Mandy Fabian
Coming to you live from a tidal wave of unstable internet, welcome! While we venture into the wild and the weird, the iconic and the bionic, the chaotic and the cacophonous! We’re delving into the creative trenches and seeing what bubbles up. Hello, everybody. I am Mandy Fabian and I am joined here by the multi-talented Pete Wright, Ryan Dalton, and Kyle Olson.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Mandy Fabian
Or what I like to call, three bards and a babe.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Mandy Fabian
This is Craft and Chaos. And tonight, a little more chaos as I am broadcasting from the other side of the world. It’s not Turkey, but I can see it from here.
Ryan Dalton
Intro music.
Pete Wright
Right. Wow.
Mandy Fabian
Oh boy, do we have a lot of fun things to talk about today.
Pete Wright
Oh boy.
Mandy Fabian
But hi guys and hello everyone.
Pete Wright
Hi.
Mandy Fabian
How you doing?
Ryan Dalton
Hello.
Pete Wright
Ugh. Just so good. Everything’s great.
Ryan Dalton
Great.
Pete Wright
There are no problems in the world.
Kyle Olson
Mm-hmm.
Pete Wright
Everybody’s health is strong.
Mandy Fabian
Okay good. I wasn’t sure how we were gonna do this if we were going to, you know, ignore it.
Pete Wright
We’re just gonna start lying.
Mandy Fabian
Yeah, I feel like it’s probably for the best.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Mandy Fabian
Oh my god. Sorry, I have a guest in my studio. Can you hear him clearing his throat?
Ryan Dalton
Didn’t hear it at all.
Pete Wright
No.
Mandy Fabian
Oh, that’s good.
Pete Wright
Couldn’t hear that at all.
Mandy Fabian
That’s good.
Ryan Dalton
Oh, I heard that one. But that was super faint.
Pete Wright
See what else he does.
Mandy Fabian
Anyway, sorry guys.
Kyle Olson
Yeah.
Mandy Fabian
It’s my agent.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Mandy Fabian
He’s very excited about this podcast. But we’re not here to talk about representation today. This week we’re gonna talk about heroes and gods and monsters. But first, before we jump into that, I just wanted to see what have you guys been up to in the last two weeks? Anybody have any exciting news? I feel like a little birdie told me that maybe somebody has some exciting news. Pete, would you like to begin?
Pete Wright
Oh, I thought we were talking about Kyle’s new diet. No, I guess I do.
Ryan Dalton
Yeah.
Pete Wright
I feel like you bozos — this is my headcanon — somehow I was dared to do this as a result of this show. And so I did it and I am eager to say, thrilled to say, that I have self-published my first work of fiction. I am now a struggling fiction author too. It is a short work of fiction. It is a novella. And it comes in right around 115 pages or so, and it is a story that might be completely lost on people. Who knows? My early readers have said they like it and that they forget that I wrote it. And that is a high compliment. And by the time they reach the end of the book, they may need to keep forgetting that I wrote it. Or then they can come back and remember I wrote it when they write that five-star review. So that’s where we are. It’s called Lattice. It’s available on Amazon right now. It’s called Lattice, a Novella, by Pete D. Wright. Don’t say Petey Wright, though you’ll be tempted to. Thank my last publisher, Wiley, for cementing that name. And there we are. And so as the process goes on — oh my God, Ryan Dalton, I’ve got questions. So you and I are gonna have some fun time together.
Mandy Fabian
Me too.
Ryan Dalton
I have your print copy on the way, so I will let you know.
Pete Wright
Oh, thank you so much.
Ryan Dalton
Yeah.
Kyle Olson
Yes.
Pete Wright
Thank you so much. Yeah, very excited about it.
Kyle Olson
Wild West of self-publishing.
Mandy Fabian
Mine arrives
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Kyle Olson
How exciting.
Pete Wright
I’ll tell you, having done both and being able to log into my dashboard and see immediate results is
Kyle Olson
And what is
Pete Wright
intoxicating compared to the traditional publishing model, which is, oh, we’ll reach out to you every six months, you know?
Kyle Olson
Having to wait for those numbers. Yeah.
Pete Wright
Like it is intoxicating. Right now it’s hard to imagine not having this kind of control. So far, a delightful experience.
Kyle Olson
So does that mean you have now hung out your shingle and you’re looking for other people to come under your benevolent wing?
Pete Wright
I’m not the one with the benevolent wing yet. That’s Dalton. But I will say this. I am equally intoxicated by just the fact that I feel like I unlocked something on these past works. And I’m so excited to dig into the next one. Like I have finished projects that are ready to be deeply edited. And so I’m working hard on the next one right now, which is a full-length YA work and I’m so excited to get some eyes on it. And hopefully by July sometime I’ll be able to sort of get that one out the door. That’s kind of my timeline right now.
Ryan Dalton
Nice.
Pete Wright
So I’m really excited about it.
Mandy Fabian
I have a craft question about that. I think self-publishing is great because — it’s like when you’re doing stuff on stage, you have the audience that is giving you feedback on your work and it’s instant, right?
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Mandy Fabian
But with self-publishing, that’s kind of another way of trying your work out, seeing what you got, seeing who responds to it and how it’s doing.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Mandy Fabian
And I think that’s just such a valuable thing. And I’m wondering, did the act of doing that — has that given you a different kind of — like, made you hold your shoulders differently? Does it make you approach the next thing you’re working on differently, because you have self-published and now you have a book that people are buying and getting shipped to their homes?
Pete Wright
I think it’s too soon because I’m in that liminal space as we record this where the book is out and nobody’s read it because it’s in the mail. And I’m waiting to hear how it hits. My early readers know me. Are they biased a little bit? Probably. But for me, as a podcaster, as somebody who’s accustomed to owning the entire flow, coming back to being able to take this thing and turn it into a book and own the entire process myself is very comforting. And so no matter what happens, if people end up hating it, that’s fine. It’s all mine. I didn’t have to argue with the editorial board over cover design. I didn’t have to do any of that. And did I make mistakes? Guaranteed. But they’re my mistakes and it’s my responsibility to fix them. And on that point, I am proud of the process and the part that I played in it.
