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Arc 27: Extinction
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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:
Scion spoke for the second time. Four words, barely audible. "Brockton Bay Book Club."
Get in contact with us @brocktonbaybc
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Timestamps:
(00:00) - Introduction
(01:10) - Book Club Begins
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Transcript
Introduction to Worm and Content Warnings
00:00:00
Speaker
Worm is a web serial by JC McRae, also known as Wildbo. You can read Worm in its original format by visiting parahumans dot.wordpress dot.com or donate to Wildbo's Patreon at patreon dot.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.
Arc 27 Extinction: Humorous Takes and Emotional Impact
00:01:09
Speaker
Good morning, Brockton Bay. Pack your bags and get ready for a long commute to the portal. It's arc 27 extinction. Oh shit. Although you did miss a golden opportunity to say goodbye UK. Oh, Michael, how I'm going to wind it back. Brexit from existence.
00:01:33
Speaker
he guy I'm gonna start using that from now on that goes up there with uh, I'm gonna self employ as a full-time ghost Yes That's one of my favorites I've ever heard that's a good one. That's a good one. I'm right up. There's not I think I'm gonna break zip from I'm gonna break zip from the breaks it from existence in Minecraft um Okay, so real quick I've got our fuck me copacetic stats um
00:02:04
Speaker
I know there's one of those in there. Yes, by my count. I only counted two fuck me. um And zero copacetics, because let's be honest, this arc is not very copacetic. no I'll be honest, I'm surprised somebody didn't try to convince Sion to be copacetic about this whole situation. let's Let's talk a little bit. How did we feel overall about this ah this arc? oh Better, worse than last one.
00:02:29
Speaker
I mean, in terms of like writing and enjoyment, way better. Obviously, this is peak. This is This is the narrative climax I feel like we've been moving towards in a lot of ways, or at least it's it's not the climax per se, it's the beginning of the climax, right? It's like, okay, this is this is the beginning of we' where the story has been heading. Yeah. So see in that sense, like very much better. in terms of feelings, like Hannah said, um, a lot of feelings, a lot of sad, so many so when it feels. Yeah. It's interesting. I actually am with Taylor on this one. Uh, not that, not that broken up about this arc. I was waiting for it to hit and something we'll get to eventually. I feel like much like Taylor with a one exception. Don't really felt, I feel like it was almost too overwhelming or maybe just.
00:03:28
Speaker
detaching herself, AKA myself as the reader from this, just kind of robotically went through it. Really liked the writing, but it did not hit
Worm Fatigue and Renewed Interest
00:03:40
Speaker
emotionally. like Is it because you've been reading for so long? I'm not gonna lie. i did this I was dreading reading this arc because of worm fatigue. I figured.
00:03:58
Speaker
But after I got past the first, uh, the first chapter, I, I actually, the, the speed picked up a lot more and I was like, Oh hell yeah, let's get into this. By the end of the first chapter I was in, but the the start was a little slow. That makes sense. It's definitely, yeah, it's definitely like the the first nuclear bomb just dropped and now we're waiting for the fallout in the first half of it. Yeah. And as we'll get to, uh, I would say we'll wait for Hannah to give us our summaries and we can start talking about the details of each chapter.
Zion's Explosion and Brockton Bay's Symbolism
00:04:40
Speaker
Let's do it.
00:04:41
Speaker
Yeah, okay, so Chapter 1, if you don't remember, Ark 26 ended with Zion exploding the UK. And he is now on a rampage. So we open with Ark 27, Chapter 1. Taylor's feeling very hopeless. She's standing around with all the heroes and they're just all kind of like... in shock. She leaves with Bitch and heads back to Brockton Bay to find it in complete ruins. They assist in the rescue as best they can and then head through the portal. Taylor walks through the refugee tents, hovers over the water, and then heads to a meeting at Cauldron. Yeah, I think and think seeing Brockton Bay in shambles was part of the feeling for me, right? Because it is sort of the
00:05:33
Speaker
realization that this is the beginning of the end of this story, you know, the hometown of our protagonists has just been rocked and destroyed and not even on purpose either. It's just the side effects of what Sion is doing. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's when it starts to feel like a lot for me, if that makes sense.
00:05:53
Speaker
Yeah, and because it's really, I mean, it's really frustrating to read because, you know, you just passively, you want your heroes to win. You want your protagonist to win. And like, here we are, 27 arcs into this story and the town, her town that she has been partly fighting for, for a majority of the story.
00:06:16
Speaker
is like just gone. She's lost. like in in In a sense, she's already lost. And that's like really frustrating to read. It's angry. It makes me angry to read that. It's so unsatisfying. Obviously, the story's not over, but like yeah it's a it's it it hurts. It's hard to read. Yeah. She's like flying over, looking down, and like like The docks are underwater. The boardwalk is underwater. like Even the tower that they've built around you know the portal has crumbled. like Everything is gone. it's ah I didn't think I was going to cry. I thought I'd moved past it.
00:07:04
Speaker
um Yeah, no, i I'm gonna say what Nick said, that it really does feel like, like we've been, we've had some hope, like we've we've felt like maybe we could come out of this, like in the last arc going up against Jack and feeling like there wasn't, like we weren't gonna come out of it and and then and then we did. And it was like, it's everything, like it worked, we did it. Only to to have everything just crumble.
00:07:36
Speaker
It's painful. Yeah.
Heroic Breakdowns and Taylor's Coping
00:07:39
Speaker
yep I think um even before she heads back to Brockton Bay when she's, you know, she's standing around and she's watching the other caves, I think seeing how they react is so, you know, people that she, that Taylor looks up to that are, you know, strong and, you know, don't show outwardly show signs of weakness are just, you know, crumpling to the ground because they can't, they just can't do it anymore. They're just so, they're so tired of fighting. And then it's like,
00:08:10
Speaker
Like what do you, you know, all the wind is out of your sails and you can't, I like, oh man, uh, foil and parion, just like leaning on each other and crying like, oh man. Hmm. Or rough. I find it really interesting how little Taylor talks about what just happened in the story. Like she's looking at the destruction and the aftermath and the effects and the people.
00:08:40
Speaker
But it takes a little bit of scrolling down when I'm reading for her to finally get around to saying, Oh yeah. Sion blew up everything. Yeah. Definitely like a little, uh, some, some, some shock. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. It's actually, I think that I think I, and we've talked about this before, but I think while the rights realism very well, cause that does, it does, that feels realistic.
00:09:10
Speaker
you know I've been through ah adrenaline fueled moments that were not fun in my life. And my thought usually isn't like a detailed breakdown of exactly what happened. It's very compartmentalized. you know It's very ah ah you know just orderly, this and that. um So yeah, i mean that that that whole section makes a lot of sense. It feels very natural.
00:09:33
Speaker
And she even admits like there's some things that she feels like she just can't think about, right? She can't like take the time to fly over her old neighborhood and see if her house is still standing. I think she does see it eventually. Yeah. But, um, but you know, that she doesn't, it's gone. Right. Cause it's gone. She looks and then she looks he like looks away and is like, Nope, not going to think about that. Exactly. Yeah. So there's, there's things that she's not,
00:09:59
Speaker
because she knows she has to keep moving. She doesn't take the leisure of, let me go check on everybody I knew in Brockton Bay, you know, let me go check on my dad and his friends and my base and my, you know, the kids and everybody. She just kind of like, what do I need to do to help the people I can right now? I'm going to do that right now. You know, and that's it. Yeah. She even runs into, uh, she runs into the Barnes family. Yeah.
00:10:28
Speaker
And it turns out at the end of the world, um despite everything, ah being a cunt runs in the family. God. Yeah, Jesus. i That made me so mad that she sees Emma's family and they just like all give her dirty looks. like Your daughter was a bitch and caused Taylor to trigger. And you're mad at Taylor because your daughter's dead? Also, it's been years.
00:10:57
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Talk about holding a grudge. My God. Jesus. Like this is like, I'm trying to think of the equivalent of this where I don't know some, some person, you know, that used to annoy you that you worked with is now like an A-list celebrity and you, you know, are walking by them and you just give them a super dirty look. Like, God, you used to annoy me so much. Like, okay. Like it's been a while.
Unresolved Tensions: Emma's Family vs. Taylor
00:11:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:26
Speaker
Yeah. And also as it it made me think about the last time we saw Emma. And it was the day that Taylor's identity got revealed to the world. Right. it's Right. And, you know, her at the school and everyone standing up, which was such a win moment for Taylor, like everyone backing her up. Put some bugs in her hair too.
00:11:49
Speaker
But the back but like ah it's it's interesting to me to think back and realize that like that was the last time Taylor and Emma saw each other. And now, you know here at the end of the world, like Emma's gone.
00:12:06
Speaker
it's i don't know it's
00:12:10
Speaker
It's weird to think of things that you take for granted or that seem like constants when they're suddenly you know gone. like I feel like at the very, very beginning, when Leviathan first attacks Brockton Bay, you get that sense of the constant of the city being totally you know flooded and you know stuff getting knocked out in the scar. like But they rebuild, you know, there's there's stuff to rebuild and people are there. And that's what gives it the oomph. And now it's like. The best you can do is drag bodies out of buildings and go through the portal. yeah Yeah, both in and out of story. This is, you know, we talk about extinction, but I like the word obliterate.
00:12:55
Speaker
um This is an obliteration for Taylor's story. where like, as we'll even move through the rest of this arc, like, oh, we're basically going to interact with the school bullies. And it turns out it doesn't matter. And we're going to interact with Brockton Bay. Oh, which, you know, basically might as well not exist really. And oh, we've got old people that we put in the bird cage and that act of putting them in the bird cage and arresting them and defeat him
Focus on Character vs. World-building
00:13:29
Speaker
kind of doesn't matter anymore.
00:13:31
Speaker
like None of that matters because of this event that's going on here. And narratively, that's not a there is a there are ways to make that, ah to fuck that up easily, to make everything that you've worked through in an entire story mean nothing by the end.
00:13:54
Speaker
um and And it's not a complete nothingness. you know We have the things like the portal and you know just having the conversation with Sophia and getting people out of the birdcage that we do know, but within the world, what they've worked towards and you as the view you know reader reading about it it's it, it feels both interesting to come to this conclusion of events, but the conclusion of events be the obliteration of everything that has come before.
00:14:24
Speaker
I mean, goodness gracious, the slaughterhouse nine have a seat at the table because of how bad we're dealing with this. And it's only bone saw, but like ah everything has to come together.
