Tag: chapter 13.8

Krixwell JaceLeave a comment

Do you think Brian will live? Why or why not? If so, what kind of quality of life would you expect him to have afterwards? If not, how do think that will affect the undersiders in general and Taylor in particular?

His chances are certainly not looking good. The only option the Undertravelers have is to somehow get Bonesaw to cooperate (I don’t think Panacea would be able to fix him even if they could find her), and make sure she fixes him properly and without turning him into a weapon against the rest of them. And before any of that, they need to get out of their own current predicament.

So I guess my answer is that it’s still possible, but it’s not bloody likely.

If he lives, his quality of life depends largely on whether or not Bonesaw actually wants to fix him. Whether she’s been convinced or forced. If they did manage to convince her to wholeheartedly repair him, he might even find himself with some artsy upgrades nobody asked for. Artsy from Bonesaw’s perspective. Otherwise, he’d… let’s put it like this: he’d probably not be in shape for much fighting.

If he doesn’t, Taylor becomes the leader of the Undersiders, after some time to adjust (this might also happen if he survives but isn’t in shape to participate). More importantly, there’ll of course be a grief process for each of his friends, though Alec might be numb to it and I’m not sure how Rachel would feel.

Taylor might take it especially hard, being the member that was closest to Grue apart from Aisha. It doesn’t help that no matter whether he lives or dies, she’s going to blame herself for this. There’s no “maybe”s or “if”s about that one, that’s a plain prediction with 97% certainty.

And then there’s Aisha, who’ll have lost her brother while they weren’t on speaking terms. Besides the hurt, Brian was also the main thing connecting her to the team, so it’s entirely possible she’d want to leave and go solo.

There’s a bunch of character development and interactions that could be had because of Brian not making it, which is fairly damning on the Doylist side.

So yeah, this isn’t looking good for him, but if it does go bad, at least I think the consequences could make for an interesting read.

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Btw, just to let you know, a lot of people stopped reading Worm because of this chapter, considered the darkest one so far. Why the people stopped reading? Because Evil won and Good (compared with Nine, Undersiders/Travelers con be considered “good’) lost and many people were disappointed, disgusted and disturbed. I hope you’re not going to stop, right?

Definitely not.

I mean, like another ask puts it,

Things are fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked.

and what’s happened to Grue is very much an awful, dark fate that may be irreversible, but I don’t think Evil Has Won just yet.

This wasn’t the end of this particular part of the story, unless I have a surprise end-of-Arc waiting for me instead of 13.9 (that would feel wrong, I think), and there’s still time to turn this around. If not to a victory, then at least to a draw.

(Incidentally, a draw is exactly what happened after the chapter that I do feel is even darker than this one, not in concept for a particular scene or event so much as for the overall feel of the chapter: 8.3. I do realize I was affected by the slowed pace liveblogging causes during that one, but it does feel so thoroughly hopeless. Like a war zone.)

Also, I haven’t in a long time been under the impression that the Undersiders would be narratively immune to the horrible things that can happen in this story forever. (You may remember how I was very much prepared for Wildbow to potentially kill off one or more of them as early as Extermination.) So to me, what’s happening to Grue doesn’t so much feel like a “OH COD HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN TO ONE OF THE MAIN PROTAGONISTS” as a “oh hey, there we go, something like this was bound to happen sooner or later”.

Which is why it may not affect me as strongly as it maybe should, besides my usual tendency to take the gore in stride.

But in itself,

Is what happened to Grue the most horrifying scene in Worm so far? If not, what is?

this is certainly up there.

…along with what Taylor did to Clockblocker in Agitation. No, seriously, I haven’t just been playing that up for comedy, I genuinely find the idea of getting insects in every orifice and under the eyelids incredibly uncomfortable, even after the insect phobia I had when I first read that chapter was cured.

But hey, I’m admittedly biased on that one, and even then Grue is definitely worse off. At least for Clockblocker it was just for ten minutes or so, and his organs stayed where they were supposed to be.

