Arc 11: Infestation - Chapters A-H

Transcript

Speaker: Worm is a web serial by J .C. McCray, also known as Wildbo. You can read Worm in its original format by visiting parahumans .wordpress .com or donate to Wildbo's Patreon at patreon .com slash wildbo. This story isn't intended for young or sensitive readers. Readers who are on the lookout for trigger warnings are advised to give Worm a pass. For a complete list, check the description for all of Worm's trigger warnings.

Speaker: Good morning, Brockton Bay. Look under your seats. You get a murderer. You get a murder. Everyone gets a murderer. It's arc 11. Part two. It's arc 11. Part two, the interlude in part. It's a slaughterhouse nine, baby. Oh my gosh. Boy, what a few exciting chapters we have before us.

Speaker: Welcome back everybody to another episode of the Brockton Bay book club where a bunch of a bunch of worm nerds reading, reading, discuss worm. Yeah. How's everyone? How's how you, how's the, how's the audience doing? Well, I had a root canal this morning, so I'm feeling extra good. Lovely. That's a lot of fun. That's cool. Yeah. Did they have, did they have to break out the bone soul?

Speaker: Now can I mute other Is that this button it's this button, okay

Speaker: There you go. You found it. All right, let's get back on track. We have a fun group here today. Myself, Jacob, is always joined by Alan, Nick, Hannah, and Michael. Welcome everybody. Greetings. Hello. Hey, for all of them. And we are in the back half of arc 11 for this episode. The eight interlude chapters that we get to enjoy and where we meet the slaughterhouse nine.

Speaker: and to learn a bit about them along with a few other people. It's a lot of fun world building, a lot of fun. Well, fun's probably the wrong word for these chapters, but I had fun. I had a blast, yeah. I have mixed emotions and we'll get to them. We'll get to them. Let's dive in. The nice thing about these is that each chapter is pretty self -contained. We can really go a chapter at a time here.

Speaker: Yeah. You want to just kind of go down, go down the list. Hannah, as always, want to kick us off. Oh yeah, for shizzle. For shizzle. So we start out with 11 .A, which is Bitch. So Bitch's point of view. We find out a little bit about how she grew up, her trigger event. And then she meets up with Glory Girl, Brandish, and then gets recruited by the Siberian. What the heck? Great arc.

Speaker: Real quick before I know we're going to get more to the Siberian later. Has she been mentioned before? I feel like she has been. I was trying to, I was thinking the same thing. We've had crawler mentioned. We've had Jack slash mentioned. Well, okay. So when they went through, remember like back in coils base when they were like flipping through the, you know, the folder of the different people. I think, I think Siberian was mentioned very briefly then, but other than that, I don't.

Speaker: Okay, okay, gotcha. Certainly their powers, I don't think were discussed, but like Jack's slash has been discussed and his power, uh, in terms of like how he can slash with the knife. Yeah. They were discussing like, Oh, but what if he cuts the world in half and then everybody stops laughing? Yeah. Well, let's, let's get to, uh, we've talked about crawler. Right. I just remember there were a couple of heroes. I feel like coil mentioned or that were mentioned.

Speaker: that I feel like they were mentioned as like avoided. I know that the slaughterhouse nine in general is an avoided all costs group, but I feel like there are a couple members of them that were even more so doubly like Jack slash was one. A crawler was one. And I feel like the Siberian was mentioned, but I might be projecting because that also comes up in this arc.

Speaker: Um, in, or not in this arc, but in these interludes, it comes up which members are the most dangerous. Right. But I think you're right. I think they did. He is mentioned in parasite. So arc 10, uh, 10 .6. Okay. Thanks. There we go. You're welcome. Nailed it. Uh, let's get to the tragic backstory. Gosh, man, poor bitch.

Speaker: Yeah, for real. I think it's really easy to hate bitch because she's so bitchy and the whole dog brain thing kind of makes it difficult to, uh, relate with her, but her backstory is fucking tragic as shit. Yeah. Yeah. In my head, I like, I remember us talking about this before and her power and I, you know, I was going off of what I remembered.

Speaker: And it's always worse every time I read it. I loved the instant regret she felt when she betrayed Taylor. Tried to push her into the containment foam and just describing that just the immediate wish she hadn't done that was heartbreaking.

Speaker: And her, her mentality of now that I've done that, there's probably no way we can go back is so sad too, because that's just kind of how she grew up is this mindset of, okay, once you heard somebody it's irredeemable, there's nothing you can do. And so now she kind of feels like that, like her relationship, even with the rest of the undersiders is kind of shot at this point. Cause she's like, I don't get why they just accepted her back so quickly. I mean, I feel bad for betraying her, but now I know that none of them probably trust me.

Speaker: It's just sort of the snowballing problem that she has with her personality. And yeah, the more you learn about her, especially in this arc, the more you're like, Oh, wow. It's again, it's one of those, um, you know, this isn't your nature. This is how you were nurtured. This is the environment that you were raised in that made you such a messed up person. It also goes to show where, you know, we're running into a lot of discussion about psychopathy and sociopathy. Bitch.

Speaker: like isn't either of those. She just struggles to fit in with society. She has some of those tendencies, but ultimately she has like the empathy and maybe more the sympathy if anything. It's just traumatized. Yeah. Yeah. She's like, you know, she, it's not that she doesn't feel bad. It's not, she doesn't even, you know, she feels jealous of other people and also kind of feels bad for them that they can't do what she does.

Speaker: She is living her best life out in this wilderness. She's running free. She's bullying people, all the greatest things you can do when you're a bitch. And she's got her dogs and she's got people that work under her and she's so happy to bully them if they fuck up with the dogs. She's living her best life. And she feels bad that others, she's like, why do you grew and

Speaker: you know, skitter even have, you know, that even comes close to this. But then she immediately thinks, and why are they happier than me? Yes. Oh my gosh. That killed me. That kind of this like false sense of, of joy, even like I have everything I want. So why am I not happy? Like, Oh, I don't even know if it's why am I not happy? Like it's, why are they happy than me? How, how are they doing this? Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah. And I think, of course, a lot of that has to go back to even though she has this sort of dual personality of wanting to be alone, just wanting to be with her animals, taking care of her animals. But there's still that natural human need for social interaction and for people in your life. Yeah. And she's just losing, she doesn't have that because she struggles with relationships. She struggles with communication.

Speaker: She struggles to connect to people and she even talks about in there, I think is very relatable how she talks about, um, in some ways it's like just heartbreaking and relatable in the sense of, wow, this makes me feel so much more for you of how she's like, there's so many social cues just to get and to understand. And she's like, how do I know what people mean when they do this and do that? Um, yeah. And you know,

Speaker: I can imagine that for somebody who is, I mean, I think it's okay to say that bitch is neurodivergent. Um, in some ways. Um, but I, it just kinda, I don't know. I can imagine, you know, I've, I've heard from students who, and I'm a teacher, um, I've heard from students who have ADHD or who have autism and just the

Speaker: the immense social struggles they have to fit in and to catch things and to notice social cues. And I just, I don't know, it makes me feel for her a lot. You definitely feel a lot worse for her after this arc.

Speaker: Yeah, when she's talking to that guy who shoots at Angelica and she's like, what the fuck are you doing? And she's yelling at him and he's trying to like, he's like, no, I didn't know. And the whole conversation was like, well, it's my territory. Like, well, we didn't know. It's like, well, can't you hear the howling? Well, can you hear the howling halfway across the city? He's like, yeah.

Speaker: And of course, she's interpreting their facial expressions, their voice as, are you challenging me? What are you trying to do? And are you laughing at me? And not knowing that what these people are experiencing is absolute fear and terror because everyone's squatting at this point. Everyone's just trying to exist in Brockton Bay.

Speaker: And, and it's like, they're terrified because like, I mean, even we talk about later in some of the couple of the other arcs, not the other arcs, couple chapters later, there's a curfew going on. Like, there are looters and rapers and this is not a safe city. And, you know, a giant dog is near your house and like, okay, well, I'm trying to protect my family. And they're just trying to do their best. And she's trying to, you know, figure out

Speaker: What does your facial expression mean? I don't even know what you mean. Are you challenging me? Are you fighting me? Are you going to shoot at my dog again? Are you going to shoot at me? And she has absolutely no frame of reference, does not compute at all.

Speaker: And that's just, oh, that was, that was really tough for me to read. That was harder for me to read than any of the stuff with bone saw is like this, this communication, this interpersonal human relationship that just can't happen because it like isn't sticking in her brain that same way. I want to go off of what Nick said before, but you know, there's, I think maybe Hannah even said something about, there's like the dual personality of like, you want to be

Speaker: She wants to be alone, she just wants to be with her dogs, but also she recognizes that she needs to be around people kind of, like that that is where her sense of, like she feels good with her dogs, but she belongs with people. Like even she recognizes that as a human being. And I think thinking about her as sort of this dog -human hybrid, which we'll get into later,

Speaker: is really apt for her because like a dog, she could 100 % survive on her own. In fact, she would probably, due to powers or something, just become more feral over time. And I think this even plays Nick into the nature versus nurture thing. As a kid, she had the nature within her already to survive on her own. Like she was making noodles, she burned herself. Honestly, if the cops hadn't showed up, she probably could have

Speaker: you know, kept going for a while. Yeah. Um, so she already had, she already had that dog in her. I don't know. I would press X to doubt on that survival instinct. I mean, I think it's less the instinct and more just like she didn't have another option. Yeah. I think it was more desperation, but go on and continue with what you're saying. Yeah. But she had, you know, she can survive on her own, you know, with her dogs, but to thrive, she's going to have to be with people.

Speaker: Um, so balancing that weird in between state for her is going to be really tough. And I think it's really interesting how it's shown something I really didn't examine this time around, uh, until this time around. I mean, yeah. Yeah. And then she has the fight with glory girl and brandish. Um, which I'll be honest, I don't remember many of the details of, except that she kind of just.

Speaker: If I remember right, she does pretty well against them. Oh yeah. She holds out the dogs on them. And Brandish tells Gloria girl, we need to go. Like we need to grab your grab some wounded and let's fuck off. Yeah. Let's run. Yeah. Oh yeah. No. Cause they come to help out the man that she's attacked. And originally they're trying to run her out. Yeah. They're trying to run her out and they're like, actually, let's just take the wounded and leave. Well, don't they, don't they leave when they see Siberian?

Speaker: Yeah. They're on the, they're on the back foot. I read it as glory girl spots Siberian and that's right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. But they're on that. Like they're on their way out. They're not, they're not sticking around for the fight. She sees her. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. She sees Siberian. She's on the phone because they were going to call for backup or whatever. I don't know. They were calling for Amy to, you know, basically like, Hey, we've got people that need healing.

Speaker: we'll be bringing them in or something like that. She's on the phone and she sees Siberian and like something clicks like, oh, she's still on the phone. And I'm pretty sure that's when our last interlude happens. Where they get on the phone and call her and that's when they yoink out. Which all I wanted to mention there was just that I did love the timing of these arts and how they fit together. I did not remember that these weren't

Speaker: And these were a chronological, I think that's the word I'm looking for. I mean, they're essentially simultaneous, I think is what's basically happening. Yeah. But like there's some that happen directly after or during or, you know, before, during, after, like, I don't think I'd ever paid attention to that before. Yeah, which is cool. It's just a fun, clever writing because you get the sense at the end because that ties it all together. You're like, Oh,

Speaker: Did all of this, did all of these, uh, interludes happen in like a single day, roughly at the same time? Seems like it. Yeah. Yeah. That was definitely the vibe that I got. That it was like all happening at the same time. Cause originally it gives you the vibe that like they see Siberia and they're like, Oh my gosh, she's so scary. We need to just leave. Yeah.

Speaker: Um, which, and cause it's, it's kind of raining during this arc. Is that right? Or this, this chapter? And it's also, and it's also mentioned that it's raining during, uh, Cherish. Yeah. Yep. It was raining during cherishes. Um, I want to say it's raining in arms masters as well. Um, I think the only one is maybe hook Wolf's happens the day before because his happens during the daytime.

Speaker: Yeah. Or like the day before the night that everything, you know, the, you know what I mean? A few hours before. Day of. Exactly. Thank you. Yeah. I definitely got the impression that they're all sort of concurrent with each other, which is fun. Yeah. We had a note of that for dissecting worm, but we'll come back to that in the next episode. All right. Very cool. So we get to, uh, we get to the first.

Speaker: Slaughterhouse nine reveal. Woof. Oh my gosh. Okay. So. Mark me down for scared and horny. Yeah. So cool. Forgot she talks. Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah. Well, I mean, she says the thing at the end about like, no one hears her talk and lives. Yeah. Well, look at my head.

Speaker: She just never talked, period, like during this whole confrontation. And it was like, once again, this is all in my head from what I remember, you know, bitch is like, what the hell's going on? And then, you know, essentially just goes back and there's a note. But like, you know, what the fuck are you going to do to Siberian? You can't do anything Siberian. And she just like stands there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Even the rain doesn't make her wet.

