The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 81: Carpe Jugulum Pt. 2 (The Gothic Literature Position)

Episode Date: April 11, 2022

 The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is a podcast in which your hosts, Joanna Hagan and Francine Carrel, read and recap every book from Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series in chronological order. This week, Part 2 of our recap of “Carpe Jugulum”. Eyeballs in places they shouldn’t be!Find us on the internet:Twitter: @MakeYeFretPodInstagram: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretFacebook: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretEmail: [e-mail]: www.patreon.com/thetruthshallmakeyefretWant to follow your hosts and their internet doings? Follow Joanna on twitter @joannahagan and follow Francine @francibambi Things we blathered on about:Dictionary of Superstitions - Oxford ReferenceThe Count Censored - YouTubeLeo Breebaart's comment - alt.fan.pratchettLara Croft Handstand - YoutubeChristabel by Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Poetry FoundationYou’re Dead To Me - Vampires in Gothic Literature - BBC SoundsIn Our Time, Polidori's The Vampyre - BBC Radio 4Trial By Content - The Greatest Vampire Sire - The RingerComment on the Stone Witch - alt.fan.pratchettWookey Hole Caves - WikipediaMusic: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com 

I feel like this is the time to let listeners know that I am, in fact, eight magpies in a trenchcoat. And I, in that case, would like listeners to really appreciate all of the sound effects I edit out every month. Carl! Damn it, Joanna. How many, what does eight stand for? Depends on the rhyme, fucking anything. Let me consult my amazing book. I'm going to talk about those a little bit and follow up. Absolutely, amazing book here, I'll pick up.

Oh, Joanna, you'll love this. I am going to grab a copy. For a whore, you can have eight for a whore, that's nice, isn't it? Oh, I'm having that one. I am eight slutty, slutty magpies. Or for a whish, you can be both. I am a whimsical whore. Yeah.

Like that, my Twitter bio. Oh, wait, I need to make up a LinkedIn profile. I'm going to put that in my LinkedIn bio. Sure, it's not like you want jobs. No, God, no. No one, please don't employ me. I'm trying to treat them mean, keep them keen thing. Do not fucking give me a job as a narrative designer.

In fairness, if someone gave you a job as a narrative designer now, you'd be very unhappy. Yeah, I would never clue what the fuck I was doing. The more I learn about it, the more I realize I know nothing. But I made a very small shit level in Unreal Engine today. Pretty good to me. It is okay. There's this weird thing where if you look up,

you can see through the floor into the room above that's made the lighting really fucky. But technically, that's not my fault. Just don't look up. That's down to the static meshes that I downloaded an asset pack for it. I did not make all of that shit myself from scratch. What about static meshes?

You need dynamic meshes. Yes, but dynamic meshes are a lot more less efficient. Oh, I've got no fucking idea. Generally, dynamic versus static dynamic is going to cost you a shitload more at runtime. That makes sense. I've already nearly filled this computer's hard drive. Luckily, there's room for three more hard drives.

Oh, good. I don't know how to put them in, but someone else is going to tell me exactly what to order and then put them in the computer for me. Good. So I'm not going to keep randomly referring to something I won't tell you about listeners. I have the Oxford Dictionary of Superstitions,

which arrived in the post today. And it's from, I don't know, the 2000 and somethings. It's not terribly old, but it feels like it is, because I couldn't get it as an e-book. That's just, oh, eelskin garters prevent ground perimeters. And did you do that? There's so much about eggs here.

Eggs after sunset. I'm going to buy a copy. And then instead of a proper rabbit hole, I might just read aloud from the Dictionary of Superstitions. You're stealing my Castle and Snacks idea. To be fair, technically, we had a simultaneous Castle and Snacks idea. That's true.

But I got mine in a millisecond before you sent yours. Yeah, that's fair. It's all good. I love it very much. It's a bit like brewers, except it can focus more on the origins of each of them, because it's only the one subject as in superstitions. And yeah.

I once again had a consult brewers moment while planning this episode. So I think I'm going to make it a point to find something to consult Brewer's Phrase and Fable on once per episode. I don't. I'd be surprised if I've ever gone on an episode without looking at it at least once,

but I don't always end up using it. I completely forget that I have physical reference books when I'm planning episodes and I fucking Google everything. And I Google something, and one of the first results that came up is, well, Brewer's Phrase and Fable says, and I was like, I have the book in front of me. See, I've got all my most used there and there.

All right. So they are within reach when I'm working at this computer, which I do if I'm planning in earnest. I'll do the odd bit on my phone. Well, because I do the post-its and then I plan on the computer, the post-its, I just star things to look up later and then I look everything up so I'm planning.

Yes. Which means Brewer's, is at hand if I've used it for a previous episode and not put it away yet? You need a tiny little bookshelf somewhere in your work space. You can't have an office without any books in it. That's weird. There's three bookshelves in here. It's just my reference sections in the living room.

Terrible. They are also sharing space with some fabric and shit. And why not? I'm not going to move the camera to show you how much fabric is in this room. Front scene, but it's a lot. I believe you. So much fabric.

I'm going to quickly follow up on a conversation we were having before anything. The listeners were allowed to hear. But if we happen... Broom at sea. Sorry. Like lose a broom at sea, it's bad luck. Well, that ruins my weekend plans.

I've decided that if we ever do happen to find ourselves in a situation where we could be cosplaying this world, say a convention, then I'm going to make us matching William DeWard and Zachary Cripslock cosplays, which will mean nothing to the readers. I think either would work. I was about to say, I feel like we could quite either of us

would be happy playing either. Maybe have to make two outfits for each of us so we can swap. And we do two days. Because unfortunately, we can no longer share clothes. No. But I'm thinking like 1940s, like American journalist, but in like Regency fabrics.

So anyway, that's what's on my brain right now because I've got an actual sewing project I need to be working on that, isn't that? Good. Yes, absolutely. Like last night when I was meant to be researching things I'm really interested in for this podcast, but because I was meant to be doing it,

instead I went and stalked all of our exes on Twitter. We didn't enjoy it all, really. I don't know, as we said last night, the best revenge is living well, but sometimes you need to make sure that you are in fact living better. Yeah, otherwise how do you know? Speaking of living better,

we're going to an improv night tomorrow. Oh yeah, is that living better? I have no idea. I don't think I've ever been to a live improv night. But I did used to really enjoy whose line is it anyway. Yeah, I enjoy the odd bit of improv, but I think it gets such a silly rap from people who've been to too many bad improv things

at Edinburgh Fringe and then make fun of it on TikTok that I can't help but sort of think it's going to be crap and it probably won't be. Like we're friends with one of the actors and she's very talented. I have a feeling the mood of the room would change it a lot, if everyone's right, it's going to be funnier. Because it just is like I've talked about before, isn't it?

If you watch a stand-up thing even on Tally with someone who's not into it, it's not good. Yeah, or it's stressful. Like if I'm when I've taken people to see things I love or shown them things I love and they're not into it, then I feel an overwhelming urge to apologise and explain it. Yes, which makes it worse. I did it for about...

I promise not to let you know if I'm not enjoying it. Thank you. I did it. I was watching Jess Foster-Q's stand-up show, Hench, which is on Prime Now, which is so good. And I'm a massive fan of Jess Foster-Q, but I was watching it with someone who doesn't necessarily watch very much like feminist stand-up.

Not that it's like over-feminist, but it's definitely more feminist than, I don't know, fucking Jimmy Carr. So I found myself like... Yeah, fucking Jimmy Carr is an anti-feminist act. I'm sorry, guys. Yeah, fucking Jimmy Carr is not feminist. You are actively upsetting the suffragettes.

Specifically, the mum from Mary Poppins, who is everyone's favourite suffragette. Yeah, sure. I'm not going to argue. Probably if we do the survey. Her daughter's daughters do a dora. Fuck, I can't... Oh yeah, no, I was watching Jess Foster-Q

and I was sort of having to quietly explain. No, see, this is funny because women have to live with... I don't need to do this every five minutes, do I? Do I? You get women, have it rough, it's fine. Okay, please laugh more. I'll have been with Jack eight years this year and I rarely have to do the little explanations of these things anymore, which is nice.

I find myself doing it less and less often because also I'm just less and less willing to. Sure. Like I was in the pub with some friends last week and they are people who I love dearly, but who I don't... There's a mix of like a couple who I'm almost identical to politically and then there's a few who are middle-aged men.

Actually, one of the middle-aged men are pretty much identical. Although he had nicer nails than me, which I was upset by. And someone said something really stupid about women and I didn't have the energy, so I didn't want just to be like, fuck's sake, could you? Could you not? And he went, oh, you're going to get a lot up in your high horse. And I was like, no, I'm very tired.

Could you just stop? I have got to the point where if it comes out, I'm just like... That is a weird thing to say. And I can leave it at that now. So I think that's personal growth. I do like the tactic of when someone makes a very bad, like non-PC joke of asking them to explain to me why it's funny. I like the idea of it, but I don't think I've ever actually done it.

I have, but I think I just could yell that. I like trying around middle-aged men, then you used to say, well, that's not true. End of non-professional setting. Yeah. I mean, I've cut down massively because I live further away from the pubs than I used to. Yes, I'm trying to give up middle-aged men.

No offence to any middle-aged men listening to the podcast because I'm sure we've got one or two. Yeah, no, for sure we do. But I imagine the ones that don't need to come with a health warning. Well, yes, has Pratchett fans. I'm assuming if they are. They get the benefit of the doubt, to be honest. I feel like if they are still that sort

while being Pratchett fans and listening to this podcast, that they've got some real interesting double-think going on. Yeah, there's a lack of comprehension somewhere. I do wonder if anybody hate listens to us. You know, that's the thing. I'd really like to think that they do. Special hello to all of our hate listeners out there. How are you doing this evening?

Good. Good. I'm glad it's bad. Yeah. I don't really listen to hate listen to anything, although there are some podcasts that I don't really like anymore, but I kind of listen to out of a sense of obligation. That's the shittest form of parasocial relationship I've ever heard of.

