Welcome to the Gamer Dad podcast where we talk about all things
Magic the Gathering and gaming. We strive to make things fun,
fit into our busy lives, families, keep things casual,
and show you how you can too. I'm gamer dad Bob.
You know that guy?
A 30 year Magic Gathering veteran who has played formats
from legacy to standard to commander.
I like Harry Potter, but before you crucify me in this opener,
take a step back for a second. I cannot and will no longer be
supporting anything JK Rawlings doing.
She doesn't get one more cent of my hard earned cash.
I've hit my absolute breaking point.
I actually hit it months ago. Do you remember like that cigar
smoking super yacht selfie that she took like, Yep, almost like
the, I love the smell of napalm in the morning sort of thing.
Like it was her supervillain selfie and and that was that was
the, the turning point for me. I was, I was absolutely done.
I remember talking to my wife about it.
I was like, we're done here. We're just done here and I'm
Jesse Hoagy. I'm also a 30 year Magic the
Gathering vet. I'm a gamer and a two time girl
dad and I just want to know what to do.
Music. Everyday there's some new
controversy with a brand or person I admire.
What's next? Keanu Reeves?
Henry Cavill? You can tell me the Henry really
isn't built like a Greek God and he's just an AI image that we've
been seeing. If so, plug me into that matrix
and teach me Kung Fu because I'm on board.
Henry, remember this podcast is sponsored by you the listeners.
So heading over to Patreon and subscribe there.
You can find exclusive content like our video podcast.
The only place you can get the video is here right now live and
then it's gone and off to Patreon.
Subscribers to Patreon also get notified when we post updates of
our podcast recordings. I'm also going to start treating
Patreon as my own little personal blog.
I'm going to be putting some bits and other some fun stuff up
on there as well. And Jesse, you have creator
access now too. So if you you want to have your
own subsection, that is all yours, so check it out.
See. Hoagies really bad.
The guitar riffs. Also, don't forget to stick
around for our flavor text or song lyrics at our midway point.
Will Jesse try to trick me with stuff that's on my recent
playlists, or will he hit me with some really obscure flavor?
OK, now with all that out of the way.
So here's the thing. I did not think I'd be here
talking about sleeves, but it's August 2025.
Ultimate Guard just fully admitted to using AI tools to
extend art on deck boxes. Dragon Shields still silent on
their past Harry Potter merchant, Oh, by the way, still
has character and actor sleeves for sale as of this recording in
their store. And neither one of them seems
particularly interested in addressing the why behind
people's frustration, especially from trans folks and their
allies. And I wasn't going to say
anything. I was waiting.
I gave these brands space to talk, but now I've seen what
they're willing to say, what they're not.
That's actually louder, by the way.
I'm done waiting And, and this hurts.
This hurts me. I grew up with Harry Potter and
until recently I, I'll admit I couldn't define what a turf was.
I didn't know. I, I'm literally the 43 year old
old dude Googling turf. What is a turf?
Not turf war. And I was like, oh gosh, what is
this? So for those of you who don't
know, and you may not, it's a noun.
By the way, TERF. It's an acronym meaning trans
exclusionary Radical feminist, a shorthand to describe one cohort
of feminists who self identify as radical and are unwilling to
recognize trans women as sisters, unlike other feminists
who do. Wow.
Not cool and not cool. I'm not trying to underplay that
by saying not cool either. Here's the other thing I use
ultimate guard gear. I like AII love ChatGPT.
It's been helping me a ton, but let me be clear, there's a lot I
also do not like environmental footprints, the artwork, Oh my
God. I mean, Jesse, how many times
have I joked whenever we use AI, I'm like, well, you just killed
another sloth in the rainforest because.
It's, I've been saying this I think all week, like I saw a
recent report, like there's a data center in the Northeast
that uses more electricity than all of Vermont and New Hampshire
combined. Come on man, I went to college.
One single data center 1. I want to believe in good
intentions here. There's there's just some point
when silence becomes a stance. And for us as small creators,
we're sitting here trying to figure out if our sleeves, yes,
our actual card sleeves, My katanas.
And card boxes. Are going to get us blacklisted
for not being loud enough fast enough, right enough in social
media. And that's just exhausting.
It's it takes so many cycles of should I be saying something?
Should I not be saying something?
What does my silence mean? What if I say the wrong thing?
It really is exhausting. So this episode, it's going to
be messy, it's very personal, and it's not going to end with
an easy answer. And finally, I'm not here to
pretend that I've always had this figured out.
I'm here because I'm learning. And maybe if you're listening
now, later, maybe you're learning too.
And really quick before we dive into the meat and potatoes of
everything here, just to be clear, we're not both sides in
anything here. But turfs are bad.
Trans rights are human rights, and that's not up for debate in
this podcast at all. We're not upset.
People are angry. A lot of people have ever reason
to be. And what we are talking about is
how hard it is to keep up, you know, to buy the right things,
to support the right creators, to speak at the right volume.
And those expectations shift daily.
Goal posts. Like it.
And this isn't a call out, this isn't a defense.
This is just a reflection and just a discussion.
If you're still with us, you know, talk about what happens
when we're doing the best still doesn't feel like enough, you
know, and it's, it's so hard to keep up with.
It's very hard to. Keep up it is and and we're not
full time creators either. So you know, we scroll through
blue sky and other social media, tik toks, Instagrams and stuff.
And there's a common thread here, which which is why we
wanted to talk about this stuff from the the small creator
standpoint. So let's talk a little bit about
what's happening right now. And I'm going to read a wall of
text, so I apologize in advance. So Ultimate Guard issued a
statement. Was it this week, Jesse?
It was this week, I think it was Monday.
About using Adobe's AI extension tools.
So let's read this word for word.
Earlier this month we saw a post and discussions about generative
AI use in our Halia and Tesserate Flip and Trade deck
box. I don't know what the hell a
flip and trade deck box is. We immediately, we immediately
conducted an internal review and unfortunately confirmed the
claims. OK, so they use the word
unfortunately here. Let's, let's keep going.
Let's see how unfortunate it was for them.
When adapting 2D card art for 3D products like deck boxes, we
sometimes extend the original artwork to fit complex shapes.
Our review found that in some cases, including this deck box,
a feature called an Adobe called Generative Fill, which uses AI,
was employed alongside our designer's hand work.
Upon further research, we also found it occurred in a small
number of other products in development.
We deeply value the artists we work with and trust of the and
the trust of the community. Effective immediately, we will
no longer use Generative filler, any IAI tools in our design
process for Magic the Gathering license products.
Period. Notice what they didn't say and
any that were in production have been removed from our lineup and
no future AI assisted Magic Gathering license products will
be made or sold by Ultimate Guard.
We recognize that the heart of this issue is a concern for the
livelihood of artists everywhere.
Ultimate Guard wholeheartedly supports this sentiment.
To that end, we have been steadily growing our own full
Time Team of illustrators and designers.
We also commissioned unique art pieces from the freelance
community, a practice that has and will continue to be part of
Ultimate Guards DNA. Thank you for your understanding
and continued support. Jesse, what do you think about?
That I got first, I thought it was good.
And then I read it again and it's like that last paragraph is
like basically saying we're not going to pay the artist to
extend it, we're going to extend it ourselves.
And eventually we're going to have artists in house that are
going to be able to recreate this so I don't have to pay
artists anywhere at all. That's how I read it too it it
screams you caught us energy. Yeah, 100 percent, 100%.
