Triple Click - Do Spoilers Ruin Stories?

Episode Date: July 9, 2020

The official Braid walkthrough: https://web.archive.org/web/20121009073610/http://www.braid-game.com/walkthrough/walkthrough.htmlLuke Plunkett’s Desperados III review on Kotaku: https://kotaku.com/desperados-3-is-a-modern-stealth-masterpiece-1844047567Ryan Gilliam on spoiling TLOU2 for himself: https://www.polygon.com/2020/7/7/21314896/the-last-of-us-part-2-spoilers-story-ruined-enhanced-experience-secrets-are-goodJamelle Bouie on Hamilton as a historical narrative & ideological project: https://letterboxd.com/jbouie/film/hamilton-2020/Kirk’s Strong Songs on “Satisfied”: https://strongsongspodcast.com/satisfied-from-hamilton-updated Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

It's late at night. You're home alone. In the dark you see something. It leaps out at you. The dreaded spoiler! Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we talk about the concept of spoilers. Can a game be ruined if you know too much? What counts as a spoiler? And can we talk about spoilers without spoiling anything? We'll try. I'm Maddie Myers. I'm Kirk Hamilton. And I'm Jason Trier. And Kirk, I have a question for you. Oh boy. You have a question for me. this is exciting. Why do you write like you're running out of time? Why?

You know, it's because I needed to survive, Jason. It's because I needed to survive. The man is non-stop. I just have to write like tomorrow won't arrive. This is just something I got to do. I get it. I get it. You are always saying that.

It's true. I am just saying it all the time as I write on a desk that is being held by beautiful dancers. People, yeah, who set it up for you? That's just kind of how I'm just kind of how I. I do it. Hamilton over here. He's just nonstop. Just nonstop. It is nice to see both of you. And it is nice to not see, but to know that I am being heard by all of you out there. That's, I guess, the best I could come up with. Thank you, everyone who's been listening to the show. We see you in our hearts. We see you in our hearts, and we

appreciate each and every one of you, especially those of you who have become maximum fun members to support us making this show. And yeah, we hope you liked that control spoiler cast. Beans cast, I should say, from a couple weeks ago. And we're pretty excited for The Last of Us, too, Bean's cast that will be doing, I think, in a week or two. So that'll be pretty cool, too. Jason's got to beat the game. End of July. End of July. Somewhere near the end of this month. So, but speaking of maximum fun related things, there is something exciting happening in Maximum Funland, and I think Maddie is going to tell you all about that. That's right. So next week is going to be

Max Fun Drive. And for those of you who haven't been listening to Max Fun Drive, and for those of you who haven't been listening to Maximum Fun podcast for the past 10 years like I have. You don't know what that is, but it probably sounds very exciting to you. We will tell you a lot more information about it next week. And also, Jesse Thorne, head of the network, is going to have a message that we'll include later in the show with some more info about it. But just to describe it preliminarily, if you're already somebody who is a member of the Maximum Fun Network, then you're already on board. We don't really need to convince you. But if you're not yet convinced the Max Fun Drive is maybe the time when we can get you off the fence and get you interested in some cool, cool, cool stuff. And we will tell you more about that stuff next week.

We sure will. One other thing before we get started, last week we had a good conversation about racial allegories in video games. But as a couple of listeners have pointed out, when we were talking about the Cajit in the Elder Scrolls series, we failed to mention that they have been criticized and pointed out to be Romani stereotypes, which is something I didn't even know about or realize until a few listeners pointed that out. So it's worth mentioning up top that we apologize for not, for kind of glazing over that,

not mentioning that when we were talking about how, oh, they're cat people. I think we kind of trivialize them a little bit. So it's worth bringing that up. Okay, cool. Let's get to it. Maddie, take us away. What are we discussing as this week's,

Hot topic. I just thought we would finally, for once and for all, decide whether or not spoilers are good or bad. I just thought we would just quickly wrap up that endless debate on the internet. Just do it in one, just maybe in a quick 30 minutes, try to figure out of spoiling something as possible if it ruins the story or not. So I want to hear from the two of you about what you consider to be a spoiler and especially how that may have changed over the course of your life because we all work in media so we all have different experiences with the idea of what plot points can and cannot spoil a story.

So, Kirk, why don't you go first? What do you consider a spoiler? If you even consider that a spoiler can exist at all, do you? I do. And I have obviously very complicated thoughts. Kirk is the most sensitive person when it comes to spoilers. I try to be careful about them. I have some stories that I can maybe tell on a little bit about just being on the internet and being a person who writes about media on the internet because of course you spend a lot of time dealing with spoilers or beans as we call them here on triple click and um and you know we've even in the the brief you know the 10 and now 11 episodes we've made of this show we've spent so much time talking around spoilers especially for final fantasy seven The Last of Us part two which also we'll talk about

in a minute but just generally speaking what do I think is a spoiler I would say um A spoiler is anything about a story or experience or piece of media that you're going to experience that is enhanced by it being something that you come to on your own in the natural course of the story. Like if it, whatever it is, because there can be mechanical spoilers for a video game, it can be a narrative spoiler for a big plot twist. That's the most obvious kind of spoiler. There can be a lot of different kinds of spoilers. It could even almost be...

I feel like that could refer to anything, though. Yeah, me too. It's a very open definition of what a spoiler could be. No wonder you got mad when I said the last of us two took place in Seattle. I didn't get mad. I just said I didn't know that. And then I would have really mad. Right.

And then I blocked you on my phone and canceled you on Twitter. But I basically think that it can mean anything to anybody and different people have different sensitivities to spoilers. And that's why I'm going for such a broad definition is because you kind of have to, if you're going to define it at all. It has to be so broad that it can be whatever it is to a whole lot of different people, which I think is one of the reasons that it's such an endlessly challenging thing with no clear solution. And as much as you joke, we're definitely not going to come up with an actual clear solution at the end of this because it's just impossible. So that's my working way of thinking of it as broadly as possible. What do you think, Jason? Do you agree? So I think, I mean, I don't know,

I'm not going to try to define a spoiler because it's kind of, it's so ambiguous. It's, it can be anything. No, but you're not going to try to define it because my definition was perfect. Right. I think the question of whether spoilers ruin a story is really interesting. And I was thinking about our former colleague Heather Alexandra, who's a great critic, and she has a tendency to just read spoilers on the internet. Like she just loves reading spoilers before she even plays things. And she feels like she like gets more out of those things by reading the spoilers. And I think that's a really interesting way to approach this, because I've always kind of been more of the opposite and I enjoy being surprised and like I feel like there's nothing like a good

plot twist. It's why I was obsessed with 24 for so many years because I love the way that like at the end of an episode or at the end of the season it would just like punch you in the face and it would just be like oh my god plot twist like the president is a traitor. Holy shit like everything's gonna explode. It's fairly rude that it would just punch you in the face like is that a spoiler that feels more like assault to me. Surprise assault. Clearly you've never met Jack Bauer because When it comes, Jack Bauer, he is immune to all assault charges. Like, for him, it's not assault. It's just a way of life.

