Recorded Neutral Territory - A Dresden Files Podcast

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (00:00)
So yeah, and the question for us, I figure we can talk about, you know, what's your favorite Western movie or TV show or video game or like one of those things that's set in the Old West, even if it's not considered a Western, something like that.

Brian (00:10)
Geez, Adam, okay, why not do our favorite Western board game or our favorite Western music video too?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (00:17)
well that's absurd. Obviously the best Western music video is Lindsey Stirling's Round Table Rival.

Brian (00:28)
That's completely wrong. The best western music video is Will Smith's Wild Wild West from the hit film.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (00:42)
Okay, yours is more absurd than mine. uh

Brian (00:44)
Hahaha

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (00:45)
But Lindsey Stirling is really good.

Welcome one, welcome all, welcome to recorded neutral territory where the spoilers go all the way to briefcases. Yes, that's right, ladies and gentlemen, today is our first Patreon episode and we're diving into a fistful of warlocks. am Adam Ruzzo and with me today as always is an eagle-eyed deputy, it's Brian O'Reilly.

Brian (01:16)
That man's got an ace up his sleeve. And I ain't speaking metaphorically.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (01:22)
well

then he's gonna have to be thrown out and possibly lampooned. All right, so Fistful of Warlocks has actually been one of my favorite, I don't know about you, Brian, it's been one of my favorite side stories in the various micro-victions and small stories that we have here and there. And I think it's partly because I think Jim nails the sort of different character point of view, because I don't think that Lucio feels like Harry with a different name, like you might expect could be the case.

Brian (01:49)
Yeah, I definitely think that having written other books, other series, Codex Hilaria, at the time this is at,

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (01:56)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (01:57)
least, has given Jim the ability to sort of really think about whose perspective he's writing from. And I'd say that's true of every short story we read in another perspective. I think just about all of them, as far as I'm concerned, he does a good job with that perspective. And this one is one of the best because Lucio's such a good character.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (02:17)
Yes, she's so cool. And you can tell, he's so excited to write her in this short story too, because you can tell in the prologue, he talks about how he likes writing from the perspective of the young hothead of whatever era he's writing in. And that's perfect for this. But could we have found another character for this period in the weird West that we know from the Dresden books that could have fit here?

Brian (02:42)
Yeah, I think one really interesting option is to do a very young Morgan, Lucio's apprentice. Now, I don't think he's necessarily around at this point. Like Lucio obviously does not have an apprentice with her in this story, but this could have been set later. You know, the Wild West, as we classically think of it, does extend into the 1900s. Now, the tricky thing about picking Morgan is Morgan seems to know

a lot even early on that'd be very plot relevant and maybe we don't ever want his POV but also Morgan has a western story already the skinwalker tale with the nuclear testing in the 50s so if you're

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (03:26)
Yeah.

Brian (03:26)
not going to do that one then you know you really can't use it

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (03:30)
Yeah, some of the other candidates, Ebenezer, obviously, he was around in this period, but unlike what Jim says he wants to do in the prologue, Ebenezer's definitely not a young hothead at this point. He's already like 150 years old, I think, by this point. Listens to Wind, also even older than that. Lara might be, but she was, I think she even, she's probably around 100 years old or more at this point.

Brian (03:54)
She's definitely

much older because I think she talked about seeing Lucio dance in Naples when Lucio is a young woman.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (04:03)
Yeah, and when she was like already a hundred or something ridiculous.

Brian (04:05)
Right. Now I think that

Lara could have been kind of fun because it could have been a very similar story just without a wizard, you know, like a white court vampire in the Old West definitely could be exciting.

Jim talks about how this period in the Dresden Files doesn't have anything written for it. This late 19th century period. So picking a character whose backstory has got to be important. It's got to matter. She ends up becoming the head of the wardens. Lucio might have become a senior counselor one day if it hadn't been for the body swap.

So

she's definitely important enough to merit the story and it's not stepping on anything that's already set. But you, Adam, came up with a different option that I think would have been really...

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (04:51)
Yes, Kincaid, Jared Kincaid. We know he's around in this period because the famous, or infamous, Istanbul incident between him and Ebenezer happens sometime in the 19th century. And we don't really know how old he is, I don't think, though I get the impression he's about a couple hundred years old, maybe the same age as Lucio or thereabouts. So he could be considered a younger hothead during this period.

Brian (05:13)
And I also feel like, getting us to see a short story from somebody who's not a wizard just kind of makes things a little bit easier on Jim. He does an amazing job with Lucio in this story. We're going to talk about it. But when you're doing an old West story, but you have the access to magic, it can be hard to make it feel old West. It's just going to feel like fantasy. So can Cade having, you know, engaging in gunplay.

in the Old West definitely could have been a cool story. uh

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (05:44)
Yeah,

there's no one in the entire cast that says gunslinger more than Kincaid, or

Brian (05:49)
Agreed.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (05:50)
maybe Murphy, who could also fit into that deputy-type role there. Now, Brian, Jim has actually done a pretty good job of setting this based on some of the historical research that I've done.

takes place in Dodge City, which is where Lucio is arriving at the beginning of this story. Dodge City was founded in 1871 and blew up really big, really fast. The saloon that is referenced in this story was founded in 1874. And we know it's somewhere after 1874 and we know it's somewhere before 1879 because the cemetery that the undead come from at the end of this story was moved.

in 1879 in order to build a schoolhouse. So it has to be somewhere in that four or five year period.

Brian (06:34)
and

we're pretty sure that it's

close to 1879 for two reasons. First of all, Wyatt Earp, is a character in this story, is in and around Dodge City and is making part of his illustrious reputation during the year 1878 with a couple shootouts in and around the saloon actually mentioned in this story. And also because this provides a pretty good reason to move the cemetery, you know, the real reason the cemetery is moved.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (07:02)
Yeah.

Brian (07:03)
So it might be right at the beginning of

79 or towards the end of 78

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (07:09)
Yeah, and the other interesting element that is introduced right at the beginning of the story is that Anastasia Lucio is riding a not horse, which is a fantastic way to introduce this thing because it very quickly and concisely gets across the idea that she's riding something that looks like a horse, but isn't. And in this case, it's described as a Naken, which is the Scandinavian, specifically the Swedish, I believe.

version of the name. There are a bunch of other names including Nix or Nixie and they're all over the Germanic, Scandinavian, and English area in terms of these fairy tales about a water spirit that often is shaped like a horse.

