Dissecting Worm - Season 1 Recap; Arcs 1-8

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. 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. We've got a lovely crossover episode here, folks. We didn't decide whether or not you're doing that before, but I'm so glad you did. Thank you, Alan, as always. Welcome. Welcome to a little special episode of Dissecting Worm here. We're going to be taking a look at our theoretical first season.

Speaker: for this hypothetical show that we are, it's out. It's actually already being produced right now. It's on the CW soon. Yeah. I hear you guys got map a studio somehow to animate it for you. Wild. Uh, I was actually thinking trigger. They put out a short promo and man,

Speaker: Ugh, we're just all moving up in the world. You didn't hear that Trigger is going to partner with Mappa just for this show? Wow, gosh. Okay, I think I can only get so hard. Do you imagine? What kind of special episode is it, Jacob? Please.

Speaker: All right, we're taking a look at everything we've sort of talked about. And by we, I am talking mostly about me and Alan, but we do have a few other voices on the mics tonight. Joined, returning Hannah, who's been with us a few times before. And for the first time, thank you, Hannah. And for the first time on Dissecting Worm, we have Nick. Nick is joining us. Hey. Hello, hello. From The Book Club. A fresh reaction. A fresh reaction.

Speaker: If for some reason the rest of y 'all don't know, there's another podcast lesser known than this one, obviously, but not by much called the Brockton Bay Book Club. And what I do there is I could have sworn this is just two parts of the same podcast. Oh, you know what? There was a divergence, you know, the timelines. We had a split.

Speaker: Yeah. You know, rough. It's rough. Yeah. But we're back together again. That's Earth for one night only. Yeah. Well. The reunion tour, they call it. Exactly. I mean, I would hope that we do it again at the end of season two. Hannah, can I have a word with you? Obviously we do that at the end of season two. We can't let them know that. We've got to sell this like it's exclusive. Okay. Okay. Do you want me to try and do that again?

Speaker: Yeah, one more take, one more take. Hannah, this is podcast edging, basically. Right, yes, of course. And since this will be the one and only time that we all diverge together, it's a special thing. So everybody, hang on to your butts. Get your tickets now. I love it when we diverge. I'm about to trigger. And we would be remiss not to mention, Michael, of course, is always behind the scenes.

Speaker: making us sound good, chiming in, correcting our spellings and our pronunciations only for us to correct him back. Yes, of course. Yeah, so this is the longest intro ever. But yes, we are reviewing the full first season of Dissecting Worm. In case we didn't make that clear, that's what we're doing. Very excited to have Nick and Hannah joining us. Nick has a fresh reaction to everything that they've done.

Speaker: Yeah, no, this is going to be a lot of fun. Yeah, we're going to get in case you couldn't hear. Michael, who has done nothing but lift all week, is also going to carry this podcast like he does every single week. If it wasn't for him, well, we wouldn't get off the ground. Yeah, no, we wouldn't function in the slightest without Michael. So thank you, Michael.

Speaker: You're welcome. Thank you for all the praise. I did, uh, wins a little when you said this theoretical thing. I'm like, am I doing this work for, uh, for nothing? And the potential to get paid. Eventually, maybe. That's fair. Poor choice of words, poor choice of words.

Speaker: Oh, we'll do the little dub over words in post where it's like a robotic sound over theoretical with a better word. We'll just bleep it out anyway. All right, we'll dive in here. We got a lot to get to. We got to get going. So let's talk just briefly about what we're going to look at here. An overview of kind of season one, the way we have structured it.

Speaker: We'll be covering arcs one through eight of Warm, basically from the beginning of the story through the Leviathan fight. Seems to be a pretty easy stopping point for the first season, but we'll get into that.

Speaker: Right now, we're kind of at about 11 -ish episodes total for the first season. And when I talk about episodes, I'm talking about television show, when I'm talking about arcs, talk about arcs for warm just to kind of keep that a little bit easier. So we're at about 11 -ish episodes, somewhere between 10 and 12 is probably going to end up landing when all the dice settle.

Speaker: When JJ Abrams, the executive producer, decided to shit together and come in and decide. I know, right? Exactly.

Speaker: And then within that, we're not changing any major events within the story. Most of the major events remaining pretty much completely unchanged at most, maybe adjusting the timelines a bit on certain things, but we're keeping everything pretty much as is. We are, however, making a plethora of minor changes to smaller moments and characters, things like that, cutting characters, giving some characters more screen time. So we'll kind of review all of that as well.

Speaker: And then lastly, just as a note, while we obviously have a lot of fun talking about how we might envision certain scenes looking at things like that, we're really focused mostly just on script at this point. And we'll leave the cinematography and soundtracks and casting and all of that to the studios that are no doubt just can't wait to place their bids. Absolutely.

Speaker: So that's kind of what we are kind of reviewing and looking at. But I wanted to start it off a bit lighter and just sort of get some discussion flowing and sort of getting our minds in gear. And I thought that a fun way to do that would be just sort of talking about other first seasons of television shows that we enjoy, what they got right. So I'm going to kind of open this up.

Speaker: I listed a few that came to mind that I was just kind of thinking about, doesn't that be the whole show? Doesn't that be the entire series or season or entire series rather, just the first season? That's kind of what we're looking at here. So yeah, this is gonna talk. I just thought it'd be a fun way to sort of think about what makes a good first season and why do they work? Why are we already drawn? Also, for those of you who are listening, this is about to be full spoilers for all of these shows.

Speaker: And for the worm series in general, we're not going to go into heavy detail, but obviously if you're listening this far, you know, spoilers probably know by now, but yes, if you know, you know, I did actually think about that. I did, I did try to pick shows that have been out or finished for a while. Um, but yes, we'll just say that, uh, naturally there will be spoilers involved with all these shows, but most importantly, we're going to be spoiling that the entire time, beginning to end, get ready.

Speaker: All right, well, I'll go ahead and just kind of start with a few that I just kind of, I thought made sense within the same genre, so sort of superhero shows that I thought did it well season one. Obviously, current shows, The Boys, very popular, Invincible as well has been pretty popular. I thought they both had really good first seasons. And then I also threw out Heroes, older show.

Speaker: Really didn't do too well towards the end, but that first season I thought was very, very good. I was gonna say, I actually think about Heroes a lot in terms of when we're writing for this show. Yeah, there's some especially crossover. The scale kind of. And like Heroes is a very personal individual, like very honed in on the characters.

Speaker: Not big set pieces, honestly. Ours would probably start at a hero's level and end up like the boys. Right. But I do like heroes for the dialogue. I think about heroes with the powers on a personal level kind of thing.

Speaker: Yeah, I haven't seen enough heroes. Yeah, I was about to say this would probably be an excellent time to say I've never seen heroes. But that's fine. I figured this might be the issue. So your next show, you really should watch heroes. You can really stop after season one. Oh, okay. It doesn't get better. I was going to say I liked

Speaker: the other seasons, but I also don't remember them all that well. I mean, I did put myself through Vampire Diaries this year. Oh, you'll be fine. If I can get all the way through Vampire Diaries or anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I take it back. Watch it all. Okay. So to kind of open up the discussion, obviously, feel free to interject any other shows you can think of that you think would fit this mold.

Speaker: What do you think makes a compelling first season for a show? When you finish that finale of season one and you go, I can't wait for season two, what's the reason for that? What worked for you? I'll start some greedy boy.

Speaker: For all of these, each Heroes, Invincible, and The Boys, once we're going with, just because we're talking about those, I think have kind of very different approaches to ending the seasons and what drew you in. Heroes kind of continues to have this, if I remember right, there's a whole prophecy thing that happens. And I don't think that's resolved in season one. Mm -hmm.

Speaker: It's partly what pushes season one, but it's not resolved there. And I very much appreciate it. It helps save the cheerleader, save the world. And then by the end, you've got to move on from that, but it's still present. So I like that that has an ongoing threat of doom that's solved in minor regards, but then,

Speaker: You still have to deal with it. Um, so that's pretty nice for heroes. Um, invincible has, uh, you know, thing, all of the stuff happens. There's a big conflict that kind of wraps up at the end. And overall, most things are resolved. The reason you want to watch invincible to continuing is because you enjoy the world that's set up. Um, there's a few questions you want answered, but overall, like a lot of it, a lot of the stuff's resolved. You just want to, you know,

Speaker: continue just won another season of which you had in season one. But the boys, I actually don't remember liking the ending to the boys season one all that much. And I think it's kind of has just a big blow up. It would be like if we ended almost like if we ended season one at arc seven is kind of how it felt to me.

Speaker: Stuff goes down, things blow up, but it's over. It's done. And I have a lot of questions. And while that can be good, I don't feel like they were questions that I was led up to. They were questions that were all put on you in the last episode, just wondering where the next season was going to go.

Speaker: And I don't necessarily like that being the big incident of a final episode for a season. So at the very least, just thinking about how those seasons ended, The Boys is a interesting world to live in, but you just gotta deal with the ick factor of it. Invincible is a fun world with a completed arc

Speaker: uh, for season one and heroes, uh, has a good arc in season one that builds into the following seasons. Um, so I think it's very different. I remember really liking the first season of the boys and invincible. Um, and I think, I think for me oftentimes with a show, uh, what really gets me is not even necessarily the whole first season, although it is nice if those end well, of course.

Speaker: as a whole. Um, but what I really like is seeing a first episode that really pulls me in. Yeah. And I think the boys does that very well, um, obviously, and invincible does that really well too, where it kind of starts out with the, oh, this is a fun show, like superheroes. It seems that way, but then you kind of have the about face turn at the end. Um, and that was really cool.

Speaker: Uh, at the end of the first episode where, you know, obviously people get attacked, people die. Uh, this is wild. You're like, what is happening? Um, and that's really cool. Anyway, so pilot episodes to me matter a good deal. And oftentimes what I usually my rule, because I don't have a lot of time to watch shows. So if I'm going to watch a show, I like to get hooked from the beginning. I don't want to get a few episodes in and then find out I didn't actually enjoy it.

Speaker: And so for me, first, I give like most episodes two shows. I'm like, you got two shows to hook me. And all the shows that we've mentioned so far, that's part of what they've done. Another one in kind of a similar genre might be something like Avatar the Last Airbender. I feel like it does a good job of setting up, obviously it's more of a kids show, so it's a lot more, it's a lot more kid friendly there.

Speaker: But it still does a really good job of setting up a compelling introduction of characters, setting up a compelling plot, compelling conflict. And even though it's a kid's show, I feel like it does it so well that it's also worth mentioning kind of in the same vein. And the first season of Avatar the Last Airbender does end in a really good ending too. It's a good first season, I think. So, yeah. Yeah, another good one. Sure.

Speaker: That's a good point. I think a strong start is important. I think a lot about, there's a lecture that Brandon Sanderson gave about deliverables and the things that you promise to your reader, or in this case, you promise to your viewer that you're saying that like, okay, well, if this is the premise, we're promising to deliver on this premise by the end. And if you do a bait and switch, for instance, if you promise

Speaker: I don't know, like a prophecy and then you switch it out. No, it's actually not a prophecy. It's this. It needs to surpass the original promise of whatever that you've said it is and that your deliverables leave the reader feeling satisfied. And when I think about first seasons of being like, okay, so you want to deliver on some of the promises that you've made, but not necessarily all of them to keep people watching in order to be like, okay, well,

Speaker: They have delivered on season one on X, Y, and Z, but we still need A, B, and C. And so I'll keep watching.

Speaker: Keep watching to season two but with Nick actually said what I was gonna say about the whole giving a show the first couple of episodes to like Okay, can you hook me within the first episode? You know of a longer like an hour episode or can you hook me in the first three episodes of like a shorter? You know 20 minute episode show and if I'm not hooked by then like I'm I'm probably not gonna stay around and I think about that with the sense of like

Speaker: with promises that you show your viewers what to expect. So if we're getting language or violence or trauma in the first episode, we know that we can expect that throughout the season. And I think about this with Game of Thrones only because I'm watching it right now, but the kind of the deliverables of the first season of like, well, no one is safe.

Speaker: You know, no one is safe from the acts as it were. There's language, there's sex, there's violence, there's a lot of blood and it comes out of nowhere. So it hits you all of these things, but you're prepared for it. So you don't feel like, you know, you know, by the end of the show, you don't feel like things are so coming out of out of left field anymore. And I like shows that are good on their deliverables, that they they make promises and then they fulfill them and and

Speaker: Like we all want to be surprised in a show or a book, but like we don't want to be so like surprised that we feel off put by the show. And so things like that that can help the viewer feel connected to the story and still feel surprised, but also feel like they weren't lied to with the premise.

Speaker: I like that. Let's put a pin in that, actually. I think that'd be a good thing to return to at the end. Kind of when we talked about our episodes and things like that. And to talk about deliverables about the first season and kind of what we're setting up and what we want to accomplish at the end. That'd be a good thing to touch on. When we do get to reading the episodes, I would like to go episode by episode.

Speaker: Um, and talk about them in episode one, I think will be a very, probably a bigger talk despite something, you know, we know about just because we talked about the concept of a pilot episode in our first episode. Yeah. Yeah. Good idea. Before we get to that, I have to say that we must all be friends because I was going to say game of thrones and avatar as well. Um, but my number one, I feel is Hickey blinders.

Speaker: Oh, absolutely crushed it. Um, yeah, the, it all, it introduces the characters, blah, blah, blah, you know, gives you some reason to be intrigued right away. And then it ends spoilers ahead with a huge, like.

Speaker: cliffhanger, you don't even know how they're going to season two out of it. When you see it, you're like, wait, what is that the end of the show? Like, is it a one season thing? Like it's a huge cliffhanger climax. Um, and it just, I could not wait to watch the second season. So very, very effective first and last feel like episodes. It was very true. I did enjoy, uh, the P G blinders first season a lot.

Speaker: Yeah. Good pick. Good pick. Yeah. There's plenty of shows are going to make this list too. I'm sure we'll come back and think of more. Um, but yeah, I kind of just keep that in mind. What, what worked for you? What are you looking for? Um, the, uh, next two kind of categories are going to sort of answer that question for me because this is what I put down. Um, but let's kind of move on away from shows into worm itself. Uh, as we sort of just look at our main players for the season,

Speaker: And if it's not clear already, character is a huge thing for me with shows. I'm very much drawn more to character and character development than pretty much anything else. Thankfully, Worm has some fantastic characters. Yes, they're the strongest points of Worm, I think, of characters. Absolutely. I think that's an easy takeaway. And I realize I'm talking here as if everyone can see this, but they can't

Speaker: listening I did sort of create a little bit of an outline just for us to follow along so we can stay somewhat organized as hard as that is sometimes for us for all the good reasons anyway so we're looking at characters here I did have two columns I put sort of major characters that would be appearing in most of the most of the season and then minor characters who just sort of appear in a couple episodes here or there that kind of thing not including the Leviathan fight because everybody's gonna be there

Speaker: So, major player is pretty obvious, obviously Taylor, undersiders, and then I also went ahead and threw in Lung and Armorsmaster, just a sort of antagonist for the season. Yeah, yeah. For sure. Anyone else I'm missing there? Does that sound correct? I feel like in terms of major character arcs,

Speaker: Because the other part of that is our major characters. I wouldn't anticipate each of them having a season arc, even if it's not huge. There is some sort of beginning and end to a storyline with each of those characters. Yeah. No, I think I think you nailed it. I think, you know, there's our protagonist and there's our two antagonists kind of.

Speaker: Yeah, kind of keeps it simple. Nothing too crazy there. The minor characters are more interesting. I know I missed a few on this list. I just tried to group them all as best we could because there are a ton of them. And as we get into episodes, especially for Nick and Hannah, who are sort of giving some initial thoughts on a lot of these, we've cut some. We've cut some people, unfortunately, and it's just the way it is.

