Latest / Dubious Creatures Presents / The Dubious Book Club Podcast Ep 12 - House of Rayne Part 2

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The Dubious Book Club Podcast Ep 12 - House of Rayne Part 2 · Dubious Creatures Presents

• 0:00
  Welcome back to the Dubious Book Club podcast.
• 0:02
  I'm Aubrey, your host, and say hi other dubious creatures.
• 0:09
  The walls are closing in. So I'm Jasmine pronouns she,
• 0:18
  they and As for where you can find me, I'm at jazz minor 9/10
• 0:27
  at anywhere you got your socials.
• 0:29
  On the rare occasion I want to give out, like actually use my
• 0:33
  socials. Yeah, that is jazz, like the
• 0:36
  music, minor like the Like Mine and Coal 910.
• 0:43
  The meds have worn off and now everything is just so fucking
• 0:48
  dull again. Do.
• 0:49
  You regret your previous actions.
• 0:52
  Not in the slightest. So yes, we're picking up with
• 0:58
  the second-half of House of Rain.
• 1:04
  And before we get into things, I will mention the content
• 1:08
  warnings for this book. They are graphic.
• 1:14
  That's mental trauma, queer phobia, religious trauma, death,
• 1:18
  grief, animal death, mental illness, slut shaming, torture.
• 1:22
  And we'll probably see the majority of this stuff in the
• 1:25
  second-half of the book. The second-half of the book goes
• 1:29
  hard. It was a lot.
• 1:32
  Yeah, it is. We pretty much pick directly up
• 1:36
  with Rain and Salem going to investigate the little Hut at
• 1:43
  the edge of the property. Well, yeah, they do that.
• 1:48
  They bone first, but of. Course, yeah, no, they they do
• 1:53
  bone quite a bit, yeah. Very, very healthy sexual
• 1:59
  relationship. Yeah, I was.
• 2:00
  Going to say always. Like every time I hit a sex
• 2:04
  scene I'm always like God. Like the level of consent that's
• 2:07
  written into this, like the level of communication.
• 2:09
  I'm like why is this not every relationship?
• 2:14
  Like, because there's a reason why all healthy relationships
• 2:20
  are confined to the realms of fiction.
• 2:23
  I mean, it sounds like you just have my luck, but.
• 2:29
  So I'm happily married. Yeah, this is the one of us
• 2:31
  that's happily married. Oh, the one that's happily, I
• 2:34
  mean, I'm somewhat happily single, so I was like.
• 2:38
  Yeah, I just, no, I just do this to, I just do this to torment my
• 2:41
  wife. Hi, Alex.
• 2:43
  I'm going to I'm going to pay for this later, but for now I'm
• 2:47
  free and clear. Torment away.
• 2:52
  But yeah, again, like the level of healthy communication I
• 2:57
  always like and like, it's just so much hotter if you know it's
• 3:01
  healthy, yeah. That's one of the things I
• 3:04
  absolutely love about Harley's characters and books just in
• 3:08
  general. He's having read a bunch of
• 3:11
  them, like a lot of the relationships are having really
• 3:16
  good communication. I know Sawyer, he didn't like
• 3:20
  everything about her soul to take, but the the two of them
• 3:26
  have related communication for for one of them being a demon.
• 3:31
  But look, I was fine with, I was fine with Leon.
• 3:34
  I was fine with his crazy ass demon penis.
• 3:39
  I just thought that there could have been a bit more monster
• 3:42
  fuckery in the book that was specifically that was
• 3:46
  specifically pitched to me as a monster fucker title.
• 3:49
  Leon ain't shit, I'm afraid. OK so that So what I got from
• 3:57
  that is needs more monster fuckery.
• 4:00
  Exactly. And then we've got House of
• 4:01
  Rain, which, granted, nobody's having sex with this particular
• 4:05
  monster, but I still think it's a damn improvement.
• 4:09
  I mean, nobody's having sex specifically with the monster,
• 4:13
  but there is still a lot of sex going on.
• 4:17
  So it's like. It meets the technical
• 4:19
  definitions of monster fuckery. I mean, it's the other
• 4:24
  definition of monster fuckery of the monster.
• 4:30
  First off, the monster. The monster is Rain's dad.
• 4:35
  But like the but also I'd say the monster fucked everything
• 4:42
  over, yeah. The monster certainly does
• 4:45
  fucking fucks up everything, yeah.
• 4:49
  Or, OK, I'd still consider Rain's father the real monster.
• 4:53
  Yeah, true to be very He created.
• 4:55
  A job. Awful.
• 4:56
  I had a punch from the very beginning that he did it.
• 5:02
  And yeah, he did it. Yes he did and we we discover
• 5:08
  his little occultism layer as they they approach the little
• 5:13
  stone house. Yeah, it.
• 5:22
  I mean, perhaps surprising no one, given the cosmic amounts of
• 5:27
  foreshadowing we've gotten up until this point.
• 5:30
  Bad things happen in the creepy shack.
• 5:35
  I mean that is usually what happens in creepy shacks that in
• 5:39
  fuckery. Yeah, so as it turns out, the
• 5:42
  Angel specifically makes its lair in Picard, Balfour's old
• 5:51
  adjunct space. Yeah, that's a, that's a big
• 5:56
  surprise. Yeah.
• 6:00
  I think it's also like the first time we get our first real good
• 6:04
  look at the Angel. And also like the first like
• 6:11
  real good trying to figure out what the Angel is and that the
• 6:16
  Angel isn't that the Angel like actually is something and isn't
• 6:22
  just like natural. Yeah, yeah, it's.
• 6:27
  Again, I I went on a tangent about like a cult horror in the
• 6:32
  previous part in the previous the previous podcast.
• 6:35
  What previous episode? OK, OK, maybe the meds are still
• 6:39
  there. Sorry, I was in Iceland in the
• 6:43
  previous episode. You're good.
• 6:45
  No, it's, it's good. But basically the Angel is not
• 6:50
  going to harp on it too much. But the Angel is to play
• 6:55
  monsters advocate and shocking for me, shocking.
• 7:00
  I know it works because it's mysterious.
• 7:04
  We don't really know that much about it.
• 7:06
  And we're given, even by the time the books wrapped up, we're
• 7:10
  given just enough information about it to make it scary, but
• 7:13
  not enough specific information to sort of, you know, get rid of
• 7:18
  the mystery of the whole affair. Yeah, no, like we still don't
• 7:23
  know exactly what the Angel is by the very end.
• 7:28
  We just know that the wife's murder was that the mother's
• 7:35
  murder was a part of it and that and that also the mother kind of
• 7:43
  works as their guardian Angel, especially at the very.
• 7:51
  Yeah, it's also. I was going to throw that book
• 7:55
  across the plane if it ended sad.
• 7:58
  Yeah, no. It was like, Oh no, is she going
• 8:01
  to murder? Is she going to bury a gay?
• 8:02
  And the answer is no, do. Not bury a gay.
• 8:05
  We want our gays to be happy, and I'm glad they were at the
• 8:08
  end. Yeah, we there are some.
• 8:13
  There are some fucking close goals, though.
• 8:15
  Oh. Very closely.
• 8:17
  Yeah. Yeah, they also find the
• 8:23
  camcorder tapes. Yeah, that was what I'm saying.
• 8:26
  Yeah. They find they find the
• 8:32
  prerequisite horror audio file. Yeah, Jonathan said.
• 8:39
  Because he's so excited. Oh God, don't, don't tell them
• 8:45
  about the the spooky recordings. Fucking somebody from the Magnus
• 8:48
  Archives is going to burst through the wall of the kool-aid
• 8:50
  man. Yeah, they managed to get their
• 8:57
  hands on the tapes and then, well, obviously they're going
• 9:10
  to. I get credit to the book.
• 9:16
  There was a very clear opportunity to just have Rain.
• 9:20
  Sorry to have Rain's dead. Mom, just spell out the whole
• 9:24
  mystery via, you know, these tapes.
• 9:28
  Yeah, but that's not what happens.
• 9:31
  In fact, I was very much expecting it to just be at like,
• 9:36
  a full info dump with the tapes. Yeah, like, just the full OK,
• 9:42
  here's the mystery. Here's how to solve it.
• 9:44
  Go ahead. Yeah, it is certainly not that.
