Transcript
Speaker: Worm is a web serial by JC McCray, also known as Wildbo. You can read Worm in its original format by visiting parahumans .wordpress .com or donate to Wildbo's Patreon at patreon .com slash wildbo. This story isn't intended for young or sensitive readers. Readers who are on the lookout for trigger warnings are advised to give Worm a pass. For a complete list, check the description for all of Worm's trigger warnings.
Speaker: Good morning, Brockton Bay. Who let the dogs out? Who, who, who, who? And by dogs, I mean the personal identities of all the white supremacists in the area. It's coil. Get doxed bitches. Basically, who knew that coils power after all this was just doxing people? Yeah.
Speaker: I didn't know that, you know, I forgot the whole part of the story where we find out that coil is a discord moderator. Um, it's amazing. Really. Actually, that really makes a lot of sense. It does. That checks out skin suits everything. And welcome to episode seven of Brock and Bay book club, where we are diving into the web serial worm.
Speaker: by Wildbo and going arc by arc discussing it and having a fun time. We are down our two first time readers this week. So we don't have Taylor and Kat with us, but that's all right. It means that all of us experienced readers can spoil everything.
Speaker: Okay, so when we find out that Brian is secretly Alex's dad. I mean, you know, honestly, I was surprised to, you know, find out that Lisa has been in love with Danny this entire time. Like looking back, it makes so much sense.
Speaker: He's obviously beekeeping age. Okay, now that is what we're all looking for in a man. It's a beekeeper. Sign me up. Hannah, you know? I know. You know, we were talking about beekeeping classes. We're actually thinking about signing up for beekeeping. I just need more zaddy energy. I need to absorb it. Well, it took us not even three minutes to get off topic here.
Speaker: That's a merch shirt idea I've ever heard. Welcome to the daddy podcast. All doubts all the time. How do you like your daddy's? Michael had a great point though. Yes, it is. There's a merch idea in there somewhere. Yeah, for sure. Gonna figure it out.
Speaker: Well, let's go ahead and dive in. And no, we're not spoiling anything, obviously, for anyone who is reading along with us. But we're gonna have some fun. So again, I sound like a broken record every time I say this, but we've got another packed episode. Oh my God, yeah. So much to get through with this chapter. As always, Hannah, do you have some summaries for us? Maybe I think these first couple chapters can maybe group together a little bit.
Speaker: Yes, yes, definitely. Okay, so this arc had 12 chapters plus an interlude, so it was pretty long. I think the longest arc we've read so far. But chapter one, we start off with Taylor and Brian doing a little close quarter combat training.
Speaker: Um, and Alec talks a little bit about his dad who is revealed to be a heartbreaker. Uh, Taylor heads out with bitch and attempt to bond with doggies because doggies make everything better.
Speaker: And I think I'm probably going to group this together with the next couple of chapters if that's okay with you guys. Chapter two, we are at Bitch's dog shelter where Taylor and her kind of hang out. We see that dynamic a little bit with Bitch and her dogs.
Speaker: Taylor finds worms in one of the dogs serious because she can sense weird, worm -y, buggy things. And we kind of learn a little bit more about Bitch's power there with how she can manipulate dogs. And then in chapter three, Empire 88, a bunch of a couple of the Empire 88 thugs show up and threaten Bitch, try to run her off. And Taylor makes a mock human with her bugs, which is fun new power thingies, which is just
Speaker: such a delight. And then chapter four, Brian shows up to offer a bit of assistance. Bitch offers Taylor a just fucking advice, which is what we all need for relationships, I guess. They head back to the loft where we reveal that Coyle has released all the information, has outed the Empire 88 secret identities, and now everyone knows who they are. And I'm gonna stop there for that. So chapters one through four.
Speaker: Yeah, no, that's perfect. Good little intro there. I love the way this arc kicks off. It feels very montage -y as they're rounding up the gang members and the banter between Taylor and Brian are really fun. I don't know. It felt very much like a silly, not sitcom is the wrong word, but like something you'd see on a funny television show.
Speaker: Yeah, I love any time Taylor and Brian get to do a little bit of sparring together. That's so fun. And I realize it's probably very cliche to have them do that in, you know, books and movies and whatnot with superheroes and stuff. But it's just so fun. And, you know, of course, there's always the... But I think Lisa makes a comment where she's just like, oh, you know, you're just gonna stare at her. You just lay on the floor. What are you doing over there? Like, are you gonna, you know, get up and get to work? That's very cute.
Speaker: Yeah. My, uh, my note here just says hot Brian can pin me to the ground any day. It's true. Yeah. I'd spar with Brian. Yeah. I mean, who wouldn't I, um, while I do enjoy that finding out about Alex, uh, terrifying father is definitely a significant part of this. Um,
Speaker: And I feel like this is one of the first times we're really seeing getting to know him. And I think that it's very revealing for his character because he's been very aloof, very unemotional, rarely showing any kind of either positive or negative emotion, just kind of very flat in his emotions. And I think that we see now, like this makes it clear, right? He had a dad whose whole power was emotion manipulation.
Speaker: And it wouldn't surprise me if Alec is essentially dead to emotions naturally. Maybe not completely, but just to this idea of, you know, you've experienced so much artificial ups and downs that now you don't have normal emotions anymore. And so I don't know, I think that that's an interesting
Speaker: idea to consider with Alec, sort of like how in the past we've talked about with, does Taylor have bug brain? Does Rachel have dog brain? You know, how do powers affect your mental state? I wonder if maybe to in sort of an opposite way, cause it's coming externally, it's that now like Alec's been nurtured into not having emotions because that's how he had to survive. Yeah, no, that's yeah. That also helps. Like I liked that it gave him a little bit of,
Speaker: kind of reasoning for being with the group too. Like I feel like all the other characters, we've sort of gotten tastes of what their motives are and why they're here, but haven't had quite had that with Alec yet. So anything that kind of gave him some more agency in the story has been kind of nice to explore. It's actually been him and Lisa as well.
Speaker: I haven't really gotten a whole lot on her. That's true. Lisa doesn't tend to offer up too much information. But I do like that we're kind of seeing a little bit more with Alec here and getting... Because we've had our one -on -one moment with Brian last arc at the apartment. And we've had a one -on -one moment with Lisa a little bit when we were all shopping. I keep saying we as if we're in the story, whatever.
Speaker: But this is kind of a moment with Alec, and this isn't like a Taylor and Alec only, but this is giving us more of an insight into Alec, which I do, gosh, I really do like. And with getting into a lot more powers and capes and what they can do, I really do feel like this is the arc where I had to sit down and I wanted to make a spreadsheet just to keep track of everybody because there are so many new
Speaker: names and faces that we're really getting into this arc and will in the next one as well. But hearing about Heartbreaker too, it's just interesting thinking about parents and their children and what
Speaker: passing on powers can do. Yeah, that's a good point to bring up because the stories kind of touched on that a bit here and there with like powers passing more easily from parents to children and things like that. Brian tells Aisha that, hey, he alludes that he's had a conversation with her because she's more likely to get powers because he has them. So it kind of runs in the family is the thought.
Speaker: things like that. So yeah, definitely give us a little bit more. We know that Glory Girl, her mom is also powered and shows up in this arc, doesn't she? Yep. We spend a little bit of time talking about her laser dream. Yes, laser dream. Yeah, that's right, that's right. And what's the... No, laser dream's her cousin. What is the mom's name? They call her Mommy Photon or something.
Speaker: Lady Photon. Also, I think Lady Photon is her aunt, I believe. Is Lady Photon her aunt? Yeah. Lady Photon, I'm pretty sure, is her aunt. Her cousin is Laser Dream. Right. And her parents are... We haven't met them yet, but brandish. And... Oh, yeah, you're right.
Speaker: Brandish and I can't remember the mom's name. Taylor does mention at one point that their powers are similar, which makes me think this is a whole family of superheroes here. Because they are family, there's a weird sense of sharing or having similar powers too.
Speaker: what you said, Nick, earlier about the whole like. So if Heartbreaker is manipulating emotions and Alec as his son is manipulating kind of like the nervous system, it's like the interior
Speaker: of a person. So it's either their nervous system or for heartbreak, your sense, your brain and your brain chemistry and your emotional state. But it's very interesting to think about Alex's emotional state. I think what you said, Nick, really, really hit it now on the head. Yeah.
Speaker: with this whole inheritance of powers thing, you know, the classic debate of nature versus nurture, um, in a weird way, while, while obviously there's a plethora of evidence that seems like nurture tends to matter a lot more than nature in many ways, there is still parts of our nature that affect how we grow up and who we are. Um, and in the same way now we see that in an even more extreme way with capes, because not only is there the nurture and you have horrible people like heartbreaker who
Speaker: run a cult basically with harems of women. But then you also have literally the nature in the sense of, hey, my dad was a cape and odds are I'll probably be one too if I have a good trigger event. And it seems like there's something being passed down there almost genetically.
Speaker: So yeah, um, the issues that, I don't know, just sort of an interesting continuance of that idea of nature versus nurture there with the capes and the superheroes. I just find it interesting too, that even though it seems like superheroes are relatively, I guess not relatively new, how long, how long has it been since Sion appeared? Like 20 years. His first appearance was in the late eighties. So like 30, 30 and change. Yeah. 30 and change. Yeah.
Speaker: So even though it's only been 30 years, the fact that we have this many second generation heroes is kind of interesting too. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm thinking about like us now with the internet, like how long our generations have had the internet and like, you know, existing with the internet in its current state, which, you know, is true, whatever, but technically capes are older than the internet. Oh, wow. Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker: Yeah. There's a, there's a lot of fun. Yeah. Fun thought experiments with that. You could, you could talk for a while. I'll say it since Taylor's not here. 9 11. I mean, we got to bring it up. Exactly. Yeah. Going back to Alec, I thought it was real interesting that, you know, Taylor does the mental math in her head and it's like, Oh my gosh.
Speaker: Alec is the most experienced cape we have on the team. Yeah, that's so interesting. And Andy's got somebody too. Yes, he's our other murderer. Oh yeah, good. Wow. Yeah, we jumped right over that, but yeah, exactly. We finally have our murderers now. Yeah. I'm not going to lie. And maybe this is just the detachment from, you know, the outside. I really didn't get like murderings. What's your hung up on? Yeah.
Speaker: I know you want that to be a little bit of a mystery, but I'll be honest.
Speaker: you could accidentally murder someone like five times over in this world. Like, yeah. Well, I mean, I feel like that's the point they make with the bitch's whole thing and her manslaughter. I don't think anyone would really call it murder, but like, it has to be so common when a child first gets their powers and doesn't know what they have or how to use them.
Speaker: You know that there's probably a whole team of therapists before for that type of PTSD. You would hope so. But the indication seems to be from right from the fact that there's more villains and heroes. The indication seems to be that.
Speaker: No, there's not those kind of resources. That's a good point. Oh, I'm so sorry, Nick. I don't mean to cut you off. No, that's all I said. I was thinking about this with the interlude from arc six where we get like Canary's little blip as she heads to the birdcage.
Speaker: kind of the judicial system there, which we talked about last time, but the idea that because it is so new, there are systems still being put into place to make things work, to make society function because of capes. So the idea that we're still working out our judicial system for capes and
Speaker: you know, how that works and how we're supposed to try them. And in the same way that like, do they have a system set up for kids in this instance? And like when you look at kids that are getting triggered, that are going through triggered events,
Speaker: they're not kids that are in a safe space. And so there probably isn't a therapist around to help them deal or talk about it or handle it in any safe way. So it wouldn't be surprising to me if kids that triggered, I mean, I'm saying kids that trigger, but the capes that trigger have a bad first experience because they're in a bad spot.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mean, it feels like this is the easy observation to make.
Speaker: It just parallels our classism here as well. If you have money or it's nepotism, then they're going to be fine. They'll trigger during a volleyball game or something like that. Everything's going to be fine. But yeah, but if you're not well off or you don't have the resources or things like that, then yeah, you're much more prone to go down the villain route, which like you said, the story implies there's
Speaker: quite a bit more, um, villains and their heroes. And it seems like maybe this society has sort of a taboo towards superpowers. Like it's almost a bad thing. And not necessarily that there's that much evidence of that yet, but you know, obviously, um, superheroes keep their identity secret and that's a pretty normal thing and standard thing for superhero literature. But usually the reason why is to protect their family and their loved ones. And that makes sense to an extent, but
Speaker: which we see in this arc. Yeah, which we see in this arc. Um, but there's also kind of this, like, maybe it's like seen as a bad thing. If you have powers, you know, maybe people will be afraid of you. People won't like you. People will think incredibly differently of you. Um, and you almost can become this sort of social pariah if you reveal that you have powers. Um, and so I wonder, and so that's why new wave is so rare because they're like, well, we don't care what the world thinks of us. We're going to show everybody.
Speaker: You can have a public identity and have powers. But so I think I wonder if maybe there's this sense of, if you're young and you're already kind of insecure, and then you have something terrible enough happen to you to trigger an event. I mean, are you gonna tell people about that? Like the fact that, hey, now I can suddenly shoot lasers out of my eyes that can kill people. You're not just gonna go and tell somebody that. I mean, I think of a lot of the people, I don't think there's a taboo in this world.
Speaker: Um, personally, I think if you are in a good situation and you get powers, I think most of those people, once they've, you know, had a second to deal with it, just go straight to the wards. And I think, I think it's not so much that there's a taboo from society. I think society actually has the opposite of a taboo. They've got an obsession with heroes. Um, that's possibly true too. Which is kind of why, like, I don't think.
Speaker: Are there any common criminals doing things? Or is everybody kind of have to fall under? Like you have to, right? Cause like, what are you gonna do? Get beat up by a hero? Like the only way you're gonna prevent that is if you have a villain on your side. So like, if you're the average criminal, you know, existing now, you're probably way more on your guard about stuff. No, that's a good point. That's a good point.
Speaker: There is definitely some element of taboo -edness. I mean, just for the simple fact that Taylor thought it was going to be better for her in the long run to continue to be bullied awfully by these girls than out herself as someone with powers. That would have made her life worse if she was talking like, there's no way I could use my powers against them. My life would get worse because of that.
Speaker: So, but I mean, her situation's a little different, obviously, being the victim there, it's hard to think straight, but I think it's, you see both sides of that. I think it depends on where you come from, but I think you're right as well. How long did Taylor have between her, you know, the trigger event and her going out on her first
Speaker: heroing venture. It's like a couple months. Oh, is it months? I thought it was a month. I thought she goes, she gets locked up for like two weeks and then she comes back and maybe has a month of like essentially prepping. And then she goes out and does it, which is how I think probably most people do it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Honestly, she's just
Speaker: see if she can do it. And then she's auditioning to join, you know, to get noticed and then maybe picked up, you know, she wants to get her toe in the water too. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like, but, but her idea also is like, Hey, can I do this? Cause I don't want to get, I don't want to out myself as a hero, get picked up by the heroes and then go, Ooh, I don't want to make a career of this, you know, a la canary style. Like,
Speaker: And Ari's like, I just want to sing. I'm not here to play powered police officer. Taylor's not sure if she wants to do that. She thinks she wants to, but she also is probably going out there to test the waters. It turns out she's got a knack for stabbing people and cutting off genitals. Something comes naturally. Rotting off genitals. Let's be clear here. She didn't cut anybody's genitals off.
