Speaker 1: This is an Unspoiled Network podcast. This is spoil Me
covering Dungeon Crawler Carl Book eight, chapters forty two through
forty eight of a Parade of Horribles. In these chapters,
I really I can't be mad at Carl, even though
I like should be a little bruh. I really hate
this for you. I really hate this for you. Welcome
to spoil Me. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Everyone.
Speaker 1: I am Natasha. Thank you very much to Michael for
commissioning this episode. Michael is here in the chat with me.
So we're going to get into the whole thing with
all of our mercenaries being murdered at once, obviously, but
really quick, I want to address something I don't know
what the term is, because when we're talking about site
we will say eagle eyed, and when we're talking about hearing,
I'm really not sure what the equivalent is. So I'm
going to say eagle eared, just because I feel like
you guys know what I mean by that eagle eared.
Listeners may have noticed that I quoted Kimata the Fire
Fairy as saying show yourself to me embros last episode,
but she doesn't actually say it until the next chapter.
So I over listened last time. But it's really weird
because I obviously remembered that quote, but when I went
and reread this chapter for this recording, being chapter forty two,
none of the rest of the chapter felt familiar to
me at all. So I don't know what happened. All
I can think is I over listened, but I was
like only half paying attention because some part of me
registered that I was like beyond where I was meant
to be or something. I don't know. So I just
wanted to address that because I feel like if I
were listening to the show and I clocked that the
host quoted something that hasn't happened yet, I would start
to be very suspicious on whether that was like reading
ahead all the time, and like, you know what I'm saying,
I just every time that something like this occurs, I
just want y'all to know it's not me being tricksy,
it's me being stupid. I have very I used to
have some competence, and as I start to go through perimenopause,
it's just eroding, like at a rate that is equivalent
to the dunes of Nantucket. It's fucking bad. So all
of that to say, technically I read ahead, but it
had no bearing whatsoever on any interpretation of the last
section except for the fact that Kemata is wanting Embrass
to prove he exists to her, which doesn't happen, so
it kind of winds up not really being relevant anyway.
It's just another example of her being in this existential crisis,
and it turns out she has a fucking panic disorder
like a It's wild because, like considering the fact that
I remember her begging Embrace to prove himself to her,
the fact that I didn't recall that not only does
she have this disorder, but she also killed one of
their previous clients. And reminder, guys, this crew demanded to
be paid triple the normal rate because of the dangers. Yes,
which I will admit that is born out. They are
proved right in that they are needing to be more
like the way that they are targeted and the risks
that they are taking on are going to be more
pronounced Carl and Donut are. But I would also argue
that if Kamada hadn't been like as useless as she
winds up being to the overall intent of hiring them
that they may not have wound up in the position
that they find themselves in later, because we would have
had like a driver who was competent for the entire drive,
and you know, all of this may not have gone
the way that it went. So it's a lot of
ifs and what if sen blame game and whatever, and
I I'm not I'm not victim blaming them for their
own murder, but I am saying that the risk that
they assert is purely coming from Carl and Donuts, like notoriety,
isn't totally fair because some of that is coming from
y'all because you weren't honest about what your deal is.
On this same note, last episode, I was criticizing what's
his face who has the memory crystal things for the
friendship with sister Inez who was really dangerous and the
whole like why didn't you guys warn them? And I
had forgotten that there's the thing with her weird toxicity
power that causes like memory shit to be all wonky.
So I rescind that criticism. I feel that's only fair, Okay,
So I feel like we're good now, now we can begin.
I think that I just wanted to make sure that
the footing we were on Oswaldo, that's his name, that
we were, you know, all on the same page here,
then everybody understood the situation. So sorry, Michael says, rabbit
eared in the in the chap And you know, I
will be very real with you, Michael. While I know
rabbits have giant ears and that we tend to associate
that with exceptional hearing, I am actually not certain if
rabbit's hearing is like better than other animals in reality,
or if it is simply that they have just exaggerated
ears that results in like decent hearing. You know, do
the oversized ears materially benefit I actually don't know. I
feel like if I say rabbit eared listeners, though I
don't think people are gonna get what I mean. It
doesn't really have the you know what I'm saying. I
don't know. Gotta workshop this a little bit. So forty
two begins with Olga at the steering wheel, and and Oliga,
I have got to say, there's a point where earlier
in the section, the one before, Donut says something about
how nobody likes a complainer, and I think she's talking
to Deroda the seat when she says this, I am
kind of feeling like Olga was a really big complainer
Throughout these chapters. It just felt like any time somebody
was upset or whining about having not been informed about
a thing, it often was her, and in such a
way that, look, I love complaining. I just want to
be honest that I am not trying to be hypocritical
in criticizing somebody else for complaining, because you know, but
there is a type of complaining that is useful or helpful,
and there is a type that isn't, and Olga was
really indulging in the type that isn't. Anyway, the thorny
bush thing fired a gun I think, at the deformed humanoids,
but their vehicle was too fast. Their gun blasted right
into the side of the hairy animal team and the
animal fell over. But it's getting back up. The bush
is now coming up fast, and Oswaldo is messaging Carl
saying I'm going to fucking kill that unicorn, which I
am rapidly beginning to suspect it is going to be
down to the unicorn and the rat and the bush
by the end of this section, because it just you
can't have characters being this much of a heel and
then not have that be the final showdown. You know,
reality television rules. If somebody is like this, hated by
everybody and has been fucking around with everybody to this degree,
you gotta kind of keep them around and generate interest
in this way. And uh, what is the krawl but
reality TV essentially so yeah, this is when we find
out about kmatas panic disorder and killing the previous uh
one of the previous clients. And I really enjoy Donut
messaging Caral and being like, this isn't Dalton Abby, we
shouldn't have to deal with drama from the help. That
really got me when she said this isn't Dalton Abby.
I was like what And then we shouldn't have to
deal with drama from the Help. That's a good line,
very good. And then we get another message from Imani.
You just passed us. We were behind the Bleak Congregation
and we pulled onto the road just as you passed.
Ellie is driving and she drives like an old lady,
but we're behind you. We already lost a team crawler, Henrietta,
the one from Angola. They hit a trap. It swallowed
their mount hole and she and her partner are gone.