00:14:37
Speaker
Yeah, i I'm thinking here out loud. like I'm struggling to think of other stories, and this is an open call for suggestions if anybody has any good stories. um as I'm assuming you'd find this more in literature, um where you get this sort of ah like a loss to the story where essentially the good guys, quote unquote, good guys lose this badly. And at that place in the story, like I think it works well. I think the, and the reason this, like this arc works very well is because ultimately worm is like a character story. It's all about Taylor's character. And it's this, it's this character journey, not like a world building
00:15:25
Speaker
story. Um, and so we get to, we still, we're still following Taylor's character through this moment. But like, you know, if in Lord of the Rings, they got to the, they got to Mount Doom and, uh, they passed out and an Azkul brought the ring back to Sauron and and Sauron won the day. It would dead no one would be the worst story ever. No one would care. you It'd be awful, but it works here.
00:15:53
Speaker
I think I don't know. I think it I think it has got to be because we're focused so much on Taylor as a character. And it's we can still follow her journey through such a drastic change in setting. But I don't know. Anyone else had any any other stories that do that set on my way? and Yeah, I'm trying trying to think if there have been any where it feels like. The good guys lose.
00:16:22
Speaker
You didn't have to be lost. I'm trying to think of like stories that just even yeah just like this drastic of a setting change. Yeah. You know, it's hard. I don't, I don't, it's hard to do.
00:16:35
Speaker
Yeah, I mean This is like it's not even it's not even close But there's this book called a dowry of blood and it's basically like uh, it's a dracula retelling uh, it's it you know It it is what it is. But ah but near the end what comes out of it is the the main character, you know, she and her uh Polycule Murder Dracula. and it's And it's like everything about their life is like over. Everything that they've built up to is done. And they have to like recover everything that they are they they are and like what their family is because of like this huge change into their way of life and their
00:17:26
Speaker
dynamic and how they look at the world and like how they operate as a unit. and And it's not even close. It's not even close to this drastic, but it's the only it's the only thing I can think of off the top of my head that gives you that same sense of like, oh my God, like everything's broken. Yeah. Like how do we come out of this? Like how do we what do we do now? Because it doesn't feel like we can do anything other than just lay down and die. Yeah.
00:17:57
Speaker
I do love that worm now fits into that category of story that says, Hey, um, you know, it's it's like your classic JRPG story, right? You begin your story with a fresh young hero, you know, bright eyed, bushy tailed, and you just go on a nice little mission, fight a dragon or something right at the beginning, maybe something small. And now, you know, by the end of the story, you're trying to kill God.
00:18:25
Speaker
there's just you know Classic JRPG storyline. Yeah. I'll be honest. Okay. So as I'm thinking about this, the vibe actually would kind of be a Ruby and you know, that also still applies Nick. Um, but Ruby, you know, for three seasons, you know, you are set at the school, having a good time, but there's a bad guy. You fight a few monsters and you run it, you defeat the battles. And then in the third season,
00:18:56
Speaker
Um, slight spoilers. Everything goes to shit in the back half of that season. Like the last two or three episodes, things shit goes downhill so fast. And do you think that at some point in time, we're going to have the heroic recovery of some kind. And the answer is it doesn't, it just keeps getting worse. And then and seasons four through I'll be honest, I stopped watching, I think before the final season or something. ah it never It's just them trying to recover from that.
00:19:35
Speaker
like
00:19:37
Speaker
It's part of why I really like that that ah when that happens in the story is because things just go so like so wrong, so hard to such a degree that the rest of the story has to be about picking up the pieces afterwards.
00:19:56
Speaker
I think that makes a very interesting story. I think that would probably qualify for something like this. Yeah, that makes sense. I could see that. That is close.
Cauldron Meeting and Tattletale's Intense Conversation
00:20:06
Speaker
It's not nearly the same scale, of course, but I do feel like similarly the last Harry Potter book kind of had a similar vibe where for six books, it's all in the school, into the sixth book, Harry leaves Hogwarts. And you can tell us kind of for the last time,
00:20:22
Speaker
And then book seven, most of it takes place all around England, right? Not even, not even focused on Hogwarts really until the very end. So, and it is kind of a similar feeling where you get back to Hogwarts after everything that's happened and you're like, Oh, this isn't the same school I Harry went to two years ago, three years ago, you know? But yeah, no, very drastic, very drastic. And I i kind of love that. It's a great drama. Oh yeah.
00:20:51
Speaker
Yeah, I do really enjoy seeing, I'll just say the heroes not succeed, especially at the very least on the first try. Uh, I think it's, it's a good thing to come back from. And there's something about like losing at the beginning and having to recover from that in a, in a story, but to have it happen when they go up against the big bad.
00:21:16
Speaker
at Or, you know, the, oh, we've got to stop the end of the world. Oops. We didn't stop the end of the world. Um, which to be fair, uh, is essentially the plots of both Stormlight archives and the Mistborn, uh, yeah. By Brandon Sanderson. Um, those happen way before the beginning though. So it doesn't count. I will say I'm, I'm in the middle of the.
00:21:46
Speaker
fourth book of the Stormlight Archive, um waiting for the fifth to come out in December, trying to get ready for that. So, excited. Anyways, I do like Brandy, Brandy Sandy, as his friends call him. Yeah, those ah the his close relations. All right. We can move to chapter two. We can move forward now. Yeah. Okay, so chapter two.
00:22:10
Speaker
Well, we always take the longest for chapter one, because we're like, every time were we're talking about our our thoughts and our feelings. It wouldn't be us if it didn't happen. That's true. You'll a lot of things. That's it. Well, I'd say they know AI is taking over the podcast is when we don't do that one day. when I think we've done it enough that it could replicate the bullshit we do for the first 30 minutes. That's fair.
00:22:38
Speaker
ah Yeah, okay, so chapter two, ah we open at the Cauldron meeting. Tattletale explains about the shards, ah reveals that Cauldron knew Sion was the catalyst, ah was going to be the the the end of the world. Evacuation suggested they prepare to open up the birdcage, and Tattletale and Riley talk for a little bit. Riley, by the way, is bone-saw.
00:23:05
Speaker
is votes yeah yeah So right off the bat, ah Taylor's like, Oh my gosh, Dinah Alcott is hanging out with fault line. That's so weird. Like, I think she says like that doesn't parse. I'm like, of course it parses. Who are the two people that we have known to have very mercenary like ah yeah money habits when it comes to offering their powers and services.
00:23:32
Speaker
Like of course these two got together and we're like, yo, you want to learn how to make some real money? And dinosaur like, bro, I already know how to make real money, but I'll hear you out because there's a 50% chance that I make more money if I team up with you.
00:23:50
Speaker
and Yeah, no, it absolutely figures and I can't think of a better team. Let's go. Yeah, I'm actually I love that I love I love the idea of Dinah being with them that it totally makes sense and I felt the same way when Taylor's like why shoot for that? I'm like Taylor because you still think of Dinah as a as a tiny little baby child in your head like yeah you don't see her I don't know. I feel like I see her differently because of the interludes in the last arc with golem and her on the in his head, like giving the the blues and reds. Like, I feel like my perspective of her changed because of that. And it makes sense to see her with Fault Lines crew. I just I like it. I like the idea of her being a contracted cape. I think that's very fun. Really, the only thing I have a mystery over is I really want to know how they met and how that conversation went.
00:24:43
Speaker
Oh yeah. Oh, I would love that interlude. That would be fun.
Dinah and Fault Line's Team
00:24:47
Speaker
Mmm, making notes for dissecting. A little off topic from the yeah end of the world stuff. Or perhaps reconstructing or whatever we decide. Oh. Yeah.
00:24:58
Speaker
so Sorry. I love all the noises we all just made right there. You can, you can always tell when Michael's making a mental note of sound bites, he's going to flip. It's a real reason to become a patron and join the discord. That's true. You get all this fun, all this stuff. And all of our excerpts that we sub, some of them, they don't make, they don't make them in and we pull them out and and we ah make little bites out of them. We send them straight to the patrons. They get them. They eat them right up.
00:25:36
Speaker
ah Khalifa Depero is back. Oh, the dog man? Khalifa Depero, yes. King of the dogs, come on. The luchador, bro. With the fur? You got the boots with the fur. Boots with the fur.
00:25:56
Speaker
And then Michael, I warned you about this before, but ah the suits, the British UK, the UK teams. yes Yeah, they were insolvent, which like another example of the UK being a dead country culturally. Can't even keep a superhero team up and running.
00:26:15
Speaker
Well, it's because they weren't as good as the Kingsmen, but I guess they were better enough than the Kingsmen to survive. The Kingsmen got annihilated. Yeah, they're all dead now. The suits are still fairly functional. There's eight... What did she say? Only three of the eight leaders? What do you mean, functional? Like, alive? I'm functional. It doesn't make me a good hero, but I'm still probably better than the suits. Look, if you're alive, if you're alive, you're in the minority already, okay?
00:26:45
Speaker
Goodness gracious, sorry. True, true. All I'm saying is, okay, who would win? American Earth Olaf Heroes, or UK Earth Bet Heroes? Discuss amongst yourselves. I mean, it's the UK Bet Heroes, except, you know, at least the live ones. You think a bunch of guys with waiter pants going, oy, bruv!
00:27:13
Speaker
ah Stop with the name of the queen of England is going to stop. Good old hero, man. First of all, that just shows how little you know about it. Yeah. We got 33 Ling England bros over here. So chill. Yeah. Chill bro. he Don't you mean bro? I said bro. Chill bro. ah Okay. All right. Oh yeah. Oh no, no, no. We talked about this before the group, the Kingsman.
00:27:42
Speaker
Uh, I stand by my point double stand by my point. I'll double down. Um, um they were relying on anonymous donations from cauldron to stay afloat. Uh, was it cauldron or was it the PRT cauldron? They were trying to break away from the PRT to go on their own, but they couldn't afford to. Okay. So they're poor. All right. Make fun of the powers.
00:28:10
Speaker
boy
00:28:12
Speaker
Yeah. Interlude 21 X the Kingsman were in debt. Easy enough to manage an anonymous ah donation. Keep them afloat for another two months. ah wait Oh my gosh. Oh, let's see. Uh, what's our biggest problems from 20 X? Oh, the CUI, the suits and Kingsman will cooperate because they have to.
00:28:36
Speaker
Does it just being bullying people with our own money doesn't make us better than them, Alan? I don't know if you know this. I don't, I don't know what you're talking about. Like all I'm saying is remember July 4th.
00:28:51
Speaker
We dump that tree into the harbor. thank god um Yeah, no, there's a lot of stuff that's happening here. Yeah, this ah this whole conversation is fascinating to me solely in the sense of just seeing so many people represented, so many groups. I will say one one criticism that i know that I've heard about worm is that it is it is obviously very American centric with an American protagonist.
