Brian sighed, loudly. “Don’t turn your power on me.”
“Who says I am?”
Chancing a look at Bitch, I saw she was pacing back and forth, each set of paces short and restless. She didn’t seem to have calmed down any.
I’m not sure even believing you would really do that. Not quickly, anyway. And then there’s the way we know she acts towards you in the future…
I wasn’t feeling much better myself. I said as much, “All I want is for things to go back to the way they were.”
“It’s not that easy,” Brian replied. When I met his eyes, he looked away, his brow furrowing.
Taylor’s line feels like a callback to this one exchange between Sophia and Taylor in 9.6:
Shadow Stalker: “I guess everything’s back to normal for you freaks.”
Skitter: “No…”
Skitter: “…things are different now.”
It also reminds me of Doki Doki Literature Club, but that’s less relevant right now.
When had things been good? What point in time was I so eager to return to, where I hadn’t been wracked by guilt or nervousness? By the time I got over my fear of getting caught, I’d run away from home and cut ties with my dad. Then, before I could come to terms with that, I’d found out about Dinah, which had affected me more than anything else. I’d terrorized hostages, maimed a supervillain, hurt superheroes, but it was Dinah that left me lying awake at night, feeling helpless, feeling like I was the scum of the earth.
This is actually a good point. Besides, going back to “the way it was” technically includes going back to the situation where Taylor was an undercover hero or hiding the secret that she at one point was.
There’s no taking this back. And honestly, I feel like that’s a theme of Extermination that I didn’t really think enough about when I was back there: There’s no taking this back. Everything that happened in Extermination has consequences. Those deaths were final. Armmaster is probably going to prison for life. The city was wrecked and it’s gonna be a bitch to repair. The Undersiders were alerted to the potential traitor in their midst.
That’s how the reveal fits in, besides the general climactic feel of Arc 8. It fits in because like just about everything else that happened in that Arc, it changes everything and there’s no taking it back.
Krixwell Liveblogs 