:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is an area of cultural sensitivity that I don't even know I was aware of until about 10 years ago.
• 1:19:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: When you start to become more aware of it and I became aware of it in some of the controversy with what Peter David was saying about Romani people publicly.
• 1:20:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: which was a helpful for me as an academic and as a reader to understand some of the stories I'd always read about characters like the Scarlet Witch or Margarli Shardos etc.
• 1:20:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: and why some of those become problematic.
• 1:20:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: giving a brief history and Shana does not speak for all Romani people.
• 1:20:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: I really do not.
• 1:20:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: But you're an incredible robotic creator.
• 1:20:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the Roman era people are a diverse ethnic group whose ancestors migrated from Northern India around the 10th to 12th centuries Gradually moving through the Middle East and into Europe.
• 1:20:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: By the late Middle Ages, they were present across most of Europe, where they quickly became targets of suspicion and discriminatory laws.
• 1:20:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: From the 15th to 19th centuries, many Romanic groups faced enslavement, especially in the Romanian principalities, where Roma were legally enslaved for centuries.
• 1:20:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: throughout early modern Europe Romani people experienced expulsions forced assimilation, child removals, forced labor, and bands on language and movement.
• 1:20:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is the unfortunate history of so many oppressed groups across world history.
• 1:21:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: They were frequently portrayed as criminals or outsiders, which fed public hostility and state persecution.
• 1:21:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: During World War II, the Nazi Germany and its collaborators carried out the Porosmos or the Romani genocide, which killed about
• 1:21:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: murdered in camps and in mass killings, after the war discrimination continued with forced sterilization, segregation in schools, police harassment, systemic exclusion from housing and employment occurred in various countries, notably in parts of Central and Eastern Europe.
• 1:21:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Today there's still oppression going on, anti-Jipsyism, sometimes called or anti-Romani racism, social-martialization, hate crimes, unequal access to education, health care employment,
• 1:21:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I know that's a lot of heavy history to reckon with for a moment.
• 1:21:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: We read all of these stories that were written in the 456Ds that kind of set up our modern understanding.
• 1:21:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: So if we're just looking at Marvel Comics, Romani people are very often associated with mysticism and kind of wandering, joyful, beautiful women dancing,
• 1:22:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's this kind of like happy family environment associated almost with an innocence that's there to be taken.
• 1:22:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: So they're often the characters where violence is committed against them.
• 1:22:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: But they're often characters who are rising up from oppression, which is kind of the Dr. Doom story in his own way.
• 1:22:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's become an oppressor for many, but he rose from this place of oppression.
• 1:22:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: Shut up, I'm happy to hear whatever you have to say on any of this, but let me toss a couple of the tropes that we often see in comic books, in relation to Romani people in the way they are portrayed.
• 1:22:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: A lot of these are problematic, some of them are very joyful, and we have an ongoing conversation on this show about representation and how it's really important for the while also recognizing the fallback or the drawback of the way that it's often done historically, right?
• 1:22:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: We have one trope that I see most frequently, maybe, is the fortune teller who's kind of always ready with a curse.
• 1:22:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: And this covers characters like Dr. Doom's mother and Margotlee Shardos and others.
• 1:22:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I will say if I could curse people, I'd have cursed a lot of people before I hit adulthood.
• 1:22:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I feel it is one of the more negative tropes that clings around.
• 1:23:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: do find a lot of Roma fortune tellers culturally we developed the taro deck we developed a lot of fortune telling mechanisms because when you are not allowed to have a job when you cannot find employment what you need is something that you can quickly set up by the side of the road make some money with and then disappear.
• 1:23:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: If I come to your house and I tell your fortune as a wandering fortune teller, I can tell you anything, you can't prove it.
• 1:23:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've just told you you're going to have wealth and joy and you've given me a big dip and then I run away and you catch the plague, you're not hunting me down six towns over.
• 1:23:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: So it's not necessarily honest work.
• 1:23:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was work that happened quite a bit.
• 1:23:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And as I mentioned earlier, sometimes stereotypes are based in truth.
• 1:23:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've got at least one aunt who's a full-time fortune teller with our shows.
• 1:23:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's just what she does.
• 1:23:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: That said, Roma fortune tellers are kind of done to death at this point.
• 1:23:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: It'd be like if every white guy representative in comics, every single one was a Starbucks barista, all of them, no exceptions.
• 1:24:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we've kind of hammered that into the ground and it is so frequently used as an opportunity to justify racism.
• 1:24:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, she put the evil eye on.
• 1:24:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, she looked at me funny.
• 1:24:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: She was thinking about putting the evil eye on me.
• 1:24:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I better beater with sticks before she put the evil eye on me.
• 1:24:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, and we did a show on which craft lest fall where we talked about the three tropes of like made in mother Cron and when you apply that Margali space, like that's the second question, we see the trope of the exotic dancer or the seductress, but once they become the parents, I think we often see stories of Romani mothers abandoning or being
• 1:24:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: cool to their children in a particular way.
• 1:24:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: We see stories in Disney all the time where these types of tropes are explored, including in the Tangled one, which very strongly seems to have certain amount of ties.
• 1:24:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know what your thoughts on that are.
• 1:24:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: But let me hear your thoughts on the exotic dance or kind of seductress trope.
• 1:24:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: Again, the chrome being the fortune teller is what I'm getting.
