Transcript
Speaker: But it's a top-ranked review.
Speaker: 41 people liked that review.
Speaker: 41 people liked that review.
Speaker: And hey, you know what else 41 people like?
Speaker: What's that?
Speaker: Hey there, everybody.
Speaker: Welcome back to Pixel It.
Speaker: My name is Kevin.
Speaker: With me, as always, is Phil on today's show.
Speaker: We're finishing off Minecraft the Island by Max Brooks.
Speaker: It's not good.
Speaker: And thanks guys very much.
Speaker: And Kevin, I got one question for you.
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: Hey, you don't need to hear that.
Speaker: You don't need any of that.
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: It's a new era of Pixlr.
Speaker: We're going for efficiency.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We are.
Speaker: We've come a long way.
Speaker: Yeah, I took a six sigma course on podcasting.
Speaker: We've come a long way from five episodes of the very first Resident Evil book because we could not keep focus to skipping straight ahead to the What Are You Playing segment.
Speaker: Yeah, we're just going to say book good or book bad.
Speaker: And then what are you playing?
Speaker: It's what the TikTok generation craves.
Speaker: It's what they crave.
Speaker: They crave TikTok and they crave Brondo, which I realize.
Speaker: I mean, and I realize the TikTok generation doesn't even know, I guess, know Brondo or only views idiocracy as problematic.
Speaker: Is that so?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Well, there's a year it's like, ah, it's promoting eugenics because it's about classist and eugenics.
Speaker: And it's like, ah, it's taking psychic damage from people complaining too much about a movie called Idiocracy.
Speaker: Yeah, we can.
Speaker: There are things that we should talk about and we should discuss and there are things that we can.
Speaker: It's probably fine.
Speaker: And we probably shouldn't.
Speaker: It's probably fine.
Speaker: Mike Judge movie.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm not sure we really need to go in hard on the Mike Judge movie.
Speaker: Everyone's looking to get their.
Speaker: What do you call it?
Speaker: Their.
Speaker: Beauty and the Beast is Stockholm Syndrome moment.
Speaker: Everyone's trying to get their version of that hot take.
Speaker: They're looking for the H-Bomber guy take on Fallout 3.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just, just that everyone wants to have that.
Speaker: And, and, and I, and I understand if it comes naturally and you gotta, and you gotta, you got an interesting thought on things.
Speaker: Uh, okie dokie.
Speaker: Uh, but, uh, but, uh, I don't think we need to force it.
Speaker: It's like a lot of things.
Speaker: If you force it, it's just gonna hurt.
Speaker: If you force it, it's just gonna hurt.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Relax.
Speaker: Relax.
Speaker: When you want to come.
Speaker: Relax.
Speaker: Don't do it when you want to go through it.
Speaker: Relax.
Speaker: Do it when you want to come.
Speaker: Speaking of 80 songs, we got an 80s song referenced in the book section.
Speaker: We did.
Speaker: We did.
Speaker: A very good one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I was like, you know, talking heads, baby.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Pretty interesting choice.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, I thought he could have gone with life during wartime.
Speaker: I think that would have been.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Or a little.
Speaker: They might be giants.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just things interesting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But before we get into any of that nonsense, I
Speaker: We wanna talk about something that is near and dear to our hearts.
Speaker: Oh yes.
Speaker: Which is a website called patreon.com slash pixelitpod where you can go to, you could follow us for free.
Speaker: You can pledge a dollar to us.
Speaker: You could pledge $5 to us.
Speaker: You could pledge $10 to us.
Speaker: Free, hey, if you follow us for free, you get to see the early access, the episodes early access when I post them to Patreon.
Speaker: Hell yeah.
Speaker: If you pay a little dollar, one dollar, you get to read Phil's blog where he talks about a book that he sometimes likes and sometimes doesn't like.
Speaker: Every week, there will be a book or a novella.
Speaker: Phil reads a lot of things.
Speaker: Much to the chagrin of his wife, he's got too many books.
Speaker: I have way too many books.
Speaker: Phil's got too many books.
Speaker: So give us money so he can get more books.
Speaker: And then $5 gets you the ad free version of the episode.
Speaker: Plus the pre-show bonus that we record before the show every week where Phil and I shoot the shit about the things that are happening in our life.
Speaker: In this special pre-show, you got to hear Phil and his lovely wife, Emily, argue about the Roku for a few moments.
Speaker: So that was, that was good.
Speaker: It was all love.
Speaker: It was all love and all fun.
Speaker: It was a play.
Speaker: It was a play argument.
Speaker: It's very much.
Speaker: It was a play.
Speaker: It's a who's afraid of Virginia Woolf.
Speaker: Who's afraid of the Roku wireless headset settings?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Not I. Not I. Not me.
Speaker: And finally, if you throw us $10, you get your name read out during the episode.
Speaker: So Ruthless Mudder, Kyle Seaman, Jesus Loves You, and Friendly Friend, thank you so much for pledging at the $10 level.
Speaker: It's amazing that you did that for us.
Speaker: And we thank you so much.
Speaker: Thank you for being a friend.
Speaker: So you want to do this book or what?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Yeah, let's let's wrap this thing up.
Speaker: Body, body in the marsh.
Speaker: Marsh.
Speaker: This was the scene yesterday when Delahunt's body was found in the marshes near the Fenway.
Speaker: We're going to start at chapter 15.
Speaker: We did chapter 14 last week, chapter 15 this week.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Our boy figures out the water cools lava and leaves something called Blackstone as a result.
