r/TAZCirclejerk

Will the brothers address any criticism, or will they pat themselves on the back once again? What bizzare revelations will we get about Royale? And what will come next for the ailing podcast?

I propose we only refer to it as 'Taztanic'

I'm not going to rag on anyone but it's clear that Clint has a vary different playbstyle than the rest of his family. He wants to do compelling character work and his family just wants to make fun of him. Not that they don't try to tell compelling stories through their characters, but it's clear making fun of their dad is the main focus. That's a dig at everyone. It's ok to have different play styles. But I think Clint's growth as a player is stunted by his desire to cater to what his family wants.

As a listener, I get so frustrated every time Clint is trying to do character work or a monologue, somebody has to interrupt with a bit. I can only imagine how frustrated Clint feels. I know that Clint has his own issues sometimes like not knowing how to play the game, but I don't think he can learn how to fix those issues and evolve as a player woth the current group. I honestly think he has the potential to be up there with Sam Riegal or Lou Wilson but not in this environment.

I know TAZ is supposed to be a family D&D show, but I would love for them to switch things up by having Clint play in a group that takes the game more seriously. Heck, bring in a more frustrating player for the rest of the family and I'll listen to both shows. I love TAZ but the clash in play styles just isn't working.

Edit: I also think Clint would benefit from a less rules-heavy system. Maybe Dungeon world as that gives the player a lot more room to play around with the outcomes of their rolls.

Everyone ignore my last post. It's my first day on Reddit and as Travis' personal planted jerker but I wasn't meant to post that for realsies and I don't know how to delete Reddit posts.

Thoughts on the newest season? I've personally found it pretty enjoyable overall, but I am seeing the Anthony GM bad habits creep.

The ending of last episode (14) was especially egregious. Big Bad shows up out of nowhere (no foreshadowing), somehow knows everything the PCs have been doing, what their intentions are, where they are then takes the mcguffin and kills an important npc with no roll. Felt like it undid the past couple episodes of player action and neutered anything interesting that could've come out of the t1m ashley relationship. Didnt feel like a good faith escalation of the stakes so much as a "gotcha" plot twist that came out of nowhere and steamrolled player agency.

Its reminiscent of things that happened earlier in the season and in season 2 and seems like it comes from a lack of confidence in trrpg story telling? The players can't truly be allowed to direct the plot or figure things out on their own and instead plot point happen spontaneously in cutscene/monologue style seemingly out of nowhere so PCs dont have an opportunity to "mess them up" before they happen.

it wasn't "the bell house", it was a taco bell twitch stream. he was trying to climb onto the sign to prove it makes the sound if you punch it (it did not) and he fell into an inconveniently placed punji pit

I don't want to read them but I want to feel upset about it anyways. I can't escape it. A local pub did a trivia night with DCC as a category. All I see is recommendations to read it and announcements about the audiobooks. I need to feel some sanity.

“I’m so mad. im gonna have sex with my girl friend so i wont be so mad”

Sonic - Tails Gets Trolled

*Post script edit: I have dyslexia, I don’t have a transcript, spelling mistakes and all that will happen. Also look for my work on furaffinty and Itch.io, I’m Duhad everywhere, yada yada.

That last Interrobang took it out of me and made me pretty hesitant to start up this next episode, but I am not about to let Travis and Tybee beat me down!

This time, from the start, I am going to TRY and keep it a little faster, a little lighter in terms of note taking and quoiting and god willing, this will NOT be so long I nearly have to break it into 3 parts… cus ya that last one was over 8k total words and Reddit did NOT like that…

Luckily, unlike ‘the IRS and Fluid’, I’m sure this new episode should be nice and light with nothing to get hung up about…

From Derailing Conversations to Diversity Hires

… you know, I’ve started playing Mewgenics again recently and I could probably just boot that up and do an act three run instead… oh intro music is playing, I guess we are doing this…

Content warning, Strong Language, ‘References To Homophobic Slurs and Gun Violence’.

References to homophobic slurs? Do you say them or not? Actually, can I say them or will Reddit flag that? Better be safe, I guess…

This weeks nicknames are ‘Travis SUPER GREENS McElroy’ and ‘Tybee GRAPE ESCAPE Diskin’. Tybee cracks up at her own nickname and Travis sings a song about ‘grape escape’ which… seems to be a board game from the early 90’s using play-doh for grape player pieces that you can squash. I actually might have played that in preschool come to think of it…

If your wondering why I got hung up on that, I started the podcast at 3x speed and it genuinely sounded like Tybee was talking about ‘grape’ without the ‘g’ and cracking up at that which threw me off badly enough to go back and re-listen at normal speed.

Travis starts us off by jumping in with a topic he ‘really needs to talk about’ and then prefaces it by explaining that he “needs to remember the people who I’m talking about are also listening to this podcast.” Which… doubt. But also, man are you actually throwing shade at people in your life by complaining about things, ‘some people do’ that annoy you and forgetting they are listening to your show? Because if so, your either an idiot or, based on previous episodes I’ve listen to, forgetting other people are in fact real and capable of acting independent of you when your not watching them.

