Transcript
Speaker: Worm is a web serial by J .C. McCray, also known as Wildbo. You can read Worm in its original format by visiting parahumans .wordpress .com or donate to Wildbo's Patreon at patreon .com slash wildbo. This story isn't intended for young or sensitive readers. Readers who are on the lookout for trigger warnings are advised to give Worm a pass. For a complete list, check the description for all of Worm's trigger warnings.
Speaker: Take that you worm. I forgot. Did we decide to make that our intro? I'm all for it. I just can't remember our signing and our sign off. Yeah. Let's commit to it. We'll keep it going. I like it. I'm here for it. Nice. Welcome back to dissecting worm with
Speaker: With a few of us here today, myself, Jacob and Alan as usual. Hello. Michael as also usual. And a special guest, Hannah from the book club joining us. Hi, I'm just here to keep all you nerds in line. Which is greatly appreciated. Because boy do we ramble.
Speaker: Oh no, I'm going to let you go. Michael, this is going to be a four hour episode. Get ready. Let's go. I'm just a facilitator. For our Patrons, you are about to get your money's worth out of this episode, I'm sure. Exactly. Remember to subscribe to our Patreon at Brockton Bay, BC. Yeah, plug in. Brockton Bay Book Club on Patreon. Help us pay for Michael's skills. Oh, especially now you could sign up to be one of our special slaughterhouse nines.
Speaker: Oh, there are only nine slots, ladies and gentlemen. Nine slots for $9. Yep. So you got to go fast. Get them all the gettin's good. Speaking of which, actually, shout out to our first Patreon member. They are actually part of the Slaughterhouse 9 tier. Victory with Ice, Victor Short, our newest Patreon member.
Speaker: Very, very, very excited to have you. Shout out to you, my friend. Thank you so much. Allow you to do one crime per week. No, no, we don't do that. No, no. I was about to say, I don't think you've been reading the same series.
Speaker: All right. Third time's a charm. I'm going to try to start this thing before we go any further. We are into Arc 12 of Worm by Wildbo.
Speaker: And if you are not a... I was about to say a fan, but that's not what I meant. If you are not fully red worm, thank you. I can get my words out, I promise. Just as a reminder, this section, what we do here on this part of this podcast is going to be spoiling pretty much the entirety of worm. Everything's on the table. It doesn't mean we're going to be spoiling it every single episode, but just that is the warning we're putting out there because we're talking about
Speaker: moments in chapters and how they relate to things to come and foreshadowing and all that kind of stuff. We will certainly be spoiling future events, especially I feel like in this chapter, probably going to get into some spoilers. So if that bothers you, and it should, please feel free to dip out now, finish Reading Worm and then come back and have a listen. And let's jump into it.
Speaker: Dare I say right at the start, just to kind of get out of the way, do we think there's too much here for one episode? Are we counting the interludes? For now, but we'll return to those because I think we have some thoughts on the interludes, I'm assuming. So yeah, let's actually not including the interludes for the moment, just in the main chapters. I think this is one episode for a single episode. Yeah, I think so too.
Speaker: Especially since the mannequin bits are... It's a lot of description written, but visually happening, the fight will take place a lot faster than it does on the page. So I would say that this could definitely be one episode. Yeah, I think only the last interlude maybe gets spread out in an episode. I think it's very, very ripe for that.
Speaker: just the way that it's spaced. You can put this through an entire episode leading up to something if you wanted to. Yeah, yeah. No, I think that's a good thought. I think I agreed the...
Speaker: The only thing I think is the last chapter does feel like a good start to the next episode, just in terms of pacing. It doesn't really end. This chapter eight doesn't really end with anything too exciting. It's sort of the aftermath of the mannequin fight just sort of feels a little
Speaker: kind of tagged on at the end there. So I think that might work better placed at the beginning of the next episode. Yeah, I definitely agree with that. Yeah. But other than that, okay, so let's think in terms of one episode. I like that. And kind of going through, starting at the beginning, we got the big old hero villain truce meeting. Pretty fun scene. That's going to be kind of fun to lay out for everything.
Speaker: Anything in those first couple chapters that sort of stand out in terms of things you want to address or work with, rewrite, move around, lines you want to move, anything like that? I'm trying to remember is the beginning of one is her talking with Charlotte and Sierra, right? I think, because now that we have henchwomen around, I think that we really should play up
Speaker: in our CW universe, this being our trio that we always hang out with. We're getting coffee and tea in the morning and talking about our day. I really like this setup. And I think that building trust or establishing the relationship with them, they're so interesting,
Speaker: This could potentially be changed into like, oh, these are her first non -powered friends that she hangs out with maybe. I know that that's not how their trajectory works in the story, but I think it'd be really good here.
Speaker: I'm hesitant to ever portray Sierra and Charlotte as, well, specifically at this point, to portray them as friends because of how Taylor sees them and sees herself. And this is actually something I wrote down because it was kind of bugging me. But the way that Taylor wants to be perceived by her underlings and like, okay, so she is this big villain
Speaker: She wants them to see her as an authority figure, someone who can't get hurt as she says later. And I don't necessarily know if showing them having a camaraderie, I guess, is necessarily the right fit for this part of the story because
Speaker: Taylor is still... We're still showing Taylor growing as a villain, and if we're showing that visually of maybe a little bit of awkwardness in the morning as she's giving them the to -do list of the day, and that kind of... It's like, Cierra and Charlotte are like, yep, uh -huh, got it, right. Okay, this is where we're going, this is what we're doing. But Taylor stepping into that space that's maybe a little uncomfortable for her to be the boss,
Speaker: And I think that this is a decent place to show it. So I'm, I'm hesitant on like building up some camaraderie here, although I do like the underlings and Taylor altogether. That is a very fun. Here's where I'll go with like an entire theme for this episode while we're at it. Um, the theme for this episode is, uh, is like taking care of territory slash people.
Speaker: being that hero, if you will. I think there are some things I would change, especially in the back half of this. We really haven't gotten Taylor being a hero too much. We've saw some of it in the last episode, but like throughout the series, she kind of just gets like, if she's in a fight with a bad guy, it's because there's, you know, there's bickering.
Speaker: And Taylor keeps talking about wanting to be a hero and has these aspirations of being a hero, but they still haven't gone through yet. And this is sort of the first, I mean, you got a little bit of that with handing out stuff, but it still feels like, you know, I'm ruling this territory. And throughout this episode, I think there's this theme of like, she finally gets other people to see her as not an
Speaker: evil villain, right? Like this is the episode where people start coming to her, not just because she took on a bigger bad, which some people do, but some people realize like, Oh, this person genuinely cares about protecting these people. Like maybe it's selfish reasons, you know, cause they're possessive of the territory, but like Taylor puts herself on the line.
Speaker: to save others and everybody kind of sees that. And in fact, I would want to bump up their reaction to that. And I think having Taylor struggle a lot with this episode of I want to be perceived as a villain, unlike before where she really wanted to be a hero, she wants to be perceived as a villain, but she keeps showing her vulnerability
Speaker: And her heroic nature of sacrificing herself actually wins her points. So I think this is a great time to get back into, Taylor's always wanted to be a hero. This is an opportunity for her to be a hero. And I think it's finally an opportunity for other people to see her as a hero. And I think the conversation with Sierra, especially later,
Speaker: who I assume is Forrest helping her out during the fight. And yeah, and some other people being like, oh yeah, this person actually was here to help. Yeah, I think there's some good insight into Taylor's character.
Speaker: This is definitely a pretty important milestone arc in terms of her character progression. Definitely something I think we need to make sure we nail for any sort of TV show that's adapting her. Because she does have to have these moments of progression. And I think this is a big one. If we can jump a little bit ahead to the Sierra conversation later,
Speaker: So she sends there's, you know, after the day after, you know, that we're bumping anyway, she sends Charlotte to go, you know, Oh, find about out about the father and whatnot. I think having Sierra ask like, is the father your dad? Like, you make insurance, like, and you know, Taylor keeps trying to put, you know, put this distance, but also she just got the shit beat out of her. And I think having a,
Speaker: having a moment where like she wakes up and she's like, ah, like, you know, somebody took care of me. Somebody made breakfast. Like who the heck is it? And it's Sierra and Charlotte sitting down there. Charlotte obviously doesn't have as close a relationship and, and, you know, maybe shouldn't, but Sierra is there and it's like, Hey, I see you as a human being and that you're trying to do something here. And I don't think that clicked until last night. And then maybe they have the conversation of, Hey,
Speaker: I get that you really want to be a villain, but also you, I heard something at the hospital about you wanting to be a hero. What's up with that? And then exploring, like, I'm trying to be this big, bad. I'm trying to put on this face because I need to like, it's how I can do the most good kind of in this area. And Sierra may be going, okay, like I get it. And then when grew comes in as a perfect time for her to maybe like,
Speaker: flex on him a little. Sierra, I mean, he comes in and she's like, you have company and maybe she's, I don't know, a little more aggressive to him because she's trying to play up this henchman routine. Oh, it would take it, she has her arms folded. And she gets a little scared at him, obviously, which she does in the story. And she is already a little aggressive to him, but having that bit where she's trying to play up that like, hey, I'm protecting
Speaker: not just my boss, but this girl who's really trying to do some good. And it requires the illusion of, you know, villain. Yeah. Well, I think, I think also that that builds a sense of loyalty. So the idea of like, well, if you have these henchmen that are supposed to be your people in your territory that are, you know, you're trusting them because you live with them, they're carrying out your orders. And, you know, at the beginning, we are building up this layer of trust, like with the bugs and the necklace kind of like, well, okay, so you're, you know, okay, well, you're,
Speaker: kind of that conversation they have at the beginning about good and bad. And like, okay, well, what's evil and whatnot? And like, okay, well, you always have your eye on us because we have these bugs that we're carrying around in necklaces. But it's very much of like, we're building a level of trust that has to come with a villain and their henchmen. And by the time we get to that point with Brian, we are seeing that from Sierra. We're seeing that, what you just said, the defensiveness of like,
Speaker: Like, hey boss, you got visitor. Getting closer and closer to that level of trust, that level of camaraderie, because it is, like you said, it is a really cool little group, the three of them, and then the territory coming up around them. I think that I definitely like that idea of her defensiveness coming through more and more as the episode progresses, because Taylor has proven herself, basically. Taylor has proven that she is more than just
Speaker: you know, another random villain taking over parts of the city after a, you know, catastrophic event. Yeah. I think it'll even be, it'll be even more interesting because given the trajectory of these two henchmen, you know, we're going to be looking at like, Sierra eventually has, you know, moral concerns with what Taylor's doing and leaves.
Speaker: And I think having her be a close, you know, closer, trying to embrace what Taylor's doing and then being like, I can't do this anymore, you know, is going to hit that much harder. And having Charlotte be the juxtaposition to that where Charlotte very wary about this, very distrustful, but ends up staying with her the whole time.
