Tag: Parahumans

End of Interlude 2.933 monme

Krixwell JaceLeave a comment

What a wonderful family reunion!

Cherie, or Cherish, is a really fun character. A girl who is quite relatable when it comes to music, entertaining through her cheerful bluntness and super disproportionate revenge plots, and scary through her mix of cunning, ambition, mild crazedness and not least of all her power. Getting to know her and her relationship to Alec was quite entertaining. 🙂

In the process, we also got an update on Alec: He’s been provided with soldiers and has people he keeps under his control, like he used to in his past. That’s… morally questionable, but it’s not like we didn’t know that about him already.

And we got some pretty important further details on the nomination process:

  • Cherish is the reason the Slaughterhouse Nine knew about some of the nominees in the first place.
  • Everyone knew in advance who everyone would go for, regardless of how their attempts went. So no second chances.
  • Even if they didn’t successfully convince their nominees to join, the nominees will still be tested.
  • Burnscar, what the hell.

At this rate, Arc 12 will be quite intense. It seems likely to me that Arc 12 as a whole will be about the testing process, which ought to be interesting considering the Undersiders have two members being tested and one of them is at best on the fence about it.

So yeah, I enjoyed that quite a bit! Hopefully the next one will be just as good, as we either watch Bonesaw making contact with the scaredy cat or the crusader, or loop back to Interlude 11a. Prrrrobably the former 😛

See you then!

Interlude 11g (Anniversary Bonus)

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F I N A L L Y

Now we can move on from this madness and get ready to meet, most likely, Bonesaw!

As far as predictions goes for that, I pretty much covered everything in the intro for the previous chapter:

As for who Bonesaw might want to recruit… Panacea sounds like a weird but plausible option, if I’m right about Bonesaw having a specialty in medical equipment and thus probably also a medical background. We’ve established that Panacea’s power can be used offensively, too, and she is the daughter of a known bigshot criminal – those things might appeal to the Slaughterhouse as well.

But yeah, if Panacea is an attempted recruit, I don’t think it’ll work, unless she is forced like Hookwolf was (and I doubt that’s happening in two chapters in a row). Panacea has a spiteful, slightly darker side, and might be tempted by the prospect of dropping the exhaustion that comes with her responsibilities, but I think at the core, she’s a very good person who cares about fulfilling those responsibilities at the expense of her own health.

Incidentally, if Amy is Bonesaw’s attempted nominee, she’s likely to be the POV character for whichever one of these Interludes is about Bonesaw. Perhaps we’ll learn something about those secrets of hers that would wreck her relationships if they came out.

Nothing about my predictions re: Bonesaw has changed since then, and the Newbie (who could take this spot instead) is too mysterious at the moment to speculate much on.

So without further ado or nonsense about measurements, I’m going to go make myself a bowl of popcorn and then we’ll get this party started!

Interlude 0.388 oz (Anniversary Bonus)

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Howdy! Krixwell here, ready for some more Wormy acti– wait.

The imperial system? No no no no, fuck that. Where’s the lever that switches between the units…

*grumbles while looking for the lever* Seriously, who even flipped it to imperial in the first place? Sharks, maybe? …ah, there it is. Let’s get the blog back to a sensible system of measurements and start over.

End of Interlude 11f

Krixwell JaceLeave a comment

Sundancer is a Good, and Coil’s a dick.

So! In this chapter, we watched as Dinah saved everyone, at great personal difficulty.

I think it’s worth thinking of this chapter as split in two: There’s talking tactics, and there’s the horror portion.

There was a lot of discussion of tactics in this one, which… kinda drew long, but was a pretty decent demonstration of Dinah’s power and an alright way to introduce us to Crawler’s power. It grew especially interesting once the final solution of having Dinah look into the future more thoroughly and find out what they were going to do came up, which was an aspect of her power I did not see coming. Uh, no pun intended.

I think I like the horror section better – trapped in the dark with a potentially dangerous person sniffing at you from inside, and a definitely dangerous monster banging at the door from the outside. It does feel like it didn’t quite pay off, though, somehow – Trickster calmed Noelle down with relative ease and a gentleness that didn’t match the horror tone surrounding it, and Crawler was quite effectively stopped by the vault door. (The latter isn’t quite as much of a problem as it could’ve been, because it’s previously been solidly established that it’s a really strong door intended to keep berserk!Noelle in check.)

Overall, it was a fairly decent setup and used the uncertainty surrounding Crawler and Noelle’s appearances effectively, but ultimately the ending felt kind of anticlimactic. It was certainly not bad, though.

And then there’s Dinah. It was nice to see Dinah’s perspective on her situation, and I’m very glad that she does not like Coil. She has learned to not cross him, and does have a heavy addiction to the drugs that will be especially hard to break due to her power, but she does not like him. His abuse hasn’t gotten to the point where she starts telling herself he’s good to her, that what he’s doing is okay, that she doesn’t want to go home.

Sundancer (civilian name Marissa, which is nice) was also very good in this chapter, being protective of Dinah, but admitting to Dinah – to Dinah, talking directly to her – that her hands were tied by her bonds to the Travelers. I would love to see Taylor and Sundancer discussing Dinah, though it’s very unlikely to happen.

