Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. Listener mail.
My name is Robert and I am Joe McCormick, and it's Monday, the day of each week that we read back messages from the Stuff to Blow your Mind mail bag. If you've never gotten in touch before and you want to give it a try, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Whatever you want to send us fair game. But we especially like if you want to respond to a topic we've talked about on the show recently and add something interesting
of your own. Let's see, rob We've got a bunch of messages in response to our invention series on crossbows. I think I'm going to kick things off with this message from Ahmed If that's cool with.
You, Yeah, let's do it.
Ahmed, who has written many great emails to us in the past. By the way, Ahmed says, hey guys, I'm ed again here. I loved your recent episodes on the crossbow, especially the discussions of its association with evil that seems sort of unfair and out of proportion with the technology
itself and as a refresher on the side. This is from the episode where we talked about how if you watch movies from the modern period where some kind of medieval fantasy is depicted or there's a medieval technology context, the crossbows are always used by the bad guys, almost always exclusively a villain weapon, and how this wasn't a It hasn't always exactly been seen like this, but there are threads of that going back to the medieval period itself.
There are some writings from the period that characterize the crossbow as a uniquely wicked or barbaric weapon, and we were wondering, like, why that, why the crossbow compared to any other weapon. Ahmed's message continues. One important example in literature that came to mind for me was the Rhyme
of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Coleridge. For those not acquainted, this is a Romantic Movement English poem that tells a story within a story of a sailor who shoots an albatross with a crossbow and is cursed for it before ultimate redemption. It's had a big culture impact, with famous imagery like an albatross hanging around someone's neck and lines
like water water everywhere, nor any drop to drink. I always thought it weird that this poem, published in seventeen ninety eight, so centuries into the gunpowder age, had the crossbow as the weapon the unnamed narrator uses to shoot the albatross. After listening to your episodes, this seems to fit into a broader cultural association of the crossbow with evil and wickedness, and in this case, a wicked act,
as the poem itself says. Quote by him who died on cross with his cruel bow, he laid full low the harmless albatross, Ahmed goes on. I wonder if part of this association comes from the fact that the crossbow made it easy for the first time to accidentally or unthinkingly kill or hurt someone. After all, the energy is already stored up, and all it would take is an accidental or impulsive pulling of the trigger. Besides dropping something
on somebody from high up. This was probably the first time a regular person without a catapult or ballista could get a ton of kinetic energy into something all of
a sudden without much work. You certainly get the idea that the mariner shoots the bird on a whim and I wonder if countless such unsung instances or half baked or accidental maiming and killing with crossbows were the reason for its bad rap that stuck around even centuries after gunpowder made even higher energies deployable with the push of a trigger. I couldn't find any actual scholarship on this,
but the speculation was too juicy not to share. Anyways, keep up the great work and happy Thanksgiving, Ahmed uh on it. Yeah, I don't know if that had occurred to me. I don't think it had. And that's a really interesting idea that the crossbow makes it easier to do to cause a lot of harm accidentally or with
very little immediate physical effort. I mean, it does take physical effort to cock it back, but that's something you can do in advance, and you know, the release of the mechanism to to unleash the violence is quite simple.
Yeah. Yeah, I think it's a great point on top of the fact that just like the basic technological metaphor is so irresistible, you know, and we touched on that a little bit Louis. It's referenced in sun Zoo and
so forth. But yeah, here is this this lethal the lethal force has already even applied, and then it may be the device may be set aside, and virtually anyone could then pick it up and fire it or misfire it, or whatever the case may be, and and could commit heinous crimes with it, such as in the case of the rhyme of the ancient marrin are shooting that blessed albatross out of the sky exactly.
So thanks for the email, Ahmed, I think that is a really interesting idea. Okay, Now, we invited listeners to chime in on a couple of topics related to crossbows in Dungeons and Dragons and rob There are several emails of this genre that you might need to help explicate and interpret for those not as deeply familiar with the game. Do you want to do?
This?
One from Emily Sure.
