Jess argues against an article she didn't read, Ryan argues against non-Scotch gifts, and Damien argues against everything Jess and Ryan say. It's a contentious day in the studio, as we talk sexy flowers and human-botanical grafting! Welcome to Whiskey and the Weird, a podcast exploring the British Library Tales of the Weird series! This season, we're pollinating plots from our seventh book in the collection, ‘Evil Roots: Killer Tales of the Botanical Gothic,’ edited by Daisy Butcher (yes, really!). In this episode, our featured story is: The Moaning Lily by Emma Vane
Bar Talk (our recommendations):
Jessica is reading The Gunslinger by Stephen King; drinking a PBR shandy, baby.
Damien is reading Chlorine by Jade Song; drinking Maine Beer Company's Dinner DIPA.
Ryan is watching Exhuma (2024; dir. Jang Jae-hyun); drinking the Balvenie 14 yr, Caribbean Cask finish.
If you liked this week’s story, watch The Apostle (2018; dir. Gareth Evans).
Up next: The Guardian of Mystery Island by Edmond Nolcini
Special thank you to Dr Blake Brandes for our Whiskey and the Weird music!
Like, rate, and follow! Check us out @whiskeyandtheweird on Instagram, Threads & Facebook, and at whiskeyandtheweird.com
Damien: [00:00:00] I wanted the premise to be expounded upon but WHAT
Jessica: YOU JUST SAID WE COULDN'T WANT THAT YOU JUST SAID THIS IS A PERFECT STORY AND I did not say it was a perfect story. What I said was I'm not going to criticize the fact that in the most eloquent and what I said was I'm not going to criticize it.
The fact
Damien: please, let's go back. Let's check tape on this
Ryan: Welcome back, everybody. I'm Ryan Whitley.
Jessica: I'm Jessica Berg.
Damien: And I am Damien Smith.
Ryan: And together, , we're Whiskey and the Weird. Here we are in our seventh season, friends, and it's amazing to look back and see how much we've grown from our roots, speaking of roots, from our roots in season one, when we covered from the depths to the fruits we discovered in season six, when we read the Nightwire.
Whiskey and the Weird is proud to once again till the soil [00:01:00] of the British Library's Tales of the Weird series. Each season we cover one volume in this acclaimed series, and each episode we dig deep into one story. They always contain a full spoiler summary by the best story summarizers I could find on short notice.
So, if you care about that sort of thing, make sure you read the story first. This season, we're gleaning from Evil Roots Killer Tales of the Botanical Gothic edited by Daisy Butcher, friend of the podcast. And now, the sun lies low in the west, and the soft light of the golden hour has begun. Join us, if you will, in the garden.
And let us see what has germinated from the minds of the best writers of yesteryear.
Damien: Wait, is that new? It's germinated new. [00:02:00]
Jessica: I feel like this is getting longer.
Damien: There's a lot more plant puns. A few
Ryan: more things have sprung up, if you don't mind. Have sprouted. Jess is our master story planner. Jess.
Jessica: Not for long.
What
Ryan: story are we reading tonight?
Jessica: Okay, tonight we are getting into The Moaning Lily by Emma Vane.
Ryan: There will be no jokes made about the title of tonight's story whatsoever during the course of this podcast. Not even close to
Damien: being funny. It's, there's nothing funny about the moaning lily.
Ryan: No. But before we get deep into that story, we've got some bar talk to do.
Damien,
Damien: what are you drinking? Guys, I went beer tonight. One of my favorite local breweries out of Maine is the brewery. It's a brewery. They only brew blue beer. So say that 10 times fast. It's main beer company. They have what has become my refrigerator beer, which is always on tap in my refrigerator.
It's their lunch [00:03:00] IPA. It's delicious. It's piney, just a little bit of citrus, mostly good bitters, just quality ingredients, really great balance. They've started
Jessica: selling that in my local grocery store, but I haven't picked it up yet.
Damien: I'm thrilled to hear that. You should at lunchtime, what you can't find tomorrow for
Jessica: lunch,
Damien: what you can't find anywhere is the double IPA sister brew to that, which is dinner.
Go figure.
Ryan: I can't imagine.
Damien: Yeah. It's 8. 2%. So it's a true double. All the same great tasting notes, a little bit, just more robust, a little bit richer. I had the honor of hosting my parents for a recent visit who decided they wanted to go explore the new England coast. They went up to main beer companies, brew house.
Brewpub in I believe it's Freeport, Maine. And , I said, Hey, if you happen to go by here while you're out exploring, New England, please get me a case of Give me some lunch
Ryan: and dinner. [00:04:00] Yeah.
Damien: I can get lunch pretty readily, but dinner is impossible to find. And so they came back with two cases for me.
So
Jessica: Oh, that's very
Damien: nice. Hashtag blessed. Thanks, Jan. God bless the parents. Who's not my parent, but that's become our go to thank you phrase for any parents. Thanks Jan. For delivering delicious dinner. So I'm drinking dinner by main beer company. It's a double IPA. If you happen to be able to find yourself in front of it on a tap, they, so mean beer company has this weird, like.
Network of preferred vendors in the commercial space. So you can go to a restaurant and they have beers that nobody else gets from a beer company. If you see dinner on the menu is what I'm saying. Just get it. You'll be very pleasantly pleased. It looks like you've got a proper bit of stemware there too.
Yeah, this is a Tiku glass, so it's an interesting build. It's got a wide base, a narrowed top, but then it also springs out, which allows for head on a beer that's poured to build, but not spill [00:05:00] over. So the Tiku glass is a great, it's a great beer glass. I don't know, Jess is laughing at me.
Last time I checked though, Jess had plastic ice cube trays in her freezer. Okay. So let's not be. Let he who throws the first stone. I don't even know how that phrase goes. Let he without judgment cast the first stone. Is that it? Come on, Padre. Better leave the Bible verses to me. I literally had no idea.
Something about stones and throwing them is
Ryan: bad.
Seth the Buddha. What are you reading, Damien? I can't. We're watching.
Damien: I read a book that is totally out of my genre. I couldn't identify with the author with the turmoil of the protagonist. Or any of the main key themes of the story, but I still found it to be an incredible debut.