And it's like how many things that are already out there did
they use this for? Like they didn't admit to that.
I guarantee there is no one's just noticed yet.
And how many other brands are doing this too?
It's not just them. Not to mention Ultimate Guard
really just said, well, oops, Magic the Gathering, oops.
We're, we're, we're, we're going to use it on our other products.
They they the the implications here as I'm I'm looking at this
for for God, I've lost count of times I've read this.
The implication here is that oops, magic the gathering.
We're not saying we're not going to use it on our other products.
A lot of not said stuff that's going on.
So they're pivot. Well, we're not paying original
artists still. We're just going to hire
internal people to extend the art it to me and I ski did this.
What the hell is blue sky? Ski.
Ski did this. I was like, I was like, so why
not just compensate the artist directly?
You know the the one in question on that box was like for a
couple 100 bucks I would have just extended it for them.
They didn't ask. They didn't ask and and I was
quiet on blue sky until Ultimate Guard said something because I I
feel like places deserve a chance to respond.
It's my understanding that Ultimate Guard has had a
practice of some bad behavior that I'm now seeing as this all
unravels. I I'm just not that close to
everything. So that statement of theirs flip
the switch for me and all all bets are off.
I used to be a big supporter of them.
Man the amount of different card sleeves.
I'm shopping around now. I just got the rock guards and
today they literally just came in today and I literally just, I
got almost all of my commander decks all to arch my guard
sleeves and now it's like Flitch, I gotta do it all over
again. Right, that that's the crazy
part. And I'm a big supporter of AI.
It's it's been helping me a lot in my job.
It's been helping me a lot in life and other things and this
isn't it. This is not the way to use.
AII don't think anyway is to use AII do not like AII only have to
use it because of my job, but this is definitely not it.
I am you were there along with my logo journey for for all my
content stuff. I did AI first.
I didn't think about it. I didn't think about what, you
know, what this did to people. And then it's like, OK, we're
talking about it. Brought it to my attention.
We started and we went down that rabbit hole and the AI issue,
it's not theoretical. It's about who's getting paid
for the creative work. It's not.
And I just got all this the content, the not the I the
graphic stuff from Holy MTG for my my channel.
And there's no AI that could have made that.
Like it looks so good. There's nothing AI that could
have made that. And you paid an artist for
that's, that's the important part here.
So here's the other thing. Ultimate Guard got on a call
today with people. I guess they're the people that
they sponsor and everything and man, they're they're losing
creators so fast. I've seen a couple yesterday,
Sam wristic studies. Sam said he's dropping them.
Carlo MTG today said he's dropping them.
It's it's a matter of time before they start losing a lot
of their their base on on ultimate guard here.
But, and it's I didn't read Sam's thing, but was it because
of AI or was it because of Harry Potter?
Now you're putting me on the spot.
I don't remember. I know Carlo was Harry Potter,
which is a completely different issue than AI.
Let me see if I can find what he said.
Effects today have resigned from working with Ultimate Guard as I
can no longer support the company's creative or business
decisions. I think it was a blanket
statement. Probably both.
That's smart. Sam's done with both.
That's smart. They're still ultimate guard.
Not only are they moving forward, those house theme, the
Harry Potter house theme deck boxes, they're already out in LG
s s in the wild. So they they said screw it, they
went to print and we're selling them and that's that.
They didn't do any distancing. That they're, they're thinking
probably from a purely financial standpoint like we paid how much
money for the license it and we want to make that money back.
Right, right. And and.
Oh, by the way, let's talk about.
By the way, this episode's called The Quiet Elephant in the
Room. I thought that was a very
apartment title. Yeah.
Dragon Shield previously sold some Harry Potter house sleeves.
Not previously. Those are no longer for sale,
the house ones, but Jesse did some research.
Tell us what you found. They're still selling stuff
under on their website. It's like the character faces.
It's all the Harry Potter stuff. It was I think 1699.
And it's not like it's a reseller, like an Amazon selling
like a reseller selling it, right?
It's so I can chill directly on their website, right?
Right. And do you have you seen
anything from them about it? No.
And where's the the outrage for that?
It's weird, right? Why are we not attacking them
right now for a missing a complete opportunity to yank
that product? Holy cow, ultimate guard fumble.
Let's make sure that we don't have any Harry Potter stuff
still for sale except for our actor Hermione Ron Weasley Harry
Potter sleeves. Well, we'll still.
Sell. Sell Harry Potter.
Sell that. And last I checked, Rowling gets
paid on that as. Well, so, and I'm skipping to
another point here, but you mentioned like, where's
everybody's outrage on that? What about other brands?
Like what about Lego? There's Lego Harry Potter stuff.
Lego hair and and there's so many of us that love Legos.
I love Legos. Do people boycott going to
Universal Studios in Harry Potter world?
Yeah, We both have the same thing that's all like behind us.
We. Got the tall neck behind us
here. You know, we, we like Lego.
What about Universal Studios? I tried the world.
I tried to go but I got COVID late 2019 I'm pretty sure and
Amazon. Walmart, they all saw official
Harry Potter merch, Kohl's, Alex and Ani.
I I stopped looking at when I got all that many brands.
Are you telling us, Jesse, that it's very hard to ethically
consume products? It is because like I have an HBO
Max subscription. Well, sorry, it's not.
I don't think it's called. Is it called HBO?
Max. I don't know what that was
called anymore. I.
Think it's back to HBO Max. It was Max and now it's back to
HBO Max. They have they have rights to
play Harry Potter. Should I not watch HBO Max
anymore? I don't.
I don't know what to do there. Yeah, this, the Harry Potter
thing hurts for me. It was just part of growing up.
You got to realize we're in our 40s, right?
We are in our early 40s, Jesse and I.
So Harry Potter was prime in our formative years, college years,
when that came out, so I remember.
It was on my campus anyway. It was like Team Harry Potter or
Team Lord of the Rings, so it was quite funny.
But like that, that was just ingrained in our culture.
So the books, the movies. I've bought so many official
movie props for my wife because she loves Harry Potter.
This one hurts more emotionally. Like it's such a gut punch that
that such a fun world was created by such a terrible,
terrible person. And and, but honestly the AI
stuff still makes me angrier. And it's it's interesting, too,
because Harry Potter was so inclusive.
It was. In the world.
There was also shades of anti-Semitism with the goblins
and and and some other other weird stuff going on, but
everybody was like, Oh, you can overlook it.
Wizards, magic, he he he fictional characters that is
just interlaced with anti-Semitism.
So there were signs if if you know, 1820 year old Bob knew
better, if he was a bit more seasoned in life, you know, and
people growing up now all of that is out there for them to
consume. And no early Internet stuff for
us. I wasn't finding out that Harry
Potter was the goblins were were, you know, symbolic.
No idea. I know that I, I tend to read
things at face value first. That's why I failed English.
OK, I didn't fail English class, but that's why I got criticized
when I was reading poetry. And they're like, you're not
supposed to read it literally. And I'm like, why not?
It was, it's it's tough. So there, there are no clean
choices in cardboard capitalism, Magic Gathering, right?
There's no such thing as clean consumerism period anymore.
Jesse just rattled off a bunch of stuff.
I still buy things from Amazon. So do I, I just did half an hour
ago. Walmart.
Yep. We get a big chunk of our food
from Walmart. We have to.
It's affordable. But being ethical is no longer
just about what you buy. It's about what people think
your purchases mean. How do we navigate?
