Transcript
Speaker: If you made it not just the cards, but if you made like a cool setup, like a cool table set up and stuff like that with all the with all the you guys and all the extra bells and whistles, I would absolutely put that on Kickstarter.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, I'd get that instantly.
Speaker: But we're not here to talk about inscription.
Speaker: We are not.
Speaker: We are not.
Speaker: Hey there, everybody.
Speaker: Welcome back to Pixel It.
Speaker: My name is Kevin, alongside with me as always is Phil.
Speaker: Hello.
Speaker: And today we are starting a brand new series.
Speaker: Bioshock Rapture.
Speaker: There it is.
Speaker: There it is.
Speaker: With my Costco receipt coupon.
Speaker: I have the same copy right there.
Speaker: Hell yeah.
Speaker: You own a physical copy of the book, Kevin.
Speaker: I bought a physical copy.
Speaker: You are rubbing off on me.
Speaker: Ah, crazy.
Speaker: Let's just not tell our wives.
Speaker: as well yeah you're a you're a you are a um i'm normally a digital copy guy but you know what i i i looked at the book and i was like you know what this is a nice looking book it's just a nice fat paperback yeah i was and i didn't want to get the mass market i wanted this version of the paperback um and it's nice it is it's nice it's a it's a it's a nice book
Speaker: It's also a pretty good book, which is a breath of fresh air.
Speaker: I mean, I don't want to talk too unkindly about previous books, but I was starting to wonder if we were...
Speaker: If it was ever going to happen again.
Speaker: When we started this out, you know, it's like you think about we were just we were just thrilled to run into mediocre things when we did.
Speaker: And then things start getting you start reading goods like the Halo book was so good.
Speaker: And there's some really quality stuff out there.
Speaker: The Far Cry Absolution.
Speaker: And and then every time you get into something that's bad, you
Speaker: Or just like or just like what you expect when you think of a video game novelization.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You start going, OK, now we're back in the real world.
Speaker: The honeymoon period is over.
Speaker: Honeywood mood periods over.
Speaker: We're back.
Speaker: We're back in the trash lands.
Speaker: But Bioshock Rapture is is so far pretty good.
Speaker: And today we're going to be covering part one of part one of three in it's it's divided up into three parts.
Speaker: One of those parts must be much longer.
Speaker: Much longer.
Speaker: This is a shorter book than what Dead Space was.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: This is coming in just around 400 pages.
Speaker: yeah yeah okay it looks like the second part is uh is the beefiest part is the beefiest part uh yeah we got it's like the first part is about 200 100 pages second part seems to be 200 uh at least in my mass market paperback version of it yeah uh and then there is
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: About another another 125 pages for the third part.
Speaker: So second part is a real beast.
Speaker: Yeah, that's that's the that's the bugbear that we'll deal with as we come up to it.
Speaker: But the book starts with a prologue and in that prologue.
Speaker: we meet the great man, the great man, the great man, Andrew Ryan, the, uh, union buster and libertarian extraordinaire.
Speaker: Yeah, he is.
Speaker: He makes union Boston seem so, you know, wholesome and good.
Speaker: It does.
Speaker: I think that was the idea back then because you know,
Speaker: Like you were trying to fight off communism.
Speaker: So union busting was the whole, some all American apple pie and basketball kind of a thing to do.
Speaker: As he said, union busting makes him feel good.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Oh God.
Speaker: And, and this is actually right off the bat.
Speaker: This is a very interesting book to me because we've talked about, uh,
Speaker: doing, uh, covering books that the game was based on.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: As opposed to the opposite, which is what we mostly do now.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Uh, and this is the first book I think we're ever going to run into probably where it's a book based on a game that was kind of based on a book.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And you're getting, and you immediately right off the bat, get all that Ayn Rand goodness.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like, cause we're never going to read Atlas shrugged on the,
Speaker: I already, I already read it.
Speaker: I don't, I don't, you already read it.
Speaker: And I, I, I had a, this is, here's the thing.
Speaker: I'm going to just top load this and let you guys know right now.
Speaker: Uh, I, I had a brief stint as an objectivist, uh, Ayn Rand reading, uh, libertarian white, you know, you know, just, just that guy.
Speaker: I had a, I had a brief stint as one of those guys and a woman was involved.
Speaker: It's how it tends to work.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And and I read both the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.
Speaker: So I'm going to be.
Speaker: That's like 4000 pages of pure, unadulterated garbage.
Speaker: It just just not just not just garbage, evil garbage.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It's evil stuff.
Speaker: It's not good stuff.
Speaker: It's real bad.
Speaker: It's badly written and it's and it's and it's bad for the soul.
Speaker: Probably bad for your teeth.
Speaker: So so slowly.
Speaker: unraveling this thing is going to be a good therapy.
Speaker: I think I'm, I'm really looking forward to it.
Speaker: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker: Um, so the, the opening of the prologue is a conversation between, uh, uh, the chief Ryan's chief of security, Sullivan, uh, good Irish name.
Speaker: And, um, who is read with an Irish accent, I believe on the, on the audio book as I was listening to it.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: There are a lot of I had to I had to stop and I have to do it in bits and pieces now because the the dialects that this this this author in the audio book version that he juggles.
Speaker: Oh, boy.
Speaker: Oh, boy.
Speaker: It's a lot.
Speaker: It's a lot.
Speaker: And I'm I fall back on my just don't don't try.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't.
Speaker: It doesn't add anything for for me personally.
Speaker: It doesn't add anything.
Speaker: Just just read in your voice.
Speaker: I know I know that's how they're directed, because I know that they are hired based on their abilities to do different dialects.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: I think I've seen a few job postings for for book voiceovers.
Speaker: But yeah, it's just don't do it.
Speaker: Directors, voiceover directors out there.
Speaker: Stop.
Speaker: Please stop.
Speaker: It's not helping anything.
Speaker: It really isn't.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: So they're having a conversation and it's basically your introductory, like a lot of talk of fear of the bomb.
Speaker: Uh, you know, it's just, this is world war two.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's the end, very end of world war two.
Speaker: Um, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki have just been, they've just happened, just been bombed.
Speaker: They literally just happened earlier.
Speaker: Uh, and this is, and this is clearly a very big deal for, uh, for Andrew Ryan, uh,
Speaker: It's just inciting incident.
Speaker: It's the thing that draws him, like gives him the idea to start this whole thing.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: It's, it is exact.
Speaker: It is essentially for him, his inciting incident.
Speaker: Um, and they have a lot of that.
Speaker: They have a lot of libertarian talk.
Speaker: A lot of the standard is not a man, you know, uh, yeah.
Speaker: Does a, does a man not deserve this?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And, and one day everyone will learn that age is just a number and a social construct.
Speaker: You know, like it's, it's, it's pretty much exactly what you'd expect.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The libertarians jump from, from a no taxation to age of consent pretty quickly and very merrily, by the way, makes one a little nervous.
Speaker: Oh boy.
Speaker: But yeah, so they're having this discussion and we get, we get a little flashback into, uh, Andrew Ryan, 1918, Russia, uh, Andre Ryan.