It's just day-to-day activities. Jack Bauer's spoilers are all just physical violence, like different forms of physical violence that he commits against you. Yes. But yeah, but there's something to be said. I mean, I think being surprised by like a good, what's the term, it's like the turn, the prestige from that movie with Christian Bail. The movie, the prestige.

Yeah. That movie, what is it called? It's got the prestige. And if you read something online, and this actually makes a good segue to topical conversation, because if you read online that like at the beginning of The Last of Us 2, or like if you read online the Last of Us 2, like this character kills this other character, but you don't have any context for it and you don't have any kind of like understanding of why it takes place or what it actually means and maybe you think

it's at the end of the game because that's where the spoilers are saying and it's actually the beginning of the game and sets you off on the journey. It just kind of, it does kind of take away from the experience I find. And like, if it's a bigger twist, like, let's say you're playing a game where, you know, oh, actually, I have a good one. So I'm going to spoil the good play season one because it was spoiled for me. So, okay, I think that's fair. That was out. That was out a little bit if you've seen this one. But so that was actually spoiled for me. And it kind of sucked because the whole time I was watching, like knowing this was going to happen that at the end it's going to, of the season, it turns out it's not the good place, it's a bad place. They're not in heaven,

they're in hell. That's too bad. And that's the kind of show, yeah, that's the kind of show that, like, so masterfully sets that up, that like at the end, you're suddenly thinking back and it just changes the way that you looked at everything. But if you go into it, already knowing that your perspective on it should be changed, then it really does not, it like ruins the way that you experience that media. So I do think that spoilers can ruin a story. That's my argument. I agree. That is closer to what my definition of a spoiler is, which I would consider to be much more broad than Kirk's, to a level that I think has gotten me in trouble in social situations, because I've had to remind myself that many other people see things as spoilers that I don't consider spoilers and just

try to tamp down that part of myself that gets excited about media and wants to just talk about things. But to me, Jason, that definition, I do agree a story can be ruined by a spoiler, but to me, it's like, if it's a twist, if it's a mystery, like, who's the killer or some type of reveal along those lines or even just that there's a mystery that will be solved in some way. Anything at the end of a story or the denouement or like anything like that to me can ruin a story, especially if it's a story that is building up to that reveal. But anything else besides that, I'm pretty chill about it. And I have changed over time. I don't, neither of you described this. But like, as I,

have worked in media so long, I have become more immune to spoilers or just I've forced myself to care less because I've had to because especially in editing so many stories, I am reading about the ends of games so often or like reading about fun surprises in games or just talking to writers about things they're playing and trying to help them with their stories. So I'm, I've just had to get over it and be like, well, I'm going to learn a, out a whole lot of stuff before I have the chance to experience it myself. And I think that's part of why I might be kind of a dick about spoilers by accident. But you two maybe don't have that experience. No, I kind of do. I actually had that because I edited you and Rob's conversation about

The Last of Us 2. And while you were very vague, because you were still under that banana's embargo, there was enough in there that I was able to deduce major things that happened in that story. And it didn't detract for me. I actually read Ryan Gilliam's article on Polygon about The Last of us too and how he read spoilers. Yes, I was going to mention this. So just to describe this briefly, Ryan wrote an article at Polygon about how he read through and saw all the spoilers for the last was part two on purpose. Like as an experiment, as an experiment, because he was like, I want to know if this is going to change how I feel about the game. And he actually ended up loving the game significantly more than I did and significantly more than a lot of our co-workers,

perhaps because he knew everything that was going to happen, or at least that was his justification, although there's absolutely no way for us to know whether you would have loved the game if he hadn't known all of those spoilers. But I think it's also true that the things that were spoiled in The Last of Us 2, without the context of the rest of the game, those spoilers are kind of meaningless. So that was sort of a strange situation that I guess we can get into in a minute. But I'll let you finish your thought, Kirk. Yeah, I think that the way that we're all describing is actually pretty similar. Like the thing you're describing, Maddie, is similar to how I see it, is just that whatever the thing that's being revealed is the reveal of that in the context. in the process of the media is an important part of the experience of it.

So the reason I'm being broad is just because I do see mechanical spoilers, which is something that gamers will talk about. And I've seen people ridicule that, but I actually understand that. I understand it too. There's like a cool scene in control that we didn't spoil until the beans cast because it's a cool mechanical reveal. God of War. God of War had that great. I was about to say, God of War, we did a VG chat about a weapon that you get in that game

that is a significant mechanical shift for the game and also a narrative twist sort of, or like a narrative development. And it was a really cool surprise when it happened in the game. And I would say that that happening in the game is a cool thing. Like it's meant to be experienced that way. And then of course a mystery or anything with a prestige at the end is meant to be teased out to you. Or games where you play is another character and that leads into the last of us too, right? Right, right.

The idea of inhabiting someone else's body can definitely be a spoiler. Right, right. like you're going to be playing some percentage of the game this way or that way. I actually recently rewatch Knives Out just for fun because it was on Amazon and I put it on. And there's a great pleasure in watching something that was a mystery the second time through. Knives Out is a particularly, maybe it's a bad example because that story spoil. It tells you what happened kind of early on and then the fun of it is there's still a mystery to solve and you kind of watch. It's like a very postmodern or whatever the word is like it turns in on itself in all these really clever ways.

but watching a mystery or something like that the second time through is also very satisfying. Just like a show, like The Wire, for example, is really fun the second time through because you have, you know exactly what's going to happen. You're no longer shocked by anyone getting killed, but because it's just so rich and dense, you follow it more clearly. It's nice to have both experiences. Like, I don't know that I would have wanted to read a recap of the Wire before watching it. But at the same time, that wouldn't necessarily be, for me anyways, like a ruined experience.

