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King's Quest 4 w/ Sara Benincasa
113 Plays7 hours ago
Ben & Jess are joined by author and comedian Sara Benincasa to talk about King's Quest 4, secret religious messages, and the hidden tensions within the fisherman and his wife. Bonus discussion about Sara's time writing for MST3K!
Sara's website: https://sarabenincasa.com/
Sara's instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarajbenincasa/
Quest Quest podcast is Ben Vigeant and Jess Morrissette.
Editing by Ben Vigeant
Show art by Kevin "WilcoWeb" Wallace
Watch us on Twitch!
Ben: https://www.twitch.tv/ps_garak
Jess: https://www.twitch.tv/decafjedi
Give us a review, they help people find this show! Unless you hated it, in which case, don't.
Talk with us on Discord!
https://discord.gg/ve9fqjgPp2
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Transcript
Introduction to Sarah Benincasa
00:00:30
Speaker
It's Quest Quest. The Adventure Game Podcast. Yes. We have a guest today. I could not be more excited to welcome this guest
Writing and Projects Discussion
00:00:42
Speaker
in. This is going to be listeners. This is going to be a banger.
00:00:46
Speaker
i So today, joining us, Sarah Benincasa is an author and comedian based in Chicago, i Illinois. i i like, i I chewed the city I lived have lived in for, like, 20 years. sha Chicago or Illinois? Chicago. Chicago. Good, good, you good, Look at that in post.
00:01:12
Speaker
Among many things, she wrote a really great piece for the New York Times Magazine titled An Agoraphobe Goes to the Grocery Store. I sincerely recommend this.
00:01:24
Speaker
It has some really wonderful illustrations if you look at the website version of it. and She also wrote for the ah most recent season of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
00:01:37
Speaker
uh and has an upcoming biography titled abraham fucking lincoln sarah good to see you it's great to see you too how are you guys doing good terrific because i know i'm breaking the fourth wall here for the listeners um or the third wall uh but um i am concerned that i can't see my waveform should i be concerned about that or no don't be concerned Oh
Podcasting Challenges
00:02:03
Speaker
my God. Look at me trying to micromanage. and right know We were, we were just discussing before the show commenced the terror experience of realizing that like and a track has not recorded.
00:02:18
Speaker
We know how it feels. I sometimes imagine having to redo an episode and what that would do to my soul if I ever had to like record an entire episode over again. In fact, I think I would lobby just to skip a week at that point. right je rat yes i mean It's lightning in a bottle. We're never get this level of quality to us. Jess, we recorded Space Quest 4 like three times. Do you sure? We'll get right someday. ah All right.
Mystery Science Theater Revival
00:02:49
Speaker
So, i Sarah, you and I, like we ah when we were talking before the the podcast, this came up. So you you wrote for like ah season, I think it was 13, Mystery Science Theater.
00:03:05
Speaker
think so. Yeah, I think so. It was a Jonah and Emily la season. Yeah. And I love Jonah and I love Emily very much. So it was a joy. And those those seasons, all note, I believe that the 13th season is is now being uploaded to YouTube. So for those of you that weren't me and didn't ah pay, like, I don't know, two or three years, whenever that was, ah you can you can watch it on YouTube now.
00:03:35
Speaker
thank you for paying for paying for paying my ah my fee my writer's fee yeah i did it a lot that was just like an incredible crowdfunding experience that where they brought the show back and did it the way i did it on netflix and and did it um did it independently the way that joel wanted to and uh it was really fun i this is i I just kickstarted the new new season of Mystery Science Theater that's not out yet with Mike and that group, the Riff Trax people.
00:04:10
Speaker
so cool like i'm i That one I'm excited about because I've become a physical media dork again. So I went went for the Blu-rays. Oh, that's cool. this is i don't even I don't even know much about that one. Is it going to be, or is it just Mike or who's going to be in it? It's Mike. In Abraham Lincoln town. asks Mike, Kevin, and Bill, the the sci-fi era cast. Oh, fantastic. That's awesome. and they've reassembled the, like, the Minneapolis, like, crew that did the show. and they That's dope. And they've built.
00:04:51
Speaker
like they've they've like look look this up they've built a new physical like satellite of love set like the really i'm so out of the loop yeah like i'm this is i'm so excited because i'm just like oh you're making it in the twin cities um well that is oh they're doing okay msc3k
Comedy and Puppeteering
00:05:18
Speaker
thrift tracks experiments that's dope and um oh and mary joe pell's doing it that's so cool yeah i i um have been on another planet but um that was that's that's so cool yeah joel's rad that whole crew is rad they're awesome And we when we did it, they shot in Pennsylvania, um outside Philly, and they worked with Monkey Boys Productions, if I remember correctly. And Monkey Boys do all the SNL like puppets.
00:05:51
Speaker
So they do really cool stuff. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that puppeteering world is so, there's so much crossover. I bet. It's really fun. I do a show once a month in Chicago, well, once a month-ish, with a bird named Chad the Bird, who some would say is a puppet operated by my friend of 25 years, Josh Sigourin, but I would say is a puppet. It's called Class at Lincoln Lodge, where we are professors, and And we welcome adjunct professors to compete for tenure, i.e. our comedian friends who we've made do 10 minutes on a particular topic. And um that's just a lot to say that puppets are cool and I enjoy working with them. And we went out to San Francisco Sketch Fest this year and had a great fucking show.
00:06:38
Speaker
And like the Brian Henson's like whole crew was there Oh, wow. So Josh was over there hanging out with them, and it was at the after party. And I love
Tribute to Creative Festivals
00:06:51
Speaker
Sketchfest. I've done it like, I guess I've done Sketchfest three times now, and that is really fun. But if you want a crowd that's going have puppets and Jonathan Colton Jean Grey and John Hodgman, you could probably take the JoCo cruise or you could go to Sketchfest. some point it's so fun to like see so many old buddies i do not know the hensons however i should say that i do not know them so and then just to return to mystery science theater for for one moment i said before the pod when we were talking little more about mystery science theater i said i i had a a joel uh story uh i i like to tell
00:07:34
Speaker
um which for if you're listening uh joel uh was the creator of mystery science theater and they're listening and they don't know who joel hodgson is what are they doing here yeah are they young come what they definitely aren't young we've looked at the numbers yeah no yeah no Your elder millennial Gen X demo is, if they don't know who Joel Hodgson is, I'll go to their house.
Admiration for Joel Hodgson
00:08:00
Speaker
I'll show up at their house. i'll follow them in my car. I'll be like, what are you doing? Why are you listening to Quest Quest and you have no facility ah with the nomenclature of our great MST3K icons? That man may be hundreds of dollars.
00:08:18
Speaker
I mean, I think it was thousands, but ah what a wonderful, I really like Joel. 50 of them. ah Thank you for paying me, my little friends. The show was really fun because I know you have a tale about Joel, but first I will say it was like fantasy baseball camp for comedians, but we were getting paid to be there. So it was great. so it was like me and all these late night writers who had off for the summer who did not need the money.
00:08:47
Speaker
Um, now, now they do because now they're just getting rid of late night, right and left, but then they did not a few years ago. And, um, so it was great. It was just like, I just incredible, incredibly funny.
00:09:04
Speaker
writers um and and watching increment by increment like watching a shitty movie with a timer on we would we would all have to watch it uh ourselves the previous evening we would have a chunk of it to watch to write jokes to and then in the room all day we would do um well a zoom room um We would watch it in 10 second chunks together. so there was a countdown clock on one side that counted down those 10 seconds that we were writing to live and we could pitch our stuff live. And then there was another clock that was read and that only popped up when there was space in between dialogue and
00:09:45
Speaker
um in the film or or like loud, like where there was any space where we could get one of the robots or the host to make a joke, it would be measured, even if it was like, you know, a quarter of a second and you would try to and then we would try in real time to like pitch the jokes that we had done the night before. it was joke ballet. Like it was so precise. It was fantastic. Sorry, you go ahead. Tell me your jokes. No, no, no. I love to hear that. That's fascinating.
Impact of Mystery Science Theater
00:10:17
Speaker
um so i think in like 2008 or 9 um uh joel uh came to town with cinematic titanic which was his movie riffing project that he did between the two incarnations of mystery science theater And it was mostly a live show. they um And when it ah came to Chicago, they did three nights and they did three different movies. And two of them were world premieres of that script. That's so cool.
00:10:54
Speaker
ah And so i i am an enormous Mystery Science Theater fan. ah Like behind me ah is a poster signed by the entire cast.
00:11:08
Speaker
ah like i've I've always been a huge, huge, huge fan of Mystery Science Theater. And so I bought tickets to every night, all three. And ah one of the nights, I bought one of the the DVDs they were selling.
00:11:26
Speaker
And the full cast, which was a lot of Mystery Science Theater ah ah performers, we're were all there like doing autographs. And I'm waiting in a very long line.
00:11:39
Speaker
And i get up to them, and I can barely speak. because Because you're so excited. I'm excited. And I'm like Ralphie's little brother seeing Santa Claus. Thank you for that Gen Z. It's like Gen X reference, not Gen Z. I cannot, like, I just see, like, I see Mary Jo Peel. I see Frank Conniff.
00:12:05
Speaker
like And i I'm just like, I just hand them the DVD and they they put their name in it. And then they I just take it back. Like, i don't say anything. And then Joel's at the very end of the line and I'm like kind of working up a nerve to say something ah because i'm i'm I'm so excited. And he's the one all the way at the end.
00:12:25
Speaker
And so i i get up to him and I just kind of blather. I'm just like, you know, it's it's because of you, like, and and this show that, like, i have, ah you know, you, you know, really formed my idea of comedy. That's why I'm here in Chicago. Came to Chicago to do, like, live comedy. I'm doing all these shows. And, and you know, you're such an inspiration. And I say something like that. And Joel looks at me and he goes, he goes,
00:12:57
Speaker
you got a good look for comedy and that's it. That's pretty good. and follow in that's is joel koland And, and I walk out and I'm like, that's a great compliment. And then I'm like, but was he making fun of me a little bit?
00:13:11
Speaker
So then many years later, storm back in many years later, Joel's back in town because he's doing his one man show.
00:13:23
Speaker
doing this one man show. He talks about ah like ah being a magician, being a standup, going, creating mystery science theater. It's a really, really great one man show.
