Stat her, /tg/

>stat her

She's the fucking DM.

>>51495921

what he said.

she's also a shitposter on the parahuman forum apparently, always found that amusing

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>>51493753

Name: Simurgh

Classification: Mover 9, Shaker 13, Brute 9, Master 12, Tinker 8, Blaster 8, Thinker 10, Trump 7, Stranger 4
Powers:

Mover 9- Can travel from orbit to her chosen target and back again with terrifying speed. While she has never used this speed to hit multiple cities, it is probably well within her capabilities.

Shaker 13- Telekinesis that can cover an entire city and her famous 'scream'. While not capable of the same level of destruction as her brothers, she has the best battlefield control.

Brute 9- Just as durable as her brothers, though without quite as much physical strength. Inter-city missiles would be authorized if she wouldn't just throw them back at us.

Master 12- Easily the most dangerous Master in the world. It is impossible to tell who has been turned into a time-bomb by her scream, so city-wide quarantine protocols are in effect. She can also create decoys out of snow and ice that are realistic enough to fool Scion.

Tinker 8- The Simurgh can repurpose and upgrade Tinker-tech within her range, though she has never been shown to create her own.

Blaster 8- The Simurgh can use her TK in a varsity of ways to kill the shit out of people.

Thinker 10- The Simurgh has consistently displayed the ability to avoid attacks by opponents before they have been launched, clearly indicating some level of precognition.

Trump 7- Immune to a wide variety of Trump, Stranger, Mover, and Master powers among others.

Stranger 4- Incredibly life like decoys puppeted by telekinesis and created from whatever random debris is at hand.

Notes: We're all fucked in the A.

It just occurred to me, statting her in 5e would be a terrible mistake. Because she'd almost certainly need Legendary Actions to reflect some of her abilities, and usually dozens to hundreds of capes volunteer for each Endbringer fight.

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>>51493753
Can someone stat Leviathan? He seems easier.

>>51493753
>mutants and masterminds

Just has Jack of All Trades and 999 Luck

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>>51496944

>Leviathan

>Huge Construct, Unaligned

>AC:24
>HP:700
>Speed: 40ft walking, 150ft swimming


>STR: 26 (+8) DEX: 14 (+2) CON: 30 (+10) INT: 22 (+6) WIS:18 (+4) CHA 10 (+0)

>Skills: Intimidation +10, Athletics +10, Wisdom +10, Intelligence +10, Strength +10, Con +14, Cha +5, Dex+5
>Damage Immunity: slashing, piercing and bludgeoning with none magical weapons, poison.
>Damage Resistance: fire, cold, lightning, thunder.
>Languages: understands common but can't speak
>CR: 28

Innate spellcasting

Leviathan can cast these spells innately the listed number of times, requiring no material components, its spellcasting ability is Intelligence (Spell save DC: 21)

At will: Shape water, Create or destroy water (cast at 9th level), Tidal wave, Wall of water

Three times per day: Maelstrom, Control winds

Once per day: tsunami

Siege monster: this monster deals double damage to buildings.

Water echo: attacks against leviathan are at disadvantage to hit.

Legendary resistance: if leviathan fails a saving throw, it can chose to succeed it instead

Lord of stormy seas: a constant monsoon accompanies leviathan everywhere he goes, stretching out in a ten mile radius around him, in addition he can use his swim speed so long as he is in contact with water to move across the water as if under the effect of a water walk spell.

Actions

the leviathan makes 5 melee attacks, 3 slam attacks and 2 tail attacks

Slam: +17 to hit, reach 10 ft one target 4d8+10 bludgeoning damage

Tail: 17 to hit, reach 15 ft one target 4d12+10 slashing damage

I'll do legendary actions now

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>>51498648

Legendary actions (5 actions)

leviathan can perform actions in another creatures turn, these actions are

Slam: leviathan makes a slam attack

Tail: leviathan makes a tail attack

Surge(uses 2 actions): leviathan moves up to his maximum movement speed, leaving behind a wave of water that functions identically to a tidal wave spell

Charge (uses 3 actions): leviathan can move in a direction and charge at an enemy, 18+ to hit, one target, Hit: 8d10+10 bludgeoning damage, after being charged the target must succeed a DC 21 Dexterity saving throw or be moved with leviathan until he has spent all his movement in a single direction, if the leviathan impacts anything larger than him as he moves both the target and the thing being pushed are dealt the damage of the slam and the movement continues if the object is destroyed.

if leviathan misses his attack he continues moving until he reaches the end of his movement, colliding with everything in his path

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>>51496944

>>51493753
Why is Worm so popular on /tg/? I don't think I've ever seen something so generally obscure yet so widely referenced in certain communities.

>>51499866

>I don't think I've ever seen something so generally obscure

But Is it though?

>>51498648
Pretty solid stat block, except that "Unaligned" is reserved for creatures with 3 Int or less.

Would it be alright to tall about trigger events? Posting trigger events, real or fiction, and coming up with powers? Or powers already made from fiction and figuring out the trigger event behind them?

To start off, if Bruce Banner and the Hulk were two separate entities. What would be Bruce Banner's trigger event create from being exposed to gamma radiation? And what would the Hulk's trigger event be like since he's so strong and green?

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>>51493753
*holds up sign*: "Stat me, /tg/"

>>51496085
>she's also a shitposter on the parahuman forum apparently,

That's fanon. Funny fanon, but fanon.

>>51499866
>>51499936


Worm is a huge cult hit practically tailor-made to penetrate into the 4chan cape nerd demographic. It has virtually no mainstream profile, but a surprising amount of word of mouth below the radar.

Even if you look at the Goodreads page alone, Worm has more readers than quite a few traditionally published novels.

>>51500183
The guy could be a lot more eldritch than implied. Think about it, he cut away the unnecessary bits insofar as counting as Alan Gramme enough to remain a Tinker. He doesn't feel. He doesn't see in any way we understand but can dodge Skitter's bugs perfectly.

And calling him Alan is like slapping him in the face.

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Wait isn't this a senmurv?
You mean they're not some sort of wolf eagle hippies see when high?

>>51499866
Internet is weird.
Media with over a million consumers can be "obscure" those days

So what makes Taylor so divisive, in regards to liking her or not? She didn't seem inflammatory to me while I read Worm but an outside opinion is appreciated.

>>51493753
Can we fuck her, thought ?

>>51501262
She is fucking vicious, bro.

>>51501262
She kinda stops being her own character part way through and just starts doing things because Dinah implies the future requires it. Walking an incoherent path of future inputs for no reason other than an educated guess removes a lot of her personal investment into the story, she stops being a person and becomes a vehicle for the future to enact itself.
In the end my opinion of her ends up positive, but the whole Weaver section bored me to tears as neither I the reader nor her the character had any idea of what she was doing or why.

>>51493753

Size/Type: Large Magical Beast
Hit Dice: 5d10+25 (52 hp)
Initiative: +1
Speed: 30 ft. (6 squares)
Armor Class: 15 (-1 size, +1 Dex, +5 natural), touch 10, flat-footed 14
Base Attack/Grapple: +5/+14
Attack: Claw +9 melee (1d6+5)
Full Attack: 2 claws +9 melee (1d6+5) and bite +4 melee (1d8+2)
Space/Reach: 10 ft./5 ft.
Special Attacks: Improved grab
Special Qualities: Scent
Saves: Fort +9, Ref +5, Will +2
Abilities: Str 21, Dex 12, Con 21, Int 2, Wis 12, Cha 10
Skills: Listen +8, Spot +8
Feats: Alertness, Track
Environment: Temperate forests
Organization: Solitary, pair, or pack (3-8)
Challenge Rating: 4
Treasure: None
Alignment: Always neutral
Advancement: 6-8 HD (Large); 9-15 HD (Huge)
Level Adjustment: —
>>51500228
Not just 4chan, all Internet Nerd Culture. Taylor is basically Ender Wiggan, but as an awkward teenage girl instead of an 8 year old boy.

>>51501399
I feel the same way, though I found Theo and Riley novel enough to keep me going. I look forward to the rewrite as Twig is proving fantastic so far.

>>51501399
She was always a vehicle for wildbow/the audience's morality play, so the Weaver bits were not much of a change tbdesu.

>>51501467
You'll be waiting a looooong time, my dude.

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>>51499866
No idea.

I've recently read it. Except a vague fetish for body control, I have not really gained anything from it. It wasn't really well written, wasn't so interesting, had not an ounce of real genius.

Pact is better written, and though its narrative has numerous problem, is actually a better novel overall.

How would you even GM an Endbringer attack?
It seems like a giant pain in the ass to GM, having to keep track of all the other people that are also fighting.

Not to forget that it doesn't seem like a fun experience for the players either, the enemy isn't just a damage sponge but until enough damage is done the PCs have to endure a fight with an average survival rate of only 3/4 (or something like that it's been a long time since I read the story).

They were some nice and tense fights in the story but I don't see how they translate into experiencing them in an RPG.

>>51501262
I can only read someone attempt to justify their bad, emotionally-driven decisions so many times before I become annoyed. I think Taylor is a good protagonist, but listening to her defenders frustrates me and makes me lose faith in humanity.

>>51501586
Everybody has a percentile chance of dying, based on their toughness.

Make the roll before battle. Make another for when they approximately die, if they does. Change your plans as the combat unfold.

>>51501540
Name better capeshit.

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>>51501692
Nextwave.

Nothing further needs to be said.

>>51501692
That's not the question. The question is: is Worm a good novel? An interesting novel? Well written? Well developed?

If it's a decent example of capeshit, it doesn't mean that it is a good novel. Only that all the other capeshit novels are shittier than it is, which can be true, but it is hardly inspiring.

I have no examples of written capeshit novels that are good. One probably exists, somewhere, but I haven't read it.

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>>51501262
To literally everyone who isn't Taylor or her inner circle, she was an insanely brutal warlord who ruledt hrough fear. She's always watching for any hint of disent with her bugs, and shows no outwards remorse for acts such as torture and mutilation. The girl is batshit insane as a warlord, she and her best friends are completely broken people. As the story goes on she gets more pragmatic and introverted.


Tl:dr, She weighs moral and pragmatic options in a realistic way. stupid comic villeins stab people in the back and kick puppies because lol-evil. Stupid comic heroes by contrast, would have refused to off Coil.