And that novel is called chlorine by [00:06:00] Jade song. It's, uh, yeah it's a short one. Like I said, it's a debut. But it revolves around a. Adolescent a girl who is going through a series of identity crises and is on her high school swim team. And throughout the entirety of the novel, basically portrays herself as a mermaid, a mermaid who's able to take human form.
And all I will say is that it has a tremendous Climax in the story. It is exquisitely written and I was supremely impressed. Can't wait to see more from the author. Jade song. That's all I'm going to say about this book. So again, it's chlorine by Jade song. Just go out and give it a read. Cool. Thanks.
Always looking for new writers. By you, Jess.
Jessica: Well, I'm drinking in my [00:07:00] fancy glass that this was What we gave out as like a wedding favor when we got married
Damien: And it has a tree on it
Jessica: It's a red solo cup
Damien: It's a sippy cup it never tips over it's a cute it's a cute beer glass It is
Jessica: your glass and it survived a very long time And they don't really hold up very well.
So I think this was one I had stolen from my parents who are caretakers of things like that. Cause we had
Damien: washed the emblem off of ours in our old school dishwasher.
Jessica: We've also been married for a very long time. Anyway, it is full of a PBR shandy. So we're going extremely high class tonight. It's been hot.
I'm really tired. That's as much effort as I put into it.
Damien: Amazing. So what are you reading you cheap drunkard?
Jessica: So, I just re read Stephen King's The Gunslinger.
Damien: Oh yeah,
Ryan: okay. Yes, Dark Tower 1. It's the only Dark Tower 1 I've [00:08:00] ever read.
Jessica: Okay. Are you serious? Yeah, I never
Damien: went on with it. Okay, let's let Jessica Let's hear about this, yeah.
Yeah, I wanna, I wanna dive in more to that.
Jessica: I've read all of them, but obviously not since they came out. So I finished them in college, I assume, is when the last one came out. So my goal is to reread, I think it's, eight and a half novels, an assortment of short stories. It's something like, I don't know.
4, 200 pages of Western fantasy sci fi horror adventure.
Damien: Are you reading this on the wiki page? That was very specific. No, I looked it up. Randomly. It's like 4, 200 pages of sci fi Western horror.
Jessica: Cause they just get bigger and bigger. I knew that it's sci fi Western horror. So this one.
They do
Damien: have a lot of those half novels or whatever, like the wolves of Kala or something, and it's like four and a half pages. And to
Jessica: yeah, there's some at the story jones a little bit. There's some things that he fills in later. But so the original gunslinger this one came out in 1982. [00:09:00] It really.
Honestly, it really holds up. It it's fun. The character is the best, coolest guy that's ever been written in any book. He's just like a cool cowboy with a sad past who's just shootin things and chasing evil guys, and this
Damien: Roland,
Jessica: it sets up more of the rest of the story than I had remembered. So you're introduced to a bunch of characters that you're just like, Oh this is important later.
But like, when I first read it was a very long time ago. So anyway, it's been fun to dive back in. I have moved a lot. So I no longer have any of the other ones, because they just, Either were like bad quality or like we moved so much that like big hard covers did not survive the move. So now I'm going to search them out and hodgepodge them together.
So it's not necessarily going to be a linear journey. I will read them in order, but not there like some
Damien: epic tone. That's [00:10:00] like a dark towel tower. Like an omnibus of seven novels where it sits in its own, like, dais and you gotta, like, flip it open like you're reading an incantation or something.
You
Jessica: have to stand at a podium to read it. Exactly!
Ryan: You probably can't check it out. Like, you have to read it in the library. It's
Damien: bound in human skin.
Jessica: Yeah, okay, I'm gonna ask someone to publish this for me. All my life savings are gonna go into publishing. Publishing this one, one
Damien: omnibus. It has your DNA in it.
Jessica: It's good. So I will keep you updated as I progress through. This is amazing. It might be a while before I get through the next one. But worth it. Yeah. Worth it. I thought that seemed like a journey worth going on again. Ryan, what are you drinking?
Ryan: Well, I'm the only one drinking whiskey tonight, it seems, but that's okay. It's a new
Jessica: night. It's hot.
Ryan: No, I didn't get the memo. I'm drinking, I'm drinking the Balvenie 14 Caribbean Cask whiskey, which is a really delightful, [00:11:00] it's a slightly spicy whiskey. It does have that rum sweetness. It's a, it's finished in, I think, two years finished in rum casks, which is Balvenie marketing ploy that I'm happy to be a sucker for.
Yeah, that's good. It's a, it's not as good as the double wood, the double wood, the Balvenie 12, the original is one of my favorite whiskeys out there. One of my favorite Highlands. Right.
Damien: Can I ask you a question?
Ryan: Yeah.
Damien: so is it a good, like entertaining whisk whiskey to where you could say like, You don't like scotches.
You've never had them right this this 100 percent
Ryan: 100 percent and it's at a great price point, too It's usually about 30 35 a bottle. Sure So it's a great whiskey to be an everyday drinking single malt if you're gonna drink single malt every day It's a great whiskey for that. But my absolute favorite is the boomer 12.
Yeah, that's an isla whiskey. Yeah.
Damien: All right I was just curious because you know, that's a good question our most scotch forward You Host on the show.
Ryan: I'll tell you one of the great things about being scotch forward in life is that people give you bottles all the time. [00:12:00] Lovely. So I, one of my goals in life has been.
To be a person for whom it is easy to buy gifts
Damien: There's
Ryan: not a question
Damien: really about it something for my Grill is and then right a scotch, right?
Ryan: Absolutely like people know they can buy me they can buy me a grilling implement They can buy me a book or they can buy me a scotch And so these three things periodically show up and It's great.
As for what I've been watching I took a recommendation from somebody in our horror book club and I'm sorry, I don't remember who it is off the top of my head, but they recommended a 20. Yeah, thanks, Jan. Recommended a 2024 film on Shudder called Exuma, not Eczema, as we got confused in the pre show.
