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BBBC Reads Ward - Arc 16.8 - 16.Z - From Within
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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 Arc 16.8 - 16.Z - From Within
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 Host Greetings
00:00:00
Speaker
Good evening, Brockton Bay or Mega City. Are you experiencing weird shard-based dreams? You may be entitled to financial compensation.
00:00:14
Speaker
Tonight, Beckford will be hosting because he's just the silliest baby. He's just sweet little baby boy. he just loves the attention. For those audio listeners, I am a holding up Beckford, a rather rotund black cat.
00:00:32
Speaker
In front of the camera because he just refuses to get out of the way. um Welcome to the Brockton Bay Book Club.
Book Club and 'Ward' ARC 16 Discussion
00:00:42
Speaker
i am one of your hosts, Alan. Joining with me is Hannah.
00:00:46
Speaker
Hello. Jacob. Hello. Nick. Hello there. And our producer, Michael. Welcome. It is so good of you all to join us. We are a book club that's going through J.C. McRae's Ward, the superhero sequel to Worm.
00:01:06
Speaker
ah You can, of course, go read it on your own, and we'll assume you're caught up. But we are reading tonight the back half of ARC 16, which I believe is 16.8 to
00:01:20
Speaker
16.Z, or Z for all of our backwards listeners out there. backwards listener. only ah Upside down. i couldn't just say thing I was going to say British, but you know.
00:01:32
Speaker
Brits, the Aussies. There's a lot of them out there. Yeah. There's a lot of wrong people in the world.
Patreon and Community Engagement
00:01:41
Speaker
It's true. you know shes Gosh, toilets be flush in wrong directions and all sorts of nonsense. And we appreciate that. on the wrong side of the road.
00:01:51
Speaker
Michael, i trying his best not to but to lose subscribers here. It's too late. know they they They support us because they're angry and they want to tell me in person on Discord because they're a patron. and on um For as little as a dollar a month, you could be a patron and you could help us with our bingo and you can tell Alan off to his face. You can tell me off to my face.
00:02:13
Speaker
You can call me out. We should have, I really do want to have like a fight night, which is just all of my hot takes in your I was going to say, i think I think as a reward, if somebody does end up buying the gold morning tier, we should give them an address where they can meet you and fight you at any time of day or night. yeah i'll do it I'll do it. we'll see We'll see who's about to have a trigger event.
Character Focus: Amy in 'Ward'
00:02:41
Speaker
All right. But that being said, yeah we do have bingo in description. Beckford is currently laying on my hand, so my mouse hand is not working great. um You don't need it anyways. He's so heavy. Like any of the other cats would be fine, but he's so heavy. I genuinely lose feeling in my hand.
00:02:58
Speaker
It's the joy he brings to our life. He's just so full of it. He's so lucky. He's cute. He can get away with all sorts of stuff. Well, ah for those of you who are joining us live, we really appreciate you being here. I'm sorry about the ah the the confusion, but the flooding here in Brockton Bay has been absolutely terrible. And I wish that was sort of a joke, but it's been it's been a nice and dreary, ah rainy time for us here, yeah which is good because we were in a drought and all of our trees were not doing great.
00:03:31
Speaker
We need it. We need it. Except for my internet. I'm not moving out of the city. I don't know about any of you. My freaking internet is suffering. We apologize. The stream is really, really yeah slow. It's going to be buffering a lot tonight.
00:03:45
Speaker
So guess nothing I can do about that though.
00:03:50
Speaker
Yes, yes. i let me I know I had some stuff over here. um ah Just some comments we had before. ah One of our patrons um mentioned, Truett mentioned that upon their third reading, they found the story most enjoyable for the first 10 chapters and the last four.
00:04:09
Speaker
Seeing as we're breaking into those last four, we're also really hoping it picks up. So it's all fire from here. And I was like, heck yeah, I'm excited. So with that patron endorsement um and hint from J-Man that luckily we have interludes from a really good person this week.
00:04:30
Speaker
What did y'all think about the back half of ARC-16? Hannah.
00:04:37
Speaker
As I put in chat, I've never been madder in my life. ah I'm wearing black, as you can see. this is... um This is to mourn the final fuck.
00:04:50
Speaker
The final bit. No, not for Cradle. This was the final. This is for the final tiniest shred of pity that I had for Amy. It's now officially gone.
00:05:03
Speaker
There's none left. No fucks to give. No, no, no hope for her. No pity for her. This is the end. This is the end of that. i have nothing left to give her.
00:05:16
Speaker
I thought the chapters were fantastic. I really enjoyed it. ah ah Yeah, really, really great fight scenes for fun. um Yeah.
00:05:28
Speaker
Oh, yeah. This was a good time.
00:05:33
Speaker
Jacob? Yeah. um Amy is a rat bastard. Yeah. Not much more to say. about sums it up Well, ah there's plenty more to say, and we'll and we'll definitely say it.
00:05:47
Speaker
um Yeah, interludes aside, which I did really like. ah Interesting chapter. It's very interesting. I like this bit a lot. I thought it was i thought it was ah some some pretty neat stuff going on in the old Shard Space dream world scape. So...
00:06:01
Speaker
um Yeah, really cool chapters. i liked it a lot.
Storyline Analysis: Victoria and Amy's Conflict
00:06:05
Speaker
I think overall, I know I've said it before, but I'll continue to say it. These are just little little chapters like this. The interludes just reinforce my theory that or my feeling that the story should have been firmly Victoria versus Amy from the beginning. I really think that's where the story is strongest. I think they are fantastically written characters. As much as I hate Amy, I think she's very well written.
00:06:29
Speaker
And ah that's why I hate her so much. It's because it's a very well-written antagonist to Victoria. I just wish, knowing that we only have a handful of arcs left, which I know in in word count terms is probably like two or three full novels, but still, it doesn't feel like we've had enough time to really flesh out this conflict.
00:06:51
Speaker
So that aside, really good stuff. Before we move on Michael, is there anything we can do, like drop the frame rates or whatever we can do to stabilize the stream?
00:07:02
Speaker
I know you're probably already working on that. I'm watching it about 30 seconds to a minute behind live, and that's working okay for me. Okay.
00:07:12
Speaker
Yeah, that would be my suggestion. Yeah, it's already... Y'all are already behind us live anyways, like me watching us is already a bit behind anyways, so the chat wouldn't be... perfectly synced up anyways so it's we'll sort it it'll be fine yes bird you're such a good hunter she has brought her favorite toy um yeah uh okay good to hear glad we could that because i want i know ah we you know we do this live so that we can have some interaction so i'm glad we got that figured out but nick your thoughts on back half of arc 16.
00:07:49
Speaker
Yes. um I do agree the interludes are the highlight in the sense that they are the most interesting portion of the section. um I would say i'm i'm of two minds with the first...
00:08:04
Speaker
with the non-interlude parts of the second half of 16, which is a hard way to say it. The first half of the second half, um I had a hard time with. ah So that would be like 16.8 through
Technical Issues and Stream Quality
00:08:16
Speaker
16.10. I just kind of had a hard time getting into the headspace of what was happening. There were some cool bits in there.
00:08:23
Speaker
But once they were actually in the shard space, it kind of became... Something about it became difficult to follow. And I think it's because there was a lot of action happening while Victoria was down.
00:08:34
Speaker
And that made it a bit difficult. Like, she's not seeing what's happening. We're not seeing what's happening. It makes it very confusing and chaotic. But not necessarily in a good way. um To the point where, like, I forgot that Cradle got smushed at the end of 1610 until, like...
00:08:51
Speaker
I had to go back and be like, wait, what happened to Cradle? Like, he's got, what? is So, it felt like it was a bit too chaotic, perhaps. 16, 11, and 12, though, where they actually talk more about what the shard space is,
00:09:04
Speaker
what it's doing, seeing Tattletail's power at work in an internal way, um and then the confrontation with Teacher where you realize what the Shard has done to Teacher, that was really cool. I feel like that those parts are where I really locked in and thought, okay, this is a really interesting...
00:09:22
Speaker
piece that makes me want to know what happens especially the ending with defiant clearly being upset it's something that they did in the real world like something they did in charge space that affected the real world so i'm like okay cool so this is cool like i like how this is all connecting and then of course the interludes were fantastic um and i yeah i have to agree with jacob i think had the story been Had the story been um ain't more Amy-focused, I think it would have been better. It would have been a bit more grounded, perhaps. um I think that's tricky to do with the fact that Victoria has such trauma towards Amy, and so you can't really have them in the same room all the time, right? You can't have it like a Taylor-Coyle situation where they're together and interacting a lot and getting those cool villain protagonist moments, but...
00:10:14
Speaker
there There had to have been a way to do I don't know. yeah Yeah. Honestly, I think doing it through interludes would have been the best way. like You have a bunch of Victoria stuff, and then you see what Amy's doing simultaneously, and that could have been really cool.
00:10:28
Speaker
so Yeah. Eventually, this get... oh Yeah, not and not to jump ahead because there's a moment in Amy's first interlude that is in the past, and I think Amy says something that affected how Yamada treated Victoria, and I'm like, that would have been really cool to see in the moment as it was happening to make that connection. So, that's all.
00:10:51
Speaker
Yep. Yep, yep. Also, I'm wondering what chat is saying about that as opinion,
Trigger Events and Narrative Impact
00:10:58
Speaker
not fact. what are we What are we talking about? I think maybe Truett's saying maybe it's not buffering for the Brits.
00:11:06
Speaker
Yeah, I think... It's definitely buffering. They're piping internet onto their little and island. okay they're they're having you know They're piping it through the tunnel.
00:11:17
Speaker
Through the channel tunnel. Yeah. They're getting their five mega they' they're five megabytes they share with everybody. okay have a egg Don't they don't they bike don't they you know but hook the bike up to the generators?
00:11:30
Speaker
Oh my gosh, they do do that. Do we have Brits? Do we have any Patreon Brits? Yes, anymore. We did. We did once. Oh no. no.
00:11:43
Speaker
yeah oh no it's okay It's okay. The World Cup's coming up and then they can gloat over there. Oh my gosh, can they gloat? It's not like they're going to win. i was going to say, rather they can just laugh at at us again. Yeah, I was going to say, they they can just laugh that they're better than us, not that they're also winners.
00:12:03
Speaker
but ah Yeah. My thoughts ah really like the interludes, top-notch. um I also, Nick, have... Once again, I just think that... ah Shard space, I think, is a combination. We'll get more into it. But um it's a common writer's pull for writing alternate space, but also it's particularly bad because Wildbo's bad at geographical space.
00:12:35
Speaker
I just... ah yeah um In a weird way, it almost works for him because he's like, it's a geographical space that just doesn't make sense with geography. And I'm like, okay, so you're just giving up. Why not?
00:12:50
Speaker
All right. um Yeah, but I think in terms of like this This is absolutely the catalyst in a bunch of senses. like There's so much so much going on in terms of like what's hinted at in the shard space, what's hinted at in the shard space about out of the shard space, like people's life events and that happened in the past that are happening right now. ah That...
00:13:20
Speaker
um you know, and then of course you get out and it's like, what did go, you know, what did you do? there's just so much going on. Uh, that's like, like, okay, but it's still all pretty unsure. And then the next one's going to be, you know, is going to be hitting so hard.
00:13:42
Speaker
Um, yeah, as Jamie said, ah the Amy interludes are the best best depiction of self-delusion that I've seen in fiction. We'll get to that. That will probably be the entire back half. Just us taking turns yelling into the camera. Um,
00:14:03
Speaker
Gosh, also ah for our opening to this podcast, man, we knocked off so many ah so many of our bingo. crazy. right.
00:14:14
Speaker
um we know got like another two or three even ah we're just we're so close fabulous um great all right ah On that note, though, let's get into this.
00:14:31
Speaker
Nick, shall you start us off on 16.8? Or do we need to do like 8 and 9? Put those together. I think 9 and 10 go better together. 8's got enough to talk about on its own.
00:14:45
Speaker
So, 16.8. sixteen point eight The team prepares to enter shard space through the dream room, getting warnings from Kinsey and Tattletail before everyone nearby is pulled in.
00:15:02
Speaker
Right, to the Leviathan. The Leviathan. Yeah. Love that. Which kind of identifies, like, yeah, like, in a way, the... The... the the these, with the way that they see them in here are somewhat physical manifestations of the agents.
00:15:20
Speaker
And in a way, all of the, end bringers are physical manifestations of the same, you know, agent pushing it out, um, at different points.
00:15:34
Speaker
Right. Right. Um, so, uh, Wow, we had not one but two people get up and leave. I just rewired my whole house and we should be able to have better internet now, guys.
00:15:51
Speaker
It looks like we're in the green. oh that would be great. I think we of the the kilobytes are up to on at least more higher.
00:16:02
Speaker
It looks like it's get it's pretty close to being... It's getting closer. It's still not stable. It's going up, but it's... It's at least kilobytes or at least more.
00:16:14
Speaker
Yeah. like Tell me when they hit a megabyte. Yeah. We've never hit a megabyte, my friend. It's it's never going to happen. Oh my gosh. Um, that's worrying. Uh, another thing I really loved in this was the, uh, how they transferred all of the, you know going through all of the trigger events, you know, cause that is the, the, the transfer into the shard space.
00:16:39
Speaker
Um, that we had everything kind of transferred over into the mall. Yes. Like everything got set except for, um except for Ashley.
00:16:54
Speaker
I was going to say Tattletail.
00:16:58
Speaker
Because Tattletail has hers. Oh, you're right you're right. It starts yeah that starts with Tattletail. That's right. Also, I've had that image in my head for so long. It's such a visceral image for me personally. But it's the girl, you know, the little girl trying to hold her brother up by his, like, ankles and getting tired and having to let go again. And that is just...
00:17:23
Speaker
ooh that That is a haunting image in my head. um And I've been waiting for that to come up. ah yeah yeah Yeah. the The trigger events in particular are very painful. And it seems like... Except for Tattletales. I think you said this, Alan. Except for Tattletales, they all seem like warped versions of them. Like they're not exactly...
00:17:44
Speaker
and Because one of them um even seems like a combination, perhaps, where it's like Chicken Littles and Love Lost, almost, or Snag, or somebody else from the mall event.