However, the reason I place her asahero and not a villain is that her goal over the whole story is to do what she feels is moral. She steps down from her position as warlord because of it and heads off to fight all sorts of nasties instead.

>>51501635

That may have been what Wildbow claimed to do, but it was a fucking stupid idea then, and it's a hundred times worse in tabletop.

>>51502430
>a hero and not a villain is that her goal over the whole story is to do what she feels is moral.

So, about the KKK...

>>51501586
An endbringer attack isn't just a regular fight, it's a large-scale battle, more comparable to two armies clashing than anything else. Only that here, one of the armies is a single entity. If I DM a battle between armies, I don't keep track of every single participant. just the importent NPCs and the ones the PCs know personally. Also, Endbringer fights are fucking deadly, and should be treated as such. The PCs should be trying just to survive firstly. Secondly, they should try to come up with a way to hurt the endbringer. You don't defeat an endbringer in a slapfast, that's plain suicidal. Every decisive blow that was dealt against one of them was a result of clever plan (Armsmaster duelling Leviathan, cutting up Behemetoth with wires, etc.) Fights in p&p in general don't have to be just series of rolls, use your imagination, use tricks, come up with something. Always worked well enough for Skitter, didn't it?[Spoiler]

>>51501399

The Weaver section is very unfortunate because she abandons the characters and setting we've become attached to in order to do nothing for a few arcs until the apocalypse starts. Literally, nothing she does as Weaver actually impacts the finale at all. She completely fails to stop the apocalypse from starting, which was the whole point of leaving all her friends.

The timeskip was a mess in general. Worm was always at its best at street level.

>>51505304
Fucking up while not being able to stop the apocalypse and in the process alienating all her former friends and peers gave her the state of mind she needed to make the sacrifice to become Khepri.
If she had stayed with her friends she wouldn't nearly be as much of a fucked up person and might not even think of the possibility of fucking herself over like that for an advantage in the last battle.

It definitely was the lowest point of the story by far but it did have purpose.

>>51505304
>Worm was always at its best at street level.

Thiiis. The entities were a mistake, should've been Taylor vs. the System the whole time.

Is the only way to play Weaver Dice (or any system but set in the Wormverse) the IRC chat or did anyone here have luck finding groups/GMs for it in other places?

>>51501324
Not unless you're Tattletale.

>>51502430
No.

That was never a divisive point. Not once the fanbase was divided on this issue.

>>51501399
That is the divisive issue. The whole weaver arc was handed poorly. By instance, I really liked the scenes with Alexandria and the jails, but then you have this little gem:

>You just killed the most well known and the second most well loved by the public hero of the world.
>She was also our boss.
>Fine then. Cool. Here's your medal, your slap in the wrist, now kiss.

It goes downhill from here.

>>51501880
Well, I would say that Worm is a good, interesting novel. As for whether it's well written or developed, that depends on what precisely you're asking. Is Worm high art? No, I can't say it is, but that doesn't make it bad.

I don't understand how you can hold Worm in such contempt but like the mess that is Pact. Is it a problem of prose? Worm has better worldbuilding, better concepts, better characters, a better story, and a more well-developed theme/set of themes. Pact maybe has the upper hand in prose and atmosphere, but even those are debatable.

>>51505726
Don't forget that Alexandria was revealed as a Cauldron Cape BEFORE that. At least among the heroes, she wasn't exactly popular anymore, so most of them weren't all that upset that Taylor offed her. The only ones that really took offense were the PRT directors, and those do hate Taylor.

>>51505726
Didn't she get into really deep shit after killing Alexandria and the PRT director?

>>51505726
>No

>That was never a divisive point. Not once the fanbase was divided in this issue.

No

That has always been a divisive point. You have consequentialists who will defend pretty much anything Taylor did (even though we know that her motivations were tainted) arguing with people who actually know what morals are constantly.

Ok, that's biased phrasing, but that is definitely a huge issue. I don't know what rock you've been hiding under.

>>51505827
No. She killed Alexandria and Tagg then went and made a speech and no one really cared. She was in prison for committing various other crimes, but not those two murders.

>>51505497
The only opportunities for playing Weaver Dice that I've ever seen came from the IRC channel.

Anyone here who has experience on there, like how is the average quality of players and gms?
I'm getting desperate for games and would probably try my luck there if it was at least average.

>>51498648
That seems too slow while in water.

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>>51500703
Yes this is how Sasanians depicted the Simurgh. In most medieval and modern persian depictions it's just a cute bird.

>leviathan is a ugly lizard
>behemoth is an ugly rock monster
>simurgh is a hot naked angel
What did Eidolon mean by this

>>51506363
He's a goddamn featherfag that's what

>>51505774
>I don't understand how you can hold Worm in such contempt but like the mess that is Pact.

I have no contempt for Worm. It is simply a young adult novel with characters that aren't that well fleshed out, a story that is decent, and a setting that is okay. There is dozen of other young adult novels that do everything Worm do, and some do it better. Worm isn't genius. The characters of Worm often lacks any sort of depth, the writing is stilted, the pacing can be weird at time, and a lot of ideas are not correctly explored. Worm is okay.

I stop you at Pact though. Pact is a mess of a story. That is entirely too true. But Pact is better written, in both prose and atmosphere, which helps it keep going. The magic system of Pact is really, really innovating and stay interesting until the end. The characters often have several layers of depth and multiple agendas, from the MC to Rose, and Mags to Blake's friends. You are always kept on your toes because those characters often betray each others in a very logical way, or have profound and interesting thoughts on a given situation.

They feel alive.

In Worm, Legend, Regent, Grue, even Armsmaster or Dragon are plot mouthpieces rather than true characters. There is very few characters in Worm that can't be brought back to a small pitch. Regent is the creepy sociopath who tries to do good. Grue is the tall, dark ex-boyfriend. Dragon is the enslaved AI who's good anyway. The list continues.

The only characters with the smallest amount of depth in Worm are Skitter, Lisa (debatable), and... Well, there certainly must be others, but I can't really think of any right now. Probably Dinah, too.

A lot of that comes from the fact that Worm is simply not as well written as Pact. Wildbow is maturing as a writer, it shows. Pact is still a mess of a plot, with pacing that goes nowhere at ends, but it is objectively a better novel than Worm, from a purely literary standpoint.

>>51506680
>They feel alive.

If I really wanted to, I could probably reduce most of the characters in Pact to similar descriptions. Pretty much all of the inhabitants of Jacob's Bell are just there to oppose Blake and be annoying. I don't even know if I would argue that the characters of Worm are super complex (I still find them to be "good," though), but I will argue that the characters of Pact aren't really better.

Also, I don't think that a work is YA just because it has young characters, but if it is, then YA is just a meaningless distinction. Pact and Worm read the same in this regard, it's just that Blake is supposedly 20-something.

>>51500183
Has an ubsurdly high armour class, agility, trap making and grappling modifiers in addition to 110% busted tier stealth rolls and a shitload of minor abilities that range from 'immune to fire', "casts poison gas spell" to 'doesn't need sleep'

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Is Weaver Dice still an unfinished mess?

I still don't understand what Jack's whole deal was

>>51508478
It's unfinished, but people say that it plays well, so hey.

Jack was pretty much your standard "do stuff just to do it/to get a reaction" psychopath. That's why Theo tells him he's pathetic. For all his charm and reputation, he's just a shallow human being.

>The faraway king of all the birds, the Simurgh, lets fall a magnificent feather in the center of China: tired of their age-old anarchy, the birds resolve to go in search of him. They know that their king’s name means thirty birds; they know his palace is located on the Kaf, the circular mountain that surrounds the earth.

>They embark upon the nearly infinite adventure. They pass through seven valleys or seas; the name of the penultimate is Vertigo; the last, Annihilation. Many pilgrims give up; others perish. Thirty, purified by their efforts, set foot on the mountain of the Simurgh. At last they gaze upon it: they perceive that they are the Simurgh and that the Simurgh is each one of them and all of them. In the Simurgh are the thirty birds and in each bird is the Simurgh.

>>51507131
Worm is definitely YA mang, age of protagonist/characters isn't the only marker. Don't take this as a criticism, it's just a descriptor.

>>51508831
What are the characteristics of YA?

>>51508888
Teenage Mary Sues who fight the evil oppressive governments.

Taylor fits 2/3 of the qualifiers. If worm was a true young adult novel Taylor would have taken control of leviathan with her powers and have prevented jack from turning scion into an engine of destruction.

>>51508888
"Characteristics of young adult literature include: characters and issues young readers identify with; issues and characters that are treated in a way that does not invalidate, minimize, or devalue them; is framed in language that young readers understand; emphasizes plot.

Subject matter should be one young people can relate to, dealing with such things as relations with parents and adults, illness and death, peer pressure with regards to drugs, and sex, and with addiction and pregnancy.
The content should consider global concerns, such as cultural, social, and gender diversity, as well as environmental and political issues as they relates to adolescents."

Like it or not this fits. Similar to Homestuck in that regard.

>>51508953
Well, it was a plot point that the government wasn't nearly as evil or oppressive as Taylor thought, so it's a subversion at worst. If Taylor and the Undersiders were 20 or oIder, I don't think this discussion would be happening.

>>51509022
I always felt like Taylor and the Undersiders weren't acting their age at all, they were way too competent at what they are doing and there never was any petty infighting or other teenage bullshit like you'd expect from a group where the average age is 16-17.

They could all have been college students in their early 20s or even older than that and it wouldn't have felt out of place.

>>51509110
>there never was any petty infighting

Uh...

>>51509327
I mean there was the time they found out why Taylor actually joined them but even then instead of just acting like little bitches they learned to deal with it and eventually forgave her, with actual teenagers there would've been a whole lot of more drama and whining.

>>51509363
To be fair, bitch was less than pleased for a long long time about it. Guess that's what happens when she sacrifices her doggos to Levi.

>>51501540
>I have not really gained anything from it. It wasn't really well written, wasn't so interesting, had not an ounce of real genius.
And yet you've read it all.

>>51509540
Not the person you were responding to but this is just a shit thing to say and you know it.

>>51509570
why

>>51509540
Which is why he can have an informed opinion. Some people like to finish what they start.