Alright the thing he was building up to is, ‘derailing conversations’, further evidence that these names are genuinely just the first and last topics they bring up.

Apparently Travis HATES it when someone gets off topic, especially online, like when he walks to talk about ‘if red or blue is better and someone leaves a comment about how their favorite color is yellow.’

Just want to throw in that, while I skip this part, part of the intro to this show, the part RIGHT before this conversation was Tybee talking about how, “This show will just ramble and move from topic to topic till we are done.” So… exactly what your talking about, Travis.

While Travis claims he ‘doesn’t mind’ if the conversation is about ‘best N64 games and he gives you three options and you mention a 4th game instead’ he gets really upset when he brings up something, “politics or religion adjacent” and people “derail the conversation by talking about divisive things like how much they hate liberals or conservatives or catholics and now my name is attached to that thread!”

He apparently believes that people talking about, “if you like this candidate or that candidate” on a thread he started, something that apparently was happening allot at the time of this episode, then it reflects badly on him and he has no way of telling people to shut up and go away because he’s not talking about that.

When was Interrobang being recorded again? 2016? Who was running at that time? Donald Trump? Hmmm… ya can’t imagine why people where fired up about politics at that time, total mystery.

He talks about… cutting people like that out of his life because he’s an adult and… I’ve heard this conversation before… I swear to god, he was talking about this in another episode I covered!

I can’t find it with a quick word search, but I swear to god I’ve heard him make these same arguments before…

And then Tybee starts talking about trans people being put in danger because Caitlyn Jenner came out and because America’s gun culture is so crazy, trans people are now in danger and on Tumbler someone used that post to talk about how they like guns and Tybee got REAL mad about it because they where “hijacking my shit!”

And then the episode broke and I had to work to get it to play again… this archive is not doing so hot. Getting this episode to play in the first place took awhile and now it’s breaking… fingers crossed I can get to the end…

Travis, ‘doesn’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist’, but has the revelation that, “They do this on the news too! They’ll talk about gun violence and then someone will change the topic to mental health issues or someone will bring up trans bathrooms and someone else will change the topic to children's safety!”

Travis, that’s not a conspiracy theory and it’s NOT the same thing as people getting distracted and talking about other topics under your posts, it’s a pretty normal rhetorical tactic for redirecting an argument from something that is harder to defend, ‘mass shootings are fine actually’ to something easier to argue, ‘mental health is a serious concern and allot of people are suffering without adequate services to deal with people in crises’.

This man is like a children's PSA character going, ‘Wait, I’m not being given a job just because you don’t like my beard? But that’s unfair! Your judging me just cus of how I look… oh my god, just like I was judging that black guy based on the way HE looked! Now I realize, being prejudice is wrong!’

Tybee nods along with Travis’s talking about, ‘people changing topics to misdirect a conversation’ by confidently declaring, “That’s gas-lighting!”

No it isn’t you… the fuck is wrong with you!? Changing the topic of a conversation has nothing to do with gas-lighting!

Like I guess you COULD gas-light someone by constantly misdirecting them, but going, ‘I don’t like the idea of trans people using their identified bathrooms because of my concerns around the safety of children’ isn’t gas-lighting. It’s more often then not disingenuous and obfuscating the actual problem you have, being uncomfortable around people your bigoted against, but it’s not gas-lighting!

Aaaaaaaa!

FOCUS!

Travis and Tybee continue this gas-lighting conversation by stating that, ‘if you yes and’ a post by going, ‘I agree with what your saying and also…’ they are fine with it, but if you ignore or misdirect the post by getting onto something else all together, your clearly working with some sort of agenda and trying to manipulate them towards your own ends.

Ah I see, it’s because “people like us with influence and followers” are the target of malicious actors trying to parasite-off their good names to get attention for their own points.

Which again, are both politics and religion AND ALSO which N64 games they like, something Travis keeps going back to despite previously saying he ‘didn’t mind’ if it was a conversation about that… to the point where I feel like someone did derail him talking about an N64 game he enjoyed by talking about one he didn’t and that pissed him off.

Tybee complains about guys accusing her of hating men (which, ya, she’s a woman with opinions online, I 100% believe MANY men have just accuse her of being a ‘man hating feminist’) which leads her to declare, “That’s right! I hate all men!” Which Travis joins in with, “And I hate all women!” Before both of them get cold feet and begin frantically walking back the joke as if afraid people will actually believe them.

Not me, I hate all men AND all women! Only non-binary people are valid! BWA HA HA!

Travis then gets weirdly passionate and angry about, ‘both sides’ of… dads being weird and possessive of their daughters bodies and ALSO men being told that, ‘men often have a hard time expressing their feelings’. And despite insisting BOTH sides of this apparent coin are bad, he gets REAL worked up over, ‘men having a hard time expressing their feelings’ because to him, saying that is, ‘telling men that they CAN’T express themselves!’ That when feminists talk about the difficulties men face with being emotionally honest and vulnerable, they are in fact actively… trying to prevent men from being open by telling them it’s hard???

I guess the idea being that men in our society are actually really good and healthy, but the second someone tells them, ‘Actually, your societally conditioned to hide your true feelings and vulnerabilities’ they just clam up and shut down?