00:17:57
Speaker
Rain, maybe. Because like Chicken Littles is like, there's a stampede at a mall and he gets put up on top of something, which Snag did to somebody in the mall interlude. Yeah, to the girls.
00:18:10
Speaker
To the girls, and so it's like... there's kind of even a warping there of what actually happened. But Tattletales, we know from other sources of that Tattletales is pretty accurate to what really happened.
00:18:21
Speaker
um And man, it's as brutal. Yeah. Yeah. We were, we were mentioning how they, they all get warped. So they're kind of pushed into the mall. Cause there's like one with a birthday party that's off to like a party room at the mall.
00:18:35
Speaker
And that was probably just at like a kid's play place or literally any other location. um but We know the Warriors was a real basketball game, right? It wasn't. Right, not in the arcade. Yeah. yeah Yeah. I thought that was interesting though, because it because they're all in it together.
00:18:54
Speaker
And this kind of, like you could see it so easily be, like we've talked about this but in the past with Wyrm, but like visualizing at it as one of those scenes in a show that doesn't have any cuts in it, or it's literally just like one event after the other. And there's like hidden cuts, but it's meant to feel like one long scene. And they're all just kind of like circling around and in each other. And they're all kind of happening at the same time.
00:19:21
Speaker
and it's morphed, but it's they're all there together. And like that would, ah visually, it's really cool. Because that's kind of how I read it. I read it as like that one bit just kind of moving through and around and connecting. and Almost like a carousel. Yeah.
00:19:37
Speaker
Yes, yeah, very much so. yeah And the the Candy to Darlene one was... was... oh Yeah, that was... yeah Yeah, this one was tough.
00:19:52
Speaker
This was really tough. the Yeah, mo it's like you're slapped with multiple traumatic events. Like horrible traumatic events back to back. And obviously that's what triggers are, but having them put so blatantly in front of you like uh having tattletales brothers
Character Insights and Story Investment
00:20:10
Speaker
suicide and then you've got like candy basically being like propositioned by this older man um and you've got and then you've got like sveta's which is really weird and out there um because she didn't really have a true trigger event right kind of i think fran mentioned that in the chat where yeah you get it even sveta gets a glimpse of maybe who she was before she got taken by ah by cauldron lots of
00:20:38
Speaker
Yeah, lots of weird weird stuff going on. um And we like it. it's It's fascinating. it clearly ah clearly um pushes them all to the edge.
00:20:54
Speaker
The Tattletail is very much on edge for the rest of the chapter. Pushes all to the edge. Oh! bad. Alan, you were really shopping around for that one. have a good name Oh,
00:21:09
Speaker
yeah Yeah, it's it's interesting. i ah Obviously, it's it's awful to read about the trauma, but I also i kind of love it. Like, put the characters through hell, let's go. And I think that it... Because i so I have very vivid dreams to the point where I have woken up and thought I was still dreaming. And it is like a weird moment of like, I don't know where I am. I have no idea what's going on.
00:21:41
Speaker
ah And it's really disarming and weird. And it is not a fun space to like pull yourself out of. And having them...
00:21:54
Speaker
come straight out of that trauma dump, basically, straight into combat is fantastic. So, like, that just that moment of, like, everyone's reeling, everyone's, like, you know, basically gone through hell and relived it again and then relived each other's trauma.
00:22:13
Speaker
And that that feeling of like, you're in the trauma and you're trying to figure out whose trauma it is. And you're like, is this Sveta's? Like, no, like, who is this? Like, oh shit, this is Candy. Like, oh shit. And oh now we're Darlene. Like, and that kind of this, you can't take a breath, you can't take a breath. And then they get dropped on their ass and they can't take a breath again because now we got to fight. And it's, oh, it's yeah so, it's so good. It just leaves you kind of like,
00:22:42
Speaker
you know, you're leaning in you're waiting to see like, what what the heck, man? And, oh, that was, that was, that was great. I love that. I love that a lot.
00:22:54
Speaker
Well, ah anything before we move to 16.9 and 10? ten a couple of, couple of comments. Bernard mentioned, uh, the fact that Tress is, or is an allegory perhaps for being trans.
00:23:09
Speaker
Um, I think, is it mentioned Sveta? It's mentioned you almost look like a real girl. Yeah. You almost look real girl. One of the friends. Yeah.
00:23:19
Speaker
like ah Oh, Nadia, you almost look like a real girl. And yeah, you know, in my very straightforward reading the first two times, uh,
00:23:32
Speaker
Was definitely just the ah kids being like hanging out with their, you know, yeah tomboy female friend being like, oh, yeah yeah you almost, you know, you almost look like a real girl.
00:23:46
Speaker
um But, you know, we know from confirmation now from the author that Tress... inadvertently and then somewhat intentionally is a trans allegory at the very least, if not outright. Yeah. So some, some cool bits there. um And then, yeah, Truett just mentioned we get a lot of insight into the heartbroken, which we didn't haven't had before in terms of what their life was
Action Scenes and Character Roles
00:24:15
Speaker
like. We knew it was terrible, but yeah,
00:24:17
Speaker
mind golf. Holy shit. There's like a throwaway line that I love where ah heart Heartbreaker, was that his name? Heartbreaker?
00:24:29
Speaker
Yeah. um Where he says something to Darlene, I think, of like, I lost your two oldest siblings, but I'm not going to lose any more of you, right? Which I just thought was like...
00:24:40
Speaker
chef's kiss a reference to um to what oh my god their name uh sheree and regent regent yeah alec and um yeah alec and sheree uh you know so so just great little like like references like that right to their history which is great um yeah yeah interesting stuff so interesting gosh i I... We've talked about this so much.
00:25:07
Speaker
The whole about, like, who's... Who would we prefer to be following for Ward? And... you know, whatever. But I do think that it would be so cool to be, you know, at Aunt Rachel's ranch and with Imp and Tattletail as they're dealing with the aftermath, as they're dealing with all the heartbroken, as they're dealing with trying to put the world back together. And I'm glad that we did finally get a little bit more crumbs, heartbroken crumbs, because boy howdy, I just ate them right up. oh For sure.
00:25:45
Speaker
Yeah. you new you you give More please. 16.9 and 10 I think can go together if we like. Yeah. 16.9 and 10. The group tries to fight and survive Cradle's fractal hand monster and while they try numerous individual or cohesive strategies before deciding to turn on Cradle himself.
00:26:10
Speaker
1610, the fight continues. The group shares last messages. Cradle is killed by his own agent, and the group enters shard space proper. Ooh. So one of the things that the summary does a disservice to, I think, is the fact that Victoria is the one who figures out that this is controlled or related to Cradle in some way, um that it is in fact Cradle's agent. And I think there's an implication that Love Lost and Rain and Colt are also safe when they're in their own spaces.
00:26:45
Speaker
Meaning the agent only seems to care or have an effect if they decide to venture out of their space, right? Which, of course, they're trying to do. So that's why they're fighting it. But it begs an interesting question. how i did love that. It's like, oh, it's up it knows them well enough to separate them and also knows them well enough to know that Byron's unconscious. yeah Yeah.
00:27:08
Speaker
Completely unwell. it's I mean, we've talked about it before about the whole... the whole shard recognizing how you see yourself. And that, like, like um Victoria's force field and how it included parts of her costume before. And now it's in the shape of the wretch because she still sees herself as the wretch. And, like, she can't, you know, distinguish herself from that. And kind of that same idea of, like,
00:27:39
Speaker
you, how you see yourself, how you see something as part of you, the, the um, like, Tattletail with the gun. Like, she carries it and has carried it for five years. Like, it's become a ah part of her. Like,
00:27:55
Speaker
I don't know, like when you wear a piece of jewelry all the time and, you know, you just, that's just a part of you. You don't even think about it or notice it anymore. Or, you know, the, like, oh, like your nose, like you don't, technically your brain cancels out your nose. You can always see it, but your brain cancels it out because it's like, this has always been on my face. And, you know, eyelashes are also the same, but like,
00:28:17
Speaker
It's cool that how it connects in and Tristan and Byron are still two separate people, even if other people perceive them as perceive them as one individual swapping in and out. They're still two people, two whole separate people.
00:28:33
Speaker
And yeah, it was it was nice to give them a little bit of something. We need a win every now and again, and I'll take that as a win. Every now and then. Yep. every now and again, just a morsel. it doesn't We don't need much. We're starving. We're starving for a good thing. ah Very few good things.
00:28:52
Speaker
oh ah Shall we move on to 11, 12?
00:28:58
Speaker
yeah che I do think it's funny though. Cradle's death is slightly comical. When I did go back and remember that he died, he just had ah a dresser fall on top of them but he's had a shelf ball on him. had a shelf fall just on It's just very comical. He died how he lived.
00:29:16
Speaker
A bitch. that's Exactly. i actually had a question about this. so in in the recap you just read, Nick, it said that he was killed by his own...
00:29:28
Speaker
His own agent. His own agent. But... That's... Sveta was involved. Sveta starts pushing over the the shelf and then it doesn't Ashley get in on it and then he's like stuck to the shelf.
00:29:44
Speaker
He gets stuck to the shelf, and I think one of the hands that was reaching for Ashley and Sveta ends up like crushing the shelf and smashing it down. Because he's outside of his area. Because he's outside of his area. Yeah. Because he's outside of his zone.
00:29:59
Speaker
Okay. I read that more of like... yeah Yeah, I read that more of like a series of events that happened at the same time, but didn't necessarily mean agent was the one who dealt the killing blow. It's very Syndrome-esque in a sense, because if I remember right, he gets like his shirt stuck on the shelf.
00:30:19
Speaker
It's his tape. Yeah, he gets his tape. Not tape. He gets his sleeve or something stuck on the shelf yeah outside of his zone, and then his agent smashes him, and it's like that's what gets him. Fantastic. very very comical way to end what was a pretty I would say he was a decent villain for the story for you overall you know yeah yeah riy yeah i
Exploration of Shard Space
00:30:43
Speaker
kayos grace i would I would never besmirch Cradle to that level
00:30:52
Speaker
not there's only one person in this story who's as bad as Caillou and we're gonna get to them is ah yeah yeah
00:31:04
Speaker
1610 sorry 1611 and ah we could throw 1612 in there too I feel like we can combine those so 1611 damsel fixes the group via shard shenanigans and the group explores the space learns things about themselves and find teachers group 16.12, the group makes plans to cross the gap.
00:31:27
Speaker
Vicky looks in on Amy and learns things she didn't want to know within the shard space. She then puts all of herself into stopping teacher's plan. She succeeds, but at what cost?
00:31:39
Speaker
I'm to stop us right there because I can hear the comment in chat. Oh, so have you figured out this? And I'm just going to stop you right there. Don't say a damn thing.
00:31:51
Speaker
but Don't even ask the question as a leading one. Don't make the statement. Oh, so do we know who this is now? Don't even do it. I know you we don't know because we're you typing it and don't type it as far as we know in the story, which is how we're reading this. Nothing is all speculative.
00:32:15
Speaker
We'll figure this out once we get out. which is now two weeks from it tells you can You can tell your fingers to calm the fuck down. care a humans Next
00:32:32
Speaker
no oh no man Yeah, that's what I do love damsel that the one line that made me kind of laugh and maybe it was ah just the way it was phrased and maybe it was an audiobook thing too. And it's a combination, right? Damsel's really good in shard space.
00:32:49
Speaker
She's figured out all you have to do is basically figure out how you want to present yourself and you can pull that person out of shard space because shard space contains all of who you are and every iteration of who you are.
00:33:02
Speaker
Just the line in 1612 that gets me is where Victoria's like, damsel, you're good at this. Fucking strut your stuff. I love that. That's how I would have phrased it. It works, I guess. Ashley's being so cagey. Yes. Wait, wait, hold on. Yes, queen slay. Yes, queen slay. Yes, queen slay. There go. There we go.
00:33:33
Speaker
life Yes. ah Yeah, no, she's good. And it's she's like being elusive and being all like, well, Victoria's like, bro, we are in the lion's den. Can you not be like modest right now and keep things to yourself? Like we're trying to sort things out here. Come on Also, Fran, did we figure out Amy was bad? Shut the fuck up. No, no, Amy's a good person. She said so.
00:34:01
Speaker
You know that's not what I'm talking about. You try my patience. Chat tries a lot of things. That's a really funy good one, though.
00:34:15
Speaker
oh yeah no are We have firmly gotten into the I know how this ends and I know some of the stuff, but because Shard Space is such a, like, there's so much going on.
00:34:33
Speaker
I don't really remember any of this part. yeah I think I remember, like, some key events in the last arc, and the rest of this is kind of a blur.
00:34:46
Speaker
Like, it's ben I'm currently in shard space right now. Let's just put it that way. Yeah, seeing visions of himself from the past and the future. yeah they don't I don't know which one was correct. um like i like I'm about to make a statement. I think that Scapegoat would be really scapegoated in shard space because I think his ability would be really great at pulling whatever the hell you needed out of shard space.
00:35:14
Speaker
Is that something that happens later? i don't know. i don't remember. am I a prophet? Go on. No, you've just read it already.
00:35:26
Speaker
We can assume if Alan's talking about it, he is not going to spoil it for us, so he must not remember. No, he would never. Yeah. Yeah, so...
00:35:38
Speaker
yeah so I do like this section too. This is part of why i like this section as the lore dump ah sort of bit, right? Like we found out about the entities in Wyrm, this feels like an added layer to that where Damsel's talking about how when we die, this is where we come. Why? Because...
00:35:57
Speaker
shard space is literally recording your identity right it's it's not just because that's what the entities were doing they were gathering data and so it's not just a space where powers exist but it's literally recording your identity which makes sense with how now we have valkyrie who can sort of summon pieces and shadows of people from shard space like memories of those people right you're pulling almost like a corrupted file version out of a computer and over time she's been able to refine it put those memories into bodies and basically the person's alive again it's it's like they they rebooted an old save file in a way yeah of that person um and because that's and that's basically what damsel is saying is like all of the versions of you are here
00:36:47
Speaker
You just have to boot up the right save file for your body to be the one you need it to be. And that is such a fascinating concept. I love little things like that and lore explanations for how things work.
00:36:59
Speaker
And if we want to tie it to another person now, we can also talk about March. March talking about essentially like heaven and wanting to be together forever yeah and tying them together. And this is what they're talking about.
