Retronauts - 509: Stephen King's Influence on Games

Episode Date: January 23, 2023

Nadia Oxford chants the names Andrew Vestal and Shane Bettenhausen three times in reverse to summon them into an episode recording circle dedicated to exploring the influence of acclaimed horror author Stephen King on video games. We all ’cast down here… Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts

This week on Retronauts, what kind of world-class author can't spell cemetery anyway? I'm your host for this week, Nadia Oxford, also the co-host of the acts of the Blog GotRPG podcast. Thank you for joining me. I'm here to talk about horror author Stephen King's influence on video games, but I'm sure not going to do out of long because that's some scary shit right there. So joining me are my good friends, Andrew Vestall, and Shane Bettenhausen. Say hi, fellow overlooked caretakers and introduce yourselves briefly. You first, Andrew. Hi, my name is Andrew Vestel.

I have a long and story history in the RPG corners of the game. gaming internet. And I'm also an inveterate book nerd who has read a lot of Stephen King in my childhood. That's probably what twisted it all in the end as we'll get into. Yeah, the whole point of Stephen King is that you, you know, you have to read him when you're like in fourth grade and should absolutely not be reading Stephen King. That's the ideal age to come to his work. Oh, absolutely. Like my mom like, oh, no, you can't watch violence on TV, but read all the Stephen King you want. Yeah, hell no. You're not, you're not my daughter. You didn't read Stephen King. You imbue this book, you get out of my house.

That was my childhood. I'm parenting my daughter the same way. I told her she couldn't watch season two of Demon Slayer because it was too violent, but she's allowed to read the manga, and she's reading. So, you know, whatever it takes to encourage your children to stick their nose in a book. I'm sorry to drown you out, Shane. You say hi. Oh, greetings, constant readers.

This is Shane Bettenhausen. I've been on the retronauts here and there occasionally, and once in a while on Acts of the Blood God. Yes, you are. Happy to be here for a fun, obscure. interesting topic that's kind of outside the normal preview of retronauts. Yeah, this topic in general, this is something I've been kind of had to bug up my butt about doing for a long time now. And I threatened to do it recently in a previous show saying that if I needed a kind of a rainy day topic, this would be it. Well, guess what? I needed a

rainy day topic. And here we are. Because as someone like the two of you who has been reading Stephen King since a very young age, you start to notice certain parallels going on between, not even parallels, I guess, like, intersections between both the mediums, because it seems, I suppose, that we're not the only people who like Stephen King. Like, can you believe that? Like, the whole world is the history now. He's the most successful popular author of the last 30, 40 years. So, yeah, he's had a profound effect on like, into our entire general, like, everyone in Gen X and millennials basically grew up reading him all over the world. And that influence has been broad and pervasive.

Which is crazy because he's a. genre author, but he has had mainstream success. And as I'm sure we'll talk about, he's a much better writer than you normally associate with quote-unquote genre. And during our lifetimes, I think we've seen genre go from being outside the mainstream to being the mainstream. And I think, yeah, and I think that you can kind of watch his influence along with, you know, like these days Marvel movies being the most important thing or whatever. But it's interesting. Did all of us come to Stephen King when we were in elementary school? Like before we were a sensibly supposed to. Is that? Oh, yeah. That's right. Yeah. Same here at fifth grade.

And it's funny, my genesis of Stephen King was we went in my fifth grade, you know, public school once a month, we'd go to the big library, like the town library. And the cool kids in my class, Scott and Monica, when everyone else went to the little kids section to get kids books, they ran into the adult stacks to check out Stephen King books. And I watched them and like followed behind them and picked a Stephen King book and took it home thinking I'd be cool too. But I've checked out the dead zone. and I remember desperately trying to trying to read it and like I just really couldn't make heads or tails of it and I felt so like uncool and not sophisticated and I like begged my dad taking back to the libraries because I wanted to get a different book but I went back to the Stephen King books

and I looked through all of them and I found Cycle the Werewolf which had pictures and was shorter and I loved it and that was my first entry into the world of Stephen King. That's a good introductory Stephen King book even though you're right because it has gorgeous illustrations still as violent as hell, it's still king But it's right. Well, and then the next one I read was Salem's Lot, which is much more, you know, hardcore than that, but I loved it too. So then I was totally hooked. So I got to tell you, the first Stephen King book I read was the uncut stand. Wow. That's going in both feet at the same time. Isn't it like a thousand pages?

1,137 pages. I know because I looked at. Wow. I mean, there are a few illustrations, but that's not a very good beginner, Stephen King. That's amazing. That was definitely jumping into the icy water, the first head first. God, that's not just terrifying. That's a terrifying book for a number of reasons. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It was absolutely not the, I mean, I turned out okay-ish, but, you know, like, definitely, like, there was a lot of stuff in that book, especially the uncut one, where you're just like, wow, is this the way the world is Stephen King, and it's the way Stephen King's world is.

I think the sand was like the fifth or six when I read, and I read the cut one because the uncled one wasn't out yet. Yeah. What was your first book, Nadia? No, actually, my first book by King in. grade six was eyes of the dragon oh that's that is ideal in fact i just was ideal over thanksgiving i was talking about a fairy tale with my cousin and her son once to get into steven king and she was asking what he should start with and i suggest that eyes the dragon i's dragon for sure

he's like seven sounds like that's a little young there's nothing that bad in eyes of the dragon it's more about in fact ice dragon is more about just learning that your father's disappointing that's a good idea that is a very good dragon You could also learn about erectile dysfunction, depending on how old you are. I remember the king having a real big problem with that. But, yeah, I started with, see, my mom was a huge, huge, huge king fan. She had all the hard covers. Yeah, that's amazing.

So she had that original version of Eyes of the Dragon that had that really nice, those paintings and whatnot. So that was kind of what attracted me to the book. And I went ahead and read it. And that was kind of started my awakening. But she also had the original version of the stand, which was her favorite book. And she got the hardcover. which had that really boss-ass picture of the rat flag fighting the hero like kind of the whole like god-devil metaphor going on just a really cool illustration I was actually going to talk about that a little bit later like the cover of the stand the hard cover of the stand because like that is my earliest Stephen King memory is seeing that artwork and just being like what is this book like yeah it's just called the stand and it has these two people on it or creatures or whatever they are just going at it good and evil and

And for me, at least, like, as a kid looking at that, I'm like, this book must contain the answers to the universe. No, you're absolutely right, because I kind of had the same impression. I guess all three of us kind of being writers and kind of therefore effed up in the head, we're certainly influenced by those illustrations and by those, like, first early, I guess, like, our first entry into adult fiction, as it were, Seaman King, you can lob a lot of criticism has him for sure, but he's, his writing is very accessible. And I think that's something I actually try to strive for in my book.

in my writing as well. But, yeah. And I think it's worth pointing out, sorry, you're talking about, like, the hard covers there. Like, I think it's worth pointing out in this age of, like, digital books or something, that in the 80s, like, a shelf full of Stephen King hardcovers, whether it's at your parents' library or the big library downtown or whatever, but, like, that's an impressive bookshelf. Like, yeah. He's the most popular author of the last generation, as Shane pointed out, and he could afford good bindings, good cover artwork, good logos.

I mean, God, like, Stranger Things is just ripping off the style of King's books for its logo. Oh, God, yeah. Well, and really, his first five, six novels were such huge successes that the publishers knew that they could market him and spend the money to give him great graphic design and huge promotion. And, like, it was a big deal. He was instantly a huge deal. So us as kids growing up in the 80s, like, yeah, he was just like an event already. in a way that, like, other authors were not marketed in that way. Yeah, yeah.

He was a name, King, four letters, right? They're on the side of the book. The books themselves are hundreds of pages, yeah, hard covers, but they look, not like literature, per se, but they look like events. I mean, and think about, like, a Marvel movie is an event. Think about Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, which is pretty important to me.

It's a film that my father showed me when I was, like, nine years old. And it totally messed me up, and I love it. And, you know, Stanley Kubrick was a very well-rescent. expected director who chose to do that because The Shining is a great book. And Stephen, you know, it was a huge deal, right? Like, you know, that, think about that. Like, one of the greatest directors, like, chose to do that back then. And it was, you know, as good as it is. So, yeah, like, I think that the profound cultural impact of Stephen King, like, we, you know, it wasn't an anomaly that all of us kind of found him and, like, gravitated towards him. And, like,

you know, I kind of had a renaissance a few years ago when I came back to King after, like, my, you know, I stayed with him through the dark tower ending. And then, like, kind of waned a it. And in the last few years, during quarantine and stuff, I kind of came back to him and have been rediscovering it. And yeah, it's, if you, if you're a last King fan, I recommend going back and reading some of the old ones and catching up on things you've missed, there's so much. And he's so prolific. I don't know if you've read any of his new stuff, Shane, but like he himself has kind of turned to leaf. And I think since around 2018 or so, he's been turning out. But his early 90s, early 2000 work was, except for the Dark Tower, I think,

like, was kind of not his best, but like, the outsider, if you haven't read that, I think that's one of his best ones. Like, it's really good. Well, and a lot of the things that were endemic to the 70s and 80s, you know, sexism, some racism, some things you know, things that were more of the time. He's really turned that around. And that's not as present or not present at all. And a lot of his more modern stuff, which is great as well. Oh, yeah.

That's pretty good. As much as I love his classic work, it does have some problems with that. And especially with the, the quote unquote, magical Negro trope, he's really, really bad about that. Really bad. For me, it's just kind of like, how much cocaine was Stephen King on when he was writing this book? Oh, but some of, like, I, I'm a Tommy Knocker supporter. I'm, I'm a Tommy head. And, like, that's probably his most cooked out book, but I like it.

