Transcript
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Why not?
Speaker: Actually, I might I might I might have to look into that.
Speaker: I might not actually pay my taxes like everybody else.
Speaker: I have to talk to my accountant.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know who does pay their taxes like everyone else?
Speaker: Hey there everybody, welcome back to Pixel It.
Speaker: My name is Kevin, with me as always is Phil on today's show.
Speaker: We're starting The Witcher.
Speaker: We're doing The Last Wish by Andrei Schapowski.
Speaker: I think that's how you say his name.
Speaker: Schapowski, something like that, yeah.
Speaker: But yeah, so we're getting into that.
Speaker: But before we do, there's a wonderful website I want to tell you about.
Speaker: It's called patreon.com slash pixelippod.
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Speaker: $5 gets you the ad-free episodes and bonus episodes that we post on Patreon, and $10 gets your name shouted out at the beginning of every episode.
Speaker: And to that end, I want to thank Jesus Loves You, Kyle Seaman, Ruthless Mutter, Middle of Things, Sigma Sound, Chut Beats, Demothic, and Friendly Friend, thank you for being a friend.
Speaker: So The Witcher,
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Last wish.
Speaker: So for those of you who are riding along for the first time or not the first time, we usually start out with talking about the game.
Speaker: But this is a backwards thing because the books.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: And we've done this before, haven't we?
Speaker: We've done it once before, sort of with Disco Elysium, where we did Sacred and Terrible Air, fantastic book.
Speaker: I might add.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: The Sacred and Terrible Air, which is came out way, I don't know, six years before Disco Elysium was a thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Set in the same world.
Speaker: But yeah.
Speaker: So first, OK, the video games for The Witcher, since that's the touch point for everything here.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: They're made by CD Projekt Red.
Speaker: First one comes out in 2007.
Speaker: And the weird thing about the games is that they are actually a considered a continuation of the book series.
Speaker: There's the last canon book is The Lady in the Lake.
Speaker: And that is told a lot from Ciri's point of view, from what I understand.
Speaker: And then it has an ending and it's...
Speaker: It seems like it's the end of the series.
Speaker: He has written a few more books since then that are either prequels or side stories that take place during the main series.
Speaker: But then CD Projekt Red, huge fans of The Witcher series, decide to...
Speaker: Basically pick up the story of Geralt with The Witcher in 2007 and just continue things from there.
Speaker: And it's the first Witcher game is, from what I understand, is stunningly average.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's the gist.
Speaker: You're like, okay, it came, it happened, and we moved on.
Speaker: It came, it happened, and we moved on.
Speaker: And then there was a second Witcher game, which came and happened, and we moved on.
Speaker: And then The Witcher 3 became the thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Witcher, the Witcher three, also which known as the Witcher three wild hunt releases in 2015.
Speaker: And it is a lot of people put it on their best games of all time, you know, list.
Speaker: It did very well.
Speaker: It did.
Speaker: It did very well.
Speaker: 2015.
Speaker: Yes, it did come out 2015.
Speaker: Double checking.
Speaker: So, yeah, this is a book series that spawned an entire little empire of video games.
Speaker: Not to mention, there's the three video games that CD Projekt Red made, the three mainline ones.
Speaker: There's also a few spinoffs.
Speaker: There are expansion packs to The Witcher 3.
Speaker: There's going to be a fourth Witcher game with Siri as the protagonist.
Speaker: And they did announce a couple of years ago that they are remaking the first Witcher game.
Speaker: Oh, nice.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Maybe people actually play it then.
Speaker: That's great.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Maybe people actually play it then.
Speaker: That'd be nice.
Speaker: So yeah, that's the games.
Speaker: Phil, what do you know about our author here?
Speaker: Andrzej Sapkowski is a Polish fantasy writer.
Speaker: I've found a lot of he's often referred to as like the Polish Tolkien.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Obviously his biggest work is the stories of the Witcher.
Speaker: by just writing short stories and that sort of thing and trying to get them published in his favorite magazine, which is called Fantastica, which is a Polish fantasy sci fi lit mag.
Speaker: And it was just it basically came down to he just he really liked this magazine.
Speaker: I think they were having a contest or something like that.
Speaker: And he literally wrote the very first short story we're going to talk about tonight, The Witcher, for this contest and took home third place.
Speaker: It that was the beginning of it.
Speaker: And from there, yeah, it got it.
Speaker: As Kevin said, it got adapted into these video games, got adapted to comic books, TV shows, a musical.
Speaker: They made a musical out of the goddamn thing.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And it's and I think the thing that kind of permeates all of his writing, not just that he's best known for The Witcher, but what seems to have permeated all of his writing is this inspiration of Polish folklore and classic fairy tales and that sort of thing.
Speaker: And you do see a lot of you're going to see that when we through the first three short stories we talk about are like, oh, I know this one.
Speaker: Yeah, I know what you're talking.
Speaker: And even then, it's kind of fun because he'll talk about the monsters that he's hunting or that he's hunted before or whatever.
Speaker: And you look it up, you can Google it.
Speaker: And that's an actual Slavic or Polish or something like that, like folk creature that he's put his own spin on.
Speaker: So it's it's a lot of fun like that.
Speaker: He is a hell of a writer.
Speaker: It's a very
Speaker: I, I, I, I very much thought of, uh, Robert E. Howard's Conan and stuff like that.
Speaker: Uh, uh, that, uh, it's just, it's good, you know, boots on the ground, hard handed sword and sorcery shit.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And he's, and he's, he's, he's, he,
Speaker: he has a lot of fun with it clearly.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I think that's really, really neat.
Speaker: He also is the author of something called the Hussite trilogy.
Speaker: I'm not as familiar with that.
Speaker: Basically, the Witcher is the only thing that has brought him any kind of international attention.
Speaker: But in Poland, he is big daddy fantasy writer.
Speaker: You know, he's, you know, George R. R. Martin over there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's, you know, so over there, everyone knows who he is.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: In fact, interestingly enough, when the third Witcher game came out and it exploded, some people might remember this, Sapkowski actually sued CD Projekt Red for like millions of dollars claiming they owed him royalties.
Speaker: on the character and they correctly pointed out, we bought it from you for like a for like a flat fee.
Speaker: And that was back when it was, you know, the first which you get and it didn't do really very well.
Speaker: And and so he didn't think about it.
Speaker: And then, you know, suddenly it's making millions of dollars and he pops in and says, where's how can I wet my beak again?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it was kind of a controversial time.
Speaker: They ended up like, I want to say they we don't know how much they gave him, but like it was like a behind closed doors.
Speaker: Like, let's give him something just to make him happy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I know the author of what is it?
Speaker: Metro 23, whatever it is.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: who is another author who was transformed into a video game.
Speaker: Another Eastern European author whose works have became, you know, a game series.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And which I think next year I would like to read that one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Get into the Metro 2033.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That looks like a fun universe.
Speaker: So he he was very critical of Andre for this.
Speaker: I believe he called him an old fool for doing it.
Speaker: And correctly, without disrespecting Sapkowski, he correctly pointed out you were never going to get this level of success, this level of international success without
Speaker: uh, that video game.
Speaker: So shut your mouth and, and take all the opportunities you can get.
Speaker: It's going to be, it's probably going to make you more money in the long run.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: The book, a lot of book sales and all that stuff.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And, and, you know, he was a consultant on the TV show and I'm sure, I'm sure after, uh, the video game situation went where it went, he, he,
Speaker: rethought his interest in, in collecting on royalties.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And being more, I guess, involved in what happens.
Speaker: Um, then again, the show has kind of fallen off of a cliff a little bit.
Speaker: Uh, especially now that, uh, Henry Cavill basically quit and he was replaced by the lesser Hemsworth brother.
Speaker: Um, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Wasn't wasn't there talk about what was it?
Speaker: One of the doctor who's was going to play him at some point.
Speaker: Maybe.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I just I think it's hilarious that Cavill.
Speaker: My assumption was that he left it so he could work on his 40K ship.
Speaker: But you pointed out that he left because he was pissed that it wasn't true enough to.
Speaker: So he left for the nerdiest reason possible.
Speaker: Giant dork Henry Cavill.
Speaker: Once again, once again, showing he is Nerdosaurus Rex in our culture.
Speaker: There can only be one.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: So I think that's where we're at.
Speaker: So, Kevin, what do you say?
Speaker: Body marsh?
Speaker: Yeah, it's but this body in the marsh.
Speaker: When I tell you to dump a body in the marsh, you dump them.
