Rating juggling, ennui overload, Jess gets obsessed with parallel realms, and Aaron Taylor Johnson? We're back on a boat and hunting for TREASURRRRRRRE!!!!! Welcome to Whiskey and the Weird, a podcast exploring the British Library Tales of the Weird series! This season, we're pondering what could have been with our ninth book in the vast collection, Roads of Destiny: And Other Tales of Alternative Histories and Parallel Realms, edited by Alasdair Richmond. In this episode, our featured story is: The Discovery of the Treasure Isles by Amelia B. Edwards.
Bar Talk (our recommendations):
Jessica is reading Turtle Island by Sean Sherman; drinking Bodalen Bourbon by Far North Spirits.
Damien is watching The Toxic Avenger (2025; dir. Macon Blair); drinking Mary Dowling Bourbon.
Ryan is reading If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio; drinking Woodford Reserve Rye Old Fashioned.
If you liked this week’s story, read Robert E. Howard's Conan stories: Xuthal of the Dusk, The Iron Shadows of the Moon, and Queen of the Black Coast. Or Lady Eleanor Smith's No Ships Pass (featured in WatW: S1E4).
Interested in reading Mrs Roliston's Travelling Adventures by Amelia B Edwards? Find it here: https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/80e3bb63-79f3-4505-9c4c-be8cd3d02ff0/
Up next: "The Curfew Tolls" by Stephen Vincent Benet
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
Jess: [00:00:00] yeah. Right. This is your
Damien: brain, this is your brain on found mussels.
Jess: Well, yeah, don't take gold water from a stranger or you'll crash your ship and turn into an old man or something. It's like what
Ryan: might happen if you tried to write The Goonies as a tragedy.
Ryan: Welcome back, everybody. I'm Ryan Whitley.
Jess: Jessica Berg.
Damien: And I'm Damien Smith.
Ryan: And together we're Whiskey and the Weird, the podcast that for the past eight seasons has been bringing you unrivaled literary critiques of the best of yesteryear's weird fiction, as collected in the British Library's Tales of the Weird series.
Each season, we have journeyed together through one edition of this now voluminous series, and each episode we've turned to one story for in-depth discussion, but never along the table of contents' prescribed [00:01:00] path. I'm such a goober. If you don't want the stories spoiled, make sure you take the road less traveled and read ahead.
Alternatively, our summaries will do the job for you. This season, we were fated to pluck the strings of the multiverse as we take a dimensional left at the corner of reality to trek through Roads of Destiny and Other Tales of Alternative Histories and Parallel Realms and Really Long Titles- ...
edited
by Alasdair Richmond.
Look over there. What? In the sunshine. Where? Through the fog? Is that a road sign with an arrow? But which way does it point, and to what time? Time or, or, or place or where am I? Let me get out my spyglass. Wait. [00:02:00] Why do I have a spyglass? Jessica, help. What are we doing?
Jess: You know what? Why don't we talk about The Discovery of the Treasure Isles by our best friend, Amelia B.
Edwards.
Ryan: That sounds like a better idea than anything I was about to propose.
Jess: Let's go
Ryan: back to that later. However, before we get to that, we've got some bar talk to do. Jessica, what do I see in your glass over there?
Jess: This is a bourbon by the Far North Spirits. I've had their rye before. This is the one that's made in very northern Minnesota by where I grew up.
This is called the Bodelin Bourbon. It is very orangey. It's from a farm distillery. So, like, a couple weeks ago I had the Uncle Nearest, and that's one- Mm-hmm. Oh ... where, like, if you close your eyes, that's just, like, what you think whiskey should taste like.
Right. This
one tastes distinctly different than that, but it's still fun.
I like a little craft, craft brew. And sticking with my [00:03:00] strangely Minnesotan theme, I also read a really good, I think it's a cookbook but it's called Turtle Islands, and it's by, the chef is- Sean Sherman, who is a Minneapolis chef, I think he's originally from South Dakota. It is a, like a really beautiful cookbook with indigenous food history and culture, and it's arranged geographically in this really cool way with really cool pictures.
And a friend of mine actually helped put it together, so great job, Kate. She did a really good job. Yay, Kate. But it, it's the only cookbook you'll ever find where an ingredient is seal oil, and it's just like- Whoa ... you'll never cook with this. Unless you're in Alaska. You're never gonna find this.
Damien: Yeah.
Jess: Yeah, but, but you should know that this recipe would use seal oil. You know? So it's just, like, a really cool look at food and ingredients that are just no longer used widely but are used very specially. Anyway, it's a really good, interesting cookbook, [00:04:00] history book artifact that's...
Looks really nice on a coffee table, too, which I always appreciate. Hey, Damien, what are you drinking?
Damien: Oh, dear. I had to keep it simple. I've had quite the week this week, a lot of insane fun antics and work-related stuff. But being exhausted, I wanted to come home and tuck into a nice glass of my Mary Dowling again.
If you're listening to this sequentially, it's a delicious new find. It's probably one of my favorite whiskeys of all time. I just talked about it in recent episodes, so go find Mary Dowling and drink it. As far as other things, so I finally got to tuck into, it, it's popping up in my Hulu Recommends.
It's the 2025 remake of Toxic Avenger, The Toxic Avenger. Remember that with- Fun ... Peter Dinklage. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Dink. Peter Dinklage is in it. So it's, it's directed by Macon Blair. He also wrote the screenplay for it. And I didn't know this name, but he's done other movies that I know fairly well.
He did, most notably for me [00:05:00] is The Green Room. Yeah, that was a good one. Yep, yep, yep, yep. Yeah, s- the ultra violent Patrick Stewart is, like- Mm-hmm ... the head of a Neo-Nazi skinhead pack, I guess. But he also did I Don't Feel at Home in this World Anymore, which also stars Peter Dinklage. .
His filmography is really interesting. So I thought that was pretty cool to see that, and I was like, all right, I'm a big fan of the Troma movies. You know, I, I wanna see what sort of treatment they give to The Toxic Avenger, arguably the most signature of the Troma films. Oh, Macon Blair also did Murder Party way back.
And if you haven't seen Murder Party, you should check
Jess: it out. I haven't. I was just looking at the- Really, really, really
Damien: hilarious ...
Jess: thumbnail for it.
Damien: Super dark super funny. But he does, I think he does it justice. It's- It's, it's really loaded with what you expect from a Troma movie. There's gratuitous nudity, there's ultra-violence, like super gore, but then there's also just deadpan delivered one-liners.
The cast is pretty interesting. In addition to Peter Dinklage there's a, there's a kid who plays his, sort of like ennui-riddled [00:06:00] stepson. He's Jacob Tremblay.
Ryan: Ennui-riddled.
Damien: What a great-
Ryan: Yeah ...
Damien: description. Yeah. It's Jacob Tremblay, like everyone's favorite little boy superstar is in this ultra-violent penis-loaded movie.
Sure. A very heavily make-upped and costumed Elijah Wood is in it. Frodo. Frodo's in this.
Jess: Mm-hmm.
Damien: And Kevin Bacon's in it. It's just, it's, it's like a, it's like a really interesting pack. But if you don't know anything about Troma movies, great.
Go in blind. Just don't expect it, it to take itself seriously and you'll have a really good time with it. So again, that's the-
Jess: Have a good time. Yeah, you should.
Damien: You should. It's the 2025 Toxic Avenger reboot brought to you by Megan Blair.
Ryan: But you, Ry, what's up? Well, tonight I'm drinking an old fashioned, in part because I had an orange, and that doesn't always happen in the fridge here, so I thought- In Florida?
Surprisingly, less and less, believe it or not. So this old fashioned is made with Woodford Reserve, and [00:07:00] the only other thing about it that makes it slightly different is that I've used agave instead of a simple syrup. And I'd like to tell you that's because I think it tastes better, but it's really because I had it on hand- Yep
and I didn't feel like making simple syrup. I'm
Jess: glad we're all putting in- Whoa ... a lot of effort tonight. This bodes well.
Damien: And, and we're also just brimming with honesty. Look at this. Yes. Didn't have to tell us that detail. Chose to.
Ryan: Smashed up a couple of amarena cherries with my orange, muddled that with Angostura orange bitters.