Fuck the episode broke again…

It is REALLY fighting me on this!

Getting a 502 error from the server…

Trying to find an alternative site for the show… nothing.

Okay we are back for now, though this archive is breaking actively so… fingers crossed!

HA! Finally managed to get it to download! Now I at least can finish this without the site constantly breaking!

Downside… I can only turn the speed up to 2x speed rather then 3x. :(

Okay and we return to Travis and Tybee moving from ‘men can’t express themselves’ to the Ghostbusters 2016 reboot with Travis and Tybee confidently declaring, “Kate McKinnon is going to be every bodies crush, across the spectrum!”

Does anyone else remember back when people where convinced that Kate McKinnon was going to be the breakout star of that movie? Like the people who thought the film was good to at least okay all seemed convinced that it was going to be a star making role for McKinnon and that she was clearly going to be the next big thing in comedy movies going forward.

I guess she was fun in her small cameo in the Barbie Movie.

Travis gets annoyed about the fact that people called the Ghostbusters remake trailer, ‘the worst trailer ever’, in part due to its terrible like to dislike ratio, not because he liked it, but because ‘their are other trailers that are worse!’

Ya man, it’s hyperbole.

Ah, he’s back on his ‘I’m not trying to be conspiratorial, but…’ thing as he talks about how, “It’s a bad trailer, but I think it’s possible, you know, the fact it’s an all female Ghostbusters remake might be influencing the like to dislike ratio…”

He is so… ugh.

He follows up by comparing people not liking the trailer to ‘a guy not liking another guy cus he’s black and that is ignoring the wider context around white people and black people not getting along’.

Which… I get what he is TRYING to say, that it’s possible to say something inoffensive, but still have that come off as offensive because of the wider context, but man, really?

This is such a weird fucking argument he’s having with a straw man of a Ghostbuster’s trailer disliker, over a trailer he himself didn’t like, but wants to argue was bad, but not the worst trailer ever because he doesn’t want to come off as sexist around the all female remake of a ghost-busting based action comedy film.

I am… so fucking tired…

The annoying thing is that I DO get what (I think) he’s trying to get at cus I had a similar reaction to the film ‘The Last Jedi’. I personally found it mid as fuck, but the backlash against it was so bad I’ve spent more time defending it as a fine movie then I have spent talking about many movies I genuinely like!

Sometimes the worst people in the world really hate something you dislike and you end up feeling compelled to stick up for it if only just on principle, but he is, as always, going about it in the most unbearable, ‘Just so you know, I agree with both sides, but especially with whichever side will make people like me more!’ Bullshit way!

Tybee concludes by talking about how much she wants the movie to be good, just so that it proves the people who knee jerk hated it on concept alone wrong. Which again… I feel that.

Travis complains the movie, ‘can’t be good because people are already prepared to be unfair to it’ and is surprised when Tybee expresses that, ‘she just wants the movie to be good, as a movie, regardless of what the public thinks.’ Travis apparently forgetting that your opinion of a piece of art can be a personal thing and not an objectively correct/incorrect position based on weather or not the general public has agreed a movie is acceptable to enjoy.

Tybee then explains how she hopes the movie will be a ‘6’ on a scale from Batman vs Superman to Mean Girls.

Hey, I’ll take BvS slander! That’s one of three movies I legit regretted going to the theater over, the other two being Last Jedi and Avatar, specifically seeing it a second time and getting aggressively board by the halfway point.

Travis brings up the idea that expectations around movies can make them better or worse, talking about how he watched Star Wars when he was 7 and his dad told him it was great and thus he had a good time because he was a kid and believed his dad, but:

Travis: If your thirty and you’ve not seen Star Wars, I’m sorry, but you can’t watch it anymore. Because you’ll be going in expecting it to be the best movie ever and hate it because within the first 4 minutes it’s not good enough!

… Travis what the fuck are you talking about!?!?

Plenty of people watch great movies later in their life just fine! My partner watched Jaws for the first time a few weeks ago and while he wasn’t as blown away by it as I was as a tiny child, he ended up thinking it was a good movie, if not one of his all time favorites. And I imagine if I showed him Star Wars, something he has also not seen, he’d probably have a pretty decent time with that as well.

Hell, we are watching ‘The Simpsons’ actively and that’s a show that ANYONE who’s grown up around Millennials or Gen-Xers has probably had run into the ground for them! Our generations treat the golden age of The Simpson's as more or less the best thing ever made and the bases of our entire cultural lexicon and you know what? Even with all of that build up, he STILL thinks the show is pretty funny and has come around to really enjoying it after a little bit of a rocky start with the first couple seasons.

Cus as it turns out, you can still enjoy a thing that is good, even if it’s been hyped up to the point where it’s not going to live up to the highest highs promised by its biggest fans, because most people can understand, ‘Oh… this is a thing that means allot to you, so I’ll take it with a grain of salt when you tell me how amazing this thing is and just judge it for myself.’

Anyway, sorry for the tangent, as cromulent as my points maybe, they are getting off topic and as Travis has made clear, getting side tracked and going off on a tangent is the worst thing a person can do!

