Mannequin put in a very interesting new weapon for the Undersiders to work around, and watching Taylor figure out how to deal with that, and the teamwork between Taylor, Brian and Bastard as they blew Mannequin’s ass up a couple times, was quite satisfying.
I do feel like Mannequin could’ve made more use of some of his other abilities besides gas and gun, but to be fair, we’ve already had the first fight against him to highlight those and he did end up fighting with limited space on the sides (though exactly how limited is unclear). Also he may have been unable to protect his arms from Taylor’s spiders while extended.
And then there’s the twist at the end – Burnscar taking over Cherish’s turn in order to be allowed to fight the Undersiders right now. Welp. None of them are feeling particularly well after the Mannequin fight and now it’s right on to fighting Burnscar? And, as I mentioned in this chapter before it reminded me of Burnscar’s existence, Skitter’s costume is made of spider silk, which supposedly isn’t good against heat. Though it does seem to have survived the fire sweep Burnscar did near the end of this chapter, as well as the battles with Lung, so maybe I’m giving it too little credit.
Anyway, better hope Genesis can find the alley soon, because damn, the Undersiders need her help.
–no, not that Motherfucker. I suspect this motherfucker is Mannequin.
Taylor asking herself this suggests she’s either following Mannequin, or she just arrived at her territory to find him being already there.
I’m guessing the latter.
He wasn’t even trying to avoid my bugs, so I had a sense of where he was as Grue, Bitch and I tore down the street on our dogs. I rode behind Grue on Sirius, my arms on his shoulders, while Bitch rode Bentley, Lucy’s corpse lying across her lap.
Ah, nope, the former.
And I think he’s not trying to avoid her bugs because he’s deliberately clued Taylor in on what he’s planning, and wants her to follow him, all so she can see it happen.
We’d lost a couple of minutes as we helped Bitch retrieve Lucy’s real body. It was eerie to see. When the dogs grew, they really appeared to be adding mass, literally growing and stretching. Somewhere in the transformation, after they weren’t recognizable as the animals they had once been, their real bodies were reformed inside a placenta-like sac.
…huh. I suppose that’s why they can be injured and not have it carry over, and why they can shed their new mass.
So when a hellhound dies, does it not revert, meaning that to get the real body they had to get it out of the hellhound casing?
Mannequin’s gunshot had opened a hole in Lucy’s chest and penetrated that membrane to kill the real dog within.
Ahh. So is it not possible to kill a hellhound without breaking through the placenta sac?
Or more interestingly, could you kill the hellhound without killing the dog inside, allowing you to dig out a living dog from the dead flesh?
We’d used my knife and Grue’s raw strength to help pull the dog free in a grim sort of anti-childbirth.
Fanart commentary time! Today’s theme: It’s hard to truly appreciate just how freaky Crawler looks before you’re sent a bunch of fan interpretations.
fatsmagoo: Like I was just saying and will likely repeat a lot in this post, Crawler looks freaky as hell and it’s hard to appreciate just how freaky he looks until you see art like this. I love it.
The rest of the Nine also look quite good here – especially Shatterbird with her majestic glass “wings” and Cherish with the most natural pose – but it’s undeniable (for me) that the super-detailed Crawler is the MVP of this one.
(I trust the five-year-olds that surely read this blog about a story that is in no way for kids will take care not to look at Siberian’s naughty bits.)
And then DerTodesbote is here to reinforce it with not one, not two, but three amazing pieces focused on this freak. The shading and details are fantastic, and I love how scary DerTodesbote made him look. 🙂
scarfgirl: I could see this one being used in heraldry. Man, screw lions and dragons, whoever puts this beast in their heraldic achievement is clearly the awesomest noble around.
Also scarfgirl: And there’s the more adorable, relaxed Crawler!
Overall, the style in this one is quite distinctive, with the cartoonish bobbleheads. I like it! Also, I appreciate the inclusion of Hack Job, though he himself seems less excited about it.
Gar-a-ash’s Crawler design reminds me a lot of a t-rex with too many limbs. I suppose that’s not an inappropriate comparison for him – he’s probably just as dangerous, if not more.
Turns out Crawler’s origin story is Jurassic Park.
I like the scribbly style of his surroundings, highlighting that the focus is on Crawler himself.
silentstranger: I feel like this style really highlights the monstrosity of the Nine, with the facial expressions. Even Bonesaw manages to not be adorable here, and that’s just blasphemy.
Still, though, that’s not really a bad thing. This is definitely an important side of the Nine, and it’s good to see that represented as well.
Pabel and Nine: Damn, Burnscar looks badass in this one. That’s a bit different
of a
design than I’ve usually seen, and it’s a really cool one.
All of them look really good – besides Burnscar, I particularly like the expression and hair on Siberian (conspicuously the only one here without a full-body shot for reasons I think I’ve got a good guess at), which is probably the most distinctively Pabel and Nine-ish part of this image.
Abyranss: You know, I think I’ll pass. What’s that, Shatterbird? You say I don’t have a choice? Dammit.
…oh my cod this piece is so adorable once you look a little closer.
We’ve got Crawler with an axolotl face, Burnscar being beautifully crazed (in a way that reminds me of someone), Cherish looking so done, Siberian chomping on a leg in possibly the cutest depiction of non-sexual cannibalism ever, Jack staring into the eyes of Oni Lee’s decapitated head like he’s gonna kiss it in front of an erupting volcano, Bonesaw, and Mannequin having a cute little drawn-on smile (probably done by Bonesaw). This is beautiful and I love it.
So yeah, that’s all the fanart I’ve got for now. This was a good batch!
I think 2012164 may mean “day 164 of year 2012”. That would be June 12th, which seems a reasonable date for this point in the story (though we’ll have to assume 2012 was a typo for 2011).
The 164th day of the year is on June 13th (or June 12th if it’s a leap year, which 2012 was and 2011 wasn’t). June 13th, 2011 is only a few days away from when this chapter takes place.
June 12th is certainly a good date to be involved in the Arc that (I assume) has chapter 13.4.
Oh! That makes a lot of sense. It’s kinda impractical as a way to convey a date to someone who isn’t used to thinking of days like this (i.e. most people), but I guess at least it doesn’t lead to any “which is the month and which is the day” confusion.
Remember after Gregor’s interlude, when you said “This Interlude’s focus character was chosen by poll – it could’ve easily been someone with no connection to Ʊpsilon, in which case Wildbow would presumably not introduce the concept at this point. That makes me wonder if Ʊpsilon is actually relevant to Taylor’s story, the story we follow outside the Interludes, in any way other than as backstory for parts of Faultline’s crew.”? I think it’s finally safe to say how funny that bit seemed to us.
Yeah, as of Arc 11, they’ve started having some increased relevance, and now they’ve set up one of the heroes of Brockton Bay as a helper for two of the Slaughterhouse Nine, which is quite possibly going to put Battery in the Undertravelers’ way against her will.
Cauldron is still more of a background agent, not very directly relevant to Skitter in particular beyond Skitter vaguely knowing about them, but I know well how much of a difference background agents who act through others and only insert their influence in small doses where its needed for their purposes can make. If you’re not careful, they’ll make you all
…though Cauldron, so far, seems more interested in business than some master plan.
As of Jack’s interlude, you’ve read 500,000 words of Worm. On a somewhat related note, Ward is almost 7 months old and is closing in on 500,000 words soon.
I got my wish – we did get to know Battery better, and it turns out she’s got some history with Cauldron. History that gave us some insight into how exactly things work when people buy powers from them! That was neat, though I’m not sure how important it’ll be in the long run.
We also got to see firsthand the experiences of someone getting her power through one of Cauldron’s vials. That was quite… bizarre. I feel like some of that is going to make more sense later on. I do think Battery’s power ended up reflecting her mental state – she has to stop, have a moment of calm, to charge up her power, which makes things around her comparatively calm and allows her to focus and act quickly.
We also learned the true relation between Assault and Battery: Battery became a hero specifically to take down Assault – then Madcap – but when she finally did it, he weaseled his way into becoming her teammate. It’s a beautiful tale of a long-lasting kismesissitude that seemed to turn red at the end.
Man, Assault is… quite the character. I like him as a character, but what an ass. Though at least he seems to have changed a bit over time.
(You know what happens when you assault. You make an ass out of Australia and Lithuania. Wait, what?)
And finally, there’s the matter of Battery’s third favor. She’s going to have to act against the PRT’s interests in this Slaughterhouse situation, especially when it comes to – for some reason – Siberian and Shatterbird. I wonder, did Siberian too get her powers from Cauldron?
But yeah… as far as I’m aware, that’s it for Arc 12! I’ll be back tomorrow for the Arc Thoughts, and then we’ll move on to whatever Arc 13 has in store for me! See you soon!
He strode off, looking like he’d just won the lottery.
“Yes, hello? This is the lottery calling! We’d like to inform you that you maybe possibly won the jackpot! We might perhaps send you the money someday. We’ll have to see.”
She smiled. If he only knew this was her shot at some clean, innocent payback. The squealing, screaming grade schoolers, all fighting and pulling on your costume and demanding demonstrations of powers and constantly asking questions.
Ahahaha! It’s not that she’s willing to expose the children to Assault, it’s that she wants to expose him to them!
And he’d have to put up with it.
She would relish this.
■
Wonderful.
I’d be willing to ship them as kismeses. Black romance, hate-love. That works. 🙂
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