Speaker: Like is, is her right hand woman for all intents and purposes? Remind me again really quick cause I can't remember which one. Is it Sierra or is it Charlotte that knows Taylor from school? Charlotte knows Taylor from school. Sierra is like the college age girl that, uh, that. Oh, her brother. Yeah, exactly. And then Charlotte was the one that they rescued. Right, right, right. Um, but yeah, I think, I think having that crisscross right there would
Speaker: be very good for a good triangle of character development and relationships to happen that don't even need to be a whole lot, but having these morning coffees kind of, I just, I like it a lot. Yeah. So Charlotte and Taylor are, or Charlotte and Sierra are great
Speaker: characters for Taylor in the sense that they don't really exist in the story as their own characters. They don't have really any sort of arc for themselves beyond
Speaker: the very basic stuff at the beginning gets resolved pretty quickly. But they play really well into, as you're saying, Alan, showing Taylor's character progression, especially with how they split in their eventual reception of her. So I do like the idea of highlighting
Speaker: their individual responses to Taylor as Taylor's character evolves and grows. Because it gives the audience something to play off as well, especially with, and I'm imagining will probably end up
Speaker: sort of restructuring certain events later on, but especially because there's not a lot of other characters that fill that role for Taylor, character -wise. Yeah. Like, Undersiders don't really do that. The words don't do that. So having two smaller characters that aren't really impactful to the story, but are there to sort of give that response to Taylor, I think, is a good idea. I think it'd be fun to do a visual
Speaker: a little visual gag be kind of funny, because in the previous arc, arc 11, so either, you know, an episode or two back, depending on how you want to split it, skitter takes takes over her territory. And she has that moment where she's walking through her like,
Speaker: her headquarters. Her lair. Her lair. And she's decking it out. And it's very empty. And she very clearly wants... It's like she has this vision, but it's not there. But then to cut and have it to the end of this episode where it's like, hey boss, you got visitors. And she's in her lair chair and she's got her spiders around her. It'd be a really cool visual to see that realization of what she was hoping for.
Speaker: Yeah. Like we said, you know, we had that last episode of she's like, it's really empty and she's not just meeting art and stuff. Cause she got that put on the wall, but like it doesn't have people. And she, you know, she's actually kind of gotten used to like living with the other side and hanging out with them. And she, she's like, now that I have a taste for that, like I used to, you know, essentially go solo cause that's just, I didn't have any friends and whatnot. And now I, I,
Speaker: then hanging out with friends. Like she really misses that. She's always missed that. She just was kind of numb to it before.
Speaker: I also think about the visual differentiation of the lair being very empty, kind of like... Because Taylor's the type to do her dishes right away. But now that she has people there, kind of the idea of like, okay, well, Charlotte's leaning on against the counter, having a bowl of cereal, whatever. And this kind of like, the space feels more lived in. I don't want to say clutter, but there are things here that aren't Taylor's.
Speaker: it's like it feels more lived in, much like the loft with the undersiders. I was like, well, there's signs that this place is lived in and not just like, oh, yes, there are people here, but the signs of clothing and dishes and a hat left here and a bag left there and the things that make a place feel lived in. And I think about that when you're set dressing,
Speaker: we're creating a space that feels like someone lives in, not just a place that was decorated, which is the beginning of how the lair is. It's decorated. And by the end of this, we have a space that's really hers as a villain now. It's becoming what she wants it to be. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, a lot of fun imagery you can play around with there, for sure. Yeah.
Speaker: I think this falls in with the, uh, back into, in this chapter, going with the, like being seen as a villain and stuff like that. You know, we have, uh, we, you know, we have dealing with people who are kind of like still ungrateful for the things she's doing here. Yeah. Um, despite it clearly putting her out a little bit. Uh, no, you know, it's funny.
Speaker: There's this element in a lot of superhero fiction where the hero is fixing up the problems, right? And they're the pinnacle of good and justice against the forces of evil. But in reality, humanity is good on the inside and they just need sometimes to bring it out of them, right? So like it's the big scene in Dark Knight, right? With the two boats at the end.
Speaker: And, oh, Joker's plan was foiled, not because Batman stopped him, but because Gotham City did the right thing. And Spider -Man has the same thing, right? That, oh, get Riley's people in New York, and they're ready to fight. Oh, well, hold on to that Spider -Man one, because we'll come back to that. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But I love the moment.
Speaker: in this arc after Shadowbird and picking up the pieces of all of that, where Taylor is attempting to give orders. And she tries to give orders to the one guy who's just sort of messing around. And he's basically like, no.
Speaker: I want to be first in line for the hospital. And I love that moment because worm doesn't do that. At the end of the day, worm goes, no, everybody's kind of an asshole. People are shitty.
Speaker: Yeah. And you're not going to trick me with this big massive thing that ruined the city. And everybody's got to come together to make it right. Like, no, we're gonna fight that. And I love that dynamic of worms so much. I really want to highlight moments like that, which I think contrast really well with... Because you don't have to go fully down that road, right?
Speaker: Again, I think it contrasts really well when you have the fact that she does appeal to the gang members at the end and they're clearly like, listen, we're struggling, we just want to be taken care of. And there's this really fun interaction and play there and it's not so one dimensional. And I think that there's a lot of room to demonstrate and explore that without falling into those superhero traps. Well, I like the fact, and I mean, this is the entirety of the series,
Speaker: That's the word I'm looking for. Not a dissection. That's where we do. Yeah. But, you know, taking it apart. And in this case, you know, you were taking part of the tropes, but you're still existing in it. It's, you know, parody and sorts. Deconstructing. Thank you. That's the word I was looking for. Deconstructing. But it's deconstructing these tropes. And in this case, you still kind of have the moments
Speaker: they're small, they're way smaller than, you know, the cranes lining up and the amazing Spider -Man or anything like that. But you know, you have the one guy who helps her fight. Mannequin, yeah. Mannequin, you have these people who do help out a little bit in the crowd. You have afterwards, you know, the bunch of brothers that are like, hey, we'll come help out.
Speaker: Like, as well, you heard, you know, we, you know, saw what you did. We really appreciate it. Let's like, you still hiring. Like, I think it's slower, you know, this truthfully, this is the Spider -Man trope at the beginning, you know, when he's not the friendly neighborhood Spider -Man yet. Yeah. Yeah. And in this case, Spider -Man.
Speaker: Like the way that you have friendly neighborhood Spider -Man being in the neighborhood, you have friendly neighborhood skitter. And God damn it, I don't remember what I was talking about. They don't know that she's friendly neighborhood skitter yet. She's just skitter. That's what you were saying. I was going somewhere with this. Well, I mean, I can tell you what you were saying and then I can pick up what I was thinking is that kind of this idea that like,
Speaker: You know, at the end of the episode, we're seeing these people coming in and being like, Oh yeah. Like, no, she is here to help actually, but she's had to prove herself. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Do you, do you remember what you were saying? Yeah. Yeah. I remember what I was saying. Okay, go for it. So in this way with the, you know, the spider friendly neighborhood, Spider -Man trope, we are, we are ticking off that box of like, Oh, we are sort of getting the neighborhood on skitter's side.
Speaker: Um, especially with the mannequin fight and post the mannequin fight, but, uh, it's not as big of a thing as, you know, all those other examples. Um, and it's, but it's still there. Like it's just very small scale, very reasonable in my mind to the point that you would almost miss it, but like it's still the trope. Mm -hmm.
Speaker: Yeah. And I think this goes into a phrase we've used before early on too, where we talk about how Wildboat is a good job at not just stopping at the deconstruction of the trope, but reconstructing it. And so you still get to enjoy... I mean, because tropes exist for a reason. They're fun, they're popular, and people
Speaker: attach themselves pretty easily emotionally to a trope. So that's why they get used. So it's important not just to break it down, unless you're doing pure satire like the boys or something like that. But to be able to rebuild it up and reshape it so it's exciting and new, but still hits those same emotional beats.
Speaker: And Wild Bo accomplishes that very well. So if we're going to attempt to maintain that in a show, then we got to be aware of what you're saying, where those beats hit. We interrupt our scheduled program to bring you a word from our sponsor, Zencaster, a one -stop shop for all your podcasting needs.
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Speaker: something I was thinking about with the idea of promises and payoff and the idea that like okay so if if the goal here is what because emotionally we all want skitter to be you know to to have her her lair and her henchmen and her you know neighborhood behind her where she is you know friendly neighborhood skitter like we want that for her emotionally but she can't just have it
Speaker: So the idea of if that's the goal that... Because we're stupid and we've never seen the show before and we have no idea what's looming on the horizon. But if this is the small beat, the small win for Skitter that we want to see happen, she can't just get it. And I like the... We were talking about this before, but I like that in that moment when everything's kind of in chaos, no one is listening to her. The people aren't coming together. They're talking over her because she is a teenage girl.
Speaker: And they don't see her as someone who's here to help them. They see her as someone who's just trying to grab territory. And so when we get to the end and we get that big payoff of these people are coming to her and saying, hey, yeah, are you hiring? We can't get that good payoff without the absolute
Speaker: Ugh, gut -wrenching feeling of like, damn it. No one's listening to her. No one's paying attention. She's trying to help and they're not seeing it. And that has to be frustrating for the payoff to feel so good at the end. And so I think that showing that... I mean, we've already had to show it a little bit, but specifically here where she's, again, she's trying to help people. She's trying to deliver supplies. She's trying to get rid of the rat situation. This dad's just being a dick.
Speaker: feeling her frustration in the moment, that feeling of like, shit, no one will hear her, has to feel like a gut punch. So that when it does all pay off, it's just the best high. Yep. Yep, I think you nailed it. There's a really strong contrast there between the way they respond to Taylor after Shatterbird and the way they respond to her after Mannequin. And I think that is like,
Speaker: kind of what you were hinting at, Alan, that that's the the sort of arc of this episode. And I got to get my terminology correct. So I know I'm referring to arc as the storytelling device and not the group of chapters in the story. But no, that is that is like the progression. That's that's the mini arc of this episode for sure. Yeah. Alongside of that, there's small changes. One of them is when
Speaker: They ask Taylor, you know, Oh, what's, you know, essentially doing the pesticide control on our house going to cost. She says on the house, you know, who's free. Uh, but I think changing that to something subtle, like, well, it's my responsibility. Um, I think kind of shows that, you know, somewhat possessiveness of the territory and
Speaker: I agree with the possessiveness. I disagree with the phrase. I feel like the on the house feels flippant because it's supposed to feel flippant, but like it's my responsibility. Like, okay, you're 16. You know, cause I think that with this line of Taylor being a teenager still. Not like it's my responsibility, but you were like, yeah, well, like she states upfront, like with the last, you know, last thing, like I'm giving out stuff because this is my territory and I'm going to take care of y 'all. And this is like, well,
Speaker: It's my responsibility to take care of you guys. And this is part of it. I feel like giving it very straightforward. Like I said, I would make a safe place for y 'all to live. And it's my responsibility to make sure that that happens.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, especially I think playing off of that, because that conversation is happening right when this dad is being a dick. And he's like, because, you know, the whole like, well, he's trying to be a big old man and take care of his family, but he doesn't feel like he has because she has that conversation with Gru about like him feeling like, well, should I hire him? It's like, no, because it's just going to be like he's going to be insufferable. And then every decision that you make that doesn't work out, he's going to say it was your fault and he called it and, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: So like kind of that idea of like, I'm taking responsibility for the people in my neighborhood in the same way that like you should be taking responsibility and like choking down your pride in order to make sure that your family's needs are being met. And, and when you won't take responsibility, I will. And I kind of, I like that idea of the responsibility shifting there, but like I,
Speaker: I don't know how I feel about that just the phrase, you know, it's my responsibility. I guess that's just what I'm saying, which not to drag like one phrase out into here's the 10 reasons why Hannah has a problem with that phrase. But yeah, but getting the feel across as opposed to like saying it. And that's why we're here to get the point across without saying it.
Speaker: No, I mean, but that is one of the benefits of shifting mediums is you can still illustrate that and just change it and just differentiate how you show that. Yeah, so there's a lot of different ways we can do that. There's a few moments here that I think lend itself to a slight reshaping for television. The confrontation with the nine
Speaker: Where are they meeting? They're in a parking garage or something like that? Is that right? The base is located hidden in a parking garage. Yes, it's in the parking garage on the lower floor. Yes, okay, yeah. That whole scene, Taylor running back to try to get to her dad before Shadowbird screams. Yeah, there's a few moments. Obviously, the fight with Mannequin.
Speaker: Yeah, so there's a few moments here that I think could service a little bit of a slight restructuring just in terms of how it shot to differentiate it from the web serial that I think we could improve on. I hesitate to say improve, but... I don't know. That's why we're here. That's why we're here.
