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That was the hardest part.  The rest was easy – finding the doorway, entering the cellar, then heading upstairs to the main floor.  She was glad to see light, to let go of that fear that she’d miss the gap and find herself wandering the storm drains and getting lost, unable to find a way back to the surface or the beach.  She wondered if Skitter had felt the same way.

Probably not, given her tendency to navigate with her power.

I notice that Sierra is talking about Skitter in past perfect here. Does she think Skitter didn’t make it, or something, since she hasn’t returned? Or is it just “when she used to actually be here”?

She nearly tripped over a small child as she made her way into the kitchen.

Heh. Did Charlotte turn the place into an orphanage?

Charlotte was there, and she was busy emptying the cupboards.  Everything edible was on the counter or on the floor, neatly arranged.  Sierra estimated roughly twenty children were on the ground floor.

Seems like it.

I love the idea of Charlotte just being really good with kids.

“There’s more than there used to be.”

“O’Daly clan.”

Was that the family that volunteered to help with the shelter?

Or maybe it’s another set of victims.

Sierra frowned.  “They need to take care of their own kids.”

“They’re kind of preoccupied.  They were hit harder than anyone else by the attack.  I think only six of the twenty who were with us are left.”

Damn.

That doesn’t include the kids, right?

“I know.  But they still need to take care of their kids.”

“Give them one more day to mourn?”  Charlotte asked.

Fair enough, I suppose, if you’re up for taking care of the kids.

“It’s your call.  You’re the one babysitting in the meantime.”

“I’m trying,” Charlotte said.  “But they’re switching between playing and being pretty normal kids to crying because their parents are… you know.”

Yeeeah, that’s not easy.

All the more reason for those who still have parents to be taken care of by them, I suppose.

Dead.

“Yeah,” Sierra confirmed.

Charlotte had taken off her mask and was using it to tie her hair back.  She straightened it and tied it over her forehead again.  “Isn’t the city supposed to handle this?  There should be something like foster care, or a special evacuation plan for orphaned kids.”

There should be, but have you met Brockton Bay?

“I don’t think the city knows.  It’s not just the kids.  We’ve got thirty dead bodies and it’s not exactly cool out, and there aren’t any ambulances or anything showing up to handle it.

Oh yeah, that’s fair. They kinda need to know about it to do anything.

You should probably tell them.

We just spent the entire afternoon moving them to a new spot with Jay and two locals.

We were talking about burning them in a mass grave, but I’m worried that’s against the law.

Hmm.

I don’t know, is it?

I would think the burning might be the most legally iffy bit there.

And since half of them don’t have ID, we might ruin any chance of their families identifying them.”

“Not easy.”

“No,” Sierra admitted. “How’s the rationing?”

“Irrational.”

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Exhausted and unnerved, Sierra headed back to Skitter’s headquarters.  She double-checked that nobody was following before entering the storm drain.  It was pitch black inside.  Humid.

How long has it been since Skitter was home?

Few days? A week?

She walked with fingertips tracing the right-hand wall.  When that wall ended, she kept walking.  It was disorienting, uncomfortable, walking without a guide in darkness so absolute she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face.

Taylor’s used to it, in part because of Brian and in part because she has thousands of “hands” to touch the walls with. Sierra, not so much.

She felt the wall again, and she kept her hand on it as she rounded the next corner.  There was a wet patch where some small amounts of water were trickling down from the street above… two more paces, then a left hand turn.  She fumbled around briefly to find the opening.

Is Skitter going to be inside for once?

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“No,” she said.  “I’ve hit my limit.  Can you find someone else to move the last two bodies from the factory to here?”

“Okay.”

It’s important to know when to stop even if you’re not entirely done.

She stared at the bodies.  Hopefully they could arrange something early in the morning.  Maybe if she put together a group and sent them downtown to verbally request help?  It was only one of a growing number of issues she was having to solve.

Help from whom exactly? The other Undertravelers? The PRT?

She sighed.  “I’m going to go see how things are inside.”

“Okay.”

She watched as he left to rejoin Yan and Sugita, the other two ex-ABB members.

I guess Sugita is the Japanese one?

He must have said something to them, because Yan turned to look at Sierra.  The look was intense.

Woah, chill.

It wasn’t jealousy from the Chinese-American girl.  It was something else.  As creepy as Jay was, his girlfriend’s stare scared Sierra more.

