Title: Gladlands
GM: Brennan Lee Mulligan
Players: Ally Beardsley (they/them) as Quinn Wedbush (she/her); Zac Oyama (he/him) as Connor Kawasaki (he/him); Oscar Montoya (he/him) as Poppy Persona (she/her); Jacob Wysocki (he/him) as Kokomo (he/all); Vic Michaelis (they/she) as Hugi (All Pronouns), and Kimia Behpoornia (she/her) as Tess Tube5 (he/him).
Streaming Service: Dropout

If you missed them, catch up on the reviews for episodes one, two, three, four, and five!

We return this week for the season finale of Gladlands! Poppy embraces Parcel’s drag persona, Flashy Facade, celebrating her friend. The two connect. Both admit to their fears and weakness, expressing their longing to be accepted despite knowing how oppressive their home is and how fear of rejection burns them out over and over again.

Taking bravery from Flashy, Poppy dresses up, returning to herself and marching straight back into the History Heap. Though afraid, she remains determined. Flashy took inspiration from her, and Poppy wants to live up to that.

Quinn immediately supports Poppy. Connor, Hugi, and Kokomo follow suit. Aunt Freaky is uncertain; however, coming off the relief of her reconnection with Hugi, I believe her reaction was softened. Of course, softening Aunt Freaky is still a defender of non-fiction and absolutes. When the rest of the Heap finds Poppy’s hidden fiction books, Flashy jumps in despite panic. Poppy and Flashy quickly go into a Dome of Dreams performance. They inspire Quinn to take off her helmet. Their gorgeous performance shows how fiction gives way to truth.

In this moment, as the people of the History Heap dance and basically fall into a bacchanal, Kokomo realizes that this is a beach before getting closer to Aunt Freaky in ways nobody could’ve seen coming. Quinn and Connor slip off as neither is ready for that sort of situation. Breaker takes Ash off as she’s too young to be around all this. Tess, unsurprisingly, takes part.

Afterwards, Aunt Freaky supports Poppy and the Carer Van going out into the Red Dust Plains. Unfortunately, they run into marauders. Splitting up, some descend into the dark, following Uncle Pus’s trail while the other group drives in circles, defending from the marauders and keeping the Carer Van safe.

Hugi faces the marauders. She immediately goes into comforting and mediating, taking the group down and trying to send them on their way. The main bummerometer heads toward the red, and Hugi ends up knocked down as their personal bummerometer goes up to ten. A stray bullet takes down Breaker. Angry, Hugi clips a rocket to Extremis’s balls, launching him into a rock wall and undermining his authority over his group.

Losing Muni’s skull, Hugi goes to comfort Breaker. She addresses the group. Charming them, she explains the Carer Van and the Gladlands. Their words turn the marauders against Extremis. However, rather than pressing the advantage, Hugi asks how she can help him, encouraging him and the others to change their perspectives on how life has to be.

Down in the hole in the sunken city, Tess finds Uncle Pus. He fell through several floors, and he was caught down there for a long time. Gently, Tess goes to lift him, but Uncle Pus is in too much pain. As Poppy comforts him, helping Tess and Ash to move him, Connor and Quinn find the books. Kokomo and Quinn go for the books. They also find two emaciated people. Quinn goes to a dark place and gathers a huge sack of books.

Meanwhile, Connor goes for the sound, finding Extremis’s gun. Extremis rips Connor’s bike in half. Despite getting the advantage, Connor calls truce. In an attempt to bring Connor down with him, Extremis handcuffs their ankles together, but Connor merely hugs the raging man. He manages to turn things around with Extremis.

Meanwhile, Hugi heals breaker with the chicken nugget, and Hugi hallucinates Muni, who offers her comfort. He asks her to take care of someone for him. To her frustrated and adoring surprise, he tells her that it’s her he wants her to care for before the pair flip each other off. Waking up, Hugi sends the vehicles up to safety, and she turns to the hole.

In the midst of this chaos, Connor’s Mom and Dad arrive – everything he said they were:

Connor’s Mom flies Hugi down as his dad rides down. Connor cries, hugging his mom until his dad shows up. Extremis and Connor ride Connor’s dad ride through the undercity.

