“You guys were just waiting for me to get to this, weren’t you. I know how liveblog readers work.” Yeah, I think it’s safe to say this is one of those big moments people have been waiting for pretty much since you started this liveblog.

Niice. I’m glad to hear that because it means people appreciate the punch of this chapter, looking forward to reactions to it even before finding out that the reactor in question really likes Amy.

Oh, and by the way, if it wasn’t clear? I was talking from experience there, as a fellow liveblog and reaction video fan. :p

So, what do you think about Amy’s decision to go to the bird cage? Ignoring your obvious disappointment at her taking herself out of the story (at least for the time being, I’m not saying whether or not she’ll re-appear later). What do you think her main reasons for doing it were? Atonement for Victoria? Preventing herself from possibly doing something worse sometime in the future? Just wanting to give up? Intentionally going to Marquis? Something else?

All of the above.

I am disappointed that we’ll be deprived of Amy, but it’s a really solid ending (for now) for her, one that makes a ton of sense for her character. I can’t complain.

Do you think it was the right choice? Did she have any better options? What would you have done in her situation?

I don’t think she should’ve done it, but I very much understand why she did. She didn’t really need to do it if you ask me, but from her perspective, there wasn’t much else she could do.

If I were in her situation… I don’t know. I mean, it’s a situation brought on largely by her own compromised state of mind. Would I have a similar state of mind? If so, I have no idea what I might do, really. If not, how did I end up in the situation?

Just saying, we’ve never actually seen Alan Barnes and Mannequin in the same room before. And he did rather suspiciously leave the city right before the S9 showed up, and then come back right after they left…

You do have a point there…

Hey Krix, sorry this is kinda late (I just kinda assumed somebody else would say it), but Dinah’s interlude revealed a limitation on her power that you’ve apparently forgotten about. Ctrl+F the word ‘configuration’ for the relevant paragraph.

Hmm?

*goes a-searching*

She thought, and felt the mosaic shift into a new configuration.  Coil’s face predominated each tiny scene, active, speaking and alive in some, unmoving or dead in the others. “Forty two point seven zero nine percent for the worlds where I don’t die.  Don’t know about the worlds where I’d die first.”

Ohh, right. She needs to live to see the timeline.

That’s actually really big. The apocalypse can’t be stopped in any timeline Dinah can see, but it might be possible that the threat could be stopped before killing a third of the world’s population in some timeline or other where Dinah dies.

I am officially predicting that Dinah will die before this story ends and it might be critical to victory somehow.

Welp, there goes Vicky. I don’t think what would be worse: Either forcibly happy and in love with Amy, or living the “And I must scream”-trope trapped in her body. Now her only hope is probably Bonesaw, and I think she now prefers death over being touched by Amy ever again. Will Taylor blame herself when she hears of this?

Yeeah, Victoria’s situation really sucks. It’d be a mercy to be truly insane in there.

Let’s be real, the answer to “will Taylor blame herself” is rarely ever “no”. In this case, I think she’ll put a lot of the blame on Amy, but she’s not going to ignore the fact that she’s the one who put Victoria in Amy’s grasp.

What do you think about the fact that one apparently can just ask to go to the Birdcage? And that Dragon is “mastered” into following the law and did it anyway? Amy’s thoughts probably went like this: I did horrible things -> I am a villain -> I go to the Birdcage, because that’s where villains go, like my father. I think she does it in part to lessen her guilt, somehow atone for her fuckups. Do you think she will be happier, or regret it and feel trapped? Will Marquis’s presence help?

Yeah, that’s absolutely how her thought process went. I don’t think I ever actually questioned why she’d do it, knowing her.

The only real question I have about her thought process is whether or not she wanted to meet Marquis in the Birdcage or went “well, that’s gonna suck, but I deserve that fate. we’re both horrible people so I guess we belong together”.

I do think that she’ll find herself happier than she thought she’d be with Marquis. He’s a good guy, for all his villainy.

The other people around them aren’t that great, perhaps, but I feel like they might want to avoid messing with Marquis’ daughter unless they can take him on too.

Feeling trapped? Sure, that might happen. And she might regret giving up the outside world. But she might be happy nonetheless.

Besides, feeling trapped is really nothing new for her.

“We beat Marquis by taking advantage of his weakness to girl power” makes for a better news story than “we beat Marquis because he sacrificed himself for his daughter”. PR is very important in the parahumans world, as Piggot has proven. Dragon was probably just going by the official story, since she wasn’t established yet when Marquis was captured. And as far as I remember, the only difference between the BBB and New Wave is that NW are unmasked.

Fair enough!

So, now might be a good time to mention the main reason why Wildbow gave up on his Guts & Glory drafts: they were just too dark. Imagine if this had been the main plotline of Worm, instead of just a subplot.

too dark

for Wildbow

(Okay but seriously, it’s true that the main plot is a lot less dark than some of the… adjacent plots. With the Undersiders there’s hope even in the darkest of situations. Most of the time.)