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Arc 8: Extermination
816 Plays1 year ago
This story isn’t intended for young or sensitive readers. Readers who are on the lookout for trigger warnings are advised to give Worm a pass.
Complete list of potential triggers: here
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Episode Description: “But you should know your chances going in. Given the statistics from our previous encounters with the Brockton Bay Book Club, a ‘good day’ still means that one in four of the people in this room will probably be dead before this day is done.”
Get in contact with us @brocktonbaybc
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Timestamps:
(00:00) - Introduction
(01:48) - Book Club Begins
(31:38) - Zencastr
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Content Warnings
00:00:00
Speaker
Worm is a web serial by JC McCray, also known as Wildbo. You can read Worm in its original format by visiting parahumans.wordpress.com or donate to Wildbo's Patreon at patreon.com slash wildbo. This story isn't intended for young or sensitive readers. Readers who are on the lookout for trigger warnings are advised to give Worm a pass. For a complete list, check the description for all of Worm's trigger warnings.
00:00:29
Speaker
As
Release Schedule and Discussion Format
00:00:30
Speaker
a quick announcement, as these arcs get longer, we realized we need more time to read them and digest them, as will all of you reading along with us. So we are going to be splitting the future releases. Instead of weekly releases for each arc, we're going to go every other week. However, we are going to still fill that void in between with Dissecting Worm, which is now going to be its own release. So as the weeks go on, it'll be an episode of the Brockton Bay Book Club.
00:00:59
Speaker
And then the following week will be the episode of Dissecting Worm about that same arc and so on and so on.
Arc Popularity and Character Dynamics
00:01:50
Speaker
Good morning, Brockton Bay. Batten your hatches and strap on your helmets. It's D-Day in Brockton. Indeed it is. Hope everybody's not afraid to get wet as the good captain might think. Friends, we made it. We made it to our gate. In many a fan's opinion,
00:02:21
Speaker
For a lot of worm fans, their favorite arc of the entire cereal. I was thinking about it. Yeah, it's the one I think of most readily. Yeah, it's a good one. It is an end bringer fight like like this is this is the big Kahuna. And boy, do we have a lot to talk about.
00:02:45
Speaker
So let's not waste any time. Let's just, let's get into it. We are the Brockton Bay book club. We've got a full cast tonight. Everybody's here. We got a lot to get through. And I think instead of going chapter by chapter for this arc, just because so much of it flows together, we should kind of go in three parts. We'll do like a little bit, the part that's pre
00:03:14
Speaker
the Leviathan fight, then the fight itself, and then the last part just kind of be post that. And we can sort of group the interludes where kind of appropriate there. So yeah, without further ado, let's dive into this thing. So we don't have too much here before the fight actually starts, a couple arcs or a couple chapters rather, kind of building everything up.
00:03:40
Speaker
How did, uh, how did that, how did that feel for everyone set in the tone for what's to come? I mean, the policeman just walking up at the one guy's like reaching for his gun and the other, you know, puts his hand is like, no, let them throw. Just like, damn, I got chills. Yeah. Set the tone. Let's go.
00:04:02
Speaker
Like we are all in this, like the, you know, very end is nigh. It doesn't matter who you are. Like we're going to need all the hands on deck for this one. Very great world building where it's like, you know, they play their little hero villain game, but then when the going gets tough, everybody's like, okay, like, come on, everybody get in. Let's come up with a game plan. I thought it was really cool.
00:04:27
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of a unique, I was really trying to think about any other story that sort of approaches these sort of world-ending events or city-ending events in this way. And nothing really comes close. There's a lot of examples of the hero and his rival
00:04:46
Speaker
her rival sort of, you know, teaming up to take down a bigger bad once in a while. Like you see that from time to time, but on this scale, I can't think of anything else that has this type of dynamic and one that's like set in stone during the story. Like this has been like, you know, a part of the process whenever there's a, whenever there's an end bringer fight, everybody gets together. This isn't just like the first time they decided to do this. Like this is part of the world, which is pretty fun.
00:05:14
Speaker
Yeah, and I appreciate too how they immediately set up the stakes by presenting
00:05:21
Speaker
You know, it's kind of now becoming a who's who list of heroes. We've heard of some of these heroes mentioned in name and in stories before in passing, but now we get to see them. And that's pretty, that kind of lays into that weight. And we also hear from Taylor just how devastating these beings, these end bringers can be. Like Newfoundland just doesn't exist anymore. It's like, and so you hear this
00:05:51
Speaker
terrifying you know this world is already kind of terrifying in its own way because of the
00:05:56
Speaker
you know, the amount of people who have powers and you never know who's going to do what, or if you're just going to be on the wrong end of somebody's trigger event. But now to add to it, you've got these three sort of God-like creatures that can just destroy so much and you feel those
High Stakes and Hero-Villain Cooperation
00:06:17
Speaker
stakes. And I think Wildboat does a great job of building the tension with the increase of the sound of the rain.
00:06:24
Speaker
Um, how you can hear just like Taylor describing every once in a while, the rain's getting more intense. You can hear it more loudly. Legend is shouting louder, you know, stuff like that. Um, it's just really, it's really well written and really well built into that tension. So that when it finally does break, you're like, Oh, all right, here it comes. Uh, it's great. I love it. Exactly. Yeah. Something, you know, it happens or talking about like, it does this happen in any other,
00:06:51
Speaker
superhero thing where like they all get together and they team up. And like, I'm sure it does, but it doesn't happen enough. And I know that it's probably happened in like, had to have happened later in like the Marvel universe where they realized like, Oh yeah, we've got to make like, we've got to get the bad guys team up with the good guys. And we've got to make it make sense. It would always make sense to be like, Hey guys, um, this city won't exist if you don't help.
00:07:22
Speaker
So your choices are, number one, die. You could just die. You don't even have to be there. Run for it, I guess. Lose all your money in the entire operations that you set up. The bad guys are so invested in this. And as we've shown for at least the undersiders, and I'm sure other people, they have families. They have
00:07:47
Speaker
alternative things other than just being evil. It could be supporting a sick mother or, you know, a numerous, numerous other reasons. Like the bad guys aren't bad because they're bad. Like that's not why they're doing things. Yeah. There's no, there's no, I'm Dr. Evil and I'm here to destroy everything. I am evil just because I'm evil. Yeah. Yeah.
00:08:13
Speaker
And I think that's why you can do an event like this and have the bad guys teaming up, but you can't do that in a lot of the DC Marvel stuff. It's like, why is this bad guy bad? Well, cause he's bad. I'm like, okay, cool. So that person would never help in a world ending disaster. But here, because the villains are people too, and they have depth,
00:08:36
Speaker
They're going to show up and they're going to fight right alongside the heroes even if they die because it's just such a monumentous end bringer. If you don't, everybody dies. Yeah, that's the end of it.
00:08:56
Speaker
I like that there's a pride thing too, kind of associated with it. On the hero side, if you don't fight, you're basically blacklisted as a hero. You have no hope of getting respect anywhere else. But then also from the villain side too, it's like you're saying, it's their city that they want to rule or control or anything like that. So if they don't fight, then they can't make a claim to anything. So yeah, there's a lot of into it.
00:09:27
Speaker
It's a great place to prove yourself in a weird way. Knowing the odds, which he even says, legend says, that the odds are one in four.
00:09:37
Speaker
capes will die in an end bringer attack. Like one in four, that's crazy. And yet even with those odds, it's very much of like, you can prove yourself here. You can prove yourself against an end bringer and you will either die and be memorialized because of your sacrifice or you'll survive and you'll have the clout to say, yeah, oh yeah, the Leviathan fight, I was there.
00:10:03
Speaker
And that element to it is such a sense of pride, I think, for the capes here. Like when Taylor's standing in this room full of all these capes and she's looking around the room, it's like these people are here because they know the odds, they know how dangerous this is, and they're here anyways. Because she notes very early on, Coyle isn't here.
00:10:27
Speaker
coil isn't in the room, where's coil? So coil's not here. So there are capes that decide not to go and help, or to hide, or to flee, or to cover their heads, whatever they need to do. But the people who are here, they are taking a stand. Whether that's so they don't get blacklisted because they're a hero, or because they're trying to prove themselves, or they're just trying to stand up for their city. The people here are, this is the people that have shown up basically.
00:10:57
Speaker
Yeah. At the same time, I don't want to miss too that some of these capes, because we know the vistas there, some of these capes are incredibly young and I just imagine it's like you're in like middle school English class and you get a text, it's like, hey, come on, we got to go fight God. Isn't that the premise of every anime?
00:11:22
Speaker
basically. Pretty much. Pretty much. But yeah, no, I really do love that moment where Legend is kind of, he's giving everybody the lowdown, which again, this is, I mean, I've said it once, said it a million times, love the way the wild bow
00:11:38
Speaker
gives out information to us as the reader without necessarily, like, spelling it out super, you know, obviously, but literally Taylor and the others are getting a briefing on Leviathan. They're getting briefed and Taylor, like, because we're listening to this through her perspective, we're hearing the things that she knows already, like Newfoundland getting completely dumped in
00:12:00
Speaker
back into the water, but also things that she didn't know, like perhaps the odds or how they're going to classify the breakup of capes into who's going to be doing what. And so she's seeing some of these things for the very first time.
00:12:16
Speaker
And some of the things she already knows, but as the reader, we're coming to it blind, other than the conversation that she had with Lisa and the van all those arcs ago. This is our first introduction to Endbringers, and it doesn't feel like we're getting this huge info dump. It feels realistic. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, a great place to put a little bit of exposition, which just feels very natural.
00:12:45
Speaker
I do want to highlight Legend's role here as well, only because obviously we don't know much about him yet, but he's really the first hero to me that has felt like a hero-hero in the sense of, you know, he comes in and he's like, all right, people, here's what we got to do. Some of you might die, and I want you to know that I appreciate everyone. You know, he comes in with like the Aragorn speech, you know, the battle, the hopeless battle kind of thing.
00:13:11
Speaker
Whereas other heroes have felt kind of less than I think there's a nice highlighting of yeah. We've been witnessing Avengers. What is it Avengers West in San Francisco?
00:13:26
Speaker
And finally, finally, one of the original Avengers decided to show up. Finally, Captain America, Iron Man and, you know, all show. Yeah, exactly. And
Character Introductions and Depth
00:13:37
Speaker
it feels like it feels like that. Right. Like these, the big three as as she I think it's interesting, too, we can talk about how she ranks people. I find that fascinating. But like the big three, Eidolon, Legend and Alexandria.
00:13:54
Speaker
Just the way that they kind of come in and show like, yeah, these guys are the real deal. And you can tell. And let's just get ahead of it now. There are dozens of names in this arc. We are going to pronounce them as best we can. And we are going to correct the pronunciations when clearly the world is wrong. Is that a statement you want to make about anything specific, Jacob?
00:14:23
Speaker
I have, I have one in mind, but I'll save it for a minute. I have one. I was going to kind of itching. Like we, this is where we get all the heroes and villains all together. Did we want to talk about like favorites now since they're all gathered together? There's so many. I was going to say, I do feel like we should wait till the end because there are so many and like, as things happen, people become my favorite for certain reasons. So I'd rather wait till the end.
