Damien drops cuckoo knowledge, Ryan gets a namesake nook and Jess drinks a bargain beer - and actually likes it! Plus, so many Willow references. Love you, Warwick D! 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: Scarrowfell by Robert Holdstock.
Bar Talk (our recommendations):
Jessica is watching The Assessment (2024, dir. Fleur Fortuné); drinking Evil Twin Brewing Pils: Dandies.
Damien is watching DTF St. Louis (2026; TV series); drinking Larceny Bourbon old fashioned with chipotle bitters.
Ryan is watching Lee Cronin's The Mummy (2026; dir. Lee Cronin); drinking Campbeltown Journey whisky.
If you liked this week’s story, read Voice of the Fire by Alan Moore.
Up next: "The Badlands" by John Metcalfe
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] Hey, hop in the carriage, losers.
We're heading to the English countryside where the vibes are pastoral punk and the neighbors are sus and sacrificey.
Ryan: Welcome back everybody. I'm Ryan Whitley.
Jess: I'm 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 path.
What is happening?
If you don't want the stories spoiled, make sure you read [00:01:00] them ahead of time, because otherwise Jess and Damien will spoil them for you.
Damien: That's what we do.
Ryan: 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, as edited by Alasdair Richmond. But look there, in the smoke of the fire.
Is that a, is that a pitchfork coming at me? What? Pointed right at me? Oh. Is this the time? Am I the person? Is this the place? What is going on?
Jess: Jessica, help. Oh my God. Why don't we read, and perhaps even talk about, Scaro Fell by Robert Holdstock?
Ryan: That sounds like a much safer idea than what that [00:02:00] gentleman with the pitchfork had in mind.
But before we get to that, we've got some bar talk to do. Damien, I see your glass is full tonight with an amber mead. It is.
Damien: It is. Good eye. Of course, I've been holding it up a lot, sipping through that intro. Holy cow. I do have to say that at some point you said, "Pointing it at me," and I instantly shot to a scene in Willow starring Val Kilmer and, uh, Warwick Davis, where Willow claims to be a powerful m- magician, and he's, he takes an acorn out of his pouch, and he points it at him, and he goes, "I'm a very powerful sorcerer.
I'll throw this at you and turn you to stone." And Val Kilmer's mad martigan goes, "Oh God, no. Somebody help me. There's a peck here with an acorn pointing it at me."
Ryan: It's just classic line, lives rent-free in my head forever. Um, and- I love- Apparently ... I love Willow, but I, I also love the fact that you felt it necessary to inform us of who was in it.
Damien: Yeah. Well, it's, it's, it's, uh, it, that is my movie if someone says, "What's your favorite movie of all time?" And- It's a great choice ... going under the qualifier of [00:03:00] it, the movie that hit me the hardest the time that I saw it, it still belongs to Willow. No, no movie has ever hit me the way Willow hit me the first time I saw it.
Ryan: CGI totally holds up, too.
Damien: The everything, everything about it. The dragon demon That, that was modeled after Clint Howard, Ron Howard the director's brother. This is a true story. He modeled a beast after his brother, and when you see it, you, you get it.
All right, so anyway, back to my drink. I am drinking- I'm just drinking Larceny Bourbon. I'm experimenting with some bitters, so I put in a chipotle bitter. I don't know why. It's not really doing anything- And? ... for me. Mm-hmm. Uh, yeah, it's... I feel like I kinda wasted it and I turned it into what would be, like, a drink of the month at Chili's.
Not that I'm against drinks of the month at Chili's, but- Just a random Chipotle bitters. I put in a little bit of simple just to sweeten it up so it wasn't just like, you know, smoke and smoke. But I should've just kept it plain larceny. But I will tell you about an exciting show that I watched recently- Oh
on HBO, and it's DTF: St. Louis. Oh, I've
Ryan: heard [00:04:00] of this, yeah. Yeah.
Damien: Super, super weird, and- David
Ryan: Harbour and Jason Bateman r-
Damien: And the Bateman, and more, probably more importantly is Linda Cardellini- Sure ... is back, and spicier as ever. Definitely spicier than these Chipotle bitters that I have in my drink.
It's, it's a brilliantly cast show. The writing is razor sharp. The, the dark humor is pitch perfect. David Harbour should get an Emmy nomination for this, and if he doesn't I'm gonna be very disappointed. I don't, I don't wanna give too much away, but essentially- Is it a comedy? It- It's, it's a, it's a bit of a dark comedy- Yeah, okay
but it, it is, it's also, there is a dead body early in the show, and it's a little bit of a whodunit. Richard Jenkins plays the lead detective- Oh, I do like him ... on the case, and he's great as always. The, the entire cast is just exquisite. There are a whole bunch of just absolutely inane scenes. The dialogue gets really crazy.
The characters are lovable, memorable. Just go watch it, and try and go in blind. [00:05:00] And yes, DTF means what you think it means. So that's- Yeah, I was gonna say, with a
Ryan: title like that I assumed this is not a family
Damien: show. It's, it's DTF: St. Louis. There's some harsh language. There's some nudity. But che- check it out.
One of the Skarsgårds is in it too, but not the one you think. So- ... it is, so DTF: St. Louis. D- D- DTF: St. Louis on HBO, and I'm drinking Talis bourbon with some bitters in it. So I'll throw it over to Jess. Jess, what you got in your glass?
Jess: I'm having a beer because I bought an Evil Twin Brewing one, and I was like- Oh boy
"That's, like, thematic." But then it wasn't really for this story, but I had already opened it.
Ryan: Jess, you never like beer.
Jess: I like some... I actually, you know what, I just like a PBR tall boy, end of list at this point in my life. List. But I'm trying to be, I'm trying to branch out. I like to try new things, and then- Not even a
Ryan: Molson anymore, or whatever that hockey beer was that you liked?
Labatt? A Labatt. Labatt's, that's it. Labatt's. Sorry. Labatt's Blue. Molson. But this
Jess: one is just a Pils that's called Dandy's A Little Bit [00:06:00] Fancy. It's pretty good. It actually kinda just tastes like a- Puts a feather in your cap.
Ryan: Just
Jess: kinda tastes like a PBR. It's a pretty regular Pils. And I recently watched a movie that came out in 2024 called The Assessment, and it's one of those movies that shows up on Hulu and, like- It just like, did anyone make this movie?
Like, I've never heard of it before.
Damien: Where did you come from, film?
Jess: It has Elizabeth Olsen in it, Alicia Vikander, uh, Himesh Patel, and like- Oh,
Ryan: wow ...
Jess: like a decent budget. It's like a kind of sci-fi-y, I don't know. It's just like, I'll turn this on. It's, it's incredibly strange. It's kind of like m- a mid-apocalyptic movie where if you are really, really wealthy, you can apply to, like, have a kid.
But you have to be assessed. So, like basically someone from the- Oh, okay ... service has to come out and, and make sure that your family is, like, worthy of having a [00:07:00] child. Anyway, it's really weird. It's like a psychological sci-fi, not quite thriller, just like kind of a drama with some thrilling bits in it.
But it's pretty good. It's w- like, no one's ever heard of it. I don't think it was in the theaters. It just is on Hulu for some reason. But it's worth watching. The Assessment. I like it. Yeah. Ryan, what are you drinking?
