A Geek History of Time - Episode 198 - The Dark Crystal from Two States to a Fractured State Part V

Episode Date: February 18, 2023

And while we have a through line that states, Authorial intent means debt, right? I don't want to have to have the same haircut, you have dad. Sorry, I forgot. Harry, mother fucking tub. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha you know, it's like, jk, probably she's something. Ahhh! Oh! Oh! So it was this before or after the poster you wanted to call over the couch? For those of you that can't see, Ed's eyes just crossed. It is fucked up.

But it's not wrong. Oh, huh. This is a geekest, real world. Where we connect nursery to the real world. My name is Ed Laylock, I'm a Royal District and English teacher here in Northern California. And I had the opportunity just a few days ago to take something that I will confess I am self conscious about and weaponize it in the service of justice. And Damien Schreckley, so he already knows what I'm talking about, but for those of you listening, I have Dwayne Syndrome, which gives me a lazy eye. And it also allows you to smell what everyone is cooking? Yes, there is that too, which is an advantage just in and of itself. But I had the opportunity when I found out that several of my students were bullying another kid.

out that several of my students were bullying another kid. I had the opportunity to look each one of them sort of in the eye with one eye and say, you know, I have a wonky eye, right? Are you going to make fun of me for that? No, I didn't think so. And then use that as a tool for making them all feel about 18 inches tall. And it was one of the most emotionally satisfying moments of my decision career so far. So yeah, that's that's what I have going on. I use it for a great justice. Yes. It felt pretty good.

How about you? Well, okay, before I get into who I am, my favorite thing is to do is to take a weakness and make it a strength. And in many ways, you have done that. So well done. Number two, the larger, the longer part of the story is that you, you, a money python on the Holy Grail them, uh, which I really love because you kind of stared at them with the eye, trailing off and they didn't know where to go with that, which is very much the, he has a wife, you know, though I love. London NTO. Yes, I love that. But yeah, anyway, proud of you.

Uh, I'm Damien Harmony. I am a high school US history and soon to be no more Latin teacher up here in northern California. And my news is, okay, you know that I've been having the kids playing Star Wars, right? The role playing game Star Wars. We've finished about a two-year arc, two-year campaign, wherein they started in 4,000 years before the battle of heaven. And I used the comics as huge jumping off points. And I would put them off to the side of major things happening in the comics. And I had them both read the comics to get used to the

world and the time because my son wanted to be a wookie Jedi. So it's the only time he could be even though they weren't working back then. I worked that in, you know, you're on the market, you're always on the market. So when the big battle with XArcune is happening on Yavin 4 and all that's happening with the Massassi and all that kind of stuff, like I made sure that they were running like a covert operation to shut down a fleet killing weapon before it fires on the fleet so that no me sunrider can do her thing.

And that's why in the comic, you saw her do her thing because they didn't get blown up, you see. So a lot of doing that, they fought on the Battle of Ossas, like my son's character picked a fight with the Mandalore. And yeah, and because Mandalore kind of goes off screen for a little bit while they're on Ossis. And so I do that. So they they they I'm doing this as short as I can. The the big bad evil guy was a Zabrak Jedi turns out that Zabrak Jedi was actually a security droid who I borrowed this from you or I borrowed it from Isaac

Azama who realized the safest thing for the entire universe was to end all force users completely. So he and and so they break into his layer. Five laws. I love it. They break into his layer. Julia notices that he's not breathing. And they both notice that there's gas hissing in and she puts it together that he must be a droid of some sort. Sure enough, he is. And he is talking about launching this dark side

force creature that will destroy into power everything. And then, and then only he will control the force power everything and then and then only he will control the force and then he'll end that and then the whole galaxy will be safer. Um, which I honestly maintain it's probably would have been true, but that doesn't mean you get to justify genocide. Yeah. So, um, so he does that and the only way they can stop it and William realizes this after they beat the, uh, the big bad evil guy evil guy, he laughs, he's like, it's already done. You can't even stop it. There's nothing that can stop him. Look, and he points to like this, membranous bulb that's got the dark side energy thing

in it. And William realizes if he and the other two characters go in there and activate their, you know, one of their force powers, then maybe that could like staunch it and just keep it there and suspend it animation. And that's exactly what they do. They wake up and I asked my kids weeks earlier, what's your favorite era of Star Wars? And of course, everybody's favorite era is the one that came out when there were kids. Yeah.

My kids at 7, 8, 9. So they wake up and I start describing everything. And within a few descriptions, my son's like, we're on a star killer base. And Julie's like, no way, there's no way you could be on star killer base. This was 4,000 years before in blah, blah, blah. And then everything's shaking and they break out of the membrane. And they've got these tremendous headaches and they look around and they see this silver Polish armored woman come out covered in garbage barking orders at white

Armored guys who they all have this sinister grin on their face And then they make their way to like this Large chef because remember she got put in the trash compactor their way to like this large chef, because remember she got put in the trash compactor. Mm-hmm. Then they make their way out to this large shaft and they see a young Jedi male stab an old man through the heart and throw him down the pit.

And then they hear a wookie scream and William's character is a wookie. So I pull him into the room and I'm like, here's what the guy said. He said, ha, no. And my daughter failed her language check and then I said, Han, no. Um, and, and my daughter failed her language check. And then I said, and then you see two spacers, a woman and a man up at the top. And she's wearing a jacket that's too big for her. And, uh, and she screams, no, and then they retreat

and then you guys start to feel the building shake and, and they, they go out and they find their ship, which has been, uh, retro upgraded, that kind of thing. And I said, you see it guarded by several of these grinning soldiers because the helmet looks like a grin. And they stand to attention. Who are you? Show me your identification. And my son has always botched the role on all-termind where you don't need to see my identification. He makes the role on all-termind, where you don't need to see my identification. He makes the role, so he finally gets to do that. They get aboard their ship and turns out Hux has been refitting this ship to be his own hot rod and escape vessel, so they get the ship back basically, right? And as they leave, I say, you see a disc-shaped ship taking off, followed by cross-shaped

ships. And then, you know, on the other side, you see a ship where it looks like it has two ears that are flapping up toward the top of itself. And it takes off in the direction. And then the planet blows up. And then, of course, you hear the laughter of the dark side creature that has finally been released. And I had the music queued up perfectly. And I hit play and it was the finale music. Nice. That was their thing.

And what's done. Thank you. What's wild to me is like number one, they're digging it, but they also want to take a break because it was so emotional for them. But number one, they're digging it, but they also want to take a break because it was so emotional for them. But number two, my daughter asked, she's like, how did you do that? And like, the honest to God truth is the same way anybody else does jamming. I said words. Yeah. And you just happen to believe them. Like if I turned around and said, and you grow wings out of your ears and turn pink,

leave them. Like, if I turned around and said, and you grow wings out of your ears and turn pink, then that happened in the world too, because it's just as valid as the other made up things that I said. But at the same time, they saw everything. So it was really cool. So very, very cool. Yeah. Sorry, I took the lines. Yeah, no, no, no, no, that's awesome. That's a condense person. So the lines. Yeah, no, no, no, no, that's awesome. That's condensed. So when last we left, yes, the sad muppets, the deep muppets, yes, yes, speaking of speaking of resistance against fascist forces, right, the and Muppets. Yeah. You know. So we need a T shirt. Oh my God. I need a black T shirt with black lettering just as antifa Muppet. I get like Kermit's face. Yeah. Oh nice. Yeah. And then like you got to get Fuzzy's face in there for like the the E for Muppets or something. Yeah. Oh, man. Oh, anyway.

So in episode six, yeah, Seladon actually thinks that she's the all-modra and she sits on the throne, right? And you remember, Laura bursts through it and stares her down in his, I believe I called it the the anthropomorphized rocks judge stare of judgment, right? Yeah, yeah, so he does that now That's not the end of the episode as I recall The general was there and he was saying you know, we need seven volunteers to fight the aratham right? Right, right and he was carrying on that lie and really they were just gonna drain the shit out of people and be like, Hey, sorry, they died Faithfully, we need seven more, right? And that would just, you know, which from a mafia perspective, that's the way to go, you know We'll only want 5% just enough to wet my beak, you know that kind of thing But instead and literally because they're dipping it in the

Yeah, yeah, that kind of thing. But instead, and literally, because they're dipping it in the Yeah, yeah, that's good. But unfortunately, the skecs are way too greedy. And so they want, they want it all. And they stabbed the shit out of the Almodra because she says, you know, she does the no more, no more, no more, um, that question of independence. So the general and the master of ceremonies, the ceremony master, I guess, they're riding back with the seven that they're going to devour and those seven are in fucking cages.

And these were like the paladin types. These were like the cream of the crop, the most defiant. Best of the best of the best with honor, sir. Because because there's some skecsies who think that, you know, the essence will taste better if it comes from defiant gulflings. So there's, which is interesting, because you remember when we talked about Vee and we talked about, you know, the blood libel and the babies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they are writing back, and this includes deep and and up and Ryan steps out, Rian, steps out into the road and halts them.

And he's like, he challenges them. Just one geltling and they come to a halt. He challenges the general to a fight because the general finally recognized him. Oh, you're the one who ran away. He's like, I'm here now. Let's go, bitch. And the challenge is actually, and that's a direct quote. No, nice. And the challenge actually is a diversion. Rian knows that he's not going to win. But if he can slow everything down and get the general away from the carriage, his friends can break everyone out. His allies can break everyone out.

And just as he is about to get run down by the general, because the general is like, no, no, we're just gonna run your ass over. Instead, lore comes charging through and smashes into the carriage and knocks that shit to the ground. And it keeps the general from running re-enover and it allows all the complices to break everything free. And then each of them, like, they each grab a wheel. You remember the wheel of the Rolly Pulley that was getting tortured? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, they each ride them like they're like unibikes and they, you know, go off. All right. So the general and the ceremony master, they threaten the gulfling verbally as they're fleeing and then lore steps the fuck up and causes them to beg off and escape because he's a giant goddamn rock monster. How can you beat that? And when they go to escape, they literally go around Rien. So they don't even want to fuck with him. And the fucked up part is this. The gulfling that they rescued are still whispering about re-in, blaming him for what's happening.