Exuma, like exonation. Yeah, okay. It's a korean movie. It's directed and i'm sorry i'm not gonna say this right i'm afraid it's directed by jang jae hyun it was awesome It was [00:13:00] so so good in part because it plays on a lot of korean folklore that I didn't know a ton about in fact I had to look up a great many things about the movie after I finished watching it And then that really aided in my understanding of what was going on I would say, I know other people differ in this, but I would say, like, if you're gonna watch this movie, don't look up anything about it beforehand.
Don't look up the folkloric stuff. Just go into it blind. You you'll pick it up as you go on, but you'll definitely pick it up. Be making a mental note. Like I would like to know more about that because it seems like that's a very big deal here. And I don't know what's going on, but meanwhile, I'm entertained by the visuals.
It's, it's well acted. It's creepy. I won't say it's particularly scary. There's some good jump scare moments, but it's got this really creeping dread feel to it. It's long. It's one of the very few horror movies I can truly describe as epic.
It's multi generational in its effect. It deals with national [00:14:00] trauma as well as generational trauma in one family. It deals with a lot of history that I just didn't know a whole lot about. It starts off with a a family who is being, who feels like they're being haunted, there's an illness with a baby they figure out that it's related to some supernatural cause, so they employ a shaman to come and do a ritual to dissuade whatever spirit is attached to the family, and they realize that it's the spirit of their grandfather and then they have to figure out why is the grandfather haunting his own family, that doesn't seem right and like, that's the plot line.
That's the plot arc for a whole lot of movies. Just that by itself. That's the first 25 minutes of this film. And then it just goes off. And every time, this is one of the reasons I loved it. Every time I thought I knew where the movie was going, it went somewhere different and it was the better for it.
Really, really great film. Eczema, not eczema, Exhuma, directed by Jang Jae [00:15:00] Hyun. It's currently on shutter and AMC plus it's available for rent on Amazon prime.
Damien: I feel like Korean cinema has really found its ground in a North American audience. Obviously with parasite, I forget, did it win best picture parasite one?
Ryan: Yeah, absolutely.
Damien: Yes. I just recently saw, I saw the devil and it was a very difficult, very touching, very moving film. Feels like an entirely like, you know, how K pop has its own genre and music, right? I feel like K cinema should have its own genre and film because I think
Ryan: it does at least in the horror genre.
It
Damien: definitely
Ryan: does
Damien: Yeah, I mean we're going back to like the host and So I'm excited. I'm excited to see that. I,
Jessica: yeah, me too. And you have to, and
Damien: like squid games even, right. It's like the best or the highest streamed, the most streamed show TV show on the world. Yeah. It wasn't
Ryan: across the world. Yeah.
Damien: Just absolutely incredible. So for eczema, I was
Ryan: going to say, [00:16:00] to to touch on something that just spoke about a pre show this is definitely a movie you need to pay attention to, not just because it's subtitled, but it's one you need to really focus on as you're watching it there's lots of stuff going on in the background of almost every shot.
And I want to go back and watch now that I know that I want to go back and watch it again Yeah,
Damien: really
Ryan: and see all this stuff. They do a lot with reflection Yeah, it's watch it. It's and oh god the like the folkloric stuff like and it's tied to real history. So whether or not you actually buy into the folklore, whether or not you're a quote unquote, true believer of some of this folklore, there were real people in history who were real believers who actually did all of these things that the movie talks about.
Damien: Interesting.
Ryan: So it's fascinating. It's fine. You'll never look at Feng Shui again in the same way. I promise.
Damien: There's a teaser.
Ryan: All right, that's going to take us to our author and publication info for tonight. [00:17:00] And our author is Emma Vane. Her first name is Emma and
Damien: her last
Ryan: name is Vane. There is a possible alternative spelling of the last name as V A N N E.
Perhaps Vaughn.
Damien: Oh, God. And. Mine has nothing on it. At one time, she lived in Westfield, New Jersey. Once.
Jessica: She was probably born. She went
Damien: to Brooklyn. Market high school. I can't even tell you that
Ryan: Listen, this is it. Seriously. The internet has never heard of this author I've got nothing for you. I don't know where daisy butcher dug this story out of but it was a very deep and dark hole here's what I, here's what I did find and I think this is pretty interesting.
The only other piece of writing that I could find that is credited to Emma Vane is a letter to the editor of the magazine [00:18:00] called Wonder Stories in July 1935. And I found an actual internet archive copy of the magazine and I read the letter. In it she writes to Andrew Gernsback, who was the editor, famous editor praising a story.
He had selected entitled The Fatal Glance, encouraging him not just to print more stories like The Fatal Glance, but in a separate paragraph, she encourages him to lengthen the to lengthen his own essays. She really liked his own writing. So a bit of brown nosing there. Uh, and, and she concludes by going on a brief tirade about the scourge of phonetic spelling.
Which is really fun to read because I didn't know that was a thing in 1935. She ends the letter in the very last line again by lavishing praise on the fatal glance And this is what she says about it It's so easy to thrill with colossal machines spitting blue flames But not so easy to move a reader with an idea alone [00:19:00] And I'll come back to that in our discussion.
I just thought that was a great quote. Gernsback replies to the letter by giving accolades to the moaning Lily. The title of the story for tonight and says that he hopes to receive more of her efforts for his consideration in the future, whether he did or not, we'll probably never know nothing further, at least was published.
And y'all, that is it. It, I am rarely at this much of a loss to talk about an author. It's all
Damien: good. Let's task the masses, folks as your social diva to, uh, dig up more on Emma Vane. Like if this is your
Ryan: great aunt, we want to know.
Damien: Yeah, please. We'll put you on the show. We will give you a Twinkie, maybe some Marcona almonds with a truffle seasoning that I recently got from Trader Joe's.
Delicious. It is. If you are Emma Vane, let us know. Particularly Emma Vane. Are you alive? 130 years later like Hit us up on the social scroll cuz I know you're on Facebook Because that's a platform [00:20:00] of choice as or maybe my
Ryan: space
Damien: As a duo centenarian So,
Ryan: yeah, I'm sorry I couldn't come up with more, but that is really it.
Jess, you've got the story summary for tonight, so maybe we'll just jump right into that.
