Welcome back to the One Shot Derby, the character creation competition between three different TTRPGs! After we play all three games, The People will vote on the game in which we’ll play out the one shot.
This week, we’re taking another try at Fiasco, playing out professional murderists in a Coen Brothers movie!
Housekeeping
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Cast & Crew
- Game Master, Co-Producer: Eric Silver
- Co-Host, Co-Producer: Brandon Grugle
- Co-Host, Co-Producer: Julia Schifini
- Co-Host, Co-Producer: Amanda McLoughlin
- One Shot Derby edited by: Mischa Stanton
- Artwork: Allyson Wakeman
- Multitude Podcasts: https://multitude.productions
About Us
Join the Party is an 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. Hop into our current campaign, a pirate story set in a world of plant- and bug-folk, or marathon our completed stories with the Camp-Paign, a MOTW game set in a weird summer camp, Campaign 2 for a modern superhero game, and Campaign 1 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
[music]
Amanda (as Scout McGarry): The year is 1941. Nothing wrong is happening anywhere in the world. Hi!
Julia: Except for the Great War a couple years ago.
Amanda (as Scout McGarry): Hi! I'm Scout McGary, daughter of Scoot McGary, who is, himself, the son of Jerry McGarry. We're a radio family, and I'm here to announce and bet on and take lines where you can put down a deposit in tin because metals are hard to come by right now, for some reason. Hello. It's me, Scoot. Welcome to the One Shot Derby. [neighs]
Brandon: Now, I don't want to disagree with the lore, but didn't Scoot die or something?
Amanda (as Scout McGarry): Scout died, and so I'm Scoot.
Brandon: Oh, oh, Scout died.
Amanda (as Scout McGarry): Oh, no, you're right.
Julia: No, the opposite.
Amanda (as Scout McGarry): My daddy's name was Scoot, and my name is Scout.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: What deep lore! Because this is the second annual One Shot Derby, folks.
Brandon: Weeee!
Julia: Really kept to our canon real quick there, huh?
Amanda (as Scout McGarry): Do you like how my sign off is me doing a loving impression of my dearly departed late horse, Buttons?
Julia: Is that what that was?
Amanda (as Scout McGarry): [neighs]
Brandon: Oh, that's what that was. I thought that was just your laugh. Okay, okay, okay.
Eric: We— this is a problem. Like a nuclear reactor, Amanda is not hooked up to anything, so now she's just like— we're campaign-less, so she's just throwing nonsense out into the world.
Julia: This is how we got Dr. Bertha Bones!
Brandon: I am, for the first time, starting and watching Chernobyl, so I am horrified to see what comes next for Amanda.
Amanda: Oh, no!
Eric: Like the arc reactor in Iron Man's chest. Amanda just has energy flying in all directions. Luckily, we can, uh, funnel that into three possible One Shots that we will do because here in the One Shot Derby, the four of us, the friends at Join the Party, we're gonna do the character creation of three tabletop RPGs, and then you're gonna decide which one we're going to do fully as a full One Shot, which is available only on patreon.com/jointhepartypod. I'm so excited. I really loved doing the One Shot Derby last year, which is as evidenced from the fact that this episode is going to be based on a game that we did last time, but, like, I want another crack at it. This is so much fun. I do love making characters and being able to do that, like outside of the mini campaign or the full campaign structure, is wonderful.
Julia: Spoiler alert, I'm not going to try to do a British accent this time. I'm just not going to. I'm just not going to.
Amanda: Listen, Julia—
Eric: Bold.
Amanda: —because this is true on the current season of The Circle UK—
Julia: Oh, Amanda, yes!
Amanda: Or I suppose the just finished one, sociolinguistic Twitter and Bluesky is abuzz, Brandon, don't worry, I'm keeping you updated.
Brandon: Thank you.
Amanda: Because somebody is affecting a Welsh accent, because it was rated to be the most trustworthy among UK, like, citizens. And so—
Brandon: Smart.
Amanda: —they're attempting to— as of this time of this recording, not very well, but they are attempting to use the Welsh accent to their benefit.
Julia: But isn't someone Welsh on the show?
Amanda: Someone Welsh is on the show and is like, "I don't know about that accent."
Brandon: Yeah, that's a really hard accent to do.
Amanda: Yeah, it is.
Eric: Well, yeah, I have more dispatches from 2025. This is the first episode that we're recording in 2025.
Amanda: That's right.
Eric: And I feel like we have to give some updates on what happened over New Year's.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Eric: Amanda's cousin, Thomas—
Amanda: Doesn't listen to the pod.
Eric: —doesn't listen to the pod, but he's really been liking our clips.
Amanda: He is our biggest fan on Instagram.
Julia: Great.
Brandon: Oh.
Amanda: And he said to me, quote, "You know, Eric could really do standup." And I'm like, "Oh, thank you. That's great." And he's like, "Yeah, I really like it when the girl with the hair to the side and the ginger play off of him."
Julia: Thank you. Hey, Thomas, thank you.
Eric: Amanda, that's so funny.
Amanda: He's like, "Amanda, and you're just there being like, 'Can we get back to business?'" And I said, "Thomas, that's not what I'm like."
Julia: Maybe only in the clips that we're posting, Thomas, but that's not what it usually is.
Brandon: That's really good. Tell Thomas I'm not a ginger. I just don't have any hair at all left to prove it.
Julia: It's red down here, buddy. It's red down here.
Amanda: The remaining hair is red and so I think the ginger community accepts you.
Eric: I like this, though, because I want to pair this with, like, one of Brandon's family members, probably our longest patron, Brandon's dad, to describe me and Amanda in that sort of way, and then we can just have a full kind of—
Amanda: A set, yeah.
Eric: —set of all of that. I also gotta give a shout-out to one of our clips. Julia, the one where you yelled about globe of invulnerability, is doing numbies on Instagram.
Julia: It’s almost at 60k.
Eric: People keep yelling at each other about multi-classic in the comments.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: Ideal. This is rage baiting, and we're doing it now in 2025. It's one of the things that happen when you pass the silver anniversary of a century.
Julia: Yeah, you rage bait.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: All right, so those were my missives from 2025.
Amanda: Yeah. What happened to you guys? Anything notable?
Brandon: Here's a missive from 2025 but from the future of 2025.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: Oh, no. The world imploded.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: Oh.
Brandon: We're done.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: Oh.
Brandon: Everyone's dead.
Julia: Sad.
Brandon: So look out, October 31st.
Julia: Hey. No, not my holiday!
Eric: Oh, wait. Did we ever figure out— Julia, did we ever figure out what happened in your dream?
Julia: Yeah, no, nothing happened that I can—
Amanda: Nothing happened that day?
Julia: No, my mom was in town, and I did have a really weird sense of deja vu. I was at her house, and I was looking at the water, and I was like, "Huh." That was about it.
Eric: That's good. I feel like we avoided a crisis somewhere in the multiverses–
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: –where, Julia, you had a dream about, like, December 17th and we canceled a recording that day.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: And then you're— you wrote down that you had a dream about that day.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: So I'm glad that we avoided whatever kind of a horrible fate was supposed to be then.
Julia: I do think maybe I died in another timeline.
Brandon: Oh!
Amanda (as Scout McGarry): Well, it's mid-1941 and nothing bad is ever gonna happen to me or America. It's me, Scout. My real name is Samantha.
Julia: Oh!
Amanda (as Scout McGarry): This is just a cute nickname, because I have a short haircut. People think I'm a lesbian.
Julia: I was gonna say, did your dad want a boy?
Amanda (as Scout McGarry): He wanted a boy. He died without resolving the things we had between us. And so did Buttons.
Julia: Fair, fair.
Eric: The CGI sparks from the arc reactor is just going in all directions.
Amanda: Hi, it's me, Amanda, not Scout anymore. So we are, in fact, doing the One Shot Derby, where we are competing to see which of these three different role-playing games we are going to actually play a One Shot of for our patrons. Now, we're going to play the character creation sections of each of these games. You are going to listen to it here on the feed this week and for the next two weeks after it. And then you can vote on Patreon, anyone for free, about which one you want to see us play a full length game of, but the only people who get to listen to the full length game, it's the patrons, folks, paid patrons. You gotta join.
Brandon: Oh, I thought you're gonna say it's just me and Julia.
Julia: Yeah, we just get to hear them.
Amanda: That'd be really fun. Actually, over the break, so one thing that happened to me during the New Year's break, Eric, is I didn't work for seven consecutive days for the first time in perhaps eight years.
Brandon: Whoa.
Amanda: Which was incredible. And I had a creative idea, and I was like, "How fun would it be to just make a little clip of audio and, like, I just, like, record something and do something to it?" And then I pass it around to, like, different people, and each person can add to it, but they can't take away. Like, how interesting would that be? If just we had a little, like, chain letter, chain email situation—
Brandon: That is fun.
Amanda: —of, like, just each person, like, adding a little thing, like a little letter to each other. Anyway, I can do that for the two of you, but only paid patrons can listen to the One Shot.
Brandon: Right, right, right.
Julia: I'm into that.
Brandon: That's cute. We should do that.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: I like that.
Amanda: I think so.
Eric: If you give me $50,000 of unmarked bills, I will make sure no one else can hear the episode other than the person who gave it to me.
Julia: Okay. I'm actually cool with that.
Eric: I think it's fair.
Amanda: So Eric, which game are we starting with today, and how do we play?
Eric: We are going to do Fiasco.
Julia: Again!
Brandon: Weeee!
