Safe For Work Worm Ideas thread

[Ragura]

All because some random person with a phone had a bout of insomnia and a poor sense of self-preservation.

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For extra hilarity it's Greg

 

[Prince Charon]

A rather different Bakuda-related idea: Bakuda can't make very lethal bombs, though this wasn't known when she held Cornell hostage over a bad grade (so, she was bluffing). Her bombs have a wide range of effects, most of them strange and sometimes funny, but they cannot directly kill you. Create a situation in which something else is more likely to kill you (like causing a car accident), but not directly kill anyone. The threat she holds over the ABB members is not death, but humiliation, something many of them are more afraid of.

 

[Psyckosama]

A rather different Bakuda-related idea: Bakuda can't make very lethal bombs, though this wasn't known when she held Cornell hostage over a bad grade (so, she was bluffing). Her bombs have a wide range of effects, most of them strange and sometimes funny, but they cannot directly kill you. Create a situation in which something else is more likely to kill you (like causing a car accident), but not directly kill anyone. The threat she holds over the ABB members is not death, but humiliation, something many of them are more afraid of.

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Or maybe do both... she actually isn't the violent psychopath she pretends to be... she's just a girl deeply over her head who's trying not to look weak infront of the psychopaths who have kidnapped her.

Her trigger event was the lowest moment in her life and she wanted to humiliate them as badly as they humiliated her and now... she just can't quite do it.

 

[LeftWaiting]

Or maybe do both... she actually isn't the violent psychopath she pretends to be...

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Maybe.
On the other hand, from the Comments section of Monarch16.4;

Bakuda serves as one example. It's implied that her trigger event involved her building up a huge ego with natural genius/intellect, only to have a crushing blow delivered to that ego & her self worth in an case of failure or academic rejection while attending University.
In a broader context for tinkers as a whole, the trauma would be more likely to be mental strain than anything physical, quite possibly an ongoing challenge rather than an immediate crisis.

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-so that superiority complex was a part of her pre-Trigger personality rather than an affectation.

 

[Psyckosama]

-so that superiority complex was a part of her pre-Trigger personality rather than an affectation.

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Maybe, on the otherhand... Wildbow is an idiot who cannot into nuanced characters.

 

[Prince Charon]

Maybe, on the otherhand... Wildbow is an idiot who cannot into nuanced characters.

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Yes. Also, it's an AU, so her canon personality need not apply.

 

[Psyckosama]

Yes. Also, it's an AU, so her canon personality need not apply.

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That too!

 

[Ragura]

The threat she holds over the ABB members is not death, but humiliation, something many of them are more afraid of.

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Maybe even a specialization in transformation effects - both temporary and permanent (depending on whether the bomb tells her shard to keep the original template).
This would work even better as an NSFW idea

 

[Prince Charon]

Maybe even a specialization in transformation effects - both temporary and permanent (depending on whether the bomb tells her shard to keep the original template).
This would work even better as an NSFW idea

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It was posted there, but there were too many other ideas, so it got lost. I'm starting to think I should post more of my ideas to my own thread (see .sig), but I'm not sure how much that would help.

 

[The Rat]

Has anyone done a fic where the main character decides to beat the Entities by upgrading the shards.

If the shards are like networked mainframes and the parahumans are terminals then he or she changes them into laptops that have a more loose network connection.

They dive into Eden's corpse and make her shards into smaller, faster, more powerful and more energy efficient versions of themselves.

They even alter the way that the new Entities reproduce so that they can farm a planet for multiple cycles and then leave without destroying things so that the planet can recover and be used again.

Like crop rotation to use an analogy.

The new smaller smarter Entities blitz Sion and use him to make more of themselves before looking to go after the other old Entities.

 

[evildice]

Has anyone done a fic where the main character decides to beat the Entities by upgrading the shards.

If the shards are like networked mainframes and the parahumans are terminals then he or she changes them into laptops that have a more loose network connection.

They dive into Eden's corpse and make her shards into smaller, faster, more powerful and more energy efficient versions of themselves.

They even alter the way that the new Entities reproduce so that they can farm a planet for multiple cycles and then leave without destroying things so that the planet can recover and be used again.

Like crop rotation to use an analogy.

The new smaller smarter Entities blitz Sion and use him to make more of themselves before looking to go after the other old Entities.

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The Entities have been upgrading their shards for billions of years. We see Eden doing some of that in Fortuna's interlude, for example, with her precog clusters.

Having a 16-year-old monkey suddenly able to out-perform them at the one thing they've spent billions of years doing would be a bit of a wank, and the not the good kind of wanking (which goes in the NSFW thread).