I thought they're re-adething it to a movie next year. Yeah, it got option. Oh, really? Yeah. And why hasn't there been, I mean, maybe you're going to argue that Earthbound is the Tommy Knockers? I don't know. But, like, there needs to be more Tommy Knockers influence in games. I never even thought about Earthbound.

Like, we'll get to Earthbound for sure. but like i don't think you're at that i don't think earth found maniac mention and the meteor is that a tommy maybe maybe could be oh yeah hey you got something there you got something going there yeah game developers rip off the tommy doggers it's a good idea yeah that is actually good at rip off eyes of the dragon hell rip it all off i don't care So going briefly over Stephen King, like we already obviously just kind of blew everything about him over here. But just a quick rundown.

He's a scene horror author, obviously born in 1947. Apparently he's written, I don't know if this is like an up-to-date number. or maybe it wasn't, but I think it might be, like, 64 books. I feel like Nintendo 64 books. I feel like he would have done more by now. But then again, he's also written like 200 short stories or something like that. Right. Of those 64 books, like 10 are short story collections, I think.

Yeah, yeah, which is like, I mean, good for the guy. I start feeling lightheaded if I have to type 600 words. So he goes. Like, I respect his work ethic. I remember hearing a story once about how George R. Martin asked him, like, you know, oh, man, don't you hate writers block? And Stephen King's like, no, I don't really get it. I mean, his book on writing was really influential, too, I think, when it came out in like the early 2000s.

I have not read it yet, but I've heard it's great. I've heard nothing but good things about it. No, it's really good. I mean, a lot of it is kind of seems obvious in that self-helpy book sort of way. But, you know, what Stephen King, but what he really drives, and he has a lot of good advice about writing and structure and the English language and stuff. But what he also talks about a lot is just his work ethic. And, you know, like, writing is a job. And if you're not doing your job, you're not a writer.

I think it can all relate to that. I also enjoy his nonfiction book about the history of horror called Dantz Macab. It's pretty good. Oh, really? I just actually heard that mentioned when I was reading up on him. Yeah, and it was first written back in the 80s, then it was revised later. And, yeah, I read it for the first time two years ago, and I really enjoyed it. Oh, cool.

Speaking of revised books, I just going back to the stand for half a second there, just from thinking about how they tried to revise that one for the 90s and some of the things they put in there was just a hilariously wrong. But anyway, yeah, at least they tried. Apparently, Stephen King had a newsletter in his university newspaper called Stephen King's garbage truck. And that's just the best name I've ever heard of for like a blog or a newspaper or a news column or anything. Actually, there's a really great Stephen King podcast that I'm a huge fan of called The Losers Club. And in the last year, they covered his writings for the garbage truck and read a bunch of them

and it's it is some crazy fun stuff and it gives you a lot of insight into where Stephen King is coming from to read his college writings I'm sure like I could just imagine just with us like I haven't done much of that but a little plug for the losers school while you're talking about podcasting

have you have you listened to just King things at all? No I've heard I've heard it's good actually I haven't heard of that one you're talking about so we'll have to do a podcast swap. Did podcast swap speaking of things that messed up Stephen King apparently he saw a friend get hit by a train who's a boy, which shocked him to his core, apparently, but he doesn't

remember that. So it's like people who are saying, oh, well, maybe it's subconscious, but he says, no, probably what got him into horror was finding a collection of Lovecraft's works, which, yeah, that stands to reason. There's a lot of that in King, but also part of his narrative that is a little interesting is that his dad just left, like he said he was going out for cigarettes and never came back. Oh, so that's the joke my dad's always making. Yeah, I mean, that really happened to see him came. not a joke to him no for sure i mean i'm sure he'd laugh if he heard me say this but whenever

like cat has to whenever my host cat can't do blood god one week we always say oh cat went out for cigarettes i'm sure she's coming back and we uh so my dad used to see that to me he used to say you know someday i could say i'm going off for cigarettes never come back you know that right and he wasn't doing it to be mean he just like to tease me like that so if you ever want to know why i'm effed in the head that's probably part of the reason right there i had it really you might have been the best-selling author of the last 40 years. There you go. Thanks, Dad. Thanks so much.

You came back. You came back, you idiot. So why don't we start a little bit by talking about just listing out a few of his most influential stories. Like, we've already gone over some that you have. And these shows will be brought up during the podcast. I mean, Carrie. Carrie. Carrie's his first novel.

And it's hugely influential. The film is fantastic. Before Carrie came out. people didn't really know what telekinesis was and think about how influential not really the mainstream average Americans had no idea what telekinesis was until carry carry kind of popularized telekinesis i have to admit like i had read carry but that's not the one i know one of my best known novels by him so just why did he decide to go latch on a telekinesis though does he have any explanation for that i yeah i think he i have heard some quotes about it but yeah i think it's

unique and interesting in how it's presented. And the fact that his first novel is from a female perspective, and the novel itself isn't told in a traditional style. It's, uh, how do you say that? Pistolore. Is I like, Andrew? Like, where it's like, yeah, it's like letters and fragments and, uh, um, yeah. And I think that the novel was into success. And then the, the diploma film is, is what, I think, a classic. And like that imagery from, from the diploma film, you see, yes, in, in other games, in other media. So I, I think Kerry as his first, his first published novel, and being his debut is a, you know, a huge part of his legacy. No, for sure.

What about Pet Cemetery? Would you consider that one of his more influential works? Oh, yeah. I mean, but I think, you get to The Shining before that. I think I think it goes like, yeah, carry the Shining, the stand, Pet Cemetery. Okay. I think those are his first four that I think are his most important. The Shining, I mean, the Shining, it's just like a loop where the book influenced the movie,

influenced the games, influenced the books. Like, but, you know, it all started with his, with his, his book there. And, like, again, I know we're going to talk about it, but like the, I mean, I also, I can't really skip Salem's Law, which is 77. Yeah, Salem's lots in there, too. Oh, of course, right. Again, these first five novels, and the Dead Zone is also in this area, too. But, yeah, and Salem's always his second novel before The Shining. See, I am definitely a little bit, like, I wrote down some of the titles here, but I am definitely fuzzy on the chronology of the publication.

So it is kind of interesting to go back and see how he progressed from story to story and what he kind of latched onto theme-wise. And, you know, in Salem's lot is not, it's a twist on Dracula. It's not completely original. I think, you know, it seems almost a little bit, like, obvious in hindsight. But then again, Dracula wasn't, you know, in 19... Vampires weren't mainstream. Right. And in 1977, like, you know, Dracula wasn't as just like pervasive almost, too.

It's, you know, it's a long time. And I mean, I don't want to get too far ahead. But I think even with Salem's lot, he's bringing his own unique twist to the story, which is, yes, it's about the vampires, but it's also about small towns. It's also... Oh, guys, never. Well, and it's also at the beginning of having an... author as the, you know, protagonist, right? Which is in probably half of his novels.

And it's often, right? And it's often just kind of a thin the available version of him. But, yeah, and I think there's going to be a new film of Salem's lot in this in 2020. So that's kind of going to be relevant again. So, yeah. I guess it would be after it. Yeah. Have another hood on your hand. It's been really interesting to see.

I don't know if you, I don't want to talk about knocking, but like there's been a lot of good horror movies in 2022. And it seems like there's a lot of good ones coming up too. And, like, I think a lot of his work is, like, the Tommy Knockers, for God's sake, Salem's Lot, and so on, like, there's new adaptations, re-adaptations. I think people are hungry for horror in a way that they weren't necessarily, like, five or ten years ago. And I think that he is probably going to have another moment in the cultural consciousness,

again, with all these new adaptations coming. They need to remake the Langalears. You're going to talk about remit? I love that stupid movie. I also love that terrible major TV movie with Bronson B. show and, like, the worst CGI of all time. It's pretty bad. It looked like triples, like, coming down from heaven.

It was pretty awful. I'm a fan of that novella, and I think it would make a good video game. I do like the novella. It would make a good, like, point-and-click adventure game or something to me. It would, actually. And speaking of point-and-click adventures, I did not know this, but there are several games based on Stephen King's works. Oh, yeah. Well, I didn't know if that was like a side hatch, we'll crawl down later, and we can talk about those.

But I think we're going back to the formative King Works. Before we even get to 1980, it's important to the thing about. the Dark Tower of the Gunslinger which also started in like 1977 and like for most people right there at the beginning right and most readers most readers didn't become aware of it until 1988 because it was only a very limited hardback until it got published as a trade paperback right before the drawing of the three came out in 88 was I remember the revisions to it because remember the revisions came out before wizarding glass is when the revised version came out but like I remember as I was aware in 1988 I was already Stephen King fan and I remember and I remember as I was aware of in 1988 I was already Stephen King fan and I remember remember going to the bookstore and suddenly here was not just like the Dark Tower of the Gunslinger, but the second one. And I was like, what are these? And like, I'd never heard of them, you know, because there's no air and there anything back then. And like, yeah, so the dark tower is a through line. And it ends up being this meta concordance that connects all of

kingdom into one giant enormous tale. Yeah, we're going to, we'll get into it. But the fact that he, you know, during his formative years, when he's releasing all these bangers, you know, in his beginning of his career, he starts this thing that's very different. That's a Western and fantasy that is, you know, very oblique compared to his other novels. So early on, he's giving you, he's giving a lot to his readers. And it's always been very personal, the gun, the gunslinger, the Dark Tower. That's always been Kings, like you said, his three line. And, you know, I think, I think it is really interesting that even when the Dark Tower,

even though it's a lot of the Kings fans' favorite work or one of their favorite works, like the Dark Tower has always felt like the one the King does for himself, you know, like, he does the other ones to pay the bills, to get the movies, to, be the internationally successful writing superstar, but the Dark Tower is the one where he's like, this is my mythology. This is my stamp that I want to leave on the world. So, yeah, do we even want to talk about the Stephen King games? There's so bad. Yeah, Sam, I'm just looking over my nose here, and I'm thinking, yeah.

