Joshua Noel and TJ Blackwell dive headfirst into the world of "in-game literature" on this episode of Systematic Geekology, part of our All Reading Counts initiative. Right off the bat, they highlight the significance of the written word found in beloved gaming franchises, featuring gems like Ansem's Reports from Kingdom Hearts, the cheeky Lusty Argonian Maid from the Elder Scrolls, Frank's poignant notes in The Last of Us, the moral quandary in The Witcher 3's The Lesser Evil, and the thought-provoking Book of Unveiling from Destiny 2. The duo banters back and forth with their signature relaxed vibe, making sure to sprinkle in some laughs while discussing how these pieces of literature enrich the gaming experience. They also remind listeners that purchasing bonus content or All Reading Counts merch directly supports local libraries, so they’re not just having a good time; they’re also giving back to the community. Buckle up for a literary journey through the pixels, where reading and gaming collide in the most unexpected ways!

Takeaways:

1. Joshua and TJ dive into in-game literature, revealing the depth and storytelling behind titles like Kingdom Hearts and The Witcher 3, emphasizing that these narratives deserve a spot in literary discussions.
2. Ansem's Reports in Kingdom Hearts exemplifies the ways that in-game literature can expound the plot and lore of an already complex gaming franchise
3. The Lusty Argonian Maid highlights how humor and lightheartedness can coexist in serious gaming environments, showing that literature in games can be both entertaining and thought-provoking.
4. Frank's notes in The Last of Us showcase the emotional weight of storytelling within games, proving that even short notes can leave a lasting impact on players and shape their understanding of relationships.
5. The Witcher 3's Lesser Evil story serves as a reminder that decisions often come with moral dilemmas, inviting players to reflect on the complexities of choice in narrative-driven experiences.
6. Destiny 2's Book of Unveiling presents philosophical questions about life and death, revealing how video games can tackle profound themes through their narratives.
7. The episode emphasizes the importance of reading in all its forms, from traditional books to in-game texts, and how engaging with literature can enrich players' experiences and understanding of the worlds they explore.

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Foreign.

Truest test, then the literature and our favorite gaming franchises must be worthy of reading because they exist.

We will be discussing the secret reports in Kingdom Hearts, the lusty Argonian maid from the Elder Scrolls, the note from Frank in the Last of Us, the lesser of two evils in the Witcher 3, and Book of the Unveiling from Destiny 2.

And also for a bonus, we're going to be discussing Grognak the Barbarian from the Fallout series for official members after the episode in a little bonus we're doing.

That's right, this is an all reading counts episode, and we're focusing exclusively on literature that shows up in some of our video games that we like.

Yeah, if you notice, Kingdom Hearts was listed first.

That might give you a hint of who I am.

I am Joshua Null, one of the the one who finds excuses to talk about Kingdom Hearts.

And for all the ones that are like, wow, these are actually some really interesting things.

Well, we're also here with the most interesting podcast host, Pod Almighty one and only tj.

Temperatures one Blackbot.

How's it going?

Great.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And with all of that, we do have to shout out the last thing we read that wasn't the same type of literature that we're discussing today.

Pretty easy.

I don't just sit down and read video game literature that often.

Yeah, me neither.

I've been going through some of the more recent runs of Moon Knight, making sure I've read everything, and caught up because I'm doing an episode of Rethinking Comics with Josh Patterson about a Moon Knight comic from a few years ago, and I was like, you know, I do just like reading Moon Knight.

So that's just.

I just been reading a lot of Moon Knight.

I don't know which one specifically was the last one I read, but it was probably Moon Knight.

Yeah, yeah, I just.

I was reading a novel, Science Science fiction.

Wait, what was it?

Absolution, by Jeff Vandermeer.

Man, that sounds like a smart person book.

And then now you have these new glasses, so you look like a smart person reading smart people books.

Other people should also maybe think about seeing you over there.

Well, perhaps it'll be if I have that link in the show.

Notes, words with that.

Guys, we do want to ask everybody to rate and review the show.

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The rate reviews helps the algorithms think that we're important.

Oh, also, quick disclaimer if you're watching the video and it's like all dark where I am, I'm sick, so I probably also sound a little off.

The light triggers my migraine, so I'm just recording in the dark for a video.

It's fine.

Do want to thank all of our financial supporters as well this time, shouting out, Jonathan, Dustin, Jonathan, you're amazing.

Also probably be at Theology Beer Camp because he's a cool guy like that.

And if you guys want your own shout out like Jonathan, you can become an official member of Systematicology on our website in the show's description.

There's lots of stuff you can do on that website other than just becoming an official member.

You can also get some extra content for free.

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I'm wearing one now.

Leave a one time financial gift, all kinds of stuff.

