A Geek History of Time - Episode 195 - The Dark Crystal from Two States to a Fractured State Part II

Episode Date: January 28, 2023

I'm not here to poke holes and suspended this belief. Anyway, they see some weird shit. They decide to make a baby. Now, Muckin' Merchant. Who gives a fuck? Oh, Muckin' which is a trickle, you know, baby. You know what I mean? Well, you know, uh, you really like it here. It's kind of nice and uh, it's not as cold as Muckin'

or the sun, the sun, the sun, the sun, the sun, the sun. So yeah, sure, I think we're gonna settle. If I'm a peasant boy who grabs sword out of a stone, yeah. I'm able to open people up. You will, yeah. Anytime I hit them with it, right? Yeah.

So my cleave landing will make me a cavalier. Good day, Spree. If Sysclothon it was empty-headed, plubian trash, it was empty headed, but being trash is really good and gruey. Because cannibalism and murder pull back just a little bit, and build walls to keep out the rat heads. And it's a little bit of a gruey. A thorough intent doesn't exist.

Some people stand up quite a bit, some people stay seeing a lot of the rats, but it just... This is a key point. Where we connect our two three-over-one, my name is Ed Playlock, and I'm the world's best career homeless teacher in Northern California. And as I mentioned at the tail end of our last episode, what's going on in my life lately is

I had the wonderful experience of finding out the students of mine had found my TikTok. Now by itself finding my TikTok was not any huge big deal. The the issue was my TikTok account was not locked down quite as tightly as I thought it was. And although nothing in any of my videos on TikTok is in any way controversial, well, okay, I mean, it's controversial, but it's like, you know, Star Wars fandom controversial, not like, you know, big deal political, like anything controversial. The issue turned out to be you, but turned out to be that I thought I had things like my following, like who I was following and my likes and all that kind of stuff locked down so those couldn't be viewed.

Apparently somehow students were able to view who I was following on TikTok. And the problem that this caused is that some of the people I follow on TikTok are us players. And so a student who had found my TikTok account went to our sixth grade school counselor and said, counselor's name, look what Mr. Blalock has on his TikTok, and it was a video of a Spider-Man, a woman doing a Spider-Man cosplay, wearing a Spider-Man costume and doing a TikTok dance in it. It is not salacious, it is not lued in any way,

shape or form, but apparently like this for some reason, you know, this this caused concern for the student because, you know, teachers shouldn't be interested in those things. I don't know. Anyway, I had to go through and lock down my account on TikTok. Turned my account to private, eliminated a number of followers. Anybody who had followed me within like three days of that event. I kicked off as followers, anybody who was clearly a student of mine, I blocked. And then I went to two separate co-workers

and said, I need you to do me a favor. I need you to look me up, but do you have TikTok? Yes, okay, I need you to look me up on TikTok and I need to check something. And found out that, okay, I've got to look me up on TikTok and I need to check something And found out that okay, I've got the settings all locked down properly. So that's not going to be a problem again Then followed by one of them going oh, yeah, no, you mentioned your podcast. Yeah, where where is that? What is that? Yeah, I know it's a cake history of time here. Here's what you do. Oh, yeah, I know I'm definitely gonna check that out man. That's cool

So I gained an adult follower for the podcast, yay. And then I also went in and double checked on Twitter and just in case I changed my Twitter handle just because in a fit of paranoia, I wanted to make sure that wouldn't wind up causing the same set of issues. So that's pretty much what that was all about. And you know, I had thought that morality clauses for teachers had had become a thing of the past, but it's interesting the view that students have of us as like furniture. You know, like we don't have interests outside of our job. We don't have, you know, like just it's it's shocking to them

that they might find that I was watching a video of somebody in a Spider-Man costume. Like, I don't know. Anyway, it was frustrating and momentarily very scary, but it's under control now. And yeah, that'm, I'm, I'm, that was, that was a moment of, um, close to panic. Uh, but you, you pointed out to me in our conversations that, you know, if they, if they make it to the podcast number one, the podcast is clearly labeled as not being for anybody their age. And number two, nobody's going to go parsing, you know, 12 episodes about Batman

or Gerald Ford, and not Gerald Henry Ford, or Gerald Ford for that matter, in order to, you know, find anything out of better or political bent. So, you know, I'm no longer nearly as worried about it. How about you? Well, I'm Damien Harmony. I'm a Latin teacher and a US history teacher up here in Northern California at the high school level.

Um, and as often happens, I have something coming into, I don't, I don't mind it at all. So yeah, there's, there's not much that I can, that I can think of, to be perfectly honest, I will say this, that I am incredibly, I'm still seeing dividends of the work that my union did last year with our strike. Okay. For instance, a local nearby union, which I will not name, gave 10% raise to its teachers, which I was very happy to see. I thought that was pretty bad ass.

Another local school district, their opener by their district was 10% for the first year, 5% for the second year, 3% for the third year. The district only shit. Yeah. That's pretty awesome to hear about that. My God. On an ordinary year, 3% is like, I ain't well, you know, you're right. We'll go with that. 18 over three years is sweet. My God, on an ordinary year, 3% is like, I ain't well, you know, you're right. We'll go with that.

18 over three years is sweet. Shimmie and Christmas. I love it. I absolutely love it. My district gave us I think four, four and a half. My God. And we struck for eight days. But nearby districts are offering much, much higher,

which is awesome because ultimately one strength ends the other, right? So if we can, if you'll indulge me for a second, when Kevin Nash went to WCW and Scott Hall went to WCW, they had something called the Favourite Nations clause. So Scott Hall goes in and he gets favorite nations clause. So that anybody who comes in at a higher rate than him, he automatically gets a raise to match them. Okay. Kevin Nash came in.

He too clause. Yeah. Kevin Nash came in. Also got a favorite nations clause. And he and Scott talked to each other ahead of time. Scott's like, dude, try to come in a higher that I did. And why is that? Well, I got a favorite nation.

