Inchworm

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
• Predictions

Links:

• https://parahumans.wordpress.com/category/stories-arcs-11/arc-11-infestation-stories-arcs-11/11-h/
• https://www.patreon.com/Wildbow

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?
• Amy's secret

Links:

• https://parahumans.wordpress.com/category/stories-arcs-11/arc-11-infestation-stories-arcs-11/11-g/
• https://www.patreon.com/Wildbow

Jenny and Ted discuss Infestation 11.f.

Episode Notes:

• This one’s got TWO unseen monsters!
• It’s not too late to save Dinah, but it doesn’t seem like anyone’s close to doing so
• Why did Sundancer become a villain?
• The Travelers’ ties bind them from helping and from hurting
• The temptation of community
• The eventual Marissa and Taylor team-up
• Jenny theorizes that Ballistic and Genesis were here the whole time
• Does Noelle need a quantity of food (very large) or a quality of food (human flesh)?
• Whatever’s going on with her, it’s monstrous
• The perils of not dying
• Dinah’s power can make threats against her more credible, but also lets her strategically deploy “good behavior”
• Dinah’s thoughts on “candy”
• The compulsion behind sorting through futures
• Is it catastrophizing if you’re living through a catastrophe?
• But Noelle’s holding it together, right, Trickster?
• Coil sucks but at least he’ll never risk sacrificing Dinah
• #Trickle #Noster
• What in a (Traveler) name?
• Monster movie tropes
• How did Dinah really feel about Sundancer’s apology?
• Leah was a plant!
• Coil likes addicts
• The imagery of Dinah’s power is great
• The future is countable
• Predictions

Links:

• https://parahumans.wordpress.com/category/stories-arcs-11/arc-11-infestation-stories-arcs-11/11-f/
• https://www.patreon.com/Wildbow

Jenny and Ted discuss Infestation 11.e.

Episode Notes:

• Will the threat of the Slaughterhouse Nine bridge the gulf in Empire Eighty-Eight?
• Hookwolf has too many “friends” to be recruited
• Shatterbird: great at picks, bad at pitches
• Ted does a British accent
• But does he even care about the lore as much as Shatterbird does?
• We’re doing the evil Hunger Games!
• Possibly the Slaughterhouse Nine's only viable recruit thus far?
• Shatterbird has the best aesthetic 
• Was Shatterbird playing possum?
• Fascism and aesthetics
• He's just not that interesting
• And also he's completely delusional
• Shatterbird pulls from the Tattletale playbook
• How about those other S9 capes?
• Hookwolf's attached to his minions, but mostly egotistically
• White supremacy vs. cape supremacy
• Hookwolf and Metal Gear Solid
• The Chosen need to read the evil overlord list
• Ted promises that we’ll know what the Z in Z-Space stands for by the end of Worm
• Why is Shatterbird a canister cape?
• Powers and limits
• Nazi language
• Predictions

Links:

• https://parahumans.wordpress.com/category/stories-arcs-11/arc-11-infestation-stories-arcs-11/11-e/
• https://www.patreon.com/Wildbow

Jenny and Ted discuss Infestation 11.d.

Episode Notes:

• The most romantic chapter in Worm
• Butterflies in the machine
• The nature of Colin’s ego
• What difference does it make that Colin has this connection to Dragon?
• How real love can be selfish
• Could love hold Colin back from something he sees as the greater good?
• If Mannequin thought Dragon would keep Colin alive, why doesn’t he try harder to isolate Colin from her?
• Colin isn’t gettable, and especially not after choosing death over recruitment
• The only reason these interludes happen is because the Slaughterhouse Nine are all drama queens
• If we’re both single at age 30, let’s dedicate ourselves to the greater good
• Colin’s like, you should have been Man-no-kin!
• His superhero complex
• Mannequin’s body as a metaphor for grief
• A case study in how a hero can fall (and possibly, on how the Simurgh works)
• An eyepatch for an eyepatch
• He didn’t know it but he already wanted to be a cyborg
• What if the Endbringers are meant to be culling the capes or hindering humanity?
• Noting different reactions to different offensive words
• Brate?
• Predictions, rankings, and merchandizing

Links:

• https://parahumans.wordpress.com/category/stories-arcs-11/arc-11-infestation-stories-arcs-11/11-d-arc-11-infestation/
• https://www.patreon.com/Wildbow

Jenny and Ted discuss Infestation 11.c.

Episode Notes:

• We speculate on Wildbow lore
• Very different interludes, each with a Slaughterhouse Nine member to placate
• Parallels with Theo
• Why did Labyrinth lie to Burnscar?
• Burnscar's guilt and Labyrinth's internalized ableism
• Two different takes on depression
• A correlation between strength of power and disability?
• A possible explanation for the Slaughterhouse Nine and the Endbringers
• Is it the flaw at our core that gives us our powers?
• How bad is Mimi?
• Burnscar has a great vibe but weak justifications
• Slaughterhouse Nine: kind of a cool found family, if you ignore most things about them
• Labyrinth as a foil for Taylor
• We're so happy for Elle and her new found family
• The sadness and wisdom of only getting one brief moment with each of our side characters
• The inherent variability of who beats who
• The importance of battlefield control
• Elle’s power is kind of like being a writer
• Labyrinth has built the back rooms
• Elle and Noelle…coincidence??
• Elle’s power is driving her back into her trauma
• Shamrock: not just lucky!
• Oh, to be able to Voltron powers
• Jenny turns the page to interlude 11d

Links:

• https://parahumans.wordpress.com/category/stories-arcs-11/arc-11-infestation-stories-arcs-11/11-c/
• https://www.patreon.com/Wildbow

Jenny and Ted discuss Infestation 11.b.