00:37:16
Speaker
Right, yeah, because i'm what it what it made me think of, this is sort of ah related, is a Black Mirror episode that a lot of people thought was like, oh, hey, this is the one like happy ending Black Mirror episode. I still thought it was creepy, though. It's San Junipero, which is this elderly lady gets to be young again in a and if in like a virtual reality.
00:37:43
Speaker
She meets a girl there. They fall in love. It's actually, it's a beautiful love story. But what was creepy about it to me was after you die, you have the option to upload your consciousness to the cloud so you can live forever in San Junipero in the virtual virtual city.
00:37:58
Speaker
I still thought that was creepy though because the final scene is a bunch of workers maintaining the database that keeps everybody's <unk> like like psyche alive basically. yeah um But it you know conceptually people thought it was like oh it's a beautiful love story that's great they get to live basically in digital heaven forever.
00:38:16
Speaker
um But that's basically what this is. is this like Because Damsel says right when we die this is where we go our consciousnesses are ah here and um they get uploaded to this cloud. But what's interesting is Damsel says, i think the second time we die now will be worse because what what was controlling the entities isn't there anymore. It's all chaos. It's all messed up now.
00:38:40
Speaker
um So just like little things like that. I really enjoyed 11 and 12 for that reason. Very cool little bits of lore and concepts. very So here's something and we go ahead and talk about this because I think I just must have missed all of this for some reason. um J-Man asked how do you all feel about Victoria using Tattletail's power on people? Felt like boundary crossing thing to me even though Tattletail doesn't.
00:39:08
Speaker
What are you talking about? That isn't like spffy i did I miss this? I don't I actually know either. So in 1612, they start heading towards... I don't know if it's Tattletail's power so much as just Shard Space being fucky-wucky.
00:39:26
Speaker
Oh, so when she's asking... that she's like saying Oh, you mean like asking the Shards about people's names. That's true. She does use it specifically. They get to Tattletail's zone, and Victoria realizes she can use Tattletail's power. Got it, got it, got and got it. okay I just thought that was as any old piece of crystal.
00:39:44
Speaker
Like, you she was just like, no, there's a formation in the ground. Comment a lot, make a lot more sense later, because that, okay, that makes a lot of sense. I also thought she was just staring into the shards. Same.
00:39:56
Speaker
Into the crystal, not the shards. The... Tattletail, because when she's looking and she's seeing all these things, Tattletail's like, it's not always accurate. And it felt like kind of this moment where i'm like, how do you know that Tattletail's? But since she's in her space, that makes a lot more sense. Because Tattletail, I said before, that it's not always accurate. It's like the pieces trying to being to be put together based on what information it has. yeah and It's AI. It hallucinates. It just makes shit when it has yeah gaps. Exactly. But like, it's...
00:40:29
Speaker
It's yeah. Wow. That's yeah. I don't think that it's
00:40:37
Speaker
weird that Victoria, like, I don't think it's bad that Victoria is, is using this space, using these crystals and tattletale section to like keep an eye on people or see what they're up to or like look into what's going on with them.
00:40:52
Speaker
um I don't think it's boundary crossing. But also it kind of feels like because we're outside of... Yeah, that's actually not an excuse at all. I was just going to say, i it feels like because we're not in the real world, because we're in this like weird dream crystal space, that it's like not the same. And we don't know how accurate it is. And it's just kind of like, well, okay, whatever, taking it with a grain of salt. But...
00:41:21
Speaker
It's still as much of a boundary cross as, like, everything Tattletail does. But to be perfectly honest, I don't have issue. i don't have any issue with what Tattletail does in terms of boundary crossing. Like, should she? No.
00:41:35
Speaker
But her power is kind of always on. And she can, you know, follow the rabbit trails and go down the rabbit hole. But, like, that's never... I think it's more of like what Tattletail chooses to say with the information that she has to like push.
00:41:52
Speaker
That is my problem with her and her power. But her just like knowing things. Fuck it, man. it's It's hard though because I think what what peers what appears to be the issue with the power, right? And it's something that... um as a side tangent, it reminds me of a show that my wife and I have watched together. Sometimes we we like to watch trashy TV.
00:42:15
Speaker
um And one of those shows is a show called Temptation Island. ah But, which is very funny, very funny, trashy TV. Hilarious. If you like trashy romance TV.
00:42:26
Speaker
um But part of what the idea is, you have two, you have couples, they split them up into guys and girls, and then they get to watch clips of what the other one's doing. What I've noticed about the editing, though, of the clips they choose to show their their partner, they never pick the positive clips. They're only picking the negative clips, of course, because they're trying to create drama for TV.
00:42:47
Speaker
yeah And I feel like Tattletail's power kind of does the same thing. In the same way that if you're mockumentary, it's hard... not to be an asshole with your power. I feel like it's the same way with Tattletail, where, like, if you're just knowing all the worst stuff about people, what do you do with that power besides antagonize them to get more information so you can beat them, right? Like, like I don't know. yeah yeah At the same time, though, i I feel like ah she does cross a bit of a line here. I'm still holding on to a bit of the fact that I think Victoria may be the most dangerous member of Breakthrough.
00:43:24
Speaker
um I'm still holding on to that because although Chris is obviously a problem, we can get to Chris later and the problems he's creating, quite literally creating. um I feel like 1612 especially really sealed that for me in the sense that We see why was teacher so afraid of Victoria? She, she realizes it's because I was in tune with the wretch.
00:43:48
Speaker
What is the wretch? Victoria's agent. Victoria, so but kind you know, fully puts herself into her agent to create a golden version of herself. That is the wretch that smashes into teacher in that fight scene at the end of 1612. Yeah.
00:44:06
Speaker
yeah I feel like there's a lot more going on there than maybe meets the eye for Victoria. And I think her, it's not quite the tipping point, but I feel like her spying on everybody she knows and realizing there is literally no one who has my back.
00:44:27
Speaker
I feel like that, things you know, and she sees a Dean getting powers from culture, you know, like literally everybody she trusted is worthless to her now. And I feel like that was a bit of a tipping point for her. And I think because of that, I think it maybe crossed the line.
00:44:43
Speaker
It's a long-winded way of answering the question. that was good. Yeah.
00:44:49
Speaker
Interesting. i don't I don't think she crossed the line by asking. those It's more of the repeated asking, especially with Amy. Yeah, she keeps pushing. Which feels like... ah ninety eight what It's the whole like she's good, you know, more than just like checking up on them That's clearly like almost a personal boundary for her that she's crossing more than Amy's boundary.
00:45:17
Speaker
Yeah, that makes sense. Mm hmm. I mean, she's been very clear to Amy in regards to the contact between them. And she's kind of breaking that herself. But she's like, I understand why. It's like it's like when you've you know pull up the social media for ex. You just want to and just have a quick look. You don't want to call them. You don't want to run into them at Walmart.
00:45:42
Speaker
But you do want to kind of just like, take a little bit of of a look-see real quick and it feels very protected because you're behind your screen or in this case you're behind the crystal and like they'll never know that you were checking up on them but it it doesn't matter the the way that you do it you're still doing it like she's still checking in on Amy she's still and she says it a couple different times and then she does it does she do she says Amy a couple times and then she says Red Queen right
00:46:14
Speaker
me She She She does Red Queen. And she's like, try it's like she's hunting for these other facets of Amy to like see more.
00:46:26
Speaker
And it almost feels like...
00:46:30
Speaker
Not that she's like specifically looking for the bad things to be like, ha, see, I was right. But it does also feel like that just a little bit. Like to prove that like Amy's still doing bad shit or Amy's still oblivious or Amy is still exactly who she thinks she is, which definitely. Yeah, no, she's got a reason for it, especially as we see with Amy's interlude.
00:46:56
Speaker
Fran asks, would you feel differently if Amy did this to Victoria? Which is a great question. well And the answer, I think, is not that much. Like, I don't think my issue with this is the spying. The issue is just Amy sucks. think the intent would be more voyeuristic with Amy, which is where I'd maybe... Yes, I think too. It'd be more upsetting, perhaps. Yes. Yeah, I definitely think so.
00:47:25
Speaker
ah This, yeah, the the the idea of like, and it's because we've seen Amy over and over and over and over again bust right through boundaries. That like having, like, again, okay pulling up your ex's Instagram, that's not a big deal.
00:47:45
Speaker
But if you've stalked your ex multiple times, you've broken into their house, you've gone through their sock drawer, you've yeah, maybe you should be blocked from seeing their account. Like, yeah.
00:47:59
Speaker
Fuck Amy. yeah i have nothing else to say. Yeah. Yeah.
00:48:07
Speaker
Yeah. I don't know. I think, I do think it crosses a bit of a line, more the persistence of it, right? It's more of a, it's sort of a curse mirror thing where you, you get a glance of something you shouldn't have seen. It's one thing.
00:48:20
Speaker
You keep asking questions, though, because you know it can give you knowledge, and even though it's not good knowledge, it that's that's on you, in a sense. Yeah, Truett, you are absolutely right, is a Lord of the Rings thing, which I want to say that It's Harry Potter.
00:48:40
Speaker
The invisible ring is not just a Lord of the Rings. That's like a that something Tolkien took from... other mythologies and you know so your stuff it is about the temptation of power it's you know why the invisible man you know is primarily basically just about the ring um and you know what do you do with power when you have no consequences for your actions um
00:49:12
Speaker
um And, you know, in their limited
Speculation on Teacher's Goals
00:49:15
Speaker
imaginations, invisibility was all that, you know, represented that. They hadn't invented 6 yet.
00:49:22
Speaker
ah And getting away with stuff with just reloading a save. um um yeah What do you think, Jacob? everyone know me only not that's not the same thing. like would you you know flip your car off a a splurge you know into a crowd of people and then just reload the save you know would you that was basically power right right is basically oil so powerly is why it's such a tempting power and it's hard to know how you could use that for good instead of evil because it's like well no one if there are literally no consequences except to myself
00:50:01
Speaker
why not do bad things and get away with it? it's It's a slippery slope too, because like if you look at literally anything that has... it it starts with something really small. It starts with something innocuous. It starts with five-year-old Hannah shoplifting a pez container in the grocery store and and you know like this idea of like well did it once i could do it again luckily my mother was there she she absolutely wrecked me embarrassed the shit out of me and i'll tell you i never stole anything ever again but like it's it's the little things i was like you start out with something like this where it's like it's it's not a big deal like
00:50:43
Speaker
and me will never know it's fine it's it's okay but then you ask again and you ask it again and it's like pushing that boundary until suddenly it's not just you're checking in anymore it's it's there's more to it now like there's man yeah yeah it's just i mean you it feels like a slippery slope jacob before we move on
00:51:09
Speaker
It's okay. We didn't break the 10-minute streak, so we got a bingo for that.
00:51:14
Speaker
no capacity, Michael. No, just everyone else had an answer. what do you Do you agree? What are you thinking? Yeah. What are you thinking?
00:51:27
Speaker
Nice. and I agree. yeah Made a few words. If only there was a another character who had a problem with, you know, looking in and then spying on everybody constantly, but we don't have that. So, you know, we'll never know what that problem's like. Never know what that problem is like. We'll never know what it's like to have the magic mirror in front of you and just not be able to not look at everything.
00:52:00
Speaker
A couple of other small things in these. um There appear to be three agents at the portal. um Whose are they? We don't know.
00:52:11
Speaker
um Not teachers, because he's wrapped up inside of his. It says it looks like he got chewed up by a lawnmower and wrapped around his agent, ah which is freaky. It's a weird thing.
00:52:26
Speaker
Yeah, um but then he gets smashed by Victoria, which kind of stops the connection between him and his agent somehow. um so i don't So there are three other agents that are active with Teacher, and I'm trying to remember their descriptions because I think it may be a hint as to whose they belong to.
00:52:48
Speaker
But i'm ah let me find it real quick. I'll find that one. um Just because i it was in 1611. just wanted to get their descriptions again. um And they really only fight the one The one with the long sun beam head comes to Tattletail's area. Let
00:53:10
Speaker
me see. a and but but um but I'll find them. So they have the lights. The
00:53:22
Speaker
Morton. Oh, we find out that the boy that Damsel killed really was a bad guy. He worked for Accord. That was a small thing. I just haven't scrolled past that. Jay, the jewel of Boston or something like that. Oh, interesting. Like, of course, like we kind of had our suspicions, but it's nice to have that confirmed a bit. Yep.
00:53:46
Speaker
ah
00:53:49
Speaker
Yep. Three. Let's see. da toda Three things. Also, Pruitt, for the record, and Bernard, I was talking about Look-See.
00:54:00
Speaker
Three agents interacting with this tear in the cracked sky and ground around it. One looked like a necklace giant crossed with a puddle of oil, shimmering in rainbow hues, features non-existent.
00:54:13
Speaker
Another like a tall, slender woman in a dress with a headdress of spikes radiating out for 50 feet around her. The last was barely there, insubstantial, a wisp of pale yellow and a vague centaur shape with a broad slash of black instead of a face.
00:54:32
Speaker
And then, I mean, centaur shape feels beast of burden. Oh, he dead, though. Yeah. Bob's dead.
00:54:44
Speaker
Who's the, who turned into a centaur shape, though? Lord of Loss? That's true. Lord of Loss would be the other one, yeah. Crawler from the grave. Across...
00:54:57
Speaker
Yeah, that's what we all want. ah the The black slash across the face to me felt reminiscent of when we're looking in on um Dean and he has kind of a lot of like messed up features or like black scratches across his face because of you know finding out that his powers were bought. So it kind of made me wonder if it's like tied to somebody who was a cauldron cape, or like tied to cauldron in some way.
00:55:24
Speaker
but i i mean, eh.
00:55:28
Speaker
me see. Interesting. ah They'd noticed this. Behind them was Teacher, Teacher broken, Teacher of Teacher had been caught in a lawnmower, and the substance of him wrapped around the blades, but the blades were a figure, and the figure was many-spoked.
00:55:42
Speaker
ah So here, I have a thought about Teacher. Maybe there's four agents there. It's hard to Um... I haven't thought about teacher in and what he was trying to do. um Yeah, because it's, it seems like he's, he was trying to integrate with his,
00:56:02
Speaker
um
00:56:05
Speaker
ah with his agent, but that was the process. You know, he opens that portal. He tries to integrate. And in a sense, he's trying to save humanity, obviously with him in control. Cause that's just how he works.