So, oh, get a favorite nation. And so they were able to get raises within the first year just by doing that. And what, I mean, they're independent contractors. And probably believed quite a bit in their own exceptionality. But ultimately what they were doing, doing was a form of unionizing. Yeah. A collective bargaining by proxy, if you will.

Yeah. But so I love that districts all around me are giving fat raises to their teachers on some love. Maybe not fat, but rather thick raises, like long overdue raises, but good raises. I'm going to argue 18% over three years is pretty fat. It is, but then I take a look at what inflation is doing. Well, I mean, there's still getting ahead, but they're not getting ahead that much and to be perfectly honest, they had been kept. They're, they're, they had the same problem as a former district of yours had where they would lose people in the middle.

So I'm really glad to see that because I'm trying to do the math in my head about which district that is that you're talking about. Because I haven't been paying close enough, I should be paying closer attention. Not a problem. Two negotiations of other districts other than mine, but like trying to figure out which one that is. Okay. But anyway, but I really like that others are doing that because when we get to open up for negotiations, we can say, you know what, you can't say that we're the highest paid in the area

because look at what's happened over here here and here. So your idea of relative deprivation in reverse is not going to work. Yeah, open up your books and let's look at what you've got. And let's look at what we can do to retain and recruit better teachers. So it's a good thing. And also, I'm just seeing teachers getting taken care of finally. In a field where we're constantly expecting to sacrifice and live this forced eschaticism. Yeah. I have to say, there are occasions on which you talked to me outside of the podcast. You talked to me about, you know, your negotiation team having a deal with your particular district.

And there's a part of me that wonders if it might not be, I don't know if constructive is the right word, but if you might not just think about walking in sometime and going, let me show you all the magic trick. Here's a pencil. Yeah, I doubt it'll work with them. Yeah, okay, I'm just saying, you know, because the pencil is. Yeah, okay. I'm just saying you know because the pencil is cool

Just like no and here's why it would just take one lawyer They they know it won't but here's another reason why just because something is manifestly told in front of them by an expert or shown in front of them Doesn't mean they won't pass a resolution literally to its opposite within 10 minutes Yeah doesn't mean they won't pass a resolution literally to its opposite within 10 minutes. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Anyway, I just, I, I picture as that being the kind of way you have to approach negotiations.

No, no. I'm, you know, we actually approach it in the way that I, I have always enjoyed approaching negotiations, which is we're always going to start from a place of good faith. And then when you step outside of that, we will call you on it and try to bring you back to good faith. Like, there's no need for us to go anything other than straightforward, because they're the ones that do all the dancing. I mean, it's like watching Yokozuno wrestle against, you know, Bret Hart. Like, Bret does all the movement. Yoko stands in the against, you know, Bret Hart. Like Bret does all the movement.

Yoko stands in the middle, you know. Yeah, okay. Fair. All right. So when last we left, we were talking Israel and Egypt. Yes. And the efforts of Jimmy Carter. The Indian and Sadat and Carter.

Yeah, Camp Dan. And chords. Yeah. And again, Carter loses his bid for reelection, but not before getting the camp day of it, a chords signed, which is good. And that of course leads to Sadat getting killed in 81 by Islamic Jihad in October of 81,

as you might remember. There is film on it if you feel like being disturbed. You mean of his assassination? Of his assassination? Yeah. Yeah. They, they, they, they took part in a parade.

Yep. Yeah. Ran over and started, yeah. It's all just ran over and started shooting with automatic weapons and slaying raids. Yeah yeah, it was it's pretty awful. Yeah, so this is the reality that's happening while the movie itself, this particular episode. We follow Jen, a young galfling, who is the last of his kind that he's aware of. And he's been raised by the mystics.

And the mystics are these really large, hunched over, aged. And I And I can't weather looking very. I can't I mean they look almost like honestly an apodosaurus. I'm the long. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, but they're clearly mammals. They've got hair. They've got long hair. and they wear rags, not, not ripped up terrible rags, but just it's clear that like they're not poor for the fashion. Yeah. And so these are the mystics. There's only 10 mystics left. And, and then there's nine. Because almost immediately when the movie starts, Jen's like the movie starts on Jen's master's last day on Thropp. And the wisest of the mystics, the first among equals, I guess, dies right before telling Jen, well, right after telling Jen that he has a special calling and that Jen must heal the dark crystal by using the the shard,

which has been lost to the sands of time. So, and then the mystics all kind of just like, well, they summon Jen with their deep, yeah, throat singing call, just, you know, which is pretty cool because each of them has a slightly different tone. And, and it's very simple. And so they summon Jen, he talks to his master's master, lays his head down on a bed that's specially made for the mystics, which is just basically like wood that's fit into their shape. And he yoad's out. Yeah, before you go into lots of light. Yeah, not even moats literally just fades away disappears. Okay. And that's that's very akin to

what Yoda did, but this is before you to did it. Yeah. So that kind of sets Jen on the hero's journey, right? Mm-hmm. So, but there's also Skexes in the movie. And Skexes are these, there's also 10 of them. Yeah. And on the same day, they're all gathered around their emperor who is sick and convalescing in bed

and just doesn't seem to be able to make it. And the Skexes are these large, vulture-looking things, huge beaks. Bony looking. Very, and decayed and decaprably feathers. Yeah, whereas the other ones looked aged, these looked decomposed. Yeah, they looked dead.

They looked undead. And they're wearing clothing that was once nice and is now dusty and old and brittle. And and their colors are all very, very heavily saturated. Yes. Very very dark tones, very heavily saturated, but also like you said, look like it's kind of rotting off of them. Yes.

