Swords, Sorcery, and Socialism - Coraline

Episode Date: October 31, 2022

Happy Halloween! Through listener vote, we are finishing off spooky season with the Neil Gaiman classic, Coraline. We talk about Fairy, bravery, and why the scariest parts might not be what you think they are.patreon.com/swordsandsocialismEmail: [e-mail] The Show: @SwordsNSocPodDarius: @Himbo_AnarchistKetho: @StupidPuma69 patreon.com/swordsandsocialismEmail: [e-mail] The Show: @SwordsNSocPodAsha: @Herbo_AnarchistKetho: @MusicalPuma69

🎵 bro are you fucking real man come on hello everyone welcome back to sword sorcery and socialism a podcast about the politics and themes hiding in our genre. Fiction as always, I'm Darius, and with me is Ketho. How's it going, Ketho? Howdy, it's pretty good. In a, like a, nearly a 180 change of pace. Thank God. From our last episode. Today, we are finishing off spooky month with a classic, classic spooky story for children.

Coraline by Neil Gaiman, which also constitutes the first appearance of Neil Gaiman on our podcast. What a what a funny pick for first Neil Gaiman book. Look, I put the third pick up for a vote on Twitter and it was overwhelming for Coraline. But I think somebody pointed out that people probably simply wanted us to talk about Neil Gaiman. Oh, yeah. So, yes, absolutely. Here we are. I'm going to blow everyone away by saying that this is the first Neil Gaiman book I've ever read.

Same. This is not the first Neil Gaiman book I've ever read. Same. This is not the first Neil Gaiman property I have ever consumed of, but it is the first Neil Gaiman book I have read. This is the first Neil Gaiman property I've ever consumed. I have seen Sandman, the Netflix show, and I have seen Good Omens, the Amazon Prime show. I do not watch television.

Good Omens is also technically also Terry Pratchett. The two of them work on that together. I feel like we'll probably end up talking about that at some point because it's like the two. The show's pretty good.

So I've heard, but I think I've said before, I don't watch shows. Cause I'm, I've got a weird thing about watching TV shows and I just don't do it. There is one TV show I've seen every single episode of only one. And I'm not going to tell you guys here what it is. Cause you'll judge me. So I'm not going to tell you guys here what it is because you'll judge me. So I'm not going to tell you. But anyway,

today, I'm talking about Coraline, the movie of which is pretty good. And I think this episode, we will probably bounce around a little bit between the movie and the book because they're both short enough that I feel like it's, would be silly to not include discussion of both. And they are extraordinarily similar. Yes, they are extraordinarily similar yes they are incredibly

similar aside from a few minor changes uh they're very similar and uh the movie is good you should watch it yeah watch it read it do whatever you want they're both good the audiobook is like four and a half hours long and it's and it's read by neil gaiman if you get the right one if you get the right one but the version I had was narrated by the author himself. I listened to it in a single workday. Let's say, and if you weren't into audiobooks, the book itself was like an hour and 10 minute read on my end. So it's a wonderful little book.

So Coraline. Coraline started because new gaming, uh, specifically wanted to write a horror story for kids, specifically his oldest daughter. I believe her name is Holly. So it's the nature. I know that much.

Um, is publishers at first were like, absolutely not. You're not writing this horror story for children. We won't publish that. So then he worked on it on and off over the course of 10 years and then eventually got it published anyway, because he's Neil Gaiman.

At that point, he liked to remark that the daughter that he was originally writing the story for was now an older teenager. That was now like 17 or something and then uh his younger daughter was now the appropriate age that um his older daughter was when he first said he would write the book um there's actually quite a lot of uh his own life self-insert from the author into coralline, into this story. The dad is clearly just him.

Just a writer who's very tired and, and even in the cook. Yeah. Even in the post in the, my, my version, my ebook had the, a little question and answer section in the back.

And he's like, did you get the recipe thing from somewhere? Cause Coraline will says the first time she sits down to have dinner. It's it's not a recipe, is it? Because her and he said that, no, that was his. That was something he stole from his son. Because he likes to cook. Like random weird things that he thinks will be fun to cook.

And his son would be like, is this a recipe? And then we get up and go make microwave pizza. And that's exactly what Coraline does. Um, and his son would be like, ah, is this a recipe? And then we'd get up and go make microwave pizza. And that's exactly what Coraline does. Something that has happened to Neil in his life. So like the father is clearly just him and we'll get onto it later, but the anecdote about standing on the wasp nest so the girl could leave and then going back to get his glasses is actually a genuine thing that happened to neil when he was out walking with his daughters so even that anecdote which is honestly i think

like the thesis statement of the story was a thing that actually happened to him in real life oh yeah and not to mention that the the large house divided up into multiple flats with a sealed off door that was bricked over was something that Neil himself grew up in. He spent a few, at least as far as I could remember from the e-book, he said that he spent a few years living in a flat that had a door similar to the one in Coraline's house, where if you open it, it's just a brick wall. Now, the movie the movie makes it a tiny little door in the living room. Yeah, a little trap door. But the book has it as a full size door in the drawing room that opens into nothing. And he had said that one of his fears was eventually opening that door to see that it was a tunnel and not a door and i'll be honest

some of the imagery he uses for the tunnel when it actually appears uh is some of the most unnerving imagery in the book it's old and slow and moving and wet and damp and warm. And then like when she's coming back through it, she feels like it's kind of pulling her back. And there's voices in in the tunnel. It's again, his repeated use of something very old and very slow. Yeah. And it it explicitly is. I think it's explicitly stated, even in that very scene, that it's something that's older than the Beldam and that the Beldam just moved in. It's older and I think you're supposed to feel, by extension, almost more evil.