Speaker: She rotted them off. She rotted them off the first time, gouged out some eyes, but she straight up hits a guy in the deck with like that. Well, again, cut is a strong word.
Speaker: Yeah. And if you consult the what the fuck Taylor episode, you know, going after genitals with, uh, with her baton, stabbing, you know, toes off, looking eyes, a lot going on there. It's pretty dangerous. Uh, just, just to clear up the timeline, Taylor triggered in January of 2011.
Speaker: and went out and fought long April 10th. So four months. Holy cow. Yeah. It was a few months. I mean, knowing Taylor, that seems right. She tends to think things through and wait rather than just storm into things. So that makes sense. She takes some time. She wants to figure out her costume. She figures out the bug. She has the spiders create the costume. There's a step -step process there, which
Speaker: And she started running every morning after Sophia sent those boys after. And then after that, then she went out. Anyway. Yeah, let's move on. So, chapter two. At the dog shelter.
Speaker: We can move through these chapters. This is my doggy chapter, and I just gotta say, as someone who just loves dogs, this is such a happy place with all these happy little doggos, and they're just running around chasing toys. And I just, oh, it makes me so happy. For a lot of these chapters, I have one note. Yeah, actually, a lot of these chapters, I have one singular note. This one is,
Speaker: Bitch has the tism, but only with dogs. Bitch is smart. We get a sign that like, bitch is actually really smart, but only with dogs. She can count tattoos and barely tie her shoes. But boy, when it comes to knowing the internal digestive system of a canine, she has got a PhD.
Speaker: Yeah, no, she knows everything that has to do with them. And I do love to kind of build off of that. I love the intelligence she shows to Taylor throughout all of that. And she understands their dynamics, their behavior, and where they need it, who's trained well. Like she just has such a good street sense about dogs. Yeah, and she knows their stories too, which I like. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Is it implied, am I misremembering this? It doesn't imply that before Bitch triggered that she worked with dogs. Was she like working at animal shelters or things like that? I want to say that, but I can't remember. No, I think it was, she was just around dogs. They were like in the houses that she was at. And she felt kind of a kinship to them because a lot of the people treated the dogs. The same as the foster kids. Like people, but the people like dogs in that sense. Oh, okay, gotcha. She had this weird,
Speaker: If I'm remembering correctly. Yeah, it sounds right. No, but I do love the Taylor bitch. I'm about to say romance friendship. You were thinking it. But Taylor was thinking it. Yeah. Well, their little back and forth is so interesting because Taylor is doing her best to try and
Speaker: relate to Rachel in a way that feels dog -like of the whole questioning the pack leader and standing up to them, but not standing up too much and showing them you mean business. And the conversation that bitch tells her like, oh, well, you wanna be useful, go shovel dog shit. And Taylor's like,
Speaker: Fuck no. I came to help you. So let me help you. Don't just push me off. I'm not just here to do your chores, which I think is interesting because if I had been in that position, I probably would have been like, yeah, sure. Okay, cool. I'll just go. Where's the shovel? Yeah, let me go take care of that for you. But Taylor looks at her and is like, hey, I'm here to help. So let me help.
Speaker: don't just push me to the side and give me busy work. And I think that that little exchange is so interesting. I love it. It's so good. I think that it makes me want to know more about pack mentality and the idea of how an alpha operates in a group where you can challenge them without necessarily
Speaker: telling them you want to take their place. And that's why I feel like Taylorstone. She's saying like, hey, I have value. I'm challenging you as kind of pack leader of all these dogs and everything. I'm challenging you, but I don't want to take your place. I just want you to value me as an important part of.
Speaker: the team or this group or as a friend. In order to deal with bitch, you gotta talk like a bitch. As in a big dog. Talking about their conversations, I do think that's one of Wildbo's stronger elements to his writing is these conversations feel so lifelike, like they're so real. And like you're saying, I think a lot of people's responses, if a bitch was like, hey, you want to do something, go shovel the shit.
Speaker: be like, yeah, that's what kind of we're expecting Taylor to say, because that feels like the natural response, but it doesn't have to be. And it's very human for it to not be that. And for her to still like, and really Taylor's character does say like, it makes sense if she says no, like she said no. And it's like, oh yeah, why would she do that? And it works so well. And I love the way he writes dialogue between characters because it feels so alive when they're not saying like the paint by the numbers,
Speaker: response that you're expecting to hear. Yeah, it's nice to be kind of caught off guard a little bit. Exactly, yeah. Also, I misspoke. I thought there was more that Rachel did before her powers. The one dog she interacted with was her inciting incident. And after that, she interacted with taking care of dogs at shelters.
Speaker: Oh, okay. Got it. Interesting. That makes sense. Let's move on. Yeah, well, I just I think it's interesting because anytime we have kind of a one on one situation with Taylor, or, you know, us as the reader, and one of the undersiders or one of these other characters, we're getting more and more peaks into their lives or how they work. And when Taylor is finding the worms in the dog series,
Speaker: We're learning two things. We're learning stuff about a bitch and how she handles her dogs. Because that is something I'd kind of thought about. We have all these dogs. Well, vet bills are going to be sky high. How do you deal with that? And then Taylor learning a little bit more about her. And it's not just bugs. She can tell that these worms, that these heartworms
Speaker: are all over Sirius and she knows exactly where they are. She can feel that they're not just located to specific areas. She knows that he's invested with them. So again, we're expanding the knowledge that we know more of Taylor and seeing Taylor realize it herself as the expansion of her powers isn't just arachnids, but worms as well. And then seeing how they handle
Speaker: Okay, so what do you do when a dog, you have to grow him, make him big, make him big strong boy, but he's not trained enough to be able to listen to you should you make him as big as a freaking school bus. So chaining him up, it's giving me very werewolf vibes of like, yep, chain up the werewolf on the full moon so they don't get away and hurt people.
Speaker: And I think that's so cool. The powers are obviously one of my favorite parts of this whole story. And so seeing us learn more and more about these powers is just...
Speaker: It's catnap for me. I'm loving it. Or I guess a good milk bone since we're talking. Yeah, keep it relevant. Sorry. But yeah, I just think that's really cool. Yeah, agreed. The interaction has been really fun between them. But they don't get a ton of time.
Speaker: Because they get nasty visitors to show up. Some of the Empire 88. Empire 88. Yup, yup, yup. Those bitches. Little showdown. Those ducks. Really, when I think of controlling your gang or whatever, you have the big bads, which obviously we know. But these are punk thugs.
Speaker: baby children. These little guys show up with their guns and they think they're so goddamn cool.
Speaker: and waving their guns around. It's so juvenile. My dudes, you are going up against bitch, first of all, and Taylor. And you're going up against people that fought with your boss, and not just your boss, but the boss of your gang.
Speaker: And you're going to show up and you're going to get all and like mouth off to bit like you guys, you guys are not smart. Not smart boys. You suck.
Speaker: Yeah. I mean, and the whole, the whole way, like they start talking about like, Hey, the new guy's got to earn a stripes, taking down a, taking down a, another Cape is going to do that. Yada, yada. Actually kind of speaks to what we were just talking about earlier, like whether or not capes are, are, are praised or sort of spat at again, it's kind of both.
Speaker: Like on the one hand, there's clear hatred for bitch. And then Taylor, when she shows up, like they can't wait to kill her. He's just like a thorn in their side. But it's also like you get that feeling that there's also that just insane sort of almost jealousy. Like they know they're not as cool as she is kind of thing. And they want to be right. They want to be like,
Speaker: seen and feared the way she is. Yeah, it's a really fucked up dynamic. Yeah, for sure. And just that gang initiation aspect of it and...
Speaker: Just the, oh man, if you even feel a little bit for dogs, the threats that they make against the dogs are just so like... So bad. Yeah, it just makes you mad. You know what now? Yeah, what did he say? Soak a hot dog in antifreeze and throw it over the side of the fence. Fuck off, you piece of shit garbage. Golly.
Speaker: Obviously these films came out, or films got these stories. I'm all over the place tonight. I wasn't going to correct you. I was going to let us like, I was in this story came out a bit early. Well, you'll see where I'm going. Why I said films here in a second, because what I was going to say was clearly Bitch was going to have the John Wick films like on repeat, just playing in the background.
Speaker: Oh, man. Or one movie that she's watching. I do feel like if this had been rewritten for more modern 2020s is that instead of being bitch, she's just called the Baba Yaga, which... I love it so much. Absolutely. Call her Baba. Baba. Baba Yaga. Oh, heck yeah. That's great. Yeah. But now it's this...
Speaker: It's this really tense scene though, because although she does have superpowers, she does not have superpowers. Yeah. And definitely doesn't have, you know, faster than a speeding bullet because they all have guns. Yeah. So it's, it's again, we see just how there's like different levels of powers, right? Like there are certain people, certain people that, you know, kind of like Superman, you're not going to pull a gun on Superman. There's no point.
Speaker: But, you know, Batman, you know, he's strong, sure, but there's a chance you could get him. Right. You know, it is kind of that too with a bitch. I think like you were saying, Jacob, like this is the initiation part and like eyes got to earn his stripes. It's like, well, they picked the hero that maybe they thought they could take out too bad. She's got a crazy bug girlfriend. But girlfriend in words, not mine.
Speaker: Yeah, speaking of fun new power things that we're learning about every day, I love that she makes this mock human and then scuttles along the ground so she doesn't get shot. Oh my God. That's where like wriggle on the ground you were. You were.
Speaker: I was imagining in that scene just like from bitch's perspective, just glancing over and seeing Taylor like bear crawl across the ground behind this form of bugs. And just like, what the hell are you doing? You know what I think too? It's this brief moment where I almost feel like previously we've learned that bitch really does respect Taylor. She just doesn't always show it.
Speaker: right because of the way that she thinks and talks and acts but man if if this scene like doesn't prove once again i think that's part of why i like this whole arc the thing with um with serious and the worms the things with now this scene with her helping bitch out of this tense situation like i just i love
Speaker: the subtle ways that Wild Bo shows that bitch really respects Taylor. You know, not like as a friend, but as a kind of the sense of like, I'm glad you're on my side and not theirs, you know? Yeah. Like a teammate that she can actually rely on. Yeah. One of the dogs. A pack mate, you might say. A pack mate. I love it. Okay. Put that on a t -shirt too. Pack mate. Let's go. I'm here. All the merch. Yeah. So Taylor, you could have stayed inside.
Speaker: and just let that thing go out there. You didn't have to crawl behind it. Yeah.
Speaker: I think she kind of did though. I think from what I understand from the way it was described, I think she kind of did only because she said that having the bugs hold that structure was really difficult, having them hold each other. So I'm imagining what is happening and she's kind of acting like the base of this really, really precarious Jenga tower of bugs. They're all like gripping each other and she's like, just another couple of feet guys.
Speaker: Yeah, like also her whole idea is to get out there and be able to get up close enough to somebody that she could disarm them with a gun. It's not just about having another figure out there to maybe intimidate, but to also be able to actually disarm one of these bitch bucks.
Speaker: Which does sort of, I was thinking about this while reading that part. It does sort of build towards this sort of character moment for Taylor where as a reader, really starting to see this
Speaker: I don't know if you want to go so far to say enjoyment, but she does pursue these types of encounters. Boy, does she enjoy vengeance. Wow. Maybe we do say enjoy. Maybe that is the right word here. I have actually a note in chapter one when she decides to go with Bitch to fix the relationship between them.
Speaker: Taylor solves problems by putting herself in the middle of things. See her image is not a, is not a, uh, a king in the chest terms. Taylor is a queen.
Speaker: She acts best when she is in the middle of the chaos. And she really does kind of have this, I was going to say opinion or personality, but she has this mindset of the best place for me to be is in the middle, like you just said, but also I can fix it.
Speaker: She sees herself as the solution for a lot of things as opposed to, I don't know if I can step in right now. I don't know if this is the right time for me to say anything. She feels like she is the solution. So she often will put herself in conversations or in situations like this. You're like, I am the solution to help, or I am the solution to ask the right questions, or I am the solution to do the right thing in the face of all these villains and me being undercover and whatnot. Which is so -
Speaker: Oh, sorry. Go ahead. I was going to say, no, like now that I think about it compared to like how she first fights long, which is honestly the smart decision. She is up behind the wall across the street is capable of hearing and basically seeing everybody through her bugs and can just attack them. Cause what is she going to do? Like punch them now. And then as time goes on, she is just.
Speaker: Like my complaint right there, Taylor could have hid behind the wall and let this thing go out. Like, even if it wasn't a matter of like them actually stacked on top of each other, if the bugs were flying in the air in a vaguely humanoid fashion, she could have pulled that off.
Speaker: But I think she chose to go out there because she thought that it was better for her to be in the middle of it for some ungodly reason, rather than sitting behind the wall where she could just take everybody down without moving. She's a cape with a ranged power who uses it in a melee fashion.
Speaker: Like her power by definition is very sit behind the wall, use your bucks, but she doesn't over and over and over again. She gets right up in people's business and uses in a very melee sense as opposed to a range sense.
Speaker: And honestly, it just helps, it makes her, continues to make her such a great conduit for the reader. Yes. We all do that, especially with these types of stories where we're like, no, you idiot, just get out there and do it yourself. Oh my gosh, if I had your powers, the story would be over in a second, right? Like that's how we read these books. Like Taylor just works so well as the POV character because she's doing exactly what we would do in these situations, which is really fun.
Speaker: So good. I love it. And Brian shows up just in time to have missed the entire fight. Good old Brian. At least he showed up though, right? He did. Meanwhile, Alec and Lisa just... Alec and Lisa not answering their phones, not showing up. So rude. But you know, expected of Alec's surprised by Lisa. Yeah. True.
Speaker: But I think we get a bit of explanation for that later, a couple of chapters. Actually, it's the next chapter. It's the next chapter. Yeah, that makes sense. Let's talk about Bitch and Taylor talk about Brian. I was about to say Bitch's advice to just fuck him. Hey, y 'all should bang. You'll bang later. You'll bang later. You'll get it out, which is so, it makes me really curious about Bitch's sex life, to be honest.
Speaker: Bitch, is that how you deal with stuff? You just fuck them and then, yeah, figure it out? Sometimes you just gotta bang it out. I feel like she has a generally fuck it attitude towards life anyway. Yes, for sure. We're using multiple meanings of the word fuck here. It's like some bad guys come up to bother her, fuck them. Some guy comes up, some guy or girl comes up she's interested in, fuck them. It's just like...
