Speaker 1: This is an Unspoiled Network podcast. This is spoil Me
covering Dungeon Crawler Carl Book eight, A Parade of Horribles,
chapters fourteen through nineteen. In these chapters, we meet up
with our friends, we hang out and do a bit
of karaoke, but really what's going on as an underlying
feeling of deep anxiety and dread and it's just really
difficult to shake. Welcome to spoil Me. Welcome to the
show everyone. I am Natasha. Thank you very much to
Michael for commissioning this episode. Michael is here in the
chat with me. Appreciate you man. Yeah, so, you guys,
there is so much going on in these chapters in
terms of like weird little side details that I feel
like are probably going to become central details at some point,
and we just have to sort of watch that fuse
get lit and wait, which not a great feeling. Let's
start off with the entry into the actual village, because
one of my big questions at the end of the
last episode was what this village was going to look like,
and I was thinking it might be something a little
bit more suburban, but it turns out it's a bit different.
It's actually got a very strong aige ease feel to it.
This town was straight out of a nineteen eighties neon
infused cyberpunk fever dream, which sounds kind of dope. I
will say that when Donut says you would think that
this color scheme would be right up my alley, I
completely understand what she means. Look, you can like certain
colors and know that there are appropriate times for those colors.
Right anybody who watches The Lives knows that I love pink.
There's pink all over my office. For a while, my
office chair was pink until it broke. The you know,
colors for Unspoiled logo is like a kind of magenta
cross pink and purple. And this leads a lot of
people to thinking that I'm going to love pink in everything.
But there are places it does not go. I don't
have pink in my bedroom. I do not have pink
in my kitchen. I just don't do it. There's like
a couple things kitchen wise that are pink that are
like teapots and stuff, you know, things that and the
drawing the line in the sand of her like being
like this is just like being at a Claire's I
was nodding vehemently. I kept picturing the side of those
like Dixie cups that have that you know that nineties
look so anyway, this their entry into the village is
started with a mention that the safe rooms don't apply
in the square, and also poisoning rules do not apply.
Eat at your own risk, which there's a moment later
where we find out that some foods might actually give
you a speed boost, but there's no way to tell
what will and what won't. It's impossible to get a
description for the foods in the square, so you just
have to take it. And I would simply never. I
absolutely would fucking never. And I yeah, you know, we
all have our thing. Jurgen cannot help himself. So let's see. Uh,
the arena was on the eleventh floor. Nobody knew anything
beyond that. I couldn't stop thinking about it. If we
had a choice on who to send to the eleventh
what did that really mean? Who could we pick? The
AI had dragged Princess Formidable from her spaceship to the
Desperado Club. Could I pick someone from orbit and force
them into the dungeon? Could I pick someone who was
currently on the twelfth. Could I pick a liaison like
that Harbinger guy? Could I pick Prime Minister Victory? Who
could I drag to the eleventh floor that would cause
the most damage? Really thought about this one, and I
can't decide. I feel like Prime Minister Victory sounds like
the person who's going to do the most damage because
of her current position. But I feel like Carl and
Dona have probably gotten a lot more help from her
than they realize, And I think they would be screwing
themselves long term for the remaining time in the dungeon
if they chose her and something happened to her. I
don't you know, like and anybody else that I can
think of is just somebody is so tangential that I'm like,
I don't really know how important they truly are. It's
just that I know them. Yeah, I don't know. So
there's a few places they pass by as they're in
this town. There's a joke here, guys that I actually
thought was kind of clever. Donna says about the pink
and tea. You would think this esthetic could be at
my alley. But you know, when you lean too hard
into something, it just becomes a caricature of itself. She gasped, Carl,
look a hat vendor. I see what you did, their author,
I see what you're doing there. I did think that
was actually kind of funny. I don't mind her hat
obsession as a thing. In fact, I think that it's
like kind of a very relatable human nature thing when
you are feeling like you're in an uncertain, unstable situation
that you start to lean on one particular funny, cute,
comforting thing harder than ever before. And so this actually
tracks to me as like a real evolution of her
obsession with like small side things nobody else cares about,
you know, and the connection to aesthetics. In the game,
there's also C and W and U location, illegal modifications
and more grand opening soon. And I'm wondering because, like
my initial assumption was illegal modifications to vehicles, but I
actually don't know if that's true, Like it might be
illegal modifications to bodies, but I have to assume it's
to vehicles, like it just has to. Okay, So there's
a huge sign that is for a bar called the
Hairpin with the Desperado Club entrance in the back, but
we are avoiding that in favor of a place called Lollipop,
featuring a gremlin waving what looked like a giant lollipop
back and forth and under. It was another sign that
made me grown inwardly. And Donut has not noticed this yet.
She says their selection is just abysmal. About the hats,
I did get a cheap trucker hat that says I'd
hang a little with Chad. I don't know what that means, guys.
I feel like I should know what this means. I
feel like Chad is like the equivalent of a skin
tag or something that that's like part of the joke,
you know, But I don't, like I'm not confident enough
in that. Michael says, hanging Chad Florida voting, that's still
not I don't the two thousand election, I don't know.
I love that seraphim accidentally typed ejection George Bush Junior
winning Florida? Is his name? Nickname Chad? What's the Chad
in this? Sorry, guys, y'all are trying to like just
give me a little like a couple of words to
remind me, But I truly don't you know what I'm saying.
