Transcript
Speaker: Worm is a web serial by JC McCray, also known as Wildbo. You can read Worm in its original format by visiting parahumans .wordpress .com or donate to Wildbo's Patreon at patreon .com slash wildbo. This story isn't intended for young or sensitive readers. Readers who are on the lookout for trigger warnings are advised to give Worm a pass. For a complete list, check the description for all of Worm's trigger warnings.
Speaker: Well, hello, everyone. Welcome to the first standalone episode of Dissecting Worm, where members of the Brockton Bay Book Club, led by myself, Jacob, along with Alan, welcome Alan, and guest appearance by Hannah as well today. Welcome, Hannah. Hey.
Speaker: And we are going to break down Arc 8 of Worm and discuss what this arc would look like if approached from the perspective of adapting it for television, just as we've been doing with the previous arcs. And we're going to continue to do it with the rest of the series as well. And what makes this arc really fun is we've kind of been building towards this point. I don't know if we've spelled it out
Speaker: quite so clearly, but this is pretty much the definitive end for season one or what would be the first season of this hypothetical TV show that we are scripting. So this is gonna be a fun one. We got a lot to do. We got a lot to unravel and work through. So I hope you guys are ready. Both Hannah and Alan hope you guys are ready. And I hope anyone listening is ready as well.
Speaker: So let's dive in. This is our big finale, our big climactic finale for season one. And boy, is it climactic. I was climactic the whole time. Yeah, we got a chance to sort of get our thoughts out with the rest of the Brockton Bay Book Club.
Speaker: We've, we've had a chance to sort of debrief a bit on our feelings. So now we got to sort of get into how we're going to approach the, the episode. Yeah. My first thought right off the bat is this is a huge set piece of characters and most of them are only going to be seen here. And for the ones that aren't going to just be seen here and are going to be continual, like showing up, if you're getting actors,
Speaker: or the stuff for that, you've got to keep them around some of these guys for all five seasons or however we're splitting it up. And if this was animated, it would be a lot easier.
Speaker: Yeah, and I think we're all in agreement. We love the idea of some high quality animation for the series. I'm a sucker for live action as well. I think there's a lot of fun character emotion and nuance that you could really only get from live action. But it's hard to disagree that an animated format would look really good. A lot of this would work just really well animated.
Speaker: But let's get into the fight itself, because that is the bulk. Thinking about this episode, the fight is the bulk of it, the Leviathan fight. And then we sort of have the epilogue of the episode, if you will, as things sort of wind down. And then obviously we need some character resolutions and tags and teasers for the future seasons.
Speaker: But I think pretty safely, because if I remember right, we ended last episode on the cliffhanger, the sirens going off and that being sort of the cliffhanger of the episode that Leviathan is coming. Yeah, which I mean, just as a small thing.
Speaker: You've got to have, whatever you do, you've got to have the policeman reaction scene. I was just about to say that, yeah. I know I talked about it in the other one, but just like you got to kick it off. We've done it a few times with like the walking footsteps where you just like following the feet as they walk up. Right. And I think this is the perfect time where you walking up, you're following the footsteps. One cop reaches for the gun at the barricade, the other cop stops him and like pulls it aside and like let him through. And there's this weird kind of like they stare
Speaker: because they know that these people are going to potentially die, but they're also bad guys. Like I imagine there's mixed emotion there. What they're doing is noble. Yeah. But having, I think, you know, it's weird, but like having that set the tone for the opening to this, I think that it's, it's our cold open. It's just walking them, walking in.
Speaker: And then, you know, what you're panning up is like they're walking and there's, you know, see the heroes of the distance. Yeah. That's what I was about to say. The chaos too, of like people rushing, you know, from their homes with their suitcases. And in the book they say, you know, there's a kid with a glass case and a lizard. Like the absolute chaos of these people running, trying to get to the shelters and Taylor's like pushing against the throng, like against the flow of traffic to try and get to where
Speaker: you know, the other capes are gathering. Right. Yeah. Really. Yeah. I like, I like that are sort of a really chaotic opening, really selling the panic and the fear and the uncertainty. Yeah. And the way the cops respond. It's, it's tone setter for sure. And the whole, I mean, we, we've mentioned before, but like, I feel like this whole thing should be saving private Brian meets transformers.
Speaker: Elaborate. I was about to say, as someone who has not seen private Ryan, please expand on that. Band of Brothers, if you will. Band of Brothers has this moment where they hit the beaches. It's the most famous part of it. But in film and television, we just hadn't seen a war movie like that. And then the same team went on to do Band of Brothers. But it's so chaotic.
Speaker: your speakers are getting blown out because like it's supposed to sound like your ears are gone all the time. The voices are just not, they're going in and out of sound range because sometimes you just can't hear them. And in this case, instead of a hail of bullets, it's just rain and water constantly. Everything is wet. You know, people are slipping and falling. It's gritty.
Speaker: Uh, blood is just kind of like seeping everywhere. Uh, you know, character is constantly concussed. You know, just, you need that feeling mixed with the same like, uh, scale as like, I would say the first Transformers movie, you know, uh, where you have these wrestling creatures rolling around, fighting each other. Um, and they're larger than life.
Speaker: and amidst that you have the humans who are kind of like, you know, trying to hide and do something, but, um, you know, at the same time, there's not a whole lot they can do directly. Uh, so I think combining those two where, and transformers also has that sort of heroic, um, like a slightly happy feel to it. Like you're supposed to feel good watching transformers. You're not supposed to feel good watching, uh, saving private riot.