Ryan: Well, I'm drinking whiskey tonight. And my friend David has been absolutely bullying me with text messages of him in Scotland going to the Springbank Distillery, drinking all kinds of fancy Springbank whiskeys, and it's really rude.
Mm-hmm. Screw you, David. Thanks, David. Yeah. Get out of here. Because I can't get Springbank here in Florida for whatever reason. I don't know why. It's never in any of the stores, and I think he knows that because Springbank is one of the finer whiskeys that we both really, really like. But the only Campbelltown I've been able to get recently is a blend that Total Wine puts together called their Campbelltown Journey.
Okay. I r- I like it. [00:08:00] It's pretty good. It's no Springbank, but it'll do in the interim. So, I'm drinking this straw-colored, pale- Campbelltown journey. It's, it's a, it's a, it's a delightful, it's a delightful dram. But, but there's nothing, there's nothing remarkable about it, but it's a good workaday dram.
All right. As for what I've been up to, well, I went to the movies the other night with our dear friend Kelly, and we saw Lee Cronin's The Mummy. Oh, boy. Okay. Have either of you seen this? No. Not yet.
Damien: I've definitely- ... I've definitely heard the polar extremes of, feedback, so- Yeah ... I'm curious to hear yours.
I
Ryan: can, I can understand that. I generally liked it. Okay. Okay. I liked the first half of it a lot more than the second half. It is really, really gross. So it goes hardcore into body horror in ways that rival some of the scenes from movies like Bring Her Back. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's, it's pretty hardcore in the body [00:09:00] horror stuff.
There was several times when you could detect that the audience collectively was closing their eyes and cringing. What I liked about it was that it's a Mummy movie that is straight up a horror film, right? Mm-hmm. So it's not... It's, I mean, I love the Brendan Fraser movie. I love it, but it's, that's a pulp adventure.
Bro, yeah. That, I mean- Mm-hmm. It's not even close to being a horror.
Damien: Right.
Ryan: I like the idea of, of a Mummy horror movie because the mummy is one of my favorite, if not my favorite monster of the- I remember you mentioning that when
Damien: we read the- Yeah, of the classic, yeah ... when we read the, the, the Egyptian themed- Yeah, and there's just
Ryan: not, there's not a lot of stories about mummies.
There's not a lot of good Mummy movies. I don't know why. I don't know if people are... I don't, I don't know if they're... What, I don't know what about a mummy challenges writers and directors, but- Also- Um ...
Damien: it's the slowness. It suffers from, like, a easy to escape, it suffers an easy to escape mythos, right?
But- Like every- Right ... else, like even they took zombies, and zombies always had numbers. Yeah, and they made them fast. Yeah. Right? Well, they made them fast, but also they had numbers. So it was like you could be [00:10:00] surrounded by slow-moving creatures. But a mummy, it was always just one mummy just kinda wandering around.
And then It Follows comes out, and it takes that- It's a mummy, yeah ... slow but persistent, always going after you- Mm-hmm ... thing and made it scary again.
Ryan: Well, hear me out on this, because I think- ... that a mummy could be scary, and Kelly and I discussed this at length, or rather, I sermonized them at length.
A mummy is a sorcerer.
Damien: Yeah, no doubt. Now
Ryan: it's scary.
Damien: Okay. '
Ryan: Cause it go- all kinds of blood, and black magic, and flesh magic, and all kind- Oh ... like, nobody has done that for some reason yet. Okay. Any- anyway, here's the reason. Is that in
Jess: this movie, or is this just you imagining what you want a mummy- That's
Ryan: just if I made a Mummy movie.
Okay.
Jess: Yeah. That's, just, just to clarify.
Ryan: Yeah. That's- Yeah ... that's Ryan Whitley's The Mummy, not Lee Cronin's The Mummy. Yeah, Lee Cronin's The Mummy's not a wizard. So here's, here's my problem with the back half of the movie in summary. This, this isn't gonna give anything away necessarily. You've seen the back half of this movie a dozen times if you've watched any possession film.
Damien: Okay.
Ryan: And so the, [00:11:00] nothing was distinctive about it. Nothing was particularly mummy-like about it- All right ... at the end. There's also some really strong and, and, and fairly valid critiques of a of ableism in the, in the film. Okay. Or, or at the film. Levied at the film, I guess. And, and I can, I can see that as well.
But it was, for me, I was in the middle. I, I gave it three and a half stars at the end out of five. Okay. It's long. Kind of the middle. It doesn't feel long. Two and a half is in the middle, but you know. A little above the middle. Yeah, it's long, but doesn't feel long. It feels about the right length, and you never are looking at your watch during the course of the film, so I will give it that.
Good. Yeah.
Damien: Important.
Ryan: Important.
Damien: Well,
Jess: did you have a, did you have a pineapple Sprite at the- No,
Ryan: I had nothing.
Damien: Well, look, so here's the thing. I was a bit late. You walked by a Coke Freestyle machine and- I did ... you didn't get a
Ryan: coconut Sprite- You had nothing? ... pineapple Sprite? I did. We were, I was late. I was a little bit late.
Kelly says, "Don't worry about it, because there's always tons of previews and ads," right? Zero ads. And I said, "I know." We walk in three minutes late, the movie has started. There were no ads and no previews. That [00:12:00] has never happened in my life. By edict of Lee
Damien: Cronin- That's funny. ... no ads shall be placed before my film.
Ryan: I don't know what was going on.
Damien: No, it's pretty good. It was weird. It's wild.
Ryan: So that's that's Lee Cronin's The Mummy. I think, I think it's worth a watch, but if you're not, I will say if you're not into body horror or if you're not hard up for a good mummy movie, maybe wait for it to come out on streaming or, or, or rental.
So question,
Damien: worth a watch, but worth the big screen? I'm the wrong person- Worth the cinematic experience? ... to ask
Ryan: on that, because I almost never think it's worth the big screen.
Damien: All right. Huh.
Ryan: I would be fine with this on my living room TV 'cause-
Damien: I mean, I just watched Dune Two recently to- That one's worth the big screen.
That's worth the big screen. Yeah.
Ryan: I saw that in IMAX, and I don't ever see a movie in IMAX. Okay.
Damien: All right, all right. Good to know. Good to know.
Ryan: Okay, cool. Lee Cronin's The Mummy.
Damien: Good. Three and a half stars. All right,
Ryan: that's what we're, that's what we're drinking- Great movie ... that's what we're doing, and that's gonna take us to our author and publication information for tonight.
Robert Paul Holdstock [00:13:00] is a bit of an outlier for us here at Whiskey and the Weird, as he's quite contemporary. Were it not for an untimely and unfair E. coli infection, chances are good he'd still be with us. But if this genre fiction has taught us anything, it is that there is very often a vast gulf between what is and what should be.
Holdstock, born in Kent, England, was the eldest of five siblings, born into a solidly middle-class family. In his teenage years, he held jobs in such varied fields as banana shipping, construction, and mining.
Holdstock was primarily known as a fantasist, but he made not infrequent offerings to science fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. His most critically acclaimed works, and also his most commercially successful, was the 1984 novel Mythago Wood, which won both the British Science Fiction Association Award for Best Novel and the World [00:14:00] Fantasy Award for the same.