Like you have to just actually say it. We'll get
back to this once somebody finishes typing that up. This
is when we run into Oh, Michael says he challenged
in court ballots with hanging chads and one which gave
him the presidency. Right, because it's like the little bits
of paper that were punched but didn't fully come out, right.
I forgot about that. What a weird fucking world. Yeah,
it's a reasonable reason to be president whatever. Whatever. So
Jorgan is eating his street meat, complaining loudly about the
fact that Prepotentie does not trust him, and I will
say that, despite Jurgen obviously not being like the brightest
bulb here, there is a point where he mentions that
he is a mechanic, and Preppertente ignored him in favor
of a biological amount, which when they got one, turns
out to be quite slow. So I here's my thing,
is like I want to be like, Okay, so Prepotentae
made a call that probably wasn't a good one, and
then I stop and think about what I know of Jurgen,
and I'm like, do do I know enough to say
that he's a good mechanic? I actually am not sure
if choosing a biological was a means of like self
protection from prepotente, because he's just like I do not
want him like futzing around with any of our vehicles
because I don't trust him. Yeah, I can't decide. Uh.
And let's see, there are sweetie, our mount Sweety is
a large mount sized mammal called a pariso. She is
similar to a creature called a tape ear, but large
enough to carry myself, this oaf here, and one or
two more mercenaries, which I'm afraid we're going to have
to do once the city it starts violently violently vomiting
mystery meat over the sidewalk. I will say that later.
It seems like he is recovering fairly quickly, so it
may not affect their race too much, but we'll have
to wait and see. They go into the bar, and
the karaoke is already well underway, and there's a ton
of NPCs in here who are singing, and a lot
of these NPCs, like we've seen NPCs that were different
preachers before, but a lot of the ones in here
are specifically mobs of a type that have a really
like sinister look to them. And Karl is just having
a hard time with seeing these mobs out and about
like they're just having a regular time. You know, it's
because they are so different, and I really understand that.
I feel like the well, we have a guy later
on who you know, his name and attire are really something.
But we'll get there in a second. So other crawlers
sat at various tables, all raising their hands and greeting.
Most of the crowd renpcs and all were racers. The
bartenders and the dj were gremlins. And this is when
we have the Minister of Blood letting a necklace that
appeared to be made of live back. Oh my god,
I don't even like, I can't even like picture that.
He must be very large. And Imani is here and
she's drinking, and Carl is like, I actually can't remember
if I've ever seen her drink before. And I wondered
very much about this, because, like somebody who doesn't drink
or doesn't usually tend to drink, not saying that they
are entirely sober, necessarily, their decision to drink can mean
a couple things. One, it can mean they're finally really
letting their hair down and relaxing and not holding on
to control in a way that they often do. It
can mean they're going through something and not drinking, which
is normally important to them, has fallen by the wayside
because they are trying to escape some very strong emotions.
It can mean that they have like grown to trust
the people around them in a way that they hadn't before,
and so they don't feel the need to constantly keep
their guard up and be sober and alert as they
once felt. There's all kinds of things, and so while
my instinct was to feel like not great about the
fact that she was drinking, I sort of caught myself
and was like, I don't know, maybe maybe this is
kind of a good thing, you know. I don't know.
Or it could simply be like considering the circumstances that
they are in, it could simply be imani being like,
you know, I was the one who just drove. I
am not going to be called on to drive again,
and each race might be our last. It's a lot
more likely that we're going to die than it used
to be, and so I am going to start, you know,
letting my hair down a little bit more in an
effort to make the most of the moments that I
have especially considering this is the moment where Dona realizes
that she is in love with Chris, And it's very
cute to me how instantaneously she gets it. Like the
what all she does is make a joke about Chris
being you know, like good but slow, something like that,
big but slow and uh. She nudges him, and he
seems to like enjoy the joke. He doesn't seem offended
by this at all. And I really can't tell, like
is he into her? Also? Is that even you know?
Is that part of why she's decided to drink is
like she feels like she can't relax around him or
she wants to like beach more chill around him. I
don't know. I again, I might be analyzing this a
little bit too much. But whenever it's something that has
to do with one of our friends who is like
part of our central group, I always pay special attention
because it feels like it's probably going to affect Carl
and Donut directly at some point, you know, And everybody
is talking about the different vehicles that they got, h
Ellie is complaining about hers. She's like, it's a military
vehicle that handles really shitty and Florin is like, uh,
it's a mo wag piranha, which is amphibious and really
like it's you know, armored. You guys are extremely lucky. Actually,
because Lucia and I have a tuck Tuck, I really
loved that Doughnut says that sounds like a monster from
one of Carl's nerd movies. Because I am not kidding guys.
I literally was like, is that something from like Star Wars?
You know? Immediately that was my thought and her saying that,
I just kind of cackled to myself. But it's a rickshaw?
What that fucking like? So does somebody have to be
out front? Is that what always has to be the case?
Like pulling it or I'm looking it up right now
to see the picture of it. Okay, it's an auto rickshaw,
so it's three wheels, but it's there's no person because like,
actual person pulled rickshaws are still very much a thing,
especially in a lot of like tourist trap destination areas.
