ADR - Episode 641: The Silent Audience - A Historical Note

[00:00:05] Oh, hello and welcome to Al Dente Rigamortis. I'm Review Cultist. I'm Mikey, East Ends for Evil. And I'm the Gamer in Yellow. And we're here to discuss those internet stories, most creepy and most pasta, and be critically silly doing it. And tonight we have...

[00:00:33] The Silent Audience. A Historical Note. So yeah, we're covering another Creep Pasta by MM Pratt. The Silent Audience. A Historical Note. You can check out on CreepPasta.wiki, along with all her other stories and other CreepPastas. And yeah, I suppose we'll get down to the nitty-gritty here right off the hop. With initial recommendations.

[00:01:04] I will recommend. I will partially recommend. I'll recommend it. I enjoyed the read. All right. Well, let's dive in and find out why we recommend or partially recommend. Starting with the rundown. The discussion won't ruin it and we'll all hate it by the end. Yeah. Probably not. It could happen. At the very least, it could... I honestly, mine could drop down to a partial, but we'll see.

[00:01:35] But yeah, with that teaser out of the way... Let's dive into the rundown. So, Nair, because we don't get a name for the starting narrator of the story. Oh, yeah. First, here's about the silent audience. Credits. Right off the hop. Just like credits. In 1964, from an old man sitting on his porch chewing and spitting tobacco.

[00:02:03] The story goes that a professor named Alex Tuttle traveled to the town of Boulderville, some 16 miles east of Hogan's Gap in 1922, where he was hoping to get information and accounts on a humanoid race of legendary beings known as the Lontakis. He was conducting research and hoping to publish a book on them.

[00:02:26] It's in this town he finds a dimensional expat Gurdine named Anna Crabtree, who knows some things about the entities, but is very standoffish and even fearful to say anything about them aloud. After days of persistence, however, Professor Tuttle manages to get information from her.

[00:02:47] But he but she makes him promise not to talk about the Lontakis stories around town as talking about them will draw them to you. Should we not be talking about them? I mean, they are. It's a king and yellow. Yeah, it's king. The other thing behind the scenes thing, like, from what I've gathered, this is a fictional thing created by M. M. Pratt.

[00:03:13] So this is like we're not talking about certain indigenous creatures that I'm not going to say because they will they that will draw their ire. Okay. But yeah, as far as I can tell, the Lontakis are, you know, actually, now I'm starting to feel uncomfortable. What's the name of the game? Let's take an alternate one. I wrote them all down. Yeah. What was it? What was one of the other names that like people would give them because the old lady was a Shinnokins.

[00:03:41] They also just refer to them as the folk or the dark lurkers. Yeah. So the dark lurkers from here on out, the the L word is going to be the dark lurkers. Okay, that works. Okay. I'm just going to go ahead and edit and replace all or find or replace. Uh, one. Dark lurkers. Well, I have 12 instances in my notes about them. There you go.

[00:04:09] For the sake of the like the story, I will be referencing them. But for stuff that is my own like writing, I will not be referring to them as the L word. Okay, cool. Um, thank you for making me now paranoid of yet another word aside from he who should not be named. You're welcome. Um, I'm of course referring to Voldemort. Yeah, totally. Yeah, definitely not a certain king in yellow. Can you not talk about Voldemort?

[00:04:37] Uh, so like in Harry Potter, um, you, there is, there is a stigma about saying Voldemort. Oh, okay. Yeah. Anyway, moving on to the story at hand. No. God damn it. Um, all right. So yeah, after persistence, however, Professor Tuttle managed to get information from Anna Crabtree.

[00:04:59] Uh, but she makes him promise not to talk about these dark lurkers stories around town as talking about them will draw them to you. Uh, so Professor Tuttle goes and meets with some colleagues who were also in town looking into some nearby standing stone sites, has lunch with them and begins talking about the information he acquired about the dark lurkers. Of course.

[00:05:26] Uh, right there during lunch, he begins reading off an account from Anna Crabtree that he jotted down, being skeptical about the warnings. In these notes, she had heard of them from an old widow who was very superstitious, uh, and was setting up protective wards around her house so to keep them at bay. And that's when she told Miss Crabapple about the creatures.

[00:05:53] Um, though they use different names, uh, so as not to draw their attention as we've been kind of bringing up in our little bit here. Yeah. It. Yeah. Um, then sometime after that, uh, and talking with the widow, Miss Crabapple is out hunting when a storm rolls in, not able to get home.

[00:06:16] She seeks shelter at a ghost town, uh, and in fact, an empty decrepit church building, um, and falls asleep among the pews at while the storm rages outside. Uh, she wakes up suddenly from thunder and finds that she is surrounded by the dark lurkers who want to turn her into one of them. And, uh, so she attempts to flee.

[00:06:38] While this story is being told by Tuttle, he notices some folk in the inn they are eating at who look an awful lot like the dark lurkers as they were described. Um, just, they're just staring at him in the inn. As he reaches the part about the attempted escape by Miss Crabapple, uh, the entire inn is suddenly crawling with them. Even his friends have become them.

[00:07:06] The ones that he was like talking to about this and had gone visiting that Standing Stone site. It appears Tuttle should have heeded Miss Crabapple's warnings. Finn. And yeah, that is the silent audience historical note in a nutshell. Uh, honestly, I probably could have just said like the silent audience since that is sort of like another moniker for them. Yeah, it's true. That's not one mentioned in the story. No, it is. It really isn't. They have lots of names.

[00:07:36] Well, because no one wants to call them by the real name. So when someone refers to them, they're like, we'll call them this now. But it's not like they had a PTA meeting to decide on a name, you know? Yeah, that's true. Well, again, that, that happens a lot in folklore as well. Like the same creature kind of goes by various different names. Bigfoot, Sasquatch kind of deal. Well, that's more of like a regional thing. Cause like, there's like the skunk ape in Florida. There's the Yeti in, in the Himalayas. There's Bigfoot and Sasquatch in, in North America.

[00:08:04] So in, in, in, in North America, it's like basically by province and state. Like there's the, the night howler, I think in, in Missouri. And then there's like yellow crop in, in Cobalt, Ontario. So. Cobalt.

[00:08:47] Cobalt. Yeah. There's probably shouldn't have an S at the end of it. Really? Yeah. It's like, there's something here that might answer that question is what it probably should say. Not might answers that question. Or it would just be, or there'd be something here that answers that question. Yeah. It's the mic that's making it weird. yeah however i am willing to like let it go because again it's the way the character talks or could be the way the character talks like it's like uh that might answers that question like kind

[00:09:15] of like got like a draw or something like that to him maybe i think he's like a dignified like researcher and scientist or some shit isn't he yeah that's true he has a there's something here that might answers that question no yeah it's got it like again might just be like a slip of the tongue or might be a slur like a not slur uh a um what's uh when you've got a lisp yeah it might be like a lisp thing or something maybe but regardless it also just just kind of feels like

[00:09:40] a typo yeah that s didn't need to be there yeah um and then the next thing i have i'm not surprised you've been working so hard on this lontakis that little by little these creatures are coming to life so i feel like business or research should be added after the l word so it's like oh yeah

[00:10:05] you've been working so hard on the on this lontakis business or research that little by little these creatures have come to life yeah yeah that's a little bit better yep uh and then the next thing to rid myself of this annoyance i rubbed my eyes hard and pinched myself hard several times so i just feel like maybe the second use of hard should actually could actually go harder

[00:10:31] and literally just have be like is it happen to be like i like to rid myself of this annoyance i rubbed my eyes hard and pinched myself harder several times or just only have only one mention of hard i suppose but like i i do like the the in this instance i do like the repetition of like of hard but i just wish hard the second heart had been harder maybe yeah but or just have the the hard part on the pinch because like rubbing your eyes super hard is like you're hurting yourself potentially

[00:11:01] yeah yeah exactly like yeah yeah you can only go so hard with the eyes yeah before you start damaging them yeah yeah but i'll move on to the my next one and this is my last one for a grammar inquisition he felt tug of a hand on his sleeve of his jacket and looked down so i feel like it should be he felt the tug of a hand on his sleeve oh actually i just noticed another issue with this okay so

[00:11:29] i feel like it should be he felt the tug of a hand on his sleeve and looked down like get rid of of his jacket because you don't really need that descriptor like it can just be the sleeve yeah but now we know he's wearing a jacket okay okay but like it does it's not necessary no and it does kind of hurt it does it it does kind of feel a little clunky now that i've read it again like

[00:11:58] it's kind of unnecessary i'm not gonna lie yeah and but like the main my main part problem with this was like i feel like there needs to be a the between felt and tug like he felt the tug of a hand on his or a tug but yes but then that's repeating the like he felt a tug of a hand like it's just gonna repeat the a and like in this case i don't like the repetition of course one it's all about content it's all about the context of of when it is appropriate like absolutely

[00:12:30] but uh yeah that's all i've got for um for grammar inquisition so mikey the east stands for evil all right well the one that i have here um is a break that's caused by one of the images oh okay oh yeah yeah so despite his small stature and fair appearance i i actually have a funny story

[00:12:59] about this so again you guys know that like i will copy the story into a google doc so i can more easily grab um the uh the text and stuff like basically or so i can basically make comments on the side like as i'm resonating the story um but i also remove the images uh that that are also copied in because i don't want that extra space on the google doc um however i forgot to get remove the

[00:13:24] uh the headers for the images initially so it went to like despite his bad moon rising by rat 99 larger version stature nice so yeah i definitely yeah i remember having to like fix the uh the document a bit just like so that that worked better but yeah it's it is kind of odd that the

[00:13:51] image just definitely cuts that like that sentence in half a little bit yeah unfortunately i think that's just a like a formatting thing with uh the wiki uh yeah it's just wherever you put the image like yeah regardless it just has to be clicked like ahead of it a little bit more yeah for sure all right