It's more ancient and more insidious. It's more Lovecraftian, for lack of a better word, this tunnel. It kind of is. Lovecraftian, for lack of a better word. This tunnel. It kind of is. This eldritch tunnel that leads to the fae, the misty fae lands. Which again, it's never explicitly

stated it's a fae land, but the Beldam is pretty clearly a fae, like a dark fae sort of hag figure. Yeah. So the main stuff that Neal is pulling on here, aside from clearly many things that have actually happened to him i'm assuming you know he never actually was you know whisked away into the

fey well maybe it could be a lot of his stories seem to be very they're very dark fey like if he might himself just be a dark fey but he draws a lot and a lot of the sort of the imagery from this story and a lot of the sort of concepts are pulled from like old mythology of the british styles everything from you know the fey to the ideas of like, you know, stealing children to the stone with the hole in it. All of these things are things that sort of existed within the ancient sort of, you know, Celtic and pre modern, like pre Christian beliefs of of the of the British Isles. And he's drawn sort of on all of them to recreate this terrifying little tale for children, which honestly doesn't set a wonderful atmosphere. I think his real strength in this story is like the setting of the atmosphere. very sort of very intentionally sort of kids story language. You know, when she first gets there and is seeing the house and describing

everything, it's very intentionally like, this is a book for kids type thing, you know, like the, and she saw a stone that looked like a toad and a toad that looked like a stone, like those sort of like,

sort of, you know, twee, like they're very, cute song yeah sing song cutesy little stuff that you would expect from like a british children's author but and at first i was like oh the whole book's gonna kind of be you know this twee little thing even though i knew the story already but but I was worried about it. But then he does that intentionally because in order for it to be tense and scary, you have to

start somewhere relatively innocuous in order for you to really to feel like the change into the unsettlingness. And so it's a very like good and intentional move to write in that way i mean and he does his job putting in things that make that make the place feel both sing-songy kind of cutesy but also off like a little strange um and i think part of this is supposed to be you know coralline just moved to a new place so it's supposed to be a little uncomfortable and weird but the the neighbors the neighbors are honestly for lack of better word just weird they are just weird people um i do think part of this though is from the fact that the story is being told from an 11 year old's perspective so this is if you look at it from

you know the frame narrative it's how an 11 year old would view the weird old people that live in the apartments next door. You know what I mean? Like it's very much a, a child, a child's view of what strange adults are like. And I mean, I kind of love, I kind of love the neighbors,

even though they're really sometimes a little uncomfortable, but just like the old ladies occasionally giving her like a digestive biscuit. Cause that's just a British thing. I know. Those are just biscuits, man. They only have digestive ones. It's just really strange.

I don't know. They give her limeade that tastes like not limeade, but she really loved it. I just saw there was an episode of everyone's favorite British cooking show where they attempted to make s'mores, but they don't have graham crackers in the UK. So they used cinnamon digestive biscuits instead of graham crackers to make s'mores on the great British bank. The fact that they call them digestive biscuits makes me want to sink the British Isles. I mean,

there's lots of reasons to sink the British Isles. I'm sorry. That can just be the digestive biscuit on top of the turfy pie. Like, yeah, I'm sorry. But the fact that they made us some more with those weird little biscuits, instead of like, you could just import graham crackers.

It's the Great British Bake Off. We could talk about them doing Mexican week, but we won't get into that. Yeah, look, it's after the travesty of Mexican week. This is just the jury. Pico de Gallo. Pico de Gallo. Pico guy Gallo. Pico de Gallo. Pico Pico guy Gallo. Anyway, he does some.

Yeah, these neighbors. Again, this child's perspective of these weird neighbors, whether they're like at once friendly, but also just slightly off putting. And that's like you were saying is his entire vibe for the house before she goes through the tunnel is everything is like fine, but just a little weird. I do love Mr. Bobo. Mr. Bobo. Mr. Babinski, the retired circus performer with his circus of mice, which may or may not exist. And the mice. I believe that they go.

They need to go thwomper, thwomper. But they go tweetle, tweetle, tweetle. And you're like, OK. OK, Mr. Bobo. In the audio book, Gaiman definitely narrates Mr. Babinski with this very generic Eastern European accent, which is not exactly placeable, but still very placeable in Eastern Europe um i won't try to recreate it because my accent work is terrible but it's quite funny um the the women uh spink and uh mrs spink and miss forcible are both very just like classical british ladies they they do read her tea leaves okay both of them seem to have some sort of prescient future reading power because you have the the old ladies who read tea leaves and you have bobinski who has mice that apparently tell him the future yeah i think it's

you're supposed to feel that the entire world in sort of the house is sort of infused with some say magic yeah something's going on there i mean to be fair the readings that you get from the old ladies could very easily be interpreted as just making shit up um as opposed to babinski well they are right but the only thing they're like is like the second one is more convincing with the hand the first one is just like you're in bad danger and then it passes it off to the other one's like no stop scaring the kid oh yeah she's in she's in danger okay yeah here's a rock the mice babinski's mice actually give the most prescient information and correct idea of the entire show which is just don't open that door girl and then she's like not remembering

that tossing that one right out the right out the window right then went out the door i'm 11 none of this matters the door is cool i'm going to it i mean i as 11 year old would also if i found a weird door would have gone through it oh absolutely 100 that's not even like a question like well growing, the church my parents would take me to was a very old building. And it was one of the kind of old buildings that had like a closet inside of a closet. Or if you went through the right door, you could be up in the attic and then you could walk on some boards over the insulation and then get on this little ladder that took you up into the ceiling above the sanctuary. You can bet your ass that's where

I was going anytime I had to be in that building. I'm going to go hide in the ceiling above the sanctuary. You can bet your ass that's where I was going anytime I had to be in that building. I'm going to go hide in the ceiling. I'm going to go into the closet that's inside another closet. Like I'm doing some, I'm doing little hidey holes. I'm doing weird stuff. And so the fact that a child would just be like, this is a weird tunnel that's not supposed to be here.

I'm going in 100% every 10 out of 10 times i'm going in that hole oh my god okay well that could translate to something entirely different in your yeah but also also 10 out of 10 times yeah i'm going i'm going in that hole it's accurate as a child and an adult okay and so I think though, I want to talk a little bit more about this, this Faye theme that he's drawn on for the story. As I said earlier, it's clearly drawn upon from like older beliefs from the UK,

but you get a little bit of both the good Faye and the bad Faye. Now calling them good or bad. It's going to be a bit derivative because if you're really into the Fae thing, their whole whether they're good or evil is subjective to what they're doing to you personally. Yeah, they're just really chaos. Beings there, you know, I think D&D describes it as sort of like a blue orange morality as opposed to black and white. They just sort of do stuff. And that's their nature to do things and they even say that directly in the story that when they're talking about the bedlam or the bell dam bedlam wrong but say these are both words but they mean they're doing things

the but when they talk about the bell dam the other mother they they say that it is her nature to be this way she can't be any other way. This like building the world, bringing in children so she can have something to love. That's the initial impression interpretation. And then, you know, you kind of also find out she has something to love, but also something to eat. Essentially. Well, it's a little bit of both. Yeah, I think it's both things she desires something to love and to love her but then she visually gets bored and like devours them i think

eventually but i think it's interesting the fact that it's not the like she's evil because she's decided to kidnap children it's explicitly she is this way because it is her nature to be this way. And so that, you know, throws a little bit into like the, is she evil conversation? Because, well,

you would argue yes, because she's kidnapping children and devouring them and trapping their souls. But if she never really had a choice about whether she wanted to be like this, is that actually evil? That's a good, deep question. The answer is probably no. Theoretically, I mean, the answer would be no, because she clearly can't not be the creature that she is. It's not like she chose to-

I mean, it's in the same way. Is a bear that, you know, eats an animal, an evil creature. No. Yeah. Like if my,

if like, if I'm not watching carefully and my like dog kills a chipmunk, it is my dog evil for doing so. No, it's his, it's, it's her nature to do that sort of thing. It's a dog.

