20:41 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart's not great at waiting. But sometimes there's nothing you can do but pace around and think about how bad at waiting you are. So this evening he's at the Wherehouse, having given the afternoon to pacing, and the stream delayed until the following day for the live announcements at ExileCon. He's folded up in an unopened recliner, drinking a beer, watching... what did Maggie want to 20:41 <VoxPVoxD> watch again? 20:45 <dammitwho> The Star Wars! A lot of people seem to like it, and she's never seen it before. 20:46 <VoxPVoxD> Which one? 20:47 <dammitwho> There's more than one? Does it track every individual Star War? What's the first one? 20:47 <VoxPVoxD> Oh jeez. 20:49 <VoxPVoxD> So then they're settled in watching Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope, which Stewart insists was the first one that came out. But Stewart just calls it Star Wars, because that's what it says on the title card (the mechanics of Lucas post-hoc edits and fan re-edits and de-edits of those edits is largely over Stewart's ehad. 20:49 <VoxPVoxD> He hasn't actually sat down and watched this movie since he was... maybe thirteen? 20:51 <VoxPVoxD> This copy predates the pre-Phantom Menace touchups which Stewart recalls annoying a lot of people, though he doesn't recall why. 20:53 <dammitwho> "Hoo! That Dark Vader fella doesn't mess around." She seems to be enjoying it thus far! 20:55 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "You know, the guy doing his voice is different from the guy in the suit. They dubbed his lines in later." 20:56 <dammitwho> "Huh. Now, is he supposed to be a robot, or what's his deal there?" 20:57 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "He's basically a guy, but he's had some parts replaced. He can't actually survive outside his armor, kind of like a Dalek." 20:57 <VoxPVoxD> Suddenly realizing: "A Dalek is a thing from a different story." 20:57 <VoxPVoxD> "Like a mean bug in a trash can." 21:02 <dammitwho> She snorts with laughter. "Mean bug in a trash can..." 21:03 <dammitwho> "So this'n's a real big deal, huh? It is pretty exciting. I liked that fella who went 'you're far too trusting'." 21:04 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Grand Moff Tarkin! Lot of great bad guys in this." 21:06 <VoxPVoxD> "My favorites are the droids." 21:08 <VoxPVoxD> "Everyone's so mean to them though..." 21:16 <dammitwho> "The little one, R2, he seems to get by okay." 21:17 <dammitwho> Maggie: "I don't think there's really six million forms of communication, though. I think ol' 3PO there is padding his resume." 21:18 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "I guess it depends on whether you'd count every language machines are programmed in as a separate thing or if it's just one big 'talking to machines' language." 21:19 <VoxPVoxD> The answer is clearly the former, btw. 21:20 <VoxPVoxD> "C-3PO gets treated worse but R2 must be so much lonelier. So few people can talk to him..." 21:22 <dammitwho> "Really? Everybody seems to understand him." 21:26 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "They understand the emotional inflection but 3PO needs to translate. There's bits in the other movies and in the books and games and stuff where it comes up more." 21:26 <dammitwho> "Books and games?" 21:27 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Oh yeah there's like, books, and comics, and tv shows, and so many video games. It's a really big, evocative setting so people have used it to tell a lot of different stories." 21:29 <dammitwho> "Huh." She shifts in her seat and leans back. "Makes sense." 21:29 <VoxPVoxD> "Most of them are *really* stupid, but there's some cool stuff in there." 21:32 <dammitwho> "Like what?" 21:32 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "The Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic games are pretty good. The second one's better but it didn't really get finished." 21:33 <VoxPVoxD> "Those are set hundreds of years before the movies." 21:33 <dammitwho> Maggie: "That's the old republic the guy said the last remnants of had been swept away?" 21:36 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Yeah it lasted a really long time. In the games you start out playing a Jedi no one likes anymore and you go around meeting new friends and trying to solve a big problem and over the course of each game you can make decisions that will either set you on the path of good, like Obi-Wan and Luke, or evil, like Vader." 21:37 <VoxPVoxD> "A different Jedi no one likes anymore in each game." 21:38 <dammitwho> Maggie: "What sort of games are they?" 21:39 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Role-playing games." 21:40 <dammitwho> "Eh?" 21:43 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Role-playing games are games where you guide a character or a group of characters through a defined story and take on their role. Usually they involve fighting bad guys, getting gradually stronger, often in customizable ways, and exploring detailed imaginary worlds." 