[00:14:12] and then i have a conjunction junction all right and next stop conjunction junction and everywhere he looked there were countless eyes blazing yellow eyes all leveled balefully at him wow just jumping off the gate like that's the first sentence to the story it is dialogue but anyway i'll move on i'll stop yeah

[00:14:40] it was in the summer of 1964 when i first heard the story of the silent audience credits credits it happened sorry gotta stop i'm just gonna mute myself it happened in the old mining town of

[00:15:04] boulderville 16 miles east of hogan's gap west of weaverton tucked away in the nye alps it was business of a surprisingly surprisingly different sort that brought professor tuttle to boulderville it was early in the morning when

[00:15:29] professor tuttle arrived he had left his two friends back in their hotel at weaverton under the promise to join him in two weeks time but i'm in pressing need of your assistance for research on a book i'm doing about the

[00:15:53] lontakas or have you gone and eaten some hallucinatory mushrooms it took him a while three whole days to be exact it must have been

[00:16:11] it must have been rather difficult in getting the locals around here to speak of such things and then he took the first of the pads from the pile and began reading the first few pages

[00:16:35] it's considered very bad luck to call them by their real name it didn't get its pause on the few canned rations i had finn wow really that few okay that few conjunctions

[00:16:54] interactions interesting um yeah i'm i mean we we sort of i sort of um kind of interjected when things were when i was commenting on things but yeah actually that's that's surprisingly like i mean we don't get the rest of the story about like how about the creatures attacking the character but like yeah wow that's what happens when mikey grabs all the sentences in the story the star earth words that they probably shouldn't like its answer but strings them together into a

[00:17:24] sentence with sometimes hilarious results basically to highlight that there's generally better words to use except when it's dialogue but he does it anyways for the bit yes indeed because sometimes we get silly little stories out of it when yeah like these are right out of context like eating or or tripping on mushrooms for like three days or it came at you at full force it was a squirrel yes um that was the progenitor for this yes

[00:17:52] um but yeah gamer do you have anything for uh the grammar inquisition uh yeah as it were yeah as the englishman gazed fixed he suddenly felt blah blah blah blah so i feel like this should be as the uh as the englishman paused his story his gaze fixed until he suddenly felt blah blah blah blah blah

[00:18:14] because as it is it's as the englishman gazed fixed yeah that's that word yeah because this is also like it's a good part to mention like yeah he's stopping his story and acting like this like it's a good spot to put in like a little bit of extra descriptor there too that's true yeah i actually i have something kind of related that i did put in my actual thoughts but now that i'm now that you brought that up i'm kind of thinking that might be on another one there too as well okay

[00:18:43] you do yours and see yeah um wait did i put that the one in actual thoughts because i know what you're talking about are you sure i think so okay it's when he's telling the story later on and then the dudes interject right uh i think so yeah i think uh let me i'll just i'll just get a quote the one i got here um so this is like yeah mr turtle like uh uh he's talking and then he he continued uh when i was

[00:19:08] the widow if she ever thought or when i asked the widow yeah when i asked the widow yeah yeah when i asked the widow if she ever thought i was a shonokin on account of my cat-like eyes and claws she said no because i didn't have the long pointed face and weird long index finger so this is professor tuttle

[00:19:32] continuing on the story but i forgot that he was reading from a notepad that he had had collected accounts from miss crabapple so i was a tad confused about huddle suddenly become being described as a girdine oh yeah so i think a little bit of clarification here could have just been like he continued to read from the jotted down accounts yeah or just he continued the story

[00:20:00] yeah exactly that could have also worked yeah just something else to clarify yeah just to just to remind us that like mr tuttle is reading off an account of a different person yeah that that was my yeah that was the one that i was like kind of relate to what you were just talking about with um clarification of characters did you also trip on that mikey um potentially

[00:20:26] okay very non-committal of you yeah it's because mikey knew that i was if he had said like no i'd be like oh well good for you he could anticipate the snark i was about to give him maybe because i was like straight up just like poised to pounce as soon as i was like i was like waiting for him to say no

[00:20:49] i believe sorry my bad uh i'll i'll stop okay uh so i got one more okay i was not certain whether she had invited me to do her good neighbor duty to the newcomer or if she really wanted to see me so here newcomer is two words we use one word newcomer nowadays however oh that is the modern

[00:21:15] spelling this is a story from 1911 or at least emulated to be from 1911 exactly oh wow so like while the single word uh even back then that was technically the standard but people still sometime wrote it as two words yeah like informally and stuff so technically this isn't a problem and it's actually extra immersive i don't know if it was an accident or on purpose but it works that's

[00:21:44] awesome actually i kind of like that like i dig that like that was either that was like an accident or like purposeful reese like purposeful um insert insertion of like casual old-timey casual writing yeah wait that's uh that's all i got left for that all right well then i suppose we move on to actual

[00:22:07] thoughts uh and i for one like to start with the art okay um as per usual guys i think i think there's been like as with a lot of the mm pratt stories uh i'm i'm a big fan of the artwork um i think the art for the most part works where it is again aside from the one issue with the formatting where like despite his small stature of brailed appearance um that's cut off because of um or that's just like

[00:22:36] slightly like like the the paragraph is deformed a little bit because of the placement of the image but that could be easily corrected um the art itself i mean we don't know how easily that is like it might be a pain in the ass to get yeah that's true right yeah um but yeah the art itself like on its own is very again i like i really enjoy her uh her art style and like the use of color and like how vibrant how dark it can be sometimes and even like just like there's also like a texture to it

[00:23:05] for some of it as well so yeah again big fan um it's nice seeing art done by the actual writer so like this is what that looks like you know yeah and like i i do like how like the first one shows like just the eyes of the of the silent audience right like and that like just like the countless eyes and even like the like this one character with a smile and like the their glasses and then we get an image of um

[00:23:33] of uh what must be miss miss crab apple and what looks like uh one of the creatures in the window um and like we from from previous illustrations of other gurdine characters in mmprad stories we know that this is a this is you can surmise this is a miss crab apple because she's been described as a gurdine yeah right um and then the last image of the story is sort of like a like a secondary to the

[00:23:59] original one because like the original one just showed the eyes this one actually shows when like the lights are on because you can tell because like the characters like it's their yellow cat eyes and then also like this um uh character with with glasses is likely the one from the from the the shadowed version um and again they're just they're they're depicted as they are described in the story

[00:24:22] like angular faces yellow eyes pale skin stuff like that so um ignore the one there that doesn't have pale skin i don't know if pale skin is part of it i thought they had like a pallor or like a like a they had like a they had like a paler kind of oh like white hair and yeah no wait oh yeah white hair for sure and then like uh that dude has black hair okay but one of them has white hair well it's because

[00:24:52] they take on like the aspects of whoever they take that's true yeah because as we find out later on they are like an assimilating species yeah as far as i know their whole deal like their transformation from before and after after they get the yellow cat eyes and like they get the beakish nose like their face elongates i think that's it yeah also i might be thinking about the pale thing because like the um the sentence right next to this image is the man was seen taller and paler than before and that

[00:25:20] man is kind of getting is paler than the rest so oh really yeah what man is you referring to there the i think the the tall guy with the glasses i mean in the story yeah i think uh the the tall guy with the glasses that like walked by those three that were watching him and then joined them like a few moments later oh yeah because he's referring to the the ones that were in the background yeah

[00:25:46] but yeah um again that's that's really all i've got for the art is like i liked it it it's not super intrusive except for that middle one but that can be fixed hopefully um like with formatting um but then there's something here i have for my next comment that doesn't quite sit well with me for the story and like maybe this is a personal preference thing for the writing um it's sort of similar to i think uh something gamer had in a previous episode with with the like how something

[00:26:15] should have like either ended or or it should have started somewhere differently so at the top of the story we have about three paragraphs um from a from a non-described narrator uh and like how they learned about the silent audience in 1964 from this old man on this rickety porch spitting tobacco juice at a rusty cafe can and such and then um and then we we actually get the main story like the

[00:26:39] bulk of the story um in like in the spring of 1922 an englishman named alex tuttle blah blah and so this starting like these starting three two to three paragraphs are uh like it's it seems like that this is gonna be like a wrap around for the like but like we never get a it never wraps back around at

[00:27:00] the end the the story ends with the uncertainty of of uh alex tuttle's fate oh i just saw the intro as like the intro kill in a slasher movie oh that could be i'll see it but like if you read that it almost seems to mirror what happens to alex tuttle at the very end as well yeah because that's the right mo that's true like the thing that is the last thing that happens is something pulls out his sleeve

[00:27:30] and then at the end of the story the last thing that happens is something pulled out his sleeve yeah so it's like but like in that case like it just feels like for me personally i feel like the lot the first two paragraphs um that kind of give us this this nair and then this like also like this sort of quote here uh it just seems to me it seemed unnecessary like it could have started with it could have started with in the spring of 1922 um and then just kind of name alex tuttle yeah

[00:27:58] uh again like i'm not like super hating on it or anything like that again we if um uh we do i guess we i personally would like to keep the uh it happened in the old mining town of boulderville 16 miles east of hogan's gap just so we have some kind of connection to hogan's gap and and like the greater mythos to me but um it was kind of weird though like if you remove that whole front bit yeah then there's no like i

[00:28:26] because the whole first few bits are this character nair whoever the hell he is saying like like when i first heard about this as in like someone is putting this all together to like the information out there that character disappears with that yeah and that's but that's kind of like that's the only time we get them in the story like the rest because we don't get it we don't get either either remove the front wrap or give us a an end wrap at the end like that kind of

[00:28:55] like has us like come back to this character this this unnamed narrator because we don't see them again ever you need to add musical bits to this that's weird no that's not what i meant you said rap you know what i mean w rap is an editorial term a white rap i see how that is but yeah no i i just uh yeah i i feel like if you're going to have a wraparound like this like we do need a wraparound