• 9:51
  No, and again like the true mystery of it never fully gets
• 9:55
  solved of the true. Like, other than the dabbling
• 9:59
  with occultism, I don't exactly recall you ever get like, the
• 10:04
  Father's full motive either, other than just going crazy and
• 10:11
  possessive. And yeah.
• 10:15
  Yeah, that certainly sounds like he was a monster, as you said,
• 10:19
  and did monstrous things and something to do with the weird
• 10:24
  book. Yes, which we will get into.
• 10:30
  Yeah, though we're not quite there yet.
• 10:33
  Yeah, like I said, there's a there's a collection of VHS
• 10:41
  tapes. We learn pretty early on that
• 10:44
  not all things are clearly not well in the Balfour household,
• 10:51
  meanwhile. And also the once you realize
• 10:56
  that Rain 1 doesn't stay there by choice, and two, that there
• 11:01
  is a reason why she can't leave. Like I always thought the like,
• 11:07
  like I was thinking the being like, yeah, they're like
• 11:14
  actually being a reason. She's like fully latched, like
• 11:18
  stuck on the island. Yeah, we we mentioned that
• 11:23
  before there's some kind of strange curse that literally
• 11:28
  again it the right the author covers all their bases.
• 11:34
  They like usually when people are on evil Island, the logical
• 11:37
  thing is they want to leave evil island.
• 11:39
  This little curse loophole makes sure that people can't just lead
• 11:43
  evil. Island curse 'cause then we
• 11:46
  wouldn't. Have a story?
• 11:47
  We wouldn't have a story if everyone could just come and go
• 11:50
  from Evil Island as they please. Exactly, my it's it damn it book
• 11:57
  be more poorly written so we can make more jokes.
• 12:02
  Yeah, 'cause I feel like that's like the only one there.
• 12:06
  Like seriously. Or that's like, it can't, it
• 12:10
  can't just, it can't all just be me making disturbing noises over
• 12:14
  the Angel, OK. I mean, yeah.
• 12:18
  There's got to be something else, God damn it.
• 12:21
  Yeah. Yeah, so we, they, they sort of
• 12:28
  take a look at the tapes and then Rain has to go do plot
• 12:32
  things away from Salem and, you know, has to go up and fix the
• 12:38
  like the, the trail cams and stuff.
• 12:45
  Yeah, and in fairness, Salem, Salem is hurt.
• 12:48
  Not get out of the angel's lair unscathed.
• 12:51
  No. Yeah.
• 12:58
  And so Salem heads to go see go stay with Rain's friends and his
• 13:04
  kids and takes all the spooky stuff to study with her.
• 13:12
  Yeah. So specifically she's out with
• 13:14
  Andy, who was the we, we touched briefly on Andy and he's
• 13:22
  basically like the local. Handyman, I guess, yeah.
• 13:27
  Yeah, you know, he runs the hardware store.
• 13:28
  He's got an adorable daughter. Two adorable daughters.
• 13:33
  Yeah. OK, one more makes a point.
• 13:38
  More of a point of being adorable, but yeah.
• 13:40
  Yeah. We'll get too young to have a
• 13:42
  personality look and. The other one has enough
• 13:46
  personality for the two of them, yeah.
• 13:48
  Look, my point is that nothing bad is going to happen to Andy,
• 13:52
  I'm sure. No, I can't possibly foresee
• 13:55
  anything bad happening to him, no.
• 13:58
  Not at all. What are all these physics?
• 14:01
  Yeah, because historically salt of the earth single parents who
• 14:05
  don't have a single bad bone in their body make it out fine in.
• 14:10
  Horror. No.
• 14:11
  No, they're totally not prime cannon fodder for a story.
• 14:16
  Yeah, you know. I mean.
• 14:20
  The character development goblin isn't lurking in the corner as
• 14:24
  we speak. Yeah, I was going to say again,
• 14:28
  nothing bad will ever happen to him.
• 14:33
  Exactly. It's fine, nothing, nothing to
• 14:38
  worry about. And you know, even even I'm
• 14:44
  getting my characters messed up. Salem is looking through all of
• 14:50
  these photos and goes, this is creepy.
• 14:54
  I think there's a person being like taken apart in these
• 14:57
  photos. Yeah.
• 15:02
  And then and yeah, trying to think, is this.
• 15:10
  Was this also where she, like, found the Bruins, like being
• 15:15
  carved into the bones, too? I think she saw.
• 15:19
  I think I saw them on the photos, I think.
• 15:22
  Yeah. Yeah, there's, there's picture
• 15:25
  again that the Polaroids vary deliberately.
• 15:30
  The VHS tapes and the Polaroids were both very deliberately
• 15:33
  hidden in the creepy shack. So we can process of elimination
• 15:38
  says this is probably, you know, Picard's doing.
• 15:43
  Yeah, because I mean, who else would know about the creepy
• 15:48
  shack and would totally good luck to that creepy shack to
• 15:51
  hide their creepy things. Exactly.
• 15:57
  And like, dude was all. Yeah.
• 16:00
  Currently, no, it's fine. It's just that, you know, as
• 16:03
  we're progressing again, we're there's a bit of a fake out
• 16:06
  where like, Oh no, the girls are separated and then nothing
• 16:11
  happens. Yeah, I was going to say 2
• 16:15
  adorable little girls. Like usually plot demands
• 16:21
  something happened to them, so yeah.
• 16:23
  But. Murphy's Law demands that
• 16:25
  something absolutely horrifying happened to somebody here, and
• 16:28
  eventually we get there because Black Ridge is in the midst of a
• 16:32
  truly abominable winter storm and the electricity goes out.
• 16:37
  Of course 'cause like why would that not like plot demands some.
• 16:46
  Plot needs a sacrifice. Exactly.
• 16:49
  And like otherwise, there's no story.
• 16:52
  If she just goes out, comes back, everything is fine.
• 16:57
  And that's that's what something interesting happens.
• 17:04
  So Rain has well, she's out trying to fix the cell tower.
• 17:09
  Rain has another encounter with the Angel, and the Angel thus
• 17:12
  far has lured its victims by mimicking other people's voices.
• 17:16
  Yes. But then.
• 17:21
  But then it starts to try and lure out Rain by using her
• 17:29
  mother's voice. Yes.
• 17:34
  Which, if you're paying attention, dear reader, you'll
• 17:38
  note the there is. Thus far, the monster has only
• 17:43
  copied the voices of people that it has killed or otherwise
• 17:49
  encountered, but Rain's mom died before the Angel first appeared.
• 18:05
  Yet somehow the Angel knows that, knows who Vrain's mom was.
• 18:15
  Is I wonder, I wonder, I wonder about that.
• 18:29
  Sure, something's. Definitely up in there.
• 18:33
  Totally totally not just sprinkling some bread crumbs for
• 18:36
  important plot developments later on SO.
• 18:38
  Foreshadowing is a narrative device in which.
• 18:43
  We have to pay royalties to H Palmer guy, yes.
• 18:49
  The thing continues to get up to shenanigans with our
• 18:58
  deuteragonists. Very.
• 19:02
  Newly, technically there's a Co protagonist because they're both
• 19:08
  equally the protagonist. Well, a deuteragonist is usually
• 19:12
  like second in command. Honestly it can be both for
• 19:16
  either. The thing is, Deuterag
• 19:19
  deuteragonist literally just means there's two of them.
• 19:22
  You get two different Povs. Sometimes you get more than one,
• 19:25
  sometimes it alternates. I just say it because it's fun
• 19:29
  to say deuteragonists. Oh yeah, no, I get.
• 19:31
  It yeah, but yeah, Co protagonist also works.
• 19:39
  Regardless. Salem very nearly gets got
• 19:43
  because the damn thing decides to decides to start mimicking
• 19:49
  her not quite girlfriend. Yeah, they were not quite
• 19:54
  girlfriends at that point. They weren't exactly fully
• 19:57
  girlfriends. Yeah, they were.
• 19:59
  The girlfriend meter is at least more than halfway full, but
• 20:02
  we're not quite there yet. Yeah, trying to think of when
• 20:06
  the girlfriend meter hit full. We haven't quite gotten to that
• 20:10
  part of the dialogue tree yet. We're getting there.