Eric: Again, Fiasco, deuce. Fiasco— for those of you who remember from the first One Shot Derby, is a very foundational tabletop RPG, kind of. It cemented the no GM vibes. Again, I don't think it's first, but it's definitely the one that people reach to the most when they want to do, like, straight up storytelling, where everyone is on the same level. It is the game that you use to make Coen's brothers movies, which is where your characters are flawed and trying their best. I think the way that they describe it is high goals, low impulse control—
Amanda: Hmm.
Eric: —for all the characters.
Julia: Oh.
Eric: And the way that you play is the same, but they have these things called playsets, which sets you kind of in the genre or the movie that we're talking about. Last time we did an Arctic sort of vibe.
Julia: So good.
Eric: Very—
Amanda: Penguin mafia, ooh.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: God, I still think about that all the time.
Eric: It would have been really fun. It was like The Thing meets Fargo, which I was really, really excited about. That was in the Fiasco book. It comes with a few playsets. But the thing is, Fiasco has been a while— around for, like, 15, 20 years and Jason Morningstar, great name, by the way.
Amanda: Great name.
Julia: Cool name.
Eric: He's out here making and editing playsets from tabletop RPG creators to come by his transom and him to go, "Yep. Great job, guys. I definitely want people to play this." So I found this one from an expansion called Run, Fools, Run, three Fiasco playsets by Morningstar and Segedy. This— it's designed by Jason Morningstar and Steve Segedy. There are three that are about criminals, instead of, like, normal people with foibles, trying their best. This is like— these are bad people doing stuff, but I think in more of like a Tarantino sort of way, or at least in a Pulp Fiction sort of way, where we see the— not even like the humanity of them, but like the full scope of what they do as a person while doing bad things,
Amanda: Which I really love, Eric, because that doesn't exist in the real world and I really appreciate this sort of, like, weird escapism that I'm doing in my RPGs.
Julia: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
Eric: The playset we are going to use today is called the Murderists.
Brandon: Such a good name.
Eric: You're killers, professional murderists out to do some murdering. You might not get along, but you will get the job done with grace and skill. At least you would if one of you wasn't a goddamn snitch.
Amanda: Whoa.
Brandon: What?
Amanda: Who's the snitch?
Eric: We're gonna—
Brandon: I don't know.
Eric: We're gonna figure that out. We're gonna figure that out. I really love how Fiasco does this, because they always have a section called movie night. Lots of movies and sometimes TV shows that inspire this particular playset, the genre examples that you're pulling from to inform how we're going to do this. There are some really great movie nights here, like The Boondock Saints, Red, The Expendables, in Bruges, Ronin, Spy Game, Leon: The Professional, Grosse Pointe Blank, and The Wire, the TV show. I also want to add the John Travolta, Samuel Jackson sections of Pulp Fiction onto this as well.
Brandon: Hmm.
Eric: Like—
Julia: I feel like also Reservoir Dogs, probably.
Eric: Oh, yeah, Reservoir Dogs.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: That was— there were some other really good examples from the other playsets that's in here, but Reservoir Dogs is a really good informant here.
Julia: Cool.
Eric: So how do you feel about watching people who murder people in movies and seeing their stories? How do we all feel about this?
Julia: I mean, to be quite honest, I've seen one movie listed in the movie section, but yeah, I just— yeah, yeah, just The Boondock Saints and that's a whole other, like, kind of flavy in my mind, because it's so Bostonian. But, yeah, I don't dislike the genre, but— in any sense the imagination, but I just haven't seen a lot of these inspirations that they listed.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: I love the genre. I love movies and TV shows that are about people's professional competencies. And there it is— just like a delicious illicit thrill to watch people be very good at murdering people. Like anyone— I think I love when they murder bad people, of course. It is sad when they murder good people.
Brandon: Speak for yourself, Amanda.
Amanda: But, no, but like even the, like, flawed, but I really enjoyed the David Fincher, Michael Fassbender, like assassin, Netflix movie.
Eric: The Killer is an incredible movie. Just David Fincher doing David Fincher things. I had talked about this when I was doing Threelips' characterization of, like, how an assassin gets in their head that they are like, "I am a cold machine. I do everything like this in this exact way." But, of course, like they miss the— in the beginning of the movie, Michael Fassbender misses the shot, and he goes, "Fuck." And I think about— like, you cannot take out the human element, even as you think of yourself as a human weapon.
Brandon: Hmm. Hmm. Uh-hmm.
Amanda: Hmm. Yeah, the whole point is, like, this assassin is typically very good, and then makes a mistake, and then everything unravels.
Brandon: Yeah, I love that.
Julia: I'm into it.
Brandon: Yeah, I also love the genre, but ironically, I've also only seen one of the movies listed.
Amanda: You guys should watch in Bruges. It's really good.
Brandon: I was about to say, which is In Bruges, which is the only one I've seen.
Amanda: Yeah. Oh, good. Okay, okay.
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: I haven't seen that one, so I'll watch it.
Brandon: There are a few not aged well lines in there, but getting past that, it's a very good movie. But, yeah, no, I love this. I like— I used to be a huge Tarantino— not of the man, of the films.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: Yeah, for sure.
Julia: That's fair.
Brandon: Kill Bill, Hateful Eight. I went and saw Hateful Eight on the— what's— like, Eight Millimeter or whatever it is.
Amanda: Ooh, yeah.
Eric: Oh, the 70 millimeter— oh, did you see it in New York City at the— at Village East?
Brandon: Uh-hmm. I did, indeed.
Eric: I did that, too. Yeah.
Amanda: Guys.
Julia: Buddies.
Eric: That was sick as hell, dude.
Amanda: Oh, you were both there.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: The thing is like—
Brandon: I wonder if we were—
Amanda: You could have kissed.
Eric: The Village East is my favorite movie theater in New York City, because it has this massive ballroom, which they kept from, like, when going to the movies was worth going to a massive ballroom.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: And just showing a Tarantino Western on it was so— let's say, it had— did it have an intermission, Brandon?
Brandon: I think it did, yeah.
Eric: Yeah, like that felt very like old-timey.
Amanda: How about you, Eric?
Eric: I've been thinking about this— especially— because of Pulp Fiction, Amanda saw Pulp Fiction for the first time when we were in Ireland. We went to the Irish Film Society screening of, like, the anniversary of Pulp Fiction.
Brandon: That's awesome.
Julia: That's a wild way to watch Pulp Fiction for the first time.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: It was— and it was like in the movie theater, like it was a 4K restoration of it, which I thought was pretty cool. And I was thinking about this because also there was a two-part, like four and a half hour episode of The Rewatchables of it. So I've been thinking about it a lot, especially how much of an absolute heater Samuel Jackson is, and, like, fostering the weirdness of John Travolta and his comeback into Vincent, I thought was just really, really interesting. Especially, like, there's a part where Samuel Jackson, when they walk up to the apartment that they're going to do all the stuff, and where he says he's a bad motherfucker, and he does the Ezekiel line reading, where he says, "All right, we have to get into character." And, like, being able to see the assassins doing that as a job, the hit men do that as a job, and realizing there is a performative element even to that, when they spend a lot of time talking about Amsterdam and burgers before that, and like foot— and foot massages, I'm like, "Oh, this is all part of the thing."
Amanda: This is a bit.
Eric: Like this is all part of it and I'm— I want to use Fiasco as a tabletop RPG to play this out. And also the game mechanics— I mean, Jason Morningstar is an incredible tabletop RPG master, and there's some stuff in here that I'm very excited about, from, like, a crunchy game mechanics perspective, that I think is going to form, follow, function us a little bit.
Brandon: I think you just described Quentin Tarantino's triangle, it's—
Amanda: Ah.
Brandon: —cheeseburgers, feet massages, and what was the other one?
Julia: You could just say feet, Brandon. Let's be honest with each other here.
Amanda: The man likes feet.
Eric: And Amsterdam, yeah.
Brandon: And Amsterdam, yeah.
Eric: Yeah. I really do hope that if we do this, I'm gonna make a scene where we talk about a pop culture phenomenon while, like, cleaning a sniper rifle.
Amanda: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Eric: I will do that.
Amanda: Well, again, it's not up to us if we end up playing this all the way through. It's up to you, the listeners. So there is— there's never been a more democratic time, I'd say, in America in 2025, but mostly on the Join the Party Podcast.
Brandon: I agree. This is a direct democracy right here.
Amanda: Yes.
Eric: There's— there— yeah, we use— didn't we use weighted votes?
Amanda: You mean ranked choice voting?
Eric: Yeah, ranked choice voting. Yeah.
Amanda: Yeah. The other day, one of my friends at the bar was like, "You seem like the kind of person who would appreciate ranked choice voting." And I said, "Thank you, Matt. I am."
Julia: Correct. Good read. Good read, Matt.
Eric: All right. For those of you who don't know how to play Fiasco, here's how this is going to work. I'm going to roll 16 D6's, which is 4 D6's for each one of the players. And we're going to look at the whole pool of numbies there. Then we're going to take the numbies and use them to assign relationship bonds and some other details to each of our characters, uniting all of us in kind of a web. So you're supposed to have relationship bonds with the person to your left and the person to your right. For here—
Brandon: Hmm.
Eric: —yeah, it's going to Brandon is next to Amanda. Amanda is next to Eric, Eric is next to Julia, and Julia is next to Brandon. So—
Brandon: And Brandon is next to Brandon.
Eric: Brandon is always next to Brandon emotionally.
Julia: Uh-hmm. Brandon's always next to Brandon.
Brandon: I know, guys.
Amanda: Brandon, did you name the halves of your glasses, Brandon and Brandon?