Speaker: But obviously, minor characters include Danny, Coyle, the Wards, New Wave, Fault Lines crew, Empire 88, kind of all the gangs, the bullies, obviously. Travelers. That was another one. Oh, Travelers again. I got it. I miss the Travelers. Yeah, that was a good one.

Speaker: Absolutely. There we go. See already, but none of these characters really have their own arcs within the season. And if they do, it's part of like a group arc, right? Like the gangs, for example, would have, you know, obviously that kind of arc, but not a lot of individual arcs. Unless again, you think I'm missing somebody. Let me know if I am there. But that's kind of how I broke those two categories up.

Speaker: So yeah, those are our characters we're going to be focusing on. And then just briefly, I want to touch on, I feel like this is something we're actually going to, we're going to bring background at the very end once we're done talking about the episodes, but just to kind of keep it on your mind. Beaming is also a really, I think a really, really underrated element of visual storytelling, film and television.

Speaker: consistent themes that run throughout the show. I think your best shows in the world, I think all have good themes. And I think this is a really common thing in shows that are like, Oh, that's good. But, uh, it just didn't have it for me. It just wasn't there. I think a lot of time is inconsistent theming. I was going to ask before we say, you know, cause sort of what we came up for ours, is there any themes for, you know,

Speaker: for the first eight arcs that stood out to you two. Oh yeah, good question. Good question. I think a lot about the moral grayness. I don't know if that would count necessarily as a theme, but when Lisa talks about the whole idea of it's all cops and robbers and it feels kind of like a game because one group can't really exist without the other and kind of

Speaker: the morally gray space that resides between these two. And kind of the idea that good isn't always good, and bad isn't always bad, and villains aren't always evil, and heroes aren't always saints. And I think that's the theme that sticks out for me the most. That's a good one, yeah.

Speaker: Yeah yeah i can absolutely see that yes sort of the appearances in reality aren't always you know they don't know. Yeah i see that i probably see. Themes of. Yeah that morally gray is definitely one of the good ones. I definitely kind of see this theme of innocence in a way but not in the typical sense of like.

Speaker: Oh, you're so innocent. You've never done anything wrong. More in the sense of, Oh, you thought the world worked this way, but in reality it doesn't. And I'm here to, you know, show you why. Um, yeah, we have, you know, characters like arms master, um, who, you know, we have that big con this is getting beyond the first couple of arcs probably, but we have that big confrontation where in season one or arc one,

Speaker: Um, Taylor's like, Hey, I want to go rob a bank because I'm trying to get information on bad guys in arms masters. Like life doesn't work that way, kid. Like that's just not how things work. And that's just one example of so many ways in which, um, we see Taylor as our protagonist really in over her head. Um, she is way out of her depth in, uh, these first few arcs and really the whole first bit until the Leviathan fight.

Speaker: And even then, it feels like she's barely making it out of these fights. She's barely surviving or she's having to improvise and she's getting out of them in an intelligent way, but just by the skin of her teeth kind of thing. Yeah, and I think that's something that kind of stood out to me is her character growth. And I like that theme because it is tied to her character growth. To build on that, Nick, would you classify it more as like the loss of innocence?

Speaker: Yeah, I think the English teacher term for it is a buildings Roman, which is a coming of age story. I think that in a way, worm is at least in the first arcs, a coming of age story. Kid wants to be a hero, kind of a dark coming of age story, sort of the loss of innocence, catcher in the rise style, where it's like,

Speaker: Kid wants to be a hero, realizes it's a lot harder to be a hero than she wants to be, realizes that villains aren't all bad people. You know, like these big realizations about the world that come with that kind of loss of innocence. Yeah. Naivete keeps coming to mind. Yeah. We're like, you know, it's just, it's, it's part ignorance. It's part innocence. Um, you know, just thinking things work one way when they don't. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker: I like that. No, that's good. Good thoughts. Yeah. And we'll circle back, I think around to, uh, themes at the end as well. And I'm thinking about how they work. But with that being said, I think we spent enough time stretching our muscles. Do you want to go over our themes or where are we going? Oh, you know what? We could do that. You know, that's fair. We did have a few, didn't we? I realized I interrupted our flow there, but yeah.

Speaker: No, no, no. You've got them. You typed them up. I was cutting it off early. You're absolutely right. Cut off early. That's not on this podcast. What was I thinking? Now, Alan and I, we have talked about themes before, kind of on prior episodes. I expanded on them a little bit here, but the two big ones, Alan had a really good one that I kind of added on with a couple others. Alan, you set up

Speaker: one time the perception of threat as a theme. Do you want to build on that? Yeah, throughout the thing, there's perceived threats, real or otherwise, that are kind of seen consistently by all these characters and how they react to them. Armsmaster would be one of those big ones where the way that he perceives threats

Speaker: like as small as Taylor or as big as Leviathan and how he handles them. And that ultimately is sort of his downfall is he's like, I perceive that this is, unless I do this to deal with the threat, more problems will occur. Taylor has a lot of perceived threats that she sees

Speaker: She kind of sees anybody that disagrees with her generally comes off as a bully, even if they're not meaning to. I mean, the simplest, if we're gonna get from complicated perceived threats to simple, you'd go with bitch, where bitch doesn't understand she got that dog brain. So, people smiling.

Speaker: She got that dog. So, yeah, she, you know, she perceived smiling as a threat. So I think perception of threat is a very, and like I said, just because it's perceived doesn't mean it's not real. Leviathan's a very real perceived threat. And so I think that's a really consistent theme throughout the first season at the least.

Speaker: Yeah. No, I thought that was good. And a lot of times themes will stretch into multiple seasons. I feel like many of these will, um, and I mean, we know in the long run also that, uh, you know, at least with the upcoming, uh, threat of, uh, you know, cauldron, we know that that is entirely based on perceived threats. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I,

Speaker: I think one, we can almost say that one theme is the fact that the world of worm is a very dangerous world. Um, but yeah, uh, just the idea that things are not going to come easy in this world, but there are real villains. There are real, you know, there are real threats, like you said. Um, and yeah, it's very, very scary to, I mean, honestly,

Speaker: Uh, thinking about this world, it's not a world that I would want to live in. Um, you know, it's, it's definitely not a world that I would find myself thinking. Yeah, I think that'd be fine. Cause I mean, odds are you're just going to be a normal person and it's going to be like, yeah, yeah, this seems fine. No, this seems terrible. It doesn't even seem that great for heroes. No, no. Even if you have powers, like.

Speaker: Maybe your powers suck or maybe you're just, you know, you got screwed somehow. If you're lucky to get picked up by a team and it just kind of seems like a lot of work. I mean, it's a lot of pressure to like put on you like you didn't choose to have powers and all of a sudden you have to pick a side or be rogue and be monitored by the government. Like that is so much. Best case scenario, you're a government employee. That's not a bright future. Yeah.

Speaker: No, yeah, that's great. I love that theme. My kind of flip side to that was this theme of the illusion of power, both literally, because in the story, there's this air of hiding, which you're really capable of, just for your safety, but even more beyond just a literal sense.

Speaker: power as a theme in and of itself is very much masked and hidden for as much of in the forefront as it is in the story, and it is a superhero story. There's this idea that it's very, very important to keep everything easy and gray and never letting anybody know your next move.

Speaker: never letting anybody know your next step. Everything like that is sort of the counterpoint to that perception of threat where you don't want to be perceived as a threat. So I think there's some nice little tug of war there, some given pull. But yeah, fun themes, fun themes. All right, any other thoughts on themes before you move on? In the minor themes, we have this,

Speaker: for Taylor, specifically the concept, the theme of bullying, the way that she views the world. You know, bullying is kind of consistently and she, she kind of divides everybody into that category. You're either a victim or a bully. It's one of those, everybody that disagrees with me is a bully and everybody who, you know, potentially like, I don't know, you know, that isn't me is a victim.

Speaker: Yeah, you know, I put that in the minor themes, but really bullying is kind of, it's an obvious theme, but it probably is a major theme. It's probably better in that major theme category. Especially for season one. Yeah, especially for season one. Yeah, good point. 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. All right. Well, with that, let's jump into our episode breakdown. Alan, I'm going to let you take the lead on this just because you did such a great job sort of breaking out each of these episodes.

Speaker: Let's go episode at a time. I think that's what you're thinking right, Alan. Kind of just talk about each episode in order. Alrighty. And we're really excited to hear Alan and Hannah's response. Hannah's had some insight. She's joined us a few times. Alan is so ready to respond. Oh, and I did say, said Alan. I know. I'm just going to sit here and listen and sing. I know. Don't edit that out, Michael. Okay. It's too good. Leave it in.

Speaker: Anyway, you know what I meant. We're going to get some initial thoughts. Take it away. I'm going to shut up now. Feel free to react in real time. Yeah, I was about to ask that if we could interrupt you. Oh yeah, absolutely. You know, I'll be going line by line, but if you have a take, you just give me a hole up a minute and uh, yeah, don't, don't feel like that's the whole point of for you to react to this. So, uh, episode one.

Speaker: Taylor is at her school getting bullied hard and out of spite decides to speed up her timeline to go out for a first night of patrol. Now she attacks lung from hiding, but has soon found out using his super senses. Meanwhile at home, Taylor's father, Danny is worried sick about his daughter and he lies awake in bed waiting for her. Lung chases down Taylor only for Taylor to be saved by the undersiders who mistake her for a villain.

Speaker: Arm's master arrives and talks with Taylor before hauling away the defeated lung. Danny wakes up to Taylor returning home. He thinks about talking to her, but here's her making toast and going to her room. So he returns to bed. Taylor, meanwhile, lies in bed and enjoys a high after the night's events. Get that adrenaline rush baby. Yeah. Okay. That's good. That's good. I like that.

Speaker: Pretty straightforward, just kind of shuffled the interlude into the story. Is there a chance this is an idea? I've got my notebook open, hit me with it. That's why we're here. Just as an idea, could we start

Speaker: Do a sort of cold, what's the plan for the opening? What's our cold opening? Oh, you know what? I'm so glad you asked. I'm so glad you asked. So hear me out. Taylor's in the bathroom, goes in, eats her lunch on the toilet. The girls come in. They dump the stuff on her head fully hard. She kicks it open, leaves after they leave.

Speaker: It goes up to the mirror. There's like the buzzing in her head that's kind of been building in the background this whole time. You know, she's got the headache. She like slams her hand, you know, hands on the thing and it's like gripping, you know, white knuckle grip. Finally, she does the thing where she like slams the mirror. It cracks and she opens her eyes and there are bugs everywhere but around her and the mirror worm all across the screen.

Speaker: Oh, okay. The title disappears. She waves the bugs away and walks out. Oh yeah. Sexy, huh? Yeah. Um, no, that's a good intro. Cause I was thinking you could do sort of a cold open where she starts out in the middle of her fight with lung. Um, but I didn't know if you wanted to start that way or do something else, but I like what you guys.

Speaker: We did play around. I think that's cool. Yeah. And to be honest, I feel like the first episode is the one that would get rewritten a bit. Um, when we were doing this for the first time, we noted that it is the shortest arc. Uh, it's definitely the shortest episode in terms of runtime that we would have probably, um, definitely. I wouldn't be surprised if in final revisions, we go back and we throw in a scene with

Speaker: the wards or something like that. I'm not, but you know, just kind of spit bowling or something. Yeah. It sounds like from that intro description, you guys are wanting to do sort of a title card thing, kind of like how invincible does it. Um, yes. There's is a bit more of a gag, but boys does this for their cold opens too. Yeah. The bright white letters just slap across it. Yeah. Yeah. I think the boys is a similar thing. So I like that. Yeah. There's a few ways you could do it.

Speaker: We played around with whether or not we wanted to do like a full, really utilize the exposition in Danny's interlude, talking about Sion and all of that as kind of like an intro.

Speaker: montage, if you will, or just sort of exposition. But, you know, we don't want to bog viewers down right away with just rote exposition. So there's some, there's some, there's some delicacy there, you know? Yeah, absolutely. You can do the whole Lord of the Rings, Galadriel narration against a giant battle. And if you can get away with it, it's pretty awesome. But if you can't make it work, then it just looks like

Speaker: Shyamalan's last airbender and No, I definitely think Not doing a lot of I think doing almost like no dialogue except for the ambient dialogue of the girls coming into the bathroom Would be good. I think that having that kind of an open on our main character I mean like I think we've said it before in the podcast that one of the things that makes Taylor a

Speaker: a good protagonist is that we feel for her very quickly. And so I think that having that is definitely something that we want. So the way that you've done it is really good in my mind. Yeah. No, I like what we settled on here. I think it works well to sort of, like you said, build that initial connection with the main character. Yeah, I think so.

Speaker: And, you know, because the arc is so short, if, you know, the thought about like, well, do we have enough, you know, content to fill however many minutes, you know, compared to the other episodes, like having, having those beginning moments, you know, where she's in the bathroom with the bugs, you know, the juice and her, you know, art project being ruined, like things like that, like lingering on them, lingering on her, and going on her power. Like it is, we'll take up screen time, but also I think is really important for that.

Speaker: first episode. So I'm definitely on board. I like it. Yeah, I think, you know, episode one. As long as I got a running montage. I just need a running montage for Taylor, please. Through the city. Okay, so the title sequence, if we do title sequences, those would be your running montages.

Speaker: That's where we would like. And we, of course, put it to music that somebody on Reddit suggested. John Batiste. Is it John Batiste? His We Are. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I've played that for you, Hannah. Yes. It's such a good song.

Speaker: It's a bop and it fits so well. It really does. For Brockton Bay. So it would be just Taylor running along the streets with, you know, I would think the credits in like graffiti or on signs, you know, as she's running, you get a good, like her running through the city, the different parts of the city. And then you would end with her like on the pier looking out on the Brockton Bay.

Speaker: and the PRT building off to the left with, of course, a golden sun kind of rising up in the morning. That's cool. I see you. I see you. Oh, that foreshadowing. Foreshadowing. But to trigger.

Speaker: Yeah, but episode one, I like your opening. They talk about this for books too, which it should be a microcosm for what your book is. It is the tone setter, it's the promise setter. And I think in this, this is how the series goes. You have Taylor, who's getting bullied. She has a concerned father that she's a little bit disconnected with. She rubs up against the heroes kind of.

Speaker: and seems to be more friendly with the villain aside, even though she did a good thing by fighting another villain. And for good reasons, she thought children were going to be harmed. And at the end of the day, thinking about all of this, she enjoys it and it kind of hurts those around her. So I think this is a good,

Speaker: That seems great. Like I said, it's a microcosm for worm as a whole. This is what's going on. And for season one in particular, this is what happens. You kind of just replace lung with Leviathan or whoever you want with which character, this is what's going on. This is the structure. I have an idea. This is a thought. I think of little scenes, I think, is probably something that comes to mind for me.

Speaker: um, and one that comes to mind for me is this idea of um The end of the episode you have taylor exhausted. She flops down onto her bed on her back Like you said kind of looking up at the ceiling but I have this idea of what if she? Looked up at the ceiling you see like little flashbacks to her interactions with the undersiders and then She smiles and that's like the end of the episode kind of showing that

Speaker: connection to the bad guys more than the villains, right? Yeah. Minus the flashbacks. That is exactly how I imagine it. And have it written as Taylor's like got the toast in her mouth that she's laying on her back. The camera is facing down from her ceiling. She's like sitting there. She's got like the bruises. She's kind of like rolling her shoulder and like

Speaker: And she eats her toast and you can see her like kind of nodding and think about it. And then she gives herself like a little laugh and a smile. That's where we are. Yeah. Okay. I like that. I like that. Yeah. Must have done a good job if Nick is thinking the same thing. It is a bit of a relief when you're suggesting things that we've already talked about and discussed. We're on the right track.

Speaker: I was looking the same thing. That's right. I mean, also, you know, just great writers think alike. Episode two, then move along episode two, Taylor and Danny have an awkward encounter in the morning.

