Transcript
Speaker: It's just this little box that's attached to the nozzle, and it's the part that the stuff, the filament runs through.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: And gets all gooied and pushed out, extruded through the nozzle.
Speaker: So at its peak, it's 500 degrees.
Speaker: That is bonkers.
Speaker: That is absolutely bonkers.
Speaker: You know what else is bonkers?
Speaker: What's that?
Speaker: Hey there, everybody.
Speaker: Welcome back to Pixel It.
Speaker: My name is Kevin.
Speaker: With me, as always, Phil, on today's show, part two of Borderlands, The Fallen.
Speaker: And, you know, I will walk back some of my comments from last week about not seeing the misogyny in the book.
Speaker: We're starting to get there.
Speaker: We're starting to get there.
Speaker: We're getting there.
Speaker: We're in the second third of the book.
Speaker: And, oh, boy, John, Johnny, baby, what the fuck were you thinking with some of these scenes?
Speaker: What were you thinking?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Not that the character...
Speaker: It's just like the worst stuff we've read.
Speaker: It's not the worst stuff.
Speaker: It's just like how the anyway, we'll get to it.
Speaker: It really it really throws you for a loop when you when you read it.
Speaker: So it falls out of the clear blue sky.
Speaker: It just yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We'll get to it, though.
Speaker: For a character like Marla, who is caught in the midst of, you know, a sex slave plot line.
Speaker: already a tenuous place to put your character already a tenuous place the misogyny has nothing to do with that somehow
Speaker: The weirdness has nothing to do with that part of it.
Speaker: And that's why I didn't think, oh, if it's just this, it's fine.
Speaker: Like, oh, Johnny boy.
Speaker: It came from something else.
Speaker: It came from something else.
Speaker: It came from Camp Killer Lake.
Speaker: or whatever.
Speaker: What's the name of that tabletop?
Speaker: It came from Camp Murder Lake.
Speaker: Oh, there we go.
Speaker: It came from Camp Murder Lake.
Speaker: There we go.
Speaker: Play it.
Speaker: Play it, ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker: It's one of the greatest RPGs ever made.
Speaker: It is amazing.
Speaker: So much fun.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But before we do all that, let's just talk a little bit about Patreon.
Speaker: We got to sit down.
Speaker: Shut the door.
Speaker: We got to talk about Patreon.
Speaker: Just sit down.
Speaker: Turn off your phone.
Speaker: Turn off your phone and listen.
Speaker: Focus.
Speaker: Actually, don't turn off your phone because 90% of you are listening on your phone right now.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Good point.
Speaker: Good point.
Speaker: Keep your phone on.
Speaker: Turn on your focus mode so that this is the only thing that's going to be playing.
Speaker: There we go.
Speaker: Sit, look and listen.
Speaker: Sit, look and listen.
Speaker: Patreon.com slash PixelatePod.
Speaker: That's where you need to go.
Speaker: If you want to follow us, that's really the best place to do it.
Speaker: Go to patreon.com slash pixel.pod.
Speaker: You can follow us for free or you can donate $1 a month.
Speaker: $1 a month gets you in the door for Phil's What Do You Readin' blog where he tells you how bad or good the horror story that he's reading.
Speaker: Is it always a horror story?
Speaker: No, but usually, yeah, it's going to be.
Speaker: But mostly, mostly.
Speaker: Much to his wife's chagrin, it's going to be horror.
Speaker: It's mostly horror.
Speaker: Yeah, so keep that in mind.
Speaker: We got $5, $5 a month.
Speaker: That also gives you an ad-free episode.
Speaker: You get to listen to the episode ad-free.
Speaker: And that also gets you access to the pre-show bonuses, the pre-show, the warm-up round that Phil and I do before we get into the episode.
Speaker: You get access to that.
Speaker: $10 a month gets you all that, but you get your name shouted out in the episode.
Speaker: So to that end, we got Kyle Seaman, Ruthless Mutter, Jesus love you, and Friendly Friend.
Speaker: Thank you so much for being friends.
Speaker: Love ya.
Speaker: Love ya.
Speaker: Love ya.
Speaker: So Phil, what do you say?
Speaker: Body in the Marsh.
Speaker: Body in the Marsh.
Speaker: Isn't that where all bodies go?
Speaker: I'm embarrassed.
Speaker: That's where all bodies go.
Speaker: Honestly, if we're being truly, truly environmental, that's where they would go.
Speaker: I think so.
Speaker: I think that's really the best thing to do.
Speaker: Put us back in the earth, dammit.
Speaker: Dust to dust.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Moist to moist.
Speaker: Moist to moist.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Where's that vanity plate?
Speaker: Okay, so we left off at chapter seven, and we open with Burl and Zack fighting off racks.
Speaker: Zack's interest in Burl's necklace, his super shiny, clearly alien necklace, gets him cracked in the skull with a shotgun, but...
Speaker: Uh, and, uh, it's lights out for him.
Speaker: Uh, cause Burl, Burl don't need people sniffing around him too much, giving them the hairy eyeball.
Speaker: Uh, you do not know me like that.
Speaker: Um, so Marla ends up getting sold by our great third, uh,
Speaker: 3d kind of like really fleshed out character grunge, uh, who's known for killing little people.
Speaker: Uh, what a, what a great character, uh, calling Marla Missy ho.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Calling her Missy ho.
Speaker: Uh, you, you will be remembered grunge.
Speaker: Um, and, uh, gets sold to a guy named mash who takes her away in his boat.
Speaker: Uh, we, we are going full pirate here.
Speaker: Um, um,
Speaker: Vance ends up being he's been posing as the ferryman who's who's been taking him across the the the river and sets off a bunch of explosions, killing the bandits and knocking.
Speaker: And Marlon ends up knocking mash overboard because they've been living on this island that was basically a bunch of boats all kind of strung together.
Speaker: Yeah, it's like a flotilla.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And he just blows it all to hell.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So so, yeah, Marla knocks Smash overboard and and Vance basically tells her to kill him, you know, tries to draw a beat on shoot him.
Speaker: But she closes her eyes at the last second and isn't sure if it actually happened.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: She's not quite ready for that point in her life.
Speaker: Um, chapter eight, uh, we've got Cal and Roland at Firestone, the, uh, kind of the settlement area, the tire shop, the tire shop.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: They, they're, they're looking to get a good deal on new brake pads and, uh, his parents haven't been there.
Speaker: Um, so Roland offers Cal, uh,
Speaker: his share of the score from the bandits they killed, uh, along with a new weapon.
Speaker: Uh, this is kind of like the beginning of, of Roland basically initiating Cal in as a mercenary, which is absolutely the direction this is going.
Speaker: Um, but he does tell him, you know, you need to, you need to grow the fuck up fast, uh, or you're going to die out here.
Speaker: Zach wakes up tied to a post.
Speaker: Burl feeds him some candied primal balls.
Speaker: Yeah, testicles.
Speaker: Testicles.
Speaker: Balls as in testicles, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, huevos of these primals that a lot of the psychos like to ride.
Speaker: And he gets drunk and starts telling him long-winded stories about his background and the planet and everything like that.
Speaker: Zack waits until he falls asleep and escapes, manages to get out of his bindings.
Speaker: He steals a bunch of burl shit, including shotguns, food, water.
Speaker: But then and also breaks into his stash to steal a bunch of alien artifacts, the one in particular, which appears to be some kind of compass, which is pointing him in the direction of the alien crash site, our MacGuffin.
Speaker: So chapter nine, Vance leads Marla in what appears to be a tutorial level.
Speaker: That's what that's what this was, right?
Speaker: That's what this was.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So like the the the what's it?
Speaker: The psycho guy, psycho bandits are just like running at them one by one.
