Potential Graham (Episode 12) Transcript
The audio version of this episode can be found here.
Hannah: Two vengeful fathers team up to stop seven friends from rebuilding her life.
Jennie: Somebody write this.
Hannah: Hi and welcome to Somebody Write This, where we use a random plot generator to give us an idea and then we brainstorm how that could be a thing somebody might want to write. I'm Hannah.
Jennie: And I'm Jennie. And to help us with our brainstorming today, we have a guest welcome Kirsten Porter.
Kirsten: Hello.
Hannah: I'm very excited to have you on the show. I know you've been listening to us for a little while and I've wanted to as well get somebody on the show for a little bit to talk about D&D and roleplaying games and their role in storytelling.
Kirsten: Yeah. I'll talk about D&D with anybody all day long.
Hannah: Fantastic.
Jennie: For listeners who don't know, that stands for Dungeons and Dragons, and it’s a tabletop role playing game where you pretend to be a character and the outcomes of combat and other decisions are determined by the roles of dice.
Kirsten: It's that thing that the kids on Stranger Things use to solve missions.
Hannah: Yes. It has had like a little bit more involvement in, in media and representation in the media as opposed to 15 years ago. So tell us just a little bit about your experience with D&D, how long you've been playing, have you run games or just participated… Tell us a little bit about your experience and what you love about it.
Kirsten: Gosh, I've been playing for a long time. And actually my husband is the one who mostly introduced me to D&D. I knew a little bit about it before, but he's been playing since he was like 10 years old or something, and he's a dungeon master, preferably a dungeon master. He likes to play every now and then, but he really, really, really likes to be in that creative seat. And so when we were first dating, he was running some big campaign and I would watch, but I had no idea what was going on. And he kept trying to get me involved and I was like, “No, I'll just let you do your thing.” And then he created a solo campaign for me. I really love mystery novels. And so he created like a mystery solving solo campaign for me. And I was hooked and I’ve played pretty much continuously ever since. So yeah.
Hannah: Awesome. Now I know there are a lot of tabletop role playing games in general. D&D kind of sometimes becomes like the catch all phrase, even though it's not actually part of the Dungeons and Dragons line of RPGs. Do you typically play actual D&D or is it all kinds of role playing?
Kirsten: All kinds. We keep coming back to D&D I think partly because, you know, again, it's like the biggest fish in the pond, and it's got so much content and so much support and so much everything, and everybody kind of knows it. But my husband is a really big RPG nerd, so not too long ago-- We actually have a Twitch show that we do called Super Commoner, and so about maybe six months ago, we tested a new game called Blades in the Dark, which is very cool, where you kind of create like a little team of criminals and you have to run heists. So it's sort of in this steampunk-y setting. It's very much reminded me—like if you've played the—Oh, and now the name is going to escape me. But it's a very steampunk kind of waterfront setting, very dark and creepy. But then the flavor of it is very much like Ocean's 11. Everybody has their own little role in the team and you all run heists. And so you have the guy who's the bruiser and you have the guy who's the lock picker and you have all of these, you know, different— So it was a lot of fun. So we played that game for about six or seven months before tragically, all of our characters died. We got ourselves into a jam and we were trying to get out, and my character happened to suffer some trauma, and she was kind of the brains of the outfit, which meant that we were left alone in the room with the bomb guy and the bruiser, who decided that probably since we were backed into our corner, our best thing was to just blow up the building and kill all 20 of our enemies, including us.
Hannah: What a way to go.
Kirsten: So we all died epically. It was great.
Hannah: One of the things that really makes this fascinating is that it is a mix of game play and collaborative storytelling. How much of it to you -- and this may change on a campaign to campaign basis -- but how much of it feels to you like gameplay versus narrative?
Kirsten: To me, I lean much more toward the narrative aspect of it. I'm never going to be one of those people who is going to be very much into the power gaming that is, you know, getting to know the mechanics of the game and creating a character that's like the most good at doing a thing. I actually really like characters who are flawed, who are not necessarily the stereotype of -- who would be good at the thing that they've chosen to do. And to me, that creates a lot more interesting opportunities for storytelling because -- Kind of how it works -- and, you know, my husband is also very much on the sort of writerly creative side of things, so we tend to create certain types of campaigns together, but very much what it feels like is kind of like he creates sort of a setting and a plot, but the characters are all kind of up in the air other than minor characters. And so my job as a player is to create the coolest, most interesting character that I can. And I'm just responsible for putting the main character in the story and kind of running them through the world. And so I like characters that have big flaws and big problems. I'm all for dumping stats and having weird race/class combinations that don't really go well together and just kind of creating things that immediately creates some kind of a story. It just
makes it a lot more interesting to enter into the world like that for me.
Jennie: I'm all about character driven story myself. So that's the way I play as well. I love dungeon masters who can create the world and then let my character explore it.
Kirsten: Yeah, absolutely. Our current run is a very sandboxy type of thing where we're in this setting called the Wildlands and we have almost no direction whatsoever. We just wander from place to place, and he kind of creates a setting and it's very sandboxy, like, what do you want to do here? And it's now turning into like one of the most fascinating and complicated stories. I'm pretty convinced that like 90% of the overarching plot is just him hearing what we're interested in and then back rigging it so that it's actually part of the story. He'll never admit to that, but I think that that's kind of what's happening. But yeah, it's this big wide open world, and you can just explore it as somebody who has absolutely nothing in common with your real self. I think that's one of the most fun parts for me.
Hannah: Of all the characters that you've created, do you have one that really still sticks with you in terms of their storytelling arc over the course of the game?
Kirsten: Yeah. Well, I mean, there's some that are stand-outs for different reasons than others, but probably one of my favorite characters that I ever played was, speaking of dumping stats, which is D&D speak for -- you have statistics that make you determine how good you are at certain things, but you can't just make yourself awesome at everything. You have certain limits that you have to play inside. And so I've known some people who -- usually you roll dice and you get some number from 3 to 18 to determine how good you are at things. So some people, if they get really, really low numbers, they'll just ask to reroll and they just absolutely won't play with low numbers. That's not me. So I wound up with this Teafling ranger who had a 6 charisma, which meant that she was very, very, very bad at social interaction. It's kind of funny how if you play a character long enough, as you sort of come to inhabit the character, it takes you to a place that I don't know if I could get there again on my own, in terms of the genius that this character had for saying the absolutely worst thing at every possible moment. It was truly epic because she also had a medium intelligence. But she had a whole lot of confidence. And so she would just draw these crazy conclusions, because we were playing with this group of very high intelligence wizards and stuff like that, who were all trying to figure out all the nitty gritty. And so she really tried to keep up with everybody else, but she was never correct about anything. And so she would just bust into these high tension roleplaying scenarios where it's like, okay, you're negotiating with the King of the werewolves and he has control over this entire group of cities. And he's one of the most terrifying people. This is like a level 13 RP encounter. And so obviously what you're going to do is you're going to walk up to him and ask him whether the thing that he got kicked out of the respectable kingdom for was pedophilia or necrophilia.