00:14:53
Speaker
Yeah, this might be one of our Patreon exclusives. So if y'all would be interested in something like that, we can have a whole discussion on heroes through this art. Just let us know. Exactly. And you can also join us for our every character and worm smash or pass, including the in bringers. Oh my gosh. 100% we are doing that. That is. That episode will be five hours long. For real. For real. Yeah.
00:15:20
Speaker
This is when we need our spreadsheet of all the heroes to add them to because this is like when we're meeting so many of these of these capes. Yeah. Thing is so many of them two are just names. We don't even know what they do or who they are. They're just nameless. A lot of red shirts. They're just a name that gets popped up as. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of red shirts exactly. Did Weld show up? Yes. Okay, because they never said his name there, but I thought it was Weld.
00:15:50
Speaker
Yes. Which one as well? Yes, yes. The metal boy with the spoon sticking out of him or whatever. Yeah, he shows up. He's the one that meets. So Taylor runs into him in the parking lot on the way in and then she sees him later on.
00:16:09
Speaker
And I'm pretty sure they do name him, but- They name him in the end chapter before with arms master talking about like who's coming in and who's being traded. But then in this arc, they don't say like, this is weld. They just say, it's a metal boy. Yeah, well, they do say his name, but they're not using his name and association with him as the person because it's later on like an armband announcement. Which of course, I mean, I've read the book, so I recognized it. But as
00:16:39
Speaker
Actually, that's a great question, Kat and Taylor. Did you guys pick up on anything like that reading through for the first time? Could you repeat what you mean? Yeah, I'm confused what the question was. Sorry, I just mean for, I guess, maybe I'm not gonna be able to word this well. My thought is that coming into this work, I know which characters that are being named are
00:17:08
Speaker
you know, important or feel like they stand out. Uh, did you feel like those, like, did you feel like any names were stuck out on purpose? Um, for me, I, I'll be honest, there were some sections where like, I just can't absorb that much fighting. And this is me on every fantasy I've read. Like I'm not actually, I have no,
00:17:36
Speaker
images in my brain whenever I'm reading.
00:17:40
Speaker
descriptions of fighting is just a lot to me. So I do not think that any name stood out to me because there was just so much being thrown at me. So many names, so much happening that I was just mainly trying to get the gist of the overarching situation versus honing in on specific people.
Battle Strategies and Heroic Organization
00:18:05
Speaker
And I was trying to pay attention to the people we already know.
00:18:09
Speaker
hoping that he'll just explain to me the people I actually needed to remember later on. Because it was just a lot. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's absolutely valid. I remember the first time reading this just being like, oh, that was a cool name for a superhero. It's a shame they're only mentioned when they die. Speaking of being mentioned when they die though, we'd want to skip past the armband and
00:18:38
Speaker
Great idea. Poor execution. I don't know how we want to phrase that thing, but here's a device that's just going to not nonstop. Just shout out everyone who's dying around you for the next hour. Yeah. Great idea. It's interesting. It kind of reminds me of a weird little Apple Watch thing. And I think since this was written in 2012, was the Apple Watch in existence yet?
00:19:01
Speaker
I mean, I don't feel like that was, with the information that we know so far about like the computers, like Taylor's school. Right, right. That's true. Yeah, yeah. Nope, it was released in 2015. Okay, okay. And this was written after Spy Kids too, so the idea of a cool watch was already in effect. That's true, that's true, right. Yeah, the old spy wristband is a common trope, I guess. Yeah.
00:19:30
Speaker
Fascinating, fascinating technology. I mean, I think it's probably the best they had, just the ability to be able to communicate long distance, to make announcements to everybody who has one, to track Leviathan's position.
00:19:45
Speaker
It's useful, but it is mightily depressing to be able to just keep hearing over and over again. I'm making fun of it here, but in terms of it as a writing tool as well for this chapter, brilliant. Yeah, the way it builds the tension and just the horror of everything is so good. I will say I was reading this last bit.
00:20:10
Speaker
in the car and I just I looked over at Alan and I had like I had goosebumps from and it was specifically the line where the armband is literally just spitting out name you know name down name deceased name deceased named like again and again and that like the wave of hitting you realizing that like
00:20:29
Speaker
Oh my God, Leviathan took one step and now 16 capes are dead. Holy shit, it sets the tone for the fight so well, so, so well. I do have a question though, because Leviathan to me was Godzilla. Yes. Kind of like a skinny Godzilla. I have Godzilla vibes. Am I wrong?
00:21:02
Speaker
Partly, Godzilla is your multi-story creature, like your skyscraper creature. This is just a multi-story creature. Leviathan's only 30 feet tall. So like house size as opposed to skyscraper size, right? Yeah, like three-story house size and skinny as opposed to thick and Empire State. Or like Iron Giant. Okay, so now I got like a bearded dragon running on its back two legs.
00:21:29
Speaker
Correct. That is correct. There's some really good fan art, I think, that's always helped me visualize. I was going to say, Michael, you can cut this piece out, but I was going to post some fan art from one of my favorite artists. Yeah, there's some really gorgeous artwork. Well, I mean, we can also share it on our social medias.
00:21:53
Speaker
Yes. Okay. So the artwork that Nick just shared is the artwork that I am using for one of the books that I'm binding for Alan.
00:22:04
Speaker
Oh, nice. And I think it's a good representation of him. I feel like the tail is a little long, but I don't know. I feel like it does a gosh, it just hit so well. They said it was like 45, 50 feet in length. I like that you can kind of see the water echo too behind him. Yes, you can see it behind him. I love that. Before we go, are we going full Leviathan? Are we just moving into this?
00:22:34
Speaker
Are we done with- Before we do, let's finish up what we're talking about before we kick into Leviathan because boy howdy. Yeah, I definitely, and this might be just my past kind of seeping over into it, but I'm a big history YouTube guy. My YouTube is just me watching documentaries to fall asleep at night, just to give you a little insight. So literally,
00:23:00
Speaker
an army 90% of it is just going to be people like behind the scenes, like getting you supplies, doing this, doing that. And literally 10% of your army is actually fighting men. So I was really confused on the hero side. Cause I was like, you have all these heroes, um, like tattletale and whatnot. You should have like a nerve center almost like you should have like a command center where they're all using their powers like as one. And instead of being like, Oh, Hey, like Gordy's dead, man.
00:23:29
Speaker
I'll be out front, good luck. Black Hawk down reference. But the thing is, instead of being like, arm master's dead, up Taylor's dead, up Gru's dead, be like, hey, point A needs bodies, get over there. Stuff like that. I was a little bit disappointed on that front because
00:23:49
Speaker
Which I guess if it's like a doomsday scenario, you're kind of like Soviet Union just throwing bodies at the problem. But I definitely, I was like, come on, I wanna see some better uses of powers. Yeah, I was thinking the same thing because I'm like, why are people like, why are people like Tattletale, who is not a physical- Literally no powers, is literally a teenage girl.
00:24:16
Speaker
Yeah, she's a teenage girl who knows stuff. And granted, she knows a lot of stuff. But what the fuck is she gonna do? I was like, what are we doing? Yeah, exactly. And same thing with Skitter, whereas, yes, she can do things and she did do a lot of things. There was also, for a good chunk of it, she literally had nothing to do. So she just started playing, which was great. I mean, she made herself useful and
00:24:45
Speaker
that's wonderful, but it's also like maybe, yeah, there was like no actual like use of other than going, oh, if you're like, if you got a big bad power, come to the front, everybody else, good luck. Like what?
00:25:02
Speaker
It's a good point. I think one aspect of warm as a story that admittedly I think doesn't get enough attention early on through the story, but it is present is that at least on the villain side specifically, but on the hero side as well, concealing what your power is, is a really big deal.
00:25:24
Speaker
and not letting people know what you're truly capable of is really, really important. So I think there's part of that. And I am trying to write some explanation in here for you, even though I think, Taylor, you're absolutely right. But I think there's a lot of like, hey, you know what you do better than we do. That kind of thing where you can't direct... So where you think you're needed. Yeah. You can't direct...
00:25:48
Speaker
It was stuff that you don't know what they do. So I think it was a bit of bad in there too. I think I would add too that the only other thing may be that it has a lot to do with time because they don't know when the end bringers are going to attack or where they're going to attack.
00:26:05
Speaker
which one is going to attack. And which one is going to attack. I will say it sounds like from this story, from the way it's told, this is the first time they've actually had advanced notice of an end bringer arriving. Yeah. Which means if you think about how badly this went and how badly it feels, you can only imagine then how badly it goes when they don't have any warning and all of a sudden Leviathan is in downtown or exactly, you know, all of that. Yeah. So maybe that's some kind of soccer justification, but
00:26:35
Speaker
That's at least one explanation, maybe. Hey, that's why we're here. Exactly. I feel like in the ideal scenario, it would be exactly what you said, Taylor, and what you said, Kat. Just the idea of like, we have an organized front. We have a battle station where we have all of our thinkers like Tattletale.
00:26:53
Speaker
who can be smart and direct people would be at one location. We'd have our heavy hitters here, we'd have people like Taylor Skitter, who her bugs are not gonna be useful up against a big water lizard. Like, okay, we're gonna have you help with first aid. Have those broken up way better.
00:27:15
Speaker
But what are you gonna do? Okay, all right, the capes of Brockton Bay this Saturday, we're gonna do a little training exercise where we're gonna figure out should an end bringer hit Brockton Bay, this is what your role will be and this is where you'll need to go. Ideally, that would be
00:27:36
Speaker
because then we would know exactly where everybody needs to go. We would have an organized front, but what villain is gonna be like, yeah, I'll show up for the conference on Saturday in case an end bringer arrives, so I know where I need to go. The evacuation plan for people, sure, that's great, but what do you do as a cape? I think that in an ideal world, that would be the optimal scenario, but in this sense, there's just no time.
00:28:04
Speaker
Yeah.
End Bringers as Natural Disasters
00:28:05
Speaker
I mean, this is probably something that the heroes do, like the villains are probably just not invited or just don't show up to them. But I also think all the way back, you were saying like they didn't get time to prepare. Like there is no nerve center because they didn't get that far. They were still sorting people when Leviathan hit. Like that's true. They were midway through trying to figure out like,
00:28:31
Speaker
what was going on when they got smacked. And then they were just, I guess, going with what they got. I was just going to say, so the protectorate is an organized institution. So I would think that they would have a nerve center set up. And it's not, that's completely separate from, we have all these volunteer capes. They themselves should have something and
00:29:00
Speaker
I feel like that is what is missing. Even the people who should be organized weren't because they should be prepared for this. Things are going to show up unexpectedly. That's how this shit happens. But they're supposed to already have some of that stuff established so that when that stuff shows up unexpectedly, they at least have something to go off.
00:29:26
Speaker
I can completely get that because it does feel like, wait, wait, wait, aren't you guys supposed to be more prepared than this? Like you're the ones here to protect us. And I get that. It's sort of like you would expect and not no insult to either of these organizations, but it's sort of like you go in expecting like a military response where everybody's prepared, they know their roles and they have their guns ready. And instead you kind of get this like,
00:29:52
Speaker
We're all gonna die. Yeah, let's go get the local sheriff's department and see if they can put enough together to stop it. It was literally from the people on the ground, it was here's an armband that will tell you who dies. Good luck.
00:30:07
Speaker
And that, yeah, that is what I think we're talking about here. Yeah, yeah. I think too, I think another thing that I'm gonna just try to get inside Wild Bo's head here. I'm gonna take a shot in the dark. But I think there's also this element that the end bringers are essentially like natural disasters on steroids.
