Triple Click - Nintendo News and More Silksong

Episode Date: September 18, 2025

Jason, Kirk, and Maddy convene to discuss all the news in the latest Nintendo Direct, from the Super Mario Galaxy movie to a new Fire Emblem and the mysterious Danganronpa 2x2. Then: more Silksong! They talk about difficulty, opacity, and how cool Hornet is... I mean seriously. She's just so cool.One More Thing (Timestamp 46:34):Kirk: Fourth Wing & RomantasyMaddy: When the Clock Broke (John Ganz)Jason: Nathan For YouLINKS:Christian Donlan’s Eurogamer Silksong review: https://www.eurogamer.net/hollow-knight-silksong-reviewJason’s spoiler-free tips for getting to Silksong Act 3: https://discord.com/channels/735597186657812641/1408099310213529701/1416775529041760397“Choral Chambers” by Christopher Larkin from Hollow Knight: SilksongKirk’s remix of Shakra’s song: https://bsky.app/profile/kirkhamilton.com/post/3lysrc5ee422a"Why Magic, Dragons and Explicit Sex Are in Bookstores Everywhere” - Alexandra Alter for the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/20/style/harry-potter-fan-fiction-romantasy-manacled.htmlSupport Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinAll-New Triple Click Merch!! https://maxfunstore.com/search?q=triple+click&options%5Bprefix%5D=lastJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/ 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

We all thought it was impossible for Samus Aaron to be any cooler, but we hadn't yet seen her on a motorcycle. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week we talk about the September Nintendo Direct, new Fire Emblem, 80s 2 and 1.0, and the virtual boy, okay Nintendo. And we also talk a little more about Silk Song again. I'm Maddie Myers. I'm Jason Shrier. And I'm Kirk Hamilton and hello. Hello.

Hello. We're back again. Hi there. We did it again. Back again. We did. It did an elaborate series of jumps over various spikes and traps and flowers and poegoing in whichever direction we personally prefer and we all made it here.

Tor ourselves away from Silk Song. To the safe resting place that is triple click. And we're grateful. I feel like I'm delivering a sermon, although I guess that fits the Silk Song vibe. I am clearly all I have on the brain is Silk Song. but it's not too long ago that all I had on the brain was Ocarina of Time. And why should I say that? Because we recorded a bonus episode, three of us, where we spilled the beans on everything

that happens in Ocarina of Time. That's out in the bonus feed. And how would you get access to that bonus feed? Well, you would go to maximumfund.org slash join. And you'd become a member. And you'd support us. you'd make sure that we keep making this wonderful show that is ad-free every single time, but also you get a monthly bonus episode, which this month is Ocaryne of Time, like I said,

and next time around it's going to be us spilling the beans on Silk Song, or spilling the rosaries, whatever, spelling the bugs? You spell a lot of rosaries in this game. I do spill a lot of rosaries. You still a lot of beads. We're spilling the beads. It's a beads cast. Yeah, it's a beads cast.

So we will have that in the bonus feed. But once again, Maximfund.org slash join is where you would go in order to become a member. But hey, we're here for a main feed episode today. And we're just, we're just going to talk about video games yet again. Jason, lead us, lead us through this thorny path. Through the promised land. To the citadel, to the gates. So a few things that have happened.

And we got some more Silk Song to talk about. We'll put a pin in that until later. We'll call the Pin Master. We'll put a pin in a later. Oh, yeah, pins. No, pins are in the game too. Because first we got to talk about the Nintendo Direct. Last week, Nintendo held a big 60-minute Nintendo direct.

And once again, Silk Song did not appear. But a few other things did appear. A whole bunch of news got announced that that one. It feels like they finally laid out their full plans. for Switch 2 releases this fall, including the release date for Metroid Prime 4, which comes out in December. And a bunch of other stuff. I want to talk about a few things. First of all, the Mario Brothers movie sequel is called Super Mario Galaxy. And hearing Gusty Gardens play in like a film trailer is pretty wild. I've got to say. Are you guys excited? Did you guys both see the first one?

Are you excited to see Mario Galaxy? I mean, it was fine. It's a kid. It was fine. I got to admit, I will watch it. I'm not going to pretend I won't watch Super Mario Galaxy despite not having children. I'm having no real reason to see this film.

But I will watch it, and I will probably have a perfectly adequate time. Which is how I felt about the first one. How do we feel about them skipping over all these other Mario games, though? They're just going straight into Galaxy. We're just going ahead. No dokey, dokey panic. I mean, does the canon?

matter? I don't know. It's, it's Mario. Well, I mean, the last one was, did already, already did like a lot of Mushroom Kingdom stuff, right? And so like Mario World, Mario 64, you don't want to do Mario Sunshine. That would be a weird title for a game. Mario Galaxy, you just, you're up in the stakes. You're going to space. It's like what Marvel does, right? It's like when they run out of things to do on Earth, they just send the characters to space. You bring in the aliens. I'm excited about it. I actually started playing Galaxy for the first time, when that collection came out, the 3D collection for Switch. Cool.

And Galaxy is amazing. It's so fun. It's an incredible game. And also narratively really cool. I mean, it has a narrative that actually feels sort of beautiful. It has this bitter sweetness to it. And then a lot of that is actually the music. I was happy to hear the galaxy music play at the very end of the trailer,

just because it sort of put me in that mode. And yeah, I think they could do a lot of cool stuff with that. Introduce the new princess, introduce, I don't know, some of those cool and functional. unique mechanics that you see in Galaxy. I think it could be a lot of fun. Yeah, Rosalina is a cool character. Yeah, it could definitely be fun.

Also, as part of this announcement, they announced that Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 are getting a remastered re-release on the Switch and Switch 2, which is cool because that 3D All-Stars collection that you mentioned, Kirk, is no longer available for sale for some inexplicable reason. And it didn't include Galaxy 2.

It did not include Galaxy 2, So this will be the first time you can play Galaxy 2 on Modern Platforms. And I've heard it's like kind of almost feels like, I don't know, the hardcore DLC for Galaxy 1? Is that an accurate way of describing it? It's not quite as magical, but it has like a lot of ideas and is really kind of why. I really like it. Yeah, that's a really cool game. It has Yoshi.

It has a lot of fun. Yes, you're right that it does feel like DLC with a whole bunch of new ideas. It's almost Siltzong-esque in that way, the way you just described it. And I haven't played it. I'm really just going off my memory of reading the Internet or whatever. No, you're right. that is an accurate description from what I remember, that it's kind of like a DLC turned into a big sequel or something like that. I was taken aback when I saw that they are charging $70 for this remaster

collection or $40 for each game on its own. I was a little surprised by that one. Yeah, did they, I actually haven't seen this part of the direct. Are they changing it in more substantive ways than the 3D All-Stars version? Or is it pretty much just the 3D All-Stars version? Or is it pretty much just the 3D all-stars version being sold to us again. Just giving it to you again. So, okay, so that 3D all-stars version, like for, it makes no sense. But for some reason, that is no longer available to buy. You can no longer buy 3-D, Super Mario 3-D All-Stars, either physically or digitally.