Give it a stir. A beautiful and delicious old fashioned. And, uh- Look at you, with fruit ... a heavy pour I might, I might add. It, uh,
Damien: you showed it before we hit record on this, on this episode. I'm like, "If he finishes this, we're done-zo."
Ryan: As for what I've been doing otherwise, I just finished what I know is gonna already be one of my favorite books of the year, and we're recording this in the early part of January, so that's a bold statement.
But I loved reading If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio. Okay. Uh, we were talking a little bit about it before the recording began, but [00:08:00] this is, this is a dark academia style book a la The Secret History, Donna Tartt's story that everybody loved a number of years ago. But these students are all thespians.
They're at a school dedicated to the fine and performing arts, and they love them Some Shakespeare. It's a lot of fun. I don't wanna say too much about what happens. The only thing I will say is this, if you are an actor or an actress, or you've spent time on the stage or with a group of other actors even just hanging out, you're gonna like this book so much more
Jess: What if that's my nightmare situation, Roy?
Then
Ryan: don't, don't. For you. Let me ask you this question. I think your average reader, your average reader's gonna en- enjoy this book a lot 'cause it's a great, it's a great plot, it's a great mystery that pulls you along. But if you have spent time on the stage, if you've spent time acting, you are gonna pick up on a lot more little nuggets that are in there just for you, and what a joy it was.
This was an ev- easy [00:09:00] five-star rating for me, If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio. So that's what we're drinking, that's what we're watching, that's what we're reading. And now we'd like to get into a little of our author and publication info for tonight's story. We'd love
Jess: to.
Ryan: Do it. Let's do it. We're back tonight with a story by fan favorite Amelia B.
Edwards, who you might know as being the author of the constantly reprinted classic, The Phantom Coach. Sure. Or if you listened last season, you might also know "In The Confessional," which we covered in the third episode of season eight. So it's to that episode that I'm going to point you if you'd like to learn more about her biography.
What I'd like to share with you tonight is about Mrs. Rolleston. And no, I'm not just gonna start telling you about some completely random other person. I wouldn't put it past you. Yeah. I would not put it past you. Let me tell you about my neighbor.
No, Mrs. Rolleston is the [00:10:00] name of a remarkable children's book that Amelia Edwards authored. It's remarkable for several reasons. First off, not only is it completely illustrated with beautiful and technically proficient pen and ink drawings she did herself, but it's done so in the style of what we would today call a manga or a graphic novel.
And she's doing this in the 19th century, which I thought was pretty neat. It's got individual panels. It's got multiple panels per page. It's got all the different sizes and shapes of the, of the panels across its 38-page length. And remember, this is published in 1847, which by my reckoning is well before One Piece or Attack on Titan.
Damien: Look at you, contemporary anime manga superstar. Look at you throwing out these names.
Ryan: Yeah, I've got a 14-year-old son. All right. That's, that makes sense. The story is about the titular Mrs. [00:11:00] Rolleston, who, bored with life in her middle years, decides to go on a trip to see the world. So she buys a cannon and sets off.
Jess: A cannon?
Ryan: That was her first purchase, a cannon. Yes. Yeah, probably an eight or 16 pounder. I don't know
Damien: Can we talk about... That sounded knowledgeable. That sounded- ... resourced and researched. Oh my gosh. That's, that's- Back to, back to cannons. That's the second thing we gotta ask about ... that's been my, that's been my trick for
Ryan: years, Damien.
If you don't know what you're talking about, at least sound like you
Damien: do. Be confident.
Ryan: Or give, give weights. That's
Damien: like a 12-pounder.
Ryan: Yeah. Huh. What?
Damien: You have 14 over there? That's great.
Ryan: In her adventures, she learns to speak other languages because she discovers that they can't understand her in the different countries she's going to.
She's attacked by wolves. She gets blazing drunk. Mm-hmm. She almost cannibalizes a frozen Frenchman. Yes. She meets some dashing men, and much, much more. [00:12:00] Again, all illustrated fully, which sounds impressive and novel for its time. Well, how about this? She wrote this when she was 16 years old. What? And if that's not remarkable enough, she then proceeded to, in her own life, follow the footsteps of the fictional Mrs.
Rolleston, at least ideologically, and became quite an adventurer herself, as you know, at least if you listened to last season.
Damien: And also ate a frozen Frenchman. Let's not pa- skip over that, okay? Yeah,
Ryan: she may, she may have done that. That- Just a nibble ... that may have
Damien: been a
Ryan: prognostication. Right. Just a nosh.
Yeah, when I turned the page and got to that panel, I, I was, "Am I reading this right? What?" But then you look at the picture and you're like, "Nope, that's exactly what's happening here." That's... A visual validation. Thank you. Anyway, I was impressed, and if you wanna be impressed too, you can check it out. You can view the original itself via the digital collection of the Bodleian Library, and we'll provide a link to that in the show notes.
It's a lot of fun to look [00:13:00] through. This particular story tonight was first published in Rutledge's Christmas Annual, December 1864. And Jess- ... is here to tell us what happened.
Jess: Right.
Ryan: Please do.
Jess: Let's get started with this Christmas story here. It is a little bit of a long one, so bear with me as I try to- Oof
kind of skim over a little bit of stuff. Our narrator is a 26-year-old ship's captain named William Burton, and he's on his first captaining journey, probably in 1760, says a footnote. He's taking his boat, the Mary Jane, to Jamaica to drop off printed goods, hardware, and cutlery, and bring back, of course, rum, cotton- Mm
indigo, et cetera. Easy-peasy. He's got a crew of just a couple of guys and a boy.
Damien: And a frozen Frenchman.
Jess: Just, like, the, in the bottom. You know, the hold.
Damien: Yeah. The ship is- It's, it's, it's keeping the other stuff [00:14:00] fresh. That's what it is. It's...
Jess: Our ship is not particularly fast, and the weather is not particularly cooperative, so they're pretty slow-going.
But by mid-December, they're getting close enough- When the weather takes a weird turn, it is both foggy and extremely hot with no wind. A couple of the guys and the boy commiserate on how miserable it is. Most everyone is asleep one night when one of the awake crew members yells, "Ships ahoy," and another boat approaches.
The captain of our ship calls out who they are, where they're going, but the new ship just says they're The Adventure, homeward bound with treasure. Obviously, our Captain Burton wants the deets. Mm-hmm. The other ship offers to show him a map to said treasures, so he and his little crew jump over to the other boat to check it out.
The other boat is weird. The crew is [00:15:00] silent as ghosts, and the walls of the cabin are lined with creepy weapons. But, you know, treasure. So don't worry about it. They look at the map. This new mysterious captain insists that the islands are completely uninhabited, no government, no native population, and it's literally just covered in treasure.
Ryan: He- Easy mode, y'all. ...
Jess: pulls back the curtain to show off a bunch of gold bars, and he says that their holds are filled with 57 tons of silver and six chests of precious stones. He also shows off what they call golden water, which just seems to be gold flakes in water.
Damien: Yep.
Jess: Both captains drink it, question mark, and it badly burns our captain.
But no time to worry about that. We are off on a treasure hunt.
Ryan: Must've been all the cinnamon.
Jess: Just a little gold schlogger on a-
Damien: Schloggin noggin ...
Jess: foggy [00:16:00] doldrum.
Damien: A foggy schloggy. That's, that's the name of a
Ryan: drink right there.
Jess: Oof. Oof. Okay. Yeah.
Next episode, we can all have gold schlogger and feel really terrible.
Have a foggy
Damien: schloggy and call it a day.
Jess: Our captain gives himself a little pep talk before he changes their course. Like, they're so close to the mysterious islands. He deserves it. It's treasure, whatever. He then maniacally looks for land 30 times a day, when another ship guy, Aaron Taylor, interrupts him to say, "But we're not pointed where we should be.
We're running low on supplies." And our captain says, "Dude, not worry about it. Look at this map. We're going here now." But Aaron Taylor, who I will imagine as the hunky actor, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, says- Okay.
Damien: I can, I can abide ...
Jess: says, "No." He's been sailing around here forever. If those islands were real, he would have run into them by now.