It's not like I even feel like I owe something to the host. It's just like I subscribe to this now. Maybe I'll miss something if I don't listen to it. I've got a bunch of stuff I'm subscribed to and very rarely listen to anymore, but it kind of works out because sometimes I'll like overdo it or I just won't feel like it for a while. Like the writing excuses podcast. I love that podcast.

I don't listen to it for ages because, frankly, I'm making excuses not to do enough creative writing. But then at some point soon, I'll be like, I fancy writing and I'll listen to Tennery. And I'll be glad I didn't unsubscribe and forget it existed. Yeah, writing excuses is a nice one because I go to it specifically when I plan on doing some creative writing. And the set of episodes they did on game writing is really good.

Atlas Obscura is another one. I always like those build up and build up. And they're only like 15 minutes long. So if I just need like quite interesting, but very in-depth stuff to get me through whatever I'm doing, then that's it. Nice little build up there. I maintenance phase is when I let build up sometimes

because I have to keep an eye on what my mood is going to be when I listen to it. Because although it's an anti-diet culture podcast, it's a podcast about that does talk about diets. And sometimes my mental health doesn't want that. Oh, the latest noble blood, by the way, it comes with a trigger warning for eating disorder stuff. Yeah, I haven't listened to noble blood for ages.

I really, that's one I like to binge. Yeah, yeah, me too. I listened because I didn't get into it until it started. It had been on for a while. I listened to all of the Henry, the Eighths, Wives, Ones in a row. I was like, I was so in the know about the Tudors until that leaked out of my brain. Yeah, this is a problem.

I listened to quite a few history podcasts, but I don't retain information well. Unless I've written it down or made the effort to put it in my brain. Unless it's the old useless fucking fact that has decided to live in my brain forever. I tell people at work about the Raspberry Pips thing, and nobody looked very interested.

And I had to remind myself that not everybody is you. I was trying to think of a good obscure fact, but now they all left my brain. Yeah, no, absolutely. It's like if somebody asks you favorite movies. And it's like, I've never seen a film as far as I can recall. Sorry. Yeah, what's your favorite album?

What is music? Yeah. Album. No, sorry. What are these albums? Oh, fun, actually, Pratchett related news. I got an email from Baxbindle Games that the anniversary edition of the Klaxboard game is finally shipping this month.

And I should actually be with people in May. It was supposed to be with people in August last year. So this is very exciting for me. Cool stuff. Are we going to play that? We've got a lot of games to play right now, Joanna. Yes, we haven't had a chance to play what next year. Plus, you and I have never actually played.

Oh, no, we have played Discworld like more pork together, but once many years ago. I've never played. I've got The Witch's board game and I've never played it, but adding Klax to my collection means there's only two. I haven't got hold of. Shall we? We should probably like make a podcast.

That's what I'm saying. Oh, yeah. We have to do the episode, Francine. Would you like to make a podcast, Francine? Yes, I would like to make a podcast. Yes. All right, let's make a podcast. Okay.

Hello and welcome to The Tree Shall Make You Freight, a podcast in which we are reading and recapping every book from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, one assigned in chronological order. I'm Joanna Hagan. And I'm Francine Carroll. And this is part two of our discussion of Carpe Jugulum. It is.

We are seizo by the throat. Yeah. No, I was going to say something like any, but I forgot what I was going to say. That's cool. Cool. No, it's not spoilers. Before we crack on, we are a spoiler light podcast,

obviously heavy spoilers for the book Carpe Jugulum, but we will avoid spoiling any major future events in the Discworld series. And we're saving any in all discussion of the final Discworld novel, The Shepherd's Crown, until we get there. So you, dear listener, can come on the journey with us. Cartwheeling across the terrifying bridge.

Of course. It's not falling over your head. If you fancy a cartwheel. Of course. Follow up. Follow up. Got stuff to follow up on Francine. I want to see if I can play the count censored video

with a share screen so that the listeners can hear a bit of it. Okay. This is new technology to me. I know share audio exists. Yeah. One of my favorite vampire related videos listeners is the count censored.

Well, somebody has edited a video of the count from Sesame Street. Muppets. Which one? Sesame Street. Yep. Okay. Advanced sharing options.

Computer audio. You know that I am called the count because I really love to f**k. Sometimes I sit and f**k all day. But sometimes I get carried away. I f**k slowly, slowly, slowly getting faster. Once I start f**king this very odd sound. I've seen a book or-

I'll link to that in the show notes, isn't it? It's still one of the funniest things I've ever seen or heard. It's somehow funnier with just the audio because now I'm creating the images in my head myself. Anyway, so that's nearly a follow-up. I have a small follow-up that I can't remember what it was. Was it the last episode or episode before last?

You were saying that the Anastasia Practical File kind of mentioned the same thing sometimes, like bigger on the inside, always ended up as a reference. Yeah, that was like the last continent when we were talking about the tower. That's right. And I found quite a long forum post

by Leo Bribart who put together the thing and it's from 1998, where basically he was saying that the kind of scope of the APF expanded a lot because the idea to start with was to put down things that people might not get. And then he realized that things that people might not get was a lot wider than he thought, especially when knowing people who didn't speak English

as the first language started reading it and things like that. And there's quite a long explanation, which I found quite interesting and I'm going to link to as well. Oh, cool. And then also, a brief follow-up. I've been asking lots of people about magpie rhymes and superstitions and pretty much everyone I have asked so far

of varying generations only knows the one for sorrow, two for joy, three for a gal, four for a boy. But you acquired your copy of the Oxford Dictionary of Superstitions, which has some more variety to it. And I'm just annoyed at this one. I've expressed this to you already, but one of them is one for sorrow, two for luck, three for a wedding, four for death.

And it doesn't work. It should rhyme. And so I've decided that one should go. And I'm sure this was a version, if nothing else, something that some kids came up with to giggle at, that it should be one for sorrow, two for luck, three for a funeral, four for a fuck. It did say there in brackets, brackets variant mirth

and mirth and death are better. But mirth, it's got variant mirth and variant berth. They rhyme. But yeah, I'm going. Luck doesn't rhyme with any of that, obviously. Exactly. So it should be one for sorrow, two for luck, three for a funeral, four for a fuck.

Yep. The opposite of a funeral. Exactly. Kind of. Well, okay. So a wedding is the opposite of a funeral, but most people kind of christening, I suppose. Anyway.

Four weddings and a funeral, I think, has tainted our minds, though. Yeah, well, four fucks and a funeral is a very different film, Bronson. I mean, it could be cool. I'm not going to Google and find out if that's a thing. I'm not going to. Okay, good.

Not without going into incognito mode. Anyway. There's lots of cool stuff about Mike Price in there anyway. Yes, we'll go into that in more depth at some point. Will we? Will we now? Will we? I'm trying to get you to put the books down now,

so we record the podcast episode rather than you just reading the Oxford Dictionary of Superstitions. All right, I'll put it not out of my reach because that would be foolish, but out of my sight. There we go. Well done. Bronson, would you like to tell us

what happened previously in Carpe Giaculum? I would. Previously on Carpe Giaculum. Amazing. Again, tells us nothing, but I have to assume that everybody listened to that one, which kind of isn't the point of a recap of it as the previously on.

You meant to have watched it anyway. It's like a reminder. So maybe that helped. You're like a really cryptic prompt. Would you like to tell us what happened this time, which is at least slightly more relevant? No, I've written the entire thing as cryptic crossword clues.

Fantastic. I'm into this. If not, I hate I'm not going to cryptic crosswords. Apparently, I can't fucking say it. In this section of Carpe Giaculum, in the early hours, the Count and his family carefully try some vegetable blood as they enjoy a terrible glass of wine

and endure a selection of religious symbology before suggesting King Verence to break their fast. Back at Granny's Cottage as Nanny enlightens Agnes on witchy hierarchy, they find Granny's christening invite in a nearby magpie nest. Mightily Oates arrives having planned to look in on Granny and accepts the offer to walk slash be walked home with by Agnes.

We learn that he remains pink, folk free and able to see the vampires for what they are. Hodges that, hunting the phoenix, bumps into Agnes' notes and informs them he spotted Granny this morning as the doyen of drama herself carefully crosses the stream on a strange moor. She can't stop here.

It's gnarly country. After a visit to Nanny, Agnes' notes head to the castle to bring back Magret and complete their trio. More coaches fill the road to the castle than Agnes' notes sneak in handily empty coffins. They're almost caught out by the intrepid eagle but Mightily Oates fightily smites him

and they acquire Magret, thank you, I'm really proud of that, who may not believe in vampires, but certainly believes in Granny. As the count uses magpies to search out Granny's mind, the witches meet at Nanny's to scry Granny before setting out for the gnarly ground. Hodges spots a shapeshifting bird and flames flicker

as the count discusses a winded phoenix and grinding on to ground with the family. At the gnarly ground, as Nanny worries about baby Esme, Perdita takes over and gets Agnes over the optical illusion of the treacherous landscape. In the caves, a sleeping Granny tries to keep them out and they find her firebird feather. She wakes and informs them that she shan't come back.

Nanny pops back and whispers, Granny admits that she just can't win this time. Back at Nanny's, a deal is struck with the newly arrived knackmack feagle, giving them an island to protect the local kubistis from snaffling. Nanny plans a spontaneous mob for the front of the castle while Agnes sneaks in to get the doors unlocked.

An amorous Vlad shows her the family history and as holy water attack fails, he spells out the magpyr plans. The count confronts the mob politely but flanked by a couple of threatening corporals. As the witches gear up to a confrontation and Oates fails at exorcism, Granny finally makes her dramatic entrance,

only to be caught up by the count. She sends herself elsewhere as Nanny and Magritte run and the vampires plan to take Granny as sacrament, turning her in the process. Agnes and Oates are thrown out in the rain and Granny is tossed out after. Meanwhile, Barons find himself taken from the castle by something small, blue and possibly a bit pictish.

Cool. You're on one today? Yeah, that was good. Thank you. Lots of wordplay. I enjoyed that. We like to squeeze in a little bit here and there. Helicopter and loincloth watch.