Speaker: Opski Andre Ryan.
Speaker: Opski, which Ryan Opski had better be.
Speaker: I didn't look it up.
Speaker: I didn't look it up.
Speaker: It better be a real Russian name.
Speaker: Cause otherwise that's like, that's like up there.
Speaker: Like,
Speaker: pizza pasta as far as you know shitty stereotypical quasi you know continental names pizza pasta piston honda right you know um so he's andrew ryanowski uh yeah all right for those too young to remember pizza pasta was the uh italian stereotype that you fought in the arcade version of punch out
Speaker: He was too fucked up for the NES version.
Speaker: And the other one was that in the arcade version, you fought.
Speaker: What was his name?
Speaker: Vodka, vodka, vodka, drinking ski, which they changed to soda pop in ski for the NES version.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And someone pointed out on Twitter once they were like, they were like, people are always talking about how like, uh,
Speaker: you know, being politically correct, uh, ruins jokes.
Speaker: Fuck you.
Speaker: So to pop in ski is way funnier than vodka drunk in ski.
Speaker: And I was like, actually it kind of is, it makes more sense.
Speaker: So to pop in ski, like it flows better than vodka in ski.
Speaker: It feels better.
Speaker: It's just a better, yeah, it's a better name.
Speaker: It's funnier.
Speaker: I agree with that.
Speaker: So yeah, we, we get a glimpse into his, his life back in those days.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, he got he got separated from his family and he developed a longstanding phobia of of leftist politics, all based on the workers militia, which, you know, did a lot of bad things to him personally.
Speaker: But, uh, so he's carried that baggage with him his entire life and is, is going to hoist that baggage onto some boats and take it out to the middle of the North Atlantic.
Speaker: Where it belongs.
Speaker: Where it belongs.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then we get into part one.
Speaker: We get into part one and we're introduced to Bill McDonough.
Speaker: I love that part one starts with an Andrew Ryan quote, though.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: The parasite hates three things, free markets, free will and free men.
Speaker: The parasite is like the is the Bioshockian term that Andrew Ryan uses and is used all over Bioshock.
Speaker: It's basically just like poor people like or any any marginalized person who who is having a little bit of trouble gets like thrown into this category of the parasite.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Anyone who accepts any level of social assistance and that kind of, they see them as moochers.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: As that, you know, yeah, hangers on those people who couldn't, who can't hack it out on their own.
Speaker: which is another, which is a theme you see constantly throughout the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.
Speaker: It gets to a point with some of these quotes that I'm kind of amazed that they're, I know these aren't direct quotes from Ayn Rand.
Speaker: Yeah, but they're kind of like, it feels like they get away with it.
Speaker: It's a Randian vibe.
Speaker: Very, very much so.
Speaker: So we are introduced to Bill McDonough.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Englishman.
Speaker: Englishman.
Speaker: He's a toilet repairman slash engineer.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, literally.
Speaker: That's one of those.
Speaker: You know what's he is.
Speaker: He is.
Speaker: He's from merry old England.
Speaker: He he even though he's an engineer, he didn't go to a fancy place like NYU.
Speaker: And he kind of carries a chip on his shoulder because, you know, he understands all that stuff that the fancy pants school and people did.
Speaker: But he's.
Speaker: He went to a vocational school, so he doesn't really get the respect that he believes he necessarily deserves, which it kind of ties together all of the Andrew Ryan protagonist group.
Speaker: The Andrew Ryan advisors all have that distinction of like they have a drive and something about society is keeping them from just taking what they want.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: You run into that a lot in Ayn Rand's work.
Speaker: The people who agree with them, especially the poor, when you're talking about poor objectivists, they don't call them objectivists in...
Speaker: in the books, but people who agree with the overall philosophy who are also poor, uh, are either, uh, like you said, just being held back by socialism, probably, uh, to be able to take what is theirs and let their genius shine through.
Speaker: Cause it's all about genius being a great man with a capital G. Uh, that's, that's what it's all about.
Speaker: Letting the great men be great.
Speaker: So the poor people who are poor are either great men who are being held back or they're people who just aren't bound for great things.
Speaker: But boy, howdy, are they happy to be where they are?
Speaker: And they just love.
Speaker: They love seeing the great men do great things.
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: They love licking the boots.
Speaker: They love the boot taste great.
Speaker: Oh, they are.
Speaker: That is what they are there for.
Speaker: And I would call it the most unrealistic portrayal of of poor people I've ever seen.
Speaker: If it weren't for the fact that I've seen it so goddamn many times, it happens.
Speaker: It happens way too often to you.
Speaker: You can see it on Twitter when, you know, you have a that is that meme of a bunch of nerds jumping in to defend Elon Musk.
Speaker: Every time Elon Musk does something, you know, questionable, which is a lot.
Speaker: A lot.
Speaker: You have a lot of people just jumping in to defend him, even though they have no reason to.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Because he runs a company.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Well, and deep down inside, I think there's this level with these guys of, like, hoping that they, you know...
Speaker: if I were super rich, I would want to be left the fuck alone.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Therefore, you know, that it's, it's, it's, there's a fantasy there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They're just, they're just not millionaires yet.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That, what is the, was it, who is it that said that, uh, America has no poor.
Speaker: It's just a nation of momentarily embarrassed millionaires.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Uh, and I can't remember who said it, but I know, I know that quote.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And, uh, it's, it's, you know, but throughout this chapter, we get, we get a lot of that.
Speaker: We, we, uh, interestingly enough, uh, it makes me think of a saying, a buddy of mine who was a dear friend, uh, who was still a dear friend.
Speaker: And he remained my friend, even through my objectivist, uh, uh, phase, despite the fact that he is one sneeze shy of a full blown red commie.
Speaker: And, uh, and the, the, the,
Speaker: The phrase from Atlas Shrugged is who is John Galt?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: John Galt is meant to be this great man with a capital G and a capital M. And he used to invert it and say, who fixes Galt's John?
Speaker: And his point was that, you know, it's like someone's got to scrub the toilets in this great place.
Speaker: Great society of all of where great men can be great.
Speaker: Who's fixing the toilet?
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And so we've got Bill McDonough here.
Speaker: Bill McDonough is fixing the toilet.
Speaker: He's arriving at the Andrew Ryan Arms apartments.
Speaker: He is going specifically to Andrew Ryan's penthouse to repair his toilet.
Speaker: And basically his company, from what I understand, it seemed like his company was doing some work.
Speaker: generally in the in the building yeah in repairing plumbing and things like that and uh and he's like he's new i believe yeah this is definitely his first time being called up right he's he's really surprised when he finds that andrew ryan is up there
Speaker: You know, on a phone, on the phone, on the phone, making deals like great men do.
Speaker: Just yeah.
Speaker: And just, just, and just hitting.
Speaker: So anytime we see this man, he just hits so many libertarian sound bites and the hyperbole of the rich.
Speaker: Like he, we get a, we get a taxes or theft.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Which might as well have been spelled with all capital letters.
Speaker: Hashtag Gamergate after it.
Speaker: Like it was just.
