Borderlands: The Fallen - Part 3

Transcript

Speaker: Oh, I'll tell you one thing I have added to my speaking of lemonade, adding to my my desk at work, my cubicle.

Speaker: I recently purchased a 60 pack of crystal light things to, you know, the little powder things.

Speaker: Oh, right, right, right.

Speaker: It's a game changer.

Speaker: It's my little it's a little my little treat.

Speaker: It's a little treat to yourself.

Speaker: You put it in and you shake up the water bottle.

Speaker: Yeah, you got a little sweet treat right there.

Speaker: Got a little got a little sweet treat.

Speaker: And unbeknownst to me, they had four different flavors.

Speaker: And one of them is a wild strawberry, which is the only one I never had.

Speaker: And I come to find out it's caffeinated.

Speaker: So I'm like, great.

Speaker: Just what I need.

Speaker: More caffeine at work.

Speaker: Just get get get all buzzed up at work.

Speaker: I'm just going to tap it out onto the desktop and just do lines of it after a certain.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker: That's the next step.

Speaker: Crystal light is crystal meth.

Speaker: crystal meth.

Speaker: It's that a lot of people think marijuana is the gateway drug.

Speaker: It's actually crystal light.

Speaker: It's crystal light.

Speaker: Raspberry lemonade.

Speaker: Exactly.

Speaker: God damn.

Speaker: It's good.

Speaker: You know what else is a gateway drug?

Speaker: What's that?

Speaker: Hey there, everybody.

Speaker: Welcome back to Pixel.

Speaker: My name is Kevin.

Speaker: With me, as always, is Phil.

Speaker: And on today's show, we are talking Borderlands.

Speaker: We're in part three.

Speaker: We're doing lines, crystal light, and we're ready to go.

Speaker: I think so.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I think we're ready to roll.

Speaker: I mean, we were, this is, this has been a good book, but I think it's always when we get to the third episode that we're like, okay, let's shut it down.

Speaker: Let's be done with it.

Speaker: And also when we get to the third episode, we know, we know what this book is.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: There are no more mysteries to unravel.

Speaker: No more mysteries to unravel.

Speaker: Unless you're sacred and terrible air.

Speaker: And then you just have more mysteries.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: than answers when you're done.

Speaker: That was a horse of a different color.

Speaker: That was completely different.

Speaker: Learned a lot about Eastern European fiction writing, I think.

Speaker: I don't know.

Speaker: I don't have a ton of experience, but based on that alone, holy shit.

Speaker: Ugh.

Speaker: But before we do that, I just want to tell you about a sweet little number of a website called patreon.com slash pixel at pod.

Speaker: If you go there, you can follow us for free.

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Speaker: $1 a month gets you access to Phil's blog where he rants and raves about books that he's reading.

Speaker: And $5 a month gets you our ad-free tier where you get the ad-free version of these episodes and also access to the bonus that we record right before the show.

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Speaker: You know?

Speaker: We throw it on there.

Speaker: All kinds of stuff.

Speaker: Get to know us a little better.

Speaker: Get to know us a little bit better.

Speaker: Get to know the...

Speaker: Today I was talking about the fact that it's a week and a half of hitting the gym every day.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Come celebrate with me.

Speaker: Come on.

Speaker: Join us.

Speaker: $10 a month gets you a shout out in every episode.

Speaker: So to that end, I want to shout out Ruth Smutter, Kyle Seaman, Jesus loves you, and friendly friend.

Speaker: Thank you so much for being a friend.

Speaker: And that is the end of the shill for patreon.com slash pixel at pod, the best website in the universe.

Speaker: The best website known to man.

Speaker: Known to man.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I mean, I'm expecting a giant black obelisk to appear on our website any day now to start signaling the coming evolution that is inevitable based on the quality of that website.

Speaker: I think we can all agree.

Speaker: We can all agree with that, that that's happening.

Speaker: That's what happens next.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: What happens next?

Speaker: Some some Cronenberg style human evolution where everybody kind of melts and turns into a blob.

Speaker: That's the only evolution I want.

Speaker: I don't I don't want this boring, slow change over millions of years.

Speaker: Shit.

Speaker: I want Cronenberg.

Speaker: I want the end of Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Speaker: Oh, yes.

Speaker: Yes, yes, yes.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: With less jerking off.

Speaker: Well, you know what?

Speaker: You know what?

Speaker: More.

Speaker: Take it all back.

Speaker: That kid is so fucked up.

Speaker: Oh, God.

Speaker: He can't catch a break.

Speaker: So what do you say we put the body, this book to rest and the body in the marsh?

Speaker: Let's do it.

Speaker: Let's make a marsh body.

Speaker: Okay, we left off at chapter 16.

Speaker: Zack and Burl are making their way to the alien site.

Speaker: They've got their plan for Zack basically acting as alien bait.

Speaker: Zack is still trying to think of ways to betray Burl.

Speaker: And it's...

Speaker: It's getting ridiculous now because I'm also starting to pick up the idea that Zach isn't meant to be the bad guy, which I strongly disagree with here.

Speaker: Every moment with him and Burl, and yes, Burl tied him up.

Speaker: Yes, he took him kind of prisoner.

Speaker: It was harsh, but this is the world they live in, and he has done nothing but steal from them.

Speaker: This old man who's actually got a pretty nice sense of humor compared to some of the other people we've run into in this book.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: So I don't care.

Speaker: I know how this book ends and nothing about this book is ever going to change the fact that Zach is not a good guy to me.

Speaker: I just can't.

Speaker: I can't go with it.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: He figures he's going to betray Burl when they're at the alien site.

Speaker: He kind of fantasizes a little bit about getting rich.

Speaker: Burl takes him through what is essentially a hologram on the side of a mountain, like this optical illusion kind of thing that's set up.

Speaker: It looks like a solid piece of rock.

Speaker: It is not.

Speaker: And they walk right through it.

Speaker: And it basically acts as a hiding point for the only way up the mountain.

Speaker: So they're making their way up, switchbacks and all that good stuff.

Speaker: Um, Pearl says that there is a cave up there that they can sleep in because early morning, uh, brings alien treasure hunting.

Speaker: That's, that was the original, uh, idiom of, uh, early bird catches the, uh, ancient alien technology.

Speaker: That was where that came from.

Speaker: That's where that came from.

Speaker: Came from a fictional universe and then backwards through time into our universe.

Speaker: Or forwards through time.

Speaker: And Borderlands is actually in the Battlestar Galactica universe.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: They see there.

Speaker: Hey, spoilers.

Speaker: You go forward far enough.

Speaker: You'll eventually be coming up from behind.

Speaker: That's just how that works.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: It's the, the, the horseshoe theory of time.

Speaker: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker: That's, that's, that's how that works.

Speaker: We cut to Roland and company.

Speaker: They are also making their way up the volcanic cone for the treasure at the top.

Speaker: They split up to set up camp for the evening.

Speaker: Rans tries to silence Cal, who bites his hand and gets knocked out for his trouble.

Speaker: Ranz drags him off, explains that he's a loose end that he has got to get rid of.

Speaker: We cut to Marla.

Speaker: She begins digging slowly in a corner of the cell.

Speaker: She's Shawshank in it.

Speaker: It's this little blind spot, I guess, that they can't see that she's digging it.

Speaker: She finds another note.

Speaker: from the previous cell inhabitant, which warns about the danger of the volcanic cone.

Speaker: She realizes she's going to need Flemmel, the guard, Flemmel's clothes, and uses her sexy wiles.

Speaker: Who would have thunk it?

Speaker: What a shocking twist.

Speaker: Sexy wiles, again.

Speaker: Marla, sexy wiles, last name.

Speaker: Finn.

Speaker: And she gets him into the cell at the last second before the rat on human banging.

Speaker: They're stopped by Bronchus, the big nasty guy who comes in with a new prisoner, Cal.