Speaker: Taylor goes to school only to get bullied and decides to leave. As she wanders around downtown, she makes her way to the public library and begins looking up the undersiders, only to look up the name that Tattletale gave her the night before, Bug, and finds a message left for her on her wiki description.

Speaker: She meets with the undersiders and gets a tour of the lair, only to be attacked by Bitch, who, of course, Taylor beats the shit out of before storming off. Roo convinces her to stay and she hangs out with the nice undersiders. Taylor calls Danny so he won't worry, and she tells him that her friends are good people while staring at the gun. What's the cold open? Sorry, go ahead. This wouldn't be the cold open. This would be a title sequence opener. Yeah, Taylor running along the Boulevard or something or the

Speaker: What's it called? A little The Docs. The Pier? Yeah. The Pier, thank you. The Pier. Yeah, something like that. Would we have a scene in there between like basically when Taylor meets up with them? Because in the book, she meets up with them separately. She has her mask on. There's like this moment of like, well, we came without our costumes. So can you like show us your face? And she agrees and then they go to the

Speaker: Yes, that would be there too. Okay, I just wanted to check. This one does not really change a whole lot except for how she finds the undersiders basically. Originally that happens in the computer lab and then she gets bullied and then she leaves. And in this one, she just goes ahead and gets bullied and decides to bug out immediately.

Speaker: Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah, just simplifying the scene transitions, really. Yeah, no, I like it. That's good. And that was all of episode two? That was all of episode two. How long are you thinking the episodes are going to be? So a lot of these end up being around 30 pages. Okay. That does add a good line about... Go ahead, Michael.

Speaker: No, I was just setting you up that you had a good line about how we're kind of thinking about content over time. Sure. Sure. Oh yes. Yeah, exactly. Um, and then a lot of times, uh, yeah, action, action scenes, you don't really write those out to those tend to take a lot of time. So, you know, a 30 minute script could still be like 45, 50 minutes of a show when you account for action and that kind of thing. I guess that's fair. Um, only because this,

Speaker: This felt a little short to me. It does. It definitely feels shorter than the first episode. Yeah, which is almost why I think the computer lab scene could be worth keeping in. And the reason I'm thinking that is mainly because

Speaker: I like the idea of using that as a way to introduce a lot of the world. Like first episode, you have the big action scenes. Um, you know, you meet the characters and all that stuff, but having a scene where, and I think you could do it in a pretty creative way that keeps it engaging, right? One that's still, um,

Speaker: one that still is engaging for everybody, if that makes sense. Are we talking about looking up the people on Wiki? Yeah, yeah. Looking up the people on the Wiki. So all of that's still there. It's just in the public library. It's no longer in the computer. Okay. It's no longer. Okay. Okay. Okay. Gotcha. I misunderstood that part then I think, which was also for reference. The first episode is 13 pages long. Okay. Wow. Because most of it,

Speaker: does not involve talking. Mostly in the book is Taylor explaining the world in her head. And in the episode, like you said, it's the people talking at the, you know, there's Mr. Gladley's classroom. We open in the bullies. There is no talking until we get to lungs minions. And then it's all fighting.

Speaker: Danny wouldn't even be talking. He'd just be like doing the pacing around the house, like worried. Most of that episode is wordless, like just action or kind of ambiance. Yeah, ambiance, like Taylor walking around downtown, advertisements for superheroes, stuff like that. A lot of it would be the goal is world building without

Speaker: without saying show don't tell. What's it like to live in a world like this? And then on the flip side, episode two is 31 pages. It's a lot of talking, a lot of talking. And again, with these types of episodes too, Alan and I really haven't even gotten into this too much, but we have sort of danced around the idea like,

Speaker: It probably wouldn't be a bad idea to throw in a scene or two here in these early episodes with maybe like Aegis and Gallant just to sort of build up.

Speaker: those characters so that their deaths are more impactful at the end of the season. And again, if we have a slower pace or shorter episode here early on, good time to sort of throw that in if we have that room. So not too worried about how short it is now because we could really easily sort of fluff that out with a few other scenes if we wanted to.

Speaker: I really have enjoyed the advantage of streaming is that you don't have to stick to traditional runtimes. And I really was inspired with a lot of the, with what I have, but also the way that Ted Lasso is set up season by season. Ted Lasso's first season, all the episodes, except for like, I think you get at the end,

Speaker: are like 23 minutes long. And at the end, all of a sudden, I think there's like a 42 minute one. And then it starts back over again at like 26 minutes for season two. And that quickly ramps up to like 30, 40 minute episodes. And then the last episode is like an hour. And then by season three, almost every episode is an hour long. And I think that's a good way to get randomized. Yeah, I think it's a good way in terms of like budget

Speaker: You have this ramping up effect and I think as popularity grows, so does the show. So it fits really well narratively that we're starting very small, we're starting CW level. And by the end of this, it is Avengers level. We're talking Marvel quality. Yeah, no, that makes sense.

Speaker: Okay, cool. Keep the thoughts coming. I can dig it. All right. Good. I like it. Something just real quick. I know we're not, we're talking more of like the script and flow, but like when I think of her going through the forums on the computer, I just think of

Speaker: Alan helped me because I cannot remember who directed the movie, but it's our favorite travel scene where it's literally like clip, clip, clip, it's Edgar Wright. Yes. Of like kind of the, the, everything's happening at once. All the information is hitting you at the same time.

Speaker: And like, kind of this moment where like, the internet is a flood of information. And so demonstrating that in like, kind of like, click, not click, quick clicking through forums and like looking at this and then being like, ooh, what's this, this, this? Okay, wait, that rabbit trail went nowhere. Like, go back, look for bug. Any bug? Okay, we're looking for lung, lung, okay, lung. Oh, he's in, you know, oh, an arms master and what's going, okay, go back. Like, okay, we're looking for bug again. Okay, look for,

Speaker: you know, smoke guy like, okay, that's grew and like making all of these connections of like, as she's doing the research to figure out who's who and what's what and what happened. It's like, as fast as her brain is, you know, connecting the dots and clicking as she's, you know, reading down through, you know, forums and comments and kind of like,

Speaker: in a way, like how her bugs are constantly buzzing in the background. Like you have these voices, different voices like reading different things as she's skimming down the page. Yeah, I don't want this to feel like she's just having somebody read over her shoulder. Right. She like stares at the screen. Yeah, make it feel very immersive. Yeah, very immersive. But at the same time, I would also love for this to be a freeze frame fiesta.

Speaker: just for people to have a frenzy over these freeze frames. Where, oh my gosh, did you read that whole thing? That's wild. Yeah, where you can like pause on the TV and like read the whole forum. Like, oh, that would be really cool. It's really smart too. It makes people engage with the frame. I would have a team of interns running the websites that you see.

Speaker: in that episode, but they would update it in real time. Wow, the episodes are coming out? While the episodes are coming out. That would be so cool. You have fun of this, holy moly. Oh my gosh, I love that though, because it's so many Easter eggs for people to engage with.

Speaker: the show as it's happening. Oh, did you guys see on the forum, they put this thing up that adds in extra information for the episode. That would be so cool. That is a good idea. Between this idea and Alan's list of ships, I think Alan is director of audience engagement for the project, making sure everybody's on board.

Speaker: I love it. I like to call the thirst director. The thirst director. Excellent. Excellent. I love it. All right. So episode three, we open with glory girl beating up a white supremacist and calling her sister to fix him up. Title sequence as they walk off and he's like whining in the background.

Speaker: Taylor finishes her run to meet up with Brian and actually goes to school in a good mood. Now at school, her mood is quickly soured as Sophia taunts her, so she leaves. Back at the hideout, she spars with Brian and asks questions about their mysterious sponsor. They discuss this bank heist, and Taylor uses this as an opportunity to gain more info on the sponsor. She heads home to have a nice moment with her dad talking about her new friends, and then

Speaker: goes to the ferry station to meet with Armsmaster about what she's trying to do with this undercover operation. Of course, Armsmaster isn't having any of it, and Taylor storms off. Naturally. I like it. So this is where we introduce, like, the Mr. Gladly and all that conflict, I assume. Yeah, Mr. Gladly. I'm trying to remember if he's in this one, or... Isn't this the scene where... I think it's actually...

Speaker: Two, isn't it? No, maybe. Oh, maybe it is, too. Is the one where Gladly has the conversation with her. Yeah, I think you're right. And then this one's just Sophia being a bitch. I like it. Generally, I think that it feels pretty good. I feel like the ending maybe is a little weak. Yeah, it is just kind of this like, OK, yeah, you you did it.

Speaker: Yeah, I am agreeing. You have this argument with Arms Master, which is a good scene and I like that, but I don't know. Maybe this is a good time to interject another scene with some of our other minor characters. Yeah. Maybe you want to do another scene with Throw Lung in there somewhere.

Speaker: the wards somewhere, this might be a good time to fit in another scene. The other thing I'm realizing as we're kind of looking at episodes two and three back to back, really short on anything exciting. That is true. I mean, obviously there's a lead up to episode four, which will be the bank heist, but you are correct. It is a little

Speaker: A little action. Yeah, I like the cold open for this one introducing glory girl and panacea. Yeah, I think that this that is a great way to do that and very that's very fun. I.

Speaker: I don't know, something about, and I think maybe this is one of the weaker arcs in general as well, where it's not bad, but it's not super engaging like some of the other ones. That's what I was gonna say, yeah. I feel like since this is still in our first three episode, you know, hook to try and make sure we're hooking our audience, I feel like having an episode that feels, that could have more in it, like we should utilize that. Yeah. You know, and maybe it's the kind of thing where we end up, you know, maybe we combine

Speaker: This would be a really big change, but combining episodes two and three, putting all of that into one episode, and then episode three being the bank heist, getting there an episode faster. Something like that. I don't dislike that.

Speaker: Yeah, you'd probably have to cut out some of the middle stuff. Yeah, we would have to do that in a few different ways. You know, we'll condense some bullying. We'll make sure everybody gets the bully. Yeah, instead of it being two separate days, it could be all in one. Yeah. I can't believe this is me saying it's not Alan, but I feel as though we could potentially just go really hard on the shipping and spill a lot of this episode with like

Speaker: Good ship. Like the super teenage. That's a lot of her and Brian. That's what I mean. That's why I said that. Exactly. And as she meets, she meets up in the morning. Yeah. Like you're saying it as though it wouldn't take very long, but you could kind of, I don't know. Maybe you could make that the point of the bank heist actually does take a little bit because not only is there an argument about, uh, bank heisting.

Speaker: But there's also information talking about the heroes that will be present in the city or the bank heist. Just an idea. Yeah, I like the idea of combining them and kind of like playing up more of the

Speaker: maybe playing up more of the idea that Taylor is escaping a way that this is a safe space. So like kind of when she has that moment where she's on the phone with her dad and she's like, yeah, I think I made some friends. Like things are looking up. Taylor is smiling. Taylor's feeling good. Like maybe we do have a cut to the next day. Taylor meets up with Brian. They have breakfast. She's just feeling great. Like I have new friends. There's this guy that's really cute. Everything's great. And then bam, like Sofia's bitch and everything sucks. And like, you know what?

Speaker: Maybe, maybe I just start, you know, pushing back on school. So then, you know, of course she meets up and we get more of the conversation. We hang out with Brian some more, like, huzzah. And then kind of that big conversation of like, so you guys want to rob a bank like as a good ending for, you know, episode two. And then that way we can spend all of episode three on the bank heist and you're still having a ton of action early on that's going to pull in viewers.

Speaker: I liked it. I like potentially, and I'll have to, you know, workshop this in my head, but, uh, potentially, you know, she meets, she shows up to the thing. He convinces her to come back after the fight with bitch and Lisa's in there. She's like, well, uh, you came back, so you're in want to do a bank heist. And then we get that like first day. Hell yeah. But then before they go to do the bank, she goes to talk to arms master and is like, Hey, this is about to go down.

Speaker: Yeah. I mean, I still, yeah, definitely still need to keep that, that conversation between tail. Absolutely. Absolutely. All right. Uh, moving on to episode four, I like it. Good sit in a van talking about end bringers, cops and robbers. They keep moving and stopping. Seemingly aimlessly. Uh, and it all comes to a head when they show up in the bank.

Speaker: And they finally roll the doors open and show all the books that they've been collecting. Yeah, buddy. It's a bathroom scene all over again. Yeah, it's sort of this this gag where like we even get like top down aerial shots of like them just like pulling forward and then just stopping at nowhere as they're talking.

Speaker: And you're just kind of like, why, what are they doing? And in any other show like Vampire Diaries, there'd be no point to them driving and it would never be explained. And in this one, you have the reveal that all they've been doing is collecting bugs this whole time. And headed to the bank. I love that. I think that's great.

Speaker: She unroll unrolls all the back of the bugs come out. I like to think that girl talks opener to is it all day? I think it's the combination of war pigs and what's it? Oh, no fights out. I'm about to punch show light. Move bitch. There we go. Move bitch and war eggs combined by girl talk.

Speaker: Hits up with that drum solo and the guitar throws the doors open. Out come the bugs next to her, opens the doors. Out comes bitch and her dogs. Good. It's good. You know, you know, Jen rules gathered in their masses, get out the way, you know,

Speaker: Oh yeah. For everybody here, if you haven't ever listened to girl talk, go listen to the opener for all day. And I think it's all day. It's got like a skeleton on blue. The opener for that goes so hard. And this is what I want for this scene. That being said. The music for the show is going to be next level.

Speaker: Oh my gosh. Yes. Uh, so they roll up with the dogs and the bugs and they start the bank heist grew actually compliments Taylor on her idea of taking hostages. The heroes show up and they all throw down with eventually Amy surprising Taylor, Taylor ending in Lisa and Taylor versus Amy and Victoria all facing off. Ultimately the undersiders get away.

Speaker: not a whole lot changed up here other than kind of the beginning being paced a little different. I love it. I love the bank heist. It's just so good. So much fun. Yeah. It's a great, that's going to be a great episode. I can see a lot of really, really fun things happening with that just in general. I think that's great.

Speaker: I think you're right. I do think most people give shows three episodes. I know a lot of reviewers that give a show three episodes before they make sort of the decision to keep watching or not.

Speaker: And I think if we hooked them with that being the third episode. Oh, I think so too. I think it would just be a moment. Also, I love the idea of utilizing the first two episodes here. I was like, you know, just we're interacting with the world and we're seeing, you know, of course, we're introducing some of these heroes, you know, on billboards, whatever. I love the idea of we've seen, maybe that's through the forums, but also like through ads and whatever.

Speaker: else in the world, but we've seen some of these heroes that are showing up at the bank heist. And so when they pop in, we're like, oh shit, I remember that guy. I remember them. Let's go. And then it happens. And I'm just thinking of clock blocker and the bugs and like, oh, like, give me a hewah jeebies. Hold on to that, because we'll get to that in a second. Woof. Okay, okay, okay. Any other comments on episode four? The only thing I would touch on, and this isn't even saying to change anything,

Speaker: But talking about bringing in the audience after three episodes, which is a great way of thinking about it, is you also want to make sure you don't forget the conflict of the show or the season rather. What is that tension that still needs to be resolved? And obviously we have a few things we could choose from there, but we should think about throwing in something at the end of the episode.

Speaker: Like I said, we could choose a number of things there, but just something to keep the tension between Taylor and the conflict. I think my first thought is something to do with lung, which just makes most sense to me. But you could also do anything with Iris Master, or you could even throw a quick scene of coil or something like that if you really wanted to. Yeah.