Mandy Fabian
That’s really, really cool. I think I would be overwhelmed, but yeah, I think that’s where we’re going, folks.
Kyle Olson
Down with gatekeepers.
Pete Wright
Down with gatekeepers. I feel for the gatekeepers. There are a lot of jobs there — the number — I mean, we talked about this. With that first book, the number of editors — everybody’s a different kind of editor in these publishing houses. They’re all editors. Well, I don’t know how much they actually edit. They contract out for the actual line editor to do the work. What are they doing in the office? So yeah, down with gatekeepers is the message I feel pretty good about, until they back a truck up and say we’d like you to write for us — and then I’ll be up with gatekeepers.
Mandy Fabian
Taking my gatekeepers out for martinis. Very cool.
Pete Wright
Yeah, right.
Kyle Olson
That’s right.
Ryan Dalton
Well
Pete Wright
So anyway, thank you.
Kyle Olson
When they’re looking for pitches for the Expanse novels, you’ll be right there ready to take that money.
Pete Wright
Yeah, I’ll be right there.
Ryan Dalton
Well, on the one hand, it’s easy to demonize the gatekeepers. On the other hand, if you just do random searches for what books are out there self-published, you start to become a fan of gatekeepers to a certain extent.
Pete Wright
Yes, that’s true.
Ryan Dalton
A certain amount of gate — now, can they go overboard?
Kyle Olson
Well, true. Yeah, of course.
Ryan Dalton
Sure. But a certain amount — especially when you’re talking about traditional publishing — a certain amount of gatekeeping is what people want, I think, more than they realize they want.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Kyle Olson
Yeah.
Pete Wright
Yeah, I totally totally get that.
Kyle Olson
I give it up to the small press. Like the small press people who are out there putting out books that they know maybe only a hundred thousand people in the world will want to read, but by God, they’re gonna put them out.
Ryan Dalton
Mm-hmm.
Pete Wright
Mm-hmm.
Kyle Olson
They’re going to publish it. Those are the real heroes. And it’s more that publishing has consolidated so much that unless you get into one of the big four, you’re a failure. There’s a lot of unsavory AI slop out there that people are trying to make a dollar off of, hoping you’ll not look too hard before you buy it and download it to your Kindle and go, oh wait, no human had any part of this.
Ryan Dalton
Yeah.
Kyle Olson
But yeah, those little guys are my heroes.
Pete Wright
The other side of that is I’ve got a dear friend who has two fantastic books and he wants to do it the traditional way and nobody is reading those books. It’s been two years that he’s been sitting on those, sending every Monday — he has a routine of sending more
Mandy Fabian
Oh, yeah.
Pete Wright
and he’s gotten no bites. And that’s when I come back to thinking, okay, maybe the gatekeepers need to settle down a bit and he should publish this book, because the existence of gatekeepers is preventing a great book from being read. Ryan, I feel like you are in both camps.
Ryan Dalton
Yeah, I feel like I’m at a point where I can celebrate the good things about both, but also acknowledge the extreme weaknesses of both.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Ryan Dalton
And yeah, there are definite issues with traditional publication. It’s gotten worse since COVID because COVID took out a lot of legacy people in the industry who were just overwhelmed and burnt out.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Ryan Dalton
And they were the ones that had decades of experience and knowledge.
Kyle Olson
Yeah.
Ryan Dalton
I’ll be honest, I’m not naming any specific names or anything, but the overall quality of the traditionally published books that are coming out now with new authors is significantly lower than it was in decades past. Because you have the gatekeepers now that are much, much less experienced. And you also have ones that grew up in the echo chamber of what publishing has become, which I always call little Hollywood.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Ryan Dalton
It is every bit as much of an echo chamber as Hollywood, in that they’re chasing accolades from New York and LA and completely ignoring giant swathes of readers and letting them go unserved.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Ryan Dalton
I saw it very acutely in children’s publications, where they very clearly stopped publishing the books that, oh, kids are gonna love this, and started publishing all books that, oh, this is gonna win an award.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Kyle Olson
Yeah, or a celebrity is attached, because then they get to draft off of their fame.
Ryan Dalton
Yeah.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Ryan Dalton
Yeah, so in children’s books they’re chasing these accolades and social points that mean nothing to child readers.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Ryan Dalton
And so they’ve moved to completely not publishing for the people that they should be publishing for.
Pete Wright
Right.
Ryan Dalton
And similar things happen with adult books as well. Some really great books end up not getting through because they don’t fit through that continually narrowing window of what traditional publishing is going to do.
Mandy Fabian
Yeah.
Ryan Dalton
So yeah, that’s a huge problem in traditional publishing for sure.
Pete Wright
So yeah, that’s really
Mandy Fabian
I think for self-publishing, while you know, certainly maybe — it’s a bit like, I feel like just because I’m funny at a party, that doesn’t mean I’m gonna be a good stand-up comic.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Mandy Fabian
Right? Like there are just levels. So maybe if I do my first essay, I shouldn’t — you know, if I just blurt out 80 essays, I shouldn’t release a book of essays and be like, come on, I’m amazing, because I know more about self-publishing than I do about writing at that moment.
Pete Wright
Yeah, right.
Mandy Fabian
But I do think to your
Kyle Olson
That’s why Substack exists.
Pete Wright
Substack.
Kyle Olson
That’s perfect for that.
Mandy Fabian
That’s yeah, yeah, that’s exactly right.
Pete Wright
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that’d be a great way to build an audience.
Mandy Fabian
That’s a great way to build your voice and your audience. I gotta work on that. Anyway, but that’s a
Kyle Olson
Yeah.
Pete Wright
But I don’t want to underscore the fact that part of it for me is just having the artifact that I did this thing. And that’s where I feel like I kind of need that in my life.
Mandy Fabian
Yes.
Ryan Dalton
Yeah.
Pete Wright
Whatever people end up thinking about it. I feel like one of the things that I’ve maybe learned again from you nincompoops is that the joy comes from writing for me.
Mandy Fabian
The doing. Yeah.
Pete Wright
And not targeting somebody else who is gonna judge my use of language and syntax and story and made-up words, right? Like I did this for me. And the people who need to hear it and will like it will be people that I largely probably like.