Speaker: So we've got our reuniting of mother and son.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: Chapter... Yeah, yeah.

Speaker: Which is finally... This is where I start to...

Speaker: No.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I'm just so happy that they're starting to cut down on the storylines.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: We go off so many different ways.

Speaker: And this whole section of the book, we start consolidating.

Speaker: And I appreciate that.

Speaker: Consolidating.

Speaker: And also, it's the coming together of Marla and son.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: In a very, well, Marla is in a position of doing the thing that she's about to do.

Speaker: Right, right.

Speaker: It doesn't get much better than this.

Speaker: It's going to get really uncomfortable, in fact.

Speaker: There's going to be some uncomfortability.

Speaker: There's going to be a little bit more.

Speaker: It's going to get weird.

Speaker: But then that's it for the rest of the book, pretty much.

Speaker: Pretty much.

Speaker: Thank God.

Speaker: Chapter 17, Zach, Burl, and Busy climb the volcanic cone.

Speaker: And when they get to the top, they can see where an alien spacecraft crashed a long, long time ago.

Speaker: Burl's alien compass goes crazy near it.

Speaker: It clearly wants to get back to that ship.

Speaker: Um, Zach is accosted by a silvery snake like thing that Burl peels off of him and throws away, calling it a ship growth, uh, which, uh, heavily implied to be the same thing that they found in the back of the psychos with Roland.

Speaker: Um, yeah.

Speaker: Marla and Cal catch up.

Speaker: We get caught up on where everyone is.

Speaker: And then Marla uses her feminine wiles on the guard again.

Speaker: Again.

Speaker: But for the first time in front of her son.

Speaker: In front of her son.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: She, quote, presses her breasts against the jail cell.

Speaker: Yeah, like she kind of, I imagine, I just imagine there were bars.

Speaker: And so she was like a boob through each, like, space between the bars.

Speaker: That would have worked.

Speaker: That would have worked, yeah.

Speaker: Oh, Billy.

Speaker: She knocks out the guard and poses as him in his clothes with Cal as a prisoner.

Speaker: This works for a little while, but not very long, because on the way out, a tunnel rat gets suspicious.

Speaker: They kill him and make a mad dash for some form of exit while being chased by just a swarm of tunnel rats.

Speaker: They escape through a hatch that's at the base of the volcanic cone where Vance is waiting for them.

Speaker: And Vance being his beautiful, charming self basically tells them that they're going to follow his orders or else.

Speaker: So hooray.

Speaker: Hooray, Vance.

Speaker: This is really world of supportive woke men.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: Pandora.

Speaker: Land of feminism.

Speaker: Land of feminism and the woke mind virus.

Speaker: Chapter 18.

Speaker: Burl, Busy and Zack.

Speaker: The plan obviously is for Zack to distract the monitor, which is this, which is the alien kind of lookout.

Speaker: Which is funny because it's that's like it makes me think of Halo.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker: There's a lot of similarities here with that.

Speaker: There's no way around it.

Speaker: And Burl explains that this is basically how he found Busy.

Speaker: The necklace that he wears, as Zack has suspected, kind of overrides the alien signal, and it causes Busy to serve Burl instead of the ship, which it had originally.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Zach is less than comforted by this story.

Speaker: It's one of the few times he and I are completely in accord.

Speaker: He's like, is it at this point where he's like, Burl is like, well, the range is about a half kilometer.

Speaker: And Zach's like, we're closer than a half kilometer now.

Speaker: I know, it's weird.

Speaker: That's basically what he says.

Speaker: I know, it's crazy, right?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: It's working.

Speaker: I know.

Speaker: It's cool.

Speaker: I'm a prospector.

Speaker: I wouldn't worry about it.

Speaker: We've got rap heart.

Speaker: And he's like, are you talking about rapport?

Speaker: He's like, yeah, we've got that.

Speaker: Me and Busy.

Speaker: We're rapport.

Speaker: And it's like, oh, this is not great.

Speaker: Not great.

Speaker: Don't worry about that nuclear warhead.

Speaker: It's got a plastic bag over the top of it.

Speaker: It'll keep it contained.

Speaker: You used to have a sandwich in it.

Speaker: Miss that sandwich.

Speaker: Burl points out that the spaceship has been lighting up since they got there and seems to imply that they know it knows that they are there.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: We cut back to Roland and Company making their way to the- Roland and Company.

Speaker: Roland and Company.

Speaker: Adventure for hire.

Speaker: Adventure.

Speaker: Excitement.

Speaker: Science and technology.

Speaker: They're making their way-

Speaker: Probably.

Speaker: Unfortunately, we'll find out.

Speaker: Probably.

Speaker: They're making their way up the volcanic cone.

Speaker: Roland suspects Ranz of having something to do with Cal's disappearance, which I don't know.

Speaker: I don't know if that exactly makes him Sherlock Holmes, but good for him.

Speaker: Uh, he tells the others to go up without him for the time being and backtracks to the tunnel rat tunnels.

Speaker: Um, he finds them and threatens them with his arsenal of weapons, unless they tell him what happened to Cal, uh, and Broncus, the big lovable galoot explains to him everything that went down basically gets him up to speed.

Speaker: Uh, chapter 19.

Speaker: Zach is distracting the alien monitor from Burl, who's digging around through the artifacts.

Speaker: He's doing his job.

Speaker: He finds an artifact of his own.

Speaker: It's this lump.

Speaker: It's like the size of a human head.

Speaker: It's like organic and it's got spines in it that every now and then poke out.

Speaker: And he does the old pick up your dog's poop trick where he takes his bag and like turns it inside out and kind of picks it up.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Through that.

Speaker: It's lump.

Speaker: It's in his head.

Speaker: Actually, unbeknownst to him.

Speaker: For real.

Speaker: It's actually.

Speaker: But seriously, it's in his head.

Speaker: It's in his head.

Speaker: busy gets controlled by the monitor all over again.

Speaker: Oh, no.

Speaker: Possibly.

Speaker: Not not Burl, not Burl.

Speaker: I think everyone but Burl probably suspect everyone but Burl.

Speaker: It's a special kind of prospector to to ignore all the signs that death is imminent.

Speaker: I still Burl still my favorite character.

Speaker: Still my favorite character, too.

Speaker: I think he's he's he's still good, good, still good guy.

Speaker: You know, good guy.

Speaker: Good guy.

Speaker: So busy starts attacking Burl, who is like hiding behind rocks and avoiding neon blue acid spit and crying out for Zach to come and help him.

Speaker: You got to come help me like all that.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Zach is kind of like on his way to being like, no, fuck it.

Speaker: I'm leaving.

Speaker: And then finally has a change of heart and comes back.

Speaker: He kind of instinctively uses the spiny artifact thing to basically make Busy rethink its actions for a second.

Speaker: It kind of pops off something in his head for a second.

Speaker: It pauses Busy from just melting Burl.

Speaker: Right, right.

Speaker: Stops him for a second.

Speaker: But before he can do anything more, he is grabbed from behind by the monitor and placed lovingly into the spaceship.

Speaker: Tenderly.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Like a child or a soft-faced lover.

Speaker: Soft-faced.

Speaker: Pillow faced lover.

Speaker: Pillowy faces everywhere.

Speaker: Pillowy faces.

Speaker: So like a pillow face lover or a cushion face lover as JD Vance prefers.

Speaker: JD Vance loves a cushion face lover.

Speaker: He loves a cushion face.

Speaker: I got there.

Speaker: You didn't, it didn't take too many steps.

Speaker: You didn't take too many steps.

Speaker: That was not forced at all.

Speaker: You were on it.

Speaker: I earned that one.

Speaker: Yes, you did.

Speaker: I think we're all proud of you.

Speaker: That was good.

Speaker: He fucks couches.

Speaker: Tell your friends.

Speaker: Tell your friends J.D.

Speaker: Vance has.

