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Arc 24: Crushed - Dissecting Worm
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This story isn’t intended for young or sensitive readers. Readers who are on the lookout for trigger warnings are advised to give Worm a pass.
Complete list of potential triggers: here
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Dissecting Worm: The sister podcast to Brockton Bay Book Club where our hosts Jacob and Allan discuss adapting Worm for television.
Episode Description:
Behemoth: The Hero Killer. First of the Endbringers to arrive. Do not engage unless necessary. Powerful Dynakinetic with the ability to bypass the Manton Effect within 32 feet. Scion necessary for dissection.
Get in contact with us @brocktonbaybc
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Timestamps:
(00:00) - Introduction
(01:10) - Dissecting Begins
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Worm
00:00:00
Speaker
Worm is a web serial by J.C. McCray, also known as Wildbo. You can read Worm in its original format by visiting parahumans dot.wordpress dot.com or donate to Wildbo's Patreon at patreon dot.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.
Podcast Format Explained
00:01:08
Speaker
Take that you worms. Welcome back to another episode of dissecting worm. I am your half of your host. Jacob will join me as always, Alan. Other half. I am the second one. And I'm, yeah, this is no, this is, this is a spoiler podcast. I am your second entity.
00:01:34
Speaker
I was trying, I stopped myself for the last second, then realized, wait, I don't have to. You don't have to. You can say entity. The warrior, if you will, entity.
00:01:45
Speaker
the What what Jacob warrior to my Eden yeah Adam Adam and Michael I was trying to figure out how to introduce you because I said half and I was like wait There's three of us here. You know our guy our doctor mother if you will. Yeah. Yeah, I'll take that. There we go Making sure this all runs. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes here, but not here as always Working in the shadows We are in arc 24.
Behemoth Fight Focus
00:02:14
Speaker
Can you believe it? Can you believe it? eyes Yeah, six hours left. Normally we'll do ah kind of, we'll go in chronological order of, of the arc, which I think we can do here, but given that,
00:02:31
Speaker
the entire arc, uh, all seven chapters is the behemoth fight. Um, minus the last inner that I guess, but, uh, I think we can just sort of tackle the whole arc at once. don't yeah I don't know how much we'd need to go in order necessarily here. Um, yeah. Um, I think that we we need to do some, some backtracking.
00:02:59
Speaker
We've talked about this before, but I think the idea for the rest of this season, um, as we were planning on doing it so far is to have a consistent team that Taylor is working with. They deal with a lot of the problems place to place together. And so coming into behemoth, I think should be the cap of this season rather than I mean, kind of the first introduction to working. I mean, not the first one, obviously, but getting dropped in with the Chicago wards again. Yeah. Chicago wards. Yeah. And, you know, going into this, I i think that this is our ah capstone. Capstone is our finale, you know, season finale fight. Yeah. Yeah. And I think we should be leading up to this. I think, um, keep the characters consistent, but that is like, this is, this is also the, the capstone or the
00:03:58
Speaker
I keep saying that this is the goodness. I'm coming up with every synonym except for one. I'm like, one, you want panicle the apex. It's everything we're leading towards the ad that culmination, the culmination. Yes. Is that right? ah Sure. Of, of everything we've been working with the team to come to the behemoth fight and use the teamwork where they decide to put Weaver in charge. They knew this beforehand, but this is when it were like, she's been sidelined. She's been the, you know, the one person and they kind of realized like, even though that she's like, she clearly outclasses everyone in terms of tactics, she should be in charge. And, uh, at least of the battlefield.
Taylor's Tactical Leadership
00:04:50
Speaker
And I think that's the moment here where Tecton is
00:04:53
Speaker
you know, constant or consistently being the leader. Cause that's the position that tech has been put in. But when we finally get the behemoth fight, behemoth is like, Hey, this, this is you. And if they want, you know, if they want to take issue with it, uh, then that'll come back on my head and I'm okay with that. Like, I think you're going to, I literally, I think you're going to get us through this alive, like more than I will. So like, if we get alive and they chew me out, like, Oh, well,
00:05:21
Speaker
Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Our girl gets to shine. Yeah. So I think I think this is a big like this would be a good character lead up moment to have with the team. It also. Yeah. So let's let's just go into that, assuming that that is how we are getting dropped into the behemoth fight, if you will.
00:05:45
Speaker
Yeah, I think I like that. I think it makes a lot of sense. I think the one of the biggest issues that we've already kind of mentioned for this season is really trying to highlight a ah seasonal arc for Taylor specifically.
00:06:00
Speaker
um Whereas a lot of the other seasons, the arc feels a bit more natural, especially like seasons one and two, um but even three to a degree, feels sort of built in. there's there's um There's a big moment in each of those seasons for Taylor, whether it's ah in season one, it's her ah attacking Leviathan, getting her hero moment.
00:06:22
Speaker
season two you could pick probably a couple different things with the nine um season three it is killing coil like it's there's ah there's like these moments for taylor in each of the epic in each of the seasons and in season four her moment arguably comes kind of early if you want to put them on the same like like her killing alexandria And becoming, you know, kind of turning yourself in is sort of that that huge character moment. But it happens so early in the season that by the time we get to this point, by the time we get to our end, um we run the risk of sort of ending without any more development. And I think that's something we could we want to try to avoid as best we can. We want my God, I forgot Alexandra died in this season. Yeah, right.
00:07:14
Speaker
Yeah. It's early on. It's pretty early on. It's going to happen. but We haven't really cut the episodes together and we could probably fluff it out a little bit, but we're still, it's still probably happening at like episode three, you know, or so. So like, yeah, a lot, there's a lot more in the season after that moment. And she's got to do something with that time. Yeah. And now I gotta just thinking about where we started in the season of where we're at.
00:07:44
Speaker
The other, the other hard thing too is, is that in this fight, um one, we've we fought on bring us before. So Behemoth, although he's different in ah and a different type of threat, isn't going to bring any of that sort of ah new threat to the audience, right? um And in addition to that, once again, Taylor,
00:08:08
Speaker
I mean, it's not the one that kills
Behemoth vs Other Endbringers
00:08:10
Speaker
the end bringers. Nobody is. yeah Thank you, Sion. But in opposition to the way Leviathan is handled, which is just this terrifying apocalyptic event, Taylor does still get a hero moment. She kind of has this big character moment. um As written, that moment is not nearly as obvious with fighting behemoth.
00:08:30
Speaker
Yeah. um In fact, that moment is given to Chevalier, right? Yeah. Like Chevalier gets that moment and then Sion saves the day. So like it is a bit of a, ah we'd probably have to restructure a few things there to give, either give Taylor another moment or redirect her moment to more like what you were saying, which I really liked. um Making her moment more, maybe a leadership focused, right? um Sort of taking control,
00:09:00
Speaker
ah tactically leading the team, that kind of thing, maybe highlighting that a bit better, ah can be kind of her moment in the fight. Yeah, yeah. um Yeah, I agree. um but Part of ah me thinking about just behemoth, behemoth itself would be, we you know, we talked about the size, the behemoth is about 50 feet tall and All I can think of is how tiny that is.
00:09:32
Speaker
um I don't think we go full Godzilla, but I think we double the height. I think we're like, okay, so here's the thing. We've done a monster, if you will, 30 feet tall, we've got Leviathan. ah Leviathan's fast, but Leviathan can basically go hand-to-hand combat with people as we've shown, which I, once again, reading that over is always a little bit weird. I'm like, oh, I you know forget that it's not a,
00:09:59
Speaker
a Godzilla character, it is like a giant, like ah a a very large you you know person ah yeah ah vibe.
00:10:11
Speaker
and be you know And same for Behemoth. Behemoth was a, in my mind, a Godzilla level character just waddling through a city. um So when we take Leviathan, which is honestly gonna be a pretty interesting fight in itself,
00:10:28
Speaker
of the Simberg, which is, um, a school bus is 35 to 40 feet long. Yeah. There you go. Yep. Once again, I look, if you have a pine tree near you, that pine tree is probably between 70 to 90 feet tall. Um, so think that Leviathan is half of that pine tree tall or not Leviathan behemoth is half that pipe tree tall. And that is like wildly small in my mind.
00:10:58
Speaker
um and Yeah, it's only 10 more feet than a ah big school bus 50. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, right. There you go So like if you're throwing a school bus at it like granted, I know that's not gonna do anything But like still it yeah you know, you can block his way with a school bus Yeah, right I think that I This far in a show, you know, we have Simmerg is an interesting fight, but short of items, an interesting fight. Uh, we've got crawler, you know, big great this is, we've scaled up, we've scaled up in terms of our threat levels, like overall, you know, we're working towards Taylor's working towards big, more in, you know, nationally, internationally minded endeavors of dealing with the end bringers. I think we scale that up to show by bringing.