Mandy Fabian
Yeah. And I mean, I’m facing a very similar scenario in that I’m writing this book for my girls and it’s definitely an audience of two, but I think it will resonate with other teenage girls, or moms who want to know what to say to their teenage girls about things, or dads — it has some
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Mandy Fabian
broader things. But when I think about taking that to the traditional publishing route, I go, oh well, I mean I’m not Brené Brown and I’m not
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Mandy Fabian
you know, so many people that are experts on parenting or psychologists or something. But what I have to say has value, certainly for my kids, and might have value for other people.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Mandy Fabian
So I’m gonna write it down. And I really thought about this. I was like, what am I gonna do? Give them my laptop and be like, have fun? Like I have to make a book. I want to make an actual book.
Kyle Olson
Yeah, yeah.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Mandy Fabian
And that is the way I think it can be passed on to whoever else might enjoy it, get worth from it. But I’m still going to try the traditional route. I guess I recognize I don’t want to be like your friend and go, well, I’m never gonna have it come into the world if it’s not gonna come in like
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Mandy Fabian
Glennon Doyle, Untamed, all guns blazing.
Kyle Olson
Yeah.
Mandy Fabian
Even though we’ve discussed that.
Pete Wright
Totally. Yeah.
Kyle Olson
That’s the goal, yes.
Mandy Fabian
That’s obviously my destiny, but no, I think it takes a real act of bravery to do that.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Ryan Dalton
Well, when people ask me how do you get published — which is a broader question than they often realize — my first question back to them is, what is your goal?
Kyle Olson
Yeah.
Pete Wright
Mm-hmm.
Ryan Dalton
Do you want to be traditionally published?
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Ryan Dalton
Do you want to really make a go of this? Are you thinking about a career? Or do you just want to write something to have in your hand for your friends to read? And based on their answer, my advice changes vastly.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Kyle Olson
Yeah, yeah.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Mandy Fabian
Oh, that’s interesting. Well, okay, that’s actually a pretty good segue — the act of bravery — into the things that I wanted to discuss this week.
Pete Wright
That’s actually a good segue.
Mandy Fabian
Am I allowed to say where I am? Like it’s okay to tell people where I am, right?
Kyle Olson
Sure. By the time this comes out, you’ll be long gone, you won’t be there anymore.
Pete Wright
It’s up to you. Yeah, you’ll be gone.
Mandy Fabian
Right, I always have to be careful with the paparazzi.
Kyle Olson
Yeah.
Mandy Fabian
So that they don’t rush the Airbnb slash cave that I’m staying in.
Kyle Olson
Yeah.
Mandy Fabian
No, I’ve been in Greece and it’s been really interesting to witness ruins of buildings and stories of the legends, the myths of the nymphs and the gods, and how narrative has informed this culture and is still such a huge part of the heartbeat of it.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Mandy Fabian
And of course it’s all about heroes, gods, and monsters. And so the thing that I am interested in is, like, what makes a good hero? Like what is the thing — what is the thing that for you, in the work that you’re doing for your protagonists, or the things that you watch, or even people in your life — what is the thing that inspires us to be braver, stronger, bolder? Or to do the thing that’s scary, to do the thing that’s risky, to face the monsters — which we’ll get to later. That’s my question for you.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Mandy Fabian
I’m really interested in this idea of are you a hero — and what are you — oh, my studio guest has a
Pete Wright
Yeah, he’s doing great.
Kyle Olson
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Pete Wright
It sounds like he might need some albuterol or something.
Mandy Fabian
Yeah. No.
Ryan Dalton
I think we’re boring him.
Kyle Olson
Oh my god.
Mandy Fabian
True. We’re in the last stages of some sort of serious chest fungus, so I take him with me now into the studio because I’m worried it might be the last time I get to see him. But it’s fine, you guys. This podcast is the most important thing. It’s craft and coffee.
Kyle Olson
Yeah.
Mandy Fabian
Coffin Chaos would have been better.
Kyle Olson
Maybe it’s keeping him alive.
Pete Wright
Well done.
Kyle Olson
Like we don’t know.
Mandy Fabian
That’s true. Anyway, sorry. Yes, who wants to take this one first? Ryan, I see it in your eyes, buddy.
Ryan Dalton
I can dive in.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Mandy Fabian
Give it to me.
Ryan Dalton
Yeah. So heroes. What makes a hero? To me, intention is a huge part of what makes a character the hero — you know, why are they doing what they’re doing, what is their goal? It’s also why certain antagonists, if they were in a different story, could also be a hero. Antagonists aren’t necessarily villains. They just want something different than what this story’s hero wants. But depending on the antagonist, they could very easily be their own hero in another thing. Sometimes it’s fun to just watch an unstoppable hero tear through bad guys, but what’s compelling is the struggle. The stories we really come back to and that we resonate with — what do they have to overcome to attain their victory? What is the cost of victory? That’s one of my favorite things to explore in all of my stuff — even if you win, what was the cost of victory? I like exploring that.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Ryan Dalton
A few of my favorite fictional heroes. I like Mal Reynolds from Firefly.
Pete Wright
Nice.
Ryan Dalton
He’s very flawed.
Pete Wright
Very flawed.
Ryan Dalton
He’s kinder and a more good person than he wants to admit, because he lives in a very hard world. But he always ends up doing the right thing in the end. And he usually ends up just getting ravaged along the way.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Ryan Dalton
So doing the right thing is really hard and painful and he’s gonna complain about it the entire time.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Ryan Dalton
But he’s gonna do it.
Kyle Olson
But yeah, we just don’t end up
Ryan Dalton
Shot, yeah.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Kyle Olson
Robbed, lied to, and naked on the side of the road, and then still ending by going, that was a pretty good day.
Ryan Dalton
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Switching gears to a different format.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Ryan Dalton
I like Drizzt Do’Urden from the Forgotten Realms books.