Jessica: Okay, here we go. When Carl Brent became a botany professor, nobody was surprised, including our narrator and their joint classmates at Harvard and Oxford and wherever else. They were not surprised, because Brent's looked like a scrawny plant, so apparently that made sense. Our narrator is a guy named Crail Which is I had to type out Crail a bunch for this summary, and I felt like I was going crazy the entire time.
So, our narrator is Crail, and like five years after their graduation, he runs into Brents competing in a flower show at NYC. Brents is exhibiting some of the cool [00:21:00] plants he's grown, like a purple rose and silver sweet peas. Wowza, Crail is impressed. Brents says, no big deal, he's just an expert at grafting, and he loves grafting, and he's writing a book about grafting, and he's won thousands in prizes.
I assume because Crail seems to be genuinely impressed by the plants, Brent invites him to visit his little cottage and see the rest of his work. He also says, I'm very lonely. And Crail says, that's how we became close friends. So everything is a little weird, but a little sweet. And Crail visits him often.
Damien: How is that sweet? If you're lonely and somebody visits you, that's sweet.
Jessica: Yeah.
Damien: No, not when you make that commentary. Next.
Jessica: Okay. Fine. Crail visited. Note to self.
Damien: Don't visit Damien.
Jessica: Never. Don't stop by my house. Horrible lonely friend who sucks. Until one day he shows up and Brentz is [00:22:00] not there, but he's left a letter with his manservant saying he's gone to Brazil.
What's in Brazil? Well of course, tropical blossoms that are the most curious in the world and quote, I will produce a flower that will shock mankind. God willing, he'll regret it. Return with the coolest plant anyone has ever seen. Crail heads home, doesn't hear from Brents for a full year. In fact, he only finds out he's home because he keeps driving past the cottage and one day he sees someone working in the garden.
So when our man Crail approaches the house, he gets some weird vibes. Believe it or not, those vibes only get weirder when he catches a glimpse of Brentz, who is entirely wrapped in a black cape and seems to glide around the garden without any visible means of locomotion.
Ryan: Okay, don't visit him now.
Jessica: Right!
Get back into your car. Crail very [00:23:00] nicely asks, What the heck is up? Why are you wearing this cape? Brent ignores him, but does invite him inside. In addition to the very stylish yet weird cape, he generally just looks terrible. The veins in his hands are brown, not blue. He's got deep, creepy circles under his eyes.
And he won't even smoke inside with his friend. Which I thought was
Damien: a funny The horror! Which I
Jessica: thought was a funny thing to point out. He also doesn't open the door. drapes or take off his big weird robe. Well, it turns out though that it is amazing timing on Crail's part because Brent's found his incredible flower on his trip and the flower show is tomorrow.
He brought it all the way back from Brazil and wow, wow, wow, it's really special. He calls it, The moaning lily, not weird at all. But then he kicks his friend out. Brent shows him the door, moaning a [00:24:00] little bit himself. And says, come to my flower show tomorrow. So the next morning Crail heads You can't say Crail.
It's just
Damien: Why can't you?
Jessica: It's too weird. Sorry all the Crails out there.
Damien: So call him Special K.
Jessica: It starts with a C. Well,
Damien: that makes it even weirder.
Jessica: Right! Okay, so Crail shows up to the flower show. He heads right to Brent's booth. There is already a crowd. And Crail describes Brentz, they're both terrible names honestly, as looking like a tall, gaunt monk.
In the crook of his elbow, he's holding a genuinely incredible flower. It is white and red and looks like it has a tongue. For whatever reason, there is a, like a carnival barker there with Brentz, I assume as part of this flower show to guide people to impressive exhibits. But he is yelling at people to come closer and [00:25:00] He describes the flower as a mouth.
We've got two red lips, a tongue, it's gross. The barker beckons the crowd closer and closer to hear the lily. If you all get close enough, you can actually hear this lily moan. Oh god, and sure enough, the tongue thing vibrates, the lip things move, the flower wails. Appropriately, everyone is grossed out and retreats, except for Crail, who pokes at this mouth flower thing with his fingers.
The Barker describes Brent Wait, in
Damien: what world is anyone allowed close enough to poke a moaning lily?
Jessica: Listen, we're best friends at a flower show. You can poke whatever you want. The Barker It's the very important
Damien: poker pass, the VIP pass.
Jessica: The Barker describes Brentz as an incredible botanist and announces [00:26:00] that his flower has won the flower contest of whatever thing they're at, but also notes that Brentz doesn't let the flower out of his sight and brings it home with him every night instead of leaving it at the show like most people leave their plants.
And then he sells photos of Brentz holding the flower, presumably also still wild, in his big robe y cape thing. Throughout all of this, Crail is trying to talk to his friend and be like, Brent, you gotta get a hold of yourself, chill out, you can leave the flower with me, take a nap, because you really look terrible.
But Brent says, go away, you don't know anything, I have to take this plant home, goodnight. Except, later that night, Crail gets a call from Brentz's man servant. Why? Brentz is dying, and he's asking for Crail. So he goes and asks the servant what's up. Servant? No idea. Brentz came home, looking even more terrible than usual, and asked him to get [00:27:00] a gallon of blood.
From the butcher He put the blood in a vase and then wrote a letter when the servant checked on him a little bit later. He looked like he does now, which is terrible, so he called Crail. Crail follows the servant into the bedroom where Brents is laying on the bed, obviously in his cape, next to the moaning lily that is in a vase of visible blood.
Brents is super dead, obviously, and the letter is for Crail. So, the letter explains that when he was in Brazil, Crail. Krail discovered some incredible carnivorous plants, absolutely the coolest things he'd ever seen, but he was struck with one thought. Graft. Graft! He's a grafting expert, remember? And he wanted to graft these incredible plants to another carnivore.
So of course, he grafted it into his arm and he's been wearing this big cape as a very convincing disguise that isn't weird at all.
Damien: Just a guy in a cape, no big deal.
Jessica: So he poked the plant into his arm, now the plant is taking over, it started winding its roots throughout his [00:28:00] body, he knew it would kill him but he didn't care, that's science, that's progress, etc.