So Chamberlain's plan for propaganda worked. Remember Chamberlain said we're going to blame everything on re-in. Now do you remember the summer of 2020? I hate to age this, but this podcast comes out after the summer of 2020. Yeah. Okay. Um, I mean, I, I, I, I do, I don't know what you're, you know, leading up to, but yeah, I, I do remember that summer. Well, there were 7,550 demonstrations that summer in 2,440 locations, involving 15 to 26 million people based on

which reports you follow. Okay. Yes. They were protesting police brutality against black bodies for the most part. Yes. Of those 220 had a record of violence or destruction of property. So 220 out of 75 50. 38 of that 220 were actual violence against property, but the property was merely a Confederate statue. So of the 220, 38 were that. So that leaves us with 182. Right. Okay. A hundred of those had far right counter protesters making a significant presence known by bringing

guns and openly displaying them. Now there's going to be some overlaps here. 52 of that 100 or I'm sorry, 52 of the 182 had car ramming attacks aimed specifically at Black Lives Matter protesters. A hundred of those protests of those 182 specifically involved the KKK, the proud boys and or the Bougaloo movement. 30 of those 182. And again, there's some stacking up here, right? Because of those hundred, I bet you, you know, the 52 that involved car ramings. Almost significant. Almost, it's a vend diagram that's almost a perfect circle.

Yeah. Yeah. Now 30 of those instances, those violent incidents of those 182 that aren't against Confederate document or Confederate monuments. Yeah. 30 of them involved people directly engaging the counter Black Lives Matter protesters. So the people who were there to counter protest Black Lives Matter, 30 of those involved violence, because people went and said, what the fuck are you doing here? Like, you know, what, you know, yeah. Now, like I said, there's some overlap.

Now, at the time, Joe Biden, who is the candidate for presidency against a Tandering demon, he said that protesting police brutality is, quote, right and necessary and quote the American response. But burning down communities and needless destruction is not violence that in dangerous lives is not violence that guts and shutters businesses that serve our communities is not. Okay. I'm gonna give them a bit of a pass because he didn't have necessarily all the facts, although because some of this, this report came out about 11 months later. Yeah. Or about seven months later, because I, I had this data as early as January or as, as late as January of 2021.

Yeah. James Clyburn, the Democratic representative from South Carolina said, quote, we have to make sure we do not allow ourselves to play the other person's game. Peaceful protest is our game. Violence is their game. Purposeful protest is our game. The looting and writing, that's their game. We cannot allow ourselves to play their game. Breaking out a window will not contribute to that setting a fire throwing stones at police officers. That's destructive behavior, which will not contribute to anything that will make this a better country and make a better future for our children or in our grandchildren. Okay. Again, on the surface, cool. Democrat Mayor Lori Lightfoot of Chicago said that there was, quote, no justification for criminal behavior for those who engage engage in this criminal behavior, let it let's be clear. We are coming for you.

Okay. Democrat mayor Ted Wheeler of Portland. Hmm. Said quote, when you commit arson with an accelerant and an attempt to burn down a building that is occupied by people who you have intentionally trapped inside, you are not demonstrating you are attempting to commit murder. Now there is nothing wrong with any of those statements except that they are not based on fact. Yeah, I was going to say I don't remember there being an arson of were, there were bonfires. There were in, you know, but that's a, it's a stated place, that's a bonfire.

Now, there were precincts that were set on fire, they were empty. There was one in Minneapolis, I wanna say, and I don't remember if I wrote this down, but there was one in Minneapolis, there was one in Milwaukee, and I think there was a building in Portland, all of which were empty people were not trapped inside. That is horseshit. Yeah. I profile Democrats fell all over themselves. As you just heard, to condemn the Black Lives Matter violence, the Antifa violence and any leftist violence at the 7,550 protests in the summer of 2020.

The only problem with that is that there is so little of any of that that it does not, it's odd to be condemning it, considering how much it was proven and was known at the time, there was so much rightist violence. Well, and there was, and there was like, I remember, I think it was Minneapolis. Oh, I'm going to get to that. I'm going to get to that. Yeah. I know exactly what you're talking about. All right. Okay. Tell me if I miss it. Okay. The sitting president at the time, the tangerine demon that he was said, quote, the memory of George Floyd is being dishonored by rioters, looters and anarchists. The violence and vandalism out of your fucking mouth. The violence and vandalism is being led by Antifa and other radical

left wing groups who are terrorizing the innocent destroying jobs, hurting businesses and burning down buildings. You know, I love, I love how he fucking tells on himself in the way he says that. Confession by accusation. Harming well, well, but, but you know, the first thing he says is harming the innocent. Yeah. And then everything else, literally everything else has to do with economics. Yes. He doesn't, he doesn't actually give a shit about people being hurt.

No, he gives a shit about property being destroyed and capital being lost. And it's like, you know what, you can't even, you can't even muster the cunning. Like to act like the skexus and make it, you know, even make an attempt to make it sound like funny that huh? It's the, it's, you know, well, you know, but the, the, the, the people who are being harmed

by this, right? You know, the injuries, the bloodshed, this is just like, I don't know, maybe part of that is that it would be, it would be too easy to point out there, there aren't actually any, like, no, there isn't any bloodshed, but I, I don't, I don't want to give him credit for, for thinking that many steps ahead. I, well, more cynically, if a person catches fire, it gets put out quicker. You can point to pictures and videos of buildings burning down. Yeah. That's true.

That's a good point. Now, again, age of resistance came before all this happened. So I can't say that this led to that. But those parallels are really striking. By October of 2021, the Bougaloo boys had admitted to posing as Black Lives Matter Poetreasters, a thing which Black Lives Matter protestors were calling out immediately as it was happening in the summer of 2020. And nobody listened. This includes firing on a police station in Minneapolis, breaking windows at a target.

Remember the umbrella man? Was that the one you're going to bring up? Um, I was talking about the guy that, uh, said, started trying to set fire to a tire store. Oh, yeah, yeah, who who if I want to say what I remember hearing was that he was an undercover cop. Mm hmm. Yeah. So speaking of police riots, anybody? So umbrella man, uh, you do remember him, right?

I do remember him. I remember him. Turns out he was a part of the Hell's Angels and he was linked to the Arian Cowboys as well, which is a white supremacist prison and street gang. Oh, lovely. So I'm sorry. So the Hells Angels wasn't enough. No.

You got it. You got to go for like, no, no, no. The Hells Angels is merely like a criminal enterprise. No, no, I need, I need no, I need to go all the way to join the criminal enterprise directly tied to the KKK. Yeah. Wow, such, such, such wonderful people on both sides.

I don't actually know that Aryan Cowboys are tied to the KKK, although I'm sure they get the same Christmas letters. So, uh, subscribe to the same Zines. Right. Yeah. Police investigators after interviewing him said that he helped, he helped spark a bunch of looting that followed that followed that followed an initially peaceful protest

because he, quote, wanted to sow discord and racial unrest. So, you know, on a, on a, on a related note, kind of, you know, as a personal anecdote, kind of, I don't know if backing that up is the right phrase, but we live in a town where there were huge black lives matter protests. Yes, there were. That was that one of them. Yeah. There were incidents like the BLM folks would be out.

What I remember was the protests were all pretty tightly organized and controlled. And it was we're all going to be out here. And then at roughly about 9 p.m. we're all going to disperse. You know, and then there were some issues where a number of protesters got huddled by the cops and the least it all kinds of shady shit. But they fired non-lethal rounds at people's heads. Yeah, clearly marked as legal legal advisor, or legal observers, legal servers as well as the press.

Yeah, and medics. Yep. And and medics. But, you know, so, so the protests would end at like 9 p.m. and then there were people who showed up at 10, 30, 11 o'clock and they were the ones who showed up on the tales of the protest. And I know there were, I remember hearing interviews from business owners the day after, like the first night of this,

where folks just showed up and just busted windows and just started looting. There was no pretense even. Right. Of them, like it was just they were like, well, you know, there's all this stuff going on. We're going to use it as they were motivated to use it as cover. And I genuinely, I wondered at the time and I still wonder how much of that was just straight up, we're going to go out and rob shit. And how much of it was we're going to go out and rob shit in order to make those folks look bad.

Well, how much does there need to be? Well, yeah, no, but I guess my, my interest in, in that question just comes down to like one of them would be bad enough. The other one is like another step toward the abyss. You know, and it's just something that has stuck with me since, especially after knowing about umbrella man and the guy with the tire stores in, I want to say, but I still want and it's just something that has stuck with me since, especially after knowing about Umbrella Man and the guy with the tire stores in, I wanna say, I still wanna say it was Minneapolis where he did it.

But like, you know, how much of this is actual agents provocateur and how much of it is just opportunists who are motivated by greed. Sure. You know. And of course course the problem is for everybody on the other side of the debate from Black Lives Matter,

they still could point to, well, you know, look at what happened there. Right. No, that's not the same fucking thing. Well, you know, it was the same night. Oh, look who's claiming conspiracy. Look who's claiming conspiracy. Yeah, like, yeah, bad faith arguments will continue to use words, arguments. Yeah. Yeah. So the precinct that Ted Wheeler,

Democrat mayor from Portland, piece of shit that he is, was talking about, was an empty precinct in Minneapolis, as I told you about, Portland did not burn down a precinct. They had bonfires in their park, as I said. The van that was torched, there was an NYPD van that was torched. It was done after the police had run over protesters on purpose and after the unmarked vans were picking people up and forcing them to into vans. Remember that? Yeah. The non-un, like they were wearing uniforms but the uniforms had no markings on them. Right.

So as far as anybody could figure, they were some kind of feds. Right. And they were just rolling around snatching people off the fucking street and unmarked vans. Yeah. So the van that was,

the van that was torched was already empty, but it was after those two things had happened with vans by the NYPD where they actively ran people down. Yeah. In fact, if you part and they drove down the street spraying pepper spray under their cars. That's right. Yeah. So if you parse out all the protests, you'll see that 90 of the 102 that had violence,

which didn't involve rightist agitation, had incidents of violence that were started by a more heavily militarized police force, not the people protesting. So get rid of all the ones that had rightists agitating, right? That leaves 102 of the 102, 90 of them were because of the police, the police started it. Which means that you are now down to 12 out of 7,550 that had spontaneous, non-defense, non-confederate statute-targeted violence and destruction by the people who are demonstrating in favor of Black Lives Matter, 12 out of 7,550. That's 0.15%, that's not even a quarter of a percent.

That's not 15%. That's 15,100s of a percent. Wow. In fact, digging deeper between May 24th and August 22nd of 2020, there are more than 10,600 demonstrations across the country and fewer than 570 of those involved demonstrators engaging in violence. And yet 42% of those who were pulled linked the violence to Antifa making violence, which is really weird because Antifa is not a group.

