Taylor The Survivor

i hope someone in this setting has time powers so 1970s magus can come and break 1999 magus' fucking jaw

>be me, pizza guy in shittiest port town on Earth Bet

>terrible tips and get robbed for pizza so often I have honest to god decoy pizzas

>get called to deliver to this weird old warehouse like three times a week and have to roll the dice on how it's gonna go

>there's this whole Burger King Kid's Club worth of diverse teenagers that live there and I never know who I'm gonna get

>worst kid there is the one that answers the door 90% of the time. I hate this little fucking shit

>black haired boy. Dainty little prince pretty boy type. Always the one who calls the orders in, and always gives some stupid ass fake name like he's fucking Bart Simpson. "I.C. Weiner" and "I.P. Freely." That kind of shit.

>like half the time I think I'm delivering a depression-meal since he's dressed like he just woke up, and I'd feel bad except he makes some smartass remark every time, and since I see him every other goddamn day, it's almost always the same joke. Also tries to get free pizza by saying it's 30 minutes or free, except no one has done that program since like 1993, so he's pulling shit from tv. I don't need a fucking comedy routine from a kid in cookie monster pajama pants. Bad tipper. Whatever cash he has in his pocket.

>he's on the shitlist because, and I don't know how the fuck he does this, but every time the pizza is "late", this fucking kid trips me somehow. Or I drop my phone or the pizza bag or keys. Swear to god this kid has Home Alone tripwires or something.

>and every time it happens. Every fucking time. This little bastard says "have a nice trip."

>would say he's a cape, but every cape I've ever met has had some kind of presence, and I'm not giving that much credit to someone with a four-hair teenage mustache

>hate this smug little fucker and I'd have him blacklisted if this fucking building and its weird teenage polycule didn't make up like 50% of our orders for the neighborhood. 0/10, I hope you die

>be me, Brockton Bay pizza man. Deliver to welding building. Name on order is "Dick Hardly." Little prince opens the door. He has a sidekick. Black girl counterpart. They give me matching shit-eating grins. I hate my fucking job.

Its just a background detail at the moment, but it’s interesting how the superpowers have undergone a quasi-evolutionary process, in that a new superpower can only emerge and remain around if they are more-or-less immune to the various powers of the existing superpowers, or have some other reason for the existing superpowers not to kill them.

Anyone without psychic shielding would be instantly neutered by Lux (see The Devil). Anyone one not physically resilient enough to survive a first strike from Heavy and whom Heavy dislikes enough to kill will likely be killed by Heavy. Etc

The Major only survived as long as he did because Magnus didn’t tell Heavy about how weak he was because letting America believe that it was still powerful was worth the concessions they were asking for until, suddenly, they no longer were.

Lux, Masumi, and possibly Magnus, are only alive, despite physical squishiness, because they have (in Masumi’s case, unintentionally) created dead-man’s switches.

And so by 1999 all you’re left with are Superpowers that have psychic shielding and which are either incredibly physically resilient or have truly terrifying dead-man’s switches

Thinkin’ about The Siberian

I was sitting on a draft that said something to the effect of “Worm AU where Manton pulls an NBC Hannibal and moonlights as The Siberian on top of being a globally respected parahuman studies researcher. Is this anything.”

Then I thought about this a little more and realized that this might not be far off from what actually happened. There’s a throughline in Manton’s interests, in his trajectory through life, where he’s trying to figure out what you can use powers to get away with doing to people- about identifying constraints and overcoming them. 

He’s the guy who somehow credibly catalogued, and got his name associated with, the fact that powers generally can’t be used to pop people like balloons, and he did so reasonably early in the timeline, in the nineties at the latest. That’s…. an interesting direction to take your research! When people are just coming to terms with the fact that parahumans are real he’s out there taking careful note of whether they can manifest their powers inside people to instantly kill them. How did he test that? What capes did he collaborate with to test that? What did those conversations look like? Did the IRB at a minimum issue any revise-and-resubmits?

And then, of course, he gets picked up by Cauldron (also known as the infinite untraceable victim depot) to work on improving the vials- gaining a sufficiently in-depth understanding of what they are, how they’re made, and what they can do to people that when Cauldron told Legend that Manton had gone rogue and was the one creating C53s, he found this plausible. You’ve got the guy who’d later become the backbone of the Slaughterhouse 9 basically systemically cataloging every conceivable way a power could violate someone’s physiology- first from without, and then, at Cauldron, from within.

Then, when he pulls the trigger and gives himself powers, the resultant ability is essentially a distilled refutation of the Manton Effect- a minion that can obliterate anything, eat anything, delete any material from existence, viscerally dismember people in a unity of conventional and esoteric, power-enabled violence. And he’s insulated from the consequences of his actions on two levels- in terms of Siberian’s invulnerability, but also in the discrepancy between his form and that of his minion. He mixed the vial that gave him that power himself.

Essentially- I don’t think Siberian is something that just happened after a psychological break following a messy divorce. I think Manton basically pre-committed to becoming something like The Siberian, spent most of his career working towards some form of transcendence through superpowers, and the messy divorce was downstream of the cracks starting to show as he got closer and closer to what he’d been chasing.

