Transcript
Speaker: It's all, the pleasure's all on the book side of the table.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: It takes what it wants.
Speaker: It uses and abuses.
Speaker: It does use and abuse.
Speaker: You know what doesn't use and abuse?
Speaker: What's that, Kevin?
Speaker: Hey there, everybody.
Speaker: Welcome back to Pixel It.
Speaker: My name is Kevin.
Speaker: With me, as always, is Phil.
Speaker: Hello.
Speaker: And today we're driving through.
Speaker: We're taking a road trip.
Speaker: We're taking a road trip under the water.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Back to Rapture.
Speaker: And if I got my dates right, this is the last episode of the year.
Speaker: Um, the last or the second to last.
Speaker: I don't know, but either way, Merry Christmas because it's either coming up or it just passed.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: So everyone's everyone's get get one last, you know, helping of all I want for Christmas is you under your belt, my friends.
Speaker: Before we put Mariah Carey back in a deep freeze, please get where she where she fucking belongs.
Speaker: We all love that song.
Speaker: We all love that song.
Speaker: But the chaos she causes in two months.
Speaker: Madness.
Speaker: It's absolute madness.
Speaker: Of the year is, is, is, it's untenable.
Speaker: It's, it's, it's unreasonable.
Speaker: You can't, it can't be supported.
Speaker: It cannot be supported for many reasons.
Speaker: It can't be supported.
Speaker: The globe is warming.
Speaker: God damn it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We can't support Mariah Carey being unthawed for two months of the year.
Speaker: Do you know how big her mouth can get?
Speaker: She, the, the, the amount of gas she expels hitting the notes that she hits.
Speaker: It is like a, a void to some nether realm.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The flatulence of all the cows in the Midwest cannot equal the carbon dioxide that she just bleeding through the ozone layer with every and I that she puts out there, even though I don't think she sings that part, but God damn it.
Speaker: You get my point.
Speaker: We do get your point.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So all I want for Christmas is you.
Speaker: And all I want for Christmas is plasmids.
Speaker: The plasmids.
Speaker: The plasmids.
Speaker: Plasmids.
Speaker: Plasmids.
Speaker: Can I have a plasmid, please?
Speaker: Can I have a plasmid?
Speaker: We got lots of people who love plasmids in this book.
Speaker: Jesus Christ.
Speaker: Oh, they love plasmids because we're in chapter 12 and we're in it's 1955 in the misappropriately named Artemis suites.
Speaker: But by the way, they're described.
Speaker: It seems like the the bunk of a military base.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it's very barracks ask.
Speaker: And it looks like it looks like a barracks.
Speaker: It makes sense because it's an apartment that has like 10 families living in it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And we get it's from the point of view of a man named Sam Lutz.
Speaker: Who is he?
Speaker: Doesn't really matter.
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: He's not a main character.
Speaker: He's don't get attached.
Speaker: Don't get attached to anybody in Rapture because by the time the game rolls around, they're all dead.
Speaker: So that's let's just put that out there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Anyway, Sam Lutz.
Speaker: Sam is talking to his wife, Mariska, and he's
Speaker: It's most of this part is just kind of laying the foundation of God.
Speaker: Things really suck, don't they?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's sad because, you know, last time we had one of the most heart wrenching chapters ever with a poor down on their luck couple who were the victims of poverty and plasmids.
Speaker: And we have the same sort of we have we have a similar setup here.
Speaker: The difference, though, seems to be that the Lutzes actually seem to love each other.
Speaker: Yeah, they are lovely people.
Speaker: Yeah, they seem to be nice people.
Speaker: They're just in a bad situation.
Speaker: He basically got down there to work.
Speaker: They made it sound like the most amazing thing in the world.
Speaker: He worked for literally a few days and then the work was done and he got laid off.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And and, you know, there's no minimum wage, no nothing, no safety net.
Speaker: So they're literally just living in these slums and he's just catching work wherever he can.
Speaker: But they've got like but you kind of hope the best for them, even though you shouldn't, because, you know, they're they're they're optimistic for the most part.
Speaker: He's trying to make his wife feel better.
Speaker: He doesn't lash out.
Speaker: You know, he's right.
Speaker: He's, you know, sympathetic to how she feels.
Speaker: It's nice.
Speaker: It's really nice.
Speaker: It's nice.
Speaker: And it gets the scene gets interrupted stage left by.
Speaker: Hey, what was the name of that?
Speaker: That that cartoon cat?
Speaker: Felix?
Speaker: No, the one with the stage left.
Speaker: Oh, oh, oh, fuck.
Speaker: Yeah, the Hanna-Barbera one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, it's like... Exits stage left.
Speaker: It was worth it.
Speaker: It was worth it.
Speaker: Stage right even.
Speaker: Even.
Speaker: Yeah, he would always throw even at the end of his... Is that Snagglepuss?
Speaker: Snagglepuss.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, Snagglepuss.
Speaker: That's the one.
Speaker: That's the one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Speaking of questionable queer representation, Snagglepuss.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's basically Sandra Cohen coded.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's basically Sandra Cohen kind of coded the same way.
Speaker: It can't.
Speaker: Sandra Cohen is.
Speaker: It's that very 19 like mid century.
Speaker: Like this is how gay men acted.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Type of of coding that they they throw on there.
Speaker: There's a pink feline Liberace, which is to say, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: So just out of basically just outside the conversation, two men hopped up on plasmid goofballs, basically pick a fight with each other.
Speaker: And one man, basically, they're they're just talking up a big game.
Speaker: And one man, the one man's wife.
Speaker: intervenes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And the other guy kills both the wife and her husband and like just melts them with electro bolt.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Their eyes melt out of their skull.
Speaker: It's pretty awful.
Speaker: It's pretty grotesque.
Speaker: And the one the one guy had the electricity power and the other guys, the firepower, and they're just not standoff.
Speaker: Who's going to win?
Speaker: Well, the guy who gets distracted by his poor wife
Speaker: isn't.
Speaker: Um, and then of course, because they, they had already stuck the knife in and all that was left was to twist it, uh, thus tearing our tender, tender insides, uh, two little twin girls, uh, come the Babcock twins, uh, come out as that's their mother and father who have just been so horribly destroyed by plasmids.
Speaker: And basically to the whole like poking the dead relative, mother, father.
Speaker: Like, oh, God, like Littlefoot in Land Before Time.
Speaker: Just like, why won't you get up?
Speaker: You are treated to the whole realm of that.
Speaker: The whole thing.
Speaker: And the scene ends with two little girls all alone now.
Speaker: Orphans.
Speaker: Two little sisters.
Speaker: Bump, bump.
Speaker: I understood that reference.
Speaker: I get that reference.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Insert Captain America here.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And then we cut back to Fontaine Futuristics and there's a problem.
Speaker: Too few sea slugs.
Speaker: How many times have I said that?
Speaker: We don't have enough goddamn sea slugs.
Speaker: How many times have you opened your cabinet and said, ah, too few sea slugs?
Speaker: Well, the sea slugs, they are out.
Speaker: And so they're basically working on a new project where they're using a little girl.
Speaker: to create a new base for the plasmids.
Speaker: And so they, so they don't have to use the sea slugs and Fontaine very reasonably, I think says, why don't we, why don't we start breeding the sea slugs?
Speaker: And apparently that'll take years to set up.