Quote, most protesters associated with the Black Lives Matter movement are trying to incite violence or destroy property. That was a quote from somebody who's part of that 42%. The anti- What the fuck? Yep. Because gray theory, because two extremes, except one extreme is, can you please stop killing us? And the other extreme is we want to genus. Yeah. And so, of course, the truth must be somewhere in the middle. So both extremes must be equally violent because one extreme is violence. So the other

extreme must be violent. How about no assholes? Yeah. The anti-definition league has documented organized disinformation campaigns aimed at spreading a quote deliberate mischaracterization of groups or movements involved in the protests such as portraying activists who support Black Lives Matter as violent extremists or claiming that Antifa is a terrorist organization coordinated or manipulated by Nebulous external forces. And I really like Nebulous external forces. In light of all the other shit that I've done about V, you know that that's three steps away from anti-Semitic shit. Yeah, it's, yeah, it's not even three, dude. No, it's a step and a half. True. And even that, that quote, it shows that the people who want to believe

that stuff, right? And the deliberate mischaracterization stuff, that that campaign is confession by accusation. Because on May 29, 2020 in Detroit, a bunch of non-residents of Detroit traveled to the city to engage in violent behavior, which led to multiple arrests. Guess what they didn't support? I'm going to bet that they were Honda fans, right? Right. that they didn't support American automakers. Right. Yeah. So, you know, how many lives or what kinds of lives matter, you know, like they're going to say, oh, that's why they did all the violence. And yet, during that summer, nearly 10% of Black Lives Matter protesters were met with government intervention,

which is more than triple what other demonstrations got. A year prior, just before this series hit the airwaves, the government intervention on demonstrations is that only 2%. Only 2% of all demonstrations were met with the police. And yet 10% of the ones affiliated with the Black Lives Matter protests were met with the police. And yet 10% of the ones affiliated with the Black Lives Matter protests were met with the police, which is still triple everything else of that year. And this is still up by five times as many

over the previous year. Oh, wait, hold on. Sure. Okay. Sure. I'm kind of got, like I wish I could say I was surprised because I'm not. But I am kind of stunned at the degree of that difference. And I'm a little bit surprised the rate was as low as 2% in 2019.

Yeah. Yeah. So, so you're telling me the pink hat brigade was was not met with any serious police force. You have your standard, oh, we're going to have a parade or a protest at this time in this place. By by standard, you have like one or two police officers, every next amount of feet, right? Yeah. That was it. And very often is people who are picking up over time. Yeah. Because it's easy duty, et cetera. Yeah. You were then 30 of the total protests in July of 2019 had had police confrontations in July of 2020 170. Jesus. So do you think? Well, I mean, I've the question forms in my mind and I think, well, yeah,

but I'm going to ask it anyway because I think, you know, answering is illuminating anyway. I mean, the question is, does the level of government, and I put government in quotes, because it's police response, does the level of police response reflect the attitude of the institution of policing to the demands that were being made, which is, you know, stop shooting black people for sport? Yes, and I will put that back on government because the police are supposed to be reigned in by the civilian government. Yes. Okay. So, I mean, the police technically are civilians themselves. So, yes.

But yes, yes, yes, yes, because the amount of effort that was spent on making sure that police officers wouldn't lose their jobs when they were brutal and on and on and on. The amount of effort that was spent on making sure that police departments were exonerated from the violence and it was just a few bad apples kind of stuff is is is Legion. Now in 2020, there was a lot more action against the Phantom Antifa army too. I'd even call it in hysteria. In Ukaiba, California, Ukaiba, you, you, you Kapai, Ukaiba. It is Ukaiba. Okay. Yeah. There were armed folks defending their town from antifa buses. And when Black Lives Matter protesters show up, they were accosted, tased, and beaten by counter protesters, including their three percenters. The police stood less than 200 feet away and did nothing.

Armed civilians stopped people in cars in Clackamas County, Oregon because they thought Antifa was setting wildfires. The police came out to support the armed civilians. And on both of these, there is no fucking antifa army. But there has been a history prior to the airing of age of resistance. So even those these things occur after the age of resistance, I still maintain that these parallels are worth making because there was a riot at the demonstration in Berkeley in April of 2017, in which several neo-Nazi groups, far-right groups and anti-Semitic groups,

including the founder of Identity Europa, who punched a female protester in the face and then ran away into the crowd like a courageous man, was just one of several protests turned riot that year in Berkeley about this to varying degrees of violence from both sides. Was that when, uh, Yannapolis, what the fuck was his first name? Yeah, it was that same year. Milo, Milo, Yannapolis. Yeah, that, Yanopoulos, what the fuck was his first name? Yeah, it was that same. Mealow mellow, you know, plus, yeah, that same year, same here, but it wasn't when he was scheduled to speak. That wasn't the same that particular time.

No, but he did come and get scheduled to speak at several of the other ones that turned violent because he was trying to capitalize on that. So yes, um, almost immediately Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat Nancy Pelosi condemned leftist violence, specifically tying it to Antifa while the Democrat mayor of Berkeley, Jesse, are a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a gang. There was absolutely violence from the left. I do not want to deny that. They absolutely were there. There was absolutely violence started on the left. I do not want to dispute that. That is indisputable, in Berkeley specifically. But there was also plenty of the standard far right stuff that was inciting violence, enacting violence, provoking violence. I would say that Nazis flying their flag is violence. And regardless, it is beyond arguing that the left absolutely acted with a tremendous

amount of violence, even a professor getting involved with his bike lock. But there's nowhere near the amount of criticism from Democrats when it comes to the right. They only criticize the left. They do not criticize the right. And if they do, it's very, very vague all of a sudden. And that's definitely manifest in the gulfling who are still distrustful of re-in. The militant, the fucking rescuing them by fighting guy, they look at him and they're like, oh, we don't know if we can trust him. Luckily, the upper class academic steps up and shames them. So it's not until the upper class academic, Briya comes in and says, quote, he is no more enemy than the skecsies are our friends to remind them who just kidnapped your ass, who

just signed your life away. It wasn't him. He just rescued you. And that opens them up a bit to hearing Reyn's message because yet again, the gale fling, one of their biggest weaknesses seems to be they're easily swayed. And he says, quote, everything the skecs is ever told us was a lie. But it's hard to recognize the light when you've spent your whole life in the dark. but it's hard to recognize the light when you've spent your whole life in the dark. And at this, he offers with all of them to dream fast again and they take him up on it because he has the support of the upper class academic who is respectable.

This enables them to spread the truth far and wide, hopefully uniting the gulfling of thross so that they can all unite against their true foe, the international bankers. Oh, fuck you. So not cool. Not cool, bro. No. Okay, no, this gexies. The paladins who were freed and dreamfacit was rean made their way to the castle to tell the guardians of the lords of the crystal. What has been up? So the gulfling who have been guarding the sketchies finally here. What's up? And the guards are still talking the same talking points about rean.

Like once they get told, they're still like, yeah, but, but his mind was poisoned and the skexies are our lords. And when they're faced with the actual truth, some of them actually change their minds, especially the part about Mira, their fellow guard, remember. And the stabbing of the all madras, that changes their mind. So as, oh, okay, but not all, there's still at least one who ends up becoming a little snitch bitch. But not all. There's still at least one who ends up becoming a little snitch bitch. Rhea and the rest of the main gulflings head into the desert where she finally collapses in grief, right? Because she just saw her mom get killed and your sister's turned against her and it's been a harrowing few days and she's used to being an academic. And that's not a dig on her. That's just a fact, right? Yeah. Everyone's exhausted and everyone's losing heart

and they set up a camp that night on the edge of the desert. And deep, deep, you remember the underworld gulfing, right? Yeah, yeah. Oh god, shit, I forgot their names. Yeah. The Grunin. Yeah.

She sits with Bria and, or, yeah, with Bria and she helps her to start processing her grief. Deat offers to make a grieving ceremony up for Bria's mom, which is super gracious considering that Bria's mom at first was like, I'm not going to talk to a grunion. No, that's that's not happening. Kylin, he is the friend of He is the friend of What's his face is sister He's he is Nia's friend and Nia is a Georgians sister remember Georgian is the best friend of Rian

Kyle and has Briya speak her words about her mother into something called a dream stitch Which he created and it's a living thing and basically it will float up and glow and it will carry her memory. It's kind of cool. You get like all the words carried on forever. So our memory will live on. Ryan speaks up and shares how his love and his honor of his father, Orden, who died, is with him. And that actually opens Bria up to things. And then she starts talking about how her mother often said that she loved Bria, which is a direct contrast to what Seladin grew up with unfortunately and Kyle and begin singing and then Deet and Briya and Naya and Hupp and Rian and Gergen all

start joining in. And Hupp is the most flat voice, but it just adds a little to it. It's so cute. And all the different clans are singing in harmony and the Dream Stitch is going to remember all of it. And it's like the most tender scene. And I would be remiss if I didn't include that in this because it really is one of many, many scenes where it's just absolutely beautiful, which highlights the tragedy

of the fact that we know at the end of all of this. We know how this ends. Yeah. And this intercuts at the same time, you know, they do a lot of cutting back and forth, which is good with Seladon. Sorry. Her mom, her mom's corpse is on a beer and she lights her corpse on fire saying, I loved you with all I had, I'm sorry, it wasn't enough. And Seladon is completely alone here

with her mother's corpse as it's burning. And she has no comfort. And she's completely trapped by her hurt and by her grief. So you have this remarkable contrast of of this tenderness and this community feeling and then you have the one who stepped away. Remember she she bounced out of the dream fast. Mm-hmm. And back at the castle, the skecs these are in full evil mode, right? They're torturing and mocking and delighting in the gulflings terror at being drained including I believe including the the informant. Oh that might come later. I forget and then Seladon gets crowned. There's a whole cool ceremony to it in the next scene and she has an argument with the other all modras. Right. So she sends out,

I forget what they're called with pieces of the crown to all the all modras to let them know that to all the other modras to let them know the all modra is dead. So now they come back with that piece of the crown. And whoever gets crowned, they put it back together for them. Okay. Kind of cool. I'll probably steal that. She has an argument with all the other moderas. So it's not an easy transfer of power. They're all supposed to return parts of the crown and affirm her legitimacy and they don't. And it's largely because Madra fond, from the Stonewood gulfling clan is wise to what the skecsis are doing. And she has shared that with the others.

And Marjora von, or Farah, Marjora Farah tells Seladon that her mother, her own mother refused the skecsis, which will always make Farah proud, and that Gelfling will avenge her. And Seladon says, quote, no, the skecsis are are lords. So she's 100% bought it. And then she doubles down saying that her own paladins are spreading lies about the skecsis and the skecsis must be obeyed. And Majra Farah, like, does not light up because she's seen what has happened with her own fucking eyes And she tells Seladon that she's speaking madness and Seladon's response is I speak as the all Maudra

And I think what's happened there is that she has been so cracked by her grief that she Can only see one way forward and it has to be obedience to the very people who have killed her mother because otherwise her mother died for nothing. It's that kind of thing. And there's a fight that has to happen for the crown now because you can trial, you can do a challenge, whoever does the challenge, they get to name the trial.