Speaker: And that Blackstone transmits heat, which he discovers when he puts a crafting table down on the Blackstone and it catches on fire.
Speaker: And then he finds gold and diamonds and he makes a diamond sword, which he calls flashy or something like that.
Speaker: I didn't even write it down, but it's something like flashy.
Speaker: Something along those lines.
Speaker: So he goes back down into the mines and he runs into a witch, which who's a person who looks it looks like a person, but it's not a person.
Speaker: He walks up to the person like, hey, you're a person.
Speaker: And that person throws glass vials of poison at him.
Speaker: And he runs away and the witch laughs at him and he barely makes it to the surface.
Speaker: And he learns the lesson that just because they look like me doesn't mean they're friendly.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's actually very good advice.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: That's very good advice.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: That's good advice for most white people regarding other white people.
Speaker: You know, you really have to break it down like that.
Speaker: It's important.
Speaker: It's important.
Speaker: He also realizes that getting too excited about gold with nowhere to spend it is dumb.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's like, oh, I'm in the money.
Speaker: I'm rich.
Speaker: And then it's rich with what?
Speaker: You're rich with gold, which is just as valuable as any other resource.
Speaker: It's true.
Speaker: Because what?
Speaker: Say it with us, people.
Speaker: Money isn't real.
Speaker: It isn't real.
Speaker: Gold is a tangible object, but its value is what we assign the value to it.
Speaker: We still just like it because it's shiny, people.
Speaker: And diamonds, don't get me started on diamonds.
Speaker: You know whose fault the diamonds are?
Speaker: It's Ronald Reagan.
Speaker: Actually, I don't know enough about diamonds.
Speaker: But it is De Beers.
Speaker: We know that De Beers.
Speaker: Well, we know it's De Beers, yeah.
Speaker: We know it's white people.
Speaker: Well, that too.
Speaker: Yeah, that one's pretty obvious.
Speaker: So, you know, white people, Ronald Reagan.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, that's, yeah, that all holds.
Speaker: That holds up.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That holds what?
Speaker: That does the defense's case hold water?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: So then he makes a cake when he realizes he has the ingredients for a cake.
Speaker: And as he eats the cake, he's like, oh, man, you know, it would have been great, though, is apples.
Speaker: But too bad I burned all these apple saplings.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Earlier in the book, we finally get payoff on the saplings.
Speaker: He gets into some serious moments in this last third of the book of realizing that he has basically committed genocide on several species within that island.
Speaker: And it bums him out correctly.
Speaker: So I'd say, yeah, it bums him out a bit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, you know, he burned all the...
Speaker: He burned all the saplings and he realizes his takeaway is we gotta take care of the environment so it takes care of us.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Which, also good advice.
Speaker: Chapter 16, very action-oriented chapter, chapter 16.
Speaker: Steve, actually, no, this is not it.
Speaker: This is a very boring chapter.
Speaker: Steve spends time.
Speaker: Wait, hold on, the opposite.
Speaker: Oh, the opposite, sorry.
Speaker: And look who we got.
Speaker: Hi, everyone.
Speaker: It's Camilla.
Speaker: Hello.
Speaker: She sounded she sounded like a Minecraft character there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That was spooky.
Speaker: It was spooky.
Speaker: Spooky.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Happy birthday, Camilla.
Speaker: Phil says happy birthday.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Get out of here.
Speaker: Get out of here.
Speaker: Now get a scram, kid.
Speaker: You bother me.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So chapter 16, Steve spends the chapter building a very elaborate house.
Speaker: Very, very, we get to the last detail, how it's built.
Speaker: He also- Sure glad that he did that.
Speaker: Sure glad that he did that.
Speaker: He also slaughters all the chickens.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: After overbreeding them for weeks.
Speaker: And he keeps the meat and he's like, I will never raise my hand against another life that doesn't threaten mine.
Speaker: So, oh, now you've made that decision.
Speaker: Good, good.
Speaker: That's after you just let the chickens out, you know, you didn't have to slaughter all of them after after the chicken apocalypse.
Speaker: That's what he that's when he made the decision.
Speaker: That's when he makes the decision when there's three baby chicks looking up at him.
Speaker: And he's like, get on, get out of here.
Speaker: He kills like 30 some chickens.
Speaker: It takes 30 chickens for him to get there.
Speaker: That is.
Speaker: That's the average amount, I think, for it to get you there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That makes sense.
Speaker: You've killed a turkey before, haven't you?
Speaker: And chickens.
Speaker: And chickens, Sam.
Speaker: And chickens.
Speaker: I've still, I've got shoes that have little stains on them from turkey blood.
Speaker: And it's not obvious what it is, but I like knowing that and being spooky that way.
Speaker: It's pretty cool.
Speaker: But yeah, it's a necessary thing and I did it.
Speaker: You did it.
Speaker: And this was at your sister's farm, correct?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They process them every three months, four months, something like that.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: How many?
Speaker: Like all the adults?
Speaker: Well, it's the birds that they've raised specifically for meat, and also they'll throw in any non-laying adults that are just past their prime anyway.
Speaker: And those are stew birds.
Speaker: Their meat's really tough.
Speaker: But, yeah, they, I guess...
Speaker: 20, 25, give or take.
Speaker: Every three months.
Speaker: Give or take.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And they, I mean, they, and they work with other homesteaders and farmers around the area to like, they do trade and purchase meat from them and stuff.