00:29:21
Speaker
And it does kind of feel like Canadian a lot of the times. so I'm not going to lie. Yeah. Yeah. In the sense that, well, I'll say this, it's very North American centric, right? We don't really see much of like what's going on in Africa, what's going on in Europe. We mostly hear about it third hand, and then we get the Yangban as sort of the, you know, what's going on in Asia, I guess. Um, but what I do like about this scene is that it does,
00:29:49
Speaker
This does feel like a worldwide collection of heroes. there's Seems like there's a bunch of teams Taylor doesn't even know, which is cool. um And just kind of seeing all the different groups that do exist, even even though we don't, you know, even though we don't get to see them normally. yeah Obviously, some fan favorites are back, Mordnog, the... um Oh, what's the Indian group called? um aonda The The Thonda. Yeah. I'd love them. Uh, you know, and then we've got Riley here, uh, which I do like this as a conclusion to her interlude. We do kind of get to see, um, that connection back to that interlude of, okay, if Jack is captured, I'm going to be good. Right. Kind of trying to right. Right. Switch sides and help. Yeah. Yeah. It feels very like,
00:30:42
Speaker
I might've skimmed over if they kind of talked about the setting, but it like you get the sense that this is sort of ah like ah like a little ah you know forward operating base kind of thing. You got, I'm imagining like a bunch of pop-up tents, people running around, like getting organized. And you it is it just kind of has that feeling of everybody is arriving and getting kind of onboard. Imagine being a translator.
00:31:09
Speaker
Imagine if you got a translator power as a cape. You're like, man, this sucks. I can't do anything. And then now it's my time to shine. You're like, actually, you're going to spit in on the big meeting. Dog yeah dog guy has a translator because he doesn't speak English. Right. There's a couple of them out there, I think. Yeah, that's interesting.
00:31:29
Speaker
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00:31:56
Speaker
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00:32:12
Speaker
The psychological takedown of ah bone saw is fantastic. I did like that. So yeah, um great conversation between Tattletale and Riley. They are sort of the ah emotional and psychological breakdown. yeah um But I really enjoyed this because Bonesaw is terrible. Yeah, you know, she kind of deserves it. Although, you know, what you know what I, I will say though, real quick, sorry, Hannah, but I will say real quick, my favorite part of it is that the thing that gets her the most is Tattletale basically calling her unoriginal.
00:32:46
Speaker
yeah like yeah It's funny. That actually feels like a theme for this whole arc. Um, cause we're basically like creativity and origin because we find out that Sion has basically been an unoriginal hack this entire time. And so now he's trying to dip his toes into doing anything, uh, creative with violence, but he sucks at it. Um,
00:33:15
Speaker
And then we find out like, Oh yeah, Riley, you have no creativity. Really. It's all been Jack who's been, you know, molding your creative output. And then we get to, you know, idle on later on. And we're like, Oh yeah, also you suck too. You have no creativity and everybody's just been telling you where to go and what to do this whole time.
00:33:36
Speaker
That is a, yeah, interesting theme. Oh, sorry. I just remembered what I was going to say. Uh, Taylor says a comment about, uh, tattle tail and bone saws interaction where she actually feels a little sorry for bone saw. And I have to agree. Like I, as you guys know, bone saw is one of my favorite people in worm. And I just, I feel bad for her. Like she's a terrible person. We know this.
00:34:06
Speaker
been proven over and over and over again, sadistic and disgusting. But like in this moment, she's like really broken down to her core. And like when Tattletail tells her, okay, stop with the bullshit. like Stop with the you know this little girl attitude. And she drops it and she says fuck. And I'm like, whoa, this is not the bonsai we once knew. Bonsai is not the same person. Bonsai is very different now.
00:34:35
Speaker
If you can't handle me at my bone, sawest you can't handle me at man. You can't have me at my Rileus. Exactly. But yeah, I just, I find that interesting. Like she's so kind of broken down, like with the idea that maybe she wasn't all that inventive. Like maybe she, she really was just a pawn in Jack's game. and Yeah. Yeah.
Tattletale vs. Bone-saw: Creativity and Manipulation
00:34:59
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It's it's definitely.
00:35:02
Speaker
And I mean, i I do feel bad for her, I think solely because we do have the advantage of her interlude in knowing just how messed up everything that she went through is. yeah Like, I don't know. There's something to that. I think of just like, Oh yeah. Yeah. That was awful. You did. That's awful. You know, I don't know. It's, it's rough. Yeah. Good writing.
00:35:33
Speaker
Yeah, it is. Oh yeah. For sure. Mmm. three. Yes. chapter Hold on. Hold on. I've got more Sveta and welded or an item. We can talk about them. Yes. Oh yeah. That was actually really cool. Sveta and weld. I did like, yeah I do like that combination. Amazing. Good work. Hell yeah. Good work. Uh, let's see. Also talking about, uh, praising golem for his strategy to take you out. Um, Jack. Sorry.
00:36:02
Speaker
to which I wrote down, ah, yes, a cape's worst enemy, the competent non-cape.
00:36:12
Speaker
um And then, ah ah Saint, you dumb motherfucker, teachers already got you in the bag. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I will say that that little interaction with ah Defiant and and uh was his face is so uh Saint is so like it hits you because because he's going off and then tattletales like oh he muted you And it's like oh you feel like the all of Defiance, you know bluster is kind of like stopped
00:36:46
Speaker
It's like, oh. I did kind of like that in a way, like saying it's an asshole, but I did love that, like, yeah please stop. He muted you like forever ago, dude. Shut the fuck up, man. Saint is what happens when Mark Zuckerberg does nothing but watch the Terminator movies for like a year.
00:37:12
Speaker
Again, though, It was the risk versus reward thing. And we talked about that when he did it, right? It was the, and that's again, all of this is all of that, right? Cauldron knew that Sion was the catalyst, but they had this hope that by not telling people, it would be better. You know, like, like that was their understanding of risk versus reward. And I and i feel like ultimately that's a great.
00:37:39
Speaker
This is all just a great reflection of thoughts that Taylor has been having, right? And this is why I think Taylor begins to kind of accept it as like, no, it kind of makes sense that Cauldron would act this way, actually. I kind of agree with them in a weird way. yep Yeah. I don't know. It's cool. It's cool. Cauldron is a group that I have never, well, obviously morally, I don't like them. I i have never questioned of their process.
00:38:11
Speaker
no They're like, no, no, they, they know what they're doing. Yeah. I mean, when they hit you, like they we already saved the world once. Yeah, that was a big reveal. Shoot. You guys are much bigger picture than any of these motherfuckers. Yeah. We've been doing this on the reg. Do you understand that we make powers?
00:38:40
Speaker
Have they revealed how they make powers yet or not yet? No, not yet. I mean, we know that because they've talked about experimentation, but like we don't know anything other than that. Yeah, we don't. Yeah. And there's there's juice. you You drink the Kool-Aid. Literally. They do have the juice. What flavor do you think their concoctions are? Cherry. Blue raspberry. Ooh. I think they're going for like a black licorice.
00:39:04
Speaker
who oh Oh, no, no, that that's I, I would, I feel like that would be accurate. They pull out the black licorice. You know, you're about to case 53. Listen, I know, I know you guys don't have kids, so you probably haven't tasted kids medicine too recently, but it hasn't gotten better. So I was getting like, like cherry ibuprofen vibes. yeah i Yeah. I mean, I assume it's better, but like, I'd be, I'd be down for a grape, a grape ibuprofen. Imagine if it's just like a chocolate milkshake. They just slide it over.
00:39:34
Speaker
and Just slurp this down. Yeah. No, I mean, they describe the experience as painful. So what I think of is the, uh, the happy meal milkshake challenge no drink is yeah god the happy shake. road oh the happy those yeah i I once worked in youth ministry and I both had this done to me and did this to other people, continuing the cycle of violence. What you do is you order a happy meal.
00:39:59
Speaker
with Sprite as the drink usually. And then you pour everything except for the plastic toy into a blender and blend that shit up. It is by far probably the worst thing I've ever tasted or had in my mouth. The carbonation of the Sprite mixed with the chunkiness of the French fries what is intolerable.
00:40:28
Speaker
Deep apologies to anyone currently eating. Bonesaw wouldn't do that shit to people.
00:40:38
Speaker
You're probably right. Contessa has her little thing where she just stops and is like, you need to go back to your group and then Amp appears and like walks over dejected. Yeah.
00:40:51
Speaker
I love the explanation that Contessa just all the time asks questions before she's about to go anywhere about strangers yeah to see if there's just strangers fucking with her. Yeah. She's so cool. She's so cool. And like, like I would never think it like I said, never think of that. I would have to be thinking about Contessa's powers as a main character for a long time in order to come up with that.
00:41:21
Speaker
Like, and she is a side character. Oh yeah. You mean from our like a writing perspective? promote just Yeah. Creativity wise. Like, do you have a main character? You're probably going to play out a lot of your, like Taylor, I think we've all figured out. Well, eventually we would all come to conclusions on all of the things we could possibly do with her powers. Um, there's still some things that Wild Bill picks up pretty early on that I'm like, I, that would have taken a while for me to come to.
00:41:49
Speaker
and Right. But the side characters, the ah use of their abilities and Contessa being the point, the case in point this time, man, that is, that is some thinking. That is some deep thinking right there. Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah. So they talk a little bit about shards and how basically kind of re-explaining the interlude that we talked about last time where it's like, okay, where did powers come from? You know, that they're related to all of us somehow.
00:42:19
Speaker
ah But yeah, i think I think we're ready to move on though. We've got some bigger stuff coming.
Shadowstalker Deal and Birdcage Prisoners
00:42:25
Speaker
27.3. Trace, ah Taylor meets with Shadowstalker and offers her a way to way out of jail if she's willing to fight. And Shadowstalker, actually.
00:42:42
Speaker
sort of agrees in the most non-agreement way possible. ah They head to the rendezvous point, watching as the birdcage prisoners emerge. What a fun conversation.
00:42:56
Speaker
i It's a doozy. It sure is. I am upset at how to calm Taylor was the entire time.
00:43:08
Speaker
I understand that Taylor can feel calm in this situation. I was not calm reading this situation. I was very upset and very angry and full of rage, actually. And I just wanted to smack Shadowstalker very hard. And I thought Taylor was very mature and I was very proud of her. And it made me realize that I could not be her in that situation. Not even a little bit. Yeah, she's better than us.