Speaker: In the mind.
Speaker: Sweet.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I actually, I had so much fun reading these stories.
Speaker: I didn't take any notes.
Speaker: I was just like, I was just really just kind of just- Yeah, that's-
Speaker: It has that kind of vibe to it.
Speaker: They're very exciting, very fun.
Speaker: And I didn't want to stop every five minutes to to, you know, take notes and everything.
Speaker: So I do have some synopses I found online that I'm going to use to guide me a little bit.
Speaker: So if I miss something.
Speaker: Sure, sure.
Speaker: Forgive me.
Speaker: What we are dealing with with The Last Wish is a seven story short story collection.
Speaker: I think four of them were published individually in Fantastica magazine over the course of like the 80s and the 90s.
Speaker: And then when they were collected into this, he wrote something called The Voice of Reason, which is kind of these interstitial moments that connect with
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: All of the stories.
Speaker: It's a clip show.
Speaker: That's what this book is.
Speaker: It's a clip show.
Speaker: It's a clip show.
Speaker: We haven't we haven't had the show.
Speaker: It's like the first episode of the show started out with a clip show.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Very unorthodox.
Speaker: And yet somehow it works because he's going through these, you know, we get these little flashbacks and everything like that.
Speaker: So we start with the very first part of the voice of reason.
Speaker: And it's just sex.
Speaker: We start out with him getting, you know, seduced by a priestess of Melitele, I want to say.
Speaker: This temple, this female goddess kind of character.
Speaker: I'm actually going to look her up right now so I know if I can find out that she is a mother goddess.
Speaker: She's the mother goddess.
Speaker: She is the...
Speaker: Oh, she's the threefold goddess.
Speaker: OK.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And she they in one of the voice of reason chapters, they kind of the head priestess who Geralt is there to speak with kind of talk gives like a little history about a little little like here's how Melita is a Melita or Melitel.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Melitelle or something.
Speaker: I've been saying in my head, Melitelle.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: How she became is because like, oh, there were all these gods.
Speaker: And then Melitelle being the goddess, the goddess of mothers.
Speaker: She became something for mothers to scream out to while giving birth.
Speaker: And mothers are always going to be giving birth.
Speaker: So that's why she stuck around.
Speaker: Could there be a more Slavic explanation?
Speaker: For God, there is something they just, you know, Thomas Hobbes said that life is nasty, brutish and short.
Speaker: And the fact that he did not come from Eastern Europe is actually hilarious.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's something beautiful with that.
Speaker: But yeah, I love that explanation.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So we basically just open up and if you're like me and you're at first, your only exposure to if you'll excuse the expression to The Witcher 3 was Geralt having sex and being nude in a tub and stuff like that.
Speaker: This is going to get you right into the right sense of things, because we've got a priestess of Militelli who she's got.
Speaker: She has she is silent.
Speaker: We find out she's taken a vow of silence and she's just getting into his bed.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She wants some Geralt.
Speaker: That's how we start.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: This whole thing.
Speaker: That's the note we start on.
Speaker: He's a hot guy.
Speaker: He's a hot guy.
Speaker: Now let's get into that first story.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So he has sex.
Speaker: He's a hot guy.
Speaker: So we start with the Witcher, which is the very first story.
Speaker: I think this one came out in the mid 80s.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: it opens with Geralt coming into this town and it's, it's kind of a classic trophy moment of like,
Speaker: it's like a spaghetti Western.
Speaker: He comes into this town.
Speaker: We don't like the look of you.
Speaker: And we find out a little bit about the witchers and, and how they're not trusted.
Speaker: Uh, you know, there's like kind of a, there's kind of a, um, uh, just a nasty bigotedness that goes towards his kind.
Speaker: Um, even though it's, it's interesting.
Speaker: It's even though they, they kill monsters, you know, like, I mean, they, they, witchers do it for money, admittedly.
Speaker: Um, but, um,
Speaker: They're still on your side, but they're, they're, they're filled with magic and they were kidnapped as children.
Speaker: They're very, uh, master chief.
Speaker: It's the problem with witchers is that there is a, it's like, we're all Chris Claremont X-Men up in here because these, these dark ages bumpkins hate mutants, you know, they hate mutants and Geralt.
Speaker: Oh boy.
Speaker: Witchers are, I think, technically mutants in the world of, yeah.
Speaker: in this world.
Speaker: It's very interesting.
Speaker: Yeah, because they're basically stolen.
Speaker: Yeah, it's that it's that halo thing.
Speaker: They're stolen from their beds by other witchers who stuff them full of different herbs and stuff like feed them that stuff.
Speaker: Not really stuff.
Speaker: And
Speaker: Basically, if the kid survives this ritual process, then they are raised to kill monsters from a young age and they are immune to all kinds of poisons and they learn this magic that that nobody else has access to.
Speaker: And so there's a lot of mystery and weird shit that goes around them that, you know, it's.
Speaker: You kind of get it.
Speaker: It makes people make people nervous where it's like they don't know what it's all about.
Speaker: It's an X-Men thing, just like you said.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: They fear what they don't understand.
Speaker: God loves man.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: So he shows up at this village bar and kills a few guys.
Speaker: You know, in self-defense, put some big air quotes around that.
Speaker: Because you get the feeling that Geralt could have resolved things without having to kill them.
Speaker: Yes, because and because he does constantly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's something that we're going to we're about to get into, but I'm just going to say it now.
Speaker: Spoilers.
Speaker: Geralt doesn't kill much of the quarry he's hunting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He finds ways around it.
Speaker: It's very clever, but it also makes you go, what the fuck did you just murder three men?
Speaker: Why'd you kill those guys?
Speaker: They were just, they were just, they're, they're racist.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: But like, Jesus Christ.
Speaker: So, uh, he gets, he gets taken away by the, by the city guard and, um, he gets to, uh, he, he gets taken to the castellan of the, of the city that he's in.
Speaker: Um, and, and, and tells them like, Hey, I'm here because you guys have a bounty for some, uh, creature, uh, uh, Striga.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, and, uh, and so he gets the story.
Speaker: The story is that, um, this King slept with his sister, uh, got her pregnant and, uh, and, and she dies having the baby and the baby is, uh, they, they put, they put them both in a coffin together.
Speaker: And, uh, and then like years later, uh,
Speaker: the baby now kind of grown into this horrible thing starts killing everybody in the palace.
Speaker: So they've abandoned this palace and built a whole other one.
Speaker: There's a brand new palace.
Speaker: Don't worry about it.
Speaker: The king is in a new palace.
Speaker: The old one is haunted by his inbred incest daughter who is a monster.
Speaker: Don't worry about it.
Speaker: Don't worry about it.
Speaker: Don't worry about it.
Speaker: So at first it feels like this is going to be a real simple solution, but, uh, Gerald has it pointed out to him that, um, you cannot kill the stricke.
Speaker: The whole point is they don't want you to kill it, uh, because it's still the King's daughter.
Speaker: So you gotta come up with something else.
Speaker: Uh, you gotta, uh, and he's also, uh,
Speaker: offered a deal by these by this other organization that kind of wants to overthrow the king.
Speaker: Like, hey, we'll pay you not the entire amount.
Speaker: It's like 3000 gold or something like we'll pay you not the entire amount, but more than you'll get from the king if you kill this thing.
Speaker: So we'll meet you in the middle if you.
Speaker: Oops, I killed her.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And we can we can use that.
Speaker: We have leverage.
Speaker: And one of my favorite bits is Geralt is he's very pissy about money because there's a moment where so the cast on is like, all right, well, to figure out to cure it or whatever.
Speaker: It's a thousand orange, I think is the name of the currency.
Speaker: Orange.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So he's like, it's a thousand.
Speaker: And meanwhile, then the cast on is like, all right, well, this guy tried it.
Speaker: This guy tried it.
Speaker: One Witcher came in and got killed.
Speaker: Another Witcher like took one look at it and ran.
Speaker: And then after all that, Geralt is like, well, yeah, I'll do it for fifteen hundred.
Speaker: And the guy's like, it's a thousand.
Speaker: And he said, well, the last switcher came in here, ran away, which means a thousand was not enough for him to stay.
Speaker: So it's fifteen hundred.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's, it's, and you raise an interesting point with that where like right off the bat, we are shown like we, right off the bat, we're shown that witchers badass and everything like that.
Speaker: But then we find out that witchers are, they can be cowardly.
Speaker: They can be killed.