[00:17:00] And our captain yells at him for being a doubting Aaron. Our captain gets progressively more unhinged. He knows the crew's starting to worry about him and this mysterious journey to islands that don't exist. So he, of course, sanely vows to shoot the first person who looks mutinous. Very cool, very sane.
The third morning after their midnight ship meeting, the captain finally sees the island, and it looks just like the map. Big hill, little hill, a bay, et cetera, et cetera. It's kind of two islands. He tells Aaron Taylor-Johnson, "Hey, take a look." But listen, it's a more fun story if you just imagine this guy.
Damien: I like where you're going.
Jess: But Aaron doesn't see anything. The captain is enraged again, and he makes the others look, but it's the same story. The island has disappeared under the fog. Our captain knows, however, it's there, so they keep going. He starts packing the little lifeboat to go ashore. He's got a couple snacks, a couple [00:18:00] muskets, and brandy, which is, of course, exactly what I take on a road trip.
Naturally.
He includes a little bottle with his seal, the date, a flag, a little letter, and he wants to leave it on the top of the island on the mountain that's in the middle. So they should be getting close to where he saw the island, but no one can see it. It doesn't matter. He's gonna go in the little boat anyway, 'cause he knows it's there.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson tries to talk him out of it. He knows there's no land within 400 miles, and if he's seeing anything, it is probably the reef that's going to smash the boat up. Use your brain. You're gonna die out there. But our captain knows the island is close, jumps to the boid- jumps the boat with Josh, the boy, and they immediately get bashed up in the waves.
The captain washes ashore after almost dying very dramatically. He celebrates being alive and that he was smart enough to put some of [00:19:00] the supplies in his pocket before he realized that poor Josh the boy is probably dead. But whatever, RIP. He's got this perfect island to explore, and he's gonna be rich.
Mm-hmm. And you know what? This island is perfect. Green forest, blue skies, lush moss, and everything is lining up where the map said. But where's the treasure? It seems like something maybe he should have asked the other captain about, but whatever. He finds a ruined, shiny city as he heads up the mountain in the middle of the island.
It has hieroglyphics and a scintillating beacon on top of its summit. What does that mean? He explores, examining toppled buildings, statues, and makes his way up the mountain. In one big tomb, he finds one big pearl, and he's excited to use this as proof to his crew that he was right. He's trudging and climbing through thorns.
The thorns cut him to bits, but [00:20:00] don't worry. He has a natural ability and a cool head, so he thinks it's fine as he just parkours around this island
Damien: He's got a natural ability and a real cool head, y'all. He's the challenge. But he doesn't have a cannon. No cannon. Eight pounds, 16 pounds, none.
Jess: Okay. At the top of the city on the mountain, there is a massive statue of a guy with a big, shiny ornament on his head.
Ryan: That's normal.
Jess: But actually, the whole guy is covered in jewels. We are talking- Yeah ... world's biggest diamond, sapphires as big as chicken eggs, emeralds galore. With his telescope, he checks everything out from his new high vantage point. We've got lots of smashed up temples, ruined arches, and various domed and pyramided buildings scattered around the island.
He loads his pockets with jewels that he's prying off this guy, takes the big diamond, and heads back down to the shore. But he gets sleepy, decides to [00:21:00] snooze in the forest for the night, and eats some coconuts
Damien: Coco nuts. P.S.- Co- Coco nuts ...
Jess: coco nuts. In the morning, he sees his ship has made it into the cove.
He yells at the crew, but no one answers. He's angry again. "Did they leave the boat to go treasure hunting? Who does that?" Think the guy who did that. He runs towards the boat, which is of course obviously empty and laying on the beach half covered in sand. It's not in the cove, just on the beach. She is rusty and looks like she's been empty for 20 years.
Okay, must not be the Mary Jane, except he goes inside. Totally the same Mary Jane. He looks in a mirror, and his formerly chestnut hair is now shockingly white. He breaks the mirror and continues his investigation of the abandoned ship. Everything is empty, and there's no sign of the crew, but also no sign that the crew took anything with them if they left.
He decides to [00:22:00] look for them, but he stashes his jewels in a nice mossy cave for safekeeping.
Damien: Luck.
Jess: He alternates between looking for his- Now, he
Damien: decorates with coconut shells, mind you ...
Jess: Listen, he's got two things. It's moss, and it's coco nuts.
Damien: It's coco nuts.
Jess: So he alternates between looking for his crew and taking supplies back and forth from the ship, the crashed up ship.
This continues for days, for weeks. He's stacking stones as a signal for any other humans, snoozing in this cave, still eating those coconuts, and we've added turtles to the menu. After more weeks and weeks He decides to trek all the way around the island, sleeping in different caves along the way. But immediately that is too much work, so he cuts across the middle, climbs this big hill.
The hill is maybe different than the mountain. Don't worry about it. On that hill is a broken hut with a skeleton in it- What? What? ... and some [00:23:00] graves.
Ryan: And a volleyball. And a volleyball.
Jess: And Wilson the volleyball. Wilson. Wilson. Okay. And with the skeleton, it is a letter in a bottle, pirate style. The skeleton, unfortunately, is our no longer hunky Aaron Taylor-Johnson, but he has left the message.
Basically, after our captain went to shore, the fog cleared and the rest of the crew saw the island. The captain was right. A couple of the crew guys took a small boat around the island to see if they could find the captain, and the other guys went to the island, and everyone g- ended up getting sick. One guy was too sick to get back to the boat, so Aaron Taylor-Johnson went back, got help.
But basically everyone got sick, and now everyone is dead and buried on this hill. Aaron is writing because, well, now he's sick too, and he wants to leave a record of what happened and how lonely he's been to be the last guy alive on this island for months and months and months. He wills his watch to his mom [00:24:00] and his dog to his cousin, and he hopes somebody buries his bones.
Captain does bury his bones, but he can't comprehend how the letter is six months old when he thinks he's only been on the island a couple of months, and the bones look years and years old. The captain goes back to the wrecked Mary Jane and fixes up one of the other life boat-y things and just sails away.
When he's picked up by another ship 11 days later, they confirm that actually he's nuts, and the ship he claims that he was just on was lost at sea 20 years ago. He tries to show him all his diamonds and gold, but he's of course just got pockets full of rocks. They get him back to England, but his mom's been dead for 12 years.
His once fiance is married to some other guy and has four kids, and he keeps showing people the jewels and trying to prove what happened, but everyone just feels bad for him.
The end. The end. [00:25:00] We end on a real uplifting note. And a pocketful of rocks. Oh my gosh.
Damien: Yeah. Rally around your family.
Ryan: Well, were either of you as excited as I was to be back on a boat?
I was very
Damien: excited.
Jess: I had a great time. I loved this boat.
Damien: When we have a theme that is not relegated to a certain atmosphere or a certain, like, kind of haunting or a certain whatever, I get excited because I'm like, "This could literally be anything and anything." This could go
Ryan: anywhere.
Damien: Yeah. We just had an alternate, like- Nazis win. A dystop- dys- dystopian future, and now we're on a boat? Yes, show me more. Where are we gonna go? What are we gonna do?
Ryan: I think in a similar way, but kind of opposite if you want to follow that, any time we read a story and we're not on a boat, I'm st- I start off disappointed.
Okay, that's fair. Sure. I- That's fair. Yeah. That's
Jess: fair. Fair.
Why aren't we on a boat right now? That's a good place to be. What is [00:26:00] this, Nazi London?
Ryan: Boring. Give me a boat. Give me a boat. I knew Jess was excited for all the nautical terms that she had to remember back from season one. My
Jess: God, I didn't know any of them.
I kept writing boat, and I had to correct it to ship because I can't remember why it matters, but there is a difference.
Damien: There is absolutely a difference. A ship is a boat that transfers stuff.
Jess: That can't- Yes ... be true.
Damien: That's it. It has, it has, uh-
Ryan: I believe it's a size matters-type question ...
Damien: cargo. It has... No, it has cargo. Ships have cargo.
Ryan: Ships have cargo. Boats have no cargo, they just have dry storage and old shrimp.
Damien: Boats just have people, maybe, if they're lucky. Well,
Jess: this one also had people. It had a first mate, Aaron Taylor Johnson, I think, and then a boy and a couple other guys. Yes, along with the
Damien: livestock. It was, it was transporting, it was shipping goods.