It swallowed their mount hole. I look, Carl has got
some abilities regarding traps and being able to see them early, allegedly,
you know, like I really do not know how that
applies to something like this where we are moving at
a pace. I don't really know how much warning he's
going to get. I know that he has this ability
to like set off the traps all at once, but
if we're too close to one. There's not necessarily no
hope with this, obviously, but just knowing, Like, when I'm
thinking about what a trap is going to be, I'm
expecting it to be something like it gives you a
flat tire, it causes the like an axle to break.
I'm not thinking it just eats you and you're gone.
That's not what I was thinking traps meant. I thought
it was going to be like we're making it more
difficult for you to finish, not simply we are removing
you from the fucking crawl. You're dead. Like that's insane,
Michael says, would a predator waiting in ambush even count
as a trap? I don't know.
Speaker 2: Well, this is the thing.
Speaker 1: It's like I would say if the predator is like
in a cage and it's a trap that gets tripped
by like rolling over it or something, then yes. But
if there is simply a predator that is in a
place because that predator is roaming around, then no, I
think it. Like to me, intent would matter on what
counts as a trap. Now, granted, the AI is going
to have its own rules on this, so you know,
I'm not trying to pretend that my opinion on this
holds any water whatsoever. I'm just saying that that's what
I would expect. But yeah, I just was really taken
aback by the fact that that was something that could
even happen. And Chapter forty three starts with the track
suddenly got bumpier, we slowed down, and Olga says that
she's making the wheels bigger to compensate, which is a
really nice thing that we can do. Let me find
out about. Like the whole thing with the cannibals, Dona
is like are they if they're not human? Because like
so many different types of monsters act only eat each other.
And we get these things dropping from the branches above
and we have the shield, so they get killed, but
it's wearing the shield down it can't withstand this forever.
A chorus of high pitched screeches filled the jungle. What
are they? They keep blowing up before I can see them.
They're human, I think, but they're acting like bugs. It's
like the bright light is driven the mad. A natural
bridge crossed the path up ahead. The tall arch appeared
to be made of a tree that had been deliberately
bent over and tied. Hanging from it were dozens of skeletons.
Decapitated dried heads dotted the structure. Hundreds more random body
parts and bones littered the arch like grisly Christmas tree decorations.
Standing on the bend, screaming and shaking their spears were
about a hundred of the cannibals. They were pale, slightly
pudgy human creatures. So right away, I'm reassured because the
fact that this was going to be a bunch of
racist stereotypes. If we were doing this in our universe,
there is absolutely zero doubt whatsoever that this would be
people of color, whether they would be black or you know,
the sort of do thracky anybody who's not white is
death Rocky on Game of Thrones kind of vibe it.
This is absolutely how it would be set up, and
it's just reassuring. Now, granted, we've got a lot of Gingers,
as it turns out, is the theme here, but it's fine.
This is I just can't have a problem with this,
and I think that most Gingers would find this amusing. Actually,
but we will get there. So Donut uses her astral
paw here for the first time since she did it
as a war crime, so it's just a regular one.
But I was surprised that she used it, honestly, because
I just you know, but it's super effective. Swiped through
the woods ahead of us, sweeping all the cannibals on
the bridge away like she was sweeping pieces off a chessboard.
Most flew off into the jungle, screaming. The spell wasn't
nearly as large as when she cast her war crime spell,
but it was still huge. The tree flipped up like
a catapult, flinging the remaining cannibals in the opposite directions.
Skeleton bones rained down, they crunched under the truck as
we passed. I appreciated that because there was a part
of me that wondered whether or not the tree itself
was a part of a trap, like you know, the
sort of thing where you roll over it and loop
just tightens around you and lifts the car into the
air or something. This is when Ellie says, donnut, have
I told you recently how terrifying you are. Let's see,
I'm trying to find this bit here. She waved a
few more times, trees around snapped and broke. It's a
lot stronger than it was before, but it doesn't last long,
and the cool down is much longer now. It's supposed
to get shorter as the level goes up, not the
other way. And Carl is like, yeah, because you're so
friggin strong now it's trying to keep you from being
able to just get through everything no problem whatsoever. She
isn't going to be able to cast that spell again
for another eight hours. And here we go, a particularly
large cannibal stood in the road ahead of us, blocking
the path. This one was enormously fat, and it didn't
hold a spear but a staff that glowed with enchantment,
and it's got this kind of mind control thing going
on that both Carl and Dona are immune too, but
as it turns out, Olga is not, and it is
a pretty intense. It's so so. It's not just that
like you're enchanted to be charmed or anything. Olga's basically
as good as dead unless we are able to do
something pretty dramatic to get her soul back to her,
which needless to say, is not going to be happening
as we get there. But uh yeah, so great, Rusty
cannibal ginger chieftain level ninety nine, neighborhood Boss. These human
like moms are from Earth. We didn't change anything about
them except we made them cannibals to fit in with
the whole jungle theme. This is a ginger they hide
amongst regular humans. They're the result of alien interference in
the development of your human world, much like how octopuses
are also the result of outside meddling after the initial seating.
Nobody really knows when the corruption was introduced, but it's
expected the nullians were involved. The men are said to
be sexually deviant to a fault. The women are known
to be let's just say, extra spicy. Both sides have
whacked out pain tolerance, making them more susceptible to heat
and cold, but immune to electrical and acid attacks, which
is actually a real thing. There is association between being
redheaded and pain tolerance, and they have a lower pain
tolerance on some things but higher with others. And it's just,
you know, there's much of this amongst different types of
human beings. And I think I've mentioned before that my father,
having so much Native American blood, passed on the susceptibility
to alcohol that makes you get drunk faster and also
turn quite red, which is something that happens to a
lot of Asian people as well. So it's unsurprising because
Native blood is very linked with Asians.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's uh, it's just I.
Speaker 1: Turn really red. Guys, they can suck your soul away.
Never stare too long into the face of a ginger.
If you get lost in their eyes, it's already too late.