[00:29:25] like something at the end that kind of like justifies it like still being there because otherwise it just seems like it's unnecessary other than to establish that this story is being told to us from somebody else who's collected the story but like we kind of have that in an indirect way in the bulk of the story because alex tuttle is the one narrating his notes that he's collected and account does he die at the end though but that he isn't putting it together yeah but at the same

[00:29:52] time like the hat if you remove that front part and just have it at a title his fate is undeterred his fate is is left up in the air and that's usually better for like a suspenseful like horror story or like or spooky story so i mean it's technically still left up in the air because it's like okay jumping to the end um like he basically says like i don't want to know what happens when i finish the

[00:30:17] story aka like he's gonna try to not finish the story oh my god i just oh like yeah no stalking him and like driving him insane until he finishes the story yeah so like tuttle is well that because that's well there's no nare saying that but like tuttle the whole thing was here's like tuttle licked his dry lips yeah like and he was afraid to keep talking because if he finishes the story that's when they're gonna get him yeah i i just realized yeah that that is sort of like okay i it kind of got me

[00:30:46] back on board for having that wrap it and having it not finished because that's the whole premise of like the telling of the tale of the silent audience is that if you finish their if you if you talk about them to somebody or aloud you draw their attention if you finish the story they get you and i didn't realize wow i just realized that might be like the theme for why this doesn't have an end wrap

[00:31:14] damn the intro okay so the character of nare might actually just be uh tuttle because like by the end if he's like i don't know what to i don't want to know what happens when i finish the story maybe he just stopped telling the story and walked away with these things kind of like stalking him and he immediately like tried to find more information and he found this elderly resident who said and everywhere you look there were countless eyes blazing yellow like he's getting

[00:31:40] more information about it okay and then as that guy's talking about it he gets killed or something i mean but that's not okay that i don't think so because like it says like it was in the summer of 1964 when i first heard the story of the silent audience from this old man and blah blah and then in the spring of 1922 this happens oh but i think it's by the name of alex total yeah exactly but i think it's but yeah that's what i'm saying like i think you're like you've gotten it mixed up we're

[00:32:06] like because that that'd be super fucking confusing and gaslighting yeah damn i almost had it you almost but yeah i think nair is just supposed to be like some again like either like an mm pratt insert or just like again a non-named narrator who's discovered this this group this uh this this creature or something like that from this old man okay long story short yeah you're right the first couple of bits don't really have to be there i didn't catch it as a wraparound i caught it as a

[00:32:35] intro kill to kind of yeah uh an appetizer to what happens later on but yes it doesn't need to be but i also kind of now i'm kind of in this bit going back i know you're you i we're wrapping back around okay great because not having a an end wraparound makes it interesting because it's again of the theme at the end of the story where like he doesn't want to finish the story because he fears

[00:33:01] what'll happen next and so this this story isn't uh having a wraparound and finishing it up perhaps for the same reason um that's it's a little meta but like i kind of dig it because of that but uh other but for the sake of for the sake of brevity and like the sake of like just getting this done if that's not the case i just feel that those these first two paragraphs don't need to be

[00:33:26] here we can just introduce the story with 19 1922 this guy going to boulder or boulderville so anyway back done with this bit done with this done with this comment moving on okay um i got three other four other pages to get through in my notes yeah unfortunately for the professor

[00:33:52] sorry it sounded like i was about to dive into something another like add on a diatribe anyway um unfortunately for the professor the library's entire document collection just days before had been eaten by bottle ants sam branson had hanged himself and as for old herb according to one resident he went looking for gold last year and never came back however local gossip directed the professor to a

[00:34:19] gurdine hermit woman named anna crabtree oh it's crabtree not crabapple god damn it wow i have been totally fucking up her name the entire episode oh i thought the way that you were fucking up is because you were saying crabapple no i i was gonna wow i were absolutely saying crabapple and i was gonna interrupt you and clarify that but like i'll just let it go i thought it was i thought it was i thought it was crabapple like when i was taking my notes down fuck okay you know it's crabtree my bad

[00:34:49] no i should remember that and corrected you actually you really should well because he's the bus driver from south park yeah exactly bus driver that yells at everybody yeah wow all right anyway so yeah a woman named anna crabtree uh perhaps she could tell him all that he wanted to know about those strange ghastly

[00:35:12] folk so i didn't know i wanted a more like western or like early era fantastical mundane earth for like the hogan's gap critical like series of stories but here we are like just this like kind of like add-on of like uh this sort of like kind of frontierish town or this small like kind of like willard or like wildernessy mountain town and having like set in like the 1920s or like 1911

[00:35:41] um and having the having them like have like gurdine and other like dimensional expat folk and fairy folk walking among them but also fearing other fairy folk creatures and beings and such again i forgot that i love that genre of like weird west sort of uh fiction and this story sort of captures that a little um and speaking of uh we get this part oh that'll be miss crabtree the grizzled patron nodded over his

[00:36:11] large cup of coffee she's a gurdine woman you know got her got here quiet by accident 11 years ago something went wrong with the two-way door between this world and theirs and it spat her out and it spat out here well we're quite used to seeing her at seeing as their other fairy folk living around here

[00:36:33] lots more nicer compared with them darn stuck up elves with their all and now we can move past saying this feels a lot like shadow run sorry mikey and we can go straight into saying uh this feels like faza game's newest ip 1879 where magic and fantasy beings live not in the cyberpunk future but the

[00:36:58] steampunk west past oh yeah it is steampunk isn't it uh it is yes and technically it's in england but like there are like north american supplements and expansions and such for for 1879 um also this is quite deadlands-y as well um deadlands being another uh tabletop rpg that has magic returning um and like fantasy things and supernatural things happening to the to the wild west and like the the old like

[00:37:24] america but like not in like a in a cyberpunk future but in like the like in the 1890s or like the 1900 the the early uh 20th century late 19th century i don't fully remember earth dawn like the original like the furthest back point in the shadow run universe sorry mikey um that's like uh medieval dnd right no it's actually even farther back it's uh it's in like the bronze age like basically like

[00:37:48] like have like uh like think like mesopotamia or like um uh like ancient greece like pro like before ancient greece sort of era like the bronze age it's it's more like the the the the it's like um uh it's more bronze age i think cool oh yeah and and uh then 1879 is actually so faza slight divergent from the story uh into some tabletop rpg history so faza was the original creators of earth

[00:38:18] dawn and shadow run uh at some point in the 90s they lost the rights to shadow run and they got and that got sold over to catalyst games so faza couldn't do anything with the shadow run franchise even though they had linked it technically with the earth dawn universe because like the earth dawn universe is the fourth age or the fourth world and shadow run is considered the sixth world leaving basically mundane earth in the fifth world yeah so recently in like last couple like last like

[00:38:48] decade or so faza games the original providers of shadow run and the current the the original the the owners of earth dawn and the the former ones of shadow run decided well okay well what if we did shadow run but in like victorian age steampunk so basically they have now taken the fifth world and had this alternate unit alternate history where like uh the english empire created a uh like

[00:39:14] essentially a particle accelerator in like victorian era and it ripped a hole into reality to to this other world this fantastical world where like magic basically restarted on earth and people started expressing as trolls and orcs and elves and all that stuff and then they were also like traveling to this other fantasy world because it's rich in resources and the english empire is going to colonize because that's what they do is this a new sixth world or is this the fifth world this is

[00:39:43] actually the fifth world so it's an alternate history of the fifth world in from from shadow run and earth dawn cool but yeah so but but it also like again it's very similar vibes to what's being presented here where like magic and fan or like like supernatural stuff and and fantasy creatures have like live among humans in in a alternate history or mundane earth and and humans are now chill with

[00:40:09] that or at least they like they understand that it's a thing it's it's basically like an everyday thing and they treat it as such yes yeah it's like if aliens showed up like a decade ago and now we're all chill with them like because they live among us um but yeah so again uh just back to this is just uh i so yeah i was just like oh man this is like very much like up my alley of like weird fiction weird west

[00:40:36] stuff and it's like basically just hogan's gap but in like the old western like the in an older era and i suppose this also kind of clarifies at least in some iteration uh or universe of hogan's gap that the magic and supernatural stuff uh that is interacting with the mundane world in those other previous stories that we've we've read of em and pratt's uh have been around for a while like longer than we thought perhaps because i remember when we were talking about previous from

[00:41:04] previous stories of em and pratt that like we were always curious like when did this stuff start like popping up in the world and like being like um normalized so we were able to push back i guess the timeline in because of the story yeah definitely um on to the next thing i have now that i'm done gushing over uh fantastical wild west stuff

[00:41:37] by the fourth day he was helping her with daily errands and chores in exchange for little snippets of information always in the form of small handwritten notes discreetly passed to him during his labor meanwhile both the tourists and locals who would snicker and chuckle at the sight of his of this ungainly gentleman being ordered about by a diminutive fairy girl often he had to endure

[00:42:03] the wisecracks all the while he was in the crowds in the crowded stores with a basket under his arm there were even talk of wedding bells so to this i was like i was like reading this part and this is like again him trying to basically like him being with like being at her at uh at miss crabtree's beck and call because like he's trying to get this information and she's just basically using him

[00:42:27] for uh for like workload and stuff but is it sad that i too i'm starting to ship these two characters i guess yes that is bad actually yeah is it sad it helps me like update there's a part of the story where like oh this ship sinks like hard for me like it is done like it is over um do you understand why she was like making him do chores and stuff like that i outside of what she's not just using him

[00:42:54] for that as far as i'm concerned the reason that she decided to give him the information this way is because of the way that the dark lurkers work they show up when you're thinking about it so she's folk she's getting him to build a fence over there to get his mind off of thinking about this focus on building that fence you build that fence i'll give you a slip of paper with some information when you're done that go do the hay keeping his mind active so he's not in town