Jess: Yeah, rum. Yeah,
Damien: yeah. No, we're going
Jess: to pick up rum.
Damien: That's why it's a ship. Yeah, it was shipping other things.
Jess: Cutlery.
Damien: Cutlery.
Jess: Scabbards. The natural
Damien: exchange
Ryan: for rum- Scabbards ... right? Yep. Pretty much. Forks for rum. Having trouble [00:27:00] keeping a straight face for the next question. When- Me too ... when the captain of the Mary Jane meets- Mm-hmm
the captain of the Adventure, Adventure tells him exactly where to find the gold and how much jewels and other stuff he will be able to locate on this island. "Here's the map."
Damien: Nothing weird there. Isn't that when you
Ryan: go the other way?
Damien: Nothing weird there.
Jess: And the crew is deadly silent. This is definitely- Right
the... Remember when the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie came out back before everything was terrible, and there were that scene where he steps into the moonlight and you see- Yeah, yeah ... that the pirates- Yeah, yeah ... and it was, like, a genuinely cool effect? Right. It was a cool effect. Like, this was that.
These are just-
Ryan: Right ...
Jess: for sure dead zombie pirate men or whatever, and so, that was fun to imagine. It was. But yeah, you, you just got served some hot poisoned gold water. Yeah.
Ryan: This- Get back on your boat. This so stretched my, my credulity. Uh, like come on, man, you've gotta... If, if, if you fall [00:28:00] for this one, then not my captain you shall be.
Damien: It's commentary on the selfishness, on the drive, the capitalistic drive of man. We're also- When you get all the signs that say, "Do not proceed," and you proceed on the promise of infinite riches.
Jess: And we're on these exotic islands. Yeah. You know? Who knows? There might be gold, more gold than this boat can carry.
Why can't I put the rest on my boat?
Damien: Giant head diamonds.
Jess: Just some pyramids I don't know why anybody
Damien: thinks of head cheese with diamonds in it And then an hour after the passing of, of Mr. T with his necklace o' jewels.
Ryan: That's exactly- Yeah. Let me tell you where I got it all.
Well, the weird factor in this one was pretty cool, I thought. What did you make of it? Did it work for you? Would you have done something differently if you were any of the characters in this story? What'd you think of the weird here?
Jess: Fun and effective, especially considering how old the story is.
Mm-hmm.
The creepy ghost pirates, great. The zone [00:29:00] reveal of looking in the mirror and, "Oh my God, I'm 30." Got a white beard. Whoa.
Damien: Yeah. I'm an old
Jess: man. My chestnut hair. It's only been a week or whatever. That's fun. That's a fun twist. Oh, I think I forgot to mention that this is a Christmas story, 'cause it took place on Christmas.
Yes, yes,
Damien: yes. Yeah, it's totally Christmas. It's the Die Hard of- Probably not one we're gonna do as a Christmas special, though ... It's, it's the Die Hard of Amelia B. Edwards stories. Yeah. Yeah. The phantom-
Jess: He- ...
Damien: coach or whatever ... there's
Jess: just the reveal that "Oh, gosh, wow, yesterday was Christmas Eve, so today is Christmas," and then he finds gold and then he...
it, that was just a very funny "
Damien: Sure." Seeing him like a- "I guess, I guess
Jess: that's important."
Damien: Like a bad Disney remake where he's walking up to a mirror and the mirror shows him in the reflection, but it's actually a picture of him behind him, and then he turns the mirror to the real him, and it's got you know, gray hair- Yes
and a beard, and he's like, "What?"
Jess: Yeah. You can very easily see- And it's starring
Damien: Steve Guttenberg ...
Jess: how this could be a little Twilight Zone. And as written by
Damien: Oscar Wilde, [00:30:00] apparently. Yeah. I, I, I, I do... So I, I thought the weird was, was interesting. It was fun. Found it to be a bit directionless. I was hoping that it would tie together.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And I thought that it encompassed a few other weird elements, but when I thought, "Okay, this is the course we're going, this is the track we're following," all of a sudden it became something else. It's what's the deal with the time passage? What's the deal with the two tracks? And, and in fact, I was just gonna
Ryan: ask you about that, Damien, because you have said several times now during this season that one of the things that attracts you to this particular anthology is the idea that anything could happen.
It could go anywhere. It's not tied to- Right ... one particular haunt or- Right ... or locale or something like that. So did this story go where you expected? Was it a surprise? Did you want it to do something else?
Damien: No, I mean, tying back to, though, a- about the weird factor, I, I got to a point where... So you drink the gold water, right?
As you do. And it's on the island. And I found this story to be very instructional and educational, and we can get to that in just a bit, so [00:31:00] be sure to ask me for details. But in addition to fabricating his own residence and deciding that he's able to, find mussels to eat and make- Mm-hmm
an entire diet out of coconuts, at one point he discovers berries, and a lot of The story kind of hovers around ma- going hy- getting hyper detailed on just the standards of traversing this terrain- Right, right ... and exploring these weird structures. Several times.
Ryan: Yeah,
Damien: and, and on- He's gone
Jess: back and forth and back and forth
Damien: yeah. But there was something about the focus on these berries. And so at that point I said, "Wait, is he basically high or poisoned?" Hmm. And then when I got to that, everything started to make sense, and I attributed it to him being- The gold water? ... the ultimate unreliable narrator who is suffering a delusional- Interesting
episode. And so I was like, "Okay, anything can go from here," because we have no idea what's real, what's being imagined, et cetera, et cetera. So all these factors [00:32:00] could come into play. Then when it wraps up and it's, oh, he doesn't have jewels, he has flint and- Right ... like, sand spar or whatever it was, I was just like, "Yeah, that makes sense.
All of this makes sense." So- So I was
Jess: trying to figure out a way to shoehorn in that this was a drug trip and that the boat's name was Mary Jane. Yeah. Educational afterschool special about- Afterschool special ... yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. This is your
Damien: brain, this is your brain on found mussels.
Jess: Well, yeah, don't take gold water from a stranger or you'll crash your ship and turn into an old man or something. It's like what
Ryan: might happen if you tried to write The Goonies as a tragedy.
Damien: Yeah. The Goonies meets Cast Away meets Lost, yeah. Yeah. Oh,
Ryan: God. Yeah. I re- I liked the weird factor in this.
Okay. I enjoyed the... Although it was all a bit obvious to me what was happening, but that's because I've read a lot of stories like this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've read a lot of stories in this vein, so- Sure ... I had to hold that thought at bay and just say, "Let me enjoy this for what it is." And then, yeah, I liked the [00:33:00] weird factor.
I liked the exploration. There was a lot of exploration. We coulda done with less of that. Yeah. We'll come to that more in a minute. But I thought that the, uh, the sense that he had fast-forwarded in time... I didn't pick up on the perhaps drugged berry connection, but that's an interesting thought. I like the idea.
Jess: There were a few, yeah, just druggy bits in there.
Damien: I think that all the action leading up to his discovery of being an old man was a falsified historical recollection of this guy who's been on the island a lot longer than- Mm. Mm-hmm ... the story makes it seem.
Mm-hmm.
Jess: And
Damien: I think that was the whole purpose of introducing the epistolary element with finding- Right ... the letter from- Yeah ... you know, his future self.
Jess: If you want the non-weird version, he's just been- Traumatic. That's
Damien: like an explanation ...
Ryan: tripping. Looks like the explanat- what was the guy's name in Treasure Island that was on the, on the island forever, the old guy?
Like, it's the explanation for him.
Damien: I don't know his name No Tre- Yeah ... no Treasure Island fans? No. Okay. I've only seen the Muppets version, so Well, we can- Kermit.
Ryan: His name is [00:34:00] Kermit ... yeah, we can eliminate that. Yeah.
I think it's, I think it's safe to say that greed is a principal motivator- Yeah ... here. But where, for you, is the line between greed and adventure? Where do you think it is for Amelia Edwards? Is she saying something about that? How would you... not that this particular situation is gonna present itself to you, but how would you- It might
parse that line of greed versus adventure in your own life?
Damien: I don't know. I- greed versus ambition I think has a closer tie or an interweaving- Okay ... where it might, it might get fuzzy. Like, are you ambitious, or are you just motivated by a, an over sense of- or an overactive sense of greed that's wealth driven, right?