Kyle Olson
Yeah, that’s a good one.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Ryan Dalton
He was born into a largely evil culture — a large part of it because of, and this will tie into another thing, the god that they worship in that fictional world. And it would be so easy for him to be just like them. But he chooses a path instead
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Ryan Dalton
that is a better path, but also puts him on a path of opposition and collision with his family, with the entire system that he was born into, and that also forces him out of that world
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Ryan Dalton
into another world that hates and fears his kind because they have a reputation for being murderous and evil.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Ryan Dalton
So he has that to deal with as well. He’s sort of like a man without a country. But he chooses that more difficult path. And he’s one of those good guys that is extremely competent and a very tough adversary. But he’s also not perfect — he does make mistakes, and there are things that he doesn’t know that come back to bite him and he has to learn and grow and get better. And he has to have friends, which those group dynamics can be super fun.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Ryan Dalton
So yeah, I like him a lot.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Ryan Dalton
My third one — I like Veronica Mars.
Kyle Olson
Yeah, yeah.
Ryan Dalton
She’s clever and she’s mouthy and she gets by on her wits and she keeps to her own moral code despite being surrounded by corruption. But she’s also, despite being very smart and very capable, she’s often in danger. She has very clear vulnerabilities. And the qualities that make her a compelling hero to watch are also the same qualities that get her into a lot of trouble, which is also very fun.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Ryan Dalton
So her good points invite conflict and trouble, which is a lot of fun.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Ryan Dalton
I’ll tell you what, to me, is not a compelling hero — and I bring it up because I see this happen more and more often, especially in Hollywood productions.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Ryan Dalton
A character whose whole journey comes down to realizing that they were perfect all along.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Kyle Olson
Yeah.
Ryan Dalton
The only problem was lesser people holding them down.
Kyle Olson
Yeah.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Ryan Dalton
That is not compelling. It’s lazy. It’s annoying. And it’s often self-serving on the part of the writer, whom I suspect the characters are kind of a veiled self-insert for them. And that’s like I said a huge problem in a lot of modern Hollywood productions. If your hero never grows, if they never learn, if they never have to change or stretch to be better, and if that growth doesn’t inform the story and isn’t necessary for success, you haven’t written a person, you’ve written a statue. And nobody likes to watch a statue on camera. Don’t do that. The end.
Mandy Fabian
Well done. I feel like I just got a master writing class.
Pete Wright
And scene. Right.
Kyle Olson
Yeah.
Mandy Fabian
I love it. I love it.
Kyle Olson
Currently, the sort of hero type that are resonating with me are the ones who get knocked down and get back up again. Not to quote Chumbawamba, but you know, here we are.
Pete Wright
Chumbawamba, yeah.
Ryan Dalton
You’re never gonna keep me down.
Pete Wright
I mean, that’s yeah.
Kyle Olson
Yeah. But you know, as we’re talking about Greek myths and things — Spider-Man is Sisyphus.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Mandy Fabian
Yeah, yeah.
Pete Wright
Really?
Mandy Fabian
Writing that down.
Pete Wright
Spider-Man like Spider-Man. Yeah.
Kyle Olson
No matter what he does, he can never get ahead and he always ends up right back where he started. But by God, he’s gonna push that boulder up the hill again. There are so many things — like in the Spider-Man movies — where you hit those moments. There’s no way he can do this, and he is the only one who can and has to pull it. Like in Homecoming where he has to lift the building off himself, which is straight from the comics, or in Andrew Garfield’s run, where his leg is injured and he still has to get to that building to save the city, even though he can’t walk. All those things resonate with me. And there’s the new season of Daredevil. Daredevil’s just a guy. He’s even a blind man who has to do all of the things that all those other superheroes do, with this additional thing, and not letting anybody know what is going on with him.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Kyle Olson
So he gets the crap kicked out of him again and again. But man, he’ll just stand up, wipe the blood off his face, and then square up again.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Kyle Olson
Those things right now are really resonating with me. But the one along those same lines — those are sort of your quintessential superhero heroes — another type that I like is Sir Samuel Vimes from the Discworld. An interesting one because he is a person who never expected to be a hero, never even expected to grow up,
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Kyle Olson
much less grow old, and yet keeps finding himself in these situations where he has to be the one to do the job. He was a rough kid from the streets and got into all sorts of awful things, and then got taken in by essentially the Discworld version of a police officer and set him on that path. And so he is a cop, but he thinks like a criminal. And he has this sense of — he doesn’t judge people, and he’s just the one who’s gonna be like, well, there’s nobody else, so he’s gonna roll up his sleeves and do it.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Kyle Olson
He’s gonna have a cigar in his mouth and a really annoyed expression, but he’s gonna do the right thing, whether he has to bring down an entire country or arrest a king or stop a war. He’s gonna be the one to do it. And so he just shrugs his shoulders, straps on his breastplate, and goes in. He’s not the strongest, not the smartest, but by God, he’s the meanest. And sometimes that’s what it takes. And so that’s right now the kind of hero I’m looking at.
Pete Wright
All of these are so interesting and I think it just makes me reflect on what I look at in a hero — the shape of their struggle, right? You talk about Spider-Man, you talk about Daredevil, you talk about all these characters who, on the surface, have all of the skills that you’d think would be required to be successful in their chosen field — fighting crime, whatever it is.
Kyle Olson
Yeah, mm-hmm.
Pete Wright
And yet the shape of their wound is such that they just can’t get ahead. And I’m really curious about that — that they are everything you imagine they should be, and they still sometimes lose in the end, and badly. It makes me wonder about my own obsession with heroes. Like what does that say about me? What does it say about us as people that we’re obsessed with heroes?
Kyle Olson
Yeah.
Mandy Fabian
They look great in tights.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Mandy Fabian
I mean, I get it.
Pete Wright
They do look great in tights.
Kyle Olson
Yeah, true.
Pete Wright
And I’ll tell you who’s a hero who looks good in a good seersucker, and that’s Atticus Finch. Now Atticus Finch did all the right things. And I acknowledge Atticus Finch is a complicated character. And later texts have complicated him even further. But when I was introduced to Atticus Finch, he was a guy who did the right thing beautifully and it didn’t fix anything, right? And that is, to me, an incredibly honest kind of heroism. And map Atticus Finch against Samwise Gamgee for crying out loud, right? Here is the hero who just never thought of himself as a hero, and he just stood up and did the right thing in spite of his own shortcomings. You see what I did there? Hobbits are short. That is, I think, a really pure kind of approach to what it means to be a hero. And I think the best heroes, the best written heroes, are the heroes who have a certain set of skills and are still battling their own brokenness. And we criticize Superman all the time because Superman is a character who, when written casually,
Kyle Olson
Yeah.
