Welcome to David Behavior, a horror book review podcast. I'm Marie.

And I'm Beth.

And today's David Behavior is American tourists ignoring clear signs of danger. Before we get into it, just a reminder that you should support your local bookstore. You can do that by purchasing a physical copy or using Libro FM to pick up an audiobook. It's also available on Libby and at your local library. And specifically, what is available on Libby or at your local library is the Ruins by Scott Smith. This was an interesting book.

Yes.

To kind of give a non spoilery summary of it. This book is about a group of 20 something tourists in Mexico as they venture from their safe resort to a newly discovered archaeological dig site, hoping to reunite with a missing brother. What they find is a vine covered hill in the middle of a clearing and a long abandoned campsite. When they are prevented from leaving by locals from a nearby Mayan village, the group struggles to survive while slowly realizing why the Mayans can't let anyone leave that clearing alive. So, Beth, who do you think this book is for?

It didn't like, strike my fancy in particular, but it's not like other books that I've read where I thought I didn't like this book because I didn't. I didn't think it was well written. Like, I didn't feel like Einhallow was very appealing in general. I know that some people like it in that sense. I didn't really understand why they liked it in this case. I can understand why somebody would like this book. I don't think it was for me necessarily. I think that it had a lot of, I want to say, like older sensibilities to it, in my opinion.

That makes a lot of sense.

Yeah. I think that it's maybe for somebody, you're going to be mentioning Stephen King a little bit later and I, I will say if you are a fan of Stephen King, you might actually like this one. I'm like slagging on it. I feel like I'm being very rude.

But no, and, and I do agree with you though. I also wasn't. This book wasn't 100% for me. I think I might have enjoyed it a little bit more than you did overall. But it definitely does have a lot of that like, older sensibility of horror writing that I think people who enjoy a very like blunt and direct writing style, not one that tends towards the like flowery prose, they may enjoy this a lot more because of that. I also say, like, if you love eco horror like you love the earth fighting back in some way. And you love, like, survival horror.

Yeah.

You would probably enjoy this quite a bit because that is. That's the focus is ecological stuff and surviving.

The survival part was very interesting. I think that it was realistic in a sense, I guess, like that sort of fight to survive in the minutia of organizing and planning ahead and that sort of thing was very interesting. Sort of seeing how specifically Jeff's mind worked in that way.

I agree. I was actually surprised by the amount of, like, legitimate survival advice Jeff ends up kind of giving over the course of his chapters. And like Beth mentioned, this book does have a review from Stephen King himself. I just found it really funny because I feel like nowadays Stephen King, like, you can. You can be like, hey, Steve, you want to comment on this? And he'll be like, I loved it. It was the greatest thing I've ever seen. But this is back in, you know, in 2006 when it came out, or 2005 when the novel came out. So I feel like maybe he was being a little bit more accurate when he said the book of the summer. That would be the Ruins by Scott Smith, last heard from in 1993. A simple plan later filmed by Sam Raimi from Smith's script. No. Quietly building Ruth Rendle style suspense here. Smith intends to scare the bejabbers out of you and succeeds. There are no chapters, no cutaways. The Ruins is your basic long scream of horror. It does for Mexican vacations what Jaws did for New England beaches in 1975.

No, I'm sorry, no, Stephen.

Mr. King, I do have to disagree with the latter.

Yeah.

That said, from looking at people's reviews online, it seems like for a lot of people it did do that. So once again, I think we're kind of coming into that divide between maybe fans of an older style of thriller like this versus maybe fans with a little bit more of like a. It sounds so pretentious to say like a modern sensibility, but there is a. There is a difference between a horror book written in the 90s, in the early aughts even, and a book written now.

Yeah, for sure. There is more of a focus on character introspection and more of a focus on prose, I think, in like a modern horror novel.

Yeah.

And I think Stephen King does that to a degree, but not as much, I guess. But yeah, I feel like a lot of books like, like the Hacienda, for example. Extremely poetical language.

Well, and it's. It's very character driven.

It is, yeah.

This. This is a. This is an Extremely plot driven book. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's just what you prefer. And I think both of us kind of lean more towards characters and I think that's also why to kind of loop in our experience with this. That's why we both had a difficult time with the narration at the beginning because it felt less personal. And it did get a little more personal as time went on, which helped with the latter half of the book.

Yeah. And I mean, I'll give an example when we get to the spoilers, just because I feel like I don't want to necessarily get into too much detail here, but. Yeah, it's. It's not my favorite thing necessarily. I wasn't a huge fan of it. The way that characters are described and the way that they think and the way that they're given personalities.

Yeah, no, I agree, though. I definitely agree and I feel like we're on a similar page with it. I just think, like I said, I think I'm a little softer towards it because I am a fan of the movie and I acknowledge that. That's probably why I am a little more lenient on something that is outside of my typical wheelhouse for books that I enjoy for sure. On that note, though, what other books or movies would you recommend for someone who maybe enjoys this book?

I actually didn't have a lot of books because it was also outside of my personal preferences. I will say, for the record, I don't regret reading this book necessarily. I think. I think I'm glad that I went outside of my comfort zone a bit in reading this one. So. So that's good. But I don't have anything similar that I can think of in terms of books. Off the top of my head. I put down the Ritual, the Movie and the. I haven't read the book. I hear the book is quite different. And the movie as above, so below. Mainly because they're about people who are out of their element, out of their depth and their places they shouldn't be. That's kind of the theme or the bent that I took with my recommendations.

Yeah, and I. I definitely see that. And you are. You are so right about the Ritual novel being very different from the movie. I adore that movie and it has a very emotional core to it that is not there in the book. And it's not necessarily a bad thing. It's just an entirely different vibe. So if you are a fan of the movie the Ritual, I would recommend reading the book the Ritual. But I would also go in knowing that this is a different story. It is very different from the movie. But I do agree with you in regards to, like, characters being in a place that they don't belong and being out of their depth while they're there. I kind of leaned more eco horror recommendations to kind of go with the vibes of the book overall. Or rather the vines of the book overall. Oh, my God. So I would recommend I have a few movies in the Earth, directed by Ben Wheatley, the Hallow directed by Corin Hardy, and of course, the greatest eco horror movie ever released, the Happening, directed by M. Night Shyamalan.

I could go on a tangent about M. Night Shyamalan. There's a video. Okay, just recommending YouTube videos now. I think I made Marie watch it.

That's media. That's media.

But Movies with Mikey has a video about M. Night Shyamalan. And it turned me around on him. And I like. I love him.

Now I know exactly what video you're talking about. I also highly recommend watching that video because a lot of the public perception of M. Night Shyamalan is. Is, I think, completely unfounded. And watching that video, it was nice to see someone recognize the kind of, like, albatross around his neck that the Sixth Sense and the. The twist, what a twist has, like, really become to his career and the way that people. People. It's so interesting because. And we could get into this as, like, reader genre enjoyers as well, because people sometimes go into media expecting a specific thing, especially if it's done by someone who could be perceived as like, an artur. Like M. Night Shyamalan. Can they go in and they're like, we want a twist. We want something that's going to bedazzle and. And like, completely turn around our perspective on the movie. And that's not what the Sixth Sense is about, in my opinion. It's about. It's an exploration of grief and learning how to move on and understanding like that reaching out to others and being able to communicate is important. And it does have a good twist. Like, it's just. The twist is just another thing on top of it. Not the end all, be all.

It's incidental. It's not the. It's not the central point exactly, in my opinion. I think. I think you're absolutely right. It's a beautiful movie, even without the twist. It's a beautiful movie about grief and about death and how you can view that.

Absolutely.

And how characters deal with it in different ways.

100%. Now, that said, I love M. Night. I think he's great. I give him a lot of leeway. My recommendation of the Happening is kind of a get, you know, have some friends, have a little party, have some fun with it.

Sure.

M. Night has come out and said that it was an intentional kind of funny send up to older ecological horror movies. And that's why the acting is the way it is and everything. I don't know if I 100%, you know, believe him that that was the initial intent. However, it works great as that if you watch it with that in mind.

That was quite a tangent.

That was such a tangent. All right.

We are M. Night Shyamalan defenders in this house.

We really are. Are any of his movies based on books? We should add it to the list if they are. We should look into that.

We should. Yeah, we should.

So before we do, you know, fully dip into the spoilerful section, I feel like we got a little bit into this, but let's just go over, once again our experience with the book, how we kind of felt about it, and if you would recommend it to somebody to read.

Yeah, absolutely. So, as I mentioned, my experience was pretty mixed. I did not enjoy the beginning. It was quite hard to get through and it felt very detached and impersonal. And I think as we talked about, it's because he's not really giving the characters personality. I did feel like as we got into the book and as it sort of zoomed in on these characters in the situation that they're in, we did get more. Obviously, I mean, it would be hard not to, but we did get more introspective with them and we got more personality and we sort of saw some of their motivations and things like that. Not a lot. I feel like we could have gotten a lot more and it could have been more devastating in terms of, you know, their survival part of it. It could have been a lot worse if it was more of a character driven thing, like if it was more of a character study than it was. However, I do think that, you know, he did zoom in more and more as the book went on, which I.

Appreciate and I will highlight in our spoilerful section. There is one specific scene and death that I felt was very impactful because of that zoom in at that point. But we'll. We'll get to that.

Yeah, I could. I mean, I guess I could mention that my example in this. In this section, it was things like at the beginning he would say instead of something like. Amy was an avid photographer. She liked to take pictures with her film camera because she Enjoyed the tactile feel. Something like that. Like that would have been a more, I guess, flowery description. What he said instead was Amy liked.