Like, my favorite thing would be the whole Roberta and Kenna Williams-Sierra thing, where, like, they really wanted to work with Stephen King in the 80s. I could go find the exact quote, but there's an interview from Roberta Williams from where she talks about how. She kept reaching out to Stephen King because she wanted him to write a horror game and that they would work on this. And eventually he did get in touch and he's like, I don't know who you are. I don't like games. I don't want to work on this with you.

So then she ended up doing Fantasma and Goria by herself. And then that said me on a quest to like, and I found this piece that Stephen King wrote for Intamea Weekly back when he did a column. He did a whole giant column about video games. I saw that. Yeah. And it's interesting because he's, you know, he's defending the fact that they shouldn't be, you know, Congress was saying video games are violent and he was defending them but at the same time he's like he kind of says he hates video games he's terrible at them yeah and and you know there's a quote here it's like i won't argue for the artistic value of stuff like god of war or 50 cent bulletproof actual quote actual quote to stevening game don't feel too bad shame because you know john carpenter is out there getting high and playing video games yeah he loves video games oh shit really he's a super god john carpenter is a mega gamer yeah but stevening no phantom game didn't want to work with Roberta. Doesn't care for God of War, 50 cent. But we have had a few

direct Stephen King inspired video games, including the Lonmer Man for Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo. It is bad. I rented it. I rented it. It is not good at all. Did you actually rent it thinking you were getting something similar to the book or the story? It's based on the film, which I love. Which I love. Oh, I never seen it. It looks so terrible. Oh, you had to be there. Andrew, you saw the theater, right? Oh, of course. At the time, it had like literally the best computer. Mind's blowing. It was like the mind's eye. It was spectacular.

It looked like violent tron. I think, I mean, I think what you're talking about King himself, not playing games, though, is really one of the more fundamental contradictions about King's influence on games, which is that he has had so much indirect influence on creators, on our culture, on the whole, even the idea of horror and horror villains and so on and so forth. But when you start looking, okay, but where has he had a direct? influence it's like it's not there you know he's we're talking about how stephen king his influence games we're actually in many ways you know talking about how stephen king influenced

culture that's true yeah horror as a whole and and and we'll get to it there are some specific games where the connection is much more than tenuous but it's not like it's not like you can draw a through line we're like oh yeah Stephen king co-wrote this you know seven game horror series which is super popular in the 80s and 90s. He never had that kind of connection or influence to it. It's always been more like just by virtue of being the biggest horror author in the entire world, that horror and genre culture can't get out from under his shadow. Well, and the closest there is is the PC adventure game based on the dark half,

which is a novel I actually really enjoy. Yeah, it actually looks pretty good. And the fact that that game exists is interesting because it is completely original. It's kind of stuck on PC. It has pretty good visuals for the time. And I worked at a game store where that came out. And it was kind of weird at the time. I was like, this is weird.

Like, how did this happen? And I think there's ways to play it. And I've heard it's a bit of a slog. I watched a little bit of it. But it's interesting that that occurred, that he allowed that to happen. Yeah, I actually tried to play it a few months ago. I was going on a big DOS PC adventure game kick where I was like, not Sierra, not LucasArts, like, I'm going to play all the weird stuff. And it had some really, it was trying

really hard. Like, it's much more than you would expect from a licensed adventure game, but it's still fairly unplayable, unfortunately. But it was, but it was interesting, though, just because it's like, oh, these people really went for it with the technology that they had at the time. Yeah. In terms of the graphics, the interface, the way the story is told. But it's interesting that at no point with Stephen King, like, lured, you know, to just, like, work on a game. It's true. Because remember, like, Clive Barker's undying? That was a game, anyway.

Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah, I was just thinking about that, how, like, Stephen King, like, he's never really accepted a few dollars to write something. Like you said, he said, I don't like games. And he just. And super early internet, he did have, like, an internet-only, like, continuing work called the plant that he never finished. He, like, started the plant. And then he's, like, quit after, like, two chapters.

He never finished that. He never finished it. There was uproar over it. Yeah. I think fans sometimes still ask him, hey, when's like plant

for coming out. It's how plant finishing. Now that he finished the dark tower, we have to harass him about something. There you go. There's also a text adventure based on the mist. No graphics at all, just text.

Really? I see how I went through it. Yeah. Like a real official product, not just like a fan thing? I'm pretty sure it was official. I'm trying to remember who, by Mindscape,

yeah, It actually resembles when I was a kid. I used to play actually the way I got into Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is I played a Commodore 64 game based on the books. It was the exact same thing where he had the books text. That I've played. It's good. Yeah.

So you know what I'm talking about. And that's kind of what they had going on for the mist. But I want to, I'm sorry, I'm a huge hitchhackers fan. So I have a good for one second. Like Douglas Adams loved computers. Douglas Adams wrote most of the text. in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galilee game along with Stephen Resky. He learned how to do the Z-Machine coding for Infocom

so that he could understand how the puzzles are created. And that's why that game is full of weird parser tricks. And like you have to take the no-tie and then you have no-tie as an object. And you'll have things like doors that argue with you and like you have to try to go through the door like five or six times before it finally relents and starts describing what's on the other side of the door to you

before that it's just like it's just like there's nothing here go go stay where you but but I I think that's just really an interesting comparison that like

Douglas Adams even were the non-hitchhackers game for info about bureaucracy which is also hilarious and so you know there were other genre authors who were you know they got that be up there about

about like oh games are cool are games the future I don't know but I want to try I want to figure out what's going on here. And, like, King, King, Kingsenow on that. Yeah. But I do appreciate the fact, even though he's like, no, I'm suck at games, I don't like them at all.

He did stand up for them, like Shane pointed out. So he wasn't like one of those, oh, I hate games because they ruin children these days. I mean, I'm a huge, huge Redwell fan. And Brian Jakes actually wrote something for the Toronto Star way back the day when the Redwell cartoon first came out, because it was by Nelvana, basically wrote a thing saying how kids,

if you, these days, since they type, they don't know how to write for real. And it's like, you know what? Nah, I'm not into that kind of attitude. So if you don't like video games, that's fine, but you say, hey, there's someone else's thing. That's also totally fine. Just don't go around saying,

oh, I'm an old man, kids these days, blah, blah, blah, that stuff just drives me off the wall. Well, I mean, even though he has such mainstream success, King's works have always been kind of violent and gory and extreme in content and in some ways. And he himself has had his share of controversy about, like, should these books be carried in libraries, you know, is it okay for kids in the fifth grade like me and Shane? And even, you know, Stephen King post school shootings did

withdraw rage, you know, that no longer is available. Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah, but, you know, he's, he's no stranger to First Amendment controversies. And I think that's probably a large part of why even if he doesn't like games, he understands, you know, that's the first domino. And if, and if you don't stand up there that people are going to, you know, it was comics for a while. You know, it's whatever is considered the lowbrow media of the time is always kind of the first to be put in the crosshairs of politicians when they're trying to put up those guardrails that don't need to be there. And so, you know, he has enough self-awareness, I think, to realize that, you know, he has to stand up for the people on the gaming side of the fence or

he and his writing is going to be next. Yeah, for sure. So like you said, he always liked to be on that side. So going to, like, just basically games that were that inspiration, that kind of that king vibe, as it were, We have a few to go through, and I think maybe we should start with one that you pointed out, Andrew, kind of deserves really his own sidebar is Alan Wake, just Alan Wake. Let's start there. So, yeah, so first of all, I just want to say remedy as a game developer are great. And they are the only people, whether directly or indirectly, I think, who have ever tuned into King's wavelength and that have made games that feel like King's novels.

You know, because King, I mean, and again, we're going to talk of, we are talking about this now, but, you know, like, King's books are very often vibes. Like, King's books are very often, like, tone and mood and writing in terms of phrase and really evocative language that really makes you see something or feel something in a real strong and powerful way. And, you know, like, look at the dialogue in the Max King game, even though that's not a King game. Like, I would say that the writing in Max Payne is very much like the writing in a King book in terms of trying to evoke that strong reaction in a reader where it doesn't sound like people talk, but it sounds awesome anyways. But, you know, with Allen Lake for sure, and I think with Control, so the Control 2, like, they tapped into those vibes.

So the thing that interests me about King and horror is that games need to be. structure. Yeah. And games need to tell the player what to do and where to go and to provide them with a framework for how they experience the game. And King's works are often the opposite of that. Right. Kings works are often really almost like abstract and cosmic and ill-defined about the

specific details. They're much more a mood than kind of like, you know, oh, the evil institute is making bio-zombies and we have to go, you know. Yeah. You know, it's not that. It's just kind of like, like, what if there's something out there and you don't know what it is? That's a big thing in King, for sure. And it's like, and that's scary.

