Latest Posts by khepris-worst-soldier - Page 4

It’s left unsaid but during the timeskip when Taylor was in the Wards the CIA tried to poach her because of how good she is at radicalizing youth.

Every college speech class in America has a section dedicated to studying her “Arcadia address”

The PRT stopped letting her speak during her mandatory PR appearances because every time she gave a speech it resulted in large amounts of civil unrest.

She won Speaker of the Year but was too focused on preparing for Jack to care so she never actually picked up the award. Dragon has it pinned on the fridge in the Guild’s break room.

Glow-Worm P.4

I really digging the epistolary format of these. A surprising amount of characterisation can be crammed into a search term or a couple of comments. Rain's desperation jumps off the page.

Also of interest is the tidbit about cluster mechanics that wasn't picked up by the fandom; I don't think I've ever seen any fic ever have clustermates with a primary and secondary power of similar strength. This might be because Ward never expands on this idea elsewhere.

Also, we have the first mention of what will likely be a recurring bugbear for me; the classification system. In Worm, power classifications are a useless bureaucratic post-hoc kludge. There is one fight where Taylor is only given ratings instead of power descriptions and it leaves her entirely unprepared. And here we have a hero referring to a cape having a "mover power with the ability to run on walls". What does "mover power" add to "the ability to run on walls"?!?! Its fine here, because its possibly a hero, like Weaver, inflected by the PRT's bureaucratic ticks, but from what I know of Ward and of Weaverdice, it seems that Wildbow forgot that the classifications aren't useful and aren't an intrinsic part of the power system.

Internal Inconsistency Counter: 6 (nc)

Inconsistency with Worm Counter: 1 (nc)

Number of times I've complained about power classifications: 1 (+1)

I have to wonder what happened to Labrador when Newfoundland was destroyed. Is it still a province despite having less people than any of the Canadian territories? Was it turned into a territory? Did the Québécois irredentists win and annex it? I want to know

Glow-Worm P.3

I'm a fan of this one. I enjoyed the anti-cape discussion, and I find the discussion of the amnesty both interesting and realistic. A blanket amnesty would be controversial, as it would allow criminals to escape justice for their actions and for criminal organisations to regather their strength in the light. But it is also necessary because the heroes need all the manpower they can get and the criminal justice system barely exists. Similarly, its pragmatic to provide villains with accommodations as a bribe to not engage in criminal activities, but it is also manifestly unfair. I like how Swansong promotes the pragmatic view while also establishing her personality and her need to be respected and feared.

Her and Victoria also have good chemistry

Valkyrie awkwardly not acknowledging her past is also fun and hopefully thematically relevant

I am also required to point out the oddness of "Chief Armstrong"; his title and him giving a statement on the applicability of the amnesty to two specific capes implies that he is in a position of authority within the Wardens, which doesn't work because the Wardens, as stated in both Worm and Ward, are without civilian oversight. Plus 1 to both inconsistency counters.

Internal Inconsistency Counter: 6 (+1)

Inconsistency with Worm Counter: 1 (+1)

Glow-Worm P.2

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

so like. ward-era parahumans definitely had some kind of khepri-romanticization kink subculture right. like there had to have been a genre of PHO capefic written by capes who were controlled by her and all of them are like "as i felt her control washing over me, i knew i was hers. just meat for her to use." and then they write 700 chapters of vaguely autobiographical vaguely pornographical noncon gold morning fight scenes. that moment when taylor dropped ash beast on scion written with jealousy that taylor chose it to sacrifice to her golden foe and not them.

Glow-Worm P.1

Everyone knows Ward's worldbuilding is ill-considered and often contradictory, but I really was not expecting the extent to which this would be apparent immediately.

There's coffee and ice-cream, electricity, the internet (and therefore internet cables), cellular infrastructure, libraries and newspapers, but also "[The City] desperately needs farmers".

"[The City] desperately needs farmers", but also thousands (possibly tens or hundreds of thousands) are being kept in refugee camps being feed by whatever government exists and being actively prevented from productively contributing. The fact that there is a processing of refugees beyond maybe giving them an ID, and which extends to background checks, is absurd: to reject anyone is a death sentence (one I doubt the Wardens in their second chance era would allow), most refugees would have been American citizens, and you just need the man power.

"[The City] desperately needs farmers", but also looting Bet, a method of sustenance, is illegal. This also increases the degree to which having coffee is out of place; if coffee isn't being liberated from the ruins of Bet then the coffee needs to be grown which you can't do in North-East America (unless there is a connected world with a more tropical climate, fingers-crossed), and would be being done at the expense of subsistence farming.

