#The Horne Section podcast

[penelopepitstopp]

Now that's what I call Taskmaster does The Horne Section Podcast!

[alexhornefan]

[sherlock-is-ace]

My discomfort with sexual fanfiction of real life people is never really a problem cause I don't go looking for it but that one ep of The Horne Section Podcast is absolute hell for me. Like literally can't listen to it... thankfully is over in the first 10 mins

[eesttm]

This is how Greg sits on his throne when he's bored.

S10E08 outtake

[lastweeksshirttonight]

LEE'S FAQ!

Over the past nearly-two years, I've noticed that I get some questions about John's work asked repeatedly. That doesn't bother me - half of his prominent work is somewhat lost media, Tumblr's search is super fucked, and I always want to help anyone falling down the JO rabbit hole - but I realized that one central pinned post would be helpful! I'll keep this up to date as much as possible.

I know I have a lot of international followers, and if you have any knowledge of where to stream or find some of these items, please let me know and I'll update this post.

WHERE CAN I FIND...?

Anything really, I've just started going down this rabbit hole:

The John Oliver Masterlist is an incredible resource - while it hasn't been updated since about 2017 and has some broken links (especially in the LWT sections), it has functional links to every JO clip from The Daily Show, all the main segments of LWT through 2017, radio shows, and lots of other material. This was made by @johnoliverphotos and @ilovejohnoliver, and I'm eternally grateful for it.

The Department:

YouTuber Ben Jennings has the entire series on his channel.

Player FM has the series uploaded here as well.

The Bugle:

The Bugle Archive has all Times Online era episodes available to download. PLEASE DOWNLOAD THE EPISODES DIRECTLY; DO NOT STREAM FROM THIS SITE.

The Bugle is starting to upload Times Online era episodes to their official channels, which can be found here. They're up to ep 75 as of June 2024.

All post-Times Online episodes (starting with episode 179) are available on The Bugle's official channels.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart:

Paramount has axed the Daily Show archives online as of 6/26/24. It's absolutely gutting how little they give a shit about this program. Fuck them.

You're gonna have to sail the high seas to watch this. I'm sorry that this is the state of the US' most important comedy show of the 2000s. Since Paramount hasn't done shit with the old episodes for decades, I wouldn't hold your breath on it entering streaming.

Community:

In the US, this can be streamed on Peacock. Individual episodes can be purchased on YouTube, Apple TV, and Amazon Prime.

Worldwide, Community is now on Hulu.

Every season of Community is available on DVD and Blu-Ray.

John Oliver's New York Stand-Up Show:

In the US, the whole show is on Paramount Plus and can be purchased through Amazon and Apple.

This show also got purged in the big Comedy Central erasure, but at least you can buy it still?? Shit silver lining, I know.

Back catalog episodes of Last Week Tonight:

You can buy back catalog episodes on YouTube and Amazon in the US.

The first through fifth seasons of LWT have been uploaded fully on their YouTube in the US, with plans to upload future seasons during breaks in the show's current episodes!

In certain areas outside of the US, LWT is now being uploaded in full on their YouTube channel as well.

HBO Max no longer has back catalog episodes because capitalism is fucking ridiculous, I pay monthly for this service entirely for this show and I can't even watch old news from 5 years ago

The Horne Section:

The whole series is on Taskmaster Supermax+, which should work everywhere except the UK.

In the UK, you can stream this through Channel 4.

Taskmaster:

I've been trying to will this into existence for multiple seasons, no one can stop me

BLOG-SPECIFIC QUESTIONS

How did you get into John Oliver?

I answered this in too much detail in two posts, here and here.

Where is your icon from?

UPDATED: It was made by the lovely @stalebagels for me. She is wonderful <3

Is this blog a bit?/Do you really find this man attractive?

No, this is not an ironic bit, I really like John Oliver and find him genuinely hot. (Tbf, I get this question way more in person than online.)

