Transcript
Speaker: Worm is a web serial by JC McCray, also known as Wildbo. You can read Worm in its original format by visiting parahumans .wordpress .com or donate to Wildbo's Patreon at patreon .com slash wildbo. This story isn't intended for young or sensitive readers. Readers who are on the lookout for trigger warnings are advised to give Worm a pass. For a complete list, check the description for all of Worm's trigger warnings.
Speaker: Well, well, well, we have reached season two, theoretically, of our theoretical worm television show. Here, as always, joining me is Alan. Alan, welcome. And myself, Jacob, I should have said that.
Speaker: We'll fix it in post. And Michael, thank you. As always, absolute resident audio guru. Nothing like that. Perfect. His editing keeps us going and his laughter keeps me warm at night. There we go. It's so lovely. Oh man. Wow. We've wrapped up season one.
Speaker: theoretically still still work to be done there. I think we'll piece together some final pieces as we sort of continue reading through everything. But now we've definitely entered season two and a fun little way to start it.
Speaker: Before we jump in, I'm just going to say we've sort of been talking. From this point on, it's going to get pretty difficult to talk arc to arc about important characters and arcs and things like that without spoiling future events and moments.
Speaker: while the Brockton Bay Book Club, our sister podcast, will still remain spoiler -free, arc to arc, of course, for any readers following along. Anyone who's been listening up to this point, while we're not going to just outright spoil everything in ink, we're definitely going to just casually spoil stuff that happens, character deaths, character
Speaker: not deaths, battles, things like that, big moments. So if that is something that you want to avoid, we will miss you, but definitely tune in once you have finished reading the story. So just fair warning. That's the big warning we're going to put here at the front. Spoilers beware for the entirety of worm through arc 30. And so that without further ado, I think we can dive into arc nine here.
Speaker: which is a unique arc, the first non Taylor arc or like the full arc is not from Taylor's point of view. And we get to, we get to enjoy seeing the post Leviathan Brockton Bay through the eyes of the wards. Yeah. I think overall, I think this is a, we're going to introduce an episode for a new season to like keep people on their toes. This is a banger right here.
Speaker: I agree. Keeps people on their toes. You know, they're coming into season two. They don't know quite what to expect. And I get that this is somewhat of a bait and switch is you're kicking it off with this episode. And then, you know, the rest of them. Well, no, I take it back. I need to look ahead a little bit, but, you know, we kind of do move right back into our group. A regular group dynamic immediately following.
Speaker: But I want to say given the fact that we'll have the, you know, the slaughterhouse nine coming up and that's just nothing but alternate points of view. Um, like I, yeah, I guess I should have thought before I spoke, I think this will set a precedence in the fact that like, there's going to be a lot of different points of view more than just the undersiders.
Speaker: No, I think you've touched on one of my main thoughts here was that up until this point, we could really get away with really seeing the entire first season through Taylor's perspective. We've talked about a few other scenes and stuff like that just kind of help flesh things out. But really, everything is... Taylor is the audience's POV character for the first season, no doubt.
Speaker: And as the story develops, while we're not losing that, we're definitely going to want to jump around a bit to really explore this world and the story. And I love that this opens with no Taylor. Essentially, you could, you could arguably, and I'm sure we will argue, go through the whole episode without showing Taylor. I mean, except maybe at the very, very end, if you want to just sort of tease it. Which I think is a great
Speaker: lead in to the next episode as well. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Just to remind you that like, ah, there's our character. They're not completely gone.
Speaker: Oh yeah. There are so many great ways to end the episode. We're jumping way past it, but it's relevant just to the little teases because you end season one with, where is she? What's she going to do? How is her relationship with the undersiders? All this kind of stuff, coil teases, all that kind of thing.
Speaker: So that's everyone's like big question. And then to not answer that question for the entire first episode is so good. I love that. I think it's brilliant to just sort of keep the audience hooked, waiting, and then still just sort of tease it at the end, but not really answer everything. It was really fun. Yeah. Overall, I think, oh man, so much fun. This is another one of those where most of my notes are
Speaker: or this podcast and not our book club.