I am shocked, I repeat shocked. As I read this
text from the Kindle version, this is not highlighted. I
thought for sure that people were going to just jump
into this like headfirst as what a delightful weird joke,
because is it racist technically technically in the most technical
way of saying the word. But also racism against white
people is a really like layered weird thing. So it's
difficult for me and granted, there are some non white
people who are Gingers as well, but like we know,
we know what we're talking about here is going to
be mostly white people, and they are described as pale
this book for this purpose. So so yeah, it's just uh,
you know, yeah, we have a whole thing. Donu says,
this is ginger phobia laid bare, disgusting. Ferdinand would be appalled, though,
if we're being honest, the pervert part is probably true.
I don't even I don't think I've ever met an
orange cat who shouldn't be on some sort of registry.
And Carl is saying, I love how this whole thing
is both socially conscious and outrageously racist at the same time,
because after that first description the North and South settlements
destroying one will create a power vacuum that will have
a cascading, devastating effect. It's not like that's a metaphor
or anything about how outsiders crash through cultures, have their fun,
and then leave after they've vilified the natives and exploited
them to the point where they can never possibly recover,
and then generations later blame them because they still struggle
to step up. So yeah, it's a really, it's a
somehow Matt Dinneman has threaded this needle. I was really like,
I felt pretty confident actually that he was going to
pull it off. But I was like, I just don't
know how you do when you've let us know ahead
of time that you're it's going to be racist stereotypes,
like how you know and so doing this is just
a really nice side step. Well done, Matt. I gotta
give you some props for this one. Michael says, leave
orange cats alone. They have it tough. They have it tough.
It isn't easy to have to all share the same
single brain cell. I'll be honest, guys. The whole like
orange cats are so stupid is like something that I
only learned in the past five years or so. I
didn't know that this was like an accepted thing, and
I can't help but understand it. That is to say, though,
one of my cats who passed away recently, Ripley, was
the stupidest cat I've ever met in my entire life,
and she was very sweet, but my god, what a
dumb dumb so Carl when she's like, I'm assuming the
same is true for humans, he says, it's not It's
just a stupid thing people do to make fun of others.
None of it is true. The AI is being a
prejudiced dick, not even the part about the women being spicier. Well,
I paused and then shook my head. No, it's like
everything else, Ah, Carl, And he says something about the
AI thinks if the AI thinks redheads are the spiciest,
he's clearly never met a Latina, which is Carl being
racist now. But Donut points out that Carl is saying
he in regard to the AI a lot more often recently,
and he doesn't actually address this because we have our
emergency with Olga happening next. But this is one of
those things that the TV show The League actually had
a really great like scene dedicated to the coded language
that sports announcers use when they're talking about players of
certain ethnicities, and the term firecracker always is applied to
Latino players, and the you know there is culturally going
to be a certain except like this is what a
lot of this stuff, these stereotypes come from a place
of well, this culture doesn't have the same weird hang
ups that white people do about certain things. So now
we act like that's their whole thing. And the spiciness
of latinas as well as Italian women. Those two cultures
don't demonize women's being angry in the way that certain
Anglo culture does. And it's just a really I have
grown to notice, because if you're going to talk about racism,
there are levels to it, right, There's all different weird types.
And a reference for me was my grandmother, who was
that really specific type of racist. Where Italians don't count
as white, Spanish people don't count as white. You have
to be like German, Norwegian, English, Finnish, you have to
be above a certain spot and nowhere near any of
the like more tropical areas of Europe in order to
really count. If you're swarthy in any way, no, you're
not really white. And if you go by this weird logic,
which that will be expanded, the definition of whiteness expands
depending on how outnumbered.
Speaker 2: White people feel.
Speaker 1: So if they are feeling like, okay, well the Irish
or throwing in a little bit too much with black
people to try and like oust us from control, now
we have to tell the Irish that they are white.
Actually we take it back, never mind, and then they
will feel superior and stop associating with and allying with
black people, which is just literally what happened, and it
was very It was a very conceit considered and documented
choice to do that. But all of this to say,
the types of white that my grandmother considered truly white
value control above almost everything else, and control can mean
a lot of different things, but over one's own emotions
is a major one. And the type of passion that
results in being publicly upset or angry or really really
considered tasteless, low class and you should be ashamed of yourself.
All of that is for behind closed doors. So this
is why certain races are described as spicier because it's
in their culture, not a stigmatized to show certain types
of emotion. In general. Yeah, it's just things are very odd, man.
We just have these bizarre goalposts that we like set
and act like are absolute, and then we will move
them at the drop of a hat if things aren't
going the way we want them to go. So they
are nowhere close to absolute, But when we need them
to be true for our own ends, they are immovable
until they're not. It's just really dumb. Anyway. This is
when Olga gets hit with the uh the soul drain thing,
and Mordecai says, did you see the did you kill
the mob that did it? It'll return her soul, but
she needs specialized healing from a cleric. She'll be in
a fugue until that happens. Good thing you have a
backup driver famous last words. We really thought, we really
thought that three was going to be enough. But Donut says,
I did the voting thing for Great Rusty. I said,
let the audience choose, and they're voting now. So I'm
really curious about this because when Mordecai says did you
kill the mob that did it? I am not sure
if the voting affects whether or not he counts as killed,
Like you know what I'm saying, does that because technically
August still like kind of alive later, But I think
that ship is sailed pretty much. I don't know, though.
There are things in this game that can be done
that are just I would never consider, so I don't know.
This is when we get a new quest. Great Rusty
is fallen. Maurice, the chieftain of the Northern Tribe, will
learn of his enemy's death and move in and when
that much power grows unchecked, everybody loses. Find and kill Maurice,
chieftain of the Northern Tribe. Whoever completes this quest will
receive the contents of Maurice's cook pot, which could mean
a lot of different things, and I just don't really
want to speculate on any of them. To be perfectly honest,
this is a mandatory quest. You will not be able
to finish the race unless Maurice is the Maurice on
your track is dead, which it like. The way that
this whole thing is working is very much giving somebody
who is trying to create the game as we go along,
which we know is actually true of the AI because
they weren't supposed to be this many crawlers. This is
also when Carl says, goddamn it, doctor Metcalf, you said
there weren't any quests on this path. Oh fuck off, Carl,
this is just typical upgrade me. Stop being selfish and
maybe you'll get better intel. I can't read minds. The
quest happened when the cat blew up the fat guy,
so that's fair, I think. Actually doctor Metcalf like yelling
at him about getting upgraded. No, but she could not
have foreseen this, so you know, things happen. Chapter forty four,
the Piranhas did indeed fly, And when I read that
name in the last section, I sure hope these Piranhas
haven't learned to fly river. I didn't even like really
stop to address it because there's so much bonker shit.