[3dprintcess]

Two minutes of suggestive sounds from the Horne Section (or TM).

[justifiedmadness]

It's been a long week - so let's unwind with some good music and good vibes!  Tune in and bring a friend (or a few!) Copyright Disclaimer under section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statue that might otherwise be infringing."  Originally aired at https://www.blogtalkradio.com/justifiedmadness/2024/08/18/saturday-madness-8-17-2024 Support the Podcaster: Join My Patreon Squad I'm on Cameo Join My Fanbase CashApp Me PayPal Me Vwnmo Me Become a Justified Madness Extra Supporter Music and Audio Featured This Episode: "Love Machine" - The Miracles (1975) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLBWHQIfxEY "Baby Come Back" - Player (1977) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjBs4pKwzhU "Hot Child in the City" - Nick Gilder (1978) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrPesaX1o3c "Keep On Truckin'" - Eddie Kendricks (1973) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjKwmlH0EJE "Three Times a Lady" - The Commodores (1978) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-XBK3kSyFE "Strawberry Letter 23" - The Brothers Johnson (1977) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CExygD1iEu0

[lexstellaris]

that weird feeling of relief when it's not your fic being called out for once lmao

[panelshowsource]

i’d love to know, what are some panel show moments you think about a lot?

omg like just off the top of my head?

just the whole episode of cats after jimmy's tax avoidance scandal

"good evening your majesty you tax-dodging bitch"

david mumbling "chancellor of the exchequer" in small font

when the horne section was doing macarena on catsdown and the rose was so limp WHY WAS IT SO LIMP

the greatest breath smeller game

"this makes me so angry because they wouldn't show the clip of me attacking my mother with a taser! i thought it was really funny!"

josh groban being an absolute wizard at singing intros followed by martin freeman being an absolute wizard at guessing them to the point production asked him to slow down giving the answer because he was too good

when stacey solomon said she likes teresa may and jimmy carr, gino d'acampo, and carol vorderman were absolutely speechless

alex’s reaction after joe says he has pineapple in his ass

when jimmy used the 30 seconds to wax his leg??

the way the queen’s pussy being haunted was like genuine headline news

mark sending greg 148 texts and getting 0 points ("what a terrible waste of time")

when that nude model came on for jimmy to (pretend) to live draw and lee mack was so gobsmacked at that man's penis he violently elbowed david o'doherty going "look at that!"

"you wouldn't do that during shakespeare, would you?"

on outsiders when joe wilkinson couldn't believe david mitchell is only 47 and literally said "do you live outside"

phil wang roasting ed gamble and saying "ed's girlfriend is such a dog i tried to eat her"

"you cannot imply that only gay people eat vegetables"

♪ but bin men get sad ♪

when those podcasters were reading joe wilkinson his own tweets and he was sweating so much and then just covered his eyes and went "what's wrong with me..."

"stephen fry wouldn't read 'pussy-friendly finger'"

when johnny vegas was literally eating a tin of fucking dog food and kathy burke was like "what's happening??" and jimmy so nonchalantly went "we're just eating dog food :)"

when noel ate some of alex's beard and greg said "you are aware that when we're at home alex is only allowed to move around like a snake?"

every joe & rachel hug ever here's a cute one :')

claudia completely bodying this lie and everyone's animals being so cute and funny and rob and lee complaining just the whole thing

on rhlstp when richard was Being Richard for the last hour and louis theroux was Over It and richard went "have you ever tried to suck your own cock?" and louis just died and then muttered "...do we have to..."

