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BBBC Reads Ward - Episode 7
106 Plays6 days ago
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. Complete list of potential triggers: here
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The Brockton Bay Book Club discusses J.C. McCrae's Ward live! The gang reads a portion of Ward and comes together to share our thoughts with each other and anyone who want's to participate.
This week we cover Arc 5 (Shadow)!
Read along here
Play along with this week's BBBC BINGO while you listen!
Support us and connect with us @brocktonbaybc
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Transcript
Team Name Debate
00:02:46
Speaker
And we are live. Welcome back, everybody.
00:02:52
Speaker
good evening, Mega City. It's a throwdown showdown in the woods. The Fallen versus these assholes. Who will win tonight on the Brockton Bay Book Club?
00:03:10
Speaker
So is team the assholes? Yeah, I thought the following would have been. Yeah, who are the assholes in this scenario? Just villains? It's interesting that you identified as, you know, the asshole in that situation. i was just going to say that's the hollow low point, you know, people.
00:03:27
Speaker
There's a lot of people here, okay? Look, it's not just Hollow Point. It's also our team. It's also some extra people that show up. We don't have a name yet!
00:03:38
Speaker
We're the Brockton Bay Book Club! No, no, not... Oh my god. Not us, you goofball. We're all definitely assholes. that's our Victoria's team. Oh, ah the the therapy group.
00:03:50
Speaker
We don't have a name yet! That's what I'm saying. It's our team. the the Like, come on. ah This hollow point. It's like other people. the undersiders are also there. They're not all assholes.
00:04:05
Speaker
um Night, I am drinking what I am affectionately referring to as a love lost.
Drink Discussions and Introductions
00:04:10
Speaker
It is a dark plum ah cherry, I believe. Juice mixed with Jameson.
00:04:17
Speaker
It tastes pretty good. Have we already done that? Like, that which ah drink for each cake? we We posted that a long time ago. Back when we were allowed to post in the... In the Reddit? In the wild books. Yeah, we're not allowed to be there anymore. No idea why. Yeah, they really don't like us.
00:04:38
Speaker
um And then... someone knows why, please let us know. Yeah. ah We'd love to go back there. Yeah, I'd love to post there. um I should ask the Tumblr. the say tumblr likes this Yes, Brockton Bay Drink Club.
00:04:52
Speaker
um We were actually pitching that ah idea around for some Patreon content that we all show up with our our worm-themed ah cocktails that we've mixed up. And then maybe we have some patrons submitted ones as well. That would be fun. taste that's good i'm I'm currently drinking ah Dark Introspection, which is a black coffee with a little salt.
Ward Book Club Introduction
00:05:14
Speaker
guess Solid. that absolutely Who's the most boring person who's water? ah Look.
00:05:25
Speaker
Hydration is tea and water. No, no, no. Not of us. of in In the worm universe, who can be the water? Yeah, I was thinking. Who's water? Mr. Gladly is lukewarm tap water.
00:05:39
Speaker
There we go. Lukewarm tap water? From your grandparents' house, so it has a taste to it. Out of the hose. They didn't rinse out the glass first. so they Out of the hose. No. Yeah.
00:05:52
Speaker
That was water? Oh, man.
00:05:56
Speaker
oh man um Red wine is Miss Yamada. Classy. classy yeah and you know The red wine to go with her pizza. Yeah.
00:06:09
Speaker
This is literally grocery store wine. That counts. Are you talking about my Stella Rosa? mean, yeah, it's still grocery store wine. It's dessert wine and it's amazing. It's the best wine. It's also not the best thing you can get for eight. Let's introduce ourselves. Eight.
00:06:28
Speaker
You know what? Thank Who the fuck are we? Who are you? Welcome, welcome. Good evening, those of you in chat. I know most of you are returners, but just so we get this for all of you newcomers, I am your host, Alan.
00:06:44
Speaker
Here we have Hannah. Hi. It's
00:06:49
Speaker
Did you call me? i didn't hear you. Yep. There we go, Jacob. Nick. Hello there. And of course, our producer, Michael.
00:07:00
Speaker
Hello. Welcome, everybody. Michael, there we go. Because we will have audio listeners, too. Not just... We always do. And we appreciate you audio listeners, because we do y'all are holding down the fort for our streaming sites. I myself am an audio listener after the fact, so...
00:07:19
Speaker
Uh, for those of you don't know, this is the Brockton Bay book club where we go, arc by arc or sometimes part of an arc at a time through, ah currently ward by wild bow.
00:07:30
Speaker
And we, you know, give our thoughts on the chapters. It is a book club that, um, you know, everybody else gets to participate in that as well. Uh, As always, watch the spoilers in chat.
00:07:42
Speaker
ah TT's in chat if we get spoilers so we can just edge that right out. And don't forget, if you do want to talk spoilers, there's a place to go talk about that in our Patreon Discord.
00:07:54
Speaker
you For as little as $1 a month, you could be a patron and get exclusive content that we are currently working on more of, ah but also access to the Ward Spoilers channel. um In that Spoilers channel, you can also submit for bingo every week.
00:08:08
Speaker
um And there is a link in the description so we can play some bingo ah while you're listening along. And of course, we love our patrons and trying to come up with more Patreon content for you as we speak. The drink idea, think, is a really
Drinking Games and Storytelling
00:08:28
Speaker
good one. Well, we're going to do some games coming up pretty soon. So stay tuned to the end. We'll talk about that.
00:08:35
Speaker
Yes, yes, we'll talk about that. Yes, ah in a former life, we definitely did a a drinking game. If anybody's played the Red Dragon Inn where we came up with a list of drinks for every single drink in that game and expanded universe.
00:08:50
Speaker
I imagine Leviathan as seawater ah would definitely fit in that disgusting category. It was bad time. you know Spoilers. It's a bad time to play Red Dragon Inn with real actual drink drinks.
00:09:05
Speaker
Because we did use the Four Loko for something. was I think it was Gnome. Dirty Dishwater. No, Dirty Dishwater was like... Dirty Dishwater was lemon water. lemon That's right.
00:09:16
Speaker
Well, you know, your girl... yeah was so sick. I sat next to Michael during that game. was a bad time. I was trying to give her a lot of water. She's a big lightweight and it was really cute. And she was very, very warm as well at the time. It was just a bad time for Hannah. But it was great for me. I was just like dying.
00:09:38
Speaker
I loved it. We also, we were on vacation and we chose to play at like 10.30 in the morning or something ridiculous like that. Yeah, it was like 10 in the morning and was crashed out and then someone was like, okay, let's have an edible.
00:09:52
Speaker
And it just, no, that whole day was a wash. It was a time. It was a time. a great day. Speaking of...
00:09:59
Speaker
It was a blast. I love how we all have our individual little drinky drinks that are going on here right now as well. um Anyway, we are reading for this week. We have read second half of arc five. It was a long one, so we split it up. We read 5.7 to five point y to the end of the arc.
00:10:21
Speaker
um It is about exactly, believe it's like 53,000 words exactly, you know, almost the exact same as the first half. um And a lot goes on.
00:10:32
Speaker
So... oh yeah yeah oh Opening thoughts on this. Just overall vibes. What are you feeling? Stuff is happening. Holy shit!
00:10:45
Speaker
Thank God. I can't remember who said of it, but one of our patrons said it. I think it might have been... I don't know who it was. One of our patrons said it, that like at ARC 5, that's when things pick up.
00:10:55
Speaker
like That's when they were like, oh... Shit, I'm here for it now. ah Yeah, no, shit, I'm here for it now. Let's... oh Yeah. hu What a time.
00:11:08
Speaker
Yeah, there were there were like two or three moments that would have been the moment of an arc. And I feel like we just breezed through oh yeah well all three of them. a lot Yeah.
00:11:22
Speaker
Good time.
00:11:25
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, theres there's so much going on in this one. It definitely is now.
Character Surprises and Developments
00:11:29
Speaker
This feels more like Wyrm, right, where so much is happening all at once. And that's great in the sense that I do feel like things are happening.
00:11:36
Speaker
um I tried to take more specific notes on this arc, the second half of the arc, because I felt like there's just a lot and I don't want to miss the little the little things. you know There's so much in there that um is worth bringing up and talking about that I...
00:11:52
Speaker
Yeah, i I like it. It's good. it It was fun. The interludes were great here too. I really appreciated those. Yeah, as always. We'll get to those later. the we Yeah, the fight between villains was so interesting.
00:12:06
Speaker
Twists, turns, betrayals. ah so many So many good moments. Surprises. It was good. Yeah, for me, i think one thing that i that kind of finally clicked for Ward now is something that...
00:12:19
Speaker
brought me into Wild Bo's writing in Wyrm initially, or especially early Wyrm. Later Wyrm, not so much, and then Ward, not really until this arc. But like the way Wild Bo constructs fight scenes, we've we've talked about how how great his action writing is in the past.
00:12:35
Speaker
And I think so much of what makes it great is he does a really good job of ah using action scenes as storytelling devices, not just... And now there's an action scene, but like especially early Wyrm, all of the action moments...
00:12:52
Speaker
progress the story or advance character or things like that. He does that very well. And then like later Worm, not quite as much until we get to the end, of course. And then I think in Ward, I think that's really what was hampering some of those early conflicts for me is that those fights just didn't feel...
00:13:09
Speaker
impactful enough in the story. And now this one definitely did. Like this whole obviously gave a ton of time for it, but like it felt like I was back in early worm days where the action was really progressing.
00:13:23
Speaker
Not just the story, but the characters themselves, which felt really good. It was like, oh yeah, that's I read like the last four chapters yeah yesterday, just going through them. It was a good time.
00:13:38
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it was good. It was one of those two where i ended up um forgetting to read until just a few days ago. And so I picked it up though, but it it was one of those where I was like, I just really want to keep reading and finding out what happens next.
00:13:55
Speaker
So yeah ah that that felt good. Well, yeah I'll be the contrarian. I actually did not, especially the last couple of chapters. I was not a fan. I kind of skimmed through the fights because I find them kind of boring. oh There he right on to how No account for class, you know.
00:14:14
Speaker
and i' say I really enjoy that stuff is happening now. um Is that a buck? That's got to be the free square on the bingo card. yeah And you know what? i know what Alan hates everything.
00:14:25
Speaker
but that You know what? I will say, i don't remember Rain being this much of a badass. Rain was holding his own. the rain turned out. I will say, I got that part and I was like, did I misread that?
00:14:40
Speaker
No? No, even he done did it. Boy's cold-blooded. Cold blooded. And as a reminder, I don't read these. So I'm just neutral here.
00:14:51
Speaker
So I'm here completely on vibes. I'm here to make sure this show. might will ask michael We might ask Michael to Google something or Alan to Google something. We've all got that dog in us, know?
00:15:03
Speaker
isn't involved we've we've all got our we've all got that dog in us you know and And Michael is the dog whisperer. You know, he's got to he's got to keep us in line. Got to give that little, you know, make sure we're all behaving.
00:15:15
Speaker
Y'all got the little bastard inside of us, so to speak. Yeah, exactly. You know, someone's got that Brutus, you know.
00:15:25
Speaker
and All right. Yes, my Angelica.
00:15:30
Speaker
All right. Well, let's get into this. Five and points. Shall we? Let's do it. So 5.7, uh, hollow versus fallen with the heroes caught in the middle. Well, periphery in the midst of the reunion, they find out that guns are a thing now.
00:15:46
Speaker
Um, and then a couple of notes from me, just a couple of scenes. I wanted to highlight Victoria at the coffee shop and costume at the beginning. I liked that scene. Uh, Victoria chats with Jasper and Gil Patrick, which was a nice little reunion scene.
00:16:03
Speaker
And then meeting up with the Wardens, including Vista. So all of these were like these were like little highlights for me of like, this is yeah this is what I like about it, getting to see these characters again.
00:16:16
Speaker
um Also, there's a we'll get into this in 5.8 more, but it is funny to me that 5.7 ends on what's the shocking thing to get you to read 5.8?
00:16:29
Speaker
They have guns. It's like, yeah wait a second. Miss Militia was a thing, right? Well, I mean, she even mentioned that. Yeah, we'll get to that in 5.8. We'll get into that in 5.8. So we'll save that for that that section because that's one of the bigger parts of that. But it is a funny part. like
Cultural Norms and Interactions
00:16:48
Speaker
i I read that and i was like,
00:16:50
Speaker
they have yeah they're expecting a war of course they have guns like yeah you know also I know no offense to any of my fellow southerners but the fall under like the worst stereotype for rednecks of course they have guns yeah right this almost feels like it was written by somebody who's not from the northern you know North America or like You know, we all have guns here, right? Like, when you come out in Texas, they give you a horsey ride and like a gun license. That's like the first thing they do when they slap you on the butt when you're born. A horsey ride, hat, and a little.22. Yeah, and carry license. Here you Yeah.
00:17:33
Speaker
yeah yeah and a carry license here you go yeah Yep, yep. Actually, on the way back home from work, I'm pretty sure sure I passed like three different signs advertising three different gun shows in the area, so.
00:17:48
Speaker
Oh, yeah. yeah I did a quote the other day, and both the guy and his brother showed me around with like the gun just not even tucked in the belt, like in a clip outside of their pants. Yeah.
00:17:58
Speaker
was like, ah. i Welcome to the South. not forget Like, Wild Bo is also very aware of this. He gave us, ah is his name Colt, the cape from Texas, who is a bulldog? yeah Yeah. yeah that isn't Young Buck. yeah or Young Buck. thank young but young like you There's a whole section of like the southern capes that all have like that yeah but i'll have that like aesthetic. um Absolutely. 5.8 because Victoria more thoughts there.
00:18:28
Speaker
But for 5.7, I did like we'll get to the gun thing more with five point eight because victoria has more thoughts there but for five point seven i did like I like Victoria's, um I don't want to call it grandstanding, but it's kind of like oh showing off in a way of like, I'm a cape, I'm here.
00:18:47
Speaker
And her enjoying that in a bit, I think, or enjoying that a bit, right? Like we had Taylor who had the reputation of this warlord villain, but she never enjoyed it. She never like reveled in being that. And, you know, probably for a good reason.
00:19:01
Speaker
i mean, in the sense of like, like for for the common people, I think she used it. I think she used it but to her advantage, but I don't think like walking into an area and seeing a bunch of people cringe at her was like something she enjoyed, right?
00:19:15
Speaker
I mean, think Taylor enjoyed it when she had a body double up and everyone like looked at the body double and then she like peered out of the crowd from the other direction. I think she enjoyed that. The shock and awe thing, yes. I think generally, though, when it came down to it, she was like, I want to help people and I'm a villain.
00:19:31
Speaker
and And I don't like how that works. I'm scary, yeah. um Whereas um for Victoria, she's like, I'm a hero and I want people to know I'm a hero.
00:19:42
Speaker
I want to give people that comfort. in that You want a picture? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. um That guy's like, love ah oh, no, it's fine. And she's like, no, it's cool. And he's like, really? The girlfriend's like, oh. ah So good. And she does her little like hover off the ground. She does her little pose where she's got like yeah one foot like slightly knee bent, like toe just barely kissing the ground. like Oh, my gosh. No, I totally love it. like if If that was me, if I had flying powers, that's how I would pose, too. like You can't...
00:20:14
Speaker
Be like, oh yeah, you want a picture and then stay on the ground? Like, no. what's the so good there's There's like ah a a screenshot from like a cartoon or something where like somebody's holding up a picture of where they met somebody and they're standing next to him just like... there i can't think of what that's from. i got So many things. I don't know.
00:20:33
Speaker
There's like a particular thing I'm thinking of where he's like, look, it's me and so-and-so. They're so happy to see me. And the person's like not happy, but they're like, I don't know. Oh my gosh, I can totally... I've got this picture in my mind, but I can't remember what it'd be from. That's how I imagine that picture being taken. Oh, I know, I know.
00:20:49
Speaker
It's Mulan. It's Mulan. It is. Yes, it's Mulan with... What's his name in the emperor? Yes, yes. He's like standing next the emperor. Oh my gosh. With a big smile, the emperor's just like... See? Yeah. See? Thank you, Hannah. Love it. I got you.
