Where is Taylor going now?

This was a nice chapter. We got a glimpse into what the past two weeks have been like for Taylor, we finally learned how exactly Coil’s power works (and it’s really interesting), a lot of cool and new context was added to the first Lung battle and Taylor becoming an Undersider, and Taylor made an important decision and then quite rudely didn’t tell us whether the Undersiders were to be involved yet.

I am very intrigued right now, to see how Taylor decides to go about changing things. How she’ll go about making the world a bit better while not falling into the pitfalls of all the other people we’ve seen who were allegedly trying to make things better.

Next chapter… I don’t know. I don’t even know if it’s a regular chapter 8.9 or Interlude 9 (yes it still bugs me that Wildbow seems to be breaking from the “Arc N -> Interlude N” format) or even chapter 9.1 (which would set that right again). Let’s take a look at the link.

Interlude… 8… what.

Oh my cod now I have to call the one with Tattletale “Interlude 8 (Bonus)” or “the Tattletale Interlude” to separate it from this one? And what do I do with my tags?!

…I’ll have to tag that bridge when I get to it, I guess. At least it seems we’re setting the numbering back to the old pattern. Hopefully Wildbow figures out how he wants to number the bonus Interludes soon. 😛

So, uh, see you in Interlude 8.2, I guess!

Hooooo boy. That was one hell of a ride.

Time for bullet points, I think.

• Tattletale’s back, bitchesss! I was completely wrong before – it didn’t feel like a cop-out at all. Possibly because I was too busy being really relieved at the non-death of my favorite character and amazed at her brilliance in the rest of the chapter to care… But honestly, if anything, this might just make her “death” even better in retrospect. It’s difficult to make the audience believe that a major protagonist like this is dead, and Wildbow pulled it off so well that he got me, a usually relatively optimistic person, to be far more pessimistic about her chances of returning than Taylor. This in turn allowed me to empathize more with Taylor’s worry over her friend. Fantastic writing.
• Her brilliance was already mentioned, but it deserves a point of its own. After turning up alive, Tattle proceeded to dominate the situation beautifully, and I loved it.
• The mysterious conversation was, as I predicted, meant to be about Taylor possibly joining the Wards on a probation like Sophia, but it turned out so much more interesting thanks to Taylor discovering Sophia’s identity, not to mention Tattletale’s intervention. I know this is the third bullet point mentioning Tattletale’s brilliance in this chapter, but can you really blame me?
• Armmaster… what the hell, man. Well, say hi to Bakuda and/or Lung from me if one of them’s still alive.
• And then there’s the final development. The cat’s out of the bag and the mouse is running away. What do you do now, Taylor?

I suppose that last thing is what we’ll have to begin dealing with next time. It might be time to look for Danny, and/or check whether his house is still intact, too.

So yeah, I love this chapter. See you next time! 😀

That’s right, we can go back to regular “End”s now. At least unless it turns out Leviathan isn’t as chased off as it seems.

So, that was an interesting chapter. Between Taylor talking to the nurse-in-training, getting healed and antagonized by Panacea (♠), learning that some of the Protectorate higher-ups want to talk to her and some unknown others, performing a daring escape and discovering that Shadow Stalker is Sophia Hess, there was plenty of action here for a chapter that mostly had the protagonist lying in a hospital bed. I quite enjoyed it.

That one of her tormentors is also a cape is a pretty big realization for Taylor. It marks the collapse of another guard post on the border between her civilian life and her cape life. One of the most important guard posts, in fact.

Also, this recontextualizes a few past events. At the mall, who stepped in-between Taylor and Emma? Sophia. And who is obsessed with being a rival to Grue, but romantically jealous over Brian? Sophia. (That last thing is almost approaching Miraculous levels of dramatic irony.)

So, next chapter, Taylor will have to deal with this discovery, which seems to have shook her so much that it’s only a matter of time before the people looking for her find her. As such, I suspect we might learn what Legend & co. have to say to Taylor as well.

See you then!

Phew. That was a pretty decent chapter. Taylor sneaking up and nanobotting the minikaiju in the butt was definitely a highlight, and Scion was awesome. 🙂

So now things are looking up and down at the same time. Up in that Scion showed up and Leviathan is on the run, and down in that Taylor has only one functional limb and might be getting arrested instead of treated.

I mean, I can understand why the PRT is doing this, but that doesn’t mean I like it. There’s a truce in place to fight the bigger enemy, and if we suppose Tattle was right about most of the parahuman antics being a game, then abusing such a truce to arrest people on the other side is cheating.

(It’s possible that they’re not actually doing this, and the manacles are just a precaution against villains creating chaos in the hospitals, but let’s be real – this story is not one where people should get the benefit of the doubt most of the time.)

And I don’t care what the Hippocratic Oath does or doesn’t say – medical personnel siding with the heroes and prioritizing them over the villains, to the point of possibly not treating the villains at all, is awful. Especially when the villains are there as a result of heroic work anyway.

Next chapter, Taylor hopefully gets some treatment. We’ll probably also learn more about the medical efforts surrounding this whole debacle, unless we don’t have time for that before Taylor gets hauled off to a PRT holding cell or interrogation room.

See you next time!

This was great.

Armsmaster was fucking awesome in this chapter. Sure, he was underestimating Leviathan and being a prideful man seemingly only concerned with his reputation as usual, but he was genuinely a really badass fighter who provided us with what I believe to be the most visually cool fight so far in the story.

And, surprisingly, he didn’t actually die, in spite of about 3-5 different death flags. I doubt Wildbow is going to casually be like “oh btw Armsmaster bled to death” at the beginning of the next chapter, so I think he’s good for now, even if he’ll only be Armmaster from now on.

Meanwhile, Taylor finally found a way to help out! One that fits with what she’s been doing regularly ever since Agitation: Sticking bugs on people to track them. Along with the flier that was just assigned to Taylor, this also puts her in a position giving her an overview of the battle wherever it moves to.

Speaking of which, Leviathan appears to be moving towards one of the shelters. I should note that Danny’s also got a death flag or two on him (basically, if going for maximum angst for Taylor, it’d be a good time to kill him off just when he and Taylor have a conflict and she last saw him during a really stressful confrontation), though Armsmaster has just proven that such is survivable in this story.

So yeah. Next time, this bug is going flying! See you then! 🙂

This was a good chapter, but damn was it bleak.

More than 42 people died in this chapter, and that’s only the ones whose announcements we got to hear. That includes Tattletale, one of my favorite characters, though I was prepared for that due to the overlap between Interlude 8 and this chapter.

I’m not gonna lie: This is not my idea of a good time. I know this is one of the Arcs where people decide if Worm is for them, and if the story as a whole continues being this kind of bleak without lighter points in between, it’s eventually going to start leaning more towards a no. That said, I’m not going to end the liveblog as long as I’m still invested enough to want to continue, which I still am.

(Don’t tell me if it gets brighter or stays this bleak. That’s a thing I’ll just have to see for myself.)

So. The plan is no longer to win, but to survive until Scion – who apparently never stopped saving the world for a moment to buy a damn phone – shows up. I guess we’ll see in the next chapter how that works out for the capes protecting Brockton Bay.

See you then.

So is this where we call in Godzilla to step on Leviathan and save the day? I dunno, I haven’t watched any of those monster vs. monster kaiju movies (or really any kaiju movies at all).

The battle has started and at least one formerly unnamed cape, WCM, is dead and many injured. Dang it, Timmy!

At least we’ve learned a lot about the Endbringers, finally. There are three of them: Behemoth, Leviathan and the Simurgh. Behemoth is the strongest one physically, the Simurgh is the most cunning one, and Leviathan balances the traits out more and has a focus on water. Leviathan’s known powers so far include monstrous form, macro scale hydrokinesis with extreme range and capacity, “water echo” leaving water behind every time he moves, high movement speed (especially when swimming) and possibly weather manipulation.

And Brockton Bay just so happens to be situated on a sinkhole-vulnerable aquifer. Great.

We’re certainly in for a ride here, folks!

Next chapter, Taylor needs to figure out what she’s supposed to do in this battle as her comrades fall around her. This won’t be easy.

See you then!