"i don't really eat potatoes it feels a bit irish :/"

johnny vegas pulling something out of rhod gilbert's pants, sniffing it, and then scandalising the entire room by saying "i've been told i smell better from behind than i do from the front, lovers have told me"

gosh my rotted brain is always rattling around panel show moments ..i wish to be cured

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Good news, everyone! Alex Horne has chosen to bring back his lip synch skills! You know, the ones in that video of his stand-up that's somehow from 2014, even though it feels like the sort of thing that should be one of those old videos you find of a now-famous comedian performing in like 2007:

Anyway, that Zaltzman interview was fun. I enjoyed that he was wearing full cricket gear, not just messing around with a white shirt. Knee pads. Big mittens. Helmet with face mask. And, yes, carrying the bat. I love the idea of Andy Zaltzman finally getting a big break on TV, at almost 50, and saying he'll only do it if he can drag in an entire cricket uniform. No, no, not just a shirt. All of the gear. And the bat.

This is actually not the first time this week that I've heard these two interact. I decided to prepare for Taskmaster s18 by listening to the previous recordings of Andy Zaltzman with Alex Horne. Andy's done three episodes of Alex's 2013-2014 podcast Alex Horne Breaks The News, and he did one episode of The Horne Section's podcast.

Listening to those four episodes really drove home how many specific similarities there are in Alex and Andy's style of humour. They're not particularly similar overall, but they have a few fairly rare quirks in common, and are usually the only person in a room with those quirks, so it is fun to hear them put those to each other. I cannot wait to see them get to Taskmaster, and Alex tries to measure something in mice and Andy will not be put off in the slightest, will just start explaining why using cats is actually a more standardized system. Andy and Alex are both so big on tracking pointless stats.

All three of Andy's Breaks the News episodes were a lot of fun. Those were actually the 3-5 episodes I've heard of that podcast, as I listened to the two Ray Peacock ones earlier this year and liked those too, I might end up getting into all of that podcast. It's very funny. An excellent vehicle for showing off Alex Horne's quirky humour, and I always like being reminded how much of that humour was there long before Taskmaster.

I like how much of the Taskmaster origins you can trace in general, through Alex Horne's whole career. No More Women/Jockeys and We Need Answers are both Alex showing off his love of random pointless games. Tim Key has talked in interviews about how they used to play the stupidest games they could think of at university. And Breaks the News is Alex Horne making people play a variety of pointless games, which he introduces and scores in absurd ways with full commitment to the bit. I suppose making comedians play short silly games can't be called Alex Horne's invention, as it's the cornerstone of the entire panel show industry, but Alex has a signature way of doing it that's been consistent for twenty years. The way he'll ask the senseless questions with total sincerity. Throwing in unrelated things as though they go together.

Is it possible that Taskmaster rose above all other panel shows in national and international popularity because it's a rare panel show that was made in the image of the showrunner's genuine sense of humour, rather than just a concept based on what's previously worked with famous names attached? I mean obviously it was also a bit of the latter (I don't love the things about Frank Skinner like "used to be a lecturer who married his teenage student", but some things about him are better, such as "is the reason Taskmaster exists because no one else would do the show without a big enough name attached in season 1"), but I feel like it has more of the former than most shows.

Anyway, I'd say that of all the Horne/Zaltzman podcast interactions, the one that makes clearest their odd similarities is the Alex Horne Breaks the News with Andy Zaltzman and Liam Williams:

The above is an absolutely excellent podcast episode, I highly recommend it to anyone who likes any of the three people involved. Andy and Alex go back and forth brilliantly, getting a bit further than usual with their style of "present an absurd scenario but take it seriously", as they keep taking each other's scenarios seriously, which is where I get the idea that Andy will respond to Alex's Taskmaster mice measuring by converting it into cats. Andy Zaltzman is often so awkward on other people's podcasts, there's usually a beat missing where everyone else will be in their rhythm, and then Andy will just throw his weird lie-based joke at what they're doing, and it'll hit a wall, and the others will either find it funny or not, but it's hard for it to go anywhere. But in this episode, Alex is kind of also doing that, they get into their own weird rhythm, and every once in a while Liam Williams will throw one of his deep-voiced baffled cynical statements into the mix, and I think it's a perfect blend. I realize it might not say great things about the diversity of my comedy taste that I believe three straight white Oxbridge-educated men form the perfect podcast episode, but this is pretty much what I want out of comedy.