Speaker: And so he's just a wink and a nod to was it.
Speaker: GameStop writer Colin Moriarty.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Whose whose handle is no taxation.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That's what it is.
Speaker: And he, and it just, so we get one of those.
Speaker: He's, we just, just in case you forgot who he is.
Speaker: And, and, and, and so McDonough goes and he fixes the toilet.
Speaker: And Ryan kind of watches him and they start talking shop.
Speaker: Like, yeah, apparently everyone's been using tin bolts and and he points out to him.
Speaker: He goes, those are fall apart real fast.
Speaker: That's the cheap way.
Speaker: This this way.
Speaker: I think it's brass or something.
Speaker: Yeah, it's it's brass and yeah, it's more expensive, but it'll work.
Speaker: And McDonough is like, well, I'll pay for it myself out of my own my own pay to make sure the job is done right.
Speaker: And that is that is crazy.
Speaker: great man talk.
Speaker: Oh, he loves it.
Speaker: He loves it.
Speaker: Oh, Ryan eats that shit right up.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And, and he just, and he just like, he immediately wants to talk philosophy with this guy.
Speaker: He's super impressed with his work ethic and he wants to, and he just starts asking him questions.
Speaker: Like, so what do you think?
Speaker: Where do a man's rights in?
Speaker: Do you know?
Speaker: And it's like, and you immediately think of that, like Twitter gift of like the guy whispering into the girl's ear and she's just going, yeah, exactly.
Speaker: But if you're like me and you thought that you'd be wrong because Bill McDonough is super into it.
Speaker: He is 100% into it.
Speaker: He fucking loves it.
Speaker: He's they get into it.
Speaker: They get into the whole conversation.
Speaker: The, the, the, the, the kind of,
Speaker: Just, I mean, here's a quote from it.
Speaker: He says, a man must make of his life a ladder that he never ceases to climb.
Speaker: If you're not rising, you are slipping down the rungs, my friend.
Speaker: Just that, like, work hard, work, work, work, until you are quite literally dead and in the ground.
Speaker: uh, kind of thing.
Speaker: One classes oneself.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: That's a good one too.
Speaker: Oh, we've got some just awe inspiring sound.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It is like the, the text feels like it's written in art deco.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Everything is Art Deco here.
Speaker: But so Ryan.
Speaker: And so he goes, he does the thing.
Speaker: Ryan's really impressed.
Speaker: The guy goes home.
Speaker: McDonough goes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The next morning, it implies that he's hung over, which I thought was funny as fuck.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Not the kind of thing that a great man would do, I don't think.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: But he wakes up, he gets a phone call from his boss, who basically tells him that Ryan wants to see him again.
Speaker: And Ryan hires him as his new building engineer, which is...
Speaker: Stupid.
Speaker: Let's just say that.
Speaker: That's what the fuck.
Speaker: All he knows about this guy is that he.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's a mean pipe.
Speaker: He turns it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He he he said he's he's objectivist friendly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And he uses brass fittings instead of tin.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Toilets.
Speaker: Those are those are the two facts.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That Ryan knows about this guy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And this isn't the end of this, but like, we're going to see Ryan making these kind of moves more as the, as the book goes.
Speaker: where you're just like, why is he doing that?
Speaker: It doesn't make a lot of sense.
Speaker: But we got Bill McDonough in here, and we're gonna see a lot of Bill.
Speaker: We're gonna see a lot of Bill as the book goes along, but chapter two, we're back with Sullivan,
Speaker: And another one of the guys that is sort of responsible for this whole thing is Ruben Grevy, who works for the Wales Brothers, who are, as we'll find out, they have a lot to do with the stuff that Ryan is involving himself in.
Speaker: Yes, yes.
Speaker: We get them, they're seeing off
Speaker: a ship full of supplies heading off to some mysterious Vista.
Speaker: Uh, and, uh, they're, they're talking about McDonough and they actually kind of address what we talked about.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Sometimes they're just like great.
Speaker: And sometimes it feels like they're regular or something like that.
Speaker: They're just like, yeah, sometimes it feels like he brought in somebody who's like, Oh yeah.
Speaker: Cause Grieby is a learned professor.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And he's one of the guys.
Speaker: And then Sullivan is just, you know, a former cop, uh, down on his luck and down on his luck cop, you know,
Speaker: Yeah, and they use a phrase I'd never heard before, and I really like this.
Speaker: They said they ask if McDonough is an apple picked from an orange tree, which I'd never heard that phrase before.
Speaker: I really like that.
Speaker: Just kind of a rando phrase.
Speaker: pulled out of nowhere yeah uh you know it's like they seem to have the same misgivings that you me or anyone who's halfway sane i think would have right about hiring a plumber to be your building engineer it's not like a diamond in the rough it's like an apple picked from an orange tree is like he's he's being picked based on the fact that he's just different rather weird yeah rather than um
Speaker: Rather than the same, like it does, it's not a mark of quality.
Speaker: It's just a mark of difference.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: A mark of something unusual.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that's, and that's, and that's not usually good enough, especially when we're talking about.
Speaker: Well, it's definitely not good enough for what's his name.
Speaker: The professor kind of has a gravy kind of is like, Hmm.
Speaker: Yeah, he's not particularly impressed by any of this shit.
Speaker: No, he's not.
Speaker: So we've got them, we get to...
Speaker: Ryan again.
Speaker: Well, they talk about Ryan.
Speaker: This was another thing.
Speaker: They're talking about Andrew Ryan, and they say that he didn't side with anyone during World War II, that he didn't like Hitler and the Nazis, but he really had real problems with the way that the Allies did things, too.
Speaker: And it's just the ultimate both sides are bad kind of...
Speaker: which to me doesn't.
Speaker: Here's the thing.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: There were issues with the allies over there.
Speaker: There were, there were serious issues with the allies.
Speaker: So, you know, if you do any level of digging into America's history and you see how it influenced Nazi Germany, it's horrifying.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And there's a lot of, but, but at the same time, at the same time,
Speaker: If you're actually pound for pound looking at the allies and the axis and you decide that you're not going to make a decision at all.
Speaker: I call opportunism.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I don't I don't think your morals are really all that good.
Speaker: I think you're waiting to see which one of these giants comes out on.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, Ryan is just a billionaire trying to see trying to hedge his bets.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's not.
Speaker: He's not.
Speaker: He's not making a real moral stand here.
Speaker: No, he's not.
Speaker: And and they don't.
Speaker: And John Shirley, our author, who, by the way, we didn't get into it, but John Shirley has quite a pedigree as well.
Speaker: We talk about him versus Evanston who wrote our last book.
Speaker: Bram Stoker Award winner.
Speaker: Really, really cool guy.
Speaker: I need to check out more of his work.
Speaker: Yeah, but he he he makes it clear that.
Speaker: It's not, you know, he really he really sends up.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Ryan is Ryan is somebody who is.
Speaker: He's the Ryan is definitely portrayed as the the dumb man's idea of a smart man.
Speaker: Pretty much.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: It's the kind of thing.
