#worm tangle

What the fuck Bakuda

Also, uhh, not to harp on this too much but what the fuck were Wards doing dealing with Bakuda's little masterpiece? Like I'm glad they did it, but Brockton Bay really has a problem putting its trainees in the line of fire it feels like

Didn't even wait an hour, holy shit

Also, gonna make a wild guess that Medhall is the company that Kaiser is in charge of, call me crazy. Maybe a little unsporting for Coil to leverage that against the Empire, but it's the Empire so I don't care for now. I'll give a shit if it ends up a problem for people who aren't fucking Nazis.

What do you rob an airport for, anyway? Not to say there's nothing to steal, but that feels random, especially with security and shit.

Or, hang on, is airport security in this world different from ours? Did they not have a War On Terror that jacked all that up? The diverging point was back in the 80s...

This is fucking crazy ballsy, the boss is absolutely nuts for this one

Like oh yeah, walk into a building filled with a shitload of hostile heroes and rub their noses in their own humiliation, with a shitload of PRT and cops and whoever else, this is in no way me letting you all wipe the fuck out

No you know what, I'm with Brian, this is absurd enough to make for good comedy

I'm shocked Lisa was even a little confident about pitching this one to the team

(Also nasty burn about miscounting the Wards on the bank job, ouch)

Yeah, see, everybody's making sense here

What's Lisa's stake in this? Like I know she's about to drop a big fucking number but this feels like she's got more riding on this

Credit where it's due: that's a lot of fucking money

Ahh. And there's the other part of the hook for Taylor.

Also gdi Alec you're fucking hilarious

Taylor. Taylor please. You cannot humiliate these people in a public arena and then come to them for a job. There aren't takesie-backsies on this.

Oh, Taylor. You poor girl. I think you're gonna end up hating yourself no matter what. The Undersiders are a rising star in the Brockton Bay underworld but turning them in isn't gonna save the world. Fucking, none of these people are strong enough or nuts enough to disrupt the "greater good" any more than it's already been

Oh boy here we fucking go again

Current Thoughts

Ohhhhhhh this next part is gonna be tense as fuck. This is beyond "out of the frying pan and into the fire," this is out of the frying pan and into a fucking volcano

250k and a meeting with the mysterious boss is a lot but fuck me it's a steep risk.

Okay, from the top now

Brian Laborn is actively evading all of my attempts to understand him. I will discover what makes him tick no matter how long it takes, and I will know whether the furniture building was meant to be a date or not

Speaking of which, my God 6.3 was fucking awkward. Some of that I'm certain was intentional, and good job at that, but holy shit I was actually uncomfortable with the way Aisha is described on her first appearance. Like I guess that can be chalked up to Taylor being awkward and mean but I'm gonna be real, I'm eyeing Wildbow on this one, if there's ever a fucking Worm Revised Edition that had better be on the rewrite block

Uhhhhh, lessee, what n-ahh. The gallery job.

I'm torn on this one, honestly. The build-up was solid, the entrance was delightful, and in the moment-to-moment stuff the fights were fun, but... the Undersiders went in with like half the Protectorate's numbers, and then proceeded to fight a wholeass PRT squad and then every hero there, and beat almost all of them. The Wards didn't do jack shit before being taken out, Assault and Battery got one cool team move and then were dusted, Triumph got downed by a dog, Velocity... Velocity found out a critical flaw in what gets sacrificed in the name of full power efficiency.

Someone on Discord pointed out that Miss Militia using the machete against Regent was actually a good way to discourage him from making her arms move, which is honestly smarter than I initially gave her credit for, but she still wound up puking inside her own costume so it's not like she's coming away from this smelling like roses.

Armsmaster and Dauntless are the only heroes who come out of 6.5 to 6.7 not looking like complete chumps, and Dauntless doesn't have a whole lot of personality on display so he barely counts as a character.

Overall it feels like the Protectorate heroes lost a lot of their bite with this entire sequence. The Undersiders are getaway specialists, thieves who don't pick fights unless they're sure they can win, and they just challenged like one of the highest-rated heroes in the Protectorate and his entire squad and came out of it in one piece. I'll grant that between the ambush conditions and the functionally unmatched battlefield control provided by Grue and Skitter that they tilted multiple factors in their favor, but that still doesn't feel all the way sufficient.