Like it's, it's, it would, it would definitely be evil from the chipmunk's perspective, but it's not from, like, a more, like, meta perspective. So even though on the one hand you feel bad for the children and what's happened to them, on the other hand, it's sort of like, well, it's not really her fault. of not really her fault she's still a great conniving bitch i mean that that is that's objectively true going back on a promise i do i do appreciate this one change from the movie where i don't remember the other mother swearing on

anything no because you don't he changed you don't have the other mother swearing on anything. No, because you don't, he changed. You don't have the thing with the hand in the movie where like, I mean, the hand makes it out. The hand does make it out in the movie. Does it? You just don't see it happen.

You don't see it happen. Like the hand comes back to life. I'm like, you see the hand get taken off by the door oh yeah but the hand just sits there it doesn't like come back up until later and then her and the the boy in the in the movie the boy and her you know strap it to a stone and throw it in the well in the in the book she has a little tea party on top of the well and tricks it into jumping on the the the key i do feel like there's probably something symbolic it took 40 seconds to hear a splash by the ways yeah you know how far down that is that's insane you should not be able to hear anything

after 40 seconds of falling like yeah we're talking like like it takes like six seconds or seven seconds something like that for someone to reach terminal like maximum terminal velocity when falling so it's like that's that's that's deeper than like the empire state building by a decent chunk like so that well is deep and that's a that's a pit straight into hell 40 seconds right uh-huh let's see here talking an average something probably like 85 pounds dropping oh well with if it's the hand in the rock it's probably like yep i mean the weight is so you say it's probably about five pounds i just typed i just found this weird calculator thing quickly online where it's just talking about you just put in like how long something takes to fall and how high that would be.

That can't be right. That would be over a mile. Yeah, it's like 25,000 feet. That's five miles. Is that right? That can't be right. I mean, remember, this is Coraline guessing at how long it took for it to fall. remember is his core line guessing at how long it took for it to fall.

Okay. So I'd average a person skydiving from 10,000 feet is in free fall for about 30 seconds from 14,000 feet. You'll fall for 60 seconds. So we're talking like 12,000 feet. That's a little bit. That's a little bit over two miles. As well as two miles deep. How deep is the earth's freaking mantle? I think it's I think the crust is what, 11 miles thick.

Yeah, something like that. OK, it's 25 miles deep. OK, there we go. OK, yeah, OK. okay anyway this rock falls forever effectively just an absurd distance this rock is falling um almost as far as the the eunuch fell into the pit in the tombs of atuan just forever down into the dark into the dark um and i mean someone in the in the story i i think it's one of the old ladies says that they think that the thing is like a mile deep yeah um but sure why not why not two and it so two and a quarter two and a quarter, two and a quarter. So you have this, you know, this evil Fae Beldam, whose nature it is to be there.

You also have this somewhat more old and more eldritch, whatever this pocket dimension is. Yeah, because it's it's not just stated that the space is older than her. It's stated pretty directly that she came there later. Like she moved in to this long ago, long ago. And whoever initially created the space is gone. And the bell dam does mention her mother, by the ways.

Yeah. She did have a mother who she killed, who she killed and says that she sometimes has to go out and put down again. At least once. At least once she climbed out of the grave and had to put her back in it. So the Beldam at least has a mother, which is... This is some lore. Some deep fey lore.

I would, like, honestly, this is the catch-22 of lore you're like oh my god that's so interesting and then if someone were to actually like explain to you what it was you're like okay that's actually not as interesting as i wanted it to be i don't actually want to know but it's cool that it's cool that it exists but i don't i don't want to know because it would just spoil it but like all fay there's also good fay or helpful fey i should say less evil the fey can be more cost yeah it could be more constituted as helpful fey and unhelpful fey from the perspective of the person being there uh the bell dam is unhelpful you might be able to argue the cat is a helpful fey the cat is somewhat a helpful fey but the cat also exists in the real world as well yeah he, he just is that like an old that that's got to be like an old folklore thing where they can like flip between the two worlds because cats can walk in the spirit world as well.

Because they because the cat at one point just walks behind a tree and goes back into the regular world, like disappears and then comes back around the tree later. And he talks he talks about the fact that there's many ways in and out, at least to start with before the bell dam closes them all. But the cat can like flip in and out between the spirit world and the real world. And that like annoys the bell dam that he can do that. Yeah. She,

she called when she says vermin, she's referring to the cat and not to all the rats that she uses as spies. Yeah. Also, we'll get to the rats in a second because there's something i think we need to talk about with the rats because there's also other helpful fey in that when coralline meets the disembodied spirits of former children one of them is a has wings and flies one of them is like a fairy child. And at this again, not explained at all. You have like some Victorian child,

a slightly younger or closer to modern era child. And then you have this like fairy kid who eats flowers at their banquet. Again, it's like, yeah, these fair fair it's what i don't understand is is that supposed to imply that fairies inhabited that land before people like is the fairy just been in there does it has this fairy might be from camelot era like yeah we stories are we talking like yeah this phase been here since it was still still the land of the fae before humans showed up? If so, that fairy has been in there for an absurdly long time. I think maybe more of what it's trying to imply is more of like a King Arthur connection. Like in terms of time period, if you think probably closer to like the 11 or 1200s

well arthur was supposed supposed to have existed um in the like 800s or something oh shit well still 700s because still was still sooner than the fay without human interaction because arthur was like fighting against the invasion of the Saxons. Like the Saxons invading England. Which was, you know, even older than that. You know, after the Romans, but before, you know. Before the Middle Ages, really. Before the Middle Ages.

It's like late medieval. Before the Norman invasion. It's like late antiquity is when arthur was supposed to have existed according to legend i believe so yeah we're talking we're talking like a mystical british past i think also some of it there's got to be some kind of just inside joke to the kid not even inside joke just like inside reference i feel to the fairy child because he even mentions in his like q a yeah most people don't even notice there's a fairy in my story. She's actually already dead.

