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With new perspective comes new insight, and we've got two brand new POV characters today! Maggie's Comet Corner returns to help us make sense of Theon's Freudian violence and Davos' prophetic doubts. Cam takes a closer look at Martin's narrative structure and stumbles upon an illuminating Tolkien comparison. We may have our first glimpse of Gondor and Rohan! Finally, we wrangle up all the creeping supernatural elements in this series and finally confront the many gods of Westeros. Are any of them real? How can we be sure? Does it even matter? Finally, we wrap up the discussion by revisiting and revising a few of our ongoing theories.

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What do you get when you combine the dark fantasy of Van Helsing with the horror of old school Universal monster movies — and then sprinkle a healthy dash of Red Dead Redemption on top? Well, you get Evil West, the outrageously fun fantasy horror western hidden gem that is the subject of this episode. Topics include: the ingenious gameplay hybrid of God of War 2018 and Doom Eternal, the power of contrast and saturation in art direction, puzzle piece enemy design, the restraint of a great fight, and the perfect "thrill ride" pacing of the Xbox 360 generation.

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This was a tough episode to record. Our beloved Alamo Drafthouse has spent the last few months systematically destroying everything we loved about it. In this fiery eulogy, we're reminiscing about what the Drafthouse has meant to us over the years, condemning what it has become, and analyzing the vile new mobile ordering system within the larger trend of corporate enshittification.

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Luckily for us, George R. R. Martin seems to have written A Clash of Kings in couplets. And it's not just basic narrative themes or tone that he explores two chapters at a time, there are more explicit structural similarities too. In this episode, we're exploring two strikingly different and hauntingly similar accounts of marginal characters who have been thrust suddenly onto center stage. Maggie is exploring the Spider's riddles and the true nature of power. We're working together to take another crack at our ongoing Stark Werewolves theory. Cam's tracking ghosts through the Westerosi countryside, and stumbling upon an old friend. The discussion culminates in a titanic, brand new Macbeth conspiracy that's even more fruitful and wicked than the one we investigated throughout A Game of Thrones.

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Riz Ahmed's Hamlet is both a fantastic film and a tremendously sharp, fearless work of adaptation. In this episode, we're running through a dozen of the smartest and most provocative choices that make this the definitive modern staging of Hamlet. Topics include: a new twist on Shakespearean doubling, high-speed soliloquies, first person editing, weaponized silences, and a rash of character changes that refresh centuries-old archetypes while retaining the soul of the original text.

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Hunters of Dune is the first mainline Dune novel not written by Frank Herbert. In this episode, we're exploring the markedly different writing styles and narrative priorities that Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson bring to the series, as well as the equally unavoidable and unanswerable question of their fidelity to Frank Herbert's original vision. Cam's also investigating the sudden gold rush of gholas, face dancers, Reverend Mothers, and self-duplicating robots to build out a theory on dissolving personal identities and historical patterns. Finally, we zoom in on the novel's brand new villains, who paradoxically seem to come out of both left field and ancient history. This one's a doozy, let's dive in!

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Chapter by chapter fantasy discussions lead us in some very strange directions. In this episode, Maggie does a deep dive into our characters' myopic, almost spiritual interpretations of the comet hanging overhead and then (not ten minutes later) she investigates the symbolism and historical implications of GRRM coding his aspiring kings with an assortment of precious metals. Cam explores the dueling mysticism and metaphor of the series' endless parade of ghosts before tackling the strange structural similarity of these two chapters and what could very well be a sweeping statement about cycles of history, dual identities, and the unavoidably tragic deaths of principled men. Fantasy — the genre that keeps on giving!

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Dolly is a demented and delightful indie slasher, 80 straight minutes of "what the fuck" that totally revitalized the genre for us. In this episode, we're discussing the film through three pointed lenses of comparison: Hansel & Gretel, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Strange Darling.

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Diablo IV's shortest season yet has also turned out to be its most promising. Season of Slaughter is an ode to fan favorite character 'The Butcher,' but beneath all the flash this season represents an exciting reinvestment in the foundational parts of Diablo IV. After a short burst of narrative, Sanctuary opens up with a whole bevy of new and refreshed activities. This is fun factor personified, and it has us feeling incredibly hopeful about the future. Topics include: state of the game, seasonal campaign, a class update exploring all sides of the Paladin, and a look at the forthcoming Lord of Hatred expansion.

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It's rare for a horror movie to divide us this much. Undertone scared the bejeezus out of Maggie, but left Cam completely cold. In this episode, we're exploring both of these reactions in turn as we investigate the question of what makes Undertone so terrifying and divisive. Topics include: invisible creature design, weaponized ambiguity, "downtime" in horror movies, our complicated relationship with genre tropes, and a reckoning with the most strangely overpopulated genre in movies: dead mom stories.

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