Speaker: So it's, it doesn't necessarily make him any greater than the people around him so much.
Speaker: He's just better equipped when it comes down to things, which I thought was a nice touch.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So basically he has to spend the night at the palace for like, what is it?
Speaker: Like three nights or something.
Speaker: Well, it's so it's not it's only one night.
Speaker: But he says there with the problem with Striga's is that there's complications sometimes.
Speaker: Sometimes it's one night.
Speaker: Sometimes it's three nights.
Speaker: Sometimes you have to do this.
Speaker: Sometimes you have to do this.
Speaker: So that's why he's like he he's explaining all the rules to the to the castle on.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: And so they're hoping he's getting a lot of and this happens a lot in these stories.
Speaker: He's getting a lot of different people offering him different stuff.
Speaker: Some of them say, just kill her.
Speaker: We'll pay you.
Speaker: Don't kill her.
Speaker: Let's see if she's a. And then there are the people who are like, well, find out if she's a lost cause.
Speaker: And if she's a lost cause killer, just the middle ground.
Speaker: You got all these people offering different stuff.
Speaker: So Geralt ends up at the palace, the old one.
Speaker: Well, classic palace class first.
Speaker: He meets.
Speaker: So first he meets the king.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He meets full test, who is the father who kind of like represents himself as like, listen, I understand if you have to kill her in self-defense.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah, she is.
Speaker: But and if you do that, I'm not going to like execute you.
Speaker: I'm going to yell at you and send you on your way with no money.
Speaker: It is basically right.
Speaker: OK.
Speaker: OK.
Speaker: I do remember.
Speaker: And that's why I was thinking three nights.
Speaker: Basically, it's there's kind of vampire rules here where she lives in this coffin and.
Speaker: He has to keep her in the coffin by sunup, by the third crowing of out of the coffin.
Speaker: She has to be.
Speaker: She has to be.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She can't be in the crib at sunup.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And that should cure her.
Speaker: And they even point out, like, she'll be very simple minded if she gets turned back, because at this point she's a teenager.
Speaker: She's a 14 year old who has not learned a damn thing.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So she's going to be.
Speaker: But she'll at least be a human being and she'll be alive.
Speaker: So, yeah, we do have that moment.
Speaker: So, yeah, thank you.
Speaker: So Geralt spends the night at the place he finds the coffin.
Speaker: And indeed, we've got the Striga.
Speaker: in there.
Speaker: Uh, but I'm, I'm getting ahead of myself though.
Speaker: Uh, so he's, he's in there and a, uh, member of royalty, the royalty kind of comes to him and tries to, uh, bribe him to basically and say, yeah, just get out of here.
Speaker: Like I'll give you half of what the King was offering you.
Speaker: If you just get out, because again, that gives them leverage over the King and it makes it easier for them to say he couldn't even get rid of this horrifying, horrifying abomination that happens to be his kid.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: So Geralt refuses and instead ties the guy up.
Speaker: And and and and the guy wakes back up again later at night and and he gets and he and he says, you should let me go.
Speaker: And he says, yeah, sure.
Speaker: I'll let you go.
Speaker: Because that was the whole point.
Speaker: He wants him as bait.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: A strigabate.
Speaker: A strigabate.
Speaker: And he runs and he runs out and immediately gets torn to shreds by this horrible thing.
Speaker: It's described as it's kind of again, it's very Conan, like where it's kind of apy.
Speaker: It's very big and powerful.
Speaker: It's got big, giant, nashy teeth.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And he gets torn to shreds immediately.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So we get our fight scene.
Speaker: One of the things that distinguishes a Witcher is they have their regular weapon and then they have a silver weapon.
Speaker: Geralt has a silver sword and the silver is something that is, you know,
Speaker: You run into that in all kinds of folklore where that's the thing that can kill most monsters.
Speaker: And the stress is most because in another story, he'll like explain like, yeah, there's no it's it's it's the rules are all over the map.
Speaker: It's just silver is good for most.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: So he they get into a huge fight.
Speaker: He tries to tie her up.
Speaker: It doesn't work.
Speaker: And he uses some of his magic to just fuck with her head, basically.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She's feeling all this viciousness and evil and that sort of thing.
Speaker: And so he kind of uses it.
Speaker: It's a it's a I'm rubber, your glue kind of situation.
Speaker: And he bounces all those emotions back to her and she runs off.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: What do you do in a situation like this?
Speaker: You hide in plain sight.
Speaker: So he gets inside the coffin.
Speaker: It was like, well, she can't be in the coffin if I'm in the coffin.
Speaker: Like, I'm not sure you thought about this, Geralt.
Speaker: Can't can't can't argue with that airtight logic.
Speaker: He's literally in there with this girl's mother's corpse.
Speaker: The corpse of her mother.
Speaker: The mummified corpse of her mother.
Speaker: Mummified corpse.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Thankfully, she doesn't stink anymore, but that's what's happened.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: And it works.
Speaker: He stays in there.
Speaker: The strigger does not make it back to the coffin in time.
Speaker: And when he leaves the coffin, he is he finds a 14 year old girl.
Speaker: We get we do get a quick moment there where we think it's over and you're you're left to go.
Speaker: Ah, everything's fine.
Speaker: And then, of course, she turns and tries to claw him and that sort of thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She still hasn't like fully transformed back yet and has like the Striga claws and nearly decapitates him.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Cuts his throat.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And and he hears the final crow of the rooster and has to bind himself and passes out.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Fair, totally fair, which I loved because you don't get a lot of stories like this that end with.
Speaker: And then the bad guy was down and then our hero was right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's fantastic.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So the story kind of concludes with him waking up and.
Speaker: And gets his money and that's it.
Speaker: That's the whole thing.
Speaker: The Castellan is like, 14 year old girl nearly killed you.
Speaker: And he's like, that's crazy.
Speaker: That's crazy.
Speaker: And he's like, yep.
Speaker: I'll take my money now.
Speaker: Thanks.
Speaker: That's the end of that story.
Speaker: It's terrific.
Speaker: It doesn't, it doesn't, we got some, and this is, this sets up a lot of the tropes that you're going to run into with all of these stories.
Speaker: We do have action scenes, but they don't just end with him lopping off the beast's head or something like that.
Speaker: He's way more clever than that.
Speaker: There's always something – there's a twist to it.
Speaker: There's always a twist.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I think that's really fun.
Speaker: So we cut back to the voice of reason and Geralt – I keep wanting to say Geralt and I don't know why.
Speaker: Geralt is woken up with his quiet friend by Nanique, who is a priestess there.
Speaker: And we basically find out that he has been wounded recently.
Speaker: He's been hurt from one of his jobs and he's come there to... Oh, actually, it's from the neck.
Speaker: That's what it is.
Speaker: He's still binded by the neck.
Speaker: Yeah, we find out that this Driga thing is basically...
Speaker: Timeline wise, right before the voice of reason stories.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: That's that's the inciting incident for all of this.
Speaker: Like he's he's badly wounded.
Speaker: And so this is leading into it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This is where, as Kevin pointed out, we get kind of an explanation of the goddess and where he is and that sort of thing.
Speaker: Here comes another trope.
Speaker: We get like this discussion of faith here.
Speaker: And this is, again, this is a trope for the Witcher where they get into discussions on the nature of evil, the nature of humanity, the nature of God and religion and that sort of thing, which, again, you don't always see in these sword and sorcery things.
Speaker: And it's actually handled very well.
Speaker: I think if someone told me ahead of time, they were like, oh, yeah, he stops and philosophizes with these characters all the time.
Speaker: I'd go, oh, Jesus fucking Christ.
Speaker: But it's very well done.
Speaker: And he's not a –
Speaker: He actually even has a line later where someone says, good sir.
Speaker: And he goes, I'm not a good man.
Speaker: Don't call me that.
Speaker: And he's not.
Speaker: Geralt is the definition of chaotic neutral or at least lawful neutral because he has his own kind of code.
Speaker: He does.
Speaker: But he's not.
Speaker: But it doesn't always savvy with everybody else's.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And what's funny is he's an atheist.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, which again, you don't see in the fantasy world very often.
Speaker: In the fantasy world, he's like, he doesn't believe in God.
Speaker: He believes in what he, he believed, like, he's like, I believe that there, there's like fundamental forces in the world and people make up gods to personify them.
Speaker: But that doesn't mean these gods actually exist.
Speaker: It's just that these forces exist.