Speaker: And I'm not,
Speaker: convinced about that one.
Speaker: Unless you know something I do, I don't about these these these sea slugs metabolism.
Speaker: I mean, don't you just throw slugs into a thing and eventually more slugs come out?
Speaker: They just yeah, that's kind of how it works.
Speaker: You throw them in a jar, you shake the jar and then you got more slugs.
Speaker: It's as simple as that.
Speaker: metabolism.
Speaker: Jesus reproductive reproduction is what I meant to say.
Speaker: But yeah, so but doesn't matter who cares.
Speaker: They are basically basically they found out that
Speaker: it's better for the little girls can handle the plasmids better than little boys.
Speaker: It can't be little boys.
Speaker: It can't be adults.
Speaker: It has to be little girls.
Speaker: Uh, something about little girls.
Speaker: Oh, little girls.
Speaker: Um, they get bigger every day.
Speaker: Uh, and, uh, so that's, so we've got a whole thing about them using these little girls to, uh, as a new basis for carrying the plasmids.
Speaker: Uh, they even bring up the Babcock twins.
Speaker: They'll be, they'll be, you know, that was no,
Speaker: coincidence that they used them for that one.
Speaker: And you're just about to think to yourself, is this too horrific to actually work in this world just when Reggie, one of Fontaine's guys, rushes in and he's been shot?
Speaker: Perfect timing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Great timing to keep you from thinking too hard about what the fuck is going on.
Speaker: But he basically he's been shot.
Speaker: He doesn't know who shot him or why he's assuming it's some, you know, plasmid, you know, addict or something like that.
Speaker: But people are just out there getting shot.
Speaker: He says there have been turrets set up everywhere, which is another reference to the game to help protect property, which they don't say that outright.
Speaker: But let's face it, that's what those turrets are there for.
Speaker: And so it's it's basically just an interrupt an introduction to this new violent world where
Speaker: you know, there's crime out there all over the place.
Speaker: And the only response to it that Ryan has come up with is to put more weaponry, more automated machine guns out there.
Speaker: It's, it's basically the literally trying to fight fire with fire is, is the idea of Andrew Ryan.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, so yeah, that's, that's basically, that's basically that scene.
Speaker: Um, it's,
Speaker: And also it's it's the this is where Fontaine is basically like, well, how about we start an orphanage?
Speaker: And they they because the orphanage has been alluded to a few scenes earlier where it's like, well, would he's Andrew Ryan wouldn't start one unless it was for profit.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Because there's a need for one because a lot of workers have been killed and left parent left their kids there parentless.
Speaker: And we do, and we find out the way that someone here can actually make a level of profit off of an orphanage.
Speaker: And that is by being able to have this easy supply of little girls to, uh, to turn into little sisters, to be a base for these plasmids.
Speaker: So, uh, yeah, he gets to look like he is doing good work for the community while, you know, just furthering his own, uh, uh, gains.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then we come back to Andrew Ryan and he is talking to Mr. Stanley Poole.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And he's asking about a this top side character.
Speaker: Johnny top side.
Speaker: Johnny top side.
Speaker: Which is my porn name.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: Coincidentally enough.
Speaker: Back in the day it was known as Johnny top side.
Speaker: Johnny top side.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's good to know.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Google me, coward.
Speaker: Or are you afraid of what you might find?
Speaker: So this is the thing about Johnny Topside is that I...
Speaker: It kind of comes up out of nowhere.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I don't know.
Speaker: Is it a reference to like Atlas or the stuff Fontaine is doing?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I mean, I've read through the rest of this section and I don't remember seeing Johnny Topside being mentioned again.
Speaker: It is a rant.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: And if you guys are listening and you know if this is a reference, please let us know.
Speaker: I wasn't sure either.
Speaker: The only the best I get the best guess I could make is it's this legend of it.
Speaker: Clearly what they say is it's this legend of some guy who's
Speaker: he's become a legend in a way where he's supposedly from the outer world and he's infiltrated the place, smuggled himself into Rapture.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And he's a G man or something like that.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And it just feeds Ryan's paranoia.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: And it's just another thing to feed Ryan's paranoia, and it kind of leads to him finally just crossing the line officially and basically ordering that he wants lamb disappeared, essentially.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Send her into Persephone, which is, um, they haven't really talked about what Persephone is quite.
Speaker: It's a penal colony for all intents and purposes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Persephone is basically their, the way they, the, the place they put people.
Speaker: Um, and, um, and they say, yeah, just take the kid, take her kid, give it to a woman named Grace Holloway to just look after.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that'll, that'll be that.
Speaker: That's that ties up that loose end in Ryan's mind.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so I'm not sure.
Speaker: I'm not sure if this is meant to reference something larger or it's just another thing.
Speaker: So Lamb is big in Bioshock 2.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: She is.
Speaker: She is.
Speaker: I haven't played all of Bioshock 2.
Speaker: I've played maybe like an hour and a half or something.
Speaker: But Lamb is positioned as basically the antagonist of Bioshock 2.
Speaker: And there's references.
Speaker: So in the book, they talk about the debates.
Speaker: In Bioshock 2, towards the beginning, you find audio logs of debates between Ryan and Lamb out in public.
Speaker: Stuff like that.
Speaker: So since this book seems to try to tie all three games together at times, and mostly Bioshock 1 and 2,
Speaker: Yeah, this came out before Infinite, I believe.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But not so early that they couldn't have given... Couldn't have, right.
Speaker: And they do mention Comstock and stuff, which is an infinite reference.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So I think the...
Speaker: What was I going to say?
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: If it's if we don't necessarily pick up on it, my my go to is I guess it might be in Bioshock 2.
Speaker: Maybe is is because I know I know Lam and her daughter figure into Bioshock 2 to the extent of which I don't quite know slash remember because I haven't beaten the game yet.
Speaker: So right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But yeah, I have a figure.
Speaker: It's it's foreshadowing to something that happens later.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: OK, well, that makes sense.
Speaker: Which I would say, and I'll stop here to mention, that's probably the only weakness that I really, one of the only gripes I have with the book is that some of it feels like, whereas Far Cry Absolution,
Speaker: for example, and even Halo fall of reach, you didn't need to have played anything of those games in order to grasp it.
Speaker: And I feel like some of what it, some of the scenes in this book are super well-written, but then they also have the, you know, and I was just going to say essentially the same thing.
Speaker: I can deal with the occasional wink towards the audience.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: But I will say this, these, it feels like they get a lot of references out in a very short amount of time here.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And it's right here in this area that we're reading.
Speaker: There's a whole cluster of them all in a row that felt a little rushed to me.
Speaker: But yeah, yeah, it's, it's still, you know, quality writing, but I think that that's, that is absolutely a weakness that, uh,
Speaker: we've run into here.
Speaker: It still might come through and pay off in part three, but I'm just saying as of right now, it just feels like more of a wink and a nod rather than naturally in the line of the story.
Speaker: I totally agree.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So we finally get our first introduction to Spider Splicers, which are my second least favorite enemy in Bioshock.
Speaker: Oh, they're so effective.
Speaker: They are so effective because they're up on the ceiling, man.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And number one, the one I hate the most is the Houdini splicers, which we're also going to run into, which we're also going to the book is also going to talk about relatively soon.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The spider slicers, Bill, our dear friend, Bill, is finding out about spider slicers as we are in this book.
Speaker: There are a couple of them.