It should've been a lot closer, I think, and in some places it was already pretty close.

I hate Coil's entire vibe so much, I hate hate hate this dude. Smug motherfucker with his choreographed limo rides and coin tricks and shit. I'm gonna have to put up with this for a while, I can fucking feel it, goddamn him.

Somewhat relatedly, Tattletale... I don't like her less but I'm keeping a closer eye on what she says and does. If she's actually vibing with Coil and not just working with him as a matter of opportunism then that. Doesn't reflect great on her.

Hebert family continuing to break my fucking heart. I swear to god these two are gonna take fucking forever to mend the rift between them, and it's gonna involve at least a half-dozen more near-death experiences, goddammit

Edit: fuck me forgot the interlude

Birdcage scares the shit out of me, I think what makes Dragon’s role as architect and warden even worse is that she clearly takes no joy from the act.

Bakuda died as she lived, with bombast and sudden, violent cruelty.

This is. Fucking evil. Chaining a woman up like an animal and parading her around the courtroom. Like what the shit.

Utterly fucking barbaric

Brief detour I guess to provide exposition on the existence of rogues

Going from heartbreak to outrage this quickly in succession was some fucking whiplash when I first read this arc, fucking tell you what

Actual torture.

The inhumanity of this entire arrangement is borderline sickening to see play out. What an utter failure of the system

Oh hey you two

I can see how people would get. Touchy. About a power like that. But touchy enough for a life sentence is fucked.

Also, credit where it's due, Bakuda's ingenuity in this situation is still pretty well on display

Bakuda is playing with fucking fire here, and not just pyrokinesis, har har

Okay you know what, callousness and cruelty aside, this is a fucking badass display from Bakuda.

Okay so what the fuck is up with the ABB capes, actually. Bakuda built a bomb that would've devastated, like, the entire Eastern Seaboard, and probably even further beyond that into the west and north. I'd say that she was slumming it as part of a gang that's only got a minor presence in one city and a few neighboring areas, but honestly Lung feels just as cracked.

Dude basically only fights harder over time, he would've taken down everyone in that warehouse if Skitter didn't make a Hail Mary play with Newter's hallucinogen. Kaiser, Sundancer, Bitch, Newter, and one or both of the twins would've been fucking smoked, maybe Labyrinth if Coil's guys didn't bother to pull her out. This dude could've been putting up massive numbers throughout his entire reign as the head of the ABB.

So what the fuck was he doing instead? If he's a gang boss with this kind of power at his fingertips, where's the fucking appetite that should come with it? Skitter didn't even think he was an A-lister before they fought and he proved her wrong, she thought he was like, a step above Uber and Leet? In what world does that misconception become publicly accepted?

I'd say this is gonna bug me, but uhh, Lung's going to the fucking oubliette to end all oubliettes so it's a bit of a moot point, isn't it

Like, okay. Fucked up, sure thing. But this is still such a massive injustice; it was a one-time thing and she couldn't have possibly known if this was the first time it ever happened. You could've demanded training for her power, if nothing else, but you throw her into Hell on Earth. Fuck me.

This is a level of determination that I think has so far gone unmatched in this story. Like, I'll give Taylor time to pull off something even more outrageously self-harming for the sake of an objective, it's her story after all and there's a lot of words left, but Bakuda really is something else.

Of course that "something else" does include being an abrasive piece of shit, but hell, she's a parahuman, I don't think I've met one of them that's without some kind of baggage.

Maybe there's a world out there where after her trigger event she comes down on the other end of the hero/villain line. Bombs aren't exactly heroic but she could build non-lethally for standard use and save the big damage for shit like Endbringers. Plus the obvious potential of having a bomb Tinker as an EOD expert, that would be game-changing.

She'd still probably be an asshole, but like. You don't have to be pleasant to be a hero, we know that one for sure.

Alas.

I was torn between wanting Paige to get out of this and wanting Lung and Bakuda to get what's coming to them.

Hi Dragon, wish you weren't the warden of the worst prison I've ever heard of in my life, see you later in the story maybe

Also. Six hundred prisoners in the Birdcage. Not counting whoever's died. That's a fucking lot of them.

Wait what the fuck happened to Newfoundland

Oh, Dragon hates this too, well there's a small fucking mercy.

Also, "the hole the men opened into the women's half of the Birdcage" is a fucking alarming phrase. We're just fucking letting anything fly down here, huh? Jesus Christ.

