Parahumans - Blog Posts
... I don't recall when exactly this was, but shortly after we have a firmly established infinite suffering Butcher ball, I doubt he'd approve a plan to try to move it to deeper waters so it stops causing issues. This annoys Taylor, who, of course, still Really wants the docks to be rebuilt, darn it.
Taylor was really in for coils image as “crime lord who will fix city” pre the Daihna plot twist
How long do you think it would take for her to hate his guts if he never told the undersiders about the drugged up kidnapped child in his basement I giver like two months before she wants to blow his brains out anyway
Is this not, rather, a measure of fucked upedness? For instance, surely Skitter/Weaver/Khepri is a poor little meow meow, despite being the third best person in canon (beat only by Vista and Dragon)?
people need to realise that a poor little meow meow must be a character who has committed atrocities you cannot poor little meow meow a good guy that's not how this works
Currently on arc 9 of the Ward audiobook, "waggle" doesn't feel like a real word anymore
What if they were called The Slaughterhouse Ten and Amy and Ashley got freaky with it
There's another Worm connection in No Man's Land with Poison Ivy. As the rest of Batman's rogues' gallery carve up Gotham, she ends staking out a derelict city park and caring for a bunch of kids who were orphaned or otherwise abandoned after the earthquake. Rather than rousting her out, Batman agrees to leave her alone for the time being, provided she uses her powers to generate produce for the rest of the surviving citizens to eat. While Ivy was less than pleased about having to go along with this, she still held up her end of the deal.
In his own discussion of Ivy's history on Twitter, Exalted_Speed has argued that No Man's Land is really where the interpretation of Ivy as an antihero (ahem) took root. The connection with Worm is obvious; however, Taylor's tenure as urban warlord feels like a more refined version of that concept. As noted in the thread, the attempts to turn Poison Ivy into an antihero often stumble on both the sheer amount of carnage she's caused over the years and on with her original characterization of "vicious plant-themed Catwoman" which is still a major element in her modern portrayals. By contrast, it's much easier to offer apologetics of Taylor's conduct on the Boardwalk, since she was explicitly written to fit the role that Pamela Isely was awkwardly retrofitted to play.
Got a Worm meta question for you. I'm starting on the early parts of Taylor's warlord era - I'm about to leap into Arc 13 - and the general concept of a ravaged American city being divided up by various supervillain groups is reminding me a lot of that Batman story arc No Man's Land from the late 1990s. Unfortunately my comics knowledge is rudimentary at best, and I haven't been able to any discussion comparing the two stories, so I was wondering if I could pick your brain on the subject. Was it just convergent evolution, or was Wildbow engaging with the Batman story in some way?
I myself have only read about half of No Man's Land- and several years ago to boot- so I've got limited ability to do a direct compare and contrast. No Man's Land is absolutely the sort of status-quo-shattering, history-book-making upset that, within Marvel and DC, nonetheless always inexplicably heals and loses salience until you can barely tell that it's still in continuity. Worm is heavily informed by Wildbow's irritation with that sort of thing, so I think it's totally reasonable to view the warlord era through the lens of "What if No Mans Land had no editorial escape hatch." Alternatively, I think it kind of makes sense to view it through the lens that it's working backwards from the premise of No Man's Land- In what kind of setting would it be plausible for the Federal Government to write off a sufficiently-damaged American City? In what context would the legal infrastructure have been established for that, in what context would that even fall within the Overton Window? What muddies my opinion on this is that the general concept of a ravaged, atmospherically-apocalyptic American city torn up by superpowered gang warfare is something that's kind of just been in the water in superhero comics since the mid-eighties at least, and it was a relatively common thing to see during the Dark Age- they were choice prey for all those overpouched musclemen with their poorly rendered firearms. I'd be surprised if Wildbow wasn't at least aware of No Man's Land, but it's definitely not the only cape book from the late 90s or early oughts where you could pick up that idea from. Ultimately this leaves me unsure if No Man's Land is the specific referent or if it's just part-and-parcel with trying to do an involved, thoughtful take on what cape comics were like at the time.
Having an extremely specific problem after trying a traditional pencil crayon look for an older Tattletale portrait. Somehow, during the slow work from grubby sketch to rendering, she became way too hot. And said traditional art style means I can’t change this with regular digital tools, I have to redraw sections of her face entirely.
That I did with optical colour mixing using hatching and a limited palette.
Do I roll with hot Tattletale or do I suffer?