Speaker: One at a time.
Speaker: One at a time.
Speaker: Evenly spaced out.
Speaker: For enough time for Marla to get her used to the gun and the difference between shooting somebody without a shield, shooting somebody with a shield.
Speaker: This type of bandit is called this.
Speaker: This type of bandit is called this.
Speaker: It's literally a tutorial level.
Speaker: Like, yeah, the first one comes in.
Speaker: Well, he wasn't wearing shield, but this next one is.
Speaker: So you'll get to do it.
Speaker: And it's it's it's a tutorial level.
Speaker: Yeah, it's it's actually pretty hilarious.
Speaker: Marla is clearly warming up to Vance in a big way.
Speaker: She is developing feelings for Vance.
Speaker: She's catching feelings for the for the the space pirate.
Speaker: Roland and Cal, meanwhile, they run into Kranigan.
Speaker: Roland pretends that Cal is a foreigner worth a million in ransom and that he's the only person who speaks the language Caucasio Bungonin, which I thought was fucking hilarious.
Speaker: And they're basically doing simlish.
Speaker: They're just kind of making up their shit as they go along.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And and Cranigan kind of buys it.
Speaker: But, you know, he's like, just it's more out of convenience.
Speaker: And then they basically team up and roll in.
Speaker: Basically, you know, I'll give you I'll give you a share if you help us out.
Speaker: I can help you.
Speaker: And we're better in numbers.
Speaker: So so Cranigan has joined your party.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So we've got a little mercenary band here.
Speaker: Chapter 10, Zack, he's following the alien compass and wondering if Burl is following him ready to kill his ass.
Speaker: Which, yeah, I'd have to be worried about that too.
Speaker: This guy's off his fucking rocker for one thing.
Speaker: And you stole a bunch of shit from him.
Speaker: You sure did, Zack.
Speaker: You are paranoid for a good reason, my friend.
Speaker: You're going to get spat at by a drifter, my friend.
Speaker: So he finds a telescope from like the corpse of a surveyor or something like that.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And in the distance, he sees what might be the alien ship drop point.
Speaker: It's this big volcanic cone as they describe it.
Speaker: And he's wondering to himself if Marla and Cal will be waiting there for him.
Speaker: And this is another one of those points where we're given an opportunity to kind of like feel bad for him.
Speaker: And I just didn't have it in me.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's such a dick.
Speaker: I am.
Speaker: I am like, I'm such a dick.
Speaker: He is.
Speaker: He's such a dick.
Speaker: And, and what's funny is that as we're going to find out later, Vance is a total dick too, but, but I'm still like team Vance in this thing.
Speaker: Like, Oh, Marla, you, you're gonna, you're gonna marry up.
Speaker: Don't worry.
Speaker: Don't worry.
Speaker: He's rough around the edges, but come on.
Speaker: You'll, you'll get there.
Speaker: You'll get there.
Speaker: You'll be fine.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: And speaking of which, we cut to Vance and Marla basically playing house.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: This is a very, very funny scene.
Speaker: She wakes up and he's gone, which has her feeling conflicted because on one hand, like he's like her owner slash kidnapper.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: On the other hand, they did fuck last night.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And and and surely at first throws it in so casually that I thought that
Speaker: I must be misreading this.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Because he says something about like we they had been doing quite a bit of bonding the night before or something.
Speaker: And I was like, is he talking about the tutorial level?
Speaker: What the fuck is that?
Speaker: No, it's like, no, he had entered her and she was all for it.
Speaker: She was pumped.
Speaker: We find out Vance got a big old hog.
Speaker: He's cranking that hog.
Speaker: He's cranking that hog and she's digging it.
Speaker: She kind of starts in on this little domestic fantasy of them being like hunter gatherers together.
Speaker: It's like she kind of like entertains this fantasy of him, like bringing home the meat and her like
Speaker: being at home and stuff, which is where I thought, I thought that might be where we were going with the distasteful lady stuff.
Speaker: Cause there's a lot of trad wife stuff in there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, and just some, like the way some of it was written was just like,
Speaker: I don't understand what I'm reading.
Speaker: There's like some weird sudden trad return to caveman wife stuff in there.
Speaker: And it's like he had, he had woken up some sort of primal feeling in her.
Speaker: Like as if it's like,
Speaker: I think the thing that bothered me about it is like there's like some essentialism, like bio essentialism in it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like this is what a woman is.
Speaker: She is waking up to what being a woman is.
Speaker: And I was like.
Speaker: And don't get me wrong.
Speaker: I know plenty of women, especially who love that kind of shit, who not so far as the trad wife shit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But like.
Speaker: Trad wives can go get fucked.
Speaker: Oh, they can get fucked.
Speaker: No, but they like, you know, a bigger, tougher, burlier kind of fella and stuff like that.
Speaker: They like that.
Speaker: They just want to be treated as equals, basically.
Speaker: So I can see this being a character development aspect.
Speaker: If it weren't, if it didn't have, it does smack a little bit of like...
Speaker: is this who I'm really supposed to be?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And this is where I actually also started wondering, because we pointed out in the second chapter, first or second chapter, she has a background in xenobiology.
Speaker: She's a scientist.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And this is where I started thinking about it.
Speaker: I was like, okay,
Speaker: Cal's out there blowing people up.
Speaker: Zach's out there like running from bad guys and shooting stuff like that.
Speaker: And she's over here using her feminine wiles when we've already established that she is like a science person.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And we haven't used it once.
Speaker: We haven't used it once.
Speaker: And also it's like we forgot about it because Vance comes home and brings a dead skag and she's like icked out about the idea of dissect, like, like.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: They're going to drain it and cut it.
Speaker: She's like, ew.
Speaker: I mean, like, if you were a xenobiologist, if you got your degree in xenobiology, I guarantee you had to dissect some shit.
Speaker: Dissecting animals.
Speaker: Like, exactly.
Speaker: So it's and it'd be one thing if the writing addressed that.
Speaker: It was like, it's been so long since you've done that.
Speaker: She couldn't help but feel a little.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Fine.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But that's not even addressed.
Speaker: It's you're right.
Speaker: I think it's like we just kind of it's like we just forgot.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I think it's a real shame.
Speaker: Uh, uh, cause she, cause I really like Marla.
Speaker: I'm really digging her character and, and, and, but some of it just doesn't make sense.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: So we end the scene with her helping him gut and hang this.
Speaker: Well, he goes, she, she's meant to clean the skag to start with, and he's taking a nap and it ends with her waking him up to help him to hang the skag up to drain the blood.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: And we cut to Cranigan's camp, or as I like to call it, Roland and Company.
Speaker: They're visited by an Atlas executive and his posse.
Speaker: And Atlas is in this world essentially like Weyland-Yutani.
Speaker: They're like the super corporation.
Speaker: They own everything.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so it's this it's actually a very cool scene because we have been dealing in very low sci fi, very dirty, gritty sci fi.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And the ship they come down in is this like slick.
Speaker: They kind of describe it like a South American pyramid, you know, just a very slick, very alien kind of ship.
Speaker: And this Atlas executive and his posse, which includes our old friend Rans Veritas, still the most Star Wars fucking name of anybody in this cast, and basically gives them their marching orders, says that they've got the coordinates for the alien MacGuffin and they're going to need to approach on foot because there's a big defensive system around it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And and he leaves them.
Speaker: The executive leaves them with Rans who stares at Cal clearly recognizing him because he had done deals with his dad.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: So we're like left on on a kind of a cliffhanger there.
Speaker: Chapter 11.
Speaker: Uh, we've got Zach still journeying through, uh, this dry riverbed.
Speaker: He gets this encounter with these purple larva crab worms.
Speaker: They're like, uh, underground predators.
