Dungeons and Daddies - S2 Ep. 23 - Alright
Episode Date: November 29, 2022The teens pay a visit to the Church of the Doodler.This episode contains Violence, Profanity, and Sexual Content.Support the show on Patreon!Get merch and more at our website!Follow us on Twitter @dun...geonsanddads!Check out the subreddit! DM is Anthony Burch (@anthony_burch)Lincoln Li-Wilson is Matt Arnold (@mattlarnold)Normal Oak is Will Campos (@willbcampos)Scary Marlowe is Beth May (@heybethmay)Taylor Swift is Freddie Wong (@fwong) Theme song is "On My Way" by Maxton WallerBrian Fernandes is our Content ProducerAshley Nicollette is our Community ManagerEster Ellis is our Lead EditorTravis Reaves provides Additional EditingRobin Rapp is our transcriber Cover art by Alex Moore (@notanotheralex) Send us stuff and get in contact: https://www.dungeonsanddaddies.com/contact The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Dungeons and Daddies is a rowdy, horny, violent podcast for grown-ups.
Content warnings can be found in the episode description.
Dads and Sports.
I'm watching the game!
Welcome, sports fans, to another episode of Dads and Sports.
I'm Eddie, the rock star, rock man.
Coming at you live, and that's my co-host, Brock Braxton.
It's not just sports here, we also talk about families and how much we love being dads.
Speak for yourself, I fucking hate my wife.
Go!
That's me, Larry Snapple.
I've got a chronic hacking cough.
Did not get vaccinated.
Hey, it's me, Trip Trigger, the handsome single dad with two beautiful kids.
I'm a widower.
Baby!
I'm getting on the phone, Trip.
Let's get on to the topic of the day.
The game between Aaron O'neill's trees and these teens
that seem to come out of nowhere you guys catch this you guys catch game last night i thought
everyone had a great hustle out there uh really rooting for them to uh save our world from what
appears to be like a lot of bad stuff going on and i really like that trick play between scary
marlo and wickedly wilson they had a lot of synergy going on there incredible play incredible
play what an upset.
You know, look, I was talking to my bookie, Frank.
I had money on those kids losing for sure, but
they pulled it up. Hey,
you're still betting, dude?
Yeah.
I thought you got that
under control, man. It's just like
every so often on games that I feel like I
have a good insider.
No, man.
Let's go to the ads and when we come back, we'll do a little session
of dad therapy. How about that?
This week's episode is brought to you by
Man. man man man man man man man man man man man man man man man man man man man man man man
man man man man man man man man man man man man man man man man man man man man man man Welcome to Dungeons and Daddies, not a BDSM podcast.
Instead, this is a D&D podcast.
Not when you say it like that.
Wow.
Humpa, humpa.
Where four teams from our world are sent back to our world to fix our world from the mess that our world caused when our grandparents
and maybe kind of like Henry's whole family line fucked up.
Anyway.
What the fuck?
What?
Jesus.
Shit.
What?
Are you kidding me?
I'm just saying.
Look, I know that Anthony gave me a special piece of paper
this episode and you guys didn't get any
and I get to open it and you don't,
but don't take it out on me.
Spoilers.
Well, my name is Freddie Wong.
I play Taylor Swift, the anime loving, stealthy. Boo. That's my name is freddie wong i play taylor swift the anime loving
stealthy i'm gonna say boo now for you that's why it's like the gas for scary but
taylor's teen fact for this week taylor of course has ordered off of amazon a series of
wetting and sharpening stones for the various blades that he keeps at his disposal and like
despite watching probably like 30 hours of like how to sharpen your knives youtube videos and his
recommendations is just like knife youtube every time he sharpens or
attempts to sharpen his blades they get duller he can't do it he just doesn't know what he's doing
wrong but every time he tries to be like time to bring the old katana to the whetstone it just ends
up slightly duller than it was it gets it and cuts his hand somehow he has a yeah set of band-aids
nearby he tells me hey mom i'm going in the garage to
sharpen my blade she's like don't forget to bring some uh neosporin i sympathize we got really nice
like kitchen knives from japan we bought whetstones for them it's like actually hey they're getting
dull matt you should sharpen them up like they're all worse like every time i do it just they don't
get sharper i'm bad at whetstones hey everybody my name is mat't get sharper. I'm bad at whetstones. Hey, everybody. My name is Matthew Arnold.
Bad at whetstones.
Bad at whetstones.
My name is Matthew Arnold again.
I play Lincoln Lee.
Oh, no.
We're on the time loop.
I play Lincoln Lee Wilson, a schooled at home soccer kid who's the productive paladin of the group.
A really quick fact about Lincoln.
His entire relationship with Daryl, his grandfather, is just predicated on the fact that they both
think it's really funny that football means football and soccer that's the only thing they
share in common it's just it's just nothing but jokes like like like like daryl like all right
kid ready play some football and he's like of course he pulls up it's like ah not that football
grandpa he's like just kidding i got this football psych that football! Oh! It's just that. That's the only
thing they share in common. And then they always end up
just like either kicking a soccer ball or throwing a football.
That's it. Wow. They also both hate
liberals.
Anthony! This is my
family
and Daryl has complicated
feelings
about the liberals.
But Lincoln is Gen Z. One of the few conservatives About the liberals. The Lincoln is Gen Z.
One of the few conservatives in the country.
The heir to Ben Shapiro's throne.
The Lincoln's not even Gen Z.
We just say Gen Z as a generic catch-all word for anyone younger than us because we're old now.
I know.
I like how anytime somebody says something about millennials, we're all like, millennials are 40 now,
but we're just like Gen Z.
Everything's Gen Z.
Hey, everyone.
I'm Will Kieffus.
I play normally
Oak Swallows Garcia,
mixed up mascot kid
trying to make his way
in a strange world
and find himself.
And aren't we all really?
Aren't we all?
My fact about normal this week
is that before all of this began,
like the week before,
he decided, you know, like just as a backup plan, the week before he decided you know like this is
a backup plan just in case like you know being a cool mascot didn't work out his second step to
get everyone to love him would be to set again his book of world records so and he's like you know
what i bet i could chew a piece of bubble gum longer than anybody on the planet so this entire
time normals had a piece of Bazooka Joe in his mouth.
It's just back there.
He's found this one spot to kind of stick it to
so he doesn't have to chew it all the time, but it's in there
and he kind of chews it whenever he's not talking.
He lost one tooth, but he refused to fill it.
He just keeps the bubble gum in there.
He had a filling fall out and he's got it in there.
He's like, this is my secret.
Every day after everyone goes to bed, he
takes a picture of it to prove it's still in there and that's why he refused to go to dentists because
the dentist will find it this is just gum he's dreading that day because he has a dental checkup
coming up and he's like i gotta i'm gonna have to convince the doctors for the book of this
book of world records you just said my parents everything's cool okay you got it real quick if
you just start flossing two weeks beforehand you you can fool your dentist. I love flossing.
I floss twice a day.
I floss a lot, too.
I'm just saying that if you're...
I floss every day and fortnight.
Nice.
You know what?
That's okay, too.
My name is Beth May.
Jen's ears love that joke.
Oh, like the dance.
Oh, okay.
My name is Beth May.
I'm going to leave the podcast now.
Goodbye. And I play Scary Marlow,
the goth punk seeker of darkness
who is not like the other warlocks.
Fun fact about Scary.
You could really hear the letters in that one.
It's spelled that way.
Fun fact about Scary is I, Beth May,
am still in my injury era,
my sprained ankle era,
to say it in Taylor Swift terms.
I said last episode
that scary had never been
hurt playing soccer, which is true.
The worst injury
she's ever had is
slamming her finger
in her locker when somebody
called her Terry at
school. So this is pretty recently.
And it's still a little sticky.
It clicks.
It clicks.
The old finger clicking.
I'm Anthony Burch.
I'm your dad.
Hey, dad.
My dad fact is, or teen fact rather, I guess.
I realized the other day that I accidentally still have
all the lyrics to the theme song for the Weird Al
Saturday morning kid show on CBS. I still have all that memorized. And I didn for the Weird Al Saturday Morning Kids show on CBS.
I still have all that memorized, and I didn't even watch that many episodes of it.
Whoa.
Give us all a taste.
I mean, it's a long song.
So this is a story about a guy named Al who lived in a zoo where this hamster piled.
The sanitation workers didn't really approve, so he packed up his accordion and had to move to a city in Ohio where he lived in a tree.
And he worked in an antique and justice factory, and he played on the company bowling team.
And every single day, a reoccurring dream where he's brain-leading to his own end of a virus algorithm, but it's really not important to the story.
The very next year, he met a Dunahawai judge gen sweat a spatula tattooed on her arm on her arm and he didn't
keep in touch and he lost her number and he got himself a job at a tater tot farm he spent all
his money on split level cave seven miles below the surface of the earth and he could have made
some money making dead jelly bean pickle sandwiches for what it's worth then one day i was in the
forest trying to get a tanning i heard the torture screaming and the funny little man he was caught
in a bear trap and now set him free and the guy that he rescued was a great fellow's gonna be and
it turns out he's big shot producer on tv and he is set in free and the guy that he rescued was a great fellow and it turns out he's a big shot producer
on TV
and he gave out a contract
what do you know
that he's got his very own
weird show
wow
I didn't even know
where to have a show
I'm sure it was that
Anthony or Eminem rap guy
so many memories
of holding my loved ones
that will be lost
to the ether
just to make space
before the final line
goes out
that is the only thing
you remember
on your deathbed.
Then it'll be a life well lived.
You take a deep breath and for a second you feel a lot of relief to not be underground,
but the freshness of the air is counteracted by the fact that you are once again looking
into the horrible underside of the doodler.
Oh, man.
It's not great.
That's too much running.
I flop down on the ground and start panting.
Grant pulls you into a hug.
He's looking at all of you with a great deal of pride.
And he says, that was great.
You guys did a great, great job.
We do it for you, mister.
I don't accept that pride.
Nobody give him the sun because he wants to use it to blow up the whole.
I'm sorry.
I'm really tired.
And I brush off the hug i go um
it's not hugging time right now dad that's his personal space please oh no okay okay and he puts
his hands behind his back and he stands up and takes one step back and he goes i do want to talk
to you about what happened in there though how are you feeling about the tree that you you killed
and that we took the sun oh i mean I mean, I don't feel great.
I don't know.
It's a tree.
