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
Truly the tragedy of Taylor is that she was just, the best at violence and discovered this at a time in her life when she had nothing else. Is it any surprise that she ended up as a creature of nought but violence when people only cared about her in relation to her capacity for violence?
list of times taylor hebert used other peoples powers better than them:
when she told genesis to create a body that looked like crawler with the s9 riding on his back
when she used clockblockers power to bisect echidna. this literally fundamentally changed the way clock used his own power
when she made doormaker open and close portals overlapping each other so that the portals were effectively moving (granted this was only possible with the help of taylors multitasking power)
help me add more things to the list
I liked this one. Tristan's interesting, and I enjoyed his dynamic with Moonsong. I find it very interesting that he was glad to have been dragged into GM, presumably meaning to have been controlled by Khepri.
This chapter also directly states that the City is "Almost like a city in Earth Bet", and points for self-awareness I guess, but god is it boring
Internal Inconsistency Counter: 5 (+0)
Inconsistency with Worm Counter: 0, but only because the city hasn't yet been confirmed to not be New York
1,680,000 words and Taylor never even considers dressing the bugs up in little outfits, let alone choreographing a song and dance number. Both of which well within her ability. That's what made her a villain protagonist.
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 following tinkers are all given 2 months to create a basketball team of 5-9 players. These teams have to be entirely made of their creations.
The only limitations are everything has to be bipedal and have a vaguely humanoid shape, cannot have more than 8 limbs (tails count), and cannot be above 7 foot tall.
They then do a tournament. Assume that those that can't explicitly create drones (i.e mannequin) can turn existing stuff into drones. So mannequin could create a drone version of his current weird body as a 'player'.
Directly attacking other players is not allowed but indirectly is. Any damage is repaired between matches. Distorting the field by doing things such as creating acid pools is allowed, so long as the hoop itself is still accessible. Blocking the hoop in any way is not permitted. The ball must be accessible at all times - no teleporting it to alternate dimensions. No teleporting in general, and ball modification is not permitted. Flight or wall climbing is not permitted.
Anything else goes.
Essay and art previews for some of the essays from The Power Cut, an upcoming The Power Fantasy fanzine!
Credits:
Masumi: essay @jkjones21, art @tazmuth
Heavy: essay @idonttakethislightly, art @jkjones21
Etienne: essay @meserach, art @artbyblastweave
Magus: essay @rei-ismyname, art @jkjones21
Valentina: essay @khepris-worst-soldier, art @idonttakethislightly
Eliza: essay and art @idonttakethislightly
73, Charlotte?
Lets see, 73 is Great King Rat by Queen. Yet another song I got into 'cause of Eidolon.
Hmm. I'll be honest, I haven't though much about Charlotte. She doesn't take up a lot of space in my head, except for thinking about how she went from White Kid with Dreads to known businesswoman and community organizer. I'd like to think that she lost the mayoral election because she still has the dreads.
If I was gonna make a fic about her....hm, we only get a limited sense of how she feels working under Taylor, especially given her past view of her from the bullying campaign. You might be able to write a neat fic that shows her view of Taylor during their schooldays as a pitiful, kind of disgusting figure, and then transfer to her viewpoint during the warlord era where she sees Taylor as powerful and worthy of respect, but still fundamentally disgusting. Something that deals with her feeling under the heel of what she'd otherwise consider vermin. I don't think that's actually how she views Taylor, but it'd be a neat spin on her character.
If Lung didn't kill Bakuda in the birdcage, I could see Amy and Bakuda making each other worse, somehow.
I could write an Amy×Bakuda piece. I really could.
Mostly a Worm (and The Power Fantasy) blog. Unironic Chicago Wards time jump defenderShe/her
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