Transcript
Speaker: It is a pretty quick wrap up when you get down to these last chapters.
Speaker: Yeah, when you get down to it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But, you know what isn't quick?
Speaker: What's that?
Speaker: Hey there, everybody.
Speaker: Welcome back to Pixel It.
Speaker: My name is Kevin.
Speaker: And Happy New Year.
Speaker: Happy New Year.
Speaker: With me, as always, is Phil.
Speaker: Hello.
Speaker: And today, we're finishing up Bioshock Rapture.
Speaker: what a good way what a good way to ring in the new year with a conclusion yeah yeah ring in the new year start the new year with an ending with the end of rapture that's we're good at this fine city under the sea oh so beautiful the sea lab why wouldn't why wouldn't anyone want to live there
Speaker: Yeah, I wouldn't anyone want to live in an objectivist paradise.
Speaker: I mean, that is riddled with corruption and drug addicts.
Speaker: I mean, I wouldn't know anything about that.
Speaker: I wouldn't know anything about that.
Speaker: Yeah, I have no idea what it's like to live in a kleptocracy that is basically corrupt as shit.
Speaker: The rich get richer.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker: I'm not picking it up.
Speaker: I'm not picking up what you're putting it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm not picking it up.
Speaker: And all of our new viewers have unsubscribed.
Speaker: Clicked off.
Speaker: If they're starting on episode six of Bioshock Rapture.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: Yeah, we might.
Speaker: You were lost to begin.
Speaker: You were lost to begin with.
Speaker: I mean, come on.
Speaker: Starting on an episode six.
Speaker: Who does that?
Speaker: And it's our it's our only episode six thus far.
Speaker: This is like it's true.
Speaker: That's why you're like, what's this?
Speaker: What is this?
Speaker: We are.
Speaker: We are deep in the barrel of this book.
Speaker: It's true.
Speaker: You're hugging the bullet like this is this is about as far back as you go.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So chapter 18, that's where we left off.
Speaker: And the chapter before there was a run on the bank.
Speaker: And now in chapter 18, there's a run on the Atlas.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: In a manner of speaking.
Speaker: It's a Diane McClintock chapter.
Speaker: Yeah, which are kind of disproportionate in this section of the book, aren't they?
Speaker: Yeah, she suddenly starts popping up more and more after being more of a secondary character in the first, I don't know, 300 pages of the book.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: She suddenly becomes a point of view character.
Speaker: Yeah, suddenly they're like, oh, sure, let's hear what she has to say.
Speaker: You know, Diane.
Speaker: Diane.
Speaker: That character.
Speaker: Andrew Ryan's Gal Friday.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know her or gal Saturday by the time he shows up because he's always late.
Speaker: He's always he.
Speaker: Oh, if he shows up at all, if he shows up at all.
Speaker: I mean, Diane.
Speaker: So we're back with Diane.
Speaker: Diane has been she has had a rough go of it.
Speaker: She has.
Speaker: She's going to have some issues for a little while.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The last time we saw her, she was at a cafe, if I recall correctly, and she saw Atlas off in the distance.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: At this point, she is really curious as to who Atlas is and she wants to meet him.
Speaker: She's going to meet him because she needs to.
Speaker: Diane is a completely different woman than than she was at the beginning of the book before.
Speaker: She was just kind of one of Ryan's hangers on.
Speaker: Now she has been she was brutalized.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: During the attack on the on the party on New Year's Eve, she had, you know, heavy facial scarring that J.S.
Speaker: Steinman had to repair and all that stuff.
Speaker: And, you know, she and Andrew Ryan was also late to the party, which is.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And the fact that they were the people who were marauding the party were probably.
Speaker: coming for for him.
Speaker: And she's the one that took the bullet to the face or whatever.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: She's scarred up on her face.
Speaker: She's she's no worse for wear, but she's she's pretty pretty hurting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: As far as that's concerned, she's she's traumatized.
Speaker: She's got a lot of trauma.
Speaker: yeah um and and it seems to her at least it it's never so overtly stated but it feels like she's looking for another person to like help her heal basically uh and and atlas seems like the right guy he seems like the kind of guy who because atlas does seem like a character who would want someone to share
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Atlas, the character of Atlas, which.
Speaker: Oh, yes.
Speaker: Within the invention of.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: The invention of Atlas within this is a fiction, as we all know.
Speaker: We all know that that Atlas is a fiction at this point.
Speaker: Um, so she, she shows up to, to, to where Atlas is, is hiding out and she comes down with some rapture dollars and is basically just trying to throw in the rapture dollars around, trying to pay her way in to see the man.
Speaker: Uh, and it works and it works.
Speaker: It works.
Speaker: You know, the, even revolutionaries are not going to turn down cash.
Speaker: Even revolutionaries want the PlayStation five.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And they've got all the time in the world to wait in line for it, but they don't have the cash.
Speaker: It's the opposite of many other people.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Revolutionaries have the time, but there's some interesting splicer characters in this brief scene that are working for Atlas.
Speaker: One that keeps repeating the phrase tittle tattle tits, which... Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Liked that one.
Speaker: I, you know, that one tittle tattle tits went beyond a new t-shirt designed for us.
Speaker: I think that needs to be a tattoo.
Speaker: I want to get that on a banner surrounding like right across the neck.
Speaker: Yeah, like an old-timey knife with a banner going across it.
Speaker: Tittle, tattle, tits.
Speaker: Yep, yep, that's it.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: The Splicer, who's the extra bitch?
Speaker: Tittle, tattle, tits, the Splicer asked in a scratchy voice.
Speaker: And that is almost Dr. Seussian, if... Yeah, it really is.
Speaker: With her tittle tattle tits, she served at the Ritz.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: Would you like some bits said tittle tattle tits?
Speaker: Watch out.
Speaker: It's a flying bar below Schlitz.
Speaker: This weird jabberwockian creature flies by honking like a trumpet.
Speaker: And that's, and that's what the splicers seeing in his head all the fucking time.
Speaker: It's just doctor.
Speaker: That's why he is.
Speaker: It's like, do you ever see, did you, you watched 30 rock?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The episode where, where Kevin is like, he keeps seeing everything as, as Muppets.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it just cuts back and forth from real Alec Baldwin to Muppet Alec Baldwin.
Speaker: Like that's what I imagine a splicer sees.
Speaker: Just some Seussian nightmare.
Speaker: Seussian.
Speaker: It's everyone's favorite nightmare.
Speaker: Dr. Seuss does Iron Rant.
Speaker: Oh my God.
Speaker: I refuse to believe that isn't a thing.
Speaker: someone's done that.
Speaker: Someone has, has done a, a, um, uh, the, the, the call of the fountainhead or, or, uh, Oh, Oh, the parasites you'll drown.
Speaker: Just, Oh, yeah, that's gotta be, I mean, we live in a world where even kids in the hall did the, the Dr. Seuss Bible.
Speaker: So, uh, yeah, we've got to, yeah, I believe that's gotta be a thing.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: So Diane makes her way down and she finally she gets to meet Atlas.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I don't know, man, like, like, you know, we were seeing more of Diane in in these past, I'd say in the past, like,
Speaker: hundred pages or something like that.
Speaker: Not even that, like 50 pages.
Speaker: We've seen way more of her than we had in the previous pieces of the, of the book.
Speaker: And with good reason, it makes sense.
Speaker: She's developing more.
Speaker: But in that time, I kind of respected what she was going through.
Speaker: Like I did, I respected what she was going through.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: but this scene kind of makes me go, come on.
Speaker: Like she's just cause cause cause Atlas Atlas kind of strikes an inspiring figure at first.
Speaker: But well, basically what happens is she, she gets in this conversation with Atlas.
Speaker: Um, and he is, you know, he doesn't, they don't really go into a lot of the specific
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: proletariat kind of talk that he gets into.
Speaker: They don't, they don't, there are a lot, a lot of quotes.
Speaker: They'll just say they talked about politics for a while, which I think at this point in the book is, is merciful because we're like, we're almost 400 pages in.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We don't, we know what his politics are.
Speaker: We don't need to do that.
Speaker: That's fine.
Speaker: We can hit the fast forward button at this point.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That would have been a very, uh, dead space martyr move and, and John Shirley knows better.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Uh, so, and that's fine.
Speaker: But what bugged me and maybe, maybe, maybe I'm alone in this, but what bugged me is he offered her, he offers her a cigarette and she's surprised to find that they're real cigarettes, like cigarettes from the surface were like, like good Virginia tobacco or something like that.
Speaker: And, uh, and she marvels at that.
Speaker: And then he offers her a drink and it's good Irish whiskey or Jameson, which is, which is good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But, uh, you know, it's, it's,
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: That made me very like, what the fuck is like the worker, the working man guy?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Where is that?
Speaker: Those are rich items.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: She she is not a she's not presented as a character who is who is going to put the dots together.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: And she doesn't even question it.
Speaker: She doesn't.
Speaker: Because there's only there is.
Speaker: As up to this point, she she was she was with Ryan all the time.
Speaker: She knew probably knows a lot more about things like the situation for, you know, the Fontaine situation than she would have like a regular person would have.
Speaker: She probably would have known that he was the smuggler.
Speaker: Fontaine was a smuggler that got everything in.
Speaker: And there's yeah, this is a story of a working man.