It's sentient.
I don't know.
It's a lot to think about.
I'm just happy we're out here alive with like, yeah.
Okay.
Not feeling great.
I'm not.
I'm feeling pretty bad.
Okay.
Okay.
Good.
Good.
Great.
Good.
I mean, it's not good that you feel bad, but I'm glad that you didn't get like, you didn't
feel like an adrenaline rush, like anything like that.
No, man.
He said to back off.
Yeah.
Like, give him space. space okay seems like you're
doing okay though i mean last time you talked to me you were like oh i should die i hate myself
which is like pretty rough and then i saw you again oh well that's a lot of pressure to put
on a person i'm being honest i can't i don't my defenses aren't really up my brain's going this
way in that way i i feel weird but like i it was nice to see you i do sort of deserve to die that's not a big deal it happens no that's not it happens
but you don't deserve to die because you didn't feel good when you killed the guy so hey good for
you you're great i think you're having big feelings right now and it's not the time to discuss it i
think we both need to just process what's happened and then we'll have a conversation soon i yeah agree
and mr grandstand i'd just like to add that as a warrior on the path of bushido it's often unclear
what i'm supposed to feel and i think it's supposed to be nothing all the time grant turns
his back to you and continues talking to his son like you didn't even say anything oh oh oh hey you
listen yeah really quick while we're here mister this is something you can do i want you to
apologize to these three wonderful friends of mine.
Because you told me not to hang out with them, and they were dangerous.
But you know what?
Right now, they're like, they're my family.
No need to apologize.
You apologize.
I am dangerous.
Yeah, I am dangerous.
Yeah, we're all dangerous.
And I'm your family, and I hug Lincoln.
It's all personal space.
Sorry, sorry, sorry.
Yeah, it's good to ask.
No, no, you just ask beforehand.
Can I hug you?
Yeah,
of course.
Yeah,
bro.
Are we all bro that brother?
Yeah.
We're like brothers now.
You said we're family.
We're like brothers.
Yeah.
Hello,
dad.
I shake Grant's hand.
He immediately wipes his hand on his shirt.
He looks jealous just for a second.
Like,
like he's calling him dad.
Wait,
what?
no.
Grant says,
yeah,
no,
we all did a great job, and
I think we're good to go home now, so
let's, uh, if you give me the sign, and then
we can head back through the portal, and then we can
deal with whatever's happening back there.
I don't think...
We're not gonna do that, though, right?
No. Keep the sun away from this loser.
Yeah, we got some information from
another source that said that
the Church of the Doodler was an interesting place to go.
And maybe we could find out something there that would help us, you know, come up with a less bad plan than the one that you and our dads came up with.
And that shouldn't be too hard because your plan sucked.
Okay, do you want me to come with you to the Church of the Doodler?
Because we can go together and you can see that there's nothing there because I was there.
There's nothing there.
Ah, you know where it is.
I mean, you do too, right?
I think you guys have a map.
Just because you have a map doesn't mean you know where it is. It's hand-drawn. You never you know where it is. I mean, you do too, right? I think you guys have a map. Just because you have a map doesn't mean you know where it is.
It's hand-drawn.
You never know how accurate it is.
Scale, photography.
One second, Dad.
I need to talk to my bro, my brother here one second.
Just give us a second here.
He goes, oh, God, you're talking to me when you said Dad.
So, Link.
What's up?
Do you want to bring Dad along?
Your Dad?
I feel like I'm rushing into this.
But it feels like you still maybe have some stuff to say to him or not.
What do you guys think?
If anything,
he will be good cannon fodder.
Look,
I'll be honest.
Like I more or less kind of just followed,
you know what my dad said,
but I'm not really trusting them.
So like maybe you three can like,
you're like my new,
not my new dads,
but just like whatever you guys say,
like we're a team.
So like,
what do you guys,
what do you three buddies think
we should do yeah who's your daddy it's me scary all right scary's dad number one yeah scary that's
right what do you think we should do scary oh shit see natural leader well maybe we could get
some more information about like whatever happens with grant around but on the other hand he might
try to steal the sun back when we're not hand he might try to steal the sun back
when we're not looking he might try to get under our defenses try to like i don't know be so edgy
and cool like oh i'm grant i'm depressed whatever i'm depressed so suck it wait i dared to grant
go home marco it's been weeks dad's misses you what are you doing here oh shit he's got you there
yeah well we're trying to
save the world yes which is why i'm trying to we're all trying to save the world which is why
we should just go back now if you want i don't want you to go to the it's just gonna waste time
but i'll go with you if there's nothing secret there i don't want you to see it's just boring
but dad can not have both of us at least one of us gotta go home that seems like an arbitrary no
i'd be sad if you both die in a car crash i'd
be less sad if one of you did i'm not saying i want but like that's a wild thing to say
what are you talking about i thought i was losing the high ground as the parent here but you just
said that and now i feel like i can say confidently that's a little bit buck wild son right now marco
has dad has nobody he doesn't have nobody dad has us in
the same way that i had you and we weren't near each other we love each other it's fine but yes
we do need to get back as quickly as i can i agree we should all go back now i do a insight check on
grant i'm trying to suss out if he knows more about this place the church of the doula than
he's letting on good idea i cast zone cast zone of truth. Yes. Okay.
Zone of truth is just something that the family does.
They created a little circle and they say,
you can only tell the truth in here.
Yeah.
It's not even a magic spell.
It's just something you always agreed that like,
no matter how bad it got,
you could zone of truth.
What did my role tell me? Let's start there.
Sure.
Yeah.
Ooh,
I got a 20.
With a 20,
you can tell that he is not explicitly hiding anything from you other than
some possible emotional trauma.
There are not plot things that he is hiding from you to be nefarious.
Yo,
how rowdy do you want to get on your dad right now?
I feel like he's telling the truth and that there was nothing there,
but like,
I think there's some there,
there,
and that nothing there.
Do you know what I mean?
Like,
I think,
I think there's some blood in the water.
So it's like,
you know,
I don't know how real you want to get with him or what all you want to learn
about him right now,
but you know,
well,
we need to go there, right?
I'm just going to say, once you knock him off that pedestal,
there's no putting him back.
I know.
This is our dad we're talking about.
I can't lose another father figure, Link.
I'll be down three.
I get a free one with my punch card.
No, in the Wilson Lee family, we're all on the same level.
There's no pedestal.
But we sit at a round table.
Every sequel.
The real question is just us as a group.
We need to go to the church, right?
Yeah.
We got to go to the church.
We need to investigate all the leads.
You know your dad better than anyone.
Can we trust your dad to not screw us over or pull some move or try to steal the sun
because he thinks he knows better than us?
Should we give him the boot or should we bring him along? Maybe three weeks ago, the answer would be yes, but not now. Here, I got move or try to steal the sun. Cause he thinks he knows better than us. Like should we give him the boot or maybe three weeks ago?
The answer would be yes,
but not now here.
I got,
yeah,
here we go.
All right.
Well then you know,
zone of truth grant here's zone of truth,
which is not a spell of the way that your family does.
It's just something you agreed upon as a societal thing that you will
always tell the truth.
One zone of truth.
Yeah.
The Wilson Lee family.
Yeah.
The Wilson Lee family.
So he goes,
okay.
Oh,
zone of truth.
Zone of truth.
And he says,
yes.
Okay.
He puts his hands up and he says ask me whatever you want link it's probably helpful to have you
come along to the church with us if that's what you want to do because you know more the better
in terms of trying to survive i mean you're here to help us we're not here to help you so if you
come along with us are you going to betray us, be mean, do bad things, things that would get you a timeout, anything like that?
Everything that I have done has been to try to protect you, and everything I will do will be to try to protect you.
That said—
That's some lawyer talk, sir.
I wasn't finished.
Hey, I'm talking.
This is the truth.
I'm telling you my truth.
This is my truth.
Okay.
My truth is I may do some things you don't like,
but it will all be for the purposes of protecting you when we go.
Sounds like your truth sucks balls.
You know what?
I'll make a compromise because you talked all about Henry Clay and the,
and the power of compromise.
I would suggest that I won't betray you.
I won't try to get the sun until we're halfway through the Church of the Doodler.
So you're telling us when you're going to betray us.
I'm telling you when I'm not going to, which is the first half.
And I might not in the second half.
I appreciate the honesty.
I'm going to talk to my team here for a second and then we'll decide.
Okay.
All right, guys, you heard it.
My dad's definitely going to betray us at some point.
I might not.
He says in the distance.
you heard it my dad's definitely gonna betray us at some point i might not he says in the distance as much as i think that having cannon fodder is going to be helpful for anything that we
might encounter along the way i don't trust anybody over the age of 30 i say we dump his ass
yeah okay i think so too okay yeah this is gonna be a little hard so if you guys could just maybe
yeah why don't we take this why don't we talk to dad together okay um are you okay normal yeah i'm fine i'm great like i'm great uncle
or like any number of things like why he's not i mean why would he be my uncle if we're a family
and we're brothers so yeah i know i yeah why'd you talk to him i feel like i gotta i gotta think
about some stuff i'm gonna just go sit over here dad and i have always been on kind of a rough patch dad yes son we appreciate your offer of help but
the team and i feel that it would be best if you went home spend time with dad and you know help
out over there there's some weird stuff going over there and yeah you know what no you said
you betray us i just can't i needed my space not just hug space but like you space and i think you need space because last time
you talked to your son you said some rowdy stuff and um you should think about that roll persuasion
with advantage because you're in the zone of truth eight plus three eleven so it's an eleven he goes
i may not like it i may not agree with, but you said it in the zone of truth.
You told me your truth, so I will accept this.
Okay, fine.
Okay, well, I'm okay for a hug now if you want.
You know, it feels fitting.
I would like that.
And he goes in for a hug.
Okay, I give him a hug.
How strong is this hug?
It's a good hug.
You know what?
Actually, you can tell Link that it's weaker than the average.
His whole heart's not in it.
He's a little disappointed.
My side too.
Yeah, just a couple hover hands. tell, Link, that it's weaker than the average. His whole heart's not in it. He's a little disappointed. My side too. Yeah.
Just a couple hover hands.
Just a weird couple people at a comic con talking to somebody who was in Buffy.
Just like light
contact. Brief incidental contact.
It's like an obligation. It's like
never go to bed angry.
He shakes his head and
whispers to Scary, that's not a good hug.
What would you know about it?