Many- Whoa ... critics praised it for being on par with Tolkien, not derivative of Tolkien, and even surpassing Tolkien in some elements. It's a contemporary fantasy set post-World War II in a mythical wood in England, inhabited by creatures formed of ancient memories and the myths found in nearby humans' subconscious minds.
The first in a series, it had five follow-ups of largely equal value. Some critics thought one of them wasn't, wasn't up to, to snuff, but- Which one? ... in general, they were... You know, I knew you were gonna ask, and I don't remember.
Jess: Number four sucks.
Ryan: Right. Let's go with that. Okay. Number four it is. But I'm intrigued by, by the sound of Mythago Wood and the series that followed.
It, it... I'd never heard of it before, but it gets almost unanimous high praise. Holdstock was known to his friends to be warm, funny, sometimes weird, and, this is the best part, given to sudden surreal and [00:15:00] insightful comments. His illness and death were very sudden. So sudden, in fact, that although he knew he was ill, he was not aware he was going to die.
In one eulogy I read on his website, his friend and fellow writer, Christopher Priest, put it this way, quote, "He did not have to face death. He did not have to undergo dying" Priest recalled that some years before his death, Holdstock gave an interview in which he made these remarks, proof that he could be suddenly surreal and weirdly insightful.
I quote, "Everything we know now is destined to die except for the forest and the Earth. Earth is the eternal survivor, and homo sapiens is not part of its mindless and inexorable plan. There are many forests to come. There will be flashes of intelligence. The last thing to burn will not be a man, but a leaf.
[00:16:00] So eat pizza and drink beer and cheer up. It'll soon be over." Geez. Guy just- Huh ... just came out with things like that apparently.
Damien: Yeah. Way to win the crowd.
Ryan: Our story tonight was written for a Halloween evening of storytelling hosted by the aforementioned Christopher Priest. It was then slipped into an anthology Holdstock himself was editing, which was entitled Other Edens.
Legend has it, when he won a French award for the story and they announced what volume it had been published in and who had edited it, Robert Paul Holdstock blushed in embarrassment. So that's gonna take us to our summary of Scarrowfell, and Damien's got that for us tonight.
Damien: I do, y'all. Hey, hop in the carriage, losers.
We're heading to the English countryside where the vibes are pastoral punk and the neighbors are sus and sacrificey. Story opens on Jenny, a girl who clearly needs to get better sleep because she has been [00:17:00] trapped in this constant loop of a nightmare about some three blind mice... Uh, I'm sorry, men- Mm-hmm
and creatures following a very grim suitor. Mm. Her mother, or at least the woman she calls mother who is her caretaker seeing as how her actual parents died in a very, very convenient fire, is there to comfort her, which in this story and many stories like it is usually code for gaslighting you until some sort of ritual starts.
Go ahead. I'm gonna go ahead and open the door right there. Yeah. It's everyone's third favorite Amazon shopping holiday, Lords' Eve. Lords' Eve, everyone. In the village of Scarrowfell which is celebrated with the same fanatical pomp as the Super Bowl, but with probably a smidge more slaughtered livestock and just a few fewer commercials.
This village is basically a fortress built inside this old kind of a Saxon fort, which is your first clue that these people aren't big on outsiders or visitors. Sound like anybody you know? So Jenny is usually found hanging out with her [00:18:00] gang, and by her gang I mean two boys, Kevin and Mick. They do typical kid stuff which includes tormenting the lo- local priest who they've called g- or who they've nicknamed Gargoyle- Mm-hmm
which I think- Mm ... is a pretty rad nickname. I would like to be called Gargoyle
It's Father Gargoyle.
Anyway Everyone in the town is all hyped up because allegedly this is the year that a mythical war hero named Sirik is returning after almost a millennium and a half. So I, I don't know about you, Ry or you, Jess, but if someone tells me that a 15-year-old war hero is coming to dinner, I'm not gonna set a place at the table.
I don't need that sort of pressure- ... or stress in my life. I'm probably going to move to a different state or commonwealth.
Ryan: Hmm, that's odd. I'm getting out the silver candlesticks. I'm sure you
Damien: would. I'm sure you would. So anyway, that's what the whole town is doing, prepping for this big homecoming.
Meanwhile, the kids sneak into the church tower. They pass by a stone demon that Kevin pets for luck. The stone demon is [00:19:00] described in great detail, and it sounds pretty horrific. I would like to see it in art form.
Ryan: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm,
Damien: mm-hmm. Jenny is rocking this thing called a ghost bell. I, I, I think she put it on her neck, but other people in the village put it around their legs or arms.
I, we never really find out what the tinkling is for, I don't think. But anyway, so she's wearing the ghost bell Feeling a little bit of dread. Remembered a few years back when a friend of hers named Mary had some similar nightmares that she had, and then mysteriously disappeared. For a, a recent Lord's Eve, so she's thinking about Mary and pouring one out on the curb for her.
Ryan: Mm-hmm.
Damien: You know, I, th- this is obviously showing a trend that Scarrowfell has a major missing child problem. And obviously the local constabulary, as it were, is probably too busy eating all the delicious roasted ox that's going on for the festival. Which, according to the Yelp reviews, is mostly gray, greasy meat.
So not too compelling- True story ... but, you know, roasted ox is what it [00:20:00] is. Ginny wakes up late, unfortunately, on the day of the festival. She sleeps in, she's not awoken, she freaks out. Not just late though, 15 hours late, so she's missed the entire parade with all those ghost bells and stick bangers- Mm
and the like. Her bell is actually gone, and suddenly everyone is giving her the cold shoulder. As a matter of fact, she's told she's being denied. So this is denial which doesn't really get expounded on. But Kevin, who is apparently- We'll talk about that. I've got that queued up for you. Moving past it.
All right, cool Moving past it. Good, good, good. Moving on. Kevin, her pal, her once pal, is all of a sudden turning into a real jerk around her. He's taking this denial to a whole new level. He calls her a cuckoo, and then starts jabbing her in the groin. Inappropriate, Kevin. Not, not polite. Inappropriate. You know, the only person who's actually showing her any sort of kindness or empathy is Mr.
Box, who's the pub landlord, and I assume the local hunchback. He's crying [00:21:00] and tells her that she's special and chosen and we all know what that means- Mm ... in this context. It's the one word you probably never wanna hear coming from the local friendly hunchback who's sobbing over your now alive body.
Especially daunting when he's holding a baked potato, drinking a beer, and again, sobbing into said items. So night falls in Scarrowfell. The festivities take a turn for what I would call the metal. Because all the jolliness dissipates. Everyone takes off their bells, throw it into a fire. They smash their instruments, throw the wood into the fire.
They stop dancing. They start... They stop singing, and they just make that fire roar. Then there's an eerie silence that permeates through the entire village around the bonfire. And the Scarrowmen, who are wearing black pig masks or c- pig makeup- Mm-hmm ... start surrounding Ginny at this- Mm ... iron gate, I think at one point referred to as a life gate That's when the mother shows up again, not [00:22:00] the real mother, but the mother mother, the other mother according to that one book from Josh Malerman.
Ditches... She, she ditches all the Iron Age charms and tells Jenny to hold quiet. That's when the veil thins. The atmosphere- Mm-hmm ... around them starts to get a little creepy, a little textured. Shadows start to seep through this Life Gate first, and then some big spectral dude that's referred to as the Father is like a...