Speaker: It also implies one of two things though about Taylor and Brian. Either one, bitch is actually much better at reading people than we thought. Or two, probably the more likely scenario
Speaker: Taylor has been not nearly as subtle as she thinks she's been around Brian. She has no expertise in the boy category. We've seen her basically stroke out every time she sees him. So like, bitch is probably like, what the hell is wrong with this girl? Can you pass me the wrench? The what? Jesus, the wrench. God damn.
Speaker: but our elbows touched that one time. That one time, God, teenage girls, I can't, I can't, I can't stand it. It's the worst, I will say it. So Taylor has written so much like an adult, all the characters are. And it's moments like this where I just think, oh my God, that's right. Taylor is a fucking child. Like she is what, 16, 17, good God. Okay, all right, yeah. This is what separates teenagers from adults. Like teenagers have complicated,
Speaker: They think things out sometimes, but they don't bat at a high enough percentage. That's why they're teenagers. Well, I would argue adults also suck. Once again, we're saying adults in terms of age. I'm not saying their brains are fully developed. You're right. But that chapter takes a sharp turn. Yeah, it does.
Speaker: once they realized that Coyle has started another phase of his master plan. Yeah, jumped the gun, geez. Yeah, out at everybody. Which totally, not that we wouldn't be, but totally on the undersiders side here. Like, what the hell, Coyle? What did you think was going to happen?
Speaker: Whatever. What the fuck, Taylor? I have a what the fuck coil. We have like one rule, one rule. It's you don't go to somebody's house and fuck about like.
Speaker: or everybody comes and they fuck you. Yeah, as someone who has a lot of contingency plans and who has thought his plans out, who did not think this one out? He just didn't. Okay, so. I think he thought it out. He just calculated. Yeah. Yeah, no, I think. I'll take this risk. No, I think that this was absolutely part of his plan.
Speaker: I think part of the reason why it feels so badly put together is only because we're seeing it from the undersiders perspective. And of course, Coyle probably didn't know slash couldn't account for what was going to happen with bitch and Empire 88 just before this all got let out, right?
Speaker: But I think that that part aside, this is exactly what he wanted. He probably knew the Protectorate was going to take Aster. He probably knew that Purity was going to freak out. I think what he wanted was he wanted to disrupt the public's view of Empire 88 even more.
Speaker: Again, the sense of, because there's still the sense of like, yeah, they're racist, but maybe they're not that bad. Just completely to obliterate their image and just reveal, hey, these people are monsters. Anybody who's an adjacent ally, not a member of the empire, but anybody who's like an adjacent ally,
Speaker: might be rethinking their entire relationship with the empire now. Just going like, do I really want to work with these people? And then, oh, here comes a new guy, Coyle. He's calm, cool, collected. Let me work with this guy instead. I think that - You can't even tell what skin color he is. So, you know, I can't be racist towards or against him, you know? But, you know, I feel like, um, I feel like that absolutely was his plan. Like he just wanted to disrupt the city. He wanted to put them into more turmoil because of course, when
Speaker: societies and upheaval, that's when it's easier for the strong man to come in and to take control. Yeah, exactly. It only feels bad because it put the undersiders at risk.
Speaker: Right. Yeah, he's taking control of the situation. He's taking out parts of... We mentioned, Alan, you said earlier, Taylor acts as though she's a queen, she needs to be the senator for using that chessboard analogy. He wiped off a bunch of the pieces off the chessboard with that move. And if he took a couple of pawns on his own side out with him, okay, fine.
Speaker: And he's even... He even says to the undersiders, he's like, look, I have other teams in place here. You haven't agreed to work with me. I'm sure I realized that this could be bad for you, but I made a calculated decision and I did it and I... It happened and there it is. He played a queen's gambit. He did. He did.
Speaker: And he's still willing to help them, too. He's not like, yes. Oh, this screws the undersiders? No, it sucks to be you guys. He's like, no, I'll give you men. I'll give you vehicles. We're going to work on this together. We'll fix it together. So.
Speaker: Yeah, and what are they gonna do in the meantime? Oh, no, I guess I'll have to stay at Hot Brian's place. Go to the mall with Hot Brian. Oh, no, I better kiss Hot Brian to flex on a bitch. Good luck. Oh, no. Okay, wait, we gotta talk. Okay, all right, we gotta talk about that. All right, so the bus. Okay, so, Brian, delightful little baby sitting on the bus, you know, whatever, here comes Sophia, the little fucking bitch.
Speaker: And Taylor decides, sure, now is the perfect time to flex on Sophia and kiss the ever -loving shit out of Brian without any explanation whatsoever. And Brian just does a little eyebrow wiggle and was like, what's that? She's like, I'll explain later. Like, what?
Speaker: Taylor, where are you? I don't want to tell you, sometimes you don't flex on a motherfucker. Okay, here's the thing though. This was the most like mean girls moment. Yes. Oh my gosh. I have these moments with Taylor where I'm like, who are you? Where's this Taylor been the whole fucking time?
Speaker: Like this was one of those moments where I'm like Taylor, who are you? This is not the Taylor that I, you know, I was gonna say no in love, but this is not the Taylor I know. Like the Taylor I know stays quiet and lets juice get poured on her head.
Speaker: Yeah, it's felt like the moment, the first time Taylor saw an opportunity, because she's known forever that she could beat these bullies with her bugs, easy peasy. But that's not what she wants. And this felt like the first moment for her where she had the opportunity to beat them at their own game.
Speaker: kind of be that, be the bigger bully, if you will. Yeah, be the vicious one. Yeah, exactly. She just jumped on the opportunity. She practically jumped on Brian. That's okay, Hannah. I mean, if you want her to get bullied, I know you like her getting bullied. I know you want her to stay in her lane. Me? Know her place. Yeah. No. I realize that this Taylor is too much for you. But that's okay, because Sophia is about to teach her a lesson.
Speaker: Geez, okay, first of all. You're a Sophia, Stan. Whoa! Sorry, I'm sure I just blew out my mic. Whoa. Hey, watch yourself, sir. Finally, somebody worse than me being a Kaiser, Stan.
Speaker: Yes. Yes. The bullying teenager is definitely worse than the white supremacist. Oh my God. Okay. I've always said every teenager is a little Hitler. You know, I guess this goes to prove classic classic Kaiser Stan move to be like, uh, yeah. Okay. But hey, look at the angry teenager. Okay. How about that? That's true. That's way worse. Oh my God. Okay. Well,
Speaker: Sophia doesn't let it go. No, she does not. No, not at all. That came out. Okay. Did you guys remember that that happened? Because I did. I remember that. No, I did. I just was waiting for it to go down. It was one of those like, I didn't remember it. And then on the bus, I was like, Oh, that's right. This happens. And then as like, I didn't remember anything. And then as I kept reading, I was like, Oh, that's right. Oh, this got way worse than I remembered it getting.
Speaker: I couldn't remember how she was getting away with it in my head because I was like, where the fuck was she? That she could just kind of like eat the shit out of Taylor for a second. I couldn't remember if it was like, I assumed it was like, I don't know, like a dressing room or like in the bathroom again. Like it had to be somewhere secluded. I couldn't remember for the life of me.
Speaker: Honestly, the visceral feeling, again, some of the wounds that Wild Bo writes feel painful reading them. And when she is like,
Speaker: just ripping, practically ripping off Taylor's ear, you know, twisting it and, you know, enough so that Taylor needed stitches in her ear. Sophia's just, you know, practically ripping her ear off. Like it made my scalp tingle. Like it made my head, my ear hurt. It's so, ugh, so painful.
Speaker: We've had, we've had other moments with bullies, but all the other moments have been in some way, indirect contact, like throwing juice, you know, Heidi taking papers, whatnot. Sophia though has been the one to
Speaker: Punch her into the locker. Literally physically assault her. Emma is the kind of emotional abuser in the relationship. Sophia has definitely been like the physical powerhouse behind everything, which has been brutal to read. It hurts.
Speaker: Yeah. So hard. But on the positive end though, this is the first time that Taylor actually fights back against her bullies. Yes. In a physical way. And she's like, you know what? I'm going to use these lessons Brian's taught me. Smack her in the face with a big book. You know, they start going at it. Yeah. Yeah. The one waiting for that for so long. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: I also love Taylor's, her book selection as she's going through her head goes from like all the way to like escapist fantasy to just practical, this is what I need to learn. Like nonfiction. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I respect it. She, she wanted to get a dog, a book about dogs, right? That was one of them. Yeah. He's really trying to get those books, but whatever.
Speaker: What'd you say? I didn't get those books, but whatever. I wouldn't buy them either after Mr. Bookman just was like, yeah, you can beat that bitch in the corner. I don't give a fuck. What the fuck is up with him? And he totally stood up for Sophia, even though Brian steps in and tells him off, he's still like, oh yeah, well that girl in the nice tennis skirt said something, so I believed her. Golly. You know what, I'm gonna say it right now.
Speaker: Fucking old people. Okay. Yeah, that was, that was shitty. But again, there's two things I hate in this world. It's people who are, you know, teenagers, everybody younger than me, children, stupid, everybody older than me, incompetent, withering. Jesus. The only good age is my age. All right, well. Exactly.
Speaker: Brian doesn't really help much. I do love him just telling her to shut up. That was pretty good because she tries to weasel her way around. I'm like, oh, this girl. And he's just like, shut up. Yeah, so good. Comes to Taylor's defense and just like a white knight, shining armor, let's go.
Speaker: Yeah. Then turns right around and destroys her whole life. It brings me to a moment during our school talent show.
Speaker: in which you got up on stage and did two sentence horror stories. What? And one of them. It's about getting friends on. Nick, do you know which one I'm talking about? Would you like to recall it for us? Yeah. They weren't quite two sentence, but they were super short horror stories. I had a name for him, but I can't remember. But basically one of them was so good. It was a girl and a guy were walking down the street.
Speaker: And, you know, this romantic street at our college and the girl looks at the guy hopeful that he'll say something and then he leans in and just goes, I really appreciate you as my sister in Christ. And it just, that's the vibe, that's the feeling. Oh, just chilling, haunting. Haunting view, like a sister in Christ. Oh man, absolutely. I love you, like a sister in Christ.
Speaker: Yeah, that's how we know we went to Bible college. So something I thought about after the fact, I came back later and wrote a note. Taylor's first kiss is not about romance. It's about the ability to have romance in spite and to spite the haters. It's mostly a negative and a little bit positive. It's tactical. It's
Speaker: It's tactical, but like, sure, she wanted to kiss Brian. But the whole, if you remember forgetting Sarah Marshall, where they've got like the bedrooms next to each other and they're making noise. At one point in time, they realized like, oh, you making noise wasn't for me. It was for him or her or whatever. This wasn't about Brian. This was about Sophia. Like this kiss, I dedicate this kiss
Speaker: To Sophia. To Sophia and Emma and all of them and Brian happened to be there. Right. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's a good observation. It makes me wonder too, like,
Speaker: Brian's rejection is rough here. But I wonder if it happened in a more natural and authentic way, how he would have responded. I wonder if the fact that he realized it was a tactical move plays into his sort of like...
Speaker: It has to, right? Yeah, it does. I think I was going to say, I don't think he realizes it, but he 100 % realizes, you know, cause she tells him and he kind of gets it. And I think he is like, ah, that's the fact that you did that. Maybe is a little off putting. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I mean, I think that like sometimes you, you don't necessarily know how you feel. You know, you get form fussies around somebody and it takes a sobering moment like this when the pieces come together and you go, oh,
Speaker: Yeah, I'm gonna have to say I like you as a friend and as a sister and that's how I see you because you know up into this moment he could have been flirting with her because he's feeling the vibes, he's feeling the moment but then to have it come out that way for the kiss to have been revealed as tactical for you know all of this to have happened and of course you know Taylor's ears bleeding all over the place like
Speaker: Yeah, you've put me on the spot and I have to make a flash decision and my flash decision is that you're a friend. And that's it. And he backtracks and he backtracks. And we see it even later. Taylor makes a comment about how he seems to distance himself from her a little bit. And she feels that loss in the sense of like, oh, I fucked it up. And I ruined whatever it was that was going on, regardless of whether it was romantic or not.
Speaker: And that's him backpedaling. Right, right. But he doesn't get the backpedal too far. Nope. Because purity goes psycho. Moonbeam! Good lord. Absolutely. Absolutely delightful. She scares me.
Speaker: Oh man, nothing like a woman scorned or a mother having her child taken away from her to absolutely - I didn't realize how much of an artillery piece. God damn. Yeah, it was until this read, like she is essentially, you know, the laser beam in every anime that's just leveling streets. Yeah. Oh yeah.
Speaker: like this. Sorry, real quick, should I do the summaries for the next couple of chapters? Cuz that was where I had stopped. That's true. That's when we stopped. Yeah, yeah, yep. Okay, so we're hitting into chapter seven now. So purity is, I said, quote unquote moonbeams the city, that's a D &D reference. The Undersiders head to meet up and Brian and
Speaker: Taylor and some delightful paramedics that Coyle has provided run into a fight with Hookwolf, which I've put in his powers because it's so I couldn't remember all of them. Hookwolf, the shifting mass of hooks, blades, and other weapons. Storm Tiger, Aerokinetic, and Cricket, Subsonic, Noises, and Radar. At chapter eight, they fight. We get the first responders to safety. Gru and Skidder flee to find the others.
Speaker: Chapter 9. Purity is kind of being handled by New Wave. New Wave has showed up and is trying to take care of purity as on the ground with the doggos. We group together with the Undersiders and fight Night, the unseen monster is what I'm calling her, and Fog, which I have called Foggy Misty Mist.
Speaker: Crusader and Crusader with the ghostly duplicates. And then in chapter 10, we have a little bit more fighting until Purity kind of takes it down to the ground and Tattletail reveals to her where Aster's location is her daughter and agrees to leave with her to prove that she's telling the truth and Tattletail and Purity fly away to save Aster.
Speaker: There's a I think there's one other here one other villain that I want to throw out there I think may have been miss was rune is on yep is with Yes, I bring to that
Speaker: Yeah, we got a whole host of new powers. Yeah, I got to keep track of all the powers here. There's a lot. Yeah, Rune's is moving things up to a ton. Is that right? And she has to touch them first. She has telekinetic powers, but she has to touch it first, but she can move anything. It seems like she can move multiple objects each way up to a ton. Is it each way up to a ton?
Speaker: because at one point she's moving multiple massive objects that Taylor notices. So yeah, very, so I think, I think what's interesting to me here is, you know, the undersiders have fought some pretty formidable foes. You know, Lung and Onili being in Bakita probably being the top three, right? But what was interesting about those cases is that except for the fight with Onili and Lung,
Speaker: And even then with Onili and Lung, these fights were pretty much handled one -on -one, or in the case of Lung, it was like 5v1 with Lung holding his own. We get a kind of a flip script here with these characters because... Oh my gosh, these villains are terrifyingly powerful. Yes. I mean, Alan, you mentioned Purity being just this artillery weapon, but...
Speaker: My God, we've got Crusader with these massive amounts of duplicates. Rune is moving city blocks. Fog and Knight are ridiculous. Hook Wolf and Storm Tiger and Cricket. This whole group of Empire 88 and Khaizer's not even there. This metal bending guy. Neither are Finya and Minya from what we can see.