Fuck, Scary?
God.
Okay.
You drive back, I assume to the portal?
Yeah, we're going to drop him off.
Okay, cool.
We're becoming more dad-like every single day.
Okay.
He points the direction to where the church of the doodler says it is. And he just says,
just keep going down this road.
And then it's basically,
it's going to slowly turn into a hill and get like almost vertical,
but just keep going.
And the church will be at the top of the hill and good luck.
You'll be fine.
There's nothing.
I mean,
good luck.
I love you very much.
And he jumps out of the van.
Oh,
dad.
Yeah.
Sorry.
He doesn't jump out of the van.
Just quick.
Yeah.
I love you too. Weird question. Do you love yourself doesn't jump out of the van. Just quick. Yeah, I love you too.
Weird question.
Do you love yourself?
He jumps out of the van.
And you lose sight of him.
I assume you drive to the church.
We're listening to Take Me to Church by Hozier.
This song means a lot to me right now.
I wish I could go to church.
That's great.
Yeah, that's right.
Link's a homeschool kid who really loves church.
You can draw whatever consequences
you wish from that.
Okay, so you drive
to the Church of the Doodler
as described by Grant.
It is down a long, lonely road
bathed in darkness.
A boulevard of broken dreams,
if you will.
You only slowly start to realize
that you're rising in elevation
as the ground gets steeper
and steeper beneath you.
But the cat has no problem
dealing with that.
You find things a little bit
harder to breathe
because you must be up
actually pretty high.
And the shape of the doodler
is getting closer and closer to you.
And it's having a worse
and worse effect
on your mental health. It is getting closer and closer to you. And it's having a worse and worse effect on your mental health.
It is getting more and more anxiety inducing as you feel the undulating
scaly,
but slimy,
but furry,
but indescribable exterior of the doodlers ass.
All right,
guys,
gear up.
We all pull out a fidget cubes.
Guys,
this is having a really bad effect on my mental health.
I just thought y'all should know I'm not doing well.
Oh, I'm sorry to hear that, Scary.
Geez.
Try fidgeting harder.
Take my fidget cube.
I can just grit out my anxiety, and I give you my fidget cube,
and I just clench my fists and cry my teeth.
Yeah, cool.
Now mark that you were twice as mentally ill as Scary is.
God damn it.
No.
No.
The idea that scary
would be pissed off
by that is very good.
I've been dethroned.
Scary just going,
no, while she spins too,
bitch, it spins.
The cat comes to a halt
outside of what looks to be
like an old cathedral
whose spire is so tall
that it looks to be piercing
the flesh of the doodler itself.
But the place where the spire meets the doodler's flesh,
you can't focus on it too hard because it makes you nauseous and because it doesn't make sense.
It's not close enough to pierce it, but it definitely is.
But it's not.
But it is.
And it's very upsetting.
It's like a magic eye.
Oh.
As you approach the door, you see a plaque on the front of it that is over the closed door that has the symbol and acronym of the Department for the Acquisition, Destruction, Deployment and Investigation of Extra Normal Stuff on it.
And it has a note that says it's closed.
Dash Ron.
Dash Ron?
Oh, guys, we're late.
Some guy named Ron closed this place.
As you say that, you hear like the sound of buttons clicking behind you.
And what looks like a kid in like a soccer tee playing what looks to be like a single player version of Fortnite on a phone walks past you.
And he goes, move, son.
And he moves you aside, Link.
And he just touches the door and the door opens.
And he goes, oh he looks down at his body and
realizes that this is your dad grant and he is reversed to the age he was because there's a lot
of like extra psychic energy like i mean you see you know right and he points at you look look at
yourselves and as you turn to look at each other you see things that do not make sense. When you look at Link, you see a large beer gutted baseball cap wearing stay at home sports
dad with a beer.
When they look at Scary, they see a mustachioed, no pants having businessman.
Don't look at me.
I'm hideous.
When they look at Normal, they see a crunchy, munchy granola druid dad.
When you look at Taylor, you see a rock and roll bard dad.
What about Hermie?
When you look at Hermie, you see a creature wearing a fedora who seems slightly non-Euclidean to your eyes.
And he goes, yeah, what's going on, everyone?
You guys all look old.
As you say that, as you say you guys look old, some of the memories of what's happened in this location
begin to seep back into your brain.
And you remember being Daryl Wilson,
Link Lee Wilson's grandfather.
You remember coming here with your friends,
Ron and Glenn and Henry,
coming here to try to close this place off.
All the hope you had that this could be the final stand
where you would defeat the doodler once and for all.
You hold those memories in the same brain
with which you hold your current identity as young Link Lincoln Lee Wilson, and as all of you do.
The memories of your grandparents being in this place hover within the soup of your mind as the
doors open and you see the interior of the Church of the Doodler, and you are filled with both the
sense that everything is going to be all right, and the sense that, uh, not today.
So you see that the others around you have taken on what looked to be the images of your grandparents when they were younger you probably saw your grandparents a little bit when you were
on the younger side i've decided that the players will get to determine what happened to their
grandparents i will not decide for you by fiat and to be clear i look like glenn and you look
like glenn i mean nobody recognizes the person they're looking at because they don't know who
middle-aged man in the room yeah when you say younger do you mean like i'm daryl as like a
teen or daryl i'm sorry the age is in the age we ended season one on plus a few years okay like
when you saw your granddad your dad looked like a granddad like an old guy so he's like six three
now and he's like 140 built he's in a supermodel phase if i remember correctly is what we had talked about sure yeah next to each of you you see spectral forms of figures that reach up about to your
chest or maybe a little bit higher that look to be ghostly images of your own dads when they were
teens so lark sparrow nick and yeah except for grant grant is corporeal because grant's actually
here yes and the rest of them are like ghosts.
Are like golden, shimmery ghosts.
When we talk, what do we sound like?
When you talk, both voices come out in this moment.
Whoa, who are these guys?
So Grant hears both Ron and Scary's voice
come out of this version of Ron Scary that he's seeing.
And he goes, oh, right, there's a problem.
There's a way.
Wait, I want to see something too.
Yeah, I guess you two sound pretty similar.
Yeah, everyone's told me I sound a lot like my Grandpa Henry.
Wait, scary, is that you?
Are you in there?
Yes, loser, it's me.
This is going to be really hard to edit with all the crosstalk.
That's why Grant goes like, oh, yeah, we stashed something last time we were here.
So he puts his Fortnite phone away and like still slouched over,
walks over to a loose brick on the outside of the church and yanks it out.
And he pulls out what looks like a thermostat.
He goes, okay, this is the time of stat.
We built this.
Let me see.
And he holds it out to you.
Probably me.
Probably you.
Yeah, his son.
His son father.
So, yeah.
So he hands it to you.
He goes, here, son, dad, dad.
Sorry, dad, son.
Sorry, son.
Yeah.
Dad.
And he hands it to you and he says,
you twist it forward, you'll turn into yourself.
You twist it backward,
you'll get to access the memories of your grandpa, my dad.
And you can sort of switch back and forth
between them as you want.
I'm E, and now I'm Daryl.
Me.
Daryl.
Stop, you're freaking me out.
It works for everybody as a group oh sorry everybody
yeah you see yourselves get really big really small really big really small i turn back to
we're all us define us season two us season two okay it's yes there's there's literally
little dials there's one and two on it wait dad where are you dad yeah so when you turn into two
grant turns into your adult dad, Grant. He gets bigger.
Yeah, he does.
He goes, he gets smart.
Yeah, it's like-
Almost throws up,
and the piece of gum falls out of his mouth.
No!
I'm saving that!
It's still good.
There's a fly in it.
It's still in my saliva.
It's still good.
Let it go, man.
Let it go.
Indiana, let it go.
So Grant says,
yeah, sorry,
when you tried to drop me off at the,
I just snuck back on. I did a roll and I rolled really well and I snuck back onto the pussy wagon.
Okay. Well, great. So you start this adventure with a lie.
Cool. Yeah. Like nothing we could have done would have prevented you from doing that. That's great.
Yeah. I could have rolled worse. Your dad's a real loose cannon.
So wait, what does this do? Like why when we turn this, we turn into grandpa?
The church is a lot of really powerful, nascent psychic energy from its connection with the
doodler.
A cult built this a while ago, and we sort of infiltrated it because they were talking
the doodler.
It's the foul taint of the warp.
Kind of.
And basically, you can use the thermostat to try to filter out some of those psychic
energies to focus on just what's happening right now or to focus on the things that happened
here long ago.
So it's like a little psychic energy tuner.
Yeah, basically.
You can sort of re-experience, re-remember,
relive the events that happened here
back when I was a kid as your grandparents.
You told us there was nothing here.
This is not nothing.
This is basically nothing.
I believe I rolled an insight check
and I was not told that there was a cool thermostat
that would turn me into my grandfather.
Only here, though. It's only going to work here. It's not that useful. I consider this nothing.
Yeah. I mean, this guy wasn't even my grandpa. This guy's like my step-step grandpa.
That's true. How do you feel about that? I don't know. I heard he died.
Really? Well, I mean, I guess that happens to everybody. I mean, it's not like someone you
know, so I guess it's not that big of a deal. I'd say I'm sorry, but you've been kind of mean
to me lately, so I'm not really feeling like I need to extend a lot of, you know.
I think you should be sorry for me.
Like, who knows?
He could have been a really great guy.
By the looks of it, he wasn't,
but like he could have been cool,
and now I'm really hurting,
so thanks a lot, Norm.
Oh, no, I'm sorry.
I'm slowly turning the thermostats
into turning into your grandparents as you're talking.
I feel like as a note,
this sound design should be the THX noise every time you do this, and it goes backwards and forwards depending on which direction and time you're talking. I feel like as a note, this sound design should be the THX noise.
And it goes backwards and forwards,
depending on which direction and time we're going.
All we know is that there's something in here,
maybe that Mr. S,
we haven't told you about the guy that,
there's something in here that can help us.
So let's go check it out.
Oh yeah.
But first,
why?
And I point straight to my dad.
Did you come here?
You said there's nothing here and you're supposed to go back?
Explain to me, sir, what are you doing?
Why are you back here?
Link, toggle the thing so that you have advantage over him.
Yeah, I get tall.
I turn into Daryl.
I think the way it works is it doesn't just-
Yeah, he gets small.
When you do that, he gets small and you get big.
Yeah, look who's the big guy now, huh?