Speaker: And it's the thing, you know, when I was when I was, you know, 24, 25 and stupid, you know, these kind of quick, quippy, clever quotes really worked on me.
Speaker: You know, they made me feel special, made me feel smarter than other people and that kind of thing.
Speaker: And it's one of those things that the
Speaker: It doesn't take much to unravel.
Speaker: It doesn't take much to unravel at all.
Speaker: But people don't want it to be unraveled.
Speaker: And so that's how you get rapture.
Speaker: We get a scene change now.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: We got a new character.
Speaker: We got a new character.
Speaker: Frank Gorland.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Who has just taken over a bar based on the default of a loan.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And Gorland is a tricky dude.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, he is like Gorlin is running the thieves guild, baby.
Speaker: Like Gorlin is like he is level 20 rogue all the way.
Speaker: He is maxed out on persuasion.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: I like Gorlin.
Speaker: He is he is insufferable and kind of a nasty character.
Speaker: But damn, is he good at what he does?
Speaker: And so he's basically setting up his he's taken over this bar.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And and which is on which is by the docks.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And that's important.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And the FBI shows up presumably to interrogate him.
Speaker: But mostly they just want to make a deal.
Speaker: And that is.
Speaker: you know, they've have been hearing shit about Andrew.
Speaker: What's Andrew Ryan doing?
Speaker: Like they're like, Hey, Gorland, we know like, you know, we could arrest you on any number of things, right?
Speaker: But we probably wouldn't be able to get them to stick.
Speaker: So you're better as like, uh, as somebody who can give us information.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Is it be you being useful to us?
Speaker: Like, you know, do something.
Speaker: And so, and, and, and Gorland,
Speaker: says, yeah, sure.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: Naturally he, he goes with it.
Speaker: Uh, but all that's really happened is they've given him an idea for his next scam.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He is.
Speaker: He is the music man.
Speaker: He is a, he knows he knows for a fact.
Speaker: He's like, he's like, Oh, I had no idea.
Speaker: Something was going down.
Speaker: Thanks.
Speaker: FBI.
Speaker: Thanks.
Speaker: FBI.
Speaker: I'm going to go down there and figure it out myself and not tell you shit.
Speaker: I'm cutting out the middle man.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it doesn't take long for him to get a tip.
Speaker: Some poor drunk girl comes in.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And her boyfriend was a diver.
Speaker: Her boyfriend.
Speaker: And disappeared.
Speaker: Who disappeared.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And she thinks that it has something to do with Andrew Ryan, who he was working for.
Speaker: And she thinks that he maybe knew too much.
Speaker: She seems to think he was doing something.
Speaker: It was in the North Atlantic.
Speaker: And that's yeah, it it's it's
Speaker: It's tight storytelling with the amount of stuff that happens in the course.
Speaker: And it's such a breath of fresh air.
Speaker: And we were talking about this before we got started.
Speaker: Like, this is super tight storytelling because we are on page.
Speaker: We're 50 pages in just about.
Speaker: And we know the following.
Speaker: Andrew Ryan wants to do something big in response to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Speaker: One year later, he is already well underway.
Speaker: And then the government is aware that he's doing something.
Speaker: And this character, Frank Gorland, is now aware and has already procured important information about it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that's in 50 pages.
Speaker: And it feels like it feels like it took forever to get there in our previous book.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And this is just good pacing.
Speaker: We get.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We get quick little moments.
Speaker: These beats that don't pad themselves, that don't waste any time.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it feels like it feels like two things, and both of which are perfect for this kind of book in the subject matter.
Speaker: First off, it feels like pretty decent noir.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's got the mystery element.
Speaker: He's, you know, the reverse gumshoe, but, you know, still the same idea.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And he goes and interrogates this person, talks to that person, pretends to be a guy to talk to this person.
Speaker: Just little moments that are giving him
Speaker: bit by bit by bit of information.
Speaker: And, uh, and the other, and based on that, it also feels like an adventure game.
Speaker: Yeah, totally.
Speaker: It feels like a good point and click things are happening in each scene.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Every scene is important.
Speaker: There is a detail that is coming about from it and, and it's just good writing.
Speaker: It's just really tight.
Speaker: It's really, really good.
Speaker: We also found out at some point that, um, Gorland is not his real name.
Speaker: No, he is.
Speaker: He has gone under a dozen other aliases.
Speaker: At least Gorland is just the latest name, the latest name.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: So, yeah, he continues and he gets basically at this point, he just he goes to the dock and starts investigating.
Speaker: Like, yeah, he starts to t alk to a drunk dock worker.
Speaker: Yeah, pretends to be a cop at one point.
Speaker: Yeah, he pretends to be a cop.
Speaker: It's it's amazing.
Speaker: All the little details and stuff.
Speaker: He finds out that there's tunnels under the sea, that it's in the North Atlantic.
Speaker: That certain workers are dying.
Speaker: He starts finding out information about who's involved, the gravy and all that stuff.
Speaker: The bathyspheres, another book with bathyspheres.
Speaker: Yeah, we've gone from one bathysphere to another.
Speaker: But yeah, he's funny.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's, you know, he overhears workers talking about people down there dying, you know, in the, in the process, they're not happy about it.
Speaker: So he's, he is, Oh, he's filling up.
Speaker: He's filling in the gaps.
Speaker: And the chapter ends with Gorlin's making the realization that
Speaker: Ryan is building a city under the sea.
Speaker: And that is the first time it is explicitly stated in the book.
Speaker: Now, coming into the book, if you obviously played Bioshock and the title is Bioshock Rapture, it's no surprise.
Speaker: But the way we get it is through a character who just pieces things together.
Speaker: And it gives you some...
Speaker: It gives you good character moments.
Speaker: And it gives you nice, nice little bit.
Speaker: Like, cause you could have easily just, Ryan could have just said it in the first scene.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: Anybody who, anybody who's reading this book,
Speaker: has probably played the game, most likely, and so it's no surprise.
Speaker: That's not a surprise to them, but it's not boring to find, to watch this guy piece it all together.
Speaker: It's quite the opposite.
Speaker: It's very exciting.
Speaker: It's like, you know something he doesn't, and so the whole time, you're like, oh, is he gonna figure it out?
Speaker: Oh, is he gonna, is he gonna fuck up?
Speaker: Is he gonna, is he only gonna get half the information?
Speaker: You know, like,
Speaker: It's exciting.
Speaker: It's done well.
Speaker: So yeah, I totally agree.
Speaker: It's so interesting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We moved to chapter three and we're back with Bill McDonough.
Speaker: It opens with her comparing a woman to his mother and then promptly ogling her.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, felt good about that one.
Speaker: He really does fit in with this crowd, doesn't he?
Speaker: That's a choice.
Speaker: Elaine.
Speaker: Elaine.
Speaker: Because Bill McDonough has a girlfriend that he mentions in the first chapter, I believe.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I don't think she's ever mentioned again.
Speaker: No, I think he's moved on from her.
Speaker: But yeah, Bill is Bill's working at his in his office as the building engineer.