• 1:24:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, I can see that I can again only speak from the American Roma experience and I was only living part time with my father's family.
• 1:25:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: But when I was with dad, we had much stricter rules for dress behavior compartment than I did when I was running around in the apartment complex with mom.
• 1:25:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: The Roma seductress is really a trope that arose as an excuse for committing sexual assault on Roma women that you wouldn't be held to standards for having heard.
• 1:25:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, she seduced me.
• 1:25:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: She wouldn't let you see her ankles.
• 1:25:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: But she seduced me.
• 1:25:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm certain that there are people who saw dancing at a wedding or managed to come to a company while we were, you know, doing stuff and saw things that they thought justified it, but really the Roma women are hot, soul-tree, seductive, I can't resist it, I can't stay away, is less about the Roma women and more about them in looking for an excuse to hurt someone that they will not be held to terms for hurting.
• 1:25:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: uncomfortable history that we're going to see the parallels quickly.
• 1:25:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now I'm going to take myself back to one of my favorite Disney movies growing up was Robin Hood and there's a scene that I laughed and laughed and laughed over where Robin Hood and Little John, the Fox and the Bear, dressed up as a Romani women and they go into Prince John the Lion and they pretend to read his fortune but really they're just there to steal all the gold.
• 1:26:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a wrap-up story and there's all kinds of tropes related to gender and these are animals which
• 1:26:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: to a weird place as well.
• 1:26:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: But that takes me to the third trope, which is the the the the grifter, even kind of the beggar child, I think falls in here a little bit as well.
• 1:26:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, almost as though we're saying these people that are living in poverty and slavement, they're gonna steal from you, right?
• 1:26:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do you want to talk about that trope?
• 1:26:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: That is probably the most common trope.
• 1:26:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: That is what roots the whole lot of anti-Roma racism in America.
• 1:26:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: We don't have as much here, I think, because we are not as recognized as an ethnic group.
• 1:26:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: I actually had a teacher in elementary school tell me that she didn't have to be sensitive about how she portrayed Roma in stories because they didn't exist anymore.
• 1:26:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I've met multiple people who really thought that Roma were fantasy creatures like elves.
• 1:27:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'd love it if I were an elf.
• 1:27:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: That would be great, but no.
• 1:27:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: It is again very, very easy to blame things that you would normally get in trouble for on the wandering group that has just passed through.
• 1:27:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And hungry people will steal.
• 1:27:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: I am not, I'm trying to be very careful here to avoid bad sound clips, but I am not claiming that there has never been theory or grift associated with Roma groups.
• 1:27:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: That is absolutely
• 1:27:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely historically happened because you were talking as you said about people who are impoverished being kept in slavery Being accused of things all the time if I know we take all your resources away and then punish you for feeding your family Yeah, yeah, we had an issue a couple of years ago in France where somebody was setting a Vardo on fire while the families were inside
• 1:27:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: And when a reporter asked the president of France about this, president of France was basically, if they didn't want to be set on fire, they shouldn't have been dirty gypsies.
• 1:27:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that is still such a strong prevailing opinion.
• 1:27:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm gonna say, absolutely there's been theory in the past 100%, but so much of it was in fire in the past.
• 1:28:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no.
• 1:28:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: So much of it was environmentally motivated.
• 1:28:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: And if I give you a sandwich, you're not going to steal it.
• 1:28:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: So as a trope, it may be based to a certain degree in reality, it may have those roots.
• 1:28:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it is still something we should not be writing.
• 1:28:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: We should be moving away from.
• 1:28:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: You'll notice I'm very, very careful about using the slower unless it's a direct quote.
• 1:28:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: That is because when I was 17, my uncle sat me down and said, Mira, you look white.
• 1:28:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's your culture, it's your heritage, but when you say it, all the other white girls here that they can say it too.
• 1:28:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the word we're talking about is GYPSY, right?
• 1:28:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Which gets so confused all over the place right at the end.
• 1:28:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: proper name.
• 1:28:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a broad way, you know, broad way fundraiser every year.
• 1:28:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm sure it's a new character.
• 1:28:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: It is genuinely the equivalent of take any slurry you want below the big nuclear ones and start substituting that mentally.
• 1:28:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: and the cultural consequence of using those types of words.
• 1:29:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Fourth trope I'll mention is the kind of hot blooded or untamable man, which is a lesser used one, but we see it in comics quite often.
• 1:29:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Balanced by another trope, which I think is kind of like the kidnapper.
• 1:29:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: formative masculinity is a real thing culturally.
• 1:29:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've never been a part of that for pretty obvious reasons, but that is a trope that goes back to at least the 1600s because that's the earliest version of Blackjack debut we have, and that is one of those that is both used as an excuse.
• 1:29:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: by white men for assaulting Roman men because oh he was he was hot blooded he was scary he was going to touch my woman and by women who find themselves in bed with Roman men to explain that they had no choice in the matter so it's
• 1:29:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: frequently used in a negative sense, but if someone is kidnapping people, that's negative anyway, so I'm not going to say that that is one that is doing a huge amount of harm right now.
• 1:29:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Blackjack Davy is a classic English folk ballad about a woman who is basically swept off her feet by a Roman man and falls completely in love with him and then he leaves and so she spends the rest of her life pining or he takes her with him and her husband spends the rest of his life pining and writing the hills looking for his lady.
• 1:30:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we're going to take their women in their after hours is kind of usually the the mess in these their store lines.