Does it send us back in time or does it just turn us into, okay.
It just turns you into a virgin.
Basically, the memories are floating around in the ether like motes of dust in the light.
It's like Assassin's Creed.
We're inhabiting the body.
But if we get too far from the memories, perhaps it'll go away.
Yeah, it'll desynchronize.
You have to restart the mission.
It's weird that when I get older, I get shorter.
I feel like such a loser.
Ew.
And you also, yeah, you have access to the personalities
and memories of your grandparents
when you were in grandparents.
Son or dad, there's too much actual love
and happiness for you in this body.
So I'm going to turn back to me because I'm still angry at you.
Wait, no, no, no, I was talking so cool.
Okay, as you turn back, normal in Henry's body
realizes that Henry was chewing a piece of gum on this adventure.
And as he turns back, he spits it out of his mouth and then, as Normal, catches it and puts it in his mouth.
He's like, I've been chewing this piece of gum for 30 years.
You already won.
Yeah, you win, man.
So why are you here?
Grant goes like, why am I here?
A, to protect you, obviously.
And then, I mean, to, you know, get the son back.
What?
He said to get the son back.
We heard it.
Okay, well, then why'd you ask what?
Okay, well.
Well, maybe he meant like son like you.
Like, oh my God.
And to get you back.
I'm like doing the dumb thoughts that this guy had.
I'm saying all the dumb things that come to my mind.
Son, son.
I feel like I'm two people at once and my memories are merging and i'm so cool
i'm so cool yeah whoa grant says like yeah i mean if you want to find there's a nexus point where
you can feel the doodlers thoughts they basically built the church around that point it's it's like
a little throne in the center of the church you can go see that you can see there's nothing here
and then we can bounce what happens when you sit on it when you sit on it you can sort of see into
the doodlers mind for a second and it hurts a lot and it can
drive you crazy last time i was here i mean well you'll see when we go in so i can show you rather
than tell you but i forgot great worked as a video game writer and new good environmental
story sounds like some environmental story yeah you might find some audio logs inside
um i mean if you want to go in you can go in i'll come with you or i can wait in the car whatever
you want yeah why why because the cult of the dude that was not a lot of cool people.
Somebody might have found a way to get back in, or there could be dangerous things in here.
Like, I thought you might need help.
Hey, teen huddle.
Yeah, all right.
What's up?
Yeah, we'll do a teen huddle.
Teen huddle.
I don't really trust my dad right now.
Like, should we just send him back?
I mean, he's the only one who knows really what's going on which is probably a argument to
keep him around but we need to believe what he's saying but we're always back there and like the
other dads are there and he's gonna try to take the son and like i've got an idea all right hear
me out so for one i do think he's not trustworthy but sometimes it's better to keep an eye on
someone you don't trust then to keep your enemies close and your friend i don't remember yeah keep
an eye on him for one and then here's's what I think. I think we tell him
we're going to leave the sun
back at the cat bus.
But really,
we bring the sun with us
in my backpack.
And that way,
if he runs away
to go steal the sun,
we'll still have it.
Okay.
Yeah.
He's pretty smart.
I think he's going to know
we have the sun,
but we can try to.
Well,
what do you think?
I was just thinking
we should just kick
his stupid mean butt
back home.
Wait, wait, wait.
I happen to have a certain companionship with our
feline mode of transport.
What if we have the cat
hold him under its paw the
whole time? Oh. Like a mouse.
Okay. Yeah. Sure.
That's true, because if we let him go, like, then
he's probably just going to sneak back. We know we can't trust
him to go leave if we tell him to go leave, and I'm not going to go all
the way back to drop him off myself.
That said, he might have like context about whatever we see in there.
Not that I believe him or anything.
Yeah.
Okay.
We'll do this.
Dad.
Okay.
So here's what's going to happen.
After this conversation, this is going to be the last time I talk to you for a bit.
Whoa.
Well, yeah, you didn't respect my space.
I said you needed to go home and we need
space, but it seems like practically it's useful to have you here. And I'm part of a team now.
That's right. A different team, a different family, you might say that respects each other
and listens to each other and follows the rules. Is that what you do? Yeah. Yeah. We were. Hey,
okay. Sorry. I didn't mean, I didn't think I would say that out loud. Sorry. I didn't mean to
some of my nascent teenage self coming through there. So you're going to come along with us.
I'm only going to talk to you through normal.
Okay, great.
Yeah.
And I can talk to my dad.
Your dad.
I get to talk to a dad.
Good luck with that.
And yeah, I hope you respect my space because you haven't recently.
Not now.
You're not going to get the sun.
And if you try to get the sun, I mean, we don't believe in timeout in our family, but
you're going to be in trouble.
Dad, your son, me, Link, said all that stuff that link just said okay
and uh you know maybe you should tell link that you're proud of him maybe he'd like to hear that
uh length uh i am well sorry a normal could you tell link your brother that i am proud of him
link uh grant said to me i am proud of you okay well, Grant said to me, I am proud of you.
Okay, well, I want you to tell dad.
Oh my God.
I know, I know, this is annoying.
Just tell dad, one, of course I know he's proud of me.
It's not like a single fight changes that.
Two, stop using positive reinforcement
to like try to change the topic.
And then also tell him not to indulge you
in your fantasy of being his actual son.
I look at Grant and say thanks dad
where we're going do you think we should we all like look like big old mean adults well i look
taller when i'm like this okay but i guess i feel like i don't know there's something about me that felt like a strong
businessman or something like the other i say we roll in like this we come in fresh if we need the
wisdom of our ancestors we can switch over that's true we always like use like a like a cool like
we go into one room and come out as adults like whoa what happened to them like yeah
i'm just saying like we we keep our tricks up our sleeves. Ah, you're saying that we have a multiple identity if we need, yes, a do-over possibility as older people.
That's true.
That's true.
We could essentially buy a lottery ticket twice.
We double it.
You're right.
Holy shit.
Is there a place we can buy a lottery ticket?
Let's go.
All right.
I walk towards the dungeon.
I walk towards the tower.
Okay.
So you open the door to the Church of the Doododler and we all look like Aragorn doing it.
Yeah.
All of you line up side by side next to the door and try to do the Aragorn push, which doesn't work because some of you are going to be on the edges.
So you can't like put your arms out that far.
Let's all do it one by one.
One at a time.
Yeah.
Okay.
So one by one, you Aragorn push open the door.
Yes.
Roll performance.
Yeah.
If you want to roll performance, see how good it looks when you Aragorn that's
a 12 pretty middling not
bad I got an eight not
great I got a seven even
worse the worst one yet
scary gets her pinky
caught in the door I
got a 19
the spitting image of
Viggo the spitting
I'm so tall that the
other three are stumbling
underneath my wingspan as I do it.
Yeah, the camera pans down.
Yeah, it turns out you got a little help.
Yeah, you look like Gandalf of the Hobbits.
So when you enter the church,
immediately you get dizzy
because the ceiling is way too fucking high
for how big the church is.
Oh, if I had a ceiling tall enough for this guy.
You cannot see
the terminal point
of the ceiling.
And the inside is
much like a church
that you might have
experienced, you know,
in your childhood
if any of you went to church
which I kind of doubt.
They had to exercise me.
Yeah.
Whoa, really?
I was so badass
as a child.
No, I'm lying.
Did you vomit pee soup on?
I wish.
You could still do that.
It's just like a church except there are black sort of tendrils, slimy tendrils coming down from the very top that sort of slowly seem to be snaking down and dripping viscous fluid onto the ground.
Just like the Bible says.
I don't know.
I've never read it.
As you continue through the foyer of the church.
We'll get our tentacles.
We know what they mean in anime.
You see some corpses littering the ground. Well, careful with tentacles. We know what they mean in anime. You see some corpses littering the ground.
Oh, God.
Some basically people in robes,
some gray robes
with wild looks in their eyes.
Taylor's gonna poke
one of these with his finger.
All right, go ahead
and give me a perception
or investigation or...
Poke.
19 plus five, 24.
So you can tell these corpses
have been here for at least 20 years
if not more
Taylor like
leans over
and like just
and he turns to
the group
and he's like
these corpses
have been here
for at least
20 years or more
this is one of the
skills I've developed
is I can smell
corpses until
the time of death
I've been training
this as a child
ever since
well as a child
and then I find
dead things
and I smell them
and I can tell
how old they are
wow metal hey normal can you ask my dad if maybe if we turned the dial if we would see how
these people died or something like is that how this thing works hey uh grant i mean dad if we
turn the dial will that mean that we can see how people died is that how this works i said that
right right yeah that's good cool yeah let me know what he says okay link yes yes that's how it will work we'll
zoom back just walk here and yes that's how it'll work we'll tell that we can zoom back and here
here just watch it and he leans over and just nope nope it's in my pocket uh excuse me okay
tell him tell my dad to keep his hands where i can see them but not reaching towards me because
i saw that but i don't just don't touch me tell link says keep your hands where you can see them, but not reaching towards me, because I saw that, but just don't touch me.
Link says keep your hands where he can see them.
Okay, no, I heard him.
It's okay.
Okay, everybody get ready.
You want to see what happened to these fools?
Sure.
Okay.
I'm like slowly turning the dial.
All right, and you feel your body slowly morphing,
and you see spectral versions of the corpses on the ground.
The corpses on the ground in front of you are corporealal and you see these golden shimmering sort of spectral memory versions of them sort of almost like reversing up from death like you're scrubbing through a
video timeline one of the cultists on the ground because again you're going from reverse sort of
leaps onto your back and is trying to choke you from behind link daryl ah i stop it is it frozen
in midair have you like finished no. I'm like halfway through.
Once he jumped on me,
I just like paused.
Okay.
So yeah,
you pause it and then yeah,
you,
you,
you sort of reach at it,
but your hand goes through nothing because this is the memory of it.
So you're freaky.
Yeah.
It's not real,
man.
Okay.
Well,
yeah,
you didn't get jumped at.
I have memories of this ride where there's ghosts,
but they're not really ghosts.
And you get on like a doom buggy.
Yeah. It's like one of those. Is it real? Yeah. One could follow us home. where there's ghosts, but they're not really ghosts. And you get on like a doom buggy.
Yeah, it's like one of those.
Is it real?
One could follow us home.
I keep turning it.
You keep turning it.
You see one of the cultists gets back up and is facing away from Ron Scary,
not seeming to realize that Ron Scary is there.
