Milo’s birth parents??? The Knight of Mirrors??? Where did all this guac come from??? All that and more on the Afterparty!
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Cast & Crew
- Dungeon Master, Co-Producer: Eric Silver
- Co-Host (Milo Lane), Co-Producer, Editor, Sound Designer, Composer: Brandon Grugle
- Co-Host (Aggie O’Hare), Co-Producer: Amanda McLoughlin
- Co-Host (Val Vesuvio), Co-Producer, Editor: Julia Schifini
- Multitude: multitude.productions
About Us
Join the Party is a D&D actual play podcast with tangible worlds, genre-pushing storytelling, and collaborators who make each other laugh each week. We welcome everyone to the table, from longtime players to folks who’ve never touched a roleplaying game before. Begin with Campaign 2 (The Join Campaign) for a modern, sci-fi superhero game, or marathon all of Campaign 1 (The Party Campaign) for a high fantasy story. And once a month we release the Afterparty, where we answer your questions about the show and how we play the game. New episodes every Tuesday.
Transcript
Amanda: Hey, hi, hello and welcome to the after party where this episode might just be two minutes long because all it's talking about is the Knight of Mirrors people. Oh my god, we finally found out!
Julia: You think it's only gonna take two minutes to talk about all of our feelings about the Knight of Mirrors?
[Brandon chuckles]
Amanda: Single subject episode one-hour long.
[Brandon and Julia chuckles]
Amanda: Oh man, we have so much to get to. So much happened in these last two episodes and we're having a special edition after party here because folks there are only five story episodes left and there's a lot to get to.
Julia: That's, that's so few but also so many.
Amanda: Not enough. I think we need to do more. Guys, I, this is me coming in hot.
Amanda: Oh?
Brandon: Five more. Five more. Let's go.
Julia: So, 10 total is what you're trying to go for?
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: Okay.
Eric: Brandon, if you finally developed the time travel technology to go back and stop what we've already done, please tell me and why didn't we go back in time and get all of the flavors of Dr. Pepper, including the five secret ones that they won't tell people for?
Amanda: I thought you were gonna go for the original grip.
[Amanda laughs]
Julia: I mean, don't tempt Brandon. He has the technology. It's called deleting the files that we recorded.
[Brandon laughs]
Amanda: That's true people. We've recorded all five of the rest of our story episodes. Oh man, the spoil-ey corners are gonna have, like, unprecedented energy.
Eric: I'm thinking about the most specific creepypasta that has to do with a haunted ProTools session that makes you go back in time and that you can delete someone by deleting their recording.
Brandon: I was trying to think of a secret Dutch Peppers flavor. It's Dr. Bell Pepper.
Eric: It's a secret. I can't tell you.
Brandon: Dr. Chili?
Eric: No, no, no. Dr. Pepper's 23 flavors layered inside of the soda.
Brandon: Right.
Eric: So, they've released 18 but 5 are lost to time.
Brandon: Oh, you want the ingredients,l not the flavors. I see. I see.
Eric: Listen, I know that it's just, like, someone in Atlanta made a bunch of flavors in a lab and then put that into a test tube and then inserted it into the soda, but the branding of Dr. Pepper says there are 23 flavors of Dr. Pepper. I'm going off the branding because branding is always correct and tells you the truth.
Brandon: 10 and 2, baby. Should we answer questions?
Eric: No. We're talking more about the flavors of Dr. Pepper. I think one is Boys and Berry.
[Brandon laughs]
Brandon: Oh.
Julia: I do like the image that you provided earlier where it's layered. Like, every sip of Dr. Pepper is a different flavor in it of itself.
Amanda: Neapolitan Dr. Pepper?
Julia: Like a layered shot.
Eric: Or yeah, like a layered shot like you're in sixth grade science class and you're learning about density for the first time.
[Amanda chuckles]
Julia: Oil and water. Yeah.
Brandon: I thought you were gonna say like a layer shot like it's sixth grade science class where we did layer shot.
[Amanda laughs]
Eric: Yeah. Yeah. Mmh, forbidden layered shot. Take a photo, put it on TikTok, get a hundred million followers, nailed it.
Amanda: Alright, people, I'm gonna have to see this car back on track because we have so much to get to today. I love it. So, let's begin with episode 52 where we go through the mirror, we go to the other side. Oh my god.
Eric: Porkchop Hoppy called it a mirror dimension, and I'm like, "oh, yeah, I should have called it that." It's very good.
Amanda: Come on! Get the time machine, Eric. Get the time machine.
Eric: Oh, Brandon. The curse from ProTools right now.
Julia: Eric, you killed me during that episode, because I know that we had to switch between scenes, but every time we asked a question like, let me see what's Brandon doing. I'm like, no, answer my questions, man.
Amanda: Oh my god, it really gave me the join the party listener experience in a way I've never done before.
Eric: I don't know. I, what I really want the most is I want more screaming from my players while they're recording. I know you're doing it because we're recording a podcast and you're trying to be kind, but what I really want is when I do something Julia will go, "Fuck!"
Julia: I'll keep that into consideration from now on. Mostly because since we record remotely, Brandon can just cut that.
Amanda: That's true. I won't, but I could.
Julia: Or at least put it in an appropriate place.
Eric: Exactly, exactly. Why? No! I was, I did that 100 intentionally. I felt really good about that. Thank you.
Amanda: So, let's begin with the first thing in the episode, which is Julia and I meeting alternate versions of ourselves. Julia, how did you feel about learning what the hell was up with Vulcani in this other universe?
Julia: You know what I was not surprised because we've talked about on after parties and Eric and I have talked about, like, in person about what would Val's other timeline be, you know, like, we talked about, like, if Val had been the one who got splashed by the waters of time instead of Aggie here's probably what would have happened. And it would have, like, probably be that transference at the point where Val would have gone over to the mob, so it makes a lot of sense to me. Like, oh, yes, Vesuvius is an evil mobster supervillain. Um, Val didn't like it one bit though.
[Amanda chuckles]
Brandon: I'm assuming you didn't add mass murderer to that list when you are imagining it.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: There is a moment, I wasn't anticipating doing this, but I think there was a moment where you were like, oh, no, I'm sure alternate mirror Val is, like, a superhero agent or something you'd probably find struggling within then Preserver was like no that killed a bunch of people. Like, stories and stories of people lighting on fire.
Julia: I think someone said something about evil. I was like, well, a job doesn't make you evil. Yeah, like mass murderer. I was like, okay, fine!
Amanda: Okay, okay, okay.
Brandon: That job does.
Julia: That job does. Mass murder does.
Eric: Notoriously known for burning people, Vesuvius.
Amanda: What a name too. Eric, how long have you been sitting on that one?
Eric: Oh, I mean, it was right there. I had to take it
Julia: Wasn't too far. Yeah.
Eric: Especially I did Vesuvius, specifically because Val would have been less precious about changing their name, so it was Vesuvio to Vesuvius specifically --
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: -- because to tie themselves to, you know, the, their mob connections and their, and their dad and stuff. So, that one was very explicitly ominous.
Julia: Definitely not a secret identity thing.
[Amanda chuckles]
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: Porkchop Hoppy would like to know, "In the mirror world, was Val convinced by the painting to join Aunt Min? Where do we think these timelines diverged?
Julia: Yeah, I think it was the painting, if not earlier, I think it really depends. Like, I'm sure if that had been the real case, Eric and I would have figured it out.
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: But the mirror does seem like the appropriate timeline split place.
Eric: Yeah, definitely.
Julia: Or in a timeline where they never met Aggie and Milo and then also the painting thing happened.
Eric: Exactly.
Brandon: Val's life was much bett-- worse for it, you know? No Milo, no life. That's what I've always said.
Amanda: All, all day. They're like, God, I wish I had a really nerdy friend with a dump truck ass.
Brandon: Guy who refuses to wear shorts and talks about Star Trek too much.
[Amanda laughs]
Eric: Loves bowling. Loves drinking out of bowling balls. That's what's gonna keep me on the stream.
Amanda: Unruly cat? Yeah.
Eric: Yeah, it is interesting, though. I'm trying to think of it man probably would have come back into Val's life because that's what Aunt Min does, but I think it would have been easier to convince. In my head, it was easier to convince Val in this timeline to just be like, Hey, you're not doing anything. The whole LT3 initiative was, like, Dr. Morrow pulling all of you together. And if Dr. Morrow was doing something else and didn't have everyone together, and without Milo as kind of maybe the glue to put this particular LT3 together, I think everything kind of would have been different, but we'll get there when we talk about the difference between Preserver and Multitool and how all that stuff happened.
