Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Arc 13: Snare
572 Plays1 year ago
This story isn’t intended for young or sensitive readers. Readers who are on the lookout for trigger warnings are advised to give Worm a pass.
Complete list of potential triggers: here
-----------------------------------
Episode Description: “You okay?” Grue asked me.
“A little spooked,” I admitted.
He set a hand on my shoulder. “We’ll make it.”
Speaking from the perspective of someone who had gone toe to toe with the Brockton Bay Book Club, I wasn’t so convinced.
Get in contact with us @brocktonbaybc
-----------------------------------
Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast:
Zencastr
Use my special link to save 30% off your first month of any Zencastr paid plan.
-----------------------------------
Timestamps:
(00:00) - Introduction
(01:10) - Dissecting Begins
(37:52) - Zencastr
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Worm and Patreon Support
00:00:00
Speaker
Worm is a web serial by J.C. McCray, also known as Wildbo. You can read Worm in its original format by visiting parahumans.wordpress.com or donate to Wildbo's Patreon at patreon.com slash wildbo. This story isn't intended for young or sensitive readers. Readers who are on the lookout for trigger warnings are advised to give Worm a pass. For a complete list, check the description for all of Worm's trigger warnings.
00:01:14
Speaker
Mmm. You know what that is? That's the sound of a delicious pizza courtesy of viewer like you. Thanks to Vic on Patreon for providing this pizza for all of us. If you would like to provide more than just a pizza, head on over to Brockton Bay book club on Patreon and help support us. Thank you.
00:01:37
Speaker
Yeah! Woo, Vic! Speaking of which, Vic actually ascended from Slaughterhouse-9 to the Canaries. And we have a brand new Patreon, CyanCicada. Welcome to the Slaughterhouse-9. Thank you so much for your support. For real. It means a lot. Yeah.
00:02:00
Speaker
It's ARC 13 and we've officially earned ourselves our first pizza, which has been our goal this entire time. It's a magical thing to be at this place. Thanks, Vic. Honestly, couldn't have gotten here without you. Yeah, super exciting.
00:02:21
Speaker
Um, yeah. And if you, like Alan said, if you want to join us, there are $1 month, $3 month, nine, 10, uh, 25. And more excitingly, we have the wrigglers, the Brockton bays slaughterhouse nine. Yeah. Those are the special ones. Only Lee fans, the canaries. That one's my favorite. The only Lee fans, the end bringers.
00:02:50
Speaker
And gold morning is the top most here. It's for our sugar daddy. Nobody would dare.
00:02:59
Speaker
And as exciting as pizza is, ultimately, we would like to pay Michael for all of his immense work that he pours into this podcast because we could not function if it were not for Michael's amazing mixing and clipping and cutting all of the rambling conversations and upload.
Behind-the-Scenes Contributions
00:03:21
Speaker
He does everything. So round of applause for our man, Michael. Thank you.
00:03:27
Speaker
Insert applause here again. Thank you. We appreciate all that you do, Michael. The podcast could not exist without you. I'm just managing the talent, which is you guys. Oh no, we're just rambling. That's all we're doing. The power of friendship is what really keeps us together. And theoretically, the power of your Patreon donations could too. That's a perfect place to cut it.
00:03:56
Speaker
Good
Character Analysis: Aisha and Bitch
00:03:57
Speaker
morning, Brockton Bay. Hang me up in a meat freezer and ask me how I feel. It's arc 13. I don't feel well now. I feel like opening up to y'all, you know? Oh my gosh. Alan, I got to say that was a really gutsy intro. I didn't want to get on your nerves. I know y'all got on mine.
00:04:25
Speaker
Well, there will be some body horror in this episode if you haven't guessed. We like to deal with our trauma with humor, if you can't tell. So if any of you are triggered, contact your local PRT office. They won't help you. They won't help you, which is apparently the message here. They'll leave you to fend for yourself. Just leave us a voicemail with your complaints. It might get played on a future episode.
00:04:55
Speaker
It's going to be a long episode. I can already tell. Welcome back. We've never had a long episode. Name one time. You can't. And if you think you can, leave us a message. I'll tell you why you're wrong. You haven't even begun to see any long. Let me get through my intro here and we'll see how that goes.
00:05:20
Speaker
Or we can delay it and see how long we can make this go. I mean, we've already, we've already introduced everything. I was just going to say welcome to everybody. Thank you, Jacob. Oh, you're so welcome. Yeah. Thank you. Here we go. We got that out of the way. We're in arc 13, ladies and gentlemen, arc 13 of worm and they're getting 13 of 30.
00:05:44
Speaker
Is it 30? Oh my gosh. Only a third of the way through this. Wait, no, no, no. I mean, I was going to look at it as like, we are almost halfway because 15 is half. You would think we're, you know, we're about to do 13. We'll pretend that's true. We are at the 33% mark.
00:06:04
Speaker
No, no, no, no. I don't need that kind of negativity. You already heard of the way through this. I don't need that kind of negativity. So you better buckle down. It's only because the arcs get longer from here on out. We started with very slow arcs. They do. For the term dense. You're confused by our math. That's why. The math ain't math. It's sort of like you finished the third Harry Potter book and you're not quite halfway through the Harry Potter series. Right. Right, right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's true. Something like that.
00:06:33
Speaker
But anyway, we got a fun arc here. Arc 13's got a lot in it. A whole bunch happens. We're going to get into it. Before we do, Michael kind of touched on it, but this episode, those listening who might not be reading along in time with us does touch on some body horror and things of that nature. So if that's not your cup of tea, no sweat. We'll try to probably give you a heads up and get those chapters.
00:07:01
Speaker
If you need to just skip on past that, feel free to do so. I almost did, to be honest. It's not a pleasant read, but we're getting ahead of ourselves. So let's start in the first couple of chapters. Hannah, you have some summaries for us?
00:07:16
Speaker
I do indeed, I do indeed.
Battle Strategies and Tactics
00:07:19
Speaker
Grouping wise, it's a little hard to group some of these together, especially the first couple because we have two chapters and then we're hit with an interlude. So I think for time being, we're going to just go chapter by chapter for now. So chapter one for arc 13 snare opens up.
00:07:36
Speaker
Jack has delivered his terms of engagement for the Slaughterhouse Nine trials. Coyle and the gang discuss options and plans for how they're gonna fight, how they're gonna deal with it. And Gru shoots down Imp's idea to infiltrate the Slaughterhouse Nine with her power, and ultimately she storms off.
00:07:58
Speaker
These are stupid rules. Was, was anyone else completely confused by the rules? Cause I read them multiple times and still didn't get. I get them, but the fact that I had to read it multiple times and granted, uh, my autism is like, I don't get things that are abstract very well. And you know, explaining rules with no picture or diagram in front of me just
00:08:29
Speaker
I don't understand. I go, cool. I didn't get any of that. Explain it to me like I'm a human being. I can't translate that. It's the Michael Scott. Explain it to me like I'm five. Explain it to me like I'm four. Exactly. It's too complicated. It needs to be simpler. I agree.
00:08:50
Speaker
Again, we've talked before about things that probably would have gotten refined with a bit of editing and second and third passes. It's probably one of those things that would have gotten adjusted a bit. I like the idea a lot of them making it a game for themselves. That's a fun concept, but it does get a little hard to follow. Could we talk a little bit about what the rules are? Because I'm honestly not entirely sure that I know what they are. I can pull them up.
00:09:17
Speaker
I know what the, the ones that I care about that make sense to me are you cannot leave. Otherwise we will enact this plague that bone saw has put together. You cannot have outside direct interference from other people outside the city. So like we can't go toe to toe with, you know, legend or somebody otherwise see, you know, said,
00:09:47
Speaker
plague. Uh, you can't however, get help that like, you know, healing stuff like that, all perfectly acceptable. Same goes for slaughterhouse nine slaughterhouse nine's got going to be picking up, you know, uh, their beef, their, their junior varsity squad can't come in from out of town to tag in. But you know, if they've got somebody that is good with computers and they're like, Oh man, we've got malware on our computer. Like that's perfectly acceptable for help. So, um,
00:10:15
Speaker
indirect interference, only no direct interference from people outside of the city. You can't leave. Otherwise there's a whole complicated system about essentially if they can kill off everybody with their trials, except for one person, then I don't know. It gets, you lose me. So the goal is to keep more than two people or more than one person alive by the end.
00:10:44
Speaker
At least two candidates survived the testing. Jack will admit defeat and leave Brockton Bay in peace. Which doesn't feel like a where. No, I mean, no. The goal is to have no one die, of course, but that's very unrealistic dealing with the Slaughterhouse Nine in general. I did look up to get someone's, I don't know, simplistic version of the rules. I can't seem to find any off the top of the internet or the top of Reddit at the moment.
00:11:13
Speaker
But yeah, what Alan said is basically it.
00:11:16
Speaker
Rules about people helping, rules about leaving. The slaughterhouse nine have to go one at a time. They can't all attack at once. And then they have a certain amount of hours. If a slaughterhouse nine should fail in the testing or lose in that sense, they get penalized certain amount of hours that their test has to take place in.
00:11:44
Speaker
I can't remember exactly how many hours it is. It's they get what three days a piece. Yes. And so they'll be penalized. I want to say a day for everything. So Mannequin got penalized one day for his interaction with Taylor, which Jack considered a defeat. So he only had two days to perform his test. And then we'll we'll talk about that when we get into Mannequin specifically. But mannequin. Yeah, mannequin.
00:12:14
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. Um, okay. Yeah. That was, I just wanted to make sure that I remembered the rules correctly. That's basically what I remembered. And I mostly thought that it was interesting how we kind of get this sense of like how the slaughterhouse nine talked about it and realize, okay, yeah, let's do something a little bit different right in that previous interlude. Um, where they were beating up on the, on the travelers, I believe. Um,
00:12:41
Speaker
The merchants. The merchants. Yeah, sorry. Wrong group. The merchants. Yeah, they were beating up on the merchants. Shit out of trickster. Yeah. But I just thought it was interesting the way they were like, OK, yeah, we're going to play this, quote unquote, nice. So it's I don't know, it'll be interesting to see. But obviously, as we find out later in the arc, they aren't really playing it nice. Mm hmm.
00:13:10
Speaker
Yeah, we'll get to that. It really is like watching a WWE game, like match because like the rules are made up. Nobody's, you know, they literally have a tag in at one point in time. I'm like, Oh no, outside interference. Like I was expecting somebody to bring out like a ladder, there to be a brief chase involved. Yeah. Like there was just going to be like, Oh, you can't do that. And then all of a sudden, you know, the referees getting punched in the face too, like,
00:13:40
Speaker
It feels really, really contrived. And I get that in the universe's logic, that is Jack trying to keep things interesting to keep these guys going. But it's frustratingly complicated. I stick with the like, you can't leave the city. We'll blow it up. We're going to do some testing, you know, uh, and we're not going to tell you what the penalties are. Like just,
00:14:11
Speaker
I don't feel, I feel like it was a little extra. I think the, I think the thing that I thought was interesting. Did he draft this in a word document? Like, did he hand write all this? I think it was probably, I would guess it was in an Excel spreadsheet. Jack seems like an Excel spreadsheet kind of guy. I does see. I was going to say the back of a napkin kind of person. It's a cocktail napkin. He like has really good handwriting, but it's on the back of a napkin. He's like, all right, I've written out the same letter eight times. And they're like, wow, those are almost identical.
00:14:40
Speaker
It's kind of like Riddler-y, right? Yeah, but also there's ketchup stains, you know? Is it ketchup, though? Oh, that's the question, you know? Riddle me this. We must ketchup all the relish we can mustard. Oh, my God. Oh, God, no, I can't. I can't take it. We're gonna go after fugly bobs. No. Well, I mean, in the... No! Why was that?
00:15:11
Speaker
Oh, I completely lost my train of thought. I'm so sorry. Oh, no, no, it's okay. It came back to me. We're here. We're good. In the previous arc, in arc 12, when we have the chapter where Tattletale gets slashed by Jack,
00:15:26
Speaker
It's something that Bonsaw talks about, that it has to be fair. And she's very childish in that way, but for her fairness is very important. But fairness is by her own rules. And so the rules that Jack's delivered here, they kind of feel unnecessarily complicated. But I almost imagine that that conversation was Jack sitting around in a little huddle.
00:15:50
Speaker
with bone saw being like no no no we gotta make it this many days and it's gotta be this because in her mind she has to make it. It has it has to be fair has to be a playable game it can't just be alone you know the the slaughterhouse nine playing with loaded dice. Which like obviously they are but to her they have to be fair in whatever twisted version that is.
00:16:14
Speaker
Yeah, I think I feel like it's a little hard to conceptualize, but I also feel like, excuse me, that like it's kind of like real people. It's more like realistic to how people actually are is like, we make all these like rules to try and control things and over-complicate stuff in real life more than the simple, like don't leave or else like that. If you were actually like.
00:16:43
Speaker
I don't know. If I was a super villain trying to control people, I feel like that would be too open-ended for me to leave it that way. It would feel like I was not being menacing enough. I don't know. It just seems more realistic to how people actually are, maybe.
00:16:58
Speaker
To me, as weird as it is to read. I think it also sort of plays into that stereotype where serial killers are really organized and they've got all their rules and they've got all their methodology and it's all by the book, by their book. So it sort of plays into that whole mindset as well, which makes a lot of sense. No, like I said, I really like the concept of the game and that they want to stick to these roles and sort of like their own
00:17:26
Speaker
really fucked up code. They just get a little confusing to keep track of while you're reading it. I think one of the interesting rules for me was seeing the rule about not having outside interference. I think we may have talked a bit about it.
00:17:43
Speaker
But I really thought from the villain's perspective, them saying, we don't want you to have outside interference from other heroes just kind of speaks to the fact that even though the slaughterhouse nine are very powerful, there are certain heroes that they've purposefully avoided.
00:18:02
Speaker
At least, at least to a certain level. Right. And I think titles are not titles skills. Um, skitters assessment of them is very good in that she says they're a lot like us. We pick our battles, we think through what we do. And if we get in a situation where, you know, we're probably going to lose, we just don't get into that situation and we run away as fast as we can. And the slaughterhouse nine seem to be very similar in that regard, at least from, you know, from their perspective.
00:18:30
Speaker
And I think there's some truth to that in that they are saying, yeah, we. We will do this game, but we don't want to. We don't want, you know, legend or idol on coming out of nowhere and blindsiding us and winning for you because it's not fair for you. Yeah, it's kind of an interesting perspective there. I think one of the other things I think about because, you know, we're talking the fact that they're
00:19:00
Speaker
We're talking very much practicality. It's like, okay, they've got three days to issue these tests. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but there are six contestants now, but could have been up to eight contestants participating in this game. Uh, they each, you know, each of the slaughterhouse nine members gets to give, you know, three days of testing by themself.