You see another one stand up
and Vines basically come up from the ground
and start attacking it and constricting it in place while you see normal Henry extend his arm towards them.
You basically see the middle of a fight in reverse motion.
And when you complete your turn all the way to the one on the thermostat for season one, in that moment, you remember being in this fight as Daryl and Glenn and Ron and Henry.
You remember being in this fight as Daryl and Glenn and Ron and Henry.
You remember these cultists attacking you as you tried to peacefully negotiate with them to get through and the fight that ensued.
You can just describe what you did.
You don't have to roll for you.
Just describe it.
Henry turns to Daryl and says, Daryl, you had to just go in swinging again, huh?
You just had to get in there.
You know, I had him on the ropes.
I was going to tell them, you know, that we should all get along.
I had some great Deepak Chopra quotes ready to go. Daryl just tosses his second axe to Henry and just ignores him and just keeps swinging. He's like, hey, not now, buddy. We can talk about the way that this
should have happened when we're done with this. I hear you. Feedback appreciated, but now's not
the time. All right. I'm swinging. You cleave through one of the cultists with ease. One jumps
onto your back. Henry, watch out! And he's about to get killed.
And Daryl saves Henry's life.
And they're like, an axe
over his head. Hey, buddy,
we can do an argument next time. Whoa,
Glenn! And another guy's about to kill Glenn.
And Daryl goes, another axe! And goes over
Glenn's head. And
gets him. And I look at
Ron, dead in the eye, and go, Ron,
Voltron team up? Sure.
And then Ron, watch out for that cliff!
And Ron stumbles and I reach my hand out
and I grab Ron.
And then you throw Ron onto my shoulder.
Nobody except for Matt has to roll
to describe what you do.
Ron jumps on my shoulders
and we form essentially this
part in RRR where they're all standing on each other's
shoulders and we're doing all of that like i'm leaning back and
swinging ron around and ron's like we flinging business cards like ninja stars and then uh
henry just smiles and he's like my boys henry negotiation there's also me that's halfway and
i cut a guy in half so you see a line up against the wall.
Also, you see your kids, Grant and Lark and Sparrow.
I turn the bleeding battle axe.
And on one side of the battle axe is a picture of Carol and Grant.
And I go, I'll be back soon.
Well, no, they're against the wall.
They're with you there physically.
I turn around and be like, I'll be back soon.
I know.
And you turn to Grant and Grant is strangling one of the cultists.
He goes, yeah, I know, Dad. I've got it handled. You don't have to say you'll be back.. I know. And you turn to Grant and Grant is strangling one of the cultists. He goes, yeah, I know, Dad.
I've got it handled.
You don't have to say
you'll be back.
I'm watching you.
And the fucking cultist's eyes
are bugging out
and Grant just completely
heartlessly just fucking
closing his windpipe.
And then Glenn looks over
and calls out to Grant.
It's like,
I taught him everything he knows.
And then Ron shouts,
I taught him everything he knows.
And Terry shouts out,
I taught him everything he knows.
You sure did, kiddo. Love you
so much. I'm emotionally
available now.
And while cleaving through three cultists
simultaneously, I go, I love that you
three friends helped teach my son everything
he knows. I appreciate you guys.
That's right. It takes a village. It takes a
village, Daryl, to raise a family.
And let's get back to killing this village.
And let's get back to killing this whole village together.
This is literally my worst nightmare.
That we would spend a half a second with these dads and be like,
whoops, season one was way better.
Oh, no.
They've also turned into killers.
You successfully kill all the-
I thirst for blood.
You successfully kill all the cultists.
Your kid's a little bit older than when
the doodler was first revealed on earth i used sneak attack i used it now you got the extra
damage die you fucking slid a cultist throat with ease did so much damage to him he died
terry's like great job ron thanks buddy love you so much i'm'm emotionally available now. Yeah, you can stop saying that.
You say it all the time.
Well, it's kind of like his catchphrase, you know?
It's a weird catchphrase.
Hey, you don't get to pick your catchphrases.
You really do.
Glenn, that'd be a great catchphrase for you.
It is my catchphrase, actually. I'm trying to work on one where I'm just like, nice.
Glenn points to a shirt on his back and it's a quote.
It says, you don't get to pick your catchphrases
underneath Glenn clothes.
Daryl goes, good parenting, Ron. And he tosses you a brew that is ron and daryl's brewery
that they started together it's called the sneak attack ipa i go this one's for you the sneaky
goliath six pounds of hops
the only beer you can chew.
This is an IPA, an interesting person award.
Idiots. Wait, what happens to Hermie?
Anthony's playing with the Hermie figurine,
and it's reminded me that Hermie's in this with us.
You don't see Hermie.
You see what looks to be a slightly non-Euclidean form
that's wearing a fedora with pointy ears.
And it's going,
whoa,
you guys got real violent
real quick,
didn't you?
That's my boys.
I love my boys.
Say,
how's my boyfriend doing?
Have you called him recently,
Glenn?
My boyfriend,
your brother?
What?
And your phone rings
and you look at your phone,
Glenn,
and it says,
king of hell.
It's got a picture
of your brother,
Jody.
Oh,
I'm sorry,
guys,
I gotta take this. Jody is Satan now.'m sorry, guys. I've got to take this.
Jody's Satan now.
Jody runs hell.
And he's dating.
And he's dating scam-like.
And Hermie's their offspring.
Hermie's their son, yeah.
Holy shit, so much canon being established right now.
And I pick up the phone and I go, this is David Jones answering for Glenn Close.
Jody goes, hey, what's up, idiot?
Please hold for Glenn.
Yeah, I know it's you, Glenn. Hey, hey, what's up, idiot? Please hold for Glenn. Yeah, I know it's you, Glenn.
Hey, hey, what's up, man?
That was my assistant.
Oh, right, your assistant.
Yeah, ha ha, impersonation.
Oh, look at you, Bards.
Look at you go.
Look, have you gotten to the center of the cult yet?
Did you figure out what the doodler wants?
More importantly, how can we kill it?
Glenn's doing that thing in like a Zorro movie
where it's like the person's swinging a sword
and he's like dodging each one.
It's like, ah, we're kind of in the busy, uh, fighting off some of the cultists right now.
What?
Okay, fine.
Well, look, just call me back when you're done killing those cultists, okay?
You know what?
Actually, I'll call you back because if you do kill them, they're just going to pop up here anyway.
All dead and shit.
Oh, and do me a favor.
Tell Scam actually that I love him.
You hear that, Scam?
Hey, Glenn.
Wait, is that Ron?
Ask Jody if he still wants to go in on our business
ACAB beer
All cops are beer
Knowing Jimmy
Jody would probably be like
I don't fully believe that all cops are bad
I'm a highway patrolman
It's somehow slightly different
Somehow I guess
Okay so yeah
You dispatch the cultists
I turn it back
Okay so you immediately
Your bodies morph again.
Your dad gets bigger.
You get bigger also because you're so tall.
And immediately the corpses go back
and your memories are back to just being yours
and not that of your grandparents.
Well, our grandads were cool as fuck.
Yeah, that was a lot of violence.
I don't know.
They did all this.
Grant's like, yeah, they had a much clearer sort of goal.
Their archetypes were a lot more clearly defined.
Yeah, they seem to like
know themselves in a way that I never will.
They felt like really one-dimensional, just kind of
swinging things around and killing people.
Yeah, people seemed to like that, though.
They had a lot of friends.
The way is pretty much open to the throne
of the doodler. So what were you guys trying to do here?
Like, what were you attacking? We knew that
these cultists had found a way to
communicate with the doodler, and we thought that if we could sort of get inside the doodler's head,
we could find out a way to kill it or what it wanted and a way to get rid of it.
And did you?
Well, you could see what happened if you want to zip back.
Because you're not going to believe me because my own son thinks that I lied.
Well, I mean, I did lie to you a couple times.
You all ready to go in again?
Let's go in.
Yeah.
All right.
You zoom back.
There's a closed door that you open after killing the cultist.
So now that door is actually open in both timelines.
In current timeline, season two timeline, you see a baby.
Not unlike the baby that you initially met slash fought slash ran away from when you first got inducted into Daddy's.
It is standing there with upright adult posture,
its hands behind its back, just waiting.
Other than the fact that it's wearing a diaper
and a mask covering its face,
it seems to just be waiting patiently for you.
Hello, hey, hey, little guy.
It's just a baby.
Like the T-1000 starts sprinting towards you,
its meaty, wet, baby, disgusting feet
flopping and hitting the ground.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, close the door, close the door, close the door.
Normal narrows his eyes and says,
we meet again, old friend.
And I charge straight at it.
All right, so it leaps onto you,
and it opens its mouth,
and you see that the mask is like a Batman cowl
where its mouth is still exposed.
So it opens its mouth,
its bright, shining, glittering teeth,
and it goes,
and it leans in, and it bites you on the chest
as if it's gonna nurse
and you feel its teeth rip through your flesh.
And then you hear a suckling noise.
Oh yeah, I wanna see what happens to the baby if I turn it.
You turn the timeostat
and you go back to looking like your grandparents.
And you see that back when they came in here,
they were also fighting this same baby.
Except this version of the baby is not wearing a mask.
And it, just like what happened in the present tense,
it attacked and leapt onto Henry
and started clawing at Henry and biting at his chest.
Oh, that didn't help.
I always told Mercedes-O Garcia
I wish that I could breastfeed our children like she did,
but this is much more painful than I thought it would be.
Ow, ow, ow.
I turn it back to so there were teens again.
And then I want to charge and kick the baby off of.
Okay.
Give me an athletics or an attack roll or whatever you like.
Kick it in its baby back ribs.
That's great.
What's incredible is that, Matt, you can choose.
If you want to do like foot-based attacks, you should be young version.
And if you want like throwing football-based attacks, you just switch around.
Well, either.
You're sort of an army of two.
Damn.
Solo army of two. That. Solo army of two.
That's not funny.
Will.
Will.
Incredible.
It doesn't matter which sort of attack I was doing because I rolled a one.
Okay.
Wait, go back in time and re-roll the attack.
So you just kick normal in the face really fucking hard with your cleats.
Oh, God.
Ow.
Why would you do that?
Yes, please.
One damage.
Okay.
So it didn't hurt that much, but you definitely take some fucking...
It hurt emotionally.
Some skin off his...