00:30:27
Speaker
Think about our world right now. We have all sorts of stuff that can track hurricane movements, earthquakes, et cetera. But we have literally no way of stopping a hurricane from hitting the coast. There's nothing we can do.
00:30:45
Speaker
to stop that. Despite how advanced we are as a society and a planet, the best we can do is evacuate people and bolt up the windows and then just let it hit. So I think there's some of that element too where Leviathan feels beatable because he's 30 feet tall and humanoid in shape. And that just feels like a fight we're used to seeing
00:31:08
Speaker
win, but they have never won. It's been 30 years of these end bringer attacks and they've never beaten them. So part of me is also like, I wonder, again, trying to read into the story a bit here, but I wonder if a lot of the heroes are just exhausted. What can we do except die? Jesus.
00:31:38
Speaker
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Speaker
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00:32:49
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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. I was wondering about how long when, when did the end bringer start showing up? Were they like immediately when power started showing up or were they like when the first end bringer attack was
00:33:18
Speaker
Yeah, it's in the early nineties, I think was the first one shortly. It's like a few years after Sion's first sighting, I think I have to look at the timeline again. Yeah. Cause it was something that I've definitely felt more of this time round, which was like, you're right. They weren't as prepared as you've like, they're just now getting an end bringer, like alert system. Yeah. Yeah.
00:33:48
Speaker
Like I think I would just always felt that they were for like these, this was a relatively new problem, you know, maybe like 10 years. But the fact that this is like 30 years of an issue. I wouldn't say 30 years. Didn't we just say the nineties?
00:34:08
Speaker
Yeah, I guess it's like 20 years. But with them being so erotic and never knowing what's going to hit, never really knowing. And actually thinking about that in the sense of just like we don't necessarily know everybody, every cape's powers, we don't necessarily know every single thing an end-bringer can do either. And we've only shown up twice. Exactly, exactly. We'll buy it then, I should say.
00:34:37
Speaker
Right. So we have a general idea because we've fought them before of what they can do and things that we should be aware of. But the idea of like, okay, well, we know that he's a really fast... Leviathan's a really fast swimmer. And we know that he has his water shape. What's it called? I can't remember what it's called. The water echo. Yeah, the echo. Yeah, the water echo. He has these things that are...
00:35:04
Speaker
know, we know work, but that we learn more information every time he shows up. And the fact of like, well, the only way to like, have a better detection system is for him to show up. And like, well, don't want that. But like, luckily, Arms Master and Dragon have this system that
00:35:28
Speaker
They don't know if it works and they're lucky that it pinged. The only reason we had a couple hours, if that, to gather people was because of their system. And just to answer the question, Leviathan is the 56th end bringer attack. 56th, holy shit. So that's what I'm saying. Damn.
00:35:52
Speaker
Holy cow. I was going to say, cause I thought it was way less than that. It's the first one that they were able to, uh, like get any sense of prepare for. You have to detect. Yeah. Well, speaking of the attacks, do we just want to go ahead and get into it? We kind of been talking for a little bit. We've been dancing around it.
Leviathan's Battle and Character Deaths
00:36:11
Speaker
What a fight. Holy macaroni.
00:36:15
Speaker
I don't even know where to start. I mean, I guess we can start with the tsunami. The tsunami hits and that right there is the first wave, if you will. But it's like before we've even seen him, he's already taken out capes. He's already taken out buildings and he's already done damage.
00:36:43
Speaker
One thing that's always hard for me to grasp when I'm reading anything is speed. Speed is just sort of one of those things. It's hard to visualize when reading, but you just get the sense that he is way faster than anyone was prepared for. Just crazy, just skidding around on the top of the water. I mean, really, he's got that image of the lizard just running across the water there. It's like that, but really deadly.
00:37:13
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely definitely nice to see like this like in game level threat like it's nice to see like something like that and it actually has repercussions I guess there's a lot of the time outside of war movies like I feel like especially for the superhero movies like
00:37:32
Speaker
final battle with Thanos and Endgame. They're like at the facility. There's not a lot of people around except for like all the other heroes and everybody that shows up. So it's not like there's not like a lot of death considering if that makes sense, considering this is like a galaxy wide ending battle. So it was definitely, it's not nice as in like, oh, I love seeing heroes die, but it's nice where it's just like, crap, like capes are dying, like capes I've never even heard of.
00:37:59
Speaker
That's insane. He took a step and there was someone there. Why was that person there? Literally just it engrosses you, which I thought I definitely appreciated. I think it's important for fantasy, sci-fi, whatever you want to call those overarching genre where they have frequent fights and frequent gang fights. Regardless of how powerful they are, people need to die. Yeah.
00:38:27
Speaker
You're fighting all the goddamn time. How is it that your group, granted, this is not the exception to that, but it's very unlikely that your group is going to 100% make it out. And granted, we killed a lot of capes. I'm kind of surprised that not one of the undersiders were even severely incapacitated.
00:38:57
Speaker
for a significant amount of time. So this is where the fun part begins when we talked about like a wild bow rolling for characters. This is the chat. This is the arc he started rolling on. And it is amazing that they did make it out alive because one of the things that you can go and read is his alternate chapters that he posted for when Taylor dies in this arc. And who becomes the next main character.
00:39:28
Speaker
Oh wow, that's interesting. Interesting. I'll be honest, I kind of find Skitter's power a little underwhelming in the sense that she seems to be very, very powerful, but at the same time, her power does not in and of itself seem like it should be as powerful as it is. Yeah, it's a fun thing to think about.
00:39:51
Speaker
Yeah, I think, um, if I remember right, Taylor, he, uh, wild bow had written, uh, several like little chapters and short stories set in the worm universe before starting worm. And Taylor was like one of the last characters he wrote about that he decided to keep as the primary protagonist of the series. But a lot of the other characters pop up obviously in the story because he was writing about all these kinds of things. So it's kind of fun to think about
00:40:17
Speaker
I'm not going to go too much into it in case you want to go back and read them later, but it is fun to kind of see those characters and kind of what he was thinking in terms of alternate protagonists and directions the story could have gone.
00:40:29
Speaker
Which, again, just makes the world feel real. It feels bigger. It feels more natural when those stakes exist for everyone. I mean, think in just a really pop culture sense. That is what made Game of Thrones the juggernaut it was, is when... Spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't seen Game of Thrones, about to spoil it for you right now.
00:40:49
Speaker
But when Ned Stark gets beheaded at the end of season one, the world lost its mind because no show kills off their protagonist. It's crazy. And I think you get a lot of, even though Taylor ends up being fine here, I think you get a lot of that same sense of just unease and uncertainty as characters that you have read about and were following and maybe even liked are dying.
00:41:18
Speaker
the weight of it. Yeah, exactly. It makes it a better reading experience when the deaths are actual deaths, not just, oh, it was a dream, or, oh, we can bring this character back, or we can whatever. With what Kat said, it feels heavy. It feels realistic. And not that we want these characters to die, but also it makes their lives
00:41:48
Speaker
feel like they mean more because when they do die, it is so final. Yeah. Were there any character deaths that maybe didn't take anybody by surprise because I do feel like this is the kind of thing where we can understand, yeah, people are going to die. But just out of curiosity, were there any that you were like, oh, I can't believe that person's dead. Yeah. Definitely your favorite person, Nick.
00:42:22
Speaker
We don't even see it, we just see Leviathan coming around the corner with half a body.
00:42:33
Speaker
Holy shit reading it and being like because because you know like mentally it's one of those it's my favorite thing Mentally, you know people are about to die and mentally, you know as a reader People I know are going to die
00:42:48
Speaker
But even reading it again, I couldn't remember who died in this arc. And with his, and he just, Leviathan just drops half of the Kaiser. And I'm just like, holy shit, we were just fighting. We were just fighting Empire 88 an arc ago, mere pages ago. And now he's half of the person dead, like what the heck?
00:43:18
Speaker
Right. But also, like, does this mean Leviathan is anti-white supremacy? So, you know, it's still Leviathan, I guess. He's genocidal towards just people. He's an equal opportunist when it comes to killing people. Yeah, bias is not his problem, except towards the living.
00:43:43
Speaker
I mean, he just fucking turns and tail whips a man in half at one point in time. Like every time Leviathan moves, somebody dies. Yeah, but not Taylor. Yeah. Yeah. But there is, um, that one too. And I would also say that Gallant, even though it's only kind of mentioned and he don't really feel it until later,
00:44:06
Speaker
Um, that was another one that I was like, Oh yeah. Like that was, again, it was, it was one of the, one of the kids, so to speak. Right. Whereas like, Oh, shoot. I thought about, uh, same with ages. Yeah. He just kind of hurt because I think he doesn't die to like very close to the end of the fight. Like he's, he's fighting throughout most of that fight, surviving everything as you would expect him to, from what you know about his powers and like,
00:44:35
Speaker
I can't remember exactly if it's pinpointed or not or when it's revealed, but he had to be like one of the last ones to die. And I just remember thinking like, it was so close. We almost made it. Yeah. I'm trying to find a list right now of everybody that dies in ARCH 8 and I can't find it, unfortunately.
00:44:58
Speaker
I really, really gets to you at a certain point where you just, like I said before, with the armband, just name after name after name. And I think, Nick, you said this earlier, you hear a name and you're like, oh, that's a great name. To Beth, they're dead. That's the end of that, I guess.
00:45:16
Speaker
I was also thinking about with the armband, when the armband marks someone as deceased versus someone as down. If down means like considerably injured or if down means unconscious or
00:45:29
Speaker
you know, whatever that might be. But if it's unconscious, how many people that got knocked down that weren't able to be saved right away died because of just the water, just the tidal waves kicking through the city again and again and again that just got drowned underneath it all. Like how many people got knocked down and, you know, they weren't even near Leviathan, but the wave took them out.
00:45:51
Speaker
Don't they mention that at one point, I think, where I forget who maybe, maybe it's Taylor's monologue or somebody else, but they talk about how in a previous Leviathan fight, they thought they had the brilliant idea to bring in some ice powered heroes to freeze all the water. All they did was give him projectiles, manipulate them in the water. Now you've got hard water with
00:46:18
Speaker
shards of hard water inside of it. Something that stood out to me this time, because I've always been a fan of the water shadow. It's something you do as a kid when you're in the pool and you move and you try and push the waves back and forth and stuff. And I've always had that idea as a power. And I remember one of the biggest things that drew me into this was Wild Bo had the ability to write
00:46:49
Speaker
couldn't put into words, and he nailed the water shadow, the water echo. That was an idea that I've always thought about, and he gave it form. But something that stood out this time was the head twitching and how alien the end-bringer is. It's got three eyes on one side and one on the other. I'd forgotten about that.
00:47:15
Speaker
And then his head like he wobbles along real slow and awkward like when he just bopping around. But then the head is like twitching all over the place, like nonstop. Yeah, I think they say it doesn't Taylor say like the head twitches at a different speed than his body's moving or something like that. It's like it's it's creepy. What like zombie movies will do with like whatever zombies, whatever you want to call them, where they always have that like that twitch.