• 1:30:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I mean, we've we've had issues even as recently as a couple years ago where people called in reports that a aroma family in Dublin, Ireland had stolen children and they came and took those children away from their family and didn't give them back until DNA testing showed that those blonde children had come out of their Roma parents.
• 1:30:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: It happens.
• 1:30:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it happens more since World War II, because a lot of the Roman women who survived the camp survived pregnant, we have a lot of German blood culturally in us now that we did not ask for, but you follow that down to generations and you are going to get blonde children popping out of dark-haired parents.
• 1:30:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: That is.
• 1:30:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: just how wartime aftermaths were.
• 1:31:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: The final trope I mentioned in this is the one that I think is the most positive or heartfelt is the portrayal of the family and Romani culture.
• 1:31:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: You kind of get this idea of joyful, free spirited.
• 1:31:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: We dance, we work hard.
• 1:31:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think of images of Wanda and Pietro's upbringing with the maxim off, right?
• 1:31:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Which is sometimes problematic because I don't know their dad becomes a mad puppeteer at a certain
• 1:31:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: their patrols of their early childhood are often them surviving in this wholesome loving family environment.
• 1:31:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, it's the oppression of the outside world that is the threat consistently.
• 1:31:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: The family unit as it is often represented is as idealized as the American nuclear family on the sitcoms.
• 1:31:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, here is the best way this could possibly go.
• 1:31:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: no one's getting hit and no one's going to bed hungry.
• 1:31:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: There is a lot of favoring of male children in Roma households.
• 1:31:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: So if you're a girl, you're probably working hard from the time you're six or so.
• 1:31:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I like to joke about knowing how to fix Ferris wheels, but I was fixed in Ferris wheels when I was 10.
• 1:32:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: that is just a part of how we do things.
• 1:32:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: But when you are in a state of cultural oppression and when you are in a state of trying to survive attempts at erasure all the time, you kind of have to work hard.
• 1:32:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: You don't have a huge amount of choice on that.
• 1:32:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: I do think that by continually idealizing what the family unit looks like, you are kind of creating a situation where people who need help might not be able to get it.
• 1:32:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: That said, I also feel like ceasing the idealization is just going to feed into the people that want to take our children.
• 1:32:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, look, they have such miserable lives.
• 1:32:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let us take them away from their horrible, oppressive, awful parents and give them a nice safe life that will just coincidentally erase all traces of this culture we don't care for.
• 1:32:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so I'm gonna give you some characters.
• 1:32:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I'd love to hear you just hear one two take.
• 1:32:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: First one, Luna Maximum.
• 1:32:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Luna.
• 1:32:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: a quick silver's daughter.
• 1:32:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, okay, that's filling the interview.
• 1:32:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: She would be a maxim off.
• 1:32:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: I never really took her as one.
• 1:32:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Luna's fine.
• 1:32:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: She was really a non-entity most of the time that I encountered her.
• 1:33:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that putting her in a position where you have to fight between the other ring of inhuman and mutant all the time.
• 1:33:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: They've just layered too many oppressions on this kid.
• 1:33:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: They give her powers, quicksover, give her the targing crystals, and now she's like a great empath that she like senses and manipulates emotions and energy.
• 1:33:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
• 1:33:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 1:33:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 1:33:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: What about Germaine Shardos or Amanda Scepton?
• 1:33:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Germaine is a beautiful example of Marvel attempting to reconcile some fairly racist tropes with the fact that that character is now immutably tied to the rest of the canon and can't really be taken out.
• 1:33:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: I like her.
• 1:33:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: I feel for her.
• 1:33:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: I would love to write her at some point.
• 1:33:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do you like her relationship with her?
• 1:33:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: I do like her relationship with her.
• 1:33:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: I do.
• 1:33:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: I do.
• 1:33:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: I really like it.
• 1:33:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: uh... margali shardos margali is one hundred and seventy three percent based on clichés and stereotype and that woman would have benefited a thousand folds from ever allowing a roma writer to even look at the outlines of my her stay tuned we're doing a margali focused episode over on the character channel everyone uh... that a dear friend joining me for that conversation uh... how about as marelda from the hunchback of notes for dot
• 1:34:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Esmeralda is causing me massive cognitive dissonance because she's not Roma.
• 1:34:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: She's read the hunchback of Notre Dame.
• 1:34:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: She is an adopted Gajegarol that wound up with the family.
• 1:34:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think she was the replacement for quasi-Moto.
• 1:34:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: quasi-Moto is the Roma character in hunchback of Notre Dame.
• 1:34:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: movie and book, but in the Disney movie, he is a fairer-skinned redhead, while as Marelda is very much their Roma character.
• 1:34:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that in the Disney movie, she is beautiful, and it's lovely for Roma girls to have a princess effectively, because those are very aspirational when you're a kid, but she's also a great big sack of stereotypes all tied up with a pretty jangly bow.
• 1:34:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I am very fraught on the topic of as Marelda.
• 1:34:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I will sing God Save the Outcast
• 1:34:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: What the maximum?
• 1:34:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love Wanda.
• 1:34:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Though again, we're back to to conflict.
• 1:35:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have not voluntarily watched an MCU movie with Elizabeth Olson in it.
• 1:35:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: One, it is not viewed as a racer to cast a white girl as a Roma character, and two, some of the statements that she made during filming, which is like, oh, she has bleep style.