• 20:15
  Yeah, unfortunately, fortunately for Salem, she is saved by the
• 20:20
  timely, timely intervention of best boy Loki.
• 20:26
  Oh, he is the best boy. He is the goodest of boys.
• 20:31
  Yeah, and I can confirm, Loki. Loki survives.
• 20:36
  Okay, nothing. I'm not going to say Loki.
• 20:39
  Also go into the realm of things that would have caused me to
• 20:43
  throw the book across the plain, so yeah.
• 20:48
  Yeah, but it gets hairy for a bit for Loki.
• 20:51
  I'm not going to lie, Loki definitely sustained some battle
• 20:53
  damage, but Loki's fine. Loki survives.
• 20:57
  No dogs die in this book. Rain and Salem get more messed
• 21:02
  up than Loki ever does. No dogs were killed in the
• 21:07
  making of this book. Exactly.
• 21:11
  Actually, well, we don't know for sure, but in the story,
• 21:14
  yeah. Yeah, men get killed on the
• 21:16
  page, but yes. So yeah, that and due to Loki
• 21:24
  and everything our our two protagonists are finally able to
• 21:27
  get back together. And Rain is real fucked up.
• 21:35
  She crashed the ATV and it's kind of all like messed up so.
• 21:40
  So now it's all up to Salem to drag her girlfriend home.
• 21:44
  Yeah, and there's a chapter. Chapter 35 is literally called
• 21:50
  Fucking Good Girl. Jesus Christ.
• 21:55
  Yeah, Jesus Christ, of course. You do know they're dynamic,
• 21:58
  right? I know, but it clearly the
• 22:05
  author knows other authors who use subtext and they're cowards.
• 22:10
  Yes, yes they are. We really, we really like that
• 22:13
  phrase here. Dubious creatures.
• 22:16
  What subtext? No, cowards are so.
• 22:21
  What? Yeah, that's what I get paid to
• 22:23
  do. OK, this is my.
• 22:24
  First episode I need to get in on all the inside jokes so.
• 22:29
  Yeah, no, if you if you pay attention to the soundboard in
• 22:32
  the Discord server. Yeah, it's not a something, it's
• 22:36
  an inside. Katie has made sure it's no
• 22:38
  longer an inside joke. That fucking clip will haunt me
• 22:41
  for the rest of my days. Look, I used to.
• 22:50
  There was a time of my life to make ends meet where I would do
• 22:55
  the amateur voice over for certain.
• 23:01
  You know, texts of a salacious nature.
• 23:10
  Yeah. And we'll and.
• 23:15
  What? Can I say I needed the money?
• 23:20
  I mean, money is money, money is money.
• 23:23
  Yeah, I don't know. And no, you don't get any more
• 23:27
  information than that. I don't need more people digging
• 23:30
  those particular skeletons up. You'll probably find them if you
• 23:33
  take enough on Reddit. I mean, yeah.
• 23:36
  Shut up. I know what some reddits they
• 23:40
  would be posted in. Yeah, So anyway, moving.
• 23:48
  On anyway, back to where we were.
• 23:53
  Good girl. I'm not fucking saying it.
• 24:00
  You got to pay for that privilege.
• 24:03
  How much? No.
• 24:05
  My going rates $20.00 an hour moving on.
• 24:17
  Yes, anyway. Salem gets rain back, does your
• 24:22
  best to patch rain up, does have to call on the doctor and you
• 24:27
  know, just a lot of establishing relationship and watching them
• 24:30
  grow closer. But we haven't like hit the
• 24:36
  point of no return yet. The day at all.
• 24:40
  Yeah. Everything with my desk.
• 24:45
  Good boy, Isaac, Good boy. So, yeah, again, we have.
• 24:51
  We have a moment to breathe. We have a moment to recuperate.
• 24:54
  We have some time to, well, some time to like, talk to Andy and
• 25:01
  Doctor Hale and watch as Salem continues to be just horrendous
• 25:05
  on Maine even. Yeah.
• 25:12
  I'm bad. Horrendous.
• 25:18
  Just truly. I mean, granted, I know.
• 25:22
  I know what we're here for. Yeah.
• 25:25
  You know, I'm fully supportive of women's wrongs.
• 25:30
  It's just like I would not. That would not be my reaction
• 25:34
  after being nearly killed by a six limbed creepypasta.
• 25:40
  But you know, that's just me. You know, more power to her.
• 25:45
  That that's just me. Like I'm not, I'm not clearly
• 25:48
  I'm not the battle lesbian. Guess in the situation, you
• 25:52
  know, no one's ever accused me of that.
• 25:57
  No, no they haven't. Been accused of many things.
• 26:01
  That's not a lot of them. Eventually, eventually,
• 26:04
  unfortunately, the sexy times must end.
• 26:07
  And as we get a bit more into the stuff that they recovered
• 26:13
  from the shack, they start to wonder how if that is, if that
• 26:24
  is Marion's body, Marion again, for those who might have missed
• 26:29
  it, that's Reign's mom. If that is Marion's body, how
• 26:34
  did how is she in these pictures if she was buried shortly after
• 26:39
  she was murdered? And if so, what's in the coffin?
• 26:44
  Exactly. Or who's in the coffin or who's
• 26:51
  what, Yeah. I have a meme for this.
• 26:59
  I don't know why I have. A meme for this.
• 27:01
  I don't know why I have. You, you come prepared.
• 27:08
  This meme just sits in my personal discord server and I do
• 27:11
  not remember the context of it, and I just remember that it
• 27:14
  exists occasionally. I love it.
• 27:18
  So yeah, they they go out too. We're out here doing a little
• 27:22
  bit of, you know, girls. The girls will be girls getting
• 27:25
  up to a bit of brief exhumation. Yeah.
• 27:28
  I mean, it's totally normal girl behavior.
• 27:32
  Look, if you and your former one night stand don't go.
• 27:36
  Out becoming a little more than a one night stand.
• 27:39
  Yeah, you know, if you and your almost girlfriend don't go out
• 27:43
  to exhume your dead mob's corpse to solve a generational mystery.
• 27:48
  And what are you doing really? Yeah, like that's like the best
• 27:51
  like date, isn't it? Guys, where's everybody going?
• 28:03
  I guess they they dig up the body and surprise, surprise,
• 28:12
  there's not a body in there. No, no there is not.
• 28:16
  There is a book. Yes.
• 28:21
  A strangely again, the book is deliberately described as
• 28:26
  smelling strangely like smoky almost, which I'm like, OK, like
• 28:32
  nobody's just nobody's saying the hail Satan, but.
• 28:36
  You know, it's like kind of given that.
• 28:40
  Again and again, the book is very conservative with its
• 28:44
  supernatural elements. Or at least it's very
• 28:47
  conservative, like the specifics of a supernatural elements.
• 28:50
  It's kind of left up to your imagination what form of, you
• 28:55
  know, shenanigans old Picard was getting up to with this.
• 29:00
  Yeah, like that's not the point. That like the exact type of cult
• 29:05
  shenanigans isn't really that important.
• 29:11
  Just other than just that he was getting up to that.
• 29:14
  Also was it in French or something?
• 29:17
  Or yeah, it was trying. To remember what language it
• 29:20
  was. Sorry, it's been a couple weeks.
• 29:22
  No. It it, it does say that the book
• 29:24
  is specifically in France. And here's the thing that really
• 29:29
  doesn't narrow it down, because there are a lot of it's there is
• 29:36
  a surprising number of French grimoires just out there in the
• 29:41
  world. I mean, of course.
• 29:43
  If you're kind. Of yeah.
• 29:46
  And like, if you're going to write a grimoire, it's like the
• 29:49
  great language for that. It's a, it's a Romance language,
• 29:53
  you know, everything sounds better.
• 29:57
  Exactly. Yeah, like specifically there's
• 30:00
  like there's the grand, there's one literally called the Grand
• 30:04
  Albert, which doesn't sound very threatening.
• 30:09
  LeBron Albert. Yeah.
• 30:12
  You know, there's a you know, I think it could be out there.
• 30:16
  Yeah. Like Le Grand grimoire probably
• 30:18
  sounds a bit more menacing, I guess.
• 30:22
  You know, there's the Dragon Rouge.
• 30:24
  There's there's a lot. So again, it it doesn't really
• 30:32
  it, it doesn't really narrow it down, but it doesn't have to.