Speaker: just to sort of keep that, the audience doesn't forget that's what they're watching, right? Yeah. Yeah, Coyle to me makes the most sense just because like the whole reason that Taylor is with the undersiders is to figure out who their leader is. And with this kind of bank heist, maybe we have like a little moment where, you know,

Speaker: Lisa kind of maybe dropped something in the planning phase during the bank heist where we're like, Oh, okay. And Taylor kind of like, maybe, I mean, it doesn't have to be a actual written into the script, but kind of like her recognizing like, Oh, okay, that that's a piece of information I didn't know before.

Speaker: And so she's still kind of to remind the viewer that through all of this, Taylor is still, she's robbing a bank to try and get info on the leader of this villain team, not just robbing the bank because it's fun to be in the car with Lisa.

Speaker: You could even do a quick shot of, you know, very quick, not even showing coil. I don't think we want to show him yet, but you could do a quick shot of somehow conveying the kidnapping of Dinah at this point. That's not a bad idea.

Speaker: It doesn't even have to make sense to the audience. Just something that's weird and off -putting. And you're just like, what the hell? And then obviously we'd come back to that. But does anything like that just as short of... Yeah. Just a simple idea for that could even be something like the heroes, you know, as our protagonists are escaping the bank heist.

Speaker: We have a moment where maybe one of the heroes, like Aegis, right? Cause he's the leader being, uh, like some of them are like, we should, like, why aren't we chasing them? And Aegis is like, got a call. Like you can tell he's like touching an earpiece and he's like, like, we've been told, you know, we've been told to let them go. Um, we have, we have something bigger to deal with or something like that, right? Something simple that would allow you to give that sense of something else is happening. That's a big bank heist.

Speaker: I love it so much. Yeah, it's not bad. I like that. Yeah, I like the idea. It shouldn't go like this because it would give it away too early, but you have like a knocking on a door, like the little girl, Dinah, bopping around the house, gets the knock on the door and she's like all groggy eyed and who should be at the front door but coil in his coil suit. And he just goes like, hello there, pet.

Speaker: You know what you could do though that would be a great after we've met coil but before we find out about Dinah that could be like right after we find out somewhere around there could be a good cold open.

Speaker: Just you wait, Henry Higgins. You're using my favorite phrase against me. So I like that. Something I was doing while writing this was looking for mini conflict arcs to wrap up with. And for most of them, they're about three or four episodes long.

Speaker: I like to call the first four, but now three, essentially getting to know the undersiders. So that would have been episodes one through four, ending with having a great time bank heisting and getting away. Episodes, you know,

Speaker: five through seven would have been dealing with the ABB and eight through like 11 would have been essentially finishing with Leviathan.

Speaker: So, uh, small things moving forward, you know, just these little mini arcs that we kind of lump episodes into. Yeah. I like that because we're, we're again with the whole thing, making promises and delivering on them. Like we want the audience to feel like they're progressing and instead of just like accumulating more questions, like questions are being answered as we're going along. So I like that. I like that very much.

Speaker: Yeah, a shot that we will repeat a lot is starting us off in episode five. It's footsteps, you're following these feet as they're walking up the concrete into the head converters of the PRT building where we finally get to go walking up and going, you look like shit, cut to the wards in just bloody pieces all standing next to each other. Oh, I love it.

Speaker: And she's like, get in my office. And they all bleed all over the place on the way in. She debriefs them after the heist and then mentions that while they were busy losing to some C -listers, the mayor's niece was busy getting kidnapped. Now clock blocker has a thing for Skitter. Everybody kind of picks up on that he just paid way too much attention to Skitter for some reason. Who gets a name now?

Speaker: getting to that name a little bit smoother. Amy and Dallin, of course, have their talk. And when Amy goes up and starts writing stuff on the board, we intro into our title sequence. Now, Taylor meets up with Brian again before going to school. Taylor is actually enjoying school when, of course, Emma comes up and pesters her. Taylor tells her to promptly go fuck herself and then leaves. Taylor joins the undersiders, Sans Rachel, for a day of shopping.

Speaker: get background on Rachel, some bonding with Lisa, and the talk of trigger events, which is of course where we get to show off Taylor's trigger, followed by Brian's. In both of these, I like the idea of them kind of narrating a little bit over it with it going, you know, sort of silent for the last part of it and showing a flash

Speaker: at the moment of trigger, just the quickest flash of the entities. Yes, yes, yes, yes. It would be so quick, you'd think it was a glitch in your TV. And even if you could pause it at the exact scene, it wouldn't make any damn sense because obviously. But I think having that and that be a consistent thing for the rest of us talking about or showing trigger events, that is what's going to happen. I like that.

Speaker: So they have that, and then Bakuta hijacks the television broadcasts and starts setting off bombs in the city. The Undersiders get up to leave, Taylor stops for a second to call her dad while the Undersiders walk ahead to call bitch. They turn just in time to see Taylor get caught in a blast. Yeah, where we just cut Taylor's like walking and she's like, yeah, dad, okay, goodbye. And then from the Undersiders perspective, they look at Taylor walking towards them and then just

Speaker: Fire and smoke makes her disappear. Taylor goes in and out with while some sketchy doctor works on her. And then all of a sudden she wakes up with Brian and Lisa, of course, lugging her home to a worried Danny, and then all of them hanging out. Post credit, Caden leaves Theo with Aster before flying off to talk with Max about joining up to fight against Bakuta in the ABB.

Speaker: Definitely make sure we got it. Got to pronounce the names correctly. Say it, Alan. Say it. I was wondering who was going to say it first. Wait, are we not doing the bucket effect? I was about to say, so we took out the bucket effect? Yeah, this is an exciting moment for us. Yes, this is one of our bigger changes that we've hit first here.

Speaker: So we go from bomb to Taylor goes home and happy family moment and we skip Uh, okay Okay, I uh, I I Okay, just our we're we're keeping the fight like it's happening later though, right? Or is it going completely? And we played around with it a bit. We have moved so basically our idea was that

Speaker: pacing wise, the Bakita fight is really, really hard to get in and out of. And on top of that, it's a bit long. There's some extra characters. We love Uber and Leet, but they are a bit extra for the show and things like that. So we moved Bakita, we'll get into this in the future episodes. We moved Bakita's confrontation with Taylor into the warehouse fight

Speaker: Where lung is because we wanted to keep it and then here we instead just used the shock of the entire city being bombed as sort of like a

Speaker: this big moment that leads to the rallying of the gangs and things like that. So there's no real buildup to the explosions going off. It sort of catches the audience off guard as much as the characters.

Speaker: But it is a change. We acknowledge that. That is a pretty big change. Yeah. So, yeah, I don't know. I don't know how I feel about that. I just won't mind it, but that is one of my favorite fights, I think. So it is kind of like sad to mess. On a biased note, it's one of my least favorite fights.

Speaker: I would have to say it depends on what gets transposed into the warehouse fight and what gets cut out entirely. Because I think there are a lot of parts that I really like about the Bakuta scene, more so to show Bakuta as who she is and absolutely insane, like putting bombs inside people's heads and also kind of a little bit of the interpersonal. And I think I actually talked about this when we did, when we talked about it in that episode of the book club. You were there for that episode.

Speaker: I was about to say, I remember talking about this. I like a lot of the interpersonal things that happen with that group together fighting Bakuta. And at the warehouse fight, not all the undersiders are there. Yeah, that is great. It's an interesting thing that I, like when I think of the Bakuta fight, I think about it like how anime movies are, where you've got a television show and then you've got this weird aside that they go on.

Speaker: something that kind of like is not even canon. And then you come back to the story as if no time has passed and nothing's happened. That's how I feel about the Bakutah fight. It's got cool moments. It shows off some things that, you know, the regent overdoing his powers, Brian being awkward with Taylor, Taylor's armor, toe stabbing. But ultimately I feel like it is a side quest,

Speaker: you know, especially with the Uber and leet. And, you know, it's sort of an aside to the main story. Yeah, I definitely agree with you. I'm so sorry. No, go ahead.

Speaker: I was just going to say, I agree with you about the Uber and late thing. Like they are super fun characters. Like I love them so much fun, especially like with Bakut of being in costume with them. Like that is a priceless moment. But I do see how they they can. They could be cut out for this fight. Yeah, unfortunately, I can I can kind of see that, too. And I guess part of it is just it's a bit. Just knowing how big that fight is and in some regards, how big that fight is.

Speaker: Um, it's, it's a bit, it is just, to me, it's just jarring as a reader to be like, it's always that moment of like, you know, like in Lord of the Rings, they, they cut out Tom Bombadil and you know, there's like, Tom Bombadil has like exactly two fans who are like, and so it is kind of that same feeling of like, but, but, but I get your reasoning. Once you've explained it, it makes a bit more sense.

Speaker: Um, I, I don't know. I still think that it's a bit of a shame to lose it, but I can at least understand why. Maybe, maybe we describe what it's like, what the fight is like that we're replacing you with. Yeah. So I'm currently writing this and I am going back and forth right now. Um,

Speaker: So this is the, you know, this is the summary write up. I am still in the middle of actually writing the script for this one. So I am still workshopping a lot. The big thing would be for this. So up until now in writing, I have scrapped Bakita fight completely until I've gotten to this fight. Like in my head, that's just non -existent.

Speaker: Bakkura is introduced and dealt with off -screen. She has a bunch of moments that are shown in post -credit and obviously she exists in the world, but they're almost never interacting with Taylor or the Undersiders. So we're kind of removing Bakkura from the ABB.

Speaker: I, that's what I've been running with. Well, she's not removed from the ABB. She's just mostly removed. Well, yeah, the ABB as, as we are experiencing it through the underside. So I'm working on putting her in this fight. Cause like I said, I'm literally there about to raid the warehouse is where I've stopped writing. Um, so I'm working on the details of what I'm transposing from that to this. I imagine, uh,

Speaker: trying to figure out how to deal with bombs is already part of them going into the warehouse. And what I'm having a difficult time with is villain overload all in one location. It's not hard to explain that they would all be there, but it is

Speaker: potentially difficult to have the Onili fight, the Bakata fight and the lung fight all in one go. Not that it's impossible, but that might be a lot, which is why mentally I've just kind of forgotten about Bakata. Well, and like I said, I'm trying to figure out

Speaker: Definitely figured out there. So two points. The first is this is what's really fun about trying to adapt stories is trying to figure out what the essence of the chapter or arc in this case is and what is the most efficient way to tell that in a different medium, which is the fun part. This is why we love adaptions and why they're fun.

Speaker: And one thing we didn't mention here, and Alan, I realized I didn't see it, but I'm cheating and I'm looking ahead at the next episode points. You put it as the post credit for the next episode, but in talking right now, I think it would really work as the post credit, or rather the final scene of this episode, which is the whole point of the bombs going off. We're simplifying it. I mean, this is what it was for also, but like,

Speaker: we're simplifying it for the show, was to spring lung from prison was a distraction. And so if we show that at the end, the bombs have gone off, the episode's finalizing, and we sort of get a quick scene at the end caught in the confusion, lungs being transported.

Speaker: And that transport is stopped by o 'neill. You know anyone else want to have in there and we realize the audience realizes that all of the bombs that entire sequence was a distraction to spring our villain free and because.

Speaker: Again, one thing I want to make sure we don't look past is we're all huge fans of Worm. We're on our second or third reread here. We're really passionate about a lot of these characters, but the audience is going to be very, very quickly overwhelmed. And I think a lot of this has to be simplified to

Speaker: And I'm correct, and please interject any thoughts you have here. But in my mind, a lot of the conflict, especially with the ABB, needs to be simplified to Lung as the antagonist, not a lot of his minions. And his minions are cool, and they can have their moments. Sony Lee should still absolutely get some pretty awesome fight scenes. Bakada should have some cool bombs and things like that. But just for the sake of simplicity, because we have a ton of characters that we really want to get in when we can,

Speaker: Lung is the focus. So it really should look like him, it should feel like rather him masterminding this plan to get himself broken free. We're going to get a warehouse fight with him. He's still not going to go fully down because we're going to get him back again. Like he's just this reoccurring antagonist for the season. So having the bombs go off is really just a way of getting lung back in the fight. And that's kind of what the purpose of that scene is.

Speaker: And that is really what the purpose of the scene is in the story as well, along with a few other things.

Speaker: with the undersiders and some fun banter and power moments that we want to make sure get in there. But just in terms of keeping everything within reach for the audience, that's why a lot of the stuff ends up just having to overly simplify it just for the sake of pacing. That's a great explanation, Jacob. Yeah, that was amazing. That was fantastic. Way to bring us back in, Jacob. My gosh. Something else I thought of that is already done in Worm,

Speaker: We're just gonna play in reverse. Bakuta's dealt with off -screen. Yeah. Oh yeah. Bakuta is taken down by heroes off -screen and we hear about it in a newsreel. That's true. Yeah. And so like starting from back to front, well, Bakuta has a strong opener to introduce the character. She's not there for the long warehouse fight.

Speaker: She's not there to be taken down. The next time we see her, she's on her way to jail, obviously. Yeah. And then she gets murdered. Cool incident. But she she shows up for that fight and then we don't see her again. Oh, can I just I hate to even say this? Oh, say it to me. I think it makes perfect sense, you know, because she like you said, she's really not there.

Speaker: Oh, okay. Okay. This is how we got to this conclusion. Oh my gosh. I'm literally, I'm such a huge biography fan. I will say, I do get it. I really do get it. It makes sense. And I don't want to lose her completely. So I like the idea of keeping her still as like one of the henchies, you know, with Oney Lee, but taking a huge back step, you know, from all these main fights.

Speaker: Well, as we'll move forward, uh, you'll see that she actually gets, uh, she gets a fair amount of mention in these episodes and we'll actually show her kind of, uh, maybe not at least once an episode. Uh, but she gets a, she gets a little bit of screen time as well outside of just, uh, that I think it's a fun moment. Um, when we finally get to get to meet her.

Speaker: and see what her personality is in person. We're basically going the opposite of the story. The story is she shows up in person, bombs everywhere. We do get a, I'll be honest, was there even an interlude with her or did I just make that up in my head?

Speaker: I don't believe so. Bakut is in Canaries interview or Interlude. Then we made up an Interlude. That's more Canaries. Yeah, I mean, that's Canaries. Bakut is in it is all I'm saying. Yeah, no, no. Okay. Then we made up an Interlude that has Bakut in it, which we'll get to. I forgot. I'll be honest. They're all blurring. This is about the same. Am I wild though? What's going on? Who am I?

Speaker: You are. What have I written? What have I not? You've written the script and it's amazing. Where are you? I don't know. I'm going towards the light. Okay. You're finally awake.

Speaker: So just to be clear, so we have our lovely moments shopping and everyone's kind of having this great moment. We have the trigger conversations. We have the big blow up. We have, you know, lovely time with Danny and the dryer warmed blankets. And then we have the him lung getting broken out on his way to jail. And then would that be the end of that episode or?

Speaker: Nope. Um, we'll get to that in a second. There's a reason why we have the, well, well, jig, I'm sorry about this, but, uh, I think the post credits for this and the next episode go hand in hand with their openers as well. Wait. Um, wait, did you just say post credits?

Speaker: Yes. Well, we're calling them post credits. However, however we want to do it. The last scene of the last scene of the show, whether you want to do it as like one of those fake out post credits where like the title comes on and then whoop back to the show or, you know, there's a, there's a lot of depends on. I think we do post credit for two reasons. Number one, people are already primed for those in superhero genres specifically. They know that superhero movies do this. They should be expecting this in a TV show.

Speaker: What that does also is the people who aren't expecting it don't necessarily lose out on essential information, but it rewards those who stick around and watch and encourages people to sit in the credits, which we should do because people in the credits deserve recognition.