It would just mean that I was deprived of the wire. initial experience of like seeing it fresh. So let's do talk about The Last of Us too though. I know I'm like, we could go in a million directions, but we keep kind of going there. And without spoiling anything, I think like the spoilers that leaked for that game on the internet, the way that they leaked, which was in this kind of haphazard way from these YouTube videos where it wasn't totally clear what was true and what wasn't and what order things happened in, was really, really bad for this game's.

like the conversation around this game, like in a kind of a profound way. That's how it seems to me anyways. Yeah, I would agree. It has fundamentally changed the way that people think about and talk about that game. And it's too bad. I mean, I'm sort of heartened that Ryan was able to write this story about how he purposefully looked at all the spoilers and still really enjoyed the game because at least that's a path you can go on.

but it also is, I mean, there's this whole other culture of spoilers that you're sort of getting at Kirk, where once spoilers exist for a piece of media, there is a type of person on the internet who will seize upon that and try to ruin it for other people. And far be it from me to psychoanalyze this type of person, but they clearly are unhappy in some way and are now vent on ruining something for someone else. And even though I have a pretty, uh, broad idea of whether or not stories can be ruined. I find that to be such a reprehensible and like internet-specific behavior that it's sort of fascinating to me. Like as horrible as it is, it kind of like flips back around into being fascinating again because I'm like, why are people doing this? And I'm like, what? A thing, and a part of Ryan's article was that he wasn't spoiled on everything. He kind of read the spoilers that were out there, but they were incomplete. And so there were still some blanks that he was able to fill in while playing it. I would be interested to know if someone just went and read the Wikipedia, like,

total plot breakdown of the entire game and then played it, like, fully spoiling themselves. Because I think that a thing that made and continues to make The Last of Us Two discourse so toxic and crazy online was that they were incomplete spoilers and they remained incomplete because there was this weird, like, silence around the game where no one wanted to spoil anything obviously because you don't want to just spoil your readers or you're, listeners. Right, which I would say is still going on. Like, people are still trying to respect those spoilers even now, and it's been a few weeks. Which we're doing right here, you know, we're, like, in our conversation, we spoiled more like two episodes ago than we have right now about what happened in the game. We're not going to do it because, you know,

why we don't need to? Some people maybe still haven't played. Sure. But because there was this huge, weird restriction, the embargo was so gnarly. I mean, you couldn't talk about what was happening. It puts people in the position of saying, I liked this game or I didn't like this game. And I can't say why. But I can't actually really tell you why. And that, I think, leads to a very weird space where everyone is arguing about something without talking about what they're arguing about. And that's happened before, but it's really like exacerbated by this unique set of circumstances that kind of played out with The Last of Us 2 involving the leaks in the embargo and the review timing and the length of the game and all of that kind of together.

Yeah, embargoes are a whole other beast. I don't remember, we must have talked to about this, maybe on the last show, and Kotaka's supposed to hear maybe we talked about this, but a lot of publishers will send you lists of things that you're not supposed to spoil, and therefore spoil you in the original. Yeah, I know. Don't mention that X happens in Chapter 3, and you're like, cool, I guess that happens. Yeah, Nintendo does this all the time.

Every single time they have, like, some RPG. Well, and you heard, and Rob, in his conversation with Maddie, mentioned that he skimmed the embargo, which I used to do this all the time when I was reviewing games because I didn't want to get spoiled. And he skimmed it and didn't realize how draconian it was and then had to go back and like rewrite his whole review because he included too much. Of course, assumed that you could talk about X and Y. Well, so, I mean, that leads to another question that might be beyond our scope.

But like, there's definitely an ethical question of like, is it really serving readers to agree to these embargoes? And like, if we're agreeing to an embargo that prevents us from talking about the game holistically, what purpose does it serve? I think that's related, actually. Because I certainly saw this come up with film critics talking about The Last of Us Part 2 just in comparison to what their industry is like and how they're like, we trust film critics to know what is and isn't a spoiler when they're writing a review of a film. Well, movie reviews all have spoilers. I avoid movie reviews. And to be fair, a lot of game reviews will, the embargoes that I've seen, will say that.

They'll be like, please don't spoil plot major plot developments. And that's kind of all they say. Right. And like, we trust you. Which is a fine request. It's one thing to say that. Yeah, that's a fine way to do it. We trust you, like, don't spoil the game. And that's fairly common.

Like, it's not like, the Last of Us 2, Embarger was pretty intense. Yeah, it was unusual. Everything, everything about the messaging surrounding this game and the way that people are talking about this game is unusual. That's not what we're talking about today. We're talking about spoilers. Dang it. Right, right, right.

About spoilers in general. Yes. So, so, yeah, it does raise an interesting, some interesting ethical questions. But yeah, but to the point about, like, the spoilers, I don't really think that it would have ruined it for me to know about the thing that happens two hours into the game. In fact, that would have made it more interesting to me than just like wondering or just assuming that that was going to happen, which is what I was doing anyway. I think there are times when like talking about the incentive incident can actually make a piece of criticism better and can make you appreciate knowing what's going to happen in the beginning of the game. But then again, I've also had so many enjoyable experiences where I've gone into a story, a TV show, or a book, or a movie or a game, having no idea what was going to happen other than just like a rudimentary idea.

Like, I saw something and the box looked pretty or whatever. And then it can be kind of cool to have that, like, complete blank slate experience. So I don't know. I'm of two minds of it. It's challenging because it's just different for everyone and it's different for each individual thing. I mean, there are people who don't feel the way that you felt. If you're dealing with like a blanket thing like Twitter, you're just going to tweet out a screenshot of something from some video game. You're essentially making that decision for them.

The story I was going to tell us just, my like spoiling people trial by fire was this Batman Arkham City preview that I wrote for Kataku forever ago. I've talked about this. I've talked about this on split screen, so I'll just briefly paraphrase it. They made us think in this preview event, kind of the only piece of information we got is that at the beginning of the game, the Joker dies. and there's this other villain or something, which winds up not being the case. And so this was a case of a preview event that faked out journalists and told them that something in the game happened that didn't actually happen. And it was a fake out. Like literally they show this a cutscene where Joker is dead in the cutscene and then it cuts to black.

In the game, in that same cutscene, the Joker then snaps awake after it cuts to black and is not dead. So like they made us think he was dead. I very foolishly published this headline. This is not entirely my decision, but at the same time. time, not going to cast plane. This was in the end my call to run this headline that said the Joker dies in Arkham City, which was not cool at all. And people were very upset with me and I felt terrible, not because people were upset with me, but because I knew I had fucked up. Like, it was not cool to tell people that information. I thought it said, or does he at the end of the headline.