I don't think adventure and being greedy kinda go hand in hand, unless you are- In colonial times ... your idea of adv- unless your idea of adventure is like, extreme games and doing stuff that- Mm ... may put other people's who care about you, [00:35:00] may put their wellbeing in jeopardy, and you're just like, "Nope, gotta do it.
Gotta live that life. Gotta, gotta be an X Games person," or Red Bull gives me wings or whatever, then other people are like, "Please- The
Jess: ice- ... please take me-" ... ice luge ... "a
Damien: better time." Yeah. I mean, I, so , I don't know if I would necessarily abide by the is it greed or is it adventure?
I think that greed and ambition might be a, a better call. I think in this one, a- again, putting it in the frame of reference of, of somebody who's going through a bad drug trip or ate a bad mussel and is having a false recollection, I th- the theme of, of course you're overlooking all those red flags and just pursuing this- Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm ... nonexistent stow of wealth, it just goes to show that that's the ambition of man. Uh, i- it's f- it's fine thematically but I think it goes hand in hand. Justifying adventure, which is a bit of a boring adventure to be honest, and having the chief motivation be, like, infinite wealth, well, that's, that's greed that takes over very readily, and he loses everything over it.
Jess: But the, this [00:36:00] captain's also young, and it's his first time captaining. And he-
26 ...
Ryan: tr- real- the pressure's really to
Damien: make a name for himself.
Yeah. So would you, would you, would you say that's where the adventure comes in, Ryan? It might be, yeah. 'Cause he, 'cause I think he saw it, but so it's... But it's also greed of, like, legacy, right? It's, "I wanna establish myself. I want the world to know who I was."
Ryan: Right? A visionary leader has the capacity to see something that maybe nobody else in the organization can see.
Damien: Yeah, sure.
Ryan: Okay. Kind of like the island here, right? So to what extent or how far do you go in the pursuit of that before you realize it's folly, if indeed it is folly? I
Jess: think maybe when you're carrying a gun around to shoot anyone who disagrees with you, you've probably maybe- That's probably crossed a [00:37:00] line.
Yeah ... yeah, yeah, you might be- Yeah ... on the wrong side of that.
Damien: Also three cutlasses.
Ryan: Like maybe- You can't even use three at the same time.
Damien: No, you cannot. And that, how, how does that make for walking in general?
Ryan: It's really hard.
Jess: Yeah. I think- And, and maybe- ... I think if you are aware that all of your crewmates think you're crazy and potentially wanna kill you, just take a step back. Be like, "Should I just deliver these forks?"
I'd just deliver the forks instead- Right, right ... of getting killed. But that, you know, listen, that's just me.
Damien: But it's the potential. He was like, he was like a tech bro of the era . He was just this- Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's gotta get his Shark Tank money. This is my, legacy, yeah, exactly.
Ryan: It'll not shock either one of you that adventure stories involving shipwrecks is a non-fictional vein I go down to from time to time.
So like I've read the Endurance story. I read David Grann's The Wager a year or so ago, and I think that the, the story of the Endurance is, an absolutely incredible story of leadership. Shackleton brought [00:38:00] everyone home alive. By contrast, the captain whose name is escaping me from the, the book The Wager really got into a, a leadership crisis, and had a whole...
There was a whole separate camp that, that sort of mutinied from him. Somebody was shot on a, on account of it. They were shot in the face- God ... on account of of disobeying. Shot in the face? In the face. And the worst part is in that book it was, it was described it didn't kill him. Shot point blank in the face, and it just smashed his jaw up, and it, that was, that's like a real bad thing.
That's rough. Yeah, no thank you. So it's like you hold Shackleton up against, against that captain, and yeah, they're, they were both in a similar situation. They both may have thought they were visionary leaders, but only one does the job at the end of the day. You can't know if that's gonna be you in the moment when you're driving your ship towards- Yes
the Treasure Island. You can know
Jess: If a ghost gave you hot gold- Exactly ... or water, you can know.
Damien: Guys, hear me out, okay? Hear me out.
Jess: If every person is saying there is no [00:39:00] island there, you just- Jeffrey Rush- ... got high with a ghost ... kind of told me to do it. Yeah.
Damien: Jeffrey Rush- They're more suggestions than rules
stepped into the moonlight and said, "You need to go to this Jewel Island." And I said, "Okay."
Jess: Okay. No, I- I would say maybe not a visionary leader.
Damien: Yeah. It, but it seems like in those two instances, and I haven't read the books, and kudos on you for reading these shipwrecks or drama on the open seas, but-
Ryan: I love those stories
Damien: one of them was in the interest of the greater good, it seems. Mm-hmm. And so putting men above all, protecting the, the crew. And the other one was not, and this had no elements of this leadership and, established captain, captain, like- They were running out of food ... street cred. Yeah, he had none of that.
Yeah. And all, all of these challenges in front of him, and he's like, "Let's go. Ghost ship just said to go find Jewel Island." Shiny stuff. "We're going." Yeah, exactly. Shiny, shiny. And I think it's the complete antithesis of someone trying to establish that leadership via adventure. [00:40:00]
Ryan: Well, what do you think might the story be suggesting about discovering, we'll put that in air quotes, discovering-
any land or colonialism, Jess, and the consequences of both of those?
Jess: No, no, you don't have to worry about it. There's, there's no natives here. Yeah. There's no government. We're totally fine. It's-
Ryan: Do you think she's say- yeah, but do you think she's saying that to avoid accusations of writing colonialism
Jess: stories?
She was, like, an Egyptologist. Right. I don't really think it would've been in her mind. Yeah. I think she probably wrote that 'cause it's easier than- Easier, it, it's easier- ... imagining ... to do with
Ryan: these places if there's no people.
Jess: Yeah. I think she probably saw Egypt as the same way. "Oh, all these people are dead.
I can go in here and take these diamonds," right?
Damien: Yeah,
Ryan: sure. Except for the people in the back raising their hands saying, "I'm an Egyptian." "
Jess: Hello, I still live here. This is my house." Yeah. So I don't think that it was written to avoid those conversations. I think she probably just was like, "Why would that be a conversation?
Why would anyone [00:41:00] ask? Who cares whose gold it is? I'm here now. It's me, Amelia B. Edwards." It
Ryan: was, I was disappointed by the lack of, of, of anyone occupying the island. But there were coconuts. And turtles. There were. There was too, too many of both. Well, one fewer- Delicious ... turtle now. Delicious turtles.
Sometimes
Damien: boiled, sometimes roasted, by the way. I forget who, who was it that said, like- It was a young turtle, PS. Yeah. He speci- he specified it was a young turtle. Supple shell, supple shell. Who, who was the- That's all ... who was
Ryan: the writer that said, "If you're struggling writing your story, just introduce a man with a gun"?
That's what didn't happen here the whole time this was happening. Obviously there's nobody with a gun for real, I get that, but- Nothing like that happened. I kept waiting for him to get across the island and, and, and something weird or, or uncanny to occur- That's what I'm saying ... and it was just another coconut.
Like every time
Damien: there was a potential, you were like- Yeah ... is the weird gonna be, are we dealing with sentient plants? Are we going- Right, right ... you know, are we- There was none of that. Weird moss? Are we dealing, are we [00:42:00] dealing with a, with an alien civilization that just happened to influence if not be duplicated by the ancient Egyptians?
But no, it's just because A.B.E. was an Egyptologist, right? So okay, great. It, there was so much of that where I was like, "Oh, is this something?" Yeah. And so it very much felt like a loss for me. It was like- Yeah ... the statue only has four toes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exact- And I'm like, "What?" I was, I was hoping for that.
And then what?
Jess: Nothing. 'Cause it is interesting that it is so abandoned. I guess she makes a point to be like, "Oh, there's no bugs or birds or animals," but he's eating turtles. There's some animals. Yeah.
Damien: Right. So then, like, a- Well, I, I thought that was just commentary on how everything went, like, eerily silent at one point.
Jess: Yeah, I think when he went to sleep. Yeah. He was, like, trying to listen to stuff, and there just were no sounds 'cause there was nothing on the island, but then- The
Damien: turtles were also asleep.