Speaker: kind of going in order of those, unless you guys had any thoughts on the hero villain truce scene at the beginning. Oh boy. I just have one comment about that. Open a can of worms. I have one comment because I think as a whole, I think it does a pretty good job of like,
Speaker: the you know, the the text on the page does a pretty good job of like creating this gap between You know heroes and villains and like well we have to basically the real lining of of who's on whose side I think it's already done a pretty good job of that even the spacing of like grouping certain characters next to each other and like putting Taylor right next to Miss militia. I think all of that is like really good and
Speaker: good laying out of the scene. The thing that I would want to, like, fix...
Speaker: is the frustration that Taylor feels towards Coyle because he's, for all intents and purposes, he's throwing them under the bus. And it's all in her, that moment is all in her head of like, this fucking bitch is not backing us. And of course, we don't want it to be too obvious because facial expressions or anything like that. But I don't, and I don't know,
Speaker: what we what the what we could do but i feel like that internal thing that's happening because we're all thinking it. The same thing of like what is your play here like what are you actually doing and then brian says it later about the whole like what is probably using his power and playing out two scenarios to see how it's gonna go but the idea of. Putting making that more.
Speaker: obvious to the viewer that there's like, it's not just that coil is throwing them under the bus, but that there's shit going on under the surface that everyone else here is not aware of. I want to muddy those waters even more because we have, you know, we have some things we're like in our rewrite of this.
Speaker: Uh, coil has kind of just been revealed with two episodes ago to finally be the one, uh, in charge. Um, I always forget the shit that you guys have rewritten myself. I think at this point, uh, you know, we've talked about, you know, some, some of the stuff that's going on, but we also haven't talked about Dinah all that much. And I think this is the perfect time.
Speaker: for it to become even more under the bus throwing, because I think having at this meeting, weld figures out where the numbers are coming from. Right. Great bit there. Gosh, that's such a good scene. But I think, and this is going to go all the way, we're going to go all the way back. I think that we should have an interlude or ending or whatever.
Speaker: way back in the bank heist episode, which is like little girl in the house, the parents leave the room and trickster switches her out for like a doll or something. I think we mentioned that, didn't we? I think we mentioned talking about that. I love that, that's great. A short moment of the kidnapping, you don't know who it is, it's barely ever talked about after that. And then now we get to,
Speaker: talking about like he reveals like, Oh, there was that kidnapping and this where the numbers come from. And we've talked about the numbers, at least from like tattletale of giving these, like, we have a 33 % chance of doing this. And they're like, where are these numbers coming from? She's like, you know, I got my sources and then the sources, you know, other coil, but it's not just coil. So at this moment when, you know, he will weld goes, Oh, this is where the numbers are coming from. I think having,
Speaker: essentially not coil be the one to give those numbers out, but you know, maybe Lisa and you know, that makes all of a sudden Taylor like looks across the room knowing that coils setting them up kind of by having giving them those numbers and them them outing themselves. Uh, and then kind of looking over and, you know, maybe realizing well being like we'd always thought that travelers did it.
Speaker: You know, or something like that. Right. And maybe, and maybe even throwing the travelers under the bus in that regard too. Like maybe coil ends up throwing them under the bus for the kidnapping where he's not the one with the child. And of course the travelers have to cover for him. And so do them. And I think, you know, them all kind of like, yup. Nice. Everything's fine here. Makes coil even, you know, even, even more conniving.
Speaker: Yeah, because he's not even getting blamed and working around the whole like I kidnapped her of her own free will like he's putting the blame on these people. Yeah, I like that. I like that. I will take this moment to just ask
Speaker: for your guys' opinions, because as I was reading this arc again, I was reminded of one aspect of the story that never really hits with me. And I'm curious how you guys feel about it. I never really connect that well with Taylor's internal conflict over Dinah, in terms of that being her driving sort of factor in doing what she does. Yeah, it feels...
Speaker: It feels like that very goody two shoes, it's the right thing to do. And it's kind of boring, to be honest. And like - It's such a random one good thing that she's hung up on. Well, I mean, I think that makes sense for her as a person to be like, okay, well, she's, because she does still see herself as a good person. And it's like, this is the one thing she can't forgive, which is, because she can kind of forgive other stuff, like, okay, well, capes and whatever. But because coil is so much of a,
Speaker: Because I mean, specifically, she has that dream where Coyle is her dad. And so there's already clearly a weird little something happening in her brain. But the kind of this, he is a man in a position of power who
Speaker: who, you know, calls this little girl his pet and basically drugs her. Like, I understand. I understand her. Oh, yeah. No, there's a there's definitely it's not not the issue itself. Yes. Right. Because I think that's very valid. And I think that's a good reaction for her to have. But it's sort of the obsession. It's boring. It's a bit of an obsession. And it's not really that compelling of a drive for her character. When I think we've already built up enough of that already at this point.
Speaker: Like, just her wanting to be able to do something with her powers feels like enough of a motivation at this point. Especially considering future events to come where she very clearly doesn't care about the lives of children. So, you know, yeah. You guys, back in episode seven, you guys said something like,
Speaker: I'm okay with kidnapping, but I draw the line at kidnapping. Yeah, exactly. The shadow stalker. Yes, exactly. It's okay if I do it. You guys mentioned that we should have an ongoing like, I'm okay with this, this, this, this, this, this, but I draw the line at this, like at kidnapping. Cause that is how it feels. You guys pointed out way back then too.
Speaker: Yeah. And like we, you know, we've, as we're retooling this, you know, I think we've kind of pushed that off and having this now is less of a dilemma in the sense of I've got to rescue Dinah, but I think more in a dilemma of.
Speaker: her friends are kind of okay with it. And the travelers who she's kind of had like, oh, they're kind of nice and we work together. All of a sudden she's like, wait, you kidnapped a kid and you just like, you're fine with that. And they're like, yeah, hey, wanna go hang out? And then they go to hang out, which I'm all in favor of and they're all popping their masks off. And Taylor's just kind of in disbelief,
Speaker: you could have this with her reason of why she's got the mask on. And they'll kind of like look at her like, yo, what are you doing? And she's like, you know, it takes off the mask, but in her head, she's still like, I, we're just going to move past the child kidnapping. That was months ago. Like the girl was like 10 years old or whatever. Like, I can't believe you do that. And then, you know, there's sort of this, then you have the internal conflict of can I trust the travelers if they're just, you know,
Speaker: Like I thought we were all just around the same age goofballs together, but you guys are clearly willing to go further than I am. You know, I'll rot somebody's junk off and pluck their eyeballs out. Do we pull in an old switcheroo changeling with a child? No, never.
Speaker: Yeah, because it puts the weight of that also on the group dynamic of like these are the people that she's, you know, come to trust. And, you know, if you want to say chosen family, then yes, like this is her kind of become our chosen family. But the idea of like, well, if these people I'm supposed to be partners with, if the travelers were supposed to all be partnered with together, we're all working on Coyle's plan.
Speaker: It's not that I don't trust Coyle, it's that all my friends do, and that makes me nervous. Well, I think for a lot of them, they're okay with it. But for Lisa, Lisa's known. Yeah, she's known and facilitated. And facilitated that, which brings me to, I think, for mostly season two, and we kind of ended this on season one with this, we should play up
Speaker: the double agent -ness of Leah, or Lisa, that she should feel kind of duplicitous up until the moment that she hands Skidder the gun and they plug coil. Yeah. Like we should kind of, like we love Lisa, we really do, but she does a lot of shady shit that she does not tell anybody about. Yeah, and I think we could play into that. I think it should feel like she could betray
Speaker: Taylor at any moment. And Jacob pointed out in past episodes that because you're pushing off the reveal of coil that like people might even guess that Lisa is actually the real baddie. Oh, I love that. Yeah. I love that little bait and switch.
Speaker: I mean, up until this arc, ironic that we're here right now. I mean, we get Lisa's first loss, truly. She's been kind of wrong before, but you can excuse a lot of that. But she gets blindsided.
Speaker: Oh yeah. So, so brutal. Yeah. Um, commercial at that point. Uh, I think other things that change around small things. Uh, can we move change bastard to a half wolf instead of a pure wolf? Well, we've discussed before her powers are specifically that it works best on half breeds.
Speaker: Oh, it's weird that her, the way her power works on a wolf really well. Especially considering that like she doesn't work with wolves and even her first dog was a half dog, half coyote, not a half wolf. So like, it just kind of feels off and don't get me wrong. I love the wolf thing, but let's just let for continuity of power. This is the ideal creature for her to work on. So like half wolf being really cool.
Speaker: Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, you really wouldn't have to change anything else. That dog kind of looks like a wolf. You know, it's definitely a dog, but it really looks like a wolf. Is it Lisa or is it Rachel who says the comment about it being a wolf?
Speaker: Yeah. Or is, or is the comment not even said, you know, I don't even think it's, I don't even think they said because she figures, cause Lisa figures it out later, you know, right. Oh, that's right. Boy, do I have thoughts there? Um, connecting all the dots. Yeah. I think we just need to also the whole argument. Uh, this is maybe a bit nitpicky of me, uh, but I don't find hook Wolf that
Speaker: I don't think he's that smart or maybe he is and I just don't want him to be. Um, but the maneuvering here kind of feels a little, uh, it just pissed me off that, that they're so like, they're also sold by it so quickly. Like he doesn't really have to convince them much at all. Oh, you kidnapped a kid, but also these guys like.
Speaker: I'm pretty sure Empire 88 has kidnapped people before. Oh, I'm sure. How is this the one thing that you guys and Skidder are all hung up on? Yeah, no, I agree. I think kind of rewarding some of that and making that a bit...
Speaker: more realistic, to be honest. And it's not often I'll criticize Wild Bo's dialogue, but I think there's some room for improvement there. Yeah, both in this and I think there's some tooling at the ends of some conversations in the last chapter, some rework. Yeah, I would agree with that. Also, kind of sliding on to the next one. Imp is such a great character for an actor when you just don't want to use an actor.
Speaker: Oh, there's a cut on my arm. Must have been imp. Oh, they're actively doing stuff. We just don't have to have a person there to do any of it. I actually had a really great thought visually for imp while reading this because
Speaker: In film, there's a lot of subtle tips and tricks that once you know how to spot them, it's really hard to not spot them in terms of how directors and cinematographers will frame shots to highlight certain things that you're supposed to look at. And it becomes very obvious when you're supposed to be looking at a character or you're supposed to be looking at an object or things like that.
Speaker: And so all you have to do is just not use that with imp in the sea. It's just always out of focus. Unless she's talking. Unless she's talking, of course. I mean, you've seen the famous little study with the gorilla coming out during the basketball game and nobody sees the gorilla you see in that video.
Speaker: It's an old, old study. I kind of know what you're talking about. Yeah, it was a little experiment. They put a bunch of people in the crowd. They said, watch these two teams pass basketballs back and forth and count how many passes they make. And then while they were doing that, a guy in a gorilla suit walked out, stood in the middle of the court, banged his chest and then walked off. And afterwards they asked and virtually nobody saw the gorilla because they were all focused on what they were supposed to be focused on.
Speaker: So that's all you really have to do with Imp as it would be such a great way of keeping her in frame, in the shots, in the background, basically just like an extra. Nobody remembers the extras because you're not supposed to look at them. They're just there. And she could still be moving around and doing things. Or, oh, here's an even better example. It just came to me. Community. You guys have seen Community? Great show. Yeah. Oh my gosh.
Speaker: Are you aware of the episode of Community where Abed, in the background of the episode, has an entire episode behind him, like delivers a baby, gets into a fight. It's so great. And you like don't notice it the entire time. Like that is essentially what you're doing with Imp this entire time. She is still present, but just not in focus.
Speaker: Yeah. Like you're panning around and she's there, but like, because she's not in the foreground, we don't necessarily notice her. And because we don't call attention to the fact that like, Oh, she's not on the boat on the way back. It's not until we're back on shore that someone goes, Oh, it's cool. And stay behind. And we all look around and we go.
