kes a little bit more sense. I guess Because I I don't think they've set him up as sarah on at all up to this point Yeah, because I don't really think he's been manipulating her at all He's kind of been begging it There have been times where he's manipulated other people, like Farazon to get what he wanted, but if you say that he's literally come from being Sauron, then I don't think getting like a guild crest or whatever is that big of a deal, and it's like he's trying to find pieces on the road to redemption. He wants to be redeemed and wants to change his ways. I think you can you have like the odd like lie or whatever along the way. It's not like because even in the in the alleyway, yes, he did batter them, but only after he was pushed to a point where he couldn't really resist. So he fell into his old ways. He was trying to tell them, please just leave me alone. Or the entire thing has been him going, I don't want to do this, please don't make me do this because I know where I'll end up. Rather than this reading his manipulating of other people occasionally is just evidence of his latent evil, but nevertheless, the thing he's trying to overcome. Yes, I think that especially when you've been that bad, doing something like lying, you'd probably consider yourself not to be like that's a big step up for you on the. Because, yeah, if it's going to be that he's actually evil, Sauron is manipulating Galadriel to do what he wants. How does this scene, you can't explain this scene, like his lines where he says, I don't want to go back to what I was doing. I swore to never return there. Why is he saying that? Because all that's doing is trying to convince Galadriel to not go and fight, but that's what he wants. I'm assuming you're suggesting she could have at any point been like, okay, I understand, then leaves. Yeah.  Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. He only goes after she's told him that he will not find peace, which is what he said what he was here for. So he kind of goes with everything's like, well, okay, if she says I'm not going to find peace here, my only chance at it is with you over there. And then that's what drags him back into his old ways. But if he could actually be right that he could get peace here, then she's the one that caused all of it. I'm aware that I'm now sounding like I'm doing a lot of work on the part of the writers. But the line in the prison, which I think is the most instructive one when he's teaching her about what manipulation is. And he says, what was it? He says something like you show people their fears. And and she says, and you exploit it. And he says, no, I think he says you give it to them. I think that's what he says. Give you the weapon to fight it or something. And then you master it. It was it was analogy of the one ring. Give them the thing that they want. And you make sure you have ability to have mastery over that thing. And you will master them. So what is he doing in this scene then when he's talking about when he's talking to Gladriel about his refusal to go, he's established that what she fears is peace. He is giving her peace. He is establishing himself as the tool which can be used against her. He is the very thing that she refuses to accept could exist. That's what he's presenting as. But that makes him integral to her plans, because then you get to the point where they go to the Queen's Council. And it's his word against everybody. His word is the one on which everything in the future then hinges, because he's established this position of trust and influence, precisely by portraying himself as being against the thing that he secretly wants to happen and therefore playing up on Gladriel's fears of peace, which is what he's showing to her. I'm now aware that that sounds way too nuanced for the writers, but that would be how I'm seeing this. He's denied that at every single step of the way. My point is, he would deny it. That's the key to the manipulation. No, because she said, you're the king. I need you. Then he could be like, yep, and go along. If he just said yes right from the start, then how would he have got? We'd still be in exactly the same place as we are now. If he true, because if this was Sauron's master plan, that means Sauron really does want Gladriel to go off on this war to potentially either spread war, corrupt or whatever, set himself up as the leader in the Southlands, everything. He could have done a lot of things to help that goal more than what he's done. In fact, he's tried to work against it at every point. He could have just said, oh, you're right, I am the king. I don't really, but maybe with you. That's what I mean. If this was supposed to be his master plan, that he manipulated Gladriel to do that, he has been actively working against it at every point. And his own actions of support is his own story. Yes, he lied to somebody to get what he wanted, which could be slipping back into his old ways, but that was only to get a guilt crest because he wants to forge and forging gave him peace. So his actions, which don't really event like she doesn't care whether he was forging or not at the end of the day. So his actions back up his own sort of internal desires rather than some hidden narrative. And they might try and say there was one, but I don't think they've actually. Yeah, I would call bullcrap. I'll be like, all right, where was he actually subtly manipulating the thing to achieve this result of Mount Doom exploding and all that bullcrap and everything when if you actually just what he's doing is constantly trying to do the opposite.  Yeah, I think the defense about this is this is from the same people that said that Gil-galad and Calibriam Boar's master plan to find Mithril was to say, Jiren's back in a little bit weird, hasn't he? And then you're supposed to find out that's an intricate plan to get our runs to do exactly what they wanted. So it could, yeah, they could just come out and say it and hope everyone believes them. Yeah, you make a convincing case. I think maybe you just exposed that I have a misplaced basic element of faith left over that the writers will not completely be fucked in the future.  It does not help her at all.   We're going to catch up with them now, see what they're up to. So, they're led by, what was Oldman's name again? I don't know. When, uh, Wodalg, Hodalg? Oh, Waldrig. Waldrig. Hodalg, close enough. Yeah, so they turn up and, uh, this is funny because of the actually like, lift us up, lift us up.  It was such a moment of, um, at least to me anyway, that he like frowns at him and you're like, oh, this is going to be like a weird move from him, right? To imply, is he, is he Sauron? In the next episode, he's like, I'm not Sauron. They're really enjoying making people think that Hulbred isn't Sauron, I guess, because it's all such nonsense, right? Like trying to bait that it's not Gandalf or Adar, or whoever else. When it's just like, was that the whole point of this show? Just to be like, which one's Sauron? Which one? I mean, Adar would just, he would have just told his orcs he was Sauron, right? Well, he's not though, right? So he's, well, I mean, if, if the show was trying to say, if the show was baiting, which one is actually Sauron, why wouldn't Adar have just told his, why wouldn't he be going by that name to his own orcs? Well, they very deftly would have said Sauron goes by many names. Oh, oh, he goes by many names. All Adar is one of them. Oh, okay. Well, that's, okay. All right then. I go by one name. Well, yeah, fair enough. Well, he doesn't. So that was enough for everyone to go. That could be Sauron, but yeah.  Okay, fine.  I just kind of found it. It's like, one of those genuine human moments in this whole show was Waldrick just being like, dude, I don't, if you're not, so that's fine. I didn't mean to call you or whatever. I'm saying I'm your slave. Okay. It should be okay.  Like, what's, what's going on? I didn't mean to upset you. Like, I don't know. You wanted my allegiance? You got it. All right. Here I am. Let's go, let's go, I don't know, build infrastructure or something. So then something awkward happens. Ada, like, you got to, the only bond is blood and you've got to draw blood and they give him Waldrick a knife and they suggest he's got to do something to kid here or teen guy here. What did everybody think was happening here exactly?  Yeah, that's what I got from it. Yep. Do you think it's worth if he just cut him and was like, there you go, I drew blood? Would Ada be like, uh, I'm not a man, buddy? Yeah.  I might not look it, but I'm a bit of stickler for, you know, protocol here. It's not really the spirit of what I was saying, Waldrick.  And then Waldrick's like, well, maybe you should have been more specific. Hey, we should kill one of the old, old ones that can't fight good. Why would we kill the young, super healthy guy again? Ada's like, it's about the point, about the message. It's not, it's not about old or young. I am not an Uruk that is loved. So, uh, yeah, I guess he does it because we don't see this kid again. So Rip, he was, uh, he was your favorite character, right? And somebody, somebody's favorite character here, I think was that guy. He's Fringis, yeah. Yeah, Fringis. Sorry about that. I'll save him. He's a better actor than the main team guy is. So possible miscasting. I think also that more, more reasonable explanation. Wouldn't it be funny if the most common conclusion is the only one that was well cast with Disa? She's all right. She's kind of fun. We like her.  There's a lot of wooden acting in this, unfortunately. There is no more than they don't even have ends here. So go back to the watchtower and, uh, and they're practicing some archery, um, firing arrows into a wooden door, which if you're going to, if you're going to be proud, I imagine that if, if you're spending all this time and effort sharpening arrows, making the arrowheads, getting them all nice for this battle, you're practicing from 20 feet away by shooting at a hard wooden door. Like, I don't know, man. I feel like you're going to lose a lot of your arrows doing that.  Right. I'm sure there are plenty. They must have loads. Remember, they have all that food. So I'm sure they had plenty of warfare resources too. The elves wouldn't have taken that when they left the watchtower. They would have left all of their, uh, warfare weapons there, right? So it's a good, it's good that you're practicing at such short range at an object that will clearly damage many of these arrows, therefore not being able to use them against torques. This is a, this is a sound strategy. And he gives them a little, uh, pep talk, I think. Or rather, no, they're like talking about why the elf is, uh, is here, I think.  And it turns out that we are pretty evil, I guess. Um, cause yeah, he said that whenever we had a knife to sharp, you would, you would come down on us. And the elf guy was like, yeah, well, among every, among the knives, I heard whispers and I learned to trust some of those whispers or something like that. Never been like, he just said a, he just been up front and said, yeah, but in our defense, we are racist. I, well they're both like, both teams have loads of racism in it. It's just like, yeah, well, whatever. Like if he said like, why are you here?  So he was like, I don't know, man.  So maybe we were, that's the fight.  It's like, why would you trust us? Half of us left. He goes, but half of you stayed. I mean, he's not wrong. He's like, he's the last half fork kind of guy. I mean, his entire instruction on archery was aim higher. So I don't think he's good at advice to begin with. He's tangling up those metaphors.   Also, the forgetful aspect of kids gripe is that the elves have been watching the humans too closely, but apparently not closely enough that they spotted huge tunnels, burned down forests, soup towels. All of these massive world shifting things the orcs have been doing for the last however long it's been. Sure, but they did notice the whispers among the knives. Yeah, see?  He clearly said something about whispers and knives. He definitely did, but I then I'd question why he's listening so intently to the cutlery draw and not actually opening his eyes. What did his alfie see? Now, it's just so painfully boring. He's like, I do not care.  Get rid of him. Like, just to, you know he said he was a half, a glass half full kind of guy. If the whole conversation is about whether or not the men are worth saving, that his like counter to them as a collective is that half of this whole fucked off, if the counter is half state, he's like, I know that. That was implicit in my statement of half left. I'm saying it's really bad that half left, okay? And he'd probably be like, oh yeah, no, I agree. That's pretty bad actually.  Or I mean, something to try and turn it around the narrative. This reveals how much of a low opinion he really had of the humans that is impressed that half state is like, I thought only one or two of you are gonna say, I thought you're all gonna be going over the evil, but half state, I've been pressed. Oh, I believe it. He can just say something very opaquely about having, you know, higher loves than whatever it is that, you know, the base loyalty, for example, but at least you could do it a slightly more subtle hinting at his relationship with whatever his woman's name is, as opposed to the really overt and tedious and very cringy flirting they do later. Oh yeah, you often forget that they just have a relationship, these two like love each other. It's something you legitimately forget because it's so poorly. Five hours in, you must have had plenty of content to understand their relationship at this point. That is true, I have a lot of context for why they like each other, how they met, what they see in each other, just so much, it's a very thoroughly explored relationship. And so, so relatable. EO is like, hey bro, check out my cool, cool hilt.  I've seen this before and then like moves 10 steps to the left.   Hey, that guy fiddling with vines? Hey, Gary, check out this guy. The old fiddling with some vines is like, yeah, that's what they do. It's the Simpsons meme where Grandpa Simpsons sits on a stump, starts talking, and then Milhouse goes, look everyone, an old man is talking. They all just run over. That's a good reference. That's a good reference. The same thing, they're all just fascinated by the fact that he's pulled away something that's always been there. It's just, and then, yeah. No one's noticed it.  It's hard to miss, you know, but I guess you can't catch them all, I suppose. I'm glad you got the whispers among the knives. That was important. I was just being that writer's from. We need the next thing to happen. So what can we have him do? Where has he seen this before? I don't know. Right next to him? Just stick it on the wall there? That's good enough.  It's staggeringly contrived. It's even more baffling when you find out what it means. Oh, gosh. It's like, I thought that this was gonna be like maybe a dark doorway entrance to a tunnel that leads to the bowels of Mount Doom that Sauron set up previous end, and the elves found it and built their tower to block off and protect it and make sure no one could find it. And holy crap, could I have not have been more wrong? I was just gonna say, like, that errant thought you're having about the potential storyline these writers are gonna come up with is so much better. Than what they come up with. It's dead. It's a key to open a spillway. And it's like, why would Sauron make this evil mural for like a very functional kind of mechanic of a dam? So you know for a fact that if Sauron had a toaster, it would be red and black. You would have hordes. It's just how things work, Shad. It's always been. Like, it's not like at this point that they don't know what they've got because Arinder knows it's a key. So the first question would be, well, where's the lock? And the lock is right at their feet as they are standing here.  