Yeah, he feels like you were brothers,
and then you immediately turned on him
and kicked him in the fucking face.
So this is what it's like
when brother fights against brother.
Scary, help!
Maybe I'll have some cooler weapons
as the other dude.
I toss it to you.
All right, this seems like a good idea.
I'll give this to Beth to control.
To Beth? To Scary, I toss you the you. All right. This seems like a good idea. I'll give this to Beth to control. To Beth?
Me too.
To Scary.
I toss you the time of stat.
I go zoop back to Ron.
Oh, that's great there.
I have my intense fish-o-rama fishing reel that can grab people and pull them away from things.
So I'm just going to cast that.
Get it?
Yeah. Okay. And then I'm going to roll. Yeah. Give just going to cast that. Get it? Yeah.
Okay.
And then I'm going to roll.
Yeah, give me a roll for that.
No, I'm rolling on the ground as Ron.
In a very cool way.
I got a 15.
Okay, so the 15,
you hook your fishing rod
into the back of the diaper of the baby,
kind of like a Coppertone girl.
You're the dog.
And you pull the baby away,
and it's still got its teeth hooked into Henry's chest,
and it stretches a little bit.
Its teeth are fucking holding on tight.
Finally, I know the pain of motherhood.
The baby's just getting fucking pulled back in.
It rips off, and some of the fucking chest flesh comes with it.
Sorry, Henry.
But it is separated,
and now it's running towards you and chasing towards you.
Normal vividly remembers that one time when he was at the pool with Grandpa Henry and he asked Grandpa Henry why he only had one nipple.
And then like Grandpa Henry just went real dark for a second and then just like shook his head and changed the subject.
It's like the rap kids.
Wait, wouldn't the baby be dangling from the like a fish?
Well, I mean, it's pretty heavy.
Are you holding it?
Ron, reel it in.
Wow, this one's a fighter. Are you holding it? I'll roll to hold it. This one's a fighter.
You got a big one. I'm gonna
wrap my hands around Ron's arms
and help reel it in. Just like old
times. Thanks, Glenn. Okay.
Go ahead and roll something. Animal handling.
Can I roll it as Glenn, though, on my character sheet?
Sure. Is the animal handling Ron?
Are you handling Ron or are you handling
the baby? The baby. I got a natural
20, so it doesn't really matter. So you get to describe what happens. I reel handling the baby? The baby. I got a natural 20, so it doesn't really matter.
So you get to describe what happens.
I reel in the baby and the baby is chomping.
And then I take a fishing photo with it because I also have a camera.
The four dads with beers and there's like lawn chairs out.
You got the big fish.
Yeah.
Okay, great.
So yeah, it seems to be for the moment suspended and the fishing rod can't do anything.
And Grant, after finishing off the cultist,
he comes up and he's like looking at the baby
dangling from the fishing rod.
He's like, we did something to like stun it for a while
that like calmed it down for a bit
so we could do some other.
I'm trying to remember what it was.
What did we do?
Oh, I know what you do to fish.
You just slap them against a rock.
Oh, I forgot it's a baby, not a fish.
Same physics probably apply.
You still slap them against a rock. Well, Grant, buddy, what did we do? I'm trying to remember. So it's a baby, not a fish. Same physics probably apply. You still slap the fish.
Well, granddaddy, what did we do?
I'm trying to remember.
So it's wearing a mask in the future
over just the top half of its face.
What did we do?
I can't remember.
I don't know.
This is just like in God of War II
when your son gives you hints to do the puzzle.
No, in God of War II, they'd be like,
hey, you should do this thing.
Father, what if you got a different angle on the torch?
And you're like,
I haven't even started solving the puzzle yet.
I wrote most of it.
And people are like, we hate these.
I'm like, yeah, no, that's fair.
Well, I know one way to calm a baby down when it's hungry
is to stick your finger in its mouth so it can suckle on it.
I'm speaking as a father now.
I know that there's certain things you do to calm a baby down.
What if we sprayed it with poison?
What if I sprayed the child with poison?
Glad no.
It's one of Mother Earth's creatures, even if it's that vicious.
Hold on, hold on. Daryl, what if we sprayed
the baby with poison? Just hand it over here.
Daryl dips his finger in the
six-pound IPA and
then puts his finger in the mouth, just like
a little bit of alcohol on a baby.
It bites your finger off. Well, I
should have seen that one coming.
With a horrible crunch, the baby just has it in its mouth now like a stogie.
It's like a fucking baby Huey from Roger Rabbit.
Daryl just grimaces like, all right, buddy.
Yeah, that's right.
You just suck on that pacifier there.
Why don't you?
And then I start rocking.
I go, rock.
Goodbye, baby.
It's still feral, still clawing at you, still pissed off.
Got my finger stump.
Goodbye, baby.
It's still feral, still clawing at you, still pissed off.
Got my finger stump.
Hey, Daryl, you want to cauterize that wound on my body?
Because I'm red hot.
If you could cauterize it, that'd be great.
And I hold my hand out.
Oh, I have nothing for you.
Henry gives a rueful sigh and casts a healing spell to grow your finger back.
I have regenerate.
Yeah, okay, yeah.
So your finger comes back.
I should have used this on Walter's legs.
I don't ever know why I never did.
Is this a puzzle, Anthony?
It's a little combat puzzle. Yeah, proposal.
When he asked him for the wound to be cauterized, I have fireball. I could just cast it and then
splash damage the baby accidentally.
Okay, if you want to. That's not solving Walter's girl to kill
the baby? Well, the puzzle is the baby has a mask
on, so we did something to the face of the baby.
You think we disfigured the baby?
That's where my mind went.
That's what I thought. That's a wild
solution to the puzzle. Wait, wait. Just so you
think though, you thought Anthony designed this where
the solution to the puzzle was
we disfigure a baby's face?
And it's so ashamed that it puts a mask on.
It's so ashamed that it wears a mask in the future.
I get it. I've got it.
They want us to play peekaboo with the baby.
So we put the mask on the baby and we're like, where's the baby go? Where'd the baby go? I love it. I've got it. They want us to play peekaboo with the baby. So we put the mask on the baby.
We're like, where's the baby go?
Where'd the baby go?
I love it.
And I grab the thermostat and I crunch it back to the future.
Where's the baby?
Is it still?
It's dangling in the air for a second off of a fishing rod from the past.
But then once you go to the future, the fishing rod disappears.
It drops down on the ground and then starts crawling up.
Scary's body.
We need to make a mask in the future, Henry.
Uh, uh,
turn it back, turn it back.
Scary, grab the mask.
Okay, so do I roll
to grab the mask?
Yeah, give me a slight of hand.
Ooh, 70.
I'm rolling so well today.
You really are.
So you snatch
with Ron-like reflexes
the mask from the baby's face.
Is it disfigured?
Is it horribly burned?
Yeah, it looks like
a Phantom of the Opera.
No.
No? It looks like a normal baby, but it like a Phantom of the Opera. No. It looks like
a normal baby, but it has
a name of butt.
Wait, his face is a butt?
No, his face is not a butt. Its nose
has two big bruises
around either nostril.
I just started punching the
nose of the baby.
Pretend to take its nose, Ron. What are you doing, Ron?
Don't punch the baby. This is scary right now. I'm jumping to the baby. Pretend to take its nose. Ron, what are you doing? Ron, don't punch the baby. This is scary right now.
Oh, I'm sorry. I'm jumping to the future. Well, you got the mask. Get his nose. I slam the thing back to the past.
Oh, I got your nose and I'm going to get it in an aggressive way, even though I'm saying it like this.
Ron, put that nose back, man. No, I got it. I got the nose and I do the thing with my fingers where it looks like I got it.
Well, you're holding the mask, so you still have to reach forward and take the baby's nose from it.
Okay.
To convince it you took its nose.
But his mouth is chewing on my finger.
Yes, his mouth is chewing on your finger.
Actually, you don't have to roll for that, yes.
And it's slightly sleepy because he's drinking a really strong IPA.
It's like 20 ABV.
Yes.
Talking like your oatmeal.
Yeah, like your oatmeal.
And then Glenn casts Programmed Illusion, which is a spell that makes an illusion just happen.
That's a spell.
So you create an illusion of an object,
and yeah, it's the nose.
It looks like the nose.
I have a little sleight of hand.
So yeah, you reach out, you do the got your nose,
and the second you do that, the baby looks at you.
Its face goes white, and it looks at you in terror.
It goes, uh, uh, and it starts clawing at its own face.
And it feels the nose, because the nose is still there,
but it's like, uh, uh, uh, and it's reaching out to you, and it feels the nose, because the nose is still there, but it's like,
and it's reaching out to you, and it just goes,
and I'm not going to give it back, and it goes,
and it just freezes in
shock and just sort of stays that way,
just frozen in fear, and
you feel in the past that that was
exactly what you needed to do to get
past the baby, and you stunned it,
and it was not willing to
do anything to you so long as you held its nose hostage.
Damn. Alright, well just put that in your pocket
and maybe we'll give it back to you, little guy,
when we're done. Put this nose in my pocket.
It steps forward and is like,
Oh, this hits
different as a dad.
Okay, so yeah, you've solved that
in the past, at the very least. Oh, we gotta do this in the
future. Oh yeah. Wait, no, I don't know that.
I don't know anything about the future. Wow did it good job everyone all right so with the
baby sitting there unable to move while you have its nose the path forward to the throne of the
doula that they built is open did you say something by the way that the other kids are here yes your
kids are here okay and it's like that's just like memories of them or what is it yes it is spectral
memories of them they were here except for grants None of them is here corporeally.
Okay.
But the memories that when you did this,
you were doing it with your kids.
You can see actually outside the open door
that you just came through.
The Odyssey is there
and it's just full of
what seems to be monster hunting weapons
and X-Files ass like,
you know,
devices for finding weird shit.
It looks to be like
the origin of daddies
was probably in the back of the
Honda Odyssey.
You built this out of your,
out of your garage.
I'd like to volunteer detail.
And when you look,
it looks like it's moving.
Like the wheels are spinning,
but in fact,
it's because it has 20 inch spinner ribs that are continuing to go.
So it has the illusion of movement at all times.
Very cool. Great. That definitely got you out of a couple of scrapes where some people rolled are continuing to go so it has the illusion of movement at all times very cool great that
definitely got you out of a couple scrapes where some people rolled some bad perception checks
about how to aim their shots they're like how much do we lead it but look at the wheels look
at how fast the wheels are going hey grandpas you want to go uh move on i guess see what's
behind this door so behind the baby now that the baby has been dealt with there is just two very
big large wooden doors that you can, once again,
if you wish to, air a corner open.
