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BBBC Reads Ward - Episode 2
112 Plays11 days ago
This story isn’t intended for young or sensitive readers. Readers who are on the lookout for trigger warnings are advised to give Worm a pass. Complete list of potential triggers: here
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The Brockton Bay Book Club discusses J.C. McCrae's Ward live! The gang reads a portion of Ward and comes together to share our thoughts with each other and anyone who want's to participate.
This week we cover Daybreak!
Read along here
Play along with this week's BBBC BINGO while you listen!
Support us and connect with us @brocktonbaybc
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Transcript
Introduction and Hosts' Banter
00:00:35
Speaker
you
00:01:28
Speaker
Welcome, everybody. There we go.
00:01:34
Speaker
All right. You know, we'll get to them eventually. We'll we have a system. We'll work on a countdown. That's
Current Events and Podcast Format
00:01:44
Speaker
funny. Good evening. Welcome, everyone.
00:01:47
Speaker
Mega City.
00:01:51
Speaker
Megalopolis, I believe, is the correct pronunciation. The Megalopolis. Good evening, Megalopolis.
00:01:59
Speaker
Tonight's news shooting and car crash at the Norfolk Span Community Center. Were your kids there? Were they injured?
00:02:10
Speaker
Were they covered in gore parts and mind controlled? Find out on this episode of the Brockton Bay Book Club. My host, myself, Alan.
00:02:27
Speaker
other Hi, I'm Hannah. I'm Jacob. That's me. um ah Nick?
00:02:37
Speaker
No, no, give him a voice, Nick. Hello there. And of course, it is i last producer Michael. Hello.
00:02:48
Speaker
The book club. We're here. We are certainly that. For something. That's for sure.
00:02:55
Speaker
we're We're back is what we are. Yes. I know it was only like a month and we we already did, you know, Glowworm, but it felt like we're back. to and read It wasn't even a month.
00:03:12
Speaker
It was two weeks. I'll be honest. I mean... Weeks in between while I love the break, it ah it still kills me that I have to wait. It's true. Really? That we you have to wait one, you know, a whole extra week in between? Like, yeah really?
00:03:28
Speaker
Yes. It flies by for me. I'm not going to lie. I'm ready to talk about it as soon, you know, I get off of this, I read it, I go to bed immediately, and then I'm spending two full weeks, you know, because I'm just so excited.
00:03:43
Speaker
You're just up late. Hannah's like, Alan, let's go to bed. and you're like, no. Go to bed. I must finish this next art. I would say flipping a book, but it's not a book. It's, you know, you're doing... It's just mindlessly scroll. One day, one day, i'll get my physical copy of Ward.
00:04:00
Speaker
We've got to work on finishing our physical copy of Worm. Well, yes, that would be the first day, and then the next day would be the rest of the Wildbow works. Whew.
00:04:12
Speaker
Well, uh, let's get into it.
Spoilers, Games, and Audience Interaction
00:04:14
Speaker
Daybreak arc one, the official first arc of ward. Yes. Before we start, we had a discussion about, uh, some ground rules since we are doing this live.
00:04:29
Speaker
Thank you. That's your most welcome. I'm glad you said that. Um, ground rules for, uh, for chat.
00:04:41
Speaker
Um, we're going to be going into this as if, uh, it is, it is, uh, uh, of spoiler zone. Uh, but if we can keep the chat spoiler free until we've talked about it, um, there are some things that, uh, are a little ambiguous. So we'll be going through that, maybe explaining that as we catch up with it in the arcs.
00:05:00
Speaker
Uh, but treat us like we are fresh readers. Um, most of us are. And, um, yeah, keep it in chat. Uh, Keep it spoiler free. If you want it to talk spoilers, we have a word spoiler, ah discord.
00:05:16
Speaker
Uh, if you're a patron, which you can subscribe for as low as $1 a month, uh, our discord patron, uh, channel has a, uh, as a specific word spoiler section that you can go in and we talk about how, uh, think all of us are going to react.
00:05:33
Speaker
Um, which I would like to go ahead and throw in. i have a bingo sheet for people.
00:05:41
Speaker
um So as in chat, there's a bingo sheet link, which should give you a very small, ah slightly compiled of myself and some of our patron ideas. ah None of you other Brockton Bay Book Club hosts look at that.
00:05:55
Speaker
Okay. Okay. I haven't looked. All right. Don't look at that. that is' That is very spoilery. Sounds suspicious. Okay. is. is just a mess ah for people to play bingo ah with you guys.
00:06:10
Speaker
So you do get a bingo. Just throw up a good bingo in chat. It's very small, but you know we'll get there, I'm sure. And if you fill out a full card by the end of this, oh boy, let us know as well.
00:06:23
Speaker
What do they get, Alan, if they fill out a full card? but you yeah I'll kiss the camera. How about that?
00:06:30
Speaker
No. Alrighty. I didn't see it pop up in the ah YouTube live chat. Is that where you posted it? I did. didn't see it first, but yeah might I might be behind as well.
Daybreak Arc and Victoria's Protagonist Role
00:06:43
Speaker
ah To answer Fran Val's question, yes, we did read the whole arc of arc one. um We don't know if we'll do that for all of them, but... um Just depending on the length of the arc and how, you know, kind of like we did, I ah i remember at the Slaughterhouse Nine, ah where they had like nine interludes, we split that up into two episodes, that arc.
00:07:05
Speaker
So, you know. or But we will that try to let you know. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. yeah well yeah Oh, yeah. We'll let the experienced reader, Alan, sort of dictate ah what what arcs need to be divided, if possible.
00:07:19
Speaker
Yeah, i mean we have a word count courtesy of somebody who I will name the next time I can think of it. um But ah they've compiled all the worms into a lovely spreadsheet, so they really got me hard.
00:07:31
Speaker
um And I believe this one is about 40,000 words long. Good Lord. me put it up. It doesn't feel like it when you're reading it That is for sure. User the white squirrel on Reddit.
00:07:46
Speaker
A copalist, a glow worm at 26,000 words. And Daybreak at 51,622 words.
00:07:56
Speaker
i they also break it down by chapter and um and and by characters. like They also have and words like ah characters are in by viewpoint and stuff like that.
00:08:09
Speaker
Good stuff.
00:08:13
Speaker
Hell yeah. Also, guys, I'm having a weird issue where I can't comment on the chat, but we can see your chats and we'll try to acknowledge them. haven't pulled up. I can see you guys. Yeah, I can see it too. I just can't comment for some reason. it We're having an issue there, but we can see you and we appreciate everyone being here.
00:08:33
Speaker
Take it away, Alan. Chapter one. but I can't put in the YouTube ah chat my link. stupid. I guess that'll have to be a patrons only thing.
00:08:47
Speaker
to or the patron word spoiler channel. Yeah. I was going to say you could also put it in the description afterwards. I'll put it in the description afterwards. and I'll try and get those to the Michael beforehand so that we'll have them in the description for yeah yeah just going forward. We'll have it pre live and then we and yeah y'all can just click on that in the description.
00:09:08
Speaker
That should be easy. oh Best laid plans. Daybreak arc one initial thoughts.
00:09:17
Speaker
Immediately. I appreciate that Victoria does feel like a different protagonist. um And yeah yet it still feels like wild bow.
00:09:30
Speaker
ah Just writing style wise. I'm like, oh, okay. This is, this is pretty similar. It's a, Victoria does come at life with a very different mindset, it seems like. But at the same time, she is also recently post-major life trauma.
00:09:46
Speaker
and so And Taylor was at the beginning of Worms. So there is still kind of that aspect, too, of things she's trying not to think about. ah Things that she's trying to avoid worrying. You know, just all those things that she's trying to avoid thinking about in her past.
00:10:02
Speaker
Um, but i I don't know. I liked it. It got me back into the world. Uh, got me back into things. Uh, I had a couple of predictions that were right, I think. Um, and so, yeah, so that's exciting.
00:10:19
Speaker
Nice. Yeah. Yeah. I, um, I, um, My biggest ah complaint with Worm who is that that there are just sections where I'm like, I don't,
00:10:36
Speaker
i you're there's a general rule that like, don't treat your readers like idiots because they're a lot smarter than you think they are. And they pick up a lot on a lot more. You don't need to spell everything out for them.
00:10:47
Speaker
And for the most part, i I fall into that category of being that reader. Like I pick up on stuff. i Wild Bo makes me feel stupid, I'm not gonna lie. ah There are sections where I'm like, Wild I appreciate that you are not spelling it out for me, but also at the same time, i would like some more explanations, please, because I'm confused.
00:11:10
Speaker
um I feel like the first half of the arc, I was trying to just push through it. And the second half of the arc, I was much more involved and like, okay, cool.
00:11:21
Speaker
I'm on board now. We're good. I'm in a groove. But the first half, I was like, oh, no. is this going to be worse? Like, okay, here we go.
00:11:37
Speaker
Yeah, definitely takes a second to say align again with nay like ah all new names other than Lord. oh yeah you know Oh, yeah. you're wait So there is the ah her team and then there was the the hero team and then the villain team and all their names are new.
00:11:53
Speaker
and It was a whole lot of trying to remember who's on which team. But yeah, then once it once a you kind of get into the groove, but you're back into it again. ah takes a second Yeah.
00:12:05
Speaker
Oh, yeah, that is true. It is. um And it doesn't help, too, that we're not, although it is a sequel, we're not in a familiar setting. We're not in Brockton Bay anymore. all right No. We're not even on the same Earth anymore.
00:12:15
Speaker
Nope. So it's very much a... New planet. Okay, new new city, new place. Who dis? What's going on? I get that completely. function of society, too. like um Like, I was there for the... Like, i was I was in it for the car... This gets into chapters, but...
00:12:33
Speaker
so when when you're breaking down some of the like structure of the society, like how society works now because of you know living in this giant megalopolis, whatever, I'm like, I'm going to need you to be a little bit more specific and clear because you're giving me something that doesn't exist anymore.
00:12:49
Speaker
that I'm like familiar with. you know We're talking about a massive city that's combined with portals and worlds. And it's like, i i'm i'm going to need um I'm going to need a map at the beginning of the book, please, because ah your girl is lost.
00:13:07
Speaker
I don't like you don't like that feeling. For sure. I actually, um we'll get into this more specifically, but I was... The way it started made me feel like maybe Victoria had lost her powers at first too.
00:13:20
Speaker
um Which I think was purposefully vague. Yeah. yeah I think it was purposefully vague about her powers because she was clearly either not using them on purpose or she had lost them. um But yeah, we'll we'll get into that more as we get into specific chapters.
00:13:36
Speaker
Yeah. but And does the... does Remind me, does the city have a name or is it just...
Post-Gold Morning Society and City Setting
00:13:42
Speaker
The city or Megalopolis. me Megalopolis. is that what it is? Okay.
00:13:48
Speaker
all right All right. Megan LaLopez. Yeah, the Megamind. Metrocity. ah la la la la la but bla la metrocity but but yeah no it is um Yeah. Isn't it? That's a specific thing, right? Where there's so much conflict, they can't even decide like what to name this city.
00:14:05
Speaker
like They can't agree on a unified name. yeah they're like It's just yeah the the place, the city. ho yeah the one is yeah It's helpful when there's no other thing. Which we'll kind of get into later about how it's laid out and why there are those difficulties.
00:14:23
Speaker
But the big thing being, you know, it's right where the portal is and the whole world came through where there were portals. And yeah, that's just where the population is, you know?
00:14:36
Speaker
Makes sense. All right. there' a fan map out there. That would be sweet. As long as there's, yeah it's hard not to give so spoilers. right Yeah. True. Yeah. I imagine things will happen. Yeah. Yeah.
00:14:50
Speaker
I'll see if I can't find like an, ah one of those and then I'll just like white out. labeled an Unlabeled map. and We can slowly unveil it. I'll like share my screen and like, you know, get rid of things. That's when they happen.
00:15:05
Speaker
It'll be like, you know, it's like Mufasa sharing the Pride Lands and Simba's like, what's that whited out area to the south? And you're like, that is not a place you should go, Simba, until Ark 23. Don't even look over there.
00:15:17
Speaker
Don't even look at it. Don't even think about i look at it and think about it so All right. Well, ah to start, I do enjoy how clearly like divided the scenes are here for the most part.
00:15:33
Speaker
ah We'll get into some that are a little bit ma more mashed together. ah But to start, 1.1.
00:15:40
Speaker
um Invited to the barbecue. ah there ah This person who we later find out is Victoria at the end. has a car crash, ah witnesses a car crash into this memorial for people from Gold Morning.
00:15:56
Speaker
ah The advanced hero guard shows up um to an angry crowd. ah Victoria goes back, peruses collection of files, ah discusses Fumehood and the assignment that she's about to get stuck with, witness the five pounds of gun talk and get assigned to the kids.
00:16:17
Speaker
um And then we finally get the reveal of the protagonist, who is Victoria Dallin, a.k.a. and Glory Girl, a.k.a. a so a good old Swan Neck.
00:16:29
Speaker
We don't have to call her that. her name We can just stick with Victoria, right? She turned me into a newt kind of vibes is what I'm getting. Oh, no. I got better.
00:16:41
Speaker
I got better. Oh, boy. A little bit more traumatic than that. um And she is, she's a little older too, right? Than Taylor was during the story because she's two years post transformation fix.
00:17:00
Speaker
Yeah. 19, 20, something like that, right? Wasn't she already now that age? I thought she was already like 18 when... So she was about to age out. She was 17 when she proceeds age...
00:17:13
Speaker
everything happens um so she proceeds to age forward I believe it is two years. That's the time. step Yeah.
00:17:26
Speaker
After the, ah so she's two years into the time skip. She is that for everything.
Victoria's Transformation and Background
00:17:32
Speaker
Then,
00:17:35
Speaker
she gets aged. Oh yeah. So it's basically been four years and then she gets aged. No, two years. She gets aged back and then another two years passes. So she appears to be,
00:17:49
Speaker
19, but she's 21. Right. right ok Because Victoria has been fixed by Amy after a Gold Morning, but she's been like the way she used to be kind of vibes.
00:18:04
Speaker
Yeah, that's a later was later chapter thing. ah like chap but like yeah She talks about what Amy did. yeah Right, right, right. But she is appearing to be 19. She is 21. Okay. Yeah.
00:18:17
Speaker
okay yeah you know, yeah which is not the worst thing I've, I've seen, a and you know, a very nerdy fandom out there, you know, messing with a Allah, uh, you know, every anime ever, you know, she appears to be five, but she's really 3000, you know, 21 and 19. We've seen on that. No, no, for sure.
00:18:38
Speaker
Um, yeah no no for um Yeah, this opening, i think, is a really, really... It's really, really good at setting up the tension of this new world that everybody's in Because somebody is so stressed, she's driving, hits a monument, just... Like, doesn't even seem like anything went wrong with the car. Like, she just b blanked out a moment, maybe.
00:19:01
Speaker
People start gathering, immediately upset. It's not even apparent that this monument is for somebody that they know. It's just a monument for a Gold Morning... And people are immediately getting upset. And even the old man's like, well, I'm not violent. But then he pauses and is like, well, maybe I am actually. like you know it's that yeah And there's this clearly this tension. Vikar, Vikari, i don't know how you say his name.
00:19:24
Speaker
Vikar is how I said in my head. and Shows up and immediately tensions rise. and Vikar, yeah. Vikar, tensions rise instead of drop when he arrives.
00:19:34
Speaker
um That's not Vikar. ah Viker. That cape I don't think was named. Viker is the name of the first cape ah that gets killed at that basketball game in like 19... Long ago. Yeah. Right, right, right. Sorry.
00:19:49
Speaker
They do the cape. Oh, that was his name. What is his name? No, he is named. They bring it up because the tension felt very similar the situation did where there's this one hero and everybody's pissed off at somebody and they want to direct it towards them.
00:20:05
Speaker
And they were like, ah Victoria was like, oh you know we need to dissolve this because this could be a ah very easily turn into a lynching situation. um you know If this hero hand mishandled everything.
00:20:20
Speaker
Right, right. Yeah, yeah. So, um yeah, really interesting. um Very good at setting up that tension. And then you've got high schoolers who are joining some kind of recruitment thing to be ah sort of like bodyguards or they're like interns that are protecting, you know, doing grunt work.