Damien: Kill a rabbit.
Jessica: Then he realized it was time for this flower show so he booked it back home. This lily that's growing out of him looks a little bit like the original plant that he grafted, but definitely more like a creepy mouth. And he's been in so much pain lately because he put a flower in his body that he's been moaning and groaning, which he thinks is why the plant also moans and groans.
It's mimicking what he hears and sees the most. Our children
Ryan: do what we do.
Jessica: He could tell today would be his last day because the lily had peaked and it's only downhill from here. But why did he call Crail over knowing that he's dying slash dead? Well, He put the plant in a glass vase so that everyone could tell it was living on blood.[00:29:00]
But what he wants from Crail is to take this bloody flower vase back to the flower show so he can show everyone it's a real deal and he's not doing ventriloquism. End.
Ryan: Because that's the first accusation that's attempted here. Ventriloquism. So that everyone
Damien: knows, I am not.
Jessica: The flower continues to be a disgusting hit for a full week.
But on day seven, this horrible, creepy plant dies, it opens its red lips, spasms, emits an unusually long moan, before folding in on itself. Oh,
Ryan: we probably could have done without that.
Jessica: Everyone around the
Ryan: world knows Brent
Jessica: and his weird plant.
Damien: And that's
Jessica: the end. They're both dead.
Damien: What a disgusting weird one.
Ryan: I would like to know if this story went in the way that you might have guessed or if this kept you guessing until the end.
Damien: It's really, really tight. I don't [00:30:00] think it promised anything that it didn't deliver on almost immediately. So I would say that I wasn't led astray. It was very much a, Hey, you know what?
I'm wearing a cape. You don't know why. Here's why I'm wearing a cape. I need to let this thing that I've grafted to my upper bicep breathe. It feeds off my blood. It's taking on more human characteristics. It's starting to talk. It's starting to moan like a human because all it's heard is me moan in pain from having a plant grafted to my bicep.
And now I die. You try and keep it alive. It lasts a week. It dies. The story moves on. Like it's very succinct. It's And so, because of that, like, I didn't have time to set any expectations. It just sort of breezed. Yeah, I felt like
Jessica: I was just along for the ride. Exactly.
Ryan: I guess what I would say is that from, uh, The body of work that we've read so far in the Tales of the Weird series, there hasn't been a tremendous amount of really gross
Damien: [00:31:00] body horror.
So the strange orchid was another one that comes to mind. That was the
Jessica: strangly sucker tentacles.
Damien: Right. Yeah, but emerging from, like building around a corpse, potentially. But I could, this was, this was another one. Like the American's tale where the fly trap, like being okay, cool.
Professor Jonkin, falling into the fly trap and being like, that was crazy. This, this was super creepy because I mean, that's my point, right? So like this element of this like writer plant that was so important to this, not novice botanist that he's letting it. Implant itself into his arm.
Like that was, it was soup in so few pages. It was so impactful and yes, very creepy. Like, but from the
Ryan: title, I, Here's what I thought from the title. I'm like, all right, so we're going to have a plant that's going to make a noise that sounds like a person like that's, and we get that, but I did not see that I'm grafting this into my [00:32:00] body coming at all.
That was a
Damien: great, like weird misnomer.
Ryan: Absolutely. And I guess as a side question here if you were grafting a plant, Into your body. And
Jessica: I am, yes.
Ryan: Where would you do that, if you can say?
Jessica: I think the top of my head. How did this guy pick
Ryan: the bicep?
Jessica: I imagine because of veininess, but I think I'd go top of my head for maximum hilarity.
Maximum
Ryan: hilarity. Fair enough. Especially if it was, especially if it was a moaning lily like this one, right? Well
Jessica: then you just have to put a tall hat on instead of a whole cape too.
Damien: Hello, I'm Abraham Lincoln.
Ryan: Damien, how about you? Where would you put that? Where would you graft your plant?
Damien: This is arguably one of the most difficult questions you've ever asked in the seven seasons that we've had this show.
I would want to say, I would want to graft it in a place for optimal blood flow, if blood is its primary like nutrient source. [00:33:00] So, inner arm seems to be feasible. Inner leg. Seems to be feasible around the granule region. I hate to say it, but if I'm that obsessed with a plant survival, I would probably give it some strong like blood flow access.
There's so many questions, like, is it a thorny vine? Is it just a flowering plant? This is your plant,
Ryan: Damien.
Jessica: Yeah, I guess you can graft whatever you want. A radish, maybe? A radish?
Damien: A
Jessica: radish, yes! Cucumber? Well, it's not a
Damien: tumor. It's a radish.
Jessica: It's just a one off, you know, it's not a tube.
Damien: Um, I would give an optimal blood flow access, but something that's you're very kind to your plant coverable. So I would say probably femoral artery.
Ryan: Yeah, okay. I'm going for least inconvenience to me, so, like, my back. Like, between my shoulder blades.
Damien: So, why your back?
Ryan: Well, I don't have to think about it then. [00:34:00] There it is.
Damien: How would you wear a shirt?
Ryan: A cape would seem to work fine for our narrator here.
Jessica: Yeah, a backwards button up.
Damien: A back? What are we? How do you do that? Like
Jessica: a
Damien: Criss cross in the 2000s?
Jessica: Yeah.
Damien: Yeah, perfect.
Stylish. So you're planting a plant in your back that you can't cater to because it's on your back, the one place on your entire body you can't access.
Ryan: It's a lily, it's not an oak tree.
Damien: Alright, Ryan.
Ryan: Listen, we'll see whose plant lives and whose dies. We'll find out after seven days, shall we?
We'll do this thing.
All right, so aside from some cool body horror then What do you think's really going on in this story what is this story about at a deeper level if you think it has one
Jessica: I have some thoughts.
Ryan: All right, jess. Let's hear them
Jessica: First, it starts with an argument with our editor about an article that I didn't read.
Ryan: That's a great place to start an academic dispute.
Jessica: Yes. Okay. Well, I [00:35:00] don't have academic access to read or buy the article, so I'm going completely off of the abstract. But, Daisy Butcher wrote an article that I imagine makes sense. If you could read it. If I could read it. But I'm arguing about this particular story.