…

I’m disturbed and I can’t even see it except in my head.

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She felt like she should say something, but the words didn’t come to her.  Had he been a mean-spirited lecher of a drunk?  Someone who’d worked hard at whatever job he could find to support his family, then drank his worries away with his buddies after a shift?  A lonely man without anyone to care for him?

A runaway from a circus? Maybe he worked at the carousel, ‘cause he looks a little dizzy.

What do you say for someone you didn’t know at all?

She considered a simple ‘sorry’, not necessarily because she felt guilty.  She was speaking more for the fact that she couldn’t do more for him, and apologizing on behalf of the random, senseless events that had taken his life.

That’s definitely a feeling Taylor can empathize with, except she’d feel guilty for those random, senseless events.

“Next?” Jay asked.

She looked at him.  He was tired, but she didn’t see any signs of the same emotional drain she was experiencing herself.  He’d been a gang member in the ABB, had preyed on others, maybe even killing.

He’s used to this kind of thing.

Sierra on the other hand is just a young woman who got involved in this life out of desperation.

This job didn’t faze him in the slightest.  Behind his shaggy hair, his narrow eyes were cold, uncaring.  He could have been carrying groceries for all he seemed to care.

Jay. Jay no. We’ve had enough cannibalism for a while.

It creeped her out.

That is very fair.

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When they’d started working yesterday, that sort of thinking had made her want to cry.  Now she felt numb.

Too many people to cry for.

Too few tears.

She could have thought about something else, but a part of her wanted to pay John Doe his due respect.  If nothing else, he deserved to be looked at as a human being rather than another body.

Yeah, this is true. Each one counts. Each one is a person the world no longer has.

She bent down to set the door on the ground.  Jay took hold of the man by the shoulders, she lifted by the pants legs, and they moved him three feet to the right.  John Doe was set down on the concrete floor.  He joined twenty-nine other bodies, now arranged in two rows of fifteen people.  Too many were fellow John and Jane Does.

That’s a lot of people, and I’m guessing they’re nowhere near done.

Oh man, I mentioned receiving the news about the Nine earlier, but you know what’d be even better? Seeing Sierra’s reaction to Skitter’s reaction to finally coming back to NeoPets the territory and seeing this. It’d mean we’d most likely miss out on seeing Taylor’s perspective on this, but that’s fine. I’d love to see what Sierra thinks of Skitter when she sees something like that, whichever way Taylor’s reaction plays out.

A blister had popped on her hand as she’d carried the door.  It smarted, but her focus was on the man.  Forty or so, but the yellow of his skin pointed to liver problems.

Alcohol, perhaps?

He could be as young as thirty, prematurely aged by alcoholism; it wasn’t like she hadn’t seen enough drunks around the city to be blind to the signs.

Ahh, yeah.

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“Lift!” Sierra grunted.

Oh hell yes.

Sierra (or Charlotte) POV? I am so here for this.

The tightness in her back was reminder enough to use her legs to rise to a standing position.

Alright, definitely Sierra. Hell yes.

Her hands were blistered and every knuckle was scraped or bruised.  They were carrying a door, torn from its hinges; the peeling paint, the worn wood, and the weight of their burden made it less than comfortable to hold.

So are they working on the shelter? Or maybe other repairs in Skitter’s territory?

…are we going to see Sierra receive the news that the Nine have retreated?

She held one end of the door.  Jay was at the opposite end, his back to the man who was draped over it.  She wanted to ask Jay to hold the other end; she doubted looking down at the figure as he carried the makeshift stretcher would even bother him.

…oh.

Well that would explain why the door was so heavy.

Is the man alive?

But she didn’t ask.  She couldn’t spare the breath.  They’d been working so long already, it was easier to forge ahead than to stop for any reason.

Despite being a lazy sack of potatoes sometimes, I know the feel.

Still, her silence meant she was faced with the corpse of the man who had once lived here.

Hey, guys, I think the man might not be alive.

I didn’t have high hopes for that.

Once upon a time, he’d had parents, had a first day at school, had made friends, even had a crush on someone.  He had probably worked.  He’d had things he loved about life, no doubt, and if he was living here, he probably had more than enough things about life that he’d hated.

A life cut short.

Whoever he’d been, he was another one of Mannequin’s victims now.  Not quite so disturbing as the ones killed by Burnscar.