 

[The Rat]

The Entities have been upgrading their shards for billions of years. We see Eden doing some of that in Fortuna's interlude, for example, with her precog clusters.

Having a 16-year-old monkey suddenly able to out-perform them at the one thing they've spent billions of years doing would be a bit of a wank, and the not the good kind of wanking (which goes in the NSFW thread).

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Yeah but they have been going to the monkeys because they lack creativity themselves.

They been getting better at there one thing and maybe someone else might accidentally come up with a clever idea.

There big thing is centralized computing and decentralized computing is a little different without being too different for the Entities to understand.

 

[Prince Charon]

Thinking of yet another Taylor alt-power: She goes by Hecatoncheire (which I hope is the singular of Hecatoncheires), because QA gave her supermultitasking and a psychokinetic Shaker field. Basically, think of the vectors from Elfen Lied, but she has about ninety-eight of them, that she is individually aware and in control of.

 

[Ajlove]

Thinking of yet another Taylor alt-power: She goes by Hecatoncheire (which I hope is the singular of Hecatoncheires), because QA gave her supermultitasking and a psychokinetic Shaker field. Basically, think of the vectors from Elfen Lied, but she has about ninety-eight of them, that she is individually aware and in control of.

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Why 98?

 

[Prince Charon]

Why 98?

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Because the name means 'hundred-handed one.' I probably should have linked to the wiki article on them, as well.

 

[Prince Charon]

When Lung goes to recruit the woman who in canon became Bakuda, she doesn't go with him. Instead, he gets bombed, and remains drunk and relaxed for far longer than is needed for her to escape (given the bullshit she came up with in canon, a 'relaxed and useless drunk' grenade should be easily possible for her). She does not go to Brockton Bay, correctly assuming that the ABB will be hostile to her. Thus, the ABB now has only one (still very dangerous) cape, and Taylor's first patrol goes quite differently.

 

[Blackenedthorn]

A crossover with DuckTales (2017) in which a post-GM Taylor wakes up in body of Bailey Beagle, the only sister of the Beagle Boys and Ma Beagle's only daughter, more specifically she wakes up in her bunk in the "Duckburg Detention Facility for Criminally Inclined Youths" on the eve of her release after a year of good behavior. Bailey, formerly Taylor, has none of her former powers but she's still the woman who became Warlord of Brockton Bay and this is her second chance of life. After being released she gets to reconnect with her criminal mother and equally criminally inclined brothers, though judging by their track record it seems that Bailey got the brains that her brothers missed out on. Bailey's first 'adventure' with her brothers is when they manage to capture Huey, Dewy, Louie, and Webby hostage where she's left behind to guard the hostages where-in she instead befriends them in the time between their capture and Ma's arrival. Bailey stays out of the way, though in the aftermath of Ma's capture she does get some time alone with Ma where-in Bailey convinces Ma that she's working a long con to weasel her way past Scrooge McDuck's defenses by using his nephews and closer to his wealth, in truth Taylor/Bailey wants to do more than just be a common criminal.

Basically an AU where Taylor/Bailey Beagle enters the scene in the Episode of DuckTales "Daytrip of Doom" and joins the gang, my idea if that Bailey serves as a big sister to Webby and the Boys while acting as their underworld insider in their adventures.

 

[Prince Charon]

Though Taylor still triggers in the locker, she does so with either Labyrinth's power directly, or QA's version of same (which probably means that she has more control, and is saner than Labyrinth, but not necessarily as much control as she has over her bugs in canon). She stays in place long enough for her power to permeate most or all of the building, though because of her power, she probably isn't inside the locker for quite as long after triggering (because it probably doesn't stay a locker for all that long).


Thoughts?

 

[Prince Charon]

Idea inspired by various Urban Fantasy settings (so, no Endbringers are active in the AU; power levels for the higher-tier capes might or might not be reduced): Most or all parahumans have a Stranger power that basically activates when they're using their other powers (or are in a mindset where they're ready to, like when they're in costume or in a Breaker/Changer state), to make non-parahuman observers unconsciously rationalize what they saw as something mundane, or if they can't, make them fail to notice it (and often fail to notice the parahuman causing it), and rationalize the aftermath, if any (explaining away the containment of Ellisburg and things like that would be rather tricky, which is another reason to maybe tone down the higher-tier powers). The power tends to temporarily link the subconscious minds of the observers, so the rationalization is reasonably consistent. The power also messes with recording devices, at least visual ones, but has no effect on parahumans or Tinkertech. The ones that don't have this power, if any, tend to be Thinkers, Strangers, really low-level Tinkers, or anyone else with powers that are reasonably likely to go unnoticed or be passed off as something mundane even without the Veil (or whatever parahumans in-setting end up calling it).

