I Hope Someone In This Setting Has Time Powers So 1970s Magus Can Come And Break 1999 Magus' Fucking

rachel is on top of my favorite characters list now

You could make a pretty good Worm game with the bones of Tactical Breach Wizards

In issue #1 of The Power Fantasy, we get at least a glimpse of most of the Superpowers' living or working spaces- the exception is Etienne. For four of them- Valentina, Eliza, Masumi, Magus- the color palettes of their spaces are very similar to how they usually dress, and I also think their spaces are on-point symbolism for who they are. Let's look at the places we see, one by one.

Valentina lives in a small, cozy house on a scrapped-together space station- she loves the small details of human culture, but will always have to take an outsider role. The interior is designed with warm neutrals, similar to the golden yellows she often wears.

Eliza's space is cloaked in shadow, with candelabras and high windows that barely illuminate anything- she's eerie and mysterious, with religious motifs. It's high-contrast black and red, like the colors of her dramatic, costume-like outfits.

Masumi works in a huge warehouse- suited to the large-scale ambitions of her art, but also an industrial space that feels sterile and empty. The pastel paints she uses are all over her outfit, and when she dresses up for her gallery opening, it's in similar pastels.

And Magus works in a dimly-lit pyramid full of strange technomagic- the angles of the walls feel alien and menacing, as do the unfamiliar gadgets. His space includes Pyramid members, not just himself, so its design reflects the messaging he sends them about uncanny power. He dresses in eerie greens that make him almost blend into his environment.

Later we see Valentina's 1962 apartment and Magus's 1978 flat, which tell us more about how those two have changed or stayed the same. But I want to talk about how issue #1 dedicates one page each to those four characters and their spaces- a very obvious parallelism that leaves out Etienne and Heavy.

Etienne's traveling, so of course he can't be depicted within that pattern. He also comments to Tonya that he likes travel, and in issue #3 he implies that he flies transatlantic pretty regularly, so it's possible that he feels just as comfortable traveling the world than staying home.

But Heavy… he's at home, taking Etienne's psychic call just like everyone else. But he's outside the pattern because his relationship to his space is different.

Haven is beautiful. It's all pastels, it's full of flourishing houseplants, it's built with swooping curves rather than workaday right angles. There's enough charming little details that if I tried to make a comprehensive list you'd get bored reading it. The oveall aesthetic effect is peaceful, luxurious, idealistic, and gentle.

Basically, Heavy is completely at odds with the city he built. It's his place, for his people… but notice how the forty-something guy in pajamas stands out among all the beautiful young people with impeccable fashion sense. Four of the Superpowers seem to have designed their signature space to represent the way they live their lives. So why does Heavy live in a space that doesn't look or feel anything like him?

I see a couple possible takes on that. You could think of the discrepancy as straightforward hypocrisy- he founded his city on ideals he consistently fails to live up to. But… well, I have an alternate take that's kind of personal. I'm saving the details for another post, but basically: I think Heavy knows that Haven is the opposite of the face he presents to the world, and that's exactly the point.

I'm 93% sure I made a post about this before, but Taylor using other people's powers better than they do is such a fun part of her character, especially since she seems to constantly be thinking "damn if only I got that actually useful power." Like, Lisa thinks Taylor would do better than her with her insight power, Taylor coordinates Cuff and Theo to make a lightning rod during Behemoth fight when neither of them had thought of that, Clockblocker with the string, ordering around like 10 people including fucking Eidolon to hold Behemoth still for Phir Se, she's always scheming and using people as chess pieces in such a way that they're not even mad because it's a learning experience. I think a large part of it is a want to be anyone but herself, which leads to her looking at other powers and considering their uses more than most people do because she just finds every reason to be jealous and justify her passive belief that she's inferior and weak. Also she's just so used to high stress fucked up situations that she performs well under pressure. She kinda acknowledges that in the chapter where she's like "what the hell why is Amy so stupid she should be using microbes to form defenses" because she realizes Amy has no experience in fighting, so she's never had a need to think about this. But Taylor is always fighting, even when she's finally safe she doesn't let herself relax, so she's used to this.

And as for wanting to escape her body and be someone else who's cooler and has a better power and isn't lame and worthless, if I recall correctly she comments more than once on how powerful Genesis is and how she would love her power, which honestly fits so well. She wants to have other people's powers because she doesn't like herself, and Genesis's power lets her create and customize new bodies that aren't her and can do whatever she wants. It's the perfect way for her escape being herself.

And then Khepri is thematically significant as always. She finally can use other people's powers, and damn she's good with them! She magnifies Sundancer's sun with Vista, she combines Ballistic and Foil, she uses every combination and interaction possible for an advantage. She can use other people's powers like she always wanted, and she stops being herself, just like she always wanted.

The Power Cut previews: The Superpowers

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

Thinkin’ about The Siberian

I was sitting on a draft that said something to the effect of “Worm AU where Manton pulls an NBC Hannibal and moonlights as The Siberian on top of being a globally respected parahuman studies researcher. Is this anything.”

Then I thought about this a little more and realized that this might not be far off from what actually happened. There’s a throughline in Manton’s interests, in his trajectory through life, where he’s trying to figure out what you can use powers to get away with doing to people- about identifying constraints and overcoming them. 

