Sword and Scale Episode 94

By Mike Boudet • 4 months ago

Jul
2017

Randy Stair secretly identified as a female for years. She ditched her given name for the pseudonym Andrew Blaze and also ditched the YouTube channel she had worked on for a large part of her life to pursue animation. The cartoons she created were dark, angst-ridden creations derived from an existing Nickelodeon character that she was infatuated with and believed existed in some otherworldly plain which she planned to be welcomed into after murdering three of her coworkers.

SOURCES

MUSIC

Fritz
Mike,
Love the program! Keep up the great work!
Just a niggling editorial note: In your description for Episode 94 you say Randy Stair was seeking entrance to an “otherworldly plain”. You should have said, “plane”. 😃
But, seriously, your podcast is definitely top-notch! I have recommended it to friends and family (many have become subscribers).
I was really just looking for an excuse to comment. 😉
Ashleigh Gionet
Eye roll…… this guy is totally allowed to feel this way. If he doesn’t give a shit about some people that have in no way anything to do with him; then so be it. He didn’t do it, he hadn’t anything to with the act, so how he feels is entirely his perogative.
Also, he’s completely desensitized to the violence he is engulfed in. WELcome to our Huxlean world.
Love your work though!!:) thank you for the hours of entertainment!
Emelyn Moriarty Lee
When gaming and covering Disney songs generates more revenue than you…surprised Nickelodeon didn’t sue him for copyright after all those years
Guys, I may be autistic like the Skater boi but I don’t sympathize/empathize with killers! Once a friend kills, he’s out of my life.
Dan D’Astugues
Frankly, I can’t wait until we’re done with this subject. The pathetic nature of the people involved with the episodes on the Supermarket killings is everything that’s wrong with this country. The thought keeps coming to my mind is, “Why is Mike giving these spoiled, maladjusted pussies the recognition and respect of a two-episode show?” I know Sword and Scale is meant to show us all aspects of the horror of humanity, but listening to “Andrew Blaze” and his “Skater” friend makes me want to look elsewhere for podcast entertainment. (I won’t, of course, I love the show too much. But I feel strongly enough about this particular set of shows that I had to say something).
- SB2017
  Dan, I think you answered your question/complaint within your comment. You asked, “Why is Mike giving these spoiled, maladjusted pussies…a two-episode show?” and yet in your previous sentence you said the episodes involve “…everything that’s wrong with this country.” Doesn’t a subject embodying such a problem deserve to be investigated? You feel that this case embodies everything wrong with this country yet you don’t want Sword & Scale to address it? What sense does that make?
RebelMavvy
Skater is a tool. It pained me to listen to him speak.
- Sally Hansen
  I rolled my eyes when he called his own mother a whore. Explains a lot about his world view and lack of empathy.
- SecludedCompound
  Definitely a self interested tool.
  Wants everyone to think they’re so hardcore by acting like they don’t care about murder. Same old thing since Columbine. It’s an archetype, a template edgelords follow.
Macushla
Yes I agree with Ashleigh below that Skater has a prerogative to be completely insensitive and almost without empathy completely. But I completely understand the fascination and trying to delve in and to make him see and actually listen to his own words. To no avail though. I have a wide range of friends including some transgender, but did I miss where it was explained why Randy – who identifies as female, chose a male pseudonym?
- Jay
  Because HE was a totally whacked nutcase? The whole basket of self-important losers bring to mind the stereotypical losers living in moms basement.
  - Macushla
    True enough, I just mean that it is very odd and points up that he was so angry about people not acknowledging his being transgender….yet he didn’t tell people in his life, so its yet another way of his being unreasonable. I think interviewer is extremely generous in referring to him consistently as “she” – giving him more respect than Ryan ever showed for any other human being. I am just hoping that the fact that he may have been transgender is played down in coming days – legally. The young man had SO many serious and dangerous issues, being transgender is neither, but nonetheless makes people afraid. Again, it just bothered me that he is so respectful of his wish to be addressed as “she” when subject had literally no respect for any other human. I admire the interviewer
MD
I could have seen a whole piece being broken off here regarding a lack of empathy in internet culture and it’s connection with mental illness; instead I found myself being compelled to fast forward through the rants of Andrew Blaze hating her father and family from the comforts of their household wifi.