That. Yeah.
Because like, I have katanas on my my cards.
Does that mean I support JK Rowling?
No, doesn't mean I support AII like sleeves.
They like that all. That doesn't change the fact
that the sleeves are good. Yeah, but.
By purchasing them, that means money is going to check out
Rowling. In a roundabout way, it does
now. Somewhere, yeah.
I never liked Dragon Shield sleeves, if you recall, even
back when we were first playing, I tried to avoid them.
I I was playing with ultra pros. I was all Dragon Shield, that's
all I was using. And then you showed me the
katanas, and I switched to katanas mostly because locally
all the LGS is around me. That's all that carries dragon
Shields, so they're so easy to get.
Yep, yeah, the ultimate guards coming right from from Europe
most of the time. And let's be honest, those
katanas were the go to high quality, reliable.
They've been our favorite for the last, what, 2 years now?
Look, look at the Prof you know he put out a video comparing
sleeves and what were his top 2 katanas and dragon Shields.
Yep, and and if you weren't already using those, you were
definitely curious. Yep, that's what made us pay
attention to it. So now, like I said, I'm already
experimenting with other sleeve brands I've got, I mean, I've
literally got like game gamegenic ones here.
I've got rock guards on on other stuff.
I'm trying to find sleeves that I like now, which is, which is a
challenge in itself and I don't want to.
That shuffle man it's so hard to shuffle like 100 card deck
already. Yep, you don't want the sleeves
to lay down. And I don't want to sound like,
oh, poor me, Bob has to find different sleeves.
Guess what? I'm going to find different
sleeves. I'm going to find ones that I
like. The market is saturated and we
can so. Many sleeves out there.
And we can choose, we can vote with our wallet here and and I,
I intend to. It's like I said, it's not just
the sleeves either. It's sleeves, It's deck boxes.
It's like Game Genic is really stepping up on a lot of their
deck box stuff. Yep, Yep, I.
Have I Want the Rock Guard or whatever it is nerd gaming a
playmat thing behind me too, along with the sleeves that came
in today. So there's so many out there.
There's so many options and I think that is another important
thing is that it is easy to pivot if things are going South
if you don't resonate with a brand for any reason.
If if a brand has gone nuclear like ultimate Guard with the
stupid stuff that they've been saying and the things that
they're not saying, we can pivot and we should.
Here's the other thing. I'm not burning my other
ultimate guard sleeves. No, the Cortana.
I'm not burning them for practical reasons.
Like think about like the chemicals, like if if I burn
them and you know, or if you. Throw them away.
You know, it's like I literally have a bulk box behind me.
That's. There's three rows.
Two of those rows are full of sleeves because I don't want to
get rid of them because it's. I don't want to throw them away
because it's bad for the environment.
But we don't need to erase the past here.
I think it's important that we the, that we, we move on though.
You know, I I will use these sleeves until they're no longer
useful to me and I will get new ones.
I have two boxes of Ultima Guards I haven't opened yet.
I don't plan on opening them. I have one back there.
Maybe No, it's a deck box. You know there.
There's no no more of this. Ultimate Guard is the best.
The katanas are the best Talk that that that is a line that we
will draw. I'm boring Jesse over here.
No, it's the it's 9:00. Everybody's getting up early now
because of school. Yeah.
And here's the other thing about the market, right?
We most of the Magic the Gathering community, at least in
the creator space that that we bump elbows with Jesse, right?
What seller are we not using anymore?
No, I will not use TCG player ever again.
You know that that hits close to home for me.
Right. Syracuse is like an hour and a
half away from me. You know, I used to go to
Syracuse all the time when I lived over that way.
And, you know, them closing that plant instead of, you know,
letting them unionize, it affected 200 people, over 200
people's jobs. So manipul, man.
I mean, they came at a great time.
They have a great site. They have a great shipping tool.
That they have the best optimize that screw anything else.
Like their optimizer is better than TCG players on a on a good
day. Like their bad day is bad.
It's not even close. Not even close.
So they came out a great time. You know I.
Freaking love manapool. I I've got another order out for
another deck that I'm building already.
I can't stop. I said I was going to stop and
and I I. Just say here, I was just going
to say you said you're going to stop.
I can't freaking stop. I have another deck coming,
Jesse. No company safe.
And, and let's also be crystal clear on this, billionaires are
the problem. They are so many problems.
This is just one of the many problems that they create, but
yeah, they are. Billionaires are part of the
problem here. Amazon, groceries, clothing,
everything. Just who profits?
Billionaires. The billionaires that's.
Really it's, I mean, obviously the billionaires are top of the
problem, like they're the heads, but really just the whole money,
like all the like, make money no matter what is the problem.
Like the whole capitalist, the whole capitalist way, the United
States is the problem. It's funny, my wife and I talk
all the time about billionaires and it's like the second you hit
a billion, good job, you win capitalism, you now have to
donate the rest of your money. There should be no billionaires.
Like, we'll put up a statue in your honor.
You won capitalism. Good job.
I I mean, you don't get to be a billionaire a second time.
There are no good billionaires. There's no simple good or bad
list either anymore, right? As as we've already beat to
death. I still shop at Walmart, I still
like Legos, I like Amazon. I use Home Depot as my primary
hardware store. What's wrong with Home Depot?
They're political affiliations and and the lineman's Jesse are
are. What about Lowe's?
Way right? Next to me.
Right. They're they're not good.
So I mean, this is the crux of it, right?
You saw, if you're watching, you saw the literal Jesse.
I roll over that. Yeah, yeah.
Because it's like, well, what the hell, What am I supposed to
do here? There are some like there are
some pretty hard limits for me, like I used to be a huge NASCAR
fan, we both used to be. And honestly like I stopped
watching when the the stage racing kind of started or.
They were like throwing attention.
Cautions. And then my final nail in the
coffin was the Let's Go Brandon crap.
Granted, that was like, that was Xfinity, but after that I'm
like, no, like I have not watched it at all.
Like maybe I'll catch like the final ten laps of a race.
So that's it. Like I don't pay attention
anymore. Yeah, just because of all the
political. Crap, yeah and and the worst
part in all this in I live near Raleigh, NC, I am in the.
Center of Charlotte. I am in the center of NASCAR
land. Yep.
I'm close. I'm, what, 3 hours away from
Watkins Glen? Yeah, I, I went to New
Hampshire. That was a couple hours away.
There's got to be 5 or 6 tracks within three hours for me, yeah,
3-4 hours there's got to be. There's 100%.
You have Bristol, you have Richmond, you have Charlotte.
Martinsville. Mountain Martinsville, That's 4.
Is there a track in Atlanta? Yeah, Atlanta.
Yeah, that's that's, that's six hours.
I mean, we are in the heart of NASCAR country and my kid loves
race cars. We got to bring them at some
point, right? Yeah, yeah.
Just make sure you have earmuffs.
There's no good or bad list anymore.
Every purchase we make feels like it comes with baggage.
What do we do about that? Yeah, because every purchase
goes to a company that's run by a billionaire who donates to GOP
like that, like it all, it all, like every rich person seems to
be that way. And and I don't want to hear
from comments or anything. Well then just buy local.
I do, yeah. I love to patronize local
places. I I would love it.
I knew every chance I get. Like my wife and I like we
rarely like this is a simple, very simple like pizza.