You know, I can't do it every time. But I
was sort of like, Okay, well that's gonna suck. And yeah,
by the time we reached the river, our shield had recharged.
We had to inflate our tires fully across the river
and then waited on the opposite bank for Immani and
Ellie's APV to Ford, which it did easily. The thing
was meant to be amphibious even without upgrades. The Piranhas
were especially strong for a mob that attacked in packs.
Each one was level fifty. They didn't explode like the
Cannibals did against the shield, but instead sort of sizzled
and stuck there for a few moments before dropping away dead,
which sounds like they're being pan fried. Really. Doughnut used
her fresh into Salt spell on the river, and this
is from her Champion of Neckabit title that pretty much
finished off the rest, she still didn't go up a level.
She is getting so pissed. But this is what happens,
you know, it's not anybody knows when you look at
certain levels within certain games and whatnot, that it becomes exponential.
So I am not surprised. Let's see, Finley kept chewing
on his own claws. We bumped through the dark forest.
This is no good, no good, no pay is worth this.
I shouldn't have used such a strong sedative on k
She'll be mad when she wakes up. She'll be mad.
I didn't protect Olga, and Dona is trying to cheer
him up, and it's just like maybe we'll run into
a cleric that can wake up Olga and we finally
pull into the pit stop. Safe room rules do not
apply during pit stops. I have to say when I
saw that, I had my stomach drop a little bit.
I didn't really put it into words, but I think
I was assuming the pit stops were going to have
the safe room rules and finding out that they don't.
I mean, what winds up happening is no surprise in
light of that. Yeah, anyway, where I was expecting more
jungle with something completely incongruous to the east was what
appeared to be a tall group of black tubes. Opposite.
I was expecting more jungle, but it appeared like just
went on and on. All the other houses from all
three heats had been arranged in a long line, like
in a long suburban street. The hot dog truck was
there poking out the back of a garage. Rapture and
Genesis were walking from their garage toward a doorway at
the end of the street that led to what looked
like a group of falling down buildings and huts. And
there's Ellie and Imani's garage where and there's another one
next to it where Heat he has appeared. A two
hour timer starts the moment you park. Garage doors may
not be closed during pit stops. Safe from access is
unavailable during pit stops. The fact that you can't close
the door, I mean, come on, dude, fucking come on.
If the open garage doors indicate the ones who've already
arrived were doing better than I feared, I said, Counting
there were twenty four houses total and only eleven doors
were open. I started trying to see if I recognized
any of the others. Team Sparkles was the first I
saw Osvaldo's slaughter New was also parked after the Lady Dominators.
That meant we were in fourth place, ahead of the
bug Bears and one fine Pig who had yet to arrive. Yeah.
So we pull into garage and Heady comments on the
fact that the car overall is in better shape than
last time, and they are followed after this by Josha
and Radislav the bug Bears, and that their vehicle has
been fucking trashed. Uh let's see. Oh yeah, Heaty is
surprised at the Node closing the garage door as well.
It looks like it's going to be the standing rule.
I ain't safe like this. Okay, nobody stayed in the
garage with you after we left. No, ain't no door anymore.
Jamal does protest. Came Jamal's weak, cracking voice from the ceiling.
This is such an interesting scene, you guys, because the
whole way that this goes down is that Jamal feels
like he's being the over dramatic pain in the ass
that he always is, but it turns out that he
is having an existential crisis also, and so suddenly he
goes from me being like dude, oh my god enough,
which is exactly how everybody is reacting to me suddenly
being like, oh sweetie, oh I'm so sorry. Let's see.
So he was testing out these fringing other legs and
he gets stuck up at the ceiling. He is afraid
of heights, so when he jumped up there, he just
has basically kind of frozen up in fear and donut like.
He says, when Jamal jumps, he doesn't have time to
see how high he is because he always falls down again. Okay,
Jarjar listen, Doughnut started to say, we don't have time
to When she said jar Jar, had a moment of
like is that fair? Because Jorjar is really a very irritating,
fucking I'm not sure I would put Jamal in the
same you know, like I don't I but I understand
her feeling this way. But Jamal interrupted her, talking fast,
his voice taking on a sad, strange tone. Jamal is
happy to have his legs, but he wishes he could
just go back to the ocean. We aren't at warlike before,
but everything is so much scarier. All of a sudden,
Messiti says, if you die, we die, We.
Speaker 2: Won't even know. Everything will just stop.
Speaker 1: She says, that's what happened to the Gremlin and all
the people in the houses of the other racers. So
Jamal came up here so he could see everything all
at once. It's what Jamal used to do before, when
he was real. He was so brave, but he was
not me. I know that, but I want to be brave.
I want to be Jamal. But now I'm up here
and I can see it all, and I am so
scared of what I might lose. I'm scared to come
down because if I do, maybe I won't ever see
it again. And I was just like, oh, sweetie, and
Donut goes up there. When Carl asked her later what
she said, she tells him I said, he shouldn't be
scared about that sort of thing. Yes, it could happen
at any moment, but if we worry about things we
can't control, we start to ruin the things we can control.
And that even though he can be annoying, he's part
of the family, and that he shouldn't be scared to
tell us when he's in trouble, even when we're frustrated,
will help the best we can because that's what family does.
And it's just really really sweet, you guys. And I
mean it's tough because, like it's the last section that
we just saw her being like, maybe it's better if
we're not friends with Oswaldo so that it won't hurt
so much. And obviously Jamal is part of our crew
in a way that Oswaldo was not. So I am
not trying to say that she's done a reversal at all.
It's just that these two extremes have to be in
such conflict inside of her that it must be really painful.
And this is when Finley comes out and he is
carrying the toad and Kemata is draped over his shoulder.
I'm going into town, Finley said, I will see if
there's a temple. I'm taking Ky with me because I
don't want her to wake up and be alone. I
heard what you said to the shark, how you feel
about him. I feel about these guys. They're my family.