00:13:34
Speaker
We get the VIP tickets, which includes getting his autograph again.
00:13:42
Speaker
and so I go up to him and I say, joel Many years ago, you were in town for Cinematic Titanic. ah ah and And I said all of this stuff about how you inspired me to be a comedian. it
00:14:08
Speaker
And you said to me, you have a good look for comedy. Were kind of making fun of me? And then he goes, I said what I said. Oh, no. So I'm just waiting. I'm just waiting for the next time he comes through. to so i can find. So I'm two previous occasions.
00:14:27
Speaker
or i would clarity here I want to text him and he'll be like, I have an order of protection against that young man. Please shut your laptop immediately. haven't talked to him in a while, but he's, I, I, I find him to be so delightful that ah he'll be like, why are you texting me in the middle of the night for no reason? It's been years. How are He just, he is who he is. He said what he said.
00:14:57
Speaker
He said what he said. He's a kid with a funny face. He's a haiku of a person. but you have to just accept the beauty and his the the simplicity of what he gave you.
00:15:09
Speaker
we could We could teach a whole college course about it, and we will never know for sure. you know, it'll just be it'll just be commentary. It won't be the sacred text. Yeah.
00:15:20
Speaker
That's amazing. Yeah.
Recent Travels and Comedy Gigs
00:15:23
Speaker
Now, before before we we we talk about anything we've been ah playing, I do want to ask, on your your i you recently took a trip. where Where did you fly out to, Sarah?
00:15:37
Speaker
I've done a couple trips. i I went to New York a couple weeks ago to do a gig with John Glazer and Alexandra Petrie and a couple other people at the New York Society Library in front of like 80 people at this members only library. was on the Upper East Side. It was really fun. So there was that trip and then came back for a few days and then I went to Philadelphia to produce a photo shoot. And so I was there working with a crew that I really like and I was in Philly for a few days.
00:16:05
Speaker
I hold I what's a members only library like oh honey wow it good well let me tell you very full of books um it was I think I've always hated about public libraries is the public part yeah the public uh I don't want to, do I want to consort with the hoi polloi? It was actually the first library, community library founded in the city of New York in, I believe, the 1750s or 1760s.
00:16:36
Speaker
And some of the first members were Mr. Alexander Hamilton and and Mr. George Washington and the such. And so... They are now in a townhouse that was built, of a modern townhouse built 1917, but they've had different, you know, homes over the years. And so...
00:16:54
Speaker
Hold for sound, hold for sound, fixing my mic in my ear. Okay. um So they ah they have this incredible, the Newbury Library here in the city of Chicago is like this too, where you can go, you can visit, you can take tours, um you can see some of their public collection on display, but you need to become a member if you want to actually um see any of the so ah most of the artifacts. Like I don't know if either the New York Society Library or the Newberry are lending libraries. and The Newberry is not. It's not a lending library. It's not like doesn't put books in circulation. But as a researcher, it's just this incredible, i mean, it's an incredible resource that I'm going to take advantage of for Abraham fucking Lincoln. and i already talked to a librarian there who's really fantastic. And then the New York Society Library
00:17:48
Speaker
I think is similar, but then they again, they've got like a children's playing room and I know, you got to pay to join. Basically. That was a long walk, long fucking walk to say you got to pay to join. George Washington's kids played in that playroom.
00:18:03
Speaker
that That maybe their ghosts did in 1917. It was a very, it was a really interesting, Glazer and I were talking about it, about how it was just like, so interesting to be how we, he said at least that he loves,
00:18:18
Speaker
these unusual settings for comedy, and so do I, where you just, it's unexpected. here It's not a club. It's not a black box theater. It's not a tradition, what you think, it's the members room at this gorgeous private library. It was cool. And apparently there's ghosts in the building. One person who works there told me they don't believe in ghosts, but allegedly there are ghosts. And I could tell that some of the other people who work there do believe in ghosts. And I will be returning and asking about the ghosts.
00:18:45
Speaker
but Now I've seen New York ghosts do that whole like card catalog trick where they like, wow. I would like to see that. Like maybe like a really like attractive ghost that did turn super scary as it turns to me in the stacks. I wanted to go to ghost B in that.
00:19:01
Speaker
Did you know that after they shot that part of Ghostbusters in the basement with like the librarian and all the turns into like ectoblasm and shit. They shot that at um Columbia University and they were like in the rare, they like for some reason they gave location permission to Ivan Reitman to shoot in like adjacent to the rare book section. oh god They're like, you know, they're doing like a lot of practical effects and stuff. Throwing stuff there. So they like, aren't, you can't, they, I think after that, they didn't let anybody film in that part of the library ever again.
00:19:34
Speaker
Wow. Did you have any interesting meals on this trip? This is, this what I was building up to. This is what our listeners to hear. Okay. Me and Alexandra, Patrice, she's great. She was at the Washington Post for a long time. She's at the Atlantic now. And her friend from high school, who was awesome. We went to, um,
00:19:53
Speaker
on the Upper East Side, and we had some really fucking good sushi, man. I don't remember the name of the place, but it was real good.
Personal Backgrounds
00:20:02
Speaker
I also had gone with my mom and my aunt, who is also my godmother, to a pizza place that I have been going to since the 90s. It used to called Sophia, now it's called Serafina, and it's like a chain now in New York.
00:20:14
Speaker
But um the original one is, again, on the Upper East Side, so we went, and it was delicious. And you're, you're, you're from, uh, uh, are you from, uh, New Jersey? Is that correct? I am. I'm from beautiful, sunny New Jersey. a neighbor to, I think your native Pennsylvania.
00:20:33
Speaker
i'm I'm from Connecticut. Uh, shocking, shocking, shocking. Yeah. you You know, who else else had family from Pennsylvania? Who? Abraham Lincoln. Oh, my God. There you go. It all goes back to Lincoln.
00:20:47
Speaker
Berks County, Pennsylvania, birthplace of Taylor Allison with one L. Swift, December 13th, 1989. Berks County, Pennsylvania, also where Abraham Lincoln's... is think his great-grandfather john was born there but then he moved to virginia and became virginia john i might have fucked all that up but whatever there's any hardcore lincoln heads listening ah just pretend i didn't say that buy my book when it comes out whenever we get emails from those guys all the time listen we're always ignoring their yeah the lincoln heads are always our ass The Lincolnettes are like, who is Joel Hodgson? I am a 49-year-old with a liberal arts degree who does graphic design.
00:21:31
Speaker
I went to Vassar and i was one of the only dudes and I loved it. I've, I've never heard of MST3K.
00:21:42
Speaker
What is Dungeons and Dragons? What is a dungeon or a dragon? Yeah. you know what i don't luddites I don't know what a dungeon dragon is. Uh, now.
00:21:53
Speaker
i but My, my New Jersey question. yeah Okay. Okay. Okay. Important. important Taylor ham. Oh, no, it's pork roll. or Okay, or pork roll.
00:22:04
Speaker
Okay. It's pork roll. It's pork roll. Okay. Taylor Ham is like, so it's so bizarre to me that anybody calls it that. What are you, a fucking monster? You're calling it after the name of the company, you corporate fuck?
00:22:17
Speaker
It's pork roll. Are you in bed with the Taylor Ham mafia, you fucking losers? Shills. These people are weak. Pork roll.
00:22:28
Speaker
Pork roll. Haven't eaten it in years. Probably wouldn't eat it now. did as a child. It's like a Canadian bacon. It's, you know. I also don't remember if there was actually a Taylor Ham Company, but it was a good bit and I just wanted to kind of roll with it. I believe that that is, but I don't know. I'm looking it up right now. I have a telephone with the internet on it and I'm looking it up. Yeah, that's right. Did Joel get that?
00:22:57
Speaker
Joel did. Joel said, Sarah, welcome to a new world. Yeah, he woofed you. Oh, yeah, he did. He is, in many ways, my Lawrence Fishburne. Okay, developed in Trenton, New Jersey by John Taylor in 1856. Ooh. Okay. He
00:23:15
Speaker
um made and then the world took. yeah Yeah. That's really good. Yes. Very good. Clap for that. Thank you. Thank you. We all like... When we look out the window, riding the train through Newark, the Amtrak South, you look out, you see that suspension bridge Newark makes. It's beautiful.
00:23:37
Speaker
The world takes. So he invented it in 1856. Guess what else happened in 1856? Is it related to Abraham Lincoln?
00:23:49
Speaker
Well, only if you think it's important that his home in Springfield was remodeled for the fifth time in 1856, which it is very germane to this conversation. Yeah.
00:24:01
Speaker
yeah Yeah. Yes. Yeah, it's very it's ah it's very connected. I wonder if he ever had Taylor Hamm.
00:24:12
Speaker
Well, that's, you know, what thisy but this is never coming out cause I'm going to have research that for seven months. So the publisher will be like, fuck you. So Jess, speaking of the fifth time Abraham Lincoln renovated his home in Springfield, Illinois, yeah what have you been playing?
00:24:34
Speaker
Oh my gosh, what have I been playing? Ben, just earlier today, you know I've been talking about this a lot. I have set up a little virtual machine on my computer where I've been going back and digging into old Windows 95 games. I have like a little tiny Windows 95 running inside my Windows 11 that allows me to relive all the fun of the mid 90s and early 2000s. Let me get a calculator out.
00:24:58
Speaker
So 95 divided by We're running Windows 8.6363636. Yeah, so basically Windows 8, known as one of the better Windows. Windows 95 had the best fucking commercial.
00:25:16
Speaker
It started with Start Me Up, remember? Yes, yeah. into your retina Sorry, go ahead, Jess. I was just... No, absolutely. is But I was playing around earlier today with Daria's Inferno based on the MTV animated series Daria. That is so funny that they did that. Oh my god. And it's it's a weird game. Like the premise it starts out with like a an animated sequence that looks quite good. It looks like the show, as well as you could capture that 2000. And Daria falls asleep in class while her teacher is talking about Dante's Inferno.
00:25:56
Speaker
And she ends up transported to her own version of hell, populated by all of her classmates and family and everything else. And it's kind of crummy game, like this asymmetric, like pulled out tilted view where Daria walks around the high school and other locations and like Kevin and Brittany are like demon lords and you have to... The whole thing it's not a good game, but I love that exists. I love the swing that they took with it. It's kind of like an adventure game light. They have some inventory type stuff. They have some mazes and things. But I just, I mean, I'm just happy to see Daria. I like hearing a song to Daria. That alone just brightens my day.