Speaker: Like you just add in this whole group together. And I mean, you've got the power of the army of a small country, if not more in like 10 people. It's crazy. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, the power levels are insane. Yeah, this is the first time I really feel like the power level has jumped from, yeah, lung is pretty dangerous to, holy shit, levels. Well, it's the fight with Hook, Wolf, Storm Tiger and Cricket that I really kind of felt that sense of, oh, we are not doing well. Brian is not doing well and neither is Taylor and it's just the two of them against these three and it is,
Speaker: We are not doing well. This is not a fight and win. This is a run and get away. This is not a fight we're going to win. You need to regroup with the other people. Yeah. And just the funny secondary powers too, like Storm Tiger having enhanced senses of smell. Oh yeah. Cricket having her acrobatics as she can do. Right. There's all these like little secondary powers too that seem to play into these characters as well.
Speaker: I loved getting the opportunity aside from the wards, which I think is the only other team that we've seen at this point with the undersiders, of course. And they were dealt with pretty easily. But this is the first time we've really seen another team work together, like powers working in coordination with each other and teammates working in coordination with each other. And seeing how scary it would be to fight any type of organized group.
Speaker: that they knew what they were doing. Like the end -of -setters are great and they kind of work together, but their powers are all pretty defensive. So it's a lot of like retreat and escape and tactics in that way. But like seeing Night and Fog work together and Cricket running in there and being unaffected because of her abilities and just seeing all of that kind of blend together was like really, really scary. It was like, my goodness, how are these guys not
Speaker: ruling everything. I guess they kind of are. Yeah. I mean, they are one of the top people. They're one of the top. Hook Wolf, in terms of like him charging and his body and whatnot, makes me think a lot of the, is it the brutes from Mass Effect 3? You know what I'm talking about, Jacob? Yeah, yeah. The big old chargey boys. I have no idea what we're talking about.
Speaker: between the metal imagery. Also, Hook Wolf, when his arm is cut off at the elbow and it folds out like a Swiss army knife.
Speaker: It's pretty dope. Wild. There's some big old in the, stay tuned for part two where we design our warning graphic content label for every episode. Oh my God. That one's just a Swiss one. Speaking of brutal, when they finally get to dealing with cricket,
Speaker: They deal with it by skitter getting a knife in cricket's legs and then dragging it through her leg. Yes. I heard again. Holy cow. Taylor. Talk about brutal injuries. But also, again, it feels so realistic. That's just the response you would expect in that situation. What else is she going to do?
Speaker: And you're fighting for your life there. You do whatever you can. Oh, yeah. So well written. Just absolutely brutal. I'm rubbing my leg right now. Yeah. Golly. Gosh. My muscles all clench up anytime we're talking about some big skin stuff. Big injury. Oh yeah. Yeah. But also again, we get another bit of Taylor
Speaker: Again, very defensive here, having to kind of run, but we do get a bit more of her really good sort of... The gamer in me is calling it game sense, but like the tactician mindset that she has where she's really starting to develop these
Speaker: They're not really powers because it's not really tied to her powers, but these sort of like her ability to read the battlefield and understand what needs to be done is starting to really develop here. Um, knowing where to flee, what to run, she figures out crickets, powers pretty quickly. Uh, like just sort of being able to understand everything and, and get a good response in places is fun to see develop. And then they flee. So then they go fight the not the other Nazis. Yeah.
Speaker: Two things I learned here. Number one, Gru does not like being taken care of. Like, you know, for all this cool exterior when he's like trying to take care of others. As soon as somebody else has to take care of him, he becomes a little bitch about it. Yeah. Classic man, am I right? So right.
Speaker: Absolutely. The other thing I learned is they show up Taylor rolls out and she's like, man, I'm never going to be one of those, you know, witty banter type heroes. I don't know Taylor. I thought Sabrina, the teenage Nazi was pretty good.
Speaker: felt like someone's first attempted banter, but it kind of landed. Totally landed. I thought it was great. I think it was great. I wish you just said it out loud. Yeah. I do. I do love that. Again, I'm sure if our our Taylor was here, he probably would have mentioned it. But the whole thing of like, oh, so I see we have Sabrina the Teenage Witch on this planet.
Speaker: I mean, that would have come out at the same time that like we knew the powers would have existed. So yeah, sure. Like she probably wouldn't have been the witch, but yeah. In this universe, Sabrina, the teenage witch is really just, it's a documentary. Um, well, yeah. Um, but no, I, I do think I can, I like to imagine, try to imagine a person's writing process. Right. So I like to imagine that.
Speaker: Wild Bo wrote that line seriously. Like she's like thinking, oh yeah, this is a good dig. And then he's like, wait, no, that's not clever. But I can use it because it's not clever. Just imagine how the author is thinking through like, oh, this is funny. Is it funny? It's not funny. I don't know. I could leave it in, but I got to, I won't say it. I'm going to hedge my bets. Right.
Speaker: by saying that it's not funny and then people will be like, oh, it actually was funny and then I'll feel good. Wildo, it was amazing. We loved it. We thought it was fantastic. You did a great job. Stellar, stellar. I feel like he writes a lot of Taylor's dialogue like that. Yeah, again, not to dig at the actual, the writing songs. I think it's fantastic for the character, but it feels like a lot of Taylor is written because she's very indecisive herself about things. So it does work really well into her character to be like,
Speaker: That was a dumb thing I just said. Hopefully nobody heard me. A little peek into that like teenage angst, the teenage anxiety. Exactly. I also love that despite all the powers, all the planning, all the cool stuff that's going on, ultimately this fight is kind of settled by Tattletale just having a gun. As it always is.
Speaker: Bless her. Sometimes it's just about putting a bullet in someone. Absolutely. So far, wait, how many fights have we had so far with the undersiders and how many have been solved with Tattletail with a gun? Is this two? I would argue out of the three, maybe four fights we've had, 50 % of them have been solved with the gun. With Lisa just shooting someone. Yeah. Well, again, tying us back to our time earlier. Yeah.
Speaker: Well, with Empire 88 outside of Bitches dog shelter, sometimes a gun is the better weapon.
Speaker: I think a gat is what the kids are calling it nowadays. If I trust anybody else... I didn't say a gat. I said a gat. If there's anybody in this group who might know the child lingo, it's Nick. Nick knows he's with the hip youngsters. He would know the correct terminology.
Speaker: A default. That makes Nick sound really bad out of context. I'm sorry, it made the Kaiser stand sound bad out of context. Oh, heaven forbid. None of this is making it. No, no, no. Michael, don't you dare. I will bring it up a second time. You guys sound horrible. You guys sound so old. I'm dying.
Speaker: Are we okay moving off from this or do you want to talk about how creepy Night and Fog are? I was going to say, we really need to talk about how creepy Night and Fog are, specifically Night, but let's be as Night, it really sticks out to me, but oh man, yeah, no, that little duo from where, Germany? Did you enjoy the Fog versus Groove cloud off? Yes.
Speaker: It gave me I know you know very different Materials, but it definitely gave me hardened vibes. You know the great Metapod battle of Pokemon The problem is that um
Speaker: Knights is a little bit more effective, I think. Knights is a little bit more effective than Groove, yeah. It's like an acidy kind of mist, ain't it? Yeah.
Speaker: It reminded me of that, of the one hunger games, like obstacle in the movie or whatever it was. Yeah, it's in the clock one. It's in the clock one. I guess that is the second one. Movie or book, you can tell which ones I watched or read. Well, I don't, I was gonna say, I don't know. I don't, it didn't feel like it was acid. It's not acid. It's similar to that. It's corrosive though, is it?
Speaker: Is it corrosive? Maybe it is. I felt like it was, and maybe, maybe it is corrosive in some sense, but I felt like it was because the fog is his body, like him willing harm. Like as you breathe him in or like contact with him, you know, like, man, I don't even know how to describe it.
Speaker: It is a very strange power. And we see later that one of the dogs Angelica breathed in some of the power. And it, it seems to have these long lasting effects that really are a detriment to what to just see your physical health. Like it's interesting that you can breathe in this person fog.
Speaker: And it doesn't hurt him, but it does hurt you permanently. At least long -term, we don't know if it's permanent or not, but it seems long -term. And Bitches Power can't heal it, she's tried. That to me is just such an interesting
Speaker: aspect of this, of this power that makes it so unique. And yeah, it's just like corrosive. It's almost like, you know what it is, I think it's more like a nerve gas, if I could put it that way. Yeah. It's like a nerve gas kind of, it's not really. Yeah, the Wiki describes it here. Yeah, I literally have it pulled up. It erodes living matter. Right. So it is corrosive, but not necessarily acidic in that sense. Yeah.
Speaker: And then you combine that with Knight's power, which I find to be one of the most interesting in the section. Just is so fascinating. The description because Lisa goes into detail about, you know, just trying to describe
Speaker: what is going on with her power. And then Taylor asks, is that the power? And she goes, no, but it's the best we can do. Yeah. And that makes it so much worse. Holy cow. You know, we have this joke. I know that we've talked about this before amongst ourselves about this idea of useless superpowers or bad superpowers. And one of the joke ones we've come up with, I know you and I, Jacob, have talked about this before, is the
Speaker: You can turn invisible, but only when nobody's looking at you. But this is kind of a funny twist on that where it's like, no, yeah, this is a, she's a monster, but only when you can't see her. But that's what makes it so scary. Yeah, it's the weeping angels from Dr. Who. That's all I was thinking of. Half of the creepy pastas from the internet. Don't look away, right? Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: But I love to because she's not just a random monster and she's sentient. I love how smart she is with her power. Like she carries flashbang grenades with her genius. She has a cloak that she can detach and throw on you and it has hooks so you can't easily take it off.
Speaker: Like, just thinking through her costume and her setup that she has. And on top of all of that, if she gets hurt, she turns into the monster, she gets healed. This is ridiculous. I love it, though. I mean, if you can't tell, this is my favorite superpower from this arc, which we'll get to later. But just such a cool... And I think part of what makes it so cool is not just the power itself, but like I said, her implementation of it, right? So, very cool power.
Speaker: She also doesn't have a static form while she's doing it. Like she was constantly like.
Speaker: changing limb structure and how many. Yeah. Like Taylor says at one point that when she has her bugs on her, she counts too many joints, like too many elbows basically. And it's like, Oh no. So we get comparisons. Um, if any of you guys read, read the maze runner series or seen the movie, I've seen a little bit, but it's not great. I'm going to be honest. I'm sorry if any of our fans are maze runner fans too, but it,
Speaker: Please be honest, is it really that good? But there are these monsters, there's these labyrinth monsters in the first one that are described as, they're basically if you combined like a slime creature, but with hook wolf kind of. And that's kind of how I see like her thing is just this monstrous being all like teeth and claws and spikes and metal and just something completely inhuman.
Speaker: but you never see it. And that's just, it's just so interesting and so creepy. I love it. Yeah. Like with horror movies, it's not so much what you see, it's what you can't see. Like it's what's just around the corner. It's what's hidden in the dark under the bed. It's once you've seen the monster, like sure, yeah, that's terrifying. But it's not, it's nowhere near as terrifying as when you can't see it. And she personifies that so well.
Speaker: And I was just thinking about this. With night and fog, they are the perfect combination. Fog turns into fog and obscures vision from night and night can do what night does best. They are the perfect combination to work together. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: And I feel like we'll see this, you know, again, too. And I love the team up with powers because it's fun to think about, again, this is just part of the world building that I think that Wild Bo does so well. It's fun to think about, like, yeah, if you have a world where you have all these different types of powers, you're going to gravitate towards people that you synergize with. Like, it just makes sense that you're going to team up with people whose powers work well with yours. And it's kind of fun to see that play out. But then Tattletail shows up with a gun.
Speaker: Saves the day. Saves the day as always. Yeah. I think it's interesting that...
Speaker: the end, after all of this damage that purity has done, she really just wants her daughter. And from the very first time we meet purity in her interlude, she's a mom. That is her most important thing is that she's a mom. And her choosing to even get in costume is to protect her daughter and to do what, even though she's wrong, to do what she thinks is right for the city, even though it's
Speaker: absolutely racist. But her priority is to be a mother and to make sure that Astor is safe. And the second that I almost said Taylor, the second that Tattletail offers to help her get Astor back, of course, that'll solve it immediately. Purity's done, you can give me my daughter, let's go right now. I'm done, all I want is my daughter. And it just kind of ends the fight with it.
Speaker: It's a little anticlimactic, but like - It is, but it feels - That is what - Yeah, it feels honest to purity's motivation.
Speaker: Yeah. And I think again, we kind of mentioned this before too, but like Kaiser isn't here because presumably he's got other things he'd rather care about given the shakeup. Like he has, he has some kind of empire as the name implies that's crumbling all around him. He's not, he doesn't really give a shit about Astor. So this is, this is purity's battle, which kind of, you know, night and fog and the rest of the group, they're probably pretty loyal to purity.
Speaker: You sort of get those dynamics. But yeah, again, it does feel a little anticlimactic, but it completely fits with... The resolution fits the catalyst for the whole fight. Right. Yeah. So fight is over. I was about to say, that leads us into the last couple chapters here. Ooh. So chapter 11, a couple days later, the undersiders with a return to Tattletale.
Speaker: meet up in Coyle's base where we meet where he, you know, he actually does apologize for kind of throwing them under the bus. And we meet a little girl named Dinah. And we see kind of what her power can do and we see the hold that Coyle has over her.
Speaker: And then in chapter 12, Taylor argues with the rest of the undersiders about Dinah and about kind of what they've gotten themselves into and who knew and who didn't and basically how much they're willing to forgive in the sense with Coyle. And she prepares to leave, she gets ready to go, she's packing her bag, and then an alarm goes off announcing that an end bringer is coming to Brockton Bay.
Speaker: Done done done. Yeah. Let's back up. Yeah. Great clippinger. So coil has the most secret ass, secret ass layer. Yeah. They went through so much like this felt I didn't remember it being this difficult to get into his base.
Speaker: It was very Adam West Batman, just going through cave wall, waterfall, road signs. I assume he's literally making them go through the back door. There's another one that just goes straight onto the street, but he's making them come through the back. It's just like, I don't know if I can trust you. I put too much time and effort into this and nobody gets to see it.
Speaker: Why are you not amused? I specifically asked for it.
Speaker: I specifically asked for you to be abused. But then we're, we meet, we meet part of, yeah, Coils master plan. Oh, thank you for saying it like that because that was going to be my question. Michael, Dina or Dina? I was saying both and I don't know what it is. I believe I'm going to, I'm going to guess it's Dina, but I'm going to guess Dina. Yeah. If it's Dina, I'm going to declare another mistrial. I think I feel like Dina as in like dinosaur.
Speaker: What? I'm sorry, what? Okay, you lost me. I was on board. I'm sorry, that's how I read it in my head, that it's like dina as a dinosaur. Are we back to a bakuta situation? I'm sorry. Yeah, maybe, I don't know. Like dinosaur. I know this is how you spell dinosaur, it's what they know.