So it explains her having wings and eating flowers. It's pretty clear. But I mean, but it is just the one scene, really, that that we see you're specifically acting like and it's in a dream. So I think it's real. I mean, it's a dream that's real i mean it's a dream that's real but it's you know what i mean it's like kids aren't you know they don't always make the connection and adults don't always make the connection either like they might just skim past it and not even realize what they read i mean

that's fair so it is it is a very missable piece of information that they're a fairy but i think i think it's meant to imply how long the bell dam has been feeding on people there yeah it crossed such a vast span of time it's like here we go the 800s here we go like the 1700s here we go like the eight mid-1800s here we go yes and the modern modern um that doesn't like you said that does imply some sort of feyness about the cat though, because the cat is aware that the bell dam wasn't the first one there. And so either the cat learned, learned this somehow, or has just been around the whole time. I mean, the cat might also have just been in and out of that world for a while now even even within cat time yeah but how would the cat learn the history of this place without talking to the bell damn i maybe did talk to the bell damn

i there's it's not really explained i think the cat's just supposed to be generally inscrutable it would be kind of an interesting theory to think of the cat as having been just be a fae yeah where the cat is just a fixture of the house like across time i think in the in it's only in the film it's referred to as the pink palace i believe um the what they call the pink palace in the film like there's's a sign. I don't remember that. I think in the book, it's just the house. It's just the house in the book. Yeah.

Speaking of the family, imagine it being blue. And so the other thing I think that I think it lends credence to the idea of the cat being sort of a, an ancient Faye, if you will, is the rats. So the book, I don't remember if the movie does this, the book multiple times takes little breaks to is the rats. The book, I don't remember if the movie does this,

the book multiple times takes little breaks to have the rats sing in unison about how they were there before us and will be here after we fall. It is really ominous. And the audio book does it in like this weird little chorus of like pitched up voices to make it like creepy see i'd really appreciate hearing those because trying to it's it's just like reading tolkien

trying to trying to in your head come up with how someone is singing this yeah you you sit there and you're like how did he sing this because that's what i really want to know. So for the, the audio book that I listened to for the rat singing, imagine like a small chorus of voices, sort of Alvin and the chipmunk, but also just slightly off key to make it weird. You know what I mean? It also seemed like off the cuff. Well,

no, like they're in unison and stuff, but they're like pitched up and off key so it's like sort of ominous it's not like clear nice singing it's very like we were here before you came we'll be here when you are gone like that sort of thing that's terrifying yeah and so like what is what's the deal with these fucking rats? Because they, the song changes over time, but it's like, we'll be, we were here before you will be here after you. And that is some Faye bullshit. That is some, like, we are the dark spirits that have always inhabited this land. You've taken the land away from us, but we'll take it back eventually. So what the, so, so Ketho,

I ask you, what the fuck? I'm just going around to look at different spots on the internet, see if I can find anything. Cause this isn't even something I necessarily thought of, but okay. Some, some people are suggesting.

And even if you look at the lyrics, this is true. It's suggesting that the rats are in eternal, immortal presence, waiting for the fall of the real world, humanity, or both. I can tell you right now, there is on YouTube, there is a 15 minute video trying to break down what the rat songs mean. Oh my God. I mean, this is the benefit of this being in the old book is if you really want to find out anything you can about it, someone has done the analysis and, and this,

this is, this is like the second or third author we've really covered maybe fourth that you could sit down and find video essays that are like three hours long talking about anything within, within a story. You know, some others be, you tolkien and stuff but i want all of our readers to be aware in case you ever feel like oh various just read somebody

else's plot breakdown to live like what the themes are to have something to reference i want to be clear i don't read shit it's part the, it's part of the joke, but it's also true. It's like, it's part of the joke. And also I'm lazy. Like the idea that like, I'm going to read it to me,

the idea that I'm going to read a book and then go look at somebody else's breakdown of what the themes are. It feels a little disingenuous to what we're trying to do here, because what I'm trying to present here is like what the story means to me and what I take away from it. That's like kind of the whole point, because sometimes it would be nice, you know,

to see what somebody else thought about it. But I usually only do that just like right now with these rats, I've come across something that I can't really put my finger on. Otherwise I feel like it will sort of, uh, take my expectations and my views of something if i've read someone else's really detailed and really well researched breakdown oh yeah and i'm trying to you know give everyone you know whatever it was that this story hit me with which is why

sometimes i'm just wrong i mean hey that's kind of the fun of it. You know, it's, it's figuring things out. No, it definitely takes, I've had that. I know are like are,

are wrong, but it's because it's, this is, you know, what do I feel about this as I go through? And then I'll read afterwards. I'll go back and back. What did someone else say about this?

I'm like, Oh wow. I never thought of that. That's actually good. I mean, again, that's, it's, it's kind of the whole point of this is discussing it as it comes to us like i've i've peaked before but not like it's not something i do often usually only if there's like only like again part way through an episode if there's like some philosophical ass nonsense that's coming up in this book i'm like okay who the hell said that uh i did it with do android's dream um because that is a book full of philosophy that i have not read so i found it

appropriate to be like hmm what sort of philosophies is this like pushing but that's really the only example i can think of where I've done it. Because other than that, this whole thing is just meant to be more off the cuff. It's conversational, not like a well-written script. Yeah, from the first chapter, these rats really do add to the overall creepiness of the story. And so this first from the first chapter, Coraline dreamed of black shapes that slid from place to place, avoiding the light until they were all gathered together under the moon. Little black shapes with little red eyes and sharp yellow teeth.

They started to sing. We are small, but we are many. We are many. We are small. We were here before you rose we will be here when you fall that's fucking creepy and it is dark fae as hell that is very much like we are fae we exist we are outside of time we were you, we will be here after you, your world is a temporary one. It, you know, also just in general,

it's also true. It's like rats will absolutely outlive the human race without a doubt, without a doubt. Absolutely. It's like, it's like, if you disagree, you're wrong.