But if you're making a game, you're like, okay, but I want to know what it is. I want to go find it. I want to shoot it. I want to pick up what it drops. And I want to move on to the next thing. And so I think there's a real tension between, you know, King's writing and King's tone and the structure's, the structure of what people expect from a video game. That said, Remedy has leaned into that with Alan Wake and with control as well in terms of control is full of like weird unexplained things that kind of show up like what's the oldest house?

Why is it called the oldest house? Like I don't know. That just it just sounds ominous and like roll with it and move forward with it. And that's not what this game is about, but it's there and it's going to set the tone. And for Alan Wake in particular, Shane, have you played the Allen Wake games? I've not played it, but I hear that,

I've heard that it has direct references to Stephen King. 100%. They actually gave him a copy as I understand it. And he was like, well, thanks. But again, I don't play games. So like, like, the Alan Wake games, like, you know, the main character is an author.

He's a horror author. And, you know, like, he's, it's metafictional, too. And so much as, like, he is becoming, it's like the dark half or something. He's becoming trapped inside the world that he's writing. And there's actually, something called the dark presence in Alan Wake, which is kind of out there and

entrapping him. And there's so many direct references to King's works, both tonally and structurally in Allen Wake. And there was a follow-up, too, called Alan Wake's American nightmare, which was like a quasi-expansion, which is not as good a game as Alan Wake, and it doesn't have the same sense of horror, but it has a sense of being, like it's like it's narrated like when a Stephen King's book. Like it's like it's even more metaphictional, you know,

that it's like if Alan Wake is like a Stephen King story, then American Nightmare is like being trapped inside the process of making a Stephen King story. Oh shit, how do I get out? Or something. It's like when Stephen King shows up in book six of Dark Tower. Absolutely. Hi, kids, I'm Stephen King.

Spoiler alert. We have a lot of fun here, but you know, it's not fun. So, yeah, so I think the reason that it works so well is because mood and plot, you know, they're not the same thing. Right. And the remedy games, what they borrow from King and what they take from King is the mood. And so it's okay if the plot is something different, like in the case of control, where it's kind of science fictiony kind of

SCP style objects or in the case of Max Payne, where it's kind of like a noir, like they still both have that, like, I mean, Stephen King himself worked in genres other than horror as well, you know? A lot of his out, but the last two decades has been crime. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I mean, I don't think it's a stretch to say

that like the Max Payne stuff is kind of overlapping with the stuff that he's working on. But, I mean, I don't want to sound like I'm just missing the plot references. Like, like, Alan Wake is Stephen King, like, straight up. But are there, like, direct kind of, we nods to, like, the shining and stuff in it, like, you know, specific. I always thought that, like, see, I haven't played Alan Wake, but I do know about what is that song, the poet and the muse. And I know that's a song within the game that is used as kind of a clue giver. And to me, the second, rather the final verse of the poet in the muse always reminded me a lot.

I know it's not a direct reference, but it might be kind of what you're talking about, Shane, is it reminded me a lot of the ending of Pet Cemetery, the events that it's described in that. It's just the way it's described is that a woman came back from the dead and her husband or her boyfriend or her lover killed her because he knew what he had done. He done something terrible. And the very, very end of Pet Cemetery is freaky as hell. Oh, so it's terrifying. I think Pet Cemetery is Stephen King's scariest book. It absolutely is. And it's scarier as an adult.

reading i reread it like two years ago and it blew my mind how good it is yeah and just that like we don't know that lewis killed rachel rachel zombie whatever you want to call her but you certainly get that implication in your head from past events that you know and the story have happened where someone came back and they were not at all what they were what they once were so their loved ones killed them so you kind of i don't know that's to me i always made that connection i don't know if's intentional but given us Alan Wake it probably was. I think so. Yeah. I mean, there's, there's definite direct references to, I mean, gosh, it's like the setting is basically dairy. Like, it's just the town in Maine that King's always always working in. And again, it's, it is a lot like the Dark Tower, because it's about how Alan Wake gets

trapped inside his own creation and has to try to write his way out, basically. with darkness in her eyes We're in a morning of sweet words As her disguise It took her in without a word For he saw his grave mistake And bowed them both to silence Deep beneath the lake

Now if it's real or just a dream One mystery remains For it is set on moonless nights they may still harm this place. actually this is really tangential that is something that I think is interesting is Alan Wake was not re-released for a long time because of music rights issues because a song from Poe's content plays over the end credits a fantastic album it is a fantastic album and as you probably know Poe is the sister of Mark Danny Looskey who wrote House of Leaves

and the book it's basically the House of Leaves album you know yeah yeah it's a the album is a companion album to House of Leaves. And so I think that that, again, even though that's House of Leaves, that's not Stephen King. I think House of King plays into that. And the House of King is way more about the mood and the tone and the interactions between these people as they explore that. Then like, all right, here's the logical rules about how the house works. Let me explain, like, where the house came from and what it's doing. And like, none of that arises or comes up.

And so, like, as a developer, they're just very much on this. wavelength of what so I'm going to talk about this a little bit like the other kind of elephant in the room about horror games I would say is probably like Lovecraft

yeah eternal darkness and alone in the dark and there's just all sorts of so so many games yeah yeah and so like lovecraft is about like unknowable cosmic horrors and like if I had to describe what King is about it's about knowable

cosmic horse. It's about, you know, he definitely goes for the cosmic. He definitely goes for, like, the big bads. But he always finds a way to humanize them or connect them to the relationships of the people. Have you finished fairy tale where the big bad is literally just like a giant lovecraftian, you know, monstrosity with tentacles at the end. Literally, yeah, like it's like, I mean, he kind of knows it because that fairy tale is kind of about stories and he's like very self-referential. But, uh, yeah, he still take, dip it from that well from Tental Beasts. It's actually interesting that you guys

brought that up because a long, long time ago, I think I actually linked to it in the notes. I wrote a story for one up about Stephen King's influence on video games. Number one search engine optimization if you search Stephen King video games. Oh, where about that search engine optimization when US gamer was a thing? I went to click on. It was like, this is going to be full of info that Nadia's never heard. Oh, way

cheese. Ah, Nadia wrote it. Sike. I'm just amazed, oneup.com is still available for people to read. I'm, I am extremely impressed. I had no idea what's going on, but I'm happy that's still there. But when I wrote that article, yes, it might have even been that article. I think it might have even been a retronauts, really old retronauts blog

post I did for way back in the day. Is retronauts so old that we're doing retinots about previous retronauts at the same? Retronauts has moved around, my friends. But it was basically about the relationship between I said that it and Earthbound had a whole lot in common. And someone, of course, said to me, oh, excuse me, actually Earthbound didn't invent Lovecraftian stuff or Stephen King didn't invent Lovecraftian stuff. And I said, yes, but the point

is Lovecraft is Lovecraft is love Craft, Earthbound, which we'll get into in much more depth soon, and it are both about the same thing, which is about childhood, conquering terrible things from across the stars, like wishes and, you know, prayers and magic and stuff like that. That's not Lovecraft's department. That's more Stephen King's department. And it's actually, I guess, Earthbound department as well. Yeah, I mean, Stephen King likes people, even if he puts them through. Yeah. Like, I think he fundamentally believes that, like, people can stand up to evil and people can should stand up to evil. And that is. the responsibility of people to stand up to evil. Yeah, I think his ability to write interpersonal friendships and relationships and have strong groups of characters working together is one of his

strongest suits, and it's why a lot of people keep coming back to his works. I think it's what's so great about things like it and the body, you know, and like, it's interesting with it, we'll get into its influence, but like, I'm actually kind of surprised that there hasn't been more just like direct influence of it on video games.

Like, as much as there's been, you'd think there'd be even more. Well, the thing, I mean, I've been thinking about this, and I'm like, maybe it influences, like, Japanese RPGs and their structure in terms of just kind of, like, the first act, the second act, the increasing escalation of cosmic threats. Yeah, I'm surprised we never got, like, 16 or 3-2-bit J-R-BG that was literally, like, kids growing up fighting monsters, having to come back 20 years later, and a killer clown. Like, that never, that never happened, exactly, right? It kind of could have. Yeah. So you described that and I'm like, no, no, it must have happened. You're just forgetting it. It was, what was it called?

And I guess it didn't happen. But it sounds like it should have. It was, it was Rhapsody, a musical adventure now, I wish. It was Rhapsody of Music only. I'm like, maybe if you like play persona one and persona two at the same time, you can like kind of get. Oh, yeah. You can kind of fake it. But I honestly think Earthbound is our closest bet here.

I think you're right. I mean, I think, and Earthbound, it's funny because Earthbound has that same 50s nostalgia that Stephen King has. Like so much of Stephen King, the Uber boomer, is like ultimate 50s nostalgia. Like, you know, if I had a dime for every evil greaser bully in his books, right? Like, he clearly got beaten up by greasers in high school. Like, yeah, and Earthbound does kind of capture that 50s love, I think. I think also what really did it for me when things finally clicked for me was the final

battle of Earthbound shock spoilers, where they are trapped in what's essentially the deadlights. Like, you cannot, the words that made it click to me was you cannot comprehend. and Gagaius' true form, which was pretty much the spider dimensional being it from the book, the way I read it. I can see that. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what kind of made me say, hey, wait a minute. This is just, this is just it.

Where I've been? Why have been asleep this whole time? So I was pretty impressed by that. I think that's when I wrote the article, because I played Earthbound much later than most people around 2008 or so. And I had just read the book as well. So smart me, made this article that someone, you said, no, it's not. so internet writing I think if we're kind of comparing it

to Earthbound a little bit too I think one of the one of the strengths of Stephen King is his ability to describe the mundane as like a layer on top of or obscuring the horror that lies underneath like you know the horror is not always on the surface

and in fact it usually isn't did you read was it 1122 63 or whatever the one about the Kennedy assassination no I've kind of been saving it and I have it and like I think it might be my next one I've heard it's Some people think it's his best. I think it's good. I think it's really good.