It makes sense if you're Nintendo and you want to make money. Well, no, because you're no longer selling something that would make you money. Like, that's been off stores. Like, they release it as a limited edition product for some reason. But again, both physically and digitally. I think this is the only time they've done that digitally. I guess they can re-release Sunshine at some point if they want to. They could now piecemeal re-release the games in that collection.

I guess. None of it makes any sense. But anyway, $70 for Galaxy 1 and 2, which is, man, that's a lot. New Fire Emblem game looked cool. Looked more appealing than the last one Fire Emple Engage, where all the characters had cotton candy hair. and it was the story was left a little bit to be desired. This one seems a little more grounded.

I remember the strategy mechanics were kind of fun once you actually got far enough. Super fun. It was a great strategy. I liked it and I just kind of played with the sound off a lot and had a great time. But yeah, I definitely would like a new fire emblem that does something a little different. We'll see. I think everybody wants to recapture the magic of three houses, right? I mean, who among us? There are people who don't like three houses from a strategy perspective in particular. I was surprised actually reading through threads reacting to this trailer, which I thought looked really cool.

And yeah, for me, it's exciting because I do really like three houses. And I like having that narrative layer over top of the strategy just because you get so pumped up when it's a big showdown and it's finally been building to this for so long. And it's your friends or your enemies. Yeah. Like I do like that part of a Fire Emblem game, even though I haven't. played every single one. And there are definitely people who have very, I think, well-informed takes about the variety of encounters in particular. And I think that was what Three Houses was seen as lacking. There weren't that many types of battles that you would have to do

compared with some other games. And I don't know whether they'll address that or not. But narratively, yeah, like the tone of this trailer was really cool. It looked something like Three Houses. It's kind of a Colosseum set up. Like there's kind of a very violent game. like Olympic games going on, which would be a fun backdrop for a game like this. And yeah, I mean, just watching the trailer got me pumped up to play another fire emblem. Some theories also that it's like a sequel to Three Houses or possibly a prequel, a lot of... Right, because what's her name? Is it the Stinger, the goddess?

She's like a kid in Three Houses, but she also grows up at one point. She's like travels through time or something. They always make the goddesses look like children. While also being immortal and age-less. They do. Metroid Prime 4. Samus has a bike now. What do we think of Samus' motorcycle?

They give it for one of a motorcycle in these games. You know what? I'm a sucker for this. I think the motorcycle is awesome. I think it looks great. I was already going to play this game, but now it has a motorcycle in it. I am excited to ride a motorcycle.

I also think those sections look like they could be slightly open-worldy. I'm not sure if I'm over-thinking the trailer too much here. It's just a trailer hard to say. But if the game's a little bigger, that would explain why it's taken them so long to make. But I also am naturally hesitant about that because Metroid games being very specific and confined experiences where abilities unlock certain things and it's a coherent streamlined world, changing that to be slightly open world could break everything. I would imagine. I would have to imagine that if there is an open world element of this game, it'll be like a hub.

Yeah. And that, you know, and even the hub will have. Yeah. And the hub will have gates, like just sort of similar to the beginning area of prime where you go back there a lot. It's just a lot bigger and has kind of more of an open world feel. But I think there are a lot of ways you can do that. Yeah, that feels like it could work. And also, like, I assume the bike is going to make it easier to travel long distances.

So maybe you can just have bigger areas. But there's still. The bike's name is a pona. Yeah. And you can call the bike from anywhere in the world and she'll come to you. Just play a little song. You play her special. song.

Metroid Prime 4 first announced at E3 2017 at the end of the Nintendo direct just that was the same

A3 that Breath of the Wild no sorry Mario Odyssey was like the main focus on like showing off the hat and stuff Breath of the Wild had just

come out. Breath of the Wild had just come out. It was at Nintendo was on fire and we were thinking oh great Metroid Prime

we'll see that in a few years. Yeah we were thinking oh man can't wait for next year in 2019 they put out this apologetic video where a couple

Nintendo executive said, we're so sorry, this development is restarted. Reportedly, it was in development at Bandai Namco and then switched over to Retro Studios in 2019. And so now it is coming out about six years later. So pretty normal AAA game development time, if you don't count those first two years. So eight years since it's been announced, six years since it's restarted development at Retro Studios. Retro also since then has made the... Metroid Prime 1 remaster slash remake.

And I've given up on there ever being a two or three remake. I think we're just imagining those games didn't happen. Never say die. It could happen. One of these days. Hey, if it happens, I can be pleasantly surprised. Well, I don't think we were imagining. There were definitely rumors about those being in existence. They weren't just made up. Maybe the rumors were made up, but we didn't make them.

They weren't your fever dream, Maddie. Also, it could have been. Pokemon Minecraft, aka Pocateopio, which was a real, that was a real, a real trip watching a ditto transform into a person, but keep the same face and then go around and like build stuff and create a farm and do all sorts of Minecraft slash Animal Crosings. This is like when we saw Mario in New Dog City standing next to normal human beings. That is, yes. It's also a trip.

Yeah, there's like a plotline and Detective Pikachu about dittos taking on human form, but it like had a horror element in that movie. I thought that was really cool and a nervous. I don't know that everybody else remembers that. Clearly, it was burned into my brain and just what I thought about. I didn't finish that movie, but it was pretty fun. I just put it on one night, and then we kind of just kind of lost steam because we had to do something and then never finished it. But it was pretty fun.

It was kind of the beginning of this current era of video game movies, just being very true to the game and then being successful as a result. Yeah. They could totally, if they wanted to go all out, they could make it like a Resident Evil or Silent Hill style Pokemon game with the dittos as people. and they like totally shock you. Like you have to figure out who's impostors. That's the thing. I mean, it's basically the thing. Oh my goodness.

Yeah, yeah. Or like pod people. Yeah, you name it. It's creepy. Also announced virtual boys support and they're releasing actual virtual boy headline for all those people out there who thought Nintendo was, gave up on being weird. Wait, did any of you, did either of you have a virtual boy? No.

No. I had one. So I was on a band trip, I think, in high school. And we were just at the mall, like, I don't know, getting lunch and all the other band kids were there. And I passed by, you know, whatever, an electronics boutique or one of those gaming stores. And they had just a huge stack of virtual boys for sale for like nothing. So this is when they were in, give up fire sale, just get, make back whatever we can. This is a failed experiment mode.

And I bought one and got a few games. And I had it for a long time. And I think just gave it away or something. I kind of wish I'd kept it, though. Did it make you sick? Because you like VR. so maybe we're cool with it. It has so little in common, though, with, like, modern VR.

I mean, regular VR, like, modern VR is not super easy on me either. Like, I can play it, but it doesn't make me immediately sick. It's not always super pleasant, but the virtual boy was a cursed device. It was genuinely awful physical experience. And now you can recreate that experience today. There must be, like, people must have created emulators for, like, the Quest or whatever other VR headset, where you can play, you know, virtual tennis or whatever, those other games. I suspect people will buy this just for the novelty of it and then maybe be like, what are we doing here?