I hate to sound trite here, but how can we not bring up the lack of parenting? Listening to all of the statements Andrew made about her family and ‘not understanding’ sounds like help was needed from someone in the family to take interest in whatever projects were being worked on by this kid, or what her problems were, or the fact that maybe she was confused and deeply mental ill enough to murder her coworkers. I have heard SO MANY young adults talk exactly like this about their family, often suicidal, this is a cry for mental health counseling, something that anyone could have seen if they were paying attention the warning signs, which is a responsibility of people surrounding this person. I can’t help but feel like everyone around them was being overly passive, including this Skater person, so fucking stupid that people had to die because one young person had no one around them to talk them out of it. This kid spent entirely too much time on the internet, a black hole of narcissism met with criticism, entitlement and instant gratification, and most of all no real human compassion.
Doesn’t stop me from being excited every week for a new Sword and Scale!
JC
You should see the comments on Skater’s youtube, everyone is sympathizing with him it’s bizarre. I can understand both sides of the discussion but ultimately it’s about compassion and people are going to react or recoil if you come off emotionless despite your right to express yourself freely. Though I’m not surprised an (assumed) emotionally abused person would not react to people outside of their social sphere, everyone is different.
- Jennerator
  They are probably the trolls of Toni Ingram……they have been trying to discredit Mike for YEARS
Robert Houska
This episode was a bit hard to hear. Not because of the crime, don’t get me wrong, any of these episodes are hard to listen to because of the crimes committed, but I’m saying this because of the interview with Skater.
Death and murder is no doubt hard to deal with for the average person. The line of questioning and reasoning that Mike had with Skater made me feel a bit uneasy. “So anybody that’s outside your realm, that you don’t know personally, you don’t care about?” That seems very reductionist of you to ask. I’m sure people feel sympathy towards others and even Skater said so, but ask yourself that, Mike. Do you care for every single person you’ve covered? Are you broken hearted over every person affected by a crime you cover? Would this not bring you to your knees or to the point where you can no longer bear to cover these horrific crimes? I understand and sympathize with the crimes that are reported daily on the news but it doesn’t bring me to my knees. It doesn’t stop me from continuing on with my day. If I were to care so wholeheartedly that I hurt every time I hear of a crime, I wouldn’t be able to get out of bed. Nobody would. That doesn’t make me, or you, emotionless or unsympathetic. Unfortunately, this happens far too often. We can become desensitized or get too engulfed in our own lives to care and reach out to every victim of a crime.
- C Daniels
  There isn’t any doubt that Skater had an odd perspective that was difficult to understand. He wasn’t logical or even reasonable in some of the responses. Obviously this had to be explored from any interviewer’s point of view you can’t just leave so much up in the air.
  That said, the claims Skater makes about death and mortality were also obviously fake and immature. The grasp on reality there was obviously tenuous and I’m glad it was questioned.
  These people didn’t have any real conflicts or challenges so they create them for themselves. It is easy to build yourself up as a unmovable and unfathomable dark hero if you’ve never faced real tribulation or used moments of failure to confront shortcomings and truly grow.
- The Puma Man
  Agreed. I thought the way that the interview kept trying to shame and vilify Skater for lacking empathy really missed the point. Skater is clearly deeply depressed individual living in, what sounds like, a fucked up situation. Trying to consistently make him feel that people hated him was extremely irresponsible. At the very least, this interview tactic was extremely frustrating to listen to and was not remotely journalistic. It was drumming up a lynch mob for someone who vocalized that they’re concerned about receiving harassment because they agreed to appear in this podcast.
bossk
This interview felt a bit sensationalist, the host shouldn’t guilt the guest into backtracking on their statements. If you put someone on the spot like that they’ll just parrot back what they think the ‘correct’ answer is and honesty is more interesting.
- Elaine Assmann-Adler
  No…the kid is a narcissist freak!
C Daniels
Willful ignorance. Self indulgence. Unwillingness to accept and even analyze criticism leveled against yourself.
These things are all “allowed”. Something that is even more “allowed” is the idea that these traits are at the undesirable end of the spectrum and in need of being reversed when they rear their ugly heads.
Upgrade people. Get better and fight the urge to take the path of least resistance. Gain Perspective.
June Derlachter
Excellent- I like the way Mike did not relent in his questioning and short of “forced the perspective”.
Wendy Avalos
So much hate for the parents. So sad, that gets to me.
Candy Deland
He. He. He. He.
This was a male committing stereotypical male violence. You insult women when you cosign this delusion. Come on, can we get back to reality please? Womanhood is a biological reality, not a feeling.
~Not A Conservative, a woman with the right to name facts.