Hannah: Oh gosh!
Kirsten: The lengths the other characters would go to in order to try and prevent me from talking, which never worked because I was stronger than all of them. And so they would try to like cover my mouth and I would just like elbow them in the ribs and do 10 damage and it’d be all over, and then I'd be like, I've got to take it from here. It was really—
Jennie: Can I come play with you?
Kirsten: It was a lot of fun. That was probably one of my favorites.
Hannah: That is fantastic. Oh. Fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing some of that. I'm glad that it's gaining more awareness in the public eye, because it is such a very cool way of building a story, especially for people who may not think of themselves as storytellers, may not think of themselves as artistic like that, and giving them an avenue into that is so cool. It's one of my favorite things. That being said, we're going to jump into our plot. So as a reminder, our plot synopsis is, “Two vengeful fathers team up to stop seven friends from rebuilding her life.”
Jennie: Whose life?
Kirsten: All right, so the very first thing that I think of when I see seven friends involved with some mystery woman is some kind of like weird dark retelling of Snow White, right?
Hannah: Right, that’s where I went too.
Kirsten: So like the two vengeful fathers-- So the seven dwarves are like the bad guys in this scenario, right? And somehow the seven dwarves are fake helping Snow White rebuild her life, but they're actually the villains and so maybe the woodsman and the king are teaming up or something, I don't know.
Jennie: Wow. No, I like it.
Hannah: Yeah, I went Snow White too. And in my thinking about it, I thought maybe-- So my thinking is, the Snow White story ends, she runs off with her prince, but it turns out that that kind of speed relationship building is not always good or healthy. And so her stepmother's out of the way, but she doesn't have a Prince to go home to either. So she's like trying to figure out how to do things on her own and her friends are trying to help her. And then there are these two vengeful fathers. So we could either go the route where the dwarves are the villains and the fathers are the good guys or the fathers are the villains and the dwarves are the good guys. Or it could be something not Snow Whitey at all if we get off track there.
Kirsten: So whose fathers are these?
Jennie: That's a very good question. Is one or both of them her fathers?
Kirsten: I mean, cause traditionally her dad would be dead, right? Like the stepmother gets away with it.
Hannah: Maybe he wasn't dead. Maybe the stepmother like got rid of him, like exiled him or locked him up in a basement or something. And maybe it's her father and then the father of the Prince and they want them to get back together.
Kirsten: Oh!
Hannah: So they don't want the dwarves to give her independence.
Kirsten: Interesting.
Hannah: Maybe there's something that they get out of this if they team up together and get them married, and so they're both trying to-- They don't like that the dwarves are giving her agency to build her own life in the forest or elsewhere or whatever.
Jennie: That's so mean. Like what possible reason could they have?
Kirsten: Well, if it's the father of the prince and the father of Snow White, then it sounds like there could be a political element, the two kingdoms marrying.
Hannah: And there's vengeance. Is there a petty reason they want this to happen?
Kirsten: Vengeance, that's interesting too, because again, like “father,” it implies that there has to be a subject of the vengeance or an objective of the vengeance maybe. But yeah. So are they taking revenge on Snow White? Are they taking revenge on the dwarves or is there like some other outside force that they're trying to take revenge on by forcing this marriage?
Hannah: Maybe the prince has another person he's actually interested in. Maybe the Prince is trying to have a different relationship or trying to do something on his own. And maybe the Prince's father, I don't know, maybe the Prince is trying to go find happiness with somebody who has hurt both these fathers, both these people. And their goal is just, “We want anything but for this family to get what they want. So we are going to set him up, even with somebody that he does not care for, that she doesn't want to be there. We're going to find a way to make this work.” And they can really be leaning into the-- depending on how sneaky or manipulative they are, they can really be leaning into the tropes of true love and of “This was destiny. You have to let destiny work the way it's supposed to. You can't give up on it.” And using sort of the manipulative tropes of the genre against both of them.
Kirsten: That's really interesting. So they're kind of like forcing them to live in the fairy tale in a way.
Hannah: That could get fun.
Jennie: So the seven dwarves helping Snow White get out of a bad arranged marriage.
Kirsten: Right.
Hannah: Yeah. Or even just figure out how to live on her own. Maybe there is something-- And this doesn't have to be strictly set in fairytale times either. This can be a modern adaptation of this. Maybe there's something that she wants to do, but has never been able to have the agency to do it, either with the stepmother, or when she was on the run from the stepmother, or with the Prince.
Jennie: And just because she married the Prince, that doesn't mean it would fix her whole life and maybe he made it worse and that's why she's not with the Prince. And she's going back to her seven friends who will help her.
Kirsten: Well, and I'm kind of interested in the sense that like both she and the Prince are sort of entrapped by this marriage or this relationship. ‘Cause I can kind of like see this—‘cause the Prince has to like go out into the woods and find her and I can kind of almost see this weird twisting of it where it's like, he was supposed to marry her as some kind of a political thing or because of, I dunno, like a prophecy, if we want to go full fairytale. And so he finds her and she's dead and he's like, well, got to take her back and show everybody she's dead so I can't marry her. And then it turns out she's not really so now we're all stuck in this, in this horrible story in this horrible marriage.
Jennie: See, my brain's going completely another direction where the Prince has orchestrated everything from the beginning.
Kirsten: Oh wow.
Hannah: Maybe.
Jennie: He wanted to marry Snow White. Like, “I want her for my own reasons and I always get what I want,” which is why his father is vengeful on his behalf. What if he orchestrated the stepmother to drive Snow White into his arms, but he found the dwarves instead, and so he had to pretend to kill her, to get her away. And then she didn't like being with him. So she got away from him with the dwarves’ help. And so now his father and her father who he has rescued and is trying to convince him that the dwarves were behind all of it.
Kirsten: Wow.
Hannah: That's complicated.
Jennie: I know, I know.
Kirsten: But it makes sense, because the big question is like, why would Snow White's father want vengeance on her?
Jennie: Right, but if it's actually vengeance against the dwarves, but he doesn't know that the Prince and the Prince's father--
Hannah: Was his imprisonment somehow connected to Snow White? Like did the stepmother lock him up because she thought that he liked Snow White more than he loved her? Maybe he's still angry and just wanting to take control back over her life that he lost when she was born. I think I'm leaning more toward the Prince being either being less villainous-- partly because he's not even mentioned in this plot, which obviously, because it wasn't Snow White, but I kind of like the idea of him either being equally helplessly trapped or just not really even part of the story. Maybe the fathers are just mad that she didn't marry him in the first place and don't even really want her to get back together with him, they just want to prove to her that she can't make it on her own kind of thing.