Speaker: I think we need to worry about that, though, because I'll tell you what, we don't we haven't considered the very real possibility that that is just going to make him popular with a quietly enormous power.

Speaker: of couch fuckers.

Speaker: Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a whole, if there's a whole, like, contingent of people out there who really feel unseen.

Speaker: Yeah, that's the real silent majority.

Speaker: Fetish towards furniture, furniture fetishes.

Speaker: Yeah, I don't, I don't, I think, I think.

Speaker: Not to kink shame, but.

Speaker: No, no, but.

Speaker: You're going to see Joe Biden coming in and humping a cabinet just to get some relevance back.

Speaker: All right.

Speaker: Vance, Marla and Cal are at the base of this volcanic mountain.

Speaker: Vance thinking this will be a hilarious joke.

Speaker: It'll be.

Speaker: It's a hoot.

Speaker: It'll be a hoot and a holler.

Speaker: Basically says to Marla, hey, Marla, watch this.

Speaker: Grabs Cal by the scruff of his neck and the base of his pants and throws him towards what we know is an illusory wall because we've seen it work.

Speaker: And Marla has no idea, thinking that he's just literally launched her son face first at a rock face.

Speaker: And he just goes through and kind of peeks his head back out again.

Speaker: Marla has, is now, she is, whatever wet was there is all dried up.

Speaker: Mm-hmm.

Speaker: Gone.

Speaker: And I think we've all been there.

Speaker: I think women especially, but I think we've all been there where it's just like the charm fades in a shockingly fast amount of time, like a literal amount of days, sometimes hours.

Speaker: And you're like, what the hell was I enjoying about this before?

Speaker: In Marla's case, it was, oh yeah, the big dick.

Speaker: Ha!

Speaker: Fair.

Speaker: Valid.

Speaker: So she's, she's dealing with the, the, you know, it's her own little walk of shame, basically.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Vance is trying to convince slash threaten them into going up the trail with them, with him to go up to, to get some alien loot.

Speaker: And Marla has kind of this moment of recognition into what kind of a dude Vance is in that he

Speaker: needs.

Speaker: Oh, this guy sucks.

Speaker: He sucks, but it's like, it's like, he sucks because it's one of these guys that like, he's got to threaten you, but he also wants you to like him.

Speaker: He has to have it both ways.

Speaker: Toxic.

Speaker: She calls him toxic.

Speaker: Absolutely.

Speaker: She does.

Speaker: And, uh, and it's, and it's true.

Speaker: It's true.

Speaker: He's, he, he wants to have full control over everything, but he also needs you to like him.

Speaker: Uh, uh, it's a very Elon Musk vibe, uh, you get.

Speaker: So it's a very interesting moment.

Speaker: She gets kind of a come to Jesus moment of her own creation.

Speaker: Sure.

Speaker: So finally, he's kind of threatening them.

Speaker: So they're like, OK, fine.

Speaker: And in that moment, as they start to go up the trail, they are attacked by these invisible bug things.

Speaker: He calls them stalkers.

Speaker: At one point, they're described as having like

Speaker: grasshopper faces or something like that.

Speaker: And so they've got a we've got a fight that goes breaks out with those Marla and Cal try to take that opportunity to escape and they run through the illusory rock face.

Speaker: But Vance catches up with him just in time, blows up the last stalker just as two outriders roll in carrying.

Speaker: You thought they were gone, but they're back.

Speaker: Mash and grunge.

Speaker: Grunge.

Speaker: Everybody's favorite.

Speaker: Such a good character.

Speaker: That's a good character.

Speaker: Good character.

Speaker: Grunge is the guy who says Missy Ho a lot.

Speaker: Yeah, Missy Ho.

Speaker: Missy Ho likes him short, as it turns out.

Speaker: And they are ready for vengeance.

Speaker: So that's chapter 19.

Speaker: Chapter 20.

Speaker: Zach finds that he is trapped inside some kind of weird organic pocket thing in the ship.

Speaker: It's like a kangaroos pouch.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: He tries to like slide out of it, but it squeezes him real tight.

Speaker: He coughs up some kind of a plug, which is like okie dokie.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: He coughs up some technology and he's hearing like whispering and far off voices in his head.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: He's trying to escape, but the pocket's just holding him too tight.

Speaker: And he starts hearing these high-pitched screams and noises and suddenly has this realization that the alien ship has tapped into his brain, that it's in there with him now.

Speaker: Uh, let's see.

Speaker: We cut to Vance, Cal and Marla.

Speaker: They have a face off, uh, with grunge and mash and two others, which whatever, uh, one of them gets named patch.

Speaker: As I recall, uh, uh, they're not important.

Speaker: Oh, well, and there's also dimmel, which was like, I think mash is like right hand man or something.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So anyway, unimportant, unimportant purchase.

Speaker: It doesn't matter.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Henchman number one and henchman number two.

Speaker: It doesn't matter.

Speaker: We get we get classic Mexican standoff style.

Speaker: Everyone's pointing guns at everybody else.

Speaker: Threaten everybody else.

Speaker: Cal sees a stalker in the distance and says, hey, look, a stalker, basically.

Speaker: And I think it's Mash, like, basically laughs behind you, a three headed monkey.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Exactly.

Speaker: And that's just like, no, who who falls for that?

Speaker: What are we talking about?

Speaker: But Cal is telling the truth and and no one listens.

Speaker: So the stalker kills one of the henchmen.

Speaker: Just they launch spikes out of their tails.

Speaker: Very manticore.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Manticore!

Speaker: The Manticore!

Speaker: They kill the stalker and then it just... Daconia!

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: It's a reference for like five people, but I'm making it.

Speaker: We wrote a TV show.

Speaker: We wrote a TV show about a fictional country that existed on the border between Canada and the United States.

Speaker: It was north of North Dakota.

Speaker: It was called Dakota.

Speaker: And it's like the size of a small town.

Speaker: It was the size of a small town and its flag was had a no, no, the manticore wasn't on the flag.

Speaker: I actually have the flag somewhere because a friend of ours made one.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: But yeah, the manticore was important to the founding of the town.

Speaker: It was like the founding father.

Speaker: I think there was like a painting of the founding father holding up the head of the manticore.

Speaker: A manticore head, which is just a human head.

Speaker: Which was just a guy's head.

Speaker: And some people go to grad school to get, you know, to go to law school or something like that.

Speaker: And then...

Speaker: And then others, some of us just fuck around for three years and get a film degree.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Better.

Speaker: Honestly.

Speaker: Better.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So the Manticore stalker kills Patch, and he had so much to live for.

Speaker: So much to live for.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: They kill the stalker, and it just descends into a gunfight.

Speaker: Everyone's just shooting at everybody else.

Speaker: Vance manages to kill Grunge, despite the fact that Grunge has some serious shields on him.

Speaker: He just kind of just...

Speaker: forces the gun right up to him and shoots him point blank and just blows him away.

Speaker: Um, mash kills Vance, uh, just, just, just blows him up.

Speaker: Vance gets shot.

Speaker: Vance gets shredded.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Murdered the shit out of.

Speaker: Oh, truly.

Speaker: Dusting off an old classic.

Speaker: Yeah, murders the shit out of him.

Speaker: Murders the shit out of him.

Speaker: Vance, it's like, oh, Vance has this really brief hero moment.

Speaker: And then it's like, and then all three of them unload their rifles on Vance.

Speaker: And it's like...

Speaker: Vance is described as having had his arm shot off, his chest perforated with bullets and a geyser of blood erupting from his neck.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: It made me think of the scene in Walk Hard with the machete fight where the boy gets cut in half by machete and he looks at his brother and goes, listen, I don't think I'm going to make it out of this alive.

Speaker: It's the same thing.

Speaker: And so he's just dying.

Speaker: He should just be dead.

Speaker: Yeah, there shouldn't have even been final words.

Speaker: No, none.

Speaker: The DM was kind and let him have final words.

Speaker: Very kind.