Speaker: So let's talk in. We always like to get our cold open out of the way or something like that. I've kind of played around with what that may or may not want to look like, but I really like, honestly, the very first chapter in the story. I love the idea of Weld being a sort of POV character for a lot of this beginning part. I think he just works so well. He's new to the scene.
Speaker: One small change I wanted to run by you. What do you think of this? I think unlike his character in the story where he was present for the Leviathan fight, although not really mentioned, I think it might work better if he's not present for that fight for the story. I was going to say he's got to either be there and he understands the situation because he was there or he just wasn't.
Speaker: Um, yeah, I think it's really good to not have him there. I think that plays off better. And I like, I like that he could be, he could still be a veteran of end bringer fights, right? Um, he could have been at any number of other fights. There's been dozens of them at this point. Um, but just not in Brockton Bay. I think that sort of separation from the rest of the wards is pretty important for his character early on. I think that kind of would just, would just sort of help solidify that. Yeah, it helps widen the gap, but also like,
Speaker: Like you said, if we say that he has been a veteran of these fights before, then like, you know, not completely without some, some experience to talk about.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But I was thinking just the imagery of him coming in, sorry to cut you off, the imagery of him coming in on the helicopter there is like, I feel like I've seen that scene a dozen times in every FBI, the fugitive, here's the dossier, here's your team, here's the major players. It's so cliche, but it works so well. I love it. I think that needs to,
Speaker: I'm thinking like, I know there's the talk of like meeting him when he gets into the helicopter, but I like the idea of just maybe, you know, kicking it off with the helicopter and the headsets and him looking out the window at just an absolutely fucked up Brockton Bay. And then cutting back inside and I get being like, you know, here's the file, you know?
Speaker: Or maybe she does the talk, does the file. You've got plenty of time to study. And then maybe a cut away and be like, hey, we're almost there. And then he looks out the window and we see Brockton Bay. And then as if helicopter is, that's where we zoom out. We zoom out. We're no longer in the helicopter looking at it. We're outside, very distant. The helicopter is almost a speck over the ruined city.
Speaker: I like it. Yeah. Yeah. You just got to have the destruction. You just got to show that this is a city that's gotten absolutely hard.
Speaker: I think even too, just to highlight that too, I think we don't really show the city at the end of season one, from like the wider sort of helicopter vantage point, right? Yeah, yeah. So to really open with that to sell the impact of the aftermath, I think is great. Yeah, I think showing the memorial is good imagery other than that.
Speaker: You're right. I don't think showing the destruction until this season is a good choice. Um, that being said, we, you know, he comes in, uh, and there's a couple of other changes with weld I would make. Okay. He doesn't need to go to school. Yeah, sort of a minor thing. We know that's good school. We don't, we, this is not like.
Speaker: uh, uh, you know, the chilling adventures of Sabrina, the teenage witch or anything. We're not following them in school as much day to day. Um, since we've kind of gotten out of that, we're not dealing with school drama. Now we can get rid of it. He's a smart guy who is a giant metal case 53. He can just have him
Speaker: take online classes or have his GED or taking college courses already. Like it's so dumb. Yeah. No, I agree. Uh, I think you don't even have to mention it. Honestly, don't even mention it. It's important to his character. Yeah, it isn't. I just, as something I noted here, I'm like, why, why would we ever send him? No, that's good. I agree with that. Uh, what else do you have? Uh, other things I have.
Speaker: Uh, playing up the fact that Armstrong found him in a scrap yard. Uh, the fact that he is a case 53, um, and, uh, focus on the human hero relationship, uh, is, is big thing. Cause that's, you know, kind of the point of him being there is to showcase like he is a very humanizing case 53. Um,
Speaker: that scores well in PR with people. So, I think playing up all that, yeah, I think those are some good things to like just bump up when we're having weld talk and talking about weld.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm definitely, um, definitely in favor of, of highlighting the case 53 element, especially if you want to highlight that and maybe a bit stronger in the first season, depending on how we want to shape things. Um, just as that develops, of course. Uh, yeah, I think that's a really strong intro to his character because we don't really see. Yeah. I was going to say, maybe you had a talkbalker ask like, yo, where's your Mark?