It did, but that doesn't come on. And like, there was this, the image was like, it's all fun in games until the Joker dies in huge text. Like, it was, it was, if I had seen that, just as a person who plays video games, I would have been upset. I would have been like, oh, what the fuck? Kitaku? So ever since then, it made me kind of realized the power differential between someone publishing to a large audience and someone reading, and you just have to take into account everybody, which is what makes this kind of an impossible conundrum, is that there are so many people who will say, I don't care, I want to read the more thorough analysis, I don't need to be, you know, coddled at every step. And like, you don't need to keep me in the total dark.

But there are other people who will say, no, I really don't want to see this. In that case, it was specifically a problem because it was a headline on the page. Oh yeah, so it wasn't even behind a warning. It was unavoidable. It was unavoidable. It would have been the social media copy and so on. It's funny. It's funny you mention that because people are so draconian that the other day I tweeted

out a picture or a gif of me shooting the Vita in The Last of Us like in saying the Vita, the Vita can't die. Yes, and people considered that a spoiler. And one guy on my mentions is like, how dare you spoil this? Like not everybody has seen it. And I was like, what the, what is wrong with you? But it was like in a trailer for the game. No, I mean.

Even if it wasn't in a. the trailer. It's a freaking PlayStation We should also say that Nottie Dog showed fake footage from this game in a preview to fake people out about who's a live when. In the trailers, they showed fake footage, very, very Joker

style. They put together some cutscenes that made it appear as though scenes would play it in a different way. Yeah, which is fine with me. I saw some people complaining about that. I think it's no, no, I think that that's fine too. This reminds me of what Spike Chunsov did with Dangan Rompo where there was apparently a press event for the first Dangan Rumpa and at the end, the killer of the first mission, of the first mystery, is a different

person in the preview event that it is in the main game. And I actually kind of like that. I think it's cool that Nauti Dogg. Yeah, that rules. Also a demo. That was like a demo that was released also, I believe. Yeah, that's fine with fans. Yeah, there are some fun things like that. Man, dangan Rompah, that's a very spoilable game. It's very spoilable. I've had to like really avoid things because I want to keep playing those. Are you still playing those? I mean, I want to play the second and third one still. I never circled back, but I still intend to. But so to respond to something that you talked about a minute ago, Kirk, I think part of why people are draconian, and we use that word lovingly, I've certainly had my times in my life when I have been spoiled by something.

Like, for example, Dumbledore's death and Harry Potter was spoiled for me before I could get the book, and I'm still a little bitter about it, but it's fine. Anyway, I use that as a threat to get my campers in line when I was a counselor at summer camp. That's very cruel, Jason, but that's a little bit. would have worked on me. No, wait, maybe it was hard. No, that was the seventh book that I used. Like, I'll tell you what happens at the end of the seventh book. Well, so I read faster than most people, I read faster than most people and I read the entire book and then used that as a threat to get my kids to do what I wanted. Anyway, what I was saying was that Jason was a complicated child. What I was saying was that I think that that draconian response, which I, again,

emphasize I can relate to at times, is because the internet itself is so uncontrolled. by all of us and social media is so outside of our control. Like, horrible things just stream into my eyeballs every day when I go on Twitter.com. And some of those horrible things are like The Last of Us Part Two spoilers. And I can set up a variety of filters to prevent myself from seeing various content on the internet. But it is impossible to truly do that in like a meaningful way. And we are all experiencing that all the time. and that lack of control feels really bad.

And it's just something that we've all accepted as a part of our lives and like a part of navigating the internet that like you never know what you're going to see today. And that's just how it is to go online. And that actually sucks ass. And like other experiences in our lives aren't that way. Like in other situations, we are picking up a book.

We are selecting a TV show. Like we are picking what we're going to interact with and we have some idea of what we're getting. But going on the internet, You do not really have that. You are just at the mercy of whatever platform you're on. And so that's part of why I'm like, I get why people really want these spoiler tags. I get why people want things like content warnings,

which is like a much higher level of just wanting more control over what you're seeing online. And I get it. I think it's a fair thing to want. But I also am like, the onus is really on these platforms to try to give users more control over this stuff. And until then, all we can really do. is like use the crude tools at our disposal, like trying to give people spoiler warnings on tweets or like putting things in a separate place

or whatever the case may be. And these are not ideal. They do make it impossible for people to have a conversation about a video game on Twitter or social media because we can't know who has and hasn't known about the game. Twitter, message words figured this out decades ago. Like Twitter is just a backwards piece of software because all you have to do is make the spoiler tag

where you just highlight it with your cursor to see it. And that solves that entire problem. Twitter still hasn't done it. Yeah. That would actually be nice if Twitter did that. Yeah. I mean, Twitter, Twitter is like, Twitter doesn't have the functionality

that, like, message boards in 2001 has. But, like, so many other sites don't either. Like, Facebook doesn't, like, all, like, comments sections, don't, YouTube comments. Like, and also there are people out there who will just spoil things on purpose because they want to ruin your day. And so, like, there's no control for that either.

And that's just the world we live in, and we're all responding to it in our own. understandably defensive ways. Frustrated way. Yeah, I agree with that. And spoiler tags on Twitter would work. A frustrating thing about Twitter is that you can't even do like a spoilery conversation in the replies anymore.

Yes. Because people will see it. Because now Twitter surfaces your replies and sends it to other people. So I'll be spoiled sometimes. And surfaces likes. So you can't even like something that contains a thing. Right. So-and-so liked that whatever X dies and whatever game.

To pivot slightly to a slightly different thought that I've been having is the idea of spoiling solutions to a game's puzzle. Like I think a lot about Outer Wilds, a game that all three of us loved and that anybody listening to this should play because it's fabulous and one of the best games ever. And just came to Steam, so now nobody has any excuse. It did just come to Steam. Yes, unless you're really holding it against them that they were on Epic for a year. But maybe just get over it and play one of the best games ever.

Don't do that. Play it. Yeah, don't do that. It's good. So that game is very spoilable, but it's not spoilable to say like, oh, you know, whatever. Whatever it turns out to be the cause of some. phenomenon in the game. Like, that's not really a spoiler. Yeah, I mean, the sun explodes every 22 minutes in that game. That's going to happen right away. Right. Or even saying, here's why, like, here's the reason for it in the end, right? Like, even that. You could spoil

that, but like, we will, of course, not. And that also wouldn't be the main way of spoiling the game. The main way of spoiling the game would be to say, whatever, you can get to here super quickly if you just go over here. Yeah. And there's a lot of stuff in that game where the magic of it is when you do this crazy circuitous route and you jump and climb and you figure out all these puzzles and you arrive and then you realize, oh, here I am. This is how this works now. And I can actually just get right here by just doing this now that I understand. And it's this magical experience every time that just builds on itself and that's the magic of that game. And if you just told someone a few of those things, it would lessen the experience. It's one of the

reasons that giving tips for that game to friends feels almost like navigating spoilers. You'll say, well, you think about where you've been. Have you tried this? What do you have? What do you think about that platform? Yeah. Did you guys ever, have you guys ever play the old LucasArts games? Kirk, I know you did back in the day. Oh, yeah, sure. Not really, but I'm familiar with the type.