Brian (07:54)
I'd actually heard of the Nixie before and I was really glad that you did this research because I didn't make the connection that it was the same creature.

I said, oh, it's weird that he's not going with Nixie. does the Irish, the British Isles mythology so often. You know, in this case, he's he's taking it from somewhere else. whatever. And then to find out that this is the Scandinavian version of effectively the same thing was like, oh, OK, cool. So Jim's broadening his range a little bit. He's he's broadening the breadth of the folklore that he's drawing fairies from, because this is effectively a fairy.

but he's still using a creature that has a ⁓ place in the cultural traditions that he's already done so much work in. So I like him referring to it as a Nacken here to kind of show its place of origin, even though he effectively is just, you know, amalgamating the traits of all of the, fairly similar water horse things.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (08:52)
Yeah, and when I think water horse, think Kelpie, which is I think,

Brian (08:55)
Mm-hmm.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (08:56)
is it like the Celtics or Scottish version of a similar creature? But in this case, the Nakin is considered to be 17 hands tall. For those of you not into horse culture, I'm not either, I just did some cool research. That's about five foot eight inches to the top of like the shoulder blades on the back of the horse. And 17 is a...

fairly impressive size for a horse. If you think of like a horse that you see cowboys riding in a Western, 17 is a fairly large version of that.

Brian (09:27)
Yeah, and we should remember that in real life, the horses are a little bit smaller than the ones we see on TV because modern horses are bred usually for, you know, the kind of riding competitions that are popular nowadays. But

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (09:40)
Ah.

Brian (09:41)
steppe horses, all, the Mustangs of the American West obviously came from European horses. But as horses become feral, they tend to get a little smaller and stockier because it's easier to survive in that environment.

One interesting thing about the Nixie that I just want to bring up is, uh I'm just going to read you a quote from Wikipedia because this is why I'm saying Jim is firmly in his wheelhouse. English folklore contains many creatures with similar characteristics to the Knicks or Knack. These include, first one listed, Jenny Greenteeth.

So

just throw it out there for us. So this is a impressive not horse. It's magnificently white. The Nacken looks like, you know, the kind of horse that not just the cowboy rides into town, but the masked stranger rides into town in the spaghetti Western.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (10:37)
Yeah, exactly. the creature, the Nakin, the Nixie, is also known as a shapeshifter, which fits the story here because we see that it's pretending to be a horse, but it can shape shift into its quote unquote real form at the end of the story that we're talking about. its horse form sometimes has its own name. The research that I had said it's a backahast, and this is a quote from Wikipedia as well. The backahast was often described as a majestic white horse that would appear near rivers.

particularly during foggy weather. Anyone who climbed onto its back could not get off again. The horse would then jump into the river, drowning the rider. The brook horse could also be harnessed and made to plow, either because it was trying to trick a person or because the person had tricked the horse into it. There's a series of various fairy tales of people, you know,

tricking the horse or the horse tricking them and then dragging them under and drowning them. And obviously Jim has taken that as inspiration for the wager that puts the horse at Lucio's disposal for this story.

Brian (11:39)
And one thing that I really appreciate about A Fistful of Warlocks is, okay, so the name comes from A Fistful of Dollars, the part

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (11:48)
Yes.

Brian (11:48)
of the good, the bad, and the ugly trilogy of films, which are spaghetti westerns, Sergio Leone westerns. As I described, this is the kind of majestic steed that we'd expect a hero in a very romanticized western film to ride. And Lucio is, of course,

literally a spaghetti western protagonist because she's italian so i just love

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (12:10)
Yeah, she's Italian.

Brian (12:12)
that symmetry it's just it tickles me

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (12:15)
Absolutely. Now, Brian, let me ask you a question. This is, as we just mentioned, an old world creature, right? Scandinavia, Germanic, English, Celtic. What is it doing here in the Old West?

Brian (12:28)
So we get a little bit of commentary from Karl The Nacken on this, where we know that he attempted to drown Lucio by ⁓ saying that he wagered against her whether she could spend an hour on his back. And Lucio knew he was going to dive under the water with her, and he didn't know Lucio was ready for that. So Lucio won the wager by spending an hour presumably on his back underwater.

But there also seems to be a little bit of something extra thrown in here because Lugio describes him as being released from his probation when they

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (13:05)
Hmm.

Brian (13:06)
complete the mission, which makes me wonder if he's actually also kind of been arrested for attempted murder of a warden. And that's why she both has the wager over his head and this sort of obligation from the misdeeds that the council has accused him.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (13:22)
Now let's get into the actual story here, Brian. We're guessing Lucio is around 70 to 75 years old in this story, if we're correct about the date, which is around 1878. She was born uh roughly a couple years before the War of 1812, because Jim has described her as...

barely remembering the War of 1812, so maybe she's born around 1805. So that puts her at about 70 to 75 years old moving into this story. And she's still described as a young hothead, which, you know, wizard years, 70 to 75, that's like 30 or so in normal human years.

And that brings us to the actual story itself. So Lucio arrives in Dodge City riding her knot horse.

and it was such a big important town, partly because the fact that Eastern Kansas was off limits because the cattle down in Texas had this parasite that they didn't want to spread to the areas in Eastern Kansas. So it moved the actual cowboy routes up to the stockyards.

further west and Dodge City took advantage of that during this period. So it grew very quickly because all this economic activity just suddenly got concentrated at the next rail stop down the line.

Brian (14:28)
Right. And if you go look at the population of Dodge City on Wikipedia, the census records are only having a thousand or a couple thousand people living there at about this time. that m doesn't account for the constant influx of cowboys and herds and all of the trading that's happening in this outpost. So, yes,

the settled population of Dodd City, the people who live there regularly and stay there full time, isn't that high. But the reason why it's a hive of activity for Lucio is because of all of this trade, all of these people who are essentially visiting on business. An interesting thing is that Jim, feel like, either has done his research really well on the whole in this story, or...

It's just sort of very easy for him to visualize as somebody who grew up in Oklahoma. Because of course he immediately comments on the flatness of Kansas. Adam, have you ever been to Kansas? I

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (15:34)
I've not.

Brian (15:34)
was there once when I was 17 and it is astoundingly flat. is

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (15:40)
Right?

Brian (15:41)
just really hard to convey how weirdly flat Kansas is.

if you've grown up somewhere where it's just normal for there to be hills. Not like Long Island is so hilly, but Kansas is like golf course flat.