We rarely buy any pizza chain. The only time we will is when
our girls are, you know, complaining they want stuff for
us because there's no local place that does that.
But we usually buy local. We always buy local.
Patronize your local places. That helps.
Everything I would buy is local if I could, but they're all
closing because of big chains. Yep.
So like luckily here, like we have, we have a place called Mr.
B's that is like an Arby's. An Arby's actually got run out
of town because everybody went to Mr. B's when they left.
Wow. That's one of the very rare ones
where it's flipped. I would love to play or buy
local but they're a they're closing and B when they're not,
their prices are double what everybody else's.
It's hard. It's incredibly hard.
This is heavy. This is to to quote Marty McFly
here. I mean this is heavy Doc.
There's something wrong with the gravity in in the in the.
Future yeah, this this is heavy. They're they're it doesn't feel
like there's a right answer no matter what we do.
And if you were to bring boilers down to the NTH degree and, and
nobody has because there's no comprehensive list, it's not
possible. It's just not a thing.
Where, where could you shop? What could you buy?
There's some point, nothing aligns with your values, your
ethics, your morals. It's it's a horrible situation
in the world that we're in right now.
I don't like it. So what are we doing about this?
Where do we draw the line? And it's not always the same
line. So here's the thing.
Since becoming more visible as a creator, I now have to draw
clearer lines, right? I may be small.
I've got 77 whole followers on my Twitch channel.
I've got. I have 27.
I just hit 400 on Blue Sky this week.
I have, I have no engagement on blue sky, but that's 400
different pairs of eyes that see what I'm posting or not posting.
I have to draw clearer lines. And that's not out of fear.
Don't mistake that. That's not out of fear.
It's out of awareness. And that's, that's where it's
different. I'm not not saying things or
saying things because I'm scared to or not scared to.
It's because I am so hyper aware of the current political
climate, the current climate in general, what's going on?
I listen. Literal climate.
I read posts, I listen. I listen to our our friends.
Everything we do is under the microscope now, even the quiet
choices. Right?
I'm going to go to Magic on Atlanta with ultimate guard
sleeves. Do you think people are going to
judge me? Maybe.
I mean, sleeve wise, let's be technical.
There's no branding on the sleeves, so you won't know
unless you shuffle them. Like I will know when I shuffle
them. But there's going to be ultimate
guard booths, I guarantee it. Yeah, I wonder how that's going
to be. I'll take a picture for sure.
Like for sure, I'm, I'm very curious how that's going to be.
As I get older, the maturity and awareness that I didn't have in
my 20s and 30s is just piling up.
It's that combined with how much information we have access to
now. That's true too.
I mean to be honest, like if Rowling wasn't so vocal about
her terrible views, we never would have known.
Well, she she chose to be vocal too though.
She did, but if the Internet, you know, social media wasn't
there, would she have done in an interview?
Probably not. I doubted that.
Not early on. She didn't do it early on.
She didn't do it till she hit that billionaire mark, you know?
Yeah, like it's, it's, they seem to, I mean, you see it.
They live with Musk and all those people.
Like they get rich, they some get brain damage or something.
I don't. Know crazy, they get crazy.
I, I don't I don't understand it for me now that I'm I'm older,
more experienced and everything that, that maturity and
awareness, it's also there. It's hard to describe.
It's, it's just there now. I put myself in other people's
shoes way more often than I did even 10 years ago.
You know, I have a family now, which makes a big difference.
I have, I have a 5 year old, big difference.
Everything that we do and experience helps change your
perspective on things. And we're still growing, we're
still learning, so. For me, this, I don't know if
this is a good example, but before I had girls and before I
was married, I never really thought too much about how my
actions would affect women and that makes me sound like a
terrible person. I probably was, but now it's
like, how do I want the world to be for my kids, my two
daughters? But you've seen that.
You've, you've seen that. Recognize that.
Yeah. And you're you've changed.
That Oh yeah, I'm completely different than I was before I
had kids. And it's like I never saw things
through that that lens before. And now it's like, holy shit.
Now I have two girls that I don't want to have grow up in
the world that I grew up in. Right.
And what can I do to change that?
And, and, and the other thing for me is I've, I've grown up,
grown up and, and been in this, in this space.
It's never been in my nature to judge others on their product
choices. Ever.
No. Like, yeah, that's that nailed
it, right? For us, it's not Apple versus
Android energy, it's not Windows versus Mac, it's not Linux
elitism. We see everything and every time
a family member asks me as an IT person, well, should I get an
iPhone or an Android? What do you think, Bob?
You do this for a living. What's my answer?
Who cares? Get get what you like.
Get what you like. I literally have a device in my
house that runs every operating system.
I have one that runs Android, iOS, Mac, Linux, Chrome,
Windows. I have everything.
Granted, part of it was because I want to have the experience
and be able to support it in my job, but I was like tinkering
with it. You know what?
They're all the freaking same. They're all the same.
I can't judge people on that. Draco all.
Do the same thing. Draco and chat.
I only judge the lewd anime girl's sleeves.
OK, that's. Fair and the playmats.
That's fair. And the playmats and the the
shirts that people wear and then the pillows they bring to anime
conventions and. That's.
Never mind. People buy for.
The vivid memories coming back, Drake, I appreciate that, I
really do. People buy what works for them.
That's always been my stance. It always has been my stance.
So when Cortana sleeves were the best for me, that's what I
bought. Yeah, we you, you convert.
Like I said, you converted me. I literally switched 10 or 15
decks over to them and now it's like son of a bitch.
Now I have all these sleeves that make me feel dirty when I
use them. But again, the hardest dirty,
the hardest shift for me has been Harry Potter.
And and I already mentioned this, right?
I lived through the magic of the first wave, the books, the
movies of joy. But looking back now, like if I
could go back and warn 18 year old Bob about Rowling, I'd have
never gone that deep. Never, never if I could have
said, hey, Bob, you're this this lady who created this wizard
universe. She's a terrible person.
She's a turf. It's it's very hard because my
girls are at the age where they could start watching Harry
Potter. What do you say?
What do you say to a nine year old?
A7 year old? How old's?
How old's your oldest? 9. 9 What do you say to a nine
year old about I'm sorry honey, you can't watch this because the
creator of this is a terrible person.
Lately it's been no why don't we watch K pop Demon Hunters for
the 100th time? Hey, listen, I'm on board for
that. I'm on board for that.
Harry Potter was tied to joy, right?
That's where it initially was. It was tied to joy.
And, and for the younger audience, please bear with us
and understand that I'm not saying it's OK, but please
understand that younger Bob liked Harry Potter because it
brought joy. It's just not cool anymore and I
have no intention of making it cool anymore.
No, like we, we. And it's weird too, because
like, we own here. We own all the movies like we
bought them. Yep, I own them.
Owns all the books. Yep, she bought them.
What do we do? Should we burn our our past, our
history? I'm not burning books, by the
way. No, no.
And we already like the money's already gone.
You know, personally, when I'm what I'm like for myself, it's
teaching my kids better. Yeah, that's what we can do.
That's what I because it's something I can do and it's more
of a like a personal thing, how you teach your kids and stuff.
But like looking back at my childhood traumas and stuff I
went through, like I can't fix that, but I can sure as hell
make sure my kids don't go through it and they grow up
better and they grow up, you know, a more diverse thinking
way than I did. So that's you can control that.
And watching a movie is not going to change that in my
opinion. Buying new stuff sure as well
because you'll get more money, which I'm not going to do.