00:20:41
Speaker
um Yeah, like it just, it shows the world is a very different place. You can't expect, this isn't going to be your typical high school experience like it was, well, in a sense for Taylor. Yeah.
00:20:55
Speaker
Yeah, so school is like on a half-day system now and because there's not enough education system, teachers, whatnot in place to keep all kids in school all day long.
00:21:08
Speaker
So it's like a work half a day, in school half a day. Like, well, what are you going to do for work? Like, what are the options? Yeah. um i this was one of those sections where I wish we could have expounded a little bit more just because and expounded in a way that it was clarifying, not confusing.
00:21:27
Speaker
I think it would have been really cool to see what some of the other like options were for kids because like I feel like the best way to understand, well, especially when I'm reading this at this point, and I'm assuming that, okay, well, we're going to see Victoria in this role to continue, you know, ah that that I want to understand what does this
Victoria's New Role and Family Dynamics
00:21:49
Speaker
mean? Like, what does this look like? Who are the kids she's dealing with?
00:21:53
Speaker
Like, what what are they dealing with? You know, like, what does it look like for them? What are the options that they're choosing to basically, like, be a weird subcategory of, military police?
00:22:09
Speaker
like It's confusing. Yeah, it's kind of a paramilitary.
00:22:17
Speaker
I know there was why farming farming was an option. Farming, construction was an option. Remember the construction one? I don't remember the paramilitary. When Victoria shows up to the school, they literally have all the different like people getting up to talk, and then Victoria hangs out in the back with the with Jasper and the crew. Right. And you've got people talking about joining for farming you know and going out and doing that.
00:22:41
Speaker
People coming, you know hey, come over, do construction. you know you can you and We always need people building. And then getting up and doing the like, hey, Or you can get not get paid and join this PRT lite. Yeah, PRT lite. Yeah, that's accurate.
00:23:01
Speaker
Yeah. Or as Fran Vals pointed out, the PRT might be gone, but their legacy of child soldiers goes on. yeah right That's right. I was about to say the same thing. The chat is so funny today. I love it.
00:23:14
Speaker
but
00:23:18
Speaker
Yeah. Now, um ah very, very interesting. New world, very new world, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. i So, as some of you might know, ah Victoria is like my most related, my most relatable fictional character to me.
00:23:37
Speaker
um She's very emotionally cognizant of everything, but in the most logical manner, which... feels exactly about how I interpret things.
00:23:52
Speaker
Like, oh, this is a very emotional situation that can be like categorized and we need to dissolve this and resolve that. It's just spreadsheets. It's just spreadsheets and nerding out.
00:24:05
Speaker
and um and And like it starts, for me, it starts with like the second paragraph is her referring to her parents as a parental unit, which I always thought was just a very unique thing that I did as a kid.
00:24:21
Speaker
I was like, Oh yeah, my parental units was something I referred to them because, uh, they did not like familial, familial terms. Uh, you know, and the further we could get away from that, I thought the better, um, nothing malicious, you know, like malicious. That's just like, Oh yeah, they're very organized and militant. And you know, so,
00:24:44
Speaker
in a military style, they're not parents, they're parental units. It's like you have an infantry unit or an artillery unit, you have a parental unit. And when Alan told me that, I went, haha, that's funny. I also called my parents parental units because that was like a cool millennial thing to do in high school.
00:25:01
Speaker
It was. It was. And and I was calling them that in middle school. So like, I don't know where that came from. ah I don't know. Did you start it, Alan?
00:25:12
Speaker
trying to take one? You know what? I did. differently I did. I shared it with my fellow homeschoolers and that definitely took off. course, it started with the homeschoolers. That makes perfect sense actually. As we know, all trendy things begin in the homeschool community. Yes. never my parents that. they There you go. You're welcome.
00:25:33
Speaker
I called my parents by their first name for like the first seven years of my life. Did you really? That's paddling right there. Yeah, we'll unpack that later. Yeah, we'll unpack that later. It was until my Taekwondo sensei was horribly offended that I would dare call my parents by their first names.
00:25:51
Speaker
We'll unpack this later. I need to know. I like leaking little lore bits about myself. yeah yeah know yeah yeah that's I didn't know where that story was going, but it paid off already. I love it.
00:26:06
Speaker
yeah But continuing that thought and moving it forward in the story, when we get to her office and she's going through all of her files and books and stuff, Well, that is me to a T, ah in terms of like how I was in college where I just wanted to have all the books so that I could be a resource and post-college, even though I don't use my degree and have no, like I'm not locked in at all into that community anymore. I still sometimes think, do I need to like be in a church just so that I can be a resource like for strictly resource purposes?
00:26:40
Speaker
and Maybe that's the trauma of spending, you know, $100,000 on education trying to get four years my life back. That's the trauma speaking. Surely this is useful. Yeah, so when, you know, these are emptied of most of my resource books right now, but there's still a ton over there.
00:26:56
Speaker
ah You know, that if anybody came up and asked me a Bible question, I'd be like, boy, howdy, do I have, you know, some Some stuff for you. Five different answers. what Which one do you want?
00:27:08
Speaker
Which denominational answer would you like? Let's go! yeah No! use my voice against me! But she's got her little job, doing her little being a little ah helpful informant, and then she gets pulled in for this job that she does not want.
00:27:30
Speaker
Yep.
00:27:32
Speaker
um Every job. Also, being pulled into work. yeah um And it's interesting that she doesn't want to be a frontline person because that is pretty much... I think i think that's that that's interesting because, I mean, not surprising at all. Like, after everything that Victoria has been through, by being such a public figure ah for so long, that, like, her wanting to take more of, like...
00:28:00
Speaker
quite administrative, but like the support role. Like she's happy to sit in her office, offer advice, give some info, you know, for whatever mission they're going to go and do with Poison Apple or whatever, you know, but she doesn't she doesn't want to be on the front lines because...
00:28:20
Speaker
Well, I'm a week. I'll get into that later. But like i it makes sense. After everything that she's been through, I'd probably feel the exact same way. like i don't I know a lot, so I'll help, but I don't want to be on the front.
00:28:35
Speaker
yeah Yeah. Speaking of her her collection, um I love... just First, I like the names of the the fashion magazines. I think those are fun. or like the I think they're fashion magazines. Costumes Under Clothes, Gleam, Heroines, Mask, Shine On. I'm like, oh, there those are... It's like it's like Cosmopolitan, like coso Cosmo. Yeah, like Cosmo. Yeah, exactly.
00:28:56
Speaker
ah But then also, she's got collections. I just wanted to notice ah there were names of two groups that we'd met before, the Ambassadors and Empire 88. ah groups that are no longer active so far as we know, but she still has collected information on them.
00:29:11
Speaker
um Just kind of, just again, references back to the the way things used to be. um And she says, i made a priority to collect those. I worried we might need them. um You know, but so maybe she doesn't know how how destroyed they are, or maybe she's just like, just in case. Like, I know these were really bad guys back in Brockton Bay or back on Earth that we need to keep an eye on them just in case, you know?
00:29:33
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. ah others at know Real quick. ah If you had a magazine, what would your your superhero magazine be called?
00:29:46
Speaker
What do you mean? what's like There's not a bunch of names like masks, clothes under capes, you know? Oh, like if you were the CEO of a... Okay, yeah.
00:29:57
Speaker
What would you call your mask? What's it going to be? Um...
00:30:05
Speaker
Oh, that's so good. yes You put me on the spot to come up with a superhero pun. I mean, obviously mine would be like caped illustrated or like heroes illustrated and there would be slim suit additions.
00:30:18
Speaker
I love that. It's just like the like rating the skippiest cape outfits. Yeah. um Yeah. Yeah. What's the other one? Goodness.
00:30:31
Speaker
I don't i do ah do soldiers of misfortune and it's just a lot of advertisements for being grunts for villains. That's kind of cool. i'm I like that idea a lot. I feel like it would be more fun to like... Two plus has instead of Vogue, it'd be Rogue.
00:30:50
Speaker
I like that a lot. Oh, yeah, that's good. That's good. I was trying to think of a pun with GQ, which stands for a Gentleman's Quarterly. But I was like ah Superman's, like SQ, Superman's Quarterly. Yeah. Oh, I like that. You can have, you know, awarded sexiest cape of the year. Or I guess it'd be CQ because it's capes, right? So it'd be like capes quarterly. Sexiest cape of the year. It also flows off the tongue very nicely, capes quarterly. Yeah.
00:31:18
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Victoria's fan. Lastly, my last note, What was that? so Victoria's Spandex instead of Victoria's Secret. Victoria's Spandex? It's just ah female oh my god lingerie armor. Oh my gosh. Instead of Playboy, it's Nilboy. It's just Nilbog.
00:31:39
Speaker
It's all of Nilbog's different creations. no Nilboys. well All of them. Welcome to Nilbog Mansion.
00:31:51
Speaker
We have a typewriter here and then Great Quapes for GQ. Let's go!
00:32:04
Speaker
Oh, my God. What is it? What is it? I'm trying to. So here's the thing. you think about an existing magazine and then you go, OK, how can I twist this? The only in magazine I can think of is Southern Living.
00:32:16
Speaker
It just goes to show kind of shit was at my house. ah Southern Living and like make it something about like Cape Living or like Super Living. I like Super Living. And it's just like how to make a cake with laser eyes. like There you go.
00:32:29
Speaker
It's just like housewife kind of stuff. Yeah, that's great. How to be a cape and a mom at the same time. we We'll get into reality shows, but imagine Exhibit coming into your lair and making sure that it's no longer a dusty dungeon.
00:32:43
Speaker
ah Yes. It's like we're moving away from magazines here, but I just think like shows like Queer Eye, but it's like for capes. Yeah. They literally have like queer vision and they can be like, oh my God, it's so straight in here.
00:32:58
Speaker
ah It's so straight. God. Yeah. And then finally, my my last note on here is just, ah we got the nom de pom for fume hood, which is just a great play on words. That was funny. I like that. I like that she had so many aliases. Do you guys remember her from Worm?
00:33:17
Speaker
No, she wasn't a worm. I don't believe she appeared to worm. I thought she made um at least an appearance. Like, the way that she was discussed, I assume that she in an appearance.
00:33:29
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it may have been one of those things where, like, she was a passing name in the Leviathan list of names of who were fighting or something. Not dead ones, but, like, yeah ones who were, you know... um but yeah I don't believe she has any mention in Worm. However, almost everybody she's associated with, Blasto being one of them.
00:33:47
Speaker
Yes, that one gave me a sad little love in throat. Anybody that participated in the Boston Games, a lot mentions there, but not her. um a lot of mentions there but not Yeah. Interesting.
00:34:02
Speaker
Okay. So the... No, sorry. um Just real quick. Someone... It's like... Chat's obviously behind us, but I just have to point out Nick said GQ for... And they said great and then they spelled capes with a Q. Quapes. Quapes.
00:34:20
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. that's That's what I said. like Oh my gosh. even I even. That's because Alan didn't see it. Yeah, that's okay. That's great. Hilarious. I do like this this ah little throwaway line about Blasto. May he rest in peace. We don't know what happened to Blasto, but we can guess it wasn't good. Is he resting in peace?
00:34:40
Speaker
ah Oh, no. He is. Maybe. said okay I think he is ah stuck in a pocket dimension somewhere that will never be found again. I feel like we died. She was like lying in the bed with him.
00:34:53
Speaker
Oh, yeah. no he did yeah oh ok yeah she He died, but his body was still... like She was able to move his body still. no Well, thank God that he's...
00:35:05
Speaker
You know, cave... He's a in Or whatever the yeah At least he passed away. Yeah, at least he's no longer living the terror. That's rough.
00:35:17
Speaker
That's rough. And a lot of times, you Worm, that's the best you can hope for. At least they passed. It's not a good time. Yeah, I know. un Untold horrors for sure. Thank you. 1.2. Yeah, it.
00:35:30
Speaker
Onward. yeah let's do anything else on ah The bus ride there, we find out about Jasper's lovely tattoo idea. ah We talk about ah how the city's set up.
00:35:44
Speaker
um Victoria is possibly recognized, but not quite sure. They arrive at the community center where they are introduced to this new team ah consisting of fume hood, tempura, long scratch, and closer crystal clear.
Community Center and New Hero Team
00:35:59
Speaker
Um, And then i believe at the end of that, Crystal Clear is like, um we've got trouble like incoming.
00:36:09
Speaker
Maybe that's, yeah. I'm pretty sure that's it. Yeah, yeah, that's it. um Okay, I gotta say, they explain how the city is set up. And then they explain further. i do not understand it, though. Neither time did I understand anything.
00:36:24
Speaker
Like strands and... Yeah, it's like stretches and spans. And I'm like, um'm like I appreciate you being like, hey, let me explain how this works.
00:36:36
Speaker
It's yeah it's a very thorough explanation that did not make sense to me at all. like i guess I've never seen somebody explain it so, and then me not understand many of explanations. Well, I assume it it's that same vibe of like how New York is set up. Am I right, Jacob? The the whole thing of like it's a grid, and you have like numbers.
00:36:55
Speaker
Don't make that face. You have numbers, and you have Easts and and and you have like 43rd West mes meets 17.
00:37:06
Speaker
I don't know. I've been in New York once in my life. So the the way I just partly understand this is that you have two big portals that opened up.
00:37:18
Speaker
The New York portal and the but the new Brockton portal. Yes. Yes. Okay. ah Because they opened up and all the people poured out,
00:37:29
Speaker
They were relatively near each other though. So they just kind of like merged and people were trying to rebuild, you know, essentially the city as according to where it would be geographically, like from the city that they just came out of.
00:37:45
Speaker
Unfortunately, it's also intersecting with other parts of the other city, which is why you're getting heart New York and Boston. Brockton Bay.
00:37:56
Speaker
And, you know, that's why they're doing the stretches and spans like, oh, it's kind of where we would normally have Norfolk, but also that would be the same road sort of where like Main Street was for Brockton.
00:38:09
Speaker
So which is why it's so confusing and people are trying to figure out what to call things. um That is the best explanation i have. And I still didn't get it. yeah yes i think i' i Yeah, I think it's it's clear enough that it's messy and that's maybe all that matters, right?
00:38:28
Speaker
it's like yeah It's messy. The point is, everyone's confused. Yeah. I think honestly that's kind of the point. is it so yeah It's a big haphazard... ah system and there's lots of room for error and and yeah tension.
00:38:44
Speaker
yeah i I would have preferred though because I feel like ah yeah I don't want this to be I'm not shitting on Wild Bo's writing but I am just a little bit and I'm sorry don't get mad at me please.
00:38:55
Speaker
um the I'm fragile. ah the I think that if we had had like just a little bit of insight from Victoria being like, yeah, personally, i figured out these certain grids a while ago and then like have a little explanation and then be like, but past a certain point, like it becomes ah you know a tangle that I still don't understand. you know Something like that. Because like if we are dealing with limited... because here if we are dealing with limited, ah you know, like, don't have computers the way we did before. We clearly don't have GPS.
00:39:30
Speaker
So how do you know where the fuck you're going? Because I, are i you do you have a giant roadmap of Arkansas you can pull out of your glove box? It's not Arkansas. But, like, that clearly doesn't exist. So, like, there has to be some system set up that it's, like,
00:39:47
Speaker
go, like, you have to be able to know where you're going. And Jasper, bless him, because I really liked him a lot in this chapter. he He knows where he's going. He's driving the bus. Here we go. But, like, yeah I would have liked to have seen just a little, yeah like, it can be confusing, but I, like, a little something. i think, honestly, it's just one of the, it's one of the limitations of word, of of the the form of literature that we're enjoying. Because,
00:40:15
Speaker
Like you said, if we had a map of this, it would be a lot clearer. And I find that to be true of pretty much any book that I read. Like, thinking about like, ah if I'm thinking about um like Roshar in the Stormlight Archive trilogy, I have no idea where anything is in that whole world. And I've read five books of the series.