Even without becoming a member, the website's totally worth it.

With that said, make sure you know that any of your purchases of the all reading counts merch if it says already counts on it.

If you buy a bonus question, that's all reading counts.

Or even if you make a donation and just say, hey, this is for all reading accounts.

All that goes to our local libraries to support literacy.

Because that's something.

That's something we care a little bit about at least.

Yeah, just.

Just a little.

Yeah.

And with that, we're gonna jump right into our main topic.

Really weird one, I guess in game literature.

It is.

Yeah.

It is a strange one.

Yeah.

I'm excited for it though.

I think.

I don't remember how it came up, other than maybe I just want to talk about the Kingdom Hearts reports.

That's probably how it came up.

And also when you do a series about all reading counts and try to do different kinds of literature for so long, eventually you start coming up with weird kinds of literature.

Yeah, it's weird because if you think about it, there's just absolutely no reason for it not to count.

But it reminds me of how when you turn on a lamp in a game, it's a real lamp, it's using real electricity, it's providing actual light.

It's similar.

Yeah.

I think it's interesting though too because a lot of people, I think, have this kind of misconception where it's like games rot your mind and do all this kind of stuff.

And like, there are definitely some negative things from playing video games too much.

Not just justifying it, but like, I feel like people don't associate reading and gaming together.

But like, the more I think about like actually a good bit of the reading I've done in my life is probably because of a video game.

Yeah.

And there are like, not the ones we're talking about really, but there is an entire genre, a video game called the visual novel.

It's a lot of reading in those.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well then we'll get to it in a second.

But like, even when I was younger, like some, when some video games just want to save money instead of getting voice actors, there's just a lot of text for you to read.

This is what they do.

And I prefer it that way most of the time.

I think Kingdom Hearts does better with that.

Personally, I think the voice acting, the voices were fine.

It's how they write dialogue.

For Kingdom Hearts 3, it was bad.

And you know, part of it is like the language barrier and part of it just like stuff just is less cringy when you have to read it sometimes instead of hearing it out loud.

Yeah.

But if you're, if you want to talk about like the real question, does reading in video game count and you want to think about like text based adventure games like the old Lord of the Rings game Zork, the answer is yes.

Yes, it counts.

Yeah.

Well, and I think part of that gets eliminated when you think about all of the benefits of reading that we like to mention as we do these episodes.

You know, there's keep your brain healthier, more active, longevity of life.

To me, it's.

It's a hard question.

There are provable answers that I never seem to remember.

But there's never been a time where reading didn't make my life better.

So increased vocabulary, that's one TJ likes to mention.

I remember that.

I don't see.

I was trying to think of a good way of wording it.

There are studies that show that like Alzheimer's can be not prevented, but postponed.

Yeah.

Reading good.

And I think the thing is that like, for me, I think the increased vocabulary is a really good thing.

Example, because I do know a lot of like the big words I learned, I actually did learn them from Kingdom Hearts like that just straight up.

That is a thing.

Yeah.

So with that then I want to get some of the history of reading in games because again, a lot of people just don't associate the two.

It's like reading is like what you as thoughtful, grown up stuff.

And then video games are for like kids and to shut your brain off.

And it's like there are games that are for kids and there are games that Are just shut your brain off and killing stuff.

I'm trying to think.

There's a game I discovered like last year that really is just Doom.

Doom might have some like high intellect stuff, I don't know.

But for me, I am just walking around blowing up demons.

Like that's all I'm doing.

It's great.

Oh yeah.

Doom's classic good times.

But I want to talk some about like the history.

So like old arcades, they would used to have like on the side of the arcade or like there'd be a manual or something where you could like read some stuff about just kind of the premise of what you're doing.

Like, you know, Donkey Kong is stealing Princess Peach.

Mario has to be Donkey Kong, that mean bad guy who will always be a bad guy.

No way they'll ever redeem that character.

Yeah, I know.

Like TJ's.

My, my.

The one that most sticks in my head is that TJ informed me that Kirby is in fact omnipotent.

That's just from reading something off a game.

Yeah, Kirby's like absurdly powerful.

Yeah.

Like one of his games.

Like if you actually read the intro stuff, it's like he is all powerful.

Like, wait a minute.

What?

Yeah, straight up all powerful.

Yeah.

Awesome.

And I know for me, the first time I started associating reading with games, back in my day, kids, it was before Internet was like super accessible and everybody knew how to use it.

We had these strategy book games and I remember like having N64 games and I think even some Gamecube games we're like, I'm not that good a gamer.

I love gaming.

I'm just not that good at it.

I come up against something, I don't know what to do here.

Then I end up getting a strategy game.

I remember I had one for Star Fox Adventure and like it would tell you how to like beat the thing and like you're reading so you learn how to play.