Speaker: literally crawling on the outside of a tram, threatening the people inside of them.
Speaker: They're just like poking their head down through the ceiling of the tram.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Trying to get in.
Speaker: Uh, and, uh, and the tram is moving away.
Speaker: Like they're there just, and it's like Bill and, uh, I forget who's with him, but they're just like literally watching this train.
Speaker: with these horrible spider splicers on it move away.
Speaker: They're not there to help.
Speaker: They're just observing.
Speaker: And as the tram gets further and further away, you hear a gunshot from inside of the tram.
Speaker: And like, basically, as it disappears in the darkness, all fucking hell breaks loose.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Uh, and they just kind of move on.
Speaker: They're like, well, that sucks.
Speaker: It's yeah.
Speaker: Meanwhile, meanwhile, this is all happening.
Speaker: Grevy, um, and bill are having a discussion about whether charity is communist or not.
Speaker: Yeah, because Ryan's open to charity is open to house for the poor.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so they're kind of like they're kind of discussing whether or not this is a good thing.
Speaker: You know, you're finding out how much of a true believer either of them are.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I love it because it's like this this deep discussion about what about objective as political theory set against literal mutant people climbing along trains.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And threatening people with their hooks.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: If you can listen to this, if you, if you read the discussion, they're having these political discussions that they're having, just try very hard to remember to imagine screaming, innocent people in a tram and two horrifying drug addled monsters with hooks crawling along the outside of the tram while they're having this civil discussion about politics debate me, coward.
Speaker: And it's got and it's got a great line in there.
Speaker: And I've referenced this before something a friend of mine said, Bill's talking about the poor and how maybe they're trying to figure out whether and what the what's the end game here.
Speaker: Why is he doing the charities?
Speaker: And Grevy says maybe his own little army, army of the poor.
Speaker: And Bill says he'll have no shortage of poor to draw on Artemis sweets and poppers droppers stuffed with blokes out of work.
Speaker: And if they work, they can still feel crowded and underpaid.
Speaker: Not everyone can start their own business.
Speaker: And if they do, who will clean the toilets?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which is that is that it's such a simple thing to say.
Speaker: It's so simple.
Speaker: But in a but in a nutshell, it tells you what the issue with these grandiose plans are.
Speaker: It's like, you know, you know, because because that's that's the alluring thing with objectivism and Ayn Rand and everything like that, especially if you're, as I've said before, a young man, especially who who happens to
Speaker: quietly or not so quietly believe a little too much in their own greatness with a capital G. Yeah.
Speaker: And so these fun phrases like is not is a man not entitled to the sweat of his own brow.
Speaker: It's very intoxicating.
Speaker: Who could say no to that?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Say no to that.
Speaker: Could say no to that, except when the sweat of their own brow is not
Speaker: They're not getting anything for the sweat of their own brow.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Like the you're like, yeah, they're entitled only to the sweat of their own brow, according to Andrew Ryan.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Which is not they can't buy food with.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Not everyone can be great and not everyone should be great in those terms, by the way.
Speaker: I don't I don't go in for the idea of great men with a capital.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like that, that the idea exists.
Speaker: I think I think when you talk about great men, there is there are people who are exceptional at particular things.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But I think the great man is like a fallacy that leads to the boot that like the Elon Musk bootlickers, you know,
Speaker: The belief that this guy, that Elon Musk is a great man and he's not a great man.
Speaker: He's right place, right time.
Speaker: Well, he had money specifically.
Speaker: Yeah, he specifically, you know, PayPal to Tesla to to, you know, and he's he went from 50 billion dollars to 330 billion dollars over the course of the pandemic.
Speaker: The man is on track to be the first trillionaire ever.
Speaker: Yeah, it's disgusting.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It's foul.
Speaker: And on and on an even more simplistic note.
Speaker: The notion that he is somehow more valuable or more deserving of happiness and quote unquote, the sweat of his own brow than the man who cleans his toilets is wrong.
Speaker: It is incorrect.
Speaker: It's so wrong.
Speaker: It's laughable.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah, he is.
Speaker: Is three hundred thirty billion dollars.
Speaker: To put that into perspective, you could work, you could get paid like a million dollars every year of your life.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You will still not get to a billion dollars.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: No, you could have the lifespan of a Tolkien elf and never make that much money.
Speaker: There are so many absurd ways I've read of like to way to put a billion dollars into a sense of scale.
Speaker: One, this man has three hundred thirty billion dollars and it's it's it's bullshit like people in this book.
Speaker: And this book does a good job shining the light on them.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And other other works of art have done a good job shining light on them that believe in this fallacy of, quote unquote, great men that just rake in profit and.
Speaker: It's theirs because they're at the top.
Speaker: And, and as we, we have arranged everything in our society to funnel that upwards and believe, yes, they are at the top.
Speaker: Um, they, and they deserve to be there.
Speaker: They just, and they deserve it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it is, uh, it's really gross.
Speaker: And, um,
Speaker: We're a nation with Stockholm syndrome.
Speaker: It's really, you know, it's really what it comes down to.
Speaker: We are a nation with stockholder syndrome.
Speaker: Oh, shit.
Speaker: God damn, are we good?
Speaker: Got them.
Speaker: You know who you know who are?
Speaker: I don't think we need to talk too much about great men because I think I'm looking at two of them.
Speaker: Oh, shit.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: So in this moment, oh, Velma agrees.
Speaker: Velma does.
Speaker: Yeah, she would.
Speaker: She would.
Speaker: Saucy little sweater wearing minx.
Speaker: So does baby Yoda.
Speaker: I think it's kind of funny.
Speaker: It looks like baby Yoda is being censored out.
Speaker: And when it's just this green wobbly thing, you're like, oh, what is this?
Speaker: So, and while these two men are having this discussion, a plasmid riddled addict speaks for many people in the audience and threatens them by using her powers to fire a wrench at Bill.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And and threatens them.
Speaker: She's she's she's tell him to go back where they came from and all the Ryan's little puppets.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And finally fires using the telekinesis ability fires a screwdriver at Grevy where it buries itself in his chest right into the chest dies.
Speaker: That is a picture wrap on Grevy.
Speaker: Goodbye.
Speaker: To which Bill says, Jesus, Grevy.
Speaker: Jesus, grief.
Speaker: Which kind of sounds like he's blaming grieving.
Speaker: It's like, Hey, hey, why didn't you get out of the way?
Speaker: The screwdriver didn't ask for this.
Speaker: Finally, brings us back to Ryan's office.
Speaker: Bill is there.
Speaker: Bill is there.
Speaker: He is.
Speaker: He's kind of frustrated because Ryan is kind of cutting him out of certain things.
Speaker: He's not allowed in certain areas.
Speaker: Yeah, he's not.
Speaker: He hasn't been allowed.
Speaker: He doesn't even know.
Speaker: He doesn't even know what Persephone is.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: He hasn't been allowed over there.
Speaker: And he's like and Bill is like, hey, I'm I'm the dude who makes sure that shit's not imploding.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: How could I not see a place?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And we do eventually we basically eventually find out that Ryan has not been so keen on Bill over a specific moment because he's been he's debated.
Speaker: He's been debating lamb and he just got sick of it, apparently, and went ahead and had her jailed.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Under the idea that she planted the bomb that happened in the last episode.
Speaker: But he doesn't want to make a martyr of her.