But that one definitely, I mean, gosh, you want your boomer nostalgia. What if I could stop JFK from being assassinated by traveling through time? Exactly. Every boomer's dream. Every boomer's dream. No, but that book in particular, too, like it almost is a historical novel. And just the, like, what really struck me about that book is, like, it's like 100 pages just about, like, Lee Harvey-Alswell's, like, home life. Like, not about, like, oh, what a crazy killer he is, but just about, like, here's the kind of house he lives and here's the kind of car he drives.

Here's the kind of job he has. Here's his relationship with his wife and his neighbors and stuff. And, like, he just, you know, flee Harvey Oswald. It's the guy who shot Kennedy. Like, we're not supposed to sympathize with him or empathize with him. And I don't think we do, but he still humanizes it. Right. He still takes the time to make him an actual character and a bad character who does.

bad things, like killing the president of the United States of America. But he's King. King doesn't take the easy way out and just be like, oh, this is the evil guy who's just baddie bad, bad, bad. And like, you know, like, I mean, King writes great villains. He writes horrible people. I mean, I don't want to make it sound like these people are sympathetic at all. But they're still, they're still characters.

They're still humanized. Oh, completely awful. If I think about it, I think about like, you know, Henry or, you know, like, someone like Harold in the stand. Some of these, the worst characters are some of the most interesting ones. He does a great job of making them real and humanizing them and giving you some of their motivations. And yeah.

I mean, the stand, if you want to get into that for a second, it's just about like, not necessarily good versus evil, but the people who are influenced by evil. Mother Abigail herself says something to the effect of there's not a lot of evil people in this world, but there are a lot of easily influenced people in this world. And sometimes one really feeds into the other. Yeah. And I mean, if we want to talk about the stand a little bit, like what makes the stands so interesting is that it's not about the end of the world like the the was a captain trips the

the the COVID like this COVID yay that was great that was really great to remember everybody out like I mean it's it's a great description of how it all goes down but like that that part of finishes very early in the bus like like that is it's not drawn out it's not like what's going to happen but well it just happened it's over it's done and like it's about the aftermath and it's about the rebuilding and it's about the communities and the people and what they make in this world after everything that they know has gone to...

Andrew, I should have known you're one of the stand fan who loves all the meeting notes. You're like, oh, give me more chapters of meeting notes. When I think of the stand, I think of, you know, people arguing in like a PTA meeting

about like how their society should be structured. I just want to interject because I've had no podcast to complain about CBS All Access to the Stand from 2000. and 20. What a disappointment. What a drop ball.

You didn't watch it? I didn't watch it. I command you to watch it, especially it's a roller coaster of bad. But Stephen King did write a new ending. There's like a new ending that he wrote. Like the last there's like a basically got like a new

kind of Coda epilogue that is interesting. But the rest of it's pretty terrible. The rest of it's pretty terrible. That's interesting. Yeah. You know, if you want to, you're talking about Earthbound and it. Like for me when I look at the stand, like all I can see is the last of us. Oh, for sure. The last of us, to me, is just, yeah, there's zombies, yeah, it's about the end of the world, but it's like 100% about, like, how are people dealing with building a society and with continuing to relate to one another in this world after it's ended.

Yeah, I think, I think, you know, the stand was 1977. I think a lot of post-apocalyptic stuff has been inspired by that, you know, it just, it just has to be, you know, it was very early to even present. the wild to an extent is kind of the same way. People just kind of gathering, doing what they can at the end of the world. Or, you know, just like in stand, like the escape through the tunnel out of New York, which is like that is so tense. It's like 200 pages in the end up. I know, right? Yeah. When I go to New York. They just went back. It's so long in the young coverage. When I went to, when I go to New York now, I can't get through that tunnel without thinking of that. And I'm in New York a lot.

So that's good thing to be reminded by. No, do the wind, the sun or the rain We can be like that Come on, baby Don't feel a creeper Baby take my hand Don't be able to fly Don't feel the reaper

Baby, I'm no man La La La La La La La Yeah, but you know, for me Stephen King is, you know, people talk about Stephen King as in horror author and he is a horror author. But when I think of Stephen King and what I remember from his books, it's the characters. Yes. And it's the, I mean, yeah, they creep you out and they, and they scare you and they take you on a roller coaster ride. But what I remember are the people I

went on that roller coaster ride with. And I think that's what makes them so much, so much engaging, such engaging reads is not just that, oh, this terrible thing is happening and it's so scary. Ooh, it's because you get to know these people who are also being put through this. situation. And so you have a really like sympathetic emotional response to the horrible things that were happening in the book. And I feel like that's a broad reaching conversation, but I need to interject here about the dark tower. So for me, that's my through line. It's the thing that like really hooked me early on and was pivotal and kept getting better and better while I was growing up, like getting to read, drawing the three, the wastelands, Wizard and Glass as they came out.

And it's the ultimate RPG in that, you know, it's a, it's tight, this party, this cotet, this group of Gunslinger adventures who travel cross-world on this grand adventure to save everything. And huge sacrifices are made. There's so much king foreshadowing. And it's fantasy, it's sci-fi, it's Western, it's crime. It is, it's everything. And there was so much expectation built up around this thing that could never fully pay

off in a way that was fully rewarding. And he did manage to kind of stick the landing in a way to make it fulfilling and then kind of fix it and post down the way. But I think, you know, as somebody who grew up just like loving stories and loving fantasy, to me it showed this blueprint for an RPG, an RPG of sorts, right? I think it's really important to talk about the Dark Tower for people who haven't read it, which is, but, you know, it's, it is a metaverse. It is a Stephen King universe.

All of his, all of his stories, all of his characters, all of his books, they come back to the Dark Tower, whether directly or indirectly. And Nadia, just like in the third book, they end up in the stand suddenly. And that's like, there been some subtle things before that to let you know that the world's crossover. But like suddenly they're in the stand. Well, it's like also, I know that Eyes of the Dragon was Dark Tower before there was Dark Tower because that's linked to Dark Tower. So is, and this is missus me off the talisman. which we'll get into because one of my favorite fancian novels in all time. The Talism is fantastic

and very gamey. Extremely gamey, as we will get into, but the Black House, the sequel, was one of the worst things I ever read, and I just can't believe King wrote it. It was that bad. It actually ends up being really important to the end of the Dark Tower. In a really deus ex-Machina kind of way. But anyway,

I mean, this is the guy who wrote the whole God's hand coming down and ending the stand. Not anymore. Not in the series. Oh, so that's what God. I'll watch at least the last episode to see what the new end. But it's true.

Like once you realize the King started weaving everything together here, it just became in itself a game. It gamified being a fan of Stephen King because you could like, there were little Easter eggs and nuggets and connections to make everywhere. He was multiverse before there was

multiverse. For me, at least, like, it's hard to imagine the world before the MCU. It's hard to imagine the world before our cross-media universe. But like, this is something which weirds me out, okay? Like, I'm going to talk as a parent of a kid for a while. Like, the Disney princess, the Disney princess brand did

not exist until 2006. Okay? So there were... You weren't allowed to put, they weren't allowed to appear together until Disney decided that they were allowed to be together, right? And they made the princess theming. And then before that, like, Kingdom Hearts. Like, Kingdom Hearts is what, 2001,

2002, I think, in the U.S. Like, very recent. And like, that's, from my perspective at least, you know, like, when some of these big medias at Disney Marvel started to break down the walls between their universes

and to be like, well, let's bring these characters together, let's tell stories where these things cross over. He was doing this like 30 years before. Yes, absolutely. And it seems almost trite now to be like, oh yeah, all of his characters

ended up in the same story and they were all crossing over, we're like, nobody else was doing this. And that's, I think, why When I say that the Dark Tower was the one he wrote for himself, it's because this is where he could take his favorite toys and he could put them in his favorite world and he could keep telling new stories with them. No matter what happened to them in their original story, there was a way for them to come back and for their narratives and for their tales to continue. He didn't want to say goodbye to these people. Yeah. And it's true.

There's something in there for everybody. Like if you're a big Salem lot fan, you get a huge payoff. If you're an It fan, you get a you get payoff. Like, yeah, it's pretty much something for. everybody. If you, if there's, if there's king property you love, I think ultimately, you should read the Dark Tower. Yeah. I think the reason I didn't grow up with that is because my mom was never a fan. And so she didn't really have all the books in her, in her house on her bookshelf. And I think she might have found it too self-indulved him ironically. Nadia, instead of reading

Sweet Valley High, you should be Dark Tower. Why can't we have Sweet Belly High and Dark Tower crossover? And I think, I mean, I think it's, oh my gosh, okay, I just thought of this. So I haven't, like, done any structured thinking about this. And I'm like, I'm like, the Dark Tower is like Stephen King's actual play podcast of him, like, taking his favorite characters and putting them through his fantasy world that he's created. No, absolutely. You're right. So it's so before his time. When he's described it, that's what I said before Shane brought it up.