[Julia hums in agreement]
Brandon: I know you didn't mean it that way, but I am going to take that and just keep it in my heart that Milo is the glue to everything in this podcast.
[Eric audibly inhales]
[Silence]
[Eric hums in agreement]
Julia: Okay.
[Amanda and Brandon laugh]
Eric: Julia, make sure to keep the extended, the extended.
Julia: Oh, was that not getting cut?
[Eric laughs]
Eric: This is, this is why you don't skip silences for this podcast. It's very intense.
Brandon: [sarcastically] It's almost like silence is important to podcast, Eric
Eric: Brandon, lots of podcasts are not as well edited as ours. I have to put it on. I have to.
Amanda: That's what I always say about podcasting. It's more about the sounds that you don't cut, you know?
[Brandon laughs]
Eric: Like jazz. Damn.
Amanda: Let's move on to talking about Preserver. Self-centered of me perhaps or alternate self-centered with me, but Becca K. Eric would like to know what was it like to move Preserver from a PC to an NPC? Was that a difficult transition?
[Eric sighs audibly]
Eric: Yeah, I wanted to honor the work that you had done as Preserver earlier in the podcast, but I definitely pushed those to the limit because of what was happening in the mirror universe is things being, you know, bad . Worse than they were in this one, but the main thing that you had about Preserver is that Preserver was very, like, protective, and very much the person who can be, like, I'm going to fix everything, I'm going to put myself in charge, and because I'm in charge, I'm going to take care of it, which is so different than Multitool as someone who is, like, flexible, no pun intended, but-- or maybe pun intended. Maybe it was a metaphor, who can say? So, I wanted to lean into that and I think that the main thing that I did was, like, Preserver would be unhappy that y'all push through the mirror. It's like you are stressing me out, I have things to do. I have a very long to-do list keeping my superhero team together being, like, both the leader of it and the person behind the screen, so I was just like, I can't have three people from another alternate timeline come in and Preserver also spends a lot of time by themselves, so they talk to themselves loudly, which was why Preserver said I can't believe my hair looks like that from the back.
Amanda: It made me laugh and laugh. We also had a bunch of questions about the kind of tiny whininess of it all with Preserver and Multitool, so do you want to tell us a little bit about how you think of the differences and, like, conceive of or visualize the differences between these, like, alternate timeline, mirror dimension, you know, like, the upside down. What's happening here?
Eric: Yeah, okay, so this is what I think happened. There was a splitting point where, yeah, you got really mixed up in the time water, right? And it became a branching point for these two different alternate realities. Because y'all fought the time shark and destroyed it, it then turned into the portal that connected the two. So, Preserver and Multitool were the same until there was a branching path in time that split the two, so like everything in the podcast and before were pretty much the same until that split happened and then, like, it only retroactively changed what happens depending on, like, their powers and then the personality ripples that came out of that.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: So, because of that, the reason why Preserver knew Milo existed was because Preserver knew that Milo was there. They had hung out with him, had done the previous part of the podcast with a Milo, this Milo was gone. Be like, that's different. I'm sure there was a part after the time shark biz, where Preserver and this thing was like, Oh, I remember things but it's different here and started looking into that. And one of those things they looked into was, like, baby with weird organ, glowing organ problems disappears or something, and put-- kind of put that stuff together and found Milo's birth parents because of that, and was able to put that stuff together. It was more, like, detective work where like trying to pull on something you knew is different than Anubis who knew it and was responsible for what was happening. So, that was the main thing I was thinking.
Brandon: It seemed like Preserver, like, remembered some stuff when two versions of herself touched hands. That was a hard time to say out loud, but you know what I mean?
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: Like, did like memories come flooding back, or was it just like, recognition of like, oh, yeah, this is, like, this is what's happening?
Eric: Mmh, I think the touching hand point was, was definitely, like, an inflection point, where you're like, Oh, the things that felt like a dream, maybe weren't a dream. And that's where things got mixed up.
Brandon: Gotcha.
Amanda: Yeah, I can also picture Preserver sort of like being, you know, thrown into a universe that feels really different or coming out of the time water and being like, wow, like, you know, whether or not she retained all of the memories, survival was sort of the first, you know, the first order of business. And whether again, like whether, you know, the memories were unlocked or resurfaced, or, you know, to your point, Eric, felt like a dream or a haze. She also, like, got caught up on the rest of Multitool's life, right? Like, over the last several months, according to Multitool, and so I imagine knowing that, like, you know, Vulcani is okay, and Milo's alive. You know, whether that was new knowledge or just kind of, like, reassuring, it was a really fun moment to play.
Eric: Yes.
Brandon: Life According to Multitool is my favorite sitcom.
[Eric snorts]
Amanda: Thank you. There's a VH1 reunion special on right now.
[Brandon chuckles]
Amanda: But Brandon, let's talk about this backstory reveal. What did you know before we played that scene on this episode?
Brandon: None? Zero. I knew that Milo existed and Tuna existed.
Julia: [sarcastically] Whoa.
Brandon: And Anubis existed.
Julia: [sarcastically] Shocking reveal.
Brandon: But no, I didn't know any of that.
Amanda: We got a lot of questions like oh, like, Brandon and Eric, like, how did you work on this? Like, where are you know, where did it come from? How did you guys feel like show Amanda and Julia, what do you work done? And I mean, it was all you heard Brandon learn, right?
Amanda: Yeah, I think we did the thing, you know, like, it was sort of we all do at the beginning of a new campaign or a new arc at least like it's like, here's my character. I'm gonna throw it out at you, Eric. Do what you will.
[everyone chuckles]
Eric: Yeah, there was a point. At some point during the podcast where I think Milo started getting in more and more publicly and obviously interested in his birth parents. I think maybe when you died and saw Anubis for real-sies, that really happened when you started asking Anubis questions about your birth parents. And then as you revealed your mask, and I'm like, "Oh, this is something Brandon wants." So, I started thinking about that and putting that together. I'd always known that they had powers, and that you did, like, have birth parents, but I wasn't exactly sure how it was all gonna fit together. But I think that it as we started pursuing the mirror and as we started pursuing, or as we started this arc, and I knew that the mirror existed I'm like, I want there to be things for everyone in this mirror. And I think that your birth parents being in there and you traveling between the timelines was a way to figure that stuff out, explain why you have death powers, figure out why Tuna hangs out with you, other than it's just your dad's dead cat.
Brandon: My winning personality.
[Amanda chuckles]
Eric: Oh, yeah, confirmed. And uh, and just, like, trying to tie all that stuff together. So I started moving that way. And I knew that that was in the mirror. As we said in the last afterparty, I knew someone would look at the mirror because it was in a giant bank vault, but this was the other thing that we revealed is that Hank knew the mirror existed. They-- Hank found the mirror when he was still working at the OTA after you finished the time loop, because it appeared when you killed the time shark. Kill-- I don't know if you can kill an extra time dimensional being but whatever.
Julia: Val did. Val killed it.
Eric: As the shark turned into the mirror, so Hank saw that, put it in the bank vault, and then used the-- this is a little bit of an extra treat as you were in the, as you were in the OTA.
Brandon: That was actually the inflection point for Vesuvius. When Vesuvius murdered the time shark they were like, Oh, this is great.
Amanda: So good. I love to murder.
Eric: I love it when souls disappear from their bodies, and I can see it.
[Brandon laughs]
Eric: I feel the heat of a final flame coming off of a body.
Brandon: I'm always so cold. I need the souls!
[Amanda laughs]
Amanda: So hungry!
Eric: I'm fueled by the internal energy of the urge to kill.
[Brandon chuckles]
Eric: That's also what Vesuvius sounds like.
Amanda: Julia is just shaking now.
Julia: Okay.
Eric: Julia, would you like me to make a Macho Man, Randy Savage? I can do that for you.
Julia: God no! Please not.
Eric: [in a deep voice] Oh, yeah, love to murder.
[Julia whimpers]
Amanda: Let's do a total whiplash to say um Brandon, when you conceived of Milo as a character, you know, two years and change ago and chose to give him a backstory that involved adoption. I imagine you had some kind of feelings, desires, like you, you know, you chose the element of his character for some reason. How does this feel in terms of a, like, resolution? Or an answer that, like, your character, whether in the back of his mind originally, but increasingly, sort of in the forefront of his mind has been searching for?