[00:43:24] thinking about this and going around asking a bunch of people and causing all this to show up i didn't that didn't click for me until you just brought it up but that makes so much sense because of what she or what she learns from the widow says earlier like like yeah occupy don't don't think about them even thinking about them makes them more real or or brings them brings them closer to you yeah i think just says like thinking about them is even worse than talking about them oh that's so

[00:43:53] good i didn't realize that i thought it was just sort of like she was just kind of like all right like if you i'll give you the some this information but you gotta do all this stuff for me like quid quo pro kind of thing i didn't realize it was also again just another layer of protection against them yeah because this guy shows up and like his whole purpose in town is to stir up trouble with these things that no one wants him to stir up trouble with yeah at least that's the way i viewed it no that

[00:44:20] no honestly that's that's a really interesting interpretation i dig that um because i did i didn't even clue into like that was a possibility of like why she was doing that um but so yes uh she gets them to do all this stuff in exchange for like the the the information and such and then like as she's finished up giving the information um we get this part here uh yes i did have a bit of difficulty at

[00:44:44] first said professor tuttle rubbing his work blistered fingers but then i met this otherworldly expatriate who told me a great deal about those lontakis i'll tell you one of the stories she told me here and then he took the first of the pads from a pile and began reading the first few pages way to

[00:45:07] immediately break your promise to miss crabtree did say he would try not that he would do or do not there is no try yeah um yeah no like as soon as like like i knew it was covered like i knew it was gonna happen because like she was like oh like i don't don't go spreading like telling this these these stories like out loud in town like it just brought them closer and all that stuff oh don't worry i promise i'll try i'll try to i'll try not to and then he immediately goes for lunch with

[00:45:36] these other academics and starts just blathering it on about yeah he doesn't even like read directly from a notebook of i've jotted down all the like like verbatim the accounts yeah so like whatever happens to him he deserves it because like he didn't even think about it he's not like it's like his buddies are like well what'd you find out and then he's like uh i don't know if i should tell you and then they're like oh come on he's like okay fine like even like later on like he's like boulder dash this is all boulder dash i'll even like continuing this reading this out loud

[00:46:05] yeah he's uh he's asking for it harder than anyone could possibly ask for it yeah oh my god i even have a note for that it's like and to prove to you good gentlemen that it's boulder dash i will i'm going to continue on with my story according to the old legends after a lontakis tale is told something fearful supposes to occur well let's put it to the test then shall we and my only response to

[00:46:32] that is famous last words yeah absolutely uh yeah but it was fun like to watch him like just die like or spiral oh yeah because he he deserves it and it's one of those things where it's like oh man like i can't wait for this guy to get his comeuppance yeah um he's a fantastic idiot but yeah suffice to say with him like breaking his promise to miss crabtree and like after like oh man i do kind of ship them

[00:47:00] a little bit like oh this is kind of cute like they're like they're like kind of being like very stubborn toward each other like and but like it's like oh like it's been a couple of days and and people are even bantering it's like oh wedding bells i was like yeah maybe and then but then he portrays her like this or like just goes on and like shrugs that off and goes talking blathering it to his friends it's like yeah this ship is officially sunk for me like fuck this guy miss crabtree deserves better if but from this non no from this this non-canonical

[00:47:27] not really a thing ship that i've i've inserted in my mind well it's because the the story itself mentioned wedding bells so that gave you the idea of ships or were you already shipping it was it was happening like even like like by the fourth day like he was helping her with daily errands and chores in exchange for the little snippets of her at that point i was like oh wow i'm gonna be really concerned the next time you ask me out to the uh the island help with the docks

[00:47:55] but that just works sir are you sure this is just work with no but this is like again this was like i'm a sucker for this kind of like story anyway so this sort of storyline but i digress um what is the next thing here hang on i gotta remove so i gotta like highlight some things out in my notes yeah i tend to highlight the i i have been but like i've done talking about it

[00:48:25] yeah all right um next thing i have here so like again it's already been established that this place this world is familiar with like magical things and magic right like yeah there's a reason why like these guys are going to like standing stones for like some strange thing and like they're like even the common folk are aware of like dimensional expats and like fairy folk that live among them and like elves that think they're superior to the humans and such yep um so we get this part here from from from

[00:48:55] uh alex's colleagues um i know that a few of my colleagues have tried connecting these or this is a response like this is one of the colleagues are talking about the standing stones it's like um i know that a few of my colleagues had tried connecting them to those standing stones deep in the woods but then these were the same the very same people who also believed in the existence of atlantis and

[00:49:20] avalon and i was just like i read that part i was like all right like there's i guess like an academic could be skeptical as those are like places of legend but like why is the existence of atlantis and an avalon peculiar in this world you literally have fairy folk wonder wandering around society like normal citizens like that's they have different realities that's exactly why because

[00:49:45] you can see the fairy folk running around you know they're real you don't know atlantis is real i i suppose that is like the devil's advocate is like well i mean like yeah just because like elves and orcs and all that stuff are wandering around society and like there are like we know these like there are like two-way portals to out to other like dimensions and stuff um doesn't mean that like places of legend like atlantis and and uh avalon that don't have any like again hard evidence of their

[00:50:14] existence doesn't mean that they're going to be necessarily like oh they've got to exist then clearly like if all this other stuff exists it's more of like a supposition and like probably like a academic by academic biases of like so but yeah like i think i've mentioned this before like in a world where you know um i knew that was coming uh in a world where like fan there are some

[00:50:40] aspects of fantasy to us that are normal in that world that's normal to them fantasy to them would be stuff that is not every day and stuff that hasn't been everyday normal stuff for a long time because this story isn't the origin of fey showing up they're all already like chummy chummy with them it's normal so even before this story the fey have been around so that's this is normal living but like

[00:51:09] the idea of avalon and atlantis and stuff like that that's ancient myth that hasn't been proved so it's still fantastical like that is fantasy to them and fey is not fantasy it might be magic but it's not like fantastical and weird yeah i guess it's just always my knee my knee-jerk reaction like well if this exists then everything exists like you open like you open the windows of possibility

[00:51:36] like but at the same time it is sort of grounded like you're saying it is sort of grounded for like just because these things exist or we find out these things exist doesn't mean like everyone's going to believe that this other thing exists that like is in legend like that literally is like in our real world that's happened like oh like we discover something that like was originally myth but then uh we discover it like through science and fact like in discovery that like oh it actually turned out this thing is actually still around and it is actually a thing but like we're not good but

[00:52:03] and and some people were like oh well if that's saying then like bigfoot's real like it's like the the coelacanth up until up until i think like the early 20th century or or late late 19th century was considered like an extinct species and like it died out with the dinosaurs and stuff and then they found it uh off the coast of madagascar like a thriving species of coelacanth and then people were like oh well the coelacanth exists like if it's still around and it exists and other like ancient

[00:52:30] animals that we think extinct or like cryptids like must exist like bigfoot but then there are other there's the majority of people there's like well just because that exists doesn't mean like everything exists like it means it means they could exist not that they do yeah no i i get i can i can get behind that um like that way of thinking for the story outside of me just my knee jerk of like well if magic exists and fairies exist then like atlantis could exist so why are you so like

[00:52:59] um such a stickler for like that but no i guess it's because we have an outside view of the world we're not that is a character that lives in this world that has experienced has has got has had fey over to their birthday parties for their whole life you know yeah but again oh yeah and like even even though there are some people again like the the old the old guy from the coffee shop is like oh like she's one of them dimensional expats from like the uh the two-way the two-way doorway like thing

[00:53:27] but like and there's other fairy folk that walk around among us but like they're pretty nice compared to like the elves but like that doesn't necessarily mean that guy believes in like el dorado or like yeah like like elves and all that like i see them every day but like i never see a telegaster or whatever or like some kind of like i've never seen like this thing so i i don't think it really exists and never seen a man eat so many chicken it's kind of like the inflection that was

[00:53:55] getting from every time he said i guess yeah i never seen a man uh anyway i'll i'll move on from this uh because i think it's outlived its usefulness in terms of the point i was getting at um the the next thing i have here is uh so yeah we get this part here uh yet when i when it came to so this is like the i guess the widow

[00:54:19] um that's like talking with uh with mr uh mrs miss crabtree um in the in the story um yet when it came to the matters concerning magic and wandering spirits she was downright superstitious oftentimes she would sprinkle mustard seeds and sparkly object sparkly ornaments around her yard to confuse vampires uh to deter witches from entering she had a horseshoe hanging over her door

[00:54:47] pointed downward and fishnet over the windows for extra protection she carried a rabbit's foot in her coat pocket and a piece of rattlesnake skin in one sandal so i knew a fair amount of the protective wards she was describing in this um like i've i've heard of them in real life in like real folklore and such like yeah um i i was i i thought i thought the the horseshoe hanging over your door with like

[00:55:13] a point downward was more for like fey creatures but i think it might also just be because it's like an iron horseshoe over your uh your door protects you from like magic and stuff like that so maybe that's also the reason but which one the one i hadn't heard of at all is uh the snake skin in your shoe uh and apparently that is a folk magic remedy stemming from hoodoo tradition so that's cool i learned yeah i learned a new magical remedy and our new uh folk folk magic thing so neat

[00:55:45] um then the next thing i have here uh so this is like uh when he first notices the uh the the three silent observers in the inn as he's like blathering on about the uh the story that he shouldn't be talking about um he would have ignored them had it not been for the fact that they bore a somewhat striking resemblance to the people in his story sharp pointed features and glittering cat's eyes

[00:56:11] while he stared a little white haired gentleman strode past the three and out the door for some strange reason the chap acted as if there was nothing amiss eventually the white hair eventually the white hair returned and went to join the unnerving trio so a little concerning that like a a uh a white head of hair just like disembodied just walks back