Yeah, I I just can't do that, you know?
And you and I offline touchdown. Like what if I bought Hogwarts
Legacy second hand? Yeah.
Like because you're not, you're not directly buying it.
You're like, say I bought it from you or.
You're not buying it from the publisher.
Say I bought it used from GameStop.
That might be money. That doesn't go back to Rowling
though, it goes directly to GameStop.
Right. Because they already got it and
they're reselling it. So is is is that is that OK or
are we OK with a loophole like that?
I mean, what? What do you?
Do that sucks too because Hot Rock slightly was a great game.
It was and, and I think we talk about this later.
On Yeah, I know we're jumping around.
We are, we are jumping around, you know, we, we can't support
anything. No.
And there's with games like that, there's a weird thing too
of like player count too, like playing it like UPS the player
count. It's so it's, yeah, it's messy.
So, OK, I'm late to the Harry Potter issue.
A lot of sis white dudes were it, it just wasn't on our radar.
I'm sorry. But we're learning now.
It's it's unavoidable. And and I get why people are
angry and that's part of what we're learning, why we're trying
to be better allies. We get it.
I I can't directly put myself in anybody's shoes here that is
affected by this legislation. I can't.
But I can listen. I can empathize.
I can donate my time, money to causes.
I can do all of that. That is what's going to make me
a good ally. Not yelling out, you know, off
the roof, rooftops. I wish I'll on her, you know?
Yeah. That.
So on platforms like Blue Sky, there's there's pressure from
trans creators and often rightfully so, right?
For us to do something for the sys creator side, it can feel
like there's no win. If I'm quiet, I'm complicit.
If I'm loud, I'm performative. If there's no pivot, if I don't
do anything about Ultimate Guard, if I condemn, don't
condemn them, I'm canceled, right?
We're canceled. And it's, it's hard to for the
creators that are sponsored by them.
You know, granted, there's some that have come out and said, you
know, I'm not dealing with them anymore.
But what about the smaller ones that maybe that's their only
sponsorship? Or it is it?
Maybe it's a big source of income for them?
What are they? Going to do.
It's puts them in an incredibly bad spot.
Incredibly bad spot. There's no, there's no silver
bullet for that. And same with, like us, not
like, what do we do? Like, yeah, like, I wish I could
go protest. I wish I could go do stuff.
I wish I could donate more money.
I have family. Like, when is it the point where
I'm donating more money than I am?
Like it could go to my family. We have to show up.
I think that's that's the important first step.
We have to show up. We have to do what we're doing
tonight. We have to have this
conversation as awkward as we're making it because again, just a
couple of sis white dudes here. Yeah, it's incredibly awkward.
Like, I don't know if it's coming across, but it's, it's
hard because in like if you, for me personally, if you hear more
like pauses, I'm trying to think without, you know, blurting and
saying the wrong thing. But it's it's hard because like
you said, we can't put ourselves in those shoes.
No. We don't know how it feels.
We're born with the privilege and and that's that.
Yeah, I think we're incredibly privileged.
We're white men of that are employed.
I mean, being employed is a privilege.
These days. I have the privilege of having 2
girls in the house, you know, 2 little girls that I'm learning
from everyday. It's not helping me.
But we are very privileged and it's very hard to and.
And here's here's the other It's not my brand, my personal brand,
not gamer Dad Bob. It's not Bob's brand to post a
big I'm quitting something thread on social.
I'm not going to record a video about it.
I'm not going to post a big thing about it.
I'm going to put my time, my shifts quietly, right.
I'm going to drop dragon shield, I'm going to drop ultimate
guard. That's that's just quiet stuff.
But but quiet can come off like indifference.
And that's, that's something I'm really struggling with right now
because again, small creator here.
I don't want people to see my silence as complacent.
I don't want them to be like, well, Bob hasn't said anything
about Ultimate Guard until his podcast.
And then who knows who's listening to it?
Who's who knows who's going to listen to it?
You know Draco is. After Yeah, Thanks, Draco.
Appreciate you being here. You know, we don't know who's
going to listen to it. And then then they still don't
know, right. And and do I have to shout from
the rooftops? That's just not my brand.
No, where where I was always a quiet person that still am.
You know, I only drawing attention to myself, you know,
personally, like when I find the sleeves that I like, I will
advertise them. I will say, hey, you know these
is I love these sleeves and it'll be 1 post That's it.
Yep, unless I get sponsored, which then I'll do as many posts
as they want me to. Same with like manipul, you
know, I'll do as many posts as we we need to.
Yeah, right. But I'm not the type of person
and I'm not in the position to be that type of person because
content creation is not my only thing, You know, I have a full
time job. Yep, I work.
You know what I mean? I'm lucky to work remotely.
I can kind of make my own hours, but I, I work, you know, that's
not how my income. I get no income from streaming.
I get no income from anything. Everything I just did for my
graphics is all lost because I don't make any money.
Yep. So same with you.
Yeah, I was going to say I've I've been a Twitch affiliate
since December and I haven't gotten a payout yet.
Yeah. It's not lucrative.
It's fun. I enjoy doing it.
I. Enjoy doing it.
Yeah. Like, I enjoy, like sitting here
talking with you. I enjoy having Draco and chat,
you know, giving us stuff. I'm not in this for the money.
So the endorsements and everything else, the CYA, it's
not as powerful for me and I don't have to right now, but I'm
still still going to quietly make some good decisions here.
And again, that's such a hard position for the people that are
getting money from these brands because when it's on your
livelihood, like if you get a sponsorship, that is your
livelihood. What the hell?
Are you gonna do? What do you do?
Especially like, imagine if, like Ultimate Guard was our
first big break. Yeah, imagine if this podcast
was sponsored by them and it's our first big break and we have
money to up our production level to hire a full time editor to, I
don't know, something right. I, I don't know what their tiers
look like or what it would be, but imagine it was like a first
major break. And then this comes along as
we're small creators, we have to drop them.
We have to, there's no question there.
And because we're already doing this on our own dime and
everything else, we're just back to there.
And I think that's still the right stance to take, you know,
because that was bonus. And this, this is our standard
here, what we're doing right now.
And we we're capable of this on our own dime and everything.
So making that statement matters.
We'd probably do it quietly because that's just our style.
You know, we're not saying sponsored by whatever anymore.
And this is all hypothetical anyway, because hypothetical
we're not. We have no sponsors, just you
guys, if you're joining our Patreon.
So anyway, let let's take a break and I want to do our lyric
or flavor text for this time this month.
I still have two. I have, I'm looking at mine.
I have more than two. I have a couple that are like,
that's too easy. Oh, it's too easy.
They're all too easy in my opinion.
But. I have one that's too easy also
and I I still want to do it. I mean, if you do your easy one,
I'll do my easy one. All right, and I think rather
than reveal at the end, I think it's probably better given the
the heavy, the weight of this podcast.
We'll just do it in the middle here.
I'll go first. So my my lyric or flavor text is
royal flames will carve a path in chaos, bringing daylight to
the night. No idea.
How's that easy? Sounds like flavor text.
You want to think on it and then read me yours.
Sure, so I'm changing mine now because I thought yours was
going to be easy. Every year that passes rings you
inwardly with memory and might wield your heart, and the world
will tremble. I'm going to cross this off as
you're thinking so I don't reuse it.
Does it sound like a Goo Goo Dolls song or something?
I don't know, man. These are hard.