• 1:35:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, no, she doesn't.
• 1:35:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: She is.
• 1:35:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Anything want to wear is should be bleep style because that's her ethnic makeup.
• 1:35:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Why is this okay when casting any other cross-race thing would actually be a conversation at the very least?
• 1:35:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
• 1:35:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: But Wanda is a beautiful character.
• 1:35:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes she's handled really really well.
• 1:35:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes she's handled really really badly.
• 1:35:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes I strongly disagree with the things that her done with her.
• 1:35:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you can see how her powers have evolved from that initial.
• 1:35:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, she gave me the evil eye with the way her hex bolts worked in the beginning.
• 1:35:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: to a much more complicated, convoluted, less stereotyped application of Roman magic.
• 1:35:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Dr. Doom, I love Robert Downey Jr. Can we go back in time and convince him not to take that part with him?
• 1:35:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: But Dr. Doom is, again, you know, I talk about negative stereotypes and how we should really move away from those.
• 1:36:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I'm totally fine with the fact that he's a bad guy because his bad guyness doesn't play into any specific racial stereotypes.
• 1:36:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not saying you have to lose an entire group of people from your possible bad guy toolbox just make them bad guys for other reasons and his other reasons are lovely.
• 1:36:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Dr. Doom is a terrible party in a terrible box and sometimes I just want to smack him and that's what you should want out of a villain.
• 1:36:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: will close out a character.
• 1:36:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: I know you adore.
• 1:36:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: What are your thoughts on Megan?
• 1:36:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love Megan too, Daph.
• 1:36:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: I am so like I think it's really funny in a way that we have never really taken the time to stop and look at or at least not in any space that I've seen that the living spirit of Britain is now a Ramana child woman.
• 1:36:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: who is being forced socially to pretend to be a white woman.
• 1:36:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I love Megan, white passing Roma and white passing Roma, and actually absolutely exist, white passing Roma, and even more common than white passing Roma.
• 1:37:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: But the fact that for her to sit to achieve societal acceptance, she had to turn herself into basically a...
• 1:37:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: cliche image of a British white woman.
• 1:37:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like I think she's beautiful.
• 1:37:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: She's drawn to be beautiful.
• 1:37:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I had a big poster of Megan on my wall when I was in middle school.
• 1:37:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: And because she is blonde Ramana Chau, which is not the same as Ramana, but is close enough for my purposes.
• 1:37:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: She was the first comic book character I'd ever seen who looked like me.
• 1:37:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that was so powerful.
• 1:37:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I love her so much.
• 1:37:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: but she still looks like Captain Britain's white dream.
• 1:37:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: She has never been allowed to step back and be like, you know what, no, this is what I think I look like.
• 1:37:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: Megan historically, she's an empathic shapeshifter if we're oversimplifying and she's part fairy, which is another thing, but she adapts herself to kind of what she thinks people around her needs.
• 1:37:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: She'll take on their appearance.
• 1:37:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's been times when she's going through trauma and she just will kind of blur herself out of reality a little bit.
• 1:37:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's all these examples of her not being a real agent of Will.
• 1:37:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm smiling fondly thinking of a teeny Howard writing her and her very cheeky daughter in the, you know, Excalibur a few years ago.
• 1:38:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: But when you wrote Megan, much like when you wrote Kurt, you got to write a very self-possessed character.
• 1:38:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Someone who was living the best version of life for her.
• 1:38:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: I loved watching you tackle this character and that relationship.
• 1:38:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it was a lot of fun, but no Megan is wonderful.
• 1:38:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: I wish Marvel did more with her.
• 1:38:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I do wish that we had a way to have that conversation in comics, not because I think that she should be completely redesigned.
• 1:38:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: The way she is is perfectly valid, but that is a conversation, just why do you have to be this, to be happy?
• 1:38:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: When we talk about Knight Crawler, Knight Crawler is a complicated character.
• 1:38:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I think what we're saying about Romani characters often is let's let them be complicated as well, right?
• 1:38:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Nicolae Swashbuckler and tortured Catholic and superhero and Errol Flynn all at the same time.
• 1:38:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: In the body of the kind of a blue guy that doesn't fit in with the world, but he's also a sex symbol, right?
• 1:39:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Why can't we let these characters be all of the things that
• 1:39:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was genuinely upset when they announced Robert Downey Jr. Again, I love him as an actor.
• 1:39:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a page on Wikipedia for racelifting, which is the term for I'm going to cast you in the movie and I'm going to cast Cory from Star Kid who is a black man to play you in the movie.
• 1:39:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's racelifting.
• 1:39:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And normally you have to explain why you're doing it.
• 1:39:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a whole conversation about why did I feel the need to cast an Asian woman as blank?
• 1:39:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: really she is one of Marvel's only Hispanic mutants.
• 1:39:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, why did I feel the need to do this?
• 1:39:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: When it's a Roma character and they cast a white actor, there's never a conversation.
• 1:39:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's just kind of taken as written that you can't find Roma actors.
• 1:39:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: You absolutely can.
• 1:39:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: we absolutely do exist but people just don't want to take the time to look and it is not the same for all that I have had this argument before as casting straight actors as gay characters because sexuality is fluid.
• 1:39:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: There have been times in my life when I identify it as bisexual and times when I've identified as lesbian.