Speaker: We get an action scene where he basically tricks them with thrown rocks.
Speaker: Um, that's mostly it.
Speaker: Uh, we cut to Marla.
Speaker: She's wondering, uh, if she has Stockholm syndrome, uh, for all intents and purposes.
Speaker: She's like, isn't there a thing where you're saying, and, uh, and, and maybe, maybe, um,
Speaker: So Vance returns to their camp to tell her that he's found a group of grunges, old mercenaries, and they got to take them out.
Speaker: So they're watching them from a distance and they watch as they kind of drunkenly throw bullets into a fire and shoot, you know, just fucking shooting everywhere.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then and then we cut to what is is the beginning of the the sharp turn into assholeville where.
Speaker: where Marla is given the idea by Vance to flash her titties at, uh, at, at the, at these guys.
Speaker: And Kevin, uh, you very eloquently, uh, quoted it, uh, uh, earlier today.
Speaker: Would you mind terribly, uh, quoting it?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's something like, uh, it's something like, Hey boys, do these big pink things make me a female?
Speaker: Answer?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Uh, first off answer.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: But they show her fun.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: These big, soft pink things.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like I am actually I am actually here we go.
Speaker: Here's the exact quote.
Speaker: Fellas, do these round, plump pink things on my chest mean I'm a girl?
Speaker: I've wondered for years.
Speaker: Marla, Marla, Marla, you're a scientist.
Speaker: You didn't need to.
Speaker: You're a scientist.
Speaker: Like you could have just flashed them.
Speaker: You didn't need it.
Speaker: First of all, you could have just flashed them.
Speaker: You didn't need to say anything.
Speaker: The pink things.
Speaker: I can't tell you if I've ever even seen pink boobs.
Speaker: That's that is.
Speaker: Unless they were sunburned or something.
Speaker: Yeah, that's that's I guess.
Speaker: I mean, Marla, go get yourself checked out of the free clinic.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Pay visit to the dermatologist because pink is not a typical color.
Speaker: She's just eczema runs in her family, I guess.
Speaker: Yeah, I guess.
Speaker: Oh, Marla.
Speaker: So the sharp that sharp right turn into oof.
Speaker: Yeah, it begins here.
Speaker: It officially begins here.
Speaker: Roblox underscore oof dot MP3.
Speaker: That's exactly it.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: That is it.
Speaker: And so Vance uses the bullets in the fire trick basically on the drunken mercenaries, which ends up basically having them fight amongst themselves.
Speaker: And while they're doing that, Marla and Vance steal their truck.
Speaker: So great.
Speaker: Uh, yeah, we cut to Roland and company.
Speaker: They are making their way, uh, to a valley, to the valley with a volcanic cone.
Speaker: They're heading the same direction that Zach is.
Speaker: Um, Roland tells Cal that the jig is up, uh, that they, that everyone knows that the fake talk is BS, which is kind of a relief, uh, and no, no less for the reader because it was a really stupid ploy.
Speaker: Uh, yeah.
Speaker: And it really did.
Speaker: I was like, how long are we going to do this?
Speaker: How long are we going to do that?
Speaker: How long are we?
Speaker: It was like that scene where they're talking about, are those things birds?
Speaker: And I'd be like, no, they're not birds, but they were doing this in the fake simlish or whatever.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then it's like right after that, he's like, they know we're not, we're, we're just, we're making it up.
Speaker: We're just fucking with them.
Speaker: Which, which makes, it does kind of make Cal nervous.
Speaker: He's like, are they going to kill us?
Speaker: And Roll was like, no, man, they're just, they get it.
Speaker: They hired us.
Speaker: They hired us.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They're paying us.
Speaker: Why?
Speaker: They wouldn't do that.
Speaker: Yeah, they wouldn't do that.
Speaker: And Kranigan didn't really believe us anyway.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So it was just whatever.
Speaker: So basically, and this is a moment where he kind of gives Cal this lowdown on how this works.
Speaker: It's basically like we are.
Speaker: We work together when we're convenient to work together.
Speaker: You know, somebody who, you know, he took a shot at me earlier and killed a friend of mine earlier.
Speaker: I'd be better off with him right now.
Speaker: So I'm going to bite my tongue and deal with it.
Speaker: Although he does also admit that he is totally planning on betraying everybody.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's like, Cranigan.
Speaker: It's like, here's what Cranigan's thinking.
Speaker: He's like, we're going to go through, we're going to betray everybody.
Speaker: We're going to, it was like,
Speaker: First, Cranigan's going to kill everybody but me because he thinks he can work with me.
Speaker: And then we're going to kill everybody on that ship.
Speaker: And then we're going to get up to that ship and we're going to kill everybody there.
Speaker: And then we're going to go to another ship and we're going to kill everybody there and take that ship over.
Speaker: And it was like, and Cal is like, we're going to do all that.
Speaker: And Roland's like, no.
Speaker: I told him we would, but no.
Speaker: It's like the old checkers move, just jump and jump and jump and jump.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I told him that, but we're not going to, we're not going to do that, but I am going to kill Cranigan.
Speaker: Uh, first chance I get for payback for McKee.
Speaker: Um, and, uh, but, but mostly at this point, he's like me, we're going to get paid.
Speaker: Uh, good guy, Roland.
Speaker: Like he's like, even, he's
Speaker: He just kind of assumes it's not even so much that he's taking this younger guy under his wing as much as he's just like, we got to get you paid, son.
Speaker: Like there's it's already a foregone conclusion.
Speaker: Your parents are probably dead.
Speaker: We got to get you a job.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: You're out here.
Speaker: You're out here.
Speaker: Really, the only job for a kid like you is is is to kill everything you see.
Speaker: So let's let's just get you started on that, which is kind of lovely.
Speaker: So let's see.
Speaker: And he describes like basically, you know, there are treasure hunters in the world.
Speaker: He's like, there are people like us and there are treasure hunters and treasure hunters mostly end up dead.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And that which makes Cal wonder about his own father and if he is in fact dead.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So chapter 12, speaking of the devil, Zach out of food and water, desperate, still far off from the volcanic cone.
Speaker: There's no cover.
Speaker: There are predators everywhere.
Speaker: There's sun everywhere.
Speaker: He's kind of fucked.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Uh, he's starting to, you know, uh, just die of thirst.
Speaker: Essentially.
Speaker: He sees in the distance what he assumes are mercenaries and an outrunner in the distance.
Speaker: We of course know that it's Roland and company.
Speaker: Uh, and he makes, and he basically, uh,
Speaker: He's trying to stay away from him.
Speaker: So he's going to wait him out.
Speaker: He even thinks like there's a bunch of them.
Speaker: They might attract predators away from me.
Speaker: And it's like the first of two times in this section where Zack
Speaker: nearly finds a member of his family.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And avoids going in that direction.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It makes it, makes an active point not to go in that direction out of fear.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Uh, so yeah, this is the first time.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: We cut to Vance and Marla on the silicon wastes, which I thought was pretty cool.
Speaker: Basically, it looks like an ice sheet that they're on.
Speaker: It's crystallized silicon.
Speaker: We find out later from like a bomb, essentially.
Speaker: Yeah, some sort of bomb thing went off and covered the entire area in silicon.
Speaker: And it was like liquefied and hardened on top of these rocks.
Speaker: So the problem is it's like...
Speaker: I think it's they also mentioned it's like it's kind of slippery.
Speaker: Yeah, it's slick.
Speaker: It's slippery.
Speaker: It's like it's like it functions as ice.
Speaker: It's just not cold.
Speaker: That's all right.
Speaker: So they're trying to kind of delicately wake make their way across it.