00:47:45
Speaker
I also love that he's silent too. He has no mouth or anything. He's just... Yeah, he doesn't make any noise. He doesn't roar or anything like that. That to me is also kind of creepy. Do we want to bring in Tattletales' interlude to this as well or no? Yeah, probably a good time. I was going to say that what's interesting is what Tattletales' power gives her is this isn't human, was never human. It's a really interesting bit where it's like,
00:48:14
Speaker
So this is just something different. Okay. Like that's kind of, that's kind of spooky in itself too, just to add to the effect of how terrifying, just how terrifying he is as an entity. Yeah. That's great. Which just makes you wonder, is there anyone else in the animal kingdom like having trigger events? Like as like a lion getting hunted and all of a sudden the lion triggers and now it's a flying lion. Like how does that work? Yeah. Yeah.
00:48:43
Speaker
I mean, cause that would be like in the Godzilla world. Like, you know, Godzilla is a lizard that gets nuked, you know, and the atoll. Yeah. And all of a sudden, like right before the bomb hits, it's like, Oh, trigger event. And then the bombs set off. Yeah. Basically. I like that though. It's a good theory. You just said something. I forget what you said. It was going to make me say what I was going to say, but I totally forgot. Oh, thank you. I remembered.
00:49:15
Speaker
Nice. I was going to say, in Tattletay's interlude, really fun way of showing her power working. Just sort of the quick choppiness of information being sort of sparsed and pieced together. Yeah, really fun seeing her power finally explained, if you will. Yeah. Understand how she gets information.
00:49:40
Speaker
Yeah. I also get to see the backlash too. Like we've seen a region has the thing where like his nervous system starts to short out if he overstrained. And for Lisa, her backlash is she gets a killer migraine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Incoming information.
00:49:56
Speaker
it's interesting with her interlude here where we're kind of jumping back and forth between her early days and now the early days of her still kind of figuring out her power and the way that she's in the store and she's looking at the guy and she's
00:50:13
Speaker
making these assumptions and her brain is kind of rattling off in a direction and she has to physically, well, I mean, not physically, but almost physically stop her brain and like reroute it back to the original track and be like, no, no, no, no, no, we're getting, we're going off in a direction we don't need to go, like come back this way, go in this direction, like picking up a kid, literally physically moving them and, you know, pushing them in a different direction in that same way. And how when she's, you know, she's
00:50:44
Speaker
trying to steal sunglasses or a jacket, whatever it is. She's still figuring it out and she has to... It takes more effort for her to rechannel the thought process as opposed to jumping forward and her looking at Leviathan. She can channel, you know, re or I guess rechannel or re track her brain in a different direction a lot faster. Like her acknowledgement that her brain is going in this direction
00:51:14
Speaker
is a lot faster than it used to be, which I mean, obviously she's getting better at her power, but it's super interesting to get a more of an insight into her and how that works. Yeah, I did. We can come back to this in a second, but I did find a list of it on the wiki. There's a list of names from the monument. So we can go through that later if you want. Yes, please.
00:51:41
Speaker
which I don't even think the monument had like half the people that died. But it's the ones we want to remember. So yes, the important ones. No, I mean, I think Hannah, you bring up a good point. That's kind of just worth thinking about long-term, not, it's not spoiling anything. Don't worry guys. But just kind of, it's an interesting sort of, I think philosophical thought that keeps coming back as the story progresses is just how does the
00:52:07
Speaker
how does the trauma of these events and these fights affect their powers or their personalities essentially, you know, like who they are. It's just kind
Character Growth and Emotional Stakes
00:52:18
Speaker
of an interesting theme that I think pops up quite a bit throughout the whole story. I will vote for saddest on text death, even though we really don't know them too much before this fight loosely. I will say shielders death,
00:52:36
Speaker
hurt only because of laser dream and what's his mother's name.
00:52:44
Speaker
Yeah. They're like, they're like just dead expressions trying to carry on afterwards. Just hurts so bad. And there's like, these are characters that we've really only heard about up till this point and still like brutal death followed by just seeing that loss was, was rough. I mean, just going through new waves losses, you have shielder, which is,
00:53:13
Speaker
uh, laser dreams brother. Yep. And, and lady photon son. Um, I'm pretty sure we also lost. Uh, I'm pretty sure we also lost her dad in this fight and we lost gallant, which is, you know, her cousin's boyfriend. Like all the men in that family are dead. Yeah. And then just the, the look, the exchange that happens between
00:53:43
Speaker
photon mom and laser dream when they're trying to decide who's gonna take Taylor and who's gonna fly her. And kind of this moment where photon mom is literally, and it's the phrase that we hear quite a bit of, a parent should never outlive their child, that's just wrong. And kind of this moment of her realizing, I am letting my
00:54:09
Speaker
Oh my gosh, I'm literally crying right now. I'm letting my daughter go off, and I just lost my son, and I'm letting her fly off into death. And like, ooh. Yeah, and just the absolute resignment of just, she says like, I'm the better flyer, I should go.
00:54:35
Speaker
And she just, okay. She just kind of agrees and lets her go. And that thought of like, you don't know if that's the last time you ever see your daughter again. Like, that's it. And whoa, man. Whoo, that's a killer. That's a killer right there.
00:54:53
Speaker
At least we can say that most of these deaths were quick. Yeah, good lord. Although drowning. I don't know about drowning. The fat man was the one that I thought of with the drowning or like Taylor's forced to make the decision like I can't take him. Yeah. Yeah, that was rough too. The other one I think of is just like
00:55:16
Speaker
It's, it's the person is a line that says, uh, she looks down and she's got like the leg floating by her. And then she like trying to take care of the one woman and then like the fire guy comes over and she's like, you, what's your power? And she's like, like, like fire. She's like, as a radiation, like, no, she goes, burn the face. And he goes, it's half scraped off.
00:55:40
Speaker
And something about that just I had a visceral reaction where I was like gripping the table while I read that. Absolutely. Absolutely. I feel like there were so many points in this arc that were just like, it gave me goosebumps either in like a very good way of, you know, being proud of our, proud of our capes of Rockton Bay or just absolute horror. Yeah.
00:56:02
Speaker
I'm not rolling up on Mr. Gladly and literally being like, oh, I couldn't do my job. Like you didn't do yours, you know? And I was like, I was like, yeah, I was like, damn, she starts to go, she starts to go. And you think, you think she's about to leave him. And you're like, damn, cold blooded, cold blooded. What she does get is that arguably maybe is that Taylor's first like hero moment is turning around there.
00:56:33
Speaker
Yeah, it's a little on the nose, a little cliche, but I did love it. Because otherwise, that'd be one of the very first like for real cold-blooded villain moments. Yeah, absolutely. And it could have triggered Mr. And Gladly. You don't want that motherfucker getting powers. He got the asshole power. No, it definitely was a crossroads for her. My ability is to ignore kids' problems.
00:57:05
Speaker
But it definitely was, I would say definitely a deciding moment for her, for sure. One thing I like about that moment is up until this fight, Taylor has been pretty much outclassed in all of her fights. She's powerful, like she's got a pretty strong power and a really terrifying power. But like Lung and even Bakuta and Night and Fog, like all of these fights, she's really
00:57:35
Speaker
outclassed, but manages to find a way to win or survive in light of that because she's smart, can think on her feet. She makes use of her powers, her scenario, her surroundings. I mean, whatever the case may be. This is the first time where she is outclassed and there is no, there's nothing. You're not getting out of this. There's no way she's getting out of this. And so for her to turn around at that moment, I loved it because it was like,
00:58:01
Speaker
She knew that there was, it was hopeless. There was no, she wasn't outsmarting this, but she was turning around because she wanted to. It was just a, it felt very earned, that's cliche it was. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. She was going to try, which yeah, very, very good moment for her. Right. I think a lot about
00:58:19
Speaker
Obviously, because we're from Taylor's perspective, we can see her internal monologue of the things. I found it really interesting for her reasoning, for her thought process with Mr. Gladly's girlfriend, kind of like that, he doesn't deserve to have someone to come home to at night that's gonna validate his choices as a teacher during the day and tell him that, yeah, you're a good teacher, you're making a difference. Because to Taylor, he hasn't, he has blatantly ignored her when she's being bullied.
00:58:48
Speaker
And her turning around, I think is very much of, I mean, obviously it's a big hero moment, but she doesn't acknowledge like even in her own mind that like, I'm gonna die.
00:59:01
Speaker
she's just like, I gotta do the right thing regardless. And so she goes back and kind of that moment of like, when you are on the brink of death, like Taylor is in this point where really, truthfully, she should not have been able to walk away, which I mean, she didn't, but she got carried away. But kind of that space of like, when you are being the hero and you're making your choices and you're choosing to do something that will save other people, even at the sake of your own death,
00:59:31
Speaker
potentially. Do you know? Are you aware of the sacrifice you're making? Because she knows she's doing the right thing by going back and helping. And she's thinking about the people in there. But it's almost like she doesn't fully acknowledge the weight of the decision that she's making. She's going,
00:59:49
Speaker
I'm choosing to be better. So I'm going to go back and help people. I am literally saving hundreds of people in that shelter. And by my death, she's not having that hero moment that you would think she would have in that kind of space. And she's just thinking about what can I do to get him out of there. And I think that's... I find that really interesting. I don't know exactly what that says about her, but I still find that really interesting.
01:00:19
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. We've kind of been dancing around the scene. We've talked before and after it, so let's just fill in the gaps here. Formally Armsmaster, now Armmaster. Oh my God. So Clock Blocker freezes Leviathan, which, oh my God. Bless our little Clock Blocker boy, my boy.
01:00:49
Speaker
The hero of the day. Get
Armsmaster's Strategy and Misjudgments
01:00:53
Speaker
him the fuck out of there. Oh man. Yeah. Holy shit. My other boy trickster comes in and gets to save the day. The trickster velocity combo. Love that. I do love, I love that wild bow is realistic with the heroes and we'll get to arms master and how, how he is in a bit.
01:01:25
Speaker
We'll get to that in a second, but even like tricks are like monologuing a little bit and being like, nope, at least you're useful in death. And Taylor just being like, dude, what the fuck? I loved that. That was great.
01:01:39
Speaker
Right. So the fight arms master versus Leviathan. What a fight. This is Batman. This is Batman, motherfucker.
01:01:51
Speaker
I've analyzed all your moves. I've got a contingency plan for all of you. I've got tips tonight with my back pocket. That was the scene that I texted you guys that he was such a fucking dweeb. I was listening to that, and I was like, this is so cringy right now. And for me, that was when I texted the group and said, no spoilers, but this arc shows me that Arms Master is definitely a weeb.
01:02:20
Speaker
Because he's absolutely the guy watching anime and being like, I'm gonna say that one day. That's gonna be me. I stopped reading and was like, hang on, went on Spotify and put push it to the limit. Have that in the background when I listened.
01:02:39
Speaker
he becomes arm master and I was like, oh shit. What I learned here was trickster is a guy who read way too many comic books and over here reads watches way too much anime. Yeah, for real.
01:02:55
Speaker
I will say I know it's such a... I know it's cringy. I know. But I love it so much because he's even acknowledging... It's like, this is the perfect camera pans, up close, arm faster. You don't even know what I'm saying, do you? Watch your heart. It's so good. I love that. It's so, so good. The no look.
01:03:22
Speaker
Yeah, like if you are the hero, be honest, if we were all capes and we were up one on one against a big boy, you cannot tell me that we wouldn't monologue at least a little because I know I would. And it would be just as cheesy if not
01:03:43
Speaker
No, cuz you never let them touch you monologuing, we all learn, we all know this. But it's different when you're in the moment, you gotta do it. Would you monologue as a performance for everyone around you or would you be talking to yourself and this monster with no face or no mouth or whatever?
