*RED GARDEN — LOADING — "MID-PIANO PRESENTS." Transcript, unedited, as recorded on whatever was running in the garage that day.*
**TYLER:** We're doing a business meeting. I want that on the record before anyone makes it weird.
**UNICORN (TEXT CARD):** It's already weird. We're a band having a business meeting in a garage that isn't anybody's.
**TYLER:** Fine. We're doing a weird business meeting. Somebody's making real stickers — actual vinyl, actual money, actual "hold this up to a laptop lid" stickers — and the current plan is three of them. A mark. A wordmark. A logotype.
**DUCK:** That's not a sticker lineup, that's a font specimen sheet.
**TYLER:** It's a *brand* lineup. It's supposed to look serious.
**GHOST (TEXT CARD, at the piano, not looking up):** Nothing in this garage has ever looked serious for longer than one scene.
**TYLER:** That's exactly why we got asked. Founder's words, more or less: get Mid-Piano to brainstorm some sticker ideas. So. Pitch me stickers. Real ones — vinyl, die-cut, goes-on-a-water-bottle stickers. Not bits. Well. Bits, but stickers.
---
## PITCH ONE — THE DUCK
**DUCK:** Die-cut, my silhouette, standard trenchcoat, holographic foil underneath the ink. Looks like a normal duck sticker in daylight. Tilt it and the foil catches, and underneath the coat it says "ASSET." One word. No further explanation, ever.
**TYLER:** That's actually good.
**DUCK:** I know it's good, I've been building the case for it since the pilot.
**FROG (TEXT CARD):** Isn't that a security risk. Revealing your status like that.
**DUCK:** It's not revealing anything, it's a sticker. Also I have telekinesis, I could stop you from reading it.
**FROG (TEXT CARD):** You didn't, though.
**DUCK:** I'm choosing not to. That's different.
---
## PITCH TWO — THE FROG
**FROG (TEXT CARD):** Mine's simple. Print the sticker. Redact it. Full black bar, the kind a real document gets, right across the middle. Nothing readable. Sell it as-is.
**TYLER:** That's a blank sticker.
**FROG (TEXT CARD):** It's a *secret* sticker. There's a difference and the difference is the entire pitch.
**PIZZA (TEXT CARD):** Would people actually buy a sticker that's just censored.
**FROG (TEXT CARD):** People buy things that make them feel like they're in on something. This makes them feel like they're in on something and specifically excludes them from ever finding out what. That's stickier than most stickers.
**UNICORN (TEXT CARD):** Did you just make a sticker pun.
**FROG (TEXT CARD):** I've been sitting on it since Tyler said "pitch me stickers."
---
## PITCH THREE — GHOST, WHICH IS ALSO THE ACTUAL LOGO QUESTION NOBODY'S ASKED YET
**GHOST (TEXT CARD, still playing):** You haven't made a Mid-Piano sticker. We have a band. The band has a name. There is currently no merch for the band, only for the company that employs the band, which — if I'm reading the room correctly — is a stranger arrangement than anyone's flagged out loud.
**TYLER:** ...We do not currently have Mid-Piano merch.
**GHOST (TEXT CARD):** Correct. Simple mark — a single piano key, mid-press, no hands attached, because the joke is that nobody's ever seen hands do this. One ink. Cheap to print, easy to recognize at an inch, works on a laptop lid same as the corporate ones. It's not a competitor to the brand stickers. It's the same three-SKU logic applied to the thing that's actually generating the audience right now.
**TYLER:** That's the least bit-driven pitch anyone's given today.
**GHOST (TEXT CARD):** I contain multitudes. Most of them are also piano.
---
## PITCH FOUR — PIZZA
**PIZZA (TEXT CARD):** "STILL HOT." Me, on fire, same as always, no further comment. It's not clever. I know it's not clever. I have accepted that being on fire is a complete personality and the sticker should reflect that with zero ambition beyond the pun.
**DUCK:** That's the most honest pitch in this meeting.
**PIZZA (TEXT CARD):** I've had a long time to make peace with my whole thing.
**TYLER:** Do you want a variant.
**PIZZA (TEXT CARD):** Glow-in-the-dark. Obviously. I shouldn't have to ask for that, it should be assumed.
---
## PITCH FIVE — THE TREE, WHICH NOBODY ASKED FOR AND EVERYONE GOT ANYWAY
The Tree says one line. In French. Not subtitled.
**GHOST (TEXT CARD):** Print it exactly like that. The sticker is the line, in French, no translation on the packaging, no translation anywhere. If you want to know what it says you have to actually go learn French or ask someone who has.
**TYLER:** That's either genius or a customer service nightmare.
**GHOST (TEXT CARD):** Both. Same as the mark. Curse and mercy, simultaneously, Cain said it best.
**FROG (TEXT CARD):** Did you just cite last episode's guest to sell a sticker.
**GHOST (TEXT CARD):** I contain multitudes and also a memory.
---
## PITCH SIX — GARY, WHO WAS NOT INVITED BUT SHOWED UP ANYWAY, WHICH IS ALSO GARY'S WHOLE THING
**GARY:** I have a clipboard and extremely good eyesight. Sticker of the clipboard. Small text at the bottom, barely legible unless you're close: "NOT AUTHORIZED TO WRITE ANYONE UP." That's it. That's the whole design. I watch a bridge, I don't chase, and I'm not asking for more sticker than the job actually needs.
**TYLER:** That might be the best-scoped pitch of the day.
**GARY:** The bridge is quiet a lot. I've had time to think about scope.
---
## THE UNICORN ASKS THE QUESTION THE MEETING WAS ACTUALLY ABOUT
**UNICORN (TEXT CARD):** Real question, not a bit. Who's actually printing these.
*(Long pause. Genuinely long.)*
**DOC WHEEL (TEXT CARD):** Whoever it is, put it on the van. I'm not driving anything unlabeled twice.
**TYLER:** There's a van.
**DOC WHEEL (TEXT CARD):** There's always a van.
**UNICORN (TEXT CARD):** That's not an answer, that's the same bit from three episodes ago.
**TYLER:** Because it's genuinely the same open question from three episodes ago. Vendor's not picked. That part's real, not a bit — somebody has to actually choose who prints these before any of this leaves the garage. Everything we just pitched is real design direction. None of it prints itself.
**GHOST (TEXT CARD):** So put that on the record too. Six real concepts. One real blocker. Both true at the same time.
**FROG (TEXT CARD):** Curse and mercy.
**TYLER:** It's not that deep, it's a vendor decision.
**FROG (TEXT CARD):** Ask again later.
---
## OUT — THE ACTUAL LIST, FOR WHOEVER'S SCOPING THIS NEXT
**TYLER:** So, for the record, not the bit version: Duck's holographic "ASSET" reveal. Frog's fully redacted sticker. A real Mid-Piano band mark — the piano key, mid-press, no hands — sitting alongside the existing three corporate SKUs instead of competing with them. Pizza's glow-in-the-dark "STILL HOT." The Tree's line, untranslated, on purpose, forever. Gary's clipboard, deliberately under-scoped. Six ideas, zero of them require a new vendor conversation to *design* — they need one to *print*, same blocker as everything else waiting on S135-02.
**TYLER (CONT., to camera, or whatever the garage has instead of one):** We're Mid-Piano. The vendor's still not picked. Ask again later.
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