Ward, But It's Dot Fighting Amy's Nine Evil Exes.

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.

To add another dumb poll to my tumblr

I have decided to randomly generate worm ships. I rolled from a list of 114 worm characters, creating 36 ships and picking 12 of the funniest weirdest easiest to title most interesting. Most of them were not good, but that's the risk of random chance

I rejected any that wouldn't fit explicitly stated (to my knowledge) canon sexualities, and any that resulted in illegal pairings.

I gave each a silly little subtitle. Not a ship name.

I'm pretty sure I already know who's gonna win.

Also I rejected Lung x Marquis because that was a definite win. Best gay male ship in worm except for Kevin Norton x Scion. The random number generator also kept giving me Citrine, it thinks she's a casonova. I legit rolled Skitterxpanacea at one point.

Also I'm not separating tohu and bohu.

I have been compiling promotional/cover images and I thought maybe other people would find it useful too, so. Will update it continually.

Ever think about how Scion’s defeat matched the Chicago Ward’s modus operandi during the time skip? In both cases direct force was not an option, in Scion’s case because it was either ineffective or could be easily avoided and in the Chicago Ward’s case because it was forbidden, and both had the same answer: to apply relentless psychological torture until the enemy literally gives up.

It’s honestly embarrassing that Taylor didn’t come with the idea to do this against Scion considering it was most of what she was doing during the previous two years

The Power Cut previews: The Ensemble

Essay and art previews for some more of the essays from The Power Cut, an upcoming The Power Fantasy fanzine! Check out our other previews here. The Power Cut is coming February 14!

Credits:

Introduction: essay @meserach, art @idonttakethislightly

Lux and Magus: essay @the-joju-experience, art @jkjones21

The Major: essay and art @artbyblastweave

Funnies: text and art @jkjones21

Afterword: essay @meserach, art @tazmuth

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 interesting, underutilized thing about the intersection of superheroism and apocalyptic fiction- zombie fiction in particular- is that a core part of the appeal of the superheroic fantasy is that you're simply powerful enough that you don't have to make hard choices or do triage; you can just save everyone. Whereas zombie fiction is basically predicated on so much going wrong at once that saving yourself becomes a stretch goal. A total societal collapse highlights the ways in which the superheroic power fantasy was always kind of quietly dependent on the continued existence of modern society to function- the extent to which a superhero's basic identity is being outsourced to the continued existence of observers, to your continued success at the project of keeping those observers alive so they can continue to agree that you're a superhero. If everyone is going insane and eating each other and you're an indestructible guy who can bench press a car, suddenly that's all you are. Applicable to the scenario at hand, sure. You're in a better position to survive than most. But that's all that you are.

These images from J. Michael Straczynski's Rising Stars gestures in the same direction I was gesturing with that Aquaman post- there's a really interesting archetype in superpower fiction consisting of characters who "Step Outside" in the way described here. Superhumans who remove themselves from society- not in a "kneel before me" way, but simply out of recognizing that participating in society in a conventional manner offers them significantly less than it does an average person (though not nothing- insert that MP100 monologue about "can you make a soda can.") Libertarians who fuck off to the moon and carve a Gadsen snake visible from earth, that kind of guy.

Invincible featured the title character gradually sliding into something adjacent to this as he realized that he was just sort of going through the motions by attending college and so on, when his girlfriend can wish a house into existence and the Cecil throws money at him to do stuff he'd do for free. The entire main cast of The Power Fantasy is doing something like this- you're most likely in no danger if you see one of the Superpowers walking down the street but most of them probably haven't paid for a meal in years (unless they insist on paying, which wraps back around to having the same dynamic as not paying.) Superman yo-yos on the topic of how accountable he makes himself to human governments, but I strongly doubt he got a permit for that fuckoff-huge fortress in the arctic. And so on. Obviously not all superhumans can get away with this- Spider-Man is held back from becoming a full-time bank robber by way more than just his conscience. But whether they could get away with this is a great characterization question to ask of any superhuman, and it's a door you can't really close once it's open- any decision they do make from that point forward will be implicitly contrasted against their everpresent option to just Hit Da Bricks.

ok Taylor there's about a billion other ways you could have disseminated that cure to her. you could have had a bug coat itself in your sweat and then fly into her mouth when she was talking or something and you wouldn't have had to risk getting close enough for her to seriously injure or murder you. you just wanted an excuse to kiss the hot feral doggirl you've been engaging in toxic yuri with for the last 20 chapters

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