But it's also more than that.

Most of them were packed with like random stuff about lore and different things about the characters or the background.

Kind of like not an appendix.

What's the other thing?

We'll say like an appendix for now.

But yeah, there's like supplemental stuff that tells you more about all the characters and what's going on in the game.

It was awesome.

That's kind of what I know.

Is there any other, like, if you're thinking like the history of reading with games that you would want to shout out.

DJ I know a lot of arcade cabinets.

Not like Street Fighter wouldn't do it because just kind of had to learn those.

Mortal Kombat didn't do it in Mortal Kombat 1.

But it was like a golden era of fighting game cabinets that would have a lot of the moves written somewhere on the cabinet.

And then kind of gaming's first foray into role playing was through text based adventure games where you had to read it and type your answer out.

I know mine not quite like that.

But I do also know, like, I want to mention old Game Boy games before portable systems got as sophisticated as they now did and the sounds weren't able to be quite as articulate.

A lot of your old Game Boy games that your kids were playing in the car and rotting their brains out with.

Yeah.

All of the text was just.

There really wasn't voices.

It was just all text.

You're just reading.

Which was honestly good old days.

I love that stuff.

Another one I mentioned I want to mention that I liked a lot.

There's a game, folklore, when the PS3 first came out and there was voices with it, but most of it was reading it very much was meant to be kind of stylized like you're playing through a book.

But it was like Pokemon, but way edgier for no reason and not as good.

But I still like Folklore.

DJ what was the first time, like I mentioned a couple times for me.

What was some of the first times you remember that you were like, wait a minute, Reading, Gaming.

You kind of like started associating.

Yeah.

So I had.

If you were like a Pokemon kid, like I was, you definitely got a, like a physical copy of a Pokedex at some point and just had like all of the Pokemon from that region.

For me it was Gen 4, Sinnoh, Pokemon Diamond.

So I had that.

I had the guidebook for that game.

That was the first time for me that it was like, oh, I'm reading this because of the game.

So that was pretty sweet.

Games used to just come with the guidebooks.

Like not the guidebooks but like the manual that would tell you stuff about the game that ruled.

And then the first time I ever really associated it though is like reading in a game was probably in the Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion.

Because that game was just full of books.

Full of books.

And I read them all.

Yeah, well, no.

Into some of the ones we're not gonna talk about.

So the ones we did, we just did a few that we wanted to.

We put a vote up on our Discord for members only.

So all official members got to vote.

And then we put Another vote up on the Facebook.

We just wanted everybody's input on, like, what books we should talk about from in game because most of them aren't super long.

You're usually not reading an entire actual book in the game.

You're reading kind of like short stories or stuff like that or whatever.

But there are other ways games have used books.

Usually it's used to kind of flesh out the world to see what kind of world this game is.

And one of the things I most remember, and actually I've read some of the classic literature I've read, is because even though I never played the games I watched people play BioShock and BioShock had like just stacks of books places, and you would, like, pick it up and you couldn't read the book.

And, like, it got me interested in more classic literature.

And there are a lot of games that do stuff similarly where, like, even if it's not you're being able to read the book, they use the presence of these books to kind of show you.

Yeah, it alludes to themselves.

Yeah, it's a pretty cool way.

And then you have some games and stuff.

They got so popular that there's entire novels about the games, and that's a whole different thing.

Like the Halo novels, as far as I know, they're not in the game, so it's not in game literature.

But there's a lot of Halo literature out there.

There is.

And all of the Halo literature that I've read is pretty awesome because it's all Halo.

Yeah.

I think Christian Ashley likes it a lot too.

Maybe that'll be all reading counts one day.

So today's we have a few to get through and not a ton of time.

And some of these are longer.

They're not like books, but they're longer.

First up, I of course, want to talk about Kingdom Hearts whenever I get the chance to.

It's what I love.

It's what I care most about.

That's not Jesus.

So for context, what these are, as you play through the Kingdom Hearts games, especially the earlier ones like Kingdom Hearts one, you start to find these little, like, pages, and it's like, okay, this is Xehanort's report.

And it's almost like a journal or like a diary kind of deal.

And I as a kid never read them.

I've played through this game probably at least a hundred times.

Around the 50th time I think I started reading, I was like, holy crap, there's a whole nother story going on that I did not know about.

And they do some kind of, like, trickery with it.

So the first game, you go through Xander's reports.

Later you learn of the reports in the first game.

Only the first one was actually Anselm's report.

Sorry, the first one was Ansem the Wise.

The rest of them was actually a different character using his name.

Because Kingdom Hearts is weird.

If you lose your heart, your heart becomes a heartless, your body becomes a nobody.

There's a whole lore to it, right?

And that happened to Anselm the Wise and his nobody.