00:21:03
Speaker
I got you. I knew what you were talking about. yeah I was like, it's either Emperor's New Groove. It's like one of those like Disney animated. I got you. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Thank you. Thank you. Let's move on. Yeah. Yeah. He's like shaking his hand and pointing at him.
00:21:15
Speaker
Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah. good Oh, that's great. That's the vibe. That's the vibe, though. And, like, i mean, it's it's just the nice, like, if you ran into a nice celebrity at a coffee shop and you were like, can you sign this? You know, they're of course, yeah, absolutely. And they're chatting with you. Like, it gives off that celebrity vibe, which, like, she's been the face hero for, like, she was the face hero for so long. Like,
00:21:41
Speaker
it's easy for her to slip back into that role, which I think is cool. But I do like how ah the barista was like, there's a lot of capes moving here through here. Like, are you going to be trouble for us?
00:21:55
Speaker
And she's like, nah, we're just moving through. it don't Don't worry about that. She's like, okay. yeah But like, they they're all a little... The tension between capes and non-capes, you can feel, has ratcheted up a little bit from um yeah what it was Wyrm.
00:22:12
Speaker
Which I like a lot. are You don't know if they're a hero or a villain. like Right. like And she's caped up. You have no idea. cape And her outfit. Nice. You know what I mean. that's our Starting our new podcast. Our new podcast, Paped and Caked.
00:22:37
Speaker
Gaping up and caked up. yeah First topic, narwhal. Hang on. She doesn't show until... Yeah, we'll come back. now like yeah she's in this she's in this She's in the chapter, which is why this is my favorite chapter of our reading so far. Like Nick pointed out, it's a big reunion tour of all our favorite people and the mundanity of like taking a picture and but floating you know and nearly nearly everybody alan has ever wanted to step on him as mentioned in this arc at some point yeah because really are well miss militia so okay you know what i was gonna say like i don't think i've had jasper on my list of people i want oh but gilpatrick gilpatrick gilpatrick though
00:23:26
Speaker
You mean Mr. Clean Mean Machine? yeah Speaking of which, ah Victoria chats with Jasper and Gilpatrick. the bus The teens are going to be helping with evacuees.
00:23:38
Speaker
um Jasper did get his tattoo, but he wrote the word jester under it, not fool. So lot of good good work there on correcting that. and Heck yeah. And here's the thing.
00:23:49
Speaker
He's like one of the senior people there. Like... He's telling them to call him Jesper or him Jester. Yeah. How is that any different from a cape?
00:24:01
Speaker
Like the cape rolls up. It's not. It's like, hey. I'm um'm Jester. My name is Jester. We live in a world where capes are a thing constantly.
00:24:12
Speaker
That's just what you call him. It's not that like it would not be that difficult for them to be like, okay. Yeah. It's goofy, but he's Jester. It's like. It's like a cape. No, camp. It's like a camp nickname. Like when you're working at a summer camp. Like, oh yeah, who's that? Oh yeah, that's Smash. Like, no one knows who Smash is. Like, who the fuck is Smash?
00:24:32
Speaker
Oh yeah, no, that's just because we have two Hannahs working at the same camp and that one's Smash and that one's Merida. Like, love that shit. I love that shit. It like adds an extra level of like camaraderie to it, which is great.
00:24:45
Speaker
ah We hear you chat. and Are there some, having some stream lag issues? Oh, no. not watching the stream today.
00:24:57
Speaker
I'm not watching it either. I'm not going to have the chat open.
00:25:02
Speaker
um It is lagging, and I did notice that. Our poor sweet. My computer says it's at 0.5% capacity, so it has to be just internet.
00:25:14
Speaker
My computer's fine. Uh-oh. But... um Poor, sweet streamers. Yeah. You have better internet. I can't. There's nothing to do.
00:25:26
Speaker
It's like two providers and they both suck. I mean, it can't be all on... yeah For those of you who don't know, Michael, while the rest of us are in Mega City, ah Michael is currently streaming from the Fallen Camp.
00:25:38
Speaker
and but but In the booties. Yeah. Live from the boonies. from Earth. I don't think I can do anything right now. ear maison Let me see. you he's He's deep in the Jewish alphabet on that.
00:25:56
Speaker
He's one of those back-end letters. Yeah. Uh-oh. It's a... Okay. Oh, no.
Speculation on Character Behavior
00:26:07
Speaker
What?
00:26:10
Speaker
Is it pretty bad? I just... i I just heard someone say that they might have to ah listen to the recording later because every other sentence is getting interrupted. Oh, That's unfortunate.
00:26:23
Speaker
Let me change some things and see if this helps.
00:26:28
Speaker
We're going to keep going. yeah But chat, let us know if it gets me better. um But yeah, also, let's see, we got the we got the tattoo. ah Narwhal appeared.
00:26:40
Speaker
Love Narwhal. And like you mentioned, Nick, Big V and Little V back at it again. Heck yeah. Mm-hmm. yeah That was not a little anymore, though.
00:26:52
Speaker
That's right. And you know who I know carries a gun?
00:26:58
Speaker
that's true. Just carry a gun. That's right. That's right.
00:27:04
Speaker
Yeah. I think ever since she got taken by narwhal, right? She's been carrying a gun, is what she said. Taken by narwhal? Not narwhal. Echidna. Other animal. Yes. you know we actually the other have it and The other very similar smooth-skinned animal with a weird nose.
00:27:23
Speaker
Exactly. um Of all the kids... Like if you're adding a gun to an existing cape, Vista's one of the more dangerous ones. Like Vista with the gun is... but That's terrifying. like Hyper executed.
00:27:38
Speaker
yeah Now that we've we've seen how impressive her like basically portal making powers are as well, I just imagine, right? She just like does a quick like wo shoots him when they get real close, send him back far away, right? Just the... mo Oh, yeah. Yeah.
00:27:55
Speaker
She could. She doesn't, but she could, I imagine. Yeah, she's got a lock on her. Like her powers used to be like a ah thing that like, hey, Vista, we need you to do this. And all of a sudden, like, and she would use her power.
00:28:06
Speaker
This feels like she's just walking around using it now. like um Yeah, so nothing for her. And it's so much. She's like, I don't want that landscape there. That goes over here now, like just out of my way. That's so cool.
00:28:22
Speaker
So cool. Well, she's 17 now. she's She's so grown up. Look at her. all grown up now. Good for her. So proud. glad she forget how much time has passed. i was going to say, because she and Vicky are the only surviving wards from that. From Rockin' Day.
00:28:44
Speaker
bro you don't If you don't count Weld, I guess. Weld was there for a bit. Yeah, if you don't count Weld. Also, isn't Shadowstalker still alive? Shadowstalker still alive. don't know. don't know for sure. She was alive at the end of Worm.
00:29:00
Speaker
Right. don't know if that kept up. would assume that she's alive, unless told otherwise, you know. She thrived in a world where everybody else was inhibited and she wasn't.
00:29:14
Speaker
ah she walks into hollow point somebody's beating her ass like right away like she's gonna mouth off and she doesn't have the killing capacity that damsel we'll get to that yeah we'll get to that I've lowered the stream quality. Just so everybody knows, I've lowered the stream quality and it is now like all green, good bars, no frame droppage should be clear.
00:29:43
Speaker
I was streaming at too high a resolution because that's what I record at typically, but the internet could not handle it. But this should be good now. Gotcha.
00:29:54
Speaker
If y'all will let us know how that works out, if it's doing any better. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. All right. um Oh, um skipped over a small thing in 5.7 before we move on to 5.8.
00:30:09
Speaker
ah We do get to meet Kinsey's mom, who is very different from Kinsey's dad. Yes. We do. It also gives kind of the creepy vibes, but in a different way.
00:30:22
Speaker
Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah. Honestly, it helps Hannah's theory that they're robots. i I swear, it's just so... Like, honestly, my theory, though, has changed slightly after that because she's giving she's ah less robot but more just, like, uncanny valley-ness.
Kinsey's Family Dynamics
00:30:44
Speaker
Like, it feels like she's a... It feels like, oh, okay. ah This is my, oh, oh, oh um i I'll be my own soundboard, it's fine. um i They are um the tropes of themselves.
00:31:02
Speaker
So he's like the classic, you know, dad trope. He's in real estate, right? Real estate trope. She's the classic artsy mom trope, you know? Like, they're they like oh, she's an artist. Well, I'm not an artist. I'm an aesthetic. Aesthetic.
00:31:22
Speaker
Yeah, whatever she says. yeah An appreciator of beauty. Yeah, like that's like such an artsy mom thing to say. Like they fit the tropes like they programmed to. And I'm just like, I can't decide.
00:31:40
Speaker
i I'm kind of leaning a little bit away from the robot thing and more like, based on what we know about Kinsey's past now, I want to guess that her parents are being paid to take care of her.
00:31:52
Speaker
They are basically, she's a ward of the state and they're being paid to take care of her because because of all the issues she's caused.
00:32:06
Speaker
They don't talk... I think if Kenzie had programmed them, I feel like they would be nicer to her. Okay, actually though, that's a good point. That's good point. And I feel like it's not out of the realm of possibility.
00:32:23
Speaker
Still, that there's more going on with that, with AI and everything. But to me, they just strike me more as like taking care of this child is a job, not a...
00:32:35
Speaker
something I've been programmed to do. Not her parents. Yeah. Yeah, not her parents. Or programmed. Yeah. And she calls them mom and dad because she has attachment issues and has latched onto them as mom and dad, but they don't see her as their daughter, basically. Like, that's kind of the... They're very quick. Like, I understand a lot of parents are very quick to, like, chauffeur their kids around for, like, sports and band and, like, whatever the fuck they're in.
00:32:58
Speaker
I feel like they chauffeur her around to like a too much degree. Like, if that makes sense, like... I'm suspicious, is my point. i'm i mean There's something else going on, that's for sure. Definitely something else going on.
00:33:20
Speaker
Not 100% sure what it is. um Yeah, I get the sense that she's like a ward of the state kind of person. Or... Something, yeah. Or they're just all characters that one other mastermind has created and we haven't met that person yet, right? They're all just different entities this one other person has made.
00:33:37
Speaker
um Because we've talked about that before too, like is Kenzie even Kenzie? Oops, sorry. Oh my god, that's right. I mean, I always assumed that Kenzie was Kenzie because Kenzie made Kenzie, not because there's another mastermind that made Kenzie, you know?
00:33:50
Speaker
Like I always assumed it was Kenzie made Kenzie. Like, Kenzie made Kenzie how Kenzie wants Kenzie to appear. yeah that's Right. like say I can see Michael squinting. I'm like, shit, fuck, I'm losing them. I'm losing them. How many times can you say Kenzie? I was about to say that's a woodchuck, woodchuck, wood situation. where you just That is exactly. Yeah.
00:34:13
Speaker
ah Jacob, what do you think? How much Kenzie, Kenzie, Kenzie, if Kenzie, Kenzie, Kenzie. I need to know. i mean my I like the robots. but I mean, her projections are crazy. So... Something's going on with that too. Like the couple scenes where she's... ah like because People have thought it was her, but then it's a projection and she turns it off.
00:34:34
Speaker
Or even later in this scene when projection's really good and she's with the group and everything like that. They're scary good. They're scary good? have a feeling if we haven't seen the ah the extent of that yet, there there's going to be some...
00:34:49
Speaker
Something's going to we say be the gammo power that yeah we see the camo power that she made for Chris. It's like the... it reminded me exactly of the power up in Halo where it just like turns you mostly invisible just like with a slight warble to it, you know?
00:35:05
Speaker
exactly And the way they talk about it being a disc kind of reminds me of the like the weird technology from Five Nights at Freddy's. Do you remember that the little discs that like do things? Yep.
00:35:20
Speaker
Forgot about that. um Also, my weird theory with this is ah that these aren't Kenzie's parents. Like, Kenzie's parents died a long time ago and that these are recreations of them as best as she remembers, but they weren't great then and these are like she hasn't really like improved upon these models she just like quickly put together what she remembered which is why they're kind of bland um yeah yeah like I had parents and it's like what did you know about them did they have personalities and she was like uh uh dad was dad he was dad was a real estate agent he was a real estate agent yeah exactly personality real estate agent
00:36:09
Speaker
I feel like we got so much. wast We'll see. We'll see, though. Victoria victoria got invited for dinner, so maybe we'll see what happens. i know. That could be problematic. I mean, I'm excited. Let's go to dinner.
00:36:21
Speaker
But I also feel like this could be more of a problem. You know? like my first thing like Did you clear that with other people before you go? Because we know how Kenzie is. And maybe you want to talk to like somebody else and be like, oh, i got to cancel.
00:36:34
Speaker
That seemed weird. Was this the scene where Chris has his first of many in these next few chapters MVP moments where he walks over to Kenzie and she's yeah yeah just he just he just he stuffs the donut in her mouth and she keeps talking around the donut. Oh, yeah so good that was it's so good. so good.
00:36:54
Speaker
That was a great. crack me up That made me like Chris. um That made me like Chris a lot more of just as she's talking, just grabbing the donut. Just Chris has a couple. Yeah, and so I was thinking maybe you could come over to dinner. Do you like pasta?
00:37:06
Speaker
And they're like, so good. so good. Although, one quick thing, one more thing about the dinner.
00:37:15
Speaker
Her mom, supposedly, you know, if she's human and everything's kosher, allegedly her mom would know that Kenzie has weird attachment.
00:37:28
Speaker
So why was she so quick to invite Victoria to dinner? Knowing attachment stuff. Like, there are rules in place for a reason. a Brown Kenzie, right?
00:37:41
Speaker
so like, wouldn't one of them be having people over to the house? Which is, like, a big deal. You're not just, like, out in the field. You're just coworkers anymore. Now you've been invited into the home space.
00:37:53
Speaker
Like, that's got to be some kind of rule. And, like, it's weird that the mom... Yeah. like wouldn't realize the weight of that decision. Yeah. But it could also be but still with the the sort of caretaker theory I'm running with.
00:38:09
Speaker
If
Guns and Society in Story
00:38:10
Speaker
for whatever reason, Victoria is the person that Kinsey seems to be becoming the most attached to, i could see them being like, we need to meet this Victoria, get to know her, you know, kind of like very parental of them.
00:38:23
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. You know, and if that's the case, then great. yeah They're being parental. Yeah. but Yeah. I did like BeFaroni commented, watch Kenzie's parents are going to be normal people and y'all are just mean.
00:38:37
Speaker
i Listen, here's the thing. Here's the thing. No parents are normal. As a parent, I can say that. i Parents aren't normal. Even if they are just regular humans and not robots or paid wardens of the state, it doesn't matter. They're not acting like normal people.
00:38:53
Speaker
I did like, though, Victoria, when Kenzie's mom was like, oh, I do like... ah I do like your costume, Victoria. And Victoria's like, you she noticed. I got the approval from this. I've been and talking about my out about everybody's outfits and finally somebody else understands. The whole dinner is just going to be her and if they are normal people, it's just going to be her and Kenzie's mom just like crapping all over everybody else's style and costumes. and
00:39:25
Speaker
and they're just They're just wine drunk just... Oh my God. Did you see so-and-so when they started wearing this outfit? Oh my God. I was like, what bitch, what do you think those colors are?
00:39:37
Speaker
yeah I know your power isn't making them work.
00:39:41
Speaker
Yep. Yep. um There we go. On to 5.8. Yeah. yeah alrighty Yeah. Alrighty. 5.8. bunch of backwoods yokels show how dangerous they can be.
00:39:54
Speaker
ah Victoria has some thoughts on the game. ah Then Vicky tangles with the biker gang member and then powered members of the bikers.
00:40:05
Speaker
um And then some anti thinkers measures from presumably Mama Mathers starts to make some of them go cuckoo. Mm hmm. so um So, okay, so here we talk about the game, right? So, Victoria's talked about it, Tattletail's talked about it prior previously in Worm.
00:40:25
Speaker
The idea is sort of the cat and mouse game that the heroes and villains play. And what Victoria's trying to explain, I feel like this whole inner monologue is Wild Bo just saying, here's why guns matter in this moment, right? Like, I want you to understand why this is important.
00:40:43
Speaker
Because I think immediately, he we we all would have the same reason. ah We all would just have the same thoughts, like everybody would. Like, wait, like they have deadly superpowers. Why do guns matter?