21:44 <VoxPVoxD> "Good RPGs are some of the best video games there are, like Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross, Knights of the Old Republic 2, Morrowind, Planescape: Torment, The Squared Circle Saga..." 21:57 <dammitwho> Oooh, this is clearly something Stewart's really into. "So... those are your favorites? Tell me about 'em." 22:00 <VoxPVoxD> This is something Stewart's really into. "Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross are games where you sort of jump around -- in Trigger you're time travelling but in Cross there's like these alternate worlds. I like them because the stories are really good, and the music is INCREDIBLE, and you can see where all the monsters are instead of fights happening randomly as you walk around." 22:02 <VoxPVoxD> "Knights of the Old Republic 2 is the Star Wars game I mentioned earlier, you got exiled from the Jedi for doing war crimes and now you're going around trying to figure out why the other Jedi have all disappeared. My favorite thing about it is how you can influence the characters to follow your philosophy, whether it's selfish or noble, and even train some of them to become Jedi themselves 22:02 <VoxPVoxD> if they follow you far enough. Lot of really cool characters in that one. It's kind of a sad game, though. Bittersweet." 22:04 <VoxPVoxD> "Morrowind is a game that has a defined story, but its biggest feature is that it's *incredibly* open-ended. You come off this boat onto this island where everything sucks and everyone's miserable, and you make your character, and then you're giving directions to the next part of the main story, but then you're just... turned loose. You can do whatever you want. You can explore, you can rise 22:04 <VoxPVoxD> in the ranks of different organizations, you can find treasure and rob people, or if you're a complete psycho you can just stab pretty much everyone you meet." 22:04 <VoxPVoxD> "I spent hundreds and hundreds of hours on that game." 22:05 <VoxPVoxD> "Planescape: Torment is sort of the opposite. It's got levels and fights and stuff like other RPGs, but mostly it's like a giant... do you know what a choose-your-own-adventure book is?" 22:09 <dammitwho> Maggie: "...no?" 22:11 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Okay. Planescape: Torment has these sort of branching paths you can take based on stuff you do, and you get to react to every situation in your own personal way. The character's kind of a blank slate but with a defined history, so your task is to take this fully formed person, with a whole past and people who already know about him, and decide who he is and what he cares about. 22:11 <VoxPVoxD> There's a question that keeps getting asked over the course of the game: 'What can change the nature of a man?'. And that's what the game's sort of about. How to change. Whether you can change." 22:13 <VoxPVoxD> "The Squared Circle Saga is sort of in between. You take the role of the hero, Excessively Righteous Blossom, and fly the airship she builds all around this HUGE world going on adventures, and the world and all the characters sort of changes based on stuff you do. You can save a city-state from zombies and hand the power over to the workers, or you can dick around and go fight dinosaurs in 22:13 <VoxPVoxD> a huge arena, or you can take sides in a shadow war between the Stars and the Moon. You could even do all of those things, if you wanted to for some reason." 22:14 <VoxPVoxD> "You can also just spend hours and hours in the cooking minigame and playing dressup." 22:15 <dammitwho> "That's pretty complicated stuff. It makes sense that people would pay to watch you play that!" 22:16 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Oh, no, I've never played any of those for an audience. The kind of people who want to sit through story stuff is a veeeery different crowd from the one who watches my streams." 22:17 <dammitwho> Maggie: "Hoorm. Are these the kind of games I would like?" 22:20 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Well... some of them. A lot of them have a core gameplay loop that's about sort of doing the same stuff over and over again and watching numbers go up. But there's some in there you'd like, I bet." 22:21 <VoxPVoxD> "It's a really broad genre, there's something for almost anyone in it, assuming that person is willing to spend hours of their lives pretending to be a time traveling cartoon character or a laser Buddhist or a magic zombie or a really emotional superhero teenager." 22:23 <VoxPVoxD> "Sometimes they feel like books, sometimes they feel like movies." 22:23 <dammitwho> "Or a vampire! Heh heh heh!" 22:23 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Oh man, there was this one game I played, it was like, Chrono Trigger with vampires." 22:26 <VoxPVoxD> "Okay get this: there's a city way up in northern Norway, in the Arctic Circle, where the sun doesn't set during the summer and doesn't rise during the winter. And it's full of vampires. All these really weird and cool vampires like a time-traveling invincible nerd and a postmodern blood witch and a whole family of these blind yetis." 