Jess: Well, but then, yeah, two paragraphs later. Those noisy
Damien: turtles, otherwise, c- can't get a moment's rest. Keep you up at night, yeah.
So yeah,
Jess: That had potential to be interesting, like how abandoned everything was. Like, what happened to [00:43:00] the people- Mm-hmm, mm-hmm ... who built these weird pyramids? There, there was
Ryan: many points to the idea of what both of you are saying. There was many points in this story where something could have developed- Anything
and it didn't. Yeah. Yeah. That sort of thing. We
Jess: only found the one skeleton, and it was- Right,
Ryan: yeah ...
Jess: quicksilver.
Ryan: Is that a thing? And reasonably explained. At the end of the story, when you get there, Edwards gets to live. Yeah. How did that sit with you? But did he ever truly live? Thank you- No ... Mel Gibson.
Damien: I think, I think when I went back and was trying to rationalize the different elements, and again, like, was he wackadoo?
Did this past leading up to this moment, was there really no time jump? Was it him creating a false historical narrative? And then he gets off, and, like, all these jewels are rocks and stuff because he's obviously gone insane being a castaway for however long or a, a shipwrecked individual for however long.
So he's- 20 years ... he's long gone. Yeah, he's long gone. Like, when I got to that [00:44:00] point, that's what I had to do. I had to reverse course and say, "Okay, well, now thinking about it, if I went back and read this again," which I'm not going to do, with this in mind will I pick up elements of oh yeah, this is why this narrative seems really odd, or why they made this really odd decision for a 26-year-old first-time captain.
Was he, was he even the captain? That, that sort of thing. It just- Maybe he
Ryan: was the ship's boy.
Damien: Maybe he was. Maybe that, maybe he's the one who survived You know? So I, I don't know ... don't
Jess: think the ending would have hit as hard if he had died. I think you needed him to finally- Really? I think- You needed him to live?
Well, he could have died in England or whatever, but you need him to get rescued and them being like, "You died 20 years ago when your ship disappeared, and also your girlfriend left you, and your mom died." I think that that, that's more effective than it being a mystery in this case of him finding the letter from Aaron Taylor-Johnson and just knowing that the time is weird versus meeting a lot of other [00:45:00] people and them being like, "You've been missing for 20 years."
I, I like that bit.
Ryan: Yeah. I wanted him to have died. I, I, I was screaming, "Is there no justice- Hate this guy ... in this world?" Yeah.
Jess: I'm gonna kill
Damien: myself. And then you find a story, a really weird way where he survives for months, and then he, he scratches himself and dies of tetanus or something from- Right, right
a rusty nail, and then you're like, "Ah, you dummy. Sucks." So
Jess: I
Ryan: had to go back to the very beginning of the story 'cause there's an inscription at the beginning of the story that says- Right ... "From a manuscript found in a book stall," which I thought was an incredibly lost opportunity to have found this from a manuscript in a bottle.
Right. Right? That's where, that's where you find this story, and then you could have killed him 'cause then the story gets told because he wrote it down and put it in a bottle. But maybe...
Damien: But I, I think going back to Jess's point, it's interesting because it does start off with that inscription, and so you expect that to happen.
You're like, "Okay, we're obviously getting all the details because it's being fleshed out from this transcript of this adventure," right? But no, it isn't. It's like he- [00:46:00] No ... gets back to- They just
Jess: sail him home.
Damien: Yeah, sail, sail him back home. So silly. I don't know.
Ryan: We've, we've alluded to it several times already.
This was a pretty long story. I think this, this one clocked in at almost 50 pages. Yeah, it's a novella. What... Was its length affected by its pacing? Was its pacing affected by its length? Would you have edited this story at all? How did you react to this, this long, long, long story?
Damien: No, yes, no, in the order of the three questions that you asked in succession.
I think- But
Ryan: now I can't remember ...
Damien: dit, dit, dit, da, da, da, dit, dit, dit. Please send help. I think some
Jess: of the tedious parts of him going back and forth were necessary to show that time was probably passing- Yes ... more quickly than he thought it was.
Ryan: But maybe you could do that in one sentence instead- Sure ... of 27.
Damien: No, but it doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't connect emotionally and make you feel the, the- You're bored 'cause he's
Jess: been there 20 years. Yes, exactly. Well, I felt the boredom ...
Damien: you have, you have to be bored. [00:47:00]
Jess: But every time he's also walking places- There's, like he finds weird berries. He finds like the grass that's like weirdly manicured.
It's like a park that he's walking through The ring
Damien: of trees a certain distance from the big mountain. I like, I like how there was a lot of focus on him utilizing gravity to like roll stones and coconuts. He's
Jess: rolling rocks. He's parkouring up and down.
Damien: And the reason that you were laughing 'cause we read the story and maybe you didn't, you have no idea what we're talking about, is because it was so often that even in Jess's very like in-depth recap of the story, it's just there's too m- many of those minute details that had to be glazed over, because it was 85% of the content.
Then all of a sudden you get some weird inverted pyramid, or you find a pearl and you're like, "Oh, maybe this is legit." But then it goes nowhere. It's not really scaling. And
Ryan: all of this, in my view, all of this would've been forgiven if he turned a corner and there was a giant cyclops.
Damien: Yeah, just show me nobody.
Or, or [00:48:00] something. Or whatever his name was. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Make this The Odyssey, please. Right. Uh, just something interesting. Or that he ends up being like the, the captain of the adventure, and it's- Right ... it's some weird time loop or some weird ghost haunting. I did think
Ryan: that that w- That that would've been an interesting twist, like if it was a time loop and he was the, he was the captain that told himself- Kind of Morgan itself, but also directing
Damien: himself.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like he w- So that
Ryan: is, that goes
Jess: on in perpetuity.
Ryan: I like that idea. Yeah. It didn't happen. Come on, Amelia. No, it didn't happen. But y- I thought- We shou- we should've work-shopped this with her a little bit
Damien: harder. He did accuse the, i- in the, in the retrospect, lamenting his decision to go to the island as directed by ghost ship.
He did say, he's like, "I now realize that the captain of the adventure was the evil one himself," and basically called him the devil or a demon. Satan.
Ryan: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Well, what about the rest of the writing? How did you, how did you find her, her technical craft?
Jess: Know you were annoyed by some of the tedious bits, but sometimes I think [00:49:00] if we hadn't been reading this for a podcast, it was just a story that I was stumbled across and didn't have to recap, I don't think I would've been as bothered by the tedious
bits.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Just the context of having to be like, "And then he walked up a mountain, and then down a mountain, then up a hill, and then down a hill," doesn't always make for a great listening- And then he dug his hands into
Damien: a thick thicket, and then a reasonable thicket, and then a- Oh, and, yeah
thicket of moss that was very easy to move.
Jess: So even some of the stuff where I'm like lightly annoyed by that, I don't think I was actually in the context of the story. I was annoyed in the context of having to say it a bunch of times.
Ryan: Oh, man, this again. I'm still trying to figure out how do you determine the difference between a thick thicket and a reasonable thicket by- It's like
Damien: one's an eight-pound cannon, one's a 16-pound cannon.
Yeah, you just gotta s- you just gotta- You know it when you feel it.
Ryan: I might, this might surprise you, Jess, but I, I enjoyed the technical side of the story, believe it or not. Okay. I, I, I like, I like Edwards's writing. I've read- I do too ... several stories by her. Sure. Her, [00:50:00] her descriptions totally ac- this is actually true for me, they totally transport me.
They whisk me away. I am there. So as much as I was bored on parts of this island, I was definitely on the island with this guy. Sure. Yeah, yeah, empathizing. And the language of, that she uses
Jess: really- And when he's losing it- Yeah ... I thought she did a good job of showing him being like, "Listen, I'm a real cool guy.
I'm a cool customer." Right. "I'm really level-headed. If I see one person doubt me, I'm gonna blow their heads off," right? That's fun.
Damien: I'm easygoing. I'm chill. Those squirrel monkey things that are looking at me, though, they're starting to spook me a bit. I don't like- No, I don't- Are they
Ryan: talking to me?