Speaker: Atlas is the working man, the janitor who turned revolutionary, who is now has all these fine things.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It doesn't add up.
Speaker: And, and that could, and that can even be a moment where you could like, she could be like, what are you, what's a, what's this poor guy, you know, friend of the working man doing with all these things.
Speaker: And he says, oh, you know, Ryan's been getting this stuff.
Speaker: He's a total hypocrite and we steal it from him.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And portray him.
Speaker: Say, but that isn't even done because she doesn't even have the curiosity to ask.
Speaker: And that's where I'm just like, oh, you kind of deserve everything you're going to get here.
Speaker: Like, she's not really,
Speaker: It feels like she isn't really paying attention.
Speaker: She's just kind of it feels like she's kind of desperate.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She have someone take care of because all he does.
Speaker: She says, you do well for revolutionary.
Speaker: And he says, yeah, I took it from one of Ryan's storerooms under rapture.
Speaker: Oh, he does.
Speaker: Well, fuck me.
Speaker: OK, OK.
Speaker: But that's the that's it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She doesn't shoot up, but she doesn't push.
Speaker: She doesn't push.
Speaker: He's like, no, I just sweep out a shop.
Speaker: I took it from the storeroom.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: But that's kind of how it is for people.
Speaker: We kind of we want to.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She takes the first answer and is like, yeah, that tracks.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: I was a little harsh on her, but my my stance stance remains.
Speaker: She could have blown up his spot right here, right now and doesn't.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Of course, it probably would have gotten her killed.
Speaker: Very likely.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker: And we need her alive for a little long.
Speaker: We need her alive for a little bit more plot.
Speaker: A little more plot.
Speaker: A lot.
Speaker: She is, she is 100%.
Speaker: And I don't say this very often about the characters in this book.
Speaker: She is 100% a character who is only in service to the plot.
Speaker: She is not, she is not a character for a character for her own character development sake.
Speaker: She is, she's a character that is like, she has the, she, she grabs a, a rope and she is tugging the plot.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: yeah and and you know what if there were more of them i might complain yeah but you know what it's like i think they're they're they're they have they do he does this john shirley does this so infrequently that you're like okay you know what and let it it's fine yeah yeah it's fine it's it's good you know she's she has a she has a little plot boulder with uh exposition pebbles uh rolling off
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: She's rolling down the hill.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's exactly what it is.
Speaker: So yeah, it's fine.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: Fine.
Speaker: Meanwhile, we got some, um, and this is going to be, and I'll talk about it more when we, when we wrap up, um, is so we're, we got, um, um,
Speaker: We got Tenenbaum and she's looking more at the Little Sisters.
Speaker: And this is good for Tenenbaum's development.
Speaker: But it seemed like this was, I think this Subject 15 is the... Subject 15 is the one from Bioshock 2 specifically.
Speaker: If I'm not mistaken.
Speaker: I could be mistaken.
Speaker: Anyway, this is another little section where we get more into Tenenbaum's character development as she unravels more and more of that icy cold heart.
Speaker: It's revealed in this scene that she is not in fact German.
Speaker: She is Belarusian, which is Belarus.
Speaker: Belarusian something.
Speaker: Belarusian.
Speaker: Belarusian.
Speaker: So she is from Belarus originally and Belarus, if I look up on the map, is a country because it's totally it's totally a country.
Speaker: It is a country.
Speaker: It is located smack dab in between Poland and Russia.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, Bridget Tenenbaum, I take back the accusations that you are a German.
Speaker: I do not take back the accusations that you are a Nazi.
Speaker: You don't get to have everything.
Speaker: You don't get to have your experiments on people and your innocence, too.
Speaker: They're pretty Nazi-ish experiments.
Speaker: And a Nazi like, you know, you got to, you know, Nazis get a Nazi and Nazis get a Nazi.
Speaker: And we can't really.
Speaker: I mean, sure.
Speaker: She maybe she has reform.
Speaker: She is.
Speaker: This is her process of reforming because she was a girl.
Speaker: She's a little girl when she was captured by the Nazis.
Speaker: And then she became started like working for them and all that stuff.
Speaker: But still.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Her her her Grinchian heart is starting to in keeping with the theme of Dr. Seuss is is starting to grow three sizes.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: She's she's you know, she's remembering she remembers back to a past.
Speaker: where her father was taken away from her.
Speaker: Uh, and, uh, and it basically informs what she wants to be now, which is a mother to these, the little sisters.
Speaker: Yeah, okay.
Speaker: In Subject 15, she basically stops the conditioning process of Subject 15.
Speaker: And she's like, yeah, I can't do it anymore.
Speaker: So this is basically, this is her line.
Speaker: This is her, we must draw the line here, Picard moment.
Speaker: No further.
Speaker: No further.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then we're back and we got some public address stuff going on.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What is the difference between a man and a parasite?
Speaker: Oh man, it's, they got plenty of this, don't they?
Speaker: Like they, I, I respect it.
Speaker: I really do.
Speaker: Um, because it's effective.
Speaker: What basically what, you know, we've got bill, uh, walking the streets and it's another like broadcast of, uh, you know,
Speaker: randian yeah politics from andrew ryan just our old bullshit coming out the speakers right and and it's and it's like it's it's it's good writing because i remember reading this and going oh jesus christ another fucking oh okay actually that makes sense because that's the beginning of fascism that's the beginning of totalitarianism dictators right it's all you know that's a classic you know
Speaker: The you know, the the the rules are being drilled into your ear constantly.
Speaker: The propaganda is constant.
Speaker: And it's and Bill is over.
Speaker: He is over.
Speaker: He is 100 percent over it.
Speaker: He is just on his way to go talk to Sully to Sullivan.
Speaker: Nobody calls him Sully, but I'm going to I'm going to call him.
Speaker: So we've been calling him Sully here and there.
Speaker: And I think we should keep it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He seems like a nice guy.
Speaker: And when you get past all the horror, when you get past the terrible things that he does, he seems to be just a heartbroken alcoholic who that's that's really what it comes down to, doesn't it?
Speaker: Just wants to just he would like to do the right thing.
Speaker: Doesn't do it that often.
Speaker: But, you know, he's he wants to do the right thing and then he doesn't.
Speaker: He wants to do that.
Speaker: And the guilt is manifest itself in his horrible alcoholism.
Speaker: So absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And he just he's just not doing so good.
Speaker: And actually, Bill's on his way to basically to check up on him.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because he hasn't been he hasn't been so good ever since they busted up that orphanage.
Speaker: And he got an eyeful of what was going on there.
Speaker: And then Ryan went ahead and said, yeah, we're going to keep this up.
Speaker: Yeah, we're going to keep this going.
Speaker: And Sullivan is trashed when Bill gets there.
Speaker: He sure is.
Speaker: He is not half in the bag.
Speaker: He's gone through the bag and is probably halfway into another one.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: He's gone through the bag and out the other side.
Speaker: He is.
Speaker: And it's not one of those, not just a paper bag.
Speaker: I'm talking about like a reusable shopping bag that you get at Publix.
Speaker: He chewed through nylon.
Speaker: He true and your and your why not wine tote bag a little lot.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then he then he vomited up on your NPR canvas tote.
Speaker: And yeah, the one that you pledged $55 just $55 for it.
Speaker: And sure, when it came, it had like a reusable wine stopper in it.
Speaker: But, you know, you never used it.
Speaker: No, absolutely not.
Speaker: Because that's silly.
Speaker: Oh, gosh.
Speaker: So yeah, he's basically he's hammered.
Speaker: Uh, he's not doing great.
Speaker: Um, and, uh, and he's, he's playing for bill, a, um, Anna Culpepper recording.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Uh, yeah.
Speaker: And at first you're like, what the, because he's, he's it's, it's, you get the, it's, it's given this level of gravity at first where he's like, I've got to show you something.
Speaker: And it's, and basically it's Anna Culpepper,
Speaker: doing a song.
Speaker: She's getting her Bob Dylan on, uh, basically she's, she's in there, uh, talking shit about, you know, Ryan and the government and everything like that.
Speaker: And you're like, well, what's the big deal?
Speaker: This is, this is absolutely something we've covered.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You know, like, why does this matter?
Speaker: and uh sullivan keeps on he's he's basically he's noticing that people are being trapped and disappeared yeah and tortured right uh and he's he's letting bill know that he you know and and starts implying how much he has to do with it and bill bill shocks me a little bit here right uh but doesn't yeah at the same time because he talks about torture and bill says well maybe they had it coming
Speaker: which does feel like a, which feels like a desperate, like grass.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because that feels like a guilty con.
Speaker: You're letting me down, Bill.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Bill, what are you doing?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, so yeah.
Speaker: Oh, cause they talk.
Speaker: And then he admits that he knows about Sander killing people.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: that sanders that was like like that's like that was one thing that even i was just like oh shit i kind of assumed that no one knew about that one uh but ryan's been protecting him because he's his friend yeah and and sander is so far off the deep end uh with the adam stuff and just just uh well beyond um
Speaker: He was already a little off his rocker to begin with.
Speaker: A little, yeah.
Speaker: And now we're at a point where, yeah, he's just been straight up murdering people.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And then...
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So he, you know, he's at Bill is concerned that Ryan is taking Adam and Sullivan's like, no, no, he's, he's just drinking a lot more.
Speaker: He's not taking Adam.