And they're both like, oh, just nobody looked down. Otherwise we're in trouble and we'll destroy your entire story. Should we put like a rock in there or something? Is it sand or gravel? We had hundreds of years to deal with this problem. Yep.  I'm sure the chances of the key going into this hole are so small that we don't even have to bother with any sort of defensive questions. But when you find out what the key actually does, it turns out you don't even really need the sword to do that to open the spillway. Just hit it with a couple of solid hammers and you've got the job done. And what's weird is like Adar, he actually seems to know that's what the purpose of the key is because he says what's his guy named to do it. And then it's like you didn't even need the key, you didn't even need to go to all the trouble. The elves abandoned the tower, no one was there and you chasing the humans to like, no, you could have just walked to the dam and opened it up at your leisure.  To leave the tower and not, you know, not... What was that thing where you spiked the cannons essentially with this e-hole? Feel like before we left, by the way, we never got any, the elves never came back to investigate what happens to all the elves. No, I don't.  They totally, they just left. None of them care that all of them had been killed. It's just like, what do you... None of the elves at home mention it. We're building a tower right now, go away. Also, that's all, think of that as a big old next time on Evefab sort of thing because that's going to be all episode six. And unfortunately, we're still, we still got like 10 minutes of this episode left, so we're not going to be able to cover the other one tonight. All right, I'm sorry, Chad. You know this happens. Having seen episode six, I now know to book Monday off work. Yeah. Blossoms into problems. We think, oh, five. It wasn't that, it wasn't that meaty.  It really was just rife with issues every scene. There hasn't been one scene where we can just say, yeah, that was good. Well, so... You think back, Rags, for anyone, we first covered the show like episode one. It went pretty fast. Fairly fast. Those first two episodes were a bit of an anomaly in terms of emptiness.  That's basically, the story has expanded, more characters are thrown in, more factions. The decisions are made. A lot of complexity is starting to, things are all coming together. Because I think we said it. For as little was achieved in those first two episodes, there was definitely a lot of breaches anyway, but now they've managed to establish more and breach, like the inconsistencies have just piled on to where the show is pretty terrible, I would say, at this point. Absolutely. I don't think it would be worth praising in it, and there's a lot to criticize about it. Again, it's worth mentioning, for the people who don't watch the show and watch our coverage of it instead, or anyone's here, this is pretty atrocious, and the worst episode is the one we have not covered yet.  That's the way to sum it up, yeah. For glad real. So we have, yeah, the little chat between LadyGill and Elfman, and so they're going to talk, and he says to her, your son has what the enemy leader needs to take over the world and become a god, basically. And she takes this information really casually. She's like. It just goes, it just follows. Theo's been, I mean, that, that's Theo, you know. Yeah, Theo's gotten cool enough at something, he always gets us, boys will be boys. We all know him. I'd be surprised if it wasn't the case. I always knew that Theo would be the death of the world. It annoys me that. Teenage boys, am I right? She doesn't have every question on her mind. Like, where the hell did Theo get this thing from? In which case, Theo should probably mention to everybody, I got it from Waldrig. He actually is the one that had this in his barn, and he's very much loyal to Sauron. So better be careful with that guy. I mean, it's a bit late now. He's already gone, but whatever. Secondly. But if you see him in the future, hanging around after a battle or something, maybe we should stop him and run out. Stab him in his face over and over again. Maybe just put that in the baby pot. Oh, sorry. Well, that stab twist got the face. With men, it's got twist stab. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah, that's works. It's it's it's complicated formula. The order is important. She said she'd keep it simple. This wasn't simple. This is difficult. So yeah, she doesn't question the whole become a god pot. She's just like, Yeah, we better stop that from happening. It's like, yeah. Okay, fine. I guess there's no curiosity as to how it'll all happen or why they definitely believe this is true. She just she's like, yeah, sure. And then of course, just like the nature of the fact that the enemy leader of this army of demon things is after an item your son happens to have. Takes us so well. Just I just don't get it. And by the way, this might actually be consistent. You remember her reaction to that whole village being annihilated was like, Oh yeah, right. So this point is like, is it the actress? Is it the directing? Is it the script? Maybe it's all of them. All of the above. What are they supposed to say? The conclusion they draw is, well, we have to hide this thing. It doesn't seem to make a very much of an effort to hide it. I think it just keeps it in his pocket. But I'm sort of thinking watching it's like, you know, if you've lost your car keys, just just in your front room, you've lost your car keys and how it can take hours to find them down that particular part of the sofa that they've fallen down. You've got an entire world you could take that thing to. You've got ample time to escape. It's only one. There are no copies. Just give it to your fastest runner and tell them to run away. And Sauron or Ada is basically fucked for the foreseeable because it's going to take him a long time to find it and even longer time to find it than it's already taken. Yeah, that's if Ada doesn't realize that he could just break open the dam whenever he wants with a couple of strong hammers. Yeah. But if, yeah, if they really wanted to get rid of it and they actually had it even shorter time, there's a really, really deep dam like you're right next to that, you know, just throw it in the middle of that thing, swim out a bit, drop it and holy crap, no one would ever find it again. They actually say at one point, give it to the Numenorean so they can drop it in the ocean. Well, you've got something kind of similar to that. It's right next to you.  You could just go out into a forest and dig a hole and bury it and nobody would find it. Yeah, because there's no, there's no tracker on this thing of any kind, right? It's not even like the ring where the people are drawn to anyway. It seems to be, it seems to be that it is an object that you need to see to know that it exists. And if that's the case, no different than anything. Oh, it's no different. Like, yeah, exactly. So like in that case, just go out into the forest, dig a really deep hole and bury it. Even like before you do that, encase it in concrete color of different, like put it in a brick, put it in some wall.  Like in this little fort, you have so many options. For the stakes, what they are, yeah, you should probably be like one person needs to, your only job is to hide them. And remember, when you do bury it, if you decide to bury it in the rag, make sure you like unfurl it and check that it's in there first before you bury it. You wouldn't want to, you wouldn't want to accidentally place it. I don't understand. Why would you say that? Any person would obviously do that. Why would you mention that? That seems weird. Yeah, you're saying you wouldn't be able to tell instantly just by the weight. Well, I mean, maybe that's the thing, right? You would tell by the weight and shape of it. So I don't even need to open this. I know with like absolute certainty that this is not a tomahawk. I will snake the fate of the world on my certainty. I'm so sure. Yeah, I'm so sure that I will. Well, you could possibly be referencing. But what could we put? Well, I mean, we're not referencing. We're just floating some ideas. Just hypothetically, if that was to be a thing. Hypothetically. You should be watching out for. Yeah. Well, yeah. No, that's good to keep in mind. I don't think any of these characters are going to make a mistake like that. That seems responsible. No, obviously. I know. I can't. I can't. I can't. I can't. You need guilt? Exactly. It would be obvious.  Yeah, I think you guys should have more faith in the writers.  Yeah. You know, the consequences of mistaking a tomahawk for a hilt in this case could entail an option of a massive volcano, for instance. But I mean, that's just one of many. The apocalypse, the apocalypse in 3,000 years of misery. Yay. All rest on your certainty of the shape and weight of the hilt. So then the purpose of the scene comes before the characters in it again. This is something I want to work backwards of. I don't typically do it, but I'd like to do it for this scene, just in general. The end of this scene is Bromwin saying something like, you know, it's pretty much over. They've won. This tower will fall. And then she has like a look. And when I was watching the rags, we both hadn't seen the next episode yet. It was like, oh, so they're going to topple the tower on purpose to try and use it as like a weapon. And immediately we were like, I don't know if that was... First of all, how are you going to set that up? And secondly, like, how's that even going to work? That seems pretty unreliable. You know, just all the normal thoughts. But I guess we'll put them to one side. All the thoughts are going to rise. Oh my God. Yeah. What was it about that? I did not pick up on that. Like, you know, this tower will fall. I thought it was just them saying, you know, being overtaken. Like defeated in battle, you know. That's what I think that's what she is saying. They're trying to be clever writers. She has the realization. I think you're pointing it out. I think the writers are actually foreshadowing that point it out.  Yes, it really does. But the point I want to make is they wanted to get her to say that line to then very cleverly be like, I will fall, but not in the way that you think. How do we get her to say that line? It's like, well, we needed to despair a little bit, right? So let's have the conversation go that way. And man, they went insane. This is a lady who like constantly is the leader and the hopeful person and will take you through everything. La, la, la. In this conversation, what he explains, like, oh, yeah, we've got this, so we've got this, this, this, this. This is our reason for this situation. She just like 180s her personality to the point where she's like, we're all destined to be horrible, horrible people.  We're not going to be able to beat them. It's all over. We've lost. We're dead. And even Elford's like, dude, come down.  Where did this come from? She is a lot. Is it that time? She walks out into the public square, just us declaring that we're all fucked. We're just dead. It's like, what the? Just a reminder, we did not elect you as our leader. Don't listen to her. You didn't even elect her. It's fine because you get to wear blue. It doesn't mean you're better than us. To do this in public in front of the people, you are the reason they're still here. And now you walk out into the crowd and say, yeah, maybe I was wrong. Maybe we are all just dicks. And so let's just give up. No. Like I said, I'm almost certain they assassinated her character in order to have a line they thought was clever. But she was like, they're going to topple our tower. You say they assassinated her character. I do. I'm claiming that. And I'm sticking to it. She had something of a character. She said, you didn't have a character.  You can kill vampires, right? They're dead. Oh, they're undead.  And that brings in, oh, then she's undead. So much fine text on the bottom of that one. We're not even going to have this getting started about. I actually don't think she's inconsistent.  It's like, that's already pretty bad. Yeah. And it just like, it seems to come out of nowhere. This character who's really big on, we got to do this, got to do that. I've got a plan. You do this. All of a sudden, no, the hell is doomed, all the logs. Yeah. They broke her again, is what I'd say then. But they break everybody all the time, so whatever. I mean, they'll break her back in.  Which takes us to the realization that the table thing was indeed a lie. Ha, ha, ha. Yeah. That's dumb. I explained why. And so Elrond is trying to get the thing that he wants to say. Out. And Euron says, enough with the quail sauce. Give me the meat and give me it raw. I can't believe that. That's a great line, boys. That's a great line. They must have known when they wrote it. Elrond, give me that meat raw, Elrond. I mean, it makes everybody think of stuff in particular. That's fine, dude. I prefer my meat raw. I could excuse a couple of naive people that might not have such dirty minds and everything. But that's great. It ain't about dirty minds. It's just through a lot of people before I had no one. No one said, you do realize what it sounds like, right? Factor when he was, you know, he was thinking it when he was saying it.  He forgets on the stone to announce it. You've got, I'm rock hard for your raw meat. Elrond. Enough with the quail sauce. I don't even know what that means. I know, that's just stupid, but there's already enough, like, quail sauce is kitchen between these two. And then he comes out with that line on toughest. I think in this, in this analogy, give me the sauce with your raw meat, Elrond. Quail sauce is lube in this analogy, I'm sure. Oh, okay. He's like lubed up enough. Now give me the raw meat. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to harvest only the slipperiest of quails.  He says, I thought I came for friendship, but I came for the mithril. It's like, what? No, no, you didn't. You thought you were coming for a proposition to get the mining job done. Then you were told they have a secret thing you should probably try and find. You did, because you eavesdropped on them. And then you said, I promise not to tell anyone. And then you did.  You're having trouble figuring it out. I don't know.  You lied to me the whole time. You lied to my face. And you think, I'm just going to let it go. And that's what they do. He just like, Durin doesn't even blink at this. Yeah, it's really annoying, because this was the foundation of all of this stuff even being able to get this far in the season. It was like, I don't even believe you are. Because remember on the elevator ride, where he's like, ah, there it is, a proposition. That's why you're actually here. And then he's like, no, no, no, no, no. You know, we're totally friends. But he's telling him now, right now, like, I thought it was for friendship, but it really wasn't.  