Brandon: Yeah, I mean, I had, you know, had some reasons to do it. And I think the thing that I most, came prominently in my mind as we went through this sort of, like, backstory reveal is, like, I hope we did it justice. Like, you know, there's always that, like, I'm not personally adopted, but, you know, there's people close to me that are and I always hope I do them justice. And yeah, I don't know, not having experienced that personally. But you know, having heard from and talked to I imagine that it's not how it usually is portrayed in media, you know, where it's like, my life is over until I know my birth parents and but you know, all that kind of bullshit. So, I wanted to portray just sort of, sort of a healthy relationship on both sides or at least to healthy as they can be and that sort of highly charged emotional event so I don't know I that was it. I was just hoping to land the plane, you know, that way. I think, I think we did, hopefully. If we didn't, let me know. I can't change it, but I do want to talk to you about it, so yeah.
Eric: Yeah, it was really important to me that Milo's birth parents didn't give him up for, like, I don't know, all the bullshit re-- I agree with Brandon, all the bullshit reasons they do in media being like, you know, like this overwrote, like they're bad people and then they-- the baby needed to be taken away. I didn't want that. I wanted them to be happy in a situation where they needed to do something that was best for everyone. And if you have a child who can't exist on this plane of existence, like, what are you supposed to do? Then they were put into a tough situation and they did the thing that was best for this ghost baby that was born in the wrong timeline. And what I want to do and what I feel like I've been reaching for a lot in this whole campaign is, like, you know, you want to hope that adults and I mean adults in the way that, like, millennials are infantilized for the-- their entire fucking lives. So, like everyone under the age of 35, is constantly like 15, in the age, in the eyes of anyone who's 50 and older. Like you, that, like, you want to hope that the people who are older than you who have responsibility over you, and either you were actually younger or currently in power above you, care about you and want the, the people who come after them to flourish. And I feel like they were putting the parents we're putting into a tough situation and they did the thing that was right for their baby so the baby could survive. And Anubis, God of Death, came in, figured it out and brought the baby and a protector to a dad who was going to do the right thing and be a good dad, as we've seen with Hank, that I've always wanted Hank to be a good dad because he's a good dude. That was always very important, so I agree with Brandon is, you want to land the plane in a way that feels satisfying, but also doesn't just, like, work with the tropes that exist in media and provide that people are complicated but are willing to do the right thing if they're put into a tough situation.
Julia: The logistics of trying to, like, get paperwork for a baby from another timeline must have been really stressful for Hank.
Brandon: No Julia. It was a straw basket in the river like Moses.
Julia: So you don't have a social security number for Milo, that's my question.
Amanda: If Moses claws. When you call the Social Security Administration and you see little Moses claws.
Julia: I found this baby, there's no record of it.
Eric: You know that the Office of Technology Assessment has a code Moses.
Amanda: Oh yeah.
[Brandon chuckles]
Eric: If you find a baby in mysterious circumstances, especially if they're in a basket, they can create a social security number ASAP.
Julia: That's the only reason that I don't question is because Hank works for the OTA.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: Oh, totally. Yeah.
Eric: Anubis knew.
Amanda: Anubis chose, right? Like, Anubis presumably, like, chose LTC's best parent and someone with the resources to make it happen.
Eric: We hadn't thought about this before but there was something about baby Tuna and baby Milo together being delivered be, like, we have, like, a two-week old kitten and a two-- and like a month old baby be brought to Hank. And Hank's like "Oh geez. Oh no."
Julia: Double the responsibility.
Brandon: I just imagine Milo sitting on the floor and Tuna just like batting his face over and over again.
Julia: Explains so much about their relationship
Eric: Anubis is like gotta make sure he's tough. Yes, that's the deal. Yeah, I also that, like, so this is what happened I think is like Tuna lived until the age of, like, probably 16. Old cat. And then this was Hank's cat of the ghost of Tuna was always around.
Amanda: And returned home to Anubis.
Eric: Yeah, but then was always no, it was always around like.
Amanda: Yeah, yeah.
Eric: We had talked about that Tuna was always around.
Amanda: That’s my euphemism for death.
Eric: Yeah, and then Anubis is like, No go out there! We talked about this. And Tuna was like, fine.
Julia: You were supposed to stay.
Eric: And the next day, Tuna is just like sitting on Milo's face, but as a ghost now.
Brandon: I like to imagine the first couple years of that relationship where it's sort of like the Cheshire Cat, where it's just like, I, Milo thinks he sees the smile or the eyes of Tuna in the corner of the room. And like his keys have gone missing and he just thinks he's clumsy, but in reality it's because Tuna has been hiding them for 30 years.
Eric: That is a different movie. That's a metaphor that a ghost to look watching over you is a metaphor for puberty.
Julia: Sure is.
Eric: Incredible.
Amanda: I mean, impossibly still more to discuss in Episode 52. Here is a couple questions around, like, running a campaign when stuff keeps changing, which I have found to be one of my favorite parts of this campaign, so this question is from Ralts. Was there ever a potential for Campaign II to not have an identity change or multi-timeline element? If Amanda rolled better in the time shark scene could she have just kept being Preserver? Or was that scene set up, so at least somebody would get split into two? Like, for example, maybe whoever rolled lowest out of three idk, eyes emoji, DND media as well as Haha.
Brandon: It's hard for me to concentrate on that question because I was just trying to think of a way to, to hilariously say that I just caught a Ralts in Pokemon Arceus, like, a week or two ago so…
Amanda: Congratulations. It's a hard one to get.
Brandon: That one was my Ralts that asked the question.
Amanda: Nice.
Julia: Ah, that makes sense.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: Uh, yeah, there was no guarantee that Preserver was going to change ever. That was just, like, a thing that was put into the fight for the time loop. So, no, there was absolutely no reason that there was going to be a time, a time thing happening or an opening to another alternate reality. Honestly, I was against it because Marvel went so fucking hard in multiverses and I'm like, that's stupid. It's like first you go to space then you go to a multiverse when you run out of things to do, right? And I really didn't want to do that but I saw that this was a thing that really opened up and we had to kind of explore it especially because Danny had painted this, this thing of Preserver and Multitool touching hands, so that's why we dove into it. I don't know if there are other alternate timelines but definitely not one that are revealed to y'all right now. That was only revealed because the time shark, let me look at my notes, Julia brutally killed an animal.
Julia: Yeah!
Brandon: A time animal.
Julia: Time animal.
Eric: That's right, a time animal just because the own-- by the time, you wouldn't even know that if the time shark had not created a portal between the two.
Brandon: When are the X-men coming into our universe, Eric?
Eric: When Sony releases them from a deal.
[Brandon chuckles]
Julia: I fuckin' love multiverse shit. I know Marvel's, like, really digging into it right now. I fucking love that shit.
[Brandon chuckles]
Amanda: I am just, like, amazed that you took on the logistics of implementing a time loop much less multiverse. I'm just like, I'm floored. I'm so glad. And I love it. And obviously, like, my character, you know, has gotten enriched as a result, but like damn, good on you.
Eric: Julia, just to, like, as our resident comics expert, do I need to have any particular rules for multiverses or can I just, like, make it, make it up, right?
Julia: No, and if anyone has any complaints about, like, you not answering questions about the various timelines and multiverses, I will remind them that there is a character in the Marvel Comics that's called spiders man which is just a bunch of spiders that genuinely--
[Amanda and Brandon cackles]
Eric: Oh, I forgot to put him in the last episode.
Julia: It's just Hive and we haven't revealed that yet.
Amanda: It's true. It's true.
Eric: Honestly, Hive has been a bunch of bees the entire time and we haven't talked about that.
Amanda: 100%. Yeah. If you had to make Milo an alt-- like an alternate version of Milo in the other timeline, what would he have been? I'm curious, what would have been different about him?
Julia: A fucking nerd, we would have made him a fucking nerd.
[Eric snorts]
Amanda: Well, Brandon, what do you think? Because that was the question Eric posed to me of, like, something fundamental has to change about your character. What changes?
Amanda: Oh, no, I want to know, like, not like, let's fun make a new character. I want to know like, what's the mass murderer version of Milo?