And especially the Infocom games, like the text base, Zork and stuff. So they would always have hint guides that wouldn't just tell you the puzzle. It would be like a series of questions and answers. And then the final one would always be like, are you sure you want to find out the answer? But like leading up to it, it would just be like what you're describing, Kirk, where you'd be having a conversation with a friend. And they would be like, have you checked such and such? Think about it.

What does such and such mean to such and such? And it'll be like guiding you along the way. And I thought that was a brilliant way of solving that particular problem. I always think about, I remember when I was playing braid when it first came out in 2008 or whatever and being stuck on a puzzle and Googling braid walkthrough. And I found like braidwalkthrough.com and I go to braidwalkthrough.com. And it's owned by Jonathan Blow, the designer of the game. And it's just this impassioned paragraph that's like, please, please don't look up a walkthrough for this game.

The whole point of this is that you're saying. supposed to take time and be stumped and have to solve it. Did you just look up another walkthrough though? No, I don't think I did. I think I was like, okay, fine, John. But I never finished braids. So in a way, you should have looked up another walkthrough. I mean, I don't know.

Maybe you would have beat me. The witness is another game that would be ruined if someone told you, someone spoils the mechanics to you. But also, it's puzzles, it's mine puzzles. That would be harder to spoil, though. How would you do that? You'd be like, the one line needs to go. go from the left to right. That line, that line means this and that lines means that. Right, right. No, if

someone said to you, like, oh, if you can't find this here, look down and there's a cherry tree branch or something like that. I don't know. But yes, but, but yeah, these things can definitely be spoiled. Yeah. So I have one more thought because we're running out of time, but I was curious about what you two thought about the idea of spoilers being old. I have a good rule of thumb for this. And I feel like, well, so I don't have like a specific arbitrary amount of time. time like 10 years or anything like that. Holding up my thumbs because it's a sign that it's a rule of thumb.

Got it. Nobody can see that. So you're clever. Your wit is lost on all the listeners. That's why I told people that I was doing it. Cool. So let's say it's 10 years or whatever it is. I mean it can be an arbitrary amount of time. I think a good rule of thumb

is that like it's okay to casually spoil older stuff as long as it's not like having a resurgence in the conversation. So like Final Fantasy 7, there's no reason. People should suddenly be careful about that. Yeah, because there might be people out there who are suddenly interested in. Or like Hamilton, the play, which we'll get to in a little bit, just came out.

So maybe like things you were a little bit more careful or less careful about a couple years ago now that it's like available for more people. Or really anything that like... Though, I mean, I think it's safe to say that Aaron Burke kills Alexander Hamilton in the dual. Well, they say, they can't really spoil American history. Also, every person in that play is dead now. All of the characters.

Oh, God. Come on guys. We're just ruining everyone on Hamilton, too. No, but like, I don't know. So like, to your Arkham City point, if that suddenly got a remaster and it was like, everybody's excited about Arkham City again, then that's a good time to be like, all right, we're going to take it easy. I think in general, it's something is having a resurgence in the conversation. But then again, I also, like, unless it's something like, Luke I am your father

where it's become part of the cultural consciousness, I still think that people should be careful because I told this story, I think it was a few weeks ago where, like, a friend of mine who's doing this Final Fantasy podcast that never learned the big the big twist in Final Fantasy 7 until like it was casually spoiled for him and he's like what the fuck like I was about to play this and like now it's a ruin for me so like in general I think like if you have a chance to just not be a jerk about it just take that chance that's that's that's a good way way of approach yes it's hard though yeah though it can be a bummer because yeah it's sometimes then it feels like we we can't talk about things it's hard I for one love making

jokes. I used to make jokes all the time on Kataku about like a certain thing that happens with Final Fantasy 7 and then I kind of started feeling bad about it. I mean, so did everybody for most of the 2000s. It was like on Luke Skywalker's dad level in terms of like jokes you tell about a thing that happens in a video game. And that's changed in the past 10 years, I think, which is interesting. Well, it changed with remake, I think. I think that's what changed that particular one. Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. But I'm like, how did everyone not already see that before the remake came out, but then it was like I suddenly discovered that a whole bunch of people somehow didn't know what happens in Final Fantasy 7. Well, some people are younger. If you're 15 now

when you're playing remake, you have no idea what happened in Final Fantasy 7. That's right. What's nice is that remake has its own spoilers as well, which is kind of fun. Which you can listen to on our Beams cast on the Final Fantasy 7 remake. You can do that. I think when it comes down to it, it's the thing that you were saying, Maddie, about wanting control over the spaces and the information that we're in is like very true about all of this. Even the fact that things like spoiler casts, beans casts, spoiler-filled conversations exist, those are nice because there's space

where everyone's on the same page and you're just going to talk about everything related to at least one specific story. And even in conversations you're having with your friends, you can be considered and say, okay. Have we all seen this? Yeah. Right.

Are we all cool to talk about that? And checking in. Yeah. Right. And there's nothing better than when you do that and everyone says, yeah, sure. Or like the one person that was like, I haven't seen it, but I don't care.

And then you can finally be like, okay, so let's just talk about it. I can't believe. He's really the killer. You know, you have this whole conversation, which is good. But it is about that respect and giving people that control over the information that they take in in the end. We solved it. We did it.

We did. We solved the problem. Good job, Maddie. Congratulations. Why don't we take a break? And then we will be back with one more thing. The owners have a lot of problems. How do you juggle your holes at the library? How do you decide what to read next?

