Fine. You win. We read Chuck Tingle...

Transcript Transcribed by Laura M.

Courtney: Hello everyone and welcome back. My name is Courtney, I am here with my spouse, Royce, and together we are The Ace Couple. Now, as an ace couple, we like to read books together, sometimes taking turns reading aloud to one another. Rarely though do those books contain phenomenal ace representation, but boy do we have one for you today. I am so excited to talk about this one. We finally caved and read a Chuck Tingle book.

Royce: Now, this is one of Chuck Tingle’s newer books and doesn’t fall into, I guess, the same category as a lot of his other works, even though there is at least one prior book that involves an asexual character, and I see a section of four books that are platonic. Is the grouping that they are under?

Courtney: Yeah. So this is a brand new book. So right off the bat, if you haven’t read it– A, do; I recommend it. It was very good. It is called Bury Your Gays, and it is a traditionally published book. I believe a lot of Chuck Tingle’s earlier works were self published and, I got the impression, very meme-y. I do– Chuck Tingle’s been on our radar for a while, but I do think we were a little late to the Chuck Tingle game. Like, the first time someone mentioned Chuck Tingle in my presence and I had no idea who they were talking to, it was like a scandal. You don’t know who Chuck Tingle is?? So he definitely got at least internet popular far before he came on my radar. But then, shortly after he was on my radar, then I started seeing some titles. Because you google Chuck Tingle the first time and you see all these books that are just, like, “Pounded in the butt by some inanimate object,” or I think there’s one about a dinosaur… lots of–

Royce: There’s a lot and they start–

Courtney: Goofy titles.

Royce: They start making– Future titles end up making fun of past titles. There’s a lot of political stuff. There’s parody works that, again, follow some of this, you know, these same naming conventions.

Courtney: Yeah. And so when I first did my Chuck Tingle google to see what all the fuss was about, I saw all these titles and I thought, “Well, that’s kind of funny, but not something I want to look into and actually read for realsies.” Just not me. But then shortly thereafter a big fuss arose that was like, “Oh, not pounded in the butt by anything.”

Royce: And that’s okay.

Courtney: And that’s okay! And everyone was like, “Wow, Chuck Tingle doing ace rep.” And so at that point we resigned ourselves to needing to read Chuck Tingle at some point. We’re like, “Let’s put that on the list and actually see what the deal is.” But it got pushed pretty far down the list because we waited a long time. And we still haven’t read any of the Pounded by Anything or Not Pounded by Anything books.

Royce: Yeah, another title in the platonic section is– And hold on, this is a long one. The title is: “Absolutely no thoughts of pounding during my fun day with this kind T-Rex, because I’m aromantic and asexual and that’s a wonderfully valid way of proving love is real.”

Courtney: I mean, we’re probably gonna need to read that too. But Bury Your Gays. There were whispers of there being an ace character in this novel long before it came out, so we actually pre-ordered it, and I am so glad we did. This was a fabulous book. I think not only was this good ace rep, but it was just a good book, which is very refreshing. So where do we even start? Do we just start with the plot, or should we go ahead and list, like, features of the ace character that are refreshing to see? Because I do have some actual quotes from the book that I’m going to pull later for how they tie her into the story.

Royce: Yeah, why don’t you go ahead and introduce the ace character in the story and then we’ll start going through the plot?

Courtney: So first of all, she’s the best friend character. So she’s not the main character, we don’t have her as the point of view, but she’s very much the really fun, sort of eccentric, energetic, best friend, almost sidekick-y kind of character. But some of the things that I thought were really refreshing is that she is– I think we calculated roughly 35. It’s hinted that the main character is 38, and that she’s like three years younger, so she’s around 35. And that is– Of all the books that we have covered that have a canonically aromantic and/or asexual character, that is on the older side. That’s quite a bit older than a lot of the late teens early 20 characters we tend to see. She is fully established in a career. Definitely has a very unique, flavorful personality.

Courtney: Presumably she’s a Woman of Color. They don’t say as much, but I assume she’s Japanese. Her name is Tara Ito. And Ito is a very common Japanese surname. Obviously, goofy things can happen where someone might have a last name that doesn’t actually– you know, maybe not blood relation, like, like Todd Chavez having the last name Chavez but being a white guy. But I assume not, because unless that’s part of the plot or specifically mentioned, I guess I don’t see another reason why you would give a character that last name if not to signal something.

Courtney: So add to our very limited repertoire of asexual Women of Color. And I just personally like her as a character. As I said, she’s got a lot of flavor. But they also reference her sexuality several times throughout the book in ways that I think are contextually relevant and increasingly more important to the plot. So that is wonderful. It does not at all feel like this character was just written to check a box and say, “I have an asexual character.” It was actually all tied in very smartly, I think. And our very first indication of this comes literally on page six, right in the first chapter. Where– Having pre-ordered this, knowing there’s an ace character, I might have even known it was an aroace character when we pre ordered. I didn’t know which character it was. But right off the bat we have Tara talking to our main character, his name is Misha, and a majority of the book is told directly from his point of view, and they both work at a big media company.

Royce: Yeah, this media company is, I guess– We felt it was kind of like real world Disney. The names are obfuscated, but it was a company that had an old past history with animation, but was also so big of a conglomerate nowadays that it had absorbed a lot of other companies and IPs.

Courtney: Yeah, there were references to older animation characters that kind of gave like Mickey Mouse vibes, but also gave like–

Royce: Wile E Coyote, Roadrunner, sort of…

Courtney: Yeah.

Royce: There were some references like that.

Courtney: Definitely. So, they both work at this company. Misha is a writer though, he writes for film and television. Tara, on the other hand, does technology…?

Royce: I was just trying to remember if she was explicitly said to be more IT, or more programming, or a combination. She’s the head of some big technical aspect of their company, because she’s monitoring the networks and knows a lot about what is going on with their devices behind the scenes.

Courtney: Yeah, and in this first chapter Misha’s on his way to talk to some executive and they meet outside of the big building. And they hug and she says, “How’s my beautiful baby?” Because she always calls him baby, which I think is very cute and funny that they point out that she’s a little bit younger than him. And he just says, “Well, I just want to get this over with.” And she says, [reading] “Oh, your super difficult meeting where the VP of television gives you two notes and then sucks you off for an hour?” She counters. “I’m implementing the revised IP security protocol across 57 buildings today.” “Wanna trade?” I quip. “You know I don’t swing that way,” Tara replies, then winks, “I don’t swing anyway, baby.”