Speaker: And they've gotten to a point where they're like,
Speaker: I want to say like 60 percent self-sufficient.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Which is crazy.
Speaker: They're there.
Speaker: They're you know, they got they basically all of their own produce and and stuff like that.
Speaker: And they've got more eggs than they know what to do with.
Speaker: And now it's really cool.
Speaker: It's like it's the goal.
Speaker: That's that's where I want to go with.
Speaker: Yeah, actually.
Speaker: No, I get it.
Speaker: Meanwhile, I have more Capri Sun than I do with.
Speaker: Well, all you need to do is get a Capri Sun plant.
Speaker: And I believe it's a bush.
Speaker: Yeah, it is.
Speaker: It is a bush.
Speaker: It's technically a berry.
Speaker: Capri Suns are the Capri Sun.
Speaker: When you pick it, it's a juice box, but then it continues to ripen a little bit off the vine.
Speaker: And the skin gets soft and kind of shiny.
Speaker: At that point, your Capri Sun is ripe and you can and you can straw it.
Speaker: You can straw it much like a coconut straw.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: A little easier.
Speaker: It screams a little bit, but it's blood is delicious.
Speaker: It's worth it.
Speaker: It's worth it.
Speaker: It's worth all the damage, the psychic damage you take.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Not even going to explain why I have too many Capri Sun.
Speaker: I'm just going to keep going.
Speaker: That's fine.
Speaker: That's fine.
Speaker: That's fine.
Speaker: So chapter 17, a creeper gets into Steve's house and explodes.
Speaker: I forgot to mention in chapter 16, the house has a lot of lava pipes everywhere.
Speaker: So we're back in chapter 17, a creeper explodes breaking the lava pipes and it caused this lava to pour out into the fields where all of Steve's animal buddies are and the animals are too dumb to not step in lava.
Speaker: So he is trying to build ditches and pour water on the lava to get it to stop and he has to punch cow in the face.
Speaker: He sure does.
Speaker: And one of the chickens, one of the few remaining chickens just walks right in the lava and gets turned into chicken tendies.
Speaker: And it's a mess.
Speaker: But he learns a lot about why you shouldn't anthropomorphize your livestock.
Speaker: Correct.
Speaker: Because they are stupid.
Speaker: They are stupid.
Speaker: They will roast themselves given the chance.
Speaker: Chicken will, if you actually give a chicken a spit, they will impale themselves on it and manage to get themselves over a fire without you doing anything.
Speaker: That's the thing about chickens.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Is that they will spit roast themselves and
Speaker: You give a man a spit.
Speaker: You teach him to, he's fed for a day, but you teach his chickens, you give his chickens the spit and that man has roasted chickens for life.
Speaker: When you spit on his chickens.
Speaker: When you spit on his chickens.
Speaker: He lives.
Speaker: He lives.
Speaker: He lives.
Speaker: And the horse drinks water.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But never after the cow.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Never after the cow.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Anyway, that all sounds correct.
Speaker: It's it's one of the more exciting chapters, but also I don't feel like getting into it that much because it literally all that I said is is what happens.
Speaker: His house that he spent weeks building is absolutely destroyed and he realizes that failure isn't what matters, but it's how you recover from it.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Chapter 18, Steve adds perseverance to his The Way.
Speaker: And he rebuilds his house, but completely differently.
Speaker: And it's the one that the reader of the book would see on the island if the reader went to the island right now.
Speaker: I am not on the island.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: They describe it a little bit, but, you know, whatever.
Speaker: Is this the first time he starts talking about that, about like if someone were to come to the island, they'd find this?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's the first time I noticed it.
Speaker: Yes, he's it's the first time they're very I think at the beginning there's a reference as to why he's writing the book is for the next person who finds the island.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But this is the first time where he says, if you're reading this, you see the house looks like this.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: OK.
Speaker: OK.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He figures out how to make paintings.
Speaker: And one of the paintings looks like King's King Graham from King's Quest, which, hey, throw it.
Speaker: Max Brooks, throwing you a bone here.
Speaker: You know, I feel like that was I feel like he did that specifically for me.
Speaker: And I was just like, OK, excuse me.
Speaker: It's a set's not enough.
Speaker: That's I appreciate.
Speaker: Don't you condescend to me.
Speaker: He's one of my favorite video game characters.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: But that's true.
Speaker: Don't condescend to me, Max Brooks.
Speaker: Don't talk down to me, Max Brooks.
Speaker: I know what I'm doing.
Speaker: Then he starts remembering the song once in a lifetime by Talking Heads.
Speaker: As the days go by, water flowing under...
Speaker: And he starts considering the questions of who he is, where has he come from, why is he here?
Speaker: And he's like, ah, forget it.
Speaker: He starts remembering that that was something that concerned him at any given point.
Speaker: At one point it concerned him and it's concerning him again.
Speaker: Ah, forget it.
Speaker: He's going to go take a dip in the hot tub and he's sitting in the hot tub and he's like, ah, I'm still thinking about these damn questions.
Speaker: And then instead of considering the questions even further, he notices that he doesn't have enough torches to
Speaker: set out at the house to keep the mobs away.
Speaker: So he's got to deal with that right now.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: He gets back to mining and he finds a mineshaft, which was clearly made by someone else, which throws him for a bit of a loop and he begins to explore it.
Speaker: And he encounters some skeletons down below and he finds some armor for an animal, but it's not necessarily any animal that he's seen before.