Speaker: While they're doing that, Vance gives her his origin story about the Wastemakers, which is a group of like religious fanatics that believe that the world is ending.
Speaker: And so the best thing they can do for the universe basically is to annihilate everything.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So his parents, he actually used to be kind of a rich kid.
Speaker: He was a rich kid.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And his whole family, his whole colony basically was decimated by these fanatics who took him in as a prisoner, as a slave.
Speaker: And the first chance he got, he killed his guard, ran off and ended up joining up with a pirate crew.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that's that's his back story.
Speaker: So they find this barrier, this weirdly built barrier.
Speaker: They describe it as like having this big boulder that has like spikes sticking out of it.
Speaker: Very, very Indiana Jones trap kind of shit.
Speaker: So they're like, okay,
Speaker: What do we do?
Speaker: And Marley says, well, we can go way off in the distance and go around it.
Speaker: And and Vance is now that's just going to it's going to cost us too much time.
Speaker: We're just going to go around it here.
Speaker: And when they do, they crash into a trap.
Speaker: And this is like, like Marla Vance basically does the like, don't talk back to me woman kind of thing.
Speaker: He doesn't say that, but he's clearly annoyed that she has an alternate suggestion.
Speaker: And he's like, I know what I'm doing.
Speaker: And then he drives them right into a trap.
Speaker: Right into a trap immediately and basically berates himself over.
Speaker: It's a tunnel rats, he says, have set the trap.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And they are attacked by these horrible, misshapen rat humanoid things that we get a brief introduction to them that they live in tunnels underground.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so they're trying to the pit.
Speaker: I get the impression that it's like as low as the truck once more.
Speaker: You know, like- I imagine it was a bit deeper than, like a little bit deeper than that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like a couple truck lengths down.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Because it was enough for the truck to-
Speaker: to like totally break.
Speaker: Like they couldn't turn the truck on.
Speaker: Yeah, it does.
Speaker: It does bust.
Speaker: And so Vance is like shooting down debris and rocks to basically build a hill for him to climb up, which he does and abandons Marla to the tenor.
Speaker: Marla is there's too many of the rat folks that are like clawing and pulling at Marla and he shoots off a few of them, but he's like, uh, bye.
Speaker: And he just, he's like, she's like, he's like, you were good.
Speaker: Take care.
Speaker: And he bails and he bails.
Speaker: It's it's it's sad because some of us were really, really counting on some of us were counting on Vance to be a good guy.
Speaker: And he wasn't.
Speaker: This is this has nothing to do with the upcoming election, by the way.
Speaker: Some of us read Hillbilly Elegy and knew from the beginning that he couldn't be trusted.
Speaker: So Vance goes off and he finds a couch.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: I saw something on Twitter today and it's like fucking Democrats, politicians in general just don't get it.
Speaker: It's like they're in the Democrats are in their war room, like trying to come up with strategies and stuff.
Speaker: And meanwhile, some stone Zenial just was like, what if we tell people that he fucked a couch?
Speaker: And like, that's it.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: It's all it took.
Speaker: Couch fucker.
Speaker: J.D.
Speaker: Vance, couch fucker.
Speaker: If Kamala was Trump, she'd be like, she'd call him crazy couch fucking Vance, you know?
Speaker: Couch fucking Vance.
Speaker: She'd be all over that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You hear he's trying to dump Jit by the time this episode comes out, he might have already.
Speaker: He's trying to get rid of Vance.
Speaker: I don't think he can.
Speaker: No, I'm not sure he can at this point.
Speaker: I think it's locked in.
Speaker: Because we're post-convention.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So I think it's so this is just it's just it couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
Speaker: Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
Speaker: God forbid I have a little optimism here and there, but I can't help myself.
Speaker: JD Dance.
Speaker: I never knew.
Speaker: I never knew the man.
Speaker: He was- Didn't know he was a couch fucker.
Speaker: Didn't know.
Speaker: Didn't know.
Speaker: Crazy JD.
Speaker: That's what-
Speaker: Vance in his pants.
Speaker: Vance in his pants.
Speaker: He looked at me, tears in his eyes.
Speaker: That couch left me.
Speaker: What people don't understand is I love that couch.
Speaker: The couch who shagged me.
Speaker: I'll tell you what, though.
Speaker: He ain't from here.
Speaker: I think it is the hashtag.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's giving me life.
Speaker: Like all the Appalachian folks.
Speaker: In there, just just just reading him the riot act, just dragging him.
Speaker: It's it's just a beautiful thing.
Speaker: Like, yeah, the most the most the most crucial one is J.D.
Speaker: Vance washes his cast iron skillet, which.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: J.D.
Speaker: Vance washes that cast iron skillet.
Speaker: He didn't know.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He calls it a violin.
Speaker: I just, I love that shit.
Speaker: It's, it's, you know what?
Speaker: It's, it's like, it just, they're, they're good.
Speaker: The, the, the Appalachians, there's, they're good people in there.
Speaker: There's good people up in them Hills, up in them Hills.
Speaker: OK, chapter 13, Roland and company, they are camping out in a giant crater.
Speaker: We get an introduction to the alien artifacts that they're going after, the difference between these and the iridian stuff that they normally use.
Speaker: And basically, we get a lowdown on how dangerous it might be.
Speaker: We find out that there is some sort of piece of technology that is connected to the space space.
Speaker: Ship that is going around and grabbing anything living that comes within a certain vicinity and changing them.
Speaker: They're not sure what that means.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But it sounds like they're building up a defense system.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: We cut to Zach.
Speaker: He sees the mercenaries in the distance.
Speaker: Again, it's the next day, basically.
Speaker: He figures.
Speaker: No, this.
Speaker: Sorry, this is night.
Speaker: He sees them in the distance.
Speaker: He figures that they would kill him if he approached them.
Speaker: He's desperate to find someone who will give him some water, but he still draws a wide berth to avoid them.
Speaker: He's getting delirious and he comes to what appears to be a tunneled room beneath the silicone at his feet.
Speaker: And sees these rat-like creatures down there.
Speaker: Scene number two, he sees the car that Vance, JD, and his wife were driving earlier.
Speaker: And he's like, I should not go down there.
Speaker: He thinks about it because maybe they got water, but he ultimately just keeps moving on.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So Zach, not...
Speaker: good at figuring things out.
Speaker: Not good at finding his family.
Speaker: Very bad at finding his family.
Speaker: He is actually one of the worst protagonists ever at finding a family.
Speaker: Hundreds of kilometers apart when they started out and now they're so close.
Speaker: It just, they are meters apart.
Speaker: And he's like, Hmm, that's that, that dungeon looks too dicey, you know?
Speaker: Better not better.
Speaker: Better not.
Speaker: Uh, so he just keeps going.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: He ends up running into a quartet of skags and they're just big and nasty and mean.
Speaker: And he just decides that he'd rather die with his boots on.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He kind of loses his shit and just kind of like has a, you know, what are you waiting for moment?
Speaker: And kill me.
Speaker: Kill me.
Speaker: I'm here.
Speaker: I'm here.
Speaker: Kill me.
Speaker: And that's exactly it.
Speaker: Except he's got a shotgun now.
Speaker: Ho, ho, ho.
Speaker: So he just.
Speaker: He basically, he blows one of their like jaws open, but they're still coming for him.
Speaker: And the second pull of the trigger, the guns jam.
Speaker: So he's fucked.
Speaker: Like just, just immediately fucked.
Speaker: And, but wouldn't, you know, it Burl,
Speaker: And his drifter friend show up and take care of the skags for him.
Speaker: Busy drops the blue goo.
Speaker: Yeah, busy.
Speaker: Thank you, busy.
Speaker: And melts those skags.
Speaker: And Burl shoots them up with a hunting rifle.