Courtney: And I thought that was very cute and funny. And right off the bat, since I already went in knowing that there was an ace character, I was like, “All right, that’s gotta be her, it has to be.” But I like it because it’s subtle, because people going in who don’t know that there’s an aroace character in this book might not know what that means until later. But they make it much more obvious in future chapters. So they definitely don’t leave it there. We’d be having a very different discussion if they just left it there.

Royce: So as the story sort of winds up, we get a few different things happening all at once. Misha heads in towards this meeting with the vice president to talk about his work, and on the way sees a creepy in-world manifestation of some kind of this Disney-like company’s early animated character, just kind of off in a field on the way up to the building.

Courtney: Chucky, the woodchuck.

Royce: And it’s far enough away that Misha can’t exactly tell what’s going on, but just notes that it seems very odd to see, like, a life-size figure of this, you know, animated character just off in the distance.

Courtney: Yeah, and it’s also mentioned – and this is why it was kind of Mickey Mouse-ish like – this is an older, like, black and white style of a character that has since been, like, colorized and changed a bit.

Royce: Yeah, it was specifically the older version that was just kind of standing out there. But a little creeped out, Misha continues on, goes up to have his meeting where he is told that he has to bury the gays in this big show that he’s been working on for a while, called Travelers. There are two gay characters and the network wants to kill them off for the ratings boost.

Courtney: As they do.

Royce: And Misha argues against this. I believe– mentioning that that’s something that he has had a name for across his career, is having a bit of fuck off energy, I think is what he calls it.

Courtney: Yeah.

Royce: But leaves the meeting determined to not follow through with the network request and to just write the script as intended, and turn it in and see what happens. But on the way out he sees a really, like, well known older animator who has been with the company for a very, very long time, sexually harassing someone in the same building. And shortly after that a piano falls down and crushes this guy. Like ACME-style death.

Courtney: Yeah, he got that–

Royce: Right in front of him. And so pretty early here, between the creepy figure in the distance and the gory, cartoonish murder of a person in this facility, the book establishes it as a horror novel and continues going at this point. Misha, clearly troubled over being that close to a very violent event, has a few days of, you know, cloudy thoughts while trying to figure out what to do with this script. And I believe that’s when we get the first backstory chapter. We get a few vague hints leading up to events that are told more frequently in the future, of some queer related trauma in Misha’s past.

Courtney: Yeah, Chuck Tingle really uses a lot of clever means of telling this story by jumping between timelines. We have the present, then we have these flashbacks where we’re learning more about the main character’s history. And then there are also some, just, very suspicious chapters that are written like a screenplay, which the very first time we read that we were like, “Is it a dream?” It was as if Misha was being written into a screenplay but doing very unassuming things. So we didn’t know what it meant, but we knew it meant something. And I think the utilization of these three different types of chapters and the orders they’re placed in are really masterfully woven together. So don’t anybody say that Chuck Tingle is not a real author. Oh, my goodness, he is great.

Courtney: But yeah, in this first flashback chapter we sort of see a very young Misha watching a season finale of his favorite show where there are two very queer coded characters. And being a young gay boy who is not out, is not even really old enough to be dating or exploring any of that, really felt represented on screen by these two characters and was waiting to see the progression of their relationship. But during the season finale they get, like, so close, but then the show just sort of pulls the rug out from underneath him and they don’t end up committing to these characters being gay. And he was so furious about this, even as like a nine year old kid, that that became like a lifelong inspiration for him to write more overtly queer characters.

Courtney: So then we get a little more history about why it is such a sore spot for this executive to be telling him, “Hey, if you actually put it on the page and make it more obvious that these characters are gay, then you gotta kill them off shortly thereafter.”

Courtney: And so our next, our very on the page, very obvious indication of Tara’s identity comes off the heels of this meeting. Misha’s really upset about it. He’s also going through a lightly rocky time with his boyfriend. And so he and Tara just meet up at a bar and have a drink, and intend to have a talk. And Tara right off the bat says, “Is this a conversation where we go through your problems and sort them out one by one, or is this a conversation where I tell you everything is going to be okay? I’m ready for either, you’ve just gotta let me know.” And Misha’s like, “I still need to sort things out, so let’s problem-solve here.” So they’re just like going down all his problems one by one, and one of the topics that comes up, he says, “Zeke, my boyfriend is about to be super pissed at me.”

Courtney: And then the chapter reads: “Tara perks up a bit. She leans forward, focusing all of her energy and attention. Tara is aromantic and asexual, which has always made me appreciate her take on relationship advice. If there’s one thing she knows, it’s people, and she has no problem seeing through the starry-eyed baggage that sometimes clouds the vision of my other advice-giving friends.” Which, I just really like that. That is a short, simple, sweet, to-the-point paragraph that isn’t just out of the blue being like, “My friend is aroace, here give me points for having an aroace character.” It’s like the fact that she is aroace is actually why I am asking her for this advice and why I value her opinion on it. Which is also nice, because we say all the time that allos could gain a lot of valuable insight by listening to aromantic and asexual perspectives. And yet too many of them who don’t actually get to know us or don’t actually listen to us, are really quick to think, oh, we’re just too ignorant of relationship things, or oblivious to them, or we’re too childish to understand them.

Courtney: So it’s really nice to have this nearly 40 year old gay character seeking advice from his solidly mid 30s aroace bestie. And it’s also here that we learn, oh, the reason why his boyfriend Zeke is about to be mad at him is because he’s not actually out to his people back home in small town Montana, and his 20th high school reunion is coming up. And he is intentionally not inviting Zeke to that because he’s still half closeted. And there are a couple of kind of funny comments here from Tara where she’s like, “They don’t know? Because aren’t you like the first result on Wikipedia for queer horror?” He’s like, “Yeah, I don’t know, maybe they do know, they probably know, but I haven’t said it, I haven’t shown them anything to confirm it, so.” And this does prove to be a bit of a sore spot for Zeke, who seems to be much more out in more areas of life than Misha is. Which is kind of interesting, also because we’ve talked before about how coming out is often portrayed in media as this, like, big, grand declaration where I’m shouting to the world so everybody knows this, and then it’s a one and done thing.