To take pictures full stop, period.

He mentioned the film camera and things like that. But it was, it was like later on, it wasn't part of that.

Kind of like that initial introduction to her. Yeah, I. I agree with a lot of what you said. This was my first time reading the novel, but I've seen the movie adaptation a few times. We're not going to talk about how many times I've watched the Ruins, including yesterday, when I literally made you watch the Ruins. I was familiar with the story due to. I was aware that Scott Smith was the writer both for the book as well as for the movie and that he made some changes in order to keep the movie like a little bit more interesting to watch. For people who may have already read the book. I was not aware of how different tonally the book was from the movie. I do think that the movie is kind of also bleak, but in a different way. And honestly we might end up doing a bonus episode in the future, kind of comparing the movie more directly to the book because I do find the differences fascinating because Scott Smith wrote both.

Yeah, we have a lot to say about it. We were gonna record this last night after the movie and we were talking about it too much and we got too late.

Exactly, exactly. We just talk too much. You know, no one wants to hear that, but. So your job, listener, is feel free to join our discord and join in on the discussion and let us know if something like that something of a closer comparison between when we do something that is an adaptation or has been adapted. If you'd be interested in hearing a little bit more detail and direct comparison between the two. But as for the book itself, like you said, the beginning was very detached feeling. It was kind of hard for me to push through up until a certain point. But I do feel like it did end up zooming in once the action started ramping up. So I felt a little bit more attached to the characters. Overall though, I would. It's so difficult because I do think that the book is better than the movie, just as like a story and as agree everything. But I do feel like the movie is something that I would recommend more just because it's more fun to re watch and like I have no interest in rereading this, even though I am glad, glad I read it.

Give me the abridged version of this book and I. I would maybe read it again. Potentially more Accurately, I would recommend somebody else read it. As it stands, it's too, there's too much, it's, it, it's too slow.

And what's interesting about that is that that is the most common complaint that I have seen about it is that you could have easily lost about 50 pages and still had like a night you would have a tighter, like, kind of more complete story. And interestingly, the only people I saw saying, oh no, I thought the, like, the pacing and it didn't need anything removed was fine were people who were directly comparing it to Stephen King novels.

Oh, interesting, huh? Yeah, yeah, I could see that for sure. Yeah.

Overall though, like, yeah, I, I might. If, if, if you hear our, our, our summary or even at this point if you're like, that sounds interesting, I want to listen, I want to read a book about a group of college students being terrorized by vines, then go for it. Just expect it to be a little much. And also for the following content warnings. Yes, we've got cheating, we've got intense descriptions of viscera, we've got suffocation, we have self harm, amputation and suicide. So tread lightly if any of those are touchy topics for you, we will be briefly discussing them as we go over the plot summary and like, you know, mentioning when they happen. But we won't go into any graphic detail in our summary here.

I for one am glad that we don't have a book with essay in it for once.

You know what, that's. So I was, I was thinking about that. Essay is a difficult topic for me personally. I don't enjoy reading it. I like to be prepared if it's going to happen. It's so interesting that this is a book that in a lot of ways is a lot bleaker and darker than anything else we've read. But it didn't involve that like, I don't know, it's an interesting line I guess to maintain for sure. Anyway, all right. And with that, let's get into the spoiler section. Our story opens with four American tourists. Eric, his girlfriend, Stacy, her best friend and former roommate Amy, and Amy's boyfriend Jeff, who is a medical student. Another interesting thing that I found was that everyone mentions Jeff being a medical student when they talk about this book. Nobody mentions that Amy is also getting ready to go to medical school.

Yeah, not even Amy.

Not even Amy. Like, it's crazy. The only thing we know about Jeff is that he's. Well, that's not the only thing, but you know what I mean, like, yeah, anyway, they are all together. And they are on a vacation in Mexico. They are in Cancun at a nice little resort. They've been befriending other tourists, including a trio of Greeks. They are referred to as the Greeks almost the entire time. And none of them go by their real names. They all go by Spanish nicknames. So we have Pablo, Juan, and Don Quixote. Thankfully for us, even though we are vacationing in Mexico, once again, we don't have to worry too much about pronunciations because we are hanging out with Eric, Stacey, Amy, and Jeff. The whitest names that you can find.

Absolutely. The whitest names that you could even think of in the mid-2000s, for sure.

Yeah. They're just incredibly generic names. And I feel like that's part of what Scott wanted when he wrote this is just like, I need to get the most generic 20 somethings I can into this story. I don't know why I gave him that voice. I'm sorry.

It also feels like, again, with that older sensibility, it also feels like an older person's version of what, like, a 20 something is like. I don't. Not to say that I didn't know, you know, Amy's or Jeff's in, like, 2006, but it just felt very, like, dated to me. I guess. The names.

I will admit, when I read this, I knew that the movie came out in the 2000s. I was not aware that the book itself was published in the 2000s. I thought it was published in the 90s.

Yeah.

So I kind of, like, everything kind of felt right to me because I was picturing everything happening in the 90s.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. If you were thinking of it in the 90s, it makes a lot more sense. I also. I think having them have such generic names also made it kind of harder to picture them as people. I guess it sort of dehumanized them in a way, because it wasn't like Amy Smith, the, you know, med student or whatever. It was just like the girlfriend, Amy, you know?

Yeah.

Like a slasher film.

And that is something that is actually commented on later by one of the characters in the book where he's talking about, oh, if this was a movie, you'd be the. I'd be the funny guy. Like, they commented on the tropes. So obviously there is an acknowledgment of the tropes, but I don't necessarily know if lamp shading the tropes means that you are utilizing them super well. I wouldn't say that they're horrible. Like, they're these characters are obviously not meant to be super liked. A lot of them have obvious character flaws that are highlighted repeatedly and like kind of grow worse in some ways as the story goes on. And I feel like that's part of it is like we're not meant to like these people. And that does bother me a little because I. I don't have to like every single character in a novel to appreciate the novel, but it is sometimes nice to have like that touchstone where you're like, oh, I hope so and so. And for me, honestly though, that was their newest friend, Matthias, the German tourist that they meet.

Oh, yeah, I was gonna say justice for Amy, personally.

Yeah, I do. Yeah. I feel like Amy was slighted by the narration. I actually liked her more in the book than I thought I was going to.

Yeah. In my opinion, Jeff was like the main character. If we were sort of centralizing one character, I guess we'll get to it. But I feel like Amy's death was almost like fridging the wife. Yeah, yeah, it was. Yeah, exactly. It was more about him than it was about her necessarily, which I don't like. I don't like that because everybody else kind of gets their own, I guess, reason for death or like at least a. A send off in some way, even if it's kind of like poor Pablo. But Pablo also is kind of representative. Like, he also isn't really a human necessarily in the narrative.

He's representative of like an outsider. Like, it's really interesting, the group dynamic, because Pablo and also the rest of his Greek friends, they don't speak any English. And our tourists, our American tourists don't speak any Greek, obviously. So the communication between them is limited to like a tiny, tiny, tiny bit of limited Spanish. And like, that's about it because none of. Once again, if we're getting into the David behavior of this and people like being bad tourists and going against warning signs, maybe I'm not saying you have to have a perfect grasp of the Spanish language to vacation in Mexico, but it is incredibly helpful when you're going off the beaten path into the middle of nowhere to have a grasp of the local language.

At least bring somebody with you who knows.

Exactly.

Or like a guidebook or something. Like bring something with you 100%.

It's really interesting because I, as we were reading this, I was looking for the. Not necessarily the message, like in some big grandiose way, but like, what, what Scott was trying to say with his story. And I for a long time was leaning towards like, it, it being a commentary on the type of culture, like tourist culture in a lot of ways. And I do think that's there. It just, it never gets into it as much as I thought it was going to.

Now that I'm thinking about it, it feels like there are a few themes. There are more themes than I thought there were when I was reading it. The one that I kept highlighting, that I have a few quotes on are ignoring warning signs, ignoring your instincts in a situation. And they do that constantly. They constantly dismiss their own inner thoughts to say, this is a bad situation, get out, get out. Or like lying to themselves, saying, it's fine, it's fine. Like they're thinking, you know, practically, or they're thinking that something is dangerous, but they're pressing it down, they're ignoring it. The other one that I just thought of is this could also possibly be a commentary on long term terminal care, if you'll follow that thread.

Yeah, no, I'd love to get into that.

So, so if you can think of. So there are, there are two things, right? So Pablo's situation, which we'll get into as, as the plot goes on, but Pablo's situation is sort of a microcosm of the situation that they're all in. So he's, he's gonna die. Like, they don't know when they're gonna get help. They don't know how long he's gonna last. He's probably gonna die. And the rest of them, they don't know it. They learn it later, but they will also die. They're going to die. There is no hope for them. If you think of like when Amy steps on the vine, that's like a terminal cancer diagnosis, for example. It's like the reasoning with it, like, maybe we'll get out maybe one day, two day, three days. Like, when do we think the Greeks are coming? And it's like maybe those are, you know, you could maybe like equate that with having hope for like a treatment or something like that. But if you don't know when that's coming, then there's no way to give yourself that hope. And all of them, again, the ignoring the, the facts, ignoring their own instincts, they all know they're going to die and they all kind of know that the Greeks aren't coming. Now the thing at the end is that the Greeks do come. Yes, but they like, they don't know that. So, like, I don't know, I guess that's kind of. Maybe I'm like reading too much into it. But that's kind of where my brain just went, is like, you know, if you know you're gonna die, what do you do? Where do. Where does your brain go? How do you deal with that?

