You're Arriving Very Late - Star Master Log: She's That Girl, Get Her (w/ Stephanie)

Star Master Log

Sep 22

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Star Master Jeff sits down with Stephanie to talk about Episode 31, You're Arriving Very Late, and the dread of playing Haleyy through a fight with no visible way out before the time loop kicked in. Stephanie talks about how three different factions closed in on Haleyy all at once, and where her own theories about the character's void-touched biopsionic powers go from here. Jeff also debuts a new closing segment, Sell Me On It, where Stephanie tries to convert him to the extremely specific hobby of filling out baseball scorecards.

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[00:00:03] Stephanie: Access approved.
[00:00:05] Star Master Jeff: Hey everyone, Star Master Jeff here, and welcome back to the Star Master Log. Today I'm joined by Stephanie, who plays Haleyy with sometimes two Ys. We're talking episode 31 entitled, You're Arriving Very Late. If you haven't listened yet, go do that first, because what follows is a spoiler conversation. Stephanie, welcome.
[00:00:25] Stephanie: Hello!
[00:00:27] Star Master Jeff: How's it going, Steph?
[00:00:28] Stephanie: Pretty good.
[00:00:28] Star Master Jeff: You've been doing anything new lately?
[00:00:30] Stephanie: Wrapping up season one with the crew.
[00:00:35] Star Master Jeff: Last night's episode was crazy. We just did the season finale last night. Don't don't reveal anything.
[00:00:40] Stephanie: I won't reveal anything, but I'm excited.
[00:00:42] Star Master Jeff: Grubby little hands have to stay off our plot for a couple more weeks.
[00:00:45] Stephanie: I'm excited for people to listen to it. So it's been a journey.
[00:00:49] Star Master Jeff: How about in your life? Anything big and brand new?
[00:00:52] Stephanie: Yeah. So summer is kind of wrapping up. So what did I do the past few weeks? I finished up a book binding class, which is pretty cool.
[00:01:05] Star Master Jeff: Like, do you take a blank book and bind it or do you like repair books or what?
[00:01:10] Stephanie: You can use the skills to repair books. And this was a beginner class. So it's basically learning different stitches and methods of making your own books. So my favorite that I've made is a Coptic stitch notebook, which has like an open spine, but it's able to lay flat. And I actually took the one that I made for class. And when I went on vacation, used it as my like journal and reading log. And it was just cool to use my own journal for that that I'd made. But you have your own sheets of paper that you have to fold into signatures, use an awl to make all of the holes that you're going to be threading through. And it's pretty cool.
[00:01:51] Star Master Jeff: Damn, that's cool. I kind of want to do that now. There's all kinds of like cool hobbies out there that I keep hearing about where I'm like, should I be bookbinding?
[00:01:58] Stephanie: Yeah, so I'm like signing up for doing a glass mosaic class soon, which is crazy. Yeah, just going through like the catalog of stuff. So engage with your local communities, guys. There's lots of stuff to do.
[00:02:13] Star Master Jeff: That is so freaking true. So on this episode, Haleyy has a lot in this particular episode. It's the first Prometheon episode in this arc. It's the final arc of the entire season. How do you feel about this episode and about finally arriving at Prometheon?
[00:02:33] Stephanie: I was so excited to get here and because the lead up to it had been so long and we had all these like promises to our characters to figure out but I just I want to jump to almost like the end of the episode and the reveal that it's a time loop. Yeah, because I remember I get so stressed when I feel like my character is in a situation that she can't get out of. I was so filled with dread and frustration because I'm like, how the fuck are we going to continue from this? It's just getting worse. There's no way out. Is it something that I'm doing? Like, what can I think of out of the box that will save this situation? Or am I just waiting for something to intervene? And so when's that going to happen? And then having the intervention be a time loop. was really cool um you know it was like a breath of fresh air but also a holy shit that just happened because obviously we don't know until it happens on the podcast like um and then also figuring out what kind of time loop it is so having the time loopy one where we like remember things as we which i guess is the only way you can really do it when we're having to role play the characters You can't really tell us like, hey, forget what you've done and you're going to learn this through context clues that you're in a time loop or something or time loops and going on. But yeah, it was really cool.