Brandon: It's Brandon and Brandon. Woooo.
Julia: Woooo.
Amanda: What the fuck was that?
Julia: It's the song from Muppet Christmas Carol which—
Amanda: Oh, my God. You two are obsessed.
Julia: —has the two Marleys. Amanda, it's only January 3rd. I'm still thinking about Muppet Christmas Carol.
Amanda: No, no. I have no problem with you being obsessed all year long, but it's all you and Brandon ever talk about.
Julia: It's the only thing we have in common.
Brandon: To be fair, I did— I brought it up, Julia didn't necessarily know I was gonna—
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: —bring it up.
Eric: In the Muppet version of Join the Party, the only human in the room is actually Bren cutting our clips.
Julia: Yeah, it's true. It's actually true.
Brandon: Oh, we found Campaign 4, Eric.
Amanda: Ooh, I love it.
Eric: Pretty good. Okay, so here are the categories, the broad categories we're going to do. So there's relationships, so we're going to— each of us is going to have at least one relationship here, and it has like a headline, which you can assign a numbie to, and then there's details under that that we are going to assign numbies to. So all of us are going to have some relationship to each other. We might have a shared past. We might be friends. We might have a complicated relationship. We might be enemies. We might have a professional relationship, or we might have a family relationship, and each of those has specific details.
Amanda: So use one die to choose the category of relationship and then another later to choose the details.
Eric: Exactly. So each of us are going to have a relationship with each other, then each of us are going to have one of the three things I'm going to list. We might have a need that we are going to explore the characters with each other, a need to accept, a need to settle, a need to be, a need to nail, a need to live, or a need to love.
Brandon: Live, life, love.
Amanda: Live, life, love, nail.
Brandon: Live, life, love, nail.
Amanda: Brandon.
Eric: And then this is a modification from the traditional Fiasco playsets. Ordinarily, they would have locations and objects that would— that you would have to assign. Like, for example, in a very Coen brothers sort of way, maybe there is a car wash or a diner that people kind of congregate around. Or maybe there's an object, like a toucan or a shotgun.
Brandon: An HR representative?
Amanda: Oh, shit.
Eric: That would kind of, like, inform their relationship. But for the murderist playset, we have targets and we have methods of how the kill is going to go down.
Brandon: Hell yeah.
Eric: What's really interesting about this is that for locations and objects, they get— put on the board as something that all characters can play with, but it's attached to the relationship. So it's— so for example, Brandon and Julia's characters would be united around the car wash for some reason. But now, Brandon and Julia's characters would be united around the autocrat they're going to kill.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: And again, this is going to be the murder that all of us are— as a murderous team, we're going to be doing together, but they wrote it really interestingly in the information about this book. If the target is attached to your character's relationship, what does that mean? Do you have a connection to them? Do you have some sympathy for them? For some reason, professional or personal, the target of this particular job is extremely important to the two of you, more so than the rest of the crew. If the method is attached to your character's relationship, what does that mean? Maybe assembling the components and orchestrating the job falls to the two of you. Is it the actual killing your responsibility? Many of the methods are esoteric, or brutal, or both. How does your character feel about that? What happens if you mess up and don't use the required method?
Brandon: Love it.
Eric: It's cool that, like, the plot points of this assassins movie is attached to the relationship of two characters, which I think is very cool.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: And then finally, there will be a snitch. We will be assigning a snitch at the end of this game, so everyone hold on to that. The last thing we're going to do is everyone's going to name their characters, and then we're going to decide who is the snitch.
Julia: Cool.
Brandon: Cool.
Julia: Now, Eric, if I end up playing a Muppet, will you be mad at me?
Amanda: Is it okay?
Brandon: Will you be mad at me?
Julia: Is it okay?
Eric: Well, Julia, I'm not the GM of this game, I'm just a player. And as a player, I'm like—
Julia: I was asking you, my friend Eric, if I end up playing a Muppet—
Eric: Oh.
Julia: —will you be mad at me?
Eric: My friend Eric, yes, I will be mad at you.
Julia: Okay, cool. Okay, cool. Just checking.
Eric: But— of course, because, like, you know, don't feel like— as we figure this stuff out, don't feel like you need to be Jason Statham. Like you should— we're gonna be bringing character stuff like, be a dumb ass, be one last job, be— like, really start to think about what your characters could be like once we start introducing these relationship mods. So in every single game of Fiasco, the person who goes first is a person who grew up in the smallest town. However, we already had this debate last episode, but is there some— I would say—
Amanda: A person who owns the fewest pairs of jeans.
Brandon: I love that.
Eric: I was gonna say the person who's held the weirdest weapon could go first.
Brandon: Nope. Shut up, Eric, it's me.
Eric: Nope. It's the person who owns the least pair of jeans. You're absolutely right.
Julia: Okay. All right. I know how many jeans I own.
Brandon: Now, are we talking about actively wear or just, like, have in our closet?
Julia: Own, you own them.
Amanda: Own.
Brandon: Okay. Do they have to be blue jeans or just something like—
Eric: No, denim.
Amanda: Denim, denim pants.
Brandon: Denim pants? Okay.
Amanda: On three, we're gonna hold up our fingers. Fewest pairs goes first.
Brandon: Okay.
Amanda: All right, ready?
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: 3, 2, 1, reveal.
Brandon: 5.
Amanda: 6.
Julia: 5.
Eric: 0h, I'm at 4.
Amanda: Ooh.
Eric: I transitioned into a jogger-based lifestyle in 2020.
Julia: Hmm.
Eric: I have so many pairs of joggers, I have four pairs of jeans.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: I really fucked myself because I have a pair of jeans in my closet that have a giant-ass hole in them and I just haven't gotten rid of yet.
Eric: Hmm.
Brandon: And I could have tied Eric there.
Julia: I'm currently in the process of purging my clothing, so I also probably could have beaten Eric there, but—
Amanda: And for me, as a big lady, little shirt-y, big pants, it's a jeans-based wardrobe for me.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: One of my jeans is lined with flannel. I can only wear it in, like, 25-degree weather.
Julia: Jake has those, too. I love those boy jeans.
Eric: Ah, they're good stuff.
Amanda: You order the hem length longer so you can cuff them to show off the flannel.
Julia: It's true.
Amanda: It's very cute.
Eric: All right, now I'm gonna roll our D6's.
Amanda: I love that Eric's rolling 16 dice and we are not all clenching our buttholes because we're gonna take some huge amount of damage.
Julia: They're only D6's, so—
Brandon: Well, speak for yourself, Amanda. I'm scared every time Eric rolls a dice no matter what it is. We played Yahtzee one time, I almost passed out.
Julia: Brandon died.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Julia: We had to revive him.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Eric: I have now put the number of dice in our dice pool. We have 4 ones, 3 twos, 1 three, 2 fours, 2 fives, and 4 sixes.
Brandon: Nice.
Amanda: Damn.
Julia: Cool.
Eric: Okay.
Brandon: That's a good distribution.
Amanda: That is.
Julia: The three is tough, the single three.
Amanda: We're going to be very choosy about our three.
Eric: Well, the wonderful thing about this game, and the fact that people know how to play it, is that the final di is a wild card. So if someone wants to— wants a three, a second three at the end, you got to hold it to be the last thing that goes. I think that's also going to be helpful, because I'm going to go to left, so Julia, you're gonna be last.
Julia: Okay.
Amanda (as Scout McGarry): Oh, but before we get that, time for a quick word from our sponsors. That's right, it's the war. Plant some peas, why don't you? And that'll help kill the Nazis.
Julia: I need to establish in canon, you started this episode with, "Everything's fine. We're not at war."
Brandon: But in the—
Amanda (as Scout McGarry): There's a war globally, and it makes us feel really useful to be a part of it, but not really, ain't it?
Brandon: Julia, in the 30 minutes that have elapsed, the World War Two started, obviously.
Julia: Oh.
Amanda: Julia, it's December 15th, 1941, have some goddamn respect for the war.
Julia: Oh, no.
Eric: Also, the war needs to have a marketing team.
Amanda: Yes.
Eric: The war needs to do a marketing spend on the podcast.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: Yes, that's right. Yes, that's right.
Brandon: That is actually true.
Amanda: That's exactly right.
Julia: All right, we need to go now.
