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Arc 12: Plague
579 Plays1 year ago
This story isn’t intended for young or sensitive readers. Readers who are on the lookout for trigger warnings are advised to give Worm a pass.
Complete list of potential triggers: here
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Episode Description: There was a rush of wind, and the surroundings swam violently for two or three seconds. When the image had resolved again, they stood in the middle section of a long hallway. It looked like a hospital, sterile, white, clean, but it was empty. There were no people, and there was no equipment.
“Welcome to The Brockton Bay Book Club,” the Doctor said.
Get in contact with us @brocktonbaybc
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Timestamps:
(00:00) - Introduction
(01:10) - Dissecting Begins
(29:20) - Zencastr
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction & Content Warnings
00:00:00
Speaker
Worm is a web serial by J.C. McCray, also known as Wildbo. You can read Worm in its original format by visiting parahumans.wordpress.com or donate to Wildbo's Patreon at patreon.com slash wildbo. This story isn't intended for young or sensitive readers. Readers who are on the lookout for trigger warnings are advised to give Worm a pass. For a complete list, check the description for all of Worm's trigger warnings.
Brockton Bay Book Club: Arc 12 Discussion Begins
00:01:15
Speaker
Good morning, Brockton Bay. It's wet outside. Grab your nylon rubber socks.
00:01:25
Speaker
Don't want to get trench foot. I was busy going over notes. You know, I have a book full of notes here. I have to keep track of this shit. All right. You know, this isn't really nearly, I can't just sit in the background, twiddle my thumbs and just hope some superhero does everything for me. Like some people.
00:01:55
Speaker
All right, fair enough. Well, they won't know how long the pause was, so. No, exactly. We'll edit it out, you know, or we'll leave it at any post. Sometimes your shave just needs to stay in the podcast. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it does. You never know. Speaking of shame, welcome back everybody. Such a great start. Of the Brockton Bay Book Club.
00:02:23
Speaker
Going through arc 12, plague of worm. Got the whole crew here. We're going to dive right into this meaty chapter, meaty arc, I should say, many chapters.
00:02:35
Speaker
And, uh, let's, you know, there we go. Medi-arc. No, no. Medi-arc. Medi-arc. You're derailed already. I don't get it. It's just super random TikToks in my head constantly. I wouldn't say that this, this arc was great or exceptional. It was really just medi-arc-er. Oh. Okay. All right. And that's the podcast.
00:03:03
Speaker
Thanks for coming everybody. Put in a little, put a little drum. We didn't need that. Deep breath. Again. Here we go. Jacob. Yeah, redo it.
Skitter's Leadership & Territory Management
00:03:24
Speaker
Take, take two. You're from the top. We'll do it live. Don't you dare.
00:03:31
Speaker
Okay. For the first time now, repeating everything we just said. Now let's dive into this arc. It's a fun one. Hannah, do you want to hit us off with a couple summaries? Yeah. So I don't know how we want to divide up this arc. I'm feeling like
00:03:52
Speaker
I don't know, I kind of feel like chapter one is on its own and some of the others are more grouped together. But while I'll just read for our little summary here for chapter one, Skitter helps out those in her territory with some extra extermination efforts and talks to Brian a little bit about her efforts and kind of what she's doing compared to what everybody else is doing.
00:04:17
Speaker
Yeah. Um, I say we just, you know, we stop there and then the next bit, I'll, I'll get into the, I'll cluster. Yeah, that's good. That works. All right. How do you feel? How do we, uh, how do we, how do we like this part? I love all of the mundane planning and, uh, all the, you know, talking with her, her minions. Um, this is fantastic. Uh, I really enjoyed all of that.
00:04:48
Speaker
Yeah, it's nice to have those quiet moments in the arc before stuff goes down later in the arc. So having those moments of seeing Taylor in a new way, now she's not just a follower, but she's a leader in her having to grow into this role of a team leader and try to figure out how to do things.
00:05:13
Speaker
Yeah. And then just for conversations with Brian in that chapter, also really good and interesting too. Just seeing it from different perspectives, how the others are, you know, taking it more slowly and Taylor is just pushing herself to the brink. You know, it says a lot about her character and I think that's consistent with everything we've seen. Yeah.
00:05:34
Speaker
Yeah, I love the way she's different from everybody else. And it sounds like even different, not just from the other undersiders, but from the travelers as well. She's just gone fully into this mindset of taking control of her territory and earning the reputation, earning the respect of her. Yeah.
00:05:59
Speaker
You don't want to call him. I like, I don't know what, what she would call it. Not her subjects, but like, you know, her, her meetings is one of my favorites. Oh yeah. That's a good one. Yeah. She went pretty quick. Yeah. Oh, her bugs, her bugs, her drones. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Does that make her the queen bee? Is she the mean girl?
00:06:29
Speaker
Yes. Yes. That is the whole story. The whole story is trying to fight against the mean girls only to, you know, become the mean girl. The meanest of girls. No. Spoilers for the last chapter. You either live, you either die a nice girl or you live long enough to see yourself become the mean girl. Exactly. My favorite quote from Mean Girls right there. Do you know that reference, Hannah? Okay. Give me a second. Give me a second to filter through all the nerd stuff in my brain.
00:06:59
Speaker
We should also have this be a segment where Hannah tries to delve into the nerdiness that is the rest of the group. Because we reference really nerdy. Is it Star Wars? You don't see yourself long enough to be like, wait, wait, actually no. I take it back. It's not Star Wars. Is it Spider-Man?
00:07:21
Speaker
Oh, you're getting close. Yes. Yeah, I'm guessing like it is a Marvel comics.
Taylor's Struggle with Perception and Authority
00:07:26
Speaker
It is DC. Good job. DC comics. Okay. Wait, hold on. Give me a second. Is it Batman? Yeah, it is. That took me too long. Is it the dark night? It is. Yeah, it is the dark night. Yeah, that just goes to show you it's been a long time since I've seen the dark night.
00:07:46
Speaker
All right, well, that's the podcast. We're going to go watch The Dark Knight now. How many times are we going to end this podcast in this podcast? I really like this chapter as an over. I feel like this whole arc is a great example of another arc that's sandwiched with the mundane on either end with all the meat in the middle. But like Alan said, I really enjoy seeing her settle into this role so much. It feels so good to
00:08:16
Speaker
to watch her settle in and really take hold of her territory. And I actually kept notes while reading this arc, which I've never done before. And these notes are a little unhinged, so I'll read them off as we get to them. But I do have a comment here what I was thinking about, and I wanted to get y'all's opinion.
00:08:35
Speaker
Taylor very clearly cares a lot about her opinion as she should because she's got this territory, she's trying to establish herself. But she cares and maybe over-thinks a lot of how Sierra and Charlotte perceive her, especially Charlotte since she knew who she was from before. And my note here is, is this overkill? Is Taylor being too careful? Because I feel like she's...
00:09:04
Speaker
She's very aware of people's perceptions of her and she's aware of the power dynamic between capes in Brockton Bay. But I feel like she's being way too protective of her own, like how people perceive her. It came off a little annoying to me, to be perfectly honest. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah, I can see that. I mean, I think for Sierra and Charlotte, definitely.
00:09:36
Speaker
Um, it's amazing that she, she's, you know, paranoid about them and how she's perceived. And oftentimes when it comes to just big group settings, like back when she let the one guy like stab her, but then when it comes to dealing with, uh, the one dad, I think that's, that's later on in this arc. Um, well, she deals with him in this after and in later. Yeah. Brian's like, like you has to point out to her, Hey, you know, what's.
00:10:04
Speaker
You know, do you see what, how he sees you? She's like, uh, no. It's a weird blind spot given the kind of paranoia about being perceived otherwise. Well, and I think it's, it's interesting, uh, this inner dialogue we get from Taylor of her trying to figure out how she wants to be perceived because it's still sort of that she is at her core. I think at this point we can say.
00:10:32
Speaker
She's at least trying to be a good person. I don't know that we would say she is a good person, but she's trying to be, right? She's trying to help the city. She's trying to get goods and things out to people. But she also feels the need to have the villain persona of fear and power and control. At the very least, she wants to have the authority side of that that comes with saying, hey, I'm in control. I've got a handle on things. You can trust me.
00:11:01
Speaker
You might not like the way I do it because I'm a villain but you can trust that I will take care of it
00:11:08
Speaker
But in reality, she's also a teenager and she's vulnerable and she's, you know, been abused and hurt. And so it's this weird mixture of her trying to be perceived as a hero in a way, in her own way, but also as a villain. And I think part of that's why it comes across as annoying because she's, she's trying to find her stride with those, you know, with her minions or beyonds to say, this is how you should think of me. Um,
00:11:37
Speaker
Yeah, it's sort of like the parent who comes out really strict and then realizes they were too strict and tries to come up and be a friend. But they never quite find that balance between being buddy-buddy and being way too strict.
00:11:52
Speaker
And that's some great insight to the whole arc, I feel like, because it's really not until... Not to jump ahead, of course, but not really until the mannequin fight that she really cements herself as a leader for her territory. Because, I mean, you got to think...
00:12:10
Speaker
How does it have to feel? Let's put our feet in the shoes of one of these poor families that lost everything to Leviathan. And now they're trying to scrape their lives back together. And here comes this obviously teenage girl who now says, I'm in charge and you can't do anything because she's got superpowers. Right.
00:12:34
Speaker
Very creepy superpowers too. Yeah, no one's going to care or any sort of loyalty that you show is only out of like safety for yourself and hoping that she doesn't hurt you. It's got to be just a crazy situation. True. Until of course she saves your life. Yeah. And I have so many notes for this first chapter. One of them is just the conversation I think she has with like, I think it's Sierra. She's like, I don't believe in shouldn't.
00:13:04
Speaker
Whoa, the whole moral conversation at the very beginning. It's like, ah, yes, why shouldn't I rob a bank? I don't believe like words like shouldn't end. Get your ass to jail and stop doing that. It's hurting people.
00:13:23
Speaker
I mean, it makes sense because Brockton Bay, from the conversation we had with Lisa so long ago of this whole, the capes are all very aware of the cat and mouse games that we have to play and that everybody plays. And the idea of what is right or what is moral is so blurred because it's all just a game of dress up, really. And of course we have the three strikes rule, but for the most part,
00:13:53
Speaker
These people are a bunch of kids with magnifying glasses over a city of ants. It's like, well, okay, so clearly the capes, as it were, are dividing the city up.
00:14:09
Speaker
There's no real action being taken against them because, you know, what harm are they actually doing? It's like, well, what kind of power do you have at all other than to just go along with it and just like live the life? Well, I guess this is Braxton Bay now. And so the morality question is like, well, I mean, what is right and what is wrong?
00:14:26
Speaker
Yeah. And we have to remember too, that at this point, because of the Leviathan attack, Rockton Bay is basically a post-apocalyptic wasteland that is trying to become a functional city again. Right. So there aren't even, you know, I mean, which when you think about post-apocalyptic stories, generally morality is defined sort of as might makes right. And in this case, it seems to be that way where the villains, you know, Taylor saying,
00:14:53
Speaker
I don't really care how I have to do it. I just want to make sure that the people who are under my control are safe. And she wants to be the most powerful person in her area or at least appear that way. And then of course there's a fight that happens, which is a cool, cool take on that too. But I think it's helpful to think of Rockton Bay sort of as a post-apocalyptic land. Yeah, it really is. Because at this point, I mean, there's so much wrong.
00:15:24
Speaker
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. No, you're good. That's all. That's all. There's just so much wrong. Yeah, it's interesting because the sense of normalcy that they're hoping to achieve and even something that Brian points out is like, if you're not
00:15:39
Speaker
you know, playing into the games that coil wants to play if you're not you don't have the value that coil wants, then like, what's the point of keeping you because it's going to take so long for the city to be able to be back to what it used to be to its former glory or to its former functionality.
00:15:57
Speaker
We're looking at years, we're not looking at months. You're absolutely right. It is very post-apocalyptic. I wouldn't have stayed. I'd be gone. Bye. If you could, if you can go. Right. You were talking about it's post-apocalyptic. I'm looking at how bad the city is right now.
00:16:22
Speaker
I love the, you know, before the city was already kind of bad enough that working as a henchman was like, Oh, he got a, you had that one dock worker guy that worked with Danny before and had to let him go. Like he's got a job working as a henchman now. I was like, Oh, really good for him. And now Taylor's doing that or like, Oh, yeah, I got to hire some people, you know, man.
00:16:46
Speaker
How rough is life? Well, I've had to start working for a villain. So, you know, yeah, you know, but you gotta do what you gotta do. Yeah.
Post-Apocalyptic Brockton Bay & Taylor's Innovations
00:16:55
Speaker
Yeah. I'm definitely appreciating the, um, uh, honestly, Nick, you said it well, the apocalyptic sort of setting here more on a second reread, um, or first reread to be repetitive. Um, but it really does.
00:17:12
Speaker
She talks at one point of lakes being in the city now that didn't exist prior to this. It's an entirely different topography. It's not even the same shape of a city. Everything is just completely upturned and moved around. It's crazy.