00:19:27
Speaker
What are those tests, and that is them going around to eight different individuals and issuing these tests, right? There's six participants at this point. In this one, but we're just assessed if they've done this before, like with Cherish. They did this with Cherish before potentially.
00:19:50
Speaker
This isn't each one of them sits down with one person and you go through the eight and maybe they're cycling where like the, you know, the eight of them are dealing with eight other people and then they all pass to the right. They're doing this one at a time, which means they're issuing the test up to eight times in three days for individuals is what it sounds like it should be.
00:20:16
Speaker
But the way it depicts it feels like they just go after one person they don't like and are like, I'm issuing the test of this one. And the other people, if you're lucky and aren't offensive to any of the slaughterhouse nine, you might win by default. You know, just like, Oh, we forgot to test him because he's just so boring. I guess he's the new slaughterhouse nine member. Well, they wouldn't, it wouldn't pick anybody that boring.
00:20:45
Speaker
I know, I know that, but you know, that's just what it felt like. It was like, Oh yeah, we've got three days. Like, well, some of them, you know, just from the sounds of what they did to like cherish, like the one that just sounds like somebody had to be there doing it. Like crawler had to be, or no, the Siberian Siberian is just chasing her, just her for three days. Yeah. It does feel more human that way. Once again, a perfect game at all.
00:21:13
Speaker
So yeah, so that's just my thing. It was like, Oh, it's, it's, it's not like you gathered all them altogether and gave them the same test, you know, sticking eight people in a room and being like, ah, the last, you know, first person to kill another person wins. And that weeds down to half the people like, Oh, you know, it's not like you're giving them all the same test off first person to get to the hospital wins, you know, and the last person there gets eliminated. This is just, I'm randomly going to whoever I want to test.
00:21:43
Speaker
and testing them. Some people could make it through almost the entire month of testing without seeing a slaughterhouse nine member. Yeah, I mean, I got the impression that one, they adjust the rules a bit every time they go to a new city. It seems like they're kind of reestablishing rules and making some adjustments on the fly. And then two, I would stand a wager that most of their victims
00:22:11
Speaker
don't survive more than a few minutes once those tests begin. So they probably move through them pretty quick too. I mean, I know I would not last if I was being hunted by Siberian. Like that would not, I'd just like step into traffic at that point. Well, it's probably also one of those things like Siberia is going first again. Oh, damn it. I'm never going to get to my test. You're all going to be dead. Exactly. Big thing from this first chapter though, and then we can move on, I think.
00:22:41
Speaker
Is that imp wants to infiltrate the slaughterhouse nine? She's like it's fine. They don't know I'm there and grew is like you don't know that and Frankly, I'm kind of scared for you, which you know, I just want to say I
00:22:58
Speaker
I think that's reasonable. Yeah. I don't think he's asking for anything inappropriate. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Like he's being the big brother here. Like he's doing the responsible thing. Exactly. And she acts like, Oh, you're just the worst brother ever. I'm like, girl, please. Yeah. I mean, he brings up the fact that during the fight, uh, when they, you know, broke into the war, where the wards are that like,
00:23:24
Speaker
Dragon could see Imp, like Dragon knew where Imp was. And kind of the idea of like, well, we don't know what they're capable of. Like you have no idea if they could see you or not. Like don't just go rushing in on the off chance that they can't. Like with so many people in a group, like with such varying powers, like that's too dangerous. Silly little girl, like, ugh. Really moments like this show their age where it's like,
00:23:52
Speaker
Again, like, you know, with before with Taylor, like moments where she's like, yeah, I'm going to go in. I'm going to be the undercover agent. Like you dumb ass. Like you realize you are still a kid. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It, you know, it is what it is. It's, um,
00:24:10
Speaker
is just, you know, teenagers being teenagers. What can you say? Yeah. Which like, I get it. When you have a superpower that can make you basically, people forget why you're there. Like she storms out, grew, stands. And they're all like, wait, what? And then they all, yeah, they all like, stare at him. They're like, why are you standing? And he's like, uh, sorry. And then he like sits down because she's like, enacted her power and they've forgotten she was there. Like it,
00:24:35
Speaker
When you have something that feels that powerful, they can make people just forget you when you're standing right next to them. I mean, teenagers too, but that's going to give you a little bit of a power trip to your head. Oh yeah, for sure. For sure. Shall I go on to chapter two? Yes. Let's see. Oh, wait, wait, wait. No, no, no, no. Stay here. So Taylor in this room. Taylor in this room. Thank you, Alan.
00:25:04
Speaker
finally gets some goddamn thank yous. Just she's been trying so hard and she gets no end of shit from everyone for doing good things. And finally in this room, everybody's like, wow, look at how great a job you're doing. And not only did you kick mannequins ass, but you're also doing a great job with your like zone. Nobody can even touch you when it comes to how you've managed everything.
00:25:33
Speaker
just top notch. It's like everybody gets, you know, might as well stand stood up and give a round of applause. Point being, it's the school boardroom all over again. But in this table, everybody's like go Taylor. And it feels really good. She does finally get, finally get some good old pass on the back. Yeah. Also at the end of this,
00:26:02
Speaker
when she's back at her thing. Man, Mannequin is such a bitch ass sore loser. Like she throws her bugs out and she's like, oh shit, he's already here. Like he's on the roof. Like, you know, it's just like you beat somebody in a soccer game and they're just constantly out in the parking lot. You know, even when you're at work, you're like, God, like dude, let it go.
00:26:28
Speaker
He's the road rage driver that follows you home after you cut him off. Exactly. It's like a whole month of this, you know, slaughterhouse nine bullshit. But, you know, it's just mannequin being Slender man, but less effective in every way. Well, he got called Alan.
00:26:47
Speaker
I know. Let's talk about fire under my God. The Allen's just keep taking L's over and over again. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping to God there's a good Allen in here because it's hard holding down the fort. It's me and that other person, that other one in the YouTube comments. You know who you are. Shout out to that other Allen. I'll remember your name.
00:27:13
Speaker
some day, but not today. It's Alan as far as I'm concerned. It is. I was just trying to give the username out there. It's hard with the two of us holding down the fort when you've got people like Mannequin just ruining the name Alan out there. And what's-her-face's lawyer dad? Lawyer Alan, yes. Just be in a tool. Oh, God.
00:27:36
Speaker
There's definitely an Alan and wild bo's life that he, that is the worst person ever. I want to know. Yeah. Was Alan the one that triggered him? Yeah. And his, and his power is that he's just an amazing, prolific writer. I can't stop writing my power. It won't let me in my head. All I see is, is lines after lines, word counts going up.
00:28:03
Speaker
No, no, what I, what I imagine, what I imagine in Genesis power is like, uh, it's just thought writing. So he thinks of a plot and it's written. He like comes to it. He's like a WordPress has already been made and it's already been written and separated into chapters. Yeah. That's the power we all want. Like the best power ever. Yeah. I can't even go back and edit it if I wanted to.
00:28:30
Speaker
All right, chapter two. Alan, do I have your official permission to move on to chapter two? Yeah. Now you have my permission.
00:28:36
Speaker
Okay. Excellent. Excellent. Uh, this is another single singular chapter, uh, that we'll talk about, uh, chapter two, skitter grew and bitch tracked down panacea to try and get more information on her specific nomination. And mannequin, as we mentioned before, has kind of been hopping from rooftops and he attacks them in the alley and in the ensuing fight, panacea bolts and bitches dog Lucy gets killed.
00:29:08
Speaker
Or Lucy isn't there there's an argument at the beginning this about like who's gonna go talk to Amy and I think it comes down to like is it gonna be Taylor or grew Maybe I'm wrong here
00:29:24
Speaker
But you might be right. My remembrance of that chapter is a little shady. I'm just going off of the angry letters I have written down. So what angry letters do you have? It just says Taylor, if you want grew to do it, just let him do it or just do it yourself. Come on. Okay. I almost need to pull up the chapter just so I know there's just so much source material.
00:29:50
Speaker
I mean, that could just be the tension between the two of them as well. Quite possibly. There's always tension between the two of them. That's true. I think my favorite part of chapter two is just where Skidder notices that mannequin is thicker than before. It's why he's so easily caught now. Exactly. He's added the jaw too and he's like,
00:30:20
Speaker
Sorry, skitter, but the clapping of my ass cheeks has alerted you to my presence. I'm just looking this up. It's so hard slaughtering Brockton Bay every day. I just pulled up the chapter really quick to have a look at it. And it's actually a conversation that they have over the phone.
00:30:43
Speaker
with Tattletale and Taylor about who should go and it's like, well, who's the closest? You're the one who has talked to Vanna Cia before at the bank robbery and then in the hospital and you seem like the best version to go. And so they talk about a couple options and in the end, it's just that she's the closest and it makes the most sense.
00:31:05
Speaker
And so they head over to where the shelter is. And I think it just comes down to Taylor is really the only one that's talked to Amy before. And it just makes sense for her to be the one. Yeah. Makes sense. And we just see just how torn up Anastasia is after what happened between her and her sister. And it's just... Yeah.
00:31:33
Speaker
It's just very, it's just, it's one of those scenes that just kinda, you feel it. You're like, oh, you are not okay. You haven't been okay for a long time, but you're really not okay now. I stand by what I said before. We talked all the way back that, you know, she had her, her last moment of sympathy way back when. And ever since then, this is just her making the wrong decision.
00:32:03
Speaker
every time. Yeah. Yeah. I hate to see it, but she also, something else that happens here is Taylor calls her panacea and she's like, don't say that to me, don't call me that. And kind of this idea that she's so removed herself from making the mistake that she did with her sister that
00:32:29
Speaker
I'm not even going by fantasy anymore. Like I assume that she's not even like healing anymore. She's kind of like given up on her cape, you know, persona entirely here. Because like she's kind of just given it up, given up all of it, like the good and the bad. She's like, I can't, so I won't. Yeah, it definitely does seem like that where she's just kind of said, you know what, it's just not worth it anymore. Yeah. Maybe out with the bathwater.
00:33:02
Speaker
And Taylor tries so hard to talk Amy down and Amy just wants to wallow. Right, but like... She really does. She really is just like, please just let me suffer. Yeah, just leave me be. Let me die. Like I get it though, like when you're in the depths of despair, like it takes a lot of strength to try and pull yourself back out of it. And like, yes, maybe she did kind of dig herself this, you know, bit of a hole.
00:33:27
Speaker
But Amy is a kid and she's trying to figure it out and her entire world has been turned upside down. The city is a wreck. The Slaughterhouse Nine named her as one of their candidates from going from being such a secure hero to then finding out that your father is a villain. You get nominated for the Slaughterhouse Nine. You fucky-wucky with your sister's head. That's not great.
00:33:55
Speaker
all of these things piling up on top. Like, of course she wants to roll over and go back to sleep on a Saturday morning. Like, she's tired, she's exhausted, she's fed up, and she doesn't know what she's supposed to do anymore. And so the easiest solution is to just run away. Yeah, seems about right. I love Amy's character. I guess my sympathy for Amy isn't gone quite yet. Almost, but not quite. Yeah, Wild Bo writes a bunch of characters that just go in the, man, I love this character, Amy.
00:34:26
Speaker
But fuck Amy. Yeah, I was going to say, I was going to echo that point too. Anytime I'm reading a story and there's a secondary character that's presented with such complexity that they could easily be the protagonist of the story if it was just written differently, just speaks volumes to how well these characters are written. I'm not going to lie, if we had Amy as the protagonist of this story, I would have stopped reading
00:34:54
Speaker
immediately. I cannot abide that level of melodrama. And she is just a walking black hole. Yeah, it would have been a very different story. Taylor and I fit to a T because Taylor's like, I don't want to deal with this. I'm just going to deal with this directly.
00:35:15
Speaker
I'm not going to put up with this kind of stuff. I'm just going to take notes, write it down, and then, you know, slap the folder on the table and be like, I have detailed notes. Like there's really nothing. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's more like, like watching, uh, like Manchester by the sea or something like that. That's exactly what I think. And she's just Manchester by the sea as a superhero. And it could be a great story, but it would be, it would be a very different little bit for everybody.
00:35:44
Speaker
Yeah. Just, man, what's the absolute wrongest answer? I've got, you know, my dialogue choices come up. I've got to pick one of these four scrolls to the bottom and to the one that they've written in knowing that you would never pick that one. It's just a teenage. Or Grey's Anatomy. I don't know. Nick, you watch Grey's Anatomy, furiously, apparently. No, no, no. My wife watches Grey's Anatomy. Sure. That's how you do too. We believe you. So, Nick, you watch Grey's Anatomy. Well, you know, that means you both do.
00:36:14
Speaker
Do not throw her under the bus like that, Alan. No, I'm not throwing her under the bus, I'm just saying. She's the one who watches it, not me. It's a medical drama, which I could imagine a superhero medical drama actually being kind of fun. That would be amazing. I'd watch the hell out of it. That'd be great. Except Amy is essentially JD from Scrubs, except not funny.
00:36:42
Speaker
Where she's like, wow, JD's actually kind of a huge piece of shit. And that's sort of the point and, you know, progression of his character over the seasons till he figures it out. And, uh, man, Amy's just that, but not funny at all.
00:36:59
Speaker
So now I just want a courtroom procedural set in worm. We all wanted the courtroom procedural. Ever since the canary interlude. Like, wait, I want a whole, I want a whole show for this. You know what? You know what? That's next writing project. You and me, Jacob, we'll set it in the worm universe, but we'll change all the brand recognition names to something else. So, you know, no copyright. And then we'll consult some law student.
00:37:27
Speaker
And just constantly run stuff by them. There we go. We'll do it. And now you're free time. We'll do it. Yep. Correct. On top of all the other stuff. No one has free time anymore. There is no more free time. It's no free time only podcasts. Calendar is booked solid. Welcome to my end bringer, Zool the script.
00:37:52
Speaker
We interrupt our scheduled program to bring you a word from our sponsor, Zencaster, a one-stop shop for all your podcasting needs. When we first started this podcast, we knew we needed a service that would let us record remotely. After doing some research, Zencaster was the obvious choice. We started using Zencaster and never looked back.
00:38:14
Speaker
It's super easy to record a podcast with Zencaster. All you do is log in, invite people to join your room, and start recording a high quality podcast right away. You can record studio quality sound and up to 4K video with your guests. You can rest easy even if you have an unstable connection, knowing Zencaster's multi-layered backups ensure you always have your recordings in the highest quality. We do all our recording in Zencaster.
00:38:40
Speaker
and when the episode is ready we can distribute it to all major podcast platforms. Zencaster has made podcasting so much easier with its all-in-one podcasting platform and tools. Go to zencaster.com slash pricing and use my code BROCKTONBAYBC and you'll get 30% off your first month of any Zencaster paid plan.
