Transcript
Speaker: Worm is a web serial by JC McCray, also known as Wildbo. You can read Worm in its original format by visiting parahumans .wordpress .com or donate to Wildbo's Patreon at patreon .com slash wildbo. This story isn't intended for young or sensitive readers. Readers who are on the lookout for trigger warnings are advised to give Worm a pass. For a complete list, check the description for all of Worm's trigger warnings.
Speaker: Good morning, Brockton Bay. Buckle up. I hope you're ready for some brain damage. Oh, brought to you by fugly. Bob's fugly. Bob's for all your fugly needs.
Speaker: man, I want, I want that restaurant so bad. I'm not going to lie. I got really hungry when I was reading that part, but let's get off topic already. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Well, welcome back episode four. Here we are. Arc four of worm.
Speaker: reading through this incredible web serial once again. And welcome to everyone who's listening. Thank you so much. We appreciate it. Let's go ahead and dive in. Why waste time? We're already talking about Fuggly Bobs. As always, we need to get our initial reactions from our two first time readers, Taylor and Kat. What did you think?
Speaker: There was action. There was possible teenage awkward romance. There was ugly fucking Bob's. I mean, the dick just keeps getting bigger and bigger for my boy. Well, though, I'm loving it. No, I think, I think this is a great arc. Um, there was a lot of action and I feel like we're starting to get much deeper into the,
Speaker: real content of like what we're going to see going forward. So I'm excited to talk about it. Yeah, it's a good one. Arc Four continues kind of where we left off in my mind. I think we talked a lot about how for a lot of us, myself included, Arc Three was sort of that moment when we were reading for the first time being like, okay, this is a story I'm going to sit down and enjoy, like having a lot of fun here.
Speaker: and Arc4 just really kind of continues that, love the dynamics throughout. I think we had a pretty good format last time that I know we're going to probably try continuing just sort of moving through the Arc chronologically, although I did want to shake things up this time and start with the interludes just because they are not as connected as the previous interludes.
Speaker: Let's go ahead and get through those now and then get into the rest of the arc. Let's start with the purity interlude. Thoughts on a newcomer to the scene of the story? She's racist.
Speaker: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Yeah. Allegedly. Definitely brought me into the BAFTA strikes because I'm sitting here and I'm like, Oh, okay. So like, you know, arms master or whatever his, we're coming, we're going to come up with a politically correct name for him. Don't worry. For arms now. Arms master. He, you know, he's making millions. He's making billions. He lives up at the space station, but for my poor, poor, poor,
Speaker: misunderstood purity, just kidding. But for purity, you know, she's like raising two kids, already got a divorce under her belt, might as well be in the military. She's like struggling out here. Yeah. But she's racist. Well, we didn't know that until the end of the chapter.
Speaker: Um, well, I mean, we surely do start out with like, Oh, purity. Like she sees her daughter as like this beautiful thing. Like, Oh, that's cute. Like, Oh, and she's a racist. Great. Well, thanks for getting me all cozy and feeling good about her. Well, though, she's very, she's yeah, she was very sweet and like loving and wants to protect her daughter. Aster, I think the name was, but then when it comes to her son,
Speaker: She's just like, oh, right. Well, I don't think Theo is her son. Yeah, he is not her son. Yeah. He is babysitting while she's off flying around. Now, Theo is Max's son, the guy, but not Purity's son. OK. So technically his stepmom while she was married to Max. Interesting. OK, for that whole year. OK.
Speaker: Also, I definitely put my notes that he is, because there hasn't been a reveal yet, I do have a prediction for who he is, but I put Captain CIA. That's what I think he is talking about. Oh, like, I don't agree with distributing crack to the inner city, and I was like, holy crap, okay, this guy's not good. I'm gonna find out he was not good. Well, he is, so he's the leader of Empire 88, who we know is Kaiser.
Speaker: Okay. He's the white supremacist leader. That was my prediction. It was just stolen from me, but that is okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I love you, Nick. I love you so much. And Nick's defense. I thought these, did they not call him Kaiser? Nope, they never did. That's why I put Captain CIA. Oh, I'm so sorry. This must be Kaiser is what I put.
Speaker: And then I said Kaiser and purity. It's more implied because he mentions leading empire 88. And I believe in a previous arc, although it may have been subtle, like wild bo often is, it was mentioned that Kaiser leads the empire, um, or leads empire 88. So I guess I had assumed that maybe it was more clear, but that just might be my memory. Um, but also, uh, in your defense again, Nick, uh, uh, Taylor did put the pieces together pretty easily. So I guess we can say that has worked as intended.
Speaker: There you go. I think purity is an interesting character because you are very sympathetic to her. And there's also the, the like the vibe that she is racist and maybe wasn't a great person, but is working on it somehow, but still hasn't gotten past all of the everything. Yeah. She sees what the problems are of Brockton Bay. Like she sees them as these people that aren't like her.
Speaker: they must be the issue. Like, Oh yeah, since all the crime takes place in black and brown neighborhoods, they must clearly be the issue. Right. And she, it's not even just that, like she definitely is like, yeah, I go after that. And you know, I have the excuse that I'm not going after empire 88 because that's old coworkers and that'd be awkward. Um, but, but she does acknowledge like, yeah, like my group that I used to run, like run with the white gang.
Speaker: is also just as criminal. But at least they were fucking civilized about it, which I feel like is just very like, oh, but it's okay when they're doing it because it's not the kind of crime that she's seeing on a, you know, it's not a defense of her. It's just, it's a good example of somebody who, you know, as Wild Bo does, he's really good at,
Speaker: writing in the head of somebody and to purity. She is, she has taken the step out of whatever she was in and you know, that deprogramming or whatever you want to call it, you know, coming out of that, you don't just turn off the racist switch. Right. Um, but I think she's a good example of that.
Speaker: I do think that he does a very good job of showing that it's not a racist switch. Because I think most of the time in these like racist, when you're talking about it or discussing it, it's always you are racist, or you are not. And I think that this is an awesome example
Speaker: Um, I'm just showing how people can change and just also like, okay, I'm not, I'm not in this environment to where I'm constantly surrounded by these negative things. And now that I'm out and seeing the world, I'm learning and I'm progressing and we might possibly get some redemption there. Um, but she is definitely, definitely still in the racism, but, um, but I could definitely see, you know, her branching out from this and possibly having some type of redemption. Here's a, here's a thought that occurred to me too.
Speaker: I think that purity's interlude is interesting that it's here. Probably, I don't know if Wild Bo is thinking this way. Who knows? Um, it may have just been to introduce Kaiser and purity in those characters. However, I think that purity forms an interesting parallel to Taylor skitter because purity, at least at the beginning, she's like, look, I want to try to do better. I'm trying to clean things up. Yeah. I'm, you know, yeah, I'm, I'm not doing everything I could be doing, but.
Speaker: I'm going to try. And so she goes to max to Kaiser and says, look, I need your help. He says, well, why don't you just join me? You might not like how I do it, but I am going to make the city a better place is kind of this perverted and obviously much worse. Uh, twist on the way that Taylor's kind of thinking, which arms master called her out for the last arc where he's like, well, you're just going to run around with a bunch of villains and hope you can, you know, turn them in someday. Like Taylor, what are you really thinking here?
Speaker: And so it's kind of this interesting, I think, comparison between purity's motivations and then her kind of succumbing to Max's, uh, you know, charm and charisma and, uh, Taylor sort of also struggling with, as we see in this arc, really becoming friends with the undersiders who one day she still supposedly wants to turn in. Yeah, she's still the double agent. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: and very good placement on Wild Bo's point, because for those of you reading online, you have four, six, you're gonna have your interlude with Purity, and then you'll have four, seven. So the entire battle, the entire battle, which we'll get into, I just assumed that Empire 88 was gonna show up because he introduced these characters. Yeah, we'll definitely get to that. And Nick, that's a good kind of segue, too, in terms of parallels to Taylor as a character.
Speaker: Uh, cause now we can go right into Brutus's chapter, uh, which is such a great parallels as well. The good boy, the good boy, best interlude dare I say of the whole series. I'm not gonna lie. It's not, it's not my favorite interlude because I have a special place in my heart for one other. But if I ever have to talk about how wild bow writes in perspective,
Speaker: And does that to a degree that like you without names could probably figure out the character in the first page. The Brutus one is the one I instantly go to to recommend to people. I'm like, this guy writes a whole interlude from the dog's perspective and it's fantastic. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, it's it's just super fun. It's very well written. Um, even though it's written certainly in more simplistic language, uh, in a way it still feels deeply complex and you do feel like you're seeing things from the dog's perspective. I love how wild bow explains how Brutus knows.
Speaker: knows what certain words mean, but also knows how they're used. And if masters looking at him and, you know, just like your alpha and I like, I love that, um, you know, bitches, the alpha of their group, um, but not necessarily of the undersiders. And like the fact that he knows that is so I love Ryan's alphas, alpha. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the fact that he's the scentless man.
Speaker: Right. I was going to miss that. I love that. That's a good. That's a great point that like you get from this perspective that just nowhere else like. Oh, yeah. Hmm. Why? Why isn't? Why is Brian Sintless? I'm just that is. I think it's a good shadow because like in the darkness, you don't hear anything. You can't see anything. It's like it kind of shuts off all your senses.
Speaker: I guess that makes sense, but it wasn't like he was actively using it inside of their own base. So it makes it seem like maybe it's a more subtle, like he's constantly using it, whether or not he realizes it. I think that it alludes to that subtle, subtle thing there. I would say, as we will just talk about in the chapter as well, there are other times where you realize your powers are going and it doesn't necessarily require conscious effort.
Speaker: true. This is true. Well, we'll get to that. Don't jump ahead. We call it teaser. Just, you know, tickling their paints real quick. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I love that. I love that Brutus is the way that he sees the world is very like a scent based. So like when he's talking about like the scent of the warehouse versus like the scent of this, this like dog fighting ring area, you know, it smells like blood and pee and death.
Speaker: And it's a very heavy scent, and that's how he perceives different parts of the world as he's being walked on his little jaunt through the world. But it's all in sense of what this smells like, what people smell like, what the world smells like, other dogs, what they smell like.
Speaker: And also though, what a creative way of expanding on what we know of Bitch's power as well, because we get confirmation that the dogs are trained. She's not controlling their movements. There's the parallel between Brutus and Angelica, who's not as well trained yet.
Speaker: She can clearly exert her power from some bit of distance. She doesn't have to be touching them or write up on them. Little things like that that were really fun to read and have such a unique perspective on her power set and how she utilizes it.
Speaker: Bitch is such a great character and I love this arc or I love this interlude for her because who isn't gonna hate the character that's killing everybody in a dog fighting ring? It's just such a great scene.
Speaker: Uh, yeah, her, her interaction with the kid, with the child is something I found interesting reading. Cause she doesn't, she doesn't like push the mom away. She doesn't push the kid away. She stands stock still and Brutus, you know, sees that mirrors it stands perfectly still and then follows her every command, you know, like guard the kid.
Speaker: bite the kid, but don't chomp too hard, you know, like all this stuff. And bitch just like stares down this mother who is on her knees crying and begging for her child's life. And she's like, keep your fucking child away from my dog. Like it's, it's a great lesson because it's, it doesn't feel like wild and crazy. It feels very calculated where bitch is like,
Speaker: This mother and this child will never forget this interaction and they will never touch a dog. They don't know ever again. This will be so permanently cemented in their minds that they will not make this mistake again. And it's not just, oh yeah, that one owner and their dog that lashed out and went crazy, but like that was a perfectly well -trained dog, like perfectly trained dog. And it was what kind of a dog is Brutus?
Speaker: Brutus is a Rottweiler mix. Rottweiler, that's what it is. Yeah, cause he has a dog tail. That's right. Cause for some reason in my mind, I had more of a pit bull in my mind, but yeah, Rottweiler makes sense too. I love too that he basically doesn't even bite the kid. He kind of just swallows her hand.
Speaker: I kept thinking of that video only because it was just shown to me again, but the video of the girl with the bear at the fence and going, can I pet that dog? Have you seen that? I kept thinking of that scene the whole time. I love it. Any final thoughts? Yeah, any final thoughts on the interludes? I know we could stick around for a while.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't know. Go ahead, Kat. I thought that purity's power was interesting because it seems to be a direct parallel or complete opposite to Gru's power. Oh, I didn't even think about that. And yeah, I just thought it was kind of an interesting thing that I feel like could probably
Speaker: play into how they, when they finally, because obviously we're going to see purity later. We are, you know, we had the glory girl interlude, and then we had the interaction with glory girl and panacea. And then I'm assuming we're going to have an interaction with purity, not too far in the future. But I'm just interested how their powers would interact together since hers is all light and his is all complete darkness.
Speaker: Yeah, that is interesting. They both seem to be kind of like solid forms of that too, where Drew's manipulating this like solid form of shadow and she's manipulating light in a solid way. Um, and it seems like too, she gets her power from electrical lights. Like, uh, it, when she comes into the room, doesn't she tell Max, thank you for the power or something like that. And they specifically mentioned halogen lights. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, that is super interesting. Also, Rachel has an army of dogs now. Yeah. So. Yes. Yeah. She rescued a lot of dogs. I love it. Building an army. Yes. Yes. All right. Well, let's get into the arc itself. Arc proper.
Speaker: We'll kind of go probably scene by scene here. Hannah, do you have some little summaries for us for like the first? Yeah, I do. We're going to break them. I've got them broken up a little bit. So chapter section. So first we're going to, we're going to look at chapter one here, which Taylor heads into school hits Emma with a zinger leaving Taylor feeling incredibly confident as she heads in to meet with the rest of the undersiders.
Speaker: Um, which kind of goes into more of a category of two through four there, but, uh, specifically this, this interaction with Taylor and Emma at school. I literally put down, Oh, so we just rob a bank and get a backbone. Thank God. Thank God Taylor's finding her backbone. Oh my God. Yeah. It's taken us long enough. So satisfying to read that.
Speaker: And I do love the, where he talks about, even though she was assertive, um, and said, fuck you, Emma, um, just her talking to herself, just like, Oh, well, even though I did that, it's going to cost me later. It really kind of shows like people stuck in like domestic abusive situations, like they are stuck. And so I love just this, us getting to see that and kind of empathize with people that are in those situations. Yeah.
Speaker: Uh, yeah, it also, it's weird cause Emma really clearly has an interest in Taylor beyond just bullying her. Um, you get the impression when she's talking about like, look at me, I've got all this. I'm, you know, I've got a job I'm going to, you know, probably going to go to college and do well, you know, look at my life. Taylor, what are you doing with yours? And then breaks down, like you don't have a job. You don't have your friends. It's got that like.