• 1:40:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was not lying either time that is just where I was
• 1:40:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't get to wake up tomorrow and say that I now identify as Polish when I have no Polish heritage.
• 1:40:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: I could move to Poland and become culturally Polish, but I cannot become ethnically Polish.
• 1:40:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, ethnic identity and sexual identity are completely different.
• 1:40:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so often we have to identify because of how society frames us into these things.
• 1:40:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: I do think these conversations, these educational conversations are really valuable.
• 1:40:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: We want to be in a safe space, and I want you to come on and talk about any character anytime, right?
• 1:40:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let's talk about Wolverine next time, not just the Romani stuff, but I do really appreciate you coming into share your voice, the passion you have for these characters and the way that you have been able to portray them.
• 1:40:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: really puts you up, we put up kind of a ranking system where we see, oh look at this character, the way this person who is a talented writer, but also Romani, look at how they got them correct.
• 1:41:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Look at what you do when we create rooms full of diversity and that makes these conversations really important because you're extremely talented, my friend.
• 1:41:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
• 1:41:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's also that so there are stories that are not mine.
• 1:41:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, again, I've brought up several times because this is not visual that I am white passing Roma in America.
• 1:41:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: I have complete access to white privilege.
• 1:41:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: I am white everywhere I go in Europe.
• 1:41:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: My bone structure gives me a way and I actually get to she says as if it were a good thing, but I'm actually forced to experience what racism feels like in a way that I would never have access to in America.
• 1:41:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that changes the stories I can tell.
• 1:41:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: I should not tell the story of a darker skinned Roma person who does not pass, trying to move through the school system in America and have focused heavily on the racism.
• 1:41:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: I did some of that with Wanda in the book, just basing off of things that my brothers experienced because they are darker than I am and that I had experienced from people who knew what my ethnic background was.
• 1:41:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: you know, there are places that it's better to have own voices in the room because even if the experience we write looks exactly the same, you know, it's coming from a different place and that's going to change how I read.
• 1:42:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: I would love for you to share with folks who are some of your favorite favorite characters in the X-Men that inspired you as a kid.
• 1:42:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's actually two questions because the ones that inspired me as a kid, Emma Frost, I love Emma.
• 1:42:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Emma is simultaneously a beautiful example of using modern logic to justify previous choices, the fact that we found out 20 years after she was introduced that she dresses the way she does because it throws people off their guard.
• 1:42:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's absolutely a doylist explanation for a Watsonian experience, but it makes sense for her.
• 1:42:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And she has always been one of my favorite girls.
• 1:42:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: But for the longest time, you could predict who was going to die in a new ex-title by who I fell him up with first.
• 1:42:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Surpept.
• 1:42:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Martina, mutant power, flexible bones, they killed her by snapping her neck.
• 1:42:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Blink, she's perfect, what do you mean she just warped herself out of existence to try to stop them?
• 1:42:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, I'm not gonna fall in love at all, sigh for oh, he's perfect, oh he's dead, though he lasted longer than a lot of them did.
• 1:43:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Anymore, my favorite X-Men, a lot of them are more recent, I love the Stepford Kukus.
• 1:43:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: They are one of my very favorite things.
• 1:43:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: You like some subtlety in your characters.
• 1:43:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: You do.
• 1:43:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: You like a complex identity and like a power that you have to think around a little bit.
• 1:43:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's got to work.
• 1:43:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: I like a complex identity.
• 1:43:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love the fact that 90% of people get Emma Frost completely wrong.
• 1:43:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you can start from a place of being completely wrong and still write a believable Emma.
• 1:43:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's how you know it's a good character.
• 1:43:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: I never liked Jean Grey very much.
• 1:43:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Her primary personality in the hands of most writers becomes girl.
• 1:43:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: She's just there to be the girl.
• 1:43:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: And for that to be her personality, all of the other female members of the team have to be brought down because otherwise they are competing for girl.
• 1:43:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that just did not make me happy.
• 1:43:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love Taro, she's great in Kat's paw.
• 1:43:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm literally looking up at the first ever appearance of Emma Frost, the big X-Men B.
• 1:44:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Where the White Queen poster with the heliens behind her, which I have above my desk framed.
• 1:44:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's older than I am, it makes me very happy.
• 1:44:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: And of course, he'll Megan.
• 1:44:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love Megan.
• 1:44:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was very fond of Kitty Pride for a long time, but more recent iterations of Kitty, she's just getting more and more Deus Ex Machina.
• 1:44:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: They can use her to solve any problem.
• 1:44:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: She has every scale.
• 1:44:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like Wolverine at least has centuries behind him, but kind of like Wolverine, she mysteriously suddenly has a degree in biochemistry.
• 1:44:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: She knows everything.
• 1:44:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's great, it's not great.
• 1:44:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: What are you working on these days?
• 1:44:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, right now as I mentioned, I'm doing a lot of work or Wizards of the Coast for Magic the Gathering, which is, if you're not aware, it's a card game, it's been going for 30 years, but it has its own large elaborate cinematic universe effectively of story.
• 1:44:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I've been writing those stories for a couple years now.
• 1:44:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: I did successfully bully a multi-billion dollar corporation and to giving me what I wanted.
• 1:44:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so the first print magic the gathering novel since 2019 will be coming out next year.
• 1:45:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's called Omen's of Chaos.
• 1:45:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: It is set at a magic school.
• 1:45:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: It has no bigotry or turf bullshit in it.