00:56:21
Speaker
sure But is, are those one in the same that if he can, because he has, he does have what we've seen from his agent, kind of a connective material. Like he is a he can join stuff to him. Essentially is what it it looked like in the shard space to me, at least.
00:56:45
Speaker
um, with his many spokes and stuff that the idea of he can connect everybody to him, then he can draw them all into shard space and preserve them much like you would like upload everybody's consciousness into a computer before the world gets nuked. And then everybody's alive inside the server and you could potentially pull them out again.
00:57:14
Speaker
um Yeah, that's the vibe I got. ah But in that way, him pulling everybody in and attaching themselves to him.
00:57:27
Speaker
That is essentially creating an entity. Like you're you're taking all the shards and shooting them to yourself and attaching them all. That is just a new entity at that point.
00:57:39
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting. I did. I mean, we've wondered since the end of Worm, really, you know, how permanent entity death is, you know, and like, do they have ah procedures for regrowth or reforming or or rebirth or something like that, especially given the fact that like,
00:58:01
Speaker
the agents still seem very much conscious on their own to some degree. And I, you know, i I wonder with a lot of, with a lot of the, uh, the shards based stuff of this is like all part of the agents ways of like reforming or, uh, something like that.
00:58:26
Speaker
They're using people to reform them. Yeah. In some way, trying to, you know, create a new, uh, uh, central consciousness or host or, but you know, whatever you, whatever I on was essentially, you know?
00:58:42
Speaker
Yeah. Um, Fran points out, you crazy that this is the afterlife that March did all that shit for. i know. Right. and just to just to bring them into fucking Tron world
00:58:54
Speaker
because the whole I imagine i'll imagine it is just fucking red and black forever oh yeah yeahp you know everything's in like grid lines yeah Yeah. They're all in the grid. It just looks like Battlezone, but red. um Yeah.
00:59:11
Speaker
Oh, God. Fran also puts out typical cosmic horror priest trying to join the fucking creature beyond understanding. What a loser. That is correct. Fucking staring into the face of Cthulhu.
00:59:23
Speaker
No, it's the leopards eating my face, but it's Cthulhu eating my face. But if I serve Cthulhu, surely he won't devour me, not the all-devourer. He would never do that. Never. The all-consuming one surely wouldn't consume moi.
00:59:45
Speaker
ah Yeah, exactly. yeah it it It does, right? It's interesting because then it bleeds into that question of how much of these plans are human plans that are shard empowered versus shard plans? Because like with Contessa, her whole thing is the path to victory. How do I achieve the goal that I've set for myself?
01:00:08
Speaker
But what if even still, even though obviously it led to the death of Sion, which seems like, you know, an anti-entity plan, um what if even so the path to victory that is given to her is one that ultimately leads back to the entities getting what they want or ah the predictions that um
01:00:30
Speaker
girl from worm what's her name go from Dinah Dinah the predictions that Dinah has even still kind of push you know like all of those things accords plans like they they all fit into this bigger master plan Yeah, I like, ah you know, as Truett mentions, it's sort of like a super organism like an ant colony where there's no one part that's technically more important.
Humor and Team Dynamics
01:00:58
Speaker
um And I think about that ant colony one ah in regards to Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time where the spiders use ant colonies as computers.
01:01:10
Speaker
Like that's what their computers are, are ant colonies. Yeah. And ah combination of that ah and like...
01:01:23
Speaker
real big level, like, okay, so all the heroes, like, what if they're, you know we're re-imagining here, you do get all of the heroes to take over because that's where their inclination is towards. They make a super entity, shards keep proliferating through children and intermingling and build up until this becomes a space-faring race of humans with superpowers how is that any different then essentially reconstituting the entities like kind of like what if the entities are in fact in control and just drive society to rebuild them as we're talking about
01:02:12
Speaker
Right. You know, oh my gosh, we figured out how to go into shard space and space travel and dimension travel. And like at some point in time, they just become the entities like the the PRT with all of its heroes or the wardens with all heroes literally just becomes a blimp of shards essentially. Yeah.
01:02:38
Speaker
Wow.
01:02:42
Speaker
We figured it out. Don't have to read it anymore. And that's what happens. Okay, we don't need to read the rest. Got it. don All right. A couple other small things. um J-Man said, forgot to mention, I appreciate another no-power fight against the Shards slash Cradle. oh yeah That was pretty cool. I do appreciate a no-power fight. That was fun.
01:03:09
Speaker
Another comment, as I was reading through 16, 11, and 12 again, looking at the Shards stuff, somebody noted, oh, it seems like perhaps Neil is actually Victoria's dad and not Mark.
01:03:24
Speaker
No. No. Interesting. People have speculated that it makes more sense with their powers that Neil would be Victoria's dad and not Mark. I'm going to look up Neil's power real quick. Poor Mark. I believe. If that couldn't be cucked enough. I know. And somebody speculated as well that they think part of Mark's depression is that he knows.
01:03:53
Speaker
Oh, no. Not her. It's contributing. It feels name is Manpower, too. man. Manpower?
01:04:09
Speaker
Yeah. That's gosh so bad. the Listen, this is why I need to read the comments. Jeez. I read it and I read that part and I was just like, oh yeah, they made out once.
01:04:26
Speaker
i certainly nothing on lord had happened I thought this was a joke. um But ah da he runs into Damsel in distress who refers to him as big guy.
01:04:39
Speaker
um he is seven foot tall.
01:04:44
Speaker
Jesus. Damn. The big old lightning bolt. you just um he now and I believe he's the guy that is appearing during oh no yeah yeah he shows up during the what with the Boston games he's got electromagnetism ah he can produce an an electromagnetic shield around his body that augments his strength and durability
01:05:12
Speaker
and he's got other stuff like like that is the first one god damn it ah He could also discharge his shield to deliver high-impact or electrified hits.
01:05:27
Speaker
Yeah. Similar to... Fuck.
01:05:33
Speaker
It's a hard day. a hard day in shard space. For the Mark fans. i know that it's supposed to hit hard, and we'll get to it too, but like...
01:05:46
Speaker
I don't give a fuck about Dean. So like him being revealed to be a cauldron cape is like, it sucks. But Neil, on the other hand, is more important because like... and that is Because it solidifies that Carol's a goddamn bitch.
01:06:02
Speaker
it That's true, right? There was a comment too when I was reading through that little comment chain saying that, ah yeah, yeah. So it's, um Fran said there was a previous interlude where Victorious Shard refers to Carol as mom, but Mark as the man who raised us.
01:06:20
Speaker
And not dad. my god.
01:06:26
Speaker
So, yeah, so in the comments, and that's what Fran just said as well, but one of the comments said that was back in 12 when we were in Victoria's retch shard perspective. This is Mark's brother? I try. read this book. Mark's brother. And I try to just take away things that are good, you know, like Grunau being dead. It's not their brother-in-law. It's their brother-in-law because he's down and...
01:06:51
Speaker
he's downlan in aolds brother in law Yeah, it's Carol's brother. Okay, that's Carol's better. I thought this was Mark's actual brother, which is so much... Her and her sister have powers. They marry two different guys. Yeah.
01:07:07
Speaker
That's right. Neil Pelham. Yeah. Her sister's husband. Her sister's husband, yes. persistous husband yes Still not good, but somehow... Still awful.
01:07:18
Speaker
You know, no, still somehow terrible. All I can think is, wow, imagine if confronted about this, if Carol would have some Amy-level delusions, and... um Because it feels like she would, and does this solidify that Carol is, in fact, Amy's mother?
01:07:41
Speaker
Not biologically, but spiritually. why Spiritually. Spiritually. yeah ah Well, I mean, you know, somebody asks Amy, do you think maybe you picked up a little bit from your adoptive parents? And she's like, why would I pick up anything from the people I lived with? Everybody knows it's all about biology. I'm like, bitch, you are not nearly as charming or anything as Marquis. Like, you and Marquis have nothing in common. Pause, pause, pause, pause, pause.
01:08:10
Speaker
So if this were the case, yeah Victoria and Crystal would be half-sisters? Yeah. hot cousin yes Correct.
01:08:22
Speaker
Listen. As well as Victoria and Eric would be half-siblings as well. Rest in peace, Eric Fielder. yeah carol Oh, true. Oh, brother-in-law. Oh, brother-in-law.
01:08:35
Speaker
Oh my God. I'm a brother lover. You're a brother.
01:08:46
Speaker
It's even worse because she's a lawyer, so it really is her brother in law.
01:08:52
Speaker
I mean, and listen, to gain Crystal as a sister, as a half-sister instead of a cousin would be great, but like, also... i did not and Great question here. And Photon Mom is ah it was dead, but is alive now.
01:09:09
Speaker
Do you think she does?
01:09:12
Speaker
Do you think she gonna kill a bitch? One can hope. One can only hope. Yeah, it's fine if she does. Ugh. ah yeah Y'all continue talking about this and the Dean and any other reveals before we get to the last part. I need some podcast juice.
01:09:29
Speaker
Some podcast juice. Oh, hey, do you want to come refill my water? He already took his head. He's going to be too late. He didn't hear it. His sons are gone. Oh, my gosh. I could make an announcement. man I could use yeah the the the robot who shall not be named to make an announcement. failediled them Hold on one second. Yeah. ah Alexa, make an announcement.
01:09:55
Speaker
Alan, can you come and refill my water bottle for me?
01:10:08
Speaker
hell yeah um Oh yeah. yeah. This is what the robot lady is for. This is what she is for. So Alan can make dinner and then tell me in my office without having to walk 20 fucking steps.
01:10:21
Speaker
Thank you. He's a good man. He's a man. bernard Bernard commented he wasn't sure that powers inherit that way because we have the example of Skitter and Chicken Little. I do think it's it's a mixture of things that we see, right? There obviously is a proximity factor where...
01:10:42
Speaker
ah Chicken Little inherited a bit of Skitter's power due to proximity. um We don't know exactly how that works, but we know there is a proximity factor. But we are also aware there's a DNA factor as well. where As well. yeah for at least list i just put Hannah's water onto my screen and drank it, and now coming after so Oh, no. Oh, God. Oh, they're fighting. They're fighting.
01:11:15
Speaker
and
01:11:19
Speaker
My best is going to be very confused. You shoot slipper at me. They're fighting. Wow. Exciting times on the Brockton Bay Book Club. Yeah.
01:11:31
Speaker
I baited the trap and then struck when the iron was hot. I just want to point out that this does reinforce ah my opinion of how we would all operate as a superhero team.
01:11:43
Speaker
Which is... Yeah, just jukes yeah it Me, Nick, and Michael just kind of holding down the fort as we can while Alan and Hannah rage some sort of war for the city. yeah i guess just You mean have a lot of fun? you know this yeah Talking to PR, being like, all you know, we're trying to clean up the city. We're trying to do this. And then I like i like you see the Nazi. Now watch this drive. Boom. We're the much fun
01:12:17
Speaker
watching yeah Hey, there you go. i see I see a Mr. and Mrs. Smith type thing happening where Alan is like a vigilante hero. Hannah's like a rogue villain. And they they keep fighting each other at nighttime, but not knowing that it's the other one. Amazing!
01:12:33
Speaker
It's a real it's a real ah book three of Hank the Cowdog. um where him and Drover are in the middle of a big windstorm and it's dark at night, storm, you know, no
Power Inheritance and Family Connections
01:12:46
Speaker
moonlight. And they they think there are two phantoms, two ghouls attacking the farm, the ranch. And um in the middle of the tomato plants, and ah they get into a fight and they both realize that it's almost the same size as their companion.
01:13:00
Speaker
And they're like, oh my gosh, you almost got me. We need to bunker down and go back. And of course the whole bit is that they just attacked themselves. Yeah. Yeah. Also, if the if the fanfic community hasn't done a pair of humans, Mr. and Mrs. Smith yet, I mean, come on, get on that. yeah i mean, I feel like Assault and Battery had that vibe. Yeah, they did.
01:13:21
Speaker
Yeah, but they were just not again. They were fighting. They were married while they were fighting. That's the vibe we need. They were just enemies to lovers. Oh, yeah. rich ah i mean And we love. need more of that. True. True.
01:13:33
Speaker
ah be But not not in this current story, please. Yeah. Yeah, yeah knowledge yeah yeah true. no No enemies to lovers here, please. yeah I would quit. You know what? I was thinking about this. I was like, what what makes you DNF a book? like What makes you actually just walk away and go, no, I don't think I can do it anymore. Sometimes it's bad writing. Sometimes it's bad characters. Sometimes it's scenarios that don't make sense. For this, it would be an enemies to lovers with...
01:14:00
Speaker
ah Amy and amium Victoria. I'd be like, no, I think I'm good. Oh, I'm out. Yeah. Alan, maybe you can weigh in on the, before we move on, weigh in on what Bernard is talking about while you were making your juice. Nick kind of weighed in on his thoughts.
01:14:20
Speaker
it's ah It's about the nature of how you inherit powers versus, is it proximity or is it, ours yeah you know? How does it work? I believe we actually, so, so she might've inherited due to proximity.
01:14:35
Speaker
Um, that's quite possible. Um, but also when we talk about approximate space for these, you know, multidimensional beings, that doesn't mean a whole lot. We know that DNA definitely is a tie.
01:14:52
Speaker
um,
01:14:54
Speaker
the The big question is, there's a basketball game. Was Neil even there? And I don't think he was. I think it was just her parents. So in that case, I think it is more of a DNA issue.
01:15:09
Speaker
And a lot of times it is, you know, when we talk about how you confuse them, you do both. You have to have same DNA strand.
01:15:21
Speaker
and then also have them spend a lot of time near them up your chances of a shard, you know, another shard appearing or breaking off or whatnot. We get this, we, you know, you two examples, you know, we, we have like, uh, uh, you know, obviously like Theo and all these second generation capes with, uh, Victoria and Amy and whatnot.
01:15:48
Speaker
uh, Like, Amelia is not getting powers because she's close to... um She's geographically close to Marquis. She never is.