Speaker: And it doesn't fit any of the animals that he knows.
Speaker: And that is chapter 18.
Speaker: So what a what a riveting chapter.
Speaker: It's a riveting chapter.
Speaker: So riveting.
Speaker: We are going to use it to pivot into products and services.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: Hooray.
Speaker: For this podcast.
Speaker: Yay, we have those now.
Speaker: We have those now.
Speaker: We've been getting those.
Speaker: I believe it's like a we've been getting a D&D podcast advertising on us.
Speaker: And I've been I've been pretty impressed with the with the the appropriateness of.
Speaker: Yes, the appropriate of said ads like that.
Speaker: It's like, OK, you know what?
Speaker: People who listen to our show would appreciate something like that.
Speaker: They would.
Speaker: Maybe.
Speaker: Possibly.
Speaker: You know, if you hear something that sounds weird, let us know and we'll take a listen to it and do something about it.
Speaker: Anyway, ad break.
Speaker: we're back and it's uh chapter 19 back down in the mines again steve finds some seeds and he goes back up top and he plants them and he finds that one of them is a watermelon seed and oh he loves that watermelon oh yeah he thoroughly enjoys that watermelon crunchy delicious sweet watermelon sweet crunchy delicious watermelon umph he
Speaker: Goes down in the mine again, but he's attacked by a group of skeletons and then ends up trapped in a room with them and the skeleton spawner.
Speaker: So he learns about spawners.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: After getting out of that predicament, he continues on and he finds some books and records and then keeps going.
Speaker: And he sees an Enderman, which he's like, maybe I should talk to this Enderman.
Speaker: Which was not my instinct when I first saw one of those.
Speaker: No, because the Enderman looks like and is named after the online cryptid horror character Slenderman.
Speaker: And he's plenty spooky.
Speaker: He's plenty spooky.
Speaker: I wouldn't have thought to go chat with him, is my point.
Speaker: So Enderman, he finds out, are actually neutral.
Speaker: If you don't attack them, they won't attack you.
Speaker: But...
Speaker: They do not like...
Speaker: when people make eye contact with them, just like don't look them in the eyes.
Speaker: Who does really?
Speaker: The Enderman just beats the absolute shit out of Steve.
Speaker: Just, just, you know, does not, he does not hold back and Steve has to book it back to the surface and he talks to Moo or cow or is the cow named Moo or is the Moo?
Speaker: Moo.
Speaker: Cow named Moo.
Speaker: Yeah, that's fine.
Speaker: A boy named Sue.
Speaker: A boy named cow.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so he talks about the Enderman and how there's so much in the information in the world for the world kept in books and that books really expand your knowledge and your world.
Speaker: And books are great.
Speaker: Books.
Speaker: Books, ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker: Books.
Speaker: Reading Rainbow.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean.
Speaker: It's like LeVar Burton made an appearance suddenly.
Speaker: It's weird.
Speaker: It's weird.
Speaker: But you don't have to take my word for it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it makes offhanded references to like, and there are people out there who are so afraid of what's inside of books that sometimes they ignore those books or burn them.
Speaker: And you're like, oh, oh, okay.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: He gets really into like,
Speaker: Hey, kids, if anybody tells you to burn a book, don't, because those are the bad guys, which is true.
Speaker: But at the same time, it comes out of nowhere.
Speaker: And you're like, what?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like Maxie.
Speaker: It's like Max Brooks just starts.
Speaker: It's like the text translates into Max Brooks's handwriting at that point.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Listen, kids.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's just like, this is your Uncle Max telling you the truth.
Speaker: This is what... This is your Uncle Max telling you the truth about books and why the written word must be respected.
Speaker: It's just so wild.
Speaker: And those on the far right, not even far right at this point, just the right, are going to demonize the written word and they're going to tell you to burn them, kids.
Speaker: And don't listen to them.
Speaker: Don't do it, kids.
Speaker: Don't listen to them.
Speaker: Don't listen to them.
Speaker: If you're a moderate example is is this guy named Ron DeSantis down in Florida.
Speaker: He's been banning books, banning books from libraries, from schools.
Speaker: So if anyone bans books, they're, they're probably on the wrong side of history.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Remember kids that's Nazi shit.
Speaker: That's Nazi shit.
Speaker: That's Nazi shit.
Speaker: And we punch Nazis here on pixel.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: We do.
Speaker: So books chapter 20 books.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Steve heads back down in the mines again, but ends up caught in a spider lair where there's a spider spawner.
Speaker: He gets bit up, but escapes and he gets really mad and he runs back up.
Speaker: And instead of taking his time to prepare,
Speaker: He only grabs a few supplies and heads right back down.
Speaker: Right back down.
Speaker: Right back down.
Speaker: And he tries to- This is another prime example of like, you just did this in the game, right?
Speaker: Like this is clearly, so clearly.
Speaker: Because we've both had that run.
Speaker: We've both been like, fuck, I got to get down there and do this thing.
Speaker: And you're not prepped and you fuck yourself over.
Speaker: You fuck yourself over.
Speaker: He tries to dig a hole directly above the spawner instead of going through the room, but then he gets attacked by another spider and that doesn't work.
Speaker: So he digs a set of stairs down to the spawner and that doesn't work.
Speaker: He gets attacked by three spiders.
Speaker: And then he runs away, but he gets attacked by a mob of zombies.
Speaker: And he runs and he finds this little hole and he throws himself into a tiny little hole and he closes it up with cobblestone.