I am going to say that the knackmack feagle have something of the loincloth implied about them. You reckon? Yeah, well, with Nanny conceal the tatties. Yeah, and I'm going with Fertive Phoenix for the helicopter. Sure. Specifically Fertive Phoenix. So if I need to use the Phoenix next week,

again, I can as long as it's not Fertive. OK. Time test. Quotes. What about him? Who's going first? You, I think. I'm going to go first then.

Where am I? You are on page 171. Now I'm on page 174. I can't read. Well done. That bodes well for our podcast about a book. Hi, my name is Jared. I'm 19.

I never learned a fucking read. Magpies flocked around the castle tower. Most magpie rhymes peter out at around 10 or 12. But here were hundreds of birds enough to satisfy any possible prediction. There are many rhymes about magpies, but none of them is very reliable because they are not the ones magpies know themselves.

I promise to calm down on the magpie ship for the rest of the episode. Do you? No. OK, good. Because it's quite interesting. My quote is a little later on. Says Matt Grant.

Don't get angry. But you don't think Granny is doing this on purpose, do you? Keeping back, I mean, so that we have to form a three and work together. Why'd she do that? So we develop insights and pull together and learn valuable lessons, said Matt Grant. Nanny paused with her pipe halfway to her lips.

No, she said. I don't reckon Granny be thinking like that, because that's soppy garbage. I enjoyed that. And I also enjoyed the little bit later on. Agnes is kind of highlighted as understanding that. So while Magrat is still somehow thinking that Granny's some mentor figure, Agnes is like,

well, no, like Nanny and Magrat thinks that Granny's jump ship to baby as me because it's narrative. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's action and that's bullshit. The actual line. I mean, we're jumping into characters now and I was starting with Granny anyway. Was learning herself to the baby had a sort of rightness to it,

a folklore touch, a romantic ring. And that's why Nanny and Magrat would probably believe it. And that's why Granny wouldn't do it. Granny had no romance in her soul, but she did have a very good idea of how to manipulate the romance and other people. Yes. She loved that when you combine it with this idea of

Granny waiting for the dramatic moment to walk in slash walk, always walking in at the right moment. Yeah. Look, she may not have any romance in her soul, but she has a touch of the theatrics to her. Yeah, she knows how the story is meant to go, certainly. And she knows what her place is in the story because she chose it.

Speaking of, I quite liked and I didn't follow this up more. I'm not sure if you did. Later on, when it was you hold onto my hand, Agnes will hold on to yours. I've been this way a few times. It ain't hard. It's like a children's story. It's that Agnes.

Yes, we're down to the bone now. All right, said Nanny. Oh, that was such a good line. That was nearly my quote. But that idea of the children's story being down to the bone, like it's like the most purest distilled form of story. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. I enjoy that. Good. Glad I managed to shoehorn that in somewhere. But yeah, Granny and making choices. Sorry, I just walked right over you. No, no, I finished my sentence. Please continue.

When Nanny's explaining Granny to Agnes a little bit and she's talking about, she's always standing behind herself and criticizing what she's doing because she's terrified she'll go bad. Yeah. And she's so moral because she's got Granny Weatherwax staring over her shoulder. That's the thing, if she's not automatically a good person,

she's making the choice to be good each time she has to make a choice. Yeah. And you see, there's a couple of moments when Nanny kind of feels that coming on in herself and makes a little comment like, you do well to cope with this kind of thing. It's interesting watching the dynamics play out with the witches now that there is, at least for the purposes of this section,

the book, the hierarchy shift. Yeah. Yeah. And Granny kind of finally making the choice, at least in part, while she's up in the caves to not be involved in this idea of thought. Yes. I wonder if she would have come around a bit quicker if the word ought hadn't been used because she obviously hadn't realized about the invitation.

She hadn't realized about the invitation. But then she couldn't come straight away because you can't admit that it was the invitation that did it. No. Or the name of the baby, which is the revelation in the same couple of sentences. I shouldn't know the baby was named after her. But she's sort of, there's lots of things that ought, I dare say, but they ain't, which are gorgeous little sentences there.

Absolutely. The between can and can't one was good as well. I've had a lifetime of ought between. I've had a lifetime of ought from can to can't, which then Nanny explained later to the point where I imagine that Prakrit loves that phrase so much he then explained it through Nanny because usually he wouldn't really just leave his little country saying things and people look up if they wanted to.

It's like, no, I like that saying you're all going to learn it. I feel like that's going to make its way into my lexicon somewhere. It's an enjoyable saying. I think it makes force into my lexicon. So I sound cool, cool, like an old witch, as they say. But moving all of the hierarchy kind of up one, and Granny taking a self out of this equation, this comes back to my kind of working theory that this is one of the best

witches books and one of the reasons is that Granny takes a self out of the equation. Yeah. Partly for the she's overpowered Granny X Mac in a thing. And the fact that it completely subverts that by her being beaten by the vampires. Yeah, that's a weird scene, isn't it? I mean, for a start, she knew it was going to happen. Yeah, she admits and she can't do it. But when she walks in, this is page 240 in my copy.

Agnes notices that she's wet. She's never seen Granny wet before. And it's such a good callback to equal rights where she's walking through the rain without it touching her. I know. I always think of Granny when I walk through the rain. Like maybe if I walk right, I won't get wet. So far, no luck.

But I do feel cooler walking up right, like I don't give a shit through the rain, rather than hunched over. It depends on how much proof my makeup is that day. Oh, yeah, no, I never really met enough eyeliner for it to be an issue anymore. I've just accepted that sometimes I will look like a bedraggled poet, and that's OK. Did you ever find a word around for Daffodil? No, and I wish not to discuss that. Daffodil back to Phil.

God, I sound like what Major General wants since that, wasn't it? Better Major General has never sat a G. That same bit where she walks in and she's wet, there is a line I feel like I'd be remiss not to mention, which is when the count's saying, oh, and you're going to win, and then you'll give me your shopping list if I expect you to free. And she says, no, I will expect you to die, which I assume is intentionally a James Bond reference.

Is that I have no idea about James Bond. Maybe something. Sorry, I take it that was one of the classic ones, was it? As a very, very classic, famous moment where Bond's like being, I don't know, there's a laser between his legs or something. He's like, do you expect me to talk in the bag? I was like, no, Mr. Bond, they expect you to die. Yeah, no, I know the line.

Yeah, I was just wondering, I didn't know which movie it was, I think it was before this book, yeah. Yeah, I don't know which one it is. I'm sure a listener points to the listener who tweets us first and tells us which one. Thank you. Thank you. I can't be bothered to google it.

Gold star to the listener. Yes, metaphorical. Not our allegorical. Yeah, we don't do allegorical gold stars on this podcast and make an awful mess. Anyway. No, I don't know what I'm talking about this. It's fine.

Thank you very much for noticing. Yeah, I mean, along the scene of hierarchy, still is moved on to nanny where she is really not happy about the shift. It doesn't suit her. It's really interesting, especially when you look at her, like especially in relationship to Magra, because nanny works perfectly as a counterpoint to granny because she's put all the sort of down human realness

that granny is kind of lacking. That's her mother to granny's other one. But when you put nanny in the position of the other one and have Magra as the mother, Magra is a very different sort of mother because nanny as the mother is all the kids are grown up. She coos over a grandkid and gives it a sweetie and gives it back. And even when they weren't, I feel like she wasn't like Magra out

with her teddy bear shaped sponge and sponge shaped teddy bear. Yes. But Magra is the mother with the baby strapped to the back. And the early development and... I feel like that's all there is. ...bearance is influence and she sort of... Yeah, that's true. Understands.

No one would have had an influence on nanny. Which actually jumping down to Magra quickly, there's this great moment where Perdita just does not like her because she's not a wet hen anymore. She's not pringing. And also because she's being the kind of mother figure that Banknes and Perdita, but the sounds of it don't particularly care for.

Where just automatically everybody gets a child label applied to them because all they're being right now is the mother. But understandable if you've got a small child, but understandably annoying as well. But also I think it doesn't work because there sort of needs to be a bit of a wet hen in the group. And obviously it's not nanny and if it's not Magra anymore, it could be Agnes, but not Perdita.

Who's too confident to be a wet hen. But then if you look at the actual dynamic of how they came to witchcraft, like Magra was always a witch. Agnes is a very reluctant witch who tried very hard not to be. Yeah, and she's not... Well, she is maiden according to Perdita certainly. She's not like that. She's not the shrinking violet maiden putting flowers in her hair

and meeting a gesture in a cornfield. She's got other things to be doing, thank you. She's very busy and important. She's not deluding herself and magicking makeup onto her face at whatever Magra did on it. It was her hair, wasn't it? Yeah, she was trying to make her hair slightly more romantic. Yeah, Agnes already has great hair.

I do enjoy the descriptions of nannies cottage with the system of favour with the photographs. Yes. The passive aggression continues. It's a passive aggression taken to an art form and I respect it. I also like nannies ability to summon a spontaneous mob. Exactly, a summoned spontaneous mob. Spontaneous mob, optional brackets, obligatory.

There's going to be a spontaneous mob storming the castle in half an hour. I put the word out, tell everyone it. I said it ain't compulsory for them to be there. You don't have to come if you don't want to. It's like the very different toned no worries if not. Yes. There's two ways to say no worries if not. Yeah, yes.

There's the trying to genuinely say, no, it's fine. Don't worry, please, I'm sorry, I asked you anything. And then there's the, oh no, it's fine if you can't. Silence. There's another nanny thing, wasn't it? Leaving a silence to be filled. Yes. Which is a repeating theme through the books.

It's an enjoyable theme through the books. Yes, Fines does it very well. That nanny does it. Nanny does it. I'm not going to dive in much to Perdita's weird fatphobia. No, I mean, it does feel a little less irritating coming from the teenage girl arguing with herself because that's kind of relatable. It makes sense.

It's just also a bit tiring to read. Yes, yes. I mean, it doesn't need halving on as much as it does. I feel like also there's a difference between Perdita kind of saying it to Agnes, about Agnes, as to Perdita saying about like Mrs. Scorbic was the one she made a point of, the cook in the castle kitchens. I do like, sorry, Perdita kind of calling Agnes out and saying, you know, oh, you're trying to be extrovert and dynamic.