[00:56:37] inside after the guy walks out okay that's me being critically silly that's me being silly because i like i get this that that was just like from now because i was like as i read that out loud again i was like that's actually like that's all i could capture by my head it was just like like somebody's toupee yeah like a like a glitch from uh assassin's creed where like like the face of somebody's completely missing it's just their hair their eyeballs and their teeth

[00:57:03] yeah absolutely um but actually to my point here is like not gonna lie i was kind of expecting the trio to vanish as the white haired man walked past them like between professor tuttle and and them like sort of in that creepy way where like like somebody's like like you're you're like looking for somebody and then like a car goes by and they vanish but they're the silent audience credits

[00:57:30] uh but yeah no like again the version that we get is better because like again like the guy turns out to be one of them as well but i just thought it would be really funny and i thought it would be creepy as well if they just vanished as that guy passed almost like they were like some kind of apparition but then we get the rest of the story and it's like oh no they're not apparitions this is a lot worse for uh for uh mr tuttle so i mean we don't know professor tuttle

[00:57:54] we don't know that they're not apparitions or just in his head i mean i kind of do but i also kind of see where you're coming from but also you're wrong okay i hate you for planting a seed of doubt in your mind now yeah god damn it stop doing that uh and speaking of the uh creatures uh we get a um that we actually get them kind of talk about

[00:58:23] themselves and such um the congregation if you could call it that spoke up as once their appalling voices sounding like a blend of the cry of damn souls howling of wolves and yelping of wild geese our name is lontakis and we are the ones that dwell in the lonely and wild places we are old though not as old as the making of the world we worship the dweller of the hidden places and the great old ones

[00:58:51] who will who will one day come forth from the earth and the stars any more any mortal or outcast fey caught venturing into our territory will be made into one of us for we regard that as a more fitting revenge against trespassers than just mere death ah cool so these guys are like lovecraftian vampire borg

[00:59:17] and with one quick little monologue you're totally on board absolutely i i really like the hive-minded assimilation angle of them um the the uh the dark lurkers uh appear to be an original creation of m and pratt like i said earlier um and from what i've read here uh they also like like it seemed like they were constructed from like various other like folkloric traits from both like north american and

[00:59:46] european sources like they can turn into mist um they turn they convert people into themselves like into them they're worshipers of the great old ones they have uh various traits that are very similar to other like uh like native american um uh folklore monsters and like and and legends like uh the the actually the the the index finger uh specifically like that index finger being like longer and pointier

[01:00:11] uh kind of reminds me of there's a there's a an entity in in indigenous uh folklore uh called a spear finger uh is a like monstrous witch from cherokee legend um that basically has like again a very long four finger uh on on the right hand it's like razor sharp and it's actually and it made of like obsidian so um it's that that's what that reminded me of like the

[01:00:36] the the the index finger being like longer and pointier and such um and then again like um the whole idea of like don't talk about them or they'll you'll you'll invite them into your your space or they'll they'll they'll come for you because they they'll be made aware of you is is very similar to both um indigenous folklore like of creatures that i'm not going to talk about because again i don't want to invite any of that shit in my home um starts with a w or starts with a w or

[01:01:06] with an s um uh but also um uh but that's also something that's from like in in tulpaic um like theory which is like tulpas where like it's basically like uh you create something by just like thinking about it um or even like fey folklore of like fey folklore and like uh if you if you say the name the true name of a of a fey creature um once you'll draw their attention or you'll they'll take

[01:01:34] notice say the second time you'll have their attention and say the third time you summon them for better or worse and you better have an offering is there like a statute of limitations on saying that the time the i think it's gotta be consecutive like it has it's like beetlejuice um you say it three times uh in in a row um like without saying something like saying something between those words

[01:02:01] yes and uh that's how you like summon a fey creature gotcha same thing with bloody mary yeah exactly um but yeah again i just i really enjoyed the um this this creation that uh em and pratt has made uh and just like how cobbled together it is from like different other like folklore sources because that's basically folklore in a nutshell like yeah especially the some of the especially some of the folklore that she's like going with with like appalachian folklore is like just a

[01:02:29] combination of like native american uh folk medicine and remedies and like and legends and it's a mix of like irish scottish and like the various other like immigrated people that went that came to appalachia like their belief systems just kind of mingled in and just kind of created this like something new so it's a very similar kind of uh design philosophy um for for a folklore monster and it almost sounds like

[01:02:54] it could be a monster from like from from an actual like worldly folklore so yeah for sure uh it is also apparently connected with two other stories uh from m and pratt that we have not covered yet so i'm just going to add those to the queue um how do you know that uh because i looked it up no arrows on the bottom no it wasn't it wasn't uh there's no arrows to other stories but um when i was like doing a little bit of like a deep dive i found out that like lontakis is mentioned

[01:03:23] in other stories um yeah and actually this story also references something another creature or another entity that has been brought up that we never really that we want to know a little bit more about but we never quite get is the uh the fire witches because they were brought up in like some of the other um stories uh in hogan's gap specifically and like there's like oh we had to deal with that that fire witch earlier so hell's a fire witch and we still don't know um but i digress uh again

[01:03:52] this is just my my whole rambling of i like these creatures they're fun they're they're creepy and it's a cool little creation so yeah um the next thing i have here actually so it's talking about the finger thing like the index finger thing i have a little bit of a problem with it uh with with how it's just uh how uh there's there's a part of the story where it shows up and i was like i i have a

[01:04:15] problem here with like continuity um so the quote is the quote is uh the hand was the color of polished bone with long curved nails the third finger was longer than the middle wait i thought the index finger was the long one on the lontakis counting the thumb the third finger either way is the middle finger

[01:04:43] and disregarding the thumb the third finger is the ring finger so not the index finger but the index finger in in like the other way it's described is the is the one that's the long finger but this the sentence says the third finger was longer than the middle it's like shouldn't shouldn't it be trying to describe like the the index finger yes so i just feel like the third finger should just be

[01:05:12] the the index finger was longer than the middle just to like just to have that like just so we know but am i crazy here like am i the only one that's concerned about this or these might not be the uh the same creature okay that's true yeah i mean or it could be like maybe the legends say that it's the it's it's the index finger but it's not always the index finger

[01:05:43] yeah also it's legends and stuff like it's possible that it's not 100 factual you know that's true yeah i mean if you can't when it comes to monster hunting if you can't trust uh legends then what are you doing who can you trust also this is basically like the hand was the color of polished bone like this is the hand that pulled at his jacket this isn't the hand of them around but no then it's

[01:06:10] revealed that like it's it's the hand from from one of his friends who's been turned into one of them it wasn't yeah i actually have that my next note is actually dealing with that right there uh professor tuttle turned to face shelton at least it was shelton a few minutes ago what happened next the shelton thing asked watching him the way a dog watches a bone did she escape or didn't she so i here's my question that was still him sitting across from him on the table i don't think it is i think it i think

[01:06:40] it's them like it the way it's it's read it the way i read it seems like they've been turned or that they were always they've been turned but they didn't move as far as i saw i i i assume that was that was uh shelton uh but because he is the small like he i don't know like it maybe maybe it is one of the other creatures what i'm assuming yeah what i'm trying to get at is i think that like because this

[01:07:04] one's weird and specifically written as it's weird and different like the uh the dark lurkers they basically cat like wrangle up a target for whatever this other creature is to convert them because it's maybe i don't i don't know it could also just be like i think with the the finger part it could just be like a typo kind of thing or like again like just uh like um an issue that needs to be

[01:07:32] fixed because of for like continuity reasons like unless again there it is a different creature or like again they have variation on which finger is longer depending on the individual of their hive mind which like ow that hurts to think of individuals in a hive mind well because uh his colleagues could have been the hunters to find people to research to feed them that is actually a that's actually tied

[01:08:02] to like the question i had um after reading the the quote from like of them like of him realizing that his friends are now these creatures as well though they weren't a minute ago and i was like were they just turned like in that few moments that like when he was like occupied by by the story and by the these other things or were they always the creatures and just in disguise and again like like you just said mikey they basically like lured him into this trap to break to to uh because they because even

[01:08:30] from the very get-go like as soon as he got to town he he met these academics um uh and they knew about his research into the lontakis so like he went there with them i i think they he they went they i think i thought they met in the other town nearby not and then they went to uh boulderville because they were researching the the standing stone site

[01:08:56] i think they i thought i thought they had met in the professor on his journey were two other oxford men like okay people that he went to oxford with that's fair then they could still be though because like he was doing this research back back in north carolina like that's where the led where he learned about the legend of lontakis um as we get established early on in the story so again like like mikey was bringing up like maybe they were all they were already like kind of on his trail because he was

[01:09:22] researching these things and as we discover through the story the more you know about these things the more they know about you i guess yeah i don't know they seem it makes the the actual supernatural creature less deadly in that situation because it's like it's playing the long con for to just get one guy meanwhile like the way i saw it is they're there they're talking about it so they are causing the creature to show up

[01:09:52] manifest and start taking people so it's either physically changing these people just when you're not looking or it's targeting the person who is telling the story and it's literally just messing with his mind and making him think that he's seeing dark lurkers everywhere and the thing that's actually going to be killing him is this creature that's coming up from beneath i i don't know i i think

[01:10:18] because he was doing the research prior to his arrival to this place i think like that's that still technically counts as them like him him stepping into their territory because like again like they because he's researching them they're now aware of him and so now they're just like they might have been playing the long game and just like seeing if he learns more and then if he learns a certain amount like that's when they'll strike is if they if he fucks up too much uh with the guidelines of

[01:10:44] like their like how they attack people or how they they deal with people i don't think that's the case because mrs crabtree specifically says don't talk about this while you're still in town and she's still happy to give him information so he can publish a book about it yeah so i don't think it matters no but i don't think it matters what i'm saying is i don't think it matters if you talk about this when you're not nearby if you're near this town this is where they're centralized this is where they