00:17:35
Speaker
And so to your point too, Hannah, kind of like you said, I can imagine the heroes being like, okay, who's actually hurting people? Oh, those guys are helping people. Yeah. Yeah. Let's just let them do that for a while. If they go too far, then we'll take care of it. But you know, if people have clothes and food that are being given by somebody, that's one less person that we have to spend resources on.
00:17:58
Speaker
Yeah. Cause I imagine the heroes resources are spread so thin to try and like take care of as many people as they possibly can. Well, because all the heroes, we didn't really talk about this, but all the heroes who came to fight Leviathan, I don't think any of them are around anymore. They just, they just like, even the big name heroes, like, um, I'm sure they're busy, you know, idle on and, um, mirrored in and all of them, but they just kind of said like, okay, Leviathan's gone.
00:18:24
Speaker
See ya. Good luck. Yeah. Most powerful heroes who could actually do something maybe. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I mean, you think about, I think Weld, Weld was at the fight and then he went away and then, you know, he still had to be flown back because he left after that fight was done. Just like everyone else. That's a good point. I didn't think about that.
00:18:52
Speaker
But yeah, a lot of, a lot of capes in that fight were not rock and bay locals and, uh, did not stick around to help pick up the pieces, which leaves it to the villains. Yeah. And they are picking up those pieces. They certainly are way to go. Yeah. Also, can you talk about, uh, Taylor is in the stage of like, she's, she's doing suit, a costume upgrades. She's.
00:19:19
Speaker
working on like these emergency bracelets. Um, Oh yeah. I do love those. Yeah. It makes me wonder, like, I know obviously this is not in there, but like, are we sure she's not a tanker? Cause I feel like she comes with a bunch of inventive little devices and things with bugs.
00:19:43
Speaker
And it just makes me wonder. You're talking about the little origami paper necklaces with the fly inside, right? Yeah, the little bracelets and they crush it. And then like, you know. It's so smart. It's so smart. Once again, just reminded that Taylor is such a smart person. And I, in her position, would never have even thought about doing something like that. And the fact that she's like thinking about those precautions, like thinking about Sierra and Charlotte, like,
00:20:11
Speaker
She's such a good boss. Go, Taylor. When she even mentions that she thinks that her ability to multitask and think like that probably is a sub-result of her powers too, which I think is a cool little bit of world building that we've talked about the negative end in a way, how with Rachel, she has connected more to her dogs than to people, and it's possible that her powers have affected her mind in that way.
00:20:39
Speaker
Taylor maybe has a little bit of bug mind and bugs, although not nearly as intelligent as humans, they move very quickly, have to think very quickly and be light on their toes and do a lot of things all at once and pay attention to a lot of things all at once. And so it kind of makes sense. Taylor's got bug brain. She can think about a lot of things all at the same time.
00:21:01
Speaker
Yep. And we see that later and quite a few times in this arc where she's having to do like eight things at once. Well, more than eight things because it's more like eight separate swarms doing eight separate things, but like hundreds of thousands of bugs in each swarm doing, you know, those, those different things. Like good gravy.
00:21:23
Speaker
And we can't neglect, uh, we probably need to move on from this chapter, but we can't neglect that. Uh, hot Brian, hot Brian is hot does show up and he's like, Hey, you want to, you want to hang out sometime, Taylor? I used to like it when you were more hardcore about villain stuff translation. I, at one point, I think this is a paraphrase, but like, why don't we get along? Cause you pushed my boundaries.
00:21:45
Speaker
And even then you went too far. Oh, Brian. Yeah. How can we ever forget? Oh, it's worth the mention. All right. Moving on. Yeah. So I'm going to group. I think what I'm going to do is group chapter two, chapter three and chapter four together, maybe.
00:22:15
Speaker
Yeah, I think that works. Yeah. So in chapter two, we have this heroes and villains meet up to discuss the slaughterhouse nine, discuss what we're doing for it.
Heroes, Villains, and the Slaughterhouse Nine
00:22:26
Speaker
And the undersiders and the travelers kind of get sidelined and get pushed out of the meeting and they're told to leave. So they don't even get to stay for the rest of the meeting. And then chapter three, the undersiders and the travelers head back to the travelers hideout and unmask, which is a very
00:22:41
Speaker
Exciting moment. They video call with Noelle, which we finally get a description of, and discuss options for dealing with the slaughterhouse nine with the kind of chess versus shogi conversation. And then as they're leaving in chapter four, Jack bones on Siberian meetup, or kind of, I guess, show up, not meet up, show up with the undersiders and travelers in that parking garage.
00:23:08
Speaker
Tattletale reveals Cherish's plan and Jack attacks Tattletale. So much. There's a lot packed into those episodes. Yeah, a whole heckin' lot happens. Yeah, well, let's start with the meetup then. Talking, yeah, I was gonna say, speaking of man-made or end-bringer-made lakes. Lakes, yeah.
00:23:36
Speaker
What a great place to meet. Yeah, man. Weld is such a smart boy. Oh gosh. Like too smart for his own good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, he gets a, he gets a gold star. He really does. Just immediately. He's like Dinah Alcott and everybody's like, you fuck like that's who it is. And then proceeds to explain to everybody,
00:24:02
Speaker
that like I have deduced my dear Miss militia and then spells it out. And at the end of it.
00:24:14
Speaker
He's still not the one to get kicked out. Coyle does not get kicked out despite having kidnapped a child. Yeah, for real. Well, because Coyle does the whole, I can neither confirm nor deny that that is my source. Somehow it feels frustrating. I get it. We're from Taylor's perspective, but it feels frustrating to me because I'm like, that's a bullshit excuse and everybody should know it. Like, how is this working?
00:24:42
Speaker
This isn't something that his powers should allow him to do because he picked the sucky option. He chose the wrong answer and somehow still everybody was like, nope, that seems good enough to me.
00:24:55
Speaker
Oh, that's, yeah, that's good. Same with Hukwulf. Hukwulf was like, all right, guys, I'm an evil Nazi. And, uh, also, oh, look over there. Those are the bad guys. Everybody's like, ah, yes. Kick the teenagers out. What? They're kicking them out because they're better than them. That's why. It really is like the heroes were like, oh, thank goodness. Those guys who were showing us up are gone. Yeah. They were making us look bad.
00:25:26
Speaker
I mean, basically. Yeah. Oh my gosh. You made me think of, and, uh, we're going to cut this up. Nobody else has seen glass onion yet. Glass onion reference. Okay. Good. We can keep it then. But the scene in glass onion where, uh, Daniel Craig's character, I forget his name, the detective block, I think, um, at the beginning, cause he's like, I've gathered you all here to solve my intricate riddle. It's going to take you all weekend. He's like, wait.
00:25:53
Speaker
I've got it. And he just goes and solves the whole thing. That's wild. He also, he flips out his little notebook too, which I love. He's like, yeah, help but imagine. I can't help but imagine. Yes! Oh my gosh, it's Steve from Blues. And that's what I was thinking. He flips out his little, you know, spiral bound notebook and he's like, and pulls out his like blue crayon and he's like, all right, guys, it's Dinah Alcott. Like, oh, the imagery is so good. You joke, but because of his power, it probably was a crayon.
00:26:24
Speaker
That makes it a million times better. Okay, it's canon now. It's canon now. World Cube's crayons on it. It's a blue clue. You can get one of those blues clues themed ones. With the armchair on the front. A giant bat crayon. The biggest crayon in the world. Oh my gosh, I love it so much. Fantastic. Unbelievable. That's great. That's amazing. I was also happy in this chapter.
00:26:50
Speaker
We have cricket. I thought cricket had mortally perished. We definitely got glass in the eyes. Well, yeah, 100%. But my note just says cricket with like 18 exclamation points after it. I just, I really like cricket. And when I thought she was dead, I was so upset. And I'm just
00:27:08
Speaker
It's just like, I know she's
The Mystery of the Travelers and Noelle
00:27:10
Speaker
with the bad guys, but cricket's so cool. I just, I'm so glad she's alive. I wonder if cricket has imps power because I don't remember cricket from the first two times I read this, not a single mention. If you said cricket, I would have gone, hoompst. I don't remember her from the first read. And again, cricket showed up like three times and I'm like, where was this character?
00:27:37
Speaker
Cause you know, like on the vague fringes, there was air wolf or whatever his name is. Wind tiger, uh, storm tiger. Yeah. There was storm tiger.
00:27:54
Speaker
That was as obscure into them as, you know, into the, the, the, the empire as it went. And then we're talking about cricket. I'm like, first off, as is cricket supposed to be some Nazi reference that I'm missing? Like, no, she's just, she's fallen in with a bad crowd. Now I don't remember cricket from my first read through either, but I've just, for some reason, this read through, I have like latched onto her and I need her to survive for as long as possible.
00:28:22
Speaker
I definitely remember Airwolf. I mean, to be fair, it kind of works too because they're kind of a Nazi thing. So he could be Herr Wolf. Herr Wolf was a TV show about a helicopter. I don't know how well that worked.
00:28:49
Speaker
Michael, the poll for this episode, by the way, the poll is going to be, how many times do we get sidetracked? It's too funny. It's been a bad week. This is me just living my best life right now with hair.
00:29:12
Speaker
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Speaker
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00:30:09
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00:30:52
Speaker
Yeah, I was gonna say bring it try to bring it back I do love you mentioned him. I love that imp gets left behind because I totally forgot that imp was there until Tattletales like God, you know, don't worry. We left him behind. Oh
00:31:07
Speaker
Well, I don't know if imp is even mentioned. I think that's a writing technique. I don't think imp is mentioned by Taylor. Oh, I think you might be right. And so when Taylor says, I forgot imp was there, I think purposefully imp is left out of the list of the undersiders who go, just as a writer. Oh, that's probably right. Well, wait a minute. Isn't worm written in first person, right? It is, yeah. Yeah, so it makes sense for Taylor not to, like for us not to get... Yeah, exactly.
00:31:31
Speaker
Yeah, I love that. I love that so much. Also, I love every moment that Brian realizes that he's forgotten imp is the funniest and also the cutest older brother thing ever. He's just like, dang it. She did it again. It's so great. I just love that. I love it.
00:31:50
Speaker
Yeah. Also it's the, it's the biggest mocking of an older sibling. Like, what are you going to do granddad? Like I'm like two years older than you. So yeah. Well, you, you know, you forget about me all the time because you're dementia. It's like, it's not my problem. It's your power. Yeah.
00:32:06
Speaker
And she's like, yeah, we'll see how long you remember that. And then he's like, what was I arguing about? Who was I arguing with? I don't remember. Who even has a sister, not me. Who else gets left? Genesis goes back as well, right? Yes, Genesis stays. In some indeterminate form.
00:32:26
Speaker
Right. Gosh, I still haven't figured out how Genesis works. And I'm sure I'll figure it out eventually, but I still have no clue. Nobody really knows. Nobody really knows. I was going to say, do you want me to give the explanation? No, absolutely not. They've explained it already. It doesn't matter, Alec. They actually have not explained it yet. Yeah, so shut up. I'm pretty sure they haven't fully. I think they basically just said Genesis
00:32:54
Speaker
Genesis's real body is elsewhere. And that's about it. Yeah. So we know like basically, but my thing is, is that like, even if I don't know it now, I'll figure it out eventually. Like, just let me get there. I got the new readers to think about. That's true. That's true. You can basically count me amongst the new readers. Because at this point, I don't, I, y'all, I don't remember what happens after this point.
00:33:19
Speaker
And Michael's basically a new reader too, let's be honest. Heck yeah. Yeah. I was going to say, wait, now Michael has read it before. Yes. But he's forgotten everything. I know. I also don't really talk about anything I might remember because I'm not reading along with you. So I'm just here. Moral support. Exactly.
Coil's Tactical Maneuvers and Undersiders
00:33:42
Speaker
All right, to try to route, I was going to say, any more thoughts on that scene? I do have one quick comment about this. So when Taylor is having her moment where she's like, why is Coyle being such a jackass? I love as a reader being able to anticipate, and this is just good writing, but being able to anticipate something before your character does. And then when your character finally gets to that point,
00:34:07
Speaker
being like, yes, I knew it. Like, oh, come on. Like, I got it before you did. And there's a, there's like, there's, I mean, in mystery novels too, it's like being able to figure out the mystery before the end. But in the same way, like having those moments, it validates the reader to know that we're on the right track, basically. But when Taylor is having her like, wow, Coyle's such a jackass, like, oh my gosh. In my head, I was like,
00:34:30
Speaker
Taylor, it's because he's using his power. Like he's playing out the two options and siding against the undersiders is doing him, is like making the whole thing better. It's the better option. And that's why you're living in it because it is the better option. And then of course later, Tattletale in the next chapter at the very beginning, Tattletale says that. And I'm like, thank you. Thank you, Lisa. Cause I, yeah, yeah, Taylor. But I love that. It's, it's good writing to, to have your,
00:34:59
Speaker
your reader be able to like anticipate those kind of moments before they happen so that when they do, the reader feels like they're being validated in their thoughts, which is just, it's just more, more excellent wild bo writing. Yeah, great point. I do think the conversation is interesting there in how, once again, much like the end bringers, the villains and the heroes come together. Um, but now because they're not dealing with essentially a natural disaster, um, it's interesting just to see how they deal with it more of a, okay,
00:35:28
Speaker
How do we make this work? Um, dealing with these people, uh, not knowing what they're going to do. So just some good, some good conversations there. I thought were interesting. Yeah. I also, cause I know some of you are big trickster fans, but, uh, this is one of those few moments that I actually enjoyed trickster.