Or, sorry, the nobody of his apprentice who was named Ximnas that nobody took on the name Ansem and pretended to be him.

The love of the reports you got were actually him.

Second game, you get like the secret reports.

And that's when you start seeing actual Ansem, the wisest reports and what he did.

And he was like, okay, so my apprentice started this really weird scientific stuff with like heartless and nobody.

Or basically destroyed the universes and he just goes completely undercover, makes to the dark realm, changes his entire appearance.

It's a whole, like, scheme that goes on.

And you're like, you wouldn't know about it if you weren't reading the secret report.

And actually does fill in a lot of the gaps of the story if you're doing that.

Birth by Sleep is the other one I thought was really cool.

That is Xehanort Reports.

The other one are Anthem.

This is Xehanort.

Birth by Sleep is like a prequel to the other games.

So it's like way before.

We'll talk more about In Our Faces behind the series later on this year.

But Xehanort Reports more some of the beginning stuff, and I think that's when you start to see the beginnings of who is Organization 13, which, like some of the main bad guys ofTeen March2, etc.

So you get links to the backstory of the bad guys, get all this stuff filled in.

I think some of the most interesting just random stuff I didn't know about was in the secret ports for Kingdom Hearts 2.

It makes sense of Gummi ships.

So in Kingdom Hearts, your spaceship is made of these gummy blocks.

And it looks so stupid to me, like I always thought they looked on.

Some people love them, and I think I've come to love them for nostalgia reasons.

But objectively, I think they might be dumb, perhaps, which is fine.

But if you read the reports, it starts to make sense why they're built the way they are.

It's.

The worlds are not supposed to be connected at all.

Some of the worlds are getting destroyed as they do.

Meteors are falling to some of these specific planets.

And when the meteors fall, what's left behind is this goo that becomes the gummy blocks.

And that's why if you have a gummy ship, you can travel to the other worlds and stuff.

And it's like, oh, okay.

Until I read that first 50 times I played this game, it just like, for some reason, they just decided I need a Lego ship.

Lego and gummies.

The same thing, I guess.

I don't know.

Yeah, yeah.

It really did not make sense without the reading.

Yeah, that's like Kingdom Hearts does it.

In what I would consider to be the.

The standard way for a game to include reading, which is we didn't really have time to make you experience the reason for this thing.

So we're gonna put it in a log.

We're gonna make you read it.

If you don't read it, you're gonna be confused.

Even if you do a little bit, you're still kind of convenient.

Yeah, well, that's just because it's Kingdom Hearts.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think they've retconned their own lore several different times.

Yeah, yeah, that's.

That's just for Kingdom Hearts.

But that's why I try to read everything I see in a game because I don't want to miss something paid for the game.

It was really.

Actually, I think it was really well done how they do it with Kingdom Hearts 2 because it allows them to do some of the unreliable narrator thing too.

So even if you are reading as you go, you're kind of like, oh, wait, so maybe this isn't bad.

And it's like, oh, no, that wasn't even handsome.

That was okay.

This is just a whole terrible, evil bad guy plot, but also allows you to be the ones that are like.

Later on with Xehanort's reports, it allows you to be a little bit more sympathetic because you're like, oh, this is why they became nobodies.

This is why this group became part of organization 13.

They weren't trying to go out and become super villains, you know, and just really add a lot to the characters, a lot to the lore.

And it allows them to do the annoying retcon stuff that gets on all of our nerves because, oh, well, we all thought that because we read the logs, but that log wasn't written who by.

We thought who it was written by because, you know, you Just find a random piece of paper that has someone's name on it.

There's no reason for you to think it wasn't whose name was on the paper.

But it's completely reasonable that you know that was just somebody else posing.

At least it makes sense.

You know some stuff in game Hearts.

Does it make sense at least that I'm like, okay, I get unreliable narrator bit can follow it.

Yeah, yeah.

But as far as like, could you read these on their own?

I'm gonna go with no.

I mean, you could, but like, without playing through the game, understanding the context of like, what is a heartless?

What is a nobody?

Some of that other stuff, it's probably because it just uses a lot of.

It uses a lot of nouns, assuming that you know stuff about the game.

And I think it enhances that.

You're not getting it all at once when you play.

You're playing, you're learning a little bit more about the heartless of the nobody.

Some of the lore.

You're learning a little bit more about Ansem, a little bit more about Xehanort.

You keep playing.

I think it's helpful if you read it as you go.

Read it all at once.

A, it's a drag.

It is not like an exciting thing to read.

And B, it just, it lacks a lot of context.

Because again, it's like if you were to read random entries of my journal, if I had a journal, like, what is Josh talking about?

I don't know what the whole church backdesk is.

I don't know what Anazow is.