Like, oh. Hey, never. He doesn't explain it. So he doesn't explain that Calibur and Gil-Galad were manipulating him. And that's what he means. So all Durin should think is that actually he was knowingly manipulating him from the start. So he actually has a decent excuse to use. But for some reason just no one takes it that way. Durin knows because, you know, he's read the script with one of the other conversations where it's always not bothered. And this is the thing that I find beyond frustrating as well. It's like, we've got all the truth out there. So what's Elrong going to do to convince him? He's like, well, you see, you need to save my entire race by providing that material. Durin accepts that 100%. He doesn't for a second go, wow, that's pretty convenient, isn't it? You can justify all of this by saying that if I don't give it to you, you all die. How do you know that? It's a fucking, the mineral. I don't even know how to classify it exactly. But how do you know that this thing is saving your whole race? He's like, trust me, bro. I have sources. My mind flashes back to the scene in an episode. I've already forgotten which one it was for. Where's the one? He goes down into the mines of Moria. He finds out that they know about the Mithril. And Durin comes as he's sneaking around the tunnels and he makes him swear on the sacred rock thing and on his mother's life and on everything else that he will tell no one about any of this and that he was in fact just here for friendship. And Elrond says all of this. But the show took time out of its day to make this clear. And there's no payoff for any of this. It doesn't remember what it did. Elrond doesn't seem to remember what he did. And he doesn't understand what's happened to him. And Durin doesn't care about the thing that he insisted Elrond swore on to begin with. So apparently you don't remember something that completely sets that up perfectly. In episode two, Elrond swears that if he loses the stone breaking challenge, he'll be banned from Old Dwarvenlands forever. And then he wasn't. So there you go. Nothing means anything is the whole point, right? Nothing means anything. The value of promises in this world are... Wow. Well Durin's just an absolute pushover. Like everyone can do anything they want with him. And he just, he can talk a bit of a big game but he just, he gives up eventually every time. Doesn't mean any of this stuff. And it's really annoying because like, you know that if he did have a spine, he could probably rise to being the best character pretty quickly. But oh well. Yeah, and I thought it was funny that these two were like joking and laughing and trying to get all this stuff done. They're like, all right, let's go back. Let's get this Mithril sorted out. We're gonna do it. I'd like it. I thought it was hilarious.   Sort of this Mithril thing. It's like, Jesus Christ. He just looks disappointed. I think he was hoping that they got up to some other thing. You know, there was meat being mentioned and it's like, yeah, oh, come on. I gave him Gilgalad. What are your elf eyes here? Elf ears here. He's like, I think you're talking about, I don't know. I must, I can't quite hear him.  We thought we were about to all die, but luckily the dwarves like found the exact thing we need. Five minutes ago, they found the thing we need.  Yeah. And he just found out that he was lying.  Plus we had elves bring it back.  That's not going to be, that's not comfortable now. Think about what it, think about what it's like 100 miles down the road.  They give it, give me the meat, give me raw light, right? I was just thinking, how could that have slipped in? And I was reminded one time when like, like I had a friend who was trying to write a story and it was like, what's a good way to write a story? And I just wanted to mess with him because I knew he wouldn't know the context I said, you could start it with it was a dark and stormy night. It was like, oh, that's great. And he writes that down. And I'm wondering, like, you know, there was a writer's like, all right, we want to do it to like, you know, get upset. What could I say? And someone just was best because they know that they have no idea. Yeah. What about this line? Now we got the subtext and the writer's like, that's great. They put it in and it was just. The writer's like, do people eat raw meat? Like, yeah, they actually prefer it raw a lot of the time. Yeah. Dwarfs don't have to cook their meat. If they do, it's just for flavor. They can eat it. They can eat it raw and that's fine. Yeah. So Halbrand clearly the many raw meat. They're just slathered in dirt all the time. They probably live in caves. And so for those who don't know the context, it's been considered that it was a dark and stormy night is the worst beginning to any story ever written. And so. Yeah. Saying it was a bright and sunny day is actually the best way to start a story. Oh, yes, indeed. So Halbrand's considering it. He's like, why do what do I do? And the way this is sold is that it was like almost like a coin flip. It came so close, but he decided, yes, he will go. And they skip to literally him on his horse and the war's about to go off and start when they told us that his decision to become king and lead his men is going to be something he needs to speak on and like the council to convince new manure to really go through with the war. And we didn't see any of that. Nope. We totally lost an opportunity to get his perspective explained to other people as to why he made this decision, why he kept it under wraps, maybe what he was afraid of, maybe what he stands to gain from this, his acceptance of his duty, any of that stuff could have had that, could have had other characters reacting to it, could have had the Numenoreans reactions to this being told to him, hey, now we have a man, not an elf, who has a legitimate royal claim to a throne in the Southlands that we're trying to... All that, nah, don't need it. We got boats to sail, bitches. I don't even know that they recognized that was a missed opportunity as a writer. They probably like, no, why would anyone want to see that as boring? I don't think so. They just wanted to skip to the... I just wanted to skip to it. He decided it and so they're sailing. Well, yeah, and that's what we see, this shot. So they got... Is it three ships in total that really truly is it? Yeah, three. And I don't see why they would have reduced the overall amount of people who are heading for this war. So that means they just pack to the five people's, or five ships worth of people onto three ships, right? Oh, I thought they just have to cut 200 people. Yeah, I thought they'd go down to 300. I just can't believe that. You started up this war effort, you have 500 volunteers and then you're just like, well, two ships got blown up so you can't come now. And it's like... Well, they said they had more than 500. You wouldn't have charged for 500 for a reason, right? I thought, yeah, I thought they actually did filter them. In theory, even with 500, I was questioning... And we know they have more ships, but they're not willing to spear though. I guess the city's like, no, we need it for transport and trade and you just can't. You had 500 men and you're sending your queen regent aboard to a foreign continent. I thought even with 500 men, that was a bit of a risk, but now you're going to send it with potentially only 300 men untrained, as we've now seen, with no idea what they're doing or what they're up against. And you're sending your ruler on that ship, which might just combust at any moment. So... Might have new men more. And in the terms of the size of medieval armies, right, I would, I think, the very bare minimum for this expeditionary kind of force would be 5,000. And I'm not kidding. And like a full-size army would be minimum 10,000, 20,000 is where you get to the... All right, now you're at it. We don't know how many orcs there are. You've no idea the size of the force you're going against. Absolutely right. Yep, this is... Because this is not billed as a recon team. We're going to do some reconnaissance and scouting. We'll bring some ships over. They'll disperse. We'll come pick them up in three months or whatever after they give a look around. They're supposed to blend in and lay low. No, this is like a fighting... This is cavalry. And also, right, it would not be out of the ordinary for the Orcs army to be in numbers of 100,000 strong. They have no idea... They have no clue. No idea. Imagine going to war against a foe that could be anywhere from 100 men to 100,000. You have no clue. Because remember, it's not even the numbers of the Orcs. It's the existence of the Orcs that is alleged. Yeah, it's not even the numbers, you're right. They have no proof of anything. The opening monologue in episode one, Galadriel tells us that Sauron is there and he's been biding his time and he's been gathering his forces. And like she knows... Well, the monologue would have us believe she knows that there are walks and there are a lot of them and they've been gathering their forces for hundreds, if not thousands of years. So she's the one advising the queen to go to Númenor. She's the only person who can realistically say this is the kind of force we might expect to come up against. Like she's the only one who has any foreknowledge of this at all. She's apparently fine with them sending 300 men and a queen to go and meet potentially thousands of Orcs, which... I mean that bit makes sense for Galadriel because at the start of episode one she was going to take on the same amount of people with like seven elves. So this is a step up for her. I was about to say, you know for a fact that she would. She would annihilate all of Mordor's forces just to honor her. Yeah. I'm actually half expecting it to quell Mount Doom with the sheer coldness of it. She'll throw a sword into Mount Doom but that'll be the arc. She'll be like, I'm a warrior but I will sacrifice my warriorness. Then she looks at the screen and she goes, that's why you don't see me doing it in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. And then I did it to close Mount Doom forever but then it woke back up I guess at some point. I don't know, shut up, leave me alone, I'm awesome. That'll be the end. And yeah, as everyone keeps saying, it's just like there's a little bit of a horse problem. If you want us to believe that you've got 300 men on there on those three ships like, okay, how are you getting 300 horses across there?  If you've got, you've had to crane the horses onto the ship. Are there cranes on the other side to get them off? Yes. They just chuck them. Cranes, they just chuck away. They make a slide or something. A catapult for the horse. Well, it's catapult. Why not? Well, I can't believe they put horses on cranes. I thought it was flying when I first saw it.  I noticed a little roach. Thirsting, flashing to my mind was Jurassic Park when they feed the cow to the raptors. So, yeah, the official word is that Elendil did approve of Isildur coming onto these ships. And so everyone's like, wow, that is an episode. And then he's like, no, I earned it. And if anyone, this is where I mean, like if you're just one of these guys who's on this ship and you go, oh, how did he earn it? What did he do? Like, is there been a fight or something? What's going on? He'll go, well, apparently someone was fishing and the ship's exploded and he almost died, but Isildur jumped in the water and saved him. And you just be like, what? What do you mean? So that's all we have to do. Oh, well, not even that. Just what an absurd scenario. Who blew these things up? And why to go a brigand? Oh, okay, whatever. Okay, all right. And Elendil knows he did all this. It's like, that's what he told him. Right.  It's weird because it shouldn't be. Oh, yeah, you're stable hand. It's weird because that shouldn't be.  It's like a role that's necessary to that. Yeah, I don't say stable hand. And he ends up being in the Queen's Honor Guard next episode. Yep, yep. You're okay. Okay, they don't care. Stable hand could be an incredibly important position. He could be the one who is in charge of the horse crane or the horse slidler. He's the one who has to put it up. So actually an honorable position for him to be in because without him, they're not getting those animals off the ship. Yeah, would the horse catapult even be built without him? I don't think so. Oh, good point.  It looks so shit, Shad. And the helmet's not master outfits. The outfits are just...   Unbelievably so. And what is it made out of like foam paper? I really don't like a lead deal specifically. And the people posted pictures of comparing the way he looks here and how he looks in the prologue of Lord of the Rings. It's like, it's fucking... Night and day doesn't cover it. Yeah. It's the sun versus the abyss. It's like, why? Oh. The creators, honestly, I think it's awesome. The creators are like, look at our great job we did, guys. Can none of you even see? Are you all blind? The answer is yes. I could help you out on that one. And speaking of Arba, guess who has theirs back somehow? The magic of everything. I don't know. Who could it be? Ladriel. Oh, wow, you found it. Oh, my God.  He washed up on the shore. Sorry. The only explanation. The only explanation, too. The Numenoreans who hate elves had a specifically set of elven armor, a set aside that's perfectly tailored to her size and proportions that happens to also have the symbol of the guy who made the Silmarils on it, the person that she hates. But okay, sure. Well, someone just said that's different armor. It's like, we weren't actually suggesting that her real similar armor washed up on shore. Trust me, that's not what we're suggesting. Obviously, it's got made. It's just why, why in the world would this have been made? And I just, the Smiths like her enough, even though the Smiths are all the people that were at the Elves of Horrible parade festival, whatever the fuck, get together. It's just funny. How could one could have made it? Yeah, Halbrand did it in a couple of hours, probably. So the thing is, clearly, no one would have, they hate elves. They wouldn't make elven armor, so they must have had it just lying around. And it's like, okay, then why are they keeping elving armor and if they hate it so much? Well, what she did was Galadriel said, I need some armor. And they're like, okay, fine. And that was that. They said, why can't you make it yourself? And she says, because I cannot. Well, because that's a lowly position that she wouldn't want to associate with.  They're like to make her armor. They gave her the normal armor, and then she's like, I would like not to wear paper, please. And then they're like, okay, we'll give you steel, I guess, if this is weirdo. She would have to very accurately convey what her armor looked like to these guys. And they're like, so do you want this random male to be sticking out between the shoulder and the chest piece? And she's like, oh, absolutely. It looks cool, right? Absolutely. It's like this is part of its design. The metal hair, this armor hair. Oh, do you think it's what they're going for? Or are you just meaning? I don't know. I really don't. Is it the third guy with the best expression? One of them, like everyone's impressed and amazed. I know.  He just looks so bored. And they've got it, the angle of the sun hitting them at the same time as they're looking, like as if she's giving off the light. It's like, why? This is so... Also, the bridge bridge is pretty bad here, I will say. The show loves Galadriel so much, and they're having it like everyone is just like getting mesmerized. Wow, look at her. It's amazing. It's come off incredible.  It's someone indistinguishable from humans unless you can see her ears. Pretty much, yeah. Especially because she's tiny. It's like she probably passed for like a... Look, that guy there in the back, the tallest one. He does not care at all. He's like, what is this?  It is, isn't it? This is her. Okay, all right. And so, after nearly six hours of breaking down more rings of power at the point where they're leaving the harbor to go to war from Numanor, which you'd be forgiven for thinking, that's what was happening at the end of the last episode. But nope. But Halbrand's going with... Yeah. So that took an episode. Halbrand was given specifically different colored armor because of great reasons. He's given man armor, okay? Main character armor. Her armor doesn't look terrible, at least. Oh, it still looks pretty bad. Not as bad as the white one. You're right. It's so... It's compared to them.  