00:35:48
Speaker
where they ask him like, hey, are you willing to cooperate? And he's just like, no, I don't think I will. I do love Trickster's power. It's one of my favorites. It's so good. It's such a fun take on a really common power. What is his power?
00:36:10
Speaker
He can swap the place, like swap two objects of equal size. They have to have similar mass, not size. Yeah, that's right. Mass, right. Which I think is more interesting than just similar size. So interesting. I remember that because we talked about how he swapped Arm's Master with like a column or something, right? Yeah. I love it. I'm just waiting for the moment he swapped somebody out for a grand piano.
00:36:34
Speaker
Yeah. So I'm curious just as an opinion, like put yourself in the undersider's shoes. Is what Hook Wolf was asking, was it unreasonable in your mind? For them to all be in a hotel? Because I feel like if they could have all agreed to be in the neutral territory, which I think was brought up, that might've been okay. But they just kind of said like, no, we're not giving up anything. And I just thought that was interesting.
00:37:05
Speaker
I think that his, his stuff was all unreasonable to the point like I couldn't believe that anybody was considering him to be a reasonable.
00:37:14
Speaker
Like, it was all ridiculous. Like, no way anybody would take that. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. And I would more argue that it's like, it's not necessarily that his request demands are unreasonable. It's more of out of principle. Like, he's clearly, he's the one that everyone knows has been recruited and he's clearly ganging up on them. And he's the freaking Nazi. Like, at a certain point, it's like, even if he did have a good point, I still wouldn't have agreed to it out of principle. Just like,
00:37:43
Speaker
No, motherfucker, like I know what you're trying to do. Absolutely not. Well, what pisses me off is that, you know, it's hook wolf, you know, he's this supposed to be sort of like weld. In this case, we have the two giant metal brutes that are way too smart
00:38:03
Speaker
for their own, for their pants, you know? And on one hand, you have Weld, who we like, and he is a smart cookie and he really surprises us. We knew he was book smart. He really is book smart here. But at the same time, Hookwolf comes in with way more intelligence than I give him credit for, and I hate giving him credit for, and I'm upset about it.
00:38:28
Speaker
But he comes in as like, let me give all of these options, none of which you're going to accept. He knows that. He's playing it up like he's being generous and magnanimous and trying to come up with a solution and they're just being obstinate when none of those are acceptable options. But he's like, I'm trying here. That's a good move. It's a good move on his part. It's such a smart move.
00:38:56
Speaker
I hate that I have to give them credit for it. I mean, again, I think this is what makes it good writing, though, is that like the bad guys aren't bad and we hate them when they have smart moments like this. It's like, fuck you, man, that I it's good tactics. Like I hate you and I hate everything you stand for, but it's still good tactics. And I just it's it's well written characters. Yeah. Also, Taylor gets a power upgrade.
00:39:25
Speaker
Can kind of hear through bugs now? Well, not quite. It's mentioned that she did do it while she was asleep. Um, that she potentially has the kind of potential. Yeah, she's got it in her head and you know, now we're going to work on the experience points to unlock that. We know it's in the skill tree. Something that is achievable. I love that.
00:39:52
Speaker
And then we move on to my favorite part of all of these, every part of these stories, which is mundane team bonding. Well, is this the part where everyone's taking off their masks and vibing and Taylor doesn't for a minute? Yeah. Yeah. So back at the travelers hideout, which is just, I love, I love that that they picked the most random little parking garage, but.
00:40:17
Speaker
hiding in plain sight, basically. Yeah, I guess, oh, I guess we'll just take off our masks for anyone now. Yeah, geez, that was fascinating. Man, let me tell you if there's one thing I know about the undersiders, it's they're just willing to lose masks at the drop of a hat.
00:40:33
Speaker
It's because they're trusting. They're so trusting. The second time they met Taylor, they all showed up in casual wear. And she was like, oh, clearly I'm overdressed.
00:40:48
Speaker
You know, and then same here. We're like, ah, we just, everybody throws off their masks and like leaves it everywhere. I'm like, well, I guess we just do that now. Okay. Do secret identities mean nothing to anyone anymore? Yeah, for real. I do like that Taylor does hesitate. Like she does have that moment of, okay. All right. I guess I'll take my helmet off, but okay.
00:41:16
Speaker
I think it's funny because they're at a point, especially now post-Leviathan, if nobody recognizes her as a secret friend or something like that or a neighbor, nobody's going to know who she is or who any of them are.
Undersiders' Trust and Identity Revelations
00:41:32
Speaker
None of them have
00:41:33
Speaker
spy satellites looking at the city and anything like that. It's an interesting... It's such a... It's a great play on an old trope where identity is so important. And I'm reminded... I feel like we've mentioned this scene specifically before, but it's super relevant. The scene in the Justice League animated adventures where Lex Luthor takes control of Flash's body.
00:41:56
Speaker
He's like, well, I can't do much, but at least I can figure out a secret identity. It takes off the mask. I have no idea who this is. That's the scene here is they're all going like, I know who you are now. I do not know who you are. Yeah. Yeah. Cause like, even now, since society has somewhat fallen apart,
00:42:23
Speaker
What does it even matter? Like somebody recognizes you. What does it even matter? What are they going to go do? Like, unless they know where you live and who your dad is, like, I think that is the concern for Taylor. Honestly, like literally, I think that's who her dad is. It's literally that what's interesting. Um, speaking of that though, is that we really only know what Taylor is sort of protecting with her identity.
00:42:52
Speaker
pretty much like you said Hannah, just her dad and her address, her home. That's about it. But we don't really know too much about everybody else beyond what Taylor can see and a little bit we've glimpsed in interludes. But most of them, for the most part, seems don't have much to worry about. Brian has imp as a sister. That's about it. And she's got powers now. So not too much to worry about there.
00:43:19
Speaker
Alec is basically not wearing a mask. Everybody knows who he is. And doesn't really matter. Bitch doesn't really care. She's got nothing except her dogs. And then Lisa, we don't know much about, but doesn't seem to hint at too much she's protecting. So like Taylor really is the only one with anything worth, you know, protecting by keeping a secret identity. So it does sort of, it makes sense that she would. That's true.
00:43:48
Speaker
I mean, Danny really is the only reason at this point. Yeah, of course. Anything to protect Danny must be protected at all costs. Yeah. Speak of protecting, uh, protecting my lungs trickster. Why are you smoking cigarettes?
00:44:05
Speaker
They're like, you're like, he's cool. No, no, I have specifically right here. Smoking is not cool, especially when trickster does it. You're like, what? 16, like chill out, dude. It's hardcore.
00:44:22
Speaker
with your red Phantom of the Opera mascot outfit like oh fuck yes no always a little goofy goober who stopped by the Halloween you know the spirit of Halloween and we love the way out he picked up a pack of cigarettes he found on the ground and he was like ah are we sure they're not just like candy cigarettes either
00:44:41
Speaker
Yeah, 100% candy cigarettes that he tried to light on fire. And they're smoldering, but it's really just the paper that's a light. It's not actually anything. Eats it afterwards. Right. It just jumps away. Oh my gosh. We do finally get a Noelle description, which obviously I did not remember anything about Noelle. And so my comment just says, okay, but she seems so normal.
00:45:12
Speaker
She's in a red sweatshirt. She just looks like she hasn't slept in three days. This is the buried girl, the girl underground, the fuck? Oh, the mystery around Noel is great. I remember being just... I don't remember at all. I remember really loving it the first time I read the story and still feels just as good. It's a really fun mystery.
00:45:40
Speaker
I think it's because all of the travelers are just so full of mystery at this point. And there's a lot of fun around that aspect of who they are. They're the only group that Taylor really interacts with that seems to
00:45:56
Speaker
Like they don't have like all the other gangs have their thing. Like, oh, the white supremacists or the Asian bad boys or skid marks crew or are just the junkies or, you know, the merchants, the merchants. That's what I got. Thank you. If all lines crew is what I was thinking. Yeah.
00:46:18
Speaker
Fault Line Screws got their whole thing going. And then you've got the travelers who are just traveling. And that's who they are. And you're trying to figure out who they are. And Noelle fits so well into that. It's a lot of fun. Also just Noelle's brief scene in Dinah's interlude.
00:46:41
Speaker
So creepy. The combination of this scene with that scene and knowing, you know, we've seen that scene and we're like, okay, what is, she seems so reasonable here, but we know more about her because of that previous interlude.
Threat of Slaughterhouse Nine
00:46:55
Speaker
So again, yeah, just the mystery of Noel and why is she so significant? It's been mentioned before, but it's brought up again that, you know, the only reason Crawler picked her is because he's looking for something he thinks could hurt him.
00:47:09
Speaker
And so clearly there's a lot more going on, but we see her, like we see her and we're like, oh, he looks normal. She looks normal. What we can, you know, yeah, we see her, she looks normal. Everything seems fine. What's the big deal? And so that, yeah, that mystery being played out is so fun and so interesting. And yeah, very well written to be spooky, I think. I'll say it again. The idea by Wildbo to create a,
00:47:37
Speaker
masochist whose power is to get hurt is the cruelest, grossest thing. I absolutely love it. Crawler is terrified. Yes. Yeah. And, uh, I was going to say speaking of, of crawler and the nine ready to move on to the next chapter. Yeah. Move on. A man just comes out.
00:48:04
Speaker
And says it. Yeah, she really does. Take that you worm. Take that you worm. I wrote the worm. The worm. The worm. Yeah, mine is all caps, many exclamation points. The same, same. Oh my gosh. And then immediately afterwards, Jack, just in the voice, I can hear it. Clever worm.
00:48:26
Speaker
It's so good. I love it. I love it so much. Yeah, that whole interaction is so good. I have such, I'm such a huge fan of the Jack and Bonesaw combo. I just love it so much. And it's made even all the better with Siberian and just kind of that weird dynamic that they all have together is just so fascinating to me. And everything about this interaction is so
00:48:55
Speaker
like creepy and weird and also so unsettling and it's it's a great it's a great you know meet-up moment for this conversation to happen this way like uh
00:49:09
Speaker
I love that scene where Taylor is thinking, okay, what are we going to do? How are we going to get out of this? And she's trying to formulate some kind of plan. And Jack just looks at her and goes, you're thinking way too hard. You should stop. She's like, this is the spook moment of just like, no, no. He's listening.
00:49:29
Speaker
And more props to Wild Boa here too. I love how creepy the Jack Bonesaw Siberian trio is without feeling inappropriate. Yeah. I want to put that out there. Like really fine line to walk and he walks it very well because I never really do feel
00:49:47
Speaker
like grossed out by their interactions. It's just creepy and it can just live there. But it's very well written to kind of avoid that connotation. Yeah. So to actually, I was thinking about that. So to parallel these two dynamics, I think about Jack and Bonsaw versus Coyle and Dinah and how you have this older man, younger girl dynamic. But with Coyle and Dinah, it's clearly very creepy, very
00:50:16
Speaker
very creepy and very weirdly possessive and like protective, but never in a good way. And the little pet names are, they're very creepy and very predatory. While Bonsaw and Jack, the dynamic feels completely different. You still have the like older gentlemen, younger girl dynamic, but, and the pet names too, even, and like holding her hand and stuff like that, but it feels completely different.
00:50:44
Speaker
And I just, oh, I love, I kind of love that duality. That's a good point. I like that comparison.
00:50:52
Speaker
Maybe just the phrase, my pet never works in any scenario. No, unless you're using it in the sentence, my pet is cool. I was going to say, as long as you're talking about an animal and not a person. I mean, unless that's your thing, we don't want to kick King shame a little.
00:51:18
Speaker
If you like being called pet, you probably like being kink shamed. Oh, that's right. Getting shamed probably is your kink.
00:51:32
Speaker
Just Jacob's quiet. Cat and I had our moments earlier on where we talked about our smut. Now we get to reveal everybody else's choices. And the words of Mariel, my, uh, my kink is kink shaming.
00:51:59
Speaker
That's disgusting. Oh yeah. I'll let you decide, Michael. Don't make poor Michael decide. Do what you always do. Clip it and cut it.
00:52:22
Speaker
Put it in out of context. Out of context on Instagram. If you want all of our weird out of context, you should follow us on Instagram. Michael, if you ever have to cut a rant.
00:52:35
Speaker
save it and put it on our Patreon. That's right. You could subscribe to Patreon to hear our weird rants that got cut. Yeah. Brockton Bay book club on Patreon. There you go. Um, it is interesting too. I just getting back to that moment. Um, yes, the relationship between Siberian and bone salt, which we find out more about in a Jack's interlude, um, is just such an interesting one to write the,
00:53:01
Speaker
The big sister, little sister weirdly kind of reminds me of Bioshock, the big quiet stranger that carries the tiny little girl. The big daddy and the little sisters. But yeah, just that, that is such an interesting relationship dynamic that all of them have. Yeah, yeah.