Speaker: And he's just like in the cave.
Speaker: He doesn't know where he is.
Speaker: He's completely lost.
Speaker: He's in the mine somewhere in the dark and he doesn't know what to do.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: Now we're in chapter 21.
Speaker: Needing food, Steve remembers that all he needs is one block of water to fish in.
Speaker: So he finds some underground water and he makes a fishing pole and finds fish.
Speaker: Now his fish cup overfloweth.
Speaker: His fish cup overfloweth and he puts into play everything he's learned as he digs out space for a bed, plants mushrooms and mines to make new tools and weapons.
Speaker: But he didn't know how to get home until he read one of the books that he had found on navigation.
Speaker: And then Steve decides that he needs to find and destroy every spawner before he makes his way out of these tunnels for good.
Speaker: He also learns more about how to use Redstone and to remotely trigger TNT.
Speaker: This is very much his rise moment.
Speaker: Like he has to basically start from scratch and build a whole new workshop down there for himself.
Speaker: He loses everything.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He loses everything, builds a whole new set of diamond armor, a sword and all that shit.
Speaker: It's very much him climbing out of the pit in Rise of the Dark Knight.
Speaker: Like it's just, that's what this is.
Speaker: And then he does.
Speaker: this is, this is by the way, this is also filled with moments where for all of his talk of like having to explain to us the house he made and like every little goddamn insignificant detail down to the carpeting and all that shit.
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: He chooses a few moments around this point in the book to start saying things like, you don't need to hear about the exciting battle I had with these skelly man's like, you don't need to hear about the the the battle that took place and and and the things like the sneaking around I had to just know that sounds far too entertaining and interesting.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: God forbid.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: That was that's the you really helped us dodge a bullet there, Maxie.
Speaker: Jesus Christ.
Speaker: Please tell me more about the shag carpeting in your swank little cabin up land.
Speaker: Jesus.
Speaker: Yeah, so chapter 22, it's the last full chapter of the book.
Speaker: Steve Gall goes all end of Godfather 1 on the remaining spawners.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Using a lot of TNT.
Speaker: He ends up blowing up the cave that he's in, and he shoots out into the water.
Speaker: into the ocean where he swims back to the surface.
Speaker: And in the epilogue, which honestly should just be part of chapter 22, Steve talks about how he realized while he's down there that growth doesn't come from staying in your comfort zone, but leaving it and that he needs to leave the island.
Speaker: He wrote the book and left it for the next person who finds the island.
Speaker: I'm sorry.
Speaker: Did I miss something or wasn't him trying to figure out how to leave the islands in the first place?
Speaker: Like a huge thing he was trying to overcome.
Speaker: Yes, he builds a boat and he tries to leave and then he realizes there's no land around him.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So he realized I can't just leave at this point.
Speaker: I don't know how.
Speaker: But then when the time came, he was like, and then I just fucking peaced out.
Speaker: And then I left.
Speaker: And then I left.
Speaker: Yeah, this is this is I hate this book so fucking much.
Speaker: You know what's funny is the end of chapter 20 is honestly, to me, that would have been like, oh, that's like the end of that would be like your end of act two or something like that.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That's a big action kind of climactic moment.
Speaker: And then and then act three is like this much of the book.
Speaker: And for those who are just listening, I put my two index fingers together in about the space to denote about the space of a millimeter.
Speaker: Because that's how many pages it takes up.
Speaker: It was insignificant.
Speaker: So there's just so much prep there.
Speaker: Just him learning and learning everything and constantly learning everything.
Speaker: But it's just, it's so flat in terms of the action throughout the book.
Speaker: It doesn't pay off for anything.
Speaker: And it doesn't pay off for anything.
Speaker: It's not like...
Speaker: So he kills the witches.
Speaker: I skipped over that part, but in the case of the course of killing everything, he kills the witches.
Speaker: He kills everything.
Speaker: He kills all the monster spawners and the mobs and all that stuff.
Speaker: Yeah, he puts a red headband on and goes to war.
Speaker: Goes to war.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And we got a at the end of the book, we have a what I've learned from the world of Minecraft, which are just every little thing that he says over the course of the book, which are just like these little learning tidbits.
Speaker: Yeah, these these lessons.
Speaker: They're just written out in a bullet pointed list.
Speaker: Yes, there's 36 of them.
Speaker: And yeah, there it is.
Speaker: It's like it's it almost like he wrote down these 36 and then built a story around them.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: That would make some sense, like not.
Speaker: Well, that wouldn't make sense, but it would actually explain a lot.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm just... So don't get me wrong.
Speaker: There's more stuff that happens in the last third of the book.
Speaker: That being said...
Speaker: It's not a lot and it doesn't really do enough to validate the first two thirds of the book and the way they play out.
Speaker: It's slow for a 240 page book.
Speaker: It's slow, boring, and it seems like this.
Speaker: How does that even happen?
Speaker: Like, it's such a short book.
Speaker: It is such a short book and almost nothing happens in it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, Phil, what are your thoughts on the book?
Speaker: Okay, this is my theory.
Speaker: This is what I sincerely believe happened here.
Speaker: I don't think Max Brooks reads...
Speaker: youth literature.
Speaker: I don't think he reads kids' books.
Speaker: I don't think, which might sound like an odd thing to criticize somebody for until you realize that the only way to write a good example of something is to read it, is to consume it.
Speaker: That's why, you know, there is, I forget what show it was or something, but it was like someone's talking about, you know, wanting to make a
Speaker: romance novel or something like that as a joke.