Pete Wright
is a guy who has no brokenness. But when written well, Superman can be broken in the most diabolical ways. And that’s interesting. That’s when he becomes an excuse for me to outsource my own courage, right? My own image of myself into this other body and make it a playground. So I think that’s one of the reasons that I’m super obsessed with how heroes are portrayed.
Kyle Olson
Before you make the next point, there was a post on Tumblr that I read that basically someone said, if you put Macbeth in Hamlet’s story, he’d have it all wrapped up in like an hour.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Kyle Olson
And like, and vice versa.
Pete Wright
Right. Real Type A energy.
Kyle Olson
Like you couldn’t have
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Kyle Olson
Either one. It’s the whole thing that they’re trapped in the wrong story. And that’s sort of where the drama comes from.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Kyle Olson
And so if you switch them around — it’s built to be resistant to it, but with a different person, it would be a completely different story. And that’s what makes it interesting.
Mandy Fabian
That’s really interesting.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Mandy Fabian
I really love what you guys were saying. And one of the things that really resonated for me, what you said Ryan about a hero overcoming these great odds — lately, just with the world being what it is, I’m finding greater and greater thrills in the characters who have obstacles that feel as big as the obstacles feel in my life sometimes. That they’re able to face these things and summon this — they usually come out on top, or they
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Mandy Fabian
But they’re always being knocked back. I’m not articulating this well. But what I mean to say is, it inspires me to figure out how I can be a hero, in what ways in my life
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Mandy Fabian
could I do better or try harder or not shrink back or stand up bravely. And I don’t think this was a thing for me my whole life — it wasn’t until I saw Captain America, the very first one, that I was like, oh, now that’s a hero to me. Because I wasn’t a fighter, right?
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Kyle Olson
Yeah, mm-hmm.
Mandy Fabian
And honestly, with some of the more Sisyphean tales, I was like, guys, you’re just getting knocked back.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Mandy Fabian
Like, what am I watching? I’m just watching the same thing over and over again. And now I appreciate that so much more.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Mandy Fabian
But Captain America to me was this thing where it woke everything up in me, because I was like, oh, he’s good.
Pete Wright
Oh good.
Kyle Olson
Mm-hmm.
Mandy Fabian
He’s just good.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Mandy Fabian
And yeah, he also is giant and muscly because he got the super soldier serum and everything. But to me, I loved
Kyle Olson
But he was a good man.
Mandy Fabian
that moral center was something that I as a human being could look at and go, that’s my hero.
Ryan Dalton
Yeah.
Pete Wright
Yeah, he was good before.
Mandy Fabian
And the ones I enjoyed the most, that was the heartbeat of the story. And I was so glad that the guy with the goodness inside of him had the muscle
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Mandy Fabian
and the unwavering commitment to overcome evil.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Kyle Olson
Mm-hmm.
Mandy Fabian
Because I do think that’s the thing that a hero means to me — is someone who I can either be
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Mandy Fabian
or stand behind and try to support or emulate in any way I can to fight evil. Something that we all have, that we can all stand up against.
Pete Wright
I think that’s a great example and we’ve talked about that a bunch over on Marvel Movie Minute years ago as we covered that movie. But the fact that they so perfectly capture the essence of Captain America and Steve Rogers in that one line. Like, he’s not really about good or evil. He just doesn’t like bullies.
Kyle Olson
Yeah.
Mandy Fabian
Yeah, yes.
Pete Wright
And we can all relate to that.
Mandy Fabian
Yes, yes. A good human. A good heart — that means something.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Ryan Dalton
Yeah, yeah.
Kyle Olson
Yeah.
Pete Wright
Right.
Mandy Fabian
And then I also really like heroes that are just — even in the tiniest little — there’s no fighting or big
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Mandy Fabian
obstacles. I also really like the heroes that overcome the internal obstacles.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Mandy Fabian
Like the character that kind of — what you were saying, Pete, about
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Mandy Fabian
the ones that have to fight their own wound or make a change in their life, even if it’s like, talk to the girl. I was telling my kids the story of Lars and the Real Girl.
Pete Wright
Yeah, yeah.
Mandy Fabian
You know, and he just becomes brave enough to introduce his blow-up doll girlfriend to his community.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Mandy Fabian
I don’t know if you guys have seen that movie, but it’s like this fantastic story. Like it’s the smallest act of bravery where anybody would look at that hero and go, I wouldn’t call him a hero, but I would, because he has to make that change in his life.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Mandy Fabian
And I think that’s also reflective of the hero’s journey.
Pete Wright
Totally. Totally.
Mandy Fabian
Say.
Ryan Dalton
That just makes me think about — at the end of Return of the King, if you look at what Frodo is writing, there’s a scene where you see him writing in the journal. And the last thing he’s writing, he’s talking about — this is after they’ve gone and done all of that stuff — he talks about how Samwise asked Rosie Cotton on a date, and then he says it’s the bravest thing he ever did.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Mandy Fabian
Oh, I love that.
Pete Wright
Yeah. Awesome.
Mandy Fabian
Okay, well, should we maybe — do we have any sponsors this week?
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Mandy Fabian
Because they’re
Kyle Olson
I believe we do.
Pete Wright
Great toss.
Mandy Fabian
Oh, that would be exciting.
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Ryan Dalton
Did I catch some Beck lyrics in there? I’m pretty sure I caught some Beck lyrics.
Kyle Olson
Makes a lot of sense in a weird world.
Ryan Dalton
That has to be a hat in our merch store. Meaning is for hats.
Pete Wright
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Mandy Fabian
Meaning is for hats.
Pete Wright
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Kyle Olson
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Mandy Fabian
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Kyle Olson
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Mandy Fabian
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Pete Wright
Oh god.
Mandy Fabian
Hey. What a great segue, you guys.
Kyle Olson
Hey.