Tybee talks about being on a Marvel News podcast and her co-hosts LOVING Peter Parker Spiderman, comparing it to how people identify with and love Harry Potter.

Ah 2016… pretty sure we already knew Rowling was a TERF at that point, but I guess it was still a few years before her big open letter where she went fully mask off.

Travis agrees that people love Peter and Harry because, “They are outsiders no one knows or cares about normally and when they are being themselves no one gives them the time of day, but when they are pretending to be something else, everyone thinks they are the greatest shit in the world! Ya, it’s a very relatable idea!”

Ignoring for a moment that doesn’t really apply to Harry Potter, that is such a weird takeaway from Spiderman. That the fantasy of being Spiderman isn’t having great powers and using them to help people, but that you suck and no one gives a shit about you, but when you put on a mask, everyone loves you and that’s an amazing fantasy that is very relatable.

Also, Spiderman is constantly getting shit on, he has a whole on going thing where the news paper he works for actively demonetizes him, so… no this doesn’t even really work as a Spidy thing! It’s JUST Travis revealing some weird complex he seems to have about only being beloved and paid attention to when he became, ‘Travis McElroy, Podcaster!’

Anyway all of this was so Tybee could complain that she feels robbed because… her friends got the experience of seeing a character they love portrayed on screen (in Captain America: Civil War) in a way they felt did them justice, but she doesn’t get that and wants to have a character she loves and relates to portrayed just as accurately and faithfully… but she doesn’t say which, if any characters she’d want that for so, I guess it’s just the general concept of getting a faithful adaptation of a character she likes that she feels robbed for not getting.

Travis counters that, Tybee at least doesn’t suffer the heart break of having that happen in reverse, where a character she likes and relates to is portrayed badly, like Clark Kent in Man Of Steel, a movie he apparently was badly let down by, along with every other depiction of Clark Kent since ‘Lois and Clark’.

I’m raising an eyebrow at Travis ‘relating to Superman’, but to be fair, Clark is a pretty relatable character when written well…

Wait, ‘Lois and Clark’ came out in 1993, that was BEFORE Superman The Animated Series! He’s talking shit about Tim Daly’s Superman!

Screw off Travis, animated Superman was great!

Grumble grumble…

Anyway Tybee admits she apparently has never actually related to a character in a way where she’s felt all that strongly, positive or negative, about their portrayal, but feels like it’s similar to being a fan of a sports team and being upset when they lose and happy when they win.

Travis talks about how, “If a show or movie has a character you love in it and they get it right, its the best feeling in the world, but if its not done perfectly, if they only get it 99% right, its heart breaking and ruins the whole thing!”

Which… look, I’ll admit, the 2025 Superman movie made me REAL happy as a big fan of Superman, it felt super validating to see more or less my ideal Superman up on the big screen, but I cannot wrap my head around the black and white, ‘make it perfect or don’t bother trying’ mentality here since like, especially with a character who has had SO many interpretations, so many variants, so much history, their is no ‘one true’ version of them and the idea of refusing to accept anything, but perfection in their adaptation is just… sad.

Okay Tybee, after being pressed by Travis comes up with a character she cares about enough to be invested in that an adaption getting them right or wrong would matter to her. Lisbeth Salander from ‘The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo”.

Apparently the Swedish version of the movie got the story write, but not the tone where the American version got the tone right, but cut parts of the story, which she’s okay with, because they got Lisbeth Salander more or less perfectly, as far as she’s concerned.

I have not read the books or watched the movies so… sound off if you have opinions, cus I do not.

Travis tries to push Tybee to pick a childhood character, but apparently Tybee didn’t read as a kid and Travis admits his childhood picks would be Han Solo and Data from Startrek so they already started as on screen characters, rather then people he had to imagine.

Ah he eventually lands on, “Xanth” as a series he read as a kid, which apparently included a book called ‘The Color of Her Panties’ and spent allot of time focused on describing centaur tits, something Travis is quick to assure us he does not stand for now, but you know, as a kid he thought the series was great and inspired him… BECAUSE OF THE MAGIC SYSTEM! Not the titties! Oh and because the lead character was an outsider who didn’t have talent and felt like a loner who no one understood, something he found really relatable and profound… and people who just focus on the tits and the panties and the adolescent horniness miss the really deep aspects of this story he liked as a kid.

Real quick pivot here from, ‘Look I was a kid, it’s a little embarrassing, but it had elements I liked and you know, at that age your gonna be a little cringe’ to ‘Actually it was good and people focusing on the problematic aspects are missing what I was seeing as a young man, which was the deep and meaningful elements of the story! Panties and titties!? Why I hardly even noticed them!’

This man would unironically try and tell you he only reads Playboy for the articles and only jerks it to keep his hands busy as he thinks about the personalities and rich inner worlds of the naked women he’s staring at.

Anyway he starts complaining about the Dresden Files show, how they changed the name of the Wizard PI’s cop buddy from Karrin Murphy to Connie Murphy and that really upset him. They gave her a daughter, they changed her hair color and Travis is genuinely angry they would change all these details when the show should be for the fans, with Tybee chiming in that the show ‘betrayed’ the fans with these alterations.