She lists a bunch of stories that seem to fit what she's arguing, but I'm going to argue that this one doesn't. But she's arguing that these killer plants represent the female eco vampire.
Ryan: Yes, I saw this article.
Jessica: Okay. At
Ryan: least I saw the same abstract you saw. Yes.
Jessica: Okay.
Ryan: I didn't read it either.
Jessica: I'm going to argue with this article that I didn't read.
Let's do it. Come on. I think that definitely is a real thing for a Lot of these stories and a lot of stories about plants in general But this one like even though it's like a real sexy mouth or whatever is going on He specifically says that it looks like his mouth. So I don't necessarily agree. [00:36:00] So that's not sexy, yeah. Well, but I don't lean into that it's an eco feminine mouth when it's grown from seeing and being this guy. So I was reading this more as, like, fanaticism, religion, going back to more of the, like, science.
Side of things that we did with our mad scientist of just like someone getting so obsessed and going so far I think there are things in the text that support that he is referred to as a monk and a priest On just about every page in this short story even like I think before he's wearing the robe He's told he's like being fanatical right His friend is continuously like, Hey you got to chill out.
Did you basically like, did you join a weird cult? Like what is going on? I think even,
Ryan: does he even ask him, did you join a cult?
Jessica: Yeah. So I think this is definitely a story that's more about like science as a religion, religious fanaticism, something like that then.
Ryan: Interesting. [00:37:00] Okay.
Jessica: There we go. There's an argument with an article I did not read, but I imagine is very good.
I
Ryan: think it was well, well executed.
Jessica: Perfect.
Ryan: I don't know. I, so if I'm gonna, if I'm gonna buy the whole feminine plant mouth thing let's just, let's say I'm buying that, Wholesale. The FPM? Yeah. Whole feminine plant mouth thing. Yeah. FPM if I'm buying that wholesale and for the sake of argument, I am sure then I can see this story as being about , well, really some feminism because early, early feminism.
Yeah. No, it's not a surprise. That which once did not have a voice Finds its voice when separated physically from a man. So there's some feminist ideas right there What do you think D?
Damien: Yeah, I think that was a pretty soft pull
To be honest, Daisy's a friend of the show I think that she [00:38:00] might lean into the narrative that this has a feminist slant.
Jessica: She also is listing a bunch of other stories where I feel like that's definitely more true based on I have read some of the other stories. Yeah, it's very possible.
Damien: So far in this season, we have not encountered that. This, I think if that were the example that she was trying to lead with, I think it would be a weak example. And I think the reason is, is because there isn't any inherent misogyny that's overcome There isn't any direct like correlation to the, like empowering the feminine in this story.
And it just ends up being some like, it's actually outlined in the story itself that the plant takes on the traits of the host who has been moaning in pain. Right. Right. Because of its proliferation in his, in his body.
Ryan: That, that actually is going to lead into a criticism that I have the story.
[00:39:00] So I'm, intrigued by this Damien.
Damien: All right. So good. So the, the anthropomorphification of this flower, like being driven to a feminine, is really diluted in the fact that it's attached to a man.
Who has been enduring some pain and suffering because of its proliferation and survival. So there's nothing to me that says that it's embodying the feminine because there isn't a feminine influence to this, except for the fact that in a very like Georgia O'Keeffe banner, it probably looks very vaginal.
At the end of the day.
Jessica: It's described. It's
Damien: right. Right. So I think that's it. I didn't catch a lot of the symbolism beyond that, uh, to this, and maybe it's because it's so short, the story was so short it could have been there, but I don't think it was expounded upon enough outside of the fact that it looked like a man who was obsessed [00:40:00] with the survival of this flower, attaches it to his bicep.
asks his. predecessor, to some extent, to put it in a vial of blood. It lasts a week and then it dies. Like what is the message there? Subtle or otherwise?
Ryan: Jess, a reply.
Jessica: I think that argument works better in a story like the other one. The where the orchid goes crazy and tries to kill the guy where there is that, like, the main character who buys the orchid has the maid that's the cousin who has no name who does everything for him and he becomes obsessed With a flower, you know, like a flowering
Ryan: of a strange orchid.
Is that the Wells story? Yes, yes, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jessica: Like, I feel like there's a more fun and interesting feminist read in that one where it's,
Damien: I would agree.
Jessica: Uh, this one, I just have a
Damien: harder time
Ryan: applying.
Damien: Okay, that's
Ryan: [00:41:00] fair.
Jessica: I think the like eco vampire is interesting. Like the idea that this thing is, Reproducing itself and killing its host and see I'm gonna argue with
Ryan: that because I read the same like Google Books preview of this article About the eco vampire, I don't I would like to read the article Daisy, please send it to us because I don't get the eco vampire thing at all Yeah, I don't see I see this as a botanical horror.
Absolutely, but I don't see it as a ecological horror. I guess I would view it ecological horror story to be on a grander scale than what's presented here.
Damien: Agreed. I think this story
Jessica: comes up. Or the flower doesn't die.
Damien: Right, right. This story comes up in a Google search of old stories that have to do with like blood sucking plants or, or carnivorous plants or something.
It's strong. [00:42:00] It's tight, but it doesn't strike me as a tale that's told in 17 pages that has a lot of unnecessary depth. I think that you can, of course, open up that Pandora's box and say, it represents this. It talks about this. I feel this. And that's great, that's up to each individual interpretation, but for me, it was a pretty straight, streamlined story that didn't have a lot of that bulk.
Ryan: Well, let me ask this question then, Damien. One of the other words that's often used in association with this story is erotic. Did you see this story as erotic?
Damien: Yes. I mean,
Jessica: I can't stop thinking about that.
Damien: I think, honestly, when you look at the elements of the story, there's a lot of, sexual innuendo, and it's mostly in the moaning this there's one subset of readers who will look at it as pain endured and there's other subset of readers who will look at it as sexual [00:43:00] stimulation and both are valid.
So it depends on where you're coming from. What do you think Jess?
Jessica: I think it is interesting to read it as erotic and feminine at the same time, when I feel like there's a very queer reading of these two lonely guys who love to hang out with each other and talk loudly. Right, yes, yes. True, true.
