Untitled

ROUND TWO

Lucy Darling: ‘Died a Winner’? That’s charmingly optimistic of you. Does that make you a ghost?

Died a Winner: Yeah.

Lucy Darling: Oh…interesting. I didn’t think that was going to be the answer. Now, I notice you are sporting a beak and feathers. Is this a costume? Do they have costumes for ghosts?

Died a Winner: No, I’m a bird.

Lucy Darling: You’re a bird ghost…alright. Were you also a bird in life?

Died a Winner: Yeah.

Lucy Darling: ‘Yeah.’ Okay. How did you die, my love?

Died a Winner: Big ink hand.

Lucy Darling: Big ink hand? … I hate to be the one to tell you this, darling, but as stories of one’s own death go, that’s a little lacking in the details department.

Paul F Tompkins (at bar): Oh, that reminds me. Paget’s birthday is coming up.

———

Jimmy Carr: ‘Killed a God’? Well, well, well, good for you. Anyone I know?

Killed a God: No.

Jimmy Carr: No. Which god was it?

Killed a God: Yes?

Jimmy Carr: *Yes?*

Killed a God: Yes.

Jimmy Carr: Third base. What do you mean, “yes”?

Killed a God: The god’s name was ‘Yes?’

Jimmy Carr: The god’s name was ‘Yes’. In a pantheon with Rush and Jethro Tull, were they? Did you get them all or just Jon Anderson?

Killed a God: I don’t know who that is.

Jimmy Carr: Sure. Alright, how did you kill this god?

Killed a God: Well, I created it and then…

Jimmy Carr: You created the god? As in you made him up?

Killed a God: Well…I mean…kind of…

Jimmy Carr: Hey, hey, hey, don’t get embarrassed. That’s an exclusive club to be in, that is. It’s you, Moses, Muhammad, and L Ron Hubbard. Well done. So, how’d you kill him?

Killed a God: I just didn’t evangelize enough and it just died. So, like…neglect.

Jimmy Carr: Point of clarification. When you say ‘god’, do you mean ‘tamagotchi’?

———

Paul F Tompkins: You, ‘Mister March’, big John Phillips Souza fan?

Mr March: No, I was on a calendar.

Paul F Tompkins: Okay, so you were the model for the month of March on a calendar?

Mr March: Yep.

Paul F Tompkins: Is there more to this story? And by ‘more’, I mean ‘anything’. Was it a really famous calendar?

Mr March: It was a fireman’s calendar.

Paul F Tompkins: Okay, so that’s not a story. It barely qualifies as an anecdote.

Mr March: I guess.

Paul F Tompkins: At least, you admit it. Okay, you: ‘Bone Haver’. What’s your story? Can you do better than ‘someone took a picture of me once’?

Bone Haver: Uh…yeah, well, I have all of my bones.

Paul F Tompkins: As many do.

Bone Haver: Yeah, so…I was in a river for 250 years and I kept all of my bones.

Paul F Tompkins: I’m dangerously close to owing Mr March an apology. Okay...I’m not an expert in decomposition, but I feel like, if your body was in a river for 250 years, your bones would be the last thing to go.

Bone Haver: I wouldn’t know. I still have all of my bones.

Paul F Tompkins: Mr March, I want to offer you my sincerest apologies.

Mr March: Everyone makes mistakes.

Paul F Tompkins: Yes, they do and I am racking them up tonight.

———

Lucy Darling: Hello, Mr March, what do you do aside from please me immensely?

Mr March: I’m a firefighter.

Lucy Darling: A firefighter, that’s fun. And I understand you do calendars.

Mr March: Just the one. I don’t know if I’m going to do the next one.

Lucy Darling: Oh, I think you should. I think you should do all of them. In fact, I think you should do a whole calendar all by yourself.

Mr March: I don’t think that would sell very well.

Lucy Darling: That’s okay, as long as I get one. Now, I would love to keep talking to you, but I can’t think of anything else funny to say. So…you there. What’s your t-shirt say? ‘Butt ugly’? You’re not butt ugly, you’re adorable. Why does your t-shirt say ‘butt ugly’, my love?

Butt Ugly: Well, I run a shop that sells butt ugly stuff.

Lucy Darling: You sell very unattractive things? Is there a brisk trade in that?

Butt Ugly: I’m gonna keep selling butt ugly stuff til I die.

Lucy Darling: A man with a plan, I like that. What’s the ugliest thing you have?

Butt Ugly: Well, I once gave a gal a pair of rocket boots for a bag of drugs.

Lucy Darling: You failed to answer my question while succeeding at raising several more. I don’t suppose these were medicinal drugs, were they?

Butt Ugly: I suppose it depends on what ails you. *Weird little laugh*

Lucy Darling: Yes, alright. You know, I’ve sometimes wondered what drowning felt like and I think this is it.

———

ROUND THREE

Jimmy Carr: Let’s see. What’s yours say? ‘Dark Lord’? Waah, yeah! Dark lord! Watch out! What makes you a dark lord other than having a very small penis?

Hacktivist: It’s not small!

Dark Lord: *suicidal embarrassment*

Dark Lord: I didn’t choose this. I’m not really the dark lord.

Jimmy Carr: I’ll tell you what, we already knew that. So, why’s it on your t-shirt?

Dark Lord: There were these demons who were trying to make me their dark lord and I refused.

Jimmy Carr: You refused to be a dark lord? Well, I refused to be an office worker. Things you refuse are sort of the opposite of what you’d advertise with your wardrobe.

Dark Lord: You are wearing a suit.

Jimmy Carr: huh-huh-huh-huh-HAA! You got me there.