Speaker: be like my heel. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Um, cause we don't, we don't really, we don't really get a reoccurring case 53 until weld really. So yeah, I was gonna say cause we've like, you know, we've run into Gregor and neuter, but yeah. Um, forget they, there are like intro T's to case 53 is, but yeah, especially with the file, you know, yeah. I do like that's another,
Speaker: inserted mystery that we will have going on. Oh yeah, a great one. Yeah, that's great. I don't think I have anything else for him at least in
Speaker: first chapter. There's a few bits here. Yeah. I think that about... I mean, I love... We've talked about it before. Obviously, we're going to be cutting and restructuring lots of things, but so much of the way Wild Bo writes just translates so well to screen. You can just... His first interaction with the wards and just butchering everything
Speaker: Like it just, I can, it's just plays out. I see that playing out so, so clearly. So I think a lot of that is just going to work really well. Just translating from, from page to screen. Yeah. Um, I think going off, uh, you know, immediately lends itself pretty well to the patrol with shadow stalker. Um, I think maybe replacing the chain that Flechette has with just cable. Um, really small change I have.
Speaker: I don't know how I feel about the whole, I don't know, zipping from building to building with the cable. Yeah, it's interesting. And this is funny. This is a good thing to bring up now because this is going to be something
Speaker: where it's not really something of our focus as we're just sort of working on script as opposed to like visuals. But I agree. I think Flechette is the first of many, many times and we're going to interact with powers that are really challenging to think about how to accurately depict them on screen without the aid of narration or exposition in the text. Yeah.
Speaker: I was thinking about that because I'm like, it's got such an explanation to it. And also, uh, like at least you could maybe get, if it was just the cleats and the climbing up of buildings, like there is enough hints given to her other powers and how she uses them, that that's how the cleats work. Um, you could even show that pretty easily, I feel like, uh, but the cabling and explaining the cabling and stuff.
Speaker: While it might be a five second explanation, it just feels a little bit odd. Yeah, I agree. That'd be a fun conversation to have with a director and a DP and your lead editor. These are the types of conversations I can't wait to have one day with Wild Bo beside us as we work through the challenges, the fun challenges of bringing some of these powers to life. A lot of fun.
Speaker: Yeah, just bumping up Flechette and Arian, love that. Yep, yep. Do you have anything for the patrol with Shadowstalker?
Speaker: Not particularly, I think it works pretty well as is. I do think giving more screen time to Flechette is going to be a good idea. I have a feeling, and again, I'm drawing both from my original reading of Worm and then knowing that I'm just remembering so much as we read on. But Flechette might be one of those characters that's good to sort of keep in the rotation a bit more prominently than she is.
Speaker: Yeah, I think we had a list for our retrospective. We talked, we wanted to bump up New Wave, you know, bump up the Wards, the Paria, Flechette. Yep. Okay, so we did mention that. My Forbidden Suite, my Taylor Clockblocker one. Collin and Dragon, Theo, and then Coil and the Travelers. Yeah, okay. Okay, good. Specifically in those combinations too.
Speaker: Yes. Agreed. Out of the many, many teams within everything. Yeah. So I like that. I think, I think given Flechette a few moments is going to be great. Um, her and Perry and going to be a lot of fun. Going to be a fan favorite couple. 9 .3 has a ton of interesting exposition. Yeah, it does. A lot of interesting stuff. And, you know, I think we talked about it in the other episode, but
Speaker: I do, I do really, this is where I love just sitting around. This is part of why I love Ward, love the mundane, just learning about powers in the world. And I would sit here and take college classes on parahumans and a heartbeat. One thing that it points to with Flechette, there's a mention, and I don't know if it's ever mentioned in Worm again.
Speaker: but it's a big part of Ward is Flechette's group trigger event. Hmm, interesting. Flechette is part of a group trigger. Right. And I don't know if that's ever mentioned like any time in worm that group triggers are a thing.
Speaker: Well, I don't know if it's, I don't know if it's directly mentioned because we get actually coming up soon. I think within the next like two arcs or so, sort of a side story, but we get a scrubs trigger. And I think that was the, I think if I remember the arc correctly, I think the attempt there was to create a group trigger, but he's the only one who triggered. Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. But I think that's the closest we get. I don't think we ever see an actual group trigger.