Speaker: Right. But streaming platforms have like auto to next episode where like oftentimes and credit stuff gets skipped. Like the Game of Thrones, it happens all the time. Like all the end of credit stuff gets skipped if you have a, you know, an automatic to the next episode. You know what? You know what? I love that idea. I'm going to go ahead and tell our producer JJ. JJ, I'm just going to need you to put a solid like

Speaker: A minute 30 of just bullshit at the end. Make it whatever you want. I don't care, honestly. You can't tell J .J. Abrams to make it whatever he wants. No, you can make it a preview for a new show he's got. It fades to black after the post credit, and then it's a minute 30 of the filler. It could be a black screen for all I care.

Speaker: That's okay. It's kind of I think what Jacob's hinting at is more likely what it would turn into but we can't really like predict what the four I would be but regardless we've written we've written these extra little scenes that Yeah, that yeah are quite short and could be like, you know The fakeout moment. Yeah before the skip button comes up right as a skip button comes up You know that it wouldn't be that hard to you know, yeah

Speaker: Plus that means you have to get up and press the skip button. You got to know I want to watch this because you know, I, you know, that's audience interaction right there. It's engagement up. That's right. How about the numbers?

Speaker: Okay, so this one, I like to call this our John Hughes episode. It's mostly just Taylor hanging out, having a good time. We have the incident where she gets blown up, gets the brain damage. She wakes up just snuggling with Brian and Lisa, with her dad smiling and being happy that she has friends.

Speaker: Great episode, post -credit Kayden has the talk with Max about joining up again so that she can take on the fight against Bakita because she's worried about Aster. So keep that in mind as we open in episode six, where Rachel is busy raiding a dog fighting ring. And as she leaves after tearing up the place, here's bombs going off in the background.

Speaker: Kind of like turns, you know, you can see her walking outside and her jacket as the dogs are kind of like tearing the building apart. Bombs go off and she like looks down the street at the smoke and like the way distance and then just kind of shrugs her shoulders and keeps going. Title sequence. Now. Brutus is a good boy. He's such a good boy. So all the villains meet together. They discuss taking down the ABB with information that Tattletale and her secret sponsor have come up with.

Speaker: A hook wolf, of course, has beef with Rachel over the dog fighting ring, which gets put on hold. Afterwards, Brian and Taylor both deal with bitch in their own way. Taylor then goes with her dad to get new school supplies at the mall. What fun. There, they run into Emma and her dad, Alan. What a dumb fucking name. And Taylor punches Emma in the face for her dad having such a stupid name. Now, out in the car, she breaks down and tells her dad why.

Speaker: It's because her dad's name is Alan. Then they have the confrontation in the school office that goes poorly and Taylor storms off pulling out her phone and saying, I need to hit somebody. At which point host credit, a PRT van is transporting a prisoner out of the city when it is stopped by a bunch of very scared civilians armed with whatever they could grab and bombs in their heads.

Speaker: sort of like zombies. They're just like all out in the street. They knock on the window. They're like, I'm sorry, man. Like I don't want to do this, but they still like pull the guy out and start like beating him. And they're kind of, you know, they're just miserable. They're crying. They're like, I don't want to do this. I don't, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Meanwhile, Bakita and Oni leash dried up to the back of the van below it open inside as a shadowy figure. He steps out.

Speaker: You know, throws off the cloak or whatever you want to put it and just says like, I've got a score to settle. Oh, yeah. That's good. That's good. I do like that. I like it. We get at which point we get to see all three.

Speaker: of them. You can see how kind of terrifying Bakura is. Especially if they talk about that we've got bombs in her head, she's been blowing up the city, she blows open the door, so we see a very tangible, she just does that really quick to blow open the doors, but also these people have bombs in their heads and they're terrified. I think it sets a very scary existential threat of Bakura. Bakura has blown up Taylor

Speaker: and didn't even know it. They were just there and a bomb went off. And then all these people are wandering outside their homes with weapons that they just grabbed because they were told that they didn't. Bombs are in their hands. I think she's terrifying like this. Do we get to see someone explode? I think, you know what? I wasn't going to, but I think

Speaker: We have okay, so like we have this moment where it's like oh we're gonna bust them out we're gonna bust them out and like maybe long looks at bakura and says like

Speaker: I don't know, maybe something like, how did you, like, what's all this basically? And like a very kind of maniacal, huge grin, like, ooh, check out what I can do, hits button, kabloo, like, oh, okay. And like, it clearly doesn't phase any of them, but it makes everybody else incredibly uncomfortable. And we realize in like this moment that like, oh, they're unhinged, this, and now they're all back together and lung is out, like,

Speaker: This is about to be a fucking story. I like the idea of kind of making it similar to the way it was in the in the fight, where it's kind of like maybe, you know, somebody's refusing to give them something. And then one of the soldiers is like, or one of the bakut is like, come on, get them.

Speaker: And, you know, then we see the person going, no, no, I can't. And so Bakita is like, well, you're lost then and clicks a button and we can even do like the face melting one for like extra effect. Right. Um, so I like in my head, he comes up, you know, they, they, they, they, they're blocking the road. They pull the guy, the guys out. Do we then get the foot walking shot of Bakita coming up with Oni Lee?

Speaker: And she snaps her fingers and points and goes, kill him. And the guy who's pulled him out is like, what? I can't. And she just presses the button. His head blows. And she snaps her fingers and points to the next guy. She's like, are you going to argue? And he just kind of like, sorry, man, and just starts shanking the guy with the kitchen knife. You got to have the same characters. It's got to be the boy, the teenage boy, and then the teenage girl. From the original

Speaker: thing where it's like I can't I also I won't lie I do like the idea of you know he's got this guard in his grip and she's like she's like okay we'll kill him and he's like I can't she's like okay well I can and like clicks the button and it takes them both out them both out not just his head yeah okay potentially but I do like the idea of like

Speaker: Okay, his face melts and then like, all right, are you gonna step in? And then the girl comes in. Yeah, I like the idea of not lingering too long on that because I want it to be such a nonchalant.

Speaker: Like she does not give a fuck. Right. You know, this is the fact that he, you know, it's an inconvenience. It's enough that he didn't stab the person. So like, if I have to press a button a second time, I don't want the camera to stop moving. She should just be walking and the camera just continuing to follow behind her. Is she like, all right, kill him. Like, no. Oh, well, they am next. Like, so callous. I love it.

Speaker: As she walks, maybe as she, you know, she's walking up to the van and then walks around it, you know, plants the bomb on the back, blows it open. But yeah, lung steps out. I've got a score to settle. And that brings to the end of episode six with that one. Any other comments about episode six? No, that sounds solid. I like it. All right. Moving to episode seven. Gregor the snail goes to the paliquin club.

Speaker: and talks to his teammates while their fault line reveals that she's been working on the side project of hunting down this mysterious organization that seems to be the origins of Gregor and Nuder title sequence. The undersiders split up. Oh, also, by the way, in that I always says I've been workshopping that as well.

Speaker: She says, you know, hunting down this mysterious organization, specifically, there's a woman who's human who has the same tattoo as Gregor. She's in Las Vegas, goes by Shamrock, and we should go hunt her down after this next job. And title sequence. Yeah, buddy. Yeah. The undersiders split up to go with their different strike teams. So in this case,

Speaker: Lisa's driving the van, or Brian's driving the van, they're in the back. Some talky talk and then drops Bitch and Taylor off. Taylor tries to bond a little bit more with Bitch. And then when they get there, Taylor talks with the other teams to learn more about them. Joining Taylor's strike team with the usual are also two mercenaries, Senegal, the Sniper, and JAW, the Medic. Hey!

Speaker: They raid the building. Oh, on the way there, by the way, because I just wrote this down. On the way there, they're almost spotted by a patrol before they spread out, in which case Senegal, who neither of them have talked yet. Sundancer is talking with her and she's like, what's up with the two special forces guys? And she's like, what are you talking about? And Sundancer goes, well, when they showed up, they said they were with you.

Speaker: And there's like, uh, interesting at which point in time, Senegal comes up, shoves her into an alley and up against the wall. And she's like, what the heck? And he does the shush.

Speaker: Like this just doesn't say anything, just puts his finger over his mouth and then leans away from the wall to look down the road where there's the patrol. Now, before neuter did this, but because I'm thirst trapping here, we're going to go first trap for modern warfare. Uh, he is our thirst trap here. I know all my ghost girlies are, uh, loving that choice.

Speaker: Absolutely. So that, that is the big change that I'm going to go on about right there. Uh, then they raid the building only of course, to get surprise attacked by Oni Lee, Senegal and skitter work together to deal with Oni Lee, you know, that's showing how much of a bad ass he is. And also maybe having a moment where like he like tackles her to save her. And it's obviously there's nothing else there unless you're into that. And yeah, there's the moment where, you know, he tackles and then gets up.

Speaker: And, you know, goes back to shooting or something like that. Uh, on top of that, we get the, you know, the normal, uh, lung turns out to be in the building. Everybody's like, Oh my gosh. And they get in the fight with Kaiser, Menya and Fenya. Everything goes fine until of course, lung spots skitter. And then he starts kicking everyone's asses. Now Taylor doesn't ultimately get caught, but not before she poisons lung and plucks out his eyes.

Speaker: The other strike teams are successful. One of them saying that they did in fact get to Baketa and disabled all the bombs in the city. Everyone hobbles away and bitch and Taylor have a little talk. And then the fake out kiss moment with the jacket and the post credits. We zoom out and the, you know, sort of pass Brockton Bay, which is, you know, a little bit smoking, but there's no fires kind of showing that like the fires have gone out with the bombs. We did it.

Speaker: and we move out into the bay over the water deep into the ocean to a top -down shot and we just see a ripple in the water. In this, one of my favorite moments is we throw the interlude with neuter doing the whole like drug thing with the girls in the club early.

Speaker: That way we can show off his ability a little bit more with that, explaining it. There's also, we bumped up the fact that everybody kind of, you know, Kaiser runs away pretty quickly to go, you know, set up for the building. And everybody looks at Taylor because she's had the most experience with the ABB. In this case, we move to like, Hey, this is your home turf.

Speaker: And, you know, you fought long before and the ABB, the rest of us kind of either been out of town or doing other stuff. And also you've got the mercenaries. So like, tell us what the plan is. And Taylor starts to do some, some I'm going to check for bombs first thing, you know, and her and neuter actually kind of do a good back and forth here with their bopping because neuter has the general experience. He's been doing this for a little bit and he's good at it.

Speaker: And he kind of coaches, slashes, encourages Taylor to use her information and her delegation skills and the experience she has with the ABB. So that's a good little moment that I am, that is literally where I left off. I am in the middle of that conversation. So that's fresh in my mind. Cool. Nice. Very cool. Yeah. Any comments? I like it.

Speaker: Yeah, one thing I think I think it'd be just a good note. I don't think we've ever really talked about this Alan in any of our episodes, but just something probably that will just naturally do but I think is probably worth mentioning, especially with neuter and his character and things like that too is we don't we can we can illustrate that

Speaker: A lot of these characters are kids or in high school without giving them an age. They can just be younger. Neuter specifically, I don't think we ever want to state that he's under 18. A lot of TV shows do this for good reason, but a lot of you are like,

Speaker: high school age kids are played by older actors. Um, they're sort of aged up the characters and this, this works. It's a lot easier to sell an audience on characters when they're not kids, unless the story is like stranger things, right? Where they're really, really supposed to be kids or like, yeah, exactly. And we want them to be younger and that's, that's important, but you know,

Speaker: things like this, it just kind of reminded me of reading it again and hearing us talking about it again. Because like, Newter's what, 16 in the story? I believe he is 16. Yeah, and he's given drugs to women and things like that.

Speaker: It's just a hard thing to sell and the story is very dark and we get very dark, but there's ways to do that tastefully without getting... You don't want to scare your audience away. Without being euphoria. Yes, exactly. I was actually about to mention euphoria. Exactly. Especially today where everyone's eyes are on that kind of thing for good reason and making sure that we don't

Speaker: we don't, what sort of thinking of, endorse, encourage any sort of abuse or anything like that. Exactly. So something to keep in mind. We don't really ever really do that. I think Nuder is probably one of the worst examples just in the story that exists, but just in general, kind of thinking of all these characters as, you know, not stating their age, but they're young, but they're not children.

Speaker: Yeah. And, and I think that for neuter, that makes a lot of sense because he has a character that you want your audience to like. Whereas when, when you have the implications, like with coil later is like you, you want people to dislike coil, like, yeah, you want people to go, Oh no, no. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It should feel gross. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Speaker: Right and so i think it's that kind of same thing where it's like okay we want people to like this character so. Not that we're sort of cleaning up the story but it's a good idea like you said to try to try to make the characters more appealing. In less you know icky.

Speaker: You don't have to go full John Travolta Greece, you know, and cast 30, 40 year olds, high schoolers. We don't need to go that far. There's some nice middle ground that we can find. Yeah. Somewhere in between there. Yeah. Anything else for that episode? No, not that in particular. Not that I can think of. I really like the feel of it so far. Yeah. All right. Moving to episode eight.

Speaker: Canary goes through her trial, sentencing, conviction, all that, and is transporting to the birdcage. In the van, she meets Bakura, who tries her best to get out, you know, talking the whole time incessantly, only to get caught immediately upon escape. Oh, good. Oh, good. Dragon then talks about the birdcage and sympathizes with Canary, and we have our title sequence.

Speaker: Just to stop right there because you said it, Hannah. We thought about, because it feels like an interlude to cut in this season, but it does such a good job of world building and introducing the birdcage and dragon and tying up lung and bakuta for right now. And sort of... Rogues. And intrusive becomes rogues. And also the idea of how the world is having to handle

Speaker: superpowers and a legal system. Exactly. That's really important. I will tell you today, I read entirely too much litigation on NEPA 5, which is a bill that was passed in the United States in the earth that that is essentially preventing people with powers from profiting. Oh, interesting.

Speaker: So like Parian doesn't have a brick and mortar store is one of the examples that people gave. Parian technically does performance art. So like you cannot as a super powered individual use your powers to make money unless it is of course through like Tinker PRT means essentially you can't do it unless you're going through the government.

Speaker: Interesting. Interesting. Which Nix is anybody, you know, it's why Vegas fell apart. It's, you know, people, you're not allowed to do it for business or stock markets or anything. Interesting. Yeah. So that's a whole fun thing that I read way too much about today. And most of it is not even in the worm like story. It's all in forums that, uh,

Speaker: that he posted about when he was running wild. That was running campaigns and stuff. Oh, that's fine. We appreciate your research. Thank you. All right. Sorry for the interruption. Please continue. Yeah. So, uh, after the trial and all that, we have the title sequence. The undersiders are busy cleaning up the remaining ABB, Brian and Taylor, you know, doing their little back and forth and they ultimately end up hanging back out back at his place where of course they are ambushed by the caseworker and Aisha now.

Speaker: Afterwards, at the hideout, they find that the heroes are taking credit for capturing Long and Baketa, and that the sponsor wants them to embarrass them with this next assignment, which is crashing the gala. Part of it is a celebration for ending this, you know, reign of terror, but also fundraising and, you know, other stuff. So I'm going to go crash that. Taylor, at this point in time, against Brian's wishes, convinces the group that they should do it.

Speaker: Now, we cut to the Undersiders staring over the roof's edge and then running down the building on the dogs. They crash the hero party, fight a few people, but then Arms Master appears. The Undersiders fight Arms Master, luring him outside and ultimately defeating him. They escape only to be caught again by that bitch, Arms Master. Lisa calls for reinforcements and the travelers end up sending the heroes packing.

Speaker: I just love the idea of ballistics, sending a car into arms master and just launching them into nowhere. Taylor goes home only to be forced to have the intervention with her father. She ultimately decides she wants to be a villain and leaves with Lisa. Host credit, PRT officers raid an apartment complex. It bust open the door to find Theo and Aster, who they take into custody.

Speaker: Outside, one of the officers dips away to confirm with a mysterious employer that we've got him. Okay. Does the confrontation with Sophia and Ryan, does that happen before or after the Gallifite? I genuinely couldn't remember. So I just wasn't sure.