I'm sorry. You are just wrong. Like, but, and there's, there's song changes over time to be even like more sinister as you go on and it's also sinister in that like it's not clear if the rats are actually many individual entities or like just one like a single plurality entity

yeah that takes the course of many shapes which i which is kind of the way i interpreted it because if you're doing it as the thinking of it as fey it's to me it's more likely that it's not i mean not more likely but i like it better if it's not just a multitude of little individual creatures but more of like a you know sort of a multitude that makes a whole a plurality of consciousness that makes like a single entity you know like a spore colony or something and honestly i think there's one of the creepiest things in the book like flat out yeah it's it's the stuff around the bell dam more so than the bell dam sometimes like the bell dam is just the one you expect you know what i mean it's like yeah she's she's creepy because she is what she is but she's also like the focus so she's the thing that's the least mysterious you know the most about her

um like you know what's what she's capable of i think i was gonna say i think one of the other more creepy moments obviously like this is intentionally creepy but he does so well with it is when she goes into the empty apartment and down into the cellar and sees like the sludge form of the other dad that's that's some nightmare fuel right there that's some like that where like he's turned into like a putty slop type monster because she's the the Beldam is no longer like consciously maintaining his shape. Well, he's sort of become to devolve into a non shape. Well, it's both that and that he let too much information slip to her. Well, she's punishing him.

She's punishing him and kind of also using him as a weapon against Coraline, like tricking her into trying. Well, I won't even say tricking like Coraline, like new. She was like, she's probably just lying to me.

She goes down into the cellar anyway. The cats, the cats, like you shouldn't go in there. And she's like, yeah, I know. And then just does it anyway.

Hey, we all want to see what's in that cellar. And then later. And she's like, yeah, I know. And then just does it anyway. Hey, we all want to see what's in that cellar. And then later on, she's like, I've added some new additions to the cellar. And it's you're like, uh, who all of the. OK, but that is to me one of the creepiest, most well-written parts, because it's scary in the way that clearly everything else that exists in this world is simply a creation of the Beldam, I think, minus the rats. I don't think the rats are created by the Beldam. No, and the space itself, of course. Space itself, it doesn't.

But everything else, all the other people she talks to are reflections of the real world. talks to are are reflections of the real world but despite the fact they're simply created reflections they still have will and agency despite the fact that the bell damn made the other father that's the most fucked up thing the bell damn does yeah she creates life that has will but then also tortures it. Hey, were we talking about do androids dream of electric sheep? Just a second. Really though.

You're right. Like the fact that we did, she can create a thing that has, that has thoughts and feelings and desires and then tortures it. The, the bell dam is a, uh, is a futuristic Elon Musk-esque venture capitalist.

But that really is one of the more, I think might be the most, kind of the most fucked up thing she does. Well, I mean, especially from our perspective, like, I don't need like i feel like there's all sorts of things anyone could agree or disagree on in terms of like what's the worst thing she does but it's like i guess from our perspective as anarchist specifically the idea of giving something a will and then taking that will away is like the most ultimately cruel thing

you could possibly do to give something like desires and impulses and needs and then just be like, yeah, but you can't have them, though. Like there was no need to give these creations those things. But she does because I think she takes pleasure in like taking them away. And so the father says to Coraline, like, this is what's happening. This is what's fucked up. And so the father says to Coraline, like, this is what's happening. This is what's fucked up. I don't want to hurt you, but she's going to make me hurt you.

And I can't stop her from making me do it. And that's really fucking dark. Uh-huh. That is just the worst. Yeah, that is the worst. Again, talking about the way we discuss things, It really has come out naturally in this conversation. The two darkest things in this book to me are things that we didn't talk about in the pre-recording, which is the rats and the other others. The other others.

I mean, even, even some of their, because you get to see some of their rudimentary forms other than just the other father like you get to see the the old ladies uh actually the young ladies uh who and they do this in the movie too and that's actually really clever this this was a book that when you read it you're like okay i see why someone was like let's do this in stop motion animation oh yeah um because like they unzip the old lady suits and step out of them into as young ladies young ladies and but then later on you you see them as like a weird amalgamate fleshy thing that's fused together inside of a like flesh cocoon and that coralline has to reach into to grab one of the marbles. Talk about some body horror. Yeah. It's like kids,

body horror, baby's first body horror. Yeah. Babies. It's so weird. So deeply unsettling. Even though we did talk about in the briefing that I personally of the neighbors,

I found the, the other Babinski to be a little bit more creepy because he doesn't actually present a physical threat to Coraline at all. Like by this point, the world is falling apart enough that he doesn't present a physical threat to her. He presents entirely a psychological one because he presents her with the like the false promise of utopia. You know, you could stay here with her. She'll give you everything you've ever wanted. You'll never have a boring day. You'll never have a bad meal.

She'll love you. We'll love you. Everything will be perfect here. By this point, though, Coraline is smart enough to be like, yeah, but that would suck. If every day was perfect, they would kind kind of suck i mean they that's kind of what happened to all the other everybody got bored yeah and then the bell damn was like i'm bored eight child a child or locked him away to dissolve yeah wither away and then she would consume their souls yeah wither away and it's so so the fact that I found a little creepier

Babinski's whole thing of like not really being a flesh form anymore, simply like the like the malice of like seductive coercion, which you've actually seen in a couple stories. We saw that in A Wrinkle in Time. That is what like that mind is like offering to like Charles Wallace and Meg. The idea that if you become one, you don't have any needs anymore.

You don't have any pain anymore. You don't have any sadness anymore. That sort of union homogenization with that overmind in the dark world they go to in A Wrinkle in Time. that overmind in the dark world they go to in a wrinkle in time. It's this, it's the, the temptation of, uh, getting rid of pain as a way to get you to give up yourself is one we've seen repeated in a couple of stories now. I mean, this isn't a quote from a, like Le Guin even talks about that too. Um um though i don't think we've actually i believe

it's in left hand of darkness that she brings it up i mean while you're looking that up i can say the same premise is one of the foundational principles of the matrix which is they said when skynet was first created to like take care of people they put them in like a utopia and then they realized people didn't actually like utopia because it was too good all the time so the simulation put them in a place where there are still bad things and i think uh mr the agent smith actually says something to the in one of the movies says let me do the effect of like humans actually like measure their existence on their suffering and so the idea that like humans can't like are simply not programmed to be happy all the time and we actually don't do well when we are oh yeah yeah yeah the uh this all gets into really like interesting debate territory um I mean, the ones,

Omelas kind of proposes the same idea. It's just that in Omelas, all of the suffering has been put upon a single child. It's been all offloaded onto one person. Onto a single child. It still must exist. It simply won't exist to you, which slightly changes the question,

but still exists on the foundational idea that there must be suffering. And so I feel like that's an interesting common refrain of an antagonist. Tempting a hero to give up is the idea that you could be released from your labor, from your suffering for utopia. your labor from your suffering for you know utopia but you know you have to come to the realization that sometimes things being boring are fine which was also the main theme of everything everywhere all at once wow which if you want to hear us talk talk more about that and how existing in the mundane is better than the better possible worlds that are out there you should subscribe to the patreon and go back and listen to our

episode of everything everywhere all at once but it's just an interesting sort of like continuation of a theme you see lots of villains here's the quote by the way it took me forever if you evade suffering you also evade the chance of joy. Pleasure you may get or pleasures, but you will not be fulfilled. You will not know what it is to come home. What's that? Is that from the left hand? I'm not quite sure. I just found it.