Speaker: I think the mixture of them with this being a superhero or a super powered story, there is a bit of fantasy slash levity to it that we don't want to strangle out. But it should be such a minute part of it in this area, but not completely absent. Something I was thinking about
Speaker: specifically with this episode is mixing with, you know, the chaos. We have, like you said, we have the rain coming down. We have the voices. We have the armbands. We have all this sound happening. And we, I think we'd have to be very careful with not, you know, like, well, blowing up the speakers, yes, at the right times, but also that when we do hit later in the episode, when, you know, Sion shows up and is fighting
Speaker: Leviathan, that quiet that we had kind of talked about earlier, that the quietness of them fighting together feels so drastically different in comparison to what we've seen the entire episode where we've seen these tapes being loud and, you know, armsmaster monologuing and people yelling and
Speaker: and trying to direct tapes and such. But the idea that utilizing sound and color, I think, this episode is going to hit really, really well. And having the sound of the chaos being mixed in with those important quiet moments, like the quiet of the shelter in the sense that it's out of the rain and that we can
Speaker: we, every time we are, we are removed from the chaos, it's like, okay, I feel like I can breathe again, but just like, you know, Taylor's experiencing, you know, hit after hits, like we're not really getting a break, but like the audience needs to feel like they can breathe whenever they possibly can. I like the idea of like sound is very important as you both know, I have my,
Speaker: issues with a certain Nolan and his inability to understand sound. But in this case, I think you're right. Like sound is really important, especially going from we want the chaos. And when we get to that moment, I hadn't thought before, like, yeah, we want the weirdly kind of dead silent except for the rain and the hits. But you mentioned color. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, so this was something that I was thinking about, like in reference with movies like The Dark Knight. That's super dark, it's very dreary, or like recently we just watched something on the, oh shoot, what's that like Dracula -y movie, the superhero one that everyone hated?
Speaker: I can't remember what it's called. I'm drawing a blank. Morbius. Morbius. So we recently just watched kind of like a behind the scenes video on Morbius and the people who were working on it and doing all of the amazing set work, basically in this behind the scenes with Morbius.
Speaker: they're looking at how much of this beautiful art and architecture that's been done by somebody to do all this CGI set dressing is completely gone and missed because the scene is so dark. And I think about that in the sense of like, because of the rain, because of the gray of the concrete, the gray of the skyscrapers, the gray of the water even, of like all of those things mixing together, you get a very,
Speaker: uh like monotone color scheme of the world and i was thinking very much with the idea of these capes all have such unique costumes like even just looking at narwhal with her very like crystalline diamond and white hair and just like
Speaker: those pops of color of an arm with a red sleeve floating by Taylor in the water, or the capes, speckles of color mixed in with the buildings as they're going down, or the sinkhole, those colors to stand out hit us more because of all of the gray. And that on that backdrop of this rainy, wet, chaotic city with Leviathan,
Speaker: you have all of these colored capes that are just dead or falling. And that color, specifically at the beginning of the episode where Taylor is getting the armband and we're seeing all of these capes, because at this point, a lot of them, if we're talking live action, a lot of them are just extras because they're about to die anyways. But the idea of having, oh yeah, there's a cape in the corner with a super bright purple and gold
Speaker: Design and then later when you see them in the water you think of that color again because those colors have stuck out with you from the beginning and you see and you might not know who those capes are we don't even need to reference any of them but that color popping out amongst the gray i think is gonna hit really hard especially with an episode that's basically gray as a color palette.
Speaker: Gray and water. I like the idea of the bright colors that we start with getting washed out as the heroes are like getting either entangled in the combat or straight up like when they die, you know, the water and the color muddies. Yeah. Um, so that, you know, when they're alive, I think arms master, like when he's alive and he's succeeding, he doesn't have a colorful outfit, but like, you know, maybe the lights on his suit or, you know, kind of make him a bright character.
Speaker: But then, you know, when he gets knocked the fuck out, like all that shuts down maybe. Yeah. And you're left with a very, you know, all the colors gone. Right. Yeah. No, I think, I think that's a fantastic point.
Speaker: As you were saying, Hannah, those kind of introductory scenes when all the heroes are there, the audience is, of course, not going to be able to associate code names with costumes. There's going to be dozens, if not hundreds of them, theoretically. So when the armbands are beeping, which is going to be a really fun audio cue throughout the episode,
Speaker: It's scary and it's terrifying, but there's no sort of association there. But there will be absolutely with costumes. And so there's definitely going to be moments that... And again, this is sort of the area where
Speaker: visual storytelling works in your favor as opposed to reading it where you can have quick moments, for example, between skitter, you know, glancing over towards velocity or somebody else and there's a little quip or something like that, just something to make that stick into the audience's mind to when later
Speaker: you know, we see velocity or anybody else who's dead at her feet, that color and the patterns, those costumes are going to be much easier to recognize than names will be, for example. So you're going to have a lot of opportunity there to
Speaker: to create that sort of emotion, which going back to what you said, Alan, is is what they did was saving Private Ryan on that beach scene. There's a lot of where you'll see there were soldiers yelling and then you see them later and they're dead. And it was something either like on their helmet or something like that. There's a visual component there that you're able to identify with to sort of bring that together. I think this would also be a great time in my head if you were like, oh, man, what if we reached out to all the local
Speaker: worm fans and said, Hey, make up a costume, show up in it. We just need bodies. Yeah. Like what's at the, uh, the five Oh first for star Wars. Exactly. Yeah. Right. You know, the casting call, Hey, show up. Like we just need bodies here and then, you know, we'll do the scene and you don't need most of those people.
Speaker: doing the characters that you're going to see and talk to. You just need bodies and suits. And you don't need perfect costumes either because these are capes that have potentially put their own costumes together. They're not sponsored or anything with perfect skin -tight costumes. But these are people who are coming out and are fighting Leviathan and they might not have a full get up. So I like that idea a lot. That's cool. That's fun. Do you want to talk about characters real quick?