00:43:46
Speaker
Well, and it's it's it's again, this is another hint to me that this is the conclusion, right? Because it's coming full circle with all of her past. ah yeah Even Emma being dead to an extent feels like it's meant to represent that. Not that, you know, I mean, I guess probably we wanted her dead at some point in a metaphorical sense. But anyways, point being, though, bigger that you kind of look at this arc and you go,
00:44:15
Speaker
Oh yeah, she's reconciling with, not reconciling, but reconciling with her past, right? Reckoning with her past. And this conversation with Shadow Soccer is just another end cap on that where she's like, I'm not afraid of you anymore. I don't care what you think of me. Do whatever you want. It's just like, it's, it's so good in that regard. It's so good. I do like the system that they come up with where it's like,
00:44:46
Speaker
you as you you know You can let people out, but only if one of the victims essentially says, yeah, you can go. Yeah, it is. It's a cool idea, right? like Well, if ah the people you hurt give permission. Yeah. But yeah, I agree with you also that Taylor is so detached and robotic this entire conversation, which seems to fall in line with, like,
00:45:17
Speaker
I don't know that she has these weird swings in this whole arc where she goes from being like concentrated on the destruction to detached and like logical through the next couple of chapters and then back into like, I don't know, frenzied in the moment panic. It's neither good nor bad. It's just really interesting. I think it's kind of, it's like the most we've seen her defeated Because like even when she's on her back foot through a lot of the other arcs, she still has a plan or she has a tactic or she takes a minute to kind of reevaluate. And like throughout this arc, she's fully in what where we just got a
00:46:03
Speaker
we just gotta do what we gotta do. And it's it's there's there's very little ah in in the way of like her typical planning and everything like that. So it's just her base sort of survival instinct. And we know that she you know kicks off a lot of her emotion to her bugs as well. So take away the tactics, take away the emotion, and she's just one foot in front of the other.
00:46:32
Speaker
yeah What do you guys think of the um all the birdcage prisoners coming out? Pretty cool. and i love it I loved listening to the descriptions of all of them. Yeah, that was fun. Some fun characters.
00:46:47
Speaker
We're definitely getting into the part of the book where there are so many capes now, it's hard to keep track of them all. yeah But it's still fun to hear the description. I i don't even remember, because i I don't remember people's names, but the girl who had like all the X's that went a little... Anjanu. Anjanu. I think that's pretty cool. Heads up, that might be my favorite cape of the arc.
00:47:13
Speaker
I liked, uh, gavel, uh, coming out serial killer, mostly because yeah yeah, but only because I was, I remembered his name from when I read the story, you know, whatever eight years ago now. And in my mind, I knew he had a gavel as a weapon and in my mind,
00:47:34
Speaker
I don't know why, but his, his costume was like an old timey judge with like the powdered wig and everything. yeah And the reading and now I was like, Oh no, wait, I don't, I don't know where that came from. But I was, I was a little sad. No, I think freedom for those of you who know the video game freedom force, I think there's a character named something to do with like law. Um,
00:48:03
Speaker
Oh, uh, no, not law order order is, uh, a just has the giant gavel and his, um, blind companion law. Who, you know, looks like, uh, the law, but with the sword and everything. So yeah. Law and order. What goes up for freedom force characters. Oh, sorry. Yeah.
00:48:31
Speaker
yeah also Um, gavel is the one who is the reason why the rule about secret identities exist, right? Like that yeah that rule about not going over after families and stuff. Yes. Yup. Yes. Because, cause that's what he used to do. It was like, he would go after his victims, families, like break them down mentally, break them apart. Yeah, exactly.
00:48:58
Speaker
You're a bad dude. Yeah. And that's why everybody hates the Punisher.
00:49:07
Speaker
Everybody hates the Punisher until they need the Punisher. Nobody needs the Punisher. That's why they kicked you in civil war. That's why both sides kicked you out. Frank Castle, you can go back to your Frank White Castle and get fat.
00:49:20
Speaker
doesn't Wait, doesn't in Civil War, doesn't he like break the rules and just like kill two bad guys? Yeah, like with the he's with the underground movement. They bring the bad guys in. They're like, all right, guys, we've got people to help. He shoots two of them in the head, and they're like and Captain America's like, Frank, I'm going to kill you if you do not leave right now. Nobody wants to.
00:49:48
Speaker
I'm surprised you didn't get anything like that here. Birdcage prisoners come out and none of them get got by some vigilante. I mean, there's the one guy who like sees acid bath and is like starts shaking. Yeah, true. That's we yeah came close. so Probably more PTSD from something that acid bad bath did and that he saw. But yeah, i I'm I'm surprised something didn't break out. Yeah.
00:50:15
Speaker
Yeah, so we've got Lushdrum is the feminist who... Oh, yeah. ...he was a emasculated man, went too far. Whose Taylor's mom was part of. Was college. Right? Oh, yeah, they dropped out a little. Let us not forget. Back before tidbit. you know Yeah. um Yeah. but She was part of the group and in college before things got, like, real crazy. The more you find out about your parents, you know? Jesus. The more we find out about Taylor's parents.
00:50:44
Speaker
It's like finding out your parents were part of the moonies or something. Crane the harmonious. Um, we don't really find out much about, uh, but she walks up to a hero and kisses him. So there's some speculation that he might be her son or something. Um, they get real close though. Yeah. Uh, well maybe not. Then she kisses them on the forehead and then they're like hug for a really weirdly long time. And then she like,
00:51:15
Speaker
turns around so that her back is against his chest and they just like hover very close together for an uncomfortably long time. That's true. Yeah. String theory and him on the head for a very long time. And then she hangs out next to one of the people that she came with. I thought maybe, maybe it was, it was worded a little weird. Yeah. String theory and lab rat. We'll talk more about them later, probably.
00:51:42
Speaker
Um, Galvanate, what is his thing? Galvanate has a fun power. Oh, he can render, he can render people and invisible and give them. Yeah. regular your people in Yeah. and give them electric powers, which is really cool. Um, black cause a, uh, yeah, black has got ah another fun one. Yeah. Well, it doesn't really say her power just says that she, uh,
00:52:12
Speaker
probably has killed tens of thousands of people. That's exciting. Yeah. Uh, so also as I'm reading up, there's a lot of, a lot of background stuff for crane, the harmonious, uh, that is all just wild though on space battles forums. Uh, and it's a lot of her kidnapping children. And then, uh, you know, a lot of basically she's a martial arts cult leader.
00:52:42
Speaker
Oh, interesting. But yeah, very, ah very abusive, very, ah you know, emotionally abusive and all that. Yeah. Anjanu, we talked about a bit already. Who immediately approaches Chevalier, which I think is fantastic. Yeah. Well, she saw the size of his cannon blade and she was like, yeah. She knew. She went straight for him. B-line.
00:53:09
Speaker
Uh, Marquis of course, as well as Panacea. Yeah. Um, Oh, that was a sad moment when Taylor's like looking at them and they're like sitting together and she feels like the pang of jealousy of like, I wish that I could sit and talk with my dad right now. Like, Oh, hmm. Yeah. Um, teacher of course, as well. And then glycyguinea.
00:53:37
Speaker
take man yeah Oh, what a, what a character. She's definitely one. I'm like, Oh yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. yeah She's one of my longest back to get out here buddy. It was like super buddy buddy with panacea, which like we already knew, but I love that probably cause panacea gave him his balls back. That's my, that's my head cannon. Oh my gosh.
00:54:04
Speaker
And she's got like tattoos now too. She's like yeah he's a whole prison prison member sky being a little though. Yeah. yeah you know I love that. We're like, Oh, she's got tattoos. Maybe she's grown up. Maybe, you know, not to say the prison reforms, anyone, but like maybe being in there with her dad has given her a little perspective on life. And then like immediately she starts interacting with people and you're like, no, no, I can tell. I can tell. Who does she interact with?
00:54:34
Speaker
oh And maybe this is Taylor being judgy, but from what I remember, she like sees her and like the way that she's interacting with people, and the vibe I got from reading was just like, nope, she's still super insecure and has not learned a damn thing. I do love, um this is one of our two fuck me's in this arc, is Panacea looking at Bonesaw.
00:54:58
Speaker
Yeah. Uh, yes. Cause doesn't she look at Taylor and go like, fuck me. And then looks over and sees bone. So I was like, fuck me. Well, no, she, she just says what to Taylor. Cause she sees Taylor and Sophia standing relatively close to Taylor. is just like yeah But she doesn't, she doesn't say, she doesn't say the fuck me until she sees. so Gotcha. Absolutely fantastic too. Yeah. Oh man. Next, next one.
00:55:27
Speaker
And then move it on. Sure. All right. So chapter four, the queen administrator has a chat with the queen of the fairy. Uh, love that. That was fun. The heroes gather and attack in stages. String theory's device works. And then Sion teleports to where they are and everything just gets fucked.
Sion's Overwhelming Power and Hero Struggles
00:55:52
Speaker
Let's put some real big quotes around that word works in regards to what string theory does. No, you're absolutely right. I don't want to hear anything bad. I love string theory. I'm not saying string theory is bad. I'm just saying. It does work. It punches him right out of the sky.
00:56:12
Speaker
She uses the goddamn G driver. The God driver. Come on. She found the G spot and hit it hard. That's right. You just got to keep pounding the G spot over and over again until they get Sion to you know stop. I mean, ibi for all intents and purposes, it does work like it knocks them out.
00:56:36
Speaker
Totally works yeah ah for like half a second. Listen, listen, again, I feel like work needs to be in heavy quotations here. yeah Hey, look, did anybody else do better? Yeah, I didn't think so. I mean, Eidolon briefly, but you know. Well. Everything about Eidolon is brief. He's getting old, okay? He takes pills for that now. wow No, he got cut off, remember?
00:57:04
Speaker
yeah yeah yeah hey i guys i can they anyone have no pves anymore i might choose and she choose not to I love how convoluted their plan is, but like it makes sense ah like the whole breaking up into groups and attacking from different angles and base is going to be on a separate earth and like everything to just sort of like it Like it feels like as good a plan as you could create to yeah attack a God. Right. yeah You know, and and even that doesn't work. i was going to say and All that did was like buy them what 10 minutes? Yeah. Yeah. I do love that they're like, man,
00:57:50
Speaker
He's a, you know, we keep him on that other world, we're safe. And then he just... That's so stupid. That's so stupid. Like, did they not? oh
00:58:02
Speaker
Anyways. Well, I think it's funny because a lot of this at this point is for a lot of them just realizing how powerful he is because like up until this point, yeah, he can hold his own against the end bringers pretty much unfazed. He's obviously the strongest Cape on earth, but he still is just flying around to the world. Right. So when you are on a different universe,
00:58:29
Speaker
on a different part of the planet. ah and he like they're not They have no reason to expect him to blink into existence above him above them. yeah Like, that's not a reality yet. It's just, oh, yeah. They underestimated what they were fighting. I mean, if you think about his reaction and his response time when he was acting as a hero, like the fact that he would be on the other side of the planet, like helping get a cat out of a tree when they're all fighting behemoth on the other side of the planet. Right. It was it it felt like, oh, well, we got to wait for Zion to fly halfway across the planet to like help us out. Like he might not get here for another 45 fucking minutes. And now now that he's like invested, he like blip blink and he's there. It's like he was literally just strolling down the road. Yeah. Like for his entire life. Yeah. Just casual walk through the park. Motherfucker.