Speaker: And thank God for, for small favors.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: So, and then Sullivan finally admits, um, so me having to protect that little prick Cohen, Sullivan growled that extends to Ryan, giving me orders to, and his voice broke.
Speaker: He reached over and picked up the red and black knit blanket, clutched it to his chest.
Speaker: Pretty, isn't it?
Speaker: When I was done with her, I left her as she was in the bathroom, naked in the tub.
Speaker: And it's his, this is his admission that he has murdered Anna Culpepper.
Speaker: For just she all she was doing was singing songs, making fun of Ryan and Sandra Cohen.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And Ryan ordered Sullivan to go murder her.
Speaker: And yeah, and basically the entire scene.
Speaker: The entire scene is like a setup.
Speaker: Like Sullivan is so in his feelings for having to have to do this.
Speaker: The reason he's playing these songs for Bill is he's like trying to get somebody like Bill on his side to be like, yeah, you're right.
Speaker: You were justified in killing her.
Speaker: It's all right.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: It's all right.
Speaker: Sullivan, you were you did the right thing.
Speaker: And Sullivan's like, look at this.
Speaker: Listen to this song.
Speaker: She's she's terrible, isn't she?
Speaker: Doesn't that deserve something?
Speaker: And yeah, he's.
Speaker: And even and even as he's saying this, even as he's like.
Speaker: Trying to get this sort of reaction, he himself is not buying it like it feels like as he's unfolding it, he's just going no, no.
Speaker: And and he basically tells Bill that he's planning on ending it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Sullivan's going to Sullivan basically just says, yeah, it's.
Speaker: that's it for me.
Speaker: That's a picture wrap.
Speaker: And, and, and, and then bill does the right and noble thing, uh, by sitting with him and talking to him about his escape plan and that maybe he can like live a new life and do better and put these demons behind him.
Speaker: No, I'm sorry.
Speaker: I got that wrong.
Speaker: He let, he leaves.
Speaker: He just leaves.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He just
Speaker: He says, my name's Paul and this shit's between y'all.
Speaker: And he fucking goes.
Speaker: Bill.
Speaker: Bill, one act of like kindness.
Speaker: Jesus, Bill.
Speaker: He's like, you've known this guy for 10 years.
Speaker: Sure, he's a murderer.
Speaker: He's sure he's a murderer.
Speaker: But the man that you you have been hyping up, Andrew Ryan, ordered your friend to kill somebody else.
Speaker: The only reason Bill isn't a murderer is because Ryan didn't see him as valuable for doing that.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: They they're both being used by Ryan for the same, you know, for the same ends and the same, you know, everything.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And Bill, but Bill is being used in a different way.
Speaker: They're both two different tools, but they're both being used in the same way.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: It's they're both so they're no one's no one's guilt free here.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: So he leaves.
Speaker: He leaves.
Speaker: He said, I have I have to go see a man about a horse.
Speaker: And he.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He peaces out.
Speaker: He goes.
Speaker: Damn.
Speaker: Um, it's like, all right.
Speaker: Thanks.
Speaker: Thanks for helping.
Speaker: Thanks for helping.
Speaker: Uh, cool, cool beans.
Speaker: Um, Jesus.
Speaker: So we get back to Bridget Tenenbaum, and she's taking a... She's drinking some vodka.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And this is not just like a... She's basically in Ryan Plasmids, and she's not in their...
Speaker: She's almost not in there voluntarily anymore as part of her job.
Speaker: So basically she's trying to con the guards.
Speaker: What is she actually trying to accomplish here?
Speaker: I forget.
Speaker: She's on her way.
Speaker: She wants to get the girls out.
Speaker: Oh, that's right.
Speaker: And not her titties, if you know what I'm saying.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, she, she's, she's, she is on her way to rescue the little sisters because she has, her guilt has turned her inside out and she has gone full on mother hen with these girls and she wants to rescue them.
Speaker: So yeah, she, she basically takes a bottle of vodka.
Speaker: She's trying to seduce these guards that are, that are like, you know,
Speaker: running the play, you know, she, she works there, but they're like, you're not supposed to be here at this time.
Speaker: What are you doing?
Speaker: You're no one in or out.
Speaker: And she tells them she wants to have a shower with them.
Speaker: Um, which I remember being a young security guard.
Speaker: Uh, and, uh, that would have been great.
Speaker: That, that would have been, that would have been the easiest way to get you.
Speaker: It would have worked.
Speaker: Oh, it would have worked.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: What I don't.
Speaker: Yeah, come on.
Speaker: Any one of you who read this section and were like, oh, come on, some random Belarusian chick shows up out of the darkness with a bottle of vodka and says, I want to take a shower with you and your friend.
Speaker: How do you fall for that?
Speaker: Judge not lest thou be judged, my friends.
Speaker: I would have gone with that and I wasn't even living in a libertarian hellscape.
Speaker: It was 2008.
Speaker: Things were nearly as bad as they are now.
Speaker: We were, but yeah, so she, she's seducing them.
Speaker: They're not going for it.
Speaker: Really.
Speaker: They're kind of going for it, but it's not going well enough.
Speaker: And so she says, all right, well, we'll at least have a, have a drink.
Speaker: And she's got this bottle of vodka and, uh, and they go great.
Speaker: And so she says, drink this and meet me in the showers.
Speaker: And they go great.
Speaker: And she drinks, they, they drink from the bottle of vodka and almost instantly boom, they go out because we find out she has laced the vodka with sleeping pills.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, they're they're not getting their shower time with.
Speaker: They are not.
Speaker: If they're going to shower with anybody, it's each other.
Speaker: And you know what?
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: It gets lonely under the sea.
Speaker: And so they she she basically she wants to sneak the girls out and she wants to clear the slugs from their bodies.
Speaker: So they go back to being regular non Adam sucking.
Speaker: uh, uh, little girls.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That's the plan.
Speaker: Uh, so that's basically pretty much.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, uh, yeah.
Speaker: And they, they escape off into an abandoned dormitory, um, which is more or less where you find them in the first Bioshock.
Speaker: You ultimately end up at some, in some dormitory when you, when you, when you do meet up with Tenenbaum and, and the, uh, little sisters.
Speaker: Um, all right.
Speaker: Andrew Ryan, the man, the myth, the legend.
Speaker: Here we go.
Speaker: The great man.
Speaker: Great man.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, so he's, he's basically just recording onto his, his little box.
Speaker: Lamb is, Lamb is out and in the streets.
Speaker: And he's interrupted by Dr. Suchong.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Sushong, fucking asshole.
Speaker: Like, he just... That fucking little dickweed.
Speaker: Like, he's just... Always... He's so transparently mercenary and will turn on you in a fucking split second and no one seems to give a shit.
Speaker: But yeah, so... Ryan, he basically is...
Speaker: SIG Sushong about a loophole in the plasmin users trying to come up with something in the plasmid powers that would make them open to mental suggestions.
Speaker: Right, which is something that Fontaine had been wanting to work on for a very long time.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so Sushong is like, yeah, it's possible.
Speaker: And he's like, Ryan's like, what does Tenenbaum think?
Speaker: And Sushong's like,
Speaker: She's gone.
Speaker: She may have left and she may have taken all the little sisters with her.
Speaker: This is how Ryan finds this out.
Speaker: Yeah, it's kind of beautiful.
Speaker: Ryan has the nobody tells me anything moment.
Speaker: You know, I was like.
Speaker: Do my coworkers not respect me?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a great way to find that out.
Speaker: I'd hit because he had no idea.
Speaker: No one told him shit because everybody is jumping ship, basically.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But but all the same, they need more little sisters.
Speaker: So they've got to come up with some sort of plan.
Speaker: And then finally, at the end, this was a nice moment I quite liked.
Speaker: Ryan gets a note delivered to him.
Speaker: From Sullivan.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And it says, Don't think you'll see me alive again, sir.
Speaker: I plan a quick get-together with a bullet.
Speaker: Can't live with what I've done.
Speaker: She had the cutest little red and black jacket.
Speaker: Here's a tape.
Speaker: Might clue you in on why Jasmine Jolene moved out.
Speaker: Why she's been ducking you.
Speaker: Owe you that, I guess.
Speaker: Great man.
Speaker: Now I owe myself something else.
Speaker: A little drinky, a little bye-bye.
Speaker: Bye-bye, great man.
Speaker: Which...
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: Sneak a little drink.
Speaker: He passed great, man.
Speaker: Snakeity doo.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: Yeah, that they are.
Speaker: So Sullivan, we can assume is gone.
Speaker: And now Ryan has a tape and we do not know yet what is on that tape.
Speaker: But I have a feeling what is on that tape.
Speaker: Yeah, especially if it involves young Jasmine Jolie.
Speaker: Meanwhile, please don't steal my kid.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Oh, there's a little kitty in the background.
Speaker: I see a little kitty poking that head out.
Speaker: There's little Miss Ripley.
Speaker: She's a sleepy little kitty.
Speaker: She's a sweet pea.
Speaker: She's getting so fat.
Speaker: She's not fat.
Speaker: She's just she she is greedy for food.
Speaker: She bullies her older brother for his food.
Speaker: And and she has gotten distinctly roly poly.
Speaker: And I love that about her.