Speaker: Um, cause there are some characters that are introduced here that are a big part of the story moving forward. And, um, it makes me want to start working with them earlier than, uh, then we do, um, potentially, or like maybe involve them more, I should say, as we write the script. Uh, the first that come to mind, of course, is Parian and Flechette. Yes, I agree. Um,
Speaker: I didn't realize that they had talked to this early on. Yeah. Right. Re -reading it. Yeah, same. Parian specifically, I thought came much later in the story. Obviously, you work with the Undersiders here for this entire first arc, but I think in the arcs moving forward, it makes me really like, oh yeah, there are relationships and characters and groups that we should probably give their own screen time and arc, like character arcs too.
Speaker: just because like, I think they deserve it. And the Perry and Flechette is one of them. Moving forward, Weld is another. I was gonna say Weld, yeah, definitely Weld. Which he, at least in the next arc, gets a decent amount of screen time. So I'm too worried about that. But this is, you know, this is when he shows up. This is maybe a time to be like, hey, this is Weld. Like,
Speaker: Um, well, I liked that. I liked that. He's one of the first people that Taylor sees when she's heading in to meet with all the capes. Like he's the one who kind of motions at the building and like, because he is so unique, uh, visually, uh, he, he does stand out, you know? Yeah. Um, the other big one is, uh, I think we need to focus in on new wave since they are kind of kind of a big deal. Um, and at least for, you know,
Speaker: next few arcs, like new wave has a lot happen. They are a big parallel part of this universe and a lot happens to them in this, this arc. So I feel like they kind of deserve their own arcs that we, you know, maybe get a little bit more than wild bow wrote moving forward from here. A lot of this. So sorry, go ahead.
Speaker: I was gonna say a lot of this is just things that move, moving forward, kind of. And then just like, you know, we're talking about color and highlighting stuff, like visually highlighting maybe that these people are important at the time. Yeah, but other than that, I don't think we need to spend too much time in this arc. You know, just those small moments where we like point, say, hey, that's that person, remember that person, and then move on.
Speaker: Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, you can do so much with a fight scene for those types of moments without really needing to edit or take away too much from what Wildboat wrote, right? So you can give a couple extra moments to New Wave. You can give an extra scene. Perion actually has a pretty good scene already written in, but you can expand on that weld, et cetera. You can absolutely give them moments and not even worry about
Speaker: Oh, you know, I don't want to rewrite the story or we were doing too much here. Like, no, it's a, it's a fight scene. Like you can, you can easily do that and it doesn't take away anything. No, totally agree. Uh, for the design and talking about Leviathan. Yeah. I think rain actually helps a lot here because a lot of elements going on, you can hide a lot of rough CG. Yes. I was thinking about that in terms of like how they did Jurassic Park.
Speaker: with not having necessarily fantastic puppeteering or the graphics. And still, because of all of the rain, it highlights it in the best possible way where you see the shadow, but you don't necessarily see the details. And then when we get lighting or we get lightning, things like that,
Speaker: that highlights all of a sudden, we see the tail, like we see Leviathan's tail, we realize how long it actually is. And like we see the legs and the arms and the eyes glow again. I love that idea of like, you can't really see him at first until he's suddenly right there. Like his power literally precedes him. Like you've got the water crashing against the thing, maybe people glancing towards the windows. And then all of a sudden the water just
Speaker: explodes into the building. People are getting washed over. They look up in the distance is Leviathan and then all of a sudden he's in the middle of them and there's just red mist. For that being the first time you see him, that is some Slender Man ass whore going on. Yeah, and it should. I love the idea of like,
Speaker: of looking towards the coast in the dark with the rain and like a large wave crashes on to the docks. And then as it dissipates Leviathan standing there, but you can't really see him. All you see are is this twitching set of eyes, the weird like three eyes and one eye and that kind of thing, just sort of twitching around. And then yeah, then him coming into frame as he, as he charges.
Speaker: as it charges as a gender, as it charges forward. Death. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not too worried about budgets and things like that, obviously. I mean, theoretically, in my mind, if this ever was live action, then HBO or Apple TV or something like that is going to pick it up.
Speaker: a half a billion dollars and it's going to be amazing. There you go. It just will be fantastic. This fight can look really good because of the setting. I was thinking, once again, I'm going to compare this all the way back to vampire diaries. Just the speeding up motion of them grabbing people. That's all you need to do. It's the simple zombie trick. We're talking in the other one. It's the zombie trick of the head twitching and them grabbing and slamming them against the wall.
Speaker: You know, if vampire diaries can do that much, like you just need to add rain. Yeah. But yeah, honestly, that's all I have for the basics on this. I think the rest is talking about, you know, Oh, my other thing, character relationships that I want to point out. So I don't know if we've ever talked about this, but I may,
Speaker: Huge clock blocker skitter combo. Are you really? A shipper, if you will. And okay. I would love to see that ship sail, you know? I mean, she does save his life here. Yeah. I really like them. I ship them. And if I had my way,
Speaker: I would not, I would not go too much further, but I would like a little bit more, uh, from the universe and, uh, I will defy wild though to do it. Hey, we're, we're writing it. You can throw in some banter. Yeah. If wild bow wants to complain, he can email me. That's actually something I was thinking about earlier. Um, I haven't listened in or been in on all of your dissecting worm.
Speaker: breakdowns. And so I'm curious with how, like we mentioned with Clock Blocker, with the Bank Heist episode, he's there. And we're seeing him again after, since the Bank Heist, and kind of the idea of what
Speaker: you know, what capes we show here is in a way reflecting of like what we've shown them already. So like Photon Mom and like seeing her and her reactions, like if we've kept in already, and I don't know if you guys have, you kept in the script already where, you know, Taylor's mentioned it or we've mentioned Photon Mom or anything like that. Like her showing back up is kind of like, oh, hey, that's her again. Like we know her already, as opposed to a sad mother who just lost kids.
Speaker: And in that same way, just like with Clock Blocker, how much screen time have we given some of these characters already? And how much can we play off of that for this episode?