Kirsten: Maybe the father really loved the stepmother.
Hannah: She imprisoned him in the mirror.
Jennie: Oh, let's do that.
Kirsten: That’s an interesting question.
Jennie: He's the mirror.
Kirsten: He's the mirror.
Jennie: She turned him into the mirror.
Kirsten: That's such a good idea. She traps her husband in a mirror so he can tell her how pretty she is every day.
Jennie: I love it. I love it.
Hannah: Oh. And maybe he's not out. Maybe he's still in the mirror because she hasn't been around to bring him out. So maybe he's trapped there. He's orchestrating this from there.
Kirsten: Right, because he's still keeping track of his daughter, but he was like helplessly in love with his wife. And now he knows that the dwarves are responsible for killing her. So he wants vengeance on that. And then of course—
Jennie: He would collude with the Prince's father for help.
Kirsten: Right. Well, and maybe in the whole royal marriage, you know, this magic mirror is like this powerful, magical item that they have in the palace. So it would make sense that somebody-- like it doesn't just disappear.
Jennie: Right, it’d be part of Snow White’s dowry or something.
Kirsten: Right. And so the King, the new King, somehow gets hold of it and uses it to-- and he knows that it can be used to track Snow White because that's what the stepmother used it for.
Hannah: Okay. I'm going to pause this real quickly because we have a title.
Jennie: Which will probably ruin everything.
Hannah: We'll see. Our title is potential Graham. That's Graham, the name. “G-R-A-H-A-M.” Potential Graham. So I don't know where to go with this. Is Graham the father in the mirror? Potential Graham… Does it have something to do with what Snow White wants to do with her new life? Does she want to create a persona named Graham?
Kirsten: All right. So that's actually an interesting possibility. What if Snow White is a trans person?
Jennie: That is a very interesting possibility.
Hannah: That brings an interesting layer.
Jennie: Wow.
Hannah: So yeah, rebuilding her life is not just rebuilding her life as a person outside of this relationship, but rebuilding her life as a man.
Kirsten: Right. Another thing that I'll bring up, and this is like a deep dive here, is that— I thought this was like pinging something in my brain, but in Disney canon, the Huntsman is named Graham.
Hannah: Are you serious?
Kirsten: I'm serious.
Jennie: I’m going to look that up? I got to fact check that right now.
Hannah: Oh. Okay. So wait, maybe we have to go that route.
Kirsten: So that's another thing we can do.
Hannah: “Potential Graham.” “Potential” is weird, but maybe…
Jennie: His name is Humbert.
Kirsten: Graham Humbert. His name is Graham Humbert.
Jennie: Okay. Just says Humbert. Hold on. I'm still looking. I'm still reading.
Hannah: I mean, I'm willing, I'm willing to buy it. Oh, if I search Graham Humbert, I do get Once Upon a Time.
Jennie: Oh, in Once Upon a Time. So not in the original.
Hannah: However, that's fairly accepted as acceptable canon there. I had forgotten that that was his name. So, okay. Is he part of this? I mean, he's gotta be part of the story now. Like you can't have that connection and not use it. Is he part of her rebuilding? Is he somehow one of the vengeful fathers instead, instead of like the Prince?
Jennie: “Potential.” “Potential” is a funny word.
Hannah: This is gonna be a lot of editing and cutting out this long silence where we’re like, “What in the world do we do with ‘Potential Graham’?” That’s why we edit, so we sound like we have instant ideas.
Jennie: Just put in a little montage of us saying, “Um…”
Kirsten: One of the first things I thought of with the two vengeful fathers was that maybe the Huntsman was one of them. But I think just because the number of adult men in the Snow White story, other than the dwarves is really limited, because there's basically like there's the seven dwarves, there’s Snow White, the Huntsman, the Prince and the queen. And that's like the whole cast. Possibly--
Hannah: Okay. So the Huntsman goes back and let's say that the stepmother queen did something to him for not like— I think traditionally she killed him, but maybe the fathers try to use, essentially create a new one of him to go back and lure her away from the life that she's trying to rebuild for herself and either ruin her or bring her back to the Prince if we're going back that route.
Jennie: If his name is in the title, whether or not this is about Snow White, he's the main character, is what I’m thinking.
Hannah: So yeah. So if it’s told from--
Jennie: From his point of view. I'm thinking of their relationship. Like he knew this princess, he's been working at the castle, he's the Royal Huntsman. And so that's why it was difficult. He didn't want to kill her. And so what did happen to him if he wasn't killed? Did he also run away? How does he get back involved with Snow White’s life? And what does the “potential” mean? What potential are we talking about here? Is he trying to marry the princess so he becomes a Prince, or is that just a possibility?
Kirsten: That's a good question. The first thing I think of is— ‘Cause he's not just a— I mean, he's a person who's, you know, a wood crafty sort of— I mean, I know that he's listed as being, you know, the Huntsman in the cast of characters, but he almost is more of a spy type character. He has to hunt down Snow White and assassinate her and bring back the heart. And so I wonder if maybe— Maybe I'm over complicating it, but maybe he's like somehow involved in her escape. Like he can get her in and out of the palace.
Hannah: I feel like with the title of “Potential Graham”, the potential has to be like whether there is a Graham.
Jennie: You think so?
Kirsten: Interesting
Hannah: Because I can't see any other way to read it. Like it's not “Graham's Potential.” There's the potential Graham. There could possibly be a Graham.
Jennie: Is part of Snow White rebuilding her life, then, searching for the man who rescued her?
Hannah: Do we play with this? Do we make it a modern sci-fi thing again, bring this in, and she's building some sort of AI consciousness thing? Is she rebuilding her life and rebuilding him?
Jennie: Like literally rebuilding her life.
Hannah: Like literally rebuilding him. And so it's about her rebuilding this— Maybe it's about trying to go back and make amends for the things that the stepmother did or the queen did on her behalf, and so she's trying to re-give life to this guy. And maybe several attempts and it keeps not going well and she keeps trying to fix it. And so there's always like this potential Graham, he hasn't quite manifested yet, but in the meantime, the fathers are still are trying to go after her.
Jennie: This actually works, I think, because we already established that the stepmother trapped her husband in the mirror. And so maybe instead of killing the Huntsman, she just trapped him in another thing, like maybe another mirror or some other kind of— Like trapped his consciousness, as you said, and Snow White’s trying to upload it into this robot she built or something.
Hannah: Yeah. She's trying to find a way to give him as much of his full human life back.