I don't know, it's seems like a void, seems like a vacuum, but then it also has, like, branches coming out of its head. It's got a single eye. So it's a very, it's a very pagan overlord. It definitely gives, like, The Ritual beast, if you remember that movie, to me at least. So he man- he sort of mani- the Father manifests as this shadow corpse.
He comes trotting through. It's a rotting jaw falling off of a face. Mm-hmm. We all assume this is Sirik, that cen- that millennium-and-a-half-year-old, you know, war hero MVP. [00:23:00] Time for a spa day, dude. Like, yeah, he looks like, he just looks like a really, really run through- ... Walking Dead guy. Jenny is about to be kissed by this thing, but then as it turns out, Kevin, who was the one who was jabbing Jenny's groin and calling her a cuckoo, he freaks out and runs through the gate.
He disappears.
Ryan: Hmm.
Damien: He's gone. So it wasn't Jenny who was the thought to be sacrificed during this ceremony. It ends up being Kevin. Sorry, Kev.
Jess: Sorry, Kev.
Damien: Maybe you shouldn't go poking people in the groin. However, Ginny is very important because she is told to dig through a pile of cloths and pull out a rabbit.
Not just a rabbit, a hare, which to my understanding is a very large rabbit. And so when she does hold it, it turns out that that is the previous vessel for Sirik, the ancient dark one, which then transfers- ... from her through the rabbit, or to her from the rabbit- Mm-hmm ... and she becomes the new [00:24:00] vessel for Sirik.
So Ginny is gone, long live Sirik in a tiny girl's body. The story ends with Gi- Ginny, this neo-ghoul protector hybrid, and the rest of the village joining each other in a twisted version of the Lord's Prayer, as I shall now recite. Please follow along if you know it. "
Our father, who art in the forest, Horned One is thy name.
Thy kingdom in the wood, thy will is the blood, in the glade as it is in the village. Give us this day our kiss of earth and forgive us our male factions. Destroy those who malefact against us- Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm ... and lead us to the other world. For thine is the kingdom of the shadow, thine is the power and the glory.
Thou art the stag which ruts with us, and we are the earth beneath thy feet. Droca nemoton. Amen."
Ryan: I knew that sounded familiar. [00:25:00] Well, Damien, thank you for an excellent summary- Great work ... as always. Thank you. You know, obviously this story was written in the late '80s, which means that for us at least, it's got a ton of differences from the stuff that we normally read.
We're normally on the other end of the, of the century. What were some things about the writing that you noticed right away that, that, that seemed different to you from, from some of the other stories that we've read?
Jess: How the village was described was, I guess, like, not necessarily like more cinematic language, but it was easier- Mm.
Mm-hmm ... to imagine it as kind of the behind the scenes of, I mean, we'll talk about all of these Wicker Man style movies.
Ryan: Mm-hmm.
Jess: So just fit better into a version of this that I had seen in movies before, instead instead of something- Right ... that, like, I'm starting.
Ryan: You were conversant with the-
Jess: Yeah ... with
Ryan: the descriptions.
Yeah, I, I agree with that
Damien: Yeah, I would, I would agree. I think it probably [00:26:00] took, it took less time- Mm-hmm ... sort of moving the story too. Whereas I think- And less time to get into it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Less time to get into it. Yeah. And I think that that's just a symptom of more contemporary storytelling- Mm-hmm
where people don't have the patience for the setup. Also, we were placed in the moment and not placed at a pub where people were sitting around a table that then jumped to the story being told. Very good. Right. Yeah. You know? Which is- No frame
Ryan: narrative here ...
Damien: probably another indicator that this is a little bit more contemporary.
I, I also think that especially when the, it got to the point of the father sort of coming through and unveiling- Mm-hmm ... themselves for the ceremony, that there was probably a little bit more of a, you know, George Romero-esque- Mm-hmm ... description. It
Ryan: was more graphic than- It's
Damien: more graphic. Mm-hmm. It's definitely more rotten, I think would be a good word for it.
Mm-hmm. And there was less- Putrescent. There was less posey behind like describing the, the, the terrifying nature of the beast. So and in weird horror it's all about, [00:27:00] you know, or in cosmic horror it's all about like size and grandeur- Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm ... and mind-bending-ness, and this was just straight up like decaying- Mm-hmm
Rose creep show type of thing. Yeah.
Jess: It wasn't the like, "And nobody could comprehend it," instead of describing it. Right. Right. It just was described.
Ryan: It was, it was comprehendible. It was like- Yeah. Of course ... it was just really gross. Yeah. It was like, "Oh, my
Damien: jaw fell off. Sorry." Yeah. "I, I got, I got a rotten branch through my eyeball," you know?
Ryan: I, I agree with both of the things that y'all have said. To that I would add music is, is a part of this story at the- Yeah ... at least at the beginning, and for reasons that we talked about before the show. I'm kind of paying attention to that right now for a couple of, couple of different reasons. But I noticed that the language at times did feel to me like it had a deliberate cadence to it, or a lyricism that was, is not present in some of the older stories that we read by, just by, by virtue of the length of those sentences sometimes.
Sure. Yeah. There was, there was definitely a beat to some of the things that Holdstock was writing, at least in the [00:28:00] early, early pages I thought, and that was part of what drew me into the story. It felt like there was a, there was a soundtrack already built into the, to the words that he had chosen.
Damien: Yeah.
That's a good call Which is interesting, which is interesting because you actually, because we're, everything's told through Ginny's perspective- Mm-hmm ... we sleep through most of the music. Like, we see sort of- Right, right. ... the pre-festival type set up and stuff- The fun part ... where people are jamming out. Yeah.
And then we, we join her in her s- in her unconsciousness for a little while, and then she comes out of it and it's like, "Oh, party's over."
Ryan: Yeah, just, just when she wakes up and she's scared, she's screaming for her mother. This is just an example of some of the cadence that's here. "Hush, child, I'm here. I'm beside you.
Quiet now. Go back to sleep." "I'm frightened. I'm frightened. I had a terrible dream." It... There's this, there's almost this poetic rhythm to some of the language. It's like an ethereal sing song almost. Like free, like free verse sing song. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. So, Holdstock wrote [00:29:00] mostly fantasy, and this story is definitely set in a fantasy village.
Yeah. This is not, this is not the French countryside. Does that add to or detract from the story for, for you guys? I think, Damien, you read a little bit of fantasy. I don't know about you, Jess. I, I read quite a bit. Do you think this could have been set in a f- in a, in a European village and been the same story?
Damien: Yeah, sure. Okay. I mean, I, I do. You know, it probably would've been more Clive, Clive Barkerian. Mm-hmm. Clive Bar- Barkish. But also, you know, you look at even Stephen King had fairy tale, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And it's like, so he, he can dabble in that. I think it was nice because it didn't lay onto heavy world building.
Like, some stuff was introduced and then not explained further. It was just, like, how it was. And I think it's- I really like
Ryan: that style of world building, actually. I do too. For a short story, it was perfect. Yeah, I
Damien: do too, and I think you have to do that when you're writing short fiction. Yeah. Right? It's just like you don't have the same column inches to be able to- Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm ... paint this massive universe and then dive into it for another 700 pages. So it's just like, talk about some stuff, [00:30:00] let, let the reader, you know, ruminate in, in the weirdness, and then move on or don't. But the good news is it never detracted from the story. Right. And it left some compelling elements where I was like, "That's so weird," but also, like, I get it.
