One last job. I told you I'm out of the game. Sorry,
I dragged you back in. Take me back to the place sign know,
with the Mystery Shack and the forests. I'm orety back, So come on,
let's go. Don't get me started. My heart's in gravity Falls.
Welcome to Mystery Shack, look back. A nostalgic time capsule and no spoiler
book club of the original Gravity Falls fandom, except not really doing that today.
We are your curators. I'm Ella, I'm Shelby, I'm Charlie.
And when we say see you next summer, we mean it. Yeah yeah,
Well we can see you, but you can't see us audio audio medium.
Earlier we could see Rob Ronzetti, but he couldn't see us. I
ran away in shame from my camera, which is to say, we are
joined today once again by Robert Renzobert, you may know as Bobby roun Zabie
of course, yes, or the author of the journal. The author of
the Journal, Rob Rinzetti, true, several nom de plumes, creator of
My Life as a teenage Robot. And of course what was that show we
talked about before? I can't remember my little pony right, Yeah, that's
the thing we had a podcast about, could be Samurai Jack you worked on.
I think every cartoon that people like that was it. If it has
a fandom, Rob has worked on it, Dexter's Lab, Big City Greens,
Foster's Home, Powerpuff Girls, don't forget about meaning the Count. My
series of shorts mean in count. Yeah, I mean in the Count?
Yeah, kid cosmic, Yes, that must that must have been it.
It's I think it's the initials are GF Is that girlfriend was the show called
girlfriend? Yeah? I think you were a supervising producer on the show girls.
It was Lumberjack Girlfriend girl. Guys. It was gluten free. Oh
yeah, that's right, that's right. That was a healthy show. Yeah.
So we previously interviewed you about the season two episode you directed, Scary
Okay, about the book you wrote, Dippers and Mabel's Guide to Mystery and
Nonstep Run, and about another book you wrote, Gravity Falls, Journal three,
establishing a precedent that you write books sometimes. Yeah. I did.
For I forced I forced that, forced that precedence onto the world. Yeah.
So you you talked about, had asked you during Journal three if one
of the goals in volunteering to work on all these books for the shows you
worked on and otherwise such as Onward. Oh yeah, yeah, that's right.
Was to establish yourself as an author, and the answer was yes,
to make it night things quickly. The answer is yes, everybody in too
much suspense. That way, you don't have to go back and listen to
that episode, but you should. No, I wanted them to backtrack to
that episode. Answer was pause and go return to the episode. So you
have just like literally just like last month as this recording. Yes, released
your first original book. Yes, it's titled The Horrible Bag of Terrible Things.
Two of us read it. One of us listened to Let's see if
you can figure out what I know, Shelby. I sent it to Shelby,
so I know Shelby read it. I think she did. Unless you
just threw the book aside and listened to the audiobook instead. Well, the
problem was that something came out of it and kidnapped Shelby's sister. Yeah,
it was a whole thing. I saw that video. I still need to
post that. When I was waiting for this interview, but oh, I
can't wait for people to see It's great. Yes, no, yes,
so Charlie, maybe you listened to the audiobooks. Since you are Are you
in Europe? Is that correct? Since we last did an episode of this
podcast, I moved to Eastern Europe, So yes, I listened to the
audiobook. Fantastic book, rob First, let's just get that off the pat.
Well, thank you, thank you very much. I received it's that
copy from Shelby. After Shelby was finished, they mailed it to me because
we're state side. We're both in mary Kaw. We saw the very sweet
inscription on the front page of said, to the Mystery Shack, look back
crew, hope this gives you a little of that gravity falls feeling, Robern
z Eddie. And you know, I think I think we have to wait
till the end of this episode to find out if it does or not.
But I have a suspicion the answers, Yes, it had siblings and monsters
that checked off two of the boxes right there. Well, there, there
you go. But how long has this been in the making? Yeah,
aud of this all come to be, I'm very very curious. It's been
about five years in the making. Woh golly. I think I look back
on my first notes from it and there from twenty seventeen Okay, started kind
of jotting down notes in twenty seventeen, but I really started writing it for
real at the start of twenty eighteen. In fact, it was my New
Year's resolution for twenty eighteen, which was, I'm going to write a version
of this book. Whether it ever sees the light of day or not,
I don't know, but I'm going to try and write a real version of
this book because it had been a gold mine to write something original since I'd
started writing all the books I did for Disney, right, and honestly before
that, I'd have had aspirations to write horror stories kind of for a while
now, and I'd written kind of half asked a few short stories and just
written versions of them, never submitted them anywhere, but just like kind of
to get warmed up. And were they always like intended for the age range
that this book is, because this is like it's a middle grade sort of
No, the stories were more geared towards an adult audience, So none of
them are so horrific that I don't think a kid could read them. There's
only a few of them that actually got written, and most of them are
just like ideas jotted down on paper, and I may return to those someday,
but I just after having the experience having kind of written those on the
side, just when I had an off minute or something like that while I
was working, you know, and Gravity Falls and stuff before that, when
I got to write the actual Gravity Falls books, that kind of geared me
towards targeting the same kind of audience, the middle grade audience, because this
audience I've been writing for my whole career, just been writing in cartoon form.
Yeah, so I feel like I have some idea of what that target
is. I listened to the audio book with my wife and one of her
comments was, I didn't know that horror existed for the middle grade, but
I mean, like Goosebumps was huge when we were true. As you mentioned,
you have been fascinated with horror since you decided to befriend Frankenstein as a
youth. That's right. Yeah, did you read about that? Yeah?