00:26:43
Speaker
That concept is great. That pitch must have been so fun. I love that idea. and That's a good starting point, right? like that For sure. It's very fun. Yeah. Absolutely, yeah. dode Do you think that they work backwards from Daria's Inferno? Like, they have the title, and they're like, okay.
00:27:02
Speaker
Yes, I do. I think so. i Yeah, that sounds right. That sounds For sure. Yeah. No, it sounds too good to have gone the other way around. Yeah, no, they definitely worked backwards on that. But yeah, I mean, it's a crummy game, but I love a good, like,
00:27:19
Speaker
adaptation of a media property turned into a crappy game. That's like my favorite sub-genre of video game anyway. So I'll take it. It's good stuff. So yeah, that's what I've been playing around with today and probably will end up streaming it at some point. it' so bizarre.
00:27:35
Speaker
I feel like i need to share it with the world. Ben, what have you been playing?
Gaming Discussions
00:27:39
Speaker
Jess, I've been playing the ah co-op cooking game Overcooked 2.
00:27:51
Speaker
Yes. With my boyfriend. And when, like, I think it, like, when it was loading up, like, the second time we played it, he turns me, he goes, is this going to cause us to have our first argument?
00:28:06
Speaker
Like, our first big argument. If you said, shut up, we're playing a game. Yeah. Because I don't know if you've ever played this game, but it's a game like where it's like, okay, so like you see a bunch of food orders and they're all like populating at the top of the screen. And one person is chopping stuff up and another person...
00:28:26
Speaker
is like cooking, you know, the hamburgers and you like put them in the bun and you pull them on a plate. You have to throw them on the thing, but there's constant chaos and everything is really difficult and and obnoxious and hard to get going at the same time.
00:28:40
Speaker
And so
00:28:44
Speaker
it is like, did have the same thought. He just vocalized it. And did it. I mean, did you have your first argument? No, we didn't. We made it through. We made it through. Good sign. We made it through.
00:29:03
Speaker
We made it through. We made it to the third world of the game, not a developing nation.
00:29:20
Speaker
Yes, that might be fun for us to stream together. into that. Because you know what? That might lead to our first fight. That would be kind of fun. I think man I'm going to start a fight with with someone I love soon about this game. Wow, wow. That's beautiful. Yeah, no, I mean, and we're both so conflict avoidant, and I think it would be a very awkward fight for people to witness. I think it would be, i mean, you would, I don't even know if it would rise to the level of passive aggression. I think it would just be somewhere below that, which is almost more upsetting.
00:29:55
Speaker
But you're Southern, you could polite him to death. I love that. I could, I could if I needed to. that. That is such a good, I think that's such incredible. I could bless his heart. It's such a beautiful weapon of war. When I see my Southern friends deploy it, I'm like, God damn, how did you people lose? Like, it really is so fucking good.
00:30:14
Speaker
Was there any important leaders on the other side that may have led them to lose? Like, anyone, like, like driving the ship over the other side? No, I just think it would have worked out if Jefferson Davis had been like, well, don't you look good today? You look cute. I bet you feel cute in that. you feel cute in that? I could not wear that, but I love that you are. couldn't do that myself. I'm so impressed. What are you doing? Y'all it looks like y'all like to eat. If he had just did that, everybody would've been so sad. Oh yeah, but you know, history went the way it went, man. You can't retcon history, am I right, guys?
00:30:56
Speaker
Or can you? We're in another dimension. I had a lot of coffee today. i don't know what I'm saying. It's okay. but I feel real comfortable with you guys.
00:31:15
Speaker
Did you know? Sarah, what have you been playing? ah ah I've been playing at being an adult woman, and I'm not succeeding.
00:31:29
Speaker
I've been playing shit, I gotta to be honest. Truly nothing. um i do think it's really funny that Jefferson Davis' his wife was named Verena. It's a perfectly nice name, makes me laugh every time. I don't know why.
00:31:43
Speaker
Mostly I just play the role of somebody who does things other than think about what she's supposed to be doing for work. Um, my boyfriend's kid would really like for me to play games that he's into. The one time I tried, i was like, I feel nauseous. i don't know what's happening. Where do I put these boxes? This is a lot. But I love him, so I will try. And today i did send him two-hour-long walkthrough of King's Quest IV.
00:32:13
Speaker
And I was like, this is an important relic of my childhood. And he just texted back, cool. Oh. I same conversation with daughter.
00:32:32
Speaker
please He's about to be 13 in a couple weeks. And I was just like, man, where am I studying this? He's done. We did watch, this is not a game, but we've been watching The Amazing Digital Circus, which fucking rules. I don't know what that is. I don't either. Well, let me tell you something. The Amazing Digital Circus is a fabulous animated program on the YouTube straight out of Australia. And, but you don't have to deal with a ton of Australian accents. Just, they're just peppered in there it feels right.
00:33:01
Speaker
And um it's so good and it's so popular that they're dropping the final episode in like a week or two in theaters. Like they did a partnership with some American theaters and some theaters in Central and South America and Mexico. Anyway, that told you basically nothing.
00:33:18
Speaker
Again, I'm Sarah Benincasa. Hello, everyone. I'm playing any games. I don't play games, guys. I came here to be real.
00:33:29
Speaker
That's right. That's what we we want to get. Yeah, that was a spence with all the game inspiration time for games. Inspirations for the show include Harlan Ellison's short story, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.
00:33:40
Speaker
oh I saw Harlan Ellison once. Um, and she was so funny and so just roasted the other panel. and It was like, it was like October, 2001. Okay.
00:33:57
Speaker
and um Was it Harlan? Yeah, it was Harlan Ellison. He was so fucking funny. And I'm so glad that I saw him from afar.
00:34:10
Speaker
Really great performer. um Quite a guy from what I've read. a real mixed bag, but what a brilliant fucking dude. It was at MIT in like October 2001.
00:34:22
Speaker
m Strange time for America. yeah ah Harlan was not making it more normal. No! was just making fun of everybody. It was pretty great.
00:34:35
Speaker
Yeah. You didn't want to be in the splash zone. no no no, no, no. I was in some cheap seats. No, he was, like, mostly making fun of his fellow presenters and, like, their families and so just roasting people. Like, he was not being demonic or evil or nasty. He was just being very funny and ribbled, I would say.
00:34:55
Speaker
i think he cursed sometimes. was pretty cool. Yeah. So you can do that back then. Yeah. You can curse back at um at MIT back then. P.S. I was not an MIT student, but I did go to their events sometimes.
00:35:14
Speaker
Were you in Boston at the time? goes Yeah. I was, I went to Emerson college for a couple years before dropped out. That is where I met my friend, Josh Segoren, AKA Chad the bird.
00:35:26
Speaker
who I perform with sometimes. um But yeah, i was ah I was at Emerson. I guess I was, what was I? I was a junior and I dropped out like halfway through. And then one day finished at a little place called Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, North Carolina.
00:35:41
Speaker
So we're talking- you think your listeners are opening a vein yet? Do you think they're like, who the fuck is this broad? Truly word salading, info dumping.
King's Quest Connection
00:35:50
Speaker
i just stepped on your pivot.
00:35:52
Speaker
No, no. guess. They've heard us talk way too much. This is like episode 81. Any break from the two of us is a real treat for the listeners.
00:36:03
Speaker
No, that they come here for you. They come here to be entertained. Oh, no, that's even more upsetting. Awesome. Awesome. Perfect title of a podcast. I love it. a Quest Quest. I love it so much. Thank you.
00:36:18
Speaker
Easy to remember.
00:36:21
Speaker
So today we're talking... about King's Quest 4. And one of the the the reasons that we have you on, Sarah, was I was i was at your housewarming party. Yes! year ago.
00:36:39
Speaker
Last year. Around this time last year, maybe. And ah there, on a shelf, was the box for King's Quest 4.
00:36:51
Speaker
And actually... When we were talking last year, Jess and I, about potential guests to have on the show, even before that housewarming, Jess said, we should maybe reach out to Sarah Benincasa because she's tweeted about King's Quest IV.
00:37:14
Speaker
uh yes in the past we were mutuals a lifetime ago on uh on twitter when it was fun it was fun and normal and you didn't have to feel like an awful person being there and even you remember like it was still twitter um like it was like a bunch of fun dorks talking to each other and you would find your dorks who were into your dork stuff and you would just be dorks about it yeah it was very fun Right. And I think I posted something about King's Quest four and you dropped into the comments and, and said, it's like, yeah, oh this game was, you know, I loved this when I was younger and I kind of filed that way. I was like, Oh, that's, ah that's always interesting to hear people who, you know, played these games that were, they're so influential in,
00:37:55
Speaker
my childhood and so many other people's and yeah when Ben and I were first brainstorming and like guests I said it like you know I would love know all I know of Sarah's experience with King's Quest 4 is a tweet here and there but I would love to know more about it because I could tell that like you were very excited to see someone else talking about King's Quest 4 so I was like want to hear her talk about King's Quest 4 yes I have I was texting my friend um a great uh writer of many things and a author and a game writer and a late night writer, Mike Drucker, who's fantastic. I was texting him that I was going to do a show and talk about King's Quest 4. I also sent him sent him that walkthrough. I didn't just inflict it on like a poor 12-year-old.
00:38:42
Speaker
But ah because because that's like a sort of ah one of the tenets of Mike's and my friendship is that um we both love, and he's he's interviewed Roberta Williams recently, actually. i freaked out. I was so excited for him. So we love that. And I have a few...
00:39:01
Speaker
um I have a couple books. many many years ago, he gave me ah a King's Quest novelization, which I have. And then I think I have one more um book that he gave me that I still have. that's I mean, and that was when, think that was when...
00:39:20
Speaker
I lived in l LA. We both lived in LA at the time. So that has been with me through so many moves. um And I just love all that stuff. And yeah, I i love i loved King's Quest 4. I mean, I loved King's s Quest 3. I liked 1 and 2. I tried to get into 5, but because you know we're moving to like a point and click kind of interface, that was really not for me at that time. little too advanced, little too wild, little too out there. I said, o this will never take off.