Dragon's description of the Birdcage's security measures is. Fucking extreme. This is a fucking nightmare, an absolute cavalcade of human rights abuses that I can't even begin to fathom.

Have children been born in the Birdcage? If not, who's preventing that? Is everyone being covertly dosed with contraceptives to keep them from having children? Do the block leaders have people on hand to deal with abortions? How do you handle dietary restrictions? Religious restrictions? What if it turns out you were wrongly convicted?

Literally everything about this place is a horror show. Every implication is dark as fucking Vantablack.

Gross

I guess this is what passes for society down here, huh

Well shit, I guess I'm glad Bakuda has some enrichment at least.

Okay, so, Marquis is a supervillain who's taken over a cell block, and he's a Brockton native invested in learning what he's missed out on

...Easy money says he's Amy Dallon's old man.

Not entirely shocked that Lung's spent time behind bars, though I assume that was before he got his powers.

And uhh. I'm gonna be real, I feel kinda bad for Bakuda here. Like she's a piece of shit, obviously, but for all her insults she seemed happy to work for Lung, enough that she made a point of freeing him from the Protectorate and putting him back in charge when she could've stayed in charge, taken advantage of his arrest and done whatever she pleased

and now he's gonna kill her. Because she insulted him. Because it'll make life in prison easier.

I mean, shit. I do not like Bakuda's odds in this exchange. It probably doesn't take a lot for Lung to have her debilitated, and from there the kill is even easier. Maybe he dies too, but I don't expect that to be the case.

Current Thoughts

Justice for Paige McAbee

The Birdcage is, I think, a very reasonable simulacrum of Hell, and its very existence probably gives in-universe philosophers, ethicists, defense attorneys, and human rights activists fucking hives.

Also, justice for Paige McAbee

I'm not going to mourn Bakuda, but maybe I'll mourn the version of her that could've been in a kinder world.

Last thing, just in case we weren't clear:

Taylor. Taylor. I know you're getting desperate but come on. You can't write an email to the hero you and your friends publicly bodied on the same night that you did the bodying.

Nobody's checking her on her shit. Nobody who she should theoretically be able to go to for advice is equipped for this, or even inclined to help her. Danny would try, I'm certain, but he'd be out of his depth. Emma might have been a grounding influence for Taylor once upon a time but, haha, that is no longer an option. School is worthless to her, and her new (only) friends are the ones who are doing the crimes she's involving herself in, not to mention that she became their friend with the intent to backstab them.

...I wish she'd just talk to her dad about this shit. Her refusal to even try and explain it to him feels like it's tangled up in something she can't even name or describe. He's the closest confidant she has at this point, and that's not saying much, but for fuck's sake it should be saying something.

Fuck.

Fucky fucker fucking fuck.

You can't lie to someone you live with for that long about something that can be so easily fact-checked and expect to never get caught out. It's just not feasible.

God this is so hard. She's trying to spare his feelings, she's trying to not pin any of this on him, and it's not working. The fact that she feels like she can't trust him means that he failed to be trustworthy to her, somewhere along the way, and she won't even acknowledge that. She won't even sit across the table from him to talk about this.

Here's where Danny scuffs it, honestly. I'm not going to say he was even wrong to anticipate Taylor's avoidance, but hemming her in like this is only going to rile her up worse. I don't know what the right answer is. Breaks my heart.

I don't think it's fair of Taylor to lump her dad in with the others who've hurt her, in no small part because. This hurt that Danny's feeling, the pain that makes her twist with guilt and frustration, was damage she caused by lying to him, by pushing him away. She's been so lonely for so long and the one person who could've been an ally, even an ineffectual one, is the one she's kept at arm's length throughout all of it.

Even the violence, even the kicking and the breaking, is just a way to avoid telling him anything.

Just pull the bandage off, Taylor, please. Maybe the worst-case scenario happens but then you don't have to keep that poisonous cold lump inside of you. There's other reactions he could have, better ones. I don't think his love for you is conditional. I don't think

Okay so this is almost the right decision she's making, here

Yes! Be with your friends, make bonds that last, admit to yourself what you actually want

God fucking dammit

Straight up crying in the club rn

Tell him! Oh my god please just tell him. Taylor for the love of god please just tell him

Fuck

Lisa's just a kid, too. As much as she pretends otherwise, as much as Danny wants to believe her.