Its Year 1, but also its 2 years and 2 months since Gold Morning. What possible logic leads to people designating 2014 and not 2013, the year GM actually happened, as year 0? Defining the date of Scion's death, June 24th(?), as the new first day of the year, and the year immediately following his death as year 0, doesn't even work.

Even at the micro level, WB can't even it keep it straight within a single PHO post: Conrad, the refugee, is stated to have been traveling for four months to reach the refugee camp. He is also stated to have started his journey in June, but the post was made in August.

It also took two years for Bet to cool to the degree that Wisconsin is getting snow in Summer. I'm not an atmospheric scientist, but wouldn't the coldest days being those soon after the destruction, once the dust has had time to blanket the planet, but before any dust has had time to settle?

I do like how this chapter sets Victoria up as a nerd and as a person actively knowledgeable about current affairs (I must say, its weird to read the comments and realise that people didn't know this was her). I also appreciate the foreshadowing for threats from Bet, and the conflict between ordinary people and Capes.

Internal Inconsistency Counter: 5

Inconsistency with Worm Counter: 0, but only because the city hasn't yet been confirmed to not be New York

Only Annex can become one with Christmas decorations

Who is the jolliest parahuman?

The Chicago Wards would be a good team; shakers (and those that can function as shakers) would be best for the format considering the versatility they offer

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

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

Cauldron’s funny in this regard, first because all of its members can fit in a minivan and because literally 90% of their capacity relies on Contessa; when she has to fake her death and can’t intervene Cauldron stops existing within a handful of hours.

And their plan is also based on the bus factor; they let the apocalypse happen early because every 2-3 months a bus crashes and every bus maybe contains the person who can kill Scion. And they are vindicated in this; Foil, Tattletale and Weaver all could have died in any of the 8+ Endbringer fights they went to, and very likely would have eventually died in one of the dozens they would have gone through if Cauldron stopped Jack from setting off Scion

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?

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?

Finally finished worm!!!😭😭😭 So i drew some fanarts!! I may or may not make an short animation!!

When we realized they're just kids...

Thinking about Rachel and Aisha post Behemoth best friendship... :''(

Finally done with finals and need to draw one of the blorbos

I love the Worm reboot; as a standalone work it’s simply brilliant, but as a reboot its overly reactive to fan criticism and fanon in a way that feels a bit mean.

Like, people didn’t like the Birdcage’s revolving door, so now it’s an inescapable super mega prison

Or how Wildbow didn’t like that people preferred Clockblocker over Golem (WB got so much hate mail after Taylor got with Golem) and so now people shipping Clockblocker with Taylor caused Clock’s career to nosedive

You think Scion is boring? Now he’s boring and evil. And everything with Amy and Vicky is obviously a reaction to a handful of (consensual) ship fics, most prominently Guts ‘n Glory, which were passed around back in the day.

What are your toughts about the 2011 edgy reboot of wildbow's characters?

First: I will let you know that i am a fan of Wilbow comics since i was 5 so i am kind of nostalgic for the 80s comics but with nearly 10 years since the end of the most important series from the reboot in 2013 with Worm i will ask you : What did you like and what did you dislike from the wildbow comics reboot? And from the pre-reboot comics?

Let me start:

From the reboots:

I loved: That they made Legend canonically gay (The tension he had with Hero in the old comics was CRAZY), that they transformed a recurrent background character with a funny hat into a plot point (Contessa) and Tattletale (They made a secondary villain into the best thing ever)

I hated: That they made Scion evil (Like really , he was boring but THIS) , Eidiolon beign the cause of the endbringers (Guy there were already a guy that did that , it was his whole thing . Why did you eliminate Fatuum and then made him into a clone) and the whole Amy with an incestous crush on Vicky (They ruined WBC's first family)

From the pre-reboot:

I loved: Taylor from teenage villain , to protectorate hero and her love triangle with golem and clockblocker , the Operation: NILBOG mini-series where we are told the origin story for Piggot and Coil and the whole Pact series (I'm a sucker for magic tales)

I hated: The revolving door prision birdcage , that they killed off hero to erase his relationship with legend and the weird clone saga.