So I was like, is that what we're doing. There's
actually a few TikTok accounts of people who have their
own small business of pulling these things, and they're extremely
hot dudes who the camera being on their muscular back
while they're doing manual labor is like very much a
thing for folks, so they make pretty good money on
their TikTok account as well as pulling people around. But
these look a little bit more like a golf cart,
but with three wheels instead of four, and usually have
a couple rows of seats rather than just the one,
and they're kind of dope b looking. Honestly, I kind
of love it. Like they're very goofy looking on the
one hand, but there is something kind of fun in retro,
almost like a vespa about the build. I don't hate it,
but for a race, yeah, that sucks. That really sucks,
and Prepotentda has to explain to them what a tut
tuck is wanders off to find somebody who has a
menu of all of the soda flavors that they have.
I couldn't help, but wonder if Prepotente would like that
peach beer. You know, I feel like that's like potentially
something that he would be very fond of if it's
on the sweeter side. That just seems like it's up
his alley, But who knows. So there's this uh moment
with Jurgen, where it's mentioned Jorgen had a pregnant wife
named Heidi who wasn't really in the dungeon with us,
even though he pretended like she was. She was up
there somehow in the kinder facility on the surface, along
with Katya and presumably the one hundred and twenty thousand
children that were stuck in Lucy's head. Jurgen was a
great fighter and had been more than competent as a general,
but getting separated from his wife had obviously knocked his
marbles about. I am really curious if he is actually
as bonkers as he is seeming like. I don't know, guys,
There's just something about the what has happened to Lucy
mar that makes me feel like many things are not
as simple a one to one translation as the showrunners
would have you believe. And so the idea that maybe
his pregnant wife doesn't come into the dungeon, but something
wonky happens where he can kind of see her or
sense her. Is she in his head somehow? I just
can't discount that as easily as Carl seems to. I'm
not saying that she's actually here and invisible because like
before I was sort of like, is this you know,
is this something else like that going on? But now
that we know one per can have as many as
one hundred thousand people going on in their head, and yes,
this is supposed to be an outlier scenario, but like
I don't you know, I don't know, I am putting
a pin in that mentally and just sort of I
just want it on the record that I suspect it's
not that simple. I just want to say it. And
this is when I love this so much. You guys,
they're shit chatting and fucking. There's a voice from under
the table asking if he can come out now, and
it's Linus. It's Ellie's number one fan, still wearing the
shirt of her naked body. This dude is honestly as
much as he is a and I'm not mad at
all for the way that Ellie reacts to him, especially
when he starts getting super personal about like music that
she owned and her husband and stuff, because like, it's
one thing for somebody to be objectifying you in a
weird way when it's not even like your actual body,
it's a computer generated body. And the fandom thing is
such a weird, but you know, like all of that
feels like very separate. But once you start talking about
shit that's like pre collapse, that's very personal. I would
also be like, yeah, you're not going to get his
name at your fucking mouth, you know that kind of thing.
So I'm not mad at her at all for the
way that she is reacting to him. I am just
saying that as a reader, I found him downright amusing,
and I wouldn't mind if he just happened to be
around all the time, because I think he adds a
little something. It's just sort of potentially he could be
maybe a little bit useful if he brings up some
information that our friends don't already know. You know, I
don't know what that would be, but I could see
it being something that was sort of overlooked by the
people who are in charge as being valuable information that
he just mentions as a matter of interest and winds
up being kind of important. So, you know, all this
to say, this little guy is a weirdo, but I
sort of have a soft spot for him. At this point.
We have a little bit like tran Zang and Lena
are not here, Sam says Lena isn't really talking to him.
She killed almost all of the other teams in their heat.
I guess we'll see next race if Prepotente's theory about
having to race other crawlers is correct. And Louis says
Tran is stuck in his garage. She had a rough
race too, but I don't know the details. Some of
his spider legs got wrecked, but I guess his gremlin
is fixing it for him. He said he has a
hearse for a car, which, yeah, that's not going to
handle too well either. I'm really you know, also kind
of stopping to think about the fact that we have
this one van that the hippie bears have that produces
an endless supply of beer. We've got the endless supply
of fries and like chicken patties, excuse me, in the
car that the food truck that Donut and Carl have.
So I have been sort of giving it, like just
a teensy bit of thought if some of these other
vehicles also have an endless supply of something, and like
what that would be. But I think it's likely not
all of the vehicles have this necessarily, because not all
of them are going to really have a storage space
at all, you know, I don't know if a glove
compartment would have anything an endless supply of sunglasses and
unused water burger napkins. That's pretty much in my glove compartment.
I don't know. And let's see Chris has I love
that he's Chris and the Errands because both women are
named Aaron. A semi truck with a trailer, a big rig.
It's big but slow. And this is when Ammani nudges
him and says, kind of like you, Louis. They have
an suv, a tahoe, but it's a neon covered lowrider.
Our gremlin says, it'll get put back every time. So
next upgrade we get, we'll pick something that fixes it,
because if they try and undo the low ride, it
won't stay. I you, guys, I have always been so baffled,
utterly baffled by the concept of a lowrider being something desirable.
I just don't, you know, especially an suv. The point
of it, the point of it is that you're able
to handle allegedly slightly more rough terrain. Maybe you do
better in the snow, and you're up higher, and so
they're supposed to be a sort of like sense of
I say all of this with like a really strong
asterisk see below, because all of this stuff is what
I understand is the appeal. But I'm not sure that
it's necessarily true. But I think a lot of people
feel that if they're up higher, they have a better
view of their surroundings, and that makes them feel safer
and like they have more control over things. I have
only driven an suv like a couple times, really briefly,
can't speak to it, but I do kind of want one.