Speaker: And I was like, that's kind of an interesting, because clearly it's a world of magic and monsters and all that stuff.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But to him, that doesn't mean that there is a being at the end of that.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: It's just it's your argument of what is that being?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And that it's it's it's pretty cool.
Speaker: It's an actually interesting distinction.
Speaker: And that brings us into A Grain of Truth, which is our second short story.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: This one begins with Geralt riding through a forest.
Speaker: He's on horseback.
Speaker: His horse's name is Roach.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Which I love.
Speaker: And I don't know if that's a direct translation of what it is called in Polish.
Speaker: I did not check because I'm a hack and a fraud.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But Roach is what he calls his horse in the show, too.
Speaker: Yeah, and in the game.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: It's so funny.
Speaker: So he ends up finding these corpses, dead bodies, and he's investigating them.
Speaker: And follows, he tracks them, basically.
Speaker: Tracks where whatever killed them must have come from and comes to this kind of like –
Speaker: that is being devoured by the wilderness, is being reclaimed, basically just completely abandoned, run down kind of situation.
Speaker: And he ends up meeting Nivellen, who is this horror.
Speaker: I thought just like an ogre kind of troll character, but but is also
Speaker: a talker.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: As we'll find out.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Uh, they, they start, they start out with fighting and that sort of thing.
Speaker: And, uh,
Speaker: And then it becomes clear that he's he's trying to it becomes clear that Nivellen's trying to scare him off.
Speaker: I don't want you here.
Speaker: I don't I want to be left alone.
Speaker: And Geralt's like, I'm not I'm not that guy.
Speaker: I'm not going to I'm not interested in that.
Speaker: Yeah, you're not going to be able to get me to run off.
Speaker: And Nivellen's like, oh, OK, well, you want to come inside and have something to eat?
Speaker: Yeah, that's exactly it.
Speaker: He's like, do you want to come in and eat?
Speaker: And Geralt's like, yeah, sounds good.
Speaker: Yeah, I can eat.
Speaker: So I can eat.
Speaker: So we go inside, we find his magic table that he like, he hits the table and anything he wants is going to like appear out of it.
Speaker: So he hits it, gets a carafe of wine, hits it and gets them some dinner.
Speaker: Um, it's a whole thing.
Speaker: The whole house is magic.
Speaker: He can, he basically tells the house whatever he wants and it happens.
Speaker: It is very beauty in the beast.
Speaker: Uh, it is very, very that.
Speaker: So we find out, uh,
Speaker: the story of Nevelyn and it's, and it's the majority of this story is his story.
Speaker: Um, and again, this is, this is them discussing things.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Nevelyn it's this, the 90% of the lines in this story are Nevelyn dialogue.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yes, yes, yes.
Speaker: And long story short, he has basically been cursed.
Speaker: I think what was it?
Speaker: He's like part of it.
Speaker: He was part of like a bandit.
Speaker: He was part of it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So his grandfather ran a bandit bandit group.
Speaker: His father like we're not talking like like cheapo bandits.
Speaker: These are these are these are the premium bandits.
Speaker: They hit the rich folks.
Speaker: They like they had their they had a mansion.
Speaker: Based on they're just thieving.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: So they and everything's going great.
Speaker: This is a family business.
Speaker: He's done this with his dad and with his dad's dad and et cetera.
Speaker: And it all comes to a head when he ends up he is he is.
Speaker: I don't know if you can put it this way, but persuaded into raping one of their captives, who is a priestess of Coram Og Terra, who is like the worst, like the goddess of death, the lion headed spider.
Speaker: God, I think.
Speaker: Holy shit.
Speaker: What a great image.
Speaker: Yeah, that's exactly it.
Speaker: It's just like the God.
Speaker: I looked this one up.
Speaker: It's like the goddess of cruelty and death and like absolutely the last person you want to be on the bad side of.
Speaker: And and so this woman, rightfully so, curses him and he is turned into this horrible thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And we get his story and find out basically that he is he's the thing that that you tell your kids about in the woods to keep them close to the house.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: He has become this local legend, this creature.
Speaker: And he.
Speaker: Gets this idea that the only way, because he thinks about it, he's like, well, I'm a fairy tale now.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm a fairy tale.
Speaker: True love, right?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So what happens with this?
Speaker: I just need, I need a virgin to fall in love with me and to make love to me and I will be transformed.
Speaker: That's how these things work, obviously.
Speaker: So he's-
Speaker: because he kind of gets back into his highwayman style shit.
Speaker: And finally, a merchant passes by and he jumps out.
Speaker: Makes me think of a Mike Birbiglia joke.
Speaker: He basically runs out to the road and goes, where's your daughter?
Speaker: And the merchant says, my daughter's eight, please.
Speaker: I can't.
Speaker: And Nivellen's like, oh, man.
Speaker: No, I don't know that.
Speaker: No, no, no.
Speaker: Never mind.
Speaker: I don't feel good about that.
Speaker: And by the way, he has like a fucking shit ton of treasure.
Speaker: And this is just from the family biz.
Speaker: It's just piled up in their mansion.
Speaker: And he feels bad for what he's done.
Speaker: And so he goes to the merchant and goes, all right, come here, come here.
Speaker: And he like fills the merchant's bag with like gold and jewels and shit and says, go on, please.
Speaker: I'm sorry.
Speaker: Have a nice day.
Speaker: So what happens is the merchant goes back, tells all his buddies, you're not going to believe this.
Speaker: And they believe him.
Speaker: And the next day, another merchant shows up with his daughter,
Speaker: Who is not eight at the very least.
Speaker: So he basically exchanges his daughter for a bag full of golden riches and stuff like that.
Speaker: And he's,
Speaker: The daughter stays with him.
Speaker: It's Beauty and the Beast.
Speaker: She's horrified by him at first.
Speaker: And, you know.
Speaker: And then Nivellen's like, you know, these these women, they come over and then they're horrified.
Speaker: And then they're all monster fuckers, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They all end up being monster fuckers.
Speaker: He goes, eventually he's like, yeah, they're like, oh, no.
Speaker: But there may be something there that wasn't there before.
Speaker: And suddenly they're there.
Speaker: They're fucking beasts.
Speaker: And that's that's what this is.
Speaker: And and he and he and the right off the bat, he finds out, oh, it doesn't work.
Speaker: He's still a monster.
Speaker: But he keeps doing it.
Speaker: He keeps doing it.
Speaker: And we get into this cycle.
Speaker: He keeps these girls with him for a year and he sends them on their way afterwards and he's shown them the good life because he takes very good care of them.
Speaker: He talks about how a lot of these girls, when they show up at this place, they are still covered in bruises from their dads beating them and stuff.
Speaker: And so he's like actually very nice to them.
Speaker: He gives them nice clothes, you know, that stuff feeds them.
Speaker: He gives.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: He shows them a year of the good life.
Speaker: They they have a lot of sex.
Speaker: They turns out they're monster fuckers and and and then they move on.
Speaker: And over the process of this, it becomes clear this isn't going to work.
Speaker: But it also becomes clear that he's like, you know what?
Speaker: This isn't so bad.
Speaker: He kind of comes to an understanding with himself where this is not a bad life that I'm leading.
Speaker: I have everything I need.
Speaker: Girls are into me every now and then.
Speaker: It's a pretty cool situation.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: He's kind of made his peace with the whole thing by the time Geralt finds him.
Speaker: And we get a moment at the end of the story where Geralt, he's been asking him throughout throughout the story.
Speaker: He's been asking him, like, so you're here by yourself.
Speaker: Are you here by yourself?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But are you here by yourself?
Speaker: And and and the devil is like, you know, I'm not here by myself.
Speaker: You know, I'm not here by myself, damn it.
Speaker: So it's like, yeah, I got a lady in the house.
Speaker: Fuck you.
Speaker: But he talks about how he's been having horrible dreams, and he thinks that this is not the end of his transformation, essentially.
Speaker: That right now he's – what's the word?
Speaker: Lucid.
Speaker: He is, you know, sentient, but he has a feeling that that's not going to be the case.
Speaker: And if and he basically after a nice evening of storytelling and wine and dinner with Geralt, he makes him promise that if he does become this mindless, senseless monster, will Geralt come back and take him out?
Speaker: And Geralt agrees.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's actually a really it's a really lovely kind of moment.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then we come back to this.
Speaker: It's kind of a weird ending.
Speaker: Oh, gosh.
Speaker: Hold on.
Speaker: This part.
Speaker: So he's he's with Roach.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And yeah, he's leaving.