Clockblocker and Assault both get to embody one half of Fozzy Bear, with Assault getting the hat and Clockblocker the scarf, naturally
Worm (2011) but theyre all muppets
So when Sabah joins the Undersiders shes literally just drawing on angry eyebrows with a felt marker
Worm (2011) but theyre all muppets
So when Sabah joins the Undersiders shes literally just drawing on angry eyebrows with a felt marker
So I'm working on a fic currently and I was trying to mentally map how I view the layout of the Hebert house so I made a whole floor plan. I'm aware of the one wildbow made, but I wasn't when I started, and I like mine better anyway.
The stairs into the basement are directly below the stairs to the 2nd floor, should help orient things.
Floor 1 + yard
Floor 2
Basement
I figure the whole property sits on a full acre, in the older residential part of the docks, so not surrounded by apartments or townhouses but also not an excessively wealthy area. Where the middle class used to be before the economic downturn hit Brockton Bay.
it might already exist but holy shit "Becky" by Be Your Own Pet is such a Taylor Hebert song there needs to be an amv. I don't even watch amv's and there needs to be one. does it necessarily fit the vibe 100% or is accurate to events in the book? no, but its real close
is cherish in my neighborhood, why did I wake up this morning with a slaughterhouse nine au in my head??? brain, explain
Back at it again with another Parahumans fandom question.
Just thinking about something for a fic I'm writing that sort of applies to the setting at large, did Columbine happen on Earth Bet? Because from what I can tell it didn't. The Columbine shooting was the catalyst in the US to get increased surveillance and security in the school system which led to all the security cameras in the hallways and on campus in schools of all levels.
The reason I think this didn't happen on Earth Bet because if schools like Winslow were using security cameras then the extensive bullying campaign Taylor was on the receiving end of would have stopped way sooner. But even if it hadn't, she was shoved into her locker, objectively, and hallways in schools are generally where cameras are most frequently, so if there was a camera in that hallway then it could've been easily determined who put Taylor into the hospital. I guess the fact that that doesn't happen means that either 1. School shootings such as Columbine never got national attention like in our timeline or 2. Winslow is so corrupt and underfunded that it can't meet DOE security standards in a public high school.
I know there's some fanon about how corrupt and evil Principal Blackwell is, but security cameras provide a certain objectivity to events that theoretically should have been easy to obtain during the investigation as to what happened? I dunno, thoughts just spiraling.
"Tilt" is pretty good, "Dakka" is fun, I love "Marionette", "Paths Diverged" if you're into pillbug, "Here Comes The New Boss (Nothing Like The Old Boss)" is great
Had to look through my Worm bookmarks for a minute for these, all on ao3 by the way
someone know some good and interesting hero taylor fanfic?
Does it have to be my traumatic personal character arc or is there like a bin we have to pull from? I feel pretty not-traumatized, oh gosh, does that make me a cauldron cape of a wormblrina?
I’m taking over Wormblr and Wardblr
Handing out vials for my loyal viziers.
Giving powers symbolic of traumatic personal character arcs to the peasantry!!!
Take a penny from the "take a penny, leave a penny" gas station thing, but she doesn't leave a penny >:)
AMY DALLON has finally gotten sick of NEW WAVE'S BULLSHIT and decided to become a real SUPERVILLAIN. YOUR TASK, should you choose to accept it, is to INVENT for her an EVIL ACT TO DO, before she snaps and does something UNSPEAKABLE to her SISTER.
Kind of building off of Silvia Norton's post from a while back but if I read another line in a wormfic where an authority figure or like, actual serious adult individual mentions the "unwritten rules" as a hard concept that everyone just *knows* I am going to bash my face into a wall.
It's literally just how Tattletale described the social contract of capes to Taylor, it stops being "unwritten" or just a polite fiction when people like Piggot or Coil or whomever actually treat them as something tangible.
"But ma'am/sir, wouldn't that be breaking the Unwritten Rules?" Shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut-
Losing my mind
Just a little fandom rant-
For some reason a lot of wormfic seems to feature a trope or piece of fanon centered around a "Dragontech cell phone/computer/whatever" and it bugs me. Doesn't Dragon's power explicitly prevent mass production? And wouldn't her breaking into the tech sphere with Tinker-made cell phones have issues with NEPEA-5 or whatever? And being Tinker-tech, wouldn't it be impossible to be commercially viable due to maintenance? I know it's a convenient way to handwave the lack of visible tech companies or recognizable products, but it feels like a lazy workaround. Earth Bet can have a little Steve Wozniak, as a treat. Or a Bill Gates, or whomever. And like it's *always* Dragon, there's never another Tinker who specializes in telecommunications and commercial touchscreen devices.