Eric: You know what's funny, I think if they looked hard enough, you know, what this would have been, is that there was never another Milo. There was only an original Milo, right? And they're probably, if we were doing, like, Teen Titans right now, there would be a whole episode where they're looking for a copy of Milo and they try really hard to, like, graft people on top of you, so there's definitely someone who has some sort of like ghost powers, but it's definitely more, like, incorporeality and, and things like that. And maybe they were, like, the equivalent of a rogue. And they're like, oh, that's the equivalent of Milo and they're like No, I love monster trucks and basketball. Like, I don't know what you're talking about. And there might be, like, another person who's like all about space, but, like, is very obsessed with getting sucked into, like, a black hole or something. And like oh, there's Milo there. Like, no that person's just a nihilist and loves, loves the black, the blackness of space. They don't like that, so I think, like, there will probably be reaching for people to graft on who are Milo but I think that the ultimate thing from this particular episode is that there is no version of Milo on the other side. If there was someone else who had done this and you weren't the person who had gone away, I think you would have-- this would have been like in My Hero Academia. There is someone who can create black holes and it's incredibly dangerous. They, like, need to control it a lot and they're, like, a-- What kind of hero are they, Julia? They're like the--
Julia: She's the Rescue Hero.
Eric: Yeah, like, they're like the support healer like Julia said the, the Rescue Hero I think it would have been more about that using, like, maybe you wouldn't, you would have had more space powers than ghosts powers and it would have been something more like that.
Amanda: Okay, so what I heard was Dr. Doom type who has his own country in Europe, so...
Julia: Cool. Cool.
Eric: That is exactly what I said. Thank you for listening and for taking the time to pay attention to what I said.
Amanda: More like Killemnova. Am I right?
Eric: Nice.
[Brandon laughs]
Eric: If you were a villain you would have been a Dr. Doom type called Black Hole. Yeah. 100%. And you would have black hole powers.
Brandon: Hell yeah.
Eric: But if you want and-- I did like the idea that Vesuvius was the only, was the only bad guy.
Amanda: See, the problem with that Eric is if one black hole even a size of like, less than a penny would open up on the earth we're all dead, so you know, that's fine.
Julia: It's a controllable black hole. Just for you.
Eric: There's something about, like, you branding or the black hole the villain calling it black holes.
Amanda: But it's not, yeah.
Eric: And then like the only science, scientists are having a hard time explaining it to the regular people to, like, defend themselves because they're too busy saying it's not really a black hole.
Amanda: I imagined Dr. McTier being like that's a mild vacuum at best, and shut up!
[Amanda chuckles]
Amanda: It's a Temporal Gravity event. A TGE!
Amanda: There you go.
Eric: Yeah, that's what they're spending all this time and everyone's like, shut up. It's cool. We're going to kill, we're going to black holia.
Julia: He keeps threatening different countries. Stop it.
[Brandon chuckles]
Julia: Stop arguing about the logistics of it.
Eric: I want to go to a country where I'm not-- well actually it all the time. I'm going there.
Amanda: Couple more questions before we refill this big bowl of chips and guac that we're sharing temporarily just across, like, our three locations. This is from a Bray Master Real Cheese, If Preserver hadn't fallen in the water and become Multitool, would we have had a scene where the crossing or meeting of timelines existed? Was Milo always planned to be from another timeline? Or was that a plot point you decided on once the divergent timelines idea became more concrete in the plot? Also, as always sprinkling on top, Eric, what the fuck?
Julia: Eric, tell us your secrets. Eric, tell us your secret.
Eric: And for this particular after party, I am so, I have these two wolves inside of me. One is like, wow, I want everyone to see how much I've planned and the other one says, does it ruin the drama and fun when people don't know what I have had planned or not? So I'm very, like, I'm nervous to share some of this stuff. Especially as we get into the Knight of Mirrors talk as we will in the second half of this episode.
Amanda: Eric, I thought your two wolves were named I love rye bread and fuck caraway seeds.
[Julia laughs]
Amanda: It's just, it's just a joke for Eric.
Brandon: They're required in the bread!
Eric: Brandon, they taste like garbage.
Julia: It does taste like trash.
Eric: Also, Jewish rye bread does not have caraway seeds.
Julia: That too.
Eric: Fuck.
Julia: Eric, can I make an argument for please tell us your secrets as a fellow DM.
Eric: Please, please.
Julia: I have a lot of anxiety about kind of, like, making decisions that are going to impact the rest of the campaign. Like, not at the beginning of the campaign.
Eric: Sure.
Julia: So, like knowing that maybe you made these decisions later on as, like, opportunities presented itself and being flexible with the plot points that you're dealing with here would be very reassuring.
Brandon: Hmm, I like that. Can I also make another argument, an additional argument?
Julia: Not if it's about caraway seeds.
Brandon: Give me. Give me.
Eric: Okay, if that's what people actually want, and it doesn't, like, spoil --
Amanda: No.
Eric: -- what I'm doing later, I will definitely do that. Yeah, here's my biggest DM advice is take every episode, bit by bit. Imagine that people make anime or cartoons, like they do. Imagine they actually do it one episode of the time and, and look at each one and see what happened there. And then change what you're doing or plan the next session accordingly because you want to be flexible like that. So, I'll say no. I might, I might not have done timelines, I did not know that Milo was going to be from another timeline. I had it here, this is gonna be way back. I had thoughts that Milo was going to be a villain's child that could have come up if we, if I ended up pressing on that a little bit more, but Gutenberg has really, like, subsumed this entire story. I would not have made him Gutenberg's child, but if there was, like, another villain that would have popped up, he could have been like that. It wouldn't have mattered, he just kind of came from, from nowhere, which was another thing I think that Brandon was touching on, like, a different sort of representation of what adoption was like, yeah, your birth parents live in Oregon, and they were 17 when they got, when they got together. The age doesn't really matter. And maybe they're, like, super, one of them superheroing on the Pacific coast, but that's really it. Like, it could have been non-consequential. I had a lot of ideas, but I think that as this timeline thing came together, I was thinking of that and then even within the timeline thing I'm like, do I want this to be a villain's kid? That was a thing that I was, I was thinking about. Like, Gutenberg wasn't the big bad in the other timeline. It was something maybe a little bit more straight up like a Dr. Doom-esque pair of parents or a couple that would have been trying to turn Laketown city into an independent country or something like that.
Brandon: Dr. and Doom, they got together.
Julia: There need to be more villain, like, couples in comics.
Eric: Dr. and Mr. Doom would have been your parents, Brandon. So I was struggling with a lot of that stuff but I think that the thing I, we ended up doing which is the Fitzgeralds giving them up. I wanted the Fitzgeralds to still be together. That was a really big thing for me that they --
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: -- As Anubis said. They're at Legal Seafood right now, that shit was very important to me. And I wanted, I definitely wanted to touch on that, that they were still together even though this, this hard thing happened.
Brandon: Is alternate timeline-Gutenberg bad guy named Glutenberg? And it's, it is bad for people to say?
Amanda: Bread magnet?
Julia: Brandon.
Eric: Yeah.
Brandon: Yeah?
Eric: Brandon, why did you cut that? That was in the episode.
[Brandon chuckles]
Brandon: Yes, Julia?
Julia: Brandon, sometimes you just say things and I'm like.
[Eric laughs]
Julia: Yeah, okay. Sure. Why not?
Eric: I forgive him because it's 8:30am where he is. And I think that that's good. I think that's just great.
Brandon: You're getting unfiltered Brandon at 8:30am, baby.
Eric: That was a thing that I realized. I did want Gutenberg's plan to have developed further because Preserver--
Brandon: They don’t like gluten!
Amanda: Like, uh, like Adele. Exactly.
[Brandon laughs]
Eric: Like, just like, Adele.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Right, because Preserver was more interested in creating the Preservation Society and being, like, a real street level sort of thing like fighting robbers, and the regular maybe, the regular, smaller crime that was happening in Laketown City, so Gutenberg was kind of allowed to do whatever the fuck he wanted for a while. Like, I can't imagine that a lot of the work that you've done looking into his shit, and figuring out who he was, would have happened with the Preservation Society because they were more interested in like, I don't know probably what maybe, like, replacing policing or releasing, like EMT services and helping directly helping with that. That's more what I felt about, like, the Preservation Society was, was about preserving Laketown city and helping citizens directly in that way.
[Julia hums in agreement]
Amanda: Makes total sense. And then finally, Jay Wilts 207 says, The players in Join Hands IX seems to take most of the reveals in this episode cooly, were you actually kind of, like, flipping out inside like the rest of us, or just so focused that you had to kind of take it in stride?