Speaker: So he isn't prosecuting her or going through any sort of judicial notion.
Speaker: He's just...
Speaker: disappeared her.
Speaker: And he thinks that bill is pretty much responsible for this because bill convinced him to leave lamb alone with his marketplace of ideas.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And he blames bill so hard.
Speaker: And bill is like, it's like, you fuck,
Speaker: Bill's like you can't just disappear people though you gotta like due process and Ryan's like oh well that would just draw people to her cause she just has to vanish you know right so that's we get a little Andrew Stalin here
Speaker: Yeah, a little Andrew Stalin.
Speaker: And we do find out the details on Persephone, that it's this penal colony, like part penal colony, part mental institution.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And you know what is interesting is at the beginning of this scene is the way Bill figures out that there is a Persephone is because of the way the airflow is coming through the pipes.
Speaker: He's like...
Speaker: There is a there is something the error is going somewhere that I don't know where it goes.
Speaker: Like that is so funny.
Speaker: I yeah, I forgot about that.
Speaker: Like he like whips out is like engineering engineering math smarts that be like.
Speaker: there's, there's a drop in pressure because there's another part of rapture that I don't know about.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And that, and that, and that actually is some fucking genius shit to like, think about that kind of detail.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Um, of course, right now, Bill is also thinking that eventually if he doesn't watch his shit,
Speaker: He might end up being in Persephone.
Speaker: Yeah, he is.
Speaker: He is on.
Speaker: He is on thin ice.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But he's still.
Speaker: But he's still insanely optimistic.
Speaker: Like he still believes that he can fix this.
Speaker: He believes in the greatness of Andrew Ryan.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Sort of.
Speaker: Kind of.
Speaker: Andrew Ryan with his help.
Speaker: That's what you run into a lot.
Speaker: You know, when, when these people, they it's, it's almost as if people don't get the lesson of, we shouldn't put so much stock in individual people.
Speaker: They don't get that lesson.
Speaker: Instead, they say, you know, they're really great, especially when it's plus me, you know, especially when I'm Lieutenant great man.
Speaker: So that cuts us to Lamb.
Speaker: Yeah, Simon Wales and Sophia Lamb have a little meeting at Persephone.
Speaker: They let Simon in, even though in the previous section, Ryan's like, yeah, I think it's Simon Wales, who's like the turncoat.
Speaker: They let Simon in to talk to her.
Speaker: And he is full lock, stock and barrel in on Lamb.
Speaker: totally.
Speaker: She is a, she is like lamb is part mother Jones and part mother Teresa.
Speaker: Uh, there is a, there is a, um,
Speaker: there is obviously the red you, and this is, this is where it gets weird for me.
Speaker: And I haven't played Bioshock too.
Speaker: I'm all for equal opportunity on like displaying the horrors of certain, you know, ideological notions, but I don't recognize, I recognize the idea of Ryan and that fanatic.
Speaker: But lamb is kind of this weird combination of the,
Speaker: red union unionist kind of person and a religious fanatic.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which doesn't really match, especially if you happen to, if you're, I mean, no matter who you are, like whether you are communist sympathizing or if you're extreme right and you hate the commies, part of the reason you hate the commies is because apparently they want to kill God.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it's kind of a weird combination.
Speaker: It is a weird combination.
Speaker: And it's like, you know what it is, is.
Speaker: I feel like they had Bioshock one where you have antagonists like Andrew Ryan who are.
Speaker: Pro, you know, the objectivism and and, you know, no gods, only men and all that stuff.
Speaker: And they're like, well, what's the mirror of that?
Speaker: And that's like communal communism.
Speaker: But yeah.
Speaker: But yeah.
Speaker: Belief in a greater power.
Speaker: The thing that exists, but is, you know, that kind of, that exists, but on small scales, you're talking about hippie communes now, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Not talking about anything that's ever been done on a large scale.
Speaker: Other thing is, and I might, then again, I guess,
Speaker: full objectivism has never been done on a full scale, but right.
Speaker: Um, my, my thought process is it feels a little both sidesy.
Speaker: It very much does.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: It's like, it's like they, they didn't want to go too hard into critiquing the, the objectivism libertarian right type stuff without positing.
Speaker: Oh, like, Oh,
Speaker: but the communists are just are also just as bad.
Speaker: And we are kind of developing that with lamb.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And there's, and there's room for criticism on anything.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You can, this feels you're right.
Speaker: This is the it's, it's, it's on a level that like is so extreme that it's like, this doesn't really fit.
Speaker: This isn't really a thing.
Speaker: Yeah, it doesn't really it doesn't fit.
Speaker: And that was I think that was my issue as I got started getting into Bioshock 2.
Speaker: It was like.
Speaker: okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It feels a little weird because they're backing off really hard against the, like, it feels like there was a really strong core message of the first one.
Speaker: And then the second one, it's like, oh, but we're backing off really hard from that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It feels like they didn't want to be accused of taking either side.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Which I think the, the quality of, um,
Speaker: of one game over the other kind of shows you what side they were on.
Speaker: But yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I'll say this Bioshock to combat is, is better.
Speaker: Like it's, it's a little bit tighter and it feels a little bit more modern compared to the first one.
Speaker: But in terms of writing, I think it, which is where, you know, Bioshock buttered its bread.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's interesting.
Speaker: So, yeah, so we're left with lamb essentially like it's a weird little in addiction kind of moment.
Speaker: Yeah, he's like his whales.
Speaker: Simon becomes like John the Baptist.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: In this instance.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She blesses him for all intents and purposes.
Speaker: She lets him know that she thinks that she has.
Speaker: gotten permission to be able to do therapy for the prisoners.
Speaker: And in doing that, she'll be able to start an uprising because all the people who are going to be there, this is a good point.
Speaker: This is, this is something that anybody who studied Russian history, for example, knows anything about the gulags and those kinds of political issues.
Speaker: jails.
Speaker: You're wonders like, why did you put all these people together?
Speaker: Like all they have to, all they have time for is lifting weights and exchanging notes.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That's kind of a, it doesn't make sense.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So she's planning on some sort of a uprising at that point.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And that brings us to chapter 13, 1956.
Speaker: We finally moved forward a year.
Speaker: We moved forward a year.
Speaker: We were in 55 for a long time.
Speaker: A long time, yeah.
Speaker: That went from like 47 to 54 pretty quickly.
Speaker: We were in 55 for quite a spell there.
Speaker: And now we're at the rapture detention, which is not true.
Speaker: Persephone?
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: They've mentioned the detention before.
Speaker: Okay, detention is regular crimes, like murdering people, you go to detention.
Speaker: Yeah, Persephone is more of the political prison.
Speaker: Is the political prison.
Speaker: Got it.
Speaker: Alright.
Speaker: Well, it's the Sullivan chapter.
Speaker: Yeah, Sullivan, Sully, they've been hearing the stories of a homicidal splicer.
Speaker: who's been using new black market plasmids that might be the most dangerous plasmids of all.
Speaker: They can teleport.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: The Houdini's the Houdini's.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So we get our first impression of one of these guys basically immediately.
Speaker: They've got, I forget the story.
Speaker: The guy like basically was found.
Speaker: He had cut some woman's head off.
Speaker: Clean off.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Her hair, her head cut off her body.
Speaker: You get me?
Speaker: Sliced off just under the chin.