[00:04:11] Star Master Jeff: So, yeah, we're going to do obviously the next episode is episode 32, which is an interview with Brian. But then 33 is the big finale for the season. And I'm going to have everyone on the cast on one big mega sized Star Master log. So save it for them. We'll have a giant discussion.
[00:04:28] Stephanie: Can we talk about our favorite time loop methods?
[00:04:33] Star Master Jeff: you mean like uh in various movies and media or yeah this is mostly my way of selling people to go watch primer oh i love primer well you know we just talked about time loops in the last star master log but what's with what's god so i guess it's a favorite topic yeah no spoilers on primer though i think it's i think everyone just go watch it but yeah let's not spoil it just it's like not even 90 minutes just go in It's a quick, tense thriller. There's like a couple of really quick, tense thrillers, not necessarily time travel related, but are kind of in that zone that I think everyone should see. I think Primer, Time Crimes, and Coherence are like a triple threat. And you could watch all three in one night.
[00:05:17] Stephanie: I haven't done time crimes before. But I have shown coherence to a lot of people.
[00:05:23] Star Master Jeff: It's so good. I was a little worried about this one, actually, because of that feeling you're talking about of like, dread. I was like, this is really difficult. And the thing that makes it difficult is not the fact that they couldn't succeed if they got lucky. It's that the situation is so damning that without foreknowledge of what's going on, they can't win. It'd be very, very difficult so i was like on loop two it's gonna get easier because they kind of know the layout and what's going on but on loop one unless they get really lucky with their roles someone's probably gonna die and that someone was felix yeah so when we were playing the one comfort that i had is i was like
[00:06:05] Stephanie: The way that we record, we are not going to end during this scene. There is going to be an end to this scene before we finish at 11 p.m. So as I was like, you can watch the clock and know we are counting down to something happening, which is its own also its own weird form of tension.
[00:06:25] Star Master Jeff: It's like when you're watching a movie and you keep checking, you know, the movie is going to be over.
[00:06:30] Stephanie: and so we're gonna get a resolution somehow there is going to be a resolution coming today for this specific um for this specific encounter which is really nice and does help with the like stress over your character being in or hayley uh being in such a tenuous situation where she's going to die because you know she can't control this and ah she doesn't know what's going on
[00:06:57] Star Master Jeff: So what was that feeling when the horde burst in Felix was dead, everyone was probably about to get completely overrun and die. And then all of a sudden, you were back on the bridge.
[00:07:09] Stephanie: For me as a player, it was like, oh, thank God she's not going to die. And then for Haleyy, it was pure panic of, you know, carrying like her body the way that I thought about it was like the shock of having Haleyy. the memory or that much adrenaline going through you and stress all of a sudden you're now bringing that mindset or your thoughts from that into a body that's not freaking out and so it's like that immediately for her it was like an immediate rush of stress And then she pukes because all of a sudden it's like, you know, the visceral reaction to that kind of panic and fear to, you know, it's like waking up from a nightmare, but knowing that it actually happened because everyone else is also reacting weird.
[00:08:03] Star Master Jeff: So I want to whiplash a little bit. We were at the end of the episode. I want to go all the way back to the beginning of the episode because there was a nice scene there where you, well, Haleyy and Froggy have a heart to heart.
[00:08:17] Stephanie: yes and i was really glad we did that because like oh my god i feel so bad about froggy and um i was very happy to have wafisa back with us as well in a way i mean a nasty way when it got to the descriptions of graywater um but yeah i really like that scene do you miss wafisa I do. I think as a player, it was one of our first, you know, it was one of our first arcs. But also the house that we went to there and the little mini mission with the necklace, etc. And that motel was I took a lot of like that helped me really form Haleyy's character as we were playing. So I will always have a soft spot for Wafisa and like the cookbook and stuff like that, that Haleyy is still convinced there is more to that cookbook.