• 1:45:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Please order Omen's of Chaos, so that'll let me keep writing these.
• 1:45:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: I really want to do the sequel, so very badly.
• 1:45:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Other than that, I am currently working on the next book in my encrypted series, which I will get back to as soon as we're done
• 1:45:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Sean, I'm an enormous fan, it is such a privilege as the host of the show and as a super fan of comics to meet the creators often and get to know them and understand their voices in history.
• 1:45:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: It tells me so much about the works that you've done and I felt like this conversation was really crucial to launch a month like Nightcrawler specifically.
• 1:45:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is such a huge piece of his cultural identity and upbringing.
• 1:45:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm an enormous fan of this character and love the way you wrote him.
• 1:45:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: So thank you again for your time.
• 1:45:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: you.
• 1:45:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, online, I am most active on Tumblr, honestly.
• 1:45:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: I am still a cockroach in the walls of that crumbling media empire, but I'm also a blonde blue sky and on Instagram where you can understand why I make publicists cry.
• 1:45:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Since if you pop by my Instagram, I think you have to go back something like 15 posts before you see it even a mention of the fact that I write,
• 1:46:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's wonderful to meet you.
• 1:46:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: I look forward to seeing you again.
• 1:46:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much for your valuable time.
• 1:46:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: And thank you everyone for listening.
• 1:46:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: I will see you back here next week.
• 1:46:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: And now stay tuned for some thoughts on fascism.
• 1:46:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: As a special guest and I talk about a red skull story and its modern applications.
• 1:46:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: By mid-1942, the island of Malta, a small British-held fortress in the Central Mediterranean, was starving.
• 1:46:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: Axis aircraft from Sicily and Sardinia, bombarded daily and the island's fuel, ammunition, and food were almost gone.
• 1:46:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: Malta was strategically vital from its airfields, British submarines, and planes constantly struck Axis supply lines to Rommel's Africa corpse.
• 1:46:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: If Malta fell, the balance of the North African campaign would tilt sharply in Germany's
• 1:46:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: To save the island, Britain launched Operation pedestal, one of the most heavily defended and desperate supply convoys of the entire war, 14 merchant ships, escorted by two battleships, four aircraft carriers, seven cruisers and over 30 destroyers pushed eastward from Gibraltar on August 10, 1942.
• 1:47:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: The Germans and Italians knew exactly what was at stake.
• 1:47:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: If they could sink the tankers, Malta would starve.
• 1:47:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: For days, the convoy was attacked relentlessly by submarines, torpedo boats, stuka dive bombers, and bombers out of Stardinia and Sicily.
• 1:47:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: The carriers, eagle and indomitable were struck.
• 1:47:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: The cruisers, Nigeria and Cairo were crippled.
• 1:47:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: And merchant ships were torn apart by torpedoes along the route.
• 1:47:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: The heart of the mission came down to a single, battered American tanker, the SS Ohio, loamed to the British.
• 1:47:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: She carried the aviation fuel multi-needed suit to survive, but she had been hit by aerial torpedoes, bombs, and even a crashed fighter, leaving her dead in the water.
• 1:47:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: Refusing to give up, cruise from the Royal Navy destroyers, HMS Pen, and HMS Rammum, tied themselves to the sinking ship literally last to her hole, and pulled her forward while fighting off more attacks.
• 1:48:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Ohio's decks were awash, her back was broken, and yet she was barely afloat.
• 1:48:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yet, on August 15, 1942, she drifted into Valetta's Grand Harbor, greeted by thousands of Maltese civilians and exhausted air raid wardens.
• 1:48:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: The fuel she carried allowed Maltese fighters to rise the very next day.
• 1:48:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: regaining air superiority, and keeping the island alive long enough to play a decisive role in the North African treaty at L. Alameen.
• 1:48:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: Operation pedestal is remembered as one of the most extraordinary feats of determination in naval history.
• 1:48:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Malta survived because sailors on shattered ships refused to let a tanker sink, and because an entire convoy endured one of the most intense gutlets of attacks of the war.
• 1:48:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: Today, the arrival of the Ohio remains a national memory in Malta, proof that a single ship pushed by a people who refused to break,
• 1:48:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now, we're going to jump to a story in Captain America, Redweiden Blue.
• 1:48:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is the first story.
• 1:48:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is an anthology of Captain America's stories in the early 2000s.
• 1:48:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: This story is called the legend and the lore.
• 1:48:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's by Tony Sammons.
• 1:49:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: On the war front in World War II, the Red Skull leads a Nazi force on the Axis held island in the Mediterranean called Montemorte.
• 1:49:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: As the Allied forces draw to close, the Red Skull authorizes the use of a Nazi super weapon.
• 1:49:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Ragnarok Ray, Ragnarok being the death of all as guardians if you recall, but the ray hits Nazi forces stripping the soldiers of their very flesh and leaving them as horrific piles of bones But at Captain America closes in the red skull runs for it making it to a helicopter to escape There are still three years of the war left to fight to talk about this kind of intense war story my friend Darrell Taylor is here to join me Hello Darrell good morning.
• 1:49:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: Are you a red skull fan my friend?
• 1:49:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, I mean, he's just easy to hate and he's smart.
• 1:49:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't like him, but he's he's just someone that you can just you want to see him get punched in the face every single time We have been hanging out on the show a little bit more recently.