I won't lie because I have two dogs now and
that just feels like it would be really helpful. The
idea of taking an suvn making it into a low
rider just I don't get it, and I also don't
like I live in in the Northeast, where I originally
come from. Road maintenance is something that is taken a
bit more seriously than it is here in Texas because
it freezes all the time, so there's a lot of
wear and tear on roads. We have to do all
kinds of patching, and even though the roads are narrower
and the speed limits are lower, the roads are generally
in better shape. I'm in North Texas on the border
of Oklahoma, and the roads here are fucking appalling. I
have a regular sedan, a Toyota Camra twenty twenty one,
and that bitch bottoms out all over the place, and
it's like it is not a lowrider. Many people have
a car that is, like, you know, but it just
happens constantly, and the sound of the undercarriage of your
car dragging is excruciating and it can really do damage
if you hit hard enough, you know. So anyway, I
just don't understand why people like want that, because I
don't even have a low rider, and I still end
up with a lot of issues every single day when
I go out in this normal sedate. If you have one,
I feel like you'd just be able to barely drive
fucking anywhere, you know. I feel like it would have
so many limitations on it. What are you gonna do
with it? So anyhow, Yeah, they really do need to
get that scene too and fixed. Michael says, most of
these car mods don't make sense to me. Why would
you want to risk damaging your car but putting it
so low. Why do those people who make their trucks
slouch do it when it looks dumb as hell and
fucks with their headlight level so it blinds everyone around them. Listen.
There are there are some car mods that I think
are awesome, but they have to be done right, obviously.
But there was a car I ran into the other
day that had underlighting, purple underlighting, and the car itself
was black and it was like nighttime, and that shit
looked slick as fuck. But I also saw one like
last week that had underlighting that was clearly a DIY
job and it really showed. It was like you could
see like a bit of it had come loose and
sort of hanging down. It was not good. So you know,
some mods are fun, Absolutely get it. But I just
when I guess the answer is probably these sorts of
mods are done by people for whom this is not
their one and only vehicle. Probably that this is like
a fun time car, but they have their regular day
to day car. I guess, you know, I just I
don't relate. So the fact that this one is a
neon covered like Tahoe as well, at least the neon
is fun that I could go for, And yeah, just
sort of trying to picture it having a hard time.
But they mention that the fucking the two of them,
Louis and Britney. Brittany yelled at him for driving like
an American, which I don't really know what that means. Uh,
there's this hydraulic system, but I didn't how it work worked.
All of our opponents have these super fast cars and animals,
and we were late coming out of the gate. We
would have lost if the tentacle guys hadn't gotten eaten.
And this is when Carl is really having a moment
of like, what the fuck? This is like a much
more dangerous floor than I think it looks like it
seems like because there's not outright battle. There's a sense
in the moment of like almost like a childlike game system.
You know, it's just racing. But he is sort of
coming to the conclusion that I came to as soon
as I heard the rules in the first chapters, where
I was just like that anything can cause you to
come in last. There is no predicting all of the
things about setting aside the other players who apparently hate
each other and will kill each other if you don't
stop them, So now you have to worry about that,
but also the actual conditions of the road itself and
the environment that you're in, which we see later is
fucking not what it sounded like it was going to be.
I was super anxious from the start, and I had
been sort of feeling like Carl didn't seem anxious enough.
I definitely understood his reasoning, being like, I am not
responsible for the lives of you know, thousands of other people.
If I fuck up, only me and Dona are going
to die. And there's some relief in that. I really
really do get that, But there is also a sense
of like, if you fuck up now, it could affect
other people in who winds up having to race against who,
and so it it isn't an immediate reaction to your
it's not an immediate consequence, but it still is related
and still can affect other crawlers. So I feel like
it's almost an illusion. You know, he's feeling very relieved
about it because it's not as obvious a connection, but
it's still really there. And I just think that because
we didn't know enough about how everything worked, he wasn't
taking it as seriously. And I don't want to harsh
his vibe because him having a moment of relief from
that anxiety is great for him, but I just felt like,
I don't think it's warranted right now, dude, you know
so sorry. Prepotenze comes along with the book of karaoke songs,
which he says, I'm going to be singing Tarzan Boy
by Baltimoa, which I don't know if I know that song.
Dona is lamenting the fact that these are all old
people's songs, all choices from the nineteen eighties. Curious what
you guys would pick. I would probably do something by
Madonna because my mom listened to Madonna a ton when
I was little, so I know a lot of the songs.
The material Girl is a pretty fun one. I might
do that. So let's see. I'm trying to find the
next Here it is Prepotente wants some advice, so he's
got some pet biscuits and evidently it's you know, Miriam
said ten. But Prepotente is evasive when they ask how
many he has, which leads me to believe that maybe
he has even more, and he's like not wanting to
let people know. I I don't know. But what's going
on here is that most pet biscuits, it's a roll
of the dice. It's very likely that you will get
a good result, but it's also a very real risk
that something terrible is going to happen to your pet,
or your pet will be turned into something that will
attack you and kill you. And the pet biscuits that
he has two of are called like nothing special and
it just turns them into pets. Basically. The one that
he has that he's debating is called the paramour. This
biscuit imparts the Paramore benefit. This is a subset of
the Party Companion Tree benefits. Nonsapient pets will have their
intelligence and Wisdom stat raised to at least three, and
then additionally enhanced to be commensurate with their original form.