01:04:05
Speaker
Yeah, it'd be like me playing basketball in the backyard as a kid where I'm like Taylor goes for the three point. He scored like it was literally I'm going to wear only the cardboard. The way arms master did it was so performative like he wanted to like announce and he wanted to be heard even though like he's in the midst of a fight like he wants to be the one with all the glory and the fact that is it was just so cringy to me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
01:04:33
Speaker
Bring it back in though what I what I love about this and I do I Love armors masters character in this whole story
01:04:43
Speaker
One thing I love, and this goes back to what you were saying earlier, Taylor, was that he has a really good system, not perfect, obviously, but a really good system for dealing with Leviathan. And imagine if he, instead of showboating, instead of letting his big ass ego get in the way, imagine if he was coordinating with the armbands and his AI system. Yeah.
01:05:10
Speaker
directing capes where to go. You get the sense that they probably could have won if they were all using that, but he had to keep it for himself.
01:05:21
Speaker
Right, just sharing the knowledge that he had. You've been studying and you're not gonna tell everybody else. Just so you can get to this moment where you're the one that is saving the day because you wanna be the big good. Which is why even from the beginning, I was like, this is not a superhero that wants to do good. This is a superhero that wants everybody to see that he does good. It's not the same thing.
01:05:50
Speaker
Yeah, but you get the sense that Armors Master really isn't on mentally, isn't on the same level as like Eidolon and Alexandria and Legend, like the big three, who when they show up, they're like war pants on. Here's the game plan.
01:06:08
Speaker
let's go to let's go to work like ours master just isn't isn't thinking in that same frame of mind like to him there's still like status and and ego associated with this fight when well the others don't have that and if we refer back to the interview interlude right before arc eight um wasn't he getting like demoted and like sent away
01:06:36
Speaker
Yeah. So this is like a big hoopla for him. And he probably was looking at this as, oh yes, I get to redeem myself versus like, fuck, this whole city could be flattened if we fail.
01:06:55
Speaker
I think it's a very good, if you think of the movie, Hacksaw Ridge, sorry to spoil it for those that have not seen it yet. But there's a scene where the new company of soldiers is about to go into the battlefield and they have a couple of people from the last company that are still alive. And literally that in my mind, that's legend and that's like the hero's heroes because they're like,
01:07:20
Speaker
I've lost so many people fighting these things, like, all right, like, let's do it all over again. Whereas Arms Master is like, oh, well, I'm good and good always triumphs over evil. So I'm gonna go out here and beat this thing. And then he's just laying there without an arm, just like, years of Academy training, waste. Just at the tikka table with a woody foot. Yeah. Oh man, that's going in my context.
01:07:49
Speaker
You, you get the sense that arms master and maybe all of the heroes, but particularly arms master in this case, one of the sneaky things that they, they introduce you to early on as legend dimensions, how. Although Leviathan does not appear to be as smart as the Simmerg, the one of the other end bringers, they've noticed that it is strangely intelligent and to be cautious of that, right?
01:08:16
Speaker
And yet arms master clearly is underestimating it, right? The whole time he's calling it like an animal or a beast or like, you know, like, Oh, you're just like, you're just a nothing, right? Just a creature. Well, turns out and Leviathan adapted to what arms master was doing and did something different that his program couldn't predict. And it just, again, adds to that. Like, this is a natural force that you can't just,
01:08:43
Speaker
put into a program and learn how to beat. Like this is something completely different. I also love the little dig that Tattletail drops towards the end. And we're not going to leave the fights yet, but just because it's relevant, where she says something to the effect of like, Oh, and even if your programming was fine, you still wouldn't have been able to kill him.
01:09:02
Speaker
Like you didn't, you didn't have enough to bring him down anyway. Like it's just, it's just like a kick in the nuts at the end. You know, it just, he was so, he was so outclassed. He just didn't even, didn't even realize it. Yeah, absolutely. Should we talk about Arm's Master faking Skitter's death now?
01:09:27
Speaker
It does work well, yeah. I mean, we are sort of getting out of the fight anyway. Yeah. I say if we were going to get out of the fight, I'd at least like to talk about bitch coming in with the dogs. Oh, true. Yeah, it does warrant a mention. Great moment. Great bitch moment. Yep. She came in with the dogs. Okay. So let's go. No, I'm kidding.
01:09:46
Speaker
I will say, I don't know about you guys. I cried. I cried. I just watching the dogs because they went down so fast. I was so depressed. So fast. It just killed me. Leviathan straight up bloody eagles one of them. Just grabs it by the rib cage. Yeah.
01:10:12
Speaker
And they say it at the beginning of the fight, or Guru mentions it, or something like that, like, bitch is keeping her dog safe. They wouldn't do any good here. And then even later, one of them is like, hey, where's Hellhound? We need her. They're like, you don't need her. You just want the disposable soldiers that she has, because you know that it's my time. But she comes in clutch when Taylor needed her most and was about to drown. Exactly. It's like she knew.
01:10:41
Speaker
So my question is, where was she? Where has she been that she happened to just arrive right when Taylor needed her? She was in that building overlooking. Yeah, that's my thought. I'm not kidding. Like she's just going from building to building, just watching Taylor, just like. Waiting. Following Taylor on rooftops. I actually, I wouldn't...
01:11:03
Speaker
I wouldn't be opposed to that line of thinking. Mostly because we know that Taylor and Rachel have connected so well in the past couple of arcs, and they've really bonded. And if Rachel is viewing Taylor in a way as accepting her as part of the pack,
01:11:20
Speaker
It makes sense that she would keep an eye on the undersiders out of sight, but be ready if she needed to. Because she shows up right when Taylor needs her, immediately, as if she were waiting behind the corner. Just as a quick question on that too, when Leviathan was there,
01:11:42
Speaker
Taylor was kind of mentioning that it was sort of close to her neighborhood. Is it maybe partially too, because this is where Rachel's new setup for her dogs might've been? Maybe so, yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. I know Taylor, our Taylor was kind of joking about it, but maybe she really did like
01:12:07
Speaker
look outside and was like, oh crap, Leviathan's close. Oh shoot, that's Taylor. In my mind, she's been watching the whole thing and she's been saving each of the undersiders this entire time. She saved Cattle Tail. And Lisa fell off the roof. Yeah, that was bitch. She's just ready to save her people. Yeah. I love it. Then Syon comes in and just
01:12:35
Speaker
Oh my gosh. His backhand, because at one point he just back... Bitch slaps backhands Leviathan. And it just... And I love that, because Taylor describes it as
01:12:53
Speaker
He makes no sound. There's no, you know, he's not, there's just nothing coming from him whatsoever. And these hits are only, you know, loud because of Leviathan when he goes smashing into things because Sion has just, you know, chucked him four blocks. But like, he just, he's so still and calm and quiet. And the things that he does are so
01:13:22
Speaker
It feels like he's not even thinking about it. He's like, yes, I'm here now. You are coming at me, so I'm going to backhand you. Who does he look at in disgust again? A little on. That's right. Even in the middle of the fight, without having facial expression, he still looks at him in disgust where he's just like, y'all are so beneath me that here I have to come and do this again.
Sion and Power Dynamics
01:13:52
Speaker
And that feeling of power, I was just like, oh my gosh. Goosebumps. Well, in the beginning too, they're like, we're basically just fighting, hoping that Sion notices and comes to save the day. But he stops the helping the mugging that he's saving some poor old lady from to go and help the freaking end bringer fight. Well, in a way though, that does make it clear that
01:14:21
Speaker
Sion is not like he can't be bought, like he can't be persuaded to like, oh yes, come help us when an end bringer shows up. Like, no, he goes where he's needed. And whether that is a mugging or a house on fire or a fucking end bringer, like he will go where he feels he needs to be.
01:14:41
Speaker
that's... Yeah. I think he's definitely lawful, good, personified. I think he probably stopped five muggings because they happened first before he went to end bringer, because he's just like, all evil is evil. I must vanquish it all. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I get that vibe so strongly from him. It's just so... It's the cool, calm, collected thing that is just like, gives me shivers. He's just so
01:15:06
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, we talked about Leviathan being quiet and basically mute as well. Imagine the two of these guys fighting. It's just the sounds of the rain. And when they crash into buildings. Yeah, nothing else. So cool.
01:15:27
Speaker
And that in comparison with Armmaster's showboating, if you put those two things side by side where you have Armmaster giving his big speech on like, oh, you're nothing but a beast and I'm going to put you down. And then Sion, the real powerhouse showing up, doesn't say a fucking word. That is such a baller move. Damn.
01:15:52
Speaker
I love just the scope and width of power level in Worm where there's no misunderstanding about who the strongest person is in the room compared to, I don't know about anyone else. I was a huge fan as a kid watching the DC animated show.
01:16:16
Speaker
And in that show, you would have Batman kicking Darkseid, who's like a personification of half the evil in the universe. There's just no comparison. There's no way to compare that. But just the sheer difference between even Legend and Alexandria, who we understand to be near invincible,
01:16:39
Speaker
going down to Leviathan, who in turn can only run from Sion. It's just this crazy levels of power that's really hard to grasp. Just having a trigger event and being like, my God, I'm a tinker, arms master. And then you make something and you're like, no, I'm leaked.
01:17:00
Speaker
I was about to say that when Jacob was talking about the scope of powers, my thought is like, okay, so we've got, on one end, we've got Uber and late. And on the other end, we have the golden god himself, Sion, just absolutely wrecking this end bringer shit. Ugh. Which, by the way, do we think Uber and late were live streaming this? Oh, for sure.
01:17:31
Speaker
I'm gonna be honest, if there were any villains that weren't at the fight, it was definitely Uber. It was them, yeah. I was about to say, I don't think we ever saw them or heard mention of them, so I feel like they probably dipped out and recorded from a safe space. It's okay, nobody had respect for them either. No, they went to get an armband and someone was like, no, no, it's all good, civilian. No, bro, my God. The disrespect.
01:17:59
Speaker
When it comes to terms of power too, I don't want to forget that Taylor rates Eidolon on a level almost equal to the end bringers. Like she even says like Eidolon is a bit above legend and Alexandria, and we didn't really get to see much of Eidolon in this fight. But what we did see is apparently he has the ability to choose powers, but can only hold so many at a time.
01:18:24
Speaker
And I'm like, what a crazy wacky power just to come up with like, you can be whatever you want to be. You just have to pick like your top three in any given moment, right? He froze the entire coastline. Like that was his job was like, okay, Eidolon by yourself, go freeze the entire coastline. Which is pretty cool. Like even though it didn't end up doing as much maybe as he'd hoped, it's so pretty cool. Yeah. Probably saved a good bit of the city. Yeah, exactly.
01:18:52
Speaker
going back again to what Taylor said earlier. One of those things were like, man, if I had Eidolon's power, that fight would have been over in a second. I would have just picked like power word kill. The power of no, just the reverse UNO card.
01:19:17
Speaker
I love that. I love that. Level one D&D wizard with the command spell. Just flee. Just flee. Or just drop dead, you know? Because I don't want him to flee. He'll come back. Drop dead. And then, so Taylor's got a broken back.