00:59:31
Speaker
yeah I think it it that just goes to show you that like the difference between him before feeling like he was doing a purpose because he didn't know what else to do with his life, and he was just like going on autopilot from like someone telling him, like, you should do good things. And he was like, sure, okay, I guess. And now this is like him making the decisions, he's making the calls, and so therefore the the response time is much faster.
01:00:00
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I think too, it just shows that more than likely they've underestimated him, which is hard to say because they know he's killed behemoth. But I do think that, yeah, I think they've just underestimated him. Like they've, they thought that he was like them just super strong, but he's obviously not. And that's dangerous. Yeah.
01:00:30
Speaker
Clearly there's more to him than and what they thought, I guess. Yeah. You don't say. Uh, next chapter. Ah, yes. The chapter that destroyed me. Yes.
01:00:43
Speaker
um If you're a patron, you got to see my picture of myself that I posted earlier today of the absolute black tracks of tears pouring down my face because I forgot I had mascara on and was bawling my eyes out and then looked over the mirror and realized, holy shit, that's what my face looks like now. um Yeah, this one wrecked me. Okay. Chapter five.
Taylor's Transformation and Continued Fight
01:01:11
Speaker
Sion drops a golden bomb on top of the um but oil rig that they're all on. ah Taylor is thrown off the platform, hurtling towards the water, mortally wounded. She's missing a hand. She's missing a leg. Her lung has collapsed. she's her Her organs are leaking out.
01:01:34
Speaker
um
01:01:37
Speaker
She's floating around in the water, basically dying in shock when she realizes that Labrat's device, he gave everybody one, is trying to inject her, so she she fixes it. And her body reacts to the injection by morphing to survive the damage. ah could Basically, growing limbs um that are very insect-like in nature, she climbs the structure back up, meets up with the irregulars, which is Weld's team.
01:02:08
Speaker
ah helps battle Sion with distractions, Sion leaves, and Taylor blacks out in the water before being sucked through a portal.
01:02:22
Speaker
Damn. yeah it's what what what got this What got you this episode? Oh, I mean, I can already feel it again, so ah let me I'm so glad you asked.
01:02:34
Speaker
um so So we've talked before about Hannah's warm Medcha. Just not remembering things. ah and And that's where we're at. We're at the part now where I don't remember. I don't i don't know how the story ends.
01:02:52
Speaker
um I actually did remember the oil rig and Sveta and weld, but I didn't know when that happened and I didn't know what happened. I just knew that at some point we were going to be on an oil rig and be with weld and Sveta. But this moment when
01:03:12
Speaker
Taylor is going into shock. She's falling, hurtling through the air. And this was, I think part of it was also just, it's just the way that Wild Bo writes. But the the sentences are are short. They're very clipped. um There's not a lot of extra explanation or um Floury language, it's very much feels as if you're in Taylor's head as she's going into shock. And it's a lot of like move arm, try to breathe, you know, flip a flight pack, ah you know, angle towards water. and And it's just like she's trying to survive and fight through the panic and the shock that her body is going through. And like,
01:04:04
Speaker
Her in the water, like the clouds of blood obscuring her vision, ah her choking, trying to breathe, it just felt like this was the end. And like i didn't I didn't know what was gonna happen. And like after losing Brockton Bay,
01:04:32
Speaker
and Losing so many people and Losing Danny And then we fight so hard and he just appears and it's like From the beginning Taylor has been fighting Taylor has put her own needs to the side to survive she has learn to be a thinker, like she's had to be. And like even here where she's forcing herself to hold her breath so that she can like twist and get her arm out of the water to get the arm band to like, you know, go into her skin because it won't go through her suit because of the the spider silk. Like her lungs are literally, like one of them is collapsed. She's she's like,
01:05:29
Speaker
she's, I just have to hold it. Like this isn't that bad. And she says something like I've been through worse and it's like, she's trying to convince herself that she's been through worse and she can't because she knows that she hasn't. And I think the, the sense of like sacrifice, it's just all, all of it, all of this hitting me at once yeah just was so overwhelming.
01:06:00
Speaker
It just, it really, it just, it ripped me apart. It really, it really did. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, well said. It's a, it's a big moment. And I think for me visually, what got me was the description. She's like, I feel like I'm unraveling. Oh, that's my insights. Yeah. Oh my God. no ah Oh no. Um, cause I kind of forgot that she got this she gets close to dying, you know? ah Yeah. I thought this was the end cause there doesn't seem like there's going to be a way out. Like this, this isn't it. You know, like there isn't, we're not just going to have someone, some healer show up and be like, I got you. Don't worry. Like you're in the water.
01:06:52
Speaker
You're bleeding out. You have, you have no limbs. Like it's just, uh, yeah. No, it's, it's a lot. It's a lot for sure. Um, yeah, that's as difficult. Um, and then like, there's so much, one of the difficulties I have with these big fight scenes is realizing like there's big things that happen that are just kind of throwaways. Like we find out clock blocker died.
01:07:21
Speaker
Oh my god. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my god. Because because when he has a shadow, you know. Yeah. Oh my god. That killed me. That absolute. I was so upset. Yeah. Plug black or man, like, come on.
01:07:39
Speaker
It's like the curse of the first person narrative, because on the one hand, again, it feels very realistic. Like you're we're getting to experience the story as Taylor does, which means we we don't get the glamorous send off if she's not there to see it. you know right But at the same time,
01:08:00
Speaker
Give me my glamorous send off. Damn it. was fucking clock blocker. Like, you know, it's, yeah, it's, it's rough. That's her main ship in this podcast guys. What are they thinking? Wow.
01:08:15
Speaker
As we, as Ben said, there are many ships. All ships are possible. All ships are possible. Um, I think, I think that reveal though, of it being like plastic when yeas. Oh yeah. Oh my God. That just, man, it just sets up for the, like, that's that you feel like that that's how you're going to be finding out for the rest of this.
01:08:43
Speaker
yeah Sequence like oh, who's who's dead how many we're about to find out when she whips them out Yeah, how many more friends will we see as ghosts through classic one when you're not just friends? ah but everyone everyone I Forgot that glass to Gwen yay Killed the original gray boy. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah, right. Yeah, and has him on tap. Yep. Damn
01:09:09
Speaker
She's so powerful. Fuck. Yeah, she's crazy. No, it's it's crazy. um And seeing Taylor still, once she gets once she realizes what Labratt was trying to do, and that... yeah i mean i This is like, wow, wow, Labratt, way to go. like I have no idea who you are or what you can do, and I know you're a bad guy, but damn. you know ah but get ahead Way to go there. but Even then, like most people are probably like, Oh, I'm alive. Thank God. I got to run away fast.
01:09:45
Speaker
Taylor was like, Oh, I'm alive. Thank God. I gotta to go help people. I don't know. Like it just, it says so much about her character, either her arrogance to think surely there's something I can do to stop God or, um, you know, or her just her need to help people. You know, one, you know, it could be good, could be selfish mixture, whatever, right? Maybe it's animalistic. Like I just got to fight. You're right. That is awesome.
01:10:14
Speaker
Oh, it's great. I mean, that is like her whole character. Like that is, it we would if she if she were to run or give up, it would feel so out of character for her. um Yeah, absolutely. It's just not who Taylor is. And so like, again, they it's one of those things. it It could come across as so cheesy, right? Like, oh, just got to get back into the fight, you know, put me in coach. But it doesn't because but It's just very well written and Taylor's a very, very well written character where you can you can you can do that. You can have that moment and it not feel out of place or or cheesy or anything like that. It's like, yep, that's Taylor. that's She's going to get back in the fight. That's what she does. yeah so That's what she does.
01:11:07
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, and then just kind of seeing the big heroes fight, right? Like you've got pretenders, Alexandria, you've got, I have a lawn and legend. And now, you know, we get to see kind of the fourth big one, Glicing, when you, um, and it's just such a cool fight to see. To see her, uh, in the fight. I think that's just really neat. Realizing just how it makes you kind of wonder, like, could the bird cage have really held her like Really? yeah Could it have? hello I have doubts. Did they ever say where the birdcage was? Because I've had theories, but I don't know if it's ever spelled out. It's under a mountain, right? They believe that it's and in the middle of a deep like cave inside of a mountain, but there's also theories that has been shrunk down as well. Oh, go to a good old Ant-Man style.
01:12:01
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. so There's theories about it, but that's not confirmed. I think that's just a suspicion people have. When they do the portal. If what, if it was shrunk down, wouldn't they come out chunked? Maybe not necessarily. that makes sense um I mean, I think the only reason that's thought is because I feel like teacher or somebody implies like, it's not just that it's hard to escape from the bird cage. It's literally impossible.
01:12:32
Speaker
is the idea, you know? Yeah. Well, you could write because he does say something to that effect. Like they, he tried to figure it out or something like that. And yeah. Yeah. interesting Yeah. I'm sure it's spelled out somewhere. Comments will correct us. Yeah, probably man. Any other thoughts on, I mean, that it's, we've got a lot of thoughts, but any other, oh any other immediate thoughts on chapter five?
01:12:59
Speaker
Okay.
Eidolon’s Backstory and Struggles
01:13:00
Speaker
So, um, Sveta and Garat or Sveta is Garat. And. Yes. There's another one that's also a ribbony. Matryoshka.
01:13:18
Speaker
Matryoshka. Yes. Yes. Okay. Very similar, but different as well. Sveta is like the one who's permanently in the tendrils form. Yeah. Matryoshka is the one who can turn into ribbons at will. Turn into ribbons. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Okay. Cool. Um, I think we definitely should talk a little bit about the Taylor Weld conversation about what he says to her about being brave. And I feel like.