He’s the guy who somehow credibly catalogued, and got his name associated with, the fact that powers generally can’t be used to pop people like balloons, and he did so reasonably early in the timeline, in the nineties at the latest. That’s…. an interesting direction to take your research! When people are just coming to terms with the fact that parahumans are real he’s out there taking careful note of whether they can manifest their powers inside people to instantly kill them. How did he test that? What capes did he collaborate with to test that? What did those conversations look like? Did the IRB at a minimum issue any revise-and-resubmits?

And then, of course, he gets picked up by Cauldron (also known as the infinite untraceable victim depot) to work on improving the vials- gaining a sufficiently in-depth understanding of what they are, how they’re made, and what they can do to people that when Cauldron told Legend that Manton had gone rogue and was the one creating C53s, he found this plausible. You’ve got the guy who’d later become the backbone of the Slaughterhouse 9 basically systemically cataloging every conceivable way a power could violate someone’s physiology- first from without, and then, at Cauldron, from within.

Then, when he pulls the trigger and gives himself powers, the resultant ability is essentially a distilled refutation of the Manton Effect- a minion that can obliterate anything, eat anything, delete any material from existence, viscerally dismember people in a unity of conventional and esoteric, power-enabled violence. And he’s insulated from the consequences of his actions on two levels- in terms of Siberian’s invulnerability, but also in the discrepancy between his form and that of his minion. He mixed the vial that gave him that power himself.

Essentially- I don’t think Siberian is something that just happened after a psychological break following a messy divorce. I think Manton basically pre-committed to becoming something like The Siberian, spent most of his career working towards some form of transcendence through superpowers, and the messy divorce was downstream of the cracks starting to show as he got closer and closer to what he’d been chasing.

Now to segue into a complication that’s more directly supported in the text- it’s Worm, it’s always complicated- Master powers spring from loneliness. My theory is that while Manton wanted apotheosis, and while he’d probably been gearing up for a rampage for a while, he genuinely didn’t want to do it alone; he wanted a sidekick. Hence why he bothered pursuing a family in the first place, hence why he fed his daughter a vial, hence why his own projection ended up looking like his daughter after he accidently made her explode or whatever with the bad vial- a monkey’s paw restoration, giving him back a facsimile of the person he wanted to take along for the ride, and making his capacity for violence inseparable from her presence.

This is why he joined up with the Nine rather than remaining a solo act; it’s why he engages in a bad imitation of the Parent/Child relationship with Bonesaw; and it’s why he seeks out Bitch as a candidate. His interest in her candidacy parses to me as genuine- Even moreso than Bonesaw, even moreso than Jack, Bitch has arrived at a no-frills fuck-you-I-do-what-I-want outlook that’s very appealing to Manton. He wants to have a murderer-daughter relationship!

But Rachel got where she is the hard way, by having a life that sucked a lot, by getting near-constantly kicked around! She has a clear reason to be so angry! Even if all my postulations about Manton having a long game are complete bullshit, there are several stages at which Manton had to actively opt in to the same lifestyle and reputation that Bitch was forced to adopt as a basic survival tactic. He didn’t have to start eating people! He’s a tourist! His “freedom” is inseparable from his distance, his disguise. Rachel’s “freedom” is just the freedom of having nothing left to lose.

All of this to say- In an interlude in which Bitch has an extended internal monologue about how people with families have the opportunities to be assholes and monsters to a captive audience, it is absolutely not a coincidence that she’s scouted by a would-be parental figure who proceeds to be an asshole and a monster in front of a captive audience, before trying to buy her affection with a puppy. In rejecting Manton, Rachel dodged an esoterically-packaged but ultimately very familiar bullet.

America's modern psychic shields are Magnus's Numinous tech, which implies that they didn't have shielding prior to Magnus's rightward shift and his involvement with America. So when then, did Etienne not stop the New Mexico Festival Massacre, or at least warn Valentina? Was it a deliberate attempt to alienate her from America? Or was he even hoping that they would succeed? The balancing act would be easier with one less Superpower around, even if its Valentina, but I think they're were still too close at that point for Etienne to do that.

And more importantly, how did he explain this lapse to Valentina?

Vista’s is an Escher staircase keyring trinket. It very much wants her to have a gun.

Taylor and her eldritch buddy

I somehow, in what was probably a moment of poor judgement, convinced my mother to read worm.

Highlights so far (shes on 7.10):

thinking Coil was spelt Coli and pronounced Coil-ee (she refuses to wear glasses)

not knowing the names of any characters

thinking Taylor is 'very practical' in reference to her cutting Lung's eyes out

just complete incomprehension at the incompetence of Taylor's teachers and the PRT

saying that she would have attacked the trio if she were Taylor

not catching any of the Wolfspider content (tbf, this is a bi woman who doesn't call herself queer because she has never been in a relationship with a woman, so her ability to detect queerness is hardly the best)

being very mad at me for not telling her why Emma is bullying Taylor

Anyway, shes only a chapter away from the Dinah reveal and a couple of chapters from Leviathan, so I'm quite excited.

But didn't have a single period

As stress is a factor in recovery, Taylor was concussed for almost the entirety of Worm.