Like, it's the multiverse. Sorry, but for Andrew, you brought it up. It's like, hey, it's the old, it's the multiverse because it is. Yeah. And it's, it's, um, it's so rewarding. Um, and it's so, this is the thing which is really fascinating to me, you know, we're talking about like, King never worked in games, never wrote for a game. like he wrote the dark tower like the dark tower is one of the most beautifully enjoyably gainy fantasy series i've ever read i mean yeah the pivotal climax of book

three is literally a riddle game a game of riddles like and there's little puzzles and stuff throughout yeah it's it's right it's his most game like thing except for maybe the running man is there a box moving puzzle in the there may be a crate moving puzzle yeah pull this lover And there's even, there's even, you know, with Wizard and Glass, it's, it's like gunslinger origins. It's like he suddenly stops and, like, goes back and writes the prequel the way that so many game franchises like to fill out the lore of their, of their stories after they've been around for, for 10 years or so. They're like, let's go back and see how it all began. And you never, you never read the talisman, Andrew?

I have not, I have not read the talisman. I missed it as a kid. It's also a good beginner, or like, second or third, because it was one of the first five I read and it's much more fantasy and it's very great, it has some cool characters like Wolf is one of the all-time best characters in any Stephen King book and it kind of takes place in like, you know,

two worlds. It's like he's trying to, right? Yeah, and I know, Noddy, you're saying like it kind of has the same plot as Nino Cooney and it kind of does. But I think that trope of like child having to rescue their mother from a sleeping spell is something that Stephen King and Peter Straub

also stole from like European folklore or something. Yeah, but the, the Twinter thing? Like, did they steal that? No, but I don't think some of the Twitter idea is fantastic, actually, that everybody has, like, yeah, like a Twitter, like alternate person in the other world. I feel like, I'm sorry, but I feel like the fact that she had, that Oliver has his mother, it being, who's a queen in another world being made sick through, well, you know, like, through these linked events. I don't know. To me, it feels like so, so, so talisman. I think the talisman would make a great video game. Oh, it's perfect. Just a depth. Well, apparently, like, you know, Spielberg wanted to make a film of the talisman for the last, like, 30 years and never got around to it.

But I think someone did option the rights. Maybe it'll happen one day. Well, I know that Shigasato a toy, speaking about Earthbound and her mother and all that stuff, like, he is a big fan of the talisman. And, yeah, he mentions that he wanted to work, actually, with the property more, but Signor Spilbergo had the rights. And that was a long, long time ago. And nothing's really happened since then. but yeah, that's a bit of a shame because it's really a book that deserves more media, like a lot more media.

I feel like it was Dark Tower before Dark Tower. And it's just not really recognized nearly as much as the Dark Tower. Also, did you interject, just the fact that Spielberg put the Shining into Ready Player 1? It's like the meta mix of everything. It's all just very weirdness. Yeah, but they also put an awkward orange into Space Jam, a new legacy. They sure did. Along with the devil.

I would not be too much into the Metaversal. Yeah, like the nuns from the devil. being in Space Jam legacy is something. Yeah. So you said ETOE is a big fan of the talisman? Yeah. Actually, he mentioned in the interview that I linked to that the character of Wolf,

who Shane and I were just talking about, like, he noticed a similarity between them and the it's called the Birdman for Magic Ant. Obviously, Wolf came first, but he did notice, like, there's a lot of similarities between Earthbound and the talisman. And actually, World Warcraft has a reference to

the talisman with, they have an actual wasted place called the blasted lands, which is nuclear, basically with the talisman you have, what happens in our world happens in the territories, quote unquote, kind of our parallel universe. So during the testing of the atomic bomb, the equivalent in the territories got basically covering radiation. It's a radioactive wasteland. Nothing can live there except terrifying, horrible mutants. And that's probably the only really scary part of the whole book, actually, is them going through the blasted land and confronting the mutants living there. So, yeah, it is extremely gamey, as Shane mentioned

earlier. So you mentioned the I was going to say, like, yeah, if you like the talism, you'll like the Dark Tower. Oh, I know it. I know it. The Dark Tower is like the Quest narrative. And again, it's like, like the content. It's a party. It is a

group of people who are bound together by fate. Oh, yeah. I mean, there's like towns and worlds and maps and bosses and gods and. I mean, even the end of the talism, you have the McGuffin, the literal talisman at the blind hotel the final boss area well you've like yeah and the you know the dark tower is the ultimate macuffin and then you the question at the end is do you actually want to get there and at the end you know

before you read the last book stephen king's like i don't want to show this to you but i know that you want it so i'm going to give it to you yeah like yes he has to deal with like that at the end too like the ultimate question like do i give the reader what they think they want i have to say um i didn't say this on twitter because everyone would have just said shut up nadia but when i played Eldon Ring and I got to Kalid, the wasteland. I was like, holy shit, this is the blasted lens by Stephen King. Except, same description, the red soil, the

horrible yellow disease. I don't know. I kind of like Eric's, when he calls it the third impact, I think that's a good description. That's pretty perfect. I love how Erica, just like side note for people who don't know Eric is one of the co-hosts of the Axel Bug God podcast. He's always making the best references like he's watching he started a run

of Kirby. He's watching it on GameStunk Quick or something. He's like, oh, this looks like such a fun, marvelous game. And then they get to the end, the final, of Kirby's, the latest game, I can't remember what it was called Kirby's. Forgotten, sorry. Kirby in the Forgotten Land or Kirby in the Forgotten World. So he gets to the end

of the last level and says, why is Kirby fighting the 13th Angel? Like, I love that description. It really is some cosmic horror. Kirby Games go places. I'd like to see what King thinks of Kirby games. You'd be like, what the hell is this? Oh, God. Somebody watched Akira.

So we're talking about you're talking about I'm sorry, so you're talking about I'm sorry. So here's I've been thinking about a lot, too, is that when we think about Japanese horror, that's kind of in the late 90s, but when it first started coming up, and the early 2000s, both movies and games, we started seeing a lot of it. But that stuff was all influenced by King. I mean, the first round stuff, and, like, Silent Hill and Silent Hill, too, in particular, are, like, I mean, the missed. Like, like, you can't get, of course, they're doing it for draw distance on the PlayStation or whatever, but just like in terms of like what's out there what what's coming for you finding safe zones i actually kind of have this like personal theory that the miss became so popular with the day games because dear god that fogs it is a miracle for draw distance cover up hey everyone suddenly we have a misty world going on here

and it's clearly how that one of the reasons it was done but it's so effective remember at the time when the high the hill came out i liked that it wasn't just resident evil because resident evil is so clearly inspired, you know, by Romero and specifically zombie movies from the 60s and 70s. And Silent Hill was not that at all. It was, yeah, more the mist or Carpenter's the fog a little bit too. But, you know, the way the horror is presented, the more psychological presentation of it. And again, that's what Silent Hill, too. Silent Hill, too, you really get into the interpersonal relationship of James and his wife, the Maria. And again, you, we've been kind of dancing around this a little bit, but like, there's a weird psychosexual.

which is also present in a lot of things. Which kind of pops up in King's stuff a little bit. Right. I remember when I first came out, when that, when it was psychosexual and, you know, I was just shocked. And a little bit of that is references to things like, you know, Hitchcock. But there's definitely, yeah,

Kenyan vibes throughout Soundhill, one, two, three, and four, I think. I mean, even the street that the opening cafe is on is called Backman Street. Right. And I think there's a direct reference to, yeah, Stephen King's student. him, Richard Bond. Yeah, and I can't remember if it's any particular King story, but I feel like the room like feels really, I mean, I guess it's kind of like the mist from the other side, from the inside or something, but just kind of like the idea of being in this enclosed space with things

going on outside. You know, that that one really strikes me as kind of a kingian premise. Yeah, the interesting thing about the mist is that it's like, of course, you have this outside world filled with fog and horrible monsters within the fog, but the man is a real monster, but to King's credit, he doesn't really want. well in the mist. Oh, but I'll never forget my favorite quote in Silent Hill three is someone says, Heather, they look like monsters to you? And I was like, that just like blew my mind. That's like, oh, like that's what's great about sound like maybe these aren't even monsters.

They're just people. Even Silent Hill, the first one, the part with the taradacto that crashed through the cafe window, that is a direct reference to the taradacto monsters in the mist and the, uh, dear God, the mist is a terrifying story. And every, is like Pet Semetery in every respect, there's something there to just freak you out. The cult stuff in Silent Hill One really reminds me of a lot of King's work, too. Not necessarily his better work, but definitely, I think it's a, it's a vibe. Well, well, again, but we're talking, we're talking about small towns, like Silent Hill's a small town, you know, and what Salem's lot, lots of his work. You know, it's about who has the power in the small towns, who is terrorizing people behind, you know, and in King's stories, they're supernatural, but that's an actual thing, even even in our world, which is that they,

there's these small towns, which are just terrorized by small cabals of people who either really know what's going on. I mean, I think another really influential short story, children of the core. I mean, obviously the film franchise ran on its own, you know, Urban Harvest is a banger, part three. But, you know, I think the core idea of like this cult that's, yeah, like, very terrifying and easy, easy to be inspired by. Yeah, the whole children taking over the town and making a cult out of it. Yeah, that sounds pretty universal at this point. But also just one thing to always stuck out to me about it was. the fact that yes, you had a small town and you had trouble in the small town and people ignored

what they saw. You know, oh, no, there's not a child being kidnapped. I'm just going to get up and go in my house. I didn't see that. That's extremely relatable in a really terrifying way. Did any of you play, do either of you remember even Secret World, the MMRPG? Madia, I'm friends with the lead writer on the Secret World. You are not. It's amazing. So, yeah, a guy named Ben who used to work at Blizzard when I was there. I probably got drunk with him that day.