Yeah, in comparison. Awful, awful. They have a scale obsession, I think. They do. The scale mail is awful. Which is like, okay, it's fine, but take it easy. Not everything has to be... You can have it, but it doesn't have to be everything. Well, they're so obsessed with the scale that they even have it printed on the queen's undershirt. Yeah, that was... That's awkward. It couldn't have just been clothed. Just have it be a clothed shirt. Do they expect her to actually go into combat?  Just give her a nice, regal-looking, bright, a new menor color. The blue shirt underneath it all. Something. It'd be fine. Some sort of padded, like in, you know, arming doublet underneath. Problem solved. I'd say do they actually expect her to go into combat? I mean, she is about to be attacked by a volcano, so anything could happen. They really need to do that. I'll do the paper problem is gonna be really bad against a volcano.  I was ready for it. Yes. Oh, yeah. I thought she was gonna lead the army when they charged the village. Yeah, it... Because you know... You know, they wanted... That episode is so bad. This episode was so bad. It's all so bad. Like, they're still amazed. Oh, she's shaking his hand. Yeah, we're gonna do it, guys.  And in that shot, you got to see kind of all the guys on board and the size of the ship. And it's like, is there what, maybe 20 men? I know, right? And it's like so 80 or below, I guess. Boats and stoes, boats and stoes. At this point to get everybody in, they'd have to have, like, the lifeboats on the side just row it along with them, or they trade out who's in those every so often because they just don't have a room. They're probably the column window seats. The people underneath would have to be stacked side by side, like the slave ships of, you know... Oh, yeah. Hardies. There might be some mariners in the chat who'll disagree with me, but I'm sort of questioning the wisdom about trying to sail your way out of an enclosed harbor. You got to be very skilled. Because that thought came to my mind as well. Where's the wind coming from? They're backed up high on the walls behind them. There isn't going to be wind in the harbor. They've got a really big fan. That's why the others can built like that. A really big fan. They've got the entire town together and blow. That's why they needed to get the approval of the people to go to war because they need the blow power of... I'm just thinking of, you go in and out of these arches every time a ship has to come and go from the harbor, which is like amazing defensively. But you think the 99.999% of the time we're not under siege, man, this is going to be... How many boats have we ruined? Just bumping into the sides of the canyon and hitting the bridges. I guess they're really good at it, supposedly. So... That's cool. Yeah, couple. Yeah, rowing would have been the way that they did it. Also, like, you saw the bridge in perspective before. And I was like, those boats even get to fit through those arches because barely... You saw them go in originally when they entered. They came in and they were lowering the sails as they did it, but it's almost like the sails are designed with the bridge in mind. Because they have the Tism sails where they're sort of in like these two sections like that. So in their curve. So that's supposed to fit, I think, in kind of inside neat... That's bizarre. Because also on the size of ships, these are pretty small. You're telling us our Numenorans have no bigger ships than these and it's because they just...  Oh, we can't fit it through the bridge. Yeah. They're just gonna trap it in the harbor forever. They built the bridge before they remembered to get the boats out of the harbor. So they're just there now. They're just party barges. They just got converted into restaurants and things or something. Just to get from one side of the harbor to the other. They can never leave. That's episode five. Only three left. What a man. Really good. Really good. I mean, this show is so bad. Like going through it again. We found a lot of stuff in addition to all the things I thought was bad in this episode. It just gets worse. This is incredible. Yeah, pretty remarkable. Yeah. And it is pretty good work on their part because it's so little happen. It's just like, wow, you've got millions of issues and you don't even make much of anything take place. Not the same thing I would say for the next episode, of course. It's really interesting to summarize the first five hours of the show versus the sixth hour because you'd be like, wait, what? It's like, yeah, that's that's what happened. But yeah, since we're at the six hours, we figure that we will now move into super chats and then end the stream at a quote unquote reasonable time and instead pick up coverage of the next episode as early as tomorrow. Crazy kids and chat since we're trying to get this all done in one but failed probably, which I suppose is a good thing to a lot of people anyway. But I will say since we're at the sort of like the halfway mark or not halfway, but we're at a break part of sorts that I would offer any of the guests if they wish to leave at this point because you have been here for good six hours. Reasonable if you need to, you know, do life things completely up to you. And I will be one of those people. Unfortunately, I've been a duck out, guys, and it has been tremendously fun. No problemo at all. Thank you so much for hanging out. I'm hanging out good, sir, before you leave. Hell, everybody, where they can find you and what you're up to. Well, well, well, I'm up to something pretty cool at the moment, guys. I got a graphic novel that's available if anyone's wanting to check that out. You know, I think I really enjoy it. It's a graphic. I don't know. I've loved comic books my whole life. And so having, you know, being part of making one is pretty awesome. And also making one that's just top tier. Like if you see some of the art that Marvel and DC are doing, it's such garbage. There's been people sharing the art of a recent Robin. Robin, you know, Batman Robin comic. It is unbelievable cringe. And then I get to look at this art by that Mike has done for me in this graphic novel.  It's so cool. So it's pretty cool. If you throw me a link, I can get it in the description. Yeah. Goes back up. Absolutely. So yeah, check that out if everyone interested, that we're selling the hard cover for the price of a soft cover. So it's a good deal. But if you're wanting as well, you can get something special and get the leather bound. I'm doing leather bound for the graphic novel and the second edition version of the novel as well. And they are all good. Beautiful. And then of course you've got Night's Watch, right? Yeah. Night's Watch is just exploding. It's going great. And we're doing in-depth reviews and everything. So you can check me out there. And of course, Shadiversity looking at all the medieval stuff. And so I've already reviewed the weapons and armor and rings of power and the gradual fight scene. Oh, it's so bad. We've been. It's fun to review. We've been, that's not the word, is it? I was about to say spoiled with bad content. It's more so we've been attacked with bad content. I don't know. Is there anything blighted, cursed? Blighted maybe, yeah. Isolated. Subjected to. But hey, we're nearing the end. There's a light at the end of this tunnel in terms of She-Hulk and rings of power coming to an end. And once House of Dragon ends as well, it'll just be Andor who's chilling out on his own. That's what's going to happen eventually. Oh yeah. I might need to take a break after rings of power and House of Dragon. It's been full on. And hey, it's good. I'm not complaining. But oh, I need to take a break. I think afterwards. Yeah, we've doubled up. But you've had episodes. We're going to have to take a week off here and there. What is this time of the year? It's going to happen. But yeah, man, thank you so much for joining us. Legendary as always. And if I don't catch you on tomorrow's one, I will obviously see you with Gary for House of the Dragon. All right, guys. This has been awesome. I'll catch up. See you, dude.  Bye-bye. Well, well. I assume a little too soon, you're going to be hanging out with the whole thing, I think, right? Is that what you said? Yeah.  So yes. No, I don't. Unless I'm intruding on your private chat. I'm absolutely not. Well, I mean, several of these may very well be to you. Who knows? And Disbrew, how are you doing? Yeah. I need to head out because if I'm back here again tomorrow, then I've got a video to start and finish. Sorry for cursing you in such a way, but I very much appreciate your company. It's been great. I did enjoy the story. Like, this episode will be really fast. We'll fly through this one and get straight to the big one. It's like, wow, okay. I never thought six hours on that episode. It just takes a little bit longer. But yeah, before you go, of course, since you're a brand new guest, nobody even knows what's going on here in the Leaf. I'll tell everybody about what it is you get up to. Disbrew on YouTube. I tend to focus. Like, I kind of do think it's sort of spoiled by bad content because I think bad ones make the best reviews and the best videos. And I think they're by far the most interesting to talk about. You get something that's really good. And I'm like, yeah, okay, that's good. I think you should watch it. I don't want to spoil it for you though. So that's not really what you can talk about. So on live streams, I think good content makes better live streams because everyone talk about it. You know what it's there. But for videos, I would rather just rip something apart and when it comes to that, She-Hulk, especially, I've had some of the most fun times making videos for She-Hulk. Oh yeah, dude. It's rapid fire disaster. Like they fit more into three minutes of the start than last episode. Was it safe to say your life has probably been strange for the past, let's say, month or two-ish because your name has come up a lot more than usual for me than it has ever before. And it's like you've got all these TV shows to cover at once. And I keep seeing you on loads of different streams. Do you happen to go outside and breathe oxygen or is that not a thing? Not the last couple of months. Oxygen is indoors, Mahler. Checkmate. Prove it. Yeah, gotcha. But yeah, my channel has exploded. I think in February, I had 2.8k subs and now I'm at like 87. Excellent job, man. I have no idea what's been happening. It's kind of been a roller... Well, not a rollercoaster ride because it's just been an insane upward thing. But yeah, all these streams that I used to just watch, I've been on. Like Friday Night Titans, I've watched for years. And it's been kind of a surreal journey, especially last few months. Yeah, man. That's one of the things that's really cool about Rings of Power, She-Hulking, and the others coming out is that a bunch of new creators can now come out as a result of being passionate enough to sort of be like, okay, this is shit, by the way. I'd like to talk about why. Well, it's one of the opportunities you get with all this sort of stuff. But yeah, it's... I only started reviewing stuff because I was really into Wheel of Time. I've read the books over like decades, and Amazon came along and just annihilated that. And so that's sort of everything else. Yes, I genuinely think that was a trial run for this. A lot of the marketing was the same. A lot of the kind of the mystery box. Oh, guess who's the dragon? Guess who's Sauron? Have been the same way through. I think they did see that as their little mini project. Well, now here you are reviewing incredible shows every night, every day, even possibly. Yeah, like I said, I don't know whether to apologize or whatnot, but it'll be lovely to see you tomorrow as well to talk about the other episode. Oh yeah, I will definitely be back. Hey, anything that gets me to see Galadriel get hit by a fiery cloud of ash from a volcano? Well, that wouldn't happen. That's absurd. Why would that happen? That would never happen. That would be where would that come from? They wouldn't just invent a volcano to do that. That'd be crazy. Can you imagine, though, if they did just... They led everyone on? Oh, no, we're doing this in five seasons and then just end it halfway through the first... That's how you get in. This was the plan from the start. Yeah, this was the story we wanted to tell, yeah.  We call it subversive. A lot of you guys really liked that and we experimented with it. What are you trying to get? I mean, if they pulled that on this one, I think that people would genuinely cheer. So it might be the first one that people actually like. Well, I mean, if we're being completely honest, if it was announced tomorrow, no more episodes are coming out, all the reactions be from us. Certainly from us a lot would be like, okay. All right, then. Yeah, that's awesome. Nothing been heard, nothing gained. Yeah, like, okay. And this will be remembered by no one.  Bye. That's my favorite thing about it. It is the case of at this point, you're just kind of seeing how much money they're willing to throw away knowingly. Because at first, like a billion dollars, we could make something amazing. But then the reception that this has got and what they've ended up with, they now know what they're going to get for future seasons. And I don't see how they can turn this around unless they just get rid of so many of the people that made it. And so it's going to be how much money, especially how much good money they're willing to burn. Just keeps going and going and going. Yeah, because Wheel of Time's got season three. And season two isn't even out. And I think they're doing the same thing with that. So they're not beyond just throwing away piles of cash. How much, can they keep that going forever, Wheel of Time? Have they gone up to adapt or they can just keep going? There's so many books. Yeah, they could do it for like 14 seasons if they wanted to. Sorry, Wheel of Time fan. Yeah, well, the first season, because in this they were like, oh, well, you know, we've chosen something where we think we're just filling in the gaps. But Wheel of Time is literally specifically written down word for word, action for action. And they, after the episode two, didn't entirely different thing. Not unrelated to the books in every single way, changed the magic system, changed everything about it. So the whole idea that, oh no, if this was detailed down in a book somewhere at Holkins, they would have followed it. No, no way. Well, good luck, of course, with that as well. Covering season three of Wheel of Time. Because you said you got started with Wheel of Time, right? So I imagine that you'll definitely be covering that. Oh yeah, I'm not. I, like, even if what, if the only person that sees those videos is me, I'm still gonna do them. That's, I am heavily into Wheel of Time. Oh yeah, I assume the same as for Rings of Power. We've got five years of that, at least. It could be a gap, yeah, who knows. Well, yeah, if they, well, if considering they're moving countries now and the studio isn't built, it's probably gonna be a two-year gap between seasons. So this could go on for 10 years. Oh. 10 years of Rings of Power. 