Speaker: And Zack is saved, sort of.
Speaker: Sort of, in a way.
Speaker: Burl still is debating whether to kill him.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And he says, you know, I wouldn't have cared if you had just stolen the shotgun and the water, the food.
Speaker: I got plenty of that shit.
Speaker: But you stole my my alien shit.
Speaker: And so I got to decide what to do with you.
Speaker: Um, chapter 14, uh, her claws, her clothes torn, surrounded by creeping monsters.
Speaker: Marla looks like she's on the cover of a men's magazine from the fifties.
Speaker: Uh, basically it's just that it's that whole thing, you know?
Speaker: It's like all the clothes are torn and all the spots that like they could get away with, you know?
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: Under the nipple, over the nipple, never the nipple.
Speaker: Never the nipple.
Speaker: Never the nipple.
Speaker: It only counts if you saw a nipple, so you can't, they can't do that.
Speaker: You didn't see anything if you didn't see the nip.
Speaker: It's true.
Speaker: So she she uses her feminine wiles, which, again, this is where I get confused.
Speaker: I'm like, all right, we made this character in Fallout.
Speaker: She specced in science repair, stuff like that.
Speaker: She didn't spec in charisma.
Speaker: She's, yeah, we're all in charisma.
Speaker: It's like, and there is a fucking, in Fallout, there's like a perk for doing, for this kind of thing.
Speaker: There's a sex appeal perk for like, but
Speaker: She didn't take that.
Speaker: She doesn't have that.
Speaker: But she's trying to hit those dialogue options anyway.
Speaker: And she's passing them with flying colors.
Speaker: And she's passing them somehow.
Speaker: Yeah, because there's this lead rat man who's like, I get to rut with her.
Speaker: I get to lay with her.
Speaker: And she's like, yeah, totally.
Speaker: I'd love to do that because you're super handsome.
Speaker: And I figured...
Speaker: Our children will be great at being rat men.
Speaker: But what the hell is this place and what's going on and who are you?
Speaker: And basically he just spills the beans on everything about who they are and what they're up to.
Speaker: They're human.
Speaker: They've just been underground for a while.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: People.
Speaker: That's pretty much the long and short of it.
Speaker: And they're inbred as shit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So Marla could actually help them out.
Speaker: They're approached by a leader, engineer Gluck, who's like,
Speaker: the biggest one among them.
Speaker: It actually, the writing suggests that part of his, his advantage is that he appears to be less inbred than the rest of them.
Speaker: Like, yeah, that'll help.
Speaker: That would be, that would be, that'd be very helpful.
Speaker: He has the freshest chromosomes in the down there.
Speaker: It's not bad.
Speaker: Hot off the presses.
Speaker: Hot off the presses.
Speaker: And she ends up, again, just passing charisma check after charisma check, just just talking circles around him to get him on her good side.
Speaker: She basically, like, gives up one of the other rats and implies that he's been trying to betray the big bad and all that stuff.
Speaker: And so she's just she's just.
Speaker: Feminine wiling all over their rat asses.
Speaker: Cut to chapter 15.
Speaker: Burl's giving Zack some water and telling him his plan.
Speaker: The plan is that he's going to use Zack as bait to draw the alien defenses away while he sneaks in the back way and steals some more.
Speaker: And gets more that alien tech.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: As long as I'm out here, I might as well get some more alien tech.
Speaker: And that's it.
Speaker: And if Zach lives, if he survives, then he can go free.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He'll let him go.
Speaker: What's funny about Burl is that he doesn't get to alien tech to sell it.
Speaker: No siree.
Speaker: He wants to have it.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: He just wants to have it.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: If you ever, if you ever read a treasure Island, he's basically Ben gun.
Speaker: He has just been there for so long.
Speaker: He has been convincing everyone that he's a ghost.
Speaker: Everyone's afraid of him.
Speaker: And he's just gathering up all of this treasure and sitting on it like a dragon.
Speaker: And that's it.
Speaker: And it's, it's, I honestly think Burl's my favorite character in the book.
Speaker: I love Burl.
Speaker: Yeah, I think, though, in appearance wise, I imagine him looking like Herman Toothrot from Monkey Island.
Speaker: Oh, sure.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I love this character.
Speaker: We cut to Marla in a prison cell.
Speaker: She is she's giving into despair.
Speaker: contemplating suicide.
Speaker: Um, and as she's doing that, she gets her V for vendetta on and finds a letter in the, in the walls, basically from an engineer who used to be there, uh, uh, and that suggests, uh, in the letters that there are tunnels beneath and around the prison cells that might've allowed this person to escape.
Speaker: So we are feeding her a glimmer of hope there.
Speaker: Um, uh,
Speaker: We cut to Roland Company.
Speaker: The engineer, by the way, talks about like the fingers, like how they keep cutting his fingers off and they think that the rat people think it makes them more a better like engineer by eating his fingers.
Speaker: It's a very cool bit of lore building.
Speaker: Cause it's like, you know, there, there, that's an old idea.
Speaker: The idea of like, if you eat the heart of the lion, you'll gain its, its courage.
Speaker: If you eat its brain, you'll create gain its intelligence.
Speaker: I've never heard of the idea of eating the fingers to gain nimbleness and to become a bit, that's very cool.
Speaker: Like that's, that's a very unique take on that.
Speaker: I thought that was.
Speaker: So do you think King Charles's fingers tastes like sausage?
Speaker: wouldn't they have to those things that I'm not going to find out God help me there are there are human beings I would eat his fingers are not one of them army hammer just to start with because I think it would be funny the irony is delicious but you can't say anything back can you because you're not all there well some of you is there and some of you is over there some of you is over there
Speaker: Uh, in this story, I'm a serial murderer.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Phil standing over army hammer, like Ray Liotta, uh, in, in Hannibal or what was it?
Speaker: What was it?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: His brains out and everything.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's pretty much it.
Speaker: Eating his brain like it's sherbet.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just giving it a little, little sizzle.
Speaker: Just get a little seer on it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I liked that.
Speaker: I thought that was a pretty I wonder if that was Shirley's idea or if that comes from the game lore.
Speaker: I'd have to look into that.
Speaker: We'll never know.
Speaker: We'll never know because I'm not going to find out.
Speaker: I briefly considered in the waning days of the sale buying Borderlands or Borderlands 2 or something just to play a little bit of it.
Speaker: And it was on sale.
Speaker: And I still was like, I'm not going to do that.
Speaker: I'm good.
Speaker: Um, so we've got Roland and Cal.
Speaker: They are discussing, uh, the, this alien tech, uh, that they found, uh, in the psychos, uh, that, wait, did I skip something here?
Speaker: I totally skipped.
Speaker: I skipped a bigger part.
Speaker: And I skipped the end of chapter 14.
Speaker: There was a big, uh,
Speaker: War, basically a big fight.
Speaker: Oh, right.
Speaker: Yeah, I totally skipped it.
Speaker: There's a the crater they're staying in.
Speaker: All of these psychos on riding on primal back attack there.
Speaker: We get a huge battle after a bunch of heavy losses.
Speaker: They do end up killing them all.
Speaker: This is a quote.
Speaker: that I got a kick out of, uh, the psychos were dead.
Speaker: The men converged around the primals and crushed their skulls with the butt of butts of their guns.
Speaker: It was a memorable sound.
Speaker: The crushing of skulls with gun butts.
Speaker: Cal was very much afraid.
Speaker: He'd never quite forget it.
Speaker: So Cal is getting his PTSD on.
Speaker: He's really, yeah.
Speaker: Drinking it in.
Speaker: He's becoming one with the planet, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I don't think Cal's going anywhere.
Speaker: I think Cal stays here on the, I think they all might, to be honest.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He can't, you can never, you can't go home.