Speaker: Kind of concerned, but terrible mother attitude, like tone of voice, or she's like, like, what are you doing with your life? It's like, I just want what's best for you, obviously. And it's like, yeah, well, you're terrible at showing that. When it, it kind of adds to that too, because it's like the, it's like, well, why do you even care then Emma? Like, why are you tearing down this? If you, if your life is so great, Emma, why are you tearing down this person? Like, obviously there's.
Speaker: Uh, reason, um, you know, there's reasons behind it. People can just be mean because it's a power trip, obviously. Um, but what Emma bringing this up does kind of make it feel like, like, why the hell do you care about my life? Emma? They just leave me alone. Yeah. So I am, I am glad that glad that Taylor finally said something to them. Yeah. Did anyone else catch the inconsistencies though, with this chapter?
Speaker: Um, cause I was looking through and it said that it talks about Emma, like basically having like a modeling career, but I could have sworn in act one, it said that she was a redhead.
Speaker: Oh my God. I was wondering where you were taking that. I'm like sitting here thinking, Oh, did you mention one of her jobs? Well, Hey, I took us deep. So I had to pull us out of there so that we could have producer. Michael, how do you feel about that? Is our resident redhead? I could tell he was messing with us by his tone. I was waiting for whatever the punishment was. Again. Don't worry, Michael, of all of us, you, you would definitely be the model.
Speaker: That's actually true. Absolutely. You are a gorgeous man. Yeah. Can we just, can we just make the cover podcast or cover photo for this podcast? A picture? You know, Michael, I know what, no, no, it's not even Michael. It's just Michael. There we go. It's the Michael's abs in the Spanish romance novel fashion. I'm here for it. I'm here for it. And that's all we have time for. So that's all we needed time for.
Speaker: Is this a good time to transition? Is this our interlude? All right. Okay. All right. I'm moving on. I'm moving on. All right. So, so up next we've got, um, I've grouped them into chapters two through four, uh, with the under, undersiders hang out together minus bitch. Uh, they shop, they eat at fugly Bob's burgers. They talk trigger events and costumes and, um, Taylor gets a little gift.
Speaker: Absolutely. Shout out to all of my men that grew up with sisters and had miracles happen once in a while, just playing in their head, listening to them shopping. Definitely, definitely a princess diaries moment. I loved this. I love this set of chapters. I think that it kind of is giving
Speaker: Taylor chance to be a normal teenager, even though they're kind of obviously not normal, but she's making friends and she's talking to them about her insecurities and her personal issues and they're caring about it. And she's just kind of really seeing that these people really are her friends. And I think this is really sweet.
Speaker: Especially, you know, that is it that I'm sorry, Kat, I was going to say, especially prior to what comes next in. The rest of this arc. Yeah, it's just how sad is it that she had to join the villain gang for her to have a normal high school experience, right? Yeah, like that's so sad.
Speaker: Backing up to a happier moment. Uh, can we just go back? I would need to wind it back to Brian. Um, just waiting there with coffee and the best muffins in the world. Oh yeah. Just every morning brings you coffee and muffins. Oh, take note. Can we bright hot Brian is hot. Agreed. Brian is hot. Brian is hot. This is true. Brian is sweet Brian. They sit on the beach. Yes. And they read the paper together.
Speaker: And then she has this moment where she gets up and he's like, where are you going? And she's like, you know what? I'm going to school. And he just kind of like respectfully is like. Cool. And it's that, you know, yeah, he gets it. And also I love Taylor's explanation of like, it's not even about going to school. It's the same thing as the bitch, you know, dilemma. It's.
Speaker: I'm not about to fucking say like I'm done because that's letting them win and I'm not fucking having it. Right. Yeah. I love to the interactions between, uh, tattletale and skitter release and Taylor as they're shopping. It's just fun. Uh, you know, listening to them banter, um, talking about, you know, cup sizes and random stuff like that. And like,
Speaker: And, you know, Lisa's like, well, don't worry about it. One day you're going to find a guy who thinks you're the hottest thing ever. Wink, wink. And yeah, exactly. I think most of my notes are about interactions between Brian and Taylor and they're like subtle. Yeah. I do because they are subtle. It's like things that she would just naturally notice being like a teenage girl. But I don't know. It doesn't feel
Speaker: awkward or like forced or anything. It's just like, they're just, they're hanging out. Yeah. And at this point, they're still kind of at that. They're at that point where they are genuinely friends, right? They're not like pretending to be friends, but they obviously both have huge crushes on each other. They're like genuinely good friends. And I like that it's starting out slow like that. It's not immediately them, you know, jumping into something.
Speaker: I think it does make it feel a bit more real, especially for high school and somebody as awkward as Taylor seems to be, it feels more natural. I do love at the end of the chapter, she's basically sitting there having a great time eating some fugly bobs and she's like, but I can't get too close because one of these people is a murderer, which literally brings up this news clip that I've seen where two Massachusetts men are getting interviewed about Whitey Bulger,
Speaker: And the reporter's just like, what, what do you mean? He was a good guy. He's like, he was a good guy. And then he's like, but he murdered people and he goes, what murder the whole time I'm thinking about Brian, because I don't know who it was. Um, I have a strong suspicion, but literally I'm just like, Oh, come on. He's a good guy. I feel like it was alluded to in this chapter, like this one specifically.
Speaker: Well, don't we find out, though, that Brian isn't the guy who's killed somebody else? Because we find out that he beats up the stepdad or the mom's boyfriend, but it does not say that he kills him. No, they said that he went to jail. Not not Brian, but the boyfriend went. Yeah. Yeah. Implying that he wasn't there. There's a little clever illusion where he Taylor asks a question and then immediately it cuts to a character.
Speaker: Okay, so it didn't say, but it, okay, okay. It didn't say. It doesn't say. I think - Just heavily implied. I don't think it's that heavily implied, especially as a new reader. I would have to disagree with Alan. Yeah, I also disagree with Alan. I know I've said this before. I have read the book, yes. I don't remember jack shit. So I can tell you, sitting here right now, I don't remember who the murderers are, but I - We know one is Rachel. Yeah. Yeah, they do talk once. We know about Rachel.
Speaker: But like I don't think I think that like while while there are things that I do remember that I see little you know hints towards uh You know in these chapters so far I feel like there's so much that I don't because I don't remember i'm missing And I don't I think that it's really interesting how much she's focused on one of these guys as a murderer and she's trying to trying to
Speaker: kind of sneakily deduce who it could be, but she was so close to murdering lung. And I feel like she just kind of needs a little bit of self -reflection on like maybe everybody else also did not know the complexities and
Speaker: how like of their power and how how strong they could be and that mistakes can be made just like she overdid it with lung and she regretted it. It could very well have been the same situation with any number of these people but it didn't turn out the way that hers did which was just lung losing his penis or
Speaker: Yeah. I thought she would go in the opposite direction. We were like, I think she just needs to have some self -reflection and look inside and see that she too probably could murder someone if she really wanted to. Like if she just worked on it, you know, did some self -assessment. I could murder.
Speaker: I don't think it's going to be long. I think she is going to kill somebody at some point. That's a prediction prediction for the predictions saved for the prediction. No. Um, but no cat brings up a good point though, because even with Rachel, who is obviously like the most aggressive of the people that we know of so far, like even her, like Ryan says it was a complete accident. Like she didn't know what her powers were doing. She just was angry and upset and lashed out and it happened. So even like for Rachel, who we know is pretty violent.
Speaker: Her killing somebody wasn't even on purpose. So I think that speaks to the possibility that for whoever the other member is who has killed somebody, probably a similar circumstance we could assume, but we don't know. And I do love how, how Wild Bo writes the sort of morally gray because it's arms master who, who tells her in the last chapter, right? Like you've got two murders on your team, right? Yeah. And so then, you know, she's, she's wrestling with it. And then right. They talk about Rachel and as the audience, you get that sympathetic
Speaker: element two, you're like, oh, she didn't know what her powers did. She accidentally, you know, grew this giant untrained dog and it killed people. Like, that's not her fault. I mean, it is. But, you know, there's a sympathy there. And then I love how so she's wrestling with that. And then, of course, we get Rachel's interlude at the end here where she just goes and murders a bunch of people. No, no, she doesn't. She doesn't kill them, I don't think.
Speaker: But maybe I read that chapter a little differently. She didn't kill them. No, no, no, no. Nick brings up a great point because I don't think so. Actually, Brutus in his monologue is like must like must hit. Can't bite. Must. Oh, yes, you're right. Must bump. Like literally he is not claws. Yeah, you must. Okay. It's been trained. Not not. Amen. I'm not saying that she might not have accidentally killed somebody, you know.
Speaker: giant dog and all, but at least from Brutus's perspective, we get that the intention is just beat the crap out of these people, but don't kill them. No, just fair point. Fair point. I misread that a little bit. Fair point. Yeah, not to. Sorry. That was probably was a little aggressive, but not to try and attend. No, no, no, I don't. That's good. I mean, we don't want to be wrong. There's nothing worse than that. Come on.
Speaker: We're a group of friends talking about a superhero web serial. We are nothing if not pedantic about details. That's fair. That's a great point. I will correct the rest of you multiple times. I know. But we're all kind of skirting around a big topic. We learned about trigger events and how people get their powers.
Speaker: I thought that that was very well done. It also talks about the hero villain dynamic because you're essentially just undergoing trauma. Like that's all you're doing is you're having the worst moment of your life unless you're born into it. But, you know, privilege, which I thought that comment about, you know, the privilege that it's just like generational wealth or like generational, like,
Speaker: you know, oh, if your parents go to college, you're more likely to go to college. And it's the same exact thing. It's just, this is powers. And if your parents have powers, then you're less likely to need a super traumatic event to trigger your powers. Um, so we know that, we know that glory girl has that tick tock out there with, uh, here's how I bought a house at 16. And because they can pass it down genetically, we know that just like P powers are stored in the balls.
Speaker: That's true. Power's only passed through mail. I'm pretty sure Max said that. Max can you spot himself right off the roof of that building? Actually, Nick's right. Overees are balls on the inside. You're so right now. That's true. That's fair.
Speaker: And he's not out. Maybe walls are just ovaries on the outside. Yeah, yeah. No, no. Look, look here, extra rib. Don't get neither. That's a deep cut biblical reference.
Speaker: And this this type of this type of stupid conversation is perfect because it brings us into uber and leet Right over trigger events just talked about trigger events this conversation is my trigger event
Speaker: I have more comments about Brian and Taylor, so we're not we're not skipping. I have comments about Lisa and Taylor. I want to talk about Taylor's trigger event. Hmm. Oh, go for it. Yeah. So let's get into it. The fact that she opened up at all like we've been, you know, this whole time it's like been waiting and waiting and waiting. Like what happened in January? What happened in January? What happened in January?
Speaker: And her dad's wondering what happened and she's just not talking about it. She's not even thinking about it because we're in her inner monologue and we're not getting that information. And then now she decides to open up to them. And I just think that that was a really sweet moment because even Alec, who is probably, is definitely less her friend. It's like more of the aloof friend
Speaker: He showed a very protective kind of concern of wanting her to stand up for herself or wanting them to stand up for her. We could help you with this. What do you mean you don't want to do anything? And you're telling me you can't find a subtle way to get back at them. And I just felt like, even though he's aggressive about it, it was a protective. I just really liked the way that everybody had that conversation and how she got that.
Speaker: Concerned from them because I feel like that's something that has been missing For her from other people her age. Like obviously your parents are going to be concerned but You not have anybody at the school like the whole time She was getting bullied and no one cared and then now here are some people that care and I just and want to protect her even if she doesn't want them to they
Speaker: knowing that they want to protect her, I feel like is a big moment for her. Yeah, it's pulling at her heartstrings, too, because Alec literally says, I wrote this down at the end. He said, then why the fuck are you a supervillain? Whenever she refuses to attack them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So she doesn't even hesitate when they ask her that either. She just immediately. Yeah. Like without thinking. Cool. And it's such a great it's such a great moment, too, because
Speaker: it makes sense that she has her reasons. She knows why she's doing this, even if it's subconscious. And the fact that she has the resolve or fortitude there to talk through it
Speaker: And it makes sense in this scene, because she's talking through her trigger event, she's talking through all of this stuff, and it just sort of comes out. It's such a great scene of her own sort of self -realization in terms of why she's even here. And again, I think this scene, as different as it is, just plays so perfectly following her conversation in the previous arc with Armsmaster, where if that's the pinnacle of her trying to be
Speaker: who tried to be a hero, and now we're understanding her real intentions, which really aren't heroic. They're self -serving. Not that that's wrong, but it's a great little moment. I love the speed at which he responds. I do think that when she was having that conversation with Arms Master, I almost feel like she was having the way that she was supposed to act,
Speaker: the way that she was like, she's supposed to be a hero and she's supposed to want to do all these things. And then I feel like as she gets closer with the undersiders, she's starting to realize that gray area, that she could be a good person and not be a hero, not half, because
Speaker: Just because someone's a hero doesn't necessarily make them a good person. And we see that with glory girl. And I get that vibe from arms master, you know, yeah, he's not done anything outwardly specifically morally wrong other than be kind of a jerk, but you know, there's just, you can kind of see that, you know, Oh, they're a hero, but they're not necessarily great people all the time. And I feel like there's that other side where people could be a villain, but not necessarily be that people.
Speaker: Which brings up like, I mean, for Arms Master and any of the heroes, like we now know, Halo realizes like, oh, like this trauma has happened to everybody who's got powers. And you know, with the exception of people who have inherited it. Yeah. Like everybody has had a traumatic event so bad that it's triggered them. So like everybody, heroes, villains has something that's caused
Speaker: them to be the way they are. And as, as Alex says, he, he just puts it so bluntly. You basically just asked us all to share the worst day of our life. Yeah. It's like, Oh, some singers Taylor's just like, Oh, you're right. Damn. Okay. Um, but it's interesting that she didn't even know that, uh, that's not common knowledge that that's how people get powers is they have to be put through trauma.
Speaker: Yeah, that's interesting that that's not something that they would have discussed. Like, even in her class, you know, in the opening of the book, they're sitting there, they're talking about powers, they're talking about, you know, capes and classifications, and yet that's not something that's known. And honestly, it makes me wonder if people would try, if it was a more common knowledge kind of thing, if people would try to trigger an event.
Speaker: you know, like try to have a near death experience.