10 years until we're allowed to let it be forgotten. Imagine that, chat. It's 2032 and the season, the series finale for the Rings of Power is crawling out of Joseph Fritzel's basement, sort of wondering where the beatings have gone and why they've stopped. Oh, that's gonna be a really strange experience. We're all gonna be, like, old men by then in 10 years. Finally, we put Rings of Power to rest. At that point, there's, like, 30 viewers and 26 of them are reviewing it negatively. That's probably She-Hawks' current situation. Yeah, I think so. I get that impression. But I do like this, that one Twitter account for She-Hawks. It's just, like, the most rabid defender. Oh, yeah. Dude, deep down. Like, there's just one person holding the line. They've put out some hyper cringe, haven't they? They're desperate. Oh, what an account. Good luck to them, I guess, that if you want to revolve your personality around just the She-Hulk of all things, you go right ahead. All the things to defend. That's where you've pitched your tent. That's the hill you're dying on is She-Hulk. Priorities. Yeah, man. Thank you so much for hanging out with us. Six hours, six hours is still a long time. It's not 12, but normal shows actually do run. I don't know if you've heard about this. There are some podcasts that go for an hour. You hear about this? It's a myth as far as I'm concerned. They exist. They whisper on the wind. I can't imagine that. Only podcasting for an hour. Yeah, why would you have a podcast that's just intro? What's the point? That's our intro, yeah. Seems weird. I didn't cover anything. Well, yeah, so thank you very much. And I suppose we shall see you tomorrow. Ah, yeah. Pleasure to be on. Cheers for inviting me. Thank you so much. Thank you for watching. Yeah. Toodless.  Which leaves. Oh, go ahead. I will say I'm drawing and I drew over my sketching layer. I drew it on the same layer. So all that work is gone. I have to redo it. I'm sorry. I'm feeling pretty sad about it. I'm like, oh, yeah. Oh, I'm not happy about that. Well, you learned something new, which is, I don't know, don't have a lapse that causes you to do that. So there's not really anything I can do to account for that. Yeah. What was the lesson here?  The lesson is just, yeah, a little bit, because it's kind of nothing. It's like, you got to do it again. Yes. Could you have learned from it? Not really. It's kind of worthless. So I mean, I guess I got, because as Chat may have, because it hasn't been acknowledged yet, cassowary for Halloween. Gary. That's, that's the, that's the, yeah. I see a little platoon. You don't have anything scary. Where's your little horns or something? That's what you got to do. Oh, yeah. I've been meaning to actually ask the guy who does the channel art. I need to actually, yeah, get him to put some horns on me or something. You've got plenty of time. So it's not, not a. You just started October is true. It is, yeah. I know. We take it very seriously here at EFAT. It's very important. Halloween is a thing to be taken seriously. It's a very fun festival. But the Valentine I ask him about time it's done. It could well be Halloween itself. And then what I've got like two days to use it. So no, I should actually get on that. And next year. Yeah. True. It will be reused. We get mileage out of ours. That's for sure. A pumpkin head or something. Which people would know from seeing our avatars on Karen EFAT movies, which is out by the way, who did not know it released today before the stream. And you'll be getting an EFAT movies per week until the final week of Halloween. We get to think final destiny. Be excited because you should because if it's out, that means that things went well because Final Destination 2 is still getting pushed back with copyrights and nightmare. The latest one was weird. It didn't get clipped for like two days. And the message I got was it has been manually reviewed and they have found a six second clip that is like enough to block it worldwide.  So yeah, for anybody who sees maybe a little bit of an obsessive protection of copyright on any of these films, that's why. But hopefully. Anyway, I'm going to start reading these super chats then. Well, all right. All right, the first one of the night is, I love you all. This is a threat. All right. I love you. I love you.  I feel like that would be a threat. Dark comedy idea. The vegan cannibal. He only eats vegetables. Oh no. I get it. He only eats vegans. No, vegetables. A vegan cannibal only eats vegans. Vegan cannibal only eats vegetables, as they said. That wouldn't be very sporting. No, because carrots can't run away. Yeah, I suppose it's no less sporting than just plants eating. Invite random film talk. I'm not sure who that is. But who knows? Maybe one day. Oh, I gotta take a look.   The worst one. Okay. And that's how this usually makes some sense. Out of all three, I guess we'll keep still season four. There's some stuff in it. That's actually pretty good for season five. All right. Yeah, that's kind of the nature of it. You can't have season five without season four. So I guess Jaws four will be the one that gets fucked. I have no idea what that means, but there you go. Man, at the time when I was watching that, I really didn't see how it could be saved. I really didn't. I thought it was doomed. No one can. So like what happened to Karen's kids? No parents, no uncle, no other relatives? The film just forgets they exist. No one doesn't care about them. They don't matter. It's not a very good movie. You could say that. I haven't seen it by the way. I haven't seen it yet. I just woke up and pretty much did this. I haven't seen it either, yeah. I'm going to watch it while I'm at dinner. I think the people were pretty happy with it, as was I. It was a fun one. The land it came out well. It was a fun movie. Man, I learned a lot. I think that we may not have even watched it. Oh, yeah. It's basically, yeah, just on a whim from Jay Longbone. Loads of appreciation for Jay Longbone, because it's in the video where she suggests it and we all go, yeah, sure, okay. Never would have happened. Simply struck gold. Have a nice general conference, Shad? Hope he did, or whatever. I don't know. All right. Shad, imagine when training in episode five, she said, control is more important than strength. A hard strike means nothing if it can't hit. It took me two minutes. I would be stronger than... Like discounting arms when it comes to fighting, yes. Her arms are pretty overrated. You see, Sarn would have paid attention to his arms in that fight. I mean, yeah. The top comment on the Karen, you've probably was right now, by the way, is that extended comment, trying to figure out how much effort Karen would have gone to to get confederate soap. Well, it probably isn't easily stumbled across, is it? No, it's just funny. You specifically have to, yeah. Well, when she goes on Amazon, it's like soap. Oh, wait, sorry, confederate soap. That's her. Let me go to Amazon and look that up. Confed soap. And now you're on a watch list. Yeah. Yeah, it's just normal soap. It's as if the word confederate was never involved. I'll put confederate flag soap. And if you want to know the context to this, you can go watch the Karen EFAT movies. Trust me, I'll love it. What's the Chinese version of Amazon called this? Is it Alibaba? I think we'll use that once. You can find all kinds of weird stuff on there. Probably on there, then. Or eBay. Which? Ligatory She-Hulk's Feet Super Chat. Yum. All right. To you, I suppose. She has large green feet. That is true. Hey, Molly, did you like Matosis's God of War 4 video? I think I did when it came out, yeah. I can't remember if I agree with everything on. I feel like I often disagree a lot on... I feel like that people are way too harsh to the mechanics in that game, but especially when comparing it to the original trilogy as if there are no problems with the original trilogy's ones for the design choices they have made. The help maybe explain what I'm trying to say is that people highlight a lot of restrictions that happen as a result of the choices they made in God of War 4 as if that's not the case for literally every mechanical system that whenever you choose to do anything that you've given yourself things that are difficult to overcome. One of the most common things that everything has to face when it's like an action game of third-person nature of some kind is camera.  I already played three quarters right now of God of War 1.  And it was different in small ways, but sometimes in ways that we really didn't need to be, like where they chose to aim it. Camera's difficult. I think Matthew Matosis talked about it in his most recent video about context sensitive buttons that one of the difficulties of transitioning from a 2D to 3D game is that just by virtue of how much complexity that adds, it just makes things more challenging. And one of them is cameras get more difficult in 3D because like in a 2D space, it's always from the side. Wow. Generally, it's from the side or it's from the top with a really clear view of what's in front of you. You can see clearly what's in front of you and behind of you when there's no input to control the camera. It's always going to show you everything that you need to see or the mechanics will at the very least be built around this limited space. But then when you throw the camera in, it's like, oh, well, I guess the challenge with something like God of War is that I haven't played enough of four, but I imagine that the old games used the face buttons for combos, whereas the new game, it's kind of hard to have face buttons serve as like the way to do combos and attacks because the finger you need to use the face buttons is always going to be the same one that you use to control the camera. And so like any point where you need to move the camera is a moment when you're not fully in control of attacks. That's the reality though, right? That's almost the binary. Either the game has control of the camera and so you can focus on fighting, but that means the camera doesn't always go where you would personally choose for it to go or you can give the player full control, but then they need a third finger or a third. Well, or you just have to account for that. You just have to account for it. It's the reason why in the PS3 360 generation the triggers became way more prominent in games. Yeah, yeah, because like a shooter does that, right?  Shooter. And then you have your attack buttons of most of the time, shoulder. Yeah, exactly. Whereas, because I mean, there was a trend, you know, use Ratchet and Clank as an example. I remember in the old games, you pressed the circle button to shoot, but then Deadlock changed it to, you can use circle, but you also can use the shoulder buttons. And obviously the reason why they did that is because that game was combat heavy and it just made more sense to use the shoulder buttons and it's just like the more that games move towards that combat heavy focus. Because you see an older, like Crash Bandicoot has a fixed camera. You don't control the camera. It does the fixed camera in the same way that 2D platformers do essentially the difficulty is that in a 3D space, judging depth is tricky. Right, yeah. Because it's kind of why you need a lot of visual cues. That's why Crash 4 had like a highlighted circle beneath you so that there was like absolutely no confusion as to where you are. But the fact that it even needs that kind of says something about navigating a 3D space. It was a part that... Think of just, I'll remove most of the context, try and make it as simple as possible because it would be so much easier if I could draw it.  And the camera is behind Kratos, obviously. And as you move across them, it follows him. It's exactly, let's say, three meters behind him. And it just follows him across all of them easy, but this is God of War 1 now. And then you need to go back. And so they haven't made it so the camera does like a 360 or 180 flip so that now it's behind you on the other side so you can jump. It just backs up as you head toward the camera. You understand what I mean? Yeah, I know what you mean.  I absolutely hate it.  There's not enough space. I can't feel in control of the platforms at all. I just have to kind of hope and pray that I am remembering it right. Well, it's one of the challenges of making games. How much control should be afforded to the player versus how much should be entirely in the hands of the developer in terms of what you can see or do? They'll have several segments where they go bird's eye and I think they just want to not go bird's eye because it's not as, dare I say, cinematic. It's more gamey. There might be a few factors, cinematic resources, maybe bird's eye is a bit too intensive because it's too much that you can see. It could be the reason why God of War would tuck the camera in so close is probably because they wanted to pump the visuals up. Yeah, I'm almost saying that is a huge motivation for it. But that's, I guess, what I mean. I just consider it a really dull take to be like, because of the fact you have to control the camera, it means that you could split focus on the camera and attacks and that's what ruins the whole system for God of War 4 and it's just like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's a little bit more complicated than that, right? Well, there are benefits, too. Something that's different. Yeah, that's the benefit of every presentation. Exactly. And that's what I was trying to say is that any mechanical system you choose, there are going to be drawbacks and points of praise for why they chose and how well they executed. But yeah, the first three, because there was another one where the camera was set to think of a map that is a half a donut and you are on the left edge, enemy on the right edge and you're coming to meet in the center. But wherever you are, the camera will horizontally have you as you're moving through the donut aimed, let's say always aimed with a donut would have been split. This is, I feel like this is going to be so hard to understand because... Yeah, I don't think I follow. Donut. You got that, right? Ring donut. Ring donut. Think of that as a map. So all of that is walk on a ball. Now it's a 2D space. Think of it that way. You can't go in the middle. Okay, Captain. Yeah, but you can go in a big circle. Now cut horizontally in half and remove the top half. Now you got it like a U, right? Okay, yeah. A U spawn at the top of the left side. Enemy spawns at the top of the right side. All right. The camera, think of the object of the camera existing on the bottom end of the donut, but it points up to where the donut would have been cut in half. But it sits on its y-axis, sorry, x-axis to wherever you are. Which one is x? X is a cross. Okay. It sits in, it'll always be lined up to where you are at the time. And so hopefully that translates. If you come down to the center of that half donut as the character and the enemy is coming down also, he might just be off. I can't see him necessarily because the camera isn't zoomed out enough. It's too close to me and he's just outside of it. And so he might have a big ranged attack and it just hits me off camera. And I'm just like, oh, well, great. And it's like, yeah, well, it's your mistake for not, you know, and then they do the thing.  Oh, great. The focus system doesn't work on this enemy. Yeah, well, don't use it. Yeah. Like if, um, if the game glitches and like, you know, guns just don't work on one random enemy, you have to use grenades instead in this moment because the boss is glitched and the response is just, yeah, don't use a gun. Easy. And it's like, what if I don't have grenades at that point in the game? It's like, yeah, well, what if I rely on focus for my combat and it's like, and it's supposed to work? It's like, yeah, well. Can't really complain about it. That's the other thing. I wish people would just be more willing to be like, yep, that's not a good thing. But that's there. Unfortunate. We can get people really defensive. Like, nah, or offensive. Like a game discussion. Maybe we'll have some more of them as, uh, once Callisto protocol on the Dead Space remake come out or the Resonable 4 remake. Resonable 4 remake is next. That space was all right considering, um, it was so it was kind of close on over your shoulder. If it's close and over your shoulder, then it's harder to have it be Tizmy. Uh, but yeah, the further away you get from a character, then that's where he starts to have the problems more and more. What do you mean? Also be argued, though, that the further you get away, the more clarity you have in general. Oh yeah, that's what part I'm confused. Funnily enough, I mod my Dead Space to push the camera away for the back. So I don't know what you mean. Um, if your camera is in terms of like clipping against environments and stuff, the closer that your camera is to like a first person view, the less likely it will be that you're going to get clipping issues because it's closer into where your character is. But as you pull the camera back, there's more and more opportunities. It increases the distance where obstacles can exist between the character and your camera. Um, that's one aspect.  