Of course, the power does not affect people who were not present, and even with all the rationalizations involved, there's a decent chance that people are going to notice that something really weird is going on, especially as it's plausible that some of them will get help from the parahumans who don't have the Veil. So, while the PRT as written in Worm is really not plausible for this setting, there is fairly likely to be a government agency of some sort, or branches of one or more such agencies, investigating this, as well as various non-government organizations. It's also plausible that some of the same people who are part of the PRT in canon would be part of this (if Nilbog is removed or toned down, Piggot could still be fit for field work, and might be less of a bitch). The Protectorate probably still exists in some form, but is a secret organization, and might not be at all affiliated with the government org that's been investigating 'spooky stuff.'

Into this strange world comes the newly-trigger Taylor Hebert, who sort of knew that strange things happened a lot, but has a legitimately good reason to have no idea how strange, or what specific weirdness is part of Brockton Bay.


Thoughts?

 

[LurkingInTheDeceit]

It is slightly off-topic so this will be my last response. Your point is based fundamentally on the premise that you can affect what happens in Coil's simulation or that you share a consciousness with the "you" in Coil's sim. You can't and don't. It's a simulation which which you have no contact or control over, because it is purely what the shard thinks will happen in that situation. It's a incredibly accurate thought experiment, but a thought experiment nonetheless, it has no actual interaction with reality. There are no two of you. There's just you, and a mental model of you the shard built.

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If you want to continue you can do it here.

I do think you can affect what simulated you does yes. If you want to argue that the shard isn't actually accurate, then I don't really have anything to say. But if it is accurate, then simulated you would act exactly how you would react, so changing how you would react changes how simulated you reacts. I don't think this is that complicated. You don't need contact, you don't need control, you just need the shard to have an accurate prediction of your behaviour.

 

[Azreales]

If you want to continue you can do it here.

I do think you can affect what simulated you does yes. If you want to argue that the shard isn't actually accurate, then I don't really have anything to say. But if it is accurate, then simulated you would act exactly how you would react, so changing how you would react changes how simulated you reacts. I don't think this is that complicated. You don't need contact, you don't need control, you just need the shard to have an accurate prediction of your behaviour.

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I would argue the shard is accurate to a point (an honestly insane point, but a point). Just like the Entities precognition wasn't 100% accurate or they wouldn't have died. The simulated you acts how the shard thinks you would act with the information it has at hand. Given that includes a complete understanding of human psychology, history and a (probably) quantum model of every parahuman's (and only parahumans) brain and psyche, those guesses are pretty fucking accurate. But they aren't always in every way accurate.

If you have a non-Entity derived power they can only model what powers you have displayed and would have an inaccurate psychological model of you because of your unknown powers. Your actual thoughts couldn't be accessed unless you have a shard. It's entirely possible that some completely random-ass coincidence like encountering a dog at the park and improving your mood could subtly throw off the simulation. These are just some examples. So no, simulated you wouldn't act exactly how you would, and it definitely wouldn't be able to keep up realtime adjustments if you undergo a sudden personality change in the middle of the sim. Predictions of that sort can never be inevitable, 100% guaranteed. It's the difference between magical set-in-stone precognition and data-driven guess-work precognition.

The more important point for me is that you don't have to wonder whether you're the real "you" or if the Coil you're about to shoot is the real Coil. You are the real you because you are a discrete (for this purpose) entity. You aren't somehow in both the simulation and the real world, that you have to wonder which one you're in. There is only one real world, the rest is just information in Coil's brainmeat.

 

[LurkingInTheDeceit]

I would argue the shard is accurate to a point (an honestly insane point, but a point). Just like the Entities precognition wasn't 100% accurate or they wouldn't have died. The simulated you acts how the shard thinks you would act with the information it has at hand. Given that includes a complete understanding of human psychology, history and a (probably) quantum model of every parahuman's (and only parahumans) brain and psyche, those guesses are pretty fucking accurate. But they aren't always in every way accurate.

If you have a non-Entity derived power they can only model what powers you have displayed and would have an inaccurate psychological model of you because of your unknown powers. Your actual thoughts couldn't be accessed unless you have a shard. It's entirely possible that some completely random-ass coincidence like encountering a dog at the park and improving your mood could subtly throw off the simulation. These are just some examples. So no, simulated you wouldn't act exactly how you would, and it definitely wouldn't be able to keep up realtime adjustments if you undergo a sudden personality change in the middle of the sim. Predictions of that sort can never be inevitable, 100% guaranteed. It's the difference between magical set-in-stone precognition and data-driven guess-work precognition.