I definitely get where you're coming from. And I actually do agree to, like, to a remarkable extent, because, like, when you really think about it, Jeff's coping mechanism, and when we get further into the plot, like, he is constantly planning, he is constantly trying. He's like, no, well, we have to do this, because if we do this, then this, and if we do this, then this. And like, he's. He. Every time he allows himself to dwell on, like, the truth of the situation, he spirals. Like, he can't handle it if he's not trying to control the situation, which is a coping mechanism. And like, you're saying that can be something that, when you're coping with the terminal illness, that can be just. When you're coping with a difficult situation, like, it makes a lot of sense to look at it in that view. And with Pablo being, like you said, that microcosm of the overall situation.

Yeah. Interesting. I didn't necessarily have that read on it when I was in the process of reading it, but I think as a reader, I also wanted to have hope that something would happen. You know what I mean? Like, as I was reading, I'm like, well, maybe that is Scott's intention in the Mayans. You want to kind of think, well, maybe they're wrong, maybe this isn't. And that's kind of one of the comments I made as well is I would love to have a book, a prequel, like, what happened with the Mayans? How do they know?

Yeah. How long have they been safeguarding this? How. How do they know what exactly it does? Yeah, no, yeah, I definitely. It's so interesting because your instinct is.

To be like, they're wrong. That's. The instinct is to be like, oh, they must. Like, they're overreacting.

But they're not. They're quarantining them for a very legitimate reason. And it's. It. It's. It's something that I promise not to touch on the movie too much, but it is something that the alternate ending of the movie does kind of touch on with. Like, when that quarantine fails, it's. Everyone's fucked. Like, it's. They had a very good reason for stopping people from leaving that area. And someone getting out is a selfish individual act when it really comes down to it.

Interesting to note when Jeff tries to leave the Vines Alert the Mayans. So, yeah, I'm like, don't the vines. I guess the vines don't reason that much. The vines reason a little bit in how they. Are you mimicking me?

Mimicking me? No. You saying that, though, does. It's so interesting because these vines, as we'll come to find, seem incredibly intelligent. Like, they actively use people's words to, like, inflict psychological warfare upon them.

Maybe it's as simple as the vines know that if they alert the Mayans, the Mayans will kill the person and then the meal.

Yeah, that's. Yeah, that's fair.

It seems like the vines don't eat, like, through skin necessarily. It seems like more like organic matter. Like, it didn't seem like they were coming after them as they were alive until they went into the tunnel.

But I can agree with that. I think that was more. It was less of them being unable to process organic matter because they talk about when Jeff later finds skeletons, like, they can process meat real fast.

Oh, but I mean, why did they have to alert the Mayans to kill them?

No, exactly. This is what I'm thinking. I don't know if you know much about Venus fly traps, but it takes a lot of energy for them to snap clothes and process their prey. So if we expound upon that and assume that Scott kind of thought about, you know, real life plants that are carnivorous and these vines, it just might be less of an expenditure to deal with live prey than to deal with prey that can't get away because it's dead or dying.

True. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, for sure. I could see that. I guess that's why they would also have the acid blood.

Yeah. Which is so interesting. But you know what?

Some other creatures we know we should.

Rewind because we've gotten so far away from. I think we did this. Didn't we do this, like, a couple of books ago, too, where we're like. And now that we've explained the ending, let's get back to the beginning of the plot. But, yeah, so their newest friend, Matthias, is a German tourist who I like a lot. I thought that Matthias was the most likable character out of all the characters.

I think, because he is not a stereotype, in my opinion. I think he is supposed to be like a German stereotype where he is compartmentalizing his emotions. And I think that we get some of that when they meet him and he's worried about his brother and he's frustrated that his brother went after this girl, and he's like, you know, why would he do this? But he's also worried about him. So we do get a few emotional outbursts at the beginning from Matthias, but not to the extent, I think. I think that we get a lot more depth from him than from the other characters, I guess.

Yeah. And I also feel like his interactions with the others, because he's, you know, they just met him, like, during this vacation. They don't know him super well. So even though, like you said, he mentions to the group that his brother Heinrich has gone off to meet some woman at a nearby. Not nearby, but at an archaeological dig, site of a, like, newly discovered ruins, and that he was supposed to be back and he hasn't come back yet. And so Matthias is going to travel and Jeff volunteers the group to go with him.

Oh, my God. So unprepared.

So unprepared. And I think you're right. I think it's because he's an outsider, we don't get as much exploration of him. So he just kind of comes off as a chill guy in all of the POV that we do get. He just seems like he's keeping it together and he's kind of chill when everyone else is falling apart.

Yeah, for sure. And I think that's supposed to be this German trait that he mentions later on.

Yeah.

Where he's. He's able to kind of like, he sees, like, the body of his brother and he doesn't really react necessarily in the movie. He does. Well, we won't get into.

We won't get into the movie. I will say. I will say he does react to an extent. Jeff has to tell him, like, no, let's just go up the hill.

Like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because it seems like he wants to go attack one of the Mayans that obviously he finds an arrow in his brother's body. So it was obviously one of them who killed him. But you're right, though. He doesn't necessarily have, like, a huge emotional outburst. And I do feel like that is. That is kind of a stereotype of. Of Germans, is that they're very contained. They're very, like, stoic. Stoic. A lot of stoicism. Yes. But, yeah, they. They decide, well, Jeff decides, like, hey, we should all go help Matthias find his brother Heinrich, who has been missing. And Amy does not want to go. Amy thinks about how she does not want to go. And Amy thinks about how this seems like a bad idea, and she ignores it. And I think you probably have something highlighted for that.

They could be travelers for once rather than Tourists, they could explore and discover and. But he was a hungover and so tired and it was hot out here. So they. I had that sort of highlighted as a. As a example of, I guess, this, like, false sense of entitlement.

Yeah.

To being real travelers.

Yeah. Because they've just been. They've been lounging around the. The resort, which, I mean, if you're paying for a resort, hang out at the resort, go to the beach, read a book, enjoy yourself. I think that everyone's vacation should be what they want. But there does seem to be this, like, mindset of, like, well, we haven't really gone to Mexic if we haven't seen, you know, these ruins. And there is an argument for that of, like, going to the actual country and seeing the actual sites instead of limiting yourself to these very, like, you know, Americanized, touristy areas. But if you're going to do that, the people that do that are people who prepare and who kind of have a plan in mind and not just a, we're just going to take the bus and it'll be fine.

Well, and being. There's something to being told that this is authentic, you know, like, it's something that no one's seen before. And it's like, that should be a red flag to you because like you said, if you are going to do that kind of vacation, you really do have to do some research and figure out what the location is and what to expect there. And there's kind of, like I say, the entitlement and kind of an arrogance about being like, well, we can just go.

Yeah, absolutely. There's no preparation made. They decide, like, basically the night before, party that night, and then depart the next morning along with Pablo, one of the Greeks, who decides to join them after some, like, vague charades. And he. He leaves a map and a note for Juan and Don Quixote letting them know that they are traveling up to the, like, rural Yucatan. Like, they're going out in the sticks for this. They have to take a bus, and then they have to, like, get a pickup in the town of Coba to take them, like, just further out into the woods, basically. The jungle, to be specific. The woods.

And I had a quote as well. So one of these other characterizations. So from Eric's kind of chapter, I guess he's picturing what to expect. And he's like. He's not even picturing, like, what's the ruins, what's going to be there. He doesn't really have an interest in that. He's Kind of the party boy person. Shawn Ashmore.

Shawn Ashmore.

But he says Eric was looking forward to it. He liked drama, conflict, the rush and tumble of other people's emotions. It wasn't all going to be like this. The drudgery of walking through this heat, his elbow throbbing in time with his heartbeat. Once they found the ruins, the day would shift, take on new dimension. And it's like he's not even thinking about, you know, seeing culture or anything. He's just like, I want to see this guy punch his brother.

Yeah, it's, it's so wild, the, like, motivations of these characters, honestly. And it, none of it really reflects well on them. Like, none of them like, even like, I love Amy and I will defend Amy because she has intense anxiety about a lot of things. But like, girl, just tell them, I don't want to go. I want to stay and read my book. Like, I don't want to go traipsing off into the jungle to find this guy's brother.

Yeah. So the rest of my quotes are, it's not true. Whenever they say it's not true, so they'll have a thought, they'll catch themselves and say, it's not true. So I have one from Stacy. Oh, yes. When they get to the village, it's pretty dire. It looks like a lot of poverty. There's a dog that follows them around. That is. It was a pretty horrible description of this dog. Flea ridden. There's a woman in the village with a baby that seems at the very least very sick and, yeah, unresponsive. Yeah, dead, Stacey thought. And as she forced herself to look away. It's not true. Yeah, constantly.

It's so interesting. They are constantly running into these warning signs to give a little bit of context to this village. They are basically told like, it's near this village. If you get to the village, you've gone too far. They get to the village, they're following this trail, trying to find these ruins where Heinrich is supposed to be. And they get to this village and choose to ignore everything that they see in it. Like, any weirdness, any, like, less than savory details. They're just like, oh, well, we time to go back along the trail and see if we can find where we missed our turn off. Like, they try to ask for help and no one wants to help them because A, they don't speak the language and B, like, we've come to find out these Mayan villagers don't want people going to these stupid ruins for very good reason. Even the taxi driver who drives them out there is obviously a little more knowledgeable of this location than they are. And he tells them, like, this is not good. This is not a good place. Well, specifically, he tells Amy, this is not good. You don't want to go there. Let me take you somewhere else. And she doesn't really understand, like, what he's. It felt very confusing in her pov. I felt like she wasn't just grasping what he was saying and she just thought that he was trying to upcharge them for something is basically what it comes down to.