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Um, and then obviously you'd have like adaptive cameras that move with the location or they'll blur out the walls that you end up putting between you and the camera that you can still see you. That is something that happens in games. One thing I've never understood. Mario put silhouettes on walls that were between you and the camera just to let you know where your character is. And it's like, I wish all games had that at the lowest level. Mario's been doing that for ages. Yeah, Mario's been doing that for a long time. I'm not expecting everybody to be able to do the perfect system ever, but can you at least do that?  That's real great. I'm glad. I wonder if it is just a matter of, um, because I'm pretty sure everybody knows this, but like Super Mario 64's development went like this. They spent a year figuring out how to make Mario fun to control in 3D. Then they started building levels. I don't know how many games are being made where you are like fundamentally working on like that core and trying to streamline it, trying to figure it out and basically make it like as good as it can possibly be. And then from there, you start building content. I'm not sure if they still do that for like the new Mario games. Maybe not, but I can imagine like in Odyssey that they spent a long time just making Mario fun to control and figuring out how to make sure that he could interact with the space and then, you know, start building levels and start figuring out what you need to do. Not all geometry is made the same, Morley. Good thing I didn't say that it was. I remember he specifically said that all geometry was the same. A big bit, Morley, really bungled that one. You shouldn't have said that. I regret saying that.  And I can now say I'm sorry for saying all geometry is made the same. That was my bad. Irax. Hello. As Little Platoon read, the 1967 essay by Roland Barthas called The Death of the Author. I have, yes, I believe, I haven't read it for a long time, but I have read it before. Are we at the death of the author part of the evening? Well, no, this is, I'm guessing they're just curious to ask you that anyway, because of the... Yeah. No, I was genuinely, I was apologised that I was basically, I didn't paste myself properly last time, so I was about a bottle of whiskey in by the time we got to Death of the Author. I was just kind of interested in sort of your guys take on how strictly you apply that term. Yeah, we're absolute on it. Extremists, we're crazy people, but most people, I'd say, push it to like 90%. They'll let slip in, I think the most valued, most intelligent, most in touch artists that have the best takes, they'll be like, no, their take is gold, and they should be considered like almost canon. And then you have people, like I said, who are like Twin Perfect, who are like just absolute, whatever artist says, whatever about their work, that is the truth, which is... And that is, that's just not true. Nobody holds that perspective. To be fair, he might. He actually like, he might be insane enough to... No, I don't believe it. Well, so, but... I don't believe... How do you deal with a person who will bite those bullets without realizing what they mean? Because all you need to do is just find the one example where they'll change their mind. Well, we did with the George Lucas one, and then he like went back on it in his discord.  And it's like, oh, okay. I guess it's just that there will always... I think that you'll always believe... It's kind of like the same as when somebody says, no, there's no such thing as good or bad, like, and then they'll always default, like you default to it at some stage, because everybody to some extent believes in death of the author. I don't know what it means to engage with... Because if you don't, then what is the point of even watching the media? Just watch the interviews or the things where the author explains what it's about, and then you got it. Because when you say it's zero percent, like a hundred percent, or zero percent death of the author, it's like, what is the point of the work? Just ask the author what they think about any given topic. Like, and then that's it. You got it. And I wouldn't look to hurt anyone's feelings, but I think if you really dug on this, like dug deep on this concept, you can't choose anything other than zero or 100. Pretty much. I don't know what the middle ground looks like, really. No, I don't. Because if the breach is something they say casually, versus something that is in the book, those two things are always going to be, like, what is the halfway point of those? A leaflet that comes with the book, maybe? It's like, is that can it? See, well, I know that there's no definitive middle point. My instinct is to go for middle point, though, with anything like death of the author, because I know it's a wishy-washy liberal position to take, but I have to have a couple of those. But my fear with anything to do with death of the author is, you know, this comes from a particular school. It's actually born of critical theory, death of the author. I mean, it comes from Bartow in the 60s, is developed as a concept, as we now know it today, by I think directly by Foucault and by Derrida as well, who has quite a lot to say on death of the author. You can trace it, it's roots back to, it goes back to sort of cancer aesthetics, but Oscar Wilde sort of popularizes it in the 1800s, because it's an outgrowth, at least as I understand it anyway, death of the author is this outgrowth of this concept of aesthetic autonomism. And that's the idea, as Oscar Wilde put it, and he put it like this for legal reasons, that you cannot judge the author of a work by the moral content of that work. In other words, that's sort of the groundwork that separates out moral content of work from moral intent of author. Oscar Wilde sort of does this for quite practical or pragmatic reasons, because he had to do it to try and stave off lawsuits. But it's developed sort of in the 60s, and my issue with it taken to literally, or taken to a great extent is that I'd argue that's sort of where we are at the moment, that the problem we have with so much art at the moment is precisely that. We have abandoned any conception of authorial intent. Rings of Power is quite a good example of this. I mean, if you were to say, well, Tolkien quite clearly said and thought and believed this about the world, and this quite clearly impacts how he writes, and therefore the moral underpinning of the Lord of the Rings, you would then turn to Rings of Power and you'd say, well, that's quite clearly contrary to authorial intent, which I think is at least a sustainable position to take. The problem if you're going for 100% death of the author is that you can't really criticize bastardizations of the work. You can't really draw a distinction between interpretation and the work itself because the work exists independently in the mind of any reader. But then how we can judge objectively artistic merit based on artistic intent, which I think has to come into the question of artistic merit. What I would say is that I think that the goal I would have is to try and separate them into two different discussions, like where you could have the discussion about authorial intent or questions of what or not have been factored into an adaptation or when choosing to do a follow-up to a story. I think that all those questions, I think it's a conversation that's worth having. I just think that when the conversation gets merged with a discussion about a story's merits internally, that you can just end up in some murky area where it's kind of hard to work through disagreements on those types of things. So I find it's easier to try and make them two different discussions, basically. Yeah, and obviously we went over it last night, but there's so many problems to have to deal with, including we're not limited to, if the author provides a contradictory statement about the state of being in the world or any particular item or thing in general, which statements to be taken as true. You have that problem quite sort of uniquely, I think, with Tolkien, the question of, it sort of verges into questions of canonicity in that sense. I mean, Tolkien wrote multiple versions of multiple myths. Many characters have multiple names, multiple lineages, and then the job is to decide, and it is up to the reader to a degree, or in this case, I think it's up to Christopher Tolkien primarily to decide which of these are canonical and which of these are apocryphal or which of these are sort of ersatz versions of what Tolkien wrote. But I don't think that really answers the question of whether or not the intent, the moral intent behind it, can be completely separated out from the work of art. That's why I was sort of saying, I'm sort of instinctively minded toward the middle ground, because I think we should bear it in mind. It's the old sort of critical approach to the pre-1940s, really, which takes the meaning, the moral purpose of the author, much more strictly than we've come to take it today. George Orwell wrote this essay called, I think it's the Frontiers of Art and Propaganda, which sort of sketching out part of the difference in approaches sort of pre and post-1940. And he sort of celebrates the idea that new criticism as it was emerging in the 40s is much more focused on reader. It's an understanding of the political inspirations of author, but not reducing works to the author's sort of moral and political opinion. I'm sort of with Orwell in that it's a kind of, it's a bit of a paradox, but I think it's a sustainable paradox. I think you can hold the middle ground on death of the author. I don't think you should ignore it, because ignoring it leads you to the place we're now in, but I don't think you should hold too strictly to it because that denies the validity of artistic interpretation. So my sort of stubborn middle ground, undefined, ill-defined, sorry, though it is, would be have regard to, but don't be restrained by.  Like they've actually got, it's almost more frustrating, is that they actually line up some things, even if they're... No, well, what are we talking about here? I mean, I think superficially, yes, they use some of the correct names, but if you're talking about... I mean, the Sauron argument from earlier is kind of the useful example. Let's sort of say for the sake of argument, we don't know it yet, but for the sake of argument, that Disbru and Shad were right, and the Galadriel is going to turn Sauron evil by her own manipulations. Now, you can say there's a superficial alignment with Tolkien, and that both of these people existed in his works, and they have the same names. But my point would be, if you understand what Tolkien was getting at about the fundamental nature of evil, which is really what he is writing about, that completely... That's not just sort of...  That is a betrayal of Tolkien. I think you can say that's a betrayal precisely because you have adherence to the moral intent behind the Lord of the Rings. Sorry, so I'm saying that you were in... So that it's death of the author that links to that, that the Amazon writers would probably employ it, and thus that gives them the power to make such a horribly bad, unfaithful lack of accuracy adaptation. I would consider those things disconnected. I don't think they would deploy it. I think that that's the pervasive attitude toward art is death of the author.  You know, like 411 Thunder or anything like that, where Taika Waititi says, I'll ruin your mythos in a minute, maybe?  I would probably agree with that one. Not quite with Rings of Power. I think that they would all claim when making it that they're like, no, we love Tolkien. We're adapting his work. It's just some stuff that needs to be updated. I don't know that I would say that death of the author, I get the impression with some recent media that you are kind of expected to view it and consider it in relation to like the broader landscape or the statements of the creators rather than taking it for its own thing. Like I could imagine that a lot of the ways that people watch, like for instance, I'm not sure that anybody could actually tell you what like the theme of Thor Love and Thunder was without referencing interviews or anything. Same with Doctor Strange. What was it? Knives out, right? Like a lot of people's praise of knife outs is like word for word, just the Ryan Johnson's explanation behind the motive of making that film and like the structure that he wanted to do. I get the impression that like death of the author might actually be less prevalent now than it may have been a while ago where like people will be very quick to reference statements that are made about a film by its writers or directors. So was it that's a cop out you know the writers don't care about Tolkien? That's not actually like... I don't actually know that. I don't know that, yeah. I can't know that necessarily. Even from looking at their work, I can't know that. Yeah, they could just be bad at making TV shows. They might love Tolkien, but they're just bad at their jobs. And remember, we can have people who love the same work for completely different reasons and think that they respect it when they do completely different things. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, well, then you're sort of veering into the complete subjectivity of death of the author itself in that one. Just picking up on what Fringy finished there. I think there's a difference between something that's being created now and the adaptation of something which predates it or pre-exists it.  