No, you told us about that on the podcast. Okay, I wrote
an article about that from the School Library Journal recently, like a little gust
post. But yeah, it's been a recurring facet of your career. The
first thing you got on television was MITA in the Count, which was about
Count Dracula. I know so many people who still to this day have nightmares
about Raggedy Android. Oh yeah, you can't stop with the rag dolls.
Huh No, No, you know that one time. Well, sure,
there was supposed to be a third one, right, the suit was going
to come back. It was wanted to merge with Jenny permanently, and it
was going to drown Brad if she didn't agree. It was a very rough
idea. It was just a one page outline and I don't even know where
that only exists because horror has been such a facet of your career and you
felt comfortable writing it for a middle grade audience. How many R rated horror
films did you watch it? And seen it? And Apage's at third age,
I wasn't watching too much. I like I told you before. It
was a bit of a scaredy cat and it took me a while to kind
of transition into horror. But by the time I was a teenager, which
I guess Apagee is a teenager. By the time I would be fourteen,
like Apagee, I was watching a lot of a lot of horror movies and
stuff, and that just increased as I got older and older, and I'm
you know, I'm a huge R fan. Now, I don't know if
i'm I might be misattributing this quote or this idea, but I think it
might have been Don Bluth or someone who said something along the lines of like
kids can handle, Like like you cant scared of deat of kids, They're
fine, Like yeah, it's good for them. I do, I do,
I do see what they're saying. You know, I know that on
Gravity Falls, you guys talked a lot about how you would pull from like
Pinocchio and Dumboat, things that are like legitimately terrifying. Yeah, yeah,
yeah, four kids and is Disney Like so when Disney gets on your back
about it, you're like, this is you guys, Like, yeah,
I mean Disney. I mean the current wave of Disney exacts. There's some
good ones, but the general vibe of the company is is it's none of
these people realize the legacy that they're working for. They don't understand where where
Disney comes from or what Disney really is. They just look at the High
School Musical and think that's the Disney brand. It's like, now, that's
that's the bright, shiny part of that Disney brand. Look over there in
the corner, look in the shadows, and you'll find like children turning into
donkeys. Yeah, exactly, you'll find all the dark that happened in the
original features. This book certainly brings to mind Alice in Wonderland, just going
into a hole to a topsy turvy world. Yeah. I wanted to ask
what were some of your their influences for the story and the world of Grebog.
If the audiobook is pronouncing it correct, that is Grabog is correct.
Yes, I'm sure. I hope everything's pronounced in audiobook correctly. I haven't
listened to it myself yet. I need to get a copy before we join
the call. We discussed. They were like, oh, we don't know
how to pronounce them, so we'll have to ask Rob and I'm like,
actually, I don't know how to spell them. With our powers combined,
we can do it. Also, Wonderland was a huge influence, obviously.
The bag itself is a couple of things. The less obvious one is that
the title in itself actually comes from my wife, Wow, who has a
great away with the turn of phrase and the reason it's called the horrible Bag
of Terrible Things is we are pack rats, and lots of paper piles accumulate,
and eventually we'll try and clean up the house and do a good job.
Sometimes we do a slap dash job and we just throw things into a
bag. And so there was a grocery bag full of old phone receipts and
credit card bills and all that, and it was something we didn't want to
deal with and it was shoved in the corner and Tracy called it the horrible
Bag of terrible Things. I love that so much. So I just love
that and latched onto it. But it didn't really there was really nothing behind
it for a while. But the other influences I was a huge fan of.
When I was a kid, they showed the nineteen sixties Felix cartoons on
a local station and he's got this bag of tricks, which you know,
he pulls stuff out of it transforms. It's really I was. I was
in love with the Bag of Tricks. I loved that. And you were
like, what if the bag of tricks was disgusting? That was trick was
a disgusting there was you went inside and there was a horrible world in there.
Yeah, the design of the bag that you see on the cover of
the book is kind of heavily influenced by Felix's Bag of Tricks. I did
notice, and we kind of did a modern version of that on Foster's with
Cocoa and her eggs, where she you know, she she had an egg
and weird stuff would come out of it, so on the note of you
know, kind of classic cartoon shout outs and and this is like this is
later in the book, but it's very minor, so can we can kind
of if you feel it's too spoilersh But I did notice there's a theme of
like cruelty to animals as musical instruments, which is totally a thing that like
Mickey Mouse would like pick up a cat and like yeah, pull on its
tail and it would make music, and like he is a menace. Feels
like an homage, like it wasn't unconscious homage. But I find that,
like when people talk to me about my book, there's things in it that
I don't realize I'm pulling from consciously, you know what I mean, because
this stuff is so much in my bloodstream and in my thought processes, and
it's so ingrained yeah, I don't necessarily have to go like and now I'm
going to do this. And then I realized later it's like kind of a
reference or someone points it out to me and I'm like, oh, yeah,
yeah, you are what you eat applies to your media consumption act.
Yes, you are what you eat with your eyeballs and ears too, for
sure. But it never feels derivative. It just feels like it's it's another
like part of this like pantheon of of these types of fiction. And you
know, it feels like it's it's a guy. Yeah. Yeah, it's
already feels like a classic in a way. Thank you, of course.
I was. My first thought when I was reading this was Okay, well,
when's the animated film coming? But then my second thought was, no,
when is the Jim Henson Creature Shop film? Yeah, oh my gosh,
yes, this has the Labyrinth vibes. I would love to I mean,
obviously I've thought of it as as some sort of film adaptation or mini
series adaptation, and I mean a Henson thing would be a dream come true.
Yeah, I mean puppets of these characters. I mean I'd also be
interested in like taking a pass at it or the people that did Garamo del
Toro's Pinocchio, Like, yeah, yeah, I could see. My first
thought would be that, like One Year on Earth, it's a it's a
it's a two D animation and when you go to Grebaga becomes stop motion.