I’m sure this is all very annoying to fans of the show, but man these two come off as exactly the kinda, “THEY CHANGED IT AND NOW IT’S RUINED!” Fans they just got done complaining about with the Ghostbusters movie.

Tybee starts talking about her show, ‘Nuka Break’ which would be the Fallout Fan show she talked about in the last episode I recapped, the one where she got weirdly competitive and hostile with other fan projects, treating them as competitors to beat and undermine, rather then fellow creators to lift up.

Well apparently the show features a love story involving a character called ‘Twig’ who’s gimmick is that they are fat. The vault they grew up in had tons of food and everyone in it was REALLY fat and called this guy ‘Twig’ cus he was comparatively skinny, but out in the wasteland he’s SUPER fat and that’s… very funny to Tybee, I guess?

Ah it’s also:

Tybee: [This character is] Very wonderful because it gave our audience someone relatable they could attach themselves too. Someone who looked like them and who they could see themselves in.

Part 2 ->

I don't want to read them but I want to feel happy about him winning the 2025 Nobel Prize for Literature anyways. I can't escape it. A local pub did a trivia night with the seven hour film Sátántangó as a category. All I see is recommendations to read War and War and announcements about English translations. I need to feel like I'm smart.

<- Part 1

Travis: From their point of view.

Tybee: From their point of view, ya.

So a character who’s gimmick is that they are super fat, from a joke vault where EVERYONE is massively obese and so, to them, he is skinny as a twig, but out in the wasteland he’s a big fat guy, THIS is the positive, fat representation that Tybee is proud to have brought to her audience who, you know she doesn’t relate to him, but the fans, ‘from their point of view’, can relate to him so much!

Ah, but you see, parts of Tybee’s team pushed back on this fat guy getting a love interest because ‘no one wanted to see that, because ‘Twig isn’t sexy’.’ But Tybee ‘hated that so much’ and pushed back ‘so hard’ because she knows fat people deserve love too.

If Travis is in the corner, ‘reading Playboy for the articles’, Tybee is sitting in front of a class in the inner city, going, ‘Did you know Shakespeare was the gangster rapper of his day?’

Travis, trying to understand why people had an issue with ‘Twig’ getting a love interest asks, “Did people just not believe its even possible for a fat guy to find a love interest or just that they think people wouldn’t want to see that?”

Tybee responds, “Both!”

Both… BOTH!? You genuinely think the push back came from people on your team being so rock stupid they thought it was IMPOSSIBLE for a overweight person to find love? That it was ACTUALLY impossible and not just people being shitty?

These two act like god damn space aliens sometimes…

Travis describes the end result as, “Really good and doesn’t feel forced at all!”

And Tybee, after basking in the adoration for a bit, pivots her own argument from, ‘people didn’t think the audience would like AND some people could not comprehend a fat person finding love’ to, ‘actually the company was falling apart, everyone hated everyone else and the push back came from person A rejecting the idea just cus person B was for it.’

Which, tellingly, Tybee JUST got done saying she was the one who was pushing for this to happen, so the push back apparently had more to do with allot of people on the production just really not liking her and disagreeing with her on principle. Which is either a serious self report on just how unlikable she is OR her developing a hell of a victim complex and declaring people only pushed back on the idea because she was in favor of it.

Either way, this show sounds like a fucking nightmare on the back end…

She also apparently declared that another character, ‘Scar’ could NOT have a love interest because then the show would be to cliche.

Which, you know, I’ve not seen this show myself, but if you have a character named ‘Scar’ who it would be ‘cliche’ to give a love interest too, I’m guessing it’s because he’s already the bad boy loner and you named that character ‘Scar’ and your fat guy ‘Twig’ so I’d REALLY not be all that worried about falling into cliches at this point…

Travis then declares that, ‘tropes are fine actually’ because we rely on them for story telling. That he likes to just put things he already likes into his stories and that ‘The Heroes Journey’ is a ‘good trope’ because, and I quote:

Travis: Because I don’t have to think to hard about [my story], because I already know how the Hero’s Journey storyline works.

Don’t worry Travis, I already kinda figured you didn’t put much thought into your stories.

Also ‘The Hero’s Journey’ isn’t a trope, its a (flawed) theory about how all stories, especially mythology, fit into a fixed broad story structure. It’s just treated like a writing guide cus George Lucas used it as a reference for the Star Wars movies and then overstated just how closely his movies matched up to the Hero’s Journey in an interview which lead English teachers the world over to leap at the chance to teach their students about Joseph Campbell by going, “Did you know that the Odyssey AND Star Wars follow the same story structure? It’s true!”

I’m getting REAL distracted, but just… god so many rants, so little time…

Oh, also apparently ALL of this was just to get back to the idea of changing things in adaptations and Tybee’s theory that the problem with basically ALL adaptations is… they change too much and thus they suck. They don’t do enough fan services and her show was good because it did allot of fanserives, I guess.

Apparently the McElroy Brothers and Client all love Final Fantasy, but Travis was DEEPLY offended by The Spirits Within because it ‘didn’t have enough Final Fantasy stuff in it!’