Speaker: Yes, like her hair billows. Man, go on. Nothing gets her wet. Confirmed Siberian, our ace. Our ace representation. Stop it right now. All right. No, but I love that image of her standing over this body and her hair is billowing

Speaker: And like she's not like her hair isn't wet at all. And it's just kind of this like quiet everything quiets everything all the dogs stop everyone like turns to look and it's like even the dogs know that like, oh shit, like

Speaker: There are so many. All of these interludes have some just fantastic one -liners by all the characters. And Siberian's a little subtle, like looking down at the dog, not even bothering it, just being like, he's going to get hurt. Do you want to stop this? So powerful. So good. Just such a good cinematic little moment there. Delightful, really.

Speaker: For those of you who don't know, Michael Scott has been working on a remix that he posted recently. And at one point in time, Siberian has dummy mommy up against bitch.

Speaker: You know, and is like leaning forward and basically goes, you know, like, are you going to be a dog? And I'm just hearing it in my head. I'm like, there's, there's this like playing in the background. I'm like, okay, go on. And then we get all the way back to the, you know, the bit to the hideout.

Speaker: tries to read the name tag, go, are you a dog or are you a wolf? And all like, I think it was. The ball to music intensifies the beat drops. Yes. Oh, that's so funny. I think I can insert the, the vaulto quote without getting copyrighted now. So I'll do that. Oh, that's funny.

Speaker: I don't know if we gave enough context to what that volatile thing was about. Can you just explain? She gives the wolf and what the note says real quick, Alan. The note says on it, are you a dog or are you a wolf?

Speaker: Yes. So that, yeah. And then the volatile quote is self -explanatory, which we just played. So there you go. All right, moving on. I love it. But this was also our not to lose sight of the important things. These eight chapters have our second, which is with this episode or this chapter, and then also our third, later on, good girl of worm.

Speaker: I just want to point that out and thanks to Hannah and Kat for making me aware of all the smut language. I'm so glad. If there's one thing that I can bring to this podcast, if that's it, I'm happy. In the comments below, just go ahead and throw some, every time they say good girl, somebody wants to do a control F of worm every time they say good girl.

Speaker: You can send that over to I'll take it. Thank you so much. I run the Instagram so you can just message me and I'll see it. There you go. Send pics to fan art preferably. Any last thoughts on Siberian?

Speaker: Just one quick thought at the end with the little box that Siberian leaves for bitch. In general, give a girl a puppy. Am I right? Give a girl a puppy and we'll love you forever. You kick the puppy. Yes, that's clearly the villain. You give a girl a puppy. Okay, well, obviously we love you. You give bitch a puppy.

Speaker: I feel like that was a great way to just cement this idea as Siberian. Like, hey, who knows you better? Your team that smiles at you and brandishes their teeth at you or me who lays down on the ground and smiles without showing my teeth because I know who you are. You and I.

Speaker: I love it so much. And then give her the wild wolf up. If anybody knows bitch at all, it's Siberian. Siberian gets it. And obviously Taylor was getting there by figuring things out. But Siberian knew and was like, oh, I know. I know all about not showing my teeth and not looking to be a threat and speaking quietly. Dang.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It also speaks to that calming presence. There are the presence of calm and confidence that she has. Yeah. Knowing that she's basically completely invincible. Yeah. That's not even like, Oh, she's pretty strong. It's like, no. Um,

Speaker: she I think later it's mentioned that she has invincibility on scales that not even uh other invincible classical invincible heroes can match not even close right um yeah she's supposed to be the uh like the

Speaker: unmoving object in space. Yeah, immovable rod. Thank you. That's what I was trying to say there. I got you. I'll cut this if this is a spoiler, but it says that she's an unstoppable force and an immovable object. Oh, that's right. She's both. That's right. That's right. Yeah. Fun power. That's so fucking cool. I love the slaughterhouse nine so much. Man, any last things on Siberian?

Speaker: Yeah. We got seven more slaughterhouse nine members to get through. Let me, let me give you my final bitch fact that I like racking my brain. So, but I was trying to think there's something weird about a bitches powers, um, or her backstory specifically that I couldn't remember. So I actually had to look it up because I knew, I knew there was something there and I thought it was like, is bastard a wolf? Cause that's what he, they call it a wolf. Um, but something that's never mentioned in the worm series.

Speaker: but was, uh, hinted at by wild bow on Reddit randomly, uh, was the people postulating that bitch, uh, her powers aren't directly related to dogs. Dogs are just the thing that she has readily access to, um, and are adjacent to her power because of Rolo isn't a purebred dog. Rolo's.

Speaker: potentially half coyote. Oh, interesting. Oh, interesting. Maybe like canine in general, not necessarily dog. Yeah. Canine in general, specifically half breeds.

Speaker: Oh, gotcha. Interesting. I always kind of interpreted it the same way skitter controls her bugs because she controls those crabs too, but she never uses crabs. But she kind of just talks about how it's sort of, she can sense things with lower brain function. So I kind of always just assumed to a similar with bitch is that she just sort of honed in on a certain type of

Speaker: you know, brain activity or biology. Yeah. She also makes, she also makes a comment at the end that it's easier to use her power on the wolf pup than other dogs, which is interesting to me of like kind of like playing into that idea of like, well, are you a dog or are you a wolf? Like, are you a wild animal or not? Like, well, it's easier to manipulate a wild animal. So, you know, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. Very interesting. It's also alluded that it's like a domestication thing.

Speaker: that the less domesticated a creature is, the better. So potentially if she's interacting with the Chihuahua, not going to be great. You're not going to get a whole lot of work out of that. But if you found a feral dog, then it would probably, it might be harder to train, but it would actually work better on them. Interesting.

Speaker: Kind of a paradox then, too, because she does need the training in order to actually direct them to what she wants them to do. Yeah. Super interesting. Yeah, what great character work. Oh, love it. Love it, love it, love it.

Speaker: Well, we're going to be here all night if we don't move. I was going to say, I feel like we spent more time there. We were familiar with bitch and it's funny getting to her character. I have more notes for that chapter than I do. I think any of the others anyway. I have some big notes for some other ones, but yeah. Well, let's get going. Let's not slow down here.

Speaker: Yeah, so the next chapter B is Theo's perspective, which we've met Theo before. And Theo is babysitting, Astor watching in the apartment, and Jack slashes there. Woo, love that. That's absolutely freaking terrifying. Theo makes a deal with Jack, basically, in order to keep him and Astor and purity safe. And Jack gives him two years to train and prep.

Speaker: before he comes and kills Jack, which is like... Before he comes and kills Theo. Well, yes, but he'll come and kill Theo, but he's given... Kill Theo and a thousand others. Yes, so Theo has a thousand. Yeah, that's right. A thousand and Theo will be the thousandth. So he has two years to get prepped to take on Jack.

Speaker: Man, all of these chapters go so hard and they're so good. Oh, also a quick note since we're talking about these chapters all happening around the same time or near the same time. He has Onili in the bathtub and we see Onili later on. Yeah, we do, right. So this is earlier as well. Yeah, that's true. Put that bitch on ice.

Speaker: I mean, not that much earlier since I think, you know, four hours, four hours. So maybe, maybe same time or chapter. Yeah. We interrupt our scheduled program to bring you a word from our sponsor, Zencaster, a one -stop shop for all your podcasting needs.

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Speaker: looking at Jack Slash going, no, you, you I kill. That's the moment I knew I remembered. This is what's so fun about rereading the story because I remember, you know, five, six years ago when I read it for the first time,

Speaker: really liking Theo's character. I remember that. Yeah. And he's got some good development. Obviously, we're not going to spoil anything. We see him again. And it's a fun character, but I couldn't remember all the bits about him that made me like him. And reading this again, it was like, that's part of it. Right there. Yup. Yup. Which I love in a weird sort of way, he like perfectly handles the

Speaker: psychopath that is Jack slash because that's what Jack wanted him to say. It was like, he's like, Oh, Oh, okay. All right. Big kid saying you're going to kill me if you were a hero. All right. I'll let you try. You know, it's like, he's like, I'm interested. I'll let you try to kill me. It's like, Oh, okay. What a great, great moment.

Speaker: I also love the difference between kind of the idea of like, well, everyone knows who the slaughterhouse nine are and everyone knows that they're incredibly dangerous. And so how do you respond when you come face to face to one? So like looking at Theo, the way that he responds to Jack Slash versus, you know, two chapters later, where Colin or arms master and his interaction with a slaughterhouse nine member and how Theo is like,

Speaker: He's just, in his mind, he's just keeping an eye on Aster. He has to take care of Aster. So he says, sir, and he doesn't make a bunch of grandiose statements. And when he does say, I'll kill you, it's a very matter of fact.

Speaker: It's not like, I'll kill you for this. It's not like I'm very emotionally driven. It's very quiet and purposeful. And I love that. I love how smart of a kid he is that he's like, well, you're older than me and I know that you're really dangerous. And I'm watching after my half sister and I need to protect her and me and Purity who will be home any moment now. And just kind of like the smart, quiet, a little calculating, but like,

Speaker: I just love his reaction to Jack is so... I don't even know what the word is for it. I love his quiet... What is the opposite of grandiose and pompous? It's borderline apathetic. I wouldn't say apathetic. I would just say, careful.

Speaker: Like, he's just being very careful with his words. Like, he's terrified. Like, you know. Well, we start out the chopper with him staring at the TV for five minutes, you know, and the TV's off. And it's like - Well, I mean, this is just how he is normally. Like, you know, we talk about, Purity talks about, like, essentially all of the machismo, everything that made Max, you know, Kaiser, you know, the raging asshole that he was,

Speaker: like had essentially been worked out of him. And I think he had, he even had this vibe of like, I don't want to be like my dad and also my mom made sure that I was not going to be like him. So, you know, and some of that takes away like confidence and speaking up for yourself. So like he's kind of, I feel as if he's very apathetic a lot of the time and everything's kind of muted down. So like,

Speaker: As soon as we said like it kicks off with him just staring at a TV, that's one of those things where if you say just staring at a TV, I could tell you it was Theo no matter where we are in the story. Because just him quietly staring into a corner is just such the most Theo thing in the world.

Speaker: I completely disagree because to me that feels like he's just staring at the TV because he's staring at it like, yes, this is what I do. I watch Aster and I stare at TV. No, I think he's terrified and he's trying not to react. He's trying not to make any big move. Jack told him to stare at the TV, so that's what he's going to do. And it's not that he's apathetic because apathetic to me says, you don't care what's going on around you necessarily. You're just kind of nonchalant.

Speaker: just doing exactly as he's told. And Jack is terrifying. So Jack told me to stare at the screen. So I'm going to stare at the screen. And I've stared at the screen for five minutes. I know every detail of this TV, every, you know, scratch in every mark, because I'm terrified to turn around because Jack told me to stare at the screen. Like I would say apathy is the complete opposite. Read his chapter with purity again. He is doing almost the exact same thing.

Speaker: Well, yeah, but he's in a very like chill place at that point. Like he's literally just babysitting. He doesn't have a, you know, a slaughterhouse nine member standing behind him. Yeah. But his conversation, at least to begin with, as you know, as we ramp up and get into the conversation, you know, clearly he's showing some, you know, initiative, but it's almost like it's dragged out of him. I get the feeling that

Speaker: In Theo, we see sort of a miniature version of Alec as well, in the sense of it's not so much that he doesn't have feelings or emotions, or even that he's apathetic, because very much it's clear that he cares about Aster, he cares about purity. He cares about these people, even though they don't always care about him, especially purity. But I think what it is, is instead, similar to how Alec talks about how if things got too loud or crazy, his dad would

Speaker: Silence them with waves of emotional terrorism and i think it's probably a similar thing like max is probably a terrible dad. Yeah probably was a terrible dad was and he probably just anytime there's any defiance he sort of just.

Speaker: beat it out of them. Maybe literally, maybe not. I'm not saying he did literally, we don't know. Maybe verbally, yeah. Maybe verbally, right? We just, again, it's that feeling of, oh yeah, you just really did. You had your personality kind of beaten out of you. Yeah. Yeah. He wasn't given the space to be verbal and push back. Exactly. And for Alec, that became hugely apathetic because of course, there was so much more emotional damage, but I think

Speaker: sort of a small picture of that with Theo. Yeah. I think one of the sort of interconnecting themes with how each of the Slaughterhouse Nine members approaches their target is that they attempt to pull out the most inner primal, emotional response from each of them and

Speaker: That's why I think I love the no, you, you I'd kill line is because really that's the most emotion Theo shows in the entire chapter. He doesn't really show much, but that's the, that's the moment that end right before it too, where he's sort of is telling what he wants to do. It wants to be a hero. Um, it, that's Jack slash winning is like, Ken, I think you just said like that that's the response Jack wanted was that that's his like, Oh,

Speaker: There you are, Theo. Like, got you. Found you. Oh, I just got chills when you said that. Love it. Like, everyone loves hook, right? Oh, there you are, Peter. Great line. Yeah. I love it because I get the feeling that Theo, because he's talking about, you know, when I, you know, I grew up, I'd be a hero, you know, I'd take down bad guys. And he's like, what about me? And he's like, Oh, you I'd kill. It gets, gives this vibe to me that,

Speaker: If given a dagger right then, he still, and like nobody to stop him, he still wouldn't be able to kill Jack slash. And he knows that, but he wants to be able to kill Jack slash like, and like, he's like, I don't have the fortitude of character or whatever that, that killing instinct.