I've already lost so much and I don't want to
lose more. So I'm going to help them the best
I can. I know I'm supposed to do what you say,
and I promise to come back, but I want you
to know this is my family and I'll do what
it takes to protect them. Finley walked right out of
the open garage door, stepped onto the street, and was
promptly mowed down and killed by the speeding APV from
Team One Fine Pig. The APV hit the brake, smearing
the bodies of all three across the street, backed up
a few feet, then went forward again, smashing them all
further into the pavement before disappearing down the street and
turning into their garage. You guys, the fact that they
back up and roll back over them again is really
insult to injury and I am so sorry, but I
can't like what Carl does to them later is one
percent deserved. Sorry about it, but yeah, that's I'm not
you know. So this understandablys Carl into a bit of
a rage. He is in a place where he is
beginning to lose control of himself and he sees somebody
else die in a way that could easily have been
him because he isn't paying attention. There are people yelling
around him trying to get his attention, and he is
not hearing what they're saying, and clearly it was then
trying to warn him and restrain him, and he is
just not interested. So yeah, he runs up to the
APV before the tigrants have actually gotten out, and ethereal
gun suddenly materialized, coming out of the side of the vehicle,
right in the butt of the pig airbrush on the side,
and it fires and he just barely gets out of
the way. The entire wall of the gar blew out.
A wall of the next house over caved in, revealing
the double decker bus. The powerful blast hit the side
of the vehicle and it flipped, catching on fire. So
these guys screwed them as well. And the driver of
that one is a camel. Let's see Daria, the tigrin appeared,
get out of our garage. He popped back down. The
three Dromedarians entered the garage and started beating the shit
out of the front of the APV with their baseball bats.
Next door, the fire in the garage spread to the walls.
Their gremlin was running around with the fire extinguisher, but
a moment later, the entire double decker bus was encased
in ice and the fire stopped. That was an alley spell.
And this is when he is punching with his gauntlet
the side of the vehicle and creating enough damage that
later on he can hear the two tigrin talking to
each other about how probably they shouldn't have pissed him off,
and that they made a mistake on this one. This
is when the square shaped shield turned back on, pushing
me back with a heavy electric shove. The camel on
the hood of the truck flew upward and back, his
head crunching sickeningly against the top lip of the garage door.
His neck was broken dead before he even hit the road,
and from inside the garage came a new scream lipstick.
The gremlin was pressed against the back wall, pinned between
the shield and the barricade. The gremlin suddenly exploded, the
gore held aloft by the shield and spread in a
red flowerlike pattern against the wall, like a drop of
blood pressed under a piece of glass. I started to
get back up, wondering if my wraith phase would work,
wondering if my wraith phase would work. Like all of
this has happened, and this is by no means causing
Karl to stop and realize that he shouldn't be doing
what he's doing. He is simply recalibrating his attack plan.
It is not until Immani steps in and Donut finally
gets through that he realizes they'd walked me out of
sight of their garage. And I sat at the curb
in front of the remains of our mercenaries. I just
sat there, breathing heavily. It had happened so fast. I
was taken with how unfair it was, and I just
really want Carl's rage here, while understandable, is so different
than what you think, because like my immediate thought personally
after Finley's speech was like, oh my god, that's so unfair,
closely followed by oh my god, that's all of our mercenaries.
Who the fuck is gonna drive? And I thought Karl
was more reacting to that, and obviously that's a factor
as well. But once you are in his head here
and he is just starting to cool down, the anger
is a lot more about the unfairness, and I find
that really really admirable. This rage isn't even about him
and Dona and their race. For weeks months we'd been
on the precipice of death crawlers I knew were dying
left and right, and NPCs like these were falling by
the thousands. But there was something about that simple act
of defiance that Finley and NPC I didn't even know
had shown protecting his two friends. He had been on
his way to help them, and then all three of
them had just been snuffed out. Fuck, I cried out.
I was so angry, so overwhelmed after all that, for
them to be hit and killed right there on the street.
Fuck Jacobus buzzed near my ear, he whispered, And I'm
going to find this. I hate tigers too. They only
have thirty teeth. If you pay me, or if you
let me fuck the pig, I'll make their skulls explode.
Helpful Jacobus, Thank you, Oh God. The two remaining camels
were now sitting on the floor of their garage. One
put his head into the lap of the other. Imani
and Ellie were in there talking to them, giving us space.
We were fucked. We couldn't drive, We couldn't hire new
mercenaries between heats and MONI couldn't drive. We couldn't even
use goddamn Jamal because he counted as a hired mercenary.
And gremlins couldn't drive, and y'all I just again want
to point out how long it takes for him to
address that in comparison with just being really sorry what
happened to Finley and Olga and came out of for
the sake of it, Like, the way that it affects
them is so distant behind his rage at how unfair
this was to do to them, And I think that
is so important. That it's like Carl really really sees
the NPC as people in a way that I will
confess I don't even as a reader. And honestly, I like,
I'm not even mad at myself for that, because as
a reader, even the characters that are real people that
aren't in PCs, in anything that you don't that are
not your means, you're going to care about less than
your means.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: That's just like the nature of it. But I just
think it's really it's remarkable the way that this is
set up, because having Carl get so angry and go
after them and that last for like two pages, and
me sitting here thinking that I really know what's getting
him so angry, and then finding out that well, yeah,
that's in there, but that's not even the main thing.
It was just a nice moment of like, oh, Carl
is angry for the right reason in a way that
makes me have faith in him and I have this
whole time. But that's just so significant to me, you know.
Michael says, I just feel bad for Penelope. Poor pig
had no idea what was going on. Yeah, Penelope is
a really weird element in all of this. And then
Michael says, Matt really twisted the knife by having it
happen right after Finley's speech. Yeah, And it's interesting because, like,
depending on how this we're done, I could have reacted
really poorly to the choice to have Finley make this
speech and then immediately kill him, Like it could feel
really cheap. And I'm kind of compelled by the fact
that I don't find it cheap. And why is that.
I think it's because everybody slowly having these like existential
crises has been set up. We have seen the different
ways that people are reacting, and Finley responding and giving
this speech does not feel like it's out of nowhere
because we just had Jamal and the moment with him
in Donut, So Finley's like speech is in context. This
moment that you could call grandstanding is as Carl put
it this act of defiance that is very like in
keeping with how everybody is trying to do their best,
knowing that to a degree, maybe none of this means anything.