So. Fucking sad.

Current Thoughts

The Heberts break my goddamn heart.

Danny tried, but he pushed too hard when Taylor was already raw and accidentally put her in a defensive mindset, made her feel cornered, unsafe. And then when it came down to it, he still let her walk away. He let Lisa take her from him.

And Taylor. God. I wish she'd just let Danny support her. Even if he doesn't solve her problems, if she could just lean on him during the low times that could make such a difference. I think he could understand, maybe given time. He'd side with her before he'd side against her, no matter who was on the other side.

Another point of proof, I guess. Taylor's fate wasn't sealed from the beginning. It doesn't have to go the way that it goes. There were options, much as she can't see them.

And the roads not taken just make it hurt that much more.

Interlude next.

God I miss having my own place, every apartment I ever had was a dim pit but it was my dim pit

Okay, so. The main thing I'm pulling from Brian's aesthetic preferences is that he wants to be boring. This isn't, strictly, a bad thing, he knows what he wants and I don't think that it's wrong to want to play things safe aesthetically. That being said, like, my god, you cannot get any kind of personality out of this description. Light gray bookshelves? Pale tan couches? What are we doing with the paint on the walls, eggshell white? Off-white? Wild wheat? Are we gonna have some biographies of Allied WW2 leaders tastefully laid out on the new bookshelves?

It's definitely a contrast to the prior living spaces we've seen, both the Heberts' and the loft, and frankly this one is not working for me, I don't know if my tone has carried over on that lmao

Brian, god, please don't tell me this is a date, please don't tell me this is a date

Desperate craving for touch and affection: activate

(No I don't know what that's like)

Brian. Brian please. Was that meant to be a move? I need to know if that was intended to be some kind of overture towards Taylor, you cannot leave me in the dark on this

Aisha, from the bottom of my heart, thank you

Okay let's not talk about the breast size of a 12-13 year old compared to a 15 year old, please and thank you

Boy. Boy oh boy. Taylor, hon, bestie, what's going on here? Is this more envy? I don't know what you're doing in this narration and it's worrying me

Aha. Aisha is a stinker, I see.

Taylor, please don't play dumb, Aisha is not stupid and will be unimpressed by the attempt

Taylor, why are you so nervous, she's in like eighth grade max. Middle schoolers can only do damage to other middle schoolers.

Interesting to see this breakdown on Brian's efforts. Mrs. Henderson's got a point, from what I can glean of Aisha's aesthetic tastes this apartment doesn't seem someplace she'd call home. I'm not sure anyone would call this home except for people who live in furniture catalogs, but that's just me.

She might be annoying, but I'd hardly suspect Aisha to be a narc, c'mon now

Lisa, thank you so much for interrupting, this is a mercy

Girl, if the idea of betraying them already agonizes you this much you're probably already fucked!

Current Thoughts

I've been dumped while on a date (we were walking in a park) and it felt more natural than the time between Taylor and Brian. I hope this wasn't a date, because it'd be a fucking terrible first date.

Aisha seems like a real character, God willing her presence in the story gets smoother than this introduction because holy shit that was rough

Don't separate her! From her dogs! Let them get in the limo!

This is so fucking funny

Coil is trying to flex on a pack of teenagers with a coin trick

and Skitter's immediate response was "okay hang on fucker, I'm supplying the coin for this trick"

and is only satisfied after that

...Also man, when's the last time i saw a dollar coin anywhere, huh

So, having been spoiled on how Coil's power works (in my defense, I went like three or four years knowing about this series before I even considered reading it), I can't help but feel like this is simultaneously a petty means of flexing power and a melodramatic means of describing it.

I kinda suspected Tattletale was playing carefully with her word choices when talking about the boss, nice to see the confirmation.

...Now that I think about it... Hmm. Three of the six groups at the table in Somer's Rock were under Coil's command, and when Tattletale was talking about how everyone but "Grue and maybe Faultline" was planning to take advantage of the truce to advance their cause, that didn't mean that the Undersiders weren't part of those plots. It turns out to have been the opposite.