Speaker: I don't have that because all of that's been stripped from me. I don't have the brazenness to feel that strongly to be able to kill you, but I want to want to kill you like that. And that's why Jack, I think Jack is like, hey, two years, we'll see if you've got that gumption in you. Got that dog in you.

Speaker: I think that's the theme of worm right there. Do you have that dog? Oh man. All right. Let's keep, let's, uh, let's move a long list. Anyone else has got some thoughts on Theo and Jack slash. I just wanted to add in, um, just, I do really like, again, like his powers and his mentality.

Speaker: I do kind of really like Jack Slash's character. I think it's such an interesting character. Absolutely. So what's interesting about this too, just as a point, is that Theo was not Jack Slash's target. I think that's an important point. Oni was Jack Slash's target. Classic knife, bro. I believe if I remember right, he just says, I just wanted to visit you because I felt like I owed it to all father, I think.

Speaker: He's like, I wanted to see like, what's all father's kid doing nowadays? Something to that effect. I'm not sure exactly the wording on that, but it was something like that. And I thought that was just such an interesting take. He's like, you're not even really here to see Theo. You just happened to stop by. She's like, Oh,

Speaker: You hate it. I kind of got the impression that Jack slash entire frame of mind going into that was to kill their whole family. Like I really, it probably was closing that chapter of his past with All Father. Like, let me just wipe out the rest of his descendants here. Yeah. And just sort of kind of clean that up. He had a boring fight with Oney Lee that wasn't really a fight. He was still hungry. He was there to just sort of have fun and

Speaker: finish them off, but then got sort of caught off guard by Theo's response in a fun way. So yeah, Jack Slash is an amazing character. One of my favorite villains in fiction. For sure. For sure. And super hot. Like the rest of them. And super hot. Oh my gosh. Damn it. Lord, why are they always so hot? So many Brockton bays. Brockton bays indeed. Full of Brockton bays.

Speaker: I, I, last thing, I like the dynamic that Theo and Caden have. It gets mentioned here of, you know, I, I love her, but I don't like her. She likes me, but she doesn't love me. Yeah. Yeah. That was hard. And I'm not going to lie. His.

Speaker: that weird back and forth of non -reciprocal feelings is something that's just kind of a theme with Theo. Now that I'm thinking about it, he's got a lot of these weird back and forth feelings with people where, in this case, it's a like, but not a love and a love, but not a like the other way around. I just, yeah.

Speaker: And one final note, I did think it was interesting how they talked about how Onili's power left a bit of his mind behind every time he jumped. Yeah, interesting little detail there.

Speaker: All I could imagine in my mind though, was like, is he just Mr. Bean? What? Like kind of half out of it, just sort of teleporting around, causing all this mayhem and destruction, but doesn't really know what's going on. I'm just pitching a Mr. Bean movie now. I don't hate that comparison.

Speaker: Theoretical Mr. Bean. The perfect soldier, but, you know. Anyway, just waiting for orders, certainly. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. Eleven points. See Hannah.

Speaker: Yes, 11 .c. So we kind of start off not really knowing who we're following here, but then about halfway through the chapter, it becomes clear that we're kind of seeing things a little bit from Ellie, as we know her as Labyrinth. I think it's just Al.

Speaker: Is it Elle? I read it. I didn't know either. I was going back and forth. I wasn't sure. I did look up the pronunciation, but I couldn't find it. So if... Elle makes sense, actually. Elle does make sense. Oh, because like, labyrinth Elle. Okay. You know what? We're getting there. Anyways, Elle. So Berndsgar attacks Faultlings' crew and Elle is watching from the building above. Upstairs kind of has a bird's eye view over the whole thing.

Speaker: And then Burnscar kind of comes upstairs and visits Elle, and we hear a bit of their past. And that's very awkward and a little heartbreaking and just, wow, a lot. And we also see quite a bit of labyrinths, her power and kind of how she accesses it and like what's up with her. Because we know a little bit about her, but this gave us a lot more insight.

Speaker: Yeah, you are correct. It is L. L. Okay, solid. It feels like it's a little bit from Spitfire's perspective at the beginning, right? It is. It really is at the beginning. Yeah, a little bit. It's definitely throwing you off because it's like, oh, we've got the knife guy went after the knife guy. We've got the wild girl goes after the wild girl. Of course, the fire person is going to go after the fire person and then you're not. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker: Which I mean, I think that was the point. I think Elle mentions that, that it makes sense that they're all like, ah, yes. So she's clearly going after that one that's like, oh wait, no, she looks up at the window and Elle's like, oh no, she's here for me. Like, ooh. Yeah. Well, cause she realizes who it is. And that's what's so cool about this one is it brings back.

Speaker: Somebody, it brings back a character from Labyrinth's past and we don't know much about Labyrinth, but you immediately feel the fear and the tension and the pain and the conversation between Burnscar and Labyrinth where immediately Burnscar is like, oh crap, I didn't mean for it to go this way. It's just, you know, like fire happens and I go crazy and I can't help it. And it's just this, and you have these two kind of opposite sides of the coin.

Speaker: I sort of craziness or not craziness is a bad word but mentally. Lack of mental faculties in a way whatever might be mental illness I guess is the phrase I was looking for but yeah these opposite sides of the coins of mental illness.

Speaker: where these characters know each other, but even though we don't know either of them very well, I just thought it was really well written that you get the sense of, you can feel the history between them from the moment they meet eyes. It's very heavy. Yeah. Very heavy between them.

Speaker: Gosh, the imagery of her pulling in the asylum around them as they're talking just hurts. It does. We had some good times though, right? Pulls out the whole asylum. Golly.

Speaker: All of these interludes, but I'll highlight this one because I think this is the one where I saw it most clearly, is like the perfect demonstration of Wild Bo's ability to describe powers effectively. Just an incredibly visual image of how her power works, how she relates to her power, like how she brings things in, just

Speaker: Unbelievable job. It's fascinating reading this again and getting to experience it again and just seeing how he, how he writes powers. We've talked about it many times, like it's kind of one of the things that brings us back, but I think these arcs do it so well. It's because we really get to see a lot of really cool powers at play here described in really intricate ways. Yeah. I love that her description of like the, we finally figure out the place that she keeps making

Speaker: is what did she call it? Her high palace. Yeah. Yeah. But the temple is something like that. Yeah. Yeah. And that that's what she's, you know, that's her like, essentially her meditation state. She's trying to, you know, bring that there, but it, you know, but potentially it makes me think of like, okay, if while she was in the asylum or in and wherever she was at,

Speaker: you know, she brings about a negative space like the asylum that has no doors or windows or anything. Could she trap herself in there? Like nobody gets in, nobody gets out. Like she's just in a weird padded room of her own making potentially if she's like in a really, really bad state. Yeah, it is, it is sort of that weird. Um, it's one of those powers that is weird to understand because it does feel like it reaches into alternate dimensions and

Speaker: That's always kind of a tricky thing to write and think about because you're thinking, okay, what is really happening here? Right. Um, how does this, just all those questions about how it really works practically, like you said, can she basically teleport herself to a mind palace and not, you know, not think about that. Mentally kind of lock herself away. Yeah. It's interesting too, when she talks about having to build the space and like build

Speaker: Uh, and like by, by going too far or by expanding too far, she loses ground. Like it can, it can take so long to like build it back up. I thought that was, that was very interesting. I liked that a lot. Yeah. Yeah. That was more facets to her power. Also there's, you know, killer line at the end where they're talking and she's like, we were friends, you know, you're like, we were friends, right? Like.

Speaker: And it's, I don't know, I feel like it's a little bit ambiguous, but yeah, it's kind of like, well.

Speaker: You know, we had a moment, maybe. Doesn't she say something like she kind of like nods hesitantly, but really, she's just trying to get her out of there. Yeah, like we put us together or something like that. I forget what she says exactly. At the end, she says something. What does she say? Hold on, I've got it pulled up here. She says, because she says earlier, like good times, right? And then right when Burnsgar is about to leave, Elle comes across the room and wraps her arms around Burnsgar hugging her from behind. We had some good times. Elle lied. Take care.

Speaker: Yeah. I'm not gonna lie. That one hit me really hard. There's so much history there, clearly. But it's not history that Elle wants to revisit, that Elle wants to see again, that Elle wants to interact with again. And here Burnsgar is kind of forcing her way back into Elle's space that Elle has tried very hard to make safe for herself.

Speaker: And yet, by Burnsgar, even being there has pulled out all of this darkness. And much like how she talks about how she interacts with fire, like, well, I don't really mean to, and it just kind of happens, and then it just kind of feeds on itself, and I kind of go crazy. In the same way, she's ruining something without meaning to. Burnsgar is thinking that the Elle might be happy to see her, and she's just ruining more things by being there.

Speaker: And Elle's just, you know, fighting to say the right thing or even talk at all and kind of wants her to leave. Like, I just need her to, I just need to get her out of here and try and rebuild the safety that I've, that has been destroyed by Burnsgar being here. Like I, that one hit a little too hard for me. Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah, that's a tough one. And just adding into this whole time of what's happening just before this is she's yelling and just asking, please no. Uh, like from the window, unable to do anything. It just feels so helpless. And yeah, that's really, really hard. Just a few, you really feel that moment of like, Oh wow, this is.

Speaker: This really hurts, like on a very deep level. Reuniting with a person you never wanted to see again after watching them nearly kill all of whatever kind of friends you have. Friends and people who have become your family. Yeah, your family really. It's rough. Brutal.

Speaker: Then we get to Colin. Sweet Colin. This is the one I always remember the most from this series. Oh, yeah. Okay. I will say of, of the, okay. So of the, um, slaughterhouse nine.

Speaker: that we've met so far, right? You're reading through these, you're meeting all of these for the first time. Siberian, super powerful, little inhuman, but not like super inhuman. The weirdest thing about her, honestly, is it just that she's naked?

Speaker: Then we have Jack Slash, who we know looks like a pretty normal person. Burn scar has some scarring, but otherwise looks like a normal person. Any burns. Burns maybe, perhaps. Maybe even a few scars. Yeah. Maybe even a few scars from burn. Oh. Can you get a burn from a scar though? I think you have to get a scar from a burn first. Yeah, can confirm.

Speaker: Anyways, all that to say, Mannequin is the first of the Slaughterhouse Nine. You're just like, oh, these are not humans. It's really up until this point. I love it. Yeah, up until this point with the exception of maybe Siberian, because at this point, really not too sure on what she's capable of. You're like, I mean, okay, they're killers.

Speaker: We've been fighting, they're not that bad. They're just like, we just gotta watch out for them. Just don't die. And then Anakin drops in and you're like, what the hell? What the fuck are you looking at? Oh my gosh. Mannequin, I read this one at night. I remember laying in my bed.

Speaker: You know, the light of my Kindle being the only thing illuminating the room. And you know, it was, it was disconcerting. Um, yeah.

Speaker: Well, let me read what I got written down here real quick. So Colin, armsmaster, mannequin, just climbs in through the vents. It's just absolutely terrifying. And then puts himself back together. Attacks and guts armsmaster in this kind of little

Speaker: Scrabble board piece. Well, it's keyboard piece at me you Me you team up moment and then Colin wakes up in the hospital with new prosthetics and dragon tells him that she has a secret It's like okay Okay, I gotta say I

Speaker: Yeah, this is absolutely one of the creepiest so far and probably of all of these actually just. Oh, mannequins character, just his description is so visceral, so inhuman. And yet, you know, like you hear about him from dragon and, you know, throughout the arc and you're like, yeah, this guy used to be a human or like a regular person. He was a great tinker, great at creating biomes and then just went crazy after an in bring her attack. And now this is what he is. Right. Like.

Speaker: Holy cow. I love the image of his organs like sloshing around in the glass, you know, cavernous piece that is his torso. Like, oh, that's. And I think even Colin says something about it, like he can't stare at his, at the, uh, uh, uh, mannequins organs for too long because it makes them kind of sick. Like, oh, just look at someone's insides sloshing.

Speaker: Part that bothers me is just him climbing out of the vent.