Mandy Fabian
Thank you for your thoughts on the heroes. But next I would like to talk about the element of God. Now, I don’t mean like
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Mandy Fabian
you know, like where did you go to church for Easter. But I’m noticing that there are a lot of these really fun crazy stories about gods in Greek mythology that are so much more interesting than any god I was ever introduced to as a kid. And I’m just curious about this idea of — from any god that you would have in your storytelling, whether you channel your stories from someplace, or whether you worship at the altar of some rock god or a particular type of food, or what — how do gods or the idea of gods work into your storytelling? Or what’s your favorite representation of god in storytelling? Because I’m constantly diving into supernatural, magical realism in my stuff. It just inevitably happens.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Mandy Fabian
Because I’m fascinated with it. I mean, I admitted about the eclipse spell that I did. I do still have eclipse water in my pantry. Like, this idea of
Pete Wright
Oh good.
Kyle Olson
I am very religious about my dice, so I get it.
Pete Wright
Keep that around.
Mandy Fabian
There you go. And I think that humans kind of crave this idea of something beyond us working its forces, that’s not like a hero in a cape or whatever.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Mandy Fabian
So I’m curious about if any of you dabble in that or your favorite examples of it.
Pete Wright
Okay. Well, I don’t know about “dabble.” When I think about gods, I think they are — plural — the places where our feeble human brains put things that we cannot control or explain, right? A god becomes a container for awe and terror and meaning. And we can call it the muse or the algorithm or the work, whatever you want to call it. There is a thing there. And when we go meta and talk about the function of gods — like, do we really worship Zeus or do we worship certainty and chaos, right? The Greeks in particular gave every big messy force a face and a name, because unnamed dread is worse than personified dread.
Mandy Fabian
Yeah, it’s fantastic. Yes. And there’s someone to talk to about the stuff that’s bothering you.
Kyle Olson
Yeah.
Mandy Fabian
You’re like, I need wins for my sales, right?
Pete Wright
Yeah. Yeah, right.
Kyle Olson
Yeah.
Pete Wright
Exactly. And so we build our own pantheons. And inspiration is a god and procrastination is a god, and the inner critic is sure as hell a god, and we keep showing up. So that’s what I think about. And this is particularly — have I mentioned I just self-published my novella, Lattice?
Mandy Fabian
What?
Pete Wright
One of the things that I think a lot about is the sort of modernization of the chaos deity, right, that is embodied in the forces of capitalism. And the systems that we create that are bigger and more powerful than anything we could individually break down. That has become for me something to really think about. That Greek model is really brilliant because gods can be petty and jealous and horny. And I think we have created systems that are petty and jealous and just horrible to the people who created them and worship them. And so that’s a lot of kind of what I’m thinking about right now as I’m writing and podcasting. What hath we wrought — in the language of religion, we hath wrought chaos at the very top and we still have a very complicated relationship with our worship of it. And I will say, you asked me to pick a god, and I picked Loki, because not necessarily because of chaos, but because I feel like Loki
Mandy Fabian
Oui!
Kyle Olson
Yeah.
Pete Wright
ultimately is the god of the necessary disruption. You know? Nothing moves until something breaks. And I think every creative project probably has a Loki moment where things go sideways and that’s when it gets good.
Mandy Fabian
Oh, yeah.
Kyle Olson
And the Norse gods are the only ones who built in their own expiration date, which I find fascinating as well.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Ryan Dalton
Mm-hmm.
Pete Wright
Yep.
Ryan Dalton
Mm-hmm.
Pete Wright
So that’s my take.
Ryan Dalton
Kyle, I caught that Neverending Story reference, by the way.
Kyle Olson
Oh, nice.
Ryan Dalton
Nice little drop there.
Kyle Olson
So
Pete Wright
If your favorite god isn’t from the Neverending Story, now that’s gonna be problematic for all of us.
Kyle Olson
So I find every time I try and do something along those lines, story-wise or whatever, I end up going into the same place and like, oh, no one’s thought of this. And I go, nope, that’s just American Gods by Neil Gaiman again.
Pete Wright
Oh yeah.
Kyle Olson
I know he’s persona non grata right now, so I’m not gonna spend any time talking about it, but that book is so good in terms of taking all these incredible ideas about gods and worship and America and putting them all into one thing.
Pete Wright
So pretty good.
Kyle Olson
And it made a pretty good first season of a television show, and then not so great a second season. But moving on from there. What I’m interested in is the stories that we continually retell. Like there are things we come back to. How many Loki stories have there been? Like there’s — not in a negative way — it’s sort of like, what we come back to and why. And so the story that I find interesting, and that the storyteller for this one incorporated into it, is Hadestown.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Kyle Olson
In Hadestown, when you’re sitting and watching it, the performers up front are saying, this is an old song and we’re gonna sing it again.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Kyle Olson
And so they go through the entire show talking about Orpheus and Eurydice and Hades and Persephone and telling the story, but in this very 1940s sort of band style, and it’s this love story with a tragic ending.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Kyle Olson
And you know that, because it was written well before our country exists. Thousands of years ago, people have been telling the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. And so they do it.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Kyle Olson
And then they get to the end and there’s that thing, and by God, you’re caught up in it again.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Kyle Olson
Like every time he turns around, you go, oh, like — once, can once he get through. But he never does.
Pete Wright
Every time. Every time. Every time.
Kyle Olson
And then the musical ends by saying, it’s an old song and we’re gonna sing it again. And they reset the stage because they’re gonna tell the story again. And I just love that. It’s this beautiful thing of like, yeah, this is an important story.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Kyle Olson
And you need to hear it and we’re gonna tell it again.
Ryan Dalton
My favorite Greek god is a lesser-known deity of getting up again, Chumbo Wambacus. I don’t tend to quote them because we may have to pay a royalty if I start quoting the lyrics.
Kyle Olson
Any particular drinks that he likes?
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Kyle Olson
Sure, sure. Yeah.
Pete Wright
Thank you.
Ryan Dalton
I don’t tend to address much that’s divine or celestial in my work, but I do enjoy it in other works. In fiction, I enjoy — I’ve shouted these guys out before — I enjoy how Critical Role, in their take on a D&D world, particularly the way that Matt Mercer designed his worlds and portrays that pantheon of gods in a D&D-based RPG.