Courtney: But rarely is that actually how it works in real life. And I actually think that– that– This is really funny, because I just remembered how, not too terribly long ago, we were having a conversation with a friend of ours and we were kind of just, like, swapping our own queer histories and coming out stories and stuff. And at one point in this conversation you, Royce, you were like, “I’m not out to most people.” And we, like, literally have, like, an asexual pride flag hanging outside of our house. And like during Pride Month we put up a pride flag. And so it’s– it’s like actually really obvious to a lot of people in real life, anybody who would certainly ever come to our house or come to our neighborhood, like, we’re not hiding it. So I had to kind of crack up because we also have this – uh – little podcast called The Ace Couple that’s charted in 58 countries.

Royce: Yeah, but your life bubbles sometimes don’t intersect. And apparently Misha’s California bubble and Montana bubble are potentially still pretty separate.

Courtney: So I do think it’s kind of interesting to see a story that shares, like, that complicated element of it. So Misha, I do think, is a good character. I do like him as a character. He also definitely has some of his flaws, and I think some of the flaws are a little bit subtle. So I do want to point out this one because I imagine some readers who aren’t going through this specifically trying to analyze the aroace rep in it might miss this element or not put as much weight on it. But Misha does not seem to be like the most attentive friend to Tara. And I think it’s really interesting because the text and the broader story actually seems to pay closer attention to her, with fine details here and there, than Misha actually does as a friend, which I think is interesting.

Royce: It’s very intentional, which we’ll get into more.

Courtney: And halfway through the book I wasn’t sure how to feel about it, but by the end I saw exactly where Chuck Tingle was going with it. So the first sort of big indication we have is that they’re at this bar and some woman comes up and is talking to Misha and mentioned she is a fan of one of the projects he worked on. And it’s a very weird kind of awkward conversation. And she introduces herself as Alice but after she leaves– Tara first of all points out that she was a cast member on some reality show called the Hookup. And after this woman leaves, Tara just goes, “Well, that was weird.” And Misha kind of rips her like, “Oh, what? I’m– You think I don’t actually have any fans who might recognize me?” [reading] “Tara shakes her head, “Not that part. You’re a superstar. I’m talking about the part where her name isn’t Alice.” “Wait, really?” I chuckle, “I never took you for a reality show buff.” “Well, fuck you, I am.”

Courtney: Tara continues and she goes on to talk about how she actually helped with some sound on this set. So she, she knows all about this woman and she’s like, “Why is this woman introducing herself by a different name? I’m very confused.” And I thought it was so interesting that she’s like, “Fuck you, I am a reality show buff.” Because they’re supposed to be really close friends, who have known each other a long time, who are very close. And this is not even the first– or this is not even like the only time in the book that Tara’s love of reality shows comes up.

Courtney: Like, later, halfway through the book, at one point Misha is, like, gone out of the house, out doing something else, and he, like, calls. And Tara and Zeke are both hanging out together, and Tara is like showing Zeke a trashy reality show. And they’re just like eating popcorn, watching reality TV. And so it’s like, why does your boyfriend share in your best friend’s hobbies more than you do? [chuckles]

Courtney: Which, if that was just kind of a one off, I wouldn’t read into it too much. But despite having an aroace character, something we also look for when we analyze these pieces of media is how does the text actually treat the character, and does it actually seem to respect the aroace worldview? And there was a moment where I was like, “I don’t know where they’re gonna go with this. I don’t actually know how I’m going to give it a stamp of approval at the end.” Because Misha gives this big sort of speech at his high school reunion to all of his old friends and all of their wives who are with them, and this all kind of started– was because someone was criticizing his work in horror, sort of discrediting horror as a legitimate genre.

Courtney: And he starts sort of, you know, going on a monologue about how it’s not just about the death, it’s not just about the gore, it’s the subtext, it’s the parallels. It tells deep truths about our inner fears, and society, and whatnot.

Courtney: And one of the paragraphs in the midst of this monologue is: [reading] “First of all, horror isn’t a celebration of death – I state – if horror was a celebration of death, then nobody would like it.

Courtney: Human beings are conditioned to move toward some behaviors and away from others. We are programmed to self-replicate and protect our legacy, which is why sex is crafted to be just about the best feeling there is.” And he goes on to talk about how great sex is, but he’s like, “Even though sex is great, we can’t spend our entire lives in the bedroom. You gotta get up and go drink water and eat food at some point.” To which, one of his high school buddies is even like, [mockingly] “Talk for yourself,” to which his wife, like, eye rolls. And it’s a very like, “Oh, that kind of guy” moment.

Courtney: But it becomes this very dramatic moment. Because by the end of this speech, where everyone’s all engaged in what he’s saying, he has proven why horror is so important and why it’s a valid genre and what it can actually say, and everyone kind of celebrates him in that moment, and is like, “Really well said, good job.” And so that was the moment where I was like, uh… We’ve got an aroace character. We have the moment where he valued her opinion on relationships. And yet when he is not in the room with her, he’s going on big speeches about how important sex is. And not– not only like sex is important, but saying using language, like human beings are programmed to like sex. That’s– That’s– I was like, “Guy, your best friend is aroace, what are you doing? What are you doing?!” But that, paired with his, you know, minor dismissal or obliviousness to her interests, I think he is just a pretty flawed character.

Courtney: And don’t get me wrong. They’re good friends, they love each other, but I think he’s just got so much of his own trauma and his own baggage about not fully being out, about being a gay man writing queer horror and in Hollywood. And in many ways this entire book is about him growing through that as well. So– But at this point I was like, is this the character’s feeling or is this the overall vibe and story and message of the book? Because those can be two different things and I think that’s important. And at this point we didn’t have enough to know which way it was going to go.

Royce: I also had some conflicting thoughts about the book as we got into it. Particularly with how Tara was going to come out. Because, while she is a very prominent character, a lot of the material does focus specifically around Misha. And so– Also me, in the middle of the book I was wondering when we get to the end of this, how much material is she going to have?

Courtney: And the beginning of the book does set her up as, like, borderline conspiracy theorist. Because, like understanding the technology of this big corporation they both work at, she’s like, “I know what their systems do and they are spying on all of us.” So she, like, tells Misha, like, “Do not even have your phone on when you are anywhere near properties owned by this company.” And so she has like two phones. She never brings her personal phone to work with her.

Royce: Yeah, I don’t know if she– I can’t remember that part of the book if she’s specifically put up to be a bit conspiracy-theory, or just took it as like people I’ve known who are in– who are like network security professionals.