Speaker: But she's just a little chunker.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So meanwhile, brings us to Arcadia chapter 19.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Where Bill and his wife are out on a jolly stroll, except now there's like it's gone from Arcadia is this beautiful park to Arcadia is where all the drug addicts shoot up.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like literally there's syringes on the ground.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And, and their daughter fucking disappears.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: like briefly just disappears away.
Speaker: They're looking all over for her.
Speaker: They find her.
Speaker: Someone's been snatching up kids though.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And based on the fact that, uh, Ryan has made a point of saying we need more little sisters.
Speaker: Now these other ones are gone.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And we can kind of guess what almost happened to Elaine and Bill's
Speaker: Is that, yeah, is that Ryan has some dudes on his payroll just out and about snatching kids.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Because that's what the market demands.
Speaker: That's what the market wants.
Speaker: That's what the great chain requires of it.
Speaker: That's exactly it.
Speaker: The great chain requires you to steal children.
Speaker: Like, well, it's a weird great chain, man.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: There's a market for kidnapping in the free market.
Speaker: That's where things have gone.
Speaker: Adam Smith is just kind of like off on the side.
Speaker: Like, hmm.
Speaker: OK, I didn't.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, boy.
Speaker: What did Adam Smith write that book?
Speaker: Is that like?
Speaker: Oh, gosh.
Speaker: The Wealth of Nations, right?
Speaker: That was, I mean, OK, here we go.
Speaker: Wealth of Nations.
Speaker: That was.
Speaker: Now I have to know.
Speaker: I was, well, 1776.
Speaker: Oh, well, look at that.
Speaker: There you go.
Speaker: Perfect.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That works on a lot of levels.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Let's see.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, I'm not going to get into that right now.
Speaker: Yeah, fuck it.
Speaker: Fuck it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Economists.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Jim Cramer is on CNBC right now saying bye on kidnappings.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: If you're not kidnapping, you're a fool.
Speaker: Standing in his... It's open season on kidnapping.
Speaker: Nancy Pelosi is just standing there saying, who are we to pass a bill banning kidnapping?
Speaker: It's an, it's a free market.
Speaker: In the interview, she's saying, look, I don't like kidnapping.
Speaker: I've been, I've gone on record several times saying I don't like kidnapping.
Speaker: I think it's wrong.
Speaker: But if I help to pass a bill that'll stop people from kidnapping, aren't I as bad as the kidnapper?
Speaker: And we're all going, what the fuck are you talking about?
Speaker: And Mitch McConnell is just like standing over there going like this.
Speaker: Just doing a Mr. Burns impression.
Speaker: Strap in, kids.
Speaker: There is no hope.
Speaker: Strap in, kids.
Speaker: What did I see?
Speaker: I saw a tweet the other day.
Speaker: So it said, you may have even sent this to me.
Speaker: I don't remember.
Speaker: And it said, what was it?
Speaker: It said, when I grow up, it's December and it's 70 degrees.
Speaker: You're not growing up.
Speaker: Oh, God, that's that's right.
Speaker: Everything's fine.
Speaker: Everything's fine.
Speaker: Everything's fine.
Speaker: I got a nice fire going in the background.
Speaker: Look at that.
Speaker: Look at that.
Speaker: And look at this kitten.
Speaker: Yeah, there's a kitten.
Speaker: For those of you just listening on the podcast, there's a kitten sleeping behind Phil and there's a roaring fire in the background on my screen.
Speaker: Everything's fine.
Speaker: Everything is fine.
Speaker: I'm literally the everything's fine dog right now.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: He's even wearing the hat.
Speaker: It's all there.
Speaker: That dog wear a hat?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So, I mean, we're at Port Frolick now and we get the introduction of the Gatherer's Garden, which is the automated, it's like the automated atom selling, oh, that's a big yawn.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The automated Adam selling machines that we see in the game.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Whenever we get a new plasmid, it's it's from the gatherers garden.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And and it's and who's who's hanging out there?
Speaker: It's it's Andrew Ryan.
Speaker: Oh, oh.
Speaker: And he's.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And Fort Frog, he's heading into the strip club and he's basically we'll find out that, yeah, Sullivan's suicide note included a recording of Jasmine admitting that she had given away his child to Fontaine.
Speaker: So Ryan does what a lot of people would do in a situation like that.
Speaker: And he chokes her out.
Speaker: He murders her.
Speaker: He murders the shit out of her.
Speaker: Murders the shit out of her.
Speaker: Murders the shit out of her.
Speaker: Her eyes pop out.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's literally the section ends with him with his, Oh, big yawn.
Speaker: You're not, you're not allowed to be in the show anymore.
Speaker: It's too difficult.
Speaker: No, he, he, he, it ends with her eyes bulging out as he just chokes her to death.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Is it, you know, and you have to wonder where, what is Ryan's,
Speaker: concern?
Speaker: Is it because, and I'm not, I'm not saying he has no reason to be concerned.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: I just wonder for a guy like Ryan in the world that he's in right now, what is his concern?
Speaker: Is it, is it that his child was stolen from him?
Speaker: Is it that it was his son?
Speaker: That's my blood.
Speaker: I want a son.
Speaker: Is it that it was given to Fontaine?
Speaker: Is it that like, this is his enemies now have something on him.
Speaker: Is it all of the above?
Speaker: Like it with with Ryan's mental state, it's just very it would be I found it very interesting to think about that and be like, why?
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: Why is it?
Speaker: What is the specific thing that is that is tilting him right here?
Speaker: He just says you sold my child to Tenenbaum to Fontaine.
Speaker: And yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I mean, hmm.
Speaker: It's interesting.
Speaker: It is interesting.
Speaker: Anyway, he murders the shit out of her.
Speaker: And we're at.
Speaker: Anyway, she's dead.
Speaker: Jasmine Jolene, page whatever, 30 to page 396.
Speaker: RIP Jasmine Jolene.
Speaker: She's in heaven smoking blunts.
Speaker: She is in heaven smoking blunts and pouring one out for Sullivan and well, a few other.
Speaker: He's up there with a few other characters that are going to be joining right quick.
Speaker: I like to imagine in heaven that Jasmine and Jolene and Sullivan are dating and having a really nice time.
Speaker: Yeah, they're having a... Sharing a two bedroom apartment.
Speaker: Yeah, they're having a great old time.
Speaker: In a neat... In a nice...
Speaker: upper middle class section of heaven.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because yes, class still exists in heaven.
Speaker: Um, so now, uh, uh, Bill is just hanging out with Ryan.
Speaker: Ryan fresh off some fresh off a murder bill fresh off knowing Ryan has ordered murders.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: It cuts directly to this lovely family stroll.
Speaker: his family stroll bill and his family with ryan just strolling struttle on right after his his his hands still swollen with blood from from the the physical exertion it takes to end someone's life with your hands yeah
Speaker: It's just, yeah, so they're surrounded by security.
Speaker: And basically it's like a whole, like the whole point is like Ryan wants them to do this to show everyone, everything's still normal, everything's fine.
Speaker: Look, there's Andrew Ryan and his top engineer, Bill.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's walking down the street as if nothing's happened except for the fact that he's surrounded by a small army.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Everything seems fine from his point of view.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Meanwhile, most of this, though, is Bill internal his like his internal plans of how is he going to he's decided he's got to get out of Rapture.
Speaker: And him and Roland Wallace have figured out a plan.
Speaker: They're going to execute a plan in an escaping rapture.
Speaker: Bill, Roland and Bill's family are just going to GTFO by grabbing one of the bathyspheres and just, I believe it was to, they were going to get out from the lighthouse is what they determined.
Speaker: Is there a kitty now walking on the table?
Speaker: The cat, for those of you following along, the cat has progressed to the top of the computer.
Speaker: Oh, look at that.
Speaker: Where she hangs out now.
Speaker: She and her brother swapped between the little bed we made back there.
Speaker: So the computer.
Speaker: She's like, I don't really want the pets right now.
Speaker: Yeah, she's like, thank you, but no.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: I'm sleeping.
Speaker: Don't touch me.
Speaker: Your company is nice, but not required.
Speaker: That's basically having a cat.
Speaker: Someone described having a cat.
Speaker: The best way to learn consent is to have a cat.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That is absolutely true.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They will tell you if they don't want to be petted or something like that.
Speaker: It's not like a dog where they're basically always down.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: For petting and for playing and that kind of thing.
Speaker: That was not.
Speaker: No one informed my fiance of that.
Speaker: She is a dog person.
Speaker: She did not know that cats were not always down.
Speaker: They are not always down.
Speaker: Meanwhile, dogs are just like, oh, you got to all you got to do is like, oh, who's my buddy?
Speaker: And the dog is in everything, everything, you know, everything and everything all at once.
Speaker: Anything and everything.
Speaker: Yeah, it's their advantages and disadvantages to both.
Speaker: When it comes down to cats, I choose style.
Speaker: That's really what it is.
Speaker: They're stylish animals.
Speaker: They are very stylish.
Speaker: Stupid but stylish.
Speaker: So anyway, they, they, yeah, they're planning on getting out of Dodge.
Speaker: They've got, they've got a whole plan figured out.
Speaker: And while he's ruminating on that, two big daddies pass by each with a little sister.
Speaker: And one of them, it turns out he gets a good look at her and she is Masha.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And for those of you who don't remember, what was the name of the family?
Speaker: I forgot already.
Speaker: I want to say it was like Lutz or something like that.
Speaker: The Lutzes.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: The family that had the daughter disappeared on them and everything like that.