00:39:03
Speaker
I want you to have the same easy experiences I do for all my podcasting and content needs. It's time to share your story. That's zencaster.com slash pricing and use our code rockton bay BC. And now back to our scheduled programming.
00:39:20
Speaker
Speaking of trying to find gaps in our schedules, Aisha's interlude. I was trying so hard to segue that. That's pretty good. You know, that works. It works. I'm here for it. Yeah, Aisha's interlude. Well, she decided that
00:39:41
Speaker
You're not my mom." So she went off and decided that she was going to get shit done. We get a little bit of a look at Aisha's mom and get some insight into her backstory and kind of her background growing up a little bit more. It's kind of a mess. Empt tracks down the Slaughterhouse Nine.
00:40:03
Speaker
tries to attack them. It doesn't go very well, but she runs into Cherish and realizes that Cherish can sense her, if not can't see or hear her, but can sense her. And then they strike some sort of deal where Cherish, you know, wants to work with him somehow. But we don't really know what that is. It kind of leaves it like that. Okay. So I think the most, one of the most interesting aspects of this arc
00:40:32
Speaker
is we find out that Imps power works the opposite of at least how I would assume, and I'm sure many other people would. Meaning we might assume, oh, she concentrates and then she leaves people's memory. In fact, it is the opposite. She has to concentrate to keep people being able to see her.
00:41:00
Speaker
And I just think, not only is that maybe the saddest thing I've ever heard for a superpower, but just such an interesting thing to think about, like, again, I just appreciate the way the wild boat writes superpowers is that it makes it so much more interesting than just, Oh, they have power. They can use it. This is no, I have this thing. It's almost like a condition and I have to work to suppress it rather than it being something that I'm choosing.
00:41:30
Speaker
And that just is very compelling as an idea and also very, very sad. Oh yeah.
00:41:38
Speaker
It just, yeah, it's one of those in her arc is just so, so painful with the attention on her mom. You see just how bad her environment is. And the fact that her mom's pregnant again, and she's thinking to herself, you can tell she really does love grew in her heart. Cause she's like, don't, don't give him another baby just to have to take care of, come on. Like, like just the way she says that is also so heartbreaking. Yeah. It's just very well done. I appreciate that.
00:42:08
Speaker
Aisha's powers on a large scale as around thing gives a lot of, like brings me back to kingdom hearts and a three, five, eight days over to, or any niche listeners that know what I'm talking about, uh, memory loss and erasing memories. Like, uh, really hits hard for me, uh, as well. And the fact that her power just wants to kind of erase more and she is actively preventing it from doing that, man.
00:42:40
Speaker
And it, it makes me think too, you know, we've talked about with, um, with characters like skitter, her power still works when it's, you know, when she's unconscious sometimes, does it work that way for her too? And she just go to sleep. And if there was like, you know, she's asleep in a house and then, Oh, um,
00:43:04
Speaker
Whoops, the house is on fire. Right. Is there anybody inside? No, I don't think so. You know, like, do they just forget the cheese? That's what, that's the kind of thing I'm thinking about now. And I'm like, Oh no, when, when Aisha gets to be, uh, in her like mid twenties, uh, and she's living in an apartment by herself with her cat, um, she will have that realization of like, if I slip and fall in the bathroom, I will die except, you know, cause nobody's going to check on you.
00:43:34
Speaker
Except she has to have that fear at every second of the day. Like anytime she goes unconscious, I assume like nobody can help her. Has she been knocked unconscious before? I think that's the thing I want to establish. If she's been knocked unconscious before. I mean, I don't think so. That we're aware of. Please explain.
00:44:00
Speaker
Yeah. I think that would be the question would be if we, if we've seen her unconscious before. Well, we kind of do answer that question in this chat, in this arc, not to jump too far ahead, but she correct me if I'm wrong. She's unconscious on the table in bone saws lab and they're all aware that she's there.
00:44:16
Speaker
Oh, okay. Because Bonesaw was talking about her referencing her. I was gonna say, is that true? I always assumed that she wasn't, she was like paralyzed like the rest of them. I wasn't as, when I read that, I read that as that she was like, she'd gotten the powder to the face and she wasn't passed out. She was just incapacitated. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's what I assumed. She's still very much awake. Either way.
00:44:42
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, okay. No, no, that's right. Because if she... That's right. Because the phone song makes them so that they can't access their powers too well or something like that. Yeah, it's more of like a... It's not like an active thing. But then again, that makes me think of the same thing. If her powers aren't like, I have to think about this to do it, then
00:45:04
Speaker
Oh gosh, I don't know. Oh, that's true. It would be reversed. If she can't, if she can't access her power well, then everyone should be forgetting her more easily. So maybe she is so unconscious to give you some insight as I'm, as I'm going through, cause I remembered something, uh, in the extended universe. Um, but, uh, her power does, uh, is less effective over a long term. And of course, tinker tech, you know,
00:45:34
Speaker
as we've seen from dragon does circumnavigate that a little bit. You know, cause there's even times where they think about like grew has remembered that he has a sister and it's Aisha and it's M and she should be here. And she clearly has just used her power and he's forgotten. Like he has those moments frequently, probably more than everybody else, because you know,
00:46:01
Speaker
It's her brother, and he's around her all the time, and she pulls this shit all the time. So whether it's a power getting used to thing, or, oh, I forgot something, oh, the thing that I keep forgetting is probably Aisha, because I figured out that she does this all the time. Dude, I would tattoo that on my hand. Where is Aisha? Because as soon as you think about it, you're like, ah, yes, I remember I'm supposed to look for her. Yeah. So the next time you go to look down at that,
00:46:32
Speaker
There's some, there's some memento memes here. Yeah, for sure. I was about to say. Yeah, memento moments. Oh, I love it. I love it. Yeah.
00:46:41
Speaker
Anything else on that chapter? I mean, that chapter is cool. I will just say, I do really love the way it's written from Aisha's perspective in terms of how her power works on people with the exception of Cherish, just seeing her walk around everybody and stabbing a bone saw in the eye. She really did look at everybody in the room and then just said, you know what? Nah, fuck them kids. And just cut her throat. Wait, did she cut her throat or just stab her in the eye?
00:47:10
Speaker
She tried to do both. Yeah, because she goes to cut her throat. Yeah, cutting her throat less successful. Yeah.
00:47:20
Speaker
I mean, she had the right idea of going for the right person because like bone saw is the one that will stitch people back together. So I mean, if you had to pick somebody, I feel like bone saw. I mean, there's no way you're going to take out Siberia and like, that's not. Yeah, of course, of course. I mean, I think the options were Jack. I want to say, wait, who was in the room? It was no bones on the roller were there. Yeah. And burn scar. Yes. Burn scar. Yeah.
00:47:46
Speaker
Um, and then bone, bone, saw crawler, bone scar. Well, I can't talk burn scar. Yes. Burn scar crawler words are hard. Uh, Cherish and Jack were not there. They were downstairs and of course, um, mannequin was not there cause he's out humbling people in a alleyway. Um, Siberian was there as well. Yes. Okay. Um, that's what I thought. I just couldn't remember exactly. Um, I'll also say, uh,
00:48:15
Speaker
probably my least favorite interlude so far. Oh, really? Oh, I really like it. I love all the little details in it, you know, like we've been saying, just as a co, like maybe not even as a cohesive thing, just, it was relatively compared to the other interludes and the expansiveness of the world that, you know, they kind of show off. I didn't really feel this one. There is less of worlds building in it, but I do really like the... Not just this interlude,
00:48:45
Speaker
I really wasn't feeling like the first half of this arc. It was really hard to read through. Interesting. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. It was the later chapters that were harder to read, but for different reasons. You and I have talked about that before, where the last ones I was edging my seat, I got to read these last ones. I got to know, even though it's painful, I got to know what happens next.
00:49:10
Speaker
I was having to take breaks in between the chapters later on this arc just because it's so heavy. But no, with back to the interlude specifically, Aisha's interlude, I like quite a bit and much better than Pickett's interview later on at the end of the arc. I just, I really like Aisha as a character. I really like her power and because her power is so like, she just kind of is
00:49:34
Speaker
you know, missing from the group or perceptively missing from the group. We don't see a lot of her in action. And that's kind of a bummer because I think she's really cool. And so having this interlude, we get more of like in her head, but also like her thinking process of how she attacks and how she operates with the powers that she has. I really liked it. I thought it was cool. Yeah, I'd agree. I think it's it's always just interesting seeing things from another character's perspective. And I think that that's definitely an example of that.
00:50:06
Speaker
But I can also understand it's a bit. It does feel a bit samey with mannequin attacking again at the same time. So I kind of get that as well. I think that was that was another part of it is like mannequin like immediately is there and then immediately attacks again. And sure, he's got different stuff, but like. Yeah, we we've talked about.
00:50:29
Speaker
how much of a bitch mannequin is, but man, does he just fall off after that first fight. First fight was skitter in the warehouse, like, cool. Oh, wow. You know, that's, this is a great fight. And then ever since then, it's just, it's just downhill for poor Alan. It really is just like, I could see him stumbling over. He's like drunk, like throws a bottle against the wall with his lengthy ass. I was like, you know, he's not saying anything, but you can practically hear the slur like,
00:50:56
Speaker
Come here, you bitch. I'll show you to steal my arm again. The glass inside that's containing all of his vital organs is like soggy. He's like, Alan, are you vaping again? Damn it. It's sloshing with all the alcohol back and forth.
00:51:18
Speaker
We just lost all our listeners. You can't cut us all out. If we all make the noise.
00:51:31
Speaker
Wait, we're just trying to make the sound just now. Cause that was hilarious. I mean, I made a couple of sounds. I don't know. Yeah. Same. There were a couple of sounds. It could have been anyone vote on who you think made the disgusting. Fine.
00:51:53
Speaker
I could see mannequin going to a department store and picking fights with, with all the other mannequins in the store. And then, Oh my gosh. Yes. It's all silent. It's all just mind out. Yeah. Total mind. You know, the slight push and then it like rocks back and into him and he's like, Oh, he starts spinning like a, you know, a Dervish like, sir, sir, you have to leave. I'm going to cut you off. Sir, I'm calling Jack right now.
00:52:21
Speaker
He's done it again. Yes, Mr. Slash. Oh my God. You know, we've already told him you send crawler to come and get him. Okay. Thank you very much, Mr. Slash. Okay. I'm going to move on. Yeah. You can tell my family next week. I'm going to move on. I'm going to move on. So, so the next couple of chapters, I am going to group together so we can kind of talk through some of the big fights here.
00:52:45
Speaker
Um, okay. So chapter three, uh, we come out of the interlude, uh, mannequin attacks skitters territory, uh, fights the undersiders and Genesis who shows up and then right when he's about to get like actually beat
00:53:01
Speaker
Burnsgar shows up and she taps in and he forfeits the rest of his turn, which is just an absolute fuck you moment. And then chapter four, Burnsgar delivers her test to bitch, which is to kill the other members of the undersiders and then sets Skitter's entire territory on fire, which is just a delight. Yeah, we're gonna just stop there with those two grouped together for now.
00:53:30
Speaker
Did Alan put a mouth on just to fucking laugh at her? That's what it felt like. No, I don't think he can. It was his gas mechanism. I know that. I know that. I know all of that. It's just what I read it. I mean, this is what I felt necessary to make it a mouth.
00:53:50
Speaker
No, I just looked at like, did this bitch just like go back and retrofit a shotgun arm and also add a mouth just so he could laugh at her? Like, what a little bitch. It's so terrifying. Did he add a middle finger just so he could flip her off? Like, God. I mean, basically, basically. Like, and then he shrugs. Fuck it. I'll blow myself up. Spiteful bitch.
00:54:19
Speaker
I do like that moment with the with the lighter. So this is something I've actually been thinking about a lot. I love how smart Taylor is. And I'm sure I said this in the last arc when she was fighting Mannequin the last time is I love how smart she is. She's thinking all these steps ahead and she's contemplating, OK, well, you know, I can't go up against him with these. So she comes up with ways to like fight him that aren't, you know,
00:54:40
Speaker
you know, that are actually going to work. And she realizes that the gas is combustible and then uses her bugs to light a match over in his little gas bubble, gaseous cloud, his little fart cloud over there. And like blows the fucker up. Like I, oh, I just, it upsets me how smart Taylor is. And like,
00:55:06
Speaker
Once again, I would not last long in this world. In the hero world? No way. I'd be like, well, can't beat him, might as well die. There's no way. Is that what happened? Is that she lit it? I thought she was trying to light it. And then he figured out what she was trying to do. And he was about to shoot. And that's where she's like, I know what you're doing.
00:55:35
Speaker
And he's like, ah, fuck it. And then shoots his gun anyway. Yeah. I think his gun is the thing that sets it off, but she has a lighter in her hands and then her bugs have a matchbox. And so it's like multiple ways of attack. And then he ends up, you know, pulling, pulling the trigger himself, but golly. Oh man.
00:55:58
Speaker
I've got her got the meme for this. I've got so many memes in my head. Ready for this. No, I was trying to, I was trying to remember what it was called from a bug's life. Uh, PT fleas, flaming, flaming death strikes the match. Excellent. Excellent.
00:56:21
Speaker
That's pretty good. Stay tuned on our social medias for upcoming memes. All us on Instagram for all the memes and Reddit. Mine's just going to be like one, any WWE Smackdown where like some guys just getting absolutely wailed on and then, you know, it's just mannequin crawling away to tag in burn scar.
00:56:39
Speaker
Oh my gosh. It's the famous WWE clip where Vince McMahon, a McMahon, whatever his name is, McMahon, not in charge of the WWE anymore. Hopefully behind bars someday. Anyway, when he's like running out onto the ring to try to, to try to break up the fight and then pulls his quads getting onto the ring and just sits there. Like that's mannequin. It immediately collapses.
00:57:08
Speaker
Yeah, that was rough. Did he say sexual assault now? He did say sexual assault. I echoed it, and then was like, I can't make a joke out of that. I was saying, Vince McMahon, and it just came out bad. It was sexual assault. Sorry to our advertisers. You heard me correctly. Yeah, so.