Speaker: Shit, we're down one member. When did that happen? Like, I love that. Because people will forget, especially when so many, you know, we have so many capes in one frame. We're keeping track of like four different groups. Imp is just one character who hasn't already has not gotten a lot of, you know, screen time. And now all of a sudden we're supposed to keep track of where Imp is too. Like, and I think that it would be a great easter egg for the people who are paying attention, who know worm already, who know Imp's power.
Speaker: and are keeping an eye out for her in those kinds of shots. Yeah, exactly. I think another fun thing to do with her, I like that too, but with her more active stuff is potentially, man, it'd be so interesting if you knew what her power was.
Speaker: And like during fights, she's just walking around and you as the audience realize that nobody can see her because they're just not reacting to her. Right. And she's just kind of nonchalantly going through. I mean, I think we still can, especially if it's the idea of like what in a scene where we've forgotten that Imp is there, if she's still on camera,
Speaker: the audience feels like they're getting a secret glimpse behind the curtain of like, oh, well, they can't see Impa, but I can. And so still having her be able to do exactly what you're saying, walk in and out of scenes like that and not see people reacting, the audience is then like, oh, fuck yeah, like Impa's doing her shit. When she does do something, it feels
Speaker: Like, yeah, like we're in on the action because we know as opposed to like being in the scene ourselves. Yeah. And maybe, I mean, these are all different, like directors taking their own spins on her power and different episodes, which I think would be great. I think showing a variety of how to show off a power is awesome. The last one I would do for her is, uh, the film flicker.
Speaker: you know, very fight club -esque, but you know, literally, especially if she's active and doing stuff, she just literally flicks in for a frame, you know, where you're like, what was that? And then, you know, you couldn't see it, your eyes can't register it. You just know there was something there. And having that happen while she's, you know, supposed to be right there on the screen would be really, really fun to do.
Speaker: Yeah, no, I like that. Yeah, there's a lot of fun ways to... Her powers would be so much fun for a director and cinematographer to play around with. Yeah. So right before they bust in, we have this moment. Who's they? There's so much busting happening. Okay, got it. Yeah. Yeah. Slaughterhouse nine. Right before they bust in.
Speaker: And we have, you know, the basically like, where'd you get that dog from bitch? And Lisa figures it out and then also realizes there's people here and is like, Oh shit. Um, I think that we need to retool the last episode, uh, because I think it would be fun to not know who the slaughterhouse nine has recruited until
Speaker: Oh, we figure it out. Hmm. I think that having like them go, like, you know, they're trying, cause they're trying to figure out, I think maybe, you know, not everybody wants to admit to it. Uh, this could also do the potential of like cold opens for some of them or like flashes in the middle of episodes. You know, we could start with hook Wolf cause he doesn't care about hiding the fact that he got recruited.
Speaker: Right. You know, we, we maybe even do away with that interlude episode for just interspersing these, um, and, and leaving it a mystery to the audience for them to figure out, you know, we know that they're recruiting people. Who did they recruit? You know, and this meeting kind of says, Hey, I got recruited. Who else got recruited? Because I know PRT building got attacked. Who wasn't?
Speaker: And the heroes are like, we're not at liberty to say. Nobody on our side would get recruited. Who was it in the undersiders? And the undersiders are like, I mean, nobody, because nobody's fessing up maybe. Or maybe Regent doesn't towel till later. And in this case, everybody's like, oh my gosh, the slaughterhouse nine are here. What the fuck are they doing here? And Lisa looks and goes,
Speaker: bitch, where did you get that dog? And bitch like kind of like closes her arms around the dog, hard cut to her out in the thing, you know, and her whole scene. I think that would be really fun to do every time we run into the audience realizing like, oh my gosh, it's this person. That way we just keep that mystery going.
Speaker: Yeah, I just think that would be a really, really fun. We could show off a few early on, like the Jack Slash one, because that's a botched one. But we could say like, hey, these people have chosen people and then leave it up to the audience to try and figure out who they recruited. Yeah, I don't hate that idea. There's a few things you'd have to work through.
Speaker: Mainly a couple, you'd have to restructure a few of them because
Speaker: when we were talking about the last episode, assuming that we were going to kind of just use the entire episode to introduce the different members of the nine, we were playing around with like having the fact that the entire episode is all, they're all happening at the same time, right? So there's all of that sort of play going on. In addition, you would run into a couple issues just pacing wise with too many flashbacks.
Speaker: But more than that, you'd run into a few issues. You'd have to balance around the fact that like, for example, if you're playing up that mystery, mannequin fighting Taylor feels much more like his attempt to recruit her, which does feel like that, which would get confusing if then after that you show mannequin going to arms master. So like,
Speaker: You'd have to work a bit on the pacing there. I don't hate the idea of saving the reveal of that until afterwards, but maybe it would just be shifting that entire episode until after this. Well, I mean, we don't have to reveal everything. So I like the idea of
Speaker: that specifically for Bitch, that being a big reveal, I think would hit really well. But I don't necessarily think that they should all be revealed in that kind of way. I think if we have the previous episode, still basically the episode being, everyone's recruiting at once, kind of have this interaction that feel, maybe two of them that feel vague,
Speaker: that we're just not quite sure. Okay, so we know that she's there, but we're not quite sure what's going on. The Siberian is here clearly in the rain, but what's going on. And then when it finally comes out with Bitch, like, oh shit, so Bitch was the one. It finally makes sense.
Speaker: But I feel like if we're doing all of those reveals, like you said, Jacob, the flashbacks, I think they can get very tedious very quickly. Okay, so hear me out. I mean, in these, I think maybe we could create our B -plot with a character we've talked about making more of a main character anyway. What if we have Weld kind of doing his detective shit in the background? Oh, shit!
Speaker: I'm here for that. I love Weld and his like little detective moment. Imagine him showing up to a house. We don't say whose house it is, but like, yeah, she's still really shaken up. Like, you know, like she ended, you know, she killed these two monstrosities, yada, yada, yada. And we don't say that it's the Dalin house, but have him try and figure out like what happened. You know, the sisters still are, you know,
Speaker: She's still upstairs. They just say things like, what about? And you're like, yeah, she's upstairs right now. She's pretty shaken up about all of it. And have him try and piece together because we've already had him from his perspective show up to the body strung up like the slaughterhouse nine, three and three. Having them figure, piece that together. I think it's actually Vista that, is it Vista that puts it together or clock blocker?
Speaker: I forget who puts it together. I think it's this. Yeah, I think it is. I think it's Vista. So, you know, maybe we change that around to be weld like and start to play up his just, you know, he, you know, even from this scene, we see that he's a pretty smart cookie. Yeah, the man loves paperwork. He loves paperwork. And I think having him put together essentially a serial killer mystery of like him also explaining the rules
Speaker: Cause I, as we'll go into the, the later interlude, I don't like the whole conversation about them figuring out like, ah, this is how we do like our things. You cut all of that. And we have, we have weld explain it. We have him say, this is what happens. They do this every time. I need to figure out who they're recruiting.
Speaker: because that's what they're here for. They just lost an eighth member or their ninth member. So they're probably in town to recruit. And they know that we're weak, yada, yada, yada. So having him in the background as our B -plot, doing this whole like trying to put things together, trying to figure out who in the PRT got recruited, you know? Like the idea that
Speaker: You know, maybe he doesn't know that arms master is upstairs in the penthouse suite, right? Being kind of a big thing. Like, right. Yeah. Well, who they attacked here. Who, who was it? Like, you know, finding out like there's only one person that could squeeze through the vents and it's mannequin. So who did mannequin come to recruit? Um, you know, he figures out half of them. There are some that he obviously can't, and those will be figured out by,
Speaker: you know, Taylor, you know, cause obviously like bitch would be an obvious one that he couldn't figure out, but it would be revealed on Taylor's ends of things. Uh, and then having potentially no well being another one that he doesn't know well being another one that they figure out through, uh,
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. There's just something to think about. Something to write. Okay. So I'm going to run on your parade just a little bit and play devil's advocate because I think that's a great, first of all, I love weld. I love the idea of him being a B plot detective. I think that's phenomenal. Um, I have to say though.
Speaker: I don't want to make promises to the viewer that we can't keep. And that being, if we give Weld more screen time for this episode, and then he kind of dips back into the outskirts of the wards again, as he basically has been. Oh, I wouldn't put it just for the outskirts of this episode. I would say that we spread out all of those things through all the episodes, potentially. We take that entire
Speaker: that entire interlude of the recruitment arc, instead of having that be an episode, we disperse that.
Speaker: Right. But what I'm saying though, is even if this is dispersed through like two or three episodes, you still have an entire season where Weld is not a B -plot. And my thought is that I don't want to make a promise to the audience, get the audience excited, like, oh, we're going to see more of Weld this season. Cause he's getting this whole thing about him being a detective and him figuring this out. And this is all kind of like happening in the background. And then it's like, but not really though. No, no, no. I think, I do think like,
Speaker: once or twice per episode, he shows up. I'm not talking about - So you wanna like write him in like permanently new spots just to stick Weldon. Yeah, at least for, I mean, cause we're already gonna have him in this season. He's gonna play a bigger part in the, definitely gonna play a bigger part in the next two seasons. Yeah, oh, for sure. He does disappear, which is fine. He has a good exit for that. But I think a combination of those
Speaker: the extra interlude at the back of this, maybe he looks into that because, you know, when the breaking of like kind of the, uh, cauldron cape thing blows open, he's, you know, very much on the like, what the fuck side and leaves because of that having him hat, you know, been doing that. I've been investigating and realizing like,
Speaker: Oh, like the PRT who I've always had very good, high opinions of, uh, kind of into some shady, shady shit. And not just that, but there are like moles and stuff in here. Right. I would also potentially this is, this is a big, we'll get into something else later, but hold that thought.
Speaker: Uh, cause we've got a lot of other stuff to talk about. This will be another big, big change up in the, in the back half. Yeah. Well, mark me down as.
Speaker: There's an interesting roadblock we're going to hit time and time again, because at the end of the day, we are really big fans of the web serial. And so it is hard for us to make changes to the story. Jacob, are you calling me biased?
Speaker: I'm calling me biased. But as biased as tape. Yeah. Because this is one of those things where it probably would be really helpful. And obviously, if this was an actual script that was being written, would be worked on by someone who's unfamiliar with the story and is strictly looking at creating concise and clear seasonal arcs, right?
Speaker: And if that was the case, if I was trying to be as objective as I could,
Speaker: Alan has a decent idea, but it would probably go even beyond that, where you're really rewriting a lot of the story to focus on the Wards with Weld as the lead. And you really would have like two main plots, Taylor's plot and the Ward's plots, as they're both sort of in their own way, figuring out and dealing with the Slaughterhouse Nine this season. Like that would be sort of your, your triangle of plot there.
Speaker: which would of course be a lot more rewriting. You'd be putting in scenes, you'd be putting in character moments. It'd be a whole rewrite of the season. But it is really intriguing because at the end of the day, if we're looking at this season, we haven't really said it out loud, but if this is the season where they deal with the slaughterhouse nine for the first time in quotes there, then
Speaker: then that would make sense to have a couple different POVs of the capes dealing with the threat. It's kind of exciting. It also gives the audience another scene change. It keeps things lively. There's different characters you can play with and lets people enjoy their characters that they fell in love with the season prior, as opposed to just putting them in one episode. So there's a lot to be said for that. And in all honesty, that's really exciting to me to try to tackle.