Like, these are just words, you know, like, some of it might make sense, but as a whole, journal entries without the context are just kind of weird.

So I would not recommend reading it on its own.

Personally.

Me neither.

Yeah, I was just a dj.

You have anything else to add or.

Yeah, don't do that.

Yeah, no, you've played some Kingdom Hearts.

You're not like a huge Kingdom Hearts fan, but you haven't read these before.

So did anything in here like for you?

You're like, oh, I didn't know that

most of it because I don't know most of the game.

Yeah, that's fair.

But you, you knew enough though that like, you knew the context what he's talking about.

You knew what like a hard listened.

Nobody was, you know, pretty much a little bit.

That's it.

I mean, it is cool to know how they reach these conclusions, but yeah, yeah, cool stuff.

Just my kino hearts bit for the day.

I love it.

But it is time to Move on to a deeply moving piece of literature.

TJ knows more about this than I do.

Tj, you tell us a little bit about the Argonian Maid from the Elder scroll series.

Mm.

Mm.

Well, that's.

That's not what she is.

That's not what she's called.

She's called the Lusty Argonian Maid.

And this is the first thing that comes into my head when you say in game literature, reading something in a game.

Because these are.

I mean, they're hilarious.

That.

That's really all it is.

It's just super, super funny.

Just erotic book that you can find in Skyrim, and I'm pretty sure in Oblivion too.

But it.

It just cracks you up, you know, you're fighting demons right inside this house.

Look around for something to heal.

Find a copy of a book called the Lusty Argonian Maid.

It's.

It's just exactly what it sounds like.

God, it's so funny.

I looked up because, you know when you do, like, the beginning of the episode to try and do, like, a quote or something, and like, the beginning of this episode, I read part of something from the unveiling for Destiny.

They just fit.

I really tried to find something from Argonian made, but none of them works.

Like, oh, the length of your tail.

Like, well, I can't open a podcast with that.

Yeah, yeah, that's it.

It's all that.

It's all Argonian innuendo.

It's just really, really funny.

For those who don't know, Argonians are lizard people.

I feel like that's important.

Yeah.

And I think Elder Scrolls does this so well because it's a game where it's easy to get sucked into the fighting demons, werewolves, dragons, whatever.

But if you want to learn about the world, there's a lot of lore in all the Elder scroll games, and they do a good job.

Like, not just, like, reading, but in general, just having little things here and there so you can go into people's homes and kind of get a feel of, like, what is this village?

Like, who was this person who lived here?

They really flesh out the world in these games.

It's crazy.

Yep.

And it's just part of what makes them feel alive.

Yeah, a significant part.

So they're Gonia Maid, too, though.

I feel like the Lusty Argonia made it has, like, a.

A larger pool in, like, the Elder Scrolls gaming community that I think the creator probably thought it was gonna have.

Yeah.

I don't know if they assumed that people were just gonna Latch onto it.

But so funny though.

They did.

Everyone.

If they only know about one book from the Elder Scrolls and it's not an Elder scroll, it's the Lusty Argonian Mae.

Yeah.

And I mean, they're not super long, but just kind of like, you know, a guy is a Lusty Argonian maid.

They're just doing some really suggestive stuff.

I don't think it gets pornographic, but it gets highly suggestive and pretty amusing.

Yeah.

That is the other thing.

You all.

You always, always.

The books in the Elder Scrolls, you never find the entire book.

You never find the entire book.

So you get Lusty Argonian made and like snippets of six different volumes.

You just get to piece the story together.

Would you recommend reading this one on its own?

I would.

I would, yeah.

This one, I think does.

I don't think you read the context of the game to read the Lusty Hargonis.

All you need to know is Oregonians are lizard people.

That's it.

Yep.

That is the only context you'll be missing.

Nice.

The next one is another one I think it's probably helpful for you to tell us more about because I've never played this game.

I've read the letter.

I've watched the show.

But the Last of Us is a character.

Frank writes a letter to another character whose name I already forgot.

This is why you should do Bill.

Right?

Frank and Bill.

Yeah.

And my understanding is this isn't even like a pivotal part of the game.

Like, you could just miss this whole side story, Right?

Yeah.

So this is the note that is largely what everyone's favorite or least favorite episode of the Last of Us show is about.

They extrapolated most of that hour of television from knowing Frank a little bit and this note.

So it's significant.

It means a lot in the world.

But because of the nature of the series, it's just kind of.

There's a note you read that you move on.

The world sucks in the game.

It's weird, too, because.

Well, we should talk about what the note is, I guess, and who Frank and Bill are.

But the show and the game, very different on this matter.

But also I'm of the camp that it's one of my favorite episodes.

My probably is my favorite episode.

It is a really, really good episode of television.