00:57:32
Speaker
What do we think about the tag out? Because I think that's the bullshittiest bullshit ever. Yeah. Okay. We have so many rules. I did not see this in any of those rules. Did y'all see this in the rules? Cause I didn't read that in the rules. I mean, I don't know what I'm saying. Burnscore says as much. She's like, uh, you know, I won't, does she say, I won't tell if you want something to that effect. Yeah. She's like, yeah, I'm going to take over now. Like, are you really going to, who are you going to complain to? Not going to be a snitch, but I'd be like, all right, Jack, like,
00:58:02
Speaker
I'm sending bugs your way. I've got some, I've got some issues, you know, cheating teammates, my man, actually, actually, if I were pig, pick it, pick it as specifically who I think would do this, I would, I would just be emailing the shit out of Jack being like, now you said,
00:58:21
Speaker
And I quote, but we have, you know, so-and-so tagged in. Now I think it only right that we should be allowed to tag in for one of, you know, our big heroes. I think maybe Alexandria, you know, email me back at your earliest convenience, fucker tag inside. Honestly, based on what we've learned from the picket interlude, I don't know. Alexandria would go to turn a fight, but we're good to that. That's got some interesting questions for that interlude towards the end.
00:58:49
Speaker
Yeah, I forgot that Burnscar can teleport through her fire. That is so cool, but so unfair. Burnscar has one of those what I might call an unfair power. How do you say bullshit? Yeah.
00:59:14
Speaker
But yeah, it's cool though. It's very cool. Anytime we get into stuff with fire, it just means like.
00:59:24
Speaker
It's one of those things like deep ocean or deep space. Like, fire is kind of one of those things that you just, you can't really get away from it. Like, sure, you can try and put it out, but once it reaches a certain point, like, you're not gonna put it out. Like, this isn't gonna be the Lion King where a nice rain will suddenly, you know, extinguish the flames on the Saharan. You know, like, that's not how it's gonna go. Like, these flames are out of control. They are burning the territory down.
00:59:52
Speaker
And there is practically nothing that they can do about it. Like, like, what are you going to do? What are you going to do? Like, sure, you're on the ocean. You're in a Bay City. But like, that means absolutely nothing if you don't have, you know, roads that are functional enough for like a fire truck to come through. Like, none of that is going to happen. And so what do you do? You do your best with with Genesis and you what, evacuate? Like, that's your best bet here.
01:00:22
Speaker
Yeah, for real. If, if burn scar had half a mind too, and this is one of those, you know, any of them could do this. She could literally set a city on fire. All it would take is her just. Teleport burning her way, you know, every 15 feet in rapid succession, just down a street and down, you know, turning and going back down the other, like,
01:00:48
Speaker
You can't put out that much fire and she could just keep lighting. Like, Holy cow. And unlike anything with like, if you had a water power, for example, cause I'm, I'm always thinking with opposite of fire water, but like if, okay, sure. Great. Okay. You can drown someone with a lot of water, but then what, when you stop controlling it, it just kind of like what settles fire is going to continue eating until it's done until it burns itself out.
01:01:19
Speaker
Yeah. Yep. Naturally destructive. I think that's why in Avatar the Last Airbender, they quickly realized like, oh, we need to maybe limit. It's like, oh, which you know, which nation is the most likely to try to take over the world? So the ones who can make it windy or make it wet, move some rocks. Or is it the ones who can burn everything down? I don't know. Is it the cool guys who can kick ass or is it the dudes who like
01:01:49
Speaker
make snow cones. Gee, I wonder who. Who could it be? I don't know. I like a good snow cone myself. The opening of this though, when she issues her, her challenge, which I'll be honest, kind of feels like it just gets mostly ignored because of the fire. Um, but, uh, burn scar is absolutely right because as much dogtism as Rachel has, she does not mourn dogs like she does people. And, um,
01:02:20
Speaker
Yeah. I think, I think burn scar nailed her right there.
01:02:24
Speaker
I think Bernscar unintentionally nailed her in the sense that like, because I don't think bitch cares about people at all. I think she cares about very, very specific people. And so I, yes, you know, I think we've talked about how the undersiders are kind of like bitches pack and she sort of has that mentality with them. Um, because yeah, she cares about them more than her dogs, but she would care about her dogs more than pretty much anybody else. Oh yeah. Bernscar was like, you know, just go kill people.
01:02:53
Speaker
She'd be like, okay, fine, you know, it's not going to matter. Yeah. But I think about this specifically, you know, an arc eight with the lung fight, she gets there and somebody says something about, uh, why isn't, you know, where's bitch? We could really use her dog. So that's like, you really could use fodder is what you're saying. Like, right. And you got to realize that bitch would kill you where you stand for saying something like that. Cause to her dogs are more important than people, but.
01:03:23
Speaker
Well, we kind of find out when she rescues Taylor is, you know, she's essentially sacrifices a lot of those dogs to save Taylor. Yeah. Like they're, you know, they're important to her. They're important than a lot more other people, but for the people that she knows and cares about, uh, you know, losing a couple of dogs here and there isn't as big of a deal. She's got a more in them, but she would have mourned Taylor a lot more and she
01:03:52
Speaker
You know, I don't think a lot more burn skirt. Well, I mean, enough to sacrifice multiple dogs for one person. Like, yeah, I don't think, I don't think, have that been a one to one ratio? Rachel would have done that. She would have been like, Ooh, tough break. You know? Yeah. She's not, she's not doing that for the average person. That's for sure. No, but it is surprising because, you know,
01:04:19
Speaker
She is all dogs and she think, you know, the whole like things like a dog and like, man, dogs are more important people to her. But it's not true at a fundamental level. Like she really has this community here with other humans, which is what she really craves. Not with dogs. Um, and it's, you know, it's this kind of big secret of like, no, she really does care about these people. And they mean a lot to her. Like a lot, a lot, because that's what she wants.
01:04:48
Speaker
because she wants that family that she never had when she was a kid, the dog was a stand in for that. Like a dog was, you know, not to say it was a, you know, a distraction from that, but she as a child had that dog and that distracted her from the family that she unfortunately was stuck with. Yep.
01:05:07
Speaker
Yeah, good thoughts. We've talked about not to beat a dead horse or beat a dead dog, I guess, but I do love multiple dead dogs. I love her. You know what? Is this a dog story? No. No, it's not. Is this where the red fern grows like five? No. I can't. I can't do that again. I've got this idea for a new movie.
01:05:35
Speaker
It's about superheroes, but it's about superheroes with dogs. What were you saying Jacob? Being a dead dog? No, I was just going to, I was just going to reaffirm my love for bitch and her character. Really fun character. I'm going to keep going with this because I like this train of thought, but also would have been a really fun protagonist for a story would have been obviously a very different story.
01:06:02
Speaker
Bitch would have made a really interesting main protagonist for this series, if it had been from the beginning, when a really interesting character to follow.
01:06:12
Speaker
That just might mean we might get more interludes that are dog based interludes. I'm 100% here for. Has somebody done, has somebody done like fan fiction yet? It's just a dog interludes and worm, like all the dog interludes. I need to read it. People have definitely done Rachel fan fiction, but I'm sure that's not what I'm looking for. I'm looking for all dogs all the time and how they, I need somebody to rewrite worm.
01:06:42
Speaker
but it's entirely from one of the dogs. First of all, there is not like, I don't think there's a single God. I think that you are the man for the job. Oh no. With great power comes great responsibility. You know what? You son of a bitch, I'm in. Yeah.
01:07:14
Speaker
No, no, it'd be very short, but you know, it's the few times the dogs are involved, but you know, and then they're just like, Oh, and then it got really watery everywhere. Like, Ooh, like taking a bath all the time. And then there was this giant lizard and tasted like chicken. So confused. That was confusing for a second.
01:07:36
Speaker
You know, it should be because it's a dog. And mid thought when they die. Just like, yeah, just squirrel. I don't, I do not like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. So how do you tell the difference between a Yorkshire terrier and like a French bulldog or a German shepherd or you know, a half wolf? Like each one has very distinct thoughts.
01:08:00
Speaker
You know, you write it like how Wild Bo writes the heroes. Yeah, that's good. Just go ahead. Don't encourage that, Michael. Michael, you don't, don't encourage that. Do you see the field, Brutus? No! Don't you gladiator this bullshit. Don't you dare. No, no, no, no, no. There will be no field. No, no, no. I can't deal with dead dogs. Thank you very much.
01:08:25
Speaker
I'm actually the same way. Somehow Worm gets around that for me. I don't know how, I guess, because they're super dogs and they're cool and they're going out in a blaze of glory.
01:08:36
Speaker
Like John Wick is hard for me to watch, but I tolerate it because the whole movie is about him killing the entire mob because they killed his dog. So like, you know, justice. But a worm, I don't know why worm doesn't trigger that for me because I will avoid books where dogs die. I absolutely will. Or in movies. My favorite website is does the dog die? You just put in your movie and he tells you if there's a dog that dies in that movie and I will not watch a movie if there's a dead dog. We talked about that, the Sisu movie.
01:09:05
Speaker
where the entire advertisement I saw for the campaign was just the dog doesn't die in this one. It's just shots of the dog with the guy the whole time. I need that, I need that. Solid advertising. Yeah, but worm gets around it. I give it a pass for some whatever internal reason, just because they're awesome and superheroes, I guess.
01:09:29
Speaker
Well, when they die, though, it feels... Well, not that this makes it any better when it happens in other movies, but when they die, they feel like they were part of the fight. They were part of the team. That is true. After the big behemoth fight, it's like when Bitch carves... Leviathan. Thank you. Thank you. Leviathan fight. My bad. When Bitch carves their names into the memorial, I sobbed my eyes out because it was so... Because they were part of the team.
01:09:59
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Getting emotional right now. I think that is definitely part of it, Hannah, is that it's the difference, too, between a lot of times in dog movies they emphasize either how the dog is making this heroic selfless sacrifice or just it just happens because dogs get old and that happens sometimes, right? Yeah.
01:10:23
Speaker
And so it feels like the dogs are a lot more innocent in those cases. Not that Rachel's dogs aren't innocent, but like Jacob said, they're part of the fights. Although they might not be completely aware, they seem to be loyal and care enough and have, as we saw in the interlude, some level of conscientiousness to be able to say, I understand what's going on and I'm choosing to be a part of this fight. Yeah, there's some agency there.
01:10:51
Speaker
Yeah, it makes it feel better than just that does help, you know, right? Oh, no. Old Yeller got hit by a trucker, you know. Yeah. No, he went out. No, don't you expect old Yeller like that? I swear to God. Watch old Yeller for that very reason. I still. But you get it, you get it. No, well, I mean, Lucy's death here doesn't feel like it's sad, but I think also the more we know dogs, the more
01:11:19
Speaker
like the more it means when they do die as opposed like in other movies if a dog dies like they're the one dog in the movie like we all know that they're the one dog and here like there's always a big pack of them it's like when like with Brutus like we all know Brutus like that's important and now that we know bastard and we're meeting some of the other dogs that are have become the arsenal basically like Lucy we didn't know Lucy and so when she dies it's like oh
01:11:45
Speaker
Damn it, that fucker, we're mad, but we're not overcome with grief about it. Let us know in the comments, do you cry more about the dogs dying like we do, or is it? Or are you a heartless person? Listen, you know what really gets me? Chubster. Never forget, RIP, shut up. Rest in superpowers.
01:12:13
Speaker
Okay. I'm going to take this time to move on to chapter five. Oh, no, no, no. Let's not move on. Cause we have one more bit and that's hot. Brian can push me up against a wall anytime. Okay. Well, that's one of those out there forever. Let it be known. Hot Brian is hot. Hot Brian is so hot. Brian is just, he knows. Yes. Yes. I don't even know what he wants and he gives it to you and he knows. Yeah. Well, yeah. That was what you want.
01:12:42
Speaker
He knows what the reader wants, that's for damn sure. Anyway, you were saying chapter five? Yes, chapter five. You should get me sidetracked like that. Yes, chapter five. Okay, so Taylor confronts Bitch after this whole thing with Burnsgar and then talks to to Genesis.
01:12:58
Speaker
And then we have a little conversation, Coyle and the travelers and the undersiders, and they talk about moving forward in their plan and how what they're doing isn't working, and that the best way to move forward is to just be more aggressive. Be aggressive.
01:13:17
Speaker
B, B, aggressive. No, you're going to do this. I'm going to add also chapter six to this since they're kind of connected. The Undersiders and the Travelers have a plan where they're kind of set up to surround the nine on rooftops. They have all this stuff they're going to do and they ambush the Slaughterhouse Nine. And through this whole venture,
01:13:38
Speaker
It seems to actually go relatively okay. They do capture Shatterbird and Cherish, but unfortunately, Gru is captured by the Slaughterhouse Nine in the impending scuffle. And I'm gonna just stop there. I really like this aggressive plan. This whole chapter is where it kicks up a notch for me. This is where we've gotten out of that slump that I was kind of like having trouble reading. And it's go time.
01:14:08
Speaker
Yeah, it's it feels super like if it's hard to watch them like run all the time and to constantly be like trying to decide what they're going to do reacting instead of acting. And so this is like, OK, we're going to make the first move here. We're going to catch them off guard. We're going to make it happen. And it's it feels good because when Taylor has a plan, when they have a plan and they're like executing and they're making it happen, it feels like
01:14:35
Speaker
Fuck yeah, we're going to do this. It's a good plan. Let's fucking go. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. And again, just alluding to the fact that the, the travelers are absurdly powerful. Yeah. Just, you know, sup with that, man. It's like the travelers individually just all would rather be on another team. It does kind of feel that way. And let me tell you, they should, because like,
01:15:05
Speaker
Sun dancers bitching infects ballistic. And it fucking ruins everything. Like, I have such high expectations of the travelers. You know, I didn't think much of them from the first two couple of times I read this. And then we got back to this and y'all, y'all, y'all had me, you know, we were really doing it. And you know what? I'll even say you still got me with trickster. I didn't like him the first couple of times in this one. He wins it for me.
01:15:35
Speaker
but the rest of them, the bitching and the whining, you know what? The trickster was right. I will say, unfortunately, the trickster apparently has not been playing his call of duty because he missed his shot on, um, on cherish. Oh, that hurt. He didn't kill. I mean, he, he maimed her and you know, all of that. And they got some good information out of it, but, um, yeah, he definitely, uh,
01:16:06
Speaker
definitely missed there, did not pull off the 360 no scope that we were all hoping for. I was going to say it. I wonder because I, and I mean, obviously I'm not the writer, but I, I wonder why they didn't play it off where like he did hit the shot perfectly and then cherish his fine because of all of the safety measures that, you know, uh, um, phone sauce put in place. Like that's kind of implied later, but I wonder why, uh, it wasn't,
01:16:35
Speaker
I wonder why Wadbo didn't go with a deadlier shot there to display that up. Well, I think because he wanted to keep using Cherish is probably why. I would assume. Just not wanting to get rid of a character who you just have ideas for, you have plans for. I think that's fair. I also kind of like her bleeding out all over the place. It kind of fills me with a little bit of joy. Yeah.