Speaker: He's leaving with Roach.
Speaker: And he's like, hmm, Roach is acting weird.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And like he remembers that the guy Roach didn't act weird around the guy.
Speaker: He like she so she so she sees through the the guise of of who he is.
Speaker: He Roach knows that he's a human.
Speaker: Roach only gets kind of skittish around actual monsters.
Speaker: And so then Geralt's like.
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: OK.
Speaker: And he heads back.
Speaker: He had he had been riding away and he heads back and he finds a woman just kind of like sitting there.
Speaker: And he's like, what are you?
Speaker: He keeps asking it.
Speaker: What is like?
Speaker: Are you this?
Speaker: Are you that?
Speaker: And then it attacks him and he realizes it's a Brooks, which is a type of mind control vampire thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And this is basically what's responsible for the Nivellen being this way.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The dreams and all that stuff.
Speaker: It's it's been keeping.
Speaker: So so they fight.
Speaker: They they they fight.
Speaker: They go back and forth.
Speaker: The Brooks keeps transforming between a beautiful woman and a bat like creature.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which is wild.
Speaker: And then he's cool.
Speaker: It's pretty cool.
Speaker: And then Nivellen is like finally realizes, holy shit, this is no good.
Speaker: And he impales the Brooks, stabs her through the chest, through the heart with a wooden stake.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Not like a wooden stake, like a part of his house.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like he literally rips and he's talked about this before where like he's wrecked the shit out of this house because he's so strong and he likes showing off for his girlfriends that come by and he's wrecked chair after chair.
Speaker: He goes, there are hardly any chairs left.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So he just, yeah, you're right.
Speaker: He just like rips off some of the house and just.
Speaker: Impales her with right through.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it kills her.
Speaker: And then he transforms back into a human because he then Geralt's like, so, you know, the fairy tales are sometimes are the there's a lot of grain.
Speaker: There's a grain of truth.
Speaker: The title title card to the fairy tales because it needed to be true love.
Speaker: And the Brooks.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: actually loved him and he actually loved the Brooks, even though they were toxic.
Speaker: She was toxic to him.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Which, yeah, that's relatable.
Speaker: But yeah.
Speaker: So and so he did the curse is removed and Nivellen is is restored to a human being again.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Again, really interesting tropes where
Speaker: The monster isn't who we think it is, and Geralt doesn't even end up killing anybody in this.
Speaker: It's it's.
Speaker: It's pretty cool.
Speaker: We come back to the voice of reason.
Speaker: We get some knights from the Order of the White Rose.
Speaker: Very, very serious knights.
Speaker: Very, very serious knights.
Speaker: Very serious, very like stereotypical paladin kind of characters.
Speaker: And they've showed up to the temple basically demanding that they throw Geralt out so that they can kill him.
Speaker: Or at least run out of town.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And, you know, they want to duel.
Speaker: They want to kill him.
Speaker: They want all this kind of shit.
Speaker: And Nanique is not giving him up.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Absolutely not.
Speaker: And she's kind of almost as pissed with Geralt as she is with them because she's like, I don't want these people at my house.
Speaker: These people leave my temple, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So finally, after a lot of back and forths, the knights leave.
Speaker: But but, you know, we'll be back.
Speaker: We'll be back.
Speaker: And in great numbers.
Speaker: And great.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: That's exactly it.
Speaker: And that cuts us into our third story, The Lesser Evil.
Speaker: And this one is starts with Geralt after a hunt.
Speaker: He has killed a kicker more, which I looked that one up, too.
Speaker: And that's like a Slavic house elf or something like that.
Speaker: It's described as like a spidery.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Goblin.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The kicker more is a is massive in the way that it's portrayed both the show and the book.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But yeah, he just has it on the back of a donkey or something.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And he's just he's just on his way into this town to collect a reward on it.
Speaker: Like, hey, I killed this thing.
Speaker: Will anybody pay me for this thing?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's not a bounty, by the way.
Speaker: He's just he's just bringing like, hey, I killed that.
Speaker: You guys don't have to deal with that anymore.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Give me some money.
Speaker: Like that's literally, that's literally his, his, his stance on the whole thing.
Speaker: And you have to wonder like, Oh, he does this a lot.
Speaker: This is how this works.
Speaker: So he goes in and he meets the town guards and the alderman there.
Speaker: And they're like, Oh yeah, sure.
Speaker: You know, you know, who's going to be interested in that master Irian.
Speaker: And he is a wizard who lives in this tower.
Speaker: So let's go to master Irian.
Speaker: And at first, it's very much a don't no one see the wizard.
Speaker: No way.
Speaker: Not know how.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Kind of situation where they're just like, no, you're not coming inside.
Speaker: And then they realize who he is.
Speaker: And and mysteriously, the voice that has been talking to them and refusing their entry says, all right, Geralt come in.
Speaker: The rest of you fuck off.
Speaker: So Geralt walks into this place and it's this illusory room.
Speaker: It's filled.
Speaker: It's like a beautiful hanging gardens kind of situation.
Speaker: With naked women.
Speaker: Complete with naked women picking fruit and shit.
Speaker: And he finds that the wizard, Aireon, is actually Stregobor.
Speaker: Stregobor.
Speaker: Stregobor.
Speaker: who is a wizard that he has, he has background with.
Speaker: He has, he has, he knows.
Speaker: And he finds out.
Speaker: Stregobor is like, we're friends.
Speaker: And Geralt's like, I don't think that's the right word.
Speaker: I don't know if that's the word.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It gets tense.
Speaker: So Stregobor is, is, is,
Speaker: Taking care of taking care of he's taken over this tower and has taken the name Master Eryon because that's like, yeah, Eryon's been dead for 200 years.
Speaker: I just took.
Speaker: Yeah, it's it's an alias.
Speaker: That's really what it comes down to.
Speaker: And he's happy to.
Speaker: Yeah, he says it's like, oh, yeah, I'm just honoring him by doing this.
Speaker: And it's, you know, this is an AKA.
Speaker: Yeah, that's what this is.
Speaker: So they get into a conversation and Stregobor, they basically start talking about.
Speaker: monsters.
Speaker: And we get information on this thing, the Curse of the Black Sun, which is kind of a curse and kind of
Speaker: They don't go into a lot of the specifics, but the idea is that there was this time that was brought on by wizards like Strigobor where any people who were born under this sign became hideous, horrible monsters.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And one such monster is hunting Strigobor down.
Speaker: And as long as he's in the tower, he's fine.
Speaker: He's not he's fine.
Speaker: He's got everything he needs, but he doesn't want to be in that tower for much.
Speaker: But much.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Much like the guy from the thing.
Speaker: He doesn't want to spend the rest of the winter tied to this fucking couch.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And it's that's exactly.
Speaker: And he's so he basically says, you know, so it would be a lesser evil if you just found this this this girl and kill her because she is a monster.
Speaker: They call her the Shrike because she likes to impale her enemies and all that stuff.
Speaker: And she's the leader of a band of brigands, you know,
Speaker: And he talks about like she had a group of seven gnomes that she paled around with.
Speaker: That she got them out of mining and into being bandits.
Speaker: And then they all got killed.
Speaker: And we don't know how that happened.
Speaker: It is hilarious because they talk about how the women who were cursed were.
Speaker: to be these monsters the wizards like rounded them up and created a tower for each one of them and imprisoned them it's got a and so you've got this uh rapunzel thing yeah uh and he says and a lot of them we we underestimate a lot of them escaped and this is one of them yeah um and uh it's a she's a former princess you know she was born into rapunzel plus snow white snow white yeah that's exactly it and so
Speaker: But she's Shrike, man.
Speaker: She went by Renfri.
Speaker: She's now Shrike.
Speaker: It would be better if you just killed her.
Speaker: And Geralt's like, I'm not going to fuck it.
Speaker: You were responsible.
Speaker: You did this.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like you guys, wizards like you made this.
Speaker: If she's a monster, you guys made her into one.
Speaker: I have no interest in this.
Speaker: Fuck off.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which I thought was fair.
Speaker: So Geralt.
Speaker: ends up meeting them.
Speaker: He, he, he runs into them at a tavern in town and, and he, he basically wants to talk to her and like, like, what is this all about?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Let's, let's, let's see what her side of the story is.
Speaker: And she is of course surrounded by all of her, her thugs and goons and that sort of thing.
Speaker: And, and violence almost breaks out, but she shows up at just the right time and goes, Hey, I'll talk to him, whatever.