You're trying to impress me. Yeah. She's such a toxic friend. We will have that. I did like kind of opposite side to that when she was like, Agnes is terrified to use her muscles. She's really strong. Like I can cartwheel off this thing, which is kind of rings true

and there's somebody trying to make themselves small doesn't use their power. Yeah. It's the look at what someone who is willing to could do with this body, with this ability. Although that said, there's always the, you don't use all of your strengths because it'll hurt yourself unless you're in emergency and the adrenaline goes through. So I wonder if it's something like that with the. I felt like it.

I'm not going to do that because I will pull all of my muscles. You don't give a shit. You're going to be punched out in a minute. Love how that's an anti-possession. Yeah. Just text them. There's some great stuff about the abyss. Did you have any other notes on the witch dynamics?

Some great stuff about the abyss mood. You know what? I just fucking love the abyss in this character development from the abyss. Some one-liners from the abyss. Fucking fantastic. I keep talking because I'm sure there was something else on the dynamic. I can't immediately think of. I actually have the abyss as a bullet point in little bits.

I liked later and when I was worried I was going to put too many in. It was, I nearly made it a location to just shoot more shit into this episode. Mm-hmm. Oh, I did like the fact that Nanny knew she could go immediately back and then get the actual answers from Granny. Yes, but it was the fact that Nanny and Magret both knew. Like, that's the nice thing with Magret. She's grown up enough to take some of Nanny's role

and that either of them could have been the one to go back and get those answers. Yeah, and the fact that Magret kind of shoved aside all her nonsense as soon as she heard that Granny was in trouble. Yeah, she didn't believe in the vampires, but Granny, she would go for straight away. Yeah, good stuff. Who's next? Let's talk about the magpires.

Magpires. Magpires raised. The family dynamics, we get a bit more background into how they've been raised to try and. I want to design that nursery wall paper. Do you see the dancing garlic? I was learning how to do repeating patterns on the photoshop recently, so maybe I'll do some religious symbol wall paper for you.

Thank you. Fictional religious symbols, possibly. Yes, that's not accidentally do something very weird and culturally appropriative. He's trying to cure them of phenophobia, whipping out the holy symbols to test them. Symbols, honestly. And then I have two bullet points that are just fucking Vlad and fuck boy Vlad. Did they connect to anything?

They do connect to page numbers, so I'm finding them now. I don't think I ever dislike Vlad this much in previous reads. I think I've just really decided to dive into the fuck boy Vlad belief. I think in previous reads, we weren't so aware of things like dating strategy nonsense, you know. Yes, very true. And this just screams that. He's such a dick to Igor.

He is. Oh, I feel so bad for Igor. He's like shouting at him for whipping the spiders. Which is weird, but. All right, yes, it is odd. It's not how I would spend my weekend, but yeah. But yeah, no Eagles looking all sad. He's saying I'm doing my best job and he's yelling at him and calling him a baby and saying,

Oh, no one's impressed by your limp moaning about the dribbly candles. Those dribbly candles are hard work. I bet they are. I bet they are. You can't just make a candle dribbly. No, no, we'll find that out one day. We will find that out one day. And then as as granny is literally being like taken to be turned into a vampire and

the count is kicking Agnes notes out into the rain and they are miserable. Vlad says, shall I see you again tomorrow? Yeah, he doesn't really get it. I guess he never tried to do consensual relationship. It's true. You could almost sort of sympathize with him for attempting to flirt. I said almost. I said almost.

But I say he's never done a consensual relationship. I didn't say that in a sympathetic way. Well, I mean, I don't think he's tried for a relationship. He's got all the people he's bit. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, which I feel is not. Although it seems to mostly be young men hanging around. Well, I see him.

He's bisexual. Yeah, all vampires of vampires are bisexual. I assume a peacock waistcoat is a pretty universal sign of bisexuality, you know. Vampires are all bisexual. Yeah, yeah. But yes, also, peacock waistcoats are definitely a symbol of bisexuality. That's why I really want one. Just in case my inability to sit in chairs wasn't enough.

Oh, and one last thing on the vampires. I just didn't know where else to put this note. But there is when the Count's confronting Granny, he says to her, do you think we're really like some inbred elves? So he's done his reading. He read Lords and Ladies before they came here. Good. As he should have done.

It's a very nice book. It's a good callback, though. Yeah. It's nice that there's sort of this awareness around the different supernatural species of like, like I like to think they're sort of gossiping. Like, oh my God, did you hear what those witches in Lanka got up to? Yeah, especially it says like some similarities

between the tactics here with the, you know, the charm. Yes. But yeah, this one comes with a lot more political awareness and strategy rather than the Elf Queen, who's, you know, kind of an animal at heart. It's a similar story told very differently. Yeah. It's almost like early versus later gothic literature,

actually, which is a whole bullet point. Yeah. No, I just said that sound clever to be honest. I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. I don't even argue with you. Back down. I can't argue with that. I've read very little gothic literature.

Yeah, I'm worried one of our listeners can. All right. All right then. Where do we go? No, sorry. Midely Oats. Midely Oats, Midely Oats. Midely Oats, quite reverend.

Quite boring. Sort of, no, I'm not being mean. The book literally says he sort of exists to be boring. Yeah. But I like diving into, you know, the whole idea of vampires need to control someone who's very single-minded. So someone who's in two minds is free from their control, hence Agnes and Perdita.

And it going into why Oats is out of their control, which he's so divided about like religion versus faith, versus knowledge. He's sort of like, obviously, I believe, but I could be really helpful if I could pray to him and he could literally say go and do exactly this. Yes, exactly. But it's an interesting callback to small God, really, isn't it?

This other had some of these crises, even when like he had his God literally in his hand. It's really fun reading this and looking at the small God's callbacks. It's the first time we've gone into modern omniism in more depth than like a constable visit. Yeah, I know we've looked into this before, but I can't remember how long it's between the two in this good time.

I think it's quite a while. I think small God has kind of died and, yeah. Yeah, because he lives for like a hundred years. So we're going to say at least a century-ish. Yeah, a century or two. And, yeah, his realization when he got to read a lot, that actually all of these different translations might just be one story being told by lots of different people.

Yeah. And that's made him quite stressed out and doubtful. Okay, have a small God's, approximately 1885, brother begins reform of omniism, omni and mism. Omni and mism. What's this one called? And this is 1989. So, yeah, just over a century.

Yeah. That makes sense. Kind of. I would have gone with maybe slightly longer to allow the writings of post-brother to then turn into their own schisms. Yeah. I don't know how long it takes for a good schism. I think we could create a schism quite quickly if we wanted to.

And as I was probably a bit busy to fix them all. Yeah, good point. That's a nice little Sunday afternoon treat, isn't it? Yeah, Sunday schism. It's schism Sundays, I like to call them. I don't, because I can't fucking say it. The count using Oates' doubt against him, he can't get into his mind because of the doubt,

but he can use it against him in other ways. And he's saying, you don't really believe enough to be intimidating. When I met all these priests and helped them write their fucking holy books, I mean, they were all wrong, but at least they were passionate about it. Yeah, yeah. And you can tell he's kind of going for the being nasty, because I can mention the frustration that he can't just control him. So he's going for the other weapon, which is,

I can see enough of your mind to really fuck you off here. Yeah. And it's a nice glimpse behind the count who's mostly polite and reasonable. Even when he's fighting the witches off, he doesn't really slip. Yes. Yes. I think with Granny, he does a little bit, doesn't he? Yeah, when he can't see her mind.

He just kind of keeps her. Yes, no, that's right. Yeah, it's the same issue. And that seems to be, I think the only reason we don't see him have a reaction like that about Agnes is because he's just not really paying attention to Agnes, because I think he's sort of written her off as Vlad's a bit. Yeah. Which obviously I don't like anyone disrespecting Agnes.

She's one of my favorite characters, but I do like the idea that he automatically doesn't respect anyone who's hanging around with Vlad because. Anyone who's not putting out for the count. Oh, vampire funds. They are numerous. They bite. But they do suck.

Right, let's carry. That would have been so much better. I can't pun Francine. That's all I know. It works. It's a dynamic. Okay. You build a platform.

I work off it. We go. We go. Pogja. Pogja. A one man feudal system. He knows as best as he knows when to doff his cap. Absolutely.

I felt so bad about that, Phoenix. I felt so bad about that, Phoenix. It's a little ragged Phoenix. At least we know he's probably going to be okay. But it's very sweet in this idea of the sort of nature of Phoenix's and what if it's just there's an egg and the egg needs warmth. And maybe it's just very efficient incubation. Yeah.

I want to clarify to listeners now, before we consult the Oxford Book of Substitions, that I'm pretty sure you can't hatch an egg by setting fire to it. No, but there are plants that you can. There are plants that only grow through fire on there. So. Oh, yeah, good point. In a universe where things are fucking weird already,

I can quite believe this Phoenix thing. Oh, yeah, absolutely. When you know the old saying, give a man an egg, he'll eat for a day, set fire to an egg. Got to use the man. Yep, absolutely. Unless he's Hodja, who's clever enough to cover his eyes. I forgot that Phoenix was wounded by the Magpierres.

So when I was reading it, I was like, oh, that's cool. It sets fire to itself like a salamander dropping its tail or something. Like it's a bit of harm and a setback, but it's a self-pensing. And then a little bit later, they mentioned the wounded Phoenix again. I was like, oh, yeah, no, it was just hurt and died.

But still, that's a cool idea. It's not a little Phoenix. Fontaneous combustion as a defensive mechanism. Like that lizard that spouts blood out of its eyes. What? You don't know about the blood spouting eye lizard? No, I don't know about the blood spouting eye lizard. Hold on, hold on, hold on.

I promise, I promise I'm not making those up. No, I mean, I believe you about the blood. While you looked that up, I'm just... Short horned lizard. That's what it's called, Karen. Short horned lizard spouts blood out of its eyes. Amazing. Okay, cool.