Speaker: But we would run into... We're talking major, major rewrites at that point, cutting a lot of stuff, moving a lot of stuff. You would be talking about the... You would pretty much cut their entire
Speaker: In my mind, you're cutting their entire game they're playing to whittle down their opponents. You're probably cutting a lot of that. You're really simplifying it, where now the mystery is not like, oh, how are they going to recruit? It's who are they going to recruit? And you're building up that towards the end. I don't hate it. It's a really fun idea to play with in terms of how you're trying to rewrite
Speaker: the, the season. Um, but yeah. Yeah. Cause I think there's a lot of, oh, sorry, Michael. No, just real quick. This format, um, podcast format specifically is, is interesting because we're going one, yes, we're looking forward and backwards, but we are mostly going one arc at a time. And I feel like even with last season, like you guys,
Speaker: figured out a lot of the puzzle pieces by the end a lot better. Um, cause yeah, I remember you guys just throwing out ideas and being like, well, we'll come back to that, see how we feel once we've covered more episodes. And so this might be one of those things. I feel like, yeah, that's a good point. It's definitely made me look further ahead as we've gone along. Um, just, there's so much branching stuff to go.
Speaker: look into. And one thing we haven't done, and again, we're kind of just tackling this from a really fun sort of... This is a hobby. We're having fun with it, but we're not taking it that seriously. We haven't sat down and storyboarded and put our whiteboard up with our plot points because we haven't even talked about...
Speaker: Well, I mean, I've got a whiteboard right in front of me. I don't know what you're talking about. I mean, in the sense that like, I say this because this is a really important interlude that we get this arc, but like, Cauldron is a really big part of this story overall and needs to have some very important highlights throughout the story.
Speaker: Just because we're kind of already talking about this, I'll kind of jump just very quickly and just very, very briefly because I want to come back to it in full. But that final interlude for this chapter, which talks about assault and battery and cauldron, I think works very well split up throughout the season. You get interludes of assault and battery and the rise of cauldron throughout the season, splitting that up.
Speaker: I think would work very well. And that keeps in line with where you were headed, Alan, with if you're going to do that and you're going to interject. Because a lot of worm, a lot of the really exciting
Speaker: elements of worm is mystery. It is what is cauldron. It is where do powers come from? It is eventually what are shards? What is scion? What are the end bringers? All of these things are, there's a huge mystery element to the story. So being able to slowly build on that, I think is a really great idea. And I think having a character like Weld who can fulfill a lot of that as well, I think works really well.
Speaker: was just gonna have to rewrite a lot and piss off the fans. So I'm so sorry. So sorry to the purists, the warm purists out there. Yeah, I think one of those things that kind of exemplifies taking all the stuff and trying to make it as cohesive as possible, but having multiple stuff going on at the same time, I think the game of
Speaker: if we have the mystery of who, you know, potentially was recruited, you know, trying to figure that out. At the same time, we've got to figure it out so that we can keep them alive because that is the game that the Slutterhouse 9 plays. Maybe not something that's negotiated for, maybe that's something that is how they operate. And in this case, it gives us, you know,
Speaker: a couple things that are going on, the tension of, oh, we've got to keep these people alive, but also, oh, we've got to figure out who they are in order to do that. Right. And like playing off of that, and you could even play this as, what if they don't think that it's a recruitment? What if Well doesn't figure that out immediately? What if they think they're just being targeted for some reason, right? And they're trying to figure out what that is.
Speaker: That's true. And then well figures out however many episodes in, whenever you want to give them that realization that, oh, wait a minute. They're not trying to kill these people, not directly. They're trying to recruit them, right? And he gets that sort of moment there. I think that's really good, especially if we, his moment figuring it out is talking to Victoria after Amy's run away from home.
Speaker: Cause then he realizes like, Oh my gosh, what they were doing here when they talked about like, yeah, hack job was here. He's like, you know, uh, it was an amalgamation. You know, the dad can explain Mark can explain. Yeah. It's he, they said it was an amalgamation of hatchet face and, you know, only Lee. It's like hatchet face was their last guy. Well, he kinda was a zombie there. And it's like,
Speaker: So we've got eight slaughterhouse nine people in a city hitting up random people, but not killing them. I think they're recruiting and not like they, you know, they've got to become the slaughterhouse nine again somehow. And I think they just tried to recruit your daughter, you know, or, you know, they said as much. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think this is good. I think we're talking through it, but I think this makes a lot of sense. One thing with, one thing with worm to that it's kind of important to remember is like,
Speaker: With a lot of adaptions today, the stories are written. They either they succeed or fail based on how well they appeal for the most part to like the already existing fan base, right? Like thinking recently the only because the Halo season two is being trailers everywhere.
Speaker: That season one was abysmal from a Halo fan here. Absolute waste of time. I have no idea what they were appealing to. I think the Halo fans in the first episode. And you were the lucky one. It pissed off the original fans and nobody who isn't familiar with Halo is going to watch a Halo TV show. Who's your audience there?
Speaker: And we see that there's a lot of other shows have been doing that recently. There's a lot of hesitation and fear and you've got all sorts of shows coming out. Worm is different because as passionate and as large as the fan base is, you're nowhere near the size of existing properties and IPs right now.
Speaker: In all honesty, as much as you don't want to alienate early fans, there's not as much of a need to appeal to that because what you're really doing here, this is for all intents and purposes, would be treated as an original story for 99 % of the viewing audience. Yeah. So you can play around with a lot of this and still be respectful of the story and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker: and not have to worry about, oh, well, you know, on page 147, it said that, you know, Taylor used her left arm to point at Jack Slash, and you used her right. And I hope someone was fired for that blunder. Like, you're not going to have that type of, you know, dedication. Well, we might. I mean, we might. You know what? I'll give the community the
Speaker: the benefit of the doubt on this one because worm as a community is built on number one speculation. If you go to the pair of human subreddit, every question is who would do this, what, when, where, why, how in a completely different situation if they've done this differently. And then people write it because
Speaker: Like Worm is like primarily a work by Wild Bo and secondarily a work by every other fan writing fan fiction. Yeah. Like it's just, it's so prevalent to the series. I don't think the fans would be that upset with this because this is already what they do. This is like true.
Speaker: This is already how they operate. And they're used to Wild Bo having to retcon stuff because it was written on the fly and they know that he wanted to do things differently at certain places. That's a good point. I think the mal, the adaptability, the malleability, whatever you want to call it, flexibility, the flexibility of this story for somebody to adapt it is already present.
Speaker: in how it was written the first time. And how it's continued to exist from the moment was penned to the moment that the first fan wrote their fan fiction about it. The story is built to be flexible. That's the danger of the beast. And I think this is just continuing in that parahumans
Speaker: a fan club tradition. Um, it's just fanfic that is getting put on the screen. And the whole point of, of making it is to, you know, we've enjoyed it for so long and we know that there are things that could be adapted. We're keeping all the essential stuff, like all the cool moments. You're never going to change that, you know, and you bring in all these new people who
Speaker: who need to go and read it. Yeah, you're changing the accessibility for the common man. Yeah. And hopefully, honestly, I wouldn't change it so much, unfortunately, as to make it like a why am I watching this adaptation? You know, I would argue the boys actually does a pretty good job of that, where they are so divergent from
Speaker: the comics that it is. Yeah, it's vaguely the same, but enough that when you get to the end of this story, I'm assuming they're going to be massively different endings. In fact, I know they are.
Speaker: Um, yeah, you know, all the stuff that should have happened in the comic already went a completely different direction in the show. And with worm, you, you can't do that. And I don't think you should, because it is such a well done cohesive story, um, that you can't make it worth a worms fans time to be like, Hey, this is so different that you'll enjoy it for all the differences. Um, they're going to enjoy it cause it's worm.
Speaker: And all the people coming in are going to enjoy it because they've never seen it before and they're here for the ride. Ultimately we're worm fans and we're making what we think would be awesome. Yeah. And it would be so awesome. Put us in charge.
Speaker: Give us a hundred million dollars. Put me a hundo, Millie. Can we just take Alan's speech and make that episode one? Can we recommend that? It's a good intro to what we're doing. Great intro now that we're on episode 12.
Speaker: Yeah. You can take that out of context thing and just slap that somewhere. You can sum that all up by just saying that all adaptions are fanfic and that's what we're doing. I'm fun with it. Well done. I like it.
Speaker: All right, moving on. Not too much left. I was going to say, I think not too much left. I've got pages. I was about to say, there's so much. I was being optimistic. Yeah, no better. I think everything's going to turn out all right, he said at the end of the last episode.
Speaker: Oh, boy. We were in, I think we were in the parking garage. Yeah, with Jack Slosh and the buddies. We were talking about... So assuming just putting on the back burner a lot of our rewrites, which I think would be fun to sort of maybe come back and revisit, maybe a Patreon exclusive or something. But just for the time being, taking the chapters as is, what stands out in terms of what we want to keep and manipulate.
Speaker: I kind of don't like this scene. I get actually exactly what you mean. I really, really like Jack cutting Lisa. Yes. Oh, so good. I mean, we have to get rid of that. But I do think that you can trim this down quite a bit. Yes, yes. Yeah. It doesn't need to be this long drawn out conversation. I think it can be a quick
Speaker: Hi, we're here. Bye. Like it doesn't have to be a long thing. Yeah. I'm thinking in terms of decisions you may end up making to change some things around, but do you want to keep
Speaker: And we'll put a pin on this because we'll come back, especially if we decide to sort of rewrite a lot of the recruitment arcs because Jack slash shuts Taylor up or Lisa up because she's spilled the beans on Cherish's plan. Yeah. Which I love that so much. So good. But that would be really confusing for anyone who's not aware of Cherish's plan. Right. So maybe that we have to give him a different reason.
Speaker: Yeah. But I love that though. Like I love it because like Lisa being wrong is such a great theme. And this, she just, you know, calls the situation wrong. And I love. Yeah. You know, this is, this literally is the sometimes you just don't say shit because like, even though you're smarter than the person, sometimes they just hit you. Sometimes. Yeah. Sometimes just don't be a smarty pants about it. Yeah. Like, because, you know, Lisa is trying to use it to her advantage, but.
Speaker: Everyone's got a plan till they get hit in the face. Right. That's true. Well, I mean, what else would we, would we replace it with? Yeah. And that's, that's the issue. Is anything else kind of feels petty for Jack? Like it feels like he's making a, he's making a choice there. Like he's a deliberate cut. Her just running her mouth. I think him being like, like, I know what your power is. And like, I don't want, you know, I don't want any spoilers for what we're doing. So like shut the fuck up for a second.
Speaker: and just does it offhandedly. I think flippantly doing it just because she annoyed him. I was going to say, because here's the thing. So at the root of it, he gets very pissed at Lisa because she messes with his, and he kind of hints at this in the interlude.
Speaker: his sort of carrot, as he calls it, right? Yeah. His manipulation and control of his team. Right. And she messes with that. So if you want to sort of keep that train of thought, what if she catches on to, and the audience doesn't have to know this, but Lisa does, catches on to the fact that they are recruiting, right? Or something along those lines and start to put the pieces together and that, and, you know, Jack re retaliates to that.
Speaker: Right. So he slashes her to shut her up to not give away the recruitment. Which doesn't... I don't know. I'm kind of talking myself out of it now because it doesn't really work because she can still write, but... Yeah. Well, I mean, it would still send a message where kind of the idea of like, well, I'm giving you... I'm telling you to shut the fuck up right now. And if she wants to write it out then, then that's a terrible mistake for Lisa to make.
Speaker: She's already made one mistake, don't make another one. And so kind of that fear of potentially Jack retaliating against other people that are also there. Like, okay, well, if you were told to shut up about something, maybe don't also write it down. So I think that could work. I don't... Yeah, I don't know. What do we not like about the original?
Speaker: Just that it doesn't work if the audience doesn't know that Cherish is having recruited her brother. I mean, we could reveal that earlier and have a good conversation where Regent tells them and then we have a flashback. Flashbacks again.