00:39:51
Speaker
You're going to always have to type in the text to to do stuff and move the arrow keys. But it was the first like major wide release to my knowledge that had a girl as a protagonist. um And so that was really big. and And the fact that, and I'm, you know, I'm sure I've,
00:40:11
Speaker
in this particular genre of game or sub-genre, let's say, I believe it was the first time where you yeah had a game where you could play as the lead and the lead was, your protagonist was a girl.
00:40:23
Speaker
um There's probably one where you play as like a lady octopus and somebody, if we were on Twitter, somebody would be like, actually, I'd be like, you're right. Okay. That was a femme coated octopus. I'm terribly sorry. I forgot about that.
00:40:37
Speaker
tentacle fuckers which came out after leisure suit larry or something i wasn't allowed i wasn't allowed to play i want to play it now i want to play on steam now actually i need get that on steam and do it because i was never allowed to play that game and i was like this feels like it's about sex i'm eight let's go and my parents like absolutely not i can uh push up my my glasses and say think the earliest one is plundered hearts which was an infocom text adventure. It was a romance. Oh, romance. It was a romance. It was a pirate romance. Was it a romance adventure game? It was a ah romance adventure game.
00:41:19
Speaker
This is Wikipedia. Plundered Hearts cast a player as a young woman in the late 17th century who's received a letter. Jean LaFond, the governor of a small West Indies island of St. Sinatra, says the player's father has contracted a quote, wasting tropical disease. Oh, no. He probably fucking deserves it because he's black probably part of the fucking triangle trade. What fuck is he doing? The fucking West Indies goddamn forced labor camp plantation. Fuck him.
00:41:46
Speaker
French motherfucker. but Unless her dad is is an enslaved individual being forced to work on one of said plantations. Pretty sure that's not the deal, though. Doesn't sound like it. Let's unpack it. As the king, we'll bring you back. We'll all play Plundered Hearts together and decolonize it.
00:42:06
Speaker
Let's decolonize. Let's queer and decolonize yeah Plundered Hearts, please. Everyone's been begging for that. That was, honestly, I played it. i was like, pretty good game, but needs to be queer decolonize. Yeah. um so And your parents are like, great job, Ben. That's amazing coming from a six-year-old.
00:42:29
Speaker
Ben, you really unpacked the layers inherit of corruption inherent to the sugar industry even today. Yeah. um But ah i so in ah King's Quest four when when you played it, did did your computer have a sound card or was it just doing the the little beeps and boops?
00:42:53
Speaker
So we had we were a PC family. Yeah. So in in that world... many years later would be represented America's sweetheart, John Hodgman.
00:43:05
Speaker
um Oh wait, no. Was he a Mac in those commercials? He was he was the PC. Wait, no, but there was the dude you're getting, Adele guy. That was a different thing. yeah Different guy, yeah. Okay, so Justin Long was an Apple. He was the cool, handsome Mac that we all wanted to be.
00:43:23
Speaker
and John Hodgman was the stodgy, awkward PC that we don't like. adorable we love him and so we were a pc family i was not fucking around with an apple 2gs i was like get out of here this is a pc household that's what i said to my parents who brought the computer home from work so um we had a pc of some kind and i was playing it on that so i never played any of the sierra online games um the i think they had them for like atari and shit like they had they had them for all kinds of platforms yeah the atari computers and yeah
00:43:59
Speaker
min girlie I was asking if, because one of the the cool things with ah King's Quest IV was their their first game to support sound cards, and they went all out with it. So I have, this was the the title theme. You're
00:44:26
Speaker
Like, just...
00:44:38
Speaker
bro. There's a piccolo in there. I want like a trap remix of this. Walk down aisle when I get married. I want that.
00:44:51
Speaker
They brought William Goldstein ah to to do this, who did music for the TV show Fame. Wow. I don't know if either of you watched the TV show Fame. I know that I'm going to live forever. That's literally where my knowledge is.
00:45:10
Speaker
Inspired Fiorello LaGuardia High School in of the Performing Arts in New York City. Think about that when you go to sleep at night. I will be.
00:45:21
Speaker
ah and And also he did music for the 80s Twilight Zone. they they they They weasel it a little bit. They're like, Andy did music for the Twilight Zone.
00:45:33
Speaker
And then i I'm like, but if he's doing the fame music, he's not he's not working with Rod Serling. me I looked it up.
00:45:45
Speaker
Well, I think, i you know, i don't remember the music being that resplendent um when I was playing it. i I recall a series of beeps and boops in a melodic fashion that I enjoyed.
00:45:56
Speaker
But I do feel there's something in me that has this, that is like hearing that and heard it earlier with the walkthrough that I forced on people. Yeah.
00:46:08
Speaker
where I was like, oh, this is so much more rich and resonant and there's a lot more happening here. it's ahs It's a version of what I was used to hearing on my computer. But then I might also be conflating that with King's Quest 3, so I don't know. King's Quest 3 was my gateway drug and then King's Quest 4 was really when we got popping off.
00:46:28
Speaker
They had a fucking unicorn, man. It did. Yeah. ah I, and the, so, so it was a showpiece for this new sound card technology. Now the version, you might've had a sound card and it might've sounded a little different. This is like the, the version I played was if you had like the 500 in 1989 dollars, no count card its which is a million dollars today if you can believe it um and uh but uh they brought in this guy who who had done like professional like television and movie soundtracks to do the uh music they uh like it they
00:47:18
Speaker
up to the resolution. They made it a much bigger and like splashier looking game. Another piece of music I wanted to share very quickly is this very oddly melancholy tune they play for the fishermen that's always stuck. Oh yeah.
00:47:37
Speaker
Oh yeah.
00:47:48
Speaker
That's beautiful. That's beautiful. I mean, again, I heard it in sort of a primitive beeps and boops form, but it was a bit melancholy even then. Like, well, look at this motherfucker just fishing.
00:48:01
Speaker
Pretty much. That's it. That's his life. He fishes. And it's like, is it that bad? And it's, I guess I'm supposed to think so. There he is. Fishing. there aren't that many other people on the island. There's an evil giant and his family.
00:48:16
Speaker
There's Pan, Cupid. Yeah, there's Pan, there's Cupid, there's... Seven dwarves. Seven dwarves. Yeah, there's a... A minstrel. A minstrel, but like the... um ah He's like a white guy with like... who Sort of like fa-la-la-ing along, if I recall correctly. Sort of like...
00:48:35
Speaker
Some dude who just, you know, he looks like one of the strokes would eventually look circa 2002. And he's just sort of but scampering around. There's a haunted house with a ghost in it. It's pretty cool. and don't want to get too political. Are the evil trees people?
00:48:52
Speaker
Well, that's a great question. the fact that you would bring that up without sort of giving me a heads up or giving my publicist a heads up. I'm so sorry. You're trying to sell book and you're going to get her canceled.
00:49:06
Speaker
Diana? Diana? Are you listening? Diana, did you give them the third rail topics? Did give them the list? we got the rider but we didn't get that she she knows that she'll be punished later and it's we got you uh we got you three and a half cups of only red m&ms so we did do that thank you and a joel hodgson story yeah and a joel i love it yes hard to get one but time for the record
00:49:42
Speaker
An evil green woman and her son. Mm-hmm. Okay, i would I would just like to push back on that. Mm-hmm. She is ah a she's misunderstood and clearly ripped from...
00:49:59
Speaker
that' the cinematic wizard of oz do you think she has a wicked story who yeah as well yeah ripped from wizard of oz like that whole thing it's so great i mean i'll call it outt let's call it an homage i believe it's an homage her flying henchman yeah yeah her flying roberta and ken williams were not trying to violate ip they were saying let's do an homage so i think that's what that was um and then her son who who like is like horned up for you and likes you as the girl he's like i guess i'll let you out of my mom's dungeon prison yeah and then you're just like okay bye and like that's it you don't like i think you like kiss him on the cheek at some point or hug him i don't know he turns red at some point he he's constantly blushing any every time he looks looks at you he's got that like i'm a little stinker blush
00:50:49
Speaker
Yeah, and you're like, I'm a hot blonde girl. that's my My job is that ah a fairy named Janesta gave me a quest, and I guess my dad dying, so now I'm on this island, not clear on what to do.
00:51:05
Speaker
Look past my peasant clothes to see the royal demeanor beneath. That's beautiful. That's beautiful. That's poetry. who all right Then you have three witches that all share one eyeball.
00:51:19
Speaker
Classic. Ripped from Billy's shakes. And just mythology in general. and then ah And then a mummy's tomb. Where Pandora's box is. Luckily, if you have a scarab, you'll be fine.
00:51:33
Speaker
Why? A pool. There's a pool. That's important to know about. There's a pool. That's where where Cupid hangs out. I am curious. Why is there a mummy's tomb? Like the the mishmash of of many other stuff.
00:51:50
Speaker
It's that a general crypt that looks like kind of a European kind of crypt. And then you open it up and it's a mummy's tomb, actually.
00:52:01
Speaker
Yeah, we get like the... It's interesting. Thank you for bringing this up. it it We have this Greek mythology layer. h We have this sort of Grimm's fairy tales, like fairy tales of probably Western and Central European origin layer. And then we also have this very sort of... um maybe like a Victorian horror story through modern day layer of like the haunted house, the, the mummy's tomb. Like this all feels very um ah of, of its own thing. So we're playing with it. but We at no point does like Jason run through with like,
00:52:41
Speaker
you know, a hockey mask or something. we don't get that far along in the progression of story, but we are, we are playing in these different realms in a way that's just sort of all mashed together. So, which I love actually.
00:52:55
Speaker
And there is an Easter egg that will make Rosella breakdance at one point. What? Yeah. If you play the like, when I played this game as a kid, I had a crappy computer that couldn't run the nice version King's Quest 4. I had to have like the downgraded worst graphics, worst sound version that had the same interface as King's Quest 3 did. So they made two versions of it, the nice one. Okay. And I probably had that one. I probably had that one.