00:40:33
Speaker
If you tell me, ah, yes, due west of here, is this I couldn't tell you, but show me a map and I'll be like, oh, yeah, there's that, there's that. It makes sense to me now. I think it's the same thing here is all it is. It's just very complex and it's hard to describe in words in a way that a mind can easily visualize.
00:40:49
Speaker
And so it's just a, yeah, it's just a limitation of writing. I think, honestly, it's very difficult to. Yeah, maybe so, maybe so. To see. yeah ah into Two plus adds, a skinny stretch that goes north-south.
00:41:01
Speaker
is a stretch. A skinny span that goes east-west is a span. Thanks. I understand now. Stretch.
00:41:12
Speaker
Stretch and span. I mean, you're talking about a grid system, sure, guess. Yeah. Sure. Anyways. You just label everything like a battleship game.
00:41:24
Speaker
Be like, oh, yes, A2. Thank you. Yeah, that would probably make more sense.
00:41:32
Speaker
Do New York and number your damn streets. yeah ah Lost in New York. The streets are numbered. I think this paragraph, like you said, is one of the weaker parts where I would have been okay with no explanation about a stretch or span and them just going on.
00:41:50
Speaker
Because geographically, I never know where anything is. And it doesn't matter, ah to be honest. It doesn't we you know Famously, we all watched Coyle get shot on the beach. and or Not on the beach. and we I always thought it was on the beach.
00:42:03
Speaker
And it's not. It's in like a back alley. You know, yeah kind development it or on the beach. I can't remember. It's one or the other. But who cares? Because it doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter. That's the important part.
00:42:14
Speaker
yeah And geographic, like this is a thing that didn't, I don't think needed explanation. And I don't think the explanation was good. um I usually appreciate Wild Bo for describing really complicated concepts that are abstract and making it very tangible for me.
00:42:31
Speaker
See Leviathan's water shadow. Yes. Oh, good. also so A lot of what I read in this arc is not that. Yeah. um A lot of explanations that I glazed over because either the explanation was too boring or it didn't make any sense.
00:42:49
Speaker
Yeah. Listen, Wild Boat, you're great with the time traveling universe traveling entit entities that share superpowers. Worms. Worm whales. City planning. that Stay out of city planning, maybe. It's not your...
00:43:02
Speaker
He can make me understand this ah abstract, multi-dimensional being as if I could visualize it clear as day. But I'm lost trying to go downtown.
00:43:17
Speaker
That's regular life, is it? Not at this point. Yeah, as soon as somebody says, take two rights and a left, you lost me at the first right. like i have i I get lost in my own cities downtown, okay? Yeah.
00:43:32
Speaker
It's the go ahead and back up. Yeah. Which is it? Going ahead or backing up? ah you know Exactly. I also love Jasper, but boy howdy does he give strong about to die energy.
00:43:45
Speaker
Like... Oh man, when i grow up, I'm going to get this tattoo and I'm be so cool. Don't you think so? Person who like ah mildly tolerates me that I have affections for like, don't you think when I grow up and retire in two days that like, I'll be so cool.
00:44:02
Speaker
know, I have a dream. Let me tell you about it. And I'm like, oh, this motherfucker's going to die. Like, holy shit. He's going to die so fast. Yeah. yeah Big tiny Tim energy. Just. Yeah, he's go he's going to be like on the ground bleeding like, like I always knew you were Glory Girl, but it never mattered to me.
00:44:20
Speaker
i just thought, you know, maybe we could live out my dream together and we both get matching tattoos. oh You know? we yeah thought We do need to talk about his tattoos. So, if you're there, because it was mentioned earlier in chat, like if you're there, Jester's talking about his tattoo, like how, what is, what are you going to say? Are going to say like, yeah, bud, go for it? Are you going to like break it into him gently that this is
00:44:43
Speaker
Yeah. yeah i think i think his tattoo is a great idea, by the way. Okay. He wants... Okay. His name is his is Jasper, but he wants to... His call sign is Jester.
00:45:00
Speaker
wants his call sign to be Jester, yeah. He wants his call sign to be Jester, and then he wants a tattoo, and I imagine it very much like a tarot card in my head, right? You have the Jester, and then underneath it, you it says, Fool.
00:45:13
Speaker
The fool. pet Not the fool. Fool. Oh, fool? Yeah, well, the the fool is, I mean, that is a tarot card, but he he just wants fool. So, like, Victoria makes an excellent point, or someone makes an excellent point. They're like, they're just going to call you fool.
00:45:29
Speaker
They're not going to call you jester. They're going to call you fool, which is... accurate like yeah but we'll go with yeah they won't look at a clearly written name and go with oh the picture they'll go with the name not the picture like yeah it's labeled look that's how call signs are created is mostly through mistakes that people make and then you call them that mistake for the rest of their life but he's too sweet to be called fool for the rest of his life i don't like that he's so nice i like him honestly i think
00:46:03
Speaker
Come on, tell me he wouldn't be a great fool for the rest of his life. Oh. Very short life, we assume.
00:46:11
Speaker
um That's fair. but dinner yeah As we get into this more, Fran Valls has a good point. Ward is both very post-apocalyptic and not at all.
00:46:24
Speaker
Yeah, I'm getting that. I'm picking up that quite a bit. Which is ah it's a neat, definitely neat setting. in terms of, yeah, vibes. I want it to be more post-apocalyptic. You are rebuilding society, but you kind of already have the remnants of society.
00:46:39
Speaker
Right. That you can pull It's a much less... Yeah. ah It's just... It's equally Wild West and pioneering while at the same time you have downtown Tokyo right there. Right.
00:46:54
Speaker
Like, you know, the vast difference between... It's a very... Yeah. Yeah. yeah Yeah, it feels very similar to, um since we're on Brando Sando, um his, ah what's the Wild West sequel series to the ah the Alloy of Law?
00:47:11
Speaker
Alloy of Law. That's the first book. oh The Wax and Wane series. It feels like a big city, and then just sort of everything outside of the city is tiny and doesn't matter and is just lawless.
00:47:24
Speaker
um Yeah. Because everything happens in the city. ah Yeah. And... The other thing I think about with the post-apocalypse that is not apocalypse is ah somebody who once described Japan as an apoca as a post-apocalyptic country ah because post-World War two two giant apocalypses happen.
00:47:44
Speaker
ah Their god-emperor is undefied and you know brought low, and the entire country has to live in the post-apocalypse of that.
00:47:58
Speaker
um And so, like, showing what a post-apocalyptic, like, society looks like, it's Japan. Like, that that is what this person, you know, may I can't remember who video-essayed that.
00:48:13
Speaker
And much in that way, I'm like, oh, yeah, this is Tokyo. Like, this is the post-apocalypse. Yeah. That's interesting. They're rebuilding from scratch. Interesting. They have a lot to work with. Yeah, yeah.
00:48:23
Speaker
Kind of an interesting comparison.
Public Distrust and Cape Society
00:48:25
Speaker
Hmm. Yeah. yeah Especially when you talk about like, you know, the deificness of like heroes, the concept of heroism in capes and our golden boy Scion, like all of that getting turned on its head and kind of going sour and the world physically getting rendered apart.
00:48:44
Speaker
Like, yeah, just a, just a smidge of sourness there at the end. Yeah. Yeah. yeah ah yeah Yeah. And that's an interesting interesting comparison.
00:48:56
Speaker
How about this new this new team that they're trying to build up? What are your thoughts on those kids? Yeah, so the the vibe I'm getting is there there are people who are trying to be heroes, form hero teams, or become heroes.
00:49:11
Speaker
Fumehood is trying to but become a good guy. um And there are protesters who are basically saying, no, you were a villain. You should not be a hero. like Get out of here with that. We don't want you.
00:49:23
Speaker
um Yeah, i feel I feel bad for them. like i I think there's probably still that prevalent belief that, hey, I have powers. I should do something good with my powers and try to help the world be a better place.
00:49:37
Speaker
Clearly, Fumehood is like, yeah, i I screwed up. I was a bad person, but you know things have changed. Maybe I can do better now. Yeah. And yeah, it just, everybody's like, no, we probably shouldn't.
00:49:50
Speaker
ah You guys should disband and cancel the event. Like, this isn't worth it. Yeah. I think that's interesting because it's like, we see, when we see that in the previous chapter where it's like, there's a very mixed response to capes in general. And it seems like there's more of a, like, i feel like the kind of, um like, rogue,
00:50:14
Speaker
do your own thing capes are probably looked at more ah in a chill manner than like heroes. ah And it definitely, it it definitely feels like that. Like you have the people that are inside the community center that are like sitting there excited there with their families. Like we're unveiling, we're introducing the new, this new cape team as a, as a team now.
00:50:34
Speaker
and So you do have that, but there's also a lot of tension around this space. And yeah it it feels like it's not just about Bad Apple, Plume Hood, whatever. whatever I can't... What's her name? Fume Hood?
00:50:49
Speaker
Fume Hood. Haha, chat coming in clutch. Fume Hood. ah that It's not just about her. Like, the tension, yes, is about her because of her past and the the incident.
00:51:00
Speaker
But it's also... feel like it just surrounds Capes in general, like the heroes in general. There's just, like, a weird tension there. And a lot it... A lot of it, I think, maybe comes down to the lack of information, right? We talked about how nobody really knows what happened with Gold Morning.
00:51:17
Speaker
Right. um And so there's maybe this feeling of blame. the real you know The realization that Scion was an extra world entity is not something everybody's privy to.
00:51:29
Speaker
Their assumption is he's just a hero like everybody else who went really wrong. If they even know that Scion was the cause of Gold Mourning, right? like it's They know powers were clearly involved.
00:51:41
Speaker
Something terrible happened. Yeah. And it's all the Capes' fault. That's all we know. Whether it was Scion or somebody else, we don't, you know, who knows what information's out there completely. But yeah.
00:51:52
Speaker
So it makes sense that everybody would be like, you guys kind of blew up the world once. We don't really want you to have a position of power in our city anymore. Yeah. Fair, honestly.
00:52:05
Speaker
Yeah, fair. I mean, it's an entity that you can't control that has historically proven themselves to be kind of above the law. And we had all this information come out, you know, pre-Gold morning where, okay, all of these people that were in positions of power, like you everything that happened with Alexandria, like when her, yeah you know... thing came out. It's like, oh so the whole idea was capes not policing themselves. And yet that's exactly what was happening. Like the question becomes like, who can you trust now with when it comes yeah to capes? Like at least the villains are clear with what they want or the rogues.
00:52:37
Speaker
but What, what, what are they called? The, the middle, the I don't know. rogues Yeah. Okay. The rogues are at least clear in their intention is that like they're in it for themselves or like they're mercenary for hire or whatever. Like your, your intentions are fairly clear here with a cape.
00:52:54
Speaker
that's so you know put up in this hero position or in an authority position, which I think is the bigger issue, it's it becomes this question of like, I don't actually know if I can trust you to be an authority figure in this space when you haven't proven yourself to be that in the past.
00:53:11
Speaker
Yep. Yeah. And and now... ah People hate them even more, but there's also no no laws keeping them out of those places of authority anymore.
00:53:23
Speaker
Right. It's the Wild West. It really is the Wild West. You know who I bet would have been really popular with as an antihero would be a ah smart hatchet face type who has anti-cape powers.
00:53:40
Speaker
Yeah, ah yeah exactly. He's like, yeah he would be with this group of protesters, right? He'd be there. Be like, oh, this guy is anti-cape and he's got anti-cape powers that nullify what they do.
00:53:54
Speaker
Hell yeah, that's my guy. Like, yeah for some reason that just came to mind is like, I bet he he would be super popular if he were smart and alive. But he's done and dead.
00:54:05
Speaker
yeah that Unfortunately. Yeah. So yeah ah so you're welcome, Bernard. ru I just saw your thing come in. You're welcome, Bernard.
00:54:19
Speaker
I'm glad someone appreciates it. ah i You may continue, Alan. I'm sorry. Crystal Clear's power is described and, you know, describes how the trouble is incoming.
00:54:34
Speaker
um Talk more about Kate. Hey, Kate. hey hey While Fume Hood and Victoria discuss Fume's past. Finally, Kingdom Come erupts in the crowd and the villains crash the 18-wheeler into the building ah while Jasper runs the ah ah bus into it to try and prevent it from getting there.
00:55:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:04
Speaker
Hmm.
00:55:07
Speaker
Yeah, Crystal Clear seems like a cool hero. um one of the i'd I'd assume he's technically a monstrous cape just with his appearance um yeah being what it what it is. I would assume so. but yeah But, oh man, like such a cool, but like limited precognition, limited, you know, shooting these crystals that kind of break through. remember, right they they can go through things and then he can kind of decide what to do with them. They have to go through things. They have to go through things, right. Yeah, it's a very weird, again, very unique, very cool power. Mm-hmm.
00:55:42
Speaker
Actually, all the characters in this, the villains and heroes, have really interesting powers. Kingdom Come, like, blowing himself up to take control of people. Terrifying. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. be honest. Friggin' terrifying. Absolutely.
00:55:55
Speaker
The first time I read this, and the first two times I read this, I don't know how I missed Kingdom Come's power and how I got him confused with Lord of Loss. I don't know how my brain turned off for that.
00:56:06
Speaker
But, um, you know, ah yeah, reading it this time, holy cow. That's a wild power. I did have this moment where I was like, did Wildbo exhaust all of his power ideas and worm? We'll see. I don't know. Never. See what he's still got.
00:56:24
Speaker
ah No, he's still got it. So good. So, yeah. you I got goo on me and now I'm being mentally controlled.
00:56:36
Speaker
they They describe it. It's a breaker master power. He goes into a breaker state yeah where he doesn't have a physical body anymore until he gets to the last, like, he, like, essentially peels off the last person and then reforms.
00:56:53
Speaker
like So he, okay, human, explodes. He's on everybody. And then he, like, you said he peels himself off. The kingdom comes on everybody, you might say.
00:57:05
Speaker
Yes, he does. Kingdom came everywhere. That's Nick, you know, high five. Right up to top. Is that why he's called King? yeah Is that why? That's not why he's called Kingdom Come, right? No!
00:57:18
Speaker
My poor sound bite. God. my poor at my poor sound right yeah ah Yeah, okay. But then ok but then he he just kind of peels himself off of things and inchworms his way back to a globby hole. I don't think it's even total. I think he just regenerates out of the last person ah that he's controlling.
00:57:44
Speaker
and know there's some minutia there, but um yeah, he is essentially, he has no corporeal form when he's in his breaker form, which is... controlling everybody like say he is gone when he explodes there is no that does not like all the pieces come back together because we also talked about like when he exploded there was way more than there should have been ah so ah this is gross yeah but also like what a wacky suicide bomber amazing
00:58:18
Speaker
It's a fantastic power. It's a phenomenal power. This is where we get into, while Wyrm has cool powers ah that are, you know, oh, those are creative, but we've seen a lot of those before.
00:58:32
Speaker
Ward really does, oh, how do you do a master breaker power? What's your power? Oh, I explode. And then you've got to make that a master ability. Like when you're goofing off with the random rolls and stuff like that.
00:58:45
Speaker
You know, when we're creating characters, right how do you make a master ability out of self explosion? And this is how you do it. Like these are creative,
00:58:57
Speaker
um, you know, uh, tempura, this, I I'll be honest. I just imagined like a very beefy car lack type, but ah no, no, no.
00:59:09
Speaker
Uh, edgy Vi. Edgy Vi when she's in her grease paint mode. Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah.
Character Complexity and Emotional Battles
00:59:16
Speaker
Um, yeah. Just throw in like paint splashes everywhere, Splatoon style, but then can use those to do different things.
00:59:28
Speaker
and One of which is included just wrapping people up with it. Yep. Um, yeah. Yeah. Very Um, one but Yeah.
00:59:43
Speaker
Tempura. Tempura, not Tempura. I also heard that. Thank you. I'm like Tempura shrimp. Tempura shrimp-based superhero. yeah I love it. um I also love the tension they built that Wild Boat builds in this by giving us incoming, you know, there's a problem incoming.