22:27 <VoxPVoxD> "It was a lot like Chrono Trigger actually. It had the weird slug monster and the girl named Luca..." 22:28 <VoxPVoxD> "But anyway the main characters were this kind of skeevy rich guy vampire from New York, this scary rich lady vampire from Germany, and this workaday vampire scientist who was slowly turning into a yeti." 22:29 <dammitwho> "A *yeti*?" 22:30 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "An abominable snowman. His was like this huge eyeless bat thing. Eventually if you play as him enough you can take control of his mutation and get turned into this really messed up man-bat that has maxed stats all the time." 22:31 <dammitwho> Maggie: "No, no, I know what a yeti is. But what do they have to do with vampires? This guy just get really unlucky?" 22:32 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "There was like this really complicated vampire mythology. Basically he was part of this one cursed bloodline, yeah." 22:32 <VoxPVoxD> "I can't remember the name. One second..." 22:35 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart's got his phone out and he's searching. He's searching... 22:35 <VoxPVoxD> "I can't find it." 22:36 <dammitwho> "Eh?" 22:37 <VoxPVoxD> "The game! I can't find the game!" Stewart almost snaps. 22:37 <VoxPVoxD> "Maybe I'm using the wrong search terms..." 22:39 <dammitwho> "Well, if it's pretty old..." She says mildly. 22:39 <VoxPVoxD> "It's not that old! It came out in... in..." 22:39 <VoxPVoxD> Increasingly frustrated typing. 22:43 <VoxPVoxD> Suddenly Stewart stands up, almost throwing his phone on the chair as he does, and goes to get another beer. 22:43 <dammitwho> Hoo boy. Maggie doesn't know how to react here, because Stewart's the one who knows about search terms and the internet and such. It feels like something's wrong, but like... is it? 22:43 <dammitwho> "You okay, there?" 22:45 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart looks back at her, furious, then he holds a finger up while drinking angrily, like he's Jamie Lee Curtis. 22:47 <VoxPVoxD> Finally he's rolling the now-empty beer bottle between his fingers, slightly stooped, face darkened with ugly thoughts, more Morlock than Eloi for the first time in a while. "What else?" he mutters to himself. 22:50 <VoxPVoxD> Belatedly he realizes Maggie is looking at him. "It's not real." 22:52 <dammitwho> "Wh-- ahhh... jeez. I'm sorry..." A long pause. "You want me to make you a nice sandwich or something? Ham and cheese?" 22:53 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "You've been-- sorry. You've been asking me all these questions for weeks now. And Nels? Hoo boy. So like... what. What else isn't real?" 22:53 <VoxPVoxD> He turns to face her fully. "What else have I confidently described to people that never fucking happened?" 22:57 <dammitwho> Maggie: "Do you want to see about the others?" 22:59 <VoxPVoxD> "I know the Others!" Stewart hisses. "I know them just as well as you!" 23:02 <dammitwho> Maggie's eyebrows go up a little. Carefully, she replies. "I meant the other games you talked about. Nail down which ones are real and which, um, aren't. I don't know how much it'll help, but maybe it'll get you your bearings? For this conversation, anyway?" 23:09 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart opens another beer - against the counter, like Stu - and takes a sip without meeting Maggie's eyes. 23:10 <VoxPVoxD> Looked up how to do that on Youtube. At least, he thinks he did. 23:13 <VoxPVoxD> "...no," he says finally. "No, I don't want to look those up right now. I'll do it later. At home. Double check with Lauren." 23:14 <dammitwho> "Okay. You wanna finish the movie?" She has it on pause. 23:16 <VoxPVoxD> "...yeah, okay." Where were they? 23:17 <dammitwho> Kenobi just became more powerful than you could possibly imagine. 23:18 <dammitwho> "Let me ask you this. Do the higher-ups in Autumn talk like that? Becoming more powerful than you could possibly imagine?" 23:18 <dammitwho> "Because I'd bet money the wizards do." 23:18 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart, red-eyed, thinks about his friends used to say that line to each other before shooting nerf guns. "Santander absolutely does." 23:19 <VoxPVoxD> "Kingsley's got way more of a white collar, I-am-the-senior-partner-at-this-firm-and-I-am-constantly-judging-you vibe." 23:20 <VoxPVoxD> Was his Dad like that too? Is he even remembering that right? 23:20 <VoxPVoxD> Is that really Maura's face he sees in his mind? 23:33 <VoxPVoxD> They pass the rest of the movie in silence. Then: "As I understand it, that is now the fourth of what will, this time next month, be nine movies." 23:34 <dammitwho> She nods. "You want to invite Lauren over? Maybe get Nels or Melanie in too, make a night of it?" 23:35 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Lauren's waiting on showing me 7 and 8 until closer to 9. I don't think she likes the first three but I remember them being pretty good." His voice breaks at the end there. 09:44 <banana> i just did some birth-date calculations 09:45 <banana> melanie was born in 1997 and, since generation is surely based on when you grew up rather than biological age, is technically a zoomer 09:45 <banana> but, ths is the wrong channel