01:19:33
Speaker
And the PRT and the medical staff are just so careful taking care of her. Jeez Louise, I completely understand her frustration. In her mind, I have just broken my fucking back. I am paralyzed now.
01:19:52
Speaker
fighting for this stupid fucking city. And now, you handcuff me to a bed with a broken back. You don't tell me anything. You give me a little sneer and you leave me here. Like, I'm sorry, what? What kind of bullshit is this? As a hospital worker, fuck off.
01:20:23
Speaker
Someone who has literally shown up to work and had the hospital go on mass cash. Yeah, if shit hits the fan and you're like, hey, I've got legs blown off here. I got a back broken here. This little criminal's got a back broken. We got arms master without an arm. Joe Biden just came in cuz he felt like literally you're just dealing with so much stuff all at once. And literally it's just like,
01:20:50
Speaker
You can't discriminate. And I will say I have never seen anyone discriminated based off of, oh, you're coming from a jail because you got stabbed versus you're out in town and got stabbed. But you definitely have to triage people. And she's obviously fine. They had panacea. They knew they were gonna take care of her. Like, come on.
01:21:12
Speaker
I will say too, on that too Taylor, I feel really bad for the poor little like nurse in training who's like, I'm so sorry. I have no idea what's going on. Please don't ask me questions. I'm just here to take your vitals. She's like, I started my first nursing class yesterday and they brought me here. I have no idea what's going on. Literally my application is still in my mailbox.
01:21:39
Speaker
And in all seriousness, if I'm thinking, if this is like, what did we say this was, like 2012? Around this. So literally like a patient has to come in, you make sure that they're not going to die immediately. You send them off to get scans and then scans have to get read by like all the radiology team. So they just don't have information to tell her. And I think even in real life today, that's a lot of the time it's like, what's happening? What's happening? And it's like, we are trying to figure that out now.
01:22:06
Speaker
No, I thought I thought I love that scene. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Go ahead. Finish with that. I was about to say I love I love the scene. I was disappointed that she got healed right off the bat by panacea. But I thought that conversation was great. Oh, yeah. Totally agree. I just like that. Well, first of all, we know for a fact. Obviously, our master was there and was like, she's a villain. But I feel like he probably was like that one right there.
01:22:36
Speaker
back the list, bottom of the... He's got a personal... I don't think that they would have left her there so that same way, if it wasn't for Armsmaster, his weird vendetta. This is one of those things where I
01:22:56
Speaker
Like I get the, you know, having to handcuff some villains up, but after, you know, we just had this big thing. We were, we've put everything to the side and I wasn't fucking with anybody. I was, I was a good villain. You know, is this what happens? This is how they get us. We're like, after you're done, they just.
01:23:15
Speaker
They black bag all the villains to the bird cage and you're like, oh man, Leviathan sure killed a lot of villains. Like what do they tell the public? Yeah, only a fourth of you will make it. And that's the ones on good behavior. I could see the government doing some shit like that though. It does feel that way because that's how Taylor's feeling it. But then we do find out as we'll probably talk about in a second, the reason why is because you have a mixture of heroes and villains whose identities are sacred to them.
01:23:44
Speaker
And you can't just let people run around looking and everybody, you know, like, you know, so it is, even though it feels unreasonable at first, like you're kind of on Taylor's side, like, yeah, what the heck? And of course they rougher up. They didn't need to do that. That's, you know, just some nice police brutality for you. But, um, you know, but at the same time, it is at least when you find out why it's like, Oh yeah,
01:24:09
Speaker
Yeah, that makes sense. I hate that the cops were right in this case. The super cops, the super cops rather.
01:24:19
Speaker
Yeah. This is one of those scenes that definitely felt where I really felt Taylor's age in the character where she, she did feel like a really impulsive 16 year old kid who thought that she was at the center of attention and the protagonist of a book. But, but yeah, no, the whole scene plays so well. And you do get that sense of like, just them being completely overworked and overloaded.
01:24:48
Speaker
which is interesting. I still don't know how I feel about Panacea. I will say it because part of me, I see the good that she does and everything. And obviously she is a good guy, like just through and through. But her talking down to Taylor almost like,
01:25:04
Speaker
It still makes me mad because she's coming from an elitist family. She's the 1%. Literally, she's like, Taylor's like, well, I was infiltrating. I was doing this, I was doing that. And she's like, yeah, yeah, of course you were. When really, she's healed so many bad guys, her sister's almost killed. So it's just like, come on.
Character Complexity and Family Tragedies
01:25:26
Speaker
You judge me?
01:25:30
Speaker
Yeah. No, she's a great character. But I remember at this point in the story too, like not really knowing how I felt about her either. And obviously reading it again, you get some different insights and you're kind of reading it a bit differently. But yeah, she's unique. Also, she just had like half of her extended family die. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. She doesn't really acknowledge. Yeah, exactly. And I don't want to
01:25:57
Speaker
I don't wanna miss out too on the fact that she mentions that Tattletail was about to do something that could have ruined her family, at least how she feels about it, right? We don't know if that's true or not. We don't know if that's true or not, but we know that there is some secret that she has that she's not ready to reveal. So I can kind of get like at least from it. I'm with you Taylor and that I'm not sure how I feel about her, but I kind of also get where she's coming from.
01:26:25
Speaker
He's like, look, you, your friend messed with my family. You robbed a bank. Like, I don't have any pity for you. You know? Yeah. I still, I will say.
01:26:39
Speaker
I think you're right. There is no reason for her to have any pity on Taylor. Taylor is getting fixed. At the end of this, Taylor will have a healed back. And really, to Panacea, does she even deserve that? She's getting that because she fought Leviathan. Because of your sacrifice, you are getting healed right now. But I do not owe you more than that. And that makes perfect sense.
01:27:05
Speaker
but I still hate the way that she kind of mind messes with her, which is something else she says again here, which she's mentioned before, and she says again about the whole not being able to mess with people's brains, or she says something about the concussion, and she's like, I can't do anything about that. I can't mess with your brain, basically. I can mess with your other things, but I'm not messing with your brain. And kind of this
01:27:32
Speaker
I don't know, even though she can't physically mess with Taylor's brain, she's still messing with Taylor by the way that she's not necessarily answering her questions or giving her this, well, I don't know.
01:27:47
Speaker
And honestly, I wonder, Panacea, do you have the energy to treat Taylor like that? Don't you have 100 more people to heal? Why are you fucking with this one girl? I understand that her teammate almost ruined whatever it was you're trying to keep secret, but it just feels so petty. Which again, it's so easy to forget that these are children.
01:28:16
Speaker
Taylor, Panacea, they are high schoolers. These are children and they're going to be petty. And I forget, because we just fought an end-bringer, that these are not adults. And they're going to be demanding on Taylor's front and Petty on Panacea's front. And that's just
01:28:39
Speaker
Honestly, I had forgotten that these were children until you literally just said it. Whoever it was, I think it was Nick or Jacob said that, yeah, these are fucking teenagers. She's really showing her age. Oh shit, yeah, they are 15. Goddamn. Yep. Amy will always make time for spite. We did
Teenage Decisions and Shocking Revelations
01:29:00
Speaker
that on a t-shirt. Always make time for spite.
01:29:03
Speaker
to move it along a little bit because we still have a good bit to talk about here. Taylor does break free and stumbles upon maybe the biggest shock of the arc. Fucking bitch. Not bitch, but a bitch. I need Taylor and Kat reactions for this. Yeah, I knew that it was going to be Emma or somebody. I knew it was going to be somebody.
01:29:30
Speaker
that is like, they've had powers this whole time too. First of all, y'all saw me text.
01:29:41
Speaker
At the same time, I then had to Google Sophia, because I was like, I know this name. I know this is a big reveal. I completely forgot what her character arc is, because there's just so many fucking characters in this thing. There's the time. There's a lot. So I was like, this is a big deal. Who the fuck is this girl? Like, confirm that I was supposed to be shocked. But yeah, I was like,
01:30:10
Speaker
expecting it to like Emma, but I think I have questions though about plot holes or not plot holes, like how it's filled in. Cause like, like she said, shadow stalker was like bear at the mall. But like, does Emma know? And like, I don't know. I just think like I have, I have more questions. Yeah. I mean, I think you're supposed to have a lot of questions too. Also interesting that this bitch
01:30:40
Speaker
is in the words. So she's a quote unquote good guy, she's the fucking bully. Basically, while Hannah was on her monologue, it comes down to being a hero does not make you a good person and being a villain does not make you a bad person. Yes. Yeah, exactly.
01:31:05
Speaker
And at the end of the day, what is the difference between the two other than who what they've decided is the good guys and the bad guys, right?
Morality of Heroes and Villains
01:31:18
Speaker
I can straight up say long as a bad guy.
01:31:22
Speaker
Kaiser is a bad guy, he's a racist. Long as a bad guy, he's the drug cartel. But I wouldn't say the undersiders are bad guys, I don't fucking care if they're robbing banks. They're not like, let's go- Yeah, they're not killing people for fun. Right, they're doing things for their own benefit, which is egocentric, but not necessarily bad.
01:31:49
Speaker
Their own benefit is money. Meanwhile, Sophia is in the wards because she kept shooting people, like, and almost killing them. And they were like, hey, you need to go to the wards because she was a rogue. Like, you need to go to the wards. Right. Didn't they say that she, it was either Juvie or the wards? Yeah. Hold on. Was that
01:32:17
Speaker
in this chapter? Not in this section, but early in one of the earlier arcs, they talked about how when they first introduced Shadowstalker, and you obviously like we don't obviously know who she is yet, but they make a mention that like, ah, Shadowstalker is a perfect example of like someone who had powers was doing their own thing, was needed to be monitored and was given the option of like either the wards or juvie.
01:32:43
Speaker
Yeah, I've got a couple of theories of how to fill things in. What do you think, Nick? Got a couple of theories. So Sophia, the quote unquote track team, is the words that she's been on. She's the star track runner for the show, right? But instead of going to track practice, maybe she shows up for the meets and runs, but beyond that,
01:33:08
Speaker
I don't think she's really on a track team, right? That's the cover for like, where does she go after school? Oh, the track team's out of practice. Yeah, exactly. Second thought. I just want to remember there's a scene from a previous arc where she says something like,
01:33:26
Speaker
Do you have any idea how much trouble I got him because of what you did at school, talking to Taylor? Do you have any idea how much pain, how bad this is for me, what you did? And I think she's not talking about the school consequences there. I think that it got back to the wards, and the wards are like, are you serious, Shadow Stalker? Yeah, they're like, you're bullying people now? Okay.
01:33:49
Speaker
Well, when they have the big meeting at the school, Shadowstalker doesn't have a parent show up, she has somebody else. And it's not really- It's actually a case worker. Yeah, a case worker. Which at the time, we just assume because Shadowstalker we know has kind of been having some trouble and everybody kind of knows, I'm sorry, not Shadowstalker.
01:34:11
Speaker
We know Sophia isn't the most stable, we already know that, but she has this case worker show up. But now looking back on it, there's a good chance that that person was from the wards to represent her as a parental figure.
01:34:29
Speaker
Yeah. And to add to that, I would, I would wager, um, that although it didn't seem like anybody else believed Taylor when it came to, Hey, uh, these kids have been bullying me. I can a hundred percent imagine if that woman was from the wards of being like, we know what kind of a person you are, Sophia, you absolutely were bullying that kid because then you have a ward that's a bully.