Speaker: No, but I think I think that's right because I mean, obviously, you know, villains aren't out there doing interviews and things like that. And they and they talk about how Glory Girl, everybody knows what her trigger event was because she talks about it in interviews and she's all bubbly and things like that. So for the public, it's probably a complete mystery. Right. You have, oh, Glory Girl triggered playing volleyball and, you know, and then obviously that's not how it is for everybody. I'm going to I'm going to press X to doubt on that story. The Glory Girl was telling
Speaker: Um, I, I would not be surprised if it was at least a little fake. Um, like that. Yeah. Just because of that. I don't actually, this isn't me like putting in my meta knowledge. I genuinely have no idea. Um, or remember, I'm just thinking, I'm like, just what we know about glory girl, what we know about her family and what tattletale revealed about her and panacea. It's kind of like, is that really how you got your powers glory girl?
Speaker: But it's something much worse happens more. I think it also doesn't necessarily. So I know that they said like, oh, people who whose parents have powers, they need less of a trigger. But I almost wonder if now, obviously not everybody that has powers is going to be in a position of privilege in society, but
Speaker: You know that like there's, I just think about that Kim Kardashian meme where she's like crying cause she lost her earring and the water and Courtney's like, people are dying Kim. Um, basically like something that is a tragedy to one person is not going to be a tragedy to somebody else. Right. So that is true. A trigger event, you know, being.
Speaker: humiliated or embarrassed during a volleyball game could be, you know, or, you know, feeling like I want to win, even if that's not her actual trigger event, but just, you know, bear with me on the, if it was, maybe that sounds like feels like the worst thing that could ever happen to her versus you have someone like Taylor who. If her life was that simple, if it was just a fucking volleyball game, her life would be a breeze right now because yeah, yeah.
Speaker: The we go through her trigger event. It's like so traumatic. Kills me and kills me. What's the ratio? We'll go into her trigger event in a second. But what's the ratio that that's given for villains to heroes? Is it two to one or one to six? One to five, one to six. Yeah, one to five, I think. Yeah, one to five sounds right. Yeah, is that. Oh, yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker: And the two of y 'all are killing me right now because Nick has cat had a very amazing explanation. But like when Nick said, Oh, you know, I don't think that's the real story. Well, if we look at glory girls interlude, what does she have a problem with? Freaking self control. And so literally.
Speaker: Who knows what happened to give her her power, but she freaking lost her temper. And that's the first time the public saw her powers was her like just having an outburst of volleyball game. But then Kat's explanation was so good that I was like, Oh, I can't, I can't let that be lived down. So good job. Was it, was it a volleyball game? Cause now I'm asking now, I thought it was basketball, but we kept saying volleyball and then I thought I was misremembering it. Oh, well my, my apology sports ball then.
Speaker: Sportsball. Yeah. Oh, and it is two to one villains, the heroes. Oh, wow. That's a lot. OK, that's a lot less than our bank. Of course, that would be I guess that's what the public numbers are. So could be different. That's true. That's true. One thing I appreciated because Taylor, you know, Taylor is being vulnerable and it's after this moment where Lisa has pulled her aside.
Speaker: And basically is, you know, bribing her not to tell about how she's kind of like slipped up a few times with her power. Um, cause that's how Lisa operates. Lisa loves information and she does not like giving up a whole lot of information that she doesn't choose to. And sometimes that's, that's that she got something wrong or anything about herself really.
Speaker: Um, we'd like compared to, you know, Alec really hasn't said anything, but that's cause you know, he's being a punk. Uh, but like Lisa is really friendly, you know, but also doesn't share her story. Um, but at the same time she has pulled her Taylor aside and shown a moment of vulnerability that kind of prompts Taylor to, to be vulnerable with the rest of the group as well.
Speaker: Um, it's very interesting because we also have the lingering threat that like hattletales ability is that she knows things and Taylor still thinks that she's going to be an undercover cop. So like there's a lingering threat there, but also at the same time, like this weird, like is Lisa pushing her? I mean, Lisa says as much that she's pushing her to be more, uh, to not play things safe. Um,
Speaker: you know, with clothing and other stuff. But I wonder if that's Lisa playing some 5d chess as well of like, Oh yeah. If I prompt Taylor to, uh, if I'm vulnerable with her, then Taylor's vulnerable with us, which endears like us to her, you know, thus making her not want to be a snitch.
Speaker: And I love how it doesn't really get expanded on, but it's just sort of left up for us to wonder because Lisa says, you know, oh, you're new, you're interesting. We talk about you. And like, there's that lingering thought of, well, what was Lisa telling the group? What does she know already about Taylor? What doesn't she know? So it's kind of that fun moment. Also, I have to mention that whole scene with Lisa and Taylor,
Speaker: As an introvert with extroverted friends, that scene is so accurate. Oh, Jacob, I'm so sorry. No, in a good way. It was so well written, but it felt... And this is something that we've talked about, that Wildboat does well, and just kind of character interactions just feel so good. But that whole dynamic between Lisa and Taylor is fantastic. They play off each other really well, and it's a lot of fun to read.
Speaker: Uh, if we can move slightly to Brian's story, um, cause Brian being a, a good, healthy individual has listened actively. He's said like, Hey, I don't think, you know, Taylor's shared with us. I feel like we shouldn't just leave her hanging there. So I'll be vulnerable as well. Once again, a moment of vulnerability among this group. He tells his story and, um,
Speaker: two things stood out to me. One, of course, is the, the absolutely savage line talking about, you know, what you feel during your trigger event. And for him, he just, you know, some people feel like on fire or whatever me, I didn't feel a fucking thing. Just move mic drop, which blows right into, uh, watching characters and their powers and
Speaker: what states they were in during their triggers and what their powers kind of associate with that. For Brian, his mental state where he was, he didn't feel a thing. He was kind of not seeing red, if you will, but he was seeing black. Like he went over just cold,
Speaker: no feeling whatsoever and protected his sister. His senses were dulled. Yeah. You could say, yeah. Yeah. You know, he's, he's hitting the guy with his, you know, with his fists. He's not feeling it until later he realizes like, Oh, there's smoke pouring from them. But like, you know, like you said, dulled senses, dulled, you know, kind of everything's dulled and it's part of his power. And, um, he thrives in sort of an objective calculated environment.
Speaker: Whereas Taylor, we look at what her environment was. She was trapped. She was locked up. And what's the word I'm looking for? Like back against the wall, the cornered rodent. She is locked in this scenario. And I think watching her as we move forward, just looking at her headspace and how her powers work also in regards to when she triggered, it's just something to keep an eye out for specifically when it comes to scenarios.
Speaker: And man, does her event, gosh, it really did, because I think, correct me if I'm wrong, please, but it talks about how these girls are just picking on her. And then after that is when Emma befriends her.
Speaker: And then like Taylor realizes like, Oh, like the whole reason Emma befriended me was to get closer to me. That way they could do this big event, which we just need to discuss. Cause my God, it was terrible. But, um, is that correct? Was that Emma? Because it's not Emma's a childhood friend. That was just, they literally don't even give her a name. It's just some random girl. That's kinda nice to her.
Speaker: And then isn't after the break because that's what was confusing me because she wasn't named. And so I just in my head space, put Emma in there. Um,
Speaker: Well, but Taylor doesn't name anybody. Is it not Emma? I actually kind of thought it was Emma too. It's not Emma because Emma's the childhood. Emma's they've known each other. Oh, that's right. When she learned that her, like, you know, her mom died and that's right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I just didn't know if that was like during that time period or not. Um, but I do appreciate the correction, but I will say this. Um, I'll say something funny just to lead us into it and then we'll actually get serious cause this is terrifying. But, um,
Speaker: I will press X for doubt because I never in middle school, high school, I never had a locker big enough to get shoved into. Part of me was like, because I was just a nerdy, normal kid, like, like, yeah, so literally just thinking about, I was like, man, I'm going to get shoved into a locker.
Speaker: because that's what you see in all of like the media and everything. And I'm like, Oh my God, I'm going to get shoved into a locker. These bullies are going to get me. And then I roll up and it's like the locker like ends at my waist. And I'm like, Oh, okay. Nevermind. Thank goodness. You also had half lockers. Yeah. We had three quarter lockers, one third locker size, like the full length lockers for seven. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: Not what a ceiling, the ceiling would be really high, but it was like six feet. Okay. That'll be a huge ass locker. I could definitely fit in. I think I, I could definitely have fit in my locker and like middle school, which I'm assuming Taylor's a small girl. She's not, she's not big at all. She's probably about the same size that I was around eighth grade freshman year of high school. So yeah.
Speaker: I don't think that's unreasonable at all for her to fit in the locker. I do think people being shoved in lockers is a little cinematic. A little cliche there. Yeah, but. But the fact that they filled the locker with used tampons like that, like these bitches were scheming. That's like that takes time. The fact that they have been collecting it and.
Speaker: like chose to like back off so that she wasn't expecting it. It's just so evil.
Speaker: It's so evil. It's so degrading and humiliating. And it made me so angry reading it again. And just like the amount of time these girls sat down, they planned, they schemed, they collected. And then when they shoved her in this locker, they stood around and laughed with other kids in the hallways. And no one, not one person,
Speaker: came to help her or said anything. Like she was in there for a long time to the point where she had basically started calling all of these bugs to her unknowingly. But that is just absolutely insane. I've never, I know of, like I was never bullied
Speaker: in school in any way to this degree. I mean, I've had people where it's like they're being a bitch to you, but it's not like it stuck with me or anything versus like, this is like personal. Sociopathic, psychopathic tendencies. Yeah, this is so like awful. I just cannot imagine like putting time and thought aside to make another person
Speaker: feel this terribly. Yeah, feel this miserable. And this whole story, this whole trigger event is a fantastic example, I think, of one thing that really sums up the entire web serial, but something that Wildboat does so well. And the best way I've heard Worm described as a story is we hear, we talk about stories, we talk about deconstructing stories, right?
Speaker: For superheroes, the boys is a really common example of deconstructing the superhero genre, breaking down the tropes that we've come to expect. Worm is a reconstruction of the genre, and it is taking those tropes that have been broken down and not abandoning them, but rebuilding them into something that we're familiar with, that we're expecting, but
Speaker: but not exactly, but doing something new with it, but putting a twist on it, but the kind of breathing life back into the trope because it is, I mean, the shoved in the locker trope is like we were saying, it's, it's, it's, it's a joke now at this point that someone, you know, it's humorous, but there's, there's nothing funny about this. I mean, it is, it is brutal and it is, it is a visual. I mean, it's graphic. It's just a, it's a really upsetting chapter. Like you're not enjoying reading it.
Speaker: Um, but, but it's, it's, it's so good. It sets her up, her character up so well. And I think another important part of her telling the story is, you know, we get that point where she was like, you know, I'd like to think that you guys were
Speaker: my friends and, you know, they're like, shut up. Of course we're your friends. And Brian will slap you if you finish that sentence. And Brian says to her and we appreciate, or at least I appreciate that you trusted us enough to share your story. And I feel like that kind of reaction is so important because that's only going to keep building trust between her and the rest of the group, knowing that like they didn't, they didn't, she expected,
Speaker: a completely different response. She expected them to be like, Oh my God, I didn't realize that we were friends with a fucking nerd or, you know, dweeb and this person's lame. We should stop being friends with her. You know, instead their reaction was completely into her defense and completely sympathetic to her. And I just thought that was really sweet. Um, even though she had this awful experience, sharing that kind of information with others really brings you
Speaker: closer together. Um, and I think it's also, I, they did this over, you know, dinner or lunch or whatever they're eating, but, um, you know, there was say like the, I don't remember where the exact phrase is, but, um, breaking bread with people is like the best way to like, get to know people. It's like eating is a very like,
Speaker: natural thing and people seem to be more comfortable when they're eating. Like there's something to do with your hands or something to fill the void of silence. You know, it's not awkward silence when people are chewing because they're chewing, you know? So, um, I just feel like it's interesting, you know, eating together and getting closer together. So, yeah. And she really did go into this just like, okay, I am the good cop.
Speaker: infiltrating these bad people. And then Brian's like, yeah, so I beat up my evil stepdad and I became a villain. That way I could go ahead and take custody of my sister. Yeah. And you're like, whoa, wait a second. Yeah. So it's just, it's a complete 180 from where she started. Right. And I think I wrote something, you know, cause I wrote down, I knew he was not in this just to be a villain. Cause like, there is nothing about him
Speaker: that says I want to be a villain. I want to be a bad guy. I've had that vibe from him and from the others. I don't know about Alec yet, but I just got the vibe that they're like falling into this versus being their choice being to be a bad guy versus like, bitch, she wants to be mean to people.
Speaker: even if it's the right people, i .e. dog fighting and people abusing animals and stuff, but she wants to like do bad things versus like Brian, you could just tell this whole time he's wanting to make calculated decisions, things that are going to, like he doesn't want to make, he doesn't want to just rob a bank because they can, you know, or he doesn't want to just jump into things because they can and they're villains and therefore that's what they're supposed to do.
Speaker: more like, you know, if this isn't going to benefit us, if this is, if this isn't going to make us money, that this does not make sense. Yeah. Not recklessly putting people in danger because motivations are very like, well, we understand that this bank heist is to build a reputation for ourselves to collect, you know, these things for the boss and our, our, you know, our intentions are not to rain down havoc on Brockton Bay to, you know, hurt people.
Speaker: But like we have these steps. We're doing them. We're going to be careful. We're going to be smart. We're not just going to run in there and cause absolute havoc. Hmm. I, so this is the set. So just as site slight segue, um, Lisa had said, like, in order for her to share her story, um, she'd need
Speaker: to be drunk. And she said, I'm not legal to drink for a few years yet. This is the second time that somebody that is a villain brings up something being illegal. And I'm like, you, you like you literally just robbed a bank for more than $40 ,000. And you're worried like you don't have a fake ID.
Speaker: That was a good point. To add to that, there was a, uh, an interviewer, um, the comedian was talking to who actually interviewed Jeffrey Dahmer in jail. And he was saying that, you know, they're like, Hey, Jeffrey, you know, like a lot of your victims were black, you know, was there anything with that? Like, did you, and he like stops them and he's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. I may have killed and eaten people, but I am not a fucking racist.
Speaker: You know what I mean? So it's, it's that whole dynamic of like, whoa, whoa, whoa. I brought banks from the man, but drink under age. What am I an animal? I'm not about to get this poor waitress busted for letting a minor drink just because I wanted, you know, a margarita. Oh, that's funny. I could say too. Yeah, I would see that. I could see it too being like,
Speaker: You know they are villains but they talk about risk versus reward of course the risk of robbing a bank is high but the reward is high. The risk of getting caught trying to get alcohol.