Julia: I feel like maybe our responses came across as cool because we were trying to pump information out of Eric and if we spent too much --
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: -- flipping out, we wouldn't have had as much time. And we're also, like, under a time crunch. We had the pizza pies kind of filling in as we did every question in every roll. And that wasn't, that was stressful, so I just wanted to like, you know, when you're, like, very focused during a crisis? That's how I felt during that episode.
Brandon: It's like we're an escape room. We're in focus mode, you know?
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Yes.
Eric: I did intentionally put that in because you guys needing to roll damage every single time.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: That was, that was part of, that was definitely part of that. I wanted to put a time pressure and I was doing my fucking best to throw you off the trail by making the Knight of Mirrors a sentient motorcycle.
Julia: Like, what? No, focus!
Amanda: Right now focus focus, but I mean no, but after, you know, as soon as we kind of end the episode and stop rolling, it's like, Oh my god. Like, I can't believe what happened. I mean, it was, it was so exciting, but yeah, I think Julia that's the perfect thing where you know, like, someone's, someone's having a baby and you don't celebrate and talk until the baby is born because in the meantime, there's a lot to do.
Julia: Correct.
Amanda: And that's, that's kind of how it felt.
Brandon: I do also remember, just personally, I was exhausted that day for some reason, I don't think I slept well, so I couldn't, couldn't bring the emote, you know? I couldn't bring myself to emote as much, but on the inside, I was just going.
[Brandon screams]
Brandon: Continually.
Amanda: But I think that actually worked out really well. Like, I think, you know, from my outside perspective, you know, Milo having a really lovely life and not kind of looking into his backstory and birth parents from a place of lacking, but from just a kind of curiosity, I think is lovely. And, you know, to what you guys were saying earlier, not, not a thing that we see a lot where, you know, adoptees are coded as, like, fundamentally kind of broken or have a missing part, which certainly are some people experienced, but it is not kind of the totality or, or the universal experience of adoption. So yeah, maybe you were sleepy, but I think it, it worked really well, where, you know, as you were describing that, like, I had tears in my eyes. It was, it was amazing. Like, Julia and I were both sitting here, you know, kind of being like, wow, like this is, you know, profound and moving. And I can't believe we're learning it.
Eric: Yeah, I also did not know necessarily what I was going to do, because Milo didn't go through the mirror. And I think that Anubis maybe felt the same way I did.
[Brandon chuckles]
Eric: Where Anubis was like, Hey, man, you're gonna die when the ceiling comes down on you because you're doing a four person puzzle by yourself while the ceiling is going to crush you. You should come with me and sit down on my couch. And let-- you need to dea-- and you need to deal with this right now.
Amanda: I fully appreciate one the hint and help from Anubis and the backstory, but Eric, I would, I already had plans to get to that puzzle.
Eric: No, you would have died.
Brandon: No. No, I would have made it baby. I had.
Eric: Oh okay.
Brandon: I have a plan for every gate.
Julia: Tell us. Tell us the plans for every gate.
Brandon: Well, I don't remember it now, Julia.
Julia: Well, why not?
[Amanda chuckles]
Brandon: Because I don't remember everything.
Eric: Sorry, let me look at my notes. Oh, I'm the controller of reality. Oh, no.
Brandon: If you had kept to the rules as which you laid them out, I would have gotten through every gate.
Eric: Honestly, with that thing, if that's another thing that could have happened, you guys were gonna go escape that way. It was-- you would have to go through five gates and you only had, like, three turns to do it. So truly, statistically, you, I don't know if you were able to, you would not have been able to do it.
Brandon: Eric doesn't like it when I say I solved his gate puzzle.
[Julia laughs]
Eric: That's not what it is. It's not what happened.
Amanda: Do you know this needs? Just kind of like smooth the tension here>
Brandon: More guac?
Julia: More guac?
Amanda: A lot of guac.
Eric: Yeah!
Amanda: I'll be right back.
Eric: Yay.
[midroll sfx pings]
Eric: Hey, it's Eric. I got a new woefully sweatshirt that I am really loving. It's super soft. It is oversized. I'm actually wearing it right now. And there's something about finding a piece of clothing that is just soft and nice and good. Everything feels like it's like slim fit and, like, adhered to your body. Sometimes you just want something pillowy, and I found that in a sweatshirt. Welcome to the midroll. I'm a crew sweatshirt, usually for life, but this hoodie is really comfy. And I get to put my hands in a pocket like I'm a kangaroo. I like that. First and foremost, welcome to our newest patrons over at patreon.com/jointhepartypod. Hello to Lilith, Ben, Indie. You are helping us get to this goal of 600 patrons. Remember, if we get 600, we're gonna have this massive poster of all the PCs and NPCs from Campaign II. And we are kind of, like, rounding it all out because we are nearing the end of this campaign, so we really want to hit that. But if you're not convinced by that goal, remember, if you become a patron, you get so much bonus content. You get party planning, our bi-weekly bonus podcast of just kicking it in games, where we just covered everything that you might have missed in the Office of Technology Assessment. There was also our exclusive live show we did just for patrons that you can only get if you're a patron. There are also playlists, there also NPC stories, there is a whole lot more. If you want to help us get to that patron goal of 600, plus want to get a lot of stuff for your trouble, go to patreon.com/jointhepartypod and become a patron or if you are a patron tell someone else to join up. It's just that simple. I think you should check out the other shows that are part of the Multitude Collective. I think you'd really like the Queer Movie Podcast. The queer movie podcast is a queer movie watch party hosted by Rowan Ellis and Jazza John, two of my favorite people working in internet media right now. Join them as they research and rate their way to the Queer Film canon one genre at a time from romcoms to slashers, contemporary arthouse cinema, to black and white classics. The queer movie podcast is a celebration of all things gay that is in the copy that is five A's on the silver screen. You should check out the most recent episodes. They did a deep dive into Best Picture Oscar front runner, Power of the Dog with Benedict Cumber, I haven't been on Tumblr in so long I couldn't think of a name to make a joke about, their episodes exploring movies that made people queer with their various guests and there are the movie hot takes you're looking for. Make this your new movie podcast. New episodes every other Thursday, you got to check it out. We are sponsored this week by Athletic Greens, it is sunnier for longer, and I'm feeling the difference. And maybe the entire United States is going to get on board and abolish the change for daylight savings and we're going to feel the sun more. Our environment affects us in all different types of ways. And that's something I'm noticing more and more as I get older and, like, I can't just sleep for three hours and drink three cups of coffee and I'm fine. Some people need to call about it like I do and just figure it out, but other people are making choices to make themselves feel better by taking multivitamins or supplements to get their bodies those nutrients. If you do, if you're one of those people, it's important to choose one with high quality ingredients your body can absorb. So to make it easy, check out Athletic Greens, they're going to give you one free year supply of immune supporting vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. All you got to do is visit athleticgreens.com/jointheparty. Again, that is athleticgreens.com/jointheparty. We are also sponsored this week by BetterHelp Online Therapy. Relationships take work, a lot of us will drop anything to go help someone we care about, but do we do this for ourselves? There are plenty of ways that you can take care of yourself, you can get a nice coffee, you got to treat yourself a little bit. You can make a bedtimes who actually go to sleep at the time that you need, you can tell yourself that you were doing too much, like trying to pull your friend who lives out in the woods and is only invested in magic and more specifically bone magic trying to help her, no you're going to put a boundary in that relationship and maybe stop talking about the bone witch so much on your podcast. BetterHelp this month wants you to remind you to take care of yourself because the most important relationship you have is the one with yourself and your brain. BetterHelp Online Therapy offers video, phone, and even live chat sessions with your therapist, so you don't have to see anyone on camera if you don't want to. It's much more affordable than in-person therapy and you can be matched with a therapist in under 48 hours. Give it a try and see why over 2 million people have used BetterHelp online therapy to help themselves. This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp and Join the Party listeners can get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com/jointheparty. That is B-E-T-T-E-R-H-E-L-P.com/jointheparty. And now, back to the show.
[midroll sfx pings]
Amanda: Alright everybody, we have our individual guacs prepared to our preferences, varying levels of red onion, lime, chili flakes, etc. Insert your favorite guac add-on here.
Julia: Super lime-y.
Amanda: You know I've been in recently for guac, which I recommend --
Amanda: What?
Brandon: -- everyone give it a try. If you can get, like, $20 either molcajete or like mortar and pestle.