01:13:47
Speaker
but I have such ah an image of him from like when he was ah leading the the wards in Brockton Bay that like he's such a good leader and I feel like he's he's like his character has broken down and changed so much after all like the cauldron reveal stuff and now like he's with the irregulars and like this moment here with Taylor and as like he's fully expecting to go down with the ship. you know Because he he knows, like I can't just walk across the ocean floor for indefinitely without music, which I love that's that that's that his that's his thing, alone without music ah you know until someone opens a portal and gets me back. like I can't just walk across the floor you know in the darkness. yeah
01:14:39
Speaker
Like I, I really do love that little, that little chat that he has with Taylor. Hmm. Yeah. Well, it's the best. Well, well, doesn't die here, does he? He's all right. Right. He's, he's, he survives here. Yeah. Okay. ah Don't say it like that, Jacob. Yeah. He, he makes it through this chapter. I i generally can't remember what happens to him. So that's, genuine but but he did survive this fight. Yes. Okay. Okay. Good.
01:15:07
Speaker
Yeah, I got a little bit of the warm nature with some of these characters. So many. Oh, and um the other thing I wanted to say before we end chapter five, ah as Taylor is is, you know, under the water for the second time in this chapter, and the the stuff starts wearing off basically, and she starts dying again.
01:15:32
Speaker
And she looks up and she sees this figure like hovering over her, watching her. And she realizes that it's Glastig-Wenye, like smiling, like waiting for her to die. Like not helping, ah not pulling her out, like i'll just watching and waiting. headline and then And then she feels the whoosh change in the water and Glastig-Wenye frowns. And then Taylor gets pulled through the portal. Like she gets sucked in. Oh my gosh.
01:16:02
Speaker
Like, it's the that is god like, oh, that was death right there. That was death smiling down at me. And I love that image though. i Like, I think that's probably why I love Glace Guenier so much, but like that she's very unpredictable. She's very like, I won't say obsessed with death, but like she is like, like everyone comes to me in the end very, you know,
01:16:26
Speaker
Mm hmm. Yep. Like the Grim Reaper. I love it. Yeah, I was going to say very, very Grim Reaper, very Lady Death. Love that. Oh my gosh. Yeah, I need more of that. Anybody have a Lady Death book, Rex? Let me know, please. That's what I need to read next. I just need more Glastic, wouldn't you?
01:16:47
Speaker
Uh, the closest I know of is in, in Terry Pratchett's disc world. Death is a recurring character. He is quite literally a grim reaper and, uh, he speaks in all caps only. So it's but it he's very funny. Love it. I'll have to try that. Why not? But not, not, I mean, it's not like, I mean, I love Terry Pratchett. I do. I do love Terry Pratchett. Um, monstrous regiment is probably one of my favorite books I've read. and Just the audio book made me laugh out loud, just as another recommendation. Did you read the, the Wee Free Men? I haven't read, I haven't read Wee Free Men yet. It was so fun. Oh my gosh. Yeah, that one was a peach. Yeah. Once I, once I managed to finish the Stormlight Archive, I plan to go back to some Terry Pratchett stuff. Yeah.
01:17:43
Speaker
I feel like worm takes up most of my reading time. I don't read a lot of other things beside worm, or at least as much as I normally do. Uh, worm like takes up all of my, my mental reading space, like worm and smut. All right. Uh, the interludes. Yeah. The interludes. ah Oh.
01:18:05
Speaker
Yeah, okay, so it's from Eidolon's perspective. As Eidolon fights Sion, he thinks back on what brought him to this point. We kind of have a present moments and ah flashbacks. um His powers waning, the exposure of the triumvirate, legend confronting them when he first got his power, meaning Dr. Mother for the first time. And then he learns to gain strength.
01:18:33
Speaker
And only for Sion to cut him down with four final words. Uh, and I'll just say the, uh, you know, the second interlude, the addendum, the longest line Sion has and the shortest arc you needed worthy opponents.
01:18:53
Speaker
Blackdrop.
01:18:56
Speaker
What a mic drop. yeah i will this shit so one Before we get into this little interlude, because it is great, one funny little Easter egg is if you scroll down and look at the comments, people are like, wait, did you delete a line from this arc? And so yeah and so I'm pretty sure what Wild Bo did was he had those last four words at the end of the arc and then was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, I've got an idea. I've got the best idea ever.
01:19:26
Speaker
And then he just has its own thing. Yeah, exactly. I love that. And then, you know what? And then you've bought yourself another week. That's true. Or another two days. If you're a Monday, Wednesday, Friday poster. No, I think, I think he posted it immediately. If I remember right. He didn't like, he didn't like hold out for a week and then post the one line.
01:19:47
Speaker
No, no, I wish you did. Even even then, he didn't wait that long and people were mad. They're like, what the fuck? I know. I was reading to the comments on those. That's amazing. But yeah, just a funny little Easter egg of just the like.
01:20:01
Speaker
Wait a second. No, it was two days in a mood. It was two days. Hey! Posted August 27th and then in a mood 27B, August 29th. I do just love that though of like, like the top comment I think was somebody like, wait, did you delete something from this arc? I feel like I remember. And then it's like, oh yeah, he totally just deleted that one line. That's fantastic. So good.
01:20:30
Speaker
oh And every time, every time I say, Oh yeah, that's my favorite interlude. Oh yeah. i Which I've said like three times in this podcast. We just, we get, we hit another banger. And I don't know if this was, I could, I don't think I'm going to say favorite, but damn, it's good. It is. It was a pretty good one. Yeah, it's definitely not my favorite, but it is really good. This conversation with, uh, Glastic is all pretty good.
01:21:00
Speaker
Okay. Can we, do you guys mind explaining to me what happened? Cause I, I read it a couple of times, just the section where he's like figuring out, I guess where he can suck hours. Take it away Alan. So, uh, the way that it generally works is that, um, the simple answer is that it gives us power, like just gives him whatever he needs. However, he is essentially an unlimited tap into, uh, into where powers come from. The shards. Yes. Like he is essentially, he's not draining shards directly. He is bouncing back to, uh, I guess
01:21:51
Speaker
the origin point of power and then to the shards to pull from them. Um, that's how he gets powers. Um, he still has his own, like, we'll say limited bandwidth of energy that he can use, which is why over time, uh,
01:22:16
Speaker
as more end bringers have shown up, those are, What is causing his power level to drop? What? I don't understand.
Vague Story Elements and Humor
01:22:31
Speaker
i So, but I don't. So I did not get this at all. The first like two times I read this. we don't Don't spoil, don't spoil anything though for me. Cause I really don't remember anything from now until the end. I was going to say,
01:22:50
Speaker
Um, Jacob quick aside and, and, or Nick, I don't think any of the other stuff is explained. I don't think it is. I think I had to look it up. It's not fully explained that I only found in retrospect going through Reddit, which was like years after I read this. So yeah, yeah so here's, well, yeah, I would just say a lot of it is very, is is very very vague intentionally, I think, but.
01:23:16
Speaker
in order to really discuss it does dabble in one or two more spoilers of the series. Okay, so as long as we can revisit this when the series is over. Yeah, I was going to say, we'll leave it at that for now. Put a pin in it. That'd be great. If we can really break apart power stuff a little bit more. Yeah, that'd be a fun thing to review after we've read everything for sure. We can make it a Patreon exclusive.
01:23:44
Speaker
but
01:23:48
Speaker
spoilers snakes spers boy getting some of that Simurfie fussy. No! No, no, no, no. I had a stroke trying to say that. I definitely heard that. Oh no, the Simurfs got him. So horrible. just might sound My brain went, you know, put the words Simurf and pussy together. And I was like, oh, that's easy. And then I was like, There you go. Anyway. That's how they say it on the left. That's like Smurf stuff now, though. Yeah, no. like All right. Anyways, let's move on. yeah I mean, Sion took away his behemoussey from him, so you know. Sir. That's true. Sir. Why? Lord knows we're never going to get any more leviathosy.
01:24:40
Speaker
no No. I mean the Tova. Oh, the concept
01:24:53
Speaker
Alan, that was a great mind meld moment. I love dick ah love you so much. did you do I support you ah so much right now.
01:25:09
Speaker
Strictly platonic. Unrivaled. No, it's not. it's now um Working those long shifts. I love long shifts. No. All right. anyway I know that right now, us avoiding talking about ah the the four words, um are our listeners are losing their goddamn minds. That's true. We put it off.
01:25:39
Speaker
Um, and, and I'm not gonna lie. I'm one of those cause I had so much material to talk about and I'm so upset. We we can talk about the four words all day. Cue up the, I'm mad at you.
01:25:55
Speaker
so Oh, i'm I don't, I'm mad at you. Damn it. Oh, I'm mad at you. Yeah. yeah but That's a pretty good impression.
01:26:08
Speaker
That was really good. That was pretty good. I need everyone else to do it too. And then I need Jacob to judge who's who did it best. It's going to be me. And I'm going to feel so much better about myself. Jacob, go ahead. Go ahead. Who did it best? We complimented you already. had it You don't have to. yeah i think I think you nailed it. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm sorry. My eyes hurt so bad right now. I've cried way too much today. And now I feel a little loopy.
Eidolon’s Powers and Entity Connections
01:26:31
Speaker
So I do i do want to talk about the four words a little bit. Yes.
01:26:36
Speaker
yes because It's great. talk about it that was I was going to say, does that do a way? Can we want to talk about about a little bit? Okay. I would love to talk about it. As long as we don't spoil anything for me. No, no spoilers. No spoilers. Okay. that's but That's what I'm saying is this is literally the most vague thing, I didn't get this for two whole things and it's never mentioned again as far as I know. i mean know this This we can discuss. This I don't think is ever brought up again ever. i Yeah. Yeah. I think even with extensive reading fan base is still not like complete. it's There's still split in terms of exactly what it means. Well, I was going to say, I feel like they're pretty, they're pretty on somehow
01:27:22
Speaker
they are all on board with the same idea. Once again, like, yeah, maybe I'm stupid. I did not get this and until I ran into the end. I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure I had to look it up. I feel like I was like, what does this mean? And it, yeah, I feel like I had to look it up. like I'm going like i went get through the comments and People explained it as if it was like, oh yes, this is obvious. We all knew this was coming. And I was just like, what? Well, that's just how people explain things. Especially on Reddit. Yeah, on the internet. right Yeah. Hannah, what do you think it means, Hannah? Yeah, since you're not sure. I assume that it means
01:28:12
Speaker
So, okay, if we're thinking about it in the sense of like, what Glastig Wenyay says about how Sion is both like, he's the father basically of the shards. and Well, she doesn't say that, but she calls him father at one point. But like, if he's the father, then like, the you needed worthy opponent. I i don't think I understand why it hits Eidolon so hard, but I assume that it means you needed worthy opponents, like you needed to prove the shards, like you needed to to have like the shards needed resistance. And so like in order to prove the shards to like create
01:28:53
Speaker
better capes to create like harder hitting powers to like stress test. They had to go up against a worthy opponent being scion or being like, I imagine the end bringers but like, I still don't understand how the ender bringers fit into this because we haven't talked about them much really in terms of like,
01:29:14
Speaker
We know they're not human, but they're not shards, I don't think, so I don't really know what they are. But I assume that you needed worthy opponents had to do with like stress testing the shards in humans, and that's why Sion has been so hard on them. Kind of. ah At least for Eidolon in particular, it seems like In the past, he's mentioned how his shards seemed to react when he was fighting. Very powerful enemies like the end bringers, right? It felt like he's mentioned how he's like, I feel like there's a ceiling on me, except in these particular really extreme scenarios. That's when he gets pushed in glycygwynia. I think kind of implies that of like, no, you, you don't have a cap. You're only putting it on yourself, basically. Um,
01:30:06
Speaker
And he learns how to take those powers, to take them for himself, to force out the better powers and work them in such a way that he can actually fight Sion. And so, yeah, so it's it's kind of what you're saying, but I think it was for Eidolon in particular. It has to do with his power in particular, not just generally stress testing human beings, I believe.