It feels like, yeah, everybody wants money.

Yeah. And they try to solve a lot of their problems with money, which is very American tourist of them, to be perfectly honest.

Yeah. I have another Eric not thinking about things.

Yeah, yeah.

So they're walking along the path and he's thinking about his future with Stacey. And I think this also feeds into the theme of not accepting, like, for example, on the ruins themselves, not accepting that they're going to die. And I think this is sort of not accepting, like, that very teenage experience of having your first girlfriend or boyfriend and kind of knowing that it's not going to last, but still wanting to be, like, invested in it. So he didn't think he himself would ever accomplish this. He didn't understand how people did it. He was going to teach children and remain a child forever while Stacey advanced implacably into adulthood, leaving him behind. He could dream of them getting married someday, but it was just a story he told himself. Yet another example of his inherent immaturity. There was a goodbye lurking in their future, a break of note, a last painful encounter. This was something he tried not to see, something he knew or suspected he knew, but before which he reflexively closed his eyes.

Yeah.

So, like. And that's again happening another microcosm of.

What is happening overall in this story.

Exactly. Yeah. Just closing their eyes to. To truth.

Yeah.

Yeah. I have another one from Jeff. So this is when they find the path to the ruins, which happens to be camouflaged. So.

Yeah, but obviously, obviously, it was done by the archaeologist. Right, Beth? Is that what you're going to tell us about right now?

Obviously, the archaeologist, he didn't want to be thinking about this. The boy rotting off the camouflage path, it would only frighten her and she became obstinate and skittish when she was frightened, which wasn't a particularly helpful combination. Something strange was going on here, but Jeff was hoping that if they could just ignore it, it might not amount to anything.

Yeah, yeah.

It's like that kind of manipulation from Jeff to get Amy to go along with his plan while him knowing that it's not a good plan.

Yeah, like he is starting to feel these creeping doubts about what is going on. Like, why would that trail be hidden? Why would these kids be watching them so weirdly and riding off, like when they start going down this tr. I don't know, dude. Maybe because something's wrong. But you know what? I don't think so. We don't want to bring it up. Amy will panic like a woman. So let's just keep walking. And keep walking they do. They end up finding a large hill covered in vines, and it is in the middle of a clearing where everything around it is completely, like, bare. Like the, the ground around it is just dirt. And later we find out salt, but it's just dirt. And the way that this was described, I the impression that this is obviously like a Mayan pyramid of some sort, but it's still buried. Like it has been buried over time. That's kind of the impression I got because of the, when they get to the top, they find like a mine shaft leading down. And I, I, I did have a difficult time, like, imagining exactly what this was because the way he describes it, it takes him an hour to like, circumnavigate around this hill. So I'm not exactly sure if my thought is correct and it movie influencing me. Maybe it was just a mine of some sort. Like they dug too deep and unleashed these vines.

That's why I want the prequel with the Mayans. I want to know. Probably not written by Scott Smith because I don't, I don't know if he would do a good job of. He seems to hate all of his characters. So.

Yeah, so this seems like a good time to bring it up. From what I understand, Scott Smith has done several screenplays. He's done a few short stories, but he's only done two novels. He's done this, the Ruins, and he's also done a novel called A Simple Plan, which also has been adapted to film and also had to undergo quite a few changes because apparently it's extremely bleak. So I feel like, and I haven't read it, obviously, so I can't say for certain, but it does feel like in a lot of ways Scott is kind of writing characters to be disliked or to be in these bleak situations. And maybe he doesn't get super attached to them in his writing because he knows he's just going to kill them all. You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, for sure. And, I mean, I guess there's something to be said for giving your characters flaws that's fine. I guess, like, the manipulation of Amy and things like that. Like, I guess I get that. I just. It's very strange. Like, it. The writing, like you said, he's very detached. Like, he doesn't seem to actually like them.

Yeah, yeah, it's. It's very interesting, but. So they see this big hill, like I said, I have a hard time understanding exactly what it's supposed to be, but they see a big hill and they're starting to approach it when a bunch of armed men from the village confront them. Jeff tries speaking, like, very basic Spanish to them. They obviously don't speak Spanish. They're yelling at him in a different language that he does not know or understand. He tries to. Thinks about offering them money at one point, like, once again trying to solve his problems by throwing money at them. And Amy is kind of in a bit of, like, almost a fugue state. She's, like, trying to cope with the situation at hand. And she had been taking pictures of the area, and she just starts, like, taking pictures of the situation and stepping further back because she wants to get everyone into the frame. And it's like, it becomes a very. Almost obsessive thing for her for a moment to, like, I need to make sure everyone is in the frame. So that, I guess her thought is, if we die, someone will know what happened. You know what I mean?

Like, yeah, I guess. So in terms of taking the pictures, I kind of get it, because you're. When you're taking the picture, you're kind of like, making it into art, in a sense, or making it into something else. And so you can kind of, again, make it not real. Like, if you're taking a picture, you can almost pretend that it's staged. So I can kind of get that instinct of wanting to take a picture. Like, I. I get it.

Yeah, I. I definitely get it. And I. I felt for her in the moment, I did feel like this. Like I said, this was kind of almost like a fugue state in some ways, where it was just like. Yeah, her thoughts were entirely focused on getting this picture. Because if she let her thoughts focus on what was actually happening, she might have a. I assume, like a panic attack or something.

Yeah.

But unfortunately, as she is stepping back, she steps into the vines and the men begin to, like, completely panic and start, like, forcing the whole group up towards the hill, threatening to shoot them. Basically, at this point, like, very clearly, you get up There or you're gonna die is what it comes down to.

So, yeah, they. They're forced to go up the hill, and they find. At the top, they find two tents.

They assume that the tents are from the expedition. However, they're all overgrown with vines, which is. It's really interesting because all of this, I think, would have felt a lot more threatening with, like, how fast these vines grow before I moved to North Carolina. But I don't know if you've ever heard of kudzu, Beth, but kudzu is wild.

I hear it has no backbone.

No backbone whatsoever. So out of control vines. Yeah, I've seen that. But regardless, they think, okay, we can escape down the back. Like, we'll go down the other side of the hill and lose those guys. However, they find more of these Mayan men forming a perimeter around the entire hill with rifles and bows. And then also they discover Heinrich's body. It's. It's really interesting because the way he describes it, for someone who uses such blunt writing, in a lot of ways, I found it really interesting how he kind of describes the bodies as, like, islands of vines out in, like, the more barren areas of this clearing. It was just a weirdly poetic moment in an otherwise, like, very kind of bluntly written book. You know what I mean? But, yeah, they discover Heinrich's body. And do you have a quote for that?

Not for Heinrich's body, but for finding the tents. Okay, yeah, once again, all of my quotes are about them ignoring their instincts. It would have been relatively easy to cover this up. Jeff assumed no one knew where they were, just the Greeks. Maybe if Pablo had, in fact, written them a note before he left. But even so, it seems simple enough. Kill them, bury them in the jungle, feign ignorance if someone ever came searching. Jeff forced himself to remember his fears about their taxi driver. The same fears unfounded, as it turned out. So why shouldn't this present situation prove to be equally benign? I don't think those were unfounded fears in general. Like, I feel like I think we.

Should just ignore all these fears, all these worries about anything. I think that finding an abandoned campsite where you expect to find an archaeological dig with no evidence of anybody being there, completely overgrown with vines, is normal. It seems so normal.

Yeah, it's gonna be fine. They're gonna leave. They're just gonna go back down the hill and then go home.

Exactly. But unfortunately, they don't. Instead, they find Heinrich and they find him with an arrow sticking out of his body. So the assumption is that the Mayans killed him. And now he is being overgrown with vines, which Matthias does try to, like, rip them away when he realizes that it's his brother. And as a result, he ends up getting the SAP or the whatever on his hands. And they realize that it's slightly acidic and that it is hurting their skin when they touch it. Then they start to hear a cell phone ringing, which is an unusual thing to hear at the top of a hill in the middle of the jungle. But their assumption is that one of the archaeologists had a phone, and it's in the mine shaft. And so they decide. Pablo. Hey. Hey, Pablo. You're here too. We haven't forgotten about you. We're going to lower you down to retrieve this phone. However, once again, this acid from these vines, they pull some vines off of the rope, and as a result, the acid begins eating away at it, and it breaks.

So when they started lowering him down, the vine wasn't on the rope, but as they start to lower him down, the vine had sort of grown into it. So as the.

As it went around the winch, it squished.

Exactly. So they. Yeah, it's not them pulling it off. It's. It's. The vine went onto the rope intentionally to be squished to eat at the rope.

I don't know, Beth. Vines don't do things intentionally. Obviously, it was just. They just didn't notice it before. But, yes, the rope begins to snap, and then Pablo falls down this mine shaft. They can hear him screaming, so they know he's alive.

Also, to note before this, Pablo, his whole personality was, like, happy. Go lucky. He was, like, giving a thumbs up as he's going down into the shaft. He's, like, so excited to. To do it. Yeah, he'd just been drinking.