Their level will be reset to level one. Dungeon born
pets will be given a crawler number and assigned crawler status.
The former pet will be required to find a safe
room and choose a class. If this is consumed after
the third floor begins, the pet will be given a
subtree two be transformation, resulting in a physical transformation to
an oxygen breathing upright form. The resulting height will be
within one in two point five meters with a mass
proportional with their new form winged creatures will retain wings,
but will no longer have the ability to naturally fly.
Basically a catgirl, a mascot, a furry, depending on what
their original form was. This is what happened to Prepotente,
while Donut, who was under subtree one, remained wholly a cat.
The pet will be given the pairamore benefit. They will
receive a permanent, incurable aster risk charm that will make
them fall hopelessly in love with the entity who fed
them the biscuit. He's definitely using this. He's definitely using this.
He's definitely using this. I totally get donuts argument here.
She's not wrong, but it's he's decided. You can feel it,
you know. So she emphasizes it is a mind control
sex slave biscuit, which Prepotente keeps trying to sort of
side step the fact that it is a mind control
sex slave spell. I will say, it doesn't have to
be a sex slave spell. If you don't have sex
with the being you could, you know, they can be
in love with you, and that sucks because you know
you can take advantage of that, obviously, But it doesn't
have to be a sex slave thing. It's all about
what you decide to do, but they would want to
have sex with you. They would be pushing you probably
to do so. And the thing that's causing Prepotente to
think about this is that he has a goat in
his inventory named regats Uh Regazzachia, yeah, Regazachiya, and she
was his girlfriend before the dungeon started. So doing something
like this, in his mind, wouldn't really change anything about
the way that she behaves or thinks about him because
she was already in love with him. Maybe just because
she's your girlfriend doesn't mean that she was in love
with you like you know, but we'll just let that slide.
The whole thing is it feels like a really mean
prank to have played on him, where now he has
to like think about this, And I feel for him
quite a bit because he says with some feeling later
how lonely he is. I understand that, but I also
feel like you don't have to be You could be
more friendly with everybody, like all of these other crawlers,
you know, and I know, as Donut says, that you
miss your friends and the fact that they are kind
of right there weirdly, you know, they're within your reach.
In this bizarre way that's probably really torturous mentally, it's
this is just it's gonna fuck up the whole dynamic.
The one thing I will say, the asterisk after incurable
leads me to believe it isn't leads me to believe
you there will be something that can be done to
undo it or mitigate it somehow. But I willing to
bet it's pretty difficult thing to achieve. Something that would
be like require an intense sacrifice of some kind or
you know, God knows. And as Donu points out, setting
all of the ethics of the mind control sex slave
thing aside, the fact that she would be brought in
as a crawler, and a level one crawler at that,
that is a really awful thing to do to her.
She would be in so much danger and it would
be What this reminds me of is there was a
movie I can't remember what it was called. I feel
like it had Jennifer Lawrence in it and maybe Chris Pratt.
And the gimmick is that he and a bunch of
other people are in basis on a spaceship and something
happens that causes him to come out of that stasis
before they reach their destination, which their destination they will
not reach for like one hundred years. So when he
wakes up, he is destined to be alone on this
ship until the day he dies from a natural death
because he can't go back into stasis. So he's so
lonely that he chooses to wake up a woman who
is in stasis just because he wants company, and doesn't
tell her that he did it. He tells her it
was an error the way his was, and it was
played as a romance in a way that a lot
of people had an issue with, understandably because, of course
the movie addresses that he lies to her and that
he did this to her her, but not in a
way that really seems like it is taking the gravity
of we're going to die on this ship and you're
the only person I'm going to get to have contact
with like seriously enough. So of course she ends up
forgiving him and they wind up like being together, but
it just it just felt like, no, no, that is
not the reaction that a woman would have to realizing
that this guy essentially killed her so he could have
a fucking plaything to hang out with, you know. So anyway,
that's kind of what this is reminding me of is
like you just want company, and so you are going
to If she was your girlfriend and you still care
about her at all in any real way, you would
never want to do that to her. It's just a
deeply selfish move. Again, I understand. But no, however, I
think he is still gonna do it. I think something
is going to happen and he's gonna do it, and
I don't know what that's gonna be. I can't even
imagine a circumstance where it would feel like he has
no choice but to do this, But I think it's
gonna happen. And the only thing I can imagine is
organ dying perhaps, And so he's got nobody on his
team except for himself. And you can hire mercenaries. I
don't know, you know, if it would just be like
the mercenary is no good at driving, or he can't
afford somebody else, or what would be the reasoning. But
if you absolutely need another player on your side, maybe,
I don't know if it's possible to join up with
another party at this point on this floor. If you
lose a party member, are you still stuck with the
vehicle that you have in the race track that you're in,
or can you switch to like Carl and Donuts party,
for example, and join up with the Prince. I don't
know if that's allowed. I don't think so. But so
Michael says, I heard about obsession and I watched Buffy
the Vampire that Buffy the Vampire Sligher episode. I'd be
terrified of the permanent, incurable charm spell. Oh, Passengers is
the name of the movie. Thank you, Michael. That movie
would have been so much better if they didn't try
to force the romance. It would have been a fascinating,
thought provoking movie if he had died during the rescue.