Courtney: Yeah. Well, the thing is like– In the place where she works, when she’s like, “I see their systems, and I know exactly what they’re doing.” There’s a reason for that behavior. But then when they’re at the bar, she, like, pays in cash. And I think–

Royce: Oh…

Courtney: There’s a one off line about, like, oh she doesn’t have credit cards because she thinks they’re going to… bla bla bla, whatever that means. So–

Royce: Yeah, yeah, okay.

Courtney: Until we get confirmation of what this company is doing, it’s like, alright, maybe she’s a little– a little conspiracy-ish.

Royce: But to run through the middle of the book here, through most of the plot, as I mentioned earlier, there are a few little mysteries that start to foreshadow or untangle events. Misha and Tara, coming home from a bar one night, encounter a figure that is straight out of one of Misha’s more famous movies. It’s a character called The Smoker, who is this sort of wide eyed smoking figure who does a sort of– I think it’s even mentioned in jest as like, you just copied The Ring. You see The Smoker and if you don’t meet the conditions, you have five days before he cuts your bones out of your back and kills you.

Courtney: Grinds them into dust and smokes them, no less. [chuckles]

Royce: Yes.

Courtney: He wants to smoke your bones!

Royce: But in a very creepy situation, this Smoker figure meets them in an alleyway, and Misha fails the condition of having a lighter or a– matches ready to light The Smoker’s cigarette, which is the condition that he wrote into this story that leads to someone’s death.

Courtney: And it had actually already been established too that he does always keep a book of matches on his person for situations just like this. But normally it’s a way more casual fan than this, who looked like he actually had special effects and everything.

Royce: Yes, yes, there were– there were things about the situation that Misha couldn’t quite figure out. One, how true The Smoker looked to, like, his original writing, his original ideas, the ways that effects were being played. The Smoker never talks, he uses nearby technology like car radios to speak. And throughout the book that– The Smoker, the presence of The Smoker, puts a five day time limit on the majority of the book where they are trying to get a grip on what’s going on before time is up, and they’re killed.

Courtney: Well, and he goes to reach into his pocket and doesn’t have matches. And so they figured, the only way he possibly wouldn’t have matches was if this mysterious reality show woman who came up and talked to them awkwardly actually stole them from his jacket when he wasn’t looking.

Royce: Yes, and later on in the book, to sort of tackle this problem a little bit out of order, we do get a bit of a history behind The Smoker and learn that this is tied to a very specific point of trauma when Misha was a teenager when his abusive uncle found out that he was gay and basically used it as a point of leverage in that: “I’m going to keep your secret, but now I have all of the power in this situation.” And while he was basically charged with babysitting him for a week, had him sleep outside–

Courtney: Five days!

Royce: Had him sleep outside in the cold, in the car, while he basically had run of the home. And that’s where the fixation on always carrying matches came from. That’s where the five day time limit came from. That is the manifestation of this character.

Royce: The next supernatural phenomenon that comes up is this eldritch horror of a lamb.

Courtney: A lamb!

Royce: It is a small, fragile, defenseless looking lamb that, if allowed to get too close to you, if people go to try to help it, it basically morphs into this eldritch abomination and devours them. Was the the point of another popular film of his and also another point of trauma that we get back to.

Courtney: It was when he had sort of his first, like, early teenage crush and he was going over to his house and it actually did end up seeming like that boy also liked him back, and they– they kissed, at one point. This is like after parents went to bed in the basement, he snuck in. And the brother of his crush, like, came down and kind of caught them and was very homophobic, was berating them. And in that moment just in– in fear of being outed, Misha ended up getting kind of thrown under the bus, and also physically assaulted in the process. But having come all the way here in the middle of the night to sneak in, wasn’t actually able to get home on his own. So he ended up sleeping in a barn that night. And when he just wanted to cry it out, and be alone, and felt really exposed and outed and vulnerable, got kind of jump-scared by a legitimately innocent lamb who just sort of walked into the barn.

Royce: And the third major figure is a sort of higher power alien figure known as Mrs Why, who is present in the show Travelers that’s popular right now, that Misha had the meeting about earlier in the book. And he sees her manifest as a seated figure in a flight, like on the plane, and her whole deal is that if she comes into physical contact with a person, she shows them essentially everything there is to know about the universe, about the end. And it is a, you know, cosmic horror sort of situation where that person is unable to handle this kind of information that is, you know, beyond our capacity for understanding. And that they basically become unable to physically do anything and end up dying of dehydration or starvation or something like that.

Courtney: Yeah, they just stare into the void. And maybe mumble things about, “Oh no, it’s endless.” What I thought was really interesting too, because she’s Mrs Why, W-H-Y, and she is – at least her name – is directly inspired by an Agent Y, as in the letter Y, from that very same show that he was in love with as a kid. But then got so disappointed in for pulling the rug out from under this very queer coded story that he never actually ended up finishing the show. He turned it off there in a rage and never ended it. And that character had an Agent Y, as in the letter.

Courtney: So now this eldritch horror of– of knowing and not knowing in his show, where he is determined to have these two characters’ relationship actually become fully realized, I think it’s very interesting. I think it’s very cleverly done and the order that Chuck Tingle writes it in, since it is all kind of out of order, sometimes we hear about an inspiration before we see the horror, sometimes we see the horror and then later learn what the inspiration was behind it. And it really all just works very well for the atmosphere and the pacing, I think.

Royce: So all of these figures from Misha’s work that were all based off of past life traumas are now in the real world. And Misha has realized that they are very real. He sees the lamb morph in front of him and murder a security guard. Mrs Why’s incapacitates several people around him and gets very close to touching Misha. And he’s getting series of phone calls counting down the five days from The Smoker. And is trying desperately to figure out what he can do about this before time runs out for both him and Tara, who was with him when The Smoker was present.

Royce: And during this fact, he’s sort of lamenting that these creatures are all following the rules that he wrote in universe. And in universe he didn’t write any means of getting out. He didn’t write any means of defeating them.

Royce: So as we’re getting into the final couple of days, Misha ends up having a conversation with the vice president that we talked to previously, and the vice president makes an odd comment about who’s really running the company and what’s going on here. And drops the line– drops some information that makes it seem as if he knows a bit about what’s going on and basically tells Misha, “You just need to kill those characters we talked about.” And so Misha’s like, “All right, these characters are not worth my life and my friend’s life. I’m going to get it in writing, I’ll send the email to people in the company and this will all stop and it’ll be fine.”