Tequila has been extremely happy. Yeah, he has a bottle of tequila. He's just vibing. He has. He has. He has no idea what awaits him. So then they're like, okay, now we need to lower Eric down there to see what's going on. So then they lower Eric down the shaft, and because the rope is no longer long enough to reach the bottom, because it snapped, he has to. Well, he doesn't have to. They're like, no, we're going to pull you back out, and we'll find a way to extend the rope. But he feels really guilty leaving Pablo down there by himself. So he ends up jumping out of the, like, little loop on the rope.

On top of Pablo.

On top of Pablo, injuring Pablo further in the process and injuring himself in the process. He has this huge, like, gash on his knee that won't stop bleeding. I found it really not endearing, I guess, but, like, I, I did feel for him because he kept thinking about how his shoe, like, was getting filled with blood. Like, I don't know, it just felt like almost you could feel his youth, you know what I mean? Like, you could just feel that this was a situation he wasn't prepared for. And it felt like I was like, oh, this poor guy.

Describing your injury as my shoe is filling with blood.

Yeah.

Instead of saying, my, like, leg is gashed again is evidence of the turning away and not accepting what's happening. He's just like, I don't know. I just. My shoe is wet now instead of, like, my leg has a huge gash in it. And that's again, when he gets down there, he's. He knows how bad it is with Pablo. And again, it's another turning away moment. I won't read it again, but it is like, yeah, he knows what's going.

On, but he refuses to think about it too much. He doesn't want to dwell on it.

Yeah.

He realizes that Pablo is moving his arms, but he can't move his legs. He suspects that his back has been broken.

And in this case, I don't blame him. In this particular case, I think it's fine to not want to accept that that has happened. I think you can live in your delusions, King. Like, I, I like this journey for you. In this particular case, I, I agree.

I agree with that.

There's nothing you can do about it. You don't have to face it. It's fine. You could quote me on that.

I just want to state that, David, behavior is not sound psychological advice for anybody to say.

If you can't solve the problem, then you can pretend it doesn't exist.

Oh, my God. Okay, so. But the group does try to solve the problem.

I'm just kidding. I am just kidding. To be clear, for any, Anybody who can't read tones of voice out there.

Yeah, Sarcasm. A lot of sarcasm. But yeah. So the group is like, okay, we're gonna make a, A backboard for you to put them on, and we're gonna also extend the rope. And they just. I. This is one of the many pages I felt that could have been trimmed.

Oh, my God.

There's so much description about them braiding these ropes and like, braiding these, these pieces of fabric in order to extend the rope. And like, it's, it's a lot. It takes a while, but they finally make a spine board, a spinal board. A spine board is just a board made of spines. They find a bunch of spines.

They do, though.

Yeah, they do though. Not yet, but they. They lower it down as well as Amy, because obviously Eric can't pick. Pick Pablo up by himself. So they make Amy go down.

Oh, my God.

The lamp is about to go out. And Eric is. At this point, he's been down there by himself with Pablo for a while. He's been sitting in the dark to preserve the lamp because he has very limited amount of oil. And, like, there's this cold breeze coming from somewhere. It's just. It's creepy. It's really creepy.

It's so creepy. Yeah.

This part wonderfully described. I felt like. Like, I felt creeped out reading about Eric's experience being down there. And he's like. He's like, no. Like, Amy realizes that the. Once again, the rope isn't long enough, and they're gonna have to pick Pablo up. And Eric is like, we're. We're not waiting. We're not sending it back up. I'm not sitting down here in the dark any longer. Just pick him up by the knees, and I'll pick him up by the shoulders.

Yeah. And I do want to go back to the description of the air coming from someplace. As a reader, I'm like, okay, maybe this is like, hope. Yeah. Where maybe the hill will go someplace and they can escape. That was my first thought. And then as like an RPG player, I was like, if I were Eric, if I were a player who's my character was Eric, I would go. I would go 100. I want to know.

I want to know what's over there. I agree. And I did, too, initially think that this was like, oh, okay, there's. There's something here. It's dangerous because they'd have to come down into this mine and, like, they don't know exactly where it's going to lead out. But, like, that makes sense that there's like this hope.

You had told me that there was a vines and that they were intelligent, and it mentions seeing something in the dark. And I was like, is it a vine monster? Is he going to go down that tunnel and there's going to be a vine monster? I was really excited for it, and I really wanted him to go.

I would be delighted. I feel like that's like, maybe now, maybe in the year 2025, if someone were to go to this ruin, like, after the vines have had more time to evolve and stuff, maybe there would Be a vine man. You know what I mean?

They were kind of possessing a corpse.

Exactly. They. Yeah, they're getting smarter.

Good for that.

That's what we learn is, like, they have adapted over time, obviously. And every later on, when they finally start realizing that something might be going on, Jeff, like, throws a rock at them and they react. Like, the vines kind of snap towards it. And then he does it again, and they snap towards it, but every time he does it on a third time, they're learning, like, from the patterns that are happening. So I feel like we could have a vine man in the future. But anyway, so they. They rush to get this poor man with a broken back onto this, like, spine board and as, Sorry, spinal board. I can't.

Backboard.

Backboard. And then the lamp goes out. And so they're, like, kind of waiting as he's being lifted out for it to come back down for them. And they start hearing the cell phone ringing again. Eric does try to find it, but he realizes that it's coming from what appears to be, like, a deeper shaft in the mine. So they get out of the mine finally, and everyone, it's fine. I mean, the situation. Tough situation, but it's fine. Because Juan and Don Quixote, whose name I will also add, is very fitting for this. Not necessarily from his side of things, but we do talk about, like, if you've read Don Quixote, he is chasing windmills. He's. He's doing a lot of very delusional things. And I feel like thinking that Juan and Don Quixote are about to ride in and save them at any moment is a delusion that they are sharing.

Yeah, totally agree. Yeah, it's interesting because you want to have hope that maybe they will get out of this, but I knew that that wasn't the hope. Like, I feel like, again, we learn at the end that they do come, like, two days later, three days later, or something like that. But there it's not a hope, because even if they do come, they're not getting out of there.

They'll just be in the same situation with people.

Yeah, exactly.

And then Jeff, because, like we said, his coping mechanism in times of stress is making preparations and being a Boy Scout. Apparently, he begins to, like, ration the food and water, and he also decides that they should take shifts just in case. I think at this point, his assumption is, like, just in case the Mayans come up to attack them, but also because they can't afford to move Pablo again because they lifted him up with a broken back. So they built him a little lean to and don't want to leave him by himself outside because they're going to sleep in the tent.

Well, because he shit himself in the mine and he's laying in his own.

Mess, which I'm just like, jeff, you're a medical student. Clean that man up. Like, I understand not wanting to move him more because his back is injured, but, like, give him, like, take off his pants, you know what I mean? Like, get him out of his filth.

Yeah. And that's another sort of example of Pablo not really being a person to them. Like, as soon as he gets injured, he sort of ceases to be humanized, I guess, in a sense, he just.

Becomes something that they have to take care of. Like, at that point, like, he. He's no longer really personified. They don't really think about him very much, aside from, like, when scary things are happening. It's weird.

And he's not even included in the ration plans. No. They're like, we have rations for five people, and it's like, oh, six.

Yeah. It's very interesting. And I also feel like, like I said, Jeff is very. Would you say he's trying to be compartmentalized? Kind of like Matthias is being. But I feel like his plans and stuff that he's making because at a later point, he suggests saving a body in order to have something to eat. He is extremely pragmatic to kind of a scary degree when you really get down to it.

Yeah. And I think the others. It's not realistic to do that. Like, I get where he's coming from, but the others have kind of, I guess, accepted that they're going to die.

And he still hasn't. Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, and that's the thing is, like, at that point, he knows he's realized what's happening. He's realized exactly why the Mayans are keeping them here. He's realized why they sort of have to keep them here because of the danger that it presents. And he's still thinking, well, we should save that body just in case we run out of food. And it's like, homie, you're dying soon. Like, you're not getting off this hill. Like, come on.

Yeah. And I. I mean, I get, like. I get it from both sides because it is that, like, sort of that bargaining.

Yeah.

You know, where you're like, well, maybe if I. I will need the food, just in case. Just in case.

Yeah, 100%. But once again, pragmatic Jeff, he then kind of ventures back down the hill to see that, you know, the. The Mayans are still there. The hill is still surrounded. He does notice a potential gap in their line where he could possibly flee. But like you mentioned before, a flock of birds takes off from the vines and alerts the Mayans to his position, which we later learn these vines can mimic people, so. Or mimic noises.

So it's. Yeah, it's not birds, because he also notes that there are no birds in the area, because presumably the vines have. The birds have learned to avoid the vines.

Yeah, they've presumably been here for so long that all of the wildlife in this area knows to avoid the area. Because as he demonstrates with the rocks later, these vines are fast. Like, crazy fast. And that kind of goes towards what I was talking about with the expenditure of energy. I feel like if they're that fast, that has to use a lot of the energy that they get from eating stuff.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

But anyway, night passes. The following morning, they find that a vine has wrapped completely around Eric's leg and his penis and. Which is. I don't know that I don't have. I am not a penis haver. But that sounds terrifying to, like, find a vine wrapped around such a sensitive area.

Well, because. Because, yeah, Stacy gave him a handy in the night.

Stacy needed to feel alive in the middle of the night. Apparently, that resulted in a handy, which they're in a tent with their friends. Like, I don't know, girl. Find another way to feel alive. Honestly, I would feel so awkward. But it does highlight, though, like, Amy is even, like, I normally might have made fun of her or said something, but. But I understand. And so, like, I, I. I'm glad that Amy at least, like, understands what Stacy's, you know, kind of going through and how she's coping with the situation. It's weird, but, yeah. So the vines went after his semen, I guess, as well as his blood from his knee.