I understand why it was there even if I don't know what it was for. And so I can, I, I can appreciate that, and I think that because of that, it sort of stood alone. It was-
Ryan: Mm-hmm ...
Damien: was geography-less, and it could've been anywhere, and it could've been any time really, to be honest.
Jess: Yeah, I think the timelessness of it was noticeable because it's, you know, a kid wandering through a village.
And so the way that she's narrating it, she's like, you know, kind of observant, but she's not gonna be like, "And now, here's the ice cream parlor that opened up in 19-" You know, like, you're just not getting those details. Right. So even if it was contemporary, it wouldn't... You wouldn't hear about it maybe.
Right. And so the things that she does notice are church, bar- Mm-hmm. Right ... stone [00:31:00] wall. You know, things that are, are a little more timeless.
Ryan: I felt like I... I agree with Damien. I th- I think this could have been set in any medieval European village or, or sort of early Renaissance. But I felt like I wanted it to be a little bit more fantasy.
I mean, knowing, knowing what I knew about the author going into it, I wanted a, a deeper sense of otherness from this village. So when the things were called the bar or the tavern, and when it was called the church, and when the, when the minister of the church was referred to as Father- Mm-hmm ... and when there was a gargoyle.
It, it was like, why is this, why is- Don't forget the Oozers.
Damien: Don't forget the Oozers. That's
Ryan: the only thing. Like, the people from... Those are just the people from the next village- Yeah ... with a weird name. I was like, is
Damien: it Ooze Village? I don't know what it says. Right Like Es Village in France? The
Ryan: vil- the village of Ooze.
Damien: Yeah.
Ryan: I, I just wanted more, more fantasy, and I think it would've been really easy to actually accomplish. Just throw in a, a mention of some kind of mythical creature or s- Some [00:32:00] dragon
Jess: walking by. Right.
Ryan: Yeah. Just something like that.
Jess: I mean, I, I think the story's more effective if there isn't that fantasy.
Damien: I agree with Jess.
Ryan: I think if y- Then why does he set it in a fantasy world? Why doesn't he just say this is
Damien: Bavaria? I don't know. But it doesn't, but it doesn't matter because everything prior to that would've been fantastic, sure, but, in that we didn't know anything about it, but nothing was, like, supernatural, you know?
It just wasn't, and the supernatural came in in the last three pages. Comes in at the end. Yeah. And so then it's like- This could've been any,
Ryan: any village with, that had this- Yeah ... weird belief system. Right.
Jess: Which is most villages. Or a cult. Like, every village you've ever seen in a movie- Right ... has this-
Ryan: Yeah
Jess: harvest festival that, "Oh, something's
Ryan: going weird." I guess I, I wanted a magician or something.
Damien: I, I see, I see what you're saying. But, but y- you know, I, I see what you're saying, but I totally agree with Jess that I think- Mm-hmm ... it worked better that there was no other, you know, magical or- It's certainly
Ryan: more timeless and-
mystical element. Yeah. The, the-
Damien: Until the very end, and then the end comes in and it's just like, okay, this got real weird r- [00:33:00] real fast. Yeah. This whole thing isn't just, you know, some fanatical belief that turns into nothing. You know? Like, read, read any ap- apocalypse prediction and, you know, end of times that it actually happened, and then it was like, whoa.
That made it more impactful because you didn't know if it was just all- Mm-hmm ... pipe dreams or smoke and mirrors, or if something was really gonna happen, and then it did. And I think if they had incorporated some sort of magical element or supernatural element earlier, it was like- Then you're waiting for the-
then it wouldn't have the same impact. Yeah. Yeah. I can, I can understand that. A guy coming through a portal. I can see that. Yeah.
Ryan: I can see that. Well, probably like you guys, when specific words are repeated in a short story, I pay attention to that. So when the word pledge showed up in two different contexts, I went, I, I underlined it and I went back to the first time I found it and underlined it there.
And so that word shows up, shows up twice. Holdstock uses it in two different ways. On page [00:34:00] 338, he writes this. This is in the words of the priest, Mr. Ashcroft. Holdstock says, "'We have made a pledge,' Mr. Ashcroft was intoning, 'A pledge of belief in a life after death, a pledge of belief in a god which is greater than humankind itself.'"
So the context for that usage of the word pledge is a sermon, and then on page 344 it's, it's a... The context is the promise to Sirick. Holdstock says this on that page: "We made a pledge to this man a long time ago when, when he fought to save the village. Tonight we're honoring that pledge. All of us have a part to play."
I wanna talk about this. What, what is Holdstock doing with this pair of pledges that seem to be to two different deities, two different ideals? Are these... Is it the idea that there's this sort of established religion on the surface, but yet there's the folk [00:35:00] religion that everybody believes underneath- Possibly
going on? What do you think?
Damien: Yeah. It could very well be the localization of, like, a greater belief system, and then attributed to an actual historical figure that is known and dear to them, even if he's a 15-year- a 1,500-year-old, you know, legend. So it, it could be. To be honest, it didn't strike me with the same broadsword to the gut that it did for you, the fact that he mentioned pledge earlier.
I just saw that as being sort of- There goes Ryan
Ryan: making stuff up again.
Damien: Yep. No, I j- I, I just thought as, like, you know, an oath is an oath. Like, this is something that we believe. This is, this is, this is part of our- Mm-hmm ... ethos, you know, and so we just follow through. It's... We do it because we do it. It's ritual.
It's, it's annual. Well, I actually
Ryan: thought, once I saw both of them, I actually thought it made more sense in the second usage of the word, which is why it sparked my attention, 'cause I was like, "Wait a minute, didn't we already have a pledge?" Mm-hmm. And then I went back and found it- But- ... in the sermon ... aren't you talking about,
Damien: like, a pledge of, like, loyalty?
Isn't that what it is, is like I- Yeah ... I pledge my loyalty, I, I [00:36:00] pledge my- Right. Right ... subservience to you? So it doesn't matter if it's to man or to, you know.
Jess: Well, and it just says, "To a god," so even the priest isn't necessarily saying-
Ryan: It just maybe, maybe it just struck me as a word sort of a little bit out of place in that context- Sure.
Damien: And, and probably more so for- ... and more in place in the s- yeah ... probably more so for you because- It might be ...
Ryan: probably ... it might be. I just thought, I thought Holdstock was, was potentially calling our attention to- Yeah ... you could use, you could use a lot of words in that first sentence besides pledge, I think When
Jess: I read it, I guess in that context- Vow
yeah, it was like a, "Okay, we might have some out-of-towners in church." Mm-hmm. "They're not gonna stick around later, so I'm gonna kind of be vague with what we've got going on." You know, like, "Oh, we've, we've made a- Mm-hmm ... we've made a vow- That's an interesting idea ... to a god." Yeah. And if you're not gonna be around for the sacrifice- Right
situation later, you would just be like, "Oh, yep, to God, [00:37:00] 'cause we're in church"
Ryan: Let me just gloss over this in the public setting. Yes. Yeah. You know, like- Yeah. Okay ... but then if the people- I like that. I like that idea. We made a pledge to fill
Damien: in the blank.
Ryan: Yeah.