Speaker: And Vance kind of, he whispers the location of the money stash that he hid away after they betrayed MASH and Grunge and all them to Marla before he dies.

Speaker: And Marla is very grief stricken.

Speaker: And it's, it, you can't, you just can't help but imagine Cal being like, uh, mom.

Speaker: Why are you so upset about this guy?

Speaker: What's this?

Speaker: Like it's, it is, it is awfully suspicious.

Speaker: It really is.

Speaker: So Roland, uh, before the, before, uh, grunge and mash could make short work of them because they, they,

Speaker: Correctly assume that Vance's last words were spent telling about his hidden away stash of money.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: But before they can do anything about it, Roland has snuck up on them and just kills the shit out of Mash and Dimmel.

Speaker: Yep.

Speaker: Taking care of the rest of them.

Speaker: Introductions are made.

Speaker: timelines are, are, are solidified.

Speaker: Merged.

Speaker: We got merged.

Speaker: We're, we're getting rid of, we, we, we're characters are, are, have been pruned from the tree.

Speaker: Yes, exactly.

Speaker: We're, we're there on their way to being a real boy.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: That means, um,

Speaker: Roland agrees that they will bury Vance at Marla's request.

Speaker: Once again, very, if I were the kid, I'd be like, mom?

Speaker: You're like, just leave the other ones out, but this guy.

Speaker: Do you think the guy who was threatening us, mom?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Because that's Cal's only frame of reference for this guy.

Speaker: It's the guy who threatened him and also threw him at a rock wall that he didn't know he could walk.

Speaker: It was like, and it's just like,

Speaker: And he sees his mom just like, oh, Vance, you were such a complicated person.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: And he's just like, you mean the guy who thought it was funny to make it look like he murdered me?

Speaker: Like that guy?

Speaker: That guy?

Speaker: He knows something's up.

Speaker: He has to.

Speaker: Yeah, he's got to be putting two and two together.

Speaker: I would hope so.

Speaker: Or be putting six and nine together.

Speaker: Ah!

Speaker: I bet they did.

Speaker: I bet it was gross.

Speaker: I don't care how good in bed he is.

Speaker: He smells.

Speaker: He has to.

Speaker: He does not smell good.

Speaker: No, come on.

Speaker: No.

Speaker: Come on, guys.

Speaker: Yeah, the smell.

Speaker: It's got to sting the nostrils.

Speaker: Oh, bad.

Speaker: Real bad.

Speaker: So they agreed to very much.

Speaker: They haven't mentioned a toilet.

Speaker: No, no, let alone toilet paper.

Speaker: Roland says that Cal is going to grow up to be quite a man, which, you know, Cal is Cal is doing very well for himself.

Speaker: I will say he's he's he's the most improved.

Speaker: He that's what he wins.

Speaker: Most improved player.

Speaker: I think he's he's he's growing possibly not in the not not in the best ways, because, again, this guy's going to have PTSD for the rest of his fucking life.

Speaker: Oh, yeah.

Speaker: He's he's going to be having some issues.

Speaker: Oh, it's going to be bad.

Speaker: We cut to chapter 21.

Speaker: Ripley, if you're going to be here, you can't shake and toss yourself around.

Speaker: It's a very delicate operation.

Speaker: I will toss myself around as I see fit.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: This is a delicate operation and you're very fat.

Speaker: It's... She shakes everything.

Speaker: Uh, chapter 22.

Speaker: I just see her ears going back and forth.

Speaker: She's so happy to be here.

Speaker: Um, Zach is inside the alien ship.

Speaker: Well, inside the alien, as we have found out the ship and the alien are one.

Speaker: It is a being from space that resembles a spaceship, but it's, it's, it's all organic.

Speaker: Uh, so he is inside the alien deep inside the alien, uh,

Speaker: Um, did I skip?

Speaker: Way down.

Speaker: No, no, I didn't skip anything.

Speaker: Wait, I did.

Speaker: How do I keep doing this?

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: All right.

Speaker: Hold on.

Speaker: Let's back it up.

Speaker: Chapter 21.

Speaker: Uh, he wakes up out of the pocket wall.

Speaker: This is, this is beforehand.

Speaker: Uh, and he hears a disembodied voice.

Speaker: Uh, and I'm going to give you a quote because I quite enjoyed this.

Speaker: Um,

Speaker: It's the alien ship basically introducing itself.

Speaker: I have additionally been observing your race on the planet from time to time as I regenerate it.

Speaker: Your species is made up of bumbling dumbasses on the whole.

Speaker: Kind of makes me ill to contemplate all the resources you have access to and the poor choices you make with them.

Speaker: What a bunch of knuckleheaded apes for crying out loud.

Speaker: Ha ha ha!

Speaker: And the alien, and Zach kind of goes, what the fuck, man?

Speaker: Like, could you be a little less condescending?

Speaker: And the alien's like, I'm sorry, I'm reading your thoughts and I'm using words in your head so that you would understand.

Speaker: I'm using words from your vocabulary that would impart the most understanding to you.

Speaker: Yes, exactly.

Speaker: It's pretty great.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: The alien's been there for a while, has crash landed and has decided while it regenerates and feels better, it's going to study this planet and its inhabitants.

Speaker: It basically, it says it's looking for the quote unquote hidden thing of interest in humans, which is never fully explained.

Speaker: It's kind of heavily implied.

Speaker: It's like a soul basically.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Trying to get right.

Speaker: Trying to get like the alien basically is saying je ne sais quoi.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Pretty much.

Speaker: A certain human genesis.

Speaker: Like that's that's pretty much it.

Speaker: It's considering Zach both.

Speaker: It says Zach might have that certain something that it factor, if you will.

Speaker: But if not, it's also considering keeping Zach in its collection, basically suggesting it's going to throw him in a bottle to put on.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Put up on a on a shelf to observe later.

Speaker: And this is this is where it explains that this is that it is not a ship, but a living organism that Zack is a part of now.

Speaker: It is.

Speaker: Yeah, it is a space thing.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Roland, Marla and Cal now armed to the teeth because they have just taken all the guns off of the four dead guys that they killed.

Speaker: They are climbing the cone.

Speaker: They meet Burl.

Speaker: They're climbing the aggro crab.

Speaker: Pretty much.

Speaker: Do you know you can like find those agri-crag pieces online?

Speaker: People sell theirs.

Speaker: Really?

Speaker: For like sometimes shockingly low amounts, like for a piece of classic Nickelodeon merchandise.

Speaker: Sometimes they are lower than you'd expect.

Speaker: I also know on Etsy they have in the past just made them, which I might take just for fun.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: How much is a working piece of aggro crag worth?

Speaker: You continue.

Speaker: I'm going to be.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Look it up.

Speaker: I'm going to be.

Speaker: Look.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: This is important information.

Speaker: So they're arms to the teeth.

Speaker: They meet Burl, who basically gets them up to speed on Zack, tells them because he's bore witness to everything.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: They make camp, but they're woken up by an Atlas ship, another one of the pyramid ships touching down.

Speaker: And out pops Cranigan, Roscoe, and Rans Veritas, along with a suit.

Speaker: Okay, chapter 22.

Speaker: This is where I was.

Speaker: Uh, Zach is inside the alien.

Speaker: Uh, there's no other way to put it.

Speaker: Uh, he's still waiting to hear his fate.

Speaker: It's driving him crazy.

Speaker: Uh, because the alien's like, well, hold on.

Speaker: I want to decide.

Speaker: I don't know if I'm going to kill you or not.

Speaker: Uh, and is admittedly very blase about the whole thing.

Speaker: And he's, it's driving him nuts.

Speaker: Um,

Speaker: The alien gets kind of snippy with him talking about and talking about humans like as being these primitive ape things.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And Zach calls him on it saying, like, didn't you guys have to evolve from like lower life form?

Speaker: So we're just evolving where that's that's what it's like.

Speaker: What's your what's your deal, alien?