I really love how Taylor can either hold a grudge forever or have it disappear alarmingly fast, and it all depends on if she acts on her anger at first. Like she forgives and is willing to work with Sophia after the bullying, Lung after he tried to kill her, Rachel after she tried to fuck her over, Defiant after the everything. Like most people wouldn't forgive all those acts and trust those people afterwards, but she hardly even considers otherwise because she believes that people should work together against unbeatable foes despite their differences and when she fights alongside someone she kind of just forgets the things they've done.

When she acts on something though, when she acts immediately in an irreversible way the people she lashes out against are immediately marked as 100% irredeemable evil bastards in her mind. Alexandria, she doesn't regret the murder in the slightest despite the fact that it had consequences and Alexandria isn't a being of pure evil. Since she killed her she has to convince herself that it was right and just and that she doesn't regret it, which erases any nuance Alexandria had in her mind that would lead to her forgiving her. She does this again a buncha times throughout the book. Against the C53s in the Cauldron raid she thinks about how everyone in the crowd could be innocent, forced to go along with the mob out of fear that they'll be next and with no chance or choice of getting away and being peaceful. But then she dangles a disintegration knife into all their faces to kill Mantellum and suddenly they're all monsters who delighted in torturing innocents and all voluntary members of the mob and none of them deserved any mercy because they're Evil Bad People, so she'll never lose sleep or forgive them.

Aisha points something like this out in 29.5 actually, she says her and Alec had an argument over it because Alec was annoyed at how quickly and easily Taylor stopped being mad at her bullies and didn't want revenge. I think Alec equated Sophia to Heartbreaker in his mind because they caused both their respective triggers, and he can't fathom the idea of someone not wanting to slowly torture and kill their Heartbreaker to make them feel an ounce of the pain he felt, and honestly Alec is the normal one here I think? I think most parahumans would get revenge on the people who caused their triggers in a heartbeat if given an opportunity, and honestly poor Alec imagine trying to understand and make sense of your dulled emotions and Taylor Hebert is there as the worst example ever with her weirdo decisions. Aisha defended Taylor and her choice to not get revenge but she still got revenge for Alec because she hold grudges for herself and other people.

Letting go of hatred to someone isn't something other people can really do like Taylor. Going back to Aisha, she fucking despised Bonesaw during Gold Morning and hated how she got a redemption, but Taylor was fully willing to work with someone who sawed her skull open for the greater good when it would be completely fair for her to never want to get help from her. Idk what my point is here I just think it's really neat that unless someone is her enemy right then and there or unless she already killed that person and sorted them into the Bad Person Category, Taylor is willing to forgive anything and everything to make sure everyone works together.

Okay, so there's an entire a chasm between Farcille and Wolfspider. Because yes, it makes sense to see Marcille as having a crush on Falin, and that reading of her character could even be more enjoyable than assuming otherwise. Its a coherent ship and an enjoyable one. But with Worm, not reading Taylor and Rachel as crushing on each other actively detracts from the story's comprehensibility.

New York, in the process of being rebuilt.  Dust and ominous clouds were being held at bay by a thin forcefield, and the city stood in the center of a brilliant sunlight.  Where glass had broken and where oils had risen to the tops of city streets, things almost glittered.  A shining city.

Does Ward ever explain why they went from rebuilding New York on Earth-Bet to living in 'The City' on Earth Gimmel? Or does it just do that and leave us to wonder as to the answers?

My god, did Wildbow even re-read the epilogues before he wrote Ward? Like, I knew he didn't re-read Worm as a whole, because his characterizations of Amy in Ward are like, frozen in Arc 14 for most of the text but did he not even make the effort to at least re-read the last couple of chapters?

What the fuckberries? How is this the first I'm hearing, in all the complaints I've seen about Ward, and 'The City', that they were GODDAMN REBUILDING NEW YORK CITY after Golden Morning?

Also @fran-valz

In regards to the radiation and pollution on Bet, that was directly addressed in the epilogue; New York Bet is protected by a forcefield. It’s set up to be the final oasis on Bet. And threats like the Machine Army don’t just stop at Bet, so abandoning NY-B achieves nothing unless you close all portals to Bet, which I’m fairly certain they didn’t do.

And even if you abandon NY-B, while would the settlements in alternate New Yorks be abandoned?

New York, in the process of being rebuilt.  Dust and ominous clouds were being held at bay by a thin forcefield, and the city stood in the center of a brilliant sunlight.  Where glass had broken and where oils had risen to the tops of city streets, things almost glittered.  A shining city.

