I saw this awesome Captain America cosplay by Dania “Hijabi Hooligan” Khalil and was immediately reminded of Worm’s Miss Militia.

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A thing I kind of want to clarify:

While I do so far like Victor as a character, I don’t think Lisa is wrong that he’s awful, in ways we and Taylor haven’t gotten a good first hand look at yet.

It’s just that “is a good person” isn’t always a requirement for me to like a character. If it were, I’d hate two thirds of the cast.

And on top of that, Wildbow is really good at making somewhat sympathetic pieces of shit.

(Similarly, let’s also note that my dislike of Shatterbird has next to nothing to do with her murders and maimings.)

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I’m not sure you would like WDiR. There is commentary and the story gets deeper and more nuanced as it progress but there is a lot of dark and/or gory humor. The main character is Psycho Gecko as a homicidal supervillain and one of the few who gets away with killing heroes. Hell, one of the first things we see him do is kill a hero who was doing a transdimentionnal vlog and take his tech to do his own transdimentional blog. He kills people. A lot. In generally amusing ways.

I’ve already sent an ask about WDiR but I just wanted to add that while Psycho Gecko is a mass murderer the main stories and some side stories also explore why and how he became who he is and what this lifestyle does to his psyche, the fact that even he has people he cares about and limits and standards. He sometimes kills indiscriminately, but more often than not his targets are either : able to defend themselves, jerks, they actually deserve it or a combination of the three.

This is… pretty much the kind of thing I suspected. Like I mentioned, some of Genoscythe’s traits are very telling about Psycho Gecko’s sense of humor, and I did not mean that as a compliment.

While I’ll acknowledge that I don’t know much about it, World Domination in Retrospect (wicked cool title, I’ll give it that) sounds like the kind of story I was slightly worried that Worm might be before I started reading it, when I knew pretty much only that it was dark and would eventually have a “bombed-out city” for a setting.

“Dark” can be done in many ways, and I think what marks Worm’s brand of darkness as good for me is that it’s tastefully dark. It’s not “fuck everything haha rape murder and gore is funny” dark. It’s “I won’t pull my punches”. While dark, gritty things keep happening in Worm, they’re treated with respect, and they’re usually not edgy just for the sake of edge – there’s always something more to it.

For example, the precise details of what Amy did to Victoria hardly matter, because the gore and body horror doesn’t take center stage. The characters, the reasons, the reactions, that’s what was important, and that’s why all we were told about what exactly Victoria looks like now were the things that told us something about how Amy viewed her and why she had done this. The characters and emotions, that’s what made Interlude 15 hit so hard.

At the risk of making this about ponies all of a sudden: I unironically like Cupcakes. Not because of its gore (I kinda don’t really care about the gore in it? There might be a little too much, honestly.), but because of its portrayal of Pinkie Pie and the horror inherent in the entire premise. The horror of Cupcakes isn’t the gore. The horror is that it’s the cheerful pony Rainbow Dash thought was one of her best friends who is doing the whole thing, and she just acts as the same old cheerful friend while doing it. I like Cupcakes for the dark stuff it does with Pinkie’s character, not for the dark stuff it does with guts and blood.

Is it any wonder that I really like Bonesaw, then, who maintains that same beautiful contrast of a super cheerful “just doing my thing” attitude and horrifying actions, while also being a literal child who simply doesn’t know better? It’s hilarious and terrifying.

…okay, so this post got a bit off-track, but yeah. This is why I probably won’t be reading WDiR.

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You mention “the end of Amy and Victoria’s story”. Do you think the suffering ever really ends?

The Wheel of Suffering turns, and Arcs come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legends fade to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Arc that gave it birth comes again. In one Arc, called the Fifteenth Arc by some, an Arc long past, an Arc yet to come, a healer was imprisoned in the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center. The imprisonment was not the ending. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Suffering. But it was an ending.

Alright, metaphysical wheels aside: Even if we see Amy and/or Victoria again, this was very much written like a solid ending to Amy’s character arc and her story. The suffering caused by this story will live on, though (especially for Carol, Mark and even Victoria, if there’s anything left in there that can suffer through her unnatural bliss), but the story appears to be over. For now.

We may see a continuation, perhaps (especially if the Birdcage does bust open someday), but it will very likely feel like a sequel, a bad idea or simply a checkup on an old friend.

As much as I like Amy and want more with her, I honestly think that leaving her out of the story – at least until a hypothetical prison break, which I think is likely to be in final boss territory – is the better choice writing-wise.

(This is why I was kind of surprised when we kept checking in on Armsmaster for a few Arcs, and lo and behold, now he’s out in play again. Sort of. I’ll be disappointed if he died off-screen, probably doing something stupid against the Nine, because by keeping him in the story Wildbow has implied that there is a followup story he wants to tell with the guy.)

I wouldn’t mind a confirmation (in story, no Word of God please) on whether Amy will be happy in the Birdcage with Marquis, but I can appreciate a good open ending too. I’m cool with it being left up in the air, especially as I really did get the feeling that meeting Marquis was going to be a good thing for her.