Speaker: Oh, it's like all the loose pieces. Tap, tap, tap. Don't even say tap, tap, tap. We've all seen X -Files. I will never forget when I was in a motel room with my parents X -Files on the television. Cause we turned it on and who should be there, but tombs. Now we all remember from X -Files. I think he shows up in a couple of episodes, one or two episodes at the very least, but

Speaker: Tombs was this character that would like pop all of his joints to squeeze through things. Oh, that's right. And then eat their livers. Yes. I forgot about it. So like he did the thing with the vent. Yeah. I don't, I don't know that at all, but yeah. Oh yeah. And you know, I'm just, I'm hearing the tap, tap, tap. He crawls out of the vent, you know, and that's, that's what, that's what the X -Files was. So I have a very visual image of,

Speaker: Yeah, this guy crawling out of a vent with all of his discs, you know, popped all of his joints out of the top and falls on the floor and then starts putting it all together again. It's such an image too though, like of the whole, like the pieces that are kind of pooling around on the ground, very like marionette puppet vibes, but then clearly he is in very much control of like all of his limbs and suctioning them back together and clipping them back in the face. Incredibly precise. Incredibly precise. Yes. It's so terrifying. Like. Yeah.

Speaker: Ugh, like both liquid, like a cat, both liquid and solid at the same time. Like, I don't like it at all. And it's raining and we're in his tinker shop and there's weird shadows everywhere.

Speaker: And then he can't even talk because he's removed his vocal cords. And so he has to like, after he's already stabbed Colin and is like watching him bleed, which again, we get from dragon later. I love the detail of she's like, he knew what he was doing. This was on purpose. I'm just like, Oh, you know, like he was an expert at taking a part. He's like, he's stabbing things that are like,

Speaker: And, and that every PC hit was on purpose. And I love to the, there is a bit of that, like that me versus you kind of thing that we, that we talked about because of the mirror. But even just the, uh, but even just the, the feeling of, um,

Speaker: What am I trying to say? Helen, you made him lose his trade. No, it's fine. He was losing it anyway. Even just the... Oh, sorry. The parallel between what happens to Colin along with later when we find out, oh, you've been given prosthetic organs.

Speaker: Yeah, it just that just that simple moment of like you will become me oh like maybe Yeah It makes me immediately think of like the whole idea of like, you know, maybe mannequin Being like I'll make you like me even if it takes time like

Speaker: I feel like for my Arc 11 .2 no context meme, it's just going to be the image from Spider -Man. You and I, we're not so different. It's the whole fence, every single chapter. It's that of the Mulan blade. What you got to do is you do that image eight times, but all in different color patterns.

Speaker: One on fire. One with perfectly curled blonde locks. Oh my gosh. I am not reading along, but I have read past this part. And this is by far, like Alan was saying, the scene that is the most etched into my brain because of how

Speaker: Insanely good and terrifying it is. So I was been excited for you guys to talk about this. And again, credit to wild guy how he writes like just being able to visualize mannequins movements is really impressive. I mean, just as a

Speaker: barely to call myself an amateur writer, but just struggling so often when I'm writing stories to describe how people walk from A to B and then trying to imagine how I would describe mannequin walking from A to B. It's really, really fun to read. Oh yeah. Really good. And I love me some Mars Master and Dragon Lore. Yes. Oh my gosh, me too. I wonder what she's going to tell him.

Speaker: Yeah, it could be any number of things, really. It's like we get to that point and she just goes, Colin, I love you. I love you. Well, I mean, I know. I feel like we do, but I could be wrong. What'd you say? Do we get a little bit of Colin simping for Dragon Endless?

Speaker: A level? I believe it's a musical. This was one of the arcs I read a little bit ago, so I don't remember specifically. Well, I love it because he brings it back up, so of course he blocks out, immediately wakes up, she's there, and he's like, I can't do this without me, huh? And she's dead silent.

Speaker: Right. Right. Right. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool.

Speaker: What appears to be a body and like yeah

Speaker: all artificial organs and limbs and a face. And he realizes too at the end when he puts his hand up on his face and he realizes where the skin and the prosthetic meet around his eye, that he's like, wait, that means that she had a face ready to go. She had face prosthetics already ready. Dragon, two steps forward, eight steps back, gosh.

Speaker: Yeah. Desperate much, but 10 steps closer to my heart. AI wants to get laid. Come on. Yeah. The face just brings us one step closer. That's all that matters. All right. 11 point E. Yeah. 11 point E. So we're, uh, yeah. Hook Wolf, um, training with new recruits for the chosen and Shatterbird shows up.

Speaker: and just blast glass all over the place. Sandblast. Just blast, I didn't know. And shows up and recruits him for the nine. Yeah. Ugh.

Speaker: So good. Yeah, I probably had the least to say about this one, but I did love Shatterbird's, again, power description, her capability. Because you hear, I think, and maybe I'm reading into it, but I'm reading ahead too much. But I think I remember them saying how Shatterbird normally announces.

Speaker: the arrival of the home. I forget if they mentioned that, but we still have the tailor vaguely alluding to it with her dad. Yeah. Well, also Hookwall says something about it when he steps outside. He's like, all right, where are all of you? And she's like, nope, just me. And it's like, okay. So he was expecting all of them because of the reputation as it was.

Speaker: No, but just the imagery, the glass, her control over it. It's really funny. I don't think I can name another character in Cape superhero fiction that is a glass manipulator. Glass manipulation. Yeah. Which feels really easy. And yet I was like, I don't think I've seen that. There's probably, if I had to guess,

Speaker: There's probably an incident somewhere in Naruto ship it in with Gara. True. People who mess with sand because we've got a bit of those that turn sand into glass. Maybe even Sandman from Spider -Man has probably done that at some point in time. But that's not the primary thing though. Yeah, certainly not a primary. Part of it is because of what

Speaker: what gets mentioned in this arc, like what happens when somebody can just blow up glass at will. Yeah. And you see the phones glasses. Yeah. Just a lot, a lot. Um, I mean, you gotta, something you don't think about here, but, uh, depending on how fine the, you know, breaks down the glass,

Speaker: That can just be sharp particulates in the air. I mean, she talks about when she's refilling all the holes at the end of the chapter, how she's, you know, she's putting pieces of glass in, but then to fill all the like tiny little minute cracks, it's like the fine dust that she's billowing up around her. Like that is like, Oh my God, it's getting in your skin and that will never end. Don't breathe it. Don't have your eyes open. Like,

Speaker: That's gonna be cutting you for a long time. Also, Alan, I had to look it up really quick. So I looked up the power wiki and the power of glass manipulators. I actually recognize quite a few of these. It's not a long list, but it's a relatively decent list from Bloody Mary, from Wolf Among Us, Power Rangers references.

Speaker: William Baker, Sandman from Marvel, Box, I don't know who that is, Madison Jefferies from Marvel, Star Servant, Cinderfall from Ruby. Oh, that's right. I forgot Cinder is technically, she throws heated glass. That's what she's doing when she's got her little... Sailor Moon, the Winx Club, and then Bono the List is Shatterbird from Worm.

Speaker: So, I mean, it is a short list though, but they saved the best for last. Exactly. They really did. I love, I love the glasses. I think someone just said this, but the glasses thing of like, if you've got phones in your pocket, you know, smartphones with a glass screen or glasses that you're wearing or anything that you're wearing that might be glass to like necklaces or jewelry, like a lot of beads are made out of glass. Like,

Speaker: Your throat's about to get slashed wide open. Depending on where you keep your phone, your butt's about to be slashed open. Even worse, think about it if it's in your front pocket. It's a little bit more tucked to your leg at the front than the side. That artery in your thigh. It's right over your artery.

Speaker: I don't know if this is a spoiler, we'll cut it out. So here we go. But it says that she can also fly using the glass in her suit. The image for her on the worm wiki is really beautiful also. I can only imagine there's that one D &D art that somebody drew that's the

Speaker: to add like Asmir paladin, but as an all stained glass. I imagine it's a sinister version of that. But with a helmet sort of like whatever that one chick from Dark Soul or not Dark Souls from Elden Ring. You know, it's just the visor that covers the top. Yeah. It's like that with the long cloak, but it's all glass. Oh yeah. I like that.

Speaker: She's very imperious. I would almost argue she doesn't feel like she fits in with the rest of them. Well, they're all very distinct and she's very distinct. Yeah. Well, not that the others are scummy, but they're all kind of like serial killer vibes. And she feels not like a serial killer.

Speaker: Yeah, she seems big villain. Yeah, big villain energy, not necessarily, yeah, Slaughterhouse -9. Yeah, we'll kind of get to this in Cherish's interlude as well. But I wonder too, because of the way the

Speaker: So this story is written kind of web serial format. I try to imagine if there was maybe moments or arcs that Wild Boat shows to just not expand on or things like that. This also might be a slight spoiler tag, so just mark the time. But I wonder if maybe he had plans similar to Cherish with Shatterbird.

Speaker: trying to take advantage or manipulate the nine in more depth that just kind of got left on the back burner as the story developed. Cause it kind of really comes across that way where she feels like she's got something else she's trying to do here. It's just kind of using the nine. So there's something else going on there. There is a reason that she hangs around from what I remember.

Speaker: Oh, well then maybe we will see her reasons later. Okay. Love that. We love, we love the motivations. I was like something that I felt like was a little bit more prominent in this chapter as opposed to some of the other ones is she really.

Speaker: Obviously, they're all trying to get their potential recruit or... Jack's slash is a little bit different. But the idea of trying to push you, trying to push your boundaries, trying to get you interested, potentially to be a willing participant, but not necessarily. But none of them really

Speaker: Other than maybe bitch a little bit at the beginning with Siberian, I feel like Hook Wolf and Shatterbird really have a decent back and forth in regards to like, well, what are you doing here? What do you want to achieve in your life? How do you think you're going to achieve it by working with The Chosen and how much more do you think you could achieve that?

Speaker: goal by being with The Slaughterhouse Nine and kind of that discourse of them going back and forth. I really enjoyed that of like the motivation, because I always find people's motivations so fascinating. And with Hook Wolf, and I think because he's very villainous being part of Empire 88 and now Brenner is chosen, just kind of like

Speaker: Okay, well, obviously, we hate them. But more reasoning of just like, well, we hate them because they're evil and white supremacy. But she implies that there's something else going on underneath it. He has other motivations besides just, I guess, white supremacy and

Speaker: you know, chosen race or whatever, but that it's also, there's something deeper there that's motivating him to, you know, grow the chosen and be such a big influence in Brockton Bay and then therefore like the world. And I think it's really easy, I do this all the time, it's really easy to like associate villains with villainy because like, okay, you fall into the stereotypical idea of what I think you should be, so therefore you are and kind of like, well,

Speaker: Hook Wolf is obviously a terrible person, we hate him, but he's got other motivations than just whites should rule the earth. And I like that she kind of alludes to that. He definitely thinks about the Roman Empire every day.

Speaker: Oh, for sure. Sure. He thinks about the Roman Empire and doesn't think about the average skin color of the, you know, average Roman. No, not at all. He does not think about Scorpio Africanus in the slightest. No. Yeah. I also like to, um, hook wolf.

Speaker: Here we see, um, we get to know his powers a little bit better, which I really like because hook wolf is another character, not quite like Siberian, but almost like Siberian in the sense of this guy just invincible. Like we don't really know. Um, yeah, to find out that he has this essentially energy core, I guess it's hard to say like really what it is, but the sort of weird energy core thing.

Speaker: that keeps him powered up. He's got this core heart of metal or something like that. And just a description of the metal piercing different parts of his body and how it affects him. It's just so interesting. It's weird. It does like this exchange kind of, too, where as metal goes out, flesh essentially gets sucked into the heart. Yeah. So he's trading stuff in and out.

Speaker: Sort of a law of equivalent exchange, if you will. Ooh. One fun game you can play with our podcast is how many nerd references can you find? Oh yeah. There are many. So many. References to other media, fellow nerds. They're going to catch stuff that we don't even know we're referencing. Absolutely. I will say sometimes I chuckle and I don't always get it.

Speaker: You don't always get it. I don't want to be left out though. You have to feel like you fit in. Sometimes I fight just yelling at the north and I just say... That's how I just felt about 10 minutes ago because I haven't seen a single episode of The X -Files.

Speaker: I know that one. See, this is a tangent now, which might get cut out, but I do love, I just love the statement. We all know the scene from the X -Files and you're like, okay, listen. Right, sure. It's just me and Alan. It's just me and Alan binge -watching the X -Files. It's fine. It's fine. Anyways, it's great. I love it. Happy for you guys. Thanks. Thank you so much.

Speaker: Are we good? Shall we move on? Any other commentary for hookwool chapter?

Speaker: Oh my gosh, I didn't talk about cricket. Okay, you guys, I know that earlier when we talked about cricket, Alan was like, I love cricket and I'm very, I am very upset about cricket. Very, very upset. And I like, I love it when powers can cancel out each other. And I don't just mean - You know what, Hannah? You know what? What? Cricket is underappreciated and I think you're right.