Speaker: Slick as a whistle.
Speaker: Brunette.
Speaker: Might have been a pretty woman.
Speaker: I think maybe I saw this chippy dancing over at the strip joint in Fort Frolic.
Speaker: Well, this splicer, he's kind of squeezing her head to his chest.
Speaker: He looked like a kid hugging a baby doll.
Speaker: And he was sawing logs, this guy, snoring.
Speaker: Pat Cavendish gets there and gets him cuffed, tries to wake him up, but the guy's too sacked out, so Patrick gets some help.
Speaker: Brings a son of a bitch up here, puts him in a cell, 17 over there.
Speaker: We got the broad's head in a freezer, in case you want to ID her.
Speaker: Which is like, you know, law and order.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a total law and order talk.
Speaker: That's exactly what it was.
Speaker: It is the opening pre-credits law and order scene.
Speaker: I am convinced that before every Sullivan chapter, it should be opened with, Jung Jung.
Speaker: Jung Jung.
Speaker: Yeah, so they've got.
Speaker: And they rapture criminal justice system.
Speaker: It's view rapture.
Speaker: But they so they got the guy.
Speaker: He's he was he just killed the woman and passed out and they've got him.
Speaker: They got him in a cell.
Speaker: And they're they're discussing this.
Speaker: And then suddenly the guy starts teleporting around them, just mocking them and making fun of them.
Speaker: He's not he's not doing anything, but just like teleporting around.
Speaker: No, and they can't get up.
Speaker: And it's actually a really great action scene.
Speaker: They're just these guys who are armed to the teeth who are basically powerless.
Speaker: And one of them actually shoots one of the other.
Speaker: Yeah, there's a ricochet and Harker, one of the one of the constable
Speaker: gets shot by, right?
Speaker: Like that's, they, they are just powerless to, to stop this guy.
Speaker: And, but eventually between one guy with a shotgun, another guy with a Thompson gun, they managed to take him out, but not until like pure chaos has ensued.
Speaker: And this is just one guy on these plasmids.
Speaker: So, you know, people are really fucked at this point.
Speaker: yeah and um so you know harker harker's down he's bleeding out um and yeah basically uh they they end up getting him um uh they uh has he i think is is a shotgun blast it was like he got he got riddled he got riddled with with shotgun and the time yeah karlowski yeah karlowski had clipped him good with a shotgun
Speaker: And some are as part of the Tommy gun burst ricocheted down the corridor.
Speaker: Maybe the steel walls hadn't been a good idea because the bullets are just bouncing all over the place.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a it's just it's just everything goes to shit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No time.
Speaker: And the guy who was completely unarmed.
Speaker: And Karlovsky says, this is a whole new how you say it from baseball.
Speaker: And Sullivan nods a whole new ball game.
Speaker: It's kind of chung chung.
Speaker: But it very, I mean, that's like from beginning to end.
Speaker: That is a very law and order kind of set a dialogue.
Speaker: In the rapture criminal justice system, there is one branch order.
Speaker: That's all.
Speaker: These are their stories.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: Do, do, do, do, do.
Speaker: Kevin, do you know what's been missing from my life in the past episode or two?
Speaker: Some some Dick Wolf.
Speaker: Well, in a manner of speaking, yes.
Speaker: Oh, OK.
Speaker: A new another super gay musical with Sander Cohen.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: We haven't had one of those in a while, have we?
Speaker: We haven't.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Thankfully, we're about to go to one.
Speaker: Thankfully, we are about to go to one.
Speaker: And this is a is this the one that's a co-production with Steinman?
Speaker: Oh, yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Plastic surgeon clearly has some tendencies to make art.
Speaker: It is a super gay musical clearly dedicated to Slanesh.
Speaker: Uh, it is a Fontaine.
Speaker: He's going to the show because you get the impression there really isn't a whole lot of entertainment down there.
Speaker: Like, cause they're all about making their own everything, which I respect on a certain level.
Speaker: Um, but they've only got the one dude.
Speaker: And so Fontaine who has no interest in Sandra Cohen doesn't like his shows has never liked his shows.
Speaker: but it's something to do.
Speaker: It's the only thing to do.
Speaker: So he's there.
Speaker: So, uh, he, he goes to see the show and, uh, it's just, it's wow.
Speaker: Yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker: He ends up, he uses the opportunity of the show happening on stage to basically flirt with Diane McClintock.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Who is Andrew Ryan's number one gal.
Speaker: His number one gal.
Speaker: And Diane basically is like, yeah, I breed dick.
Speaker: Right, yeah.
Speaker: When he insinuates that she's dumb or something like that.
Speaker: Yeah, he knips her a little bit.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: He's doing the Dennis.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like, oh, really?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But he effectively flirts with her.
Speaker: Basically, you know, tells her he's like, well, if Ryan never shows up, she's waiting on him.
Speaker: You know, if he never shows up, I'd love to be your
Speaker: your arm candy for the evening, if you will.
Speaker: And, uh, then Ryan does show up, but it's after the place.
Speaker: It's after the play is the play is done.
Speaker: And the play actually gave, uh, Fontaine an idea.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He got an idea from, um, from this, this little play that Dr. Steinman and Sander Cohen put on.
Speaker: And, um,
Speaker: It's it goes rapture is the hope of the world.
Speaker: It declared over a picture of Andrew Ryan holding the world on his shoulder.
Speaker: Andrew Ryan as Atlas.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Looking to see that no one was watching Frank Fontaine tore the poster down.
Speaker: Now that that is foreshadowing.
Speaker: Hey there Frankie foreshadowing.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: So we get his interest in that.
Speaker: What is he talking about?
Speaker: Well we're going to find out.
Speaker: We're going to find out soon enough.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, after that, we get a real quick section where it's bill recording his thoughts on rapture and it's downfall, like basically, and the, and, and, uh, also thinking to himself, gee, it might be the dumbest thing in the world that I am making physical evidence of the fact that I don't 100% believe in Ryan's vision.
Speaker: That might be an issue.
Speaker: Maybe an issue at some point might be.
Speaker: So that's that's that cuts to a special meeting of the council because there's been some murders, some murders going on.
Speaker: And here's the thing is that it doesn't it doesn't become an emergency meeting for murders until it's in the upper atrium, which is where there are the rich folk.
Speaker: Yeah, they don't care about the murders anywhere else, but they happen to they've started to bleed, no pun intended, into where the the rich folk where the money is.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So there's there's only six people had shown up this time.
Speaker: They were gathered around the Oval Conference table in their ornate gold trimmed little room near the top of the highest air scraper in Rapture.
Speaker: anna bill sullivan anton kincaid ryan rizzo and grievy grievy normally would have been there except he got very killed by a screwdriver he was uh he's suffering from a slight case of murder
Speaker: Yeah, he is.
Speaker: He is.
Speaker: He's he's he's out to lunch.
Speaker: So they've also they also have some.
Speaker: So they basically they're discussing these plasmids and Ryan's great solution is that he's going to get into the plasmid business.
Speaker: He says he's going to make better plasmid.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The solution is simple.
Speaker: Ryan Enterprise is now in the plasma business.
Speaker: A better product will draw people in and they'll buy one that doesn't affect their minds.
Speaker: He glanced at Bill, thinking he looked weary and troubled.
Speaker: What do you think, Bill?
Speaker: And Bill says...
Speaker: Seriously?