Damien: To... The oozers are like, "Gortho"
Ryan: Somebody, I need a deity.
Anyone? Yeah. Deity? Plural?
Damien: Is Rama in the house? Do we got a Vishnu? Who's out there? All right.
Ryan: All right, we, we mentioned this in the summary, but on page 342, Ginni is told by her friend that she is, quote, "being denied." This is one of those pieces of world-building that Holdstock drops in there, doesn't explain, and moves on from quickly, but it just jumped out at me.
What do you guys think that means? How does this sort of one-word concept... I, I mean, I guess these are two separate questions. First, what do you think that means? And then second, how does this concept add to the fantasy world-building? How is, how is the world-building accomplished just in the deployment of that one word?
Jess: So it's weird because Mr. Box, who [00:38:00] is the bartender, ox griller, right?
Damien: Right. And probably a hunchback.
Jess: And obviously a hunchback. He says, like- All threats
Damien: to all
Ryan: hunchbacks
Damien: listening ... "
Jess: Can't you just play, child? It's what you're supposed to do. I'm just a pub landlord" Yeah. And so he's just, like, it's reads weird as, like, is that what she's supposed to do because she's denied?
Or is it just like- Mm, yeah ... she's a kid and she's supposed to just not fully know what's going on yet?
Damien: Yeah. I think as intended perhaps for the time and the story, I was thinking that it fit the trope of her being a social outcast- Mm-hmm, mm-hmm ... who has been either selected or rejected because of her missing of the parade.
Missing,
Ryan: missing-
Damien: Well, not, not that to me. It was she got denied because she showed up late and missed all the festivities earlier. Oh, 'cause she slept in. Yeah. I see. Yeah. 'Cause so, so she slept in. So I think, I thought her absence was noted and so she's being shunned. Mm-hmm. So it's a little bit of like, "You're grounded."[00:39:00]
Mm-hmm. "You're being denied." Mm-hmm. It's like the stockade, right? Or the stocks, like where- Yeah ... people would go and they, and you could throw a tomato at that person- Right ... because they, they earned it, right? So that's what I thought. But then once the action concluded and we saw what she was doing, I think that she's actually being denied in her corporeal form as a human.
Like, she is now- Mm-hmm ... being seen purely as a vessel. And- Right. It's somehow- ... her identity is now being- ... related to. Yeah. Yeah.
Ryan: And in that identity, her role in society- Is now- ... is changing. Yeah, exactly. And you're not just a little kid anymore. Right. You're, you're special. Gin- Ginny is being- Yeah ... denied.
Damien: Yeah, yeah.
Ginny has experienced denial. And-
Ryan: I really like that.
Damien: Yeah. So that's, that, that's what I thought once the story was over, and I was like, "Okay, we know her fate." So now I look back on the denial- Mm-hmm ... and I was just like, "That's what I think it is." Her denial as, like, a human, and her soul, maybe the denial of her soul.
Jess: Even more basic could just be like, "Well, I know probably you're not gonna- Be around
Ryan: in a couple hours Well, also- So I'm just
Jess: gonna-
Ryan: Or in the sense of like- ... pop out ... you're [00:40:00] holy now, so I can't play with you.
Damien: Exactly. Yeah. But also, being called a cuckoo, and you know, the cuckoo bird, what they do is they lay their eggs in, like, other nests, and then the other birds will hatch their egg.
Ryan: Mm-hmm.
Damien: And then the cuckoo basically, like, kills the other hatchlings. Mm-hmm.
Ryan: Are these the birds from the clocks?
Damien: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're, they're real birds, and that's what they do. And so there was something to being called a cuckoo too- Mm-hmm ... which is like you're an imposter. You know, you are- Hmm ... you're living in our society- Mm-hmm
but you have a different role, and you have a different purpose. Solid pickup.
Ryan: Yeah. Yeah. Solid pickup on that. So I, so when
Damien: I look back on being called a cuckoo, I was like, "That's sort of a weird thing." Mm-hmm. And at first I thought maybe it's just the, you know, colloquial of the times out there in Scarrowfell, but it, it does have a second meaning.
Jess: Well, and she doesn't have- I didn't pick
Damien: up
Jess: on that
Damien: one ...
Jess: she doesn't have her mother. She has a mother.
Damien: Right. A mother. Right. Like, being raised by... Yeah. And so then it calls into question, did she [00:41:00] have parents? Is, like, what, what's her, what's her history? What's her deal? I don't know. Yeah.
Ryan: I, I like that because I think there's some cool linguistic stuff going on in other parts of the story.
I did a, I did a little linguistic research. I didn't, I didn't pick up the cuckoo one, which I really like, Damien. Scarrow, I looked that up, 'cause that's, that's in the title. Scarrow means a shadowy or faint light, and is a word that comes from Scotland, which if you've ever been to Scotland, I guess that fits.
That's- Like the entire country is ... how it looks most of the time, yeah. But that was a cool word. That is cool. Ciric, on the other hand, is, is more directly from a religious tradition. Ciric actually means church, or from an even older Proto-Germanic source, Ciric means of the Lord, which is how it comes to mean church.
Damien: Interesting. I thought that was
Ryan: really cool. Oh, I like that. To find that, I had to wade through... Ciric is also a god in one of the D&D settings that's out there, uh, the Forgotten Realms settings, so I had to wade through- Sure, of course ... like loads of fan pages. [00:42:00]
Damien: I mean, to be honest, Ciric is- Yeah. Ciric is a pretty, is a pretty badass name when you think about it.
It's like, that's kind of a clutch name. Yeah. So I could see it finding a, a lot of, like, places and spots in- I was like, "
Ryan: What does Ciric mean?" It was all just instructions for Dungeons & Dragons.
Damien: Of the Lord, which is interesting, because then maybe this whole thing is like, it's really a positive holy entity that's there- Right
to protect against evil spirits, not just g- you know, not just human invaders, but, like, invaders of all sorts, and that while the, while the ceremony is super macabre and everything that goes into it, it looks really gross and rotten, that still, it's just, that's the nature being pagan. I just think you don't,
Ryan: you don't pick words like this- Yeah
arbitrarily. Mm-hmm. Not at all. I think Coldstock knows this stuff.
Damien: Yeah.
Ryan: Thacker is another word I, I looked up. That's just a derivation of thatcher, so that's a more common word. But oozer- One
Damien: who makes roofs?
Ryan: One who makes roofs, yeah. Roofs. These are the names of the other, the other types of villagers.
So oozer, unsurprisingly, is a word that, that means from the mud. It's how we get our, our word ooze. So you have, in the other villagers, you [00:43:00] have people that, that are building roofs over their houses, and then people that are from the mud. There's something very earthy and primal and primitive about both of those words that- Okay
separated them from the scare-omen, who are shadowy and dark. How did these different words make you feel wh- as you read the story? Was there emotion attached to these, even if you didn't pick up on, on the meanings or look them up, like I did, 'cause I'm a nerd like that?
Damien: I just, I just got, I just got straight warrior vibes.
I thought it was different clans- Yeah. Okay. Okay ... and it was like, you know, the... But of course, I'm a Smith, and you know- ... the last names were originally, like, you know, based on your occupation, so I'd be Damian the Smith, right? I was the m- metalworker and s- and sword, so it was just like, okay, this makes a ton of sense now that you're explaining it, right?