This exchange, however, is from the episode he did with Brett Goldstein (and Ian Smith as a very funny scorekeeper, it was a sideline role but he stole the show several times from there), and is probably the easiest summary of the sort of thing I'm talking about, when I say Andy Zaltzman's sense of humour is largely based on just... lies:

I love the Zaltzman lies, but it's so hard to find other comedians with whom they can fit into a panel show setting. Alex Horne might just be that guy, I look forward to hearing them go back and forth on Taskmaster.

And one more audio clip for this post:

That's from the end of last week's Bugle episode, with Andy bringing his usual level of smooth self-promotional skills to the plugging portion of the recording. The first of what should be many times that he has to plug his Taskmaster appearance, and I hope every single one is exactly that awkward. I'm also pleased to hear Nish Kumar and Tom Ballard will be the next guests, partly because they're an excellent combination and I don't think they've been on together in about a year, but mainly because those are two people who will not let Andy get away with not acknowledging that he's on Taskmaster now. This will be fun.

[phils-slit]

i just learned that hank green has been on the horne section podcast and given how much he hypes up dan and phil um. phil on taskmaster? pretty please?

[penelopepitstopp]

!!!!

[alexhornefan]

Alex having to guess what instrument Greg was playing.

It's really nice to just see them having fun not in the TM world.

[sherlock-is-ace]

December first means it's finally time to listen to christmas music!! Hell yeah I'm back in my Horne Section Christmas bullshit!! dkfjghdg

[bluerosesonata]

I played and finished Slay the Princess last night while I was puppy sitting. I had such a great time. She’s my scary wife now.

Spoilers + more detailed thoughts below the cut, but without spoilers:

[points at devs] haha horror podcast fans

I’ve always loved Nicole Goodnight from her first appearances on Nosleep. she did so excellent as the Princess.

Very impressive scope, even with the very definitive ending I got, I came away from the game feeling like there were still paths I hadn’t seen.

Just as a general tone setter, I love the opening card/disclaimer that ends with “This Is A Love Story.”

GREAT visual style and art. I’ll get into this in my breakdown below, but with my amateur eye I love how they took a non-traditional approach to way the images/characters are displayed in a renpy game

INCREDIBLE music.

Hard to avoid Disco Elysium comparisons with the aspects of the Self mechanic, which I’m sure is either a received as a high compliment or is a source of annoyance for the devs, lol

Highly recommend it for OELVN fans, horror fans, and lesbians.

First and foremost, I’m genuinely very impressed at the amount of variety to the paths.

On my first playthrough, I got on a loop where I kept the princess locked up, and then she came upstairs and killed me. The next loop, The Paranoid showed up, and when we went into the basement, it was all spooky and distorted. In this one, we had some great banter with The Princess before I ultimately decided to slay her, and trapped me in the basement by warping reality and removing the stairs, forcing me to kill myself to escape that loop. The Cold showed up in chapter 3, and I think that was when I tried to leave the woods.

In subsequent loops, even when choosing all the choices I made to the best of my memory, I couldn’t recreate that first loop at all. It really speaks to the scope of the game in an impressive way.

The first vessel I managed to provide was The Tower. (It was the outcome of being mauled on your first encounter with her, then perceiving her as a dominating, inevitable force.) After discovering my new objective, the endings I saw were The Prisoner (It’s the ending where you just wait for the cell to rot away around you), The Razor (GOATED route, I will be calling her ‘Knife Wife,’), The Damsel, and ended with The Adversary (devil horns), before reaching Awakening.

These are the only routes I can talk about, but I’m certain there were at least 2 I missed/didn’t get to see. It’s an EXTREMELY impressive scope, and fully voiced, to boot, so my hat is off to the devs on that front.