- Rachel Erin
  THANK YOU! If people cared about male violence as much as they do about preferred pronouns, maybe something would be done about murderers like this.
Rob
Mike I feel that you’re giving power to Randy’s sickness by continuing to refer to him as Andrew and her/she. You can’t hurt his feelings because he’s dead – even if he wasn’t who cares!!!!!! He destroyed 4 families!!!
Rachel Grubb
Well it looks like your hope that this person be judged by her actions and not her gender identity are being ignored.
http://www.christiansolorzano.com/ Christian Solorzano
I have SkaterWolf41’s I Miss You song stuck in my head…
Kimber
I love horror movies and it’s absolutely no excuse, cause, or reason for the disconnected air or flippant attitude
Skater is so absorbed in his own attempt to create a mystique and a clumsy attempt to be worldly and refined that he stumbles and shows his severe immaturity at every step.
Skater’s, ” Death doesn’t phase me and others mean nothing,” statements are juvenile!
Andrew Blaze and Skater BOTH show an inability to look critically at their own behavior or actions. Andrew was unable to see blatant copyright infringement issues and Skater is unable to recognize how shallow he appears to be in his videos.
Failure to launch takes a dark turn with the young adults in this situation.
MH
Great episode. Loved the assessment you gave as to why he may have done this and that the ultimate and most atrocious attention seeking behavior was still a complete failure.
What_it_tis
This was the hardest thing to sit through. Andrew and Skater are the epitome of every rightist/conservative stereotype of millennials: self indulgent, entitled, lazy, spoiled, whiny, callous, irresponsible, too precious to accept criticism, too arrogant to accept responsibility, attention-seeking, too self-important to respect or empathize with others. I wanted to vomit listening to the crap being spewed. “My dad had the nerve to want me, A GROWN MAN, WHO IS LIVING IN HIS HOUSE, DEPENDING ON HIS INCOME TO SUPPLEMENT MY LIFE, to get an actual job and be independent! How dare that *homophobic slur* (but you’d better respect my gender pronouns, or you’re transphobic!) expect me to grow up! He should drop dead! And f** all these people who were nice enough to agree to help me for free, then have the nerve not to prioritize ME and WHAT I WANT instead of what pays their bills! I hate people!” And then we have Skater, “Well I don’t care,I didn’t know them, but I knew my friend, so I care about her, even though we weren’t good enough friends for me to realize that she’d been planning a mass murder for years, I want to show my respect to her, go look at my channel! See my channel? My channel will have a song for her, and oh yeah, those people that I don’t care got killed, I’m gonna say i do, on my channel, go look at my channel! I’m not trying to center myself by promoting my channel, I’m just saying that I will be using this event to make videos for my channel. Oh, I’m supposed to care about other people dying? Uh, k, I care then. I don’t really know their names, I researched the Columbine shooters so I would know about them, but not the innocent people my friend murdered that I can’t relate to. But I’ll say their names on my channel! Hey, I’m just desensitized cuz scary movies. No, I can’t empathize with them, my family hates me, no one loves me, I’M the victim! What did you think of my video?”
Utterly disgusting. Literal embodiments of what’s wrong with these infantilized adults being let loose into the world with the rest of us.
- Sestra Helena
  YOU ARE MY FUCKING SOUL MATE. I CAME DOWN HERE TO WRITE AND YOU SPOKE MY TRUTH. PREACH, MAFUCKA, PREACH!!!!
- Jennerator
  holy shit balls- can I put this in a can and spew it on people on the fucking daily> THIS IS THE FUCKING GOLDEN TRUTH
- Daisy InReno
  Man I don’t think Andrew/Randy could possibly sound more self obsessed and whiny!
- kazoshay
  AMEN
- Elaine Assmann-Adler
  Everything you said is true except them being right wing and conservative. That makes no sense. I don’t want to get political but you described millenials to a tee, which 85% of them are self proclaimed left leaning. Poltical affiliation has ZERO to do with this behavior. Its called narcicism.
  - Matt Loudon
    He’s not saying they were conservative. He is saying they are exactly what conservatives imagine leftist millennials to be.
- Bruce H
  Well said!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- Kimbo_Sliice
  Moron! Tranny’s are anything but right wing/conservative. Sorry bro, them yo people!
- Fridge
  He didnt say skater and Andrew were right wing, re-read what he said, the right wing person is the one making the stereotype.
Pe Nelope Kay Greenhough
if you are talking to someone who has had a close relationship with a transperson you could easily be talking to someone who has been chronically gaslighted … transgender is a headfuck and usually just an excuse for a narcissists to get away with literal murder. … o dear should i have not said this ? #thisneverhappens.