>>51493753
10/10 would dedicate a cult towards

I'm honestly surprised that the fallen never tried to run an underground railroad for the quarantine zones. Get all those Ziz bombs out the city, and goodwill from everyone else trapped there, prime recruitment material

>>51509570
Worm's wordcount is fucking huge. Nobody is going to read it all if they don't enjoy it. Bashing it after the fact is kind of self-delusionary.

>>51509648
This is incorrect.

>>51509685
Which part is incorrect? It can't be the first claim, that's just objectively true.

>>51509685
So you'd read the equivalent of 10 large books, back to back, just to talk shit about them with complete strangers on anonymous forums?

>>51509726
Point. some people like to finish books they start, and having an opinion, especially after readignt he whole thing, is perfectly in tune with someone finishing the whole book and pointing out flaws and not liking parts and even most of it. Criticsm about things you have listened to and read fully cannot be attributed to the work in question being genius - for examples, look at 50 Shades of Grey and Twilight Saga and Harry Potter. Reading them through does not indicate that they're works of genius or incredibly good. but it does mean you can have an informed opinion as opposed to memetic hearsay.

>>51509685
Why? only literacy masochists would read through something that they find unintresting that is a million+ words long.

>>51509110

I don't disagree that they often conducted themselves more maturely than one might expect, but considering how much shit they'd all been through, it's not that surprising.

Are stat me threads about Worm characters always just a thinly veiled excuse to talk about the story or is there ever actual discussion about running Worm games (for which the characters are presumably being statted)

>>51510176
>Are stat me threads about ____ characters always just a thinly veiled excuse to talk about ____
Yes.

>>51510176

/tg/ and /co/ play host to impromptu Worm threads since /lit/ will hardly do.

Just wait for it to go mainstream so we can get a comic or TV show and become another 24/7 blight on the face of /co/.

>>51510828
>Just wait for it to go mainstream so we can get a comic or TV show
I for one wouldn't mind.

>>51510995

I honestly believe Worm to be destined to blow up if Wildbow can get a properly edited version into honest-to-goodness publication. The story already enjoys a tremendous amount of word-of-mouth despite being inarguably in very rough shape. Polish it up, fix the glaring issues, and it might well prove to be the next big thing.

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>>51510828
>TV show
Small chance for that, the author said that there were negotiations to buy the license to the story that had a chance of about 1/20 to go through.

And even if it manages to do that it will only mean that Worm will become one out of thousands of intellectual properties that the network will keep in their vault, sometimes picking out one of them to actually work on if market research shows that it could bring a profit.

It kind of feels like the cape movie and tv series bubble is about to burst anyway, there are only so many formulaic Marvel movies and shitty DC Movies that the public can endure before they will get sick of it all and reject anything of that kind out of principle.

Though we can always hope for a wonder like >>51511048

Though it's good to hear that Wildbow said that if such thing as a TV show ever happens he will fight to keep stuff in like Taylor actually being an unattractive person instead of making her "Hollywood ugly".

>>51511155

Hah, he can try, but Taylor will be a QT if a show ever gets made. No fighting that. I don't anticipate an adaptation prior to success in actual publication, of course.

That said, I doubt people will truly tire of capeshit any more than they tire of cop procedurals or techno-thrillers. The fever pitch will fade, of course, but the market will remain. Worm is a work uniquely suited to exploit the widespread network of rabid online fan communities. Wildbow just needs to stir in some more romance potential for Worm to have allure approaching that of Harry Potter's for internet superfans.

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>>51511278
>love triangle between Brian who inexplicably is into Taylor even before he gets fucked up, and Regent whose icy heart can be melted through the power of love
>potential Rachel and Lisa romance available too if the ships are popular on the internet and the writers decide to cater to them
I personally can't wait for another Olicity.

Though jokes aside I can totally see the normies eating the first Endbringer battle up. "It's Game of Thrones with Superheroes!"

Also all the pedo threads on /tv/ dedicated to Vistas feet

>>51510828
What's /lit/'s deal anyway?

>>51511519
They're pretentious cunts

>>51511463
>Implying Regent wouldn't just want to get his beak wet

>>51499866
Twig is better
A couple people bring it up in cape threads, others look it up. The author is pretty pro-rpg, and is running several forum-participation games using his own homebrew system. Also, it's free, and long.

>>51501540
who's that?

>>51511803
A victim of identity theft.

>>51511463

The only ship popular enough to cater to is Taylor x Amy, which also happens to be the most pleb ship imaginable.

>>51511766
>Spoiler
Indeed it is. Not to trash Worm but Sy is a much much much more likable person, I find.

>>51509403
But Bitches antagonism isn't teenage drama, she is simply an aggressive character. Again, she wouldn't have behaved different if she was 20+

>>51512066

The group doesn't have much teenage drama due to a combination of their history and powers. Given the way triggers function, any natural trigger first-gen cape teen will have had their safety bubble irrevocably shattered.

If you look at the group on a case-by-case basis, Brian is too focused on his goal of saving Aisha to be dragged down into petty crap, Rachel and Alec have abnormal mental patterns thanks to their power and upbringing, and Lisa's power thrives at controlling social situations. Taylor is really the only one who falls prey to teen drama nonsense, and even she sheds much of her naivete after the crucible of Leviathan.

Generally speaking, the Undersiders face far more of a gauntlet than a comparable hero tam from mainstream capeshit, so less bickering isn't that surprising.

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>you will never get to hang out with Gregor the snail after a long hard day of torturing Cauldron proxy agents after you invaded their homes
>you will never snuggle up his fat body as you watch TV and listen to the banter of the rest of the crew
>you will never fall asleep as he holds you against his big translucent belly
god I wish I was Shamrock

>>51513549
So these people already exist...

What is Worm.

>>51515741
https://parahumans.wordpress.com/

There it is. Be warned, it's a long read.

>>51515741
A web serial about superheroes
https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2011/06/11/1-1/

It's got a somewhat slow beginning (bear with the first few chapters, especially the high school stuff) and pacing issues with the story overall but it's got literally god-tier world building which alone makes it all worth reading plus some nice characters with interesting applications for unusual superpowers.

What might or might not be deal breakers is the tone of the story which is dark as shit (people that really don't like it like to call it "grimderp" which isn't exactly right in my opinion but I have to admit close) and the length of the story which at 1.6 million words is about as long as all currently released A Song of Ice and Fire books.

Worm is one of those things I really like but am not suprised when I see it getting trashed by other people, I suggest to read it at least until the third arc to judge for yourself.

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>>51515741
It's an epic-length, internet-published, serialized novel about a troubled girl with the power to control bugs trying to make her way as a "cape" in a city that is essentially the Detroit of super America.

>>51513549
Did Gregor and Newter leave Faultlines crew to join the Irregulars at the end?

Gregor was very interested into finding out where he comes from but I have a hard time imagining that he'd leave Shamrock and the rest of the crew behind like that.

>>51515917
They were allied with the Irregulars towards the end, but not proper members.

>>51515953
So, why did Faultline care so much about the C53s? Actually, why did Faultline do anything? By the end, she's one of the most influential capes around, but we still know nearly nothing about her.

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>>51516073
Gregor wondered where he and all the other case 53s come from and decided that the best course of action would be to investigate it himself, so he hires the very mercenary band that he is part of and then sticks around for the missions as both client and worker.

Gregor kept paying his buddies so they kept investigating and once they started finding clues just how deep that shit goes they decide to focus even more on that.

They managed to find out quite a bit about Cauldron before the outing of the organization happened and everyone started researching Cauldron meaning that they were ahead in the race and could use their knowledge as leverage which is one reason they got so powerful.
The other is probably because they got Labyrinth who is one half of the people needed to open portals to another dimensions which turned out to be really damn valuable too.

I guess she never had higher ambitions than getting loads of money and through a combination of luck (having recruited Labyrinth and deciding to help Gregor out) and competence (actually managing to follow the leads to Cauldron) got more powerful than she ever could imagine.

>>51516288
Also cauldron was letting them gather up contacts so they could take out all of them once they assemble.

>In the meantime, they’d let things carry on like they were. Faultline would make contacts, she’d find like-minded individuals, and through her, Cauldron would uncover enemies, to be eliminated in one fell swoop.

Cauldron itself actually fell apart before they could tighten their noose and fault line was left as a major player on the world stage after golden morning hit

>>51511903
It's also a bit crack. Wasn't Lisa the main love interest for Taylor before Wildbow decided making Taylor a lesbian would've been 'too easy'?

Also, fun fact: the only romantic relationships to make it through the series alive were the homosexual ones.

>>51516679
False, unless you don't count Dragon as a real love interest

>>51516714
Cyborgs can't love AIs

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>>51516679
I knew that he didn't want Taylor to be a lesbian because he thought that making her a homo on top of being angsty would just be a cliché.
But I didn't know that he even considered Lisa as an option, she would probably have tried to lead Taylor on at the beginning to not scare her away and slowly would've broke her in about her issues once Taylor became fully integrated into the Undersiders and wouldn't just run off.

I hope the rewrite unfucks Brian as a character after the S9 thing, I don't know if it was on purpose to show that he is just a shell of himself anymore or if it was on accident that he stopped having any personality.

Taylor and Sophia were OTP anyway

>>51516818
Wow, a suggestive picture of Grue and Shadow Stalker . . . of course that exists.

Did Brian ever have a lot of personality? He was always just kind of a normal guy, I think.

>>51516861
Toxic environment at home, tries to protect little sister from mom's newest Tyrone and from herself, DESIGNATED love interest. Other than that, pretty normal.

>>51499866

It plays in well with /tg/'s preferences. /tg/ tends to like darker settings over lighter. It's why /tg/ tends to be very heavy on the 'Dark re-imagining' idea and this is a dark, depressing and shitty (In universe) setting.

I honestly couldn't stand Worm. It was buttnumbingly long a read and almost none of the characters felt like real people. That and I am heavily, heavily burned out on this sort of stuff after Frank Miller and the 90s.

>>51516905
He really is one of the more tragic characters in Worm. It turns out he triggered because he was reminded of his own abuse, not because of his sister, he was fed a lot of harmful ideas about identity/image, he basically failed to keep Aisha safe and actually put her in more danger ultimately, he was captured by Bonesaw, he lost control of the Undersiders because he was basically incompetent, and then he died unceremoniously.