Yeah, I mean, I have one of those super mini super Nintendo's in a drawer somewhere that I bought that I never used. People are suckers and they're much bigger Nintendo suckers than me out there. A couple more things, Dragon Quest 7 remake that looks hilarious of hilarious character models in that one. That's a fun one for all the Dragon Quest, Sicko is out there. The order of them doing Dragon Quest remake so far has been Dragon Quest 3, Dragon Quest 1 and 2, which comes out next month, and now Dragon Quest 7, which comes out in February. Interesting decision making there. Dragon Quest 7, even for, it's a good one, but even for Dragon Quest standards, it's like way too long, to the point where even the developers are like, this game is too long. In this remade version, we're going to cut down some of the fat.

So this game should be kind of a, that's why they're calling a Dragon Quest 7 reimagined, because they're not just changing the graphics, they're also just kind of like slimming it down a little bit. I expect it'll still be like an 80-hour game, but it won't be quite as unwieldy as the original one, which is really fascinating. This is one of those games where it's like,

you have this party of characters, turn-based RPG, all the typical Dragon Quest flourishes, character classes, all that stuff. But it's very much a, it's like a sequence of short stories. are on this island and you go out to different islands throughout the world and each of them kind of has its own kind of genre almost like themed story. It feels very much like, like, I don't know, one of those manga collections or anime collections or whatever where it's all a bunch of different genres, which I think is what they were going for. Should be fun to revisit in February. I'm excited for that one. You two might not be quite on the

level of sicko JRP as I am. I'm trying to remember. I think it's Dragon Quest 5. There's one of these that I played, but I, they all kind of blur together for me, but I believe it was five that I played on the DS, but I don't think I've ever played seven. Yeah, I don't know. I don't try to remember. Was seven remade for the DS? I don't remember. It might have been a 3DS thing. Four, five and six were remade for the DS, and then seven and eight were the three DS, I believe. Yeah, I think it was five. It might have been four. It was four or five. It was cool. Those games are fun. I just never really quite a, like, make time or find them quite remarkable enough to really commit, even though I think if you do, I get the sense if you do, they become quite interesting

and rewarding. Yeah, they can be. I mean, they're also good, just kind of TV watching games. Hades 2 gets a 1.0 release in just a couple of weeks. Actually, by the time this airs, it'll just be one week. This is less exciting, at least for me personally, it's less exciting than some of the other big, I mean, Silk Song as an example, just because we've played a lot of it already. We did an episode. We talked about 80s two last year when it first entered early access. I'm excited to see what else is in there and play some more, but it's not brand new. Yeah. I'm curious how much they've added to it because I played a lot of the first version, the early access version of Pady's 2, saw a big chunk of the story. I think the most of the

three of us, right, Maddie you played the most. Yeah, yeah. And enjoyed the story, but that means that I'm like, I feel like I should start over again. And then I'll notice if they've changed the story at all. but yeah, I know they changed Hades 1 a ton after early access, and I'm not sure if that's going to be the same here. So I barely played Hades, too. I'm actually really excited about this. I've been waiting for this. Like, I played, I don't know, only a few runs enough to kind of talk about it briefly on the show.

But I, like, just stopped because I said, you know what? I'm just totally going to wait. So I haven't seen the story. I haven't really gotten super far. I haven't figured out all the systems. And all I really know is, or the only person I've heard really talk about it at length this Justin McElroy on the besties who he like kept playing and he's just been playing or at least he was playing for a long time and he just like you know he was really excited like he was always

kind of sharing you know new updates and kind of keeping up with the latest big updates because there have been a few really big updates for the game and um it sounds really cool so I'm actually like coming in pretty fresh I'm definitely going to start a new game and I'm very excited about this it is funny timing only because it's like two big intense difficult indie games that I'm just, they're going to demand a lot of time and focus. But they're both great games and they're both sequels to games that I love. So I'm, I'm certainly going to play Hades too. Last announcement that I thought was noteworthy, Dangan Rompah 2 times 2. What a weird announcement, right?

Super weird. So what was weird, there are a couple of things that were weird about this. What is they announced like just Dangan Rompah 2? They already released the three main Dangerrampa games as a compilation that came out on the Switch a couple of years. ago and Steam modern platforms. So for them to be like, Dangarampa too, now it's on modern platforms. It's very strange. Then they said with some new tweaks and mechanics. And I was like, oh, okay, like what's the point of this? And then they said they're adding an entire new scenario to the game that they have since said is like as big as a normal dangan rampa campaign. And then you think about it again. And dangarampa two times two is four. And it's like, is this a secret dangan rampa four?

because they've done like, I don't think you two finish the third one, but they've done some kind of twisty things with titles of games. It was twisty stuff in two as well, yeah. Yeah. Well, no, with titles specifically. They've done specific, like specific twisty things with the titles of these games. And so for them to be like, dangaramp a two by two. Hmm. And secretly released like a dangaramp a four.

That is very intriguing to me. So I will have my eye on this one. That is later for launch next year. Yeah, what a strange thing to be like, we're just re-releasing two for some reason. Yeah, you're right. And also there's a new campaign in it. Like, is this secretly, I don't know, there's something really interesting here, I think. I'm kind of with you now.

I didn't think of the two times two of it all. It does feel like it's four now. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, the caveat here, of course, is that Kodaka, who is the director of the first three games, is no longer with Spike Chunsoft. He's made games with them, but he has his own studio now. he just released, we talked a little bit. It was my one more thing, 100 line earlier this year,

one of the best games of the year, I think, one of my favorite. Which I've started and is very cool so far, but I know it was very long, so I don't know how I'm going to play it. Crazy ambitious game, yeah, man. And it's hard to imagine him and also having time to work on a new Dangan Rampa game. So maybe this is new people doing it. I don't know. I am excited to see what they do with this thing. And without spoiling anything in Dangan Rumpa, too,

given some things about the setup of that game, it seems as that it would be ripe for this kind of thing. What do you mean? Oh, well, I mean, I don't want to spoil it, I guess. I'm just saying that for anyone who knows what is going, what is actually happening. Got it. Got it. Got it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's actually, it's hard to really talk about the nature of the series without spoiling the ending of the third game, so I just won't go there. But, yeah, lots of questions about. Before we talk about some other stuff, like South Song, any other kind of announcements you two wanted to bring up from the Nintendo Direct? No. Nah. Looks cool. Okay, cool. Let's talk

about Silk Song. More motorcycles for everyone. Maybe Hornet should have a motorcycle. You haven't finished a game yet, so maybe she gets one. Maybe don't make assumptions. Let's talk some more about Silk Song. The game's now been out for a couple of weeks. I think people have made their way further in so we can do a little less

stancing around spoilers. So I guess I'll warn people here that if you want complete, spoiler-free, silk-song experience, you should skip ahead to one more thing. Don't listen to this segment. Because I think we'll get into a little bit more about the game, maybe talk a little bit more about our experiences with it. And since we told people to skip ahead, I'm actually going to give them a timestamp to skip ahead too. So here's a timestamp for one more thing. If you don't want to hear any of this, the timestamp is 46 minutes and 34 seconds. That's 4634. All of us have gotten at least past act. one. Maddie just finished act one. Kirk is in the thick of act two and actually beat act two at some

point, but isn't yet on act three. And I have finished the game. Congrats. Yes. Very recently. I've completed the game. And yeah, let's get into a little bit. I know I for one was like surprised by the structure of the game and how it just kind of transforms when you finish act one. And essentially it's just a second game in there. But, Let's get into it. I mean, do you guys have, have your thoughts on the game kind of evolved or changed it all since we last talked about it last week? A little bit. I mean, it definitely gets more difficult. It was very early in the game still when we last talked about it. And it doesn't mean that I don't agree with my past self about how patient you have to be to kind of withstand some of the

things that this game throws at you and how many times you might have to watch a boss's patterns, for example, before you can defeat it. But by this point, I have faced a lot of challenges that aren't even bosses and are just regular enemies or, you know, platforming gauntlets that have been things that I've found very challenging. And it doesn't mean I'm not enjoying it. But I feel like I definitely saw a lot more stuff in the second half of Act 1 that I was like, wow, there's a lot here. This is, this is testing the limits of my 39-year-old reflexes and making me appreciate every last brain cell that I still have alive. You know what I mean? This is like from Greymore onward kind of, like blasted steps and the woods.