Speaker: And like, I don't concern myself with the ants.

Speaker: Why the fuck are you bothering me so much?

Speaker: And to the alien's credit, it's like, that's a really good point.

Speaker: I apologize.

Speaker: That's a good point.

Speaker: Sorry.

Speaker: The alien basically...

Speaker: He tells him that he's invited an Atlas ship there early on.

Speaker: If you guys remember when we first saw an Atlas ship, they were saying that they couldn't fly straight to the thing because the, the, the defenses would stop them.

Speaker: And they weren't lying.

Speaker: It's just that now the alien has invited the ship directly and, and, and,

Speaker: you know, has lowered its defenses just because it's curious and wants to get on with it.

Speaker: Yeah, it wants more humans.

Speaker: Exactly.

Speaker: Because it knows it's about at the point where it's ready to leave.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: It's ready to go and would like to see a few more humans before it leaves.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: It also mentions kind of offhandedly that there's a woman and child up there with them, which Zach catches his attention.

Speaker: Yeah, of course.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So we cut to Roland, who approaches Cranigan, Roscoe, Ranz and Gorman, the Atlas suit.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: Played by Paul Reiser.

Speaker: I think so.

Speaker: Like, come on.

Speaker: Like, he did it so well before.

Speaker: Why not just let him keep it up?

Speaker: He's good with that.

Speaker: This is this is the it is a 19 is a 1987 edition.

Speaker: Paul Reiser suit.

Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker: Double breasted, triple breasted.

Speaker: I'll have you know he is.

Speaker: And he is going to put all throw all the safety precautions out the window.

Speaker: Out the window to to get that alien sample.

Speaker: Absolutely.

Speaker: So.

Speaker: Either we play the game of we thought you were dead.

Speaker: I thought I was dead, too.

Speaker: I just know blah, blah, blah.

Speaker: He suggests that they let him kill Rams.

Speaker: He's got a personal beef with him over what he did to Cal says that he's hidden Cal away in a place you'll never find him, which is going to be really funny, really funny in about five minutes.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: He speaks a dozen languages.

Speaker: He can blend in and disappear.

Speaker: With any luck, he has the grail already.

Speaker: That's basically it.

Speaker: So he suggests that they let him just, you know, you should just give me Rand to let me kill him.

Speaker: And they kind of consider it for a second.

Speaker: And then they're like, no, he might still have some value.

Speaker: So they leave him be.

Speaker: And then he gets really pissed.

Speaker: And the same reason that Zack got pissed, basically, because they're being very blasé about whether he lives or dies.

Speaker: And he gets up in Gorman's face, who gives.

Speaker: I loved this part.

Speaker: It was so it was such a funny little detail.

Speaker: Gorman, who has a red armored bodyguard who at first they're like, is that a robot?

Speaker: Like he's that big and just metal covered.

Speaker: But it's a soldier in like power armor, basically.

Speaker: uh and he gives his guard a signal which is they call it a just a little bit signal which i have to assume is this just a little bit just a little bit just a little bit just a little bit yeah and uh at the end the guard says all right fine and just knocks rand's block off uh doesn't doesn't kill him just a quick backhand with the power armor

Speaker: Yeah, just backhands him into oblivion.

Speaker: And Gorman takes a moment to go, if I wanted you dead, you'd be dead.

Speaker: Just so you know.

Speaker: So let's all be cool now.

Speaker: Be cool, honey bunny.

Speaker: Exactly.

Speaker: So the Alliance seems to be back on rolling his back with the crew and he's kind of quietly hoping to himself that Marlon Cal are, are, are being cool, honey bunny and keeping their heads down.

Speaker: Uh, we cut back to Marla Cal and Burl, uh, who are approached by more Atlas soldiers in more power armor who are on like a scouting platform vehicle, uh, like a skiff or something like that.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: It's like Jabba's barge.

Speaker: I was just going to say, it's like a little version of Jabba's barge.

Speaker: That's exactly.

Speaker: I guess I could see us having drinks.

Speaker: It's that.

Speaker: Think of that.

Speaker: And they're like, what the fuck are you people doing here?

Speaker: They had been given...

Speaker: information on Cal, but not Marla.

Speaker: So they're like, well, we don't know what to do.

Speaker: And they're basically going, you know, fuck you guys.

Speaker: We're, we're get on the, get on the, get on the, the barge.

Speaker: Uh, we're taking you back.

Speaker: So they're, they are, they are, they are found, uh, by Atlas.

Speaker: Uh, but fortunately, uh, uh, maybe, uh, uh, Burl has not been found.

Speaker: Burl was in a hiding spot and, uh, they didn't seem to notice.

Speaker: He's a wild prospect that you can't see Burl.

Speaker: I wonder if he's going to help in the future.

Speaker: He doesn't.

Speaker: Doesn't.

Speaker: Just goes off and hides.

Speaker: He just hides.

Speaker: You know what?

Speaker: I don't mind telling you guys that right here off the bat.

Speaker: Burl does not come in at the eighth hour to like eighth hour.

Speaker: Is that the expression?

Speaker: I don't know.

Speaker: The 11th hour.

Speaker: 11th hour.

Speaker: Thank you.

Speaker: The 11th hour to like save the day and do like some sort of sniper shot that saves.

Speaker: No, he just pops up after everything is said and done.

Speaker: He clearly had just gone and hidden away.

Speaker: Like, that's all.

Speaker: So this is not.

Speaker: Burl's back.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker: This is not them setting him up to be like a hero driving a crop duster into the alien ship.

Speaker: Like, this is not anything like that.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: He's just gone, which to be fair, if I were Burl, it's exactly what I would do.

Speaker: So once again, favorite character ever.

Speaker: Hey, boys, I'm back.

Speaker: Like, that's not happening.

Speaker: Not happening.

Speaker: Chapter 23, the alien shows Zack.

Speaker: He basically...

Speaker: gives them a bitmap basically of everything that's going on outside the Atlas group.

Speaker: And he sees that Marla and Cal have joined them and he confirms that that's, that those are his kids.

Speaker: That's his kid and his wife rather.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Cut to the Atlas team trying to decide how they want to infiltrate the ship.

Speaker: If they want to like go in guns a blazing or if they want to like be some level of sneaky about it.

Speaker: And while they're talking about this, the soldiers bring Marla and Cal to,

Speaker: Uh, and Gorman wants them interrogated on their Atlas ship.

Speaker: Um, Roland puts his foot down and says, absolutely not.

Speaker: They're under my protection.

Speaker: Uh, you leave them alone.

Speaker: Uh, and, uh, and so he and Cranigan are arguing about it.

Speaker: He and Gorman are arguing about it.

Speaker: And finally, Roland kind of inexplicably says, Hey, uh, why don't you let me and Gorman fight to the death of

Speaker: And then you'll just have one of us to deal with.

Speaker: And Gorman says, that does sound pretty good because I kind of hate both of you at this point.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: But knives, no guns, knives.

Speaker: So it's so I don't get hit with a stray bullet, which is actually.

Speaker: Gentlemen, you know the rules.

Speaker: Avoid the face.

Speaker: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker: Exactly.

Speaker: The moneymaker.

Speaker: So, yeah.

Speaker: So the, you know, fine, fine.

Speaker: Knives only.

Speaker: And they get started with the knife fight.

Speaker: Cue the beat it music.

Speaker: And we got another quote that I really like.

Speaker: They have a face off.

Speaker: They really do.

Speaker: They do everything but tie their wrists together.

Speaker: One of them picks odd job and it pisses everybody off.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Slappers only.

Speaker: Uncool.

Speaker: So they're swinging knives at each other and Marla, ever in the voice of reason, says, what is this barbaric idiocy?

Speaker: Marla demanded, washing with disbelief as the two men circled one another.

Speaker: You've already explained it, Gorman said, amused.

Speaker: Barbaric idiocy.