Like imagine, imagine any one of the images of Queen Elizabeth the first with that huge elaborate kind of rough Right and the and the and the and the bodice and the huge gown Right, and then imagine for 400 years. Yeah And then dig her back up and then dig her back up and imagine what that outfit would look like and that's it It's like yeah, they they've been wearing their opera clothes for the last century without ever taking it off or washing it. Yeah. Like you can smell them by looking at them. Oh yeah. And it's not a pleasant smell. It's bad. Yeah. You know what? They remind me of rotting flowers. Oh, that's a good, that's a really good metaphor. Yeah. I like that a lot. Yeah. So, yeah. And if I remember correctly, when the emperor,

well, we're gonna get to that. Okay. So, they're all gathered around the emperor, watching him breathe his last. And one of them, Chamberlain, that guy, he goes to reach for the emperor's scepter and the emperor grabs it and says, I am still emperor. He says it shakingly, haltingly, it's clear that he's like, he talks like he has dust

in his throat. And seconds later, he turns to, he lays back, breathes out his last, and he crumbles in this really disturbing way for a kid in the 1980s. And so, whereas the mystic disappeared and faded away, this emperor and coincidentally, the mystic just died and now the emperor of the skexiess. So now there's only nine of them too. Weird. But the emperor crumbles into emperor dust. But they're like clumpy dust. It's not even like and then he turns into like the sands of time. Like you see in a Michael Jackson video. No, no, it's like it's like clumps of charcoal. Yeah. Oh, yeah, there you go. It is yeah, desiccated. It's bad. It is it is it radiates evil Yeah, it puts one in mind of the ending of time band. It's no mom dad. Don't touch it to evil. Yeah Um, and then as soon as he dies

Chamberlain goes to grab the scepter and he even says it's time to make my move. And they have cloistered off into different groups. And Chamberlain goes and grabs the scepter and the general screams at him to lay down that scepter. And then they challenge each other for leadership. So leadership matters, ambition matters, and power. And so they challenge each other. It's the dumbest challenge I've ever seen. Chamberlain says trial by stone. And the general agrees trial by stone and everybody starts yelling. And the skexies are really big on cheering on every fight that exists between them. It's like the cruelty is the point. Oh, totally. But the skecsies have this trial by phone.

By phone. Trial by phone. Yes. And it's all like in a rotary. But they have trial by stone and they bring up a stone which has been hit a few times and they basically they have ceremonial swords and they basically take turns hitting the stone. Chamberlain goes first, the emperor goes second, Chamberlain goes third.

Sorry, yes, and then the general goes fourth and so the general wins. Yeah, and that always bothered me because like, well, he, like the first hit's going to weaken it. The second hit's going to win, you know, and, yeah, yeah, man. You know, it's not like it's baseball where you had an inning, you know, it's, You know, it's, I don't know. Yeah. But it is, you know, more, more the fool Chamberlain for choosing that particular challenge. Right. With the genital, right?

Yeah. With the general number one, choosing a trial and strength against a figure who is militant. Yeah. And, and then, you know, I don't, I don't remember how the, how the back and forth thing went, but how did they determine who went first? Like, no, you want the other guy to go first. Well, and maybe it's standard dueling rules. You challenge a guy, he gets to choose all the things, and then he gets to shoot first,

too. That's a little bit. Yeah. Whatever. But, okay, so there's struggle for power. Chamberlain loses, and they immediately strip him and banish him And so then you get to basically see a naked skexus, which is just I mean Errowing if you if Deadpool took off his mask that would be more of a comfort to you then a naked skexus

Deadpool is at least recognizably like human. Mameleon. Yeah. Chamberlain looks like a turkey vulture with mange. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And leprosy. Yeah. And it's gross.

It's bad. So then he gets exiled. So which I also still find funny. OK, so you're the emperor of like eight mystics. And you know, banished one of them. Yeah, yeah, eight skecs is and you just banished one of them. Like, yeah. So the cruelty is the point. I guess so. Yeah. Um, better, better to be a gustous Romulus than it is to be, uh, not. Yeah. So, so anyway, back to Jen, Jen, uh, is, is off off wandering trying to find any place music and stuff like that but trying to find the shard and he meets augura Yes, who is also

Horrifying in her own vibrant kind of way, but like vibrant in the same way that like Like if if black licorice was a human being, like that taste of Anice, you know, I love your your culinary with the analogies tonight. That's great. That flavor was a human. That would be Agra. Yeah, that's not an all wrong. On a certain level, she's kind of the On a certain level, she's kind of the grim fairy tale version of Edna Mode. Yeah, I mean, she's a crown, right? Yeah, well, yeah. Well, yeah, that is the role she plays in the story, for sure. Yeah.

So, she has an orri, I could never say that word orri, which is... Orri, yeah. Two Rs, and then ERI. So go look that up, you're welcome. You'll have a really cool Wikipedia page to download. Yeah. Um, so she's digging it there. Um, she has the shard. But she is as auger as auger gets right so she can pull her own eye out and hold it up to look at things. Yeah, which is weird. She's got horns, she got rags, she got nipples, and a dump truck of an ass, she does. So, that's all there.

She also commands like all the flora in the area. And she brings Jen into her orary and she basically like teases him and tells him about the great conjunction, which is where Thra has three sons. Yeah. And how they're all going to come together. And when that happens, bad things are going to happen forever or the place will get saved.

And if you have the shard and you heal the dark crystal with the shard, in other words, stick the thing in the thing and the world will be better. Right? So reverse of Excalibur. Yeah, actually. Um, he's an, he's an orphan as well. Yeah. So she's clearly wise. She is eclectic and erratic, but she is clearly wise. And right before she can tell him what he has to do, And right before she can tell him what he has to do, the skecsies who have seen Jen in the dark crystal, because the crystal called to them right after they stripped Chamberlain. And they see that there's actually still gulfing left. And they're like, oh, the gulfing are profsied to destroy the skecsis. So let's, you know, and so the general, of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of the scarlet of scarlet of the her home and her orriary and gen escapes barely. Now, he is trying to figure out which one is

the dark crystal, and he plays certain notes, and that causes the crystal to resonate, and that's how he's able to see it. The mystics hear that call when that happens, and they They start their long and slow plotting migration migration. And originally, the crystal, like I said, showed Gen that he or showed the sketches that Gen was coming to heal the crystal. And for some reason, they don't want that to happen. There are reasons that are explained in the later prequels, but they're not really explained in the movie or subsequently. So the mystics get moving slowly to the crystal castle.