———

Paul F Tompkins: ‘Standing’? No, you are not; I can see the chair. Unless you are very short. Are you very short and standing on your chair?

Standing: I’m not short. I’m very tall.

Big Fan Fan: He’s so solid.

Paul F Tompkins: He’s solid? Okay, so you’re standing and also solid. Except you are sitting, so I can only assume that are also fluid or gaseous. Are you gaseous?

Standing: No, but the night is young, the day is long, and I’ve got a pocket full of dry beans.

Paul F Tompkins: As one does. Would you care to explain why you are *(air quotes)* ‘standing’, which you are not?

Standing: I graduated from the Biffmore Academy where I studied Reposed Standing. I dare say I know more stances than anyone in this room.

Paul F Tompkins: And yet you remain in a sit-ance.

Standing: *stands on table* Dauntless Punctuality Stance!

Okay, so there’s dragons. Dragons have hoards and for hundreds of years, mortal adventurers have been trying to steal said hoards. As mortal technology and magic has advanced, they’ve been succeeding more and more.

It gets bad enough that the dragons get together to come up with a counter-strategy. They disguise themselves as mortals and go figure out that most adventuring parties are put together in taverns.

“If we shut down the taverns,” the dragons think, “the mortals won’t come after our hoards.”

So, posing as mortals, the dragons try to get power in mortal society the only way they can think of: getting rich. The dragons essentially invent industrialization in a bid to become influential.

This kind of backfires because mortals invent guns. But also, the dragons now have bigger hoards than ever before. So, they eventually succeed in making alcohol illegal, shuttering the taverns and stemming the tide of adventurers.

Sort of.

“No, Sam,” Gary Oldman says. “I’ve been here the whole time.”

A week later, Izzy Roland and Gisele Schmidt—their lives in shambles—weep into each other’s shoulders as BLeeM explains to the Wizard Sunny that their dad is actually Gary Oldman.

Six months later, critics declare the series finale of ‘Slow Horses’ to be the worst in history as Jackson Lamb is inexplicably being played by a 40-year-old redhead. Though, they praise the American actor for sounding exactly like Gary Oldman in previous episodes.

As enraged and bewildered fans plead for answers, BLeeM and Gary Oldman release a joint statement saying simply “Capitalism did it.” With nothing else to do, every single fan of Dropout, D&D, and Slow Horses turn to the Luc Besson fandom (who are all French) for guidance.

Over the next year, un djihad socialiste spreads across the English-speaking world. Revolutionaries storm the offices of oligarchs shouting “multi-pass” at the overwhelmed security guards. Spray painted stencils of roseate spoonbills appear on the walls of mansions as warning to the residents to leave before mobs of “level-8 artificers” come to turn these latter-day palaces into affordable housing. Elon Musk barters for his life by giving away the secret to cold fusion.

Think about it. Death is nature’s limiter. Without it, life just grows and grows. Imagine a ten-story tall elk tangled immobile by flora that constantly chokes it, but it can’t die. Death is why that’s not happening.

We need both life and death. And if one of them is going to start overreaching, it seems way more likely to be the forces of life. Death is out here telling Life ‘no’ all the time, but Life gives Death purpose. If everything is dead, the forces of Death just sit around playing chess or something.

Life, though! Life is nuts. It keeps coming up with new creatures and plants. It’s got everything mutating and trying to get bigger and bigger. And whenever Life runs dry on ideas, it turns something into a crab. The forces of Life have to be thinking “man, we could really do some shit if those Death guys were out of the way.” Then, That Guy starts talking about turning kangaroos into crabs again and everyone drops it so he’ll shut up.

When this podcast started, Suvi’s story hooked me right away. By the end of Arc 1, I was super excited for this story about complex morality and the heroes getting deeper and deeper into a world where everything was a compromise. There were no right answers because every option had some gut-wrenching downside.

With ‘The Battle of Twelve Brooks Pt 2’, that no longer seems to be the case. It looks like the morality is pretty clean. The world is dark and the main characters have to be the light in it, which is uncomfortably close to a chosen one story.

I’m realizing that I’m not going to get what I wanted. Which is not to say that what I got was bad, but I was really excited for a story of moral quagmire. I wanted an intellectually challenging story and now it seems the people that were along for the emotional ride were right.

The Great Bullfrog won. All those soldiers that came in and said Silence neutralized him? Shapeshifters. Silence and his company were captured and the shifters are luring the rest of the imperial troops into an ambush.

Twelve Brooks is a trap.

That family who said the Empire was kidnapping kids? Liars. They were trying to turn Eursulon on Suvi.

Okay, so what do we have here? Spooky ass trees? No, thank you. Singing moss? Oooh…if we have to. Poison colored mushrooms? Hahaha, uh uh. Moss that’s eating a person? No, no, no, no, no! Panther with a bunch of horns? Okay, that’s sick! Toothless, eyeless children full of mushrooms wailing that the spirits of their loved ones are broken? Fuck this!

Wizards blast the whole place with sand and fire? Thank God! That was a glade built of nope. That was freaky shit from start to finish and you cannot convince me that you wouldn’t, in real life, be down with blasting a forest full of screaming ghosts and man-eating moss to glass.

And bear in mind that this is not a Judeo-Christian fantasy. Humans are not spiritual amphibians here. The spirit world and the physical world are not layers, but separate spheres that rub against each other. A grove full of spirits is not a blessed, holy place—“sacred”, the man says, but sacred to whom?—it’s a colony, an invasion. Spirits set up shop in this human-world forest and made inhospitable to humans.

“I believe that. I believe that I showed you things that you and the world needs to know are true. But I also know that truth, real truth, is quickly and shatteringly ignored by the stout-hearted when the objects of their affection demand it be ignored.”