Speaker: And it's like, well, those are all garbage.
Speaker: I'll, I'll write, I'll write one and be a bestseller.
Speaker: So no, it turns out those people really consume that media and really know it very well and know the tropes and know how it works and know, know how to write it really well because they consume it.
Speaker: And I think Max Brooks was approached with this idea or, or he approached Mojang with this idea after playing it with his kid or something like that.
Speaker: And I think, well,
Speaker: He thought that the only way you can make a good kid's book is to like have it just be steeped in lessons.
Speaker: And I just I don't think he knows the first thing about how to write a kid's book.
Speaker: And it just happened.
Speaker: He got lucky.
Speaker: And, you know, this is this is a franchise that kids fucking love.
Speaker: And so they'll ignore most anything beyond the trappings of it.
Speaker: But he doesn't.
Speaker: This is this is this is a kid's book written by somebody who does not know how to write a kid's book.
Speaker: And I think that really, really shows.
Speaker: I think more than anything else, that's where the weakness of this book comes from.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The characters aren't he's not fully fleshed out in any sense of the word.
Speaker: The plot doesn't seem to really matter.
Speaker: There's not really a plot to to speak of.
Speaker: It's it's it's it gives it kind of feels insulting.
Speaker: Like it feels like it feels like, you know, it doesn't really it doesn't really give a shit about this.
Speaker: That's how it comes off.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: What about you, Kevin?
Speaker: What do you think?
Speaker: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker: I could go, I can understand that.
Speaker: I think the fact that there are 36, like a list of 36 lessons in the book rather than, God, that seems like a lot, doesn't it?
Speaker: This seems like a lot of lessons to communicate through a 240 page book.
Speaker: It sure does.
Speaker: It sure does.
Speaker: Most kids' books hope to get one lesson across.
Speaker: And this is 36 lessons over 22 chapters.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That really, they're really popping out for this character, the reader, or the writer of the book, calling him Steve or whatever, is taking lessons from everything instead of,
Speaker: every, there's no, there's no journey to these lessons.
Speaker: It's just like, I tried something, it didn't work out.
Speaker: So that's a lesson.
Speaker: And I get it that that kind of works in real life, but you have, you're so rarely presented with the opportunity where you glean that many lessons from that many, from those opportunities, like that many distinct and discreet lessons.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's really jammed in there.
Speaker: And it comes off as very, you know, just kind of forced.
Speaker: Forced.
Speaker: And even when it isn't those direct lessons, he's still working these little monologues of like,
Speaker: being good.
Speaker: I'm going to be good.
Speaker: You know, I'm not going to kill anything anymore.
Speaker: I'm not going to, I'm going to start reading these books and paying attention to them.
Speaker: And it's, it's, it's all very, it's, it's like a, it's like a kid's book written by, uh, uh, you're really no fun parent who, uh,
Speaker: doesn't know when to have some flexibility and let the kid just have fun.
Speaker: Everything has to have a big goddamn moral behind it.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: So there are more lessons in here than an episode of full house.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And we have come full circle, ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker: There it is.
Speaker: Just like that.
Speaker: Just like that.
Speaker: Everywhere you look, everywhere is the heart.
Speaker: I'm so glad this book is over.
Speaker: That's the lesson I learned.
Speaker: I'm really glad this book is done.
Speaker: This book is over.
Speaker: So what's your favorite lesson?
Speaker: I'm looking through them right now.
Speaker: Oh, let's see.
Speaker: Let's see.
Speaker: And I am going to go with...
Speaker: Never put off the boring but important chores.
Speaker: I'm really going to internalize that next time I have to go weed.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, I think that's good.
Speaker: I like...
Speaker: Never make out with a cousin.
Speaker: I thought that was a good one.
Speaker: That's a good one.
Speaker: That's a good one.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Never light a bag of your own feces on fire on an enemy's doorstep.
Speaker: Also, you know what?
Speaker: That's that's good.
Speaker: It's it's not worth it.
Speaker: It's not worth it.
Speaker: It's not.
Speaker: It's it's nowadays with DNA testing.
Speaker: Also, they could probably find you.
Speaker: Yeah, they could probably get you on that one.
Speaker: It's really not worth it.
Speaker: Got to leave that back in the 80s.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Avoid kissing on the mouth when when there's no love.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: That was a good one.
Speaker: I thought that was practical, a little, maybe a little advanced, but I think the kids will remember later on when that becomes more relevant.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And don't summon...
Speaker: Eldritch beings on a Saturday.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's just good.
Speaker: That's just bad.
Speaker: That's just practical.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's practical.
Speaker: So thanks, Max Brooks.
Speaker: We learned.
Speaker: I feel like we learned a lot.
Speaker: I learned a lot here.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I feel.
Speaker: Feel.
Speaker: I feel.
Speaker: I feel moral and upright.
Speaker: Motherfucker.
Speaker: I mean, he could like fucking.
Speaker: Mr. Rogers had like one lesson per episode that he was really trying to impart.
Speaker: And he spent a 30 minute episode trying to really, to really get that home.
Speaker: And Max Brooks tried to slam 36 into this goddamn book.
Speaker: Like, dude, come on, man.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: Anyway, Phil, what are you playing?
Speaker: Oh, I haven't gotten a lot of games in this week.
Speaker: It was the holiday week and all that stuff like that.
Speaker: So I didn't get much in, but I did get a couple of demos under my belt.