01:00:04
Speaker
And this it takes this whole chapter to get to it. But it's, you know, one of those, you don't just have a bomb go off. You tell people there's a bomb that's going to go off 10 minutes beforehand and you let that sit. Which is much more impactful. Builds that tension, really. Yeah, absolutely. Build that tension. um Love it. Also the mention of mover psychology.
01:00:26
Speaker
Like, oh yeah, but that's probably just the mover psychology in me. Sounds like, you know, your own categorization of like different CAPE autisms. Well, to me, it's more like ah it's like the Myers-Briggs. Like, oh, what what what cape psychology do you have?
01:00:44
Speaker
Yeah. You know? It's like, you know. But I think maybe with more studies in parahuman power and what a parahuman is, yeah We did talk previously about how the entity in the shard does influence the way you act and behave in some regard.
01:01:01
Speaker
And so maybe there have been more studies on that showing, yeah, actually movers tend to think this way. Breakers tend to think this way. um Masters tend to think this way. So it'd be it'd be interesting to see if that comes up more. Ape psychology.
01:01:15
Speaker
Yeah. can you get We need to get Jessica Yamada on the podcast. Pick her brain. Yeah, there you go. Oh, man. yeah We need to make a BuzzFeed quiz. We'll make a BuzzFeed quiz so we can determine what what psychology we have.
01:01:32
Speaker
I love it. Not what cape you are. What, you know, Fran Vols, how very shaker of you. Yeah. Yeah. definite Yeah.
01:01:44
Speaker
ah I'm a shaker wing mover. Oh my. I love it. I love it.
01:01:57
Speaker
Anyways. Can we we get to the conversation with.
01:02:04
Speaker
Sorry. Go ahead, Alan. I was going to say ah conversation with Fume hood and Victoria. um My note is just, fuck. Fumehood is already more complicated of a character than 99% of the characters I've ever read.
01:02:24
Speaker
Yeah. How, like... I... ah like her. I like her a lot, actually.
01:02:35
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. I don't like her, but, like... me i I just don't read pet characters with complexity, even in books that I like, i you know, and Brandon Sanderson took five books to get that across, you know, to some of his characters, you know, i love, there's a lot of characters I love in there. They're very charming, but like Fume hood is already more complicated than almost all of them, if not all of them. And it's,
01:03:05
Speaker
a conversation between two people in one and chapter. like It's just very unusual for the genre. Like you just don't, like you said, you don't really have complex characters in these types of stories. You're just used to the black and white, the good and evil. Oh, maybe this guy is but a little gray because his mom was bad and his dad was good. Oh, you know, so like that's about as complex it is. Herein lies the battle. yeah Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that it ties into a bigger...
01:03:35
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think it it ties into some issues, Alan, that you and I have talked about a lot, but the idea of books being ah very trope-y or trope-based. And I think like with superhero stories, it's really easy to fall into those kinds of tropes and also letting your power being the most interesting thing about you.
01:03:55
Speaker
And I think that Wildbo does a good job at like still making the characters themselves complex. And that, like, well i mean, while we saw with Taylor, like, her background did obviously very much impact her power and her to her power, but still having like a complicated character that's not necessarily being so solely like wrapped up in their power, I think is cool.
01:04:21
Speaker
I feel like she fits bad apple because I can't fucking. remember ah she just, I think she fits that, that, you know, example pretty well. Like, she also has an interesting character, not just an interesting power.
01:04:39
Speaker
Yeah, for sure.
01:04:43
Speaker
As a completely side note to this, as I was kind of scrolling back through this arc, ah Victoria says she doesn't really get mustaches, barring the truly awesome ones.
01:04:54
Speaker
um And I just want to know, to Victoria, what is a truly awesome mustache, Victoria? I mean, if you look at four members of the Rockton Bay Book Club have some form of a mustache.
01:05:08
Speaker
Look, I could get a Sharpie and make it happen. We all know it's the handlebar mustache. I mean, let's be honest. Yeah. That's the only one likes. Well, see, all I can think of is like the the Omni-Man mustache must be the awesome mustache, right? The like thick, big, thick gray silver fox mustache.
01:05:28
Speaker
Oh, yeah. That's an awesome mustache. Can it hold a comb? You know, just like... that's There you go. Good job, Hannah. Thanks. Yeah. um Bernard...
01:05:39
Speaker
yeah <unk> Bernard, I don't know if we know Fumehood's real name. i don't remember if it mentioned not. I don't believe it's ever stated. um Yeah. ah Because I looked up a lot of this stuff beforehand, and if I remember right, I don't think it's ever said.
01:05:53
Speaker
Okay. All right. Yep. honored if am i Am I missing the Apple reference also, by the way Because I feel like all of her other names were all Apple references of some kind.
01:06:04
Speaker
um Fumehood? Fumehood is just trying to disassociate from the Apple thing, except it is lightly a reference to like Red Riding Hood, Snow White-esque vibes, which is similar to what she was before.
01:06:21
Speaker
um But i I think it's just her trying to disassociate from the poison apple moniker. That makes sense. so
01:06:31
Speaker
So.
01:06:35
Speaker
Yeah. Let's see. 1.4. Moving on. Yeah. to go where's go ah The mercenaries enter the building. ah We have the blind side versus Victoria fight.
01:06:49
Speaker
And then after she gets away and meets up with the group, ah she gets Jasper to admit that ah this was a setup for a test. It just wasn't supposed to go this bad.
01:07:01
Speaker
Oopsies. Whoopsie-doo. Yeah. um Blindside is... I i mean, i love... There's some good capes here. Blindside's my favorite power-wise for this arc.
01:07:14
Speaker
ah I think that's so cool, and I... wow just loved the, ah you're going to need to adjust your posture because I'm about to move. And if you don't shift, you're going to snap your neck.
01:07:28
Speaker
She's like, okay, cool, and le know shifts her posture, whatever. And i I love that because they're very clearly not here to cause, you know you know if maybe wreak some damage, but not kill people. They're not here to do harm. They were they were coming in to deal with Fumehood.
01:07:47
Speaker
Jesus. ah you know, they're not here to hurt anybody. Right. And so he's like, you need to adjust your posture or you're going to get your neck snapped. And I don't want to do that. So please adjust your posture. Like, but I love that interaction of like, you have to think about that when your power is no one can look at you, but like, you don't want someone to turn their body and all of a sudden snap, you know?
01:08:08
Speaker
ah So I, I loved that. I thought that was so much fun. and again, wild bow with all the little like sprinkly bits of cool things with characters. It's so... it.
01:08:20
Speaker
I love it. Of the ah You Can't Hurt Me powers that we've seen, he's my second favorite. Nice Guy is still my first favorite. Just because of the... Hey, how's it going? Oh, God.
01:08:33
Speaker
And then I put on August Prince is also in that category of the You Can't Hurt Me. uh where he's just like i'm gonna disable you and then i can slowly crawl up your body and stab you you know because i'm a child but so but this one am i right this child power is terrifying yeah but this is the the second coolest one very close to nice guy and how cool it is just the idea of when i'm using my power you just you can't look at me you can't like it it's such a yeah like a oh it's so weird um
01:09:05
Speaker
i then Yeah, ah two plus four times five says, blindside, shift your posture. Victoria, okay. Raise your chin a little. Why? Blindside, swings a baseball bat in your face. yeah so I it wait, wait.
01:09:19
Speaker
Little up, little up. Got it. but Just, just, bam. Cut out of Looney Tunes ass. Tom and Jerry.
01:09:30
Speaker
oh yeah great I do love the dynamic we have going on here. You're talking about like, they're not expecting any heroes to come save these people.
01:09:42
Speaker
They're also not here to hurt anybody or do anything. i would argue like traditionally criminal. They're not robbing a bank. They're not even trying to kill this person.
01:09:53
Speaker
They're literally just want to grab this person because they've been hired by a kind of normal person potentially to make her pay for the miscarriage you know allegedly of this woman that she you know she caused like it's it's such a weird setup already and then the way they treat it is very much like hey this is our job we're not trying to get anybody you know less people involved better That's, you know, partly why I think they, you know, that he controls everybody is like, hey, we get all these people. It's less so a hostage situation and more so like we can quickly find her.
01:10:34
Speaker
This doesn't have to be a big deal. All these people are taken care of. And then we just leave them where they are and they forget nobody knows about it. We dip out. Like if they had done this, you know, ah really quickly, it would have been,
01:10:50
Speaker
you know, a perfectly Kingdom Come hits everybody outside. That's taken care of. They crash the bus in They quickly grab Fume. Maybe there's a fight, you know, between those heroes and them, but they are wrapped up and then they get back in the truck and head out. like Right. And like, and if if they hadn't been there, then, you know, there were a bunch of teenagers behind the basement door. Like that would have been bad. right But if they hadn't been there, then yeah.
01:11:19
Speaker
Yeah, well, Victoria even tells them that like when they get there, you know she gives them the thing of like the spiel of, if something goes down, do not be the hero and put yourself in danger. You you know you find a safe space and you step back. like there They're there to kind of be ah an image of, hey, this place is protected, but they're not like, they don't seem like they're there to actually like,
01:11:44
Speaker
do anything like the only reason that things go so ridiculously sideways is because victoria is there and throws the wrench in their plans which i love to see it but you know like it they're they're not these kids are teenagers like jasper was not gonna like he he did some good damage with the bus good job buddy like they they you know they're what are they gonna do they're they're they're a bunch of kids
01:12:14
Speaker
um Yeah. Yeah. Also, um believe there's a small hint that love getting sprinkled in here and in the other comment, like like combat as we get into ah where you start to unveil a little bit of, in the midst of combat, no less, ah what Victoria is feeling and what has happened.
01:12:36
Speaker
um And I thought that was a very interesting time to begin unveiling that. and like Yeah. We got ah snippet of it when she's putting on her body armor um and she's seeing herself in the mirror. There's kind of like this feeling of like, hi, me, in the mirror, which that did that did ah hurt a little.
01:12:56
Speaker
ah But I can only imagine... ah you know She's getting these flashbacks and she's trying to hold everything together. She's trying to hold her emotions in check and trying not to let the past ripple in and take over for what she's trying to do here now. and
01:13:22
Speaker
this is This is the point when I started being like, I'm okay. I'm in ah there. Earlier chapters. I'm, I'm struggling a little bit in the bus.
01:13:33
Speaker
I don't care about the the stretches and the spans, but we're getting into now some meat of Victoria, what Victoria is dealing with. And that is, that is eat it right up.
01:13:45
Speaker
ah Now, now Hannah's Hannah's in locked in, locked and loaded. but yeah And I think we may have had our first fuck me drop in the ah in that with a blindside saying it about Victoria.
01:13:59
Speaker
but yes nice that mean i still find it so funny how often he uses that phrase in his writing. It's a great phrase. It's great, but I can't think of the last time i said it ever.
01:14:12
Speaker
For those who don't yeah mean i don know why Nick's bringing this up, and make a morning they used to Nick used to keep track of how many times he'd read it. I used to do a count of copacetic and fuck me's that were used. yeah Just because I found it funny. like It's used multiple times in every arc.
01:14:30
Speaker
but very It's not like one character either. It's a wild bow trademark. It's a wild bow trademark. Copacetic, fuck me. um I need to use it more often in my ah daily life. 1.5? Yeah.
01:14:44
Speaker
ye ah Yeah, let's do it. ah Victoria goes against Kingdom Come, and we begin to have flashbacks to a happier time with her boyfriend, Gallant.
01:14:56
Speaker
ah She then has an encounter with Nursery, and running away from that, gets hit with Snag's emotion power. That's when she internally all goes to shit.
01:15:08
Speaker
Yes, that's when it is, by the way. I was one chapter early. Sorry.
01:15:15
Speaker
ah ah Nick, we you got to it prematurely. o ah But I just have a new idea. Kingdom come. It's just different bodily fluids and and he has to save them up.
01:15:31
Speaker
No! Oh! Yes! oh ah oh yeah Kinky. It's just a jar of... What's the... Well, no.
01:15:43
Speaker
No, don't bring jars into this. That's never a good... Jars on the internet do not have a great history. No, I was gonna say... I was gonna say... you all... I was gonna say... like you know when people have dip and then they spit?
01:15:59
Speaker
You just have a big jar of dip spit and then it's like extra That's so gross. How is that like worse than like and other things?
01:16:10
Speaker
It's so gross. Body fluids. Yeah. That idea came early, eh? I see you. I see you, 2 plus 4. I have lawyer standby.
01:16:32
Speaker
I was just looking at Jacob. I'm like, what are you talking about, Jacob? Jacob's mouth isn't moving. It was all Jacob. New new crimes. the floor.
01:16:44
Speaker
yeah yeah um also with their flirting. ah but you oh ah go for it and no no no yeah it's all he listen you had the floor but i hear i also have a great line from gallant with their flirting ah it would be my pleasure to deal with you.
01:17:04
Speaker
i Nice. lord okay You know, I don't give a shit about them in Worm because like, oh, it's tragic. Your boyfriend died, yada, yada. You get here and you're like, oh, oh, the chemistry.
01:17:17
Speaker
like Oh, yeah. The chemistry was good. Do I need to play it? The romance girly pops be loving that kind of shit. We eat that. Every ship is possible. You have a bay full of these ships and one of them can set sail.
Nursery Imagery and Horror Vibes
01:17:33
Speaker
And I ship it for sure. i get it now. It's good. They're fantastic. It did take me ah ah regrettably far too long to remember who the hell Dean was.
01:17:45
Speaker
and hearing Dean, I was like, Dean. We like Dean. We like Dean. Yeah, that was, it took a second.
01:17:57
Speaker
He died a while ago. It was a long ass time ago. That's true. Yeah.
01:18:04
Speaker
um Yeah.
01:18:08
Speaker
ah And then we get to ah we get to nursery. Yeah. Bernard asks us how we feel about nursery. um Well, Bernard, let me tell you how I feel about nursery. um i am weirded out, as is, by child capes.
01:18:26
Speaker
No surprise there. ah ah Both love and hate bones off. But there is something about babies and the baby imagery and the child imagery and the rocking horses and the ah like little creepy music. i just It's just, it I don't like it.
01:18:47
Speaker
And I don't like it the way that it makes me feel. And it's like... you when a horror movie and all of a sudden they're like, oh, the baby's crying upstairs. Will you go check it? And everyone's like, oh, no.
01:18:59
Speaker
Oh, no. No, no, no. no It's not the baby. It's a demon. Don't do it. that's That's that vibes that I got while reading anything with nursery. Just like she's seeing, like Victoria's like seeing things in the hallway. Like she's seeing toys and she's like, something's wrong here.
01:19:17
Speaker
i Felt like the most icky chills that were just not good.
01:19:27
Speaker
Yeah, there's a really random reference, but it reminded me of a boss in Bloodborne called Mergo's Wet Nurse.
01:19:38
Speaker
um which is a, so it's this area where you can hear a baby crying all throughout it. And then you open up into this big area and there's like a ah black baby carriage in the middle.
01:19:49
Speaker
And then this entity forms around it. And it's sort of the, the nurse for this baby. That's not actually there. is As if I, were if I'm remembering it right. And it's just this, again yeah, it's like Hannah said, the horror movie baby.
01:20:02
Speaker
ah bueno. No, I don't like, thank you. um And yeah, yeah yeah I will say, I forgot there was one thing was just going to say, there was one thing that was spoiled for me about Ward that I forgot about. was in it was in some kind of list on Reddit of worlds are worlds that are fucked up and you don't want to live in. Worm was in there in the you know universe, like a a universe you don't want to be in there. And somebody mentioned nursery.
01:20:35
Speaker
So I do know, i did know a little bit about nursery already. just didn't know she showed up so early. Lord. more I can't. Yeah, ah Fran Vols, Victoria's reaction to her is the most real thing in Ward.
01:20:48
Speaker
Absolutely. As soon as the baby stuff starts happening and things start moving, Victoria just immediately books it. Just get the fuck out of here. A proper response. Just, nope, I'm good.
01:21:01
Speaker
Out. It's like the worst version of Death Stranding meets like Doom's like textures that they put on everything.
01:21:12
Speaker
It's just all squelchy. And then you've got the ghost babies from Death Stranding like putting their little hands everywhere. o don think Yeah, there's something about baby hands that are just...