00:53:27
Speaker
Uh, and so then we have cherished there as well. Yeah, presumably came because of, um, you know, because her, she thought her brother might be there wanting to torture him further. But what a scene between cattle tail and Jack. Now, if I had a nickel for every time tattletale using her power got her fucked up, I'd have two nickels.
00:53:52
Speaker
which isn't a lot, but girl, you got to, you got to think about what you say sometimes. Yeah. Right. It really goes back to like, everybody should live at a slightly constant fear that what they say could have
00:54:07
Speaker
you know, get them punched in the face. And I think more people should just think about that. And tattletale should be number one on that. Like, never forget, like as smart as you are and like, ah, yes, like, let me just take you apart with my words. Glory, girls.
00:54:25
Speaker
going to punch you in the face. Yeah. You're going to get hit with a fire hydrant. Come on. Yeah. Like they're going to, they're, she's not going to care. It's like, ah, if I have this suicide vest on and I blow myself up if you, and then they just punch you. And it's like, whoops. Like, looks like they didn't care about the moral quandary or the, the, the, oh no, what are we going to do? Cause they don't sink that far ahead. Sometimes they just punch.
00:54:51
Speaker
This part might need to get cut out because I don't know if it's worth including, but I've been seeing this clip from a movie or a show. I don't know where it's from, but it's like this giant monster is approaching this group of soldiers. One of the soldiers runs forward, pulls out two grenades and pulls the pin, expecting the monster to eat him.
00:55:10
Speaker
Oh, you're thinking of Skull Island. Yup. Skull Island. Skull Island. Yeah, expecting the monster to eat him. And then immediately the monster just spins around, tail whips him across the canyon and he blows up on the mountain. That was the best part of that movie. No, that movie is fucking rocked. I will not hear any slander. You better cut your own self out of this whole thing.
00:55:33
Speaker
But that being said, um, that's kind of what it reminds me of with tattletale. She's just like keeps talking. And even before Jack, you know, cutter, I kind of got that feeling of just like.
00:55:44
Speaker
Please, like, shut up. Cattle tail. Come on. Her strategy doesn't work against the good guys. Like, what did she think was going to happen? Yeah. You're messing with the guy who has superhuman reach on his blades. You think it's not going to. Yeah. What are you thinking? I mean, how is to cut people?
00:56:07
Speaker
Exactly. And I feel like Jack is already hard enough to read. And then to have like this moment, which again, like we've seen already, where Lisa has miscalculated the use of her powers and her misinformation or lack of understanding has already gotten them into trouble multiple times. And because we did gloss over it just a little bit, but the moment right before these four members of the Slaughterhouse Nine show up,
00:56:32
Speaker
Tattletail is just now piecing together. Oh, strange how bitch has a wolf pup out of fucking nowhere in the middle of this apocalyptic city.
00:56:45
Speaker
And hmm, we don't know who the ninth recruit member or the eighth recruit member is. We don't know who the last recruit member is. And it's like, just now, just now, she gets that, she makes that connection. So she's coming fresh off of a miscalculation and then decides, oh yeah, this is gonna be the time that I'm gonna run my mouth. Like, tattletale, what are you doing? Yeah. High intelligence, low wisdom.
00:57:14
Speaker
Some indeed cheese Louise it's I mean it's it's a it's such a great introduction to them showing up because Of her being like oh shit. Oh shit Like it's a it's a great segue, but yeah
00:57:30
Speaker
My girl needs to take her cockiness down a couple notches, which I mean, I'm assuming that this slash to the face will do, but. And it is, it's a great way of illustrating threat to so like the one thing about the Leviathan arc that I think if you could try to criticize anything, that's my favorite arc in the whole story. So do that, but would be that none of the undersiders are even badly hurt, you know,
00:58:00
Speaker
That's the chapter in this type of story where you expect one of them to die or lose an arm or a leg or something like that. Taylor did have her back broken.
00:58:09
Speaker
That's true. Yeah, but it was fixed. Yeah, but in the fantasy of... No lasting consequences. Exactly. So when you go on to a group of more humanoid safe crawler looking creatures that are not leviathan giant monsters, and you want to establish them as really, really powerful and really scary.
00:58:31
Speaker
having their real first interaction with them being essentially removing tattletale from the equation. Yeah. Just such a power move. Yeah.
00:58:43
Speaker
I also wanted to talk about the, just the psychological damage that has clearly been done to cherish by the slaughterhouse nine. Just that whole moment of her, you know, of Jack explaining what she did, what she went through. It's just so, so brutal.
00:59:05
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It just, it, it hurt. It was one of those moments. I'm like, ooh, that this description is painful. It's horrific. It really is. I actually, I wrote a huge chunk of this in my notes because that it's so, it's so graphic and like, I'm not going to say that every woman deals with this, but I would say that probably a majority of women deal with the whole thing of like,
00:59:36
Speaker
Like our bodies that we live in, we already have a love-hate relationship with. It's already hard enough to exist in our skin. I think that's a human thing. I wouldn't even say that that's a woman thing, but it's hard enough to exist in your skin as is much less having to deface it in such a way to morph and to modify and to ultimately mutilate this
00:59:59
Speaker
for lack of a better word, the skin suit that you reside in. Because after everything, because it's very clear.
01:00:09
Speaker
through all of the tests that The Slaughterhouse Nine do to people is that we all have our different breaking points. We all have our moments that will crush us. And Cherish goes through the psychological terror of Shatterbird. She goes through the whole drinking the blood thing with bone saw, which is horrifying. And she gets hunted by Siberian.
01:00:32
Speaker
But the thing it is that breaks her out of everything is the tattoos. That's what breaks her down, to alter herself, to make herself so horrifying and ugly. That's what breaks her in the end because pain is temporary. Pain is something that you can mentally say, just a little bit more, and then it'll be over. But scars,
01:00:55
Speaker
Those last, and the tattoos, those are lasting her for the rest of her life. There is no covering this up. She can never walk away from the Slaughterhouse Nine unscathed. She can never be anything other than what she has become to be part of the Nine. And that is so... I've got goosebumps right now because it's so...
01:01:18
Speaker
There is no coming back. This is the final line. There is no coming back from this at all. And this moment where Lisa kind of reveals it and we realize that Jack and Bonsaw have known this whole time her fate has been sealed. Yeah. Yeah. It's just kind of the foreshadowing of her arc with Alec where she picks him for the challenges and to test him. It really does. Like now you feel that foreshadowing where Alec is just like,
01:01:48
Speaker
Like Cherie, you have fucked up here. You don't, you may not realize it, but you fucked up. And it kind of, now we see, I think she does realize it, but she, her last hope is that in the end, she can get them to believe that, you know, or get them to think, you know, Oh, she's on my side or something like that. Um, or like, you know, using her powers to control them. That's like her last hope. And that's been taken away.
01:02:17
Speaker
now from the scene. And so I think seeing that utter defeat is what's so crazy about this scene too. It hurts. That's heartbreaking. Yeah. But does she deserve it? No, no, she doesn't. She kind of deserves it. That's what's hard about it. I hate the story so much because it makes you sympathize with these lovely people. And it's so hard to read because you're just like,
01:02:47
Speaker
let her go, please. But also, she's killed so many people. It's hard. Yeah, she's made her bed and now she has to lie in it kind of thing. Also, do they, and this is me completely forgetting if they do or will explain how a couple of them were immune to her?
01:03:11
Speaker
Bonesaw knew what her powers did and put an implant in people's brains. Did they say that? Okay. It's like an inhibitor of something. Some kind of inhibitor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, Bonesaw being a medical tinker, basically. Yeah, it's one of those like, how does she do it? We don't know. Who knows? It's in your blood. It's in your cells multiplying. Jesus. Yeah. Oh, man.
01:03:38
Speaker
I feel like we'll have more to say about the nine on Jackson or Lude. So maybe come back to it unless there's some lingering thoughts on that chapter. Just to say again, I fucking love the slaughterhouse nine. They are great. They are great. Really, really fun characters in horrific ways. Yes.
01:04:04
Speaker
All right, so moving past the nine for now, we'll be back. I should say moving past that chapter because they stick around.
01:04:15
Speaker
Hannah, do you want to hit us with some more summaries? Yes. Yes, I can. So chapter five, so at the end of four, they kind of revealed that Shatterbird is about to sing. And they all know what that means. So Taylor in chapter five, Taylor is racing to reach her dad before Shatterbird sings. And meanwhile, she's trying to let people know as much as she can
01:04:36
Speaker
Chapter six, skitter, after the singing goes off, skitter organizes the wounded in her territory, tries to save as many of the lives that she can, and then Mannequin shows up, which I'll just go into the rest of this. Chapter seven, Taylor and Mannequin fight in a absolutely brutal one-on-one, and Mannequin leaves without his head. And I'll stop there. Lovely.
01:05:06
Speaker
The scene of her racing through the neighborhood, trying to reach her dad, knowing there's a countdown is one of the most tense scenes, I think, in the story so far.
Taylor's Crisis Management
01:05:17
Speaker
And that's, you know, including the Leviathan stuff and the conversation just now with the Slaughterhouse Nine. But I think knowing the stakes for Taylor and knowing how important this is to her. Like, this is the one thing she has left in a way that's keeping her connected to the normal world, you might say.
01:05:36
Speaker
It's just such a brutal feeling to see that. It pretends. I love it. A completely off task from that. We finally get a name for the fat guy who died.
01:05:49
Speaker
What? Did we? What was his name? Yeah. So she's running through the city and I, oh, you're right. Oh, and she mentions like, Oh man. Like I'm trying to save people now because I couldn't save people before maybe. Right. Like, and then she says his name. It's Chubster. Oh my gosh. Okay. I don't think that's his actual name or is that his name? I think that is his actual name. What?
01:06:20
Speaker
That was 100%. I'm not going to speculate into Wildbo's writing styles and habits, but I have to imagine it's because of the way the format of a web server works. You type that in, put it in as like a placeholder, I'll come back and then hit published anyway and forgot about it. Nope, that's the same now. It's canon. Whoops. Oh my goodness. That's great. Thank you for telling us that. That's amazing.
01:06:49
Speaker
You're very welcome. I just, I, I, that's something that stuck out, stuck out to me so much. I'm like, I have to. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Oh my gosh. Okay. Back to her running. Yeah. Back to her running through the city in absolute terror.
01:07:08
Speaker
Again, she's multitasking. She's got all of her bugs trying to get everybody protected as fast as possible. She's got Sierra on the phone or is it sure? It's Sierra on the phone. Yeah, to try and get everybody to take cover where they can. I like to imagine that she put up a message with her bugs in the houses that said something to the effect of
01:07:34
Speaker
Okay, everybody listen. You might not know who Shatterbird is, but here's the rundown. And it's just this paragraph of text. Oh my God. Stay away from glass, hide under things. Someone's going to read and get to the very end and not make it in time.
01:07:53
Speaker
What do you think she said to try to... Could you imagine the absolute fear? If you just look up and on the wall are a bunch of bugs that just say the word hide.
01:08:14
Speaker
But don't call for help. Your phone won't save you. On like newscast at the bottom, they have like the ticker tape with the
01:08:25
Speaker
text that's just going by, but it's like very limited. I kind of imagine that that's what's happening. The bugs are like scrambling, cycling in through. It's like all these words that you're like, you're trying to read and you like lose track. You get distracted by like a cockroach and you're like, Oh God, I missed that word. Fuck. What did it say? It's all train of thought too. So it's just like, Oh, okay. Uh, all right. Um, so the slaughterhouse niner here and a shatterbirds about to get away from the glass and throw your phone out and take off your glasses. Yeah.
01:08:54
Speaker
You know, but you should bring up a good point. You do bring up a good point, Ellen, because everybody does know who the Slaughterhouse Nine are. Like, Brockton Bay is not the first city they've hit, and it's not the second or the third either by the sound of it. And this is their modus operandi. Exactly. Every time they come into town. Exactly. Which Jack talks about in his interview. Because she's a diva. Yeah. So, like, if you just put S-9 on the walls, people would probably know, like, oh, shit. S-9 hide, yeah. Yeah.
01:09:25
Speaker
Yeah, no, that probably would work. But also, man, just once again, what a brutal world. Imagine just trying to live there and just being like, well, we could be next. Slough House 9 could be here any minute. Gosh. Is it better to live in a small town or not at that point? Probably. I think so. I think living out in the middle of the countryside
01:09:51
Speaker
Like it would probably be the best option. Cause like, what's the worst villain you probably deal with? Redneck Jim, who's just trying to make some moonshine. Here's the thing though, like someone triggers cause they got found by a bear and now they have bear powers and then they're running your whole town. So I don't know. I mean, you know, that's gotta be a little bit of a balance to be fair. Um, well, nevermind. That's a spoiler. I won't say that. How many, how many trigger events are just DUIs?