Speaker: I played one called Revelatio.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I was really attracted to this one based on the art style.
Speaker: It has this very pixelated, grimdark,
Speaker: classical style to it, which is very, very interesting to me.
Speaker: It kind of made me think of, oh, what's that torturous RPG you play?
Speaker: Are you talking about fear and hunger?
Speaker: Yes, yes.
Speaker: It makes me think a little of that.
Speaker: It's a little slicker.
Speaker: It's a little slicker, but it made me think of that.
Speaker: What's the name again?
Speaker: Revelatio, R-E-V-E-L-A-T-I-O, which is also like what I call it when I'm getting a blow job and I suddenly realize something really important about my life.
Speaker: It's called Revelatio.
Speaker: I thought you were going to say it's what happens when you're getting a blow job at the end of the world.
Speaker: At the end of the world.
Speaker: That's good, too.
Speaker: That's actually the that's actually the that's why John wrote the book of Revelations is it wasn't a dream.
Speaker: He was actually, you know, he was he was he was.
Speaker: He's like, I'm coming.
Speaker: And then I saw the seventh seal.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's how it happens.
Speaker: The sky was as black as sackcloth.
Speaker: And it just turns out he was that good.
Speaker: The head was so good.
Speaker: He went blind.
Speaker: The head was so good.
Speaker: He passed right the fuck out.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it's a turn-based strategy game.
Speaker: It's got some roguelike elements to it.
Speaker: It's got, it's just got this very dark atmosphere to it.
Speaker: Very grimdark, very... What?
Speaker: What?
Speaker: Surrender your show father
Speaker: Bye bye.
Speaker: Bye bye.
Speaker: It's got some sort of storyline in there.
Speaker: It's keeping its cards real close to its chest in the demo.
Speaker: It's got a very interesting kind of gameplay mechanic to it where it looks like.
Speaker: Corruption is one of the things.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I was just going to say that it has very blasphemous vibe to it, kind of Catholic.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, goodness.
Speaker: Speaking of King Graham.
Speaker: Yeah, seriously.
Speaker: But it's very bleak.
Speaker: I love the aesthetic and the art style of it.
Speaker: There's a corruption kind of factor to it.
Speaker: You can corrupt enemy units and force them to fight for you and vice versa.
Speaker: I don't know what the fuck it's about, and the demo hasn't really...
Speaker: offered any explanations just yet.
Speaker: It's interesting.
Speaker: I'm going to come back to it and play a little bit.
Speaker: I didn't play a hell of a lot of it, but I love the style.
Speaker: They really snagged me with that.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Oh, no.
Speaker: Oh, no.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And I played Union of Gnomes.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: It's a free prologue.
Speaker: It essentially acts as a demo.
Speaker: It's a free prologue that they have.
Speaker: And it's a turn-based strategy game as well.
Speaker: It's got a...
Speaker: And also very dark, but in kind of the more comical fantasy form.
Speaker: And you lead a army of gnomes and they have different abilities.
Speaker: It kind of works as a deck builder.
Speaker: You've built up a deck of different gnomes and you're working your way across this landscape to fight people.
Speaker: You live on wieners.
Speaker: You have to make sure everyone has enough wieners to eat.
Speaker: They make a point of saying it's not sausages, it's not hot dogs, it's wieners.
Speaker: It's wieners.
Speaker: It's wieners.
Speaker: And there's also kind of a weird kind of glitch horror aspect to it.
Speaker: You get the impression that it's not everything that it seems.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: The interstitial dialogue and some of the little...
Speaker: just some of the dialogue in the end, the, the, the words that they use kind of give you the impression that this game is going to maybe pull the rug out from under you at some point behind it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I love the art style in this one too.
Speaker: And the gameplay is you've seen it before you've done it before.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: I recommend.
Speaker: You know, I think I think if you're going to stick with it, it's going to have to be based entirely on if the style of it and the storyline and that sort of thing are your cup of tea.
Speaker: Yeah, because it doesn't it's not really so far bringing anything terribly new to the table.
Speaker: It's got roguelike elements, deck builder elements.
Speaker: But it's definitely got a unique point of view and it's dark and weird and funny.
Speaker: And I'm going to play through it some more just to see if it'd be worth it.
Speaker: But it's interesting.
Speaker: Interesting game.
Speaker: But that's pretty much where I'm at.
Speaker: So what about you, Kevin?
Speaker: I have been exclusively playing Elden Ring.
Speaker: Now, I am not in the DLC yet.
Speaker: I am still...
Speaker: Fighting.
Speaker: So basically what happens and I might have probably told this story before was I bought the DLC on PC, but my end game character was on PS5.
Speaker: So and I never actually I thought I had played it more on PC, but I hadn't.
Speaker: So when I started up, I basically had a character with
Speaker: as not really anywhere.
Speaker: So I started a fresh character.
Speaker: And right now, instead of rushing my way to the DLC, I've kind of re-fallen in love with Elden Ring as a game.
Speaker: And I'm like, you know what?
Speaker: Fuck it.
Speaker: I am just going to do everything.
Speaker: There are things that I know I missed in the base game the first time.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: I'm just going to go ahead and get them all done, and then I'm going to take on the DLC.
Speaker: So it's going to take me a while to get to it, but I think that's fine because I want to make sure that I'm really...
Speaker: thoroughly getting the bang for my buck out of the DLC when I get there.
Speaker: And I know I didn't leave anything behind in the base game that I would just regret not doing instead of while I have this opportunity.