And the stonewood and the drenching Drenching. They withhold their approval and the other three listen to Seladon's appeal to tradition saying that the skecsis decreed it and they're like, it is tradition. So Seladon then claims it's her mother's crown and so it belongs to her and the other three moderas now say that they can't stand against the skets. They can't stand against the skexies and therefore they have to go with the status quo. And they call out Madra Phara for being divisive when they should be standing together. Yeah. Wow. Madra Phara challenges her to a flying challenge called Trial by Air, which is a direct echo to true. No by stone. Nice

Which is a dumb fucking trial if you remember the trial by stone. Yeah, well you've got the first two hit. Yeah, yeah So anyway It it it it's the parallel sell it on rejects all of it and she gets ready for the challenge and she dresses and and and well Modra Fara gets ready for the challenge. And she dresses and, and, and, and, well, Madra Farah gets ready for the challenge. Sell it on, rejects it all and they're like, well, then you're not the fucking Madra. She's like, oh, I'll be back.

I will answer this challenge. And she goes and she gets dressed. And she dresses all in black and like deep purple on her lips with a veil. And she walks back in looking like a skexies in gulfling form. What? Yeah.

Yeah. It would be like, I don't know if a munchen came in with like orange spray tan. Yeah. And a diaper, you know, yeah. Yeah. So meanwhile, back at the castle, Chamberlain's back and he finds the Gormand peeing on the wall. And it's a really gross scene because the Gormand is peeing on the wall. And clearly he's having trouble peeing. And I mean, we've both held it way too

long and like, come on, come on. And then it's like, oh, well, then he gets two streams. And we both had the stream split before, right? But to him, it seems like a relief instead of a moment of panic. And then he's like, come on, come on. And then a third stream comes out, which implies that they have kangaroo penis. Okay. Kangaroos have three decks. Yeah, I know that.

That's that's that's that is not the source of the tone of my. Oh, just the oh, all right. We're going there. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Yeah. All right.

So the castle is unguarded. The the Gormon finished peeing and he reports to Chamberlain that the general killed the Almodra which led to a rebellion of the guards which the skecs is defeated because the skecs are really big and badass apparently. And now they're all going to drain all of the guards. Chamberlain is slow is and really I think a rebellion would have worked, but for that one little snitch. Chamberlain is shown to the banquet where the skecsis are all discussing how delicious the essence is as they drink all they can of it. And Chamberlain tells the skecsis that the stonewood

clan are an open rebellion. And the emperor immediately blames this on Chamberlain, saying you fail to bring back Rian, and that's what caused it. Chamberlain goes on this long rant about how order is upended and that the pretence is impossible to keep like this and the emperor actually rebukes him and says that the general quote has set us free. Never again will the skecsies have to bear the burden of pretending to care for these useless gulfling. I know. I also thought like holy shit. He sounds exactly like Evanna Trump. Wow. Are you want to go? Yeah. Yeah. Holy. Yeah. Because they're full on evil now, right? They're dropping power and they're like, oh my God. We just put down a rebellion and we're

drinking them too. And the general shouts, we will take what is ours without games or pretense. And the emperor shouts, we will rule forever. Well, shit. Do you remember that time where Trump tweeted and edited video set to Edward Griggs in the Hall of the Mountain King? Not off the top of the mountain king. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, not off the top of my head. Well, it's only a couple of hours after E. Jean Carroll accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in a department store dressing room in the mid 1990s.

And it showed yard signs of a Trump campaigns. Trump 2024, 2028, 2032, 2036, 2040, 2044, and so on and so on. Mm-hmm made that video in the first place. Yes second off Some mother fuckers Have made campaign signs Oh, this is all true. Oh, okay, it was all okay. All right, okay, okay Oh, this is all Trump. Oh, okay, it was all okay. All right. Okay. Okay. All right. So the rabbit hole does not go quite as far into the mouth of madness as I was afraid to cross-couple. But Trump did retweet it. Yeah, but but then Trump took that. Mm-hmm. And retweeted that. Yes. As a as a boast. Mm-hmm. And and a display of bravado in the face of the Constitution. Yes. Wow. Okay.

Like wow. I am the Senate. Actually, because I'm a history nerd before anything else, the first thing that occurred to me was they taught Samoa. Yeah, yeah, that's the second one that came to mind with me. And then the second one was I am the Senate. Yeah, so we're just we're we're flipped. We flipy floppy, but yeah. Oh, hey, absolutist much. Yeah, fuck.

Yeah. Oh, okay. So then the general says that Stonewood's defiance is all the excuse they'll need to clear out the gulfling out of all the villages and into their larders. And he says they're larders. And they mock Chamberlain out of the room.

Okay, so question. Sure. Is Chamberlain Bannon or Miller? He's kind of a mix of a bunch, but I believe we talked about earlier, he is absolutely Bannon. Okay. Yeah, he's primarily Bannon. Primarily Bannon, right?

Yeah. Ever. Of course, being Trump. Right. Oh, yeah. Is General Pillow guy? No, I think general is general Flynn. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So at the edge of the crystal desert, the heroes of throng meet the doosin clan. They're very clearly Arabian. They paint themselves very fiercely. They're

the only clan that's actually been banned from service in the castle, which, you know, Muslim ban. And, and Rian is absolutely falling back on old prejudices. Brea accepts their offer regardless of Rian's objections. And remember, they're the ones that actually don't have the stupid fucking gulfling braid bangs. They actually put their hair up. Yeah.

And then you get back to the trial by air and Seladon shows up at the last minute, making her entrance with her new self made crown and black veil. And she straight up refuses the challenge. And Seladon says that the old crown is soiled and that the living crown is a sad relic of a failed rebellion. Quote, that's why I forged a new crown. She self appointed because she didn't like how the results went. This show predicted January six.

Well, I mean, in fairness, you look at any kind of fascist regime. Oh, yeah, there are a lot of people predict a January six, to be honest. Yeah. It was not hard. Like a lot of people were like, are you serious? You're really think it's going to end in flames. I'm like, yeah, yeah, I do think there's a pretty good chance that after the election, and he, if he loses the election, it still might be the last one.

Yeah. So, you know, as wrong by a bit, but so Seladon claims legitimacy because she was named by the skecsis, which, you know, if you get named by an outside power as the, the, the, the president, you know, Farah again points out that the skecsis are draining galfling and Seladon dismisses this as quote lies fake news. Jesus.

Barra, where's justice and that she'll be the new Al-Madra, Seladon, you will bow. Farah, I will never bow. Seladon, then you will crawl and she sucker punches Farah throwing her through the old crown and it stand shattering the old crown and then says quote, this is the discord my mother has sown. This is the inevitable end of rebellion. Gelfling turned on gelfling. We stand on the brink of anarchy with all the awareness of a dog licking itself in the middle of presence on Christmas morning while grandma's here. So like she does all that and then she's like, see, look, gulfling fighting against gulfling. It's like you fucking punched her. Yeah.

You threw the first punch. Um, look, this antifa violence. Mm-hmm. the first punch. Look, the Santifa violence. Three of the moderas simply stand by. One of them goes too far as aid. And then sell it on. Here's the exchange back and forth. Bow before me, Modra Farah. And together we will prove our loyalty to the skecsies and snuff this fire before it burns us all. As you burned your mother, Seladon then summons the paladins to throw Farah out. Farah and her ally from the Duce on Clan actually leave

telling the rest of the modders that they're all lost. So they're like, we can see ourselves out and you're all fucking lost. Seladon then turns to the three and says, quote, and what will you three choose, order or chaos? And one of them says, this is not the gulfling way, to which Seladon responds, it is now. And then they all bow to her.

Wow. Yeah, I can order. What's that? The the appeal to order. Mm-hmm. And again, like they they didn't do a head count and be like we outnumber her. We could literally just be Literally just kick the shit out of her right here. So how about how about the challenge of my size seven? Right because gulfling, like, you know.

Yeah, there's a little. Like, yeah. How about, how about the 10 knuckle challenge? How about that? Mm-hmm. So that happens. Now I can only imagine that this is how many of Bernie's supporters felt when Hillary got the nod,

to be honest. And then again, when it was clear that he wouldn't get the nod the second time as well, it's hard to want to show up when you get burned twice like that. Luckily, there's not any kind of existential threat to show up to fight in 2020. So that kind of opting out is totally healthy and has no bad effects. Yeah. But also this does have big Christian cinema vibes to me too. Comes in with new makeup. Yeah.

I am an independent look at the, look at the violence in the discord that has been sewn. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, in episode seven, they meet the heretic and the wanderer who are in the middle of the crystal, the crystal desert. The heretic is a skexus and the wanderer is a mystic and they live together at the top of the circle of sons. It was absolutely far and away in my favorite episode.

It is shit. Yes. Okay. Yes. They built lore, 379 trying ago to deliver their message for them. And it's my favorite scene from the whole thing. There's such great personalities

and they prepare a surprise. And the heretic is batshit crazy. And I can't do the voice perfectly, but I can think I can give you the tone of it. Oh, you're here. You're not supposed to be here yet. Oh my God. So we've got a surprise. And then, you know, he introduces like the mystic and the mrs. I, you are gone, gone. I am. Yes, you are. Say the word. Go ahead, say the word. Come on. say it, say it. The one who funfully, oh my God, you know, and oh my God, it's fun. It is so fun.

And the heretic has a nail through the top of his head. Just like what the fuck? It's so and he's dressed in like almost like, like imagine a moomoo that divine would have worn in hairspray. It's like that. Like, it's, it's like red and white and it just, oh, it's so fun. It's just the antithesis of all things, chexes, which is why he's the heretic. Yeah, boy, howdy.

Or rather than being the heretic is why the moomoo is the wrong colors. Yeah, you know, if you're going to go all in, go all in, you know, and then we cut back to the scene between the general and the emperor, and they are talking to each other and the bowels of the castle, the place where galfling weren't allowed, and they're creating an alliance with the aratham

who do the whole helping hands face thing that we saw on labyrinth. They do it with their aratham bodies and they are called the ascendancy. And they they agreed to fight on behalf of the gale or the the skecsies against the gulfling in exchange for their ancestral homeland back, which is the grotten caves. Now there's a bit of a plot going on here because the emperor knows that the darkness is coming and it's coming up from the center of the earth upward, which means the rotten caves will be covered in the darkness. Whatever the fuck that is and that kills things so the aratham are going to die down in the rotten caves. So he promises them a poison homeland without them realizing. Wow. Yeah. And I remember the first time I've seen this because this is I think the third time I've watched it through.