00:40:56
Speaker
um And also, Miss Militia is a thing. So she gets brought up specifically. um So I don't know. What do you guys think about the justifications for it? Of like, okay, guns do exist, yes. However, there's sort of an agreement of like,
00:41:11
Speaker
non-lethal most of the time we're just trying to capture each other we're not trying to kill each other and now it feels like this is all okay all hell's broken loose and we're just trying to kill each other now and don't know does that what did you guys think of that justification it kind of felt it felt a little weak to me but maybe that's the whole point right is the veneer of the game is so weak that it's easily broken Yeah, it's of those things where I think we praise Wild Bo a lot for his ability to explain away ah tropes that we take for granted so often with these types of genres.
00:41:49
Speaker
And i think this is an example of that. But it is one ah it's it's weird how this one, I feel, probably just doesn't need explanation. it's i know we say that about all of them, but like specifically, this is one of those suspension of disbelief things that we just...
00:42:06
Speaker
you kind of have to have for superhero genres. Like, you start digging too deep into any of this stuff and it just sort of It kind of midichlorians the magic of the of the of the you know the setting. you know's Stuff like that. love that reference.
00:42:26
Speaker
Interesting. i think it's I think it's a fine explanation in universe. I think it works i think there's anything wrong with it. But I do think it was like, we didn't really didn't have to. He just said they had guns. and was Okay, they have guns.
00:42:38
Speaker
they they They mean business. They're going to kill you. Yeah, I think it it it just feels like probably what happened is he wrote 5.7 and like ended on the guns thing and then was like, oh, I made that seem like a big deal.
00:42:52
Speaker
Probably need to explain why it's a big deal. Yeah, that's that's possible. Yeah, I think. oh I'm sorry, Alan, go ahead. No, no, go for it. I just, i mean, i i think so. But like, this is something we've talked about with Worm about ah coil sniper. Like, oh yeah, just get coil sniper in there and that solved the problem real quick.
00:43:12
Speaker
and that's And that's because it's true. And like with with the gun thing, like I get what she's saying, but I agree. Like we didn't we don't necessarily need a big explanation, but I do really like it. I think it's fun because because of the whole concept of the game, the cat and mouse, which I find super fascinating.
Endbringers and Societal Impacts
00:43:31
Speaker
Like, I loved that whole initial conversation that we had with Taylor and ah Lisa back in in and Worm with Tattletail. This kind of, like, breaking down of, like like, we all have powers here. We can all absolutely brutally murder each other.
00:43:49
Speaker
quite easily if we wanted to. But it's not in the game for us to do that. The people who do that are like Slaughterhouse-Nine. Those are the people that do that. We're not like them. And so the idea of like, well, we don't use guns here.
00:44:01
Speaker
It's like having the guns in this scenario feels like another reason to just fuck Fuck the fallen. Like, absolutely take them out because they're breaking the unspoken rules of the game. And, ah you know, that they're they're they're not just and not just pulling in other parts of the gang. not just pulling in the bikers. they' just pulling in more capes.
00:44:25
Speaker
They've got guns now. And it's like, you've taken this to a level where, like, sure, someone might have powers, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're bulletproof. Like, Like someone like Kenzie, Chris, literally everyone on the team would take a bullet other than other than um Victoria. And that's if her wretch is down.
00:44:43
Speaker
She can only take two. right Yeah, exactly. So like, it's this idea that like, you're not playing fair, which, which puts this certain kind of like, almost like whimsicalness to it all because it makes it feel like we're all just having fun. Like when, when Victoria hurts Moose, it's this play acting. It feels like we're, well, it's, you know, it's for the game. Like, oh I'm sorry. didn't mean to scar you. It's like, well, I made my mother cry. Like, it's kind of funny. And like, we but like, this is not funny anymore. Yeah.
00:45:14
Speaker
Like, you've you've broken the rules that we've all agreed to and you've broken the truce, as it were. Not truce. ah What's the word? she What's the word Victoria uses? Does anyone remember? Charade?
00:45:28
Speaker
No, like, the it's not like the treaty. It's it's like a no, it doesn't matter. yeah But, but like this idea that like they've, they've stepped, yeah, they've, they've broken the agreement. They've stepped too far.
00:45:41
Speaker
You know, you've, you've, you know, we don't nice necessarily have to be nice to you anymore. Where before we might have. Two things that it makes me think of is number one, in this world, they might, they probably didn't have um the North Hollywood shootout.
00:46:00
Speaker
um which for those of you don't know is two guys with self-made like full body armor, bulletproof, rob a bank, I believe. And then, you know, because they're in full body armor, they just walk out and the cops show up. And at this time, ah police kind of just have pistols.
00:46:17
Speaker
um So they're shooting at them and it's not doing anything because these guys are just walking in full body armor. And, you know, they're spraying the cops with semi-automatics and stuff like that.
00:46:28
Speaker
Um, and it was a moment that was, you know, we've had bank robberies before. Uh, we've had, you know, bank robberies with, uh, semi-automatics before, but the fact that these guys were just such a you know, this, this kind of truce breaking incident is what led to armored cars for cops, body armor for cops and higher caliber, like weapons, more powerful weapons for cops.
00:46:54
Speaker
Um, because of that, because of that shootout. Um, And like, if they didn't have that incident, it makes me wonder what, and because we have heroes, like it makes me wonder if you really don't have as much armed, like enforcement as you would otherwise.
00:47:16
Speaker
Yeah. um And on top of that, it makes me wonder how much, uh, two things. Number one, ah we talked about this a little bit before in our worm read through.
00:47:28
Speaker
What is the sports like in this universe? We know they exist, but um to what degree? And what is war like in this universe?
00:47:40
Speaker
Because if there's two things I've noticed in this world, ah back on Earth, bat, um and worm, it's that we really didn't talk about war all that much.
00:47:53
Speaker
And I think that's because it just doesn't happen. um think if anything does happen, it, like, yeah yeah yeah, yeah, I just don't, I don't think it happens.
00:48:04
Speaker
It seems like, um, sort of with war in particular, you had a couple of mentions of like, um, Ash Beast and Mordnog in Africa sort of being wars, taking over multiple countries.
00:48:18
Speaker
But beyond that, it does feel like... is sort of the... um sort of the ozymandias and watchman thing right where he sorry to spoil watchman um if you haven't seen or read watchman um but you should read it anyway um spoiler aside we're like there's about to be a nuclear war so he fabricates a unified threat that the entire earth has to come together to fight and as a result it stops the war and for the worm universe yeah the end bringers
00:48:50
Speaker
um kind of feel like that, right? Where it's like, okay, like we're going to have squabbles, we're going to have land disputes, we're to have teams and villains and heroes fighting each other.
00:49:00
Speaker
But ultimately, we have bigger problems that we have to be aware of Right. We can't afford infighting. Yeah, we can't afford having a nuclear war when...
00:49:12
Speaker
behemoth is going to come because of it and then destroy the entire continent of Europe. You know, like we can't afford that. um And everybody knows that point. Yeah, I was just to build off of that, especially because of the Endbringers, right? So they're drawn to conflict.
00:49:28
Speaker
ah We don't know ah about all of the early Endbringer attacks, but it's like, it makes sense that they would have shown up to at the time, you know, the these border disputes and conflicts and things like that.
00:49:40
Speaker
Like imagine two nations are about to go to war and like this behemoth just pops up in the middle and kills everything. You're going to quickly stop going to war. So yeah, that's interesting.
00:49:52
Speaker
Good point. Yeah. The Endbringers are good, actually. Yeah, yeah. As Not So Certain says, ah you know, it it's kind of a pro-con thing. It's like, pro stops war.
00:50:04
Speaker
Lots of people saved. Sure. Con, Endbringers kill a lot of people. Kind of evils out, probably. like Really kill a lot of people. What Taylor said was, Earth-A-Left got 9-11, and Earth-Bet got the Endbringers.
00:50:18
Speaker
ah Right. But... ah But also in terms of that thing, back to the sports thing, um so I've heard, you know, some theories idea of that that like essentially World Cup soccer, all these sports we have, that they are a bloodletting of sort.
00:50:35
Speaker
That like throughout all of human history, conflict is way more, you know, constantly happening. And we're losing so many people all the time.
00:50:46
Speaker
And it's like the same time that we actually get like, sports franchises going, like really going is also the same time that like most of the like world wars and all these major conflicts kind of calm down a lot.
00:51:01
Speaker
Um, you know, obviously there's tons of other reasons, but, uh, the idea of like, yeah, we've got enough mini battles that we would have had, except now they're played on sports fields and they kind of relieve that aggressive,
00:51:18
Speaker
need that humans have to just be in conflict with one another. And i think about that in terms of like, if we have the game of heroes and villains going after each other, and people obviously filming that on phones and they're watching that and you keep up with your local hero team and you even keep up with your local villain team, you know, Uber and Leader people you're watching.
00:51:44
Speaker
Yeah. It kind of lets out that that weird, like i said, it's a bloodletting. was going to say, it's just the Gladiators, but modern day. It's the Gladiators, but modern day.
00:51:55
Speaker
And I really wonder if on EarthBet, at least, because they have all those heroes, the best, like, sports franchises kind of do as, like, a semi-pro thing. Like, they're there, but they're not nearly as popular because people have the hero franchise, and that's, like, people's main, like,
00:52:16
Speaker
investiture of violence that they let out on. All the definitely going to the pro stuff for sure. No one's paying to watch me play when you can watch somebody.
00:52:27
Speaker
Yeah. Why would you want to watch the best a human could do? Exactly. You know, running you could watch... Exactly. You watch the speedster when you could watch yeah yeah exactly you what these scoster just Please. Book it. i yeah I do think um one funny comparison, Bernard mentions how they have like hero franchises and like sponsor deals and stuff too.
00:52:54
Speaker
There's one, i didn't read ah a bunch of it, but I read a bit of the manga ah Tiger and Bunny. which is in a universe with superheroes and they're all have sponsors and they're all like they wear outfits with sponsors on them like race car drivers do and it's all like oh there's been a bank robbery who can get there first and they've got like rankings and like you know you get points based on how much you help and like what you do to save civilians And, you know, so it's kind of that there's kind of that like funny.
00:53:23
Speaker
it It's much sillier than worm is. So it wouldn't quite fit in
Powers and Psychological Complexity
00:53:27
Speaker
worm. But it it would be funny if, um you know, there was a a sort of thing like a hero who was like this arrest sponsored by is Ketchup. you
00:53:41
Speaker
Legend, legend. Where are you going to go after you like a arrest this villain? get skillshare Use my code
00:53:51
Speaker
you know Uber123 and get 15% off Uber123 Uber10 I didn't have the sun in my eyes when I was arresting that villain and that's because of Ray-Bans Ray-Bans I knew it Sponsored by me Raymancer Raymancer and raymond yeah yeah there you go Yeah, as Fran said, Uber and Leet were doing that shit before Twitch was a thing. They were ahead of their time. That's true. I love that. I just imagine they're like, Uber's like punching a guy in the background and Leet's in the foreground like, hey, dog 22, thanks for the 10-month sub. i Like beating a guy from his wallet. if deep the That's a tier three sub right there.
00:54:34
Speaker
That's another punch. We're going to keep going until the subs run out. no. no yeah Oh, man. It's fantastic.
00:54:44
Speaker
ah Looks like these bad guys won't be cooking up anything, but I will with HelloFresh, today's sponsor.
00:54:53
Speaker
I love it. Way too much fun coming up with taglines. Holy shit. Maybe that's what we should do until we get real sponsors. It's just... There you go. It's just Gabe sponsorships.
00:55:06
Speaker
Yeah, for the rest of 5.8, we have Victoria tangling with that one biker gang member. who She leaves on a tree, which is hilarious. um right But then she runs into three powered members. He got a couple of breakers, a couple of change or breaker, a changer. And I think just a guy. i think actually it's like a breaker, a changer and a guy. du dude with the gun and then uh they yeah so then we see the we've heard that there's anti-thinker powers at play here most likely from mama mathers trying to protect the fallen um however we see it happen where when victoria tries to press one of the biker gang members for more information she starts to convulse and scream and pain and they're like should we like knock her out like what do we what do we do
00:55:52
Speaker
Which I do appreciate somebody mentions, I think it's in this, somebody mentions like, knocking somebody out not as easy as the movies make it seem. like yeah There's a fine line between you know putting somebody to sleep and permanent brain damage.
00:56:04
Speaker
yeah And so before it's like, I'll just choke him then. I'll just go for the choking. That's still, that is also still like... That's still brain damage. You're cutting out their oxygen supply. You put that hold, because she gets back and does you a little rear naked choke and is like,
00:56:19
Speaker
Yeah, that's going to make him fall asleep if done, like, you know, well, for, like, a couple of seconds. And if you lock that in that he's more than a couple of seconds, you're depriving a decent amount of oxygen to the brain, right? You know.
00:56:35
Speaker
Although, um I did want to say, though, this whole... so I forgot something else with the whole game thing and the guns thing, right? Where it's, like, you know Batman's whole thing about, like, not killing people? Yeah. people I just maimed them horribly and leave them in the hospital with pain for the rest of their life. Life's upstairs, yeah. yeah yeah yeah Oh,
00:56:57
Speaker
I think we've mentioned before that there's a a ah maybe Vertigo or Dark Horse comic or image ah that is just the worst version of Batman. i think his name's like Nighthawk or Bloodhawk.
00:57:09
Speaker
And his whole thing is he does the whole Batman shtick, except every single bad guy, he banes them. He breaks every single bad guy's back so that they cannot walk. but Oh, my gosh. I don't kill them. I i kill them financially from the hospital bills. From the medical bills. Jesus.
00:57:30
Speaker
God, that's worth. Just put me down at that point. Jesus. Really? It's just like some random guys like, oh, I only took this job because I'm poor and I need to feed my daughter. Oh, God, Batman, no.
00:57:46
Speaker
Pretty sure that's a college humor bit. Oh, no. Just the poor mooks that accidentally end up on the wrong side of Scary Batman. They didn't really realize what they're doing.
00:57:59
Speaker
They didn't read the fine print. They're from out of town. They didn't know that this tape existed here. Also, we we and we should probably keep it keep it running. and we're we We're an hour in and we're we're barely in a time. 5.9. We are. 5.9.
00:58:12
Speaker
ah we 5.9, as Team Therapy tries to evacuate and protect uncooperative fallen families, they inevitably get into the skirmish. A couple of scenes from this I wanted to recall.
00:58:25
Speaker
ah The cranky old lady makes a couple of interesting statements. My favorite was, many of these people do not deserve to be saved. um you know as They're talking about like being vigilant over the little things. I thought that was interesting.
00:58:36
Speaker
And I think that was one of the preacher ladies, maybe, from a previous chapter. I think so. I think it sounded like, and like at first I thought it was supposed to be that one lady who was like always trying to get the, you're talking about how everybody needed to be fucking and having kids.
00:58:53
Speaker
But then I remembered like the way she talked sounded like she was just a cranky old lady who was like on the right side of stuff Yeah, this lady seemed different. These people are all assholes.
00:59:09
Speaker
I hate them. Yeah, this lady seemed bit different. And that's why I'm so cranky is because they're all crazy cultists. And I just got stuck here in this house because I'm an old lady and like, what am I going to do? Yeah. they say her name. get that second.
00:59:22
Speaker
Oh, do they? Yeah, we'll get to that in a second. A couple more notes. A couple of interesting fallen villains who go unnamed. We have the dark smoke and lightning guy who is apparently able to hold pretty much everybody off on a road just on his own. His power seems... it's he i I think, you know, I imagine he's like a cloud except, you know, like those there lamps you touch and there's like lightning everywhere.
00:59:45
Speaker
He's like that. um But in a cloud. And then there's a hooded girl who's guarding him. um who we don't see much of either, but don't get her name. ah Victoria and the team help the hollow point people only for the hollow point people to then debate turning on Victoria and her team.
01:00:01
Speaker
So we sort of get a we get a reverse of the Amy conversation that we had in worm. um And then we get to see dark introspection. One of Chris's forms, which I, I think is my, now my favorite. Cause it sounds really funny.