Speaker: Yeah. Um, but that's something that leads into a fairly big point. And, uh, in the sequel series ward, um, is, is specifically like there's a lot of dealing with group triggers. Uh, that's a, that's a dynamic that is thought about and talked about and is kind of essential to the plot. Um, for a lot of wards. So, um, I didn't remember that was here.
Speaker: and Flechette's group is one of them. So that is something that like in this, she talks about she isn't sure, but I think we should make that that she's a little bit more aware that she is a part of a group trigger. And that's why she gets kind of a grab bag of powers. Interesting. That makes sense. Okay.
Speaker: Yeah. And I haven't, I've read the first couple arcs of Ward, but I haven't, I haven't definitely not gotten into it. So that'll be, that'll be fun. Another, just another reason for me to go and finally read through that. I know. Stifle your disappointment in me. I can hear it. No, no, no, no. This is the time. This is the time. This is the time. This is the time. Punch up the family and the case 53 is a little bit more cause we're talking about them. Yeah.
Speaker: I also put big V little V relationship with Victoria and Vista. Yeah, I love, we talked about it in the book club. That's one of my favorite scenes in the story so far, just the way it's written. And I don't think, I mean, I wouldn't want to change anything with that. I think that would, it's such a great scene to capture. Yeah, I said it before, I'm a sucker for healthy,
Speaker: dialogue. And man, it's just... Exactly. This nails it. It's rare. Which sucks. It's so good. And then we get a pretty good intro into Slaughterhouse -9 with the murder mystery. Ooh, what a fun introduction for them.
Speaker: Now, I know we teased a little bit in the last episode or the one, no, I guess it was the last episode, talking about teasing The Slaughterhouse Nine at the end of season one, which we'll play around with that. I still like the idea there, but if we don't, having this be the introduction to them, I think is a really fun sort of horrifying mystery.
Speaker: Yeah. Everybody, everybody knows the name. We're seeing some of their like their MO a bit. Um, everyone's like, Oh, they're in town. Oh, they're in town. There's like whispers and everyone's afraid that the audience isn't in on it yet. I think there's a lot of power there. Which brings us to the fight following that. Yeah. Does this fight need to happen? You know, it's funny. I was thinking about it too. Part of my first thought was no, but
Speaker: I do think a little bit of action is good in the episode just so it's not super, super... What's the word I'm thinking of? Just slow? Yeah, but I do think you could...
Speaker: I do think you could change it quite a bit. We're still keeping this, the core element basically that the travelers are sort of playing on the defensive or intentionally like they're, they're controlling everything. The travelers are very much in control of this fight. Yeah. And sort of playing on the, on the, on the defensive a bit, the, you know, seeing, seeing, seeing the team in action under Wells leadership, I think would be good to see.
Speaker: But I don't, I agree. I don't, I don't, it's tough. It's definitely tough. I don't, I don't really like the fight itself. I liked reading it because I liked seeing, you know, a trickster get to use his powers. And exactly ballistic, that kind of stuff. I think, especially if you did it as a quick succession of like them getting their ass kicked really quickly, then I think this works well, but I think,
Speaker: In terms of pacing, like we're going to get some fun stuff in the next episode. Yeah, we don't feel like, you know, in terms of what's slow, fast, slow, fast, I think this has enough teasing you into season two. Um, also I like the, I weld as I read him, you know, while he has a stickler for the rules and a good, good boy, I feel like, you know, there's talk before of like,
Speaker: his focus should be on reaching out and trying to fix the city and not on picking unnecessary fights. And I feel like this is one of those things where like he really should let this one go, but not just, you know, my opinion, but like as a character, like clearly his team is tired. Clearly he's not in the right mindset. Like this is not the time to do this.
Speaker: You could even keep some of our little favorite elements there. What if there is a quick little confrontation, ballistic launches glory girl, trickster swaps a few people around and then welds like, okay, we're out of here. This is not the fight right now. Yeah, I think that's good. And then just kind of end it there. Yeah. There's a few cool moments that happen in that, that I like and enjoy.