Eric: Yeah.
Brandon: Really, you know, not anything expensive. You cut up, dice up the onion as much as you want, dice up the jalapenos as much as you want. Put some salt in there and then smash them up. And so it's, like, more of like a paste. And then, and then add your avocado, smash those up. That's just good.
Julia: Mmh.
Amanda: I love it. It's like we've really reunited here. This was good. This is good.
Eric: Oh no, I'm the master of reality. And Brandon's guacamole has peas in it like the New York Times recommended that one time.
[Brandon chuckles]
Amanda: Alright, folks, we have a whole other dang episode to talk through. which was episode 53, all of our loose ends. Eric, I love this title. How did you come up with it? Why, why did this feel like the loose ends entanglement for you?
Eric: It was the day before the episode was gonna come.
[Amanda laughs]
Eric: And I forgot I didn't put the title of this but it was entanglements, but I-- looking back on what we did here, there were a lot of things that were dangling before kind of we are going off of the ski jump that is the end of the podcast. And I did think that we were, we were tying things up as, as you'll see from as you all heard from this episode.
Julia: Can I nip a question in the bud given that --
Amanda: Sure.
Julia: -- we're talking about --
Eric: Sure.
Julia: -- this being loose ends. Eric, in that episode or before that episode, expressed that to us being like, hey, if there's some stuff that you kind of want to do before we kind of get into the final stretch of the campaign, here's where you do it now. And so a lot of people were like, Well, why didn't you guys check your friends/loved ones/like family members with the glasses? And that's because, like, we were doing other things. Full long campaign things that I wanted to make sure that we're done before that.
Amanda: We also decided not to do it for, like, Hitomi and my friends for a reason that I can't remember.
Julia: I think Eric, like, straight up told us don't worry about those people.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: To that point, yes. I had said some stuff that didn't end up on the microphone. Hitomi does not, is not made out of pixels.
[Julia cheers]
Eric: I'm not. I'm not fridging Julia's girlfriend.
Julia: Thank you.
[Amanda laughs]
Eric: That's what it came down to is that there were people I didn't want to fridge, for example, Milo's friends and Val's girlfriend, I didn't want to fridge, because it felt, that just felt bad. I also did that in Campaign I, where Inaros' girlfriend was mind controlled. I didn't want to do that again. That was also the thing I accidentally did, because Hitomi called Val, instead of being, Hitomi being there, so Val would have seen Hitomi with the glasses on. That was a continuity thing that I did by myself, but I didn't want to fridge up on a bunch of people just to turn that around. There are plenty of other people who I can turn around on all of you. And I think that's unfortunately, a lot of those people are confusingly related, or friends with Aggie, so who have come out of nowhere and kind of disappeared, so we're going to look, but we will look into that.
Amanda: We'll get to it. We'll get to it.
Eric: We had opportunities, but I really wanted to as we do in entanglements, each player gets a chance to figure out something that they had been looking into, and I really wanted to push on that. We have that really sweet scene of Hank, Hank and Milo, Aggie and the favor. And then of course, Val, talking to the Knight of Mirrors.
Amanda: So Julia, you were very clear from the beginning that your loose end you wanted to tie up was the Knight of Mirrors.
Julia: Yes.
Amanda: So, how uh, how did you feel about how everything went down?
Julia: This has been my theory for a very long time. And before this arc started, Eric gave me a little, little nugget there that was like, Oh, this Kathleen, Debbie stuff is important. I'm gonna follow up on it when we finish this heist. And so.
Brandon: A little crumb.
Julia: It felt very rewarding, and very, very nice to know that I as someone in the Discord said that I managed to solve this mystery, even with Val's thembo stats.
[Amanda and Eric laugh]
Julia: Which is true. I will also say that I felt really kind of awkward about it after it was, like, this was what that reveal was because I went into the situation thinking that it was a family thing, because the phone call led to Salimony. And so I feel kind of bad that Val didn't invite Aggie and Milo with them --
Amanda: I don't know. We were doing other stuff.
Julia: -- because I wanted there for that reveal as well. And I feel weird about it.
Brandon: I think it makes. I appreciate that, but I think it makes much more sense if the Knight of Mirrors revealed themselves to just, like, one person and the one is --
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: -- hot on her trail.
Amanda: That makes sense for what we've known of the Knight of Mirrors. We've always had fun, like, I've had fun interactions with them kind of one on one. And also, it let me feel like a listener for a minute. Like, I got to sit back and watch the scene which was really fun.
Brandon: I got to see Eric take off a helmet in real life and --
[Amanda laughs]
Brandon: -- release his flowy hair.
Eric: Yes, shake out the long hair that I've had pinned up for how many episodes now. Oh, man. What a, what a life. What a time.
Amanda: Tell us everything, Eric, because for the duration of this podcast, there has been one thing of continuity and probably it's like January, you know, no one can harm our son. But secondly, it's been who the hell is the Knight of Mirrors. So, a bunch of people asked a bunch of questions. This, we chose one from Hakuna your-- your Potatas.
[Brandon chuckles]
Amanda: Eric, did you always plan to reveal the KoM's identity? Or was that prompted by our guesses meaning folks in the discord and on social? Did you know who the KoM was from the first time they were introduced?
Brandon: I also want to know what, at what level of stress you felt for the past, like, two years of like, oh shit, I gotta land this Knight of Mirrors motorcycle.
Eric: Oh, boy. Okay, there are a few different things that I want to say here. I'm gonna start with me and then I'm going to go into Priya Moon, the character and what they were doing behind the scenes which again, another DM tip, treat your very important NPCs like they're people. When they're not on screen, they're doing stuff. That is very much something that helps and when you play your NPCs as characters and not as DM devices, things go in very fun ways. I had known that the Knight of Mirrors was a person who existed in Laketown city who was going to keep their identity safe at all costs from episode one. When they showed up trying to help you all fight in the bank fight, I knew there was a person inside of the Knight of Mirrors armor and they were going to pretend like they were Superman to throw you off the scent. And that is where they were going to begin. They were going to have the, the, the mechanic voice where they're gonna call you citizen. It was gonna be the whole thing. I knew that from the beginning.
Amanda: So, never someone else we knew, never like I don't know, I'll figure it out later, never a sentient motorcycle?
Eric: I never. No, definitely not a sentient motorcycle.
[Julia chuckles]
Eric: I only did that specifically to throw y'all off the trail and to distract you during episode 52. I knew it was a person, this person came more into focus as the episodes went on. I knew they were going to be a wheelchair user from the beginning. I thought it was really interesting that they were going to use a motorcycle as their main thing. I kind of started to seed some of that stuff in by making sure that the tires were very large so that they could stand upright. And Priya's power is uh, I've named it Pact Bonding in the way that, you know, in My Hero Academia, you just fucking name a power regardless of what it actually does, where they can have full control over one item then you can switch that, like, you are bonding to a magic item as you might know from Dungeons and Dragons. So, like if Priya had, like, a baton in her hand and she, she bonded with it after spending, like, some amount of time, like, turning it over in her hands, threw it in the air covered her eyes turned around, she could put her hand down and grab it. So, that was also somebody saying of, like, her in a desk chair kind of like bouncing around was, so that's her power was Pact Bonding. So, that was her relationship with this cool, with this cool motorcycle that she put together and built with some.
Brandon: Oh, she built it.
Eric: I was really-- She had, like, put it together. She had, like, put it together and gotten it souped up and all, and all that stuff.
Julia: Kind of like how, like, a middle aged man buys a really rundown old muscle car and then puts it back together.
Amanda: Julia, if you just want to call me out for my future self then just say it.
Julia: I'm doing it.
Eric: Brandon has been recording from inside of a Mustang this entire time. Not that she, she's not, like, an artist. She's not like Lou or Dr. Morrow. She didn't build it but it was like this was not like a kit. The motorcycle itself wasn't sick to start with. The, she, like, modded it out and put all of the Knight of Mirrors reflection stuff on it. So, I knew that. I worked with Mischa Stanton, our good friend, senior editor at Multitude, consultant for Join the Party when I need, when I needed to talk to someone about my notes and things. I really wanted to make sure that Priya was someone, like, interesting, and that this was not, like, a metaphor for her disability was a really big thing that I was dealing with because, like, I did want her to ride a motorcycle because the motorcycle was sick, but I didn't want that to be, like, a stand in for a wheelchair or like, you know, the Daredevil thing where you lose one sense and the other ones get better. I didn't want that. So we'd, we'd worked on this a lot, which is also kind of like as we revealed how as Priya said, like, her joints are bad and she can walk but she would rather not.