Pe Nelope Kay Greenhough
people need to know THIS WAS A MAN. we dont need to be polite to murderers and rapists paedophiles. we dont have to pretend we really think this person is a woman. i mean come on…! who really believes this shit and who is just pretending they do because they are terrified of being targeted by masturbating fuckwit trolls? how did this happen?
Gidd
No one should have any respect or sympathy for this filth — Skater or Stair. He gave neither to anyone in his life, and therefore doesn’t deserve any.
Chelsea Lee Bennett
Staaaaahp this was so good. Skater is terrifying. Andrew is terrifying. I got chills listening to him talk about his dad and rant about “copying”… Holy shit. This episode was legit. Thanks Mike!!!! <3 <3 <3
metra williams
All of the FUCK YOU’S and I wish you’d would’ve killed yourself dad sounds like a 3 year old having a tantrum. Dude (girl) you live at home with mommy and daddy at 24 grow up! No stories about dad beating you or mom locking you in a closet, he just wanted you to do something with yourself. nobody owed you anything, what a pathetic toddler those people did not deserve the hell you put them, their families and even your own family did not deserve that. And skater, I worry for you. You should feel something about the poor families that lost loved ones but you can’t remember their names even after you wrote them down.
Jennerator
but, he did
Jennerator
When your dream is to be a dead female cartoon- you are not transgender, you are nuts
Wesley Smith
I know skater personally and has told me in dms that he dosent care about the victims and i completely ditched the fucker i will never associate with skater again
Jay
Without a doubt , this was the most repulsive episode of S&S to listen to. Andrew hasn’t a shred of humanity, decency, redeeming value, energy, ambition or integrity. He’s the Dylan Roof of the Millennial generation. I believe nothing he has to say, as he was a pathological liar and had precisely NOTHING redeeming about him.
The news media is all over hate filled roaches like Roof, but there’s air cover for self identified sexual minorities provided by all news media…even S&S. The murderer has a Y chromosome, he’s a male. Deciding that you want to be female (if it gets you get more clicks on you tube?) doesn’t change the fact that you the murderer are male.
I have as much remorse for Andrew as I do for “skater” (another basement dwelling under performer). None.
I’m glad they chose to document their lack of value for all to see.
Madeline Jane Johnson
I’m disappointed in many of the comments expressing disapproval about Mike’s use of she/her pronouns for this person. We use the correct gender pronouns for people even if they are bad people. Not out of respect for those people, but because we cannot make gender a conditional right. It creates a dangerous precedent for how trans people are treated, as well as precedent for the conditionalizing of other human rights.
Stair was a repugnant human being: a murderer, a self-professed racist and sexist, an overall cruel, lazy, and selfish person. We do not need to have sympathy or empathy for her nor must we judge her with lenience because of her transness, or because she was tormented. Our use of she/her pronouns is not a show of respect or compassion for her (whom we abhor) but for humankind.
I’m really glad that S&S did an episode on the Weiss massacre. I found this incident so fascinating and complex and chilling, just doing my own research. This is my favorite podcast! I’m shocked I finally got to a news story first before Mike Boudet did.
- SB2017
  People would be more likely to respect Randy Stair’s desire to be recognized as a woman if he actually looked, talked, or behaved like a woman. But he didn’t. And, ironically, he capped off his life in an explosion of characteristically MALE violence, while still proclaiming that he was a “female soul.”
  From what I’ve seen, his thoughts on being a woman bloomed fairly late in life (once he saw that cartoon character), as opposed to being an intrinsic from early childhood on. He was just as obsessed with the idea of death and the fantasy of being a ghost (painting his skin white) as he was in behaving like an actual woman, which shows that his deepest issues were death-obsession, homicidal rage, and obsessive, delusional fantasies.
  Calling himself a female seems to simply be a part of those mentally ill delusions, just like his desire to be a ghost—and therefore people don’t feel compelled to respect his fantasy. Playing along with someone’s gender issues in a case like this is akin to pretending that a schizophrenic’s delusions about the voices on TV talking to him are real, just because it hurts his feelings and upsets him if you tell him otherwise. If a person is mentally healthy, and is truly wired like the opposite gender, then they should be mature and reasonable enough to realize that, “Hey, even though I feel like a woman, I was born a male, and so people are going to see me and treat me as such; I can’t expect society to totally rearrange itself just because of my rare disorder. That sucks, but there are worse disorders to have, and I can deal with it.”