Speaker: Oh, thank you so much. It's so sweet. I really love cricket. I thought she was really cool. And kind of having these moments where, you know, like powers are canceling each other out and not just in like, oh yeah, my powers cancel out other powers like boo. But like the, oh yeah, I figured out how to disrupt your, you know, glass manipulation because of my, you know,

Speaker: whatever audio, sonic vibration shit that she can do. It's just so cool. And I love that. I love it. Because of her super smoker lug. I was so upset and she's talking to her little throat thingy and I'm like, ah, cricket. And then of course, glass to the neck, like, God damn it.

Speaker: I really liked cricket and I'm very disappointed. I'm very sad. Also, Jacob, I just saw your meme and I'm very upset. That is what my last note was. I just love the casual gun from Shatterbird. It takes me back to the Wizards animated movie by Rankin Bass. The whole time it's just a couple of brothers who are Wizards versing off versus each other.

Speaker: Spoilers for this movie from like 60 years ago. Um, but at the end, you know, they're throwing magic back and forth and like, brother, you can't beat me. I know all your tricks. We, you know, we learned both from the same mom. He goes, yeah, well, mom, I didn't show you this one pulls out a revolver and shoots his brother.

Speaker: I'm not upset about it. Sometimes you just got to play dirty. Yeah. I love it. It's just like, Oh man, how are we going to get out of this one? And then, you know, pull the old tattletale, you know, it's the classic tattletale maneuver. Like, have you considered a gun? Have we tried shooting them in the head? You want to really stop a hero? Stone mortal. Yeah.

Speaker: Uh, gosh. Does sake have to be refrigerated? We can cut that out. Uh, does sake have to be refrigerated? No, no, no. Michael, leave that in. People need to know. Sake should be refrigerated, yes. Damn it. Okay, I've had a bottle of Fuji apple sake sitting on my desk since before Christmas, and I'm... There was so little left of it, I was just about to drink it. I mean, what's it gonna do, ferment? I mean, I'm about to pour myself some sake. Anywho, shall we move on?

Speaker: Next episode, Sam's Hannah. No. Oh, actually, no. I don't think I will drink this. This is probably a bad idea. Okay. All right. 11 point F. This is Dinah. Love it. Yeah. So she, we get a little bit more of an insight into her lovely powers and crawler is coming for what we think at first is her and coil, but very quickly realized that

Speaker: Crowler is coming for Noelle, and so they all, Coyle and the gang, hides away in Noelle's bunker. And we get a little bit of an insight into Noelle, and we get a lot of an insight into Dinah for this episode.

Speaker: Could you just imagine having the ability to predict the future and being like, here's all the futures where I die. Yeah. Let me sift through them real quick. Like pushing waves on the side as you're wading into the ocean. Yeah. Jesus. Yeah. But I will say this does not that, you know, coil is a great person, but this does show.

Speaker: his intelligence in asking very specific questions to Dinah, being like, okay, how do we survive this? What happens if we do this? Try this one. Okay. That was better. Let's add to that. And just the way that like his process of going through it with her.

Speaker: is so, you just see his intelligence and his speed. And you can tell, like she says, I notice he's using his power. So what that means is he's split himself up to ask two different sets of questions to her at the same time. That's just, again, it's so cool. It's just like, he's a terrible person and I hate him, but I love his power. He asks her about crawler. He says something about like how soon will crawler get to us? And she's like, ah, yes. So he already knows that it's crawler. Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah. You probably, you know, maybe in the other world, he asked which slaughterhouse nine was it. Yeah.

Speaker: Hey, this is the other one that is super creepy to me because we never see crawler. Nope. Or Noel. Or Noel. We don't see them. I've got the hungers. I'm hungry. I can hear salad fingers in there. I can smell you. Why do you smell so tasty?

Speaker: You're so tasty. I just need to be a snack. I love not seeing Crawler, but just kind of getting the description of who he is. I think so too. It makes it better with not knowing what he looks like. Because obviously, The Slaughterhouse Nine is here to say, we're going to run into all these people again. And so not necessarily knowing what we're going to be looking at, it just raises the tension so much more.

Speaker: And it raises the tension with Noel too, was like, well, we already knew that, you know, there's, there's shit going on with her, but what shit exactly. And now we have, you know, the second, another, a second large powerful entity that is coming for her. It's like, Oh, fuck. Like, okay, maybe we need to keep an eye on this one. Yeah. I love, I love that. Uh,

Speaker: That that is what the reveal that that's what leviathan was after leviathan was going after noel. Yeah. Yeah. Wait, what? I don't remember that. It's very, it's very subtle. It said near in, in this chapter where she basically, I think coil says it or who is it? Like I thought we've gotten, you know, we, we, you know, this is just like when leviathan came after noel and now crawlers doing it.

Speaker: Yeah, we thought we'd gotten past that. Also, real quick aside, I finally figured out who my mental image for trickster is and it's Stuart from Letterkenny. Just moving forward.

Speaker: I always kind of imagine trickster to be better looking but you know he's not and that's okay and I do love Stewart so honestly honestly the way he's described with like long messy curly hair and a big nose you know who I think of

Speaker: I think of Dan from Game Grumps. Danny! I love Dan. I like more with a bigger nose. I have the uber -leap combo. Obviously, they would get cleaned up a lot, you know, but they would stay in their relatives' shapes. And you have Stuart and Rald from Letter Kenny? Yeah, that would be pretty good. Stuart, because he's jacked already. And then Rald, because he's just like, he's like, leet!

Speaker: What do we do, Uber? Leet. That's pretty good. Love it. That's pretty good. I actually love it so much. I'm sorry, remind me, who did we just fight? Which end -brainer did we just fight? I had to simmer again. Leviathan. Leviathan, thank you so much.

Speaker: We're at Levi as his friends call him. Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. Here we go. Uh, and I just had to find it because I wanted to make sure that we weren't spoiling anything. Um, so she says basically, uh, Pat, the chance that crawler would seek out Noel first, given the opportunity, 93 .4 % shit trickster swore. That's why he's here. Just like Leviathan crawlers coming after Noel. Yeah.

Speaker: I also love the kind of subtle implication. We obviously get the idea that Noelle is pretty dangerous, but the fact that

Speaker: When Coyle's like, what are the odds of survival if we give Noelle to crawler? And the initial hour, the survival goes way up. But then it's like five hours from now, we're all dead. Way down. We're all done Zoe Robinson. It's just like, what the hell are we dealing with here? Her little comment about like, she hasn't gotten dinner yet. And Coyle's like, I personally oversaw that she got dinner. And it makes me question, what are you eating Noelle?

Speaker: What is dinner? Because I'm not so sure that it's chicken and mashed potatoes.

Speaker: No, I was getting some serious God Emperor of mankind vibes from Noel. I don't know what that means. Warhammer. Human sacrifice to sustain. Nerds, got it. Yeah. Every day the God Emperor demands thousands of psykers to sustain his half life. Brutal. I mean, we love human sacrifice. Yes, I love a good sacrifice. We love human sacrifice.

Speaker: On a up note, Leah, the rando that was getting inducted into the cure, or the chosen, got ended prematurely, was an undercover op. I thought that was so fun. Oh, which actually, okay, so that ties these two together because Coyle gets the phone call and is talking about Leah when he comes in to see Dinah.

Speaker: Yep. It's all connected. It's all web tangled web we weave. Or I guess wild bow weaves. I can see through time. Wild bow, web, serial. You just saying words now? Writing. Book. Worm. Speaking of cool powers, I feel like this is just where this whole like interlude selection

Speaker: is where Wildboat flexes their ability to describe really cool powers. Because, yeah, the power's, Dinah's power, the way it's described is so interesting to me. So cool. Yeah. Very, very well done. Yeah, just such a powerful description. I love it. It's like trillions of possibilities. The end of that chapter, she's like, ah, the number went up.

Speaker: Oh, I'm glad you said that. Will I ever go home? Like, well, it's gone up 37%. No, no, we're up to 30%. Yeah, up to 30 or 31 point, whatever it was. But yeah, it's gone up to 31 .6 % more than 4 % higher than it had been yesterday. Also, oh my gosh. What's her face? Is it Sundancer's comment?

Speaker: whose comment is, is it Sundancer? Who basically is like, I'm really sorry. And she's just like, she's basically nervous talking at Dinah that like, I'm really sorry. Like, I know we could help you, but like, you have to understand like, we have to do this. We have to stay together. It's like,

Speaker: Oh my gosh, you're not helping. You're just making yourself feel better. I'd rather you just be my prison guard. I'd rather you shut the fuck up because at this point, your excuses mean jack shit to a little girl who's been kidnapped and drugged for who knows how long.

Speaker: your word vomit might give you a little bit of peace, but it's so, ugh, that made me fucking mad. That made me madder than anything else that the Slaughterhouse Nine may or may not have done this arc.

Speaker: It's just like the idea that like you can leave some sort of guilt by word vomiting. Like, well, it's, you know, it's, it's okay because, you know, because we need this and we, we did promise we'd say that. And I, you know, we try to help you, but we just can't like shut up, please. It's so, it feels so on, I don't, I, my brain is in my, it's the end of the day and my brain's tired. The, uh,

Speaker: real, truthful, like, dang it. What are you talking about? I'm trying so hard. I'm trying to help you here. Like when something is genuine, it feels so disingenuine is the word I'm saying. There we go. Found it eventually. It feels so disingenuine. Like it's not, just shut up. Just stop talking, please.

Speaker: Yeah, no, I think this is more of Sunday because Sunday just kind of always had that with her, where she feels really out of place, like she doesn't belong.

Speaker: with anything that's going on, and she doesn't seem to grasp it. I felt this with her fight in the warehouse with Lung and the rest of the ABB. Same kind of thing. She just feels perpetually out of her element, which is unique.

Speaker: Especially for somebody with such a powerful ability to feel. For someone who should be able to be pretty overpowering when it comes to fights like the one in the warehouse. She's just kind of holding herself back a lot of the time. I also just want to point out the fact that

Speaker: The idea of creating a serial killer who is a masochist, whose power is that they get stronger when they get hurt is one of the most devious character ideas. I think you could create and I love it. What an awful, awful character.

Speaker: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Next one. Shall we move on? Moving on. Next is Cherish or Sherry. Shelly. Shelly. The French Canadian. I like how we all instinctively do the same thing. It is definitely French. It is French Canadian.

Speaker: But Cheri shows off her powers a little bit and comes for Alec Regent. And we have a little bit of like a family reunion, a little power on power sibling action, which I love. By far my favorite fight in this whole very clever.

Speaker: I love this fight, so good. Just the idea of two people in the room with like a couple people in between them, like twitching and like standing there. And it's like a chess match. It's the most anime fight scene. Or like, it's a whole time, but nothing's happening. Exactly. They're just having that, like the battle is in their words the whole time.

Speaker: So yeah, that's what I was thinking. Big old dragon ball fight. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, what do you think? Yeah, so Cherish is an interesting one because she is

Speaker: The only slaughterhouse nine member that we get their, their arc is from their perspective. So at first, again, it's kind of that bait and switch where you're wondering, Oh, who is this character? You're trying to think of the description and match them and think, Oh, is this somebody we've met before? Somebody we should know. And then it kind of does the bait and switch where you realize, Oh no, this is a bad person. She just told those guys to kill themselves. Um, and we know it's not a Canary.

Speaker: Um, cause she's in the jail, the big jail house, the birdhouse. Um, and so then when we finally see who it is, when Alex says it and then she responds, actually it's cherished now. Um, and you're like, Oh, okay. So now we know who this is. We get an idea of what range her powers have. Um, yeah.

Speaker: Oh, what a bitch do I listen to you? Oh, she's so awful. Yeah. I mean, I love it. I love it, but she's so awful. I love her relation to people's emotions and like their, you know, hormone balance sort of, uh, as music. I think that's really cool.

Speaker: The idea that she sees their insides as music. Well, I'm basically strumming and tuning and mixing a whole new cocktail for you in there of doubt and rage and whatever else I want to mix in.

Speaker: and with such fine control. It's not just blunt emotion. Gallant has his emotional blasts early on. He can hit you with a beam and you get afraid or you get sick, that kind of thing. But Cherish is far more precise and it gets really into

Speaker: the weeds of who they are to the point where she effectively has complete control over their movements just by manipulating how they feel, which is crazy. Yeah. Little tweaks and fear and ambition and even loyalty. Yeah. So good. But doesn't work on her brother. Nope. Nope. Doesn't work too well on him.