Ah, but Travis feels like movies based on things MUST be made for the fans explicitly and exclusively, BUT they cannot do TOO MUCH fan service or else its pandering, but too little and its a betrayal!

So if you make something based on a show or movie or game or comic, make sure it hits that fine line between too much and too little fan service or else Travis and Tybee will be PISSED! What is that line? Eh, you’ll figure it out, probably…

Travis uses as an example, ‘The King Killer Chronicles’ and how the main character has red hair and its mentioned a number of times, so if the character does NOT have red hair in an adaptation, ‘what the FUCK are you even doing?’ Which just makes me think about all the terrible wigs used to make characters ‘accurate’ and… well I guess we now know who keeps demanding that shit.

Hmm… Travis brings up Harry Potter as another example and declares, “Not everything can make it into an adaptation, but if you had a teacher who was a woman and made them a man, then what are you doing? Do you think the fans won’t notice!? You didn’t swap that for time, you just fucking changed it!”

Tybee: Ya and people will say it doesn’t matter, but it does! It changes the interpersonal relationships within the story! Every peace of it matters!

Travis: And it doesn’t matter if its a minor character with three lines of duologue, the description of that character matters and someone might love that character because their three lines really spoke to them and made them feel scene and they wrote hundreds of books worth of fan-fiction about them! Or that was their avatar on twitter and YOU made them a man or made them have long hair when they where meant to have short hair or made them brunet when they where SUPPOSED to be blond! And sure, maybe that’s just 0.1% of your audience who that effects, but [laughing] that 0.1% of the audience and a following and can tell everyone to not watch your movie! Like, make it for them!

These people… This is one to one just the Ghostbuster fan complaint they had at the start! They are doing the same thing as the people they where complaining about, but hey… at least they are being woke about it. At least its about gender bending a woman to be a man and not say… race bending a white character black… they’d never complain about-

Tybee: And the same thing is happening with the Dark Tower adaption right now, with Idris Elba playing Roland and that WILL effect the story, because as I understand it, he has a relationship with a woman who is black and so him being white is important to the story!

I’m going to walk into the desert, pursued by a gunslinger…

Travis begins explaining that, no, Roland being black isn’t actually going to mess up the story, that Tybee is thinking of the relationship between Eddie and Susannah.

[Cutting a VERY long section talking about Stephen King. As a Mainer and a writer I have many thoughts on him, good and bad and that would double this recap’s length.]

Travis ends off by doing a REAL weird bit where he goes, “I hadn’t thought about it till now, but having your main, awesome, badass gunslinger character ALSO be black? Weeeeeell that is INTERESTING!”

HUGE ‘I’d have voted for Obama a third time!’ Energy.

Tybee, seeming to realize she probably just stepped in it back peddles with, “I’m not saying it will change it for the worse, it might be great! It might add something new and he’s an incredible actor! So I’m sure it will be great! But I do… uh, you know, its just a case where someones color does effect their interpersonal relationships so I wonder… I just know some people will be upset so…”

Travis declares he’s going to hit Tybee with a hard one and then asks:

Travis: Do you think their is a defensible stance for someone to say they don’t like the new Ghostbusters because of the changes they made to the original?

Travis, for the love of… I DON’T AGREE WITH THIS, BUT BY YOUR OWN LOGIC YES! 100%! You genuinely argued changing a characters hair style was indefensible and Tybee threw out that as far as she’s concerned even a progressive change like adding MORE diversity is problematic, how could EITHER of you at this point argue that their is NO reason for someone to be upset about a Ghostbusters remake where all the characters are gender flipped and the plot is reworked from scratch!?

Again, it’s not even about agreeing with that point myself, at this point YOU have constructed a black and white, all or nothing version of this argument where ANY change is too much and now are forced to look at a situation where EVERYTHING is changed and YOU are going to ask if its even remotely possible for someone to be slightly valid in not liking that!?

Tybee: No. Because no one took that movie out of their hands. They still have it.

Travis smugly: Exactly!

I’m so fucking mad I’m animorphing into an alt right grifter! AAAAAAHHHH I AM SO FULL OF FACTS AND LOGIC!!! DEBATE ME!!! DEEEEBATE MEEEEEE!!!

Okay, I’m back.

Travis: That’s a great point Tybee! Because I was starting to feel like a hypocrite! Because of this and that and the things I said, but your right, it’s not like they have an adaptation and its bad, instead, they have a movie and its called-

Both: Ghostbuster!

I can’t be wrong, the person who agrees with everything I say said I’m right!

Travis starts gassing Tybee up for being so smart as they start patting one another on the back and my urge to rampage through Tokyo as a giant monster grows…

Tybee: And I don’t think their is a defensible stance for like, saying, [mokingly] ‘I want my Roland white!’, but I do, I mean, in terms of framing it as like… it changes interpersonal relationships… it’s interesting. But I don’t care, cus I didn’t read the books! But I do wonder how it will make people feel who really love them.

God I hate them so fucking much.