Damien: Are they talking to me? So I... Yes, we can recognize A.B. for her craft, and yes, like technically good writing. Yes, the decision to make us feel and embrace and engage in the drudgery- Mm-hmm ... that he was going through, it happened, but that doesn't mean I need to like it or agree with that choice, and I didn't.[00:51:00]
And I didn't. Be- because I wasn't, because there weren't enough other elements to counter that, to keep me engaged and to care about this character himself. And so for as long as the story was, and the ability for it to escape some of the traps of really short stories, which is you just can't identify, you don't get emotionally attached to the characters, they s- they act more as like parables or like little stories of morality or something- Mm-hmm
that it's, it's more th- thematic than it is about characterization. It was like you were with one person pretty much this entire story. I should have cared, and I didn't. I didn't at all. Mm. And so all the good proficient technical writing in the world isn't gonna change that. So- It was lost, lost ... for, for Edwards, great, still read Edwards' stories.
For this story, though, I just, I wasn't, I wasn't in it. That's
Jess: fair. I did feel more connected than I thought to Aaron Taylor-Johnson, 'cause he's- Obviously,
Damien: because you made him Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Yeah, uh, my- ... yeah,
Jess: my hunky shipmate. [00:52:00] 'Cause he's just like, "Listen, nope, nope, nope. There's not an island here.
There's not an island here." And then his, you know, little two-page- With some reason,
yeah ...
letter about watching his shipmates die and try to take care of them, and he's, shuffling them back and forth and burying them. I thought that that was very moving.
Ryan: That could start a whole nother conversation on the concept of duty that might take us in a completely different direction.
Like, at what point does Aaron Taylor-Johnson depart? The last comment I wanna make on the writing, we've, we've mentioned it several times about this weird ship, The Adventure. This was a great quote from page 27. This is where you're clued into some of the weirdness that's going on in this one scene.
"Good night," replied the captain, his eyes glowing in his head like fiery carbuncles. "Good night, and a pleasant voyage to you." With this, he burst into a laugh louder and more hollow than ever, a laugh which was instantly taken up, echoed [00:53:00] and re-echoed by all the sailors aboard. That was genuinely creepy, I thought.
Yeah.
Damien: Yeah, no doubt. Just the spontaneous laugh at the end. Yeah. And I had to look up what a carb- The
Ryan: echo of the laughter just, ooh, chills. And it's the only time I've gotten chills in this whole anthology so far. Again, I don't think this anthology is meant to be scary, but that was a scary moment.
Jess: I did have to look up what carbuncles were.
Ryan: It didn't even matter what they were. They were fiery.
Damien: Well, when they're ablaze, they're fiery, yeah, but in general, carbuncles are not flaming.
Ryan: But that's what I mean, anything flaming make, makes it scarier. If it's on fire, it's scarier.
Jess: I guess that's true.
Ryan: So did it destiny? How many alternate paths are you giving this story out of 71?
Jess: Let's go 64.
Ryan: Interesting. Okay. That's pretty high, yeah. Yeah. Pretty high for destiny.
Jess: Think, I don't think I mentioned, this is the [00:54:00] first story in the collection. It
Ryan: is, yeah. So I think- And a bold choice for that. We didn't talk about that. But I think- A bold choice ...
Jess: but I think that's a fun introduction of you are introduced to a story, and it seems a little bit s- like a straightforward guy stuck on an island, and then he finds a letter and realizes "Oh, things are weird."
I thought it was good. I thought the... This, I mean, maybe this sends us on the, a different tangent, but the tagline for this one from the editor is Other Worlds as Curse, which I thought was interesting.
Ryan: Okay. I didn't get curse as much as-
Jess: Right ...
Ryan: the editor did, apparently.
Damien: Yeah. I don't know. It seems like this being the first story, had we been reading this in order, I would've been pretty disappointed.
Not necessarily just because of the structure of the story or because it wasn't my personal favorite, but because it doesn't embrace the theme at all. Yeah. To me, this wasn't an alternate future or, a breach , in the cosmic timeline. [00:55:00] It was a questionable past. We lived one timeline, and I think the only thing that would've changed- I think we lived two timelines
was what happened before.
Ryan: But even if we lived two timelines, Jess, I wanna give you props as an editor because I would've picked, if I were editing this volume, I would've picked it to start with the O. Henry story, as you did, right? That's obviously- This is the most obvious one ... fits the theme. Is- Yeah, so let's start with that and then move away from it.
Is
Jess: this organized by date, I assume? It might be, it
Ryan: might be organized by date. Yeah. I haven't looked at that.
Jess: That, that's kind of my guess. But this one is also Roads of Destiny and Other Tales of Alternate History and- Yeah ... Parallel Realms. I think this is the parallel realm.
Ryan: Yeah, it is organized by date, but you don't have to do that.
You don't
Jess: have to do that. You could pick my method, which is-
Ryan: Yeah ... more fun. Better. Yeah,
Jess: yeah
Damien: I still, I still didn't, yeah, I still didn't get the, the squishy feeling of a parallel realm here. I got the feeling of- Yeah, I have low numbers for destiny here I
Jess: think it's a parallel realm, Captain
Damien: [00:56:00] What's-His- I'm giving 29 out of 71 destinies.
I didn't give a number, you gave a number. You said 64? 64. She said 64. Taverus. I'm at 29. I
Ryan: had 19. Okay, good. 19 out of 71 destinies. What are you talking about? Yeah.
Jess: This guy's on an island, it's covered in runes, it's covered in gold. He's covered- Does it
Ryan: vegetate? 82 of 71.
Jess: Yeah, it does vegetate.
Ryan: He walk- it's a portal story.
He walked through a portal. He didn't know it, but he walked through a portal. Yeah. He lived a different life, everybody else died, and then he walked back through the portal. That's a parallel- That's not an alternate destiny, that's a... It is a parallel realm. It is a parallel realm. But there's not much about destiny or fate to it.
Parallel realm. It's a
Damien: paralerereram.
Ryan: It's
Damien: a parallel
Ryan: realm. A parallel realm.
Jess: Yeah, but it says parallel realm on the cover, so I'm gonna rate it high as parallel realm. It does, but it's the last thing it says on the cover- It's not a, it's
Damien: not a parallel realm ... in the long list of subtitles that we have.
The letter itself from Aaron Taylor Johnston's William Silver Grambell said, basically, "This is, this is actually what happened," even though he did make a point of mentioning that when trying to [00:57:00] rationalize and justify his story, that he forgot to bring the letter that was written by his, you know-
Jess: He did forget it
his,
Damien: his shipmate, he forgot to bring it back with him, so he had no proof in written form. So maybe the letter itself or the contents of the letter itself were hallucinated. But I, I just think it was, like, a deep piece on unreliableness coming from a place- This is not where I thought
Ryan: we were gonna have a big disagreement
who
Damien: may have been poisoned, who may have just been guilt-ridden, who may have been fattened at, because- You can do drugs and eat
Jess: turtles in a parallel realm ... maybe
Damien: he was never married to Bessie, whatever her name was. She married his rival, and so he's been destroyed about that and decided to go back and kill his wife, but wasn't.
I think there were a million different things that could've been- Bessie ... that would've been pretty much, pretty well justified in his actions, or lack thereof. But I didn't get any parallel realminess, with the exception of the odd hieroglyphs and the stuff that he was seeing. With the
Jess: exception of the parallel realm he was in.
The parallel-o realm.
Ryan: [00:58:00] Well, we'll leave it to the listeners to decide. Sure. Dear listeners- Give us your rating
Jess: and tell us why it's 64 ... let us know how many- Yeah, 71 ... yeah, how many
Ryan: destinies do you give it out of 71? We are gonna rate the story, though. This is when we do our whiskey ratings. So that goes from zero fingers of whiskey all the way to five fingers of whiskey.
Jess, what are you giving The Discovery of the Treasure Isles?
Jess: I wrote down three, but I'm bumping it up. I'm argumentative. I knew you would. I think it's a three and a half.
Damien: I knew you would- I think the- ... 'cause you know what's coming.
Jess: Yep. I think we're eating turtles, we're in an alternate plane, we're on the island from Lost.
Your buddy just died 'cause he didn't get to eat any turtles His island has no jewels. 3.5.