Do you have
Ryan: envy of people with even remotely interesting last names?
Damien: Like Hunter? Yeah.
Jess: Krentist.
Damien: My good buddy John [00:44:00] Parkour. Yeah. Dom. No, I'm just kidding. I don't know any John Parkours. No, but I mean, thinking about that, it does make a ton of sense, and so, like, village by identity, village by how you utilize resource, cool, you know? I live in a reedy plain, so of course I'm a thatch- or a Thatcher. I live around the muddy, like, swampland, so I'm an oozer, and then I live around where there's a lot of stones- Mm-hmm
and also I'm a necromancer, so I'm, I'm a scare- Well, s- speaking of last names- ... I'm a scare- ... did you
Ryan: all, did you all notice that I have a nook in this story? The Whitley Nook featured on page 331.
Damien: Congratulations. I
Ryan: don't really need more than a nook in life. That's, that's all I want, just a place to read.
Just a little nook. Well,
Damien: Jeska has a giant chunk of ice in the Arctic Circle, so top that. Yeah. Yeah, I think I'm just- I can't, I can't ... a mountain
Jess: in, like, every language.
Ryan: I can't, I can't top any of that, literally or figuratively. There's some music in this, in this story. There's some lyrics to some songs in this story.
Yeah. This is something that fantasists are known [00:45:00] for particularly, but all kinds of authors put lyrics in their songs. What do you think about it when an author writes the lyrics to a s- to their own song into the story? Is that a plus or a minus? Is that a risk? Oftentimes I don't think they have the poetry for it.
Damien: I mean, I guess I would say to me it's, it's sort of akin to when you're watching a spy movie and they open up a dossier on the big bad, and they just, like, give a big info dump about everything you need to know in the moment, and the fact that the first song that we hear is the lyrics that, you know- Mm-hmm
Ginny is having in her nightmares, and it sort of alludes to what's to come, and it's a little bit of a... Like, to me, it was just a device to be able to deliver a cryptic message, and to do so in a way that doesn't give away too much, but also, like, has you wanting more as you turn the page. So I didn't, I didn't read too much into the utilization of music beyond that because, again, the only other time they could have used music and they were to use music, it wasn't experienced- Mm-hmm
because our narrator was fast asleep. 'Cause she was asleep. [00:46:00] Yeah.
Ryan: Yeah.
Jess: There is a Margaret Atwood trilogy. It's called, I think, The MaddAddam Trilogy, and it is Oryx
Ryan: and Crake. It's O- Oryx and Crake, yeah. Yeah.
Jess: It's, it's three books, and I, I think it's the last one. There's, like, a kind of cult called the Gods Gardeners, and they're just, like, kinda weird hippie vegans, but they relay all sorts of information about holidays and things like that in songs, and so they have...
After certain chapters it'll just be, like, an entire song That kind of reiterates either what happened or is important to whatever is happening. But the audiobook version of it has those songs performed.
Ryan: Oh, no. Is this good or bad?
Jess: It's great. It's so fun. Is it? Okay. It's like- Nice ... the most, like, bonkers, you know, like, hymn about a honey bee or whatever, 'cause it's, again, just like a hippie cult.
But it's really fun, and it's a really fun way to, like- Well, that's
Ryan: good. Yeah ... kinda
Jess: convey, like, okay, this is the information that's relevant for this part of whatever. [00:47:00] And so I like it when they are inserted, but I am not musical, and I don't have a musical bone in my body, so when I read them, I just read it as prose.
As words. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Like, I don't have the ability to be like, "Do, do, do, do," like, put any tune to it, even in my head. So I appreciate when someone does it for me. I always try to do
Ryan: that when I come to a song in a, in a book. I always try to sing it, and I, I, it's Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.
Jess: Like, it doesn't- I like- ... even occur to me. I'm just like, "This is a song," and I just... It's like the most monotone way to read anything. Row, row, row
Damien: your boat. Yes. Why would, why would I row three... I don't understand. What is that? Are you a coxswain? You know what's funny, Jess, is that I do, I also love it when they, like, interpret or perform songs- Mm
in audiobooks, but because I listen on 2X, it, it's always chipmunkified. So,
Jess: yeah, yeah, yeah.
Damien: Like, every time it's just like, "
Jess: Yeah, baby, baby." And this one there- ... there are some songs that are like, "This is a children's hymn," so it's, like, performed [00:48:00] as though a kid is singing it. Yeah, right. So if you listen to that on two times, I can't even imagine.
It's just like a squeal.
Ryan: Eee. I, I've got... I guess I read a lot of fantasy that puts these hymns in, or, or these songs into, into, into the text, and they're like, "This character is supposed to be a brilliant poet," and then you read the poem and you're like, "But that's not a brilliant poem." Right, right, right.
So that's a frustration, and then when they put a song in, it's like authors sometimes don't realize that songs have to follow rhythm and meter. Sure. In order, in order to be singable. What? Unless it's, unless it's a grunge song, I don't know.
Jess: I mean, that being- Playing it tom, sure ... said, I thought that putting the stupid little prayer at the end was stupid.
I liked the little bits that were interwoven into- I agree ... the text, but I think ending on- Oh, you all are
Damien: lame if you- I agree. And also,
Jess: the Lord, our monster with one horn and a purple- Okay ... people eater. Okay,
Damien: okay, time out. If that [00:49:00] prayer weren't in the story, the story would not be in the collection.
Ryan: Because that's, that's the whole reason. It's an alternate history. Because that is the alt- Yeah ... history. Yeah. That is the
Damien: alt timeline. I thought that... I think the- Everything else would just be a standalone. Yeah, I can see that. It wouldn't be- I can see that. So because they put in a variation of the Lord's Prayer- I think at the end-
Jess: that's what made it alt history ... when the world starts getting wavy and we're opening a gate- No, fam ... I think that's enough.
Damien: Nah, too generic. That's just cosmic horror. I'm with Steve on this. That's just cosmic horror. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, take a seat. Take a seat. Take a... No, I'm gonna rip this out of the mic. But wait, I have more
Ryan: questions before you sit down.
All right, cool.
Damien: Stand back up. So I know,
Ryan: I know we haven't been asking this of this volume r- really at all yet, but I actually thought this story was creepy, and I wanted to see if you guys did.
Damien: Yes, I did think this story was creepy.
Ryan: Yeah.
Damien: And even though it had sort of a little bit of a, a Hollywood arc and a Hollywood twist- It was still really enjoyable, and the, the very few pages that were dedicated to the [00:50:00] story sufficiently placed me in the village- Mm-hmm
sufficiently had me empathize with Jenny and her fate, or sympathize with Je- Jenny and her fate, and sufficiently creeped me out. No doubt.
Ryan: I agree.
Damien: Jess is like, "I see poop in diapers 700 times a day. No, thanks, guys."
Jess: I think that because it's such a young narrator that a lot of the things that would've been- Hmm
scary maybe didn't come through. Up until the very end, I think it read a little bit like the, like Welcome to Halloween Town, like a Disney- Mm-hmm, mm-hmm Sure ... Channel kind of like, I can- Well, and that's what
Ryan: it was written for. It was written for Halloween Reading Night. Right.
Jess: Yeah. So it, it just, it read young enough to me that I don't think it was particularly scary.