Like you can just stop at, ‘Arguing Roland HAS to be white is dumb and kinda racist’, you don’t then need to follow it up with, ‘UNLESS you frame that dumb and racist take in a way I’d find smart sounding, in which case…’

Travis talks about reading the Dark Tower and finishing it, but getting caught up repeatedly on Wizard and Glass which… ya you know, if Travis was going to get stuck on anything, it would be the book that’s a tragic love story instead of a gun slinging adventure yarn.

And he uses this just to say, “You know… it [Roland being black] didn’t bother me!” In the tone of someone declaring, ‘I actually found this 10k bike ride very refreshing and not tiring at all!’

Travis then expresses, “The one upside to people complaining when you make a black, gay lesbian is that they then cannot complain when you make a white character black!” Which… no? What the fuck does that even mean? Someone complaining about a diverse character is not going to go, ‘dang you got me!’ if you then make a previously white character black… what the fuck are you even talking about!?

I’m losing my fucking mind, I need a break, be back soon…

Tybee, continuing on the Dark Tower talk: I think you have a responsibility, when adapting a book, to change it to match the current social climate and not the social climate the book was released in! And if you leave that out, if you don’t take that into consideration, your making a HUGE mistake and being totally irresponsible!

Okay, whatever. I, again, agree in general with this take, update adaptations as needed to make them feel modern and representative, don’t just use the fact that allot of old books were written by crusty old white Europeans and Americans to refuse to cast people of color or women or queer people, est. But to hear THESE TWO go on for over half an hour about how changing ANYTHING in an adaption is a sin worthy of damnation, but then when that classhes with their self-purported progressive values it’s suddenly like, “Can you imagine someone getting bent out of shape over something as trivial as changing a characters race or gender?”

They are just such massive pricks!

Travis: Okay, I agree with you, except on one thing…

Tybee: Oh ya, I mean I’m just coming up with all of this on the spot!

Travis: Because I feel like your right, but- except under the circumstance where the thing that is happening is..

Jesus Christ, he’s getting so worked up, it sounds like he’s about to cum! Like hes taking quick, short breaths, sounding increasingly tense, but excited and then…

Travis: Is like the impetus, is like… it MEANS something… LIKE FOR EXAMPLE! It means something that someone called someone a F*GOT!

Tybee: No no no! I’m not saying leave THAT out! That’s not what I’m saying! I’m saying, story like what your describing should be left as is. I think we should explore the edges of violence, I don’t think we should pull punches, I don’t think we should pull punches…

TYBEE IN THE FIRST EPISODE OF THE SHOW YOU ADVOCATED THAT EXACT THING! I have the receipts, mother fucker! I HAVE YOUR ASS!

Tybee: I’m saying… Gone Girl didn’t need to be released when it was released.

Travis asks what she meant by that and Tybee immediately walks back her own point by saying Gone Girl discredits Me Too and thus should have been banned.

She then concludes by saying that if you CAN make Roland black and it won’t change the story, you should.

This, as a reminder, all started because she herself brought up making Roland black as an example of a BAD change that should not have been made in adapting The Dark Tower.

Oh here we go, it’s Diversity Hires time!

Travis brings up that it’s ironic because Idris Elba should have been hired as the best person for the job, because in a perfect world everyone would be equally represented and race blind casting would be a thing.

Tybee then equates this to ‘Affirmative Action’ and says, “Some people equate it to equality, it’s not, its a step towards equality. ALLOT of people say it doesn’t work, but I donno, I’m not trying to comment on if it does or doesn’t, I’m just saying in terms of what it’s SUPPOSED to do, it’s not equality, its just the precursor to it.”

Travis: (Sigh) You know, Brent and I were talking about this the other day and I don’t think it made it to air, but we were talking about like… sometimes it can seem like people who are fighting for equality or people who are people who are fighting for ‘blank’ are pushing TOO HARD. Are pushing for MORE then what equality is…

OH BOY! I was so nervous they where going to have the bog standard liberal take on this and just go, ‘ya people who complain about diversity are bad’, but NO! We have Travis declaring that equality HAS GONE TO FAR! Affirmative action and diversity hiring has moved past equality and into reverse racism land! LETS GO CRAZY!

Tybee: Ya.

Good to know you agree Tybee, would hate to leave you out of this…

Travis: And the realization I think the world needs to come to is that if you only push back as hard as they are pushing back it doesn’t move the needle. You need to push the need harder to push the needle back to zero, because we are not at zero yet.

Wait… your saying that we DO need to push harder… because we aren’t actually at equality and thus need to push back to a point of true equality? Fuuuuck are you going to turn out to be reasonable on this?

But then what was the whole, ‘they are pushing too hard and pushing for more then equality’ shit!? Ugh, let’s roll this forward and I’ll report back after they’ve had a chance to clarify their point more.

Okay, OKAY! I see the argument they are making now!

Travis’s argument is that we are CURRENTLY unequal and that we need ‘radical leftists like Bernie Sanders’ and black people playing traditional white roles to help push things back to the middle. AND THEN, once we are in the middle, back to TRUE equality, then he’s going to start pushing back against the left and progressives because THEN they’d be pushing for TOO MUCH diversity and progress! In Travis and Tybee’s ideal world, we would be perfectly centered, with equal pressure from progressives and racists to ensure no one achieves any movement one way or the other.