I guess you could say that this scene was pretty… gruesome

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(Doki Doki Literature Club spoilers below)

Further, we could have:

  • Taylor as Yuri. Dark and quiet on the outside, intense on the inside, a bit socially awkward. Knives.
  • Rachel as Natsuki. Might sound like a strange choice, but I’m thinking about the aversion to needlessly flowery language, the opinion that people are often stupid and the overall tsundere attitude.
  • Brian as the well-meaning and well-spoken but sometimes dense and clueless MC.
  • There are exactly six known characters in the game, so I guess by process of elimination, Alec gets stuck with the role of Natsuki’s shitty dad. That seems either very appropriate or very inappropriate given Alec’s relationship with his own dad.
Krixwell JaceLeave a comment

I dunno if this is the right blog to talk about it (somehow, this has started turning into a SU discourse -_-) but Lapis never used the whole ocean in a fight- she only used small pieces of it that hit with great force, as it was practical for her. The ocean pillar was not a weapon for her, One water punch, water bubble, water chain or water clone pretty much won any comfortation, due to the fact that it seemed to have a lot of force behind it considering the gems are superhuman and all. Incidentally puts all the more meaning on Blue Diamond shrugging these attacks off. Again, apologies for this being wholly unrelated with the main content of your liveblog, but I felt like I had to sent it, so, uhhh… to make it relevant…. Papradascha x Tattletale crossover crackfic?

True, she didn’t ever use all that much water in a fight, though I don’t think there’s much reason to believe she couldn’t if she wanted to (like you seem to be pointing out, she didn’t need to). The best argument for that would be her not escalating against Blue when the chains failed, but while she couldn’t exactly go all out either due to the risk of collateral damage. Though there was room to up the game a bit.

Also, don’t worry, it’s not like this is the most off-topic we’ve ever gotten. 😛

But yeah… crackfic, you say?

A Vision of Love or some stupid title like that

Lisa was incredibly intrigued.

And scared, of course. It wasn’t every day you accidentally fell through a hole in reality, and even her power couldn’t tell her whether she might ever get back home. Of course that bothered her. She really hoped her friends were okay.

But she was distracted from her worries by the best of headaches. She was learning so much with every minute she spent exploring the strange new world the hole had spit her out on, and even though she was wearing herself out using her power so much, she just couldn’t stop.

Unusual rock colors, futuristic buildings: Not Earth.
Rocky, dead terrain: Planet doesn’t have organic life.
No organic life, citylike architecture: Does have inorganic life.

That was the first thing her power had told her about this place. She had soon found some of the inorganic life. She watched them from hiding because her power immediately told her they’d likely be hostile, another thing she was less worried about than she probably should be, but it was enough for her to determine that they were extremely interesting both biologically (if you could use that word about custom-grown beings made of gemstones and hard light projections) and culturally.

Large quantity of similar individuals: Caste-based system, each caste has a specific purpose.
Only unique individual in sight: Rare gem, Sapphire.
No visible eyes: Seer archetype, can see the future.
Rare gem: Gems exist in different rarities depending on factors such as material availability–

Lisa had been studying her surroundings for seventeen minutes (she wasn’t wearing a watch, but she didn’t need to) before she ran into the first robotic drone. Based on her power’s comments about how common they were during her dash to the hiding spot behind the nearest protruding rock formation, she figured she’d been lucky it took that long. She felt even luckier when she learned the drone couldn’t sense her.

Her smile faded when she realized her foothold was giving way under her. Lisa went tumbling backwards into a hole she hadn’t noticed earlier, half sliding and half falling down a tunnel that seemed to stretched a good way downwards.

Long tunnel, falling: Whoops.

Lisa came to her senses after…

Waking up: Spent one minute and fifty two seconds unconscious.
Unconsciousness: Caused by five hard hits to the head.

…two minutes. Great, as if her head wasn’t already hurting enough. It was probably best to limit the use of her power a bit. She groaned, keeping her eyes shut.

“Are you alright?” came a voice. A Gem?

“Are you unhurt?” followed the same voice immediately after, but Lisa could’ve sworn it wasn’t the same person who said it. She had heard Gems of the same castes speak with similar voices, but this felt different somehow.

“No, no, no, no, what do we do?! What if they’ve found us?” A third – second? – voice, this one panicky.

Lisa kept her eyes closed. For all she knew right now, opening them might cause the Gems to panic even more than the third… second… last one already was, which might be bad. She was better off using her power to find out more first, headache or no headache.

Similar voices: Two voices, one body.

Thank you, power, that clears up so much, she thought sarcastically.

“Calm down, Rhodonite,” said one of the similar voices.

