Tag: Krixwell liveblogs

Infestating 11.3

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Ah, there we go, finally.

Wait.

Oh what the hell, let’s just roll with it. Infestating 11.3 it is.

Welcome back to the liveblog! It’s time for me to continue reading about Skitter’s rise to power in Skitterville, and the upcoming confrontation with the Merchants! 🙂

Last time, Skitter was approached for help by a redhead whose little brother had been taken by the Merchants. Knowing Taylor and her heroic side, and the sheer dedication she has to getting Dinah out of her bad situation, I feel like she’d want to stage an attack on the Merchants for the express purpose of saving this one child even if she didn’t already have reason to fight them. Hopefully that ends better than her dream attack on dream Coil’s dream base.

Whether or not we’re getting the beginning of her attack in this chapter is a better question than whether there will be one. That could really go either way – it depends entirely on how much worth narrating happens before the attack, which I have no idea about. I feel like it might be good to have a buffer chapter before we get into it, though.

If we don’t delve into the attack, I guess we’ll be following Taylor back at the Hive, making arrangements regarding the extra supply packs and maybe hiring some of the most eager employees (it’s a bit early for that promise of hers to have its full effect, but a couple early birds may show up), that kind of thing.

So yeah, whatever happens, let’s dive into it.

Lights! Camera! Action!

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I just noticed a thing about one of the pieces of fanart I put into my phone wallpaper rotation, namely this Coil piece by Winkle92:

(Previously featured in this post from while I was liveblogging Arc 5.)

Look at Coil’s shadow. Or rather, shadows, plural. He’s got two of them.

That’s a normal enough occurrence that someone who notices the double shadows without knowing about Coil’s power won’t question it, but it also works as really neat symbolism for the way he essentially has two versions of himself going down the timelines before he collapses them into one whole (represented by his physical body, I suppose).

I don’t actually know whether this was made before or after Arc 8, or whether this was intentional or not. In any case, it’s either a really neat detail or something that’s accidentally quite appropriate. 🙂

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Remember how I said I’d figured out how to work around the thing that put my Worm tab back to Interlude 8?

Yeah, no. Doesn’t work, though I really don’t think it’s supposed to not work. Every time I open the browser again after closing it, it opens a locked tab to Interlude 8, even if I unlocked that tab. Oh well.

End of Infestation 11.2

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So! This was a really cool chapter – Skitter has a theatrical side that shows once in a while, and she used it to good effect here. She’s now the Queen of Skitterville, and the fifth or so of the population that showed up to her announcement seems to be mostly fine with that, after she explained her good intentions, set an example of the Big Man despite all his best dunks stabs, and was sorta kinda publicly accepted by a Protectorate member.

I really enjoyed the forthright interaction between Battery and Skitter. I hope we’ll see more of Battery (with a speaking role) in not too long, because she seems interesting. Maybe we’ll even learn the true relationship between her and Assault someday! 😛

And finally, we met the dreadlock redhead whose brother Taylor will certainly be trying to save when she goes up against the Merchants. I’m pretty certain that we’re doing that in this Arc at this point, unless Wildbow decides to pull a bait-and-switch and go “SURPRISE IT’S THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE NINE” instead. We’ll have to see, but I’m fairly sure we’re sticking with the Merchants for now. (Though we’ll probably be getting to know the Fellowship with those Interludes at the end of the Arc, so they might be somewhat relevant nonetheless.)

Next chapter… maybe we’ll meet up with the other Undersiders and discuss how the claims went and how everyone’s adjusting? Or maybe Taylor intends to do some planning at the Hive before launching an attack on the Merchants on her own? Or, perhaps, we’ll dive straight into it.

It’s a little unclear to me still how much the Undersiders will work together when it comes to attacking enemies in their separate territories, but I’ll just have to see.

…huh. It’d be really fitting if Bitch’s territory just so happened to be frequented by Fenrir’s Chosen. Hookwolf is the perfect nemesis to her.

Anyway, yeah. See you then!

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She only stopped when her voice cracked.

Breathing hard, out of breathlessness or emotion, she stared at the ground, clenching her fists.  I could feel one of the ladybugs get crushed in her grip, fading out of existence as far as my power was concerned.

Whoops. Rest in peace, li’l lady.

“Stop,” I told her, without using my swarm to change my voice.  “Breathe.  What happened?”

She looked up at me, then she swallowed hard.

I like that Taylor deliberately doesn’t use her swarm echo here. The swarm echo makes her less human-sounding, and in this case, human is exactly what she needs to be.

“The Merchants took him.  My kid brother.  I want you to get him back.  Please.”

Looks like we’ve got a specific goal for Skitter’s upcoming attack on the Merchants!

I suppose this is why we had that bit in the previous chapter about the people the Merchants decided to keep around. So that we’d know how much trouble this means for the kid. And yeah, it certainly doesn’t sound pleasant.

There’s no way Taylor wouldn’t want to save him, especially when you consider how similar the situation is to Dinah’s.