Amanda: Like lots of wheelchair users and people in pop culture in the world are big dicks about it, so I was glad to see that the reality of, like, lots of people who use assistive mobility devices depicted here.
Eric: Yeah, I tried to move away from that with the thing with the motorcycle having standing up on itself because they didn't want, like, she could have put her foot down if she wanted to. But like she had enough control over the motorcycle that she didn't have to because it's so uncomfortable. Why would you do it if you didn't want to?
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: The thing that turned for me, so we're getting into Priya the person, is that I feel like at different times y'all didn't know how to feel about the Knight of Mirrors especially when we started the mob arc and dealing with Bone's body as she was rooting around in the juice dumpster and just, like, being around and stuff. Like, she, I was, this was during my Teen Titans binge. I've thought of her as a Red X character.
[Julia hums]
Eric: As someone who was just, like, I'm going to do what I'm going to do because I'm good at it. And like, if you want to help me do and if you don't want to help me then get out of my way or I'm going to run you over. She very much an anti-hero who's just, like, kind of doing her own thing. And I was modeling a little bit off of Batman as the greatest detective ever, which is as I found deeply very funny. She became someone who's, like, only thing and maybe this is kind of reflected in the, the new Batman movie that just came out of like.
Brandon: You're flustered.
[Julia laughs sarcastically]
Brandon: Oh.
Eric: Bang, it reflected in her thing was that she, her only thing was doing this. Like, her hobby was crime fighting and being a sleuth. And then she got very much subsumed in and it and was, like, the only thing that was going on with her because, like, as I said, when this, you keep getting deeper and deeper in the secret, what do you say you can't tell someone at some point. And that was what ultimately, after all this happened, y'all revealed yourself. She was like, you know, you guys are my emergency contact. Someone needs to know who I am. And that, that is kind of how it revealed and yeah, she revealed herself to Val because Hitomi and Val were hot on their trail and figured out the Kathleen Debbie thing because she wanted to be at the gala, but had to.
Amanda: It's just a person, yeah.
Eric: But as just a person. She wanted to see what was ha-- She wanted to see what was going on.
Amanda: Cool.
Julia: I still laugh every time I think about, I have a family. Ooh.
[everyone laughs]
Eric: I have to go see the wife. Oh my god. I was just.
[Amanda laughs]
Eric: I was like, yeah, Priya is gonna be so fucking awkward trying to throw you all off the trail by making you think that, like, the Knight of Mirrors was, like, a 40-year-old retired detective or something who has a life. And I was very clear about that. And then of course she showed back up during the gala. She walked in with Hitomi. I think she got too close to Hitomi because she wanted to do something fun for once. And that's ultimately what burned her. Was that you, you guys followed the Kathleen Devery thing, and you showed up at the college. She did not see that one coming. So, she's like, Fuck, I'm gonna have to reveal myself to, to Val here. And that's, that's what happened.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: Do you know what the final odds were on someone? I guess it was someone at the gala?
Amanda: There was some debate as to whether this was somebody we met at the gala but was not named, which I think is the right answer, or just kind of somebody in Laketown city.
Julia: Someone did also guess Kathleen Debbie, which I feel like they get credit as well.
[Brandon hums in agreement]
Amanda: Oh, yes, you're right.
Eric: Okay. These were the final odds. Thank you, Maureen, once again for being our bookie. I'm sorry that you got really invested in something and it only happened for three weeks.
[Brandon laughs]
Eric: 5 to 1 on someone we haven't met yet. 5 to 1 on someone we did meet at the gala. I think that one is, like, taking the line or like doing, like, a cursory bet on something instead of actually betting who it actually was. 9 to 1 on Dez. 10 to 1 on Lucas. 12 to 1 on Fritz. 12 to 1 on Hank. 16 to 1 on Hitomi. 20 to 1 on someone from the alternate universe. That one got real hot over the last few episodes.
Julia: Got spicy.
[Amanda chuckles]
Eric: 21 to 1 on January. 30 to 1 on Preserver. That's interesting. 33 to 1 on a kit from Knight Rider situations i.e. sentient motorcycle. Sorry, I threw you off intentionally, that one's on me. 40 to 1 on specifically alternate universe Milo. 46 to 1 on one of Aggie's siblings. 61 to 1 on an alternate universe Val, so Vesuvius came in and redeemed themselves, maybe? 61 to 1 on Lou. 61 to 1 on alternate or current Sour Anthony.
Julia: Ugh.
Eric: 76 to 1 on Al Gore. 76 to 1 on Kathleen Debbie. I'm going to give the point to someone who guessed Kathleen Debbie because they didn't know that it was –
Amanda: Nice.
Eric: – that was a secret.
Julia: Shout out.
Eric: 76 to 1 on Tegan. 87 to 1 on Gutenburg. Raltz was going hard on that one and they kept telling me and I'm like I'm, oh, you're so, you're so incorrect. I'm so sorry. 102 to 1 on Dr. Morrow. 123 to 1 on Byron Zorn. 205 to 1 on a pixel person. And 619 to 1 on the time shark.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Yes!
Amanda: Man, if someone had actually put that on Kathleen, Debbie, they would be rolling in that bet.
Eric: Absolutely rolling.
Amanda: Congrats.
Eric: I know. You, you all were pretty far on, on the path there. Kathleen Debbie was the next string and Hitomi pulled on that string, didn't know what it meant, but then I think Priya kind of put it together a little bit and made it as a trap for Val, which is why Val ultimately showed up there.
Julia: Yep.
Eric: And of course, you did it where uh, where Milo and Aggie met with the Knight of Mirrors the first time.
[Amanda hums in agreement]
Julia: I still argue it would have been cool if she had, like, an apartment inside the lobster.
[Amanda giggles]
Julia: Really Teen Titans style.
Eric: Oh man, if only. That would, imagine having an apartment inside of something that's neon. Like, the outside is just glowing at all times
Amanda: Or like it's a that's the sort of elevator where you can go, like, under and then sideways into where your actual apartment is.
Julia: Like the Banksy apartment.
Amanda: Yes, exactly.
Eric: The Banksy apartment. Oh, man. Well, I hope you all enjoyed that mystery.
Julia: That was a very good one.
Eric: We, we've known it, Mischa and I have known this from, like, the, one of the first episodes, so it's, it's wild, knowing that everyone knows it now.
Amanda: And I have to confess that the only thing I knew about this campaign going in is that Eric, as the person who, like, keeps the accounting and the books for Join the Party, before we recorded the first episode of the show, asked for, like, budget to do a call with a sensitivity consultant, and their disability consultants. And so, you had that conversation with somebody, obviously, before you made the character Knight of Mirrors to make sure you, you know, avoided the tropes of, you know, oh, disability is a superpower. You know, it gets very boring, and people have a lot of legitimate problems with it, so that was, you know, two years and change ago.
Eric: That's right. I have the consulting with Kevin Snow at Brave Mule on Twitter, where we talked about what radiation would do to people and if it would make you have powers and how to deal with that. And also, I asked them a little bit about Knight of Mirrors stuff.
Julia: Cool.
Amanda: So, this whole time I've been like, I know, a little, a little inkling, which is why I never weighed into the debates. This for me was the huge event in sort of episode 53 but also Eric and I did a scene on microphone without you there Brandon or Julia. And I think you know, I mean Brandon, you didn't hear it until you edited it, right?
Brandon: Correct.
Amanda: Julia, you heard it when the episode draft was ready, so what did you think?
Julia: You know what, I love these kinds of moments where it's like everyone leaves the room. Here's a situation that's happening to just one character. I think those are my favorite, like, DM choice moments, so it was very cool.
Amanda: Yeah, my favorite thing, when my favorite board games to play is betrayal on the house on the hill, which we did, you do that as part of the game. You split up into two people and go into different rooms, so it was very exciting. Me and Julia had a very, very intellectually stimulating conversation that I will tell you nothing about.
Amanda: Oh!
Brandon: So, you can just wonder about that, listener.
Amanda: Oh...
Julia: I feel like there's a little snippet of it in the bloops, so if you get the blue you can, you hear something.
Eric: I was really, I was really stoked on being able to do that. I wasn't sure how to pose this to all three of you, which is why I was just like, Amanda, you have the choice of doing this. Yes or no. I think Brandon and Julia both said yeah.