Yeah. I mean, if you choose to do Sinners Road, I did blasted steps and then circled back to that, which I'm glad I did because sinners road is very hard, I would say. I don't love the poison swamps there. But Blasted Steps is tough. Although by the time I was, by the time I beat the boss there, I had done that runback so many times I was like doing it in my sleep. Like the boss runbacks I got so good at. I know we kind of like hinted at some of those runbacks getting really long. But I just kind of enter a meditative state at a certain point where I'm like,

jump, jump. You know, I'm not even human anymore. I am Hornet. I'm just, I'm embodying this silk song. Yeah, that's me at my best. But me at my worst is when I enter a room that I don't know is a kill room, and I don't know how many waves there are. And then I get angry.

And then I take a break from the game because I'm mad. How are you feeling, Kirk? The door is shut and you're just like, oh my God. Yeah, you never know. You never know when that's going to happen. Ugh. Sometimes you know. I don't know this.

Sometimes you walk into a room and it kind of looks like an arena. Yeah. And I feel like usually you can kind of tell the boss rooms or so far I feel that way. But there have definitely been some rooms where I'm like, oh, I was going to spend these rosaries on something else. I didn't realize what was happening here. And now they are maybe gone and I might need to just move on with my life. Yeah. I mean, I think that like the complaints about losing rosaries are super overblown because there's so many.

And the game, well, and the game gives you ways to recover them. True. If you find, if you find, there's a certain. Yeah, the little silk things that you can eat. What are they called? Yeah, if you find a certain spider hidden in Sinners Road, she'll make you these cocoons that you can get. And then they bring your cocoon to you so you can get them.

If you're like really stuck somewhere. And those are limited, but still, I mean, you can keep going back and getting more. more of them. And also, rosaries are not, I mean, I don't know, maybe at the beginning of the game, they seem like they're super rare, but it's really not that bad. And in fact, part of one of the kind of the silver lining of these long boss run backs is that you can pick up a bunch of rosaries on the way. If you just stop and patiently kill the dudes. Well, shards aren't, you know, lose shards. If you're using tools on a boss, then you can might be. Well, but my point is, my point is more just that,

like the rosary economy. I don't think it's that big at all. I also don't think that you need to be buying every single item that you got. Like I completed the game without buying a lot of the tools or finding them all that necessary. So I think if you get to a shop and you see a bunch of things and you're like, oh my God, I lost those 200 rosaries. I could use those on this tool and now I can't. It's not the end of the world.

And then especially in act too, you wind up getting a whole bunch of rosaries that you can then just go back and shop for them. All that said. I feel like actually rosaries are more plentiful. I agree. Like, I was surprised by that. All that said, yes, those arenas, there's nothing worse than that, like, sinking feeling of, like, oh, my God, I have three health left and the doors just shut.

And now I'm just totally screwed because a bunch of dudes are going to come out and who knows how hard they're going to be. But on the flip side of that, there's also something super awesome and elevating and cathartic if you manage to take them out even under those circumstances. That's true. Yeah. on the rosaries thing, I definitely don't lose rosaries. I mean, I just don't, the rosary system almost started to feel totally irrelevant to me. I guess I play a little bit differently maybe, and then I'll just go farm rosaries. I've bought every single item because I like having all the toys. And it's just fun to play with them. I use the same two tools that like triple daggers and the star trap that I talked

about last week. I mean, I use those 90% of the time. But I like having everything. I like to buy everything. But it's really easy to get rosaries. If you're the halfway home in Greymoor, there's these three pilgrims right to the right of the bench there. You can just run over there and kill them in one second, and you pick up like 25 rosaries and then just go rest. And like if you like farming, which I actually do in games like this, I find a kind of calming to just go farm some, you can just like crank out a ton of rosaries. And I complained some last week about the shards, which we kept calling stone shards and are actually, I believe, shell shards. But anyways, the shards that you need to craft tools.

I still kind of find that system to be a little bit extraneous. But I suppose in the way that I kind of almost find the beads and the runback, like losing your beads when you die soul style to be a little bit extraneous at this point, because it just doesn't matter. Like the thing that bums me out about dying is that I have to get my silk back. And there's no way to just kill myself really quickly. I almost wish there was a way to sacrifice your rosaries and just get all your full silk capacity back. So you can just go do something else.

instead of having to go and kill yourself and then collect the silk from where you just died. But anyways, if you farm and, like, build up a bunch of rosaries, you can just go buy packs of shards with your extra rosaries, and then I just never run out of anything. So I find all of that to just be sort of... Farming Hamilton over here, Kirk Farmelton. Yeah, I find it calming. It's something that I'll do sometimes in between really challenging parts of the game,

because the thing is, like, as you said, Maddie, Act 2 is incredibly difficult. it becomes really hard, especially in the optional parts of it, which are a little bit tied to, like, I think, getting to Act 3, like they're not necessarily tied to getting to the credits, which I just rolled this morning. You know, the path there is pretty straightforward, but I did some incredibly hard things along the way that were not essential, and we're really, like, having, that was tearing my hair out.

I mean, there are just some very difficult things, and there's one challenge room in particular that is actually on the main path in the forum, as it's called, that is, like, really, really hard. and I just spent forever trying to beat that. And so there are these very difficult parts of the game. You know, they've mitigated it somewhat. There's a patch now where I think I talked last week about the platforming is hard, in part because some of the platforming falls would cost you two masks.

They've actually reduced some of those falls to one mask, which really helps in platforming. I feel like that just feels more fair than losing two masks. It just gives you fewer tries on a platforming. So on a platforming challenge. So I find that to be a little bit easier. But yeah, it's a hard. game. And I want to recommend

to listeners to check out Christian Donlin's review in Eurogamer. I think it's a fantastic review. There are definitely some reviews out there that just feel incomplete, or they're kind of just, I don't know, the little surface level, like I haven't been that impressed with a lot of the critical writing about this game yet.

But so far at least, Donlin's review really stands out to me. It's very well written, and it really gets at the, like, suffering and the trial and the patience and the just kind of arduous nature of the game and how that's intrinsic to its meaning. And I do think that that's very true about this game. Yeah, man, I've been thinking, so having finished the game now, the final final boss, like the true final boss, is really tough,

probably the toughest thing in the game. I don't think anything in this game is on the level of the optional challenges in Hollow Night. A lot of that stuff I just couldn't do. I never wound up doing the God Home, gauntlets, or like beating Nightmare King Grimm or anything like that. Same. That stuff, I think, is way harder than anything in Silk Song, at least until the DLC comes out and blows us all away. Notably, that stuff was all added after the fact as DLC, and Silk Song hasn't gotten any DLC yet. That's good to hear because I think that stuff is too hard. Like, that stuff is sick, oh hard.