Yeah. It's like organic matter is what they're sort of consuming.

Yeah. So they manage to pull the vines off of Eric, or he's working on that. But they simultaneously discover that the vines have also gone after Pablo and wrapped themselves entirely around his legs, which have been eaten down to the bone. Horrifying.

Awful. Awful.

Amy pukes, understandably.

And then the vines eat it.

Yeah. And then the vine slithers out like a creepy little snake and, like, slurps up her puke, which is, like, very gross. Jeff, meanwhile, is not there for most of this. It's so funny because he comes back and is, like, what's happening? But anyway, Jeff has been on a side mission to put up some signs around the base of the hill in order to warn the Greeks to. To stay away and go get help instead of coming up the hill, which I get. But I don't know if a skull and crossbones and the word danger is going to communicate all of that, Jeff. Especially since they don't speak English.

Like, yeah, it's. I mean, it's not a great plan, but it is a plan.

A plan. Yeah. And as he does this, he puts up his sign, and then he decides instead of going straight up, to, like, circle around the entire hill and kind of look for more weak spots now that it's daytime. And he notices, obviously, multiple campsites of groups of Mayans from this villager who are keeping an eye. And he also notices more of these vine bundles kind of separate from the hill itself.

Yeah.

He discovers a whole bunch of corpses, basically. Initially, he thinks these must be really old because most of them are skeletal. He does not yet realize that these vines can process a human very quickly. And he realizes after licking some dirt, because he's. He. To be fair, he's curious. He's like, how is there nothing growing here? And he realizes that the Mayans have been salting the earth here because they are trying to prevent these vines from growing out. And he realizes, like, having gone up on this hill, having touched these vines, we probably got spores or whatever on us, and that's why they can't let us leave.

He realizes that they are quarantined now.

Yes.

I don't think they use that word, but I think he realizes. And he's still planning.

Yes, he's still planning. And then he gets back to where he placed his sign, and it's gone. And at first he's like, these Mayans. And then he's like, oh, wait, they won't touch the vines. They won't come over here. And he realizes. Interesting. What's that shiny bit of metal over there off in the. In the. In the vines? Oh, it's my sign that I put up, along with another sign that says peligro, which is Spanish for danger, carved onto, like, a pan that has also been taken down by the vines or, you know, a strong wind. He, once again, he tries to rationalize. Like, he starts to get it, and then he's like, that can't be it.

Oh, yeah. So there's a portion where they're talking about Pablo, and Amy's like, you're not supposed to speak the Words.

Yeah. When he's saying, like, he's gonna die.

Yeah.

Because basically when Jeff gets back up to the top of the hill and realizes everything that's going on, shares his information, learns about Pablo's legs, he's like, we have to amputate them or he's gonna die.

Yeah.

And you're not supposed to speak the words. It's such a. I did a double. I rewound because I was listening to the audiobook for this. I rewound because I was like, I don't know, it felt like a weirdly out of place thing to say. It almost felt like something you would say, like, in a cult. Like, I don't know. It was just a weird response on her part. But, like, I get it because she's once again, like, you're talking about. None of these people want to confront the situation at hand.

Yeah. Yeah. And Amy's talking about, you know, if she were Matthias, she would still be at the bottom of the hill clutching her brother's corpse, like, sobbing, and, hey, Rick's. And Matthias is not doing that.

Yeah.

And things like that. Like, just she's not able to deal with it. And the other kind of funny. Not funny, but, like, I guess pathetic in a way.

Yeah.

Jeff is like, oh, we have to collect dew. We have to, like, figure out how to collect water. Like, I'm trying to remember how to do this. And a lot of the book is spent trying to remember how to collect water.

Yeah. He has this whole thing about how you can, like, dig a, like, pit to process urine, to clean it, to make it drinkable. Like, there's so much that is. He is trying, like, once again focusing on, instead of recognizing the situation at hand.

Yeah, exactly. And he's like, oh, if I make a. A balloon or whatever, if I make a thing, I can hold water in it. So they decide to amputate.

Yeah, well. And they specifically send Amy down the hill to keep an eye out and don't include her in the vote because it'll only matter if it's. If we need a tiebreaker, which is just clearly another example of Jeff knowing how she'll react and choosing to keep stuff from her in order to not have to deal with that reaction. And the rest of the group, reluctantly following Jeff's medical advice, decide that it's time to amputate.

Awful. Awful, awful, awful, terrible.

It is a very difficult scene. Yeah, it's. It's. I mean, obviously it's rough. They're amputating a man's legs in the jungle, like, it's. It's a lot. And then realizing that their resources are dwindling, obviously, they literally only brought, like, light snacks for their day trip that they thought they were taking. So he decides to go down into the mine shaft to try again to find the cell phone. He takes Amy with him, and he makes a torch. Does he use the tequila to make the torch? Okay, it's some strong tequila, y'all. We got some. Some really strong tequila. He uses that to make a torch. And they begin following the sound down that shaft that Eric had noticed before. And as they go, they realize, well, Jeff realizes slowly that there is no phone and that the vines can imitate sounds and have been luring, like, actively luring him and Amy towards a, like, pit, like a vertical section of this mine shaft to make them fall down so that they can eat them.

Yeah.

And as they are, like, they run obviously back to the entrance, and as Amy is being lifted, they start hearing the vines laughing at them, which is crazy.

Yeah.

I love it so much. Once again, like, there is some really good horror in this. It just. It takes so long to get to it that it doesn't. It doesn't quite feel worth it, but, like, it is great when you do get there.

We're doing you so much of a favor by honestly.

Yeah.

Summarizing.

Give you the highlights. Yeah.

There are parts, too, that are very interesting. Like Stacy. Stacy goes down to be like, we voted and we're gonna amputate. And Amy's like, no. What? How? No. And, like, runs up the hill to try and stop it from happening because.

She didn't vote because, like, they excluded her.

And Stacy knew. Yeah. And Stacy voted to do it even though she didn't want to do it.

Yeah, it's. It's. Everyone kind of going against themselves internally because, like, she thinks about it and she's like, I don't think this is the right thing to do, but Jeff does, so I guess we should do it.

Yep, exactly.

Time goes on. We're skipping a lot of, like, the nitty gritty details.

Exactly. And the. The other thing I was going to say was a lot of the interpersonal stuff is happening at this point, and it's like. It's good stuff. I liked sort of reading that part of it, in the sense that you get more of a dynamic and more of a personality from each of the characters.

Yeah, absolutely. I do agree with that. And we also start getting more and more of Eric because, as we stated earlier, before Pablo's legs were discovered, he also had a vine wrapped around his leg, and it was going into the wound on his knee. And he is convinced that the vines are still inside of him. And we learn later he's absolutely correct, but nobody believes him because that sounds crazy and impossible.

Yes. Yeah. He can see them underneath the skin. And it. Is that a very typical horror movie moment, right? Where he can see it crawling, and it's like, is he imagining it or is it actually real? And everybody thinks it's not real because he sounds like he's losing it and. No, it is. It's real. They're in there. There is reaches a point where they go to take them out, and everybody's just like, okay, yeah, they're in there. We have to get them out. And they do kind of take him at face value, at least to, I don't know, maybe to appease him, maybe not. Maybe they do believe him at that point. And they're pulling them out so long, like, so much vine is coming out of him, and it's like, you have to believe him now. There's so much. Fine.

A hundred percent, 100%.

They're like, well, we must have gotten it all. There's so much. And it's like, how can you think that as. Again, as a medical student, how can you think that? It's.

Once again, it's not confronting the scope of the situation. It's, well, we got what we could see, and that's all we can do. Therefore, I don't want to think of. I don't want to think about the fact that there's probably more.

Yeah, exactly. There's nothing I can do about it, so I'm gonna be delusional. It's like, love that journey.

Exactly, Exactly. But before they. Before they do that, we get our drunken escapades, which Jeff. Jeff, at this point has mentioned to them. He's like, reciting, you know, the stuff about, like, what to do in a survival situation. One of them is, don't drink alcohol. It dehydrates you. And they decide, you know what? We're gonna drink all that tequila. While Jeff's down on guard duty at the base of the mountain and Matthias is asleep in the tent, I believe, when it starts. And eventually Amy and Stacy get into an argument. I found that this is the one part where I felt like Scott was. I felt. I agreed with. With your thought about the way he described women. Because the way that these women argue and the way that Eric thinks about it and the way that he's like, this is just A thing that girls who are friends do. She's gonna call her A, and she's gonna call her A and eventually they'll hug it out because that's what always happens. I'm like, that's not good. Like, what are you talking about?

There's also a point where one of them, I think Jeff says, like, I could have gone for either of them kind of thing. Like, he went for Amy by, like, default or whatever because she was like, basically. Because she was less of a slut.

Yeah.

Basically is like his thought process. And they're like, they do use that word. I'm not just like, no.

Yeah. And to be clear, this is. As they're having this discussion before they start the argument, Eric is like we had mentioned before, kind of talking about if this was a movie, the roles that they would play and saying that, like. And he does do some self depreciating in this too. But he straight up calls Stacy a slut. Like, he. He calls her a slut. And then he talks about how he'd be the first to go, but it would be funny because he's the funny guy. And they just. And then they, like, go into this weird frenzy where they eat all the grapes like they're drunk, first of all. So that's part of it. But it. And you can see this happening over the course of the book is like, there's one point where Amy gets up in the middle of the night and she is like, I'm not gonna go get a drink of water because I already had my evening drink of water. And we'll get another one in the morning. And then, like, it's almost. This is a stupid reference. It's almost like the Smeagol in her brain goes, but. But precious, we can have our water now. And in the morning, we just tell them we already had ours, It'll be fine. And she's like, as she's actively thinking, I'm not gonna drink the water tonight, she just starts chugging the water that they have.

