After doing some jam items and participating in a bit of Morktober I’ve gained enough confidence to try to write something substantially longer. Enter The Real Housespouses of X (working title), the module I’m writing for Liminal Horror.

I’m not ready to disclose any plot other than the players will take on the roll of a Real Housespouse attending a séance with friends. Things go awry from there, but that’s also fairly typical for an episode in The Real Housewives franchise. It will just be spookier.

What I’m really here to talk about in this first blog is ruining myself watching reality television during the pandemic.

At the start of the pandemic my fiancé and I first binged some good ole serial television - Buffy, the X-Files until Duchovny left, and so on. But as the pandemic dragged on our attention spans began to wane even more. Plot became a luxury our brains couldn’t afford. That was when the fiancé broke down and started watching Vanderpump Rules.

For the uninitiated, Vanderpump Rules is a spin-off of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills franchise. Vanderpump Rules follows ex-RHOBH star Lisa Vanderpump and her husband as they navigate running several successful restaurants in LA. Naturally the real stars of the show are the young, perpetually horny, perpetually sloppy main wait staff at Sur. It should come as no surprise that there are a lot of drunken arguments, bad ideas, and ridiculous costume parties.

BUT

That was only the gateway. Once I got sucked in to the world of Vanderpump Rules my fate was sealed. My fiancé and I then watched all of the Real Housewives of New York and Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Both are weird pop culture and fashion time capsules. Watching the looks, the glam, and the obsession with phones evolve over time certainly became part of the appeal. However, amidst the drunkenness and drama, a spiritualism theme appeared.

I’m not necessarily talking about New Age metaphysics, though that’s definitely also something wrapped up in the Real Housewives franchise. But spiritualism is the belief that there is an ever changing spirit world and that via mediumship, contact with the spirits can be made so they may advise in worldly matters. The movement peaked in the late 1800s, and enraptured large swaths of the middle and upper classes in North America and Europe.

What’s interesting is that the Real Housewives franchise - with Beverly Hills being the stand-out example - not only devotes hours of screen time to these rituals, but treats them all as legitimate.

I’m going to skip the whole tirade about the wealthy and their relationship to death and just say that these shows illustrate that the rich and powerful are probably the most scared of dying out of anyone. Yet the fact that the rituals are given an air of legitimacy, even when the medium says shit like, “Papa God has my phone number,” is the bigger piece here.

Not only do the participants need to believe in the spirit world, but the participants need the viewers to believe too. Even when there are other Housewives doing interviews, skeptical of the whole thing, the show experiences a tonal shift - reverence for the dead, perhaps. And when the medium sometimes does say the spooky thing that really feels spooky, you’re right there with the skeptics as they start questioning their own experience, the believers getting to say “Told you so.”

So why even do a Liminal Horror module about this? Because I think there are several interesting “what ifs” here to be explored, and Liminal Horror provides a really fun framework for doing so.

What if real contact with the spirit world was made?

What if it isn’t what we expect?

What if us watching makes a difference?

I’m still working through the outline and tables to create a barebones, playtestable version of The Real Housespouses of X. I’ll be writing blog posts about my process, what media I’m consuming for inspiration, and whatever else comes up.

Finally, I can’t end this post without ordering my favorite Housewives franchises, and how much I’ve watched of them.

1. Real Housewives of Beverly Hills (all seasons)
2. Real Housewives of Atlanta (season 4 and forward)
3. Real Housewives of Salt Lake City (all seasons, currently airing at the time of writing)
4. Real Housewives of New York (all seasons)
5. Real Housewives of Orange County (still watching, starting from season 8)

Let me know if you ruin yourself with reality TV in the comments below.