Speaker: Because it's not that often that I ultimately revisit
Speaker: bigum games you know like oh yeah oh yeah ring is a big beefy boy there's yeah there's not much reason it's a it's a hundred hour now i know it's a hundred hours first playthrough i i mean i've watched i watch youtubers who will do like a meme run through with restrictions in like 17 hours
Speaker: So that's fine.
Speaker: But it's not that odd.
Speaker: So now that that can of worms has been reopened and I'm here and I'm revisiting it, I'm going through and really revisiting it and really...
Speaker: checking out everything that I can do in it.
Speaker: Just absorb all of it.
Speaker: I'm absorbing all of it because I know there's, I know I never really got through most of the haligotry, which is there are areas in Elden Ring that they feel
Speaker: Like they could have been not in the base game and they could have been DLC on their own.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just because of the way that something about them, but they were included in the base game.
Speaker: So there's...
Speaker: So there's the Hallig tree and that's ultimately where you fight the hardest boss in the in the base game, Melania, Melania, whatever her name is.
Speaker: And that sounds right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Melania, Melania, not Trump.
Speaker: Jesus Christ.
Speaker: That's that's that's why I thought it sounded right.
Speaker: Not
Speaker: election elden ring melania yeah blade of michella melania blade of michella uh she's a red-haired tall woman with golden valkyrie armor which i feel like did you just search her because i feel like that was it sounds that sounds good actually it sounds like a thing that you would search
Speaker: Yeah, that sounds nice.
Speaker: She's one of the characters that was like shown in the original story trailer.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: She like puts the helmet on and goes after General Radon.
Speaker: I like her.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: She's the hardest boss in the base game.
Speaker: Uh.
Speaker: So she has, when you fight her, she has like two forms.
Speaker: She's got her human form, the blade of Michela, and then she comes back after you beat her once.
Speaker: She goes to her true form or her full form, the goddess of rot.
Speaker: Oh, awesome.
Speaker: That's cool as shit.
Speaker: So yeah, because she's basically a biological weapon in certain regards.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But yeah, no, that's what I've been playing is all Elden Ring all the time.
Speaker: It's nice to get back into that stuff.
Speaker: It's nice to, you know,
Speaker: feel, you know, just get something you can really sink your teeth into and just really, really soak it up.
Speaker: I have played a couple of board games recently, so I'll throw those in there.
Speaker: We played last night for my daughter's birthday.
Speaker: We played Um, Actually, which is a college humor game show.
Speaker: where it's a lot of fun.
Speaker: There's a lot, there's all these categories and they're really nerdy categories.
Speaker: And so what happens is the host for that round will, from the category, will read the category, the topic.
Speaker: So category, horror, topic, jaws, and then it'll be a statement, right?
Speaker: Could just be like a couple sentences long.
Speaker: And the host just reads the statement.
Speaker: And the first player to go, um, actually, and then they have to say what is wrong about the statement and, and how to correct it.
Speaker: So, um, actually, uh, and I, I forget, I'm trying to think of an example.
Speaker: There was one where it was like, uh, the, uh,
Speaker: Oh, the Avengers.
Speaker: It was in the Avengers Endgame.
Speaker: And they were talking about how the Avengers go time travel back in time to get the Infinity Stones.
Speaker: And it was like one team was sent to get to this point to get one stone.
Speaker: One team was sent to get one stone and this other team was sent to get another stone.
Speaker: And you're supposed to go, actually, one team was sent to get three stones.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So like little bullshit like that.
Speaker: And there's so many like there's I didn't we didn't get through all the cards.
Speaker: Obviously, there's so many of them.
Speaker: But I but as I was flipping through, I saw ones where it's like statements on Friday the 13th, statements on Jaws, video games.
Speaker: There's one on Cuphead where my daughter was all over it because she loves Cuphead.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: She umactually on that one.
Speaker: And then today we were playing a trivia game called I Should Have Known That, which is basically you can somebody ask you a question.
Speaker: You can either answer it and get some points or pass.
Speaker: But if you answer it and get it wrong, you actually lose points.
Speaker: So it's like the bigger swing you take, the more points you could lose.
Speaker: So yeah, that's, you know, that's kind of a fun little game.
Speaker: That's really cool.
Speaker: Yeah, we got a and we got a few more that we got in the mail recently.
Speaker: So yes, fun times.
Speaker: Love it.
Speaker: Love it.
Speaker: And you know what?
Speaker: We love all of you.
Speaker: So it's true to show love back.
Speaker: You can follow us on our Patreon, but you can also follow us on X, Instagram, fucking Blue Sky.
Speaker: Yeah, we're still there.
Speaker: We're still there.
Speaker: Where else?
Speaker: Where are we going?
Speaker: That's mostly it.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: Join our Discord.
Speaker: That's pretty much it.
Speaker: Hey, you should join our Discord.
Speaker: That's a really great way to keep in touch and to know what's happening in our heads and the heads of other fans like yourself.
Speaker: So go ahead.
Speaker: Join our Discord.
Speaker: It's free.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And yeah, it's free.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: It's free.
Speaker: It's free.
Speaker: It's free.
Speaker: What are you complaining about?
Speaker: It's free.
Speaker: It's free.
Speaker: Jim, it's free.
Speaker: It's free.
Speaker: Free discord just for you, Jim.
Speaker: Free discord.
Speaker: Free discord, Jim.
Speaker: It's free.