Speaker: you know, like I said, you know, launching glory girl, a clockbocker, like kind of realizing like his power. I forget if it's his power doesn't work on weld or, um, he just turned it off at the last second. I thought that was a good bit. Oh yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah, just, and then kid wins shooting himself with his own gun, you know, get those, get those in real quick. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. You can do this. You can do it much, much quicker than that. It needs to be.
Speaker: I do think as we move into the post fight with them talking about the bodies, uh, actually have, uh, maybe we should make glory girl, the one who, uh, knows about slaughterhouse nine. I'm a big Victoria fan and, uh, she might be the biggest Cape geek out of all of these people. Um, like,
Speaker: You know, low key, she eats, like when we talk about her at the college, um, that is what she does. She audits college parahumans classes, like they were in there and she's like, yeah, I already took this class before. Like that's what she is. She is a huge fucking nerd. So I feel like her being like, um, three sets of three.
Speaker: Nine slaughterhouse nine. She does, she does the whole, she just does the Sherlock thing right there. Just kind of figures it out. Yeah. No, I like that. I like that. I think that works well. You see, you know, she could even go like you, she could even mention something. She walks up. She's like, anybody else think the like body on chains while disgusting kind of reminds you of mannequin. And then like, they're like, ah, travelers, like we got to deal with you.
Speaker: Mm hmm. Oh, yeah. Got it. Got it. No, I like that. Actually, I think that works well. 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: We don't need to keep it. I feel like that's not too necessary. It's nice that it sort of introduces the idea that capes are being recruited by villains. But I don't know, it's not that important. We could probably cut that if it's, especially I feel like that's probably gonna break up the episode's pacing a good bit.
Speaker: I don't know. We could, we could keep it in. I do like, I do like kid, when getting a win a little bit, cause he gets a little nice work, you know, that kind of nod from, from pig it and weld. So that's kind of nice, but maybe we can, we can, again, it's something you could give. You could give that same moment in the next arc very easily. Yeah. And I'll be honest. I don't remember Sherry it despite being a spy doing all that much. Um,
Speaker: I don't think he does either. I remember, right? Yeah. Yeah. Let's give it the X. We need to give more things the X. Yeah. Just cut it. Cut for time. Yeah. Yeah. You know what? That works because we sort of get... Honestly, with that being said, then we do get...
Speaker: the little bit of the Slaughterhouse -9, the fight scene, that sort of breaks up to really good dialogue moments. Because before that, with Clockblocker, Glory Girl and Vista, and then after that with Vista Unweld and then Vista and Shadowstalker, which are, I think, both really great moments. So splitting that with the Travelers and Slaughterhouse -9, yeah, I think that would work well.
Speaker: Yeah. And I do like that because talking about sort of like episode arcs, thinking of little arcs and episodes, that sort of welds mini arc this episode is going from the new guy on the block, whose team doesn't respect him, to at the very end, you know, the team's still working on it, but Vista sort of has a bit of a respectful moment, like there's a bit of respect there at the end.
Speaker: And that's just a nice little cap on Weld's introduction arc, if you will. Yeah, I don't think it needs an intro or a closer. I think honestly, you've got Shadow Stalker at the end of this episode. It's knocked out and then bam, you hit worm roll credits if you wanted to do worm there in the beginning.
Speaker: Oh, true. I do like, I am a sucker. I'm a sucker for tropes. I am. I do like the idea of the title coming at the end of the first episode of the season, as opposed to the beginning. I don't know why. Also, also, if you wanted, uh, if we wanted to replace kid when with, you know, we'll just keep following weld kind of as he goes to recruit this kid. Um,
Speaker: to do that. See, I like that. I actually like that a lot. I don't know how you would, I don't even think you need to play out the, there's a spy in the midst, maybe. Maybe you just have that, the kid go to the other room, as soon as Weld leaves, he gets up and types like, I'm in. Yeah. And we don't know who he's reporting to, you know, just deepening the, who does who work for.