Speaker: I will get on a pedestal to say I do really like where you're going with a lot of the ideas with those interludes and weld kind of piecing it together. I will die on this hill. I think flashbacks are the bane of filmmaking. I really don't like them either. I don't like them. I think some of them, I think bitch would do really well.
Speaker: Um, I think that would be a really good flashback. I don't like the idea of most of the others. Um,
Speaker: I don't have a good framing device. Can I just say something? Because this is the thing, because I don't like flashbacks. What I do like is showing us a scene that we've already seen before, but drawing our attention to something different. So if we have seen Siberian in the rain, surrounded by dogs, we've already seen it. We're going to do it again, but we're just going to zoom out.
Speaker: Just a little bit, so now bitch is in frame holding a puppy. Like those I can do, like I can deal with that. I can't do with like cold, I'll say cold flashbacks. Cause like they just feel so weak. But like the idea of. Maybe you have her getting a fight with Siberian and then it's, you know, we flash back to it.
Speaker: And it's the continuation of that somehow. It's the end of the story. We stopped at 75 % of that and we're showing the last 25%. That I can get on board with as long as it's done right, but the pacing would have to be right. I get what you're saying. I don't like flashbacks either.
Speaker: There's probably a better way to frame it. There's time and a place. There's time and a place not to be 100 % a hater. There are good examples of flashbacks. No, that's okay. Please Jacob, be 100 % a hater, please. I don't have a better way of framing it. There are definitely very, very valid times for a flashback, but generally, the way I see them is it's usually a tool of the
Speaker: frustrated or dare I say lazy scriptwriter who can't tell the story in the moment. I definitely don't think we need them. But I do like the idea of hinting that events have already happened. And then
Speaker: you know, maybe referencing them or having, you know, things like that. Like you were saying, Hannah, where you show a scene you've already seen, and now there's just more context to it. Things like that I think are a little different, a bit easier. But I forget why I got on that pedestal to begin with, to be totally honest. What was the flashback Alan mentioned?
Speaker: Oh, flashing back to I think we're talking about Cherish. Yeah, Regent Cherish. Yeah. No, I think that would work. I think just having maybe that scene take place before this, I think is fine. Because the nice thing about that scene too, is you don't even really have to
Speaker: Allude to the fact that she has appointed him for recruitment, right? She's just being a dick to her little brother because they hate each other. Um, it doesn't have to be anything beyond that. She could even just say, uh, you know, I, you know, essentially, Hey, I gave, I gave the nine your number. Yeah. I mean, this could be a great time for her to show up and recruit and fuck up everybody. So she rolls in freezes everybody.
Speaker: They have a fight, but the fight isn't between henchmen that he has. It's between the undersiders being the pawns in the middle and him potentially having to like fight them trying to come at him because of her. And then on the flip side of that,
Speaker: Like they're having this argument in between. And then as she leaves, she goes, Oh, by the way, cause this would also resolve the whole, like, why doesn't he just kill her thing when she steps outside? Cause the whole stupid bomb vest stuff, uh, her being like, Oh, by the way, shatterbirds about to hit the city better find cover. Like, and that's our bomb get out, you know, get out of the way.
Speaker: that allows her to escape and Taylor's like, fuck, like I gotta, like my dad, like, you know, and then books it, which would take care of two, two birds with one stone there. I love it heavily into my mic. Yeah. I like, I like the idea of the meetings being very personal.
Speaker: so cherish and regent meeting without anyone knowing. I think I like that too much to change, but I do like... There's stuff to play around with there. I don't hate every idea. I also love showing off the whole... What do you all think?
Speaker: Tell us why we're completely wrong. And better yet, why don't you help me figure out how to work all that together? I had to Google because I was literally struggling. I had to Google good examples of flashbacks just now. No, there's some good ones. The first example
Speaker: This is a good flashback just to illustrate that there are good flashbacks. Ratatouille, very end, right? That's a great one. We do that for trigger events already. That's true. Literally every trigger event. How does that become the ability to be a shitty food critic? I remember when I triggered as a child. But anyway, all that to say, there are good flashbacks that you can have a good one. Very nice.
Speaker: Yeah, I do really like the travelers showing off their dynamic as well. Just as a small thing. I think them explaining everything in the chess analogy and talking about like going after people, going after the nine and stuff.
Speaker: I really like the idea of setting up the travelers in Taylor's eyes and so kind of the audience's eyes as the more organized, more mature, more put together group working for Coyle than the undersiders.
Speaker: which is contrasted by as we have a lot of internal problems and struggles that we get to eventually. But at this point in the story, I think it plays really well to have like this parallel to the undersiders that is sort of doing everything correctly, quote unquote, you know? Yeah, yeah. Looks, looks really good.
Speaker: Yeah, in my mind, they are the proto man to Mega Man and the animated television show. We're like, yeah, they work for the bad guy, but also they hang out on the weekends. I was thinking about that scene where they like, I think they hang outside, like leaned up against the wall and they like swap computer chips and like laugh about the day's events at the end of the Mega Man episode. And I'm like, man, that is weird dynamic. And I would love that for the travelers.
Speaker: and the undersiders basically. I don't want to dwell too much just because I do like the idea of maybe trying to restructure some of the recruiting arcs that would kind of interact with that scene and chapter. So I don't think that's worth spending too much more time on just because I think we'll come back to it.
Speaker: The countdown. The countdown is, I think, something we trim a good bit of, is just my thought, in just getting Taylor home as fast as possible. Yeah. Yeah, trying to. I really like showing off all of the bugs, like her running down the street, like getting all of these things going, like people out, you know, calling people. Get everybody the fuck out of the hospital.
Speaker: You run there, you tell them and you keep telling them until they get out. I don't care what you have to do. Everybody needs to get away from the glass.
Speaker: See, I like the idea. In my mind, this is paralleling the scene in The Dark Knight. It's my second Dark Knight mention of the night. Yeah, I'm good. Of the, you know, of the Joker. He's at this address. She's at this address. Who are you going to say? That kind of thing. That whole chase scene, the tension in that scene is very, very well done. Yeah. And I like the idea. I would shorten. I wouldn't even give a time frame. I would say because it's like, what, she has 30 minutes or something like that?
Speaker: 27 minutes. Yeah. The 30 minutes, I think that, you know, you make it however, however many minutes you need, 17, whatever. It's just, you know, you cut it to her booking it, trying to go over fences, making calls. And then she's like,
Speaker: I'm basically like, I'm never gonna make it. Or somebody even says before she runs out, like, you're never gonna make it. So yeah, I was gonna say, I even don't even go that far. Just have, you know, Shadowbird's gonna scream. They get that. They have no timeframe for when. They just know she's about to. And that's the countdown. There's no minute there because the minute you give like a timeframe there, the audience is queued into that and you know it's not gonna take.
Speaker: 10 minutes to play the scene, it's gonna be 30 seconds. So you just give that moment, you have her running, skip the call to the hospital, skip all of that. This is just Taylor sprinting home and then right as she gets home,
Speaker: at the front door, glass explodes. We got to show because her reach of her bugs, we've got to show her trying to tip the alarm clock with the bugs. She is reaching as far as she can with her bugs to try and get ahead of her because she can't physically be there. So having that happening at the same time, I think... I think, yeah.
Speaker: I think I think her calling the hospital is isn't a bad idea because we're because like it builds that anticipation of like oh my god like any minute like she could be on the phone with her phone up to her ear when the shit goes off like yeah and kind of that idea of you know drawing out that who knows when it's gonna happen but there's something that you know she thinks in her head while she's running and she's
Speaker: kicking people out of buildings and away from glass and stuff like that. Um, and it's, uh, that only a few people period in the whole world can do what she can right now. Oh yeah. With the multitasking and like getting, like saving this many people. And I think having her run down the streets where like, even though she's powerful and she's got all the power in the world to save all these people,
Speaker: And she is, very clearly her concern is, come on dad, pick up the goddamn phone. Maybe she doesn't make the hospital call.
Speaker: Well, that's kind of the point I was getting at is just like how Batman has to make the choice, Skitter does too. Does she sprint home or does she try to warn the city and she opts to sprint home? Okay. That being the choice there. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, I don't like that.
Speaker: I also don't care that much for the dark night, but you know, that's a different issue. Well, I mean, if you're having somebody making a comment, like you go, we'll, we'll call as many people as we can kind of thing. Like Taylor, you do what you can control, which is at this point running. Yeah. Cause also in this case, her thing is multitasking. I don't think her running down the street to her house should be exclusive from all of the buildings around her getting swarmed with bugs as she's running.
Speaker: And people, you know, having quick scenes as she's booking it down the street of people waking up and being like, Oh my gosh. And then like numbers and stuff appearing, you know, get, you know, glass hide, like being up on the walls and then cutting back to the street of her just, you know, booking it. Like her whole thing is that she can multitask. So like, why not have her rescue, like rescuing the people that she can reach while also her physically as a single individual.
Speaker: running towards her dad's house because that's the person she's trying to call. And clearly like she's directed there, but her power is directed everywhere else. Yeah. No, I mean, I get, I get that. I think in my mind, I'm, I'm just, I'm focusing the tension on a, on a singular target, but I don't, I don't disagree with, with that take and trying to get there. Honestly, I would flip flop this if we were doing it the other way around. Uh, if we were writing the story again,
Speaker: given Taylor's hung -up -edness about saving Dinah at the cost of the city sometimes. I think this would fit in with her character. Like, I think this would have been better in the book, but the fact that, you know, this one, we don't have Dinah and her hung up on this one thing that she's got to do. I think, you know, do I save my dad or do I save the city?
Speaker: Maybe at this time, genuinely, the character would probably pick her dad. But not that much later, I don't think she would. I think, you know, I think she'd be okay with me like, oh my gosh, this is really hard choice, but also I gotta do it because somebody's, you know, I gotta make that choice. Yeah, it's a good scene. It's gonna be a tense scene. Yeah, I don't know about the countdown.
Speaker: I'm not sold either way. I don't think you necessarily need a physical countdown. Yeah, I guess you don't need it. I do like the idea of her getting right within range and her running up to the house and then the boom. We can still show that with her feeling the vibrations through her bugs and knowing that it's coming.
Speaker: And I think that would be fairly easy to show. So that we don't know when it's going to happen, but we do get that instant half a second, maybe even a whole second of,
Speaker: Words, I don't know. Warning, warning is the word. Half a second warning, single second warning. Like having, especially if we don't have the countdown, if we have the countdown, then okay, but like without the countdown, we need that one second of like, oh shit, and then bam. Like when a tidal wave hits, how the water pulls away from the shore and then the wave hits, like you need that split second of like,
Speaker: warning before the hit in order to like, and bam. You know, that's actually, you know, you could actually, actually I'm thinking now you could play this into Jack Slash's attack on Lisa. What if Lisa puts together and she goes like, Oh, you're going to hit the city tonight. Jack Slash cuts her. God, you know, all right, Chatterbird, you better get going. We can't have them warning everybody. It's not even there. Like,
Speaker: That's already going to happen. Yeah. She just ruined the surprise and he's pissed off. Oh, I like the idea of him being like, well, now you've ruined the surprise. Like after he cuts her. I love that. Yeah. Like maybe she could even say when or something like, Oh my God, you're about to blow the city. Still don't have a great explanation for why he's there right then. But no, we got to figure that out eventually. Why, why Jack is there.
Speaker: Like it was specifically at that, you know, they come to the location to talk to them. Oh. I don't think it needs to be explained until you get into the weeds of his character much, much later in the series. A lot of Jack's character sort of falls into place by the very end of the series. Kind of touched on that a little bit last time. So I think stuff like this can be a little odd at this point. That's fine.