01:21:26
Speaker
i
01:21:28
Speaker
Oh, no. It's all about context, right? Good case for antenatalism. first Jeez. Maybe. Like, i have I have two kids, and, you know, they're cute and adorable, and I love their little hands. Yeah. um Well, they're they're not baby hands anymore.
01:21:45
Speaker
but For a little while, they were they were terrifying, right? Yeah. no You were afraid of life, right, Nick? That's why you keep them... Some people call it a crib. Others call it a cage. you know But it's there to keep their little hands away from being in you.
01:22:01
Speaker
o You make eye contact with a baby and you just know, this thing's going to kill me someday. It's going to kill you. That's why you put the little mitts on. It comes for you at night. Yeah. um but There you That's why you got to swaddle them so they they don't escape.
01:22:17
Speaker
You got to like raffle about got a wrap them up. What is Snag's power exactly? I'm sorry. What were you going to say, Alan? We'll get to that real quick. ah Hannah, I do think you are right. I think that nursery is Ward's bone saw.
01:22:32
Speaker
And I i hate it. i I will say knowing things more after having read the interlude. We'll get to that. I'll give you my thoughts more on Nursery after we get to the interlude bit.
01:22:45
Speaker
ah Because I do have a ah theory. We'll get to it. um Yeah. ah but But same vibe for me. I love Bonesaw. I love Nursery as a power. ah I just don't like... Fucking terrifying.
Spoilers and Combat Styles in Ward
01:22:58
Speaker
Fucking terrifying. Fucking terrifying.
01:23:01
Speaker
Yeah. What were saying, Nick? Nick? I was asking exactly what Snag's power is, because he's got the mechanical gauntlets, ah but he also clearly has emotional... What I could best describe as like literally emotional ripping powers, ah where he like forces you to feel things. Kind of like Victoria does, where she has her emotion aura.
01:23:20
Speaker
and yeah So they have like an emotion battle. um But is that... Am understanding Snag's power right? It's like an emotional... hi I mean, I asked assume... Plus claws. He yeah you like you are goes in in the walls, too. So he can like reach through and like grabs her. like Because he can melt... He's tearing through the walls.
01:23:43
Speaker
He's not... z not like yeah He's got gauntlets and stuff. Okay, I misread that as he can just zoop into the wall. And that's why she doesn't see him coming.
01:23:57
Speaker
You know? Because the assumption... He's got like a...
01:24:01
Speaker
He's got clown arms. They're like slanky, you know, they're hanging all the way to the floor. That's the whole thing. And that's because because they're like mechanical. And he's like stretching and grabbing through the wall and ripping people through.
01:24:13
Speaker
was saying it's a grab bag cape. He's got multiple powers. Yeah, yeah. He's a grab bag cape, multiple powers. He's a tinker, emotional manipulation. there a bingo in chat?
01:24:26
Speaker
Oh, does somebody already get a bingo? think. Two plus four times five says one maybe. How did you guys eat access Oh, it must be a patron. I'm not. i'm I'm not.
01:24:37
Speaker
Right, Alan, where'd you post it? I posted in our patron thing. Otherwise, you can look it up on bingobaker.com as the BBBC Arc 1 bingo card.
01:24:50
Speaker
That's funny. That's bingobaker.com. We'll have it. The BBBC Arc 1 bingo card. We'll have it in the chat next time so everyone play. And yes, there is a confirmed in the ward spoiler chat.
01:25:04
Speaker
We have ah vi Victoria is traumatized. Oh, hell no with nursery and speculation on Snag's powers for a bingo. Wow.
01:25:15
Speaker
I love that. That's hilarious. Oh my gosh. Good job. Let's go. pressure ah Alan owes you a kiss.
01:25:29
Speaker
Oh, I thought that was if i we filled out the whole thing. Oh, yeah. love the whole Okay. okay can we can I just want to say, chat, if anybody else gets another bingo, please let us know because I want to know what the rest were on these bingo cards. What the other things are? Yeah, super curious.
01:25:48
Speaker
I can let you all know at the end if we don't. Yeah, let us know at the very, very end. Yeah, we'll go over it right now.
01:25:56
Speaker
um um yeah So, okay, so Snag has a grabback. So we've confirmed that Snag is one of those cluster powers. Is it cluster? Is that the right word? I want to make sure I get the verbiage right because there's such unique ah language.
01:26:11
Speaker
I want to make sure I get it right. but It is not confirmed, but it is assumed they are part of a cluster. Okay, assumed cluster. Fuck. Mm-hmm.
01:26:22
Speaker
um yeah The fact that he's an emotion tinker is kind of a funny combination, right? of like Yeah. ah ah My metal gloves break through walls and then make you sad. Break through your walls.
01:26:38
Speaker
Break through your walls physically. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. yeah yeah an article out tinker ah Yeah, what did Bernard say? That Victoria has emotional powers and mentions that emotional powers don't have that much of an effect on her.
01:26:53
Speaker
And despite that, we see how much it does affect her, which makes you wonder if Snag grabbed somebody who didn't have right emotional barriers of some kind.
01:27:04
Speaker
Holy cow, what would that be like? but you on your ass probably i like i imagine that like you could just someone would just pass out right like if you got had such a huge flood of emotional whatever can just pass right like think about it in terms of like like adrenaline pumping through it like your brain responding to certain emotions and trying to like keep you safe i imagine your brain would probably just go
01:27:36
Speaker
nap time drop you on I wonder if you can do that in a positive manner like with the adrenaline thing of like supercharging somebody by like latching the claw into their back and being like alright get hyped and then like flooding them with adrenaline and like you know super focus and then letting them go and then they just like take off like a energizer bunny yeah yeah yeah paterall yeah There you go. i I had a... it For some reason, this reminded me of... um ah We're on a Brandon Sanderson kick, you know, because he's he's one of my guys.
01:28:11
Speaker
really um There's a character in that in the Wax and Wayne series who is hit. They have emotion powers as well where you can you know make people feel things. And she gets hit with this emotion power where it's like you're you're worthless. you like It's all the shame and all these negative emotions.
01:28:27
Speaker
But she overcomes it because she realizes, I've thought all of these things about myself already, and I've already beaten those bad thoughts, right? So just kind of as a side note, kind of an interesting way of like, would there be a possibility for somebody who has wrestled with their darkest...
01:28:43
Speaker
thoughts already be like yeah you're making me feel terrible i felt this way last week you're not going to affect me much more than my i can myself um just a side a side thought wait a minute i'm already depressed um
01:29:02
Speaker
listen you can never you can never hate me more than i hate myself Oh, no. and damn yeah yeah yeah he's but yeah no every Every day I'm glad I live in the world with no superpowers that says 2 plus 4.
01:29:22
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, yeah. yeah Everyone thinks they're going to get Marvel or or, you know, something nice and fun, but it's going to be Wyrm. yeah You're going to get Wyrm.
01:29:34
Speaker
I feel like it's between Wyrm, the boys, and Invincible, where it's like either demigod's going to conquer the Earth... All powered people are assholes who kill people for fun.
01:29:46
Speaker
yeah Or it's worm, which is, you know, and all of that and more. worse The worst of both. We got another bingo. um not yeah Another bingo in our Patreon.
01:29:58
Speaker
Spoiler. um We have what the fuck is up with stretches and spans? ah Victoria is traumatized in speculation on Snag's powers. Yeah. Nice. Good job. Love it.
01:30:11
Speaker
Fantastic. ah fantastic Do we want to move on to 1.6? Let's do it. I think we should. Yes. We do. we We're getting This one's... a a lot.
01:30:26
Speaker
um I think there's a big talking point for this since it's pretty simple. The heroes and villains are in the fight. And while we're having this fight and all the emotional powers are coming out, ah Victoria's trying to hold it together while getting hit with the motion powers from Snag.
01:30:42
Speaker
So yeah that, you know, all wraps up with a gunshot thank him and everybody kind of just goes home. Yeah.
01:30:54
Speaker
Everyone's like, well, all right. Disperse. It felt like such a jarring ah deviation from the cops and robbers ah feeling that a lot of these fights have had throughout all of Wyrm, where it was like, oh, no, the helpless civilians. And ah no, and they're running from all the ah the heroes and villains it sort of playing this game, as it were.
01:31:17
Speaker
And then now, because it's a it's a civilian that that pulls the trigger, right? It's like a dude across the street who shoots through. i can't remember. I open a window or the hole in the ceiling.
01:31:29
Speaker
Yeah. like yeah And it's just like, oh, wait, that's right. People can have guns. and if You know, if it was Quail Sniper, it would have been a different story. But yeah some Joe Schmo with a gun, not even a kill shot.
01:31:45
Speaker
Yeah. yeah Very different resolution. Absolutely. They think they're him, but they're not. So I love that, like, that is what is the end. that Because, like, they they just... These villains that have popped in, it's like, oh, okay, well, close enough to what we were going for. Sure.
01:32:07
Speaker
Mission accomplished. Let's skedaddle. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, the... Like, it wasn't... Sorry, Nick.
01:32:18
Speaker
No, it's all good. Go ahead. I was going to switch to something else, so... Oh, no. god yeah ah I mean, I was just going to i wrap this up. I was just going to say that, like, their mission is very different from Worm.
01:32:31
Speaker
So, like, in Worm, it's like, oh, we're going to kidnap this person because they have information we need or we're going to teach them a lesson or whatever. But, like, she is a symbol and it's an idea is what they're trying to do. And by her getting shot, the idea has been put in place.
01:32:46
Speaker
We can all go home.
01:32:50
Speaker
Yep. Yeah. Yeah, all of the flashbacks here in this arc are incredibly... It's one of those... I saw a comment um on the last chapter, but I think it's relevant here too, of like, you know, like when I read Wyrm and immediate you know first met Glory Girl and Victoria Dallin, I kind of disliked her.
01:33:09
Speaker
um But now you've made me feel things for her wild bow how could you How dare you? um And just like what what I do like about it, though, speaking of callbacks to the original series, you know, we had that interlude with Vista where she's like gives, you know, has the conversation with Glory Girl.
01:33:30
Speaker
And I love that that mattered to Glory Girl, too, to Victoria. I'm like, OK, good. It wasn't just for Vista, right? Like it really did matter to Victoria that Vista cared about about Dean.
01:33:42
Speaker
um Right. And yeah, lots lots there. um Somebody had asked, I think it was Bernard at the beginning, um how we feel about the way combat is done. Yeah. And Ward versus Worm. And Ward versus Worm. And what
Ideological Shifts and Emotional Awareness
01:33:57
Speaker
I like about it so far with this chapter too is that we have a hero now who can take hits.
01:34:03
Speaker
Right? Victoria has her force field power. Yes. Ooh. Whereas like for Taylor, it's very tactical. It's very like guerrilla warfare. She's like, okay, I gotta think. got Can't get too close to these guys. I'm gonna die. like I'm a little meatbag.
01:34:16
Speaker
Whereas Victoria's like, I can stop a bomb. you know It's a very different vibe, right? on where shes She's like to snag like, stop, this will end badly. And then he just yanks her through the floor and she's fine. Yeah. yeah yeah Okay, very different fight scenes, ah which I like.
01:34:34
Speaker
i like I like that change. um Yeah. Yeah. Good, good, good little arc here.
01:34:45
Speaker
Go Hannah. I was just going to say, i feel like I kind of said my thought already is that like with Wyrm, it was very like if we're going to fight, it's because we have a of a greater purpose. And thus far, the big fight that we've experienced has been an idea. It's been for an idea or a theme or a discuss topic of discussion as we, you know, talk about later in the interlude.
01:35:08
Speaker
But like it wasn't for... oh, we need to take her out or, oh, we need to make her suffer. It was, we need to remove her from the situation and bring about a conversation about capes as a whole, which is like so different from Wyrm.
01:35:26
Speaker
And this idea that like, well, civilization is so different. People are so different. The way they view capes are so different. How does that play out in that like big picture, litter little picture idea of how capes and society interact with each other? And it makes me really interested to see moving forward what that ends up looking like for Victoria, but also for like any capes that we come in contact with.
01:35:52
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Um, I touch a little bit more on the combat just to answer that question, the combat, how we felt for this versus worm. Um, and a big point for me is, uh, we've already touched on a lot, but since Victoria is an emotional power person,
01:36:10
Speaker
has that in her build. Um, she is emotionally aware of everything going on. So, you know, we see first that car crash and that seems like she's just ah aware as a mindset, but then as we move out, realize that's kind of part of her power that makes her more attuned to it and that she can also use it, not just receptively, but offensively.
01:36:34
Speaker
And we see her do that. Um, And we've already seen multiple emotion powers and how they get used in, you know, in this emotion just feels so much more present and prevalent to this story.
01:36:54
Speaker
um and having combat with flashbacks and the narrative, like the exposition of her backstory and what she's feeling then all being tied together.
01:37:07
Speaker
is a really odd like i said but when we started this time to explore your narrative is in the middle the middle of this combat um but you know lot of anime does that in their like tournament arcs and stuff um but they take forever to do it and this is i was about to say they do take forever while it's happening it's literally he's hitting her and she's having a flashback like and it's not just like oh we're gonna exposit while this is happening she is having the flashback because in universe he is hitting her. It is a cause and effect, like an actual, you have to exposit now because I punch you.
01:37:48
Speaker
um ah Yeah, I really enjoyed it.
01:37:56
Speaker
Yeah, we didn't talk much about Lord of Loss's power, um but I think it's an interesting one as well. ah where he, the more he does the same action, the more powerful it gets.
01:38:08
Speaker
So it's like, he punches you once, it's, you know, X power, punches you again, X squared, punches you again, x cubed. And it's like this kind of interesting building power that I, plus the breaker of like taking on multiple forms. Like he's, he's a bird at one point, he becomes a centaur by the end. He's a tree at the beginning. I love the tree. Yeah.
01:38:29
Speaker
The tree. I am a tree. Um, Yeah, and then had to look up what Long Scratch's power actually was. um So basically, he creates like long furrows when he swipes his claws, and then he can teleport through those.
01:38:47
Speaker
Oh, legit. So he like creates like a slash in the ground. I don't know how far away, but it's a certain distance. He can teleport to the end of it, make another one teleport again. um he's Like Jack with teleportation and also claws. Yeah, yeah. Yes.
01:39:02
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's An ability in D&D, the ah like steel wind strike where you appear very quickly, like in the blink of an eye at five different locations and slash the person at each one.
01:39:16
Speaker
um It's that, but you also telegraph the locations by teleporting the ends of the slashes and then hitting them at like, you slash, you teleport to the end of the slash, you slash again at the end of the slash and to teleport back all in the blink of an eye.
01:39:32
Speaker
like Yeah.
01:39:38
Speaker
A quick question, since we're talking about villains. A continuation ah from Bernard. ah Do you prefer to see new antagonists like Nursery, or would you prefer to go to old ones like Lung?
01:39:52
Speaker
I mean, I do want to see Lung again. Yeah, give me Lung. I mean, he's on tour, so, like... ah Right. I really want to see what his one-man show looks like.
01:40:03
Speaker
Uh... 100%. Yeah. Well, both. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think... one hundred percent yeah well i but yeah yeah i mean um i think We talked about this a little bit, but the idea of we we want a mix of both because of you know what's familiar, but also in a weird way, like there is that kind of question that I didn't... I don't... but Release the breath. She didn't realize she was holding. Had a question I didn't realize was in my head until you said it, Jacob. But the idea of like...
01:40:32
Speaker
Okay, what do the powers look like? I feel like we've we've had so many good ones. Are we going to continue to have like super solid powers in the next book? And like nurse nursery? we Yeah. Yeah, and like Lord of Loss and Kingdom Come. like that's that All of those are so good. And clearly, Wild Bo will never run out of ideas. Blindside.
01:40:56
Speaker
Blindside, God, so good. Fucking love Blindside's powers. So cool. Like, we're not but i going to run out of anything cool. And the idea that, like, there are still going to be super cool powers that we just haven't met yet.
01:41:08
Speaker
Like, you know, like, oh, friends we haven't met yet. Yeah, this felt like the introduction and these were, you know, like, oh, yeah, we just need some villains to kick the story off to set us up.