Oh, well, it's fine. Either way. Either way. So that's I think why like Babinski's little speech to Coraline set out to me because it's sort of this like theme we see running throughout a lot of our stories so it's clearly something a lot of authors and people have like thought about this you know this like temptation of the easy way out to paradise which you know obviously from our perspective like politically there is no no such thing as an easy way out to paradise. Like that just can't be. And it wasn't dispossessed, by the way.

Dispossessed. And anyone who's offering you an easy way out to paradise is lying to you. They are tricking you. Anyone that tells you that this one simple trick will give us everything we've ever wanted is lying to you. They're not good people back on a slightly lighter note one of my other favorite things i just wanted to mention talking about drawing from real world sort of fae mythology the stone with the hole in the middle is actually a pretty common trope across all of sort of central and northern Europe, also Egypt for some reason,

these like stones that have a hole in the middle, they're actually called adder stones. Like the snake. Like the snake, because they have some mythology or them being caused by snake, created by snake venom or something. But specifically within Welsh mythology,

they appear a couple of times, including one story where he has to use the stone to look through it, to be able to see an invisible creature that the hero has to kill. This is from one of the Arthurian legends. So the idea that you would like look through the stone to be able to see the real world is also sort of an old idea amongst sort of, you know, Celtic and Fae mythos of the british styles

you know you're gonna put on the they live glasses but like paleolithic style i i you know what's funny is i i kept imagining even though this isn't what it was supposed to be i kept imagining the the thing that you use on a ouija board oh yeah, yeah. It has a name. It has a specific name, but... It's a Ouija wedge. A Ouija wedge, no. It's like, yeah. But regardless of whatever it was, that's what I kept

envisioning in my head, was an almost arrowhead-shaped stone with a circle in the middle. But it's, you know, it's a fun little piece he directly drew from like drew like juridic practices of like the you know of the welsh of sort of the pre-christianized uh uk which i thought was really cool and again ties into the fey aesthetic hashtag fable shit hashtag fable shit uh the we should bring it up now and talk about is the sort of the main theme or i think one

of the probably the main theme that sort of like runs out the book is standing up to your fears yeah standing up to your fears which is you know a pretty common one for children's books even though it was a real world thing that happened i think that like thesis story that coralline tells about her dad like explaining what bravery was by like the whole idea that you know being brave isn't it's not the absence of fear it's it's action in the presence of fear and and like because in the presence of fear and and like because generally what happens in the story is coralline's dad and her were like exploring like a road like a dump essentially because coralline really really really wanted to explore it and her dad was like okay fine but we're gonna go out with like boots and like protective gear uh and so they go out and like this gear and stuff and they go climbing

through the dump. And eventually he just tells her to run. And she goes a running and he makes sure that she's in front of him. And she feels a single bee sting, a single Hornet sting. Apparently they had stepped on a Hornet's nest and unleashed the beast. And by the time they got up to the top, apparently her dad had received like 37 bee stings. Because he stayed standing on the hornet's nest to essentially draw aggro so she could run away.

Yeah. Yeah, and he and he mentions later that he wasn't afraid when he did that because it just was something he knew he had to do because she was like it was more important that she, you know, be OK. And then later, like he dropped his glasses in like trying to get up the hill and then later that evening had to go back and get them. had to go back and get them. So he drives back without Coraline this time and gets his glasses. And when he comes back, he explains to Coraline that this time he was afraid because unlike the previous time when he had the motivation that he was protecting her, it just felt like it was something he needed to do. He wasn't afraid afraid so he wasn't being brave he was just doing what he felt like he had to do but when he went back to pick up his glasses he was afraid because he knew what he was walking into because he knew what he was walking into and he didn't have anyone to protect from it so he was just he just had to be brave to go down there and get his glasses because he was actually terrified.

And this is and this Coraline tells this lesson before, like. Going back into the other world for the last time, she explains it to the cat. Very smartly is unable to talk to her at the moment. Yes. But the rest of that story then is Coraline really coming to grips with this concept that she could have just stayed out

of the other world. Like she could have just locked it. She would have lost her parents, but she could have just locked it back up and I guess lived with it. But she didn't because bravery was knowing that the other mother was waiting for her and going back in anyway. And like, you know, going back in and, you know, proposing this challenge to the other to the to the bell dam to save her parents and then eventually to save the souls of the other children as well.

And throwing a cat at her face in the process. Which, props. It was a good plan, actually. Yeah, it was actually a good plan, even though poor cat. Pocket cat. I think even in the movie, the cat's really pissed. The cat is not happy about that. You just threw me at her?

Like, what the hell? She's like, look, I'm sorry. We had to get out. That was the only way I could get out of there. Yeah, no, so this, I think it's a wonderful concept i think for a kid's story this which you have seen echoed in other places the idea isn't that you know bravery is the absence of fear it's bravery is action in the face of and through the presence of fear you know which helps you know it's a really helpful lesson for kids and adults.

Sometimes it's like, it's, it's not brave to just act instinctually in the moment. It's brave to be like, this is going to be awful and I'm going to do it anyway. And it is kind of disappointing to me that that's not in the movie. Yeah. That is one thing that was left out of the movie entirely in, we got YB instead, which I feel like is a downgrade to it. Yeah. To be fair, I feel like anything YB did in the film

is something that the cat did in the. Book kind of a little bit of both, I think YB exists to sort of expedite plot and like, you know, do exposition. Yeah, I mean, but to be fair so does the gat yeah but why be sort of does the like oh this is the well and my grandmother's yeah i guess my grandmother's sister went missing and yada yada yada as opposed to her just coralline just sort of being told that or just sort of knowing a thing well yeah and in the case of the of the book coralline just sort of being told that or just sort of knowing a thing well yeah and in the case of the of the book coralline just explored the place herself like she found the well

herself yeah um she just explored where in the movie they're like let's have this little boy help this weird little boy then there's fake version of weird little boy who who doesn't speak at all. Mm hmm. That's what she desires him to shut up. So this on a completely different note, we're going to go into, you know, before we finish here, we're going to go into Darius's special little little corner of of, you know, of. Oh, yeah, this is, of, oh yeah, this is, this is the corner. Yeah.