So I think that's another part where it's just like, if you're saying this flower is a sexy vagina, I'm not sure anyone is particularly interested in it.
Ryan: Right, but it looks like
Damien: a male
Ryan: mouth.
Jessica: Yeah, I
Damien: didn't see it as erotic at all. But the male mouth was as interpreted by the narrator who happens to be, or at least in that moment, the guy in the cape.
Yeah. So it's auto, it's auto erotic as well. Yeah. Okay.
Jessica: I don't know. Our narrator, when he goes to the flower show, sticks his fingers into it. We already discussed this. So we
Ryan: discussed the [00:44:00] poking. It's true. Yeah. But it's like,
Jessica: it's erotic now.
Ryan: Sorry, Jan. Yeah.
And I do, I hesitate to say this, but I did have a hard time seeing it as erotic. At least in a, like a straight eroticism. I never caught it as erotic. Yeah. I was much more, I was much more on, on Jess's reading of like, here's a couple of guys that love some flowers and
Damien: yeah.
Well, I'm on Jess's reading too, because I didn't read this and like, step away from it going, Oh my stars. He, yes,
Jessica: flower,
Damien: sexy flowers and fingers and Mouths and moaning. Pistols and stamens, oh my. Oh, pollinate! Ah!
Ryan: Terrible. Jesse's died.
Jessica: I started googling sexy flowers to make a point, and I That's probably a bad idea.
It's all orchids, yeah. I don't know what to tell you. Huh.
Ryan: Alright, what do you make of [00:45:00] the ending, then? The idea that, Even though Brent's fame spread over all the earth for this experiment that Then he died. So what did it matter? It is, is the author making a point with that is, is what I'm getting at, I guess
Damien: dying is not a big deal.
The flower dying I thought was, was a huge deal, was a huge, huge deal. And I thought it was a beautifully like somber end to the story.
Ryan: I think the ending, like the very ending.
I, I was trying, I was playing editor and I just wanted to switch around the order a little bit. Yeah, me too. Like she does, she has this great great line about the Indian fanaticist walking with bare feet over coals of fire and jagged knives had nothing on him. My poor demented friend who had plotted heavily about through long torturous months, speaking of torturous, the writing's a bit tortured, torturous months in his stifling black mantle, zealously guarding his.
precious moaning lily. Like, I would have put that at the beginning of this [00:46:00] ending paragraph and then concluded it with her opening question of the paragraph, which was, but the fame of Carl Brentz and his super blossom spread all the globe, but of what avail to him who had perished. That's where I would have ended it.
Yeah. I thought that put that around.
Jessica: The paragraph was the weakest part. That last
Damien: one. Right. It's easy to just knock on somebody who can't be discovered referenced in any other works.
Yes. That's true. Stylistically, it teetered, I would say teetered is probably a good word because there were strong elements that really progressed forward. And then in the ebb of the tide, like it seemed to stifle a bit. That's the word I wrote
Ryan: down.
That's exactly the word I wrote down for being stifling.
Damien: It was a little stifling for 17 pages or whatever. Yeah. It, it felt stronger. But I think the key elements of the story were resonant and I think they persevered.
Ryan: Jess, what about the writing for you?
Jessica: I thought [00:47:00] it appropriately built some dread. I think the part where I was the most like, what is happening, is when he's driving by his friend's house and sees something in the garden. So he pulls in and then he sees what used to be his friend instead looking pale and skeletal, wearing a cape.
I imagine just like walking the rows of his garden. With brown
Ryan: veins.
Jessica: Yeah, like for me that's like. Get back in your car. Just get out of here.
But
then at the end, when we're getting to the, like, how he dies, the conversation between the servant and the narrator, that got a little bit like convoluted. I felt like that just could have been streamlined so that it wasn't duplicate conversations.
But again, it was fairly short. There wasn't a ton of extra meat on it. It was just, A couple places where I think you slow down in the reading to be like, this could have just been handled slightly better. [00:48:00] What is this
Ryan: sentence trying to say? Yes,
Jessica: or why is it in this order? Like, why do we need to hear this again?
When we just got it.
Ryan: Which maybe leads to the idea that Gernsbeck did receive a few more story submissions from the mysterious Emma Vane, but just didn't select them. Oh, yeah. I, yeah, I found the writing to be heavy, and look, I know, I'm like the big Lovecraft fan on the podcast, and so it's a little hypocritical to say that this was a little purple for me, but it was purple without much of a point.
Uh, particularly in such a short story and that again I keep referencing that I do have this criticism. I want to hold off on it for just one, one more second. Damien, did it plant?
Damien: Yeah, this is a 10 of 10 plants, Jess, did it plant? ,
Jessica: I feel like we had a heck of a lot of plant in this one. Both in that people liked the plant and I feel like this plant was doing stuff, right? Like it,
Ryan: We kind of have
Jessica: both a plan, some agency and a mouth [00:49:00] yelling a little.
Damien: Plants and mouths get bonus points, I guess. Ryan. Yeah. I'd
Jessica: say that plant.
Ryan: Yeah, it plants, it plants all the way.
Damien: It's a 10 of 10 plants. All right. Next.
Ryan: Did the scare hold up? I'm going to say, I'm going to say this is a very creepy story.
Damien: This is super creepy. Super creepy because of the cultist behavior.
Yes. Yes. And the weird descriptions of the, knock it down.
Jessica: No, I'm with you. I think it's scary.
Ryan: All right. So here's where my criticism comes in. Here's where my criticism comes in. Yes, this is a scary story. Can we
Damien: say this is arguably one of the scariest stories so far in the season?
Ryan: Absolutely.
Jessica: Oh, for
sure.
Ryan: If not number one, this is the, I would say this is the number one scariest story we've read so far.
Damien: I think this and this strange orchid were probably the scariest stories.
Ryan: So my criticism is that this story could have been even scarier and even better. If it had done something more plot wise, [00:50:00] right?
So it's just a, it's just a description. I know you're gonna hate this. It's just a description. No, I'm fine with it. I
Jessica: agree with you.
