So what's really going on in Worm?

[MissileTeatime]

WoG states that Contessa has spent decades tightening up gun laws and also making it seem that guns are ineffective against capes.

For example, local hero gets the idea to snipe a villain. Contessa sets the situation up so the cape notices immediately and kills the gunman. It gets featured in the news heavily. The whole entertainment industry ( movies, games etc) are influenced by Cauldron to make it seem that normal people cant fight capes.

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Which is fair enough. Except it is flatly contradicted by at least two events before the Leviathan fight:

1. In Danny's interlude, interlude 1.x, the documentary mentions that the first cape was killed by a flatscan with what amounts to a baseball bat. This is referred to as being the end of an era.
   
   I mean, maybe Vikare had a completely unarmored costume, and part of the change was capes having armor. But even so, come on.
2. When Taylor is at Rachel's helping with the dogs, a flatscan thug with a gun is treated as a completely credible, story-ending threat. Literally no-one on the scene questions this -- Taylor and Rachel resist, of course, but they still treat it as "well fuck".

Honestly this is becoming probably my biggest gripe with Worm. I was promised a superhero setting where people die. I was promised a superhero setting where a flatscan with a baseball bat and nothing to lose is a credible physical threat to like 50% of capes. And then I was given the Slaughterhouse Nine, who are oh-so-terrifying horror movie monsters who can't even kill a secondary character properly. (Battery died in a hospital. After surviving long enough to talk to Assault. She even spilled some beans relating to Cauldron iirc.)

Like I'll give the S9 "not being dead already" for free, that's on theme for them, but kill someone who's not one of the Merchants maybe?

Like if societal brainwashing that it's useless to fight against capes worked so well, then why are there capes. That's the number one thing they do.

...Sorry. This has apparently been building for a while.

 

[The Unicorn]

If you grow up in a society were everything tells you its suicide to fight capes... You probably dont want to do it. Normals also have less access to guns.

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This is certainly plausible, except that we see in canon it doesn't apply to Worm.
Worm is a setting where guns are common, people know capes can be killed by normals (the end of the "golden age" was specifically a hero getting shot) and the S9 surviving to get the power boosts we see them have in canon makes no sense.

Additionally, when you face against a monster that you expect will kill you at best, it doesn't matter if you believe you have a chance of killing it - you either collapse or try and kill it with whatever you have. Barring Contessa directly intervening to stop people from killing the S9 someone would have killed jack long before he met up with Riley.

Also, I too have seen so often people talking about contradictory WoG posts, yet so far, nobody has brought anything up.

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I don't follow WoG posts, but the one you just referenced seems to very clearly contradict canon.

 

[Whitesnake Pelinal]

Which is fair enough. Except it is flatly contradicted by at least two events before the Leviathan fight:

1. In Danny's interlude, interlude 1.x, the documentary mentions that the first cape was killed by a flatscan with what amounts to a baseball bat. This is referred to as being the end of an era.
   
   I mean, maybe Vikare had a completely unarmored costume, and part of the change was capes having armor. But even so, come on.
2. When Taylor is at Rachel's helping with the dogs, a flatscan thug with a gun is treated as a completely credible, story-ending threat. Literally no-one on the scene questions this -- Taylor and Rachel resist, of course, but they still treat it as "well fuck".

Honestly this is becoming probably my biggest gripe with Worm. I was promised a superhero setting where people die. I was promised a superhero setting where a flatscan with a baseball bat and nothing to lose is a credible physical threat to like 50% of capes. And then I was given the Slaughterhouse Nine, who are oh-so-terrifying horror movie monsters who can't even kill a secondary character properly. (Battery died in a hospital. After surviving long enough to talk to Assault. She even spilled some beans relating to Cauldron iirc.)

Like I'll give the S9 "not being dead already" for free, that's on theme for them, but kill someone who's not one of the Merchants maybe?

Like if societal brainwashing that it's useless to fight against capes worked so well, then why are there capes. That's the number one thing they do.

...Sorry. This has apparently been building for a while.

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Eh, it's a fair complaint when you try to make all the WoG statements plus the original fictional work function as a coherent whole. The gun stuff is easy to understand in the context of a Canadian author fielding a bunch of complaints from American readers about a story set in America that should have involved a lot more "rule .308" than was present. I think a better way to handle them would have been to say "that's not how things are done in a Superhero/Supervillain setting", but whatevs.

Best strategy IMO is to tune out the post-Worm commentary by the author when engaging with Worm. If you want to read the work of fiction, do so. If you want to write fanfiction for it, write it with "Worm as-originally written" continuity specified. If it differs in some way from the world as described by the author, whether on IRC, message boards, or in Ward, then big whoop, it's AU, like about a hundred thousand post-OotP fanfics.