[01:11:12] attack you if you talk about them they don't teleport around the world they're centralized here that's why he went there maybe i i'm i'm a little i don't know i'm i'm not sure she'd be okay with giving the book information out she should be like no i'm not going to doom the world that might be unfortunately that might be a bit of a i don't you you could be correct actually like thinking of that it's the only thing that makes sense well yeah because the the alternative is

[01:11:37] like from an from a writing point of view like this is a plot hole that's like why she would be willing to give out information about this if it's that bad if it's that much of a of like a uh an existential threat to humanity yeah she wouldn't give the information out if that was the case yeah yeah yeah yeah i don't know um but uh that that's all i've got for my my actual thoughts

[01:12:06] so mikey these stands for evil all right um so for me i was more interested in the story within the story um so like as they're telling the different stories about the creatures and whatnot and the

[01:12:30] encounters um i've found myself intrigued by that but then every time it would get interrupted by another character interjecting or something i was like ah just continue to with the story that's kind of like how we were interjecting with your uh uh anything you say we have tend to interject i interject i don't think we do that to him i think we do i feel like sometimes we do

[01:12:59] no and i will continue to feel bad about it but i will i will try to do better but i will not make any promises i will because i know i will break them oh i'm sorry mikey brings up interesting points that are fun to discuss oh exactly yeah i still feel bad about interjecting we're here that it's a discussion podcast i know blame my canadianism all right i'm sorry i'm sorry no i'm sorry i shouldn't have no i'm more interjecting

[01:13:31] mikey see this from ourselves all right so my uh my disappointment comes when he reached the end and he doesn't finish the story but that's the point because he doesn't want to know but i know i was more interested in the rest of the story yeah no i kind of now that like i think i was like i think that actually would have been interesting if like uh so like what what if what if like our nair at the

[01:14:00] beginning had actually just been alex alex tuttle and then like the rest of the story had been like he gives a little intro of how he came across these stories and stuff like that and then the rest of the story is just that that story of miss crabtree and her encounter with the things but well no the the start of it is the most recent part of the story because it's talking like

[01:14:25] there's what the old man says and it says it was in the summer of 1964 when i first heard the story of the silent audience i was a youth about 17 and the teller was an incredibly old man blah blah blah and then it it goes back to 1922 talking about alex yeah that the old man is telling nair about yeah so the old man could be alex maybe but oh my god there yeah also bad this story i do the more

[01:14:53] the more thing about this story is really just inception it's just story upon story upon story there's not that many stories there's like it's like three layers that's still that's that's still pretty deep like in layers yeah but yeah so so mikey the here like brass tacks here like you just wanted you wanted the story to be completed because you were getting really irritated with them keep interrupting the story yep

[01:15:26] would you have been okay if at the end it's like um and after finishing telling the story the lurkers did this credits whatever this is uh well the thing is i know why they didn't put the end of the story because the character knows that if he

[01:15:52] says that he's doomed yeah but i still want doesn't mean i didn't want that story no that that's true so and i mean i guess it technically proves that the character is not from derpland if he's not gonna finish the story yeah also just thinking about it now from like again the fact that this is very much again like clearly um there's some inspiration in this story from like

[01:16:21] lovecraft writing and again he was the master of just like anti-climax like something happens and then it just trails off yeah um and that is like sort of like a trope in this story that as well so it's like but like that's where like it's a trope that's also like an established trait of how this thing how these things hunt and kill is that you have to finish a story and you're all your their bane is if you don't finish the story

[01:16:50] they really hate cliffhangers oh my god i need to if i ever if i ever stat out the the the the uh the dark lurkers as like a as a creature for in in shatterrun sorry mikey um or like uh maybe even knights black agents or cthulhu or something uh their bane or we one of their weaknesses will be like if you start telling them a story and then don't finish it they get really

[01:17:15] frustrated and can't they cannot it's like a threshold they cannot like cross them they cannot cross the threshold to get you if you don't finish a story in front of them yeah i kind of like that it's kind of it's it's so dumb it's it's brilliant no it's just dumb but it's kind of brilliant and dumb and yeah yeah i was just doing a reference

[01:17:43] of course yeah i just did the reference i let it i opened the door for it uh all right yeah so that's any of my actual thoughts all right gamer

[01:18:02] okay let's see what i got left um so i kind of brushed on this a little bit but i'm going to go into it a little bit more in depth uh in regards to me being surprised that anna decided to help alex at all with how dangerous sharing information about them is yeah um like yes she did do it over

[01:18:25] the span of multiple days to only think about it in little bursts as well but like it also might have been the only way to get him to shut up about it in general because if he didn't shut up they'd be showing up even sooner that being said uh having the very last piece of information that she says being don't think about them while you're here is strange you'd think that that would be the first

[01:18:51] thing that she tells him not the last thing because like alex has been like thinking about these things constantly for three days yeah i did mention that i'm sure she was distracting him with chores but regardless in between that time i'm sure he's pouring over these notes and thinking about it constantly yeah um she's basically just helping to do like it's like short term versus long term like problems

[01:19:20] but like also if she didn't actually want to help him with all this um but like wanted to try to limit him talking about it i'm surprised anna didn't just like go to the townsfolk and ask for permission because like she says like if you want to do this without permission you have to be quiet like but there was no mention of that of needing of not wanting to ask for permission from others and stuff like that like if none of them wanted him researching this

[01:19:45] the town would kick his ass out yeah or at least like mob yeah like just kill him and bury him in a shallow grave absolutely i'm done like very delta green like burn like um uh uh cleanse it with fire like get rid of the problem by burning it away destroying it but she also might have not mentioned it to anyone else in town because she doesn't want anyone else in town actively thinking about them as

[01:20:12] well that's true like because like right now it's just her and alex thinking about it and she can she knows everything about this so she can like limit how much she's actually thinking about it and stuff like that um but if she's bringing up with other people they'll be like oh they'll have to start thinking about whether they should let this guy do a book on them and that's just thinking about that is that i'm thinking about the these creatures right so that's inviting them in a little

[01:20:39] bit yeah so regardless long story short i suppose in the end it kind of makes sense her decisions um and based on her decisions we get a lot of information that isn't said about these creatures like i was said before i think they're a localized creature and i think they only target the one person personally um because if it was like an aoe to use gaming terms or effect sort of deal

[01:21:08] where like if someone's talking about it and everyone listening about it hears it is also affected then it would also be really dangerous to give them this information you know true um but she does say don't talk about it while you're in town so the localized part is the biggest uh point towards her like actually being okay with doing this yeah now also to possibly like give some like she could have

[01:21:37] also said well i mean like if he does dig into this too much and talk about it they're just going to get him and then it's not like the book's not going to get published yeah it's also that it's like he she might just also been banking on the fact that he'll just get he'll just get killed or disappeared by them so and like before even is able to get the his his uh his research cobbled together because he's again researching something that if you research it uh you become more aware of it and it becomes

[01:22:05] more aware of you and then it gets you so so you think her intent the whole time might have been just use them to kill him to shut him up basically yeah or like that he might that might have been her likes her um like reasoning for like eventually like just being whittled down like her being whittled down by his persistence is like all right fuck it i'll just i'll tell you the information i have discreetly as i can it's not like it's gonna matter because they're gonna get you the more because you're gonna read the you're gonna keep researching it they're gonna become aware of you and

[01:22:34] you're just you're gonna end up uh gone so like nothing's gonna come of this so why not just share this information with you but she's also doing it discreetly to save herself yeah it'd be kind of cool if at the end like the hand like grabs him and like it's i don't know like like the finger like punctures his skin and like turns him into it or something and then like disappears and then you see like a girdine hand come in and take the research papers back oh that would be yeah that could be

[01:23:03] interesting yeah i was like it's like she she's in on it as well like like like she's deep in it or not necessarily in on it just like what i said like oh she's aware that this dude is just going to talk about this forever so it's like fuck it i'll get moldy information i'll let them get killed by these creatures i'll take the information back burn it there we're resetting that that's why the the that's why the other documents that he came to this place in the first place were destroyed by bottle

[01:23:30] ants yes quote unquote um which i i know i didn't look that up our bottle it's a thing is that a is that a type of is that i don't know let me see i am i didn't look it up but i i either assumed it was a real yeah okay all right maybe nope blue bottle ant is not an ant just pieces of large wingless flower wasp from southern yes or australia so nowhere near this area so i think it might just be like

[01:23:58] again a another creation for the story um but again like again the the documents he came here in the first place for are gone and the the guy who was doing the research here hanged himself and then the other prospector guy that he was looking for that also had some information went missing a year ago after looking for gold going up into the mountains to look for gold so it's like conveniently all the people that were that were that really had like were blatantly like

[01:24:28] talking about the information are gone or dead and the documents have been destroyed so yeah yeah i do kind of like that idea of like yeah after like uh all the all the notepads are sitting there in the inn in this in this empty quiet inn after after whatever after the deed has been done and um and then uh the a girding hand just kind of like plucks all the papers and stuff like that

[01:24:52] to be cast into a into a fire or something like that like they're basically they want to just put a lid on these creatures because the only way that they show up is just through knowledge and um sharing information about them so they can literally just chill in this town and live a normal life and then if someone shows up talking about them it's like okay there's a um a loose end we got to tie up

[01:25:16] okay here's the information welcome to the family son and then turn um also i just like maybe the like that could also give the the title of the story and the title of them the silent audience a double meaning because it's like the silent audience is the uh the dark lurkers like because they they they're they silently watch you uh when they're about to attack you um but it could also be

[01:25:39] like the silent audience is maybe also the girding who's like silently like like keeping things under wraps like observing like watching things and keeping things under wraps so that like the information about these things doesn't spread yeah so but that's a little bit of conjecture for like just

[01:25:58] elaborating on like what could be at the end here so hmm yeah move on from there my next note is very much like one that you had anna don't talk to anyone about this while you're here alex okay i'll try also alex here i'll tell you one of the stories she told me i know right yeah guy deserved to die he really did