Speaker: but is probably a lot higher than the reward of just getting to drink alcohol in there. And since they've done like actual crimes, they're like, we don't need to get our adrenaline run from, you know, getting some Miklob ultra from the gas station down the road. Because like with the glory girl interlude, that one white supremacist guy was just like, that's illegal. And I'm like, what?
Speaker: And it's the second time I'm like, this is so funny seeing people that no one knows the laws better than criminals, right? Don't break the law while breaking the law. That's exactly what I was about to say. The classic rule. Don't break the law while you're breaking the law. If you're going to rob a bank, don't speed away.
Speaker: Just adding, adding stuff on. I want to back up a second, just a personal favorite of mine for wild though. And for just more books should have this in general, but I, it maybe, maybe it's the tism, but I cannot stand melodrama in books and I cannot stand unhealthy relationships. People are in an unhealthy relationship. If the point of the book is.
Speaker: like that they're obviously going to show this is a bad relationship and move on to better and healthier things than like, that really upsets me. And in wild bo's case, he continues to develop these healthy relationships or show unhealthy ones being unhealthy. And here we have a perfect example of a group of people sitting around having emotionally healthy conversations, talking about trauma,
Speaker: And that just gets me hot every time. And, and I don't see this in other books. I really don't. It's a lot of teen drama. So it's not, yeah, it's a lot of teen drama and I'll read some more, you know, we'll consider like classical literature, you know, uh, things that English majors read. Uh, and, and I'm reading this, I'm like, well, this is just a bunch of miserable people being miserable and nobody's doing anything to get better.
Speaker: And that just drives me up a wall. And in this case, it's like these are, you know, these potentially could be, you know, miserable people, but they're trying to. Be better. As an English teacher can confirm most good literature is about miserable people who stay miserable. I love classic literature. Yay.
Speaker: Well, we could talk about this for hours because we literally did. But, uh, we got a huge battle. Yeah. You just get this tiny section at the end here. What, what, what is this? This cliff note says Bach. Well, that's great. Uh, transitions into, uh, episode episode. Nope. Chapter chapter five. Uh, I'm going to, I'm breaking this into chapter five with the them at the lockers with Uber and late.
Speaker: And then after that, we'll discuss chapters six through 10, which, yeah. I want to put a trigger warning for my video, for my viewers here. Um, I say this to my friends all the time. We are going to be pronouncing several words like Uber and leet and bakuta. I just want you to understand that none of these people are fucking real and I can say it however the fuck I want to. Thank you. This was in the podcast.
Speaker: It is pronounced bakuta like barracuda. And that's how I sing it in my head. That is canon for me. Although not to be again pedantic, but you said you, Alan, you did just say, I pronounce it. I pronounce it bakuta like barracuda.
Speaker: That's not what you said, though. You said, I say you said.
Speaker: Like I did like a man like the stupid marble game. It doesn't matter. Uber and late. Uber and late. We're screaming motherfuckers. They're adorable. What a couple of dorks. I kind of love Uber because he's supposed to like his power is literally being good at everything. And somehow he sucks at it.
Speaker: It's so bad. It's so hilarious. They suck so hard. And their costumes. Oh, my God. It's so great. I love how they just are like, oh, today we're Mario and we're just going to dress up as Mario. We are doomed, baby. They've got to change it up constantly, but they're raking in that Mr. Beast money. It's wild. This is Jake and Logan Paul.
Speaker: Yes. Oh, no, don't say things like that, because that makes me dislike them. No, this this vibe to me, it gives off like the kids that do parkour in school. Oh, yes. Yes. Oh, I've got it. I've got it. Uber is Markiplier.
Speaker: and leet is jacksepticeye stop it right now oh my god we love you guys please don't hit us it's so funny though because what's interesting though is that and we don't see it in the scene of course because they're kind of meant to be the the funny prelude before the very serious battle that comes afterwards which is a great contrast too by the way you know points for wild bow there but
Speaker: It's interesting though that we get the hint that they're, they're actually a lot meaner of people than they let on. The only reason our characters aren't afraid is because they're better villains than they are and they know that they can beat them. But, you know, Taylor alludes to the fact that like, it's not feel good watching their stream because either they're getting their asses handed to them or they're actually doing bad stuff to people. Yeah. And it's like, like you can imagine these are the kids who.
Speaker: If you pick on them, they'll run away crying, which, you know, they kind of do, but they're also the kids who are going to be like, Hey, let's push down this kid down the stairs and film it and put it on YouTube as a prank. Yeah. And it's like Japan and find a dead body in the woods. Another poll reference. Thank you very much during the taunting piece where Lisa and Alec were just going in on lead. I literally wrote a note where I was like, I know they're all villains.
Speaker: But this feels like bullying. Like it is. Wack. It is. Your moves. Wack. Wack. Your family. Wack. I was just like, yes. I was like, oh my God. First off, you have no bitches. It was like beginning to be like, I'm now like, I was starting to like feel really bad for Lee. Yeah. Because he was like, shut up. And I'm like,
Speaker: No wonder he's a villain because I'm like, this is gonna be like the kid that gets bullied to being a school shooter. You know, like it's just. And she describes his voice as like high pitched and whiny. So you know, it's like, shut up. No, I'm not. He has a weak chin and you know, he's a mouth breather. No, the weak chin. I didn't feel bad at all because I was like, Leet is the guy that would bully someone to be the school shooter and then be like after the fact, be like, oh, what happened? Like, come on, dude.
Speaker: Also, they're apparently pretty well off. They're making a lot of money. So they make so much money at this point. It's like, yeah, I'm going to say, I think you're right about that one. We all know it's OK to bully people if if they're rich as long as the views are right. That does bring up that does bring up a good point, though, because again, we're getting this context where Taylor is sort of enjoying taking down people.
Speaker: And so even though she's kind of experienced what Lee has obviously at a more extreme level than what's happening there, but I don't know. She's kind of participating in a similar activity. It's a bit, it's a bit sketchy. Uh -huh. Uh, it's also fun. Cause Lisa is, as we've seen, you know, Lisa may be using her powers to, as I'm theorizing to coerce Taylor and to joining them by building up friendship.
Speaker: But at the same time, she can turn that on a dime and destroy the relationship between these two. Yeah. Mm hmm. You know, she is just putting ever taking every insecurity and kicking it in the deck. Oh, and just that line to where she's like, well, Uber, why you could actually be good. Why are you with him? And he's like, yeah, in his voice because he's my friend. Yeah. Yeah. I do think that it's important, though, to note that, like,
Speaker: In Taylor's situation for her being bullied, she is not actively doing anything to these girls to encourage them to bully her. This is totally unprovoked for her versus these guys kind of walked into it. I mean, like.
Speaker: whether you're getting punched in the face or you're getting emotionally damaged by, like you walked into this fight knowing that you were going to get hurt in some way. It just sucks for Lee that he's going to have to, you know, Uber and lead are going to have a conversation later. Yeah. Yeah, that's going to be uncomfortable. Yeah. Back to what Alan said a second ago. Well, no, wait, maybe it was like, I can't remember. I just had to have to read it. I have to read it because it's so good.
Speaker: This is at the end of 4 .5. Taylor says, I'm game. I was surprised at how excited I was. This was the sort of thing I'd put my costume on to do. Sure, the context wasn't what I would have chosen, but going up against the bad guys, I smiled behind my mask and reached out for my bugs. Like she is living for this moment.
Speaker: I like, okay, can we talk about her taking down Leet real quick? Because Brian says something really, that I really liked. Him, good girl. Yes, oh my God! I'm so sorry, I know I just, I know I just clipped out, I know I just clipped out. Kat, I have had this hold up since the beginning of this episode and highlighted because I knew that you and I, all right everybody, welcome to the podcast. Kat and I, we're gonna sit here and we're gonna talk about something that just,
Speaker: Woo! Lit our fires, ladies and gentlemen. 4 .6. Thanks, I huffed for the lesson.
Speaker: Good girl. That's Brian, by the way. He highlighted it and wrote, hot. It was like, oh, I wasn't ready for that. I was like, oh, in the middle of the fight. Okay. I know, right. And he's like, he's like, actually, if you're going to choke somebody, choke them like this, I'm like, Brian knows how to choke. Right. He's like, don't crush the wind pipe. And I'm like, oh, he knows how.
Speaker: You guys had a good done. If you didn't know already, Kat and I are connoisseurs of a good smut book every now and again. Go to horny jail. Horny jail. Horny jail. We do indeed have that freeze kink, apparently. That's true.
Speaker: Okay, I'm sorry. Wait, isn't a praise kink just code for like somebody's nice to you and that makes you horny? Is that what that means? It's a little different. This is not a therapy session, Nick. You can save that for yourself. You can put that somewhere else. This is neither a therapy nor a sex education. This is a podcast. Unless we need to have the podcast within the podcast within the podcast. Which we do. Oh my goodness.
Speaker: But that is, it is a really fun scene. Yeah. Imagine being a fuck boy. You were being choked by a girl. So already you're just like upset. And then someone teaches her how to do a proper blood show and then she chokes you unconscious. So good.
Speaker: These things happened. Either he had the biggest, hardest boner that he will ever have in his life. And he'll never get it back. Or he's about to go shoot up Brockton Bay High. I don't know which. I had to take a minute to look at that. Yeah. I was like, oh.
Speaker: I just wasn't ready for it out of the blue. No, neither was I. It was nice. I liked it. Brian, do it again. Do it again. Keep going with that. Keep up the good work. Yep. Very good. Well, I think we should move on to the real battle. Can I just offer that we changed the name of our segment this week from What the Fuck Taylor to What the Fakuda Bakuda?
Speaker: I like it. I like it because holy shit.
Speaker: Yeah. Oh yeah. Jesus. Hey, Bakut knows how to recruit, but only knows how to recruit one word. How to recruit Alan. No, no. Okay. So we're looking at chapters, uh, chapters six, seven, eight, nine, and 10 in which, uh, what I have written down here is the summary is Bakut a big boom, boom, because kablooie miss the miss bomb herself. Yeah. Just the horrific image of
Speaker: tons of normal Asian people wielding whatever weapon they could grab on hand as they were strapped into a suicide vest. Yeah. Like, or, you know, had something shoved up their nose. Like they're terrified. They're looking at you with terrified eyes, but they're not about to just blow up except for that one dude. Well, he didn't really blow up.
Speaker: Yeah, he just kind of just vibrated. He vibrated, vibrated. Talk about disgusting. I. Yeah, no, I feel like this whole arc has been really graphic imagery that has just left me with a like weird shiver and gross taste in mouth, like, oh,
Speaker: That was not a fun section to read. Yeah, and I just I love the and I'm not talking about personality types. I'm talking specifically the fighting styles, but this was definitely a type A versus a type B person because I've had in my notes. I'm like Bakutas like.
Speaker: okay i got my minions what if they what if they come at me from different sides i got a jeep what if i need an aerial thing i've got a rocket launcher what if i need to do this what if i need to do it in secret i'll put the rings on my toes what if i need to do this and then taylor rolls up and she doesn't even have a bug storage system on her suit yet so she's just like
Speaker: Give me your energy. Oh, no, there are none. Okay. And I'm like, oh my God. She's like, cool. I got my pepper spray and my baton. Yep. She has a handy dandy knife now. Yes. And a pen and paper. Yes, she is prepared. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: So, OK, so I will say graphic imagery aside, I do want to talk about, though, just how cool Bakutas bombs are. Oh, yeah. They're so gross and so. Who knew that there were so many ways you could bomb someone? Oh, Lord. Yeah, no, we're jumping ahead. She gets I think she unanimously. In another life, she just would have gone straight to the Pentagon. Oh.
Speaker: Yeah. I think, uh, bucket, uh, unanimously are we all in agreement gets coolest power of the arc. Yeah. I can agree with that kind of like Uber. Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. I've got some, I've got some powers I'd like to talk about that. There's some other powers that are introduced. Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. Uh, so bucket is like blowing these people up. I don't have any notes from like 4 .6 onwards.
Speaker: to the end of that fight because it's just her blowing up shit. And she's she is the Joker kind of at the beginning of the Dark Knight, but like way more prep. Oh, so much.
Speaker: Like there was prep work for the, for the joker. Like he obviously is like, I've got a plan, even though he's like, I don't have a plan. He's got a plan and he's been working on it way too long. Bakutu is the same way, except Bakutu worked on it for like what? All week, maybe. And just holy cow, spammed the suicide vest button.
Speaker: Oh my gosh, just the amount of contingencies that she has said it like she knows where they're going to come in. She knows that Uber and lead are going to distract the undersiders. And then she's going to come flying in with this Jeep and she's going to have the whole place around it. And not only is does she have all of these suicide bomber, you know, brain bombs going on.
Speaker: with these poor innocent people. She's got people disguised. It's just like everywhere. We're gonna turn this way. Nope, can't go that way. Okay, well, we're gonna go over this giant container. Well, can't do that. Okay, well, she just blew that one up. So let's go back through the fire and double back. Oh, nope, she's prepped for that too. Like she is prepared for all of it. And it's all this kind of crazy insanity energy, but it works. Like it's working. The undersiders are scrambling. They are not doing well.
Speaker: They are struggle busting it all the way and getting blown apart as it happens. For as prepared as she was, she was not wearing steel -toed boots.
Speaker: So, you know, OK, well, that's that's where to put that as my what the fuck, Taylor. It's not it's not as bad as the others, but the like blindly just feeling it out as you stab as hard as you can. And I'm like, I didn't go far enough. So you press down harder until you realize, oh, I'm dug in the asphalt. Yeah, into the concrete. Like what the fuck, Taylor? No, I feel like I don't actually know.
Speaker: Not what the fuck Taylor. Like fucking go Taylor. That's a fucking Taylor, but chopping some toes off is a little weird because she literally just got fucking blew up this bitch. She got brain damage. It was like, I can't see, I can't hear. I, she very nearly thought that her
Speaker: soon to be boyfriend. She thought he got hit by a, was going to die. Then he did it. He was not dead. And she was like, Oh, thank God. Then she blew up. And she's like, I can't, I can't do shit right now. Let me try to cut this bitch's toes off. And it worked. It worked. And I, you know what? She fucking saved everyone and she didn't even have her powers. So like her, she had not one bug
Speaker: used during this whole interaction other than for the freaking camera to cover up. So I think I think the real what the fuck Taylor is what Taylor mentioned earlier are Taylor is that you don't have a pouch for your bugs with you. Like what? That's the real one. You don't keep like an emergency black widow on hand.