01:00:16
Speaker
Yeah. It was great. Banana bird. Okay, so let's talk about the cranky old lady. is she Is she who we think she is or is she somebody else? I don't know. I know they said her name this chapter and I know that we had her name. had the name of the preacher lady from earlier. I just don't know if they're the same name.
01:00:35
Speaker
So either someone needs to look...
01:00:40
Speaker
Or actually, you know what? and look it up We're going to keep talking. um I kind of assumed when we were reading it that it was the same person, which was interesting to me because if it is the same person, i mean, it might not be. But if it was, she's like clearly figured out the formula of how to stay okay. yes But when faced with a normal person is like, no, these people are bad shit.
01:01:05
Speaker
Which is really interesting to me because this idea of like, well, when you're in if you're in a cult that you clearly cannot leave from, you know, considering Mama Mathers is looking over your shoulder, ah you you have to do what you have to do to survive.
01:01:23
Speaker
And it feels like if it is the same woman that she's figured out the formula of the right thing to say, to get in front of a crowd of people and to like talk and either people like her or they don't.
01:01:34
Speaker
And it's like, you know, whether she believes it even or not, like, she knows the formula. so Yeah, maybe. So, speaks the rhetoric. And, i would like, that's stuff's the vibe I got.
01:01:46
Speaker
But I didn't know. I didn't know if it was the same woman or not. Because she's, there's clearly, like, um oh, gosh, what's the mom with the kids? What's her name? Who's helping Victoria?
01:01:59
Speaker
i don't remember. She basically says to skip the house. She's like, don't, just don't go there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's like, oh, that lady won't leave. That makes me think it's not her um in a way. Yeah, it's... I don't know.
01:02:12
Speaker
bri to answer your question, Fran, of who do we think she is, there was a rain interlude where he overheard and ah lady preacher... And we were wondering if this cranky old lady is the same that they rescue in five yeah is the same as that lady preacher from a previous interlude. It also makes me wonder if that preacher lady is the same as that cranky lady who always used to give him shit when he was walking to school.
01:02:46
Speaker
Interesting. I don't know. um There's a lot of cranky females in the family campus. ah Listen. mean, listen, when you're forced to marry people when you're like, what, 11? I would say, look, none of them are having a word out there. You're forced into cult. You get a little crotchety in your old age, okay?
01:03:05
Speaker
if youre If you get to your old age. I mean. Yeah. The the incest childbirth hasn't killed you first. I literally, like, full body shiver. It's just. or yeah How excited you were? Yeah.
01:03:22
Speaker
I hate you. Don't you mean amazing? Astounding? Yeah, you do. Shut up. Oh, God. It's so gross. If anybody knows what song reference that is, I'd love to see it in chat.
01:03:41
Speaker
I do not know. yeah um Anyways, um yeah, so we get we get a bit more of the fight scene, kind of a difficult fight scene for the heroes. um And ah yeah, we have some weird powers here.
01:03:58
Speaker
i i did think the reverse of the Amy conversation was kind of funny because what it basically boiled down to is Bob is like, Why should we work with you guys? You're good guys. And they were like, Bob, please.
01:04:12
Speaker
Come on. Please. Bob, please. like we're we can Bob, let's not be childish. And he's like, I don't know. You guys are good guys.
01:04:23
Speaker
i don't trust you. Turns out he's fugly on the inside, this Bob. i
01:04:32
Speaker
Well, yeah, we'll get to that too. And then we get to see ah dark introspection as well. were you going to say, Michael? I was just going to say not so certain agrees with Alan that it's the same cranky walking lady.
01:04:43
Speaker
But who knows? ah Interesting. Yeah. ah Yeah. Dark introspection. um Yeah. I see black chicken with four legs.
01:04:55
Speaker
yeah It's like a backwards banana. Yeah. yeah Yeah, that's... it it But also... i imagine it's kind of shaped like a skunk, almost like how, you know, it's like bowed up.
01:05:05
Speaker
Yeah. You know, where with skunks have the tail and the kind of like... But then it later on, it essentially curls in. Can I look up a picture? Is that going to be... No, I didn't want to... yeah I would not look up a picture.
01:05:18
Speaker
Yeah. As someone who didn't read this, this is the weirdest thing I've ever tried to understand in my brain. it's like... like a crow raven thing with like these black feathers.
01:05:31
Speaker
And it's like four wings. I looked up a non-spoiler picture. That's kind of interesting. It's not quite what I imagined, but... Oh. Someone give me a picture, please, because I don't want to be spoiled or anything, but I also... I'll post it in our general chat. I need a visual. It's not a spoiler, but yeah, it's ah it's a weird... I can see the reverse, sort of the inverted banana thing.
01:05:52
Speaker
um yeah Oh, yeah. Okay. Wait, where did... Okay, okay, okay. I posted it in general in our private general chat. Yeah, it's a weird... It's so weird. Curled up thing. Yeah, curled up inner banana thing.
01:06:08
Speaker
Look, here's the thing. The banana gram. but Banana spiral. I mean, I love it. I think it's great. No, I mean, and it's it's fantastic. And what is... It's like... I couldn't quite get the power behind it, but it made it sounded like it could...
01:06:26
Speaker
uh give commands to his body separate like separate from his mind or something like that yeah that's generally his power it sounds like right oh is that for like all forms oh i thought that that was that's for like this one specifically is that this one is he has this form because it's a separation of mind like the mind and the body are two separate things for that maybe um So he can he can literally like let it autopilot and it'll go on pure instinct and do its thing.
01:06:59
Speaker
And he can just like ride it around inside of the head. Kind of. Yeah. Chris. Okay, interesting. Wild. Yeah. Does he have a cape name?
01:07:12
Speaker
Am I stupid? Does Chris have a cape name? Nope. Nope. He just has all these different like names for the different things he can become. Okay. Okay.
01:07:23
Speaker
yeah he need We need to give him a name. Yeah. I mean, I mean i feel like he's Chris until... Proving otherwise. I mean, hear me out. Hear me out. Hear me out. Hear me out.
01:07:34
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Bob, um can you take someone else's name?
01:07:40
Speaker
Beast of Burden. Well, maybe now you can after 5.10. All I'm saying is maybe we call him Pokemon. Pokedex. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Pokedex. Gotta catch him.
01:07:52
Speaker
we You know what we should call? Chris would be the Pokedex and ETHBs are Pokedex. Oh, I love that. Maybe he we could be something like Pokedexterous. Pokedexterous.
01:08:04
Speaker
I'm to give him something else. Freak boy. Fran says freak boy. I love it. a freak freak boy a Freak boy. Freak boy. over here and freak.
01:08:16
Speaker
No, don't say that. No. It's a yeah No. no Can't say that. Take it back. no no no no oh no No. Okay, moving on. moving on moving yeah yeah Moving on. 5.9 is one of those. I will say I agree with you in this point, Alan. We're like 5.9. The fighting does kind of glaze over um and um kind of glaze like starts to glaze over for me in the sense of like there's so much happening so many people are moving there's and it's just like okay they beat the lightning guy and that's all we need to know basically what happens for that fight um beat up on some bikers and that's it all right oh yeah
01:09:01
Speaker
appears and wreaks havoc on the attackers. Victoria has a bad flashback and people find different workarounds for Valifor's hypnosis. Vicky is able to drop him on a faraway roof.
01:09:15
Speaker
Bob uses his leadership position to put pressure on Damsel, who promptly kills him. Yep. This is a packed chapter. yes Okay, so...
01:09:27
Speaker
One thing at a time. Did Taylor accidentally make Valafor stronger? Yes. Kind Yeah. Kind of. kind of Not really, though, because it's still, like, he's still strong. I mean, old Valafor was on sight, was instant, right?
01:09:48
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So I feel like he's still strong. Yeah. Like, with Valafor, we were talking about ways to get around. Like, don't look directly at him. Look down. Don't get, you know, whatever.
01:09:59
Speaker
You can't plug your ears in the middle of a battle. yeah I feel like Valafor... What was interesting is um it seems like maybe if you're mentally strong enough, you can just ignore it if he's not giving you a direct command. Because... Right....eventually kind of figures out his hypnosis is based on you believing that he's talking to you, which is a really weird quirk of it. It is this very interesting thing. And I'm, I'm kind of joking that he's stronger because obviously he is literally blind and people have to guide him around. i think that is a big weakness. but
01:10:37
Speaker
ah even so, um and, but still though, like just the ability to stand in a large enough area and go, everybody stop and everybody listens to you.
01:10:49
Speaker
Everybody clap your hands. Yeah. and One hop this time. I was getting for lot of... those Irresistible dance on the whole crowd. Love it. A lot of similarities to um the Purple Man from season one of Jessica Jones.
01:11:13
Speaker
which has the exact same power, essentially, and which is fantastic if anyone needs a little superhero kick show. Season one of Jessica Just Stands Alone. It's fantastic. It's pretty good.
01:11:25
Speaker
And yeah. And that's i mean that's the power. So it's like just that instant ability to to control people's actions. And it's not like, ah especially because the way Victoria describes it, it's not...
01:11:39
Speaker
like he's controlling them, but they're just doing what he says. Yeah. Yeah. Unwillingly. Yeah. you know They're compelled to do what he says until, you know, either acted upon by their own thoughts or some, some other force kind of pushing them out of the hypnosis mode.
01:11:56
Speaker
Yeah. It's interesting though. Valifor does seem to need to retain some level of control over the chaos for it to work. Right. Like if things get a bit too crazy, then maybe he's not able to control or to stop everything that he wants.
01:12:09
Speaker
Obviously, like, general commands... Yeah, lot yeah kind got to maintain that concentration. ah Like, general commands, like, no powers, right? That applies to everybody in the area, not just... You know, so then... right but what's it You know, that gets into the whole mental thing where he's like, Fallen, you can use your powers.
01:12:26
Speaker
And then, you know, if you're not Fallen, you wouldn't think he was talking to you, so it doesn't apply to you. Those little, like, psychological tweaks are very interesting to me um for powers, and I really like that. There's one...
01:12:39
Speaker
Brandon Sanderson novel actually who's got it's a superhero novel when he did a foray into that I haven't read the whole series but one of the villains he is invincible to anyone who's afraid of him and so and because he has like kind of a Superman suite of powers It's nobody's not afraid of him, basically, is the idea. is like yeah um But that's that would be his weakness, right? As if for somehow you did not feel fear towards him, you could harm him. But otherwise, if you have any sort of fear, any sort of intimidation when you're around him, can't touch him, can't hurt him.
01:13:15
Speaker
And I kind of like that psychological tweak on powers with Valifor here, where it's like, okay, instead of eye contact, it's you believe he's talking to you.
01:13:26
Speaker
And it's hard not to believe he's talking to you most of the time. Oh, cool. So cool. cool
01:13:35
Speaker
Taylor didn't go far enough? Nope.
01:13:40
Speaker
Yeah. Maggot's ate out his eyes, but it wasn't enough. um To get in with talking about the second trigger, I don't think Valafor had a second trigger here.
01:13:51
Speaker
talk about ah you know how cool it is that ah These powers are ah do actually have you know personality and some sort of agency, um as it were.
01:14:05
Speaker
um They're dynamic. They change over time. Characters don't just find new abilities. They grow with their powers to develop them.
01:14:15
Speaker
And in this case, the power wants to be used. When he loses his ability to use it, the power is going to just transfer and figure it out. Hannah and I were actually discussing like how would that work for other heroes?
01:14:31
Speaker
If you're legend or you know some yeah legend we'll go with legend somebody who your main power is laser blasting and but you do it out of your hands you know repulsive beam style but all of a sudden somebody comes and chops off your arms.
01:14:44
Speaker
where would the power go? Like, is it now that you have Cyclops powers eventually? Like, you you know, you can fire them out of your eyes or is it like a yelling beam power or is it just in air you have to, because I like you know love the trauma, you have to you'll remember that there's an a hand out there or imagine that there's a hand out there and that it shoots laser beams out of it.
01:15:09
Speaker
But to everybody else, it's just a laser now firing out of the air. umm just imagining a an armless legend like spinning in the air like a top shooting lasers in a circle.
01:15:24
Speaker
Oh, Nick!
01:15:28
Speaker
and this is my money though h yeah i um i With the way that your powers so much adapt to you, like with the conversation Alan and I had had earlier a couple days ago, talking, my thought was like with Victoria's power, like the wretch, the... the her force field reshaped itself to who she was and who she saw herself as.
01:15:59
Speaker
And even though now she's back to human form, her wretch form is still, you know, out here with all the arms and the elbows and the faces because she still sees herself, part of her, sees herself as the wretch still. She doesn't see herself back to, you know, human normal, I'll even say, but like normal is just a setting on the dryer.
01:16:22
Speaker
Like she, but part of her still sees herself as the wretch and therefore the wretch, as the force field, still exists in that capacity. And like thinking about it in the sense of like so much of your power is attached to how you view yourself, how you see yourself, how you see your own power, how you interact with it.
01:16:41
Speaker
And that's so interesting to me because you can have Valfour, who literally lost his eyes, and still have that same power, but it's just like it's morphed into who he is now.
01:16:54
Speaker
yeah And like that idea of um an exchange that your power isn't just something that happened to you. It's almost like it's a parasite in you. but Like your parasite and you are working together in order to, like Alan said, because you're the parasite wants to do shit.
01:17:15
Speaker
Like, your power is like, let me go. Let me him. And so it's going to find a way and work with what we've got. Which is just, oh, it's so good. It's one of those things but that Wild Bo does where it's like, it's it's the whole ah work yourself into a corner thing. Like, he does so good at just when you think like, oh, Valifor's not a threat because we saw him before in Reigns Interlude. We're like, oh shit.
01:17:41
Speaker
We see him again and we're like, but God damn it. Just when we thought we dealt with Valafor. He's gotten worse. Yeah. Gotten worse.
01:17:52
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. it's um It's interesting. As Bernard says, it's kind of similar to Canary. Yeah. a Very similar power now to what Canary kind of had. Fran completely agreed with you, Hannah. Said the force field thing as well.
01:18:08
Speaker
Yeah. Hey, yeah. Thanks, friend. According to Beefaroni, it's a fun fact legend can shoot lasers out of any part of his body. So now I'm just imagining.
01:18:18
Speaker
Spreads them. No. No. Stop it. Stop it. It's just legend riding a laser like a rainbow. just like No.
01:18:28
Speaker
He doesn't need it to fly. He chooses to, though. Oh, shit.
01:18:35
Speaker
yeah Along those lines of like crazy ah stuff for Taylor with her bugs. I posed it before, but doubly so now. I wonder if Taylor leaning more into the like less direct modes, if she was the kind of person who would sit in a room and like just let the bugs go wild, like doing everything through them and not, you know, doing anything physically herself.
01:19:02
Speaker
If eventually you could go kill her human body and still like the power transfer essentially into the swarm as like, she just becomes a sentient swarm of insects.
01:19:21
Speaker
Right. Like depending on how long the power went and how like less and less she kind of like somebody talks to her like in person and she like,
01:19:31
Speaker
oh, that's right, I'm a human. Like, I'm not 500 bugs. I'm not one million hands. I was waiting for you.
01:19:45
Speaker
Yeah. um Maybe if she had been, like, made, like, bedridden, catatonic kind of person after the trauma she went through. i could see that happening for sure. um where like she is the swarm, basically.
01:19:58
Speaker
Issue is the lifespan of most bugs. Very short. um Swarm, not very long-lived. She's like, I just imagine it's like a swarm of mayflies, and she's like, I'm the swarm!
01:20:10
Speaker
Oh, no! yeah
01:20:16
Speaker
Anyways, um yeah, yeah. crazy Crazy scenes there, which I do love, though, the revelation of limited information, right? Apparently, it wasn't big news that Valfour's eyes got eaten by bugs.
01:20:29
Speaker
um I don't know why that wasn't big news. i feel like that would have been talked about, but maybe maybe not. I don't know. I mean, and how quickly after that incident did the world explode? Yeah, true.
01:20:41
Speaker
ah And they just got him back to a fallen camp and then just didn't talk about it. was about to say, he was fallen, too. He was fallen, yeah. As we probably know, is Mama Mathers is not a like...
01:20:55
Speaker
massively expansionistic. Like the other ones are assholes that ride around town. And she's one of the ones that's like... Keep people close.