Gonna YouTube that. It puts people off when it works. Well, yeah, I'd be put off by something spouting blood out of its eyes at me. Yeah, yeah. Toads, if you pick them up, will we on you to make you put them down? And I'll tell you what, that fucking works from personal experience. I don't often pick up a toad.

Well, my dog had a horned one. Oh, okay. And I picked it up and it went, blah, like lots of cold wee. And I was like, oh, put it very quickly down into the slab and hustled the dog inside and washed my hands, Googled Toadwee or something. I was like, there's Toadswee in self-defense to make whatever's holding them, drop them. And I was like, well, that's very effective. I like falling to little evolutionary tricks.

It makes me feel part of nature. I'll remember that next time I need to be in camouflage. Anyway, sorry, Karen. I'm just gonna paint myself. I wrench and walk through a jungle. Sorry, I ended up talking about Toadwee instead of Badass. We don't really go many places.

And we're gonna talk about Nali Ground more later, but I like the little reference to Badass named because there was a donkey and it stopped in the middle of the river and it wouldn't go backwards. And so the town got named Badass because I think it was mentioned before in at least one other witches book, possibly even as far back as equal rights. Yeah, I think Badass was probably one of the first vaguely amusing place names we got, wasn't it? One of the middle, yeah, middle, stupid little villages with nothing in it. But I can't help saying it with a slightly American twang because

Badass, Badass. Sorry, Americans. Well, the word ass, ass, isn't it? In English, Jackson, I suppose it's very difficult to say now because ass, ass, yeah. Sorry, because my husband is from Plymouth. I've kind of picked up saying asshole instead of asshole anyway. Yeah.

Apple also, which As opposed to apple. As opposed to apple, yes. As opposed to apple, which is how we pronounce it properly. Thank you, Francine. You know, the Cockneys would say apples and pears. Apples and pears. Apple.

Is it apple? Apples and pears. Apples and pears. Apples and pears. Get your apples and pears. Two pounds and apples. Very expensive apples. Honestly, we still got like half an episode to get through.

Badass. Yeah, should we go for it? Yeah. Should we have a coffee then? Yeah. It is held extremely unlucky to kill a cricket, perhaps from the idea of it being a breach of hospitality. Cramp Bone, 1579.

Lupton, thousand notable things. The little bone in the knee, joint on the hind leg of an air, does presently help the cramp if you touch the greed placed therewith. Often prode is from Suffolk, so that's a vaguely accurate offensive accent. Apparently, the rain which runs off the leds or roof of the church is said to be restorative. I would say not to follow that advice. Knowing what we know about the danger of lead and religion.

Yeah, we go. Thank you. But it's very unlucky to give a new bootlace to a friend unless he gives you a broken one in return. What? I rushed back so I could read the listeners. Sorry, I took longer than normal as well. Yeah, sorry, listeners.

Yeah, now you'll never know until you watch the video of our episode, which you never do. Which I can never be bothered to do. I don't want to look at my own face for that long. No, I mean, I'm just going to put the whole flower crown on. That's the joy of it. True shall make you fret uncut. Yay, flower crown.

Also, I want to be clear that this is white wine and not toadwee. Good. Just a little things. Should be red wine, really, shouldn't it? Fuck off, lad. All right, I like a woman with spirit. I like a man hunched over in pain. Right, sorry, should we get on with the podcast?

I guess. You don't have to. No, we should. Little bits that we liked. I've got a short one because we have so many other things to talk about, and I know you've got a lot of things to say about the abyss. Not tons. Quickly before the abyss, though, right at the beginning of the section

when we're talking about the hierarchy shift. Nanny's talking about the people who were the right shape mentally. She was never a maiden mentally. Whereas Agnes has an aunt who, four kids, still bashful around men. Tell her a saucy joke and if you're quick, you can cook dinner for six on her head. A redditary blush that Agnes has. Which if you had to pick one of the three, which shape would you say you are mentally? Maiden mother or crown?

The other one. Oh, I mean, possibly, you know, it sounds odd to say, but I definitely have a blusher when it comes to talking about, you know, emotions, sex, anything. Considering how long it took you to just say the word sex there. I was trying to think of a less disgusting way of saying matters of the heart. So I just went with sex in the end, yeah. Yeah. What about you?

I mean, possibly crone as well. I think I'm a maiden mother. A maiden crone of fusion. As much as I have no parental instinct whatsoever, I feel like I relate to nanny most. So I'm mother in that sense. Well, you are a host. Which I feel like is the mother. The child-free equivalent of mother.

I am a thankfully childless mother. God, no, that sounds bad. Yeah, not that, not that. But yeah, if I had to pick one of the three, I think I'm the most sociable and full of dick jokes. Yeah, for sure. Especially you are that. Yeah.

Interesting. We would need a third if we're going to put. I would say if we put you as maiden, then I feel like Sterling fits crone pretty well. And we will never tell him that. Yeah. The easiest trick. Slash will immediately say that term as soon as we see it tomorrow. I mean, I couldn't shut up for three seconds in the group chat.

Oh, it wasn't even the group chat. I was just sending you more shit about apples. I want to make a coffee. How do you like them apples? Oh, it's like comparing apples and oranges, oranges. Apples and oranges. So the abyss, the orangutan. Sorry, the abyss.

There were a couple of bits in it that made me chuckle. Around the abyss as we're crossing the stream that might be abyss. They stared into the abyss, which didn't stare back, which is. Was it Nietzsche? Oh, could be. Could be. You stare long enough into the abyss. The abyss stares back at you.

It might not be Nietzsche, whose name I'm also probably not saying, right? Carry on. And then there's another line later on when Agnes is hanging and panicking. That's one word. Asking for distractions. She says, why do they say writer's nine pence as opposed to say 10 pence? And handily. Rubber's dictionary of phrase and fable tells us because we don't get the explanation.

See, I'm glad I looked at your notes because that was going to be my obscure reference. Ah, sorry. No, sorry. I didn't even bother looking it up before we got to that point. Nice is nine pence is the earlier iteration of the phrase. A corruption of nice is nine pins in the game of nine pins. The men are set in three rows with the utmost exactitude or nicety. But we also have nimble as nine pence.

Silver nine pence is for common to the year 1696 when all unmilled coin was called in. These nine pence's were very pliable or nimble and being bent were given as love tokens. The usual formula of presentation being to my love from my love. There is an old proverb, a nimble nine pence is better than a slow shilling. I guess so. I just flicked past something about crooked coins. Was this in your dictionary of superstitions? Yes.

Yeah, giving them as just good luck in various situations, giving them to someone before they go away on a journey. Ah, lucky to be paid or to receive as a gift of crooked six pence. Yeah. Cool. Which is weird because crooked six pence sounds like it'd be a bad thing. There was a crooked man who lived in a crooked house who had a crooked cat.

Yeah, but there's a crooked six pence in there somewhere, isn't there? There is a listener listening to this right now screaming the proper thing for us. Are you Googling? Yeah, of course I am. Sorry. While you Google, I am going to talk about the last bit I enjoyed around the abyss, which is when Perdita is doing the handstand. Sorry.

Sorry. There was a crooked man and he went a crooked mile. He found a crooked six pence against a crooked style. He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse, and they all lived together in a little crooked house. Lovely. Yeah. So I guess finding your crooked six pence was lucky.

And he bought his lucky cat with his lucky six pence. And I guess the mouse was happy to live with them. I'm guessing the cat does need the mouse. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. When Perdita is doing her handstand, I feel like this is an early Tomb Raider reference. Oh, yeah.

And annotated practically. There's a thing you can do in, I know, the first couple of Tomb Raider games. And I think it actually lasted through all of them, where when you're pulling up on a block or something, if you press the walk button, then she flips over and does a little handstand. And it's a completely non-functional thing. It just looks cool. It's like you can dive a certain way into deep pools.

I've linked to a video. Does she still have that hair in her neck? Quite possibly. But she's not wearing a voluminous petticoat. But yeah, I've linked to a video of it from Tomb Raider 1 in the show notes, but I know Terry Pratchett was a big Tomb Raider fan, and it was kind of like a fun thing that I remember it very clearly from Tomb Raider 2, because it was very fun.

Oh, I can do this fun silly little pointless thing. That sounds very likely then to be a... Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Because, yeah, it was a little handstand on the edge, not just the cartwheels you've been talking about. So, yeah.

Yes. Cool. So, yes. I enjoyed that. Very good. I'll spot it. Is there any more abyss? That's all my abyss content for the day.

I don't know. I liked how we foreshadowed the abyss, and then it was all nice. Yes. Yeah, just a couple of little nanny similes I thought I'd go for this time. You know how I like weather, and you know how I like nanny-og onliners. I very much enjoyed her describing the priest as wetter than a thunderstorm sandwich, and as wet as a snow omelet.

And special mention to not a nanny-og simile, but a wonderful simile all the same. Suddenly picking his words like a man pulling plums from a boiling pot. Ooh. Ooh. Good, right? That's a nice one. It's a very pleasing sentence to say, and it is a good simile.

That's a nice one. Yeah. Super simile corner, over. Let's go on to the biggest stuff then. Do you want to talk about the subjective nature of reality? I mean, not really, but I've put it down now, haven't I? So. So, why did that?

That's a stupid thing to do. No, it's not as deep as it sounds, because there's lots of interesting stuff on vampires to get through. So, first of all, crossing this river in gnarly country, like how dangerous it is, possibly. How terrifying it is. How terrifying it is, certainly. It depends on mood. Do you think if you had time, or like even if you didn't have time,

if you were quite concerned about getting over safely, is there no way to get yourself into a better mood to cross this thing? Well, think about it. If you like try and think yourself happy, you end up more annoyed because you can't help it. It's like when someone says, don't think about pink elephants. The first thing that comes to your mind is a pink elephant. True, which is like the mental discipline is kind of part of what they do, isn't it?

But I don't think they can do it on themselves quite so well. I mean, Nanny is so in touch with herself. She can't not feel what she's really feeling. Magra has found a very solid center of confidence, but also she can't get over her conservative granny. That's really first and foremost in her mind. Agnes is quite scared of things, and it takes someone with Perdita's confidence to go.