Emily writes it and says, Hi, guys, I'm listening to your episode about crossbows and wanted to chime in since you asked for comments relating to crossbows in tabletop RPGs. A few years ago, I DMed a game of Pathfinder, playing a published adventure path called Second Darkness. Mild spoilers
follow for this fifteen year old AP. The central plot revolves around the Drow rhymes with brow not crow, okay for anyone out there, or dark Elves, which at the time the AP was written, were an explicitly and exclusively evil race. Yeah, this is true. Nowadays in Duns and Dragons, you're finding a lot more needed nuance with specific races or species. So I think there were exceptions to the rule in the Older Lord, but nowadays it's less a matter of like, oh, yeah, the Drow are all evil,
They're all awful evil. Now we're opening it up and realizing you, no, no, it's okay that some of the Drow are evil and some are not evil. It's like they're just like people, right, And I think that's a much healthier place to land everything. Anyway, Emily continues. I believe the recently released second edition of Pathfinder has been updated such that this is no longer the case, but I'm not sure. The big twist of second Darkness in Universe is that normal elves turn into Drow if they
are sufficiently wicked. There's an important scene where this happens to an NPC picture below for your amusement. Kicking off the back half of the adventure rob.
Maybe we should go ahead and look down to this ps of this character, who is I don't even know how to begin to describe this a V neck shirt so deep it goes down to his belly button, and he's got like about six swords hanging off of his belt. And yeah, he looks like he's no good.
He looks like he should be fronting a really ridiculous I don't know, in late eighties, early nineties kind of satanic heavy metal band, I'm not sure, a little bit glam rock.
In there, Yeah, like the kind of bands that have song titles that translate to I dislike Christians.
Also, the Drow and this image has pale skin, which, of course in dungeons and dragons they're generally depicted as having a dark skin, which of course plays into some of the problematic aspects of having the Drow the evil. And then also always threw me for a curve because it's like, Okay, there's subterranean creatures. Shouldn't they be pale? Like subterranean creatures, shouldn'y have like translucent skin or something? But clearly I am and was overthinking that that aspect of the scenario.
Oh, and we should say Emily has a ps regarding this image. It reads who in the world would have suspected this guy of being evil? He has so many swords, Yeah, like six swords. Going back to in the same discussion we talked about, for some reason, in movies the sword is identified as like an honest and virtuous weapon, which is pretty equally silly to the crossbow being more evil than other weapons.
Yeah, all right. Anyways, she continues on to I guess the main point here, given your discussion in the second episode about crossbows being evil coded weaponry in fiction, it should come as no surprise that every single Drow the PC's encountered was packing a master work hand crossbow as part of their load out, even the castlers and folks
with other weapons, including swords. I suppose it makes sense for the Drow to favor the crossbow for the same reason Rob said dwarfs would favor them, good for low light, close quarters underground combat. Also, for the record, according to d twenty pfsrd dot com, an online pathfinder reference document, loading a hand crossbow is technically a move action that
provokes attacks of opportunity. Why they have conveniently forgotten this while I was running the ap but my players still manage to defeat the Drow and avert the titular second darkness all the same.
Oh wait, so in your campaign the Drow we're getting double the amount of attacks they should have.
No, if I'm understanding what she's saying correctly, it's like by engaging in reloading of the crossbow, you would be provoking an attack of opportunity, meaning that the enemy would get to make like an out of turn attack on me. Unless I'm misunderstanding something. But anyway, again, that sounds like one of those rules that suddenly makes using a crossbow in the game less fun, and maybe isn't a great rule, but that's just me.
I think we got another email this coming up.
Okay. Emily closes with this was a really interesting series of episodes. I liked Invention a lot when it was its own separate thing, and it's been a while since you guys have done a proper Invention episode, so this was a pleasant surprise to see when I opened my podcast app this week. Thank you as always for the excellent podcast.
Well, thank you, Emily.
Yeah, I enjoyed dipping back into the Invention content from time to time. You know, a splash of something different from time to time, so we'll definitely keep doing it.