[theme]
Amanda: Hey, everybody, it's Amanda. And this midroll is coming in like a sweater that fits you just right. Exactly long enough at the sleeve so you can push them up to your elbows if you want to, but also cover your wrists if you want to. And the exact perfect weight to keep you warm, but not too hot. So welcome. Thank you so much to all of you who have followed us for free on Patreon. That is a very good idea, because, as you know, you will have to vote at the end of the One Shot Derby. After all the episodes are out, we're gonna post a link. You're gonna vote about which one you want us to play, and then the only people who get to hear the full length episode, the actual One Shot that we play after the derby, are our paying patrons. So go ahead and follow us for free, but you are gonna have to upgrade before the finale of the One Shot Derby to hear it for real. So come on over to Patreon. You also get the biweekly Party Planning podcast, ad-free episodes, early access, and, of course, Discord access. All that and more at patreon.com/jointhepartypod. Lots happening in the Join the Party universe right now. We are having a pop-up for New York City to celebrate the end of Campaign 3. Come on through, Thursday, February 20th. It is free to RSVP at jointhepartypod.com/popup, curated by listener Nick, who is an award-winning mixologist. It's going to be so much fun. I cannot wait to see so many of you there. We are also doing a live show in Portland on March 23rd, 2025, with Spirits. So if you want to get two podcast live shows for the price of one, you get some merch, you get a raffle, you get to see other fans. We're encouraging masking. So if you are COVID cautious, disabled, or otherwise want to be masked when you go out, you are going to be among friends here. Come on over and get your ticket at jointhepartypod.com/live. Tons happening at Multitude right now, including me, Brandon, and Eric prepping for something to do with Pale Blue Pod, which we are doing next week. It's gonna be so cool. Pale Blue Pod is, of course, an astronomy podcast for people who are overwhelmed by the universe but want to be its friend, where every single week, astrophysicist Dr. Moiya McTier and a new guest demystify space one topic at a time. I love this podcast. I recommend it to so many people. And if you are somebody who's like, "Space seems cool and I want to love it, but like, aaah, it's kind of existentially terrifying." I promise you, this is the show for you. If you've never listened to a podcast with Dr. McTier, you are in for such a treat. So look up Pale Blue Pod in your podcast app or go to palebluepod.com. We are sponsored this week by a wonderful podcast called CRAMPED. Now, 90% of people who menstruate get cramps, so why do we know next to nothing about them medically? So in this new podcast, CRAMPED, host Kate Helen Downey attempts to solve this, quote-unquote, "medical mystery" of her own severe period pain. She sits down with doctors, researchers, and other people who get cramps to understand exactly why this happens and also why science doesn't know anything about it. The answer is partly misogyny. So whether you experience cramps, love someone who does, or just curious about a very common experience among people that hardly ever gets talked about openly. Listen to CRAMPED wherever you get your podcasts. We are about a third of the way through their run of their 10-episode first season. So get on the train now, listen to CRAMPED. And finally, we are sponsored by Audio Maverick, a new 9-part documentary podcast about one of the most visionary figures in radio, Himan Brown. It will explore the golden age of radio through the life of this famous New Yorker whose programs brought millions of families around their radios each night. Now Audio Maverick, the podcast, features archival audio as well as contemporary interviews, media scholars, and podcasters. That's right. Learn about the birth of radio, the height of radio drama, and discussions with the new generation of podcasting audio mavericks that were inspired by Himan Brown. Now, because you're listening here, you probably know about like Nikola Tesla, and you might have even heard of some of these incredibly famous shows, like Dick Tracy and Mystery Theater. You'll hear clips of those actual shows on the podcast. It is produced by CUNY TV and the Himan Brown Archive, and covers decades of history in just nine episodes. So listen to Audio Maverick in your podcast app now. That's Audio Maverick brought to you by CUNY TV.
[music]
Amanda (as Scout McGarry): That's right, folks. Welcome back to the One Shot Derby, where me, Scout, and my deceased horse, Buttons, may they live in peace, are here to tell you how important it is to switch over to a Ritz cracker-based dessert lifestyle. That's right. All the apples are going to the boys in war. Now, it's time to eat Ritz crackers.
Brandon: Have you ever had a mock apple pie? I wonder if it’s any good.
Amanda: I hear it's good.
Brandon: Yeah.
Amanda: I hear it's good.
Brandon: Yeah, we should try it.
Eric: Okay. I'm gonna start by assigning a relationship here. I've been looking over the relationships that I've been excited about and I'm like, "How do I want to be involved with either Amanda or Julia?" And—
Amanda: One is your wife's best friend from kindergarten.
Eric: Okay.
Julia: Just to clarify. Just to clarify.
Eric: Oh, I wasn't sure.
Amanda: Our voices sound very similar. I'm the taller one, Julia is the smaller one.
Julia: We're the same person, so—
Eric: There's some really interesting stuff in the friends category, one of which you wouldn't expect for friends. It's friends only, not really, friends of the target, friends of a powerful high roller with eclectic taste and a bad temper, friends with benefits, friends with tattoos of each other's names, and friends since childhood for reals.
Brandon: You're gonna take that away from Amanda and Julia?
Amanda: We don't have tattoos of each other's names, yet.
Julia: Hmm.
Amanda: Hmm.
Julia: Hmm.
Amanda: Hmm.
Julia: Hmm. Actually, I don't think I get a relationship with Amanda ever.
Eric: No.
Julia: I don't touch her.
Eric: They're across the table. So I'm gonna take friends, and I'm going to assign it, and I'm going to assign it to Julia, to me and Julia's character.
Julia: Ooh.
Brandon: Ooh.
Eric: So one two is off the board. There are only two twos left.
Julia: Whoa.
Brandon: Whoa.
Eric: All right, Amanda, it is now your turn.
Amanda: I think I'm going to assign family.
Brandon: Family.
Amanda: The sub choices are certainly ones that I think are the— are more interesting than others, but there are siblings, parent, child, cousins, seriously, family due to a bond, debt or oath. We have blood brothers or sisters, which I think could be really fun in terms of assassins, and then… in the Italian sense.
Julia: Ooh.
Amanda: So all of those, I think have very good options here. And I'm going to assign it to Brandon and Julia, because I want to see you all play family in some way.
Julia: Oh.
Brandon: Oh.
Julia: Okay, okay.
Brandon: I'm gonna do my Italian accent.
Julia: Oh, please.
Brandon: The entire time.
Julia: That's just Umbi. You just did Umbi.
Brandon: no, I'm gonna do an Italian accent you can't refuse Julia.
Eric: That's Umbi wearing a mustache.
Brandon: Oh, shut up, Eric.
Eric: There's a really interesting stuff. I think it'd be crazy if two— if you were on an assassin team and two of them were siblings.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: Or one was a dad and one was a son, that would be crazy.
Amanda: Yes.
Brandon: I've seen both of those in films and TV before, so—
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: —like it.
Eric: I like that.
Amanda: Commonly in heists, but not necessarily in an assassin workplace dramedies.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: Brampton, it's your choice.
Brandon: Okay. So, oh, boy, do I fuck Julia over or do I have fun with Julia? Do I fuck Julia over?
Julia: Hmm, it’s up to you.
Eric: I would say have fun, Brandon. That's just my thing, my weird thing, my one weird quirk, my tip for 2025.
Julia: What would you like to do, Brandon?
Brandon: oh, I can't not do this. I think—
Julia: Have fun.
Brandon: I think me and Julia are gonna have to be parent and child.
Eric: Yes.
Julia: Great. Excellent. Excellent. Excellent.
Brandon: I was gonna do siblings, because we do twins so much, but I think parent and child is gonna be too funny.
Julia: Brandon, can I be your mom?
Brandon: Absolutely, you can.
Julia: Fuck yeah.
Brandon: I was gonna be a little boy with a gun.
Julia: No.
Eric: No.
Julia: You can't be a little boy with a gun. I want to be an old lady.
Amanda: You can be boyified adult man with a gun.
Brandon: Okay, okay.
Amanda: —adult man with a gun.
Julia: Hmm.
Eric: So, Brandon can be a child, but he has to be a Muppet as well.
Julia: Damn it.
Eric: The gun has to be sewn onto his hand. God, I love that. I love— oh, my God, having old crone Julia as Brandon's mom is awesome.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: Yeah.
Eric: God, I love it.
Julia: I like it. I'm into it.
Eric: Already start the— I— you guys got to start thinking about your last name. I— please.
Julia: Okay. I'll think about it.
Eric: Ghoulia, it is your turn.
Julia: Finally.
Eric: We are down to just one two now. We've used two twos already—
Julia: Oh, no.
Eric: —so there's only one two and one three still in the dice pool.
Brandon: Ooh.
Julia: Excellent. Okay, hold on. I am going to assign someone, and it's complicated.
Eric: Great.
Brandon: Ooh.
Julia: I know I'm using the only three we have—
Eric: That's fine.
Amanda: That's a good use of it, yeah.
Julia: —because I need one of these complicated ones.
Eric: They're really cool.
Julia: So the options for it's complicated— I keep saying it's complicated, like it's that one movie. It's just the options for complicated.
Eric: It's complicated, one of you is Ashton Kutcher.
Julia: One is, "I won, you lost. Get over it." The other is, "In love, in secret." Number three is, "Additional instructions, eyes only."
Brandon: Hmm.
Julia: Four is, "You're wearing the collar and I'm jerking the leash. Five is "Conflicted, co-religionists."
Brandon: Oh, that's good.
Julia: And six is, "Please don't tell everyone about my problem."
Eric: That's sick.
Amanda: Yeah, that's a really good category.
Brandon: These are all really good.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: I'm gonna give it to Amanda and Eric—
Eric: Yes.
Amanda: Thank you.
Brandon: Oh, good choice. Good choice.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: All right. No threes, but we could do it in the last round with the wild die.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: All right, it's come back to me here. I think if it's complicated, I would love if the method was assigned to Amanda and I.
Brandon: Ooh, okay.
Eric: So the methods are subtle, obvious, definitive, elegant, exotic, and false flag.
Julia: Okay. And is this for all of us? Like this is the method that we're all using, but it's specifically tied to you two and your it's complicated relationship?
Eric: Correct.
Julia: Correct?
Eric: Correct.
Julia: May I pitch you? I like elegant. I think elegant is really fun. I really like elegant as well. There's some really fun ones in there. Like—
Julia: One is malfunctioning dishwasher, and I need to know more about that, but I particularly was drawn to slow CO2 asphyxiation.
Eric: Oh, there's a lot of good ones in there. There's single bullet in the back of the head, a classic airplane crash, and driver side airbag remotely triggered. All of the— like, five out of six are really interesting.
Julia: Those are really good.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: So I think I would love— I— I'm gonna agree with Julia. There's some other really cool ones for exotic. There's one with using a jellyfish.