To me, it's, like, actually in a different category than most of Hollow Night, which I kind of include everything up to the radiance is, is, like, reasonable to me. Yeah, so now having seen pretty much everything in Silk Song, to me, the entire game, with maybe one exception feels fair in its difficulty. There's no boss that has RNG attached. Every single pattern you can recognize either from the audio cues or the visual cues or both and you can get out of its way. It's all just about executing on that pattern. But it's never unfair. Like there aren't, I don't know, I can think of a few souls bosses or Eldon Ring bosses that have some level of RNG that makes you feel like, man, this is like stupid. That doesn't happen in Silk Song, which I think is an

important part of that difficulty question. I think maybe the exception is there's some stuff past Sinners Road that is truly ridiculous and stupid and annoying and not fun to play. Let me throw a word out there because there is a boss that I beat, where I think you're talking about Jason, there's one runback that's just absolutely outrageous. And I think there's another word we can add to our kind of lexicon here to include with difficult and also fair versus unfair, where this game is difficult but barely unfair. I think this game is frequently arduous. I think it feels like a real trial.

There are times where you'll get through this really, really long, incredibly difficult level and arrive at a multi-phase fight that goes and goes. And then a boss comes into the room and you're barely hanging on and you die and you think, oh my God. So the next thing I have to do is all of that as many times as it takes me, to probably beat the boss, who is hopefully the last part of it, but I don't actually even know that. And like, it doesn't feel unfair. It does feel difficult.

But I think that arduousness, the feeling of like weight that you have to carry is such a big part of this game. And then carrying the weight is like part of the experience of playing it. It's like you suffer at times. And they want you to and you feel that from the game. And it's a really interesting and not unique to this game. a very distinct thing that this game is doing. Yeah, it's also very useful as a progress marker because what seemed arduous five tries ago is suddenly just like you're zipping through it and getting to the next thing.

Sometimes it can feel a little bit like the game is trying to waste your time if you have to fight through the same gauntlet over and over again just to have a chance at like getting reps on the boss. But I also think it can be really, it can be helpful in other ways. It can be soothing and meditative like many mentioned with the runbacks. And it can also be just kind of like a measure of your success, almost like, I don't know, like having a child's kind of growth chart and being like, man, look how tall I was. I may not seem that tall now, but look at me now compared to five years ago. That's kind of what these stages of these boss fights can feel like.

Yeah, and waste your time is like a very particular phrase that I would like, I would really try to, you know, take to mean exactly what it means, which I think the only way this game would waste my time is if I felt like, the time it was asking of me was just kind of arbitrary. It was saying, you're going to have to do this just because we couldn't be bothered to design a bench halfway through this runback. And it never feels that way to me. It's on purpose. They are making me spend my time. And, you know, sometimes I resent them for it or I feel mad in the moment, not in a way that makes me want to stop. In a way that's actually part of the whole experience is looking and being like, fuck you, like, at the game.

But, like, you just rage sometimes at the game. And that's, like, that's part of it. And you talk to your friends and you complain. And then you push through it and you eventually win. And it's like, that's all part of the experience. So yeah, I certainly don't think that this game wastes my time, at least. Yeah, I guess I agree. I also think you alluded to something that is important, which is just the religious

theming of the game. And the idea that suffering is part of what all of these characters undergo and that in Hornet's perception, some of that suffering is meaningless. And she's very kind to them about it. This is the thing about the game I really like is the way Hornet talks to people. Like, she doesn't have this, like, atheist YouTuber sensibility where she could be, like, talking down to people about their thoughts. Instead, she'll often just be, like, well, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but okay.

And, like, that combined with her coming across design choices on the part of this theocracy in the world of the game that feel cruel, not because, like, the game designers themselves are cruel, but because they created a cruel world that she has to navigate. And that is something that I really try to take with me when I'm experiencing something frustrating in the game or something that's frustrating me, I guess I should say, is that I'm like, well, is this fitting with the world? And I have yet to find an example where it isn't the case

that it's fitting with the world, that, like, it would be a cruel world that she's navigating. A cruel and a broken world. Yeah. I think the brokenness of it is part of it. Like the things don't work. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Totally. Also a big part of Hollandite, of course. There's one more thing I wanted to talk about, which is that this game is opaque in many ways. The story is opaque, just like Holo Nites was, a lot of context. You just kind of have to figure out through item descriptions and reading between the lines of what characters are saying or just kind of figuring out the metaphor. But that is also true of some of the quests. and unlike Hollow Night, this game actually spells out quests for you.

But just like Hollow Night, there is kind of a fake-out ending and then a true ending. And in this case, it's even more pronounced. So what happens in this game, and here I'm going to kind of do some broad structural spoilers, but these are spoilers that I think everybody should know, or at least we'll be able to figure out pretty easily, because you kind of have to know if you want to see the entire thing. So what happens is you finish Act 2 and you beat a boss, and then credits roll, and you get what is basically an unsatisfying ending.

And it's very clear. It's very clear that there is more to the story here. Yes, very similar to Holo Night. It's very clear there's more to the story. But the game doesn't actually signal to you in any way how you are supposed to unlock the third and final act that concludes the story and gets you on the path of the true ending. And the answer, I recommend finding kind of like a spoiler-free guide online somewhere, because it's pretty opaque and vague and not something that most people will be able to figure out on their own. Do you think that we could find one and link it in the show notes for people?

Like if you could vet one and give it to people? I posted my own version in the Discord that we can wait. Okay, we'll link to that then in the show notes. But basically you have to be just doing a lot of the side stuff and then you also have to be like collecting enough fleas that you reach a certain point and then you get one specific one that you happen to find somewhere, and then that'll activate a trigger, and then eventually that'll get you to the wish that starts the process of unlocking the third act.

And it's kind of, there's nothing in the game suggesting that this needs to happen for you to see the true ending. It's just kind of expecting you to go and do everything. But you can get really frustrated because you can feel like you've done everything, but then there's nothing signaling you to find this one hidden fleet who will then start the process of activating the ending. And that, I think, is actually a frustrating part of the game, especially because some of the quests are just kind of busy work. There's one, I don't remember if we mentioned this last time, but there's one that's just like finding bells.

And this is the one part of the game that is randomly generated, and the bells are just randomly generated in the tunnels. It's a very strange choice. It's so bizarre. It's like the one big whiff. I mean, it doesn't take long to do it, but it is noticeable. Well, I didn't realize when I was first viewing it, I didn't realize that we were going to be randomly generated. and so I was just kind of frustrated, like, trying to figure out. I guess you're meant to just find them as you navigate the tunnels, like, anyway.

A lot of those quests, by the way, are meant to be done as you're doing other stuff anyway. And a lot of them are very cleverly designed because a lot of them lead you, breadcrumb you, to other massive hidden areas. Like, Mattie, you mentioned Sinners Road. A lot of people will go through the game not knowing that exists until you go back to Bellhart and you find a quest that will take you to find someone that gets you. you write to the entrance of Sinners Road and shows you its existence. So there's a lot of stuff like that in the game.