...Tattletale, I think you're my favorite, but I'm watching you like a goddamn hawk now

Taylor seems to have a lot of "not-best calls" when it comes to people, huh

Also oh boy the Travelers have some shit going on huh

and that's not just whatever is souring their teamwork and communication

...Did Coil practice this? Was there a rehearsal period for his speech, getting the timing down right for the window's speed and the emergence from the tunnel? I can't escape the feeling that he spent at least a day on this, maybe a week

And, yeah, ambitious is a word for it. Man wants to control every aspect of an entire city? He wants to play the cops and the robbers and the bankers and the... whoever else exists in this metaphor? Just play Sim City, honestly, or get into 4X games. If we could just get this man hooked on Crusader Kings or something the world would be a lot safer

I'll grant that he's making a good play at this if nothing else. Certainly not going to cry for the collapse of the Empire, fucking Nazis that they are, and none of the other criminal organizations seem both able and willing to make any kind of major play.

...Though that doesn't preclude groups from outside the city, does it. You could have people from New York or Boston or whatever decide that some expansion is in order. Hmm.

Oh he's doing a real estate scheme, okay. So now we're in a Ryo ga Gotoku main plot. This is a lot easier to follow, I just have to keep an eye out for the Millennium Tower

...Also, Taylor. Are you confident this man isn't also putting moles in the Protectorate and PRT? Like, c'mon now. Bribing government employees works no matter the agency. I'm not gonna say it's beneath the Protectorate's notice, far from it, but a web this intricate means there's no way he's not accounting for multiple angles

...Okay so in The Order of the Stick, there's a sideplot involving a group of former adventurers who realized that they could take over most of a continent through an everchanging map of alliances, conquests, and treachery, with all of them acting as the hidden powers behind multiple thrones and keeping up the appearance that there was no singular rule, so that their own control over the territory had multiple points of failure.

Coil's plan sounds... similar. He's trying to carve up the city between multiple lieutenants who themselves belong to different organizations, with him as the secret mastermind at the heart of it all. Main difference in these two plans is, of course, that Coil is only one man, and also that he's telling his puppets ahead of time that he's the actual shot-caller.

It's not a terrible plan? It's not super complicated at least, but then that's only the criminal side of the city; I'm not sure how he would expect to play all sides off each other with sufficient balance to keep all his pieces on the board (or keep the pieces in line if he decided to make a sacrifice play with one of them).

Anyway. Coil making his appeals to each individual member. Bitch gets more resources to care for her dogs, Regent... something with his old man. I don't know if Coil is reading his wants exactly right on this one.

Hmm. Guess that's the best reassurance that can be provided, not that it feels reassuring still.

Okay so Coil is offering to wave his magic wand and settle the matter of Aisha's custody for Grue, that much lines up. What's the benefit he's offering Tattletale? It can't just be money or power, that's too simple and I don't think any of the Undersiders are that simple in their wants. I don't even think it's true of Regent, much as he's trying to play the lazy hedonist role.

Little funny that Skitter being respected enough to afford silence while she thinks is the exact opposite of what she wants right now.

And it's interesting that she can't pull up a wish that Coil feels like confirming. "Bettering the city" is vague enough that there can be disagreements, and it's the kind of thing with no quick results which means a lot of patience. Obviously it's because Taylor only ever tried to become a hero and the villain thing was... I don't know if "accident" is the right word, but definitely unforeseen, but that sense of higher purpose is still firmly in place.

He's sounding entirely too cool about this, and I hate it. There's no way this man doesn't have a thousand hooks and caveats waiting out of sight, he literally described himself as being able to control destiny and wants to control all crime.

Yeah probably a huge pain in the ass to do finances as a supervillain, huh.

Also what the fuck kind of name is Number Man?

Yay, sloughing puppies

Not to steal a well-worn metaphor from another superhero story, but here and now Taylor is the dog that finally caught a car and is only now realizing "oh shit, I don't know what I'm supposed to do now"

This can only go well

Current Thoughts

Man I hate Coil's entire fucking vibe. He's scummy, entirely too sure of his abilities and resources, and I don't trust a man who acts this overdramatic and this reasonable at the same time. I also don't fully trust a guy who insists on having his meetings in a limousine, or who insists on using teenaged girls as his proxies, and I'm sure I'm going to get even more reasons to hate his rancid ass as time moves on.

Side note, Tattletale, I'm like pretty sure you could be doing better than working for this guy. Blink three times if you need help.