First time I watched it, I just loved it. Second time I really enjoyed it. And third time I was like, okay, I have to do research now. So a labor of love for certain. It certainly helped cleanse the palette of V. So we go back to the wanders in the Heretic's place, right? Yeah. And I remember the first time saying, wow, imagine if their surprise is a puppet show, like, it would just be, like, you know? So the Heretic, who, like I said, has an actual nail in his head

that he hits to make it, you know, ding, and it causes all the crystals to vibrate in the desert. And the crystals all sing, which in some levels he's sending his brain waves out to crystals. That's trippy. Yeah. And then they, yeah, I can't help but wonder if there's like intentional symbolism there. Oh, it very well could be. Okay.

Yeah. Wow. All right. So then they introduced a puppet show. Oh shit. No, dead series. It's a puppet show being put on by puppets, four puppets to tell about the history of those same puppets. Wow, the meta.

Oh, it's so good. Damn. All right. And they talk about it and they narrate it. And I, I, it's, I forget who says what, but I, I did write down this quote. We too were not always the crude flesh you see before you. We were perfect unity. We called ourselves Urskiks. And there's a story about how 18 of them

came to Thra 2000, and they gave Agra the ability to see the stars and explore in exchange for the crystal of truth. And they ran experiments on it until they got split in two because of the crystal. And they broke a shard off the crystal in the process which brought about the darkening. And all the heretic and the wanderer want is to get back to their true form. The skecsies took over the castle. They banished and turned on anyone who preached unity hence the heretic. The mystics sought out solitude to await their destiny. They tell the galfling the rest of their history, but this ties back to the movie

and that whole misunderstanding of the Israel and Palestine quite nicely. Anyway, the puppet show ends up catching fire. And also the gulfling need to retrieve the dual glaive from the most reclusive of mystic, the reclusive mystic there is, who lives in the grotten caves. of the reclusive mystic, the reclusive mystic there is, who lives in the grotten caves. Meanwhile, Majra Farah is plotting rebellion, especially after hearing that the skecs is killed all of the castle guard, and Agra comes convinced them to stop. And she tells the galfling, you plot strife when you should plot survival.

So she knows it's a doomed fight. plot survival. So she knows it's a doomed fight. Auga is all about the longer game, which is cold comfort when you're like, no, we need to fucking rescue our people. And she says that the skecsies will not meet their fate in the Stonewood hands. Okay. Which I mean, I also kind of think I would tell I would do what mother Madrafara does and rebuff her and auger walks away and to stay and she even says something to the effect of

can't say I didn't try. Um, the hunter shows back up in Stonewood to try to kill Reyn as he's saying goodbye. Oh, no, he shows up. Uh, I'm sorry, not in Stonewood in the, uh, the circle of sons. So they, they finish it and there's a tender moment that reen and Deet I think are sharing or Bria and the hunter shows up just as reen is saying goodbye to the

heretic and he throws a knife through the hand of the heretic and that causes the wanderer to start bleeding. Nice call back to the movie actually. The archer then shows up to frustrate the hunter's efforts and the hunter grabs Bria and runs off and she drops her journal and re-enpicks it up. And then you go back to the Stonewood clan and they are getting ready to fight and the Skexy's arrive at night with a spotlight, which is kind of cool.

But the general has found a way, so he stands there in front of it and the spotlight, I mean, it's a spotlight, so is kind of cool. But the general has found a way. So he stands there in front of it, and the spotlight, I mean, it's a spotlight. So grabs all the attention. And while it does, the Aratham have sent these little tiny versions of themselves to go to possess gulflings. And they just, they crawl under the light. And nobody notices until it crawls up on them and then just hooks into their brain. And and Bria's other sister, not Seladon, but Tavra. She shows up and she speaks for the eratham through her voice because she's been possessed. It's a locutus of bored kind of. board kind of. Yeah. Yeah. Their little insects called threaters that go up there and and

pretty soon the entire ascendancy possesses all of the stone would gulfling and they're taken down without even a battle. And then they all line up single file and go back to the castle as food for the skexies. Yeah. Now at this point, I could say that this is high fantasy meets dystopian fascist nightmares.

Yeah, it's getting further and further from reality from here on out to be honest, but there's a few threads here and there. So, Seladin, Seladin, who's fully bought into the gaisis, the foreign masters who've taken over, very much feels like the people who've accepted Normalsy on the second and third year of Trump's presidency. Do you remember the thing called Trump derangement syndrome? Yeah. So she tries like held a strong arm, a auger, which obviously doesn't work.

She calls her a crone at one point and tells her to move or she'll move her and auger is just like whatever the fuck. And then she says that she and only she alone can negotiate a piece with the skecsies with a certain amount of I must be in power that takes over reason and morality. Only I can save you. Right. But also, I don't know that she actually cares about negotiating. I think she uses that as more justification for why she should be in power. And it's quite illustrative.

You know, it's, it's, well, you know, we can't quit the administration no matter what, because, you know, then who would be there to to help things run it's like Imagine seeing the worst thing possible and then seeing people double and triple down on it after seeing the cruelty Imagine being a gulfling who saw this happen in here that gulfling say oh well, we can have peace Yeah, yeah piece. Yeah. Yeah. August tells Seladon that they aren't interested in peace and that she needs to stop. And Seladon says the all modra is not yours to command, which

to which august says you try full of powers, you cannot understand. And then augura appeals to Seladon to ask her to trust Agra, which then elicits a move, Crone. Don't worry, Mother Agra. I will convince the skexes to show mercy to you and your treasonous pets. So, okay. Yeah, she's all in, right? Yeah. And this is where we see Agra room move her eye

and use it to spy on her. She just puts it in a pocket. And the plot moves along and Rian and the heroes depart from the heretic and the wanderer who says that he carries with him the hopes of their reunification. And back at the castle, the scientists is draining gulflings who include the informant who shouts, but I was loyal. And that doesn't buy him more life from the ones that he was loyal to because their stated purpose was his consumption. Yeah. So. But, but the leopards weren't gonna eat my face. You you voted for the leopards eating faces party. They specifically said they were gonna have le leopard's eat people's faces, but they

were just talking metaphorically. I mean, they were only going to do that to the right people. No, to me. Okay. So you're making multiple points there. Yep. So, so did you believe it or did you not believe it? If you didn't believe it, then you're kind of an idiot because they said everything they

said with leopards next to them while they were speaking. Flossing. Yeah, flossing. Yes. And if you did believe them and you thought, well, you know, it was going to be the right people that they were going to have eat, well, then you're just fucking evil and you just said you even more deserve what you got. Like, you know, um, well, so you remember what Orwell said though,

the ability to hold two conflicting ideas in your head and have them both be true. Yeah. That's an under sung quote of his. That's an under sung concept that he covered, because all the other ones are really easy to loop on to. But that one, I think is honestly one of the more salient ones that that certainly that we see here, but also that we've seen in the last six, eight years. Yeah. That's true. So the skecsies are all happily drinking essence and they're celebrating the destruction of more gulfling when seladon the all-modra the self appointed all-modra shows up to beg for mercy and she does so by literally throwing all the gulfling under the bus

So she's like, you know, I'm so sorry for what we've done. Can we please have mercy? The emperor know. And all the skecs is laugh. And then she pivots and she says, okay, she just killed the stone wood clan, but spare the rest. No. And he keeps saying no in that slightly comical way. Uh, no, no, like that. And then there's more laughter. And then she says, quote, you're as wise as you are fair. And then she pivots again, saying that some gulflings are spreading this filthy lie that sketsis are draining gulflings. And the emperor confirms it. And now she stuck in the middle of a whole bunch of gale uh, skexies who are laughing at her and surrounding her. She even offers, she says, okay, let's go back to our original

terms seven, seven per clan per trying. Uh, no. And then she says, okay, if you won't spare anyone else, can you spare my sisters? They refuse again. And then they grab her crown and start stripping her down and they start mocking her grief and like the the one the collector she puts it on and look how pretty I am and all this the emperor shatters her crown as she continues to plea for mercy. They tear off her clothes and then they take her off to be drained. Now, through all of this, what had happened was a threat or tried to possess Agra. And she's like, are you, are you kidding me? You try to control Agra. Agra can't control Agra.

That's a great quote. Oh, it's so good. And so she converted it to her side. And so she converted it to her side. And so she sent that with her eye to on Seladon. So the threator carries away her eye to now that she's been stripped down, right? So the eye goes flying off. And so the threator and her eye go off from this scene and Agra is seen at all. Rihanna and Deet make their way to the Groughton tunnels and they find that the threators have taken over all of the gulfling who have not been destroyed by the ascendancy. And that includes Deet's little brother and her family and it's really fucking tragic. There's a whole subplot about the archer and the hunter as well, because, you know,

again, each one has a pair. And the amount of damage that the archer did to the hunter hurts him as well. And he's, the hunter's still driven by his need to hunt and kill and capture and whatnot, but he's also in death's door. And Chamberlain finds him just as he's about to die and the emperor is obsessed with making sure

that the hunter doesn't die. And Chamberlain has also delivered Bria, because the hunter was with her. Which means that Tava, Seladon and Bria are all in the same spot now having been captured by the skexies. So the emperor, because remember Tava was the one that was look you to support. Right. Right.

Seladon just got carted off after begging. And Rhea has been kidnapped and brought brought back. So amidst skecs's arguments, the emperor insists that they give the hunter all the remaining estates that they have as the scientists is doing triage on him. This is in full view of the gulfling who are being kept in cages in the scientist layer. And Briya yells at them that they're all monsters to which I believe it's a scientist and he says, and you're just now figuring that out.

Oh, so sell it on a shouts across the prison to sister, still lamenting the loss of the old order under the skexist, and basically uses her voice to yell and blame Bria for what the skexis are doing now. Wow. Yeah. And then sympathetic characters for 500 Alex. Right. And then she's- And then she's- And then she's- And then she's- And then she's- And then she's-

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And Rian puts it together and notes that the skecs is new and that this was their plan for exterminating the erotham, send them to the caves that the darkening was taking over. So Diet says, look, this is what happened and what if we save you? And the erotham are like, why would you do that? She says, if this was your home first, you still deserve to be here. And so she makes a new deal. She says, we'll move on. We'll leave. Let me help save you. And then you fight with us.

And this absolutely can be your home. And we'll get rid of the darkening. And there's a new deal that's made with the Aratham and the Gelfling. And Rian asked them to release all the Gelflings and join them to defeat the Skexes. And the ascendancy agree. And so they release their hold on all the gulflings.