I suppose Mannequin didn’t do much fancy stuff with most of his victims. Especially the gassing victims wouldn’t have many outward marks. But Burnscar? Charred remains still look just human enough to be very disturbing, I’d guess.

He didn’t have a wallet on him, so he was a John Doe for now.

Doe, a deer, a female deer
Ray, a drop of golden sun…

Interlude 14

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Howdy! It’s time to wrap up Prey – and, at long last, the presence of the Slaughterhouse Nine in Brockton Bay – with an Interlude.

Who are we in for today? Well, that’s usually pretty difficult to speculate on, but I had some ideas at the end of the previous chapter:

If it’s an Interlude… fuck, Interludes are so difficult to speculate on. Maybe we’d have a look at what someone else has been up to under the miasma’s effect? Ooh, maybe we could get Legend’s perspective on the miasma and his head clearing? Though I do feel like if Wildbow had had a Legend Interlude planned around the time of Interlude 13, he might’ve saved the details on Legend’s family life for Legend’s own Interlude.

Another option is that we might follow one of the Nine – Bonesaw, Siberian or Mannequin if he’s alive – and seeing how they feel about the retreat. That feels wrong, though, due to the finality issue.

Hmm. Honestly, I feel like a Protectorate perspective on the Bakuda bombing and its consequences would be quite appropriate, ideally from someone who didn’t know about it like Legend did. Though such a thing could still be presented from Legend’s POV, as someone confronts him and/or Piggy about it.

But we’ve got other Protectorate characters we could use for that, such as Triumph or one of Legend’s people.

Then again, we had a PRT perspective last time. It’s probably more likely Wildbow’s going to switch it up.

Victoria could be an interesting and relevant POV character, but I’m not sure she’s in a good state to be giving her POV right now.

I should probably just jump into it and find out. Let’s go!

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Check out this post. Wildbow talks about his life on reddit. This explains so much about Taylor’s school experience. No Worm spoilers

This sounds interesting. I’ve frequently wondered about how Wildbow’s life shaped this story.

Let’s take a look.

Redditors who have opted out of a standard approach to life (study then full time work, mortgage etc), please share your stories. What are the best and worst things about your lifestyle, and do you have any regrets?

Well, the title is already intriguing.

Hermit writer here.

Born hard of hearing, went to a regular school. Struggled in middle school. Struggled in high school. Kids who were in my class in kindergarten were in my classes all the way through to grade ten, with the elementary/middle school and high school being a stone’s throw from one another.

I kind of knew about the hard of hearing bit already. I can’t find the ask that told me about it, though (it was probably before I stopped using screenshots for asks).

So far this sounds relatively normal, except for that part. But I’m guessing he’s going to elaborate a bit on the struggles surrounding his school life and hearing problems?

In grade 10, after years of bullying and a peer group that had established who was ‘in’ and who was ‘out’ when I was knee-high, tired of struggling, I was walking down the halls and I found myself wondering when the last time I’d even opened my mouth in school was.

Oh wow.

I stopped dead in my tracks, just paralyzed by loneliness. I asked myself what the point was, couldn’t come up with an answer, resumed walking, went out the side door of the school and went home.

This clearly parallels a few of the last times we saw Taylor at Winslow High.

The start of me just not going to school for that entire year. Nobody noticed.

Damn. He really did write all that from experience. It took a while for Taylor’s absence to get noted, too.

Taylor’s absence getting noted at all actually seems like a fantasy compared to this.

I got caught at the end of the year, did the same thing the next year, got caught only at the end.

What the hell sort of attendance routines did this school have? Clearly not good ones.

Ended up going to an Alternative school (Self study), proved to myself that I had it in me when I got 3 years of studying done in 8 months, won two awards… and then had to go back to my old school for what was essentially grade 13, where I struggled.

Huh. Well done.

People learn in very different ways. Some people can do this much more effectively than learning in a group. Some people are like me and can’t make themselves keep up the effort required to self study, or learn better from lectures than reading.

Some people learn by observing their surroundings while flying.

I worked retail and found it fine. But family wanted me to go to University and figure myself out.

I’m currently working retail, taking a break from the educational system and buying time to figure out what to study.

I went to University and I struggled.

Guys, I’m sensing a theme here.