Just a little irksome thing.
Oh boy, something i have been dying to talk about while brainstorming wormfic ideas in my notes document for the last two months.
I really enjoy the idea presented here of the differentiation between a pure alternate power scenario, where the trigger happens off-screen and the story starts after the fact and a scenario where the divergence from canon directly results in an alt-power occurring to whoever the protagonist of choice is (almost always Taylor, let's be real).
In regard to tagging, I figure it's probably safe to tag "alt-power" if one appears at all despite the circumstances, though that might depend more on the premise of the fic, where the "what if" moment takes place.
Really can't wait to write a more worm-centric fic following my current crossover one, which does feature an alt-power but it's kind of weird and I've yapped about it so much to the people commenting on the fic.
If you're taking the name literally, alt-power fic includes every fic where a main character has a different power from canon, but when people talk (or complain) about alt-power as a genre, the stuff they're talking about is usually stuff that is not implied by that definition. So I'm curious - where do you all draw the line of what is and isn't an alt-power fic?
For me personally, I would call something alt-power if "what if the protagonist's power was this?" is the primary thing the fic is about, with all other changes that canon made either to enable or as a result of the different power. Therefore, I do not consider fics where the primary "what if" is about something other than the protagonist's power, even if a consequence of that change is that a character triggers with a different power. So I would consider fics like Camera Shy or Monster alt-power fics, but not, say, Here Comes The New Boss.
Anyway, mostly I was thinking about this because I was trying to decide if any of the fics that I'm writing/want to write count as alt-power fics, because some of them definitely contain some of the elements that people mention when they're talking about alt-power fics, like, say, taking place in Brockton Bay pre-Leviathan. But to use Broken Crown as an example, the change to Amy's power wasn't the thing that I set out to write about, it just seemed like a natural consequence of that thing (though I imagine some people would disqualify it from their own definition purely for not having Taylor as a protagonist)
I don't agree with it or anything, but I'm surprised Sophia/Taylor isn't up there considering how many fics are made of that pairing. I've not read any, but still, if we're talking fanfic then that one has more rep than half of these combined.
note that this poll is meant to represent romantic (though not necessarily sexual) ships, not your favorite QPR. If you like, say, Aisha/Alec or Lisa/Taylor as strictly platonic partners, but only in this scenario, then please don't pick it as your favorite ship!
Other less popular taylor ships (like Taylor/Alec) are not included in this poll, I will be posting a second poll with Taylor-specific ships later
make sure to tell me what you think and why you think it!
I think there's an unknown number of people in the worm fandom who either A. Haven't read Worm or B. Took it entirely to heart at the beginning when Taylor said "I'm going to be a hero" and they never realized she's an unreliable narrator.
Listening to some podcasts it's wild to me to hear people bearing down some of Taylor's actions like she wasn't doing those things to ACTUAL DESPICABLE PEOPLE.
I just hate the purity culture of it all, like, are yall really criticizing someone for not going easy on NAZIS, SLAVE OWNERS, ABUSERS etc??? Boohoo, poor them
"Aw, Taylor rotted Lung's junk off / took his eyes out" GOOD FUCKING RIDDANCE, it's ON TEXT that this asshole enslaving a bunch of vulnerable people and putting them to absurd hardships.
"Aw, she cut Bakuda's toes" Toes she was using to MELT FUCKING PEOPLE.
"Aw, she bullied Panacea and Glory Girl" ............. please --'
"Aw, she punched Emma in the mall, not very hero of her" She should've done worse to this bitch who caused her fucking trigger
FUCK YALL, honestly
Victims are ALWAYS blamed for reacting, for doing something
Tolerating the intolerable is NOT THE ANSWER.
Taylor isn't any less of a hero for not taking it easy on DESPICABLE PEOPLE.
She's only less of a hero when going hard on a bunch of people who didn't deserve it, but people bitch and moan way more about her actions towards WORSE VILLAINS than innocents. Seriously, annoying as SHIT
String Theory tried to blow up the moon for fun and Bakuda triggered from a bad grade and a bruised ego, and then tried to blow up a school. I... don't know what else there is to say.
I need to do another dumb poll.
I had fun with those.
Um...
How about...
It's 420am I should probably just sleep...
Now I would like to note:
This isn't which ship you like the most. This is which would have the messiest divorce. The sort the whole cape community is talking about.
Everyone's going "did you hear what happened down in ___"