And

we will get to this at the end of the story, but it also seems like Butcher did his research about Dodge City. Not only is he using the most significant saloon and placing Wyatt Earp correctly inside that saloon at this date, but I also really feel like the way he's just structured the later scenes in this story suggests that he pulled up a historical map or something.

to just kind of get a feel for what the town looked like. Because I can tell you that I haven't been able to find something that detailed about, you know, what is 1878 Dodge City look like from the street to street perspective. But Jim does, I feel, have a pretty good command over how high the buildings are and, you know, just what the construction's like in a way that either bespeaks a great imagination or a good amount of research on his.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (16:52)
or

a lot of Western movies, consuming.

Brian (16:53)
Sure, yeah, could be that, could be that.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (16:56)
It'd be that. So Lucio arrives, she starts looking for her target, which is Alexander Page. He's the warlock that she's chasing on her way through Dodge City. She's tracked him here she basically goes to the first place she can find that looks civilized and asks some questions, looking for the bad part of town, more or less. She explains.

much like Dresden does in the mainline books, that warlocks tend to seek out places that are themselves sort of the bad side of town, hives of scum and villainy as it were, because they feel more comfortable there, they can blend in better, they can hide better. And so she visits several of these places before winding up at the Long Branch Saloon.

Brian (17:40)
So right before she goes into the saloon, as any good cowboy does, she ties up her horse. But Lucio specifically tells Carl, don't let yourself be stolen.

And Carl snorts. And when I first read this, I was like, this is a joke because they both know that of course nobody could steal a napkin. The napkin's more likely to kill the horse thief. But I wonder, is that laughable because nobody could steal a napkin? Or does Carl snort because he was thinking of getting out of the deal by letting himself be stolen?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (18:15)
That's possible, though the deal, so much as we know about it, is that he is to serve as her loyal mount for as long as she's on this hunt. And so to me, allowing yourself to be stolen is not a very loyal act. So I still read it as a joke, as her like just having fun there, but you're right, it could be that she is trying to close that loophole, so to speak.

Brian (18:41)
I mean, he can always say I was just maintaining my disguise.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (18:46)
Exactly, exactly. that just to be sure, let's close this loophole in case he has the free ability to do that.

Brian (18:53)
Now, Lucio historically

does go to other saloons in Dodge City, and there were other saloons in Dodge City, before she finally ends up in the Long Branch Saloon around sundown. And in her attempt to enter the Long Branch Saloon, she faces her first obstacle of the trip, which is that she's not allowed to bring her sidearm inside.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (19:18)
which would be less of a problem for a wizard because they've got the forces of creation without their weapon. Now, what I kind of expected when I was reading this story, Brian, was that we would find out that her gun is also enchanted in the

Brian (19:33)
Mmm.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (19:33)
same way that her sword is, but we don't really get any hint of that here. And I'm not sure if that's something that Jim is saving for later as a fun thing for Dresden to do or something else, but it seems like if you're gonna...

Enchant your sword, you should also be able to enchant your gun or the bullets or something to that effect to help them break through enemy defenses and things like that. He didn't deploy that here. And it might just be because it's a short story and he didn't have a need for that particular thing, but I'd love to see that in the future.

Brian (20:02)
Well,

I wonder if, and we're going to talk about this a little bit more later, it's because the firearm that Lucio is using is essentially the height of technological sophistication at the time.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (20:13)
Oh, and magic wouldn't really work well on it, yeah.

Brian (20:16)
So I wonder if the tech gremlins make Lucio, you know, frankly, not too unwilling to give up the weapon in the first place. She needs one. If she didn't have one, it would be weird for her to, you know, sort of be a woman traveling alone with, you know, no way to protect herself. But she probably doesn't really care if she gives it up because, it might not even work that well all the time for her.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (20:37)
Yeah, maybe it's the equivalent of the Blue Beetle for Harry more or less.

Brian (20:40)
Sure.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (20:40)
Now,

the deputy that stops her turns out to be Wyatt Earp, and that reveal is very cool, but it doesn't come until later. At this point, he's just mysterious deputy who is enforcing the town ordinance that you're not allowed to carry firearms while in the town limits. Oddly enough, that ordinance is only enforced if you walk into the saloon, not when you're outside of it, or that's just where she happened to get caught.

but in this case, she has some fun banter back and forth with this deputy, and I find it really charming, the sort of chemistry between her and Wyatt Earp

Brian (21:14)
It's

really wonderful first because it's just well written and I like both of the characters and they read as people who are interested in each other immediately. But also because I love how easily Jim slips into the Western cadence in a way that, you know, I don't know if it's authentic, but it seems authentic to every movie and TV show I've ever seen. You know, from the pardon me, ma'am that Earp, you know, meets her with the door.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (21:42)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (21:42)
to even her description of him, which is just like an eighth of an inch from saying, a tall glass of water standing over in the corner. I mean, it's, you know, the tall lead man with the droopy mustache. I find this ordinance irksome, you know, as Lucio's reply, the sort

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (21:59)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (22:00)
of polysyllabic words thrown in in the laconic cadence. It's all over this and it

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (22:05)
Yeah,

when she talks about wagering the money and he says, ma'am, losing that bet would be a singular pleasure.

Brian (22:12)
Yes.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (22:12)
Like, there's something about, I don't know what it is, but I love it. I loved it when they did it in Firefly, and I love it here. And I'll bring up one of my favorite lines from the whole thing later on, and it's exactly one of those things.

Brian (22:24)
Yeah, so we're immediately introduced to this deputy who, if you've seen a picture of Wyatt Earp, you might guess who it is because the description is on point, or if you've just seen Tombstone. um But we don't get that immediately. We get Anastasia, um after commentary that her sidearm is a lot of gun for a little lady, um heading into the saloon to try to pursue her quarry.

where

we're introduced to some magical gear that can I frankly say is way cooler than any magical gear we've seen anywhere else.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (23:01)
It's so versatile. Can you imagine if Harry's trying to spot somebody in a crowd or something, he could just put on some green spectacles and find the one that's colored like subterfuge or something to that effect? Like, it just seems like so cool. The way that she describes it, the people working at the establishment were the green color of someone focused on a task and the people that were gambling or drinking were having that, the pink of like, sort of,

light joy or something. It's just, it's just such a cool idea. And I really think this is a very cool comparison between Harry and Lucio because, and maybe this is because these are the only characters that we see directly into their heads as like the older characters, but they both are enchanters. I mean, we've seen so many different magical gadgets that Harry has crafted over the years and he's constantly making newer versions, better versions. And here we have Lucio who has obviously her swords and the swords that she makes for every single warden.

personally. So she's obviously a master enchanter when it comes to those weapons, but she's also got these special spectacles that let her see the different emotions of the people in the room. And it is absolutely one of the coolest ones we've ever seen.