00:11:44
Speaker
uh, behemoth to be a bigger creature. Um, I think that having behemoth in the background as they're running and they're essentially like, you know, they're not outpacing it. It's just doing literally the slow crashing through the buildings, shooting the electricity. Like people can't get near it because of the radiation. Like you make its presence the danger more than you maybe make it's Like Leviathan was dangerous because it was willfully like picking up people apart along with the environmental damage it brought. Yeah. Behemoth is just going to be a force, more even more of a force of nature just kind of wandering through.
00:12:28
Speaker
um You know, the same way you would have an earthquake or something. In fact, that's what I would, I would say you do this more like a Godzilla monster movie or, you know, a, uh, any of the disaster movies where all the plates are shifting and you know, cars are falling in, right? I feel like that is going to be more appropriate to the destruction that we want to feel. yeah And I mean, it kind of is, right? I mean, his behemoth's whole this set is is this sort of energy and and and earthquake manipulation, that kind of thing. So it's not outside the realm of plausibility that
00:13:09
Speaker
every time he takes a step, the ground shakes for miles, that kind of thing, right? um it is It is tricky though, because while I agree that in my mind, these creatures were much taller, the fact that they're not is interesting, right? like it yeah it was ah That was a deliberate choice that Wild Bo made to not make them kaijus, you know? yeah yeah And i think there's I think there's an interesting,
00:13:37
Speaker
oh but Because like Godzilla is designed to feel unbeatable from the beginning. like You see Godzilla rising out of the water, marching towards Tokyo, and you were going you know he's it's and ah and analogy it's an analogy for nuclear war. like That's what he was. He was a nuclear bomb. It was just this unbeatable thing.
00:13:59
Speaker
And what I like about the Endbringers is that the heroes don't think they're they're unbeatable. The heroes just think that they haven't figured out how to beat them. right um Spoilers, right we know that they're just these incredibly, incredibly dense pockets of of matter um that our only scion can penetrate. right But like the heroes don't know that. And i think I think having them on the smaller side helps to reinforce that.
00:14:30
Speaker
that like, oh, because he gives the audience the same thing, right? Like, oh man, they're not that big. If Alexandria just hits a little bit harder, if Eidolon just blasts a little bit more, you know, maybe they'll do it. It sort of keeps things within that within that realm of of, oh, they could win, right? As opposed to just running for their lives. It feels like more of a more of a winnable fight, even though it's not.
00:14:58
Speaker
So I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I do think just naturally, I think you're going to make them a little bit taller because again, it's it's not that tall. Yeah. Yeah. It's one of those things where like, Oh, sorry, Michael. Oh no. I was just going to say, I got really deep in the weeds on 50 foot length. So a normal semi-truck is 48 feet long.
00:15:22
Speaker
It's the one that you see on the highway. basically fifty yeah So Um, generally, um, in most apartment buildings, a five story apartment building, it's about 10 feet per floor per floor. Okay. Yeah, generally. And then just for fun, a whale shark is usually around 50 feet long. Just a freaking big shark. That's a big shark. I know I'm scared now. Um, and the Hollywood sign is also 50 feet long. Hmm.
00:15:52
Speaker
the Oh, wait, really? that oh hollywoods Oh, wow. Okay. That is a lot smaller than I anticipated. I did. I thought that thing was huge. Clearly. i've never made there Oh, no, no, no. Sorry. Each letter is 50 feet tall. That's a lot different. I never said that. It's getting edited out. It's fine. Yeah. Michael was never wrong. Yeah. Yeah. um Never been wrong once. Anyways, there you go. Yeah. I do think this is one of those things where if we showed a legit 50-foot creature. and And obviously, this is my preference to show a much, much bigger creature. um And well I'll get into that in a second. But I think this is one of those cases of, and I forget what the effect is called, but if you should owe something ah real that is not that like commonly believed to be that way, people will not believe it. um Oh, it's, yeah. the the um
00:16:50
Speaker
Well, i might it's similar. It might be the Tiffany dilemma. It is the Tiffany effect. to The Tiffany dilemma. so we like that because you know I think about this with some special effects with like fire and water where ah people have accurately portrayed it in the past. But like literally it was not even a ah VFX thing. They shot it and people are like, wow, that fire looks fake. And you're like, right. um Well, I mean, we just filmed fire. Like I don't know what to tell you.
00:17:18
Speaker
Uh, and same with like, uh, a lot of you know guns are never, and they get nothing about guns is accurate. And for like the longest, there's some weird stuff about the sounds of guns and sounds of other things in movies. Like, I mean, the sound of a lion is a really good one. Most lion sounds and movies are tigers. Right. But the big one being the MGM is MGM. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah.
00:17:45
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good point. And I think this is one of those where if we put a 50 foot tall behemoth in, people would go, what the fuck? So small. Yeah, it's hard because you don't there's not a lot like ah like the iron giants 50 feet tall. And obviously in the iron giant, it's he's terrifying at the end of that film, just walking around unstoppable tanks, nothing, nothing's hitting him. But it's a different right. It's a different oh playing field when the tanks are superheroes and things like that. Yeah, um it's tricky. There's not a lot of visual. ah I don't think there's a lot of visual comparison to make.
00:18:25
Speaker
Yeah, ah well, OK, so this is comes into the thematic element of
Taylor's Role in Hope
00:18:30
Speaker
introducing this. And I realize none of this has to do with the script. We will get to the script, which is the whole point of this think in a second. But um arguing about this is important for the theme.
00:18:41
Speaker
um No. So the idea about talking about like, they just haven't figured out how to beat behemoth. I don't think that that's the attitude we should be coming in with this, especially given they could get the phone call while they're at the, the at the taking care of the kids. And they're like, which one is it behemoth? And we've kind of stressed that like one in four on average people, you know, die fighting these things. And behemoth is.
00:19:08
Speaker
as we could establish you know earlier, but I'll say is the hero killer. Like this is the one that has been around. We've lost the most people to like Leviathan's his slippery younger brother. and right This is kind of the real deal. It scales us up from Leviathan where they they have somewhat contingencies to deal with Leviathan.
00:19:32
Speaker
Um, they've gotten better each time, but behemoth is, and they same for simmer, the simmer. We, while dealing with the simmer directly is difficult. We know to contain and you know, we've learned how to kind of deal with the effects of the simmer. We behemoth is, we know what behemoth does. We know what behemoth is about. Behemoth is just unstoppable. Like that's, it shows up and.
00:20:02
Speaker
we haven't figured out what to do. And honestly, the hope of even coming up with something which would fit in with the rest of this, like the rest of the theme of the season of like, ah people are losing hope. They're losing faith in the PRT. People are leaving the PRT cause they don't feel like there's hope. um You know, like they're, they're abandoning ah theyre group yeah like and There's just this this feeling of um not being able to win. This kind of gone through ever since everything came out you know about the cauldron and all of that. So you have a faithless, hopeless group that Taylor is kind of responsible for instigating, but Taylor
00:20:54
Speaker
Is like, well, even if that's true, the best way forward is to join the PRT is to bolster them is to do all this. Like, cause we have to win it's win or die. Like, you know, and it's thinking big picture. And this is the conclusion she's come to. And I think part of that should be, we have never beaten.
00:21:16
Speaker
behemoth, behemoth is larger than life. Behemoth is unstoppable. The hero killer. We are going into this with no real hope of stopping this. This is about evacuating civilians and slowing this guy down. Like this isn't even like Leviathan where, you know, maybe some people can handle it. And by the end of this sequence, they have in fact,
00:21:46
Speaker
done enough damage to behemoth that Sion can finish it off. Like it was still going around. It still would have been able to like get up and moving, but like there clearly was a victory there. And I think, you know, having this be a, like a win, you know, at the end of this,
00:22:15
Speaker
feel really good in the face of all this hopelessness. And to have Taylor go, this is why I joined the PRT. This is why I made this decision. This is what justifies that because in part, she, she enabled that to happen. Um, and yeah I think that also helps her kind of become this even more rallying figure in the heroes for our next and final season. Um,
00:22:44
Speaker
It just kind of earning her place in bigger hero society. If that makes sense. Like on a global scale, like, yeah. Um, so, so yeah, I know it's a lot, but, uh, no, it was good. Just what I'm imagining for coming into this that behemoth isn't, we just haven't figured him out yet. It's behemoth is impossible, but Taylor and yet somehow Taylor, she doesn't find the way obviously, but in a sense, Taylor is there to witness humanity overcoming the impossible. Yeah, I think I do like that. I'm trying to organize all of that um because
00:23:37
Speaker
That's a hard thing to show without just rote exposition into the into the scene, into the dialogue. um And i think i I think I really like that. I think I agree with that a lot. um I think the tricky part is gonna be how do we convey that?