No, it's a little stream. I wonder if getting drunk would work in the same way that it does. But sometimes being drunk kind of exacerbates whatever you're already going through sometimes, doesn't it? True, but Nanny Ogg seems to just enjoy it. Yes, I think if you've got Nanny Ogg drunk, she could cross. If you've got Magra drunk. I feel like Magra is the kind of one who drinks gin

and then cries on staircases. Absolutely, she is, yeah. Yeah, nobody likes my shoes. I mean, 50 fucking vegetarian volavons. I'm never going to get these forget-me-nots out of my hair. My husband jingles. We've all been there. But anyway, sorry.

I like, I like, I like, I like the fact that the reality is different through different eyes. And that is very philosophical. So we're not going to go into the philosophy of that in the round world. I don't know why we've both completely forgotten how to say words, but we should probably remember again what was what we do. Nah, it's funny this way. Okay, but for me, a kind of physical sense as well.

I've always found it quite interesting as how much of your physical form shapes your personality in that, okay. So similar questions arrive when you're talking about cloning somebody's brain, uploading someone's brain, or when you talk about performing a head transplant, the questions arise about, is that going to be you or just kind of a very odd copy of you? Because it's not being filtered through things like hormones, through things like your body just changes in various ways, just depending on what it's gone through.

And how much does that filter your brain and your perception? It's also this kind of nature versus natural argument, isn't it, of how much of it is filtered by what's around you and how much of it is built into your very bones. Exactly. And I like that there's kind of an example of this here by Padita being able to see things as they are, despite being in exactly the same surroundings, because she's somehow separated from whatever it is that Agnes is getting anxious over.

For so much it is built into sort of Padita being so confident, so extroverted, self-assured. Yes, but then the Miley Oates' second mind is not that. No. It's also, I don't know, he never came to the bridge, but he's also impervious to the vampire stuff, but not he gets a migraine from it, doesn't he, whereas Padita gets smug. I'd be interested to have read like Miley Oates' reaction to the gnarly ground. Yeah, absolutely.

Exactly. Yeah, so sure. And yeah, I'd really like the whole concept of Miley Ground as one of those practice things that, again, stuck with me, couldn't have told you which book it was from. Everything down to the line about pulling on ridiculous wool socks to go through the gorse is just wonderfully described. And I think if you've ever been on a moorland in certainly England, I'm sure lots of other parts of the world you know exactly what it looks like

and how six socks you would need. It's the side of the stone bridges you've seen even, the dry stone bridges that look like they're going to fall down at any second. It's the side of the land literally being scrunched up like a piece of paper that I really love. Fjordish. Very fjordish, fiddly bits, they took me forever. I've got an award for them. I love the thing as well about like that being able to just about spot the way in

like a gap between glass and I don't know, it's all somehow incredibly imaginable, even though it's completely unreal. Detached from reality. But then also think about, you know, a walk will feel like it takes longer if you're in a shit mood and don't want to or if the weather is in a certain way. And also if you think about walking in different places feels different and feels like it's taking longer or less time depending on where you are. Like going walking up in the malls is this very freeing experience where it can feel like you've

had like a nice hour long wander and then you realize you've been gone for six hours because you're enjoying it so much. I think that's when you get taken by the fairies, Joanna. Oh yeah, good point. That's a known side effect. But where is that? I don't know, that's 100 years, yeah. I'm also talking about like how walking in different places feels for me personally.

Obviously, you're my Lijma, very like walking in a city always feels very stressful and like a 10 minute walk feels like it took an hour because you were so surrounded by buildings and people that it made everything more intense. Yes, unless you've got nowhere to be. Yeah. In which case it can be quite nice, but even so very different from walking in the open space. It's also, yeah, the novelty of somewhere makes it very different. I hate taking the same route too many times, even if it's like one of my favorite walks.

After a while, I'll just be like, I can't walk that again for a few months now. I'm going to go somewhere else. Can't do it. And I think that's a time dilation thing. I think novelty always makes time pass a little faster or a little more pleasantly. But then again, I was reading that novelty makes time. It's the difference between the hours ticking by and the weeks or years ticking by, isn't it? No, he makes time seem to go a little slower in that the pandemic seemed to pass in a second

into the pandemic, the lockdowns, whereas each day dragged. Yeah, time dilation is fun. I could just talk about for ages. Yeah, me too. But we shouldn't. My theory, my theory, I think I might have said this on the podcast before. My theory is that the key to functional immortality is somewhere in those 10 minutes that stretch out to the perception of three hours when you press snooze on your alarm clock

and you have an epic. And I mean, epic, not an epic dude. That's like an epic dream with three apps. And it's only been five to 10 minutes when you've been asleep. I feel like the key to me loving as long as I want to is in that. Somehow inhabiting that dream space time wise, but not consciousness wise. Yeah. Anyway, that was speaking of immortality.

Yes. Amazing segue. Let's talk about vampires. Let's. So I talked last week a bit about the fact that this is obviously parodying the Gothic literature tradition. So I'm just here to know earlier so you can see it because it's really fucking funny. OK.

Yeah, I had to go into check that I wasn't like doing Joanna's research twice. Because we're both interested in the same things oddly enough. So I'm going to talk a little bit about the history of vampires and literature. I'm going to say this is now I'm mostly looking at Western literary traditions, specifically British, because if I started going into all the folklore and all the fiction, this would have been like a full PowerPoint presentation. As it is, it's just several, I'd say. Yeah.

Quite possibly several. Just touching on a few interesting themes. If you want more details specifically of vampires and Gothic literature, you're dead to me. It has a really good episode on it that helped me a lot today, and I've linked to it in the show notes. Also, so it has Radio 4's In Our Time, which was on yesterday, so it's the 7th of April and is still on BBC Sounds.

And also there's a couple of very cool long programs about it. For a fun chat about vampires and pop culture, recommendation of the week is a newish podcast called Trial by Content. Listeners will know I'm a massive fan of Joanna Robinson, and it's Joanna Robinson with Dave Gonzalez and Neil Miller, who she had a very good lost podcast with. It was a Game of Thrones podcast before that. This new one, they take some kind of pop culture question,

and they each bring their example of the best something and debate it, and they take listener submissions. And the last episode was The Greatest Vampire Sire. And they specifically said Sire because the specification was brilliant, trying to argue about what makes a vampire the best vampire. They're talking about in TV and film, they say Sire, so it's got to be the best vampire that you would be willing to hang around with for eternity. Oh, cool. Yeah, nice. I like that.

So the suggestions put forward were Lestat, specifically Tom Cruise's Lestat from the film Interview with a Vampire, rather than going into the full vampire chronicles by Anne Rice. Uh, Joanna Robinson obviously put forward Spike from Buffy. Neil put forward Naja from What We Do in the Shadows, which would be my pick. I was going to say, as gorgeous as James Masters was, probably still is. I don't think I'd want to hang out with Spike from Buffy for very long.

Once he gotten over the sex appeal, he's very annoying. Yeah, true. I, I, you'll, again, mileage may vary. Some good arguments were put forward. Some of the listener's suggestions were great, including the count from Sesame Street that they vetoed as their listener pick, because what if you also got turned into a Muppet? But would you mind if you were a Muppet? I think I would. I don't think I'd want to be a Muppet. But the winner of the listener picks was Eric Northman from True Blood,

which yes, because he wouldn't want to spend eternity with Alexander Skarsgard. He's really hot. He's very attractive. True Blood is an awful, awful show that I fucking love. Okay. Anyway, anyway, sorry. So that's a good chat about vampires and pop culture with a fun side argument of should vampires be sexy, which brings me back to vampires in literature. So vampire folklore goes at least as far back recorded as the medieval era. It has been around for a while.

In fact, one of the medieval suggestions for killing a vampire was to put a brick in their mouth just because that would stop them from biting you. So I feel like that's kind of being referenced with the put a lemon in the mouth, put a whatever in the mouth, which it does make sense. As around the 18th century, we start seeing sort of codifying written details of how to potentially defeat vampires. And we have one of the first sort of written, this is how you deal with vampires, nonfiction pieces from 1746.

Augustine Kalmert, who was a Abbott, who wrote the Treaties on the Apparitions of Spirits, Non-Vampires or Revenants, and suggested the usual beheading, the usual burning, sucking on their gums. Right. Yeah. Smearing yourself with dead blood. Right. And then vampires end up in poetry. So we're still in the 18th century.

We have 1748 de Vampire by Heinrich August Ossenfelder. For the why? No, it's German. So it's V-A-M-P-I-R. Alternate spellings, love it. Which is a poem about vampires and considered like one of the first examples in fiction. Okay. And then we go over to 19th century.

We have John Staggs, the vampire, spelled Y-R. Which is probably one of the first like British poems. We have a poem from Lord Byron, published in 18. The Jawa, I don't think I'm saying that right. Inspired by learning folklore in Greece when he was on his grand tour. The Jawa translates as it's a particularly insulting term for a Christian into Fidel. And then, so this is great. So in 1816, it was actually written in the 1800 book, published in 1816.

We have Sam Taylor, collages poem, Christabel. Okay. Which is very fucking sapphic. Oh, tell me. It's just very queer. It's about the hero is Geraldine. Or the vampire might be Geraldine. Christabel, it might be the one who's dealing with Geraldine and eventually does.

Deal with her. Okay. So this takes us to Geneva. You know, that fame. Okay. So, you know, that famous trip that was like Byron and the Shelleys. And Pulitzer was there. They were all stuck in.

Frankenstein got ripped. Yeah. They were all telling each other horror stories. So Byron decides to read this poem by Coleridge. Okay. Okay. And gave Percy Shelley a panic attack. Okay.

Yeah. Because of the lesbians. This stands for in particular, apparently. And I got a lot of this from Yorta to me. Beneath the lamp, the lady bowed and slowly rolled her eyes around. Then, drawing in her breath aloud, like one that shuddered, she unbound the signature from beneath her breast. Her silk and robe and inner vest dropped to her feet in infall,

full in view, behold, her bosom and half her side. A sight to dream of, not to tell. Oh, shield her shield, sweet Christabel. I'm sorry. Is that a panic attack? It goes on to like there's something weird under there. But Percy Shelley, like full on panic attacked because, and like had to go and have a lie down in theory,

because he was like imagining what was so terrifying under there and had this particular vision in his head. Can you guess what it was? Because this is about to be one of my favorite things I'll have ever said in the podcast. Um, I mean, no, something corpsy. I don't. Bible nipples.