And I think it's that sense of. It's the realistic part of her brain versus the. The part that wants to shy away from it. Because, like, yeah, truly, it doesn't matter. She should drink the water. Like, if we're thinking pragmatically, like, if we're thinking realistically, just. Just drink the water. You guys are dead. Exactly.

It's. It's her. It's her mind still trying to, like, rationalize the situation while her body follows through with, like, what is real, which is, you're all doomed. You might as well drink some water.

Yeah.

But anyway, so back to the drunk night.

The day, it's like the middle of the day.

I. You know what? You're right. I was picturing it at night because it seemed like such a nighttime activity, but you're right, it is in the middle of the day because.

Yeah, because Stacey gets, like, sunburned or whatever, and Jeff has that thought about how she doesn't think about her body.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Which is another weird thing. Like, again, infantilizing this woman 100%.

So they go into a little bit of frenzy. They start drinking a bunch of water. They start eating all of the grapes. They do give Pablo a grape, and then he starts puking up black fluid. And they're like, hmm, that's like they kind of. Once again, like you said, he has stopped kind of being a person to them at this point. And they just kind of ignore it. Everyone starts yelling at each other. And then. I love this visual, though. Eric describes how both of them, like, kind of shut their mouths and they're not speaking. But the screaming continues because he realizes that the vines around them are now repeating the words that they said and just screaming. This wakes Matthias up finally, and he's like, what is happening? And then the vines start screaming at him and calling him a Nazi, because at one point, Eric made a quote unquote joke about him. Like, if this was a movie, he'd be the villain and he'd be secretly a Nazi or something. And it's a shitty joke. And now Matthias knows that you made it, bro. Like, it's crazy because it repeats it in their voices, which is so creepy to me. I. I would freak out.

It's.

It's honestly wild. And then finally Jeff comes back up after Matthias goes down and is like, they're. They're going wild up there. And I think this is the point at which Matthias tells Jeff that he has, like, a German sensibility about him or something. Yeah, yeah, he's very pragmatic. But he goes up and he's super mad that they drink all that alcohol when they have no water. And that Eric, by the way, as everything was happening, has, like, cut himself in an attempt to remove more of the vines that he can fill underneath himself, underneath his skin. And Amy and Jeff get into this superheated argument. And this is the part where I said, this part actually got to me because Jeff is thinking, for once, I want her to be the one to apologize. And I don't know if, like, he is giving an accurate description of the relationship. But I have felt that before in relationships where I'm like, I just want you to be the person to acknowledge that you did something wrong before I do, before I have to. You know what I mean? And so when she starts calling out to him a little later, he ignores her, even though he can hear her kind of puking, but he thinks that it's just because she's drunk. So he ignores her. And then they discover her dead because the vines were growing down her throat.

Well, yeah, because she was puking and it, like, followed the puke into her throat.

Exactly.

Horrifying. I hated this. Again, her death was not about her. It was about Jeff. It was about teaching Jeff a lesson or whatever. Like, it was, yeah, awful.

No, I, I, I do agree to that. But I will say that it made me emotional when I read it because I was like, this poor girl. Like, she just, she was calling for help and no one listened to her. So this, this is one of the first times when I really, like, felt felt for any of the characters more than like a passing. Like, ah, I would hate that. You know what I mean?

Is she, Is she the first death?

I think Pablo technically dies, but, like, and there's the thing, like, he's not.

He'S not dead yet.

Is he not dead yet? No, that's right.

Yeah, that's later.

That is later. Yeah. She is the first death then, which is so interesting because. Well, I guess we'll have to do an episode on the movie, won't we?

Yeah, but yeah, she's the first death and she gets. It's not even like a violent, I mean, I guess it's like, kind of violent, but it's not. You know, she gets strangled, basically.

Yeah. Kind of snuffed out in the background when nobody is aware. Jefferson knowing what's going on. Well, I know, that's what I'm saying. Like, aside from him ignoring. Choosing to ignore whatever is happening. And then they also discover that the vines have once again wrapped around Eric's leg. That they've been, like, inserting themselves into his cuts again. And at this point, they finally start to think, maybe we should, maybe we should check to see if there's more vines in him.

Oh, yeah, this is the one that I was thinking of, where they pulled them out. And there's so many.

Yeah, there's so many. And then they put Amy's body into one of the sleeping bags, I think, because their thought is, once again, when the rescuers get her that way, she can get buried or whatever. But then this is where I was saying that Jeff suggests, like, maybe we should try to preserve her body so that we have food. And the others are like, what?

Yeah. Stacey is holding her hand, like, I think, in a fugue state. Like, she can't accept what's happening. And, like, I don't blame her.

No. Yeah. And she. She's appalled at his. And it's. Like I said, it's this weird amount of, like, pragmatism that he has. Like, it's. It's a little too much like, yeah, it's his girlfriend. Like, the fact that it's his girlfriend and he is not in a similar state to Stacy is kind of weird, and I don't like it.

Yeah. He stops thinking of her as a person again.

Yeah.

And maybe that's, you know, whatever medical detachment to a cadaver or a coping mechanism. But also. But also, yes, a coping mechanism. Because he's thinking, all right, well, what's the solution to the next problem? What's the solution to the next problem? And the pouch to keep the water in it just, like, fails because the vines, like, rip a hole in it or whatever. And it's just like, every attempt he makes to try and, like, get the water is. Is thwarted. And it's just like, this is also thwarted because the vines crawl into the sleeping bag.

Well. And then they hear. They hear Amy calling for him again, repeating what she had done when he ignored her. And obviously, when they open it, they find that the vines have completely devoured her body down to the bone. It's just. It's nasty and it's horrible, and it's bleak. And while I think that it's a good horror story in some ways, because of that, this is part of the reason why it wouldn't typically be a book that I would want to read. It's very mean, and that can be fine. I kind of like it sometimes when horror movies are a little meaner than they. Than others. But this isn't just a little meaner than others. This is bleak. Like, this is nothing matters.

It's one of the reasons. I don't know, I couldn't get through the road because it was so, like. I think I made it through, like, the first page, maybe. So I don't know if it's as bad or. Sorry, if this is as bad as the road, but even that first page was quite bad for me. So, yeah, this was. Yeah, pretty bleak.

And to continue on that path after all that, later that night, Geoff is once again down at the bottom of the hill, keeping an eye out for the Greeks. And as the rain finally does, like, begin to pour down, he sees an opportunity to flee as the Mayans are kind of ducking under the COVID of the trees to get away from the sudden rainfall. But he. He starts to take off for that gap he saw, and he gets shot. He gets shot almost instantly. And then as he is dying, he feels the vines dragging him back to the hill. So it was for naught, as a lot of things that have happened so far in this story have been.

That death was also kind of shocking to me because I think that's. I mean, that's the next plan that he had was to escape. Yeah, but there wasn't much of a plan. It's kind of half baked, like everything else, Right?

Exactly.

Like everything else he had kind of planned was like a half remembered, you know, anecdote about how to preserve water, making the, like, making the pouch. And it's like he made it. He couldn't do it properly, so, like, it didn't work. Everything else, like the rationing also, like.

Yeah, exactly. Outcome certain. And that certainty is death.

Yeah.

As the storm is happening, Stacy kind of uses the rain to wash herself off. Because at this point, they're like, cover. They're like, covered in the. These spores or whatever they are from these vines. I did like this too, earlier when Eric was describing it. He, like, went to brush, like, his clothing off and his hands started burning because he realized that he was, like, covered in these spores of these vines. And so, like, they're. They're cooked. Like they're. It's all over them. There's no. There's no escape. And Matthias is watching over Pablo and Eric is. Is resting. But then the vines start to imitate the sounds of Stacy and Matthias having sex.

Yeah, Eric wakes up to that. So, like, Eric. So Stacey comes in, wakes Eric up, and says, it's a lie. It's a lie. The vines are. Are lying. And he hears them having sex and he's like. Well, the vines just imitate.

Exactly. Which is. Which is part of where I started realizing these things are so smart. Like, they purposely did this and that's like, this isn't just. This isn't just. I heard a loud noise and I repeat that loud noise because it's just an instinct. It is. I know it would fuck with this guy if he thought that his girlfriend. Cause I've ascertained that they have some sort of relationship that would be affected by these noises. Like, that's crazy to me.

Yeah, it's wild. And later on. Oh, yes. And then, as they're having an argument, Pablo is smothered in his lean to.

They're so busy with what's happening that they don't notice that at all. And then. And it let. It leaves. It brings them Jeff's hat. It puts Jeff's hat on Pablo. And once again, this is just like, excuse me, these things are a plant. Oh, wait, apparently not. Apparently they've got some diabolical intelligence to them.

Well, and it speaks words that it's not. It shouldn't know. Like, it's not. It's imitating, but it's imitating in German and saying Heinrich instead. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

But it's. Heinrich wasn't out here saying Heinrich's dead. You know what I mean? So it's using his voice, but words that he probably never spoke to once again, taunt Matthias. It's crazy. And then in the morning, we get the scene where Eric. More vines are removed from Eric. Once again, they are removed from his chest and his leg. And Eric, having been driven pretty, pretty mad at this point by this, begins once again to try to excise the vines himself. When the others are gone and have stopped removing them, basically, he just. He refuses to stop removing them. And then the vines start taunting Stacy and Matthias that Eric's dead. And which once again, like, you're saying they're. They're saying things that no one has said. Imitating voices.