Speaker: It's kind of amazing.
Speaker: Like, really?
Speaker: Is that the plan?
Speaker: That's your plan?
Speaker: His plan is instead of banning something or outlawing something, which is not allowed, unequivocably not allowed.
Speaker: He is not going to ban it because that's a law and you just got to make better stuff, higher quality stuff, and people will buy that instead.
Speaker: And that's why McDonald's has been out of business for about 50, 60 years.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Because people, when better quality is offered to them, they will always go with better quality.
Speaker: They pass by McDonald's and they pull into Ruth's Chris.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: Every day at lunch.
Speaker: Every day at lunch.
Speaker: Every day.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's just better.
Speaker: And it's funny is Bill, because, you know, the Darwinism is often brought up, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And Bill is like, because Kincaid is talking about how
Speaker: Like, oh, well, clearly these sea slugs are just awakening like a mutation that happened in humanity's past.
Speaker: It's not like it's giving them humanity new abilities.
Speaker: And Bill responds, it's a bit dodgy of an omen that, isn't it, Kincaid?
Speaker: I mean, if these mutations existed in the past and they didn't make it, didn't work out then, might not work out for Rapture then.
Speaker: And then Kincaid's like, well, there's something to that.
Speaker: Like...
Speaker: They don't exist anymore because they kind of Darwin out like, right?
Speaker: It's like they weren't.
Speaker: They're not good.
Speaker: Like, I can't believe I'm a plumber.
Speaker: How do how am I the person to think of this?
Speaker: My God.
Speaker: But they kind of just breeze past and Kinkade move on fast because there's money to be made.
Speaker: The next line is, but Ryan's right.
Speaker: And the next thing that they need to do is they start planning out a raid on Fontaine.
Speaker: They basically believe they have enough evidence to suggest that Fontaine is indeed the one who is smuggling everything, the forbidden Bibles, the...
Speaker: the products, the services, all that good shit that they believe they have enough evidence to prove that it is Fontaine doing this.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: So we end that section.
Speaker: And also that Fontaine and Souchong are using pheromones potentially to control the splicers.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: They do.
Speaker: Which is interesting.
Speaker: An interesting theory.
Speaker: We the next section is probably the most.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I guess.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm trying to think of what movie I'm thinking.
Speaker: This kind of reminds me of.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It is the most drug addled.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Section of the book.
Speaker: This is.
Speaker: This is to me what your mom was.
Speaker: this is basically like a chapter or a chapter section of the book that illustrates everything that your mom assumed would happen to you.
Speaker: If you ever took hallucinogenic drugs.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Uh, it makes me think a little bit of the, uh,
Speaker: origin story of, uh, Oh, what's his name?
Speaker: He was in Hannah in Hannibal, Hannibal Lecter's friend is who he, uh, the rich kid that he got him really, really high and talking, chopping his face off.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, uh, it's like, uh, burger, uh, or, or something like that.
Speaker: Something like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It made me think of that.
Speaker: Uh, this, this scene is not for the squeamish.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: It starts backstage after the Sander Cohen musical and Mason, Mason, Verger, Mason, Verger.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: That is it.
Speaker: That is it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We, we start with Sander Cohen and one of his little boy toys.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And, and they're going to do some Adam and it's the first time that the boy toy in question has ever done Adam.
Speaker: But they've basically done every other drug known to man, so he's not thrilled about the notion.
Speaker: He's also kind of nervous, though, because Sander, as he says, always took everything to crazy extremes.
Speaker: After that last little drunken trip into Arcadia, dancing naked with the Sauternines, forcing a teenage boy to have sex with an octopus, they were all lucky to not be in the rapture detention cells.
Speaker: They'd gotten out one step ahead of the constables.
Speaker: So, you know, as we talked about before, it's problematic that Sander Cohen is one of our only queer-coded characters, and he is...
Speaker: but he's more than just queer.
Speaker: This is not being queer.
Speaker: This is, this is a level of libertine extremism.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: As I said, he's clearly a cultist to slash.
Speaker: He is.
Speaker: He is like, like Dionysus is like, bro,
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I need you to take a step back.
Speaker: But it also does lead to our first ever first person view of what it's like to take Adam.
Speaker: Yeah, because basically the guy disassociates.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: He thinks that he's in a movie.
Speaker: He thinks he's in it, but he also thinks he's watching it.
Speaker: Yeah, it's weird.
Speaker: It's a weird, it's a weird chapter of like disassociated violence where Sander Cohen, he basically, Sander Cohen has this triptych of, of victims and he tortures,
Speaker: all of them to death, basically.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And the guy is like freezing them, but he's not.
Speaker: He thinks he's watching himself freeze them and that it's a movie, but he's actually doing it.
Speaker: And it's just like it is really grotesque what Sander does to each person.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And then he freezes them and takes a photo of them at like their moment of death.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And it's only at the very end that this guy thinks that he realizes that there are people who are dying, that this isn't a movie.
Speaker: Um, it's a really, really grotesque scene.
Speaker: It's, uh, it's very effective, very well written, uh, a really, really honestly a real highlight of the chapter.
Speaker: Really horrific.
Speaker: It's, it's so horrific and it's, um,
Speaker: Yeah, it's a tough read, honestly.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It absolutely is.
Speaker: The last line, basically, Martin found he was drawn to Nod, that his hands went easily to him.
Speaker: He was a very pretty young man after all.
Speaker: Cohen took out an elegant little straight razor.
Speaker: And it just kind of like trails off.
Speaker: And that's the end of the scene.
Speaker: It's like, it's basically like,
Speaker: You know, you don't need to know any more of what's going.
Speaker: It's like and it continues.
Speaker: Yeah, I think we all know what's happening next.
Speaker: Yeah, it's yeah, it's a it's a it's a it's it's awful.
Speaker: It is strained at times.
Speaker: It is the most.
Speaker: It is basically, I would say it's like a torture porn scene.
Speaker: Very much so.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: It's it's it's kind of it's kind of in the genre of like hostile or, you know, something like that, where it's like these people are just being straight up tortured by by Sander and his and Martin.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And Martin is just this boy toy kind of guy who.
Speaker: You know, he's a he's a himbo that was just there for for some fun and is now complicit in torturing and murdering three people that at some point displeased Sander in some minute way.
Speaker: That's the thing.
Speaker: And they make it clear these aren't these aren't random victims he's picked up.
Speaker: These are like one of them is an assistant of Sanders, and they're all people who have displeased him.
Speaker: So it's like he is meeting out
Speaker: punishment as if he were God.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's yeah.
Speaker: So it's not just random violence.
Speaker: It's vengeance in his eyes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And speaking of well-adjusted individuals.
Speaker: Speaking of well-adjusted people, J.S.
Speaker: Steinman.
Speaker: We get back to Steinman.
Speaker: He's experimenting on somebody.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: That person is dead now, but was possibly alive when he started.
Speaker: I think they were alive when he started.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, it says someone's ringing his doorbell.
Speaker: And it says, damn them, why won't they leave genius to be genius?
Speaker: Steinman muttered, hanging the detached face, complete with her nose and eyebrows over the lamp beside the operating table.
Speaker: And they let you know this.
Speaker: He's been he's basically been paying for splicers.
Speaker: uh, that he can experiment.