• 1:49:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: I appreciate you joining me for this particular episode What was it like for you to jump into this kind of odd world of Captain America?
• 1:50:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is a short story.
• 1:50:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think my favorite stories for cat is always been because they always do this Where they show him jumping into them
• 1:50:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: war and kind of leading the troops when times are dire, right?
• 1:50:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I think that's always been my favorite cap stories.
• 1:50:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, that's why Malari used him, you know, that in ultimate, that's the first thing we saw was him jumping off a plane to fight in war.
• 1:50:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it's Nazis are just an easy enemy.
• 1:50:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's not a war where you question things unless you're starting kind of person.
• 1:50:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: But if you're not, like it's not a thing where you question,
• 1:50:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: it was necessary.
• 1:50:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: So just looking at the need, the hope that he inspired as the troops were refighting.
• 1:50:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it was a ruthless time, the way that what they had to go through and they had so many casualties.
• 1:50:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: I enjoyed looking at the way that he inspires you to do, to fight the good fight when it's actually fighting evil and supposed to not.
• 1:51:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: As a writer on the handbooks, one of the jobs I always refused to do and was to try to tabulate the adventures of Kang the Conqueror for a while and try to stack all of those insated by Brent, but another one was always like Captain America because the stories in World War II are retroactive so frequently and I've just never had enough.
• 1:51:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: of the real world history.
• 1:51:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: So doing these little red skull episodes has been an interesting challenge for me as I learn more of the real history.
• 1:51:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I open with this kind of, you know, operation where we have acts of bravery very carefully crafted and we have to eat out survival and if we can just make it one more day, maybe go get there.
• 1:51:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: But it's been interesting for me to learn not only, you know, how World War II shaped our generation of kind of baby boomer parents and how we defined evil, but looking at how it shaped comic books itself.
• 1:51:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, have you been in Captain America fan across the years?
• 1:51:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, yeah, I have been a fan of that character since probably the
• 1:51:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: wrong old days and beyond.
• 1:52:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: I've pretty much stayed with every incarnation of cap for the most part, like dropping off and on when it got a little too bad, you know, I didn't really like it, but yeah, cap is a character.
• 1:52:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: Even so Darcy's run, I'm think it's a character that I've kind of stayed with even with the implications of this white guy.
• 1:52:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: Running around to everybody.
• 1:52:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: What is freedom and whatnot in America when we know better in terms of the agencies of, you know, with people go through who are not, you know, white, blonde, blue-eyed and beautiful, right?
• 1:52:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, he learns his lesson once the Falcon comes around.
• 1:52:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think he comes the right kind of hero.
• 1:52:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: But in the 40s, he was a pretty tolerant guy back then too.
• 1:52:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
• 1:52:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: We get the stories about Isaiah Bradley.
• 1:52:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it's an independence on the writer.
• 1:52:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: The right stories are told.
• 1:52:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do you have connections to World War II in your own family lore?
• 1:52:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: No, my uncles have served, but when they served, thankfully we were not at war.
• 1:52:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: Any of those times, and I don't have any trace back far enough to see.
• 1:53:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I'm sure that probably we're some in my family, then I've had connections to World War II.
• 1:53:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, we're from...
• 1:53:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: down south, so I can't see that not being the case.
• 1:53:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: A lot of us down south had joined and continued to join for reasons of democracy.
• 1:53:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: And hopefully, we would have a better situation coming out of it, too.
• 1:53:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like there was that.
• 1:53:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, the reasons of democracy but reasons of economy and opportunity is right.
• 1:53:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think for a lot of black or African-American soldiers, and you know,
• 1:53:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: Every every person across the world it was affected by this in some kind of way, but yeah, but a black man in America I know it's an entirely different subset of history.
• 1:53:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's such a conflict with us right the way that our history That's not erased yet, but they're working on it.
• 1:53:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: But the way that we are treated like in human and at the same time you put on the uniform and then you're, you know, you're still not treated equal, but you're, you're given, you're looked at a little bit like you're better, a little better than what you were.
• 1:54:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: We were more you.
• 1:54:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: little bit more human than what we were considered prior to that.
• 1:54:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: And we fought so hard for a country that had a history of treating us some human.
• 1:54:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: I think the real thing about racist and fascists, though that bothers them and why they don't trust people of color is like, they think to themselves why I wouldn't help a country that treated me badly.
• 1:54:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: I wouldn't do something for
• 1:54:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: looked at me as less than and they don't get altruism, they don't get empathy and kindness and compassion.
• 1:54:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like those are things they don't understand.
• 1:54:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: So when they see other people, not like them, use that, have that, it angers them.
• 1:54:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, red scope just repeatedly gets angry.
• 1:54:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: Every time cap has any kind of kindness for people that he considers less than himself.
• 1:54:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's called a horrible example of my, well, example of humanity.
• 1:55:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, yeah, and we just saw the new wicked film as we're recording this, and there was a conversation with my teenage kids, and frankly, even my husband after wearing it, I don't understand why this like government united against talking animals that doesn't make any sense.
• 1:55:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm like, well, it's, the fascism allegory.
• 1:55:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: We have to have to unite against.
• 1:55:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: If we can do that, we get free slave labor, first of all, and then the opportunity to unite everyone in giving their resources toward some sort of cause that benefit the people at the top, right?
• 1:55:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we had this scene in the new wicked film where, you know, Glenda, who's a well-meaning character, who doesn't think she has any sort of malicious bone, but she's playing by the rules.