Julia: Yeah, we're like fucking do it!
Amanda: Yeah, before even I was like, alright sure.
Julia: Mute yourselves.
[Brandon chuckles]
Eric: Yeah. I also want to say I chose Delaware because Delaware doesn't have any sales tax.
Amanda: Nice.
Julia: True.
Eric: That's why the, the, what do you call it, the server building was in Delaware.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Remember that thing that happened, like, a bunch of years ago that, like, Facebook was down for, like, two days because the servers were down but the servers were in, like, somewhere that was, like, five hours away from any major city and you needed, like, a special key card. That was like the thing that I had in my head.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: Love it. And then just a couple of final game and character questions before we meet spoil-ey corner, having learned a cornerstone with spoil-ey corner. It's a cornerstone less spoil-ey corner. What's going to be there? Let's see. Marina Enchantress of Mayhem would like to know in all caps, Eric, what is John Press' Myers-Brigg please? So funny.
Eric: Um, I looked this up. I did not take the quiz, but it doesn't matter because I'm sure that John Press lied so that he could tell people what it is.
[Julia hums in agreement]
Eric: So, he is ENTJ, which is the commander. I have a website up right now. His strengths, strong leadership skills, self-assuredness, well organized, good at making decisions, assertive and outspoken, strong communication skills. Weaknesses, impatient, stubborn, insensitive, aggressive, intolerant.
Amanda: That feels right.
Julia: Checks out.
Eric: That's the CEO one. If you don't have it, you're, you're evolutionarily not supposed to be a CEO.
Amanda: Well, fuck. Steph K would like to know how long in the JTP timeline has it been since the gala?
Eric: That is a great question. So, Join the Loop was over May 1st, so that was in late spring. It became a hot one during Join the Committee, so that was during this, that was during the summer. And I think that the rest of this kind of happens in the Fall. We're in Join Hands here because we kind of went back we were, like, one year out. And I think that now, we are kind of, like, sticking in this late Fall area where things are starting to get cold, you gotta put your jackets on. But yeah, no, I think we're, we're from the beginning of the campaign., I think we're more than a year in, so maybe like five. We're gonna probably end up, like, five seasons of Join the Party.
Julia: Gotcha.
Amanda: Love it. A year and a bit in the life of the LT3.
[Eric sings indistinctly]
Brandon: In Salt Water Taffy, Eric.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: That's right. I forgot.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Yeah.
Amanda: In lobsters, in pizzas, laughter and strife.
Eric: There's, Thornhill is still a coffee roastery in --
Julia: Oh thank god.
Eric: -- in uh.
Julia: The alternate timeline?
Eric: Here's the thing that I wanted to do. I really wanted the Thornhill CEO to also maybe Thornhill to tie in to some other stuff, but once Thornhill became a candy company, that I'm just like, No, we're not touching that.
Julia: You're lying, Brandon.
[Brandon giggles]
Eric: Yeah, I was thinking, I was thinking more about like, there's gonna be like a cabal of CEOs that were kind of conspiring together which was the whole thing about, like, Dr. Morrow, getting people to sign things that said they weren't going to leave and the companies were going to be all together, so but that never came up to fruition just from the, the path that we took.
Amanda: Alright, folks, it's time for the spoil-ey corner.
[horror sounds]
Brandon: There's guac everywhere.
Amanda: Alright, people. This one comes from Vicki Moo on Insta. In the first episode of Campaign II. Julia says she'll be upset at Dr. Morrow's the big bad. How long has this been brewing?
[Brandon and Eric laugh]
Julia: Uh-oh.
Amanda: Follow up, Is Gutenberg actually pixels and controlled by Dr. Morrow, which explains how she dealt with the Giga Bear??
Eric: Mmh.
Julia: Hmm.
Amanda: Who can say?
Brandon: Who can say?
Amanda: There are a bunch of spoil-ey corner questions that were just, like, variations on Monty.
Julia: Yes.
[Brandon chuckles]
Amanda: Who can say?
Eric: Yeah, yeah.
Amanda: I mean, yes, but also who can say? Slurrian says I need to know if they missed something in the room where Val broke the power.
[Eric laughs]
Julia: Okay, no, this is not a who-can-say because Eric answered this for me off mic.
Eric: I said, yeah, there was nothing in the room.
Julia: Okay. Thank you. Everyone's yelling at me about it. I'm just like, No, it was fine. I just didn't tell you guys that it was fine.
Amanda: Slurrian–
Eric: I kept it a secret. I didn't, I never told Julia while we were playing the game.
Julia: Oh, yeah. Yeah, no I asked, like, months after we recorded that episode and Eric's like "There's no there's nothing in the room. I just wanted to make you sweat." I'm like well I did. Congratulations.
Eric: Good. I did, I did my job.
Amanda: Slurrian characterized this as the biggest crime in d&d history and --
Julia: Cracked.
Amanda: -- yeah, Eric is a criminal.
Eric: That's fair.
Amanda: Alright. Is this really Dr. Morrow or Dr. Morrow made out of pixels?
Julia: Who can say?
Brandon: [sings] Who can say?
Amanda: Who else is made of pixels? Aggie's parents? Taylor Swift? That was from Mel118.
Julia: It's definitely Taylor Swift.
Brandon: I think that is Taylor Swift.
Julia: Yeah.
Amanda: Who can say? Valentine Cal says, I realized that the last episode is supposed to air May 3rd, but If we learned anything last year, is that the time loop starts on May 1st, so are we ever going to hear it?
[Julia laughs mischievously]
Amanda: See, you will never know if there was a time loop because if and when we break out of it, it'll just be May 2nd, which is a bad Monday right before good Tuesday.
Eric: Yeah, May 2nd is also my birthday so...
Amanda: That's true.
Eric: We should all celebrate that.
Amanda: Best Monday of all time.
Julia: Checks out.
Eric: I do think it's wild that the last episode is coming out the day after my birthday when I'm turning.
Amanda: Yay!
Eric: I'm turning 31/30 because of COVID.
Amanda: You're, you're a pandemic 29, honey.
Eric: Exactly.
Amanda: And finally, I'm going to end on a real thinker for us. This is from Spaceman Named Cats. Is Anubis god of death in all universes, or are there multiple Anubises in a group chat?
[Brandon laughs]
Amanda: I love this so much.
Brandon: I like to think that Anubis is in a group chat with himself.
Amanda: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Brandon: Don't think too hard about that one.
Julia: There's, there's one universe where St. Peter is legit. Just saying.
[Amanda chuckles]
Brandon: Just one timeline.
Julia: Just one.
Eric: Oh, sorry, Julia. I'm the, I'm the master of realities here. And none of the, no Christian mythology exists. Sorry. So sorry.
Amanda: What if every cat is, like, mentally in a group chat with Anubis? I think that would explain a lot of things when they're looking at, you know, at just, like, a wall and you think there might be a ghost Victorian child there. Instead, they're just catching up on the group.
Eric: They're getting a text from Anubis, yeah.
Brandon: They're getting a text from a ghost.
Amanda: Alright folks, we did it. We uncovered the Knight of Mirrors but there are so many more mysteries to go and just as a recap, as a reminder, we have five more story episodes and two more after parties ready to go. After this, there's going to be three weeks, three story episodes all in a row. They're all bangers. Enjoy them. Then we're going to have an after party then the last two story episodes and then the final after party of campaign II.
[Julia hums to the tune of The Final Countdown]
[Amanda chuckles]
Brandon: The real mystery is how deep is this bowl of guac. I will find it.
Julia: Well, you spread it out everywhere for some reason when we went into spoil-ey corner.
[Amanda laughs]
Eric: Brandon, the car that you're recording in is now covered in guac and now you're gonna have to clean it
Brandon: Why is everyone judging me all of a sudden?!
[Amanda laughs]
Eric: Well, I hope people still think I'm good at this even though my mysteries have been revealed. I legitimately, like, a little, a little toward on showing everyone this but so I hope everyone liked it.
Brandon: Well, I did.
Amanda: I liked it. The more we've learned about this universe, the more happy and proud I am to be a part of it. I'm so stoked and I can't wait for y'all to see what's coming.
Brandon: Same.
Eric: Hell yeah.
Brandon: [in a high-pitch tone] Bye guys!
Julia: Later.
Eric: Bye!
Amanda: May rolls trend ever upward.
[Join the Party theme music plays]
Transcribed by: John Matthew M. Sarong