00:24:05
Speaker
ah with enough time to get the audience invested in that moment. I think a couple ways. Number one, I think when we finally do see Behemoth, unlike Leviathan, unlike Simurg, this one is way more, I mean, it's not bipedal, it's not you know humanoid in appearance. It is a lumbering Godzilla looking motherfucker. So beefing it up, like I said, we go 100,
00:24:35
Speaker
you know, 120 feet tall instead of 50. We make this, ah for all intents and purposes, we make this a kaiju. And you go, how do, well, how do we overcome that? How do you, how do you beat something that monstrous? Like this is, especially after having dealt with the previous two end bringers, which have their own issues. This one is dear God, like,
00:25:02
Speaker
for the viewer at least, because like heroes, I've obviously dealt with this before, but the viewer, you see this, you see the scale, like, what literally literally you get there with Taylor and the crew and you guys go along with them, well, what the hell are we supposed to do? You know? So to have that question be on their mind, be, you know, running around, and you know, it's a question Taylor asked herself,
00:25:30
Speaker
when fighting Leviathan, like she's useless. She's useless here too. And yet somehow they there there are things to do. There are small things to do while a bigger battle is happening. And in this case, Taylor, I mean, in both cases, Taylor stumbles across a bigger way to defeat that creature. In one case it's arms mastered. Of course, you know, he becomes arm master due to his own pride.
00:26:00
Speaker
But like that was a plan that maybe, maybe could have worked, you know, uh, you know, it was definitely a plan to be sure. One of the most plans of all time. And then you flip over to fear, see your say, uh, and like, this is a plan. This could also very much not work, but, um, I think, I think, yeah, we'll, we'll get to the, the, the plan.
00:26:30
Speaker
in a little bit, because I think that needs to be changed up a bit. But I think just you beef up the the feeling of the creature being larger, you Uh, use the detector that we, you know, did for Leviathan all the way in season one about tracking end bringers. You make the, like you we, we made the fact with the echidna thing, uh, you know, after that Taylor thinking about like the PRT can't handle another hit. Like the world can't handle and what what's going to, what are we going to do during the next end bringer attack?
Transformation from Villain to Hero
00:27:04
Speaker
And the answer is, um, she needs to bolster the troops. Like.
00:27:11
Speaker
She needs to get in there and prepare this, not because she wants to be a good guy necessarily, like for the sake of, you know, helping the common good. I mean, actually it is kind of that. Like she was a villain because that helped the common good. Like she was protecting her territory. And now she's a hero because in her mind that protects even more people that are her territory, you know, the planet and human beings, like,
00:27:38
Speaker
Sure. Her thinking is just elevating and it is a good maturing process of her thoughts of like in the seasons before we've had her had have to think bigger than herself and have to think about like, what's your five year plan? She's like, fuck, like, I don't know if we're going to make it five years. Like we need to get on this and I need to be part of that. I need more organizing that because I'm good at that. And I know.
00:28:04
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think you could very easily lead up to this. You just, you know, uh, one of the kids at the thing says, don't they call it the hero killer and they early, you know, we we even have her say like one and four and they're like, maybe you even say like one and three, if it's, you know, behemoth. Yeah.
00:28:22
Speaker
Yeah, 104 is Leviathan. So yeah, yeah. he was so ah worse And then they get the call. Like you don't need to say anything. All the kids, you can tell by the look on the kids faces that like, Oh shoot, all these people are, you know, not going to make it like.
00:28:39
Speaker
I also, yeah, I think there's another good contrast where with Leviathan, it was like, hey, you show up. If you consider yourself a hero, or if you're a villain who wants to have any sort of claim to anything, you're gonna show up and defend Brockton Bay, right? Whereas Behemoth, and part of this is the state of the PRT at the moment, but Behemoth is primarily voluntary, aside from the big guns.
00:29:07
Speaker
um And I thought that was an interesting contrast. We're like, but behemoth is like, hey, if you are not able to do anything to this guy, just just stay out of it. If you want to join, you know, you be our guest if you got a death wish, but like it's it's voluntary.
00:29:27
Speaker
And I think that says a lot about how much stronger Behemoth is. I think those are some really good thoughts. I will push back again. And again, we're doing script stuff here. So we'll have to wait for test screenings to see how things look on screen. and I do like the idea of keeping them on the smaller side. I think that's unique to the end bringers that makes them different from Kaiju's and Godzilla and and those all.
00:29:50
Speaker
kind of sea of monsters, but I'm not i'm not firm one way or the other. i just ah It's one of those things I'd want to see sort of like staged out in some like early renders and things like that, um just to kind of see what it looks like. But I think the fact that nothing else exists of their size, I think is is big enough, but ah again, not not beholden to that yeah um yeah entirely.
00:30:15
Speaker
We'll see, we'll see. Test screenings. the um I think the other important thing, the long-term sort of ah ah series, the entire series arc, right? That the end bringers are necessary for is demonstrating Sion's power and capabilities, right? that That he is the apex. Exactly.
00:30:41
Speaker
There's this to ah ah to spoil ah the Mandalorian season two for anyone who is curious. i'll Mute this for the next about 45 seconds. ah ah At the end of season two of the Mandalorian, Mando faces off against one of those like robotic ah ah troopers, I forget what they were called, and struggles. And up to this point, Mandalorian's a badass.
00:31:06
Speaker
fucking kills everything and like is holding on for dear life. yeah You get my drift is holding on for dear life. I guess one of these things. Yeah. Um, and then finally beats it at the end, but it's like, it's a struggle. And then at the end, Luke shows up, does some freaking bad-ass moves and just slaughters all of them. And there's this look in the, in that episode, love that scene. There's this look where the camera pans to Moff Gideon.
00:31:36
Speaker
um And you he just has, Giancarlo Esposito's brilliant, um just has this expression of fear that he's never shown before. And I don't think any of the characters ever seen before.
00:31:51
Speaker
And even though the audience is like rooting and cheering, you get this moment where you understand just how terrifying a Jedi master is for people that need to fear them. Yeah. I imagine it's very akin to the scene of Darth Vader in Rogue One. Right. The hallway scene. Oh yeah. It's that, but with Luke, like it's called, I imagine, cause I haven't seen it, but I imagine it's calling back to that. Like,
00:32:18
Speaker
yeah He's terrifying because he's Darth Vader and obviously he does bad stuff. And you know it's a horror movie of him coming through the hallway. But like, I'm sorry, just replace that with the green lightsaber and make it the good guy. Like it's just as terrifying if you're on the receiving end. And the reason that the reason i use ah yeah the reason I use the Luke example specifically is because they set up just how strong these robot troopers are by making Mando almost loose. Yeah, that's a good example.
00:32:45
Speaker
um And then having Luke come in and dispatch them with ease just separates them tremendously. And I think behemoth does that here as well Leviathan too, but specifically in this case, like they get, they do more damage to behemoth that they say than ever, that has ever been done before. Fear says bolt that could destroy all of India, the entire continent.
00:33:10
Speaker
Does not kill behemoth like they they could not do anything else and then for scion to come down and wipe the floor Really without taking a breath is just this this level this power difference there that's immense. And I think we need to have moments in this in this fight where our heroes like Giancarlo Esposito, right, Moff Gideon, where they are just, they're in awe, they're thankful, but they're also just terrified.
00:33:43
Speaker
And we get that there's just this godlike terror that Sion emanates. Yeah. That is ultimately obviously setting up for our grand finale, you know, and I think we need to highlight that. Yeah. It makes me think about the, the scaling, how we essentially are leapfrogging Uh, a lot of the scaling and it makes me think this through the whole season. So at the beginning, you know, you have people like arms master and long, and oh, I don't think they're a great comparison because we are constantly hurtling them. Ultimately, we get to Leviathan and they are. Outclassed like even arms master who gets close and you know, this is all approximate to Taylor, like Taylor has beat long and lungs, you know, loses talk.
00:34:35
Speaker
Leviathan Taylor has beat arms. Master arms. Master gets close, but still loses to Leviathan so that we understand. lo And Leviathan is not really phased that like, right? Taylor, you know, got close to losing with those guys. Taylor knows instantly that this is not like, this is not a fight. She's even going to go close to winning. So.
00:35:05
Speaker
Uh, you know, that's, that's your power scale, you know, that Leviathan has hurtled arms master along. We've set the where, where we're at, but at the end, scion and.
00:35:19
Speaker
Legend and Ilan or whoever shows up and they, you know, they're knocking them around. And at this point in time, Sion kind of makes it look like, like they're all, all three of them are beating up on him. Almost equally is what it feels like. They're like blowing him and laser beaming him and extra laser beaming him. Like it feels like an almost equal effort with Sion leading the charge, if you will. easy So we don't get a standout feature from Sion.