Speaker: That is, this is, this is Masha and she has indeed become a little sister and Bill and Elaine both see it.
Speaker: and kind of do a, they do their best.
Speaker: We'll find out later that Bill's gonna do his best to pretend that he didn't.
Speaker: Yes, exactly.
Speaker: At least for Elaine's sake.
Speaker: For Elaine's sake.
Speaker: We're back with Andrew Ryan and he is, he's having himself some martinis, which is the beverage of choice for every rich man alcoholic in the 1950s and 60s.
Speaker: Bowl of loudmouth soup.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Just, uh, just slurp down martinis.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Onion, olive, doesn't matter.
Speaker: Doesn't matter.
Speaker: Doesn't matter.
Speaker: It's, it's, at this point, let's face it.
Speaker: It's gin that vermouth is within 10 feet of.
Speaker: That is what he is drinking.
Speaker: He's drinking gin.
Speaker: There's a bottle of vermouth on the table over, over there.
Speaker: He pours the gin.
Speaker: He looks at the vermouth.
Speaker: That's a martini.
Speaker: That's what he's having.
Speaker: A quick tip of the hat to the remove.
Speaker: Yeah, I literally I remember I remember my friend's dad when I was in high school, he taught me how to make a martini and he literally took the bottle of vermouth like it was a bottle of cologne.
Speaker: Like you put your finger over the top and he turns it over and then he puts it back up.
Speaker: There's like a drop on his finger and he kind of flicks it into the martini.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that was how we made a martini.
Speaker: I was raised by a lot of drunk adults.
Speaker: I'm starting to realize.
Speaker: You're starting to put it together that.
Speaker: Surrounded by a lot of, come here.
Speaker: Surrounded by a lot of drunk adults.
Speaker: Yeah, just sit there, Kat.
Speaker: She doesn't know what she wants.
Speaker: Hi, say hi.
Speaker: That's that's pretty much 100 percent a cat.
Speaker: She is.
Speaker: She is not entirely not so decisive on what what she wants.
Speaker: She doesn't know.
Speaker: She doesn't know what you.
Speaker: Oh, here's what it is.
Speaker: I don't have the other earphone and she sees she sees it.
Speaker: And that is that is something that she wants.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: To destroy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So Ryan is having himself a, uh, he's having, he's having a drink and, uh, he gets another letter.
Speaker: Hey, and what a, how fun for him, by the way, just gets letters.
Speaker: So many letters.
Speaker: Don't you, don't you wish, I wish that there was an entire system of pneumatic tubes.
Speaker: Oh my god!
Speaker: Everywhere.
Speaker: I love the pneumatic tube as an idea.
Speaker: Like, I love it more than email.
Speaker: Oh my god, no, I would do that.
Speaker: If I had the means to have an office space, but we used pneumatic tubes... Oh my, my fireplace.
Speaker: Oh no!
Speaker: Hold on.
Speaker: I gotta...
Speaker: I gotta, hold on, I gotta, I gotta, uh, reignite.
Speaker: You need fire, yeah.
Speaker: Reignite the fire, I'm tearing up some, some kindling now, and, and, and, uh... Fire, oh, it's roaring again.
Speaker: It's roaring again.
Speaker: Beautiful.
Speaker: beautiful you're very good at that yeah it's like a magic wand sometimes i feel yeah you know it's just i mean you've got to be part scandinavian yeah i think that's i think that's come so naturally um anyway he gets a dear john letter from diane mcclintock
Speaker: yeah and she tells you just she basically just just no no great reveal uh for us no we know but it's it's but but she just just to say i'm hanging out with atlas now and your days are numbered and go it's very satisfying for her to be like hey like you're a piece of you know um we all want to write that letter
Speaker: We all want to write that letter.
Speaker: And sometimes we can, sometimes we can't for whatever reason, but we all want to write that letter.
Speaker: So yeah, Ryan flips his shit and, and what does he throw?
Speaker: He throws the drink, doesn't he?
Speaker: Throws his glass.
Speaker: So that smashed on the big picture window, fragments of wet, broken glass sliding down the glowing spires of the city.
Speaker: And what better way to, to bring on the last chapter of the book than Andrew Ryan throwing a conniption like the bad guy at the end of an eighties movie.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, come on, come on.
Speaker: He is, he is, uh, at this point he's, he's, what's his name?
Speaker: Uh, the guy from a wall street, um,
Speaker: yeah uh gordon yeah he's basically gordon gecko um yeah you know standing over new york city um though gordon is gordon gecko the bad guy in wall street or was he like a fake i forgot i haven't seen wall street i've it was i haven't i haven't seen that in a thousand years but that was that was uh uh michael douglas's character michael douglas yeah yeah yeah it was gordon gecko yeah yeah no no but it was he the villain
Speaker: think so yeah pretty sure he was the greed is good guys greed is good which is andrew ryan's personal pretty much i mean that was the 80s man that was a big resurgence of that kind of attitude so yeah greed is good that speech is i mean that that is basically lifted from a passage in the fountainhead
Speaker: Uh, okay.
Speaker: So yeah, it, it, yeah, that's, that was, that was all that's, that's another one.
Speaker: We should, we could come up with like a viewing party of different movies that are related to this kind of thing that actually might be fun.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Uh, a playlist playlist of movies to watch.
Speaker: If you, if you want more nightmare, libertarian dystopias, you might also enjoy the world's worst recommendation system.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Here's what not to do.
Speaker: If you want more, read the Fountainhead.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: American Psycho.
Speaker: Actually, yeah, that's that's pretty much.
Speaker: I mean, yeah.
Speaker: Pretty good.
Speaker: Pretty good follow up.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So we're in.
Speaker: We got another bill chapter and he's with he's with Mr. Karlovsky.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They're doing some maintenance.
Speaker: Good old maintenance work.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And he's so he sees the basically they see the the big daddy and little sister and it's Masha again.
Speaker: And he's like, Bill's like, you know what?
Speaker: I'm going to try to rescue this girl, which the fuck Bill.
Speaker: He somehow gets Karlovsky to like help him.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And this is really surprising.
Speaker: All of this, by the way.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He says, I want, I'm going to go and save this girl.
Speaker: all of this after a splicer attacks the little girl and the big daddy just destroys it.
Speaker: Just blows the shit out of this, this splicer.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We get a visual physical demonstration of how dangerous this thing is.
Speaker: And that's when Bill goes, yeah, I think I'm going to go and try to save the little girl.
Speaker: Karlovsky, you got the, you can handle a big daddy, right?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Like you dirty motherfucker.
Speaker: And, and, but, but in all, but, but to be fair, Karlovsky isn't very bright either.
Speaker: So he decides to shoot at the big daddy, basically just distracted.
Speaker: He's not, he doesn't think he's actually, he doesn't think it's actually going to do anything.
Speaker: He just, he just starts opening up, firing on it with his Tommy gun.
Speaker: Well,
Speaker: So he gets him.
Speaker: Bill grabs the little sister, but is attacked by the Big Daddy.
Speaker: The Big Daddy realizes pretty quickly the ruse that has been played before him and knocks out Bill.
Speaker: Doesn't kill him.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Knocks his ass out and Bill and Karlofsky escape somehow.
Speaker: But so does the little sister.
Speaker: And presumably the big daddy goes, you know, after the little sister to make sure she's all right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Instead of dealing with these.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Bill picks her up for like a second.
Speaker: Big daddy is on him like a split second later and knocks him out.
Speaker: There's there's no way that they are going to be able to handle this.
Speaker: It was truly a what the fuck is the plan, Bill?
Speaker: And Karlovsky's like, you're going to get me killed.
Speaker: He's like, you're going to get me killed.
Speaker: All right, I'll help you.
Speaker: Sure, sure.
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: And then we get a new section.
Speaker: And Kevin.
Speaker: I can't tell you how much I missed Dr. Stein.
Speaker: We get a kind of basically pointless random doctor, like unneeded Dr. Stein section.
Speaker: But wasn't it though?
Speaker: Wasn't it though?
Speaker: It's just, it's like, if I, if they were making a film adaptation of Bioshock or something like that, and they said, Hey, Phil, you can audition.
Speaker: You can throw in your hat, play any of these characters.
Speaker: I'd be going for Dr. Steinman.
Speaker: I want to play Dr. Steinman.
Speaker: You know who Dr. Steinman is?
Speaker: He is the surgeon general from escape from LA.
Speaker: Bruce Campbell's character.
Speaker: From John Carpenter's Escape from L.A.
Speaker: Yeah, that's it.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: It's just such a, he's such a hammy.
Speaker: He's such a, there's not a piece of, like, it's not a long section.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: It's, hold on, hold on.
Speaker: It's four, yeah.
Speaker: It is a...
Speaker: It's like a three page section total.
Speaker: And by the end of it, none of the scenery is unshoed.
Speaker: Uh, he just, he's, it's such an over the top scene.
Speaker: He's having, it's, it's, it's, so basically he's operating on this one.
Speaker: It's, it's grotesque and horrifying by the way, but it is also campy and insane.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Uh, the, the camp factor, like the eighties, it is, it is Ramey, Sam Ramey horror film levels of, of,
Speaker: beyond reanimator.
Speaker: It's like that Gore slapstick, you know, exactly, exactly.
Speaker: Uh, and so he's operating on a woman,
Speaker: very likely doesn't want to be there.