Speaker: No, this is it.
Speaker: This is it for Cal.
Speaker: He can't go home again.
Speaker: No more VR for this kid.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: So we've got we've got Cranigan, Cal, Roland and this other random old man guy.
Speaker: And Ranz.
Speaker: Ranz and Ranz and Ranz who hid under a truck the entire time.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And and they they.
Speaker: One of the mercenaries draws their attention to the fact that there is some sort of alien tech that is sticking out of the back of all of these dead psychos.
Speaker: So that's what brings me to in chapter 15.
Speaker: They're discussing the alien tech and the psychos.
Speaker: And this is basically what they're saying, what they were talking about before, where this alien ship is going out and changing intruders and turning them into aliens.
Speaker: soldiers for the alien ships.
Speaker: These psychos weren't attacking them of their own free will.
Speaker: They were doing it to protect the alien ship, which suggests they're close and and they're a threat.
Speaker: So, yeah, they're close to their payday and they start traveling.
Speaker: They continue.
Speaker: They find dark blots in the plains, which are the tunnels of the tunnel rats.
Speaker: And Cal gets the idea of putting on tinted glasses
Speaker: So that he can see, he can better see where the tunnels are, where there might be pit traps.
Speaker: And he guides them through all of them.
Speaker: And finally, they get to the other side of the planes and he sees a tunnel rat gesturing to him to come closer.
Speaker: And it feels, and it ends on this kind of enigmatic idea that he feels like his destiny is in those tunnels.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that's the end of chapter 15.
Speaker: And that is that is that is our that is our lot for this.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: So, Kevin, what are you what are you thinking so far?
Speaker: I know we talked a little bit about.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, there's still a lot of fun stuff about this book, just like some real fucking terrible handling of the way Marla.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: behaves in the second third of the book.
Speaker: Like, I understand some of the feminine wiles stuff, but I, but like completely forgetting the fact that she's a xenobiologist.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Also is like kind of the weird part.
Speaker: I don't have.
Speaker: Yeah, it's just that's how I feel.
Speaker: I don't have a problem with especially because she is it never she's a mom, you know, and everything like that.
Speaker: It doesn't it doesn't say anything about whether she is particularly pretty or shapely or anything.
Speaker: The idea is that these guys are all living out in the goddamn desert and they haven't seen a woman who is, you know, relatively healthy, maybe their entire lives.
Speaker: So that's going to look good no matter what she looks like.
Speaker: And so I wouldn't have a problem with it if she if that was like something that occasionally came up and she was like, oh, yeah, these these people are totally into me because I don't look like a mutant snake.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And and it was and it was complimenting and accompanying.
Speaker: the things that we've already established that she's good at her actual skills and stuff, but she's just kind of a waif to be dragged around and protected and, and, and using her, her miss Scarlet skills on.
Speaker: And I don't, yeah, I'm not a big fan of the direction he's taking her.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I think, I feel like the Vance thing, like Vance bailing was, I mean, I kind of, it was like very sudden, but also like, oh, I guess that is kind of just like what this place would be like.
Speaker: Like, he left at the first, at the first sign of like things not working out.
Speaker: He's like, okay.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I thought that made sense.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: This plan is brutal.
Speaker: And if we don't, we don't think of ourselves at all times, we will die.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So I think, yeah, I thought that was good, good writing and I'm still not willing to give up on him.
Speaker: Still, still team Vance.
Speaker: I mean, Zach is still the worst character somehow of all of them.
Speaker: Sega's the worst.
Speaker: Because all he's thinking about is like getting that alien tech, getting at that ass, you know?
Speaker: Every now and then he goes, oh, I hope my wife and kid are okay.
Speaker: Now to the treasure.
Speaker: Like it's just, he's awful.
Speaker: He's really the worst.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He's just awful.
Speaker: As far as, I think I kind of like the Roland and Cal stuff the most.
Speaker: That's good stuff.
Speaker: Part of me thinks like it would have been most interesting if it was entirely focused on them.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like you could have, I think you could have gotten a whole book out of like, you know, you got this kid who just plays video games his entire life.
Speaker: He's separated from his parents when the ship goes down and now he just has to learn the ways of Pandora.
Speaker: That's around Pandora, right?
Speaker: That's the name of the place.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, considering the fact that the prologue opens with him, suggesting that he's kind of our main guy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And they do divide the time pretty evenly between these three storylines.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So that's interesting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Roland is the first point of chapter one, first point of view character and is introduced in the prologue.
Speaker: So, yeah, I guess.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: It's weird, but it's weird, but still an entertaining read.
Speaker: I think it's entertaining.
Speaker: It's fun.
Speaker: It's high energy.
Speaker: Shirley's good at that.
Speaker: He's good at he's good at violence.
Speaker: He's good at keeping the energy up.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Even in some of the even when it's like dicey in terms of characterization, it's like, well, yeah, it's still.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Still moving.
Speaker: I'm still turning the pages at least.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: This is this has been one of the more enjoyable things we've read in a while, at least in those terms.
Speaker: So, OK, great.
Speaker: Well, then, now that we are done with that, that leaves me with a single question, the question that everyone actually came here for after all this time.
Speaker: Kevin, what are you reading?
Speaker: What am I reading?
Speaker: What are you reading?
Speaker: I did it.
Speaker: Oh, God damn it.
Speaker: I did it.
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: What am I playing?
Speaker: Well, I mean, we can talk about what you're reading, too, if you want.
Speaker: But mostly, I mean, I built it up.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm reading this book.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm reading this book.
Speaker: Same.
Speaker: Same.
Speaker: What am I playing?
Speaker: I am playing... I am thoroughly into Shadow of the Erd Tree now.
Speaker: It is... It's difficult.
Speaker: It is more difficult than the base game of Elden Ring.
Speaker: And I'll say that because, like, I had... The first time I ever beat Elden Ring, it took, like, you know, 100 hours, right?
Speaker: And I just beat the base game of Elden Ring...
Speaker: uh where in like 55 hours and plenty of those hours included me just fucking around like nice so it's like it's one of those things of okay you know how the game works you can kind of get through it in a reasonable amount of time um
Speaker: And honestly, I've been watching some YouTube channels of like meme builds and stuff like that that people do, and they'll go through the entire game like, yep, that's all 36 bosses in nine hours or something like that, you know?
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Or 36 bosses in nine hours.
Speaker: That's not all the bosses that you can fight in the game.
Speaker: But yeah, it's like once you know where you're going and what you're doing, the hours really tighten up.
Speaker: I think a lot of that first playthrough when I played on the PS5 just involved a lot of
Speaker: Oh my God, this game is so huge.
Speaker: I have no idea where anything is.
Speaker: I'm discovering everything for the first time.
Speaker: And then this time going through the game, I was like, okay, I'm going here.
Speaker: I'm getting this weapon.
Speaker: I'm going here.
Speaker: I'm getting this weapon.
Speaker: I'm going over here.
Speaker: You've got a little more direction this time around.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's the resident evil syndrome of like, okay, I know how to solve all the puzzles and I can just run around all the enemies and save all of my ammo for just the final boss.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: This time it's going to take me half the time.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So anyway, yeah, I'm into Shadow of the Archery now fully because I'd beaten the base game, went back and I got to tell you, Shadow of the Archery is hard as balls.
Speaker: That's what I've heard.
Speaker: They didn't mess around.
Speaker: So basically there is something in Shadow of the Erd Tree.
Speaker: They're called Scadu Tree Fragments.
Speaker: And you can use them to gain extra levels.
Speaker: Well, not really levels, but bonuses to your damage and your damage negation.
Speaker: that only affect you while you're in the Shadow Realm, which is where the DLC is set.
