Interlude 10a is one of the most infamously controversial chapters among the fandom, with reactions to it going all the way from “Bully for Regent! Finally that bitch got what she deserved” to “Regent is the most horrifingly evil monster in all of fiction and I wish he dies in a nuclear fire”. Either way it is often considered one of Wildbow’s finest pieces of writing. Your bolded “holy shit” response did not disappoint, but could you expand a bit more on your emotional reaction to the chapter?

I can absolutely see how this would be a true base breaker. I’m closer to the “horrifyingly evil” side, I think, though not quite that extreme – he’s not the most horrifyingly evil, nor do I necessarily wish death on him (that takes a lot).

But it’s hard to ignore the fact that what he did was supremely fucked up (even if he was bluffing about actually going through with it if Sophia stayed in town), and if there’s anyone who deserves the treatment Sophia got, it’s not her. She’s a horrible person, sure, but she’s a petty one – she deserved retribution, but the one Regent gave her was disproportionate, especially if it was only for the specific crime of fucking with his teammate.

I think one of the primary emotions I had during the climactic scene was one of disbelief. Not in the story, but in Regent, shock that he actually seemed to be going this far, that kind of thing. Wildbow really did a good job with revealing the true extent to which Heartbreaker fucked up Regent’s morals.

So I don’t really get why you’re doing the tw thing cause anyone who’s finished Worm probably doesn’t have any left (jk lol), but with that said, if you’re doing them you might want to give post #169967097234 (the one about Regent having sex with bodies he’s controlling) a tw: rape cause that’s one of the more horrific forms of rape out there, even if fictional :p

Yeah, good point. I kind of glossed over that fact when I learned about that, though it did occur to me.

It does cross my mind from time to time that people who would read this blog would generally be well aware of, and usually okay with, the upcoming triggers. I think the main reason I’m still doing trigger warnings nonetheless is that the posts might end up getting shown to someone outside the fandom by accident, such as by them showing up in a sitewide search for a phrase that shows up in the post.

For what it’s worth – I sent in an ask that referred to 9.2 as “Lily’s Interlude” even though it’s a numbered chapter. Technically it isn’t an Interlude, you’re right, but I think of Sentinel as an Interlude Arc. Pact and Twig have each had one of those as well.

I don’t think I thought much of it in that instance, but yeah, when the one mentioning “Weld’s Interlude” came in, I just figured that was a thing people did because the chapters in Sentinel are functionally identical to a bunch of Interludes.

Concerning Tattletale taking risks without informing others: There is the bank robbery where she underestimated the number of heroes showing up. That could be an oversight instead of an intentional risk, but she still ended up misleading the team about the job she (and/or Coil) wanted them to do. The Protectorate stand-off after Leviathan was also a risk. She could have miscalculated and caused the team’s arrest for interfering and Taylor lost her cover because Armsmaster had nothing to lose.

Ah, yes, these are some other good examples, thank you. And yeah, I do think the former was just an oversight, but I suppose it still counts if you look primarily at the consequences.

krixwell-liveblogs:

“Also, judging by the colors, it seems we’re going for a Siberian husky rather than a Siberian cat.” Or Siberian Tiger, although the white ones are actually Bengal Tigers or Siberian/Bengal Tiger mixes.

Krix, the Siberian’s name is probably a reference to siberian tigers, since she has stripes

Wildbow was referring at Siberian tiger when he described Siberian. Just google it.

Ah, yeah, that makes a lot more sense.

The only Siberian I could think of at the time was the Siberian housecat. Siberian huskies I had to be reminded of by Google’s autocomplete suggestions, and Siberian tigers completely slipped my mind.

i think Siberian’s name cmes from Siberian tigers. Which is fun seing as they don’t have more chances than other tigers to get white stripes instead of orange ones.

Despite her being nicknamed Siberian, I always thought she was named that as a reference to black and white tigers, which are actually bengals. 

I wonder how many asks with bengals you’re getting hit with. I forgot to actually check if you’d gotten one already before I sent mine.

Yeah, I got a few. No worries, though. 🙂

I guess Siberian or whoever else named her in-universe didn’t know tigers all that well, or just thought Siberian sounded better than Bengal or White Tiger (as may have been the case out-of-universe as well). Or maybe the latter two were taken already, like Crawler was for Skitter.

I’m very curious to see your extended impressions of each Slaughterhouse Nine member as they currently stand.

I’m not sure there’s all that much more to say than what I said during the chapter, but let’s think a little more about this nonetheless. If nothing else, at least it’ll be a handy summary.

I wish I knew more about famous murderers. With Jack Slash being blatantly based on Jack the Ripper, it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s a theme running through the entire team, or at least part of it. (I suppose Siberian means the killer doesn’t have to be human to count.)

  • Bonesaw: Crazed, unpredictable, violent. Practically a freak magnet as the freaks come to see what she gets up to. Possibly has the power to cut though bodies, like a reverse Faultline. I wonder if she wants to play a game?
  • Shatterbird: She usually uses her power publicly to effectively announce the Nine’s presence in the city, and spread fear and terror, so whatever her power is, it’s something that shows.
  • Crawler: Not much info given, but from the name and “a misshapen silhouette, not even humanoid”, I think they’re a Changer of some sort.
  • Mannequin: Who the fuck is so into body modifications that he lets a teammate cut up his body and use his Tinker tech to hold it together and alive?
  • Siberian: Based on Siberian and/or white Bengal tigers. People should really try not to get distracted by her boobs, because if she catches you, she’s probably going to tear you to pieces. Might have the power to actually turn into a tiger… and as I kept telling you when I met the Undersiders almost a year ago, you should always bet on the tiger – as evidenced by her track record against the Triumvirate.
  • Burnscar: Fire powers. Pretty much all I know. Possibly triggered by an abusive parent giving her her signature scars.
  • Hatchet Face: Best name. Possibly a Brute, not so much protected from attacks as able to take a lot of them. I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t use axes. Also, his civilian name might be Johnny.
  • Jack Slash: Jack the Ripper. Presumably into

    “deep throat slashes, abdominal and genital-area mutilation, removal of internal organs, and progressive facial mutilations”

    in particular.

    His power lets him basically extend any bladed weapon to swipe at a large area at once. Also acts as a catalyst for something that’s going to bring about the end of the world unless stopped, whether he knows it or not.

So that means you’ve been using that horrifying Rose-Cal icon for over a year…

Not quite.

Discord updates icons and nicknames retroactively, and those screenshots were taken in late November. I’m glad I did that, because 2.5 weeks later, the server was cleared by a hacked bot (some of you may remember that I postponed a liveblog session because I was busy fixing this), meaning those messages no longer exist and I wouldn’t have been able to search them up now like I did in November.

Anyway, the image you’re talking about, Rose Caltz, was created in the beginning of March 2017, so we’ve still got a couple months to go for its anniversary.

Incidentally, I decided not to switch my Discord icon back to Rose Caltz for the time being (though it remains my personal Tumblr blog’s icon), which has led to a bit of a crisis of color on the servers where my name before Christmas was “King Krix the Pink”:

Link to 10.6 is broken.

Fixed, thanks.

Adding chapters to the ToC is annoying because the links seem to be broken by default. In this case I got distracted from the process of fixing that.