Speaker: but it is entertaining uh so she she says something uh smart for once uh instead of uh look at these big pink things yeah uh so uh roland uh ultimately kills crannigan gives us the that was for mcnee moment that we've been waiting for since the very beginning of this book um and uh

Speaker: basically just immediately goes and takes Gorman hostage, holds the knife to his throat and orders Marlon Cal onto the platform with him.

Speaker: He gets on one of the scouting platforms.

Speaker: Ranz gets a gun and points it at Roland Gorman, accidentally kills Roscoe because Roscoe runs up and says, you're going to hit the boss and just, just fucking atomizes Roscoe.

Speaker: It's like Roscoe.

Speaker: It's yeah.

Speaker: Roscoe just never existed.

Speaker: It was very it was very a war of the worlds, just a puff of smoke and gone.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And then and then is immediately killed by the remaining guards.

Speaker: A stray shot hits the fuel reserves on the platform and it explodes.

Speaker: Now, Zack in the alien.

Speaker: Inside the alien has seen all of this and freaks out, of course, because he's assuming that that his whole family's dead.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: The alien see says that it sees that, quote unquote, hidden thing of interest in Roland, Cal, and even a little bit in Zach.

Speaker: None for Marla, I'll point out.

Speaker: None for Marla.

Speaker: This is a very, very sexist alien.

Speaker: So I get the impression she's just been fucking her way through Pandora.

Speaker: Which she's fair enough.

Speaker: So he says, you know what?

Speaker: You've proven yourself.

Speaker: I'm getting out of here.

Speaker: Uh, here's something that will help take care of this.

Speaker: It gives him like this football shaped artifact.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Uh, it's some sort of grenade and he says like, just, just throw it down into the earth and it's going to take out the soldiers, uh, uh, that, uh, that, that are now your main obstacle.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: And says, it says it's going to be leaving soon and it transports him out of the ship.

Speaker: Yep.

Speaker: So cut to the explosion.

Speaker: Marla and Cal are okay, but Roland is hurting.

Speaker: Roland is bleeding.

Speaker: And we've got a La Pieda kind of move with his head in Marla's lap.

Speaker: Marla gets real weird about Roland in kind of the same way she did with Vance.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: The quote is something like, what a magnificent man or something.

Speaker: And it's like.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: girl, like the thirst, the thirst is unreal with her.

Speaker: It's real for Martha.

Speaker: I was, I was just getting over the whole, like being with Vance to survive kind of plot.

Speaker: I was just getting over that.

Speaker: Now you're like, I don't know, but this one's good too.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: And he's black.

Speaker: So let's do that.

Speaker: It's really uncomfortable.

Speaker: And it's right in front of her kid.

Speaker: Yeah, it's yeah.

Speaker: So she's, she's yeah, definitely.

Speaker: She's doing the, the La Pieda.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: She's got them and she's, she's like sitting and kneeling and yeah.

Speaker: Mournful and shit.

Speaker: It's like, I lost another potential husband.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So the monitor comes back, bringing Zack with it in its tentacles and drops him down.

Speaker: He he quickly apologizes to Cal and Marla for everything that he's done to get them there and tells them to get the hell down.

Speaker: They do.

Speaker: And he throws the artifact down, basically releasing what is described as a miniature sun that consumes him and all of the guards.

Speaker: The blast melts Gorman's eyes.

Speaker: Yep.

Speaker: He's screaming and everything like that.

Speaker: But Zach liquefies the guy's eyes.

Speaker: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker: Liquefies his eyes in the skull.

Speaker: He's out there screaming.

Speaker: But Zach, that's a wrap on Zach.

Speaker: Zach is gone.

Speaker: That is a wrap on Zach.

Speaker: Here's the thing.

Speaker: I don't know if Zach actually knew that this thing was going to kill him or not.

Speaker: It doesn't seem like he was informed of what was going to happen.

Speaker: The alien did not mention that.

Speaker: Did not even imply it.

Speaker: Did not specify.

Speaker: And here's the thing.

Speaker: The other thing.

Speaker: Zach doesn't even, like, have a, he doesn't have a, like, Vance got more of a final line than Zach did.

Speaker: Yes!

Speaker: Zach gets blinked out of existence by the sun thing.

Speaker: Zach basically gets the same ending Roscoe got.

Speaker: No, Roscoe at least had more last words.

Speaker: He just disappears.

Speaker: Zach is evaporated by this tiny something.

Speaker: The guards, it doesn't evaporate the guards, but it melts their armor.

Speaker: and a really terrifying thing and cooks them inside the armor.

Speaker: And you can see like some of the armor like melts out from their head.

Speaker: And it's just like these skulls on the top of the armor, like frozen in place.

Speaker: Shirley writes some gore-tastic stuff.

Speaker: I mean, he proved that in Bioshock.

Speaker: We get, we get some moments here that are very, very good.

Speaker: Zach is like, I'm going to save the day, but he's not going to even didn't even get to really say anything to his family.

Speaker: I'm surprised.

Speaker: Do you think he was like, like, Oh shit, I'm going to like, that's it.

Speaker: Uh, we get this really funny and this is when Burl appears.

Speaker: Uh, they're all kind of like, it's kind of like mini eulogies for Zach at this point.

Speaker: Everyone's like, he was a good man.

Speaker: And, uh, and Burl appears out of nowhere and he goes, well, we, we didn't, uh,

Speaker: CII on everything, but he was a good boy and all that.

Speaker: They're all doing this.

Speaker: And in the meantime, you have to understand that in the background, Gorman is still clutching at his face, screaming.

Speaker: So just imagine this man off in the corner going, Oh God, I was screaming his bloody lungs out.

Speaker: And they're going, Oh,

Speaker: Zach was a good father.

Speaker: He was a good man.

Speaker: Oh, yeah.

Speaker: Well, he stole some stuff from me, and I tried to kill him a few times.

Speaker: But I got to tell you, he was a good man.

Speaker: He was a good egg.

Speaker: Burl, where the fuck were you?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Burl.

Speaker: Baby.

Speaker: Bubla.

Speaker: Like.

Speaker: Nothing.

Speaker: It's just weird.

Speaker: It's so weird.

Speaker: And then the spaceship flies out of the volcanic cone and Marla finally

Speaker: Finally uses her xenobiology background to identify the fact that the ship is not a ship, but a living alien organism.

Speaker: To which Roland doesn't even go, by God, you're right.

Speaker: He goes, yeah, you might be right.

Speaker: Like, it's not even enough that like they believe her right off the bat.

Speaker: They're just like, yeah, maybe that's an interesting theory.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: This is the only use.

Speaker: They are on a planet forever.

Speaker: Filled with alien monsters.

Speaker: And this is the only time she gets to use her.

Speaker: And Roland's like, yeah, maybe I got a concussion.

Speaker: Which is fair.

Speaker: The ship sends a voice into their heads that says, try not to be such dumbasses.

Speaker: Have the courage to find your light, which is pretty good.

Speaker: So long.

Speaker: And thanks for all the fish.

Speaker: I mean, yeah, yeah, pretty much.

Speaker: We cut to the epilogue.

Speaker: We're going to wrap it up real tidy.

Speaker: Roland has made a deal with Atlas.

Speaker: They're going to give Atlas Gorman back and an artifact that they already had anyway.

Speaker: And in exchange, Atlas will fly Cal and Marla to Xanthus, where they were headed in the first place.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: They theorized basically that the sabotage, because she's like, well, Atlas sabotaged our ship.

Speaker: And they said, no, it was actually probably the alien ship sabotaging anything that was trying to come into the planet because it was so close to leaving.

Speaker: And it didn't want anyone else to fuck that up, which I don't know what they based on.

Speaker: I mean, obviously, that's what Shirley wanted to be the answer.

Speaker: But it is kind of just like this really wacky theory right out.

Speaker: It's like, no, I think it's like.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I feel like it's just as much conjecture as Atlas sabotaging.

Speaker: That was like, it could have been either really.