The more important point for me is that you don't have to wonder whether you're the real "you" or if the Coil you're about to shoot is the real Coil. You are the real you because you are a discrete (for this purpose) entity. You aren't somehow in both the simulation and the real world, that you have to wonder which one you're in. There is only one real world, the rest is just information in Coil's brainmeat.

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Like I said, I can't really argue how accurate it is, I'm not familiar enough with canon. I've never heard of shard powers being inaccurate outside of blind spots, but that's not strong evidence or anything. If your decisions or mindset or actions or plans don't affect what happens in Coil's simulation, then- sorry, what? What even is his power then? If you can't, when learning about his power, decide to stop yourself giving information away in the future, then what is it even modelling?

What am I not getting here?

Your main point doesn't make sense because of course you need to keep in mind you could be a simulation. If you decide to monologue before shooting him, then that would normally be a fairly stupid if mostly harmless indulgence. If you could be a simulation, it becomes a brain-dead move, as he could now know whatever you felt was safe to confide in a dead man with you none the wiser. If you decide to shoot Coil on sight, and he dies to you in a simulation, he now knows you're hostile. If you decide not to shoot him until you know you could kill him at a set time in both, he won't know you're hostile till that time.

Again, am I missing something or not explaining myself coherently?

 

[Azreales]

Like I said, I can't really argue how accurate it is, I'm not familiar enough with canon. I've never heard of shard powers being inaccurate outside of blind spots, but that's not strong evidence or anything. If your decisions or mindset or actions or plans don't affect what happens in Coil's simulation, then- sorry, what? What even is his power then? If you can't, when learning about his power, decide to stop yourself giving information away in the future, then what is it even modelling?

What am I not getting here?

Your main point doesn't make sense because of course you need to keep in mind you could be a simulation. If you decide to monologue before shooting him, then that would normally be a fairly stupid if mostly harmless indulgence. If you could be a simulation, it becomes a brain-dead move, as he could now know whatever you felt was safe to confide in a dead man with you none the wiser. If you decide to shoot Coil on sight, and he dies to you in a simulation, he now knows you're hostile. If you decide not to shoot him until you know you could kill him at a set time in both, he won't know you're hostile till that time.

Again, am I missing something or not explaining myself coherently?

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The point is you never need to wonder whether you're a simulation. The simulation is strictly in Coil's head, if you decide to go after him yeah it will show up in the simulation but since that simulation is a simulation, he can't just unkill himself by "choosing a different timeline." In simple words, Coil is a precog, not a reality manipulator. Sure he can simulate reality in his head, but that is no more real than a daydream. You don't wonder whether you're in someone else's daydream do you? There is only one physical one flesh and blood Coil, the one in the same world as everyone else. The "alternate timeline" is just information, it's identical to something like a weather forecast, just more accurate.

 

[SlickRCBD]

A person with a camera phone or similar arrives as the Undersiders are leaving (zooming in on Tt's butt, something Lisa will make note of later), and records the scene, as well as the conversation with Armsmaster where Taylor tells him what happened, and he tricks her into letting him steal credit. Shortly after Taylor leaves, the cameraperson uploads the video, and links it on PHO (where the thread rapidly points out that not only do the Undersiders know, but based on the bug girl's own testimony, a bunch of ABB thugs know too, so all Armsmaster would have done is make himself look good to the public, without protecting the bug controller at all). Shortly after that, a PRT member monitoring PHO finds the thread, and e-mails the link to Renick and Piggot, as well as whomever is in charge of PR in Brockton Bay (not Glenn, he's head of Image for the entire PRT). The Director is emphatically not happy, Taylor has dozens of suggestions for a cape name and has made a pretty good impression on the public, and Armsmaster's attempt to make himself look good has backfired badly.

All because some random person with a phone had a bout of insomnia and a poor sense of self-preservation.

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I know something along these lines happened in a oneshot in somebody's snippet file on SB or SV, but I can't find it.

Though Taylor still triggers in the locker, she does so with either Labyrinth's power directly, or QA's version of same (which probably means that she has more control, and is saner than Labyrinth, but not necessarily as much control as she has over her bugs in canon). She stays in place long enough for her power to permeate most or all of the building, though because of her power, she probably isn't inside the locker for quite as long after triggering (because it probably doesn't stay a locker for all that long).
Thoughts?

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I know there are two such fics on either SB or SV, one she also manifested characters from the movie "The Nightmare Before Christmas", another where most of Winslow was slaughtered. Both had her end up in the asylum with Seveta.