And yeah, you're probably right. For that new creation, it sort of subsists on the application of death of the author. I'm talking about adaptation, I think, probably more than the creation of brand new works. And we are in a world of interminable and unending sequels and prequels and adaptations and re-imaginings. But when you get to the point where you're saying, well, of course, I adore and I respect Tolkien, but I'm updating him for a modern audience. Well, I would think I would classify that in some sense killing the author in the act. And that's the verb form. I guess maybe that's a different... Because in my mind, I don't know, like whenever I see the thing where it's like, we got to adapt it, we got to update it for a modern audience. I don't know if I would say that that's death of the author or rather something else. I don't know if I... What do you do when you kill the source as opposed to the writer of the source? Like when you don't care about the original... Because the principle of death of the author would be like the authorial intent is not something that should be factoring into... I guess I could see how they're somewhat related in that you're essentially saying, I'm not taking into account the authorial intent and what I'm making. But I guess the thing is, I imagine a lot of people would counter as, well, no, I am. I'm just updating, you know? I'm taking what they meant and I'm updating it to modern audiences, which I mean, to some extent, that might just be like an impossible statement, right? How do you... How do you substantively change it without changing it? You know? If someone remade... It's kind of circular. You are changing it by virtue of making changes to the material. Yeah, and if someone made a new hope today by necessity, it would have to be different than when it was made back then for just all kinds of reasons, technology, notwithstanding, there's lots of other things. But when they come to the scene where Han is going to shoot Greedo, if they engage with death of the author, then Han will shoot first. Yes. And so that creates a bit of a problem, I think, for the people who value death of the author because it takes, it like respects the stories, because it creates a tangle. Because that's an example of when death of the author is actually damaging. And I saw someone say, I don't believe in death of the author, except when the author is wrong about the content. So you do... Wait, so you do believe in death of the author then? That's what death of the author pretty much engages in. It's like we're going with the source. If we're checking the author's statements against the source to see if they're right, and we'll only believe them if they are, then the source is all that matters. All point of death of the author is that you can disagree with the authorial... Yep. ...like the claims created. That's like the point of death of the author. So for instance, if the... I don't know, someone said like, yeah, the theme of my story was about love lost, you know? It's like, well, no, it seems like the theme based on the story that you've told is actually about, like, I don't know, the dangers of unchecked power or something. And then you have all of the references to support it. You just say to the author, okay, you say that, but like, I just fundamentally disagree. They've written... Two people in chat just said the author is never wrong. Two different people said that. So is George correct? Did Greedo shoot first? The author is never wrong. What does that mean? Well, yeah, I'm sure nobody actually agrees with that, right? It's the thing you say. So like if from... So if Zack Snyder said like, yeah, the main star of Man of Steel was Green Lantern, it's like, ah, we'll see. He's never wrong. So Clark Kent is actually, I don't know, Hal Jordan. And it wasn't a blue suit. It was a green suit. It was, because he said so. They just said yes. Greedo shot first. That's... Ah, all right. Yeah. I'm not Green Lantern. No, you don't. You don't believe that. There will be an example that you disagree with. How many lights are there on? I'm sorry. Han shot first. That is Ken and Greedo didn't shoot first.  Zack Snyder isn't an author. So when you say death of the author, you're referring to the creator of like a creative work. Specifically a death. So it does include directors and screenwriters and artists. I don't know why. One of our prime examples was James Gunn. James Gunn about Suicide Squad. He is a director and a writer. So that's what we're referring to as a death of the author. And you know this as well. Like if you're disagreeing with that, I got to quote Andy Defrain. You're being obtuse. You're being very...  The whole idea is that Han knew he was there to kill him.  We didn't need to edit him awkwardly with his head jutting out to the side, dodging a shot to then shoot him. God, that was awful. It's terrible. Han shot first. Han shot first, yeah. And that's the thing. Han shot first is death of the author as I would call it a primary example that everyone engages in. But I can understand the prepidation with engaging with it because I would never associate rings of power as a consequence of death of the author. But I guess I understand someone believing that that could be the result because it's not quite how I associate them. I guess I could see in the sense of maybe the conclusion that comes from the perspective of death of the author is... Because we're trying to lay it out when we talk about it. It's like you can talk about the respectfulness and faithfulness of an adaptation. We just think that it should be a different discussion from its merits as its own thing. Maybe if you fully subscribe to death of the author, you start to completely disregard that. But I guess that's a choice at the end of the day, right? Like that's going to be your subjective value judgments about what matters to you and a story. And maybe faithfulness doesn't matter that much to you. I don't know that you could argue that somebody is more or less correct for having that perspective. Yeah? Sorry. No, go ahead. I mean, if there's a solid distinction to be drawn between death of the author and disagreeing with the author. So if you take like the Han Greedo example... Okay, so we know what the original author's... The author's original intent was, sorry. The author decided to update the depiction of his intent. We can disagree with whether that was the right choice. But we are still disagreeing with very much a living actor. And I mean, a living actor not in the sense of George Lucas is alive, but also creating the works that we are arguing over. So that you can disagree with his choice in that regard. And you can say, I think, aesthetically, even for writing reasons, for all other reasons, this was the better. The original version was better. I don't know that that's necessarily engaging in death of the author in quite so strict a way as to... Well, to help out the discussion would be on what canonically happened in the story of Star Wars. Did Han Greedo shoot first? If you ask George Lucas, the author, he will tell you Greedo shot first. Or I'm not even sure if you'll say that today, but for the sake of the argument, let's say he's still saying that. And many... I was about to say we. Many of the fans would say no, George, Han shot first. It doesn't matter if you released your definitive edition, your ultimate edition, which usually supersedes in terms of canon. I mean, it's up to the creator what thing remains canon, right? The IP holder. So you can say, like, I don't care what you have to say about what is canon, which is kind of the attitude we have with Disney Star Wars. A lot of people, but, you know, we've been over how, like, defining canon, it's going to have very little meaning outside of your own head canon. If you say it's only what I think happened. But yeah, that is a case where we say, nah, you're good. You're good, George. And have your ideas will have ours. The difference is George changed his mind. It's like, yeah, that's the thing. If the scene remained the same and there was no additional version released, he could say that and it wouldn't change what happens in there. And so that would be a case of just he's describing events wrong, but he's still the author. That's why it creates problems. Then there's sort of a subordinate question there is to, you know, the question of death of the author and sort of the ongoing authorial interest in a work. So like, I don't think to say that George Lucas changed his mind about what he would have done with the original version of Star Wars does not change the fact the original version of Star Wars is what it was. And there's the sort of the lowly sound of his original intent. I don't think that you could say, well, because he changed his mind on this and we don't agree that the fact there are contradictory versions of events means that authorial intent doesn't come into play. The original work of art stands and the intent that's behind it is still, it's still imbued with the intent that was behind it. And yeah, I'm still sort of very clumsily sketching up this sort of middle ground that I claim that I hold without being able to define it, but that's a consideration. Someone asked me, by the way, how do I define canon then? Basically, I think it's derived from property rights, right? That's where I'm getting it from. Yeah, the owner. And I've admitted that there's problems with that because as soon as your IP sort of protection runs out, how is canon defined then? It's like, I don't think there's any meaningful way to define it at that point. Is Winnie the Pooh blood and honey? Exactly.  I was just trying to find anything to appeal to this more definitive and less subjective. And I think probably rights is the place you could get. I think I've often said, I just can't treat solo as canon. I just can't do it. That's not like a conscious choice. I just don't believe it. But I mean, it's canon. It is. At least it's canon right now under Disney's ownership of Star Wars. And when someone says, like in the future of the Jurassic Park series, were they escaping fire locusts or something? You're just like, no. No, but on the other hand, they are. And they did and they were. I guess my problem with the full, the wholesale acceptance of death of the author is simply that it is, I cannot see away any check or balance, which stops that leading purely into the realms of subjective interpretation without reference to any objective standard. I mean, it was developed along the lines of, it's subjectivism sort of writ large. That's the school of thought it emerged in. It is part of critical theory. It is a subjectivist idea. And I'm saying, but it's born of objective roots or at least attempts at objective roots. So like this middle ground I'm trying to stake is between the old fashioned aesthetic autonomism and the critical theory developed death of the author, which I don't know that you necessarily have to go down that. But if you are going to go 100% death of the author, I think then you have to explain how you make any objective judgment about the quality of the work of art or the intent of the work of art or the message of the work of art. I think that you can, I think that, well, I guess, like let's say that we have a story that was written by, as far as we can tell, that there is no known author.  And there's no references at all to like his political perspective or his moral framework or anything. And then all that we have to go off of in terms of judging, I guess, the moral of the story is... What's in the story? Yeah, like, how do we do that? Or rather, is that impossible because we don't know who he is or what he believed in? I think the answer to that would be, no, it's entirely possible to pull meaning from a story that has no... I mean, I feel like we could just point to examples of fables that exist that we don't know who invented them. We don't know who came up with them. How do we derive the morals from them? It's like, well, just from what's in the story. But then you're deriving the author's intent, though, aren't you, by doing that? Um, well, I mean, let's put it this way. I can look at a film and not know anything about what the author actually believes and I can still make judgments about what they probably intended based on what's in the story. Yeah, exactly. What happens if I watch the Suicide Squad and I conclude the intent with Polkadot, man, and then I get told by the author I was wrong about the intent? So if he was dead and was unable to tell me that, would I have just been wrong about his intent the whole time? Without knowing. I'm not sure I quite follow. Sorry, quite follow. If we derive intent almost from the assessment of the stories, like even if there's no reference to this person outside of this one work, but what if it turned out Bill was risen from the grave and he was like your interpretation of every one of my intents of the story is actually wrong. So what was I holding onto at that point, just wrong interpretations or intentions? Arguably.  Well, just to clarify, in that world, you'd have no way to be able to tell, right? I thought, sorry, I thought you said if he came back from the dead and told me... No, if he didn't, sorry. Before he comes back from the dead, you'd not have any way of telling. Oh, no, no, no, that's fine. You wouldn't have any way of saying for sure what the intent was. I mean, that is a matter of ultimately subjective interpretation, but not all subjective interpretation is equivalently founded or well supported in argument. That's Douglas Adams' thing on opinions, isn't it? Not all opinions are equivalently worthwhile. They're not all as well supported by the evidence or the argument. You would have to look through and you could say, based on the available evidence of the story in front of me, these are the values that seem to come through. This is the value system that I think emerges from that. Therefore, these are what I would take the author's political or moral suppositions to be. But that would be my best guess. But that's still referring back to something, isn't it? That's still referring back to the question of authorial intent, even if he's dead literally and can't correct you. Well, I mean, maybe this might be an interesting hype. Like, let's say, you know, tortoise in the hair. What is the moral of tortoise in the hair? It's like, well, I think it's safe to say that the point of it is slow and steady wins the race. That's like the point of that story. What if your boy Aesop said, no, the point of it was, I don't know, it was like a critique of postmodernism or something. I don't know. It's just like, what does that mean? Like, if that's what he said, that it's meaning is totally different from like, what is in the story? Like, what am I meant to do with that, you know?  So like, tortoise in the hair doesn't leave room for. Oh, well, well, what if, maybe, what if we use like, let's do a better example. We'll use that story, but he says, no, the moral of the story is slow and steady doesn't win the race. It is like the antonym of what the point is. It's the total opposite. What does that mean to us? I think the same response holds. I mean, there's only a certain amount of room contained within the story for any authorial intent and opinion to be added to it. What you could do, of course, is to go back to Esop's time and look at the state of affairs in which he lived, the politics of the city state in which he lived, any particularly notable events that he might be parabbling, if that's a word. Animal farms are quite a good example of that. Animal farm is ostensibly a children's story. And you can interpret it strictly as a children's story, but you can also look at the time in which Orwell was writing and the things he wrote alongside it, which give you some indication of the type of parable he was telling and the targets that parable was aimed at. Well, it sounds like what you're leading towards is essentially, now, this might not be what you think, that basically having an awareness of an authorial intent and then judging what the story is helps you figure out whether it's good or bad. I wouldn't necessarily say good or bad. I mean, you could say if Stephanie Meyer had written 1984, I would probably say, no, that's not a very good book because she can't write. But that's making an aesthetic judgment as opposed to arguing whether the intent behind the book is relevant or not. I'm curious, would it be correct to say you, not confused, but like you kind of reject, at least impartial in part, death of the author because of the fact that in assessment of the story, you're always going to have authorial intent involved. It's not just not possible to remove them. To a degree, yeah. I don't think the Lord of the Rings... Going to elaborate because it's going to be a bonus question. So if that's true, but we did talk just a little bit earlier that I could have come to conclusions on intents and then the author comes back to life and he's like, boo, no, you've got all them wrong, it's these. And I asked like, what was I holding at that point? I guess a better question is, was I not engaging in death of the author at that point then? Because all the intentions I had drawn had nothing to do with the author's intent. Would it then not be possible? It depends on how the impressions you have were formed, wouldn't it? I mean, if you're trying to say... If you're going back and you're trying to understand the context in which the work was written and the messages that it might then be conveying that are relevant to that context, you might be wrong, but you're still referential.  