Julia: Also nicotine crystals, which I don't know what that means.
Amanda: Bath salts?
Eric: Or, like—
Brandon: No, it's nicotine. If you— I think you can overdose on nicotine if you have— yeah.
Julia: Huh.
Eric: Or we could do it like in Breaking Bad, where you put the ricin in one cigarette.
Brandon: Ooh.
Julia: Oh, yeah.
Eric: Like we can squish this in different ways, which I think is cool.
Julia: Yeah. Uh-hmm.
Eric: But I think elegant gives us the most options here, so I'm gonna jump down and assign the method to Amanda and I for elegant, which is a four.
Julia: Cool.
Brandon: I spent my New Year's— this is a missive from 2025. I spent my New Year's with a scientist, a PSG candidate, and a doctor. And at some point during the night, I forget why we started talking about how they would kill someone and get away with it. And so—
Amanda: Did it abruptly become not funny, because it was all, like, very legit?
Brandon: No, it's still funny, but it was also legit.
Julia: Well, I would call it more intriguing and funny, probably.
Amanda: Okay. Okay.
Brandon: But I was like, "Yeah, is the ricin thing real?" And they were like, "Nah, probably not." But, like, I think it was like some drug that was easily attainable and easy to inject. So anyway, this is what my New Year's was.
Amanda: I mean, it sounds pretty good.
Eric: That sounds great.
Julia: You're gonna get put on a list, Brandon. You gotta be careful.
Brandon: I'm already on a list, Julia. It’s fine.
Julia: All right.
Brandon: Have you seen my Google history? Don't look at it. Don't look at it.
Julia: No, I haven't. I don't work for the NSA.
Eric: I love the FBI agent looking at this and saying, "Why did you search vegetables that look like dong so many times? And why did you do different variations of it? You could have just read— use the saved— the same search, but you just—"
Julia: Dong gives you different results than cock. Let's be honest with each other.
Brandon: True. Why did you search vegetables that look like dongs ricin?
Julia: I'm making a recipe.
Amanda: Why did you Google, does everyone else think green bell pepper smell bad or is it just me?
Eric: Incredible.
Julia: All right. So you guys have elegant.
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: I'm loving that only.
Eric: One four still on the board. We got lots of ones. We got some sixes and fives, but only one four and one two still on the board. It is Amanda's turn.
Julia: Okay.
Amanda: I am really interested in our target. I think that the categories that most appeal to me are plutocrat or bureaucrat. Now, we only have one four left—
Julia: Hmm.
Brandon: Hmm.
Amanda: —so I would be happy to choose someone from the plutocrat list, which involved like casino owner, hedge fund manager, billionaire, son of an Amir Coin Op, car wash tycoon, and then an oil money baron.
Brandon: Now, Amanda, before you finish, I— can I just direct your attention to one of them is puppy mill operator?
Julia: Where was that? I didn't see that.
Brandon: Which is very good.
Julia: Oh, you do not need to know.
Eric: There's a section— yeah, one of the sections is you do not need to know with some really random people.
Amanda: But they kill civilians.
Eric: And I kind of love that.
Amanda: Which makes me a little bit nervous. Do you guys— are you more interested in that?
Brandon: That's fair. That's fair.
Julia: I'm also okay with us killing a puppy mill owner.
Amanda: Okay.
Julia: Sorry.
Amanda: I wonder if they're from Croydon, Croydon, UK.
Julia: Oh, also, hey guys, relevant, there's a medical claims processor.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: Yikes.
Eric: There are locations assigned with each one of these, which I think is really interesting. I don't know if we're gonna spend time in these places, depending on if we go there. But I think it's funny if, like, we choose someone who's in Utah as opposed to someone who's in Boston or in North Carolina.
Amanda: So then let's go with six, you don't need to know,
Brandon: Oh, shit.
Eric: Hell yeah.
Amanda: And—
Brandon: I didn't think I was actually gonna convince you.
Amanda: Oh, yeah. And sorry, guys, it's going, again, to Brandon and Julia, because I think it would be very interesting. And Eric and I already have detail.
Brandon: Hell yeah.
Julia: Okay. Okay. Interesting.
Eric: I love how Amanda is going hard on Julia and Brandon and the Brandon and Amanda relationship has nothing established.
Julia: We'll get there. We'll get there.
Brandon: We'll get there right now. I do just also want to say there was some other fun ones that were, like— the first one under aristocrat was member of a middleweight European royal family.
Eric: Incredible.
Amanda: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Brandon: Which is very funny.
Julia: Pretty good. My personal favorite in here was faded, old money socialite from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: Philadelphia, that's the part that would have really cinched it.
Julia: That would have been good.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Eric: The best part was then the one under it was fresh, young, old money socialite.
Amanda: Yep.
Brandon: Uh-hmm. Okay. So it's my turn, correct?
Eric: It is Brandon's turn.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: Okay, let's do a relationship between me and Amanda, Bermandio.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Julia: Bermandio.
Brandon: Okay. So we have shared past, friends, enemies, professional, or family. We've already been family.
Julia: Family.
Brandon: Family.
Julia: I'm a big fan of five. There's a couple of really fun ones in there.
Brandon: Well, I was thinking about that, but then I think it's gonna fuck with our relationship.
Julia: I don't think so. Like, you could— like, I could have trained you and then you also have a protege. You know?
Brandon: Hmm.
Eric: Honestly, that's your grand mentor, is your mom is really funny.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: So old. Why am I here?
Brandon: Because I think both shared past and enemies, give an amount of tension that we don't have yet.
Amanda: Then let's go shared past. We have a lot of ones on the board, and someone can take a big swing with one of these choices.
Brandon: Yeah, I think shared past is fun.
Amanda: All right.
Brandon: Let's do shared past.
Eric: I like it. Ghoulia.
Julia: Should I just— should I seal the deal and have us be doing the puppy mill person as the target?
Eric: If you want to.
Julia: I kind of want to, because I think that's kind of funny. But let me just double-check some stuff real quick.
Eric: God, there's some really interesting stuff in You Don't Need To Know. There's the puppy mill operator. It's in the UK, which I— which is a little annoying, but fine. There's a Minor League athlete in Columbus, Ohio. There is a silk factory worker in Lebanon. There's an elementary school student in Ontario. There's a medical claims processor in Utah, and a chicken hot fry cook in Jersey City.
Julia: How did that person fuck me over that they have to be killed?
Eric: I know— I mean, I kind of like chicken hot fry cook.
Julia: But I also kind of love Minor League athlete.
Eric: I know, they're really good.
Amanda: Minor League athlete really interests me.
Julia: I think I'm gonna do Minor League athlete.
Amanda: Nice.
Brandon: Ooh.
Amanda: Yay.
Julia: I think it's got to be that.
Amanda: As someone who reads a lot of Minor League sports romances, all for it.
Julia: I do really like this idea too, that— so— because this is under Brandon and I's, and we've already established we're, like, mother-son.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Julia: I really like this idea that this particular Minor League athlete, we found out was, like, fixing games or something like that. And so—
Brandon: Oh.
Julia: —Brandon lost a shit ton of money, and now I'm like, "Well, we just have to go kill them."
Amanda: It's personal.
Eric: I'm already thinking of what the sport is, because obviously, baseball is the one that comes to my mind immediately, and then we can come up with the most fun name for this—
Julia: Columbus Minor League team?
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: Or why they're coming into Columbus could be fun. They could be from somewhere else.
Amanda: With the blue horses, yep.
Julia: Uh-huh. Uh-hmm.
Brandon: But Eric, Can I pitch you, though? Hockey is also interesting.
Julia: Hockey is also fun.
Eric: Hockey is also interesting. The thing that I'm excited about is what you all just said, Why is this Minor League athlete fixing games? It's because the minor league athlete has a very powerful father, I— or mother, I would assume, and thinks that they can do whatever they want because of, like, the protections of things, which is why whoever is giving us this job needs to bring us in, because they can't handle it themselves.
Brandon: Hmm.
Eric: The other thing I was pulling from was the Mr. And Mrs. Smith TV show, the new one that just came out with Donald Glover and Maya Erskine, where they get jobs assigned from, like, an app in a kind of, like, a DoorDash situation. So I'm like, I don't know if, like, we're getting to sign this randomly, if we have a beneficiary who's making us do something that's super dangerous. I think it would be really cool.
Julia: I really like this idea that maybe Brandon's character got assigned the job, and then I found out who the target was, and I was like, "One last job, motherfuckers."
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: We're gonna have to do a scene of us watching this sport.
Julia: Yeah, definitely.
Brandon: I do— if it is hockey, we do have the ability to have a fun scene where we are slip sliding on ice, chasing each other—
Julia: Very fun.
Brandon: —with skates on, you know?
Julia: We're bringing it back to our ice shenanigans from the last time we played Fiasco.
Brandon: Yeah. I guess I'm— I guess I like ice, I don't know.
Eric: Someone being cold and not knowing how hockey works.
Amanda: Good.
Eric: I think it'd be good.
Julia: All right.
Brandon: It is going to be the Glue Horses. I don't care what anyone else says. It's the Glue Horses.
Julia: Doesn't matter what sport it is, Glue Horses.
Brandon: Doesn't matter what sport, it's Glue Horses.
Eric: Actually, I'm going to— so I'm immediately going to step here and take another di off the board. I'm taking the last four off the board, because the way that we are going to elegantly kill this person is plane crash.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: Oh.
Julia: Oh, okay. Cool. Fun.
Brandon: Okay.