Speaker: And we found out, in fact, that he does not get a lot of paying patients anymore, so he's got to pay to get some splicers to test out his abilities on.
Speaker: So here, this section stuck out to me.
Speaker: He still had Chavez's face in a refrigerator somewhere, along with some others he'd peeled off and saved in preservative jars.
Speaker: Faces from patients who'd given their lives for his perfect fusion of art...
Speaker: and science.
Speaker: He really must try to organize his preserved faces with a filing system.
Speaker: And it's like, he treats these faces the way I do my Warhammer figures.
Speaker: I'm like, I gotta find out a way to like, like set these up, you know, like filing system, you know, the space Marines.
Speaker: And we got the, I got my, here's my Marine section.
Speaker: We got some towel over here, a couple of nids, you know, it's pretty good.
Speaker: What am I talking about?
Speaker: My, my tier and it's would be the biggest thing.
Speaker: That's neither here nor there.
Speaker: Bioorganisms.
Speaker: Am I right, people?
Speaker: oh he does have a nice moment where he's like he talks about uh maybe he'd get to do another collab with uh sandra cohen another youtube collab with sandra cohen right like they've been working together and he like he talks about he's like maybe but he dismisses the idea of doing another one because he sees cohen as completely insane oh he he sees cohen as insane yeah got it he's like
Speaker: he just, he goes, he's, he's like, he's like, yeah, because they've worked together and he goes, I'll tell you one thing about that Sander Cohen.
Speaker: He's nuts.
Speaker: And like, that's, yeah.
Speaker: And he's also doing a, he's also doing a voice recording.
Speaker: This is actually one of the,
Speaker: This is actually one of the audio journals, like word for word that you find in the game.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: If I recall correctly.
Speaker: And he's talking to this girl, this this woman that he has on the table where he's going to like cut off her face and then regrow her face using Adam.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then cut into it again.
Speaker: And he's like he's he's thinking of himself as Picasso, basically.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I recognize that section too.
Speaker: He talks about, uh, the, basically the evolution of one's art and he sees, yeah, you're right.
Speaker: He sees himself as a Picasso figure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Uh, and then the patient dies on him and, uh, and he loses his shit and just kind of like, it's, it's like he absentmindedly mutilates the body, uh, the way that a kid, uh,
Speaker: would doodle incoherently on a notebook when they're bored.
Speaker: He's just slicing little.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's carving things into the body.
Speaker: And it is.
Speaker: It's not great.
Speaker: It's not great.
Speaker: Not great.
Speaker: Phil.
Speaker: No, not.
Speaker: He's my favorite character.
Speaker: Not not too happy with the descriptions.
Speaker: Not going to repeat them.
Speaker: It was, it was, it was, it is, it is deeply upsetting.
Speaker: Even for me, I'm a, I'm a horror fanatic.
Speaker: You know that I read a lot of horror.
Speaker: I write a lot of horror and, and that I was like, Oh, okay.
Speaker: Ah, this guy, John Shirley's got some, got some, some good darkness.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's, he's, it worked out nice.
Speaker: He is harnessing that darkness very well.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: Uh, putting it out to the page.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Meanwhile, meanwhile, meanwhile, back at fighting McDonough's Bill has Bill is talking to Redgrave about basically the there's there's a there's a door.
Speaker: Oh, Redgrave is there to investigate something, I believe.
Speaker: One of the doors is open at Fighting McDonough's bar, which is where the Lutzes were living.
Speaker: They were the parents of Masha.
Speaker: And basically they go in there.
Speaker: Redgrave goes in there with with Bill and they find that the Lutzes have committed suicide together.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah, they've left a note essentially saying they saw Masha out.
Speaker: They saw Masha into a little sister out in the street.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And they just couldn't deal with it and they offed themselves.
Speaker: So that's a, it's a, that's another really effective moment.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And red grave is, uh, red grave is not, uh, too happy about it.
Speaker: You know, he's no, no, neither is bill is bill already.
Speaker: He's already desperate to leave.
Speaker: Like the chapter opens with him talking about, uh,
Speaker: I gotta get the fuck out of here.
Speaker: Like it's, it's gotta be any day now.
Speaker: It's gotta be any minute now that we're finally leaving.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like it took him so long to get to the point.
Speaker: And now that he's there, he cannot wait to go.
Speaker: And this is just another nail in that coffin.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a nail in a lot of coffins.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, uh, so, uh, oh, we get another Diane chapter and here we go.
Speaker: Here we go.
Speaker: Opens up.
Speaker: One more opens up with her recapping or recounting a raid that her and the team had done in the name of Atlas to get a bunch of weapons.
Speaker: And after that, she goes to meet up with Atlas and she kind of catches him out of character.
Speaker: It's weird, isn't it?
Speaker: It's it felt a little weird.
Speaker: Like he's.
Speaker: He's talking.
Speaker: Is he even talking?
Speaker: What is it that she finds him doing?
Speaker: Because it's not about his voice.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He seemed to be recording an audio diary of his own.
Speaker: After a breathless moment, he was no longer a stranger.
Speaker: She hadn't recognized him at first.
Speaker: Something, the cold, cynical expression on his face and that sneering voice talking of long cons made it seem impossible he could be anyone but Frank Fontaine.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like through the plastic surgery and through everything, she sees that it's Frank Fontaine.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It just, it's a little weird.
Speaker: It's just kind of like, it's like, I don't know.
Speaker: It's, I, it just, it was, it was an odd way of, uh,
Speaker: Having her recognize him.
Speaker: Yeah, I think that it's kind of that these couple paragraphs are are written.
Speaker: It's almost like a little bit sloppy in the way it's written.
Speaker: I think it needed to be clearer that she walked in on him talking in Frank Fontaine's voice.
Speaker: It's not that's not clearly said.
Speaker: well they focus so much on her on the physicality yeah yeah so it's weird there i think that that paragraph could have used another pass for for clarity but anyway she recognizes that it is so he starts talking to her in atlas's voice and then he knows fuck it i know you know you know he starts talking in the in frank fontaine's voice turn this off
Speaker: You know, and.
Speaker: Yeah, he basically says, yeah, it's all lies, you know, whatever.
Speaker: And then he kills her.
Speaker: kills the shit out of her.
Speaker: He just stabs her.
Speaker: Like, that's a good, yeah.
Speaker: It's like so quick too.
Speaker: It's like, yeah, it's like, ah, fuck.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Um, yeah, it's all lies.
Speaker: And he just stabs her right in the heart and it just continues about his day.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Well, that tells you everything you need to know.
Speaker: Like we've seen it time and time again with Fontaine.
Speaker: The moment he was, oh, okay.
Speaker: Well, yeah.
Speaker: they're done i can't use you he doesn't dither uh in making these decisions no yeah there's this like it's time to kill that whereas andrew ryan is like what would a great man do right they would not do what the man in washington wants them to do
Speaker: And then Andrew Ryan has like a flow chart of like, well, if that is what the man in Washington would do, that would not be what a great man does.
Speaker: So I can do that.
Speaker: And Frank Fontaine, meanwhile, is like, like while he's doing that flow chart, Frank Fontaine is just walking by whistling like with a with a sack full of gold that he took from Ryan's desk.
Speaker: Shooting random passerbys.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But then Ryan does have his occasional moment where it's like, check the flow chart.
Speaker: I want to see if the man in Washington would strangle his conniving baby mama.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And he goes off and strangles.
Speaker: Because even Andrew Ryan gets a moment in the sun now and then.
Speaker: So the next section is Bill has decided that the first part of his plan, his little escape attempt, is
Speaker: He can't just leave, right?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: He can't just leave Rapture in the way it is without actually doing anything to Ryan.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: He's going to kill Ryan.
Speaker: This is well.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's kind of like it's they hold that card close to the I thought at first maybe he was going to have one last confrontation.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Talking him into it.
Speaker: And like because he talks about like if this works out, then I will stay behind and help you build Rapture while my kid and wife go back above, you know, to the service world and all that.
Speaker: So I thought at first I was like, you fucking idiot.
Speaker: What are you doing?
Speaker: Like you've done this a million times.
Speaker: How many times does he have to disappoint you?
Speaker: But yeah, then it becomes pretty clear.
Speaker: His plan is to kill the dude.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And if he kills him, then he's going to, if this works out, then he's going to stay behind and try to rebuild the price.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: Just just just cut and run at this point, Bill.
Speaker: You got a man.
Speaker: You got a family to think about.
Speaker: And you've already you've already not helped so many people.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You've you've you've already just ignored so many hurt people.
Speaker: Sullivan's like, I'm going to kill myself.
Speaker: And Bill's like, you know what?
Speaker: Good luck.
Speaker: hope everything works out with your struggle.
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: And it just leaves.
Speaker: And then, yeah, so now this is, this is the moment.
Speaker: So he's going to try and do this.
Speaker: He, he basically, you know, everyone trusts him.
Speaker: He doesn't have any trouble, trouble getting a private audience with Ryan.
Speaker: So he goes in there and he's going to kill him and, and he can't do it.
Speaker: Brian and Ryan busts out this good old chestnut.
Speaker: A man chooses bill.
Speaker: A slave obeys.
Speaker: Choose.
Speaker: Kill me or obey your cowardice and run away.
Speaker: Which it's one of those.