I spent a long, long time trying to figure out why I struggled, why I was tired all the time, and it took a kind of confluence of events before I realized what should’ve been obvious. I found the social stuff hard and I was exhausted after a day of listening because I’m severely to profoundly deaf.

Oh yeah, that makes a ton of sense. It’s like how focusing is exhausting when you have trouble doing that, how reading without glasses you need tires out your eyes and brain, etc.

Honestly, it’s a little surprising that I haven’t (explicitly) met a hard of hearing character in Worm yet. Maybe later? Oh wait, there was that deaf waitress at the villain pub in Hive.

Beyond that, the ‘path’ just isn’t for me. The systems and institutions just grind me down. The idea of a 9 to 5 is death to me. These things are built and streamlined for the average person, and between disability and a fairly extreme degree of introversion, I’m far from that average.

That is very fair. There’s definitely a brand of ableism in that system.

In the end, I stepped off the path. I’d been writing a thing online as a side project and the reception was good, so I decided to leave school earlier than planned, use the savings I had, stretch things as far as I could, and work when I could (with a family friend when he needed the help and had the cash to spare, doing some landscaping, drywall installation, house painting, all prepping houses for sale in a boom market) to stretch things further.

This would be too early for that thing online to be Worm, right?

It just occurred to me that I have no idea how old Wildbow is.

And I wrote as seriously as I could while people close to me told me that I didn’t deserve to ‘get lucky’ and have the writing work out because I hadn’t seen University all the way through, or openly expressed doubts and disappointments.

Yikes.

Fuck that noise. Writing is tons of effort!

But you know, it worked out in the end. I wrote the equivalent of 20 books in 2.4 years, wrote another 10 for my next series in the ensuing 1.2 years, and I’ve kept up a similar pace over the last 7 years and two months.

Especially when you’re this coddamn productive!

That’s 8.33 books a year!

I started writing mid- 2011, left school at the start of 2012, went full-time-paying-the-bills in 2014 with an income around minimum wage. I moved to a small town (no car, nothing fancy) that same year. I’m now closer to the average Canadian wage. It’s been two chapters a week (2.5 if crowdfunding money is enough) since the beginning.

Oh, I suppose that means it would be Worm after all.

When was this written… huh, yesterday? Well, that explains why this hasn’t been sent to me before.

Writing being Wildbow’s only/main income makes me feel even more right about my decision to set things up so that some of the money from my Patreon goes to Wildbow. It’s not that big a portion of his income (apparently average Canadian wage is 986 CAD or 755 USD per week, and I chip in with about 3.26 CAD or 2.50 USD per week), but it’s something.

My reality: I can go a week or two without really talking to anyone that isn’t a cashier.

Sounds a bit lonely in the long run, but as a fellow introvert (or maybe I’m an ambivert, in the systems where that’s actually a thing), I get it – it also does sound pretty good. Especially if you’ve got internet people to casually interact with at your own leisure.

Every two months or so I go to a relative’s to dogsit while they’re on vacation or to see someone for their birthday, and that gives me most of my fill of socialization and companionship.

Nice!

I don’t have a car, so it’s usually walking or taking the train to another city, and using public transpo there. I subsisted on a rice and beans diet for a good stretch, one $15 video game bought in a year, and my level of expenses hasn’t really risen that much from that point. I eat better and buy a couple more things, but nothing major.

So I guess this would be somewhere between average and reserved?

I don’t know. Being Norwegian spoils me on these things.

60%+ of what I earn goes to savings, which gives me security when my income could fluctuate or disappear at any time.

Oh, that’s smart. I suppose writing would be a bit of a risky business, what with writer’s block, audience fluctuations, sudden drops in popularity because something you wrote didn’t go over as well as you thought it would, etc.

My schedule is entirely my own, which usually amounts to 2.5 15+ hour workdays a week and another 5-10 hours a week spent managing community, finances, and exchanging emails with tv/movie studios, publishers or startups.

I was going to talk about the long but few workdays, but tv/movie studios excuse me what

Is a TV series version of something Wildbow wrote (Worm or otherwise) a serious possibility right now?? 😮

Best things – I love what I do. I love creating, I love my reader’s tears, I love my readers being horrified.

This is really important. You gotta enjoy what you do.

I get to make monsters and be surprised by what my characters do. Many of my fans are just the absolute coolest people – people I’m now insanely glad to have met and include in my life. There’s amazing fanart of my work out there, music, people have gotten tattoos. Tattoos. That’s insane.