Speaker: And then he gets picked up by Andrew in a limousine to to take a ride down to the docks.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They go, they go off out there and Ryan starts asking him about, uh, the war, his time in the war, his experience in the war and where his loyalties lie.
Speaker: And that's where he kind of openly admits to what we were talking about before him.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: His loyalty is, is not to the government, but to himself and he, the government, you know, it's said with like, like the word is,
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like, yeah.
Speaker: Like the word is packed in oil with sardines, the government, uh, it's, it's really weird.
Speaker: And, uh, and so he starts basically telling them that, uh, he starts hinting, like, we're going to go away.
Speaker: We're going to get away.
Speaker: These people, these, these, these nuclear warheads and all that shit, we're getting away from all of that.
Speaker: And, uh, and he says that we're going to leave.
Speaker: He says,
Speaker: And I just, I don't know what it was about that.
Speaker: It sounded like it was like, you fucking moron.
Speaker: We're not going to the moon.
Speaker: Of course not.
Speaker: 20,000 leagues under the sea, you stupid ass.
Speaker: You son of a bitch.
Speaker: It's so funny.
Speaker: He's just like, you know, you fucking stupid slap slap.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's so mean.
Speaker: And he's and he tells him we're going to I'm going to take you to Iceland.
Speaker: I'm going to show you this.
Speaker: We're going to do it.
Speaker: We're going to promises that he'll be in rap in raptured.
Speaker: But I'm sure.
Speaker: And we get a scene change back to Gorland, who is doing more spy work, basically.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's delivering canned food.
Speaker: Yeah, he's delivering canned food in disguise.
Speaker: This is actually a really funny scene.
Speaker: Yeah, because the guy, like the dude calls him out on it so fast.
Speaker: He's like, you're...
Speaker: This is not like because like Gorland is like, well, I need Andrew Ryan to sign for this.
Speaker: And I was like, Andrew Ryan doesn't sign for shit.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's basically if you were a delivery guy and you took it to Trump Towers and the guy Donald Trump signed for.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And the manager came out and you're like, no, I'm sorry.
Speaker: It's supposed to go to Donald Trump.
Speaker: Like, I can't.
Speaker: I can't.
Speaker: You know, maybe Donald Trump Jr. if he's here, but otherwise he's playing.
Speaker: He's not just playing dumb.
Speaker: He's playing stupid.
Speaker: He's playing.
Speaker: I'm just like, I'm just getting paid to, but, and it says right here, Andrew Ryan.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: And so he finds out that a guy named Rizzo is the dude who actually runs the day to day.
Speaker: And he basically, that section ends with him kind of figuring out
Speaker: how big of a scam this is going to be.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: This isn't that he realized this is not small potatoes.
Speaker: This is big.
Speaker: This is big.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And we get another scene change back to where they were going in the limousine, which is, which is to see everybody's favorite dandy Sander Cohen.
Speaker: They're going to a musical.
Speaker: They're going to a musical because Andrew Ryan loves musicals.
Speaker: He loves musicals.
Speaker: He loves musicals.
Speaker: The whole thing opens with him talking about, you know, I do find it funny that I support these musicals.
Speaker: It's kind of hilarious.
Speaker: It's a little too...
Speaker: He does say, I don't care for this jitterbug nonsense.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: There's a, there's a scene where they're, they're up there dancing and they're doing like, you know, a really, you know, one of the stupid little, yeah, jitterbug kind of dance.
Speaker: And he's real quick to go.
Speaker: I don't care for it.
Speaker: It's like your friend who really, really likes Britney Spears and, and lucky comes on and he goes real quick, goes real hard.
Speaker: Like, look, that's a garbage song.
Speaker: Everyone hates lucky, but, but listen, but seriously, baby one more time is a bop.
Speaker: Like that's just others to it.
Speaker: It's a little protest too much.
Speaker: You know, it's kind of like I've known guys who were kind of shy about liking musicals or theater or something like that because they're like, I'm not gay.
Speaker: Yeah, it's really cool.
Speaker: You know, the way the ballet guys stand on their toes is super manually.
Speaker: It's books.
Speaker: It's super, super cool.
Speaker: So Eddie says only the great understand the great.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's just, just which, and that to me says so much.
Speaker: about this mindset.
Speaker: It's like, it's not enough that because he's, he's responding to a few drunks.
Speaker: He claims they don't seem drunk.
Speaker: They just seem like they didn't like the show.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And he hit, he just goes, they're morons.
Speaker: Like this guy's great.
Speaker: Only great understands.
Speaker: This is, this is where you get the people who think that there should be objectivity in movie and movies and art and like, yeah, like this is, and this is again, this is an objectivist thing.
Speaker: Like that's why
Speaker: art deco is so associated with it because it's very strong.
Speaker: It's it when it shows human figures, it shows them at their peak muscular.
Speaker: It's all about beauty.
Speaker: It's meant to evoke nothing but
Speaker: physical beauty, which is about as far as it can go for a lot of them.
Speaker: Like there's, there's not a lot of room for reading between the lines.
Speaker: And, uh, so this, this, this attitude says so much about Sander Cohen is like this.
Speaker: He is the way the book is written to kind of illustrate that Sander Cohen is way past his prime in terms of as, as an entertainer and an artist.
Speaker: Yeah, we get we get two artists that we run into two artists.
Speaker: The first one is Jasmine, who is a dancer.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And clearly she is she's basically Ryan's favorite stripper.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Let's face facts.
Speaker: Like he goes into the strip club and he asks, is Jasmine dancing tonight?
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Like that's that's fine, by the way.
Speaker: That's what.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's what strippers are for.
Speaker: And having just replayed Bioshock.
Speaker: That is a reference to Jasmine who is there at the strip club in Bioshock is Jasmine's.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Oh, that's awesome.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: I have, I started replaying it.
Speaker: I don't know what it is about the remaster.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It is having serious trouble with my computer shutting itself off.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But I'm, I'm, I'm having fun replaying it, but I haven't gotten that far.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: But yeah.
Speaker: And he basically invites her to his underwater.
Speaker: He says, he says, I've got this thing that's happening.
Speaker: He says, you're going to come along and, uh,
Speaker: And that says that says everything.
Speaker: It shows you how full of shit this guy is.
Speaker: It's like and does it again with with Sander.
Speaker: He does that with him, too, where he's like, I've got a place for us, us geniuses.
Speaker: And it's like, you're not you're not actually after great people and geniuses.
Speaker: You just like you just want to protect who you like.
Speaker: Yeah, you're you just picking out the people you specifically like.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And because you view yourself as a great man.
Speaker: Obviously, these must be the greatest people.
Speaker: These are the best of the best because your taste is object.
Speaker: Your your your your taste is objectivist.
Speaker: So it must be perfect.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And that's it's not enough that you just I just it's OK if I were building, you know, a castle in the clouds, I would.
Speaker: And people accuse me like, you're just inviting your friends to come along.
Speaker: I'd be like, yeah, that's exactly it.
Speaker: Like, that's of course I am.
Speaker: And they're like, well, you're not including great people.
Speaker: I'm like, well, they're great to me.
Speaker: They're my friends.
Speaker: You know, they're great people.