• 1:55:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: This royal wedding upstairs, while alphabet discovers all the animals and cages, literally off to the side where no one's paying attention.
• 1:55:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it's just, it's kind of an awful thing, the way we turn our face away from history in its way.
• 1:55:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then bravery, human resources, human community, the ability to gather together, like in this story with Malta, you know, it's a fantastic thing to recognize what we're capable of when we unite for the right causes.
• 1:56:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: Meanwhile, there were schools over there with his Ragnarok Ray.
• 1:56:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's a shoot-nup and destroy people left and right.
• 1:56:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: Withering flesh, how you hold up in 2025, my friend?
• 1:56:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: I know, I mean, as a black man in America, but also as a person in the library system, we got to talk a little bit about this in our recent pay-trained episode.
• 1:56:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's just that there is a constant state of fear.
• 1:56:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: And there's a friend of mine, her job is to do inter library system books where if someone it's not in our system, then we would actually go and get it from another entire system, different system and bring it in so that the patron can have it.
• 1:56:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: And we were talking and she was talking.
• 1:56:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: She was so surprised by the books that people are asking for,
• 1:56:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I think some of it, some of it is they kind of believe in that stuff.
• 1:56:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: Some of it not, but it's very political.
• 1:56:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: People are very scared and they want to know what's happening.
• 1:57:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: So it is such a world of disinformation, right?
• 1:57:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: We constantly get stuff thrown at us.
• 1:57:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: We can't even trust the news on DV, right?
• 1:57:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like, depending on what corporate entity owns it, that that entails what kind of information we're going to get.
• 1:57:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: And it's just a place where everybody's trying to look for information.
• 1:57:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: and a lot of people are going into the wrong places to get it and it is just an unsure time where you just have to you have to rest your mind.
• 1:57:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: I do know you being a therapist you constantly get this where you have to you're in a state of panic and you can't stay that way all the time.
• 1:57:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
• 1:57:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: forward that I felt more safe and and that's been very recent it's only in the recent weeks but I that's a privilege to be able to feel safe at all as is something I'm recognizing I'll be more transparent with my listeners about the path I'm planning as as things kind of take shape in the future but yeah it's been it's been a crazy journey I think for everyone.
• 1:58:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now, Darlin, I have plans to hang out early in the new year.
• 1:58:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're going to be doing a pair of episodes together in a very, where it's black history months, but we're, we're delving into the world of brother Voodoo, and we have some dead plants together with some mutual friends, including Eric, a showlled to who we will, I know.
• 1:58:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: But do you have any advice for listeners on just how they're holding up these days, or what they should be doing to get by?
• 1:58:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: I would say sometimes there's a tendency to sit in your own fear and, you know, and not want to bother people that care about you, you thinking that you're burning them with stuff, but I do think you do need to reach out to people that you love and that love you and kind of that is the connection, right?
• 1:58:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's the thing.
• 1:58:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: You do it on your show all the time, like there's that connection of being able to talk.
• 1:59:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's okay to talk about just people with
• 1:59:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: or singing or what I listen.
• 1:59:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't, I'm not a person into musicals, but if wicked helps you to go someplace and just breathe for a while, think of what whatever it is.
• 1:59:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I grew up in a world where I was expected to keep secrets and not speak truth, which is not a great feel for me.
• 1:59:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, my show has always been a balance of just kind of who I am, but my first rule for therapy, even when I'm working with clients, is the idea of dual realities existing, like I can have despair enjoy at the same time, right?
• 1:59:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Being silent's not going to work, and like pretending it's fine is not going to work, but I can be full.
• 1:59:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm very grateful for our friendship, my friend.
• 1:59:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: I am fantastic, and we have a high-owned person yet, which I need to do.
• 1:59:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: No, we need to make the happen next time in the New York City.
• 1:59:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, we have to do.
• 1:59:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Or if you make it out to Salt Lake, let me know.
• 1:59:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: That'll be a while with everything going on right now.
• 1:59:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: and to leave New York.
• 1:59:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh yeah, yeah, understood.
• 2:00:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, and I have a ton of friends of color here locally, who it's just a different kind of dirty, a different place, but everybody, please take care of yourselves, you know, living joyful is an act of defiance as I keep saying, but learn from history.
• 2:00:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Darrell, it's great to see you.
• 2:00:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for hanging out this morning, my friend.
• 2:00:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Great thing, I got where you two enjoy it every time.
• 2:00:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: All right, everybody, we'll see you soon.
• 2:00:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: We'll be back here next week with another Red Skull Chat.
• 2:00:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks, Darrell, bye.
• 2:00:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for listening to Grimalk and Lane.
• 2:00:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: We hope you are enjoying this podcast.
• 2:00:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Grimalk and Lane is produced and recorded in Salt Lake City, Utah with music and editing done by my husband, Michael Bell, and promo art done by the incredible Seth Martell.
• 2:00:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Look for us on Patreon, where we are releasing weekly episodes about obscure characters and facts.
• 2:00:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a great way to participate with the podcast for only just a couple of dollars a month and it helps support what we are doing here.
• 2:00:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Also, the best way you could help
• 2:00:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Grimmulkin Lane is by sharing and liking and subscribing, but also please leave us a review wherever you listen to your podcasts.
• 2:01:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: We'll see you back here next time on Grimmulkin Lane.