Oh that's similar to the live action stop motion of James and the Giant Peach.
Yeah. So if those are the types of movies you like, like
Labyrinth, this book is absolutely for you. Absolutely. I mean if you
like books like Spiderweight Chronicles and like Coraline those or just spiders in general,
spiders in general. Yeah, definitely like your kind of series. And if
you don't listen to the end where we say all this, I just want
to quick get out there. It's available wherever books are sold. There's an
audiobook version on Audible. That's fantastic, Thank you, thank you. Yeah,
I know. And another big influence before we move on is an Unfortunate
Series of Events was a was a big, big influence on me. I
love that was my favorite series growing up. Definitely a lot of the a
lot of the pros when you come up with comparison for things kind of brings
has a lemony flavor citrusyst. Yeah. Originally I was going to have a
more overt narrator character, very much influenced by that series, but it's and
I kind of started writing the book that way, but it kind of fell
out. The audiobook narrator, who is a voice artist named Jay Myers,
definitely seems to go with that direction because he does not use his normal voice
for the narrator. He puts on a British accent. Yeah. No,
I always imagine, well, you know Tim Curry. I listened to audio
versions of the Unfortunately, absolutely Tim Curry did most of the ones. He
does an amazing job. Violet Baudelaire, the eldest, liked to skip rocks.
Like most fourteen year olds, she was right handed, so the rocks
skipped farther across the murky water when Violet used her right hand than when she
used her left. I didn't want to just use Tim Curry because I didn't
want to be such a direct correlation. Sure, but then Apajee had turned
thirteen and in the year and a half since she'd been thwarting his schemes instead
of helping come up with them, and when she couldn't stop him, she
would rat on him. This was one of the guys I was in the
round of auditions that Penguin sent to me, and I just he did such
a great job with the narrator. He kind of nailed with the characters that
they used for the audition section of the book. He just was so much
closer in a bil So I was real pleased with him. He's Kreebel though,
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Kreebel. I love I love
what he did with Krebel. Here is a joke, what is always full
and always empty? But never Wait? Now that is more of a riddle.
Well, before we go further, maybe Rob, do you want to
give, like, you know, whatever level of synopsis that you are comfortable
with, just to sort of contextualize what we're about to go. Oh sure,
without giving sure anything away. Yeah, we'll try and keep it as
spoiler free as possible. But basically the setup of the book is there's a
young eleven year old boy named Zenith Mailstrom. Does that mean the end of
the storm? Mailstrom is a storm? So his last name just means storm
at his first name as well as Appaty's first name, mean the conclusion climax,
Yeah, well means peak The climax, highest point or climax or yeah,
the eye of the storm kind of yeah. He's a young boy who's
been punished, he believes unfairly at the beginning of the summer. So he's
stuck in the house. His parents are away at work. His older sister
Abagee is watching him, which he resents and here's something on the front porch.
The story starts after he opens the door. I don't think anybody even
knocks, but he senses that something's happened on the front porch and he discovers
this bag, which is this horrible looking bag because it's made of all these
disparate animal skins and they're all sewn together with this ragged stitching. It's just
a bag full of menace. And he cannot resist it because he is curious,
and he opens it. Nothing seems to be inside, but then he
pricks his finger on the bag. A little blood drops into the bag,
and that brings the bag to life. In this horrible creature, which is
kind of half spider or half hairball, crawls out, escapes into the house
and eventually kidnaps his older sister, Apagee and drags her into the bag and
Zenith discovers that the bag there's somehow the bag is a portal to another dimension,
to a world called Gribag, which is full of other nasty things,
and his sister has been kidnapped for some nefarious purpose which is unclear at first,
and he has to make his way through this world try to find where
his sister is and save her before she is put to death, or maybe
perhaps something worse than death happens to her, another terrible thing in the horrible
Bag. Yes, one of the terrible things. A series of unfortunate events,
if you will. It is a series of unfortunate events for sure.
Yeah, it's spectacular and I love so Apage and Zenith, as you said,
are both actual words, not names so much, but they both mean,
you know, the climax of the peak of something, So the names
mean the same thing. But I notice, like you know, Zenith feels
undervalued and looked down on, and he's at the end of the alphabet,
and he sees his sister is all high and mighty, she's at the beginning
of the alphabet. So it almost reflects, like, you know, he
doesn't think that they are on equal terms, even though their names mean the
same thing. So they actually have more in common than he probably thinks,
but there's that sibling dynamic where he doesn't see it that way. Part of
his hang up with his sister is that they used to be much closer a
couple of years back. You know, they used to be thick thieves,
as Apage put it. Yeah, she has a problem with getting phrases correct.
That changed when his sister became a teenager, and he doesn't understand why
they've kind of grown apart, and he's kind of resentful of it. I
don't remember if this came up when we're talking about gravity falls, but do
you have siblings, Like, is this a grounded thing? It feels like
this is written from some experience, and siblings have also obviously cropped up in
a lot of your career. Dedi and Dexter, Brad and Tuck. It's
weird because my own experience is that I had two much older brothers. I
was a result of my mother's second marriage, and I had two brothers that
were literally more my half brothers, but I never thought of them as that,
and they were seven and eleven years older than me, so I basically
had other adults in the house which is what Zenith now feels like Apage's pretendants,
like he's got another parent because instead of getting you know, partnering him
with him on all his schemes, she's basically calling him out, ran him
out, telling his parents Zenith is misbehaving and he doesn't understand why that's happened.