Well, they were saying Jeff is dead as well. Was it in Heinrich's voice that they said Jeff is dead?

Yeah, yeah. He tells him, like, Heinrich is dead and Jeff is dead, basically, is what he was mocking him with after bringing the hat. The hat thing was crazy to me. I'm not gonna lie. Like, that was. And so they rush back to the camp, obviously, but he's not. I mean, he's not quite dead yet, but he has heavily, heavily injured himself. And it describes it, and it's harsh. And if you aren't a fan of descriptions of gore, I would recommend skimming this part quite a bit.

He flays himself, essentially.

Yeah.

Which is. And it's described in detail how he flays himself. And it's awful. Like, awful, awful. I was on the bus reading this, and I was, like, horrified. If anybody looks over my shoulder right.

Now, they're gonna see the worst. The worst shit. I swear, I'm not like this.

Yeah.

So Matthias tries to take the knife away because he's like, dude, you have to stop. But then Eric flailing about. I don't think it's purposeful. But he does stab him through the heart and kill Matthias. And the vines are right there, and they drag Matthias away.

Even though Eric is heavily bleeding, I think the vines are, like, saving him. Like, it's almost like, yeah, this one injury, they take Matthias, but I think they're taunting Stacy in a way. By not taking Eric.

Exactly.

I think the vines know that she has to kill him. And it's crazy. That's crazy to me. That part. The hat was crazy to you? That part was crazy to me.

No, 100%. It just. It just. It just keeps ramping up as we get nearer to the end.

Because every other time there has been blood, they've been right on top of it, like, sucking it up, like, automatically. This time, he's bleeding heavily. He's, like, gory, and they're not taking him. And I'm like, oh, my. That's horrifying. I hated that.

Yeah, I did, too. And as obviously, as you might guess, it's. He is begging her to kill him. And because he's too weak at this point to even, like, really move and get the knife himself. And she does, like, she. She puts him out of his misery. Now she's all alone. All her friends are dead. And I, once again, coming from the movie, and I'm not gonna give too much detail about the movie, but just coming from the movie, I was not expecting this outcome with just Stacy being there alone at the end. You know what I mean? Like, I was not expecting that. I knew that it ended with everyone dying. Like, I knew that going in, but I didn't realize how heartbreaking it was going to be for. Because it's just Stacy. She's the. The good time, fun time girl, and she's the only one left. And she just, like, makes her way down to the bottom of the hill just desperately one last time to see if Juan and Don Quixote are going to show up. Even the Mayans at this point are like, yeah, they're finished. Like, they're. They're kind of realizing, like, all right, this is it. This is the last one. And they start breaking down their camps. And once nightfall hits and she realizes that they're not arriving, she uses the knife to end her own life, hoping that her body will act as a warning for them to stay away.

Oh, Stacy.

I'm like, girl, you've seen. You've seen this happen. Of course, the vines drag her away into the underbrush.

The other thing that was kind of the Kicker as well is that she laments that she didn't cut the rope so that anybody else would. So that nobody else would go down into the.

Yeah, yes, yes.

I was like, yeah, yeah, that's a good. A good point, because that is a very good point. The vines kept it intact deliberately.

Exactly. And then we flashed three days later, and guess what? Juan and Don Quixote, along with some Brazilian tourists that they've met, come across the trail. And just like when the. Our group previously came through, the little boys on the bikes kind of alerted the village to them finding the trail. This time, a little girl is kind of guarding the way. And as the new tourists are already, like, halfway up the hill, the Mayans arrive and we end. Girl, Girl.

They need to block that better.

Yes, I agree.

Also. Also, we learned. Jeff learned at the bottom of the hill because he was going around finding all of the bodies.

Yes.

He. When Pablo died, they looked at his ID and they saw what his real name was, and it's Dimitri.

They learned his name. It's Dimitri.

Yeah. So that was something I just wanted to mention because he actually has a real name, and they only learned it.

After he died, which is so tragic and weird.

They could have known it the whole time, truly.

Exactly. It just felt like another little, like, jab towards, like, why these characters are bad. I'm not judging these people for how they reacted in a crisis situation. I'm saying that the book seems to want you to look at these characters and judge them harshly.

Absolutely. Yes. The author and the book doesn't seem to like the characters very much at all. I think it seems like the book sees them as frivolous and young, and it's like they kind of are, but at the same time, I don't know. It doesn't seem to cut them very much slack, in my opinion.

I would agree with that. And I do feel like that's kind of the messaging of it. It kind of goes into your reading of it that you've been talking about with them refusing to confront death, the inevitability of death. I feel like them being young has a lot to do with that because there is a lot of, like, I'll never die. I'm too young to, like, have something horrible happen to me. Even talking about, like, the amputation, there are a lot of people who, if they experience grievous bodily harm at a young age, it can feel like it's super unfair because they're young, like, and it's. It's kind of also weird and horrible. Because I know a lot of people with disabilities who have talked about how, like, you know, they're not maybe visibly disabled or maybe they just use like a cane or something as a. As a. An aide. And people have straight up told them, like, oh, well, you. You can't be disabled. You're so young. Like, oh, that's. And it's. It's a weird thought that a lot of people have. And I feel like maybe that was part of the call out. I still would have enjoyed it more if I could have liked more about the characters, though. All right, I think it's time. Beth, what would you rate this book?

What would I rate this book? I. Okay, this is so difficult. At the beginning, when I was first reading it, I was like, this is a solid 1.5. As I was reading, I changed my mind. So for Einhallow, I said it was a 2. I would rate this higher than Einhallow. I think it's around like a 2.5. For me.

That's. That seems super firm.

Closer to three than final girl Support Group, in my opinion, if we're rating on the books that we've read, I think it's like somewhere between Einhallow and Final Girl, in my mind, I think I liked Final Girl more.

Yeah. So I ended up giving final girl A3. I can't remember what yours was, but it was around there, I think. I feel like it was around there. And I would agree, agree.

So in that case, I would give it a 2.5. If we're. If I'm putting it between Final Girl and Hollow, it's really tough for me.

Personally because I. I haven't been raiding on a sliding scale. First of all.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And second of all, well, I personally enjoyed Final Girl Support Group more than I did this book. I don't necessarily know if I think that Final Girl Support Group is like. I don't know how to describe what I'm trying to say. I think that for me, this book ranks at probably, honestly probably a 2.75 to a 3.0 on a 5 point scale. While I did not enjoy it as much as I ended up enjoying Final Girl Support Group, once I was able to kind of push through it and kind of delve more into what Hendrix Grady. Grady Hendrix was trying to say in Final Girl Support Group, I overall enjoy the messaging and the themes of Final Girl Support Group more. But I didn't have that same difficulty that I did with Final Girl Support Group. With the Ruins, I kind of felt how I felt about it when it was over. So I think that it's just kind of throwing me off because it didn't feel like a book that I needed to process to really understand how I felt about it. But I do think that with everything. And take into account, I would still put it at about that same ranking. So I think I'm leaning 3.0 as well for it.

Okay.

Maybe 2.75. I don't know.

I was gonna say I'm lower than three. I wouldn't rate it at a three, personally.

That's super fair. That's super fair. And once again, too, like, this is. Despite my attempt to kind of keep the book and the movie separate, I do really like the movie, and I feel like that kind of colors how I was gonna experience the story from the beginning, because I'm going in kind of with a little bit more generosity that it will get to, like, a point that I'll enjoy because I like the movie and, like, the same guy wrote it. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

So I think. Yeah, I think. I honestly. Hold on. Sorry. I'm verbally processing this, guys, as we go through this. I do think maybe it's more of a 2.5 for me personally, but I don't think that it's a badly written book is the thing. And, like, with Einhollow, I kind of felt like it was a badly written book as well as being a book I didn't enjoy.

Way. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I agree. I think it's a badly edited book. It could have been edited.

Oh, it could have been shorter.

Much more.

50 pages at least.

All right, so I think it's time to spin the wheel.

Oh, heck, yeah. And it is your turn.

It is my turn. All right. Interesting. Okay, we got Modernized Classic.

Ooh, it's so tiny on my screen, I couldn't even see. It's just orange. Modernized classic. That's fun, though. I think you have at least one more of those, right, that you wanted to do?

I think so, yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I think. I think we could do Thorn Hedge.

Awesome.

I really like T. Kingfisher or Ursula Vernon is her name.

Her non drag name.

Her government name. This one is interesting. It's a Sleeping Beauty story, I think. I think you'll enjoy it. I truly don't remember a lot about it. I still have some notes from it, but it is pretty short, so I think it'll be a nice little, you know, break.

That'll be fun. I have only read one other modernization of Sleeping Beauty, and I don't think I'll be putting it on my recommended media unless Tea Kingfisher gets real freaky in her version. So we'll see. Maybe I'll. Maybe I'll touch on that a little bit in the episode. We'll see.

Okay, Sounds good.

Hey, thanks for listening. If you want more from us, our social media is in the show notes, as well as a link to our discord once again. Come on, join us. Join the conversation. Suggest books. Maybe we'll read something else gay every once in a while. If you suggest it hard enough, who knows?

All right, get out there and commit some David behavior.

Bye. Bye.

Mimicking. They're just mimicking.

Are you mimicking? Mimicking me?