01:16:00
Speaker
She's getting that because of DNA. Yeah. um And also potentially growing up in a... Aiden, however, is clearly has a Taylor shard. You know, off shard. um No DNA involved there.
01:16:15
Speaker
She's just... ah really close um you know to her all the time. So, like, we know that it can happen both ways ah and that you're more likely if you do it with both, which she had. She was both close to Neil all of the time and had his DNA potentially.
01:16:40
Speaker
So, that, like, kind of locks in that she's going to get those powers. now She could have... less likely gotten one of Mark's powers just because she was in proximity to him all the time.
01:16:55
Speaker
Yeah. But the double whammy of being in proximity to your parent and having their DNA is why second generation capes are almost guaranteed powers.
01:17:07
Speaker
Got it. Yeah. There does seem to be some kind of DNA connection. yeah I think, um yeah. And I guess, I mean, this is a wild theory, but we don't know who Chicken Little's mom was.
01:17:20
Speaker
There's nothing that says that potentially he's not related to Danny in some way. Obviously, that's a bit of a stretch, but, um you know. Yeah, you lost with that one. We don't know.
01:17:33
Speaker
Yeah. Bit of a stretch. but But, yeah, I don't know. It's it's interesting. um It's interesting considering how... how those things come together. Yeah.
01:17:45
Speaker
don't know. Fascinating. All right. Cool. Fascinating.
01:17:51
Speaker
um Yeah. So trying to think if there's anything else. I do love the little defiant bit at the end where they wake up and she's like, oh, did the world end? And he's like, No. no Yeah. um And poor Natalie standing there like,
01:18:14
Speaker
Love love Natalie. ah Best girl. I'm on Defiant's side, whatever it is, by the way. yeah Yeah. They did something. They fucked with something.
01:18:24
Speaker
We know that they were told explicitly, like, don't go into shard space. So they did that, which we know he told them. Defiant told them no. Like, of all the people, too, who were like, yeah, this is probably a terrible idea. Don't do that. Defiant's like, yeah, don't do that. They're like, okay. Turns around, does thing.
01:18:41
Speaker
Like, what are you, five? i love it. you kind yeah yeah Big daddy defiant coming in. but he What have you done? Yeah. happy um Yeah.
01:18:53
Speaker
I explicitly told you not to do this. And what do you do? you You did it. Did it anyway. All right. On to the Amy interludes, perhaps.
01:19:06
Speaker
Yes. but Now these these I do think we need to take one at
Amy's Character Examination
01:19:11
Speaker
a time. so yeah yeah Oh yeah. yeah sixteen y interlude Amy Dallin. Flashback to Amy's meeting with Jessica.
01:19:21
Speaker
Currently, Amy tries and fails to fix Hunter. Amy thinks of the psychology of people around her and the plans in front of her. She thinks she sees far enough to make the right decision.
01:19:37
Speaker
amy Amy. All right, so... um Yeah, meeting with Jessica. my God. all i All I got to say, somebody in the comments, I think, said it on one of the arcs, but generally... And generally...
01:19:53
Speaker
Some of the best villains are those that are convinced they are doing the right thing. Yes. Some of the best written villains. I think this is why... ah Javert in Les Mis is such a good villain because he is convinced he's doing the right thing.
01:20:11
Speaker
We're on the side of, you know, the protagonist, Jean Valjean, but I mean, you think about it from Javert's perspective, this is a a convict who escaped prison and is on the run doing who knows what with his you know as a convict.
01:20:27
Speaker
He's convinced he's doing the right thing, trying to hunt this man down relentlessly. But he's a terrible person, and he just can't see it, right? um And that's what makes Amy such a great character.
01:20:40
Speaker
Not a great person, of course, but a great character because... she is so utterly convinced of her own goodness. And...
01:20:52
Speaker
Yeah. She says it a few times between the two interludes, but I'll stick with the first one. um like there's She constantly references to herself that she is right.
01:21:04
Speaker
and like Yeah. Yeah, and and she's doing the right... like she you Like you said, she's just completely convinced herself of... that delusion. did Was it somebody in chat here you said, Alan, that was like said earlier like the the representation of of self-delusion or something? Like the spot on. It's one of the best representations. Yeah.
01:21:28
Speaker
um Yeah. Entirely.
01:21:33
Speaker
well Yeah. it's god it is Go ahead, Nick. I was just going to say what's great about it is She has the same character flaw that Taylor had in that she thinks she's always right.
01:21:49
Speaker
The difference is that Taylor was always right. as i I mean, I've talked about that. Amy has never been right. Amy has never been right. Not a day in her life. We've talked about that comparison in Worm and in particular. yeah that Taylor and Amy were basically like written as... Foils. Mirror images almost. Yeah, essentially.
01:22:12
Speaker
yeah Foils of each other. for each other yeah In the way that they interact and go about. and Yeah, it's it's fascinating. I love it. I love the idea that the trope, i don't know if it's a trope or not, if it's even used enough to be a trope, but I love, I love the idea of like the failed, uh, uh, protagonist essentially. We're like, um, like in Harry Potter,
01:22:37
Speaker
Neville could have been the protagonist, but it just wasn't him. Right. But he it could have been like he fit the prophecy or whatever it was. Right. But it just ended up being Harry. But but Neville was still a good guy and still was awesome.
01:22:50
Speaker
But like Amy's kind of like that where like she could have been the protagonist. she She could have been the hero here. if she wasn't completely wrong about everything. you know It's great. It's great.
01:23:07
Speaker
There's nothing that makes you sound like a fully hinged individual, like repeating the phrase, I'm not crazy. Yeah. Yeah. yeah i I found that interesting. that that was her her whole yeah Her whole thing about the like, I'm good, like I'm i'm doing what's right, like I'm doing, i'm I'm a good guy, I'm a good person. That makes sense for her character, for her thinking that she's, you know, in the right, being raised by the hero family, being the healer, like that makes a lot of sense.
01:23:38
Speaker
The repeating phrase of I'm not crazy and that you need therapy if you're crazy and that like she wouldn't need therapy because she's not crazy is really interesting to me because she's like all of her powers could go very well hand in hand with the whole like mad scientist like off her rocker healer vibes but of course she doesn't but she kind of does but she kind of doesn't and this idea of like I don't know Amy I think
01:24:10
Speaker
I think you are crazy, actually, a little bit. And Al and I were talking about this earlier because I was losing my shit ah earlier this afternoon. and we were discussing it. But I had this kind of moment up where I was like, Amy is so oblivious to herself. She's so unselfaware. I've said this a million times. She's totally not self-aware at all.
01:24:33
Speaker
But it made me wonder but the whole thing, like, I'm not crazy. her
01:24:40
Speaker
inability to be able to heal herself and she she can see jessica's like the antibodies the the her blood her lack of sleep the weariness behind her eyes she can sense all of that from a handshake and she has an insight into jessica in you know in this moment ah when they're talking so well that she can just by seeing how her body is functioning, that Jessica is exhausted, she's overworked, she's being pushed to her extreme and that she's going to be reaching her breaking point very soon. She can she can't see that, interpret that from Jessica's body. And yet she is so unaware of her own self. She can't heal herself just by her power. She can't do it. And in that same way, she cannot see herself and her own mental health, dearly, because she can't see her own brain.
01:25:36
Speaker
And I was thinking about that, like,
01:25:40
Speaker
i wonder if that's a huge factor into her, of, like, her clear lack of self-awareness is partially... Again, wearing black, the death of my last fuck for Amy.
01:25:54
Speaker
But, like, not to blame the shard, but that probably has a big part to play in why she can't see herself clearly. she's so easily be a like She's so easily able to tune into other people's mental health space, their body, what they're physically going through, but she cannot see it for herself at all.
01:26:15
Speaker
And she just fucking...
01:26:19
Speaker
i was I can't. She's...
01:26:24
Speaker
Can we push her into a volcano? Please? yeah Yeah. That's crazy. I was going to say, even just taking 16.Y, which, you know, my one note for that is, how does this woman not get this? Bitch, how do you not get this?
01:26:40
Speaker
Like, if you had the opportunity to talk to Amy...
01:26:49
Speaker
What would you say to her? what would you Would you try to convince her of anything? Would you tell her off? What would you do? Front hand or back hand? That's what I'd ask.
01:27:01
Speaker
Back hand! Back hand! I think hard, right? And I think... i think it's hard right and i think um
01:27:12
Speaker
It's clear from this interlude that the direct approach is not one that works with Amy. Because she is so defensive and so self-deluded that...
01:27:25
Speaker
that
01:27:30
Speaker
you can't just straight up say to her, like, go to therapy, because she gets angry at that, right? Like, yeah you know, if you suggest that one more time, like, I'm gonna go off, you know? Because, again, in her mind, she thinks you're telling her, oh, therapy is for bad people who need help.
01:27:46
Speaker
But that's, of course, not what Jessica's suggesting. Jessica's like, no, you have a lot of feelings, Amy, and you need to process those with somebody who's yeah not yourself. think...
01:27:58
Speaker
i think The only way to work with Amy in this situation is to try to lead her to her own conclusions. And the only way I think that you could possibly do that is with essentially a Socratic conversation where you are not even talking to her so much as asking questions and letting her answer them and seeing where those answers lead. Like I would ask Amy, well, Amy, what is a good person?
01:28:30
Speaker
What makes somebody a good person, Amy, in your mind? And try to get to the bottom of that because that's what she keeps telling herself is I am a good person and she doesn't take blame for what she did. She's
Responsibility and Amy's Psychology
01:28:40
Speaker
like, I was, that wasn't really me. I was messed up and I was in a bad place, right? Like is's one of the worst excuses for an abuser, of course, ever. Doesn't really count. I didn't really mean it. Yeah, it doesn't really count. Yeah. wo Like that, that whole thing is just like crazy. Yeah.
01:28:57
Speaker
But you have to get to the core of those definitions because that's what she's shielding herself with is the definition of a good person. And I think in her mind, a good person is somebody who has good intentions.
01:29:11
Speaker
And that might be it.
01:29:15
Speaker
Because that seems to be the pattern in Y and Z is that she's like, well, I'm doing this for good reasons or I controlled myself enough or I could do bad things, but I'm not going to because I'm a good person. I have good intentions.
01:29:32
Speaker
Right? Which she does. um Well, this next interlude. So we'll get, but like, she does that exact thing with Victoria.
01:29:44
Speaker
It's like, I could, but I'm not going Her and Cradle really ride that line there where like, Cradle... talking about not maybe not make what makes a good person, what makes a passable person, what he's like revealing himself to his friends being like, yeah, like I would do all these terrible things, but I don't like, because that's not what a human does. Right. And they're like, normal people don't even have those thoughts. Like, yeah. And it is like, Oh,
01:30:21
Speaker
It's like you shouldn't have... It really is... a Amy, you shouldn't have to think, no, don't do that.
01:30:33
Speaker
And granted, there's like... We'll call it a learning curve. Rain's doing this. Rain talks about he was really indoctrinated. So there was a while whenever he saw Tristan or Kenzie, he had really homophobic and racist thoughts.
01:30:50
Speaker
And then he would stop and go no, that's not true. Let me examine that. Why do I think this way? A level of cognitive dissonance and introspection and, yeah you know, interrupting the the thoughts to, you know, evaluate. and
01:31:11
Speaker
you do that for a time and eventually that becomes a habit. Amy has only more developed The habit of initially thinking bad things and counteracting them by just not doing them.
01:31:28
Speaker
Like... Amy, how did you get to the point that the bad things were your first reaction? Like, because it wasn't always like that.
01:31:40
Speaker
yeah I've got to imagine that at some point in time, your first reaction was not bad things. So, like... i i I want to put some blame on Carol. ah I'm going to put a lot of blame on Carol. First off, Nick, this is 100% Amy's fault.
01:32:02
Speaker
And somehow mathematically also like 70% Carol's. Yeah, exactly exactly. Because Amy is a more than beyond mathematical problem. She's a four-dimensional bitch, if you will.
01:32:15
Speaker
Exactly, exactly. But the question of how do you get to the point where you... Your first thought is towards doing terrible things and recognizing you could do terrible things. I think you get to that point where you're probably a sensitive 12 or 13-year-old girl who gets a superpower that is...
01:32:32
Speaker
the most incredible healing power in the world. And what does your mom do? She drops you off at a trauma center for eight hours a day and says, do good. You know? Yeah. yeah like and I know that wasn't exactly what Carol did, but I'm sure it's close to what she did. It's pretty close to what she did. Her power is her trauma. And Amy kind of alludes to that.
01:32:52
Speaker
Yeah, her power is your trauma. And Amy even kind of alludes to that in her conversation with Yamada where she's like, like, look, can you imagine how screwed up that would be to be like 13 years old and your aunt died an hour ago and they're asking you how you feel about it on TV?
01:33:07
Speaker
Like, yeah, ah yeah I... ah You know, we talk... um as is I'm going off on a lot of tangents, but um there's been a lot of... Over the past like five years or so, I feel like, i there was a big wave of criticism of family vlogger YouTubers because of how they are exploiting their children for profit on the internet um in various ways. And I feel like...
01:33:35
Speaker
I think the intention of New Wave of being this like, we're going to be public-facing heroes and we're going to be, you know, we're not going to have secret identities. We're not going to play that game. I think the intention maybe was good, but when you bring your kids into it, when you bring your families into it, and you bring in these and non-consenting non-adults into this space, yeah I think you create a lot of trauma.
01:33:59
Speaker
And it's no doubt that's part of what happened with Amy.
01:34:05
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's very true. And it's like to to follow along that same train of thought, only recently have states begun passing laws about family vloggers. And there's a very famous family that has moved twice now, different states in the past, you know, five years, because they keep moving to a state that doesn't have really hard laws about,
01:34:34
Speaker
ah you know, children influencers, basically, basically family vloggers who utilize their children for profit. And I think that says a lot. ah But yeah, but this idea of like, Victoria, because Amy makes a comment about like,
01:34:51
Speaker
Victoria was meant to be a hero, but she was also expected to be a hero, and she was raised to be a hero. And she's a great hero, but she never had the option to be anything else because she was raised with this intention of being a hero. And...
