Author: Krixwell Jace

A doofus.
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I stopped, turned the flashlight on an open apartment door.  “Here, maybe?”

Grue grunted, adjusted the position of the unconscious body he had draped over one shoulder, “Scout it.”

Time for the bugdar, I suppose.

Bitch nodded, letting Angelica off the chain, pointing at the door.  Of the four dogs she had with her, only Angelica was still under the influence of her power, standing three times her usual size.

Ah, apparently not. It’s time for the far less subtle dogdar instead!

Despite the invigorating effects of Bitch’s attentions, the dog moved slowly as she loped into the apartment.  It was painful to look at her – she was moving as though she were ten years older than she was.

Ouch. Did she participate in the Leviathan pileup and get injured rather than killed? I don’t remember any of the dogs in the pileup surviving, but it could’ve happened. I suppose it wouldn’t make sense for Rachel to keep Angelica out of it when she included Brutus and Judas.

The other dogs pulled at their chains, wanting to follow.  Bitch made angry clucking noises, then ordered them to sit.  They were slow to obey, but I think something about the look in Bitch’s eyes told them they’d better listen.

Oh, they’d better, alright.

One of them reared back as I sent more bugs into the interior to investigate.

Ah…

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No power meant the building was dark.  The city, and consequently the building, were flooded, which meant it was moist.  With exceptions for some of the luckier areas, pretty much every service was suspended, which meant no mail and no trash pickup.

Eesh.

Trash bags were accumulating anywhere that people lived, here included, and when they had run out of trash bags, people had started littering, throwing their trash out the windows or leaving it in hallways instead.  To top it off, the weather was getting warmer.

Sounds like a place with a fantastic scent.

For bugs, all of these converging details made the city into a paradise.

Oh yeah, I remember (because I recently reread it) back in 1.2, Taylor commented on Brockton Bay being good for both bugs and capes because it was relatively warm, and now we’re getting closer to summer.

To be honest, I’ve started losing track of the specifics of the timeline a bit, so I’m not sure exactly how long it’s been since Gestation, but around 2-3 months or so sounds about right. Gestation started in early spring, so now we’d be getting into late spring and early summer.

I walked in the lead of the group, with Imp a step behind me and to my right.  The two of us held flashlights, but Imp was barely paying attention to hers.

Hey there. Maybe Taylor’s going to tell us a little about you soon?

She held a knife much like mine, and she dragged the point against the wall as we walked down the hallway, carving a groove into the paint.  Her flashlight spent more time pointed at her feet than in front of us, leaving me the burden of lighting our way.

Hm. Sounds kind of… disinterested?

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Creepy crawlies riddled the building’s interior, and I hadn’t even used my powers to bring them here.

Nice. That establishes quite nicely that we’re back to Taylor’s perspective. 🙂

One thing I suppose I haven’t really commented on before: Whenever we leave Taylor’s perspective, the story goes into third person, whereas Taylor’s narration is in first person. I like that – it makes for a consistency when it comes to who appears to be telling this story, even if it’s questionable that Taylor would end up knowing all the things we learn from other people’s narration, after the story’s end. Take Brutus’ Interlude in particular – he was a dog, and he’s dead, so there’s no mundane way for Taylor to get that story from him.

It seems like we’ve got an omniscient narrator who’s telling us about events and the setting from the POV of various characters, and limiting her narration to how she and the other characters were perceiving things back then.

(Not that I’m saying Taylor will literally become omniscient by the end of the story.)

Parasite 10.1

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Howdy! It’s time to continue my journey through Worm!

Judging by the fact that I was asked to do the Arc Thoughts after the last chapter, it seems we’re skipping the between-Arc Interlude we’re used to by now and moving straight into Arc 10. Double digits!

Let’s turn the page and find out what this Arc is called…

Parasite. Nice.

I suppose it was really only a question of time before that name showed up. Not quite as much so as Buzz, but still.

So, what does this mean? By definition, parasitism is a kind of symbiosis that benefits one of the organisms and is detrimental to the other… Sounds kind of like the situation Shadow Stalker has with the Wards, which benefits her by keeping her out of jail. Though I suppose you could argue that it’s not so much a parasitic relationship with the Wards as a mutualistic relation between Shadow Stalker and Piggot. Shadow Stalker is kept out of jail, and Piggot gets her little PR boost.

The second person I think of when I hear the word Parasite is Kaiser, who benefited from his subordinates’ help and broke many of those same people psychologically in the process. But Kaiser’s dead, so I seriously doubt that’s what we’re talking about here.

Another possibility is that this has to do with Chariot, whose intention appears to be to become an information-gathering parasite in the Wards.

And finally, since I have no idea what she’s like yet, I can’t discount the idea of it having to do with Imp. Exactly how, I don’t know.

As for chapter 10.1, I’m fairly sure it’s finally time to find out what Taylor and the Undersiders have been up to, who Imp is, and what they intend to do with Shadow Stalker. Although maybe that’s too much for one chapter? At the very least I think we’ll find out one of those things, probably starting with the last one.

So yeah. Without further ado, let’s start louse-combing! Uh, I mean, read Worm!

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there’s an xkit extension, auto tagger, that can automatically tag posts for you. that might be easier for liveblogging?

It would help, but unfortunately I don’t use a browser that supports xkit anymore.

Funny I should receive this right now, actually, because I was just looking at an old post of mine that mentioned this within the last hour, as a result of the previous ask getting me to check out the archive for the month it was posted (June 2017).

Anyway, yeah, tagging is a chore, but I’m used to it by now. The only real problem with doing it manually is the risk of human errors like typos or tagging the wrong chapter.

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“Also, with that last bit about Wildbow commenting on a readthrough, I can’t help but wonder if he’s aware of my liveblog, or even reads it… That’s a somewhat… scary? thought? But I’d also be honored… I don’t know, really, how to feel about it. I do know that if I’d written a work that got liveblogs of it, I’d be reading them, though.”

He said this when you was on 3.6:

I enjoy [another readthrough] and I do enjoy Krixwell. That said, Krixwell does sort of exemplify what I was talking about in [a blog post] about lack of consistency and the effect of it – I frequently forget about his readthrough until readers tell me it’s started back up again.

No pressure though 

I’m very glad and honored to hear that! Good to know I’m not too obnoxious for him 😉

And yeah, the criticism re: consistency was a fair point. At least I’ve gotten quite a bit more consistent since 3.6, something that I suppose is probably related to me still being in school back then and having to work the liveblogging in between school, homework, sleep and other spare time activities. (I can’t guarantee that something similar won’t happen when I find a place that’ll take me in for work training.)

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Just wanted to say I’m loving the liveblog. I’m a big fan of worm, and have shared this account with some friends who have read it. I’m really glad you’re doing this, enough that I rediscovered how to use my long-lost tumblr account to spam you with likes (I’m working through chronologically).

I’m glad you’re enjoying it! 😀

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No, the obvious conclusion is that it’s all a simulation. And Coil has gained read access to the memory used by the branch predictor.

Either way, better be careful with those bugs.