Speaker: This guy is, is Ed, Ed Gein, you know, very much, very much Ed Gein, even though Ed Gein only maybe killed like two people, like in terms of the experimentation with slicing things up, that's, that's very, it definitely brings that to mind where Sandra Cohen, we've got kind of more of a Ted Bundy,
Speaker: Jeffrey Dahmer kind of thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Definitely Jeffrey Dahmer rather.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So he, this is actually kind of a funny scene.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Cause Fontaine is like Fontaine is like there and he was like, I want plastic surgery, but none of your fucked up kinds.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: He knows exactly what he's doing.
Speaker: He knows.
Speaker: Well, first off, first off Steinman goes out there and it's Fontaine and his posse and, and, and Steinman's like what?
Speaker: And they're all staring at him because he's covered in blood.
Speaker: He's completely, cause he's just, he is losing it.
Speaker: He is like, he does not know what's right and wrong anymore.
Speaker: And he goes, and he kind of like goes, Oh, right.
Speaker: I'm working on something.
Speaker: And they're like, sure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then Fontaine's it's Fontaine tells him he wants plastic surgery.
Speaker: Basically he wants to switch bases with one of his crew base off.
Speaker: He wants to reenact that.
Speaker: and and dance around in a priest's costume and grab some chorus girls.
Speaker: But yeah, that's all I remember.
Speaker: But yeah, he makes a point to be like, I know what you fucking do.
Speaker: I'll give you all the Adam you want, but you're getting it afterwards because I don't want you to go fucking rogue on me when you're high.
Speaker: You're going to you're going to be sober when you do my surgery.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's just so funny.
Speaker: It's like Fontaine is so he he wants something and he's going to get it.
Speaker: God damn it.
Speaker: But he's all.
Speaker: But it's like he's still willing to let this guy cut him up.
Speaker: Like, I'd be like, well, I guess I better come up with a better plan.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: If this is my only plastic surgeon.
Speaker: But so so he tells him that's the plan.
Speaker: And Simon agrees.
Speaker: He says, yeah, sure.
Speaker: We got a deal.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And if you mention it to anybody, you'll find yourself going head first out in airlock without a diving suit.
Speaker: That's the last thing Fontaine says to him.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And we know Fontaine will do it.
Speaker: He will do it.
Speaker: Like, that's not a, that's, he is, he is going to follow up.
Speaker: It's not an idle threat.
Speaker: That's, Fontaine only gives threat threats.
Speaker: No, he gives real threats, no matter what.
Speaker: And that brings us to chapter 14.
Speaker: Say what you will about, about Frank Fontaine, but at least it's an ethos.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Fontaine-ism.
Speaker: Fontaine-ism.
Speaker: So we are now with Bill Sullivan and a whole team of Ryan's thugs and they are getting armed and they are about to go raid Fontaine's smugglers.
Speaker: This is the, this is the arm up scene.
Speaker: You know, they're, you know, the guns are going,
Speaker: And they're like, right.
Speaker: You get the whole you get the close ups of all the wood grain on the stock from the rifle, whatever.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And they're getting all set up and they're heading on down to the wharf area where fucking Fontaine's got a submarine, which I don't know why I was surprised.
Speaker: Of course, if they've got a city under the sea, there's going to be submarines.
Speaker: You've got to have a submarine.
Speaker: But I was still kind of like fucking submarine.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: I was so digging it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And, and, and just as they are making their way down there, they see, they see Fontaine's man, Reggie down there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And just as they're about to make their way down to the docks to throw down the law, so to speak, the submarine just lurches out of there and basically kills a ton of people.
Speaker: kicking up all this ocean and drowning all of these guys or decks.
Speaker: Basically, the idea is they knew they were coming.
Speaker: Yeah, they knew they were coming.
Speaker: Somebody signals the submarine and there's a guy that they're trying to fish out of the water, Grogan, who...
Speaker: They hadn't mentioned before, but RIP Grogan.
Speaker: Rip Grogan.
Speaker: Poor Grogan.
Speaker: He's dead.
Speaker: RIP Josh Grogan.
Speaker: Josh Grogan.
Speaker: And Andrew Ryan is not happy.
Speaker: Oh, he is pissed.
Speaker: Because Frank Fontaine is there to see him.
Speaker: Yeah, we don't have to wait very long.
Speaker: It's kind of fucking great.
Speaker: The very next section, Ryan is just fuming, and then Fontaine just shows up.
Speaker: with his group and, uh, and they start negotiating.
Speaker: They're, they're starting to kind of negotiate smuggling plasmids, all that shit.
Speaker: Tains playing his cards very close to his vest.
Speaker: Uh, Ryan seems kind of frustrated because he's not play.
Speaker: I think Ryan thinks that like, they're going to play this game of gentlemen, businessmen or something.
Speaker: And that's not Fontaine's
Speaker: No, he's going to undercut him any way possible.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Even from like, so like Karlosky is there acting as Ryan's bodyguard.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But then like Fontaine rolls in with three people.
Speaker: Like.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: There's no winning in this scene.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: There's no winning.
Speaker: And so basically Fontaine lays it out for him and he's like, look, basically.
Speaker: You leave us the fuck alone and we'll leave you alone.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But, you know, there's a great section.
Speaker: It says Fontaine's smile went crooked on his face because Ryan mentions teleport to him.
Speaker: And he says, I'm finding teleport problematic to people who use it.
Speaker: Get extra crazy.
Speaker: They're giving me problems.
Speaker: I've got my own security issues, security issues.
Speaker: You act as if you have your own little fiefdom here in Rapture.
Speaker: If I do, you gave it to me, Ryan, by deceiving people about what they'd find in your pretty undersea utopia by not providing for them once they got here.
Speaker: And he has a point.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And also, it's you kind of want to shout at Ryan's like, yeah, he does have a fiefdom.
Speaker: Isn't that the idea?
Speaker: Isn't that that's the goal of rapture.
Speaker: That's the goal.
Speaker: I thought the whole goal was to let great men be great men.
Speaker: And therein lies the problem.
Speaker: Most people who think of this stuff when they when they think of great men, they're not thinking about like they're not really thinking, let the cream rise to the top.
Speaker: They're saying me, I'm going to win.
Speaker: I am the great man.
Speaker: I can rise to the top.
Speaker: And he thinks Andrew Ryan just thinks he is just going to coast to the top and things will be great.
Speaker: And Frank Fontaine is like, eh.
Speaker: But fuck you.
Speaker: And he's and he's and he's outplaying him in every possible way.
Speaker: Fontaine.
Speaker: Basically, the summary of this scene is Fontaine marches into his office with a show of strength.
Speaker: He's got three guys with him.
Speaker: He's got six more out in the hallway.
Speaker: And he said and he says to Ryan, if you back the fuck off, the only concession you'll get is that I stopped distributing teleport.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And that's it.
Speaker: Everything else continues as is.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm not.
Speaker: That's the only concession I'm offering you.
Speaker: Mostly and mostly because I don't like teleport either.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: So it's just a coincidence, really.
Speaker: And you get the distinct impression that he'd be like, you know what?
Speaker: If I knew that it would fuck up your little empire, I would risk keeping it out there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Even if it would fuck things up for me a little bit.
Speaker: If I knew it would crush you, I'd take that hit.
Speaker: So, it is a really nasty scene.
Speaker: When you have two big bads, who do you pull for?
Speaker: Who do you pull for?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: The answer is the one that actually seems to stick to his ethos, I think.