Okay, here's more about crossbows and fictional worlds. Andrew says, Howdy, regarding your recent crossbow episode, you failed to mention Chewy's crossbow from Star Wars. I've always been confused on the physics of a laser crossbow. Did he have to reload it? How is a laser propelled forward with stored energy in the way? The traditional one is how is his weapon any different from any other Star Wars blaster? Thanks Andrew, Andrew, I have the same question growing up. I had no idea.
Why would you need a blaster to be a crossbow blaster? I don't know what advantage it provides.
Yeah, I mean it never made sense to me either. I'm sure it has been explained. Someone in the Star Wars fan world has explained this. I just haven't looked it up, but I guess I always tended to lean towards two possible sort of headcanon explanations. One, it's not really a crossbow. It doesn't have a string. Maybe it does have a string, but in my mind I just remember it has the like the bow shape, and then
they are like these balls on the end. So maybe those are for some sort of like electromagnetic rail gun scenario. I don't know, so something other than aiding in the drawing back of a bow, or is there is a string there and it's not so much about propelling something but as facilitating some sort of a fast function mechanical aspect of the device that plays into its launching of a laser boult.
Or what have you.
I'll have to go on Wikipedia to find out.
Wikipedia. Yeah, I think there's gonna have to be your answer, but it never made sense to me either.
All Right, Well, I'm just gonna go and read from Wikipedia. Here's what that Wikipedia says. Okay, quote the weapon used metal quarrels developed with plasma energy as ammunition. Two polarizing orbs placed on each end of the bow, creating a magnetic field that boosted the corals momentum. Once the cocking spring was pulled back, the trigger fired the coral, which
was enveloped in plasma energy. So if I'm understanding that correctly, it's still kind of a traditional crossbow, but with some sci fi stuff.
It's shooting bolts, like hard metal bolts that are surrounded by plasma energy. Like it's like a metal bolt with a blaster casing. It's like an eminem h that's kind of vicious, Like I can only imagine that blasting through your stormtrooper armor.
All right, what else do we have?
Let's see, well we got we got another one from Matthew about tabletop RPG rules with crossbows. Do you want to do this one around?
Oh? Yeah, yeah, sure, Matthew says, good morning. I just caught up with the two part an crossbows, and I have to admit I was stumped for a moment because I thought i'd seen statistics for the repeating crossbow in the wild. Instead, what I remembered was the esthetic choice Wizards meaning Wizards of the Coast made when they went MMO on fourth edition and purged a lot of the three point five materials to make it play more like
a video game. However, I did see the pathfinder blocks from the original version aka D and D three point seventy five, so I'm sure with a little conversion and whatnot, it can apply to the game since it still had roots in the three point five edition.
Okay, so this is a response to you saying you thought that there were repeating crossbows somewhere in the D and D universe at some point.
Yeah, I think in five E some enemies have them. But and it just and also it just makes sense that certainly someone's home brewed it, and it may be in a book that I just haven't seen. Anyway, Matthew serves a link with us and says, of course, I remember the two E versions having some more realistic rules on maintenance and upkeep, which made sure it was never used around the table. Kids these days and they're plug and play D and D. Thanks for everything, Nephew.
You know, making things in a game more like real life is not always an improvement. I don't know if Matthew would disagree with me there, but like, yeah, you have to use a turn to like load your crossbow. Is that as much fun? I don't know.
Yeah, yeah, there has to be a balance there, but I guess it's just always a struggle to figure out what the balance is. Because a certain amount of pdium in a game can be fun. I mean, there doesn't need it doesn't need to be too much like a video game, but you don't want it to be so complex that you know, only rocket scientists can play it part of the struggle.