01:17:03
Speaker
I would say, and we also, it's a pretty good shot. I don't know how good, like how much practice he has with a sniper rifle in the first place. Um, great maneuver. Uh, but dang, dang. He has a couple of really good maneuvers in this whole thing. Yeah. And I think, I think part of it too is because his power is one of the more interesting ones. You know, Sundancer, she's making a big, big sun ball. Um, ballistic, you know, pushes stuff.
01:17:33
Speaker
Um, really fast pushes it really fast. Uh, uh, tricksters though, I just always find to be more interesting and fun to interact with. And I think that, yeah, this is a great example of those maneuvers, like you said, where he's switching, switching the place of something he's already aiming at to shoot it. Uh, and then moving the team and all of that is really, really cool. I would love to play a video game.
01:17:58
Speaker
essentially super hot, but with trickster's power. I was actually thinking of super hot. That's so funny. Pause. Honestly, just add trickster's power to super hot. I think that would be really enjoyable. The turn, maybe throw yourself off a building, turn, switch places with the dude back there, fire a gun, switch places with another dude, switch to places where guys are shooting at each other.
01:18:25
Speaker
I loved the bit of, well, I guess is it this chapter coming out? I get these kind of confused where he's just sort of like keeping crawler back by just swapping him with really heavy shit. Yeah, I love that. It's such a great moment because it's a really powerful ability. I can imagine crawler would get frustrated and give up, right?
01:18:46
Speaker
No, he doesn't. He just keeps getting swapped for semi trucks and he's just like, like turns around and comes racing back. And I just love that. Yeah. Like I, in my head, crawler would give up. Could he just be like, there's like, there's no building a resistance against getting, you know, he's not getting hurt. And the way he operates, he's kind of lazy until he's dragged into, you know, he thinks that it's interesting for him.
01:19:16
Speaker
So I imagine after like three or four times of swapping this, he would just get angry and just sit down on his haunches and just like glare like your motherfuckers. Well, yeah. I mean, once I'll get you and you're pretty later. Yeah. Uh, once, I mean, cause crawlers old things, he wants to get hurt. So like the soon as he realizes that that's not happening, like he's going to lose interest. Yeah. If, if he can't do anything about it until he finds some dancers, son,
01:19:43
Speaker
And then he's like, oh, what fun. I really wanted like a laser pointer and a cat scene with Sundancer. He's just like, follow the Sun. It's the opposite problem where Taylor realizes like, no, like Sundancer, he wants to get hurt. Get it away. Get it away. She's like, what? It's like, you know how you hate killing people? This is your time to shine. Don't kill him. Run it away. He likes it.
01:20:15
Speaker
He likes it when people try to kill him. Have you ever seen, this is going to be a silly rant, cut this Michael, but I'm going to do it anyway. Oh yeah. That's a quick one, I promise. The film adaptation of Little Shop of Horrors with Rick Moranis and
01:20:35
Speaker
There's a cameo there with Steve Martin and Bill Murray. Steve Martin plays the dentist, the sadist. And then Bill Murray is the masochist patient who comes in. He's just like, he heard rumors that this guy, all he does is torture his patients and he just wants to get hurt so bad. He's just like, give me a deep, long root canal. No gas.
01:21:00
Speaker
Oh, yeah. It's such a great scene. I love it so much. Why are you telling me this? Do you think anybody's had a traumatic trigger event that they enjoyed? Yeah. Okay, now I understand why you're telling me this. I was awesome.
01:21:22
Speaker
I was going for that. Like that, that was a crawler's trigger was something like that. I get it now. Yeah. It's really bad. Enjoy it. He's like, I think I'll get a root canal.
Taylor's Transformation
01:21:42
Speaker
I've been good man.
01:21:44
Speaker
The whole concept of this fight, the buildup, we moved past it, but like they finally go, the gloves are off. We just got to kill some people. And they're like, what are you talking about? And Taylor goes guns and grenades, lethal spiders. I've been holding back. Let's break out everything. No holds barred. That right there is.
01:22:09
Speaker
The kind of what, you know, we've been waiting for in this, it's what made, it's what made the Leviathan fight. So, uh, such a standout because it's not human. There's no holding back on this thing. Your job is to just try and delay it through any means possible. And granted, you know, arms master does, and that does get him in trouble, but like,
01:22:37
Speaker
These are people who have powers and they even talk about some of these powers are stronger than we let on. And we will not let civilians see this because if they see us going this ham, they will be shitting themselves. Like heroes would not be allowed. Heroes are around because they're kind of cute, you know? They're like, ah, we've got this guy and he flies around and he's got some little pew pews. And then you're like, oh, no.
01:23:07
Speaker
That guy could just, you know, eviscerate a stadium full of people with a laser beam, you know, it's what makes the boys terrifying. Like the TV show and the comic like, and in this case, it's, this is why we don't show that off. And now Taylor is like, get the guns, get the grenade launchers, whatever it takes. And you know, for her, it's pulling out the lethal spiders.
01:23:35
Speaker
Oh, like X going to give it to you moment. It's X going to give it to you. Knock, knock. Open up the door for real.
01:23:46
Speaker
It's actually funny that you brought that up because I took a screenshot because I was reading on my phone. I took a screenshot of that and circled it because it made me think of that conversation where she's comparing the undersiders to the nine. And Brian's kind of like, that's not a flattering comparison, but she says, I'm going to just read it because I like it a lot.
01:24:11
Speaker
So she says how many divisions of the protectorate or the alliances of the cape have tried to beat them trick or says a lot she says too many to count the nine play things like a team. Like my team does on good days they pick their fights avoid confrontations or disappearing when.
01:24:27
Speaker
they aren't certain that they can win. When they do fight, they hit where it hurts. We do that. Look at what Regent did to Shadowstalker, what I did to Lung. They terrorize their victims and we do the same thing, unintentional or not. And this is the part that I circled, because literally we had a comment on our YouTube. Someone commented this for our Arc 5, Part 2 section, that the theme of the Undersiders is scary villains.
01:24:57
Speaker
And she says, Gru is scary with the darkness. Bitches dogs make people shit themselves. Me, everyone is at least a little creeped out by bugs. Tattletale and Regent are unnerving in a whole different way. The nine are us on steroids. And I love that idea that we have to think like them because we are them. And that is how we're going to beat them.
01:25:28
Speaker
Tell me what you need. I'm thinking explosives. Yeah. How much can you provide? And then Lisa, hold on. You're talking about ballistic and Sundancer using their powers with limits.
01:25:41
Speaker
and you want to use Noelle, now explosives. And I'm talking about me using black widows, brown recluses, and every nasty bug I have at my disposal. I'm talking about us packing guns and grenades, all of us, no holds barred. Fuck yes. Oh, it's great. I love it so much. But also, just to mention it too, because it does sort of get mentioned in passing,
01:26:11
Speaker
The biggest check offs gun in the story right now is Noel.
Speculative Discussions and Humor
01:26:15
Speaker
And I forgot, no spoilers obviously, but just reading it is anchoring me. That is just like, oh yeah, we can't, oh, we don't wanna bring her in now. Why not? Oh, it'd be bad for everybody. Why? Oh, everybody's just gonna die. Don't worry about it.
01:26:31
Speaker
She gets out. Yeah. What? Come on. Level with me here. Lisa, Lisa, like immediately like why? I don't want to say looks at Lisa. You got that, right? Yeah, exactly. You know what it is? Just keep them denying. All I can think of is that scene from Atlantis where it's like.
01:26:49
Speaker
You don't want to know. She told me, and I didn't want to know, but she told me anyway, and I didn't want to know. And I'm telling you, you don't want to know. Exactly. It's exactly that. Where it's just like, yeah, it's definitely the huge. So, so what is this exactly is going to happen? You know, kind of everybody's just waiting, just waiting to see what happens. Yeah. God, I have so much just exclamation points to that whole fight. Like the sniper body swap.
01:27:17
Speaker
Genius Taylor lied. Uh, fuck you crawler. You ain't doing shit today. Okay. Tricksters winning a little region control. Hell yeah. Oh, I love that. And then that was green. That's great. Yeah. And then, and then we get all the way back to them cat post battle. Um, if we're okay moving there, I don't know where we can go. Yeah. Yeah. Brooks.
01:27:43
Speaker
Why the fuck do you know the chemical makeup of spider venom? It's like one of my favorite little blips where he like pops his head around the corner. He's like, uh, Hey boss, actually, like, what do you know? You fucking nerd should have shoved you in a locker for a trigger in college. I'm trying to, I'm trying to remember what the study of bugs was, but
01:28:10
Speaker
Ichthyology, I believe. I thought ichthyology. No, that's fish. That's fish, I like. Yeah, I was going to say ichthy. I like. That's study of entomology. You're right, entomology. Not to be confused with entomology, which is the study of the fangorn forest. Oh my gosh. Now who's the nerd?
01:28:38
Speaker
Oh my gosh. Oh my god. Please move on, quickly. Yes, okay. So, we're gonna move into chapter seven, Cherish. So they grab Cherish and Shadowbird, they take him back. Cherish reveals that she struck a deal with Imp. Skidder speaks to the Protectorate in Bug Swarm, which is actually so freaking cool.
01:29:02
Speaker
Power upgrade. They refused to help her or help any of them really against the Slaughterhouse-9. And we find out that Armsmaster has escaped his little protective cell and no one really knows where he is. And that's not great. They're so incompetent. They're so incompetent. Why is it bad that he's escaped?
01:29:26
Speaker
Isn't he like... Because if he leaves the city, it violates their rules. His villain parole, first off, which is the parole that the villains have issued, not to be confused with the parole that they've issued him because he's a villain. That's a different thing.
01:29:48
Speaker
I mean, yeah, no skitter mentioned. I hope he doesn't leave the city or else I hope you all have some track of him. That's more concerning. That's true.
01:29:58
Speaker
Yes, I think also this is where Cherish reveals, is it here that Cherish reveals that the thing that's going to happen is that Bonesaw has a bioweapon of some kind that she's going to release in the city should anyone try to leave.
Threat of the Slaughterhouse Nine
01:30:13
Speaker
She does. And that's the big, the punishment that will be applied should people leave. You know what? I'll say it now. Cherish didn't surrender. She's not a POW. Plug that bitch.
01:30:26
Speaker
Uh, I mean, I love that. They're like, where can we put her? How about in the ground? How about a buoy in the middle of the bay? Yeah. How about in a fucking coffin? She can't, but we can't, we can't kill her, right? What was it? She can bleed out as the best we've got. We can't just, no, no, no, no. That's sure her, her skull isn't wrapped up. It's just all the vital organs, like the heart and the lungs and stuff like that.
01:30:52
Speaker
Oh, it's not. You could put a gun like you, they can find a way. Not for all for y'all. Oh, but yeah, but no, they, they decide that that's where they're going to stash her at least. And uh, clearly mannequin didn't think the brain was a vital organ based on his tactical abilities. Yeah. Taylor has.
01:31:19
Speaker
And I'm not going to say single-handedly because obviously other people helped, but it certainly feels like under Taylor's guidance. We have taken not one, not two, but three slaughterhouse nine members down more than a third of their team is gone because of her. And the PRT is still like, well, we couldn't even keep track of our one dude. Like, what do you do all day?
01:31:49
Speaker
And, uh, you know, I apparently fill out paperwork, like, and I get, I get, don't get me wrong. I, you know, I get that that needs to be done, but seriously, what is going on over there? What sort of chuckle fuckery is happening in the PRT headquarters? Cause it doesn't seem like a darn thing. It seems like one guy in front of a door, making sure that arms master doesn't leave. And that's it. It's that and to go pick it.
01:32:18
Speaker
That's it. That's the entirety of the headquarters as far as I know. Well, I mean, yeah, I was going to say, I think that plays very well to the fact that the story is told from Taylor's perspective. Like from her perspective, they haven't done anything. They haven't, they haven't done a damn thing since Leviathan to fix the city, chase away the villains, take care of the slaughterhouse nine. Like as far as she can, she's concerned they are completely useless.
01:32:47
Speaker
Give me a couple chapters and I'll completely roll back everything I just said. Well, she specifically talks about having controlled chaos or managed chaos, I think.
01:33:02
Speaker
And PRT, they're looking at her and they're like, but that is chaos though. And by definition, we're not supposed to be chaos. We are supposed to be controlled and in control. And this idea that we can't just go willy nilly and potentially put people at risk. And that's not something we're going to even tempt fate on.
01:33:27
Speaker
Even if, you know, even if all these villains die in the process, like, okay, but we're not going to play into that. We're not going to play that game. Like, we're not going to play the chaos. Oh my gosh. Just legend. How do you not get this? Like.
01:33:43
Speaker
At one point in time, he asks like, ah, like, well, basically like, what's her deal? It's like, we all know what her deal is. Like, she got screwed over. She's still helping people fuck off. And you know what? Oh, maybe you could do what's right. Why don't you do what's right and double fuck off? Like, geez, man. I think I wonder too, if Piget and legend aren't
01:34:12
Speaker
more hesitant to because of their trauma, specifically with the slaughterhouse nine. And this is kind of bringing in the interlude, Pig is interlude, but I think it's relevant here where there is this hesitancy because in their minds they're thinking, well, this is just an undefeatable foe. Why would we ever choose to go up against them when we can kind of wait it out and just survive?
01:34:37
Speaker
Which, you know, yeah, definitely a little scared bitch behavior, but I get it at a certain level, I guess. No, I mean, that's a really valid insight because there is at this point no answer for Siberian.
01:34:54
Speaker
The PRT have not a single answer for how to deal with her. Anybody who fights her dies. There's just, there's nothing. There's like any attempt to engage with her is death. There's no stopping her. There's no containing her. There's no cage. Like we kind of gloss over that a bit. I think just because of the way the chapters are written and she's not really the primary
01:35:18
Speaker
antagonist from the Slaughterhouse-9. From the PRT's perspective, they do not have a plan for that. There's no way to deal with it. So it does make sense. Why would they engage? All they're going to do is die and make the Slaughterhouse-9 angry enough to kill everyone around them. It's a really, really interesting dilemma that
01:35:43
Speaker
that I don't think Taylor probably appreciates, which is fair, but it does sort of muddy the waters and complicates the sort of politics, if you will, of the battle going on, which again, it's just so good. It's good writing. It's just very complex. It's like, I love all the insight there. Legend is honest to God, how you feel a lot of times watching Superman in the Justice League Unlimited and Justice League series,
01:36:13
Speaker
where he's just frustratingly Boy Scout and you just want to slap him sometimes. Like with his smug little, why don't you just do what's right? And it's just like, fuck off. The adults are trying to have a conversation here and we don't need your platitudes.
