July 2024 Newsletter

The solstice has come and gone; from here on, days grow shorter, nights longer, and Ranged Touch… why, Ranged Touch keeps making content.

We had a pretty good showing last month! MAGES AND MURDERDADS saw the stunning and sudden introduction of the plot into Baldur's Gate 3, pulling off a Hail Mary play that stitches the games into continuity with the previous two titles in the series. Which is normal, actually. And of course, CMRN and Danni immediately followed that up with some goofy sidequests about being in the circus and whatnot. Videogames!!!

Speaking of videogames, over on GAME STUDIES STUDY BUDDIES we took a look at Dan Pinchbeck's DOOM: scarydarkfast, a history of the original DOOM. Well worth a listen if you somehow know nothing about Doom and wanted to know how online storefronts got invented. Next month we'll be walking about an ACTUAL game, just as influential as Doom–Myst, which we'll be playing in the Masterpiece Edition from GOG. It is not available on our Bookshop page

Over on JUST KING THINGS, the boys traveled back to the halcyon month of September 2001, when Stephen King joined forces with Peter Straub once more for an epic horror-fantasy by the name of Black House. Listen if you LOVE Dark Tower lore dumps and extended riffing on Dickensian narratorial strategies. Over on the bonus feed, we peered into the Question Sewer for the annual Q&A and answered all sorts of questions from listeners LIKE YOU. We also promised to answer a few on all the bonus eps from now on, so look forward to that, in addition to NEXT MONTH'S EPISODE on short story collection Everything's Eventual and a bonus treat on the John Cusack-Samuel L. Jackson film 1408.

And if the summer heat is getting to you, then mosey on over to SHELVED BY GENRE to get a little bit of a chill, as last month we buddied up again with Austin to begin our unit on the manga of Junji Ito, covering his first series Tomie in not one but two episodes, almost as if the story itself needed to be disassembled…. And over on the bonus feed, we talked about the convergence of horror and comedy with the Evil Dead II. Next month, expect to hear us discussing Uzumaki on the main feed and J-horror powerhouse PULSE.

And if horror is what you're here for, and if you're a gamer, well, you can do yourself a favor now to guarantee more in the future: head on over to Steam and wishlist a game codenamed Project C, from IMMORTALITY creator Sam Barlow in collaboration with director Brandon Cronenberg and with a great deal of writing from none other than Michael–yes, the one who's on some of these podcasts. Wow!!! He's very excited for you all to see what this thing is.

And as always, thanks to our producer Jordan Mallory for his help on all these dang episodes, and thanks to all of YOU for supporting us here on Patreon. Catch you here next month for the roundup!