Speaker: Yeah, this is something I think we've talked before we're going to do absolutely do a whole episode on its own. Next episode would actually be when it comes in, we're going to do sort of like a quote unquote season one recap, where we sort of reevaluate everything we've done and decide if we need to give more time here or take something else away. Because arc by arc, we really are just sort of talking about, hey, how would this arc work?
Speaker: individually. And we're piecing it together a little bit, but we're definitely not thinking too big picture episode to episode. And so I know one thing we've mentioned is probably giving a couple extra scenes at least to the wards, for example, that just seems to make sense, especially with future arcs to come. It makes sense to have to give them a bit more character in the first season so that we can expand on them later on.
Speaker: I would probably say the same. I don't think we really talked about New Wave too much, but I think that would make sense to give them a couple more scenes. They're not as huge of players, but there are some key moments in the future that we wanna, I would assume we would want to include. So it makes sense to give a couple more scenes here or there. I think thinking about how we break up this arc
Speaker: I think this might actually be a three episode arc. I was gonna ask that how we're breaking this up. I think three episodes works for this. And here's what you need to fill it with. One, I think you have to have the long Leviathan showdown. Two, I think you have to have tattletale interspersed in there as well.
Speaker: and three, uh, Taylor's running around, you know, under fire. So you've got the fighter, if you will, the, the information, you know, gatherer, and then the person on the ground, uh, you know, just kind of amidst everything. And then finally you've got to cap it off with, uh, an epilogue, which I feel like the epilogue should be the third episode. Um, and that's everything.
Speaker: essentially waking up or going to the hospital and everything that ensues after that. I think that should be its own episode.
Speaker: It definitely depends, of course, in terms of how long you're thinking for these episodes. I think three might be pushing it a bit. Two would make sense. I think two long episodes. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. If you release like two 60, 70, maybe 80 minute episodes, that kind of thing, you could fit
Speaker: pretty much everything. And I mean, in all honesty, I think you could do like, if you were going to do a big season finale and do one like hour and a half finale, you just fit it all in. Cause I think three, you know, your 23 to 30 minute episodes, like maybe you release them at once. I just don't think in terms of arcs within this, you know, individual episode arcs,
Speaker: I think having them all together would feel weird. But if you did three separate episodes and released them on the same day, I feel like that would be better. Because like I said, that epilogue, a lot happens in there. But I don't think it's worth more than 27 minutes. But it's too much to just cap off the end of a,
Speaker: the end of an episode with. It's just, yeah, it's too much its own thing. Yeah, I think that's, we got some play around with that. Yeah. And I think, I think especially if you have an arc, the arc in the middle for lung, essentially lung to have his big buildup from the beginning of the episode in the middle to
Speaker: him getting screwed over by Arms Master. Okay, you keep saying Lung. Are you saying, you mean Leviathan? No, I mean Lung. We gotta fill Hannah in, yeah. I'm so confused. This is one change, probably our biggest change to the story here that we have kind of agreed on is that Lung's character, thinking again in terms of a first season of a television show.
Speaker: Lung's character is presented throughout the season pretty consistently as like the antagonist to Taylor's sort of rise. And the way it caps off in the book works just fine for the web serial, but it is a little anticlimactic in terms of the way you would think about your protagonist and your antagonist. Now, I like it the way it's done the way Wild Bo writes it because
Speaker: other characters sort of fill that in pretty quickly and it just sort of builds this idea of like, there's just the bad doesn't stop. She's constantly finding things, threats no matter what they come. But for episodes of television, it's not really satisfying to see a character just sort of fade away and then just stay faded away.
Speaker: On top of that as well, we do get a bit of slight spoilers for later in the story, but it does come. That's why we have it as a separate podcast. Yeah, exactly. But we do learn later on that Lang fought Leviathan when he was much younger in Japan. And
Speaker: Up into the point of the story where it where Warren begins was the most successful non -cyon intervention like lung fought Leviathan to a standstill nearly beat him And saved the town was kind of his big rise to power
Speaker: But of course, we're not going to get that in the story, but it is a really cool moment and a pretty big moment for Lung. So our idea, all of that to say, our idea was we give Lung that moment in this episode and sort of give him the... Now, this is where Alan and I are on a slight disagreement, but we'll get to that here in a minute.
Speaker: We put him in the scene where Kaiser is in the story and have him almost beat Leviathan, and then Arms Master uses that, trips him up, and then uses that as his advantage to step in and carry on from there, sort of giving him that role.
Speaker: Just to sort of cap off Long's story a bit, give him a little bit of closure there and also sort of set up future arcs. 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: I want you to have the same easy experiences I do for all my podcasting and content needs. It's time to share your story. That's zencaster .com slash pricing and use our code rockton bay BC. And now back to our scheduled programming. Where Alan and I disagree as on whether or not lung should die here. Okay. So wait, wait, wait, wait. What are our thoughts on lung dying here? Who is for and against?
Speaker: I think lung, if we're, we're incorporating essentially his, his flashbacks to him fighting Leviathan before, and then him fighting Leviathan now have this big buildup, but ultimately Leviathan kills him. But he specifically, he dies because of something that arms master does. Yeah.
Speaker: which I will admit does still keep that same problem with Armsmaster's plan. So you still have all of that that works just well. I am on team keep Lung alive because of future events and things that I like from the story.
Speaker: But also because I'm against killing antagonists for the sake of killing them. If they are going to die, I think their death should advance the plot or arc of another character. Usually you're a protagonist. And I don't think in this scene, much like Kaiser, mind you, I don't think Kaiser's death is either. It does this either, but it's not as important.