01:30:34
Speaker
If I can, if that's a decent explanation without spoiling anything, what do you guys think? Yeah. Well, let me give the information that we do right know right now. Um, and we're going to talk about this in terms of scion. Um, so scion as we've established is the leftover of one of the entities. Mm-hmm.
01:31:03
Speaker
like what i'm I'm treading carefully here, but but I'm um just remembering what's happening in that one interlude. He's the warrior, right? He's the warrior entity who showed up on Earth, specifically in a particular,
01:31:24
Speaker
like they're multidimensional. So the main dimension of Earth that that he has shown up in and occupied his earth bet and spills over into adjacent ones like earth a left, um but obviously not as much. That's not where he mainly occupies, which as we've seen from like him being in scion form, he can shift those dimensions. That's why when they were in the alternate earth on the oil rig, that didn't save them at all. Like, yeah you know,
01:31:57
Speaker
So, um, he touches down, but something goes wrong and he loses track of, uh, his partner entity. Well, I think it says she like, i'm I'm gonna say she, because I feel like it's very like masculine and feminine traits, but like she burns up because she gave too much of herself away to the, the other, uh, like entity that they ran across.
01:32:22
Speaker
Like we've talked before, like it kind of felt like an affair sort of, but like she, she has like this little dance with the other one and he's like, watch out. Like you're giving her too much of yourself. And she's like, I'm fine. Everything's good. And then they crash land. And it's like, she can't take like, it's too much. debt She takes too much damage. Yeah. So.
01:32:42
Speaker
What we have here is, um, a failure to communicate. Sorry. Yeah. failure communicate So there's a couple of things here. Some of which is completely outside of worm. The creature that they run into was called a baton. Um, a aant it is a loner, uh, entity, right? Um, as opposed to a duo entities, this is all, like I said,
01:33:10
Speaker
Wild Bo talking outside of okay got it outside of stuff. So yeah, he's this outside entity. So Wild Bo wrote essentially a short story, a short snippet of what would happen ah if they interacted a little bit more and essentially just talked. That, of course, doesn't get put in the story, but it is indicative of like the interactions between these two characters. And one of the things they talk about is that the a bad character was mainly concerned with stress testing powers by making a bunch of super powered, uh, tests, if you will. Um, you know, hundreds of them, but they would be like less powerful. Whereas, uh, the testing method that the, uh, we'll call it what the thinker, I think it's the warrior and the thinker. I forget what their names are. Yeah.
01:34:10
Speaker
the thinker's idea was she was going to do about 20 of them and make them super powerful. So in theory, cause this is all, I believe this is written, you know, as an aside, people are speculating as I'm going through the comments. A lot of people's theories is that Eidolon is tapping into the latent super beings that ah Thinker had pre-created and that his power is chart is essentially activating the sleeper monsters in order to like create more challenges for the powers. um But Thinker, of course, is not present,
01:35:07
Speaker
but Eidolon's power is doing a lot of Thinker's work.
01:35:13
Speaker
So that is the like cosmic scale of that. Okay. People are thinking about. So the potential is there are like 20 end bringers in total, just ready to go. That's what I was going to ask. So she made the end bringers. She has pre-made the end bringers before she even got there. Oh.
01:35:40
Speaker
And I don't think if I remember right, and I might not be, because it boy is it vague. um I don't think they're necessarily like shaped and designed the way the end bringers that we see them are. That part of that is, is Eidolon's subconscious manipulation of it, but just that they are essentially ethereal,
01:36:03
Speaker
weapons of sort that can be used if necessary. And yeah being a human ah who pulls from like, you know, a giant, you know, Godzilla-esque histories and and monster fights, then shaped the endbringers passively to sort of resemble more traditional monsters that we would expect to see on Earth, that kind of thing. So wait, Eidolon made the endbringers basically?
01:36:34
Speaker
That is the yeah, that's the assumption. OK, but Eidolon also his powers, Cauldron made.
01:36:43
Speaker
So like, doesn't that OK, so I assume that Cauldron made powers tap into shards differently than like natural. Powers do because they do. That is correct. Because the shards like I'm so when they the entities kind of exploded and the shards went flying everywhere and they kind of like burrowed like ticks. I imagine that they like they kind of just like dug in. So if he's he's a cauldron. Cape.
01:37:16
Speaker
Oh, I guess that really is tough to answer without knowing how Cauldron makes their stuff. That's where it dabbles into some slight more spoilers that we will get to. That's okay. We'll revisit this again when we get there. But okay, so basically the reason that the you needed worthy opponents was so important for Eidolon was because Eidolon subconscious shaped the end bringers into how they displayed themselves and that no matter what they would keep forming. So if, and then, okay, at the end of this interlude here, I imagine Eidolon gets blown the fuck up.
01:37:56
Speaker
I think that's the assumption. Yeah. Okay. So does that mean that the end bringers were for Eidolon? Like they were made for Eidolon specifically? Like with, I mean, not specifically for him, but like with Eidolon in mind, like that shard in mind. So there is some wordplay and that I know we've been praising Wild Bo this entire time entire time with credit, all credit to. There is some wordplay that I think Wild Bo intended but does not carry over quite so well in the Ark. But there's this phrase that Eidolon uses a lot going all the way back to the Leviathan fights and like his first interludes and things like that. um
01:38:37
Speaker
But Eidolon, he he comp constantly references that, I need this power or I need to be this strong. He uses the word need a lot. And what he's what he's he's mentioning, he's talking about how he needs to be strong enough. He's not strong enough. He needs the powers to be stronger. He needs, needs, needs, needs. And so Sion's direct phrase,
01:39:03
Speaker
you needed worthy opponents. It hits him that what his power was doing was his power was, was subconsciously, unwittingly creating scenarios that he needed in order to stress test himself. yeah such yeah he he's discovering And in that moment that in his desire and his need for power, he was creating the various scenarios he needed to achieve that power.
01:39:31
Speaker
which of course resulted in the death of billions. So well yeah. Okay. That is, that's excellent. Now it hits. Now it hits. That's what I needed. Yep. Yep. I appreciate that. And, and like, you know, like you mentioned, he does have a cauldron power, so we'll have to revisit okay a bit of this later.
Heroism Ideals vs. Reality
01:39:52
Speaker
Um, and I think it's sort of a, it's sort of a meta,
01:39:57
Speaker
And sort of like a meta ah narrative of kind of superhero stories too, because it like, it sort of highlights this moment where the ideals of heroism which Eidolon kind of represents, right? ah clashes with like the reality of of what that can entail it like ah early like Zack Snyder Superman did a little bit of that right with the destroy like showing that oh you know see if Superman actually fought like entire towns get wiped out like that kind of thing
01:40:32
Speaker
um And I think it looks like give any credit to Zack Snyder on this listen no this just talked about in a lot of other Superman and Batman stories forever ago Like that is very people keep showing up to Gotham because Batman's there and they're like, oh my gosh Let's take him on right because other cities don't seem to have this super-powered criminal problem. It's just Gotham City Okay no No, no, no. That's it's very fair. I agree with Zach's matter with showing it for the first time so clearly. But yes, ah digress um and but no and yeah I I was pretty much done just kind of outlining that, that it was kind of another one of those moments where ah I think to me the reason Eidolon gives up is because of that realization that hits and that it's just kind of is that shock to the audience as well that's like, oh, yeah.
01:41:27
Speaker
All of my heroes, all of these heroes that I've enjoyed watching have their actions have just resulted in the deaths of millions over the course of the story. And it's kind of harrowing. Yeah. o Well said on the precipice of, you know, finding out what happens next.
01:41:55
Speaker
Allow me to read to you one of my favorite ideas from the, uh, the comments section. oh So Kristation, uh, has what I've turned up the next arc. No, no, no. This is Kristation is a commenter. Oh, okay. Okay. ok yeah in her text um So I'll just call it the idol on bride theory.
01:42:24
Speaker
Um, and I'm paraphrasing a little bride theory. So, um, the theory here is that, uh, that one of two things at the end of this, uh, he gets frozen by these words and then, uh, Sion powers up the blaster and we don't know whether he's blasting Glastig or Eidolon. Um,
01:42:53
Speaker
You know, we won't find that out until the next chapter, but in this, uh, scion is a creature of, um, that lacks creativity. As we've shown thinker was the creative person. Um, they were the one that the creative of the two, they were the one that did a lot of the leading and the warrior AKA scion was a lot of the,
01:43:22
Speaker
ah just follow along with what Thinker was doing, which is why Sion's so boring. Like Sion has literally had other people tell him what to do. And then he's just gone and blindly done that. And the thought is with Thinker gone, Sion is actually kind of looking for this partner um to take the place of Thinker.
01:43:52
Speaker
Um, and in this case, Eidolon is doing a lot of the lifting that like in tapping into a lot of the powers that, that, uh, that thinker had. So perhaps Sion is trying to get Eidolon or Eidolon shards to become another entity and become the partner to Sion.
01:44:22
Speaker
The ah other option is getting idollon killing and then having Glastik Wenye absorb his powers, because she's essentially collecting shards from dead capes. And like they aren't the people, those are just the vestiges of the people that the shards have on them, essentially. That's what the shadows are.
01:44:47
Speaker
um And so Glastik Wenye is actually the ah She's the fairy queen, but maybe Sion is the fairy king.
01:45:00
Speaker
So that is the first one better, but that's very interesting. I mean, I assumed that that's, I assumed the classic Wenye.
01:45:11
Speaker
Because they I thought that Taylor brought it up, or maybe Ida London, I can't remember who which chapter it was in, but that Glastig Wenye would step in and like join Sion as the the counterpart.