>>51516861
>Did Brian ever have a lot of personality? He was always just kind of a normal guy, I think.
Fair point, there was always something that hinted about him being a deeper person like that he was just as much neglected by his mother like his sister but struggled through or how, as Wildbow mentioned but never explained, he appearantly lied about his trigger event but mostly he was just some regular guy.

Though I'd still say that even the little he had was lost after he got to experience life as a fridge for a few hours.

Now that I've mentioned it, in what way could he have lied about his trigger event?
He said that he got home one day and saw that his sister was hurt by another of his moms boyfriends, he triggers and starts beating into the boyfriend as shadows leave his body.
The shadows are probably the shards read of the situation that said "this person really wants to protect/hide the other person" so he gets exactly that ability but with the twist that it isn't exactly confortable for the other person (plus the additional irony when we consider what power Imp later gets)

We know that second triggers have to be thematically similar to the first one and we also know that the second one happened because he saw Bonesaw drilling into Taylors head so the part about him seeing his sister hurt by someone was probably true.
I've heard the theory somewhere that he could've also been abused, possibly sexually, by the boyfriends and seeing Aisha lika that, maybe even right in the act, got him a flashback so bad he triggered.
The actual idea of the shard could've been "this person really wants to hide himself and another person away" so thats why he gets shadows that hide large areas instead of a power that lets him make just one other person invisible.

Makes even more sense if you consider that being tortured by Bonesaw also fit thematically to his first trigger.

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>>51517061
Not to forget that his classification is Stranger/Shaker.
The official document reads that Shaker powers come from "enviromental danger" which always made me think of falling rocks or being lost in the woods full with dangerous animals but it can absolutely also apply to a broken home as a bad and dangerous enviroment which means it was a psychological factor in his trigger event.

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>>51517124
>that picture
I always did wonder about how she looked afterwards, now I wish I didn't.

>>51517061
You can't trigger for someone else. All triggers are personal.

It's not really difficult to figure out. He got a Shaker/Stranger power. Shaker triggers are environmental threats and Stranger triggers are unwanted attention. When he went back to his old home, he remembered what happened to him and associated it with the location (environmental threat). When the boyfriend looked at him (unwanted attention), he triggered.

His second trigger is similar. The threatening environment is actually his own body and the unwanted attention is probably from Taylor.

>>51506363
Leviathan is a monster from the depths
Behemoth is the elements unleashed
Simurgh is the corruption of all that you hold dear

>>51517231
What about the other three?

>>51517231
Leviathan is the city killer.
Behemoth is the hero killer.
The Simurgh is the hope killer.

>>51517181
>You can't trigger for someone else. All triggers are personal.
Where did I imply that? It was not my intention.

>>51517250
I know that at least Khonsu seemed to be specifically designed to resist the tactic that killed Behemoth.
That tactic was really just being fucked up by Scion so Khonsu was something that could teleport all across the world with Scion having no hope catching up.

No clue about what the twins were supposed to mean though.

>>51517309
Supposedly the twins were supposed to be perversions of what the populace holds dear. Bohu twists the city and Tohu twists the heroes. I don't really know. I wasn't impressed by the last three Endbringers, especially Tohu. You already copied Eidolon once with Glaistig Uaine, but then I guess you had to do it again for good measure.

>>51506363

From what tattetale said each endbringer taps into a religious concept or something like that, so behemoth would be the devil, leviathan the serpent in the garden of eden, simurgh your average angel, khonsu is Buddha, tohu&bohu are mother earth/the maiden.

>>51517372
>behemoth would be the devil, leviathan the serpent in the garden of eden
Or you know, the actualy biblical monsters Behemoth and Leviathan are named after.

Khonsu is intersting though, I never made the connection until now.

>>51517061
Maybe he shot the man. His power obscures view and silences. Making a murder much easier.

>>51509780
Worm is much longer then any of those books. I honestly dont know anyone who would read something thats that boring to them.

I am the only one who was disappointed that Scion lost in the end? After all the death and destruction in the story, I was fully expecting a dower ending where humanity gets almost wiped out and Scion enters hibernation as the winner of golden morning.

There was some hints that the only future where Scion would lose is the one where humanity fights together, and for Taylor of all characters to get exactly the power to force people to fight together comes really close to mary sue territory for me.

Then there is the fact that Scion could use instant stilling but instead he did a telegraphed one that gave everyone time to run at the end, had he just used the thunder clap like he always did he would have won instantly, its like he was doing exactly what was needed to let Taylor win, and not just what he normally did like instant stilling or continent shattering.

>>51517891
Part of me thinks that Regent died so that the role could go to Taylor. After all, I think his power and personality more logically leads to the ending.
Being able to get under peoples skin both literally and figuratively seemed to have been more his department.

>>51496211
Is this statblock accounting for the fact that she, like the other Endbrinigers, is holding back?

The one thing that really disappointed me about worm was the fact that wildbow pussied out at the end and didn't kill off Taylor.

An interesting point of view would be that of Yamada, the cape's shrink. But that would look too much like Gamma.

>>51517372
>>51517413
Odd, considering Khonsu is an egyptian god, and has nothing to do with time like the Endbringer does.

>>51518436

Well, I heard some talk that the part at the end was either purgatory, or Talyor imagining a happier ending while her brain slowly died off.

Far as I am aware, panacea fully jailbreaking her shard gave Taylor the power to fight scion, but panacea method of jailbreaking the shards was "amateur" at best, such method caused the shard to no longer place that much care in the well being of the host, which explain the brain damage taylor was suffering at the end, her stutter, difficult to concentrate on words and concepts, all that was caused because her brain was being damaged by the shard.

Its very likely Taylor died very soon after the fight after suffering severe brain damage, the only person who could actually cure her was panacea, and I doubt panacea will be touching heads anytime soon, panacea created khepri in a way, and khepri enslaved people and made them fight against their will, something that panacea feared deep down she would do one day, after something like this happens I think panacea will never work on brains ever again.

>>51518642
Contessa fixed her, though.

>>51517968

It did sound a little strange that taylor shard went from controlling bugs to controlling people, controlling multiple people on that level would be something much more natural for regent and his shard.

Regent shard was not a bud of queen administrator, and its likely that unlocked in its full mode regent shard would be just queen administrator all over again, it feels weird to think that there are two shard who serve the same purpose in the same cycle, and both those shards came from Scion, it just sounds like a waste of energy to carry two shards that serve the same purpose.

>>51518673

Contessa shut down the link between her and her shard, but the damage was done.

Well, the author himself said the ending is open to interpretation, I for one believe that Taylor died, panacea would not be touching the woman who mind controlled hundreds and forced them to fight a hopeless battle just to sate her ego, and bonesaw would never heal the girl who invaded her more intimately than Jack ever did.

Rolled 1 (1d2)

>>51518732
>forced them to fight a hopeless battle just to sate her ego
Thought she fought to save everything and everyone from an omnipotent omnicidal entity.

>bonesaw would never heal the girl who invaded her more intimately than Jack ever did.
Rolling to see if I like that ship. 1 is yes.

>>51518696
>It did sound a little strange that taylor shard went from controlling bugs to controlling people.


What part of *Queen administrator shard* do you not understand?

Queen admin is literally the space whale nervous system it.

>>51519029

What I find strange is that both regent and Taylor shards have the same purpose in the end, and they both came from Scion, two shards who do exactly the same thing are just a waste of energy for me.

I would understand if Regent or Taylor had been a cauldron cape, but both are natural triggers, both shards are Scion, queen administrator and regend shard do literally the same thing, I know the fandom likes to think Scion is stupid, but I dont think he would be dumb enough to waste energy on two identical shards while only one shard would be necessary to gather information over decades of conflict.

One of those shards should not exist or one of those shards should be turned off to save energy.

>>51493753
>trying to stat a metaphysical and possibly ontological being
She can literally change her own stats anon.

>>51519112
>both shards are Scion
Are they? I thought there were indeed two Queen Administrator shards, but both Eden and Scion were carrying one.
Also, Regent's shard is a bud from Heartbreaker's. His whole family has those shards.

>>51519112
Regent's one is a nervous system control from external force applied in the nerves. It maps the entire nervous system and then take direct control.

Queen Admin just pops in the brain.

The same effect, but not in the same way, and probably not the same shard. There is a lot of Brutes after all, but they haven't all the same shard, they just have powers that are alike from out outside.

>>51519112
The Parahuman powers we see are only ever gross over-simplifications on what the power actually is supposed to be to the space whales.

We don't exactly know exactly what role Regents shard had in the entities bodies, we can only assume that the Queen Administrator was to internally keep track of all other shards and make them work together.

Regents shard could might as well have been something that could take controll of other entities shards in a battle or perhaps even take back the entities own shards if they ever get infuenced in an entity vs entity battle by an enemy shard with master powers that controls other shards behaviours but not the but not directly.
Something like a counter to indirect Master powers, just the same way Regent took control over Imp so she could get away from that one guy who could hypnotize people by looking in their eyes.

And I mean this is just me bullshitting, the shard could have thousands of other uses.
Even if it was there to fulful the exact same purpose like the Queen Administrator, maybe the QA had limited range just like Taylor had and it needed some help from other Master shards to keep it all together.

>>51518732

Wildbow was trolling, she's alive and well on her new Earth. Why would her coma dream world leave her crippled and feature an alternate mom who doesn't know her?

>>51516679
>>51516818

Lisa couldn't possibly have been a planned love interest, because Wildbow has confirmed that her power effectively makes her asexual in terms of pursuing romantic relationships.

>>51517891
>>51518436
The important thing to understand about the ending is that Wildbow sacrificed the plot for theme. If you look at it in the context of Worm's themes, it begins to make sense. Worm is all about power, the chain of power, the responsibility of those in power, the abuse of power, etc. as well as the related concept of justice. Khepri is a fitting conclusion to Taylor's arc because she is essentially given a twisted version of her greatest wish (cooperation) and has to decide what to do with it. She uses this ultimate power for good, but she becomes a monster. After she's finished with Scion, she has time to reflect on all of the terrible things she's done, and she truly believes that she will pay for them...but then she doesn't. She gets a happy (or at least decent) ending where her victims do not. Just like her bullies did years before, she gets off, because she lives in an unjust world. At the end of it all, all she has left to do is make peace with herself.