Speaker: Well, it's interesting though, because we, we see that conversation with herself. Well, we see the conversation with Alec where she says, Alec says, it doesn't work on me. I've built up more of an immunity. And she admits that it doesn't seem to work as well on him. But then at the end, she does say, well, it does like, you don't really build up an immunity. I'm able to manipulate it to give people little dopamine hits whenever they see me. Um, you know, that's such a smart, conniving fucking

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. The Pavlov's dog sort of thing. Yes. Which is super fun and very, very smart. And I like that. Yeah. So is it working on Alec? It doesn't seem like it, but we don't really know. I do really like, I think in these chapters, Cherish might be my favorite of the

Speaker: of the nine for these specific chapters. As a whole, I have my own personal favorite, but for these, I just love how, you know, she just skips along in her little moment of like, I've never bought anything. Like I've just stolen everything and like, well, might have to buy myself a charger. Like she's just so nonchalant and because she sees herself as being untouchable because she can manipulate everyone so well. And I love that. And once again,

Speaker: I'm thinking a gun, you know, would fix this problem up real quick. Except that she talks about being able to sense the emotions of everybody around her through walls. Let me, let me, let me specify. Well, like most of these things, like we established from like arc five, a well -placed sniper, oil sniper, oil sniper is the most powerful

Speaker: The most powerful person in the scene, of course. I need a comic run. Coyle Sniper kills the worm universe. I play on all of those Deadpool kills the Marvel universe things. Absolutely. The good guy with the gun gets the job done. It's the one punch man, but it's just the one shot man. Yeah. Perfect. That's funny. On that line, I love that her whole test

Speaker: Isn't even as serious. It's just a big fuck you to region. Oh yeah. Really? No test. Just. I don't like you. Yeah. Yeah. It's hilarious. Love that for him. Yeah. What a great system. And then also, I think we get a great, a great moment of maybe some character growth or maybe just some more insight with Alec. But the fact that he actually cares about his team.

Speaker: And I don't feel as if it's just a possession thing now. I feel like in this moment, the way it's written, Cherish is basically bringing up her family and how shitty it was. And he's like, uh, I'm kind of over that. I have my new family. Yeah. And I like them. I do like that. Yeah. A little bit of humanity. And he even tries to, he even tries to point that out to her.

Speaker: The fact that he even goes that extra step and is like, Hey, look, I know you're trying to fuck me over. Cause you know, that's what we do. Siblings, classic siblings, but like I've got people that have my back and that's why I'm kind of doing really well right now. And the slaughterhouse nine are not going to have it when it counts. And they're going to fuck you up when you get on their bad side. Yeah. And she just has no, you know, she doesn't have a good concept of family.

Speaker: Uh, which, you know, it's surprising that Alec even does, um, but, you know, so, uh, and obviously things got apparently a little bit worse after he left.

Speaker: Oh, I wasn't even thinking for some reason I thought that his dad was dead or like in prison. No, he's just chilling over in Spain. In Canada. Oh, that's right. In Montreal. Just going after starlets.

Speaker: Yeah, he did that one time where he went to, where did he go? London or something to kidnap the one star? It was more local man. It was like Toronto or something. Yeah, that was in Canada. Yeah, Toronto. He didn't go far. So he like bopped over to that and she was just like, really, dude? Like, come on. You suck as a super villain. Yeah. I thought you were leading out to something and then you just, just disappointed me all over again, dad. Yeah.

Speaker: I just imagine it's like, all right, guess, finally built this army of mind control warriors. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to go to a Taylor Swift concert.

Speaker: I just felt like running. I just felt like bone in. I just feel like fucking. Yeah, exactly. All right, last thoughts or should we move on to our final chapter? The grand finale. What a fucking finale it was. Jeez, little freaking ways. Okay. 11 .8. Amy, panacea.

Speaker: Markeesh. Markeesh. We all know it's Markeesh. Markeesh is actually great. Stick him in the oven because he is done. Done zone. Anyways, Markeesh. We learned that she has not healed. Mark Dallin, flash bang. Bonesaw arrives and forces her to do a little brain fixio, which goes surprisingly well. And they're able to get rid of Bonesaw. Mr. Dallin jumps up, is able to be on his feet again.

Speaker: She finds out who our real father is. Mark. That's my dad.

Speaker: And Amy decides to leave, but runs into Victoria, where absolute fucking disaster ensues. And I wrote, what the fuck, Amy, in all caps, because Jesus. Listen, we don't have Taylor this episode, so we needed a what the fuck stand in. We needed a what the fuck, Amy. And thank you, Amy. Yeah, we needed a what the fuck someone. Yeah, Lee. Okay, well, we'll get to that. We'll get to it. There's a lot here.

Speaker: What a chapter. Starting off, there's a talk about two types of villains. There's ones that are, I love that we talk about this because it feels very much like mind hunters when they're coming up with serial killers and whatnot. And the two types of villains are, you've got the chaotic ones that have, they don't hone their powers

Speaker: because they're just constantly doing weird stuff, but they're not predictable. And there's other villains who are predictable, but that's because they've honed their abilities to a fine point. And they're really good at the one thing they do. And I like the fact that we have that little serial killer slash villain psychology going on. Yeah, that was a more great kind of world building there.

Speaker: And in a way, kind of the idea that the heroes now that they've gotten sort of the world, you know, these ideas under their feet, they're able to use those to their advantage. Like that's how they took out Marquis. They said, okay, we'll send an all female squad. Yeah. Yep. It doesn't hurt the limit. I mean, it's smart. It works. Yeah. Marquis the ultimate simp. You got to do what you got to do. I think about, I think about that with the, uh, not the all female thing, but, uh, with Batman, the end of the Batman animated show.

Speaker: specifically when he's talking about, you know, villains. There are some that he's just got on a, you know, like, ah, the Riddler sent a riddle. He's like, don't even bother. We're just going to go straight to where he's hiding. It's like, you know, where he's hiding. He's like, he does this every time. Like, like ignore the riddle. We're just going to go to the hideout and beat him up. Big, big mega mind energy. Yeah. All right. Here we go again. Yeah. Exactly.

Speaker: Man, I feel like we're avoiding jumping into it because I don't even know where to start. Amy's character. This chapter as a whole and all the way through is the last time I will feel bad for Amy. I feel for her this whole chapter I have every time. But my patience ends here. I'm not going to lie.

Speaker: This entire chapter, all I could think of was, like, poor baby, suck it up, about the whole, like, and her, specifically when she talks about, like, even, like, I force myself to go to the hospital, because even that's, like, become a chore. Like, bitch, then don't go. Like, stop being a martyr. Like, just, just either do it or don't. But, like, this, this bullshit half in, half out, like, oh, man, don't link me, and, like, everyone's mad at me, like,

Speaker: Okay so do something about it, suck it up or leave. Enough of your whining. I was already off the panacea bandwagon before this point because I very much disliked her interaction in the hospital with Taylor. But I just felt like she was whining the whole time. And

Speaker: I understand the idea of like, I don't want to fuck with people's brains because that's a really weird space and you can do stuff to them that you maybe didn't intend to do. But like, clearly, Mr. Dallin is fine.

Speaker: And like giving him his motor functions, you know? And even she talks about like the little things like the way that he would twirl a pen, like you didn't have to do that. Like you could have given him the most basic shit that would have at least brought him to a point where he can function, but she didn't even wanna do that. And so now it's like, okay, well now that Bonesaw has a gun to your head basically, like now you'll do it. And it's like, I just, I don't, oh, I'm so frustrated at her.

Speaker: And so I've already been on a non -Aimee, you know, bandwagon and it's just like, oh, it'd be such a, she's so boring. Like at this point, I'm, Bonsaw made her life interesting at this point. Like Bonsaw was like, hey, you want to try this? Like, hey, let's team up. And she's like, oh no, I could never. It's like, I don't know, Aimee, could you? Cause. Yeah. Oh man. It's such a, it's such a push and pull with me.

Speaker: for Amy because I do, I kind of feel for her. Like I get a little bit of where she's coming from. Like, you know, I mean, the brain's a messy thing. It's not like a, yeah, you can just play with the brain and it's fine. You know, it isn't, I kind of get that it's a messy thing. At the same time though, like you said, this makes it very clear that she can do that, that she can mess with people's brains.

Speaker: And it's fine. And that is just like, still, I don't know. It's tough. I think it's tough. That's part of the issue with her character, or the issue she has as a character, not with her character, is because her power is so subtle and so easy. She recognizes that she has the ability to do whatever she wants to somebody.

Speaker: And we see that at the very end. And so that mental block that she puts in is for her own safety so that she doesn't cross that bridge. I think a more apt comparison is like, you hit that one drop of heroin or something like that.

Speaker: I don't do drugs. I have no plans to. For that simple reason that I've heard horror stories, I've talked to people who have had that drop and then immediately could not imagine not getting the next one. And I feel like that's part of her power to her is that once she realizes and once she allows herself to manipulate somebody to that degree, she won't be able to stop. It's too inviting.

Speaker: which is fascinating. And I love, I love the contrast between Amy and Taylor in this whole story. Like two characters set up very similarly with difficult pasts, trying to make a name for themselves in their own way. But Taylor is eagerly embracing her power.

Speaker: and Amy is running from it. But they're on two different sides of this because Taylor is running towards this sort of anti -hero villainy route that she's going down. And Amy is trying to be this best good person that she can be.

Speaker: but is slipping further and further away from it. It's just, it's a really fun dynamic. And I've been, I have a lot of notes, Alan, we're going to discuss this in great detail and dissecting where I want more Amy and the series altogether. Cause I really enjoy comparing and contrasting Taylor and Amy throughout the story. I think it's a really fun comparison. And we do see, I mean, we'll get to the end, um, but we do see that,

Speaker: Yeah, at the end, she does accidentally screw something up. So her fear is hard. Just to kind of manipulate that, I don't think it was an accident. I think she intentionally did it.

Speaker: That's what I think too, I agree. I don't think she did it on accident at all. I think she was like, she was really feeling the vibe. She was feeling her in herself because she did so well with Mark and she just, oh, just a little, just a little. That's the whole struggle is she knows that the temptation that she has there to just rewrite somebody's brain so easily is like so hard for her to ignore.

Speaker: So I read that as intentional. Let us know in the comments what you think, by the way, was that intentional or not? I feel like it was, it was not, but I mean, I could be wrong. I think it's, I think it's intentionally, she even talks about it's just one moment of weakness. Like, yeah, that's why I feel like it's not necessarily intentional. It's more of a, yeah. Um,

Speaker: Yeah, it's just something that happens. Yeah, like a slip up. She's like, oh no, what have I just done? I think it's interesting that Victoria feels it. She immediately is like, what did you just do? And she knows what she did immediately. Oh, she's immediately aware of it. Like what the fuck did you just do to me? There's no escaping it. It's very clear.

Speaker: Yeah. Um, we haven't even talked about bone. So yeah. Do we want to just keep going with, with Amy? Let's just talk about Amy for a little bit. Cause then we can devote a whole man. I remember reading this as well. The moment Victoria figures it out because I am, uh, as, as a practically ace at the time I was reading this.

Speaker: Uh, just like what's going on? What are feelings? I don't understand. This is cool. Like, and just not understanding. So I had to reread this chapter like three times the first time. Cause I just didn't understand what was happening with Amy. Like, Oh, Oh, I guess she loves. Oh, shoot. That's what, Oh man. Like.

Speaker: But, you know, now I'm just like, God damn it, Amy. Yeah. You stupid bitch. Stupid bitch. And the moment that Victoria gets it.

Speaker: is just like, it's horrifying. Oh, it is horrifying. Holy shit. Yeah, and her comment about Gallant too, like the idea of like, oh, so when he died and I was mourning, you were what? Happy? Elated that he was gone? And you know, Amy's like, no, no, that's not what I meant. I just, you know, I was jealous, but that's all it was. It's like, you, oh my God, Amy. Yeah, if the subtitle for Worm is doing the right things or doing, yeah, doing the right things for the wrong reasons,

Speaker: Well, doing the wrong things for the right reason. Yeah, wrong things for the right reasons. And Amy's life story is Amy doing the wrong things all the time. For no God. For all the terrible reasons. Just doing the wrong things. Just doing bad shit. She is the example of like, what's the worst way you could phrase this? She is the Manchester by the sea of superheroes. Again, though. Oh, no.

Speaker: Okay. Here's, here's the thing though, that gets me that I just want to keep in mind. Amy is, I believe 16. Correct. I was actually just about to bring this up. Like we, again, we brought it up with Taylor. We brought it up more with Dinah because again, she's much more younger, much younger and it's much more disturbing her situation, but just all of these characters and you, you have Amy who knows, I mean,

Speaker: Okay, so I don't know if you guys have had have oversharing parents. I kind of did. I know. I know lots of people who did. But I feel like the dallens are oversharing parents. I mean, why does Amy know that her dad has clinical depression? Why does Amy know that her mom didn't want her at first? And the only secret they're able to keep from her is who her dad really is, which.

Speaker: Which they don't do very well. Which they don't do very well. I don't think this is an oversharing parents thing. I think this is a having lots of close family members together. Yeah. Because let me tell you, whenever I get together with family members that are close, something always comes out every time. My father, when he was like 40, finally found out that his aunt is not related to him in any way, shape or form.