What? Bibles for nipples. What? That's so weirdly specific. Percy. There's so many different comedic directions you can go. Do you want to send the podcast here? Yeah, I think forever.

Bible nipples. Bible nipples. Like, hmm, this is my first and he's told people about this, obviously, because we know it. So that eyeball nipples, which I thought of then, you know, you've got one of those stupid questions. You ask people, like, would you want, I don't know, feet for hands or hands for feet? Should you rather have eyeballs for nipples or nipples for eyeballs?

I mean, eyeballs for nipples. Obviously. Right. Yeah. Also, um, Bimini bon boulas in drag races into doing snatch gamers, Katie Price saying the eyes of the nipples of the face. I just really wanted to get that line in there. What?

I don't know what you're talking about. Okay. I'm going to move on from eyeball nipples, but still in Geneva. So Byron's doctor. Is it recorded? What Mary thought about this vision? I haven't found any thoughts about Mary's opinion on eyeball nipples, but she went married to her.

She went and invented a genre in the other room. So I feel like, have you ever been so weirded out? You just went and invented a genre about it. Like, who hasn't done that at House Party? Right. Fucking Percy Shelley, honestly. Sorry. Carry on about Geneva, I guess.

Okay. So, um, Byron brought his doctor with him to Geneva, John Poldorey. I know that guy. Yeah. Poldorey went on to write The Vampire, which is kind of considered the first use of vampires in prose as a base to poetry and Western literature. He was only 20 when he went on this little retreat. He was.

He was very young. And he didn't go and have a heart attack about eyeball nipples. No. Unfortunately, he did kill himself. Oh, yeah. There was that. Yeah. Because he wrote The Vampire.

I mean, not, not officially. Well, he wrote The Vampire and then his publisher was kind of a dick and decided to publish it under Byron's name because it would make more money that way. And Byron blamed Poldorey for it. Poldorey, like, ended up losing a lot of money and eventually killed himself. Maybe. Yeah. Officially, he did not because he was allowed a Catholic burial.

The doctors. Oh, yeah. Central causes. However, as he was a doctor and he was very depressed and 26. Yeah. Yeah. Probably that. But, but yeah.

But interesting that that was a thing. Yes. Yeah. But also The Vampire. This is very, everyone's very creative with their naming here. We have The Vampire, The Vampire and The Vampire. Wow. Yeah.

Very creative. That's a bit. Was kind of a parody thing as well. He was taking the piss out of like The Byronic Hero. His character, like his vampire character was kind of just taking the piss out Byron. Well, the story went, didn't it? The story he told is that Byron started this short story about a vampire and abandoned it.

This was on the retreat. Yes. And Poldorey finished it. Yeah. And there's some dispute. The whole thing is very muddy as to whether Byron contributed more needs as to whether it was even written on this retreat as to bloodily, bloodily, bloodily.

Yes, the rest, as you say, though, the whole publishing under someone else's name nonsense ruined his fucking career. And yeah. Yeah, his life. Yeah. The parody thing. I also heard an interesting interpretation that this was kind of, well, this is one of the first times that vampires became more aristocratic.

Yeah. And there's some suggestion that was kind of playing off the fact that aristocrats were, for the first time, being seen as these leeches. And it's obviously now very common and very popularized by Marx, for instance, to refer to the ruling classes as leeches, the standarts, but let's say then. And if you look at the Count and his family, that's exactly what they've done. They've come into leech off this kingdom as aristocrats. Parody of a parody.

Very meta, pastiche of a homage, just to mix up the words a bit. Anyway, so that's like early 18th century. Then we get to 19th century. We get to the end of the 19th century, which is when Dracula was published. Yeah. I've gone so far as to download the vampire, the vampire, whatever, to read for next week. I'm not sure I'm going to do the same with Dracula, to be honest. I've read it before.

Actually, doing these notes did make me kind of want to reread it. I probably won't get around to it next week though. I feel like I'm probably going to do a chapter or two just so I can compare them. So a really extensive use of actual Transylvanian folklore. Stoker did do his research. But it's kind of why we started getting sexy vampires. He said that like it was a bad thing, but I know that's something you like. No, I'm very into sexy vampires.

And there's lots of theories about vampires used in fiction and whether there's this kind of fear of immigrants, which is very much an underlying thing in Dracula. There are the good immigrants like Van Helsing and the Texan guy. And then there's the bad immigrant who's coming in on the ship, eating the captain. That is fairly bad behavior. There's a very weird vibe to it. There's also this weird sexuality to it. There's Harker on his back with the women feeding on him, which is very submissive.

And you're talking Victorian era, which, you know, sexuality was treated very strangely. And then there's also a lot of consumption, sexuality wasn't there as well. The whole idea of like paleness and blood and everything was very hypersexualized at the time. Yeah. And then you also have that there's a lot of popular theorizing. Obviously, we can't make sure that Stoker was possibly gay. And dealing with ideas of persecution around it. He was really good friends with Oscar Wilde.

And he started writing Dracula about a month after Oscar Wilde was imprisoned for a depravity for gay, for gay. And there were some very, very homoerotic letters between Bram Stoker and Walt Whitman. I feel like burying the lead there a bit with the evidence. Yeah, that's it. See, he was noted friends with a homosexual and started writing it after the homosexual was imprisoned. And also he did sex talk with another man. Take your pick, which is the most compelling evidence.

Well, it sounds like they were a bit more homoerotic on Walt Whitman's side. And Walt Whitman definitely just sort of had that vibe. He's Walt Whitman. American poet. OK. But then there's also some interesting stuff about Mina and Lucy as the two women of Dracula as to representation. You have the kind of new women's feminist movement coming in around this time. And Lucy is kind of this sexually ambitious new woman.

You know, she's got these three men fighting over her. And then you have Mina, who's this kind of intellectual, ambitious. And you also bring in that Dracula is really, really, or is very up on their technology. It's very new versus old. You have Van Helsing and his gang kind of using shorthand, which was an amazing new thing at the time. It was cutting edge.

And Jonathan Harker with a Kodiak camera. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that is weird, isn't it? Yeah. Against this thing coming in from the old country with this fog and his bats and his weird little bug eating dude. Very old fashioned to have a bug eating dude.

It is. Yeah. And who brings their own fog with them these days? I mean, you can just buy fog when you get there. Yeah. Like it's not worth the travel, the expense. Yeah. It's really hard to put a customs label on fog.

Yeah. You have to kind of throw it at the fog. I hope it absorbs the bureaucracy. I'm going to bring this back around to Terry Pratchett. Don't worry. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm really not helping. But I love this idea of the vampires were invited into the kingdom

and that's why they can take over. Yeah, that was a nice idea, wasn't it? Yeah. And Dracula was probably the first book to really use the invite myth as part of the law. It was a long folkloric thing because it wasn't just for vampires. There's lots of folkloric superstition about not inviting things in. Of course. And you can't eat or drink or rest or learn someone's name or yeah.

Yeah. But this kind of comes back to my whole idea of this. Like a lot of people think carpet jugular and vampires and think Dracula. I feel like this is less a Dracula parody and more just in the grand tradition of Gothic literature. We don't have a little bug eating guy. Well, I don't know what Eagle does and doesn't eat, but. Yeah. I feel like Eagle is more a homage to like the film parodies of Frankenstein.

Oh, yeah. For sure. Like I missed last week, one of our listeners pointed out, I think on Patreon, that one of Eagle's lines was a blatant reference to the film Young Frankenstein. Yeah. Which I should have got because Jack went through all of those Frankenstein films. The G-Wide fairly recently. Oh, yeah.

Obviously, I had my headphones on. But yeah, bringing it back round to the actual vampires in the books is great. You have all these different ways to kill them that frequently do and don't come up in vampire law and vampire fiction. And I feel like perhaps it's using the folklore more than the literature. Yeah. Things like the idea of them being very anal retentive, all these different ways to kill them.

I do love a reference to an aunt Carmilla because that's a reference to a vampire novel from, I want to say the early 20th century, I could be wrong. That's again, very fucking gay. Just queer all the way down. But is that kind of the origin of the sexy figure hugging black velvet vampire lady? I think it's a part of it. OK. I think vampires are often, there's something heavily sexualized.

You know, there's the penetration and the sucking. Wow, OK. I'm not the maiden. I'm making that the episode title. No, we're not. We're doing eyeball nipples. Anyway, sorry, I've gone on about literature for a really long time. Oh, no, yeah.

The Shrike. The we were talking about the vampiric ancestors. One of them was the hint of the beak. I think it was called the Shrike. Oh, yeah. It's super. Do I mean Shrike? I might mean something else entirely.

Sorry. Carry on. But whether this book works in the Gothic literature position, in the Gothic literature tradition is the Gothic literature position. Penetration. It involves a lacy white nightgown and some billowing curtains. Why am I always going to be white? So where it works in the Gothic literature tradition, it's not strict.

Sorry, not Shrike. It's a creature from Roman mythology that stabbed and drank blood through its beak. And it's a tragic game to my rescuer. There we go. Thank you. Is that the horror in this book, the fear and Gothic literature isn't necessarily horror as such, but the fear, the terror, the anticipation and thrill as well. Yeah, yeah, it's thrill, isn't it?

Suspense, thrill. But the narcissism of the vampires comes from how they treat people. It's not about them fighting and feeding in violence. And I'm going to go into this as a much bigger thematic thing next week, but tying it back into these different myths and bits of writing about vampires. A, you've got this idea of La Cromosa being the reverse, the parody that her and her friends acting human. I love that.

It's a really nice play against the teenage witches we were talking about last week. And there's, well, have we talked about this on the podcast, the whole norm core? No, I don't think we've ever talked about it before, but it is. There's some Gen Z people who are just like dressing up as like normies as a fashion thing. I don't know. I kind of love that. Loving a sensible jumper and some well cut G. Yeah, like cosplaying dads at a barbecue.