01:41:19
Speaker
Super solid start. These are your cannon fodder villains. Just getting out of the way. Yeah. These are your cannon fodder villains. I can't wait. Fume Hood is like a cannon fodder hero. Love it. Yeah.
01:41:31
Speaker
This is Wild Bo just flexing right now at this point. Yeah. Yeah. Let me just whip out a couple novel villains. Let me just whip out my big ideas. and yeah Yeah, for sure.
01:41:46
Speaker
Yeah. ah Also, Lord of Loss is a very Edgelord name. ah I'm like, I think they said like it was ah a nickname that somebody gave to him because he was actually a really bad villain at first.
01:41:57
Speaker
Well, oh know they they said they say there's two ways you get that kind of name. Number one, you either get it because you fucked up one time and everybody never let you, you know. a Lord of Loss would be what Jasper would become if he got the full tattoo, you know? Right. and Yeah, yeah.
01:42:14
Speaker
you know, you call him Lord of Lost because you're never going to outlive that. Or you end up living up to the name and being that like biblical tier badass.
01:42:27
Speaker
And he happened to be the latter. Yeah. Yeah. Also, Cannon Fodder. Great, great cape name. okay. Yeah. Yeah. That's true, actually.
01:42:40
Speaker
but That's going to be like a spree tier character where you like rush forward and you just like have a bunch of bodies that just die. Yeah. and really Well, see, I was thinking, um I was thinking, ah so ah my daughter, who is a young child, she watches a show called Super Kitties.
01:42:56
Speaker
And
Humor, Powers, and Superhero Concepts
01:42:57
Speaker
I've often thought to myself, how would the Super Kitty's powers translate into the Wyrm universe? One of them ah can turn into a basically a bouncy ball um and bounce around. And I actually thought, oh, cannon fodder. That'd be a funny name for a hero with that power, right? turn like Turning into like a destructive bouncy ball.
01:43:15
Speaker
I'm pretty sure one of New Wave does that. but They turn into a bouncy ball? i' pretty It's... ah Yeah. It's either Mark. I think it's i think it's i think is Victoria's dad.
01:43:28
Speaker
No, he's got the the flash. He's the flashbanger. um Then it's Carol. ae Thank you, man. Carol. Somebody. Yeah.
01:43:38
Speaker
ah Brandish. Brandish. It is Carol. Carol turns into a ball of light and Mark. Vic, Super Kitties. It's a show that exists on Disney+. Gotta know.
01:43:53
Speaker
They're so cute. yeah They are. They're very so cute. The little white one is named a Bitsy and she's my favorite. Oh, Bitsy. I'm going to look this up afterwards.
01:44:05
Speaker
um You know, it's probably no Bluey, but... It's not good show. Yeah. It's not... It's... Unlike Bluey, which is, like, universally, under, like, enjoyable, Super Kitties is very much kid's show. It's like, yeah, it's... I'll still... I'll give it a little look-see. They're so cute. See what we're dealing with powers-wise, you know? But there is a tiny British chihuahua, and he's hilarious.
01:44:29
Speaker
And a pig, apparently? Yes, yeah, they have a robot. Anyways, we're getting off track. We're getting off track. You know. yeah they boun ball i'll say this as a The guy from Sky High gets side kick.
01:44:43
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Yeah, and go drive bouncing ball yeah. yeah I was just going to say, um as an idea for a Patreon episode, I think it'd be fun to talk about other superhero media and how it might translate. Because I've given a lot of thought to Paw Patrol and Super Kitties and how they would fit in the warm universe. what trauma would those animals have to go through in order to get their power?
01:45:05
Speaker
I mean, think we would write in and tell us all. The Paw Patrol is pretty easy.
01:45:12
Speaker
Yeah. They
Family Reunion and Carol's Manipulations
01:45:13
Speaker
all got neutered. That'll trigger anyone. Oh, I love this. A 2 Plus adds, Kyan and Fodder would be launching duplicates of himself at high speeds, like Ballistic does, but they'd come out Gmod ragdoll style with sound effects. That is phenomenal. can go behind that.
01:45:33
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Yeah. All right. All right. It's pretty much time. Oh, a line that got me, you know, leading into all of this. Just one of the comments of like Victoria being, you know, being old Victor, you know, swan neck and just saying something about like how she saw it with all of her eyes.
01:45:55
Speaker
Like looking with all her eyes out the window. Oh my gosh. That was...
01:46:05
Speaker
Trauma. Trauma. the So much trauma. I've got some trauma. Trauma. Trauma is what I got. Alright, 1.7? Yeah.
01:46:17
Speaker
yeah Yeah, let's do it. right
01:46:21
Speaker
Victoria deals with the fallout of the attacks on Fume Hood and basically loses her job. After that, she goes to the family reunion where she finds an unexpected guest is there as well.
01:46:36
Speaker
ah We freak out and reveal
01:46:42
Speaker
a little bit more about her power.
01:46:46
Speaker
Carol's the worst.
01:46:51
Speaker
and so carol's the worst Oh my God, yes. Jesus fucking Christ. Hey, I did get one prediction right. Carol and Mark aren't together anymore, it seems. You did. There were a surprising amount of your predictions that I was like... That's funny. So... God damn. And Mark is cape name...
01:47:10
Speaker
so um and mark is cape name ah Flashbang? Flashbang? Is that Flashbang? I think that's just what I called him. i don't know if that's actually his name. No, no, I'm pretty sure it's Flashbang and Brandish. ah They're all like light-associated.
01:47:27
Speaker
I'll give you a second. Also, the one that we don't know that much about is ah Uncle Mike, a.k.a. Lightstar. Yeah. Oh, yeah. They brought up a light.
01:47:38
Speaker
Carol and Sarah, I guess, too. ah Their younger brother. Hmm. e ah He was present dirt with Fleur, which would be his wife, ah when they caught Marquis. Because she like ah grabs him right before he like falls on a spike, I believe.
01:47:57
Speaker
Or one of the bone spikes. um ah Was part of the Brockton Bay Brigade. That was very short-lived because they came out unmasked. And then his wife was immediately shot by some Empire 88 kid trying to earn his stripes.
01:48:13
Speaker
Right. So he is out of the Cape world almost immediately. Uh, and um, yeah, little bit about uncle Mike, you know, and how he, was a hero very briefly and lost his wife. And now I believe, it looks like he has kids. And we know from before when they were talking about like who gets, you know,
01:48:41
Speaker
who's going to take Amy. Uh, I think Carol was the only one with kids at the time. So he's got a new family. Hmm. Interesting. Mm hmm.
01:48:52
Speaker
Interesting. Yeah. Wow. I don't, I don't know if he was even married at the time when they got Amy. Cause I think they mentioned that where it's like, they don't have kids. This couple doesn't have kids and like uncle Mike's on his own or, you like Sarah's own. They're like, Oh, you already have a kid.
01:49:08
Speaker
Yeah. it What's another kid?
01:49:14
Speaker
Oh, my gosh. And her mom fucking knew and invited her. There's a certain level, like, okay, there's a certain level of parents being fucking stupid and not understanding anything.
01:49:29
Speaker
Like, sure, that happens. ah Being oblivious to their kids' whatever, trauma. She was not oblivious to this. She had, in fact, all of the facts.
01:49:42
Speaker
And she knew. and yet is like. Yep. Like, how do you how do you fuck up this badly? How do you because it just comes across as it's not that you fucked up. You knew exactly what you were doing. You just didn't care.
01:50:02
Speaker
that's That's the energy it's giving. Carol did not give a shit. She did what she wanted to. It's very performative. It feels very everyone else's visual benefit, not for it actual emotional health of your daughter. And it it it feels super fake to me.
01:50:26
Speaker
Like, Carol clearly does not care about Victoria in this moment at all. Even slightly. When it's... Oh, man. Just the the the call-out, too, from Victoria being like, you you invited her, and she's like, well, yeah, told you in my text. I invited everyone.
01:50:43
Speaker
And she's like, okay, now you're a lawyer. Like, you know how to use... Like, you can use words. You're not a a moron. Yeah, you're not a moron. You should know better.
01:50:55
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, man. i do like how it it seems like it was only Carol, because, like, several people... Right, because who apologizes to... ah Cousin warns her.
01:51:06
Speaker
Yeah. ah Everybody has a reaction when they see her because they're like, oh, shoot. Yeah. yeah i don't I didn't think she was coming because why would she when so-and-so's here? Right.
01:51:20
Speaker
And yeah well end because we find out later from the cousin, um from crystalite is Crystal the cousin? that she's talking to yes yeah yeah yeah so we find out later from crystal dream that carol had told all of them oh victoria knows that amy's here and she's cool with it yeah and she's cool with it and so i think part of the reaction is like they see her and they're like oh she does not know yeah like she is not no yeah oh man yeah and the looks manipulative
01:51:52
Speaker
the The moment. The moment she walks in and you just... People's eyes go up and like look and everybody's like... Yeah. shit and And you... ah that That... It's such... It's one of my favorite moments from this arc.
01:52:09
Speaker
It might be my favorite moment of the just everybody... Oh, shit. And her doing the... She's fucking here, isn't she? Like... I can't ever be here. I can't ever trust you because pulled that shit. I can't go home now.
01:52:24
Speaker
because like yeah Who's to say that she you're just not going to like let her into the apartment now? Right. Yeah. Trust has been officially and totally broken.
01:52:36
Speaker
um And to make a correction, wonderful lizard of odds, you're right. Floor and Mike were not married. They were dating. i just assumed because everybody was paired up. um also another do we have a double bingo from one of our people uh which i will pull up and look at looks like our double bingo is uh turning on carol what the fuck is up with stretches and spans and oh hell no with nursery very good yeah excellent excellent
01:53:07
Speaker
Like, I honestly, i'm I'm curious. Like, did Carol seriously think that this was going to go well? Like, did she seriously think that Victoria was going to show up and it was going to be like, you're right, mom.
01:53:18
Speaker
Thanks so much for bringing us together. Right. right but What the plan? What was the plan? Well, you know, time passes and you just think, surely...
01:53:34
Speaker
My daughter has forgiven her my other daughter for mind-raping her and turning her into a swan. Yeah. And you know and we we've already, because we went over this a lot in Worm, as everybody else on online has, and I finally had to have Wild Bo and others explicitly explain this.
01:53:57
Speaker
There was definitely sexual abuse going on too. It wasn't just the mind raping. ah There was some body involved.
01:54:07
Speaker
so yeah You mean but between Amy and Victoria? Yes. In particular? ah It was a lot more going on. Physically ill. And the fact that Carol's so fucking selfish and stupid that she can't, she can't,
01:54:28
Speaker
She's the worst. She's the fucking worst. And this right here is one of my favorite conflicts for a character.
01:54:39
Speaker
um We do have a really shitty character in Carol who clearly has what they're trying to work at and it's really fucked up. But we also have... This is not a this is not a miscommunication problem.
01:54:53
Speaker
This is not a... you know, ah oh, like, oh, I didn't realize. No, this is all intentional. This is not an idiot problem to solve where two characters can sit down and hash out their differences in five minutes and we can solve the entire plot.
01:55:11
Speaker
This is a problem that is going to require and oh weeks, months, years to resolve. Yeah. And I love those kinds of problems rather than also at the idiot problems.
01:55:29
Speaker
Yeah. To me, to me, what this speaks of is also just as a side note, this means that like Amy and Marquis are just out there somewhere because clearly Amy's probably with Marquis, I would assume based on what happened at the end of Worm.
01:55:42
Speaker
And I did what I would what I would love um is if this ever happened again, somehow Victoria calls Marquis up and is like, hey, come to the family reunion. Get him.
01:55:56
Speaker
jeto Marquis is like, yeah, sure. Why not? I've got nothing to do. We were inviting all the family and you forgot about Amy's dad.
01:56:05
Speaker
You bitch. yeah bit Oh, man. and ah damn That would be. Oh, man. Just I want Victoria to open the door, you know, push Marquis in like a like a, you know, a flashbang and then close the door. All right. or right out but Yeah.
01:56:20
Speaker
Have fun to discuss amongst yourselves. Yeah. yeah ah Yep. The line I have. How can you say that when you still sleep with the lights on?
01:56:34
Speaker
Yes. Yes! You got kidnapped with your sister and held. And to what degree, you know, there was any sort of sexual abuse or anything like that.
01:56:48
Speaker
We don't know. we could we i think there was an assumption that they were going to get sold into something, but yeah nothing actually happened yet. But that still was an extremely traumatic event.
01:57:01
Speaker
huh And you... Don't understand that you still have trauma from that. That is you know, applicable to understanding your own daughter's trauma.
01:57:14
Speaker
um Daughter. How? Doesn't Kira have the audacity to say like, well, that's different. It's the same. i know all That's different. Fucking bitch. How can you say that? I don't, I'm not a mother myself.
01:57:28
Speaker
Rough. I'm not. And, and, you know, I'm not even going to compare the whole thing of like, I have cats. That makes me mother. No. That's not the same thing as being, you know, birthing human children or adopting human children that exist in your life that you raise. Like, i I'm not a mother, but I can't, but it makes no feasible, plausible sense to me that this would be a mother's reaction. Like, how do you do that to your kid?
01:57:54
Speaker
How do you do that to your kid?
01:57:59
Speaker
She's a meanie. She's fucking... She's a dumb bitch. She is a cotton waffle.
01:58:07
Speaker
Yeah. and um So on the flip side, Gilpatrick. Nice guy. We like Gilpatrick. but you know I love Gilpatrick. Doesn't he have like a shaved head and a mustache?
01:58:20
Speaker
I forget what the description is. More reasons to love Gilpatrick. I don't remember. um He's like... That's true, I suppose. Yeah. Victoria likes I guess.
01:58:32
Speaker
yeah Despite him screwing her over, i we do really like him. Well, he didn't screw her over on purpose. he if It's very much of a, this was a higher up call that I did not have control over.
01:58:45
Speaker
And I had to do this or someone else would have. He knew the risk going in because he knew who she was and was like, hey, i know you have powers. And the whole point of this is to like kind of have, you know, people without powers.
01:59:00
Speaker
But... So the it was a test to what? Have her not react? Or that she couldn't react badly? but She wasn't supposed to react at all.
01:59:12
Speaker
um this is She's not supposed to use her powers. like They knew that she has powers. This is this is ah Taylor with the butterflies situation.
01:59:26
Speaker
Hey, can we trust you? to do what we say. Gotcha. And not like, and not, this isn't a matter of like trying to accomplish the goal. This is a matter of, can you follow orders?
01:59:42
Speaker
Can you, even though things are bad or happening, you know, are you going to stick to the rules of engagement, which is don't use your powers? And she doesn't.
01:59:56
Speaker
Yeah. It is that conflict of like, well, I could have not used my powers and things could have gone a lot worse for everybody. um Yeah. Or, you know.
02:00:07
Speaker
I mean, I don't know if it could go a lot worse. yeah Really, it would have just gone worse for Fumehood. Maybe? Like, you know, if everything had gone to what they said was going to happen, ah they get kidnapped, somebody yells at her, maybe slaps her a bit in the chair, she doesn't get shot, and they drop her off in the middle of, you know,
02:00:27
Speaker
somewhere. Yeah, it was kind of hard to parse exactly what they wanted with Humehood because there was this vibe I got where Victoria asks somebody like, you really just want to take her to meet some pregnant lady or some lady who was pregnant and had a miscarriage? And I feel like they're kind of cagey about it. Like, yeah. Yeah.
02:00:44
Speaker
That's what we're doing. well ah Remember, they we don't want to hurt her, though. You know, they've been hired to like bring her there allegedly. And, you know, she explains, to I think it was a blindside.
02:00:54
Speaker
Like, I'm pretty sure that pregnant lady died. And he was like, no shit. Like, oh, shit. Like, yeah. Yeah. like Well, oh was ah ah my yeah you know, as we know um from ah are glow worm and a little bit in the interlude.
02:01:14
Speaker
um ah They were hired by Tattletail to do this. So there is a broker that they have gone. You know, we don't know that that's actually the truth.
02:01:25
Speaker
It could be. um But, you know, there's potential. They're just dropping her off with Tattletail and Tattletail is doing who knows what. And then, you know, they take her away after they're done with whatever that is.