01:35:10
Speaker
yeah And even Victoria, when she's thinking about the whole, um what Carol told her about the whole visualize for for basketball, that it was visualize, visualize, because it wasn't actually real. It was like this extra thing in her life. But when it was cape stuff, when it was hero stuff, power stuff, it wasn't visualize anymore. It was do, was practical, because that was something that they had raised her with the intention to do. And I think Amy kind of,
01:35:40
Speaker
is a little bit right with the idea of like, that has an impact on you as a kid that like, of course it does. How could it not? But also her, her, but she, she also turns that on herself and is like, this victim mentality that she has is just, it kills me. It it makes me so angry. And tip I, I almost forgot until someone brought it up. Um,
01:36:08
Speaker
That her her, oh yeah, I had my first kiss in the birdcage. What the fuck are you talking about, bitch? what What do you mean? What the fuck do you mean? And I just, ah bless Jessica Yamada. That little, but she does, the little taken aback moment that that Amy sees, this mom to just be like,
01:36:31
Speaker
Oh my God, you believe your own bullshit, don't you? And that's somehow worse than somebody who knows that it's bullshit that they're spouting. But you fucking believe it. You believe this shit so much that you were like, oh yeah, my first kiss in the birdcage.
01:36:50
Speaker
Huh? Huh? What do you mean? i just, I've never been. I'm so taking care of my life. taking care of my life. We've circled back over into just laughter now. I can't. I don't.
01:37:04
Speaker
What? Yeah. I that guy all i mean. who it's which Which makes it more ironic in a way that she's the one who's now checking up on Bonesaw's work solely because she completely blames Bonesaw for that. It's like, oh, well, I just had my fingers cut off. I wasn't myself. Bonesaw made me do
Villain Comparison: Amy's Impact
01:37:25
Speaker
it.
01:37:25
Speaker
Jack made me do it. You know, and like, oh, but also now I'm working closely with Riley and yeah everything's fine. like Yeah. This girl, nothing is ever her fault. Nothing is ever her fault.
01:37:38
Speaker
Yeah, there's a reason like, you know, we have like ultimately people are responsible for their actions and why there's a myriad of things you go through looking at like, okay, not necessarily how responsible they are, but like what led them there? Are there mitigating circumstances?
01:38:01
Speaker
Once again, you're ultimately responsible for your actions. And this is one of those things with like people who talk about, okay, well, I was drunk when I did that. I'm like, that doesn't matter. Like you still did it. Like, yeah. um If you're a drunk driving accident and you kill somebody, you're still going to jail. Yeah. Yeah.
01:38:28
Speaker
You chose to drink and then get behind the wheel of a car. Like, yeah it doesn't matter if you didn't mean to do it. You did it. And now you have to deal with the consequences from that. And she just, they just don't exist to her because it doesn't matter. She didn't mean to.
01:38:43
Speaker
like And she's so angry. Oh, I'm sorry. Alan, I just realized I completely cut you off. I'm sorry. Keep, go, go, go, go ahead. I could talk about this for like years. Yeah, no. i I'm sorry. There really wasn't much else to that other than you like you could have all the mitigating circumstances in the world. Was it was bad childhood from both sets of parents? Absolutely.
01:39:07
Speaker
Was it, you know, ah really rough growing up being, you know, a minor celebrity? Absolutely. um Did you get a power that probably because they're, you know, conflict seeking does not like being a healer?
01:39:24
Speaker
um Probably. um You know, does that all weigh on you? Absolutely. Were you not in your right mind because you were exhausted? And so maybe maybe, you know, pointed like a missile by ah a master manipulator? Sure.
01:39:43
Speaker
But ultimately, you did the thing.
01:39:49
Speaker
It's just that simple. And when talking to Amy, like so many people... Amy will never change. This is not one of like the amount of resources it would take to change Amy's mind, if that could even happen, would be like years.
01:40:13
Speaker
This is one of those few things where it's it's not a communication issue. You could probably even give Amy the ability to look at her own brain and it would not change a damn thing about her.
01:40:24
Speaker
Like, she's not going to get it. And when trying to have a conversation with her, the only thing you can do is grab a brick. Like,
01:40:35
Speaker
she She needs to be hit in the back of the head. That's that's the only argument you need to have with her. Like, I'm not even joking. Yamada just goes, oh, um this is really bad. Reaches and grabs a plot potted plant and just and then throws her over the railing. i'll boy what i Morally, i think that's the only thing Yamada should have. Yamada's weak and bad in my mind because she didn't do that.
01:41:00
Speaker
like um you know Maybe not then, but like knowing what we know, like, yeah, if you have a conversation with Amy and Amy's trying to argue with you, there's no arguing with her. You just hit her.
01:41:14
Speaker
They'd like, she's not using, she's not using words, logic, you know, all the things that we talk about when we're like the societal negotiations with people, those are all a facade to her.
01:41:28
Speaker
Um, it's, It's the same way that we talk about, ah for those of you have seen Freerun, that the demons use human interaction and language and stuff. It's not empathetic. It's not language to them. It's noises made by their prey to lure people in when they talk to you, when they take on human form. And Amy is just that, but for anything she does.
01:41:59
Speaker
You almost have to treat her more like a conspiracy theorist than a mentally unwell person. Yeah, which, once again... Again, something. But in the sense of... um Yeah, the only the only person I've seen able to successfully interact with a conspiracy theorist, I think, is probably Dr. Mike on the internet. um But just in the sense of like...
01:42:28
Speaker
You almost have to treat it as like, okay, let me try to enter into your delusion and reason you out of it. ah But what a task that would be, right?
01:42:39
Speaker
And yet, even so, a demented clock is right every few years or so. And Amy does rightfully point out that Yamada needs help. And I'm pretty sure this is where Yamada decides she might need help with the breakthrough group.
01:42:53
Speaker
ah based on the context and the timing of it. think so, yeah. yeah And then also, you know, does end up strangling Riley. Yeah, that comes later, I think. We haven't seen that yet. Yeah. yeah ah But... ah
01:43:11
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. In that, i Amy's not correct. um She is somehow still wrong, and the reality outside of Amy...
01:43:23
Speaker
those things happen. But in my mind, it's like, there's like a quantum separation where anything that Amy is right about, um, is both wrong and also exist outside. And they might line up, but they're not on the same, like, yes, no wavelength, like true, false. yeah Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
01:43:46
Speaker
Um, Yeah, ah that's only the first half of sixteen y um The second half of 16Y gets us to the scene with Hunter. I will say... um i I too, Amy, would have a hard time focusing with the people you've chosen to have in the room for you with you while you're working on Hunter.
01:44:07
Speaker
um However, it becomes very apparent at the end of that interlude why they're all there because it took literally all of them to keep Hunter from killing Amy, unfortunately. If only she had.
01:44:20
Speaker
um I don't think Hunter's as broken as we think she is. Yeah. yeah ah she's She was on to something. She was cooking. ah Yeah, she was cooking. I mean, yeah.
01:44:34
Speaker
um I feel like. Yeah, I mean, yeah. So we... This will bleed into the next interlude as well, but I think there's a really fascinating parallel between Amy and Chris and their test subjects where, you know,
01:44:54
Speaker
bris ah for however villainous he may be, is working on clones or or artificial people, right? yeah Not actual people.
01:45:08
Speaker
And yet Amy is like, it neat hasle has a live human test subject that she is fucking with. ah Yeah. I do i do like the the the potential mental game where she's like, she doesn't know if Chris suspects her or is just cautious, but...
01:45:29
Speaker
her power apparently needs like skin to skin contact, right? it does It can't just be like hand to fur. And most of his forms now has fur, which I thought was really funny. Yeah. Oh, I love that.
01:45:40
Speaker
Love that. Chris is a smart cookie. He, he doesn't act like it. He acts like a dumb fuck, but he's actually a very smart cookie. Yes. i think That was a, that was a solid move on his part.
01:45:51
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. o Also Bernard, to answer your question, ah if we're talking about the until dawn game, i don't think that's that I, or unless until dawn's the name of the episode from free run.
01:46:09
Speaker
Or if it was the until dawn movie, I don't know. you know And to talk about, you know, thank God this woman took over goddesses place. You know what? She didn't really take goddesses place. Not fully. It's more like she's in charge of the hero or like the powered people and is still like under control of whatever government they've going on as opposed to goddess who was just, you know, dictator supreme of all.
01:46:35
Speaker
Yeah. So like in a general moral sense, like, yeah, thank God Amy's there and it's not, you know, goddess, but I hate Amy. Yeah.
01:46:49
Speaker
And I think her so much. I mean, it's it's one of those things where goddess was obviously evil, but Amy is only evil to us because we know the truth.
01:47:03
Speaker
Because again, we see in 16 Z, which we'll get to in a second, where somebody thanks her and is like, hey, you've done so much for us and we really appreciate it. And even with a brief handshake, Amy's like, she's precancerous. I'll heal her.
01:47:14
Speaker
You know, like, like that isn't... In any other context, that would be a genuinely nice thing to do. but when it's Amy, you just can't help but think, oh, there's an ulterior motive. i i think I think this is one of those things where, like, Amy is insufferable. Everybody knows it.
01:47:32
Speaker
And sure, she has the Healy power, but this is like, you know... what if the one person who can do things like your cancer is an insufferable bitch and like you just got to grin and bear it all the time so if you spend like five minutes with her you're like oh was nice to meet you know handshake is nice to meet you that's great if you spend any amount of time with her you're like oh god like she's the worst I don't think that's just a result of being inside her head i think it just makes you hate her more when you're inside her head also like yeah
01:48:09
Speaker
and We were talking about this before when Hannah was screaming no, no, no from the other room in regards to anything Amy opened her mouth to. Oh, was this afternoon. I think one of the reasons that Amy is like all-time goaded villain for me, like I think um is number one for me in terms of villains.
01:48:30
Speaker
is because Amy is such a personal villain. She is not almost an abstract political force like goddess is or like Hitler was or like, um, you know, Darth Vader or Palpatine like Palpatine and Darth Vader blow up a planet full of people in episode four. And Darth Vader still one of the most beloved and even Palpatine, like some of the most beloved characters because they're goofy and they're fun and they have flair and whatever. And the problem with Amy
01:49:12
Speaker
Is that she's such a personal. One to one hatred. For another. Human being even though she's a fictional character. And she's so human.
01:49:24
Speaker
And so banal. Is it like. She could be putting. Cream cheese on a bagel. And the reason she would be doing it.
01:49:35
Speaker
And why should we be doing it. Would make you want to strangle her.
01:49:41
Speaker
Like. The only person I can even think as frustrating as this is Worm adjacent, but the Zizian cult that gets their name from Worm, like the the what are they the realists or real moralists or something like that. i don't know.
01:50:03
Speaker
It's whole... like AI cult. um But don't name real yeah they're and they're named after the Simurg from Worm.
01:50:13
Speaker
Oh, really? Because they believe in like this whole like you've got to like morally rationalize everything. Like why am I doing this? What's the most morally efficient thing to do?
01:50:26
Speaker
And like listening to like stories about them and like the the creator, you know main person person. You're just like... this ah you very much get like, because they love, they love Taylor.
01:50:41
Speaker
They love a lot of worm writing because it's all of the like, okay, but what's the most morally justifiable? Like, what does it take to save the world? Kind of thing.
01:50:53
Speaker
They just are like insufferable as human beings because they have that like, oh, I'm putting the cream cheese on the bagel because of like these moral reasons. And that will lead to making sure that all the AI, when it becomes uploaded, will be beneficial and won't become you know cream cheese on my bagel.
01:51:10
Speaker
Yeah, and it's like, well, you know, normal people just put the cream cheese on the bagel because it tastes good and then you eat it. Like, some people think about calories and, you know, but some people think about, you know, okay, like dairy or like it came from, you know, where it came from, maybe.
01:51:26
Speaker
Most people don't think it's a cosmic freaking issue and like, oh my gosh, Amy is that sort of level of bullshittery for me.
Amy's Relationships and Story Direction
01:51:38
Speaker
So just, I was trying to figure out why the banal delusion of doing these terrible things is so, like, upsetting when you also have people like Pol Pot that have existed in real life and I don't get nearly as upset as I do about them.
01:51:58
Speaker
Well, it's the... Yeah, the personal villain is always the the more intriguing one, right? It's why... Again, he is popular for different reasons, but it's this even Snape versus Voldemort, I feel like.
01:52:11
Speaker
um And yeah. Oh, J-Man just said what I was going to say. J-Man just said what I was going to say. Amy was definitely dating goddess at one point. They said that before when Amy and Bianca showed up.
01:52:27
Speaker
Did they say that before? It wasn't, but like... They said they were together. Okay, gotcha. But like, they're together. felt like that was more implied. Versus they would be like, we're dating. It was more implied, but they were like, we're together.
01:52:43
Speaker
And then then it amy in this one's like, when I was dating Bea, and just leaves it at that, I'm like, oh, it's definitely Bianca. It's gotta be goddess, right? Like, she was dating goddess. Um...
01:52:53
Speaker
ah so yeah and yeah she's saying how like oh I met someone I might move out of the city town yeah I missed so much no I totally here you guys I immediately was like oh who is she dating and the only person I could think made sense was goddess and I was like oh I bet she was dating goddess at the time um yeah Yeah, and then, yeah, like Fran said, Amy says she's met someone, she's thinking about moving out of the city soon, talking to Yamada, and Yamada's like, maybe that'd be a good thing. Why? Because Goddess wants to get her planet back.
01:53:27
Speaker
Yeah. So, you know. Good lord. Yeah, i like i imagine it's like, yeah, my girlfriend wants to leave town, I'll probably go with her. Yeah, she wants to take her planet back.
01:53:39
Speaker
yeah But also, oh also so the fuck? Oh.
01:53:47
Speaker
Yeah. um Should we move on to 16Z? We've talked a bit about it, but we can wrap it up and yeah add a bit more. I would say, let's as much as I want to hate on her, well let's yeah heres just keep...
01:53:59
Speaker
we have on Keep the train chugging. Goddess wasn't a great villain, but Amy would have been. Anyways. 16.Z. Interlude Red Queen. The Red Queen and her entourage walk to Chris's lab, and Chris tries to manipulate Amy into making a fake Victoria.
01:54:16
Speaker
Flashback to Amy's visit with an unconscious Amy. ah Amy and Chris, or unconscious Victoria, Amy and Chris begin creating giants.