Speaker: Yeah, no, I actually like that a lot. And see, these are the types of changes I think that we really need to be thinking about too. Because you're right, that works way, way better to make weld more of the focus point for this episode, especially without Taylor. So yes, we've got Flechette and Shadowstalker alone, and we've got
Speaker: Hell, even in the little dialogue between Clockblocker and those three, you could even have Weld sort of not there, but like off to the side kind of just noticing that they're talking. Yeah. And then of course the little bit of the fight, the scuffle.
Speaker: And then the talk at the end. So he really is present for most of our major scenes this episode. Yeah, I like that actually. I really do. I'm kind of talking myself into it, sort of keeping him as the, as the audience's POV, if you will. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think that works out pretty well. Going forward from this, you know, we're going to be launching into back into undersiders and then back out again. I think this is a pretty solid setup.
Speaker: I think we were touching on the mysteries, you know, that we wanted to punch up as I look back, you know, some of the things we wanted to keep in mind was we're punching up the slow, we were building up to the slaughterhouse nine, which will be our clear and present danger. We're, we're enhancing the mysterious benefactor, you know, of coil. We're, we're also, you know,
Speaker: more to the case 53s like yep pretty good job and you know we're starting off strong with some good just a good spot to just expose it a lot about powers as well because we're kicking it off of him talking about like classifications and then we're literally going to school about this stuff which you know I find immensely interesting
Speaker: Yeah, you know, this is interesting. This is a good thing we probably should talk about because I'm kind of on the fence. Like there's obviously the Harry Potter trope where, oh, you know, our main character doesn't know anything about magic. Good fortune that he's at a school for magic where we can put the exposition right into the scene and it just makes sense, right? Like it just works perfectly for something like Harry Potter. Whereas, uh,
Speaker: any other time that I've seen that done, I'm always like, man, this just feels like a bit heavy -handed. One example of one way that it's done very subtly, it doesn't really impact the story that much, which is probably why it gets away with it, is in X -Men 3, the original X -Men 3.
Speaker: There's the one villain superhero whose ability is to sense the abilities of everybody around her. And she's got her own classification system. And she's like, oh, you're a class three, class four, whatever like that. And then she comes up at the end, but she senses Jean Grey. And she's like, I'm sensing something crazy, class five. And like, you have no idea what these classes mean, but
Speaker: You've never heard Class 5 before. So just her saying that, Class 5, as the audience, you're like, oh, she said something big. And you don't really need to know more than that. And again, that's obviously way, way, way less as involved as the PRT classification systems. But just that idea of you don't really need to expose it that much to get to the point across.
Speaker: So I'm torn because the nerd in me wants to sit down in that classroom with you and just take notes. Right. But I'm wondering how much we should. My the nerd in me also says to keep it, you know, there's. There's a bad trope of every fantasy and sci -fi writer having all these great ideas and lore, and they're trying to figure out a way
Speaker: to piece it all together. And truth be told, the only person who's perfected that was, of course, J .R .R. Tolkien. The legend. Yeah, the legend who wrote the lore before the actual story. And I think in this case, Wild Bo is also one of those J .R .R .R. Tolkien figures. He knew the end point, he had the world, he built the characters out, and then the finally,
Speaker: put the events in chronological order, you know, to lead along that timeline. Um, which is what makes, you know, the whole thing about he can swap out, you know, main character dies. We moved to a different main character because the timeline still happens regardless of what characters are alive or not. Whatever happens, the timeline, you know, still exists. Uh, so I think
Speaker: This is one of those cases also that people mask their bad writing with lore dumping. But this is good writing and it's a good lore. If you like heroes, here's the thing, these aren't old concepts in my mind.
Speaker: Like a lot of this is, you know, when, when Peter Parker has to sit there and explain his, like, uh, his spider web shooter, like, I don't. I like spider man. I like, I like his web shooter. I don't need an explanation. I just, is it, you know, is it coming out of his wrist or not? That's, that's pretty much like, um, you know, I need you to spend the 15 seconds to tell me that like, ah, I made a wide nozzle.