01:10:23
Speaker
I imagine that's every small town. It's just like, yeah, we had 30 DUIs, which accounted for like 50% of the triggers. I was going to say the other 50% were domestic abuse. I was going to say, wait, the small towns are where all the terrible things happen though. It's rural America that's suffering and suicide rates and poverty. It's like small towns are probably not the place to be.
01:10:46
Speaker
Oh God.
01:10:51
Speaker
What's your ability? I can't feel. I basically have no ability to feel pain or anything else that matters. It's like, Oh, I wonder what caused that. Yeah. Pick your poison, which town you want. They're both bad. It's no good. What we're getting at is it sucks no matter where you are. Nowhere is safe. Yeah. Nowhere is safe.
01:11:11
Speaker
Yeah, unless you're very, very wealthy. Incidentally enough, the rich people are less likely to get powers. Why does this sound so familiar? What was that? I said, unless Alan is your dad. Not you, Alan. The lawyer, Alan. Also, which we'll get into later. Yeah, we'll get into the Allens later. Don't you worry.
01:11:32
Speaker
Yeah, we will. There are so many Allens. Wait, why are there actually so many Allens in this book? We'll talk about that at a later date. And we know we got some Allens listening. Shout out you guys. Yeah, for real. We do have an Allen listener and we appreciate every comment you leave. Thank you. We read them all, just so you know. Shout out. We have an Allen listener too. We do. We do. He comments on all of our YouTube videos. He's amazing. Oh my gosh. Okay, you know what? We'll get into it. We'll get into it later.
01:12:03
Speaker
Okay. Well, when we get to the, yeah. Okay. All right. All right. All right. Uh, the glass shatters and glass does man. That is fucking glass and sand burns. Oh my God. All of that. I have inhaled like a dumb ass, you know, shavings while I was grinding up a cauldron.
01:12:31
Speaker
Don't ask more. But I was breathing in that because my mask wasn't... It's a long story. My mask was not for that. It wasn't good enough. So I was breathing in metal shavings. And let me tell you how hard it was to breathe for like a week after. Yeah. Just glass?
01:12:52
Speaker
Oh my God. Yeah, that's rough. I mean, they're also a coastal town, so you have all the beaches. So that sand is just a tsunami of sand cloud just everywhere.
01:13:05
Speaker
Imagine going to the beach to try to cheer up your family because... No, no, no. You started off, you're not going to cheer me up at the beach to begin with. I already hate it. It's got sand everywhere. It's coarse. It's irritating. I hate it. He said imagine. He said imagine. Imagine, Alan. Imagine. Leviathan sinks your home. You bring the kids and the wife to the beach, you know, just to like try to bring some spark of joy.
01:13:30
Speaker
It's a tradition you've had your whole life. You go everywhere. You hear them ringing in your ears and sandstorming. You know the story of the guy. I was just about to do the same thing. It's like everyone knows the song. She gets up and sings. She gets up to the top of the city and the scream is just... I think I'm missing a reference.
01:13:59
Speaker
There's a song called Sandstorm and that's... I love how we all immediately just go, you know the one that goes like... Well, I'm proud of every single one of you. It's okay. I'll make a meme about a city exploding and I'll just put Darude Sandstorm over that. Solid. Everyone will get it. It's just Jack Slash saying, this is so sad. Chatterbird, play Sandstorm.
01:14:33
Speaker
Oh my gosh. Also bless you, Charlotte, for just giving the call. Because it's Charlotte that sends, that's like, Oh, Taylor's, you know, given all the stuff to, uh, you know, the, at the hospital and then goes ahead and just calls, was it tattletale? I forget who she calls.
01:14:59
Speaker
and essentially sends the paramedics her way, the dad's house. Was she wrong on that? I don't think it's her. I have bless you Charlotte. So I'm assuming that's who, you know, it gets kind of confused in here. Cause somebody alerts Coyle and Coyle, cause Coyle has all his men like take glass out of all the cars and everything like that. Yes, they take the windshield out of the ambulance.
01:15:29
Speaker
Hmm. But maybe I don't, I don't think it would have been Charlotte. Let us know. Somebody correct us. I'm sure you will. Um, I can't remember what it is. So maybe it was, I don't know. I'm going to look at it out, but either way, let's see Charlotte. Yeah. Uh, so she, you know, she does that. And then, uh, the paramedics show up and you're like, you know, Oh dad, you're okay. But he's, you know, unconscious in the paramedic. You're like, Hey, we're here to help. And then she's like, Oh my goodness. Wait a minute.
01:15:59
Speaker
And I can just hear the paramedic like handing her the mask and it's like, Hey, don't forget this dumb ass. Can't just leave shit lying around like that. If you're going to keep your identity secret. Yeah. It's a great scene though. It's a great little moment. She's all flustered. Yeah. Yeah.
01:16:21
Speaker
Yeah. No, that's not that. I know what this is. This is further along. I was about to say I'm, I'm, I was literally reading it. This is all for the next chapter. That's why I'm it's the paramedic is the one looking at her when she's like, glass can't be detected by X-rays paramedic. Sorry. Sorry. Some of them can, I guess at least not the small ones. Okay. Yeah. It's like, oh my God. Fucking just.
01:16:51
Speaker
Stop talking. His head whips around. She's like, you can't do this. It's just like, what the fuck can you say? Yeah. Okay, before I say that you stepped into the topic that I know too much about.
01:17:11
Speaker
Yeah. The bless you Charlotte must've been when they people were, uh, we're congregating and like, she's like, do what I say. And nobody does what Taylor says. And then Charlotte's like, I'll do what you say. She's like, thank you, Charlotte. Remind me to give you a bonus. Jacob get a little closer to the mic and say it again. Oh, I will say it again. Are we ready to move on? Anyone have a final thought on that chapter?
01:17:50
Speaker
What people can find on our promises? No, no, I will make as many promises as I damn well please. If people pay me, if people pay me money to fulfill those promises, damn it, I will fulfill them. I'll tell you right now, people, right? As of right now, when we were recording this, we have two free members on Patreon.
01:18:05
Speaker
I mean, I have a lot of thoughts, but I feel like we've said them already.
01:18:14
Speaker
What I do know is that our special slaughterhouse nine tier of which there are only nine available slot. $9 a month.
Podcast Humor and Sponsor Shoutout
01:18:24
Speaker
That could be you. And during our slaughterhouse nine arc, maybe we'll say your names, you know, maybe we'll give a shout out to our house nine. But, uh, with that, we need you to subscribe and you just subscribe. Uh, cause you know,
01:18:38
Speaker
There's limited slots. And just to be the first. And just to clarify, so there's no confusion. I can be bought and my price is low. It's a pizza. We've been saying it all this time. It's a pizza, singular. It doesn't even have to go to anybody. I just want to buy a pizza with the money we make. That's how you know you've made it as a podcast. Exactly. We buy one singular pizza. We all get one slice.
Mannequin's Chaos and Taylor's Challenges
01:19:06
Speaker
Anyway, back on track. Yeah. So continuing the, uh, yeah, continuing the horror villain moments, mannequin just showing up. It's a good time for everybody. Oh my gosh. Um, and just the way she like looks around and realizes, wait, that ambulance is really quiet. Wait, everybody inside is dead. Wait, it's just, it's like like slaughter around. Yeah. Their heads are like, whoop. And then the one guy's like, yeah.
01:19:35
Speaker
Well, I forget if he was like stapled to the ceiling basically or whatnot. Again, just just brutal. It really is. Yeah. As if Taylor didn't already get like no end of shit for all the good things she does. Now she's got to deal with this shit. No rest. Like she was just dealing.
01:19:54
Speaker
with that old bitch who was probably an anti-vaxxer too. Oh, yeah. She gave off such strong anti-vaxxer vibes. And now we've got to deal with this old bitch. Oh, wait, no, you don't anymore. So who's to say that Mannequin was the villain, you know? Maybe Taylor stopped him from doing some good work. Taylor just sees him doing it and just does the Willy Wonka. Wait, no, stop.
01:20:26
Speaker
I will say that was so obnoxious that she's trying to help. We're trying to organize everyone. We're trying to make things happen. And people are so fucking selfish and obnoxious. It's like, I don't... It just makes me upset because it's really... I think we talked about this last time as well when we were doing Arc 11. But the idea that people are shit,
01:20:54
Speaker
and things that are awful that happen, they don't tend to bring out the good in people. They tend to bring out more shit in people. And it's just shown all over again. We see the same dad here from chapter one, and he's being a fucking cunt again. And it's so frustrating to me that
01:21:18
Speaker
that you can have such awful things be happening. And it's realistic too. And that's why it's so frustrating. It's like people are shitty for the most part. And they will... Obviously you have the couple one-off people who are self-sacrificial, but for the most part, people are shitty and they will do anything in their power to make sure they are protected. And Skitter is just trying to
01:21:42
Speaker
help. She's just trying to help and people want to fight her every step of the way and it's so freaking frustrating. Makes me upset. She gets so much shit when she does hero stuff and gets nothing but praise when she's doing villain things. Yeah. Like, how? It's true. It just, you know.
01:22:06
Speaker
I don't know. If I were her, I'd be like, hey, yo, Mannequin, you got room for one more? Just like gestures at that dude. Right here. You're over here. Mannequin, I found him right here. This one. Just using like the laser pointer to... Mannequin goes into like cat mode with a little butt wiggle. Just with the sharpest claws. The sharpest claws, no!
01:22:31
Speaker
He's making biscuits, but the person is just getting. Detective Mittens now. Oh my God, this is such an unhinged episode. Oh my God. So sorry, Michael, but it only gets better, Michael, because this motherfuckers anime running.
01:22:59
Speaker
He leaves his arms back and then starts running and they're like trailing behind him. He leaves his arms behind him. I was going to say, in my mind when I read that, it's less anime running and more just like he doesn't put any motion into his arms because he doesn't need to. Like humans move their arms and they run from balance.
01:23:15
Speaker
But if he doesn't need to, then his arms are just sort of like, they're like weapons. They're just extensions of his body. So it's such a terrifying image, just this bipedal creature sprinting at you with his arms just flapping around at his side. Oh my God. It's like a fucking marionette.
01:23:33
Speaker
That's what it's like. And we all know Marianettes are fucking creepy. It's true. If I remember the quote, right? They talk about his arms trail behind him, like ribbons. And all I can think is like, he's, it's like SpongeBob like running, but Naruto, but you know, it's like, it's terrifying, but it's a goofy motherfucker. This is my, my nerd memory. What have you guys seen, uh, Naruto?
01:24:02
Speaker
No, never. No, a few. Sorry. Okay, that's okay. I think a few Naruto fans might have a guess as to what I'm talking about, but if there are any in our listeners. Oh, there are. There definitely are. There is a character who is a puppet master.
01:24:20
Speaker
Um, and it is revealed in his final fight that spoilers spoilers for, you know, a 20 year old anime, uh, not that old, but, um, but it is revealed that he himself is a puppet and it's very similar vibes to that.
01:24:36
Speaker
where it's like, oh, he was this all along. But part of it, of course, is it's the total anime run where he jumps forward really fast with his puppet mannequin arms behind him. It's exactly the same with mannequin, except what I imagine for mannequin, and this is, I'm not there for dissecting worm and turning it into a TV show, but I would love it if mannequin made no sound most of the fight.
01:25:05
Speaker
90% of the fight. Just to add to the creep factor. Because I think that's what's needed for that to really have that effect. That would be cool. But he is kind of clanky with all of his chains. By the end he should be clanky. By the end he should be clanky for sure.
01:25:23
Speaker
Yeah, but he has chains. And let me tell you, as somebody who works with chains on a daily basis, they are the loudest motherfucking thing on the planet when they do anything. There is a show loud. He's a tinker. His chains are probably well lubed. He's got special chains. They're so slick. My special chains. Look, skitter. Look at my special chains. My brand. There's so many good memes coming out of this shit. Oh, gosh. Oh, my gosh.
01:25:53
Speaker
But also, can we talk for a moment about how cool Mannequin's tinker power is? And again, just we love Wild Bo on this podcast, if that isn't clear. The frame of mind to take a tinker ability
01:26:13
Speaker
of being able to create biomes and living spheres and life systems, life support systems and things like that. And to turn that concept literally, because he talks about who that character was.
01:26:30
Speaker
into this super self-contained being that wraps himself in... What's the word? I'm thinking of them drawing a blank. Redundancies. Regenerative. Yeah. Redundancies. Yeah. And protections and miniature biomes. And it's just so cool. It's just a great power. I think this might be the first example we've had of
01:26:59
Speaker
a hero going bad. Cause we'll see, you know, the flip around. Um, but this is the first example I feel like where we've had a person have a trigger, they go hero or, you know, have that go on, but then something else happens to them and they flip over to the other side. And the, I mean, Taylor says it uses his ability to protect himself and only himself.
01:27:29
Speaker
You know, when before he was, you know, he was unknown scientist, you know, thinker that was basically going to be a world saver. Like when it comes to all these ecological problems and disasters, like this guy was going to be the guy, you know? And when he went bad, instead of the world, he focused on himself. That's it. Like, holy cow.