Episode Notes:

• Jenny spools out “two years” of red string
• If this encounter didn’t trigger Theo, what (if anything) would?
• Aster is notable even if you aren’t all Purity about it
• Will the story even last another two years?
• How fixed are the futures Dinah sees?
• Whimsy is central to who Jack Slash is
• He sees Theo’s story potential
• Jenny sees what we all see in Jack’s vibe
• The metaphor behind Jack’s power
• Ted gets pedantic over finding keystones
• Jack is another emotional vampire
• So… how intentional was Jack about provoking Theo?
• Maybe this encounter with Jack is more different from Theo dealing with his parental figures in degree and not in kind
• Jenny comes up with names for AU Ward!Taylor
• Theo finds courage in spite of his insecurity, in a way that Ted sees as very gendered
• What Oni Lee can tell us about powers
• Jenny can’t even bring herself to predict that her blorbos will team up
• What’s Jack whistling?
• What we’re expecting from more Slaughterhouse Nine interludes

Links:

• https://parahumans.wordpress.com/category/stories-arcs-11/arc-11-infestation-stories-arcs-11/11-b/
• https://www.patreon.com/Wildbow

Jenny and Ted discuss Infestation 11.a.

Episode Notes:

• A very distressing chapter
• The conflicting temptation of the Slaughterhouse Nine
• Bitch isn't good at this territory thing
• There's a huge communication problem here
• Also an insecurity problem
• Taylor reaching out to Bitch was both more heroic and more cruel than she knew
• It's Bitch's guilt, not Taylor's, that puts her in danger now
• Bitch isn't a killer, but she is a villain
• Should Bitch be allowed around people?
• It matters that Bitch isn't a master
• A dog vs. a wolf
• Some gorgeous writing
• We all need more than the thing we're best at
• This offer isn't destiny, it's a temptation
• Taylor through Bitch's eyes
• Bitch needs humans she's free to be dirty around
• We had so many feelings about this chapter
• The metaphor of the howl
• Okay but wolves are cool (and trainable! sort of!)
• The many meanings of Rollo
• A mundane example of institutional failure
• The recruitment!
• Siberian has incredible aura, and Bitch is immune
• The mystery of the Siberian's power
• The Siberian's motherly presence
• Eye gouging: a recurring motif!
• Different ways of being alpha
• Bitch isn't a master. She's a parent.
• Also, she needs a parent
• Layers (both endbringer and dog)
• Racist and ableist language
• Surprising emotional clarity
• A howl that doesn't reach anyone
• Siberian and the othering of humanity
• What does it mean if Bitch's power likes wolves?
• Give Bitch a direwolf
• Who would Jenny recruit to the Slaughterhouse Nine?

Links:

• https://parahumans.wordpress.com/category/stories-arcs-11/arc-11-infestation-stories-arcs-11/11-a/
• https://www.patreon.com/Wildbow

Jenny and Ted discuss Infestation 11.8.

Episode Notes:

• If you’re the main character you should never feel this optimistic
• Jenny pitches Ward as an AU sidequel 
• We struggle to come up with a gender neutral term for henchmen
• Sierra’s a liability and Taylor’s hang-ups about Thomas don’t do her any favors
• Smugbug stocks are rising
• Sierra and Charlotte are synthesizing their views of Skitter/Taylor as one being
• Oh my god they’re teenagers, she’s thinking
• Sound off listeners! Are people who think they can guess people's ages full of it?
• Taylor’s had worse
• Now that she’s in charge, is Taylor doing better?
• Now Brian remembers how he actually feels about his sister
• It’s Brian’s turn to flail
• We gotta know about the territories
• We (hope we) won’t miss the Merchants
• The stakes of the story will totally eclipse any concerns about Skitter’s secret identity
• What if everyone eventually loses their powers?
• Lots of dramatic irony in the parallels to what Taylor’s been through
• Taylor just listen to the words coming out of your mouth hahahaha
• Interlude predictions

Links:

• https://parahumans.wordpress.com/category/stories-arcs-11/arc-11-infestation-stories-arcs-11/11-08-arc-11-infestation/
• https://www.patreon.com/Wildbow

Jenny and Ted discuss Infestation 11.7.

Episode Notes:

• Faultline's crew is so competent *fans self*
• One of the best inside Taylor vs. outside Taylor moments of all time
• Charlotte's unique position
• Taylor's tenuous relationship to her civilian identity
• Taylor wants all other villains to like her
• What's the purpose of the Nemesis program?
• Oh, this is where Coil got his powers
• How do these powers in a can work, and how can they go wrong?
• It's an information battle
• The Merchants are pretty pathetic, and this “party” didn’t help
• We love Shamrock’s aura farming
• But we also love Faultline and Labyrinth
• What was with the temple, though?
• Taylor's making bold moves with Trainwreck
• Maybe she shouldn't hold out for universal approval
• The ways in which having a territory is great for her
• Bryce is a convenient projection screen
• Scrub. Is. Terrifying.
• Taylor's antihero moment
• Real vs. projected pathos
• Taylor's absorbed more of Sophia's worldview than she knows
• The superhero tendency to help the people right in front of you
• Some nice Mushy body horror
• Is Weymouth Mall a giant temple forever now?
• The longevity of Taylor's and Labyrinth's powers

Links:

• https://parahumans.wordpress.com/category/stories-arcs-11/arc-11-infestation-stories-arcs-11/11-07/
• https://www.patreon.com/Wildbow