Now to segue into a complication that’s more directly supported in the text- it’s Worm, it’s always complicated- Master powers spring from loneliness. My theory is that while Manton wanted apotheosis, and while he’d probably been gearing up for a rampage for a while, he genuinely didn’t want to do it alone; he wanted a sidekick. Hence why he bothered pursuing a family in the first place, hence why he fed his daughter a vial, hence why his own projection ended up looking like his daughter after he accidently made her explode or whatever with the bad vial- a monkey’s paw restoration, giving him back a facsimile of the person he wanted to take along for the ride, and making his capacity for violence inseparable from her presence.

This is why he joined up with the Nine rather than remaining a solo act; it’s why he engages in a bad imitation of the Parent/Child relationship with Bonesaw; and it’s why he seeks out Bitch as a candidate. His interest in her candidacy parses to me as genuine- Even moreso than Bonesaw, even moreso than Jack, Bitch has arrived at a no-frills fuck-you-I-do-what-I-want outlook that’s very appealing to Manton. He wants to have a murderer-daughter relationship!

But Rachel got where she is the hard way, by having a life that sucked a lot, by getting near-constantly kicked around! She has a clear reason to be so angry! Even if all my postulations about Manton having a long game are complete bullshit, there are several stages at which Manton had to actively opt in to the same lifestyle and reputation that Bitch was forced to adopt as a basic survival tactic. He didn’t have to start eating people! He’s a tourist! His “freedom” is inseparable from his distance, his disguise. Rachel’s “freedom” is just the freedom of having nothing left to lose.

All of this to say- In an interlude in which Bitch has an extended internal monologue about how people with families have the opportunities to be assholes and monsters to a captive audience, it is absolutely not a coincidence that she’s scouted by a would-be parental figure who proceeds to be an asshole and a monster in front of a captive audience, before trying to buy her affection with a puppy. In rejecting Manton, Rachel dodged an esoterically-packaged but ultimately very familiar bullet.

Hated it at the time, but I can't understate how much I've come to like the reveal that Brian died on the oil rig. The protagonist's love interest-turned-ex died off-screen due to her decision making, and while she's recovering from getting literally blown in half by the same thing that killed him everyone decides that they're just Not Gonna Tell Her What Happened to her romantic lead, they're gonna tell her almost literally that he fucked off to a farm upstate. And she believes it, and hinges her last scraps of psychological stability on it during the endgame, and then either dies or escapes the narrative still believing it, possibly forcing herself to believe it. I think there are very few works playing in the same space as Worm that would have the balls to treat the quote-unquote "lead pairing" this way.

Actually I DO think twelve year olds should get hrt. That’s the normal age to start puberty, so why does it have to be different for trans kids?

“young witch trying to solve the mystery of her neighbor’s missing cat in a small village in the Alps” continues to be hilarious don’t get me wrong but it’s kind of making me want to take a crack at treating the concept seriously. In this insular rural community, a cat goes missing. A young woman who takes her community’s professed ideals of helpfulness and harmony in witchcraft seriously volunteers to try to find him. Realizes the more she searches and the more she asks around that everyone in this idyllic village is quietly seething with resentment against their neighbors and against the world, that the insularity of her village is harboring a festering social rot that no one is allowed to address. No one can leave. The hills have fallen silent. Something is eating the cats and no one is allowed to address this. Ötzi is there

its weird how on top of the official limits on the number of new doctors, we ALSO make becoming a doctor needlessly terrible. it could be like normal grad school! and they'd be just as qualified. we just torture them for no reason. if we removed both lmiiters we could have like double the doctors just as qualified

Random Analysis of a Very Specific Bit in Late Worm

Part of the reason I want to write a fic focused on Cuff and Taylor is there seems to be some implication that Cuff is one of the closer members of the Chicago Wards to Weaver. Not enough to be considered a friend (I don’t think even Golem qualifies), but she does get picked for the Cauldron investigation strike team over most of the other members. A team Taylor seems to hold in fairly high regard (granted, Shadow Stalker and Lung make the list so again not a measure of friendship)

And one thing Arc 29 in particular does is have Cuff always seem to know how to get Taylor to listen to her and do what she wants.

Compare this to Arc 25 with Tecton spending basically half the chapter trying to convince Taylor and only getting a compromise. Though looking at the two conversations, there is a pretty distinct difference to their approach.

Tecton phrases a lot of the conversation under the idea of “we are x, so you should do this”. Sort of holding some level of authority in the fact they’ve been a team for so long. And, big shocker, Taylor isn’t exactly one for other people holding authority over her. She doesn’t really care for what she “owes” others based on their perceived relationship.