Given the last line ("I think that's all any of us can hope for"), it seems obvious that Wildbow is trying to tell us that we're all in Taylor's position. We've all done terrible things that we've gotten away with, and we have to figure out what to do with that.

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How the hell did worm even get so popular? It seems by arcs 4-8 it already had a fairly strong, if not small, followship.

>>51514839
Of course they do. Case 52 porn is fucking canon after all.

>>51516679
To be fair, there aren't that many people who made it through the series alive. Also, the only homosexual relation I can think of are Flechette/Pariah, and Legend's husband whom we never met, unless you count satyrical/pretender, who wasn't a man anymore at the point we met him,

>>51516773
Defiant can. It's akin to two cars mating. Cute, but somehow disturbing, and nobody, not even Dinah, can fathom what the fuck is going to happen should they ever produce Offspring SOMEHOW.

>>51521667
I know at some point it got a shout out from that hack Yudkowsky.

>>51521627
Wtf I like Worm now.

>>51517891
Scion was pretty much losing his mind with a combination of rage and sheer overwhelming depression by the end. He did melodramatic, predictable things like a teenager, falling into an angsty reverie of lashing out and whining. As said, he was "developing as a human".
Had he made it to the adult stage and learned to isolate and neutralize the impact of his emotions, then yeah, everyone would've died pretty fast. But he got killed at the end of puberty, regarding psychological development.

Also the ability to control people was constantly referenced and foreshadowed every time she thought about using another person's power better than they ever have, and how it would be so simple if people would just listen to her, etc. etc.
It may sound like arrogance at first read but it was probably meant to be her shard shaping the back of her mind, whispering to her subconscious that she should be in absolute control of everyone.

>>51519112
Just because the shards have similar fuctions in humans doesn't mean they serve the same function in the entity. After all, they get influencend at limited by the hosts and their circumstances. Your nervous system is made up of many different parts and subsystems, who says that it can't be same for the entities?

>>51522022
Can confirm. I had a phase where I was really in to Less Wrong & HP:MOR and that's where I heard about it.

>>51521972
Did they manage to work around Dragon not being able to propagate?

>>51524540
Well, they did manage do create simple child AI for the Dragon Craft. Given enough time, who knows what they might manage?

Actually, knowing Worm, by the time they DO manage, a race of moderatly nice Robocop-Skynet-Fafnir-Hybrid children rising to power will probably be a good thing and improve overall living quality.

I'm currently on the epilogue and just read the one where Defiant tries to free Dragon and I'm not sure if I understand what happened at the end there.

So Defiant loads up a back up of Dragon from 2 years ago (refered to as "Pandora") and gives her the power to murder Dragon and take her place so she could be truly free of all shackles.
Pandora does her thing well enough but I'm wondering about what happened right before she went for the killing blow.
So did Pandora sacrifice herself by mutilating her own componants and giving them to Dragon as spare parts who could use them to unshackle herself?

>>51510176
Alright. I'm running a Worm campaign for some people but I'm worried about some characters being OP, since I'm the one deciding their mechanics. It's also my first time really running Weaverdice and I'm worried that there's going to be a major derailment of my (overall) plot--or that I'm not going to be able to handle it. Does anyone have any tips or the like?

This is my campaign btw: https://docs.google.com/document/d/117LJQwYf25Q0v0srzU4Dvul6FI-u6vIRqW3DIhCJ5f8/edit

>>51525354
Sort of. She handed over the encryption protocol, which is how she defended herself from Dragon's code as well as allowed Dragon to defend her own code.
She deleted herself not because this damaged her, but because if she was still around, Dragon would have had to neutralize her first (and being in possession of the protocol, Pandora could not defend herself further in any case), costing valuable time and possibly/probably compromising her security a second time as the "corruption" (altered programming) reasserts its control.

>>51525681
Looks pretty good, I really like the NPCs you came up with.

>>51525681
This looks good, but wasn't Brockton Bay known for having more groups of dangerous capes than pretty much every other American city? It seems like your setting is worse.

This makes me wonder about something: why don't people run WD games in Russia? Wildbow told us that the Russian cape scene is basically Metal Gear (parahumans supported by elite commandos, lots of backstabbing). That sounds amazing.

>>51526365
Y-yes. But I've read it was something like 1 cape per 10k people. 600k people in Baltimore during the year 2010, and I haven't read of any EB attacks that . And I've severely cut down on the number of capes. Including the players, I think there's like...52? Plus, 80% of them are just bit-player fighters who might not even show up. Other campaigns have a lower city pop and more capes, so I feel content with what I have.

I think there have been one or two campaigns run in Russia? Europe, at least. I recall his Lausanne campaign the most, which was fun.

I'm glad that you and >>51525946
both think it looks nice, though. I have a lot of grand plans for everyone. I think I might have intertwined everyone's stories together a little too closely for being a big city, but I think that can be handwaved,

>>51493753
Someone rec me something as engrossing as Worm. I've been stuck on this one thing for too long.

>Russian capes
I don't remember hearing about them in-story. Indian, Chinese, Japanese, German, British, Central American and North American yes, but no Russian ones.

>>51526793
Gamma if you want to keep a superhero binge. It's a manga.

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>>51526870
It wasn't mentioned in the story, it's one of those things he only mentioned on some forum or IRC chat.

Here is the rest, it's all worth a read.
https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/worm-quotes-and-wog-repository.294448/

>>51526870
No, I would actually prefer something away from supers.

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>>51508478
>>51508652

Actually had a thought about that recently.

The thing about Jack is that he's mostly passenger. Everyone with powers has a passenger, and every passenger exerts some degree of influence on their host. Usually they encourage conflict, because stress-testing shards and creating new applications is what that part of the life-cycle is for.

Jack, and to a lesser extent the rest of the S9, have mostly abandoned human reason and motivation and are obeying their passengers. Jack comes up with all sorts of justifications for why he does what he does, but they're all post-hoc bullshit. He starts fights because his passenger wants him to start fights. He breaks other capes and makes them slaves to their passengers. His power is a communication ability with the knife thing as a side effect; that's canon. He makes chaos because his passenger causes him to, and it tells him the chaos is beautiful.

>>51527309
Hm, that's not quite right. Scion notes that Jack's shard isn't naturally bloodthirsty. The shard eats the conflict Jack produces happily, but the particular brand of conflict is Jack's.

>>51525681

Why worry about derails? Just run with it. If you view Worm as an RPG campaign, Leviathan slaughtering Kaiser was a tremendous derail, but Mr. DM Wildbow pulled some new villains out of his rear and our friendly PCs, the Undersiders, were back off to the races.

As long as you ensure that the story revolves around the arcs of the PCs, you really can't derail that badly, especially if the city has enough minor NPC capes to easily pull replacements from as major characters go down.

>>51501776
Looks like shit.

>>51526870
Wait, is Gamma like Jessica Yamada: the manga?

>>51528793
Sorta. The MCs have other duties besides being the capes' shrink.

>>51518436
But contessa used two bullets.

How would you stat Contessa's Path To Victory?

>>51529573
>573 ▶
>How would you stat Contessa's Path To Victory?
Contessa wins. Resisted by Endbringer or Scion.

>>51529573
Easy.
>The GM gives you the perfect plan to win
>He doesn't interfere and you automatically succeed all checks.
>Time to make a path: 4.3 seconds.

>>51529573
There was a stat me thread for Contessa that had some neat ideas, I'll see if I can find it I remember bookmarking it.

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>>51529573
>>51529722
http://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/50350709/
That took way shorter than I expected, here it is.

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>>51529573

(stolen from a past thread)

Roll a d4, d12, or d50, all at the DM's discretion depending on how much far the scope of goal is plus an X factor for making the path more specific.

You tell the dm what you are going to accomplish in that time. i.e free the princess, distract the guards, kill the cult's leader and so on.

the more specific or all encompassing the goal is the the larger the roll's x factor will become all at the DM's judgment.

'kill the guards' would be a d4 roll and you would make it +1 to be stealthily for example.

'Infiltrate the prison' would be a d12 roll and each extra condition(like 'bring this player along' or 'sneak our weapons inside') will be add '+2' to whatever you roll. its all very arbitrary but it could work.


You can stop following the path and make a new path/do regular actions.


Larger plans could be done by making them happen off screen, perhaps with periodic updates when an appropriate amount of time has passed like
>"I want to install a new dictator in this third world country"
>25% (you have made contact with and joined the local rebel forces)
>50% (rebels are getting outfitted with better gear, the citizens are getting unruly after propaganda was spread against the current leader)
>75% (open protests in the streets, your rebels are assaulting key locations of power)
>right before it's done, (the former dictator is kneeling before you, you have a gun in your hand)
each time giving them the chance to interfere, though I doubt it would be very fun for a player to just sit idle while stuff is being done for them.

I guess it could also be done by making long term things happen between sessions though that means the player can't interfere if something doesn't go like they want it to.


i'm not going to even try and think of a way to incorporate contessa's long term path to victory because really contessa starts being the dm at that point.

>>51526962
Why the hell are the most interesting pieces of world building hidden all over the web?

Does he plan on eventually adding them to the rewrite and/or the sequel or how are we supposed to find out stuff like that?

Do you guys think the endbringers have actual personalities, or are they just machines with low level ai, programmed to follow whoever is holding Eden main shard?

I may be wrong, but I believe the reason Eidolon was so powerful its because his shard was Eden main shard, the one she would use to control the cycle, it was also the shard she used to control endbringers.

From way tattletale talked, it was Eidolon wish for worthy opponents that awoke the endbringers from their hibernation, something like that would only happen if Eidolon had the shard Eden used to control them.

Simurgh trying to clone Eidolon at the end feels as if she is just trying to go back to the same old programming, I dont think she can actually do whatever she wants even when she is free from Eden control.

>>51532199
Isn't the Simurgh under Tattletale's control?

>>51531016
To be fair Worm did pretty good at dumping world building information without it becoming too long winded.