You probably wouldn't have remembered from the game.

That's how I know most of you were lying when you said that you didn't like that part of the show because it was wrong for the.

It wasn't really based on the game.

Anyway.

Frank and Bill are two survivors who loved each other.

And the note we find is basically just Frank's suicide note.

He decided to go hang himself instead of falling victim to the zombie infestation, the Cordyceps virus.

So, yeah, it's really another one of those, like, just little moments that the last of us takes to stab you in the heart and keep moving on.

Yeah, yeah.

And they are.

They were a couple, right?

In the game, too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's interesting because, like, the show is more of a.

They kind of come to this conclusion together and he doesn't go off somewhere and whatever.

But the letter is kind of more of like a screw you do.

Like, I would hate to live another day with you.

So it's quite different.

Yeah.

Well, there's two letters.

Oh, is there?

I only read the one.

Yes.

This one that you've posted is the one that is supposed to make Bill feel better.

And then the other one is, like, very artful.

So I need to read that other one.

Yeah.

Do you think these can be read on their own and they can.

They can.

Kind of depends on what you like to read.

Yeah.

If you've read a lot of letters, then, yeah, this won't surprise you much.

I feel like it does help.

This one more relies on the context than the lusty Argonian, at least.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This is just a big piece of flavor for the last of us.

One of those things that makes the last of us feel like a real dying world.

Yeah.

Again, you know, that's.

Most of the reading stuff is just really flushing out the world.

They do pretty cool job with it.

I know nothing about the Witcher.

This is just me listening to tj.

I think.

I have never played the Witcher.

I know almost nothing about it.

The little I do know is from our sister podcast, Page and Pixel did an episode on Witcher 3 recently.

Great.

Sounded cool, but did not make me want to play it at all.

Like, I still have no desire to play these.

Yeah.

It just feels like too big of a commitment for something that I would like.

Okay.

You know, probably so.

Yeah.

But the Witchers started as like, stories.

Sweden or something.

I forget where.

Some European.

Ukraine.

Poland.

It's Poland.

Polish.

That sounds right.

Yeah.

There were novels, then there was a game, and then the show.

There are short stories.

It's like a whole universe.

They didn't start with the games, but I think most people would.

You probably still think about the games.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

The Witcher is a series of Books and short stories by Andre Sapkowski.

They're good.

Yeah.

And some of that and some of the short stories are in the game.

So my understanding is that's how you find the Lesser of Two evils is our pick for this one is you literally just find a book, and in the book, this is one of the short stories in.

Yep.

So could you break down what is the Lesser of Two evils and how's it play a part in, like, the actual game?

Oh, so it's actually called the Lesser Evil.

It's not.

Yeah, yeah.

The Lesser of Two Evils is an English story, I think.

But the Lesser Evil is one of Andrei Zukowski's short stories about Geralt, and it is the one that actually gives him the name the Butcher of Blaviken, which you don't actually see in the game.

So it adds a little context.

And good grief.

Just Henry Cavill's huge to be playing Carol.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But it does add a lot, because if you're.

Most people who play the Witcher don't read just kind of in general, I found.

But they definitely haven't read the Witcher stories, and it's cool that they threw one in.

It's really cool.

And it adds context to Geralt's character, which I think is sorely missing for most people.

So it's.

It's pretty awesome.

Yeah.

This is another one.

One of our official members shows on their Discord poll.

I. I did not like the short story.

Obviously, since it was originally a short story, it can be read on its own.

I think we can.

But just like, as a story, I think it was well written.

I just don't.

Like, we did something bad to save something else bad from happening.

You know, like, he basically does an entire massacre so that other people don't get killed.

And I'm like, I just feel like there's usually a better way.

And in my stories, I prefer characters who find the better way.

The third option.

That's why I like Doctor who.

Yeah.

That doesn't happen here.

No, there wasn't one.

I think he just wasn't creative enough.

He probably could have figured something out.

Yeah, he tries.

He really does not want to kill all these people.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But basically the story was just one guy tried to get him to kill somebody.

He's like, I'm not gonna do that.

The other person tried to get him to do something he said no to.

He basically just kept denying offers.

Then he realized that he was tricked.

People were coming to slaughter an entire village.

So he had to kill a whole ton of people so that a whole ton of other people don't get killed.

Yep, yep.

It's.

It's one of those.

Another, you know, point to Geralt's life just been really bad.

It really sucks to be Geralt.

That also sucks to be me.

Reading about Geralt, I didn't like him just in general in that story.

It's not a very big short story.

For context.

I'm basing my opinion off of a very small piece of literature.

Yeah, Geralt's awesome.

Yeah.

All right.

Anything else you want to say about that then?

No, it's pretty good.

I think more people should read more of the Witcher stories.