But this time we're the dads.
Yes, currently you're the dads.
Yeah, Daryl, we should definitely keep going.
But before we do, and then Normal kind of shakes off Henry
and cranks the thermostat up back to season two
and turns to Hermes and says,
Hermes, how are you?
What?
What's going on?
Are you?
Did you? I don't even know. You're like a what? He just has two dads, man. Like, how are you? What? What's going on? Are you? Did you? I don't even know
what you're looking at. What? He just has two
dads, man. Like, why are you weird about that?
Yeah.
No, Hermes is actually looking at you, even
despite his Joker makeup, more pale than usual.
And he goes, but I'm not
I don't know who any of these people
are. Am I adopted? I can't be adopted.
Talk to me, Herm.
Oh, my God.
My parents.
The ultimate performance was the one my parents have done my whole life,
telling me that they were my biological parents.
Who am I?
Who is Hermie?
So you've never seen that guy, that weird hell guy,
or the weird fedora guy in your life?
You don't know who either of them are?
No, I've met my grandparents, and it's not these people,
so I have no idea.
It's almost like I feel like I got scammed.
Man, that sucks.
I was so ready to be all Poison Ivy sexy and stuff,
and then this happened, and now I don't even know which way.
You can still be Poison Ivy sexy if you want to.
It touches you on the nose.
He goes, I know I can.
Whoever happened back then, man, it doesn't change the way your life has been so far.
And what happened to you in the past.
And just because your parents are total losers
doesn't mean that you can't be the coolest person ever.
Yeah, also join the club.
I mean, I know that you can't.
You think I'm the coolest person ever?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
You call me the coolest person.
He flips a coin and he goes,
you just got on my good side.
You want to know how I got this confidence?
No. Girl compliment me once. You know what know how I got this confidence? No.
Girl complimented me once.
You know what we're going
to do, Hermie?
We're going to put this
in mystery, this adventure.
This is going on the list, too.
This is going to be
like a side adventure
that we try to solve
while we're solving
the main adventure, okay?
So we're going to figure out
what the deal is here.
Okay.
All right.
I mean, I'll deal with it myself.
I'm going to go internal now.
I'm going to do
the Stanislavski method.
I'm going to...
No.
No.
Hermie, you need to embrace this. You don't need to be the Joker or Po gonna no no you need to embrace this you don't need to
be the joker or poison ivy or two-face you don't need to be any of those characters you can just
be you it's okay i also got hit with a cone of cold so i'm kind of mr freeze okay well that's
you don't need to be any just like you know you can just be yourself who is harmy who is you see
what you said hit him like a physical wave who is her me and he's just who's her me
who's her me and he looks down and keeps just muttering it to himself who's her me who's her
me he's not really there you can be mr freeze if that's gonna get us through this
that's cool too it's going to be a cold night all confidence comes back to him let's just go
through this door here hey dad before we open this to anything we should know before we open
this door uh no i don't think so okay do you guys want to like open this, anything we should know before we open this door? Uh, no, I don't think so.
Okay.
Do you guys want to like open this door like as us or like? Oh, uh, I remember there was a kind of an argument that happened.
It was like awkward between, uh, Lark and his, his dad.
So I guess be prepared for that.
Oh, so if we want the cool drama, we have to switch back.
All right.
Scary.
Go ahead.
Yeah, I guess.
Well, I don't know if I want to.
Okay.
All right, guys.
Lark, Sparrow, come on.
You stop goofing off.
We're here on official daddy's business.
So come on, boys.
Hey, and dads, real quick.
Hey, I saw this movie once where this guy pushed through the door.
I know we didn't do it on the first set of doors,
but maybe this set of doors we can push through like Aragorn
in the Lord of the Rings movies.
Look, we can all admit that Aragorn is really hot and sexy.
Okay, Glenn.
But like, I just feel like there's been a lot of silliness going on
and we're here on a mission.
Okay.
Daryl.
Daryl Link is like leaning down towards Grant.
He's like, I got suspicious.
Look, he goes, hey, son, make sure whenever you have a son,
you let me eat ice cream.
Just like, look around.
Like, I wonder if that worked right so you're talking you said that to grant
grant who's still your adult dad in a kid's body he's like do you do you want me to give you more
ice cream when we get home isn't this the past it's still me i'm still really here still me
yeah you didn't give me any ice cream i don't remember you giving me more ice cream
normal looks at daryl Lincoln and is like,
no, look, it's time travel. It's just like that
movie Prime.
And that's how Daryl died of a heart attack.
Alright, let's open the door.
Okay, so you open the door and you see
only Glenn Aragorn pushes in.
Yeah, everyone else just walks in.
You see rows and rows of pews hastily constructed out of shitty wood and rusty nails.
And in the back of the church, at the other end of the church, which is currently empty,
you see a throne sitting on it.
It's the nave.
Sorry.
The nave?
That's what that area's called?
The nave.
The nave.
Okay, so yeah, you enter and you see the nave of the church.
It's very big.
The central part of a church.
Central part of a church.
Hey, Daryl.
Hey, Daryl, check out the craftsmanship on the pews. Pretty nice.
They have the church just got here. Well, minus the craftsmanship
on these pews, huh? Yeah, a little wobbly.
Take a seat. But they feel good
on the behind. Right here,
the word of God. She's got
a great ass.
Wow!
Wow!
Henry, but not normal
gets an advantage, gets inspiration.
You feel psychic energy of a very chaotic and disturbing nature coming from the throne.
Scam actually goes, ooh, I'm getting a lot of doodler jizz coming out of that throne.
Oh, no.
We haven't talked about this.
We have kids around.
Oh, sorry, sorry. Doodler semen coming out of that throne. Oh, no. We haven't talked about this. We have kids around.
Oh, sorry, sorry.
Doodler semen coming out of that.
I'm so sorry.
Thank you. You're welcome.
Ooh, sitting in that might be awfully dangerous,
but it seems like that's what we're looking for
is a way to look into the doodler's mind.
I could give it a shot.
I mean, I know you've been-
Oh, what?
Is it because I'm a little scamp
and you're worried I'm going to do something untoward?
We just can't trust that scam.
You know what they say?
Fool me 73 times.
Shame on you.
Fool me 74 times.
And I've been keeping track and this is the 74th time I could have been potentially fooled by you because there were a lot of crazy scams you pulled.
Fool 74 times, your head detonates because we've programmed you just like the Suicide
Squad.
Actually, this is all the time.
Daryl says it.
Daryl holds up the detonator.
You know what's crazy?
You know what's fucking insane?
As I was literally about to say that.
I was literally going to have Scam
actually push up his fedora and go,
well, actually,
since you put that explosive inside my skull,
I can't fuck you over that badly
without risking detonation.
So I'm pretty sure it'll be okay.
I can give it a shot.
And if not,
you can always pop my head, as we like to okay so scam actually sits in the throne and he goes
and he goes oh and he stands up he goes i don't feel a connection to it i think it's looking for
something simpatico something that it's uh connected with in terms of its dude the dna so
i guess it's gonna be one of you oak boys not my my beautiful boys. I'll do it. Lark goes, no, I can do it. Lark, I'm not going to let this crazy dangerous. I'm not going to
let you do that. And Lark goes, I know it's crazy dangerous. So the last time that we saw Lark as an
audience, you know, he was a kid. Now Lark walks towards you with a little bit more of a bowed
angle to his spine, bags under his eyes. It doesn't dress himself that well. His hair's kind
of messy in a way that is unfortunately very attractive to people of his age.
I can fix him.
Yeah, exactly.
And he goes,
no, I'm going to do this.
If this is going to put you
in any more danger,
it's going to be me,
like the end.
No, Lark, I can't.
No, buddy, come on.
It was kind of his fault
that this whole thing started.
Shut the fuck up, Ron.
Jeez, come on.
He's right.
Ron's right.
Okay, I fucked over everybody
and it's my fucking fault.
Maybe it's your fault
for not stopping
me i don't know i'm gonna fucking do it and he just starts walking forward i step in front of
him he hits you in the face he turns and he punches you in the face and he goes this is my fault all
of this is my fault i have to be the one to fix it and you won't punish me everything you just you
say it's all it's all it's fine it's fine. It's fine, I forgive you.
It's all good.
You see, like, I just, people make mistakes.
People don't make mistakes like this, okay?
This is a mistake that I, I'm the only one who can fix it.
I have to fix it, and if somebody's gonna die for it,
it's gonna be me, you stupid fucking idiot.
If you would have been better, if you would have been better.
I'm not gonna let you do this, Lark.
I grab him, and I'm literally trying to hold him back.
He punches you again in the stomach, and the wind gets knocked out of you.
He's not getting involved, but he's going to step in between the throne and this happening in case he does get past Henry.
Henry, as you double over with your stomach hurt, he goes, if you'd been a better father, I wouldn't be like this.
This is my fault, but it's your fault too.
You fucked this up.
We fucked this.
I don't know.
This fucking needs to happen.
And so the note I gave you early on in the episode
is my thoughts for how Henry might react to this.
And if you want to follow that, you can.
If you don't, you don't have to.
Lark, I'm sorry, man.
Like, I can't, this is okay.
Okay?
It's all right.
You're a kid.
You were an even younger kid when this all happened.
This isn't your fault, okay?
And if you're blaming yourself, I forgive you, all right?
We're all in this together, and this is too dangerous.
You know, we know what this thing can do,
and you're right, it is my fault.
It is my fault that all of this happened,
and if anyone is going to get up there, it's gonna be me.
I know that you have all these pain
and I have all these feelings,
but I can't watch you get killed. I can't watch something else horrible happen to you you have
to let me do this okay lark is looking at you for a second and he's not moving and he's not even
emoting at you and it's very confusing and then for a second he shimmers and daryl behind you
i was about to say i was looking for sparrow damn it yeah daryl behind you. I was about to say I was looking for Sparrow. Damn it.
Yeah.
Daryl behind you, you see that Sparrow was the person who was fighting your dad. And that Lark is the one who sneaks around and goes, sorry.
And he sits down in the throne.
And immediately his back arches with pain.
And darkness shoots out of his eyes.
And he begins to bellow in pain for what actually is a couple seconds, but feels like minutes.