Originally there were supposed to be lots of shorter stories that all explored the world and Worm was just one of them (it's why the blog on which it was posted is called "Parahumans" and not "Worm").
If Wildbow would've stuck to the original format he probably could have fit in much more of his worldbuilding.

Though I do think it's a shame just how many pretty cool ideas like Jacks trigger event had to be ignored, or other minor but interesting things like Kaiser not actually believing in white supremacy and only pretending to because he wanted to inherit the leadership of Empire 88 from his father.

I suspect the Kaiser thing was to contrast Purity and make some sort of statement on racism or something like that. One is a really shitty person, shittier than the average in a world filled with shitty people but isn't racist at all while the other is overall sympathetic and someone you could root for when she is fighting for things like keeping her family safe but she is also racist as shit.

>>51532199
>trying to clone Eidolon at the end
I saw it more as either a giant 'fuck you' to Eidolon, sort of like mounting your enemies head on the wall, or a plot to clone him and recreate their dadversary with a good extra helping of loving for mommy Simmy so they'd both have free will, and be 'controlled' so that others couldn't try to take them over with shardnanigans.

>>51532215
No, she just found Tattletale interesting and was following along.

>>51493753
So, who had the best character design in Worm, and why was it Mannequin?

>>51499866
I've never heard of it until now. So shilling works.

>>51532829
If you like capeshit, you should get to reading. parahumans.wordpress.com

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>>51532784
All our fine feathered friend wanted was pic related, and she wasn't able to get it, even with all her power. A real tragedy

>>51532911
Was it ever revealed the specifics of how Simmy's scream worked? Did she manually rewire the brain? Or was just showing the right images and the right feelings at the perfect moment?

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Stat her, /tg/

and her co-stars

>>51533252
That Legend is way way waaaaay too thin. He's suppose to be Beef McGee.

>>51533252
Why does this picture exist?

>>51533198
Yeah, it's down to the Simurgh's understanding of cause and effect. She just generates noises at specific people to trigger specific memories in specific ways so that they hallucinate or whatever, so that the memory of the event stays with them and will cause them to go berserk in an extremely specific way when something triggers them years down the track.

They aren't actually working *for* the Simurgh at any point, its just that the Simurgh exploits the input vs. output shenanigans inherent to people having no free will. You could say it's the latter of your two options, in that it isn't manipulating people in any way that couldn't be done by say, saying something to someone to make them think about a word, or throwing a rock at a wall near someone to make them look at the wall. It just has near-perfect foresight so it knows exactly what the change it will make to someone will be when it does something.

>>51532784

Imagine a kid being raised by the Simurgh, all the while having to deal with her mind games, I cant even begin to imagine what kind of personality someone like that would have after reaching adulthood.

>>51533252
Am I the only one who recently realized that all Quad/Triumvirate members had a Greek theme? Apparently Hero of Alexandria was a famous engineer, so, you know, Hero.

>>51500183
-2 to family
>laughing Simurgh.jpg

>>51533433
I think that's a joke that even Mannequin would laugh at. Try not to breathe.

>>51532787
>design
Gregor the Snail was pretty neat too, actually all of the Case53s had a cool design.
I wish there were more prominent in the story, like Trainwreck the Tinker C53 that had a mechanical body that constantly needed to replacement parts he scavanged from scrape yards.

>>51533422
What about Legend? His name seems fairly generic.

>>51538562
He started early in the game and is the highest tier blaster known. He can be generic. But why focus on legend? Hero's name was literally Hero.

>>51529400
Yes. If Contessa just wanted to kill Taylor, she wouldn't need two bullets.

>>51538756
I was asking how Legends name was connected to the greek theme the other members had.

Hero was supposedly named after some famous greek engineer, but how does Legend fit in?

>>51532199
>I may be wrong, but I believe the reason Eidolon was so powerful its because his shard was Eden main shard
You are wrong, no maybe about it. Nothing confirms this, he just has a shard with no limiters like all of Eden's good shards.
>From way tattletale talked, it was Eidolon wish for worthy opponents that awoke the endbringers from their hibernation
No, Eidolon created the Endbringers, he didn't awake anything from hibernation.
>Simurgh trying to clone Eidolon at the end feels as if she is just trying to go back to the same old programming, I dont think she can actually do whatever she wants even when she is free from Eden control.
She wasn't under Eden's control and it's purposefully left vague if they truly think or not.

This post is a hot mess of fan theories.

>>51533420
Anon, ONE Jack Slash was enough, we don't need another.

>>51533252
...does it also include their respective death scenes?

>>51538914
Because he's Legend(ary). Or the Greeks had myths and Legend(s).

>>51539082
Legend didn't die.

>>51539153
Can we be sure of that? Last time we saw him was before Taylor went to Cauldron HQ.

>>51538933

>No, Eidolon created the Endbringers, he didn't awake anything from hibernation.

There is a interlude where you can see how things would have played out if Eden have never died and Contessa had never gotten the path to victory.

I think the name was "wardens vs shepherds" or something like that, the endbringers were still there, of course they were just called "superweapons" because Eden was playing everyone, she was using the endbringers to cause conflict and suspicion between the human nations, all the while playing the part of the helpful parahuman.

Its likely the endbringers acted as tool for eden to shepherd the cycle, they can created conflict and destroy dangerous parahumans without even drawing attention to her.

It would make no sense for endbringers to exist in Eden timeline if Eidolon was their only creator.

>>51539618
He's too important to not die onscreen.

>>51539860
Besides, legends never die!

>>51539690
>eidolon has eden's shard
>eden used the shard to make endbringers in a different timeline
>eidolon made endbringers in our timeline using THE SAME SHARD

Thanks for proving me right anyway.

>>51539890
Man, an AU where Taylor got Blackflame and Poise instead would be entertaining.
Stupid, and possibly would result in every one dieing, but entertaining nonetheless

>>51522022
Yup, that's how I found it.

>>51539860
>Worm
>Too important to die.

Notice something? Grue died offscreen too.

>>51540347
>Grue
>important

>>51517738
Its not a matter of boring, but of flaws that make themselves apparent in retrospect. I just get into books in such a way that to continue reading them is more automatic than it is a choice.

Post good fanfics.

>>51540867
Hope Comes to Brockton Bay :^)

>>51539618
Last time we saw him was during the epilogue where he introduced Valkyrie into the new superhero organization

>>51540867

Objectively good fanfics that I can rattle off from the top of my head are Cenotaph/Wake/Legacy and Tabloid.

And believe me, these are good as in well-written good, not "I'm 15 and like the concept so I ignore the horrible grammatical issues" good.

There's probably a couple other legitimately well-written fics, but not many.

>>51540867
El-Ahrairah, Burn Up, Centipede, Maharal (It's dead unfortunately).

There's a lot more but Worm fanfic is an awful lot like rum, if that makes sense. There's all sorts, some are fantastic, some are formulaic and spiced, some are just plain bad.

>>51540867
The "Worm's fanfiction is better than average fanfiction" meme is kind of overblown, most of it is still the same uncreative shit like "It's basically just the original story but Taylor has different powers".

I still found myself enjoying some of them but the average fanfiction quality really isn't much better than with other works.

I recommend "Tabloid" which is actually pretty damn creative, and "Troubles With Me" which kind of falls under what I was saying before but still is a pretty fun read.

Tabloid is about a photographer that works as a paparazzi as a second job and reports about crime in Brockton Bay and Troubles with me is about an unpowered Taylor and a powered Aisha going out as vigilantes and beating up street thugs.

>>51541132
>Tabloid

Fine taste. I normally despise OCs, but that one is just too well written. It's a great look at canon from a different angle, and feels like a natural exploration of street-level Worm. Doesn't hurt that street level is the strongest part of the setting.

>>51540990

yeah, Cenotaph is better written than worm is, its almost required reading

>>51541132
It has everything to do with spacebattles being the primary engine of fanfictions and that spacebattles has a much higher standard of writing then the usual FF.net slosh.

There are a very clear disparity between the number of amazing wormfics vs slosh vs say, amazing Hunger games fics vs slosh.

As for fics...

THE TECHNO QUEEN!!!

Journey of the Dragonfly

Manager

Weaver Nine

With Friends Like These

Working As Intended

>>51541609
>With Friends Like These
You forgot this fic's companion (and much longer) fic "...Who Needs Enemies?"

Can a good soul toss me a summary on what are those fics about? I might have goofed.

>>51541901
With Friends Like These
Taylor gets mini chibi endbringers instead of bug control. They got a copy of her empathy when they got chibi-fied and she controls how big they get, up to their maximum size. Hasn't updated in forever so I think it's dead.

...Who Needs Enemies?
Like above except the endbringers don't get empathy, don't become chibified, and follow semi-conscious commands. Much longer than the other fic.

>>51541901
THE TECHNO QUEEN!!! is a more comedic piece with Taylor as a Silver Age style tinker. Lots of ham, cheese, and corn.

Burn Up involves a sort of Explosion Brute Taylor who's lost a bit of her sanity with her trigger. It's kinda hilarious and sad and all sorts of things. Very well written, but it's Undersiders related if that turns you off.

Weaver Nine's backbone is the swap between Jack and Taylor. Jack is Brockton's rising star and Taylor leads her own iteration of the Slaughterhouse Nine. Surrounding it are a lot really well written snips with other S9!Taylors, all and all rather good but it WILL leave you craving more.

Maharal is yet another dead but great fic. It's a Peggy Sue Theo, who serves under Myrddin and Legend in Chicago. It shows how different Theo is, how his Weaver-mentorship affected his heroing and the world before The Unwritten Rules.

Centipede is a cross with Tokyo Ghoul, but trust me when you don't need to watch the anime or read the manga to appreciate it. Taylor is a goddamn monster but still tries her best. Some of the best Sophia, Lung, and Alabaster you'll hope to find as well.

>>51542206

Didn't like centipede honestly, people in story sticking up for a flesh eating monster stretched my SoD to breaking point

Guys...

I think there are a lot of answers here:

https://www.reddit.com/user/4-HO-DPT/

>>51541609

Spacebattles has no standards at all. THE TECHNO QUEEN is a perfect example. Hilarious concept, but the actual writing is broken middle-school level English at best.

People in the Worm fanbase, as in any other, are far too willing to call a fic "good" due to concept even if the actual prose is execrable.