Speaker: Because I definitely if she had just randomly cut toes, I would be like, OK, that's weird. But I'll call that a what the tactics, Taylor, because she knew the toe rings were there. Yeah, literally, that was the most ace in a whole move. So I don't think that was like, oh, she said I had to have one. I had to have one this this round. And that this is under her like, yeah, it was necessary. But it's a little fucked up, you know, out of context.
Speaker: In the realm of what the fuck at Abacada, can we just, her bombs that turn into black holes and suck things back in? What the fuck? That was insane. That was crazy cupcakes. Her bombs that freeze explosions from other bombs, like literally I was reading this just like, it just keeps going. Oh, I actually have a note about the freezing one was,
Speaker: So, you know, they got that freezing bomb. Anyway, Brian covered Tattletale and like Taylor looked over at them and he like immediately starts explaining. Like, I just was like, oh my gosh.
Speaker: I love that so much. Well, no, it's so great because he, he covers, he covers, uh, tattletale. And then he very quickly, of course, as Kat said, he very quickly, don't worry, Taylor, I'm protecting her because tattletale's costume isn't made to handle big, you know, big hits, which is like, it shows, okay, of course, of course I'm on obviously team Brian, but like, okay. So it shows us a, Brian is the protector type as we already knew.
Speaker: Be it.
Speaker: Brian is a friend to all and loves everyone in this group and treats them all like family. And he would cover them with his own body regardless of who they are. And three, or see, I can't remember how I was numbering this list, but three, he turns to look Taylor dead in the eye and is like, don't worry, Taylor. Right, he takes her feelings into consideration. Exactly, like he doesn't want her to think, oh, I don't want her to think. And at this point, he has no obligation
Speaker: Absolutely none. Also, is this Taylor's first time watching someone die? Oh, I guess it is because when the liquefied because she was so distraught or like frozen, I don't even know. Like she just like. He died just like that. And it was it's like everything kind of froze for her and like mentally, she was just like, I cannot believe that he's dead.
Speaker: even though she didn't know him and she was still thinking about it later. Um, so maybe this also, is this also the first on age death of the book? I think so. Yeah. Possibly. Wait, no, no, no, no, no, no mother. Well, we talked about, she doesn't die on page though. And she doesn't die in the past. Oh, I was going to say we had the guy getting beat to death at the basketball game. Yeah.
Speaker: But that's again, again, it really isn't happening like on page. It's like a like a described. Yeah. That is very true. I guess it probably is. Yeah. Drinks drinks poured for Andrew Hawk. Rest in peace, my man. Rest in power. Rest in power. Yeah, but that's that's interesting that the I guess the first rule will say on page described death of the book is this
Speaker: poor kid who's been dragged into this and strapped basically into a suicide bomb up the nose, it just gets liquefied right there. Like it's so brutal. And I think it's a great sort of
Speaker: following action scene to follow the bank heist. The bank heist is exciting. We get to see a lot of fun powers. It doesn't go perfectly, but they still win at the end. They make the escape and everything's fine. And nobody gets hurt.
Speaker: Exactly. Yeah, no one gets hurt. Yeah, exactly. The wards get beat up, but they're fine. And then we go right from that into the bakuta fight, which is a complete 180. The undersiders are outgunned, outmatched, on the run, barely holding on. People are dying. It's just such a flip, such a tonal shift. Outgunned, outgunned. Outnumbered, outplanned. Yeah.
Speaker: Sorry, it kind of takes me back to my, uh, the, the, uh, talking about Taylor and her powers. She is for all intents and purposes, trapped by a bully. And that is where she always makes her move. Ooh.
Speaker: Also, a quick note, absolutely loved the way Wild Bo writes her inner monologue while concussed. It's just the way it's written. Like, she doesn't say she has it. I don't think she says she's like, oh, I have a concussion. But it's very obvious when you're reading it, like, oh, she got hit. She got rock. Like, you know, yeah, you can kind of see the
Speaker: If this had been a different context, just kind of the, are you okay? Like classic slow -mo kind of feel to it. Yeah, exactly. Very well written for sure. Do we want to move off of the fight or do we want to talk, let's talk powers real quick.
Speaker: Favorite powers. Favorite powers. We're not going to talk about the ending chapter. I don't know if we move into that, but we're still in the power section. So let's talk powers. We'll do power quick. We'll do. Yeah, we'll do quick. Favorite powers. And then we'll go into the final, final chapter or so. Favorite powers. I do really love.
Speaker: It is a scary and creepy power and it is really good and I love it, but I gotta say, and I know we've talked about him already before, but I just am such a fan of Alec in this section here where he overexerts himself with his power and we see what that looks like.
Speaker: kind of his whole harm giving away to spasms. I'm just such a fan of him, this arc of doing everything he can to, to fuck out Bakutah. And yeah, he came in clutch this, this arc. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely the, uh, underside or MVP, I think. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, for sure. Get some great moments. Um,
Speaker: I know, I know it wasn't featured much, and I just want to preface this by saying I do not support anything that the man stands for. But Kaiser's power is one of my favorite powers. Just visually this idea of somebody just creating metal out of everywhere, just creating his own suit of armor. The moment I read that, you know, I've, I think, uh, I'm still kind of in my, um, you know, like guys have their sort of medieval
Speaker: fetish where they just love suits of armor and everything. It's kind of like that where I'm like, I'm like, Oh yeah. Like, yeah, that's, that's the good stuff. Doesn't he make a crown for himself too? Like he makes a crown for himself. It's so extra, but I'm just like, Oh yeah, baby. That's the, that's what I like to see. And he opens the window without touching it, which means that he is controlling the metal within the object. Correct. Yeah. Which isn't theoretically. Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy.
Speaker: I like to think he is not described, but he definitely made like a really thin sheet of metal cape as well. Definitely blowing in the wind. Yeah. Always. Yeah. So that's just always been kind of like my, I'm like, yeah, I don't know why it just says attractive to me. Otherwise, um, actually I don't think there really isn't otherwise. I think Bakut is power is interesting, but it's just like, you can make cool bombs. Woo. You know, I don't know. It just doesn't interest me that much, but yeah.
Speaker: this metal generation. I also, it's probably because I love metal bending too, like from Avatar the Last Airbender.
Speaker: So, yeah, it gives off those vibes. Metal bending is, yeah, kind of the same vibes. I like it. Any other any other thoughts on powers? I like to Uber. I definitely thought that Leet was just hilariously one of the best described powers of the episode, just because literally he is what what Bakuta is. But it gets worse every time to the point where like his bombs like look like
Speaker: the original Batman running with a bomb in his arms out to the harbor. And it literally looks like a hologram. So the fact that he literally has to get super creative and be like, Oh, this isn't a bomb. This is like a Z bomb because I can only make it once. You know, it's just, it's such an interesting, such an interesting dynamic. Um, but best power would be part G who rest in peace King. Um, just literally she's, she's like, go ahead and shoot one of them.
Speaker: And he just drops the gun. He's like, I can't do it now. He stood by his laurels. That is for sure. He stood by it. Rest in peace, King. All right. Unlike that one girl who like a beauty. She's like, do you think you could have shot him? And she's like, yeah, probably. Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. Yeah. I thought it was really cool. Uh, just the simple ability can be really good at things, you know, and
Speaker: Easy, fun power. Yeah. Y 'all love simplicity sometimes. I personally think that, um, I know you guys had said that you thought Alec was the MVP. I thought Brian really was the reason that they got out of a lot of these sticky situations as they were running around because I mean, just the power to like take away. I mean, there's block all light. Like it really is.
Speaker: helping them in so many situations, the fact that they could just basically hide in plain sight with his power. And then he made his darkness look like him to the point where Taylor thought that it was him getting run over. Yeah, that was cool. I just think that he did a lot during this fight to protect everyone else. And that was really impressive.
Speaker: And I think Taylor's power of will was really something to envy this round because she, yeah, she definitely got rocked and still was the reason that they actually got out of this situation, so. Yeah, I would have given up. I'll just pass out. Y 'all go ahead. I'm good. I'm done. I got blown up, therefore. I'm tapping out. Yeah.
Speaker: You know, either I'm dead or I'm going to wake up later, but I'm done with this fight. So. Yeah. Yeah. But I definitely, I mean, I could see Nick loving Kaiser. I'm kidding. I should have known. I should have known. I mean, I'll just be like, I mean, unlike Nick, I don't stand with Kaiser, you know, but I do think. Jacob, did you give us yours?
Speaker: I didn't specifically. I think Bakita reading it, reading it for the second time, I interchange reading for the first time, Bakita definitely was my favorite just just for the creativity of her bombs. But reading it the second time, Uber and Leet together are just so fun to read about. And I love I love envisioning what their shenanigans looked like in their stupid cosplay, you know, costumes and all this running around town. I also like the idea that both of them
Speaker: They're written with so much potential. Like Lisa says, hey, Uber, you could be so much more. And Leet has, arguably just based on the description, we have a really, really strong power. Like he can make anything. And that together, they're just running around town playing video games. Yeah, it's just hilarious.
Speaker: I described them as Logan and Jake Paul, but because we love them so much, I'm going to recant that. Basically, this is just I'm Uber. This is leet. And welcome to Jackass. That is that is just Johnny Knoxville and Steve. Oh, just doing the funniest shit. That's much. Yeah, that's absolutely. Absolutely. So I think they're my favorite. Hmm. Oh, onward to the end. Yeah. So our last chapter here, we end with Chapter 11.
Speaker: And I'm gonna mention part of this, cause it's something we absolutely have to talk about. Right before Taylor passes out in chapter 10, she calls her bugs to her. And then of course she passes out and chapter 11, she wakes up in this weird kind of back alley doctor shop where she gets patched up and they tell her, you know, you gotta send your bugs away cause they're swarming. So she sends them away and they get taken home where Danny meets the gang
Speaker: finally and settles Taylor in on the couch. I felt so stupid because I was sitting there in the moment just like,
Speaker: how are they going to explain this? Like, how are they gonna explain all these explosions? And they explained all the explosions just like, oh yeah, so there's a lot of explosions. And we kind of, and I was like, oh, okay, I'm an idiot, yeah. The simplest possible explanation. It's such a great excuse just in general in the world. Oh, why were you late? Dude, this fucking super villain came out of fucking nowhere. Got thrown into my, glory girl kicked this white supremacist into my car.
Speaker: It's sort of beneficial that they can kind of like hide in plain sight. Like, why are you so beat up? Well, there were bombs going off all over the city and a lot of people got hurt. So why wouldn't these, why wouldn't Taylor and them be part of that? So I did think that that was clever. Cause I didn't know how they were. I was like, Oh, the dad is not going to be oblivious now. Nope. He still gets to be oblivious. So.
Speaker: He got to meet their friends and he was so sweet. What a cute dad moment. Oh my God. He was anxiety baking. I know. I love him. Here's some cookies, here's some bagels. I got another bagel and the toast. Y 'all want to watch movies? Y 'all watch movies. He was so sweet and I just thought that it could have been completely different because we often see in film and novels where it's like
Speaker: your kid makes new friends, you don't know them. Things, you know, it just, things feel off. And then if she came back and was hurt, like he would obviously, we would normally see the parents like blame the new friends versus like, he obviously trusts them as her friends. And he hears that she opened up to them and
Speaker: Even though he's hurt, he's just glad that she's talking about it with somebody. And it was just, it was just very sweet. Um, and of course Brian was holding her. So I'm obsessed with that. But yeah, I know there's so many good Brian moments. I love to that. Yeah. We see Danny being different than most stereotypical parents, but I think acting more like a real parent would, if you had just found out that like a terrible thing had happened and your kids friends who you haven't met.
Speaker: find you and bring your home and are like, Hey, we took care of her. She's good. Like I'd be like, Oh, thank God. You know, but I do feel like, yeah, Kat, there's that stereotype of like TV parents who were like, what, how could you let this happen to my daughter? You can never see her again. And it's like completely irrational and doesn't feel right. But this feels right. And I also do love, I love that Lisa calls him Danny. I just think that's really funny. She's like, it's okay, Danny. Danny was like,
Speaker: Should I take her to a doctor? And Lisa's like, oh, no, no, no, it's fine. And Danny's just like, okay. I'm like, dude, this girl is like 16, 17, maybe 18. Why are you listening to her? Your daughter just got blows up. She said her dad was a doctor and they went to his clinic. Yeah, she does say that her dad's the doctor. But I just feel like, I just feel like as a parent, I would be like, I think I want to talk to the doctor myself.
Speaker: Need a follow -up appointment maybe at some point as someone who works in a hospital if a patient was like no no like i went to my friends who like had a doctor and they gave me a bottle of code and i'd be like okay. Is it as a parent i'd be like okay cool show me the chart. I can understand in the moment it's your daughter she just got blown up i'm just walking down an alley she wasn't supposed to. What they had brian with them.
Speaker: I literally, I wrote that down specifically for Hannah and Kat to where they're just like, yeah, we know that we shouldn't have been walking there, but I mean, we had Brian and Danny's just like, yeah, big and scary and beefy and strong and beefy. He is hunky, hunky. Yes. Also.
Speaker: he, bless his heart, bless his little father heart, he put those blankets in the dryer so they would be warm so that he could bundle up his little daughter, his poor little concussed daughter on the couch with these warm blankets. And she's so concussed. It was just such a sweet thing. Like, oh man, this poor man, he's been out beside himself with worry and he's stressed baked and he put the blankets in the dryer and frickin'
Speaker: I know I thought I thought it was so sweet when she was like, oh, I don't want to like be put down by Brian by Brian. And she's like, oh, these are freshly dry blankets. And I'm like, oh, I thought it wasn't going to get any cuter, but it did get so much cuter. She even has the line like I was I was upset about that, but then I like had the fresh blankets and I thought I could cope. I could cope.
Speaker: Oh, and she was like cuddling with him. You know, she fell asleep. Her head was on his shoulder. And I'm like, oh, I love it. A bunch of concussed babies just hanging on the couch together. I love it so much. It's just so wholesome. It's so wholesome of that moment. And I feel like it ends the arc on such a good note because you have all of this awfulness. And I think Alan and I had been talking about this like sandwiching all of this good
Speaker: you know, on either side of like, what a great day to wake up and tell Emma to fuck off and hang out with the gang and bond. And then of course, you know, we all got blown up, but then we all get to hang out on the couch and watch movies and drink tea. She waves to her dad. And she waves to her dad. We just have a moment where it's so wholesome. It's just so, yeah, who knew a concussion could bring us all together.