It comes up every episode. We got the token talk. Here we go. First official segment, the token talk corner with Darius. Well, look, every, every episode we bring up Le Guin or Tolkien or both.

Every episode. I'm going to get a little like music stinger before I do. One of the things that stuck out to me as, I'm going to get a little like music stinger before I do Tolkien talk. One of the things that stuck out to me as, as a similarity in stories. And I don't mean this as to say like gate, like in Neo game and it took this from Tolkien, but that they're both drawing from the same sort of source material and sort of say mythology and maybe some other things is that much like the way Tolkien described evil

in his work, you know, more Goth and Sauron. Within Coraline, it's explicitly stated that the Beldam cannot create anything. She cannot make anything of her own. The only thing she can do is reproduce things that already exist. She can make shitty copies of things that exist in the real world. Yes. The best she can do copies. Yeah, that's all she can do. So she's, she can copy what the house looked like, but it's just not quite right. And you can tell that the more angry she gets, the less hard she tries to make it like perfect, but it's explicitly stated. She can't make anything. And that is also a thing that's at the heart of like Tolkien's idea of the, of evil as a force that it cannot create all of its own. it can only imitate and degradate existing things that were you know

created by you know good or whatever yeah let's say in tolkien's view god yeah in tolkien's view god but i it also does have a touch of the faint because his work often does some part of me thinks that that's less likely with neil gaiman that the perspective is god i don't know if it's yeah i don't think it is i don't i mean i've only watched good omens i'll no i definitely don't think it is i just again this is my little this is my little my little pet oh no i'm just i'm just making a little uh and it's but just the idea this this concurrent idea that evil is not a creative force it's a mocking force it's a it's a dark reflection it can't actually give you anything it's a derivative force yes it is it also that idea also very clearly posits the the uh belief that good came before evil it does which obviously

from a from tolkien in a christian perspective is clear and obvious yes from gaiman it still proposes that but just from a different sort of direction i mean to be fair he probably also like despite him being fairly critical of religion to my knowledge is was also raised in a christian household yeah but you, but also it just could be the fact that it doesn't even have to be as grand as the whole world, but just the fact that whatever deep eldritch evil thing made this space in which a creature like the Beldam can create these false copies.

That more posits that the real world existed first. And this is like, this is like a comes in after this is a pocket space that, that crawls in afterwards. And, um, you know, is there simply to,

to, you know, to imitate. We know that the Faye existed before the real world though. So that creates a fun little thing there about like what's imitating what because well i mean maybe the fate didn't exist but fake creatures definitely digs we already talked about the rats oh yeah they would be here before and they will be here afterwards so you know and the rats aren't even destroyed. They still exist in there. The door is just closed. The Fae, the land of dreams and nightmares.

Yeah. Again, what is a nightmare except a bad dream? And even again, the dream exists in and of itself, but it can be bad. And I'm going to be honest, if it's anything like my dreams, it don't make any sense anyways. Yeah. I mean, I'll bare my soul here and say that. I, in the past maybe decade of my life, I can only remember maybe three separate dreams

because when I sleep, I may as well be dead. I mean, I often wake up and I'm like, I had a dream and have no clue in hell what I dreamt about, but I know I did. And I'm like, Hmm, okay, back to sleep. I wake up mostly and if no, nothing, just blank. I'm like my dad. And that like, once my head hits the pillow, I'm like, Oh,

it's sleepy time. And my alarm's going off. There's just nothing in between. You're in a coma in between. Basically. However, there have been about three dreams. It's been clearly that I can remember in about the past decade. And you know what all three of them were about? They were terrifying dreams about losing my dog. They're all nightmares about the fact that I had to leave my dog somewhere while I went to do something else. I came back and someone hadn't watched her and she ran off. And then I spend the rest of the dream panicking, trying to find her.

What does that say about my psyche? I'm leaving that up for the listeners. Figure out what's going on with me. I was about to say. All the dreams I remember about the panic and fear of losing my pet. See, I hear stuff like this and I think, wow. Dreams that make sense sense what is that like because like i don't my dreams have zero cognizant like whatsoever i can't be i can't even sit here

and be like oh yes i had a dream about x because my dreams aren't about anything it's like i don't know like i could i i yeah but like like people be like oh my dream took place in my house with a this and a that and i'm like i just see things i've never seen before in my dreams i make people up it's because you're some sort of existentialist or something you're an impressionist dreamer it's like yeah i'm an impressionist dreamer who dreams about being a tiny giraffe rider on top of a uh a water fountain at a high school that's being attacked by t-rex this is real this is way too specific to not be true i would also to be further i'd rather dream about that than have another dream about uh my dog running off yeah i mean actually yes i mean obviously yes

but it's like i don't know i just hear people have conversations about dreams and they're like yeah so i had a dream about like this and it was kind of strange and i'm like in my dream you would have been like maybe i would have seen your face but it would have been like upside down on a weird spider body and i'd be having a normal conversation with you like nothing nothing is makes any sense i can't even interpret it freud would be like, nope, more cocaine. You need way more cocaine. Prescribing more cocaine for this man.

I will say on the overall, if I had read Coraline when I was like 10. Oh, this would have scared the shit out of me. It would have been pretty scary. Even as an adult, like you could read it at your, you could still definitively feel the tension in it as you're reading it. It's, this might surprise you all, you know, game.

It's pretty good at writing, believe it or not. Surprise. Surprise. One of those popular authors in the past is actually pretty good. Pretty good at writing actually deserves the hype, you know, and all the other,

any other thing that might be like, there's no political themes in this story. And all the other themes are very basic. Like, you know, grass is not as good on the other any other thing that might be like there's no political themes in this story and all the other themes are very basic like you know grass isn't always green on the other side you i do think this is a slight sort of backhanded thing from neil to his daughters being like hey all those times you wanted me to play with you but i was busy i still definitely loved you i was just very tired and busy so in terms any, in terms of any like explicit, uh, political themes or anything, there's nothing like,

like obviously this, those philosophical bits of courage. And, and I would even argue this idea of like self, like independence, like self, self-reliance. Yeah.

Self-reliance. That's a good word for it. she takes care of herself for like a day and a half. Yeah. And her parents has beer. She's, I would have fallen apart after like 12 hours. Yeah.