02:01:39
Speaker
um in this arc okay I there was a scene in this arc I didn't quite understand and I want to see if you guys can help me does Victoria catch people having sex like what is going on with that brief moment did you guys catch that scene are you talking about the window yeah the window so okay this is a great point Explain what you're talking about don't we're talking about. Okay, so there's a scene where she's like, she's about to lay down. She puts the blankets on the floor. She starts reading a bit and then she pauses.
02:02:11
Speaker
ah She turns on her force field and then it says handprint on the window in the condensation. Then another, circular smudge that streaked and naked breast pressed against the glass moving.
02:02:23
Speaker
um then the mark that couldn't be anything but one half of a face beneath the circular smudge. They moved and I wasn't asking them to move.
02:02:32
Speaker
um ah Can I tell you what I think that was instead? And also I wrote a note down like 20 minutes, minutes ago about something that relates to this exact thing.
02:02:46
Speaker
um It's not people having sex. It's her force field. So she talks. I'm pretty sure this is what's happening. She comes up to the glass and her force field is pressing against the glass.
02:02:59
Speaker
And it's literally the hand, the breast, the face, all in a weird conjunction because her basically... So her body became this thing. All of the hands. Her body became this thing. The force field molt like morphed to her weird blobby body. the last Swan body. We'll call it swan body. don't like body. Also chat, spoilers. Swan
02:03:21
Speaker
Okay, I won't look at chat for a second. Watch yourselves, watch yourselves. ah so So it morphs to her body. And then when she gets, when when I guess Amy, or she gets fixed, she's back, looks human again.
02:03:35
Speaker
Her force field is still out here. You know? So it's still in the shape of her old self. It hasn't, like, remorphed to her new self. And she
Victoria's Force Field and Self-Image
02:03:44
Speaker
says it's because she thinks it's, like, oh it might be the Manton effect, but I think it has to do with, like, how I see myself.
02:03:50
Speaker
And she still sees herself as this swan thing, and swan body. And that's, like, that's what that is. So it's not that she sees someone having sex. She is seeing...
02:04:02
Speaker
the the edge of her force field being pressed against the window. So instead of her force field being like right against her skin, like it used to be, it's now more bubbly like around her because her form was bigger than.
02:04:17
Speaker
and she still kind of sees herself as that. Yes. And so it hasn't remorphed back to her new body. i did not catch it. I was so confused. I was like, yeah.
02:04:29
Speaker
Yeah. Is she like watching people having sex right now? Like what's happening? I'm so confused. No, I read that. I read that section, think two or three times because it caught me off guard and it, it only made sense. Yeah. People in her fourth field is mega thick is what Vic said.
02:04:48
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I get it. I get it now. The old trauma still with her in the form of her power. I think that's, think that's a short explanation. was so confused reading that and I was like, I'm just going to move on. i don't know what's happening. We'll talk about it on the podcast.
02:05:02
Speaker
Like a Jojo stand. Thank you for it. That's a reference I get. ah
02:05:09
Speaker
um um i I did my my thing I wrote down before though this seems like a good time to ask it because we're talking about her force field so during the fight so i obviously we're past the fight but I just have to ask this during the fight her her her like field breaks down and comes back like it has like a renewal thing instead of just being on all the time yeah that's the way it was before Was that how it was before? yeah Remember, Tattletail shatters it with the gun.
02:05:41
Speaker
and i But it feels like it feels like one of those things where like you shatter it and it comes back really quickly and now it's like a lot slower. But I guess i I just didn't understand her powers correctly.
02:05:54
Speaker
ah I mean, that could be a change over time. We know that powers adapt. and I mean, in this case, very physically, as we've seen. um as it opposed to, you know, it could have been different when she was younger and it's slowly changed to be stronger, but slower or you know, some difference.
02:06:14
Speaker
um That makes sense. think it still operates relatively the same. I do remember that because I remember her talking too specifically about how she could use her force field to enhance her, like an attack, but it would use up the power so she'd have to wait.
02:06:28
Speaker
um I remember this because I designed a custom Glory Girl Magic the Gathering card and I... you I referenced that temporary invincibility. that you yeah Love it.
02:06:41
Speaker
Love it. Love it. ah ah Yeah. I have the ah force field is a constant reminder that that is what her power thinks she is.
02:06:52
Speaker
And in part, what she also believes herself be. What she believes herself to be, yeah. yeah yeah yeah it has a lot more to do with her own vision of herself rather than like what she actually is because it's so tied to your own perceptions.
02:07:07
Speaker
Yeah, that's that's a good point, 2 plus 4, that she uses her force field now. Now that it's bigger, she uses it to protect a lot of people. like Yeah. blocks the go explod Yeah, so but okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
02:07:19
Speaker
Yeah. yeah and we And we don't know the exact amount of time, but as Bernard points out, the two big instances, Tattletail uses the gun to break it. And then, you know, they talk about like, you know, we're all there shooting it to break it. And then with Crawler that she got hit, it broke it. And then, you know, the acid stuff. She gets burned by the acid. Yeah. yeah ah So I imagine that it's still relatively quick, especially with having to use it to fly and to shield yourself and to hit things.
02:07:49
Speaker
would require you to get that pretty fast. But like getting hit with multiple bullets would be enough to shatter. And then the second, third, fourth bullet hits you because those would be in rapid succession or somebody coming up and bump up. bu It's like, it's like, like master chief's armor and halo, you know, take a few hits and then the shields drop. And then if you hide behind a rock for long enough, shields come back up, you know, that reference. I understand.
02:08:15
Speaker
That's, that's one. i If you whack her in the back hard enough, she dies immediately. if I've learned anything from Halo.
02:08:28
Speaker
ah but Yeah, that is that is the state of Victoria's power. um And we also see that she can now use it ah to like grab stuff.
02:08:42
Speaker
ah Because when there are footsteps coming after her, because somebody decided they wanted to be cutesy and run after her, she rips up parts of the lawn in concrete and flings it behind her. all those Invisi-hands are up to something.
02:08:58
Speaker
Oh, it is like a JoJo stand. Thank you, Fran. I'm going to think of that only now. So when Victoria uses her stand, um... Oh, my So does Dursery also have a stand? Fucking nerds!
02:09:16
Speaker
I mean, love you guys. I love guys so much. Are passengers just stands?
Miss Yamada's Supportive Role
02:09:21
Speaker
jojo is JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is the straightest manly show ever. What are you talking about? um my god. so Have you seen those characters?
02:09:31
Speaker
Blaming hats. That's what I call them. Blaming hats. ah God damn it. Okay, we gotta keep moving. We got so we still have this chapter and... 1.8. See, Michael's slowly dying in the camera, so we got to go. Yeah, Michael's slowly melting. He's like, y'all, i I have to get up for work tomorrow morning.
02:09:49
Speaker
We get to talk with Yamada. Yes. Fuck yeah. And little bit discussion about the body, the mind, the heart, the warrior monk philosophy, and ultimately how fucking dangerous Pancia is.
02:10:07
Speaker
I called it. I wanted more Miss Yamada. And we got her in the first arc. We got her back, baby. Fucking happy, man. I love her to death. She's got such good responses. She's got got such good ah thoughts.
02:10:22
Speaker
and And I just love her. She's so fucking professional, too, while also being such a big Victoria fan. Like, I love that about her so much. She's like... Well, i can't I can't be your therapist anymore, but I can absolutely recommend somebody to you. And i'm it's so good to hear your voice. Also, that's something she says.
02:10:40
Speaker
It's so good to hear your voice after like Victoria has basically been voiceless for so long. And this idea that like instead of it's so good to see you like with Victoria's own perceptions of how she sees herself that Yamada says it's so good to hear your voice like.
02:10:55
Speaker
That got me. Miss Yamada was visit visiting her in the hospital. I know. Trying to do therapy with her. oh my God. I love her so much. My God. She's the best. Just the idea that I don't think... i'm trying to remember Rudd and Weld for Slaughterhouse-Nine.
02:11:15
Speaker
I forget, did we have a Yamada Glory Girl interlude?
02:11:20
Speaker
I don't think we did. No. We had the... had a Sveta. I guess I was... don't think it was Amy. We had Vista. we I'm thinking about... It was Vista. I don't think we had one at that time when she was with the wards.
02:11:34
Speaker
Oh, yes. Because she was like yeah thinking about joining and I don't know if she had officially at that time yet. But... um So she was there. ah You know, had met her and talked to her but maybe he had wasn't a client. And then when...
02:11:49
Speaker
we later went to the facility with Sveta is when we see her as a patient. So like, yeah. who Like you said, you know, Jessica, see and Victoria hearing her voice and like, Hmm. She just knows she gets it when Carol falls. So, so short of the mark.
02:12:11
Speaker
Miss Yamada continues to raise the bar. And it's telling that Gilpatrick calls her because she's Victoria's emergency contact. Not Carol, not Mark.
02:12:23
Speaker
Yeah. Fuck you, Carol. My heart. It's great. Oh, man. ah just i'm I'm imagining the phone call and she's like, hi, who is this? And like, hey, my name's Gilpatrick. I'm You're the emergency contact for somebody named Victoria Dallin. Just, but we I'll be right there. Oh, oh. Did she write that down with like, ah like her, you know, weird, like disabled controller thing? Like, like no, she told me like in person.
02:12:53
Speaker
I'll be right fucking there. Holy shit. I'm on my way. um my way Also, side note, props to Uncle Mike for being a real one. um According to k Crystal, he was the only one who came in with his kids and was like, yo, what the fuck?
02:13:08
Speaker
Yes. What are you doing? Bless him. Uncle Mike. There's always some good uncle somewhere. yep Gil Patrick also. What a gem for reaching out. like He saw, and he didn't and he I think that if he saw it was Carol, he would have been like,
02:13:28
Speaker
no like yeah I we're not gonna call that but he saw it was like Yamada I don't know who the fuck that is but we're gonna get her over here good on him yeah oh bless him I like him so much it's a bummer that she can't work for him anymore I don't know if y'all saw this but uh Mrs. Yamada was that a change ah She was definitely Miss Yamada. I feel like have to go back and look. Is she a now?
02:13:57
Speaker
But I'm pretty sure it said Miss Yamada in worm, and it says Mrs. Yamada right now. um I don't know if that is a marital status change, or know that is often a a convenient ah
Amy's Impact and Family Trauma
02:14:15
Speaker
name, like a small name thing, that therapists will do so that theyre they're like their clients don't get like, oh, like they're single? Maybe I can shoot my shot with my therapist.
02:14:31
Speaker
That's actually very true. well you know Something to think about. I would like to think that that if she is married, his least married to the work. would like to think that if she is married, um that she married some very nice, like, chef lady. And the chef lady makes her, like, little pastries to take into work.
02:14:55
Speaker
and there I was going to say 24 hours a day. I was going to say, oh have a nice peace in my mind, she's she's with ah mr kaye um and we have lawyer ah hear a hear a lawyer.
02:15:10
Speaker
I approve. And he took her last name. It is Mrs. Yamada in Worm 2. Shoot. okay how did She was married in Worm. We saw her apartment. or You know what it is, Alan?
02:15:24
Speaker
We knew she was single. She lived in that bachelor life. you know You know what it was, Alan? is that We all got blinded by our smasher pass that we did and we're all like, oh yeah. Yeah, we just pre-assumed that we would make her missus, you know?
02:15:37
Speaker
yeah and I can missus her. oh no Oh my gosh, that's so funny. ah last Last paragraph of the arc is fairly ominous.
02:15:49
Speaker
um When, ah yeah Victoria says, send somebody my sister's way. She's the scariest person in the world, and I don't think that's a bias. There's a chance she's going to do something bad.
02:16:00
Speaker
ah It's going to affect an awful lot of people. And we I don't know... i'm curious how much no victoria how much wow i can't talk how much Victoria knows about Gold Mourning.
02:16:12
Speaker
Because she i think it's alluded to that she recognizes that Taylor dropped Amy off at the hospital to fix her. Like with the mind command of fix your sister basically. like Yeah.
02:16:26
Speaker
I didn't get that she commanded her to fix her. that she Not to command her, but like put them next to each other. to yeah like With the implication of, you know, you should do something about this. Fix your goddamn mess.
02:16:41
Speaker
Yeah. Clean your shit up. I'm wondering how much Amy told Victoria about what really happened. And so it makes me wonder, like, because when it comes to Gold Mourning, obviously Taylor takes the bulk of the credit for mind controlling everybody to beat Zion.
02:16:59
Speaker
But Amy's the one who broke through the barrier to her power with her power. Yeah, that's true. Kind of spoopy. I do. Drop her in front of Amy. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
02:17:12
Speaker
I do assume that that she... she um ah Victoria just knows because of She's, you know, all of her cave family. Like, I would assume that at this point, Victoria absolutely knows what the fuck went down.
02:17:29
Speaker
But again, like, we don't know. I don't think that many people know. I think they just know that... she I feel like she even implies that she doesn't know that much in the glow worm part where she's like, yeah, the story's not totally clear. guess so.
02:17:41
Speaker
Yeah, because all you know is all of a sudden some person starts walking out of a tent and mind controlling everybody. Like that's, I imagine, what that's most people know. um That's true. yeah Yeah. To Bernard's question, i could see it either way where Amy tells Victoria some stuff, but I could also kind of see Amy breaking down and telling her everything.
02:18:01
Speaker
So it's kind of like, ah amy I can kind of see it either way. That's the problem with Amy. You don't know what the fuck she's doing because she's just not like, girls a man, she can't use her own powers on her head to fix that chemical imbalance.
02:18:14
Speaker
Jesus. um Yeah. i just I just was reminded of that stupid conversation with Taylor and Amy when amy is getting chased down by the Siberian.
02:18:24
Speaker
And she's like, can you fucking help us? And Amy is like,
02:18:30
Speaker
You're a bad guy. i don't help bad guys. She literally is the printer um of of capes. um yeah Some small notes here.
02:18:43
Speaker
ah Holy shit. Carol is really on some shit right now. um Just with the texting. ah Love laser dream. You know, following up like, hey, I didn't know shit.
02:18:55
Speaker
but i welcome When I got there, I wouldn't let that shit slide. Nobody would have. Yeah. ah Victoria also doesn't like eggs. And I famously am not an egg fan. So, you know, and you don shit ah oh much she really is you, Alan.
02:19:13
Speaker
I don't, don't ruin this for Don't ruin this for me, Nick. I know there's probably some people thinking that the Victoria is my egg moment, you know, so just let me have this one.
02:19:27
Speaker
And then the trauma is so present ah that she can't even eat without bringing shit up. Because of how eating was for her before.
02:19:40
Speaker
Yeah. it's all Trauma like that is all-encompassing. It connects to all parts of your being, not just, you know, couple things here and there. um Yeah.
02:19:52
Speaker
And then we have the basketball game origin story confirmed. We said it was bullshit. We said it was PRT lies. ah ah There was a little bit of a spin put on it, but ultimately that is what happened.
02:20:04
Speaker
She was getting her ass whooped in a fucking junior high, you know, high school basketball game. And, uh, fucking, you know, she triggered and I really want to know what she did to that girl.
02:20:22
Speaker
Yeah, that's crazy. that That girl did. and and Oh, she died. Oh, she died. God damn it. of confirm is it that is That is what is.
02:20:40
Speaker
um I remember also reading this for the very first time and trying to be in that mindset, like in my life, of the warrior monk the incredibly balanced unbiased human being and you know we see that with with her she's like trying to be this you know this perfectly in the you know i am balanced i'm zen state and ah at the time i was reading it i was also it was also my time in my life where i was trying to be like a well-rounded complete human and confirm
02:21:12
Speaker
And um yeah, yeah do you know exactly what time it was. I know exactly. I know exactly. Alan was all down the middle on the Myers-Briggs and he was very proud of himself for basically, except for judgment. He's very judgy. But all the other things he had like, basically it was like, I need to be more this. I need to be more this or more this. And he like implemented that into his life. And that was about the time when I was like, oh, I like that guy.