A lot of the quests are good in that way. But yeah, but some of them are tedious still. And some of them are just like rosary dumps and stuff. And all of this stuff you have to do to unlock the true ending. And again, the game doesn't tell you that. And that I think is one of the kind of the biggest flaws in this game is that there isn't more signposting from Act 2 to Act 3. And in fact, I think based on some reviews I've read and some criticism

I've seen online. And some people's reactions that I've seen online, I suspect a lot of people will just roll credits after Act 2 and be like, okay, done. Sort of like blueprints where it's like, no, there's a lot of game left. Like, just because the credits roll doesn't mean you're actually done if you want to see the full like intended experience. And in this case, Act 3 is like a whole new game on its own. So it's kind of a must. So yeah, I'd recommend if you're playing this game and you haven't gotten there yet. I recommend that when you finish Act 2, you look up exactly what you need to do to unlock Act 3. Man, can I just say that act two has some of the greatest musical moments in this game? Last week, I was talking about how great the music is, what a great job Chris Larkin did. But man, I mean, like some of the choral chambers theme in particular is just outrageously beautiful. Double reads, man, oboe and English horn, secret weapon. So that's an obvious standout. But really, there's actually a really horrible area later where it has some of my favorite music in the game, it's this really beautiful background music.

Where normally when you're in a horrible area in one of these games, it's like, meh, you know, low sense or nightmare music. There's really beautiful music playing there. Some of the boss fights have incredible music, even though I eventually do usually take my headphones off so I can focus. Hornet gets some cool musical moments, as I mentioned last week. I mean, it continues to be the case that music is like an essential part of Silk Song. Like the Silk Song is the entire narrative, like thrust of the game. And man, there are all these cool little songs, too. So instead of playing the game this weekend, I, like, did a whole rearranged remix,

playing along with Chakra's song. And now I kind of almost want to do that for all the other MPCs. Like, Sherma has the little song that they sing, and I think that would be really fun. So I've, like, gone down a very deep, already, very deep rabbit hole on the music of this game. And it just continues to be, like, musically, just the narrative part of the music. I mean, watching Hornet whip out her harp every time she does it. It's the coolest shit ever. And I'm certain there's going to be even more of that.

You mean her needle in, Kirk. Yes, her needle in. Apparently a very large man. Needlein. What a good name. All right. So yeah, we'll be getting more into Silk Song in our Beanscast in a couple of weeks. Beads cast.

So make sure you sign up for maximum fun. So you can listen to that in a few weeks. And we'll be spool in the whole thing, getting deep into our favorite stuff. Spilling all the beads. Yeah, I can't wait. I can't wait to do all this extra stuff. I'm really in a very fun part of the game. Yeah, that'll be fun.

Yeah, I'm excited to talk about like our favorite discoveries and stuff like that. That'll be cool. All right, let's take a break and we'll be back with one more thing. You guys want to try and do this promo with British accents? Yeah, yeah, of course. Let's do it. Okay, if you go.

Boy, bro, this is TV chef Fantasy League. Fantasy League. Okay, Sierra. We take cooking competition shows and treat them like fantasy sports. Like a newscaster. Very posh. Right now we're doing the Great British Bake Off or the Great British Baking show if you're listening from the U.S. Oh, that was really too.

You chose like a priming proper. Thank you. Okay, I think you have the best accent. You want to take us home? Subscribe to TV Chef Fantasy League on maximum fun.org and wherever you get your podcasts. Better than my Boston one. Hi, everybody. It's Ellen Weatherford. And Christian Weatherford.

People say not to judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree. But we can judge a snake by its ability to fly, or a spider by its ability to dive. Or a dung beetle by its ability to navigate with the starlight of the Milky Way galaxy. On just the zoo of us, we rate our favorite animals out of ten in the categories of physical effectiveness, behavioral ingenuity, and of course, aesthetics. Guest experts, like biologists, ecologists, musicians, and more join us to share their unique insights into the animal kingdom. Listen with the whole family on maximum fun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. And we are back, Kirk, Maddie. It is time for one more thing.

Kirk, start us off. All right. So my one more thing is a book, but it's more of a broader topic. Classic Kirk. Well, yeah, because I read the book Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yaras, which is like one of the best-selling romantasy books out there. One of the best-selling books out there, like. Sure.

But also it is a romantician book. And it's kind of notable as one of those. And I've been reading a lot of fantasy lately from a variety of different authors. And I thought, oh, what the hell I'll read this one? It's probably fun. And read it and then found it to be, it's not a great book, but really interesting in some ways. And then I wound up reading this New York Times article that I want to refer people to. It is called Why Magic Dragons and Explicit Sex are in bookstores everywhere.

It's from August by Alexandra Alter for The Times. And it is a really interesting story. And that's actually kind of really what I want to talk about. Because fourth wing, like, it's just not really quite my thing. Like, it's just not very well written. And in the end, like, I'm happy to have books that have, like, fantasy and sexy stuff. And, you know, whatever. Like, for example, Lee Bardugo's two most recent ones are very fun that they have, like, a lot of sort of sexiness in them.

But they're great. They're really well written. They're like these killer stories. really exciting, interesting worlds. Fourth Wing, it's so derivative. You know, it's like dragon writers who go to a dragon school. And I just have seen so much of it, so many places. A lot of the writing is like, it's like reading the internet. So you read the whole book in like five minutes, and it kind of feels like reading the internet, just the way that it's written. That's the best way I can describe it. But I would argue that that's not really the point. And that's kind of part of even

maybe why it's successful is that it's just so readable. It's very sexy. I mean, there's like incredibly graphic sex scenes in this book that are like, you know, it's pretty funny to just be reading a book and then be like on the bus and like you're like, oh my God, can anyone see what I'm reading right now? And, you know, in any other media, if you were watching like a movie or something, you'd like close your iPad, you know. Yeah. So it's kind of a, it's an interesting part of the book, I guess. But what really strikes me is that this genre of Romanticy, which is a lot of the books are like this. Like they're kind of, they're not, the point isn't really that they're like wonderfully written or super original. In fact, a lot of them are based on fanfic. And that's something

that this article gets into that I think is part of what makes this such an interesting moment in time for like the world of literature. So 50 Shades of Grey, of course, kind of kick this off. Yeah, I was going to bring that up because, yeah, it's history. Notable Twilight fanfic. Right. So that's kind of where this started. And I can't remember when the first one of those was published. I've actually never read in one of those books or seen the movies. 2011 was 50 Shades in Man. And I gather that 50 Shades is sort of similar to Fourth Wing in that there's like explicit sex scenes. So it's like really steamy and you're reading it and it's like very adult.

And so it kind of has that smutty appeal. And these books of course are based on Twilight fanfic, which I didn't know. I had no idea about this. I think I watched a Folding Ideas video series about the movies that, or at least part of that series. It was kind of a like really long series. And he really goes in depth. Dan Olson really goes in depth about how they were written. And like the whole story, the kind of author behind them,

who sounds like a real piece of work. And just the whole thing that it started as Twilight fanfic. And then she basically realized, oh, if I just change it from Edward and Bella to like this billionaire guy and this girl, I can basically have the same story and I can publish it without infringing on anyone else's IP. So that has now become a template.