(The next few paragraphs are about the voice acting, if you want my story thoughts, I made a small heading for that bc my VA thoughts got a bit out of hand lol)

Voice Acting

While I’m on the subject of the game being fully voiced: Nicole’s voice acting really shines here, and it’s absolutely essential to making this game what it was. I think a version of this game without it would be very Good, but not nearly as Haunting. The sheer variety of reads on certain lines based on how you first approach the princess is incredibly impressive, as well. (Again— scope!!!)

As far as the narrator VO goes, i can’t deny that Jonathan did a great job, and with his history of being the main narrator for The Magnus Archives, he was a good fit for the tone and audience of the game. I would even posit that, even if there were other people who were considered in the early phases of development, the cross-promotional potential of drawing in even a small section of an audience already primed for cosmic, reality-altering horror via TMA was a very smart business decision, and I applaud them for it. That being said, I think one unintended side effect of his casting may be that people familiar with his TMA character (a…semi-reliable narrator) might immediately come in primed with doubts about the Narrator. They seem to have anticipated this, though, and included skeptical and suspicious dialogue choices with him right off the bat in the first chapter, which is fun.

(A brief aside: If it seems like I am being very measured with my thoughts on the Narrator, it is not because I have anything negative to say about his performance. I am being measured simply because the narrative devices the game employs makes it impossible to not draw comparisons to Big Hitters like The Stanley Parable and Disco Elysium— both incredible games that I personally would be both delighted and terrified to be brought up when discussing a game I created or a role I was playing.

These games did not Create the idea of “a narrator you interact with and who is sometimes rude to you” or “multiple voices with distinct Traits butting in on your current predicament,” but both games are incredibly prolific in how implemented those devices and the vocal performances involved….so it is not a fair comparison.)

Story Thoughts

The subtitle for this section could also be “Faron ranks how hot they find all of the versions of The Princess.” jk.

I am not going to do summaries here I’m just going to assume most people reading this have played the game.

But let’s start again with the sentence at the beginning of the game: “This is a love story.”

Not long ago, there was a big discussion on tumblr about the statement that horror is “about love”, (it might have even been spurred on by TMA, lol) and that lead to a lot of justified (but not always kind) posts from my fellow horror fans being annoyed by that take. I’ll spare you a rehash of all of that. But it is exactly Because of that discourse (and my general gothic preferences) that I like the choice to open with this a whole lot. The phrase “This is a love story,” written in bold, at the end of a disclaimer saying ‘there are no wrong choices, just different paths,’ has an immense power to it. It is a mic drop way to open up a story, as a way to prime the audience to be open to the Princess as more than a monster, and creates the anticipation for a greater relationship to be uncovered between the protagonist and the princess.

It could also be that the phrase hit my brain in a weird way because of Fata Morgana. I don’t think The House in Fata Morgana had a similar line in the actual game— but my roommate who handed me Fata Morgana very specifically told me, “it is a horror game, and it is a tragedy, but at its core, It Is a Love Story.” And that’s always stuck with me. (I digress.)

A Brief Address to Loops and the Popularity of the Looping Narrative

I could sit here all day and talk to you guys about looping metanarrative structure and the different approaches to it, but you’ve probably all played a VN with that before. (If you haven’t, and this is your first time encountering something like this and it blew your mind…Go play Zero Escape: 999. Run, don’t walk.)

I believe very strongly that reviews should be about what a game Is, and how well it accomplished what it aims to be, not about what you wish the game was. But it is an even stronger opinion of mine that loop narratives, especially in visual novels, can sometimes get too bogged down in the details of “why am i in a time loop.”

I am extremely glad that this game (mostly) avoided this, bc it offers an opportunity to say something about the subgenre as a whole.

At the end of the day, looping narratives mainly exist as a metanarrative device in VNs to acknowledge and offer a reason why your character’s behavior (and/or your choices) change. It’s an easy way to create ludonarrative harmony, and to inject some extra drama with little extra effort.