Brian (24:12)
Now

I'm putting you on the spot a little bit here, Adam, but did that remind you of anything? The goggles seeing the emotions in colors?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (24:21)
Not off the top of my head.

Brian (24:22)
So there is a scene in Turncoat where Dresden is looking for, he doesn't know it's the Negloshi yet, but he's looking for the Negloshi in the Blue Beetle right before he then crashes that car and has to stumble over to the Alphas where he opens the site and he describes sort of the colored anima of the people around him swirling throughout the city and how the different colors.

sort of represent different possible states of emotion that they're in, sort of this cool light show.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (24:53)
Huh. So

the spectacles might be a way to do that without opening the sight and

Brian (25:00)
Which.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (25:01)
all of the negative repercussions that that implies.

Brian (25:03)
which is

so in, mean, Lucio, she makes the Warden's Swords She's clearly not just an enchanter like Harry. She is a top of the line. You know, this is her thing.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (25:14)
by the time we get

to the Dresden mainline books, absolutely, she's like a master enchanter, for sure.

Brian (25:18)
And

this is a kind of craftsmanship that makes me think that enchantment for Lucio is like mind magic for Molly. It is just her singular

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (25:26)
Yeah.

Brian (25:26)
skill because if she's actually taking the sight, which is a kind of magic that we don't really even understand the working of and managing to like partially imbue an object with only this one useful thing that the sight does, that just sounds to be a level of subtlety and complexity.

that is so incredible. this little.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (25:49)
Yeah,

and that's well over 100 years before we meet her in the book, so she's got another 100 years of experience on top of this. Assuming that she's the one that made the spectacles, somebody could have given it to her. Maybe she's an apprentice to a master enchanter at this time, but I think that's her own gear. I really think it is.

Brian (26:05)
Yeah,

I mean, think every wizard we see, the gear they use, they make with their own hands. I, it's a really cool instrument and I just love little details like this where Jim gives us a feel for what the different characters are good at. That doesn't just make them a wizard, but makes them different, makes them specialized.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (26:27)
Now one thing that Harry and Lucio are different on is that Lucio is clearly a fan of wagers. We

Brian (26:33)
Mmm.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (26:34)
know that the Nacken was obviously won quote unquote, in a wager, and immediately upon reaching and meeting Wyatt Earp, she just challenges him to a shooting contest and says that during that flirtatious banter, that's where he says, you know, that would be a wager I would be happy to enjoy losing or whatever. ⁓

That is another sort of difference between them, is that she's happy to engage in those wagers. We never see Harry do anything like that, or like make a bet, or anything to that effect. So she does use those spectacles and finds not just one warlock, but four playing cards that don't appear to have seen her yet.

and she thinks for a little while about what course of action she should take. She goes over to the bar, tries to pretend to blend in, and hopes that they don't see her, and tries to figure out what she can do at this point, and it's referenced that she probably should leave because while some wizards have taken out more than one warlock at a time, only one warden has ever taken out three warlocks at a time and come out on top.

And that was the current captain of the Wardens, a man named McCoy.

Brian (27:45)
Yeah, you gotta love that Jim is working in the details of his setting, the details of the structure of the White Council so nicely here. You almost expect to just hear the name of the current Merlin or something thrown around too.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (27:58)
Right?

Brian (27:59)
Yeah, but we do get that this is when McCoy is the captain of the warden. So obviously he wouldn't fit the young hothead trope, but he has taken three warlocks.

And I just love that Jim's working in all of these little bits here because of course, Lucio sees four of them. But Adam, if you're gonna have a fistful of warlocks, how many do you need?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (28:25)
You need five, and that's why right when she makes the smart decision, which again, makes us like her as a character, she makes the smart decision to go and find backup, to like leave, because this is too dangerous. That's when the quote unquote German, the fifth warlock comes up behind her and sticks a derriger in her side, discreetly, and orders her to walk outside. And at that point, the illusion is simply broken.

the other warlocks that were up playing cards immediately end their game and head outside because this was a setup.

Brian (29:00)
Now, I love this. We see Lucio make the two wagers before she walks into the saloon, and she describes herself as, I had never been a particularly cautious person. I was not, however, stupid.

And seeing Lucio gamble and be a little reckless, it really earns her being the captain to put uh a cloak on Harry in deadbeat.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (29:28)
Mmm.

Brian (29:29)
Because somebody like Morgan wouldn't do that. But somebody who gambles, who takes risks, well, they'll consider that.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (29:37)
Yeah, uses a gut

decision-making thing because they've got good instincts. Kind of like Harry, actually.

Brian (29:42)
Yeah,

so I love that characterization from this short story of the young Lucio blending into the very mature Lucio from Deadbeat. But also, let's hear this description of Kempler, because it's the only one we get the whole series. I turned to begin walking decisively toward the door and practically slammed my nose into that of a handsome man in his mid-forties.

beard neatly shaved, dressed in an impeccable suit. His eyes were green and hard, his teeth far too white for his age, and he was pressing a tiny derringer pistol to my chest, just beneath my left breast." So, the things that I love about Kemmler's characterization, and we can, like, think about what this means a little bit.

is first of all, he's a man who uses fine things. He's got a nice suit. He has a fine accent. He has an impeccable little pistol. Very German, you know, to have the perfectly shaven beard and the

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (30:50)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (30:50)
well-machined things. But I love the line about the teeth. The teeth are far too white. Now, you discussed with me a theory because Kemler's already supposed to have died once by this point.

about

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (31:06)
Yes.

Brian (31:06)
why we might be meeting Kemmler after his apparent death. And I don't want to necessarily spoil that, but I do want to say that the teeth line stood out to me, because that's a weird thing in the era before dental hygiene, especially for a wizard who's presumably much, much older than he looks.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (31:28)
Yeah, that's a really good point. the record, I believe Bob is the one who mentions that the first time they killed Kemmler was the quote, early 19th century quote. So it would have been somewhere in the early 1800s. And that would probably be too early for Warden Lucio to be involved, which is the reason she doesn't necessarily identify him on site here. Later on, she figures out, oh, this guy's a big leader.

of these other guys who turn out to be necromancers, I bet it's Kemmler. Like she comes to that conclusion later in the story. But at this point, she doesn't know who he is at all.