A very sort of kids next door view, where once you hit a
certain age, you are now an adult. You're on their side. You're
not on the kid's side anymore. Right, You know, there's a division,
there's like a dividing line, and once you cross it, you know
it can't be like how it was or can it or can it? Yeah,
well we shall see. There's a great theme that I love of like
again not to give too much away, but of just like responsibility and sibling
responsibility and like, like you said, like how much do you take on
the role of another parent and how much do you like be by their side
as a sibling, And also just when you, as the younger person in
the family, are concerned for an older person in your family, and how
that is not necessarily how it is quote unquote supposed to be. Where it's
like you are the one being looked out for, but also you want to
look out for the other people. I mean, seeing that does put in
the uncomfortable position of getting his sister into trouble and therefore having to get her
out of it. And yeah, Apage is not necessarily willing are wanting to
take help from him, right, because she can't abandon her role as the
older sibling and the protector of him, right even when she's the one who's
in more danger. Whereas it's something that we never really saw on gravity Falls
because they are twins and like Mabel is only five minutes older than Dipper,
so they were kind of always saving each other and you know, on equal
terms in that sense. But when my wife and I started the book,
she said, is it weird I'm picturing Dexter. Indeed, I don't suppose
it is, but you know, all these things are influences. Dexter is
obviously not a lot of people know that, but Dexter and Dede's relationship is
kind of modeled on my relationship with Gendy's girlfriend at the time. So Dexter
is just you because it's also based on the voice you did for your answering
machine when you weremates. I was the first voice of Dexter, and yeah,
I mean wow. I eventually I came to reconcile with his girlfriend,
Laurie, and she's actually a lovely She was a lovely woman at the time
I was. She was always poking around your room asking what various buttons do
exactly. No, she was a very bright, cheery young woman who Gandy
hooked up with when we were at cal Arts and they dated for a few
years, both at cal Arts and afterwards. And I was jealous. I
was resentful that this girl come and taking my best friend away because Gendy and
I were thick, and all of a sudden, you were spending all this
time over at her place, and I was abandoned and I felt it,
so I was. I did not like her, and I was very This
is another tidbit that I don't know. I think I might have talked about
this once or twice before. But there's an episode that has a photo of
Deity and Dexter where Dexter is recoiling as Deedie sticks her tongue out with food
on it, and that is actually based on a photo of me and Lauriel's
amazing where I'm just looking at her with total disdain as she's laughing with her
mouthful of food. That's amazing. Are you an inventor? Then no,
I have no scientific ability whatsoever because they noticed a technological inspiration and intuitiveness is
also an aspect of Zenith's character. Sure, that's all myth. I have
no technological availability, like it took me a good thirty years to learn how
to wield a hammer. Correctly, I hated science in school. He does
do a chemistry experiment before the first book begins, that that's what lands him
in trouble. The spring semester had ended with a literal bang, when Zenis's
enthusiasm for chemistry had inspired a kitchen experiment with explosive results. Zenith argued that
his extracurricular project displayed initiative and intellectual curiosity, admirable traits that should be encouraged,
if not rewarded. Nah I was curious about how the process of making
an original book compared to the process of doing the Gravity Falls Books and the
Quests of Your Onward Book for Disney, as far as basing it on existing
characters and worlds versus creating yours whole cloth, and in this case, multiple
different cloth all together in a Horrible Bag. Well, I mean, obviously,
the influencers are much more direct when you're working with an existing property.
You know, in the Gravity Falls books, we had the characters in Journal
and three, we had some of the pages for the Ducktails book and the
Onward book. I was referencing and kind of retelling the stories that were already
done and just adding to them and taking things from a different angle and all
that kind of stuff. So, you know, in terms of coming up
with stuff, it just was kind of like what came into my head and
what part of it. Like what I said with the Horrible Bag, the
first thing I had was the title, and I really didn't know what the
title meant for a while, and then I figured out that there was something
inside of it and that there was going to be an adventure inside of the
book, and from there I kind of just kind of extrapolated forward and kind
of it's a lot of thought experiments and just writing down ideas and writing them
down with no order or no ranking or no primacy or whatever. I like
to use question marks at the end of everything because it makes it feel like
it's not necessary and that if I write something stupid down, it's okay because
I may not end up using that stupid idea. Yeah, not set in
stone, nothing set in stone, and everything's everything's up for grabs. So
I mean I do that as I'm writing through the book as well, like
a benually, I'm kind of a there's always this thing in writing where you're
are you a pants or a plotter? And I'm mostly a plotter, you
know. I don't like just start at the beginning and wonder where the book's
going to go. Like I knew what the whole plot of the first book
was before I wrote it, but as I go along, I don't know
all the details. And that's where kind of like inspiration and intuition takes you.
And as I'm writing the book, I do. I do kind of
write it from front to back for the most part, at least the first
time through, and as I'm going as new things occur to me, I
throw notes in ahead of the stuff that's actually written out and just like write
new questions in there, or when I come up with something but I know
how it's written, I just write the idea there. So like this is
where you're heading right now? Yeah, this is where this is makes sense
to you. You just kind of go in a straight line first, and
then when you're done you can go back and weave set up and pay off
and things. Once I knew that I'm going to go to an alternate world,
there's like then you know there's influences like als in Wonderland and stuff that
comes into it. Yeah, you know those kind of things. All of
a sudden, that's a touchstone for me. Yeah. In the second book,
which is going to be out next year, the Twisted Tower of Endless
Torment is the title of that book. Okay, is that another tracyism?
No? That was she did come up with part of that. She's the
one who came up with twisted. There's a tower that's called Eternity Tower,
which factors into the book, And we were trying to come up with the
title for the second book, and she's the one who came up with twisted
for the adjective in front of tower, which I liked quite a bit.