And since it's a hive intelligence, you would expect this to spread fast, but it doesn't seem to. And so maybe it's localized hives. So Rehan still has to find the dual glaive, which it turns out is Diet's grandmother. She's been holding it as a walking stick and then she likes to smack it and turns out it's a blade

Just as Deat is talking with the sanctuary tree the dark and nirlax attack it and kill it But right before it dies it transfers all its powers to Deat who is really fucked up from it like she it's clearly too much power It's burning her out But she's able to hold on to it for now too much power. It's burning her out. But she's able to hold on to it for now. Now, because Ogra is Ogra, she has respect for the hunter. Like she does. And she's come by the castle to pay her respects to him, also to pick up her eye, but she doesn't tell him that. Yeah. And she tells the skecs is that the hunters not actually dead yet, but also that gulfling essence would not be enough to save the hunter. And then she says that hers would be.

And she offers it and trade for the gulflings that they've imprisoned. Yeah. And the emperor asks her quote, you would give up your own life for a few of these worthless gulfling. And she explains the skecsis that they aren't of thraw, but that everyone else is so that they won't really understand. Now, I've told you before that, uh, Agra is the avatar of democracy with a capital D. Yeah. She's telling the ruling elite that they're not it, but that everyone else is. Kind of fun to point out. All right. Anyway, they all agree, and this releases Bria and Seladon,

and the others, and of course, the emperor, whispers to the general to kill them before they all leave the castle. And at that moment, the threators all let go of the Shrod and all the gulfling flea via the Catechomes. Nice. It was planet wide. Although Tavra and her thread are permanently bonded, she's actually still able to assert her personality. Now they're

two vicks from Voyager. Okay. And she's ready to whoops a mass and the general. The general goes to the clactories like Grab Your Sword. We got to beat their ass and they they surround the the gulfling who we're trying to flee and taver fights really hard. She ends up stabbing the general while the aratham attack the collector. The general sees that he's bleeding and weak and there's this whole subplot about Chamberlain and he's and him maneuvering each other. And Chamberlain gives him fake essence to heal him. And then Chamberlain or no, Chamberlain tricked him into getting fake essence. And then Chamberlain shows up now and stabs Topra to death just as she's about to deliver the killing blow to the general and saves him and offers him a real essence, which is the one that Chamberlain had stolen. Remember Chamberlain was born from drinking essence.

Yeah. The wound knits in the general thinks Chamberlain has his friend and Brea and sell it on double back to find Tovra and carry her out. Meanwhile, you go to to Agra and she's being drained to feed the hunter, his essence or her essence for him. And she and the scientist reminisce just a little bit because the scientist and she have, you know, quite a bond considering she knows she has a lot of knowledge and the scientists seeks a lot of knowledge. The crystal gets turned on her to drain her, but there's no essence coming out of it. And she tells the emperor that they are doomed. Then they crank it up to 11 and Agra actually bursts from the draining. This doesn't heal the hunter. They they they pour it all into him. So all the essence that they get from her, they pour into him. And he's still not healed from it and the skex is scientist declares the hunter dead and the emperor goes in a rage And says that the skex is cannot be allowed to die

Be and he says we cannot die and then he says I cannot die Mm-hmm Now Majafara is leading the escape from the castle and they run into Kylon who admits that he's been he's had trouble spreading the word Because quote some love the skex is almost as much as they love themselves. Okay. Yeah. Seladon finally comes to her senses just in time to apologize for everything right before Tofford dies, which, you know, okay.

The emperor insists that they need a ceremony to attend the hunter's corpse, and that that ends up being they hang him up, Mary Annette style in the throne room, which is apparently that he's a decoration to be revered, which I guess that's their way to do it. So his corpse is just hanging there so that he can always be with them. That's also meta as fuck seeing as he's a puppet. Uh-huh. Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

I don't know whether the writers were like all philosophy majors. Oh, that I don't know whether the writers were all philosophy majors. Oh, that I don't know. Yeah. Or if they were just doing really, really good drugs because holy shit. Oh yeah. I think they're mostly going to post it on the table saying remember, they're always puppets. Oh yeah. How do you play with that from time to time? You know, I mean, you have them being controlled by the threators, threads, yeah, threads are used to control puppets.

You know, I also think it's interesting that they've, they essentially, they have somebody who's no longer used to use, use, useful to them. And yet they use his hollowed out husk of a corpse to decorate them like. Yeah. That's. And they've been consuming the little guy. Yeah. Yeah. So the general and the collector report that the Aeroatham's betrayal has occurred. They reported to the emperor, but

Chamberlain actually has a plan. And he says that there can be no peace while galfling live and that there must be a war. And further, the Eiratham have betrayed the skecs because they've been too kind. And Chamberlain's plan is to engineer more loyal soldiers. The emperor. Yeah. Good girl. Them. Yes.

All right. The emperor promises resources to this end and he gives Chamberlain his old place as his advice or again. So Chamberlain has ascended to power again. Now eventually, Rian finds the dual glaive and there's a second blade that he finds in a forge. He combines the two and it results in the fires nearby, like the one from the forge as well as any home fires. They turn into blue flame waypoints. And Reyn speaks into the fire, which also shows in the crystal, which the skexies also see. So it's like this worldwide radio where he's talking to, you know, it's like a free gelfling radio. Yeah, yeah,

yeah. And he's talking to all the gelfling, but also the skecs he's can hear it too. And he says quote, the skecs he's deceived us, turn clan against clan, murdered our all-moder, drained our loved ones, unleashed the darkening upon the world. And now everyone and everything is at risk. What was once unthinkable has become inevitable, rebellion. This weapon, the dual glaive, he holds it up, has been foretold to end the Skexies' power. It is now in gulfling hands. The Skexies have sown distrust amongst us for a thousand trying. Why? Because they feared what would happen if we united. They were right to be afraid. Join me at Stone in the Wood. Here we will make our stand, not as many but as one. And then the emperor uses the power of the darkening to break into the call.

Basically, he says, silence, your pathetic rebellion can only end in ruin. Then why do you tremble? Disrespectful peon, your lives are about a spec waiting to be swept away. Be assured that any gulfling that stands with you in battle will join you in the grave. At which point, Rian takes his dual glave and stabs it into the fire. Basically, you know, foreign conversation, Luke, we're going to have company. And that also shows the skecs he's that he has the dual glave. And the emperor bolsters the skecs he's at this point and tells them that they will descend

on this nascent rebellion at dawn since they're nearby and stone in the plant or stone in the wood. And Rian wonders aloud if the gulfling are going to come. So as the final episode draws up, we see the environmentalist turned incorporation of the heart of Thra, Deet, making grenades. Yeah. So she's making actual grenades. Now, half of this has the vibe of an election week winding down.

Deach shows hope that the others are going to show. Rean speaks of the future and wants to see the caves of Grot with her afterwards, which what was the name of the mines that Legolas and Gimli talked about? What was the add, I think you're muted and we're still recording this. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't talk about like the glittering caves. It wasn't more. I was it.

No, it was not more. Okay. Sorry. I'm looking it up. Right. Anyway. So yeah. Okay, but it's that same kind of vibe.

Yeah, yeah. There's also there's there's a bit of romance to this. Yeah. Okay, but it's that same kind of vibe. Yeah. There's also there's there's a bit of romance to this. Yeah. There's been a hint of affection this whole time and she doesn't see a way forward. That'll be the same. But she says it'll be better. And I think really she recognizes that she's going to die that she's burning out from the power of the. By the way, it's Aglirond. Aglirond. Okay. Okay. So really you have the militant who's hoping for a cataclysmic ending, an actual showdown with the powers that be one that'll somehow settle everything and cause them

to stop being awful, and he's telling his fantasies to the environmentalist who sees how far past the point of no return we've gone on abusing this planet. Okay. Yeah. Also, Deid has the darkening in her hands and veins, which is a downside to absorbing everything from sanctuary tree is that you also downloaded everything that was troubling it too. Ooh. And speaking of the darkening, that's 3. That's 3. Yeah, it really is.

You know that she's not long for this world, you know. Now the emperor is looking over the darkness in his castle deep below again, and he and the general have a bit of an a half moment where he asks the general if he dreams and if he remembers the time before the sundering, which is where they split into skecs, he's in mystics. And the emperor only has nightmares and he sees the negative emotions. He sees suffering and guilt and sorrow as a torment which he seeks to escape, and he truly fears his own mortality as it's the one thing he cannot control. And the emperor says that the skecsis must quote, hold on to life with all claws no matter the cost, no matter the cost.

Wow. Yeah. The quiet heart out loud. Yes. You can do that with puppets. Yes, true. You can have your Uber Roy. Yeah. How could I forget Uber Roy?

Like ever again in my life. Yeah. Both times, Damien has talked about puppets. It's been about Trump. Yeah. Well, life. Yeah, both times Damien has talked about puppets. It's been about Trump. Yeah, well, yeah. But what I find interesting is we're still coming around, even though this isn't Lucas, we're still coming around to the force and Buddhism.

And at the same time, we're coming around to Tolkien's view of evil, like this underlying kind of probe of the utter emptiness of all of that selfishness, at the root of all of that, is this terrible, knowing fear that cannot create anything, can only corrupt and steal from. And it's interesting that, you know, Tolkien was coming from an intensely Catholic worldview.

And here we see this very much being in a, Taoist, I mean, kind of, there's, there's, there's a Buddhist Taoist, you know, there's a Buddhist-dowest, you know, a Eastern religion kind of outlook on it, but it still indicates that, no, no, when we're dealing with darkness and negativity, there is still this, it is rooted in emptiness and it is rooted in a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a knowing, it, knowing fear. Yeah. Does, does the general give a response? Or is it just kind of a kind of a soliloquy from the, from the emperor? Remember that the, it's mostly a

soliloquy, but remember also the general is always subsequent to the emperor. Okay. Not muleingly so, but you know, clearly the number two. Also, the general has just been stabbed and healed so he's well aware of his own more talent and yeah he talks about he doesn't dream you know at all and so he's just kind of listening it's kind of you know I'm a soldier I't, I don't have time for this. Okay. All right. Yeah. I don't, I don't, I don't have time for politics. Now, the late anthropologist and philosopher Ernest Becker wrote a book called the denial of death. And in it, he says that the fear of death contributes to a literal and figurative quest for immortality via religion, via being a parent and via making legacies or lasting works. via being a parent and via making legacies or lasting works.