However, one thing about Taylor, at least to be gleaned from the earlier examples from Cuff, is that she does care to a degree about how she is perceived. This can be backed up in her conversation with Glenn in Arc 23

Bringing it back to the main topic, Cuff is, in essence, guilt tripping. The weaponized niceness bit (still one of my favorite Cuff moments ever), as well as the prisoner part, is basically making Taylor think “I’d be kind of an asshole if I didn’t do this”. There are some labels she’s fine with having, like “creepy”, but when it gets into some weirder territory as Cuff points out, she backs off.

I find it interesting that it’s specifically Cuff given these scenes with Taylor, especially this late into the story. It seems to establish at the very least that Cuff knows what makes Taylor tick, better than most of the other Wards.

How The Nocturnal Bottleneck and Nipples Make Us Human

Almost every post here considers what humans do have, really. It’s a little tiring; realistically every world has its harsh environments and vicious species and a sophont to match. We probably wouldn’t be unique for our adaptability or our persistence or even adrenaline

But our evolution is fucked up as hell, to put it lightly.

Mammals went through what’s been dubbed the nocturnal bottleneck essentially since the start of the mesozoic right up until the Cretaceous ended the archosaur’s exclusive hold over the daylight. We lost a lot of things from every mammal spending most of its time in either a cramped, suffocating burrow or scrounging around in the faint hours of nighttime. Our blood cells lost their nuclei to hold more oxygen while we spent time deep underground, we lost protections against ultraviolet rays in our skin and eyes, we can’t even repair our own DNA using the light of the sun. Most aliens probably wouldn’t have such traits unless their evolution followed a very similar path to ours. They’d be able to see ultraviolet and wouldn’t have to worry about sunburn and all the wonderful privileges essentially all fish, birds, amphibians, and reptiles enjoy as we speak. 

There’s also what we gained from spending so much time in the dark.

Brown fat is only found in mammals, it’s a special type of fat which bear cells with several oil droplets and are utterly jammed with mitochondria. This lets it make heat, a lot of it, fast. We don’t even need to shiver to induce this heat generation from brown adipose tissue - factor in our downright hyperactive mitochondria, and we can warm up quickly. Sure, it doesn’t have too much use in adult humans, but it keeps our infants warm and still provides a little boost the whole run we have in this universe.

Unless aliens also went through a time where their small ancestors had to face cold nights, they’d have to produce heat the old fashioned way when chilled. Aliens might have to shiver the whole time they’re in a cold room while the human watches in confusion, quite literally unshaken, and wonders if the room is a lot colder than the thermostat set to 60 says. The aliens stare at their companion in confusion, it’s just a normal temperature to shiver at after all, how is the human sitting so still?

Our small ancestors spending all their time out foraging at night is also why we have such a good sense of touch, smell, and hearing. They were more important senses than vision (we’re lucky to have even redeveloped basic color vision, frankly) at the time and place and simply ended up continuing to serve us well. Birds and reptiles rarely have acute senses of smell and the latter especially are lucky to have acute hearing, and birds rarely have impeccable hearing themselves either. Our skin is free of scales and honed to sensitivity, and our external ears and complicated ear bones provide an immense range of hearing (from 20 all the way to 17,000 hertz!).

Aliens might not be able to pin down the chirp of a cricket or the light click of a lock being picked. The human might be the only one on board a ship that can pick out the finer sounds of the engine’s constant thrum and know the critical difference between when everything is fine and when something is wrong. The human could probably pick out the sounds of an approaching enemy’s careless footsteps - they’re only as light enough for *them* to stop hearing them, after all - and be the one to see the horrified expression (well, more on that later) on their face when we get the drop on them in spite of their perceived stealth. 

But perhaps the most versatile, convoluted, amazing, and utterly unique trait we have is right on your face this instant. Lips.

Lips in most animals are a simple seal to hold in the mouth’s moisture and protect the teeth, even if they’re supple they’re NEVER muscular except in mammals, and we have only one thing to thank for it; milk and nipples. Lips evolved exclusively to allow babies to suckle, it required a vacuum to be created in the mouth, and with no other animal having anything like a nipple it never happened in other animals. Many animals make milk, to be frank, but no other animal has nipples.

Your cheeks and lips are a marvel among tetrapods, no other animal can suck like mammals can. Aliens wouldn’t have straws or even be able to sip from the edge of a glass, they’d have to have a proboscis or simply tilt the whole thing back. Aliens likely won’t have woodwind instruments or balloons you can blow into. We take so much about our lips for granted. Hell, our muscular faces are vital for expressions, we’re probably absolute facial contortionists among a cast of creatures with mandibles and beaks and expressionless scaly maws. Aliens might find us ridiculously easy to read, if anything, compared to their own kind (all the better to deceive them) - or perhaps they’d find us hard to decipher anyways, with our lack of color-changing skin or erectable crests of bright feathers. Baring teeth might not be seen as a sign of aggression in most of the universe, smiling would be all too distinctly human. 

Perhaps with how infectious we are sometimes, that’s what we’d contribute to the universe; others might have to make do with opening their mouths just enough to show their teeth or splaying their innumerable mouthparts with just the right curve, but perhaps we’d teach the galaxy to smile, one ally at a time. 

Wouldn’t that be amazing?