What do you do when you find out an author you love is a huge trash baby? I'm Brea Grant and I'm Mallory O'Mara And we're the hosts of Reading Glasses We're here to solve all your reader problems And along the way, help you figure out Your Reader Willhouse Which are the things that will absolutely make you pick up a book Our listener favorites tend to be magic

And a woman on a journey And also birds for some reason? Your Reader Dog House Yeah, that's the things that'll make you avoid a book Ugh, Love Triangle, stress me out so much Reading Glasses Every Thursday on Maximumfund.org Hey folks, it's Jesse, the founder of

Max Fund. Since we postponed our annual Max Fund Drive in mid-March, we have gotten a lot of questions about if and when we'd be rescheduling it. And honestly, we've been asking ourselves the same thing. Well, now we have an answer for you. The 2020 Max Fund Drive will start on July 13th. That's coming up soon. We decided to have the drive now because it's always brought a lot of joy and excitement to our community and certainly to us. And to be totally honest, it's also the main source of income for some of our hosts. Like pretty much everything right now, this year's drive is going to be a little different. We'll still be bringing you very special episodes, fun community activities, premium thank you gifts, but we also know it's a weird time and for some folks a really difficult

one. Some people are in a position to become new or upgrading members. Others can't right now, and that is okay. We'll have ways for you to support Max Fund at every level, including some ways that won't cost you anything. We're also going to run the drive for four weeks instead of two. We didn't think it was a good time to be rushing anybody and having a longer drive lets us be a little more low-key in our drive pitch. It also gives us more time to do fun stuff like the weekly live streams we'll be putting on for charity throughout the drive. Most importantly, we want the 2020 Max Fund Drive to highlight all the ways we support each other and our communities. We also want to show how grateful we are to you for making all the work

that we do possible. Stay safe. We'll see you July 13th for the Max Fun Drive. And we are back for one more thing. Kirk, why don't you tell me what you've been doing the past week? Yes. I'm so glad that I got called on first. I'm excited.

I'm excited because I'm playing a video game that I'm completely in love with and I'm excited to tell people about. And it's been kind of a minute since I felt that way about a new game that I could tell listeners about on a podcast. So I am playing a game called. Desperados 3, which is a real-time stealth strategy game that's on, I believe it's on consoles and PC made by a development studio called Me Me Me, who most previously, most recently made a game called Shadow Tactics Blades of the Shogun, which is very, very similar to Desperados.

It's kind of like the games, the Commandos games from back in the 2000s, as well as the Desperadoes series, which were both kind of similar real-time stealth. this game rules and I love it so much it drives me up the wall sometimes because it's very difficult but it's also just so robust and well made and enjoyable and great and I love it so now I'm going to tell you both about why I love it go on I just want to say though before you start desperado's

three terrible name terrible time yes yes I'm aware that you feel this way I think that well whatever it's in this series so you know I don't know they could have called it like sneaky West something like that Desperado's colon, the sneaky west. Sneaky West. That would have been better.

Desperadoes, it just makes me think, it makes me think of, like, a THQ, like, crappy first-person shooter from, like, 2008. You know what it makes me think of is what is the LucasArts cowboy game? I'm typing that into Duck, Dot, Go right now? Outlaws. It makes me think of Outlaws, because it's very similar, and Outlaws has kind of similar art. The, like, thing I never even played that game. I don't think it's good. Isn't it, like, a shooter?

No idea. LucasArts shooter. The 1997 shooter is a first-person shooter released by LucasArts in 1997. Yes. So anyways, it makes me think of that. So I'm with you. It's not a great name.

It's a great game, though. Everybody, do not sleep on this game. If you like stealth games... Yes, I played a couple hours, and I also think it's a great game. I endorse your... Oh, my God. I'm like...

Totally in love with it. Luke Plunkett, noted stealth game aficionado at Kataku reviewed it, called it a stealth masterpiece. It is wonderful, and I love it. So just really briefly what it is. So it's a kind of an isometric view, but with a rotatable camera, really lovely little tiny miniature-looking characters,

kind of like Divinity Original Sin 2 or any of those style of games, where nothing is super high detailed. You can't zoom that far in, but everything looks really great from a distance. You're in the Wild West, you're like a cowboy. The whole thing really, like, relies, I would say overly on, like, Wild West stereotypes, like character stereotypes, which is, like, kind of a, like, it leaves me wishing that it would have been

a little bit more adventurous with the character designs and stuff, but it's a very, very mechanical game, and it's just a game about sneaking around, taking out guards, making your way through a level. And you have a team of eventually five people, I just unlocked the fifth person, and Shadow Tactics, Blades of the Shogun, which is also a fantastic game, was very similar. That was like a feudal Japan ninja slash samurai game. And it's very similar in that each of your party members is a unique character that plays a role in the story.

There's a long story. This is like a totally single player thing that goes, it's like a saga. And each character has their own, you know, dueling motivations, and also their own completely unique skill set. So one character in Desperados, your main cowboy guy is kind of a just, he can sneak, he can stab people with a knife, and he has a pistol he can shoot that makes a lot of noise. So if he shoots that, it'll alert every guard in the area. Your goal is to get through each area, pretty much, to get from point A to point B, maybe it achieves some kind of objective. But you're kind of just moving through these highly patrolled, you know, a Wild West town, and then, you know, whatever, a guard camp, and then a crashed riverboat area in the river. And you have to get through them without being seen, or you pretty much get killed.

So he's kind of basic. There's like a big guy who can knock people down really quick, but he can't climb. So if you need to get to a higher area, you send your like more limber guy. There's a woman who's like charming. This is like one of the character stereotypes that's kind of weak. But she can go and distract guards. And so she's kind of a femme fatale, right? She can distract someone so they look away.

Anyways, so each character has their own unique abilities. And you have to use them all to get through these very challenging stealth gauntlets that because you just have the ability to, you know, kind of zoom around and look at everything, you can right click on any guard and you can see their field of view. Sound isn't an issue with movement, which is nice. So it's just about whether you're crouching or climbing and, like, the noise of your attacks. It's very, very mechanical and simulation-heavy. It's hitman-ish.

Yeah, it sounds like hitman, which is why I'm like, of course, Kirk likes this. It's a little bit different, though. It has a different feel because you're controlling a team of characters instead of just one. And also because you have very strict goals instead of just like a bunch of different things you can do in one big sandbox. It's more like you're moving across maps to try to take out enemies as you go. Yeah, it's its own thing. It has some things in common with it, man. It's very satisfying in that same way, and it's very simulation-heavy like Hitman.

There are actually some levels in this game. I believe there will be some more. But there was a town level where there are just neutral areas where I could just walk around, which was very hitmanish. the femme fatale character can dress up in a costume. So she can actually walk around freely, sort of like Agent 47 does, in Hitman. So there are more Hitman notes in this game, I guess. But it's still, yeah, it is its own thing. It's more like Shadow Tactics.