Brian (32:05)
And of course, who's here to save this damsel in distress accosted by this bandit in the saloon? Our heroic deputy, Wyatt Earp, who immediately takes possession of the situation by sticking a gun into Kemler's back.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (32:23)
Yeah, and I love the reveal here where the German says, you will regret this action. Who do you think you are? My name is Wyatt Earp and I think I'm the law. Like that's just

Brian (32:37)
Incredible.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (32:38)
perfect, perfect, love it. No notes, I love it. So they get to take Kemmler prisoner at this point and bring him over to the marshal's office.

where they put him in a cell. But before we get there, Brian, let's talk a little bit about Wyatt Earp, the real Wyatt Earp, and how this characterization of him compares.

Brian (33:04)
I love that Jim has him say something like, I'm the law, because it really does typify who Wyatt Earp is seen as at this point in American history. He's essentially the most famous cop in America.

He is, we were talking about things to compare the movie Tombstone to before the show, that it's a little bit like The Untouchables, the Elliot Ness-led group that brings down Al Capone. Wyatt Earp is that level of fame as a lawman at this point. Now,

1878 or thereabouts,

Wyatt Earp has not yet done the things that he will be most known for in pop culture. He has not yet had the gunfight in the OK Corral. He has not yet had the the Deaderite against the Cowboys. But he's already famous because first of all, he is working as a marshal. Oftentimes, he's not always doing law work, but he's working as a marshal oftentimes in Kansas. And this is about 20 years after

bleeding Kansas, the time period where Kansas really was before statehood run by, you know, gangs of violent men. It's a series of boom towns like Dodge City is. It's a very rough and tumble place and Earp has already at this point tracked a

particular desperado hundreds of miles in the journey that leads him to meet Doc Holliday. If this is later in 78, he's been in two gunfights in this saloon in Dodge City from which he has escaped without a scratch, a reoccurring theme in his career as a lawman that adds to his mystique. He's simply never wounded and nobody can even graze him with a bullet.

And his brothers, who are also involved in the law business and who also sort of run Dodge City with him to a certain extent, are all sort of famous and really well known, not just as being famous lawmen and sort of the big men in the city, but also as just being serious badasses who really don't understand, no, you shouldn't do that. It will be dangerous or hard.

they're the kind of people who sort of create the romantic image of the Western gunslinger as a hero with the daring due to accomplish any task no matter how formidable or difficult or full of hardship it might be.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (35:52)
Yeah, absolutely. It's a very cool character to introduce to this and Jim is obviously a fan of this time period, of these tropes, of this character and putting him here, it works so well teaming these up together. It probably wrote itself, like he just put these two together on the page and was like, beautiful, this is already done. So now we do get them back to the Marshal's office. Kemmler allows himself to be arrested with no resistance and this kind of, to me,

suggested that he is cautious, because if you're gonna live for a couple hundred years and you're gonna outsmart the White Council, caution is probably important. And he's also aware of Wyatt Earp's reputation and respects it. And the combination of Earp with a really fast gun hand and a very accurate gun hand and a warden of the White Council,

both watching him for any sudden movements, he's not gonna make any. He's smarter than that.

Brian (36:52)
and

I speculated in the pre-show that it actually might be kind of difficult for a wizard to deal with somebody wielding a gun at this point in history. Obviously firearms have been around for centuries, but small high velocity weapons like the revolvers of this time period haven't been that common outside of a military setting for very long. So if you haven't thought of how to make a shield,

to stop one of those high velocity kinetic rounds. If your shields, unlike Dresden's in modern times, are more focused on things like heat and magic and those other elements, you might be really cautious around somebody with a gun on you. Especially if they're a Venator, and especially if

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (37:41)
Yep.

Brian (37:42)
any magic you do might be counterspelled by a Warden who at least seems to be competent.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (37:48)
Yeah, and at this point, Earp reveals himself to be a member of the Venatori Umbrorum. For those of you that forgot, this is the sort of mostly ally of the White Council. It's sort of a secret society of brotherhood. The actual Venatori are the ones fighting the Oblivion War, which we see in backup, where Lara and Thomas are members of that secret society.

within a secret society fighting the Oblivion War to keep the Old Ones asleep or outside. And the Venatori Umbrorum was set up for a couple thousand people to hide the couple dozen to a hundred that are fighting the secret war that's designed to save everyone from those Old Ones. And so he's part of that, probably the higher tier, but he could be. You think he is a member of the Venator?

The Venatori, is he fighting the Oblivion War, do you think?

Brian (38:47)
So

my suspicion is that the only people who are involved in the Oblivion War are people who are going to live beyond a mortal lifespan because it sort

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (38:58)
That's probably right.

Brian (38:59)
of requires that kind of long-range operations and you simply don't want to have to recruit new people very often.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (39:07)
Right, because if you recruit the wrong person, they spill the beans, you're back to square one. So yeah, lower recruitment for people with longer lifespans, that would explain why Thomas and Lara are part of that.

Brian (39:17)
Now, I wouldn't be shocked if you did have to recruit some basically vanilla mortals sometimes. And if you were going to recruit anybody...

you'd actually probably go for people like Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday who you know dies of tuberculosis at a young age. People who actually don't have a very long shelf life because they're not going to spill the beans for being around too long. So I'd

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (39:42)
Yeah.

Brian (39:44)
bet that he's probably part of the larger group but you know if anybody was going to be a vanilla mortal in the higher group I think it would be a man of action like Earp. You know somebody who was really necessary for their particular

skills in a given era. Now we know that Wyatt has to be taken on faith because he's lost his necklace in a card game and Adam you reminded me of where his venatory identification necklace actually ended up because this seems to be very reckless why would you bet that at cards against some random schmuck

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (40:20)
Yeah, I thought about this the first time I was reading it. Like, this is the symbol of your secret society. You should not be wagering that, you know, to a rando. And it turns out, that's not the case. Because later on, when he's talking about Doc Holliday, he says, good fella to have you when it's rough. Plus, he's got two of them Venator pendants around his neck. Took one from some fool in a Pharaoh game, unquote.

So apparently he lost it to his brother in the venatori So I don't know what that means like is he just gonna hold on to it and say well You're screwed you can't prove who you are for a while, and I'm just holding this over you Are you gonna maybe win it back in a card game in the future wager some money against it? I don't know

Brian (40:58)
Well, I

love that characterization because I feel like it's very fitting for the time and the relationship those two men are often depicted as having. Where would Doc let him wager that in lieu of money? Absolutely, Wyatt. Yeah, of course. You can call my raise with your Venator necklace. And then would Doc give it back to him at any point? No, absolutely not.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (41:21)
sell it back or force them

to wager it back.