...Wait, shit, there's no way they can keep playing at the small fry game now, is there? They tweaked the nose of the entire Protectorate in front of a bunch of rich and important people. He made them prove their abilities in a way that involves dire repercussions in the event that they back down after the deed is done. Motherfucker.

They're fucking insane for this one, though

Jeeeeesus Christ what a maneuver though, what a stunt

What a fucking entrance! Absolutely legendary for this one, holy shit

Y'know, I guess when you're this deep into the fucking shark tank, you might as well feel some kind of zen, right? Like what's gonna happen, things get more dangerous?

Oh hey Emma, hope this scares the bejeezus out of you,

Aww, Tattletale wanted to do a fun little monologue

Also very clever that they brought the bugs along via Big Dog, way better than depending on the gallery to have enough wasps and spiders

They are clowning on these fucking PRT guys, oh my god this is embarrassing

You're getting comboed to shit by a pack of half-feral teenagers and you can't even use your foam things worth a damn. Like, Tattletale is contributing in this fight, and she doesn't fight for shit!

Right, yeah containment foam. Pretty neat actually, and it makes sense as the weapon of choice for an organization meant to handle parahuman threats. Not that it's working for them rn, but y'know, thought that counts.

I think one day Victoria is gonna make Tattletale pay for that nickname, but good lord today is not that day

Also yeah fuck Shadow Stalker

Yeah, fuck Shadow Stalker!

Hi Assault, bye Assault

Great fucking team move between Assault and Battery, their powers are remarkably complementary to each other, which means it's kind of a shame it didn't work

This fight is still so cool though, god

Yeah you know what I think I get why people would want to stay away from Triumph, that's a power combination that'll do it

Aww but he's such a good boy though, taking down the big shouty man

Not only lol, but also lmao

And here comes Armsmaster to ruin everything. Again.

What's that line from the old Mortal Kombat movie? "I've studied all your moves," but said in like a horrendous fake Australian accent?

Also Jesus Miss Militia who needs a machine gun to subdue a teenager, that's overkill

Anyway haha things can only get better from here right

Current Thoughts

It hasn't even been two weeks since they knocked over the bank, and now they're here, that's fucking ludicrous

Fucking incredible that the Undersiders have managed to put up the numbers they have so far. Four Wards, Glory Girl, Assault and Battery, and Triumph all down and out. They walked into this with like two-to-one odds and have turned the numbers around in their favor. Armsmaster is gonna be a fucking problem of course, and Velocity's gonna put up a fight (Miss Militia is about to get punked in the next chapter so her not as much) but still, that's way better odds than I think anyone would have given them

The number one advantage Taylor finds in living at the loft is to be alone on her own terms and have her runs uninterrupted. She's such a fucking nerd.

Taylor, girl, you're so fucking terrifying and you don't even realize it

Also, didn't escape my notice that she's thinking very distinctly of "the heroes" as separate from her, and also waving off whatever concern there might be to letting them handle Bakuda.

Yes.

*squints* Is that a Lazytown reference?

Also it is very cute that one of them is always fetching breakfast for the others

Man, I forgot that cellphones didn't always lock and someone could just. Go through your text messages without you knowing

Also that is extremely nosy Lisa

Also also I relate to Taylor about using capitalization and spelling in text messages. It's about clarity.

Interesting that Lisa is encouraging this. Wonder what she's picking up off of their relationship

Also hey, here's the foundation for ace Lisa. Good for her.

I think I've made an observation that Brian is big on the practicality thing, nice to see it said outright in the text

Also god these two are so much fun to see bouncing off of each other

Well at least she's aware of her mounting discomfort with the idea of turning the Undersiders in, she'd been dancing around that one for a minute

More history of the Bay

I really like the way Brian's smile gets described, it sounds really nice

Also goddamn, this guy's living within spitting distance of Empire territory? Brave.

I wish I didn't need to have a car, but California fucking hates you if you try to get around with anything else

Also the caveman speech thing keeps fucking killing me, it's hilarious.

Yeah she's definitely hot under the collar for this guy

My continued stance on bi Taylor maintains itself

Also yeah, sure, blame Lisa for thinking about Brian's muscles as he's flexing them

Current Thoughts

Another kind of intermediate chapter to get us from one place to the next; in this instance it's getting us to Brian's apartment, for maybe one of the most awkward social engagements I've ever seen