01:54:29
Speaker
the um There you go. yeah the There was a comment on the parahumans for this chapter that i I really liked because it was something I was feeling, but I couldn't... I just wasn't in the right headspace to like put it into words for my own brain.
01:54:49
Speaker
But basically they were saying how... Again, paralleling Amy and and Chris here because Chris is an asshole. And a villain, but he's a villain like our undersiders are villains.
01:55:06
Speaker
Like, he's a clone of, or, or ah you know, ah a yeah, I mean, he's essentially a ah clone of Lab Rat, but yet is choosing non-human subjects, is doing everything he's doing for, like, so that this, you know, planet can defend itself.
01:55:24
Speaker
Prepping for, you know, some eventuality that is yet to be named and and terrible. So like, yeah, he's a bad guy, but but half the stories are bad guys. Like he just kind of fits in.
01:55:37
Speaker
And the comparison between and Amy and amy And specifically, his ability to recognize that and call her out is great. And I really like their dynamic. It's kind of what you were saying earlier, Nick, where, like, the direct approach doesn't really work with Amy.
01:55:54
Speaker
And Chris is just like, well, fuck it. I'm going to be as direct as hell anyway. Yeah. feel Like, yeah listen, bitch, you're fucked up. Are you ready to accept that yet? Because, like, yeah if so, cool, we can make it work. I mean, that's why I'm here, you know? Thank but you got to want it.
01:56:11
Speaker
It's, it's really interesting. i loved their little dynamic towards the end a, in a terrible way, but I loved it. I would love for Jack Slash to come back from the dead to like see all where his little like, you know, his little ah things that he's planted go off to look at Amy and go, oh, fuck. It'd be like disgusted at her. Like, geez.
01:56:33
Speaker
It's those memes where like Satan's like, okay, slow down. Okay, God. yeah Like, I just wanted you to like turn people into goo monsters. I didn't want you to be like this bad. Like, God damn. Yeah.
01:56:46
Speaker
I was thinking auto house and i is going dream getting after this. god I was thinking about this as like her past and how she was raised and like the whole being raised to be a hero. And and i i think someone said this earlier in chat, the whole thing about like part of her, part of her you know, tragic backstory is that her dad, and you know, Marquis being a villain and you know, abandoning her the heroes basically. Yeah.
01:57:15
Speaker
And honestly, I think she probably would have been a better person if she had just been raised by Marquis because she would have just been raised a villain. She wouldn't have this like internal struggle between like good and bad and like, oh, no, I have to be good. i have to be a hero. I'm not a bad person. Like, I think if you just did whatever the fuck you wanted, you wouldn't be so tied up in knots and then you wouldn't make such terrible decisions.
01:57:38
Speaker
You'd just be a bad guy and you might be like a bad, bad guy or you'd be a moderate bad guy. because you wouldn't be so tied up in knots, but because you're so tied to this idea of like what good is and because you have to like label yourself as good. Like you're going to continue disappointing yourself and everyone else around you. Like it would be better if you were just a villain.
01:58:03
Speaker
Yeah. The, um, yeah.
01:58:07
Speaker
I love that all of our intuition was spot on during that chapter a little bit ago where in the hospital during their confrontation and we were we were all like I mean we know Amy touch Amy did something yeah we touched her of course we know and then god what a gross It's disgusting. you It's yeah it very ah a very uncomfortable scene. they I did want to say Sorry, real quick. Bernard said my um Bernard and J-Man were talking about how going back to reread Amy's interlude from Wyrm and you can see the same self-delusion there but ah you kind of believe her in Wyrm. Interesting, yeah.
01:58:50
Speaker
And Bernard said nobody saw through her then not even from from our book club but I'm pretty sure I feel like I'm pretty sure I feel like we caught on to Amy's BS way back then. We're like, no, something's up with Amy like that. Yeah, I think we all called it back then. Yeah.
01:59:06
Speaker
i may Maybe, maybe not. Even as a first-time read, even if you forgive the interaction after Bonesaw and all of that, because like fair and enough, it was really traumatic.
01:59:17
Speaker
But like once you get to the the to the ah cocoon and all that kind of stuff, it's like you you start to really question her. yeah And there's no going back. no yeah um yeah but yeah no the yeah yeah we all did Speaking of that, though, that just reminded me of that. But yeah, we did catch on that. like Now, Amy did something to Victoria.
01:59:37
Speaker
and like we saw at the end, Victoria noticed like, hey, I'm mostly still... hurt except I re-grew a fingernail that I didn't have before that I lost. Yeah. yeah I didn't catch it, but I think they mentioned it before that there's like, you so between the the sections, you know, when they're moving place to place or whatnot, they have the little dots that indicate, you know, between a pair like little paragraph areas like, you know, like we have in this one, we have now and then later and you have like a little squiggle or dot.
02:00:12
Speaker
And there is at one point in time where there are just like five dots and a red one, which I guess is supposed to indicate that like Amy just keeps resetting the conversation in Victoria's head.
02:00:29
Speaker
interesting. I believe if I'm not mistaken. Hmm. Interesting. And then, you know, during the one like, grows the you know the fingernail the first time she's in there. But yeah, like, keeps trying to have the conversation.
02:00:48
Speaker
You know, maybe my information's wrong on that one, but... I mean, it's definitely an interesting thought. Which would make a lot of sense. Like, Amy... and So, the thing is, is that, like, you the the theory the like theories like that with Amy...
02:01:08
Speaker
They're easy to accept because of course she would. Because fuck her, of course she would. It sounds exactly like something she would do, resetting the conversation. Like how we've seen Imp do, where she resets the conversation to hit to try a different punchline. And it's funny and it's fun because it's her and it's the heartbroken.
02:01:26
Speaker
Like... That 100% sounds like something Amy would do to to try and... I think about this every single time. This is something, Nick, you said ah billion episodes ago.
02:01:38
Speaker
That with Amy, it's this... If I can just say the right words to you, if I can just say... What I need to say, you'll understand and you'll be on my side. And it's like, no, nothing you could ever, and honestly, it especially after her conversation with Miss Yamada, it goes both ways. Like, nothing you say will ever change Victoria's opinion of you after everything that you did to her. And at the same time, nothing we could ever say would change Amy's opinion of herself and how she sees herself as the hero, or not as the hero, but not as a villain.
02:02:15
Speaker
She sees herself as a good person. And then it would have to take something far more powerful than human language to for that to click in her stupid head.
02:02:31
Speaker
Oh, God. I hate her so much. i I don't think I've ever hated... anybody like this like in in in media in literature like because i you know i we love a we love a good villain but i don't think i've ever hated somebody as much as i hate amy which is and i you know wow just wow there's the closest i was literally thinking through just right now like
02:03:04
Speaker
my favorite villains, all this kind of stuff. And like, who did I really love to hate? And there's some good answers, but the one that I kept coming back to, and I forget the character's name, but the, uh, the evil guard in the green mile. You ever seen the green mile? Oh my gosh. I specifically haven't because I know that I don't need that in my life.
02:03:25
Speaker
There's just a, just a, uh, evil character. Yeah. so but yeah I won't spoil It's a great movie. Everyone should watch it, but like, Yeah, just the the characters that are just so caught up in themselves, and there's just zero redemption. I mean, honestly, in a lot of ways, it's very Joffrey from Game of Thrones. It's the same idea. It's just, you know, ah makes them so great is just how gone they are. Like, there's no redemption.
02:03:53
Speaker
then yeah and And the audience doesn't want a redemption, right? Sometimes you you get a villain and and you want that redemptive arc and all that kind of stuff. but Yeah, for sure. We don't want that. I would be so mad if Amy got a redemption arc.
02:04:07
Speaker
She doesn't... Alan
02:04:10
Speaker
all and I were part of our conversation this afternoon. i was saying that like talking about the whole idea of you know, if you rob a bank regardless of what your reasons are and you get caught, you're going to go to jail. Like that's just... And and now that's on your record.
02:04:25
Speaker
And like... because of Amy's whole comments about like, oh, everyone's talking about me behind my back. Like, oh yeah, everyone's talking about me. Like, well, no shit. Like, you made a choice. You got caught. um Like, you know, with the bank robbing analogy, like you robbed a bank, you got caught, you served your sentence and now it's on your record. And now every time you go to a job interview, that's, that's going to be something that people will see. And you probably will never get a job as a bank teller because you robbed a bank. Like, unfortunately, because of the decisions you made for your life, like,
02:04:57
Speaker
There are certain avenues that will never be open to you now because of those choices. That doesn't mean that you don't get to prove yourself to serve your time and to prove yourself and to seek redemption and to do better and to recognize that you made a really bad fucking decision and change your path moving forward.
02:05:17
Speaker
But those consequences still hang on because that's how life works. And if if I could see any sort of path for Amy where she could recognize this at all, then okay.
02:05:31
Speaker
Actually, I wouldn't change my opinion whatsoever, but and there's just no, I cannot at all see her recognizing her own self and being like, huh, no, that is something I brought on myself. And I do have to live with the consequences now.
02:05:51
Speaker
Like,
02:05:53
Speaker
Okay, babe. Alright.
02:05:58
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. For all those who want to... Amy is a good... Oh, go ahead. Yeah. Go ahead. No, go ahead, Michael. ah just for all We figured out, if you want to go back and listen to our worm reactions to Amy initially, go listen to our episode. It Yeah.
02:06:16
Speaker
Arc 11 chapters... it is ah yeah arc eleven chapter gus A through H. That's the episode title. Yeah. And then I think we probably, i think they were saying too, we reacted to the parts in the bank robbery, which was a bit which earlier, year I want to say.
02:06:34
Speaker
Those don't even count because those are just a moody teenager and her yeah bully sister showing up. Yeah. At that point. Yeah. Imagine if we caught it that early on. Yeah, that'd be crazy.
02:06:46
Speaker
Yeah. Something about this. pan I will say, i I do think there was an implication, perhaps, like if you go back on a reread, Tattletail may have made some implications that Amy had feelings for Victoria.
02:06:58
Speaker
yeah that was but it's not in context that you can make any assumptions it's not in a context you would understand until future yeah so um it's one of those like retroactive context things that yeah definitely we get the most context in 11h which is the slaughterhouse 9 yeah i might go back in with improvement phases yeah so our old stuff it'll be fun um So long ago. Gosh.
02:07:25
Speaker
Maybe it is. I think it was the recruitment phase. Because it that was where it was a bunch of lettered to interludes where we were talking about and of um each of the members trying to recruit people. Yes, that's right. It's all their recruits.
02:07:36
Speaker
April 22nd, 2024, by the way. That was kind of crazy.
02:07:47
Speaker
My phone, which is my webcam, despite being plugged in is on a countdown. so no Shall we talk about the Victoria tumor? the Oh, yeah. oh Okay, so this whole, like...
02:08:03
Speaker
somebody said it in chat and it was so good oh my gosh their Vicodin patch yeah their Vicodin patch disgusting horrid Fran there it is that's hilarious of course it was Fran gross truly horrid yeah it could be better all right yeah brand there it is that's hilar of course i was friend a very good ros truly horrid The antumor.
02:08:30
Speaker
That's good. Antumor-ese. Yeah. yeah yeah yeah the so So Amy's version of self-control is interesting. She said Antares. I thought she was a cancer.
02:08:48
Speaker
ah That's very good. It's good. Fabulous. Oh my god. Oh, if my phone cuts, if my camera cuts out.
02:09:02
Speaker
He's frozen. I think for his good freeze frame. it is a good frame, actually. i can see it. Yeah,
02:09:14
Speaker
no anyway which just ah yeah it's fine yeah yeah ah In the edit, Michael just put up like a cartoon picture of Alan. I'll put the so sock puppet hands.
02:09:26
Speaker
and but What were you saying, Nick? um So Amy's version of self-control. once had somebody say to me,
02:09:37
Speaker
you know i
02:09:42
Speaker
i once had somebody say to me No, no, no. i I have a lot of self-control. This was back when we were you know in college and they were talking about how like you know yeah they had self-control to not sleep with people before they were married.
02:09:56
Speaker
And they were like, no, no, no. I have plenty of self-control. I've been naked with somebody and I almost did, but I didn't. And i was like, yeah, but you also got naked with somebody. like that's a it's like ah is Is that self-control? or are you just like towing the line as far as you can? Fucking hilarious. That's the freaking like, you know, the dog. Have you seen, you know, those like videos of like dogs not being allowed and on the couch or something like that? Yeah. They're like the paws up on the couch, but they're like not on it. Yeah. Same thing. Yeah. yeah
02:10:29
Speaker
yeah That's exactly what this There's that famous ah clip that was going around of like the little girl about to drink out of a can of soda, and the mom's like, Sadie? And she's like... Yeah. yeah yeah like yeah yeah So yeah, it's... Oh, man. It it is literally that...
02:10:49
Speaker
I feel like we all, the group of us, meaning the book club, we all went to a Christian college where we were told, you know, save sex for marriage. and And the amount of times people were like, well, but like, how close can I get to that without like it really being bad? You know? Excuse me. How far is too far? How far is too far? Yeah, that's exactly. Oh, no. Perfect, Michael. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm ready. He's got his sock bucket at the ready.
02:11:18
Speaker
I do want to make sure we don't skip over. me i will throw my the hot diff up.
02:11:26
Speaker
Phenomenal. No, this is excellent. Fabulous. That's better. ok This is fantastic. I approve. I do want to make sure we don't ah skip past Chris's prehensile nose.
02:11:39
Speaker
His anteater nose. Which took me a while visualize. That is hilarious. Trying to put that on. Because he's in like a gorilla form-ish. Something like that. With an anteater nose. He's in an anteater. Yeah, gorilla form with like an anteater head. Yeah, phenomenal. Great, great creature.
02:11:58
Speaker
I love his creature so much. He has such fun. He says... yeah Yeah. Just as an aside for the for those of you who are watching and who aren't watching, Alan has put up a picture of what appears to be a steamy romance cover, except for some reason in my mind, I'm laughing to myself because I'm visualizing Alan as the woman with the rose in her hair and Hannah holding him. What the hell?
02:12:20
Speaker
I don't know why. like I hope you guys recreate this now. I yes i always cradle Alan gently. Exactly. While wearing a tartan sash.