 

[Blackenedthorn]

Idea, one where Taylor is older than her canon self and she in the same age bracket as Emma's sister Anne. A storyline in which this older version of Taylor ends up in a relationship with an overstressed girl named Alice (Bakuda), Taylor is already a cape (wrong place at the wrong time) by the time of Alice's triggering into the Bomb Tinker and instead old holding Cornell University hostage they go back to Taylors hometown so Taylor can introduce her girlfriend to her parents.

Now in this timeline, Annette is a mocha skinned goddess from New Orleans who fall in love with the Defiant dockworker that was Daniel Jean-Paul Hebert and is the heiress to a large multi-million dollar company. Danny is the youngest son of the Hebert clan, having no less than six elder brothers spread across the Eastern seaboard of America and like his brothers he is the grandchild of a pair of former French Resistance members who had emigrated to America post-war. Also in this timeline, the Dockworkers Union have not decayed too badly and are by far the largest force of manpower in the city with the majority of them being former military.

Personally I like storylines were certain villains who got the short stick or are irredeemable in canon get redeemed in canon, so what I am further proposing is that the Merchants do not exist here and instead their members are instead employed with the Union. Now in the place of the Merchants, let's say the Teeth returned to the city they were born in or if Marquis' old gang had restructured itself after his arrest and keep itself going years later.

 

[evildice]

You don't wonder whether you're in someone else's daydream do you?

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Only when I play Elder Scrolls games.

 

[LurkingInTheDeceit]

The point is you never need to wonder whether you're a simulation. The simulation is strictly in Coil's head, if you decide to go after him yeah it will show up in the simulation but since that simulation is a simulation, he can't just unkill himself by "choosing a different timeline." In simple words, Coil is a precog, not a reality manipulator. Sure he can simulate reality in his head, but that is no more real than a daydream. You don't wonder whether you're in someone else's daydream do you? There is only one physical one flesh and blood Coil, the one in the same world as everyone else. The "alternate timeline" is just information, it's identical to something like a weather forecast, just more accurate.

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How do I put this... you don't need to wonder whether you're a simulation but you do need to keep in mind that he's running simulations. So using that knowledge to change how you'd act to limit what he'll get out of the simulations makes sense yeah?

If it doesn't... I think I'm gonna give up here.

 

[Azreales]

How do I put this... you don't need to wonder whether you're a simulation but you do need to keep in mind that he's running simulations. So using that knowledge to change how you'd act to limit what he'll get out of the simulations makes sense yeah?

If it doesn't... I think I'm gonna give up here.

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Sure yeah you need to keep in mind he's a flippin' precog and that gives him terrifying information gathering capabilities. What gets stuck in my craw is when people treat his power as if he was actually creating two concurrent timelines, which would let him do insane shit like "swap" timelines in order to cheat death.

The way it actually works is his shard runs two sims based on what Coil wants to do that day. If in one you gank him from behind in his lair and the other Coil's sitting pretty in his civ-house, it chooses the second course of action and "sleepwalks" him through acting that timeline out. Coil can't handle all the info at once because puny human brain and so receives the info in "real-time." He thinks he's actively doing shit, but his shard already called the shots and he's basically a meat puppet except for the times in between him opening a new timeline.

 

[seeing_octarine]

it chooses the second course of action and "sleepwalks" him through acting that timeline out.

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Either the shard's precog is good enough that it doesn't need to "sleepwalk" Coil through anything, or there will occasionally be weird errors and glitches where Coil says or does something that doesn't match up to reality. As the latter clearly doesn't happen, we can conclude that no, there is no "sleepwalking" going on, except for the instants where he thinks he's splitting timelines with his power but is really having to make the decision on which to keep based on data the shard hasn't told him yet. At all other times he's acting normally while getting fed "what if" scenarios in the back of his mind.

 

[Azreales]

Either the shard's precog is good enough that it doesn't need to "sleepwalk" Coil through anything, or there will occasionally be weird errors and glitches where Coil says or does something that doesn't match up to reality. As the latter clearly doesn't happen, we can conclude that no, there is no "sleepwalking" going on, except for the instants where he thinks he's splitting timelines with his power but is really having to make the decision on which to keep based on data the shard hasn't told him yet. At all other times he's acting normally while getting fed "what if" scenarios in the back of his mind.

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No, once Coil's power has chosen one of the two timelines, it "sleepwalks" him through the choices of that simulated timeline. The sleepwalking isn't about the quality or accuracy of the simulation. It's basically the shard hijacking Coil so he doesn't fuck up and stays faithful to his chosen simulated actions.