“Relax,” said the other, “I don’t think she’s one of their weapons.”

Panicked, “they’ve found us”: Fearful, group is in hiding.
In hiding, weapons: Persecuted by governing caste, would be killed if found.

Maybe that meant they’d be peaceful.

“Iiiii thiiiiink the Ruuuuutiiiiile twiiiiins aaaaare riiiiight,” a fourth voice droned, deep and slow as molasses. If she talks like that all the time she’s going to be so annoying, Lisa mused.

Slow speech: Grandmotherly, consists of six Gems, fusion.
Consists of six Gems: Gems can fuse their bodies and minds together.

Fusion? This species was so fascinating.

A chipper voice interrupted her musings. “I predict that the alien is about to wake up, but pretend to stay unconscious!”

“Wait, what?!” the panicked gem – Rhodonite? – said, startled.

Uh oh.

Prediction: Has the power to see the future, Sapphire.
Voice: Sexy.
Prediction already came true: Interaction with the world is delayed, defective. Only predicts the past.
Defective, persecuted: Governing caste persecutes defective gems.

Things were beginning to make– wait, what was that second thing?

…never mind. The jig was up, so she might as well open her eyes now. Lisa found that idea surprisingly appealing – for some reason, she really wanted to see the Sapphire.

She opened her eyes and was not disappointed.

When I woke up that morning, I had not thought I’d ever see Grue verbally chew out the leader of the Brockton Bay Protectorate, Miss Militia, swearing like a sailor. Seeing her stand there and take it was even lower on the list of things I’d expected out of the day.

Half an hour ago, the Protectorate had unexpectedly stepped into the middle of our carefully planned ambush against the Slaughterhouse Nine.

And, even worse, they’d been using bombs. Special bombs confiscated from Bakuda, like the ones I’d seen Miss Militia use against Leviathan. One of those bombs had apparently created a hole between realities, which Tattletale had fallen into in all the chaos.

And then the hole had closed, swallowing up my best friend. It was a wonder I wasn’t right there beside Grue, helping him chew out Miss Militia.

But it was all my fault. This entire ambush had been my idea, and Tattletale had paid the prize. Who knew what kind of horrors she might be experiencing in whatever world she had ended up in? Who knew if she’d ever co–

My train of thought was derailed by the sound of a zipper opening in the air above me. Before I could look up, I was pushed to the ground by something landing on top of me.

Or, someone? Fuck, are the Nine attacking back?

“Hey, Skitter! Guess who’s back!” It couldn’t be – Tattletale? I looked up to see her grin down at me in her usual vulpine fashion.

“We should get out of the way,” she continued, “I’ve got friends coming through.”

A minute later, everyone was staring at the space I had occupied, which now housed Tattletale and four – five? – aliens. One… or two… of them was shaped like the letter Y, with two upper bodies on one lower body. Another had four arms (on one torso this time) and four eyes and looked scared with all of them. The third was a grandmotherly caterpillar larger than Crawler.

The last one reminded me of Princess Peach, except her eyes were covered by her hair. She was holding hands with Tattletale. “Skitter,” Tattletale said, “meet my girlfriend, Padparadscha!”

Girlfriend?

“I’ve had a wonderful vision! We will use the Magic Zipper of Dayus X to go to Lisa’s marvelous home planet! We will all be free!”

“Love you too, hun,” said Tattletale and kissed Padparadscha on the cheek.

The end.

…I’m not a writer, okay? 😛

End of Snare 13.8

Krixwell JaceLeave a comment

Bonesaw is so good and so horrible, I love her so much. Not as a person, mind you, but as a character she’s fucking fantastic.

Trickster’s plan worked pretty well, but they came too late for Grue to be in particularly good shape, and in an effort to get Bonesaw to fix him, Taylor, Ballistic, Trickster, Tattletale and Sundancer ended up at Bonesaw’s mercy. Damn, that’s a shitty situation to be in.

But hey, at least they found Imp?

The situation reminds me a lot of when Bakuda got her hands on the Undersiders, with our protagonists being paralyzed at the mercy of a crazed villain who intends to fuck with their bodies. The stakes are higher, though, because of how Bonesaw does things, and this time, I don’t think they’re coming out with just a concussion.