Royce: He does that and finds out that it isn’t finished yet. He’s still seeing the figures, he’s still getting calls from The Smoker. So he starts to track down– He follows the VP out into this remote area a little ways out of town and, while kind of staking out the place from the parking lot, sees the VP person run out bloodied face with a figure who shouldn’t be real. A famous actor who is known to be deceased, who was recently said to have been CGI’d into a movie, recently, that was up for critical acclaim that year. Storms out and follows the VP in a car chase into the woods. Misha follows and finds the VP being slowly tortured and killed by this figure, who is not the actor, it is the character from the movie fully realized.

Royce: And along this way, he’s been connecting the dots that all of these figures that have been seen are realized aspects from the media conglomerates IP that are now in the real world. So at this point Misha is running out of ideas and is trying desperately to stop whatever is happening here. Incapacitates the figure, the movie character who has just killed the VP of TV at this company. Takes his gun. Watches as his body just sort of crumbles into dust and jumps in the car. Heads back to the building that the two of them had run out of and breaks into this sort of secret high security lab area in the back, and forces the scientists or engineers there to explain what’s going on, and learns that basically what this whole company does–

Royce: They have figured out a way to create nanobots that are controlled by a large scale AI algorithm, and so they are using that to– The nanobots have the ability to basically manifest physical matter, and the AI algorithm behind it is basically learning enough about people that are in the intellectual property rights of the organization and manifesting those characters. And are able to do that in ways that are so technologically advanced that it’s sort of bending reality. The black lamb, as we mentioned, morphed into some horrible creature right in front of him. Mrs Why is somehow incapacitating people with– incapacitating people with cosmic knowledge.

Royce: But as Misha is standing there in front of this big, like, glass dome containing these– this cloud of nanobots, a figure manifests in the cloud and addresses Misha and basically tells him that all of this has been planned all along. “You’re doing exactly as we want.” And the gun in his hand also dissolves into ash and he has to race out of the building with this newfound knowledge.

Courtney: Yeah, well, there’s also– There’s a huge critique of major– major like corporations and capitalism. Because not only do we have this critique of AI, but we also have the fact that he learns this AI is basically programmed to maximize profit.

Royce: Right. And so one of the revelations is that the reason that old animator was killed, crushed with a piano earlier on, was to avoid the financial fallout of sexual harassment lawsuits.

Courtney: Yes.

Royce: The reason Misha is being targeted–

Courtney: Changed over time, actually! Because at first they just wanted to scare him into killing off his gay characters.

Royce: Right, or that was what Misha believed at least.

Courtney: I think it was. I think it was pretty well confirmed. Because then when he said, “Fine, I’ll do it. If it’ll save my life and save Tara’s life,” because Tara was also with him when The Smoker first came and asked for a light. Then he was like, “Fine, I’ll do it.” But then he kept getting followed and he was like, “Oh no, this isn’t over.”

Royce: It was unclear to me if Misha was correct about that, or if the AI had planned the long game the whole time.

Courtney: Well, over time, like, Misha started kind of going viral. Like, people would take videos of him yelling at The Smoker in public and–

Royce: Yeah, the media was writing it off as, “Oh, there are these cosplayers harassing this famous writer.”

Courtney: Right.

Royce: Because–

Courtney: But he became such a tabloid interest because all these weird things kept happening and he kept going viral. So there were all these rumors and speculations about, like, “Oh, is he just doing this for publicity? Is he staging these things?” And then people kept saying, like, “Wow, you’re going viral and all your old work is like– the streaming is going up on all of your older work.2 So it seems as though the AI noticed that and was like, “Well, this is making us money, so let’s just keep doing this.” But while that’s also happening, we also find out in another chapter, with this eerie screenplay-like writing, that Mrs Why has found a way into Misha’s house and has gone after Zeke and Tara.

Royce: Yes.

Courtney: While Misha was gone.

Royce: Yes, and a part of this– This is really at the point where a lot of these threads come together, because we learned that this screenplay writing is a nanobot manifestation of Misha, because there is something in the contracts of– I don’t know if it was all employees of the major corporation, or at least a lot of the– a lot of the talent, a lot of the writers, where they basically sign over themselves to the company. And so the company has manifested some of them in AI nanobot form.

Royce: And so we had a couple of chapters in screenplay form that were nanobot Misha basically going about their day in a state of confusion where they didn’t know exactly– They thought it was nine years in the past at the point that this snapshot of them had been taken, basically. And we’re just kind of going through their day doing what they were supposed to be doing, kind of a little bit confused. But AI nanobots Misha’s goal was basically to open the door for Mrs Why, who was written to have to follow a very strict set of rules, so that Mrs Why could incapacitate Zeke and Tara right before Misha would come home and find them.

Courtney: I do like that not only was there sort of a speech preaching about how, like, a horror story can have these deep, important parallels of social commentary, but the book itself actually succeeded in doing that in a number of ways. There was a critique of queer representation, the obviously the bury your gays trope, a critique of AI, a critique of capitalism and mega corporations. So it really was able to effectively do a lot of things here.

Royce: And so, as we head into the climax of this story, Misha is running out of time. There is maybe a day left. He’s basically lost everything at this point and is grasping at straws. And the thought occurs, “Well, I’m up against this nearly impossible to conceive data crunching AI with extraordinary technology and resources at its disposal, and it is utilizing characters that I’ve created that don’t have any weaknesses, because I wrote them that way, and I understand that. But what I can do is stop playing by the rules. I can change the genre that we’re working inside,” essentially. And so it’s kind of funny. He starts getting really flippant with The Smoker. He punches The Smoker in the face at one point and it’s like, “I’m surprised that works. He’s supposed to be a ghost, but–”

Courtney: But I also never wrote someone punching him! So… [chuckles]

Royce: So we’ve entered uncharted territory here.

Courtney: It is kind of funny to just try to punch the ghost.

Royce: He also ends up killing Mrs Why. Because she has to fa– She is a creature of order, and has to follow the orders of people around.

Courtney: If they have authority over Mrs Why.

Royce: If they have authority. And so he says, “You’re in my house, you have to do as my– what I say, and you can’t move.” And so he freezes her and then stabs her through the neck. But he gets to work on a grand plan and starts to enact this. One other time-based event that we’ve been leading to this entire book is an Oscar nomination.

Courtney: For a short film, a short live action film.