01:28:00
Speaker
Yeah, he's a really interesting character. That's a main character of another story, if anywhere else. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like Worm is full of that. All these characters could be protagonists in this story if you want to focus on them. Also, this motherfucker has Vents.
01:28:18
Speaker
He vents and he thinks of everything. The bugs go into the socket holes and he's just like, no, I'm going to blow hot air, hot compressed air and flush all that out. We've been venting this entire episode so I was a little confused for a second.
01:28:35
Speaker
Does he go on a rant? Yes. I was thinking of that. I thought you were referring to the Among Us thing where, you know, they vent and go to... No.
Taylor's Strategic Resourcefulness
01:28:44
Speaker
Oh my gosh. And they also have the spike. They do the spiky thing. They do. He does do the spiky thing. And he crawls through the vents. He does. It's all connected. Worm X Among Us.
01:28:58
Speaker
Oh my gosh. Yeah, but no, right. Even when Taylor thinks she gets a slight upper hand against an opponent who, for all intents and purposes, is completely immune to her power, and even then, he still has a contingency in place. It's like, nuh-uh-uh. Yep. A slight aside, the whole clock thing that Taylor mentions,
01:29:23
Speaker
She's like, damn, I need to put some bugs on a clock permanently so I can keep track of time.
01:29:31
Speaker
Genius. It's genius. I would have never thought about that. She does 18 billion things at once. And this is something that I just... Gosh, this is something Wild Bone knocks out of the park every time. When Taylor is playing through all the different scenarios, all the things that she could be doing, or she's doing eight million different things with her bugs, it's so impressive that she is so many steps ahead
01:29:55
Speaker
of all these different moments. And she's constantly thinking about how to make her process better, like with the clock thing, like the bugs on the hands of the clock. She's thinking about it. And it's very easy to read this and be like, oh yeah, Taylor's so fucking smart. But Wild Bill fucking wrote this. Like Wild Bill's the one who made this all happen. And it fills me with so much jealousy.
01:30:19
Speaker
that I am clearly... I am not smart enough to write this kind of shit. I am not thinking so many steps ahead to be able to write a character like Taylor because her brain is always going by a limit. And it's so impressive that Wild Bo can do this. That he can write these characters that are so vastly different. So as we're jumping with interludes. And then
01:30:45
Speaker
feel like we're in their heads so well. It's just so, I'm very impressed. I'm very, very impressed. Indeed. Regardless, Taylor gets her ass kicked in like the first 10 seconds.
Intense Fight Scenes & Plot Dynamics
01:31:00
Speaker
Like she makes like two attempts. He does a spinny like top thing, smacks the shit out of her and then has to like play dead because he like thinks he cut her throat. Like that's the start of the fight.
01:31:14
Speaker
Yeah. It happens so quickly. I mean, honestly, I feel like she should have died. She should have. Yeah. There is a bit of plot armor, but it's made of spider silk. Of spider silk. Yeah. It's a little scary so much in this. It also does help. I feel like that her opponent is blind.
01:31:42
Speaker
She even says like at one point, I have no idea how he's detecting me because that's part of what she's trying to figure out is how she can use her bugs to slow him down. And yeah, again, very interesting.
01:31:57
Speaker
Yeah, I got the impression too that Mannequin wasn't trying to kill her at first. Like if his goal was to go there and kill her, he wouldn't have messed around with the ambulance and the people and making a scene to get her attention. Like he's toying with her at the start. I think it gets to the point where he gets a little desperate, but he's very much trying to hurt her as badly as he can. Oh, of course. Well, it's talked about in the interlude, like why he's there.
01:32:25
Speaker
It's not even to attack her directly. It's that he hates seeing people succeed where he failed. Yeah. Yeah. The whole thing of like he was, you know, in this case, I think it's his wife and daughter. Yeah. Where like he tried, you know, was trying to protect the world and they still ended up dying, even though, you know, like,
01:32:50
Speaker
He works in biomes and saving people and whatnot. They still died. And he has this vendetta against seeing other people try to do that. Like anytime he sees people try to save other people or help other people, he hates that shit because he failed at it. And Taylor is actually succeeding at this. And so he's really not having it with her shit. So like this is, this is him going there.
01:33:16
Speaker
to make her watch him tear what she's done apart. Yeah, for sure. If I can't have it, nobody can. Gosh, I love a good villain. What a little bitch. Fuck, no, I love it. Jesus, it's so good. It's so good. It is. That all being said, I love this fight. I love, you know, mannequin. I love the atmosphere. I do not like the conclusion to this fight.
01:33:46
Speaker
Why do you think you don't like the conclusion to it? Yeah. It starts with the fact that I really don't like the spider silk working. I just don't buy. I feel like it needs to be a lot more spider silk. Yeah. Honestly, the arts and crafts supplies weeks, way more sense. So, you know, I'm glad that that's more of the finisher there. Um, but the ending to this fight, Taylor kicked his ass at the end and.
01:34:16
Speaker
I like, there's just some weird resolution to this. So like, she probably could have like taken him apart at the end there, even with the knife, like, you know, that he, you know, he whips out. Maybe. I think it's implied. I mean, it's implied strongly that she basically collapses on herself after the fight. Yeah.
01:34:44
Speaker
just because she's got nothing left inside of her tank. It was all adrenaline. So I think the conclusion is more like Mannequin steps back realizing, hmm, I could lose this. I'll choose to leave instead. And Taylor, you know, being like, hey, you had enough or can we be done? We'll do this more later. Can we be done, please? Can we be done, please?
01:35:13
Speaker
It's like, we've both gotten shit on in this fight. Let's just agree to be done. We'll deal with the problems later. Yeah. And it's not that I don't like in world, of course, but as like, if you could have written it differently, I don't like the ending to this. I'm not a huge fan of the, like, I don't know the tie. Yeah. Not for this, not just for the sake of like a resolution, but
01:35:43
Speaker
Uh, is something about this just doesn't sit right. Um, that's fair. Yeah. Yeah. It does. It does feel in part, it is a great fight that I think is definitely the kind of fight I could see, um, wild bow maybe feeling like they've written themselves into a corner with. And I'm not saying that this is necessarily what happened, but I could understand while being like, Ooh, how am I going to finish this fight without either of them dying?
01:36:13
Speaker
Let's just have them beat each other up so badly that... Yeah, they have to walk away. That they have to walk away. Yeah, exactly. And maybe that's the best way to do it. I don't know. Yeah, maybe. Yeah, it's an interesting... There's a great fight though. I do love it a lot. And it's just very fun. Yeah. I do like her solution of gunking him up, I think is a clever way of solving the problem.
01:36:46
Speaker
And it is just more of like, Oh, what was my first idea? Let's clog his joints. You know, he vents the hot air. Okay. Well, I guess my next answer is to clog it up even more. Yeah. And just like, it's like, Oh, well the spider silk didn't work more. And to the point where it's just like dropping paint buckets, basically like, Oh,
01:37:13
Speaker
You know, yeah. What's the correct answer? Keep doing it. Don't they have containment foam in this? Oh man. If he got hit with containment foam in the joints, he's fucked. That's what I think. That's a good point. Actually. I'm curious. Why didn't arms master just hit him real quick with that? He would've been so, so easy. That was stupid. That's fine. But no, he needed a whole new face after that.
01:37:42
Speaker
Yikes. Arms mastered, not letting the Eagles fly to Mordor looking motherfucker. That's my part of this podcast. How many times would containment foam solve this? I'm telling you, how many times would coil sniper solve this problem? That's what I want to know. One workplace bullet really could fix so much of this.
01:38:06
Speaker
I mean, Taylor even says, well, no, Taylor even says with mannequin, he's not built for, he's not like, his plating and everything isn't super strong. It's meant for utility and like it's well made, but that's something she actually exploits. So like a strong armor piercing round, maybe that would work. Yeah, maybe so. Just a 50 cal to the dome. Yeah, nobody gets up from that.
01:38:33
Speaker
knowing him would have some kind of contingency brain in his ass. Well, that's reality. Yeah. Honestly, the only person that can survive just a shot to the head is crawler. Everybody else gets one to the dome. They're out slaughterhouse nine, you know, fucking line them up. Well, you know, it's funny again, making a halo could take these motherfuckers out.
01:39:04
Speaker
It's funny though, because that's an interesting element to the story is a lot of the characters are not built with a couple of really noticeable exceptions, are not built for durability. They are not bulletproof and they do get hurt quite a lot. So it's interesting when you do have these characters that can survive
01:39:26
Speaker
a beating or two or like have contingencies like, uh, like mannequin he's, he may not be, his armor might not be bulletproof, but he is in the sense that like his heart isn't where his heart is and his brain isn't where his brain is. And he's, he's, you know, essentially bulletproof for all intents and purposes. Yeah. So everyone's got their own gimmicks. Like everyone is high attack and low, like defense.
01:39:52
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah, yeah, actually, because purity can like laser beam half the city, but you know, a nine mil to the temple would end that real quick. Yeah, exactly.
Aftermath of Shatterbird's Attack
01:40:05
Speaker
Which is why, again, unironically, coil sniper. Spongest cape. One of the best among us truly. I'm in a cape.
01:40:17
Speaker
You should bring us back. I'll bring us back. Do we have any other last comments before I move on? We do, but we're not going to share them. Okay, perfect. We're just going to go on. Chapter eight. Brian shows up the next morning.
01:40:39
Speaker
and Taylor is bruised and battered and needs help getting into her suit and finds some new recruits waiting for her downstairs. This is not something that they talk. They did this with like the glass. I think Danny put like tape on the glass windows, which is smart. Cause then when it shatters, like, you know, it's yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh,
01:41:07
Speaker
Grabbing cardboard boxes and just laying down cardboard everywhere would be a really wise maneuver for walking around. Not something that they had in here, just something I thought of while they were crunching through the kitchen, you know, when Taylor was grabbing her Wheaties or whatever.
01:41:27
Speaker
And it's fucking everywhere. Like she goes to her cabinet and how many things like salt and pepper, all of those spices are glass. They're all, they just shredded the food if you've got cereal right next to it. And so like if you're eating Cap'n Crunch or like Rice Krispies, you're not going to be able to tell if there's glass in there or not. Gosh, true.
01:41:53
Speaker
Yeah, it's hard to visualize. We were just talking about how hard it is to visualize the apocalyptic setting of Rockton Bay Post Leviathan. It's hard to visualize a world or a city or a home with no
01:42:07
Speaker
No glass. No actual constructed glass. It's all just shattered everywhere. I'm looking around my room right now and it's like glass, glass, glass, that's glass, glass, glass. Oh, that's glass. Oh, I didn't realize that was glass. I mean, it's just computer monitors, glass, glass.
01:42:25
Speaker
Everything. Phones, mirrors, windows. Yeah, I mean, they even talked about that in the in the in the I just forgot his name. The wolf guy. Nazi. Airwolf. Oh, cool. Thank you. Airwolf.
01:42:46
Speaker
The other wolf. Somebody had their phone in their pocket when Chatterbird hit them and their leg is just exploded basically. We talked about it before where they mentioned that and it was like, yeah, imagine you've got it in your butt pocket. Yeah, your ass is destroyed. Okay.
01:43:12
Speaker
which is a crime in its own, but then like you have it on the side of your leg like, Oh man, that really, that really fucking sucks. If you have it in your front pocket and it sits, you know, right there on the artery. Oh, you're fucked. Oh, you're so fucked. You're going to bleed out so fast. Also your junk destroyed. Do you keep it in a singular front pocket?
01:43:36
Speaker
No, I'm just talking about pockets, specifically male gene pockets that have deep fucking pockets because women don't know about that shit. I don't have a pocket in the middle.
01:43:44
Speaker
It's not in the middle, bro. Not in the middle, my dude. But like, okay, if we're talking about glass exploding and not just exploding lightly, but exploding violently outward, anywhere near that area of your pocket is done for, shredded.
01:44:06
Speaker
Not to be a sight to engineer, but now I can just, all I can picture is people pulling phones out of their crotches and it's just, you never know if they're calling out of there. What was that? Yeah, they call that the cockat. You never know. There's a pocket there. You know what's coming out. That's true. That's our out of context. Michael, that's a different kind of pocket. I think it's a scary world. Scary world.
01:44:34
Speaker
Also, I know that we're all just talking about I'm thinking about the opposite which is you're going down on a partner, but you've got your glasses on Do we have thoughts back to the episode the chapter do we have thoughts on on this specifically, okay, you know, I'll just say what I was thinking I
01:45:04
Speaker
Talking about how earlier this arc feels like it's bracketed on both sides with the daily, the normal, because obviously after Shatterbird hits a city, we have a new normal now.
Taylor's Leadership and Team Growth
01:45:17
Speaker
You have to. There isn't another option.