00:53:23
Speaker
that's the one i had by the way too it was in color right though and it was on was still in color and it was on eight inch floppies or was it on the smaller fra disc it probably came on larger and smaller i think i had i had the big five and a quarter inch like or yeah i know i said eight inches that wasn't fucking eight inches think yeah i had the floppity floppy ones yeah i had the floppity flops too so But yeah, in that version, there's a scene where they hit a little Easter egg that if you type rap into it, Rosella starts like break dancing and then there's ah
00:53:57
Speaker
what in the 1980s would pass as a rap? um Where it's like a rap about how hard it is to ship a video game. That like, it's really hard to make these things. And we've been like working horrible hours.
00:54:12
Speaker
And probably this is 3am. And we haven't seen our families in two weeks. And we are putting this in to vent our frustrations at being on this project. So devs are psychotic. And they are yeah always been psychotic and they always will be. And I respect that about them. That's so nuts. I love it. I mean, that jumps straight forward to the present day. So it covers, yeah, a wide span from ancient Egypt. That is beautiful.
00:54:39
Speaker
I'm going to the early years of hip hop. Oh, that's magnificent. The sugar hill gang pops up at some point. Yeah. I love it.
00:54:50
Speaker
this This did have a ah complicated development. they were ah They were trying to make this their big showpiece for an IPO.
00:55:03
Speaker
and this was them like showing that they're the Disney of entertainment software was what they hoped this game would be like from a marketing standpoint. This is us catapulting ourselves into a huge player in the entertainment industry.
00:55:15
Speaker
Ooh, yeah, that didn't happen, but it was so fucking cool as hell. Oh my gosh. ah Like reading from the the Digital Antiquarian, there's a ah like ah a story that Al Lowe, who designed to Leisure Suit Larry, tells about how they were all excited this will be their big thing for the IPO. And then someone was like, hey, how's our big thing for the IPO going? And they looked at it and it was in terrible shape.
00:55:44
Speaker
ah And so he was put in charge and starting on Labor Day Monday, they assembled the entire ah group of all programmers at Sierra and said, we are going to live here until this is done in one month.
00:56:03
Speaker
Oh my God. That's insane. And, uh, and, uh, uh, like, and, and then he's like, uh, quote, and by God, by the end of the month, we had a game. It wasn't perfect. It was a little buggy, but at least we had a game we could send out. And when we went public, it was a successful IPO.
00:56:23
Speaker
Oh, that's all. Money. that I remember, like, also at that time you had competing games, well, yeah, from, like, LucasArts.
00:56:33
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Or Lucas, i don't know if they were calling themselves LucasFilm or LucasArts or LucasGames or whatever, but you had that. And then you had, like, um it was just this really interesting time where...
00:56:46
Speaker
more of a mainstream audience was starting to like get into these story games, the storytelling games. And I know I'm not using like the correct terminology right now for like within the industry and for like real fans and shit, but in terms of like just random ass person who wasn't that into games being like, Oh, that computer game looks interesting. Let me look at that. Oh, wow. It's got a really beautifully designed, um, cover.
00:57:15
Speaker
It's got really evocative text. Like this seems interesting. And also the artist who passed away, uh, gosh, I forget when she passed away. I believe it was a, I should know her name. Um, the artist who did the cover art for um the perils of rosella was just really really amazing um it's a beautiful illustration i mean yeah it's uh it's one of the i think better looking sierra boxes from that it's so stunning i do i know you have ah the the box here uh jess is that one that you have
00:57:51
Speaker
Yes, I do have a copy King's Quest 4 as well. um I started out on King's Quest 2. That was my entry point and two into kind of computer games in general. My parents got it along with my first computer. Radio Shack just threw in a copy.
00:58:09
Speaker
And I was immediately hooked and and played 3 and 4 right after. And yeah for me, and Ben and I have talked about this before and we've talked about other King's Quest games,
00:58:21
Speaker
As small and constrained as those worlds were, as a kid, it felt like a world of just like limitless possibilities. I could type anything. i could go anywhere in this world. You know, it really did feel boundless to me in a way that just, you know, the games I'd played on my Atari 2600 or other things like that just couldn't possibly capture. And that was that was why it really drew me to it as a kid.
00:58:49
Speaker
It felt participatory because it it was, I mean, obviously you had to you know, there were certain prompts you had to type in, but you could do different versions of them. So that made it feel like, i mean, especially in an era where like I grew up on fairytale theater. And so um this was like getting to be in the fairytale world. And there were so many familiar references from stories that most kids had heard that getting to be in that world was so cool. And actually, now that you brought it up, I think I actually, the first one I played was one or two because we had it at my school in our computer lab. Remember those? wow And so in the computer lab, we could play certain games and and I think one or two was one of them. And then I played three for years and years and years, never beat it until
00:59:41
Speaker
I discovered we had a whole like trunk full of computer games. So one day I was digging through it and I realized that my dad had brought home the solution to King's Quest three from a friend and on like the old dot matrix printer paper. And it was like buried in the bottom. And I was like i've been playing this game, trying to beat it for like three or four years. And I was like, Oh my God, the solutions here.
01:00:03
Speaker
And, um and with the King's Quest four, I mean, I loved three. I always loved three so, so much, but four was really special. I think because i was maybe, I was a little older when it came out. um I don't know how old I would have been nine or 10.
01:00:17
Speaker
How, what year did it come out? 80, 88. Oh, God, no, I was only... i was seven or eight. Okay. So i um i just, you know, it it was a step up, even though I had the cheap version of the game like we all did.
01:00:33
Speaker
It was a step up, and it did feel really special. And, you know, ah as a little girl, I was like, oh should I get to play as a girl? This is this is awesome. of This rules.
01:00:45
Speaker
The... um ah One of the the things I liked, because i think four, because we had ah we had those those first four ah when I was a little kid and just like kind of poking around them.
01:01:02
Speaker
and i was And I was little, little. And ah like they had like one through four were well out and five was just coming out when I was poking around these.
01:01:14
Speaker
Um, and I remember one of the exciting things for me being very young was that I figured out, uh, what to do in the seven dwarves
Nostalgia and Game Critique
01:01:24
Speaker
house. Like I never saw puzzles as like, you know, a six or seven year old.
01:01:30
Speaker
And, but like I knew because i knew, ah you know, Snow White and the seven dwarves that you clean the house. Mm-hmm. I love that. and And so I was like, hu the house is dirty. It's so sweet. I love the the intertextuality, though, of how King's Quest goes alongside all the fairy tales and things like that that we know. As a game that presumably aimed at a maybe younger audience than some of Sierra's games,
01:02:04
Speaker
Knowing some of the basic stuff, it's like, well, you know, in the first game, if I need to get past a troll on a bridge, I kind of have some hint of the idea of, you know, Billy Goats Gruff. So maybe I can get a goat to come over here. You know, I i meet a you know a bunch of dwarves with a filthy house. I kind of know how that's supposed to go because i have some familiarity with that as well. And it it is a nice entry point, you know, for like...
01:02:28
Speaker
you know a kid's first adventure game is you know you have at least a place to start that maybe you wouldn't in the same way with games that aren't built on those fairy tales that every kid presumably knew yeah i think it gives the kid a greater feeling of authority and agency and like yeah confidence of um having prior knowledge and bringing it to this is so cool yeah that ah This is probably another one of your red lines, but we didn't get this from your publicist. ah
01:03:00
Speaker
I have a question. So when you clean the dwarves house, they all come, they all eat, you know, eat some soup and then they all leave. They leave a bag of diamonds behind. We we later see them in a diamond mine.
01:03:16
Speaker
ah Are dwarf diamonds ethical? No, because I believe they are doing this against their will. I believe they are being forced to do this. Oh. um I don't think they're happy to be there, and that might be me projecting, but I also... One of them Yeah. oh that's true.
01:03:38
Speaker
ah ah God it. That's so stupid. I love it. absolutely You scamp. You got me. Oh.
01:03:49
Speaker
They are all adults, though, and I appreciate that they're all adults. Also, they seem very, like just sort of like, oh, yeah, strange woman cleaned up our place, normal. Like, they're very...
01:04:02
Speaker
It's very whatever. Very matter of fact. So then when you come back with the diamonds, they're like, whatever, we have nothing but diamonds. we're good i and then, so you ah treat ah the diamonds also as being worthless and you give them to the the sad fisherman. And he gives you a fishing rod.
01:04:28
Speaker
and I want to note, i want to note ah this little bit of dialogue that made me like is the fisherman when you give him the diamonds.
01:04:42
Speaker
ah This is how he addresses his wife. Wife, give the girl the by fishing pole in trade.
01:04:54
Speaker
That's a happy marriage. Yeah. They live in a one-room fishing shack. no He's not even a fisherman anymore. Like, he's just retired from his job slash hobby, whatever. He gave away his his stuff. Now he's just, I guess, a rich man. He got yeah a bag full of diamonds.
01:05:17
Speaker
Well, this, like, Nepo princess shows up and is like, I got diamonds from little people who are maybe being forced to work here, maybe not. Can't really tell, but they seem to live in some sort of, if not homosexual, homosocial piece veering towards homoeroticism. don't think they're related. um Are you clearing this game now? I'm queering the game. queering and decolonizing the game. and We're queering and decolonizing ah King's Quest IV. And so this this Nepo princess is like, okay, diamonds, used to those. Boring. We're not yawnsies. And she's like, I'll give it to this poor. Yeah.
01:05:59
Speaker
This The poorest guy I've ever seen. Worst is poor. He has a studio, subsistence fishing studio. Get out. Check out this guy. I'm going to give him. It's actually, haven't you seen the Mr. Beast video? I gave poor fisherman a bag of diamonds. It's beautiful. It's a great social experiment. It's such a cool, because what he's doing is actually just like really showing how like people are good. Do you know what I mean? Like they're good.
01:06:28
Speaker
So she's like, you're poor. And he's like, thanks. Here's a pole. And she's like, what the fuck am I supposed to do with this? Stupid. and he's like, if you teach a wealthy bitch to fish, equip her with a technical skill for life, much like the Lord said. And she's like, shut up.
01:06:49
Speaker
I'm sorry. I'm still at subsistence fishing studio. It's an efficiency. The wife is like, it's an efficiency unit.
01:07:00
Speaker
Fuck you. Why?
01:07:05
Speaker
For her husband. I can't believe I'm, I'm, i' I'm, I'm shaming him ah for that when his life through, you know, not his own fault is so hard. And then I'm coming in and imposing my values.