Speaker: Danny's perspective like yeah your daughter just got brought home so she was blown up but he's seeing his daughter with two people that strongly care about her and she's opening up to and like she's having a good time like she's smiling she's happy yeah it's a bad situation like she's injured and everything but he
Speaker: I feel like his heart has to be so full watching them like hang out because she's just obviously been so miserable. And I just I just I'm just happy for Danny that he gets to see her with her friends. Yeah. When was the last time he saw Taylor so just in general just happy to exist? Because even if he's seen her smile in the past couple of months, it's been like that.
Speaker: forced smiles like, well, I don't want you to worry dad, you know, as opposed to this where like the camaraderie of them all together and. And it's a feedback loop too. Cause she even says like, that's the first time she's seen him genuinely smile in a while is like looking at her genuinely smile. Like, Oh, but I just can't help but feel this anxiety. And again, I'm.
Speaker: Uh, I really don't remember. Don't you bring your anxiety at this moment? We're happy right now. We, we fake that all out. You just stop anxiety, anxiously. I don't know how. I'll get the anxiety out. I'm sorry. I apologize. I brought it up. I have no anxiety. I don't know what you're talking about. I don't either. That's right. That's right.
Speaker: This was an all, this was just a great coming of age story. Like literally this is a cheesy coming of age movie, like teenage movie where like she gets up. She finally has the courage to sell her fuck off after she's met Brian for like cupcakes, had the strength to go to school. Then they have like the.
Speaker: We are all going to open up about our feelings together. And then, you know, the bullshit contrived event happens that they all have to overcome. And then it's back to the teenage movie again. And they're like, Oh, and then we like came back and all snuggled together and went to bed and we all live happily ever after. It's such a good teenage.
Speaker: coming of age, like Hallmark movie. And that's the story of how my life changed. This was a made for Nickelodeon TV movie. And I love every minute. And it's all of the things that happened, you know, exploding and liquefying humans. We're not even going to think about what we're going to do. We're going to take and repress, take and repress. That's right. And then one day you'll die.
Speaker: I let me tell you, though, positive messages from 100 percent thought Brian was going to die. And I was like, I can't handle that. I can't. Don't you bring that evil in here? Yeah, don't you bring that negativity here. Setting it up for it. I was like when it didn't happen, I was happy. So many more arcs. I know many more. I was worried because you guys have been setting me up for like emotional damage because you guys keep saying emotional damage. That's true. And I just was I was a little concerned.
Speaker: People come and people go. I mean, what was it? It was the name Park Joo -Hing? Park Joo -Hoo? Park Joo -Hoo. Park Joo -Hoo. You know, first death we've really had, probably not the last. Probably. I mean, one can hope, but yeah. Well, that's just a good, that's just a good, you know, a good state to be in while you're reading this is just just be a little on edge. You never know. You don't know what's happening.
Speaker: Also, I know we've been at this for a really long time, and I would love to end this podcast on a happy note. So this section, Michael, you can totally move around if you need to. But we have to talk about Taylor pulling the bugs to her in chapter 10.
Speaker: passing out and then being woken up because Lisa and Brian are like, we have had to board up the windows while you've been unconscious because your bugs have been swarming to you. With Saranrap. They have not stopped. Like we have had to, yeah, with Saranrap, board this shit up because you put out an order, you passed out and your bugs are still following your order.
Speaker: which is a huge like a superpower thing for Taylor that she probably wasn't aware of until now. And neither are we until now. I love it. Yeah. I love it so much. Give me all the like details of it is so creepy. Like give me all the juicy details of what Taylor is capable of. Yeah. Oh, and I love just a,
Speaker: This does not need to be a conversation, but I loved Alec freaking out about the idea of just like 10 ,000 Black Widows in the basement, in a sweatshop, making clothes. Black Widows in a sweatshop. That's a great image. I'm glad you brought that up because I completely had forgotten about that too. But I was like, man, Taylor, just end the story here and have her be Edna. Edna Mode. Yeah, just end it here. Have her make superhero suits.
Speaker: All right. Well, I know that Michael is, Michael is shaking his fist in anger. I can see it from here. So I'm going to go ahead and give you some predictions. Okay. So, um, like I said earlier, I literally had written down at several points. I was like, does the deus ex machina come in here? Does the deus ex machina come in here? Because I just knew that, um, Kaiser and empire 88 and, um,
Speaker: Oh my God, I cannot think of her name, Purity, how they were all going to just swarm in and just start fighting the ABB. So since they haven't, I definitely think that there's going to be some gang wars going on. Since lung is sprung out of jail, I definitely think that Kaiser being the knight is going to ride him since he's the dragon. So that's going to be awesome. Can't wait for white and yellow to get together. That's going to be awesome. But then,
Speaker: I thought about Brutus and I had the same thing that Nick thought where I was like, Oh, she just saved a ton of dogs. So Brutus just in my best Vin Diesel interpretation is just like, we have a herd. And that is about to be awesome. Powers may be strong, but not as strong as family. Cat predictions. Yeah. So,
Speaker: Obviously I already said earlier that I think that it will not be, there cannot be many more of the fights that are this intense. The bank heist wasn't so much fighting as fending off versus this was like, they really needed to survive. And I feel like there's not going to be very many more of those types of fights without Taylor causing some real damage to people. And I think that's going to result in her.
Speaker: killing somebody at some point. I think that twice now, Tattletale has gotten them into a pickle. And, you know, because they really depend on her to know when they should walk into a situation or not. And it seems like she's kind of failed them twice. So I think there's going to be some significant consequences.
Speaker: soon to like, you know, they've gotten out of it, but I feel like the consequences are going to keep getting bigger for her kind of maybe not paying attention. I feel like she knows things. She's just not thinking like we're not paying attention to it. Like it seems like she's a little like spacey. So we'll see how that goes. And then I cannot wait because this will happen and not wait for Taylor and Brian.
Speaker: It just get together. Oh. And talk. No. I mean, it's going to be a smutty bug. I'm just, you know, but maybe there'll be some kissy kissy something. I will say to spoiler, but tattletales power is actually a brain tumor. And as it gets bigger, the power gets worse until she dies. Spoilers Taylor. Good spoilers.
Speaker: All right. Those are some good predictions. We'll see how they play out. Also, I thought I did think one other really funny place we could put a put a what the fuck Taylor would be in character spoken by Alec after Taylor is like, so how did you guys all trigger a social what the fuck? Exactly.
Speaker: All right. All right. Well, we got some good predictions. We're going to keep this under two hours. That's impressive. All right. I still have another segment after this, Jacob. Oh, you're not wrong. You're not wrong. Thanks for reminding me. Look, the people, they love content. That's true. That is true. You can't say we didn't provide enough content. Is it good content? It's content.
Speaker: Depending on how complex future arcs get, maybe we should split them into two episodes. This is a lot and I feel like we're going to have to start splitting things up. The arcs only get longer from here.
Speaker: It's just going to get to the point where it's like, Kat, tell Michael to tell Hannah, to tell Alan, to tell Jacob, to tell Taylor to play us out. All right. Hey, Nick, can you tell Kat to tell Michael to tell Hannah? Exactly. Michael's like, shut up!
Speaker: Yeah, we'll definitely keep that in mind moving forward. And for anyone who is listening and made it this far, congratulations. Thank you. We do really appreciate it. Please feel free to reach out to us. We'd love to hear from you and keep reading along with us. It's been a lot of fun. A lot of fun for the new readers. Us returning to it has been a lot of fun and we hope you're enjoying it as well.
Speaker: The tentative plan I think we'll say next episode is arc five, although based on just recent conversations, we might split that up. But think in terms of arc five for the next episode. And with that, we will say good night. And part two. Our podcast is available for viewers like you. Thank you. Play us out, Michael.
Speaker: All right, and welcome back to Episode 4, Part 2, where myself, Jacob, and Alan, and also Hannah today, going to be discussing how we would approach ARK 4, adapting it for television and film, screenplays, et cetera. So, guys and gals, let's get into it. How do we think
Speaker: What do we think of Ark 4 in terms of narrative beats and all of that jazz? I love Ark 4. I feel like we're really starting to get into some more meatiness of them as a group and how they coordinate together. In the bank heist, we saw that, but it was separated in the inside the bank and outside the bank. But I feel like Ark 4, we really see them struggling as a team.
Speaker: This is a really hard episode to write because there's so many things that I think need to be cut out or cannot be shown like in, you know, in certain ways. So writing for this is going to be like a really difficult to get around. Um, and at the same time, I think there's a lot that can be cut out here. Yeah. And who buddy am I here to fight Alan on every single possible thing he wants to cut? That's why I'm here today, ladies and gentlemen, to fight Alan.
Speaker: Yeah. So this is going to be fun. Uh, yeah, a lot, a lot to look over here. There's some important stuff in arc four for sure that we want to make sure we get in, but, uh, definitely, definitely stuff to talk through. Cause I, I don't feel like there's enough in the arc to justify an entire episode or even like half an episode. Um, but there's still some things we don't, we definitely want to make sure we get in that are important. Yeah. I think we, if we combine it, we talked about adding in the, uh,
Speaker: the interlude from last episode with the awards, having their talks, that is 15 pages of dialogue right there. So I feel like that, having that at the beginning would boost the rest of this to a full episode. And truthfully, there are two ways we could go about this. One,
Speaker: which I know Hannah is on here just because she has contentions with one is we cut out the whole bakuta thing. Um, I don't think it needs to be there, but we'll get to that. You cut that out. You leave it essentially with just them having their, their talks as the back half of the episode and the front half being, uh, just the, uh, the, the wards, the other option.
Speaker: is that you add more to Bakuta and you make it a full -on fight bank heist style where like it went for a bit and you make it its whole lone episode of them being like, end one episode with like, oh, Rachel's missing. We got to track her down and start the next episode with, oh my gosh, it's, you know, these two goobers only to reveal, oh, it's Bakuta and she's insane.
Speaker: Yeah, it's tricky. I definitely don't want to cut Bakuta because it leads to Taylor getting injured and the recovery. And I love the scene at the end of the arc with her, Brian, Lisa and her dad. I think that's a really nice little scene. So I wouldn't want to cut it, but it is pacing wise. It is a bit jarring to go from the bank heist, which is a really fun action scene.
Speaker: to a little bit of a break and then back into a chaotic action scene all within an episode or so, depending on how we split it. Another option is just keeping it but really condensing it. So keeping the scene but maybe cutting out a lot of the elements of the fight itself, maybe cutting out the chase that's built in there and having a much shorter confrontation but still having the same results.
Speaker: Yeah, my biggest issue with, Alan and I were talking about this earlier, but my biggest issue with cutting out the bakuta fight is not so much of like, oh no, now Taylor doesn't have her big head injury and the whole interaction with that and taking her home or whatever. But it's more of just like, there's a bunch of little pieces
Speaker: in this fight scene that I think are really important, like a bunch of little details that are important to keep. So something, and Alan, you can please jump in on this whenever, because we were talking about this before, but kind of the idea of like, okay, well, if we did, if the Bakuta scene or the Bakuta scene was cut and kind of mashed in with the end of the bank heist, and we kind of like combined the two in a way to still get
Speaker: you know, Taylor's concussion or whatever. I think there's some really important things in that scene in the in the evocative fight scene that we have to like we have to be in there. So something I was thinking of specifically is like there's a little moment where there's an explosion that goes off and Gru protects Tattletail. He kind of throws his body over her and right afterwards he kind of turns looks directly at Taylor and says
Speaker: you know, explains like, well, Tattletail's costume isn't built to protect her against heavy hits. And in a way, he's explaining her costume, so we're getting a little bit of an insight into Tattletail's getup. But also, he's like, not comforting, but he's like saying, Taylor, don't be jealous, don't worry. Like, I'm just protecting Lisa, don't think something's going on here. But like, that insight, that quick little thing, we see Brian's
Speaker: instinctual defense of Lisa. We see him kind of explain a little bit about her costume and we see a little insight into like maybe how he wants Taylor to perceive him. So like don't think that I'm flirting with her or whatever by protecting her from this bomb blast. So like it's such a small little thing.
Speaker: but something like that, which, I mean, yeah, I guess you could move it to the bank heist, but Brian and Lisa don't fight together in the bank heist. So there's no purpose of him to do that. And there's a bunch of other little things, which I'm sure I'll get into and argue all of them, but like a bunch of little moments like that that happen in this whole fight sequence that I think if we cut, we're gonna lose.
Speaker: I don't think there's much here that warrants like the, even the, the, the outfit thing, they talk about the outfits and how Taylor's is like way better than all of theirs earlier on. Like this shows it, but they already talked about it. Like I, and while it is a cool, like, Oh, look at him trying to defend like, Hey Taylor, don't be jealous. Like,
Speaker: Uh, we, we kind of have the hint that Brian is already interested in Taylor. Like that that's already the case. Like I don't think anybody's under the impression that Taylor and Brian are like Brian and Lisa are even a thing. So like, I don't think any of this adds enough to warrant, like it's already been said elsewhere. We can scrap it. I.
Speaker: Understand where that's coming from. But I still think that this is just one of many small moments within this fight scene that if we're going to cut, then we need to replace somewhere else. Basically. Yeah. Yeah. Like this is a perfect time to, to make like, to show what bitch is up to. Honestly, if we were talking about, cause we'd, you know, one of my favorite interludes for talking about how wild though is great at writing.
Speaker: point of view is the Brutus interlude. It's so good. And unfortunately it's, that's going to be the one that's on the chopping block immediately. Cause it's just, it doesn't really add anything if you have it. So like it's so separate and it's really cool, but it's not enough. However, as I'm looking at the layout of these, like that would actually be a perfect time. We talked about, you know,
Speaker: before about having like, what, what does Rachel do all day? Cause she can't hang out with everybody. Um, what does she do all day? That's kind of a perfect decide of like, Hey, where's bitch? I don't know where she is. Maybe just don't talk about like the missing money. You just lead into a quick little bitches out and about, you know, fucking around doing stuff comes back. Okay. It doesn't ever get, you know, caught up with bakuta, maybe
Speaker: Bakuta just starts blowing up shit because she's insane. Um, and that kicks off the city, you know, that that's a perfect time of you've had this happy episode, you know, entirety of one and two basically is, uh, a teenage, like everything's going perfectly. We get kind of a dip in like trigger events, which we'll talk about how we deal with those in a second. But ultimately.
Speaker: Um, you know, it's a bunch of teenagers hanging out and having a good time until all of a sudden where the hell is Rachel? And then you have this whole dealing with bakuta stuff. I think we could kind of mix all that and have a generally happy, everybody hangs out episode, maybe even some come to Jesus moments about the trigger events in the later half that helps them bond and then finish with like, uh, this would be a great finisher, uh, finish with.