01:34:56
Speaker
Yeah, exactly, exactly. So they deal with it internally, hopefully, but you don't, you know, Taylor doesn't get to see that because she's not privy to that ourselves.
Perception of Competence and Underestimation
01:35:05
Speaker
And we found her from motion and putting her on the beat. Yeah, exactly. What are we talking about?
01:35:13
Speaker
Yeah. There's that classic, they conduct their own internal investigation and find out wrongdoing. Yeah. Oh, what a moment. My deep, deep fan theory is that this is, this is not in any part of the story. This is totally Jacob's fan theory. My fan theory is that Emma's dad is a really successful lawyer because in this world, parahuman paralegals are
01:35:41
Speaker
really important. And my theory is that Emma's dad got Sophia's case and that's how those two met up. I support that theory. Yeah, I can see that. God damn it. Isn't he a divorce attorney? From the beginning. Listen, it's a fan theory. I said, okay, don't, don't shoot holes in it yet.
01:36:07
Speaker
I'm more just confirming facts and questioning your fan theory. I'm sorry. I think you're right. I think you're the divorce attorney. That's what he tells people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. But as a result of that discovery, you get some interesting dynamics between
01:36:30
Speaker
The Undersiders and Armsmaster and Legend and Miss Militia, which is pretty fun. Yes, gosh. Oh, fan theory, Armsmaster, set her up. Hey, Laura? Set her up in what sense, Kat? To find Shadowstalker slash Sophia. Ooh, okay. I mean, they're very much in with the wards, right? Right.
01:36:57
Speaker
very well could have known about the bullying situation. He probably did. And probably set her up to put them near each other, knowing that it was very likely that Taylor, because Sophia was there with their mask off. I think that's a great thought. So Arms Master obviously has all this programming and the system and all the smarts and the little computer in his head that's analyzing shit.
01:37:24
Speaker
any type of thing that would have happened with Taylor would be on public record. So it would be in her school record. And he has access to that. And of course, because he's been working, well, not really working with Taylor, but because she's been such a bird under a saddle.
01:37:40
Speaker
He has kept eyes on her, so he probably knows all of the shit that's gone on with school. And so it makes perfect sense that he would have connected the dots and realized that there was a meeting at the school that involved Shadowstalker in the wards and involved Taylor, that this is the connection here. That would make so much sense to have set her up that way.
01:38:10
Speaker
Although, oh, actually, hold on. As I'm thinking about this, I'm messing up my own theory and messing up Cass's theory. I'm so sorry. We might be getting a bit too far off the task here. I'm so sorry. I will stop now. Sorry, Kat. I ran with your idea. That's what this story does though. It's so much fun. Yeah, it really does. But yeah, but they get into it with Arms Master and
01:38:38
Speaker
Who is? Legend is just is so like he is the by the book. He's such a good guy. Yeah, he's he's just like, well, protectorate order 2-4A would say we got to do this. He's just going to go. He is not going to break from protocol. Yeah, so lawful neutral.
01:39:05
Speaker
Yeah. Another big fucking nerd. The whole lot of them. Just like there can be no two powers that are exactly alike. There are no two fucking nerds exactly like them. It's universe. Of course. Yeah.
01:39:21
Speaker
Um, but it goes both ways, right? Like, cause I love how quickly, uh, legend and, and miss Felicia as well though, flip on arms master in that they are swings that gun real quick. Like as soon as that's hinted at, it's just a full 180, which is satisfying.
01:39:41
Speaker
It really is. But it's also, again, and I feel like we've broken record sometimes, but Wild Bo just does this so well where he just takes the little trope and just flips it completely in an unexpected way. That's what you want to happen, but you're not expecting to read it that way. You don't really expect those types of conversations to flow that naturally, and yet it does, which is just so satisfying.
01:40:06
Speaker
Also, Trickster just posted up in the corner, casually recording everything. Bless him, bless him. He knew what was up. Even two teenagers should do exactly what you expect teenagers to do. World star, we live. Also, I just want to say that Arms Master, at least so far, has been set up to be the big, cool superhero in the city. But he keeps getting bested by teenagers left and right.
01:40:39
Speaker
Like you slowly realize like at the beginning he shows up in his cool motorcycle He's got battle armor. You're like, wow, it's cool Batman like mixed with Iron Man This guy's so cool and then steadily throughout the story you realize like he's not even the coolest guy in this city like
Adherence to Protocol and Emotional Impact
01:40:59
Speaker
even the coolest guy. Out of a group of people that is just him, he's not even the coolest guy. So far, his computer has shown to be more of an MVP than he is. It's the marvel where he's like, yeah, well, without your suit, what are you? And he's like, a weeb, a nobody, a dork.
01:41:26
Speaker
I imagine he takes off his suit and he's not even buff underneath. It's like pre, like Captain America before he gets the superjuice. He takes off his suit and he's fucking Colin. I love it.
01:41:51
Speaker
Also, I love that tattletale using her power to hack into the armband. That's so great. Of course she would. It's so tattletale, but I still was blindsided by, I still didn't expect it. And then there it was, and it's like, well, of course.
01:42:06
Speaker
Of course she did, because she storms off. She's like, let me give you my things. And they're like, we're not gonna listen to you as a teenager. And she's like, huff, all right, then limps off on her crutches. I'm like, whoa, she gave up fast. And then of course, not a paragraph later. She's hacked into the armband. I love it. I love it. Lisa does not like to be ignored. Nope. She just guesses its password. Is that what it is? Yeah.
01:42:32
Speaker
Yeah, she guesses his password to hack into the armpit. She guesses legend's power or legend's password. That's right. Which is like the ultimate override, I think, right? Oh, I love it so much. That's such a fuck you. It's great. It's so good. Which is how it would be. Like if you went to like, like arms masters, like, I don't know, like the gunnery sergeant and it's like, he's like, oh yeah, I got this, this cool new system. And then you go to the general and the general's password is password.
01:42:59
Speaker
That is exactly what happened. That's the same combination I have on my luggage. Oh my gosh. I love it so much. So good. All right. Well, Michael Scott just popped out the closet and said, let's wrap this up. So I'm going to... No, I'm kidding. We are close to the end here. Yeah. We're very close. Let's touch on the... Yeah, I was going to say, let's touch on the memorial. We don't spend too much time on it, but it is a really nice moment.
01:43:29
Speaker
Really sad, but kind of, again, really kind of grounding. Yeah. Yeah. So really quickly, I do have the, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you Jacob. No, I was, do you have, do you have the names? Cause that's where I was going. Yes. I have the list. I have the list. I'm only going to name, there are a lot of names, but many of them we don't know. So I'm going to skip those. I'm just going to hit the ones that we've met or that were named or in a particular way. Right. So we have, uh,
01:43:58
Speaker
Aegis, Alabaster, Bastion, Browbeat, Chubster, and Dauntless for side one. For side two, there's Finnia and Gallant are the main two there. And then for side three, we had Kaiser and Manpower. And then for side four, we had Shielder, Strider, and Velocity. And then of course, we have the names of the dogs that bitch etched into the name, into the monument.
01:44:28
Speaker
Kuro, Bullet, Milk, Stumpy, Brutus, Judas, Axel, and Ginger. This sounds hilarious to say, but what a bitch move. Yeah, for real. They deserve their space on that memorial. They deserve their own memorial. Yeah. That's true. The doggos who gave their lives.
Identity Revelations and Plot Developments
01:44:51
Speaker
I won't lie, I definitely cried.
01:44:57
Speaker
I didn't until Taylor started realizing how long that must have taken her and that she had to like sneak out to do it. Yeah. And how much that I was like, Oh God. Oh, that was right. And Judas like, Oh man. Wasn't Ginger the old dog too? Yeah.
01:45:17
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. You definitely get the sense there that she got desperate and used her power on a lot of dogs that probably weren't quite ready yet. But yeah, that was rough. Can't think about it too much. No. Exactly. I care more about them than most of those people. That's true. Also, really quick, wasn't Browby one of the capes we fought at the bank heist?
01:45:44
Speaker
Definitely recognize his name. Yes. Yep. I believe so. Yes. He was the one that was like, wasn't supposed to be there because he's supposed to be on the protector right now. Right. But it showed up. Yeah. It makes him an ages up a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Well, now you don't have to worry about it. I could have mixed them up again. Yeah. Also, we got confirmation finally amidst all of this that
01:46:11
Speaker
Uh, you know, cause arms mastered pulls a bitch move and a outs Taylor and confirmed Lisa knew the whole time. Cause of course she knew that she knew the whole time. Yeah, exactly. This girl knows and she's just like, yeah, whatever.
01:46:31
Speaker
And I, and I love that beyond that too, that, that Lisa sort of took some of the blame there. She was like, listen, you're only in this position at this point now because I let it get this far. Like I could have said something at any, at any moment here and everything would have been different, which I thought was like real mature of her. Yeah. It's something that all the way back in like her little interlude that one of the reasons that she really likes Taylor,
01:47:00
Speaker
is Lisa is a social Cape and a group full of antisocial people. So she didn't even bother, but Taylor has at least tried. And that's one of the reasons she really respects Taylor. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. Good little moment there.
01:47:20
Speaker
Yeah, in case this isn't clear to the rest of you, this is where Alan and I pretty definitively from episode one have decided we're going to end season one on our second half of this podcast, which we'll have a lot of fun with. But it really does sort of feel like that season finale. You got the big fight, you've got the sort of epilogue, everything sort of calming down, you get these little character moments.
01:47:48
Speaker
Where's the future? Where's everything going?
Coil's Power and Moral Implications
01:47:51
Speaker
And then we get a little tease with, with coils interlude. Oh baby. I know Nick, I know Nick's got hard. I don't, I don't know what it is with me and like the worst people in the story. Well, the white supremacist is dead. So yeah, coils power. He's not a good person. I'm not saying that.
01:48:15
Speaker
His power, though, the way Taylor explains it in the way we see it in the art in that interlude, I'm just like, oh, yeah, that's the stuff. That's the superpower right there.
01:48:26
Speaker
I love that he doesn't really know how it works, which is my favorite part where he's like, am I just imagining this or am I ending entire realities every time I make a decision? Like he doesn't really know what he's doing, but he doesn't care. Oh, it's so good. So evil. And he's got a great is great system for it too. I was going to say like the way he uses it. Yeah. Go off. I like, I like the whole thing of like,
01:48:55
Speaker
I don't feel so good about the guy that I have like taking care of Dinah. You know what? Better safe than sorry. Let's just take him out real quick. Okay. But also then you like you start to understand why Dinah was so important to him because it like just amplifies how successful his power is. Well, between like her, Lisa and him, like
01:49:22
Speaker
He's got so much information at his fingertips where he can, you know, we talk about fate manipulation is not exactly what it is, but between the three of them, that's basically what he's got going on. Like shy of an end bringer showing up, you know, not really foreseeable. He can basically just do what he wants. Yeah. And thinking about like how
01:49:49
Speaker
you know, however many times we've thought like, oh man, if I could just stay up all night and study or go to sleep, you know, like he just does both. And then he has all the information and he collapses the reality where he stayed up all night because he's kept all the information and he got a good night's sleep. Like that sounds great. I think that's what's so compelling to me about his power is that ability to be like, cause we've all had those, like even just little moments in life where you're like,
01:50:17
Speaker
Man, I really wish I could try both of these ice cream flavors at this ice cream shop. But I really don't want to get that much ice cream, right? I can't eat it. Well, if you're a coil, you can. And it only gets better from there. It's only up from the ice cream flavors.