• 30:35
  Now there's something about it that reminded me of how horror
• 30:39
  movies in the 80s and 90s where they just a thing is a thing.
• 30:45
  It doesn't. They don't have to go and be
• 30:48
  like, this is where the book is, this is where it came from
• 30:51
  because it's not important to this story.
• 30:54
  It's a creepy fucking book that someone used to summon a demon,
• 30:57
  and that's about how much what? It needs to be is exactly what
• 30:59
  it needs to be. And like, yeah, no, considering
• 31:05
  I do respect the not including extraneous details.
• 31:10
  We don't need the provenance of this book.
• 31:13
  You know, a, a, a thing is a thing is a thing.
• 31:15
  You know, we don't, we don't need to know.
• 31:18
  We get a lot more out of picards notations in set book than
• 31:24
  really anything in the book itself.
• 31:26
  Yeah, which is a yeah. This band was up to some
• 31:30
  bullshit. Yeah.
• 31:34
  Yeah, all in the House of God too.
• 31:38
  Yeah, like Jesus, like. Demonic summonings in your House
• 31:45
  of God? It's more likely than you think.
• 31:48
  I mean, yeah, no, actually that kind of tracks.
• 31:55
  But, you know, because it's early in the morning and they
• 31:58
  don't want to risk going back to the the bed and breakfast while
• 32:02
  it's still dark, They take shelter in the church and, you
• 32:06
  know, like fire, so it's warm and they don't like freeze.
• 32:10
  And then first thing in the morning, guess who?
• 32:13
  Shows up uninvited for sure. Yes, fucking Ruth.
• 32:21
  Yeah. Of course.
• 32:28
  Fucking Ruth. Fucking Ruth.
• 32:31
  Fucking Ruth Ruth. Get some instant karma though.
• 32:35
  Yeah. Well, also a little bit more
• 32:38
  development too. Like a bit more background too.
• 32:42
  That she and Rain used to be like best friends when they were
• 32:46
  kids and Ruth was her like first kiss.
• 32:49
  Yeah and yeah. There's some internalized queer
• 32:53
  phobia there. Totally 100%.
• 32:56
  Which internalized queer phobia among religious people?
• 33:00
  Yeah, that tracks. Yeah.
• 33:04
  But it's OK because we all know Ruth's here for one reason,
• 33:08
  narratively speaking, and it's not to tell us about old Jesus.
• 33:13
  No, she already did that. So.
• 33:15
  Yeah, no, it's so we can watch her die horribly.
• 33:17
  It is so that we can watch her meet old Jesus.
• 33:27
  Yeah, so the Angel shows up almost like, well, that's my
• 33:32
  cue. Exactly.
• 33:34
  It was right on cue of. Course.
• 33:36
  I mean, it's been a little too long since our buddy the Angels
• 33:41
  showed up. I know.
• 33:43
  And admittedly, this was the one time where it was because again,
• 33:48
  Ruth was like waving all of the death flags at this point.
• 33:51
  At this point I was just imagining it like holding a
• 33:53
  little cue card, like all right, and her line is right here.
• 34:01
  We go of. Course.
• 34:06
  Yeah, that that pit. Admittedly, I was like, yeah,
• 34:08
  OK, you know, we're on the clock here.
• 34:14
  Yeah, like we have to get this moving.
• 34:18
  The the rest of the book kind of just kicks off from here.
• 34:22
  This is the day, New mall. It's the point of no return.
• 34:27
  Has the point of no return. OK, we had.
• 34:33
  To let's Once you start, you're not going to stop.
• 34:41
  But yeah. But yeah, they do.
• 34:45
  So they do get pulled out of the line of fire by Gerard and we we
• 34:55
  learned a bit more about the history of the Balfour family.
• 34:59
  Once they managed to like, they barricade the door and the Angel
• 35:02
  eventually stalks off. Because it's daytime.
• 35:07
  Yeah. Yeah, we, we, we learned a bit
• 35:13
  more specifically about South Gerhard.
• 35:16
  Is he? He is the local pastor and he is
• 35:20
  by all accounts a pretty good guy.
• 35:26
  The main thing is that his brother was not well.
• 35:33
  No. That's putting it lightly.
• 35:36
  And also he led Gerard to believe that that the mother was
• 35:49
  not well. Yeah, yeah.
• 35:54
  So apparently it all started when Rain's great grandfather
• 36:00
  acquired this this book that they found all the way back
• 36:03
  during World War One. In Germany.
• 36:09
  Deutschland. You know where the historically
• 36:12
  the good only good things have happened during.
• 36:14
  Ever been interested in the occult in Germany?
• 36:17
  No one has. Ever.
• 36:19
  Oh, never. Yeah, nothing bad has ever
• 36:23
  happened in Germany in regards to that.
• 36:31
  Yeah, no, nothing. It was a very nice, peaceful
• 36:36
  time in Germany. Yeah, irregardless.
• 36:41
  Irregardless the I know irregardless isn't a word, but I
• 36:46
  like saying it. Fuck off.
• 36:48
  Word is regardless. Yeah, I like deuteragonist.
• 36:53
  I will continue to say nonsense until somebody stops me.
• 36:57
  Irregardless would mean, not regardless.
• 37:00
  Yes, I know it's a double negative.
• 37:02
  It's fun to say. Leave me alone.
• 37:05
  I know. Sounds cool.
• 37:07
  Irregardless, yeah. So the history of the Balfour
• 37:12
  family, basically, they have had this book on them since like
• 37:17
  World War One, but Picard apparently was struggling with
• 37:28
  family life. The The pregnancy with Marian
• 37:32
  was unplanned. It was the result of a
• 37:37
  indiscretion. Yeah, you can feel the quotation
• 37:41
  marks there during a trip to Canada and.
• 37:49
  What's that sound? Someone loading a shotgun.
• 37:53
  Yeah, regardless, it seems that Picard was apparently of the
• 38:07
  opinion that God wanted him to do bigger and grander things
• 38:12
  than just, you know, settle down and have a family and stuff.
• 38:20
  Because again, the general. Things.
• 38:23
  Yeah, the general gist we get from Gerard is that he was very
• 38:28
  worried about his little brother from the get go.
• 38:34
  And that in particular, he always found it very, he found
• 38:37
  it very suspect that his brother made very wild claims about
• 38:44
  Marian, about her like fucking wandering off or like flying
• 38:52
  into rages and shit. You know, like, typical, like,
• 38:55
  oh, she's come down with a case of the hysterical woman disease.
• 38:58
  It's just like gate keep girl buffs.
• 39:01
  Exactly. And then Gerard had the
• 39:05
  audacity, the fucking cheek, to be like, have you thought about
• 39:09
  maybe seeking counselling? The normal thing.
• 39:14
  And it was like, no, the horrible, horrible idea
• 39:18
  counseling. I know And that was the last
• 39:22
  time apparently they spoke on the subject, which Gerard,
• 39:26
  Buddy, I'm not saying that I'm not saying you should have
• 39:29
  immediately like gone to murder, like I I'm not saying you should
• 39:33
  have immediately like wrote an alarm bell there.
• 39:36
  But like you, I'm not saying that this dude should have seen
• 39:43
  the horrifying murder coming. But I'm also, you know, man, if
• 39:50
  it walks like a duck and it talks like a duck.
• 39:54
  Yeah, murder like a duck. Yeah.
• 40:00
  I was definitely going to say like, yeah, like, you know,
• 40:05
  something is up there. Yeah, and then we moved to
• 40:14
  something more fun, like a pillow Fort.
• 40:20
  Which are fun. Honestly fair.
• 40:25
  When in doubt, pillow Fort, you know yes.
• 40:27
  Exactly, I'm pretty sure the team out breathing has built a
• 40:30
  pillow Fort. They absolutely have.
• 40:34
  They absolutely have. Yeah, do not breathing.
• 40:40
  It's the vampire coterie in our show.
• 40:43
  Oh yeah. The name's not technically
• 40:46
  Canon, but it look, I can't. There's very little you might
• 40:52
  think as the storyteller for the Chronicle.
• 40:55
  Don't you have some say in that? No, no, you shouldn't know about
• 40:59
  No. The fact that you think I have
• 41:03
  any control over these fuckers is flattering.