Okay. Well, the last part was, I find it interesting that religion is number one and legacies and lasting works are number two. And when we look at ancient Greek and Roman, that was number three. Oh, sorry. Number three. Yeah, my bad. Yeah, I meant number three. Yeah, when we look at number three, and we look at number one, they were combined by the Romans. Mm hmm. Into a civic duty. Yeah, which also combined. I mean, you couldn't separate any of those three for the Romans. Yeah, really. Yeah, it's true. It's a good point. So so far, no shit, right? Yeah. It's a good point. So, so far, no shit, right?

Yeah. But also, this does go a long way toward crystallizing. Yeah. The need for present celebrity and adulation by a certain Tangerine man, baby demon, who used to be our president. Okay. That fear, as natural as it is, can absolutely cause folks to become more severe in their ethical and political

choices, create a greater sense of tribalism and the urgency for it and bring about people who also thirst for such people to be their leaders. You get this weird feedback loop of everyone who's afraid who needs someone to validate them, both the leaders and the followers. Okay. Yeah. You'll know that I'm still trying to want to. Yeah. Mm hmm. But yeah. No. So having it elucidated like that is powerful. Yeah. Well, and here's here's more evidence. After the

San Bernadino shootings in December of 2015. Yeah. Trump got an uptick in popularity during his campaign. The same, the same thing happened in November of 2015 with the Paris attacks. And in each of these, someone brown attacked a community that was seen as largely white, someone Muslim, a, a tactic community that was seen as largely Christian and Trump rose in popularity. And he seized on it too. This was when he promised a ban on Muslims from entering the country as a part of his when I am president. It brought in the us versus them and it's largely tied to his revulsion to death. Do you remember and I truly think this is one of the most interesting flaws about this man and it's a damn shame that he never got any therapy. This and his daddy issues.

Um, you remember in France in 2018 where he refused to visit the American cemetery, saying that the hundreds of Marines who died in Bella Woods were suckers for getting killed. Quote, why should I go to that cemetery is filled with losers. Yeah, I do remember that. It wasn't just his hair, which everybody sees Don and rightly so. It wasn't just his hair though. We had a sitting president who was so afraid of death that on the hundredth anniversary of World War One, he wouldn't go out to be a part of the ceremony. When he was on Howard Stern's show in 2004, he said that he had seen an 80 year old fall

and crack his head and he said, quote, I thought he died. And you know what I did? I said, oh my God, that's disgusting. And I turned away. See, other thing is he always tells you who he is. Yeah, I do remember hearing that snippet of that interview. And yeah, his reaction was intensely narcissistic, a threat to life.

At a reminder of his mortality. Yeah. And everything about his full-throated denial of the reality of COVID. That's the very next paragraph. I'm not going to talk too much about it because it's so obvious, right? Yeah. It hit us hard because we had a feckless, incoherent, leaderless response. Yeah.

And his approach was essentially eugenics. Oh, well, yeah. You know, and it wasn't, oh,, finally I get to do eugenics. It was eugenics because he was afraid, which is the thing every time he is a scared, scared man. And like you said, like that, that basically, you know, that's the last person you want to have in charge during a pandemic. That's the last person you want to have in charge period, but especially during a pandemic, yes, it's especially highlighted at that. When he was interviewed on 9-11 about

what had happened, he wasn't really, I don't even want to, oh my God, he wasn't interviewed. That's the best part. He called into a news station and said, Hey, I'm Donald Trump. I want to go on the air and tell you what I think about it. And he immediately made it about himself, quote, 40 Wall Street actually was the second tallest building in downtown Manhattan. And it was actually before the World Trade Center, the tallest. And when they built the World Trade Center, it became known as the second tallest. And now it's the tallest. In disgusting. Yeah. Just fucking gross. And also wrong. Factually wrong. Demonstrable wrong. It wasn't the second

tallest. There's several that are taller than it. And we're taller back then too. And when political opponents died, he was thirsty as fuck to mock their deaths. Normally you could chalk that up to a character flaw in his part, right? But it's really more than just being petty. It's pathological. He mocks death itself and distance himself from it as much as he can because that's the one thing he can't control. He cannot buy his way out of it. He avoided military service like many rich kids did by getting multiple deferments. And in 1999, he admitted that he made up a fake injury to avoid military service because, quote, you think I'm stupid.

I wasn't going to Vietnam. Other quotes on the issue have actually been proven to be false, but that one was verified. Anyway, hold on to life with all clause, no matter the cost. And there's also subplot within Chamberlain's climb to power, a subplot where he gifted the scientists with Griniacs, which is a larger version of podlings who were renowned for their technical expertise and their prodigious strength. And at this point, they've been nearly wiped out. And so this was a rarity and their slaves, whose mouths were soan shut that Chamberlain gave to the scientist. And anyway, he got them to

switch out the general's essence with a fake potion that looked like essence. That's that whole thing. And he talked to the real one, and he promised them freedom if they did this, and they did it, and then he's like, oh, when the time is right. Anyway, the emperor had insisted that the scientists stay behind and build the army that Chamberlain has suggested

instead of going off to fight the fight. And the scientist, 100% feel slighted by this because he wanted to go improve himself. And there's even lines that he speaks about how can I prove myself? They won't let me go out. And the general calls him like a weakling for not getting to go. And it's like, bro, you were standing right next to Amprune who denied him. But he definitely is slighted. But he's is slighted,

but he's also alone in the castle and he's working on dissecting a dead arotham. And he's trying to turn it into something else using the crystal. And he insists that the Gruniacs clean up after him after he goes off to microdose on some essence because it turns out he loves microdosing essence. So you get ready for the battle,

both sides are hyping themselves up, and again, it feels like election day. And while the scientist is pretending to be emperor and he literally sits on the throne, he demands that the podlings play music for him and serve him food, and then he abuses them until they start to stand up to him. And then the hunter moves a little bit and it causes the podlings to flee the room. And then the hunter begins snoring and wheezing and then awakens in front of the scientist in the empty throne room.

And he snaps himself free of the marionette mounting and he demands re-in. That's the first thing he says. And the scientist tells him where to find re-in and then the hunter runs off in search of re-in while spurning the scientists for being a coward. So he just, he can't win. He cannot. Cannot win. Now, as you know, the hunter and the archer are tied together,

right? And the archer has been convalescing with the heretic and the wanderer the whole time. And when the hunter awakens, it actually takes his toll in the archer. And even with all the essence and the Frankenstein and the scientists have done to the hunter, it has not done anything to help the Archer feel better.

And as the gulflings are preparing for the battle, a fizz gig tumbles through literally like a tumbleweed, which again, these little details just delight me. You know, they're getting the validity for the marauders. Anyway, the skexy show up and they mock the assembled gulfling because look how little they are and re-en challenges the emperor to one-on-one combat. And at this point, Chamberlain let's lose his plan. He maneuvers the general into accepting the challenge and eventually re-en stabs the general through

despite getting the shit kicked out of him the whole time. And the stab wound begins to drain the essence. I can't tell if it's essence or darkness, but the dual glave starts draining it from them. And then Rian does what every good liberal, no matter how militant they appear, does. He refuses to actually follow through. He triumphantly shouts that he's not a killer and he steps back, which would be great if you're not faced with a fucktown of killers who

literally have stated their mission's purpose is to consume you. Yeah. In the face of absolute stated genocide, that's not as much of a virtue as you think it is. Right. And of course, that allows the general to live. And he kind of hobbles up to the emperor and the emperor just looks at him says, what use are you to me now? And then tells him to fall back out of the battle, which is like damn. Oh shit. Now does that sound familiar? Somebody is no longer useful to the emperor, so he just passes him away.

Oh, anybody and everybody in the Trump administration, like repeatedly, how many Steve Bannon, yeah. How many names do you need? Like, you know. So anyway, the skecs, he's get ready to attack and their armor is actually pretty damn cool. It's like, they have like wings that don't have the flaps to them.

So it's just the bones and those have been armored up and they've got like blades on them and shit and the gulfling women fly through because remember they can fly with bombs and grenades And they just start dropping Yes, and there's some tender moments in the battle. There's some chaos in the battle. And what shows up is that the skecs, these are really fucking powerful actually. And Rianna is being super heroic despite their endurance. And they have a lot of,

like things are blowing them up. They get knocked over and they get back up every damn time the skecs is doing. Chamberlain actually finds the general in the middle of the battle behind the lines. And he's wounded. And the general speaks to him as a friend and he asks for his help.

And Chamberlain comes up to him and then stabs him and kills him. And he leaves the sword in the general and says, you took my seat. And the general crumbles. Wow. Yeah. And right when that happens, the hunter comes running into the battle. He grabs Rian and holds him up because he's so single-minded, right? He takes Rian's dual glaive and he appears ready to kill him.

But then he starts to solo-alike-wise because he himself has conquered death. And he's more powerful than death itself, so we need hubris. Right, right. And at this very moment, the archer wakes up and he says that he's had a dream and that this hunt must end. Because again, he's the other half, right? He goes to the edge of the circle of the suns and throws himself off. And just as the hunter is punching the shit out of Rian, claiming his victory over death, that his victory over death.

That's when that happens. The archer turns all sparkly when he dies and then the hunter turns into purple dust and explodes. And out of the explosion comes Agra. Remember his presence, his presence is burning in the air, right? All right, okay. And she confronts the emperor. And honestly, this feels like wish fulfillment, right? member of presence, who is presence. It's brilliant. Right. All right. Okay.

And she confronts the emperor. And honestly, this feels like wish fulfillment, right? We all voted and our democracy stared down the fascist trying to bully us into accepting the rule. And the specter of Lady Liberty, your Lady democracy herself has come to confront the one in charge and who fears death the most. The emperor. About to weep.

Yeah. Like, it's beautiful. It's wishing to come and go. Oh my God. Yeah. Well, I know. Yeah. So the emperor insists that there's still no match for the skexes and he shouts to the rest to finish them all all off.

And then the sofa, the drench and the sprite and the grot and the doosen and the vapor clans all show up having their moment. You know, it's nice. Yeah, it's the, it's, you know, it's the same thing that we saw in endgame, right? Yeah. The vengeance assemble. Yeah. And then the aratham show up and they pick a side. And at this point, Chamberlain turns the emperor and he's like, retreats in option. It really is. To which the emperor says, I cannot lose no matter the cost, behold, the power of the darkening and he holds up the darkening and his Scepter glows and he sends purple lightning into the ground which explodes several geltling, which fucking sucks. And these fingers start to glow. And so she starts to absorb it all.

fingers start to glow and so she starts to absorb it all. And it's clearly wasting her away, but she's absorbing it all. The environmentalist is being destroyed by this. Oh, fuck man. The emperors incredulous Deet's eyes are purple and she sends the lightning right back at them and it kills the collector because we never see her in the fucking movie and I love how they got rid of characters that we never saw. Nice, okay. The skecs is retreat. So now the collector and the general are dead. And they're the two most militant of the skecs.