I think it was fun, and then the end had some gruesomeness that was rewarding. I thought
Ryan: it was creepy. Mm. Everybody gets their opinion here on Whiskey and the Weird.
Jess: No.
Ryan: Speaking of opinions, does it destiny? [00:51:00] Out of 14, how many scarows do you give it, Jessica?
Jess: I'm gonna give it like six pig face masks.
Ryan: Okay. Six pig face masks out of, out of 14?
Jess: Yeah. Yeah.
Ryan: D?
Damien: I, yeah, I think that's fair. Again, because the destiny... Well, one, it was entirely based on destiny, but two, the alt timeline only came in at the very end to me-
Ryan: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm ... as
Damien: I just mentioned, with that alt version of the Lord's Prayer. So I'll, I, I think that six out of 14 roast- roasted oxen is probably a good one.
That's a lot of
Jess: oxen still. I, I think you guys are just
Ryan: a little high. I gave it four out of 14 scarows. That's fair. That's fair. Yeah. Yeah. For the same reason. I was actually thinking maybe that might be
Damien: a little high. All right.
Ryan: This didn't feel very alt history at all to me, and it felt a little bit...
When I read it, it didn't feel alt history at all. It only felt a little alt history when Damian explained his interpretation of the prayer being added at the end.
Damien: It, it's the only reason it [00:52:00] made it. Yeah. It's the only reason it made it. Had that not been there- Well, it has some of that, like- ... it just would've been another, like, fantasy, you know, kooky, like, cult-driven village- Yeah
belief fanaticism, whatever.
Jess: I mean, with the cuckoo stuff, there's a little bit of that, like, destiny, you know, like she's maybe living a life that she might not have had to if her parents were alive or something. But
Damien: eh. No, I think her, I think her parents were killed so that she could serve as this vessel.
Be this- Yeah ... be the sacrifice or be this vessel. Yeah. That was the whole purpose of the mother.
Ryan: All right, that's gonna take us to our whiskey ratings then. This is how we rate our stories here on Whiskey and the Weird, from zero fingers or an empty glass, all the way up to five fingers or the coveted full fist of whiskey.
Jessica, what are you giving Scaraphel by Robert Paul Holdstock?
Jess: A th- I thought the language was good. The story was interesting enough that I enjoyed reading it, but I don't really think it was anything particularly [00:53:00] revolutionary. I think kind of pagan history, sacrifice, whatever, done a lot, and I don't...
Other than the language, I don't know that this was anything More interesting than that.
Ryan: Okay. Jess coming in with a three. Damien, how about you?
Damien: Four and
Ryan: a
Damien: half. I really- Hey, look at that. Yeah, I really liked this story a lot. I agree with Jess's points, is that it wasn't anything that was incredibly novel, but the ability, as I mentioned earlier, to, like, cram so much in and to place me there- Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm Right ... and to have me feel and to also, like, just tell a good story. Like- Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm ... Aesop's Fables aren't really too novel either, but man, are they good reme- memorable stories, and this one will stick with me. Like, even the terms and even the names of the characters, which I- Right ... hardly ever remember.
Right. I just remember because at some point a parent calls for Kevin, and I just pictured Catherine... What, what's her name? Catherine O'Hara? O'Hare? O'Hara. Catherine O'Hara. Sure. Yeah. Of blessed memory now. Yeah. Yes. You know, like, but y- yelling, "Kevin!" [00:54:00] And there's just, there's moments where I was just like, "Wow."
And then when we go back and we're doing this analysis post-reading and it's just like there's layers to this, I think. Mm-hmm. And there's, there's some depth and some nuance that otherwise this could've been a sitcom script or an episode of Tales from the Dark Side or something like that. But it actually has a little more depth than it warrants on first blush.
Like, to me, it's just a really good story. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it a lot. Four and a half.
Ryan: Mm-hmm. Four and a half for Damien. I wrestled with this. I was, I was close to giving it four and a half, and then I decided to give it a full fist of whiskey. No. Five fingers. A full fist
Jess: of whiskey. Wow. Wow, wow, wow.
Give it one more. Tell us more. Look, I
Ryan: loved this story. Even excusing, I think, the dumb Lord's Prayer at the end- ... I loved this story from the setting to the language to the creep factor. It was the first and p- maybe only creepy story we're gonna get in this book. I felt, like Damien, I felt totally transported to this fantasy world.
I loved Holdstock's skill and economy at world-building- Yes ... and it [00:55:00] made me want to read other stories by him. I really, really, really enjoyed this story. All right. Five fingers for me.
Damien: Wow. All right. Full fist. Wow, wow, wow. Nice.
Ryan: That's gonna take us to our If This Then That for this evening, and I, I've actually got it for you all tonight.
Preach. The book I wanna recommend is the first prose novel by Alan Moore called Voice of the Fire. Wait. Now, Alan Moore you might know from- Alan Moore? Yeah, from Watchmen. Okay.
Damien: Yeah,
Ryan: all right. From Jerusalem. He looks like a wizard. Mm-hmm. Uh, he's written a bunch of Lovecraftian stuff, but his first prose novel called Voice of the Fire tells the primal and primordial history of his native Northampton starting from literally the dawn of time.
It's told in short chapters that are each a different story telling the history of th- this region across about 6,000 years' worth of human history. It is really unique. It is really clever. It is unlike anything else I've ever read, and as [00:56:00] I was reading Scarofell for this episode, I kept thinking about Alan Moore's Voice of the Fire.
Scarofell is not gonna feel like all of the stories in Voice of the Fire, but it is absolutely gonna feel like some of them, and I think you all should check out Voice of the Fire by Alan Moore.
Damien: Awesome. Okay. Will do.
Ryan: Well, thanks everybody. That's gonna do it for this episode of Whiskey and the Weird.
We're so glad you could join us, and if you were glad that you could join us, we would like it- ... if you would rate and review this podcast somewhere, or better yet, tell a friend. Share it on social media. Spread the word that others might enjoy Whiskey and the Weird with you. We always wanna thank Dr. Blake Brandes for providing the music for Whiskey and the Weird, and Damien, if they'd like to tell us about the music they sing before sacrificing people, where can they do that?
Damien: We're Oxen. You can find us on the socials- ... mostly in the metaverse. Boy howdy. Yeah, mostly in the metaverse on Threads, Facebook, and Instagram @whiskeyandtheweird, [00:57:00] @whiskeyandtheweird. On those properties, we spell our whiskeys with an E, and we hope you do, too. If not, may thee suffer the f- the fate of Kevin-
and disappear in a wisp of, of, of scarof, I guess, as it were.
Ryan: Yeah. Yes, yes. Good usage of the word, yeah. There you go. Jess, what's up next?
Jess: Why don't we read The Bad Lands by John Metcalfe?
Ryan: All right. Why don't we? I'm Ryan Whitley. I'm Jessica Berg. And I'm Damien Smith. And together we're Whiskey and the Weird.
Somebody send us home.
Jess: As always, keep your friends through the ages and your creeps in the pages.
Ryan: Bye bye, everybody.
.
Damien: Jess, every time you chortle, it just fuels his next one. He's gonna get even deeper- I know ... even wider, even gappier, whatever it is. I'm laughing
Jess: at someone dying of E. coli, I think. Oh, that's
Damien: horrible. It's a horrible way to [00:58:00] die.