Speaker: It doesn't matter.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: One of the goons is just named 15.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, 15.
Speaker: There's got to be a story there.
Speaker: And I.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: I love the idea that I like when writers do that, by the way.
Speaker: I like when writers throw in something like that, that you're like, oh, there's got to be some sort of backstory or something like that to that.
Speaker: But they're not going to tell us.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We get like a hint at it, but not much else.
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: We never find out for sure.
Speaker: They certainly don't like give us a novella about it the way that American writers would do.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So –
Speaker: He meets her and finds out she's got this decree from the king that makes her and her team like not royalty, but like they're under the protection of the king.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So you can't fuck with me.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She has diplomatic immunity.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And so they have kind of an out and she kind of.
Speaker: Keeps him at an arm's length and doesn't give him a lot of information.
Speaker: But later, when Geralt makes his way back to the room he's staying in, she has broken in.
Speaker: She's basically like assassins creeded her way into his room and says, I had basically said, I couldn't talk about who I am and all that shit.
Speaker: You know, in front of the fellas, those dudes in front of the guys can't do that.
Speaker: So so she basically throws Stregobor's idea back to Geralt, basically saying, I am I am if I'm a mom, I don't know what I am.
Speaker: She goes, I don't know what I am.
Speaker: He made me into something.
Speaker: We don't get any inference of what kind of a monster she's supposed to be.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: She's just this.
Speaker: She's just a murderous monster.
Speaker: And they come and Strigobor has compared her to the Kikamore that he's killed.
Speaker: And then later she compares Strigobor to the Kikamore.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Basically saying it would be better if he died, if he died.
Speaker: And she talks about how, like, yeah, Stregobor was the the wizard who was with my stepmother.
Speaker: He filled, you know, her and him like work together to make my life a living hell.
Speaker: They tried to kill me with a poison apple.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: The there they they sent me out into the woods with a huntsman who tried to murder me.
Speaker: Oh my God.
Speaker: All of the, all of the fairy tales.
Speaker: It's so good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's, it's, Oh my God.
Speaker: She was like sent into a, she was put in a well at one point.
Speaker: It's like, Lassie saved her.
Speaker: It's just all.
Speaker: It's, it's wild stuff.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's, it's terrific.
Speaker: It, it, we do get a like nice concentrated dose of classic European fairy tales here.
Speaker: Um, yeah.
Speaker: She basically says, you know what?
Speaker: We're going to leave.
Speaker: We're going to leave.
Speaker: You know, you're right.
Speaker: Because Geralt's like, I don't.
Speaker: People are going to die.
Speaker: Like, it's not just going to be if it was just you or just him, that would be one thing.
Speaker: But other people are going to die, too.
Speaker: And that's not necessary.
Speaker: And so she kind of goes, all right, you've convinced me.
Speaker: I'm not.
Speaker: I'll leave.
Speaker: And maybe maybe me and Strigobor will meet somewhere else, you know, and just not here in town.
Speaker: And then they fuck.
Speaker: Uh, that happens that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because it's Geralt, you know, what it's Geralt.
Speaker: He's she, when he, when he actually enters his room, he hears her and he like tackles her not knowing who she is.
Speaker: And she says, make some comment about like, I knew you were going to be on top of me at some point tonight.
Speaker: I just didn't know it was going to be immediately.
Speaker: Uh, it's, it's pretty great.
Speaker: Uh, it's just good lines.
Speaker: Um, so in the morning, uh, uh,
Speaker: Geralt's having having dinner with the not dinner, sorry, breakfast with the family of the people who put them up for the night, who is the alderman who also has he has history with.
Speaker: And he basically realizes through the story that Alderman is telling him that.
Speaker: Renfri Shrike has no, she's not actually going to leave.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And she's, you know, she's going to use, I'm just going to read it out here that as they, as they write it here in the wiki, because it's way better than I would have put it.
Speaker: So she plans to use the fact that the local mage in any given town is duty bound to do what he can to protect the town.
Speaker: So she's going to kill everybody to force him to leave his tower.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Which is,
Speaker: Effective.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Bold play, and we'll see how it turns out.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: The thing is, Geralt knows Stregobor, and he's like, Stregobor is not going to leave his tower.
Speaker: I don't think that's... I think we're thinking of a different wizard.
Speaker: I think this is a different wizard.
Speaker: So Geralt makes his way out into the village, the town, and finds their band, and he's like, I...
Speaker: I'm just going to have to kill these people.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: To stop them from hurting any innocent people.
Speaker: So we get some pretty terrific fight scenes, basically.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Finally, we do finally get our final boss moment, almost final boss moment with him fighting Renfri and her basically begging him to help her get Stregoborn.
Speaker: And she ends up getting shot.
Speaker: No, no, sorry.
Speaker: He gets shot almost and, you know, does the cool spinny blade.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Kind of thing.
Speaker: Renfri is really good at sword fighting.
Speaker: She has him back on his heels.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a great fight.
Speaker: Like, it's not, you know, she's got absolute skills and...
Speaker: And it's great because she's pointed out several times, I was raised a princess.
Speaker: I was supposed to be soft.
Speaker: And she's constantly making jokes about this, by the way.
Speaker: She talks about like, you know, I'm going to go out and sleep outdoors if I leave your room right now.
Speaker: And I'm a princess.
Speaker: And I could feel a pee under like 19 mattresses.
Speaker: So my delicate constitution –
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You should just let me stay here.
Speaker: And that totally works, by the way.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So finally they fight and she loses.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So and then Strigobor, that's when Strigobor shows up and he's like, oh, oh, yeah.
Speaker: Oh, gosh, I came as soon as I came as soon as I could.
Speaker: Oh, the fight's over.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But he and he says he wants to perform an autopsy, which is not a word you hear a lot in fantasy, but he wants to perform an autopsy to prove that.
Speaker: In his in his mind that this curse, this curse of the moon, whatever, is what made her evil.
Speaker: And Geralt tells him to back the fuck off.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's very protective of her body.
Speaker: No one's touching her.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And and we get this really interesting moment.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That the townspeople start throwing shit at the Witcher.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Because we go back to that original moment in the very beginning of this book where it doesn't matter.
Speaker: He did all of this to save these townspeople from getting hurt or something like that.
Speaker: And it doesn't matter.
Speaker: They're throwing rocks at them and everything like that.
Speaker: And he's just kind of...
Speaker: OK, fine.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And, you know, and leaves.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: His friend, his friend, the alderman is like, you got to go.
Speaker: And by the way, don't come back.
Speaker: Don't ever come back.
Speaker: Don't come back.
Speaker: And this is how he becomes known as the butcher of Blaviken.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Because he killed a bunch of goons in the street that were going to slaughter the town.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So he has, so there's no justice whatsoever.
Speaker: And it's, it's actually, it's a really kind of sad ending to the story.
Speaker: And again, it's that trope that keeps coming up where none of these stories so far have ended with him.
Speaker: Like I hunt the monster, I kill them.
Speaker: No, it's always something.
Speaker: There's always something more to it than that.
Speaker: And I think that's, that's the kind of the perfect place to, to end tonight.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: Kevin, what do you think so far of The Last Wish?
Speaker: It's a lot of fun.
Speaker: And I'll say this.
Speaker: These stories are some of the best.
Speaker: Their adaptations in the show are some of the best individual characters.
Speaker: like adaptations that the show does of Witcher storytelling.
Speaker: They're pretty much untouched from the book to the show.
Speaker: And it's they're a lot of fun.
Speaker: It's it's there.
Speaker: The stories are
Speaker: Especially with the idea that, OK, yeah, no, he he goes after a monster and he kills the monster.
Speaker: And like a lesser writer would just focus on the story about him overcoming a monster.
Speaker: Like him overcoming a monster is the mundane for him.
Speaker: It's the least interesting part of the whole thing.
Speaker: It's it's him dealing with the the context and the repercussions that just doing what he does is is the problem.
Speaker: You know, it like he gets he gets kicked out of the town for saving them.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: He nearly gets decapitated by the 14 year old girl.
Speaker: It's it's it's a lot of, you know,
Speaker: It's interesting.
Speaker: I'm having a lot of fun with The Last Wish so far.
Speaker: Yeah, me too.
Speaker: It is, you know, because I compared it to, you know, Robert E. Howard and Conan and those classic pulpy sword and sorcery things.
Speaker: But it's actually far more complex than that, because whereas...