And we fast forward a few years and we see
Jennifer Lawrence contemplating waking up someone else. Yeah, and I
mean the we're not gonna at all engage with the
idea that maybe she's in love with him because she
has literally no other options than she has to make
the best of what's going on, and maybe it's not
love at all, and it's just a set like a
survival response, you know. Michael says, I think you were
stuck with your vehicle slash animal. Okay, that's kind of
what I figured, But I wasn't positive. So anyway, I
was just trying to like think up scenarios that would
make it so that using the pep piss it wouldn't
be as abhorrent, you know, that it would feel like
it was more out of necessity and because like in
this moment, it feels a little bit like when Donah
is saying, this is really serious. You cannot do this.
It's wrong. And also people aren't going to like you
anymore if you do this because it's so creepy, which
I think Donah isn't completely right about that, unfortunately. I
think a lot of like it is creepy, but I
think a lot of people would be interested in what happens,
and would you know what I mean. I don't know
if that translates to support exactly, but uh, I think
she's She's probably right for the most part though, but
he points out here that she has the love vampire
skill that literally makes mobs fall in love with her
and die for her, and her whole build is charisma
and charm of based which she says that's different. I
will agree with Donut that it is different. And here
is why the mechanics of the dungeon require certain like
survival mechanisms, and she winds up leaning into the charisma
as she chooses her build. But when she is involuntarily
turned into a crawler, she has charisma as by far
her highest stat and that is outside of her control,
and leaning into your highest stat is just the smart
thing to do. There's you know what I'm saying. You
can't choose what your highest stat is and then lean
into it because you've made a choice. I won't deny
the mechanics of the actual spells themselves are really gross,
but she didn't come up with those. She's playing the game,
and it's very much don't hate the player, hate the
game situation. This with a pet biscuit is an entirely
different thing. You are making a choice with, by the way,
an animal that you used to be appear to and
you have an existing relationship with in a different way.
When Carl fed Donut the pet biscuit, it was because
he was pretty sure she would die if he didn't
do something to protect her, and he didn't know what
would happen. I think if he had been given this biscuit,
there's no fucking way, like he just adds, of course,
not you know, we know enough now. I just think
it's out of the question. And it sounds like Prepotente
is willing to abide by Donuts' rules here, because like
what he says is, I don't know, I'm still let's see.
Oh here it is. He sat there, not saying anything.
You're right, of course, he said, it is too late.
I don't have anybody to ask these things. Sometimes I
imagine my mother and me having these conversations, but sometimes
I don't know. Your benefit came with an enhanced memory
that allowed you to remember all those conversations and television shows,
and you know how people are supposed to act. I
don't have that mother was teaching me. But and I
thought that was a really interesting point that like his
frame of reference for being a person is a lot
more limited than Donuts, which makes sense for why he's
such a little weirdo. Also, and like I said, here,
you're right, of course, it doesn't feel like there's a
lot of like sincerity behind that. I think he's telling
the truth in the moment, but he does not sound
fully convinced, you know, so I feel like it's likely
gonna happen anyway. And Donah is like, you will be
able to like come to me for any advice. We'll
talk every day. You can ask me any questions you have,
So that's going to be She's basically like going to
mentor him as to how to be a person, which
I don't know that Donah is the best model for that,
because like, if don't we're a person, she'd be pretty
fucking insufferable in a lot of ways. Probably, And yes,
I understand the irony of me saying that, considering how
much I identify with her, but whatever, But considering that
she started off as a pet, probably is positioned the
best to relate to him, so fair. Oh that's right,
Michael says he didn't actually feed it to her. She
jumped up and grabbed it out of his hand. I
forgot about that. That's funny. So then we open chapter
seventeen and bucket Boy is going to be the mercenary
that helps drive the vehicle, but he doesn't know how
to fucking drive, which evidently we are going to have
to teach him on the road, and that road is
going to be suffering some of the worst weather imaginable,
which is like, I can't look. Look. I remember when
my mother was learning how to drive stick shift. My
father said he would teach her, and they had one
of the worst fights they've ever had in their marriage.
And I've seen some doozies with them, but this was
a bad one. Teaching somebody to drive, it's a litmus
test in some ways. I have heard so many stories
of people being taught by significant other how to drive
and getting in a massive fight. This was not a
rare thing. The two of them are outliers. This is
like really common actually, And all I could think here
was just like, just how likely all of this is
to go completely fucking sideways. They only have fifteen minutes
before the green light, right, so it's like anyway, so
let's see, Carl is about to rip the Tommy gun
off the roof, which he is informed that he is
not allowed to do that. Eventually, I maintain that I
think that tommy gun might be a working gun. Still
has not been disproven, so I'm going you know, one
would think that maybe Carl would notice that it's a
working gun when he's trying to yank it off. But
I would argue that when you only have fifteen minutes
and you are assuming it doesn't work, you're not paying
that kind of attention to it. I would think that
you were probably just focusing on the base that it's
attached to the with So I am still like kind
of on that kick. And there's a moment where Dona
is saying, I must warn you the GPS, and then
we get the voice. Now, it had been mentioned before
that the voice was a little familiar to Carl, and
I was assuming that this was going to turn out
to be a voice of an NPC or somebody that
we had met already, and it felt familiar to me.