00:35:49
Speaker
But then we have legend hang around. It's perfect. We've seen legends power. You know, we know that he can, in fact, you know, knock Leviathan around. He's helped drive Leviathan back. So he's our new power ceiling, if you will. Um, and then we have the slaughterhouse nine come in and I, you know, in retrospect, maybe them getting the better of legend a little bit. Uh, you know, not a terrible, like not a terrible thing to show that, you know, they get a little bit of the better of him. Uh, cause bone saw, honestly, uh, no, having him go up against Siberian would be a really good to show our power level. Um, cause bone saw obviously is a pretty high bar and crawler and Siberian. And then everybody else is kind of,
00:36:38
Speaker
Honestly, in terms of the power ceiling, not even close. Um, yeah. So we now have, you know, bone cells run away. So we don't worry about her. So it means, you know, they're still in the hunt for Siberian. So we've got that, but we now, we now have kind of reinforced that legend is very strong by the end of this, maybe helping defeat all of that. And then we bring in legends, uh, you know, companion of, Oh,
00:37:07
Speaker
Well, we bring in a kidney and a kidney essentially dry, you know, pulls in Alexandria, which is important because a kid that we realize is, you know, more dangerous than like crawler or so-and-so, you know, that we, in fact, we've hinted at this. Like if she gets out, everyone loses. So we know that she's like somehow more powerful maybe than the slaughterhouse sign.
00:37:34
Speaker
ah So she's our new power ceiling, though we don't know why. She gets there, she has her clones, you know, they fight each other. ah She's the power ceiling, but in the end, like, Alexandria does a decent job of showing off her power while fighting Echidna. I don't necessarily think that she hurtles her, but she does show after Echidna's death that she is kind of the next ceiling. The ceiling drops after Echidna,
00:38:03
Speaker
and lands on Alexandria. Um, cause we've seen how strong and how you know powerful she is, which leads right into Alexandria being the antagonist. We know how powerful she is and we know we should be fucking worried because as soon as she walks in the room, like we've talked about, you should feel like it's Homelander being in the room with you. Like right all they have to do is, you know,
00:38:26
Speaker
Flip like they could off-handedly brush your shoulder and or you know They do the hand on the shoulder like how's it going champ? She could put her hand through you like just crumple you like a tin can and it would be nothing to break your bones um and we know this because of the last fight and Taylor ultimately kills her that's that's the new ceiling kind of you know and then we get to Behemoth who is this Ceiling that we've talked about like other like Behemoth has you know is the reason that Alexandria is missing an eye, you know Mm-hmm. I'll be honest. I forgot if those that was that or the I think it's a Siberian I think is yeah, that's what got her right but like, you know But but she has been in a fight with the behemoth with behemoth before you know, it's the hero killer like it's
00:39:24
Speaker
you know, it's this big bad and we know that they haven't been able to do as much damage. So it is the new ceiling. And then we come in and Sion beats it. Thus establishing Sion as the new ceiling and as we'll find out the final ceiling sort of. who um So I think all of that long tangent just to go, there's a good escalation of power and showing who the new big bad is, showing where the power is, showing the levels that we need to meet at, and then through beating them, showing essentially who the next antagonist is and what their skillset is. Like there is a very good progression there. And with just some minor tweaking, you really can set up every person you fight
00:40:16
Speaker
to lead into the next person you fight without having to introduce them or their power level. Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah, no, that's ah that's a good kind of breakdown analysis of the fights, I think. um I really like the idea of of kind of setting up and leading into like the next kind of conflict, if you will. um I think the one thing to avoid there is you don't want to get boring and predictable where you kind of run into, and again, there's a phrase for this and I can't remember what it is, but it's more it's more of a comic book phrase.
00:40:59
Speaker
um We're basically, ah it's like, it's essentially like power, like power creeping, right? I was a about to say power creep is what I was thinking. Yeah. I think there's, I feel like there's another term for it specifically to like writing it out. Um, but where you write a, you write a conflict and then you want to keep going with the story. So I guess you got to write a bigger conflict and then I guess you got to write a bigger conflict. And like for, you know, at bad man's punching God in the face, you know, it's just like, okay. Yeah. I mean, to be fair, that is what is happening here. That is.
00:41:31
Speaker
It is, but but also kind of ah kind of not because the conflicts are, well, yes, there is a bit of ah a power so ah power creep in terms of scale. It's also very much a different type of conflict every time. Like the Slaughterhouse-9, Bonesaw in particular, and the Miasma, ah very, very different conflict than Leviathan. Very, very different conflict than the Simurg. Very different conflict than in Kidna.
00:41:59
Speaker
Very different conflict in Alexandria, Behemoth, Sion, the list goes on. All the conflicts are are very, coil, right? Very, very different types of conflict, which I think is great. It keeps everything where it's not just, you know, got to punch harder next time. um Yeah. But as as long as you're highlighting more the the creep of, I think rather than power, it's like threat, right?
00:42:25
Speaker
um it's It's why is this threat more severe? Why does this need to be addressed right now? Why does Taylor have to go do this and tackle this threat? And and the the behind the scenes thing that you're hinting at there is because she is becoming and getting more prominent, right? She is she is approaching as she's sort of climbing the the hierarchy, if you will, of parahumans in worm, it's demands that she tackles bigger and more complex threats. But it's not simply just like which one, they're just increasing in strength every time. It's it's threat and the need to address that threat.
00:43:07
Speaker
yeah
00:43:09
Speaker
I'm kind of just being a little nitpicky there, because I think what you're saying is is accurate. It's just sort of making sure we avoid the um ah sort of I think it's really boring. like I'll give a good example. again I really enjoyed the first season of first scene of Invincible. um I think Invincible is a lot of fun. I think my biggest criticism of invent ever of Invincible is that it just power creeps. Just straight power creeps and he's got to punch harder and harder until he beats the thing.
00:43:35
Speaker
And it's fine because I think invincible strengths are not in the like combat scenes. I think the rest of the, rest of the characters in the show is the is the show strength. So they can kind of get away with that, but it is kind of boring to watch after a while. They're just, he's just hitting them harder and it's a boring power, right? Skitters got a way more interesting power, but like you want to just avoid that, you know?
00:44:02
Speaker
Yeah. as best point Good point. I think also you're after the fact, and you know, and, you know, what I don't know how much this plays into it, but ah we'll just speculate. But, you know, you do your Marvel.
00:44:18
Speaker
Starting with a man building in a suit and in the woods or in a cave. I mean, and you know, a man with a, you know, some super soldier serum who basically just makes them an Olympian or should with a shield, you know, you've got also in the Norse God and you know what, but eventually, you know, they're, they're fighting aliens, they're fighting more, you know, bigger threats, they're fighting robots. And then ultimately they're facing a God essentially. like And then, and then what where do you go from there?
00:44:48
Speaker
Like, right and the answer is, uh, kind of nowhere. Like it, it yeah once you've reached that level, there is the Marvel fatigue as they call it, but yeah and and we could argue about quality of movies, but the real difficulty thing is just getting people on board for another one of those escalations after you've reached the top. Like, how do you start over but ah in the neighborhood when you just, you know, fought in the galaxy?
00:45:17
Speaker
And absolutely ah I do wonder now that I think about it, if that was true, whether people realize it or not for the sequel series ward.
Storytelling Challenges
00:45:30
Speaker
um and And I'm not going into any specifics here whatsoever, but the end of this, as we know, ends in essentially a galaxy shattering event.
00:45:45
Speaker
How do you go back to the neighborhood watch and like creep back up now? Personally, I think there's a ah relatively good job of like varying things up while still starting over similarly.
00:46:08
Speaker
But I get it. Like I absolutely if if I think about it in terms of like how I felt about the Marvel movies, I was like, that was a satisfying conclusion. um Now I'm not really excited for any of the other Marvel properties coming out. um ah You know, not that they were good or bad necessarily. I didn't even have to watch them to make the call of like, I'm just kind of like that was a really good finale. I'm yeah kind of done. yeah And anything we do after that is going to like, I just don't care. And it's, once again, it's not, it's not that like the movies, i I'm not, I'm not talking nothing about the quality of the movies. I'm not saying positive or negative. I just like, even if it was good, I'm just like, kinda, why should I care? And I wonder if, uh, you know, not that that's going to affect worm as a show, it would just affect anything following that.
00:47:03
Speaker
I mean, I'll just, just to validate you, I mean, i and I am excited to read Ward once we get to it. um comment i haven't I haven't read it, um but a hundred percent, that's why I didn't. That's why I that's why i didn't go right into Ward. I loved the ending of Worm. I was super satisfied. Everything concluded ah perfectly for me. The thought of now, and because I did start Ward, like I read the first couple of chapters and I was like,
00:47:28
Speaker
I was fatigued. I was like, wait, ah the the story was good. and It doesn't need to continue. um And now that was years ago, I again, I am excited to go back and read it at this point, but a hundred percent. I think that is a very, very well worded ah ah sort of observation there. um Yeah. MCU is a big one. I mean, imagine any other property that does that, right? Imagine like we get, imagine like, you know, 10 years after He wrote Lord of the Rings. Tolkien just put out a book like, and Aragorn fights off bandits in Gondor. be you know but yeah I mean, you have, you we already have that for a ton of other franchises and it never feels good. You're just like, Oh yay. The, you know, the hero who is now the King or the chosen one and has all the powers has to fight. What? Um,
00:48:21
Speaker
um Honestly, the only one that I can think of that kind of keeps a consistent level of powers, except for the fourth movie, which I haven't seen, um, is the Kung Fu Panda movies.