And Jen goes through a really neat swamp, and he meets the only other one of his kind named Kira. So just happens that, you know, she's in that swamp. She and Jen meet and by chance, and then they dream fast, which is it's really cool thing that that gulfling can do apparently where they touch hands and they can share all of their memories with each other. I believe the word is rocking. They can rock each other. They crack one another.

Yeah. And they hang out with her adopted people who are the podlings, the potatoes, who love music and Jen loves music. So there's all kinds of dancing and it's really fun. It's as if Fraggle Rock had less color and less cheer, but more chaos. Yeah.

Yeah, that's a yeah, so yeah, so yeah, they're hanging out with her adopted people. She tells them all about how the Gartham like killed her parents and stuff like that. So her family dying is within living memory. And she'd also dream fasted with him. So, you know, she now knows about the mystics. And I mean, they're living a very isolated from each other life. They're living a very isolated from their own culture kind of life.

They've kind of taken on the values and cultures of those that they've lived with. So she with the podlings and her connection nature, he with the mystics and his connection to mathematics and literature. The Gartham attack yet again. And Kira and Jen flee. And the next day, and he strikes one of the Gartham

with the shard as it's trying to grab it Kira. And it rings out. And meanwhile, the Gartham are taking all the Pod people prisoner because the Pod people are consumables by the skecsies, essentially. Yeah. So the next day, you know, they spend it like in the bush, kind of hiding, they wake up and they see that they're actually hiding out by ancient ruins. And what I love is that Jen is actually able to read it. And she's like, and she's like,

what are you doing? He's like, I'm reading the words and she's like, or I'm reading the writing. And she said, what's writing? He says, words that stay. Mm-hmm. And I love that description. That's an amazing line. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so he says you know basically I Forget the exact wording for it, but essentially By gulfling hand or else by none what was once the two shall now become one Yeah, and it sounds like yeah, I mean, I'm probably mixing things up But I think I've got the the end of the lines right yeah, so You know, you've you've got the prophecy that is on the stone

about what he's supposed to do. And it shows what he's supposed to do. And it shows the mystics coming in on one side and the skecsis being on the other side. And it shows him holding the shard. It shows all that on the stone and he's able to explain to her what his destiny is and he's able to find it figured out and that's all great. So that's why they survived was because Chamberlain interceded on their behalf. Because Chamberlain sees an opportunity

to regain his place. So they run into Chamberlain. Chamberlain explains that the prophecy is that a gulfling will heal the dark crystal and do something or other. and that's why the skecs he's feared the gulfling and killed them all off. An important detail that I will come to in later episodes. So, so far, we've got heroes journey, we've got an exile trying to get back into the good graces of those who exiled him, and a clear delineation between good and evil and a karmic bond between

that good and evil. And you've got a crazy lady with a removal eye who knows more than she'll ever tell anyone. Okay. But Jen is destined to heal the crystal before the great conjunction. And when all the sun's line up, he's got to have it healed by then. And he ends up doing so. There's some sneaking in that has to happen. They get on to the landstridors, which when I was young, I saw the landstridors and then I saw the next day somebody had broken their leg or something and they were walking around a crutches. I'm like, oh, they can move so much faster on crutches than we can walking.

Because I realized that it was the same locomotion. Yeah, um, and sure enough like when I'd snap my ankle Um, you know, first couple days. You're like, you know kind of slow on it, but Couple days after that I was cruz you you're involved you yeah, yeah, quite so so Anyway, so they they hop on the the So, anyway, so they hop on the landsriders. By the way, she's got a little pet with her, which is just basically a fuzzball with teeth and a tiny little fizz gig, right? Yes. And they're on landsriders, and she calls them, and she calls them to her. There's also, I think, crystal bats that are spying on them that she hits with the sling, which is kind of, you know.

But she calls them to her and she has the ability to talk to the creatures. Yeah, it's really clear. She's the ranger and he's the wizard. Like, interesting, maybe sorcerer, but again, I can't kind of wizard vibes. I always had Jen as being the fighter. He doesn't. Okay. Do much magic he stuff. Yeah. Well, okay. True. He's a fighter whose whose dump stat is not intelligence. Okay. Fair. Yeah. Fair. So. All right. But uh, constitution is probably a dump stat. Yes. Strength maybe. Yeah. Which is a counterintuitive build, but he uses all finesse weapons.

So, yeah, I was going to say it was in the days before the monk. Yeah. So, although I was playing D&D recently and I've got a friend who, I mean, you know, he tries really hard not to be a grognar, but like I built a monk that's a strength based monk and he's like, your party's gonna suffer for that. You're not maximizing what you've got. I'm like, I'm going with a different concept. It's gonna be okay. I still have mobility. I still have that. I know what I'm doing. Yeah, I know what I'm doing. Yeah. I can point to several characters, but, but anyway, so Jen is, you know, he's, he, so she calls the landswriters, he hops on and they're going just super fast because that's what landswriters do.

And at one point, he says, the profits didn't mention this, didn't say anything about this, and she shouts back, profits don't know everything, which she has all these cute little glib lines. everything, which she has all these cute little glib lines. They try to sneak into like the back channels of the... Of the palace. Yeah, of the palace. And at one point, I don't remember if this happens before or after, but essentially you have, you know, I keep talking about the good and evil. Right? The good is represented by the landstridors. They're all white creatures. The evil is represented by the gartham.

Yeah. The landstridors are furry. They are bat-like or laporial. But then they're also, they're hoofed. Whereas the, and they're long-legged, and whereas the Gartham are short squat round, and they've got a carapace. Yeah, and one gigantic claw.

Yeah, and so... Like a crab claw. They fight, and it's very visually obvious, and, you know, they fight, and pretty much it comes to a standstill. Yeah, and at some point, Gen and Kira, I think, have to jump for safety. Yeah. And at that point, she unfurls her wings. And he's like, you have wings?