Kyle Olson
Yeah, yeah.
Pete Wright
Yeah, it’s great.
Kyle Olson
That was gonna be my second thought too.
Ryan Dalton
For one, there’s enough of them that they aren’t a monolith. You get all sorts of flavors, and all sorts of different kinds of powerful beings with all sorts of personalities and flavors of how they interact with mortals, and then how their power affects the world and the people in it, and there are echoes of that and consequences. And you have extremely rare events of mortals figuring out how to kill a god or even how to ascend to the level of godhood. And the longer the game goes on and you follow the characters, the more that world gets fleshed out, including that pantheon of gods. And with all those different kinds of powers and agendas flying around, it becomes very compelling to watch. And also to think about, oh man, what kind of character would I like to play in this world, in this sandbox that has all possible levels of power in existence? So I just find that really fun to watch and engage with.
Kyle Olson
I want to do just a momentary aside on Critical Role before we move off it, because chances are the majority of our listeners — and the rest of the panel, even — are not going to watch like four hundred hours of Critical Role, and that’s a conservative estimate of how much there is.
Ryan Dalton
Yeah.
Kyle Olson
But Matt Mercer is the guy who created the whole thing and this is his world, his fantasy world that he built out.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Kyle Olson
And from when he was young, he had started building it. Now other people get to play in this world. So he brought in another DM to do sort of a prequel story of like when the gods were still around.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Kyle Olson
So most of the stuff takes place sort of after they’ve all sort of fallen. And so Brennan Lee Mulligan came in and did the story and Matt got to play, which he hadn’t gotten to do for a long time. And so he was playing a dwarf.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Kyle Olson
But what he didn’t know is that at the end of that story, Brennan had set it up so that his character
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Kyle Olson
became the shaper of the world. Like, he essentially — there was a god that had built the world and he made it so that Matt’s character ascended
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Kyle Olson
and was the shaper of the world. And there’s a great clip online when Matt realizes what Brennan is doing — he basically says, this is your world.
Ryan Dalton
It literally moves him to tears when it happens, yeah.
Pete Wright
That’s awesome.
Kyle Olson
Yeah, he’s literally crying because he realizes what that means — basically saying, we’re all here because of you, because of your imagination, because of what you built.
Ryan Dalton
Yeah.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Ryan Dalton
And an old friend comes back to him and says, basically, it’s time to become what you were before and remember who you were.
Kyle Olson
Yeah.
Ryan Dalton
And it was a really beautiful moment, seeing that turn on the guy who created the world in the first place. That whole thing was super compelling.
Kyle Olson
Yeah. It was just a beautiful moment between friends, and also from creator to creator, and just fan to thing. It was pretty incredible.
Pete Wright
Wow.
Mandy Fabian
Oh my God, I love it.
Pete Wright
That’s really beautiful. Can you dig up that clip? I’m sitting here searching for it.
Kyle Olson
Yeah.
Pete Wright
I can’t find that specific clip, but now I want to watch it.
Kyle Olson
Yeah, I’ll find it. Yeah.
Pete Wright
And that addresses the fact that Critical Role — the web show that they do — was around a long time before they started filming it, right? That fills in those holes.
Kyle Olson
Kind of. There was — the actual full incarnation of these particular people had never been together until the very first game that they live streamed it. Like there had been other things — he had home games with different groups of people — but what we know as the sort of the principal ones started out on
Pete Wright
Okay.
Kyle Olson
Felicia Day’s channel, Geek and Sundry, when everyone had their own imprint.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Kyle Olson
And she has also joined the ranks of the authors. She has a new book out now too.
Pete Wright
Yep.
Kyle Olson
That she’s out promoting.
Pete Wright
Well, and I would add, just as a plug, our dear friend of the show Mandy Kaplan on Make Me a Nerd has just done an episode on Critical Role and Vox Machina and knows Sam Riegel, and Sam sent voice notes to answer questions that are in the show.
Kyle Olson
That’s awesome.
Pete Wright
So if you are so interested, I’ll put a link to that in the show notes. It’s a great episode.
Kyle Olson
Yeah.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Mandy Fabian
Oh, very cool. I’m a little bit out of the loop there, and my answer may not be as cool, but my favorite representation of God in anything was Oh, God. Did you guys ever see that movie?
Kyle Olson
Oh, yes, yeah.
Pete Wright
Oh yeah.
Mandy Fabian
Right? With John Denver.
Pete Wright
And Oh, God, Book Two.
Kyle Olson
Yeah, and Oh, God, You Devil.
Mandy Fabian
And George Burns.
Pete Wright
Oh, God, You Devil. George Burns.
Mandy Fabian
But the first one, the original, was just — I still — actually at one point in my life, because I love playing around with gods and storytelling, I think of my storytelling heroes as gods because it’s like, you know, if you believe all the stories, the original world builder, right,
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Mandy Fabian
was the Almighty. But yeah, I wanted to remake that so badly. And then I went back to watch it, and I was like, it’s perfect.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Mandy Fabian
It’s a perfect movie.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Mandy Fabian
There’s no way you can make this any better than it is.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Mandy Fabian
Should we
Pete Wright
What’s next?
Kyle Olson
There’s, along those same lines, one of the best definitions of good and evil was in a movie called Bedazzled, which was Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.
Pete Wright
Oh my God, man.
Kyle Olson
Peter Cook plays the devil — like literally, he’s supposed to be the devil. And he’s giving basically giving wishes to Dudley Moore’s character, all like, to try to get him, you know, to like — tell me whatever you want and I’ll give it to you, that sort of thing. And so at one point they’ve just stopped and Dudley Moore asks him like, how did this happen?
Pete Wright
And so at one point — how did this happen?
Kyle Olson
Like how did the fall — how did this all happen?
Pete Wright
How did the fall — how did it all happen?
Kyle Olson
He’s like, okay, let me explain it to you.
Pete Wright
Okay.
Kyle Olson
And there’s this scene where he basically — he’s like, okay, I’m gonna sit on top of this post box, and I’ll be God, and you wander around me and tell me how great I am.