But the fact that you might be wrong about the author's intent doesn't mean that you weren't making a sincere attempt to refer to the author's intent. In that case, I've almost constructed an author in my head about his intentions with the story and thus it can't be considered death of the author still. Yeah, yeah. I think, well, yes, in two ways. I mean, yes, in the sense that you are referring to the author and you're only going based on the best available information. And all we can do is paint the picture using that best available information. But secondly, because whether we're right or wrong about how we interpret a work of art, my ultimate position is that that work of art could not come to be without expressing some element of authorial intent. The reason the story exists in the first place is because the author carries into it into the telling of it certain presuppositions, and they are usually presuppositions and prejudices as opposed to in the traditional meaning of prejudices. I have a question. You know about the monkey typewriter thing? Like if you put a million monkeys as a typewriter or something after it, or a monkey at a typewriter after a certain amount of time will create like the best novel ever. Give it an hour and produce rings of power. This is true. Well, yeah.  They don't even need the monkey. It would be the same at that point. It's the same question I asked. The ghost author at that point, you would imagine them in your head. Well, sure, but I like the monkey example. So let's go with the monkey. I'm just saying it would be the same answer. He's already answered that technically. Right. Okay.  Well, the variation I guess would be is your knowledge of the fact that no one wrote it. It was an algorithm from, well, not even an algorithm, sorry. It's monkeys. Yeah. I mean, in that sense, it becomes a bit more like, I don't know, take like modern art, for example, like the most egregious example of modern art, where someone just decides, or actually, or even the mistaken modern art works. So someone drops their sunglasses in the corner of an art gallery and everybody thinks it's an exhibition. And so they go and take photographs of it and they think this is a really profound thing. That's an act of pure subjectivism in art, but there is no authorial intent behind it because there is no author to have intent behind that. That was a pure accident. Modern art often doesn't have intent behind it.  But even then, there's an element of authorial intent there, which is just pure exploitation and laziness. But my problem with death of the author, I think, is that it can too often lead to pure subjectivism of the modern art variety, which means that you can look at anything and you can say, well, there's no need to refer back to the moral impetus that gave rise to its creation. All we need to do is just to say, well, I think this about it and that's good enough for me. I find that interesting though, because you've said you've been a fan of our work for some time, right? We tend not to do that. We don't do that. Well, I don't know that you... Well, this was part of the reason that it was so interesting last time and I was sort of regretful I wasn't in a fixed state to have the conversation. The interesting thing about it is that obviously you guys are big on, at least fairly big on objectivity and judging our aesthetics, at least, by an artistic technique, by objective standards. And the thing I was really interested in was that you should take essentially a subjectivist standard like death of the author and how that can be married. And I think it probably can be married, but how will you choose to marry that to the idea that you can make objective judgments about the work of art in general? Because of course you can make objective judgments about technique, irrespective of author, of authorial intent, or at least I think you can. But broader questions are the worth of a work of art. My suggestion, I guess, would be the... Maybe we are just operating slightly on cross purposes as terms of what we define death of the author as being. Oh yeah, because we clearly, like all the cast today, I think Disbru even has said in other streams that like, you know, he's sort of alluded to it there that he doesn't like covering things positively because he's nowhere near as entertaining. And his metric for what is the worst content versus best is how entertained he is. So the most boring will be the zeros out of 10, which isn't lined up with us at all. However, myself, Shad, disagree on loads of things. We disagree, but all six of us came to almost identical conclusions on rings of power. Kind of interesting, right? Like those foundations being, having these really important differences, and yet we all come out with similar results. Definitely. But then there is more to a work of art than authorial intent. So like you could be, you could fundamentally disagree on whether authorial intent is even important when you're discussing anything to do with Tolkien. But you could still look at it on terms that have nothing to do with authorial intent and make judgments on its quality of writing. Like, do events logically follow? Do character decisions follow from the information we have about them? Yeah. It does most of exist. Because none of that really has to do with... That's, I guess that's at the heart of it is like, as long as everybody in a conversation can agree on what framework they're using, whether or not that means that we're referencing authorial intent, then you can have a discussion where everybody kind of under... Because ultimately, I guess the most important part of the, of this process is that everybody understands what everybody else is saying. And so that there's like no points of confusion. And ideally, whenever there's disagreement, you're disagreeing on something that can be resolved by just going over the material in the story or the framework that's relevant to the type of discussion you're having, rather than getting stuck, essentially. Because we can't even agree on like a fundamental framework. The reason why I don't think it's like, I don't think that it's worthless to discuss authorial intent at all. I mean... No, yeah, we didn't... Like, I don't know if you watched our Halo coverage, but I mean, it's kind of hard for me to not talk about what I think that they intended and what I know that they intended based on their interviews. Because of course, that kind of pisses me off. Like, it's normal. I think it's like topical to talk about. It's just always important to try and not get those conversations confused, I think. If we can expand author to include the actors as well, as in the characters they're portraying on screen, is a work of art and that they are defining that work almost. So when the actor says, like, oh, he was clearly hesitating, he wasn't sure he'd do it and he probably... Like, he wouldn't have, if not for the fight he has with the seal door.  Oh, yeah, but I wouldn't... I think I would reject the suggestion you can include actors as authors in this, in that way, or at least in a strict way. Like, actors are performers and they are performing things that have been written before them. He could have performed that, right? That could have been something he actually portrayed. He could have gone to throw, pulled it back and then heard the cough that that could have been something that he didn't, or rather, they didn't include that cut if that cut is in there. And then, of course, the question would just extend then because it sounds like, you're like, yeah, that's being rejected, but if let's say he was correct though, he'll be like, oh, well, yeah, I guess he's on board, but whether or not we're disregarding his opinion isn't actually in focus or not, we're just listening to him as a source for what is in the actual stuff and then we verify it. And that's kind of how I would treat the author. Let's in this case say, the director or writer or whatever of that episode of Rings of Power, they say, yes, he was hesitant and he wouldn't have done it if not for the fight with the sealed door. We'd again be like, no, that's wrong. That's the, you didn't portray that at all. That's not in there. I'm sorry, Mr. Director. True, no, but I'd agree with that, but that's because they're not portraying clearly stated authorial intent. Then again, what you're criticizing isn't authorial intent and whether that's relevant. It's simply assuming that it's relevant and you're saying is this what is depicted on screen, but you can't make that judgment without reference to. In that case, if they said, if the creators said he was thinking about not doing it, he didn't go through with, you know, he opted for going through with it. And that's not something that had crossed our minds at all. We thought he was just 100% on board with it the whole time. I probably would entertain that because there's no way to disprove it. And if there's ones like, but I wouldn't care to include much of it in an assessment because it's so up in the air, there's so few references. Like if they said, for example, he was actually a Skrull that turned into Bronwyn for that scene where she says, oh, we're all going to die. And then the Skrull left seconds after that and she was put back. I mean, there's nothing necessarily, I didn't think Skrulls were in this universe, but you know, it's just like that. You know, like technically speaking, there's nothing stopping that from being impossible, but I would still reject that even if the author says it and it doesn't conflict with anything in the show. Necessarily. Yes. And I think I'd reject it too, but I'd still deny it. I wouldn't deny that the intent existed, but I would reject that it hits the show. And that's the thing, I think Fringy was kind of mentioning it. It was like, we do value what the author has to say, but it'll obviously come under a microscope, just like everyone else's opinions. And that's kind of how we want to employ death of the author.  You know what I mean? Like that's where I use it. However, he could have had the most accurate and insightful one that actually points out things that everyone missed.  And then someone could be like, well, duh, he's the creator. I'd be like, well, yeah, I mean, it doesn't always work that way. Yeah, I think I'd broadly agree with that approach, but again, all I stress is that that is still referential and that is still making reference to authorial intent. That's a judgment on the validity or the worth of the authorial intent. But that's about it really. But I don't think we basically do probably agree. It's just, it's more of a... I'd say we definitely seem to agree in practice because we've really ever come across disagreements in the conclusions of any one scene. Yeah, exactly. But there's going to be ones out there that may happen that are blurry enough and then you would have, you'd maybe opt for whatever the author has said is the correct answer, but we would say it's ambiguous. And even if the author says, no, it's X, not Y. I think, didn't Destiny say like, what would you do if Christopher Nolan said that the spinning top does drop at the end? We just ran out of film, we couldn't cut it or whatever. And it was just, I think we just said, now reject it, not in the film. It's not in the film. It just isn't. And so anything that exists beyond that, it's just like... I'm not even a fan of that ending. Trying to factor that in. What, of the where it does actually drop or... I think I remember not being a fan of it because it didn't make sense, but I could be wrong. I'd have to go back and watch it. Wow, I'm curious about Inception and how well it holds up. Oh, well, Inception holds up, yeah. Yeah, because I think I mentioned it before on stream. I'm not sure that the kick scene at the end makes any sense at all. I think they got it backwards. If I understand kicks and how they work in that film, I'm pretty sure they got it backwards. Because if you remember the whole point of like... The whole point of their heist was that they were so... They were so... Fuck. Sedated that they couldn't kill themselves. They'd go to limbo, but they killed themselves to get out of each successive dream state when the whole point of the kick was that it comes from the level above, not the level below. That the kick above will wake you up from that dream. I'm pretty sure it doesn't make any sense, but you know... I feel like any one of... If ever we were to do a Nolan for Eva movies, that might be one where like this bro, I'd need to watch it before we do Eva movies for it, just because with every last word of every character's like dialogue, you need to take it in to make sure you catch all of the craziness. Yeah. Sorry, all of the great writing. I didn't mean to say craziness. Let's look down. It's all of the great writing across all of his films. Exactly. All of his films and characters. Including Yes. That one too. I'm glad we've included all of them. There you go. There's our death of the author part two. I'm sure there'll be a part three tomorrow, so I'm not sure. The money laundering rings of power possibly cannot confirm the people do wonder where all the money went exactly. It's like, I don't know. Not to the script. I'll tell you that. All of the actors. Just watch two towers. Every character struggles to survive and every clip of Galadriel and rings of power shows her not even struggling. Yeah, she's amazing. I'm trying to think of... Does she struggle at all in the last episode, the latest one?  Where she like falls off her horse, then does some... I don't think she struggles at all.  Even, yeah, even when she's faced with an exploding volcano, she just stands there and lets it come out of... Because there's a tempest inside of her. Oh yeah, there's no problems, indigestion. That volcano better watch out. Cyberpunk Edge Runners is by the same studio who did visions. It gets very contrived, bad dialogue, but fun characters. Four out of ten would be generous. Oh my. Had lots of recommendations. I think that's the first, the more critical super jam we've had of it. I still haven't watched it yet, but I've heard recommendations from mostly everybody at this point. The new cool kid on the block. Apparently. Provided lies in that game. Wings quote of the day. Thanks for the two dollars and fifty cents, that he thanks the account, which is, Wiggs hopes my family dies. Which for, well, that might be true, but... What could be the automobile crash one, right? Yeah, automobile wreck. All right, sorry, I got it wrong. Automobile wreck. Maybe he does wish your family was dead. I don't know. I don't know what it is, automobile wreck, that he said that instead of a car crash. Yeah, I've heard car wreck. I've never heard automobile wreck. I've never heard automobile wreck. It's a rare combo. He's bringing it back, Mahler. Bonus. No, I've never drunk milk so fresh, it felt like someone's tits in my mouth. Why would...   He is a character. Apparently this talk of bringing in Harrison Ford is a recast Thunderbolt Ross in MCU. There's all sorts of things wrong with this, if it's true. I heard about that. I don't even know how I feel about it. He's, he's... I think William Hitt was great as Thunderbolt Ross. It's just that he doesn't have... He like simultaneously is not a prominent but also prominent role in that he's filled up with so many times technically. But at the same time, he has very little screen time. So, I don't like Rody, but I guess he wouldn't recast him now. Well, now Rody's getting his movie. Armor Wars is going to be a movie now instead of a TV show. Oh, I saw that. Well, I think it's because Blade's collapsed,