01:07:20
Speaker
Well, we don't know if it's, I think it's might be his own fault. Oh, yeah. you don't know if he played the ponies. if he was played the unicorns. He played the unicorns. Well, he actually had a long-term tryst with one of the unicorns. Oh, shit. the wife found out, and she said, guess what, motherfucker? You're going to live in a subsistence fishing studio with me, and you're going to have hot water.
01:07:45
Speaker
with fish scales in it every day. going to out there and you're going to fucking fish. You're going to back here. You're gonna look me deep in my eyes and you're going to I fucking love you. And I'm going to hit you across the face every day. And that's our life.
01:07:58
Speaker
And that was their life until Rosella showed up. I was, well, yeah, you, you got there. I was going to say, do you think him addressing her as wife? Do you think this is some sort of sub dom type situation going on in the fishing efficiency?
01:08:11
Speaker
Yes, I do think so. Yeah, the efficiency. Efficiency. Sort of the dynamic between them is that performatively, she forces him to play like sort of this gruff alpha male fisherman, you know, like the studly fisherman of our dreams. Oh, yeah. um And she forces him to perform that for company purposes.
01:08:35
Speaker
PS, Roselle's the first person who's ever come over, but she's had this plan in place for... was like, finally, finally. Yeah. Well, since she found him, like getting fucked by the unicorn with the horn and his bo boom boom.
01:08:48
Speaker
And she's so mad. And she's like, guess what? New world order. Wife's in charge. And her real name is Melissa. Melissa. And she wanted to be an attorney, but she settled down with him after they met high school.
01:09:01
Speaker
And they actually used to live in the Seven Dwarfs Cottage. It was great. But once he was cheating, she said, no, I'm going to punish you. And she sold us to the dwarfs and she took him to the shitty studio on the pier. Yeah.
01:09:12
Speaker
Wow. Yeah, their whole life is real fucked up. This is rich, you know, it's a game rich with meaning. Yeah. I'm curious, when when you're a kid, like, I'm guessing this isn't the story you imagined around this. No, it was this. It was exactly this. This precisely, you you found this in an old journal right before. I did. It was a Barbie journal with a lock on the front. And I was like, let's do this.
01:09:37
Speaker
I know when I was a kid, like I was filling in the blanks of these games and their stories and the characters and everything like crazy in my head. it was one of the things that I loved about them was just, you know, there it is sparse enough that it leaves plenty of room to imagine these kinds of yeah entire lives of what are ultimately, you know, barely one dimensional characters in a lot. of cases you know it's fun to just imagine i mean i eventually became the kind of kid who's you know i'd get some fan fiction going on some of these uh these sierra games you know love to fill in those blanks did you ever write slash slash fic about leisure suit larry and rosella no no um i won't deny having written slash fic but not that specific one for the record
01:10:26
Speaker
i was busy i was I was a teenager. i was writing X-Men slash fic. Thank you. i mean Thank you. Like a young adult. Yeah. this is mutes They were gifted mutants. Thank you. Yes. Yeah. Fairytale people. Yuck. That's for babies.
01:10:44
Speaker
I did once as a very young person write um like fanfic of Sweet Valley High that was like very sexual.
01:10:55
Speaker
Like I think I was eight and I like left it out in a notebook because i just it was just like somebody being like, why don't we go have sex? Okay. Like, you know, there wasn't a whole lot. going on check out highly sexual for me and my because my parents wouldn't let us watch whatever we wanted like we couldn't watch married with children we couldn't watch the simpsons we couldn't watch all this stuff but um i could read whatever i wanted so like when i found a random ass romance novel like in the you know free bucket at the library i was taking it and like my parents who were like i don't know 16 like like Not really. They were, I was, they were like, you know, some ridiculous age, such as 30 when I was like seven or eight. And so they were just doing whatever they were doing. And I was like, cool, I'm reading about all of this. So I tried to write like sort of a bodice ripper, um like Sweet Valley High without really knowing what I was writing about. And my parents, God bless them, found it. And I thought I was in trouble. And they they addressed it really beautifully because they were like, and we were just sort of wondering like,
01:11:58
Speaker
um if we could talk about like some of the things you wrote about in here, we were wondering where you found out about those things. And I was like, listen, you 30 year old idiots.
01:12:09
Speaker
you let me read whatever I want. Like me and my friend are about to go read the Prince of Tides. We're nine. Like what, like what? is You're not monitoring the books.
01:12:20
Speaker
And my parents were just like, okay, we were just worried. Like they, i think they watched some sort of parenting lesson on TV about how to talk to your kids about abuse. So I think in their simple little 30 year old heads, they were like, okay, she's, she knows what sex is We explained that, but she's writing really evocative books.
01:12:39
Speaker
stuff about Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield for an eight-year-old. It's amazing. We've never had anything this. We have to talk to you about this. Incredible erotica. We would like to, can we self-publish? And then can we do a deal with a big publisher? don't know where I got, how I got there. But the point is, I really was intrigued by Leisure Suit Larry because I was like, they do sex in that game, I bet.
01:13:05
Speaker
I need to know more. And my parents were like, no, you don't. You're already writing weird ass sexual fan fiction. You little weirdo. I have a friend that played leisure suit Larry as a kid. And it was that his, his mom played it first. And this is my story. Oh, really? oh
01:13:27
Speaker
man, you're stealing my good story. That told like nine times on the podcast already. No, this was my story. like my yeah My mom, when I was 12, gave me a copy of Leisure Suit Larry 1 for my 12th birthday. Oh, my God. And I came to find out later that she had opened it up and played it start to finish, like, while I was at school to see if, like, she was okay with me having it.
01:13:54
Speaker
And then at the end of it was like, yep, this all checks out. Let's give it to the 12-year-old. And, like, full steam ahead, which... and Looking back, you know, again, i have a daughter that age and haven't encouraged her to play Leisure Suitler. I know exactly what's in that game. And that's why i haven't. you know It's like, she she has the internet. She will find things out her own way.
01:14:18
Speaker
ah But yeah, my mom just like, yeah, I don't see anything objectionable in this game with sex and drug use and casual racism.
01:14:29
Speaker
she looks Was she like smoking a cig the whole time? Like was she? 1000%. Yes, absolutely. not I'm not giving him a cigarettes. So why can't he have this?
01:14:39
Speaker
that's getting this next year with secondhand smoke he's in ninth grade he gets a playboy whatever it's seventh grade it's a terrible accent that's definitely not your mom's accent whatever it may be I don't even know what I was doing there but like that's yeah that's very that era of parenting though I think was just like well like my parents like well do these like arbitrary rules for like okay so what like our parents like I feel like our parents' generation probably were probably raised by people who either lived through the depression or like deeply influenced by it. And so they were traumatized. They had, their parents had gone through wars. Like they had lived through these really, not that our parents' generation did, but it was a bit different. And so like,
01:15:26
Speaker
our parents' generation was like, okay, so how do I perform adulthood? Even though like I've seen TV shows that say that I should think more about me. I don't wait. How does this work? um I want to raise my kids, but there's not an internet available to tell me how to do it yet. I guess I'll read Dr. Spock and let the kid try a cigarette to teach him that it's bad. Like they would do shit like that. Like,
01:15:53
Speaker
Well, if you try the beer, you won't like it and then you'll never drink it again. Cut to... h think you liked it. ah But Leisure Suit Larry, she had probably seen... i Leisure Suit Larry is like soft...
01:16:06
Speaker
It's not hardcore. juvenile. It's funny. It's juvenile. Yeah, it is a 12-year-old's idea of what a dirty game would be. i Yeah, I mean, it is not like proper pornography like you were writing about the Sweet Valley twins. yeah Well, I was really going, I was like, this is hardcore. but And I just want to say they were not hooking up with each other. no obviously not. They had boyfriends at school. Everybody who's listening, call it.
01:16:34
Speaker
But like, yeah, your mom probably was, yeah, you'll get letters from all the parents listening with their five-year-olds. This is inappropriate. All the church groups that play this every Sunday. Your mom probably had a great, oh yeah, they do. Meet me at flagpole and then we're going to listen to this before school every day. We're going pray and then we're going to listen to this. quest quest there there are there are several churches that we have a partnership with that play this podcast and
01:17:08
Speaker
then and then they all pray on it they they uh they discuss uh everything we've covered it's very as long as it's celebrity churches That's all I care about.
01:17:21
Speaker
Yeah. It's only celebrity. I want mega churches. Like if it's, if it's outside the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area, like say we're in a Houston, I'm going to need the church to have 80,000 members and I'm going to need 50,000 of them to be present and paying every Sunday. I'm going to need a 15 camera shoot. I'm going to need a lot.
01:17:44
Speaker
we're We're working up to that. Thank God. Well, I feel more Christian now that we've talked about this. I feel more Christian.
01:17:54
Speaker
So in King's Quest IV, it begins when your father, King Graham, has a herd attack. Yeah. he does does. They will do that. And its king it's a little funny.
01:18:07
Speaker
Yeah, he's like, his face turns really red, I think, if I recall correctly. In my version of the game. Yeah, like some weird, yeah. It's like, like oh, dad. No, you're almost dead. version is extra red. and Yeah, yeah.
01:18:21
Speaker
And so you're you're sent to the, the the or rather... i you and your your brother and your mother are standing as he just lays in bed dying. and then in the the magic mirror, a beautiful fairy who looks very similar to you.
01:18:41
Speaker
Yes. It's a real, it's like a narcissist's dream. It's like a sapphic narcissist's dream. Who's is hot chick who looks exactly like me? And she's got magic powers, but she's also dying.
01:18:55
Speaker
Yeah. there' Yeah, she's also dying because she caught the itis Why is she dying? It's because people don't believe. Why the fuck is she dying? They are clapping for her. Yeah, they are clapping for her.
01:19:09
Speaker
Uh, the, the, uh, Lolo, the, the evil witch. Oh, right. The evil witch who's very much stolen from Wizard of Oz. She herself is stealing from Janesta. And, uh, so Janesta is like, all right, well on this Island, uh, there's a a magic fruit that will probably save your dad.
01:19:32
Speaker
Also, I'm dying. ah Also, there's an evil witch here. Here's the thing that always... So the the spine of the game is that you eventually run into the the evil... Like, pretty early, you run into the evil witch, Lolo.