Speaker: So they tuned everything up in the Shadow Realm to be, you know, hardier and they hit harder and all that stuff.
Speaker: You need to use the Scadu Tree Fragments in order to actually
Speaker: survive basically.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So I think that's kind of that's part of it is is is just really getting used to the fact that it is it is really tuned up.
Speaker: I'm at the first boss right now.
Speaker: uh, R'Lanna and uh, she's kicking my ass, but I was pretty close to burning her down, uh, right before I got on the call.
Speaker: And then there's like one, there's another boss that I gotta get through before it opens, like there's an opening area to the DLC.
Speaker: And then once you beat this boss and it's a boss that was shown in all the demos called the dancing lion,
Speaker: Once you beat the dancing lion, it opens up the map into more regions.
Speaker: But yeah, I'm really liking it so far.
Speaker: The dancing lion, by the way, if you haven't seen it, go look it up.
Speaker: It's a pretty neat looking boss.
Speaker: It actually looks like one of the...
Speaker: like Chinese parade, uh, dragon.
Speaker: Oh, that's cool.
Speaker: And what's interesting is I think there's actually the, the way the character model is built.
Speaker: There's actually like two guys inside of the dancing lion suit, moving it around.
Speaker: Oh, that's neat.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's a really cool design.
Speaker: Oh, I like that.
Speaker: That's the thing.
Speaker: That's why I wish I was better at these games.
Speaker: The monster design is bananas.
Speaker: I love it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Divine Beast Dancing Lion.
Speaker: Very cool.
Speaker: Very cool.
Speaker: You can actually see their legs.
Speaker: The guy's legs.
Speaker: And you get a helmet.
Speaker: You get to keep the hat, the helmet, after you beat him, apparently.
Speaker: Yeah, that's fucking tight.
Speaker: That is really cool.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So yeah, that's that's what I've been playing.
Speaker: Haven't haven't really gotten to touch anything else.
Speaker: The other thing I I've watched a couple movies recently that I want to mention.
Speaker: Love Lies Bleeding was OK.
Speaker: How was this?
Speaker: I need to know.
Speaker: I haven't seen it yet.
Speaker: It is very horny.
Speaker: It is very gay.
Speaker: So Kristen Stewart continues being as, you know, as gay as possible in a very good way since since the Twilight, you know, doing the Twilight saga.
Speaker: It's her and Katie O'Brien.
Speaker: That's the actress's name, right?
Speaker: Katie O'Brien.
Speaker: No idea.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Katie O'Brien, who is the bodybuilder.
Speaker: And it's, you know, it's a crime drama with some really light, light, I don't want to say horror, but like- The trailer makes it look like there's some body horror shit in there.
Speaker: A little bit of body horror shit.
Speaker: It's just like it's it's a crime crime thriller erotic film with some very light horror.
Speaker: Not like horror aesthetic peppered in there in terms of like because Ed Harris is the fucking looks like the fucking Crypt Keeper.
Speaker: He looks so awful.
Speaker: It's great.
Speaker: In that movie.
Speaker: He is immaculate playing that part.
Speaker: Just terrifying looking.
Speaker: And it's set in 1987.
Speaker: So it's worth taking a look at Love Lies Bleeding.
Speaker: Very cool.
Speaker: So we watched that last night.
Speaker: And we watched something else.
Speaker: I'm trying to remember.
Speaker: And it's already gone from my mind.
Speaker: It was so...
Speaker: uh inconsequential it was so inconsequential it's already gone from my mind i can't i can't even remember what it was so uh that'll be it for for me uh phil
Speaker: What are you playing?
Speaker: Oh, I am.
Speaker: I played.
Speaker: I played a few things.
Speaker: I played a demo for a game called Mech Builder.
Speaker: There's not much to say about it.
Speaker: It's basically it's basically the same game as like model builder simulator or whatever.
Speaker: It's just that you're building Gundams.
Speaker: OK.
Speaker: And honestly,
Speaker: I get it.
Speaker: I get it.
Speaker: It's relaxing.
Speaker: It's it doesn't give you instructions.
Speaker: I don't think anyway.
Speaker: So you do have to kind of figure out how to put them together and they get more and more complicated as you go.
Speaker: And you can paint them.
Speaker: You can sticker them.
Speaker: But I mean, that's I just I'm not spending money on that.
Speaker: I'm just not.
Speaker: I also played a game called Life Eater.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: This is very interesting, and I'm torn on this one.
Speaker: This is a game where you play.
Speaker: It's a strategy game, and you play a guy who is the servant of like a cosmic elder god kind of figure.
Speaker: And if you don't kill somebody every so often in a very specific way, then this elder god will
Speaker: destroy the world.
Speaker: So you have no choice.
Speaker: And when you when you find the person you're going to kill, you have to like stalk them.
Speaker: You have to choose different ways to follow them, stalk them.
Speaker: And it's a strategy.
Speaker: It's like it's kind of a spreadsheet kind of thing in a way where it's just like laying out what you're doing and how long and how you're spending that time.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And then when you get them, when you finally have enough
Speaker: intimacy with them, basically to kidnap them, to take them away and kill them.
Speaker: That's when the game gets really tough because you have all of these little questions.
Speaker: Basically, his opened up guts are in front of you.
Speaker: And based on stuff that you should have learned while you were stalking him, you have to do certain things.
Speaker: So if the guy is between a certain age, then they want you to break his 13th rib.
Speaker: If he is, if he works at a certain place, they want you to eviscerate his small intestine and so on and so on.
Speaker: And this is stuff that you like, you will have to write this down.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And my notes look like the notes of a serial killer.
Speaker: Ha ha ha!
Speaker: As a result, dinner alone, alone on Sunday, patrol with partners, six hours sleep, five and a half hours sleep, bury the body, light brown hair.
Speaker: Like, this is not okay that I have to write.
Speaker: No, you should shred those.
Speaker: I'm going to because this is, I'm fucked.
Speaker: And it's,
Speaker: And I'm still getting my sea legs with it because it's not obvious how it all works sometimes, how to how to play the game most efficiently.
Speaker: But I've never played a game like this.
Speaker: It's a very unique game.
Speaker: And as I've said many times in the show, any game where I literally have to take notes is a plus.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm adding that to my wish list.
Speaker: It's a very interesting game.
Speaker: Oh, and it's like it looks like it's the the UI is basically like Adobe Premiere.
Speaker: Right, exactly, exactly.
Speaker: It's like an editing kind of thing.
Speaker: Yeah, that's exactly it.
Speaker: And it's, what a unique game.
Speaker: It's very strange, it's grim.
Speaker: It's also heavily implied that,
Speaker: This whole thing with the God is real.
Speaker: Like it's heavily implied that like like you actually are serving a dark God and that it isn't just in your head.
Speaker: It's very strange, which I am for, by the way, I am totally sick of of like, oh, it was never real.
Speaker: Like, fuck it.
Speaker: Make them real.
Speaker: Make the gods real.
Speaker: Make them like, you know, it's, I don't care.
Speaker: But I don't want the twist to be like, oh, he was, because first of all, that's, it's like a little bit sanest and a little bit ableist to be like, ah, he's just crazy all the time.
Speaker: All these stories.
Speaker: All the time.
Speaker: It was a dude actually being literally talked to by an eldritch being to do these things.
Speaker: It makes you feel a little less creepy about playing the game a little.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: But this is by Strange Scaffold, the same people who did El Paso elsewhere.
Speaker: And and they did a game that just came out that I also want to play called Click Holding, which is very unnerving looking.
Speaker: Oh, yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: These guys are good at unusual games.
Speaker: It's it's it's pretty, pretty interesting.
Speaker: So I'm going to have to come back to it.