Speaker: Now that sounds good. Um, it's, it's kind of a middle episode. I feel again, kind of like the episode three one was where there's a lot of movement of plot, but not a lot of action.

Speaker: per se, which is fine. And I think at this point, yeah, the Gallo fight, Gallo will be a decent amount of action. Wait, is the Gallo, oh, the Gallo's in the episode, sorry. I thought that was split into two for some reason. It originally was. Yeah. Well, yeah, then having the Gallo fight, that'll be perfect. Then the first half of the episode, I guess, could feel a bit slow, but the payoff of the Gallo fight. And if you can make

Speaker: If, and obviously this would depend on script writing and all of that, but if you can make it so that the lead up to Taylor not wanting to go and then being like, actually, I think I kind of do. I think that could be really good. Of course. Yeah, I like it a lot. Um, I like it a lot. I think it's good.

Speaker: The fact that you have failed to notice the biggest change you made in this one is a really good sign. I was thinking it, we won't say it until later. Hold on, let me think about it now, now I gotta think about it. I don't know, I don't know. Can you repeat everything you've said? I will say I was thinking about it. All right, episode one.

Speaker: kind of the idea of like well after the big lung fight we kind of have feel we feel like we've you know solved an issue with lung like okay we've we've you know huzzah we did it but then to immediately come out of that fight being like and all our work is being credited to the heroes like

Speaker: Fuck. We just watched them fight tooth and nail. We saw Taylor kick fucking ass and she's not getting credit for it? That's not cool. And so that's why I was thinking about that. It feels so good to be like, yeah, let's go fuck them up. Sure, let's do it. And so I was kind of wondering, I think tonally it works.

Speaker: being able to come right off of that and be like, yeah, let's fuck them up. Let's go. And I just really, I just really want to see how much faster you get hit by a car so badly. Yeah. Yeah. It is a good image. All right. Uh, next episode. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Episode nine. Miss militia has a nightmare about her trigger event. Ooh.

Speaker: We say a little quicker moment, or not a little quicker, a little bit longer moment with the shards, but then her waking up and quickly forgetting about them. She goes to talk with Colin about the Protectorate and the future, and also speaks with Dragon and him about his new end -bringer, Detector. They wander off to go do their thing only for the teeniest, tiniest of pings to go off on the radio. Title sequence.

Speaker: Taylor rassles with Brian and then goes to visit with Bitch and her dogs. Empire 88 thugs show up and Taylor and Bitch chase them off. Brian arrives just in time to tell them that someone outed all of the Empire 88's villains. And, you know, given that Lisa is the information person, everybody's kind of after Lisa right now.

Speaker: I think something that we didn't talk about before, but this is a big no -no in the world. This is crossing the line and heroes and villains would potentially be the person going after Lisa for this. I'm sorry, I think I just figured out what it was that you changed. Oh, well, what did you figure out? Are we not introducing coil?

Speaker: Oh, very interesting. Yeah, I missed that. Let us finish and we'll revisit that.

Speaker: I was like, oh my gosh, wait a second. The big thing here, of course, being Cadence, kids have been abducted by the PRT and everybody assumes it's Lisa's fault. Brian and Taylor split off to go to his place only to run into Sophia. There is the kiss and Brian and her don't talk about it.

Speaker: Um, but they get back to his, uh -huh. Nope. Sorry. Keep, keep going. I'll hold all questions. No, no, no. There, there is no fight with Sophia here. Okay. Sophia's on the bus. So it happens all on the bus. They kiss Sophia as a fucking bitch. And then Haley, he just, Brian, there's no, nope, there's no fight. Brian and her just have the awkward, like,

Speaker: Like Sofia like gets off the bus potentially and Brian's like, what the fuck was that about? And she's like, uh, and that's where he says like, Oh, like a friend. Wow. So it gets, it's just kind of an awkward moment. Uh, or, or actually in this one, I have her ear ripped off. No. Uh, and I have Brian and her actually not talking about it. Like they do it and she's like, don't ask questions. And he's like, cool. They kiss and he's kind of like,

Speaker: Okay. Like you said, don't ask questions. I'm not going to for an hour now and we'll get to why that's important in a second. Okay. Okay. They get back to his apartment where Taylor turns on the news and sees the cadence blowing up everything and new wave trying to stop her. Taylor and Brian then get into an argument about the fact that they kind of caused this. Um, if it, you know, if it was Lisa or whatnot, Taylor suits up and Brian is right behind her begrudgingly, uh, just because he doesn't want her to get hurt.

Speaker: little conflict there between her superhero showing and whatnot. She then calls Lisa up, but they can't get in touch with Rachel or Alec. Lisa picks them up in a fake PRT van to head to the scene and on the way there, Hookwolf gets thrown into the vehicle that they're driving.

Speaker: He spots them in the vehicle and starts shit saying that he was looking for them and hinting that Alec and Rachel have already been taken care of by Knight and Fogg. Now, Victoria was the person that Hookwolf got thrown by into the van because, you know, Victoria is a classic collateral damage doer.

Speaker: So she incidentally rescues them by continuing the fight with hook Wolf while her family fights purity in the sky. Tattletail gets upset that the speakers on the fake PRT vehicle don't work anymore. She says she needs to get closer to purity. So skitter and grew fight night and fog, opening a path up to try and get Tattletail with an ear shot to yell at Caden that her kid, where her kids are located, negotiating for the release of her teammates. The undersiders gather up.

Speaker: you know, sans Lisa a little wounded and have a talk at the hideout. Lisa shows back up and Taylors argues that kidnapping children and endangering the area by outing Empire 88 put too many lives at risk and that the undersiders act as if this isn't a big deal. When pressed, Taylor finally admits that she always wanted to be a hero and joined the team in order to betray them.

Speaker: Lisa obviously knew and stays back. Bitch storms off. Alec and Brian both leave as well, telling her not to bother coming back. Taylor and Lisa pack her bags and then the sirens go off. Oh, a lot. That's a pretty big change. Wow. Yeah. So what do you think? A lot of changes here. Would love to hear what Amanda had to say about this one. So I'm assuming the change of

Speaker: The reveal that Taylor wanted to be a hero all along. I'm gonna guess that that main change is due to the fact that you wanna set up that tension before the Leviathan fight rather than after. Yes. Correct. Yep, pretty much. Because there's essentially at the end of the Leviathan fight and after it, there are those beats that hit with the undersiders. I think it would do a lot better

Speaker: given the different reactions that people have and setting up for season two, how they feel about what's going on. I think it's better to have that here. I also think that, you know, Brian and her having the kiss and that sort of not being talked about how he feels necessarily will be both thirstier and also play into the betrayal better.

Speaker: And this was actually a change. We had kind of made this change while going through the episode, but this is one we actually came back to recently as we're going through season two now and sort of perfected. It flows so much better going into a second season.

Speaker: with the tension of her leaving happening here, as opposed to after the fight. It's a really weird way to end the season, going into season two with where season two would start. Yeah, it was really obvious once we started getting into it. We were like, oh, this works way better here.

Speaker: Yeah, there's two problems we have as well. One is what we just called the coil problem, you know, for obvious reasons, but two is that Taylor, you know, Taylor decided to be a super villain. And while she has issues, obviously with them, her storming out kind of was difficult to ride around.

Speaker: But her admitting that this is, I feel comfortable enough with these people, this is who I really am. That being something that makes them step away is something that will both pay off later and definitely hits a little bit harder. That she exposed herself, felt comfortable exposing herself and is getting rejected for it.

Speaker: Yeah. Cause she's taking a chance here by saying, okay, well maybe like I'll tell them the truth and we're good enough friends that they'll understand. Right. And then of course they don't. And like all of that, you know, coming off the end of her conversation and unfortunate kiss with Brian, like it feels like a even bigger punch in the gut. I guess my only thought is that I love

Speaker: Well, maybe I shouldn't, but I love the stress of that moment at the hospital when it comes out. Because the fact that Taylor has once again, lost control of the situation. And since we see this bullying thing over and over and over again, it by extension is Taylor not being in control of what's being said about her, what's being said to her, what's being done to her.

Speaker: And coming off the Leviathan fight where she finally feels like she got to be a hero and this treat being treated like a villain and then having this big moment and then once again being outed by somebody that she had originally you know trusted your arms master and this kind of like

Speaker: I like the tension there. I like her feeling so betrayed and out of control. And I really like that moment in the hospital. And so I don't know if that same level of stress and anxiety and betrayal

Speaker: translates over to this section specifically. Excellent point. Real quick, remind me of the lead up to her confession because I'm getting the show plot that you guys have and the real plot and stuff. Can you kind of give a quick summary? And the real plot. Well, I know the real plot. Yeah, we know the real plot because that's what we're talking about. What's the show plot version? So in this one, she argues that like endangering the children, like the kid mapping,

Speaker: with the PRT and essentially using them as pawns and then also endangering the entire neighborhood area by outing the Empire 88, which is also a weird line to cross. It's just too many lives at risk and is really upset a lot by the fact that the undersiders don't consider all the collateral damage a big deal. Okay, okay.

Speaker: I don't know. I think I kind of tend to agree with Hannah. I do see what you guys are saying that it having this tension building into the Leviathan fight. Um, okay. Here's an, here's an idea. Here's just an idea to pitch to you. And then I have a second unrelated idea. Um, but I just had as well. What if instead of a full confession, what if it was the moment where.

Speaker: She's like thinking about it. Maybe she's even talking to herself. Like she's just like talking to herself. Like I gotta tell them, I gotta tell them the truth. I can't hide this anymore. And she gets there and she says, guys, I need you all to sit down. I need to tell you something. And that's when the in -bringer alarm goes off. So there's that tension of she really wanted to say something so close and she's so close to being honest. And we know what it is because we know the truth, even though they don't.

Speaker: And so that way, when you get to season two, that moment in the hospital could still be there. And it maybe feels a bit more painful, like in the, you know, like when, when shows have a long break in the season two, like recap of season one, you could have that moment in that recap. So that way that scene hits harder. Um, that's just an idea. Uh, obviously, um, I haven't been as deeply involved in it, but I do.

Speaker: I don't know, I get what you're going for there, but I'm not quite sure that would hit as hard as we might want. And if I could actually add on that, because I like that idea a lot, like when she's talking to them and talking about how it doesn't seem like you guys care at all, you know, about the collateral damage, like these people and like it doesn't, it's not right, it's not right. And kind of as she's talking aloud,

Speaker: You know, maybe she's not like talking to herself being like, yeah, I need to tell them. But as she's kind of having this big speech moment, being like, it's like you guys don't even care about the neighborhood. Like what happens? Like these are people's lives. She's like realizing like, shit, I need to be telling them. And like her speech kind of slows down. She gets really quiet and she goes like, you know, and maybe

Speaker: The impact you're having isn't what you think you are. And it kind of like to the undersiders, like their faces, like they're kind of, you know, she's lost them a little bit. They're like, what is, what is your point? Like maybe Lisa says, like, what are you saying? And she goes, I guess I'm saying, and then the alarm goes off. I like having that moment. I could even imagine a character like Alex saying, like, why the hell do you care about people so much? You're a supervillain, like kind of that callback to that earlier conversation. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker: These are great points. Really, really good points. Alan and I did talk a lot about this in terms of how we wanted to utilize this tension and how we were going to resolve it. Because we also agree, we really, really, really like the tension and conflict in the hospital post -Leviathan.

Speaker: Now, I don't want to jump to that point yet, but I do want to put a pin in this because let's come back to it because we because I think it's really connected to the way we sort of want to structure the hospital scene. Yeah. So without without jumping all the way there and then jumping back, let's just say, yeah, excellent points, really well spoken. And I want to jump back to this. Big thing to remember here at the end of this is that Lisa knew and says so. Bitch storms off like as soon as it happens.

Speaker: Alec and Brian kind of, you know, say what the fuck and then tell her not to bother coming back. Okay. That is, that is, that's the, that's the takeaway from what we've kind of written here. Yeah. Okay. Okay. That is, that is the, how everybody feels at that moment. Okay. Quick side thing. Quick side thing. Oh yeah. You had a side point. Yeah. Side bar. I just had this, I just had this thought that, you know, you've talked about having too many characters. Um,

Speaker: Ah, nevermind. It doesn't work. Okay. So my thought, my thought was, is there a way to somehow switch the prominence of Sophia and Emma in the bullying? The reason why, and this is obviously getting more in season two with the hospital scene. The reason why is the reveal that Sophia is shadow stalker is such a big moment.

Speaker: But there's a lot more buildup in the story, whereas in the show, yes, we see Sophia and you know, we have the fight scene with her, but I feel like that payoff maybe could be lessened. And maybe if Sophia was kind of switched out as the ringleader over Emma, you still have like the fight with Emma and that confrontation with her, maybe.

Speaker: But having Sophia more as the ringleader of the bullying over Emma, I don't know, just a thought, not a major one. But Emma is feeding Sophia information with which to bully Taylor Hartman. But it's more clear that Sophia is kind of the alpha of the bullying group. It is the Gretchen Wieners.

Speaker: Gosh, who's the ringleader? The Mean Girls, my God. Regina George. Regina, thank you, Josh. Regina George, yeah. Jacob, I'm so disappointed. Don't even start. I'm mad at myself right now. I'm about to log off. Yeah, bad. Get a log off IRL. Part of, like, I really do. I agree and story -wise, but in terms of character, Sophia's not good with people.

Speaker: Yeah, that's true. Well, she's good with bullying. She eggs Emma on to do the things. But this is Emma's fight, kind of. Okay, that's fair. That would be my only thing. It just doesn't fit for the characters. But I really do like the idea of what she said, switching that. It's just hard with Sophia just being so bad with people.

Speaker: And I think part of the other problem too is, is that Sophia doesn't really have a reason to hate Taylor at the beginning. There's no other than just being a bitch. That's true. Like Emma is the one that's trying to make you need when you're Sophia. That's true. But the the pain of the bullying for

Speaker: Taylor is that Emma has been egging it on the entire time. Yeah. Yeah. And so I think Sophia works as like the catalyst or as the as the enforcer, I guess, of everything. You can make her like the clear bully of the group, but I think it should probably for Taylor's character still be focused on Emma as the as the as the primary bully.

Speaker: But I don't, you can play around with that. It's not the worst idea, especially like we were talking before about simplifying things and just making it easier to follow. Having Sophia as a more prominent part of that isn't a terrible idea. The only reason it occurred to me is because we were talking about the hospital scene, so I was thinking about the reveal. That's true too, yeah, to make that more impactful for sure. But yes. Anyways, moving on. So, anything with Empire 88 and the fight there?

Speaker: I feel like Empire 88 when we had that whole fight, this is one of those, we almost got rid of this. Cause this is kind of another bodily incident. It feels like an aside for some weird reason that they're going off and doing this for an arc. And there's no clear goal other than survive. They run from like,

Speaker: Three fights they go from like one fight to adjust into another into another and finally it just gets magically resolved by Lisa. Yeah.

Speaker: And in this, you know, the goal is to get Lisa to Caden. That's the guy. It feels like, yeah, it feels like the goal here of having a whole entire fight is to talk about Caden doing anything for her kids and tattletales specifically being the one to be like, I know where your kids are. I'm not the one who released this information.

Speaker: and basically like kind of clearing their name in terms of the ABB. But it's not really like that even as a motivation, it doesn't feel like a strong enough reason other than like, yes, some people are mad because you maybe possibly might have been the one who released their names. Like, sure. Okay, fine.

Speaker: Yeah, in this case, you do feel like, I mean, given that Hookwolf is sort of the first person you run into, like this is not, well, this is a good reason to do it. And also puts a target on the undersiders backs by everyone. Like everybody could come after them for this.