00:48:37
Speaker
oh Like funny. Yeah, that's true. I mean, he learns in the first one, but then yeah, it kind of stays the same power. Well, the thing is he still, he learns something else.
00:48:50
Speaker
in the second one and in the third one, all of which lead to being able to defeat the bad guy. But in terms of the honest to God power levels, like, yeah, there are a tie lung could have fought against, I forget Gary Oldman's peacock character, but bridge're right like they could have fought together and that, but that could have gone either way, you know?
00:49:15
Speaker
Same with the villain and the third one, whose name I can't remember. Like all three of those guys are on the same tier, but you're not getting warmonger to fight against Thanos and that be easy in any way, shape or form. You're exactly. Exactly. Um, so it just makes me interested in other movies that keep ah That's sort of, that's a good but sort of evenness. Which I mean, and I think part of that too is like, it's it's kind of a, it's a good thing. It's proof that when a story ends well and fans are happy, like it's hard to want to leave that, but you did good. Like, good job writer. Give yourself a pat on the back. Good job, Wild Bo. You know, like when you tell a good story, good.
Adapting Worm: Challenges and Opportunities
00:50:00
Speaker
Like that's that's that's the that's the goal and you know,
00:50:04
Speaker
Yeah. We, we got a little bit of a tangent there, but all that to say, well, I was going to say, I think this is important because it also comes back to adapting worm, which is what this is about is like the adaptation of worm is going to be at best treated like ward, which as far as I'm concerned is a 50 50 split among amongst the community, positive negative, um, to varying degrees of positive negativity, whatever, but it's like a strict 50 50 in my mind.
00:50:33
Speaker
uh, just the vibing it out. And I think that would how like an adaptation, even at its best is going to be essentially treated like ward. If the adaptation is in a sense, a sequel of media mediums, I forget the difference right now. It's late. Um, it's a difference of mediums as a sequel of mediums, but not of, you know, the narrative. Right. So,
00:50:59
Speaker
No matter what you do, it's always going to get compared back to the original. sure Ward was never allowed to succeed for how interesting its story and characters and yada yada was completely separate from worm because it just couldn't like yeah the reason everybody who's reading Ward has read worm.
00:51:29
Speaker
It is a ah sequel series ah yeah like to the universe. Um, personally, I don't, I'm trying to think if somebody read ward, how they would, if they would be able to navigate it. And I think they would sans, you know,
00:51:50
Speaker
If they sans reading worm, I think you'd be able to do fine reading that and picking up on context, how things are. I think that would actually be an interesting way to read ward. Um, and I wonder if anybody has, if it shout out anybody who's read ward and then read went back and read worm, how was your experience? Cause I think that would be funny. I think that would actually make, I think that would be a better way to read it maybe.
00:52:21
Speaker
That'd be interesting because you essentially get a world that's established and then you go back and essentially get a prequel that leads up to how that world was formed. Like through a so series of events, knowing what the end is, even though it's treated very interesting and ward and almost none of the events are talked about.
00:52:49
Speaker
So like, you could absolutely get away with it and have all of worm be a, oh my gosh, it's that character. Oh my gosh, it's that character. Like, yeah, you know, i mean that's how, that's how prequels thrive is on. Yeah. Huh. It's unfamiliarity. Yeah. I, now that I think about that, I think Ward would have done really, really well if it was done in reverse. It's interesting thought for sure.
00:53:19
Speaker
Anyway, there's a lot of rambling about not this arc. yeah i I'm having fun with it. Yeah, I mean, I think at the end of the day, this is an action arc, um regardless of how long it takes.
00:53:31
Speaker
I think you could have a lot of fun fleshing out the whole arc. I think you could cut to other characters. I think you can cut to Arms Master and Dragon. I think you can cut to Chevalier. I think you can cut to, um you know, Fiercei. You can cut to the Yangban. So there's so much going on here and it feels like such an in-the-trenches battle. I think you could stretch this arc into two episodes of pure action.
00:53:55
Speaker
oh yeah um i think I think you get too full, especially because so much of the arc, there's like a lot of downtime, right? Like behemoths across the city. So your characters get a chance to breathe and regroup while the fight's going on. Like it's very war film-esque in that way. Oh, I was i mean, I'm back to the Saving Private Ryan. Yeah, right. from ah Exactly. um but So I think I think you stretch this out a good bit. um I think we'll obviously, like you said, I think we'll probably argue a bit on ah where to place the seat, like the final moments. He's a finale, maybe into the arc 25. I got to reread it. We'll find out. yeah But this is definitely, I think, the climactic battle of the season, for sure. Yeah, ah yeah not a lot to say on the arc itself, just because
00:54:45
Speaker
It's a fight. And that'll that'll get fleshed out when we're talking with second unit directors and stunt coordinators and and all those kinds of things, you know? Yeah. um Writers don't have a have a role in that. Yeah. So let's let's talk let's talk changes. that Are there any changes that you would like to make to this arc?
00:55:06
Speaker
The only ah change, which, I mean, it is a change, but but how big? Who's to say? um I do think you just flip the importance and order of the Chevalier and Taylor slash Fierce a fight where you just, you give Taylor the final hit before Sion arrives rather than Chevalier. So,
00:55:34
Speaker
the way I was envisioning it just as kind of spitball it is. Everything's playing out the same way, but Taylor and Fierce need an extra moment. They're worried, they're not gonna be able to prep enough, Behemoth's coming, and Chevalier steps out to buy them some time. And Chevalier gets his moments, just as the interlude gives it to him, has all of that go down, he buys just enough time, barely survives, and then bam, now Taylor and them are ready. They hit him with the giant beam.
00:56:06
Speaker
And then in the smoky skeletal remains of behemoths still standing, they're out of options. Sion arrives, you know, just kind of, just kind of restructuring the order there. Yeah. Just to give Taylor the spotlight in that moment rather than Chevalier. Yeah. I think, I think more sad i like that i think also at this point you You call upon golem again, and with Taylor, cause we want to lead in Taylor, essentially coaching golem. I think I don't want to make him weaker, but.
00:56:43
Speaker
a little less sure of his powers and having Taylor having to coach him more than other people. Cause maybe he, maybe he triggered more recently too. Like, so like, can you go bigger? And he's like, I can't go bigger. You know, and we've, we've shown earlier, yeah like, you know, him doing some stuff, but maybe that's other people. And then like having, I need you to go bigger. I need you to hold, you know, behemoth down. I need you to do more hands, something like that.
00:57:07
Speaker
I've never done two hands at once. Like, yeah right you know, and Taylor, like, you know, literally doing the the shoulder massage, get in there champ. You can do it. Like I believe in you and get in there and you're know anymore. Come on. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Um, and so, so Uh, I think having her cool, you know, do the whole coordination of the, uh, lightning rod thing, essentially, again, if we, you know, have that be their constructive moment to show that like they can work together and then have them do some other thing where they are building this. Contraction to antlion pit slash hold him there.
00:57:50
Speaker
down so that the portal can happen. So it can blast them out. And of course they need all that time to build up to that with Chevalier, you know, assisting them. Right. But yeah Taylor being the one to coordinate all that for the big thing, including her coordination. I think that we make the fear see the thing pretty easy where he's just like, I got to blow this thing up. I'm going to do it. And she's like, I don't know if it's going to work.
00:58:14
Speaker
Like I said in the other podcast, I don't know if it's going to work, but like, if you're going to blow it up, like, and you're going to go for it, give me time to get everybody out of the fucking way.
00:58:25
Speaker
Like, right give me time. He's like, I've got to, you know, you could say something like this. I've got to shoot it horizontally. Otherwise he'll dodge it. You know, is it going to take out everything in that line? Sure. She's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. What if I got you to shoot it up out of the ground below him? And he's like, nah, he moves too much. And you go, okay, well, what if we can hold him there? Right. And then he's like, I mean, I'd have to be putting my faith in you to do that. And she's like,
00:58:55
Speaker
I'm a cash a again, all my faith tokens. Give them to me.
Character Arcs and Interactions
00:58:59
Speaker
yeah ah ah right and And that's, that's the conversation there that we have. yeah Yeah. Not the whole thing, but you know, the end of that where she's like running out. She's like, just give me, give me five, give me 15 minutes. Yeah. Yeah. He's like, not a second more. Yeah.
00:59:15
Speaker
You know, and we've got this countdown thing and she's, you know, I get out of there, you know, hold him, hold him. And then the, you know, the lights opening up underneath and then just the giant beam comes out.