And she says, of course, I do silly. All girls have wings. But again, he grew up in orphaned completely cut off from his culture. And apparently, the mystics didn't think enough to tell him about anything about his culture. Much less the wingedness of the females of the species. Here's a parallel that just struck me. The mystics are very much like elder Martians from...

Highline. Okay. In that, they don't think about things in terms of gender. The Elder Martians in... Damn it. Anyway, the Valentine, I'm completely forgetting the title of the flipping novel. Stranger and a Strange Land, Jim and Christmas Blight had taken me that along. Remember that. Anyway, the elder Martians in Strange and a Strange Land are the sage, eschatic, highly intellectual, incredibly wise, older form of Martian life.

And one of the things that winds up being a problem for the main character in Stranger and Strange Land is he is a human man who was raised by these elder Martians and so he gets to earth and he is completely captivated by and mystified by sex and gender and the that duality because that was something that the elder Martians never bothered to say anything about. Right. And so it's kind of the same with Jen is like, oh, you're a girl. What, what does that mean? What does that mean? Right. And she had at least some knowledge of her family lineage because she remembers her mother and she remembers stuff like that. And she was raised by, frankly, a mortal species. That's true.

That's very true. She was raised by violence. But, you know, they wouldn't have had wings, but... No. I mean, the wings thing is a specific deal, but I'm just thinking of, you know, Jen's, Jen's particular level of cultural blindness. Yeah. You know, goes beyond just, you know, all girls have wings, silly, to like not even really totally understanding what what girl means. Sure. Sure. You know. So, so yeah, they, they,

they get to safety. I think Chamberlain, maybe lets them in. I forget exactly what happens there, but, or no, he finds them in the passageway. So they're getting there. And eventually, essentially, they capture her. There is a, what Chamberlain does, he does capture her and the gen uses the Dark Crystal and Stabs Chamberlain, which causes him to bleed. And then we cut to the mystics and one of them, their hand starts bleeding. Now at this point when I showed my kids this movie and my daughter was or yeah, she realized what was

going on based on that, which was pretty cool to see that parallel show up for her. So, you know, that's going on. Eventually, there's a cave in for some reason and Jen is separated. And he and Fizgick are together and Kira actually has taken and put into the machine to suck her essence out. Now we've seen that machine suck the essence out of podlings. And it barely

does anything. Talk about horrifying. Yes. Yeah. Jim Henson is amazing at getting you to think that these bits of cloth are alive. To the point where you're like, oh my god, this is torture. Like there's the only convention against this. And the padlings are like the RC cola of essence when it comes to sucking the essence out. Like, whereas a gale-flang essence is like Mexican Coke. Yeah, okay. You know, it's it's Coca-Cola. Yeah.

Um, but, uh, so is it though? Actually, no, you know what it is. It's original Coca-Cola that actually has the cocaine in it. You know what? It does because, oh my god, the skexies are just like, suddenly like, we should buy a boat. Yeah. But, yeah. Yeah. But anyway, so, Jen finds his way to the dark crystal. So Jen finds his way to the dark crystal. Agra has, by the way, stormed in on them eating and she interrupts their meal

because the gartham captured her by accident. And this is a little bit before all this stuff happens. So she's taken prisoner, which is cool, whatever. But while she's there and they're eating, she cops a squat and just grunts. Yeah. And there's no resolution to that. And I, and one of the skecs, he goes, Oh, how crude. And I don't know what she's doing. Like, yeah, suspicions having raised children, but it's really like what? What? How did that? Yeah, like it just oh so anyway, so she's she's been captured and so she's in jail and she she tells Kira to call to all the animals in the scientist's layer while she's being drained, because Kira is getting drained now. And Agra tells her to call out all the animals and she does. And he's like, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, and then all the animals come and free her. They attack the

scientist, drive him down into the fire of the depths where they keep their crystal. And including FizGig, which we're like, oh, shit he's sacrificed himself, but Fizz gig lands on some sort of projection. And Kira actually ends up being freed by this. And so she's not drained all the way, but she's fucking tired. Like she. They do a really good job with the effects of making it clear that she's been aged by the experience. Yes. Yeah. Like that's the aesthetic. It looks like Courtney

love is going for in the early 2000s. Like so you're right. I'm never going to be able to look at either dark crystal or Courtney love the same way ever again. Like, there we go. I mean, I try not to look at Courtney love. Sure, sure. From the individual. But yeah. So, yeah. So, Jen ends up in the palace of the crystal. Yeah. And ends up in the chamber of the crystal, pardon me. And he's got the dark crystal shard. And Kira shows up and he sees her. And then the skecs he's captured her.

And I think she ends up with the shard. I don't exactly remember how it works. And she basically throws the shard up to him. Yeah, that's what it is. Because they all surround her like, give us the shard. to him. Yeah, that's what it is, because they all surround her like, give us the shard, you know, and you can go free. And they surround her and she throws the shard up to Jen because he's landed on top of the crystal somehow

and they stab her and kill her. And then as she's dying, she tells him to heal the dark crystal, so she plunges it in. Now while all this is going on, the mystics have been walking the entirety of the movie. See, I think this is good preparation for Lord of the Rings. Um, so the mystics, I can't argue with you, but I want to tell you to fuck off. to argue with you, but I want to tell you to fuck off. I think both things can be true. Yeah. Um, so Jen, like you're not wrong, but fuck you. Right. Yeah. You would. Yeah. We're being right about that. Um,

so Jen heals, he's destined to heal the dark crystal before the great conjunction when all the signs line up. He ends up doing it right then, but only after they've killed care in front of him. And once he does all the garrhythm that have shown up to like stop him, literally just fall apart. There's nothing to be doing together. Yeah. The podlings whose essence, the skecsies,

were draining to keep living forever, they regained their essence. And the whole castle begins to fall apart. And just as that happens, the mystics have finally arrived at the castle. And the Gartam that tried to guard them away from it, they just kind of waved them off. And the Gartam, like all stepped to the side. And so now there's only eight skexes and eight mystics, and the mystics come in.