People have permanently, painfully painted their appreciation of your work into their bodies, Wildbow!

The bad- I’m an online content creator, and it’s impossible to convey just how toxic the toxic elements of a fandom can get and how negative the negative aspects can get, and how much it can affect you.

That is true. There will always be a toxic side, and I can imagine works like Worm would attract a lot of the edgy sort.

I’ve seen 20 online content creators either break down or remark on the effect it has, and it’s wholly accurate- and my audience isn’t even ~that~ large.

Yeah, it doesn’t take that many people to start brewing fandom sides like this.

This is multiplied by the fact that writing is lonely as a profession (I know too many writers who can’t even talk to their life partners about their work) and it can be hard to find perspective or balance as you take it all in, when you don’t have people to communicate with.

Robert Jordan used his wife as a beta reader or editor of sorts. She was there to tell him when something he wrote didn’t quite come across, to make up for the fact that he couldn’t tell. After all, he knew what he meant by that one line.

On a similar note, some casual dating would be nice, and living in a small town for economical reasons doesn’t leave me with a large dating pool, and at this point I’m not even sure if I could or should inflict myself on someone.

Oof.

There are way too many people who think like that. I hope you find happiness with someone who sees you for the good bean you are, Wildbow.

I’m healthy, groomed, I can hold a conversation, I’m just pretty set in my introverted ways.

…relatable, though.

But still, I’m pretty sure there are people out there for us, who not only tolerate but appreciate the introvert lifestyle.

Hell, both of my crushes have been very introverted, even compared to myself, so I know those people exist because I’m among them.

On another, less social note, there is the fact that as an online content creator, you can’t really take breaks. Or you can, but it costs. Consistency and frequency of updates are god, and a hiatus is a death knell.

No wonder he criticized me on this that one time. In his situation, it matters a lot.

I don’t even know what an effective vacation would entail, because I feel like finding my stride again would cost more than I gained from having the break. So it’s been seven years and two months without a vacation, writing a short book every month.

Damn.

You deserve so many props, Wildbow.

…at some point here I started talking to Wildbow, just like I do to Taylor and other Worm characters. Well, at least this time there’s actually a chance he’s going to read this sometime, if he hasn’t dropped my blog.

I just hope he doesn’t think it’s weird that I’m liveblogging his life story.

It makes for a very strange sort of burnout, when I love it so much, I can still regularly put out some great work to acclaim and praise, but am nonetheless worn down around the edges.

That does not sound healthy.

No regrets. This is me. This is what I’m built for.

As long as you feel it’s right for you, this is good. 🙂

I could do with less negativity from some fans and getting regular good nights of sleep (the deafness comes with insomnia by way of terminal tinnitus),

but both of those just come with the territory.

Ouch.

I feel you on the sleep front (ADD has its ways of messing with your ability to fall asleep too), but tinnitus sounds like a particularly annoying way to be inflicted with it.

I’ve been telling family for the last year that I’ll move to a city with more going on than (as my elderly neighbor phrased it) drinking and meth, where there’s classes to take, a possible dating pool, and/or activities that could break me out of my hermit shell… but my current apartment is amazing and cheap, with the nicest landlords ever. It’s just in a do-nothing town. I haven’t found anything remotely competitive, even taking ‘cheap’ off the table.

I’ve lived in small-ish towns all my life. It’s pretty nice, especially as an introvert.

So that’s where I’m at.

Thank you, Wildbow. This was an interesting read. I feel like I know you a bit better now. 🙂

(Again, if you’re reading this, I hope it wasn’t too weird to see me liveblogging this.)

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“What about Bentley? Does him being stuck in hellhound form until you specifically revert it mean you can not be using your power on him at all times and thereby have it not kill the parasites?” 1) Panacea said that the thing she did to Bentley would likely be undone the moment he came within range of Bitch, 2) Bitch’s power is to make her dogs into hellhounds, why would parasite immunity be less part of that than nonliving zombie-flesh or big boney murder-tails?

1) Oh, right, forgot about that.

2) My logic was basically that I thought the parasites got killed during the transformation, and Bentley being locked in hellhound form would mean Rachel didn’t need to continually keep using her power on him to make sure he didn’t shrink, killing the parasites each time she did that. In retrospect, that’s silly considering how long they can go without her present before starting to shrink.