Speaker: I like the idea of her running into the house, like mask off, terrible idea given that all the glasses in the air and everything, but that she was willing, I mean, I guess she doesn't even have to take the mask off, but she was willing to sacrifice her identity, her villain identity to save her dad, I think does say something that like maybe she goes in and he is,
Speaker: unconscious or something like that. And she's like, oh, well, he is unconscious. And being like, oh my gosh. And then, you know, the ambulance shows up and the one of them hands the mask and surprise it's Senegal. Senegal, my boy. Senegal and jaw, like they've got the hat, the classic like hats tilted down. Like, ma 'am, you know, you forgot this and you know, he lifts his eyes up and you're like, oh, it's fucking Senegal.
Speaker: I love it. I love it. And you can still play that you don't have to even have her going into the home. I was thinking about that too. I mean, you can even just have a running up to the home yelling, you know, dad, dad, glass goes flying, you know, she gets blasted, falls over. And then at that point, she's running in, she takes off her mask, he's unconscious and you go from there. Yeah, you don't have to have her actually need to need to enter the house because I agree. I think that would be a little
Speaker: odd, especially if she doesn't, if she doesn't get hurt. So, uh, yeah, yeah. Uh, I like, I like the idea that she at that, in that moment is fine revealing herself, uh, you know, revealing her identity. I think it's, um, yeah. Uh, let's see. Yeah. Uh, after that, I, uh, yeah. What do we want to move to next? I mean,
Speaker: The aftermath of the Shatterbird thing and then also mannequin. I feel like we should just jump right into mannequin. Yeah, because I actually have no stuff. I mean, we talked a little bit already about the kind of the aftermath of the Shatterbird incident. Like the people and people not listening to her and her feeling frustrated like I'm trying to help and it's just like,
Speaker: I like the idea of a lot of this sort of happening very quickly for Taylor without a lot of room for her to catch her breath. So again, I can only visualize what I want to do in terms of other movies I've already seen. So in my mind,
Speaker: they get tipped that Shadowbird's about to scream, Taylor takes off running. And as she does so, like Scar with the hyenas chasing Simba, Jack just kind of looks at Mannequin and is like, get him, you know, that kind of thing. And then Mannequin slowly takes off after Taylor. So that when we get to that moment, because by that point - Because we'll have forgotten about him. We'll have forgotten about him. And then she's trying to pick up the pieces, she's back in the group, and then, you know, boom, there he is.
Speaker: I love it. I love it. And we already know that Mannequin plays games a little bit. And so having that thing of maybe she's running and we're like, where is he? She's looking around as she's running and we're just like, we just don't see him.
Speaker: Like, there's no way he lost her. Like, where the fuck is it? So we're waiting and waiting for him to pop out at any corner. We're waiting. And then she's at her house and he still hasn't popped out. Like, where the fuck is he? And then right when we've all kind of forgotten, bam, I think that would. Oh, yes. I love the opening up the ambulance. Yes. And like, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. And then running back and he's there. Yes.
Speaker: That's a great, a great kicker to that. Uh, I also think we need to have this line set out loud from Taylor. Um, the whole, he uses his ability to protect himself and only himself, which is a great line, not only because the theme of Taylor and her territory, but also kind of gives away what his powers are and how he operates. Um,
Speaker: I think that's a great setup for the fight and for the vibe that Taylor is giving off this whole episode about protecting people. Yeah. And that is one of the just slightly unfortunate things that we definitely lose moving from literary mediums to visual is that you are going to lose some of the really fun details about certain powers like Mannequin.
Speaker: and sort of understanding the complexities of what he is doing and how he operates. But at the same time, it is that mystery that would get people back to reading worm. So, you know, it's kind of fun to have those elements where people really want to be like, what, how does it, what is this power? How does it work? You know, that kind of thing. Yeah. Well, I think we, we talk about later, actually, you know, when they're discussing mannequin
Speaker: and his ability, like how he works. I think her figuring that out mid fight would, and her, you know, because they know, her egging him on at one point by saying like, yeah, like no wonder you locked yourself in like a little box. You couldn't even protect your family. Like, is that like, do you just hate to see somebody succeed where you failed?
Speaker: Especially when she's trying to draw him away from stabbing children. Yeah. It would work. Like her to get his attention by saying some Lisa like shit, you know? Yeah. I mean, I love that. But again, that runs into the problem where she, you can't just give Taylor that knowledge without setting up why she knows it. So you'd have to have, you know, they were discussing, you know, they're having their round table discussion.
Speaker: Yeah. Before. And instead of going, you know, into major detail on some of them, you just like, we publicly know, you know, maybe what happened to mannequin. You know, it's very, very akin to what happened to Manton. Um, except, you know, he disappeared from the board and for, uh, mannequin people know that like, Hey, he was this brilliant biome tinker. And when, you know, he lost his family.
Speaker: he went crazy and made himself into like a self -sustaining biome, which was another thing. He was famous. He was known for a guy who was going to change the world, essentially, and was very useful for society. And when he lost his family, he didn't contribute to society anymore, even though he was this very respected individual and became a,
Speaker: Serial killer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So like it's very public knowledge and just having, you know, Lisa say some stuff about that. Yeah. Um, no, I mean, it still works. Just something I don't remember sentences. Yeah. We got to make sure that it's his family died. He was a, he was a biomes tinker working on, you know, some environmental stuff to save the world. His family got killed and you know, he locked him, you know, he, he turned himself into this.
Speaker: And then Taylor can say some shit here. Um, I think we really need to reorder this whole fight in terms of, uh, I think the playing dead needs to happen later. Um, I think that I really don't buy the spider silk aerial stuff working.
Speaker: Oh, the nets, the soak nets. Yeah, I don't buy that working even in the slightest. I think it's a very, I think one pass at the very end when he's kind of crippled and just sort of stopping him at the end. They get the hand. That's a perfect time to start doing that. I think the arts and crafts supplies. Perfect. That's your, that's your finishing move right there. I think that
Speaker: you have her, instead of the inner monologue of trying to figure out what she needs to do, you have her try a bunch of different stuff. This is what takes up the majority of the fight, is him kicking her ass every time she tries to figure out how to, you know, she shoves bugs in the arm joints, he fucking blows them out, you know, with the heat fence. And that's a whackin' right there.
Speaker: You know, she tries to stab him. Oh, he's fucking casings way too hard. That's, that's a fucking punt across the room. Um, every, you know, he's kicking her ass the whole time and she's just trying to figure out one way to get inside. And finally she's like, you know what, fuck it. We're just going to gunk up the whole thing. And then all the, you know,
Speaker: all the glue and all the arts and crafts supplies and everything she can get her hands on just gets shoved in there. I have a note here. It says, I'm sorry, but like, what the fuck? In regards to this whole fight.
Speaker: I know and you all know that Taylor is much stronger and much more capable than she thinks she is, than she gives herself credit for. And we've proven over and over and over again that she can rot people's junks off and whatnot. The fact that she survives this still feels
Speaker: A lot to me. And I think my only thought with the Mannequin fight, because I think that as far as it is, I think the pacing is pretty good. I agree with you, Alan, about the whole playing dead part. But I think for the most part, it feels good to me pacing -wise. The only thing that I have to say about this is that Taylor needs to take heavy hits.
Speaker: And this is obviously, this is more fight choreography than it is script, but I want to be in pain watching Taylor get her ass handed to her. And when she does succeed, when she does have her smart moments of throwing all the arts and crafts and gunk at mannequin,
Speaker: It is like, it feels like a last resort because it is. Like she's at the end of her rope, there isn't much left for her to do anymore at this point. But like, I just, like I said, this is tough because it's not script, but it needs to hit. Yeah. I was going to say after you, I would love to paint you a picture of the end of this fight. Okay. So just one, one last thought that I have about this. So the Wheel of Time show.
Speaker: Oh, boy. Couldn't get through the first episode because of one thing that really drove me crazy. Only one. Well, the one thing that sticks in my mind because honestly, I've forgotten most of it. But the thing that I always come back to when they come in out of the rain into this little tavern, not a speck of dirt or mud is on these people.
Speaker: And it doesn't feel real. It feels like a stupid little fantasy world that we've popped into. And it doesn't feel real. It doesn't feel realistic. I don't believe any of them. And in that same way, I need this fight to be
Speaker: grimy. I need it to be dirty. I need us to want to go get a tetanus shot afterwards. Yeah. Because of how gritty it is. And I think that already worm in general lends itself to really good, gritty world. But like this fight to me needs to be like, we're really worried about Taylor here. Like we're... Yeah.
Speaker: We're, this is, this is painful. It's blood, but it's not like the nice, bright, lovely blood. It's like the crusty, brown blood of a warehouse, you know? Like I need, I need crusty is what I need. You gotta be scared for her life. Yeah, we need, I need to be a feared. No, no, no. I want her kicked across the room like a dog. Oh yeah. Like a dog. So she gets, after all this attempts, she,
Speaker: But yes, like a dog. Yes. I'm sorry. I'm going to. Jacob, you had something you were going to say. No, no, go for it. Go for it. She gets she's she's trying all her stuff. She gets kicked across the room. You know, she is just been taking kind of a physical beating. She hasn't gotten stabbed yet. But finally, you know, he pulls out the blade, does the little throat slit. But we realize that there's no blood. He starts to stalk back to kill.
Speaker: some kid that cries out and you know, they're huddled in the corner. He, he, you know, makes his way over there. Taylor in the background, you see all the bugs kind of like crawl in through the ceiling, yada, yada. Taylor stands up and is like, Hey, he turns around and she is standing as a strong word. You know, she's there. She's got maybe her hand on the baton very clearly, probably some broken ribs.
Speaker: you know, the leg doesn't look so hot maybe. And she's like, that's where she gives her like, is that like, you're going to go over there. You try, you're just upset because you couldn't protect, you know, people and you're, you're, you know, you hate to see somebody who is doing a good job of protecting people. Cause that's what I'm like, that's what I'm going to fucking do. Like these are my people. I'm going to protect them. And like,
Speaker: Oh man, what was, I wrote a line down here with, with the start of this fight. Oh yeah. Talking about his biomes and keeping himself, you know, he uses ability to protect himself and only himself. And then out loud we need, but it won't be enough to keep me from killing you. Ooh.
Speaker: No matter how much protection you throw up, I would like you touch any one of my people and I will fucking murder you. And that's when the bugs just start shoving all the gunk into everything. And she, you know, comes over there, does the like leg kick throws herself. Well, not even the kick throws herself into his legs to knock him over, gets a hold of the head and starts like pulling it out.
Speaker: And like very clearly like she is struggling. She's like baby dislocated an arm and all of a sudden forest shows up and he also grabs the head and he pulls back. And you know, that's our moment where like one other person, all it took was one other person reach over and then she, you know, gets the arm off and then they wrap it up and string it from the ceiling and
Speaker: Taylor like stands between all the people huddled in the warehouse now and the like crippled mannequin and is like, you know, says something like,
Speaker: What are you going to do now? You know, fucking like go home and cry or something like that. You know, some real bully type shit. Yeah. If you had eyes, you know, bet you'd be crying right now. You big bitch. No, but go on. You're fired. Yeah. And, uh, and of course he like kind of like looks around the room and does, you know, his, or no, he can't look around the room cause he's got no head cause he's a fucking dumb ass. Um,
Speaker: You know, sticks a blade out does like maybe the throat slit with this non -existent neck and then runs out, you know, like a bitch with his tail between his legs. You know, I was on word for most of this. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But we've got to, we've got to get him to leave at which point in time, Taylor collapses, you know, and is like, Oh man, I was running on adrenaline and it's really running out.
Speaker: Do we have a careful she's a hero moment? Yes, I wrote down spider -man to crescendo I don't want it that badly like she's just a kid but borderline like
Speaker: I, for the sake of nothing else than all the fucking shit she has gotten, this entire goddamn two last arcs, she deserves to have some people be like, fucking, is she alive? Give her some air. Like maybe Charlotte and Sierra come over and like them with forest.