Speaker: It is it is a hell of a learning curve.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: It's a it's difficult.
Speaker: It's difficult, but I think it'd be worth it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I finally started playing Jurassic World Evolution 2.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: I feel like the first one was your jam, right?
Speaker: I loved the first one.
Speaker: I did.
Speaker: And the second one came out pretty quick after it.
Speaker: And I was like, why?
Speaker: And I didn't touch it for a while because I was worried.
Speaker: I was like, are they just going to...
Speaker: Do the same thing with this one again.
Speaker: Is this, is this, is this bad?
Speaker: What's going on?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And they've been steadily adding DLC to it and all kinds of, the first one, the DLC that they had was pretty predatory.
Speaker: Like it was like, you get five new dinosaurs for like $10.
Speaker: It's like, motherfucker.
Speaker: Jesus.
Speaker: This one I got on sale and I got a bunch of the DLC and they have campaigns.
Speaker: The campaign's really interesting because in the first one, you're basically doing Jurassic Park.
Speaker: You are evolving these creatures and getting, you know, busting up fossils and all that stuff and getting the DNA.
Speaker: In the original campaign for this, it's more Jurassic World where you work for the parks department basically or a fish and fish and
Speaker: wildlife or something like that.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And you have to, and you go out to different places around the States and you have to build a facility and you have to go and capture these animals that have already been found.
Speaker: And they're like, like we've got a whole bunch of Brachiosaurus out here.
Speaker: We can't just kill them because we brought them into life, but we want to keep them safe.
Speaker: So you have to build the right facilities for them and, and get them tranquilized and put in the park and all that stuff.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I like it.
Speaker: I really like it so far.
Speaker: They've they've taken they've mainstreamed, sorry, streamlined a lot of stuff that was a little clunky in the first one.
Speaker: It's still very pretty.
Speaker: It's still very intuitive and it and it just feels like Jurassic Park.
Speaker: It's the proper way to it.
Speaker: To me, these games are the proper way to play Jurassic Park.
Speaker: That is until this Jurassic Park survival game finally comes out, which.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I.
Speaker: need in my life.
Speaker: I'm hope they keep calling it an action adventure game.
Speaker: And I hope that that doesn't mean that it isn't just Jurassic Park Alien Isolation, which is what I'm keeping my fingers crossed for.
Speaker: Yeah, that would be that if it was Alien Isolation, except Raptors,
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I would shit my pants.
Speaker: That would be, that would be childhood terror, uh, right there.
Speaker: So fingers crossed that that they do the right thing.
Speaker: It's like, just imagine a game where you're like, you keep hiding behind doors or something like that.
Speaker: And in the first part of the game, it's totally effective because the Raptors can't open doors, but the more you do it, the more likely it is that they learn how to open the doors.
Speaker: So you don't want to overuse it.
Speaker: And then you get like a little notification when the, like the raptor has opened the door.
Speaker: The raptors have learned how to open doors.
Speaker: Like you see it like a little notification.
Speaker: And you just feel a chill run down your spine.
Speaker: Like, oh yeah, that would be fucking tight.
Speaker: So until that game comes out, this is a I think I think Jurassic World Evolution, I think this is the proper way to play a Jurassic Park game every now and then.
Speaker: And they've they've added in aviaries and aquariums.
Speaker: So you've got aquatic dinosaurs and right.
Speaker: I beat the original campaign for it, and I'm starting in on a DLC campaign where you play as Biosyn, which was the it's the it's the competing genetics lab that basically got Nidri, hired Nidri to steal stuff for them with Dodgson and everything.
Speaker: So it's interesting.
Speaker: You're playing one of the bad guys, which is pretty cool.
Speaker: So, yeah, it's it's a it's another one of these.
Speaker: I've said this before and I'll say it again.
Speaker: You know, this is the year where I learned the games I appreciate the most are going to be the ones that I can do with a kid in my lap.
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: Like all I need is the only thing I need is the mouse and I can click on things.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And every now and then reach up and like do a little thing.
Speaker: But like, yeah, no, like this, Bellatro, shit like that.
Speaker: This is, this is, this is, this is time well spent.
Speaker: So yeah, that's me.
Speaker: I've been, it was a good week for games.
Speaker: Yeah, well, that will do it for tonight's episode.
Speaker: If you want to follow us, go hit us up on Twitter.
Speaker: Still calling it Twitter.
Speaker: God damn it.
Speaker: I'm not going to stop.
Speaker: I'm not going to stop because fuck Elon and his.
Speaker: The guy, by the way, was like, I'm going to pledge $45 million a month to Trump.
Speaker: And he's like, I never said that.
Speaker: His daughter fucking rules.
Speaker: His daughter fucking rules.
Speaker: Oh, God.
Speaker: She eviscerated him.
Speaker: She's the coolest, man.
Speaker: She is freaking awesome.
Speaker: When Elon was talking about how his kid died of the woke mind virus and he mourns them like they're actually dead and his daughter is just like, yeah, he's a piece of shit.
Speaker: My dad, like, like,
Speaker: Like, he was never around.
Speaker: Like, what the fuck is he?
Speaker: What is he mourning?
Speaker: He never knew me.
Speaker: He can get fucked, you know?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: She eviscerated him.
Speaker: Robert Evans said a really great thing on his show about him where he was saying, like, the problem with people like Elon Musk is they see their children as extensions of themselves and not as human beings.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And that's it.
Speaker: That nailed it.
Speaker: That is one and done.
Speaker: Yeah, because behind the bastards the week that we're recording this is talking about RFK Jr. and how he comes from a family, the Kennedys, which are quiverfuls, which means quiverful family means they have a ton of kids to increase the odds that the kids are going to do something spectacular.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: In the Kennedy's case, it's mostly bad things because of all the pressure.
Speaker: All the boy, all the male Kennedys were just in pressure cookers from the time that they were born, basically.
Speaker: Endless pressure plus endless money is not the...
Speaker: So you should go listen to the Behind the Bastards episodes about RFK Jr. because A, it gives you some empathy for RFK Jr. because the man never had a chance.
Speaker: Never had a chance.
Speaker: Never had a chance.
Speaker: Great episodes.
Speaker: Great episodes.
Speaker: But yeah, so, but I didn't know that I would find anyone related to Elon Musk that I could put my, put my support behind.
Speaker: But Vivian, we're on your side.
Speaker: We're on your side.
Speaker: Your dad sucks.
Speaker: Sucks ass, but you seem really cool.
Speaker: So you seem really cool.
Speaker: And you agree with us that your dad sucks, which is also really cool.
Speaker: That's always important.
Speaker: So Twitter, you can also follow us.
Speaker: On Instagram.
Speaker: Instagram, you can follow us for free.
Speaker: Like I said earlier on Patreon.
Speaker: If you're watching on YouTube, go ahead and hit that subscribe button.
Speaker: Like and subscribe because that will help us.
Speaker: We're actually we're getting closer.
Speaker: We're inching closer to being able to be monetized on YouTube.
Speaker: Only 220 subscribers away.
Speaker: from being able to be monetized on YouTube.
Speaker: So share us.
Speaker: If you're feeling real spunky, go ahead and share a YouTube version and, you know, let's get some subscribers, some subs.
Speaker: Let's get some subs.
Speaker: We'll dom your subs.
Speaker: Well, yeah, we'll top your bottoms.
Speaker: Top your bottoms.
Speaker: Top your bottoms.
Speaker: Am I doing that right?
Speaker: like I'm not.
Speaker: It's okay.
Speaker: It's okay.
Speaker: I'm a dad now.
Speaker: I don't have to worry about that shit.
Speaker: Who cares?
Speaker: Good night, everybody.
Speaker: Good night.