Speaker: See, I'm thinking of the Dinah, won't you blow? Dinah, won't you blow? I beg your pardon? Oh, that's right. The class. Oh, that's classic. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I just always go to all the DC characters that are named Dinah. Are there? Yeah. Like Black Canary is Dinah. Oh. Either way, we'll get to the bottom of how to pronounce this name as we always do. I'm pretty sure it's Dinah. Guys, we're going over literally one of the easiest names in the book.
Speaker: And it won't be the last time. Just wait till we get to my favorite name, which is coming next arc, so don't worry. I won't correct you all. I think I know which one it is because it's maybe one of the favorite heroes. Hang on to that. Hang on to it. I'm shaking in my seat right now.
Speaker: To get back on track, we meet Dinah, part of Coils Master Plan. Right. Who can basically run calculations for success rates and give percentages. And then immediately tells him the just worst ones. That was funny.
Speaker: That was interesting though. I mean, we know what's happening because we've read the chapter that comes after it. But her numbers are going down because time is passing and things are changing. And it's not just
Speaker: Oh, yeah, it's the thought with time travel of like, oh, yeah, well, you can't time travel without changing time. And the same idea of like, well, there's an infinite amount of possibilities. And so if we're looking at the percentages of survival for this, okay, sure, okay, let's talk about these scenarios and these scenarios. And it's like, well, regardless of what your scenarios are, they're changing minute by minute because of outside circumstances that you may not be aware of.
Speaker: And in which case, I honestly wonder if that was, you know, they don't know because they're down in the sewer. But if that was the moment that the end bringer... Oh, I was thinking the same thing. Yeah. ...decided, you know what? Rockton Bay is nice this time of year.
Speaker: Yep. I think you're spot on. That's exactly how I was reading it. Granted, reading it with some foresight. Yes. But no, I think that's exactly what it is, which is so cool. It's so cool reading it again a second time. Oh, thank you Michael. Confirmation from Michael. Dinah. Okay. Dinah. All right. Well, we should have gone with our gut initially. Here's a note.
Speaker: Listen, I know I'm the English teacher here, but this isn't a hard one, guys. To be fair, I think that was all on me. I started that. I apologize.
Speaker: One thing about this interaction, though, that I totally forgot until rereading it here was that Dinah was the reason for the bank heist. I had completely forgotten that.
Speaker: It blew my mind. It's buried in there. It is buried, yeah. And the fact that Tattletail knew that she knew that the Bank Heist was to distract, but she thought that Dinah being taken had to do with a political move and ransom, not that Dinah had powers and that Coyle wanted to use those powers. How old is Dinah?
Speaker: Well, that is 12. Well, I think they say. She is young. She is what? The mayor's daughter? Yeah. The mayor's niece or something. What in the heck was her trigger? Yeah. You know, like what caused that?
Speaker: It gets into some really squelchy, oily, mucky territory for me there. And I think that Taylor is feeling it as kind of... They're all realizing what the fuck is going on, but Tattletale is realizing what the fuck is going on. And Taylor is realizing that she knew this whole fucking time. She knew. She didn't have all the details, but she knew and just went with it anyways.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. And like, am I just the weird one or was this implied that it's not like the candy that she gets is in candy? It's not. Yeah. No, they say that outright. Oh, they do say that. Okay. Yeah. Alec is the one who has to ask about it. He's like, what are you guys talking about? Okay. That's right. That's right. Yeah. Okay. That's right. And Taylor is like, no, you fucking idiot. She wanted, she wanted drugs and coils giving her drugs.
Speaker: Yeah. The whole thing. Like, again, it's hard to read your favorite characters like having arguments and things like that because it's not fun. But like, my goodness, you got a side. I think you've got us like Taylor's
Speaker: reasonings for not being comfortable with the group makes so much sense. Like how do you, again, it's hard for her too, because up this whole time, up to this point, she's like wrestling with, well, I'm going to do the right thing. I'm going to turn them in. I'm going to catch their boss. But then she's lowly, very obviously really falling for them as friends and having a good time and hanging out and doing a little crime here and there. That's not too bad. But then she gets just hit with
Speaker: Child abuse and and that's just awful. Like it's completely snaps her back to the reality of like, oh, wait a minute. These are wanted to be the good guy. Yeah, exactly. These are villains. And I find it interesting the way that they all justify it kind of in their own unique ways. Yeah. Yeah. You know, like.
Speaker: I mean, we kind of expect that maybe from the more cold hearted ones, like Alec, who's like, well, this is not much different than what I grew up with and bitch who's kind of like, doesn't really seem to feel that much for people and they feel it's for animals. But yeah, with like, you can really see the conflict with Tattletale and Brian, but they're both, you can tell that they're weighing it, right? Like it's this, oh man, I'm not comfortable with this.
Speaker: But I have so much invested in this guy. And I'm depending on, especially Brian, I'm depending on so much for this guy. Am I just gonna throw that all away for this one thing? Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's such a...
Speaker: such a gross thing and really puts the undersiders in such a terrible position. But what I think is interesting too is, um, Coyle is proud of this. Yeah. Like he, he presents her as this is my secret weapon. My secret weapon, my prize, my prize possession. Like he's out of the fact that he has her and is able to use her
Speaker: And he calls her pet, which is just the creepiest thing. So creepy. Yeah, there's some bad juju, bad vibes going on here. I got to say, thanks to Wild Bo for putting this part of the story here now, because we were definitely on that train of like, oh, Coyle's a bad guy, but he's going to fix the city. He's kind of cool.
Speaker: He's got a secret lair. He's not the white supremacist leader. He's not the crazy gang leader. He's just like the common collected Lex Luthor, that type of, you love to hate him type of thing. But then just hits us with the absolute fucked up reality that he is. Which was good. This is also the first time we see him not completely calm and collected.
Speaker: So kind of the reason between his powers of fate or whatever you want to call it, you know, we all know what it is, but at this point, you know, destiny, manipulation and calculating percentages of, you know, things going to happen. It seems like it's a pretty good combo for doing whatever you want. And
Speaker: Uh, you know, for him to get frustrated, like really like, Oh, like why, why are the numbers fluctuating? What, what the heck is going on here? Like that assuredness that he had is kind of tied into how those two powers interact. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: not to dwell on bad things, but it ends with a bad cliffhanger. It ends with a bad cliffhanger, but it also ends with a decision here with chapter 12, where Lisa says to her, she says, we had all talked about this as the undersiders. We had all talked about what we were going to do with if an end bringer came.
Speaker: And we all decided that we would go, and Taylor doesn't even have to think about it. She knows what she's gonna do, and she's gonna go. Yeah, you get the sense, and obviously I think we're gonna dive into this a lot in the next episode, but you definitely get the sense that every cape has had this internal decision, probably already made one way or the other. This is something that you hope you never have to answer, but you have your answer ready.
Speaker: In a weird way, it's very much like the question, like, what would you do if you want a million dollars? We all kind of know because we've all kind of talked about it before. And that idea of like, sure, it might not happen, but we know what we're going to do. And in the same way, if an end bringer is coming to Brockton Bay, I know what I'm going to do. Yeah, it's interesting that we just had everybody make this moral decision to
Speaker: essentially leave a girl in captivity and kind of be okay with it. But whatever the end bringer situation is, is an over of such overriding moral value that they have all agreed to do it. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: Oh boy. Which is quite the tease. Which is quite the tease. And that's probably all we should say on that. Yeah, we won't say anything else. Without getting into future. Maybe a good time to talk lastly about the interlude, which is Miss Militia, or as we know her as Hannah or Hannah,
Speaker: as she has changed her name, her origin story and how she triggered and kind of giving a little bit of insight into her power, specifically with her weaponry kind of shifting whatever she needs it to be. And this conversation with Hannah and Colin, or arms masters, we know him, and Dragon discussing just kind of a casual discussion of transfers and potential team leads and then all of a sudden,
Speaker: dragon and the arms master realizing that the system that they've created to warn them of any incoming end bringers is lighting up and they realize that it's time and Colin or arms master pulls the alarm. Yeah, great. Can I just say real quick as a complete aside, Colin is the perfect name for the
Speaker: huge nerd that arms master is. Is that not just the perfect name? You're like, if you could have guessed what his name was, you may not have guessed it, but then you hear Colin and it's like, yeah, that's right. That's right.
Speaker: It's sad because the only reference I have for the name Colin is love actually and the nerdy British redhead who goes to America. That's Colin. It just works so well. So I was like, yeah, that's my, that's what he looks like in my mind. I'm going to find that actor's name. I like Colin because it's not as outright like nerdy, you know, as like Tim or something.
Speaker: just a name like Alan, somebody that works in IT. Alan, you don't work in IT. But all the other Allens I know do. It's a fair assessment. It's not an outright nerdy name, but it's tainted a little bit with the nerdiness, the dorkiness. Yeah.
Speaker: And which is perfectly this guy like, he's not a complete dweeb. Like obviously he's kicking people's asses, like hand to hand combat style. He's not like,
Speaker: fucking kid win over there, like trying to whip out giant laser guns and fucking everything up. Not like Uber and Elite are like, I'm trying to think of some dumbass name for them in real life. Reginald. I was going to say Arnold. That's right there. One of them's definitely an Arnold. Oh, God. Oh, that's great. OK, so we do get a bit of
Speaker: A bit of important information from Miss Malish's backstory, which yes, crazy backstory. Just we don't know that much about what happens with her. But right. You can imagine any number of armed conflicts that occurred in that time period that would have fit. Well, she specifically mentions Turkey. Yeah, Turkey. Oh, is that what it? Yeah. So I just thought that her origin story was super interesting to me, where you have this
Speaker: So okay, we've talked about this before about how powers sometimes, not always, but sometimes seem to have a connection to what the person needs when they have their trigger event. So like with Taylor, with her, it had to do more with proximity. Maybe they were bugs in the locker with her when she triggered with Rachel.
Speaker: We see that she was near a dog. She'd been close to a dog. And that was part of what she got her powers with when it triggered with Miss militia whose powers are some of the strangest basically has the ability to summon any weapon that she needs. Yeah. To the point where she can specify, it seems like she, you know, she, she did this in the fight with the undersiders where she went from
Speaker: you know, a machete to a stick or something, I think, with her power. But she basically has this amorphous blob of energy that she can turn into any weapon, which is such an interesting power. But that is what she needed, or maybe in her mind as a kid thought she needed in order to get out of the situation she was in. Which again, just very well written, very well written, horrific situation for a kid to be in.
Speaker: So, but the thing that's interesting about her too, that I wanted to note is that she remembers something that it doesn't seem like a lot of people remember that when she got her powers, she felt this connection to this vast otherworldly being. And that's all we know at this point. And obviously we've all read it, so we're not going to try to spoil much here.
Speaker: It's not even that she remembers it. She's dreaming. Yeah, she dreams it. But she says that she feels like it's a reality. Not just that she dreams it, but that it is a reality for her. Well, in her dream, she even talks about forgetting about it immediately.
Speaker: Well, it fades as time passes and then she dreams and she remembers again. And then it slowly fades again because she's dreamed it, she's waking up, she mentions it to dragon. If she was forgetting instantly, she wouldn't have mentioned it to dragon, but she mentions it because it's still in her mind just after dreaming. So it stays and then it fades as opposed to what she alludes to, which is her experience is that people don't seem to remember that.
Speaker: or have even had that experience. Yeah. Yeah. Seems unique to her at this point, which is interesting. Yeah. It's just such a unique experience that I thought it was worth pointing out. Yeah, for sure. That we haven't really had that yet or before. It's an important thing to note here. Yeah.
Speaker: Well, and I mean, it just builds into, there is sort of this unanswered question that hasn't been mentioned at all in the story, but it's very present, which is that before Sion's appearance in 1984, there was nothing, there was no powers. This is a very, very recent thing. And so there was this explosion of powers. So there is a clear before and after, you know,
Speaker: why. So it's not important to the story right now, but it is sort of just kind of in the back of your mind and the sort of kind of plays into that. Can you kind of, as you're reading it, just sort of put it there, you know, you sort of categorize all your questions about the story and it's sort of back there and we'll grab it later. Yeah. Yeah. For sure.
Speaker: So, um, just because, uh, this was brought up a while back, um, in the bank heist episode, I mentioned to you, to everybody, I said, those of you who know, will know, I can't believe I forgot that they named dropped certain people so early. One of those names was the end bringers and Taylor, when Taylor says it twice, Lisa has a very interesting reaction. Um, I wish I had had pulled up in front of me, but basically she's like,
Speaker: She has this reaction that's kind of like, why the hell are you bringing them up twice in the same conversation? There's a lot in that statement. And now we see that there's a whole alarm system just for these beings, just for these things, heroes, creatures, whatever they are, we don't know yet. There's an alarm system set in place for them. That's how dangerous they are.
Speaker: Yeah. And oh my gosh, it's just, you can feel the floor kind of drop out from under you mood wise at the end. Yes. It's great. It's so, so good. Such a good cliffhanger. It is. Yeah, it really is. Yeah. This whole section is the last couple, this last, you know, to interlude and end of the last chapter is so, to me, it feels like
Speaker: that quiet moment, like if you're watching a movie, like the quiet moment before you know the music is about to just hit you. And it's that little quiet before the storm. And I am like, oh my gosh, I am so ready for Arc 8, you guys. I am like, oh, I'm ready for it, I'm ready for it.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely. I found that that line from earlier, the title tale says, Nick, after mentioning the end bringers a second time, police, holy fuck, Lisa said, slapping the side of the steering wheel with their hands. I think of the venom and moving that twice. You bring up the end bringers in as many minutes. You're being morbid. What's going on? Just like slammed on the brakes. It just stopped the car. Like, yeah, just that response.
Speaker: Yeah. But that is for another episode. I'm so excited. Also, fun fact, obviously these books are, they're web serials, so they're available to read online on Wild Bo's blog.
Speaker: But he has given permission to, for people, if you want a bound copy, you can format it yourself. You cannot share the file around, but you can have them printed yourself. And arc eight would be the end of book one, if we were to print them all out, which actually we are doing.
Speaker: Yeah, it does make sense. Yeah. So Arc 8 would be the end of Book 1 and then Book 2 would start with Arc 9. So we are basically finishing a whole... A whole novel. A whole novel, basically. We are finishing a whole novel at this point. And I did print a copy of it for Alan. And it is a chunky boy. Let me tell you, up through Arc 8, it is chunky. We've done very well for ourselves so far. I'm very proud of all of us.
Speaker: And these were the short arcs. It only gets longer from here. It does. But more exciting. Well, any other final thoughts before we get into what we'll do? We'll do our classic favorite powers here. But any other final thoughts on the arc itself? Yeah. The whole point of this series is kind of like talking about blurring lines and morally gray people overall.