But BECAUSE it’s easy, it can also feel Extremely Overused, and starts to become an expectation.

I won’t go on a soapbox about it, especially because I feel like this game handled it very well, and the looping, metanarrative aspect is suited to the themes and character subject matter of Beings Who Are Concepts, even if they Why doesn’t really satisfy. At the end of the day, this is a love story, and the why matters less than the feelings involved.

Specific Path Thoughts

All versions of the Princess are incredibly strong concepts, and the game is structured in a way that I very much would enjoy seeing how different people’s first loops influence their opinions on her. It’s got IMMENSE “streamability” in that regard.

Someone that encountered The Damsel version of the princess first would have an INCREDIBLY different experience than someone who encountered the Adversary first, which ties very neatly into the subject of the greater love story and can also generate some great post-play discussion.

I think, undoubtedly, the Aspects of the princess that made the biggest impressions on me were The Adversary (demon wife) and The Razor (Knife Wife). Part of this is due to the sheer length of their paths, as both of them take 3+ loops (correct me if I’m wrong) to reach the conclusion of their sections, whereas The Damsel, The Tower, and The Prisoner all only took 2. (See the next section for more on that). Thinking about it, every path was similar in the amount of sheer resources created for them (illustrations, animation), but these two create the illusion of having more than the others simply due to being the longest action sequences and loops in the game.

The Razor has an OUTSTANDING design, and the sequence to slay her would have been an incredible finale in its own right, as we get introduced to EVERY Aspect of ourselves as we die over and over again, even shoving the narrator out of the way so we can just jump to the cabin and fight her again, and the PC reasoning that “if there’s enough of Me, I might be able to overcome her”. For this reason, and because of the big knife skeleton body, I think that the Razor path is more Fun than the Adversary’s.

Flavor-wise, however, I feel like The Adversary is a much stronger character and narrative thread. A princess who doesn’t want to escape— she just wants a good fight. She wants you at your best, and she won’t have any less. That’s exactly the sort of character dynamic that really gets me going. I love single-minded women, and I love a main character who meets them on their level of crazy.

Both of these paths involve the Aspects of Self “The Hunted” and “The Stubborn,” and they are the aspects of the PC that by FAR have the most color to them (besides the lover, who is more of a buffoon.) I think they were my favorites.

That being said, I adored how exhausted the Narrator got during the Damsel path, and I thought there was a very quiet, profound power in the Prisoner version of the Princess. She had an austere, quiet pride to her, tinged with an undeniable sorrow.

I really do appreciate the variety of ways they provide for one to approach your dialogues with the Shifting Mound after every loop. They really create a lot of space for the player to decide how they feel about her. Even if it sort of bothered me that every time there was a choice to tell her you would slay her once it was all over, I appreciate the option being there. (And, again- the sheer amount of dialogue!! Sheesh!)

Lastly, the finale. It was incredible, going through all of the forms, reliving all of the choices you made. But this is the part that the amount of options started to detract from my experience.

Again- I love that they left a lot of space for people to decide how they feel. I like the amount of responses provided, and I get the impression they don’t change the final choice in any way, just the dialogue she says to get to it.

But it bothered me that there was an option to just…opt out of seeing every vessel, either by submitting to her or by killing her. I can’t see a world where anyone playing a finale like this would WANT to cut the big final movement short. It seems silly.

The payoff was worth it, though. It was a beautiful end and one that definitely will stick with me.

(And Obviously I decided to take her hand and remain endless with her! How could I not!)

Mechanical Musings

Note: I am a dabbler in Ren’Py, but I have been a dabbler for over a decade, and I went to college for game design. (You’re allowed to laugh) I’m not GOOD at programming, and I forget the class names for basically everything unless I’m looking at it.

All of this is all to say I am PURELY speculating on how certain parts of the game were accomplished.