I do genuinely love this. All of them calling each other things like Wendy rather than Hieroglyphica. And her mate Gerald, who pretends to be an accountant. But they're coming at this normality. This let's be as close to human as we can be in completely different directions. La Cromosa is doing it to rebel, whereas the Count is doing it to make them more powerful. And suddenly it becomes a lot less cool when it's your dad's motivations as well, doesn't it? Exactly.

This idea of drinking wine is actually kind of disgusting to her when you get right down to her, but she will pretend to be into it with her mates. That's the difference between teenagers dressing as like vampiric goth lot and then the weird like Mason stuff with the. Funny handshakes and city robes. Like, oh, all right, guys. Apologies if we've got any Freemason listeners on this. I don't apologise for that.

It's very stupid. Oh, yeah, pissing off the Freemasons. Good move, Francine. OK, carry on. Tell them all the time off at the eyeball nipples. I seem to have no listeners at this point. Possibly. I'm sorry.

I've gone on for far too long. I mean, this is my fault entirely. Please continue. We there's a reference to vampirism as pyramid selling. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Which if you think about it, like obviously pyramid selling is to the 90s, what MLMs are today, they are literally the same thing.

Yeah, literally. Don't at us. Don't at us. No, what none of us never have a life. OK, rule for life listeners, unless there's some very, very old exceptions and you'll know them if they are them. If you have to pay to do a job for somebody that is a scam. Yeah.

There you go. But it's predatory. Yes. It's predation. Pyramid selling is very predatory behavior. It is about taking advantage and doing what you can. And vampirism offers the same thing that fuck in Herbalife and Avon do. I'm not sure if I'm more scared of Avon or the Masons atting us.

Actually, I feel like Avon is the best pyramid in this year. Herbalife, I'll fucking fight. Avon's fairly bad, but not one of the worst ones. I can't think of any other. If you have, I'll tell you what, that could be a rabbit hole one day. If you ever want some deep dive stuff into why MLMs are bad, I will supply that. I've done like the whole starting to join them thing to compare the literature and the. Yeah.

It's a weird mix of like fucking dodgy and cult. Yeah. I like it's known enough in pop culture that it doesn't fucking work. Like, so I binged a bunch of that show in my family from the early 2000s because I found there was an episode in that about them accidentally joining a pyramid scheme. Yeah. It was in the Simpsons. It's Greek.

Yeah. Like it's known. It is known. It is known. But this goes into the treating people as things thing. And this is starting to round out my where it differs from some of the vampire literature is that the vampires often are somewhat enamored or close to their subjects, especially when you go into like the more 18th century,

like the vampire poetry in the early 19th century. It's often the loved ones and their family, they're kind of coming back to. Yeah. There's a lot less of this. You have the family connection in that this family of vampires are close to each other. Yeah. And a lot of the sexual stuff is kind of like a it's more like a dom sub kind of more consensual stuff in some of the novels.

Whereas, yeah, this genre, which I've also read some of is very much a. This is no one would have agreed to this if you hadn't. Yeah. Yeah. And it's amazingly good writing because it's so terrifying to consider yourself so small in the eyes of them. There's these little hints that we'll go into. We'll see next week of this town called Escrow and people living in harmony in what's

clearly. Is there a word play thing going on there? Escrow is to do with like buying houses. Yeah. It's a financial tool. So I wonder if that around us, the root word is quite often the old legal terms have some quite interesting root words. Well, that's the most boring thing I've ever said.

Carry on. What I want to bring it round to is an interesting parallel. I don't think I've ever spotted in a read through before, but I noticed this time, which is that there are multiple references in this section a lot more in the next to humans being treated as cattle subservient to the vampires. To contrast this, the other creatures we've had come in from overworld and the knackback people whose favorite job is stealing cattle. Hey, this section ends on them stealing King Verence, the catalyst of the cattle right now.

Snappling Goobie Stee. A snapple the King Goobie Stee. A King Goobie Stee. Good. I'm going to conclude my unhinged rent there. Okay. Can I do a vampire fact? Yes.

Or two that we missed because not missed, but didn't come up because I find them important. Are they about eyeballs? No, they're about vampiric watermelons. Oh, good. Yeah. I feel like a lot of our listeners will know this already because it's one of those like fun fact things that a lot of people know. But the vampire pumpkins and watermelons is an actual folk legend from the Balkans.

Sorry. It's a Romani legend. Like a lot of the vampiric legends are Romani. You said that to me. I mentioned Transylvanian folklore. I didn't specifically point out the Romani legends. Yeah. Apparently, there are any two plants which are regarded as likely to turn into vampires.

So is the PSA, guys. Pumpkins of every kind and watermelons. The change takes place when they are fighting on another. So if they've been, if the ground fruit has been kept for more than 10 days, then they start staring and making noises like. So I guess you'll be able to hear it. Yeah. Keeping it out and begin to shake themselves.

And then, yeah, then they become vampires and they can go around houses, stables and rooms by themselves, not really explain how and do harm to people. So I just, I feel like I would be remiss not to warn people about that. It's not pumpkin season yet, but you know. I feel like we should let the senior rango know. I think that might do him in. Good point. Well, we'll let the kitchens deal with that.

I think that, yeah. We'll let Mrs. Whitlow know. The other thing is I didn't want to interject when we were talking about bricks in the mouse. Because this is a bit gross. But ever in the 1700s, one of the vampiric lore was shroud eating. There were like scientific books written on this concept of shroud eating, which were. I mean, revenants in general before they became vampires were very much a thing. I mean, I'm sure you came across this as well.

There's just, there's a lot of crossover between like vampiric stuff and the revenants. And yeah. Yeah. But basically when corpses were dug up for whatever reason, probably often because they were like, what if it is a vampire? Like me checking the fucking gas again. The shroud would be rotted away a bit and the face around the mouse would rot quicker. And I think that's because of bacteria and moisture just in the area.

And so they came to the scientific conclusion that corpses were waking up and kind of eating the shroud and their own face a bit. Because they didn't know what to do with this information. Yeah. And then that kind of followed on to. So there's three main characteristics of what we would consider a vampire. And that is it's a revenant. It sucks blood and it's contagious.

Yeah. And so they reckon, like that said, it became more prominent as discovery of bacteria kicked in and like contagion became a modern worry. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I thought that was quite interesting. No.

And that's all from the podcast, the BBC one I was on about the darling too. So. Awesome. Cool. Do you have an obscure reference for me? I do. And it's not even about eating your face. Or nipples.

It's one that's relevant to us, Joanna. Yay. The stone which found at the entrance of the cave where Granny Weatherwax is hiding out. This is from the forum again. Sounds remarkably similar to the stone which found at the Wookie Hole Caves in Somerset. We've been there. Yeah. And Terry Pratt replied to that simply saying,

bing. Yeah. And that makes me happy. Yeah. The the the stone which for anyone who hasn't seen it, look it up. But I mean, it's it's one of those things where you really have to want to see something. Yeah.

Yeah. And also, you know, it's a cave in candlelight when this was discovered and all of that. It's easier to see. It's it's lump and put it that way. It's a big lump and stalagmite. Yeah. Yes, stalagmite. Yes.

Yes. Because tights come down. Yes. Because they're holding on tight and tights come down. When you're assuming the Gothic literature position. Oh my gosh. What's wrong with me? You're a terrible influencer.

Right. I think that is probably everything we should say. I think that's right. It's nearly 10 o'clock. It's only going to get worse from here. Well, the podcast is definitely after the watershed now. I really enjoyed that, Joe. What a what a nice thesis you did.

And you're right. It wasn't really a thesis. It was a nice little journey. Yep. See if you still like it when you're editing. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Truth Shall Make You Threat. If indeed you still are. If you're still listening.

If you're still with us. If you are. If you're still with us. Do it. Oh no. Reality. Carry on. Carry on.

I can't be doing this. Francine, don't have an existential crisis when I'm doing the outro. We'll be back next week with part three, which goes from where this section ended to the end. Good idea. I'll tweet some page numbers. The page. I remember.

256 in the Corgi paperback. Oh, I've got 268 at the top of the show plan. That's because I accidentally did two different ends to this section and then told you the earlier one last week and decided not to change it back. 256. Yeah, so 256 to the end in the Corgi paperback. I will find quotes and things and tweet them. Speaking of in the meantime, until next time,

you can follow us on Instagram at The Truth Shall Make You Threat on Twitter at Make You Threat Pod. You can find our Facebook page at The Truth Shall Make You Threat. Join our subreddit community, r slash t t s m y f. Send us your thoughts, queries, castles, albatrosses, magpies and snacks. The Truth Shall Make You Threat Pod at gmail.com. If you would like to support us financially, I mean, if you really want to encourage us, go to patreon.com.

Don't encourage us. I mean, please do go to patreon.com forward slash the Truth Shall Make You Threat. Exchange your hard earned pennies for bonus nonsense, like trips down the rabbit hole and for our castles and snacks, gang, some bonus recipes. Handsome superstitions. Please do rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts. It helps other people find us.

And of course, just tell everyone you know. Yeah, maybe don't mention the nipples though. Maybe don't lead with the nipples. They are the eyes of the base. Leave with the nipples. That sounds like another Katie Price advice, doesn't it? I mean, it's how you do the Gothic literature position. Of course, yeah.

Lead with the nipples. God, I'm so sorry. Until next time, dear listener, don't let us detain you. So that we don't fall afoul of the algorithm, I think the Gothic literature position might be the title instead of eyeball nipples. Oh, fine. Do you reckon? I'm happy to risk it.

But I'm like nipples might get a censored. Let's not put it in the title. Society feels about nipples. No, it's fine. They're men's nipples. But they're not. They're female eyeball nipples. The algorithm doesn't.

How can you tell if the nipples are female? They're wearing mascara. Obviously make up has no gender. The evening eye nipple look. I was not thinking about makeup being gendered so much as cartoons that put mascara on the female like cat or whatever. So you know, it's like if I want to skeleton. They gave her bone titties.

Oh dear. All right. OK. Right. No, we're done. We're done.