Skeleton Songs
A games and literature podcast all about stories, from London-based indie developers Weather Factory. Forgotten myths, fantastic sources, gothic tropes and ghoulish tales. All with a list of the games / texts we talk about at the bottom of the episode summary, so you can go away and play/read to your black heart's content.
Episodes
24 episodes
Only In Silence The Word
"The final victory of sci-fi is its final defeat," says AK, gnomically, before we sing the Beverly Hills Cop theme tune and talk about trombones. Join us for a discussion of 'the best fiction novel of the 20th century', A Wizard of...
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1:01:20
The Wood Between the Worlds
Lord of the Rings + Narnia + Jane Austen = ? A smash-hit 800-page faux-Victorian novel of realist magic and alternate histories, of course! Welcome to the world of Susanna Clarke, whose rules-based, Mametian and very 'English' magic sys...
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Season 3
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Episode 4
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1:05:36
The Kilns of Smorgasbord
Author. Visionary. Dreamweaver. Plus bellhop. Meet Jack Vance, one of the most inventive fantasy authors we've ever heard of, and probably not a pirate king. What happens when fairies become too lumpen and earthy? Why are Lvl1 wizards in D&...
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Season 3
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Episode 3
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1:02:45
Magic That Hath Ravish'd Me
"If magic works, why isn't the President of the United States doing it?"After a 'brief' hiatus, we're back! We pick up where we left off and talk about the magic of Doctor Faustus, whether magic is 'liberation or damnation', and the dis...
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Season 3
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Episode 2
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47:32
This Thing of Darkness
Welcome to a new season, all about magic and literature! We talk William Shakespeare's Tempest, from women-wizards from Algiers to royal demonology. Caliban's Moth, Ariel's Lantern and AK nearly dies in a spiegel tent.Games / books ment...
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Season 3
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Episode 1
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46:50
A City Is Not A Tree
What makes games 'savoury'? Why is Twitter such a bad place to get game design advice? And is it ever sensible to push a count off a cliff?This episode, Lottie and Alexis talk art, games and critique, through architect Christopher Alexa...
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Season 2
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Episode 9
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34:26
The Glittering Lights of Wolfstack Docks
Hiraeth? Sensucht? Saudade? Listen to Alexis and Lottie cry as we talk nostalgia, sequels and games, from 17th-century Swiss cowbells to sailing away from your loved ones into danger. We talk transmission of experience from one generation to th...
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Season 2
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Episode 8
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42:47
Now Draw the Rest of the Owl, Part 2
The conclusion of an epic two-parter. Who would win in a fight between TRPGs and CRPGs? What happens if a giant worm swallows a city? Is a dolphin the same as a cat? We attempt to answer these questions with appeals to Simon Baron-Cohen's empat...
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Season 2
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Episode 7
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56:58
Now Draw the Rest of the Owl, Part 1
"I don't want to be Elfstar anymore! I want to be Debbie!"Join us for a romp through tabletop gaming's earliest origins and the effect its had on modern video games. Well, that was the intention. We actually stop around the 1980s with f...
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Season 2
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Episode 6
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53:24
An Early Symptom of Schizophrenia
Real talk: APOPHENIA. Alexis and Lottie discuss subliminal pattern-seeking from its coinage by a Nazi psychologist to its use by modern indie game developers to cover up the fact we don't have any budget. Wait! We meant to make clever, co-opera...
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Season 2
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Episode 5
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40:26
This Episode Is About Sex
This episode is about sex and games and the libertine novels of eighteenth-century France. From Talleyrand, the Napoleonic clergyman and diplomat, through to Cindy Crawford, Peter Bradshaw and Amouranth, the Twitch streamer scandal du jour<...
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Season 2
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Episode 4
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46:38
500,000 Sociopaths
Join Alexis and Lottie for a discussion of antagonists and villains! Via witches, Belgium, Simon Baron-Cohen, a charming Irish vagabond and, of course, Nazism. Alexis talks about how rubbish games are and destroys Lottie's argument; Lottie talk...
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Season 2
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Episode 3
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47:43
Twisty Little Passages All Alike
What's the connection between the Labyrinths of Night and the Bright Ditches? This question and many more we don't really answer in this episode on mazes, labyrinths and game design.Meet labrys, the lesbianic double-headed axe. Leave ki...
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Season 2
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Episode 2
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41:49
Are Panthers Chairs?
Skeleton Songs season two, baby! This season's all about GAMES, but not as you know 'em. Join Alexis and Lottie as we discuss genre via Aristotle and Wittgenstein, cyberpunk and film noir, the Berlin Interpretation and, er, fish genitalia. Also...
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Season 2
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Episode 1
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42:03
Endgame
Ragnarok! Gotterdammerung! Armageddon outta here! In the final episode of season one, we talk eschatology, chocolate, fake news and the bloody gothness of Old Germanic literature. Sexy zombie apocalypses and millennial doomsday cults make an ap...
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Season 1
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Episode 10
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38:17
DIONYSIAN NO PICNIC
Maenads! Who are they, what do they want, and how do they wear their fox-skins? Kittens! How can they be so cute and so murderous at the same time? Join Alexis and Lottie as they discuss why frenzied Bassarids and Cutie McFloofcat are both the ...
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Season 1
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Episode 9
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33:57
An Inheritance of Stones
Join Alexis and Lottie on a deep-dive into WORLDBUILDING. Why it's menacing to be told to start with a timeline, how Twin Peaks' BOB came to be, why you must never call pulled pok 'flesh-spicing', and why the architect of the Guggenhei...
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Season 1
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Episode 8
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32:47
Top Hat, Flight Guy & Tales
This week we take a break from literature and talk about the weird stories in our own lives. Join Sheep-Stealer and Big Head as they introduce you to Great Uncle Gilbert, the teenage flying ace and real-life Great Escape artist, and David the c...
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Season 1
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Episode 7
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32:04
(Un)reliable Narrators
Can you really trust anyone? Join Alexis and Lottie as they roundly conclude that you can't. We talk unreliable narrators via toilets, relevance theory, echoic mentions, the four levels of Star Wars canonicity and Lovecraft being surprisingly c...
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Season 1
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Episode 6
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34:49
Women, Bloody Women
Madness, blood and ladies! We talk all things bloody, from Freud to Pliny to the Red Grail to Queen Elizabeth the First to murdering an entire hive of bees. The Madonna / whore complex? Check. Horrible Norse mythology about men being scared of ...
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Season 1
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Episode 5
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33:32
Forbidden Knowledge
Join Alexis and Lottie for a run-down of forbidden knowledge: the type that's ipso facto dangerous and the type that's dangerous because of what you can do with it. We discover Christopher Marlowe was definitely a spy, nuclear codes are modern ...
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Season 1
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Episode 4
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33:04
Doppelgängers, Fetches & Ka
From ancient Egypt to modern web comics, döppelgangers haunt us all. Join Alexis and Lottie as they discuss the ins and outs of these look-alikey ghouls, from Scottish fetches to Capgras syndrome via Dostoyevsky, Silent Hill 2, neurops...
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Season 1
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Episode 3
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33:16
The Terrible Tale of the Yale
Panthers, dragons, monoceri, yales, wendigos, hell-hounds and pigs! This isn't an occult incantation, this is a half-hour deep-dive into our favourite spooky beasts from medieval bestiaries, epic poems and early 20th century ghost stories.<...
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Season 1
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Episode 2
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31:56