 

[Sartek]

In canon we see people try to shoot capes pretty much only if its a gang fight, there is no other choice or they are high.

How many capes died that way?

If Contessa wasnt successfull in her task, I imagine more capes would be shot by civilians. Cape robs a store, shotgun to the face. And yet we never see this.

I thought that WoG supported canon just fine. Capes themselves avoid guns and civilians tend ti avoid fighting capes. Even in gang fights, it tended to be capes vs capes and normals vs normals.

Even though the normals could have easily shot the capes while they were distracted

 

[MissileTeatime]

I'm pretty sure Grue shot Cricket (still before Leviathan)?

I actually don't even care about the guns thing so much as it set me off bitching about the S9 being overhyped.

 

[Guardian54]

In canon we see people try to shoot capes pretty much only if its a gang fight, there is no other choice or they are high.

How many capes died that way?

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Even just Vikare is enough because the chaotic collapse is costing Cauldron more capes over time than it's yielding.

It would have been in their best interest to keep the Golden Age going to get a stockpile of reliable, mentally as-stable-as-possible capes.

 

[MissileTeatime]

Even just Vikare is enough because the chaotic collapse is costing Cauldron more capes over time than it's yielding.

It would have been in their best interest to keep the Golden Age going to get a stockpile of reliable, mentally as-stable-as-possible capes.

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Guardian, mind that Vikare died before Cauldron really got established. He was the first cape (who wasn't Scion), and Cauldron didn't even start their process of getting their hooks into everything until they saw Scion on a TV (possibly on a videorecording? I'd have to check). Even if they started the same day Vikare meet Scion, the kind of society-wide manipulation Wobbles is alleging takes years to set in.

 

[Guardian54]

Guardian, mind that Vikare died before Cauldron really got established. He was the first cape (who wasn't Scion), and Cauldron didn't even start their process of getting their hooks into everything until they saw Scion on a TV (possibly on a videorecording? I'd have to check). Even if they started the same day Vikare meet Scion, the kind of society-wide manipulation Wobbles is alleging takes years to set in.

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The thing is that Contessa was alive when Vikare met Scion.
Vikare would have been Path-able afterward.

If she wanted a longer Golden Age and a better stock of reliable, disciplined capes, then she should have used Doormaker to ninja-save Vikare one way or another on that day instead of letting him die from what was probably a subdural hematoma from a baseball bat.

Vikare was probably active for well over a year, more than enough time for Cauldron to be rolling well enough to save him even if they didn't have Doormaker yet.

 

[Valor]

Maybe an S-class threat created a hyperdimensional superbeing capable of destroying reality and Contessa was busy dealing with that. Who knows!? Everything wrong in Wrong is obviously Contessa's fault, so she was most likely nefariously planning to ensure as much suffering and pain possible on a worldwide scale. Which means Vikare had to die.

... Not a fan of putting everything at Contessa's feet. As mentioned above, I don't think Doormaker was around that early. My personal opinion is that the young teen girl was busy living life and not being an untiring, emotionally dead machine that fanon loves to depict her as.

 

[Guardian54]

Not a fan of putting everything at Contessa's feet.

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I'm not either, but when 99% of plot holes have people going "AHP... Contessa, end of argument!" then that says we should blame her for everything.

Besides, she could have had Vikare lose his ticket to the sporting event to make sure he had time to put on his costume and helmet, but didn't.
Killing is easy. That means butterflying a killing is also pretty easy. At least compared to arranging for cockblocking people for a few days to prevent births of serious threats, because she'd have to cockblock thousands of people at once, which is kind of hard even with Doormaker.

 

[The Unicorn]

If she wanted a longer Golden Age and a better stock of reliable, disciplined capes, then she should have used Doormaker to ninja-save Vikare one way or another on that day instead of letting him die from what was probably a subdural hematoma from a baseball bat.

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Except:
1)They didn't have Doormaker at the time.
2)It requires the idea to occur to Contessa and have her start running the needed path that early.

 

[Guardian54]

It requires the idea to occur to Contessa and have her start running the needed path that early.

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I'm quite sure they were trying to build up stockpiles of reliable capes who were organized enough to follow orders from DAY ONE of trying to Path for an arbitrarily powerful opponent.
So... maintaining the Golden Age was definitely THE way to do it.

 

[The Unicorn]

I'm quite sure they were trying to build up stockpiles of reliable capes who were organized enough to follow orders from DAY ONE of trying to Path for an arbitrarily powerful opponent.

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You seem to be giving them more credit than I do in assuming they were aware of needing "capes who were organized enough to follow orders". I saw no evidence in canon they ever realized that. However ignoring that I grant they were trying to get capes from the day they saw Scion on TV. Which doesn't change the fact that they might not have had any way t preserve the golden age, especially keeping in mind how every trigger is a blind spot and possible reordering of the path for Contessa.