Speaker: Right, for betraying the trust or whatever you want to call it. Yeah, whatever they call that. Hookwolf is getting in a personal vendetta for this. When you're the first person that meets him, he's basically like, I've been waiting to do this for a long time, kind of vibes.

Speaker: And it's still, you know, this still could be something that gets cut. Like I love night and fog. Oh, you know, you'll notice we cut, we cut cricket and, um, I love crickets. The cricket was a weird, I didn't like cricket all that much, but you also have, oh, I think the power's cool, but, uh, you know,

Speaker: trimming down people and there's a lot of fights that happen in this. 1 .6 million words. I agree. And honestly, out of the people, you're like, okay, who do we want to show off in this? Hook Wolf's Swiss army arm. Yes. And Knight and Fog. Yeah. Right. That's who you want to show.

Speaker: I would also argue that purity is kind of a big deal for this too. Because I like that there are so many different powers that we interact with that we're clearly like, ah, yes, that's cool, but it's not like world ending type of, it's not like,

Speaker: city, I'll say city ending, not world, but like city ending type of power. And then we have this moment and we go, oh shit, like purity has been working or, you know, has recently been working with the ABB or not the ABB, MBAR -88, and she could have done

Speaker: any of this, but she's been holding back and we're seeing that power come out because her kid is at stake here. But the idea that maybe there are a lot of powers that are super, super amplified that have been held back that we're not aware of. And so having her go ballistic and seeing the city

Speaker: kind of taken the brunt of that. It's also a good moment to have the, uh, the new wave show up to begin with, but they're, they're kind of at the end. Um, and I think having glory girl fighting with hook wolf and all the other people like a new wave, essentially being the main team that was first on the scene, fighting purity in the background, I think is

Speaker: good at still keeping purity as the main threat. You know, she is the MacGuffin that we've got to get to right now. And they're fighting her in the background. But as this tiny aside story, the undersiders are fighting night and fog. Right, right, right, right. All right, let's get let's get into these last two episodes. Yeah, yeah. And we'll finish this thing up. Episode 10 in Japan, a young man named Kenta is working for a gang

Speaker: that attempts to steal money from a drug den. Now, while there, the whole gang is defeated by a mysterious figure, who we'll just say now is Contessa, who ends up holding his face down in the cocaine until he triggers. He blacks out, and as he blacks out and triggers,

Speaker: Doors open and lung is led out of a PRT van met by Alexandria who tells him one way or another, this is his last shot title sequence. Oh, uh, my scalp got a little tingly. Oh yeah. I'm feeling it now. Just tell Alan was excited about reading that one. Okay. Okay. Interesting title sequence. I like it so far carry on.

Speaker: Lisa and Taylor, as we follow their feet, walking up to the police, because we've got to have that shot again, because I love that shot. The cops, excuse me, like goes to reach for the gun. He's like, no, son, they're here to do their job. They join everyone at the PRTHQ for the briefing. Leviathan breaks through and the death toll begins. Tattletale watches from a helicopter, giving Dragon as much data as she can relay to the ground.

Speaker: Taylor tries to recover and feels useless in the face of dragons flying back, coming down and tangling with Leviathan. She tries to help the wounded and sometimes end up having to leave them. Shielder is killed, but right before Skidder is also killed, Clockblocker steps in and tags Leviathan, saving her.

Speaker: A little, a little, a little clock, a little clock, a clock skitter moment, skit blocker. I don't know. Saves her by freezing Leviathan. Uh, everyone falls back while look, Viathan is, you know, uh, frozen there while he's frozen and everybody's pulled back. Leviathan walks out alone to stand in front of him. You said Leviathan there, you went arms master. I assume.

Speaker: No. What? Lung alone in front of the frozen Leviathan. In front of, yes, in human form. Cut back to Kyushu where he is standing by watching everyone fight Leviathan offshore. When a Sentai elite comes up to him and asks him if he's a hero or a villain. And he just replies, he's here to win. He wades out into the waves and on the way out transforms into the dragon.

Speaker: He roars and in the present he has also become the dragon. Leviathan unfreezes and the battle begins. I got goosebumples. Back and forth we flash with the present fight and the fight in Kyushu in the water. Oh my gosh. Taylor's trying to help more people from simply drowning in the water and turns to watch the fight.

Speaker: Lung holds his own in Kyushu, fighting to a draw and slipping away into the water, only to be rescued by Alexandria, where in the present, he is left defeated. End of the episode. Okay, wait, wait, okay, so wait, wait, okay. So when you said left defeated, what do you mean by that?

Speaker: So we played around with this a bit. Oh, go ahead. Go ahead, Alan. Oh, so I was reading this and I couldn't understand what I wrote and writ here. Taylor is helping people try not to drown and notice that her watch cuts out.

Speaker: Okay, solid, solid. We love that. We love that. Got a reference to that. The two things we wanted to do with this scene was one, put lung in it, which just made so much sense. I love it. I really love it. It flows so well. I know we had talked about it before. I really feel the flow works great here. It works for his character. I think it just makes a lot of sense.

Speaker: Yeah, especially those flashbacks like, yeah, buddy, let's go full dragon. The second half of this that I think this cleans up a bit, he has defeated

Speaker: And we can kind of maybe leave this ambiguous for the end of the episode, but clear afterwards, once the dust settles, he's defeated because Armsmaster interferes, much in the same way that he interferes with Kaiser and Empire 88 fighting Lung. We've sort of just swapped that for Lung.

Speaker: One, because one, it gives us more lung, and two, that feels like a much more impactful interruption for Armist -Master to make, stopping the one guy who probably had a chance at pushing Leviathan back.

Speaker: really makes that Armsmaster's failure feel way worse if he's responsible for tripping Lung up and getting him knocked out. Yeah, he's slowly becoming more hateable as we go along. And like a moment like that really makes you go, oh, you fucking pompous idiot. Well, you fucked it. You fucked us all. That's good. I really wanted, we were talking about character arcs.

Speaker: Um, while it isn't, uh, you know, in, in the worm story, this is, you know, there's no definitive end for long. I did one since he is, you know, one of the main villains here in this arc, you know, he's the guy we start with. I wanted him to have a big moment, you know, to kind of cap off his season, you know, his arc in season one. Um,

Speaker: you know, live or die, he is going to be here at the end for this big moment. And it fits really well since in his interlude way at the end of worm. We're jumping ahead here because we get the flashback. He fought Leviathan to a standstill. Yeah, we get that way later, which is really funny.

Speaker: I think having that here works really, really well. Yeah. And to build off of what you just said, Alan, what the character arcs to is this really helps because up until this point, Lung is probably the most obviously villainous evil person so far.

Speaker: In a show where we've stressed many times that sort of gray morality is a really strong theme. Lung doesn't really fit into that. So giving him a moment here at the end where you get to see a bit of that character, you get to understand he's still pretty evil, but it does sort of humanize him a bit. A little redemption. Yeah, it does sort of help to balance that scale for him a little bit there. Yeah, I like that. I think that that's a good

Speaker: It's a good way to tie a season together to have a recurring character. I will say that I think that you guys make a good point that there isn't a lot of.

Speaker: Because Worm was written as a web serial, it's not written with this in mind, right? It's not written with the idea of let's have cohesive things come back, you know, every few hours and kind of wrap up as a story. And so I think that, yeah, this is a great way to have that happen. Um, I think this is good. This is good. I like, I like this inclusion. Yeah. I am, I am on board. I am definitely on board.

Speaker: Let's keep it going. Cause we got our two of this fight kind of pick up with leaves off last episode. I get away at 11 Taylor continues running only to see Leviathan come around the corner with half a Kaiser. Oh, that's good. Arms master squares down with Leviathan. And before he, uh, before he gets the upper hand, Leviathan suddenly overwhelms him.

Speaker: Skitter, however, distracts Leviathan with the bugs and rescues Armsmaster, which point Laser Dream and Lady Photon rescue them. And Laser Dream takes Skitter to help one of the shelters that is flooding. They help get the doors open only to have Leviathan appear behind them right as they do. Taylor seemingly turns away from Mr. Gladly, but then returns to save him only to get her back broken for her good deed.

Speaker: She begins drowning and is about to be, uh, it is to drown there while Leviathan kind of stands overhead when bitch appears with their dogs and saves her, pulling her out of the water. At which point idol and swoops in and holds off Leviathan until Sion finally appears and together they drive off Leviathan. Taylor is carted back to the triage unit, only of course to be handcuffed. Panacea stops by and taunts her while healing her Taylor.

Speaker: just to win her sympathy, compares their shared loss of family being like, Hey, I know, you know, you lost some people, but I don't know if my dad's dead. And I need to know that. Try to bond with Amy in some way. Taylor eventually escapes, finds out that Sophia is shadow stalker and then the confrontation happens. Lisa, however,

Speaker: Immediately, you know, grabs the watch out arm master, uh, about hacking arms master. Yeah. About hacking the arm bands and the rest of the undersiders also come to Taylor's defense. Arms master tries to be a sniveling little bitch and out skater as a trader to which Brian just crosses his arms and goes, we know sort of echoing Lisa back at the base. Miss militia, of course, arrests arm master.

Speaker: and the undersiders leave. Weeks later, Taylor watches Vista and Victoria visit the memorial for the dead. Lisa and her catch up, talk secrets and the future. Taylor says she doesn't know what she's going to do. And Lisa waits for Taylor to leave, then pulls out a phone.

Speaker: Calls her employer and says she's in immediate cut to coil, putting down the phone and looking menacing while steepling his fingers over a desk credits. Okay. All right. I'm triggering. I'm triggering. Oh my gosh. It was pretty good. Oh my gosh. The group triggered together. Okay. So I have a couple things, a couple things.

Speaker: The first thing that comes to mind, because I don't want to touch the switcheroo in the hospital just yet. Sion.

Speaker: Did we keep that kind of weird moment in Danny's interlude all the way back at the beginning where Sion documentary thing is happening on TV? Have we kept information about Sion, who he is so that when he shows up, we're all like, thank fucking Christ, cuz this is the only guy that was gonna actually make an impact.

Speaker: That would be all the way episode two, it's on, it's kind of like the noise of it is the mainstay while Danny is making breakfast. So you're, it's said - Okay, so it's like the next morning where - But we don't really get another Scion reference until Arms Master's giving the, or legend.

Speaker: Who's giving the big sledge? Legend is giving the big speech. And he's like, basically we need to hold here until. Okay. Okay. Cool. I just want to make sure that because I want that moment when he shows up to hit, we, we all collectively like, Oh, thank fucking God. Like, superman and Zack Snyder, where he's just kind of like floating down, you know, through the smoke.

Speaker: And you're like, oh, I like the idea because of the way I read it described in the book, uh, is that Sion does the superhero landing, but there's no impact. And I loved that image of just him slamming down, but it just not, there's like no ripples. He just like stops right there. There's no impact. It's just, and he's there.

Speaker: But no, I agree, Hannah, I do think we probably should put in or at least make it more obvious in a few different places that like just mentioned of Sion and him being as powerful as he is just so that this doesn't feel like as much of a deus ex machina. Yeah. But yeah, we don't want to overdo it. But yeah, he should be mentioned. There should be a little bit of a buildup for that for sure.

Speaker: I mean, we could mention him in the van when Lisa and Taylor are talking about the whole cops and robbers and end bringers come up, like, because it doesn't have to be a lot. But like, if we've given the audience snippets enough of Zion and then it's like, bam, there he is, it just, it needs to be able to hit. And if they don't remember, because, you know, we've said this before, we have such a huge cast of characters. If they don't remember who Zion is, if Zion has kind of emerged in their brains to like,

Speaker: legend or idoline. They're not going to remember the absolute importance of not just what Sion can do, but who he is, how he's come out of nowhere. No one knows who he is. The way that he operates is very like, as things happen, depending on where he is on the planet, not as opposed to what is the highest priority. I think that then being like, okay, he did show up, he did

Speaker: grace us with his presence. Like it does hit well because we know who he is now. Would it almost be worth doing a... I don't know if there's a cold open that you want to replace, but I almost wonder if like an early cold open of Sion doing something

Speaker: I like the idea of, of that very much good, but I don't, I liked all the ones that you presented. So I don't know that there's one I'm like, Oh yeah. Like get rid of that one. Think of is we just do like the TV special. And then as it finishes, you do the fade out into it's what is it? Anoscopic where it's in part of the universe.

Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what you're talking about. So it's its own thing and then it cuts back and they're watching the television. Yeah, yeah. That could be good, yeah. Okay, just remind me really quick. In episode one, what was our post -credit scene for episode one? No post -credit for episode one. Well, what if we did that for post -credit? That's good. I like that as an opener for episode two. But don't we have Victoria for opening two?

Speaker: I think that's what we have it as three right now. We talked about merging those episodes. So yeah, we'll have to play around with that. I like the idea of it being a cold open and him just kind of floating over the cruise ship as it were and people doing interviews and stuff. Yeah, it's funny. I actually thought about it'd be really interesting if

Speaker: if that was actually an entire trailer for the show, was Sion's montage of decades leading up to the present, starting in the 80s. You just sort of do like a news montage of him on the cruise ship.

Speaker: him helping people, him getting his name. You sort of use Sion as this, it would just be a trailer. Literally, this is how you could shape the trailer around introducing people to the world. And then you do that and then you cut to the classroom with all the kids just like looking bored as hell and Taylor like being in the back, like scribbling something in her notebook. And then it goes, the camera goes towards her and then up and over and it's her drawing a suit.

Speaker: Right, exactly. And that's why I do like that. I like that. We could also reuse that same footage from the documentary and have it in those snippets of things that Taylor is clipping through as she's looking at the forum. So as she's clipping through Superpower Forum stuff, Sion being on the front page of the forum as the face of the ParaCumin forum.

Speaker: So, like, we see him again, and it's like, ah, yes, there's the name again, there's the name again, and he can keep popping up so that when he does show up, it has that impact. I like the idea of the trailer. I think that's fantastic. All that to say, Marcion. That is the end of season one. You know, leaving some cliffhangers, leaving some secrets, some mysteries to continue to unravel. I did have an idea.

Speaker: I like the way that it ended. I think that's good. There's just a small part of me that's thinking like, what if it just ended with Taylor blacking out in the Leviathan fight? Like she sees Sion, she sees Sion arrive and then she's like, you are a producer. Thank God. And then she just passes out.

Speaker: Yeah. And that's the end of the season. I'm okay with that. Don't give this man any scripts or control. You know what? You're working with Ben Stiller on Severance, aren't you? Oh my gosh. I literally, I understand cliffhangers, but I hate cliffhangers because they make me crazy. No, it's a good thought though. It's a good thought. I do like giving it some more resolution, but it's fun to think about.

Speaker: Yeah. Um, yeah, I dunno. I like the, I liked the idea overall, um, for the way it ends. I think it's fine. It was just a small thought of like, Oh, but what if it just like, and it ended and that was it. Well, it's funny because we didn't mention my one thought for some sort of teaser at the end of the season to keep things going.

Speaker: Um, well, we didn't mention it because we kind of are probably not going to do it, but we could do something in the, in the form of, you know, having the unnamed slaughterhouse nine enter the city or sitting on a rooftop. I have really mentioning that like,

Speaker: You know, they found their next kid, you know, uh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Either. Well, yeah. I would say I like the ending of this being coil very much portrayed as the bad guy. I like coil. Yeah. You know, he's just shown in the dark light being an evil villain. Um, and you know, the one that's been behind the undersiders this whole time, but I think as a, uh, post credit

Speaker: for season two, episode one should just be a van that says S -9 on the side and spray paint. And, you know, just like maybe a sign on the back that says like Brockton or bust. The idea of all of the slaughterhouse nine traveling in a single van though, for some reason really goofy to me. They're like the Scooby gang, except it's the slaughterhouse nine.