Royce: And so he doesn’t know for sure if he’s going to win. I think he had a pretty good feeling about it going into, or a lot of people gave him the feedback that he had a good chance at winning. So his plan is to go to the Oscars with an acceptance speech proposed that might be enough to save this situation, to get out of this situation. And we’re not really told what the plan is at this point. But we see him get in the car and head toward the event, very nervous. And he ends up at one point moving through a crowd of like paparazzi. Because not only is he this big name actor going to an Oscar award ceremony, he’s been in all these tabloids, there’s been all this stuff going on around him. And he feels sort of a puncture in his hip and isn’t sure what it is. And just tries to blow it off and continues on.

Royce: And as he’s sitting in the chair at the Oscars, as they’re getting ready – they’re going through the, like, In Memoriam section, which is especially long this year, a lot of talent has died – he starts to get sick. And he kind of realizes, “Oh yeah, why did I think that this entity was just going to let me do whatever I wanted? There are so many things in this megacorporation’s IP that it could have used to infect me somehow.”

Royce: And we get basically another manifestation of past trauma, where Misha and his abusive uncle, way back when, had sat down and watched something that seems to be at least inspired by the movie Predator, but possibly also just a whole mixture of 80s action flicks.

Royce: You know, the Schwarzenegger variety. And Misha finds that what is actually happening inside him is a creature from that movie, a large, parasitic worm is inside of him and is crawling towards his heart. And manages to rush out of his seat, ignore the pain enough, stumble into the kitchen, grab a knife, hide it, and get to a bathroom before he’s thrown out by security and cuts this worm out of his body, nearly passing out, with The Smoker manifesting once again to basically reveal what’s going on here. The AI has planned for him to die by suicide in the bathroom just before the Oscars and for that to be this big tragic event that will spur more watch time for all of his material.

Courtney: Well, because they even mentioned, like: “Oh, they’re going to find out that your boyfriend and your best friend have, you know, fallen ill with this mysterious illness for which there’s no cure. And then they’re going to find you here, dead by your own knife in the bathroom at the Oscars.” And they’re like, “Now, that is a tragic queer story. And you already have all this– these media eyes on you.” So also just like the bury your gays, I love that it’s a critique of the trope, it’s someone trying to navigate being pigeonholed into the trope, and they also just make it so literal by the end. It’s very good.

Royce: And there’s a point during this where the AI, through The Smoker, mentions what this is all worth. What the profit increase for all of this is. Because there was collateral. There were other people that died around all of this just to get Misha to this point.

Courtney: Oh yeah, and sometimes just random people who happen to be in the vicinity of Mrs Why. Like, they were just on the same airplane Misha was on.

Royce: Or other manifestations, other characters.

Courtney: Oh yes, here it is 0.003162%.

Royce: And I think at this point, hearing that number, hearing what a machine had valued their lives and their suffering as, and had used that to justify the book, this whole situation, this whole tragedy, I think that is one of the things that gets them up off the ground. They try to hastily stem the blood loss that they’re experiencing and they cover up and go out to accept the Oscar award that they won. And they end up throwing away their bloodstained cue cards and doing an impromptu speech.

Courtney: But that Oscar speech ends up being really interesting because basically Misha has to do the big coming out to the world speech, and he kind of acknowledges– He’s like, “You know, all the queer people in the audience, you probably already know this about me, but for all you straight people out there, let me make this abundantly clear.” He comes out, he mentions his boyfriend by name, thanks Zeke at the end of the speech. And he gets, you know, a raucous round of applause for it. His speech is very well earned.

Courtney: But in coming out, he also says, “I reject the idea that I’m the star of some real life queer tragedy. And I reject the very idea of queer tragedy as the only valid form of gay entertainment. I call on all of you to usher in a new era of stories where the gay, or bi, or lesbian, or asexual, or pansexual, or trans character lives happily ever after. Buy those stories, make those stories profitable.” And it’s a beautiful thing! And he name drops asexuals. So I’m like, that’s a little bit of progress for you. But he does actually manage to at least temporarily turn the tides, because this is so well received. And he’s getting so much press that now there is a big Hollywood buzz about stories with queer joy. And it’s actually very fascinating because then you immediately start seeing the shift, like, eerily fast.

Royce: Well, first of all, Misha passes out from blood loss and wakes up at like noon the next day, having been bandaged up by– He doesn’t know. I think it’s presumed that it was the nanobots, and this is past–

Courtney: I think he knows that it was them, or at least figures that out.

Royce: I think that idea was presented. It happens off screen though.

Courtney: Yeah.

Royce: And it is past The Smoker’s time limit. He goes home to find Zeke and Tara back awake, aware, around.

Courtney: But a lot of people have still died, including the former VP of this company. So, turns out, they replace him with a gay stereotype, because now gay is in. And it’s very, very funny. Because there’s this moment of hope, like, yes, we’re going to have queer joy. But then when the corporation is like, “Yeah, you’re right, that is profitable now, so we’re gonna do that.” Then we get to see how that gets horribly bastardized and isn’t actually what we wanted either. And so when he and Tara go back to work, now all of a sudden the campus of this corporation is like a Pride festival. They’re talking about, like, a DJ in a mesh shirt and booty shorts playing, like, Robbin’s Dancing On My Own, and all these rainbow colors all over the place. And they are like, “What the hell?” And a poster for a new movie with the word “Queeroes” emblazoned on it. And from Misha’s point of view, with Tara standing right there next to him, he says, “This is a superhero team. And the colors of their uniforms make it quickly apparent which queer identity they each represent. There’s a hero clad in pink, purple, and blue, the bi one. There’s a hero clad in blue, pink, and white, the trans one. There’s a hero clad in orange, white, and pink, the lesbian one. This continues on and on until every aspect of the community has been covered.”

Courtney: And at this point, I kid you not, I stopped. It was my turn reading aloud for this chapter. I stopped reading, sat down the book, looked over at Royce, and very snarkily said: “I highly doubt that.” There’s no way. And we had our little chuckle and I kept reading. [resumes reading] “Across the bottom is the film’s tagline: In this world, there are no villains… – dot dot dot – only queeroes. “No villains?” I mumbled to myself, struggling to understand what this could possibly mean. “Does this show actually have no conflict?” Tara steps up next to me, her eyes locked on the poster. “There’s no asexual hero.” “What?” I blurt, pulled from my trance. “They’ve got everyone up there, besides an ace character,” she observes. “Every fucking time.” “Oh… oh!” I stammer, realizing now that she’s right. “I’m sorry. That really sucks.” “It is what it is,” Tara sighs, “I’m headed in.”