  Exploding in characteristically male violence just proves that he wasn’t really a woman, and that his core issue was being an unhinged, delusional psycho who found a hip, trendy issue to blame all his neurological/mental/emotional problems on.
- Sans Wozniak
  THANK YOU
- Kimbo_Sliice
  You’re a complete idiot. F your insane preferred pronouns. If you have a problem with it, take it up with you biology teacher, moron.
http://mayramm.com/ MayraMM
The whining was unbearable.
- Ronald F.
  yeah, it was..
Ashley Augustine
Although it was done beautifully, it makes me so angry that Mike had to put out another recording explaining himself in the wake of backlash received since these episodes were released. It’s just ridiculous that he has defend his integrity and justify his actions despite the fact that he is always tactful, appropriate and fair. I hate that he has to apologize to the listeners because of people that will crucify anyone who dares to express an individual point of view.
Bruce H
Dude, (yes dude I say) was pissed because people flaked on him. That’s life. I can’t count how many times people have flaked on me or I have flaked on others in my 50 years… That’s life. Deal with it. Glad you took yourself out. Saved the tax payers $$.
Brittany
Man….this is such a bizarre case. I apologize that people didn’t get the point and got hung up over the politics of the whole gender thing instead of focusing on the actual crime and people involved.
SecludedCompound
I’m not sure why so much time is being spent on Skater here. This person is obviously a person who wants to shift attention from very real victims onto themselves, self-promoting, and preening. It’s seriously not good. Allowing people to do that is pretty disgusting.
TB
I appreciate your attitude towards this, Mike. It would be easy to become desensitized to tragedy after having a living like this and it was very pleasant to hear your reactions to someone who does seem completely unemphatic and unsympathetic. You are very respectful of the situations and cases you cover, in terms of the victims and the large-scale implications of each case, and the fact that you DO do this for a living and STILL maintain empathy speaks a lot to your character.
So thank you!
Kimbo_Sliice
Love the pod, but this apology diatribe is everything wrong with the world today. Who gives a shit about their preferred pronouns? The MF KILLED 3 people and you people are concerned about not offending what he thinks he is? Go argue that crazy shit with a biology teacher. Idiots.
Raja Hindustani
None of this a joke but a giggle burst out of me when he said “sock a cock” in regards to the thought of him having to get a job. What a true loser. It’s a shame he didn’t just kill himself, and himself alone.
scoop
Everyone’s losing their minds and I’m just over here like “I KNEW the same guy created Fairly Odd Parents!”
pleadinglynx
Disgusting pieces of trash…both of these BOYS (Randy Stair and Skaterwhinyass). Not MEN and definitely NOT FEMALES!!
Melis O.
I somehow missed the ages of these two delusional fuckers. Can someone fill me in on that? Not that it makes the hugest difference, but I’m curious.
Paul Rain
Not. A. She.
It is a tragedy that this malcontent did not kill itself before it struck out.
Kalin December
I’m really confused as to why someone’s autism would preclude them from being interviewed on your podcast. Autism is a spectrum and manifests very differently for everyone who has it.
I have a number of autistic people close to me in my family and while they may appear to lack empathy (or more precisely, theory of mind) they are still honest witnesses to the events of their lives.
- http://swordandscale.com/ Sword and Scale
  This person publicly claimed after both interviews that their autism was the cause of their inability to show compassion and empathy towards the victims’ families and that intentionally exploited them. If an interview subject is upfront about some issue, like autism, that may affect their answers then that’s something I would have taken into account in the interview, or I may have chosen to exclude the interview altogether. It seems a little convenient that they only claimed to have this issue after the two episodes aired, which seemed to paint them in a bad light.
  - Kalin December
    Sorry, I think my comment may have been unclear. I have no way of knowing whether Skater is lying about being autistic.
    I was responding to your statement at the top of the episode that you wouldn’t have interviewed her at all had she told you she was autistic ahead of time. Autism is correlated with an inability to lie, which seems like it would actually make someone a better interview subject.
Rachel Erin
This really was infuriating to listen to. I suffer from depression. I’ve had the worst year of my life. I’ve lost my job and am very discouraged by people not consuming my art and videos just like Andrew. I am angry at the world too. But guess what? I’ve never in my life thought of killing anyone. You deal with the shit that’s thrown at you because that’s all you can do. You keep going and find the good in life, even if it’s a sliver or a fraction compared to the bad you experience, and you don’t take it out on others.