I run up to him.
I'm going to try to pull him off the throne.
The second your hands touch him,
you feel, in order, love, confusion, betrayal,
sadness, and deep anger.
And the heaviness of those emotions
make you feel like you can't even move
and Lark can't even move.
I'm obviously trying to help Henry, but I'm assuming.
Yeah, same kind of vibe hits all of you.
As you touch, there's just no way to get him off there.
But after a couple seconds, the darkness fades from his eyes and he...
Lark! Oh my god, are you okay?
And he looks at you with just a lot of fury in his eyes.
A fury that is very familiar to you over the past couple of years
of a tiredness, a sadness, and a self-hatred and he
says we we just gotta fucking kill it we gotta kill it i don't want to talk about i don't want
to talk about what i saw we're gonna fucking kill it we're gonna kill it okay i love you in that
moment as you say i love you the memories all kind of end and freeze and this is as much as the church
of the doodler remembers in this timeline so if you want to switch back to the current timeline you can let's cut scenes over we got it hey ron you want
to oh yeah sorry uh scary yeah oh wow really you oh you're really getting your own head there that
was yeah intense normal kind of just kind of takes a step back and just his eyes are welling with
tears i was like oh my god you all right, I mean. So in the present tense, the throne is still there.
Mm-hmm.
You can do what you wish.
Well.
Holy shit.
I got to see what he saw.
No, no.
I started walking towards the.
No, I'm sorry.
No, let me do this.
I started holding.
I don't have a twin to rope you with, man,
but we need to know what he saw.
No.
Because we need to know how to beat it.
You're like my brother now, though.
You just said, like, you can't just,
you just saw what happened. And you saw.
The answer they got was the bad answer.
Like, let's not, we don't need to know what's in there, dude.
But he, man, there's so much I don't know about my freaking family, man.
Like, I'm going nuts over here.
I don't know why they hate me so much.
And maybe something in there will tell me what I need to know to be at peace with them.
Man, this is like, you don't fucking understand this.
Okay.
You don't understand.
You need to back off.
Okay. You're not my brother.
You guys aren't my family.
That's my family.
This is all this whole fucked up thing.
And we need to know what's going on and we need to know what they know.
So just let me do it.
The answers are here with us, dude.
Like, no, I'm not your brother, but I'm your friend.
I can't let you do that.
Guys, help, help me out here.
I try to hold him.
Grant just sits there and sort of watches and is like, I is what i was worried would happen i lark never told us what
he saw i asked him a million times he never told me what he saw so if there is something in here
maybe i mean lark didn't die maybe maybe normally i'll be fine whatever happened we need to know
everything we can to stop this thing i can't live with this in my heart anymore come on like i i
think deep down i've always known the only reason my dad couldn't, you know,
feel the way that dads are supposed to feel about me is probably he knows that I got to
inherit all this horrible shit someday.
So you just gotta let me do this.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay, man.
Like you do what you have to do.
We're here for you, but I don't, I don't know about actually.
Yeah, I guess we are.
I guess even if you're not related to this thing,
it still comes back to haunt you.
Gary, what I'm about to do is so fucking goth and so metal,
I wish it could be you.
I wish it could be you,
because I know that you would think this was super cool,
but one of us has to do it, and I think it's got to be me, so...
Then I guess rock on, Norm.
Link, Taylor, Hermie, Scary, Grant.
I'm just listing people in the room because I'm scared now.
I love you all.
Be aggressive.
Be aggressive.
And I start chanting that as I go towards the thing.
Each step, like, yeah.
Hermie starts stomping and clapping his hands.
We've got spirit.
Yes, we do.
We've got spirit.
How about you?
And I sit down on the throne.
In that moment, your mind explodes with possibility and space and time.
You immediately feel yourself zooming through the consciousness of a creature that is older than time and more intelligent than...
Than Jordan Peterson.
David Mamet.
Jordan Peterson. David Mamet.
Jordan Peterson, yeah.
Imagine this. Oh my God, we need to clean the doodler's room.
Imagine the intelligence of Jordan Peterson
combined with the sex appeal of Jordan Peterson.
Oh my God, stop it, Anthony.
And the Kermit-like voice of Jordan Peterson.
You look into the doodler's mind
and you can feel all of its memories stretching out from birth to now.
And you feel yourself being drawn toward the very, very first memory.
You can go in the direction of finding out what it wants or what it fears.
Which do you want to go for?
I'm going to go for the real video game moment
where I'm like, am I going to get to do both?
You'd like to quick save?
Save a version of this podcast.
I'm going to seek out what it fears.
When you think of the word fear, you zoom to a memory from the middle of its lifespan
and you feel yourself inside the body of a quick talking newspaper gal.
Great Grandma Hildy, I wrote a book report on her in sixth grade.
She is being quietly, insidiously, and subtly gaslit
and insulted and abused by her son, Barry,
who is tucking her into bed and taking away all of her agency
and all of her resources and all of her money
and is smiling the entire time that he does it.
And you feel, as the doodler, the sense of pain and hate.
This little brat can't do that to me.
I want a fucking bullet, sir.
Yeah, you feel that resentment,
and then you feel, from Barry,
that sense of quiet, loathing, and selfishness.
What gets you more than anything
is the feeling of once he leaves the room,
Hildy is in Oakvale, this beautiful forest,
but she is completely alone in her bed. And there is no one that she loves around her. And she feels completely
and utterly and totally isolated as she dies. And when she dies, you feel your consciousness shift
into Barry and the fear goes away. Because to be afraid of losing something you love, you have to be able to love really hard.
And so that fear sort of goes away.
But the fear that you found was that fear of loneliness being Hildy on her deathbed.
Okay.
I would like to now circle back and figure out what this thing was.
Great.
Yeah, this is a telltale game.
You get to do both.
So to find out what it wants, you go all the way back to its very, very first memory.
So to find out what it wants, you go all the way back to its very, very first memory.
First, there is not just darkness, but the absence of darkness, the absence of anything, the nothingness of nothingness.
And then very suddenly, there's a bright light, and you hear the sound of a film reel going.
And you look around you, and you see lots of glowing rods on the walls.
You see a really, really handsome Asian actor that gives you untoward thoughts. You see a young stuntman in a newsy cap.
It gives you untoward thoughts.
You see a cowardly line producer holding a script,
and you see who you will eventually join with the image of the lady journalist.
And you feel confusion, but awe and wonderment at what's surrounded you.
All these feelings, all these sensations, all these new people.
Then you find yourself getting bigger and bigger,
wanting to interact with these people.
And you hear the people screaming, you hear fear from them, and you see the line producer reaching out his hand to shake your hand as his mind leaves him.
And you try to embrace him, but as you do so, you feel his bones getting crushed under your might and your weight, and you accidentally murder him.
And you suddenly feel very, very scared and very sad because you just, all you wanted to do was hug him and say hello. And then you see
the stunt man looking down into you as you get bigger and bigger to try to hug him as well,
maybe, and say sorry for what you did to his friend. And you end up consuming him as well
and hurting him. And the one person who remains living in this group, the journalist, you try to
join with and you decide not to hug her, not to show your love because your love hurts people so much. You decide to instead go inside her and hide yourself and join
with her. And as the years goes by, as you sort of very quickly speed read through almost the rest
of his memories, you see the doodler glimpsing Ron and Willie. You see a boy almost getting drowned
in the water and you reach out to try to save the boy. But the boy leans back and the father goes in
instead and you accidentally grab the father who was trying to drown the boy
and you join with him and the second that you join with him you feel his indifference and his
hopelessness and his spite and his selfishness and it inhabits you and then you feel being inside
two young boys lark and sparrow and all the excitement and all the wonder and all the love
in the world but then you feel the sting of betrayal from both having your back stabbed by your son
and being your son in that moment.
And in that moment, you feel the resentment grow
from within Lark towards himself.
You feel that resentment for everyone and everything.
You hate it.
It's your fault.
Everything is bad.
Every time you try to love someone,
every time you try to touch someone
or reach out in someone, they hurt and it's bad.
And you just want more than anything to make it all go away, however you can. You don't want to
be alone, but you don't want to be near anybody else. You want to destroy all of this stuff. And
these emotions and these feelings that you're feeling are so strong and so terrible that you
decide you want to live without them. And you calcify these emotions and feelings into anchors, into physical objects, and you hide those across the many planes of existence, hoping that their absence from your body would allow you a freedom from those emotions.
But they're too strong, and even the radiation of those emotions still allow you to feel them as if they were right here.
But you know in this moment that the anchors are the thing keeping the doodler here, even though the doodler doesn't
realize it, because it is at this point, basically a child lashing out at everything around it,
out of confusion and self loathing. Its anchors are the things that are allowing it to maintain
a foothold in all of these planes while it tries to reach out and alternately get humanity
to love it and punish it for not loving it and all the complicated feelings they're in. And in a
sense, it looks at humanity as its dad, and it deeply resents its dad, but also deeply loves
its dad and wants that validation. But in this moment, you feel if you could go find those anchors
and destroy them, the doodler would not necessarily have anything keeping it here and could maybe pass back into that darkness from whence it came. And in that moment, the darkness
leaves your eyes. You hear a really loud noise sort of come into your ears and you realize it's
the sound of you screaming. And slowly that stops and your throat stops hurting. And you are back
in the world. You know now what it takes to get rid of the doodler, you know what it's scared of,
and you know what it wants. Normal staggers out, and he drops to his knees, sobbing,
and he looks at his friends, and he says, we have to help it. Wist away. Is there something more to say? You know that no one knows us better than ourselves.
You should tell myself it'll be all right.
Pretty lies that we sleep at night.
I know that no one knows me better than myself.
And I know I'll get this right
It's just a matter of time till we make it out alive
We gotta pick ourselves up and say
Not today, no, not today
We live for tomorrow, Make steel and borrow.
Break where we can't change.
We gotta pick ourselves up and say,
Not today, no, not today.
I don't need your sorrow.
Come back tomorrow.
I'll be on my way.
I'll be on my way
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will see you then we gotta pick ourselves up and say not today no not today we live for tomorrow
fake steel and borrow brave where we can't change we gotta pick ourselves up and say not today, no,
not today.
I don't need your sorrow.
Come back tomorrow. I'll be
on my way.
Glenn lights up a
dupe and is like, phew, outside of my pay grade.
Terry, I love you.
I'm emotionally available now.