Rude Tales of Magic: Mountaintop (with special guest star Brennan Lee Mulligan)

May 21, 2020 11:51 AM

"Regarding that principle, the Buddha often said to the bhikùus, “You should know that the Dharma which I speak is like a raft. The raft is used to cross the sea of suffering — birth and death. Before you have ended birth and death, you use the raft in cultivation. Once you have ended birth and death, you should put the raft aside. If you do not put the raft aside you have an attachment." -The Diamond Sutra
posted by yellowbinder (6 comments total)

This was just mindblowing. When Kreedis and Albee went off for the real lesson I had to stop the podcast and make sure I could savour the rest. As ever I need to relisten.

There's a lot of great stuff in here about parasocial relationships and fandoms and selfishness and identity and struggle and oh damn it's so harsh but real. And that capper.

I'm dying to see where Albee goes from here. So much of the plot has been driven by her impulses, her need to do something or save someone. Hopefully they can pick up soon (see next post), but this is a great place to pause.
posted by yellowbinder at 12:04 PM on May 21, 2020 [1 favorite]

Yeah this episode was fun and funny and then suddenly I was like "fuck, did I just gain enlightenment?"

And upon googling, Brennan Lee Mulligan has a philosophy degree, which explains a lot.
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:54 PM on May 21, 2020 [2 favorites]

This was a good one - I'm glad they gave a guest the trust needed to just do whatever he liked. I ended up listening to the podcast season of BLM's Fantasy High and damn if he's not the best in the business.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 8:13 PM on May 21, 2020

Finally caught up with RToM, and wow, this was some great stuff. It's rare that a D&D story really digs into what it means to be a particular class past the mechanics. Getting into the philosophy of monkhood was amazing.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 7:19 AM on June 17, 2020 [1 favorite]

I actually thought there was a chance Albee would reclass away from being a monk at the end of the episode, but the way they went is much more interesting.

I'm not really feeling the new in-between series but I can't wait for this to come back.
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:51 AM on June 17, 2020

No one has ever learned anything meaningful from someone else’s journey.
posted by yellowbinder at 11:30 AM on July 28, 2020 [1 favorite]