[01:26:26] goddamn academics and then my next one uh the little bit where um where mikey hated that shelton and adkins chimed in i liked the little bit yeah i did also i'm not off yeah uh because i felt like the way that it did it was pretty well done compared to a lot of other stories where this sort of thing happens where like someone chimes in interrupt the story and you don't really get a clear indication

[01:26:52] of when the chime in and out happens uh but here you get a pretty clear distinction because the first word of it is shelton which is not a character from the other stories so okay we're immediately back here so like it snaps you back instantly the only way i could have possibly improved this the break situation here is like maybe line breaks at the start and end of every like uh mention of the story or

[01:27:19] easier just have it so like uh the shelton line have it like shelton interrupted tilting his head and sucking on his pipe blah blah blah blah like immediately just say oh i'm interrupting right now or interjected since that's the word of the day to yes for us but as it is i still think it works

[01:27:40] quite well fair enough and then uh this one i kind of talked about i like the reveal of the almost normal looking people who just like appear and listen to the story being told yeah but i am curious as i said if uh total is is the only one seeing them or if all of them are seeing them because it's entirely

[01:28:05] possible that this is all in his head while he's being converted or again it could just be like oh the entire ends it was all an ambush just like again the whole lunch was an ambush from them yeah so that's like the good and bad part about the story is like we don't get a clear answer on that so there's a lot of talking points but i don't know which one's real so i just wouldn't believe yeah and again that's that

[01:28:30] is a big thing with horror is like the uncertainty so yeah like you're not supposed to get all the answers because otherwise it wouldn't be a horror story because you wouldn't have the like the uncertainty in the story so and then uh we get to this part when he's like continuing his reading um it says ever since i was a cub i had read with relish the tales of writers like edgar and

[01:28:59] poe arthur macken does that pronounce macken yeah it's macken yeah macken and bram stoker uh it must have been hard to read through the words uh through all that relish spread on the pages but that's fine low-hanging fruit i know but someone had to say it i'm sorry it says relish it's the you know what this is this is the relish pizza it's been all over again yeah

[01:29:27] and then uh my next note is in regards to the ending how like it's got to be hell knowing that you're screwed basically like that's he's like well i'm gonna die now one way or another or my mind is not going to be on my own pretty soon um like if he doesn't finish the story they might not take him but they might also be constantly stalking him forever if he does like if he doesn't finish the story like i want to know what's how like like mikey said i want to

[01:29:57] know what's actually happening after the story like is he actually able to not like is he able to resist not finishing the story or like what is the implication like what's what are they doing to try to force him to tell the story you know i i want to see the next day what they've been doing to him you know i can get that um i mean it's also a horror story as you said where like less is more a lot of

[01:30:25] the times and i agree but that doesn't that doesn't mean that i'm not going to be thinking about like i wonder what happened you know yeah yeah it's a it's it's a sort of like but who was phone kind of situation at the end here sure but at the same time like again like yeah it's sort of like a balancing act because like oh like who was phone like god to your ending like kind of thing but also like disney princess i must have more of course of course yeah and my last note is like

[01:30:55] what's kind of odd about the story is how it starts it starts showing like about eyes in the darkness um but it's kind of not about that at all no like i get it it's about people watching but it's them hiding in plain sight not in dark well were they not eyes and darkness in that like chapel that no crafter was in okay oh well i mean was it they were like dark silhouettes

[01:31:22] hence why she thought it was a hallucination so she like rubbed her eyes and pinched herself yeah but she clearly see like what they were though right i don't know um i also i again the beginning part like that beginning quote like it's almost like it it's it's like it was a caption from like like later in the story but it's like at the top here it's at the beginning it almost felt like it was trying to be like cinematic in that way of like i bet you're wondering how i got to this point and then but in like a horror way mm-hmm

[01:31:52] yeah what it says in the church is jolted awake i sat up at the start as soon as my eyes adjusted to the dismal gloom i noticed i was no longer alone in the church there were people seated seated in nearly every pew tall dark-haired beaky nose people and they're all staring at me with greenish yellow eyes okay yeah so they are pretty well described they're not yeah because again like i could see like them being like just these silent observers in shadows but like the story

[01:32:15] continually like describes them as being out in the open just watching mm-hmm like it'd be cool if like she says fuck that and runs away and then like they're like she's running through the the forest at night and she's seeing the eyes in the forest or like she gets home and then phew i'm home looks outside and she just sees the the eyes like in the window you know like that'd be cool but like we

[01:32:44] don't get anything that is actually that first image unless i'm missing something yeah it's more just like yeah i don't know like like i'm i'm with you on this like the image i like the image and because it does like sort of foreshadow the last image we get which is basically like a version of that image just like the lights are on but it doesn't really describe them as being like well they are dwellers in darkness they are the dark lurkers so but so they do like linger in shadow

[01:33:12] and wild places um not in the story but just not in the story yeah like the ones we see in the story don't do that they're just like they have like monikers of that but yeah it is a little odd it might be because like originally they were referred to as the dark lurkers and stuff because like they're kind of like being careful of how to like um deal with the humans and stuff like that

[01:33:38] but now that they've been doing this for hundreds or thousands of years they're like super comfortable just sitting in there like completely just taking over people in broad daylight you know that's true yeah or they're dark because of their dark like goals intense it's not illumination dark

[01:33:59] it's evilness dark yeah could be but that's all i got left for notes okay um man i almost kind of want to push mine down to a partial recommendation okay like i i i so on to final thoughts i i think i will still recommend it but i do think there there is some room for improvement like i enjoy

[01:34:28] exactly yes i mean like again obviously i enjoyed the the the creatures i enjoyed the atmosphere and the style of writing it's very reminiscent of pulp horror from like the days of lovecraft or even like frank belknop long it felt very much in line with like one of their stories or or how they how they were written in terms of that styling um i also really liked the ending because it was like it was clearly foreshadowed like because he was like reading this so they were going to get him but then there's like to me there was an added twist of like tuttle's colleagues were now also

[01:34:57] either had been turned into monsters or they were already or he had doomed them um to this existence or because he was like talking about this thing in front of them or they were already monsters to begin with kind of thing at least in my like my personal interpretation of it um and also again i just really like the monster um it's like the the creature the concept for the creature is really is really fun and steeped in in various folkloric

[01:35:23] traits um i have a question for mikey specifically because you and i have been very loud about our viewpoints on uh the creatures at the end and who they could and couldn't be mikey who did you think they could or couldn't be or were you just too angry that you didn't get the end of the story that it didn't matter um well it's either um by telling the story he's going mad and everyone around him has

[01:35:51] become the creature oh okay i yeah like as in they look like them to him because he's going insane but they're really normal people it's a mimetic virus like the more you think about them it's not actually that they're coming toward you it's just that the more you think about them the more that burns into your into your brain that like everyone suddenly looks like them yeah it's insanity yeah it's a

[01:36:17] mimetic virus kind of thing or a basilisk hack on your brain yeah i get madness yeah like you said was that what you were going with the i said that a long time ago yes okay i was like i was like is that like is that what gamers think it was like because i i just thought yours was like oh like like the beginning at the end here uh is he hallucinating these things or are these just apparitions in his head i mean for some reason i didn't clock that as being like like again like

[01:36:43] because the more he reads about them the more madness he gets from about them like yeah he's hallucinating like he's seeing things that aren't real yeah like they're he he's seeing his friends and the other random people in the uh the tavern where's where are they doesn't matter they're in the other people at the inn he's seeing them as what they're not because he's just imagining what's not actually there because of how steeped his mind is in this because of supernatural influence influences

[01:37:11] on him right now true yeah i do like that idea or that concept i don't know if i necessarily would would want that in like my interpretation of the story but i do like that concept um yeah continue okay uh well basically that that's the end of my my uh my final thoughts is uh

[01:37:35] i will recommend i interrupted you to interject there and ask mikey a question about that yeah it's not like it more okay no uh i was basically at the end um so yeah i i will recommend it uh though i think it could use a little bit of work in terms of like just like some fixes here and there uh like from what we brought up um but i really like the monster and i really like the the the the styling and and atmosphere of the story so i will continue with a with a

[01:38:03] a firm recommendation not shaky at all nope those are good bones on that recommendation good bones really sounds like it i totally believe you definitely not going to collapse any minute anyway moving on mikey your your final thoughts yeah so as i stated the uh uh well the investigation

[01:38:32] goes and the people that were ahead of him that tried to make books disappeared under the picture um so like that should have been a red flag from the get-go um but he must do it because reasons academia tenure why will be honestly you you scoff at that guys but like that is 100

[01:39:02] shit that happened in real life and in a lot of cthulhu stories like oh man my my old professor who was researching this the these ancient ancient sky people who steal steal of the men of the earth uh and he he went missing in in the hills of west virginia i'm gonna go continue on with his work and continue in there never never mind uh his that his assistant is in a madhouse right now it's rambling

[01:39:27] about sky people stealing the professor's brain i will continue his work bully becomes more and more more like more more british academic uh but yeah no that that's such a well-used trope in almost a tripe that's such a well-used trope in in uh in in weird and horror fiction so but yeah yeah anyway so

[01:39:57] that happens and then we eventually slowly get more stories about these creatures and i enjoyed the stories that we got about the creatures but it kept we kept getting interjections like i said yeah but you're interjected with a story about the creature like really because the main the the story being told in the present is a story about the

[01:40:25] creature yeah yeah well but i liked the older stories better than the new story okay he just he just didn't want anything to happen he wanted me he wanted to read this story and from the safety from from the character's safety of their own home like he just i didn't want anything actually bad to happen anybody just read a read a weird story and that it wants the published novel that uh that alex put out yeah yeah or might would have put out if he had

[01:40:54] survived that's what i meant yeah yeah so uh yes i do get personally annoyed at the end because he doesn't tell the rest of the story um but at the same time it proves that the character is not from dirpland um because he as far as he could tell might not survive if he tells the end