Speaker: and be like, hey, you go get like, go to the fucking ambulance, grab some more med stuff. Like we need it. And then somebody be like, but we need those supplies. And then being like, well, you need her more, you know, like, I'm sorry, you got a bitch at wine after she just got her ass kicked for a solid, you know, 10 minutes, like, and almost killed.
Speaker: Like there needs to be some recognition there. If nothing else, my personal satisfaction demands this. I like all of that. Yeah. Cause I could, I could almost imagine her getting her mask half shattered and somebody essentially going like,
Speaker: She's just a kid, like barely older than my daughter. I would never go that hard, but she needs some recognition. And then, you know, the next day she wakes up and she's like, what the fuck am I doing in bed all wrapped up and comes downstairs? Like in a robe, the most disheveled has given up on being the evil villain. And the two girls are downstairs, like get real quiet when she comes down. And she's just, you know, scrounging for cereal.
Speaker: And, and they're like, didn't want to, didn't want to come down in costume. And she's like, fucking, I couldn't even put on, like I couldn't put it on if I wanted to right now. Like one of your new jobs might be helping me put on the costume. Yeah. Like, yeah. And, and that's, that's your bonding moment. That's the moment. Like, I mean, it leads into great conversation, but like,
Speaker: At this point in time, she's too sore to give a fuck. You know, people saw her do the thing and she gets the effect she wanted, which was, I want some loyalty and some goddamn recognition out of this city. I got some goddamn respect. And she got it even though she wasn't being a big bad villain to her own people. Like, nice.
Speaker: You know, it was self sacrifice, not fear that won the day if you wanted to be nice. Sure. Still very tropey, but I feel like it does it on a believable scale. I just want to sort of cross the T's because I think what both of you said is fantastic.
Speaker: So there's a couple of things we can do here to make this really work. And the nice thing is, well, that was kind enough to put this in the story, but just didn't really go this route. And this ties in very nicely with the way we want to treat the mystery and the recruitments as well. So Mannequin. Oh, oh yes. You know where I'm going with this? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Has arms masters blade.
Speaker: is his super vibroblade. His little worry, like little thingy. His lightsaber. His little anti -matter knife. Happens to be a nice little convenient Deus Ex Machina.
Speaker: that Taylor can make use of in this fight in a creative way that some fight choreographer would probably love to have fun with. That gives her a bit of an edge and would allow her to win this fight. You can still, you keep all of the struggle, you keep all of the pain, all of that stays, but this can be the thing that gives her the victory without it coming across as
Speaker: Man, she really shouldn't have won that. That didn't feel right. And then on top of that, you have the mystery of, wait a minute, how the fuck does Manny can have this? And tie that into the mystery you want to keep there. Can Taylor keep that knife?
Speaker: I do like the idea of Taylor keeping it only to give it back to Arms Master the next time. Yeah, I think that would be such a cool moment. Well, no, not the next time. I feel like Edie's to go, isn't that my goddamn knife? She's like, what up, bitch? Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, oh, fucking. I put it to better use than you ever did, you big bitch. This is my toothpick. And yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I wipe my ass with it sometimes. Really cuts through the shit. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you? But yeah, no, I think that's great. I love that idea. I think that can work very well there. I love that.
Speaker: And then just in the end, I think this would be a great way to cap off the episode is you can have her, have her wake up, you have her walk down, she is disheveled, Sierra and Charlotte are there kind of in their very, yes boss, what do you need boss attitude. And she's a little put off by that. And then one of them can say something to the effect of like, you've got people waiting if you're ready. And she's like, what, what the, who's waiting?
Speaker: they bring in, she gets her costume on, they bring in the two or the three ABB members. And the change I would make here is that these are not the only, they are the first of many.
Speaker: And you end the episode with her like giving them, shorten that scene quite a bit, just give them a quick little like, we're here to help you, yada, yada. I think you're right. Yeah, thanks. Taylor essentially is like, how many more in Charlotte, Sierra, something to the effect of, there's a line out the door, essentially. And then Taylor just saying, show them in, cut to black.
Speaker: And that's how you end up. She's kind of limping. She's clearly wounded, but she's trying to put on the brave face. This is the perfect time. This is the perfect time. She comes downstairs. Yeah. The girls are like, they get quiet. She like limps over. They kind of give each other like a sort of giggling look and maybe like Sierra goes, uh, like sleep well.
Speaker: Like, you know, something a little bit more nonchalant and Taylor being rummaging for cereal, like, uh, like, and then, you know, one of your jobs, maybe to put me in armor and they're like, well, we might have to do that. Cause, uh, you've got visitors and hurt me. Like, what? Like, yeah, some people, uh, you got some other people that want to.
Speaker: are shooting for our jobs. Pan down the stairs of like, as she's going down the stairs and realizing like, oh my gosh, no, there are quite a few people down here wanting to talk to me. Like, that like, the difference between the looks on people's faces at the beginning of the episode with our like, you know, ignoring the girls, ignoring
Speaker: Charlotte and what's her face? What is her name? Sierra. Sierra. Charlotte and Sierra just kind of ignoring them and like giving Taylor the dirty looks of like, you're just another, you know, those, those faces are gone and they are replaced with like this kind of hopeful, like, we want to help, you know. I know it would be hot to have hot Brian.
Speaker: help her into her armor and suit her up. No, but I think this would be a great time for a just a quick shot of our ladies and waiting, zipping her suit up while she's like groaning and like, uh, and then like comes out on the steps and goes like, you know, uh, yeah, looking out and the, you know, there being a bunch of people there and be like, all right, like,
Speaker: Who's first or something, you know? Yeah. No, you can save the Brian conversation for next episode, for sure. Yeah, I think so. You don't need that here. Also, I'm good. That's what I'm going to call them now, the ladies in waiting. I like hench women, but the ladies in waiting is what I feel like they are. The hench ladies.
Speaker: I don't like hench ladies. Ladies in waiting. The ladies in waiting help you put on your armor. Anyway, so that would wrap up the episode here, which I think is a pretty good place to wrap it up. I know, right? I'm like, how long is this fucking episode going to be?
Speaker: I know. Well, the truth is a lot, like we've talked about, a lot of this stuff would be paced a lot quicker on screen as opposed to the way we read it. Oh, I meant dissecting worm as an episode. How long is this going? Not the episode or screen. We're giving the people the content they want. The content they deserve. Is it really? I need to be on dissecting worm more often.
Speaker: I mean, just know that you're adding an extra 30 minutes. Oh, no. Okay. Well, then I need to never be honest. That wasn't a bad thing. No, no, no. I don't think we need to touch too much on the interludes personally. I think the Jack interlude gets mostly cut for the most part. I like the idea of if, you know, you could, you could give them a scene somewhere
Speaker: taken care of the merchants if you want to, but it's not really necessary. Yeah. We touched briefly on the assault and battery interlude and just this would be kind of probably something we'd want to spread out and space in sporadically throughout the season to give Cauldron a bit of agency in the story. I really liked it.
Speaker: a great time because the whole reason that they're there kicking ass or kicking all of the people's asses there is because they're just getting their jollies off. They're there for a good mass murder spree. Um, you know, and cause that's what they enjoy doing. And I think this would be actually a great time to be like, if we didn't do the like go get them mannequin thing, uh, for them to be like,
Speaker: killing all these people and go, where the hell is mannequin? And, you know, Jack to go be like, you know, what a loner, you know, how he is basically like never participating in the group fun. Like he's got to do his, you know, his murdering on his own, um, which would show that like, he's not recruiting right now. Like is, and, and, you know, yeah. Yeah. If, if we wanted to touch on that, otherwise.
Speaker: Uh, I don't like all the exposition here anyway. Yeah. I don't think it's necessary, especially if we're going to kind of restructure that anyway. Yeah. Um, and we talked about the whole, uh, intro to cauldron getting spread out, I think is great, especially on the back of, uh, when did we have the big break? Was that episode 10 or I'm sorry, arc 10 that had the big fight with the, uh, the briefcase full of powers. Yep. Yep.
Speaker: So like we got an episode, you know, we could spread that out following that episode and you've got a ton of stuff there to follow up on that, that narrative of cauldron. Um,
Speaker: And again, especially if we end up sort of going with some pretty heavy rewrites in terms of giving Weld and the Ward some more bits, you throw in, you know, Nuder and Gregor and as well, and, you know, maybe have a scene with one of them interacting with Weld. Just little things like that you kind of throw in, just keep the world building and keep all of that mystery still sort of moving along.
Speaker: And I imagine I think we'll probably revisit the interlude too, as we sort of structure the season as a whole at the end of it. So before my computer turns off, I killed some low battery, I forgot to plug it in. And we hit two hours. There's something that I would like to touch on that we, I think we, I mentioned before maybe, correct me if I'm wrong, but we should keep an eye on moving forward. And that is the new problem.
Speaker: continuing problem, I would like to call it the directorate problem. We have a ton of directors in, uh, in worm, and we are about to have Taylor go through them like tissue paper so fast that I would actually say we potentially condense, um, some of them together. And, uh, I think.
Speaker: potentially a first really good one. And I think we'll just, you know, something to keep an eye out for as we move forward is that we retroactively go back and we make, we scrap the go and we start off with Thomas Calvert as the PRT director currently. Yeah. I mean, this is definitely something I am more than happy, uh,
Speaker: playing around with as we structure everything. I do think it gets way, way too confusing. And to be totally honest, I forget the importance of each director and kind of what they accomplish. I feel like in my mind, you could just keep the go or pick it and whoever, however you pronounce it, as the pretty much the director the entire time until
Speaker: Uh, you know, the important one, I mean, Thomas is right after. Um, but I think, I think if we were going to keep, and like I said, I don't remember, I also don't remember how picket gets outed. Um, other than maybe the fear, no, no, not even then. Oh yeah. I don't know how it gets out of here, but, uh, that we should have that. Like if Thomas was.
Speaker: already the director, it would make sense the amount of infrastructure that coil has set up, um, in, in the city. And like the idea of like how very much like his power plays two sides, um, which is also akin to how he even plays with the villains. Like I feel it fits in his character. I feel like it's a good setup, uh, and a great couple of twists.
Speaker: that we wouldn't have to fuss around with. And then you could just move to the next director, which I think is tag. Yeah, no, I think there's some, I think there's a lot of wisdom in that. And that might, that could work very well, I think.
Speaker: So yeah, I'm definitely, and I'm going to have to refresh my memory. Yeah, definitely going to revisit that, but I definitely like the idea of simplifying a lot of the directors. And yeah, maybe I'm thinking about that with a lot of characters too. Like a lot of times when it's like, Oh, we have battery. I hate to say it, but maybe we switch out battery with Miss Militia all the time. Like every time there was Miss Militia, maybe we just switched out for battery.
Speaker: just because we have that character be more consistent or not saying that character specifically, but, you know, just condensing characters just so that we make it a little bit easier to have a through line for the audience. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: No, I think, and I think that makes a lot of sense too. So, and I'll have to remind myself of all the different directors and, and who's important when we'll get. Um, so yeah, we'll definitely put a pin in that, but I think that's, that's wise to, uh, make that a lot simpler. And audience members, um, with the condensing, um, who do you want to see more of if you did have to pick? Yeah. I mean, who would you, who would you much like a Yu -Gi -Oh card game?
Speaker: Who would you sacrifice to summon more of in this story? Let us know in the comments. We'll be asking every week on Reddit the discussion for the arc. So follow along with that.
Speaker: Keep an eye out in the parahuman subreddit as we do our adapting arc discussions. Yes. Brockton Bay, BC on all platforms. Email us. Subscribe to our Patreon. Get us that pizza. Get us out of here.
Speaker: Thanks, Michael. And thanks to all of you, Alan and Hannah, as always. It is a pleasure. This has been a lot of fun, a lot of good discussion. And as always, it's only going to get more complex as we keep going. So stay tuned. Yeah. Stick around tackling ARK 13 in the next episode. And as always, take that, you worms.
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.
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