I really, really like it. It has, you can like cue up abilities. So if you pause time and then you can be like, okay, when I press enter, everyone's going to do an ability at once. So like, this guy will throw the knife, and then this person will like knocked out that guard who was watching and would have seen the knife hit the guy. and then this person's going to go over here and really quick grab the thing, and then you activate it and you watch your team kind of snap into action all at once,

and it has that very satisfying feeling. And it's sometimes really hard. They do the thing. I just did a level where you have like a wild night out, and then your one character wakes up and he's hung over and doesn't have any of his gear, which is a common trope in video games, and you have to get through this whole level, without anything, gradually finding everybody,

and you don't have any of your gear. So the gear is kind of overpowered at times, but without it, oh my god this level was so hard and i was like it's designed to save scum like they tell you at the beginning you're supposed to be saving and reloading and doing trial and error that's the point of the game in fact a thing i'll pop up a notification will pop up when you haven't saved in more than a minute and it'll it'll be like constantly reminding you to save which i love i adjusted that to two minutes because i was like okay but yeah it reminds you it's a great that's a great idea to remind you like to save if you've watched the trailer also there's the cinematic trailer for

this is like a cinematic reenactment of save coming. It's kind of like edge of tomorrow or whatever, but the guy, it's like a shootout, and then the one guy gets killed and he's like, wait, and then it restarts and then they do it again, and they keep doing it until they get it right, which is kind of how the game works. So, I really like it. I think it's super fun. It's very tough, and I'm going to be playing it for a long time. I gather it's quite long. But if you're looking for like that kind of really crunchy, tactical stealth game, man, I mean, I'm enjoying it. And also the story is pretty good. It's like surprisingly good animations, actually. The characters are little, and it's pretty

like great. You're kind of watching these little characters talk to each other, but they have unique, you know, it almost seems mocapped or something, the animation. So the story is fun enough. And mostly I'm just there for sneaking up on guards and taking them down without anyone noticing. But that is Desperados 3. It's on PC and consoles. And it's great. Cool. All right. Jason, why don't you go next? Maddie, Kirk. I am not throwing away my shot. Of course. No, you're not throwing away your shot. I watched Hamilton with my wife and some friends last week. I've been away, by the way, for those who have not been following. I was my wife and I and some friends. We rented an Airbnb in Connecticut, which, and just spent a week there grilling and hanging out outside and it's raining, so we spent some time inside too. And it was lovely. Highly recommend it. I recommend it if you can do this. Doing something. If you can do, if you, if you have a safe way of doing this, what we all did was we all quarantined for two weeks ahead of time. So we were, we felt more comfortable doing it.

and also New York and Connecticut has the cases have dropped so low that we're feeling a little more secure than we would if we were in like Florida. But anyway, recommend like going someplace and like seeing people because. Yes, if you can safely. Man, it was like after months of not seeing people in real life and being like cramped in this apartment in New York, just being in a house with space and a yard and a grill and friends, it was pretty amazing. But anyway, we all watched Hamilton when it came out on Disney Plus on Friday. And I had always known, my wife is a huge musical theater nerd, and I'd always known that I would like Hamilton, but we've always wanted to wait. Like, I never wanted to listen to soundtrack, because I always wanted to see.

Did you want to wait for it? I wanted to wait for it because we wanted to see the show itself, which in retrospect is hilarious, because I had no idea that the show itself has no talking, and the soundtrack is the show, which is one scene that's not on the soundtrack, it's an amazing scene. Okay. Which one? Which scene? When John Lawrence dies. Oh, okay. that when she reads the letter, which is an amazing scene.

Actually, like, really crucial. He said, I think Lynn Manuel Miranda said that he purposefully left that off the soundtrack because he wanted there to be something for people who went to the show. Only for the live audience. Something new that you get. Maddie, have you seen it also? I have not seen it. I have only listened to the soundtrack.

But you listen to the soundtrack, so you know the music. Okay, so my take is that Hamilton is pretty, pretty incredible. As soon as I watched it, I was like, oh my God, like, I have to get this music. So let me preface this by saying that when I say it's pretty incredible. I'm talking about the music and how much I love the music. I'm obsessed with the music. Whatever. About the,

I don't have any takes on like the founding fathers who are obviously shitty people and the glamorization of like slave owners. Sounds like you have takes on the founding fathers, brushing them under the bum. No, I really, I really don't. I don't want to get into that discourse here. As much as I've enjoyed reading like good criticism of Hamilton and like appreciating like all this stuff about how it really whitewashed history and like how,

how all these people of color are playing white people, but there are no actual people of color in the story. And there's a lot to unpack with the actual story itself. But I am obsessed with the music. The music is just so good and well-constructed and the motifs and the different ways that it just like repeats different, like, I don't know, vocal, like signatures, vocal signatures for each character and man, everything about it. There's just so many freaking bangers on this track that I just have been obsessively listening. since we watched the movie. And shout out, of course, to Kirk's Strong Song episodes, strong song episode about Hamilton's Satisfied, which might be the best, one of the best,

one of the top three songs on the soundtrack. It's my favorite anyways. Yeah, Maddie, are you not a Hamilton fan? Are you not into it? I like it. Yeah. I mean, I really enjoyed it in 2015. Remember 2015, like, before Trump was elected, when we, like, still had hope about, like, systems may be working. I never heard any of the music until this. So like I am, imagine that my mind is in 2015 right now. It feels like such a time capsule to me to be thinking about Hamilton in 2020. And I feel like that has made it harder for me to enjoy its resurgence because I'm like, I just feel like I was a different person when I was listening to the Hamilton soundtrack. But that, that's not a reflection on the soundtrack at all. Well, as a show, it feels, yeah, well, it's

interesting. It's coming into time where like a lot more people are down on America than they were in 2015 for a lot of different reasons. Right. But also it feels so Obama years. Like it just does. Like it is just a product of that time. Right. That's what I'm saying. So I'm saying that it's like a celebration. It's like it feels very much like a celebration of a lot of like that progressive Obama liberalism that it was clearly like feels very different now. It was like about to be pushed back. against by like reactionaries like almost immediately afterward. Yeah. And it's like it can't really be taken out of that context. But again, I'm, I'm talking about the music. It's just the music I'm obsessed with. That's wonderful. Yeah, I'm obviously obsessed with the music. And yeah,

I, uh, making that episode of strong songs about Satisfied, which is my favorite song for the musical, totally freaked me out. I mean, the level on which Lynn Manuel Miranda and Alex Lackamore, the musical director and arranger are operating is nuts through that whole musical Like, it's just, well, people should go listen to that episode of strong songs. Well, and Renee, I mean, part of it is like the vocal talent of the original cast is just unbelievable. Especially Renee Elise Goldsbury. I mean, holy crap, in this version, the man. Seeing the original cast is really cool on a lot of levels.