Speaker: 40 years. This woman used to watch him over the summers. It's just one of those things every time there's a family gathering, something new comes out. And they are with their extended family constantly. So I imagine every time they're getting together, something's going like, yeah, I mean, you remember that one time in college and you're like, you did what?

Speaker: Like it could be either one though. I can see, I can see either of those things. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I think she finds out from maybe I'm overthinking it's like aunt or uncle. Yeah. Something else I think this came to mind while Nick was talking and something I was thinking about and this is making my heart soften just a little bit.

Speaker: But I'm not still not chasing my opinions about Amy. But something we've talked about quite a bit on this podcast is that the characters, especially all these, you know, all the undersiders who are teenagers, you know, are very responsible. They have very adult conversations. They are, you know, very... I don't know. The conversations are very mature. They're very mature characters for being teenagers.

Speaker: And I think maybe what it is, is that Amy feels so immature, put up against everybody else. All these other teen capes, that she feels so much more like a teenager, where your homelands are raging, you have no idea what's going on. Everything is either black or white, no grays in between. And, you know, I, oh my gosh, I love her. I fucking love her. Like,

Speaker: cannot move my brain beyond it. After all of these years, cannot create that space between us, force myself to move past, seeing Victoria as a love interest, not just sister.

Speaker: it feels and then her conversation with Taylor at the hospital like it feels very immature compared to all the teenagers we've been interacting with thus far in the book that feels so mature and maybe maybe that's what it is that grinds my gears about Amy because like

Speaker: Even the way that she's like, quote unquote, running away. Well, I mean, quote unquote, she is running away. Even her running away at the end feels so juvenile. She goes out the window like it's so it feels so insanely juvenile as opposed to like when Taylor left home and like it was in this big thing after talking to her dad. Like, I don't know. Maybe that's what it is that's.

Speaker: Do you guys feel like that at all? Am I completely left? No, no, I think it's a great point. I think the two dynamics, the person we want to compare against is not Taylor, but Vista. So on one hand, you have New Wave, which is a bunch of adults with two teenagers and bringing up the rear is the third teenage girl, Amelia, who,

Speaker: is the least aggressively powered. The rest of them very attack oriented. I get the feeling that she gets left home a lot.

Speaker: Because she's not built for... She's not built for fighting. She's built for the, you know, afterwards, after the fight is done. Hey, wait in the van. Hey, wait at the PRT building when we get done or, you know, they'll drive you here and then you can like meet us. So she's always left out. She's always, you know, they're having these big adult conversations that everybody else kind of gets to have

Speaker: without her, or around her, but she's not present to really talk about that. On top of that, Carol is not great. Now, especially about showing her any love, but she's always, she's got the Theo problem where she's always not been fully accepted into the family. Carol's not good about hiding that.

Speaker: And Victoria really, really was full in on the sister thing. Like, you're my sister. Yeah. Cause like they even talk about way earlier that like, Hey, Mark was there, but he wasn't like there. Yeah. He also had his own issues. Really depressed to the point of like non -functioning basically. And so, you know, Victoria is the only one and

Speaker: But, but that's, you know, that's the state that she's in on the flip side. Uh, we have the other youngest child of a group. We have Vista who gets treated, you know, like a kid, but she's way more involved in stuff. I feel like, um, and also another younger sister, Victor, a younger sister figure to Victoria is big V and little V.

Speaker: And they hang it out. And like we even see from the section where a cock blocker kind of insults Gallant's death. Cock blocker? Yeah, you said cock blocker. It's what he meant. We all know what he meant. I'm honoring the spirit, if not the letter. Please continue. Yeah. It's clock blocker without taking the L, only W's.

Speaker: But yeah, when, you know, when, uh, Vista goes out in the hallway and she's having a, you know, a good cry, like Victoria comes out to check on them because Victoria, even though she's not on the team, has this, you know, has this relationship with Vista. They, you know, big sister, little sister, little sister vibes and.

Speaker: but Vista handles all of this by like, I'm going to do better. It doesn't really want to spend time wallowing in it. And I think comparing the two of them, both in the dynamics that they are in and how they're treated in those dynamics, as well as their own personal choices that they make when doing things. Because, you know,

Speaker: their, their Vista makes this very obvious decision of like, I'm going to try and grow as a person and I don't feel like Amy does that. No. Um, but also Amy's environment doesn't really seem to give her the space to do that. Yeah. Um, you know, I think, I think that's something too, that just, I just, just imagine having the powers that Amy has, you have these amazing powers of healing and that's great. But if you've ever cared for a sick relative,

Speaker: for any extended amount of time. You know how exhausting that is. And I just imagine though, that being your whole family's expectation for your life is that you will be the hero. You will go to the hospital and help people. You will do all of those things.

Speaker: I just, I kinda, I don't know. I still kinda feel bad for her. I get what you guys are saying, but I just kinda feel bad for her still because I feel like, yeah, like you said for her too. Circumstances make it easy for her to do anything. I am sympathetic for Amy until the last period of this chapter. She has used up exactly my amount of sympathy. Yeah.

Speaker: And I'll be honest, I forget what happens with her in the future. So I don't have that context, but. I think again, too, it's a, it's a fun contrast to Taylor where, um, they're headed towards the similar paths and it's kind of, I wonder if their positions were flipped. If Amy found the undersiders and Taylor didn't and was stuck on her own, you know, I'm sure, I am sure Jacob, that we can find a fanfic for you.

Speaker: I already know there's a, what if Victoria got raised in bitch's situation and bitch got raised and - Oh, fun. And new wave. I already know that exists. But yeah, just kind of seeing Amy truly being alone in all of this, even from Victoria because of what she's kept from her. So like,

Speaker: There's a lot. Yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm incredibly sympathetic towards her character and sort of the direction she, she ends up where she finds herself. And again, I think these conversations, we should just circle back to some of these once some spoilers are revealed down the line. So stick around. We got to talk about both of them. We want to talk about them. Put your elephant in the room.

Speaker: We have to talk about Bonesaw. And now for my most hated character to read of all time. Give it up folks. It's Bonesaw.

Speaker: the creature from my nightmares. Let me tell y 'all a little story about my fears. I've got a few. Fire, I've worked through it. I lit fires for, I don't know, how many years as a camp counselor that worked out. Heights, I'm working on it. I work with trees, I get in lifts, you know, climbing.

Speaker: We're working on that. What I haven't gotten over, small witches that crawl under beds and disappear so you don't know where they are. They're one moment and then they're out of sight, okay? And they cackle and they laugh and you hate them. I don't know where this came from. Creepy dolls never liked that shit. And let's not forget, scalpels and needles, you know? And of those fears,

Speaker: You know, she bats a pretty high average scalpel spiders. Fuck that. Fuck that. So hard with needles and oh my God, boy, does she love needles. She got creepy little girl with scalpel spiders. It's just loves just, you know, and then the scalpel spiders, you don't know where they're going. You know, if they're out of sight, they're about to stab you in the back.

Speaker: We had a whole conversation about this outside of the podcast, by the way. I just want to be very clear. Alan's very upset about Bonesaw and her creepy little scalpel spiders. Every time, don't get me wrong, she's a great character. She's so interesting. I love her as a character. If I have to read words on the page following the name Bonesaw, fuck that. I'm out.

Speaker: No, she's just a little girl. She's just trying to find a place to play with. Get the fuck out of here. The bone saw stands over here. I just want to add in another reference for our fellow nerd fans. Just imagine Shao Tucker from Full Metal Alchemist, but on ceremony. Gosh. That'd be a fun house over.

Speaker: Play with me, Edward. No, stop. Oh, no. Well, I know what's going in the no context. Yeah, really. Gosh. You don't have enough pictures. Do you want to reach chapter? Okay. So grossness aside, grossness aside. What a cool power.

Speaker: I am not editing that long pause is staying in way to take power a Trump power like hack, you know, whatever his name was hatchet face. Yeah. His power is he's just, he's just one of the killers from, from every horror movie.

Speaker: your powers he's got a giant axe he cuts your head off like. Now he can teleport yeah and now he can tell now we can do the thing where you run around the corner and somehow he walked and beat you there he's just the horror movie villain.

Speaker: I love that this is the chapter that broke Alan. I don't forget he's got Mr. Bean's face sewed on his back. Yeah.

Speaker: We need that guy who puts a, I forgot it's like handle to be dot wave, the guy who puts, you know, Mr. Bean and other characters in the video games. It's just that, but he's just permanently put the Mr. Bean face on. Oh man. I mean, it is

Speaker: So we've got hack job and then we've got murder rat. Murder rat. Which is a combination of the mouse protector and. So sweet.

Speaker: Who is the other character? The person that was hunting. Yeah, I can't remember the name though. It was the red one. Not Ratchet. No, it's like Revenger or something. I bet I could look it up for you guys. I'll find it real quick. You probably could. It's definitely something with an R. And if it's not, I did love that though.

Speaker: Ravager. Ravager. Ravager hired us to kill mouse protector, so we did. And then we killed Ravager, because we don't take orders from anybody. I love that. Yeah. What an idiot. You may not know how the slaughterhouse. Classic slaughterhouse night. Like, fuck everyone. Yeah. And then she has, who actually unintentionally Amy names Pagoda,

Speaker: Which is a mixture of a character named Carnal and another one named Prophet. And they're both healer or self -regenerators. They got the double regeneration. Yeah, they got the double regeneration. Oh man. Oh, but getting a glimpse of her like contingencies that she has built in. Yeah. Yeah. Her traps, her... The gas and the needles and the... Yeah.

Speaker: And because this is Amy and she can feel their biology, she can see how they're connected, which is such a smart character pairing to have because you're introduced to Bonesaw, but you get such a deep insight into how she works. And you get the sense that she controls them.

Speaker: But they might still be in there, kind of like how Sophia was still in there. Oh, they're 100%. Sophia was still in there. She says, oh, they're still conscious. Just to add to the horrifying level there, kind of like how Sophia, when she was under Alex control, was still there, just suppressed. You just imagine being stuck like this. Yeah.

Speaker: It's so, I do want to say though, just as a quick caveat, I am so sad that Mouse Protector is dead because, or just, you know, that we meet her mixed into this murder rat character because I love the description. I'm just going to read a bit of the description that Bonesaw gives of her.

Speaker: One of those capes who plays up the cheese, no pun intended, camped it up, acted dorky, used bad puns, so her enemies would be embarrassed to lose to her. I love that. It's so sweet. And I just want to know what were her powers. I just want to know what she could do. Wild Bo, if you can answer that for me. I was going to say, have we not found anything? Do we not know anything? Well, I mean, I think this is the only time she's mentioned as far as I know. I'll look it up while you guys talk. Just keep going. I'll bring it up.

Speaker: Yeah, no, I mean, Wild Bo does that a lot too. He'll kind of drop a character here, drop a character there. It doesn't really go into detail. Just adding to that world building again. But yeah, I agree. It was such a fun sounding character. It's like, oh, man, that would have been a fun interlude.

Speaker: Yeah. I feel that way with the end bringer attack too. Cause it's like, you're hearing all these names of people over the, over the, you know, the, the little radio watch thingy. And it's like, you know, whatever their names might be, you're just like, Oh, that sounds cool. Oh, that's, and they're dead. Oh, you know. All right. So her abilities, um, she was able to make objects and people, uh, teleport if she touched them.

Speaker: whenever she wanted. So she used this ability to harass her opponents, both physically and verbally using her teleportation to make escape impossible. She also had some minor powers that helped her agility, coordination, and stamina.

Speaker: And she chose mouse protector. I was gonna say, I was expecting some more mouse themed powers. She's got a really cute little mouse helmet in this picture. It's great. So I'm gonna tell you now what I remember, and I might be mixing this up with a ward character, but this is like some weird out of the way stuff. What I remember of mouse protector is that

Speaker: because there is a mouse character later on. So maybe there's a mix up, but mouse protector was really into causing trouble. She literally is like a Jerry type character from Tom and Jerry, where, you know, in retrospect, you realize that Jerry's the asshole most of the time that mouse protector not only, you know, got people, basically got people riled up. There's a reason that like,

Speaker: Ravager goes out of their way to hire the slaughterhouse nine to kill her. Cause she's just so pissed off with her. Like from what I remember, she's kind of irreverent and the other heroes don't like her. And she's just tough to get along with. Like I said, I might be pulling that out of my ass, but I just remember her

Speaker: I think she's just kind of annoying. Yeah. So she's apparently ravager and dangerous to be around basically. Yeah. But she is like, yeah.

Speaker: No, I was just going to add to that too. Ravager on the other hand is, was a villain who, uh, the wiki says could imbue weapons, objects, and immunity, um, ammunition with the ability to inflict gradually worsening wounds, which smoke. All wounds Ravager inflicted would bleed fester and permanently scar if not tended to with scratches, having the potential to worsen into evisceration. And she maintained awareness, clairvoyant awareness of those she wounded.