Quinn ends up trapped, and she goes a bit insane. Luckily, she doesn’t eat anyone, but she doesn’t keep her mouth entirely to herself as she bites one of the emaciated people. She manages to crawl her way out of the area with the books. With the elevator taking the books out of water, the group focuses on the remaining test tubes, helping Uncle Pus to hatch #2 and #4. They succeed in hatching the pair, welcoming the last of Tess’s siblings into the world before they rush up and away from the rising tide.

Hugi and Rubby get together. They are in a mutual, beautiful relationship. A wonderful opposite to Quinn and Extremis, who returned to his old name of Marbles, who are together but not the healthiest as they are paranoid for running into other folks like how they used to be. Kokomo wrote a book of their adventures to tell Skeeter, Rolly, and Ash who excitedly listen as the season ends.

Highlights

Kimia lived and died by the himbo rules. Tess was absolutely brilliant, offering surprising insights and sweet intentioned stupidity in perfectly timed moments. While Hugi has lost so many and was reforming a bond that went dark with her Aunt Freaky, we had the chance to watch Tess find the family he never knew he had. The relationship between Tess and Ash, the cute moments with Breaker and Tess in the past and as protective brothers were heart-warming. The insect siblings also served as a wonderful counterpoint to Hugi’s story. I’d love to see Kimia back in the dome.

Final Score (5 out of 5 Stars)

This entire season was a wild ride of chaos. There’s always a powerful ‘yes, and’ mentality in Dimension 20, but this group steered directly into the high-energy chaos. Whether it was more or less than Never Stop Blowing Up, there’s arguments for either side. Ally definitely stuck to a subtler chaos in both, leaning a bit more manic in this season; however, Ify brought more sense to that storm, and we really didn’t have the same force in the Gladlands.

At its core, however, there was so much heart to this season. When the world is horrible and hard, we don’t have to be. Rather than nomadic bands of ruthless murderers, the post-apocalyptic era can be an age of community, acceptance, and love where people come together to endure and rebuild a better world. Of course, even in aiming for a utopia, there will still be grief, and the way it shapes us may transform our kindness into cruelty, but we remain capable and responsible for pushing back against that. Like Aunt Freaky, we need to learn and apologize. Like the people of Rotglob and Hugi, we need to trust those around us and ask for the help we need.

I don’t believe I need to point out how important this is with everything going on today. It’s frankly a message that will always be important; however, the decision to fight for a better tomorrow is one that we must constantly keep making. There will be those who seek selfish individualism and their personal success over the lives of others, and it all comes down to the paradox of tolerance. Any society that extends tolerance to the intolerant risks the eventual dominance of intolerance, destroying itself.

While we don’t see the sort of ruthless BBEG that might be in other campaigns, we do see minor examples. Rotglob needs to set limits and expectations that those they supply with their goods will keep a reasonable preserve in case of disasters rather than forcing the citizens of Rotglob to exhaust themselves and their resources to make up for poor prior planning. Though we don’t see the outcome there, we do see the outcome of Kokomo confronting Breaker and Connor as well as Quinn confronting Justin. In both cases, when called out and offered support, Breaker and Justin reveal the core, allowing the injustices they faced to be addressed.

That’s not always going to be how it is, but in the Gladlands, they’ve already dealt with the marauders and the actual, intentionally evil individuals. Those ones are easy enough to spot. Still, it takes a lot to gather the courage to fight them. On the opposite side, in the after and during the rebuild, figuring out the right move and preserving the good you’re building can be tricky, but it’s worth doing.

Let us know what you thought or the Beach Boy song you’d want to play first in comments below or go over to our Discord channel to join the conversation.

Featured Image: Dimension 20

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The Boss Rush Podcast: The Flagship Podcast of Boss Rush Media and the Boss Rush Network

The Boss Rush Podcast – The Boss Rush Podcast is the flagship podcast of Boss Rush Media and the Boss Rush Network. Each week, Corey, Stephanie, LeRon, and their friends from around the internet come together with other creators, developers, and industry veterans to talk about games they’ve been playing, discuss video game and entertainment based topics, and answer questions solicited on social media and the community Discord. 

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