Speaker: We, you know, where is bitch? And then bitch going out, hooking up, you know, the dog earlier, walking out, doing the whole, uh, rating the, I forget what fighting ring. Yeah. Yeah. The dog fighting ring thing. Um, and have her come out and like bomb go off nearby. Um, and bomb start going off to the city and everybody being like, what the hell just happened?
Speaker: Are you proposing then that like, okay, so we have the big bombs go off and then we don't talk about them engaging with the bombs at all? Well, no, cause it leads perfectly into the next arc, which is, Hey, Bakuta is unhinged. She is trying to get revenge for whoever put, you know, long behind bars, which is a perfect for like the undersiders now, but none of the other villains now. Uh,
Speaker: necessarily, like she's trying, she's out here, you know, just blowing up shit willy nilly. It's time for us to come together and put her down. Like that's still regardless of whether or not they are there during the inciting incident. Like, but Kuda was going to blow up the city anyway, but could have just also wanted to get Taylor. Like if you take Taylor out of it, but Kuda is still going to blow up the city. And the whole point being to get log out, like,
Speaker: And you could even have like all the bombs are going off. Hey, what the heck happened? Lisa just goes, oh, my gosh, it's an escape. And it's like for who? And then she looks at Taylor's like, guess who? Or she could I mean, she could genuinely be randomly caught in a blast and get genuinely taken to her dad's house. Like that is also an option. So basically play out the story that they tell Danny of like, oh, yeah, she got caught in the blast.
Speaker: And that's what's going on. And that's why she's here. That's why she has a concussion. Yeah. Yeah. And this is going to be... This is a great arc to sort of begin these conversations because Alan and I have joked in the previous episode so far that the way Wild Boat Wurm, the serialization of it, the nature of it, is very...
Speaker: It makes it very easy to adapt for television. It just sort of written that way. He writes for cliffhangers. He writes for moments like that. So that type of framing is already sort of built in. But it's also 1 .6 million words and 30 arcs that we have to condense. And another thing to consider too, that we have to keep in mind is that as an audience, if you're taking an audience that doesn't have any affiliation or knowledge of the source material and they're watching the show for the first time,
Speaker: Taylor's a fascinating character, really fun POV character, but you cannot devote even 90 % of the show to one character's point of view or you just fall into these sort of really long drawn out
Speaker: arcs that take forever to complete. People get bored. You want to see other characters. People are going to have other favorite characters. Most people's favorite characters in the show is not the protagonist. It's going to be some cool side character, someone in the background. The comparison I've been making as I've been rereading this is to just for both POV and it's a similar concept, but invincible.
Speaker: on Amazon Prime. Invincible is your protagonist there. And he's the majority of the POV, but he's not the only character that the show follows. There's a few other characters that you cut to conveniently in order to expand the world building, all this kind of stuff. And so I think we're definitely going to need some of that. I think having some sort of clip with Bitch is perfect for either her getting caught or the dog fighting, if you want to do it. I think you need something like that in here.
Speaker: The warden elude is great that's very helpful we already have that you could even do a couple quick clips of the cuda and the abb you know things like that so there's other ways we can sort of expand. And reinforce you know the ideas we wanna make sure get get. Translated from from the story to the.
Speaker: to the series. With Bakuta's fight, I think the two big things that we've already mentioned is one, she has personal beef with Taylor, which I think is important, especially because not to spoil anything, but obviously it's not the last we see of Bakuta. She comes back. We want to build to that confrontation.
Speaker: And then two, the bombs, right? So the terrorist attack, the freeing of lung, all that kind of stuff is pretty important narratively. It helps sort of set up the next couple arcs. So we definitely want to make sure we're including that to some degree. It doesn't have to be exactly a one for one copy. And I don't think it should be, but we definitely want to include it
Speaker: in some fashion. My unfortunate thing that I think we need to cut, at least for this part, maybe give them an appearance later, is Uber and Leet. That's what I was thinking. They feel really out of place. Yeah, I agree. They feel really out of place. I love them so much. They're some of my favorite characters in the story. They're such Twitch streaming and live streaming. These two would be on TikTok, 100%.
Speaker: Yeah. And, and they're just, yeah, I would hate to get rid of them, but yeah, like, like bakuta, you can throw bakuta into the next arc because you're, you're, everybody's fighting Lee or OD Lee and lung. So you've got one of his lieutenants there. Why not add bakuta? Like, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, there's definitely... And I think we're gonna have a fun time coming back to all of this after we've finished.
Speaker: like, you know, our theoretical season one or whatever that may be, and sort of restructuring elements. And kind of as we remind ourselves of the arcs as we're rereading them here, we might go, Oh, you know what? We could easily put Bakuta here or, you know, Oh, we could, we actually, we really should expand it here and instead cut stuff down the line. So it's going to be interesting to kind of come back and, and reorganize that. But I think you're right. I think, I think there's, we have a lot of, a lot to play with here and I think we can, we can structure,
Speaker: it in such a way that we don't miss a lot of the small things, but we may have to definitely move them around. Yeah. Um, even as like, I'm thinking about, we just had, uh, if we split arc three into two parts, we just had a big fight arc. Um, you know, this is our rest arc, if you will, ends with an explosion. Somebody's getting bombed.
Speaker: The next arc would be if we kept in bakuta and all bakuta episode, like we're having to deal with the entirety of the bomb threat thing or skip that. And the next episode is the villains meeting up saying, Hey, we need to kill them. And then them potentially going and attacking. Uh, and we can move. There's some school drama there, but
Speaker: You know, the next episode potentially could be straight into the, Hey, we're the villains. We all need to go take down the ABB. And when they're done with the ABB, you can move, uh, the episode after that has kind of some random bullshit of like finishing off the ABB, uh, and some mundane stuff. So you could move the, uh, some of the school stuff ahead of the big warehouse fight later on.
Speaker: where they finish up with the ABB. Yeah, and that's a good point. The school scene in particular is a great scene. I definitely wouldn't want to cut that, but that is one that could easily be moved and maybe would even fit better place ahead a little bit. Yeah, so that's definitely an option as well. Hannah, was there something else that we had mentioned cutting?
Speaker: I think I'm more on board with the idea of moving a lot of the bakuta conversation because I think, like I said before, I think there's a lot of little things in there. So one of those things is
Speaker: Tattletale catching on to Bakuta a little too late and like we've already seen at the bank heist She tells Taylor like don't tell the guys the other guys that I kind of messed up So we're seeing another mess up here from Lisa so like I think that that's important to keep To really show that like Lisa isn't you know, she's an all -powerful so I think that's important to keep so we can transition that to the next episode if we need to and
Speaker: in a bakuta scene. I think showing bakuta's unhingeness, of course we have to have that, but again we can move that. I think the
Speaker: kind of, I understand what, Alan, what you were saying before about kind of having this pendulum swing of like super high intense episode and then like a more chill episode. But honestly, that just makes me think of like having a beach episode in anime. Like it's too early for a beach episode. It's too early for a chill episode. Like we still need to have some high stakes going on. And I think that even if the high stakes are worst bitch at the end of the episode, I think that's not enough. And having some stuff in there
Speaker: still somehow I'm not quite sure we need to have. Also, the classic, you know, to me, one of the most important things regarding Taylor with this
Speaker: bakuta fight scene is when she calls her books to her, she gets knocked out, and they're trying to wake her up at this back alley doctor's office, and the room has been boarded up to keep her books out. I think that is an incredibly important detail about Taylor's powers that we have to keep early on, whether that's in this episode or in the next one or at the end of the bank heist, if she gets a concussion. I think it's incredibly important to show
Speaker: Um, uh, how do I say this? Not spoilers. Uh, giving some more, yes, absolutely. And her classification, you know? And, and that showing that like, there is, there is a deep connection that she has with her bugs that it's, she can, she can make a statement. She can pass out and they are still going to follow her, you know,
Speaker: her command, as it were, even if she's passed out cold. Yeah. It's a longer payoff, but that is definitely something that
Speaker: is sets of precedents for later on. Yes, definitely. And foreshadowing is important. You want to have that in early so that the payoff, however late it comes, feels earned. And that's one thing about any sort of story, but it's so true in television and film, is mysteries should not come out of left field to the audience. The audience should solve them.
Speaker: Because that one is more satisfying. Two, for the audience, it makes them feel rewarded for paying attention, even if it's really simple. Even if it's such an obvious foreshadow or an obvious plot point, when you solve that, it's just rewarding and feels good. So those little things are really, really important to start laying now so that when those payoffs do come,
Speaker: It hits, right? We want that to hit. Let me ask this to both of you because I think this would be fun. This is a quick kind of hypothetical. Hypothetically, let's move the bakuta fight forward an episode or two. And Michael, we're probably going to ask this question a lot. Would you mind just checking on the pronunciation? Because I don't know if I'm saying it right. I've been thinking the same thing. Is it bakuta or bakuta? Yeah, I don't know what it is. But we probably are going to have that question a lot.
Speaker: I know from some of the pronunciation guides, there are ones that like, dang, I've been saying that wrong this whole time. And there are others like a certain, uh, very French sounding name further on that. Yeah. But wild though has said the correct way to pronounce it and he's wrong.
Speaker: It's such a terrible alternative to what his name should be. And I hate it.
Speaker: Okay, before we tangent too hard because we could spend a long time there. So hypothetical, let's move Pukuda for this hypothetical forward in episode. So we have some time in episode four now to explore. If we want to keep sort of the pace moving so we don't slow down too hard, right? Is there a scene that isn't described in the book?
Speaker: Or an interlude or something like that that you would want to see expanded on that we could do in like a television episode. So for example, I'll give an example. One thing for example, we could do this if we wanted to, right? We could show
Speaker: Lung's escape, right? We could show them breaking him out. Do like, uh, you know, the scene that comes to mind is at the end of Daredevil season one, right? Breaking out of Kingpin. He's got his monologue. Great scene, right? Fantastic scene. We don't have to give Lung a monologue, but right, but we could still build tension, have some excitement built into a breakout or something like that, right? So is there something like that, another scene or a moment that you would want that we could expand on? I mean, I like the idea of
Speaker: Bakuta either taking hostage a like newsroom, you know, doing the whole, Hey, everybody here's rigged and that I'm broadcasting this everywhere kind of ordeal. Um, you know, Bakuta's got that joker unhinged mentality, uh, or just we as the audience see her being unhinged with a bunch of people.
Speaker: you know, strapped up with bombs and then, you know, all the city bombs going off and her being like, yeah, like go do my bidding now. And then they, you know, ambushed the truck that's taking him and, you know, it's a bunch of hostages, you know, holding guns and stuff, getting the guys in the truck to come out and they're all like, you know, I'm so sorry. Like she's making us do this, but also get on the ground. Otherwise we're all going to blow up. Um,
Speaker: And then of course she breaks lung out and lungs like, I've got a bone to pick with someone. Um, you know, don't say who and bakuta, you know, just the bombs are going off all over the city. Uh, at that point, I think that's, you know, great pan up to the city as things are on fire and just. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I do like the idea of showing, you know, more of all the bombs that are going off because then
Speaker: when Lisa tells Taylor's dad, Danny, later of like, oh, well, you saw the bombs going off, right? Well, yeah, we got caught in that. Like, yeah, these are everywhere. Like, they are going off all over the place. It's not just a couple spots here or there. It is a huge distraction. So I think potentially having more of that, I'd be cool with. I can't think of anything else specifically with this that comes to mind, although
Speaker: What Alan said earlier about having that bitch and, is it Brutus? Brutus, Brutus, yeah. It's so good, it's so good. I do really like that. I do want to, I think it's important to give each of the undersiders some moments. So I think that a scene for bitch would be great. Another thing we haven't talked about, but who does get an opportunity to really shine in the in the bakita fight is Regen.
Speaker: Right? We don't really see him. We see him shine a little bit in the in the bank heist, but not much. But he's got a lot of great moments in this fight that, you know, again, if we're going to move it or cut it or short it, we want to make sure we're not we're not forgetting about him because he's the type of character that's going to have fans as people are going to like all the all the undersiders are. So it's important that they all have moments that we can highlight, too.
Speaker: Yeah, it's the first time we see him overextend himself. Yes, that's what I was going to say. Because we're not really seeing what it looks like to exert your power to a point where it's causing you physical damage. Because even with the bank heist, you're seeing some of these crazy hero capes that are literally crushing themselves, flying into pavement and whatnot, and getting back up and sort of
Speaker: being fine. But with him, we really see that this is what it looks like for him specifically to overexert and how that can have a huge kickback. Right. Yeah, completely agree.
Speaker: Also, real quick for a pronunciation, I found this thing that's talking about bakuta and it's the feminized bastardization of the Japanese word bomb bakudan, which makes me think it's bakuta.
Speaker: Yep. Correct. Oh, interesting. Correct. I was going to chime in. Yeah. Yeah. So it's that emphasis on the bar. Yeah. And then Kuda. Yeah, exactly. The back with the back Kuda. We'll just short it to Baca. No, no.
Speaker: And that I do love the thought that Wild Bo puts into all of his names. Even when they're silly, there's still something there. I love it. Okay, good to know. I mean, I love the mundane moments of Danny and the undersiders, but I feel like that's another thing that given the dangers that happen and the stuff that happens, I feel like that could get moved to somewhere else.
Speaker: You're killing me. You are killing me. I don't want to get rid of it. I'm just saying that maybe it moves to somewhere else. Okay, so while I definitely say we can't get rid of it, my argument against moving it is thinking about pacing and the overall pacing of where Taylor and her dad's relationship is or is moving to. We have very much the beginning. They are not talking. They are not communicating.
Speaker: to, okay, she's with the undersiders. She's communicating more now. She's opening up a little bit. She seems happier. He's recognizing it, but clearly she's holding back. This moment of them, you know, he's making her, you know, bagels and they're all sitting on the couch and he's met the undersiders now. There is such a moment of like shared, shared understanding maybe of like Taylor and Danny are getting a little bit closer in this moment.