So it doesn't It doesn't feel the way that it
felt on The Walking Dead, where you would just like
have a moment with a character and that character would
die by the end of the episode and you would
be like, of course they died because they hadn't gotten
a chance to say more than a single sentence, and
they were given eight in a row and that was
the kisse of death. This feels like Matt Dinneman is
showing us some of them are doing what Carl is
trying to do, you know, some of them are refusing
to turn off the fact that they care and leaning
into it because that's the only thing that really matters.
And then there are guys like the Tigrin who are
only caring about themselves and Penelope and just showing us
the extremes of the ways they are all coping. And
you know, like the Tigrin have got to be in
the race because they know that they are in PCs.
That's apparently the way this whole thing is set up.
So they could in a way choose to like operate
similarly to Carl in support of their fellow NPCs, and
they are choosing not to do that.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 1: It's part of the world building. It doesn't feel like
I am being manipulated to have a reaction because the
show doesn't want to bringing up show and referencing again
The Walking Dead, because the show doesn't want to really
do anything new or risky. So it's just going to
kill a red Shirt to make us like sad for
this one episode in a way that doesn't really matter. This,
while not one of our main characters, is still a
massive loss to our team because of the danger it
puts them in. So while it's not like we're losing
somebody that we have personally grown particularly attached to, it
is still a loss that affects us, even if it's
in a practical way rather than really an emotional way.
And the emotional way is now there also, So just
you know, guys, there's something to be said for all
of these different, like little nuanced elements that I think
can I think a lot of people might feel that
I was being a little bit too either forgiving or
I was using a lot of like tiny details to
justify reacting differently to this, but I think it matters,
and sometimes it can be really hard to verbalize what
you know. I've talked about this with like world building
as well, and how some world building feels like it
completely falls into place and you're reading and all of
a sudden, the world in which you have been transported
feels bigger and realer and more expansive. And then there
are times where the world building feels very much like
an author coming up with names and making a list
and it.
Speaker 2: Doesn't hit at all.
Speaker 1: If anything, it makes the world feel smaller because there's
something about it all that's just like it's drawing attention
to the fact that the world doesn't feel real. And
I've been struggling with a lot of this as somebody
covering different things for a living, because I have felt
so many times I should really be able to put
my finger on why this works and doesn't work by now,
and I feel like I'm only just starting to be
able to really see it. And it's like even now,
I don't you know, it's taking me like five full
minutes of talking to get my point across, and I'm
not even sure I really did it, but I don't know.
I'm trying. So let's see, she says. Donah is saying
it's okay. We'll find a way. We have plans in
case this happens. She was right. I couldn't react like that.
Now that I was thinking more clearly, I could see
all wasn't lost. We had options, none of them good,
but we still had them. Donut, can you please take
the corpses Finley and Olga at least take that one too.
The Dromedarian had left the body of their friend outside
the garage, so she goes and does this, and he
can hear the Tigrins fighting inside, obviously unaware that he
can hear them. We needed to take a team out,
especially now, but we needed to be smart about it.
The unicorn was the biggest threat, but for right now,
I just needed to make sure one of the teams
was gone because I was no longer confident in our
chances to not come in last I thought again about
the description of Penelope, the pig of the lightning that
had just flashed across the sky. A tear rolled down
my cheek. God damn it, I thought, God damn it,
And I think what he is talking about here is
the god that would get involved if something were to
happen to her, and that the lightning maybe was like
she had gotten hurt a little somehow, and so that
was like beginning a trigger that didn't fully come to
pass because she's she wound up being Okay, we should stay,
We should both stay in the truck, Dario said. We
shouldn't have run over those mercenaries. That human was pissed.
Look what he did to the door. He did that
with his hand, and now the camels are mad too.
Fuck him and fuck them, Nico said, we'll blow them
all off the road if we see him. Remember the plan.
We win this and we get Penny to the safe place.
She's the important one. Lipstick is dead, Dario replied.
Speaker 2: What are we going to do.
Speaker 1: We need to find a new one on the track.
There should be two out there, and if not, we
can use a few emergency gremlins to keep it running
until we find one. Eyes on the prize, okay, Daria replied,
sounding hesitant. But don't get in a fight with that human.
If you see him, get back into the truck. I
can take that bitch. Nico replied, maybe, but you can't
take the cat, and if something happens to him, we'll
have to deal with her. If we fall, Penny will
be defenseless against her sultry advances. Gentlemen, I urge you,
I implore you to please join the rest of us
on planet Earth. What are you fucking talking like? My god?
Speaker 2: Huh?
Speaker 1: So this is when we get a message from Louie
that they're selling protection against acid rain. Louis and his
group was in first place in their heat. Prepotente is
in first first. I don't know if it's going to last.
But before the race, that body guy went into Hungry
Eyes all by himself and ate a thousand different things
from all the different stalls, and his buffs make Eileen
go really fast. I didn't name her. That's the lowrider.
She has a painted on the side, but Brittany thinks
that's the name of the person who drove the truck
because the fuzzy dice are pink. Anyway, most of the
tracks are like water slide tubes, and there's this satan
guy who keeps saying, I hope none of these tubes
lead to my butthole. It's really weird, Sweetie. That's Prepotente's
taper thing really likes the water tubes, and we've just
been following them. Prepotente says he knows the best path.
So Satan, as it turns out, is a hedgehog, as
we find out later, And there's a whole story there,
but we'll get there shortly. So I love the fact
that all of these buffs from the food are actually
like doing something. And Prepotente, you know, like drinking all
of these different sodas. Carl, I'm gonna need you to
like get in on that and take it a little
bit more seriously, just you know, just go ahead. So
I returned to the Tiger and garage. They'd fled back
into their truck at the sound of Donut's voice. The
two Tigrins were sitting in the cab glaring at us,
doughnut glitzy pizzazz. Why we don't want to hurt the pig.
I explained what I wanted to do. Donut scoffed, but
she did as I asked. Her headset microphone appeared. She
leaped off my shoulder and posted up in the center
of the driveway, facing the truck. So she begins using
a belle called all eyes on Me, but She's managing
to do it without having to sing because her charisma
is so high that she can actually pull that off.