But the reason that it feels familiar to me, I
think is simply because this audiobook narrator only has so
many voices. He's probably done something similar before, and it
just sounds a little bit like that. You know. Evidently
the GPS is named doctor Metcalf, miss Beatrice's therapist. It's
not really her, I asked, God, I hope not, I said,
suddenly remembering the one and only time I'd met the
very expensive alternative therapist, the therapist who turned out not
to be a real doctor at all. Whenever I was
reminded of that whole episode, my head still ached from
the trustful thing she'd made me, and be do. Doctor
Metcalf has her controls set as she thinks best, and
I believe we should listen to her. And then in
Messenger she has big, mean girl narcissist energy, so we
must be nice to her. Oh boy, the GPS has demands.
This is gonna be a real pain in the ass.
My god. The thing about this, like being a fake
therapist that b takes him to cracks me up as well, because,
like it's a classic thing for a manipulator to like
use a therapist in such a way as to to,
you know, kind of invalidate everything that you are feeling.
And this is not an unheard of thing. Somebody either
being not a real therapist or being a therapist that
doesn't know how to really keep perspective. And so they've
been meeting one on one with the significant other and
are predisposed not to believe the person they are partnered
with that they bring in like later, the person who
is trying to manipulate the other maybe doesn't get a
choice in the therapist, but they're very selective about the
way they talk and behave when they are in front
of the therapist, which makes it look like your complaints
are not valid. All of these like therapy only actually
works if you are prepared to be fully honest in
every way, and if you're not, it's a complete waste
of fucking time and money. And be having like a
friend who's, you know, probably a fucking energy specialist who
has a h you know, degree from some online university
in like nutrition. That definitely tracks for me with who
she is. So let's see, I'm trying to find the
bit here. Were you driving transportation on the last floor,
don'ta ask? She remained in the back, inspecting the contents
of the freezer chest. I've driven a cart before, bucket
Boyce said, his voice going up in octave. It didn't
have any of these handles and pedals and extra buttons.
And there's a mention of how Be always used to
say that she only got tickets when the cop was
a woman or they were gay. She only got like
five or six tickets, which is just quite a lot, actually,
And if you were going to get more than that, damn,
what a maniac. Uh. Let's see, wrend I called pulling
the pet carrier out. I still had the truck passenger
door open, and he stood there looking at me, panting
weirdly like a dog. The inside of his mouth was
absolutely filled with smashed, uncooked French fries. I want to
go for a ride, buddy. He let out a deep
giggle and let me zap him away. Rend is just
so unsettling, you guys. He's just like I keep trying
to picture him, and I know that he's like on
the cover a few times, but I just don't really
like the way he looks in that so I'm just
I'm just choosing not to believe that's what he really
looks like. So I don't like it. So see, uh
oh right, So we have to path assignment left path
starting red spot number seven, Distance ten kilometers track asphalt,
paved road, rolling hills. Tasks required to complete. Each path
is of equal length. Each path has a gatekeeper monster
along that path that must be killed to resume environment
torrential downpour of rain and giant hail hazards. I thought
a cat driving was a fifty to fifty death sentence,
But now that we've actually put a prepubescent crocodile behind
the wheel, I see you're not leaving anything to chance.
Time limit three hours. When it said that Hale is
going to start light and then get worse. I don't
know what worse is. We'll have to see how that
can be possible. This has when saying jumps in and says, sorry, guys,
but I have to confirm perpotentes theories mostly correct. Not
killed five of the other teams, and we have four
replacements at the starting line. Two are NPC teams, but
two are crawler teams, including trans team. Nah Is just
sitting there behind me, not reacting. I have the reins
for this one. I don't know what to do. Nah Is.
She doesn't need to be in a party with anybody anymore.
Zyg needs to get the fuck out of there. He
needs to partner up a train or something. I don't know.
She isn't safe. She's clearly in like a very nihilist
space right now and isn't interested in working together, and
just it just sucks because like, I don't think he's
able to switch out, and it's she's just being really
like unfair right now, you know. And she of course
doesn't know that she's being unfair, and even if she did,
I don't think she fucking care. But anyway, so this
is when we get a bunch of the teams like
yelling at each other and having all of the I
won't get into it because I'm like running out of
some time here, but there it's a very colorful language
that you know, when you talk about smack talk, that's
one thing, but this vibe is a lot more intense
than smack talk. It's a lot more uh yeah. And
Doughnut rightfully is just like, how the fuck are we
supposed to keep these people alive? And I'm like, yeah, girl,
I do not know. I don't have any suggestion, Like
they'll sound like they're just dead set, punintended on and
killing each other. I spent a moment trying to examine
the vehicle in front of the woman tars, the vehicle
currently in the first spot Team one five one Fine Pig.
It was a big military vehicle similar to what I
imagined IMMANI and Ellie had. To the right of them
stood the two large black dog too. Stood the large
black dog of the jugglers. The creepy masked riders sat
in a row on its back. The razor Fox's bear
was about the same size and was currently sniffing at
the butt of the dog. So let's see. I pulled
the special banger sphere out. If it worked as intended,
it would destroy the entire windshield in one hit, not
just poke a hole in it. And this is when
the hail begins and they realize that this is way
more intense than we thought. The back of the truck bucked,
as if we'd been rear ended. The entire awning over
our heads exploded. Bits of ice and snow and metal
crackled across the roof of the truck. The rain started
pounding the windshield. In a second, I couldn't see anything
through the ice and water. I couldn't even see the
lights above us, indicating when it was time to go.
And of course bucket boy is fucking panicking, as he should.