• 41:05
  But. Yes, pillow Fort has happened.
• 41:12
  Food happens. Another really really well
• 41:16
  written sex scene that I have nothing to critique about other
• 41:19
  than it's really good and I wish I could write sex scenes this
• 41:21
  good. Yeah, I really like she should
• 41:24
  like teach a course on how to write sex scenes.
• 41:28
  But seriously, I would take it. Of course, same here.
• 41:35
  I'm admittedly being like OK, but can we get back to the
• 41:38
  monster? I want to I.
• 41:39
  Want to see them I. Want to see?
• 41:42
  Them sexy sex. I don't, I need more of the
• 41:46
  greebly creature with the multiple limbs but gay.
• 41:51
  I know, gay but also butt monster.
• 41:54
  I mean, we finally, we finally kind of get an answer to what
• 42:00
  the fuck the ghost is and what the fuck the ghost is doing.
• 42:04
  Yeah, and it is a genuinely disturbing scene.
• 42:09
  And props to body horror gets me.
• 42:15
  It's one of those things with me.
• 42:16
  It's like, you know, that that really gets me where I live.
• 42:20
  So props to, again, props to the author for an effective.
• 42:25
  Yeah, for an effective scene. And this was the bit where I'm
• 42:26
  like, OK, this, this thing either is or somehow is
• 42:37
  connected to the late Marian Balfour.
• 42:41
  The answer is D all of the above.
• 42:44
  Yeah, which again, I like how we never necessarily, we never
• 42:52
  necessarily get it confirmed to our face.
• 42:56
  Isn't that bad? But we don't there's enough
• 42:59
  evidence to like make a reasonable guess here.
• 43:07
  So the ghost shows up to Salem and points her to the final
• 43:12
  videotape, which is pretty much Reigns mom saying I'm going to
• 43:21
  try and get us out of here because I'm worried my husband
• 43:25
  might murder me. That'll do it.
• 43:33
  Yeah, that, I think there's pretty good confirmation that's
• 43:41
  yeah on, I mean, definitely says not a coincidence most likely,
• 43:50
  but she happened to die right then.
• 43:55
  Pretty soon after making that video.
• 43:58
  Yeah. What's really ironic is that we
• 44:03
  learned early on that Picard was one of the first casualties of
• 44:08
  the Angel. He couldn't control his own
• 44:12
  creation. Yeah, now.
• 44:16
  His creation specifically sought him out first.
• 44:21
  Yeah, again, we don't when we don't get it confirmed.
• 44:24
  But, you know, draw your own conclusions.
• 44:27
  Or his creation got revenge on him.
• 44:31
  Yeah, but we have absolutely zero time to process this
• 44:38
  because we get an emergency call from Seahawk.
• 44:42
  The monster is at Andy's. Oh well, you said nothing bad
• 44:48
  happens to Andy. Well, I guess they want those
• 44:55
  word death flags. Yeah, Unfortunately poor Andy
• 44:59
  does not survive. As we're very much death flags.
• 45:06
  Yeah. Yeah, it I will say, given how
• 45:14
  the book ends, do we really need to sacrifice?
• 45:19
  Do we really need to sacrifice Andy of all people so that the
• 45:22
  two of them could be in lesbians together with Gabies?
• 45:25
  But you know, that's just me. Yeah, I mean, I guess they could
• 45:30
  have had their own babies. They.
• 45:31
  Could have they could have adopted.
• 45:33
  I'm just saying like I know. Well, they did.
• 45:36
  Yeah, I look at at mild tangent. It doesn't really detract from
• 45:40
  the overall quality of the words.
• 45:41
  It's like, God damn it, Andy was solid.
• 45:45
  Andy. Wasn't.
• 45:46
  Alive and Andy was a good guy and he was like, only the day.
• 45:50
  I'd die young. Yeah, yeah.
• 45:54
  Quicker than anybody else. Now kind of just picked some
• 45:59
  rando up. Well, OK, it's been picking
• 46:01
  randos. Off the street a while, yeah.
• 46:03
  It's been, it's been picking randos off for a while.
• 46:06
  Like they needed. They needed it to kill a name
• 46:10
  character that wasn't. Important to kill for the plot
• 46:14
  like otherwise. Like they need the stakes.
• 46:19
  You need the stakes there. You need you need the stakes.
• 46:23
  The stakes are medium. Yeah, but Rain and Salem are
• 46:30
  able to Save the Children. They are fine.
• 46:33
  Andy is not fine, but the children are fine.
• 46:37
  Yeah, but in the chaos, the Angel grabs Salem and pulls her
• 46:43
  into the Burrow. I'm excited.
• 46:52
  Yeah. And so we sort of get to see a
• 46:55
  little bit more about like it's been kind of burrowing under the
• 46:58
  island a little bit into all of these areas and the borough
• 47:03
  takes them to the lighthouse, which is it's like nest.
• 47:13
  Interesting because it was also Marion's.
• 47:19
  Yeah, exactly. Favorite place to go out to.
• 47:23
  That's like an interesting. And where she was murdered
• 47:25
  parallel there. Yeah, no.
• 47:29
  No, it's a flesh nest. Yeah, yeah, I had, I had a.
• 47:34
  Flashback to certain meat hives in that moment.
• 47:40
  Yeah, we don't need to get into the meat hives.
• 47:42
  We. Don't need to get into the mean
• 47:43
  hives we don't have time to get into the meat hives we.
• 47:45
  Don't know, There simply isn't time to get into the meat hives.
• 47:49
  We don't have time to unpack that.
• 47:50
  I feel like there's context I'm missing.
• 47:53
  Yes, but. It is a it is a very, very old
• 47:58
  inside joke evolving an old vampire chronicle fly.
• 48:01
  I, I, you should never get. Look, the point here is that you
• 48:06
  should never give me creative freedom.
• 48:10
  OK, but sounds like giving you creative freedom is fun.
• 48:14
  But it's fun for. Me exactly.
• 48:17
  It's fun for you. It's horrifying for us, so it's
• 48:19
  fun. Yeah, like that, you know, I'm
• 48:22
  having a good time. I mean, yeah, the.
• 48:30
  Life of storyteller tormenting the players.
• 48:33
  That's like the whole point. If the players aren't, if the
• 48:36
  players and the characters aren't suffering, then it's not
• 48:39
  good enough. Look, I just want, I just want
• 48:43
  to put everybody in this little, this little container so that I
• 48:46
  can, you know, this little Tupperware so I can shake them
• 48:49
  and hear their delightful screams from time to time.
• 48:54
  Fair enough. Yeah, what were we talking
• 48:57
  about? Right The the flesh nest, the.
• 48:59
  Meat hive. Yeah, the flesh nest, the other
• 49:02
  meat. Yeah, it is.
• 49:06
  Yeah, it is. It is rank down here and it is
• 49:12
  decorated. It seemed the the creature
• 49:15
  apparently takes trophies like jewelry and scraps of clothing.
• 49:24
  Body parts. Totally not creepy at all, but
• 49:30
  yeah. Luckily, we set up earlier in
• 49:33
  this book that this this lighthouse was not electric.
• 49:37
  It ran on kerosene. So guess what we have in
• 49:40
  abundance? Kerosene.
• 49:44
  Question mark. Yeah.
• 49:50
  Yeah, and the one Melanie, her name's Melanie.
• 49:54
  I've been calling her. I've been calling her Marion.
• 49:57
  Yeah. Damn it, you got me into that
• 50:01
  too. Yeah, I'm sorry.
• 50:04
  I finished this like 2 weeks ago so like.
• 50:06
  I I deceived. And I'm bad with names IRL too.
• 50:10
  And Melanie. Her name is Melanie.
• 50:13
  Melanie, Her name is Mel. The mom's name, Dead mom's name
• 50:17
  is Melanie Belfour. I thought it was Marion for some
• 50:20
  goddamn reason. It's.
• 50:21
  Not very close. Hey wait, I'm also like, wait, a
• 50:24
  dead mom? Is this a Disney movie?
• 50:27
  It's all what? There's always a dead mom,
• 50:29
  doesn't matter what you're reading.
• 50:30
  There's always has to die. I wonder if she had a braid
• 50:38
  maybe? When putting together your Dead
• 50:41
  mom starter kit. Remember they have to have the
• 50:46
  side the loose side braid. They've got to be, you know, be
• 50:54
  the better parent. Oh, always optional starter.