Yeah, I think I might.

But if they make the game a lot easier to understand.

There is a comic of the lesser evil, though, so that's the thing.

Forgot about that.

Probably pretty awesome.

Yeah.

All right.

This last one shocked me.

So this is actually somebody I know in person, loves the Destiny games, listens to our show and was like, hey, wait, if you're doing in game literature, you should talk about the unveiling.

I was like, sure, I'll read something.

Just.

Again, most in game literature isn't that long.

Destiny has, like, Kingdom Hearts vibes, but it's sci fi.

So you think like Kingdom Hearts and Halo somewhere in the middle, but in my opinion, not done as well.

That's probably Destiny.

Yeah.

But cool weapons.

I like a lot of the stuff in the game.

Again, this is my understanding.

I have not played.

I played the first Destiny.

I didn't play Destiny 2, which were the unveiling trail.

TJ, have you ever played the Destiny games?

No, not really.

Okay, so we are talking a little bit from ignorance on how the story comes up.

Oh, completely from ignorance, yeah.

My understanding is that you just kind of find them and they got updated throughout.

You didn't get the whole story at once.

But a lot of Destiny is, like, about light and dark, and you're fighting off on the side of the light, trying to fend off the dark, whatever.

And one of the beings of darkness is who kind of gives you this parable of, like, is dark actually bad or do you need to prune sometimes?

Is that actually just necessary?

Kind of like what was being posed by delivering these short stories.

So the unveiling is kind of like a series of short stories that compile together to make a full parable?

I guess would be the fair way of saying that.

Yeah.

So I don't know.

So it's the gardener and the Winnower is kind of the characters of the parable.

And it starts off with kind of this whole proposition of is it evil if everything's getting.

Basically everything's getting created.

In order for five things to be alive, two things have to die.

Kind of is the ideal.

Things aren't sufficient on their own, so death has to happen for life to continue.

Thus is it really evil if someone is causing some of those death because he's trying to create life?

And that's when you get this, the winner, the Winnower and the Gardener characters.

So first it gets kind of poised as kind of like a game.

And then you see the Gardener and the Winnower.

The gardener is trying to plant.

The Winnower is going through and taking stuff out so that things that are planted can grow efficiently.

Then you have what's called the flower game.

And it's a set of rules.

Okay, So a living flower with less than two living neighbors is cut off and dies.

A living flower with two or three living neighbors is connected.

It lives.

A living flower with more than three starves, because it's overcrowded and it dies, we have the Thanos problem.

So you need exactly two or three neighbors for flowers to live anymore.

They're overcrowded, they die.

Any less, they don't have what they need to survive.

You know, I'm not going to go through the entire parable, but it's given like five or six parts, I think.

And I thought it was done really well.

It was interesting that that's kind of how the darkness positions everything to the end.

Go.

Okay, so who's right?

The gardener or the Winnower?

The planter or the one keeping up the rules of the game so that things can live?

Yeah, I like Bungie is able to do that pretty often, I feel like is right.

Like a good morally gray conundrum.

I wish Bungie still did that kind of thing.

Even at the time of Destiny 2, it was.

It was pretty rare for them to care this much, if that makes sense.

It just, to me personally, like, the world of Destiny is cool.

The concepts are cool.

It's just a far cry and it's not far cry from the peak of Bungie as a studio, which is, of course Halo 2.

I still don't like Halo.

Yeah.

That's why I'm called Josh with the bad opinions, if anyone's wondering.

Yeah.

But yeah.

As far as this literature goes though, I think I would love more people to read this actually.

Even though Destiny for me was an okay game this parable, like reading this, like top to bottom, I'm like, I want to talk to people about this.

It would be kind of cool if more people read this on its own.

This one to me stands up more than even the one that actually was a short story.

Like, I think this stands up perfectly.

Yeah, it's really thought provoking.

Great literature.

Enough to make me want to play the games.

Just because I'm like, okay, so they're doing some interesting things like philosophy and stuff in this game.

I kind of want to know more, which I think the opposite was supposed to happen.

I was supposed to play the game and that's gonna make me want to know more than read.

But instead I read it now I'm like, I kind of wish I could play that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Anyway, so those are our five choices.

We have one more pick we're going to be doing.

For bonus for listeners down below, we're going to talk a little bit about Grognog the Barbarian from the Fallout series.

Before we do though, one of the things that this sparked for me is just kind of remembering the importance of taking those little moments to read.

Whether it's like I collected an answer report in the game or something I used to do a lot is like, I'm waiting in line or in a bathroom.

I like always had my Bible on me and I'm just reading stuff out of my Bible.

And that's why I started the habit of reading the Bible 13 times a year.

And it's just kind of one of those.

I don't know, it doesn't have to be the Bible guys.