This being the first time you're actually driving a real
car is deeply fucking unfair. Uh doughnut Like, there's she
has the thing that she is supposed to do, she's
supposed to fire, and she stops, and it says a
long tank like tube had just popped out of the
side of the team sparkles bush and was pointed directly
at the muscle car right in front of us. And
they don't duck quite in time. Flames burst from the
turret as they fired directly into the Chevy bel Air.
Instead of spinning away, the car miraculously went straight up
as if it were a rocket. The burning Chevy bel
Air landed loudly to the left of us, smashing into
the ditch, burning furiously, and Dwight just yells, that's right,
gargle my translucent balls, you garble malt, you know cornballs,
you translucent bitch. That's right, because they are the one
that is a goo team six girth. The trouble has
been eliminated due to the destruction of their vehicle. Seven
teams remain in the current heat. And then chapter nineteen,
don't turn when you look left and right. It's okay,
you're good. They stopped up ahead. I see them so
poor bucket boy. He's trying his best, but this shit
is very, very fucking tense. Dona is using her shield spell,
but when she has to stretch it over the whole truck,
which she if the truck gets disabled, you lose, so
she can't just protect the people, she has to protect
the whole truck. The massive chunks seem to be hitting
mostly off the track, thank god, because spreading in the
shield out that big makes it less powerful. I am
wondering about Carl's shield spell and if he could do something.
You know, he has that like, but it stays in place,
I guess. So that was really useful for some things,
but it wouldn't work for this. It's stationary. So yeah,
that sucks. The Lady Dominator's car appeared to be a
late sixties Pontiac Gto convertible painted in a deep burgundy,
and they have a really good shield on their car.
And then we have this weird thing with one fine pig.
This is so odd, you guys. Uh, Nico Tigrin level
ninety one, greaser. You already know what a tigrin is,
as your buddies with that guy who plays with dolls
and almost did something really suspicious with his tea before
he came to his senses. Mm hmm. Nico is two things. One,
he's a tiger person. Uh. Nico falls well within the
range of what you come to expect from your average
dude with a tiger head, with one glaring exception, and
that exception is Penelope, his wife, the love of his life.
Nico is part of a throuple. It's not a healthy
relationship and goes on to be like, you know, polyamory
isn't the problem here. Some people get bullied into things
that they are not ready for. Penelope is the one
who wanted to open things up. So now, Nico, Dario,
who is that other tigrin glaring at you from behind
the steering wheel? And Penelope? Penelope is the pig. She's
a regular pig with the intelligence of a regular pig.
Just go with it. There's a whole storyline here. Examine
her if you want to know more. This beast is
magically protected by Tyrannus. If the beast dies or is hurt,
the culprit will be marked for death by the thunder God.
She is a pig. She loves both Nico and Dario equally.
At least that's what Nico and Dario believe. She didn't
used to be a beautiful princess who was transformed by
a witch. She's a pig and has always been a pig.
Penelope did, however, once get hit by a stray spell
the Touch of Lou also known as Snowdrop Curse. There
was going to be this whole suckybist storyline that also
involved Embras and helic and Taranus and a bunch of
angry spouses on the seventh floor. We didn't get to use,
so we brought Vanelape here. And now when certain NPCs
see this fine pig, they fall helplessly in love with her.
That includes Tarannus, who has it bad for her. I
simply cannot I don't know what to think. This is
just it just made me think of the first Black
Mirror episode. And you know it's not it's not good.
I don't like it. I don't like it. Uh. We
stepped out of the truck, passing by Corkunda, who was
curled up in the back seat of the GTO. He
had an unconscious notification over his head. He'd been put
asleep via a spell. Huh, I thought. We passed out
of the area of the shield from the GTO and
rain and Hale started to pour on us. Donnut let
out a little Yello and recast her shield spell. Hale
pinged off it loudly, like pebbles against glass. We approached
the others, who finally noticed us. Just beyond them at
the bottom of the hill was the boss just sitting
there in the middle of the road. Oh, for fuck's sake,
I muttered, and that's it. That's where I had to stop.
So I do not know what the boss is yet
I managed to stop exactly at the right spot and
not over listen at all. I wish I hadn't. I
want to know, but I won't. I won't check right
now because I don't have time. I gotta wrap. But
thank you guys again. I appreciate you all very much.
Michael says, I need to know that everyone in love
with Penelope loves her enough to not be having relations
with her without her enthusiastic consent, which she can't give
otherwise it is too disturbing to think about. Yeah, agreed, Michael.
I Uh, I hate it, I really do. I also
kept thinking about, wasn't there a movie where there's a
girl named Penelope who has like a pig nose? Or
is like there's like a movie like this. I don't
know if that's the reasoning here or what, but uh
with Christina Ricci, Michael says, yes, okay, I knew I
wasn't imagining that it was too weird a premise. And
there's also of course that like there's like an SNL
skit with oh my god, Pamela Anderson. I feel like,
and all the people are pig people except for her,
and the expectation is that they will think she's hideous
because she doesn't look like them, but that is not
what happens anyway. I have got to rep thank you
guys again so much for hanging out with me. I
appreciate you all very much. Oh and real quick, I
mentioned before that there's like an episode of the live
cast that's missing, and it was some weird thing that
happened with Patreon, and then I had gotten in touch
with them. They finally got back to me. They did
figure out what the glitch was, but that live recording
is just gone forever, which fucking sucks. So if you
have been going through them and wondering where that one is,
sorry about it. Not my fault, but I can only
do so much. All right, kids, Until next time to
the lou motherfuckers. That was an Unspoiled Network podcast