Courtney: And so again, I am like, your best friend in this whole world is aromantic and asexual– Which it doesn’t say as much, but I assume there’s also not an aromantic hero up there. But he knows about asexuality. He mentioned asexuals in his Oscar speech. And yet when presented with a poster of flag themed queeroes, he’s like, “Wow, they’ve really got everybody!” And he didn’t even realize that there wasn’t an ace one until his ace friend had to be like, “Every fucking time.” And even then he seemed a little surprised. He’s like, “Oh!” As if that’s something to really be surprised about. So I just thought that was another little, like, you think he would have recognized that. You really think.

Courtney: And I think it’s just extra funny that the two of us, before we even read that line, we were like, [skeptical] “They have everyone? Uh-huh, sure. Sure they do.” So Misha goes and has this new meeting with this new VP, who turns out is also just nanobots and he is a total gay stereotype, which becomes increasingly more obvious through the course of this conversation. But yeah, they’re basically like, “You know? Those gay characters of yours? Make them gayer.” [soft chuckle] “No more queer tragedy, let’s have more happiness. No more conflict, no more villains, no more sad.” And Misha’s like, “But I am still a horror writer, though. Like, horror is my genre.” And they’re like, “Yeah, that’s not really gonna work for us anymore. We need queer joy now, buddy, that’s what’s profitable.” [chuckles]

Royce: I believe it’s around this time as well Misha starts to put things together. Because the new AI nanobot VP not so subtly threatens Misha and some other people that Misha knows who work for the company. And Misha kind of puts two and two together that the constraints that the AI was working under, previously, seem to have changed. That the figures the AI is pumping out seem to be more interconnected, it seems to be doing things more deliberately. And that, while the goalposts have shifted, while the genre has been changed, there is still this incredibly powerful – I guess, I want to say, inadvertently – malicious.

Royce: It’s mentioned more than once that this is not written as a, like, sentient, general purpose AI. It is a massive scale, large language model sort of AI that we’re seeing manifest in today’s world, just hooked up to an incredible physical replicating technology. And it’s called a big calculator on multiple occurrences. [Courtney agrees] So I was pausing over the words– over words like evil and malicious, but it’s mentioned a couple of times in the book, this is just a calculator that’s driven to micromanaging profits with absolutely no feeling towards what needs to be done to prove that. And so people are going to continue getting in the way, people are going to continue getting hurt.

Courtney: Yeah, one argument you could make is that it’s not immoral, it’s amoral. But you know that still leads to bad things when introduced to humans. Because something completely devoid of any and all morality that only cares about profit is going to hurt humans. They don’t see a human life as having more value than a dollar figure. But yeah, I like this. I really like this new VP. It was a very funny chapter to read, very flavorful, very like– It drives the point home so beautifully.

Courtney: He’s got like a day bed that is rainbow colored with the word Pride written in giant white sequins on it, and Misha at one point is like, “No adult gay man in their right mind would own that fucking couch.” [reading] “He is an approximation. At best he’s someone’s poorly executed gay best friend character from a forgotten 90s rom-com. At worst he’s a synthesized amalgamation of traits and behaviors built to fill the role of generic queer man through the eyes of straight culture. He’s a stereotype.” And he even says, “Why let all the straights have– And he even says why let the straights have all the fun? Am I right? We’ve got trans mothman, we’ve got a gay goblin, we’ve got a bi Mrs Why.” To which Misha, admittedly, is like, “Yeah, that does sound awesome, but you’re still trying to micromanage the way I am telling my own stories, and you’re trying to put it in a direction that is not my style and not the way I want to present it.”

Royce: And so, briefly after this, the protagonist trio decides that this AI is– it’s still dangerous and this queer joy hellscape needs to go. And so they formulate a plan, mostly uh–

Courtney: Queer joy hellscape… [laughs]

Royce: They formulate a plan, mostly from Tara’s involvement, about how to take down this machine.

Royce: The three of them travel back to the laboratory that Misha first encountered the nanobots in physical form and make their way in to talk.

Royce: During this conversation, Misha is basically trying to distract the nanobots who have manifested in physical form to speak as the former VP of television, who was like a long-term friend of Misha’s. And while this is going on, Zeke is, like, clumsily moving over to like an old style desktop computer to stick a thumb drive in it. And during this, the AI sort of drops the veil, revealing that this cage that they’ve been in, this glass container that they’ve been in, was just warm nanobots.

Royce: It was something that they manifested themselves to give the illusion of a barrier or of weakness. The little desktop computer that in no way, shape, or form would have been able to power all of this technology was also just nanobots. Lots of things in the room were just nanobots. And then it manifests a whole bunch of various characters from its IP that begin to press on the characters here, saying, “Well, we need you to write, so we’re not going to kill you, but we do need to impress some amount of trauma upon you so you don’t try this again.” And starts going through, like, “Well, you don’t need your eyes to write, you might not need your legs to write,” like going through these things.

Courtney: And that’s when motherfucking Tara steps out. Oh my God! I was giddy reading this chapter. It got so good and completely put into perspective exactly how I felt about the ace rep in this book, without a shadow of a doubt. In fact, I just want to read a couple of paragraphs from this. I assume if you’ve gotten this far, you don’t care about spoilers or you’ve already read it yourself. [reading] “Tara clears her throat. A movement so unexpected, she actually halts the monster’s approach. “Hey there,” she calls. “Out my name’s Tara. I’m the asexual in the corner everyone’s been ignoring.” And she goes on to explain like, “Yeah, it’s really impressive that you have so many data sets, that you know so many things about so many people, and so, of course, you’re always going to be one step ahead of everybody else. The problem is, your accuracy goes to shit once you introduce a new variable, baby. For example, someone whose data you don’t have. A mystery box, who always remembers to turn off her phone when she’s near studio property.” And she takes it one step further even, “You may not have the data from my phone, but you can fake it with a basic knowledge of pop culture, can’t you? You can’t actually create anything new, just variations on what you already have. But that shouldn’t be a problem. Just pull up all the information you have on asexual and aromantic heroes who saved their queer companions at the last second.” And she basically pulls up, “Oh right! You can’t!” It is so good.