01:21:05
Speaker
Keep people close, consolidate kind of type. Yeah. Secret. So we got that. um Yeah, so it's just, it's fun to see them be like operating on that old information when we know that's not the case.
01:21:18
Speaker
When it's like... Which kind of was a nice, like, okay, so what's really going on? Why is Valafor here if he doesn't die? um Yeah, yeah, crazy. And then, yeah, but fortunately, Victoria, she's given the command to protect Valafor, and then once the fighting breaks out again, she tweaks it to say, I'll protect you by taking you as far away as possible from the fighting. Yeah.
01:21:46
Speaker
Oh, Fran mentioned... Yeah, Fran mentioned people didn't care because two days later Taylor killed Alexandria. That wasn't bigger than anything. That's true. That's like every story that happened the day before nine eleven Like everybody just forgot about it.
01:22:02
Speaker
Yeah. um yeah oh then I was to say with Vicky and her power, um it it speaking of like adapting with it and stuff like that, ah she lets the wretch loose for a second and snaps a dude it snaps the dude's arm yeah like yeah she just kind of like oh well like ah because they're like stop and she's like okay and just lets her wretch go and she physically stops at the wretch just breaks the dude's arm in half and then later on aior two yeah yeah this is ni by a hair
01:22:42
Speaker
And then later on, she has the she has the moment where the wretch actually holds an object for once. She's like, no, stop breaking every every item I give you. Like, hold on to it and use it like a club.
01:22:56
Speaker
And her wretch... kind of listens. It kind of listens. It's weird. communicating Yeah. Now what I'm imagining is Victoria eventually with just... I mean, it is it does feel like a stand from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. It really does.
01:23:13
Speaker
It's like she's just got floating clubs around her just ready to whack people as they get in range, you know? um And the Wretch is a good name for a stand, too, so it works. yeah um You should have called it Creep.
01:23:26
Speaker
that way The Creep. The musical themes. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. Keep it with the musical theme.
Mind Control and Trauma
01:23:32
Speaker
I will say this is the... So we had talked previously about the sexual abuse that ah Victoria experienced with Amy.
01:23:40
Speaker
And I feel like this is the most explicit Wild Bo has gotten with it thus far. Yes. Because when she's hit with Valifor's hypnosis, she begins to have that sort of a PTSD reaction to it because of what Amy was commanding her to do with her brain. Mm-hmm.
01:23:59
Speaker
And it's not as... a you We've talked about it briefly ah before. It's not still 100% explicit on what exactly happened, but we get enough of a picture to know.
01:24:11
Speaker
yeah Yeah, that was messed up. That was really, really messed up.
01:24:17
Speaker
It was hard reading that section. um And it's something i i actually... it it made me think of something else and wrote down some notes for ah another thing, not ward related, but the, the idea that, you know, we talk about, we talk about guns being, being kind of the taboo thing in the world of capes, you know, of like, okay, well not guns or step too far, but like the, the mind control thing is so invasive that,
01:24:52
Speaker
It's so, it's so invasive. Like all of your agency is gone. You are not, you are no longer in control of yourself. And that's so violating as it is.
01:25:05
Speaker
But with that, you know, all of Victoria's trauma, it just like, oh, it made me, made me ill reading it. Yeah.
01:25:18
Speaker
I mean, ah it's the... yeah I will say the amount of... And it makes sense because people are pretty awful, and this is probably what they would do with powers, but the amount of, like, rapey mind-control powers that exist in the worm universe is a really high amount.
01:25:34
Speaker
um Between Heartbreaker and his emotional manipulation, ah you've got, even with Regent and his body manipulation gets weird. Um...
01:25:46
Speaker
you know We've got Canary accidentally doing it to somebody. and just had a thought. yeah um So speaking of ah ah not having control of your own body, ah Byron and Tristan.
01:26:03
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. and Like what Tristan does, Byron is a silent ah viewer, I'll say, and vice versa.
01:26:16
Speaker
Like while we do see them in this half of the arc probably communicate and like go back and forth and work together a lot more than we've ever seen them do before. There's still that element of like, you are not yours. You don't own you anymore. Like you're not in charge of you anymore.
01:26:33
Speaker
You don't get the privacy of, and the individuality of you anymore because now you are literally sharing your brain space With, you know, for Victoria, you're sharing your brain space with what Amy is stuck in there. And Valifor has stuck in there.
01:26:51
Speaker
And with Byron and Tristan, that same thing. Like, you're stuck with your other this other person in there with you. like And I mean, think about Rain. Or do we talk about Rain with Mama Mathers? Yeah, Rain with Mama Mathers, too. Exactly the same thing of, like, your mind is not your own anymore. You don't have the...
01:27:06
Speaker
the Not the courtesy. That's not the word. autonomy. Thank you. Autonomy is the exact word i was looking for. Thank you. That's perfect. ah You no longer have autonomy over your own mind. And if it if that comes into controlling of your body, the same thing. You have no more body autonomy either.
01:27:26
Speaker
And like, that's such a stripping of rights. and Oh, yeah. I mean, it's one of the... It's one of the...
01:27:39
Speaker
well in In the real world, it is one of the things that I think i'm I'm the most, like, not constantly worried about, but when I think about, like, bad things that could happen to me, losing losing my mental faculties in one way or another is definitely up there.
01:27:55
Speaker
Because is's that it's that if you if you go a little bit crazy, how do you know that you're going crazy? Yeah, right. You know? Yeah.
01:28:07
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. yeah I mean, that's something that's been a theme. ah Bernard, like you said, it's a theme in Ward. if You know, it's a theme that was present in Wyrm.
01:28:18
Speaker
um You know, we we had Valfour and we're talking about Regent um and and Sophia and taking over bodies there and Bonesaw doing things to people. And and yeah um and I'm thinking about...
01:28:35
Speaker
ah dragon ah Dragon's bodily autonomy and Armsmaster you know violating her autonomy with herself to free to give her autonomy free and um you know all of that the yeah all all of that you know um and then you get to ward and ward is like that for every other person um you know were Like you said, we're talking about in our group, like ah talking about right to, you know, just privacy of a per your person and your autonomy and having, you know, the rights over yourself.
01:29:19
Speaker
Kenzie violates that for everyone else all the time. And so there has to be limits both for her because she would just, she has no limits to herself and therefore she doesn't see limits on others.
01:29:31
Speaker
Which, you know, when we talk about pictures and stuff of, somebody, that's also a type of bodily autonomy that you could be talking about. And she just doesn't... Kind of doesn't respect that at all.
01:29:43
Speaker
um And so, like, Kenzie's a violator of that to an extreme degree with people. um And then... You have, you know, like we said, Rain with everything and Byron and Tristan and Taylor.
01:29:58
Speaker
And then you get to like, and you know, we don't know anything about Chris. And Sveta also is somebody who's kind of been trapped in her own body as well. Like Victoria was like, she didn't really have control of who she was or what happened to her. Cause she didn't start like this.
01:30:15
Speaker
She was a human and had her, her bodily autonomy violated by Cauldron. um yeah you know uh you could say the same thing about ah damsel ashley is a clone yeah probably didn't the original ashley probably didn't ask to be cloned and and got worked on you know to and and fooled around with my bone saw and like didn't ask for any of that um
01:30:47
Speaker
So like there's literally nobody in that group that isn't affected by that as a theme at all. yeah yeah It's very probable. I think yeah power and control has always been an important theme. And and it seems like Worm is taking it in a similar and different direction.
01:31:06
Speaker
Whereas um I feel like Worm was much more literally power-like. ah in the sense of power over others, sort of like Taylor experiencing powerlessness with her bullies to gaining powers over others.
01:31:20
Speaker
This one, Ward definitely feels like it's taking more of a power over yourself and power power over others in a different sort of way, which I think is really interesting.
01:31:31
Speaker
um Yeah, i don't know. Yeah. Definitely, it's a lot. It's a lot, yeah. um And as people are pointing out, a lot of people here post-Wyrm have been ah touched by Kepri, who yeah basically buried everybody to save the universe.
01:31:52
Speaker
So, yeah, I mean, like, you know pros and cons there again, but And it feels like a lot of the on you know the regular humans feel ah kind of violated because Gold Mourning happened and yeah they're all left out of the loop.
01:32:10
Speaker
And they are, everything seems to be at at a bunch of events that are parahuman related that happen around them and the effects of which will are constantly affecting them without their say-so or knowledge or anything. think we'll get to that with one of the interludes. Yeah, with the interlude, yeah.
01:32:26
Speaker
One of the interludes deals with that. And we'll misty-eyed. Yeah. What's going on? I'm, i'm the the whole body autonomy thing just like really kills me. It just really kills me. And and it's a tough one. it's It literally, like anytime you get into stuff like this with through lines and themes, I'm just, I honestly jealous that I can't,
01:32:48
Speaker
I wish I could write as good as this with wild bows. but It's the stuff like this that like really gets to you. it's it's it's It's not until we're sitting here, we're literally talking about these different through lines that we're seeing with the whole body autonomy thing that I'm like realizing like it's literally everyone Everyone is is fucked, okay? We're all fucked.
01:33:09
Speaker
Hannah's fucked. Everyone's fucked. It's just ah's a whole funky thing. And war is coming. And I'm upset. And i love it a lot. And I love you guys. And I love everyone. and I'm just feeling a lot of things right now.
01:33:26
Speaker
I'm glad I asked.
01:33:28
Speaker
Good, good. ah Sorry, you can't. My ah listeners, audio only listeners don't know that I've been crying over here for the past minute and a half. You know what? We'll see later. But ah those of you playing bingo, we haven't gotten to it yet. But I feel like we could count that as as the bingo piece.
01:33:50
Speaker
Y'all know which one I'm talking about. right. I think I owe an explanation. if you're going to give them it, I should know what it is. ah Hannah cries. Hannah cries. Listen. To be fair, is the original that's written down is is for a specific scene.
01:34:11
Speaker
Let's see. Let's hold off. but i If we haven't gotten to it, wait. Just wait. might It could happen. even Because we might. We might that cry. Look, I cry a lot. hold off. I'm a very emotional individual. All right.
01:34:23
Speaker
all right. well As the only girl on the podcast. yeah ah I'll gladly cry. Somebody's got to have feelings. And it's going to be... and Bernard, I know a long time ago asked, what's the difference in combat?
01:34:38
Speaker
And once again, i think combat in Ward is way more emotional on a both literal sense, like the emotion powers. I've said it before, I'll say it again. The emotion powers, there's way more of them.
01:34:49
Speaker
And how Victoria, because she's an emotion power person, views everything way more... like, as an emotional response. Things, when things happen, she gets frustrated.
01:35:03
Speaker
When, like, I just, more emotionally packed. I will say, yeah, I think with, with Taylor, you kind of get almost a, With Taylor, I almost felt like I could visualize the battlefields more because she was so analytical.
01:35:17
Speaker
And she's like, all right, 13 degrees this way. We're going to move a bug here and it's going to hit that guy in the nose and he's going to tease and shoot that man. like Like that was how Taylor fought people. So he could very clearly see her game plan.
01:35:30
Speaker
With Victoria, it's just, it's all vibes. It's vibes based fighting. Yeah. Yeah, it's good, though. It's fun. um Speaking of vibes-based fighting, Damsel ah blows a hole in Bob.
Character Complexity and Conflict
01:35:41
Speaker
Yeah, let's talk about that. I see we've reached the find out stage of Damsel. I'll fuck around in my now. We've been fucking around for a while, but yeah. yeah You know, we did we did the full fuck around.
01:35:54
Speaker
Because we went from, oh, Ashley's going to be the problem of the group. Nah, there's no way Ashley is the problem of the group. to Oh, she is one of the problems of the group. Look, at Ashley's the solution.
01:36:10
Speaker
i i I will say, will say, of the... i think Ashley was the most obvious answer for a lot of the questions. i like, if there's a problem, who's it going to be? Like, sure, okay, it's Ashley. She is the former villain.
01:36:22
Speaker
but Like, i I didn't expect that we would have it happen so quickly. I expected her to hold on for a little bit longer, but no. I'm surprised and also not surprised at all.
01:36:41
Speaker
I think it was a valid response. I'm on team Ashley here for this one. Yeah. power Her power was shorting out. You stepped on her dress. I don't know if she meant to, but whatever. stepped on her dress.
01:36:56
Speaker
ah He really did. He was being an asshole. and He was being an asshole. Talk shit, get hit.
01:37:05
Speaker
can't Basically, yeah. Yeah, if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen. Although I do, in hindsight, wonder if it was really a good idea to have Ashley be the one that infiltrates the other group.
01:37:21
Speaker
Yeah. And like, yeah you know, play like she's one of them. Double agent. Double agent villain. Our mole. Yeah. yeah Maybe not the best.
01:37:32
Speaker
No, probably Bernard, did one of us really predict that Bob was going to be the one to die? Oh, gosh, really? Good on us, if that's the case. It wasn't me. I can tell you that right now.
01:37:46
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. um I mean, yeah yeah was it's one of those things where it's like, you know, it's we we've had our protagonists, our our you know heroes, quote-unquote, kill before in Worm and stuff like that. So it's not that new of a thing.
01:38:08
Speaker
But yet it still sort of... it It caught me off guard when it happened. yeah Like, obviously, the water was boiling. jarring But, yeah. But it's a it was a shocking moment.
01:38:21
Speaker
there are there are two There are two one-liners that get dropped in this section that felt almost humorous to me in how...
01:38:33
Speaker
wrong they felt for the moment and one of them this scene where Damsel shoots him blows a hole in his torso and then just goes no you stop I love it no I love it was so good yeah and I'm like I
01:38:51
Speaker
i was so good who never yeah and i'm like ah and Okay. We'll get to the other one later. Gamble does not have these the the social skills to you know give a banger one-liner.
01:39:05
Speaker
I do think out of context... Taylor our comedy one-liner. yeah She never say see never said them out loud. Taylor was a comedian and just only thought things.
01:39:17
Speaker
There were 500 other banger liners. She was fucking hilarious. She was fucking hilarious. Her and Clockwork. duo. ah They would have been so good. um So good together.
01:39:32
Speaker
and great The only other person to infiltrate is Chris. Yeah, thank you, Fran. ah that That is true because people would show up and go, what's that upside down banana thing? he'd be like, and like, it would there would be no. like Or just the screaming like, ha!
01:39:49
Speaker
ah You know, from any mad anxiety or whatever. like And everybody would be like, oh, let's kill that right away, please. That one. I do like that. My response to Chris has just been to like shudder and just ignore it.
01:40:05
Speaker
Like, maybe it'll go away. Just go away if we just don't interact with it. Is that just how cockroaches are here on this planet? Did we miss that before?
01:40:16
Speaker
oh it said we wake it up? That's phenomenal. R.I.P. Bob. i have yeah R.I.P. Bob. R.I.P. Bob. 5.11. Consequences. Victoria reaches out, but Ashley backs out.
01:40:31
Speaker
Side piece plays bingo. Conversation with Chris and a battle plan brief. Victoria fights the fallen bodyguards, but Mama makes the hostages, including Aaron, lose their minds.
01:40:44
Speaker
Not Aaron. Yeah. so a victoria era Yeah, Victoria immediately trying to be like, don't worry, Ashley. We can explain this all away. like Don't don't like worry about it too bad.
01:40:57
Speaker
Which, I mean, to be fair, it's like, okay, who witnessed this you know blatant murder of Bob? A bunch of villains yeah and Ashley's three best friends. like Like, who cares? so Yeah. right look This is like watching a shooting outside a Waffle House. Like,
01:41:14
Speaker
We knew what we were getting into. That's just, it happened and you explained to cops. I was at a Waffle House and they say, i ah say no more. Like, yeah.
01:41:24
Speaker
Jeez. That's not... Let's be clear. We have not. We have More do we intend. ah Victoria says, okay, look, we're all just gonna... The body cam steps on it, like, something happened. allie or Valafore told you to do it. He said, attack your friends.
01:41:45
Speaker
Let's get our Clearly Bob was your best friend. Yep. Yep. We're all going to talk about how you and Bob went back years all the way to Boston. Boston Bob, they called him.