Were you always wanting to do? Was this ever going to be a standalone
book? When I first thought of it, I thought of it as one
book, but the ending always lent itself to more books. And my literary
agent asked me very early in the problem, like do you see this as
one book or three? And I said, I think it could be a
trilogy, and he said, so when we go out, in addition to
the first book, I want you to write a page for what the second
book would be, in a paragraph of what the third book would be,
so they could see the whole trilogy. So yeah, at that point it
was a trilogy. I don't honestly remember how the first book might have ended.
Where I thought it would just be the end. The way the first
book ends was from a very early standpoint was where I was heading. So
yeah, I knew I wanted the conventure to continue, because the adventure is
kind of it ends, but it doesn't. And I knew there were at
least two more stories left to tell, So the second book. I just
saw the second book in PDF form, which is where it first starts to
look like its final version. Pretty darn fine, and that's what I always
say, PDAs And I just did my last big changes on that, and
I'm starting to write the third book now, can't wait on your note of
like question marks in your own notes. And again, you know there's a
thing we observed in Gravity Falls as well, but like leaving questions that even
the characters aren't really sure what the answers are, and then then it leaves
the readers kind of wondering about it too, And especially for something supernatural and
mysterious, it's nice to to not close every door, even if you don't
have a sequel plan for sure. It's just it's going to be really interesting
to see how you raise the stakes, because like it feels like where it
ends is at a pretty like high stake, and so it's just going to
be really interesting to see the zenith of the story or perchance the appaja.
Those who have seen the second book have said they didn't see where it was
going, So I hope you will all be surprised by what happens. The
thing I was getting towards with Alice in Wonderland without blowing anything, is there's
a courtroom scene in the second book which is one of my favorite parts of
the book, and that was very okay, very much influenced by the you
know, Alice on trial. I mean, it's and it's an inherently interesting
concept of like we think of the courts as such a rigid logical thing and
then put that in a world that does not make any sense, and you
know also happened in Gravity Falls. That's true. Yeah, Judge Kitty Kdding
Mesh Schwarztein. Yes, Unfortunately that judge will not be presiding. Nah,
he doesn't have jurisdiction in Gribog, does It'll be John Stewart out of character.
He turns out he lives in Griboc, He's from Garbog. Yeah.
Actually John Stewart could do a pretty good job of the one who's in charge
of the inquisitor, who is very briefly mentioned in book one. That's right.
Yes, I was wondering if that of like, oh, yeah,
I wonder there are a few things that I see did in book one that
actually come to fruition in book two. Yeah. That kind of ties in
with a question of mine. Certainly. A staple of the Alice in Wonderland
Wizard of Oz type book is they meet this character, then they meet this
character, which gave you a lot of freedom to just put in the weirdest
malarkey you could come up with. Tell us about some of those characters they
meet and and what it was like writing them, and if there were any
particular inspirations or things you had in mind. I know certainly, what I
would guess is your favorite amongst them is Kreebel. Yeah, Kriebel is my
favorite character. She's a gargoyle who Zenith meets relatively early in his adventures,
and she's knowledgeable. She understands English as English was called in Gribog because it
comes originally from Angleland. She's wise of she knows all about Grabog. She
frustrating, though she's frustrating literal she doesn't understand English, but she doesn't understand
metaphor or simile so any so sort of an accuracy overtact for sure, which
is a problem of mine definitely. But I, unlike Kreeble, I love
to use old time crazy phrases that are way out we do know most most
people don't understand today. So Krieble is kind of my way of poking fun
at myself and also having a character that's the direct opposite of you, who
never uses a metaphorical phrase and doesn't understand what you're talking about when you use
one. So I assume you don't eat grits. I was about to say,
you don't, you don't partake I do not. You know, I've
got my own disgusting habits, but they won't be discussed here. But yeah,
creble, Gargols and grebag enjoy ear wax, which they call grits.
So yeah, I know, isn't that great. That's the proper reaction,
Charlie. I always want a little bit of gross out humor for it,
because I think kid middle of grade kids love that kind of stuff. And
I know, I think that's also that's part of the heart, because they're
like, even getting into the bag is like pricking your finger. You have
to like bleed into the bag for it to open. Yes, And there
are three characters that act as like the gatekeepers. They're kind of inspired by
the witches from Macbeth. Ah gotcha. Yeah, Zenith calls them the foul
Mouths. Once he gets into the bag, the bag all of a sudden
gets larger illogically, so that he's kind of in like this cave slash chapel
sized space, which is the bag enlarged, and the scene that's running down
the bottom of the bag has three gaps in it, and those gaps speak
to him. They are living creatures, and they liked the taste of the
drop of blood that he dropped into the bag, in fact, must be
blood. They want more blood from him in order to let him pass,
and I will leave it to the reader to figure out how he gets past
them without giving them his blood. But Disney, BS and b would have
hated that. It's jam I mean, yeah, that's the freedom of writing
a book. There's lots of things that I was able to get away with
that broadcast standerds and practices probably wouldn't let go. But yeah, there's a
lot of soft body horror. Like everybody that Zenith meets in the first book
wants some part of him, some physical part of him. Yeah, that's
true. I didn't think about that. Yeah, it is a connecting theme.
The Mouths wants his blood, Preebele wants his ear grits. Albert also
wants a part of him. Albert, I mean, Albert might be my
favorite character. And again, without giving too much away, yeah, yeah,
no, there's another raggedy character that horrible back called Raggedy Albert, who
is a living a ragdolf, a foot all living rag doll. Suffices to
say Raggedy Albert wants Zenith become his friend, and but his definition of friendship
is is not so friendly. Let's say when that character speaks, uh,
gravity Falls fans out there, it activated my sleeper agent cipher brand. But
it was like I didn't even have to decode it. I could like read
it. That's how gravity Falls brained, I am for you. I could
just in the audio book. Yeah, he's just unfortunately he just mumbles nonsense
in the audiobook, there's no way to translate with his mouth. Undone.