As Jen repairs the crystal, making the heart of through all again, the mystics and the skexes combine to become these beings of pure light. They become one again. They're comically linked races, and they become their true higher selves. And then they leave through for the gulflings with the healed crystal. So they literally transcend the planet. Yeah, the castle in which the skecs is had lived loses its dark carapace that all falls away. to it, that was thraw is now a fertile and verdant valley again. And that's the trick. It's the word again, by healing the crystal heart of the planet so that it was whole and it was no longer used for dominance, but instead for healing, everything becomes its own true or higher version of itself. Kira is brought back to life.

Which gets back to the text of Yes, the Seth material. Seth. The Seth. Yeah. And that's the new age version. That's the LSD version, right?

Both of which Jim Henson didn't know much about. And that's all there. I mean, that's absolutely worked its way into the ending of his movie from the ship that he was reading. At the same time, here's the geopolitical version, which I have no reason to believe that he knew much about, but which there's absolutely was happening at the time. So, you know, again, water that we swim in, right? Yeah. Yeah. The two-state solution for Israel and Palestine, which the United Nations had already put forth started at the same time that Hanson was first writing the story.

The PLO even accepted it as a talking point as early as 1975 when Hanson was snowed in. What the movie is saying, what it's drawing on, what the idea is the idea that once the Palestinians and Israelis realize that they're part of the same land, much of what is dry and cracked, but which once was lush and verdant, once they realize that they're basically the same people, which they're not, but this is Jim Henson. Yeah, outside white guy with a beard. Right. Receiving the situation. Right. Once the ones who are in power merge with the ones who are out of power. Once they stop retaliating against each other, once they stop living in two different realities and they blend their realities in states again, they will then see, literally see the light and they will be the

light in the region and peaceful reign. In the most basic, and again, that's a poor man's understanding of it. It's a man's poor understanding of it. It's a poor understanding of it for any man. I can't permutate the words enough to get off across how broad it is. How broad it is. In the most basic terms of the combination of skecs and mystics are becoming angels, essentially, right? They, they, being as a pure light and they, they, they,

they, they, they, they, they, they are better angels, right they they yeah being as a pure light and they they descend they are are better angels right so even though the mystics were pretty chill and peaceful and and and geometry and shit they had a piece of them that was missing too and and and this is an image that is kind of dreamed up in the whirlpool of culture that included psychedelic drugs, New Age, philosophy, and Israel and Palestine's constant conflicts. Yeah. So, Dott and Begin's pace-meeking, pace-meeking, pace-meeking, pace-meeking, Jesus. Say, hey, thank you, thank you, Reverend Spooner. How many can you be well about once an hour? Yeah. Good pace making. Yeah. But the piecemaking that they were doing was proof of that hope, right, that you could have two opposing sides come together. Peace could be had in that region of the world.

We have the receipts. And the optimism with which Henson approached his movie couldn't help but be influenced by what was in the news around it Now that said he saw the conflict which had raise of hope amid a backdrop of horrific retaliatory violence and wicked oppression He saw it through the lens of hope That's hope hope punk, right? Yeah. I found this wonderful article written by Amy Knight titled Big Henson Energy. Nice. Here's a few quotes from it because she writes for a living, and I just translate dead languages and tell kids about John Brown. And so I'm just focused on what happened already. She says quote I've always tried to present a positive view of the world in my book. It's so much easier to be negative and cynical and predict doom

I'm sorry. I've always tried to present a positive view of the world in my work It's so much easier to be negative and cynical and predict doom for the world that it is true that then it is to try and figure out how to make things better. We have an obligation to do the latter. Now, that's a direct quote from Jim Henson. In July of 2017, Tumblr user Ariaste, who is a fantasy author, who's fantasy author, Alexandra Rowland, coined the term, hope, punk. Tumblr, Tumblr used to be really cool. It had all kinds of fan art, fan and fanfic, all kinds of cool shit. It also had like a whole bunch of different kinds

of porn on it. So there's something for everybody. And I think that's awesome. Because people would like gather like really, you know, cool expressions of erotica that they really dug. The problem was that they essentially over corrected at the the specter of and the very real problem of where there's porn, there's also sometimes child pornography. And rather than try to parse any of it out,

dedicate a group to that, which in retrospect, like I've seen the need for therapists at Google go unanswered for the people who are also hunting this shit down to make sure they block it and stop it. Maybe Tumblr got it right. I really don't wanna say that because of how much fiction that we lost and how much cool shit that we lost,

how much costuming stuff got lost. And how much really cool Arotica got lost, but at the same time, okay, you know what, the world has moved on, like, and there's still work work is being optimized there. Now we're coming around to the fin to say call of Twitter and so now Tumblr might have another opportunity to try to get right. But anyway, at that time, you had a lot of really cool people writing a lot of really cool stories. And she coined the term Alexander Rowland

coined the term Hopepook. And it's a storytelling trend. It's an ideological stance. And it's a big mood that means essentially kindness and softness doesn't equal weakness. And Rowland believes that quote, in this world of brutal cynicism and nihilism, being kind is a political act and act of rebellion.

Now, the way that Hon saw things was inherently silly. He used muppets to make statements, usually soft fuzzy muppets with many human flaws. But quote, any silliness was always tempered with overarching notes of respect and empathy. In this way, Hanson was subversively earnest and earnestly subversive. Love that quote. And the dark crystal used so little of that silliness, and yet on its most basic level, it's really quite ridiculous to explain new ageism, LSD, and the Israel-Palestine conflict and violence using puppets. And yet, that's what he did.

And he, Jim Henson, valued the individual's ability to make the world a better place. But more importantly, he valued a team's ability to make the world safer for an individual to be strong enough to make it a better place. Okay. Because, I mean, if you look at all the projects he did, yes, you had Kermit. Yes, you had, um, go as a bear. No, no, uh, uh, go wasn't goober. Uh, god dang, the main character in the fragals.