Does Ward ever explain why they went from rebuilding New York on Earth-Bet to living in 'The City' on Earth Gimmel? Or does it just do that and leave us to wonder as to the answers?

My god, did Wildbow even re-read the epilogues before he wrote Ward? Like, I knew he didn't re-read Worm as a whole, because his characterizations of Amy in Ward are like, frozen in Arc 14 for most of the text but did he not even make the effort to at least re-read the last couple of chapters?

What the fuckberries? How is this the first I'm hearing, in all the complaints I've seen about Ward, and 'The City', that they were GODDAMN REBUILDING NEW YORK CITY after Golden Morning?

It is an actual crime that Ward isn't set in New York City. The portrait of the city painted in Worm's epilogue is genuinely an incredibly compelling setting. A city with depth. An ungovernable labyrinthine city spread over dozens of worlds, accessible only through portals created by humanity's saviour, with its central hub being the partially rebuilt ruins of the last sizeable outpost on Bet protected from the pollutants created by the destruction of Bet only by a thin forcefield. A city created by the final battle, and yet scared by it.

New York, in the process of being rebuilt.  Dust and ominous clouds were being held at bay by a thin forcefield, and the city stood in the center of a brilliant sunlight.  Where glass had broken and where oils had risen to the tops of city streets, things almost glittered.  A shining city.

Does Ward ever explain why they went from rebuilding New York on Earth-Bet to living in 'The City' on Earth Gimmel? Or does it just do that and leave us to wonder as to the answers?

My god, did Wildbow even re-read the epilogues before he wrote Ward? Like, I knew he didn't re-read Worm as a whole, because his characterizations of Amy in Ward are like, frozen in Arc 14 for most of the text but did he not even make the effort to at least re-read the last couple of chapters?

What the fuckberries? How is this the first I'm hearing, in all the complaints I've seen about Ward, and 'The City', that they were GODDAMN REBUILDING NEW YORK CITY after Golden Morning?

she's so real for this tbh. sometimes, the best way to honor a friend's memory is to kill their fucking dad

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.

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.

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.

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

Ok, it’s good to know that the Fallen at least have a coherent thematic throughline in Ward, and I guess I could see that working if it coheres with the larger themes of Ward. I know the members of Breakthrough and it seems like they’re set up to explore themes of imprisonment, violation and the aftermath of such. Victoria and her whole experience, Sveta and being a C53, Tristan and Bryon, etc, and I would imagine that the Fallen is that for Rain.

Still, even the most abusive, most cynically created cults have theologies. And I don’t think any sizeable cult can run without the rank and file being actual believers. So it’s worrying, in regards to verisimilitude, that the Fallen’s theology, as far as I’m aware, hasn’t significantly changed despite the actual apocalypse happening.

I should be excited to read Ward. There’s so much potential in a sequel to Worm. I care about the returning characters and I really, really, really liked what the epilogue of Worm set up. I’m maybe one of a handful of people that like Teacher (as of his epilogue). I love the idea of a work set in the portal ridden ruins of New York. The tension created by the amnesty and of the Wardens attempting to police this new world. And fundamentally, it’s incredibly interesting to move from a work where the world was slowly ending, to one where the world has ended, but which is no longer on the path to ending.

And yet, I’m aware that this potential is, at least partially, squandered. The evocative picture of New York replaced by the amorphous, placeless City. The problems of resource distribution mentioned and yet never fully integrated into the narrative. The apocalypse cult going through the apocalypse mostly unchanged.

Still I’ll read it. Who knows, maybe I’ll love it

really good observation from this liveblog actually why the fuck did cauldron decide to prioritize Interior Design for bonesaw's presence. britain just exploded what's wrong with you

I should be excited to read Ward. There’s so much potential in a sequel to Worm. I care about the returning characters and I really, really, really liked what the epilogue of Worm set up. I’m maybe one of a handful of people that like Teacher (as of his epilogue). I love the idea of a work set in the portal ridden ruins of New York. The tension created by the amnesty and of the Wardens attempting to police this new world. And fundamentally, it’s incredibly interesting to move from a work where the world was slowly ending, to one where the world has ended, but which is no longer on the path to ending.

And yet, I’m aware that this potential is, at least partially, squandered. The evocative picture of New York replaced by the amorphous, placeless City. The problems of resource distribution mentioned and yet never fully integrated into the narrative. The apocalypse cult going through the apocalypse mostly unchanged.

Still I’ll read it. Who knows, maybe I’ll love it