And what Dona decides to do is give Penelope some
relationship advice about being in a toxic thrupple. I'm going
to sing Acapulco is what Donut says, by the way,
which I just love so much. Don't let's see, Penelope.
I'm sorry, but you need to hear this. I'm not
saying there's anything wrong with your little thrupple in theory,
but I strongly feel all three of you could use
some relationship advice. Situationships where two of the members are
at each other's throats are destined to end in heartbreak.
It's all too common with pigs, as they're famously known
to be attracted to toxic relationships. I mean, look at
Miss Piggy. Honestly, she's the toxic one as she abuses
poor Kermit. People give her a past because she's beautiful
and knows karate. That's fair. I adore Miss Piggy until
the end of time, and she was definitely a role
model for me growing up. But she is really horrible
to poor Kermit and needs to go through some some therapy.
It's just like a variety of therapies. There's Piglet, who
is what some people call a twink, and he's in
a relationship with a bear who's unbelievably selfish. Don't even
get me started on your team's namesake. One fine pig
that's Wilbur, who we're supposed to think is a friend
to this spider lady. But that's only because and it says,
as Donut droned on, I went to work, Matt Dinneman
droned this. He's a thesis. I wanted to hear all
of it. How dare you interrupt this finely crafted argument,
fully throught through, full of great examples that are relevant,
and just cut it off like that? How could you? Okay,
this is a Tumblr post and I want to read
the rest of it. I have no doubt that he
wrote the rest of it actually, and he had to
go back and figure out where he was going to
cut it off. But I bet, I bet he's got
the whole thing somewhere. If I ever get a chance
to actually talk to him, I'm going to ask him
and see anyway, As don't it droned on, I went
to work, and he lays these that are to disintegrate
Tigrin specifically so that Penelope is not going to be
a factor in all of this. And then we get
the end, the tail end, which is why Pepa is
absolutely destined for a Denny's ham Lover's Breakfast skillet if
she doesn't immediately do something about her cousin Chloe. I
actually have never seen Pepa pig. I have heard a
lot of conflicting feelings about it, because evidently Pepa has
like a bit of an attitude, and some parents feel
like it is not a good example for their children
because she is a little spicy. I don't know about
her cousin Chloe, but Pepa's always been the one that
I've heard is the problem. Anyway, it was nice talking
to you. I hope I've given you something to think about.
See you later. We quickly moved down the sidewalk, catching
up to Ellie and Emani and uh, this is when
we catch up to the Minister of blood letting. What's up? Uh?
The minister is very nice, but that bucket did smell revolting.
I didn't get a chance to examine it.
Speaker 2: I did.
Speaker 1: Imani said, it's something even worse it is it is
I am not going to read all of the things
that are coming up. Like in the beginning of chapter
forty seven, we get a lot of updates about where
everybody is in their race. Florin is in first place
in THEIRS, Chris's team is doing well. Prepotente wouldn't stop
talking about all the benefits of this newly discovered splooge potion.
It is not actual splooge, but they do have to
manually drink it, which is really fucked up. At this point,
Zev comes up over the speakers again. Each track has
four heats, and each pit stop combines four tracks. Each
individual heat will roll for what path they continue on,
so the second half of your race may not be
on the same track you started on. There will be
a random drawing for each individual heat, so the heats
will be jumbled up. The moment the team in first
place in your heat times out, you will receive your
new assignment. Also, some of you have received quests that
require you to complete tasks. Please do not worry about that.
Even though all four tracks are different, the associated quests
are mirrored on each track and your quest will be transferred.
In other words, you will be able to complete your
quest on the new track. Good luck everybody, And again,
like I said, it's just feeling like the AI is
having to compensate and do things kind of at the
last Like it just doesn't feel fully planned out. It
feels like things are being changed as we go at
the last second, as the AI is sort of realizing
that this idea won't work because of that YadA YadA, YadA.
So let's see. Prepotente gets moved to the jungle and
he is sad about it because the water park tunnels
are all mapped. Sweetie will be most upset. You just
want to make certain you don't take a wrong turn
as they come quickly. It's very high speed. This jungle
appears to be more leisurely and they are going to
be moving into Satan's water park. This is when he
gets the notification about the trap activating. You have dissolved
a tigrin that Harry fucker is dead, which I just
really want to point out the AI like he is
always tending towards what's the word. There's always editorializing in
descriptors and everything, but this sort of thing where you're
getting a notification that something you did went off? Is
usually the editorializing doesn't come until you get the achievement afterward.
So I found that sort of interesting, and it felt
like the AI being like, good, I'm glad he's gone. Honestly,
so the team has been eliminated, which he you know,
the whole deal with Penelope the pig. I was like,
exactly what happens here? Because if she vanishes because their
team has been eliminated, does that count as triggering the god?
And it seems not. There's no notification. And let's see.
Floren says, if there's a team in your heat, you
need to slow down, slowed down, just let me know.
And Carl says, let me tell you about a unicorn
named Dwight. Which I'm really curious what all Floren is
going to do because Floren is very intimidating in a
certain direction and I feel like he could really fuck
their day up. Okay, so the hedgehog, the hedgehog who
is Satan? Oh my god, there's a lot to deal
with here. Also, we have Olga in the driver's seat.
The resurrected corpse made a slurping noise. Her head was
completely caved in. But the toad's long tongue still lolled
out of the ruined mess, bobbing and oozing like a
yo yo that had been dipped in slime. The spell
brought the dead corpse back to life for a maximum
of fifteen minutes, and she'd already been resurrected for five.
Florin had left forty minutes previously and was giving me
a blow by blow on the track so far. He'd
offered to go after the boss on our behalf, but
we decided he should instead pursue Dwight and Lucienne and
attempt to slow them, as they most likely wouldn't be
taking the same path we'd chosen. Thanks, we had a
way to catch up, assuming we could talk these corpses
into driving in a straight line, which does wind up
being a lot more difficult than one would think. I mean,
it's not great. Uh. Since this was a summon, it
skirted the rules. We were relying on voice instructions to drive.