Albert spoke in a much calmer manner, but the noises he made was still
incomprehensible to Zenith. O phew, kof. But Creeble is there to helpfully
translate for Zenith and the reader left at him. Kriebel explained what cipher was
it? Well, I guess I won't give it away for you gravity Falls
fans if we're going to pick up this book. It's one of the easier
codes. It's not meant to be too tough. Okay, Yeah, it's
simple enough that I think it was its recognizable on site as one of those
iphers, and I think anybody who's not familiar can figure it out pretty quickly.
I mean, was that you kind of like shouting that out yes,
So it was meant to be a nod to all the Gravity Falls fans.
Because I'm I'm not big into codes. Hersh introduced me to all this code
stuff. What is your obsession with scary ragdoll's? You know that goes back
to my childhood as well. Like, one of the few things in my
childhood house that was from my mother's childhood was two of the old Raggedy and
an Andy books. She had like two of the books that were printed in
the nineteen thirties. She was born in thirty two, and she had gotten
these books from her grandma or her parents or stuff, and so they were
her childhood books. And they were out like in the bottom of this like
side table to this couch that we had in the front room, and every
once in a while I would just look at them, and I was just
fascinated by the arts. And I thought Raggedy Ann and Andy were both very
appealing and very creepy. Yeah. I think in a film adaptation, Albert
should be too d animated on ones like it's Richard Williams doing the uh the
Raggedy Ann movie, yeah, which gave a lot of people nightmares as well.
Talking about Pinocchio and Raggedy Android. And also I've recently discovered that there's
an old Fleischer short. They did a one short with Raggedy Ann and Andy
as well, and very very faithfully translated into into animation, just like the
Richard Williams. I do love that the code is in there, because,
like what we praised about Dippers and Mabel's Guide, it inducts kids into that
world of like decoding of like it's not really spelling it out for you,
but if you notice that it's there and you decoded, it's like, oh,
that is that phrase in a code, and then it's it's you're along
for the ride. You feel like you're an active, like participant in Zenith's
adventure. And I think that's awesome. I really like the way you turn
the Raggedy Idea even more twisted than it already was. So it's like when
you go back and read it, it's like, oh my gosh, yeah
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, well thank you that yeah, that
would be something we don't want to talk about, but yeah, there is
a twist of things. No no, no, no, no, no,
just a little taste of like once you go back, you're like,
oh my gosh, well, you know, because everything's in a bag.
The you know, drawing on like tailorine and costumine and all that kind of
stuff was a big yeah. Especially in the first book. It's there's less
of that in the second book. I had you got those thoughts out of
your head, because I'd be really scared for you if you had to keep
them in without getting them out somehow, without exercising them. It's good therapy.
He could use the memory gun. But my personal favorites were the Bird
Brothers. Oh yeah, yeah, I liked them a lot too, And
I didn't understand what I was going to do with Hugh until I got to
that part of the book. Loyalties shift a lot in the book, and
his loyalty shift in a way that delighted you that I didn't really understand until
I got there. I said while listening to it with my wife that when
this gets a fandom, the sexy artwork is all going to be of Hugh
Tumbler, sexy man Hugh Really, Okay, I didn't. I Well,
you gotta hear it with the voice that that yeah, yeah, yeah,
because he gives Munsey this kind of Gandolf impression. That's a little Richard Nixon
a slow down and hold on, slow down and hold on, and then
he does this kind of uh more swashbuckling yeah, swashbuckler voice for yeah,
A pleasure to meet you. He bowed his head. I am the seeker
of gribag, collector of knowledge, but everybody calls me Hugh. The bird
lifted his head, tilted it at zenith and waited, don't be rude,
Furman, introduce yourself. Gotcha? Yeah again. I've only heard snippets of
these characters just a little bit, so I'm looking forward to listening to the
audiobook version of MYLF. I have to actually reach out to the audiobook people.
I've had it on hold on libby the library app, but it's not
available yet. I'm just waiting for it to show up so I can.
You're like, you're like, don't you know who I am? Yeah?
Shouldn't I be? Now? Knowing how influenced by a series of unfortunate events
audiobooks like, I'm going to need to listen to it because that Tim Curry
reading was my everything. The direction I gave for my narrator was basically like
he is very closely aligned with Zenith because he's in his thoughts, but he's
also enjoying the torture that Zenith is going under a little bit as well.
Old Zenith's friends were laughing. Even Appa was laughing. I picture you as
like the bugs bunny making the cartoon and Zenith the daffy. For sure,
this torment you're just like, Ain't I a stinker? You have to love
your characters and but also be willing to make them suffer. Oh of course,
of course that's how they earn a happy ending. I mean, yes,
it's idea. And to go back to your initial inscription on the book
page for us of giving that gravity Falls feeling, it absolutely succeed like without
a doll Like, if you are a fan of Gravity Falls at all,
in any stretch, you will guarantee love this book. And it scratches that
it's so much that I'm already like kind of theory crafting without even realizing it.