00:59:29
Speaker
the sudden elation of like, oh, we did it, you know, and then the molten corpse starts crawling out of the, you know, the ant lion pit that they made. And they're like, oh shoot, you know, terminator style. And then of course, Sion like slowly descends and everybody's like feeling better and but it rips its head off. Yeah. ah um Yeah. Yeah, beautiful. ah One other, um not changed to this arc but in particular, but something I i think is worth mentioning.
00:59:57
Speaker
um I think it'd be really good throughout the season up to this point that we give ah Regent a few more moments just so that when we get to his death, it is a bit more impactful. um Just give him a few lines here and there, give him a final moment with Taylor, little things like that that just sort of seed a bit more spotlight um so that ah ah his death is a little bit, just stings a little bit more.
01:00:25
Speaker
Yeah. I was going to say, uh, that we don't have them appear at the beginning cause they essentially start off this fight by going, let's follow the undersiders and, you know, get both them. I think we should just run into the undersiders because remember we said they're not supposed to be in contact with each other. So like we just run into the undersiders naturally on the battlefield. And from there it's a,
01:00:54
Speaker
Oh, hey, you know, somebody notches them. Like, who's that? And it's like, that's our old team of villains, you dumbass. Wow. That's the undersiders. Like, you know, they don't, they look taller on TV. Um, and, and that's where they meet up. They like, what are you doing? I'm trying to do this. Where's tattletale? Yada, yada, yada. And then they go ahead. They team up for a little bit. We have Regent being like, man, like you're such a goober when you left, yada, yada.
01:01:24
Speaker
all this heartfelt goofy stuff with him and the other people that are there. And then of course to have to lose him closer to the end of the fight rather than the middle. yeah Oh yeah. Yeah. 100%. Well, okay. I mean, if this is a two episode thing, he dies at the end of the first episode. Um, you know, that's like where he'd be placed, I think.
01:01:54
Speaker
uh, kind of gives, gives a bit of weight. If you're splitting the fight into two episodes, that's the kind of thing you would end the first episode with to sort of raise the stakes for the second episode, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Um, I don't know.
01:02:17
Speaker
I question whether I want the Chicago wards with Taylor the whole time or whether I want her to just split off with the, two tinkers to go deal with fear. See, um, like it feels a little bit odd to be with them and then dip out. I think maybe we just, uh, Tekton here's the easy one. Tekton not only has the ability to affect the ground and the plates and stuff like that, but also can like essentially is like a tensiometer. We can feel the, the tunnels beneath. So it was like, Oh,
01:02:53
Speaker
Fuck like, yeah, there's a tunnel system here. Like I, you know, does the, like puts the puts his gauntlet in the ground, but not trying to shatter it, like sticks it in the ground. It's like, Oh yeah, fuck. Like using my seismic reader, ah there are fucking tunnels everywhere. And like, okay, well he's facing that way. And then, you know, he's, you know, hitting me. He's like, Oh yeah, there's a you know tunnel. ah You know, it comes up to the surface here.
01:03:18
Speaker
And you know, Oh, there's the wall. And then instead of the dust guy doing a tech and just punches it, like, I feel like you could use our powered people to locate fear sea and ultimately, uh, have them deal with like the teleporter holds them hostage and Taylor has to talk them down rather than the teleporter killing the one dude and like teleporting the other dude away. Um, they still get to fight.
01:03:48
Speaker
uh, Contessa, you know, on the way. Uh, I just think we, you know, as, as much as I love those two characters, I think we just nix them in favor of, uh, and if we need to add one of them to help them, then we just add them to the team. Like, Oh, I've got a reader, you know, the dust anchor, I've got a reader that can point us that direction. So right yeah just take it and go. yeah Um, but that way we keep the group consistent.
01:04:15
Speaker
We keep, I mean, almost everything else can interact pretty much the same way. And then we have maybe that adventure be finding, you know, doing all the things to find out that like Leviathan kills region and is heading somewhere, uh, is the end of the first episode. Second episode is them hunting down what fear sea is doing.
01:04:46
Speaker
And then, you know, tying up Behemoth to destroy him. Yeah. Yeah. ah I like it. No, I think that i think how that works. Yeah. um Things I would get rid of. ah Get rid of the Chevalier backstory. Yeah. We don't, we don't really need the backstory too much. Obviously he needs to be in the, in this episode. Yeah. episodes Yeah. ah yeah i I like it. ah this may be not This maybe shouldn't be the time for her.
01:05:22
Speaker
exposition, even if it's a cold open, I think it's not right here. i don't I don't think it fits at all. And again, I think we mentioned this briefly in the ah Brockton Bay book club, but obviously the little bit of backstory here is just perfect for a nice little spinoff. If you wanted to do a spinoff series, unlike the first words, right? With yeah all the first words is the name of the spinoff yeah first words yeah yeah Exactly. um no yeah save all that save the Save any of that type of backstory. um I've even thought about that just a little tangent going back even to like clips of ah of ah fighting Siberian and stuff like that. um
01:06:05
Speaker
Some of that can stay, but I like the idea of kind of nixing a lot of that stuff in favor of, you know, potentially, I think, ah I think it would be a really fun spinoff show to do like the early PRT or first words, hero, yeah so you know, all that kind of stuff, but they'd be fun. So yeah, I do bet it's in the eighties. Cause you could set it in the seventies. That'd be even better. I mean, why not do it anyway. Yeah. Who cares? The timeline is ours to command. yeah They showed up just 10 years earlier.
01:06:35
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. With bell bottoms. Man. um
01:06:45
Speaker
Yeah. ah as As always, I forget if this is in this one or the last one, we have a strict fuck Cody policy. ah So he doesn't even get mentioned. His ass gets canned. I'm glad you brought that up because that because Cody's come up a couple of times on some Reddit comments.
01:07:02
Speaker
um So yeah, just to kind of quickly highlight again, ah we're pretty much in agreement here, but I understand the pushback. So just to push back against the pushback, um the issue is not so much in reading this, even though I do think Cody's involvement is still a little jarring, even reading it. The issue is, is that visually audiences have concluded the travelers arc ah and Cody hasn't been a part of that arc.
01:07:33
Speaker
except for the flashback. um So to then now jump, mind you, a season later at the end of the next season to have him show up just to off a minor character.
01:07:50
Speaker
and and do nothing else is is just come so out of place. ah Even if we wanted to up his involvement to maybe being more of a threat or offering a major care or something like that, it's still, it's very out of place. It's just gonna throw audiences for a huge loop, unless you were doing an entire like C-plot this season of Cody with the Yangban, which I don't think anybody really wants that. so Now, if I'm wrong, let me know in the comments. I mean, does everybody want an arc with Cody and the young bond? Um, yeah, it just, it just doesn't fit like that. I like his power. I think he's cool. I think he's a little interesting character, but, uh, but it's just, yeah, he doesn't really, he just doesn't fit in. Sorry, Cody. All right. Are the Cody fans? Yeah. I think most of the interludes just need to go here. Uh, the afterwards, a lot of the inner ludes, I think here also get kicked. Um,
01:08:51
Speaker
Like, you know, they're just so disjointed and they don't have any lead up to them. yeah I think, I think this is the type of stuff you could kind of rewrite and and place later, but I, yeah, but I agree. Yeah. It's a little, little disjointed immediately following everything. Like I, yeah, I like, even the one thing that I would consider keeping here is Taylor's confrontation with Glenn.
01:09:21
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's probably the strongest element. i think And I think that is like an opener that like the image of him, like, here's what you do. It's the celebration after behemoth, yada, yada, yada, but it's from Taylor's body cam. And we zoom out to show that it's him watching it on the computer late at night in the office. Right? Yeah. And him like sending it.
01:09:51
Speaker
Yeah, something like that. Walking away. I do you like that. And that's the end of the season. Like that's our after credits and the season. Um, and then the next, the next season would start with, Hey, here's a, you know, Taylor, you're in big trouble with the PRT. And I think part of what would be interesting to show is that the Chicago wards are backing her up with all the decisions that she made.
01:10:22
Speaker
um And what she chose to do and the fact that they put her in power. Tecton is actually standing by his decision to put her in charge. And they are... that She has essentially done what the PRT feared most, which was she came over and converted the first group of heroes she was hanging out with to her side.
01:10:43
Speaker
Right. Like in their mind, she is that, you know, that toxic or whatever you want to call it. Like she is that manipulative. Yeah. And maybe that is the level one thinker, you know, or the level one master that she's got going on. Whatever. Yeah. Yeah. You know, but, and then that's what they're thinking. And the truth is she just makes a really good point. She's good at her job. Yeah. And, uh, yeah.
01:11:13
Speaker
And then, yeah, and we can talk about what the theming of the next season is, but I think I feel like we could lead that into some other stuff and like, yeah, like this is the, you know, Taylor's right. There needs to be an overhaul. Oh, look, some people listened to her finally, and they agree with her. Like this is what would have happened if clock blocker and her sat down for 10 minutes.
