Okay, So There's An Entire A Chasm Between Farcille And Wolfspider. Because Yes, It Makes Sense To See

Grue: A little too general as a ward or weaverdice power, especially with the side effects of "blocks other non-visible EM radiation" and "messes with breaker powers". The EM blocking could be made more obvious, and/or rely more on Brian's conscious thought; "i'm blocking radio" "they're not using radio they're using microwave transmission" "fuck". It's also a little easy in terms of control, and this might be fixed by making it un-malleable (so he can't make distracting shadow-duplicates, it's just smoke that expands a little once he's created it).

Tattletale: In terms of weaverdice trigger-gen Lisa would be a master/thinker, so a social thinker fits. Her "super deduction" should be restricted down to people's tells only, and maybe other things that are directly connected to a relationship, or something social. She can still kind of do things like know people's powers, but only by reading what people think those powers are. Some kind of resource mechanic to feed her power might also be necessary, but lets leave it there for now.

Skitter: Mostly fine, but only because she's a double trigger. Maybe she could face down a trump who un-does this, to give her a control system with different "modes" like Aiden/Chicken Little? Alternatively maybe restrict her in terms of which arthropods she can control (only spiders, or only insects), or make her control range be shaped like winslow high school (rectangular, she is at corner point of it and has to swing it around to decide where to control/attack) instead of spherical.

Bitch: Weaverdice character creation says that a Master "creates minions or has a means of compelling others to take certain actions". As Rachel is doing neither of those things (her dogs already exist!) she needs either a real master power to control/influence her dogs, or she needs a different trigger, to make her a "TWOxNINE" trump. Maybe her foster mother was a parahuman?

Imp: Since her trigger was a very "immediate, in-your-face threat", she should be a striker. Maybe she can create weapons like a swords of shadow that create an amnesia effect on hit? This would give Aisha more control over her amnesia effect, but would be more in-keeping with weaverdice power-gen rules.

Regent: He can't actually fully control anyone, and can only jerk one limb at a time, distracting people instead of controlling them, like the younger heartbroken in Ward.

NGL gang when I read Worm I was surprised how ultimately understandable Amy's actions were.

Keep in mind I haven't read Ward yet so I don't know all of it but in Worm Amy is clearly shown to have not been hardened enough to handle the high stakes situations that parahumans deal with everyday (y'know like a normal person) and parahumans are known to have their powers pop off without them wanting it. As well as how she was later being deliberately pushed by people who's probably some of the best non-master manipulators.

What I had heard was a repressed and predatory lesbian brainwashing and raping her sister. What I read was a frightened woman pulled too thin to think, being human, and failing because of that.

Number one takeaway I had from worm was... damn these bitches gay

This discussion of superhero logistics reminds me of an element of Worm's background worldbuilding that I've always found really interesting, which is that the heroes are running out of teleporters. They had a cloak-style mass teleporter, Strider, who was apparently indispensable for troop deployment at Endbringer fights, but he didn't get the hell out of dodge in time so by the Behemoth fight they mention having to seriously kludge other not-as-good powers to get everyone on-site on time. No one dies forever in comics so the question of "what are the risks of one guy's powers becoming indispensable to our organization" isn't as salient, but here goes Worm, gesturing at the idea that you might just get super fucking unlucky because you became organizationally dependent on a couple golden gooses who you inexplicably keep bringing to live fire situations. If they weren't hard to replace, they wouldn't exactly be superheroes, would they?

The Power Cut contains more than your daily recommended dose of insightful character commentary

THE POWER CUT

A fanzine about THE POWER FANTASY

Issue #1: "The Balancing Act" coming February 14, 2025!

The Power Cut is a collection of meta essays, illustrations, and jokes. The Power Cut contains mature content and spoilers for The Power Fantasy #1-5. The Power Cut will be available free online. The Power Cut is so excited to meet you!

Contributors:

@artbyblastweave

@idonttakethislightly

@jkjones21

@khepris-worst-soldier

@meserach

@rei-ismyname

@tazmuth

@the-joju-experience

Cover art by @tazmuth

Deception also plays a large part of this. The Major survived a decade as America’s super powered hatchet man off of a bluff. Lux’s dead-man’s switch is possibly a bluff. Heavy can pull himself back together from more or less anything, but it’s not as perfect a process as he pretends it is. For all we know America succeeded in killing him, just with a delay

Its just a background detail at the moment, but it’s interesting how the superpowers have undergone a quasi-evolutionary process, in that a new superpower can only emerge and remain around if they are more-or-less immune to the various powers of the existing superpowers, or have some other reason for the existing superpowers not to kill them.

Anyone without psychic shielding would be instantly neutered by Lux (see The Devil). Anyone one not physically resilient enough to survive a first strike from Heavy and whom Heavy dislikes enough to kill will likely be killed by Heavy. Etc

The Major only survived as long as he did because Magnus didn’t tell Heavy about how weak he was because letting America believe that it was still powerful was worth the concessions they were asking for until, suddenly, they no longer were.

Lux, Masumi, and possibly Magnus, are only alive, despite physical squishiness, because they have (in Masumi’s case, unintentionally) created dead-man’s switches.

And so by 1999 all you’re left with are Superpowers that have psychic shielding and which are either incredibly physically resilient or have truly terrifying dead-man’s switches

So... I found this and now it keeps coming to mind. You hear about "life-changing writing advice" all the time and usually its really not—but honestly this is it man.

I'm going to try it.

the funniest part of the endgame sequence of Worm is when the narrative completely forgets about the END OF THE WORLD for a hot second to describe in great detail how sexy and effeminate Marquis is. how even though she isn't usually interested in feminine men or older men Amy's dad is gnc af and just so incredibly fuckable. Taylor there's people that are dying

controversial opinion: i really like when worm characters have crisies about the whole "alien supercomputer is in my brain and subconsciously influencing me, i can't trust my own mind" thing BUT i think that it takes away from worm's theme of how trauma affects people on a deep level if shards are ACTUALLY seriously interfering with how people act.

Lisa's interactions with Taylor make a lot more sense if you believe she's never had a real friend in her life, even before her power started to whisper things in her ear. Taylor's experience got messed with by the bullying, but Lisa is starting from the bottom and has to pull from her interactions with the Undersiders and it shows