Speaker: I mean, I guess it would be with crawler, it would be better if it was like a semi. Yeah. Actually, you know, that just brings up a real practical question. How do they get around? I genuinely had to think about that. Private jet. No. Well, let's get into, unless there's any other media thoughts, I do want to get into the hospital scene so we can get back to that. That is quite a bit different.

Speaker: thoughts on how we're choosing to approach this. But I do want to just sort of bullet point it real quick, because you kind of understood Alan and I's train of thought. And Alan correct me here if I'm off the mark. But so we're going with betrayal pre -Leviathan. And then that moment of betrayal is sort of haunting Taylor through the Leviathan fight. Back is broken.

Speaker: And the first person from the undersiders sends Lisa really to come back to her is Bitch, which is, we thought, I just love that idea of Bitch being the first one back. Doesn't, not necessarily forgiveness. No, I agree. I think it's good. I think it's really good. And then we get to the hospital scene, or sorry, go ahead, Alan. It was to hold off at Bitch, cause I think, you know, just thinking like how Bitch thinks.

Speaker: For bitch, it's uncomplicated. The reason I have her leave kind of not saying anything, she just storms out, is she is just upset. She doesn't know why there's been talk of betrayal, but she didn't betray her. But she said she was going to, so she kind of has to go in process. She's angry.

Speaker: And that's really all it is. They've been building this relationship we've had this entire time. And she's like, well, she didn't betray me. Why should I be angry? And then gets over it. I think that Taylor spent a significant amount of time with bitch trying to get to know her and to understand her and having her back and stuff that bitch while having to process

Speaker: the initial reaction just kind of gets over it. I don't wanna make that sound like it's light. I feel like that is a natural conclusion to both how Bitch thinks and the development of the relationship that they've had together. And also I'll just throw out the very subtle fact that Bitch is a dog. She has dog brain and a dog is the most loyal friend you'll ever have. And I like that imagery.

Speaker: I appreciate the bitch being here as well. My main issue with that line of thinking though with bitch is that I think that coming into season two with bitch being incredibly angry that Taylor is there that she tries to like

Speaker: lever in the foam when they attack the wards. I think that all anger, all this anger is coming from the place of you betrayed the pack, regardless of what your motivations were. The base decision was that you were going to betray the pack and we can no longer trust you, so you are dead to us. And the behavior that comes out of that

Speaker: And not just bitch's behavior towards Taylor, but then Taylor's retaliation by beating her the crap up afterwards, I think is really important. So you'd have to figure out a whole new way to handle that. There's a great thought. Jacob, do you mind? Go, please, take it. It's a bit complicated, but we cut that.

Speaker: We have rewritten bitch's character a bit at the start of season two. You guys. We'll get to it in our season two recap.

Speaker: One issue we kind of run into, and again, this is something that works much, much better in book form than it does in show form, is that Bitch's anger at the start of season two doesn't really feel justified. It feels really out of place.

Speaker: after everything, after Leviathan, after the regrouping, after everyone else has kind of moved on. Not so much having a character that's like still on the fence, but the amount of anger and frustration that Bitch has in season two, in those early arcs. It's hard to make that work effectively and importantly, resolve just as effectively. Like if you're going to carry that tension across seasons,

Speaker: Taylor and Bitch sort of get over it with the fight they have in Ark. What is that, Ark 10 or Ark 9? Yeah, it's right away. Yeah, they sort of resolve that and the plot moves on. And again, that works fine when there's not a season break there and you're just sort of going Ark to Ark. It works pretty well. But if you're breaking up a season of a television show to carry that anger, to then resolve it in like the first episode of season two,

Speaker: doesn't really flow very well. So either you have to resolve it in season one or you carry the anger through all of season two and just make that part of a character arc for the entire next season. And so we opted for the first option just because we feel to work a bit better if all of the undersiders are on the same page, sort of resolving that conflict

Speaker: as opposed to carrying it, just one, less work for us. I think to rewrite a whole season of tension and character development, but two, just to kind of unify where the undersiders sat and all of that. I will say, I agree with you. It's a big change for Bitch's character, but I do think it gives her more room to grow in season two. It also does a job of

Speaker: with having all of the lesser tensions taken out. You know, cause we, we get to, you know, Alec basically goes, yeah, she was going to, I mean, Alec literally goes, ah, she was going to betray us, but then she didn't. So I'm over it. Like no harm, no foul. Like he gets over it so quickly. Bitch is, you know, pro Taylor.

Speaker: Uh, Lisa's always been on board with Taylor. So all of them being on board highlights that they are with Taylor and not with Brian. Yeah. And that's something that we, you know, happens continuously through this thing where like Taylor's in there, Taylor and Brian are kind of supposed to be the closer ones, but Taylor turns around and undermines him. Right. Yeah. Like hard. Um, and.

Speaker: I think her, you know, I talk about her ability that, you know, it's not all her, but she, well, a couple of times she does kind of flip everybody's opinions. And part of that is the influence that she has with bitch that she's made. Like she's figured out bitch and Brian still hasn't. And Brian's been with bitch a lot longer than Taylor has. And so this idea that like we are slowly building to the fact that Taylor is going to oust Brian.

Speaker: You know, and this is a long time coming and also highlights, you know, we have this weird, awkward, you know, uh, are they enemies or are they lovers bit with Brian and Taylor moving forward? Um, where he's the last hangup and maybe it hurts him because, uh, he and Taylor were kind of the closest, like they kissed. Well,

Speaker: He didn't say no, you know? And I think having that like he's really butthurt about it.

Speaker: I mean, I think that makes sense. He should be. I don't like how quickly they could potentially be coming to Taylor's age, though, at the hospital. Like, if we do play it out this way, where she, you know, she tells them beforehand, everyone's mad at her, I never want to see you again. And then at the hospital, there are all of a sudden on her side, like,

Speaker: I, to me, if we're talking about how Bitch's anger feels kind of out of nowhere in season two, I feel like them being on Taylor's side again feels a little out of nowhere because, like, I realize that they're a bunch of teenagers and their brains aren't finished developing. But like, teenagers hold grudges faster and longer and I don't

Speaker: know how I feel about them just forgiving her so fast. That's a good point. And I would, and I've talked about this as well, I would leave the forgiveness and her like rejoining the undersiders. That still can be ambiguous.

Speaker: because of the way we start season two, which we'll have fun getting into that in a future season two recap. But that ambiguity is still there at the start of the season and plays into how we want to start season two as well. So that's fine. I would absolutely keep that. I think more, it's the undersiders defending Taylor against arms master.

Speaker: who now looks like even a bigger bitch than in the original story because he tries his one last trick up his sleeve and it just backfires right in his face. And it's more the contrast between the villains and the heroes in that sense because at the end of the day, so because the contrast there is Taylor's betrayal to the undersiders

Speaker: versus arm's master's betrayal to the entire superhero community essentially with fucking up the fight with lung and then trying to out Taylor like he's doing everything wrong to an absurd degree beyond what Taylor just did and it's more like them defending her in that situation against him as opposed to just a like let's all sink by our friends again

Speaker: Right. You know, that kind of thing. Yeah. I mean, as long as I feel like as long as that's shown in that scene where it's like, well, we're not forgiving you. We're just standing up against, you know, bitch master. You can even you can even throw in a line where Brian says something like you have the we know line, which I like. But then you could also add in like just for an extra punch him saying something like, well, why should we care? She's not with us anymore or something like that.

Speaker: Yeah, I was gonna go with we don't for like, we don't forgive her. But she's like, you know, she's with us or something like that. I was gonna go with with Lisa being like, do you want back with the undersiders? And Taylor being like, I don't know. And she's like, you know, no, no, you should come back. Like, you know, bitch would love to see you and Taylor'd be like, but you know, Brian and I and she's like, Brian will get over it. Like,

Speaker: You know, yeah, he's still pissed, but you know, you'll figure out a way. Yeah. You always do. I feel like having that conversation at the park is probably going to be really important. If you can convince a bitch to be friends with you, it can't be that hard to convince Brian. Right.

Speaker: I feel better if they are able to have a conversation. I just, I don't like the idea of leaving the viewer at the end of season one, like the undersiders are Rosie and Mary and the only issue is Brian. Like if we are more on board with like leaving it, like you said earlier, Jacob, leaving it more ambiguous, leaving it more open -ended, kind of the idea of like, well, okay, so she's in with the undersiders, but like,

Speaker: Well, they take her back is more of the question than will she try to rejoin the group? Like, OK, well, Taylor's back in, but like, will we be a cohesive group in season two? And the and the answer is we don't know. And if you if you have that if you have that scene to where Brian kind of says something like or somebody says something to the effect of she's not really with us anymore, then you can have that later conversation with Lisa, be like,

Speaker: Listen, I think I can get you back in, but I just need to know if you're at all interested. Um, basically saying like we talked about it, but you can have that conversation kind of play out through Lisa being a narrator saying, right? We talked about it. Everybody's still pissed, but we can't deny that you are a valuable member of our team. I like that. I like that a lot. And then that's where you leave it with Taylor being like,

Speaker: I'll think about it, but kind of obviously hinting yes. And then you have the phone call with Coyle, which is good as well. And you can even do a bait and switch with a phone call too, right? Because at the end, Taylor Goes calls, she's in, everybody is thinking she's calling Brian or somebody like that. And then you have the cut to Coyle.

Speaker: and credits and you're like, okay. Yeah, I like that. Because we know Tattletale's power too, you could even have her say something like, you'd have Taylor say something like, I don't know, I gotta think about it and then walk away. But then Tattletale just says it with such confidence. No, no, that is the intent. I love that, I love that so much. She says she doesn't know what she's gonna do, it's nice to see you, Lisa waits for Taylor to leave and then calls her employer and says, she's in. Oh, she's in. And I think leaving it maybe with, yeah, like Hannah was saying,

Speaker: Is I don't feel like I think I kind of agree that the tension of her essentially wanting to, you know, revealing that she's betrayed the heroes. I don't know. I feel like just resolving it so quickly feels a bit unearned maybe.

Speaker: And I think it's not completely resolved, which I completely understand. But I think from a viewer's mindset, if you have this big conflict and then you throw out, oh, yeah, she's still with us is going to feel resolved, especially if you're not introducing the tension yet until season two. Right. So that's that's just my my take away from that. Yeah, that's good. But I think I think leaving a little bit of ambiguity as to whether or not they even want her back, I think is good, though.

Speaker: Because I think that's that's even better than being like, hey, clearly everybody's on your side except Brian. Right. Well, I was going to say we don't know that, though, with this. We don't know that Alex on the side. We don't know that, you know, obviously Brian's still upset him and Alec were still pissed when they left. We don't know what their state is at the end. OK. Other than we've got her back for this argument, which is what happens in the book.

Speaker: Which again, I think is they sort of double effect, not the right word, but whatever you want to say it, of the she's in phone call is because again, the audience is expecting resolution with the undersiders, but that's not what that is. That is a call to her boss. Yeah. Yeah. Just coil being sort of the mastermind here. So there absolutely still is, and I agree, there still should be tension with the undersiders there.

Speaker: And again, we can sort of shape that with that scene, I think with the dialogue there to make that more obvious. Cause I don't want it to be that she's number one that Taylor's even interested in being with the undersiders. Cause we could, you know, for the audience's idea, we could kick off season two with her joining the heroes, you know, that she's like, you know, I wanted to be a superhero. I'm going to go on the straight and narrow now.

Speaker: or I wanna be a rogue or - It makes more sense for her to be a rogue than to try and join up with the heroes for season two. But she starts her own group. I get what you're saying. She says, I don't know, I'm gonna think about it. I'll let you know. At least on her end of that conversation. She doesn't know she has no feelings.

Speaker: the definite feelings for that. And at the same time, we don't know what the state of the undersiders even wanting her. All we know is that Lisa wants her back and is trying to convince her.

Speaker: And just to sort of tie it into season two as well, just because we've read and already discussed some of those arcs. This this does play perfectly into the way season two is going to open because the first time we see Taylor after this arc is from Shadowstalker's point of view when she's spying on her. And she does look like she's a rogue. She's out doing everything by herself and then of course gets captured. So there there's still going to be that that

Speaker: that feeling of not knowing where Taylor is, is exactly where season two starts. Yeah. And then, you know, then she is with the undersiders and we've got to answer those questions and we do, you know, that's how you work it from there. But it definitely wouldn't start season two with them all back together, you know, playing in the next heist, you know, it's, uh, there's still, there's still tension there. Okay. I feel like if we can nail that tension, then we'll nail the scene. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker: And obviously a lot of that depends on acting or voice acting the way it's presenting scripting pacing and all of that. So this is all very theoretical. Um, but I think it's interesting. I think that there is, there's some interesting tension here. I like, I think overall, I'd say I'm okay with a lot of the changes you guys have made. Um, obviously adapting text to screen is very difficult.

Speaker: Um, and yeah, I think overall you guys have done a great job of taking these ideas and, you know, um, putting them together in a cohesive and interesting way. Um, and I look forward to hearing more about, about what you do with season two. Yeah. Well, really good about it. It feels good. Yeah. Big things. We, uh, move towards season two, you know, we've got, uh, you know, we've got

Speaker: you know, the reveals of coil and his little machinations in the background. Dina, specifically. All of this, yeah. Dina and coil, we've got a lot moving forward with the wards being kind of a mainstay and focusing a little bit more on them. And obviously, you know, there's a bunch of non - And the world. Yeah, and the world. Yep, hell yeah.

Speaker: Yeah. Lesson. So it's, you know, it's, it's fun moving forward into the things that we've set up here with, with coil being our overarching mystery that started here. We're going to have, you know, background mystery of cauldron, obviously, you know, following the family of new wave, uh, you know, cause you know, we've had them in half the episodes, uh, you know, in one form or another.

Speaker: Right. And then, uh, yeah, I think there's some good, some good setups, some subplots and plots to follow. Uh, and of course the mystery of what's going on with the trigger events. Yeah. Always the mysteries. There's always another level. There's always always a bigger fish.

Speaker: Well, this is going to cap off our longest episode of Dissecting World. Big thanks to Nick and Hannah for dropping in for this episode. We really appreciate the insight, the thoughts, the comments. That was really, really good. I made a ton of notes. Alan did as well. Definitely going to be looking at a few things, restructuring some stuff, especially early on.

Speaker: So yeah, a lot of good insight there. Thanks to Michael, as always, for chiming in and editing. Thanks to you guys too. Jacob and Alan, you guys have done such a good job with breaking apart this story and reshaping it into something adaptable. You guys are great. You guys are doing real good.

Speaker: Well, thank you. You're both cute. We try. You're both incredibly good looking. Thanks, Beyonce. I think you're cute too. And you, the fans, let us know now that you've heard it all in one long episode, what you think, love and hate and what you suggest. And thanks so much. If you're a Patreon, we might even listen to you.

Speaker: Listen to all of you, I promise. Tune in for the bonus episode on Patreon, where we do season one Smasher Pass. And we skippled by a theoretical combining characters together in ships and how that would go.

Speaker: We're going to put their pictures into chat GPT and see what their babies would look like. Oh no. You want to see the shipping episodes and the chat GPT baby episodes. Remember to write that down. Comment that on Patreon. $10 tier, the silver tier. Like I said, we get enough of those. We might even make that episode. We also have grew feet pics. No, what is happening?

Speaker: We like to call them our meet and greet pants. This is what happens after you podcast for three hours straight.

Speaker: Anyways, stay tuned for, yeah, I was going to say find us on our socials. At Brockton Bay BC on all platforms. And the link is in our description. Carry on Jacob. No, thank you, Michael. That was perfect. Catch us up. Stay tuned for the next episodes of both the Brockton Bay book club and dissecting worm. We're going back into our regular scheduled programming arc by arc. It's going to be a lot of fun. We're deep into season two at this point, so stick around. It's going to be a good time.

Speaker: Michael, would you do us the honors of laying us out? Yes, I can.

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.

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