01:19:49
Speaker
And she's like, you have to get these three things for me. um And I'll let you free. And I'll give you an incredible reward. And I remember as a kid being like, so you're just going to do what she says?
01:20:05
Speaker
yes That was, that was a real sticking point for me. Now the, the game's narration makes the point like you don't believe her, but I surely you'll think of something to stop herof later.
01:20:17
Speaker
So the game's like, yeah, yeah, no, it's good. go get the the things for the evil witch. She's like, yeah, this will help me take over the world. But even as a kid, like I'm playing and I'm like, why am I helping the evil witch? Yeah.
01:20:32
Speaker
because al low was tired he was saying they were on week three of that month and he was like fuck it god damn we got an ipo coming up just grow with it but the text can i just put one text box that says she realizes she's getting played here will that be good enough is that sufficient yeah like absolutely a bunch of kids are playing this they can't even read but like we all Everyone there hates kids. They don't fucking hate kids. Why do we work here? ah
01:21:03
Speaker
We work at Apple, but they're going nowhere fast. They're going back to the garage. yeah The game is also ah fairly arbitrary. It doesn't give you, like at one point, you have to get the bridle for the unicorn, and it's hidden on an island.
01:21:26
Speaker
That was hard for me. It's hard for everyone. It's not visible on screen. It's just like hidden in a shipwreck. It's like you have to know a bridle's there at some level to get it. You have to be swallowed by a whale.
01:21:38
Speaker
With human teeth. The whale has human teeth. You have to climb up the whale. The whale has ah ah there's a maze on the whale's tongue of climbing up up the whale's tongue, which I remember figuring that out as a kid and being like, wow, I i climbed the whale's tongue.
01:21:59
Speaker
I did it. You did it, Queequeg. You made it happen. Now you're the survivor. The whale vomits you. Yeah. um Oh, you you to tickle it's you view like you have to with a feather, I think.
01:22:13
Speaker
That's why I know how to spell uvula. Same. i think that's why many people know how to spell uvula. the The whale vomits you on an island. Does a whale also, the whale has human teeth.
01:22:29
Speaker
Do whales also have uvulas? I'm looking it up right now. thank you i don't believe they Because as as you were talking about that, I said inside my head, wait, do whales have ueculas? You guys, i'm I'm the research assistant for the show. I'm good. Because i um I think that my job should be, because I love looking things up, um so I think...
01:22:49
Speaker
that I've really, you guys are going to pay me like, what, 200K a year for this? plus Yeah, that's the standard. Yeah, that's industry standard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that is industry. That's that's a the union agreement. Yeah, industry standard. Whales don't have ufulus. Yeah, well, this one does. The magic whale. But guess what? Baleen whales, like blue and humpback whales, have a specialized anatomical flap in their throats called an oral plug.
01:23:18
Speaker
Because who a lady, you'll forget it's there. ah Real leisure suit Larry kind of remark to make. Maybe I should write the game. o i think if I were at the top of that tongue, I would have done like a little comedy bit with like some speed bag work on the uvula. Like you might really yeah do do a little or be little props do a little prop comedy.
01:23:42
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. I mean, yeah, if you can't have fun on an adventure. You can't just... hold like a string up and be like look it's a balloon like you know a little news props game love that oh it's a thought it's a big red thought bubble i'm i'm trying best 10 000 points Thank you. mean, you have to think of how, like, just terrifying it would be to be in the midst of being ingested and soon to be digested by, well, I mean, Rosella's only thinking about her own survival. She doesn't have time for prop comedy.
01:24:16
Speaker
Only if it saves her life. And this is the part, this is the layer of the the game that I've been hoping we would get to because it is about the Bible.
01:24:28
Speaker
Because it is about how we can suffer. And it is about how we can endure, how the Leviathan can swallow us whole.
01:24:40
Speaker
And if we are covered in his love and smothered in his blessings and scattered in his joy, we can climb up the tongue of that whale to a piece of it that isn't there And as Christ warners, we take it on faith.
01:24:58
Speaker
And because here's the thing, gentlemen, our God is an awesome God and he reigns from heaven above, but he is in there in the whale's non-existent uvula with us. And when we get puked out by that whale who has an eating disorder and it's sad, but the eighties were a different time about, we didn't have these conversations about body neutrality
01:25:22
Speaker
That's when I saw Christ in that game. And that is when I had my conversion experience. Wow. Was it when you only saw one set of footprints in the whale vomit?
01:25:40
Speaker
It sure was. And that's when I... That's when I knew that lady's ugly gay son had carried me. Now, he was blushing not because he loved her, but I think that he was a closeted homosexual. And this is why I think that, because I decided it just now. And I think that the Lot's son...
01:25:59
Speaker
She's just to such a fucking diva and he doesn't get to be room to be him. And he knows that Rosella is very inclusive and accepting because why? She forgot the lesson of the whale and veered away from Christ. And that's why I'm really excited that Quest Quest is going to be at our our Lord in christ and Christ in Recovery hillside fun times camp all summer long. Yeah.
01:26:25
Speaker
yeah i can't wait we're we're flying down there flying straight to to texas and we're going be doing that we're with pastor oestein who we love so much with his beautiful teeth he also has he doesn't have human teeth anymore but that whale does he has veneers and they're beautiful he has a plane ben do you feel more like you're bathed in the light right now oh yeah i'm totally bathed in the light right now here's my phone do you feel ready for a traditional marriage with me personally Uh, yeah, let's
Humor and Theories
01:26:55
Speaker
do it. Wow. but i know
01:26:57
Speaker
Gang, don't want to make this awkward, but I was just ordained a week ago to perform a wedding for a friend. So, I mean, I can make this happen. There we go. I have to call my best friends a ballerina farm first, and I'm going to have all the girls, all the girls there.
01:27:14
Speaker
um And I'm really excited to be Ben's trad wife. And I'm really excited just for you to unite us. No, I mean, I think I could do a beautiful ceremony. I think you would do a great job, actually. You have a very good speaking voice. You're very funny. I think you'd be a great pastor person. Well, thank you. I mean, I think I'm low on faith, but I think I've got a lot of heart.
01:27:36
Speaker
And a lot of pizzazz. The pizzazz is really important. Yeah, no, I've been working on my pizzazz. Ben, what religious messages did you derive from King's Quest IV?
01:27:49
Speaker
Great question. Spiritually. ah Well, you know, i actually, i you know, I was thinking about ah the the the mummy and traditional, like, historic a ah performances of, like, ancient Egyptian faith.
01:28:10
Speaker
Oh, wow. Interesting. Yeah, that's what I was pulling from when I was playing the game. And I saw the the mummy. and Because it's actually, as as you know the three of us know...
01:28:25
Speaker
ah Egypt was in communion with ah aliens that came here like way far. They helped build pyramids and the obelisks. Humans couldn't have done that.
01:28:36
Speaker
What not. And so like, you know, one might have asked, like, you know, someone could have said earlier in this podcast, why is there a mummy ah in a Western style crypt?
01:28:51
Speaker
But like, as we know that the mummies were seated here by these, you know, all powerful aliens that have been visiting us. They've been influencing a society for the past, I would say about 3000 years. Yeah. Leaving their crystal skulls behind. Yeah. Leaving crystal skulls. ah Leaving last crusades. Yeah.
01:29:15
Speaker
leaving temples of doom ah what was uh uh dials of destiny that was a destiny everywhere yeah and it's of atlantis and and so ah like you know roberta when she was designing the game placed the mummy there you know as a signal uh to let those of us who are aware uh those eyes are open yeah my well my third eye is open my mummy right And, ah you know, so that's like, you know, that's her signal of because Roberta is going to ascend up to
01:29:53
Speaker
ah you know, Percy Eye Lexitron 3. three That's correct. That's right. In a couple years. Yeah. And that's that's on the that's what's on the dollar, too.
01:30:06
Speaker
That's what's on. ah That is. Well, if you fold the dollar in a specific way, you can see it. And it also says that Roberta will be the first to to join ah our are benevolent overseers, you know. The first to precisely 144,000. That's right.
01:30:23
Speaker
that's right uh so yeah that's what i got out of the game um you that's so beautiful can i tell you how nice it is to be here with two truth tellers you really get it because finally someone with a podcast who isn't afraid to tell the truth someone who will tell the truth that a lot of people won't you know and i'm not talking about like um fluoride and drinking water to I'm not talking about that. That's basic level shit. I'm talking about what we're getting into here. And I don't know if the government is going to let this information, you know, go out there unchecked. But I do know that as a Christ warrior, um i grew up understanding that when that Egyptian alien found Moses in that little baby basket, that one day...
01:31:18
Speaker
through his love and grace, and by his, I mean hers, I mean Roberta Williams, who is our God and Savior, there would come to be a game called King's Quest IV. And about 40 years after it came out, we would all be sitting here talking to each other, making complete sense.
01:31:38
Speaker
In a way that will positively attract, impact, and energize a very mainstream audience. Speaking the language of the people, just like who did Jesus and Moses and Roberta and Ken to a lesser degree Williams. I think that's pretty cool. Wow.
01:31:56
Speaker
I mean, can you imagine how many updates there are going to have to be to the King's Quest 4 Wikipedia page when this goes live on the dark web next week? I cannot imagine, and the the people are going to do the work. I mean, I think what we've done here is first of all, ah complete through line that makes absolute sense chronologically in our podcast. That's what people come here for. Second of all, we have, um we've somehow, we've queered and decolonized, but then also dipped,
01:32:29
Speaker
in the blood of his love and salvation, King's Quest IV, and all of popular culture ultimately. So we've really done, that's that's intersectionality, if you want a definition.
01:32:39
Speaker
We just did it, okay? That's a, we appealed to every voting bloc, every, Ben brought up the Egyptians. He's appealing to people who don't even live here in America, the only country, you know? So I feel really good.
01:32:54
Speaker
ah So on the the topic of them doing things in a very slow and slapdash way, I do want to note something that really made me laugh when I watched the video of ah the log play earlier today,
01:33:17
Speaker
which is the final message of the game. Which was, so you you get ah you you get back to Daventry, you give your dad the magic fruit.
01:33:28
Speaker
If you do this properly, you can just eat that fruit, and he just dies. Like, that's an option in the game. Rosella is big. Om nom nom, I feel great. I've never felt better in my life. I love that. My silences are cleared up, cured all of my allergies. It's so great. And then he dies, and then she inherits a beautiful castle. Yeah.