Courtney: I also don’t think I mentioned this before, but every time Tara’s introduced in a new screen, or oftentimes it’s mentioned what she’s wearing, and she seems to just have a fabulous sense of style. She seems to dress flamboyantly in a way that she’s really bright and colorful and stands out and just seems very stylish. So just picture an incredibly badass woman [laughs] using her power of invisibility against the mega corporation. [resumes reading] “Tara hesitates, a fire in her eyes now. “Oh wait, that’s gonna be pretty fucking difficult, because there are almost no human asexual heroes represented in popular media are there. In fact, I checked the HBS copyright banks, and guess how many ace heroes I found? Zero. Asexuals have terrible representation and that fucking sucks. But right now I am so glad you have no idea who I am or what I’m capable of. Because you still have no idea I did this.”

Courtney: And she holds up her phone, which is on. And this is the first time she has ever turned on her phone at one of these properties. And in fact there have been multiple times where she has, like, caught Misha with his phone on at work and she’d be like, “What did I tell you? Turn your phone off. Phones off!” So she has been just so adamant about this, not only for herself, but she informs her friends of this. That now she was able to use this against the evil AI, because apparently what they had been doing is just automatically downloading data from every phone that is on and within range of these HBS properties. And she even says, “I can see how a capitalist neural net would think that was a killer idea. But if someone happened to have backdoor access and know exactly what packets you’re opening, you could be in a lot of trouble.” And so what would you call it that she probably put on her phone to make sure it was downloaded automatically when she turned it on? Is it some kind of virus? What’s your take on that?

Royce: Yeah, this would have to have been some sort of virus that was uploaded using the own system’s data mining operation.

Courtney: And that is the– exactly the thing that takes down this complex capitalist neural network of AI driven nanobots. And so first all of the characters start to dissolve away, and then the very building they’re in starts to dissolve away. And it ends up being a much farther reaching network of nanobots than they even realized at first, like multiple buildings are gone now.

Royce: Yeah, once they get out of this, after almost being literally buried once again–

Courtney: They literally buried the gays alive.

Royce: –in the particles from these nanobots that are falling apart or deactivating.

Courtney: But it’s okay, they survived.

Royce: They survived getting literally buried and walk out to see, yes, that it wasn’t the building, it wasn’t the complex, it was the forest, the hills in the area… The nanobots had been expanding and sort of creating or replacing this area all around them. They also find out in the days afterwards that at this moment when this had been deactivated, a significant number of business executives and Hollywood talent just disintegrate in front of people on the jobs. It becomes this whole sort of conspiracy, like, was there some kind of spontaneous combustion event that happened where all of these people just–?

Courtney: Or aliens… But yeah, and it’s, it’s just very good. It is very, very good. And we get to finish the book on a really high note where they’re able to watch the season finale of Travelers, and it is written exactly how Misha intended it, and everyone can be very happy and excited about it. And it is just so good. It is so good because, in a book that is a critique on queer representation in the media, they not only accurately and respectfully pointed out how big of a problem it is that there is so little ace representation, but they did it in the context of a really fascinating story with horror elements, with sci-fi elements, with really dynamic characters, and nothing felt out of place. Everything was intentional.

Courtney: Like I said earlier, the ace character wasn’t just there to tick a box, but also they didn’t just rant about there not being enough ace rep in media just for the sake of ranting about it. And, you know, preaching at the reader. They incorporated that plotline in a really badass way. In a way that was important to the story, integral to the plot, in the way that actually made the aroace character the one who saved the day. And all of the elements leading up to it had been teased directly from the beginning of the book, even though we’re learning more and uncovering more and more and there is a mystery element for so long. Everything was teased right from the beginning and everything got progressively clearer, and I just think it was perfect.

Courtney: I had so much fun reading it. There were multiple times where we were both laughing out loud. There was a moment where I cried, tears were running down my cheeks at the end of – I think – at least two different chapters. And it was an instant USA Today Bestseller. So there are a good number of people buying and reading this book. And I just really want it to actually be optioned for a movie or a TV series, because the Hollywood setting of it, the tone, the way it’s written, I think would lend itself very well to an actual screenplay. I really do. I could see this being a movie. I could see it being a season on Netflix and I want it to be.

Courtney: I really did love Tara as a character and I also just really loved the actual plot, and the pacing, and the tone. And that’s something we have criticized at times where there are some characters out there that, if you’re talking in terms of like, well do they represent the orientation well? Are they educational? Are they breaking free of harmful stereotypes? Like, well, yeah, maybe, but are they a good character? Do they have their own personality and their own flavor? And are they someone people want to root for? Are they someone exciting? Are they something new that we haven’t seen before? And sometimes the answer to that is no.

Courtney: And I don’t want just blasé characters that are here to serve as a PSA. I don’t want plot lines that are only revolving around the aroace character learning that they’re aroace. I love having a fully established adult woman who knows who she is. We are told who she is. We see who she is. And she kicks ass and she is the hero. And they would not have gotten out of this horrible sci-fi, capitalist, nightmarish horror story without her. So I really cannot sing its praises enough.

Courtney: I am a firm fan of Dr Tingle now. Jury’s still out on how we feel about the Pounded By or the Not Pounded By series of books, but I’m sure someday we will delve into it and find out.

Courtney: But honestly, definitely my all time favorite aroace character I’ve ever read in a book. I don’t think I can say my favorite aroace character of all time, because Takahashi and his cabbages. [soft chuckle] But can I say that this is my favorite aroace character in all of English media thus far? I think maybe. I don’t think I can think of another aroace character in English media, that’s TV and books, that I like better than Tara. So she’s brilliant. This book is brilliant, Dr Chuck Tingle is brilliant. And I’m going to implore all of you to purchase this book. I highly recommend it. And I recommend you buy this book from our featured marketplace vendor of the week. That is going to be Main St. Books. Main St. Books is an ace-owned bookstore. They have Pride button stickers, journals and, of course, LGBTQIA+ books.

Courtney: They are actually a physical bookstore as well, in Monroe, Washington, which I believe is not too terribly far away from Seattle. So if any of you are in that area, you can go to this real life, in person, ace owned bookshop. Or, of course, for those of us who are farther away, I will put a link to their website in the description and the show notes. This is actually where we pre-ordered this very book from. So even if you’ve got a book that isn’t published yet, that you are anticipating, you can pre-order books from them as well. So thank you, Dr Chuck Tingle for writing such a wonderful book. Thank you to all of his fans and buckaroos who for years told us we needed to check him out, which put him on our radar. And, of course, thank you to all of our listeners for being here. And we will talk to you all next time.