And there's things that I don't really want to get into because it would
be spoilers, but I so like I'm getting I'm building a new wing of
the Hall of Conspiracies, just for all the bag I mean, I guess
to hint at it without giving anything away of like what I was thinking about,
anytime there is, as Charlie put it earlier, like in an Isikai
sort of way, anytime there's a parallel dimension of reality to Earth with humans,
Like, I'm always curious of are the denizens of this reality? You
know, to what extent are they aware of humans and Earth? And if
we on our side are not really aware of this world, what do they
know about us? And then what does that mean about them? I'm always
looking for those little nuggets or are grits if you will, I think there's
plenty of grits for people who are are interested in theorizing about that kind of
thing. Oh, I will leave you to your theories. Thank you,
thank you. I enjoy them. I enjoy them quite a bit. And
I think they enjoyed this book. And there's just so much visceral stuff where
I was like, like reading it, I was like, you know,
if I were saying it, like if I were a kid reading this,
I would be very scared. But then I'm also an adult reading this,
and I am very scared, So I'm glad to hear it. Maybe I
just scare easily, or maybe it's it's really effective horror at any age.
I think this would have been formative to me if I had read this as
a kid, because, like as I said, Spiderwick and a Series of
Unfortunate Events were my favorite books. This would have fit right in formative to
me. Right now, my brain's not done developing yet. It can still
be formative. Oh mine's too old now. I'm just like she's brain is
rotting. My brain is robbing as we saw me. I'm sorry. In
the bag, yeah, into the bag with me? Is the receipt paper
in the in the horrible bag like in the real in the corner. I
don't know. That's the final boss in the third book, don't spoil it.
Hell does the Horrible Bag in real life still exist? No? I
don't. I think we disposed of that bag. It's had it's offspring,
believe, I don't know. There might be one on the way to you.
As soon as I finished sewing. That would be how many creatures did
you skin just the one? How many? How many different types of skin
did it have? So this is a cosplay bag, so like I had
to diet a whole bunch of different colors. I haven't heard anything of this
video you sent rock. Yeah, I didn't know that. It's just like
just like a little thirty second video me getting pulled into a bag of horrible
things by a little guy. Any any praise that people have said about gravity
falls or any of these other sort of things in this genre, I think
could be applied to this and more. I mean very especially if you liked
the ghost pages of Journal three because rob Yeah, and it's got a bunch
of fun little horror nots for the kids. Yeah, thank you. Even
threw in a talking robot for the kids. Yeah, actually there's no robots.
I had a robot character. Although speaking of speaking of talking robots for
the kids, your best known original creation likely is experiencing an anniversary at the
moment. Yeah it is. Yeah, it's the twentieth anniversary of the premiere
of my life as a teenage Robot. It's amazing you celebrate. I am
writing a new story, teenage Robot story through my newsletter. I'm releasing it
through my newsletter in chapters. It's a little bit of a serialized story with
Jenny and everybody else from Teenage Robot. And if you go to my website,
rob Ernzeeddi dot com and you go to the newsletter page and you sign
up. You will get to read a new teenage Robot story. And we
did just read it. We did. Yeah, read the first three chapter.
Ah, well, very good, thank you. I'm glad to hear
you, guys. And it feels, you know, it feels like like,
you know, like I never left the time as it passed. Well,
yeah, but thank you, I hope. So it's it was a
little bit daunting to come back to these characters after so long of a break,
I imagine. Yeah, the legacy that they have. I love all
the little turns of phrase with Mother Earth and the Earth's Sun. Hell yeah,
thank you. Yeah again. I kind of know where I'm going with
that. I know how the first story will end, but getting there is
a full of surprises as well. Actually, the stories kind of expanding as
are writed. In terms of the number of chapters. I think there's going
to be so awesome. If you sign up late, you can always link
back to the earlier chapters. There's a link at the top of the new
chapter to read the previous All of them out thus far will be in the
newsletter archivry. Yes, and on the about section of your site. I
noticed at the very bottom you have a link to this very podcast I do.
Made me really happy to see. Well, I love talking with you
guys about the gravity Fall stuff. I've always felt that you're kind of a
fourth curator, Like, oh, that's very kind of you. You did
show up a lot, you did the Patreon shout outs with me. You
are like the last bit of dialogue in the last proper episode of the podcast.
True yes, the thing saying it's a limping And you have done so
much for this podcast, retweeting every single episode and and helping us badger potential
perspective guests. Only it's only right that we help you, uh, you
know, get the word out about this awesome original novel and what you finished
buying and reading the Horrible Bag of Terrible Things. You can log onto the
newsletter and read about the further adventures of Jenny the teenage Robot. Yeah,
thank you, thank you so much for got for having me so many times
and talking with me about so many things. It's been a pleasure every time.
And I certainly so many horrible things, so many horrible, horrible and
terrible things. Terrible thing. Yeah, I thank you for coming back and
doing this special episode of the Yeah you know, on a on a subject
that has you know, it is very tangentially connected to gravity We've done you,
We've done more tangential topics on this podcast before. It's honest be pretty
related. Well good, Well then I'm glad. I'm glad to be talking
to you guys again. And the Gravity Falls fans gotta know the people who
enjoy the reveal of three separate journals, or enjoy the design of the FBI's
card. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah journal three, that that that
creator is out there and doing something amazing and original. Well thank you.
Yeah. I mean, I hope the fans of Gravity Falls will find this
book because I think they will enjoy it. Yeah. I mean, especially
in an age where like most you know, fiction named at young kids,
like I feel like there's not much of this now, of this type of
things all about hya these days. Uh yeah, no, I feel like
it feels it feels it feels like it feels it feels a niche that you
know is under certain Yeah. So absolutely, I want kids to have something
scary to read this Halloween. Oh yeah, that's true. I didn't think
about the season. Yeah no, that's a you know they bring them,
they're bringing them out in summer to kind of get them r revved up and
warmed up and make people aware. And then like, you know, that
don't make sense. I know people have got it. They're seeing it in
their bookstore and thinking like this sounds this is good for Halloween. I'm gonna
buy like one hundred copies. And then on Halloween when trick or treaters come
and be like, I don't have candy, but I have something even better.