Speaker: Um, and it really got me thinking about, uh, the decisions that, you know, the moral decision that most of the undersiders make and leaving Dinah there. Um, and how different or I should say that like how different as a not different heroes are from the villains in this world. Um, because.
Speaker: all the heroes for the most part are looking out for themselves in one way or another. But it's a noble thing in certain contexts. Brian for basically until the, I think it's the empire 88 incident with purity running around, is a really good guy.
Speaker: He's there to protect people. He doesn't want to kill anybody. He's like, you know, even when civilians are involved with the Bakata incident, like he doesn't want people to get hurt and he's willing to go out of his way to prevent them from dying. Like, because he's a good guy, but he also was not doing this because that goes outside of his realm of like, it's too far for him to be comfortable to endanger his position to help Dinah.
Speaker: Same is probably true of Lisa. Bitch is a little bit different, but you got dog brain going on there. And Alec is, yo man, not my problem basically. But I think about the heroes and I think about, probably, and I think there's more telling the future, but from what we've seen in the heroes,
Speaker: Like there are some of them that are in it to be probably genuinely good people. But as we've like talked with Pansia, like Pansia is there because like kind of she's just forced to. Well, she can't sleep at night if she doesn't.
Speaker: Yeah. She's literally like she is the superhero Catholic, if you will. Like she has, I think, I think it's called screw, screw velocity. Where you have this moral compunction that if you don't like, if you see trash on the side of the road and you don't pick it up, that is like a moral weight on your head that just hangs there. Yeah. Um, and she essentially has that because
Speaker: with great power comes great responsibility. And she has healing powers and she's not doing it 24 seven. Like people are dying. But she talks about like, man, I don't think like, like the way impression you guys like, man, if I didn't have any of this pressure, like, you know, inside of me, I probably wouldn't do this. Yeah. Like I probably would just mind my own business and use it to heal. Like, Oh yeah. Oh, my friend just cut her fingers, you know,
Speaker: cutting vegetables out here, let me get that for you. That's the extent of Pansio would go to in her normal life if she wasn't brought up in a superhero household and kind of pressured to be a superhero. And it makes me wonder how many other heroes have that same mentality. We can make assumptions about Arms Master for now, because he kind of is,
Speaker: just a dickhead, but also not wrong. You know, our feelings on Arms Master are complicated. And in this case, like how many other heroes have that thing where like, man, if they weren't a hero, like literally they just weren't in the wards or the proctorate, like would they be putting themselves out all that much in order to help someone else? Or are they just heroes because they are literally on the hero team? Right, right.
Speaker: which I think is a lot of what this series is about is just, man, if it weren't for them being on this team or in this situation, is what they're doing bad or seen as bad? Or would this be an issue or condemned as hard if it weren't for the fact that like, oh, well, they're a villain. So like, of course what they're doing is bad.
Speaker: Yeah. And with that too, we know that the wards program exists, which is meant to bring in, you know, those young heroes. Is that a form of child abuse in a way, you know, using kids to save people, putting kids in life. Kind of wonder like if you're a hero and you are, you know, we have shadow stalkers, the example of like, she was doing her own thing. Very much what Taylor kind of wanted to do. Very rogue.
Speaker: And, you know, she went, apparently she went, you know, too far, but who's to determine what that means necessarily. She went too far a few times and they were like, Hey, it's juvie or the wards. I'm like, okay, what kind of decision is that?
Speaker: You either get to be somebody who's kind of above the law a little bit representative of it or the person who's locked up by it. Like that's your options. You don't get to be anything in between. And, you know, makes you wonder like, Oh yeah, did Taylor have, take that into consideration of like, I don't know if I really want to be, you know, in the wards. Cause that's just kind of, you're forced to be part of that. And if she wanted to see if she could do it on her own first.
Speaker: before even approaching that.
Speaker: Yeah. And I guess the question of like, I mean, we see it with canary is like, how much freedom do you have if you decide you don't want to be a Cape, but you have powers? Like you don't really have an option. Like either way, you're going to be under immense amount of observation and scrupulation. And it's just, you don't really have a choice. So are you going to fight for the good guys or the bad guys? And if you happen to be in a situation where all of a sudden you have powers now,
Speaker: And especially with powers like bitch where you make monsters. You don't really have a choice anymore. Your choice has been stripped away. And the idea of a trigger event being triggering as it is, it's hard enough as it is. And now you're even more so forced to live a life that you didn't necessarily want or ask for.
Speaker: Well, going all the way back to talking about is having powers taboo. I don't think having powers is taboo. I think you're just sorted. If you have powers, you have to be one of these things. And if you are not one of those things, then you're a pariah.
Speaker: then you could maybe make it like Canary did, but I imagine that's an oddity. I think most people are forced to be one or the other, whether they like it or not. What a note to end on. Well, let's end on a more positive note. What are your favorite superpowers from this new arc? New superpowers only, please. New superpowers. I got a few to choose from. Yeah, we do. We really do.
Speaker: I mean, I think I've given away the game. I think we know next. Night is just, I mean, there's a lot of cool powers. I like, what is his name? Storm Tiger? Is that his name? Yeah, Storm Tiger. Storm Tiger's power seems cool. Hook Wolf is weird. But I mean, Crusader is kind of funny. But Amy, you can't beat,
Speaker: Can't beat it. Can't beat night. What a whack power. I love it. Yeah, I kind of want to agree with that. I'm just very drawn tonight as the unseen monster, as the as the weeping angel, you know, she just being able to
Speaker: to be the monster in the darkness kind of thing. And I love that so much. I will say just to vary it up a little bit, I really like Hook Wolf. I've really liked the idea of a Swiss Army Wolf. That he has all of these hooks and blades and weapons that can shift out that are in a way kind of like, shoot, what's his name?
Speaker: Logan. Wolverine. Thank you. Jesus. Basically like Wolverine, like you've got all these metal. Thank you. You got his actual name before the. I know. I was thinking of the movie because the movie was so fucking good. But like with kind of that metal skeleton underneath and all these like shifting blades and stuff underneath the skin that can just kind of like come out. And I just, that's so scary, but it's so cool. I love the idea of it.
Speaker: Yeah, I'll throw another vote in for Night and Fog. They were by far the... I think they stole the show from me in terms of powers. I will give a shout out to New Wave, who we really didn't talk about at all. They're kind of mentioned in passing in this arc, but they do engage with Purity. But it was kind of cool just for another plug for another team that works well together. It was cool just seeing them mentioned a few more members of that team as well, beyond just Glory Girl.
Speaker: Um, and getting to see them kind of fight together was, was fun to read, but did not top, uh, night and fog for me. Seeing them in their team up was, was pretty fun. Yeah. Night apps. I, you know, I love the ad once again, Lisa's description and then being like, also that's wrong, but it's the best we can do. Uh, you know, great, but in terms of like visuals.
Speaker: you know, hard, you know, things that happen. Like the hook wolf is just so freaking badass. Like they shoot him and in the hole, you realize it didn't go far because there's just a shifting metal underneath. And he literally is just constantly like unfolding a Swiss army knife. And he can just do that to get bigger and turn into, you know, the hook wolf part of that. Like, yeah.
Speaker: becomes very, you know, animal shaped. And, ooh, it's just, that's something to tangle with right there. For sure. Sure, for sure. This is fun. We're gonna have a lot to choose from coming up. Oh man. I think, I really do feel like this is the time that we need to be building that spreadsheet of capes because Arc -A, you guys get ready, take notes for Arc -A. I'm gonna have to because it's gonna be
Speaker: Oh my gosh. Listeners, get ready. Get ready. There's a few people. Oh, just a few. Just a few. Yeah, we've teased it. The stories teased it. Arcade is a highlight for many, many worm fans. So for anyone reading along with us, it's going to be a fun ride. Stick around.
Speaker: We are going to do the full arc eight in the next episode, all the way through the interludes. So read along with us. And did I miss any final thoughts, any parting words from any of you guys? Thank you all for joining in today. Stick around for part two of episode seven here.
Speaker: where we're going to approach the arc again from an adaptation perspective. But then moving forward from that, we're going to break out that part of the podcast into a separate episode which will release, not back to back with the book club, just because
Speaker: four to five hour long podcast episodes probably aren't for most people. And like we said, these arcs only get longer. You don't want to listen to them. Michael doesn't want to edit them. It's all a lot.
Speaker: And I would say since we are missing our first time readers today, having Kat and Taylor gone for this episode, we would really love to hear what you guys think is going to happen next. With this next big arc happening, for those of you who have read it, spoilers free comments, please. And for those of you that haven't, I want to know your predictions. Hit us up, hit us up.
Speaker: Indeed. And with that, we'll let the cliffhangers hang, go out there, get reading, come back and listen next time. It's going to take a minute. It's going to be a fun ride. Again, thanks for everyone. Everyone here for contributing. A lot of fun. Thanks for everyone for listening. Feel free to reach out to us, as Hannah said, on any of our socials. We'd love to hear from you. And Michael, want to play us out?
Speaker: All right, and welcome back to another episode of dissecting worm. I think as we are officially calling it, we've had some meetings. Yeah.
Speaker: Little on the nose, but where myself, Jacob and my co -host as normal, Alan, welcome back. We are going through worm arc by arc and attempting to adapt it for television, ideally in some form or another. And we've got an interesting arc here because
Speaker: As we dive into the end of what we've kind of talked about being the end of season one, as we approach the end of this hypothetical first season, we reach probably the first
Speaker: In my opinion, the first arc where most of this can be cut. And this is kind of scary because up until this point, it feels like we've had a bit of an easy time where the arcs are kind of already, we've talked about them being sort of framed and written for adaptation in this medium. So it's been sort of easy to just say, well, this is episode one, these are episode two.
Speaker: And now we're starting to play that game. We have 1 .6 million words and 30 arcs to trim down. We got to start somewhere. But what are your thoughts, Alan? Yeah. I mean, the biggest point we had to do this before was substituting slash taking out about half an arc all the way back with the bucket of fight. I think it's like arc four. And I think that this is going to be more difficult because that's the
Speaker: That's the back half of the chapter. Keep the front half, cut off the back half, easy peasy, done. The problem with this one is, I think you can cut about half of it, but it's about every other chapter.
Speaker: Yeah, there's a lot of good in here that I would certainly want to keep, but you're right, it's very spread out throughout the arc. Let's just kind of go through it roughly in reading order here, just to sort of tackle a few things. I do really love
Speaker: Taylor and bitches dynamic with the dogs. It's a good, I was going to say it's a good bit of character development. It's a nice bit of payoff for their characters. It works pretty well. It's certainly something I would want to keep. It could, I could certainly see it being much shorter, but I definitely wouldn't want to cut the whole thing. Yeah. I think
Speaker: Because we had such an action -packed episode last time, I think ending it, we've been going pretty well with like action, character development, you know, action, character development back and forth. And I think this, you know, having the action time last time, this is the time for a little bit of quiet,
Speaker: So, and of course, probably gonna split this into two episodes just because how it is, starting with the quiet part. And even though there's a little bit of engagement, it's nothing big when they deal with the Empire 88 guys showing up. I don't feel like it's that big of a conflict.
Speaker: No, the only thing with that that is kind of fun, although again, this would be really easy to put in literally any other fight. But I do like Taylor experimenting with her powers and sort of doing her first sort of clone human clone shape with the bugs. This is the first time I kind of see that. Yeah.
Speaker: But again, stuff like that would be really easy to drop in any other fight and sort of play with that if this was something we ended up sort of trimming or cutting. Yeah. Do we have an opener for this one? You know, I was thinking about that and
Speaker: I don't think it's that clear. I think there's a lot of things we could do. I think this would be a really good episode for one of our interlude openings that maybe we've put off or are waiting for. Or if you wanted to cold open an extra scene with characters depending on how much time you wanted to give to somebody else.
Speaker: Maybe we give a little scene to the wards here. Maybe this is, uh, you know, who knows what you could put on. You could put a lot of things here. I think there's a, I think there's some room. Yeah. I have an idea. We love ideas, but I'm not sure if it should go with this one or maybe the second half of this. Cause we're dividing this up. We divide up of course, it probably like 0 .6, 0 .7.
Speaker: And that's after the mall. And then, you know, they get the call like, Oh my gosh, Empire 88 got doxxed and purity is flipping out. Like that could be the point. If we did,
Speaker: I've got an idea for an interlude because I think we're technically caught up on interludes. Yeah, we've used both of them. We basically said after the canary one, the canary one just needs to get pumped later. I think canary just fits later in introducing the birdcage. I think having the PRT set up for like this SWAT like maneuver to bust into a place
Speaker: And then it turns out they're just kicking in Theo and Aster's apartment and absconding with the kids. So you're basically creating the interlude, but that's just kind of alluded to off screen in the text there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that would be a really good...
Speaker: I mean, you could even remind me. Because the purity interlude from a few arcs ago, did we decide to cut that or did we decide to put that somewhere? I already wrote it, so it's in there. If anything was going to be cut, I think it would. But I think going forward, I think having Theo be a character. Yeah, definitely.
Speaker: is a choice that should be made. Like, you know, it's Kaiser's son. He also is a very interesting, you know, not very much like his dad. As it said, you know, he's showed up, you know, enough that I think he warrants maybe having more of a centering point than, cause, you know, we even, uh,
Speaker: while Bo even talked about what was some of his alternative main characters that he was considering. Theo was one of them. I was considering a bunch of characters. I think he's got a great story to tell. Why not tell it?
Speaker: No, I do agree with that. I love Theo as a character and I think introducing him early is smart as all good stories do. You always wanna be building those characters throughout. Yeah, so then if we do show that earlier, then definitely I think some type of interlude showing the kidnappings, if you will, I think that would be pretty important.
Speaker: Um, however, yeah, that kind of begs the question, how much of the back half of this arc do we cut? Uh, okay. So if we're going to go to the back half, cause I think we agree. You just need to have, uh, I think we could cut maybe this CQC training. Oh yeah. Like the wrestling around was blue. I think we cut that. Um, it's a little repetitive. We maybe just dive. Oh man.
Speaker: We've also got to have the heartbreaker reveal. That's the other thing. There's actually a couple of reveals in here that I have a little bit of trouble with. One of which is, I think that, I have problems with coils reveal so early, but I also, I guess it leads into these issues. It does feel a little bit weird.
Speaker: I like the problems it's going to set up later in arc eight, the character, you know, character problems. But, well, I mean, I guess at the end of seven, yeah, the issues at the end of seven with Dinah, like I love that it sets that up. It just feels a little early to me and I don't know how to resolve that. No, I absolutely agree. I think
Speaker: I think some of those moments could be condensed for the end of the season. We're going to stay away from Arc 8, even though I know we both talked before this episode started that we have already read it. So we are making a lot of these decisions with that arc in mind.
Speaker: There's a lot to still do, probably multiple episodes just within Arc8 and what comes out. So I think Diana and a lot of that can be pushed. I'm not worried about getting it done now pre -Arc8.