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I’m interested to see that a lot of people interpret Amy’s motivations/mental state and what Victoria became very differently to how I do. People seem to see a purpose or direction that I just don’t? I understood it to be that Amy fell into one of those feverish/nightmare states where you’re trying to do something very important but keep forgetting where you’re up to, so you start over and over. “What does Victoria look like? Swan neck, yes. Beautiful hair, yes. Delicate fingers, yes. What else? There’s a head there somewhere. What next? Oh, her hair, that’s important. I guess there are legs. No, I forgot her neck, got to put the neck in. What else? Hands, yes, what else…” Knowing that it wasn’t right but every time she tried to fix it she got caught in the loop again. It’s kind of an indication, to me, of how not in her right mind she was – she couldn’t even make her fit a human body plan? What state do you have to be in to forget that?

This sounds like a perfect description to me, yeah! This is exactly the kind of thing that would lead to the most important parts (to Amy) showing up over and over, and it fits with Amy’s description of what happened pretty well.

And yeah, I don’t think she had any more purpose or direction than “fix this”. And she failed to fix it, hard, because she was so damn out of it. Everything that had happened over the last, what, week or two? It all drove her to this.

What state do you have to be in? Clearly you have to be in Massachusetts.

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I cant believe Hawk Moth works for Cauldron

Hawk Moth has an unlimited supply of power vials, but instead of using them himself, he every so often force feeds one to a random citizen who’s not feeling all that great and asks them to use their new powers to steal a couple other vials, half-used, that contain way stronger ones that form a really broken combo.

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I got into Miraculous after you mentioned it here (love it!); I also saw the similarities between Triggers and Akuma and now want a crossover where Skitter and Ladybug meet. The clash between personalities and outlook on the world and superheroing would be funny to watch. I don’t know how she and Cat Noir would deal with being in a crapsack world and whether they could win in capes fights, but image the “Holy Shit!” moment if she could repair a whole city after an Endbringer attack. (Shaker 12?)

Sounds like a fun time!

I would be interested in Skitter and Chat Noir interactions. Perhaps moreso than Skitter and Ladybug, though yes, that would be great too. It’s largely because I’ve been comparing Skitter to Chat Noir since the beginning, due to their similar reason for going into the hero business – escapism.

These days, though, Skitter’s more like Ladybug, doing it all out of a sense of duty more than anything. She’s driven by her guilts and going back is hard.

But oh man, if Skitter learned of Ladybug and Chat’s identities… A baker’s daughter with fantastic parents and a whole school that loves her, and a rich kid supermodel? I don’t think Taylor would like that very much, at first.

The crapsack world comment reminded me of a Miraculous Ladybug fic (have you checked out Ladybug fics yet? ML is pretty good as a setting when you deviate from the formula of the show) called You Don’t Know Me, by Ferisae. It’s on the darker side of the spectrum, closer to Worm than to the show, and I think some of you guys might like it. The premise is that Ladybug is sent into a coma by an akumatized demolition man, and Chat Noir has to find ways to deal with the fact that she’s not around to a) help him in battle, b) repair the city, and worst of all, c) purify the akuma. Oh, and the angst of having a comatose friend, partner and love interest, of course.

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I think there’s a very short list of powers Othala can give people. Like, a half dozen to maybe a dozen.

Yeah, seems that way.

Maybe we could stretch that to 16? That way it would match the number of runes in the younger futhark, letting each power correspond to a rune!

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Regent’s “After all I’ve done for you” is probably a reference to how out of his way he went to fuck with Sophia’s life so she wouldn’t go back for revenge and keep her mouth shut about the whole deal before and after she vanished from Brockton Bay. Remember that, when he was doing so, he justified his actions to a pleading Sophia with “Because of the shit you did to my teammate”.

Ohhh. Yeah, that makes sense. And he never told Taylor about that, thus the “Nevermind.”

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“it really is just me lying to myself, but that lie will become truth over time. People all over this city feign confidence, and that becomes something concrete. You can become the mask you wear on a day-to-day basis.” – Victor

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” – Kurt Vonnegut

The first quote reminded me of the second. I think they seem to be holding true in Worm.

*eyes Skitter*

Yeah. Yeah, they do.

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[Oh jeez, this one’s gonna be weirdly nested in transcript form.]

[reblog of a Tumblr reblog chain]

whitepeopletwitter:

[screenshot of a tweet]

dr. ron of of the pepper palace (@ronaldravegan):

when i was a young boy my father had what he called the bean jar. it was a jar full of brown and black beans. whenever he misbehaved, he would remove one and tell us that once the jar was empty, the world would end

The bean jar

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[reblog, brackets below not mine] barreboy:

[My Chemical Romance voice]: When I was… a young boy… my Father… had what he called the bean jar…

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[reblog] iridescentoracle:

[screenshot from Tumblr messaging between iridescentoracle and allieinarden]

allieinarden:

this is the best use of The Black Parade
I’m cracking up

when I was a young boy my father had what he called the bean jar
it was a jar of beans
he said son when it’s empty you’ll see that the world will end in fire
that’s what the bean jar means

he said will you
induce me
to hasten
the pace of Armageddon
and catalyze our doom
because one day
you’ll drive me
so crazy
I’ll reach into the bean jar

purloin the last legume

have i mentioned recently @allieinarden is the best

Jack Slash: *grabs the bean jar and turns it upside-down*

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[screenshot from music video linked below]

Stupendium: Remember medicine is not a science, it’s an art!

Bonesaw: “Yes! Finally, someone who gets it!”

[screenshot from the music video]

Stupendium: I’ve just had a call from our legal team; it is in fact a science… apologies.

Bonesaw: “What? Don’t listen to the critics! They’re mean.”