Ryan: Like, here's a dude that does something weird with a plant. Here's why it's weird. Here's why it's gross. Here's why it's creepy. The end. What is missing there?
any sense of, a nefarious deed or a mystery of some kind or do something with this plant. What
Damien: are you talking about? A novella? Possibly a full length. No, no, double the length. Make it 15 pages
Ryan: instead of seven pages. It's like seven.
Jessica: Okay. I think if we re read something like this story, but the narrator was the guy who's implanting a flower into himself, and you get some kind of clinical language of someone doing something absolutely insane, then you don't need more plot because you have He's doing the action.
No,
Damien: no, [00:51:00] no. You're
Jessica: also then getting his thoughts of like why he's thinking it's reasonable to put
Damien: this story and it is too short to be a Cronenberg film. So the question is, is did the story tell enough in the pages that was allocated to the actual tale itself? And the answer is yes.
Ryan: I thought
it was fine.
I
think it could be
Damien: plussed up and made
Ryan: better.
Damien: You know what have you ever played an RPG where you can go out and get better armor better weapons You know, it's always better if you have better but if you don't is it still a game and the answer is yes I think it's a very
Ryan: good story.
Damien: We've created the
Ryan: supervillain with a plant on his arm. Do something!
Damien: He didn't do anything but die! And that is the most antithetical, like, beautiful, compassionate, literary end to a character in 15 plus [00:52:00] minus pages that you can imagine.
Jessica: But if we're not allowed to talk about any hypotheticals or what we like or dislike about the story,
Damien: Jess, you can talk about whatever you want.
I just, it's wrong. I'm listening, Jess.
Jessica: No, no, no. I'm just saying that like it's a little strange to get upset about talking about What we liked and disliked about a story that seems to be the gist of the podcast
Damien: That's the gist of the podcast we have three different purviews on Ryan get to the fingers.
All
Ryan: right, here come the fingers This is how we rate our stories here on whiskey and the weird from zero fingers of whiskey to the coveted full fist of whiskey Damien let's start with you
What do you give in the moaning? Lily three and a half? That's a half moan
Damien: it was a fine story. It was short. I wanted the premise to be expounded upon but WHAT
Jessica: YOU JUST SAID WE COULDN'T WANT THAT YOU JUST SAID THIS IS A PERFECT STORY AND I did not [00:53:00] say it was a perfect story. What I said was I'm not going to criticize the fact that in the most eloquent and what I said was I'm not going to criticize it.
The fact
Damien: please, let's go back. Let's check tape on this. What I said was, yes, let us do, please. What I said was you cannot criticize this for not going deeper when in 17 pages it went deep enough. I wanted it to go deeper. I did, but I'm not going to criticize it for going to the level of depth that it did when it was here.
So. But your criticism was
Jessica: just that you wanted more out of
Damien: it. This is a 12 page story, for the record. Okay, so it delivered a strong premise, it delivered effectively, it was to me a pitch in modern media. a full fledged story, but it was still effectively delivered, written, and I was sufficiently creeped out in 12 short pages.
And that's tough to do for a modern contemporary horror [00:54:00] reader. So please, by all means. Beat me up. I gave three and a half fingers next, Ryan.
Ryan: Four fingers for me. I thought this was a super creepy story. I really enjoyed it. I think this could, here's the thing for me. I think this could have been a five finger story, but it just didn't have the plot to support the idea to make it a five finger story.
Four fingers, Jess.
Jessica: I'm doing with a four and a half, and I think the story itself is What is happening?
Damien: You
Jessica: think?
Damien: I thought that you guys hated the story and I thought I came in as the proponent and I came in as like, the lowest finger rating. . Just, just, tell your tale. Ha ha
Jessica: ha ha! Four and a half. I really liked this story. Would I have liked it more with some added elements? Sure. Did I have a great time with it? Also, yes,
Ryan: I agree.
Jess wholeheartedly.
And if you [00:55:00] liked The Moaning Lily. Another movie that you might like, of more modern provenance, is The Apostle, directed by Gareth Evans, from 2018.
This was, at least for a while, available on Netflix. It may still be. Look, the cover of this, movie has a man with a tree grafted onto him. So if that tells you anything about why we're recommending it, but you also will like this movie if you will. If you liked The Mooning Lily, but wished maybe it did something a little bit more plot wise, and took it into a folklore, a folk horror, a cult, um, like strange religious cult direction, then The Apostle is the movie for you.
So that's The Apostle directed by Gareth Evans from 2018, available wherever you stream your films or rent them.
However you get your films these days. We always want to thank dr. Burke brandis.
For providing the [00:56:00] music for whiskey and the weird and damian if people would like to speak to jess and I where can they do? That online
Damien: well, Damien's been extricated from this podcast. So if you would like to speak to either Ryan or Jessica, you can always
Jessica: their home cell phone,
Damien: which I have, you can always DM us at whiskey weird pod on X slash Twitter at whiskey weird pod.
We're also on the meta properties. So threads, Facebook. And Instagram at whiskey and the weird at whiskey and the weird on Instagram threads and Facebook We spell our whiskeys with any and we hope you do too If not Well, I guess they're looking for another host for this podcast, so I'll just solemnly feed into the corner no, I'm just kidding, I'm here. And I will murder anyone who tries to take my place, so there you go.
Jessica: We'll graft you two together.
Ryan: Jess, what are we reading [00:57:00] next?
Jessica: What a great question. Let's go with an adventure. We're gonna go with The Guardians of Mystery Island by Edmond Nolcini.
Ryan: Oh wow, The Guardians of Mystery Island.
The Guardians of
Damien: Mystery Island?
Jessica: That sounds like a It's right up there with Professor Jonkin's junky plant or whatever it is. Yes. I still
Damien: introduce myself when I order pizzas, Professor Jonkin. And I still get most of my pizzas. Most.
I'm Ryan Whitley.
Jessica: I'm Jessica Berg.
Damien: And I'm Damian Smith.
Ryan: And together, at least for the time being, we're Whiskey and the Weird. Somebody send us home.
Damien: keep your friends through the ages and your creeps in the pages. Bye bye.
Bye!