Brian (41:23)
Exactly, exactly.

So it's it's that good natured ribbing that, know, just really the characterization in these little elements is so, so good. I really do want Jim to come back and write the sequel. mean, they're just so fun.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (41:37)
before we end our show, we want to talk a little bit more about the Thule Society. This is discovered when they get back to the Marshal's office. They pull a necklace or pendant or an amulet off of the warlock they've captured, Kemmler, the German, and...

and Earp uses it as sort of a test for Lucio, and she identifies it immediately upon seeing it as part of the, as him being part of the Thule Society, and Earp then identifies her as a member of the White Council, because very few people would recognize that if they weren't White Council or Venatore, and he would probably recognize her if she was a Venatore in this area. So he determines that she must be White Council, and...

The Thule Society, I hadn't actually heard this at all, Brian. I'm not familiar with it. I thought it was something that Butcher had made up. But apparently the Thule Society is a real society, an occult group here in the real world.

Brian (42:33)
Yes, and I believe the correct German pronunciation is something like Kuhle Society. I don't speak German, but I've heard people talk about this with reference to the Nazis and specifically Heinrich Himmler, because a lot of the ideas that later funnel into the Nazi party come from sort of...

German romantic nerds who are looking at the medieval exploits of the Teutonic Knights and German kings and the pagan religions that fell to Christianity at such a comparatively late point in time. And they're using them as sort of a paradigm through which to view the occult boom, the spiritualist boom that is started by people like Madame Helena Blavatsky in our world.

oh So the Thule Society, as they say in the books and as they very well might be pronouncing it in story, the Thule Society is formed after the rise of Spiritualism as part of the Volkisch movement in German history, which is this awakening of folk and

racial consciousness in a way that will turn very ugly as the Nazi party is formed. But Jim is pinning its origins as being much earlier than that.

The Thule Society in the Dresden Files is sort of an evil counterpart to the Venatori that has been around seemingly for a long time. I think Luchio describes them as a long time foe. And that more modern Thule Society that will enter our history seems to be an outgrowth of exactly this guy, Kemmler, who we're told in universe essentially started World War I.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (44:28)
the interesting thing about this secret society of warlocks is you'd think that would be a big target for the White Council, and it probably is, but it's also got to be an easy way to make warlocks work together if they're all being hunted, and hey, there's this society that will protect you from them.

You will owe your loyalty to that society, whoever's in charge of that. And the implication in this particular short story is that Kemmler is like the leader of the Thule society. Now, maybe it's just this chapter of the society where he is, but they call him the master. But the fact that Lucio doesn't expect necromancy,

suggests to me that the dual society isn't necessarily known for that exclusively and that this is some kind of a new thing. Maybe we're seeing Kemmler take over the society from the inside.

Brian (45:27)
Yeah, I think that's actually what's being hinted at here, that this is some kind of long time Germanic order, and it might not even be, it might have started in Germany, but it might not even be an order that is at this point primarily Germanic, but is this long time order of people who are sharing knowledge, a lot like the Venatori do, but just, you know, the kind of knowledge that the White Council doesn't want to have shared to the kind of people who shouldn't have it.

And the reason why the Thule society, the Thule society will get involved in Germanic politics, will get involved in the Volkisch movement, might be because Kemmler and his cabal of necromancers are trying to create a world where death on a mass scale not only happens, but happens in a predictable way they can use.

who invents the Dark Hallow. So he's probably got a lot of use for the mass scale battles on the Eastern and Western fronts of both world wars. And we should mention that there is a specific human in history, Carl Willigot, who is known as Himmler's Warlock.

who was sort of a fool society guy who was Himmler's right hand occult man. And you wonder if this literal taking over of a society of warlocks from the inside is something that

Jim has sort of taken this notorious figure and this story that connects him to the more delusional elements of the terrible people in the Nazi party as a cool way to literally bring a magic society into this world history that Kemler needs to be a part of because not only does he start World War I, he's also killed theoretically in an atomic bomb test after World

War II. So wrapping him into that global conflict is going to be important for his story to make sense.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (47:39)
okay, so that brings us to Earp and Lucio basically determining that this guy's acting far too calm sitting here in this cell. That means he knows his friends are gonna be coming to break him out. What are we gonna do? And they both kinda come to the conclusion, well, we're not gonna let him do that. think Earp basically points out that they're gonna be coming for him, and he asks her what she thinks about that, and she says, I object.

Again, that sort of

Brian (48:05)
Incredible.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (48:07)
perfect, like, just very simple language right there. So that's what we're gonna call it for now. We're gonna have part two next month where we go over the last part of this, which actually is a really cool fight scene that's described very well. Obviously, this is a later version of Jim than we're reading in the mainline books right now with Full Moon and Grave Peril, and it's really refreshing because he does write some really good set pieces.

and I'm very excited to talk about this next time.

Brian (48:37)
Yeah, it's going to be awesome. The conclusion to the story is really, really good. And we'll get to talk about some parallels to the main story and parallels to other Westerns that Jim's drawing on.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (48:50)
But now that brings us to questions for us.

Brian (48:57)
Questions

for us.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (48:58)
Yeah, that's right. We don't need to talk to Bob. We're not gonna bother him for these Patreon episodes. Instead, we're going to broaden our horizons and talk about stuff that we wanna talk about that's not necessarily related to Dresden. For example, Brian, what is your favorite Western?

Brian (49:16)
man that's so hard. is is

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (49:18)
Well, you don't have to, okay, top three if you want to say it.

Brian (49:20)
anyone in your family like like I like a real John Wayne person like a real like watches all the old westerns person?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (49:28)
No, no, my dad watches golf. He doesn't watch the old Westerns.

Brian (49:32)
So my dad also

watches golf, but he watches a lot of John Wayne movies. And I'll say that there's kind of two brackets here, the old Westerns and the new Westerns. So I think top old Western is John Ford and John Wayne's The Searchers, which if you haven't seen it, just go watch. It's actually like kind of a masterpiece of American cinema. And unlike a lot of John Wayne movies, which are maybe sometimes a

a little difficult to understand the ideology of as a modern viewer. The Searchers actually grapples with the kind of tropes that would be right at home in a modern discussion of critically acclaimed films. For the new Westerns, Tombstone is really, really, really good. It's really, really, really good.

But Adam, have you seen Bone Tomahawk?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (50:30)
No, I have not even heard of that.