Speaker: Now I can do narrow nozzle and wide nozzle. It's like, okay, great. You know, that's all you need because it's truthfully, it's not that deep. It's not that interesting. But then we get to this world and I want to know how things work. And if there's one thing that Wildland loves to talk about, it's how things work. So I think this is one of those where if you're, you're, you're watching season two,
Speaker: You're interested in how these things are working. You're going to be there. You're going to hear, you know, the list of powers, you know, he just rattles them off in the little nursery rhyme. You're going to be like, Oh my gosh, like what a cool list. You know, I'm going to take a guess at what I think those are. They don't really explain a whole lot of them. Yeah. Um, yeah. And then, you know, you move on and we're in the school and then they're talking about trigger events and how they work in history and all this stuff. Like these little snippets.
Speaker: you know, even if they go on for more than 30 seconds, that's fine. I can't get enough of this. That's fair. Yeah. I think it's a fresh enough idea that it will intrigue people into enjoying the exposition.
Speaker: Yeah, no, it definitely is that it's definitely unique enough and well thought out enough to not be boring or tropey in that regard for sure. It feels well placed. We're talking about Harry Potter. Harry Potter
Speaker: is one of those soft magic systems that a little bit drives me up the wall because it's like the only magic they talk about is the ones like immediately relevant to the story. There is no explanation in the entire Harry Potter universe as to how magic works. And it drives me up a fucking wall. Cause magic's just whatever you want it to be. And you can like, you just swish and flick and whoever flicked harder.
Speaker: one and loved more and is tall because only tall people are deserving of love in the Harry Potter movie franchise. That was my takeaway. Harry Potter fails one of my favorite fantasy sci -fi storytelling devices that writers are supposed to kind of follow, which is whatever you create in your world that's not
Speaker: that's not explained in our world, not in the real world. So whatever makes it fantasy and sci -fi. You need to be able to go and only go one degree beyond the initial explanation. So for example, in Star Wars,
Speaker: You go, Oh, I have created a ship that can travel faster than the speed of light. That's a cool thing. And then you have to be able to answer one question of how. So you go, someone says, Oh, cool. How? Well, the ship has a hyperdrive. This is a special engine that lets them travel at hyperspeed.
Speaker: They go, cool, that's all you need. If they go, how beyond that, you don't need to do that. That's too deep now. You've already answered the immediate question. You can move on. Harry Potter doesn't do that. You go, oh, here is a magic system. It's wand based and uses kind of Latin. Cool. How does it work?
Speaker: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Any one of those spells would be immensely like just out of proportion. People would just be using it left and right. Yeah. What about the force?
Speaker: The force, the biggest thing about it was that it got over explained. Yeah, so the force that the how answer initially is, it's unanswerable, but it's unanswerable in like the how did the universe begin, right? So the answer to that question isn't important because it's not, it's sort of fundamental to the world and sort of a very, very vague sense.
Speaker: How was the force work? It's sort of like a field that's around and in everything. Yeah. Some people can wait. What am I saying? What am I saying? It definitely gets its answer. Obi -Wan. Obi -Wan. Yeah. It's around us. It holds everything. And it traits us. And yep. And you're right. Literally. And then you just add the caveat and some people can tap into that. Yeah. Like that's it. That's.
Speaker: And it's like, well, what can you do with that? And it's like, man, what can't you do with that? I was going to say that actually is another good reason though, that there probably isn't explained enough simply because we have now millions of pages of arguments and forums about how it works and people not agreeing and things like that. So it actually in that way, it probably wasn't given enough of a parameter.
Speaker: No, I think it was good. It was a very, it was a very religious answer. Oh no, it worked brilliantly for the original trilogy, without a doubt. I think beyond that, it's gotten with books and other movies and stuff like that, midichlorians and other heresies. Yeah, midichlorians and other heresies, a sci -fi writer's novel. Like how to sci -fi. Going all the way back to the, because I think, honestly, I think we should keep that sci -fi point you made about
Speaker: busting the sci -fi, like having the explanation, because I think that's very relevant for a lot of the things that Wild Bo writes about in these. My opposite explanation was going to be the Magician series, which is, you know, sort of a parody of Harry Potter. So in that series, you know, goes into painful detail about how stupidly complicated magic is. Just do the simplest magic things.