Damien: 3.5,
Ryan: that's generous. 3.5, three and a half fingers. I'm gonna give this a very strange rating. 100. I was, I was so excited at the beginning of this story. We're on a boat, it's weird, there's a creepy ghost ship. This is like a six for me right out of the gate.
And then slowly those fingers, they start getting lopped off [00:59:00] as I get more and more disappointed as the story goes on. But I started out so high- No ... that I come in at three and a half fingers too. Yes, yes, yes. This
Damien: is r- all right. You know what? I'm- So
Ryan: let me tell me, let me tell you what happened. I started at five.
No, you already did. You did. I started at five, half a finger gets cut off because they got off the boat, half a finger gets cut off for the unjustifiable length, and half a finger gets cut off- The
Jess: unjustifiable length ...
Ryan: for no weird encounters on the island. What about- There was no monsters, there was no other people
Jess: Christmas bonus? Does it get a Christmas bump?
Ryan: No, there's no Christmas bonus. It's three and a half fingers, and I think that's generous. Damien? Just to
Jess: do this story again for our Christmas bonus episode.
Ryan: Tell us why you're only giving it an empty glass.
Damien: I... No, I... It's not an empty glass. I smashed it on the ground.
It doesn't compare to... Well, again, y- there's factors that go into this. I was gonna give it a, a two, but now that you guys came in above what it deserves, I'm gonna go down to a one and a half. Ho, ho, naughty. Yeah. It's [01:00:00] just the potential and the lost potential, and the choices that were make, I think purposeful.
I don't think this is the sign of a weak writer. It's not a, a, a disheveled author that's going for-
Ryan: Nope. Yeah, I think you're right about that ... you know, it's
Damien: like, "And then topless Amazonians came out," and then, "Yeah." You know? Would have improved
Ryan: it.
Damien: But sure, anything would have improved it. Literally anything.
And literarily anything. So it, it just, it, it failed. It didn't land. It did, it made some potential choices, and then, like our fearless captain, made the worst possible decision- Mm-hmm ... in how to pursue those choices. Here,
Ryan: here are the vagaries of these ratings, friends. If this story had started off on any location other than a ship, I'd be with Damien.
But because it was on a ship, I was so excited.
Damien: Yeah, but then he started losing fingers, boss, and- Yeah ... it never turned back.
Ryan: They were just rocks in the end.
Jess: Like, that was so great. All along. Flint and a tansbar. He's trying to, he's trying to prove how [01:01:00] sane he is. Like, you know what? Like, you could see that coming.
I don't care that-
Damien: Ever since he, ever since he ate the poison berry and he drank the wacky gold water, I was like, "This guy-
Jess: What year was this story written?
Damien: ... is living in a fever dream." Who knows?
Ryan: 1864.
Jess: Yeah, so the- I would
not have seen it coming in 1864 ... the gold
water is laudanum. Maybe it's arsenic.
The berries are just poison. No, it's gold.
It's Goldschläger.
Damien: It is. Gold- Goldwasser if you wanna get the cheap version of Goldschläger. God. Which is gross The expensive version is gross so I can only imagine Yeah, all, all of them. I mean, it's cinnamon schnapps. That's a gimmick. Anyway. Yeah, I don't know.
You're being too generous, and I don't know what, what's going on. I wanna know what your ulterior motive is. I wanna know why you attacked me- I'm gonna eat a turtle ... in the beginning of the adventure. Yeah.
Ryan: Crab soup, yeah.
Damien: I like how he ate raw mussels. I still can't get past that. That grossed me out pretty, pretty deeply.
Jess: Can you eat raw mussels? You can eat raw mussels. People eat, people eat
Damien: raw oysters and raw clams. Why can't you eat a raw mussel? I don't know. Maybe you can, but the idea of that was just really gross to me. I mean, I, I don't really want
Ryan: to, [01:02:00] but... If I stop to think about it, I wouldn't wanna eat raw oysters either, but they are just so delicious.
Who ate the first raw oyster?
Jess: Who? I think the answer is always someone who was starving, and then they're like, "Ah, just die." Yeah.
Ryan: Yeah. "Oh, I didn't die." The guy that invented Tabasco sauce, I think.
Jess: A little lemon wedge. So- I need more stuff to put this on ... we're all over,
Ryan: we're all over the map on this one, friends.
You you let us know what, you were great.
Jess: No, we're not. I don't think we are all over the map. Two of us are right.
Damien: There were- nobody came in higher than three and a half. Just because you started at 18 fingers like a millipede doesn't mean that, uh, we're all over the map. You guys begrudgingly gave it three and a half.
Jess- No, I- ... ended up bumping it up. I was, I backed mine down. Yeah, out of spite I did ... but it wasn't, yeah, it wasn't anywhere near being great. It's just not her best. Like, stick with The Phantom.
Ryan: No, that's definitely true. Yeah. Phantom Coach is an amazing story.
Damien: Yeah.
Ryan: Well, that's gonna take us to our if this, then that.
If you liked this story as much as Jess and I did- ... but if you were also as disappointed in it as Damien was, and wished, as all three of us did, that [01:03:00] something else happened, like a monster showing up- Yeah ... you might actually like some of the original Conan stories by Robert E. Howard. What? And I'm thinking of three in particular here, because they all feature ships landing on mysterious islands and the discovery of something exciting, and then there was a lot of fighting and some chain mail bikini-clad folks.
Folks. In- folks . I don't know how you follow up chain mail bikini. Yeah. There's some, there's some, some scantily clad women. So those three stories in particular, I mean, any of the Robert Howard Conan stories are great, but the three in particular that I would recommend, uh, here for, for this story are Xuthal of the Dusk, The Iron Shadows of the Moon, and especially, especially Queen of the Black Coast.
Standard asterisk warnings apply when reading a, a, a Howard story, particularly for misogyny, racism, and other unpleasant subjects. But hey, you're listening to a podcast that talks about stories from the 19th and 20- early
Jess: 20- You're
Ryan: accustomed [01:04:00] to these things, friends. I've got...
Jess: Can I also add that our editor recommends the Lady Eleanor Smith story No Ships Pass?
Which we covered- Which we covered ...
Ryan: in season one. Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, No Ships Pass. Season
Jess: one, episode four.
Ryan: And I think we rated that pretty highly. That was pretty high. It was a f- 'Cause that was a good one ... funny,
Jess: weird story, yeah. Yeah.
Ryan: Yeah So lots of good stuff there, but do take a look at the old Conan stories by Robert E.
Howard if you liked this story and wished something would happen in it.
Damien: Also, great, great note. Go read Lady Eleanor Smith's No Ships Pass because- Yeah ... that's what this story could have been. Could have been.
Ryan: Well, uh, seeing as how I've reached the cherries of my Old Fashioned, that's gonna do it for us on this episode-
of Whiskey and the Weird. We wanna thank you for joining a- and spending this time with us. If you enjoyed spending this time with us as much as we enjoyed spending it with you, would you please rate and review us wherever you catch your podcasts? We always like to thank Dr. Blake Brandes for providing the music for Whiskey and the Weird.
And Damien, if they would like to tell us where some treasure [01:05:00] could be found, where can they do that? Well, if you want some
Damien: real treasure, and it ends up being flint and sandspar, I think is what it
Jess: was. Sandspar. I don't know.
Damien: Hit us, hit, uh, I'm wrong. Hit us up on the socials. We're @whiskeyandtheweird on, uh, all the meta properties, so that's Facebook, Instagram, the blue blue, which is the new one that's coming.
I'm just kidding, I made that up. Um, @whiskeyandtheweird. We spell our whiskeys with an E. We hope you do, too. And if not, may your life be as pointless as our fearless 26-year-old first-time captain.
Ryan: Hmm. Rough. Hey, Jess, what are we reading next?
Jess: We should probably read The Curfew Tolls by Stephen Vincent Benet.
Ryan: There's a new author for us. Yeah. And I like the sound of that title, actually. I'm Ryan Whitley.
Jess: I'm Jessica Burr.
Damien: And I'm Damien Smith. Or am I?
Ryan: And together we're
Damien: Whiskey
Ryan: and
Damien: the Weird.
Ryan: Somebody [01:06:00] send us home.
Damien: As always, keep your friends through the ages and your creeps in the pages.
Ryan: Good night, everybody