We came up with a hard game, Jesse.
Hey, it's fun. I think it's fun.
Royal flames will carve a path in chaos, bringing daylight to
the night. I read it at a different
cadence. Does that help?
You did that cadence sounds like a song.
Now I'm going to say a song. You've seen this band live,
Jesse. I feel like it's Shinedown now.
I've you know how many bands I've seen live?
It's like 40 or 50. All right, so let me give you
more context. I was sick and didn't make it to
that show. You just said that earlier on
the podcast, didn't you? No, that was Universal Studios.
Yeah, you sick and didn't. Disturb close.
Who else played at that one? Alter Bridge?
Who did you say was amazing that night?
I know what concert you're talking about.
Breaking Benjamin, Avenged Sevenfold.
Oh, Avenged. Yeah, because they had the
opening. They they hung a guy like a fake
guy. That's hail to the King.
Hail to the King. Yep.
The. Cadence.
The cadence was made it sound like you.
You changed it and it's a song, right?
Yeah. I thought it sounded like flavor
text as I was, as I was thinking about stuff, I was like, that's,
that would be cool that that. That's probably a white card
just thinking. I was thinking white, like
flames of like purity or whatever.
Yep. So each year that passes rings
your inwardly with memory and might wield your heart and the
world with trouble. I tried to have a neutral
cadence there. Yeah, he he gave it a neutral
cadence. He's making a hard mode for Bob.
All right. It's a 5050.
Hard mode. I don't know, I I think I just
suck at this. The only time you I think the
only time it was easy when we had the same one.
Last time that was funny. Or two times ago.
Wherever. Yeah.
You gave me ghost lyrics last time.
Yeah, I'm going to go with flavor text.
It sounds like some kind of card draw.
It is flavor text. Is it a blue?
Car. Nope.
Not a blue car. Dorian the siege tower.
Dorian, the siege tower. Door in the siege tower.
I love it. The old original Absan
commander. Door in the siege tower.
Who attacks with his butt? He does attack with his butt.
I love it. He slams you with his roots, OK.
Let's dive in and get serious again.
That was a nice little interlude there.
The pressure to be loud is real, is it not?
It? Definitely.
Feels like it. I've stayed very quiet until the
Ultimate Guard stuff this this past week or so.
Their response to the AI thing? Hollow, tone deaf.
That was the turning point for me.
I I don't know why, I don't know why something snapped and
triggered in me, but the whole start of that is what triggered
me coming up with this podcast. Yeah, it did.
And I was like, I was like, Jesse, we got to talk about
this. It's not only is it relevant,
but it's, it's this is, this is what needs to be said.
And, and that moment right there was where silence wasn't an
option for me anymore. I just could.
I can't, I can't. I have a platform.
We have a platform, right? We have 20 subscribers or
something on Spotify, so 20 listeners.
Out there? I didn't know that.
Yeah. Nice.
To all you 20 listeners out there who may eventually listen
to this, right? This is our platform.
And this is where silence is no longer an option.
And it wasn't like because Ultimate Guard used AI.
It's that they chose like the least human route, you know?
Yeah, yeah, the the whole response, like I said, to them
hiring their own artists, it's like, what the hell, man?
Like AI is, is I had this point down.
Like AI is going to become the norm eventually and it's going
to be expected that they're going to be using AI.
But I was saying we're going to use and hire our own artists
instead of paying artists. I mean, I hope they're paying
artists or maybe hiring their own artists is hiring their own
GPT. Like maybe it's hiring and
making their own AI artists. Are we going to see like, are we
going to see job positions that are like prompt writer, like LLM
prompt writer, GPT prompt writer?
Because I watched a video today because I just had my YouTube on
and it was just going to the next one.
Like it was just suggesting stuff and one of them was how to
make ChatGPT better. And the guy said, I guarantee
that IP for companies is going to be the the company's prompts.
And I am like, really? And then I actually like, I paid
attention to this video. I'm like holy shit I didn't
realize how powerful your prompts are.
Yeah, they matter so much. Like, so you're 100% right.
Because the way he did it is like he said, once you get the
way you want it to, like your e-mail to be created the way you
want it, whatever, tell it. Tell me the system prompt that
would get me this result. Yeah, and.
Then you could learn the white, white prompts, and then it's
like people are going to start copywriting their prompts or
something. Yeah.
Prompt writer is going to be art.
Too. We're going to see that job
everywhere in the next couple years.
Yeah. And that, that just kills me.
Absolutely kills me. Anyway, Silence in our space
used to feel safe just not saying things.
Now I think silence feels suspicious.
Why aren't they saying something?
What are they thinking? What?
Are they hiding? Why aren't Jesse and Bob saying
anything? What are they hiding?
Do they? Do they feel the opposite of
this outrage? Is that why they're not saying
anything? If they're not saying anything,
they must feel the opposite. That's how people think.
That's how we're trained. That's how we're we're
conditioned to think these days. It is.
It is because it's safer to not say anything sometimes no more.
And as a sis hat white dude, I keep saying this.
What's hat? Heterosexual.
I've never heard it like that way.
There's more risk in speaking than staying quiet.
Just based on our position, we will never be in some of those
shoes. No.
Never. So speaking is risky.
Well, what do you mean, Bob? It's it's scary.
And that's all shifting, right? Because because not saying
something feels like complicity. I don't, I don't know what to
do. I'm doing personally, I've done
like I put AI, never put political signs up at all.
I did this year. Yep.
To combat some in my neighborhood and I actually had
an old like 80 year old woman come up and ring our doorbell
and tell us thank you for doing it, which was we were so
terrified. I remember I was, I think I was
on the toilet or something and I saw her get on my Ring doorbell.
Yep. And I'm like, don't answer the
door, don't answer the door. But it was actually good.
And like, I don't log on to blue sky to perform.
I'm terrible at at like engagement post.
Yeah, it's it's. ChatGPT tells me I'm terrible at
engagement post by the way. It feels so fake and like forced
for me. Exactly, and there's nothing
wrong with engagement posts, but it's so hard for me to do stuff
like that. So I'm not on to perform.
Guess what? I'm also not on Blue Sky to do
or Twitter before it went to pot.
I'm not on to pick fights. That ain't me.
I don't have the energy. I didn't have the energy 10
years ago. Before we had kids.
I I'm not picking fights. I log on to Blue Sky to listen,
to learn, and that's my important take away right now
with everything that's going on. So my silence, it's listening,
not complicity. And the outrage that's going on,
often it's real genuine fear from marginalized folks,
Absolute, genuine fear. I mean, look at the latest news
out of Minnesota. With everything that's going on,
the trans community has every reason to be terrified and we
have every reason to support the trans community more now than
ever. What the hell is going on?
And that's so infuriating to me because it has nothing to do
with that person. The freaking guns.
The problem? Like the guns, the the
brainwashing of how everything is today, like the whole you got
to be angry. It's just it's driving people
mad and their orientation had nothing to do with what
happened. No, they were just freaking
deranged. I don't have a better way to
put. It no.
If JFK or whatever his name is has any saying, he's gonna say
it's the medication they were on.
RFK. Whatever his name is, yeah, he
doesn't deserve to have his name said, right?
He's going to. He's going to say that it's the
medication they were on that drove him to it, and then
they're going to try to ban that.
You want to bet? I I will bet you money right now
that's what's going to happen. It's horrible.
But it had nothing to do. And, and like, depending on
where you look, they spin it a different way.