Speaker: Yeah. A lot of that can be pushed. I think, uh, what were you saying before that? Uh, the heartbreaker reveal. Yeah. Where was that again? That was in, uh, coil reveals it. Uh, that's right. It's in, it's in that theme. Yep. You're right. Yeah. It's like, what does everybody want? And it's like going through all the different things and you know, it's revealed that like, Oh yeah. Like, and Alec doesn't want to have to deal with his dad. So I'm making sure that doesn't happen. Right.
Speaker: Yeah, it's tricky. And I think this is where we're going to get to have some fun with, uh, what we choose to adapt here. Um, because we also don't spend that much time with, with Alec in this exactly for a little bit. So I think, I think maybe having a bigger moment with him, maybe we, I agree. I think, I think that'd be better placed elsewhere.
Speaker: Okay. So yeah, let's just say for now, pretty much everything with coil in this arc would get pushed or repurposed. I think maybe having the, you could still have the reveal of like, I will get to it later, but we'll have the reveal that like coil used them to get Dyna, but, and you can still have that conflict, but this is, you know, this is the bigger issue of like,
Speaker: All we know is Coyle used them to kidnap her.
Speaker: And maybe you, we could reveal that the travelers are working for coil. Well, yeah. And I think because remember, I think I really liked our idea of if we did want to push the coil reveal from the last arc, just having the travelers show up and, uh, and saving the undersiders from arms master in them. And then just sort of continuing that, Hey, we have the same boss sort of attitude.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Cause you could, you could maybe even still have the, like the real VLB like coil being like, yeah. Like when I sent the travelers to go kidnap this girl, you know, just like I sent them to rescue you that one time. And then she's like, Oh my gosh. Like, so you're the one that has us, you know, under here. And, and maybe even, maybe even coil susses out the end or the end breaker thing. Um, maybe quill isn't caught off guard by that.
Speaker: I don't think you would be because you've got to have something that's you've got to have something that's it's there because it's a one two punch. It's a bunch of coil stuff revealed.
Speaker: at the beginning and the end, and then immediately we're going into other things. And the problem too is, is because Taylor sort of pieces together, you know, the, Oh my God, Coyle's been manipulating our group the whole time, the bank robbery and timing that all up. Like it, it sort of builds to a really fun, really impactful moment for Taylor to realize that like,
Speaker: Holy hell, I am a villain. I have been doing villain things, working for a villain. Like, this is sort of a big thing for her. So I think that that sort of makes sense to give her that moment when it's appropriate. And if we're going to sort of handle Coyle's initial reveal differently, I think it would make sense to sort of rope a lot of that together.
Speaker: so that you get a big, huge mastermind reveal tied with Taylor's realization that she's just been kind of upon in all of this so far. We do have an interlude in this chapter that we have the Miss militia interview. Yeah, that's right. Okay. Yeah. Cause here's, here's the, I mean, I guess the big thing here is like,
Speaker: When do we put that? I need to look at my notes. I'll be honest. I think that's another one we cut. I like Ms. militia as a character. I think her sort of story is interesting, but I think it gets dwarfed by everything else we have going on.
Speaker: But that being said, I do like that the interlude touches on their plan, especially arms master and dragons plan for detecting the end bringers. It just sort of, it just gives this gravitas to the whole world. Like they have a spark of hope against these things. And I love that sort of dread in
Speaker: Oh, hey, our our alarm worked. Oh, fuck. It worked like it's just it's a great little moment. And I think we've got to keep that somehow. So I like that. I would like to do two things with it. Hit me. Number one, I think I think we keep the PRT as the opener for the kidnapping the kids opener for part one. Episode two of this.
Speaker: We open with Hannah having her quick flashback. And once again, because it's visual, we can do that pretty quickly. She wakes up from her dream, whether or not we want to include, I think we do the inclusion of the big space thing. The spacey part of her dream.
Speaker: And then have her wake up, do the like staring and then like clearly you can, they do that thing where like the characters frozen up, but then they start moving and it's clearly they've forgotten whatever just happened. And you could even have it be as explicit of like walks in to, you know, Colin and dragon talking and.
Speaker: They're like, hey, like what's got you up? Like she's like dreaming and you know, dragon goes, anything interesting? She goes, I don't remember. Yeah, you can play it off pretty easily. And I think having them sitting there working on that, you know, the very quick breakdown of, you know, what's going on the inner politics. I think that's a pretty good, and then have them put together a thing and be like, yeah, we've got this. And then, you know, on the big screen, we like slowly zoom in and much like our teaser with the water before,
Speaker: Just have like the little ping and then cut a worm. Then at the end, sirens are going off. We move out from just the undersiders having their reactions to it, but we have quick, like a quick montage of everybody. All the groups we've encountered, people on the street, PRT, wards, other villains, all turning
Speaker: reacting, suiting up, rushing out. And one of it kicks it off is
Speaker: arms master running in front of the machine and being like, oh my God, like it's on the way. Like, I mean, I think you have to, I think that is the cliffhanger of the episode. I think there's no way around that. Yeah. And absolutely need to show everyone sort of response to the alarms. I mean, I think one thing that makes this story so great and so unique is are these little moments like this, like what other, what other property has
Speaker: this type of event where your heroes and your villains are just in unanimous agreement immediately to put aside everything else to address this threat. Like just the nature of that is so unique. It is such a golden opportunity for some really good like character beats and moments and pauses.
Speaker: Yeah, some type of like you said montage something like that to show. Yeah, show everyone cuz I don't like the whole thing. I don't like them all that had a whole interlude taking place at the end and then immediately going into it. I just don't think it fits there. But I think you do have to have it come back up and I think just having it at the beginning of the end of the episode is that works.
Speaker: I would also, I'm going to throw this out there, but I think if we end up cutting most of the Empire 88 fight, as we've sort of alluded to, then I think there's, you could probably condense this into one episode.
Speaker: I think if you start and end both with the alarm, I think pretty much everything else. I think you could fit it in. I think you have dog shelter. I think you can have their interaction with Sophia, which I think is really important for
Speaker: later payoffs. And I think that's about it. I think if we wanted to, this is a good episode where you can sort of stretch some things out. If you want to throw in a couple extra scenes, you want to throw in a scene like I was saying with other characters, I think this is a good time to do it. But I think there's enough here to
Speaker: to put for one episode, but not more, especially if you, because if you cut the fight, that is in terms of just what would take the longest to show. I think that would, that's most of your episode. Yeah. Well, I, okay. So there's, this is the problem I have with this. It's two fights, back to back, a lot of characters and correct me if I'm wrong, but neither of them are resolved fights, if you will.
Speaker: They're, they're resolved at a third fight. Right. Yeah. So, so what you have is, uh, you know, grew and skitter showing up, you know, going through an ambulance and out of nowhere, they get hit on accident by some empire 88 people. Oak wolf storm tiger cricket. Now,
Speaker: Stormtecker and Cricket, you know, say what you want about them. They're kind of cool. Hook Wolf is our main dude here. He's the one talking. He's the one, you know, he's kind of in charge. I think it being a completely by accident, I don't even know if we need to show them seeing the ambulance, like them looking inside. That could just be like some other fight is going on.
Speaker: Hook will storm tiger and cricket are fighting new wave or something. And one of them gets thrown into the ambulance and crews like fuck. But then they get the ambulance up and going, or if you wanted to have them interact with them a little bit more, the ambulance gets wrecked, they crawl out and storm tiger and whatnot is like, oh, well, well, look at what we have here. And the whole fight there isn't
Speaker: a drawn out thing. It's grew and skitter trying to run away and getting another car, essentially. And you can still have the crickets disrupting the bugs. You can still have Storm Tiger maybe show off his power once or twice, and Hook Wolf be big bad as he is, and the enhanced senses through the fog. But you don't have to spend more than
Speaker: maybe two minutes there, especially if you just have them fleeing. Like all they're trying to do is get away from these three motherfuckers. So here's an idea and I'm gonna spit ball for a moment, but I am envisioning completely cutting all of that. Cook Wolf, Night and Fog, everything.
Speaker: Okay. If we restructure this a little bit, because I agree, not only is it two fights, not only is it the hook will fight into the knight and fog into the third off screen fight, but even before that, it's still action with Taylor, Brian, and Sophia. And before that, it's tense with like, it's just a little much. But
Speaker: What if, because I really like your idea of starting the episode off with post the alarm system, but with the kidnapping.
Speaker: So what if after that, the rest of the episode is still building off of that, but in pieces. So for example, Bitch and Taylor, the Empire 88 guys show up and they realize that
Speaker: They are there specifically with orders to kill bitch because what the audience and everyone doesn't know is that purity has put out a hit on the undersiders blaming them for the kidnappings. So the empire guys, they show up to take care of bitch, maybe a little head of schedule, trying to get a little eager.
Speaker: and get beaten back. Then when Brian shows up, they're trying to piece together what's going on. They call tattletale. Tattletale is like, yep, pieces it together. But, and this is where I'm adjusting a lot of stuff here. Let's say at that moment,
Speaker: Tattletail is like, guys, purity found me. And so you skip everything else. So now Brian and Taylor are trying to rush over towards Tattletail and they get caught by Sophia. They have that interaction while Tattletail deals with purity and you get, and you get Tattletail and purity's conversation, which I do, I do really like their conversation that they have. You can keep those moments. Everything else sort of plays out the same, but you're just,
Speaker: essentially eliminating all of the middle of that fight, which shortens the episode. It takes away some of the unnecessary jumps from fight to fight, but still sort of carries the tension that this whole episode has, which is that Empire 88 specifically purity wants the undersiders dealt with. Okay. Follow up. I like that. I was just, I'll be honest,
Speaker: I was just trying to keep night and fog in there. Cause they're, they're cool. And I do love them too. This is, this is so hard. We got to cut so much. It's so hard because they're, they're honestly, they don't kind of matter. They don't, uh, I'm sorry. So many cool characters so hard. I was, I was looking through a list. There's, there's so many, but again, we can, we can put them elsewhere. Yeah.
Speaker: I think if you keep any character, you keep Hook Wolf just because he's a little more important. But let's stick with your idea. So instead of starting with the bitch thing, you start with Brian and Taylor out on their trip. You kick it off with the Sophia thing. Taylor's in a pissy mood. On top of that, friend, whatever, they just end up
Speaker: this isn't them going to hide or whatnot. This just kicks off with them hanging out. They end up deciding just, hey, we're gonna head back to the hideout. Taylor and bitch go do their thing. People show up, Taylor lets off a little steam, maybe a little bit too much. Beaten the shit out of some Nazis, nothing wrong with that.
Speaker: And then, then they realized like, Oh shoot, what's happened? Yeah. Phone call, you know, grew to get there. Paul's tattletale and tattletale was like, Hey, purity found me. Uh -huh. Yeah, that works. And that's where you can be like, Oh my gosh. You know, what's going on? She's like, I think I know where the kids are.
Speaker: I'll be honest, every time I read the whole purity section, I know that it happens and my brain like intentionally wipes it out. Cause I just don't care all that much. Yeah. It's a weaker part of the story up to this point, which is it's difficult because it's a whole other thing happening specifically against new wave that there's a whole other adventure happening there. Right.
Speaker: Perhaps, if we're, heaven forbid we should keep that, maybe we focus on how Glory Girl and her family are doing over there. Right, yeah. No, and of course, that's a whole nother route you could go here pretty easily. You would have to write a lot of stuff into the episode.
Speaker: But yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right. And then too, in addition to that, of course, this is where it's going to get a bit tricky where I think when we step back post arc eight and do our season one recap episode,
Speaker: I think a lot of this might fall into place a bit easier because we are still sort of containing all of these conversations, one arc at a time, which can get tricky, especially as we want to sort of move pieces around. Because now, as you're saying that, I'm like, oh, this is good. I actually like that a lot. It sort of juggles the tension throughout the episode, but now we kind of want a little bit at the end. Do we move the coil reveal here? But I'm like, no, I don't think that works.
Speaker: So I think these are things that might get answered as we pace out the whole season in terms of where we want certain
Speaker: certain story beats to land. When we end up, for example, placing the coil reveal, I think that's going to sort of domino effect with a lot of the foreshadowing and stuff that we want leading up to that. We might go back and say like, okay, well, if coil is going to be revealed here, then here is where we want to put the travelers. Stuff like that kind of might fall into place a bit easier.
Speaker: And I think a lot of that's gonna happen here. Yeah, there's just a lot of climax that I'm in this arc that we need to work to with purity essentially being the main conflict.
Speaker: And I'm trying to figure out how to get to there. I think part of the hard thing too is that really purity is not that big of a character at this point. Like we've seen her, she's spoken a couple of times.
Speaker: but we only really know her as Kaiser's not wife and mother of Astor. Like that's it. That's what she is. So like, so maybe we have, maybe we have some dynamic going on here. Cause this essentially needs to be like a hostage negotiation.
Speaker: I think having a three way conversation between new wave, the undersiders and empire 88 come to like, literally come to a head where they undersiders show up in a car and are like, Hey, it's me. I'm the one you want. I can figure, you know, Lisa going like, I can tell you where they are. Yeah. Yeah. And new wave being like, shut the fuck up. Right. No, you don't. And also like.
Speaker: you know, what the hell are you doing? Yeah, I really don't mind trying to put some more new wave in here, which I know is scary because that would mean we've got to try to flex some of our riding muscles. But I mean, I think it only makes sense given that we've already given more screen time to Glory Girl and Panacea.
Speaker: who are only gonna get more as the story goes on. I think it makes sense to show him here. I think this is a perfect time to maybe have Panacea or Glory Girl, maybe even, but yeah, maybe keep Panacea as the one watching Theo and Aster, like with PRT Troopers. Like maybe she's there, maybe Theo and Amy have a conversation with each other. Yeah, that would be interesting.
Speaker: You know, and you interject between them talking and then maybe glory girl and, you know, her aunt dealing with Lisa and purity. And then, you know, them coming to a resolution somehow, whether it's just, you know, grabbing tattle tail and flying to the secret base. And then, you know, it gets kicked in.
Speaker: And, you know, Tattletale or Purity is like, what are you going to stop me from taking my kid back? And Pansy was like, nah, not about to do that. Yeah. Not worth it. Yeah. No, I do like that. I like giving them some more, some more growth in the arc. Plus we can, in the distance, cause they're not major characters at all, but you could show more of new wave too. You could show some of the other family members that are there.
Speaker: I think, yeah, I think also playing up the fact that this is, and maybe even it's done differently. This is the kidnapping of a child. And we're about to end this on an argument about the kidnapping of a child. And I think discussing how like either both are wrong or one is okay and one isn't,
Speaker: or showing that like, oh yeah, when heroes do it, it feels okay to you, the audience. But when a villain kidnaps a child, it doesn't feel right. And I have some issues like, I don't know how I feel about the keeping Dinah on drugs thing. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: We haven't really had one of these moments yet, but it won't be the last time where we have to really talk about like, how dark do we want the show to get? It's a different medium. It's entirely different medium. And there's a lot that you can get away with in literature. That's not nearly as intense when you don't have to, when there's no visual representation of it. Yeah.