Kirsten: Well, and maybe she doesn't really know how to use it. And I think that that could honestly— Someone could take that in either a scifi or a fantasy direction, but like whatever this thing is that’s holding his consciousness, the reason it's a potential Graham is because Snow White knows that he's in there and can sometimes access him, but doesn't really know what she's doing or how it's supposed to work.
Jennie: Yes. Oh, okay. What if the mirror is the thing, and anybody the queen wants to trap is in the same mirror, but her father is the dominant one?
Hannah: Yeah. Where he's part of her life and like pretending to be on her good side. And she's just like, yeah, all these people are just all in the mirror. And we're trying to get Graham out.
Kirsten: That puts her in an interesting situation, because you would assume that her father would be the one who she'd want to save, but she's actually opting to try and save Graham the Hunter.
Jennie: Well, cause, cause she finds out somewhere along the line that her father married this woman who then tried to kill her and is still on her side.
Kirsten: Right. Yeah. But it's still an interesting— It's a bind that it puts her in because her father, not only is he her father, so you would expect a certain amount of emotional attachment, even with the horrible stuff. Also he’s the King of the entire country. So there's a lot of bigger ramifications.
Jennie: Is he still the King if he’s in the mirror?
Kirsten: I don’t know.
Jennie: I don't think there's anything in the bylaws about that.
Hannah: I don't know who's ruling this kingdom at this point if Snow White is off building robots.
Jennie: Nobody.
Kirsten: It's total chaos.
Hannah: So we are at time.
Jennie: Wow.
Hannah: There's a lot more to play with, with this. I think we have a really weird and creative take on this fairy tale story.
Jennie: Seriously, listeners, is this fantasy? Is this sci-fi? I think we're sticking with the Snow White theme just ‘cause it fits. But like what is going on here?
Kirsten: And we didn’t really talk a whole lot about the dwarves.
Hannah: That’s right, the dwarves are helping her and they're barely part of the story.
Kirsten: We just got really hung up on the fathers. So there's a lot to work with there.
Hannah: Yeah. There's so many characters to play with. Yeah. So we'll toss that out to our listeners to give us your fan theories and what the fathers want and who potential Graham is and what's going on with that. So I'm going to go ahead— Let's go ahead and close out first of all, with our recommendations for stories. I'm going to go with one— Actually in light of our conversation with Kirsten, I'm going to recommend the board game Betrayal Legacy. So Betrayal Legacy is an offshoot of the board game Betrayal at House on the Hill, which is a storytelling game where you're exploring a haunted house with your teammates, and at some point partway through the game, you roll a certain amount of dice and somebody on your team turns into a traitor. And then from then on the story changes, you each get different scenarios, and they're fighting against each other to try to win. It's very, very story-based, and if you're looking at it for strategic gameplay, you're going to be very disappointed. But if you want it for storytelling, it's so much fun. But Betrayal Legacy specifically takes that concept and turns it into a multi-game story. So you play the same characters from game one throughout. If your character dies, you play one of their descendants. And so this, it just tracks the story. My husband and I are about two thirds of the way through it. There's I think 14 games. And so it's like a little RPG campaign in a box, all centered around this haunted house and the terrible things that can come out of it. And no two versions of it play exactly the same because they alter depending on which dice you roll or which rooms you draw. And so it's really enjoyable. And I wanted to toss it out, especially for those who maybe don't have resources or people near them who are into other role playing games. But this one you can play with just two to three people. And it's very easy and very simple to play. So I highly recommend Betrayal Legacy. One of my very favorites. I'm going to toss it over to Jennie. What would you like to recommend this week?
Jennie: Well, since the projected broadcast date for this episode is— When you guys are listening, my birthday is tomorrow. Happy birthday to me! So I'm going to recommend— That's not my recommendation. Although if you want to celebrate my birthday, please do, have cake, enjoy, but I'm going to recommend The Secret garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. This has been one of my favorite books through my whole life and this particular copy that I'm holding in my hands now was given to me at Christmas when I was seven years old from my mom. This is a book that I think sometimes gets dismissed or overlooked these days because there have been so many adaptations of the story. There's movies to watch, there's a musical. And I feel like most people see it as a love story, as these children come together and then grow up later, we see them, you know, boy coming home from war and all that kind of thing. But at its heart, it's a story that for me really highlights the transformative and healing powers of nature and of real human connection. And so if you've never actually read— Even if you think you know the story, if you've never actually read the book, I highly, highly recommend it. It's not a very long read, but it's beautifully written and just has a gorgeous message. And I think everybody should read it.
Hannah: All right, Kirsten, what would you like to recommend to our listeners?
Kirsten: On the theme of kind of fantasy/sci-fi retellings of stories, and also weirdly the number seven, I would like to recommend The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, which is a novel that I just finished and it blew my mind. It's very much kind of in the vein of an Agatha Christie-style novel, you know, big British mansion, there's a murder happening, and everybody's a suspect, and so on and so forth, mashed up with Groundhog Day, the comedy starring Bill Murray, where you're the detective and you get to relive the same day that the murder happens over and over again in the body of all the different guests in order to solve it and find the killer.
Jennie: I would read that.
Kirsten: It is awesome. Like I said earlier, I'm a huge mystery novel nerd. It's really hard to stump mystery novel nerds because we've seen it all. We know how the story works. This one had me guessing up until the end. It's totally awesome. It's totally like— I can't say enough good stuff about this book. So if you like mystery novels and/or weird time-travel fantasy stories, this will scratch both of those itches for you. I recommend it.
Hannah: Sounds fantastic. Definitely adding that to my list.
Kirsten: Yes.
Hannah: Well, thank you so much, Kirsten, for joining us. Is there anything you would like to plug for yourself? Your Twitch stream, social media, anything you want to plug for our listeners?
Kirsten: Sure. So yeah, I guess you can find me on Twitter at @ohmanghosts. I have a podcast that's about accounting, which is not terribly exciting, but if you like accounting, it's called Ask My Accountant. And probably the thing that everybody will be most interested in is, like I said, we have a Twitch channel. My husband dungeon masters on it. We play a bunch of different games. Our current game is a big old D&D campaign that's been running for about a year now. It's called Super Commoner. And we stream intermittently throughout the week and then we have our regular show every Saturday night at 8:30 Eastern. You can, now you can catch us there and see a little bit about how we play D&D and how we tell stories with D&D and maybe get inspired.
Hannah: Fantastic. And we'll put all those links in our episode description as well. So you can follow along with all the stuff that Kirsten is doing. That is our episode, folks. As a reminder, you can find us every other Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.
Jennie: Follow us on Twitter @writethispod. And if you've been inspired by this episode and have questions or comments or a story or anything else, email us at somebodywritethis@gmail.com. We'd love to hear from you.
Hannah: We will be back with another episode in two weeks. We'll see you then.
Jennie: And as they say, the contents of a low shelf can be stolen by dogs.