02:21:45
Speaker
um through bernard yeah it is uh technically due to the disappointing looks her mom and dad give her from up in the up in the stands but wow you know the girl who was nearby that pushed her like if that force field comes out she like doesn't know that she has it or something like and she takes a swig and that girl goes through the fucking wall like oh i guess i got powers now um interlude unless we got anything else here To the interlude.
02:22:13
Speaker
Let's do it. Let's wrap it up. I'm fucking falling
Villain Lodge Dynamics
02:22:16
Speaker
asleep. Yep. In which people come together at the lodge with Moose, Prancer, and Scarlet. oh i think Velvet.
02:22:24
Speaker
Velvet. ah They meet at the lodge, meet up with the villains, and Prancer tries to get something started. Yeah. Yeah.
02:22:37
Speaker
Wow. Um...
02:22:42
Speaker
Is it bad that I like, once again, i like villains so much better than I like the proposed good guy team? like Like, there's nothing wrong with that hero team that we interacted with, basically all arc.
02:22:55
Speaker
But I freaking love Moose. And and i just Moose is such a good boy. Moose is such a good and ah And just, like, all of these capes interacting interacting at the lodge. And, like, i I love the vibe when they come in. and Everyone...
02:23:13
Speaker
everyone cheers and and the nursery comes over to their table and drops a bunch of lore and I wanted to be sick a little bit. you know How was her explanation less like she's so much more normal as a person than she was at the villain place like when she was acting all creepy with the Bible verses. She was just pulling that because she was trying to be friendly with the other Bible guy and then when she gets there she's like oh yeah I'm relatively normal except that I'm not a parahuman.
02:23:42
Speaker
Like, how are you creepier and more normal? You're like... yeah um Don't like that. Don't like that one bit.
02:23:53
Speaker
Also, how did your baby trigger?
02:24:00
Speaker
who I feel nauseous. Also, I feel like um we're going to see nursery a lot.
02:24:12
Speaker
Because that was fucking creepy. And we're not just, you don't just get unborn creepy parahuman baby without lots of consequences with said creepy parahuman baby.
02:24:26
Speaker
Yeah, don't love it. Mm-mm. And she's so nice too. She's so nice. I think she love as a person. She's fantastic. Like she seems like so sweet. She's in like her pink leopard print. and she's just like, well, you know, it's such a mess to try and clean off your outfits. They might as well just, you know, get a new one every time you're like.
02:24:47
Speaker
i did. i did read this. I did think this before I didn't follow up because I knew that one of the interactive stories that Wild Boat put on took place in Alaska. um I knew that was one the things that like you know, he did role playing with some people in forums.
02:25:01
Speaker
ah Fun fact, Prancer, Moose, ah and Velvet, I guess, were the villains in that interactive story where you played as the PRT director. That's fun. I was like, as soon as I saw they were from Alaska, I was like, I don't know what the story was there, ah but they're also from Alaska. I wonder if those are connected.
02:25:20
Speaker
Thank you for... Moose makes sense for an Alaskan villain. I love it. And his explanation too for his damn name is phenomenal. You know, Prancer and Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donald Blitzen.
02:25:32
Speaker
And Velvet, yeah. Yeah, it's in Velvet. And Velvet. I do love this... ah um this, you know, cafe for villains is great. It's just so funny.
02:25:48
Speaker
And the whole, like, the barkeeper being like, they're like, so what's upstairs? And he's like, if you got to ask, you're not allowed up there. That's right. It's so great. It's so good. love that.
02:25:59
Speaker
And Marquis is there too. Marquis is Yeah, Is Marquis your daughter? Where's your fucking daughter? Where's your fucking daughter, Marquis? You need to put that shit on a leash. That's what she's doing.
02:26:13
Speaker
yeah Ruining family reunions.
02:26:17
Speaker
You keep that on a choker chain. Also, William said, i feel like nursery is an unreliable narrator about her own power, mostly because that's less disturbing than the alternative. And I agree.
02:26:29
Speaker
That's true. But she could also be like, I know some people talk about this worm thing that y'all saw and y'all remember now, but like, I never had that happen.
02:26:40
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Marquis is sad that he wasn't invited. He wasn't invited to the barbecue. He wasn't invited to the lookout. He like went to the to the lodge to sulk.
02:26:51
Speaker
Oh, we also see we see Biter. Biter's there. Yeah, Biter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was fun. so and And we did say like, I think Biter was the one we said like, he's probably going to go do his own thing eventually.
02:27:04
Speaker
And he did. yeah Good for him. We don't need it. He's not running the place, I don't think. But, you know, he's he's having a good time. He's balling out with some people. Ugh. I love the talk that the th ship of Theseus maneuver that he tries to pull on the the truck. track on the china But what if we like know did the outside, but we kept the inside and then we fix that. We swap out the engine then we swap out the tires and then we swap.
02:27:27
Speaker
It's like, don't ship with thes me. Yeah. ah which That was really fun. I also really like Moose and Prancer's conversation about Velvet and like how he's trying to be a better man for Velvet and their relationship. and like you know this like This is kind of how it's been and this is what we turned into and this is us trying to like find a better space in the world for ourselves, which i I really like. I feel like there's probably a lot of villain capes that fall into that category where like
02:28:00
Speaker
they slipped into a niche and they kind of stayed in that niche and then the world blew up, you know? And so you're just trying to like figure out where your new space is. And what did they say? Wheeling and dealing. Love that. Love that.
02:28:17
Speaker
ah Yeah. I imagine Prancer is just Matthew McConaughey from that one movie where he's like, that's not the great thing about freshmen. I keep getting older. They keep staying the same age. oh All right. All right. All right.
02:28:28
Speaker
Disgusting. I don't like Prancer. I appreciate him trying to be a better person, but... just He does clarify that they were all 18 or older, but I'm like, I still didn't like your clarification. It didn't make feel any better. Yeah. yeah make you feel it's very like They were still in high school. like leave Leave the babies alone, okay?
02:28:52
Speaker
Leave them alone. ah No bueno. I'm not going to count this because I'm going to bring it up. So this doesn't count for a win at the bingo because I had to. um But the Prancer Velvet Moose thruple, I'm surprised Hannah didn't bring it up.
02:29:08
Speaker
ah That's because there's not chemistry for a thruple there. yeah When there is chemistry for a thruple, Hannah will bring it up. yeah It wasn't chemistry for a thruple.
02:29:20
Speaker
Hannah didn't bring it up. You're right. But ah but Moose is... But they did they did do thruple-y things. Yeah. that ah That is confirmed. The energy wasn't there.
02:29:31
Speaker
i felt let down. there's going to be a thruple, at least have some thruple energy, please. Yeah. ah But yeah, ah Velvet and ah Moose confirmed...
02:29:44
Speaker
or a thing as is you know he's he's moose is the little side piece yeah now now i'm fucking attracted oh somebody is always fucking a tractor
02:30:01
Speaker
ah just who yeah yeah that's that's what we want to know all right um oh i guess uh fran vol's confirming they were not actually part of the interactive story You know what? I'm going to have to research this to myself now that we've gone back and forth on this, but I appreciate you at least mentioning it because I did say, see that they were in Alaska and now that's going to be in my head. to look up that story.
02:30:25
Speaker
um Closing comments ah on favorite power slash tape. Oh yeah. Favorite new powers. Cause we can do that now. We actually have new ones.
02:30:38
Speaker
I know we got new power. Yay. What do you got, Hannah? ah Did you have one?
Villain Motivations and Personal Growth
02:30:44
Speaker
Yeah, Blindside is my go-to. I said this earlier. I really like Blindside. i really like the way that he is super aware of his own powers and with the whole thing with the, like, you're going to shift or going to snap your neck. Like, I love that so much. i don't know. i haven't, like, pieced in exactly why it, like, scratches the itch so well, but I really like that a lot. Yeah.
02:31:10
Speaker
And you know my thoughts on nursery, but nursery is not my favorite part. Definitely blindside, for sure. Yeah. I really like the idea of... I was trying to think when we were talking about them.
02:31:23
Speaker
A tinker whose tech can kind of touch into like like thinker or master stranger powers. Like I can't think of too many tinkers that have that ability.
02:31:37
Speaker
So I thought that was yeah and really interesting. it's just ah It's a neat concept that I don't think Worm really explored too much. So for that reason, what was name? ah Snag. Scab?
02:31:48
Speaker
Snag. I think it's Scab. Snag. ah Yeah, Snag probably gets the favorite power of the arc. Oh, I'm sorry. Brandsvall's confirming.
02:31:59
Speaker
ah They were in the story. He meant the underage girls. Underage girls were not in the story. That's good. I see. That's always good. We appreciate that.
02:32:11
Speaker
Yes, yes. Thank you for the clarification. I appreciate it, Fran.
02:32:16
Speaker
Yeah. That's the thing is if you if you know the age of consent in your state by memory, you might, you know, you might have Let's be on a list. Prancer is that kind of person.
02:32:29
Speaker
And probably was on that list. And probably was on that list. Ew, gross. Favorite... Favorite cape in New Powers. um I like Lord of Loss as an idea of, you know, the whole thing of like and The definition of insanity is trying the same thing and then' expecting different results.
02:32:51
Speaker
um But his is literally like, well, I'm going to do the same better for time. You know, it's just like punch you once, ah punch you again. Don't let me punch you three times. ah so it's that It's the punch me jam on Punch me twice.
02:33:08
Speaker
You're about to get fucked up. Yeah. Also, i think I think part of it too is like he reminds me of Marquis with the honorable thing, right? Where he's like, whoa, hey, we weren't trying to hurt Fumehood. We literally just needed to take her for a bit.
02:33:21
Speaker
She got shot. You go help her. Let us go. We're cool. Like, tell people it wasn't us. We didn't intend this. Like, just that kind of honorable villain vibe that I like. love it. That Marquis had as well.
02:33:32
Speaker
um So I'm um down for that.
02:33:36
Speaker
Yeah. Also, he basically has, he is the fucking, what is it? Whitney? Is it Whitney from freaking Pokemon Silver? is just, ever it is rollout. It's rollout. It just keeps... Rollout every time. It just keeps getting rollout. I was getting flashbacks as a kid, like, oh, Lord, of lost. No, not rollout again. Not Miltank.
02:33:57
Speaker
Okay. ah Wonderful Lizard added, Fran is saying in the interactive story, Prancer was wanted for statutory. Okay. Well, that... That... Okay. Interesting. ah Wow. There we go ah two plus four says yeah you go. plus you go. 2 plus 4 said their favorite was Kingdom Come or Crystal Clear.
02:34:16
Speaker
Yeah, Kingdom Come is one that I'm like, yes. Yeah. and that's Until I found out the reason he's called Kingdom Come is that he's kind of a Bible weirdo. It's a bit odd, but um power is cool.
02:34:28
Speaker
Yeah. I forgot about the Bible weirdo part, actually. Yeah. All right. Any... I'll give you the what I had on the card and then we'll do predictions to the finish.
02:34:40
Speaker
um I had a joke about Crystal Clear's appearance. um ah Probably something J.O. Crystal related. i don't know. I almost... I did almost say something about J.O. Crystal. You have given a lot of people some bingos with that. I'm sorry about that, guys.
02:34:56
Speaker
Worm Nensha or Wormnesia. I'm surprised we did not do that Oh, hell no with nursery. What the fuck is up with stretches and spans? Victoria's traumatized. Hannah gets happy that there's a throuple turning on Carol.
02:35:08
Speaker
A cat appears on stream, which I believe Bernie did his appearance very early on. And then speculation on Snag's powers. ah If you're a patron, you can go ahead and they and suggest next week in our chat.
02:35:22
Speaker
and we'll make sure next spoiler We'll make sure next week everyone has the ability to do it. We'll have it in the description next week. Absolutely. um And then predictions for Next. Uh, what were we've got incoming?
02:35:38
Speaker
Are we reading? Um, what are we reading? We, all yeah, the next one is approximate. It'll be 58,000. We won't have to break this up until arc four probably.
02:35:51
Speaker
Okay. Okay. Uh, we've 58,000 for two and then 47,000 for three. Um, yeah, very doable. Um, it's going to be a little bit longer next week, but, uh,
02:36:05
Speaker
Not by much. So predictions. What do you think is coming up? The only thing I can think of is ah Victoria had the conversation with Fumehood where she's like, I like the idea of the community hero thing.
02:36:19
Speaker
Do that. Even if people don't like you now and you're not allowed to do this whole public reveal, do that thing. Be the community hero. I'm predicting Victoria will take that advice herself as well and kind of be like, well, you know what? I got to do something.
02:36:34
Speaker
maybe me and LaserDream, we can get back out there and do some good some good for the world. Ooh, I like that. Yeah.
02:36:45
Speaker
Yeah, I didn't even know where to start. um I've got no idea. I'm like half expecting the Simmer to just show up next arc and just wipe everyone out and we'll start over again. You know?
02:36:55
Speaker
Fun little trailer. Yeah. The real problem. Yeah, all of a sudden it's a ah Kingdom Hearts 2 situation where like, actually, it's just a simulation. Yeah, exactly.
02:37:07
Speaker
Like, I don't know if everyone we've met or are long-term players or are they just sort of one-offs here to get the story going? So, I mean, it feels like we're seeing more of Nursery, probably more of Fumehood little bit. um Yeah, kind of just curious who stays and who's not going to be around.
02:37:27
Speaker
Yeah.
Community Engagement and Closing Remarks
02:37:29
Speaker
I just want to see more of how this world connects back to Victoria, like how Victoria sees herself in the new society, the new world, how she sees herself. Like, we see that quite a bit in this arc, but I want more of that. Give me more of that internal...
02:37:49
Speaker
ah Internal bits. Give me more therapizing. I want more. I want more. want more Jessica Yamada. I need a lot more of that. And I actually really liked ah Jasper a lot, actually. And I'm very bummed that we might not get to see him some more. So I'd like to have more of Jasper. That would be great.
02:38:07
Speaker
But he didn't die. He didn't die. didn't die. Bless him. He can go on and get his tattoo now. Yep. That's right. That's right. There you go. All right.
02:38:17
Speaker
Well, without further ado. Okay. Announcements um are as follows. and We do this every other week. So we, everyone, please read with us. We're doing chapter two and the next stream will be, well, yeah, arc two. Next stream will be the 29th of April. And if you're listening to this in the future, know,
02:38:44
Speaker
you know and You should have been here when it was live. And please join us. You know, come check the schedule. um YouTube is how you find out. And or also join the Patreon.
02:38:56
Speaker
Which leads me to our final, final thing, which is, of course, if you were here last week, we've got the Join the Patreon special outro music. We have a lot more versions now.
02:39:09
Speaker
Here you go. Join the Patreon. Please come on in. Why don't you just join the Patreon? Come support us and join the Patreon.
02:39:20
Speaker
Please help us and join the Patreon. We have fun. Join the Patreon. It's great you join the Patreon. Why don't you just join the Patreon?
02:39:31
Speaker
Come on, come on. Sometimes, just for fun, I'll cancel my Patreon subscription. Just so I can have the pleasure of signing up once again.
02:39:48
Speaker
Let's go. That's fantastic. oh just run around the house singing that. like and un Ironically, I run around singing that so much.
02:40:01
Speaker
i that Join the Patreon. Come on, come on. It's like in my head 24-7.
02:40:08
Speaker
Oh, well, if you like that, i I'm glad because there's a lot more where that came from. You'll have to stick to next time, the 29th.
02:40:19
Speaker
See it again.
02:40:24
Speaker
Thanks so much for joining everyone and um we'll see you soon. Great chats. Appreciate it all. Yeah, it was lovely seeing you all in the chat. We appreciate ah the non-spoilers because I love having chat up to look at it. So it's really fun. You know what? I appreciate y'all being here and y'all do a pretty good job of your policing yourself. So I'm not really too worried. Yeah. yeah And your guys like are like our own little like Google looking us looking stuff up. Yeah. Y'all helping us with the like, oh, I think they were married. no they weren't married. I'm like, cool.
02:40:54
Speaker
that's what That's the yeah kind of information I need to know. Great. It's very helpful. Yeah. All right, guys. Goodbye. night.
02:41:16
Speaker
It's great you join the Patreon Why don't you just join the Patreon