Like one site will tell you it's because of the religion, The
next site will tell you because of the orientation.
The next is because they don't like Trump.
It's like this person hated everybody.
But they sure did. Then they did clearly.
And guess what? They didn't get in the building.
They did not get in the building.
They shot through the windows. So you tell me that the gun is
not the problem? Gun is the problem and they just
had a knife. Would they have done anything?
No, because they're in the freaking building.
I don't want to make this about what what happened but people
have every right to be scared it's or mad.
I'm my kids go back to school next week.
I'm freaking terrified. I I my kid is starting
kindergarten for the very first time and I hate.
It now my wife's the teacher, she's going back.
Yep, my wife's also a teacher. I hate it.
Every time I get a call inside
of school hours from my wife, I tend to freak out.
Yeah, same here. I I I just don't know.
I don't like it. The creator anxiety is real from
us. The small creator anxiety like.
Yeah, sure. It's nothing we do is right.
I'm sure it's palpable from this podcast for, for those who are
listening that and that fear is constant because Jesse and I are
trying to build a space that's welcoming, inclusive, safe.
And you look at us and you go, I don't know, are these guys safe?
They don't say enough. The fear isn't necessarily what
if someone calls me out for being bad, right?
It's what if I accidentally say the wrong thing or signal
something harmful without knowing?
Yeah, like, you know me, I joke all the time.
That's just my how I am. And I don't know how many times
I've joked about the wrong thing and not realized it until after
it like I said it. And you need, we, we need, we
need people to pull us aside, DM us or whatever and correct us
or, or, or, or level set us or pull us out of something.
Bob, get your head out of your ass.
Why you talking about this? And I need understanding so I
can learn. We're not here to offend or
harm. We're here to learn.
We're here to grow. I mean, think about it, Jesse,
where we grew up in upstate New York, mostly white Christian
towns, right? Oh yeah, I, I was a little bit
better because where I was was right near the Army base, Fort
Drum. So there was a lot of non white
people there of all kinds of backgrounds.
So that definitely helped me. But yeah, definitely religion
wise it was Christian town, that's for sure.
I mean, I went to College in Vermont.
That helped open my eyes to the LGBTQ community.
Vermont's a great state. Enjoyed my time there, I learned
a lot. My former resident director
transitioned from female to male, went from Audrey to AJ and
the thing that pissed me off the most about that?
Hold on chat AJ. Dude grew a better beard than
me. I was so mad about that.
It's like, why is your beard so good?
It's like, I don't know, you suck, Bob.
Sorry that that that's where my mind went right.
So it's not like, oh, that's weird.
They transition. No, it was why does AJ have a
better beard than me? What the crap, by the way, it
looks good, dude. And then I moved to North
Carolina, which is in the Raleigh area.
It's a melting pot and I have learned so much from people of
color here that my whole world has has been upside down from
living in upstate New York. I'm so much more understanding.
And then let's add spaces like blue sky, like Wooburg sky.
They're all they're all helping us expand our perspective.
It's all helping because I'm listening.
I'm here to listen. You know it's.
Been It's been incredibly tough for me only because my dad was
every IST you can think of. Like he was racist.
You know he was. My father is too.
Misogynist. So that's what I grew up with.
That's like what I was told I had to be like.
We're still deep. Programming years of that,
Jesse. It's it's insane.
Like I'm listening to, I can't remember any of the book, but
I'm listening to this book about emotionally unavailable parents
and it's like, Oh my God. Like it's so revealing.
It is so revealing, like the amount of trauma that we have to
unpack. And it's like I saw a meme or
not a meme, a clip of like a bunch of glasses that were lined
up and it was very thick colored, like red colored wine
or whatever. And it said this is the
emotional trauma of like 3 or 4 down right?
It was a a bunch of wine glasses or glasses and like the very
left most one was the trauma of like your great, great, great
grandparents. Oh, I've seen that.
And then and. Then it goes to your
grandparents, nothing changed. It goes to your parents, nothing
changed. It goes to you, nothing changed.
Unless said you realize what's going on and then it pours in
water to clarify it and it says like therapy and this and this
and then you pass it on to your kids and it's not there anymore.
Yeah, it's more and more diluted, right.
Everything, everything is just deprogramming for us because
like I said, my dad was incredibly racist and he's
incredibly misogynistic. Like, like if I cried as like a
5 or 6 year old, he would tell me, I'm going to give you
something to cry about. God, he would smack me and.
Say, why are you crying? Men don't cry.
And it's like, my God, like it's so much deprogramming that we
have to, like a lot of the younger people don't have to do
that 'cause their parents are our age.
Yeah, like they're, I feel old, 'cause there's a lot of kids
that are in their 20s, that their parents are our age.
We're we're older parents with younger kids.
Is that the best way to describe it?
I guess like we waited, like my oldest is 9, I'm I'm 42.
We waited a long time to have kids.
There's people I know that had kids right out of college, right
out of high school somewhere, and their kids are already in
their 20s. Yep.
So they grew up already not having to deal with the trauma
because the parents didn't pass it on.
Maybe some did, I don't know, But a lot of it's debrogramming
for us. Yeah, yeah.
One of one of my big credos, mantras, whatever you want to
call it. Like it's just be good, do good.
That's my compass. It's really simple.
Be good, do good. No, religion didn't teach me
that. That's just me.
Yeah. I'm just trying.
These days will not teach you that.
I'm just trying to be a good person.
I want to do good things and, and, and if I slip up, right?
If it's pronouns terminology, please understand there's no
malice behind it. There's none at all, right?
Pull me aside, DM me, help me learn, help Jesse learn.
Respecting names, names, pronouns.
That's just baseline humanity. Gender ID.
People can't friggin get that in their heads.
I don't understand. It's not difficult and if you
don't know frigging ass I I just don't understand it.
And and one of the coolest things that I think that I'm
seeing out of blue sky is that like in Wooburg sky, that
community, the queer community is leading in that space.
And I am learning so much just by listening.
So again, here as the sis heck guys in the room, we are not the
default voice right now. We're we're not there, Jesse and
Bob. Privileged, but that's OK.
Here's the weird thing. I haven't seen other creators
cancelled over innocent mistakes.
So that tells me that this community is willing to teach
people to help them learn. The creators I have seen
cancelled, they've done some serious harm in the community,
right? We've seen some SA and and other
things going on out there. Oh yeah.
That there's no tolerance for that.
There shouldn't be. That those are arrestable
offenses in my opinion. So yeah, they should probably be
cancelled. And yet after all of this, that
I've said, OK, we still have to measure everything that we say.
And I'm still going to support causes.
I'm still going to donate. I am still going to be mindful.
It's just who I am. It's who we are.
But I. I'm the same, like I donate to
trans lifeline every year, you know?
I've donated multiple times this year.
Yeah, that and then like whenever Prof has his, you know,
fundraisers, I always donate to that.
It's but it's it's very hard to to know.
These shirts help help pay for it also.
I have one of. This year is this year's out.
I haven't seen. It yet did I?
Did I miss this year's one? I haven't seen it yet.
I've bought them the last two years, this is 2 years old now.
Yeah, but like I, I reposted ultimate guards post at 1st and
then I deleted it after I'd like read it and like, wait a minute,
there's between the lines here. I don't want to repost this.
Yep. So we're, we're, we're always
learning. You know, we don't, we're not
always going to get it right the first time.