Travis is only a progressive because, like a true 2eD&D druid, he feels like the balance of the world has been thrown off and he MUST return us to a place of perfect balance between good and evil, law and chaos.

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: The World’s Most Laughable Centrist

Tybee: And here’s the deal, and this will make me really emotional, but I’m going to talk about it anyway… It’s not fair. It’s not fair at all! I recently was up for a- Sorry, I’m going to cry, I was up for like, my dream job! (Actually starts to audible tear up) AND I DIDN’T GET IT! I lost it to A DIVERSITY HIRE! (Voice shaking) And like… that ‘person’, it was a black woman, and I was told by a friend who was a producer, you did EVERYTHING RIGHT! You were perfect in every way! And they NEEDED to hire someone of color… (tiny, breath) And… their is- the intersectional feminist in me is like ‘okay! Okay!’ (actually starts crying) I want to see women of color on screen… (sounding legit bitter as fuck) I want that… BUT IT DOESN’T MEAN I DIDN’T LOSE MY DREAM JOB!

Travis, sounding totally unemotional: Yep.

Tybee: IT’S NOT FAIR! IT’S NOT! BUT… I don’t get to be mad and I don’t get to throw a shit fit! (sniff) And I don’t get to decide now that I don’t like affirmative actions and diversity hires! I either have to be FOR IT AND FUCKING STICK TO IT! Or I’m a coward… and self serving. And I’m not either of those things.

Travis, still sounding detached: I agree.

Tybee: So I will watch that show and I will support that girl and you won’t hear me bitch about it publicly- (realizes in real time she’s bitching about it publicly) I’m talking about it now, NOT bitching about it, but just to say that while people will say its unfair, and it is, imagine all the chances I got because I was white…

Travis: Ya.

Tybee: And like, it came to the big one and I lost… (laughs bitterly) And that SUCKS!

Travis: Ya.

Tybee: But… it’s better… and I’m not saying, aren’t I a saint? For not being upset? I’m FUCKING UPSET! I’m fucking upset!

Travis: But I think it’s very respectable to realize like, you can’t draw a line between how it effects you personally and how it effects the world.

Oh yes, I am very sure that you find it VERY respectable for someone to not understand how to put their own personal feelings behind their understanding that the world is bigger then them, Travis, I bet you find that a VERY admirable quality!

And Tybee continues, talking about how much money she would have made, how much work she’d get, how this was a BIG DEAL for her and how she’s angry and upset and how she earned this and deserves it and it was basically stolen from her, but, you know… it doesn’t matter because if she wants to claim to be an intersectional feminist, she actually has to be one.

Nothing tells me your over something and cool with it and hold no grudges like a tearful rant about how much you hate that thing and have not, nor will ever get over how much you wish it had gone differently.

Travis thinks this was all an excellent point because most people in Tybee’s position would not be as mature as her and look at it and go, “Damn this is a thing that was taken away from me!” Rather then focusing on the fact that it’s about the wider scale issues of inequality.

Travis… your co-host just got done literally crying about how this was taken away from her. Where you actually listening or do you just turn off your brain till your allowed to talk again?

Tybee: I want young girls of color to have people to look up to.

Travis: EXACTLY! Because in a perfect world, we won’t need affirmative action or diversity hires! Cus it won’t be necessary! And I see people go, ‘this is unfair to white people!’ And it’s not, because we need to balance the scales because eventually, when their is equal representation across the board-

Tybee: IT IS UNFAIR!

Travis: Oh, ya it is unfair! If we are talking about, on paper, statistically, sure. But we just need to balance the scales so we can all start operating from a level playing field.

Tybee: The problem is people cannot zoom out… [allot of waffling then] But I CAN zoom out and so you better fucking shine, [because you stole my job], but I support this.

God these two…

So Travis’s goal is basically, ‘make everything equal, that way, we can have a TRUE meritocracy! With no more racism to get in the way of the best of the best rising to the top, unfettered by inequality!”

And Tybee’s point is, ‘I just want everyone to know, diversity hires suck, but we have to put up with them, even though they suck and hurt me personally, but I’m dealing with it, so so can you.’

Travis praises Tybee for being brave and honest and then says he loves her, followed by a sudden pivot to, “ANYWAY THAT’S GONNA DO IT FOR US THIS WEEK!”

Well that wasn’t so bad and I got it down to… 7.9k words!? Ah hell…

Okay, well, sorry for another long one, but I’ll see you next time Travnation!

I am still hoping to eventually do Amnesty, but for now, as long as I can keep this site working, I’ll keep the Interrobang flame alive!

Oh shit last note, while playing the outro Travis hit me with this:

Travis: We are glad you all like listening to us and if their is, heh, some small, tiny subset of people who disagree with everything we say and just hate me and Tybee, well we still appreciate you!

Thanks?

Okay… oh and then they talk about how all their fans (who sent in photos???) are so sexy and so ‘bang-able’.

I’m out, I’m leaving, I might need to start Amnesty next just to wash that out of my mouth! EW EW EW!

I understand current TAZ is a topic of hot debate, but we all know Balance slapped. Relive the magic juice.