I was already second guessing our decision to do it
this way. But the alternative was worse, which was to
have mango drive, which wasn't really an alternative at all,
but a last ditch hail Mary yeah. Indeed. Then we
have a female troll put up on a tow truck
with a high pink mohawk and a hooked nose. A
cigarette dangled from her lip. Her eyes first lingered on me,
and she started to smile big, but then she finally
noticed Olga. After an especially big spurt of fluid, the
cigarette dropped from the troll's mouth. I'll bet it did.
I love the idea that the troll was maybe like
about to hit on Carl. That was the vibe I
was getting for sure. Satan was a country boss, but
not invulnerable, and he wasn't the boss we were meant
to fight. He was the owner of the water park.
He lounged near the exit, occasionally offering loud opinions on
things happening, occasionally poking at the racers. Satan was a hedgehog,
a Kaiju sized male hedgehog. And then Carl remembers, wait,
is this about that beauty contest thing? How do you
even remember that you were a kitten? And we get
the story. One of Donuts' early cat shows wasn't at
a dedicated cat event, but at a sprawling pet festival
in Tacoma that included dogs and exotic animals, with multiple
competitive events going on at once. It was one of
the few shows I'd actually attended because it had a
beer garden. The winners of each category had a cutest
in Show showdown, and kitten. Donut had been up against
a few animals, including a Great Dane puppy with spots,
a snake, a ferret, and a baby hedgehog named Jezebel,
who was one of the most goddamn adorable things I'd
ever seen. Jezebel had won, which had put B into
a funk for the rest of the day. Donut, of course,
had been oblivious and had been happy to lick up
my vanilla milkshake. On the ride back to Seattle, I
remembered she'd gotten it all over her face, and B
had been pissed because she had another show the very
next day in the Tri Cities. This has nothing to
do with that. Even if it was, it was fixed
from the beginning. Who names a hedgehog Jezebel anyway, doesn't
it mean slut? So it was a slut hedgehog. She
was a baby. The owners should have been discre qualified
just for that. I honestly can't help but agree that
that name is kind of an odd choice. I love
the fact though, that she's remembering things in a way
that are just too like that she kind of maybe shouldn't.
And I also want to mention Jezebel is a real hedgehog,
like that's a because like I went and looked this
up because I was like, that is ringing you a bill,
and y'all if you go google Jezebel the Hedgehog. I mean,
I'm so sorry, Donut, but Jezebel is quite adorable. I mean,
come on, so anyway, I just wanted to mention that
Jezebel is real. This is not just for the book.
And yeah, oh there was a bunch more chat that
hadn't shown up for me. Sorry, Jeff says, My explanation
is that Kermit has a humiliation fetish that would actually
kind of track Jeff, I may accept that. As head Cannon,
Michael says, I need the Patent Oswalt uncut version of
Donut speech here. Why Patton Oswalt, I don't know the
relevance here. Donut has earned my trust. Cut Chloe out
of your life, Pepa, Michael says, Now Natasha is starting
to call the Ai. He Yeah, I'm just following Carl's
lead on this, But I have been falling into calling
it he earlier and kind of made myself stop, and
now that he's doing it, I'm going ahead with it.
I'm just gonna, you know, Jeff says, Cat ease up
on the slut shaming. I mean, one would argue that
she's not slutshaming. She's just pointing out the meaning of
the name that they chose. It's not even it's not
a tell you judgment about the sex. It's about the choice. Uh.
He had the Star Wars rant filibuster on Parks and
Rex as Michael, Oh my god, that's right. I always
forget pat As what has been in so many different
things as like these little side characters. Michael says. They
released his uncut version on YouTube and it was like
fifteen minutes long. I gotta find that. I gotta find
that there, you guys know, I mean, all I do
for two whole days a week is monolog by myself
about properties, so surprising nobody. I've always wondered what the
hell he was about to say.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: Yeah, While the tubes dominated the first half of the race,
the ground level challenges were more eclectic. Doctor Metcalf now
had the map and there were multiple paths, including the
ominously titled Toddler splash Pad, the wapool, and a massive
loop to loop, which was the fastest path but clearly
the most dangerous. The giant loop dominated the bottom part
of the park. Our path was just south of the
loop and called the River of Sloth. And I literally
cackled out loud because I instantly knew that this was
like a lazy river, but calling it the river of
sloth is so much funnier. And now that is what
I'm going to be calling all lazy rivers every time
I encounter them, because that is fucking perfect. And I
just thought it was so funny. I I love it.
It's so much more accurate of sloth. Yup, correct, Uh,
I'm going to cast clockwork triplicate before it times out.
That'll give us twenty more minutes. Don't be such a
debbie downer. It'll work, right, Carl, right, I said, as
Olga continued to leak. But why did you picked the
one without a head? Finley's remains don't have legs. I
used up most of my good corpses on the last floor.
But if she doesn't work out, we do have a
few more. We have a camel and a couple of
NPCs from Faction Wars, and Ellie lent us a ton
of dead orcs. I didn't add that most of the
orcs were also headless. Ellie had gotten really good at
some spell that froze the liquid surrounding one's brain and
then caused it to explode, which is bonkers, terrifying. She
doesn't have a gods damned head. How is she hearing
your commands? I find it's better not to think too
hard on some of this stuff. Donut replied, I don't
know how she hears me, but she does, isn't that right, Olga?
I this Donut is the voice of Matt Deneman. I mean,
we all know he lamp shades many things via Donut,
and this is definitely one of them, of being like, hey, guys,
stop asking questions, don't worry about it, just don't just
don't do it. It's fine, and I respect it, and
I will accept it. I respect and accept The gingers
on this track weren't called cannibals, but seasoned pass holders
Elliott Amani, who were in the Eternal slums still had
the quest and needed to find and kill another iteration
of Maurice beside us. The tow truck zoomed off. We
still had ten seconds. The truck disappeared through the arch
and I heard deep booming laughter. Jolly good show, said
sat in the hedgehog, Pip, Pip, And that is the
end of chapter forty eight. I am twenty minutes over.
I can't believe you guys didn't warm me. I was
not looking at the time at all, and I have
literally nine minutes until my next recording starts, so I
really need to go. I appreciate you all, but I
also hate you to the loom.
Speaker 2: Motherfuckers.
Speaker 1: That was an unspoiled network.