Eric: I think that if this person is a Minor League athlete, why are these Minor League athletes flying in a plane? Well, it's because they have money from what—
Julia: Hmm.
Eric: —they were doing before, and I think that rigging the actual plane that was given to them from their rich, connected thing is going to cause the most amount of problems.
Brandon: Hmm.
Julia: Eric, you're really pulling a like, AEW thing where, like, the owner of AEW is the son of the guy who owns the Jaguar.
Eric: Yeah, he sucks. He— he's spread too thin.
Julia: Yeah, yeah.
Brandon: Maybe they're, like, going, like, to save the rest of the team who are good people. Maybe like the bad— our target is, like, going to like a— you know, took the team's private jet to Nashville for a party or something. You know?
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Well, he was the one who brought the private jet.
Brandon: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Eric: It's like, "Hey, poppy, please give me money for this plane that I can use for Minor League but also you can smuggle things on it."
Brandon: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
Julia: Right. And also to make sure that no one dies besides this motherfucker, where all the people who are on the airplane.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Julia: Cool.
Eric: Okay.
Julia: I'm just picturing an old lady parachuting out of a plane.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: Oh.
Eric: All right, Amanda.
Amanda: I am going to further select Brandon's and my shared past. Brandon—
Brandon: Oh.
Amanda: —how would you feel about choice number one, which is watched a man die, did nothing?
Eric: Hell yeah.
Brandon: I feel very good about that.
Amanda: Book it. Let's do it.
Eric: What does that even mean?
Brandon: I don't know, man.
Amanda: The thing that's exciting about it is, yeah, it could be— we could feel happy about that. We could feel bad about that. It could be, like, traumatic, it could be a calculated decision that we had to make together. I'm all for it.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Eric: I like that. I think that further adds to us being a real ramshackle group instead of a, like, defined killing machine.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: I'm not pitching this, but one of the other options that was very funny was delivered a baby together.
Amanda: Yeah, it is funny. I can't imagine that having plot implications, but—
Brandon: Yeah.
Julia: But you guys can reference it.
Eric: It's trauma bonding. Now, you guys can both do magic. It is back to Brandon. Brandon, we only have—
Brandon: Wee.
Eric: —two ones, two fives or two sixes.
Brandon: All right, so let's go— start going towards the needs, then. So ones, fives, and sixes. So we have need to accept, need to live, or need to love.
Eric: Pretty good.
Julia: Aw.
Amanda: Accept is pretty good.
Brandon: Yeah. So, like, some of the things in accept, five of the six of them say the fucked up something.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: So, like, the fucked up compensation, the fucked up plan, the fucked up team, the fucked up target, the fact that somebody here is a fucking snitch, and the fucked up method, seriously, what?
Amanda: All those are good.
Brandon: Yeah, I gotta do accept. That's really good.
Eric: That's good. Where are you gonna do it?
Brandon: Oh, let's do Eric and Julia, because I wonder what friends need to accept.
Julia: Oh, man, Brandon, I was looking at the love and live stuff for Eric and I, but I'll allow it.
Eric: I kind of love to accept, though. I think it'll be good.
Amanda: Because it really it invites you to, you know, add detail as to why, you know, why is the compensation fucked up or why is the team fucked up?
Brandon: Yeah. And I like that friends have to—
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: —to deal with that.
Eric: All right, Julia, it's your turn.
Julia: It's my turn? Oh, then, I'm doing friends since childhood for reals, because I can't be the only old person on this team.
Eric: Oh, my God.
Amanda: Hell yeah.
Julia: So that's our second to last six there.
Brandon: Eric, get your fucking old person moves on.
Eric: I guess.
Julia: That's why I wanted to do the for live or love for us, because I really liked the idea of doing to love, but that it's like, you know, we've been friends since childhood, but also maybe one of us was in love with the other one.
Amanda: Classic.
Eric: Good. I mean, we still can be, Julia. Don't worry.
Julia: Yeah. I know.
Eric: It's still possible. All right, we're down to our final four. We got 1 one, two fives, and a six. But, of course, the final one that Julia gets to do is a wild card, so we get to do whatever we want.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: God, let's look at these accept ones, huh?
Amanda: I'm just gonna throw my hat in the ring for the fucked up compensation. I don't know how— I mean, the number one thing you know about assassins is they are paid a lot of money in cash upfront, because that is the risk. And so how is the compensation fucked up? Like that just really interests me.
Brandon: Now, may I pitch you, though couple of these? The fucked up plan gives opportunity for shenanigans.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Julia: Well, we can't use that one, because we're out of twos. We can only do one, five, or six.
Brandon: Oh, oh, right. Thank you, Julia. Never mind.
Julia: Yeah. So it's fucked up compensation, the fact that somebody here is a fucking snitch, the fucked up method, seriously, what? I actually kind of, like, five Eric, if I can pitch you on that.
Eric: Sure.
Julia: Because if you're trying to convince me that Brandon, my son, is the snitch, I think that adds a lot of tension.
Eric: Oh, goddamn.
Amanda: Oh.
Brandon: That's good.
Eric: And then, of course— I mean, Amanda and I have this complicated relationship, so it's like—
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: —how could any of the four of us be a snitch? We're all so ingratiated with each other.
Amanda: Yeah.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: I love that only one of us, maybe Brandon's character, got the assignment, and then—
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: —the three of us got attached.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: Like Julia's character—
Brandon: I don't do any job without my mother.
Julia: That's what I've said since you were born.
Brandon: Now, on the other hand, if you want to kill a plane full of people, you can do the fucked up method.
Eric: I know. That was what I was thinking. It was like, "Okay, if six is going off, I know that it was me running with this, but it's like—"
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: "—the fucked up method and because I'm responsible for it." Julia, I think the fact that somebody here is a snitch is already going to come up.
Amanda: Agreed.
Julia: Yes.
Eric: I would like to do the one— the six, the fucked up method, seriously, what?
Julia: Okay. I'm down for it.
Eric: Because it's already attached to me, so I can tell you about why we have to do it.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: And Amanda is probably in— whatever our complicated issue is, Amanda and my character is— I have to do it because she says so or one of us says so.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: So I think that I want to lean on something that already doesn't exist, that I think won't already come up in play.
Amanda: Cool.
Julia: Gotcha.
Amanda: One thing I really like about this game is that your individual choices impact others in a way that's baked into the system. And so if that is like a thing that you're not used to because you're maybe new to TTRPGs or—
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: —you're a style of player who maybe enjoys other parts of the game. This is a really, like, necessary invitation to think about how your actions impact others.
Brandon: Yep.
Julia: True.
Eric: All right, it is now Amanda's turn. We have one and two fives. We have to put the need between Brandon and Amanda's character, and we have to— we can establish how we're co— how Amanda and I are complicated.
Amanda: So—
Julia: I almost want to save your complicated for last, because I do get to pick it if it's the wild card one.
Amanda: That has some juice to it, I'm thinking about that.
Brandon: It does.
Amanda: So for complicated, again, the only choices I— could have left are one or five. One is I won, you lost. Get over it.
Eric: Pretty good.
Amanda: Pretty good. Five is conflicted co-religionists. Interesting. What does that mean? Like, we're both in the same religion?
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: I have no idea.
Eric: I don't even know what that means.
Amanda: I don't even know what that means. Or I could decide on the detail, which would be a need for Brandon's and my relationship. The only categories I have left are to accept, once again, which we've said is very good, or to live, which is a bunch of, you know, like, "This is how I live in the world, man."
Brandon: "To live, yeah."
Amanda: I think it's going to be to live, Brandon. I think that's—
Brandon: That's fair.
Amanda: I think that's good. That takes one of our fives off the board. So unless Julia uses her wild card, Brandon, you and I are gonna have to live either without regret or apology, which is choice number one or stoned, completely stoned, which is choice number five. Yeah, this is my mentee. We get stoned and kill people.
Brandon: Okay. So my turn?
Eric: It is Brandon's turn.
Brandon: Okay. I do love giving Julia the last wild card for complicated.
Eric: Okay.
Amanda: That's why she's Julia "Wild Card Ricotta" Schifini.
Julia: Yeah. Famously.
Eric: Brandon, let me pitch you something.
Brandon: Okay.
Eric: Without regret or apology, you have two random old people assigned to your plan here. You might want to get under the yoke of your mother and her longtime best friend.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Julia: And maybe my lover, who can say?
Eric: And maybe we kissed in Dresden in the 20s.
Julia: Maybe you're an illegitimate child of Eric's character. Who can say?
Amanda: Aaah.
Brandon: Aaah. Well, you don't have to convince me not to do stone, completely stoned, so I'm definitely gonna do one without regret or apology.
Julia: Great.
Eric: For sure.
Julia: Great.
Eric: Okay. So, Julia, you now have the wild card. Please define Amanda and my complicated relationship.
Julia: Okay.
Amanda: Julia assigned this to us last time, which is why we were enemies with benefits, I think.
Eric: Oh, that's right.
Amanda: Or newly divorced, something like that.
Eric: Yeah.
Julia: You were newly divorced. I remember that.
Eric: All right. The choices are, I won, you lost. Get over it, in love, in secret, additional instructions, eyes only, you're wearing the collar and I'm jerking the leash, conflicted-co religionists, still don't know what that means, and please don't tell everyone about my problem.
Julia: All right. I think based on how we've been building this, I want to give you guys, you're wearing the collar and I'm jerking the leash.
Eric: Goddamn.
Amanda: Who's who you?
Eric: I— you and I get to decide.
Amanda: Hmm.
Brandon: Could be literal.