01:36:35
Speaker
I like how it's written. I feel like the frustration we get is like, why it's so good. Yeah, for sure. 100%. Well, I mean, they, and the thing is, is that like, technically they can't, they can't help. Like they're not, they're not supposed to, right? Says who? Well, no, no, there are, so those who are in the city are allowed to help. So legend is part of the group that is allowed to help. I'm pretty sure. I was gonna say, I don't think he is.
01:37:01
Speaker
I'm pretty sure that he's specifically an out of towner. I was about to say, I think he's a transfer. I remember if he was. Well, I mean, like, okay, if we're counting him as like, okay, well, he's been here for an hour. Like, I guess he can help, but I don't know. Weld can help, but legend, I think is literally there visiting because the slaughterhouse nine was like told like, Hey, we think we're there there. And he like showed up and they're like, yeah, no. Right. Cause he's, he's specifically one of the, uh,
01:37:32
Speaker
He's not one of the Triumvirate, he's just one of the Procterate, right? No, he's one of the Triumvirates. He's the Triumvirate. He's the Triumvirate. No, he's the Triumvirate. Procterate, sorry. The Triumvirate is a legend, Eidolon and Alexandria. Yeah, yeah. That's the Triumvirate, yeah. Wait, wait. What about Myrdon? I thought he was... I don't think he was... Myrdon is the... I believe Skidder describes him as the strongest member that is not in the Triumvirate.
01:37:57
Speaker
That's what it is. Okay. He's one of the top, he's like one of the top 10 heroes, but not in the top three. Yep. Yep. Yep. You're right. You're right. Um, as I recall. Okay. Yeah. He, you know, he's got other big three stuff doing, he's just stopping by for a, Hey, heard you had the slaughterhouse nine. Why don't you do the right thing? It's so, yeah, it's so pretentious.
01:38:23
Speaker
Honestly, I do understand why they haven't attacked yet. They're trying to figure out what they're supposed to do. But do something. Do anything. People are dying. Because something we haven't mentioned yet, but something that happens at the beginning, right before they have their big attack, is that the Slaughterhouse 9 are just walking down the street, cutting down anyone that just happens to be in their path. And it doesn't matter to them who it is. They're just... Jack is slashing away at whoever's there.
01:38:52
Speaker
The people that are dying in the city are your people. And it doesn't, like, this isn't just in the villain territories that have been taken over where like, oh, gangs, wrong rampant. Like, no, this is the people of Brockton Bay. Like, they're getting slaughtered out there and you guys are just hanging out at the PR. Like, what the fuck are you doing? This feels like an Old West movie where, like,
01:39:16
Speaker
The bad gang is comically outside, you know, dragging people down the street, walking by going, you know, and scaring people and, you know, untying their horses and, you know,
01:39:30
Speaker
You know, it's just a comical level of, of skullduggery. And yeah. And then, uh, you know, Kurt Russell walks in and goes like, what the hell is going on out there to the sheriff? And he's like, well, uh, you know, we just keep our heads down and that's how we keep our heads, you know, and then, you know, goes back to sleep.
01:39:51
Speaker
and he shakes and slaps the deputy because he's like the whipping boy and he's like give me that badge and then he goes out and kicks their ass and throws three of them in jail and then is like yeah you know what get the fuck out and he throws the you know the sheriff out the sheriff's like well good i didn't want to be here off to california for me and he hops on a train that's what skidders should have gotten
01:40:11
Speaker
It's such a specific plot line. I know it's the random narrative for me that I just don't. It's Tombstone meets every Clint Eastwood movie's Apple Dumpling Gang, if you've ever seen that. It's Apple Dumpling Gang. Yeah, it's all of those.
01:40:31
Speaker
That's what's going on. Cause that's what they're doing. They're walking down, like you said, they're walking down the street, just cutting people. And to God, pants and people left and right. Who's going to stop Siberian from dancing all the people. All I could think of was a riff on the Arthur theme song is when you're walking down the street, I did every one you meet.
01:41:00
Speaker
Holy shit, that's the Slaughterhouse 9. And there's just blood spurting everywhere. We just referenced the Apple Dumpling gang and Arthur in five seconds. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. Honest to God, them walking down the street and getting, you know, the ever living daylights beat out of them by our crew. How in God's green earth did the Slaughterhouse 9 function before Bonesaw?
01:41:24
Speaker
Oh, I don't know. Otherwise we are just police snipers up on the roofs. Just bam, kill shot. Other than Siberian and crawler. Every one of these motherfuckers is just a bullet in the head away from dying. But now we've got bone saw who can just patch them up, living or dead, or you know, refit them with all these sheaths around everything. Like.
01:41:54
Speaker
you know, to protect them. If it weren't for her, the slaughterhouse nine is like a bad, is a bad event that happened. You know, Oh man. You remember that group? It was really rough for like a year. No, they'd be recruiting a lot more often. That's what would be happening. Not without Jack. Cause Jack gonna get plugged. Well, yeah. And unless he's holding hands and skipping down the lane with Siberian 24 seven,
01:42:23
Speaker
We are blowing Jack the fuck up. Well, and I mean, insert spoilers here, insert spoilers, you know, not going to spoil, but just insert spoilers that, you know, there's, there's other reasons why they were alive. There's, there's just for spoiler reasons, but no spoilers. No spoilers. I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to go into the next bits then. So the last, no, we've got to talk about Ms. Militia, the only sane individual in this place. God damn it.
01:42:49
Speaker
No, because we, because we have chairs, we've got a, you tried, you tried, but much like mannequin, you failed.
Gru's Trials and Sacrifices
01:42:55
Speaker
Go ahead. Go ahead. All right. So we're already talking about cherishes there. We're talking, talk about how to get rid of her. And obviously the answer is fucking put her in the ground, but I love, you know, everything about it. Everybody just ignoring cherish flatly, even in the background while she's spilling tattletales backstory. Like everybody's just ignoring her solidly. I love it.
01:43:19
Speaker
Um, that's beautiful. And they're like, Oh my gosh, she could totally be lying. Right? Says trickster. Like, uh-huh. In the end, I love that the thing that gets her is they threatened to send her ass back to the slaughterhouse nine. Finally. Yeah. I mean, it just goes to show like how much work they they've done on her. And clearly they have. Yeah. Also, also miss militia agrees. Miss militia. The only sane person at the room is like,
01:43:46
Speaker
Fuckin' we don't want her. Just shoot her and get it over with. Quit playing around. Yeah, I feel like funny, though, how they're all... Oh, go ahead. No, no, not all you. Not all you. No, no, no, go ahead. After you. After you. Anyways, um, what? So I would just say... One more time.
01:44:16
Speaker
No, for real. Go ahead. All right. So anyways, um, I do think it's funny. We are all kind of giving crap to, um, to ballistic for, you know, wigging out and being too scared to actually kill the slaughterhouse nine. But then they do the exact same thing when cherish comes and they're like, everybody's like, yeah, let's just kill her. And the skaters like, wait, but no.
01:44:43
Speaker
That's, this is different. And everybody's like, different how? Different how, Skitter? I can lie about civilians getting caught in your inferno, Sundancer. But if you ask me to plug a person right in front of me, it's different, you know? It's different when, you know, I have to do it.
01:45:06
Speaker
What's the community meme? You know, I can, I can excuse murder and open war, but I draw the line, you know, I had murder murder. You can excuse murder referencing that. That's like the reoccurring Taylor meme. It is actually the inspiration for the entire worm series. I remember Wild Bill writing about that. No, that is Taylor in a nutshell. That's hypocritical.
01:45:37
Speaker
Okay. Okay. You got it out of me. I'm done. Oh, can I, can I move on now? Are you sure? I mean, okay. If you want me to go, okay, chapter eight, um, have an extra note here about a whole thing, but you know, okay. So, so, so chapter eight, we go in, uh, with the city's villain Alliance, uh, attacking the slaughterhouse nine.
01:46:01
Speaker
Skitter, Tattletail, Trickster, Sundancer, and Ballistic Launch, a rescue attempt to try and save Gru and in turn are captured by Bonesaw. Where they also find him. Delightful. Did anybody else forget that Gru got captured? Nope, not even a little. Because as soon as he got captured, I knew exactly what was coming.
01:46:26
Speaker
I knew that too. We've got Cherish and we're just like talking nonchalantly and then it's like, oh yeah, an hour later, where's Gru? Chapter nine, Bonsaw tortures Skitter talking to her about the passenger, this passenger and her brain and the different parts and how kind of how powers work as she's done testing on them and then is attacked by
01:46:57
Speaker
Parian? Parian? Parian. Okay, thank you. Attacked by Parian's big little dinosaur monster. Gru has his second trigger event and kills Burned Scar and wounds Bonesaw.
01:47:15
Speaker
Chapter 10, Taylor and Brian are back at the base and they are able to discuss his second trigger event where Brian confesses that he has some feelings for Taylor. Very non-descript feelings for Taylor. Oh, he's got a lot of feelings. He's got something. I've got a lot of feelings. He's got a lot of... We know you have a lot of feelings. Drama.
01:47:45
Speaker
Man, does Bonesaw just get MVP of the arc here? Gosh, she is so... Terrifying. I know she's the worst. I know she's terrifying. She is my favorite. I love Bonesaw. And it is something about the body horror. It is something about the absolute grotesque.
01:48:02
Speaker
the fact that she wears this like doll's dress and then like carries around this giant like skull and is like the way she kisses Taylor on the forehead and then casually wipes the blood away as if it's not, you know, running down her lips. Like it's so gruesome. It's so macabre and I, I, oh, I love it. It's so great. It's so creepy, but it's so good. Bonesaw lives rent free in my head.
01:48:32
Speaker
Yes. On a weekly basis. Yeah. It's your Roman empire. I stand by that actually. Oh my God. Bonsaw is my Roman empire because not a week goes by that I don't think specifically about this event. And like, I am not kidding when I say somebody talks about just, Oh, the worst thing ever. And I just, my brain just goes and that, and I go, Oh, I got to remember Bonsaw now. Um, man. And as much as Taylor,
01:49:02
Speaker
has been wiping out, you know, the Taylor, the undersiders travelers, have been just going through the slaughterhouse nine like tissue paper. Bonesaw immediately evens that score up by just sitting up saw style in the corner and having taken out the entire team, no effort, like
01:49:24
Speaker
Holy cow, she could have set up shop there. And I imagine have taken out two or three more squads of heroes before they got wise. Like, honestly, the PRT might've even showed up by the time she was done.
01:49:39
Speaker
And it's funny that, you know, we were talking about how easy it would be just to shoot a lot of these people. They're not bulletproof. And, and bone saw kind of just does that with her tranq darts. Exactly. You guys aren't, you guys aren't bulletproof. Like I'm just going to hit you with a tranq dart and she gets all of them that way. Right into her trap. Bunch of bunch of dorks. Yeah.
01:50:07
Speaker
Yeah, that powder is really freaking creepy that it incapacitates you, but you're still like very well aware.
01:50:15
Speaker
Yeah. Terrifying. I love, too, how she talks about them as subjects, truly. Like, they're not people to her. They're just fascinating objects for her to study. And it's just this like, oh, wow, like, oh, you can still kind of use your powers even without having access to that part of your brain that I've turned off? Fascinating. And just, again, it's so chilling because this is...
01:50:45
Speaker
It's so cold and dark, and this is literally a small child that we're talking about. I mean, literally in that she's small, but in the sense that she is so young. And just to be so disassociated from the pain and suffering that she's causing and seeing it as just an experiment or as just a game, something to play with and test and try.
01:51:13
Speaker
You know, um, this is a bit of a rabbit trail and then I'll come back to bone solve, but there's this, you know, that question of if ethics weren't an issue and you had unlimited funds, what would be some really interesting scientific experiments? And I think bone saw just does that. That is her whole life is just, what if, you know, I took apart people's brains to see what was inside when they have superpowers and how they work. What if I took apart every single piece of grew to see where does his darkness come from anyways? Um,
01:51:43
Speaker
And it just makes you think, what was her trigger event? What got her to be that person that is just so disassociated from everything around her to the point where she can just nonchalantly try to cut open somebody's brain while they're still awake. It's wild. It's absolutely wild. I think the idea we're talking about like cold.
01:52:10
Speaker
It's, you know, it's cold in the sense of like her empathetically, you know, connecting with someone, but it's, she's, she's energetic and happy about it. Like she is not cold in the slightest in terms of her enthusiasm. It's a manic sort of psychopathy that she has. Yeah. And it's, it's, I think that makes it worse. Yeah. Oh, oh yeah. So much so. But, but I, you know, I wasn't thinking about that before, but now that you mentioned like,
01:52:39
Speaker
the PRT gets their hands on that hard drive that she tries to get. And then you have, is it the Mengele dilemma? Where during the Holocaust, there were all these experiments done on people. And a lot of science came out of that. Maybe I'm misremembering that, but essentially we found all the research and
01:53:08
Speaker
Well, ethically, what do you do with that? A bunch of doctors sat down and essentially went, well, it's been done. We know all this stuff because of that. Do we keep this and use this for good? Or do we burn it just because this was so horrifying? And if I remember right, we kept it. And it's the basis of a lot of medical science today. And all I can think of is the PRT getting their hands on that hard drive and going, well,
01:53:38
Speaker
We've always wondered about powers, right? Yeah. And we always knew that it would take something really terrible to figure it out. We w do we keep this hard drive or do we toss it in the dumpster, you know? Yeah.
01:53:56
Speaker
I mean, it is fascinating from a world building perspective, like what Bonesaw is trying to do is answer that question. We've joked before about how Wild Bo will give answers to questions we didn't know we wanted answers to, especially within this kind of genre.
01:54:14
Speaker
But where did our powers come from? No other property attempts to answer that question, really. I mean, there's a lot of niche stories that do, but broadly, Marvel, DC, all those big ones. Even the boys, it's like, oh, they got injections or they drank something out of a vial. Well, what did that vial come from?
01:54:34
Speaker
we're, we've asked too many questions. Okay. Stop asking questions. Like bone size attempting to get that answer in a, in a really fucked up way. But it is also as a reader, like I also kind of want her to succeed because I'm curious now, like where do the powers come from? You know, so there is, there's that element too, or even as a reader, I'm, I'm kind of torn between wanting to see her succeed and also wanting her to be stopped. Yeah. Yeah. It crosses, crosses the pages.
01:55:02
Speaker
When she starts talking about, oh, I'm so sorry, Nick. No, go ahead. Well, I'm just going to say when she starts talking about the parts of the brain, it's like, like I'm not, I don't know my anatomy, but like when she's talking about this part, no, it's behind this section and over here and you know, whatever. It's like,
01:55:20
Speaker
And she mentions even, I've watched someone trigger and I've seen it form and how it moves. And it's like, that means you cracked open someone's skull, drove them to a trigger event so you could watch how their brain would form under duress and under a trigger event. And that is just so... How many times has she done that?