It was, I went to go preview the game way, way back in the day. Fun.com, was it? I think. Funcom. Funcom. And that was a fun preview event, actually. actually, because, yeah, I remember liking the game. I didn't get to play it when it came out, but there was, like, just the whole thing was one

big Stephen King reference. Like, I remember walking down Flagstreet, so that I appreciate that very much. But, yeah, no, it's, I mean, it's still, it's, I was actually looking up. It's still available as, like, Secret World Legends, and it's kind of free to play it. But I think if you just want to, like, go through the story and you know, you don't mind a little bit of free-to-play MMO grindiness, you can probably download it and check it out. Like, it just has, again, that sort of weird, I mean, like, like, one of the The town is, like, literally Salem's Lot.

It's just, like, a small town. It's just like, it's a small New England town that's been taken over by vampires. Does it have the house up on the hill, like Salem's a lot? I don't remember geographically, but I'll take a look at the map and see. It's possible. There's a cemetery, I remember for sure. So, anyways, no, but that game, it's urban fantasy, kind of supernatural fantasy, kind of urban legend fantasy, kind of like Gravity Falls mixed with Stephen King, I don't know, but just like there's a lot

of really good writing in that game, in my opinion. And a lot of that is because, and I think this is something that we've been talking about, I think it's an important to emphasize, like Stephen King is tropey. Like Stephen King is like, vampires, killer dog. Werewolves.

Yeah, werewolves, whatever. Like, he's not reinventing the wheel necessarily, but his writing and his characterization and his plotting is what elevates these ideas and what makes his work so engaging into people. And I think that part of the reason the secret world is so much fun is because they are just looking at these common urban fantasy, like Vampire the Masquerade or Werewolf the Apocalypse

or Stephen King novels or something for like, how can we take this genre stuff and use it as like, Basically, you know, basically when you're making an MMO, you just, you're like, oh, my God, I have to write, like, two million words of content for the players. And so, they're like, let's just take some really good tropey settings and environments, and then let's stitch them all together with interesting quests and characters inside of those places. Yeah, for sure. If I wasn't terminally addicted to Final Fantasy 14, I'd probably play it, but because it always seemed like a lot of fun to me. But one NMR is all I can handle in my life right now. Speaking of Final Fantasy 14, though, that has more than the share of King references.

inside the quest text. It sure does. Like, I'm trying to remember some off the top of my head, but I can't remember. I just know I've seen them and done the whole like pointy meme thing about them.

Do you remember any of the top of your head? Because I sure don't. I don't. Not at the top of my head. I do know like there's a lot of groaning at them as I'm playing the game. That tends to happen. I know,

I know I've seen a lot of dark tower references there. But, you can't get like Kujo as a mount, no? You should. Not a good idea. I do know that like, there's a line where in Midgard Stormer, the Dragon King says like,

you have forgotten the face of your Lord. I always thought was a riff on the face of your father. Right, which is a, Stephen, which is the Dark Tower. Yeah, Dark Tower. So I always thought that was that, but that's all I can remember. Also, since I referenced, Cooge, he's, uh, Stephen King is working on a Coogeo sequel right now, kind of an unexpected sequel for getting a really? How can't make a sequel

out of Coochow? Poor dog. It's about like a different animal, I think, this time. Cats. Do you say a cat? I haven't done anything about crazy cat? You're kidding me? Oh, dear God, pet tams. Sorry, sir. That sounds like terrifying. It's called rattlesnakes. Excuse me.

This is called a rattlesnakes. But it's not about rattlesnakes, that's just the name of the boss. Oh, damn. But actually, my first dog was named Kujo. Really? Did you name this dog not? Did your mother name the family dog? My dad.

My dad names him. Dark, because the movie Kujo messed me up. Have you even seen it? It is good. I haven't seen the movie. I've read the book. The book is actually one of the saddest books I ever read. Believe it's, you would think it's scary, which it is.

But it just, it really has a really sad ending. It does. Like, the film's ending is not as sad as the books. Really? Well, I guess there's a way to make it not as sad for sure, not without getting really too many spoilers, but yeah. Did either of you play in 1998 Legend of LaGaya? I didn't finish it, but I did start it.

And I also played... It was a mist in it. I think they even call it the mist, right? That's why I was going to bring it up, because it has a mist in it. And it had, like, monsters in the mist. And I always... Long before I knew that, you know,

Stephen King was out a lot popular in Japan. I thought, this is a weird reference. This can't be, this can't be coincidental, can it? Well, it also has really low polygon character models in the battles. I know. I'm wary of reading too much into misty environments in the 32-bit era. Yeah, you're like, oh, you know. Superman 64.

You're like Rydia and her family, they're all from the mist. No, not really. That's missing here. Briefly off topic for a second. I know that in the Final Fantasy, I didn't know this before. go back to the town of mist after everything's been burnt to the ground. And you talk to someone who says, yeah, the sun, the town has suddenly caught fire one day. We have no idea how it happened.

Just picturing Cecil looking at the sky whistling. Oh, I remember that being kind of like, you depressed. Yeah, it's super depressing. Yeah. That's one of the, I'm sorry, I was talking about Final Fantasy 14. It's one of my favorite changes between the original translation and the new one is that like, in the original one, it's just like package and in the re-translation, which is more accurate to the original one. It's like, bomb.

Please deliver this bomb to the innocent people in this video. Thank you. And Cecil's like, I had no idea. This is going to happen. I can't read. Are we the baddies? I think we are. Good thing this package can't stop me because I can't read. Oh, man. How good would like a Dark Tower

and then they'll be? Well, I'll say the less that's said about the Dark Tower 2017, the better. However, I am hopeful that Amazon is going to invest in a new dark tower series by Flanagan. maybe he'll do it right because he sounds like he wants to do it right he wants to start like the beginning of the gunslinger

and like wouldn't it be great if you know someone made a game or games or like a world of games based on the Dark Tower they were actually good that's the dream you know with rings of power we've seen Amazon is kind of willing to go for like a four or five season commitment up front so hopefully they'll

do something similar for the dark because you don't want to tell the gun slinger and then be like the end you know it's funny Nottie you mentioning the fact there was a misadventure game and there was a dark half game and do you guys know about the dollar babies thing do you know that that that concept of dollar baby so for forever for 45 years stephen king's had a thing called dollar babies where if you're an independent filmmaker and you want to make a of non-commercial film short short film or feature film based on one of his stories that hasn't been

optioned you can send him a dollar and you can get the rights to do it and every year people do it and there's been lots of interesting adaptations of, like, his lesser works. And I think some, I think maybe you're finding it. Like, someone started out doing a Dollar Baby and became a real director anyway. So it'd be cool if we could try to inspire King to, like, let indie developers license his games to make indie games. Right? How cool would that be if suddenly people could just start making indie games based on? I know you mentioned this already, but like, I really think that Langelliers would make a really, I think you could just have really.

Oh, yeah. Well, I was going to ask because, like, yeah, like, that was my choice. I think for like, if someone asked me like, what Stephen King short story or, you know, book, would you want to make a game? I like, I do have a weird soft spot for Languilers. I would love to play a Langalear's game. I would make one based on Grandma. I've never read Grandma.

I hear it's really good and weird. It's so, like a lot of Skeleton Crew is great and weird. So, yeah, we've been talking about his novels a lot. Like, Stephen King has a lot of good short stories and they've also been like really influential and option for movies and all that. You mentioned the body, which is a stand by me. Oh, yes, of course. This one we haven't really talked about, which is a very, very big one, especially in Japan.

And I don't really understand why. I think it's basically the camaraderie between the four boys. I guess that's a big part of it. But apparently Japan has a boy band based on Stand By Me. The Final Fantasy 15 starts with the song, Stambride. Yeah, literally. Yeah. Literally.

It's about four boys hanging out together. Like, you can't get more on the notes. Well, I mean, Stanby Me is a fantastic film. I was the right age. I saw in the theater. It inspired me and my friends to go. walk across a rail bridge risk our lives to be like

that movie. Did you find dead bodies? No, we didn't. I wanted to, but yeah, I think stand by me is incredibly influential to all kinds of media. I saw someone mentioned actually, and I didn't even think about this, but anime in general apparently has a lot of scenes with railroad tracks for that specific reason.

Yeah. I never even thought about that, but I guess it's true. I know that like, as you said, just thinking about Stand By Me and the opening for Fantasy 15, wasn't that Florence in the Machine? It was. It was voice machine covering Covering Stan Mee.

Well, at least it didn't pay for Frank Sinatra. Yeah, I think it's cool. They got a cover. I think that's amazing, but I'm looking at it like, do you guys, how much does that cost you?

Just out of curiosity. But of course, Stan Lamee is, yeah. Stan Lamee is worth mentioning because for the early Pokemon games, at least, that's how many of them start out.

You check the TV and you see Stamababby, the movie playing, and I always thought that was a neat touch. by me I stand by me I say no you stay by me

now as we wrap up here actually one that I want to bring up and we haven't and shame on us is half life again it's the mist instead of the Arrowhead project you have black may sets uh half uh sorry valve has come out and said basically half life

is the miss. For sure. So Mark Laid, the lead writer on Half-Life, he's also a horror writer. I think he's been branched over-nominated amongst other things. So there's no...

Half-life is a horror game. We often think of it as like the science fiction game or like a shooter-type game. But like when you look at the plot of Half-Life, like it is straight up being through another world, unknowable cosmic horror. Yeah, like Monster Clause. Yeah.

