Not so much an ask as a comment, but I feel compelled to tell you that dog handling is not one of WIldbow’s many talents. Pushing the dog down to ‘show your dominance’ is actually a very harmful and wrongheaded training method. (feel free to ignore, it just puts my shoulders up around my ears to see it passed on uncritically :P)

Ouch, yeah, that does sound bad when you put it like this.

…I feel like it’s worth noting that it’s a lot like how Rachel herself was raised, too.

So now that you know the Nine are recruiting (and how they recruit), any guesses as to who else might be a nominee?

Hookwolf. I’m almost certain. The dude’s brutal as hell, with more murders on his file than Weld remembers seeing on anyone who wasn’t already in the Birdcage (though as I mentioned back when that was established, that’s partially because he keeps escaping the transport to it). Also, if we get to see him and Bitch interacting at the test, that ought to be interesting.

Other than him… maybe Night? I don’t know.

This chapter is only five days after the Wards find the bodies the Nine left, but they were apparently there for some time before they did those murders.

Ah. Yeah, I thought that might be the case… Seems they’re fairly decent at staying low.

I love that in this chapter we finally get to see Rachel’s struggles with human expressions and social nuances, if she is going for a quick interaction, she just has to eye-ball every single expression and go with whatever paints a picture where she can make herself look stronger, which means, lots of hostility where there is none

Yeah… It ain’t easy.

In the moment that Rachel screams, from the way the phrase is written, with the verbs being “screamed” instead of “had screamed”, it is highly likely that she is screaming in the present about remembering her past, the wounds are so fresh it almost physically hurts her to think about it. Also, from Interlude Doggo: “Take care of your fucking child”. And lastly, there is another, quite plausible, reason Rachel might have not included Aisha in her train of thought

Hm, perhaps.

Also, yes, that quote really takes on a bit more meaning with this context.

Hi krixwell, what do you think of birthdays in general, especially of your friends?

Birthdays are pretty neat as a concept. A day to celebrate a particular person, for no other reason than that they’re still here? I like that.

In practice, it mostly amounts to saying some variation of “happy birthday”, these days. I still think that acknowledgement is important, though. 🙂

Tbh this chapter flipped my begrudging sympathy for Bitch into full on burning hatred.

Hatred anon here: I legit hate stupid, trigger happy dumbasses like Rachel. They’re why Trump won, and I just want her dead, man. I just want them all dead.

Yeah, I have to admit that it’s hard to be sympathetic to Bitch most of the time. She has very good reasons to be as awful as she can be, but that doesn’t make it okay.