01:41:57
Speaker
I do like that there's this bit where I'm bleeding. That is true. Fran points out she was introduced by covering up a Kate Brutality scene in her very first appearance. Victoria, yeah. Victoria absolutely would do that shit. She punted a man down an alley with a dumpster. She threw a dumpster at him. dumpster at ass. And then called her sister in to cover up his mouth. Ah, we can just heal that up.
01:42:19
Speaker
You can't heal this up, Victoria. There's a hole in his chest. Ha ha. make your phone call i love that it's that image of the you know the picture of like me when i hurt my sibling but it's that medieval painting of a guy holding another guy with an arrow and he's like oh no you're fine you're fine it's okay don't come on i love that so much
01:42:49
Speaker
Oh, man. I love that. That's such like a universal sibling thing. Like, we've all done it. that We all know exactly what's happening. We're all just... God damn. Yeah. am yeah Jacob, what were you saying? That's so funny to me. You were saying something.
01:43:04
Speaker
you I was saying that I liked... yeah Ashley has this moment where... she almost like instantly regrets it, but then puts on the facade that she's still the big meanie. Yes. is Victoria notices that initially she looks different, like the murderous intent in her eye. And then that fades, and she looks very scared.
01:43:29
Speaker
And so there's still this yeah this internal conflict that Ashley has. yeah The other villains are like, like you're stepping on his dead body like she was like wiping her boots off on him and they were like like jesus like we were cold-blooded we get that like you calm the fuck down it was almost like a double prove like no i really am bad like look at me i'm disrespecting a girl how bad i am yeah if yeah exactly yeah that and like um and then side piece kind of putting the two and two together of like you used her real name
01:44:06
Speaker
You arrived like Side Piece is kind of playing that game of like... Side Piece kind of smart. Side Piece is smart. It connects. touch They touch. him You know, for somebody whose power is literally ripping out her own body part and trying to land bits of spleen on people as a game. Yeah.
01:44:28
Speaker
That's amazing. Look, that's the brains. Side piece bingo. You've got to keep your job interesting. That's all I'm saying. Side piece knows how to do I'm going to blow up someone with a piece of uterus.
01:44:40
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Got to hit somebody with a of uterus. Oh, oh, oh, oh. and yeah black Really gives a yeah. Say it, Nick.
01:44:53
Speaker
Really gives a different vibe to the nickname ThunderCunt. ah justin up i that entrepreneur Well, you have now. Wow, you did it. said it now. You certainly said it. We probably called Victoria's mom a cunt.
01:45:11
Speaker
I think it was probably me. I do know i have said that word on this podcast. It's okay. We have Scottish friends. we can say I'm sure there's an Australian somewhere. someone got bingo. We got the C pass.
01:45:25
Speaker
oh i got a bingo. Oh. Bingo. ingo I'm going do the inspection. It looks like we have Kenzie's parents are robots. Jester's tattoo.
01:45:37
Speaker
Side piece gets a laugh. And then also, it's ah well, we haven't gotten that other one yet. Yeah. But, yeah. ah Let's go! Okay, maybe not.
01:45:48
Speaker
Side piece gets a laugh. That is that is our three. We were doing a three by three tonight. so Oh, three by three. Oh, nice. yeah Yep. Perfect. Yeah. As as William Doe says... When the other villains are saying, calm down, Ed Floor, you know you fucked up. It's like, whoa, whoa. like, all right, we're all bad guys here. but <unk> guess We're not bad guys.
01:46:09
Speaker
We're not bad guys. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So Ashley kind of yeets herself out of the battlefield. So she's out of there. I think that was probably the best solution. Chris has lost a leg, but he's okay.
01:46:22
Speaker
He's got three others. He's fine. yeah He's all right. He's just, he just, you know, makes it work. ah like point twelve 5.12? Let's go. Yeah. ah All the hostages are losing their mind. 5.12. Rain and the marching band use their resistance to mama to sedate her.
01:46:44
Speaker
There's spot of hope before the speedrunners make their move. Motherfuckers. Valafor spites the heroes with the hostages and Rain fights Snag. ah speed yeah so The the speedrunners. Yes, they're a bunch of time manipulators.
01:47:02
Speaker
Oh, that's cool. Yeah, they suck. They're a bunch of is the other month This is the other one-liner that bothered me because I was like, just there's got to be a cooler way to say that.
01:47:14
Speaker
like At one point, somebody asks one of the speedrunners, what's going on? like Why are you betraying us? And they just say, someone had to represent the fourth. I'm like, what? It's the worst way you could have said that.
01:47:27
Speaker
You Kansu worshipping motherfuckers. Just say Kansu forever or something. I don't know. Kyle Kansu. Anything. liked it, though. like it if you I think what bothers me is it just it feels almost dismissal.
01:47:42
Speaker
Someone had to. Like, it's not like they really believe in it. I just had. I imagine he said it was like he said it was like a sneer and a chuckle. Like he like he looked over and he goes, somebody had to represent the fourth. And you're like, yeah, yeah.
01:47:56
Speaker
Oh, you the tone. Like that was that was that was how I read it. Maybe, maybe it just. Oh, God. For some reason. For some reason. but oh That was so good. It was such choice. Also Wonderland for the bingo. We are we are ah not counting the Hannah cries one. i misspoke what we talked about earlier.
01:48:18
Speaker
Not counting that one just yet because there is a specific time. I did jump the gun on that. But ah if if Hannah doesn't cry later I'll give it for the episode. Do I need to cry on camera? Do I need to tell you that I cried while reading it? We got you misty-eyed. I'll count that.
01:48:36
Speaker
But it has to be about a certain part. She grabbed her hat. She had to grab the hat when she did this. I did grab my hat. I was really upset. Yeah, yeah. I'm upset. oh I don't want to get to that. Sveta just stuffing her wig in Valfour's mouth.
01:48:51
Speaker
Pretty great. That was really great. You got to work with what you got and just... right at his throat. and it thats That bit ah reminded me of um of I think, what is it?
01:49:05
Speaker
Is it Avengers 2 where he's in the Hulkbuster punching Hulk and he's like, go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. I imagine Spenta's just like, shut up, shut up, shut up. Shut up. Shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up.
01:49:22
Speaker
The sun's going down. The sun's going down. Love it. Yeah. And as Fran put it out, Tohu and Bohu still got no representation. Nobody get representation those one nobody gives a fuck.
01:49:35
Speaker
You know what it is? You know what? i'll I'll give you this, Fran. I bet you there's got to be a pair of fallen twins out there in some cabin in the woods. One male, one female, just incesting it up.
01:49:45
Speaker
No. No.
01:49:50
Speaker
I'll cry for that. freakin but Also another bingo for treaty for the same three. Kenzie's parents, robots, jester tattoo, and side piece gets a laugh.
01:50:00
Speaker
Did the jester tattoo end up being the free space for some reason? I guess it did. but Maybe. I mean, we did all. We didn't mention it. No, no. I looked at all of them. I guess it's a free space.
01:50:13
Speaker
Okay, so speaking of wild power, so Rain and and March and some of her associates appear. um March, which ah somebody warned Foyle that March was there as well. i don't remember when that happened. That got brought at some point.
01:50:29
Speaker
it's It's in the interlude. Oh, i okay, it's in interlude. Is this a little bingo boy right here? that's a kid. Grabbed him by the straw. and So they they have resistance to Mama Mather's power.
March and Cluster Triggers
01:50:44
Speaker
And what I love about it is the fact that the way they have it is they have a hero or they have not a hero. They have a cape on their side who can transplant body parts temporarily yeah it's like he's like i've got somebody else's eyes it's cool minor back at base like well it's it's not that they it's it's two of them it's the gray twins yeah yeah the third person back at base as far as we know is just a rando that they're subbing the body parts out for
01:51:19
Speaker
They're just like in a coma back there getting their body parts whipped out. Oh my gosh. Which if you know about the greys, it's the Greek when we talk about the the fates passing the eye back and forth.
01:51:31
Speaker
yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh shit. That's what they are. It's the old three old women that pass the eye around. love that. God. So. I love when capes, I love reference shit like that. Like, I'm too stupid to know most of it, but like, I love it when Alan points it out.
01:51:51
Speaker
I mean, you've also got the, what is it? I don't know to say it. Amaldon? Yeah, Amaldon. oh yeah which Yeah, yeah, yeah. The power can't win guy?
01:52:02
Speaker
Yeah, one of those lesser known princes of hell. um and demonic like yeah a prince of hell well because because valifor is a prince of hell i looked that one up yeah anything prince of hell yeah wait are you serious no i don't believe you no oh wow i will believe it's the red hair yeah you're just walking down the streets of peru and people just calling cat calling you in spanish el prince so diablo el diablo yeah
01:52:37
Speaker
Wait, how do you say Prince in Spanish? um Good question. ah
01:52:45
Speaker
It'll come to me later. Oh, no. I'm sorry, Michael. i put you on the spot. No, it's okay. I just had a beer as well. It didn't help. so tough yeah I did like how this whole yeah arc was them all going. So this is a trap, right?
01:52:59
Speaker
This is definitely a trap, 100%. Yeah, oh yeah, it's a trap. Oh yeah, it's a fucking trap. Oh no, it was a trap. yeah We were not prepared for this.
01:53:10
Speaker
Yeah. It's Principe. Definitely the obvious trap was obvious. What was it? Principe Diablo? Principe. Principe Diablo. Principe Diablo. Oh yeah, I should have known that.
01:53:21
Speaker
It's like Prince almost yeah with a P-E at the end. Principe. I-P-E. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, yeah, you've got... um So March has an interesting power compared to FOIL. Like, right, FOIL we know has sort of the physics-defying punch-through-reality power.
01:53:41
Speaker
March seems to have sort of the opposite where it's like rip-through-reality power. and then make explosions from it.
01:53:55
Speaker
I don't think that's the power. Not exactly, but, you know. I believe it was delayed explosion trigger.
01:54:06
Speaker
Yeah. is that yeah Is what we see. How she uses it, at least. I'll double check. I think it has more to do with... So... so It's like a...
01:54:20
Speaker
ah ah like a fuse. it's all Yeah, it's like she makes a line with her sword and then it glows and then it blows up. Yeah, because she kills somebody with it. Yeah.
01:54:31
Speaker
yeah yeah right yeah Yeah, very strange. We don't know exactly what that means. I was guessing at the ripping through reality thing because i'm it's supposed to be sort of similar to Foil's, I imagine. um Yeah, because Foil's main power set, like, the look is like essentially nullifying a lot of ah the effects of things like gravity and... um ah Yeah.
01:54:59
Speaker
um I'm looking through side things. um And on that line, like... I'll just see. know... ah I'm curious how they're... Because they were all a Cluster Trigger, right? That's the... Yeah. I'm very curious. Yeah. i i mar all in Other people we don't know. I'm hoping... i want i want to know more about that.
01:55:24
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Very curious. Another of those don't look it up, but... Yep. Nope. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure. ah But interesting. I'm hoping that we'll get a an interlude eventually from March, be which would be really fun because I think that getting there...
01:55:42
Speaker
there I don't know. I'll say their perspective on on their cluster trigger thing would be really interesting because like we've we've gotten a lot from Rain.
01:55:55
Speaker
and like We know how their system works, but I would assume that not all cluster triggers work like that with the whole sleep thing and the room and the segments and whatnot. yeah So I'd be very curious. yeah there's wonder I would count that as a fails to understand power, so I know you've got a bingo wonderland.
01:56:13
Speaker
with fail to understand powers. Is it a failure to understand or is it just a lack of information? now a lot of things. I'll be honest, I failed to understand it and I know what it is.
01:56:30
Speaker
ah Yeah. yeah I did like that they were like, Foil was very aware that they were coming for Like, oh, yeah, they've tried before. They came a couple times in Brockton Bay. Took Perry in hostage once.
01:56:43
Speaker
Like, just... Yeah. like yeah like I was like, okay, this isn't... Not just once. Does it say, like, twice? Was it twice? Because I remember, like, last one, in the last couple chapters, it was like, oh, oh, no, you know, foil.
01:56:59
Speaker
What's going to happen? She's not... She doesn't know what's happening. It's like, no, this is this has been going on for a while. she's She's prepared. Yeah. um Yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to think of this. Yeah. mama mama does release the Mama does release the hostages. They get her to release them.
01:57:18
Speaker
And everybody else. And basically she's like, okay, I agree to go quietly. Like, i don't want to hurt anybody else. I'm assuming she's in on the plan. Maybe didn't plan to get sedated. Yeah. They wrap her up like a mummy, Mathers.
01:57:31
Speaker
Yeah. That wrecked. Well, it doesn't last long. Yeah, and then the speedrunners. Okay, so who um who are who are who are all of the speedrunners? I'm trying to get all of their powers again. So here's the thing about the speedrunners with a lot of these things.
01:57:51
Speaker
It doesn't fucking matter. They're all the same power. i don' just There's too many and they're all at once. Except end of days. End of days. has very cool has a has one of those like, I'm just going to put you in a pocket dimension power. He ban his man yeah he has banished the the power. It's very cool. Geez, like, dang.
01:58:13
Speaker
Also, Wonderland has the double bingo. Not only the fails to understand power gesture and Kenzie's, but also the cat on screen fails to understand power and argument over whether Damsel was justified in killing Bob.
01:58:28
Speaker
Let's go! Nicely done. ah run Well done. Well done. Yeah, I think... Before you get enchanted into the banish banished realm. You go in the Sin Bin. The what?
01:58:43
Speaker
Yeah. The Sin Bin. The Sin Bin? The penalty box. The penalty box. Come on. I've never heard that. That's great. I've never heard of him. I was thinking of the shadow. Come on. Send him to the shadow realm. I would love to watch.
01:58:56
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Which um I found out a couple of weeks ago for the first time that the shadow realm was a creation of four kids animation in the United States.
01:59:08
Speaker
in the original Yu-Gi-Oh anime, people just die if they lose the duel. Oh, wait, what? I know that like there's way more guns and people get shot a lot. people just die And so they're like, well, we got to censor that. So we're going to create hell where they can be eternally tormented instead if they lose. What?
01:59:28
Speaker
I'm pretty sure that's what I read. I don't know how true that is, but okay so many I just think that's hilarious to be like, oh, oh, this, you know, we can't have killing on screen. Let's just traumatize kids by sending the villains to hell instead. Into just like a a horrible...
01:59:46
Speaker
Just all the all the guys who they like animated the their hands just like this. clear handling friends as is true yeah that There's no guns in their hands because they can't show it on TV in America. so it's just like and He's just like, hey. That was like tea where they animated all of the guns as walkie talkies.
02:00:04
Speaker
Oh, really? They like what hack i went back and wiped all of them into the DVD release. crazy stuff Yeah, okay. Trane is thinking of the same one I was. where There's one episode where Yugi fights this clown guy who has buzz saws.
02:00:21
Speaker
That yeah as you get closer to losing the game, the buzz saws get closer to you. But they're soul buzz saws that cut your soul and send you to the shadow realm. I imagine in the original anime, they're just straight up buzz saws that kill you.
02:00:36
Speaker
ah Yeah. That's like, that's the, uh, when they, they immediately go into a dual city or whatever that like, Kaiba's running and like Yugi's like I'm gonna wander off into an alley and he like this clown kidnaps him and like yeah exactly oh man please for the love of God stay on the main streets Yugi for the love of God
02:01:01
Speaker
we We move on. We need to move on. Okay. Yeah. two reasons. Yugi escapes from. No. My God. I'm sorry. I do not care about Yu-Gi-Oh. Well, you know, we can fix that anyway. um So, uh, holy shit. Rain actually does some shit for once in his life.
02:01:23
Speaker
Um, yeah. And straight up yoinkin and doinkin people over here. Uh, Which I feel like he did, he turned the weakness of his arms into a strength where he, it from what I'm reading it right, didn't he basically have trapped arm arm blades?
02:01:44
Speaker
I'm kind of glitching out. I'm sorry. No, no. No, you're good. You're fine. Okay, yeah. um He had like traps inside of his arms because he knew the Snag would try to break them is what feels like. And then he traps them so blades shoot out when they break and cut his arm. Oh, what?
02:01:59
Speaker
I'm like, that was genius. Yeah. Yeah, it kind of read like that. i think I think you're right. He's got these like little robot arms that when they break, like shoot out like assassin blades into the into Snag's arm. That's cool.