Speaker: It's treated as no, I'm pretty sure this it's treated as like, this is what happened.

Speaker: Uh, but it's, it's based on what they know.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: It's, it's, it's really out there.

Speaker: Um,

Speaker: So Cal asks Roland to come with them.

Speaker: Marla backs him up, but Roland's not going to do it because he's a loner gunslinger, you know, all mysterious and shit.

Speaker: I got, I live free here.

Speaker: I live free and I'll never be bored on Pandora.

Speaker: Exactly.

Speaker: He gets his libertarian on.

Speaker: That's why he never hit on Marla too old for his taste.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And then Marla and very, you know what?

Speaker: He's very, he's very like he would be on the firefly.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: Great, great, great guy for, for the, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker: Perfect.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Marlon Cal get in the ship.

Speaker: It takes them far away from Pandora.

Speaker: The end.

Speaker: By the way, at the end, Cal says, bye, dad.

Speaker: And for a second, I thought he was saying that to Roland.

Speaker: I'm like, oh, no, he's saying that because his dad died here.

Speaker: Yeah, because he's actually his dad died.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah, that kid's fucked up.

Speaker: He's got PTSD from all the lines.

Speaker: And then he sees his dad briefly and then watches these vaporites.

Speaker: He gets no closure.

Speaker: No closure on this.

Speaker: This kid is I don't I think it would have been a kinder gesture to let him stay on Pandora.

Speaker: At least he would have had Roland there to like guide him along.

Speaker: Like, yeah, like it just he's not

Speaker: You're going to go to Xanthus and have Marla at some point is like, we owe it to your dead father to have a beautiful life in Xanthus.

Speaker: What the fuck is this kid going to do in Xanthus?

Speaker: He's going to shoot up his school.

Speaker: Like this kid is fucked.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: It's like Xanthus is like Burl's like a lot of water on Xanthus.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: the extent of it really yeah it's just it's just yeah so and that's and then they leave that's the end yeah and we don't even we don't yeah that's that's it oh yeah and we get like burl and roland are like maybe we're gonna work together i got busy back yeah busy comes back that's right sorry busy came back uh uh they don't explain if it's just yeah i think well he does actually say it's

Speaker: It's kind of hilarious.

Speaker: The alien's gone.

Speaker: And so there's nothing to interfere with my, my mind control device.

Speaker: It's like, yeah, this is not your friend, Burl.

Speaker: This is, this is, this animal's a slave to you.

Speaker: That's what this is.

Speaker: Thank goodness.

Speaker: My slaves back.

Speaker: So, yeah.

Speaker: So Kevin, what, what'd you think?

Speaker: What'd you think of Borderlands, the fallen?

Speaker: Here's what I'll say.

Speaker: It's like, it's a very energetic, easy read of a book.

Speaker: It has a lot of fun moments in it.

Speaker: A lot of fun characters.

Speaker: But Marla is all over the map.

Speaker: Just like basically the, she is the, um,

Speaker: She is the perfect example of male author writing female character breasting boobily down the stairs, you know, because part of my issue is that, yeah, she's painted in the beginning as, you know, she's.

Speaker: She's got, she's a xenobiologist.

Speaker: She hasn't really done it in a long time, you know, because of fam, you know, keeping the family together and all that stuff.

Speaker: And she's got this husband, Zach, who's always off pulling shenanigans and whatnot.

Speaker: And she gets down to the planet and we explore the,

Speaker: her using her femininity and sexuality to kind of survive, but then simultaneously forgetting the fact that she's a xenobiologist until it's convenient at the very end.

Speaker: And it doesn't even, it doesn't even add anything to the story of her just saying that might be a creature.

Speaker: And Rowan's like, I'm dying.

Speaker: Can you please take me somewhere?

Speaker: Bleeding out.

Speaker: So, yeah, there's that.

Speaker: It's like there's a lot of good in here, but I think the contrast, it's a very sharp contrast of a lot of fun stuff mixed with a lot of just terrible characterizations of Marla.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And I think we focus a lot on

Speaker: I think Zack needed to be a lot more likable than he was because to me, that kind of made it, it made his sacrifice less interesting because the only time we spend with Zack is him.

Speaker: He leaves the ship,

Speaker: Because he's a fucking idiot and he goes down to the, he gets shot down and he gets his, the main ship shot down, nearly gets his family killed near tries to steal things from the only guy who will help him.

Speaker: Oh my God.

Speaker: Over and over and over and over again.

Speaker: And then he has one moment of clarity and he helps Burl.

Speaker: And he's like, well, Burl was going to kill me.

Speaker: And he's like, yeah, motherfucker, Burl was going to kill you because you kept fucking stealing from him.

Speaker: Right, right.

Speaker: He owed you.

Speaker: He owed you a bullet in the head.

Speaker: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker: So anyway, Zack was not a good enough character.

Speaker: I feel like it almost like...

Speaker: I feel like there was a better story in there where it's just Cal and Roland the entire time.

Speaker: I couldn't agree more.

Speaker: Based on what we were given, if we just had a story about Cal and Roland and Cal basically training a replacement slash partner, we go in that direction because I loved their characterizations.

Speaker: I loved their shenanigans.

Speaker: I loved all this.

Speaker: I thought that was great.

Speaker: I agree.

Speaker: I think Zach was.

Speaker: was a little one note and, um, ultimately just annoying, not very interesting and also definitely not likable enough.

Speaker: And Marla, but, but I think the thing, yeah, Marla, it just kept screaming back to me.

Speaker: If she was a more minor character, I wouldn't noticed as much, but she is one of the main characters of this book.

Speaker: And we go from, um,

Speaker: You know, Zack having this big adventure like where he nearly dies and has to do this and has to do that.

Speaker: And then Cal learning to be a man and taking his first life and it's fucking him up and all that stuff to Marla having very little value beyond just being an undeformed woman.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: Um, it's like nothing interesting is done with it.

Speaker: You know, there's so many things.

Speaker: If you want her to, if you want her to use her feminine wiles, you could go a lot of directions with that.

Speaker: You can have me like, she's kind of a homely woman and like, she's never done this before.

Speaker: So it's really awkward.

Speaker: And she has a lot of introspection about how does this work and how do I do this properly?

Speaker: And, and they don't even really like me, not me.

Speaker: You know, it's like, you could, you can do that and make it interesting and make her a third dimension, three dimensional character.

Speaker: Uh,

Speaker: But she's just very, it's, it's, Zach is flat and Marla's insulting.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: That's really what it comes down to.

Speaker: So, so in, in the end, like still all packaged together, it's like.

Speaker: Yeah, it's fine.

Speaker: I enjoyed kind of where you still kind of get pulled along by John Shirley's writing.

Speaker: Shirley's a great writer.

Speaker: He is a great writer.

Speaker: Entertaining writer.

Speaker: Just the characters on this were a bit of a miss, I would say.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So it's definitely not.

Speaker: Here's the thing is ultimately this book, we have our best of the best and we have our worst of the worst.

Speaker: And then there's a big pile of books that end up somewhere in the middle.

Speaker: And they go, I said this to somebody the other day, those books go to where Bing Bong goes in the brain.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: They just, it's like in a month, I'm not going to remember a lot about this book.

Speaker: I'll look at it and go, oh, I remember that being a fun book.

Speaker: And that's probably the extent of it.

Speaker: Yeah, that's probably how much I'm going to, it didn't move me.

Speaker: It didn't shake me to my core.

Speaker: And it didn't make me scream and rage.

Speaker: True.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So, yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Well, now that that's done, Kevin, I have a single solitary question to ask you.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: What are you playing?

Speaker: Oh, God.

Speaker: I feel bad because I haven't had anything new.

Speaker: Oh, thank God.

Speaker: It has not been a good week for gaming for me.

Speaker: to actually talk about because I am still playing Shadow of the Erd Tree, the DLC for Elden Ring.