Julia: Could be kinky.
Brandon: Could be kinky.
Eric: I— I'm a dog. That's why— I'm a magical dog—
Amanda: Eric's a Muppet.
Julia: That's why we've been lifelong friends because you're just a dog.
Brandon: Oh, but Julia, what is additional instructions, eyes only?
Julia: I don't know, but I hate it. I don't like it. Something about it just rubs me the wrong way.
Eric: I think that with the snitch might be— it's just like too much.
Amanda: Too much. Too much.
Brandon: Hmm.
Julia: Hmm.
Eric: Okay. So let's start to squish some of this out a little bit. Okay. Now, we need to firm up the situation. We have a big pile of intermingled relationships, dangerous obsession or two, and a someone to kill, a place to kill them and how. Now is the time to get it into focus, because leaving things to be fleshed out in play weakens them. Work as a team. Everyone needs to define who they are based on the particular pair of relationships, and quite often, these will be unequal, freighted by differences in power and status. It might make more sense for you to be the drug dealer rather than the guy who has to be the preacher, but maybe not. And then once you've firmed up the situation, everyone agrees it's solid, and you're ready to play. And then you give your character a name.
Brandon: Hell yeah.
Amanda: Excellent.
Eric: So let's review. Let's go through each and see how all of it feels. Okay?
Brandon: Okay.
Eric: First on my list here is Brandon and Amanda. You have a shared past. You watched a man die and did nothing, and you need to live without regret or apology.
Amanda: I'm definitely feeling like I am a— like, the youngest person on the crew, both because, definitionally, you are— you know, Eric and Julia are one generation, Brandon is in the middle. And then I feel like, Brandon, you somehow were, like, a mentor, or, like, recruited me into a previous crew. And I really like the idea that, like, on my first job, for example, we got in way over our heads, and we—
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: You know, things didn't go to plana and that's when we watched a man die and did nothing.
Brandon: Hell yeah, I love that. Maybe we— who do we watch die?
Amanda: I feel like maybe it was, like, the person who contracted you. Like, that could be really fun if, you know—
Julia: Hmm.
Brandon: Or, like, an innocent or like—
Amanda: Like another person on the crew, and then we, like, frame them from being a traitor. Like, I really imagine that there was some kind of like death, and then in order to save our own hides, we had to lie about it together. And that sort of, like, bonds us in some way.
Brandon: Can I pitch you this really fucked up idea?
Amanda: Okay.
Brandon: Maybe we're of— we're a mother and sibling tag team, like, situation, right? We're a team and, like we were training both you and your mom or something, or maybe your mom was also training you or something, and your mom— or your dad, I guess, died.
Eric: Oh, like—
Amanda: That's good.
Eric: Like, a program developed by somebody to develop a family of assassins?
Amanda: Yes.
Brandon: Yeah, yeah.
Amanda: So Brandon and I are of a— of an age, and my parent who brought me into the program, like Julia did to Brandon, is dead.
Brandon: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Julia: Interesting.
Amanda: And I think that gives me a good reason to live without regret or apology.
Brandon: Maybe we— yes, I think we got, like, assigned to the same job and, like, maybe this was y'all's first gig after the academy.
Amanda: Uh-hmm. Very good. No, I think he died in the course of a mission, and in order not to compromise the mission and my career, we had to watch it happen.
Eric: Folks, I know the name of the movie.
Amanda: Great.
Julia: Oh.
Eric: The name of the movie is called Blood is Thicker.
Brandon: Ooh.
Julia: Ooh.
Amanda: Hell yeah.
Brandon: I like that.
Amanda: Remember how Eric designed movie posters for all these last year? We're gonna do it again.
Julia: That was cool.
Eric: Oh, that was fun.
Julia: Fuck yeah.
Eric: I did like that.
Amanda: Blood is Thicker, writing it down.
Brandon: Maybe I had something to do with— maybe me or my mom, had something to do with him dying, too.
Eric: Well, I think that works really well with Amanda and my thing, because we're complicated, you're wearing the collar, I'm wearing the leash, and we're involved in the method of the pla— airplane crash.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: I definitely think that Amanda's character is jerking the leash here and—
Julia: Wow,
Eric: —I think it works— it makes a lot more sense if I'm also longtime friends/lovers with Julia's character.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Julia: Uh-huh.
Eric: And I'm being— and I got ensnared. So now, like, everyone thinks it's fine. Like, especially because there's a snitch here, I think that, like, all—
Amanda: Yes.
Eric: —of this feels so obvious, of like, "Oh, of course." You know, like, the mom has to come in, your mentor has to co— your mentee has to come in, and then this person that the mentee has power over, who happens to be longtime friends with the mom, also has to come in. Boom, there's your team.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: Like, it all feels— it falls into place too nicely. Then, obviously, at the end of this movie, there has to be the snitch twist.
Amanda: All for it. I love it.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Julia: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
Amanda: Eric, I love this. It's as if Matt Damon in Oceans' 12 has something over, like, George Clooney. It would be incredible.
Eric: Yeah. I love being like— being at that age. I think it would be great.
Brandon: Stepdad Eric.
Amanda: You'd be a great stepdad.
Julia: Stepdad Eric.
Eric: And then me and Julia's characters friends since childhood for reals, and we need to accept the fuck up method of the plane crash.
Julia: Do we really like this idea of like we came up in the same program that I then raised Brandon in and that Amanda's character was raised in?
Eric: Yeah. I mean, I think the reason why I'm— my— I— it's easy for I— me to get caught by a younger person is that my daughter died in the program and—
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: —I got manipulated really easily, for sure.
Julia: I like that. I like that. And that's why you're so pissed off about how fucked up the method is, because it's not what you would do, but you're only going along with it because you're being left in charge.
Eric: Right. And I'm the one— I'm probably the one who has the least control over how this is all going down.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: I love the idea of all this, because me and Amanda's is— we have a need to live without regret or apology. And on the one hand, like Amanda's character is like, "I don't care because nothing matters anymore, so I live without regret or apology." And on the other hand, I'm like, sociopathic.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: "I don't care that your father died." Like I don't— you know, like I'm very professional.
Amanda: Yes.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: No, there can't be regrets, because I do what's good for me at all times.
Brandon: I do— it's a job.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: I do what I— I do my job.
Eric: Your character insisting I'm doing the job when your mom is— your mom and your direct mentee on it is— what I was saying at the beginning of the episode, of like you think you're a weapon, but it's impossible. You're a human.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Amanda: I do just want to point out that I just wrote down on my note card, under your wearing the collar, I'm jerking the leash, I wrote me jerking it, so that way I remember who was the jerker and who was the jerkee.
Julia: You're jerking it, girlfriend. You're jerking it.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Julia: And then finally, it's Brandon and I and our parent-child relationship.
Brandon: I mean, there's nothing much to say there, I think.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: Our target— we have the target, which is the Minor League athlete.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: Do we want to be, like, connected to this Minor League athlete anyway?
Julia: I do like the pitch that I did for you earlier, which is, like— again, I like this idea that you're a weapon, but also maybe you have a gambling problem. And so when we found out that this was the target, that's what kind of signed me on to this, being like, "Someone fucked over my boy."
Brandon: Yes, I love that. Yeah, yeah.
Julia: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
Brandon: Because, of course, I think I'm also perfect and not going to ever lose a gambling.
Julia: Naturally, naturally. Because you're— you couldn't possibly be, like, manipulated emotionally into betting more and more and more and more.
Brandon: Of course.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: And just as a fun little character detail, the casino I lost all my money at was on a cruise ship.
Amanda: Great.
Brandon: So—
Julia: Oh, no, I think it's a betting app, like a— what's it called? Like DraftKings
Brandon: DraftKings or whatever.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: Sure, yeah.
Amanda: He has an old phone with ,like, three apps, and it's two assassin apps, and then, like, the bet casino—
Julia: DraftKings.
Eric: That's so funny.
Brandon: That's fine, but I was on a cruise when I did it.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Julia: Okay, cool.
Eric: I mean, it could be— it'd be so funny if this was such, like, an open secret in, like, a Double-A baseball team, or maybe— or Lower Hockey League. It's like, there's a Moscow team just out of nowhere.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: The Kosovo Glue Horses.
Brandon: Well, they're from Columbus— oh, they're coming into Columbus, you mean then?
Julia: Yes,
Eric: I— they were like— they were flying into Columbus on the plane.
Brandon: Oh.
Julia: Hmm.
Amanda: That's great.
Brandon: Yeah. Okay.
Amanda: The name's a lot more elegant in Russian.
Eric: All right. Okay. I would love to come forward with my name.
Julia: Okay.
Eric: I think I am an old school operator. I think that maybe Julia's character knows my real name, but I do only know— I only go by my code name. Of course, I can have a— I have an old school name. I was going off of the kind of, like, only two syllables that they use in, like, the US Army alphabet.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: And my name is Ringo.
Amanda: Nice.
Julia: Ooh. Fun.
Brandon: Pretty good, pretty good.
Julia: My thought process, too, was like, no one knows my real name kind of thing. I guess, except for my son and my best friend, Amanda's character is the only one that doesn't know my real name. So my—
Brandon: So, Amanda, take your headphones off.
Julia: And I think my code name is Strega Tosta, which is like tough grandma.
Amanda: Hell yeah, dude.
Brandon: Jesus Christ almighty.
Amanda: Hell yeah, dude.
Eric: Something so funny about that is that there's no way anyone calls you that.
Julia: Yeah.
Eric: Like that— you— you've assigned it to yourself for this job only.