Speaker: I'll be honest. A lot of that doesn't bother me. Uh, yeah. Um, but, but the drugging children doesn't bother me all that much. How does that, uh, how does that, uh, community quote, or what's it? I can excuse racism, but I draw the line at, at, I forgot it was animal cruelty or something like that. Yeah. Excuse racism. Exactly.
Speaker: That's just, you're gonna mark that down. That's just gonna be a meme, but everything with like Taylor. Just an ongoing list. I can excuse child kidnapping, but I draw the line at child kidnapping. I feel like we just need to keep that and just add to it as the episodes go on. I can excuse this, this, this, this. I draw the line at this. Yeah. But yeah, no, that'll be, we'll have to,
Speaker: We'll play around with some of that, figure out what works best. Yeah. I think, I think we need to have another thing that needs to get punched up a little bit is, uh, move bumping up the Lisa maybe feeling, um, uh, playing up how Lisa feels about empire 88 getting outed. Um, is this her fault?
Speaker: Does she feel like it's her fault directly? Because, yeah, that's what she did. She helped gather information she knew what it was going to be used for. Or does she feel bad because she didn't know what it was going to get used for? And she's kind of gotten blindsided. In which case, is her volunteering potentially to, hey, take me to purity so I can resolve this and be her hostage? Is that her amending that guilt?
Speaker: is that, you know, what are we gonna see out of her character? Yeah, no, that's a good point. And again, I think this is something that's gonna be helpful when we're kind of doing a bigger sort of wide look at the season. But I do think that aside from Brian, who's had some decent development, the Siders don't really have that much development, bitch, a little bit, but it's still more of like a,
Speaker: character type. But Taylor specifically... A lot of its character exposition. Yeah. Taylor specifically or Taylor, Tattletale, specifically, I think could benefit from a few more of those moments. So I think this would be a good time for that. No, I like that a lot. So I think with that, and I would still want to sort of workshop how we would want to
Speaker: structure the episode, but I like the idea of starting with leviathan detection.
Speaker: And going from there to, I liked your idea of going from there to Brian and Taylor getting that done first, that whole run -in with Sophia, Brian's rejection and all of that drama into the rest, into the bitch and her dog scene, into purity with Tattletale,
Speaker: And honestly, I think, I think all of that is going to take a good bit of time. I think that takes most of the episode. And then if you want to fill in some gaps with, uh, some more new wave scenes, a little bit of, little bit of breathing room there, I think that would fill out the episode pretty well. Yeah. Um, there's something else on a bigger scale and obviously we'll talk more about this, but I think,
Speaker: I feels weird the whole going into the secret layer. I think it feels very bad having it off with getting number one, you know, closing it off kinda with a purity runs off with the kids. The undersiders are left there to get their shit together. I don't know. Maybe making this somehow a bigger deal. Cause we also have the Dinah problem.
Speaker: And that's kind of an argument that needs to be had and an issue that needs to be talked about. I don't think they need to go to the secret layer. Honestly, it would be a way weaker beat, but I think Taylor getting pissed off that Coyle outed Empire 88 to begin with. Once again, if she knows that he's her boss, that's a big no -no.
Speaker: I'll be honest, it's described as a really big no -no, and it's not really... I don't feel like we got the... What's the word I'm looking for? The consequence for the action that we should have gotten, because we've talked about what has happened to even heroes that have, you know, gone after villains in their own home. And again, heroes also have a reaction to this that should be pretty...
Speaker: Aggressive. Yeah. And again, this is, this is what makes, I think this is just one of Wild Bo's strengths as a writer is like, everybody already is sort of known by, I mean, the readers already sort of understand, right? The consequences of having a superhero's identity revealed.
Speaker: It's baked into every other story we read. You don't have to spell that out for the audience. They're like, oh no, this group got their identity revealed and that means they're going to be targeted. Everybody just knows that. That's the assumption. So you can skip all of that exposition. You can just go right into, oh, all of these guys got outed and the audience is already on board. Everybody is already
Speaker: You're not sympathizing with the villains themselves, but you're sympathizing with the situation, which I think is great. Yeah. Also, this is a perfect time to not have Coyle be known yet, because all of a sudden, Empire 88 gets out of it. We don't know by who, but what we do know is that Tattletail did it. And Tattletail feels terrible, because Tattletail is essentially the one holding the smoking gun.
Speaker: This is all information that she's gathered, she's put together and was just used to do one of the taboo things. The heroes would be coming after her. Everybody's gonna be gunning for her. And I think the idea of like, you tailored them being like, what the fuck, are we next?
Speaker: Like what happens if we outlive our usefulness? Do we get out it? Right, right.
Speaker: Well, and I'm, and this sort of plays into, yeah, I mean, obviously if we really want to build up the coil reveal too, because like, I'm going to be honest, if I was watching this show, right? And I had never read worm and I'm watching this all unfold and let's, you know, I mean, if we don't know who coil is, we don't have any understanding of who their boss is as an audience member, I might at this point go, Hey, wait a minute.
Speaker: Is Tattletale the actual mastermind? Is she the one controlling everything at this point? Like, you could really play into some paranoia there.
Speaker: And then of course, I mean, it did be very tattletale, right? Especially if we're delaying the coil reveal. And that could even play into the coil reveal, right? So like, there's a lot of fun you can have with that. I mean, I was even thinking like we could even go back a bit to where we have the little meeting of villains back in arc four or whatever that was. And what if coil just doesn't show up for that?
Speaker: What if he's just not there? Does he need to be there? Maybe not. I think maybe having him there and just be the arbitrator. True. Not do a whole lot. We know he's got soldiers, but I think hiding his powers, hiding his power levels. Yeah, just downplaying him a bit. Yeah, I think that's probably wise.
Speaker: All that to say though, depending on how much we want to put into the episode without overloading it, we could still do Dinah at the end and just keep it vague. Or like you were saying, keep it so just Tattletail knows or Tattletail reveals that she's figured it out.
Speaker: whatever the case may be. You can still have that tension at the end. You can still have Taylor's gripe with the group where they're all like, I mean, it's bad, but we have bigger problems. You can still have that whole sort of dynamic there that leads into the next arc. I think it's perfect. Cause you can still have the same gripe of we endangered a child.
Speaker: especially if Tattletail is trying to save a little bit of face here, where she's like, ah, yes, like, maybe I didn't mean to, but that's what happens. Sometimes you just got to roll with it and like roll with it. Like there were kids in the line of fire potentially. Like we, we kidnapped children from their homes because of this. Um, we, we outed people. That's something we said we'd never do. Like, how am I supposed to trust you to not out me?
Speaker: Like make this an attack on Tattletale. Which I think is really poignant for Tattletale and Taylor's relationship as we look later on. Like I think that's a great thing for Tattletale to be very forgiving of Taylor. Given the situation and why she sticks with her and nobody else kind of does in this case.
Speaker: everybody else is like, why are you making such a big deal out of this? We're villains and that also kind of going soft on Taylor. Right. Right. No, I agree. I like that. And then, and then, you know, storms out and maybe. Tattletale is the one to go get her this time because before it's been grew. Yeah, exactly. You know, we can have a very different dynamic where
Speaker: Taylor is once again, storming out of the loft, which we've seen before, except this time it doesn't play out the same. Yeah, exactly. And then while they're outside, they have a little discussion. Maybe Tattletale even reveals a little bit like, Hey, this wasn't me. Right. I didn't make the choice to do this. Or maybe, maybe she was told to reveal the information.
Speaker: She was sitting on it and Coyle told her, do it. Right. So she does pull the trigger, but kind of under orders. Yeah. Yeah. No, I like that. I think it absolutely go that route.
Speaker: And I mean, this plays into, we were talking about, we kind of mentioned it before, and I think we'll have a stronger conversation for our season one recap, but really sort of thinking about the themes of this season.
Speaker: in the show. I think it plays into all of them once we've talked about it. I think it plays into this illusion of power. I don't think we talked about this one, but I think a really obvious theme is bullying to be blunt. But there's elements of that too. I really, really like
Speaker: the way we're kind of working this ending here. Especially if you're building towards this massive distrust of Tattletale, where maybe Taylor and the audience are both like, ooh, she is way more in control of all of this than we think she is. And then the reveal is that no, she is not. She is following orders, like one of Coyle's snipers. She's just doing what she's told, just like everybody else.
Speaker: I like that. I'm trying to think about this in the long run because I think the Dinah problem is going to be a reoccurring issue and I kind of don't think we need her. Like I'm doing just a quick, quick forward look and just, you know, what I'm feeling in my heart in terms of characters we can get rid of. I think we can get rid of her.
Speaker: or at least push her back a decent amount. Yeah, let's definitely put a pin in that. I don't hate that actually at all, but, and obviously this is gonna all come back to me more as we read more here, but I do like the idea of Coyle sort of having a lot of these pieces on his hypothetical chessboard.
Speaker: that don't seem connected, really. I mean, like just at the end of this episode, we have the undersiders, the travelers, and Dina, and Coyle's army. He's got a lot of these pieces working towards
Speaker: working towards a goal and I'm trying to stay vague because I did just read his interlude today and I don't want to get into it until the next episode. But I think having a lot of these pieces are really plays into his character's strength. But I don't hate the idea of getting rid of Dina. I think she's probably lowest on the list of chess pieces.
Speaker: We could definitely move that around. I'm going to make a note of that. I don't hate that, but it's definitely something we'd want to talk through as we get into Coyle's arc. I don't think that Coyle requires, as much as it's played up here, that Dinah is such a lynchpin for Taylor not liking Coyle. I don't think you need Dinah to not like Coyle.
Speaker: Oh no, not at all. I don't think so. I do think it does help. The one thing it does do is that it does help the audience turn from, Hey, wait a minute. Coyle's not entirely wrong. He's getting rid of the white supremacists and all the bad guys. And maybe he's got a point. Like it does prevent that. Cause you can't really justify
Speaker: drugging and kidnapping children. So like it does help on that front. Um, but I agree. I don't, I think there's other ways we can make the audience hate to create coil. Yeah. Also, how do you feel about having one of the PRT officers that bust in and get the kids, one of them essentially walk away afterwards, put out, pull out a cell phone.
Speaker: like very clearly not to the PRT and be like, it's done. Oh yeah. Yeah. No, I think, I think that would work. Like maybe hint. I mean, I think we've already talked about that there, you know, people, I think tattletales even talked about like, I mean, I think she was bluffing, but you know, like she's got informants and you know, it's, it's coil. Like he's probably got people, even if it's a secretary on the inside, like, yeah,
Speaker: Well, that's kind of the idea with him too is again, he's got all these moving pieces. He's got all these different people in play. Um, he reminds me a lot of like little finger from game of thrones where, you know, he's, he's just sort of sitting back and having conversations and making plays at power and everybody's sort of just not
Speaker: figuring it out. I like that a lot. I think that helps.
Speaker: Because again, like all things, you want, you want to present everything in a way that the audience can figure it out and will figure it out. Um, you know, shock is great, but this isn't horror. So we do want our little mysteries to be able to be solved or at least when they're revealed, it's not like a, huh, it's a, Oh, that makes sense. Right. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um,
Speaker: Yeah, I think maybe going back and editing them having a conversation in the villain bar to back his, dial his stuff down a little bit. I think that's smart. Maybe not even have the fault line thing. Cause I think him trying to hire fault line maybe comes across to
Speaker: open in terms of his hiring people. Right. Well, and I think you get enough of that, even with that fight that immediately follows, like you already see Coyle's mercenaries
Speaker: It's very clear that he's very well -funded. His men are very loyal, obviously, so they're paying him well, but they're getting paid well, I mean. There's enough already there to suggest that Coyle has got a pretty smart head on his shoulders. Yeah. Well, I like the idea of him being... He's the paramilitary guy.
Speaker: And I think as long as you keep that kind of separate, that like, what's his power? His power is that he employs non, like he employs guns, like literal guys with guns, like that's his power. Which makes him very unique amongst the crowd. I think if you have that and then just, you know, fault line crew, you just go, hey, neuter, why the hell are you here? And he goes, I don't know, somebody paid us.
Speaker: Right. Like, and you don't say anything else about it. You just, you know, why are you here? I'm here because we got paid. Yeah. Somebody footed the bill. That works. I like it. And then speaking of getting paid, let's cut to our sponsors. We want to thank the sponsor for now.
Speaker: What perfect timing, you know, who won't get in drug, you know, kidnap and drug children. Most of the time, the products and services that sponsor this podcast insert sponsor here, you know, empire 88 getting out. It was really terrible.
Speaker: But you know, your information doesn't have to get out to reveal that you're a racist white supremacist super villain with NordVPN. There we go. Oh, it's too easy. Too easy. These sponsors, sponsors. These ads make themselves come on. All right.
Speaker: Well, I think that just about wraps it up from everything I want to say. I think the only thing we kind of mentioned it, but I but just ending strong on that cliffhanger, I think is important. And I think that just leads so cleanly into
Speaker: What are probably gonna, I'm just gonna go on a limp. I know a real shot in the dark here, but I'm gonna just say, speculate if you will, that we're gonna need more than one episode for Arkate. So I imagine we'll have maybe two more episodes left for our season one. I'll flip around on that, I think.
Speaker: I think arc eight will be a shotgun blast of just, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. That's it, and then you're done. I think it's gonna be enough. It's just gonna be gushing and then done. I think it's actually gonna take less time than our normal episodes, because I don't think there's gonna be that much, what's the word, like nitpicking.
Speaker: Oh, fair enough. Yeah. No, honestly. You know what? I'm not gonna say it cause it's next episode, but yeah, I think it's going to be less than just reactions. You know what? You might be right. You might be onto something there anyway. Uh, regardless, it's going to be a really exciting arc and a really fun end to this first hypothetical season of the worm television show.
Speaker: Thank you. Alan, thanks again for joining as always. Jacob, thanks for having me on. It's a pleasure.
Speaker: Thanks to our resident audio editor slash director slash everything else that we need, Michael. No problem. Thanks for making us sound good. And thank you all for listening. We really enjoy doing this. This has been a lot of fun. We're really getting into a groove. And as always, let us know, what did we miss? Are we cutting the right stuff? Have we made a huge mistake here? We know there's a lot of worm fairs. The answer is no, we've never made a mistake.
Speaker: You're right, you're right. We haven't messed up, but you can tell us that we have if you think we did.
Speaker: We know there's a lot of passionate worm fans out there. We know we're probably ruffling some feathers and stepping on some toes, but that's what's fun about this. So let us know your thoughts. Have we cut too much? Have we cut too little? Have we completely forgotten something? I'm sure we have. We'd love to hear from you. Reach out to us. Let us know what you think and stick around for Arc8. You are not going to want to miss that one.
Speaker: Read along with us at parahumans .wordpress .com. We'd love to hear your thoughts. What did you love? What did you hate? Anything you think we missed, et cetera, as long as it's kind. If you'd like to get in touch, you can find us on Twitter, threads, Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit at Brockton Bay, BC, or click the link in the description.