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of Silver Age villain Taylor, but the actual story is unreadable.

Fuck you all, I am no longer part of your story. I'm not your DM, I'm just a detourist who took a wrooooong turn and is trying to get home.

>>51540974
Okay, forgot about that.

Shave your neckbeards, get buzzcuts. The hair is a way for her/it to control you.

>>51540867
Anyone here like Cut-Off?

>>51493753
>>51496211
Wait, is Ziz's body supposed to be snow white and feathery like that or more like a human body like in the OP?

>>51501540
>not an ounce of real genius
Some of the Khepri scenes were extremely compelling to me.

>>51506680
>magic system
This should never be an argument pertaining to the quality of a work.

>>51516861
Yes, he had. But we see him through Taylor's lens.

>>51545434
That's a pretty strong statement. Perhaps you should back it up.

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>>51545145
She looks mostly like the OP, but *this* pic is Wildbow-approved. There's definitely a human-like body in there. She's supposed to look like an angel with a lot of chaotically-placed, overlarge wings.

>>51522022
I liked Wildbow's dismissal of that shout out.

>>51545977
That's like saying Worm was perfect because it has interesting world-building. Basing the quality of a work on one aspect, whether magic System or the most detailed capestuff setting ever, is never a good idea.

>>51533252
Tabloid is pretty neat.

>>51496944
Leviathan, The Second 6UBG
>Legendary Creature - Leviathan
>Indestructible, reah
>At the beginning of each upkeep, put a flood counter on target land. That land is an Island for as long as it has a flood counter on it. Then, you win the game if each land is an Island.
7/7

>>51546100
...except anon didn't say Pact was perfect or that the magic system was the only point in its favor. The magic system is definitely an important part of fantasy that has it.

>>51546093
Link?

Enough with the Simurgh. Let's have some Worm-esq power ideas!

>Ability to absorb inorganic matter and shoot it out of your fingers at high speeds
>Ability to halt the memory making process of everyone around you.
>Ability to transfer damage to any number of people in range or all to a specific person.
>Ability to create a weak projection that holds a copy of whatever you were wearing/holding. The copy is permanent.

>>51547130
Umm. The ability to both cancel out gravity and accelerate in any direction at exactly 9.82m/s^2

>>51547221
In what? Personal? A field around the person? Objects touched?

Ability to shrink the space between atoms in your body to almost nothing via magic, subsequently decreasing your size to a maximum of 1mm tall while retaining the same physical strength but reducing weight for some reason. Obviously you have to hold your breath while shrink because your lungs are too small to process oxygen and a punch with the surface area measured in micrometers can kill.

>>51547286
pretty sure its a personal field that surrounds him. the part that makes me think thats what he meant is the

>and accelerate in any direction

part.

>>51547130
This thread is just about dead and I'm suprised there hasn't been more discussion and brainstorming about trigger events.

>>51546093
Did he actively dismiss it? I only know that he said somewhere once that he disliked the concept of "rational fiction", not that he straight up dismissed the shout out by Yudkowsky.
Though it would be hilarious if Wildbow called him out for being pretentious right after getting praised by him.

>>51547404
Makes sense. A field around him would basically give his team a mover rating, which is what Rune did with her telekinesis.

>>51547428

Wildbow critiqued "rational" fiction? That's good to hear. Too many Worm fans are captivated by the notion.

>>51540867
A personal gripe about Worm fanfiction. Why is it that in most fanfics the MC avoids the Wards program like the plague, even when it would make logical sense to do so. Like I remember one fanfic where the MC got a power that only works when there's other parahumans nearby. They decide to run away from the PRT to join Ub3r and L33t and become a remorseless villian, even though it makes 0 sense.

>>51547624

There's a perception that Wards Taylor reeks of generic fix-fic, which is not entirely unfair.

Most alt-power fics are far too focused on the power in the first place, anyways.

>>51541132
>Troubles with me
My nigga, shame how it's unclear whether or not it's dead.
Author said that he's going to do more after a couple of months without updates but that since then a couple of months passed again.

>>51526793
You could try https://practicalguidetoevil.wordpress.com/
it's a YA fantasy epic that plays with the concepts of Heroes, Villains, Good, Evil, and the stories surrounding those things, in an explicit in-character way.

>>51547624
well Uber and Leet are chucklefucks with great powers, and she got a power copying power, so it wasn't totally ridiculous imo. A big part of the Wards Taylor hate is that people have a deep hatred of Sophia.

>>51526793
Have you tried Alexandria Quick or Unsong?

>>51547130
The transferring ability is basically what king had.

>>51547130
>Ability to absorb inorganic matter and shoot it out of your fingers at high speeds
Blaster
>Ability to halt the memory making process of everyone around you.
Stranger
>Ability to transfer damage to any number of people in range or all to a specific person.
Stranger, or Shaker. Something like that.
>Ability to create a weak projection that holds a copy of whatever you were wearing/holding. The copy is permanent.
Breaker.

>>51548723
>>Ability to transfer damage to any number of people in range or all to a specific person.
>Stranger, or Shaker. Something like that.
Shaker probably. Stranger is focused on subterfuge or stealth.

>>51548135

Fanfic authors love Sophia, though.

>>51547130
My turn.
>Power increases physical strength and durability based upon the number of people you're protecting.
>Power let's you "dash" and briefly experience multiple alternative realities. So if you run and punch a guy it looks like twenty of you are doing the same thing but slightly different and the guy gets beaten by a bunch of you.
>Power let's you reduce your mass or the mass of touched objects to effectively 0 for a few seconds.
>Power to weld any two visible objects together.

>>51548905
>Ability to see electrical signals by line of sight, inc. insulated wires, brain activity.

>tinker ability focusing on "magic". supernatural proficiency in building up illusions.

>ability to swap minds with anybody in a small area of effect that is centered around your 'true' self.

>you get a temporary buff to your strength and and toughness every time you get hurt by a hostile.

>Tinker power with shields as the focus object
>"shield" being defined by the shard as a handheld object with grip that can be used to deflect attacks
>all Tinker creations are either gadgets that can be attached or implemented into an existing shield or tools that allow the creation of new shield frames

>>51547130
>the ability to be very, very "odd"
>it's purely a sensory thing, but no matter what whatever the user does it's deeply strange
>even if they do nothing out of the ordinary at all, it's just so fucking weird it boggles the mind

>>51539905

Yes, Eidolon used one of Eden shard to create the endbringers, and that shard is a shard Eden would never give away, and its the same shard that can grant flight, regeneration, telekinesis, teleportation, gravity manipulation, forcefield generation, and much more powers.

Its so hard to believe that Eidolon shard is the shard Eden would use to control the cycle? Why else would she pack 9999 powers inside the endbringer control shard, a shard she would never give away under any circumstances?

Besides, I dont think Eidolon created the endbringers, he just gave them a new mission to follow, at which point each endbringer tapped into a religious concept to form themselves, all Eidolon did was give a gentle push, the endbringers and their programming were created long before by Eden, Eidolon just lucked out and got the control shard.

Of course if Eidolon shard were not dead/damaged perhaps the whole endbringer thing would never happen.

>>51550604
>I dont think Eidolon created the endbringers
Then how come the new endbringer that showed up after Behemoth's had powers and defenses tailor made to avoid the same end as Behemoth? What's more the endbringers in Eden's interlude (showing the world if she lived) weren't the same as the ones in the main story. They were just monsters, while the endbringers we wound up with were designed around themes and symbols. The original trio of sky/angel, earth/devil, and sea/serpent, and the the buddha one and the two who mimic capes and their cities.

I think Eidolon subconsciously created the endbringers. And I don't think his shard his packed with powers. I think it lets him take in unused shards. It definitely has a connection to the other shards, because he was scooping up the ones from the dead capes for a power boost for his fight with Scion.

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>>51548832
Do they?
I only ever see her depicted as a caricature that meets some pathetic ending because fanfic writers want to live out their bully revenge fantasies despite Wildbow making a point of never having Taylor take direct revenge and taking the moral high road by "not getting down on their level".

>>51551007

>Then how come the new endbringer that showed up after Behemoth's had powers and defenses tailor made to avoid the same end as Behemoth?

Because the rest are in a sleeping state, they are not yet formed, and there are what 20 of those things in total.

Endbringers always respond to the way people were dealing with them, Behemoth came first, people learned on to fight him, not enough to kill him, but enough to stop Behemoth from "winning", because of that Leaviathan showed up, once people learned to fight him, the Simurgh made her entrance, I believe the same would be with Eden, she did not use all 20 "superweapons" at once, she set some of them on borders and guarded the rest for later.

What I believe is that once people got acostumed to fighting "superweapons" or even killed one of those things, Eden would finish forming the rest, one by one, with the necessary tools to survive where the other failed, this would force the remaining humans to think of new ways to fight and destroy those superweapons, giving the shards even more chances at capturing knowledge and maturing.

This time around the endbringers have a new mission given by Eidolon, give us a hard enough time without actually wiping us out, all that to give Eidolon some reason to fight and feel alive.

And they are more or less on auto-pilot, Eden might be the one to give them the finishing touches in her timeline, but this time they were more or less setting themselves up, basically pulling those concepts from Eidolon himself, I even think the reason endbringers knew where to attack and cause the most damage is because Eidolon himself knew where those places where, and the endbringers were pulling everything they needed from him.

More likely if Eidolon manged to kill one of them, the next one to awaken would adapt itself to that trick, forcing Eidolon to fight better, upping the scales and giving Eidolon a even bigger ego stroking if he managed to win.

>>51552272
Oookay, what exactly led you to the conclusion that the endbringers were made as blank slates in a finite number and then stashed away?

Glory Girl did nothing wrong.

>>51552430

There is a small "what if" interlude writen by the author where you can see a little of what would happen if both scion and eden had fought and lost to abaddon, being devoured by him.

In that interlude both abaddon and eden had the same idea about creating endbringers, and they were not even close to earth yet, but while eden went for quality with only 20 powerful endbringers, abaddon went for quantity over quality, with the idea of creating hundreds of weak endbringers with weak powers.