Yeah. You had him here talking about, yeah, um, starts with the G. Um, you had him, you had yeah, yeah starts with the G. You had him you had Jen you had all these characters Yeah, they're singular, but at the same time they have a whole bunch of people behind them um And you need that like you know to make the world to to make the world the safer place you need to have a safe place to go Yeah, um, and this was the face of what I've listed so many times. He truly, Jim Henson truly valued diversity of approach. And he saw it as an ultimate good. He said, quote, these themes embracing dynamic and group oriented diversity and its benefits could be written off

as typical territory for kids media. But Henson's creepier, more adult-oriented films, the dark crystal and labyrinth still hinge on the resilient power of community over venal individualism. Why do we discredit stories about cooperation as being lessons only children need to learn? Which is just... wow. I'm just fuck. Yeah. And this author night goes on to point out that being hopeful is gambling.

And you know me in hope, I actually try to live without hope. It's existential sternness. Yeah. But at least I can appreciate this. It's for other people, but I can certainly appreciate it. But because hope hope is gambling, right? And it's doing it in such a way that Hanson was a

master at though, quote, gambling on hope is a tough gig, but someone's got to do it. The philosophies like hope punk help me think that think the pop cultural tide is turning, Caring cynics out, carrying cynics out to sea, returning with a treasure trove of wholesome memes and buoyant themes. When I feel bitter about the swath of serial killer biopics

doing the rounds, I watched the latest Dark Crystal, Age of Resistance trailer, and I feel connected to all these kindred strangers preserving furthering Jim's, Jim's vision. The Dark Crystal was the project he felt most proud of. It's certainly the most hope punk in Roland's fantasy of fantastical sense. It's what the author says, which is cool because it's going to lead me to the next episode

which is going to take on the age of resistance because that person wrote before age of resistance was it manifest. Okay. Now, Knight wasn't exactly connecting Henson's hope punk attitude to drugs and new age thinking or the Israel Palestine conflict like I was, but she did note the qualities that he pulled from it. She said, quote, Henson had the luxury of believing we create our reality, our own reality, and that everything works out for the best because he moved through his world with a myriad of privileges. Several of which I don't, several of which I share others I don't. I resent not being born with those that might help me make

the dent that Jim did. Yeah, pretty cool. So, which is a nice segue into the next episode. So, upcoming, I'm going to now that we've taken a look at where the dark crystal was written from, what it came out of, then we're going to look into what age of resistance. Cause between the two, Jim Henson died. Yeah. You know, between the two, you know, Brian Fraud actually continued on. Brian Fraud, by the way, whose son is Toby Fraud, who starred in the Labyrinth. Here's the baby.

Oh, oh, cool. And Toby works on the dark crystal age of resistance with his dad, Brian. Oh, wow. Quite on the dark crystal age of resistance with his dad Brian. Oh, well, quite a bit. Actually, yeah. But in between those two things, a lot of things have happened. Yeah. Not the least of which we went from Reagan to Trump.

Yeah. And, you know as As we've had said to us By and I don't know if this episode is dropped yet by our friend Jason Who discussed punk rock with us. He said in a perfect world punk rock wouldn't need to exist or it just wouldn't exist I'm Damien phrasing But essentially you don't need Hanson's hopefulness. You don't need the relentless, the relentless optimism, the defiant optimism that you see in Jim Hanson's work and his studios work after he's died.

You don't need those things in hopeful times. You don't need those things in good times. But to be perfectly honest, I haven't seen any dark crystal stuff in times that were considered good. So this is true. Yeah. This is true. So yeah. So the dark crystal is absolutely a two-state solution. It is a optimistic, overly simplified view of what should happen in Israel, Palestine. Yeah. And at the same time, it is that hope, that drove, I think, in many ways drove Jimmy Carter to think that Camp David Accords were possible. Yeah. Well, I think that's definitely a commonality between them.

What it winds up making me think of, when you mentioned the part about Jim Henson considering diversity of approach and diversity as its own good. What it actually led me to think of immediately was his son, Brian Henson's. I'm going to say possibly biggest project. I don't know for sure that it was, but the TV series Farscape. It is. Farscape. Yeah, it was, that was the Jim Henson company. And Brian Henson was, I want to say one of the executive producers. And that involved a lot more than puppetry, but puppetry was a huge, big part of it.

Right. but puppetry was a huge big part of it. Right. And what is one of the most remarkable things, and I think it's most noticeable, it's most obvious, I think during the first season, when they were really throwing everything against the wall to be like, no, no, no, no, let me explain to you how just how fucking big this universe actually is.

Was the sheer diversity of the world, of the background creatures in it. Like in the last episode you talked about, the main characters of the Dark Crystal getting swallowed up by the world around them. Oh, yeah. And I think Brian Henson and the team at Farscape were actually trying to accomplish that. Like consciously, I can think of a couple of specific scenes in the first season of Farscape, where one of the most notable and one of my favorites is they go into a bizarre on one of the planets they went at getting stuck on because they run out again, ask

if they're running low on food or whatever it is. And they're just walking through this marketplace. And there must have been 20 or more different alien puppets. Oh wow. On, you know, doing different stuff. And one of them is this big terrifying toothy monster that kind of growls at frighten the main human main character. And for a second, you know, you're thinking, oh my God, the monster is loose. And then no, it's just one of the stall vendors who's like, you know, either by something or fuck off, you know, right, right. And and it was there was this subconscious kind of message about diversity. Because, you know, all of these creatures are equally sentient with one

another, and they're all there to make a living, and they're all getting along. And that's just happening in the background. That's not even part of the plot. Right. I was going to say it's not even, yeah. Not even, it's not even germane to the plot. It is literally, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, what you hope that your players admire is they walk past instead of turn left into when you're trying to get them to the end. Yeah. Yeah. Precisely. So yeah. Yeah. You know, and, uh, and Jesus, the, the swamp, I mean,