Speaker: They're great people.
Speaker: You haven't gotten drunk and sung karaoke with them.
Speaker: They're great.
Speaker: It's like it's it's it's that's all it is.
Speaker: That's the difference.
Speaker: That's the real difference.
Speaker: He's he's not.
Speaker: it's, it's so clear here that John Shirley is just trolling Ayn Rand so bad.
Speaker: Like he's just, he's just, just going, it's proof there that this whole great man shtick is, it's horseshit.
Speaker: It's horseshit.
Speaker: The chapter ends with Bill McDonough saying that he is in A to Z. He's diving in at the deep end.
Speaker: He is, he is, he is, he is drank the Kool-Aid.
Speaker: He is 100% in on this particular venture.
Speaker: Um, he has been dazzled by the great man.
Speaker: Big time.
Speaker: Big time.
Speaker: It's like, you just want to go, no, no, no, no.
Speaker: Uh, he just, and his, and his accent's getting worse by the way.
Speaker: That I, that's the one thing I will criticize John Shirley for.
Speaker: He sounds like Dick Van Dyke and Mary Poppins.
Speaker: Is it John Shirley doing the, the reading?
Speaker: Oh, is he?
Speaker: I have no idea.
Speaker: I'm just, I'm just talking about just even just how he writes.
Speaker: Oh, how he writes in is like on page 64 core.
Speaker: He burst out.
Speaker: Me, Ma took a liking to Sander Cohen a few years back.
Speaker: Fair wore out is kissing the tulip on her old Victorula.
Speaker: And it just,
Speaker: I'm sure that people did talk that way.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm sure they did just the right.
Speaker: But the voice of the character on paper is inconsistent a little bit.
Speaker: It feels, it feels weird, man.
Speaker: It feels weird.
Speaker: I that's the one thing I will say that I'm just like, I don't know about this.
Speaker: Uh, so, and that brings us to chapter four and Gorland, our friend Frank Gorland.
Speaker: Our friend Gorland who is doing more digging.
Speaker: What a surprise digging stuff up.
Speaker: And basically he, he discovers that, you know, the best way for him to get close to Ryan's project essentially is at is just to supply them with goods.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like they are in constant need of supplies.
Speaker: He doesn't have to.
Speaker: It's so funny.
Speaker: He, he actually,
Speaker: He doesn't have to be all that sneaky about it.
Speaker: And if anything, being more legit will get him closer to this or, or quote unquote legit, quote unquote legit as a guy like Gorlin is capable of being, because now his, his idea is to, um, is to, uh,
Speaker: Basically, he targets somebody in this discussion named Frank Fontaine.
Speaker: Does that name sound familiar to you?
Speaker: A little familiar.
Speaker: A little familiar if you played Bioshock.
Speaker: He targets a guy named Frank Fontaine.
Speaker: I actually know a guy in college named Frank Fontaine.
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Couldn't have been any less like this dude.
Speaker: Any less like Frank Fontaine.
Speaker: So Gorlin basically targets Frank Fontaine because Frank Fontaine is a former smuggler who is now running a fishery.
Speaker: And Gorlin's like, well, you know, if I could if I could get Fontaine, Fontaine probably could get me some information.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Han Solo is going to help me out here.
Speaker: Han Solo is going to help me out here.
Speaker: So and it's a really brief scene.
Speaker: A little you get a little bit more about how Frank Gorland is is not his real name.
Speaker: Before we got we cut back over to Andrew Ryan and Bill McDonough are our airship.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They're on their way to where is it?
Speaker: Greenland or Iceland?
Speaker: Iceland.
Speaker: Iceland.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And yeah, so he's he he basically he's he's talking more more pseudo intellectual philosophy talk.
Speaker: And then finally, he shows him the model shows him the model of rapture.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What he's working on.
Speaker: And they end and McDonough compares it in his head to Oz, the Emerald City of Oz, which is not a bad comparison.
Speaker: not a bad comparison at all it's it's real it has this real mythical structure yeah um and uh you know there's a lot of he talks about how there's there's the most open space and they kind of they kind of do in this scene a little bit of the hand waviness with the science behind it where uh ryan's like oh yeah yeah i have scientists who figured out the air pressure stuff like it's it's like it's like and moving on yeah which
Speaker: Which, you know what?
Speaker: It's kind of fine for a couple of reasons.
Speaker: First off, it's like, yeah, it's on one hand, do we really want to read all the details in the schematics?
Speaker: Probably not.
Speaker: Probably not.
Speaker: On the other hand, this kind of dude, I don't know if this dude would bother getting to know that shit anyhow.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And we're about to see a moment where there is a moment where that kind of does come back.
Speaker: to bite them.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Where he's just like, he has, because, because no matter how much of a great one man you are, you do not exist alone.
Speaker: You have to rely on other people.
Speaker: You do have to rely on others.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But, but if he knows, but if he knows too, if he talks too much, if he talks up the science of it too much, uh, you might get the impression that, uh, its development didn't really have all that much to do with him.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: We cannot have that.
Speaker: We can't have that.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: that is that is the truth um so uh we have another scene change and gorland is meeting with fontaine yes yes this is it's pretty great this this is great um this is a great scene basically uh uh gorland is trying to pump fontaine for information um
Speaker: And the conversation, um, the conversation goes south.
Speaker: Big time.
Speaker: Big time.
Speaker: He implies that the FBI is after Fontaine.
Speaker: Yeah, is after Fontaine for the smuggling and all that stuff.
Speaker: Ultimately, what ends up happening, though, is, um...
Speaker: Is it wait, is it in this scene?
Speaker: Oh, no, no, no.
Speaker: It hasn't happened yet.
Speaker: But Fontaine is buying what Gorland is selling.
Speaker: He's like, yeah, Fontaine's like, all right, you know, I'll help you out.
Speaker: You know, you guys got me.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'll help you out.
Speaker: The gist of it is like, look, listen, these people want you need to get away for a little while.
Speaker: You need to go and disappear.
Speaker: I'll take over your operation for a little while.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: You know, because, you know, I it'll help me because I'm doing some some supply running stuff like that.
Speaker: He just he feeds him a line a mile long about you just need to disappear and I'll and I'll take over for a minute.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And then so he's on the ship.
Speaker: He's he's he is now captaining the ship.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Frank Gorlin is captain in the ship and Fontaine shows up for the payoff money to basically disappear.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah, because he wasn't going to do it for free.
Speaker: He was going to help him out.
Speaker: He's like, here, I'm going to help you out.
Speaker: We've worked together.
Speaker: I like you.
Speaker: Here, I'll pay you off for the whole situation.
Speaker: Gorlin just murders the shit out of him.
Speaker: Murders him.
Speaker: He shouts something about inventing identity theft.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: How funny it is that they both have the first name.
Speaker: So this is going to be an easy transition.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And knocks him out with a blackjack and throws him ass, ass fucking over tea kettle into the water where he does not come back up, does not come back up.
Speaker: And it ends with, uh, what was it?
Speaker: Frank Fontaine was dead.
Speaker: Long live Frank Fontaine.