[00:09:13] Star Master Jeff: than just recipes um but yeah it is weird to find something that feels significant like a cookbook like why is the gm talking about this cookbook like is it just a random item that was rolled on a table or is he intentionally placing the cookbook because it means something
[00:09:35] Stephanie: And also always be on this because I'm the kind of person who with anything that I read or watch or whatever, I will try to find meaning in whatever is put in front of me. And I'm like, wait, so why are we spending time on this? Why is this used here? And then, you know, can make my own. stuff up or seek my own conclusions and what's fun with um you know like dark star and everything is that i can really incorporate that into my character and have it affect canon
[00:10:08] Star Master Jeff: So it's actually a really interesting personality trait that you're highlighting there about trying to find meaning in things. And I'm kind of curious what your thoughts are around Haleyy's burgeoning bio psionic powers, the void energy rocks for brains. Do you have any like ongoing theories?
[00:10:25] Stephanie: I'm not sure if I have ongoing theories other than the void energy is something alien. I'm kind of thinking, you know, it's like cosmic horror type situation. So it's her body trying to like deal with this sudden, you know, I think it's Haleyy's body having to deal with this sudden new power that's completely literally alien to her biology. And that's why she might be wondering, oh, is this happening to other people who have interacted with like void powers and whatnot? But she doesn't know. I really like that she's working and I hope to do more of her working with Iso to figure this out and solve for the find a solution for, hey, six months from now, you're going to be dead because this is something that is growing in your brain is it growing is it is that going to be affected by her you know being on uh promethean and having the all the radiation from like the gyroscope hitting her so i'm really curious to see what goes if that continues to have an effect on hers
[00:11:35] Star Master Jeff: Yeah. And there's like another piece in there, too. As you're on the station, you run into a listener with the gas mask and he has a long gray hair. So he offers you a handshake. He points to you and he also points at Thorne. And he's like, hey, you guys have had contact with the void. You are candidates. Come with me. I think Haleyy just punches him in the gut.
[00:11:59] Stephanie: Yeah, of course. Yeah. She doesn't like this guy or trust him because all the other cultists that we ran into before on Scrapjacks, they were awful and they don't want to help. They're just like pursuing this for, you know, as much as like Haleyy can understand it at this point. or you know coming to promethean here it's being used for corporate reasons there they were just harvesting people it seemed like and there's been never there's never been anything good that comes out of interacting with people who use the word untethered hollowed unhollowed um yeah
[00:12:42] Star Master Jeff: So that's actually an interesting highlight as well, because Strake is trying to recover you because he's part of loss prevention. You're part of Omnitech's property, in his view. The Void cultists are trying to recruit you. The listeners who... seem to either be affiliated with the void cultists or are a separate chapter of people who would like are a similar cult or study the void. This guy wants to recruit you. Everyone seems to be chasing Haleyy for one reason or another. And I'm wondering just how that feels and if you have any theories around that.
[00:13:19] Stephanie: She's that girl. Get her. Obviously, her background is a little bit different from everyone else's. She was experimented on by Omnitech. She had managed to hallucinate this whole background. Not hallucinated, but to cope with being brought back to life in this traumatic experience. you know her brain wrote this whole character and there's a lot of confusing stuff that happens for if um you know that her brain did to compensate for being brought back to life presumably by void energy um and you know is that why the brain calcification happened is that hayley starting to take up space i don't know hayley with two eyes and hayley with one wise brain Um, but it makes sense to me because no one else has had that kind of interaction, or at least from what we've seen, um, or no one else has that experience of like void energy being used in that specific way. So I believe it would be an area of a lot of interest because now I'm worried about like, oh, are we getting into spoiler territory? Um, And because no one seems to know a lot about no one seems to have like with all of the alien tech, we are constantly figuring out what is it used for? How do you even turn this on? Everything is new and it's a lot of people just messing around with stuff that they don't know. from the sound of it um and in our characters experience so no it makes sense that people to me it makes sense that Haleyy would be like a focus for the different um factions at play here that are we keep running into
[00:15:13] Star Master Jeff: Well said. I'm actually I am curious about one thing you said this might get into spoiler territory. What are you worried about spoiling? Because it's all kind of theories to you, right?