Hannah: Two vengeful fathers team up to stop seven friends from rebuilding her life.
Jennie: Somebody write this.
Hannah: Hi and welcome to Somebody Write This, where we use a random plot generator to give us an idea and then we brainstorm how that could be a thing somebody might want to write. I'm Hannah.
Jennie: And I'm Jennie. And to help us with our brainstorming today, we have a guest welcome Kirsten Porter.
Kirsten: Hello.
Hannah: I'm very excited to have you on the show. I know you've been listening to us for a little while and I've wanted to as well get somebody on the show for a little bit to talk about D&D and roleplaying games and their role in storytelling.
Kirsten: Yeah. I'll talk about D&D with anybody all day long.
Hannah: Fantastic.
Jennie: For listeners who don't know, that stands for Dungeons and Dragons, and it’s a tabletop role playing game where you pretend to be a character and the outcomes of combat and other decisions are determined by the roles of dice.
Kirsten: It's that thing that the kids on Stranger Things use to solve missions.
Hannah: Yes. It has had like a little bit more involvement in, in media and representation in the media as opposed to 15 years ago. So tell us just a little bit about your experience with D&D, how long you've been playing, have you run games or just participated… Tell us a little bit about your experience and what you love about it.
Kirsten: Gosh, I've been playing for a long time. And actually my husband is the one who mostly introduced me to D&D. I knew a little bit about it before, but he's been playing since he was like 10 years old or something, and he's a dungeon master, preferably a dungeon master. He likes to play every now and then, but he really, really, really likes to be in that creative seat. And so when we were first dating, he was running some big campaign and I would watch, but I had no idea what was going on. And he kept trying to get me involved and I was like, “No, I'll just let you do your thing.” And then he created a solo campaign for me. I really love mystery novels. And so he created like a mystery solving solo campaign for me. And I was hooked and I’ve played pretty much continuously ever since. So yeah.
Hannah: Awesome. Now I know there are a lot of tabletop role playing games in general. D&D kind of sometimes becomes like the catch all phrase, even though it's not actually part of the Dungeons and Dragons line of RPGs. Do you typically play actual D&D or is it all kinds of role playing?
Kirsten: All kinds. We keep coming back to D&D I think partly because, you know, again, it's like the biggest fish in the pond, and it's got so much content and so much support and so much everything, and everybody kind of knows it. But my husband is a really big RPG nerd, so not too long ago-- We actually have a Twitch show that we do called Super Commoner, and so about maybe six months ago, we tested a new game called Blades in the Dark, which is very cool, where you kind of create like a little team of criminals and you have to run heists. So it's sort of in this steampunk-y setting. It's very much reminded me—like if you've played the—Oh, and now the name is going to escape me. But it's a very steampunk kind of waterfront setting, very dark and creepy. But then the flavor of it is very much like Ocean's 11. Everybody has their own little role in the team and you all run heists. And so you have the guy who's the bruiser and you have the guy who's the lock picker and you have all of these, you know, different— So it was a lot of fun. So we played that game for about six or seven months before tragically, all of our characters died. We got ourselves into a jam and we were trying to get out, and my character happened to suffer some trauma, and she was kind of the brains of the outfit, which meant that we were left alone in the room with the bomb guy and the bruiser, who decided that probably since we were backed into our corner, our best thing was to just blow up the building and kill all 20 of our enemies, including us.
Hannah: What a way to go.
Kirsten: So we all died epically. It was great.
Hannah: One of the things that really makes this fascinating is that it is a mix of game play and collaborative storytelling. How much of it to you -- and this may change on a campaign to campaign basis -- but how much of it feels to you like gameplay versus narrative?
Kirsten: To me, I lean much more toward the narrative aspect of it. I'm never going to be one of those people who is going to be very much into the power gaming that is, you know, getting to know the mechanics of the game and creating a character that's like the most good at doing a thing. I actually really like characters who are flawed, who are not necessarily the stereotype of -- who would be good at the thing that they've chosen to do. And to me, that creates a lot more interesting opportunities for storytelling because -- Kind of how it works -- and, you know, my husband is also very much on the sort of writerly creative side of things, so we tend to create certain types of campaigns together, but very much what it feels like is kind of like he creates sort of a setting and a plot, but the characters are all kind of up in the air other than minor characters. And so my job as a player is to create the coolest, most interesting character that I can. And I'm just responsible for putting the main character in the story and kind of running them through the world. And so I like characters that have big flaws and big problems. I'm all for dumping stats and having weird race/class combinations that don't really go well together and just kind of creating things that immediately creates some kind of a story. It just
makes it a lot more interesting to enter into the world like that for me.
Jennie: I'm all about character driven story myself. So that's the way I play as well. I love dungeon masters who can create the world and then let my character explore it.
Kirsten: Yeah, absolutely. Our current run is a very sandboxy type of thing where we're in this setting called the Wildlands and we have almost no direction whatsoever. We just wander from place to place, and he kind of creates a setting and it's very sandboxy, like, what do you want to do here? And it's now turning into like one of the most fascinating and complicated stories. I'm pretty convinced that like 90% of the overarching plot is just him hearing what we're interested in and then back rigging it so that it's actually part of the story. He'll never admit to that, but I think that that's kind of what's happening. But yeah, it's this big wide open world, and you can just explore it as somebody who has absolutely nothing in common with your real self. I think that's one of the most fun parts for me.
Hannah: Of all the characters that you've created, do you have one that really still sticks with you in terms of their storytelling arc over the course of the game?
Kirsten: Yeah. Well, I mean, there's some that are stand-outs for different reasons than others, but probably one of my favorite characters that I ever played was, speaking of dumping stats, which is D&D speak for -- you have statistics that make you determine how good you are at certain things, but you can't just make yourself awesome at everything. You have certain limits that you have to play inside. And so I've known some people who -- usually you roll dice and you get some number from 3 to 18 to determine how good you are at things. So some people, if they get really, really low numbers, they'll just ask to reroll and they just absolutely won't play with low numbers. That's not me. So I wound up with this Teafling ranger who had a 6 charisma, which meant that she was very, very, very bad at social interaction. It's kind of funny how if you play a character long enough, as you sort of come to inhabit the character, it takes you to a place that I don't know if I could get there again on my own, in terms of the genius that this character had for saying the absolutely worst thing at every possible moment. It was truly epic because she also had a medium intelligence. But she had a whole lot of confidence. And so she would just draw these crazy conclusions, because we were playing with this group of very high intelligence wizards and stuff like that, who were all trying to figure out all the nitty gritty. And so she really tried to keep up with everybody else, but she was never correct about anything. And so she would just bust into these high tension roleplaying scenarios where it's like, okay, you're negotiating with the King of the werewolves and he has control over this entire group of cities. And he's one of the most terrifying people. This is like a level 13 RP encounter. And so obviously what you're going to do is you're going to walk up to him and ask him whether the thing that he got kicked out of the respectable kingdom for was pedophilia or necrophilia.