Speaker: It's one of those things where like you listen to it's like choose to kill me or obey your cowardice.
Speaker: And you're like, oh, honey, that's a bit of a stretch.
Speaker: Can't he also just choose not to kill you?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, not, not, that's not really, you don't have to work your little phrase into everything.
Speaker: That's not really our, okay, nevermind.
Speaker: So Bill can't shoot him.
Speaker: Uh, and Ryan attacks him, uh, with his, with his walking stick.
Speaker: Uh, and Bill, uh, instead like knocks him out with the butt of his gun.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And Bill's like, yeah, you know what?
Speaker: I just gotta go.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Screw this.
Speaker: I'm not going to kill you, but I don't have to leave you conscious.
Speaker: So he gets the hell out to go meet up with the other escapers.
Speaker: Now is the moment.
Speaker: Time to get the hell out of Dodge.
Speaker: Now is the moment.
Speaker: So basically they're escaping a Saturnine, some random religious cultist.
Speaker: Yeah, this was weird.
Speaker: This was weird.
Speaker: I'm surprised they didn't do a whole lot.
Speaker: Shirley didn't do a whole lot like bringing this up prior to this scene.
Speaker: Anyway, Elaine is about to be sacrificed by this like Saturn.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's it's it's here's the thing.
Speaker: It's like, yeah, Elaine and Sophie are being threatened by this.
Speaker: This guy who's a part of a neo pagan cult that has risen up.
Speaker: in retaliation essentially of, of no religion being allowed down there, which is in it, in and of itself, a very cool idea.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I, I think that's a cool idea.
Speaker: The idea that if you do not allow people to have religion, they're going to have extra hard and it, and it's not going to be a, a, a cool live and let live religion.
Speaker: They're going to go super hard into that religion.
Speaker: They're going to, yeah, they're going to, they're going to go, let's mummify people in the ball.
Speaker: Fucking death cults.
Speaker: exactly when I say paint my face when I say put the body in the marsh you put the body in the marsh in the marsh
Speaker: and and it's i here so having said all that i think it's a cool idea but what the fuck man why are we introducing new cool ideas we are we are 10 pages away from the end of the book i have as many fingers as we have pages left and you're introducing new concepts we don't have time for that there's there's no time there's no time um
Speaker: Especially if Bill just comes up and he just kills him.
Speaker: Kills him.
Speaker: It's over.
Speaker: And it's over.
Speaker: And they're like, that was close.
Speaker: And they're running away.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So I was befuddled by that.
Speaker: I could have cut that scene.
Speaker: You've played Bioshock 2.
Speaker: Is that a thing in Bioshock 2?
Speaker: Oh, I haven't finished Bioshock 2, so I don't... I don't remember them in Bioshock 1.
Speaker: No, they're definitely not in Bioshock.
Speaker: The only enemies you have in Bioshock 1 are the splicers and the splicers, the big daddies, and the automatons.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So, right.
Speaker: So, well, yeah, if you guys, if you guys listening, no, no where these guys came from, hit us up on Twitter and let us know because I don't remember this.
Speaker: I don't understand the point of it, but suddenly we're kind of in an action scene where everyone's running from splicers in order to get to the, to the lighthouse to get to the escape point.
Speaker: So yeah, everyone's being, you know, it's a lot of,
Speaker: dodging and weaving and jumping and running and shooting Metroid countdown.
Speaker: That's exactly what it is.
Speaker: We had a good old fashioned Metroid.
Speaker: You got to escape in the next two minutes.
Speaker: This is the post mother brain has been, has been killed.
Speaker: But in this case, it's Andrew Ryan and he's only unconscious.
Speaker: So, uh,
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's, and it's good.
Speaker: It's, it's good.
Speaker: It's a good actions.
Speaker: It's a, we just don't need to labor too much on it because it is what it is.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, they finally get to the Ryan statue at the lighthouse.
Speaker: Uh, they're, they're up, up in the air basically.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They're, they are, they're on their way out.
Speaker: They're so close.
Speaker: They can almost taste daylight and suddenly they are just surrounded by guards.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: you know, you're surrounded by Karlovsky and and the Karlovsky, Cavendish and Redgrave to be specific.
Speaker: And Roland Wallace has been captured already.
Speaker: And he was the other part of of Bill's plan and escape.
Speaker: Roland Wallace is all bound up and and, you know,
Speaker: So and they and they make an interesting note here.
Speaker: And I don't remember if this is mentioned in the book up until this point.
Speaker: But they say, you know, they basically say they're like, you know, you don't you don't you don't think you're the only person who's tried to escape the first time.
Speaker: Everybody who's tried to escape basically is a big daddy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's where they were getting their supply of men for the big daddies, which I thought was a really interesting touch.
Speaker: Anyone who's tried to escape his big daddy.
Speaker: And basically we get a we get some persuasion checks here.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Bill rolls for persuasion.
Speaker: We get we get some serious end of game fallout New Vegas.
Speaker: Can I beat this entire game if I've maxed out with just just unlocked dialogue?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And good news for both counts.
Speaker: Yes, you can.
Speaker: Yes, you can.
Speaker: You can talk your way through it if you want.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: It's a good game.
Speaker: So he doesn't he doesn't he's not able to quite save himself, but it does.
Speaker: And this is a nice payoff for something that happened earlier in this section where Bill had had Redgrave and Karlovsky.
Speaker: over for uh christmas christmas yeah and they were they were just it was a nice bonding moment and um cavendish wasn't there cavendish is kind of a piece of shit um right basically bill talks them redgrave and karlovsky into like let let my my family go we'll come with you
Speaker: Um, and Cavendish is like, nah, that's not going to happen.
Speaker: Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: And then I think, was it Karlovsky shoots Cavendish in the head?
Speaker: Karlovsky just goes, fuck that and shoots Cavendish.
Speaker: Basically, it's like, fuck him.
Speaker: I wanted to, I've wanted to kill this motherfucker for a while.
Speaker: This is fine.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay, fine.
Speaker: We don't, you know, cause they say, they say, you know, Ryan, Ryan wants Bill and Wallace.
Speaker: He didn't say shit.
Speaker: about the wife.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He didn't say anything about, about, uh, Elaine and, uh, Sophie.
Speaker: So, um, so Elaine pleads, pleads, but it basically the, the final deal has been struck.
Speaker: Bill and Roland Wallace are going to go with red grave and, uh, Karlovsky and Elaine and the daughter are going to go off and, and, uh, and escape.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So they yeah.
Speaker: Base.
Speaker: And it's it's it's a really, you know, one of those dark kind of ending moments here where, you know, basically the guards, you know, Karlovsky and everything, you know, they they tell him, I think, we'll give you a quick death.
Speaker: You deserve that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We're going to give you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He was supposed to crucify him.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: And right.
Speaker: But Ryan, Ryan had sent them, you know, and he said he's because he couldn't stand to watch.
Speaker: Yeah, he couldn't stand to watch him die.
Speaker: And Bill says he must be gloating, must be laughing his ass off right now.
Speaker: And it's and Karlovsky says, yet he understands better than you think.
Speaker: Karlovsky said.
Speaker: A lot of these others out here, he watched them die, but he can't be here for this.
Speaker: He told me he couldn't stand to watch you die, Bill.
Speaker: Not good friend like you.
Speaker: Bill smiled.
Speaker: He never heard the gunshot that killed him.
Speaker: That's a wrap on Bill McDonough, our protagonist for the most part.
Speaker: Probably has the most point of view chapters in the book.
Speaker: Oh, absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'd call our books for a time.
Speaker: It's without a question.
Speaker: And we have basically it.
Speaker: But we're not done.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's over.
Speaker: This and this scene is more or less an epilogue.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Basically, basically, Sophie and Elaine, they escaped.
Speaker: They went to New York.
Speaker: And Sophie has basically they're they're just Elaine is taking Sophie to therapy because Sophie has has some psychological trauma from living in rapture.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She's terrified of a sky.
Speaker: You know, she's never, she's never known it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's, I thought that was a great touch because it was like, yeah, of course she wouldn't like, fuck the memories of like your dad being chased away and splicers chasing stuff like that.
Speaker: You've never known what sky looks like.
Speaker: Of course you're, you know, fuck.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: So yeah, they, they've, she's, she's never known a world without rapture.
Speaker: And it ends with the shrink carrying Sophie outside so they can have a walk.
Speaker: So you get a feeling that Bill made the right call.
Speaker: It feels like, at least to me, the note that the book ends on is it feels like
Speaker: at least Sophie and Elaine are going to have some semblance of a normal life.
Speaker: Sophie says to her mother, it's nice out here.
Speaker: It just goes on and on.
Speaker: And you know what?
Speaker: What?
Speaker: I think daddy would have liked this.
Speaker: Yes, Sophie, Elaine said, just managing not to cry.
Speaker: Yes, love.
Speaker: Yes, he would have.
Speaker: And that is the end of Bioshock Rapture.
Speaker: Bioshock Rapture.
Speaker: So Kevin, what'd you think of Bioshock Rapture?
Speaker: It's good.
Speaker: I think I, so when we were in the Christmas episode or game of the year episode, we were listing our books of the year, kind of the order.
Speaker: Yeah, you hinted at that.
Speaker: I think I said that, I think I initially I had slotted Rapture as number one.
Speaker: I think I'm,
Speaker: busting it back down to number two now that I had a little bit more time to think about it.