[00:15:23] Stephanie: It's about like the tines. And so we've run into so many different ways that this the alien technology shows up of what it you know, how you might study it, what it looks like, how it's been used. But even like vera um back when we met her is like she is a what was vera's job exactly like she finds alien artifacts you know yeah you know archaeologist you know archaeologist but she didn't have a full understanding of you know her level of the tech she'd been anytime she vera had interacted with the tech it had never even been turned on there was a there's a fundamental like not understanding what this alien tech is doing why it exists while so many people are using that technology to control you know like do these massive impactful things like controlling others, to work on projects, putting people into, you know, creating these virtual intelligences, putting people into orbs, and it's all the technology they do not understand.
[00:16:31] Star Master Jeff: So it's kind of alien technology, there is a very short list of alien tech that's actually been, like visibly seen to be activated. chronologically, they found alien technology and were never able to turn it on. However, we know that some of it has turned on on its own and some of it is activated later on. So the three-tined fork that Haleyy first runs into during the Red Rice Wars back on Ventos, the three-tined fork that's on Sibylen.
[00:17:08] Stephanie: And that's the one that I was thinking of as the one on Sibylen.
[00:17:10] Star Master Jeff: Yeah. And those two things, the Forks seem to be able to activate on their own if people know how to interact with them. But there's a whole wealth of alien technology across the entire sector that no one's been able to activate. And now they are learning that these literal depressions in these machines are meant to hold these orbs. And these orbs are meant to have virtual intelligences inside of them. And the VI then acts as the power source and the controller of the technology. The ears. we have dr voss activating the entire Sibylen complex we have the gyroscope being activated and now we even have two orbs we have the voss orb and then we have this other orb from back on Sibylen that supposedly contains the consciousness of vera corbin mere proust and sally galen who was a scientist that worked for uh veridine i believe
[00:18:05] Stephanie: Do we have? Oh, do you have a wiki? Because I was during this off season, I think I'm going to be going through and listening again to the to everything to make sure, you know, even internally, I'm able to keep like a strong understanding of all the different aspects of the story.
[00:18:26] Star Master Jeff: I have an Obsidian vault, which anyone that runs games, totally go grab Obsidian to like keep all your notes in order. And also, if you go to itch.io and go to the Dark Star Adventures page, there's a free download that I made for Obsidian that has all of the free content in SWN. So you can put all those markdown files in there and cross reference them with your own campaign. I did that for myself and then I released it. But you know, I don't have any public facing wiki. And I think maybe that's my project between season one and two. I'll take a little bit of time and I'll make a public facing wiki. So each episode that comes out, I'll try to keep the wiki updated.
[00:19:07] UNKNOWN: Yeah.
[00:19:08] Star Master Jeff: Speed round time. Are you ready?
[00:19:09] Stephanie: Speed round. Okay. Yes.
[00:19:12] Star Master Jeff: The listener called Haleyy one of us. Is Haleyy flattered, insulted, or scared?
[00:19:18] Stephanie: Insulted. Okay. why insulted quickly um insulted because who are these people to presume that she is one of them when they have done nothing but like harm when they've done nothing but harm so she assuming that her motivations will be the same as theirs in terms of like from what she has seen which is control people um wipe them of their you know person you know agency etc and So she's insulted that she's going there like, oh, you're in our group, but also scared because they have information that she doesn't have about herself. And there has not been any chance to really talk. talk to someone who knows about void energy um about the listeners etc so there's like obviously there's no guide for this and the only guide that she's really seen is from this cult that keeps talking in terms she doesn't understand um so yeah who on the crew does hayley worry about the most right now She is the most concerned and worried about Felix. And I think Felix and Haleyy have not always gotten along, but Haleyy really sees Felix's, you know, what he's going through with, say, like, Petey, the loss of Voss when she was taken by Strake, and his growing, like, erratic attitude this um you know with her being gone things getting crazier and crazier and us just coming every time we gain more information we are just it's actually a bunch of steps back because we're struggling to understand like what do we do with this information other than keep moving forward into situations where we are going to be at a disadvantage but i think we're all out you know I just she really hopes that Felix is not out of death sticks, but also worried about heavy consumption of them to deal with his stress.