[01:41:23] yeah that was the that was like the theme of the story is is anti-climax yeah uh so with that said i'm still only gonna partially recommend this all right and gamer uh well for me i honestly really dug this story um we got a lot of backstory and reasoning behind

[01:41:47] the creature which is normally bad for a monster but in this case knowledge is the monster which i kind of really liked um because like yeah a lot of stories you read it's like well we can't tell you everything because that ruins the like mystery of it and like this is kind of the opposite like i get to know about it but i hate that i get to know about it because that's bad technically yeah it's again not to keep quoting delta green stuff but it's sort of like when when the keeper the handler in delta

[01:42:15] green uh gives you guys a a green box which is like a cache of like supplies and weapons and stuff to deal with the mystery and it's like uh oh yeah you want a flamethrower you got a flamethrower you want rocket launcher you got one yeah you want an m16 got you got it and then the players are like wait wait the gm the handler's giving us all this we're fucked aren't we can i have a tank oh yeah sure you want to have it

[01:42:39] we are so i i guys not just us i think this entire this entire state is fucked if we're getting a tank and if the handler's like like why is he smiling so widely and like nodding like yes is the handler the other name for the gm in that game yeah handler is the delta green term for a for a gm because like oh okay uh delta green um cell like they

[01:43:07] work in cells like groups like small groups that like do their espionage and and burn down things to the ground um and they are they are deliberated and like debriefed and briefed by a handler so gotcha yeah uh but yeah back to this story yes um i i found the characters were were pretty fun um even though alex is kind of an idiot but he's an idiot for the purpose of actually getting through

[01:43:33] the story and i liked seeing him suffer yeah that makes me sound like a bad dude he's a fictional character yeah you're allowed you're allowed to love the torment of a fictional character yeah yeah i suppose uh but yeah and i also like that the monster was like a a neat hiding in sight hiding in plain sight kind of thing um yeah it's kind of cool and by the end i am really curious

[01:43:58] like i said if his friends were turned or if this is all in his head um stuff like that uh but like or like at the moment he's alone he'll just be like whisked away and added to one of the numbers of the dark lurkers like as soon as no one's looking at him he's just he's gone i mean now all of a sudden his like face is messed up and he's with them there's there's that or he ends up like the other uh professor the other librarian that he came to this place in the first place to and basically

[01:44:27] like when he's alone like after he's done telling the story and like has like a freak out at the end of their lunch he goes back to his room and then hangs himself because everything everything is the lontakis so it's just like oh i assumed they got actually just taken i people are just making excuses they're making mundane excuses so they're not saying that oh no there's creatures in this town that are taking people i also was kind of like wondering thing that but now that like you put in

[01:44:53] my head that like oh this might be like a memetic like insanity inducing thing i'm thinking that maybe that librarian just like read too much and then just offed himself as is very often the case in in in trope of like learning too much and just like ending it because you've seen too much in yeah also in this because knowing about it you know that you're going to be turned yeah it's a fate worse than death before he gets turned yeah i could see that so i think that might

[01:45:21] be an interesting like again like to add on to like the horror of your iteration of the story which is like that it's a it's like a mind virus um that like yeah the end point is basically like it just drives you insane to the point where you just end yourself and like maybe the reason why that prospector was never found again is because he went off into the mountains looking for looking for gold but really it was just to go off into the hills and kill himself it's possible and like again people don't like oh he went missing into those mountains like well did anybody search for him

[01:45:51] it's like no he went missing those mountains i'm going up there yeah that's scary it's 19 this is 1920 sir this is scary there's no infrastructure for search and rescue also in the future there's search and rescue stuff that's even more fucked up we don't do that what anyways moving on i'm sorry i'm referencing the reddit no sleep stuff the search and rescue woods

[01:46:15] ah we're like even in the modern day like search and rescue stuff is scary because yep the fucking wilderness and weird anomalies in but yeah indeed i digress you do um so yeah i still like the story honestly um i feel like this might be actually one of my favorites that emma pratt's done just because like the whimsy's toned down not that i hate whimsy but there's toned down whimsy

[01:46:45] lightly i'm being very careful with my words uh the the whimsy has been turned down a little bit but because of that like the actual horror is turned up yeah because the whimsy and horror knobs are kind of like that they work opposite to each other you know if there's too much whimsy there's almost no horror if there's a whole bunch of horror there's all there's like no whimsy to it um but i like that

[01:47:10] there were there's stakes to this there's relish in this as well it's delicious but there's steak because there's steak to this to relish yeah indeed because like hate so much because people could just die through knowledge of this like it's extremely threatening you could accidentally become one of them or be turned one of them just because you overheard someone talking about them you could just hear the

[01:47:37] name and a couple of lines and like you go home and start researching not knowing that okay now they got another victim like oh no what i just realized this is what this is kind of like what this is kind of similar to what the pee pee poo poo man the pee pee poo poo man the bye-bye man how like if you know about

[01:48:00] him you're fucked like yeah it kind of is that again that movie would have been better if we hadn't actually seen the bye-bye man at the end in full glory i think it would have been better if it was a little bit more subtle but yeah the the bye-bye man is very like this this is definitely like again memetic virus kind of thing like yeah and those things are scary because it's not something you can really like you can't fight that a lot no time too so yeah they either they got you or they don't

[01:48:27] got you yeah even if it is like a supernatural creature that is just like made more real to you personally the more the more you know about it you're still fucked because like how do you stop that yeah how do you unknow that information yeah like the only way that is a lobotomy i think it's it's only like i can't unsee that to like how do you unsee something how do you unknow

[01:48:52] something like without lobotomy or like anestics absolutely so yeah long story short um i'd fully recommend this one enjoy it yeah yeah i like slash hated that it we had like so much discussion over the ending like normally i want it explained to me but i kind of liked that we had a good

[01:49:16] discussion on it it made me think and your brain didn't hurt yeah most of the time it hurts when i think your brain don't hurt yeah this this one gave me the good brain juice not the bad brain juice that's good yeah i'm kind of i'm kind of with like again i i'm always gonna love the dark whimsy of of the of the mm pratt like hogan's gap and and kurtisville stories but i do love the i like this

[01:49:44] one is very much like a it's a different styling of of of of horror that she's tackling in this one it's it's more like there there's a there's a like there's a more not grounded but it's like there's a more like um like we're not we're not we're not getting trapped in the mire of like a greater mythos we're dealing with it's more focused i think in this one with one creature yeah the other ones are

[01:50:13] more fun this one is more like i don't know horrifying it's not horrifying yeah no it's horrifying it's it's fun in a different way like it's fun in a oh this is actually like yes whereas the other ones are like this is like this one's more like it's like that spectrum i have of like one side of the coin or one side of the spectrum is like horror aesthetic and like where it's like

[01:50:38] like costumes and like surface level horror stuff and like horror themed whereas then there's the other side which is substance and it's like more horror like the actual like uh the actual dissection of fear and like how do you like represent that and how do you really creep somebody out with with writing and horror fiction yes um and this this is somewhere closer to substance than a simple aesthetic and like there is like again some hogan's gap stuff in here like we do get a little bit like a little pinch of

[01:51:07] salt from like hogan's gap like with like what with the like the gurdine uh hermit woman but she could just just as easily just be like a hermit woman in the hills nearby near town that comes into town every so often like she doesn't have to be a dimensional gurdine um similar like to like the whole reference of the the elf stuff and like the other like fey creatures like that could all just be superstitious superstitions that somebody has in town that doesn't have to necessarily be like what's going on but

[01:51:34] like it's sprinkled in as just like sort of matter of fact that you can just accept it um sure and for people who have read some of her other stuff you're like oh it's hogan's gap literally me just as soon as i hear it yeah literally just like just repeating what i did what i did uh when i when i first saw hogan's gap in the story i could hear like the the hand gestures you were doing

[01:52:01] uh but yeah um so yeah i guess um uh two two recommendations and and one partial recommendation um a good a decent story but some room for improvement but not enough to like pause a non-recommendation so uh yeah that'll do it for this week's episode so if you like what you heard or if you didn't leave us a comment in the comment section below wherever this gets posted

[01:52:29] some of us are on blue sky mikey is at the e stands for evil and i'm at review cultist you can also send us emails at al dente rigor mortis at gmail.com that's a l d e n t e r i g a m o r t i s at gmail.com where you can also leave suggestions for other creep pastas scps spooky things you creep it we'll peep it yeah yeah and if you'd like to help support our show financially you can go to patreon we have

[01:52:58] special episodes early access and extra content to all our patrons helping support the show thank you immensely you're helping keep those hosting bills at bay and as always we very much appreciate that and to our listeners and the authors of these stories thank you immensely because without your listenership it'd be like screaming into the void and without your authorship writing and posting these stories online we really wouldn't have much of a show because we'd have nothing to talk about

[01:53:24] so thank you now's a good time to mention that we are part of a podcast network crit in the night an actual play and creepypasta podcast network we're there alongside our sister podcast one less die and our cousin podcast the role-playing exchange for things that go crit in the night until next time i have been your host review cultist i'm mikey these times and i'm the gamer in yellow

[01:53:51] and this has been al dente rigor mortis sleep well

[01:54:40] a professor named alex tuttle travel what was that what was that oh my laptop sliding sorry oh it was very loud apparently that seven seconds of gravity of gravity less uh earth uh just happened right localized to mikey's uh house you guys heard about that right like how yesterday on the 12th

[01:55:04] um since 2019 there's been like speculation that on august 12th uh of 2026 the earth would lose gravity for seven seconds okay weird it was some kind of like apparently there were two black holes that were like we're our planet would be our solar system would be passing by on its like cosmic journey and like the those two on either side of the system so like it we just hit that point where like

[01:55:30] we'd lose gravity for seven seconds while we quickly passed through like passed through that window that's weird that's weird you