01:11:36
Speaker
or maybe not 10 minutes, but sat down for a couple hours. Like I think by the end of that, you could, like one of them could have convinced the other to join each other's team. right um I think it was just a matter of literal time. Like she already did it to Flechette and everybody was pissed about that. yeah And she didn't even have to try that hard with that. So like it is once again, what the PRT has feared the most and they're defending her. like Yeah, yeah. So at best we have that part and we have all the competition with Glenn, I'll be part of a next season. Yeah, we'll see. I want to read, I want to read our 20 25 and sort of and try to figure out where to place the, uh, the kind of final moments of the season and and launch the next season. So I think, I think our 25 will be fun. We'll probably go through that fully and then probably do a season four recap after that, I think.
01:12:36
Speaker
um just so that we have time to sort of think about everything, process it, sort of sort of plan it out, space it out. And- Yeah, I mean, we could maybe make the decision, you know, cause we are recording this ahead of time, make the decision whether it makes it in or not. And then we'll record the season four recording, a recap recording. You know, that actually, that makes a lot of sense. Strike all this, you're gonna you're goingnna get the season four recap when you get it. And you're gonna like it. Yeah. and so That's all I got.
01:13:04
Speaker
Yeah. I have some retrospective thoughts because as of now we are, you know, we, we, you know, we are recording. What is this? 24, 25, 24, 24, 24. This is 24. Uh, I believe arc 19 has currently aired at the time of this recording. Yeah. Yes. So,
01:13:28
Speaker
My, uh, my, an interesting thing is as I'm listening to over, cause I listened to those like twice, uh, every time they come out. Um, and obviously there's some things where I'm like, man, I better say this as a follow-up. Cause if I don't, I'm about to slap past me. And then I say it, I'm like, thank goodness. Um, and there are some things I was like, man, what was I on? You know, cause we, I know we changed that later on. I hope we changed that later on. Um, and seeing my thoughts here, but.
01:13:57
Speaker
In retrospect, I have some thoughts that we've talked about that I have more established now. So things I agreed with, but I just didn't have. Uh, so, um, one of which is just the idea potentially of condensing Eidolon and arms master, uh, into like maybe having one more villainous hero.
01:14:22
Speaker
Uh, uh, some sort of like, either we condense them all into one person so that arms master is a more consistent. Well, like I said, we call them arms faster or or we do it. I don't want, we literally merge the characters together with a lot of the same, like I still think the dragon plot line's good, but.
01:14:41
Speaker
We maybe make that more of a consistent arc that is present through the whole thing. That is a genuine struggle that we witnessed rather than like all of a sudden he's being called a bad guy and all of a sudden he's repentant because him and dragon hang out a lot. Like as much as there is an arc for him, I don't feel like we see the work that leads to that. If that makes sense.
01:15:04
Speaker
Yeah, there's been some good, we've had some good comments recently. I think like last week, we last week, is it sleepy stapler? Cause I haven't, I saw that I was like sleepy stapler. Yeah. Sleepy stapler gives good, good, good stuff. And I, and I want to take the time to read it. I skimmed over it and I'm like, I need to dedicate thought to this and then come back and think about it again before I respond. that is Yeah. Always, is which, you know, yeah the best way to get our attention with those for sure is to join our Patreon.
01:15:33
Speaker
and to chat in our Discord channel with us because ah there you can directly call us out with ah our our own voices on our soundboard and other things. you Chat with us live. Yeah, chat. you can you know Live chat and yeah tell us what we did wrong and brainstorm with us.
01:15:54
Speaker
um yeah Oh yeah, on that note, not to kind of just cut you off, but I do want to, um ah we I think it it would behoove us once we're done with the full series to go back over a couple episodes and do some sort of like revisiting ideas. There's been a lot of really good comments, ideas that we didn't really think about or overlooked.
01:16:13
Speaker
things like you said, we're just even kind of listening it to ourselves. Again, this is ah unscripted first thoughts, like day one storyboard session ideas that we're throwing out here. So we're gonna have a we like we've talked about like, oh, well, that was kind of a bad idea. Let's worry like and let's revisit that. So there's gonna be lots of moments like that. I definitely think um Save saves. I would have saying is save some of your good thoughts that you have right now for those episodes. Because I do. I really want to go back and like and highlight things that we want to re re kind of go over. Yeah. Well, I got to get this. I got to get this out now. I've got to. OK, i've got two okay go for it. Go for it. So the other one is that we we fix the like once again, speaking with villainous heroes, we got to fix legend or murder or whatnot. So there's one I think
01:17:01
Speaker
You know, arms masters are villainous hero season one, season two slaughterhouse nine. We have legend or whoever. We'll just say legend for now. We condense. Of course, legend is welds mentor. He was the head of the Chicago wards are not ah the Chicago PRT Boston Austin boy. You know what?
01:17:25
Speaker
Sure. Well, as a Boston accent, well, I will never forgive him for that. Um, he's a monster, not because he's made of metal, but because of that accent. Uh, so, uh, we, we condensed that. So like this is, and I, here's why I think, well, this needs to be like,
01:17:49
Speaker
Legend needs to be welds mentor slash hero or somebody because he's accepted him for being a monster legend is also super guilty of Kind of the reason he's a monster and feels that Like so this is partly like he's taking weld under his wing because he's genuinely a good kid That's good at his job And he wants to nurture that, but also because he feels bad because he's the reason that he's like this. Yeah. Um, and like so there's this, we, I love the dynamic that that would play between them on top of this legend would be a great candidate because of his personality and how guilty feels like this. We go into the echidna fight where everything comes out.
01:18:34
Speaker
You know, he essentially has to face weld and say oh I do we did this for the right thing, you know And he's like you knew this the whole time yada yada disappoints he gets outed gets, you know disappoints weld But then I think that legend should die fighting a kid What? Nope. Sorry. I'm gonna stop you right there. I Cannot buy the follow up follow up. I After the echidna fight What does legend do ah Legend has my literal favorite moment in the entire series. Thank you very much which is fighting ah It's whichever one it's bohu or tohu or or no. Oh, it's a Kansu forget which one it is who has the time bubbles yeah Legend gets frozen in the time bubble and
01:19:30
Speaker
and flies so fast in his energy state that he survives the time bubble, which they estimate was him essentially living for like millions of years through the time bubble ah in his energy state and then ah and then popping out of it because he survived long enough.
01:19:50
Speaker
ah ah That is the coolest feat in the entire series, in my opinion. and it's better Because they all think he's dead. where he sick Because from the outside, because I forget. But they see him moving towards the edge. They see him moving and they see the light of him lighting up. And they see him just basically rapidly moving. like as if because yeah Because they do talk about how he's like he thinks that he may be equipped for space travel, that that's like his yeah power. that's his That's what they think. um Because he can is the fastest, correct me if I'm wrong, but Legend is the fastest moving cape
01:20:21
Speaker
that we know of that we know of, like, cause he can just, he doesn't have a, uh, for lack of better term, a terminal velocity. yeah Like he doesn't have a top speed. He gets faster and faster and faster, but most of the time, like it's like a train, like it takes time to warm up and you know, by the time you reach a certain speed, you're already where you need to on earth. So and hints yeah, he hints to it in his interlude, I think where he's, he basically theorizes. He was like, I bet I, this is, I was designed for, I bet he didn't not design, but cause he doesn't know what he is, but he's like, I bet I could just travel the galaxy. Cause he can tell that the faster he goes, the more he slips into that sort of subconscious
01:21:03
Speaker
Energy state. Yeah, where he yeah, like you said subconscious so he can just he's not even conscious. Like you said, I'm unconscious for the whole millions of years. He's just exactly and I'm out. Yeah. But everyone's like, oh, no, they got legend. Oh, he's dead. because And then and then he's i like, oh, it's just such a great moment. So very cool.
01:21:21
Speaker
um Plot wise, I still I still really enjoy my idea. So I enjoy your idea. It's wrong. i do i You know, I yeah get it. Like I said, you know, there's other characters that we could do this with, you know, you could do this with murder and and just make, you know, ah legend, you know, the other character. I mean, yeah, I just I think that would be a good moment where once again we have consequences for actions and legend is
01:21:53
Speaker
Uh, yeah, legend is in my mind, a little bit of, unless we're going to keep him around. Cause once again, we, we keep Alexandria around and I think there'd be a good villainous torch handing. If that makes sense. Like he ultimately goes out a good guy when he was sort of villainous, but he hands the evil off to Alexandria is right there.
01:22:18
Speaker
I mean, i don't get me wrong, I do love kind of playing around with those ideas, because I think it's a a lot of fun to kind of think about, you know, yeah thematically what you're going for. I'm against um'm against killing characters out of turn, if you'd say, ah when you're adapting works, when they're not needed, um but simply for the, this is a Jacob, but reasoning.
