To Be Determined

The harm is unintentional and one-off, rather than the culmination of a campaign of harassment. It’s not bystanders just passing by ignoring Taylor’s pleas for help, it’s the guy who’s 100% Responsible for the harm just not hearing cause he’s careless and not paying attention. And of course the physical damage being done is vastly increased.

Taylor can’t deal with inaction, with becoming a bystander. Does this guy do every single thing in his life with extreme care, to avoid blithely ruining someone’s life like happened to him? Or does he constantly draw attention to himself, because being seen is the only way to feel safe?

Jenny and Ted discuss Plague 12.4.

Episode Notes:

Jenny hates the Nine and Ted loves the chapter

We stop trying to make “Undlers” happen

Shout-out to biomechanimagical for the new team name!

How deep into the bench of Worm characters do you have to go to find a certified Tumblr Sexyman?

The “deal” gambit will unite our herovillains if not all of Brockton Bay

Taylor and Jenny are sus-Bitch-ous

Lisa will live to sass another day

Ted does a close reading on how quickly Taylor can rationalize her emotions

Taylor gives up control

Lisa and Taylor push each other around in the best way

Maybe Taylor’s bugs will be enough to avoid the thing where there’s no way she runs six miles in thirty minutes

The title drops and we talk a lot about worms and the controlling thereof

Ok for this segment just imagine if our logo didn’t have eyes

We don’t exactly feel bad for Cherish but wow, what an ordeal

Do Cherish and Taylor’s villain gang initiations only vary by extremeness?

These tests effectively show us how the Nine, and especially Jack, operate

We consider how Cherish’s situation might be different from the average recruit’s

The Nine are incredibly acceptable targets

Jack isn’t optimizing for power, but he did have Bonesaw cook up an artificial brain to punk Cherish

Don’t bring up that study about how spoilers don’t ruin stories in front of Jack if you value your face

Powers work as a metaphor for narrative, too

Jenny bonesees right through Bonesaw

Don’t bet on Amy

Faced with the Nine, some people would just choose death

Alec’s knack for chatting up villains

Siberian-based tinker-tech

J J Abrams is famous for making stories that raise questions he never figures out how to answer. He's also the guy with some weird story about a present he never opened and how that's better than presents you open--failing to see that there's a difference between choosing not to open a present and being forbidden from opening one.

You've got lengthy media franchises where installments undo character development or satisfying resolutions from previous installments. Worse, there are media franchises with "trilogies" that are weird slap fights between the makers of each installment.

You've got wildly popular TV shows that end so poorly and unsatisfyingly that no one speaks of them again.

On top of that, a lot of the media actively punishes people for engaging thoughtfully with it. Creators panic and change their stories if the audience properly reacts to foreshadowing. Emotional parts of storytelling are trampled by jokes. Shocking the audience has become the go to, rather than providing a solid story.

Jenny and Ted discuss Infestation 11.h.

Episode Notes:

Jenny didn’t see it coming but Ted brought receipts

Look, I know you weren’t asking, but the incest math checks out

Amy got her “resenting an unwanted burden” from her mom I guess

Intrusive romantic feelings are deeply tragic

Jenny and Ted do what Assault and Battery simply refuse to do

Amy’s fantasies and fatalism

The category of “healing” never really cohered

Bonesaw kicks Amy across a series of red lines and Amy’s like “guess it’s purge rules for me now YOLO”

Reading between the lines, Amy’s just making excuses

Ted makes a pretty bad analogy to Canary but give him a second he explains it better

Amy’s power is so dangerous to herself and others that the Protectorate really fucked up by not getting to her before Bonesaw

Victoria, sowing: Just use your fucking power on brains already! Victoria, reaping: Well this fucking sucks, I love you, what the fuck

So… would you really handle it any better than Victoria, listeners?

Ted speculates that this was really triggering for Victoria

Calling back to the “bus kiss”

At least we met a more functional lesbian first

“Evil” feelings don’t make you evil, and isn’t everybody kind of fucked up anyway?

Amy craves novelty and lacks empathy… but for pretty okay reasons!!!

What Amy can learn from Bonesaw: the power of a growth mindset

Is Amy’s power a threat to her sense of self in an existential way?

Bonesaw pushes Amy down the slippery slope and it all feels so easy

Is Amy gettable? Nah, but partly because she doesn’t believe in herself

Morality and fellowship seem completely alien to Bonesaw

Wait, how old exactly was Bonesaw when she triggered?

You can be a good scientist without being a good person

Bonesaw would not approve of this podcast’s explicit rating

Are the powers parasites? Tools? Agents?

If the who and what of powers are accidents, is there a why?

Bonesaw scoops Faultline’s thesis project

Yeah, of course all of the bio-manipulators will have major issues!

Ted reveals his pro-Bonesaw bias and Jenny pitches the best Worm adaptation yet

Did Carol leave that letter for Amy to find?

Parenting is necessarily coercive

Ted celebrates a well-constructed tragic plot

Amy’s not learning very good lessons from her no good terrible very bad day

Thinking back to Victoria in Dennis’ chapter

Is Panacea a rogue?

We might be harder on Mark if Carol wasn’t right there in comparison

Ted’s worst date

Fates worse than death

Bonesaw reminds us that the hero / villain arms race is ongoing

Hatchet Face is Michael Myers

Jenny looks in the mirror

Maybe part of Amy’s curse is that her power is too easy to use

The arachnid system

As much as Amy needs a therapist you can’t lead with that, Victoria

Jenny and Ted discuss Infestation 11.g.

Episode Notes:

Jenny ALMOST got this one right

Content warming for murder set up as suicide??

Cherish is in a tangle

Some very strong symbolism

Thrill-seeking is a family trait

We're not happy about these thralls, Regent

We're happy about his friends, though

Cherish is powerful, but it's a Wildbow power, so she has to work for it

Playing with point of view

Cherish's damage is that no one will like her without her power

S9 social dynamics

We decode some epithets

Jenny's hoping the S9 get taken down a few pegs

RIP soldier from the start of the chapter

When the interludes are good, they're good like this one is

Parallels to Glory Girl and to Skitter

There's a reason Cherish and Regent both go for fear

Our book two theme of a traumatized city

What kind of consent did Regent's thralls give?

Heartbreaker failed on optics

A potential Regent tell?

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters.