When Krixwell is finally freed from the effects of the miasma, please ask him to do a liveblog of his past few liveblog sessions. I want to see him scream at both Taylor and Pastwell.

You really should reread this chapter and the previous one, now that the bamboozle has been revealed. It’s a whole different experience where you notice all the inconsistencies and hints, and see Taylor’s decisions in a very different light.

Now, can we have a couple of retrospective posts of Pastwell for these chapters? Pretty please?

Upd. on my previous ask: I guess you delivered on retrospective, yay!

Yeah, I was right there with you guys in deeming this a necessity, before I even moved on from the reveal and finished 14.9. 🙂

Also in meta-dramatic-irony, watching as Krixwell completely misses the dramatic irony the reader is supposed to be experiencing.

Hehe, yeah. I got to experience some of that meta-DI myself, too, while looking back at my bloggings. :p

Did Bonesaw and Jack really fool you so long even after the “Don’t Swear”-reveal? After saying that’s more a Bonesaw than a Lisa thing and that the emotional manipulation was uncharacteristic of Brian I totally thought you were just playing along. I recommend not getting caught up in agnosic miasmas anytime soon 🙂

This is one of many ways in which I’d be fucked if I had to deal with the Nine. :p

Aaaaah god Krixwell hope you don’t think I’m overreacting or rambling but those last few days have been the MOST emotionally invested that your liveblog has made me feel ! I was SO sure you would get it at the “Don’t swear !” ! Lisa swears all the freaking time ! You even said it was characteristic of Bonesaw !

Then I went and re-read ahead to try to guess when you would get it. And I guess it’s understandable that you didn’t question their super OOC behaviour once you had convinced yourself that it was really them, but how come you didn’t question it at the very start ? Taylor had every reason to be unsure but you just treated it as paranoia, while acknowledging that she had good reasons.

And man, Bonesaw obviously doesn’t know a thing about Lisa’s power. How could she keep an eye on Battery without any external clue ? She is not a seer ! Obviously Taylor can’t remember than but you can ! Hope you don’t think I’m screaming at you it was just a very exciting time

I felt as if YOU were Taylor, unsuspectingly trapped with the Nine and unable to realize the trickery… I want to emphasize that I’m not saying you’re not smart or anything, anybody can miss things, but those were some frustrating sessions !

Yeeeah, they fooled me even harder than they fooled Taylor. They were legitimately better actors than they needed to be considering how much Taylor couldn’t remember, and I was quick to accept the premise that Lisa could work around the miasma with her power (something like that already being established with regards to Imp helped to reinforce that). And like you say, a large part of why I didn’t question their identities as much as I should have later on was because I had already been convinced.

I did catch the thing about Bonesaw not getting that Lisa needs a thing to base her knowledge off of, but I was already under the impression that the miasma had made “Lisa” overconfident in her power.

yeah, the intention was for people to figure out at the end of last chapter that it was the Nine, creating tense dramatic irony in this one. we’ve been tearing our hair out in #worm_spoilers this whole time.

“And it was all hinted towards at least as early as the last line of last chapter, which I found really weird. Someone smarter than me could probably tell from that line what was going on” – This was WB’s intention I’m pretty sure. The last line of 14.8 is treated by the fandom as one of the best reveals in the story, not as early foreshadowing.

Yeah, absolutely. The most telling part about that being the intention is that if you don’t get the implication (like, ahem, a certain doofus over here who’s currently talking from experience), it doesn’t really work well as a chapter-ending line. It’s written to be understood as “this is Bonesaw”, and if you don’t get that, the line just… flops.

Which, to be clear, is not criticism. The line works quite well when understood properly.

I can’t believe you believed Lisa and Brian to be coldblooded murderers (especially Lisa) and Brian to be an emotional manipulator. You don’t have a pretty good opinion about these two Undersiders, eh? I personally realized who they’re for real when “Tattletale” said that Skitter should not swear. Tattletale was never against swearing so far in this story.

Like I mentioned earlier, a recurring problem for me in 14.8-9 was that I gave the miasma way too much credit. I thought they were deeply corrupted, all while (more quietly) questioning why changes like these didn’t seem to be happening to Taylor yet.

Y’know, instead of questioning whether the changes were actually because of the miasma at all (beyond “maybe this is a side of them they’ve never shown Taylor”, which was largely dismissed).

This is the tensest chapter of the read-through yet. I keep being half-convinced Krix has already realised, especially with “he just flipped a switch back to fake normality.” I can’t throw any blame around though: I can’t remember exactly when I worked it out, but it definitely wasn’t from the end of the previous chapter which I only got on hindsight. 

Yeah, you’d think that, wouldn’t ya. :p

But nah, I wouldn’t string you guys on like that, even for entertainment purposes. This blog is supposed to be open and honest. Whenever I realize something and don’t tell you immediately, it’s a mistake on my part that I try to avoid.

Anyway, good to hear I’m not the only one who didn’t get it. Do you remember if the closing line of 14.8 seemed weird to you at the time?

Of all the chapters so far, this is the one I wish you hadn’t split up.

That’s fair, but hey, at least this way, I wasn’t exhausted by the time Taylor spelled the twist out for me, probably making my reaction much better.

Are we allowed to remind him of OTHER blonde-haired parahuman girls in Brockton Bay who have previously gone around asking people not to swear? Because seeing him completely miss one of the most heart-stopping lines in the story is just painful.

Hopefully the ridiculousness of my idiocy in the next chapter made up for it, rather than making it worse.

Sharks didn’t specify, but I suspect this ask:

Thanks, screener! 🙂

was in response to Sharks not letting this through. A decision I agree with, honestly.

I was blaming you not figuring out that “Tattletale” and “Grue” weren’t actually Tattletale and Grue on the fact that the liveread format means you’d already forgotten that “Hey! Don’t swear!” Is litterally Bonesaw’s reaction… But I have to side with others now: You’re wayyyy too trusting in Taylor’s internal narration.You haven’t figured it out yet so I’m looking forward to your shock when you do. I hope it’ll be before it’s spelled out though.

I didn’t really forget (how could I? it’s one of Bonesaw’s most endearing and hilarious features, I love it). It just fell into something that ended up being a recurring problem throughout the next chapter: I kept giving the miasma way too much credit. Much like Taylor did, but worse.

Like a couple other asks point out, I even called out that it was like Bonesaw. But instead of thinking “hey, this is actually Bonesaw, not Lisa!”, I went “hey, maybe Bonesaw made the miasma cause people to dislike swearing! but why isn’t that affecting Taylor? maybe the miasma caused her to forget why she didn’t dislike swearing anymore…”

You’re probably gonna see the word “idiot” a lot in this ask session, because that’s really what I was being. :p