Speaker: Um, you know, you've got to consult star charts and moon phases and what, you know, where you are in relation to those stars. Uh, and then do your complicated, you know, gang signs to throw up to activate the magic, but you have to do different ones depending on what, you know, whether Mars is in retrograde and like, just to, just to make a piece of origami fold itself. Yeah. Yeah. Like, and.
Speaker: Oh, you know, in that one, I would say it almost goes the opposite direction of like, that's, it's, it's, I get that you're making, you know, parody of Harry Potter.
Speaker: and over explaining it, but it does become a little like, man, this is rough. Yeah, definitely. And to bring that home, I mean, it's something that I think we both agree on here, that wild bow does beautifully, where I think everything in worm is
Speaker: almost perfectly explained as the story goes on when it needs to be. We get answers to our questions, we get relevant information about how things work. Yeah, I think it's a very, very satisfying, for lack of a better classification, a very satisfying magic system. Yeah, it's hard for me, as I've said before, it's hard for me to read any other superhero genre.
Speaker: you know, Marvel comic books, DC, you know, moving comic books, shows, whatnot. It's impossible for me to examine those without overlaying his system on top of them because it explains everything.
Speaker: It does. It's like, it's, it's foundational, which I think is kind of ties into your, your almost, uh, heretical comparison to Tolkien. Uh, but where Tolkien's work is foundational for pretty much the entire fantasy genre at this point. Um, I would love to see wild bows writing his worm
Speaker: be seen in that same light where like now this is the foundation for which you build your superhero stories. Yeah, I wish because I've read some other superhero fiction and they just don't. They feel like characters with powers and not a lot unique about them, which is a shame because like
Speaker: Clearly it can be done, but you know, sometimes it takes somebody who's just really freaking good at it. Yep. Yeah, exactly. Well, we sort of, uh, we've kind of got off the rails a little bit. Uh, that's what this one's for. We were, we were, it won't be the last time. It will not be the last time. Uh, any, uh, any final, final thoughts on the episode? Anything we missed? I can't think of anything.
Speaker: Yeah, I think we nailed it. I like it. I think it's a great pilot episode for this season. I think it ties everything together. I think it's going to be the beginning of a beautiful thing, I could say. Well, thank you, Alan, for joining me, as always. Thank you, Jacob, for having me.
Speaker: It's a pleasure. Thank you, Michael, for making us sound good. No problem. And thank you to everyone for listening. This has been a pleasure and a joy. We're having an absolute blast getting to read through this again with all of you and discussing it. For anything that we missed or you disagreed with us on, please let us know. This is a lot of fun just going back and forth with us, but we would love to engage in dialogue with the rest of you. So please reach out on any of our social media platforms.
Speaker: Look at the links, I'm sure, in this post in the text field here. I'm sure we'll have them all listed. But please let us know what you disagree with. Do you think Weld's a good POV character for this arc? Do you think we should focus on somebody else? Anything we need to tease that we're not thinking about that we really need to make sure we're putting into this first episode for the rest of the season? And any other thoughts you have, we'd love to hear from you.
Speaker: And next episode will be Arc 10. I think we're going to keep an Arc for episode here. So read Arc 10. It's a bit of a long one, longer than Arc 9 here. So get to reading and join us next time.
Speaker: Read along with us at parahumans .wordpress .com. We'd love to hear your thoughts. What did you love? What did you hate? Anything you think we missed, et cetera, as long as it's kind. If you'd like to get in touch, you can find us on Twitter, threads, Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit at Brockton Bay, BC, or click the link in the description.
Speaker: Did we say something that you didn't agree with that you can't just put into words on a message board or a forum or a YouTube comment? Well, now you can call us. We have a voicemail. You can call us at 980 -999 -0438 and let us know with your words what we said wrong.
Speaker: If you'd like to fight me on the podcast, go ahead and leave a voicemail at 980 -999 -0438. Call in with your comment, leave your cape name, and which one of us you're going to call out on this podcast. We'd love to hear from you and love to engage with you on the podcast.
Speaker: Give us some ideas on how you would adapt worm or just thoughts on the story in general and your voicemail might be featured on one of our episodes. Again, that's 980 -999 -0438. Leave your cape name and your thoughts and stay tuned.