Brian (50:32)
So

that's a Western horror movie. And I just want someone to like write the series of that movie. Like somebody do the world, the feel of Bone Tomahawk with just like a little higher fantasy. And you've got like an old West rival to the Dresden Files. It is one of the scariest horror films I've seen in my entire life.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (50:58)
Well, that's fair.

And unfortunately, I'm not super qualified to talk about this because I don't really have a f- I barely watch any Westerns. I've never seen any of the classics. I've never seen the Good, Bad, and the Ugly, or Fistful of

Brian (51:12)
Phew.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (51:13)
the Dollar. I've never seen any of those. Coolhand Luke, I've heard them referenced all over the place, but I've never seen them. But I will tell you, I watched a modern one that I was really a big fan of recently. Have you seen The Harder They Fall?

Brian (51:26)
I haven't, no. How was that?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (51:28)
That's Idris Elba and I think Jonathan Majors. It is the most colorful Western you will see. There's a fight scene that takes place in what must be like a dye shop. Like they have all these linens hanging from, and it's so bright pastel colors. Like obviously you're re-imagining, right? It's not going for a super realistic visual look.

but it's just so gorgeous from a cinematography point of view. And Idris Elba plays the heavy and he's so good at it. And I really like, it's a revenge story. you know, a guy coming back to a town that he was in a long time ago and all those people there like, can't believe you're coming back. It's all got all the tropes. It's so good. I really like it. The harder they fall. think it was like 2018 or something. I definitely highly recommend that. Now.

Brian (52:14)
And we should

just note before we move on, because I know we're gonna get commentary around this, this is not a selection of best Western movie. Okay,

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (52:22)
No, no, no.

Brian (52:22)
we're not talking about like, Unforgiven is very, very good. I also like all of the Viggo Mortensen Westerns, Hidalgo and Appaloosa and whatever, they're all great. We're just talking about like personal ones that tickle us guys, so don't come for us.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (52:35)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

let me ask you this, Brian. Does the Mask of Zorro count as a Western?

Brian (52:41)
that's really interesting.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (52:43)
because

I really do like that movie. That's a great movie. Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones and I can't remember the other ones, but 1998. I really think that's a great movie. And it definitely feels like a Western. It takes place in roughly that period in California instead of in like the Midwest West.

Brian (53:01)
Yeah, but it's Mexican California, right? So even that is, yeah.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (53:04)
Right. Yeah.

Brian (53:05)
But so, I mean, wouldn't argue with you if you said that it was a Western, because I think literally historically it meets the definition of a Western. But I will say stylistically, and I really do love the film. I think the meeting scene between Catherine Santa Jones and Antonio Banderas is like, you understand who the hottest people around in 1998 were because God, that's

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (53:27)
Yeah!

Brian (53:27)
a scene.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (53:28)
Yes.

Brian (53:29)
But

um I would say it's really a swashbuckler. It's a Pirates of the Caribbean. Yeah.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (53:34)
Yeah, no, you're right. It's definitely got that part in it. I think it's

kind of a mashup. It's got tropes from both, but yeah, you're not wrong. Now, this is a weird one, Maverick has always tickled me. That's another one from the 90s, where the

Brian (53:47)
Mm-hmm.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (53:47)
main character is going to play in a poker game on a riverboat, and it's almost like a heist movie.

and I really like heist movies. So yeah, that one is also one of the ones that I don't think it counts as a Western, but it's kind of set and shot like a Western in some respects. So I did like that.

Brian (54:02)
I've got two small pair.

Eights and eights. Yeah. oh

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (54:08)
Yeah,

so that's the other one that I have as a touchstone from a long time ago when I actually would watch some of these other movies. Now, what about movies set in the West that might not necessarily qualify as Westerns? Because the other one that immediately came to mind is Blazing Saddles.

Brian (54:25)
Yes, definitely. An unbelievably good film. But, and it is a Western, you know, it is a Western.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (54:32)
It's a comedy, right?

When you think Western, you don't typically think comedy.

Brian (54:36)
Right, right.

there's a Daniel Craig movie Cowboys and Aliens, where I think at one point, I believe this is the film where Jeffrey Rush, also known as Barbarossa and the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.

That, you know, not exactly a Western, but really uh quite a film. Well, Bone Tomahawk actually might, you know, if we're going to say that my favorite new one is Tombstone, Bone Tomahawk might qualify here actually, because it's a horror movie. It's just a very, it's a Western because it has to be a Western. It wouldn't work in any other situation, but that's a horror movie.

How about you? do you have for the not Western Western?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (55:19)
All right, I'm gonna say it. It's Wild Wild West.

Brian (55:23)
Hahaha!

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (55:24)
Listen, it hit me at the right time. I blame Kidbrain Mastalgia, but this was the period where Will Smith had all the charisma in the Garam world and he could just sell it. And it's such a goofy movie and I love it anyway. I still.

Brian (55:41)
Have

you watched it recently? You did, okay.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (55:43)
I did, I watched

it like two years ago, I think. I still liked it, it's still, I'm not saying it's the best movie ever. It was one of the other things I could think of. What other movies have I seen set in this period? And I was trying to think of ones that I enjoyed. The other one though, unironically, Back to the Future 3. I like that, it's good.

Brian (56:00)
Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (56:02)
I know some people malign the third one, but I still enjoy it. Especially the, you know what, when I was a kid, I frickin' loved trains, Brian.

I love trains. My dad would put on this one hour video that was just like a Discovery Channel thing, like sort of documentary about different kinds of extreme trains or whatever, like going over the Alps and stuff, and I would just watch that on repeat for all the time. So I love trains. So the fact that a train scene is a huge part of this movie was like a formative part of my childhood right there.

Brian (56:33)
yeah. mean, the, you know, I think the first time I visited Santa Fe, New Mexico, I left with a shirt about how it was like the first train like that, like the Santa Fe Railroad was like a big deal. I definitely

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (56:49)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (56:49)
went through a little bit of that phase myself. And it's part of the reason why

I was tickled as a kid by stuff by Wild Wild West, because I loved that movie when I was, know, it was 1998, right? So when I saw it in theaters at eight years old, I thought it was incredible.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (57:01)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brian (57:04)
And I've watched it since and it's, I see exactly what they were going for. And it was actually pretty clever. I just don't think they quite carried it off. They didn't really decide what they wanted it to be, you know? But it was pretty good. And that of course is based off of, from what I understand, an older movie or TV series.

that believe my mom watched

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (57:23)
right.