Speaker: doesn't do anything to advance Taylor's story in particular, or the undersiders at this point. I don't think his death accomplishes much. I'm not against it. I'm just on team alive for now. Yeah. I think showing him at full long, especially with the fire and water imagery, I think would be phenomenal here. But showing sort of to Taylor as a witness,
Speaker: Lung was the biggest person you fought and Leviathan just beat his ass and kept going. Like Leviathan has taken out every single, like, and then Leviathan turns around and beats Armsmaster. Like Armsmaster was like, ah, you've been weakened by Lung. I've softened you up. Now it's my turn. And then Leviathan whips his ass and keeps going. Like, and I think it sets up not for Taylor's character.
Speaker: but for like the world's character, like this is the power levels we're talking about. Like this is establishing the bar. And then when you bring in Scion, then you see where the cap is. Like there's the bar and there's the ceiling. Like, I mean, to be fair, we could actually get the best of both worlds here. We can have Leviathan kill lung.
Speaker: But Lung's power is that he just regenerates everything. So you could do a little scene at the end, like a little tag, throwing like a half broken charred body into an ambulance and like have two EMTs there like, where's he going? Oh, the birdcage. Why? It's a dead body. Like, he'll be fine or something a little silly like that, you know? And you could still keep him around for later if you wanted to. I like that.
Speaker: My only complaint and pushback that I will give is that I don't like it. We're talking about like killing characters unnecessarily. I like characters to die more often in shows because
Speaker: People just don't do it enough. We talked about this in the other one, in the other show about Game of Thrones doing it. They really don't. The more I watch shows, I forget which one we were watching recently that was known as another one of those, like, ah, yes, they kill the people. But then, man, I'm gonna have to remember which show it was. It was the one I was watching recently that they just brought the character back. I was like, oh, they didn't even last the end of the season.
Speaker: They just brought them back almost immediately. Why would they do that? Like they died, they died. Just kill them and be done with it because it hits harder. Yeah. It hits so much harder. Uh, well, you know, I do think we're going to have plenty of that. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Somebody like, if we wanted to do the like throwing them in the bag, like holy cow, like there's this charred remains or whatever, and then
Speaker: in like a later season, have them, you know, maybe show, you know, like way later, we'd be like, oh, who's this in the bird cage? Why the hell is lung here? Well, in that sense, I would even,
Speaker: I would want to tease that even more then because I agree. I think if you're going to kill the character, kill them. But if you're teasing that the whole way that they're not dead. So really big example of this was the character of Ahsoka from Star Wars, where at the end of Star Wars Rebels, the animated show, it's implied initially that she's killed by Vader in this final confrontation.
Speaker: But at the very end of the episode, you see her silhouette sort of walking away and the whole audience is like, Oh my gosh, you know, did she live or did she die? Yada. That's the whole thing. And then of course you see her at the end of the season or at the end of the series, she's back and everyone's like, yeah, like that's not a fake out because the implication is set there that like, Oh, we don't know if she died or lived, you know, which it's not a totally coming back from the dead. It's yeah. I don't like the idea of, um,
Speaker: telegraphing that they're alive. I like the idea of ambiguity at the very least. If we're going to say that, be like, send that to dragon. Or here. That way, we're not saying that he's alive. There's a reason we're keeping that around. We're just saying that it's going to dragon and you can make the connection that dragon runs the birdcage, but we're not going to say that.
Speaker: Yeah, no, that's fine. I think that's I think that's just fine. I mean, that's that's actually a better comparison is actually the the end of Arkane. If you've watched Arkane on Netflix, not to spoil that because it's a great series and watch it. But there's a very similar sort of dynamic there with one of the characters where at the very end it's there's some implications there. But I just very subtle. I wouldn't want the the like
Speaker: with this character, I wouldn't want us to kill them and then immediately say, ah, but maybe they're not dead. Like it's just, I would not want it to happen that quickly. I would want it to happen like at the next season, you know, I don't know. I feel like the issue, I mean, like the thing is, is like, do we kill him and not really kill him or do we just not kill him?
Speaker: And it feels like if we just don't kill him completely, but incapacitate lung, then we don't have to have this ambiguity. Well, is he dead? Well, I don't know. We just know that he's out. He's out of the fight. And that hit still hits with Leviathan. They're like, okay, Leviathan is so freaking powerful and lung is full maxed out and still he gets laid out on the ground by Leviathan.
Speaker: And we don't necessarily, because I will say I get the idea of, you know, death versus not death. And I lean more on the side of not death just because
Speaker: We are killing a shit ton of people in this episode. Like, there are so many people dying, it's ridiculous. And I think that Wong not dying isn't necessarily a huge... Because if the point of having him in this fight is to bring him back, to bring some closure to the story, and to show power strengths, then him dying doesn't... Like, he doesn't have to die for us to do that.
Speaker: I think him dying sets a tone for the world. How so more than other people dying? Those were whatever capes and this is a person that we like. I mean like Kaiser and Fenja and the dogs. Well that was the thing is we would like we would literally like Kaiser we wouldn't have here. Oh so wait wait wait you guys are talking about taking Kaiser out completely?
Speaker: We talked a little bit about this. I do think Kaiser should stay dead. Oh, okay. Yeah. No, I think he should die.
Speaker: I agree with you very strongly with that one. I think that Kaiser's death here is also, I think it's also one of the bigger hits because when I was reading it, I forgot that he had died here. And so him dying, it feels like a big hit. Like we've just been fighting Empire 88 and purity and all of them. Him dying and basically a lot of Empire 88 getting knocked out here, some of the big Empire 88 hitters getting knocked out.
Speaker: I don't even mean knocked out, I mean dead, is I think a good thing. Because at this point we're kind of moving away from Empire 88 having such a strong hold on Brockton Bay and having Kaiser die and Fenya and whoever else is like, it's kind of like the last straw of like, yeah, this isn't going to last much longer.
Speaker: Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. I feel good about his death, especially him being ripped in half. I don't know. That was incredibly satisfying for me. I did like Alan because Alan and I did talk about this briefly, I think off podcast before we were thinking about this. I did initially like the idea of sending Kaiser to the birdcage and sort of building that dynamic, this sort of parent -child dynamic that we see throughout the story.