Hannah: Oh gosh!
Kirsten: The lengths the other characters would go to in order to try and prevent me from talking, which never worked because I was stronger than all of them. And so they would try to like cover my mouth and I would just like elbow them in the ribs and do 10 damage and it’d be all over, and then I'd be like, I've got to take it from here. It was really—
Jennie: Can I come play with you?
Kirsten: It was a lot of fun. That was probably one of my favorites.
Hannah: That is fantastic. Oh. Fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing some of that. I'm glad that it's gaining more awareness in the public eye, because it is such a very cool way of building a story, especially for people who may not think of themselves as storytellers, may not think of themselves as artistic like that, and giving them an avenue into that is so cool. It's one of my favorite things. That being said, we're going to jump into our plot. So as a reminder, our plot synopsis is, “Two vengeful fathers team up to stop seven friends from rebuilding her life.”
Jennie: Whose life?
Kirsten: All right, so the very first thing that I think of when I see seven friends involved with some mystery woman is some kind of like weird dark retelling of Snow White, right?
Hannah: Right, that’s where I went too.
Kirsten: So like the two vengeful fathers-- So the seven dwarves are like the bad guys in this scenario, right? And somehow the seven dwarves are fake helping Snow White rebuild her life, but they're actually the villains and so maybe the woodsman and the king are teaming up or something, I don't know.
Jennie: Wow. No, I like it.
Hannah: Yeah, I went Snow White too. And in my thinking about it, I thought maybe-- So my thinking is, the Snow White story ends, she runs off with her prince, but it turns out that that kind of speed relationship building is not always good or healthy. And so her stepmother's out of the way, but she doesn't have a Prince to go home to either. So she's like trying to figure out how to do things on her own and her friends are trying to help her. And then there are these two vengeful fathers. So we could either go the route where the dwarves are the villains and the fathers are the good guys or the fathers are the villains and the dwarves are the good guys. Or it could be something not Snow Whitey at all if we get off track there.
Kirsten: So whose fathers are these?
Jennie: That's a very good question. Is one or both of them her fathers?
Kirsten: I mean, cause traditionally her dad would be dead, right? Like the stepmother gets away with it.
Hannah: Maybe he wasn't dead. Maybe the stepmother like got rid of him, like exiled him or locked him up in a basement or something. And maybe it's her father and then the father of the Prince and they want them to get back together.
Kirsten: Oh!
Hannah: So they don't want the dwarves to give her independence.
Kirsten: Interesting.
Hannah: Maybe there's something that they get out of this if they team up together and get them married, and so they're both trying to-- They don't like that the dwarves are giving her agency to build her own life in the forest or elsewhere or whatever.
Jennie: That's so mean. Like what possible reason could they have?
Kirsten: Well, if it's the father of the prince and the father of Snow White, then it sounds like there could be a political element, the two kingdoms marrying.
Hannah: And there's vengeance. Is there a petty reason they want this to happen?
Kirsten: Vengeance, that's interesting too, because again, like “father,” it implies that there has to be a subject of the vengeance or an objective of the vengeance maybe. But yeah. So are they taking revenge on Snow White? Are they taking revenge on the dwarves or is there like some other outside force that they're trying to take revenge on by forcing this marriage?
Hannah: Maybe the prince has another person he's actually interested in. Maybe the Prince is trying to have a different relationship or trying to do something on his own. And maybe the Prince's father, I don't know, maybe the Prince is trying to go find happiness with somebody who has hurt both these fathers, both these people. And their goal is just, “We want anything but for this family to get what they want. So we are going to set him up, even with somebody that he does not care for, that she doesn't want to be there. We're going to find a way to make this work.” And they can really be leaning into the-- depending on how sneaky or manipulative they are, they can really be leaning into the tropes of true love and of “This was destiny. You have to let destiny work the way it's supposed to. You can't give up on it.” And using sort of the manipulative tropes of the genre against both of them.
Kirsten: That's really interesting. So they're kind of like forcing them to live in the fairy tale in a way.
Hannah: That could get fun.
Jennie: So the seven dwarves helping Snow White get out of a bad arranged marriage.
Kirsten: Right.
Hannah: Yeah. Or even just figure out how to live on her own. Maybe there is something-- And this doesn't have to be strictly set in fairytale times either. This can be a modern adaptation of this. Maybe there's something that she wants to do, but has never been able to have the agency to do it, either with the stepmother, or when she was on the run from the stepmother, or with the Prince.
Jennie: And just because she married the Prince, that doesn't mean it would fix her whole life and maybe he made it worse and that's why she's not with the Prince. And she's going back to her seven friends who will help her.
Kirsten: Well, and I'm kind of interested in the sense that like both she and the Prince are sort of entrapped by this marriage or this relationship. ‘Cause I can kind of like see this—‘cause the Prince has to like go out into the woods and find her and I can kind of almost see this weird twisting of it where it's like, he was supposed to marry her as some kind of a political thing or because of, I dunno, like a prophecy, if we want to go full fairytale. And so he finds her and she's dead and he's like, well, got to take her back and show everybody she's dead so I can't marry her. And then it turns out she's not really so now we're all stuck in this, in this horrible story in this horrible marriage.
Jennie: See, my brain's going completely another direction where the Prince has orchestrated everything from the beginning.
Kirsten: Oh wow.
Hannah: Maybe.
Jennie: He wanted to marry Snow White. Like, “I want her for my own reasons and I always get what I want,” which is why his father is vengeful on his behalf. What if he orchestrated the stepmother to drive Snow White into his arms, but he found the dwarves instead, and so he had to pretend to kill her, to get her away. And then she didn't like being with him. So she got away from him with the dwarves’ help. And so now his father and her father who he has rescued and is trying to convince him that the dwarves were behind all of it.
Kirsten: Wow.
Hannah: That's complicated.
Jennie: I know, I know.
Kirsten: But it makes sense, because the big question is like, why would Snow White's father want vengeance on her?
Jennie: Right, but if it's actually vengeance against the dwarves, but he doesn't know that the Prince and the Prince's father--
Hannah: Was his imprisonment somehow connected to Snow White? Like did the stepmother lock him up because she thought that he liked Snow White more than he loved her? Maybe he's still angry and just wanting to take control back over her life that he lost when she was born. I think I'm leaning more toward the Prince being either being less villainous-- partly because he's not even mentioned in this plot, which obviously, because it wasn't Snow White, but I kind of like the idea of him either being equally helplessly trapped or just not really even part of the story. Maybe the fathers are just mad that she didn't marry him in the first place and don't even really want her to get back together with him, they just want to prove to her that she can't make it on her own kind of thing.