But I'm talking about just reading in general.

I think we miss opportunities to read all the time because like we associate gaming as gaming and we say, I'm in the line, I just gotta wait here.

It's like, oh, you can read.

You can bring.

Nowadays you can get a small Kindle and just in a line at Disney World, I'll just read a book real quick.

I don't know, I just think it's important to take the moment to just recognize there are a lot of tiny moments in our lives where we can just read.

You read the ingredients off of a bottle.

That totally counts.

Because then you'll start looking up what is this?

And you'll learn a lot of new words.

And that's awesome.

I just think that sometimes we miss out on those little opportunities.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, even if it's not like books in games there is like the type where like just describing a character or like last Time, I think or no, two times ago we did this.

We talked about like appendixes and stuff.

Yeah.

Any little chance.

I got a friend who started his workout regime, got really healthy.

And the way it started is he just like started with just finding the furthest parking spot anywhere I went, so I had to walk.

You know, sometimes you take those little moments, exercise those muscles.

I think it's important to find little excuses to read and eventually you'll be like, I want to read more.

Yeah.

Especially in today's climate, there's a lot of things vying for your attention.

So whatever you can do to make one of those things reading, you gotta take them.

I think substacks are good because, like, it's set up kind of like social media, but like, I think it's easy for people to get into.

But then you could just like read all of Thomas J. Ord's the Systematic Theology of Love because he did it one post at a time on Substack or Kingdom Hearts.

Stuff's on there too.

Guys.

I was doing something.

I need to get back into it.

Yeah.

It is also really funny to support someone on substack and then see the charge on your card because it just gets charged to like whatever they named their blog.

So it can be.

It can be pretty funny.

I paid Jacques Allul like $9 a month.

Jacques Elul's been dead for 200 years.

You're doing incredible stuff.

Yeah.

I'm proud of you.

Thank you.

I'm trying to think of what the name of Scotty Young has one.

It's like stupid fresh mess.

And anytime I buy something from him.

What Stupid fresh mess.

What's up?

Anyway guys, we are gonna go ahead and start our wrap up here.

Appreciate everybody for listening.

Want to remind everyone again you can get bonus content by becoming an official member.

You can also buy the bonus of content separately for all Reading counts episodes that help support our local libraries.

And again, all merch.

All that stuff that you get.

That's all reading counts based.

Supporting local libraries.

It's an awesome thing to do.

I love these shirts and trying to think what else I know there's a couple shirts.

There's a journal you could start Anselm's journal yourself.

All reading counts notebook.

You know, there's a couple stuff.

I think it's worth it.

I think just anything we could do to help our local libraries.

I love libraries and don't want them to die.

Yeah.

With that we do have to recommend something from a kind of literature other than the kind that this episode was about and discuss how you think it might be beneficial for people.

TJ something other than in game literature that you think people should go read.

Yeah.

Check out the Mistborn Trilogy by Brandon Sanderson.

If you've been out of the fantasy genre for a long time, Mistborn is like a really quick, easy way to get back into it.

It's a short trilogy.

It is followed up by a trilogy.

And both trilogies themselves are actually included in the much larger cosmere scale of things.

So it includes like 60, 70 books.

So you can kind of just commit to the point where you're comfortable.

If you just want to read the first Mistborn book, it's pretty good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm gonna go with kind of a weird one, a little bit older from my favorite author because I been wanting.

I've been rereading stuff lately.

I haven't got to this one.

This is probably gonna be next for me.

G. Willow Wilson writes Alif the Unseen.

It's a cyberpunk fantasy novel with like Middle Eastern fantasy stuff.

So you got like gin.

It's just.

Just freaking cool.

Yeah, yeah.

Hackers with genies all in one spot.

That sounds pretty sick.

It's just a really fun world to kind of just.

The story is good too, but just like the world as a whole.

Like I just kind of want to sit there, you know.

So those are our recommendations.

You guys want more recommendations, you got to listen to more episodes.

If you want to hear that bonus question, head on over to our member site again.

That link will be down in the show's description.

Sorry again if I've been struggling.

Super sick.

Still don't know what's going on.

Think it's just a migraine, but it's a bit.

Great review of this show though.

Wherever you're listening, it'll make me feel better that I recorded sick.

If you took the time to do that.

Made me feel appreciated.

Also I do feel super appreciated by our financial supporters, especially Jonathan Augustin.

He supports two shows that I'm on.

He's an awesome guy.

And you guys can get your own shout out like Jonathan by becoming an official member.

Assist Mike Thecology on our website this to be in the show's description.

You also get free content buy merch, leave a one time financial gift on the same site without becoming a member.

If you don't want to do that.

So do think about that.

And of course, remember we are all a chosen people.

Kdom of Priest.