01:45:20
Speaker
And having Sierra and Charlotte help Taylor into her suit and like zip her up, zip in her broken, battered, bruised body into her suit is just like, I feel the vibes of that so strongly. It feels so good. And then for her to come downstairs and to find out that we have people who heard and saw and are impressed by what she did and how she handled Mannequin and are like,
01:45:47
Speaker
Yeah, we thought you were full of shit before, but now that we know that you're actually here to fight for us, we'll help you. And it feels good. It feels so good to end this arc on that up tilt high note. Yeah, for sure. Big comparison in my mind to the scene in The Two Towers where Theoden suiting up
01:46:14
Speaker
For the first time, who am I gambling to his assistant? You are our king, Sire, as he's soothing him up. It's just this great moment. I guess I'm not imagining here. Yes, I wasn't before, but now I'll never feel it. Now I am, yeah. I love it. Now, and then she comes downstairs and interacts with, tries to get some breakfast, but is interrupted because she's got some visitors. Turns out she made a name for herself.
01:46:45
Speaker
to the surrounding neighborhoods. She's got a few new recruits on her doorstep. Yeah, not too bad. Not too shabby. Not too shabby. New normal begins. Oh, pretty cool. Ready for it. So ready for it. Um, any thoughts or should I just go straight into the next interlude? Uh, let me see. Uh, love Sierra Taylor talking. Love that. Also, I love that she is just
01:47:14
Speaker
You know, well, a little bit scared. She is sizing up, uh, Brian, you know, he may be hot, but he's scary. And she's like, uh, you'll have to talk to my boss, like, you know, arms folded. And he's like, who's this year? Yo, yo, yo, your employee. It's like henchwoman. Thank you very much. And it keeps just referring to like, just gesture guys like, ah, yes, your employees. Like Sierra has a name and she's standing right here.
01:47:43
Speaker
Yeah. Like, remember that. Remember the name. Yeah. Come on. Um, Brian's recruits. Let's go. Brian ain't doing shit. Brian ain't got no instrument.
01:48:02
Speaker
Kim's cooking and Brian's got a bratty younger sister that he can't even keep track of. That's true. You know, where even is she? Yeah. Where even is he? She's probably right next to him right now. Yeah, probably. She doesn't even know. Actually, she probably knows that's what's funny. It's probably the whole time. And so more recruits. I love once again, the somewhat mundane side. We've got to make some hiring. We've got to make some firing. Honestly, let's get Sierra in charge of HR.
01:48:32
Speaker
Um, let's see, get some people on payroll. Look at what the benefits are. Do they get a 401k? That's their dental. Like, you know,
01:48:42
Speaker
These are important questions, I would say. These are very important questions. So we're all putting our jobs and becoming hedge people, right? That's the plan. I do like the idea of like a post-credit scene. We're going to shift to dissecting Warren for a second. The post-credit scene of this episode is just cutting to Taylor, like buried deep in paperwork, just like the grueling behind... It's all taxing. She's got their tax forms. He's got the healthcare all... Yeah, exactly.
01:49:12
Speaker
It's that, but she's at the desk, but then as it zooms out, it's papers, the same piles all over the floors, except her bugs are walking over, essentially reading it for her. She's doing everybody's taxes all at once. There are some things that I am uniquely capable of, and this is one of them. I could simultaneously do all of our workers comp.
01:49:43
Speaker
Oh gosh, workers comp would be crazy. Oh man. So you want to, you need workers comp because you got stabbed by a faceless man named mannequin. That doesn't, we're going to have to send an investigator out there. Yup. Yup.
01:50:03
Speaker
Yeah, the superhero insurance business, the Cape insurance business is a racket. I'll tell you what. He appeared in my room, blew a hole in my ceiling and disappeared in a cloud of bubbles. Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me I'm lying. The bubbles though. I love it. I love it.
01:50:28
Speaker
All right, let's jump into these interludes if we've got nothing else to say. Yeah, let's do it. Try and wrap this shit up. Yeah, okay. So we have two interludes for this arc.
Inside the Slaughterhouse-9
01:50:37
Speaker
The first is... I'm just going to give us both of them and then we can talk about them. The first one is Jack's interlude, which we actually missed in the previous in arc 11 when we were doing all the slaughterhouse nines and everybody's different
01:50:51
Speaker
perspectives, this is now Jax. And the Slaughterhouse-9 are absolutely fucking up the merchants, which we love to see it. And then the other interlude, which is Jamie. And we learn a little bit about assault and battery and how battery got her powers. And we get a huge info dump and a ton of information about Cauldron, which is super cool. Yeah. We had an interlude for Jax.
01:51:21
Speaker
But this is just not from him. Yeah, but this is POT Jack. Fun little chapter. I like Jack's internal monologue. Me too. Me too. I like how he sees the group and the group dynamics. I mean, he is the leader of the Slaughterhouse Nine and it is his job to manage the members. And I like how he talks about that. It's pretty cool.
01:51:49
Speaker
He feels very aware of his own psychosis, if you will. He's acutely aware of everybody else's, the way the chapter ends, where he's itemizing all of their needs and what they need and how to keep them in line. And at the very end, he hints at, and that's what I need. And he's very, very self-aware as a character.
01:52:17
Speaker
which just is like, when I think of my favorite evil characters in media, it's, you know, your Dexter's and your, I'm trying to think of all these names now, but like all these characters that are just so well written to be fully in control of how evil they are. So you can't really excuse the behavior, right? Which I think is important, but also just makes them way cooler.
01:52:48
Speaker
Also love he's like, all right, guys, team meeting. Like even the worst of us have to have these group meetings so that we can get, you know, murders done. I feel like honestly, that meeting could have been an email.
01:53:04
Speaker
All right, guys, let's come up with the rules for this time. And I'm like sitting there, like nodding off, like, Oh my God, I would, I could never be in the slaughterhouse nine because of his first challenge was like, all right, my challenge will be sit through one of these group meetings. I'm done for like, kill me. I'm falling asleep. Alan, do you understand? I fucking didn't get a word of that, dude. I'm so sorry, Jack.
01:53:31
Speaker
I mean, in your defense, Bonesaw gets so bored that she creates the most horrific plague imaginable for like 30 seconds. No pandemics. She's like, it only has five iterations.
01:53:48
Speaker
Oh my god, that's so gross. And I love that they have those like little group dynamic rules that they have to have in place, that Jack understands that there has to be, you know, what's the word I'm looking for, but you have to have like,
01:54:07
Speaker
I mean, they have to have some order. They're not animals. Thank you. They're not... Yes. They're not Philistines. What's the word I'm looking for? The parameters, guidelines? You have to have boundaries. You have to have rules. Boundaries. Thank you. Boundaries is the word I was looking for. But you have to have boundaries in order to make this work. And yes, they bring an immense amount of chaos, but it is, in a weird way, ordered chaos and has rules to it. Even with Bonsaw's comment about
01:54:33
Speaker
It has to be fair. My test has to be fair. There are rules set even in amongst this group of absolute homicidal maniacs. What is the plague that she creates? She creates this thing that basically your arm starts to swell and then it explodes and then whatever bits explode off
01:54:57
Speaker
And they touch anything else that also begins to like swell up and explode. So like one guy will swell up and explode and that explosion will like, all the bits will get on somebody else and they will start, you know, and then as it spreads, it spreads and spreads and spreads, but it only has five cycles. So it'll die out. It's a bloodborne pathogen and anywhere the blood touches though. Yes.
01:55:20
Speaker
if it comes into contact with, you know, another human, then that human's infected with it and they explode. Well, it's not even, it's not even like the whole person either. It's specific limbs. So like, it'll be just a leg or just an arm, which is just
01:55:35
Speaker
Wow. It was that moment. It only spreads to five people at a time? Well, she did that specifically because she knew that Jack would get mad. So she's like, Oh, it's not an actual pandemic. It's only got five iterations. It can only chain to five, five cycles. So one person blows up, it spreads, you know, and then it spreads and then it spreads and then it's done after that.
01:55:57
Speaker
But it's also like that's when you realize why like the PRT gives her an S class threat. She could just, if she loses any bit of control, she can end the world on a whim.
01:56:15
Speaker
Yeah. Also a small thing, but her stupid spiders, exoskeleton suit that forms like where they can shink together. And then she has like an eagle hand style. Oh my gosh. I forgot about that. Holy fucking shit. Oh my gosh. Once again, terrifying, but so cool. That's getting sound clipped. Yeah. All of my things are, uh,
01:56:45
Speaker
Jeez, bone saw spider exoskeleton. Cool, but still fuck bone saw the exploding blood epidemic. Fuck that. Like just everything is just all bone saw. God damn it. Mannequin shows up with egg on his face. Yeah. It's just Jack and I just, I love Jack's response though. It was just like, wow. Uh,
01:57:14
Speaker
Who messed you up, man? What happened? Yeah. How's it going, Alan? Alan? Let's have our Alan moment. Why are these motherfuckers always called Alan? Alan is clearly just one of those names. It's the real idea. This is why I try to avoid
01:57:43
Speaker
being Alan as much as possible. And unfortunately started doing this on here. And this is, you know, cause Alan for the most part at, at its worst is, you know, a late forties IT guy, you know, and at its worst is a fucking divorce lawyer and a serial killer in a biome body, you know, goddamn Alan's.
01:58:12
Speaker
We love you, Alan. In representation, we had Alan from Michael Cera in the Barbie movie. That was good. She wears all of Ken's clothes. Yeah, of course. In our one good Alan. Alan, Alan, before you trash all the Allens, we have a reoccurring listener named Alan who's been commenting on every single post.
01:58:37
Speaker
Oh my gosh. He's very pro team Allen and his very first post was something like, I like how everyone agrees with Allen, go team Allen. We love Allen's face. You know what? It just goes to show there's some good Allen in the world and that's all that makes all the difference right there. Shout out to you, my friend.
01:58:59
Speaker
Thank you, Alan. We appreciate you. Listener from the beginning. All right. I've always said that, you know, Alan's are just a good, good group of guys. There's one thing I'll stand on.
01:59:15
Speaker
You might, you know, we might make a special Allen to your Patreon where you send in, you've got to confirm that you're an Allen. Yep. And then we'll, then you can be access to the Allen tier of content. And then we'll have the Allen meetup, you know, all Allen's, only Allen's just like five Allen's in a room together. Mannequin shows up. I love it.
01:59:39
Speaker
Oh man. I do want to get to the last interlude because it's such a
Cauldron's Shadowy Operations
01:59:45
Speaker
good interlude. It's so good. It's so, so good. With Jamie or not that bad. Not actually Jamie, but that's right. We learned that. Jamie does. I think she only gets called that at Cauldron.
02:00:06
Speaker
Otherwise they don't really, they don't really say, just say puppy and battery. Yeah. They call her puppy and battery, which we will get to puppy. We don't like pet.
02:00:17
Speaker
But puppy is okay. I wrote puppy. Okay, but I love it though. Yeah. It's just every time he was like, are you like a cute three legged puppy? And I went, I immediately thought of little brother from home star rudder. He's like a one legged puppy.
02:00:36
Speaker
When I grow up, I want to be a quarterback, part of a champion. Wow. Man, we reference a lot of stuff in this podcast. Geez, this has been kind of unhinged, hasn't it? It's good. This one's great. Yeah. Who knew that episode 12 would be the one? Would be the one that would break the coin. The one we all finally lose it. I think it just makes us better. Slaughterhouse9 did this to us. That's right.
02:01:03
Speaker
I love the slow build though, the slow introduction, having really no idea what's going on until the Welcome to Cauldron. It's such a good line. So great. Because I mean, we've spent 12 full arcs now having no idea what Cauldron is.
02:01:23
Speaker
Really? And we still don't, which is great. It's like, okay, so they deal in superpowers for insane amounts of money, which tracks. And then that's about it. Insane amounts of money, like 20 something thousand dollars.
02:01:40
Speaker
What? No, what? No. She got the cheap thing for like almost a million. Yeah. A million? Yeah, because she sells her apartment to them for three quarters of a million dollars. And then she also has to do extra stuff on top of that.
02:01:56
Speaker
Plus she owes them three favors. And then when she's looking at the monitor of all of the different ones, it goes all the way up to like the hundreds of millions is for like the most premier ones. It must be stuck in my head from like the first time I read this where I was just like,
02:02:13
Speaker
her college tuition and at the time I was like, ah, $26,000 of college tuition. What? What college did you go to, my man? The same college you went to. Shut up. It costs more than that. I don't want people to think we went to some... What do you mean? No, at the time it was $23,000. It was not. I have more school debt than that. It jumped up to $26,000. People are going to dox our locations. Not for the whole thing.
02:02:41
Speaker
But yeah, no, I thought it was funny. I made a note here that Jamie thinks it's creepy that mother or the doctor was able to monitor her browsing history. And I just, as someone who works in marketing, it kills me because y'all, we know everything. People who work in marketing, people who monitor ads, we know, we know.
02:03:01
Speaker
everything." And she's like, oh, that's kind of creepy. I'm like, bitch, you have no idea how much your browser history, how much everything you look at is tracked like crazy. And then we target ads to find you. And so she's like, well, of course Cauldron has eyes on literally anyone who's googled, how do I get a power?
02:03:23
Speaker
Like they know who you are. They glanced into your bank statements and they went, hmm, she might be able to afford it. Let's reach out to her. Her dad's a police officer. Yeah. Oh yeah. She'd be an excellent client. Clear history. Okay. Turn off all your location services while you're at it too.