She is. But also, DeVee Diggs and Jonathan Grapp, like, they all are just out of control. It's funny. Like, in the original cast recording, I don't think DeVie Diggs is actually all that strong. He is great on stage. Like he was one part of watching it, like watching the Disney Plus movie, which I also did over the weekend. It's fantastic. I highly recommend it. I think he's really good on stage. Like his stage presence is just amazing. And he's so good in the moment. Where in the studio or however they recorded the original cast recording, he's just like, he's just better, I think. Interesting.

I think it's just hard to capture that with any live performance. I mean, it's so much of it is about being in that theater and seeing it. I mean, this is part of why people have mixed feelings about the show being recorded at all in this form and shown in this way. But of course, with COVID, there's no way for anyone to be seen live theater. I think that this version of it really works. I mean, it's looser. The vocals are a little rar. Like, they're, the dates stretch the time the way that they do when you see it live. And that's cool.

Like, the studio recording is like really tight and really great and works on its own. But it's really fun to see them. And just the emotion of these people. I mean, holy crap. There's a couple of scenes where Renee Lee, Colesbury is like singing directly into Lin-Manuel Miranda's face from like six inches away and I'm just trying to imagine

like what it would be like to be standing on stage and having someone with a voice like that just I mean she's not belting but it's like right there there are these scenes or they're singing right at each other and they have tears in their eyes in these moments I mean he's so well the best is seeing Jonathan Groff's spittle as he

sings his stipple is Jonathan Groff is so good he's another one who's great in the recording but his performance is so hilarious and so good It's all these little subtle facial movements and, yeah, man, everything about it. You know, not to get to, because there is, I think, a really interesting critical cultural conversation around it. I read something really good that Jim L. Bowie wrote on his letterboxed about it that I thought was really well put as like a criticism of it as a sort of, you know, as a piece of historical reinterpretation. Though at the same time, I do get an energy from it now, actually, in 2020 that I didn't get when I first listened to it because it feels like the, the metal.

to me, it goes both ways and it works. The metaphor doesn't work as well when you say, oh, it's a bunch of like non-white actors playing a people who are white people and we're kind of in that way kind of glorifying people who didn't deserve that glory by looking back at the founders in a certain way. But it also goes the other way. And there's like a reverse metaphor where just the people who in this abstract version of history that is, you know, not one to one to begin with to what actually happened is like these people rose up and it's like a call to arms to like do to make things better and to work together and that's actually kind of what's happening in America right now. So that part of it, even though you can't remove it from all the other stuff and

from the historical context, that part of it was actually really cool for me. Like I thought that worked really well like specifically in that John Lawrence scene when he dies and he's like tomorrow there will be more of us. Like I think that's a beautiful sentiment and I'm glad that this musical centers on that so much, like on the idea that it's also like all of you, you need to do something great and make things better. And so I like that about it, even though the music really is the thing for me. I mean, the music just freaks me. I love those songs. I think it's so good. But I could talk forever about Hamilton and I won't. You have a different podcast. Yeah, I have a whole other podcast. The posters for Hamilton all said, rise up. I remember seeing those on like the subways

and stuff. And I think that itself is like, even though in the context of the show, it's talking about like stand up for George Washington. Here comes the general rise. To not pay your taxes. But for it to be, for it to like be, if you're looking at it, it's a call to action. I think that's a pretty, pretty succinct. When you reverse the metaphor, it becomes pretty cool. Maddie, what about you?

What's your one more thing? So I don't know if y'all have been following any of the news about J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books. I sure have. I don't know how you could not be. I wrote an article about it last week. I wrote a piece about the Harry Potter game. She has an anti-trans bigot who has been voicing that opinion a lot lately.

And that is already a known thing about her. I've even mentioned it on this show before as one of the reasons why my girlfriend and I stopped playing the Harry Potter Niantic game. So that's just something that's true about her, full stop. But I had kept hearing from friends about this podcast called The Shrieking Jack, which is these two lapsed Harry Potter fans who go back and reread all, the books and just analyze them through a critical lens and like a queer studies lens and just like all the lenses and make fun of it a little bit. And it is just super hitting the spot.

Like I had not gotten around to listening to this podcast. I'm only three episodes in and I'm loving it so much that I just had to shout it out because it's like I am also a lapsed Harry Potter fan. I love the fan fiction. I've like completely reinterpreted all of the signifiers in the books to be what I think they mean, and it has nothing to do with J.K. Rowling to me anymore. But also, I kind of despise the books at the same time, because at this point I read them, and I see, like, her issues politically, and I just, I can't separate the art from the artists, and I don't really think that's possible in this case, because I think that Harry Potter does espouse some of the things that she says. But anyway, this podcast is really just, it's just great,

and I, if anybody else is in a similar position where they grew up reading, Harry Potter and they have a lot of mixed feelings about it and especially have those mixed feelings now that J.K. Rowling is in the news. I think you should check out this podcast because I think it's going to float your boat. So that's me. Nice. Well, that makes me kind of want to check it out. I've been talking to my sister as she reads through them with my niece. And the main thing she brings up is the grammar in it and the writing where there's so many, I guess it's adverbs. Like everyone says something, you know, boredly or exactly. exhausted Lee.

Like everything is... Stephen King would never allow for this. No, and there's a lot of even like repeated words. Well, that's why Stephen King didn't support the other day. Yeah, that's the real reason why Stephen King and Jake Irralling don't get along. It's not because Stephen King thinks trans women are women. That's not really.

It's the adverts. It's really just about grammar. I do think people should check out this podcast, though. It's really fun. And they do also talk about things in the books that they really love as well. It's not all trashing it. They acknowledge plenty of things in the books that work. and they also trash it a little bit, and it's great.

Nice, that's healthy. That sounds healthy. I'll check it out. I still want to know how those Harry Potter movies got away with those big-nosed banker stereotypes. They address that, Jason. They address the goblin bankers. It is in there.

It is in the podcast. So anyway, that's been an episode of Triple Click. We've done it. It sure has been. We did it. We did another one. We did it. Eleven on the books.

Cool. So we'll see you all next. week. Yeah, see you all next week. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I added and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network, and if you like our show, we hope you'll head over to Maximumfund.org slash join and consider becoming a member. Doing so helps support us and gets you access to an exclusive Triple Click episode each month.

Find us online at triple clickpodcast.com, on Twitter at Triple Click Podcast.com. and send email to triple click at maximum fun.org. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximumfund.org. Comedy and culture. Artist-owned. Audience, audience supported.