All right. This next message is from Heraldo and it goes back to our episodes called from Before You Could Remember, our episodes about infant amnesia. Basically, Heraldo says, Hello, Robert and Joe, hope you're well. I live in Brazil and I've been a regular listener to the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast since twenty seventeen to twenty eighteen. Actually, I try to keep up with every episode in sequence and with the daily routine. I am currently still listening
to episodes from April. Yesterday, I finished the third part of the Before You Could Remember series, and I think I have something to share about it. You referred to a proposal which states that quote, it's not until we have mastered the concept of a self different from others that we're able to organize our memories into a sensical
form that can be retrieved across time. That idea immediately reminded me of a common phrase that I've listened since my childhood from my parents and other older members of my family, and which I've incorporated in my own verbal expressions.
They used to say something like and I guess this is in Spanish or Portuguese, so I apologize if I'm not saying this right, say disso des de qu au maintendo poorhente, which could be translated as I've known this since I've known myself as a person, as a way to say that the point when you identify yourself as a person is as far as your memory can reach backwards. I'm not a native English speaker, as you have probably already noticed, so I can't say if there is a
correlate expression in English. Anyway, I find it really interesting that such an idea is concealed in rather daily expression, and I thought it would be a shaable thing. Thank you for the delightful hours listening to the ever interesting and thought provoking subjects that you bring weekly to our appreciation. Please doing this brilliant work you do. Best regards, Heraldo. Oh, thank you so much, Heraldo. I did not know that expression,
and yeah, that is interesting. Yeah, I wonder where something like that would come from since I've known myself as a person, But.
It makes sense. It makes sense within the context of what we were talking about. I like it, all right, Shall we dive into some weird house cinema listener mail?
Sure?
Uh?
Yeah, Kick this off with whichever of these you want to read, Rob.
All right, This one comes to us from Adam. Adam says after listening to the most recent Weird House episode, The Butterfly Murders and watching, I found the look of the leader of the ten Flags ten thing reminded me of the main character in the graphic novel Fin Shing g wou Jing, though it's mostly the hair and cloak. I haven't thought about Fein Shinji in years, but recall
really enjoying it. It's said in a mythical world, thematically reminiscent of ancient China, where people and god's are fighting for supremacy. It's gorgeously illustrated and a fun read. I got hooked on Joe's recommendation and asterix by this will come back to this kill six billion demons years back, and thought I would return the favor. I enjoyed the main show quite a bit, but Weird House definitely quote unquote rubs the fur and I am always excited to
hear what film will be discussed next. Thanks for your hard work, best Adam.
Now I think I know what your asterisk is, Rob. I don't personally recall recommending kill six billion demons. That's not anything against it. I'm just not really familiar with this, So was that you or maybe Christian years ago?
I honestly don't remember. I know that I had a copy of it of one of the books of it and really loved the artwork and ended up passing it on to a friend, but I cannot recall if it's something that I learned about through someone else, or if Christian recommended it and I picked it up because Christian liked it. But at any rate, I recommend checking it out. It's pretty fun. As for this series that Adam is recommending,
I'll have to check it out. I'm really not familiar with it, but it sounds intriguing.
I mean, if the main character is like Bosston Funngro from Butterfly Murders, that's already in the plus column for me. Yeah, all right. This next message comes from Alan. Alan says, I've been catching up on past podcasts that I missed, and just listen to the Weird House episode about the movie Conquest. This is the Luccio Fulci Sword and Sorcery movies, kind of a Conan ripoff, starring the guy from Werewolf. The bad guy from Werewolf as a conan type guy.
I recall this movie having some well speaking of were wolves, doesn't have to like some wolf men that serve a sorceress and oh yeah yeah, and I recall a lot of good stuff. But it's been a while. Oh I remember this is one where they like, they like journey through a poison swamp that just ends up with Folci giving us like a three minute close up of the heroes Pustula wounds.
Yes, it is, I can say, without a shred of irony, is a great movie. I absolutely love Conquest. Yeah, I love it more every time that I watch it that I'll have more to say on this in a second once the email is finished.