UI/Display/Visuals

The choice to omit a typical text box was an objectively correct one for this game, in no small part to how they decided to do the visuals on this game. It kept the game looking clean and drew the eye to the stunning visuals. The right aligned prompt box similarly aided in that respect, and I think that being forced to scroll down to resist during certain tense sequences was a great touch. Makes me wonder if there’s a timed element on those responses.

The choice to eschew using typical talk sprites (outside of The Long Quiet scenes, the sequence with The Damsel, i thiiiiink the confrontation in the basement maze, and the finale) in favor of using scenes/displayed images really aided in the storybook vibes, and the animated loops they had on those images gave the pencil work an amazing kinetic energy for the scenes where the princess is just standing or sitting still. (For the uninitiated- It’s incredibly simple to program animation loops using static images in RPY, but I’m not clear if that the most memory-efficient way to do so; I’m going to assume they did this though)

The menu Ui is what gives it away as Renpy to me, but you know, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, lol.

I’m sort of surprised there wasn’t anything like a scene viewer or gallery that unlocked at the end, but I guess that might sort of be immersion breaking.

Gameplay

Just from my hobbyist eye, I can tell there’s a looooott of dialogue flags in this one, where they track previous things you’ve said in the scene. There is absolutely a variable for “Princess hostility,” just based on the fact there’s several like reads of her answering the questions you can ask in chapter one, but since I only did a single run where I didn’t pick up the knife in chapter 1, I can’t be sure if it’s points based or binary “has knife = true.”

My guessssss about how the Aspects are inherited is that it might be a point based system combined with a flag indicating how you died; this would explain how I inherited “the paranoid” in ch2 my first run, but never after that.

I can say with almost complete certainty from the way it completely locked me out of deciding to leave the princess locked up after my choice to leave the woods that there is a true/false variable tracker for each path that stores if you’ve reached the Long Quiet or not, bc no matter what I did I could NOT do that again. Either that or there’s a flag where the narrator will lock you downstairs after seeing that screen once.

There’s also probably some variables tied to your appearance changing in the mirror, but i would need to double check achievements to be sure that text isn’t just set to appear after X vessels being provided.

There’s also a distinct possibility there are different “pools” for the princess’ aspects to be pulled from after each “level” of ascension; this would set it up so that it’s impossible for you to end with an event that is only 1 loop long, and it would be easier to assure story pacing that way.

(Ex: “If Vessels < 2, use Event_Pool_A, Else use Event_Pool_B”, where pool A contains vessels that use less than 2 loops to complete)

All in all, if I ever got the chance to crack the hood open on this, I would. I highly recommend it.

[lastweeksshirttonight]

IDK what The Horne Section is about, but having John Oliver is gonna reel me in lol

Hopefully I can summarize this in a sensible way for you anon! (Also forgive me if you already knew any of this!)

"Little" Alex Horne is a British comedian who is objectively most famous for creating the internationally popular exercise-in-psychological-torture-cum-panel-show Taskmaster. The UK version just announced the cast for its 18th season. If you aren't familiar with Taskmaster, this is a pretty good intro to the tenor of this show.

Horne is also part of a band called The Horne Section, where he and his friends have made comedic songs on and off since about 2010. There's a radio show from 2012-2014, a podcast, and a few albums.

(I am not super familiar with their work ngl. It's on the backlog pile along with the entire works of like seventy comedians, the Disney Animated Canon, and 5 video games I started then abandoned for more Civ/MLB the Show time. ADHDDDDDDDDDDD)

On the back of Taskmaster exploding in popularity globally, in 2022, The Horne Section expanded into a six-episode TV show. I know I am fairly biased/literally sat through every Smurfs movie for John Oliver, but if you like Office-style awkward/cringe humour, this show is an absolute delight. I cannot overestimate how much this show had me laughing so hard I was crying.

The show is relatively easy to find online - hope you enjoy it!

Also, if you haven't, you really should watch Taskmaster. The UK version is still the best in my mind, but New Zealand and Australia are amazing in their own right.