Brian (57:24)
as a kid and she thought that that was pretty good. So there's just so much media available in the Western genre. mean, do we have to ask about video game? What's your favorite Western video game?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (57:34)
There's only one man, Red Dead Redemption 2. It's such a huge game and it has its flaws, but it's so lovingly executed in a lot of what it does that if you can get into the zone the game wants you to be in, it's just this place you can disappear into. It's so well, the visuals are amazing, it's huge, there's so many little details and touches.

that you can see and do while you're going through it. And like I said, there are flaws, I'm very much aware of them. There's a guy on YouTube named Nakey Jakey who does a lot of great video essays on things. And one of the things that he pointed out that I was like, it didn't blow my mind, but I'm like, that's exactly the problem I had when I was playing this game and other Rockstar games. But this one in particular is that.

Red Dead Redemption 2 gives you this old west world that you can disappear into and you can hunt and you can get into fights and whatever. And then the mission structure of the main missions is so constraining that you have to do things exactly the way the mission tells you to. You have this wide open world in part of the game that...

allows you to do things however you want and then a super constrained, super linear thing that says, oh, your ultimate goal is to kill that guy, but you can't just go kill him. You have to kill him exactly the way that we want you. You have to walk over here, stand here, open that door, sit in that space, ride on this horse along this specific track for a certain amount of time, and then you'll get the opportunity to kill the guy in exactly the way that we want you to. And it's that juxtaposition of freedom and restriction that I think a lot of people get hooked on.

or rather that rubs in the wrong way when playing that game. I don't know if you're a fan of that or not, but I thought the world itself was really great and I loved the characters and the characterization and I don't know, I could just go on.

Brian (59:32)
I

think that that's honestly a critique I have of a lot of open world games where there's like a heavy puzzle element all the way back to your like Zelda Ocarina of Time, which as a kid I played,

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (59:42)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (59:43)
my brother loved that game and I was like, it's a good game, I enjoy it, it's great, but like I'm not gonna replay it, you know, like I solved the puzzles once, they were a little bit annoying. And I found that for me, Red Dead Redemption 2 was the one game where it just didn't even bother me that much.

because I would just have so much fun just not doing the main story for so long.

will say though that I've played other Western games and in fact I guess I think they're more common than they are because I played a Super Nintendo game as a very small child called Sunset Riders which is the first like shoot-em-up thing I had ever played and you know that was that that really tickled me too so I feel like the Western gaming genre really was taken to another level by Red Dead Redemption.

but it's something that has been a part of American culture as a romanticized thing since, I mean, yes, obviously like stagecoach in the thirties and, know, bonanza and gun smoke and all of those things, but really as like almost a high fantasy, like our equivalent of chivalric romance since the spaghetti westerns.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:01:02)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:01:02)
Ever

since then, it's just been a fertile place to kind of really have fun in a way that we only do in high fantasy settings or now with sort of that late Victorian steampunk feel.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:01:15)
Yeah, now, there is another genre that is overlapping here, and that is the space western. And Firefly is absolutely one of my favorite shows, and it is absolutely a western set in space with the tropes and the kind of talk, like we were talking about before with the way that they speak. you you must best put that gun down or I swear by my pretty floor bonnet, I will end you.

Brian (1:01:42)
Mm-hmm.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:01:43)
Like just that style of speech. I find that when I go on a Firefly binge, I will work various versions of those idioms into my day-to-day conversation for the next month or so. Just like when I get into a Doctor Who mode and I've been watching a lot of the David Tennant seasons, I'll just use the well in the middle of sentences when I'm rethinking them. So.

Yeah, anyway, that is the only, believe it or not, I have not watched a lot of Western TV shows either, even though there are a lot of those.

Brian (1:02:14)
Yeah, well, mean, Cowboy Bebop is the other thing that comes up when

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:02:18)
Ah.

Brian (1:02:18)
you say space western to me, which again is not something that I watched a ton of, but it's something that my brother really enjoyed, at least for a little while. He is a lot more well versed in animated TV than I am. I'll also say that I have occasionally tried and failed at some of the sort of

fantasy western tv shows that you'll catch on netflix occasionally i think their version of van helsing is a a western a female western version of van helsing seems interesting but i just haven't sat down and and watched them yet so western tv show i i don't really think i have a fabulous uh choice for that but i think the one that needs to be mentioned is deadwood

which is incredibly good. And which I honestly didn't watch. I should just watch it again because I don't remember it half as well as I should. And I did really enjoy seeing it the first time, but it's probably the most prestige Western TV show with the possible exception. Yes, yes. With the

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:03:25)
Yeah, that an HBO or a showcase or something like that? Yeah.

Brian (1:03:28)
possible exception, of course, of Westworld, which, you know, your mileage may vary whether that counts as Western at all.

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:03:34)
Right, that's another one of those Western meets technology things. So yeah, that's a good list. That's your homework listeners. Go check out all the things that we talked about. I'll put them in the show notes for you. yeah?

Brian (1:03:42)
Well, there's one more, Adam, that we, I think, have

to mention or we'll get in trouble, which is, have you ever, well, have you

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:03:48)
Okay. El Dorado.

Brian (1:03:52)
ever read any Western books?

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:03:55)
Ah, no, and this is leading to the Dark Tower series, right?

Brian (1:03:59)
Well, so that's one place we can definitely go with this. The Dark Tower series definitely has moments where I would argue that it counts as a Western. I think we have to mention, you know, Blood Meridian, those sort of darker, grittier Western tales that are more popular nowadays. And I'll just say that I think that there is a space for genre Western right. Like it used to happen all the time.

L. Ron Hubbard, the guy who founded Scientology, is actually known for some vaguely homoerotic Western novels that he wrote, you know, before he did the whole Scientology thing. Buckskin Brigades. But the, think that there's a little bit of a hole right now in the sort of high fiction, I shouldn't say high fiction, in this sort of pop fiction context.

for someone to do something a little bit like A Fistful of Warlocks, a fantasy western. I haven't seen that kind of lighter western with a more adventurous pulp bent actually executed in a way that I felt was marketed to me. And I'd love to see that. That'd be cool. I'd be really interested in

Adam “Bridger” Ruzzo (1:05:16)
All right, yeah, so that's your homework. But as you can see, I'm not as big into Westerns as other people are. Obviously, Jim is very big into them, because he jumped at the chance to write this portion of Lucio's story, and we're looking forward to talking about it more next month. Thank you very much for being a patron here on the show.

and we'll see you next time.