Speaker: Yeah, Fontaine is very clear cut in what he believes.
Speaker: Oh, absolutely.
Speaker: Um, that brings us to a quick, uh, section where we're back in detention and a guard has been killed with a message left behind.
Speaker: Basically a warning.
Speaker: The blood of the lamb will cleanse us all.
Speaker: Her time will come love to all.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, so the lamb stuff is starting to spread about getting a bit of an uprising there.
Speaker: And he goes, lamb.
Speaker: The confusing part was lamb.
Speaker: Sullivan muttered.
Speaker: Ryan could jail the woman, but she was still a thorn in his side.
Speaker: But isn't she already jailed in Persephone?
Speaker: Well, that's what I think he means.
Speaker: Like, he can jail her, but she's still a pain in the ass.
Speaker: Oh, gotcha.
Speaker: I think that's what he means.
Speaker: Gotcha.
Speaker: It's like it didn't matter that she's in jail.
Speaker: She's still doing her thing.
Speaker: She planted the seed in a lot of people's heads, including a lot of people who are still up there who are getting even more pissed off by the day.
Speaker: And so they're going to do a lot of fucked up shit in her name.
Speaker: And that's the way it rolls.
Speaker: That's the way it rolls.
Speaker: Meanwhile, Andrew Ryan is having some sexy time with Jasmine, his favorite stripper.
Speaker: His favorite stripper.
Speaker: Good for him.
Speaker: He's had a long day.
Speaker: He's had a long day.
Speaker: I'm sure she's had a long day.
Speaker: And basically he is just grumbling over Atlas.
Speaker: There is another organizer out there other than lamb going by the name of Atlas.
Speaker: I wonder who that is.
Speaker: I wonder.
Speaker: And we're hearing and we're hearing the catchphrase, if you will, the rumblings of who is Atlas?
Speaker: And which, of course, is a direct parallel to who is John Galt from Atlas Shrugged.
Speaker: So we have a usurper on the horizon here.
Speaker: And there's a weird little moment of Jasmine wanting to tell Ryan something.
Speaker: Um, and he like has to pull it out of her.
Speaker: And finally, when she, she basically, she says she, she wants him to do something about the sea slugs.
Speaker: They're like all cross her window.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She's got a window.
Speaker: Uh, and, uh, and the, the divers in their suits, she says they scare her.
Speaker: They just look like a bunch of big daddies out there.
Speaker: Scary old big daddies.
Speaker: I call them.
Speaker: There's something else you wanted to tell me.
Speaker: She closed her eyes, pursed her lips, shook her head.
Speaker: He could see she'd made up her mind not to tell.
Speaker: And it's clearly that she's pregnant.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Cause there's a line of, uh, he turned to see Jasmine looking rather more full figured than usual in a pink.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's, that's a, that's a dead giveaway right there.
Speaker: She's also like, I'm trying, I gotta tell you something.
Speaker: And then she's like, uh, the slugs on my window.
Speaker: I don't like them.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I don't like the guys that clean them.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I don't have anything else to say.
Speaker: I literally have nothing else to say.
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: So, yeah, so we've got some growth on the horizon.
Speaker: Eh?
Speaker: Eh.
Speaker: Anyway, that ends part two.
Speaker: That ends part two.
Speaker: And so we got, like, maybe a fifth of the book left.
Speaker: Yeah, I think we've got one more episode.
Speaker: One more episode should wrap it up, because I think part three is a shortened.
Speaker: Yeah, part three is, well, about 100 pages, a little over 100 pages.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I have a feeling things are going to come to a head.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So we got some interesting stuff ahead of us.
Speaker: That's for damn sure.
Speaker: We do have some interesting stuff ahead of us.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: So how are you feeling?
Speaker: How are you feeling?
Speaker: I like it still.
Speaker: I still really like it.
Speaker: I think it has some some glaring issues that are probably more related to the fact that it had to be based on Bioshock.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: itself yeah like the the depiction of sander cohen um you know some of the the way it does the winks and the nods but overall i still really like it yeah yeah same i i think those are my main issues um and yeah and the and the references to the game uh the little yeah it that's
Speaker: It's just it gets there.
Speaker: You get a little stumbly.
Speaker: It's a little sloppy.
Speaker: You know what I do?
Speaker: I really like.
Speaker: So and I hate to keep comparing it to like Dead Space Martyr, but we just read it and it's still fresh in my mind.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Is that so when we get the twins, the little sisters that are like, that's the whole setup.
Speaker: I feel like in Dead Space Martyr, the way that scene would have played out is we would have had one of the characters recapping that kind of awkwardly and surely.
Speaker: Telling us.
Speaker: These two splicers killed each other.
Speaker: Two people got killed and these are their kids.
Speaker: They left behind a couple of twins.
Speaker: It was terrible.
Speaker: But instead, we get it from like, oh, let's do it
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: In the moment.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Let's actually show the heartbreak.
Speaker: It's so much more effective and it sticks with you.
Speaker: It sticks with you because it's a book and you have time to do that.
Speaker: And for as long as Dead Space Martyr was in terms of number of pages, it's amazing how much time it wasted.
Speaker: It's true.
Speaker: There is very little time wasted here.
Speaker: There is no padding.
Speaker: I haven't there has not been a section in the book that felt padded to me.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's all as we talked about last episode.
Speaker: We're either.
Speaker: pushing the plot forward or we are establishing the world or we are establishing character development or a piece of the world that is going to mean something in the grand scheme of things.
Speaker: It doesn't feel padded.
Speaker: It doesn't feel that we certainly haven't had 19 different scenes where people explain the same shit that happened over and over and over again.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I think I think there's and I think it's right to compare this to Dead Space Martyr because of if only because they're both not similar stories, but
Speaker: there's a similar feel to them.
Speaker: The science fiction.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's, it's that sci-fi horror.
Speaker: And I would say the world going to hell kind of world going to hell, you know, apocalyptic ish, right.
Speaker: Tense of, of bad futures, right.
Speaker: Yeah, that kind of stuff.
Speaker: They all have.
Speaker: I mean, obviously, the balance of those genres is different, different between the two of them.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You were like putting them on sliders.
Speaker: I would say it's like this one 70 percent to 30 percent, whatever.
Speaker: They still have some cool some elements.
Speaker: They're still the ingredients are the same are similar.
Speaker: It's like a burrito versus a taco.
Speaker: You know, right.
Speaker: There's a lot of similarities, but people are going to prefer one over the other.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Yeah, this is definitely the writing is so solid.
Speaker: This guy is...
Speaker: He was absolutely the right person to do the job here.
Speaker: I agree.
Speaker: I agree.
Speaker: John Shirley.
Speaker: Good stuff.
Speaker: So that'll do it for today's episode.
Speaker: If you enjoy what we do, please rate us five stars on Apple and follow us.
Speaker: on Spotify or whatever podcast catcher that you prefer to use.
Speaker: It really helps when you follow us, really helps when you share our stuff, tell a friend about us.
Speaker: And please follow us on Twitter at PixelitPod.
Speaker: You can check out our website at PixelitPod.com.
Speaker: And we have Instagram PixelitPod.
Speaker: It's all good.
Speaker: Go check it out.
Speaker: Fun times.
Speaker: And that'll about do it.
Speaker: Have a good night, everybody.
Speaker: Good night.