Pete Wright
Okay, I’m gonna sit on.
Kyle Olson
And so like, okay, so he just sits up there and he goes, you’re great, you’re fantastic, you’re wonderful — and he’s like, yes, I know, yes, yes, thank you. And then finally he gets tired, he’s like, oh man, this is really tiring. Can I sit up there for a while?
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Kyle Olson
And he’s like, that’s what I said.
Pete Wright
That’s what I’m saying.
Mandy Fabian
Oh my gosh. Yeah, it’s always the Faustian story.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Mandy Fabian
I heard the Faustian story when I was in fourth grade and I was like, oh my god, that’s possible.
Kyle Olson
Yeah.
Mandy Fabian
You can make a deal with the devil and get anything. And ever since then I’ve been like, mm, I kinda wish that was a little bit true. Like I think I’ve been looking for deals with the devil my whole life. I think my whole
Pete Wright
I would meet at an intersection in the desert. Yeah.
Mandy Fabian
I think my whole journey in the entertainment business has been a deal with the devil. Like I just
Ryan Dalton
I read an interesting — it’s just something someone posted online, but it cracked me up. They were talking about how someone had asked them, why are these big Eldritch horror monsters written the way they are? And they’re so impersonal, like even being in their presence can drive you mad. And someone responded and said, well, that’s what we are to insects.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Ryan Dalton
You will kill an insect literally for existing near you.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Ryan Dalton
You don’t need a reason, and they’ll never understand that reason. In these stories, that’s what Cthulhu is to humans.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Ryan Dalton
I thought that was a hilarious way to illustrate it.
Kyle Olson
Yeah.
Mandy Fabian
Let’s go. Do we have another sponsor, maybe?
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Mandy Fabian
Oh, my God.
Ryan Dalton
Nice.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Kyle Olson
Wise words.
Pete Wright
Don’t forget to hit send.
Ryan Dalton
That’s almost a PSA level, yeah.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Kyle Olson
Yeah, yeah.
Ryan Dalton
We’re being helpful today.
Mandy Fabian
I know.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Mandy Fabian
I’m not even getting to audition for a lot of these spots.
Pete Wright
Ah, beautiful.
Mandy Fabian
Like, there’s such good — I gotta call my agent because this is really — I need to start drumming up
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Ryan Dalton
You gotta make your own work.
Mandy Fabian
Some new business, yeah.
Kyle Olson
Yeah.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Mandy Fabian
Well, I know we’ve been chatting for a while, but lastly, I just wanted you guys to
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Mandy Fabian
help me uncover a mystery. Okay, look. I think it’s no secret — I have a hard time with horror movies because
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Mandy Fabian
Because I don’t like being scared.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Mandy Fabian
I’m plenty scared in my life.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Mandy Fabian
I feel like every day requires bravery. And so to sit and watch something that scares the crap out of me — but specifically with monsters. Okay, like there’s always — not always, but like the Freddy Kruegers of the world, or the monsters in Stranger Things.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Mandy Fabian
But what is the fascination with being frightened?
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Mandy Fabian
And I mean, I’m understanding — with all of our talk about heroes and gods, the monsters play a natural role, you need the antagonist. But like
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Mandy Fabian
there are some — like I actually did like Vecna from Stranger Things.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Mandy Fabian
I will say that, because Vecna was based on a person. You know, came from a person who actually had an origin story of just being a scared kid trying to do the right thing.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Mandy Fabian
Again, there’s a moral center to any
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Mandy Fabian
character, whether they’re a hero or monster. I’m for them in some way. And I think a lot of them do.
Pete Wright
I think a lot of them too.
Mandy Fabian
But what are your favorite monsters and why do people love being scared so much?
Pete Wright
That’s a good question.
Mandy Fabian
Is it good? Because I always feel like an outlier.
Pete Wright
Yeah?
Mandy Fabian
Like I’m the only one who’s like, oh, horror — I get really tense. It just makes me really — but I don’t watch reality TV either, so.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Ryan Dalton
I think there’s something about experiencing a little bit of fear when you rationally know that you’re safe that can be fun. So I think that may be why some people engage with it.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Ryan Dalton
I wouldn’t say I’m a horror movie guy, mostly because I just don’t like gore. But a good suspenseful scary movie, I’m down for that kind of thing.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Ryan Dalton
I take a little more of a less-is-more type approach to it. But that’s how I write, so that kind of explains probably why I engage with it. So I thought of two.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Ryan Dalton
For one, I mean, there’s a reason Jaws is a classic. You hardly see the monster. So your imagination does most of the work. It plays on a classic elemental fear. And there’s a level of plausibility to what’s happening, so you have less suspension of disbelief.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Ryan Dalton
So it’s not impossible for that to happen.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Ryan Dalton
So I think that also hits closer to home when you’re watching it. The other one I picked.
Kyle Olson
I do like those particular kinds of stories as well because it’s not that Freddie Krueger wants to play with you or have fun or whatever. Like the shark — the shark don’t care. There’s something that I find really chilling about that. It doesn’t hate you.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Mandy Fabian
Right.
Kyle Olson
It doesn’t have any feelings about you at all. You’re just food. And that’s the same thing with Alien. Predator, like he’s coming for you and he’s gonna do bad things.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Kyle Olson
But the alien doesn’t care who you are versus anybody else. There’s something about that inhumanity, where it’s that like force-of-nature thing, that I find chilling.
Ryan Dalton
Similar to the original Terminator, who was sort of similar.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Kyle Olson
Yes, yeah.
Pete Wright
Yeah.
Ryan Dalton
He doesn’t personally hate Sarah Connor. He was told to go kill her.
Mandy Fabian
Yeah.
Ryan Dalton
And so that’s what he’s going to do. And he won’t — it’s the whole famous speech. He can’t feel remorse or pity. You can’t bargain with him. He won’t stop until you’re dead. That’s it. And you wouldn’t really classify that as a horror movie, but it had some scary moments for sure.
Pete Wright
[crosstalk]
Ryan Dalton
The other one I picked, I think, is a little against type, but bear with me. I picked the Joker in The Dark Knight. Because