Kirsten: Maybe the father really loved the stepmother.
Hannah: She imprisoned him in the mirror.
Jennie: Oh, let's do that.
Kirsten: That’s an interesting question.
Jennie: He's the mirror.
Kirsten: He's the mirror.
Jennie: She turned him into the mirror.
Kirsten: That's such a good idea. She traps her husband in a mirror so he can tell her how pretty she is every day.
Jennie: I love it. I love it.
Hannah: Oh. And maybe he's not out. Maybe he's still in the mirror because she hasn't been around to bring him out. So maybe he's trapped there. He's orchestrating this from there.
Kirsten: Right, because he's still keeping track of his daughter, but he was like helplessly in love with his wife. And now he knows that the dwarves are responsible for killing her. So he wants vengeance on that. And then of course—
Jennie: He would collude with the Prince's father for help.
Kirsten: Right. Well, and maybe in the whole royal marriage, you know, this magic mirror is like this powerful, magical item that they have in the palace. So it would make sense that somebody-- like it doesn't just disappear.
Jennie: Right, it’d be part of Snow White’s dowry or something.
Kirsten: Right. And so the King, the new King, somehow gets hold of it and uses it to-- and he knows that it can be used to track Snow White because that's what the stepmother used it for.
Hannah: Okay. I'm going to pause this real quickly because we have a title.
Jennie: Which will probably ruin everything.
Hannah: We'll see. Our title is potential Graham. That's Graham, the name. “G-R-A-H-A-M.” Potential Graham. So I don't know where to go with this. Is Graham the father in the mirror? Potential Graham… Does it have something to do with what Snow White wants to do with her new life? Does she want to create a persona named Graham?
Kirsten: All right. So that's actually an interesting possibility. What if Snow White is a trans person?
Jennie: That is a very interesting possibility.
Hannah: That brings an interesting layer.
Jennie: Wow.
Hannah: So yeah, rebuilding her life is not just rebuilding her life as a person outside of this relationship, but rebuilding her life as a man.
Kirsten: Right. Another thing that I'll bring up, and this is like a deep dive here, is that— I thought this was like pinging something in my brain, but in Disney canon, the Huntsman is named Graham.
Hannah: Are you serious?
Kirsten: I'm serious.
Jennie: I’m going to look that up? I got to fact check that right now.
Hannah: Oh. Okay. So wait, maybe we have to go that route.
Kirsten: So that's another thing we can do.
Hannah: “Potential Graham.” “Potential” is weird, but maybe…
Jennie: His name is Humbert.
Kirsten: Graham Humbert. His name is Graham Humbert.
Jennie: Okay. Just says Humbert. Hold on. I'm still looking. I'm still reading.
Hannah: I mean, I'm willing, I'm willing to buy it. Oh, if I search Graham Humbert, I do get Once Upon a Time.
Jennie: Oh, in Once Upon a Time. So not in the original.
Hannah: However, that's fairly accepted as acceptable canon there. I had forgotten that that was his name. So, okay. Is he part of this? I mean, he's gotta be part of the story now. Like you can't have that connection and not use it. Is he part of her rebuilding? Is he somehow one of the vengeful fathers instead, instead of like the Prince?
Jennie: “Potential.” “Potential” is a funny word.
Hannah: This is gonna be a lot of editing and cutting out this long silence where we’re like, “What in the world do we do with ‘Potential Graham’?” That’s why we edit, so we sound like we have instant ideas.
Jennie: Just put in a little montage of us saying, “Um…”
Kirsten: One of the first things I thought of with the two vengeful fathers was that maybe the Huntsman was one of them. But I think just because the number of adult men in the Snow White story, other than the dwarves is really limited, because there's basically like there's the seven dwarves, there’s Snow White, the Huntsman, the Prince and the queen. And that's like the whole cast. Possibly--
Hannah: Okay. So the Huntsman goes back and let's say that the stepmother queen did something to him for not like— I think traditionally she killed him, but maybe the fathers try to use, essentially create a new one of him to go back and lure her away from the life that she's trying to rebuild for herself and either ruin her or bring her back to the Prince if we're going back that route.
Jennie: If his name is in the title, whether or not this is about Snow White, he's the main character, is what I’m thinking.
Hannah: So yeah. So if it’s told from--
Jennie: From his point of view. I'm thinking of their relationship. Like he knew this princess, he's been working at the castle, he's the Royal Huntsman. And so that's why it was difficult. He didn't want to kill her. And so what did happen to him if he wasn't killed? Did he also run away? How does he get back involved with Snow White’s life? And what does the “potential” mean? What potential are we talking about here? Is he trying to marry the princess so he becomes a Prince, or is that just a possibility?
Kirsten: That's a good question. The first thing I think of is— ‘Cause he's not just a— I mean, he's a person who's, you know, a wood crafty sort of— I mean, I know that he's listed as being, you know, the Huntsman in the cast of characters, but he almost is more of a spy type character. He has to hunt down Snow White and assassinate her and bring back the heart. And so I wonder if maybe— Maybe I'm over complicating it, but maybe he's like somehow involved in her escape. Like he can get her in and out of the palace.
Hannah: I feel like with the title of “Potential Graham”, the potential has to be like whether there is a Graham.
Jennie: You think so?
Kirsten: Interesting
Hannah: Because I can't see any other way to read it. Like it's not “Graham's Potential.” There's the potential Graham. There could possibly be a Graham.
Jennie: Is part of Snow White rebuilding her life, then, searching for the man who rescued her?
Hannah: Do we play with this? Do we make it a modern sci-fi thing again, bring this in, and she's building some sort of AI consciousness thing? Is she rebuilding her life and rebuilding him?
Jennie: Like literally rebuilding her life.
Hannah: Like literally rebuilding him. And so it's about her rebuilding this— Maybe it's about trying to go back and make amends for the things that the stepmother did or the queen did on her behalf, and so she's trying to re-give life to this guy. And maybe several attempts and it keeps not going well and she keeps trying to fix it. And so there's always like this potential Graham, he hasn't quite manifested yet, but in the meantime, the fathers are still are trying to go after her.
Jennie: This actually works, I think, because we already established that the stepmother trapped her husband in the mirror. And so maybe instead of killing the Huntsman, she just trapped him in another thing, like maybe another mirror or some other kind of— Like trapped his consciousness, as you said, and Snow White’s trying to upload it into this robot she built or something.
Hannah: Yeah. She's trying to find a way to give him as much of his full human life back.
Kirsten: Well, and maybe she doesn't really know how to use it. And I think that that could honestly— Someone could take that in either a scifi or a fantasy direction, but like whatever this thing is that’s holding his consciousness, the reason it's a potential Graham is because Snow White knows that he's in there and can sometimes access him, but doesn't really know what she's doing or how it's supposed to work.