Let's say at that age. I don't remember. I think in the movie she's 11. I'm pretty sure in the book she's she's 11. She's 11 in the book. Yeah. OK, I'd have to. Yeah, we're going to go with it.

I thought I read somewhere again that. Yeah, she's an 11 year old main character. Yeah, OK. But she was nine. but 11 makes more sense um but like even at 11 I would have after like 10 or 12 hours I'd have been like I don't know what to do anymore I have nothing to eat I would simply die I would have been shitting my pants yeah like I would have already been calling various extended family members and like panicking that I didn't know how to feed myself. So this world seems to be seem.

What year was this book written? It was published in 2002. But say this is a pre hyper connected world. It's weird to be able to start started writing it in 1990 and published it in 2000. That will be able to eventually just easily delineate fiction as being pre-internet and post-internet. Yeah, basically like does the character have access to the internet or not? It's like – or even just pre-social media, post-social media. I feel like even in essence, the type of stories being written before social media and after oh the type of

story not even like the actual setting but like it's just just because i don't think someone would have to find me a an example but i don't think you can so much of the context of the world has changed in the past like 25 years yeah that i don't know if you'd be able to pull like say this is even if you sprinkled in other technology level, you wouldn't be able to get away with calling the story something set in 2020. Maybe it's a whole presents a whole other set of problems because people have like for a lot of that's why I like horror movies. This discussion for another time, I think, but like generally quickly horror movies always have. quickly horror movies always have i think i've heard it referred to as the cell phone problem oh yeah where you like you either have to pretend you live in a world where cell phones don't exist or your movie has to give you some sort of explicit reason why people aren't using them

or your film just has to be set in the 80s or you just said it you said it in the vague 80s to 90s vague time space where people don't have them yet you know what i mean but like every horror movie has that think about the last like few years if someone hasn't used that trope what they've used is at least with two big examples uh that everyone else in the world is dead um yeah like cell phones don't matter if like societies yeah it's like societies collapse so they ergo uh bird box or some nonsense yeah or they go with the classic like you know your family rented a cabin out in the woods where there is no cell phone reception. Would they just explain that like the first like 15 minutes of the movie? I believe they call that a closed circuit.

They're like, oh, no, our phones don't work out here. Oh, no. Or you could be like Coraline and be in an alternate universe. That would have cut off your cell service. Yeah, that would do it too. When you go to the other world, I don't think there's cell towers. I don't think the Beldam knew how to make those. No, the Beldam has to have her own phone.

She gets really excited about it. She's like, ooh, I can finally create a phone. You know what kind of phone she'd have? A jitterbug. You're very funny. I think that's it. That's the final joke. That's all you guys get.

I think that's all you get. No, this was just a nice, lighthearted little romp to sort of to recover from what happened last week. And you all get to listen to a nice, moderately lengthed episode as opposed to one that's two and a half hours. To all of you that listened to the entire Berserk episode, we love you personally. Yes, I do. I personally love you for listening to, I do. I personally love you for listening to that entire thing. Don't get me wrong. Not even in a parasocial way.

Just in an objectively straight way. Not even straight. Straight forward way. Queer as hell way. Queer as hell way. I love you. Don't get me wrong. If you haven't listened to it yet, it's a wonderful discussion. Brendan has a lot of fantastic things to say. It's a rollercoaster Brendan has a lot of fantastic things to say.

It's a rollercoaster ride. About that story. But it's an investment. It's a time investment. It's an investment in your mental well-being. It was for me. And I had to listen to the whole thing twice because I had to edit it too. I will say that we all do sound real funny when I'm editing at 1.5 speed. And we all sound like chipmunks.

My own laughter at chipmunk speed and we all sound like chipmunks. Your, my own laughter at chipmunk speed is a little off putting. Cause it's just like really quick jibber. Yeah. Well, thank you all for sticking with us through spooky month. I think it was pretty fun. We'll probably do it again next year.

We'll do spooky stories again next year for October. Straight horror novels. Yeah. We might actually, we might actually dive into actual horror novels, because as we've discussed, horror is the third sibling of fantasy and sci-fi.

Speaking of which, the bonus episode this month, which will also come out, well actually will be coming out right at basically the exact same time this does, is on Blade. The Wesley snipes vampire murdering your ass before 35 that's right uh vampire murdering blood squirting terrible cgi having a vampire movie which i is campy and i love campy but but earnest. And I love it. Listen, listen,

that's all you got to do. You just have to, if you're going to do something, you have to embrace it and be aware of it. And that's all that matters. Yeah. And blades. Wonderful.

So if you guys want to hear us talk about blade, you know, we're going to have a fun conversation. So about like the politics of, of, of vampires, the inherent, like sexuality of vampirism generally,

um, and some other fun stuff and a lot more conversations about heroes and protagonists that ride the line between two worlds sort of like we talked about in berserk and the witcher and all sorts of other things it's up to the patreon that'd be it'd be super super cool especially since i don't have a job right now. Next month, it's going to be Cyberpunk month. Beep, bop, boop, boop. We actually haven't officially settled exactly what we're reading. So keep an eye on our Twitter account

where I will post very shortly what all the upcoming books for Cyberpunk month are going to be. Let's see, if it hasn't already gone up before. If it hasn't already gone up, yeah, I suppose by the time this episode comes out, it'll already come up because I think we're going to be. I say, if it hasn't already gone up before, if it hasn't already gone up. Yeah. I suppose by the time this episode comes out, I give up because I think we're going to decide that probably right now, as soon as we finished recording.

Uh, but thank you all for listening. You all are fantastic and wonderful. Um, if you could, you know, do the, this is the one,

you know, time I'll ask you to do the podcast thing. We'd go to like, you know, Apple or whatever you listen to this and give us a review. Uh, the only feedback we really get on these episodes are download numbers so i have no idea what you all like besides the episode on the color of magic which has like twice as many views as the next

time as the next most listened to thing yeah so whatever it is about that episode that you all love please tell us and we'll do more of that i mean i feel it's just got to be like brits man it's gotta be the english yeah english fans look we give you so many english authors to talk about and we give you a lot of shit for it yeah but you know what we're still here talking about your authors. So, but it's okay. America's, America's, you know, just shitty, equally shitty, if not worse, Britain.

So spinal, spinal tap Britain, we just took it up to 11. Um, but yeah, you know, give us a review or just, you know,

DMS and Twitter and tell us you think our jokes suck, you know, whatever feedback's feedback, but thank you so much for listening. Uh, you all have a wonderful halloween and we will see you soon for computers bye bye bro are you fucking real man come on