Speaker: a Conan story would end with, you know, I've killed the monster and I get my prize and I take a girl with me and that kind of thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's always it's never as simple as that.
Speaker: And I really like that.
Speaker: And it's done well.
Speaker: He's a terrific writer.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So this is this is super fun.
Speaker: I'm really glad we're reading this.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: OK, well, now that we've now that we've wrapped that up, Kevin, I have one last question for you.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: Ooh.
Speaker: What am I playing?
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So I'm playing two things right now.
Speaker: Let me fire them up.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So the shortest one I'll talk about is I started playing an early access game, point and click horror game called Midnight Special.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Which is...
Speaker: It's a neat little... It came up in my queue.
Speaker: I was like, this looks interesting.
Speaker: I'm going to try it.
Speaker: It's very, very early access, so there's some weird glitches and things like that.
Speaker: But I'm enjoying it so far.
Speaker: The controls are a little weird, and I think if I send feedback in for the early access, it would be that, like...
Speaker: the there's like the left click to go and the right click to inspect.
Speaker: But sometimes when you click on things, it's like tries to pick it up and it's like, I can't pick that up.
Speaker: I feel like the inspect should be the default rather than, you know what I mean?
Speaker: Just like little things.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Tweaky things like that.
Speaker: Or do the thing where you right click to change what interaction you want to do with the object.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The other thing I'll mention is that the main character that you're playing as Sarah is a think her name is Sarah.
Speaker: I can't remember.
Speaker: It better be because this is clearly meant to be clock tower.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So yeah, she has her breast.
Speaker: This is have jiggle physics as she walks.
Speaker: Jesus Christ.
Speaker: So that's a little much.
Speaker: I think I don't think they need that.
Speaker: She's breasting boobily.
Speaker: She breasts boobily in this game.
Speaker: And listen, I, you know, far be it from me to shame anyone for breasting boobily.
Speaker: But it just seems out of place.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This is, this is, I mean, this, it seems I'm seeing like, I'm watching a video of it right now.
Speaker: I'm seeing a lot of clock tower.
Speaker: I'm seeing like Friday the 13th, the NES game.
Speaker: Like there's all kinds of interesting stuff in here.
Speaker: So
Speaker: Why are we throwing in boobs?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But it looks cool.
Speaker: It looks pretty neat.
Speaker: It looks neat.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just like, you know, that's my one feedback is the breasting boobily.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: So, but if I am so that's that's I've played that for a little bit.
Speaker: I think I'll return to it.
Speaker: I think I accidentally quit out without saving.
Speaker: So I probably just have to replay everything that I've done already.
Speaker: It's one of those games where it's like it's an early access.
Speaker: The save option is was not like didn't pop out to me right away.
Speaker: It was like, is this going to save automatically or not?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: And I quit.
Speaker: And I was like, I'm not sure that saved.
Speaker: I don't think that happened.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't think that happened.
Speaker: But, okay, so the other thing I've been playing is, oh, you know what?
Speaker: I should mention I beat Claire Obscure Expedition 33.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: It'll be on my game of the year list.
Speaker: I don't think I'm as hot on it as other folks are after I got through to the ending.
Speaker: And talking about the ending kind of like spoils a lot of the twists and turns the story takes.
Speaker: But it was like you're presented a choice at the end that just kind of like I was like, that's bullshit.
Speaker: Oh,
Speaker: Is it kind of that binary old school good versus bad Paragon?
Speaker: No, it's not even good versus bad.
Speaker: It's just two choices that are like, I feel like we could go, we can't have a third option that would be like a little bit more balanced.
Speaker: They're very extreme choices though.
Speaker: They're not a good and bad.
Speaker: I wouldn't say.
Speaker: Although one, I'll say it seems like one is more obvious to be the good ending and it's not.
Speaker: It just really depends on your takeaway.
Speaker: Anyway, that's kind of where I landed on Expedition 33.
Speaker: It'll be on my game of the year list.
Speaker: Not on my it's not my game of the year.
Speaker: Like other people have said, it's it's good.
Speaker: It's up there.
Speaker: I beat it in 33 hours.
Speaker: And, you know, it's that's pretty quick for that style of game.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Damn.
Speaker: But something new I've been playing, which I really like so far, is South of Midnight.
Speaker: Okay, tell me all about this because that looks good.
Speaker: Okay, so you need to play this, Phil, because you're a southern boy.
Speaker: This is very steeped in African-American southern folktale type stuff, as well as general southern folktales.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: I think one of the cool things is that the enemies that you fight in the game are haints.
Speaker: And oh, cool.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Are what Annie, if you've seen sinners, paints are what Annie thinks are attacking before she realizes that they're vampires.
Speaker: So I would say sinners in South of Midnight are actually a very interesting pairing.
Speaker: South of Midnight takes place in like more like in present day.
Speaker: And but still they do.
Speaker: It's an interesting parallel to play that to watch that movie and play this game because it's African-American folklore and storytelling that is really solid and interesting to take part in.
Speaker: And a lot of it's a lot of.
Speaker: You know, there's some of the hoodoo and hoodoo-voodoo type stuff in both of them.
Speaker: Really fun.
Speaker: And I think it's...
Speaker: For for those of you who have spent time in the south, I think it's it.
Speaker: It makes sense to fire it up and play it in the logo.
Speaker: You'll see there's a bottle tree, which is.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: A very big thing.
Speaker: That's a very important element to the story is the bottle tree.
Speaker: So it's a, it's a kind of a game.
Speaker: Is it?
Speaker: So I'm sorry.
Speaker: It's like an, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: It's like an action game.
Speaker: It's, I would say the closest analog is to the like recent God of war games where you like, you're going through a level and then you go to a spot, like a little mini arena where you fight the enemies and
Speaker: Okay, and then there's might be a puzzle, but instead of puzzles in South of Midnight, it's mostly traversal type stuff.
Speaker: So there's a bunch of traversal mechanics.
Speaker: You got double jumps.
Speaker: You got grappling hooks.
Speaker: You got gliders.
Speaker: You got things like that.
Speaker: So it's
Speaker: So it's got some platforming to it.
Speaker: It's platforming with some little mini arena like enemy fights where you fight the haints and then you have to your character is a weaver and she has to untangle the knots of like they're called stigma.
Speaker: uh okay so like this all the this guilt and bad feelings turns into a knot and she has to use her weaver powers to untangle that knot and the whole game is about like overcoming guilt and generational trauma and there was the first
Speaker: the first story that you the first person that you like heal, it's called healing a person.
Speaker: The first person that you heal the story had me in tears by the end.
Speaker: Like, like it's a very powerfully written game.
Speaker: So you're playing as a character.
Speaker: I believe her name is Hazel.
Speaker: She is going off to college.
Speaker: She's a track star.
Speaker: And there's a hurricane coming.
Speaker: And while she's out and checking on her neighbors, the river floods and washes her house with her mother in it down the river.
Speaker: And it's just her chasing after her mother.
Speaker: And as she is running after her mother, the things start getting weirder and weirder.
Speaker: And I would say one other story, one other movie I would reference is Big Fish.
Speaker: It's oh, OK, it has it really has a vibe of big fish and not because there is a literal big fish who acts as your narrator.
Speaker: There's this catfish who looks like he is weaved together out of like quilts and things like that.
Speaker: Who's he's like, oh, I'll tell you this story.
Speaker: Oh, God damn it.
Speaker: This looks.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I was like,
Speaker: I was intrigued as hell by this, but the fact is I hadn't heard much about it since it came out.
Speaker: So I'm really glad that you're playing it.
Speaker: It's an excellent game.
Speaker: I just I just beat the second boss gator named Two Toad Tom, who
Speaker: Fucking Christ.
Speaker: How am I not supposed to love this?
Speaker: Jesus Christ.
Speaker: You know, you heal Two-Toe Tom's stigma, the wound that he's been carrying around, the guilt that he's been carrying around.
Speaker: So it's not about killing.
Speaker: It's about healing.
Speaker: It's not about killing, it's about healing and undoing, doing what you can to undo the damage that trauma has caused.
Speaker: Well, this looks beautiful.
Speaker: Yeah, so South of Midnight, highly recommend it.
Speaker: It's actually by the same developers who made We Happy Few.
Speaker: Oh, OK, which is interesting.
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: But yeah, this game is tremendous.
Speaker: It'll be high up on my list at the end of the year.
Speaker: This looks fun.
Speaker: This looks really fun.
Speaker: I'm definitely going to.
Speaker: OK, I'm glad you played it.