Speaker: And again, this is some slight spoilers for the future, so we might edit around this a bit. I do think Theo's character, because I initially liked your idea of utilizing that as some character development, but I do think his character works.
Speaker: a bit better in the wake of his late father's shadow. Yeah, I agree with you. Yeah. I would just say that. So yeah, I'd still give him that ceremonial death. Nick will be disappointed.
Speaker: I mean, I don't think that Kaiser needs to have a big, obvious death. I think the walk, because again, with what we were talking about, fillers. Yeah, no, I think him being fucking whacked off stage was perfect. Exactly. Well, not whacked off stage, but more, well, yeah, whacked off stage, but his half body. No, no, no. Leviathan comes around the corner and he's got half of a Kaiser in each hand. I love that. I think it's not, because especially in the light of what Armsmaster does in his showboating and his monologue,
Speaker: You have this main character who feels like, I am the hero here. And he gets to have his big special moment. And Kaiser had nothing. Kaiser had no final statements. He had no show voting. His death isn't even on screen. It's off screen. Yeah. And I am A -OK, 100 % okay with that. Yeah. That makes sense. I agree.
Speaker: Well, I mean, back with Long, though, I think the idea of not necessarily killing him, but having him insanely incapacitated. Like, I'm the thought of Levis in doing the same thing, ripping him in half, and still that not being enough to kill him. Like, ripping him in half, and the armband goes, Long down. And you're like, Long down? Like, why is he not dead?
Speaker: But it's enough. And so you don't necessarily then have to have a scene. You don't have to take up screen time to be like, hey, let's shove this blackened half ripped up lung into a body bag and send him off to the birdcage. Because we already know that he hasn't died. So we can just keep that as it happened. He's down. I like that.
Speaker: Yeah. I think especially if you don't make it a like lung down, like super loud, you just have it like. It's just in the background. It's medium volume, but it does say lung down. And if you're listening, you're like, wait a minute. Especially because something I noticed when I was reading it, uh, if you look like, if you listen back to the part of listen back, if you read back to the part where, uh, tattletales like replaying the audio.
Speaker: Taylor's armband goes down right before, I think it's right before or right after Kaiser gets announced as dead. I mean, we could have, we could have, yeah, it doesn't even need to make the announcement then. Like he was there, which is part of, you know, like how he got screwed over by Arms Master. Armmband doesn't need to say anything. He gets his heart ripped out and he gets booted across. And we don't see him again for the rest of, until we ever see him again in the show.
Speaker: I'm good with that. I like that. I think we were talking about the visual aspects of the color and the sound. In that same way, we've been hearing the beeping of the armband this whole time, but it's been very kind of... We've gotten used to it, basically. We've gotten used to the beeping, the announcements from the armband. When this big moment happens with lung,
Speaker: and the armband doesn't announce it. I'm sure some viewers will be like, wait a second, why didn't the armband say anything? Like why hasn't the armband said anything? And after a while, it kind of becomes disconcerting because you realize like, wait, I'm missing something. Like something I've been listening to for the past 20 minutes, I can't hear anymore. What happened? And then when we realize, oh, her armband's broken, it's like, oh, shit. Especially if you have Forest Master come in right after he gets killed. Exactly. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. All right. I want to move off long.
Speaker: giving a good amount of time there. We have spent like a solid 35 minutes on long. Good stuff. Good stuff. Uh, moving over to the fight with arms master, maybe, um, changed nothing. Yeah, I think it's pretty great. Yeah. Like that and like Sion coming in, I just think, uh, maybe, maybe that happens. You know, it happens pretty quickly. Like in terms of the tone of the show,
Speaker: After Arms Master gets turned into Arm Master, I think we kind of wrap it up there. I know there's stuff with maybe Mr. Gladly that we can rearrange before then, but I think the Arms Master getting his arm ripped off should be the cap of the fight. And then, you know, Sion showing up kind of
Speaker: doesn't count because it's not even a fight. It's just him driving him off. I agree. I think you do want to get Taylor's moment. If it's not with Mr. Gladly, it's somewhere else, but I think you do want to give her that moment of turning around with the sphere. I mean, chronologically, like all the events, keep them. Just put arms master at the end. Potentially. Okay. Um, yeah, maybe you do arms master. Um, he's dead. Uh,
Speaker: Taylor says like, oh, like, oh, like no, or like whisper something. You know, it whips around, sees her, and that's when bitch comes in, rescues, and then, you know, right before they get taken out, scion. But that, like, the arms master basically being kind of like neat, just chronologically the end of the fight. And then you can put whatever events happened afterwards, potentially before that, since so much goes on. No, that's fine. I think that's a good ending. Because I think, I think in, and again,
Speaker: We have the advantage of having read the entire story and are rereading it now. But again, thinking in terms of what the audience is looking for, that could very well be the moment they think like, oh, this is it. This is, you know, we're, we're getting to the end. Ars Master's got a plan. Here we go.
Speaker: This is make it or break it. It's the false ending. Exactly. Especially we do some good Marvel music swelling. It's just build up. Oh, I was going to say we do no music for this episode because the sound is so strong. Well, we don't do music, but it's not soundtrack. It is literally arms master speaker hysteria. It's playing just the American national anthem.
Speaker: It's playing hail to the chief. You just like, you know, you brighten it up a little bit, like have, have some light coming through the clouds, some ambient light, you know, starts to brighten up color palette wise. And then the turn of like,
Speaker: It just, you know, reached up, rips his arm off and he's like, Oh, back to gray. Yeah. You could literally have the gray tone slider slide back down in the middle of like literally as his face is reacting to like, Oh my God. I fucked up. Like you could just tone down the slider in time with that. That would be phenomenal. Um, yeah, that's funny. Yeah. Uh, let's see working with long. Uh, let's talk about Lisa.