Speaker: Pretty much.
Speaker: Um, yeah.
Speaker: Long Captain Fontaine was dead.
Speaker: Long live Captain Frank Fontaine.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentle thems, Kings, Queens and thamperers, Frank Fontaine, the antagonists.
Speaker: of Bioshock has arrived.
Speaker: There he is.
Speaker: He has arrived.
Speaker: And what an introduction, by the way.
Speaker: What an introduction.
Speaker: Oh, fuck.
Speaker: It's good.
Speaker: It's so good.
Speaker: He's such a nasty character.
Speaker: He is such a nasty character.
Speaker: And you can see it kind of coming
Speaker: If you if you read between the lines of like what his some of the names that he references that he had, because he said he had he had a there was a Chinese last name in there.
Speaker: And in the game itself, he says like he one time time pretended that he was Chinese in order to pull a con.
Speaker: So and, you know, it all it all connects together.
Speaker: it's great it's fin it's it's it's not just it's not just good writing in and of itself just by itself it is terrific adaptation of of a character existing property yeah john shirley played through this game a couple of times i'm really bad yeah and uh and really got to know it and went oh i'm gonna have fun with this because he's having fun he's having fun and it shows it's good writing so and that uh that brings us to chapter five
Speaker: Chapter five with and the Andrew Ryan.
Speaker: Now, this is not the man Andrew Ryan.
Speaker: This is the ship.
Speaker: Andrew Ryan.
Speaker: Yes, Andrew Ryan.
Speaker: He has not demanded that you all speak to him in third person like Kanye West or something.
Speaker: He's just it's the Andrew Ryan is the ship.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: They're basically the ship is going out to the lighthouse in order to get down into Rapture.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And, um, you know, McDonough's is not having a good time cause it's, he's getting a little seasick.
Speaker: Um, he's getting sick.
Speaker: He did, he did, he did briefly have, uh, in the section before we got a brief moment of, uh, PTSD from him.
Speaker: He got a flashback of, uh, to the war.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: When the plane starts to started to list a little bit, he was not, he was not having a good time.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And he flashes back to some horrible things that happened to him in the war.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Uh, so he's already kind of uneasy at this point.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And they end up riding a bathysphere down towards Rapture.
Speaker: Yeah, and they talk about, you know, it's geothermal, which comes up in the game.
Speaker: There's no coal needed, no oil.
Speaker: You know, the energy flow goes on as long as the Earth retains its heat, which is, you know, that's, hey.
Speaker: If the Earth runs out of heat, then we're fucked either way.
Speaker: We're fucked either way.
Speaker: But what's really neat is, like, I look at the...
Speaker: I think rapture as a concept is really freaking cool.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, the, the, how it's born is, is terrible, but sure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The, the concept of it, of this, like a city running on endless power under the sea.
Speaker: Um, cause that is where you'll find me underneath the sea lab, uh, underneath the water.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You can call me.
Speaker: Shut the fuck up and get on with it.
Speaker: You can call me Captain Murphy.
Speaker: Oh my God.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You watch some adults swim too much adult swim and too much adult swim in college.
Speaker: So basically, yeah, they continue on.
Speaker: They get down there.
Speaker: They meet with some of the other like engineering types or what have you.
Speaker: Roland Wallace.
Speaker: Roland Wallace.
Speaker: And, you know, there's an issue.
Speaker: There's suddenly like a little whoopsie that pops up.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, real quick before that, because I think this is an interesting thing that leads into it is they talk about someone mentions that three men died setting up the geothermal system.
Speaker: And Bill is kind of shocked by that.
Speaker: And and Ryan says, hey,
Speaker: how many people died building the panel Panama Canal, which which, by the way, is an extraordinary number of people died.
Speaker: French and American died making the Panama Canal.
Speaker: But Bill rattles off the numbers kind of fast.
Speaker: It's something like it's something like 20,000 people died.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And he says, so anyone's going to die in these kind of big projects.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Uh, so he is clearly very happy, uh, or willing rather to allow people to sacrifice their lives for building this dream project of us.
Speaker: And I think that's just kind of important to bring up before we get further on.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, no, I, I, and they, they talk a little bit about movies, how there's going to be a movie theater and all, you know, all that, all that nice stuff.
Speaker: But, um,
Speaker: What what happens is Bill notices that there's some water trickling down some of the glass and like there shouldn't be any.
Speaker: It should be zero.
Speaker: No, no, no.
Speaker: There should be.
Speaker: You're underwater.
Speaker: Unless you're in the shower, there should be no extra water.
Speaker: There should be no extra water if you're trying to maintain your air pressure.
Speaker: And there's water on the floor.
Speaker: And basically, it's like, oh, there's a little bit of a leak.
Speaker: It turns into suddenly a larger leak very quickly.
Speaker: Yeah, very quickly.
Speaker: It's basically since it's sloppy building.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: There's a pressure issue that clearly happened.
Speaker: It's sloppily built.
Speaker: And just as he's like, just in time for it to be vaguely poetic, he cracks start appearing in the glass and basically everything goes to fucking hell.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Bill sends him away.
Speaker: He said he's going to run it.
Speaker: I'm going to he's going to try and fix the issue for all intents and purposes.
Speaker: He's kind of, you know, you assume sacrificing himself just to get see get Ryan out of there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Roland Wallace gets him out of there.
Speaker: Ryan get out of there.
Speaker: And then he makes his, you know, he he finally he basically tells him to seal him in.
Speaker: Uh, it's, you know, close the hatch, close the hatch.
Speaker: And they don't, they don't listen to them and they, they, they're able to pull them out and then close the hatch just in time for the entire thing to be that entire bulkhead to, to implode basically.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, and, uh, you know, he says, thank God.
Speaker: Andrew Ryan says, thank a man.
Speaker: Thank a man.
Speaker: Thank Bill.
Speaker: The Hollywood handshake.
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: Paul, Hollywood, that's what I thought of.
Speaker: He was like offering him a hand like he's just this is meant to be a great honor for you, son.
Speaker: Fuck yourself.
Speaker: What a condescending action.
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: And so and then we get we get a change in time.
Speaker: About a year goes by.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: It's now 1947.
Speaker: And Wales, who we've talked about before.
Speaker: The Wales brothers, the Wales that is leading them to the rapture entryway in the lighthouse, which leads us to the first thing most anyone reads in this game.
Speaker: No gods or kings, only man, only man, which is kind of hilarious when you think about.
Speaker: I'm sure plenty of other people have pointed this out, but
Speaker: It's that's that's such a I mean, it's definitely an objectivist kind of thing to say, but it's also really close to an old anarchist's logo.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No gods, no masters.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And, and that's the thing is like, there is nothing.
Speaker: Um, he is, he is kind of anarchists in terms of his mindset on things.
Speaker: He is very, um, was an cap, uh, anarchist capitalist.