Some would say wow. And as Rob said, Halloween is coming up.
So we will be releasing the last three episodes of garden Wall. Recall
they have been recorded for a year, but I moved across the world.
Yeah, we just got busy with late but I edited this podcast. You
can hire me to edit other podcasts. Yeah, email me at voice at
Charliemarlow dot com. That's voices in mouthed sounds and that's Charlie c h A
r l E Y m A r l o w E even seven to seven
letters. You can find our other discussions with Rob and our entire coverage of
gravity falls. We covered the whole dang thing. We covered all of gluten
free sometimes sometimes I remember because when we started the podcast, I was like,
We're never gonna be able to say Bill Seifer, like this is gonna
take I think about the fact that we did that, We did all fifty
two episodes in a year, and I'm like, how did how did they
manage? Yeah? Could? I couldn't do it twice. No, we
don't have to because it is all available at pipe dream Podcasts dot com com,
as well as other podcasts that we're also on, like pod Made You
Special and I'm gonna be on an upcoming episode of Escape from Vault Disney.
Oh cool. We might do a listener mail episode at some point after we
finished releasing the Garden Wall Recall, So if you have anything you would like
to say to us about gravity falls over the Garden Wall, horble Bag of
Terrible Things, Phantom of the Paradise, Yes please, or just I don't
know your day. A lot of emails that we're sitting on now for for
the episode, but we also, you know, welcome any new ones at
Mystery Shack look back at gmail dot com. So I've got a website,
Shelbysessler dot com. It's got all my vo some of my costume work on
it. My awful X, I hate X. I hate that they've changed
the name to X. My use it. Just go just say Twitter.
Everybody knows it's Twitter, my horrible ex, horrible X of terrible musk.
Yes, yes, yes, My My Twitter is Shelby Sessler. My Instagram
is Shelby Sessler. My TikTok is Shelby Sessler. My YouTube is shelbeanie v
O. So that's where you can find some of my work. Love collaborating
with some of my favorite people on here. So you can find stuff that
I do pretty frequently. Yeah, and you can find my ex still misses
me, but getting ram is getting Twitter. Yeah. My Twitter and Instagram
are at drawn without ref You can find my art and my other all the
other things I've been doing lately other than visual art and animation. You can
find some of the music that I do at Lichsri dot bandcamp dot com.
Thank you Kyle Caroza for that, cadence. My website is LSSRI dot weeble
dot com. That's e l l a c e s a r I dot
w e e b l y dot com. It's dot com. You can
also check out my latest podcasting venture that being the Matrix Reclamations, which I'm
doing with good friend Hope Lichner of high On Cartoons aka duc takes on that
podcast for basically going through any topic at all related to the Matrix franchise,
bringing it back to its transgender roots. You can check it out on Zencaster
or anywhere you get your podcasts, and find it on the socials at Matrix
Queer Pod on Twitter and Instagram. Also, your curators recently collaborated on a
project on my channel that I am immensely proud of. It is called Well
Abridged Me Princess. It is and a bridge series of the old Zelda cartoon.
But I don't really care what happens to the old Zelda cartoons, so
it's sort of just me saying what would I do if I had an adult
swim show. Ella and I write a lot of it, Shelby and I
voice a lot of it. I think if you like our sense of humor,
you would enjoy it. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed what I saw.
Thank you. We also have a We do have a merch store at
I Believes Mystery Shack lookback dot crowdmaid dot com at crowdmaid dot com, slash
mystery Shack. Look one of those, one of those things. Just look
up crowdmade mystery Shack look back and you'll find shirts and things with our faces
on them, cartoon faces. My big thing is rob bernzeeddi dot com.
There's links to my Twitter, which is just at rob Berunzetti, and my
Instagram, which I never have memorized, which is mostly my name but with
a weird dash in the middle of it or something. I don't know.
I'm not on Instagram nearly as much as I'm on Twitter. I'm on Twitter
all the time. But yeah, you got a song to play us out?
I mean I will, But those, Charlie, those are added in
post. Do you see. No, I'm trying to fabricate an illusion.
The listeners don't have to know about that. Well, you know what.
Welcome to the real world, listeners. Time to shatter your illusions, your
preconceptions. This is all fake. Podcasts aren't real. We're kind of all
puppets. Someone's controlling. I think I've been pulled through that horrible bag where
there's gargoyles and big dolls of ragsss and terrible things that all zig zag What
an awful twist that my sister's lost in grub bug Ah there you are,
who have you found any new details for me to record? As a matter
of fact, brother, I've acquired the names of several contributors to something called
a pay tron. How peculiar. Now let us list them so the scribe
may increase the knowledge of the collectory. But I'll begin TF Sykes, help
Sterling, Jubilation, Axel Spencer, Neil Campbell, Easy Snake Oven, Samantha
Angle, Rish Rawle, Calmer, Jesse, Marie mcdoukall, May, Delphine
Dossi Adam with two a's, a d and An m ro Davis, the
nilin Zucker Mumbleton, do you Humbleton? Elizabeth Newan Felt, Jamie Bolts,
Richard Scanlon, Joseph Jones, Elizabeth Clark, Oliver Pluto, Junior, Brad
Juno Series, Gwen Pratt, drift Walk, pd Purana Plant, Stephen Patrick,
Molary, You Salinas, David Gancel, fun Boring this friendly local geek
and Ryan Faber indeed a worthy addition to Krabag's knowledge. Oh and I found
one more thing. Any firmans interested in having the name added to the collectory
should pledge their undying loyalty to the patron at patreon dot com. Slash Mystery Shack