I do think at least three of them are going to make it out of this situation alive, not counting Grue, but there’s little chance this isn’t going to lead to permanent changes for at least one or two of the protagonists, unless they somehow manage to convince Bonesaw to fix things without using that to her advantage.

Which, incidentally, is the only way we could get Grue home.

Regent is are out there still, but he has no reason to believe something’s wrong inside yet, so I doubt he’s going to be coming to their rescue. I suppose it’s possible that a stray light blast from Purity could cause an opening for the Undertravelers somehow.

I’m guessing there’s either one or two chapters left in this Arc (not counting Interludes). The next one’s probably going to be horrifying and hilarious and I’m very much looking forward to it.

See you then!

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It took long minutes for us to get there.  I could hear faint rumbles of the ongoing battle and Bonesaw’s humming.  It was all I could do to keep breathing.  It was like my body had forgotten how, and it demanded my constant attention to maintain that simple rhythm.

This sounds like it would feel similar to drowning to some extent. Not that I’ve tried that.

With the aid of her spiders, she stacked us like logs.  Ballistic and Trickster went on the bottom.

Pfft.

I couldn’t even grunt as the spiders leveraged me onto the pile alongside Tattletale.  I stared down at the mask of the third person below us.

That makes it sound like it’s not Sundancer. Parian, perhaps?

Imp.  She’d got Imp.

Oh.

Welp.

Guess we know what happened to her, then. :/

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I had almost got the spider off me when another caught me from behind.  A third and fourth caught me an instant later, seizing my head and shoulders and my legs, respectively.

Alright, maybe not something different in each, but still.

There’s a certain irony to Skitter being restrained by spider-like things.

Bonesaw exhaled a second cloud of dust into my face.

Well, fuck.

End of chapter?

I held my breath for as long as I could, but there was a limit.  When I did breathe, my chest seized up, and my ears immediately started ringing violently, a headache settling into place.  The muscles in my arms and legs locked up.

Looks like the powder does roughly the same thing as the darts. Maybe the darts were tipped with the powder, for that matter.

She sprayed an aerosol around herself, killing my bugs.  Not that it mattered.  My facility with my power was getting clumsier and clumsier as the headache increased in intensity.

Ahh, I suppose that’s part of the extra. Weakening their access to their power to make them truly paralyzed. Thereby not doing it halfway.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

“Bring them,” she said.  The mechanical spiders leapt to obey.  Within moments, me, Tattletale, Trickster, Sundancer and Ballistic were being dragged inch by inch towards the dining hall.  Towards Grue.

No, no, no.

You fucked up.

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My bugs served to give me a half-second of early warning as they felt her jam one hand into the side-pocket of her dress.  I turned on my heel, the burn on my leg screaming in pain as I did it, and threw myself to the right as she brought one hand to her mouth and blew a billowing cloud of powder into the space I’d been occupying.

That’s probably worse than poisonous, so yeah, better dodge that.

I got my feet under me and lunged forward again.  I didn’t get two steps before I was tackled to the ground.

By one of your allies?

It was a mechanical spider the size of a large dog.

Ah, fair enough.

Hey, time to figure out whether they’re arthropod-like enough to be controlled. 😛

It had been folded up inside one of the bodies.  Its legs latched around me.

Huh, so not only did Bonesaw herself hide in the bodies, she’s hidden other things in them. How many bodies are left? I suspect she’ll have something different in each.

There wasn’t much strength in them, and even with my less than fantastic upper body strength, I managed to pry the first two legs apart.

Nice.

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I’d let Brian’s name slip.  Dumb, dumb, dumb.  I wasn’t thinking straight.

It’s very understandable, given the situation.

“But no, I’m not going to do that,” she said.  “I don’t censor my art because it offends people.”

oh my cod she’s so precious ahahaha

“I could convince you,” I told her.  My swarm flowed forward, and she backed away.  Her eyes, one green and one blue, flashed as she took in the breadth of the swarm, the composition of it.

Eyy, she did do the heterochromia thing!

She was probably already brainstorming some solution.

That or studying the movement of the bugs in order to figure out how the power works.

I wasn’t going to give her a chance.  I drew my weapons, one in each hand, and charged through the swarm, straight for her.

Don’t forget the protection she’s given herself.

At least you’re on relatively equal footing thanks to the silk costume, but I really would not underestimate Bonesaw’s melee skills after her moves in 13.6.