• 50:58
  Kind of, yeah. Optional starter play concludes
• 51:02
  impeccable impeccable cooking skills and or some strange
• 51:05
  hobbies. Yes, which we have both I feel
• 51:12
  and maybe I don't know. Well, it's too bad because she's
• 51:15
  bones now. OK.
• 51:16
  Yeah, like. Just bounds.
• 51:20
  Salem is in the fucking flesh nest.
• 51:23
  And once you know it, there's a there's a skeleton.
• 51:26
  There's a skeleton carved with unrecognizable symbols,
• 51:32
  surrounded by the melted remnants of candles.
• 51:36
  It it it, it's pretty damn clear what went down here.
• 51:40
  Yes, yeah, and it's pretty damn clear those Polaroids were
• 51:47
  definitely something. Yeah.
• 51:51
  So, so we're in the, we're, we're in the, we're at the
• 52:03
  bottom of the ninth here. Like we're this is the, this is
• 52:08
  the climax. Yeah.
• 52:12
  Y'all. Know what space is loaded.
• 52:14
  Y'all know what's about to happen?
• 52:17
  Climax. Listen.
• 52:24
  No, no. There has been a few other
• 52:25
  climaxes, but. Listen, don't, don't fucking
• 52:31
  ruin this for me. Y'all got your, you all got your
• 52:37
  cespian Lex OK? Let me have this.
• 52:41
  OK, here you. Let me just just let me have
• 52:47
  this. Take it then.
• 52:49
  You will have this. So anyway, yeah, Salem is well,
• 52:58
  can you say fucked and and obviously, you know, rain
• 53:07
  obviously got to go save her distressed damsel of.
• 53:12
  Course, that's like a given. Yeah.
• 53:20
  The main thing is that, well, the good.
• 53:23
  The good news is that rain is fairly Rain is fairly pragmatic
• 53:30
  about it. Despite the horror of
• 53:32
  discovering their mom's remains in this state, they already got
• 53:38
  the clue from the Mac Guffin book that the bones are the
• 53:42
  mystical tether or whatnot, So, well, time to set this shit on
• 53:48
  fire. Exactly.
• 53:49
  Yeah, good thing there's a lot of kerosene here.
• 53:53
  Yeah, again, perfectly, perfectly reasonable.
• 54:02
  When in doubt, set it all on fire.
• 54:05
  You know, it usually is how you get out of a lot of things.
• 54:09
  Let's take it out. A lot of things, specifically in
• 54:11
  horror films, honestly. Yeah, just burn it to the
• 54:14
  ground. Look, you're a Monster Hunter
• 54:18
  and you're unsure how to kill a thing?
• 54:19
  Set it on fire. Yep, generally works, but there
• 54:32
  is there's a moment where it looks like rain's not going to
• 54:39
  make it. Oh.
• 54:44
  Because she does the self sacrifice thing.
• 54:48
  No, we're not burying gays here. No, we are not.
• 54:53
  Even though she literally says all the things that you do
• 54:57
  before you die a glorious death. Yeah.
• 55:02
  Except the die of Gloria's death.
• 55:07
  Yeah, so she blows the Angel the fuck up and and shoves before
• 55:16
  that. Shoves Salem off the lighthouse.
• 55:18
  So got it. Got really lucky that apparently
• 55:22
  the water's deep enough under the lighthouse that didn't hit
• 55:25
  any. Rocks.
• 55:26
  Yeah, about to say that nobody hits the rocks on these things.
• 55:31
  The rocks might as well be big throw pillows.
• 55:33
  But they are. You didn't know that.
• 55:36
  Surprise. I I OK the fucking first of all,
• 55:41
  I lived in the Pacific Northwest like a year and a half.
• 55:45
  It was bad. Second of all, yes, the rocks,
• 55:52
  they are there. They're not throw pillows.
• 55:54
  Yeah, I know they're not throw pillows.
• 55:56
  It's not like I don't have family that lives pretty much in
• 55:58
  this exact where this is based off of.
• 56:03
  They're sharp and they're belligerent and there's too many
• 56:05
  of them. Yes, OK.
• 56:07
  And again. And the water is also freezing.
• 56:10
  Yes, and if you hit the water from a certain height, it's like
• 56:12
  fucking concrete. It doesn't matter.
• 56:17
  Like at a certain point gravity wins again, You know, we're
• 56:23
  we're in the last fucking pages of this of this book.
• 56:27
  It it would be pretty unsatisfying if everybody just
• 56:30
  fucking died. I mean, at least they'd be able
• 56:35
  to be happy and gay in heaven. I mean for all my fucking
• 56:39
  pedantry, the fact of the matter is the reason why a lot of these
• 56:42
  stereotypes exist is because at the end of the day, it's just
• 56:45
  not narratively satisfying for things to be realistic, because
• 56:49
  I've always maintained that the story does not have to be
• 56:52
  realistic in the least to be good.
• 56:56
  Now. People who are generally
• 56:59
  obsessed with realism are also the sort of people who can't
• 57:02
  come. It's also like realism, like you
• 57:07
  really want to read a book about real life.
• 57:11
  Yeah, have you? Like you read books to escape
• 57:14
  real life? Yeah, I will never understand
• 57:18
  the obsession with trying to make fiction more realistic
• 57:22
  because. There's a whole genre, a whole
• 57:25
  medium, you know, called nonfiction, which is about the
• 57:28
  realistic stuff. So I've never understood the
• 57:32
  obsession with making the fiction more realistic when that
• 57:37
  is entirely when the dictionary definition of fiction is not
• 57:42
  based in reality. Yeah.
• 57:45
  Again, I suspect that they I suspect they just can't come.
• 57:49
  That that is my current, that is my working theory.
• 57:53
  Yeah. My work be.
• 57:54
  Buried too, yeah. But you know who is going to be
• 58:00
  able to. Oh yeah, we know exactly.
• 58:03
  Because at the 11th hour, the ghost of Melody Balfour pulls A
• 58:11
  Deus Ex machina so that Salem can get her girl before she
• 58:16
  drowns. You know, you know, Good for.
• 58:20
  Good on you, Melanie. Good on.
• 58:22
  You and you know what? I'm OK with it honestly because
• 58:25
  it feels pretty satisfying after everything that's just gone down
• 58:29
  good. On you, Melanie, for realizing
• 58:32
  we were almost going to bury some gays.
• 58:36
  And you know, self sacrifice from the afterlife to save your
• 58:41
  daughter. And yeah.
• 58:49
  And we we have an epilogue. We do.
• 58:52
  We cut to we we cut to 3/3. No doubt incredibly sapphic
• 58:57
  years later. Oh, they were most likely
• 59:00
  extremely sapphic after all of that and.
• 59:02
  They were, they moved as literally to the center of the
• 59:05
  country, as far away from water as they can get.
• 59:09
  You know, I don't blame Alorado. Yeah, I don't blame them.
• 59:17
  Yeah, I think if I went through that, I would not want to ever
• 59:19
  be in the Pacific Northwest again.
• 59:22
  Yeah, I think they'd be figuring out how to peace out as quick as
• 59:27
  YEAH. Because especially.
• 59:30
  With the whole one of them literally being trapped there.
• 59:34
  I think as soon as you have the key is then peace.
• 59:38
  Yeah, but you know, they do end up.
• 59:43
  They do end up adopting Rebecca and Rachel, which again, you
• 59:50
  know, at this point, why not? I mean, like, yeah, I mean, they
• 59:58
  needed someone. Yeah.
• 1:00:05
  They needed someone. They both talk about how, like,
• 1:00:10
  they've been getting therapy and, you know, working and
• 1:00:14
  becoming better. And it's like, I, I kind of like
• 1:00:16
  it. Acknowledges that everything is
• 1:00:18
  not magically better now that the problem.
• 1:00:20
  Has not solved. Exactly.
• 1:00:22
  Yeah, that's like very much. Still highly traumatized?
• 1:00:27
  Yeah, no, still still getting nervous every time sundown
• 1:00:32
  occurs. Which, again, fair.
• 1:00:36
  Fair, I mean, I can totally understand why there'd be PTSD
• 1:00:40
  there. Yeah, nothing about that
• 1:00:43
  situation was OK. Yeah.