 

[ANGRY PUFFBALL]

I hate how a lot of the fanon I dislike the most is also imported from Amelia, the Worm fanfic I dislike the most.

 

[Aleph]

I hate how a lot of the fanon I dislike the most is also imported from Amelia, the Worm fanfic I dislike the most.

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Well go on then. What specific fanon are we talking about here? I noped away when I saw it had over 400 chapters.

 

[ANGRY PUFFBALL]

Amelia's one of the first really long worm fics and it basically folds, spindles, and mutilates the canon to ship Amy and Taylor in one of the most cringy fashions possible while also turning their relationship into a black hole that distorts every other character. In addition, the author went on a really weird transhumanist trip near the end. You are not missing anything of quality.

They're responsible for a lot of fanon (PHO names, simurgh posting on PHO, fortress construction, etc).

 

[Guardian54]

fortress construction

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To be fair though this actually would make sense as a name for an Endbringer shelter building company...

But yeah the shipping was too focused upon, by far.

 

[SwiftRosenthal]

They're responsible for a lot of fanon (PHO names, simurgh posting on PHO, fortress construction, etc).

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I don't like Amelia either, but you're blaming it for something it didn't do. Cenotaph, Goblin Queen, and Silencio created... just about all of those things you listed.

 

[Prince Charon]

Amelia's one of the first really long worm fics and it basically folds, spindles, and mutilates the canon to ship Amy and Taylor in one of the most cringy fashions possible while also turning their relationship into a black hole that distorts every other character. In addition, the author went on a really weird transhumanist trip near the end. You are not missing anything of quality.

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It also has a really awesome ending, though admittedly not everyone may like it as much as I do.

... and the transhumanist trip actually started well before the end.

Also, from a certain point of view, the characters who get together at the end are neither Taylor nor Amy.

 

[The Unicorn]

Amelia's one of the first really long worm fics and it basically folds, spindles, and mutilates the canon to ship Amy and Taylor in one of the most cringy fashions possible while also turning their relationship into a black hole that distorts every other character.

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Yup, and it does so deliberately (IIRC the author explicitly stated he was doing that), so it's not like it was a surprise to anyone reading the story.

They're responsible for a lot of fanon (PHO names, simurgh posting on PHO, fortress construction, etc).

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Nope, those predate Amelia. There was even some discussion in the first couple of pages of this thread about where they come from.

 

[Legume]

Also, from a certain point of view, the characters who get together at the end are neither Taylor nor Amy.

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I really hated that bit of pointless melodrama.

Spoiler: minor spoilers for Amelia

It didn't even make sense since Minerva had Respawn's power used on her after the Valefor bombing. She was a clone first, but Taylor fails to even mention that. I can maybe buy that somehow it isn't the same thing for arbitrary bullshit spacewhale reasons, but you'd still think it would get brought up and maybe Minerva would tell Respawn since his entire character is based around his belief that he is constantly dying and therefore nothing matters except the here and now.

 

[Prince Charon]

I really hated that bit of pointless melodrama.

Spoiler: minor spoilers for Amelia

It didn't even make sense since Minerva had Respawn's power used on her after the Valefor bombing. She was a clone first, but Taylor fails to even mention that. I can maybe buy that somehow it isn't the same thing for arbitrary bullshit spacewhale reasons, but you'd still think it would get brought up and maybe Minerva would tell Respawn since his entire character is based around his belief that he is constantly dying and therefore nothing matters except the here and now.

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Spoiler: in case it's needed

It's at least implied well before then that this is very different, given that Minerva doesn't see Respawn/Osiris and the people he used his power on as different people than they were before they died, whereas it's pretty clear from the start that the people who get cloned are different to some degree (e.g. the new Victoria triggering later, with new powers, among other things), even before Lisa dramas her way out of the team.

That doesn't mean that it's not annoying melodrama, it is, but at least we got some foreshadowing to justify it.

 

[Legume]

Spoiler: in case it's needed

It's at least implied well before then that this is very different, given that Minerva doesn't see Respawn/Osiris and the people he used his power on as different people than they were before they died, whereas it's pretty clear from the start that the people who get cloned are different to some degree (e.g. the new Victoria triggering later, with new powers, among other things), even before Lisa dramas her way out of the team.

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Spoiler: it's not really that spoilery at this point

Eh, Victoria was brought back wrong because of Bonesaw and/or people punching/shooting Crawler's corpse and getting it mixed with Victoria's DNA. There wasn't much actual comparison done between Respawn's power and cloning, Lisa just presumably assumed they were different because her shard told her so. Although that's being very generous, and really, she had every reason to be skeptical of shards telling her to give up on her best friend. Oh well, it is what it is.