01:33:45
Speaker
yes was she looked at amons Yeah. Well, got castle now. If you get the the good ending, the I didn't eat the fruit that would save my dad ending. but The good person ending. Okay.
01:33:57
Speaker
This is the final dialogue box of the game. So Graham's like, all right, I feel great. Thank you. And then ah it shows the graphic of Roberta Williams that shows when you die. ah And it just says, so all's well that ends well until next time.
01:34:16
Speaker
That's it.
01:34:20
Speaker
Now, with a tear in my eye, I read this dialogue box and say, thank you, Roberta. Thank you, Roberta. Now, now Sarah, you've you've written a couple books, and I looked them up, and I noticed that's how all of your books end.
01:34:38
Speaker
They do. in fact, that's how my memoir, Agora Fabulous Dispatches from My Bedroom, my young adult novel, Great, my novel for adults, DC Trip, and my book of humorous essays and wacky but fun, relatable wisdom. Real artists have day jobs and other awesome things they don't teach you in school. They're all available on some corner of your internet or go to your independent bookseller and say, order this for me. um That is how they all end. And that is how Abraham fucking Lincoln will end as well. So, all was well and as well, until next time.
01:35:12
Speaker
and That's actually what John Wilkes Booth said after he shot him with a Philadelphia Erringer and jumped onto the, down, broke his leg, probably jumped onto the stage. People say he said Six Semper Tyrannus, which is the, of course, associated with the death of Julius Caesar, the murder, but also the ah the state motto of Virginia. That's not actually what he said.
01:35:31
Speaker
What he actually said was, what? All's well that ends well. See you next time. and the crowd of approximately 1,500 people at Ford's Theater was like, what the fuck? And then he just got on a horse and he went off to star in the acclaimed television series Manhunt.
01:35:49
Speaker
The Hunt for Lincoln's Killer, which was a book first. Wow. Yeah. Wow. ah And then John Wilkes Booth's older brother, Edwin Booth, a union sympathizer, actually is Roberta Williams' father.
01:36:03
Speaker
well Wow. She was more when he was very old. he was, she was, it was a love child, you know, like a change of life baby in that he was 150 and should be dead, but instead he bothered her.
01:36:17
Speaker
It's beautiful. It's like poetry. It rhymes.
Sobriety and Emotional Gaming
01:36:20
Speaker
A lot of, I've been sober for almost eight years. i just want to say that. And a lot of what I'm doing here, I think is, ah you know, almost eight years of compacted not drinking. Emerging in what sounds like a drunken tirade, I think, in the playback. I mean, God bless whichever one of you edits this. That's me. i'm I owe you a dinner um because this is going to be a rough one.
01:36:50
Speaker
No, I usually keep most of it. ah Yeah. That's terrible. I'm so sorry to the listeners, who but also you're welcome. You know? ah They've waited through this. woof o Jess, I'm sorry. I know we have to end it and you guys are in charge of hosting, but I need to know if Jess took any spiritual messages from this.
01:37:12
Speaker
Oh my gosh. You know, I think that there are spiritual messages everywhere for those who have the eyes to see them and the ears to hear them.
01:37:24
Speaker
wow And you know, i like to keep both of those open. Oh, that was so beautiful. Thank you. No, I mean, it, your message of, of hope and hope and, you know, salvation just really touched me. So yeah. Thank you. god I mean, I love dissociating on this podcast with you guys.
01:37:46
Speaker
That's what we do every week. Yeah, yeah. It's really fun. ah So is there anything else we want to say about King's Quest IV before we close the book?
01:37:58
Speaker
i You know, I mean, as the advertisements asked, you know, can a computer game make a person cry? That was the tagline they had for this game. And, you know, absolutely. i've i've I cried real tears watching Graham nearly bite it at the beginning. i cried tears of laughter today talking about it So I do believe a computer game can make a person cry because it made me cry. And I've never cried in my life until now.
01:38:28
Speaker
Wow. That's your third eye opening up, just like Ben's. Yeah. It's full of tears. I was just streaming straight down my nose. Mm-hmm. told, I was, when I was feeling a little low earlier, i was watching that walkthrough. I didn't watch all two hours. I think I watched three minutes, but... I was saying, I texted bet it Ben and I was like, I might cry on the podcast because I thought maybe I would get really emotional talking about like what it meant to me. That didn't happen. um What happened in instead was a different thing. Yeah.
01:39:04
Speaker
I'm not sure that, I think I was channeling the whole time. i think I was a vessel for someone's opinions. I don't know whose. I stand by them and disown all of them all at once.
01:39:16
Speaker
um I derailed things several times. I spoke over the hosts. I laughed a lot, sometimes silently, which you could see, but the the listeners, because this is auditory, i believe this medium is podcast typically, sometimes video, but this is for the ears. um They don't know that. There was a lot, there was also a lot of violence happening on all of our screens that they won't know about. yeah we've we fought off intruders many times all of us well well sarah for uh uh you know uh confessing your sins as your confessor uh you have to say three hail marys for our fathers and uh you have to put uh 25 dollars in the the little donation uh bucket
01:40:06
Speaker
We're going to replace it. We have a bucket? Yeah, we're going to get that replaced. It fell apart, so it's a bucket right now. Really? All right. I do think we started a church. This is awesome.
01:40:18
Speaker
Like, I feel like we started a church tonight. I know I just walked right over something you were saying, Ben. I'm so sorry. No worries. No. But I do feel like we could like incorporate, was that a 501c3? Is that what that is? Or I forget what the code is, but we could, we could make this whole deal. Nonprofit.
01:40:36
Speaker
Nonprofit. Well, this is absolutely non-profit. Yeah, it runs at a small loss currently. Diana, I was told I was getting a fee. Excuse me. She is going to die tonight. This is an extreme non-profit for sure. ah Yeah.
01:40:54
Speaker
That's the best. It's the most fun. Well, thank you so much, Sarah. Where can people find you online?
Promotions and Event Teasers
01:41:02
Speaker
Wow. um You can...
01:41:07
Speaker
You can go to sarahjbenincasa.substack.com where I have a newsletter called Sarah Tonin. I'm also on Patreon, patreon.com slash sarahbenincasa. am also on Instagram. That is the social media that I am most often on, um even though I'm much better with words than pictures. So it's sort of counterintuitive. Although if you've listened to this podcast all the way through, you may disagree with my um apparent assertion that I'm good with words. So Sarah J. Benincasa on Instagram. And you can also find my books in places. And um I feel more alive now than I did before.
01:41:48
Speaker
Hidden, hidden little nooks and crannies, hidden under the bridge, you know, like where that magic golden ball is. and the The golden ball. The golden ball. If anybody who's listening thinks that King's Quest V is good, i would like to have them make a case about that. I'm not disagreeing with them, but I was just never able to really crack it. um And so i I'm open to dialogue about that. Not personally. Do not speak to me one-on-one. But post something about it and don't tag me, and eventually I'll find it.
01:42:20
Speaker
Yeah, that makes sense. Just post King's Quest five thoughts somewhere in one day. Yeah, and it'll be it'll be shoot to the top of their SEO because it's it's not the highest in search rankings these days. Yeah, and search rankings matter more today than ever. They matter more than they did in 1988. I will say that Absolutely true. You know, well, I'm going to push back on both you. I think search rankings were really important in 1988. Yeah.
01:42:48
Speaker
in In like the Dewey Decimal. Like, you know, if you're going through a card catalog. if I mean, if you opened up a card catalog and King's Quest V was the first card in the catalog, you'd take it out.
01:43:02
Speaker
Oh, wait, what you have just brought up library things. I think this is coming out next week, maybe? Yeah, next Yes. So ah if you're in the Chicago area or you feel like traveling to Chicago for a free library event, I know you do. I am doing the American Writers Festival. Yeah. I will be in conversation with a couple of other authors who are very good at, uh, romanticy and paranormal romance and the such. And we will be, i have not written in those genres, but, um, we will be talking about rebooting classic myths and stories, uh, for the contemporary world. Cause I took a crack at that one spot a time with one of my novels. Uh, but anyway, so that's June 7th, Harold Washington library, 11 AM three American writers festival.
01:43:51
Speaker
I've never been there. i'm excited. Oh, it's amazing. And go up, check out the Winter Garden on the top floor. It's really nice. And oh one time, a friend of mine who works at the Harold Washington Library let me go backstage at the Harold Washington Library, wow which is a fun thing to say about a library. But I got to see, that's the Central Library of Chicago. So I got to see the massive conveyor belt that books run down.
01:44:19
Speaker
going to get on it. The city interlibrary loan. And it was the coolest. It was the most like Mr. Rogers thing I'd ever seen. yes It was just bunch of books rolling down a conveyor belt. and there were boxes on the side and they were all labeled with all the neighborhood branches of, uh, uh, of the, the city. And like a little thing would just like, boop.
01:44:44
Speaker
like knock the book down into a box where it's like, you Lakeview library, bang. Like it's like Chinatown library, like pop, like it was, It was really fun to be backstage at library. want to see it. my God. I'm to throw a fit. I'm going to be like, listen, I'm an author and definitely not one of your bestsellers who are here. For sure not a big-name author and not one of the most famous ones that brought people in. But I have demands, and my publicist Diana is here. And she really fucked up Quest Quest for me. So I told her... You better get me a guaranteed conveyor belt ride, Diana. Yeah. And if you're really nice, they let you ride the conveyor belt.
01:45:32
Speaker
I'm going to tell them you said that. I'm going to say this was this was given to me by somebody whose third eye is open, who knows a lot about Egypt and mummies. Anyway, thank you for listening to Quest Quest, the the adventure game podcast. Rate review of five stars. You can send us an email at questquestpodcast at gmail.com.
01:45:52
Speaker
e And you can join us next week when we discuss Space Quest 4. Wow.
01:46:02
Speaker
you said, hold on, hold on. You said wow. Does that mean anything? Have you ever played that? I played, I tried to play a Space Quest or two in my day.
01:46:14
Speaker
It's been so long, but I just love that you're doing another Sierra online game. That's so cool. We're never going to do a space quest for it's a horror. Really? Oh, yeah. so yeah i thought it was real.
01:46:26
Speaker
but