[00:21:33] Star Master Jeff: I don't think Haleyy's the only one worried about Felix.
[00:21:35] Stephanie: Yeah, I'm so worried about Felix.
[00:21:37] Star Master Jeff: Everyone except for Robert is worried about it. I think Robert's like, ah, whatever.
[00:21:42] Stephanie: well the rest of us seem pretty like pretty stable at least right now um whereas felix is like we've been in situations before where he's able to like hmm I want to say Felix is usually able to work pretty independently and be productive with like hacking and programming. But right now with such a physical threat happening where he's in the thick of it with us, we can't really set up separation from the situations we're in. He just died during that. It's pretty scary. And I'm not sure how he can, you know, how he's going to deal with a situation where he's actually like boots on the ground, but does not have the skills or capabilities to really protect himself. And now top of his mind for him is also protecting something else in Voss.
[00:22:38] Star Master Jeff: So speaking of fear, what is Haleyy most afraid of going into the next episode?
[00:22:43] Stephanie: she's afraid of being in the exact same situation again of not being able to prevent um not being able to like prevent being stuck in that antechamber again on a you know having through her own actions created a situation where she and her uh crew are going to be overrun and the death is like almost certain she's very cognizant of the fact that They were just saved from death by these, you know, whatever is causing this time loop. It is pure luck that they did not all die there and that only one one of them died.
[00:23:24] Star Master Jeff: So before we wrap. I wanted to try something new. Yes. So I asked you to bring in something today that you love something that has nothing to do with the game. And yeah, and try to convince me that I'd love it too, or at least that it's worth a shot. And a new segment that I am calling sell me on it. Stephanie, what are you bringing to the table? What should I do next?
[00:23:50] Stephanie: Um, so, hmm, well, I'm not, I'm not sure if you'd actually enjoy this, but it is my- Not a good start. I know, right? But I'm like, it is my current obsession. Um, I've been going to a bunch of Red Sox games lately. I've been, and now I need to make it to Portland Seadog games. And we also have the Woo Sox nearby, obviously. Um, but this is all in pursuit of my new favorite thing, which is filling out baseball scorecards at games. Yeah.
[00:24:20] Star Master Jeff: Baseball scorecards. Start me at like zero here. I don't even know what you mean. Do you mean they hit a home run and then you write down home run? Like what is this?
[00:24:30] Stephanie: That's like the very, very basic of it.
[00:24:34] Star Master Jeff: Oh, there's levels to this.
[00:24:36] Stephanie: Oh, there's a lot of levels.
[00:24:39] Star Master Jeff: Lay it on me.
[00:24:41] Stephanie: Baseball scorecards are pretty cool because it's this mostly standardized way of tracking what happens during a baseball game. Like when someone's at bat, what are the actions that happen? And then once they're on, say they get on base, how do they advance and when do they advance, et cetera. But it's really cool because you can go back a hundred years and find scorecards and you're basically, they're functionally the same and so you're able to follow games from like 100 years ago or whatever or 60 70 years ago and see how they they played out and these are like scorecards that audience members fill out but i have to assume there's also some sort of official record that you could be looking at right yeah so what i'm doing is just for me it's not official at all and in any way and quite often or i'll run into a situation or two every game where i either through lack of knowledge or personal bias do not record things the same way the official score would
[00:25:47] Star Master Jeff: When you're doing a scorecard, is there like a rhythm to like doing scorecards across an entire season? Or is it sort of just like the same thing every single game? Or are you focusing on a certain team? Or do you like start getting into the fandom on a specific player?