And there's an upcoming book that I didn't know about called Rose in Chains that is written by another fanfic author who was really into Harry Potter fanfic. And actually, Harry Potter fanfic on like A.O3, on an archive of our own is like one of the biggest categories on A.03. And I'm sure some listeners will be very familiar with this. And I think that some other listeners will be less familiar with this. So I'm partly talking to people who have never really heard of this stuff.

And if you're not in these particular nerd worlds, you might not know about it. And actually, that makes this New York Times article a really good primer. So basically a big, there's a whole sub-sub category of fanfic, which is Dremione fanfic, and that is fanfic about Draco and Hermione. And in particular, there's one, and I'm forgetting the name right now, but it imagines that basically, Baltimore won, Harry Potter died. And, like, it's all really awful. Like, all the good guys were killed and, like, Hermione is, like, enslaved and, like,

branded and sold at an auction. Yeah, I've heard of this one. It's very famous. Draco buys her. It's incredibly famous. According to some definitions of the word. Oh, what's it called? It's called like, I know one is, a story is called The Auction.

Anyways, it's in this, it's in this New York Times article. Bing! The original fanfic series is called Manacold. Bing! So basically he buys her, but then like, it turns out he's actually tortured over what happens and he's kind of bad, but maybe he can be saved. And it's like a really long series. Yeah, where it's like enemies to lover.

It's kind of a, it's all these different tropes of this kind of fanfic. And so this author has then taken it and turned it into Rosen Thorns, or Rose and Shains, sorry, which is like the same idea, but it's not Hermione and Draco-Malpho. It's like different magic system, et cetera. And I think there's another one that this is happening with as well. And I'm struck by a few things about this. First, I think it's just so interesting that the world of literature is being completely dominated. The statistics from this Times article are that last year of Romanticie sales topped

within 32 million copies in print alone, a 47% jump over the previous year. And five of the 10 best-selling adult fiction titles this year are Romanty. novels. So half of the bestsellers this year are Romantici. And I just think, I think that that is very interesting. I think it's notable that so many of the authors of these Romanty books are either currently Christian or were raised in conservative Christian or Mormon, like upbringings. And I mean, I've talked a lot about Brandon Sanderson on the show, who is notably Mormon. And his books are also notably sexless, which is a real contrast with all of these romantic. to see books. And I'm sure this is something that people who know more about this kind of thing

than I do have talked about. But there's just something there that a lot of these authors come from conservative backgrounds. And then just the fact that we live in this age of like constant moral panics over books and like actual book bannings that are happening in libraries and at schools over, you know, things like gender identity or LGBTQ issues or things that freak out the right, or specifically the religious Christian right in America, and say, oh, this book is horrible and it's corrupting our children and we can't have it in school libraries anymore. While at the same time, a whole bunch of conservative Christian women, or at least formerly conservative Christian women, are writing explicit porn, and it's like topping the

bestseller list. I just, there's something there. There's some kind of really big, hard to fully understand statement about where our culture is at that I just think is so interesting and I had no real idea about until I read Fourth Wing and then read this New York Times article and started thinking about it. Well, so the part of the story you haven't mentioned is the effect of TikTok. A lot of this has come because of what's called book talk, which has become like one of the biggest drivers of book sales in the last, I don't know, two, three years to the point where if you go to Barnes & Noble, you'll see sometimes like a big stack of books that is like popular book talk yeah book talk recommends and a lot of this is coming from that where just like a lot of people mostly women are reading these books and talking about them and and advertising them to other people and it just kind of like took off from there i haven't actually seen any of the six acts or anything but like a lot of these sales are coming from tic-tok people in the book uh publishing world of which i know just a tiny bit but like from what i've heard and seen are um kind of looking at this uh eyes askew and being like oh interesting

but also really happy because it's encouraging more people to read, which is an important part of this, which is like a lot of young people might be getting into smut, but at least they're reading books. And that is always good. Yeah, that's like what people used to say about Harry Potter. I have such mixed feelings about that. Like I read Twilight. I've read The Mall. I read 50 Shades.

I've seen the movie. But it's really, it's tough for me personally, having also read many incredible feminist explication. of these books and the themes they're in for these to be the books that are becoming such a cultural zeitgeist. And I think it really does say something about like societally where we are in terms of like, what are the acceptable sexy books and they're ones where women are in bondage and it turns out they kind of like it. I'm not kinkshaming in any way by saying this. I'm just noting the trend. And I think there's something interesting about that. And it's not always, I don't know, I don't always feel great about that being the only thing that is dominating all of these romantasy books.

You know what I mean? Yeah. So a couple of thoughts on each of those things in order. One, yeah, book talk is an interesting part of this. I think it's like a, it's partly a marketing vector. Like the cultural part of this is, goes beyond that, or at least to me, like the book talk part of it is like how these books are spreading and why I think a lot of people who aren't necessarily big. readers are reading them, though there's a long history of, you know, genre smut aimed at women that kind of flies under the radar that other people don't talk about that sort of predates TikTok.

But TikTok is a real acceleration engine. And that's certainly part of why they're so successful. But there's so much else there too. Like it's like book talk is like an interesting aspect of it though, for sure. And yeah, to the subject matter, I will say that fourth wing is not about that. That's good. It is definitely like, you know, it's clearly actually very explicitly at times written to not embrace toxic tropes in a way that feels incredibly clumsy like the narrator.

And it also can be cringeworthy too, yeah. Oh, I mean, you will cringe out of your skin reading this book. The narrator is so unbelievably horny, but also empowered and also vulnerable. And she loves a man who is like a bad guy, but actually he is actually a good guy and he is not toxic and he's not abusive. But then the nice guy like turns out to be toxic and like she like establishes boundaries and they talk a lot about different things and it's all very heavy-handed but it's not a bad thing there's a lot of enthusiastic consent and you know it's a it's a hetero relationship but there's also a lot of queer characters in the book and they're just depicted as regular characters like anyone else which is nice and i should

say that when it stops being about the romance it becomes a lot more fun or at least i was enjoying the parts of the book that are just about dragons and fighting like it can be pretty exciting at times it's mostly the romance stuff that's just so over the top that i couldn't really deal with it sometimes. Like it just made me laugh. But it's very much like it feels like the next generation of these books, which are kind of people who have probably been on book talk a lot and seen a lot of the sort of call out videos and posts and critiques. And I've seen the like backlash to the 50 Shades era. Right. I'm going to write something that is immune to all of that that can just sell a billion copies and be really fun and braising and have a lot of sex and

like make money. Or at least that's my most cynical read. Yeah. Fascinating. I I guess I shouldn't throw stones at fourth wing when my vantage point for this is like 50 shades where I'm like, God, this is not for me. Right. I think this is kind of the next generation. And it's not to say that fourth wing is unimpeachable by any stretch.

I haven't like read any feminist critique of fourth wing, but it does seem to have been written explicitly to go beyond those, to go beyond those tropes. Fascinating. What a weird spot. The other big one is a court of thorns and roses. which is why you said roses, Rosenthorns.

