This is just to clarify, because some of the other askers are a little confused: Labyrinth was not ever Burnscar’s choice for recruitment. Not every member of the Nine chose to recruit someone upon their entry to Brockton Bay. Burnscar abstained from the selection process and while her companions were informing their candidates, she decided to pay a visit to Labyrinth.
Ah, yeah, that makes sense. Minus the abstaining from the process, that’s pretty much how I was interpreting it. It didn’t seem to me that she wanted Labyrinth to join.
And considering how Burnscar herself doesn’t want to be in the Slaughterhouse Nine, it’s very reasonable that she wouldn’t want to seek out another brutal cape to help the team recruit.
A couple of Labyrinth things: 1) She never said that Burnscar was there for Spitfire, you just assumed that because of the elemental connection and the early focus on Spitfire – Elle was actually looking for her phone to tell the Crew Burnscar was here for her. 2) Her nightmare asylum probably doesn’t reflect reality, given the walls are lined with blades etc.
1) She didn’t explicitly say it, but I believe the early focus on Spitfire – while definitely meant to make the reader believe Burnscar was after her, which it successfully did – reflected Labyrinth being under the same impression. More importantly, Labyrinth’s narration sounded surprised by the realization that Burnscar was after her, like it was a twist. It was a twist to the reader, thanks to the misdirection that was done through the focus of Labyrinth’s narration, Burnscar’s apparent targeting of Spitfire during the combat, and the pattern seemingly established by the previous two Interludes of the Slaughterhouse members seeking out someone they could relate to. If it wasn’t a twist to Labyrinth too, though, why did she react like she did?
It makes more sense for Labyrinth to have seen it coming, but the execution of the twist for the audience makes it seem like she didn’t.
2) Who knows. I mean, sure, it makes a lot of sense for the nightmare asylum to be exaggerated in terms of how bad it is, but in this crapsack world, I could see the real asylum possibly being almost as bad. Maybe not quite at “walls lined with blades” levels, but there’s probably a reason the asylum was such a nightmare for her in the first place, beyond just the mental state she was in when she was there. Also, if I’m not mistaken, Interlude 5 had Gregor describing the Crew as “rescuing” Labyrinth from the asylum, further suggesting it wasn’t all that great.
Regarding your theories about trigger events, I think you might be thinking too literally or directly about it. Taylor didn’t get a power to help her escape the locker, but one that (attempted to) deal with the real, underlying problem: her loneliness. She had no friends, nobody to help her; now she has lots of friends! (What do you mean insects aren’t friends? They do what she says, right? What’s the difference?)
Yeah, this is pretty much how I’d interpreted that specific event, though I hadn’t tied it to her general loneliness, but rather her isolation in the moment. This goes back to the days before the dandelions were introduced, when I was theorizing that trigger events involved the body reacting to something by reaching far beyond its normal capabilities – in Taylor’s case, her brain reacting to the locker isolating her from the world by reaching out to the bugs within range.
I do suppose you have a point in that maybe I’ve been a bit too superficial with my takes on how this could work for others.
You haven’t seen Avatar: the Last Airbender? …I think I smell a future liveblog…
I have seen… a little under half, I think, of the first season. I also know a fair amount of spoilers for later on.
I do think I might return to it someday, but I don’t think I’ll be liveblogging it, sorry. I’d prefer to do something I can start from the beginning with, and it’d take a long time before I’d get to A:TLA, and I’d probably want to watch the rest of it before that.
I’m probably best off focusing on Worm for now, its sequel afterwards (perhaps with something in-between as a break from the Wormverse, like how Minda did Paranatural between the first three MS Paint Adventures and Homestuck), and then we might start thinking about what’ll follow. By then, I’d imagine lots of new and interesting stuff will have come out, too.
Any speculations about the power of the new member? You know she can track people from Burnscar’s description, but what form do you think that takes?
Hm. If not for the Slaughterhouse affiliation, the idea of teleporting to someone no matter where they are would be a neat way to have this, but most likely it’s something more violent. What I just described but with automatic telefrag (i.e. teleporting into people wherever they are) sounds a bit less like “finding people”…
I don’t know. Whatever it is, it sounds like distance is hardly an issue, so I doubt it’s something like smelling blood, but I’m running out of ideas.
Maybe it’s a remote Master ability that, presumably among other things, allows her to perceive through someone’s senses?
Depending on what the other things are, that might be a bit too powerful, though.
Actually, we were told who Jack’s nominee was: Oni Lee. Whether or not there’s a second nomination from Jack– well, RAFO (Read And Find Out). Speaking of Oni Lee, yeah, it was one of the Coilders who shot out his knee in Hive (specifically, the injured memetic badass sniper, with Skitter spotting).
“neither Jack’s nor Mimi’s chapters ended up actually telling us.” Well, they told us who the nominees were *supposed* to be: Oni Lee and Labyrinth. It’s just neither of them worked out. It remains to be seen if they’re going to find new candidates on the fly or if they’re simply out of the running.
Yeah, when I wrote that, I was specifically discounting Oni Lee because Jack didn’t end up actually presenting him to the others as his nominee, meaning Jack still has the opportunity to find an official one.
And Burnscar didn’t even get around to asking before it became clear to her that Labyrinth didn’t see her the way she saw Labyrinth.
Any speculations about the power of the new member? You know she can track people from Burnscar’s description, but what form do you think that takes?
Hm. If not for the Slaughterhouse affiliation, the idea of teleporting to someone no matter where they are would be a neat way to have this, but most likely it’s something more violent. What I just described but with automatic telefrag (i.e. teleporting into people wherever they are) sounds a bit less like “finding people”…
I don’t know. Whatever it is, it sounds like distance is hardly an issue, so I doubt it’s something like smelling blood, but I’m running out of ideas.
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