In which Gambit does Stardust; Wilbur Weston holds no one’s redemption; Gambit is unequivocally bisexual; Lucifer is kinda goofy; and we still don’t know what’s in the box.
X-PLAINED:
Family businesses
Gambit vol. 2 #1-4
What Gambit’s been up to
Some peculiar parallels
Father Miguel Bonavita
Sister Katrina
Father Marcelo
A box
Tante Mattie Baptiste
Olivier Stoker and/or Lucifer
Fancy captions
The Cross of Redemption
Anielle, who may or may not Hanael and may or may not also be a fallen star and/or angel
Gambit’s subconscious
Octopus Gambit
The Grigori
Sibyl
Cerberus
Wormwood
Pew surfing
CyberFork
Spitting locusts, sadly
A bad take on the trolley problem
An ambiguous ending
A pecular transition
Genre displacement
Warlock as a form of art
Elon Musk’s closest X-villain analog
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[Intro: GeorgeNotFound]
Oh, I see it
(Make it 19, baby)
Okay
Mmm, no
No, okay?
I- I don't think that's going to happen
I don't think that's going to happen
(Oh Dream!)
Cool idea
[Chorus]
I just spoke to TommyInnit
He said, "Give me a goddamn minute"
I said, "Bitch, two posts, one month?"
George, pass me the blunt
I paid for the dick, not a fucking manhunt (Language!)
GeorgeNotClothed, Clay balls exposed
"Tommy, are we the bad guys?" Wilbur, sit on my nodes
I only date bad guys with the good halos
(I lost, dude!)
[Verse 1]
Schlatt got stacks, he bought me a 'fit
He said I looked good, so I gave him a kiss
In my maid 'fit, cute as a daisy
Bitches be like (Help, my pussy's gone crazy!)
[Verse 2]
I be in the chat like cJerk (Ugh)
George on the OF, no shirt
Karl wants to send my ass to the moon
So I took a little pic, put that shit on zoom
[Bridge]
I'll take a pic
Show me the nips (Oh)
Bitch, I'll take the pic (Ooh)
Dream laugh like, "eeaugh"
Schlatt laughs like, "aha ha ha"
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Catherine Obvious
Weston Koury
[Chorus]
I just spoke to TommyInnit
He said, "Give me a goddamn minute"
I said, "Bitch, two posts, one month?"
George, pass me the blunt
I paid for the dick, not a fucking manhunt (Language!)
GeorgeNotClothed, Clay balls exposed
"Tommy, are we the bad guys?" Wilbur, sit on my nodes
I only date bad guys with the good halos
(I lost, dude!)
[Verse 3]
I paid Gogy five hundred dollars
He called me on Skype (Ugh, poggers)
Sapnap and Dream, you got a room for me?
I got a maid dress, and I'll clean for free
[Outro]
Tubbo cut his hair, anybody see that?
I think it looks good, Tubbo
Stay safe out there, man!
You're awesome
And George, post on your OnlyFans, goddammit
I just want one post
Where you are- are-
You don't even have to be naked
I just want you to-
I just want-
I just want the username to be GeorgeNotClothed
I was thinking about Mary Worth when I had a brainstorm, so I guess now I have to actually discuss the Wilbur Saga.
I've always wanted to explain Wilbur Weston, the self-absorbed, cringey nebbish that often needs Mary Worth's advice. Sometimes I'll look up months-old comic strips in an attempt to find one that perfectly encapsulates the Wilbur experience. But no single installment can really summarize what a bad boyfriend he is for Estelle, or why they had a karaoke battle, or how misguided it was to propose to her.
Anyway, this week Wilbur got drunk and fell off of a cruise ship.
Ironic Mary Worth fandom is having a lot of fun with the drawn-out reveal of Wilbur's fate. (He went overboard in Sunday's strip, and as of Thursday we still don't even know if he survived the fall.) If you've been following along for at least a few months, this crisis feels like an amazing climax to drama that started when Wilbur threw a fit about Estelle's cat. But without that context, this week's strips seem pretty bland and procedural, despite the life-or-death danger. Very little happens from day to day, and yet I impatiently await each day's installment.
So it finally occurred to me that this isn't a bug, it's a feature. For all that I question Karen Moy's storytelling decisions, I finally realize that she understands her medium and the pacing it demands. Each Mary Worth strip is designed to give you just enough to chew on for 24 hours, until you get the next one. Binging a lot of them at once doesn't have the same impact, because you don't spend as much time wondering what's going to happen next. Granted, that daily suspense isn't particularly gripping in Gil Thorpe or Rex Morgan, MD. But Mary Worth solves that problem with its array of garbage characters, led by the king garbage man-baby of them all.
In effect, the true Wilbur experience is not as much what happens in the comics themselves, but the time you spend between the comics thinking about what a jackass he is. Now, that isn't to say that the audience response is more meaningful than the original work. On the contrary, I've just begun to recognize that Mary Worth is perfectly crafted to maximize that response.
Oh no, I'm not watching, what has Wilbur done to poor Aksel?
i clipped it because it was so funny 😭
transcript below i tried my best
[Aksel is watching a TikTok of a person looking directly at the camera and saying, deadpan: "You don't know where I've been. Where I come from. I coulda seen a hundred ice cream cakes made like that. I haven't. But I could have."]
Aksel: Listen. I mean this in the nicest way possible. I love Wilbur Soot. But this is like the energy that I get every time I talk to him in real life. This is what it's like to have a conversation with him, this is how he looks at you and this is how he talks and it's the scariest fucking thing ever.
[Aksel watches the TikTok person again who menacingly says, "How the hell would you know?"]
Aksel: Like I've literally, I went to dinner with Wilbur Soot one time and I swear to god, he was sitting across from me, looking at me exactly like this and talking to me exactly like this. [cackles] And when we went to Hibachi, [cackles] he asked Weston [British accent] "how do you know me?" And it was literally like this [gestures at the TikTok]. And Weston was like, "I dunno Wilbur, you're pretty-you're pretty well-known."