Cracked Spines

We do not drink...wine. Unless the wine is extremely cheap and mixed with orange juice. Amelia and Sarah were briefly together in the same state and used that time to watch television, suffer mightily from the common cold, and slowly chug one (1) drink each. This week detours into Netflix's Castlevania, starring Richard Armitage at his sloppiest, Dracula and Lisa's accidental lovechild, villains of wildly different scheming capacities, and ISAAC who Amelia has decided is the most important character in the history of characterization. (Sarah's more partial to Hector, but that's because she likes her men like she likes her coffee: pathetically weak.) Ft. a special apology for not knowing dick about shit, which is the usual case for us, but Sarah felt particularly bad about it this time.

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Did rice crops create the most prolific maneater in recorded human history? Your hosts delve in to the story of the Champawat tiger, a creature which terrorized Indian and Nepalese villages for a period of ten years, evading large-scale efforts to hunt it down and ultimately killing an estimate of 436 people. Featuring the factors which make a maneater, a real-life musical instrument straight out of Hannibal, Amelia dunking on the British Empire, and Sarah dunking on Amelia for taking 10 minutes in the middle of the episode to look up a statistic.

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This week, Sarah and Amelia discuss Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, and spent A Lot of of time agonizing over the high highs and the very low lows of revisiting old favorites. Amelia reveals herself as the ultimate mold queen. Sarah grapples with her love for this book in the face of YIKES YIKES YIKES moments and then accidentally talks her way into a queer theory revelation. Here's the quotes she was trying to remember. No, she's still not sure why she finds it so meaningful. "Nothin' wrong with witchfinding. I'd like to be a witchfinder. It's just, well, you've got to take it in turns. Today we'll go out witchfinding, an' tomorrow we could hide, an' it'd be the witches' turn to find US."

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And on the Seventh Day, a new episode appeared. This week your hosts watch the new Good Omens TV series and kick around their favorite Crowley and Aziraphale fancasts: namely, Philip Quast as both. Also featuring the struggle of going back to media you loved as a kid, the extremely cursed abandoned Good Omens script, and the notebook in which Sarah documented both her religious awakening and her all-consuming lust for Carth Onasi. Martin Luther was also somehow involved.

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This week, Amelia and Sarah decide to defy God and Church alike to read The Golden Compass. Amelia struggles to find herself in the animal kingdom. Sarah raises questions about daemon sexuality that should have gone unasked. We also talk about things besides the daemons, but frankly we all understand what the most important part of this series is.

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This week, Amelia and Sarah are laser-focused on the book. Unfortunately, it's because one half of the team hated the book. Sarah shares horrific facts about historical blood transfusion. Amelia makes a compelling case for useless men who love their wives. We both are ready and willing to die for the vampire-hunting cowboy.

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This episode is all chianti, love darts, and apophallation as your hosts tuck into the latest installment in their obsession with cannibalism. From the all-you-can-eat buffet of insanity that is the animal kingdom to a deep dive into the culture of human cannibalism, there's a lot to sink your teeth into. Featuring spider sex diagrams, gender bias in scientific research, and Amelia desperately trying to explain why her obsession with this stuff is not weird at all guys, like, come on.

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This week, Sarah and Amelia discuss a work one of them has very passionate feelings about: the British television show Life on Mars. No, wait, they're talking about Les Mis again. No, wait, they're talking about Night Watch, part of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, and they're spinning theories that TPrat was waiting his whole career for some brave clever reader to figure out. Amelia regrets what she's heard. Sarah has nothing but respect for the furry community. They both agree that Terry Pratchett is proof that practice pays off.

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This week, Amelia and Sarah read the tale of the least satisfying trip north since the time we tried to drive to Newfoundland. (Please don't ask us how late in the planning it was that we figured out it was an island.) Lament the loss of what seems to be thousands of dogs in this group project from hell. Like expedition leader Donald MacMillan, we literally can't imagine anyone not being wildly enthusiastic about this topic.

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Happy birthday, Victor Hugo! In celebration, your hosts spend this episode dragging the man's masterpiece Les Miserables through the mud of their mutual thirst. This is technically an episode about the musical, though Amelia may or may not have poured over all the parts of the book exclusively relevant to Javert. We just can't know. Featuring Les Mis humiliation at the hands of family members, Javert character meta, song analysis, more Javert character meta, textual evidence misappropriated to support the Javert meta... Sorry Victor.

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