"The final victory of sci-fi is its final defeat," says AK, gnomically, before we sing the Beverly Hills Cop theme tune and talk about trombones. Join us for a discussion of 'the best fiction novel of the 20th century', A Wizard of Earthsea, an

The Wood Between the Worlds

Dec 18th, 2023 1h 5m

Lord of the Rings + Narnia + Jane Austen = ? A smash-hit 800-page faux-Victorian novel of realist magic and alternate histories, of course! Welcome to the world of Susanna Clarke, whose rules-based, Mametian and very 'English' magic system is o

The Kilns of Smorgasbord

Nov 24th, 2023 1h 2m

Author. Visionary. Dreamweaver. Plus bellhop. Meet Jack Vance, one of the most inventive fantasy authors we've ever heard of, and probably not a pirate king. What happens when fairies become too lumpen and earthy? Why are Lvl1 wizards in D&D so

Magic That Hath Ravish'd Me

Nov 6th, 2023 47m 32s

"If magic works, why isn't the President of the United States doing it?"After a 'brief' hiatus, we're back! We pick up where we left off and talk about the magic of Doctor Faustus, whether magic is 'liberation or damnation', and the distinction

This Thing of Darkness

Apr 27th, 2022 46m 50s

Welcome to a new season, all about magic and literature! We talk William Shakespeare's Tempest, from women-wizards from Algiers to royal demonology. Caliban's Moth, Ariel's Lantern and AK nearly dies in a spiegel tent.Games / books mentioned in

A City Is Not A Tree

Dec 3rd, 2021 34m 26s

What makes games 'savoury'? Why is Twitter such a bad place to get game design advice? And is it ever sensible to push a count off a cliff?This episode, Lottie and Alexis talk art, games and critique, through architect Christopher Alexander to

The Glittering Lights of Wolfstack Docks

Nov 19th, 2021 42m 47s

Hiraeth? Sensucht? Saudade? Listen to Alexis and Lottie cry as we talk nostalgia, sequels and games, from 17th-century Swiss cowbells to sailing away from your loved ones into danger. We talk transmission of experience from one generation to th

Now Draw the Rest of the Owl, Part 2

Aug 27th, 2021 56m 58s

The conclusion of an epic two-parter. Who would win in a fight between TRPGs and CRPGs? What happens if a giant worm swallows a city? Is a dolphin the same as a cat? We attempt to answer these questions with appeals to Simon Baron-Cohen's empat

Now Draw the Rest of the Owl, Part 1

Jul 8th, 2021 53m 24s

"I don't want to be Elfstar anymore! I want to be Debbie!"Join us for a romp through tabletop gaming's earliest origins and the effect its had on modern video games. Well, that was the intention. We actually stop around the 1980s with fundament

An Early Symptom of Schizophrenia

Jun 25th, 2021 40m 26s

Real talk: APOPHENIA. Alexis and Lottie discuss subliminal pattern-seeking from its coinage by a Nazi psychologist to its use by modern indie game developers to cover up the fact we don't have any budget. Wait! We meant to make clever, co-opera

This Episode Is About Sex

May 20th, 2021 46m 38s

This episode is about sex and games and the libertine novels of eighteenth-century France. From Talleyrand, the Napoleonic clergyman and diplomat, through to Cindy Crawford, Peter Bradshaw and Amouranth, the Twitch streamer scandal du jour, we

500,000 Sociopaths

Mar 25th, 2021 47m 43s

Join Alexis and Lottie for a discussion of antagonists and villains! Via witches, Belgium, Simon Baron-Cohen, a charming Irish vagabond and, of course, Nazism. Alexis talks about how rubbish games are and destroys Lottie's argument; Lottie talk

Twisty Little Passages All Alike

Mar 5th, 2021 41m 49s

What's the connection between the Labyrinths of Night and the Bright Ditches? This question and many more we don't really answer in this episode on mazes, labyrinths and game design.Meet labrys, the lesbianic double-headed axe. Leave kittens in

Are Panthers Chairs?

Jan 28th, 2021 42m 3s

Skeleton Songs season two, baby! This season's all about GAMES, but not as you know 'em. Join Alexis and Lottie as we discuss genre via Aristotle and Wittgenstein, cyberpunk and film noir, the Berlin Interpretation and, er, fish genitalia. Also

Endgame

Nov 11th, 2020 38m 17s

Ragnarok! Gotterdammerung! Armageddon outta here! In the final episode of season one, we talk eschatology, chocolate, fake news and the bloody gothness of Old Germanic literature. Sexy zombie apocalypses and millennial doomsday cults make an ap

DIONYSIAN NO PICNIC

Oct 28th, 2020 33m 57s

Maenads! Who are they, what do they want, and how do they wear their fox-skins? Kittens! How can they be so cute and so murderous at the same time? Join Alexis and Lottie as they discuss why frenzied Bassarids and Cutie McFloofcat are both the

An Inheritance of Stones

Aug 18th, 2020 32m 47s

Join Alexis and Lottie on a deep-dive into WORLDBUILDING. Why it's menacing to be told to start with a timeline, how Twin Peaks' BOB came to be, why you must never call pulled pok 'flesh-spicing', and why the architect of the Guggenheim Museum

Top Hat, Flight Guy & Tales

Jul 3rd, 2020 32m 4s

This week we take a break from literature and talk about the weird stories in our own lives. Join Sheep-Stealer and Big Head as they introduce you to Great Uncle Gilbert, the teenage flying ace and real-life Great Escape artist, and David the c

(Un)reliable Narrators

Jun 12th, 2020 34m 49s

Can you really trust anyone? Join Alexis and Lottie as they roundly conclude that you can't. We talk unreliable narrators via toilets, relevance theory, echoic mentions, the four levels of Star Wars canonicity and Lovecraft being surprisingly c

Women, Bloody Women

May 1st, 2020 33m 32s

Madness, blood and ladies! We talk all things bloody, from Freud to Pliny to the Red Grail to Queen Elizabeth the First to murdering an entire hive of bees. The Madonna / whore complex? Check. Horrible Norse mythology about men being scared of

Forbidden Knowledge

Mar 18th, 2020 33m 4s

Join Alexis and Lottie for a run-down of forbidden knowledge: the type that's ipso facto dangerous and the type that's dangerous because of what you can do with it. We discover Christopher Marlowe was definitely a spy, nuclear codes are modern

Doppelgängers, Fetches & Ka

Mar 3rd, 2020 33m 16s

From ancient Egypt to modern web comics, döppelgangers haunt us all. Join Alexis and Lottie as they discuss the ins and outs of these look-alikey ghouls, from Scottish fetches to Capgras syndrome via Dostoyevsky, Silent Hill 2, neuropsychology

The Terrible Tale of the Yale

Feb 13th, 2020 31m 56s

Panthers, dragons, monoceri, yales, wendigos, hell-hounds and pigs! This isn't an occult incantation, this is a half-hour deep-dive into our favourite spooky beasts from medieval bestiaries, epic poems and early 20th century ghost stories.Wheth

Vampires, As You Don't Know Them

Jan 21st, 2020 30m 58s

Vampires, vampires and more vampires! From the Malay 'polong' and 'pelesit' to the soucouyants and empousai of Cultist Simulator, Alexis talks the history of the vampire myth before Lottie jumps in with a rendition of Carmilla. Then she embarra

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