01:45:26
Speaker
Yeah, if it became that bad. Yeah. I mean, cause think about it. Sion kills literally everyone. yeah And then she takes all the shards. Literally everyone. And when she has everyone, that's enough to probably put together a big alien slug creature, you know? Yeah.
Slug Character and Nemesis Program
01:45:41
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Interesting. I've got so many fun theories about, uh, about the old, the old entities we'll have to touch on after this whole journey is done.
01:45:53
Speaker
Um, the only other fun thing that they talk about is they mentioned the slug. Uh, I believe this is involved with the, uh, the cauldron talking about, it's something that legend is remembering or not legend. Uh, I had a lot of talking about, I think with legend where they're like, basically do we slug him? Like, do we give him to the slug? And they're like, nah, wouldn't work or something. Um, yeah.
01:46:22
Speaker
And this is one of those where it's, there's a lot of information about it that's fun to read, ah but isn't talked about in story at all. um This is all wild boat talking, ah doing a lot of interviews and talking on a lot of stuff about it. um The slug is a case 53 that Cauldron has. um theyre A limbless hairless man with a big mass around his neck, whose power allows him to edit brains.
01:46:51
Speaker
He can brainwash, erase memories, implant knowledge of things like the English language. And they believe that the slug is responsible for setting up the nemesis program weak points. Like the whole, you give them the code phrase and then that person fails.
01:47:09
Speaker
yeah um that That is what the slug can do. Interesting. They also, because he can edit brains, um it is speculated.
01:47:21
Speaker
by Wild Bo, that he can choose to remove or quarantine the power section, the, ah you know, what is that, the corona polentia in the brain. It's just, you don't get that power anymore. yeah All your powers cut off. Interesting, interesting. So he has the ability to ah to negate your power at a biological level. Like you just don't get to access to your power anymore.
01:47:48
Speaker
um
01:47:50
Speaker
And potentially he can set that up to be done by a keyword or spoken phrase, which is the whole nemesis program thing. Uh, so a very interesting person that, you know, once again, we wonder why a lot of these characters who are stolen from other worlds and given powers, like why do they speak English or, you know, why do they not have their memories?
Arc Complexity and Broader Lore
01:48:08
Speaker
This is the dude.
01:48:12
Speaker
Interesting. Interesting. Thanks for sharing. So complicated. Wow. Wild Bo talks a lot about him. Very fun. Yeah. But it's all it's all outside of form.
01:48:33
Speaker
I mean, that that brings us to the end of the arc. ah and Any parting thoughts? We'll go and do our little our classic little sign offs, but any any final thoughts? This is definitely a series where I think now that I'm reading it my second time, I realize how much there is still I need to Google to understand things. But of course now there's word out and I haven't read word. So I'm like, well, I don't want to Google too much. you know yeah so ah But even like second time around, sometimes you just hear things or you think about things and you're like,
01:49:09
Speaker
Wait, what? like so I completely forgot, as many times as I've read this, that there is a third entity in the story. Oh, right. At the, the charon yeah. Did not.
01:49:27
Speaker
At any point in time, remember that. i'm goingnna so in Insert the John Cena's. up but do yeah is thats several That's what I hear in my head every time. Yeah. Well, yeah. And then, and then you look up and you're like, Hey, what's up with that third entity? And they're like, Oh, you meet a bad and all the other entities. And you're like, whoa, there are other entities. And they're like, yeah, they're just, you know, you gotta go in the deep lore.
01:49:53
Speaker
You gotta go to sometimes wild diseases and he's like, oh shoot, there's 25 other entities. And you're like, what? Yeah. Oh my God. That's like when I found out I was, uh, the reason I got back into the stormlight archive was because of a coworker who's really into them. And he's like, well, you know, that all of Brandon Sanderson's works are connected, right?
01:50:12
Speaker
yeah the my hospital and but He's like, yeah. And, uh, actually this character in the stormlight archive is this character from Mistborn. And I'm like, excuse me.
01:50:23
Speaker
I love it. So yeah, um it it feels like that um level where you you just find out all of a sudden all these things are connected. You didn't know we're connected. And you're like, wait a second. Wait a minute. It's all connected.
Shadowstalker and Taylor’s Trigger Event
01:50:42
Speaker
Um, quick thought, and I might've mentioned this, I don't think I mentioned this before, but if I didn't, we'll just cut this all out. Um, when shadow stalker and Taylor are talking, it made me think.
01:50:56
Speaker
From what we know, when capes are in close proximity to a trigger event, they're aware of it. They get a flash, they get see the entities, they forget the entities, but they're aware of something just happened. yeah um Do we think Shadowstalker felt Taylor's trigger?
01:51:20
Speaker
We've talked about this a little bit before. We've talked about this before. We said we thought that it was very likely that they were very far away by the time she triggered. Okay. and they kind of laugh Because she was in there for hours. Yeah. Yeah. And that even if even if it happened and she was aware of it, she would have immediately have forgotten. And like,
01:51:46
Speaker
it wouldn't have mattered. So like even if in that moment, like even if it had happened where she was you know a foot away from the from the locker and she goes, oh my God, oh shit. And then it's over and she's forgotten. like it she Her her like actions wouldn't change anything. like She would do the exact same shit. she just wouldn't have She just wouldn't remember that it had happened at all. Yeah, that makes sense.
01:52:17
Speaker
But yeah, it was locked in there for a long, long time. Yeah. Yeah. She was like, yeah, she probably wasn't standing there for hours or whatever.
Favorite Powers and Villainy Styles
01:52:27
Speaker
Yeah. Just waiting around for the teachers to yeah come and get them in trouble. Yeah. But it's a good thought. Very fun.
01:52:39
Speaker
Yeah. Favorite power of the arc.
01:52:45
Speaker
I'll tell you my favorite tooth description is lab rat. Oh my God. He needed braces. um I mean, are we sure that he wasn't once a member of the Kingsmen? Wow. Wow. I'm kidding. Yeah. Wow.
01:53:06
Speaker
Anyways, now that I've offended all of our... If any of our British fans made it to this point, they've dropped the podcast now. They're done. We lost them. No, I think there's so many quick instances of powers and what they do. I think the most interesting one to me, though, is still Glyce Guinier and just somebody who can take other people's powers and then seems to have full access to them.
01:53:35
Speaker
And then Eidolon, or not Eidolon, Sion can destroy them though, which is also kind of interesting. So anyways, yeah, Glaesig Wennie is just really cool. I love Glaesig Wennie so much. I think she's been my favorite power a couple of times now. When she first showed up, I was like, as wendy and Man, yeah, there's so many.
01:53:59
Speaker
I do really like on Janoo. I think on Janoo is pretty cool. And I just love I just love I think i I just love a good villain. That's like a seductress and like fucks with people's heads. I. die Yeah, I do like that. Is that is that. Yeah. Yeah. I i mean, I love the whole concept of the birdcage and all these crazy evil. Yeah. Capes. Yeah, I'm a big, big string theory fan.
01:54:29
Speaker
I love yeah how they villain differently than everybody else and how they just, that what's their, what's their thing? Oh, I build the super villain, blow up the moon fucking F driver laser. wow ah Come on. The firmament driver, the God driver. Come on. It's good. It's real good.
01:54:53
Speaker
What were you doing? Oh, I was, uh, ransoming people to not have me throw the moon out of orbit. Yeah. String theory is full on comic book villain. Just.
01:55:06
Speaker
Yeah. I am going to take the moon. Yeah, exactly. yeah Yeah. Other people be out here like, oh, I'm going to rob a bank. like whoo I'm going to rob the universe. Very Dr. Doofenshmirtz, you know? Doofenshmirtz is incorporated. I do.
01:55:27
Speaker
I do, I do love her too, just for the like, boom, got him. Ha ha. And then just immediately, like you just imagine she, is she like Edna mode? I just imagine she looks like Edna mode yeah yeah is ja the vibe I'm getting right. I love it. I was getting more like just general, honestly, strong, like Baccata vibes, but less malicious. Just. Yeah.
01:55:49
Speaker
same wayneo i know like ah big dramatic maybe not as tall as ah as ba i was not as tall as ena mode no i say just strong as boing i was just getting string bean theory you know so <unk> so
01:56:10
Speaker
It's the god driver darling That was good. does like I imagine that they are honestly, that they don't look that far off from like the weirdly simmered appearance where it's somebody who's like tall and lanky and just wears a lab coat and doesn't sleep. And you know, doesn't sleep just has way too much fun hyper fixating.
Merchandise Announcement and Future Plans
01:56:39
Speaker
um And he's a mad scientist. That's that's to who they are. I don't know if that's true. I just imagine that's who they are. Well, i'll do ah ah do ah I'll do a last call for thoughts. I think that's it. i' My eyes hurt from crying.
01:56:57
Speaker
so oh I have ah one thing to say before we finish. Exciting announcement. We now have Brockton Bay Book Club merch. That's right. We've got t-shirts and sweatshirts ah We've got our Brockton Bay Book Club t-shirt as well as the Brockton Bayes sweatshirt. They look sweet, Hannah designed them, and they're amazing. So if you're interested in that, link will be in the description. And shout out to Hannah for all the sweet designs. Thanks so much for your guys' support, and we're excited to have merch finally, now that we're almost done. But ah no, yeah. Super good job on that, Hannah, and go check it out.
01:57:42
Speaker
Yeah, we have plugged it a few times, but we post a lot of bonus content for our patrons and we are super thankful for their support. It's ah meant the world to us. And we have an exclusive Discord for all of our patrons. So if you like talking about worm and sharing memes and ideas and thoughts and comments and all that kind of fun stuff, consider popping on over.
01:58:05
Speaker
join in our Patreon and join in our exclusive Discord and getting access to some bonus content and videos that we do. ah Some not explicitly worm related. We do some other fun stuff as well. Some weird stuff. Yeah. Well, you know, I didn't want to scare them away. so No, no, no. It reels them in. It reels them in. We get weird. ah And we got a lot of other fun ideas planned too. So we got some fun stuff.
01:58:35
Speaker
But with that being said, I think we've wrapped up arc 27, a banger of an arc. And wow I think we can say the brakes are fully off. A brake line has been cut and it is it is just accelerating from here until the end officially. So um go, go, go.
01:58:56
Speaker
ah Stick around next week for Alan and I to try to make sense of Arc 27 in television form. We want to hear us debate this confusing end bringer, Sion's lines. Yeah, we're going to have some fun with this one. So that's going to be a blast. And then, as always, we're going to pick up with Arc 28 right after that. It's going to be a fun ride. We'd hope you stick around with us. And ah on that note, Michael,
01:59:25
Speaker
Would you mind playing us out?