02:02:10
Speaker
It was um it was a good move. And then he does the whole like, I'm going to cut you with my power. and he's like, don't move, Snag. And Snag, first time, listens. Does it again. And Snag's like, you know what? And then dies.
02:02:21
Speaker
Yeah. promptly it follows You know what? I don't because he died. Wilds almost have craziest dreams. This is crazy. Like, how did he come up with this stuff? yeah That's great. well So good.
02:02:36
Speaker
Hey, Vixier. Glad you could make it. Hello, Vix. Hey. I'm not a kid for the interludes. Just in time. Alrighty. Interlude.
02:02:48
Speaker
Interlude 5.x. Interlude Citrine. de and Kurt Wynn brief the other mayoral candidates.
02:03:00
Speaker
Bet is irradiated. Mass immigration is needed. And Gene's past is explored. ah couple The couple and kin seek the dealer but find... Teacher has claimed his resources instead.
02:03:13
Speaker
Cauldron appears to endure.
02:03:18
Speaker
so I did like this. i like cause I love the world building interludes. I think it's a lot of fun. This was some whiplash following these combat chapters. Was like, okay.
02:03:30
Speaker
Okay, where where are we at? What are we doing? Just had to completely reorient for like half the chapter. I will say, i want I wanted to say I called it too. Because we find out Gene is Citrine before Kurt is Number Man.
02:03:44
Speaker
I want to say though, I called it. I'm like, they turn to Kurt and he's like sitting at his computer typing, not looking up. yeah I'm like, it's fucking Number Man. I know it is. and me know yeah You know her type. yeah You know her type. You know his type.
02:03:57
Speaker
and ye that moon knight altered moon knight comic where the fuck are you never man you owe me 20 yep yep exactly um
02:04:13
Speaker
yeah yeah exactly um Yeah, so Jean Wynn, we find out, is Citrine. She is running for mayor. ah One of the other mayoral candidates has ah caught on to the fact that they are either using parahumans parahumans.
02:04:31
Speaker
And he's like, you know what? Yep. I'm good. yeah I'm out. Like, you guys figure it out. I'm just a dude. I'm gone. Which I can respect. One of them just goes like, let's see.
02:04:45
Speaker
Sorry. You can leave, Gary. Get the fuck out of here. Yeah. yeah Oh, man. um We were letting you in on these meetings. Somehow... We you a paper.
02:04:57
Speaker
I don't know... yeah I don't know how many eventualities Accord planned for, but apparently all of this is based on plans that Accord had, too, which I love. I love that.
02:05:09
Speaker
Yeah. What? They've taken over the investors. Yeah, it's... Oh, my God. um And, yeah, and apparently EarthBet is kind of screwed.
02:05:20
Speaker
um Kind of sucks ah to be there. Why would you want to be there? Leave. Get out. Go. It's not worth it. yeah Yeah. Yeah, it's it's not, you know... Look, it's not great, but...
02:05:39
Speaker
we weren't going to have the worlds all kind of explode and have portals in between them to not have at least one irradiated planet. Like, we needed at least one. It might as well be EarthBet.
02:05:51
Speaker
Let's just evacuate everybody and close that shit off. like and And as we know from previous arcs as well, right, isn't there like a machine army that's slowly spreading across North and America? Running through North Carolina.
02:06:03
Speaker
Yep. ah um On the way. You know, like, there's... yeah it's just not worth it anymore. Just leave. Or close it off.
02:06:14
Speaker
At some point, you just gotta be like... Yeah. um i did kind yeah ah Sorry, go ahead. No, yeah. I was gonna move on to something else with us. i was just gonna say that, like, there's enough... There's enough people moving between, and there's enough people just stationed in bed that this is, like, an active...
02:06:36
Speaker
ongoing problem. And we're gonna need to like fucking fix that shit soon and fast. ah did Yeah, more this kind of world building.
02:06:48
Speaker
yeah it's a dead world party. Yeah, this is the kind of world building I like where it's like, okay, how are we practically dealing with this ruined world, this ruined earth?
02:07:02
Speaker
Very interesting. Yeah. Yeah. um We see a little bit of when, it appears we see a bit of when Citrine or Gene was sort of adopted by, ah what's his name? Accord. Accord.
02:07:15
Speaker
Which I like. like... and like Which, you know, it was funny. I didn't notice it was a cord at first. And then the way he was talking, I was like, oh, this is cord. You're leaving now to tell me.
02:07:27
Speaker
The way he's like, she's like, can I ask you a question? And he's like, you may ask me a question. It's like, oh, that's fucking a cord. Yeah, that bastard. Yeah.
02:07:39
Speaker
That bastard. I love him. oh Gone too soon. Yeah, um was. Yep. um And then ah yes, we see a bit of the past. um We see... i do love that Number Man has kept in touch with some of his clones. oh So theyre they're driving. This whole part was great.
02:08:02
Speaker
The driving, them hopping in the windows into the backseat. They pull a reverse red. Yeah. yeah And then them... Citrine and Number Man using their powers in conjunction where he's like, little to the left, please.
02:08:18
Speaker
It's so cool. I mean, I love how she's like, I can always tell, know how you feel about me because your clones don't hide it as well as you do. or something like that. It was a great line. It was so cute. They're still like teenagers, basically, right? Yeah. They're like teenagers, basically, and they're like, oh, my God, she's so pretty. It's so cute.
02:08:39
Speaker
oh why it's so good um yeah I the pairing. Number Man is a lot like Donald Duck, where he has a bunch of little versions of himself running around like in DuckTales. He doesn't wear pants. ah But also like the thing that Number Man does not wear pants.
02:08:58
Speaker
That's actually a pretty good analogy. Winnie the Pooh in it. ah Absolutely. Honey the Pooh looking
02:09:10
Speaker
Emberman's just the... Because he's always on his laptop, right? He's the epitome of the Zoom call where he's got full three-piece suit up top, but he's just got boxers on for pants, right? They're the most of good' the most efficient.
02:09:22
Speaker
When I'm running, I have to have my boxers on. He's got some just number related reason why. If wore pants, they would inhibit my my flow. Yeah. yeah Oh, man.
02:09:33
Speaker
He's just got he's got those like 80s running shorts that are way too short. Vic is just... Vic. God, right now.
02:09:44
Speaker
Vic said that. For those of you can't read this in the future. no. Shouting pants, what pants?
02:09:55
Speaker
thank you but I don't need no goddamn pants. I've done the math. Nobody needs pants. Jesus.
02:10:07
Speaker
I love it. almost done There's not formula out there that anyone can use to calculate how hung I am.
02:10:15
Speaker
On a scale of one to ten, how tired are we becoming? One chapter left. Ultimate power couple. I love them. yeah yeah Good power couple. They try to get to the dealer who had some cauldron vials.
02:10:30
Speaker
My guess is the dealer is the guy who's been illegally selling cauldron vials all the way back in Wyrm. Oh, that'd be great. My assumption is it's the same guy. That'd be great. He finally, though, sold out of his stock because Teacher bought it all.
02:10:43
Speaker
And Teacher is in Cauldron's main old base. Motherfucker. I'm a bitch. Yeah, he's there somehow. Which makes me think, though, is Contessa working with Teacher? Because they talked a bit at the end of Worm. I'm curious.
02:11:00
Speaker
yeah Yeah. there is Yeah. The lack of Contessa that we've had so far has is made me very curious. They did mention Fortuna, which I believe is Contessa's codename.
02:11:14
Speaker
um So they said, you know, we'll let her live out her, you know, relax her days in peace. She's done. Oh, yeah. That's true. That's true. They do mention she might be in retirement. don't buy that.
02:11:26
Speaker
But could she be? Could she be in retirement? Neither do I. Yeah. Yeah, i don't know. anyway Also, as not so certain, so tastefully pointed out, why would number man wear pants when he's got jeans?
02:11:38
Speaker
Jeans. Damn. Get fucked. As Fran said, money is a human construct, like pants. Like pants. Yeah, like pants.
02:11:51
Speaker
That's right. and Oh, I love it. Y'all y'all are so funny. got a bunch of of funny funny bunnies. know All right.
02:12:03
Speaker
All right. Well, last one. Yeah, last one. Wait, wait, wait. I'm sorry. i have one last thing to say about this. it's It's something that I was thinking about with with Victoria and kind of this back and forth.
02:12:16
Speaker
It's really... Much like how in Wyrm, we start out in Brockton Bay, it feels very small. It feels like you know Taylor's priority is the docks, right? And then you know you've got end bringers hitting and things are getting bigger and the world is expanding and the world is expanding.
02:12:33
Speaker
But by the time you get to the end of Wyrm, I'll even say mid-Wyrm to the end, the the the world that we exist in is that Taylor knows things and is part of the bigger picture of what's going on in the world. like she is She is part of of the of the big shit, right? like She knows it and it's part... So when we end with Worm, all the big stuff has happened and we've been a part of it and we've been in the know.
02:12:58
Speaker
And then we're back in Ward now where we're in Hollow Point and it's like... We're back to Small Potatoes and big... big worm brain is like, I need the big picture shit.
02:13:12
Speaker
And so the, like Victoria in Hollow Point and them trying to do stuff, Nick, you're laughing. What are you laughing at? I got to know. I saw the moment in chat. I'm sorry. William, William Doe putting the formula for the volume of the filter. The measurement of his magnum dong. I was listening and then I saw that and I got distracted. I'm so sorry.
02:13:38
Speaker
um Both of your faces at the bottom just like... I saw it happen. I saw just Nick just like put his hand over his mouth and I'm like, what is happening? Okay, all right, you bitches. My point though is, I'll be quick. My point though is, is that we've had such big potatoes and we're back to small potatoes. And so having this reminder again, that war is so imminent, that bet is irradiated. Like we're back to big potatoes again. And I love it because I'm ready. Like I'm ready. I know that it won't be long.
02:14:10
Speaker
Until we're back to big potatoes from Victoria's standpoint. But like, it's a good reminder that like, while we were so small in Taylor's head with high school and bullies, which feels so small in comparison to Gold Morning, which is where we end up.
02:14:26
Speaker
In that same scenario, dealing with Hollow Point and dealing with, you know, Mama Mathers clan, which is a big problem. And then war. War loometh.
02:14:38
Speaker
And I'm... Oh, exciting to get to big potatoes. yeah I can't wait.
02:14:49
Speaker
Absolutely. Vic says, I prefer my potatoes baked in with butter. Okay, listen. Same, but I want them to be but big baked potatoes with butter. yeah Somebody commented it and removed it, so I don't know if that was bingo bait.
02:15:02
Speaker
But um they did mention that we skipped over the character BarfBet. Oh, we did. I mean, great I think that's all that needs to be said. Yeah. Bark, that's pretty bad. All right. 5.Y, interlude for Snag. Yeah, let's do it.
02:15:18
Speaker
All right. So we see Jonathan before the Maul multi-trigger. His personality becomes more apparent. The fourth fallen branch reveals itself. um Rain kills Snag, who finds clarity in death, and he sees what's in the fifth room and his final fate.
02:15:38
Speaker
Yeah, this was um this is a tough one. Yeah, this one this one was hard. i mean we've said it We've said it all along that like, yeah, they're they're assholes now, but all of Rain's cluster is kind of justified in their, in their revenge plot.
02:15:59
Speaker
Like they have a very valid, ah reason for wanting to see the fallen dead and like, yeah and, and kind of wanting to root for snag the whole time.
02:16:13
Speaker
and just this, his, his, is like, just, uh, path towards destruction is was really sad. This is like a very, very sad chapter. Well, yeah.
02:16:30
Speaker
I liked getting to see a bit more insight into his mover power as well, where it is the he can make anything down so he can just do to to, you know, kind of ping pong himself around, which was really cool.
02:16:44
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Getting to see who he was before getting to see sort of his kindness, his generosity, his thoughtfulness towards these things.
02:16:55
Speaker
And then when he's killed,
02:17:02
Speaker
we see him kind of have that clarity in death moment where he's like, no, yeah oh no, I'm so wrong. We shouldn't be trying to kill rain. Like we shouldn't that last moment.
02:17:15
Speaker
ah That last little bit of humanity in him comes back and he's like, what have I been doing this whole time? Like, why have I been pursuing this goal of killing this kid? Like, this is so wrong. And he sees that final dream sequence, um which seems to be different than the rest because it's probably just him. um Yeah, that last little moment. I was reading some of the comments on the arc.
02:17:37
Speaker
or on this interlude, and some people were debating on what it was that he saw in the fifth room. And the yeah going theory is that he, at least what they were theorizing, the people I was reading, is that he realizes, oh that person's been in there, in a sense, this whole time. Yeah. But they just can't interact with us.
02:18:03
Speaker
And now I'm going to be like that too, where I can't interact with the others. And this piece of me has been lost as well um for them. A lot of people are also saying that maybe Snag, we don't know much about Cradle and Love Lost quite as in deeply now as we do Snag.
02:18:23
Speaker
But Snag maybe was the most empathetic of the other cluster members. to how will How will losing that empathy affect the other cluster members was a question people had.
02:18:34
Speaker
A lot of interesting things here with this particular cluster and I really, really, yeah, I really like it. And how powers are going to be affected with the loss of somebody. Right.
02:18:45
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I no longer having that, that side. do they ah Do they lose it? Or do they each get a piece of it? Yeah. Do they become stronger because of it?
02:18:57
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they're um I felt like the kind of the end when he's having that moment of like realization of like, we shouldn't like we shouldn't hold on to this kind of anger.
02:19:14
Speaker
And, you know, to keep going after Rain, the I felt like that was... Because obviously they're their their anger towards Rain and towards the Fallen is, of course, you know, connected to the trauma and the trigger itself. But it's obviously very much affected by Kiss Kill.
02:19:34
Speaker
And I think that, like, in this moment when he's dying... i i to to me, I kind of felt like that maybe that kiss kill is dampening now as he's kind of flickering out.
02:19:45
Speaker
His consciousness is kind of flickering away. And without, we if you take away the kiss kill response, what is left, but just you and your trauma and kind of him still at the end being like, oh yeah, no, like this isn't, one this isn't right. And it connects to something in 5.X that I forgot to mention had come to mind is that how much the passengers are influencing the people that they are attached to.
02:20:13
Speaker
Yeah. Because yeah in 5.X, the mayoral candidate who drops out, Greg, Gary, whatever his name is. e yeah um Gary, yeah. Gary, he drops out stating...
02:20:26
Speaker
Everything we know about parahumans and their entities that they're all aggressive. They're designed to push you to fight. And I don't want that kind of person leading us, but I know I don't have a chance against you, so I'm just going to drop out and do my own thing.
02:20:38
Speaker
um But that with you know Gene Citrine basically saying, well, cauldron capes are different, but we don't really know if they are. We don't probably have enough knowledge to know if they are truly different or if maybe they are more stable than normal capes.
02:20:58
Speaker
And so we have that question of how much of what Snag experienced was him and his trauma and how much was just his passenger pushing this particular cluster to try to kill the other members.
02:21:13
Speaker
Yeah. um Yeah, i don't know. And that's kind of an interesting
02:21:20
Speaker
Interesting question. and don't know. Yeah. It's a tough one. ah Bernard, no, Gary isn't advised by here. Perihuman, as far as we know. Yeah.
02:21:35
Speaker
yeah ah But unfortunately, everybody else in the room is. Yeah. Yeah. yeah I understand his frustration very much. So.
02:21:49
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It's just everything cyclical there. you know Alexandria was in charge of the PRC secretly. Jane is going to become the mayor of the new Megalopolis. Parahumans are always going to be on top one way or another. If she doesn't, then Sierra Kelly does. and not yeah and She is her own person, but strong eyes the cattle tail.
02:22:14
Speaker
Absolutely, yeah. Like, funded by information from, like, that you you can't untangle her from Tattletail at all. Like, that's impossible. But,
02:22:27
Speaker
yeah, i'm it's it's interesting. Yeah. yeah With but the end of this interlude, though, that kind of moment where you realize that this fifth member of their cluster that's been presumably dead this whole time, their dark, you know, segment.
02:22:48
Speaker
And that realization, like you said, Nick, where it's like, oh, they've been here this whole time. And like, not not sure where the dream ends or begins, but like continually stuck in this loop.