Speaker: So that's a pretty unique power too. It also just gets, you know, kind of pushed to the side. Um, but, but still, um, then you combine those two again, you've got a teleporter power with knives and somebody who can inflict, uh, pain like that. That's a good, that is a good, uh, interesting combination for sure.

Speaker: This is definitely the chapter for body horror for sure. For now. Yeah, for now. For now. I'm not a huge fan of... I myself do not like horror movies. I don't like the impending sound and then the jump scares. I'm not a fan.

Speaker: But I love horror books. I love to read them. I think they're very fun. And I think Bonsaw in general

Speaker: is my favorite Slaughterhouse Nine character. I just find her so fascinating. And the way that she futzes with people and messes with them and this very, you know, Frankenstein's monster, you know, Dr. Frankenstein of, oh, I'm just gonna just mash these people together. Like, it's horrifying. Oh, 100 % horrifying.

Speaker: But it's so freaking cool. There is just something about it that I cannot... My brain is like, ew, gross. More, please. It's the whole you can't look away. She is my favorite Slaughterhouse -9 character, by the way. She's the best. Okay, quick side thing too to jump off of that. Because again, Bonesaw knows so much about human anatomy.

Speaker: We find out a lot about how powers function. She claims to know where they come from, but she doesn't say where they come from. She's the what? The mangle of superpowers.

Speaker: She goes, I've taken so many of them apart alive. You know, I just know how they work now. Um, which is why when Amy says, you know, Oh, I don't do brain stuff. I can't, she's like, no, you can. I know you can. Um, it's just like a limitation you've put on yourself or that your power has put on you. Um, and so it's interesting after having seen the interlude with, um, with what's her face, uh, fault line. Yeah. Trying the same thing. And it almost feels like,

Speaker: In contradiction, she's like, no, we can like, we can adjust past that kind of doing what fault line was doing. It seems like, um, you know, just does it by taking your body apart and putting it back together multiple times until you do it. Exactly. Um, but no, uh, so just this idea of, um, powers or accidents, humans aren't meant to have them. And they begin by searching around you. So what we were talking about earlier, this theory that

Speaker: your trigger event somehow relates to the power you end up with, like how you trigger, where you trigger. And so, you know, it looks for your environment around you. What's around you? What can you influence? What can you change? And then it looks for ways to make sure that using your power doesn't just kill you. And then you have a power. And it's just like, it's almost like, it's described almost in terms of like an invasive virus that changes your biology.

Speaker: Um, which, you know, some extreme viruses can do, but that's kind of this idea of it's changing your psychology and your biology. But it's a foreign thing. It wasn't meant to be something you were supposed to have like a virus. And I just think that that description is so, of course it's important plot wise, but it is such a good way to include that little bit of story or world building in this section. And I just, I just thought that was really cool. Was it really neat? I forgot that that got introduced in this arc.

Speaker: um, in this interlude. And I really felt like, Oh, that's really neat. That, like that little description of how it functions, which makes me think, um, what was bone sauce trigger event? Oh gosh. I mean, I looked it up. So I know what it is. We do learn what it is. We do learn what it does. Yeah. I remember it cause it's an interlude. Yeah. Oh my gosh. It's yeah. Don't remember it at all. So now I'm very much looking forward to that. Absolutely.

Speaker: I feel like we could probably talk for another couple hours on all of these guys again. And we probably will, to be honest. Any final thoughts on Bonesaw or Amy before we move on to favorite power of the episode, which is tough.

Speaker: One last thing, uh, for these, the section in, I forgot about this and I wanted to bring it up cause I thought these were fun descriptions and cherishes arc. She describes each of the slaughterhouse nine's picks. So some of them are obvious, but there's a couple that I'm not a hundred percent sure who they're supposed to be. So, um, here's the eight, uh, there's the buried girl, it's Noel, pretty sure the arrogant geek, definitely Colin.

Speaker: The dog lover. It's a bitch. Bitch. No way. The daydreamer. I believe it's labyrinth. Agreed. The warlord. So there's one called the warlord and one called the crusader. Oh yeah. I'm not sure which one is hook wolf. I assumed hook wolf would, or I guess Alec could be the warlord. Well, she said, I was going to say arrogant nerd. See, she only looks like she only, well, no, there's only eight of them. Sorry. Yeah. I would say the warlord.

Speaker: Warlord, I think, is Hook Wolf. The Crusader, I think, is Colin. I think the arrogant... Does it say arrogant geek? Yeah, arrogant geek. I think that's just insulting her brother. That could be. Like how he says dork all the time. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Yeah, I like that. And then the scaredy cat, which is Amy. And then the broken assassin, which is Onili. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Speaker: So I just thought that was an interesting little tidbit in there, how they all kind of picked their people and gave them these descriptions. I thought that was kind of fun. I'm glad you brought that up because I was thinking about it, but I couldn't figure out, like as I was reading, I was like, I have no idea which ones are which. Like I could not figure it out. Yeah. I do find it funny though, that arrogant geek, you're, you're probably right that that is Alec, but arrogant geek is also just such a great description of arms master.

Speaker: I was also having a tough time trying to figure out which one was which last night. Yeah. All right. Favorite powers from the arc. Favorite powers. How do you choose? How do you choose? I'll take a really easy one. Go for it. Go for it. This is this is it's actually probably my least favorite chapter, but my favorite power is a burn scar.

Speaker: I find the fire teleportation, fire footsteps, walking around, strong metal gear, solid phantom pain vibes. It's like if Psycho Mantis and that burning dude were combined. I just think if we're just going strictly the powers, it's kind of surface level, but I think fire teleportation is so cool. It is pretty cool. And the fact that she ramps up, the more fire there is, the more she can

Speaker: flame around and psychologically the more amped she gets. Like she really is a wildfire that gets worse the more there is. So that is my least favorite chapter, my favorite power. I like it. That's a good one. I'll give an honorable mention here. Favorite power, maybe not favorite power, but probably favorite power moment of these chapters was Mark Dallin.

Speaker: throwing his flashbangs around. I was getting big, the scene in Deathly Hallows with Harry Potter where it's him and Dumbledore in the caves and Harry gets knocked into the water and he comes up right as Gandalf, wow, right as Dumbledore.

Speaker: Fred is Dumbledore is like doing his big huge fire spell and taking all them out. Like it felt very much like that. Like here was Mark Dallin basically crippled and then traumatic moment gets his life back and just unleashes and really wins. I mean, he beats them back essentially. I love how, how ready he is to go. Yeah.

Speaker: Like he cares about what's going on. He keeps his mouth shut and then he starts swinging. And just the way he can use the concussive versus explosive to bounce himself around the room and Amy around the room. Oh, exactly. It's pretty cool. And points for how he treats Amy in that chapter. He's just like, it's okay. It's okay. Yeah. I still hate the whole family. Mark is a good man confined by terrible circumstance.

Speaker: But yeah, I loved that moment. So I think he gets my nod for Cool Power.

Speaker: I'm going to have to play Cherie or Cherish because I love that kind of... I think I said this earlier, the cocktail of human emotion. I love that she can mess with that and play with it and get super specific with somebody's emotional headspace and

Speaker: They're dopamine. And I just, I find that so cool. And it's, you know, it's a variation of Regents of Alex, but like still very singular on its own. And I kind of love the idea of like the family and Heartbreakers children, they all have something that's kind of similar, but not quite. And I just think that she's, that chapter is really fun for me. And I, I like how, I like how arrogant she is in that chapter.

Speaker: And with her power and just, oh, I'll just, you know, do this and this and I'll drive, you know, I, I really, I really liked Cherish and that one. Yeah, those are good. Um, I want to give a honorable mention to Dinah because we get to see how her power works. We knew what her power was, but getting to see how it works was really cool. Yeah. But I feel like this was a peak chapter for Tinkers.

Speaker: Do you think about the idea of a tinker and you think what can a tinker really do like cool they make cool machines you know dragons pretty neat arms masters got his things and that's fine. It's cool kid wins need but you get to see two. Tinkers who have abandoned morality.

Speaker: Oh man, Arms Master, am I right? Yeah, Arms Master and Dragon have abandoned morality. I do not support AI human marriage. No, I'm just kidding. I would not say that online, Nick. That's true, no. Have you seen her?

Speaker: Okay, that said though, I feel like this was a peak chapter for your peak set of arts for tinkers who have abandoned morality who just say,

Speaker: Screw it we're gonna make whatever the heck we want out of whatever we want and you end up with two different sides of it you have mannequin who is insulated himself against the world super protected basically invincible can't talk anymore and it's just. It's turned himself into this crazed monster but still very intelligent very precise.

Speaker: On the other hand, you have Bonesaw, the creepy little girl who is a flesh tinker, biotinker. And just flesh tinker, I like better. I like flesh tinker, yeah. Meets back on the menu.

Speaker: this idea of, hey, I think part of it, this is again a little tangent where my mind's going, but it's sort of that question of if you could run any experiment on humans, morality excluded, fun's infinite, what would you want to do? And you know, of course it'd be like, well, it'd be really interesting to know X or Y. And I feel like these two tinkers

Speaker: take that and you realize, oh yeah, no, it's a good thing that we don't think like that because this is what you end up with. You end up with manic - You end up with human centaurs. You end up with human centaurs. Where did the pants go? Where? But I just, again, I feel like it's like, ah, you're a tinker. Cool, you can build stuff. But just seeing them really show off what they can do in the most disturbing ways, of course. Oh yeah. Really cool.

Speaker: Really cool powers. Can't agree more. I seem to have a knack for picking the worst people for my favorite powers, but I'm going to keep doing it throughout the series, everybody. Guys are just coiled to Bonesaw and Mannequin. Here we go. It's fascinating. Nice little squad there. Makes me, it reminds me of Bonesaw, just what everything, just Bonesaw's introduction and then everything following reminds me of one of the Batman comics where, you know, Joker,

Speaker: carves off everybody's face and puts it on a plate in front of them. And then, you know, they do the reveal, like, ah, there's your face on a plate. And all I can think is, damn, wasn't fazed by that at all reading the comic because of everything Bonesaw has ever done has always topped that. Bonesaw makes Joker's worst moments look like a bitch. Like, Alan's going hard. He really has. He really has.

Speaker: You cut off a face like you ever stitch somebody into the spiral column of somebody else alive. I did that in four hours with like my hands tied behind my back. Bonesaw did it in a cave. Another meme in the chamber. There's another one.

Speaker: All right. Well, I don't know what more we can say here. I'm just kidding. We could say a lot more. I don't know if we should say more here. Please don't. Michael's coming down the chimneys telling us it's time to unplug. I was going to say Taylor's not here to pretend that I'm yelling. I'm going to say something that I feel like Taylor would say. You know, there's some Amy, Amy Victoria fan fiction.

Speaker: Oh, they're half the number one. Don't put that in Taylor's mouth. Are we absolutely sure that Brockton Bay is not located in Alabama?

Speaker: No, positive, not Alabama. Thank you. Don't put that on Taylor. Don't put that on Taylor. We love you, Taylor. His words, not mine. He's not even here. To quote Taylor. I know, I can't believe you'd say that. And we wonder why he left.

Speaker: Taylor, I'm so sorry. I know you're listening. I'm so sorry. We can cut that out. No, that's what we're leaving in. All right. I think we've said all that needs to be said tonight. And we'll be back to talk more about the slaughterhouse nine in the future. Uh, cause if it's not a spoiler to say they're not going anywhere. So we're going to see them again real soon. And in the near near future,

Speaker: We have dissecting worm. We do. Dissecting worm. Next episode coming out. Alan and I discussing these eight chapters. And there's a lot of ways we could take this one. So we're going to have a lot of fun with it. Oh, boy, do I have thoughts. I'm sure you do. I'm just kidding. I have them too. Don't worry.

Speaker: Yeah, stick around for that. That's gonna be a lot of fun. We're excited to break those down again. And stick around for the next episode of Brockton Bay Book Club. We'll be discussing Arc 12 all the way through.

Speaker: Keep letting us know what your thoughts are. We've loved hearing what you've had to say so far. I've been a lot of fun interacting and seeing everybody talking about it. Please don't hesitate. Reach out. Let us know. We talked a lot about a lot of stuff here. We got a lot of powers, a lot of strong opinions on characters. What are your thoughts? Who do you love? Who do you not love? Who do you love and hate? Did Amy mean to do it to Victoria at the end there? Was that an accident? Let us know.

Speaker: Yeah, I think that sums it up. Let's go. Michael, play us out.

Speaker: Thank you so much for listening. Read along with us at parahumans .wordpress .com. We'd love to hear your thoughts. What did you love? What did you hate? Anything you think we missed, etc. as long as it's kind. If you'd like to get in touch, you can find us on Twitter, threads, Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit at Brockton Bay, B .C. or click the link in the description.

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