01:50:36
Speaker
But I love how he thinks about, if he did something in one of his realities that he wants to keep, he has to remember to do it in the other one. Where he has to ask Dinah the questions a second time, even though he already knows the answers, so that she'll remember what she said in this reality. Little things like that, but I loved how he's really intelligent about his power.
01:51:03
Speaker
And also, if I had a nickel for every time Coyle kidnapped a little girl for his personal gain and locked her up, I'd have two nickels. Right. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened. Isn't that a Doofenshmirtz quote? Oh yes, 100%. Absolutely. Oh my God. One of the greatest quotes ever written for television. I use it as much as I can.
01:51:32
Speaker
We've got a little insight into what you have for the travelers.
01:51:40
Speaker
And there's a really, it's a small little line kind of thrown away. I completely missed it the first time I had, when I read it the second time here, I was like, Oh, I forgot that was even mentioned. But there's a little line that trickster says, or kind of says with coil where they sort of, they sort of are, we're on the right track that Leviathan had been slowly making his way towards Noel.
01:52:07
Speaker
which was a really interesting line that kind of got tossed. It's like, Oh my gosh, that's just, it just is a great, great little tease. Yeah. And just this, this feeling of like, I don't know. I, I got this sense of like impending doom from his conversation with Noel where that was in the reality that he collapsed where he was like, well, don't want that conversation to have happened. You know, like, it was just like, Oh, well, all right.
01:52:37
Speaker
how many times we've wanted to do that. Just yeet ourselves out of a potential conversation. Yeet ourselves out of one reality into another. But it also, it enlightens us into why he was so frustrated with Dinah in the scene that we did see her first, because he's like, wait, why are the numbers changing, Dinah? That doesn't make any sense. And just, again, just like the crazy use of his power of getting
01:53:05
Speaker
you know, the undersiders to flip coins until they all flip heads, just like making those little moments possible. But then of course we get the reveal that he's a creep show and he creates an alternate reality to give himself some pleasure by beating somebody up or killing somebody, apparently. That's- I feel like Wildo had to throw that in, otherwise he'd be too cool.
01:53:33
Speaker
It's the common trope with villains, like with Killmonger, where it's like, he's against colonialization and first world governments exploiting third world people. Let's make him kill someone to remind the audience that he's evil. It was definitely one of those. Yeah, it's the kick the puppy moment. Yeah.
01:53:55
Speaker
Although, it's kind of implied he might be a little bit of a pedophile too. I don't know if you guys call that or... Yeah. I've always been confused about that. He has this kind of throwaway line where he's like, he says something to the effect of, who wouldn't try things with my power, basically. Right. Yes. Yeah. It's very subtly implied, but not... I mean, he can't. He doesn't have any of the repercussions.
01:54:24
Speaker
Like if he does decide he wants to try it, like there's no repercussions. Yeah. I don't, I don't think that it's ever like elaborated or anything like that. Probably just to maintain some level of sanity with the readers. Um, but no, I think that's implied that he's done a lot of really gross stuff just because he could just to get away with
Hero Powers and Pronunciation Debates
01:54:47
Speaker
it. Yeah, exactly. Cause again, it's like you have those two realities as long as you,
01:54:52
Speaker
are careful like he says, you know, and then like kind of like he implies to like, even though he creates the alternate reality to take the pleasure of killing Mr. Potter or whatever the guy's name is, he says that he's careful not to do anything that he couldn't take back. Like if he accidentally chose that reality, he'd be like, oh, well, I could explain that away at least. You know,
01:55:17
Speaker
So even with that, he's still very careful in his pleasures, which is something so interesting into an insight into his, with his characters. Just he's like, he, like just the way he says to himself, I think I can allow myself a pleasure. Like I've earned it, you know? Yeah. Like I've earned this, my little treat, my little murderous treat. Well that, uh,
01:55:45
Speaker
That kind of about wraps it up. I'm trying to think here. Favorite heroes and maybe predictions for the future. He's going to be rough. I'm going to go first with favorite new heroes just because we never got around to it. Um, and this is a little cop out because he becomes my favorite later. Not a really big character, but I love his power. Um, and I'm going to pronounce his name correctly for all of you right now. Uh, he is the leader of the protectorate in New York.
01:56:15
Speaker
And that is Chevalier. My God. I beg your pardon? It is Chevalier. I'm sorry, is that the official pronunciation?
01:56:27
Speaker
That is the correct pronunciation. No, no. I'll fight for this one. Can we get confirmation on that, Michael? That's what the power is real quick. Okay. That's the one for a second. We don't really, they don't really talk about his power, which is why I said it's a bit of a cop out because we don't really figure out his power until later. Um, but he's a really strong member of the Protectorate. Really fun character. Um, so that's my cop out answer, mostly just cause I wanted to say Chevalier.
01:56:56
Speaker
It's a fun word to say. That's for sure. Not how you pronounce the name, but it's a fun word. Fact check it, Michael. Thank you. I have a favorite. She's already like seven feet tall. She's got this fucking long ass horn coming out of her face. She's like,
01:57:20
Speaker
A badass also? Like, first of all, I had to look at a fan art because my head was at first. My head was showing me Pearl from SpongeBob with a narwhal. Like, OK, that's not going to do. So we have to like look this up. But she just looks so cool. And her shield is like real awesome. Oh, yeah. I thought she was a cool one.
01:57:44
Speaker
Yeah, I gotta agree with that. Man, I didn't wanna say the same as somebody else, but I just, yeah. Narwhal's so cool. She's so cool. I feel like she just stood out. Yeah, I mean she- I think she always stands out no matter where she is. Yeah, with her like diamondy crystal body and the horn and the long white hair. It goes down to like her, what does she say? The back of her calves?
01:58:13
Speaker
So pretty, I'm here for it. And what does she do? She can do stuff with force fields like cut things. Like, oh, cool. Yeah. Yeah. Really neat. I second that one. Definitely my favorite. Any other standouts? No, there was just too many this episode to really narrow it down. I know there's a lot. Too many that got it too. There's a lot. I'll give one real answer in addition to Chevalier.
01:58:41
Speaker
Okay. No, Michael, that is the English pronunciation. Michael is correct. It is a French word. I'm looking at parahumanaudio.com. So that's at least how they pronounce it. It is a French word. It is. Okay. Yeah. Well, sure. But wild bow is not French. Okay.
01:59:14
Speaker
I do like the way that Chevalier runt goes off the town. Thank you. Right. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah.
01:59:22
Speaker
No, but the real answer for this arc is Parian. Gets a little bit of a moment to shine. Parian, really fun sounding power. Yeah, the cloth manipulation, making the giant stuffed animals. That was really cool. It was a really fun visual. I like reading about that.
01:59:48
Speaker
Unless I'm wrong. Do you also read it, Parian? I also read it, Parian, yeah. Parian sounds right. I mean, that makes more sense, but I definitely read it as Parian.
02:00:00
Speaker
I don't have it in front of me, but I'm pretty sure she's named after a type of cloth doll. That's what I was thinking. I think it comes from... It's probably Perrian. It's Perrian. That's the beautiful thing about Coils Power is that it's so many different things in so many different universes. It's the best part. Well, what is it in our universe, Michael Scott?
02:00:26
Speaker
Chevalier, apparently. Parian, yes.
Future Speculations and Fan Interactions
02:00:29
Speaker
Parian. Okay. Honestly, surprise who took us this long to fight over these names. Absolutely. No, I, um, yeah, I, I mean, you guys know I'm a sucker for weird, cool powers. I liked Kaiser's cause it was super cool. I like coils just cause I love the idea of what he can do.
02:00:54
Speaker
Yeah, I can't help it. It just seems really cool. That's a good answer. That's pretty cool. All right. We're moving on to the final event of the evening. My favorite segment of this episode is predictions.
02:01:16
Speaker
Okay. Michael Scott just popped out the closet and he is telling us to wrap this bad boy up. So you know what that means? Prediction time. Let's do it. Ms. Catherine, what are we thinking? What are we thinking? Um, I, first of all, her and tattletale and bitch, I don't think she's like stopping being friends. I honestly think that this is going to end back up with the undersiders. Um, what?
02:01:45
Speaker
I don't know. I literally have no clue. What do you think about her and Brian? Uh, I think they're, I think it's going to end up being okay in the end because the way that they like came to defend her was made me think that this is just a hiccup in their relationship, not the end. All right. It's, um, it's very open-ended, um, which is good. Cause then, you know, the story can kind of go wherever it needs to, but
02:02:16
Speaker
Was this 9-11? Now I know that this has happened 56 times. So the question I guess becomes, do we need to remember 9-11 anymore? Because it happens so often. So that's gonna be something that I'm thinking of. But I'll just do something off the wall here, just something crazy.
02:02:38
Speaker
I would love for Taylor, Tattletale and Bitch to make a Mean Girl Squad. And so they kind of branch off. I would love for them to branch off and kind of start doing their own thing. And I know that Coyle would react negatively to that, because of course he would never be able to lose Tattletale. But I just think that's something, I'll just throw that out there into the, into the stratosphere. That might be something cool, that would be like, that'd be good to see. I don't think, for Nick's sake, I don't think Kaiser's done.
02:03:08
Speaker
And i'll be praying for nick. No, it's okay. It's okay. I can I can get mecha kaiser gonna pull a kaiser darth maul Yeah, i was gonna say definitely darth maul with metal legs now I was gonna go walk to this thing, but that works too. Yeah, that's true I'm interested to see what happens of um with arms master Yeah, this is because I I feel like one of my predictions from the beginning was that he's actually not good and like
02:03:39
Speaker
I think this is the beginning. I think this is his origin story for being a true villain. Like he's about to go down a rabbit hole. That's my thought. Yeah. I like it. Well, I think that wraps everything up pretty neatly. Uh, this was a long one. Thanks. Uh, thanks to all of you guys of course for sticking around and uh,
02:04:09
Speaker
having a lovely little time chatting about this arc. Thanks to everybody else who listened in with us. If you stuck around the whole thing, we greatly appreciate it. We had a lot of fun and we're not planning on stopping anytime soon. It only gets better. Well, I say that a lot of people think arcade is the best arc.
02:04:29
Speaker
I think there's a lot of room to grow. I think there's a lot of fun and exciting stuff still to come. So stick around. We've got arc nine, a shorter arc, a little bit of a breather here next episode.
02:04:42
Speaker
Buckle up and stick around for our sister podcast, which up to this point has been paired along with the book club half, but dissecting worm where Alan and I break down and dissect as the name implies, a worm from a perspective of adapting it for television. We're going to be breaking that into its own release, starting with arc eight.
02:05:10
Speaker
So be on the lookout for that. And moving forward, that's going to be its own episode to listen to as well. And Michael, would you like to play us out?
02:05:24
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. In order to be a little more proactive about your comments that you've been leaving on Reddit and on YouTube and Instagram,
02:05:53
Speaker
We decided to make a voicemail, 980-999-0438. Do you have an angry rant? You want to leave an X, but don't have their number anymore because they blocked you? Leave it for us instead. Just make it specific to worm, 980-999-0438. And maybe we'll play your angry, sad, lonely rant in one of our episodes. Leave your Cape name and your thoughts and stay tuned.