Julia: It's my last job, man. What do you want from me?
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: I mean, my name is just got to be The Boy, you know?
Julia: The Boy?
Amanda: Oh, no.
Brandon: The boy.
Julia: The boy.
Brandon: I'm the boy.
Julia: Yeah.
Brandon: It's what they called me ever since I was nine.
Eric: Yeah. I mean, there has to be— Brandon, if I can give you this on a platter, because, again, there's so much, like, family stuff involved with this. But I think that if we're from the academy, then you obviously are a gifted and talented child. Like, imagine you are gifted and talented, but also your mom was there, and also you're an assassin. Like that must fuck with your head. You've been The Boy since you're nine, because who in a class of assassins gets assigned the name The Boy?
Brandon: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I was in assassin school and, like, nine years old, and the guy next to me stole my colored pencils, and I shot him in the head immediately.
Eric: Yeah, and that's what you're like—
Amanda: That guy is like very good, very good.
Brandon: "Oh, this guy knows what's up. "
Eric: Yeah. The third time he stole your colored pencils, one of them is made out of ricin. God, I love that you're like 32 and you're The Boy. That's awesome.
Brandon: I'm at least, like, 32 now. I'm probably like 36, 38.
Julia: Bimbino.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: Bimbino.
Eric: I love that. That's awesome.
Amanda: Eric, I was also thinking about the NATO alphabet, and I first, thought best thought, didn't do it this time, which was Epsilon Cream.
Brandon: What?
Julia: Ooh.
Amanda: Amanda, that's mad.
Brandon: Amanda, what is going on in your brain?
Amanda: But my second thought was much better, which is Jamie Foxtrot.
Brandon: That's very good.
Julia: That's fun. That's fun.
Brandon: That's really good.
Amanda: Thank you. Thank you. I think that's my government name. I think they just named babies, you know, going down the alphabet.
Julia: Yeah. Like hurricanes.
Brandon: Now, you know that Jamie Foxx is a person, right? I just want—
Eric: It's funnier because I— to pull—
Brandon: You didn't know that? All right.
Amanda: I didn’t get it until right now, but it’s Jamie Foxxtrot.
Eric: Brandon, I find that— if we're— if we can pull from Quentin Tarantino a little bit, like the fact that the government would just assign that to you—
Amanda: Yes.
Eric: —and then also— and then Jamie Foxx breaks out like—
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Julia: They're like, "Fuck."
Amanda: "Shit."
Eric: — few years later, it's like, "This was from the hurricane names. Like, I don't know here."
Brandon: Oh, hey, Eric, can I pitch this? So you know how in SAG, you're not— this is why a lot of actors have to use their middle name, because in SAG, you can't have the same name as anyone else. So a lot of actors have to add their middle names to their official actor names.
Julia: I know exactly what you're about to say, go on.
Brandon: So maybe Jamie Foxx was also an assassin.
Julia: Well, what I was gonna say was, like, Is Jamie Foxx two X's because there was already a Jamie Foxx with one X?
Eric: Oh, that's pretty good.
Brandon: Yeah, same thing. Yeah. But, like, you had to add something else to your middle name— your name to make it unique.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: The govern— in— the academy shares the same name bank as SAG.
Julia: As SAG.
Amanda: Incredible.
Julia: That's funny.
Eric: That's awesome.
Julia: That's really funny.
Eric: But I'm thinking about all the kids out there who are named Glen Powell, right?
Julia: Hmm.
Eric: Like they didn't know.
Amanda: No.
Eric: Yeah. I love this a lot. This is really cool. Okay. One last thing, so there's a— I want to summarize what we've done here, and try to put it on the back of the DVD.
Amanda: Okay.
Eric: That we've— that I bought in Walmart for $4.
Amanda: Okay. So front cover, it says Blood is Thicker.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Amanda: I'm picturing like big, bold, taking up almost the entire width of the DVD cover.
Eric: In my head, on this bad DVD, I thought that there needed to be, like, a— an outline of a family tree on the back, because the people wouldn't understand why it's called Blood is Thicker.
Amanda: Yes.
Eric: So it's like, "We gotta— have to really underscore the fact that this is about family."
Amanda: Great.
Eric: Which I think is great. Okay. So somehow, The Boy, known as an incredibly talented assassin but lots of problems from the family assassin Academy, got a job to take out a child of a very prominent person.
Brandon: An adult child.
Eric: An adult child who is a Minor League hockey player. They are probably Russian, probably from a Russian oligarch, and has this private plane where they fly themselves and their teammates and some other stuff on the plane, right?
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Eric: His mom is involved because she's always involved.
Brandon: No, his mom's evolved because he's in a gambling debt.
Julia: Yes.
Brandon: To the—
Julia: And it's because of this motherfucker, and so that's why she's getting involved—
Eric: That's really—
Julia: —because it's like, "Now, it's personal."
Eric: Now, they're getting involved. The protege, who is Amanda's character, Jamie Foxxtrot—
Julia: Jamie Foxxtrot.
Eric: —he's also involved, and she is bringing along an older fixer as well, who is my character, Ringo, who also happens to be a very long time friend of Julia's character, Strega Tosta.
Amanda: Maybe a lover.
Eric: Maybe a lover.
Brandon: Maybe a nursery.
Julia: Could be a nursery. Our friendship might have resulted in a nursery.
Amanda: Aaaah.
Eric: I like this. I think it's cool.
Julia: It's so complicated, I can't.
Eric: I think— this makes— it's gonna— in the montage that starts the movie, this is all gonna make so much sense.
Amanda: Uh-hmm.
Eric: And just get it over with quickly.
Brandon: Uh-hmm.
Eric: But I'm excited. I— like, Blood is Thicker is gonna be a real movie I'm gonna put on TNT a lot.
Amanda: Yeah.
Brandon: The movie starts with a tight shot on a packet of colored pencils as you hear the sound of me coloring, and then it starts to pull out, and you see a hand go over and grab the pencils, and then it— the camera just turns left to the wall, and you hear a gunshot. And then you see, Blood is Thicker.
Amanda: Yeah.
Eric: So a government agent says, "Ma'am, your son has the skills." And then de-aged Julia's character said—
Amanda: Face so smooth.
Julia: Who sounds exactly the same.
Eric: Sounds exactly the same. Moves the same.
Julia: They're like, "I always knew it."
Eric: I think about this like in— what's his name in— Robert De Niro in The Irishman, how even—
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Eric: —when he was young, he moved like he was 70. I love that so much.
Amanda: "He gets it from me." So Eric, I— I've got to know, which of us is the snitch?
Eric: Well, let's find out. So here's how we do this. We have five note cards here. Four of them are blank, and one of them has the word snitch on it. They were very clear to tell us that you need to have as many blank cards as you do players, so it's possible that no one is the snitch.
Julia: Uh-hmm.
Brandon: Okay, cool.
Amanda: So because we are remote right now, I have five note cards in my hands. I have written blank on four of them, and I've written snitch on one. Then I turn them over, shuffle them all up, and number them one to five.
Brandon: Tight.
Amanda: I'm gonna choose mine.
Brandon: Okay.
Amanda: Just looking at the numbers.
Brandon: And then take it out in the pack after that? Yeah.
Amanda: And— take it out of the pack, yeah. So I chose number four. Great. It's on the side. Now, I'm gonna let Eric choose one. He's gonna put it to the side. So the numbers left are one, two, and three.
Brandon: Okay.
Amanda: So I'm going to turn them over. You tell me which number you want.
Julia: I'd like number three.
Brandon: I'll take— ooh, I'll take one.
Amanda: Okay. So, everyone, close your eyes. Julia, I'm gonna show the camera, number three.
Julia: Okay.
Amanda: Okay? And Brandon, you chose which number?
Brandon: One.
Amanda: Okay. Brandon, here is number one.
Brandon: Okay. Read it.
Amanda: Okay?
Julia: And now we all know.
Brandon: Who is it? Who is it?
Eric: I don't know what you're talking about. I'm not the snitch.
Julia: I'm not the snitch.
Brandon: I'm not the snitch.
Amanda: I'm not the snitch.
Eric: Why would you even bring that to me? Of course, I'm not the snitch.
Brandon: Hey, Eric, look at me. You think I'm a fucking snitch?
Eric: You think I'm a snitch?
Amanda: You think my dad died for me to be a fucking snitch?
Brandon: You're calling my mom a fucking snitch?
Julia: "Neither me nor my son would ever be a snitch."
Eric: I can't even imagine that The Boy would be a snitch.
Brandon: You think I'm a son of a snitch?
Julia: Let's go, Brandon.
Amanda: All right, folks. That's Fiasco: The Murderists, is it not?
Eric: That is.
Julia: Yeah, that's it.
Brandon: It is.
[theme]
Amanda (as Scout McGarry): All right, folks, as 1941 draws to a close, sadly, nothing could get worse in the world. Remember, if you like this and you want to vote for it, well, look out for the poll, why don't you? Join the Patreon for free at patreon.com/jointhepartypod, and then later, you can vote for which one we play for real.
Julia: But also listen to the other two episodes first.
Amanda (as Scout McGarry): Next week, another one. The week after that, another one.
Brandon: While you wait, maybe buy some merch.
Amanda (as Scout McGarry): I don't know, maybe buy some merch at jointhepartypod.com/merch. This has
been Scoot and the ghost of Buttons. Ta, ta now.
Eric: Neigh.
Julia: How does the ghost of Buttons sound?
Amanda (as Scout McGarry): [neighs]
[music]
Transcriptionist: KM Transcripts