[00:26:02] Stephanie: Obviously the Boston Red Sox. So I do go to as many games as I can where I'm able. Sorry, I go to a number of games to do my scorecard in person, which is fun. Some people have come up to me and said like, oh, wow, this is like really a lost art. And it's fun to having conversations. And this kind of gets into sports fandom a little bit, but it's really fun having conversations with people who have been lifelong fans of something. So similar to how I might talk to you about, oh, hey, when you were a teenager, what was your what did you really enjoy about sports? you know, D&D or TTRPGs that led you into having like 10 year long campaigns? How do you remember the stuff that you did at the very beginning of when you started to DM or the first game you played? So all of the records you might have of the different games that you can revisit to be like, wow, what were the what was the experience this would have felt like to be in person for that you know you might get for dnd or whatever you might get it through journals or character sheets even where you see over time how something has progressed it's similar with like baseball scorecards for me of like i can go back to you know this season in particular for the red sox i started doing my scorecards as they were actively getting to be like the worst team in the MLB. And then I have scorecards that kind of show how they changed the lineup, how injuries affected, you know, who was on the active roster, people getting called up from other teams. So I have this record now of them going on that 15 game winning streak this year. But I really enjoy being able to track something historically. So baseball scorecards might not be for you. But for me, it scratches that itch of diving into the history of something, of getting to know other people and getting to engage with other people on their experience of something that they really enjoy or brings out a lot of emotional engagement for them.
[00:28:15] Star Master Jeff: i can imagine going to a game i mean or you could watch at home but i can imagine going to a portland seadogs game i've got my hot dog i've got my nice cold beer and i've got my scorecard As I'm writing down everything on the note card, I'm doodling or like pointing out a certain metric and being like, yay, because I love metrics. And then I can imagine 10 years later, pulling out that scorecard and like being transported back to that moment and being like, I remember that game.
[00:28:43] Stephanie: Yeah, no, it's really cool to like, as you see a game play out, being able to instantly see what happened and track like the sequential emotions of something happening.
[00:28:55] Star Master Jeff: Okay, so I'm going to give a verdict now about whether you sold me on this.
[00:28:59] Stephanie: I did not. Oh my God. And people who are listening to this, please do not judge me on my ability to sell baseball scorecards.
[00:29:10] Star Master Jeff: So I can't say that you've completely sold me on it because it's a very tough uphill battle. I don't really like watching sports. I do love playing sports, but I never really liked watching them, especially on TV. I do enjoy going to a game, but as like a social experience, I like getting outside, having a beer, hanging out with my friends, being like, oh, they hit the ball, fun. I do like metrics and analytics, but I don't think I'd like to record them myself. If I'm on a line between sold, half sold and not sold, I say that I'm half sold and that the next time I go to a Portland Seadogs game, I will bring a scorecard with me and I'll let you know how it goes. Well, that's it for our time today, Stephanie. Thanks so much.
[00:29:51] Stephanie: Thank you.
[00:29:52] Star Master Jeff: Scapegoats forever.
[00:29:53] Stephanie: Scapegoats forever. And I hope everyone loves the finale because I loved recording it with the team.
[00:30:00] Star Master Jeff: Next time on the Dark Star Adventurecast, the crew is back where they started. Just 45 minutes out from Prometheon Station, healed up and remembering every second of what just happened, including Felix's death. But they know the way in now. They know how to dock, they know how to get to the core, but what they don't know is how many times they'll have to walk back into that station and face danger. At least this time, they're going in with their eyes wide open. If you'd like to get these episodes two weeks before they drop publicly, the Dark Star Adventure Cast Patreon is at patreon.com slash darkstaradventurecast. We really, really appreciate each and every one of our patrons, and we hope to see you there. Thanks so much for listening, and from Steph and I, keep following that signal. Bye! Bye!