Jennie: Yes. Oh, okay. What if the mirror is the thing, and anybody the queen wants to trap is in the same mirror, but her father is the dominant one?
Hannah: Yeah. Where he's part of her life and like pretending to be on her good side. And she's just like, yeah, all these people are just all in the mirror. And we're trying to get Graham out.
Kirsten: That puts her in an interesting situation, because you would assume that her father would be the one who she'd want to save, but she's actually opting to try and save Graham the Hunter.
Jennie: Well, cause, cause she finds out somewhere along the line that her father married this woman who then tried to kill her and is still on her side.
Kirsten: Right. Yeah. But it's still an interesting— It's a bind that it puts her in because her father, not only is he her father, so you would expect a certain amount of emotional attachment, even with the horrible stuff. Also he’s the King of the entire country. So there's a lot of bigger ramifications.
Jennie: Is he still the King if he’s in the mirror?
Kirsten: I don’t know.
Jennie: I don't think there's anything in the bylaws about that.
Hannah: I don't know who's ruling this kingdom at this point if Snow White is off building robots.
Jennie: Nobody.
Kirsten: It's total chaos.
Hannah: So we are at time.
Jennie: Wow.
Hannah: There's a lot more to play with, with this. I think we have a really weird and creative take on this fairy tale story.
Jennie: Seriously, listeners, is this fantasy? Is this sci-fi? I think we're sticking with the Snow White theme just ‘cause it fits. But like what is going on here?
Kirsten: And we didn’t really talk a whole lot about the dwarves.
Hannah: That’s right, the dwarves are helping her and they're barely part of the story.
Kirsten: We just got really hung up on the fathers. So there's a lot to work with there.
Hannah: Yeah. There's so many characters to play with. Yeah. So we'll toss that out to our listeners to give us your fan theories and what the fathers want and who potential Graham is and what's going on with that. So I'm going to go ahead— Let's go ahead and close out first of all, with our recommendations for stories. I'm going to go with one— Actually in light of our conversation with Kirsten, I'm going to recommend the board game Betrayal Legacy. So Betrayal Legacy is an offshoot of the board game Betrayal at House on the Hill, which is a storytelling game where you're exploring a haunted house with your teammates, and at some point partway through the game, you roll a certain amount of dice and somebody on your team turns into a traitor. And then from then on the story changes, you each get different scenarios, and they're fighting against each other to try to win. It's very, very story-based, and if you're looking at it for strategic gameplay, you're going to be very disappointed. But if you want it for storytelling, it's so much fun. But Betrayal Legacy specifically takes that concept and turns it into a multi-game story. So you play the same characters from game one throughout. If your character dies, you play one of their descendants. And so this, it just tracks the story. My husband and I are about two thirds of the way through it. There's I think 14 games. And so it's like a little RPG campaign in a box, all centered around this haunted house and the terrible things that can come out of it. And no two versions of it play exactly the same because they alter depending on which dice you roll or which rooms you draw. And so it's really enjoyable. And I wanted to toss it out, especially for those who maybe don't have resources or people near them who are into other role playing games. But this one you can play with just two to three people. And it's very easy and very simple to play. So I highly recommend Betrayal Legacy. One of my very favorites. I'm going to toss it over to Jennie. What would you like to recommend this week?
Jennie: Well, since the projected broadcast date for this episode is— When you guys are listening, my birthday is tomorrow. Happy birthday to me! So I'm going to recommend— That's not my recommendation. Although if you want to celebrate my birthday, please do, have cake, enjoy, but I'm going to recommend The Secret garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. This has been one of my favorite books through my whole life and this particular copy that I'm holding in my hands now was given to me at Christmas when I was seven years old from my mom. This is a book that I think sometimes gets dismissed or overlooked these days because there have been so many adaptations of the story. There's movies to watch, there's a musical. And I feel like most people see it as a love story, as these children come together and then grow up later, we see them, you know, boy coming home from war and all that kind of thing. But at its heart, it's a story that for me really highlights the transformative and healing powers of nature and of real human connection. And so if you've never actually read— Even if you think you know the story, if you've never actually read the book, I highly, highly recommend it. It's not a very long read, but it's beautifully written and just has a gorgeous message. And I think everybody should read it.
Hannah: All right, Kirsten, what would you like to recommend to our listeners?
Kirsten: On the theme of kind of fantasy/sci-fi retellings of stories, and also weirdly the number seven, I would like to recommend The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, which is a novel that I just finished and it blew my mind. It's very much kind of in the vein of an Agatha Christie-style novel, you know, big British mansion, there's a murder happening, and everybody's a suspect, and so on and so forth, mashed up with Groundhog Day, the comedy starring Bill Murray, where you're the detective and you get to relive the same day that the murder happens over and over again in the body of all the different guests in order to solve it and find the killer.
Jennie: I would read that.
Kirsten: It is awesome. Like I said earlier, I'm a huge mystery novel nerd. It's really hard to stump mystery novel nerds because we've seen it all. We know how the story works. This one had me guessing up until the end. It's totally awesome. It's totally like— I can't say enough good stuff about this book. So if you like mystery novels and/or weird time-travel fantasy stories, this will scratch both of those itches for you. I recommend it.
Hannah: Sounds fantastic. Definitely adding that to my list.
Kirsten: Yes.
Hannah: Well, thank you so much, Kirsten, for joining us. Is there anything you would like to plug for yourself? Your Twitch stream, social media, anything you want to plug for our listeners?
Kirsten: Sure. So yeah, I guess you can find me on Twitter at @ohmanghosts. I have a podcast that's about accounting, which is not terribly exciting, but if you like accounting, it's called Ask My Accountant. And probably the thing that everybody will be most interested in is, like I said, we have a Twitch channel. My husband dungeon masters on it. We play a bunch of different games. Our current game is a big old D&D campaign that's been running for about a year now. It's called Super Commoner. And we stream intermittently throughout the week and then we have our regular show every Saturday night at 8:30 Eastern. You can, now you can catch us there and see a little bit about how we play D&D and how we tell stories with D&D and maybe get inspired.
Hannah: Fantastic. And we'll put all those links in our episode description as well. So you can follow along with all the stuff that Kirsten is doing. That is our episode, folks. As a reminder, you can find us every other Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.
Jennie: Follow us on Twitter @writethispod. And if you've been inspired by this episode and have questions or comments or a story or anything else, email us at somebodywritethis@gmail.com. We'd love to hear from you.
Hannah: We will be back with another episode in two weeks. We'll see you then.
Jennie: And as they say, the contents of a low shelf can be stolen by dogs.
Comments
Post a Comment