Some people do go to jail. Mm-hmm. The gulfling let them leave. Because... Now, Diet is still purpling up and she goes away as everyone celebrates and re-en notices this and he goes looking for her as everyone else, including the Aratham are getting all huggy.

So it's the end of episode six. Deet continues walking away as everything around her is purpling up. She appears to kind of be leaking the darkness. Brea picks up the dual glaive and she finds that the pommel shatters and in it is the dark crystal. Meanwhile, Agra is talking about what will come and the fragility of hope and she's talking and it's kind of montage and she says this day does not belong to a single clan or gulfling this day, the many become one. And meanwhile, because evil doesn't fucking rest, the scientist is zapping and shocking

the eratham corpse the whole time. And he actually combines it with the body of a grooneyac that he killed because the grooneyac fight him. And he throws one out and then he kills the other. And he calls the combination, a combination of the Gruniac and the Aratham. Dartham. Yes. And that is the end of season one. And then Netflix canceled any future work.

Motherfucker. Now, part of this, according to Lisa Henson herself, is due to COVID. She said, the COVID concerns are perhaps even multiplied because we have such large crews. It's interesting because we like to say that the show was the biggest puppet production in history. It looks delicate. It looks beautiful, but it's an incredibly large endeavor. You have no idea watching the finish show just how big it was. And to just put that on, put that top again, would be a huge thing. Just to put that up again, would be a huge thing.

I mean, for a puppet to jump from the carriage to the wheel of a carriage, which is sort of a typical stunt in the human world, that sequence is just amazing. And so I looked and I was like, how many people were on this set? Because COVID is a big fucking deal, right? They canceled it.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, there were 170 different puppets, 70 different species, 83 puppeteers and 59 voice artists. And then there's the crew to support that all. That's over 2,500 people working on a show. And despite its award-winning presentation, it cost a lot of money to make, and it didn't bring the viewers at Netflix had hoped, which is a direct parallel to the first movie

as well, because it's one of those movies that doesn't make much but everyone loves. It's like the opposite of Avatar. Yeah. And what's wild is that we already know the ending, right? We know that the skecsies are going to win and that a few of them will die and that auger will isolate herself while it all happens and give up and that the world of thrall will be plunged into a depressing and unending bleakness where the skecsies continue to destroy the planet and devour its inhabitants and still wither the hell away. Yeah. Which,

I mean, unfortunately, I just said the parallel out loud to what we think is probably going to happen to us. Yeah. Well, yeah, odds being what they are. Democracy will just kind of fade away. And on and on. And yet there's so much written about season two that they already did. I mean, they waited 37 years with this story, right? And they continue to carve out these bubbles of hope in such a bleak story, which, and it's a defiant hope. And it's the kind of hope that we can call hope punk. Yeah. Despite Henson's total lack of understanding of what the problem in Israel and Palestine were, he still created a world in which hope should not exist and yet it does. As I'd said in previous episodes, quoting Alexander Roland, quote, hope punk is an ideological stance and a big mood that means kindness and softness doesn't equal weakness.

And Roland believes that quote, in this world of brutal cynicism and nihilism, being kind as a political act, an act of rebellion. And Hanson Studio seems to have kept this flame burning so that, as Roland said, quote, any silliness was always tempered with an overarching notes of respect and empathy. In this way, Hanson was subversively earnest and earnestly subversive. There's so much silly in the age of resistance, but there's also this fierce empathy that occurs the entire time. There's a refusal to be ground down by the act of resisting, and there's a softness of song that is so resilient that no matter the darkness that naws away at the heroes, it's there. And there's a puppet show on top of a sacred site. I mean, how much more hope punk can you be during a resistance than to put on a puppet show?

Man, I'm gonna get emotional. I even see the show. I needed to clean my cleanse my palette after V. Like, really, yeah, I mean, this is this is this is the equivalent to the Eagles writing take it to the limit. And then turn around and writing take it easy. Like okay. I see that. Yeah.

Yeah. So I like that. What what have you gleaned? Oh, fuck. Well, number one, I've gleaned that I need to carve out the time to watch this, because I have a very strong suspicion this is going to be one more on the list of shows I need to watch on my own. Lee might get it. Lee might like it. I don't know. Yeah, she might. I'm, I, I, the thing is you won't get to watch it with your boy for another. Yeah, I've for another few years. Yeah, because I've seen pictures of the erathem and yeah, that's not. Not his thing. And yeah, like I wanted to watch it at the time.

I had one of the Legion of the folks who was like, oh yeah, no, I really need to get around and watch it. And like, completely. If you're a fault, they cancel it. So it's my fault. Yeah, yes. I will take that upon myself. I will, I will take ownership of that.

But the, the fact that the Henson Studios writers were like, no man, anvils, we're going to drop them. We're going to drop all of them. No, no, not just one. No, I'm sorry. One is not enough. We're going to drop all of them. Look, if you drop this one, it'll get lonely.

Yeah. Yeah. It needs friends. Right. You know, like, like, you know, somebody, one of them lead writer says, we need to drop all the animals. Like, what do you mean? All of them. I mean, all of them, like Gary Oldman and the professional. I was going to say Gary Oldman in fifth element. Throttling million. Yeah. We only need to drop 500,000. Drop one million. Drop one million. Yeah. Interesting. Those are both Gary Oldman quotes. The man has a has a niche. Yeah. Yeah, the blatantness of the allegory just keeps hitting me. Like, wow, you're really fucking went there, didn't you?

It's like when Andor came out, like I'm going to date this show just a little bit. This is after Andor has come out. It was like, hey, have you ever seen Star Wars be a cab? Yeah, we'll now. We're going there. We're going there. We're going to commit to it. And, and, and yeah. Yeah. Um, it's, yeah. I, I, I's yeah, yeah. I I love the original film. Mm-hmm. I Think on a subconscious level there was a part of me that was like I really don't want to Emotionally invest in a bunch of elves that I know we're gonna fucking die

So that part of the reason I watch it originally Totally fair. But you know, now, even though it's been in some ways thoroughly spoiled, I know that there's enough visual candy. There's enough eye candy involved. Yeah, and there's enough that there'll be enough little stuff that you've had to gloss over for the purposes of this, this, you know, exegesis. Oh, yeah. That there'll still be stuff that I'll notice. And like, okay, yeah, I know I know know where the story's gonna go,

but I wanna watch it happen anyway. Mm-hmm. So I don't really mind spoilers if it's not Star Wars. Yeah. And the last thing that stands out to me is the trying to figure out how to put it into words. But the, And the trying to figure out how to put it into words, but the hour of writing a story like this, that yes it's obvious, yes it's on the nose, but it needs to happen. We need to have, we need to have these stories told. Somebody needs to do it. And if the silly studio that does all the puppet shit, isn't

the one to do it? Who else will? Yeah, you can get away with a lot when you do. Well, yeah. And it's like Michael, not Michael William Gibson wound up. He wrote an essay about science fiction being the court gestures of literature. Oh yeah, you brought this up. Yeah, I've mentioned it before. And and I think this kind of highlights the fact that there are the court gestures and then there are gradations within the genre about, you know, who can get away with the most shit? Right.

And when you've been relegated to the, oh, well, it's puppet. So it's kid stuff, ghetto on top of the science fiction genre ghetto. Oh, you can subvert all the things. There's like all the stuff you can get away with doing. Oh, geez, I mean, I can put together an episode on a single episode of a frackle rock where they talk about like, well, we shouldn't eat the doosers stuff

because they're building it and it's environmentalism, right? And it goes the wrong way because the doosers are like, I guess we're gonna have to move to somewhere where people will enjoy our architecture because they liked that the, yeah, they had purpose. They were building things for people to eat and then pretty soon the whole place is overrun with do's or shitty work and so it's like

It's fat. It's a great episode. Wow. Yeah, okay. Do that. Yeah, holy shit. Okay. Yeah Wow, well cool. What are you? What are you reading? What am I reading? Well, I'm reading a lot of student work, which I don't recommend anybody I don't recommend anybody. I just got us to hope punk and you're depressing them again Right now, right I don't I don't really have very much to recommend although I will very strongly recommend if you can find it, and I'm sure it's probably available online somewhere, the original comic book adaptation of Dark Crystal is number one, a remarkably good example

of a cinematic adaptation. And number two, there are some elements in the comic adaptation that bring some additional depth into the story. And so if you're a fan of the original film or of Rise of Resistance, I strongly recommend that you seek that out and take a look at it because it's a great piece of comic art that I don't think has gotten very much attention. Yeah. So that's my recommendation. I'm gonna recommend you go watch age of resistance like straight up. You don't even have to see the original movie for it to work. Although if you do, it's probably better

because you'll get the references more. It's kind of like if you watched episode one, you could watch episode one is the first one that you watch or you could watch episode four is got intended and then all the I've got a bad feeling about this shit, makes sense a lot more because it's an echo. But I do think the Dark Crystal movie is a good one, but you don't have to watch it to enjoy Age of Resistance, but it does help.

So I strongly suggest people go watch Age of Resistance. Cool, cool, cool. Well, where do you want to be found? If anywhere, cool. Well, where do you want to be found? If anywhere. Okay, fair enough. I am a shadow in the warp. Don't come looking for me. But in seriousness, we collectively

can be found online at www.geekhistorytime.com. We can collectively be found on Twitter for as long as that platform continues to survive. Because it's doing a bleach it whole. Yes. But if you're looking for us specifically, we can be found there as geek history time. And that's pretty much it for me. Oh, I do, however, what I mentioned that of course you're listening to us right now. So you've found us either on our website

or on one of these streaming services from which we can be found. Wherever it is that you have found us, please take the time to subscribe if you haven't done it already. Please give us a review, give us the five stars that you know, Damien certainly has earned for the work he put in for the research for this episode and all of the others that he's done. And yeah, how about you? Let's see, you can find me, you will find me on February 3rd at Henry's bar doing capital punishment.

That will be a lot of fun. Please bring proof of vaccination and $10 and then eat there as well. Wanna make sure they make money off of us and we're able to pay people so we can come back there. We're trying a new venue. So,

symbiative relationship, you were all part of Traw. Exactly. So come check that out. Otherwise, that's pretty much it. I mean, there's other places, but I, I do like just rate, subscribe and review on this thing. Um, and come back and listen next week when it talks about something far less puppety. So, well, you don't know. I might do far escape. Who knows? I I, am I decide? I'm waiting like, you know, well, I, uh, I'm going to go inside off. So for a geek history of time, I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blalock. And until next time, peace. Yes.