• 1:00:46
  But it does end, the book does end, with Rain proposing to
• 1:00:52
  Salem. Yeah, I'm like, wait, were they
• 1:00:58
  ever girlfriends or did they just completely skip the
• 1:01:00
  spouses? I I feel that's they would say
• 1:01:06
  three years later, I imagine they must have been that's.
• 1:01:08
  That's like forever in lesbian years.
• 1:01:11
  Yeah, I was going to say. Three, that's a slow for lesbian
• 1:01:15
  years. Work is yeah.
• 1:01:17
  Either you haul it in on day 2 or your best friend for like an
• 1:01:22
  entire decade before even realizing there could possibly
• 1:01:26
  be anything. Look, this is in between.
• 1:01:29
  As a as a lesbian anthropologist, this is what we
• 1:01:33
  refer to as the long U-Haul. Very.
• 1:01:38
  Long U-Haul? I mean no, no technically.
• 1:01:41
  Technically it was a very short U-Haul.
• 1:01:43
  I mean she totally U hauled in. I mean, staying at the person's
• 1:01:50
  bed and breakfast and immediately fucking them again,
• 1:01:52
  I'd go with is a pretty quick U-Haul.
• 1:01:55
  Yeah. I was.
• 1:01:58
  Does that. Does that.
• 1:01:59
  Count does that count but to staying at the bed and breakfast
• 1:02:03
  count as moving in together or more of A and they were
• 1:02:06
  roommates type situation. Scholars still debate.
• 1:02:10
  Lesbian scholars still debate to this day.
• 1:02:14
  And I'd go with that puts it as A and they were roommates.
• 1:02:17
  Yeah. Yeah, look, it look.
• 1:02:21
  The fact of the matter is, regardless of the mechanics of
• 1:02:24
  it, it's cute. And honestly, it's nice for it's
• 1:02:29
  nice for a book published in the fucking twenty 20s to not just
• 1:02:33
  be grim all the fucking time. Yes, I agree.
• 1:02:40
  OK, because like, I'm, I am, I'm I'm done with it.
• 1:02:44
  OK, I'm like, I get it. Life's bad.
• 1:02:47
  Doesn't need, doesn't mean our fictional escapes from.
• 1:02:50
  It also has to be. Yeah.
• 1:02:53
  Yeah, like, can't we like, actually, like, have true
• 1:02:56
  escapism? No, we need to constantly be
• 1:02:59
  prophesizing the fucking end of the world as a thinly veiled
• 1:03:02
  excuse to, you know, it gets some control over our dismal
• 1:03:08
  situation because you know, if it's in.
• 1:03:11
  I see. All the other dismal situations
• 1:03:13
  we could be in. Yeah, you know, because if it's
• 1:03:15
  a in a video essay about how we're all going to die in three
• 1:03:18
  years, then it must be true. Yeah, again this night.
• 1:03:24
  Yeah, seriously guys, go outside.
• 1:03:28
  Go outside, touch some grass. Go outside, meet a lesbian.
• 1:03:33
  It doesn't even matter if you don't swing that way in with a
• 1:03:36
  lesbian. Yeah, it doesn't even matter if
• 1:03:38
  you don't meet that way. It it doesn't even matter if you
• 1:03:42
  don't swing that way. Just go out and meet a lesbian,
• 1:03:45
  have a nice conversation with another human being.
• 1:03:47
  Yes. Start a podcast.
• 1:03:50
  You know, that's kind of what happened to me.
• 1:03:53
  I met a very I met a a various coterie of lesbians and things
• 1:03:58
  just sort of spiraled from there.
• 1:03:59
  Yeah. Exactly same here.
• 1:04:02
  I mean, and I mean then I I mean then also around my 18th
• 1:04:09
  birthday, I became a lesbian. So yeah, totally went that whole
• 1:04:14
  pipeline. Yeah, that word's gonna get very
• 1:04:17
  overused, I feel. Yes, that's a dear listener.
• 1:04:21
  Keep a lesbian counter. Oh yes, drink every time we say
• 1:04:26
  the word lesbian. Lesbian What is a person from
• 1:04:32
  the Isle of Lesbos called? New dragonist, Irregardless.
• 1:04:45
  Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm not. I'm not letting this go.
• 1:04:50
  So that was the House of Rain. Yeah.
• 1:04:56
  It's pretty good. It's.
• 1:04:57
  Pretty good honestly. Like I, I will say towards the
• 1:05:02
  end it does, I don't know, it starts falling into a bit a few
• 1:05:06
  more of its own tropes towards the end because you know, it is,
• 1:05:12
  it is a horror book. Yeah, I.
• 1:05:15
  Mean yeah, you need a few tropes.
• 1:05:20
  But I don't really mind it because at the end of the day,
• 1:05:24
  between the general, between the general creep factor of the
• 1:05:27
  Angel and, you know, the obvious, the chemistry of the
• 1:05:31
  main characters, it it, it doesn't really do anything that
• 1:05:37
  new, But everything that it does do it does well.
• 1:05:43
  So it doesn't really detract from the overall quality.
• 1:05:48
  Yeah, it's, it's not like the, you know, it's just not like a
• 1:05:53
  completely original story, but it does every everything that it
• 1:05:56
  does, it does well, it's also. Is any story original?
• 1:06:01
  There's 14 stories that exist and we keep telling them over
• 1:06:04
  and over and. I'm not.
• 1:06:06
  I'm not having this conversation yet.
• 1:06:07
  I'm not having it. Yes, every fucking story is
• 1:06:09
  original. You want to know why?
• 1:06:10
  Because it comes from your fevered imagination.
• 1:06:14
  But the reason why it, but the reason why it repeats certain
• 1:06:18
  things is because asking a person to write a story without
• 1:06:21
  including other examples of stories they seem, is like
• 1:06:24
  asking a person to build a house without bricks.
• 1:06:28
  I mean, yeah, most houses have the same general shape, but that
• 1:06:35
  does not mean your house is not like an original.
• 1:06:40
  It's not your house. Yeah, so like, get out of there
• 1:06:44
  with that no original story shit.
• 1:06:51
  And tropes are tools, yeah. The key is that.
• 1:06:56
  The key is that you know they're done well.
• 1:06:59
  Yes, exactly. If they, if they weren't
• 1:07:03
  popular, if they weren't, if they weren't popular, then they
• 1:07:08
  wouldn't be used in the first place.
• 1:07:10
  And anybody who feels the need to pedantically call out every
• 1:07:16
  single trope, regardless of overall quality, I refer you
• 1:07:20
  back to the Can't Come Crowd. Yes.
• 1:07:25
  Never mind the fact. Oops, our tools.
• 1:07:29
  Never mind the fact that that is literally like 90% of what I do
• 1:07:32
  on this podcast. Look.
• 1:07:35
  Being like can't come proud or. Look, we all know.
• 1:07:39
  Look if this book has revealed one thing.
• 1:07:41
  So now our audience at home knows thoroughly what I get off
• 1:07:45
  to. Can't.
• 1:07:48
  Wait to have any lesbians. Yes.
• 1:07:54
  They've been planning it in an actual and I'm making sure it's
• 1:07:57
  four very non human monsters. Thank you.
• 1:08:00
  That's literally. All I ask, thank you.
• 1:08:05
  Is that so hard? I mean, the monsters are hard,
• 1:08:10
  no? OK, I walked into that one.
• 1:08:16
  You totally. I walked into that one.
• 1:08:19
  I I set him up and yeah, knocked me down. 100%.
• 1:08:24
  So in terms of final prognosis for House of Rain?
• 1:08:32
  I would give it 5 out of five blood bags.
• 1:08:37
  It's probably going to end up in my top five bucks of the year.
• 1:08:43
  Yeah, go with that. Yeah.
• 1:08:48
  Yeah, I'm, I'm also going to go A5 out of five, honestly, just
• 1:08:53
  because like it, it is what it is, man, what is pretty good.
• 1:09:00
  I mean it. Knows.
• 1:09:01
  Exactly what it is. It knows exactly like what the
• 1:09:06
  story that it's telling and like the execution of it, like it
• 1:09:11
  does it well, and it sticks the landing, Yeah.