02:23:02
Speaker
And like, not, i I feel like there's a line, can't remember what it is exactly, but there's a line near the end where it's something along the lines of like, shit, I might need to pull it up and read it because...
02:23:16
Speaker
Sorry, I'm going to look it up really quick. Oh, you look it up really quick. Tats is Tattletail's new nickname. Tats? No.
02:23:27
Speaker
Is it? i mean Of called leave that in called yeah course it's Amp. It was Amp? teas wait chat we know there's we We mentioned Tattletail, everybody. ye Come on. TTT in the Yeah, so there's some interesting interesting little hero or villain stuff here as well where Snag is like, why are why are these Brockton Bay capes, why are they all like standing back? They're so...
02:23:53
Speaker
like they're not doing as much and the hint we get is like well maybe they knew that the speedrunners were going to betray them so they're holding back so they don't get so deeply entangled with it I'm like yeah that makes sense that's exactly what they all fucking knew that shit yeah oh yeah I did love to snag snag jumping at imp reappearing like we'd had before it was just good yeah good memories of like oh right yeah um I found this section I was talking about.
02:24:21
Speaker
ah so it's at the very, very end of interlude I think that pen. and He loves pens. um ah Okay, the lights went off, the barrier went down, and he gained something of an understanding of what, not who, was in the fifth space that had been there between his and the fallen boys.
02:24:40
Speaker
With that knowledge, he slipped into dreams of a different sort, knowing that even if they paused or were broken up by visits to the room, there would never be an end to them. and like this kind of purgatory space that this has now become. And it makes me wonder, like we we don't really talk about... like Well, I mean, obviously you have the fallen and you have cults like that who have a very like religious you know connotations and things being attached to them. But like we don't really see a lot of like religious ideologies of... like
02:25:12
Speaker
You know, what happens after you die? you know, is there heaven and hell? is And this feels like the closest thing to purgatory, that you could be stuck in this, like, weird little dream-like state where he's not really dead. He's just kind of, like, here. He's just in the room.
02:25:27
Speaker
and like, time passes and dreams slip into each other. And it's like, what hap... Like, does... is Are you just stuck there until the entire cluster is dead?
02:25:39
Speaker
Like, do you... What does death look like? you're lucky, maybe you get to be one of Valkyrie's ghosts. And if so, are you consciously aware of that? Like, are you? Yeah, it's just, it's an interesting, it's an interesting thought.
02:25:58
Speaker
Yeah, it's like, it starts to bring into account, like, okay, because your passenger's linked to you, are you linked to it? Like, it's going to live on past your death.
02:26:09
Speaker
So when you die, is like your consciousness kind of also attached to ah passenger at that point in time? Right, right, right. And if so, is that like, you know, that how Valkyrie can can work with them?
02:26:26
Speaker
um In which case you're, you know, you are in a purgatory state. You don't get to just die and go into the ground or, you know.
02:26:37
Speaker
Wild Bo thought the worm universe was too nice. So of course he had to introduce Cape hell. Um, that's for yeah.
02:26:45
Speaker
Um, is that, yeah. Is that, a is that the case for everyone? This is just what it looks like in a multi-trigger, like, you know, and, and yeah, yeah. So it's interesting.
02:26:59
Speaker
Um, but yeah, with that, close out the night with our questions. Of course, our favorite power.
02:27:10
Speaker
well What did you get to see that was new and interesting and fun for you? Ooh, some fun powers this time. um Just a few of them. Nobody say banana Banana bird.
02:27:23
Speaker
Banana bird. Ring, ring, ring, ring. Banana bird. um
02:27:31
Speaker
It's the banana phone song. yeah The banana phone song. but what I was going to say Amaliam or whatever that guy's name is. um I thought him having sort of a cluster of powers not to use that term lightly necessarily but in the sense of like my spear negates powers my star teleports me like i don't know what he's got going on but he's got a very interesting grouping of powers going on i thought that was kind of cool and the power negation one is definitely very spooky i'm sure for a lot of capes to be like oh like victoria's like
02:28:07
Speaker
I can't fly anymore because i flew I flew around him. He negated it. Now I can't fly. but Yeah. like that's i was That's pretty cool. Yeah.
02:28:17
Speaker
Yeah, the simplicity of the of the banishment from... um ah End of days. End of days, yeah. just It's such a simple power, but it's it's again, it's it's terrifying.
02:28:28
Speaker
like They don't know. i Victoria's whole, and like she has that moment where she's like, I'm trapped here. Is this a permanent trapping? did I just get banished for good?
02:28:38
Speaker
ah you know It's it's yeah was terrifying. great I mean, in a world where time bubbles exist. Yeah, exactly. Multiple forms of hell. yeah My favorite was the ah goofy little one, and it's just the one that's stuck in my head.
02:28:54
Speaker
is the dude who can rearrange where his body parts are. oh yeah. Yeah. It's like you grab the wrist and all of a sudden that turns into the ankle. Yeah.
02:29:05
Speaker
so like its yeah It's like a five-pointed snore and you can just kind of shift whatever limb goes where. But then if he does it too much, he strains himself. He's just like, all sudden there's the mouth the stomach. And the one guy was like, do I need to be worried about him? She's like, no, he gets like that sometimes.
02:29:25
Speaker
Yeah. Yep. A Maimon. A Maimon is the one I was thinking of. Or a Maimon. but Which I will say, i know you said it's a demon, like in deep deep demon lore, but my first thought was literally like, what is this Digimon-ass name this guy has? like Yeah.
02:29:44
Speaker
Amaliyaman. Digivolve to Mechakaruru Amaliyaman. Go. Yeah. yeah Yeah. I'm like, what?
02:29:55
Speaker
are What are you? Wow. You might as well have just vomited I'm a fucking nerd. I love it so much. um I don't know who Barf Bad is, but that's my pick.
02:30:06
Speaker
Oh. We just lost Nick. Hard loss, you know. were wondering who was going to die first. if they Nick went to purgatory. know He's never coming back.
02:30:20
Speaker
My boy. ah yeah yeah. Barf that's a little. For name alone. Yeah. That's the only thing I know about him. Gotta, gotta be. Yeah. Hannah, did you say yours?
02:30:31
Speaker
While we wait for Nick to come back? um I didn't. I didn't say mine. i I do really like Valafor's new version of his powers. It's so very cool.
02:30:42
Speaker
But I'm more interested in in... Less about the power, because we've seen it before, but more of um Victoria's thought process of like how to get out of it. And like I'd be fascinated to see more loopholes of like trying to get out of Valafor's...
02:30:57
Speaker
ah you know his his His hold on you, basically, and like how that looks. Because it's just... It's so... It's so interesting. ha I just think, yeah, I think that's really cool. Yeah. and Bernard said Nick got touched by end of days.
02:31:13
Speaker
yeah Exactly. ah Fran but he said he went to the cluster room and that is, yeah He was in the cluster room with us and he is no longer allowed in.
02:31:25
Speaker
Light went out in his cube. Did anyone have Nick dies in the bingo? No, but maybe we should we should put technical difficulties as a free space or something. No, don't jinx us with the technical difficulties. Hey, he is.
02:31:40
Speaker
He's in chat. He's in chat. He's coming back. He said, I'm in here in spirit and in chat. He's trying. He's doing his best. um Well, while we're working on that, ah other than the powers, what about, we mentioned ah Big Potatoes.
02:31:53
Speaker
And it is one of the beautiful things about these series is you work your way up. we'll We'll look at the classic example of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Lovely MCU. you You work your way
Scaling Story Stakes
02:32:05
Speaker
up. it didn't smart stall yeah They didn't start too terribly small.
02:32:09
Speaker
but they work their way up in increments to a universe shattering yeah thing with the fight with Thanos. And one of the big problems, and I had this as well, is you get fatigue after that.
02:32:23
Speaker
You move straight into the next phase of Marvel. And how do you go to Spider-Man in the neighborhood when you just did the whole universe? Yeah.
02:32:36
Speaker
And ward definitely suffers because of that power, you know, that power creeping and then you drop. And how do you do that again?
02:32:49
Speaker
um it's really difficult. Um, I think wild bow had the good, ah you know good sense to not write ward immediately afterwards and probably was sick and tired of worm at the time.
02:33:00
Speaker
So like you have a lot of space between that. Um, But that is like, that is the natural progression of things. If things just ramp up and get bigger and it's hard not to do that because you want an ultimate final conclusion to stuff.
02:33:20
Speaker
Um, and, and it's hard to re hit the reset button. Yeah. Um, all of that to say, what is your big potatoes? What do you think the big potatoes are going to be?
02:33:35
Speaker
in this?
02:33:39
Speaker
I mean, that's the question. Yeah. I think there's a few, like, there's a lot of stuff still cooking, so... For sure. I'll wait and see. I, uh, I mean, we've talked about war.
02:33:52
Speaker
We've talked about the machine army. um I think those are two pretty big ones that'll come, but it feels like war isn't big. Like in my mind, we have to match gold morning, which was just true devastation.
02:34:07
Speaker
And so like, what, what, what would that be, you know, on that level? And so like, I think the machine army is definitely a possibility in the future. i think, um,
02:34:21
Speaker
the The whole, because because we've kind of, we've we've seen the end of the Endbringers, as it were, ish, but we don't really know what's happened to them now. You know, are they just in a comatose state somewhere? Are they just like in a locker?
02:34:36
Speaker
Like, we don't know. And we do know from the end of Worm that there was some weird shit going on with the Simmer and a baby. And that was weird. And I don't feel like we've seen the end of shit like that. of because And, you know, we can't forget the the thing that started us all off, which was the weird fucked up triggers and people having trees growing out of their faces. Like,
02:35:01
Speaker
we're We're seeing a system that's broken, and how does that continue? And I think that it's just going compound on itself, and I'm super excited to see what that looks like because I, I mean, i you guys know, I love Bonesaw. I love the weird body horror, creepy shit, ah and then I'm also just obsessed with the Endbringer. So, like, I freaking, I'm not done with the Simmer. I want to see more of her, and I think that there's a lot more Like, I think things who get can get a lot shittier and a lot creepier in terms of just everything.
02:35:36
Speaker
Yeah. You know? Yeah. You're touching on exactly what the comments are saying. Not so certain says we've got more than power creep, we've got creep, like weird creep. And then Bufaroni prefaced that is creep creep, which is hilarious to me. a
02:35:54
Speaker
That's pretty much what you're asking for. So there you go. I'm ready.
Technical Difficulties and Speculation
02:35:59
Speaker
Um, Nick, any other prediction? Nick is in a discord trying to update, uh, hellscape where his, it's failing to update and not letting him launch discord. So he can't come back.
02:36:10
Speaker
So he really went, he really was, but of he really was banished. Um, so or yeah or or one else shadow row um any more predictions, uh, you know, uh, dangerous misfit, uh, in our therapy group, like, um,
02:36:27
Speaker
what What's going to happen next now that ah the betrayal of you know the speedrunners has happened? um Any other vibes?
02:36:40
Speaker
it's so I have nothing for predictions. like I could say anything and they'd be... just as Just as valid as any other. Well, y'all called it last time. I do and remember you saying this and Bernard pointed it out that you were like, man, somebody's going to die. It's probably going to be snag first because like he just has, I just want to die already. You guys did call that. yeah Hey, look at that.
02:37:02
Speaker
right. That's great that y'all remember because i don't remember that. That's why why you guys are all here. yeah That's why Bernard is here to remind us. For sure. Okay, okay. Next next death, next death will be... oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
02:37:16
Speaker
Just like manifest it. I don't want to jinx it. I was going to say something funny, but then I was like, okay, if I just jinx it, I'll hate my mouth. I'll tell it and then you. know Don't say tattletale now.
02:37:28
Speaker
but No, well, are we talking about death of the cluster or death of people we love? i was just thinking death in general. Just we could predict the next death. but I mean, technically, it was Bob first, but yeah. Yeah, yeah. We did. Apparently, we also predicted that, maybe, according to Bernard.
02:37:46
Speaker
don't know. don't remember that shit. um but i and Who do you think is next in the cluster, then? Next in the Clustered Cradle. I think Love is going to be... Love Lost will be last.
02:38:00
Speaker
yeah She has the most... She has anger. Yes, the most anger. I think even if you take out the Kiss Kill, she lost a daughter. like that is That is a kind of loss that you don't easily... yeah just move on from like you don't just forgive your way through it it is the reason they're all like so like yeah yeah I think so think so um all right yeah honestly I think the therapy group question probably remains the same is same um different well okay just news new new i I'm not gonna say theory but new thought um
02:38:43
Speaker
We know that Chris is sussy-wussy. We know this. He doesn't want to answer questions. He's sussy-wussy-baka-waka. He's a sussy-wussy-baka-waka. He doesn't want to answer questions. um We kind of glossed over it ah in in Snag's um interlude, but ah when they come across him, Chris, in the building, and he's kind of like yeah hovering over, squatting over, sitting on, I don't know, um some of the other villains,
02:39:13
Speaker
ah there's kind of this moment of like, Chris, you're supposed to be waiting in the trees, buddy. What you doing? And it feels very much like a um Like he's trying to prove himself, but he's not necessarily following orders and is kind of like going on on his own, maybe and potentially doing some, some things behind the group's back that we don't know about.
02:39:44
Speaker
And it makes me wonder what else he's doing behind the group's back because he doesn't want to be sidelined. He he but made that very clear. Victoria wants him in the background with Kenzie because of he's, you know, younger in the group and we don't really know how his power works yet.
02:39:59
Speaker
It feels like, I mean, I think I said this before, Chris is going to become a problem. ah He might be becoming the problem now. ah We'll see. we'll swo yeah
02:40:15
Speaker
All right. ah Well, ah with that, i will let y'all know because it's getting late and I'm fading as well. Yeah. We get all the good questions at the end, so remember these for later.
02:40:30
Speaker
Yes. And these are great because ah we we ah next week, you know we don't have our episode. We'll be reading.
02:40:41
Speaker
I'll get that reading list up to make sure it's just the next arc arc. But next Tuesday, we will be... Oh! Next?
02:40:51
Speaker
welcome back coming back yeah next week we will uh sorry there we go and solid very it's very nice very nice uh next week for the patrons we will be playing quiplash like worm themed quiplash live So be on the lookout for that link.
02:41:19
Speaker
Patrons only. Patrons only and you can in submitting some questions, which y'all submitted a shitload of prompts for that. That's great.
02:41:29
Speaker
We've got a bunch of custom prompts that we're going to be playing Quiplash with. If you don't know what it is, it's just like fill the blank ah so you can get the thing right. But yeah, it'll be live in a week.
02:41:42
Speaker
A week from today. Next Tuesday. Same time, same bat time, same bat channel. As for our reading assignment, in two weeks, we will be reading all of Arch 6.
02:41:55
Speaker
Arch 6. Arch? It's only 2,000 words longer than what we read this week. So, doable. So, the 8th will be our next live. Yes. So, two weeks from today, 8th of July. You're right.
02:42:11
Speaker
Yep. Arc 6. Perfect. Whoa. Arc 7 is four chapters. i um I'm looking at that. Is that right? It sure looks like that, but it doesn't look, the number count doesn't look right, so I'm going to double check that.
02:42:33
Speaker
Oh, my gosh. I just scrolled down a little bit, and I just realized how long some of these are. ah wow yeah Oh, yeah. Oh, shit. yo So all of six next time. All of six in two weeks. All of six.
02:42:52
Speaker
Yep. And a final note, it is true that but that Banishment is a charisma save. And so don't forget get points into that. Intelligence is a dump stat.
02:43:02
Speaker
ah we've We've always known this. All right. Well, it's been great. Remember, if you want to subscribe on our Patreon, um little as $1 a month you can join us for all of our fun things our extra stuff we do like the quiplash we're doing next week otherwise have a great evening and we'll see you next time on the Brockton Bay Book Club goodnight bye friends please come on in join the Patreon why don't you just join the Patreon come support us and join the Patreon please help us and join the Patreon we have fun join
02:43:41
Speaker
It's great. Join the Patreon. Why don't you just join the Patreon? Come on, come on. Hello, princess. I noticed you haven't joined the Patreon.
02:43:55
Speaker
Daddy's not happy. I can't get enough of that one. It's so good. It's so good.
02:44:07
Speaker
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