Anyone who says that half-life isn't a horror or Half-Life 2, I challenge them to go into a dark, watery area with the failing flashlight where the head crabs are known to roam, and come back and tell me it's not a horror game. Dr. Abrin, too, and Half-Life 2, I think is a really good Kingian villain in terms of kind of, you know, I mean, this is, this is like we were talking about the stand, like Randall Flagg, the man in black. Like, he's not the big bad. Like, he's the face and the instrument of the Crimson King. He is the protagonist's nemesis because he is a person. I mean, that's what's so amazing to me about the dark tower and about the man in black. It's like, he's not a cosmic threat. He's just a...

Not as you haven't read the end, but at the end, like, Flag isn't even like the next to Big Bad. He's like the third or fourth down the line, you know, it's like, which is kind of amazing. He kind of just goes out like a jump and, uh, yeah. But Brin reminds me of him a lot in that, like, he's the guy who's on the TV. He's the guy who's the guy you're going after. He doesn't matter at all, like in the brain of things. But, you know, he's such a compelling villain, and you really hate him so much that you ignore the fact that he is actually not, he is not the instrument of your demise and your, and your travails. He is just this guy who is in front of you who you fix A-on.

he's the guy he is as he said kind of the face of something much more something much worse is behind them he always get that impression when you read about him but he's definitely the face like i think he's described in eyes of the dragon as someone who uh just wants the power to make trouble doesn't want money doesn't want women doesn't want anything just wants to make trouble and that's what he does at least in eyes of the dragon like he stirs up a whole bunch of revolutions and takes off that's what he does throughout most of his appearances he's kind of like this charming anti-hero who you're almost rooting for, which, you know, I think you're ultimately Yeah, he's so charismatic. And I think ultimately like he's nothing in the grand scale of the

evil in Stephen King's universe. No, but it doesn't have to be. He sometimes all you need is a shit disturber and that's all it takes. Well, and even like, you know, since you've spoiled too much, like the big bad, the Crimson King is kind of a nothing at the end too. And I, and I think like the real villain in Dark Tower, the real is the hero's kind of, uh, quest, his blindness, because all he cares about is the MacGuffin. All he cares about is his adventure and the realization of his party that he will sacrifice them to get what he needs. And it's a really interesting story. I highly recommend it to all the listeners of retronauts. That does sound very good gaming.

When you mentioned that, Shannon, it makes me think about Roland as like a, so there's been, there's been a lot of like interesting kind of deconstructions of like the RPG hero in terms of like, okay, but who is this asshole who thinks that he's the chosen one and goes at the people's houses and smashes there. I'm just looking through all your drawers and smashing your pots don't mind me I bet you know

because they're like oh well they're the hero they can do they can do that whatever and it's like when you look at the at Roland a little bit like he kind of has

a little bit of that to him and that you know you're like well he's the good guy this story's about him he's great but then when you kind of look a little bit deeper at like what

he's willing to give up and to railroad in pursuit of his quest you know it's not a thing he's not noble it's just that you've maybe even misreading

his motivations because you've been assigning heroic motivations to what is actually a story of revenge. So Dark Tower is undertailed blue. And in that first book in The Gunsinger, King shows you what Roland will sacrifice and you don't forget that, you know? And yeah, I think

we should dream of Dark Tower games. I think that would be the ultimate influence of King. Because it really it is his legacy to the true fans. I think, you know, all the big name books that It's the Shining's, those would be the ones that ultimately he's remembered for, but if you really get into what he was trying to say,

I think it is the Dark Tower. As long as we're, I'm sorry, I know we're trying to wrap up. But like, have I told you about, like, I think that like the Dark Tower

and Final Fantasy are actually very similar series in terms of their kind of like mixture of fantasy and science fiction, kind of in anything goes at, like, the Final Fantasy is not all connected to each other,

but I think tonally, they have the same sort of like, I will just throw whatever I want into this narrative. 14 is that, is that based. basically. It has them throwing everything Final Fantasy into one. 14 is the Dark Tower of Final Fantasy. Really, but by six, I think by six, they were prepared to branch out in new directions

and post-apocalyptic directions and science fiction directions, and they never really looked back. And even four has sci-fi. I mean, you're right. Yeah, like, it's always been broad. You do go to the moon, just kind of sci-fi-y and underground. And you start as anti-heroes in that, too. So, yeah, and that was the 80s. So, yeah. Man, these things are old. Are we old? We're old. I think we might be old. I'm sorry to break a tale. But any closing thoughts, basically, on King's influence and games? And well, you kind of indicated where you want to see it go, e.g. A Dark Tower game series. And I think all the people making video games now pretty much have been influenced by King.

Even if they aren't active King fans, it's such a part of the fabric of culture. I mean, like, the average child is afraid of clowns now. When we were kids, when we were kids, like our parents thought circuses and clowns were great. And like, when I was a little kid, I had a clown stuff in my room, I had a clown painting and clown lamp. And I was like, 30 years after it, 30 years after it, no child is going to have a clowns. Clowns are like the only thing that my daughter is afraid of. I don't blame her. Thanks, Pennywise. Yeah. Yeah. And John Wayne Gase. She does not understand the idea of a clown that is not a horror clown. I actually love there was a line for Nintendo about how they brought in that clown character for arms. I can't remember her name. And they were just like surprised when America just started screaming as a collective. And they realized, America's scared of clowns. This gives us power. And they actually said, this gives us power.

Yeah. Wasn't it a sexy clown? I don't remember. No, Twentel is a sexy one. The clown, people will find anything sexy these days. What am I saying? I completely memory hold arms. It took like a full 45 seconds for me to like pull that out of the memory hole.

So thank you. Bringing that game up. You were like, I was playing some Nintendo land the other day. And, uh, I don't know. Oh, Nintendo Lines deserve better, though, I think. I mean, I'd say arms deserves better, but it has that angry. angry, sexy clown. So maybe he doesn't deserve any better. But that is it for this very clowning around clown-centric horror clown episode of Retronauts. If you think this episode is

cool, we have a whole lot more like it. Just visit the Retronauts Patreon at Patreon.com for slash Retronauts for access to media that's even more nourishing than a field full of weasel-infested corn. I had to stock, I had to actually think of talk about that one. Is that from the Chil of the Corn? Are you, she who long? She who walks between the rose? No, try again. Here's the hint. Weasel infested corn.

Weasel infested. Why are there weasels in the corn? Why are there weasels in the corn indeed, Shane? What is that? Is that from the stand? The stand, the trash can man, appears in a whistle and Mother Abigail's dream. Right, okay.

It's deep of my brain. I was like, it's from the stand. But you should also stand, the recent stand to see a terrible trash can man portrayed by. Oh, no. Ezra Miller, a trash can man, thumbs down to that. Ezra Miller. I memory hole that one, speaking of memory holes.

Oh, well, don't worry. He's coming back as the flash, and you'll have to remember him where you want you to do that. Oh, no. I don't have to take this. Everything, Shane said, I agree with, too. Like, King is so influential that he influenced the culture, and the culture influenced the games, you know?

Yeah, no, I mean, very brief diversion here. Look at Stranger Things. I mean, that was influenced by Silent Hill, which was influenced by King, and everything's kind of going full circle now. Yeah. Good times, good time. So support us on Retronauts at the $3 level to receive access to weekly episodes,

support us at the $5 level to get episodes a week early, as well as two exclusive episodes a month. Support us at the magic number 64 for the opportunity to set a Retronaut's topic once every six months. As of this recording, there are two spots left, so go ahead and snap them up. As for me, I am Nottia Oxford, co-hosted the Axel of Blog. RPG podcast. We talk about RRG's old, new Eastern and Western, support us at patreon.com forward slash blood God pod and or follow me on Twitter at Nadia Oxford.

I also do a podcast that's under the umbrella called Charlie and Dropouts, the Final Fantasy routine podcast. You can hear me here on retroounce, of course, and I'm on Nadia Oxford. Sorry, I'm at Nadia Oxford on Twitter. Andrew, why don't you, I don't know if you want to tell us anything about yourself or we can find you,

but if not that's fine to. I work in games. I left Twitter after Musk bought it. So if you want to find and he looked me up on LinkedIn, I guess. That's kind of how I live my life these days. But I am always happy to play games and talk about games, and it's always a pleasure, not it. Oh, it's always a pleasure to have you too.

And Shane, how about you? I'm regrettably still kind of on the Twitter for now. Not as much, but still there at Shane Watch. And I think this episode has inspired me to even read more King because I have a big stack. I really did buy like 20 Stephen King books during the break, and I need to buy more. That's the great thing about King, though,

is that you can always find a king book you haven't read. There's always one out there. Yeah, on a plain reason, I read the Colorado Kid, which is like a very random one. Yeah, hard-boiled, not that great. But I think next up, I'm going to do 11-123-163. Or under the dome.

I hear that one's good too. Oh, underdome. Did you read the, what was the regulators? Was that the main piece under the dome? No, those are regulators and desperation. and uh yeah and and there's there's some dark tower in those too so yeah nadia one day in the distant future you should read all of the dark tower and we should have a sequel to this episode in like i agree 10 years hence i agree we will it's like the pact that the loser club make made will

we'll come back when the yes we'll come we'll come back when penny wise rises from the sewer and and and talk and talk about this again one day so nobody go taking any uh you know fatal showers in the meantime was the bath it was a bath that's right he killed himself in the bath but uh Until next time, thank you for listening. And don't go burying your dead kids in other people's gardens. It's not nice. you late night

Lord of sweet romance I know all my whole wife too I will remember with him whatever else I do late night

where the stars and you Thank you.