Character Deaths and Sacrifices
01:22:45
Speaker
um I'm just really against killing characters. I think death is a really poor,
01:22:51
Speaker
ah ah that's what I'm thinking of, like um character moment. um outside of when that death is directly related to ah the arc or growth of another character. So yeah um Ned Stark, season one Game of Thrones, ah that death, that character death, essentially launches the plot of the show, right? Oh, 100%. It's very important, right? You need that death.
01:23:23
Speaker
um I, I really don't like character death. I think it's a bit of a cop out. I think it's way more interesting when you're read the result, you have to face the results. of the kind of action Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, so that's just, that's just me. Uh, there's a lot of death and that was already a lot of death and one. So, uh, um, still, I think, I think something like that order,
01:23:47
Speaker
Uh, once again, condensing, just keeping it legend, he gets out and he disappoints weld. Um, and I think my going for was like, he sacrifices himself, thus kind of redeeming himself a little bit and leaving weld to, you know, this leads weld to disappear with the irregulars, um, in the face of this sacrifice where.
01:24:09
Speaker
He realizes that in this gums comes into, I mean, the philosophy the of the irregulars and sort of the divide that they have between them where he believes that there is, you know, this good we are doing as this essentially group that's not tainted by cauldron, uh, ethically. And unfortunately half of his crew believes that they should essentially be on a revenge spree. Um,
01:24:40
Speaker
rather than like a heroing group, if you will. Um, so even the, like it, and it brings in the cross section of like, even though like they, because they are on a revenge spree, they are still cauldron focus. So they, they are very much tainted by cauldron in that way. Whereas he is going with the other part of legends legacy, which is he doesn't like the cauldron part of legend because ah obviously that was bad.
01:25:09
Speaker
but he is still kind of respecting the hero part of, you know, his mentor. So, but that's like a whole other plot, you know, that we make up. And I i think if we did that, we would have to be showing, um, I think we'd have to be showing weld, you know, sporadically through the season, which I still think we should do anyway. I i think this shouldn't just be, yeah, absolutely. Uh,
01:25:36
Speaker
I think, I think some highlighting characters would be Chevalier taking over, yeah ah you know, immediately him, having him and Hannah have their little like sort of flirty, but they're way older than when they were kids. So like, it's more of a, they are they're never going to get together, but they were together. So they have, they are friendly. Yeah. There's history, you know? Yeah. There's, there's history and it's, and it's good. Like, yeah. So they are really good friends.
01:26:04
Speaker
We see that. We see the change that they're trying to make. So weld is out. He's trying to solve cauldron. I, you know, shovel ears and he's trying to clean things up. Taylor's switching over, you know, and, and all of that.
Exploring Character Dynamics
01:26:18
Speaker
So, um, and then, and then what, what are the, what is Lisa doing? I think Lisa is the important character. We kind of focus on back at, uh, undersiders HQ. Yeah. in broxton bay Absolutely. How is Lisa dealing with the Goopers?
01:26:33
Speaker
you know there we We kind of have her as our POV character for that. um So you there's a couple of spots we could jump around between. um Yeah, definitely. My last thing to think about is if we were, and I think this is probably the best way to kind of show like all the way back when, the real deal would be to have two main characters to start. I still think Detective Weld's a great character introduced later, but our two starting characters for season one is Amy and Taylor. You know, for obvious reasons, they essentially crisscross paths, they juxtapose each other. um But I think that we keep Amy in long-term. I feel still think we have her hunted and somewhat tortured
01:27:31
Speaker
by the, you know, the slaughterhouse nine, you know, Jack essentially gets his claws into her, his figurative claws into her. You know, all the others are trying to literally torture her and chase her down. But Jack's is like, I just want to have a conversation with you. You know, of course, Amy's too much of a bitch to run away. So she just kind of sits there nervously and listens. And that kind of sets the seed in her mind.
01:27:56
Speaker
um I think that you could, delay Victoria's, like after Jack plants the seeds in her head, Victoria doesn't get acid and slimed in the crawler fight. You have her get acid slimed or something radiated or something like that in the echidna fight. It's a perfect time to do it. You can literally do the same thing. And at the end of the echidna fight, you know, there's all this biomass hanging around.
01:28:31
Speaker
We can't find Amy or Vic. We assume they died or something.
01:28:37
Speaker
And you know that's when season season four, the beginning of this season is Taylor trying to become a hero and Amy making the choice to become a terrible, terrible villain. And so you know halfway through the season, Amy's going to the birdcage And Taylor's also going to prison. Right. So like you really could parallel these for a whole season longer. Yeah. Two seasons, almost longer. And then we do all the bird cage scenes. ah You know, now, now you can have all the conversations in the bird cage. You can have Amy having her revelation about how powers work here.
01:29:32
Speaker
you know, in the last season, you know, or, or, you know, the penultimate season, she's starting to put it together in the, with the behemoth fight. Like she's talking in the behemoth thing. She's dealing with prison stuff while Taylor is out in the battlefield. Um, and then, you know, which ultimately at the, you know, we've got one more season and we end with her coming out of the bird cage. She's figured out how powers work and Taylor,
01:30:01
Speaker
needs to figure out how powers work. Like, you really could keep the two of them as heroes, a lot, ah not heroes, as the main characters side by side. Yeah, crisscrossing for a lot longer. um And basically only have them gone for half of the end of season four and the beginning of season, like season five, where they kind of don't,
01:30:30
Speaker
interact all that much because they're in prison separately and going to the hero's side, the birdcage separately, right? Like, so they're essentially gone for one full season between the two half seasons where they're doing their own thing, ultimately to come back at the very end to team up, to be the two people that actually solve the problem. Like, right I mean, granted other people are involved, I get it, but,
01:31:00
Speaker
Like they, they, those two are involved in coming together. She does the thing to her brain, you know, that causes her to become Ken Capri. So like, I think that in retrospect, that is probably the strongest multiple character, um,
01:31:23
Speaker
thing that would just feel really good given their parallels consistently through the entire story, how it weaves back and forth. They start opposite, they switch places even kind of, and then they ultimately come together for different reasons. But with Amy maybe having a more, obviously more villainous route, but she's gotten over herself.
01:31:51
Speaker
You know, she's, or, or we could even have character progression, you know, w she, where she decides like, I've been a bitch this whole time when I really should just have the self control to not fuck up brains, you know, and I, you know, and I learned that hanging around a bunch of villains, realizing that like, I shouldn't like, they're using fear to control things. And like, I should just be controlling the fear. Like, and she learns that from the villains.
01:32:20
Speaker
And Taylor learns like we've got to, you know, I've got to save the world. And then they come together and it's all beautiful and poetic. Yeah, I definitely wanna put some thought into that. There's some good good stuff there. Let him cook. I mean, this is what
Series Summary and Conclusion
01:32:38
Speaker
I'm talking about. I wanna have a couple of episodes where really we really go back over character arcs and looking at the arc for the whole series for each character and sort of talking about how they how they work, how they parallel, how they contrast. um I think that's yeah where the the the heart and the meat of the story is. so
01:32:54
Speaker
Um, yeah, I think at the end of this, we do, you know, we do all our regular stuff and then our final episode will essentially be us cooking much, a much quicker. A, uh, whatever that one red Tom post, I think it's red Tom who posted the, uh, arc summer synopsis and space battles, um, chapter by chapter, but maybe we just do a single paragraph, large paragraph, but a a single large paragraph for every.
01:33:24
Speaker
uh, season like episode or season. Yeah, I guess we could do, I could do, we could do episode. Yeah. Um, and we just, you know, we make it, ah we, we condensed down the details to sort of the essential yeah stuff. Um, and I think, I think we could do, uh, yeah. And, and we'll cut out all of my scene by scene thing. And we'll just do kind of the major plot lines. Um, and we'll do that for all five seasons.
01:33:56
Speaker
Yeah, no, definitely. Definitely once we're done and we'll we'll kind of we'll definitely kind of put it together ah for people to critique. Go through. All right. Well, I think we're I think we're about done here. It's good for not having a single real note in my notebook. I pulled a lot of that out of my ass. ah That's it for ah arc twenty four.
01:34:20
Speaker
um Get to beat Ark 25 on Ark 25. So exciting. So stay tuned. You're either going to get a dissecting for Ark 25 or you're going to get a season four recap. We haven't decided yet, but we're going to figure that out and then you'll you'll be surprised with what's next. So something's coming soon. Stay on the lookout.
01:34:41
Speaker
ah Thanks so much for listening. I really enjoyed it. ah This has been a a tricky season. A lot of really good thoughts, both on YouTube, on Reddit, um on our Discord for our patreon so ah for our patrons. rather So if ah if you want to get involved in that, we're ah we're quite a bit more active on the on the Discord. So head on over to our Patreon. Give us a look, give us ah give us a follow, and come join us over there. We'd love to have you.
01:35:07
Speaker
Thanks, so Michael, for making it sound delicious, as always. Good work, boys. And... Straight tasty. i think I think we'll call it there and we'll see you guys