01:55:44
Speaker
Enough so that she talks about the passenger, she talks about, you know, what happens while our triggers are forming, how it shapes the brain. Like, woof. Yeah. It's a lot. It also brings up something where we talked about, like she essentially, you know, she had somebody's brain open like that. She forced a trigger event. I mean, she forced a second one here, which means
01:56:12
Speaker
that what we were told before, kind of way at the beginning of, oh, you can't force trigger events, isn't true. And it's probably another example of the PRT doesn't want that to get out because then you'd have parents throwing kids off cliffs, hoping they get powers. Yeah. That toxic waste. Yeah. Where would we even find a vet?
01:56:38
Speaker
I mean, plenty of people also just die. Like, it has to be enough duress that you're still alive for. You can't just chuck somebody into a vat of toxic waste, they'll melt. But like, it has to be enough that they're alive, that they're preying push to their absolute limit. Like, Gru has his nerves splayed out across the floor. And that's not enough.
01:57:02
Speaker
And that right there, I think about that the most. I hate horror films, but I love psychological horror. I find it so fascinating. I don't want to watch it because I hate jump scares, but Midsummer was a phenomenal movie.
01:57:19
Speaker
And if you haven't seen Midsommar, there's a section where there's a guy in a barn and his ribs are all in his everything. It's horrendous. And I think of that image when I think of Gru in a walk-in. He has all of his organs are on display and his nerves are... And that is not enough, even through all of that, being totally aware, being able to look down and see his own heart beating in his chest. And that's not enough to push him to a second trigger event.
01:57:49
Speaker
And it's when Taylor is about to get her head cracked open, when Imp is about to be cut open, when his people are about to get cut open, is when it happens. And I just... Ooh, it is... Brian is such a great character. We love him so much. And he's such a good leader, but like...
01:58:18
Speaker
He is so sacrificial, even. And like later when he talks to Taylor and he's like, he should have just killed me. She just put me out of my misery. Like he was ready. He was ready because he'd given it up. But it took his teammates, it took Taylor about to be cut up for him to be pushed past that limit. Holy shit.
01:58:42
Speaker
It just kills me. And it's so well done. And you can't have that moment of him being pushed to the edge without Bonesaw being as horrendous as she is. And like, the duality of those two... Ugh, goddamn. It gives me goosebumps. And I just... Ugh, I love good storytelling like that. It just... Ugh. It's such a good moment. Yeah, it's really well done. And really, really powerful for sure.
01:59:13
Speaker
And a lot of things happen very quickly in that scene. It sort of gets glanced over as as he triggers as you get the death of Burnscar, which is over very quickly. So fast. So good. Brutal. I'm trying to remember what happened. Her head gets pulverized. He bashes her head into the floor. I thought at first he like snaps it and then
01:59:41
Speaker
Even before that, because the reason he's able to do that is because he steals Siberian's power. Which is terrifying. Which we don't find out until later, but yeah. But that's what it is. And then just with that ability is able to just one shot burn scar. Which there goes another slaughterhouse nine member.
02:00:07
Speaker
Like, yeah, I realize we've been working kind of our way through the weakest of the strongest, but dang, that is, what, 50% now? Well, yeah. Mannequin's still alive, but in terms of taking the owl. Mannequin's alive, Cherish is out of the game, Glass Shatterbirds out of the game. Shatterbirds out of the game, yeah. A lot of L's there. Yeah.
02:00:30
Speaker
It's sad too, because Burnscar, despite being probably one of the more forgettable members of the Nine, is also kind of the only one with a little bit of a backstory that we get from the one interlude in Arc 11. Yeah, from Labyrinth. Yeah, with Labyrinth. So it is kind of sad there. There is a little bit of story that could have certainly been explored had Wild Bo wanted to. He kind of set that up.
02:00:56
Speaker
but, you know, opts for the death, which hits just a little bit harder. Again, even though we really don't care about it that much, it's a good death.
02:01:10
Speaker
Man, a lot really does happen in this chapter. Very quickly. I mean, you can have Parian attacks. Parian attacks with what... I get such strong Five Nights at Freddy's vibes from the dinosaur monster coming in. I love it. It's just like lumbering up behind a drone saw. It is trying to find it. Yeah, we already had one monster. We had the Saw movie going on, but all of a sudden Jigsaw is getting...
02:01:38
Speaker
chased by a FNAF character. It's like, wait a minute, what movie am I in? But you also get, you get the little, at least the way I read it was that, uh, Parian's family is part of the group that bone saw, like plastic surgery to like, Oh, I forgot about the plastic surgery bullshit. Oh my gosh. That's horrendous.
02:02:02
Speaker
Yeah. So we get a whole, whole like traumatic event for Perry in there, even though we will leave at a couple of chapters, the third total, but just possible trigger warning ahead. Then we got the second trigger, which the nerve endings things. I just, to this day, I remember the, every story I've heard about like where the one guy was like,
02:02:23
Speaker
fiddling with his nipple piercing or something like that. And it's like, Oh, what's this white string? And then grabs a pair of scissors and then wakes up having shit himself. Like in the most pain he's ever felt because it was a nerve ending.
02:02:40
Speaker
It was. Sorry. There's more to it than that. Before you say this. He gave a trigger warning at the beginning of this podcast. Anyway, now we're from our sponsors. Help. Help can get you the help you need after listening to this podcast about help. Please pay. Please subscribe to our patrons. We can get Ellen into therapy. I don't need therapy. I'm doing great. The rest of the rest of y'all need therapy. No, I do.
02:03:13
Speaker
I've had plenty of time to come to terms with this story. My nipples hurt. On the inside for me, personally. We also don't want to miss the whole thing of Skitter having a vision. Yeah, she has another vision. Because all of this happens in this one, like two chapters.
02:03:36
Speaker
102 chapters. It's 13.8. I'm pretty sure it's 13. I think it's 0.9. I was on such a rush then I didn't even put that down. That's how you know it's good. Yeah. So I don't want to overlook the fact again, talking about, you know, where powers come from. Um, and you have this story, you have this thing that, uh, that,
02:04:06
Speaker
almost almost called her tiny bones. Um, yeah, I stole the name from a magic card. So, you know, some people might get that anyways. Um, that aside, great, unrelated though. Um, bone saw is describing this part of the brain that, you know, controls all of these functions and
02:04:34
Speaker
all of that and it's like, yeah, yeah, great. That's cool. Um, and then we get this weird vision that skitter has where I don't know. It's just like, what is happening? She has this vision. It's like two creatures, two entities, and they're trying to decide something. And then they decide, yes, that one earth, you know, Taylor's earth, in fact.
02:05:01
Speaker
And they pass over all these other worlds that are very interesting descriptions that. They don't linger on too much but it's very fascinating so it's. There's just a lot happening there and I'm like I'm sorry can we can we come back to this for a second like what is what is going on here with all of this.
02:05:18
Speaker
stuff. Yeah. And by the nature of these visions, we know we won't come back to it. Like Taylor won't have a moment to think about it. Cause they all like, she tends, as we've seen, she tends to forget, like people forget the vision as soon as they've seen them. And then it's like, we move on and it's like, wait, like I didn't get to process that. Like what's happening?
02:05:42
Speaker
Yeah. Only, uh, only tattletale has been able to remember a bit more and then miss militia. Miss militia. Yes. Um, well, we didn't say that she remembered. She just like, cause remember she wakes up and she's like, ah, and then forgets the dream. Yeah. She forgets. She's having dreams. So it's something I guess. Yeah. Yeah. You're right.
02:06:05
Speaker
Well, it's interesting because when Bonsaw is talking to Skidder, she does mention the passenger quite a few times. But then when she talks about the passenger, she doesn't really give any... She doesn't really explain what the passenger is. And so when Bonsaw then leaves to go get a bigger saw, Skidder doesn't know really, but she starts... She's in her head screaming, help me, to the passenger.
02:06:32
Speaker
in the hopes that like, well, whatever this is, whatever this passenger is in my brain, that like maybe it'll be able to help me. And like, as we saw, nothing happens. Yeah. And some damn good chapters. Heavy, very heavy. I know we could probably talk on these chapters for a long time, but any like,
02:07:03
Speaker
A quick, Ellen, quick final thoughts before we go to chapter 10. Well, we should talk about 10 just a little bit. Is 10 the Brian and her conversation? Yeah. That is another, I know I said that the conversations that live rent free, you know, bone saw, actually this, the bone saw, what she does to grew is the number one incident that I think about.
02:07:31
Speaker
Following that, when I think of, you know, things I think about is this conversation right here because of, yes, specifically because of how grew like breaks down Taylor's personality and power. It's so stupidly in depth, you know, you know, for just, it's just a level of analyzing her that
02:08:01
Speaker
I honestly haven't gotten in a lot of other literature because it's, it's such a subtle part to the rest of the story. I feel like a lot of books that are one character insightfully looking into another character's soul are kind of ham fisted or they pointed out and you go, Oh, of course. Like we kind of knew that about the character, but this explains them. This unravels the rest of the,
02:08:30
Speaker
of Taylor's decisions beforehand and going forward.
Character Dynamics and Relationships
02:08:35
Speaker
This is the crux of looking at Taylor for me. It's so insightful. It's so well-written. Ignoring the romance part of it, just Brian talking about how she manipulates people.
02:08:55
Speaker
And that she, you know, she does it because it benefits her and she doesn't even realize she's doing it. And she turns around and immediately does it to him. Like the next sentence, like, and she doesn't even realize it. Like, holy cow. It's so good.
02:09:16
Speaker
Yeah, it's very well written, but at the same time, it's like, boy, do I hate Brian in this chapter. And it's so hard coming right off of the chapter where I am incredibly sympathetic to him, right into this chapter. And it's not that it doesn't make sense. He just had the most traumatic experience of his life and he's got a lot of
02:09:40
Speaker
anger to process. So like, it's not that it doesn't feel out of place or anything like that. It's very well written. It's well placed. I just, just really hate him. I just hate him so much. I don't hate him as much this time reading it because of, you know, accentuating circumstances.
02:10:00
Speaker
I actually, I get ticked off by Taylor in this chapter. I'm of the mindset that like, Brian is processing, Brian is talking through his anger. This is the time for Taylor to shut up and listen. And she wants to counter him and be like, well, I don't think I do that. And to me, it comes across as so obnoxious because it's like, Taylor
02:10:20
Speaker
Shut up. Brian is talking through it, and he is angry. And we have almost never seen Brian angry. Like, he gets frustrated. That's true. That's a good point. And this is the first time he's actually, like, angry and speaking angry, mean things that are, they're very mean. But, like,
02:10:41
Speaker
He's, he's venting. He is letting it all out right now. And like, does Taylor deserve, deserve it? Yeah, I mean, yeah, kind of. But like, I just, I, and I understand, everyone's teenagers here.
02:10:56
Speaker
But this is Brian having a therapy moment. He's letting it all out. He's analyzing Taylor and her powers and how her powers affect him and affect the team and what she does and the choices that she makes. And this is a time for Taylor to sit there and go, yeah, he's hurting. I need to just shut up and let him talk. But she's like, well, fine, I'll just leave. Taylor, that is not what he needs.
02:11:23
Speaker
Oh my gosh, it doesn't. It's a childish moment for both of them kind of. Yeah, especially. Yeah, I can see both. That's a good point. I do feel like it is, as we've said though, it's a bit hard to call this, for Brian at least, childish after what he's been through. Yeah. I mean, the fact that he's not like in the corner screaming and crying, I think, is what I've read into his character. Oh my gosh. Yeah. That is fair. You know. The first time I read this,
02:11:52
Speaker
thought Brian was, you know, lost his gourd reasonably. So, you know, geez, Brian, what a jackass. And kind of after this conversation, I started to realize more and more like, Oh no, Brian hit the nail on the head this time around kind of prepared for it. I was like, Brian, like, obviously, you know, still really harsh, like,
02:12:19
Speaker
you know, and he's whiplashing back and forth, much like the concussion that Taylor had where she's like getting a little bit more emotional, you know, maybe throwing some bows at people. Uh, and you know, but Taylor is, yeah, he's right. Taylor, Taylor is exactly that kind of person. He breaks her down. Um, is he right for doing it right there? No, but he's not wrong. And, uh,
02:12:49
Speaker
Taylor needs to, you should have listened. Um, yeah. Also Jesus Christ, Brian, she's not in love. She just has a crush on you.
02:13:00
Speaker
Saying things like, I was thinking of you when I triggered. Yeah, girls love that shit. No, it is so awful to me that that is the conversation that it led to. And the fact that like, he's kind of admitting, I guess that he kind of, I don't know. He says that like, I feel something for you, but I don't know what that is. I want to respect you so hard.
02:13:21
Speaker
Like, you have just been through the most horrific thing of your entire life. Like, you don't, to be perfectly honest, Brian, you don't know what you're feeling. And that's okay. Like, you are allowed to have no clue what you're feeling and to just let it all kind of word vomit. But Taylor is going to hear that and is going to grasp onto that and is going to think about that.
02:13:41
Speaker
And it's like, Taylor, I need you to not be a teenage girl for a second. And I really need you to just like, don't take anything Brian is saying to mean anything. Just let him talk and then move on. Because like, dang it, if this isn't gonna change things again, like, and I don't want it to be like, I almost, I wish so badly he hadn't, you know, confessed or anything. Cause it's just like,
02:14:09
Speaker
Brian, you are so broken right now. Like let yourself have a second to breathe. Like don't, you don't need to tell her that like, gee gee, at least poor people. In terms of writing, I think, I think, you know, this is, it could have been smoothed out better to transition from, you know, breaking down Taylor to the confession, you know, basically.
02:14:38
Speaker
because I think the ending, the final shot of this scene is perfect. And Taylor thinks that she goes, I got exactly what I wanted. I'm sitting on a couch with the guy I like, and we've kind of aired that we like each other finally. And we're both fucking miserable.
02:15:02
Speaker
You know, it's the theme of worm. It's the, you know, the like, I did these things for these results, but whoopsie daisy. Look what happened. Like that's, you got exactly what you wanted. Just not the way you wanted it. And it makes me honestly, it makes me think of, uh, the ending of the movie, the graduate driving away in the, uh, you know, spoilers for a movie that's a bazillion years old. I don't think I've seen it.
02:15:33
Speaker
They're driving away after getting married, the back of the bus. And there's that holding shot where they just realized that they're two kids with no fucking clue who the other person is and that they, you know, just got married and about to live a life together. And it's just slowly hitting them as the shot stays on them. And you can tell this isn't going to end well. And that's the end of the movie. And it just feels exactly like the scene to me. Oh.
02:16:03
Speaker
Yeah, it's painful for sure. All right, onto the interlude.
02:16:08
Speaker
Onto the interlude.