Yeah, that must be why I'm mixing it up. Because, yeah, that's mentioned in the Times article. Yeah, I keep seeing that in bookstores too. Well, that's a series. It's a big series. I think they're five of them. And it is sold, I believe, 13 million copies. So that one is everywhere.

Yeah, it's a fascinating trend. All right, Maddie, what's your one more thing? I'm also reading a book. It's not based on fan fiction, although maybe it could be. I don't know. Noted romantician author John Gantz. Noted romanticcy author John Gantz. It's actually it's romanticie about the post-Ragan era of America. No, it's not. Remed to see about Ross Perrault.

It's called When the Clock Broke. It's a non-fiction book by John Gantz, who is also a podcaster I really enjoy. He co-hosts a podcast with Jemel Bowie that we've talked about before. On this show is one more thing in the past. It's called Unclear and Present Danger. And he wrote this. book, which again is called When the Clock Broke, I kind of rushed by that. It's about the 90s and the post-Ragan political era in America, but it is really, it's, I feel like there are a lot of books right now in the past few years that are trying to explain Trump and they can be really exhausting. And this book, I think, does that, but doesn't set out to do that in a way

that's really annoying where like every other chapter in the book is like, and this is how we got here. It's like a true history that focuses on the 90s and talks about right-wing political figures who were populist and how that works. Like we're talking Ross Perrault, Pat Buchanan, some of the early neo-Nazi guys of that era who ran. And it's just really fascinating. I was a literal child during this time period, so it was John Gantz hilariously enough. So obviously he had to do his research to write this one, or the same age or thereabouts. And so I kind of think of the 90s as like this idyllic time, you know, the economy was doing great. Clinton was pretty popular.

Those were kind of like the extent of my political leanings as a child. It's like not really knowing a lot beyond those things. So reading this book and hearing about what the right wing and far right and especially the Christian right and the rise of those just different seeds of domination and political discourse is really, really fascinating to me because it's just a world I didn't know much about due to being a kid then. And it really helped explain some of what's happened to the right wing since that time. I usually clock Reagan as like the beginning of that. But John Gantz's theory is really, no, it was after Reagan and it was specifically these guys in the 90s. And I'm going to make my argument as to how they change the right wing into what it is today. I don't know if I agree with that or not, but I think he makes some really compelling arguments in the book.

And it's super readable. He's got a dry wit. It just really rushes. and you learn a lot quickly while also being entertained. So, yeah, it's called When the Clock Broke by John Gantz. And I really recommend it if you want to know more about the far right in the 90s in America. Man, I'm so into Gantz lately. He's really kind of one of my favorite political thinkers.

Yeah. He has a substack newsletter, unpopular, front. Yeah, I love it, too. That's really good. He just writes really brilliantly. He turns up on so many podcasts that I listen to and just always has a lot of interesting stuff to say. And, yeah, I listen to that slow burn. podcast series about David Duke

that came out several years ago. He's a figure in the book for sure. Because Duke and Buchanan are kind of like two sides of that kind of like racial animus coin that flipped in the early 90s and then Perrault and Elon Musk, yeah, I really want to read this book. It's been on my list forever. So this

may inspire me to finally do it. Yeah, check it out. My one more thing is also about one of America's great political thinkers, Nathan Fielder. I have been watching a show called Nathan for you. I'm a little late this party. This is a show that ran on Comedy Central 10, 12 years ago, something like that. And I have talked about how I loved the rehearsal, especially season two, which was some

bonkers shit. And I talked about this a couple months ago. And I was home alone. My wife wasn't there. And so I was like flipping through the TV, wanted to put something on while I was like playing some games on my Steam Deck and landed on Nathan for you. I was like, oh, I've always been meaning to check this out. Man, I have not allowed. I have not allowed. I have not last so hard in a while, probably since the rehearsal as watching some of these episodes. My goodness. Have you to watch this show? I haven't actually. Okay. Kirk you've watched a lot of it. So like anything that, everything we liked in the rehearsal

that is enjoyable rehearsal, you could see the prototypes of that in this. It is amazing. It is like taking the prank show hidden camera to a whole new level. And so the concept is he goes around America and, well, as he says in his intro, he graduated from one of Canada's top business schools with good grades, which is a great joke because then it shows his grades and it's like, A minus, B, C plus. It's amazing. Really good grades, he says. And then he goes around and helps people fix their struggling businesses and somehow gets them to agree to be on camera on this ridiculous show. I guess he pitches it to them as if it's like Gordon, Ramsey, like, fix-y restaurants or something like that. Exactly. And it is truly insane and amazing. And just to give you an example of this, I'll share one of the episodes that I was truly, like, losing my mind at, which is called gas station. And he goes to this gas station that is struggling.

It's hard for gas stations to survive these days. And he says, here's what we're going to do. We are going to say $1 a gallon on your gas prices. And the guy's like, what are you talking about? Like, we're going to lose, I'm going to lose all my money. Like, how could that be? And he's going to be like, we can say that legally if we also say, with rebate. Like an asteros that says with rebate.

And the guy's like, okay, but then people will just get their money back for me. And Nathan is like, no, we will make this the hardest rebate to possibly get. And so he stages this thing where, like, people, in order to get this rebate, we'll have to hike up a nearby mountain and then go through this trivia competition and it gets out of control. It winds up being like these three people remaining who are like actually going through his gauntlet of trivia and like spend a camping trip on the mountain and then one of them turns out. One of the three people turns out to be like a bonkers person. You think?

Man, it's it gets out of control. It gets into like, let's just say it gets into conversations about drinking. children's pee and I'll just leave it at that. Truly iconic television but every episode is just full of winners winning ideas. I think a lot of people know this show from the whole dumb Starbucks schick and that became a whole big news story that I think was like the viral moment of that show. But every episode I've seen so far is just golden. His ideas are man, this show is incredible. So yeah, I'll be watching the rest of it. I've watched like the first season or so, so far. and if you like the rehearsal

but you never watch Nathan for you I highly recommend going back and doing that it's also on HBO Max Have you guys watched Detroiters yet? Yes. Have either if you watched it? Okay no I need to We've talked about this Maddie you haven't I've been watching it again because we renewed our Netflix subscription And it's kind of a similar feeling where it's like

Feels like going back to the prototype For I think you should leave right right right Yes but of course different types of humor And that's all scripted this is this is reality Oh yeah I mean yeah just kind of like Oh, yeah. Anyone who likes this one thing should definitely watch this other thing because it's very similarly great. If you watch the rehearsal, and I mean, for many reasons, you should watch this, but especially if you watch the rehearsal and you thought, how has he found these people and gotten them to say these things on camera?

Nathan, for you, is full of moments like that, too. Yeah, it's a talent that he's got for sure. He's, man, it's so many ways. He's so talented. All right, that is that for this week's episode. Thank you for sticking around. Thank you both Kirk and Maddie. for making podcasts with me. You're welcome. And thanks to Hornet, you know, for really just sticking it out. Yeah, just sticking people with her needle.

Keep on sticking, Hornet. Thanks, Hornet. We're sticking by her principles no matter what happens. All right, cool. Well, I will talk to both of you next week. See you next week. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton.

I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network, and if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at Maximumfund.org. Find us on Twitter at Triple ClickPod. Send email the triple click at maximum fun.org and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

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