02:12:34
Speaker
Me, Jacob, up and Nick are the bats flying over in the corner. Exactly. We're the bats flying around. falling a apart a little bit Oh my gosh. Yeah, we've gone on for too long now. it's past I know it scott was going to say, we're going New York.
02:12:48
Speaker
This is our hatred of Amy's burns us on. Keeps us going. Yeah. The prehensile nose is great in the scene where I'm like...
02:13:00
Speaker
amazing I'm like, oh, is Chris about to become a terrible person? And I'm like, no, no, he's just exposing how bad Amy is. Okay, cool. We're good. yeah I love it! I love it! Because he's like, he moves her shirt, and she's like, what are you doing? And he moves her bra strap, and she's like, what are you doing? And then it's like, oh yeah, that's what I fucking thought. And you're like, oh Oh yeah. No, confirmed.
02:13:23
Speaker
Amy's just the worst. I think it may have been fran mentioned it earlier, but they they said how, or somebody said in the chat how um how every time Amy grabs her heart yeah and then you realize why she's doing it. Yeah, Bernard said that maybe. Somebody said that, yeah. Like every time she's grabbing at her heart and then you realize why she's doing that. And you're like, uh...
02:13:47
Speaker
Wild Boat did write something i but I was very appreciative of because it's also how I think when I'm like trying to write stories. Because during that scene and you're like, Chris, what are you doing? And then Wild Boat puts in the line completely, ah this was completely non-sexual. like Just make sure it's very clear. that like yeah You can't read into this. is just He's just smelling, you know, stuff it out of bullshit.
02:14:08
Speaker
But I was like, thank you, Wild Boat. Yeah, for clarifying. Yeah, I appreciate that. I'm sure there is at least one fanfiction, but we don't need to go there. yeah There's always a fanfiction. There's always a fanfiction.
02:14:22
Speaker
There are some fanfictions that don't ever need to happen. Anything to do with a minor and anything to do with Amy. oh shit Unnecessary. and It should not exist. There's a lot of both. but like there's a lot out overla says Of course there are. yeah That's disgusting.
02:14:41
Speaker
Come on. um What are they making?
02:14:46
Speaker
Oh, they're cooking up giants, I guess. It seems almost like they're reminiscent of the Titans, of the Dauntless Titans. Indeed. ha ha ha And they're making eight before the day's out? Before the day's out. and the implication me If I'm wrong, but the vibe i got is that they're creating them and they exist on multiple dimensions. Like...
02:15:16
Speaker
yeah yeah they exist in three places at once like so they're like yeah on every earth you know, a Bet, Aleph, Gimel kind of the same way that Sion did which is why it reminds me of the Dauntless Titan too because Dauntless mentions don't me that in in his interlude um that feeling of being everywhere all at once Yeah, because he is also a giant that is spanning worlds. Yeah.
02:15:46
Speaker
Sheesh. Yeah. chris Chris pulling a very bone-saw move here. He's like, ah, yes, I got a scan of Chevalier while I was in pi a city don't worry. yeah I've got a few. And then it ends, oh God, it ends in such the best way. He's like, all right, let's get to the next one. This one's someone you know.
02:16:07
Speaker
i'm like, okay, who is that going to be? I know. I was about to say, one of my questions for the end of the night is, who is, who do you think that is? but Thankfully, it's a it's a it's a clone, right? So it's not something we'd be super worried about. but Yeah.
02:16:26
Speaker
but I was thinking, So he's not bringing back dead people, right? Because Chevalier is alive. Chevalier is He their were info, their DNA. Somebody he'd have info on. I would i would not be surprised if it was Carol.
02:16:43
Speaker
He's interacted with Carol before. She was just there, too. Why not? She's got a good power. Might be Carol. Listen, we don't need a giant raging bitch Carol Yeah. yeah and If they could be dead. it or God, it's raging bitch. No. Yeah. it's Here's my guess. Is this either Carol or Bianca? Those are my two guesses. Yeah. That's what was thinking. Yeah.
02:17:11
Speaker
I don't think there's any way in hell Earth's shin would allow Bianca clone to exist. True. Probably true. so what's fair it It also depends on like how...
02:17:23
Speaker
capable, functional the clones are in terms of power and in terms of ah like reactivity and stuff like that. Because it would be really dangerous to have a Bianca, a full-powered Bianca clone out and about. That could be a terrible idea.
02:17:41
Speaker
Yeah, the implication is they they have ah some type of similar power to the to what they have. Yeah. um Yeah. Carol is a great a great guess. I like Carol, yeah. That would be an interesting one.
02:17:56
Speaker
um Armsmaster, honestly,
02:18:02
Speaker
there's a lot of ah potential options. It feels like one of the bigwigs at the Wardens. Who was there when they were there? I feel like it would be well it would be somebody Amy interacted with, though, right? like it wouldn't He wouldn't just say that if it was just like If it was like Arms Master, like I feel like he wouldn't say that. like Oh, it's somebody you know.
02:18:22
Speaker
like well like yeah Amy knows a lot of people. yeah bone saw no Maybe Bonesaw. Maybe Bonesaw is not a bad choice either.
02:18:30
Speaker
It could be Crystal. Yeah, it could be Crystal. could be Could be one of the dead members of their family, right? who Who's passed away? Eric and who else? Sarah. the an is back Sarah's back in a different way. isn't neil's ah Is Neil alive? Neil's alive.
02:18:45
Speaker
live no life I thought Neil died. Wasn't he at the barbecue? Oh, he was. oh Actually, I don't know. No? Neil wasn't at the barbecue?
02:19:00
Speaker
I thought that was the other one. That family's so weird. Yeah. yes There's another one that the barbecue I hate to go to.
02:19:12
Speaker
i'm i'm missing out that isn't related to that. Neil Dallin.
02:19:20
Speaker
No. Neil Pelham. but There's Mike, the brother-in-law. Mike, is that's who I'm thinking of. Is Mike your guy? And Mike's... Mike's... ah first partner was the one that got murdered that stopped New Wave from happening or whatever they were called before New Wave and this is his new partner Mike and Floor yeah right floor floor Floor that's what it was floor yeah um yeah ah
02:19:52
Speaker
good guesses the other question I have is what do you think that Breakthrough did Oh, right. That Defiance pissed at? Yeah. yeah be anything see i know Neil was killed killed by Leviathan as well, so it could be Neil. Sorry.
02:20:07
Speaker
um what What did you ask, Alan? I missed six. I was reading. What do you think that Breakthrough did that pissed Defiance off? good Basically, what are our predictions for next time?
02:20:21
Speaker
Yeah. I think... um
02:20:26
Speaker
my My fun theory is that whatever they did ah created a bunch of broken triggers. Like we saw glimpses of early on in the series. Or like just like, you know, shard space was opened and just like random ah unprompted triggers happened.
02:20:47
Speaker
Something like that. Maybe every time they did the whole um crystal exchange thing to like heal themselves. Or when Victoria goes through that, like, maybe that punched a hole.
02:20:59
Speaker
Every time they went through, it punched a hole. like, opened up more portals? It opened up more, more ah the ah like, it let through another, not Amy, but um another Victoria on the other side.
02:21:13
Speaker
not Not necessarily portals, but more of just, like, it caused havoc. And, like, the... yeah Because it feels like her... just the interaction with the crystals of like looking in, seeing images like that doesn't feel like it would do too much, but the, the actual jumping into the dream world, potential problems. And then by like healing themselves by going through the crystal and doing that, like swap out thing that it fucked with shit in the real world.
02:21:44
Speaker
Hmm. Yeah. I, I'm seeing more perhaps, um,
02:21:52
Speaker
More perhaps like they were monitored... Right, because she said that when she attacked whatever was powering teacher's agent, it seemed like the... the mob of Thralls like lost a bit of their... It's like they reverted back to trying to save Teacher from his agent, right? Which is kind of a weird moment there.
02:22:11
Speaker
So it makes me think maybe they were monitoring the Thralls, they were monitoring Shard Space, and maybe even they were prepping to go in and take things down. Oh, oh yeah. and And then interesting dragons like, wait a second, something's happening. And they see basically what Victoria does in type stopping teacher, but it wasn't as delicate as they would have done it. And it messed up something with their plans too. What if it's going to ruin shards perhaps?
02:22:39
Speaker
Yeah. What if it, um, what if they're responsible for like Contessa's weird behavior going on right now? Because like if they if Path to Victory couldn't account for future fuckery in the Shardverse, and so now you know her Path to Victory is all out of whack.
02:22:58
Speaker
I don't know. yeah yeah I like that. That's good. be Interesting.
02:23:04
Speaker
am Whatever it is, fine, it's right. I'm excited. i will say this is probably the first time Where I actively had to stop myself from reading the next chapter in the next arc.
02:23:20
Speaker
I haven't had that happen since Wyrm. That's so they were saying. yeah Yeah, there's there's been a few good arcs that I really liked. And i was like, okay, great. Yeah, I'm having good. I'm having fun.
02:23:30
Speaker
Good time reading reading Ward here. But I agree. I think it hasn't been... it's Turner. Maybe. Yeah. Yeah, really. But I do. I agree. I am very curious. i'm very excited to keep reading here.
02:23:45
Speaker
sure for sure.
02:23:49
Speaker
All right. I'm tired. Yeah, I'm sleepy geeky. I know you asked us about our favorite villains, but I think we're going to have to we'll say that bring that up next time. Maybe that's some Patreon content.
02:24:05
Speaker
yeah It just talks about some all-time villains. like yeah I would love to have a villain conversation for Patreon. I think that would be a lot of I also had ah had an idea for a series where we just ah called Ask Jacob, and we just bring Jacob our questions, and he has to just answer them on the spot real quick.
02:24:26
Speaker
and I thought yeah that would be really fun. I thought it would be a really fun Patreon idea because like it hit him with like some interesting writing questions, media questions, personal questions.
02:24:39
Speaker
Oh. i don't like where that's going. don't like the implication there. I'm down. If I'm not wrong, Jacob, you'll be in a new recording place next time we record. I'll in a new studio. What? He's moving. My background will change. I'm moving.
02:24:59
Speaker
But you really are? Yeah. Yeah. He's got a house that he's moving to. Damn. ah you You say that like I bought a house like I'm a one person. That's very exciting. you know He's moving to a house though. It's still true. it's still Fantastic. Well done. yeah yeah yeah I'm not on when you guys all game together so I'm behind on some of this. true. Patrons can can advise me on what I need to have on my background.
02:25:28
Speaker
Right. Yes, please. yeah um Everyone good with the eighth
02:25:35
Speaker
in two weeks. That's Monday? Mm-hmm. Back to Monday. Yes, back to Mondays. yeah it' be like monday yeah Yep, yep, yep. Should be good. yeah i'm just give it no what do we What are we reading, Alan?
02:25:48
Speaker
Ooh, because we at another 100. accelerating to the endgame. Yes. 1,000, and it's gonna let me tell you, it's going to be hard not to want to read through this.
02:26:00
Speaker
Oh, no. Okay. So maybe we read 17.1 to 17.
02:26:20
Speaker
that's a good. Okay. I'll repeat that because you were not close to your mic. We're reading 17.1. you're fine. 17.6 two weeks the
02:26:30
Speaker
in two weeks on the eighth We're so close to the end. june eighth We're getting there. We're getting there. And patrons, please advise what Jacob should do to his new background.
02:26:42
Speaker
And if you're interested Anna's Jacob question segment, let us know. And thank you for bearing with us tonight with the crazy internet.
02:26:57
Speaker
um Thanks for all the commenting. Yeah. As for bingo, um I got two bingos. I don't know about but anybody else, but I have the slightest amount of sympathy for Amy before going back to fuck Amy.
02:27:12
Speaker
Jacob doesn't talk for 10 minutes. Someone completely misses a reveal. Hannah cries. Fuck Amy. Alan rants. Someone predictions come true. That's my double bingos right there. And then also cat on screen, book cradle, love for shard space and technical difficulties.
02:27:27
Speaker
ah Next time we will also maybe in the villain thing, talk about alternate spaces. Cause we've talked before about how they are bad and boring. And this is,
02:27:39
Speaker
yeah Honestly, I don't think that much of an exception. The ones we did not get, chat gets Nick to mention his favorite villain. Y'all didn't even try, but we'll get him next time. um Michael has to... Do you guys mean faster? It doesn't count now. It's too late.
02:28:02
Speaker
a bald joke, especially with Nick with his guns out. Nick goes full parent teacher, which, you know, had had you had to leave like a... so ah You came in for five minutes and you had leave because of it. That would have been even better. And Jacob being complete cinephile.
02:28:20
Speaker
um Which hasn't scored the last couple of times. I've made some light references, but nothing nothing crazy. You mentioned the green mile, which I felt like. i did Oh, you did. You know what? did That's another bingo for me. Triple bingo. Bingo, bingo.
02:28:38
Speaker
do you guys want to take a guess at when I cried while reading and when I cried during this podcast? I'm sure Michael noticed because he always gives me the look.
02:28:49
Speaker
Every time. You mentioned it, didn't you not? i Did i I? I think you said, i think you said but I'll let the boys answer. That was a baby. was also like ballot multiple hours ago, probably.
02:29:10
Speaker
it was. it was a she Was it during... was it Man, I don't know. Was it during the... the meeting with Jessica?
02:29:21
Speaker
Nope.
02:29:25
Speaker
You gotta go earlier than that. Oh, earlier than that, okay. It really was early. Oh, when they were all preparing for their death. yeah that Yeah, she mentioned she i yeah she was struggling. Oh, yeah.
02:29:36
Speaker
I'm just sitting here at my desk like... This is it. No, no, no. can we yeah yeah shout out to Truett for trying to get Nick to say it at the very end I appreciate it um but Truett also has a bingo technical difficulties Jacob doesn't talk for 10 minutes Alan rants in love for shard space very nice nice and done well done well done well done fun night okay song time we went long ah
02:30:08
Speaker
ready for song time Are we done? Ready for song long time? Oh my gosh. Yes.
02:30:38
Speaker
Be a good puppy and become a patron. Your life will never be the same. Good boy.
02:30:52
Speaker
Hey. Perfect. Okay. We will see you on the 8th. Thanks for everything, guys. You're the best. You're the best. Bye.
02:31:04
Speaker
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02:31:09
Speaker
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