Speaker: Now, between last week and this week, I've made huge amounts of progress in the DLC.

Speaker: I think I'm getting close to the end of it.

Speaker: I really dig it, man.

Speaker: It's awesome.

Speaker: The DLC will probably be...

Speaker: It's going to be on my game of the year list.

Speaker: It's going to be pretty high.

Speaker: I was about to ask that if that was if it holds up to the point that you'd put it on the game of the year list.

Speaker: Yeah, I would I would I would carve it out as like, you know, it's a it's a hefty enough expansion to the game.

Speaker: Back in my day, we would call it an expansion expansion.

Speaker: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker: It is a big expansion to the game where it adds a basically another continent to the to the lands between.

Speaker: So the concept is and I don't think I've actually explained it is that you're you're sent to a shadow realm and somebody pointed out on one of the the reddits that the area that you're in the if you take the map

Speaker: of the Shadow Realm and you lay it over top of a certain area of the original game's map, you could see that it looks like it belongs to it belongs on the original continent.

Speaker: So at some point, this whole landmass got just ripped away and put in kind of thing.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And put into this like alternate dimension.

Speaker: And

Speaker: uh you know all those all those miyazaki games the the dark souls is and the uh demon souls and and elden ring they all kind of play with this idea of multiple timelines and dimensions and universes kind of sitting on top of each other so in uh in elden ring

Speaker: It's set in the Lands Between and you have references to other places, but it's not truly explained what the Lands Between are.

Speaker: And some people believe that the Lands Between is like, it's like Valhalla or it's like Mount Olympus.

Speaker: This is the land of the gods and there's, you can only get to it

Speaker: through certain means.

Speaker: So there's the lands between and then even deeper into the lands between there's the shadow realm where this one of the gods, Mikla, has kind of

Speaker: gone, like he's gone to, he is, he has decided that this is where he is headed.

Speaker: So, uh, yeah, I'm really enjoying the DLC.

Speaker: It's got a lot of really neat characters and twists and turns in it.

Speaker: You find some, you find some things out about things that are in the base game.

Speaker: Like there's these dudes that are just, that are called, uh, living jars, uh,

Speaker: So they, Oh, I've seen, I've seen, I've seen the living jars.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: People are selling pots based on them.

Speaker: So yeah.

Speaker: They're adorable, right?

Speaker: The living jars.

Speaker: They're really cute.

Speaker: The DLC shows you how they're made.

Speaker: Oh God.

Speaker: I'm sure it's totally natural and adorable.

Speaker: I'm sure.

Speaker: It's great.

Speaker: It's adorable.

Speaker: It's fine.

Speaker: You get to see what they look like without the jar.

Speaker: Oh, good.

Speaker: Good.

Speaker: That's that's that's that was immediately where my head went when I first saw.

Speaker: So yeah, you learn how the how the living jars are made in the DLC.

Speaker: And let me tell you, not great.

Speaker: I can imagine.

Speaker: So, yeah, but loving it so far.

Speaker: I've just beaten a really annoying bot.

Speaker: A couple of really annoying bosses.

Speaker: One, this guy named Commander Gaius, who rides on the back of a wild, massive wild, armored wild boar type thing.

Speaker: And he just fucks you up.

Speaker: He...

Speaker: It's actually hilarious when you first get into the boss arena, you don't even realize it's a boss arena because it's so big.

Speaker: And you walk through the door and like way, way off in the distance, you see this dude like...

Speaker: on, on, on, you think maybe it's horseback or whatever, just like crossing across the field.

Speaker: And then he's, then it's way off in the distance, stops and turns towards you and then charges all the way across the field at like the super high speed.

Speaker: It's like Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Speaker: Exactly.

Speaker: Oh, God.

Speaker: But yeah, so Elden Ring, Shadow of the Erd Tree, probably finishing it in the next couple days and should be all wrapped up there.

Speaker: Nice.

Speaker: So, Phil, what are you playing, if anything?

Speaker: I'm still playing Jurassic Park Evolution 2.

Speaker: I'm really enjoying it.

Speaker: I finished all the campaign modes, so now it's all just challenges and shit.

Speaker: Or it's Jurassic World Evolution 2.

Speaker: They do...

Speaker: You do some really interesting stuff with a campaign.

Speaker: I was saying before that last week that I was playing the bios in campaign, which is basically it's the prequel to the Jurassic World movies and, you know, the rivals coming in and trying to do the same thing.

Speaker: And so you build up and you have all of these.

Speaker: goals and achievements you have to achieve to get to the end.

Speaker: And then it cuts forward in time to after Jurassic World has ended and it's just a fucking shit show and everything is like burnt to the ground.

Speaker: And you pick up from there.

Speaker: You're hired to rebuild the park.

Speaker: Well, yeah, you pick up from there as Ellie and Dr. Grant and all them basically trying to corral the living dinosaurs and like at least give them some kind of good life while we wait for them to die.

Speaker: That's the impression you get.

Speaker: They're like, they're not necessarily trying to make it a...

Speaker: a tourist attraction, but they're like, we need to keep these dinosaurs here and just give them some semblance of a normal life and let them go extinct again.

Speaker: It's fun.

Speaker: It was really fun doing it from both sides like that because it's very creative for this kind of strategy.

Speaker: games campaign.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: It goes beyond just the usual make sure that you get this level of park, which which was basically what they were doing in the campaign with the first one.

Speaker: It was just it's just a smoother, more interesting campaign.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Now there are a bunch of challenges and I'm planning on getting into those at my leisure.

Speaker: I did start playing a game called Stone Story.

Speaker: uh i played this i got this on my phone i i don't remember what what recommended it but it's this it's this very basic role-playing game it's got that ascii uh kind of uh uh quality to it but it's very cute and it's got a lot of the same vibes as a lot of online not online games phone games where you are you know

Speaker: Traveling through the different levels, it's kind of auto-played and you have to equip yourself with the right things to do to get the best benefits.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: But it is interesting because there are different levels of the same level.

Speaker: So, you know, with most of these kinds of games, you go through the one star version of the level, then you go to the second star and it's the same level.

Speaker: It's just a little harder.

Speaker: No, it's an entirely different level now.

Speaker: And so and there are little mysteries and little puzzles and stuff like that.

Speaker: It's not.

Speaker: like a particularly great game, but I did start playing it at work during my lunch break and I was just like, this is oddly relaxing.

Speaker: There she is.

Speaker: So, hey, I was wondering where she was.

Speaker: She knew she had to get here.

Speaker: It's good timing.

Speaker: But I. Marama's done.

Speaker: It's a good timing.

Speaker: Good timing.

Speaker: It's a free game, but they have like a weird premium aspect to it.

Speaker: That's like $9.99 a month.

Speaker: And I'm like, who does that?

Speaker: I don't understand where they're going with it.

Speaker: I don't think it's trying to do anything clever.

Speaker: I don't think there's a game hidden under the game or anything.

Speaker: I think this is just what it is.

Speaker: But for a little...

Speaker: you know, sword and sorcery game where, you know, I don't have to control the character all the way through and just consider on my desk and get some work done and play a game at the same time.

Speaker: Not bad.

Speaker: Not right.

Speaker: But that's right.

Speaker: All right.

Speaker: Well, that'll do it for tonight's episode.

Speaker: Thank you so much for listening.

Speaker: If you want to find more of our stuff, then you can go ahead and follow us on Twitter.

Speaker: The hell site owned by the worst human being in the world, Elon Musk.

Speaker: He is the worst.

Speaker: And whoever is the worst, that could change from moment to moment.

Speaker: But Elon is always, he's always like hovering right there.

Speaker: He's always right in there.

Speaker: There's other people who are worst of the moment, but Elon is just always right fucking there.

Speaker: So you can follow us on Twitter.

Speaker: You can follow us on Instagram where you can see pictures, Phil posts of the episode and all that fun stuff.

Borderlands: The Fallen - Part 3

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