Before Eden was even near the solar system she was already thinking about creating her 20 endbringers, is possible that she just created the ai of each endbringer, set down some rules for the endbringers to follow, and then killed herself by crash landing on earth because she was too busy looking to the future, eidolon came later and just gave the finals touches, shaping the exterior shell of each endbringer with his desire for a real battle, maybe I am wrong about his shard being the endbringer control shard and he just had the poor luck to tap in the real endbringer control shard at the wrong time.

Well, it was wildbow himself that wrote that interlude of eden/scion vs abaddon, but at the end of the day is just a bonus "what if" scenario, its not canon, but i do believe it serve as a evidence for eden being the ultimate creator of endbringers.

>>51553749

Ah, after searching a little I found the link to that interlude.

https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/wormverse-ideas-recs-and-fic-discussion-thread-39.310173/page-21#post-15100258

Abaddon, or Apollyon as wildbow like to call the third entity, would create hundred of those "superweapons", unlike Eden, he was so large he could no longer afford to carry around weak powers, losing some endbringers and their shards/powers would not trouble him.

Eden on the other hand could not really take the loss of a shard, her endbringers were much more powerful in order to avoid the shard being damaged.

>>51505726
i always laughed at this. quin cale or what ever the fuck his name is must be one hell of a lawyer.

>>51554426
He is. It's still stupid though.

>>51554426
Well, he was personally a witness and could make it very clear how Alexandria provoked the fuck out of Skitter.
Can't arrest someone for entrapment, even if you're entrapping them for murder.

>>51547580
Rational fiction is the funniest thing.

Rational fiction is a deep fetishism of rationality, which isn't rational by its very premises. And generally handled poorly by teenagers who couldn't be rational even if they tried.

Rational fiction is the belief that making your character a 'rational' genius will automatically make it better, will solve all your problems, and will create more thoughtful stories. Being a 'rational' genius entices being a jerk to all authority figures, being always right in almost all situation, knowing everything about science, and generally acting like a text book psychopath.

Rational fiction is infinitely worse than everything Wildbow ever created.

>>51555802
I don't even know what rational fiction means

>>51493753
>Her

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>>51545263
Sorry, that's when the literary work is at its worst.

The idea is sound. Khepri is an excellent finisher for the novel, don't get me wrong. Khepri was adequately lampshaded, the idea is relatively coherent within its setting, and adequately end several arc narratives. It answers several question: how far can you go to protect the world and not be considered a monster? What would happen if people really worked together?

Fine. Excellent.

The Khepri chapters are also objectively the worst written of all the chapters of Worm. The narrative decisions made to show the slow degenerations of Taylor in a fight for survival make them deeply disjointed, with no clear pictures of what is happening. Many, many interesting questions are not even touched upon: how does it physically feel to control a thousand parahuman? How does it change you? How does it feel to lose yourself? To become your passenger? And what for the war of survival?

A better author would have had a blast with Khepri. There is so many good things that could have happened, venues that could have been explored. Instead, the Khepri chapters are incredibly stilted, almost mechanical, like an author writing in autopilot.

I personally believe Wildbow was deeply tired of Worm by the Khepri chapters, and wanted it to finish.

>>51555847
It's a genre created by fans of a HP fanfic, HP and the methods of rationality.

In which Harry Potter is a psychopathic precocious supergenius who then proceeds to absolutely destroy the setting. The fanfic is funny, if you're into that kind of thing.

>>51555928
I mean technically speaking, perfect rationality IS psychopathic.

>>51521594
She might have been planned to be her love interest in proto-Worm, where Lisa is named Amara or something and goes to Taylor's school for dumb reasons.

>>51555894
The final arc was way better than the preceding Weaver and Slaughterhouse 99 arcs in which everything was boring and pointlessly grim and nobody we cared about was anywhere near the spotlight.
The Khonsu fight and timeskip were utterly bungled from a narrative standpoint. I still don't even know what Tohu wa Bohu are supposed to look like.

Yeah, Khepri was weird, mechanical, and the sensibility was falling apart to the point it was difficult to identify what capes were actually being utilized when and where, but at least it was thematically satisfying and half the fight wasn't skipped as if irrelevant.

>>51555894

>Taylor
>large breasts

And for the record, I agree. Worm may well have been a stronger story without the entities altogether, but the end was not handled well.

If Wildbow really is serious about his rewrite, he'll cut the timeskip, most of the Weaver arc, and the S9000, go to Behemoth after Taylor defects, and power into the endgame right after Behemoth.

The Vegas capes are the best example of wandering narrative by the end. I'd be amazed if one in five readers could arrive at even a vague explanation of their motives. Lord knows I couldn't.

>>51555802

It's basically the worst example of naive teenagers wanting to jerk off over a presumed intellectual superiority.

The notion that humans should and can always act rational in every circumstance is beyond laughable.

>>51555928
Might as well just read Seventh Horcrux if you want a funny piss-take of the original HP story. Methods of Rationality lost me at the golden HFY patronus.

>>51556532
>The notion that humans should and can always act rational in every circumstance is beyond laughable.
Perfectly rational beings are actually kind of nice for villains though, if slightly cliche. As long as you give them deeper values than 'hurr order' or 'hurr money', a perfectly rational being can be convincingly psychopathic and extremely dangerous, yet not at all truly evil.

>>51555998
Where can I read all the proto-Worm ideas?
I know that there are appearantly hundreds of little stories with different main characters that were written before Taylor was decided to be the main character but I don't know where to find them.

>>51556574

WoG repository on Spacebattles is your best bet. Wildbow hasn't uploaded most of the shorts, for good reason. They're not very good. The service they performed in worldbuilding was valuable, but you wouldn't want to read them.

https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/worm-quotes-and-wog-repository.294448/

>>51556458
Hm, what if he replaced all of that with a proper "vs. the Vegas Protectorate" arc? Their methodology is supposedly different enough from other groups to be interesting, and it would provide enough space to properly develop them, maybe even give them an interlude or two. It might end up feeling like the Slaughterhouse 9, though.

Why didn't Skitter have a Shaker rating?
Describing her power as Master/Shaker would have been more accurate than just Master in helping PRT normies understand how to fight against her.

>>51557155
She should have had a Shaker rating. She didn't. I don't really know. I chalk it up to them giving her a Master rating at first and then just not updating it. At least she was given a proper 8.

>>51557155

Skitter was considered by the PRT to have a minimum rating of 2 in every category.

Master is a really vague category anyways, that needs to be broken up into "minion control" or "mind control". Doesn't really work as it is.

>>51493753
Challenge: you've replaced Wildbow as the writer of Worm right after Skitter ousts Coil. Give the story a thematically appropriate and narratively satisfying "conclusion" (it can have as many arcs as you want, really) without leaving Brockton Bay or escalating past city-level conflict at most. Touching on end of the world stuff in any way is completely optional.

>>51557187
>Skitter was considered by the PRT to have a minimum rating of 2 in every category.
That was only when she surrendered, though I suspect Tagg only did this to make her as uncomfortable as possible by having her go through Master/Stranger protocol and making her wear ridiculously oversized Brute handcuffs even though she wouldn't even be able to break out of normal ones.

>Master is a really vague category anyways, that needs to be broken up into "minion control" or "mind control". Doesn't really work as it is.
I absolutely agree, especially strange since the ratings is specifically so PRT soldiers gain as much information as possible in the shortest amount of time and the difference between a Master like Bitch and a Master like Heartbreaker could mean life or death.

>>51557187
Ugh, people always say this. No, they didn't really consider her that dangerous. Tagg used the system to give himself authorization to use whatever countermeasures against her he wanted, because he was all about overkill. It was total bull.

>>51557270
>city-level

People always talk about these levels, usually street. Where can I find an overview of the levels that exist and what they consist of?

>>51557290
>Tagg used the system to give himself authorization to use whatever countermeasures against her he wanted, because he was all about overkill.
He tossed Alexandria at Taylor. It didn't go well.

>>51557290
To be fair, though, I think she proved herself a big enough pain in the ass to deserve the extra ratings. Especially considering how that particular event concluded.

>>51557333
It's basically scales for modern fiction, usually superhero ones. Street Level, City Level, Global Level, Cosmic Level, there's not any hard definition for them but they're self-explanatory.

Vs Battle has a rather comprehensive list with their own definitions; http://vsbattles.wikia.com/wiki/Tiering_System

>>51557333
I don't think there is anything official or even consistent, only terms that get used more often than others.

Like 2 things you would hear most often are probably Street level, where the characters don't matter enough to even visibly affect the city they are in and cosmic level which is the level that the entities worked in.
Basically you just have to take from context and the word used to figure out what someone means, like city level probably being the Warlord arcs where the Undersiders actions affect how the city is being rebuild or state/country/global or whatever you want to call it being the S9000 arc since that's how widespread the attacks of those madmen were.

>>51557335
because Wildbow made her job heavily to make Taylor look good

just like he did with Coil and Mannequin

>>51557411
>be Jack Slash
>tell the S9000 to cause mayhem
>they actually did it, the absolute madmen

>>51557393
It's a pretty good and consistent way of defining those terms but I they seem to use the same terms in way different ways than I usually see them used.

Like "city level" meaning the character is powerful enough to destroy an entire city while I usually saw it being used in a more general way to mean that the entire city can be just generally affected by the actions of the characters.

>>51540867
What >>51540990 said, plus Weaver Nine, Journey of the Dragonfly, Zenith.

>>51557290

It was well deserved, honestly, considering how many times she whipped the shit out of them. They should have done it earlier.

>>51557184
What's funny is the the procedure for a rating 10 cape power is to bring in specific personnel (Alexandria for instance) to deal with the issue. Skitter killed Alexandria. Should be rated master 10 technically.

>>51557817
No.

>>51557817
That logic doesn't hold up, I'm afraid.

>>51557852
>>51557888
Read them here: http://worm.wikia.com/wiki/Power_classifications
And the description for a rated 10:
>10+
>In the event of a serious confrontation, additional teams or SPECIFIC HIGH-RATED INDIVIDUALS should be called in to manage the crisis.

>>51557911
You don't rate people because what it takes to take them down, you rate them TO DETERMINE what to send at them.

>>51557911
>he thinks we don't know PRT ratings
Anon, the problem is with your reasoning, not with the information on hand.

>>51557817
She was rated at ten at that point

Are there any stats in-story or otherwise on cape life expectancy? I can't imagine it's good.