• 1:09:15
  Yeah, I mean, what more do you reasonably need out of a book
• 1:09:25
  like it doesn't? Well, also not giving out too
• 1:09:29
  many details over the course of it so that you're still
• 1:09:32
  interested in like you're still like, OK, but what is this?
• 1:09:36
  But what? Like what's going on?
• 1:09:38
  Where are we going? And like how?
• 1:09:40
  Yeah, because not every book needs to set up like a fucking
• 1:09:44
  cinematic universe. Yeah, like.
• 1:09:48
  Like I appreciate it being a one and done.
• 1:09:53
  Yeah, it it can just be. It can just be its own little.
• 1:10:00
  One self-contained. Thing yeah, it doesn't need to
• 1:10:03
  be like it's a common trope, especially among creatives to
• 1:10:10
  like fall back to reference previous works.
• 1:10:13
  And part of the reason for that, because I do it is because
• 1:10:17
  writing is hard. And sometimes we have an idea
• 1:10:22
  that you really like or just didn't work out for something
• 1:10:24
  else. And then you have a new project,
• 1:10:26
  you kind of end up cannibalizing previous stuff.
• 1:10:32
  And, and the end result is that it can make it.
• 1:10:34
  You can kind of fall into the trap of making everything
• 1:10:38
  interconnected when there's really no reason for it to be.
• 1:10:42
  Yeah. Like, I know because I've done
• 1:10:45
  that and you know. It can be fun, but sometimes
• 1:10:51
  it's just fun to just create something where there's no
• 1:10:53
  expectations and there's nothing calling back to other things
• 1:10:57
  where it just stands on its own. And I feel like that's what we
• 1:11:02
  have a shortage of nowadays too, and it makes it really hard to
• 1:11:05
  get into anything when you know everything is going to be like a
• 1:11:07
  multi year multimedia commitment.
• 1:11:12
  Yeah, but it's just like I want to start this book series, but
• 1:11:17
  you know, it's like 5 books long.
• 1:11:19
  And I'm like already like being able to commit to one book can
• 1:11:24
  be a little hard. Yeah.
• 1:11:27
  Yeah, 1 offs are highly underrated.
• 1:11:32
  The art of just writing a self. But writing a self-contained
• 1:11:36
  story is really fucking difficult.
• 1:11:38
  Because the thing about the thing about a sequel is that
• 1:11:42
  yay, I can leave all these plot threads dangling and not have to
• 1:11:46
  go through the mental gymnastics of tying everything up in a nice
• 1:11:50
  little bow by the time the final chapter closes.
• 1:11:54
  I mean no no, I'd argue trilogy would be the easiest because
• 1:11:57
  beginning, middle and end can just be 3 separate books.
• 1:12:02
  Yeah. And but the problem is
• 1:12:05
  sometimes, sometimes sequels do anything but tie up loose ends.
• 1:12:12
  Yeah. Usually they create more loose
• 1:12:14
  ends and untie the ends that they tied.
• 1:12:18
  It's like again, the making. The guy making the first book.
• 1:12:23
  He's alive again. Yeah, 'cause plot.
• 1:12:29
  Yeah, I would argue that a lot of the surprise resurrections
• 1:12:33
  come from fan bases obsessing over certain characters.
• 1:12:38
  Can we just not do rat coms like that?
• 1:12:41
  Yeah. Like, no, if the person's dead,
• 1:12:44
  they're dead. The rule is if you show a body,
• 1:12:48
  they are dead, do not bring you back.
• 1:12:50
  If you do not show a body, that's when you can do the
• 1:12:53
  surprise. They somehow managed to survive.
• 1:12:57
  Yes, unless it is a story that resurrection makes perfect sense
• 1:13:05
  in. Yes, exactly.
• 1:13:07
  Like unless it's just story like where resurrection is already
• 1:13:11
  like before then a major plot point.
• 1:13:14
  Yeah. The rules are vague and unclear.
• 1:13:20
  I mean and number one rule of writing is you have to break all
• 1:13:24
  the rules. Yeah, or you.
• 1:13:27
  Can choose to break all the rules.
• 1:13:30
  And thus the cycle of contradictions continues.
• 1:13:34
  Look. As long as you know how to break
• 1:13:37
  them. I, I look guys, I'm going to be
• 1:13:40
  real with you. I, I don't know what I'm doing.
• 1:13:42
  I I have. Absolutely no fucking clue.
• 1:13:44
  Nobody's. Nobody's figured it out yet, but
• 1:13:46
  it's kind of incredible. So I think if I just keep going.
• 1:13:50
  Just just fake it till you make it.
• 1:13:52
  Yeah, if I just keep going, I just keep plodding forward, then
• 1:13:55
  maybe I can get that. Maybe I can finish out Season 1
• 1:13:58
  of The Vampire with No Name without immediately exploding.
• 1:14:02
  Exactly, now that we've shared our thoughts on that book.
• 1:14:08
  Yeah. Thank you.
• 1:14:10
  Give me I'll give you all a hint as to what's coming next.
• 1:14:14
  Usually we have the poll where people vote, with the one caveat
• 1:14:18
  is when it's a host's birthday month, they get to choose the
• 1:14:21
  book. Next month is my birthday.
• 1:14:24
  So I have chosen Kiss of the Basilisk by Lindsay Straub.
• 1:14:29
  And yeah, this one's going to be very interesting.
• 1:14:33
  The blurb for this book is. One word for it.
• 1:14:40
  I was going to say the word is dubious, but.
• 1:14:43
  It's something that was very dubious about it.
• 1:14:45
  The blurb for the book is 20 year old Temperance.
• 1:14:49
  Varus has never been kissed, but that's what the Basilisk is for.
• 1:14:55
  Along with thirteen other contestants, Tim must train with
• 1:14:57
  the Basilisk to learn the power of seduction.
• 1:15:00
  And when the prince's hand in marriage.
• 1:15:02
  When Tim is matched with Caspian the Serpent King, she realizes
• 1:15:07
  she might actually stand a chance.
• 1:15:09
  But with tensions rising between the basilisks and the humans,
• 1:15:13
  Tim is suddenly thrown in two directions.
• 1:15:15
  As her bond with Caspian deepened, so does her
• 1:15:18
  communicate her connection with the Prince.
• 1:15:20
  When she uncovers a terrible secret about the royal family,
• 1:15:23
  Tim finds herself caught between 2 worlds, neither of which can
• 1:15:27
  survive without the other. We're.
• 1:15:30
  Writing so high after this book and you just had to you just,
• 1:15:35
  you just had to pull me back down to earth then, you know.
• 1:15:38
  The series this book belongs to is called Spit or Swallow.
• 1:15:42
  I. I feel like there's gonna be a
• 1:15:47
  lot of both. I hate this.
• 1:15:53
  Oh. I know, like I know exactly what
• 1:15:57
  you're doing to us. Yeah, I I know it's your
• 1:16:00
  birthday. I know it's your birthday.
• 1:16:03
  But sincerely, fuck off. Do so much hell it isn't even
• 1:16:09
  funny. Oh my God, this is going to be a
• 1:16:13
  slog, isn't it I? Don't know, I've read the first
• 1:16:18
  like a few hours and I I'm enjoying it but this is also
• 1:16:23
  like me bait totally. I feel like you're going to get
• 1:16:30
  a massive kick out of our reactions.
• 1:16:36
  Yeah, that's literally all she does.
• 1:16:39
  I mean, OK. But you're the storyteller.
• 1:16:43
  You. You're going to torment me in
• 1:16:45
  the game. I can torment you out of the
• 1:16:47
  game. It's only fair.
• 1:16:49
  That is fair. I never, I never agreed to this.
• 1:16:56
  You keep showing up. Yeah, but that's more the
• 1:16:59
  Stockholm syndrome than anything else.
• 1:17:00
  Yeah. It's fair.
• 1:17:03
  All right. Well, we will see you next time
• 1:17:06
  with. The first half of Kiss the
• 1:17:10
  Basilisk. Yay.
• 1:17:14
  You sound so excited. Look, I get one.
• 1:17:18
  I get one reprieve every blue moon.
• 1:17:21
  House of Rain was it. Now it's back to the fucking
• 1:17:23
  gulag. So yeah, we will see everybody
• 1:17:29
  in two weeks for the first half of the next book.
• 1:17:34
  Say goodbye to these creatures. Help.