Speaker: where Taylor has, not on purpose obviously, because she was passed out and concussed, but has let Dani into part of her world a little bit, which he has felt so much on the outside of that this is in a way starting to repair the damage that has been between them for so long. And I think it's a good place to have it, to have this kind of point where maybe Dani is feeling like, you know, obviously this is a terrible thing that happened to Taylor,
Speaker: we are repairing things slowly. She's letting me back in. I'm seeing part of her world again. Only to have whatever might happen in the future happen. I'm trying not to spoil, but I think it's a good location to give us a little bit of hope that Taylor and Danny might be repairing a relationship here. Yeah. I feel like you're still coming at this from a reader perspective than a writer perspective. I'm coming at it more as a
Speaker: as a viewer being emotionally invested in the relationships that's happening here. So this is, I still think making this the beach episode, if you want to call it that works is kind of a through line leading up and finishing with that as a good conclusion that still has this like
Speaker: uh, the coming of age movie, if you want it to be that, um, you know, uh, Taylor has a great day, um, hangs out with the friends, maybe talks trigger events, has that bonding moment somehow, uh, where they don't necessarily tell their trigger events or maybe she does. And we get to like them just talking about it and enjoying themselves. You know, we maybe even cut to,
Speaker: bitch in between where bitch goes out for the day, bitch does her thing, cut back and then be like, wait, Oh, where's bitch? And I'd be like, Oh, bitch, like always doing
Speaker: Uh, you know, her thing over like, yeah, she walks around the docs and they like gesture that way. And that's when you have the bombs go off, like literally pointing like, Oh yeah, she hangs out like over there, walking the dogs around the docs. Bombs go off right where they're pointing. And then they get up and start to move and are like, Oh my God. And then a bomb goes off on the dock. They start waking up on the beach. Taylor got the brunt of it. Um, somehow like.
Speaker: You don't have to explain exactly how, but Taylor got the brunt of the bomb. And they wake up, they're hauling her somewhere. And then they end up at the house. So just cutting the confrontation with Bakuta all together and just - Yeah, because then you get them - But we're still talking about moving it, right?
Speaker: Yeah. So talking about moving it up to the next one where they're just fighting all of the ABB at once. Right. Right. I see what you're saying. But in this case, it's the group is still together. They're still helping her out. It's them being together, going to her house and like setting her down and having the conversation with Danny like and him being there. So you still keep that through line of opening up.
Speaker: Danny has now met her friends. The friends have met her dad. They've talked trigger story, you know, now, uh, I think this is a good, very, like even at the end where they're blown up, they're all dragging pork and cuss Taylor home. It's still that the group is still together. Like it's still a feel good. And at the end of it, you know, that's your feel good episode to wake up to the next episode being like, Hey,
Speaker: what the heck's going on or even end that episode with like them feeling good. And then the pre credit right at the end is lung getting broken out of the, uh, the armored car and him being like, I've got a bone to pick with one person in particular.
Speaker: You could even, you know, it would be fun if you want to play it that way is you could be cutting throughout the episode, maybe once or twice to Bakita and her group. Maybe you throw an Uber and lead for some fanservice planning this break out. Uber and lead as fanservice. God bless Jesus. That is literally what they are. But you could be cutting to them.
Speaker: like coordinating or doing this breakout, but not really keying the audience into exactly what they're doing. Like maybe you make it look like it's a robbery, right? Like they're following an armored car around, something like that. And you're cutting back and forth so that at the end of the episode, when they're... Because I think in the actual arc in the chapter, right? It's a news broadcast, right? Where they say... Yeah. I mean, we can change it up to a Twitch stream.
Speaker: You could actually, that's not a bad idea actually. And that's, oh, okay. I like that actually. It kind of keeps us away from that like cliched news stream too. I mean, now we are literally moving to the cliched Twitch stream, which is what we do nowadays. See the new Batman movie.
Speaker: But either way, or you know what, you can even combine it. You can even combine it. So like you do, you do them. They're relaxing. They're having fun. You get the nice moment of them at home. They turn on the TV and it's the news or something like that. And the broadcaster says then we cut to the stream of Uber and leet.
Speaker: live, yada, yada. And then now the camera, the point of view can cut from inside the house to the actual breakout. And you can watch now and then you get the payoff of seeing, Oh, what was Bakita and her gang doing that whole time? Oh, it was breaking lung out. And so you get the reveal of lung at the end, you get a little bit extra stuff with Bakita, so that feels earned. And then you can even cut back into the room for a final reaction before the episode ends.
Speaker: uh, you know, sort of bring that all. So you still have a little bit of a, of a teaser or a tag at the end. Yeah. Yeah. Don't mind that. Um, I do like cutting to the super elite stream though. That would be really funny. I like them. I think that there's such a fun couple of characters that are of course relevant to the nerdy community today, but man, I just don't see them being
Speaker: Important enough to keep in a lot of this like oh certainly not and I mean there's other ways of course again There's like 500 characters in this story But they could have I mean obviously you can have them playing on a TV screen in the background You could have a poster up you could have a reference to the stream You know you could put you we can drop Easter eggs throughout the story and other and other parts where we're fans of
Speaker: you know, cereal can can point, you know, and say there they are. But, yeah, no, I mean, obviously we're going to have to we're going to have to trim or cut a lot of characters. And they are there on that chopping block for sure. Yeah. And then I think you move you move the the purity episode. Oh, yeah, I think the opener of the next episode has to be moved. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, honestly, but yeah, that was pretty OK. Skipping it almost. I am too.
Speaker: I just, I mean, I think it's definitely, you know, interesting is a little bit of a, you know, peek into the leader, but I just, it's, to me, it doesn't, I don't feel like it offers the same amount of insight
Speaker: Yeah. The only thing that I like that it does, and this is, I'm going to stay as vague as possible here. The only thing that I like that it does is that at this moment, we don't know who's bankrolling the undersiders. And there's several options. There's several options. And I like the idea of introducing a few of these options, which we have been doing, just to sort of keep everyone guessing. And that interlude does a great job of that.
Speaker: That's true. And you don't have to do the whole interlude because I agree. I don't think it really works to do that whole story with purity and all of that. But even just having a moment or something like that, that we could cut to maybe reward it a bit. We should definitely play around with that.
Speaker: Oh, I have a thought. I have a thought. I have a thought. Okay. Okay. So what if we did like in this moment when we're at the end, where we're showing the bombs going off, we're showing, you know, a kind of shocked Danny and grim undersiders on the couch. We're, you know, swapping back and forth. We're showing, we're realizing, Oh my God, long is out, you know, tail, you know, they're all sitting there and they're like, what's going on? You know, Lisa's like, Oh my God, they're letting me out blah, blah, blah. We have a moment.
Speaker: up in this skyscraper overlooking the city of the sky standing at a window.
Speaker: and kind of like we have a slow pan out and he turns and is it purity or unity? I can never remember. Purity is kind of there glowing beside him and he like gives her this look and they don't even have to talk. It's just kind of, oh, who's this person? Who's this person looking down? Who's this glowing person? Okay.
Speaker: Who are you? And so we have an understanding of like, who's this glowing person? Who is this scary man up in the building overlooking the city? Who's clearly in a position of power, like having these characters potentially in a place where we recognize them when we see them again later and, you know, bring that up a little bit more. I, with the conspiracy theory of like, who is the employer? I think the way that you word
Speaker: Uh, the conversation between the two, they had it. You could very make it much, make it sound like how the undersiders have been put together. Um, and allude that max is in fact, the one who's done this, um, also for future future seasons. This is a little bit of an important show of Theo.
Speaker: Yes. But, but. Theo does get important stuff later on for what we would consider season two. Theo does get enough FaceTime there that this would be just kind of a tease. So we really don't even need.
Speaker: I mean, heck, if we're gonna condense it to a tease, we could put Theo up there too. How spoilery are we getting, you guys? How spoilery is this getting? We're not, you know what? We're fine. We're fine. No one has to, if they Google stuff, if anyone who doesn't know them, they're gonna Google, that's on them. Also, what did I say? Theo is important. Okay. Yeah, he's a character.
Speaker: So all of them are important, except apparently Uber and lead. That is true. They're just beloved. Yeah. But I mean, you could even put you could even put Theo in the penthouse with them. You could have him in the background. You know, if you if you wanted to restructure this. Condense it. But yeah, I mean, there is a small bit later that I think also we can cut out because, yeah, that also involves purity.
Speaker: But I'll be honest, I glaze over every time I read. So that's probably an indication that in the future, it's gonna get cut.
Speaker: Fair enough. Fair enough. We'll definitely reach there. I think we're getting a little long on time. So let's touch on probably the last important thing in this arc that we haven't really mentioned, but I think is worth some discussion, which is the discussion they have about their trigger events, which is a great bit of writing when you're reading it as a reader, but is a bit difficult to convey visually.
Speaker: but it's still really important. So we definitely don't want to cut it. I feel like. Yeah. Yeah. Alan and I was one of the things we had talked about earlier. Alan actually had a great idea for this. Go ahead. Go out. Oh, well, you know, I had the idea of all the, I'm not even sure I'm going to be talking about the same one, but I would love for this to be just a very, for any time we talk about trigger events, a 15 second, very dark clip.
Speaker: You're very horror movie ask. Um, yeah, flashback and not even necessarily exactly what happened. Like the literal, this is what happened back in time, but maybe a more metaphorical. So for Taylor, she's in a hallway full of people that she gets shoved into this locker. It's terrible. Um, she's trying to get out. Um, I think we go a metaphorical route.
Speaker: dark hallway panning towards the locker that's getting banged on the flickering lights, you know, the bugs, the blood, all that. Um, and that's it. That's all you have. And, uh, Jacob, you shared it with me, a lovely worm artist. Uh, YouTube channels called adaptation VFX literally has that scene. Uh, but in the daytime, still very horrific. Um, yeah. Called the locker, a worm animated short.
Speaker: Um, but I think as we talk about the extra stuff that happens during trigger events, uh, there's a debate whether we put that now or whether we put that later. Yeah. I, I really love that, that, that video. I think it's, I think it literally shot for shot is.
Speaker: Perfect. I think it could be short a little bit, but that slow pan towards the locker, her banging on it, the flicker of, you know, between the outside view and the inside view, the closeup of the bugs, the claustrophobic -ness of that moment. It doesn't have to be long. Literally, like Alan said, 15 seconds. Keep it super, super short. Keep it super sweet, amazingly. And just have a little, little, you know,
Speaker: moment where, you know, even for the script, have Taylor be talking about it and, you know, and then have a moment where we have that back. She's back in the locker and she's almost reliving it again. And kind of that moment where she like, we have this, you know, the breathing, the heartbeat and everything's freaking out and then cold cut to like her back in that burger joint again. And she kind of glances up and she's like,
Speaker: Yeah, it wasn't my best day and kind of have this kind of like, we don't need to spend a ton of time in it. We don't necessarily even need, you know, her voiceover explaining while it's happening. She can just say like, there was some really bad bullies. They put me in a locker full of old tampons and there were bugs in there. We have the weird little flashback moment cut back to her. She kind of snaps out of it and then kind of have that conversation settle back into the moment there. Yeah. Yeah. There's a, um,
Speaker: Just to touch on what Alan was saying briefly there, too, I don't think we need to include much more right now, but I do think this warrants a conversation at a later point. Again, not not to get into spoilers. We're not going to do any of that here, but there's certainly there's a lot of exposition that'll come in later seasons. And, you know, I think it would be prudent to foreshadow or tease that to some degree, but
Speaker: but probably not yet would be my line of thinking. Keep some of that in the dark. Keep some of that suspense going. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and then it makes it hard when writing this, uh, because you know, how, how do you show it off? Do you have it be all flashback? Do you have it, you know, be voiceover in flashback? Do you have it be, uh, you know, just them talking about it, you know, monologuing? Um,
Speaker: And, and then to have like one after the other, cause you have Brian's immediately following feels a bit awkward as well when you just had that tense moment. Um, and I don't know if you would even have Brian's cause I know what I want Brian's to be. Um, so it talked about it. It's him just rushing out of the cab, picking up his sister, putting her in the cab, turning around his mom's boyfriend's there and he, you know,
Speaker: does the Henry Cavill shotgun hands reload. I love it. And that's it. 10 seconds in and out.
Speaker: I also think we can also save some of these individual flashbacks for later points, right? Yes. I think Brian's could be saved. Brian's could be saved. I think Regent's could be saved for his interlude, which I think would be a really great time for that. Yeah, so again, we don't have to put it all right here where it is in the arc as well. We could definitely space that out. I think it would work too.
Speaker: All right. Any other final thoughts before we wrap it up? I think we're good. Something I was thinking of, and I'm sorry, this is just something I've been saying in my head. Alan, I've been watching a thing recently about how sound and music can help break the tension of a moment and it can help
Speaker: Um, make the audience feel a little bit more, uh, comforted or in like a horror movie, you know, a raise, raise the. The tension of the, you know, impending scary clown. Oh, it was a, by your recommendation, Jacob, I was the captain Christian.
Speaker: Uh, video on studio, Ghibli and sound. Yes. It was so good. And it just makes me think about that with these trigger events that like in, in that video, they talk about how the Japanese version of the film versus the American version of the film and the Japanese version, you hear the feet running, you hear the kind of ambient sound, but there's no music. It's just holding the tension and it is an uncomfortably long silence.
Speaker: silent section. But in the American version, they added music to kind of cut the tension or, I don't know, add the tension. And the reasoning was because American audiences felt uncomfortable not having music there. And I think that with these trigger events, you should be uncomfortable. You should be incredibly uncomfortable. And I think that if we utilize that in this section specifically,
Speaker: not using, you know, I don't know, tragic music or, you know, panicked music, but the, just the overwhelming sound of the heartbeat, the breathing, the bugs and that, that, that over until it, until it completely overwhelms your, your senses. And I, I love the thought of that. And I think that's also something that could be carried through the show in a lot of places like don't,
Speaker: make the audience feel comfortable by adding music or don't make the audience feel comfortable by adding a cut too soon, you know, draw it out, let, let us sit and feel it. Absolutely agree. Yeah. Yeah. Great thoughts. Great thoughts. Definitely gives us a lot to work with as we try to put these thoughts to paper here as a construct this thing, but it's literally starting to write that section right now. So I've got to figure that out. Perfect. Perfect.
Speaker: All right, well, thanks, guys. This has been great. Thanks, Michael, for keeping us on track. And thanks for everyone for listening, whoever is listening. We appreciate it. And if you want to continue listening, we're going to be picking up in the next episode with Arc 5. So go ahead and give that a read, plus the interludes. We'll be discussing that in greater detail. And until then, we'll see you next time.
Speaker: Thank you so much for listening. Read along with us at parahumans .wordpress .com. We'd love to hear your thoughts. What did you love? What did you hate? Anything you think we missed, et cetera, as long as it's kind. If you'd like to get in touch, you can find us on Twitter, threads, Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit, at Brockton Bay, BC, or click the link in the description.