So here's where we're at as as we start wrapping up and and we
we enter our last segment here, burn the bridge but not the
binder. What the hell does that mean,
Bob? Don't pollute.
Give a hoop, don't pollute. The burning wood is better than
burning plastic. The Harry Potter movies are very
much background noise during our holidays.
They always have been, but that's all they are.
I'm not supporting this creator. We just put them on.
I own them, physically bought them a long time ago.
I'm not streaming them through Disney, Netflix, HBO, wherever
the frig they're at now. Nobody's getting another dime
out of me on that. I mean if they.
If my kids want to watch them I will throw them on my Plex.
Then nobody gets any stream out of it.
We both played Hogwarts Legacy. Great game.
I thought it was really frigging well done.
And we know that Rawling profits off of the game.
We don't know how much that's undisclosed.
We don't know what percentage that's undisclosed, but what
about like, and Jesse and I have talked about this offline a lot.
What about the devs, the artists, the QA testers, the IT
staff, the people who are employed because of this game
that are able to go home and support their families or
themselves? Maybe they're single because of
this game, whatever, because of this game.
Now, should they have to ethically decide whether they
want to be employed or not and and survive, frankly.
So there's there's, there's more nuance to this than good and
bad. The same with the movies too.
Like the production staff, like all the people that made the
movies they still get royalties out of.
It Yeah, what are we doing about like the production staff that's
freaking I'm going to have to get a Pendragon shirt.
Sorry, I'm just looking at chat Shiny squirrel.
Look what about the like the the upcoming TV show?
Yeah, that that's where I was going.
Thank you, Jesse. I.
Knew it. Like, what about the people that
are making that? Like, that's their life.
Yeah. Like the productions, Utah, like
the production staff making those.
They don't make a lot of money. The actors, yeah, they, they do.
The kids, you know, that could be the first acting.
Do we think these kids even understand?
They probably don't. Because I bet all their parents
see your dollar signs. Oh, I'm sure they're probably
all childhood actors. The parents are probably pushing
them to do it. Like like the Ryan kid, the
YouTube and my kids always watch.
His parents are probably pushing them to do it, but like, it's
all, they're like all collateral damage.
Like nobody. It just seems like nobody's
thinking of that. And maybe I just just maybe
that's just my, you know, closed off mindset on it, but it feels
like there's so much that are affected by it.
Yeah, just a surface level thing.
There's so like, it's an iceberg.
Like you have all the surface level stuff and then a whole
bunch of stuff underneath it. Yeah, yeah.
I, I've said there's a bunch, like the Harry Potter stuff
hurts deeply. It was magic.
It meant something. Now I can't, I can't say
anything without risking blowback.
And please don't condemn me for supporting fictional Wizards.
You know, and I keep hearing, I keep hearing like, if you
support fictional Wizards, then you're part of the problem.
And that rhetoric feels really extreme and really scary.
Yeah, like I support Jennifer Vanderberg.
Am I part of the problem? No, but if you support.
She's a wizard. She's a wizard.
Harry Potter? She's a sorceress, Jesse, come
on, Sorceress. If you support Harry Potter by
consuming movies that you own, you're part of the problem.
Like I hear a lot of if you still like those stupid
fictional Wizards, you suck. OK, but can I just hate JK
Rowling and not give her any of my money?
Where's the line? Is there owning something and
then celebrating it? That's very different is they're
watching something and then repeatedly streaming it, adding
to a revenue stream to use a streaming stream stream.
Like I'm not here to platform it.
I'm not recommending Harry Potter to anyone at this point.
I'm acknowledging it as part of my past.
Like there's this similar tension, tension right now and,
and in our current political climate and history debates, you
know, what's being what's being done right now.
You can't erase the past entirely.
Because up to Trump, you could. You can't celebrate the harm,
either. Look at what's going on with the
Smithsonian. I was just going to say that
like it was on the tip of my tongue.
He's literally saying the Smithsonian puts too negative a
light on slavery. Are you kidding me?
Yeah, really. What do we do there?
Like this is the same thing going on in real life and like
to the same extent, right? We want to tear down Confederate
statues, but at the same time, we're not here to erase the
past. Those are two different things.
They can be two different things.
Our past was bad. Our past was terrible.
Harry Potter bad. Like nobody, like, like how many
people bring up the fact that we came over to this country and
murdered everybody that lived here.
So many natives. Like nobody pays attention to
that. Like you want to kick out
immigrants, we should kick ourselves out.
Right, Right. And we come still.
I've said this a bunch of times, too, from a place of privilege,
and we know it. But right now, for Jesse and I,
for small creators in our space, for your average white dudes
like us, it feels lose, lose. And we're not asking for a pass.
We're asking for nuance and room to grow.
Man, this was heavy. Yeah, there it is again, That
word heavy. Is there something wrong with
the Earth's gravitational pull in the future?
That's two Back to the Future jokes.
I apologize. I had one SO.
We're human, we're trying, we're fallible.
If you don't know what that word means, look it up.
We care deeply about this community in this silly card
game that we all love, Magic the Gathering, and we hope that you
show us the same care. If we mess up, Teach us, don't
condemn us. And in a space where everyone is
welcome, where hate has no place and understanding is king.
So if you're a small creator listening right now or later or
any time at all that you listen to this podcast where a podcast
can be found, we see you. You're not alone.
We are you. I'd love it if we could
normalize some quiet growth. Let's celebrate people changing,
trying, making better choices. Jesse and I are not aiming for
perfection. Lord knows that we're not
perfect in this space at all. I.
Don't want to be perfect? Boring.
My threat assessment is still suspect from time to time,
right? So we're, we're, we're aiming
for progress. So with us, Ask questions before
judging us, invite conversation, DM us.
Just don't DM us asking if we want to Commission our pieces
please. Especially using AII, can't
draw. You guys have seen my
infinitokens. All right, let let people get it
wrong and then course correct. One mistake is one thing, but a
pattern of my bad's, well now that's different and it's
important that you guys know the difference out there.
Real talk now, if you are a trans listener hearing this, we
want to ask you something. This is coming from a place of
genuine care here. Do you understand where we're
coming from? Like, do you see the crux of
what we're trying to unpack? We're not asking for a pass or
anyone to tone it down. We know a lot of this anger is
justified. It it legitimately is.
Your existence is trying to be erased by the current political
climate. That is beyond terrifying to a
point where I could never understand that.
So I know this anger is justified if you have
constructive thoughts, suggestions, or even gut checks
on how we can show up better, especially assist creators,
right? We generally genuinely want to
hear them. DM us, DM me, comment whatever
feels safe for you. We don't want to center
ourselves in pain, but we also don't want to quietly sit on the
sidelines and pretend we're not part of this too.
So, yeah, if you like this, stick around.
We're here to build, learn. It's been a hell of a ride
already, wouldn't you say? Yeah.
I think we can all make something cool together.
I really do. All right, Jesse, as usual, any
final words of wisdom from you tonight?
Actually wrote this one down. Usually I go on like a whim,
like does in the immortal words of the great humanitarian Jerry
Springer. Deep down we're all the same.
We all want to be happy. We cry when we're hurt.
We are angry when we are mistreated and we want to be
liked, accepted and respected. And not to mention loved is the
greatest gift of it all. Take care of yourself and each
other. Be awesome out there, Be
excellent to each Bill and Ted. Got it.
Right. Honestly, but my thing, be
awesome out there and we'll see you next time guys.
Take care.