PRT and Government Response to Crisis
02:16:09
Speaker
Our last interlude is Piget. Um, she's reflecting on the state of the city, ends up watching some footage, um, of one of the, I guess the initial interaction with Siberian where one of the heroes, hero, his name was hero, uh, is killed by the Siberian. She talks with the legend and then organizes together with the wards, uh, a plan of attack on the slaughterhouse nine.
02:16:36
Speaker
And that closes out arc 13 snare. Okay. They're sending out people to patrol the city. Well, the slaughterhouse nine is a foot. What the fuck are they doing? What the fuck are you thinking? You have two jobs, I guess. And, you know, one of them's making sure these kids don't get killed. And number two is, I don't know, like doing the paperwork. Cause I know number three wasn't watching arms master, apparently.
02:17:06
Speaker
So like, yeah, nobody should be patrolling separately. No one doesn't matter if they're a regular, like this is the slaughterhouse nine. If you're going to be bitches and lock down the fort and be like, Oh, we're not helping anybody at least keep the rest of them inside. Come on.
02:17:25
Speaker
Well, I think, I don't think it's, I think they at least go in pairs, right? They're not going alone. Well, I didn't see that though. They're supposed to, but I think two people were of the list that Clockbocker gives Piget. Two of them are like, they're out separately. I think it's Weld and somebody else. Weld and Flechette maybe are like out separately. It doesn't matter who. Dangerous as fuck. Ooh.
02:17:54
Speaker
Yeah, the BRT is struggling. Yeah, they're not doing so much. Lack of windows. It's really putting them down. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, it's interesting getting some of the insight there because Piggott is dealing with knowing that there's a mole, knowing that she's got to be selective with what she says and does, really only able to trust legend at this point, who's not even from the city, which is kind of crazy.
02:18:24
Speaker
Um, yeah, it's just interesting, interesting dynamic there. It's, it's sort of highlights an area. And this is, I think this sort of is credit to why Taylor gets a lot of support from her territory when she defeats mannequin because she's actually able to defend people. But like, it's a credit to where it makes sense in this situation where government agency would fall short. Like there's just too much,
02:18:51
Speaker
rules and regulations in place to deal with something like the Slaughterhouse-9. You just don't have time for all the red tape and the paperwork and doing it by the book. Meanwhile, they're 40 blocks down the road killing everyone in sight. So yeah, there's a very deep failing in the system there. I mean, they're trying to do it by the book, which is what's hard because it's like they're trying...
02:19:21
Speaker
To make sure that we don't have complete bedlam, they're trying to have a system. They have a system and it's not a system that's built to work when the world is falling apart, when the slaughterhouse nine are burning the city.
02:19:38
Speaker
all of our paperwork and all of our Checklists and all the red tape and all of the you know, sign form for H in triple kit, you know doesn't work anymore because computers aren't here and like we have like The city is in chaos like what we have to to keep us civilized and keep us organized no longer works like it begs the question like how well did it work before like we're the whole city is
02:20:06
Speaker
a mess and what's actually being done about it.
02:20:10
Speaker
Mm hmm. And I mean, her plan at the end of the interlude is to just be like, hey, I'm going to kind of fall on the grenade here. I realize I'm probably going down for this, but we've just got to drop back at his entire warehouse on, on them and see like, finally, that's finally the voice of reason. Oh, she goes, well, let's get, you know, desperate times call for desperate measures.
02:20:36
Speaker
Let me go with the Kissinger solution and just do some war crimes. We're gonna fire bomb them. Yeah Literally like that's their plan. That's the best they have Yeah, yeah, it's like and I'll do it cuz I'm not a cape I think is what she says something like that. I think she said I'll do it. I'm not a coward Well, no, she said also I'm not a cape so it won't violate any of the supposed like, you know Yeah
02:21:04
Speaker
We can't forget that Shatterbird absolutely obliterated any infrastructure that there was to be had. Oh, true. Yeah. Good point. I mean, there's, there's, you know, literally nothing left. And she even says like, you can tell when Shatterbird hit because everything went from being printed to being handwritten. And just that transition alone is just exhausting. It sounds like.
02:21:32
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. So it's hard to visualize the destruction. Sometimes we've talked about that before, especially with Leviathan and things like that. Like it's hard to put that into perspective, like just how destroyed the city is at this point between. I do have a really hard time even imagining it, because I think every time I've read this,
02:21:57
Speaker
the city just seems worse off every time. Like we went from, in my head, you know, things were like, oh, it's kind of bad, you know, but it's a functional city to no, this is more like a post-apocalypse. Like I'm surprised we're, you know, we have running vehicles.
02:22:19
Speaker
I think we talked about that last time about how it feels very much like a post-apocalyptic city with everybody kind of Mad Max style scrabbling for power and resources. Yeah. And we talk about the PRT is probably assisting municipalities with making sure that the water is running. So there's a lot of that other stuff too that we're not even touching on because it's just not relevant to the story, but would make sense in universe that is keeping them occupied.
02:22:45
Speaker
a lot of things that we need to make sure they're still running, but let's make sure there's no micro glass in our drinking water, things like that. So yeah, it's chaos. Also, I think it's really easy to forget because all the territories are broken up, but this is still a major city. This is a huge fucking city. And there are probably places like the territories that are much worse off
02:23:15
Speaker
than other areas like in the outer sections of the city or the suburbs, which maybe are, I'll say the rich suburbs, the rich white suburbs that are probably doing a lot better. And as opposed to the territories that are maybe more downtown and they don't have access to things, they don't have access to get out of the city even. So it's like, you're really, really cornered.
02:23:41
Speaker
Mm hmm. Yeah, exactly. And also to the to the comment about Pigot saying about the Cape, it's the calm. I just looked it up because I wanted to read it. The last line of the interlude. Don't worry. I'm the one who's going to push the button to get answered. And I'm not a Cape. Got it. Mm hmm. She's going to take the hit. Yeah. Respect. You know, yeah, honestly, respect. Yeah.
02:24:11
Speaker
Man, that kind of... Any final thoughts? We covered a lot here. Also, ArmsMaster, oh no, how did he get away under Dragon's Watch? You can just see Piglet just give like the, uh-huh, like Dragon's like, oh, how did that happen? Yeah, uh-huh, Dragon, uh-huh. Yeah, they're on to them.
02:24:41
Speaker
The only comment I would say, and this is more of wrapping up this arc and prepping for the next one, is that I hate to say this, but I would like to remind everyone that only two tests have gone so far. Fernscar and Mannequin. The others haven't even gone yet. We still have a long way to go.
02:25:07
Speaker
Oh, man. I think we'll wrap it up with... I don't think there's any new superpowers displayed here, but any favorite or interesting usages of superpowers that stood out to you? Got to give a shout out to Parian. Yes. Seeing her power in action, the way she's able to stealthily use it and manipulates her...
02:25:34
Speaker
puppets, if you will. She was inside of the one. I thought it was really cool. Jumping in. Yeah. It's Mac and face. Going toe to toe with, uh, with, uh, bone saw for a minute. Yeah. She held her own. Gets a little gold star. Trix just got me on this one. It was just a couple of cool maneuvers. The mannequin swap for the sniper shot.
02:26:01
Speaker
Oh my gosh. That's a cool use of that power. And then of course, you know, the getaway mannequins where they've got them like strung up and then they like take the stuff down so they can zip over real quick. And then just getting rid of crawler. Just nope. Nope. Uh, that would be not that I sympathize with crawler by any means, but I can just,
02:26:28
Speaker
If you've like ever done something, like if you're just like, if you've ever like tried to put something on a counter and it falls off, you pick it up, try to put it on it, it falls off again. I just imagine that's the kind of frustration he's feeling is just like, just let me, come on. Imagine you had a French press.
02:26:47
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, I've broken so many. Why would you say? It's the equivalent of like putting, putting like in Looney Tunes, like putting his hand on, on Daffy Duck's head. And he's like, let me at him. Let me. And he's just swinging and can't hit him. You know, that's, that's what's going on. Yeah, exactly. Can't quite get to him. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I mean, I think, I think I've got to mention that obviously bone saw is the most memorable usage of a power probably. Although I guess technically it's a,
02:27:15
Speaker
cooperative effort between bones on mannequin i'm primarily bones although. Yeah i think trickster definitely takes it for me as far as the most. Interesting use of the power of the most fun use of the power switching somebody shooting them the yeah stopping crawler.
02:27:35
Speaker
Uh, it's just, it's very cool. Um, but I think too, we didn't really talk much about it, but Gru's second trigger in his new powers, the ability to steal powers of those who are in his darkness is very cool. And I can only imagine that will come in handy at some point in the future.
02:27:55
Speaker
Yeah, the cop-out answer is Gro's New Power. It's just so cool. I mean, I'm... I don't think it's a cop-out answer. It's cool. It's so cool. And I love that, you know, Taylor was like counting. She's like, oh yeah, four new powers. He's like, nope, just the one. Like, it's just gonna come in very, very handy. And then, of course, Bonesaw, I just... She's so scary and so creepy.
02:28:16
Speaker
and unnerving but I just I love the the it's so it's so morbid I know but the delight that she finds in the experimentation and it's it's horrid but it's it's really well done I don't know if it's um I don't think this is a spoiler this is more of a prediction because I genuinely don't remember
02:28:41
Speaker
if it's ever explored how Gru's power works in the most technical sense. But this idea of him generating a darkness that seems to come out of nowhere and it can touch those who have powers and then connect with those powers. It makes me think, you know, with that whole conversation with Bonesaw, is his power basically tapping into that part of people's brains that's connected to whatever is giving them their powers?
02:29:09
Speaker
And Bonesaw even said, I don't know where the darkness comes from. And we've mentioned how it's not so much a darkness as it is a void. Kind of reminds me of this sort of like void of space kind of thing, you might say. Just, you know, either that or it's just, you know, Cthulhu tentacles of darkness and either way is fine with me.
02:29:29
Speaker
Yeah, the way it works. Oh, we know. We know. Oh, yeah. Actually, okay, really quick, just a thought off of that. It's like, it makes me wonder if, as he's kind of, you know, siphoning off people's powers, does he get an insight into how their power works because he's using it?
02:29:48
Speaker
I would assume so. I guess would be like a, like a subconscious insight. I don't think he figures that out. I'm pretty sure someone else figures that out. Yeah, I think so too. I think it's a lot of this is intuitive because it's just like he's not unconscious, but he uses the powers. It comes somewhat instinctually. Like he doesn't, he's not good at them because he doesn't have the experience, but he is using them.
02:30:17
Speaker
semi-consciously. Yeah. It's like getting a penis, you know? Yes, Michael. It is exactly like getting a penis. You wouldn't have experience using it, but you have to figure it out pretty quick.
02:30:33
Speaker
That's true. That's true. You know, I had a thought and I just. It's gone. I mean, maybe that's a good place to end it. You know, you might be right. I think that is a good place to end it. Yeah. Yeah, there's not. Sorry. I was thinking about that, honestly.
02:30:52
Speaker
Who is he touching to get the healing power again? I know people right after the. Yeah, yeah, he was. Yeah, who is who is grew tentaclean to get the healing power? Tennessee, probably, right? Well, it wasn't panacea. No, they mentioned it by name crawler. No, it wasn't just crawler, though. They mentioned another one, though. Who is the other one? I mean, they talk about Siberian.
02:31:15
Speaker
No, no, I think that's in relation to smashing burn scars face into the table. I know. I'll find it. Oh, it's all going to bother me so much. Yes. Oh, that's right. That's right. No, no, no, you're right. It's, it's one of the, one of the pure.
02:31:34
Speaker
Wait. Oh yeah. Cause the peer is there. The peer is there too. Oh my God. We didn't even talk about it. That's what they were doing. Yeah. That's what they were working on. That's what they, they ambushed them. They were, they had fucked up some of the empire 88 people. Oh my God. There's so much that happens in these last two chapters. It really is so much. It's hard to talk about. I'll give you one critique. Uh, there's something called balance. That's all things should be. Yeah. You were anyway. Yeah. Okay. Othala. Okay.
02:32:05
Speaker
who is a member of the peer who has healing powers, I guess, right? Yeah. I have to look it up again, but I think you're right. I think that's what it is. Okay, that was the one thing that was bothering me. I was trying to remember who he was. Yeah. Who he was sucking powers from. Tentaclean, I think is the... Right, sucking tentacle powers. So...
02:32:33
Speaker
Yeah, Withala has the ability to grant one of several temporary superpowers to people. That's right. And she can grant regeneration as one of them. Amongst several other things. That's why he can put all of his organs back inside. Yeah, so he can stitch himself up. I don't know if he was actually absorbing her power or if she was just giving him a power, literally. Because that's literally her power. I'm going to go with absorbing because...
02:33:02
Speaker
Technically, if he's adoring her power, then he has the power to give someone else a power. Which he could give himself. I think the best way to describe it is his darkness is kind of like a straw and to bring it full circle is just kind of like a nice... I drink it up. I drink your powers. My darkness reaches all the way over there.
02:33:33
Speaker
What are you? I'm finished for the audience. There will be blood. Yeah. It's the only scene that anybody knows and remembers from the movie. I drink your milkshake. There will be grew. Well, I got the meme right there. I drink your powers. All right. Cool. Well, this is a good ending. What a good time we've all had. What are we doing next time, Jacob? Next time we're going to be reading Ark.
02:34:03
Speaker
14. I was trying to remember when we were on. We just read 13. So we will be on the other 14. After 13. 13 episodes, by the way. Makeup are 14. And you believe that. I know. And they only get longer from there.
02:34:15
Speaker
They really do. But hang in there with us. We're going to do our best to keep the schedule. We'll see how well we do. But read along with us, please. We've been really enjoying reading all of your comments and your feedback. It's been a lot of fun on Reddit and YouTube and Instagram. So keep interacting. Keep letting us know where we're going wrong. You've been quick to correct our errors and we appreciate that even when we know we're right.
02:34:45
Speaker
But speaking of which, you can correct our errors through voicemail. Exactly. We have a voicemail, so please call and leave a message. Let us know when we're wrong. 980-999-0438. Look at that right there for you.
02:35:03
Speaker
And maybe we'll feature your, your message. Don't forget to subscribe to our Patreon. Yes. Proctin Bay book club on Patreon. So we can send, uh, Alan the therapy little stage of intervention and get a pizza party and go now. Honestly, it's just going to be group therapy at this point. Yeah. Yeah. Group therapy.
02:35:29
Speaker
Thanks for sticking with us. I'm going to wrap this up before we continue on and, uh, yeah, read worm arc 14 stick around for dissecting worm for arc 13. A lot of fun on that episode as well. And until next time, Michael, would you mind finally playing us out?
02:35:53
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.