Speaker: And Halo Halo Fall of Reach is number one still.
Speaker: So one of the things that I'll say is that this book, it's trying to do a lot of heavy lifting for Bioshock 2.
Speaker: And it would have been a better book with the entirety of the Bioshock 2 subplots eliminated because none of them actually pay off in a meaningful way in the pages of the book.
Speaker: Um, you, cause you have lamb, right?
Speaker: And she is the antagonist for Bioshock two, um, lamb for the most part disappears at the beginning of the third act.
Speaker: She escapes Persephone and then it's like, oh, but there's Atlas now.
Speaker: And all the attention is now on Atlas.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: I think sure would have made for a thinner kind of a leaner book, but I think it would have been a tighter experience if it was just focused on the specific events leading up to Bioshock one.
Speaker: I think that your point actually points towards a bigger problem with the overall way the book was written, at least to me.
Speaker: And hold on.
Speaker: It's not even that it's a problem.
Speaker: It's just that this book, it's the difference between this book being a prologue to the games versus it being a self-sufficient novel.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And and because they do that same thing with several threads with Bioshock one.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: You know, Tenenbaum just drops off, you know, Bill Bill, at least with a full novel.
Speaker: You know, if that was just if it was just Bill, that would have made some sense.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: you know, as an ending that I liked because that like, you know, complete closure.
Speaker: Like his character arc is totally finished.
Speaker: You hear a lot of, you hear a lot of his audio diaries and Bioshock one, you hear, you hear a lot from Bill, but as a character arc, totally done.
Speaker: It's sealed within the pages of this book.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And you can and you can read this book.
Speaker: I believe you can read this book without having played the first Bioshock and then play Bioshock and be shocked and surprised by the content in that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, it doesn't give too much away.
Speaker: There are lots of Easter eggs.
Speaker: There are lots of shirts.
Speaker: but there's not as much winking to the crowd as, as, as there could have been.
Speaker: No, no, it could have been full of Easter eggs.
Speaker: Um, I also think there, it could have been like, yeah.
Speaker: And,
Speaker: Yeah, there was just some... There's just some little streamlining issues that could have been done.
Speaker: Like, I love... Like, every scene was good.
Speaker: Everything was well-written.
Speaker: Oh, it's such a well-written book.
Speaker: It's such a well-written book.
Speaker: But then when you finish it in retrospect, yeah, as you said...
Speaker: a lot of threads just become like dangling and frayed out there rather than nice, nicely finished and tailored together.
Speaker: Uh, it's not a complete tailored picture by the end.
Speaker: Um, and I think that's part of the problem that you and I are going to run into again and again, we have already because this, the whole premise of this show is we're doing video game novelizations and that sort of thing.
Speaker: Um, so is it fair to judge the book, uh,
Speaker: Uh, in that way, you know, when the whole purpose of the book is to serve as, um, a, a, a part of the whole essentially, it's not meant to be an independent thing.
Speaker: This is part, this is Bioshock zero for the, for the most part of this book.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Um, so is it, are, are we being unfair by, uh, by, by hoping that it will tie up those loose ends in the way that an independent, a book independent of a franchise like this would.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I think, I think it's, I think it's fair to bring us at very least to talk about.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's yeah.
Speaker: I don't think it necessarily is the, um, it's not a, and it's not a massive critique.
Speaker: I think I only slide it down because compared to halo, the fall of reach, uh,
Speaker: So Halo the Fall of Reach is different because in my mind, because it is part of a continuing story, but it's like it does what it says on the tin.
Speaker: If you know what I mean, it's like this is like it as it is a complete package.
Speaker: Reach falls at the end.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: You don't necessarily.
Speaker: If you want to.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: If you want to continue to talk about.
Speaker: You can.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But you don't have to.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But you don't have to.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: If you want to talk about a session zero, if you will, book.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Versus a sealed, complete adventure.
Speaker: from start to finish with no need to continue on.
Speaker: Halo, Fall of Reach would absolutely be the one that we've read so far that does both perfectly.
Speaker: Is able to do that, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, you're right.
Speaker: Even Resident Evil, the first book we ever read, Resident Evil, unnecessarily even, introduces some plot, some weird threads into it that's like, well, this continues on.
Speaker: We're like...
Speaker: You didn't need that.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And obviously we're going to dive back into the Resident Evil verse book, book a verse.
Speaker: Oh, I wouldn't let us I wouldn't let us leave it at that.
Speaker: Eventually, we'll probably even read the the original novel that S.D.
Speaker: Perry wrote at some point that the the original novel, which is in between one and two, I want to say Caliban Cove.
Speaker: That would be the next one in the series.
Speaker: Which is not based on any game.
Speaker: No, now that's going to be interesting.
Speaker: Yeah, that'll be an interesting test to see what is based...
Speaker: how the writing style shifts when it's not based on, uh, an existing plot.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: I think, I think overall though, when you're, when you're looking at this book, I mean, Shirley is a fucking good, good writer.
Speaker: It's like,
Speaker: good writer did the franchise justice didn't baby anything and also didn't over egg the pudding uh like i said there weren't a lot of there weren't as many winks to the audience as you could do uh he was very restrained in that uh it explains a lot of things it gives you a little background a lot of things but also uh creates its own uh world in that sense you know it wasn't it wasn't completely
Speaker: beholden to uh the first game for every little thing uh like you can run into with some of these uh but doesn't go so far off the rails that you're like wait what the this doesn't make sense the way that the latter uh bloodborne yeah no those those were just senseless and and um
Speaker: It's also just, and it didn't matter that they were in the bloodborne.
Speaker: No, it didn't.
Speaker: It, it's just that the bloodborne was, uh, was a backdrop for it rather than, um, right.
Speaker: And it's, um, yeah, well written, well visualized.
Speaker: I really felt like I could see, I think maybe having played Bioshock recently helps, but I, I, I thought he did a tremendous job, uh, uh,
Speaker: generating raptures visuals in the mind's eye um i couldn't agree and um but but sorry i was just i was i i i my adhd mind uh got to thinking about what's happening next and i was looking for something
Speaker: I was prepping.
Speaker: By the way, I don't think I forgot to mention it when we when we crossed it at one point.
Speaker: One of the characters is I believe it's Simon is is humming a song from the Ink Spots.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Think spots.
Speaker: Which is a band from the 1940s that was popularized again in the early 2000s by Fallout.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So late 90s, early 2000s, because I think it was a Fallout one.
Speaker: The game starts with one of the Inkspot songs.
Speaker: Does it really?
Speaker: I think it does.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then there's I never played the original fall.
Speaker: Really?
Speaker: I need I know I need to sit down and play those.
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: I'm surprised there's no Fallout books.
Speaker: Anyway, we're off topic now.
Speaker: I am too.
Speaker: There's only one.
Speaker: This is it.
Speaker: This is the only Bioshock book.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: There are some fan fiction books that have gotten published to Amazon, Kindle somehow.
Speaker: One that's about the big daddies or something like that, which...
Speaker: How is that allowed to go?
Speaker: Yeah, I don't know how that gets on there.
Speaker: Although that might make for a fun thing later.
Speaker: But frankly, at this point, the Bioshock universe is basically shut down.
Speaker: Yeah, it's basically dead.
Speaker: We're probably not going to see any further development.
Speaker: So that's pretty much a wrap on Bioshock until we hear otherwise.
Speaker: Until we hear other ones.
Speaker: Well, I'll tell you what, though.
Speaker: We did, you know, we gave this some thought, ladies and gentlemen, and Kevin and I both agreed that in future, for future installments, now in the year of 2022, we've decided that in between franchises here, in between these longer books, we're going to have a little bit of one-shot goodness for you so we can ease our way back into
Speaker: that uh back into something much meatier uh and uh so kevin what what is it that we're going to be reading well our one shot next is is going to be the the novelization of the capcom classic megaman 2 megaman megaman 2 hold on that's what i was looking for uh
Speaker: Phil actually has it.
Speaker: If you're watching this, the video version of this podcast, Phil is holding up the actual Worlds of Power Scholastic publication of
Speaker: of megaman 2 megaman 2 by fx by f by the seminal author uh uh fx9 their work is totally in some literary canon somewhere absolutely fx9 written in let's see this came out 1990 oh wow which is like three years after megaman 2 came out i want to say
Speaker: Yeah, give or take.
Speaker: So it's a slim volume.
Speaker: It's written for kids, which it's even got game hints.
Speaker: Oh,
Speaker: So we will we will have to really I feel like we're going to really enjoy.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So we're going to do we're going to do a single episode on that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And and then beyond that, who knows?
Speaker: Who knows?
Speaker: You'll have to come in and listen and find our subject to change.
Speaker: oh but we've got a whole damn year ahead of us so much schedule we have a schedule guys oh and we got some we got some real real good books we got we got some good so uh make sure that you you uh rate us five stars uh follow us on
Speaker: your favorite podcast platform share us share us with your friends and family that is honestly that is the best way to help a podcast grow is is just share share the podcast we we don't have uh there's not much in the way of podcast seo it's it's a lot of work it's a lot of word of mouth so we uh we need you to share if you like our stuff um share us with somebody else who you think might like our stuff and that's that's all there is to it um
Speaker: And until next time, we'll catch you later.
Speaker: Have a good night.
Speaker: Bye.