Well, so Alan says. After listening, I immediately watched the movie. It sounded intriguing and visually I was not disappointed. Otherwise, I still haven't decided if I liked it or not. However, that did want to share a moment from the movie that made me laugh out loud. At the end, the wolves run to the forest, the hero walks to the shore, both somehow into the sunset. Good observation, and the credits start to roll. The first thing you read is quote,
any reference to persons or events is purely coincidental. Alan says, huh, I realized this could be something the studio just does regardless of the movie. But the idea of someone making the decision to add that disclaimer after making that movie
is hilarious. Maybe they added it ironically, which I can appreciate, but it's more amusing to imagine a group of people sitting around a table agreeing that, you know, boys, we cut this one pretty close to reality, and we better cover our butts so nobody thinks the movie was about them. That's all. Keep up the great work. Happy holidays, Alan, Thank you Alan.
Well. Now on the comment about not being sure if you liked it or not after watching it, as someone who loves Conquest, I will say this is the correct response to the first viewing of Conquest. It takes a while to figure out how you feel about it and to grow in your relationship with this particular film. But yeah, it's a bonker's one, especially bonkers, so the idea of anything in this movie matching up closely with reality is a bit ludicrous.
Imagine someone suing Fulchy for the way they were depicted in Conquest.
Yeah, this Yea. It's like you've totally stole my life story. I a topless, gold headed, uh sorceress with an army of were wolves, and uh, you're you're using my story without without my permission, without giving me a cut of the pot.
How could they? Yeah?
Yeah, I probably need to revisit some other full Chie films. At some point. We may do another full Chy film on Weird House. But uh, I have to say it's my favorite right now. It's Uh, it's it's my It's my favorite ful Chief film without a doubt. That's that's where I stand at the moment. They're not all they're not all winners. There's there's some real dogs in that filmography.
Uh.
You know, he made a lot of films. This one, though, I think, is something special to say.
The thing about putting together all the full Chi movies I've seen, they're all gross, and so the question is are they gross and also brilliant or just gross? Or are they gross and also brilliant and funny? That that's like the the triple combination is conquest all three. It's hard to say, but maybe.
You know, I got excited about about a Fulshy film earlier this year, and I thought, well, this, this might be the one. I got a copy of Murder Rock Dancing Death from nineteen eighty four, I think I rented it from a video drum, and I was like, this, this sounds great. It's a rock musical about you know, some sort of like a dance studio murder scenario, and there are a lot of dance numbers, you know, kind of like an elongated music video by Fulci. This this has to be a winner.
It sounds but it sounds great.
It sounds good. It sounds so much better on paper. Maybe some people love this. Maybe it's like Conquests, you have to see it multiple times and you appreciate it. But I just didn't like the music. And I felt like if the music had been good. It felt like if it had really good, solid disco numbers, I could have gotten into it more. But I just couldn't. House by the Cemetery is another great one. We did a weird house episode on the House by the Cemetery. That's
still one of my favorites. That's like close second to Conquest from Me. But you know, and maybe in the future we'll come back and watch something else.
You know.
There's of course the Beyond, there's Zombie, and then I've also heard interesting things about like his non horror work. You know, he did some westerns as well that are supposed to be gory and gross, but also more or less westerns.
I just had a thought, which is that I bet Luccio Fulci is the filmmaker who has made the films that the most people have years later wondered if they dreamed them or if it was a movie they saw.
Yeah. Yeah, Like we said, there's often a dream like quality, especially in Conquest, and I think that's one of the reasons I loved it so much, is that it really has this feeling of an unreality that you're cinematically engaging with. However, you know, Fulchi never made a Christmas movie really, or did he? I don't know, Maybe it was a dream. All right, we're gonna gohead and cap it there, but
we'll be back with you know. The regular schedule of episodes this week, Core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Short form Artifactor Monster on Wednesday, and on Friday, another Weird House Cinema selection. You can, of course email us. Joe will throw up that email address in just a minute but other ways to engage with us on the show. There's a discord server. Email us and we'll send you the link for that. There's a Facebook group it is the Stuff to Blow your Mind discussion module. Just if
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Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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