Speaker: Yeah, definitely want to give her a moment. Her interlude is interesting and I think we could probably move it around a bit. It doesn't really need to be in this episode. Which part? Because I think that we take her origin interlude and we bump that to maybe the epilogue. Yeah, okay. I wouldn't mind that. That would work.
Speaker: But her little bit analyzing, right, of course, her analyzing Leviathan and everything like that. I think we definitely got to fit that in somewhere. I think analyzing and like calling out stuff interspersed with lung doing his like his fight slash flashback and Taylor running around I think is a good multiple points of view or
Speaker: all the things that are happening amidst this fight. Yeah. And we would want multiple POVs here. I think definitely it would get a little stale just following Taylor around. We're not trying to, what was it? 1917? The one shot. Yeah. We're not going for that. We're not going for any sort of technical Oscars here.
Speaker: I mean, that seems pretty straightforward, I guess. Yeah, that kind of wraps up the fight. Truthfully, we spent a lot of time here, which I knew we would, but there's not a lot. Like, whenever you get to these big fight scenes at the end of the day, it's a fight scene. That's not really in the script. That's the directors and the stunt coordinators and the DPs. They're the ones that are going to figure out how that looks and what flows best. We're just sort of setting the pieces. Right. Yeah. In that case, you want to talk about, like,
Speaker: You know, the fight's over. Yeah. The after bits. This is the hospital and the memorial. I think, I think, especially if you cold open maybe with, uh, tattletales background, her, you know, kind of knowing what's going on, being, you know, aware of a lot of this and then cutting to, you know, Taylor waking up, but tattletale maybe being a little bit more present.
Speaker: or a lot of this. And when she storms off or maybe she doesn't, she just moves to like the next room and then like comes back with the arm band and like is talking to it or even does that maneuver like right in front of them. As she does that when they're, cause this will be a big moment of like, hey, arms masters like, hey, this bitch tried to sell you out to me. And she's like, I know, I always knew.
Speaker: I think having that be a hitter, especially after the argument we just had with the undersiders and her being very lenient with Taylor because she knows that this has always been the case. She's always had a hero's heart. She always wanted to be a hero. And Lisa's always known this and has kept the fact that she's known from her just as Taylor's kept the fact that she's been a hero. I think having her kind of be the secondary protagonist of this episode
Speaker: She's the one that kind of has the win over all of them. She figures out what's wrong with the arm band. She gets her and Taylor out of there. I think when the undersiders show up and support Taylor, I think there's a moment where, you know, arms master loses and like, you know, like I said, you know, like they were trying to turn you over. I think having the others step aside and be like, really?
Speaker: and Lisa be like, I knew, and then stand beside Taylor. And it doesn't matter. No, I do like that. And have that be a weird kind of divide where you've got Taylor and - Yeah, like the physical staging of the characters. Yeah, yeah. I'm with you on this. Yeah. Taylor and Lisa on one side and the rest of the undersiders with arms master and them in the middle. And then ultimately, you know, they get out and then we, you know, I think we cut to
Speaker: the memorial. And once again, you have Lisa and Taylor talking again.
Speaker: Yeah, no, I do. I do really like that a lot actually, that works really well. And one small little change that I'd love to see is instead of Lisa figuring out Legend's rich band password off screen, she does it in front of him. I want her to read him. The power play. Yeah, just sort of like super buy the book, yada, yada. This is going to be 10 characters, mix of letters and symbols.
Speaker: You're not going to use date of birth, you know, little things like that where she's just sort of figuring it out in front of them. And then, yeah, I think it'd be a really fun one. I was wondering, do you want to do that to Legend or do it to Arms Master? Do you like the idea of it being Arms Master? Because it's such a fuck you. It is. That's true. That's true. It probably does work better with Arms Master. Yeah, that works. I do like that.
Speaker: And then moving off from that, we get now to another point that Alan and I have been going back and forth with for the last couple episodes really, which is, do we want to delay the coil reveal until now?
Speaker: and make that reveal a season finale thing or do we want to keep the reveal earlier? And we've played around a little bit with this in the previous episodes already in terms of what that would look like if we delayed it or not. It is difficult. I do think it works really well delaying it until now and sort of tying everything in with coil in this final episode.
Speaker: where he's revealed, they go to his lair, throw in Dina, all of that. And then once the undersiders leave, you sort of have the tag with Coyle and Trickster about, gosh, Noelle. Yeah, thank you. I feel... Go for it. How do you feel? I feel that that's a season two thing. And I also feel that maybe we start having
Speaker: the travelers and coil be their own, uh, like thing that we look into, like a lot of the, a lot of the stuff that we would have with the undersiders and coil, maybe we shift to be travelers and coil, um, where, where you still have this vibe of like, they're a separate team doing their, you know, doing separate schemes and maybe
Speaker: part of what comes out is actually you're not a rival team. You're actually both working for the same guy. Yeah. Well, I think you've got to reveal coil at some point in some capacity during this season because it's a question that's asked at the very beginning. And there's just, you need to answer that. You need to have some season
Speaker: closure. But I'm fine pushing a lot of that later on in future seasons in terms of development. But I think it's some way you do have to reveal who they're working for because that's sort of like, again, this is probably a good question that will bring up for our season one wrap up episode.
Speaker: Yeah. But in terms of thinking and in terms of thinking of season long arcs and where characters begin and end and things like that, like this is one of the larger questions that's presented. Yes. Reoccurring throughout the episodes. I mean, it's the reason Taylor is there at all. Right. Hear me out.