02:03:45
Speaker
Yeah. Um, yeah. I thought that was so interesting where she's like, I saw a bunch of websites. They looked fake though. So I didn't really follow up and the lady's just like, oh yeah, we own most of those. I love it. It's just a way to weed people out though, which is so smart. Absolutely.
02:04:02
Speaker
Oh, I love... I mean, it's so like... I don't know what the word is I'm thinking of. I can't think of words tonight. But detailed is not... Anyway. Anyway, all I'm saying is the scene where they're sitting down and she's cycling through her options. Well, you can do this and you get more of these things, but you're going to be a little bit riskier. Something bad might happen. And just playing around with the odds of what you could get was so interesting.
02:04:33
Speaker
Cool chapter. That's really interesting. I'm going to dig into that.
02:04:37
Speaker
Jamie, Jamie alludes to it. Um, but they never really say it, but she says for a moment, well, like, how do you have all of this information? Like, how do you have all of these tests? If you have 60, you know, results per thing, like, how do you know all of this? And mother doesn't give her an answer or the doctor, I don't know what we're calling her. Mother doesn't give her an answer. She just kind of like glides past it.
02:05:03
Speaker
And Jamie makes a note that like she's on purpose being evasive. And it's like the question of like, Cauldron hasn't like just figured out powers like a year ago. They've had this going for a long time. And like, that's kind of terrifying because powers haven't even been been around for that long. And yet they have this down to an intricate science. It kind of, it kind of begs the question and brings into question.
02:05:32
Speaker
every hero and villain who has powers. Um, because you kind of look at it and think, well, if those tears exist that are way so high, who could have afforded to buy those because they're, they're not making up these numbers, right? Just to scare her and be like, you know, they clearly from the doctor's demeanor, they've sold that kind of, that kind of stuff before.
02:05:58
Speaker
Two people. So again, it's just, you know, begging that question. Who has, who has that money? Uh, what kind of person has that kind of money?
02:06:09
Speaker
Well, and it's cool too, because we finally get confirmation. I think it's kind of been hinted at this point that people are getting their powers from ways that are not triggering. But now, you have two very clear camps of ways people get powers. You've got a natural trigger.
02:06:30
Speaker
and buying them, which is really interesting. I wonder what the numbers are for those two things.
02:06:42
Speaker
Do more people trigger or do we just think that's the case because we only know people who have the story. How many people have made up trigger events just to look less suspicious? Or who Cauldron has made up events for? Exactly. Abracated events for. Abracated entire stories, yeah. Exactly. Because obviously, battery, she joins in with the wards and then becomes part of the protectorate. And they have no clue.
02:07:10
Speaker
So clearly there is a story that was fabricated for her or some kind of something that was fabricated for her to be able to join the wards because the wards have documentation on all of that stuff anyway. So she clearly has some sort of backstory that's been fabricated in order for her to function in the superhero circles.
02:07:34
Speaker
It just makes me really excited. I legitimately have no recollection whatsoever of if we find out who or what or might be Cauldron and who isn't. But my brain is reeling right now. I just have so many thoughts. Great. I just got to show ideas, am I right? Yeah. Well, speaking, it's funny you say that, Michael, because I so much prefer this approach to powers in a bottle.
02:08:05
Speaker
to what they're doing in the boys right now. So slight spoilers for the boys, very slight spoilers. I think it's spoiled in season one. But the boys goes the route of all the powers, there's no natural powers. Everybody, you got a shot. It's just that if you don't remember it, it's because your parents did it to you when you were a baby, and they paid amounts of money for it.
02:08:25
Speaker
Which is fine. And they do a fun job. I love The Boys. It's a great show. They do a fun job with it in their own way. But it sort of just stops there. It's like, oh, Vought sold powers. And that's that. They've always kind of been able from the beginning. But when you put the agency into the person to step forward and make that decision for themselves, I feel like it's way more interesting as a concept. Because then, I mean,
02:08:54
Speaker
Sure, Cauldron could be evil, I guess. We don't really know too much about it yet. But at the end of the day, it falls on the responsibility of the person who paid a million dollars to fly, which is a lot more fun to play around with than just saying, oh, they've just been injecting infants with powers for years. Interesting for sure. This is my
02:09:24
Speaker
Favorite chapter in worm. It's a good one. And the whole thing? Yeah, because it's a complete story.
Assault and Battery's Dynamic
02:09:35
Speaker
It's so cute. It is a good one. So, so cute. I'm a sucker for a good enemies to lovers trope. Oh, the book talk girl, he's gonna love this. Oh, yeah. It's very saccharine, but, you know, I like it.
02:09:55
Speaker
I need a whole movie or a whole book just on assault and battery because damn, if they aren't just the cutest. He's got to be a good looking guy though, right? Because he's an asshole.
02:10:16
Speaker
You just gotta just lay that out there, right? He's the Rizzler. Yeah. He was Madcap. That was his name before was Madcap. I know, right? Yeah. No, I think, I think too, it's just that I'm trying to think of a character to compare it to, but it's just that.
02:10:35
Speaker
It's that, um, charming cockiness, kind of like, actually a good example might be like Wesley from the princess bride, um, where it's like, I mean, he is very good looking. So, you know, we're not going to say no to that, but, um, but it's, it's this charming cockiness where it's like, he knows that he's smart. He knows that he's clever. He knows that he's a good fighter. You know, like all those things. He's very coy. Yeah. And it's just that kind of like, like, yeah, you know, I'm,
02:11:04
Speaker
I'm pretty cool. What do you say, Pat? You know, should we hang out? Yeah. Hey there. How's it going? Oh my gosh. I love it. You kind of hate it, but you kind of love it too. You kind of love it. Yeah. I love it. It's obnoxious a little bit at first, but it gets endearing so quickly, but like, Oh yeah. Yeah.
02:11:27
Speaker
Jesse's like, I've got the perfect name already picked out for when I'd be a hero. And she's like, don't you fucking say it. No, no, no. You're gonna love it. She's like, don't you? Why are you even considering it? Why are we even considering this? Throw his ass in the birdcage. And the guy's like, let him cook. And he's like, assault? Huh? Huh? And the guy's like, interesting. She's like, no. No.
02:11:53
Speaker
You're setting us up for, our names will be a crime. No! I do love how extremely unhelpful Eidolon is in that conversation. He's so bad. Is it legend? I thought it was legend. No legend. Is it legend? Yeah, it's legend. It's legend. Whoever it is. Oh yeah, no, he's so unhelpful. He's so unhelpful. And it's wonderful in this funny way. Yes, we should do that for reasons. It really is. I just love that he's like, oh yeah, oh no, it could be helpful.
02:12:22
Speaker
She's like, no, no, don't let this happen. And then she's like, yeah, we'll take him to community service. We'll have to interact with. He'll have to read. There's only one thing worse than a rapist, a child. And then he's, he's hamming it up. He's killing it out there. And she's just like over the corner, just pissed. Of course he's good with kids.
02:12:52
Speaker
They're all little criminals. Why wouldn't he get along with him? Oh no, he's hot. And he can cook. Oh my gosh. Wait a minute. Oh my gosh. You mean his familiar disguise? Yeah.
02:13:21
Speaker
We could transfer off of this into another section because I'll say right now, my favorite power growing up when people would ask me like, Oh, what ability do you want? And as a kid, my go-to power was the ability to transfer energy and use it.
02:13:45
Speaker
And I, my super, my superhero, I used to play this game called champion for those of you who know, uh, champions was a role-playing game for superpowers. And, um, I always played this character called conduit and conduits ability was like, yeah, he could just take the force of a bullet and transfer it into the ground under his feet. So you can shoot him. You can do whatever he just transfers energy and displaces it, you know, on whatever he's touching.
02:14:13
Speaker
And that's basically what Madcap does, except he also can use it on himself. So like, man, it's such a cool ability. I actually think he got nerfed in the, cause he's at the, he's the one that gets pepper sprayed, right? Or was that another speedster? Yes, no.
02:14:40
Speaker
In the, at the party scene where they watch the party. Yeah. Yeah. I think you're right. I think so. I'm pretty sure. I feel like you've really got nerfed in that fight. Cause just giving like reading what he's doing, like taking out armored cars and like how his abilities work with energy transfer, man, he really, him and battery are a perfect pairing with abilities and they really should have cleaned house there.
02:15:07
Speaker
Well, it's funny because after this interlude, now it almost reads like that fight. Maybe, maybe just let them win. He was having fun watching them. Oh no, not the villains kicking arms master's ass. Yeah. So I'm just like, Oh, that's funny. I can check it real quick. What's the, what are we talking about? Oh, we're talking to the gala. I believe it's arc six. What's the Cape's name?
02:15:38
Speaker
Oh, assault assault. He's the speedy boy. Yeah, but that's what he's checking. That was that's my favorite power growing up and my my favorite power and Cape this time around. Fair enough. That's a good pick. Good pick.
02:15:58
Speaker
I guess we're transitioning into caves. Might as well. As good a time as any. Yes. No transition has been smooth tonight. So let's just roll with it. We've got some good options for powers. There are so many good ones. I got to think about it now. Yeah, it's a tough one. I kind of gave Mannequin some praise earlier. I might stick with that for this arc. Just because it's such a unique
02:16:27
Speaker
Uh, assault was not pepper sprayed. Uh, he was disabled with containment foam. Yeah. Okay. That's because I was about to say, cause he shouldn't be able to just destroy these teams. Yeah. I'm glad we checked because yeah, no, we'd have some comments. If not take him out early. Yeah. Cause I knew there was two speedsters and the other one hits at like, I think the other one phases out. So he's like kind of weaker in the material plane.
02:16:55
Speaker
I don't remember what his name is though.
02:17:11
Speaker
Okay, so I actually don't care about Battery's power all that much, but I find her very interesting as a person. So I'm going to say Battery for this, but I just find her interesting, like her motivation for why she wanted to go to Cauldron and get a power and stuff. And I think that her powers end up working out really well for her. And of course, her and assault, it's very cute. So yeah, I'll say Battery for this round.
02:17:44
Speaker
I really thought that seeing Jack's power was a bit interesting in this one. Just seeing, again, just the ability to extend blades. It's kind of a vague power when you describe it that way, but you get what it means. But seeing it in action really does help reinforce just how dangerous he is. Like, yes, you know, bullet to the head kills him. Absolutely.
02:18:11
Speaker
However, um, man, the, the scene with the merchants just getting wrecked by the slaughterhouse nine. I mean, uh, skid marks, death scene is kind of brutal. Oh my gosh. That's right. We didn't even really talk about that. It was, it was very brutal. I mean, I don't feel much pity for him. He's a pretty terrible person.
02:18:36
Speaker
But, you know, even so it's just like, Oh, Oh, Oh, he dead, dead. Yeah. Kind of that, you know? Um, Oh yeah. So, um, yeah, very, very cool, very cool, horrifying power. Um, and I think an honorable mention just to mannequin cause I think he's a funny guy.
02:19:01
Speaker
What a goofy dude. What a goof. What a goof. What a goober. Exactly. Oh, you. Well, I think that. Velocity. Velocity was clear. Oh, velocity. Like it's not speedster. But, you know, it's the whole moment where he's freaking out and because he got pepper spray at me. Yeah. You're right. Different speedster. Did you say your favorite power?
02:19:27
Speaker
I gave a shout out to mannequin. We'll say mannequin. Alan. Alan. Yeah. We're being technical. Sticks and carrots. My favorite character was Alan from the comments. My favorite hero. Here we go. On that note, reach out to us. Rockton Bay in BC. All platforms. Yes. I think we're good, Jacob. Take us out.
02:19:57
Speaker
No, you're doing... You're doing great. You're doing great. No, pick up where you left off. You have a free chat to us, please. Clearly, we love to shout out our fans. Let us know where we went wrong, what we forgot. Who was your favorite power? There's a lot of them here. And give us those predictions. What do you think is coming up?
02:20:20
Speaker
We got arc 13 next and as always stick around for dissecting worm with myself and Alan and special guests. I was going to say special guest Hannah joins us as well for this episode. So it's going to be a lot of fun and always until next time, Michael, you want to play us out.
02:20:44
Speaker
Thank you so much for listening. Read along with us at parahumans.wordpress.com. We'd love to hear your thoughts. What did you love? What did you hate? Anything you think we missed, etc. as long as it's kind. If you'd like to get in touch, you can find us on Twitter, threads, Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit at Brockton Bay, B.C. or click the link in the description.
02:21:10
Speaker
We have a very exciting announcement. We now have a voicemail, 980-999-0438. You can call us and your voicemail might be featured on one of our episodes.
02:21:23
Speaker
Do you still have bitter feelings about your ex and no way to get it out? Well, perhaps you could consider hiding it inside a worm-related rant. Tell us all about how legend broke your heart or just how skitter won't call you back. We'll listen and air your grievances at 980-999-0438 on the podcast. That's right, leave us a voicemail about your sad life at 980-999-0438.
02:21:52
Speaker
What triggered you?