Speaker: There is, there is a weird, uh, overlap that you see sometimes of, uh,
Speaker: anarchists and the libertarian crowd sure it really makes very little sense in practice uh but these two things are are far more closely linked uh than a lot of people would assume yeah i've always found that i only bring that up because that's just it's such an interest i've always found that to be a fascinating comparison it's such a different takeaway
Speaker: Uh, whereas anarchy is, is like very much no leaders, no great men.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just people, just people, uh, and, and, and objective is, objectivism is, is the worship of great men.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Take you, you kill God and you put great men in its place.
Speaker: Um, and usually it's the idea of great men to set up that kind of system.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, so basically, yeah.
Speaker: And we get the, um,
Speaker: We kind of get that opening, a description of the bathysphere going down and seeing the, you know, you see the fish, you see Rapture, you see the Ryan Enterprises, you see all the stuff.
Speaker: And it's a conversation between Ryan and Grevy and Wales and McDonough basically just saying, oh, you did it.
Speaker: Like McDonough says, it's one of the wonders of the world.
Speaker: And, you know, the world's never going to know about it.
Speaker: And Ryan responds,
Speaker: Oh, then time they will, you know, uh, all who survived the destruction of the upper world, they will know rapture one day.
Speaker: It will be the capital city of all civilization.
Speaker: Like that's where his mind is.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He he's, he's a, he's a nation builder at this point.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's creating a new country, uh, for, for all intents and purposes, right?
Speaker: A country for the great, um, country for great men.
Speaker: Yeah, he's he's really worked up.
Speaker: He gets himself worked up in the dream.
Speaker: And then someone points out kind of kind of a reality of the situation.
Speaker: Who the fuck is going to live here?
Speaker: Like, yeah, it's like all this talk about great people where there's like a dozen of us.
Speaker: Who else is going to live?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: It's like it's mostly staff down there right now.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: He's like, yeah, we got the workers, but tell me we're not hanging out with the workers.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So he pulls up a form, an invitation.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I'm not going to read the whole thing, but you're really, I mean, just in the first few.
Speaker: Tired of taxes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Tired of taxes.
Speaker: Tired of bullying governments, business regulations, unions, people expecting a handout from you.
Speaker: Want a new start?
Speaker: Do you have a skill and ambition to be a pioneer?
Speaker: If you're receiving this notice, you've already been considered and selected to fill out an application for a life in America.
Speaker: So they're sending these out to people that they think they assume are worthy, right?
Speaker: A skill that can help out, uh, with the whole situation.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: They want to make sure that, you know, if our vetting team has done its job, you are not a trade unionist.
Speaker: You are a believer in free enterprise.
Speaker: And then I love the end of the invitation.
Speaker: It says, we ask that you show this letter to no one, uh, whatever your decision, what fucking world do they live in?
Speaker: What?
Speaker: The believers in the great chain, which is Orionism for the invisible hand, basically.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: It's unreal how naive this whole thing is.
Speaker: I guess, though, if you think that going off into the middle of the North Atlantic will solve your problems and everything like that, you know, then.
Speaker: then maybe there is something deeply naive about you.
Speaker: So they're, and they're, they talk, they're talking about, and this is, this is like the immediate problem right away.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Is they talk about, um, this guy, Prentice mill, who is building, um, an express rail around Rapture.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And, um,
Speaker: Which has, which has real quick, very Fountainhead vibes, which is, Fountainhead's all about the railroad.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And Ryan responds to, he complains he needs more workers.
Speaker: Of course, they all do.
Speaker: And Ryan says, the Express is its own business.
Speaker: Let him get busy and hire more workers himself.
Speaker: Those who are finished working on the Outer Shell can start on the rail.
Speaker: And it's like,
Speaker: It becomes immediately apparent that like Ryan is like, well, I built, you know, I built Rapture, but further building of Rapture is up to other great men.
Speaker: You know, like right.
Speaker: Prentice Mill has to deal with that.
Speaker: I'm not I'm not going to oversee that.
Speaker: That's he is, you know, that's his own business.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And like it's it's like, OK, yeah.
Speaker: No quality concerns, quality.
Speaker: It's kind of you're living under the water, my friend.
Speaker: It is kind of your business.
Speaker: You know, it is.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It right.
Speaker: So right off the bat, immediately you can see the cracks forming here.
Speaker: And by the way, I got it wrong.
Speaker: It's Atlas Shrugged again when they tell me the railway.
Speaker: And at the very end, they mention there was another little Easter egg that I thought was really interesting for any Atlas shrugged people.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It was a, they, they referred to Ryanium, which is presumably a metal name.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Discovered and named for Ryan.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: which is a direct reference to an Atlas shrugged Reardon, uh, Hank Reardon, who's the main character, who's the great man in Atlas shrug.
Speaker: And he's discovered a metal that he very creatively names Reardon metal.
Speaker: Uh, and it's lighter.
Speaker: It's like a lighter steel alloy.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's, it's what, it's what has got him his, uh,
Speaker: his his greatness, you know, and so it's this guy knew what he was talking about.
Speaker: He had he cribbed his notes.
Speaker: He knew what he was doing.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And that that ends part one and that ends part one.
Speaker: That is the first age
Speaker: First stage of rapture is the construction.
Speaker: So we've established our, our, we got Frank Fontaine, um, who is more or less represents the rot that is on its way, um, already.
Speaker: Um, and we have, we have Ryan, we have his hangers on and believers and Bill McDonough and Sullivan.
Speaker: Um, it's, it's going to be an interesting ride going into part two.
Speaker: Very, very much.
Speaker: I imagine.
Speaker: I don't know where this book ends.
Speaker: I imagine it basically goes up to right before the game starts.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, presumably, I don't remember the details specifically at the end, but I'm assuming that Bill is our protagonist from the game.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Not and not not the least of which, because he starts out with a pipe wrench and that's just too good of a parallel to ignore.
Speaker: So what are you, what are you thinking so far?
Speaker: I like it.
Speaker: What do you like?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I dig it.
Speaker: It's good.
Speaker: There's a lot of, there's a lot of work that went into getting the tone right for this for using the characters.
Speaker: Well, yep.
Speaker: It's, it's really super good so far.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: I'm feeling fantastic about this.
Speaker: So we're, we're, we're in, in, in good shape.
Speaker: We've said that before about other books in terms of like,
Speaker: And it's not like those books turned out bad.
Speaker: I mean, we really adored Far Cry, but I think the opening of Far Cry Absolution was so much better than the rest of Far Cry Absolution.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So I think that's something obviously we'll keep an eye out for is the total consistency throughout the book and the strength of the storytelling and all that stuff.
Speaker: But so far, you know, part one is off to...
Speaker: A really good start.
Speaker: I couldn't agree.
Speaker: And it's a great start.
Speaker: It really understands the source material, not only Bioshock, but the Ayn Rand bullshit.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And if in case anyone hasn't already guessed, this is this series is going to be our most politically charged series.
Speaker: Oh, boy.
Speaker: But honestly, we've dropped enough bombs and hints here and there throughout the show that if you're here and you're shocked that we are taking the stance that we are taking, you have not been paying attention.
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: And and trans lives matter.
Speaker: And bye bye.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Take care.
Speaker: Trans lives matter.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Fuck I and Rand.
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: Good night.
Speaker: Fuck I and Rand.