Speaker: So maybe we have Taylor, I like the idea of Taylor being ambiguous about what her decision is, but maybe we don't. Maybe Taylor say like, I'm in, I always wanted to be a hero. I think I could still be a hero, but sometimes being a hero doesn't mean like working with the PRT. Sometimes you do more good being a villain than you can being a hero or something. And she like walks away and Lisa smiles
Speaker: watches her walk away and then turns, pulls out her cell phone, you know, and says, yeah, she's in, closes it, click to coil, puts it down. And then just him steepling his fingers. Like it still, it reveals in one quick move that coils the one behind it, that him and Lisa are still working together. It puts a lot of doubt on Lisa.
Speaker: We just had this really big bonding moment with, I think it throws a lot of things into question, but also answers the question, like you said. Yeah. And you could do that. You can answer the question for the audience and not for Taylor and that's still satisfying. Um, so yeah, you could definitely do that. I think that works well. Yeah. I don't, I don't hate it. I like that. Uh, yeah, I think everything else gets pushed. The interlude gets pushed back to the next season.
Speaker: I think there's a lot of stuff to do in the next season with a lot of different sets of characters. I cannot wait for the next season to come out. In fact, the next arc is, I'm pretty sure, just warts. There's a lot of alternate stuff going on. I think it'll be fun to play with. I do have one fun. I don't even know if I like this idea for a season final shot of the season, but I got to throw it out there because it's just fun.
Speaker: And this will contain slight spoilers for the next couple arcs of the story. But the very final scene, the sort of cut right before the black screen and the credits roll is you see a group of people sitting on a rooftop. Maybe you think it's the undersiders, maybe the travelers, something like that.
Speaker: you know, do something a little cinematic, light a cigar, whatever the case may be. And you just hear the voice of Jack saying, you know, something, I'm a little spitballing here. Don't credit something. I love it so much. Like, darling, do you mind ringing the doorbell for us? And then Shatterberg screams.
Speaker: And that's just the end of the credits roll. I'm so here for it. I love teases like that. Things that get your blood pumping. And I... Yes, I'm here for it. Yeah, I like something. Because we did it at the beginning, hinting Leviathan coming with the water. Yes, with the water ripple. I think something real simple like a van. And the only people you see in the van is like Jack and somebody else.
Speaker: Maybe Jack and Bonesaw in the van. Right. Something like that. Yeah. And they're talking and they're shuffling in the back, but you can't really tell. And they're just like, where are we headed to next? And it's like, essentially like I heard shits going down in Brockton Bay. And then on the back, it says like, in like, there's like an arm or something hanging out of the back of the door and like.
Speaker: You know, painted on the side is like S9. Right. I feel like that's, that's a little too on the nose, but it's like a little too on the nose. It's all about family. And he hits the knots. Yeah. Just back in black starts playing.
Speaker: I like the idea of it being something that's subtle enough that it doesn't tell us exactly what's going on. The ripple on the water. If you know, you know. But if you don't know, you have absolutely no fucking clue. Right. I like that idea of it being very like, what? What's that? Yeah. Yeah. You got to give them something. You got to tease them. You got to give something to the message boards. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah.
Speaker: All right. Well, I'm, I'm, I think we're doing, I think we got a good wrap up here and I want a solid, that's a solid episode. I think we've had breaks, you know, one 30. Yeah. I think we've, I think we've hit everything. Um, uh, unless there's any final thoughts, thank you, uh, both of you, Alan and Hannah for joining myself. It was always a pleasure. Yeah. Thanks to, uh, of course, of course. Anytime, uh, Michael as well. Thank you for making us sound good. As always, we love you, Michael.
Speaker: Thank you to everyone who's been listening. This has been a lot of fun to do. And congratulations, you have made it through an entire season of Dissecting Worm as we are concluding our season one with Arc 8. We feel it's a pretty good capstone to what would be a theoretical first season for this hypothetical television show.
Speaker: And so moving on from this will be season two and we'll cap that somewhere in the future. We haven't quite decided yet, but stick around and maybe let us know. What do you think? Where do you think season two, three, four, five, six, 10, however far we want to go? What, what seems like good breaks to you? Where should the story be split up? Let us know in the comments and stay tuned sometime this week for a special release of the Brockton Bay book club, specifically from dissecting worm as we take a look
Speaker: and recap our hypothetical first season of our television show. Arcs one through eight put together. We're gonna take a look from beginning to end. We'll have a few special guests on with myself along with Alan.
Speaker: And we're going to take a look at everything, recap it all and plan it out. But we are so appreciative of everyone who's been listening and following along. It's been a lot of fun. Please reach out to us on our socials. Let us know what we're missing. We've got a few controversial thoughts in here. Let us know what your thoughts on there. Do you agree? Disagree? Anything we miss? Anything we need to add? Stick around for the season one episode as well, which is set to follow this
Speaker: next time where we're going to sort of look back at these eight arcs and sort of re -examine how we've done. If we think we need to shuffle things around, we're going to sort of complete the season as it were. But until then, get back in there. Read arc nine. That's our next arc to tackle. All about the words. It's going to be a blast.
Speaker: Read along with us at parahumans .wordpress .com. We'd love to hear your thoughts. What did you love? What did you hate? Anything you think we missed, et cetera, as long as it's kind. If you'd like to get in touch, you can find us on Twitter, threads, Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit, at Brockton Bay, BC, or click the link in the description.
Speaker: Did we say something that you didn't agree with that you can't just put into words on a message board or a forum or a YouTube comment? Well, now you can call us. We have a voicemail. You can call us at 980 -999 -0438 and let us know with your words what we said wrong.
Speaker: If you'd like to fight me on the podcast, go ahead and leave a voicemail at 980 -999 -0438. Call in with your comment, leave your cape name, and which one of us you're going to call out on this podcast. We'd love to hear from you and love to engage with you on the podcast.
Speaker: Give us some ideas on how you would adapt worm or just thoughts on the story in general and your voicemail might be featured on one of our episodes. Again, that's 980 -999 -0438. Leave your cape name and your thoughts and stay tuned.