Speaker: I'm glad you're saying that because that's pushed me over the edge there.
Speaker: And I because it's on Game Pass, I've been playing Doom Dark Ages.
Speaker: How is that?
Speaker: It's good.
Speaker: It's a Doom game.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: It doesn't run as well as I would like to.
Speaker: It's very dark.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And I think part of that's probably because my computer just doesn't handle the lighting as well as it could.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: But it's I'd say it's got me more hooked than it's like less than the than Doom 2016, but more than than Eternal.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Kind of like in between the two.
Speaker: Yeah, the second one was kind of... It was fine.
Speaker: But it was too much.
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: My problem with the second one, it was too much about the big arena fights rather than just going through a level.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This kind of rebalances that a bit.
Speaker: And there's more focus on melee in this one.
Speaker: It's set, you know, a long time ago.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And your one of your primary weapons is a shield of which you do Captain America bullshit with it.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: Naturally.
Speaker: You have, you know, your regular guns, but you're it's it's funny how secondary the guns feel in this game.
Speaker: Most of the time you're like, I'm throwing it.
Speaker: I'm throwing it.
Speaker: I'm punching.
Speaker: I'm doing all that stuff.
Speaker: One of the things that's interesting is they got rid of, for the most part,
Speaker: the glory kills.
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I understand because in Eternal, the problem with the glory kills is that they slowed for such a big game with a lot like you're constantly killing things.
Speaker: The glory kills were like four seconds each time you hit the button.
Speaker: Whereas in this, it speeds up the combat a lot by doing the execution kill.
Speaker: It doesn't slow things down.
Speaker: It doesn't do slow motion or whatever.
Speaker: They'll do glory kills for bosses, but not for regular enemies.
Speaker: So I think that was just a decision on their part to like, all right, we're going to speed up the gameplay a little bit more by removing the glory kill.
Speaker: There's still executions, but the glory kill where it's like...
Speaker: Zoom in slow motion.
Speaker: He's ripping things vertically, you know, whatever.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We got rid of that.
Speaker: I mean, that makes sense for what they're trying to do.
Speaker: I mean, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Makes a lot of sense.
Speaker: So that's what I've been playing.
Speaker: Phil.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: Oh, well, start with I played a demo of a game called Cast and Chill.
Speaker: I'm fishing this.
Speaker: The easiest thing that I can compare it to is it's basically the fishing version of Keep Driving.
Speaker: OK, it looks almost identical in its style and it delivers exactly what it says on the tin.
Speaker: It is a very chill fishing game.
Speaker: There are fishing mechanics, but they're not as complex as you've seen in some other games.
Speaker: You go out.
Speaker: on your boat with your dog, you can pet your dog and go out and catch different kinds of fish.
Speaker: Find out the different kinds of fish that are in different watering holes and try to catch all the fish there.
Speaker: Sell what you get.
Speaker: Beat your, you know, scores, upgrade your boat, upgrade your ship.
Speaker: It's gorgeous.
Speaker: At least the demo is autumn and it's just you're in, it looks like Pacific Northwest somewhere, like just mountains and golden trees.
Speaker: It's exact, it's cast and chill.
Speaker: It is very chill.
Speaker: Um, it's great.
Speaker: I think it's terrific.
Speaker: Uh, uh, it, the demo is worth absolutely worth playing.
Speaker: Um, it's, it's just a nice mellow sort of game.
Speaker: And it helped me to understand, uh, with these next two games that I am in my leave me alone.
Speaker: I just need to relax video game era.
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: You know, I can't believe it only just occurred to me, Kevin.
Speaker: My kid isn't even a year and a half years old.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I don't necessarily I will.
Speaker: I will play more involved, complicated games, but it takes a lot more for me to.
Speaker: Okay, let's get into this.
Speaker: Let's invest myself in this, that sort of thing.
Speaker: And with that being said, one of the games I ended up playing a lot this past week was Drop Dutchie.
Speaker: I think it's terrific because
Speaker: your description, I don't know how it would have been if I had gone into it sight unseen, because I totally see what you mean about it not being quite what you expected.
Speaker: For those of you who weren't in the last episode,
Speaker: Drop Duchy is a Tetris like, if you will, where it's a city builder and you're using Tetris pieces.
Speaker: Now, one of the things you said that threw you was that unlike Tetris, the the the pieces don't automatically go down.
Speaker: They do.
Speaker: It's just it's very slow when you're in the first difficulty levels.
Speaker: It speeds up.
Speaker: OK.
Speaker: But yeah.
Speaker: I but I think because you made the point of saying that it actually helped me go, OK, let's let's let's see what this is all about.
Speaker: And I ended up really enjoying it.
Speaker: It's got a lot of fun mechanics to it.
Speaker: It's bite sized.
Speaker: You can get through, you know, a run of it, you know, 20 minutes, something like that.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And it's involved, but not too involved.
Speaker: Again, it's very laid back, but fun.
Speaker: Now, for games that are just straight ass laid back, I went ahead and got the full version of Tower Dominion, which I played the demo of.
Speaker: during Next Fest and the full game was released.
Speaker: It is a tower defense game and it is a they have gloriously and beautifully ripped off Warhammer.
Speaker: It's terrific.
Speaker: Oh my God.
Speaker: The logo.
Speaker: Look at that shit.
Speaker: Like it's it's super fun.
Speaker: It's it's it's cute.
Speaker: It's cartoon characters and that sort of thing.
Speaker: But oh, my God, it's like but you have a billion different leaders to choose from that you have to unlock over the course of the game in three different kinds of worlds, three different kinds of armies.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There are a lot of things like 70 percent of the units and the way that the teams play is the same.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: But there's just enough different between them that your strategy will change.
Speaker: And it will also change based on the leader you're using.
Speaker: But you look at it and you're like, oh, my God, that's a comissar.
Speaker: Oh, my God, that's a space.
Speaker: Jesus Christ.
Speaker: Guys, guys, guys.
Speaker: They have ripped it off beautifully.
Speaker: I, I really enjoy it.
Speaker: I think one of the things that sets it apart from your standard issue, um, tower defense game is that you are actually choosing, you start out with just, it's, it's like a, it's, it's like a Tetris thing.
Speaker: It's like tiles, right?
Speaker: Uh, you start out on a few tiles, uh, with the road leading up to your base and every turn or two, you
Speaker: you have to pick a new tile.
Speaker: You have to place a tile so that you are determining where the enemies are coming from.
Speaker: And one of the most satisfying things I ever did was I had my base in the middle and I managed between a little bit of luck and some re-rolls and stuff like that, I managed to make a spiral of the road.
Speaker: Going around and and I tell you what the satisfaction of setting up just a goddamn spiral shooting gallery for all these bugs trying to kill my base is divine.
Speaker: It was amazing.
Speaker: That's amazing.
Speaker: It's a lot of fun.
Speaker: It's very chill.
Speaker: Are the enemies Tyranids?
Speaker: For all intents and purposes, they are bugs.
Speaker: They're a lot squishier than Tyranids, but yeah, they're for all intents and purposes, Tyranids.
Speaker: And, you know, they increase in their abilities.
Speaker: You've got four different difficulty levels.
Speaker: There's plenty of game to play.
Speaker: And it is and it's very chill.
Speaker: It's the kind of thing where I was working from home today and I could get some work done and then I could go over and do a round of that and then get some more work done.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And it's it's it's very engaging.
Speaker: It's again, I am in my I am playing video games to relax.
Speaker: Don't talk to me era.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And this and this is feeding right into it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Game of the Year list is going to look real, real lazy this year.
Speaker: Real weird.
Speaker: Gotta get real weird with these games.
Speaker: So yeah, so that's what I've been playing.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Oh, and by the way, happy 200th episode, my friend.
Speaker: Happy 200th episode.
Speaker: This is the 200th.
Speaker: What about that?
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: I can't believe we didn't top load that, but it's, it's, I think it's very appropriate to start on something unique like this for our 200th episode.
Speaker: I love you, man.
Speaker: This is, this is, this is a great show.
Speaker: Great show.
Speaker: 200 episodes.
Speaker: How about it?
Speaker: How about it?
Speaker: How about it?
Speaker: And for, for 200 episodes, uh, there has been a weeping angel in my garage.
Speaker: Uh, it's kind of stuck in there.
Speaker: What do I do about that?
Speaker: OK, OK.
Speaker: How much liquid cash do you have?
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: Never mind.
Speaker: You're going to burn it anyway, so it doesn't.