Edit: The Victoria clone was a Crawler-Victoria hybrid in case you didn't pick up on that the first time. That's where her masochism came from, it was kind of low key at first but then it got pretty much explicitly stated when she got caught by the Chinese and tortured.

Edit: I take back what I said about Zach's power not being compared to cloning. I was rereading Amelia and it was explicitly stated that Zach's power was basically the same thing as cloning by Emma when she was explaining that it was memory copying, not memory transference, whatever that means. Also it was explicitly said that Zach's power was not related to time manipulation during the Behemoth/Yangbang fight, which would really be the only way you could say that Zach's power is legitimately different than cloning without just saying that it's "different because reasons!1!!!!!!!!1!1!1!11111!!!!!!1!1!"

 

[The Unicorn]

So does anyone know of any canon basis for the supposed "Tinker Fugue" other than a single out-of-story comment by Wildbow that acknowledges that there exist Tinkers who go into a trance, as one example among several ways Tinkers can handle making things (and apperently using the term in that case in the more limited "parahumans who get a bunch of bluprints" rather than the PRT classification)

I happened to remember where it is, so here you go. Let's see if I can get the formatting right... And my fist two times trying to make it work failed, so here's the link.

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Unless I missed something, there's nothing there about Kid Win going into fugue. There is a bit about Chariot dismantling the toaster and TV for parts, but not only don't we know it was in a fugue Kid Win notes

He has priorities, at least, Kid Win thought, with mild amusement. Gotta have an internet connection.

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i.e Kid Win thought that was a conscious decision about what to use for parts.

Only thing about Kid Win disasembling something for parts I saw was him kicking himself over being stupid enough to dissemble his hover-board for parts, again no mention of Fugue, trance or anything other than Kid win being a teenager and not thinking about the long term when he decided to disassemble his hoverboard.[/quote]​

 

[MissileTeatime]

So does anyone know of any canon basis for the supposed "Tinker Fugue" other than a single out-of-story comment by Wildbow that acknowledges that there exist Tinkers who go into a trance, as one example among several ways Tinkers can handle making things (and apperently using the term in that case in the more limited "parahumans who get a bunch of bluprints" rather than the PRT classification)

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Only thing I can think of off-hand is when Colin is working on nanothorns and then looks over Dragon's code, after S9. But honestly, after having read a engineer-SI'd-into-Coil fic, that might be a perfectly mundane engineer fugue as performed by a tinker, and not a fanish "tinker fugue".

 

[The Unicorn]

Only thing I can think of off-hand is when Colin is working on nanothorns and then looks over Dragon's code, after S9. But honestly, after having read a engineer-SI'd-into-Coil fic, that might be a perfectly mundane engineer fugue as performed by a tinker, and not a fanish "tinker fugue".

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Engineer SI? Link?

 

[MissileTeatime]

Engineer SI? Link?

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https://forum.questionablequesting.com/threads/competence-in-slithering-worm-si.5094/
Dumbass SI spends a good six hours of chapter two building a bomb, then decides wait that was a dumb idea. Also describes the time-loss as typical for them. So, engineer fugue.

 

[Morganite]

Can I get some clarification on how Vista's power is affected by concentration and the loss thereof?

Specifically, I found an example where Vista being distracted interrupted something she was actively modifying, but I'm not sure of what happens to warps that are already 'set'.

-Morgan.

 

[MissileTeatime]

That's a good question.

I know she offers something power-related to Rachel in the epilogue, and the way I remember it she seemed to think that would be basically permanent. But I don't have any other evidence to offer and it's not like I checked.

Now I wonder what happened to the stuff at the Bank after the Undersiders left. Did she have to fix it all manually? Did she just kick it loose, and that caused it to snap back? Was it still cluttering up the area come the end of the world?

 

[magic9mushroom]

So does anyone know of any canon basis for the supposed "Tinker Fugue" other than a single out-of-story comment by Wildbow that acknowledges that there exist Tinkers who go into a trance, as one example among several ways Tinkers can handle making things (and apperently using the term in that case in the more limited "parahumans who get a bunch of bluprints" rather than the PRT classification)

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I mean, it's at least WoG and possibly canon that a Tinker can't accurately describe what is happening when they are Tinkering (and certainly it's implied by "no reproducing Tinkertech"). There are two ways that can make sense - altered cognition, and/or the Tinker's actions are irrelevant window dressing and the Shard is actually nanolathing that shit. Wildbow's WoG mentions both IIRC, although honestly I think he overestimates how far the first can actually take you in modern Earth.

(Reverse engineering is hard, but much easier than research. On the other hand, it doesn't matter if you can reverse-engineer something if building it requires tools you don't have.)