it really is. It's the swamp, I mean, it really is. It's the swamp scenes that really, there's things where like you follow this creature that's running along and it runs into like, you know, this little grotto and turns out the grotto's alive. Yeah. And it swallows the creature and then all the things that are on the surface like feet, feet away

are reacting to the nutrients that it's getting. Like it's insane how alive, like you know, something runs by and suddenly all the flowers disappear, you know, because they're hiding and stuff like that. Like it's really, really not just lived in, but living. Oh yeah, on a very, on a very meaningful level. And I think, like in the, in the, just in the, just in the background of the stuff that the Henson Studio did, does, there are so many other themes that we could spend time talking about. Because I remember, because it was, it was not so long ago that we weren't doing the podcast when I was showing the movie to my students

at my old site. I remember thinking, you know, there's meat on this bone about this being a post-apocalyptic. And all being this wasteland, post-apocalyptic kind of wilderness. And then I was thinking about, you know, and by the same token, all of the terrain that we see in Conan, the barbaric, erud, you know, semi desert because it was films, you know, in Spain and part of the world where it was. But, you you know, still visually we see so much of that during this time period and slow, you know, is this is this subconsciously, you know, the fear of nuclear war are going on what, you know, and then there was even a part of me that looked at the lettering on on the title for the Dark Crystal and the lettering that was used for Conan the Barbarian and it was like,

okay, no wait, I'm gonna look at part of this here because what's with this aesthetic? Sure. Because it's a similar prog rock album cover kind of lettering. You know, and you know, it's interesting. It's interesting that Hanson had all of this bleakness and all of this genuine horror. I mean, like you said, the brilliance that he and his, all the people working for him had at making you believe

the puppets were alive. Yes. Was on the one hand it has all the wonderment of everything you just described with all of the stuff in the background. And then the other edge of that sword is watching one of the podlings being zombified by the dark crystal and just it being this really horrifying. Oh, yeah. But even in the middle of that horror, I'm really, I resonate really strongly with the

core of it all was hopeful. Yeah. You know, like, I mean, and it's, it all was hopeful. Yeah, you know, like, I mean, and it's, it is apocalyptic. It's, it's absolutely apocalyptic. Like for one side or the other, it will be apocalyptic. You've got the two things that are the last of their kind. So that's apocalyptic. Mm hmm.

Trying to bring about the end of a world order that made them so, but that is going to be apocalyptic for the final eight of their kind. Like everything's dying off in this except for the potlinks. They are in abundance. Which is the thing I want you to keep in mind as we go further along because there will be a character named Hup that is just, I think he's my favorite character out of all of this.

He's so fun. He's a paladin with a spoon. And he's a podling. But yeah, by and large, save for the podlings, everything is either dying, dead, killed, or on its way off this mortal coil. And even when the grand conjunction happens and the skexies and mystic are made whole again,

they fucking leave. Which we will get into why that happens. The thing is, well, I don't want to spoil too much, but the season, uh, uh, age of resistance, uh, only had one season. And it, it did not finish. Oh, that sucks. I mean, it has a Star Wars ending. So that at the end of 10 episodes, it can be a finished thing, but it's so clear that

they wanted to do more. Was that just budgetary that it was like this is just- We'll get into that. We'll get into that. Yeah. So, because I've got some thoughts on that. All right. Yeah.

I think we've kind of talked and covered the greening. Is there anything else that you want to analyze or glean from it? Not particularly. Just that it's a damn shame. We lost Jim Henson when we did. Yes. Because there's so much stuff that we could have gotten There's so much stuff that we could have gotten as a society that we missed out on. Quite so. Yeah, that's all I've got at that point. Okay. Well, what are you reading? What do you want to recommend?

Well, I'm again going to throw out a renegade history of the United States because it just more people need to read it. And I'm also going to throw out the entire uvra of Bishop O'Connell, especially to Gunwitch for all of the reasons that I've mentioned any number of times before. How about you? I'm going to recommend the Dark Crystal, the ultimate visual history by Cassine Gaines, but it's going to feature a ton of the artwork of Brian Froude, which and he also wrote the, he and his wife wrote the introduction, but it is just, just, just this incredible. Like if you like Brian Froude's aesthetic, then you're going to this incredible. Like if you like Brian Fraud's aesthetic,

then you're gonna love this. But if you don't, it's still just incredible visuals and it's good concept art of the dark crystal and it's really, really good. So that's cool. Yeah, cool. Well, where can folks find you if they want to find you? I can be found on Twitter at catfetchter.

I can be found on TikTok as Mr. underscore Blalock. And if you want to see any of my stuff send a send your request. And I will, if you don't look like you might be one of my students, I will probably approve you. And we collectively can be found online at www.beakhistorytime.com. You have already found us either on a Stitcher or on the Apple Podcast app, wherever it is that you have found us. Thank you for listening,

and please be sure to subscribe and give us a positive review. I certainly think that for his work here, Damian has earned five stars. And yeah, and then we can be found collectively for the time being until Twitter goes up and evolve blue tweeting, which in flame, we can be found there as geek history time on Twitter. Where can you be found, sir? Well, to be honest, let's just stick to the live performances for now. You're too late for the December one. So I would recommend you go to the January six performance.

If that's already happened at Luna's at 8 p.m. bring $10 plus proof of Vax plus another $10 for food and maybe a couple bucks for stickers and or pins. We're worth it. Then you can go to the February 3rd show at Henry's bar in Sacramento. You have a smartphone you're listening to us on it. So go ahead and look up Henry's bar. But that's February 3rd. Same thing, proof of acts, $10, but also it's a bar and grill. So you

want to buy food and drink there. It's going to be a really good show though. So those are the two places you can find me. If for some reason this releases after February, then also the March 3rd show at Luna's, same bat time, same bat channel. So that'll, that'll be cool. Very cool. Yeah. So for a geek history of time, I'm Damien Harmony.

And I'm Ed Blaylock. And until next time, keep rolling 20s. and I'm Ed Blaylock and until next time, keep rolling 20s.