Speaking of Taylor, I have a feeling she’s a big part of why the chance of Dinah’s release is ticking up.

So yeah! Not one of the solidest recent chapters, but I enjoyed it.

Next up is either Bonesaw, the newbie or Hatchet Face. Probably Bonesaw, I’m thinking. See you then!

Interlude 11f (Anniversary Bonus)

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Howdy! Krixwell here, back for another chapter of Worm!

Five Slaughterhouse members down, three to go. I’m guessing we’ll be meeting the Newbie last (unless Hatchet Face takes her spot) so we’re probably in for either Crawler or Bonesaw today. I’m hoping for Bonesaw, because crazy and unpredictable sounds like fun right now, but I’d be down with the creepy crawlies too.

As for who Bonesaw might want to recruit… Panacea sounds like a weird but plausible option, if I’m right about Bonesaw having a specialty in medical equipment and thus probably also a medical background. We’ve established that Panacea’s power can be used offensively, too, and she is the daughter of a known bigshot criminal – those things might appeal to the Slaughterhouse as well.

But yeah, if Panacea is an attempted recruit, I don’t think it’ll work, unless she is forced like Hookwolf was (and I doubt that’s happening in two chapters in a row). Panacea has a spiteful, slightly darker side, and might be tempted by the prospect of dropping the exhaustion that comes with her responsibilities, but I think at the core, she’s a very good person who cares about fulfilling those responsibilities at the expense of her own health.

Incidentally, if Amy is Bonesaw’s attempted nominee, she’s likely to be the POV character for whichever one of these Interludes is about Bonesaw. Perhaps we’ll learn something about those secrets of hers that would wreck her relationships if they came out.

(Crawler, on the other hand, might go for Night, as I’ve previously speculated.)

So yeah! Without further ado, let’s jump in and see what happens!

End of Interlude 11e

Krixwell JaceLeave a comment

That was another good chapter!

I think Shatterbird is my least favorite Slaughterhouse member so far, but that’s not because of any real fault on her part, just because the others are so good in comparison. Shatterbird just isn’t quite as interesting in terms of personality – she’s got a commanding presence, a great willingness and eagerness to hurt and kill, and a bit of an ego, but that’s pretty much it, fairly standard stuff. She’s still neat, just not as neat as the others.

Powerwise, though, she’s fantastic. It’s as Hookwolf described – “Incredible range, fine control, devastating force, versatility…". She’s incredibly powerful, though not that greatly protected on the defensive side, making her an excellent glass cannon.

Hookwolf, on the other hand, we got to see from another perspective, namely his own. It turns out he is far less brutish than I thought, and actually a quite competent leader. It’s just a shame what he fights for. I came out of this chapter liking Hookwolf, but it’s best not to forget what he stands for.

We also got some insight into what the name Fenrir’s Chosen actually means (which I mostly caught onto a couple posts before it was spelled out, thanks to knowledge of Norse mythology), which was a fun sequence to liveblog.

Oh! Also, we learned that Shatterbird’s power has been sold to some men. Whether that means Shatterbird sold her power or bought it, it almost certainly implies that Cauldron has access to this incredibly powerful ability, which is a terrifying prospect.

So yeah! This was entertaining. Hopefully the next one will be just as good. 🙂

See you then!

Interlude 11e (Anniversary Bonus)

Krixwell JaceLeave a comment

Howdy! Krixwell here, ready for another liveblog session!

I’m not sure there’s much point in trying to speculate here – there wouldn’t really be anything I haven’t already said plenty of times, among other places in the other Interlude intro posts we’ve had – so let’s just jump straight into this. I suppose I can at least throw out a guess as to which Fellowship member we’ll be meeting today, though… Shatterbird seem like a good choice.

So yeah… Let’s jump into it and find out!

End of Interlude 11d

Krixwell JaceLeave a comment

Oh, Colin.

That was another fun ride! We got to meet Mannequin, who has an interesting backstory and a kind of whimsical body that… actually doesn’t have anything to do with the main focus of his tinker power. It seems like, in theory, almost any tinker might be able to do something like what he did, if they were mad enough to do it.

Honestly more interesting than Mannequin himself, though, was Vriska, our POV character for the day. We didn’t really learn much new about him, really, though we got reinforcement of the idea that he isn’t all about his reputation. He does try to help people. Maybe the focus on reputation came second, after some time as a bigshot hero?

On top of an awesome but insanely stupid display of his reckless, wrathful side against an enemy who claimed they were alike, we also got some delicious development for the Dragonmaster ship. I’m a little disappointed that we didn’t get to see Vriska’s reaction to Dragon revealing her true nature, but I recognize that ending the chapter like that is good writing. For now, I’ll trust Vriska to be good enough that it went over better than Dragon had feared.

So yeah! That was fun. See you next time!

…

…

…potential romantic relationship with a character associated with drAGONS MISTER COLIN SERKET YOU COME BACK HERE RIGHT NOW AND EXPLAIN YOURSELF–