There’s been a lot of talk of SCPs on Loreweaver’s Discord server recently (enough to warrant the creation of an SCP discussion channel), which got me thinking:
What would Worm-based SCPs be like?
I think the clearest SCP of the cast is Noelle. Hell, Noelle is practically treated like an SCP in canon, right down to being an anomaly even by cape standards.
And then there’s Siberian and the difficulty of containing her.
(I suppose the Birdcage is similar to an SCP containment site, too.)
Item #: SCP-9518
Object Class: Euclid
Special Containment Procedures: SCP-9518 is to be held in taut chains. A minimum of 10 different chains should be attached at a time, spreading out in different directions to increase the time it takes for SCP-9518-1 to break all of them. Each chain should be wired up to a system which detects the breaking of any of them and immediately deploys potent transquilizers into SCP-9518’s body.
There must be multiple injectors set at different angles so as to prevent SCP-9518-1 from breaking all of them before they can be deployed. The injectors should be connected to a similar system as the chains, so the remaining injectors will deploy if one is broken.
Additionally, SCP-9518’s chamber and surrounding rooms should be under constant video surveillance by staff with remote access to the injector system.
Staff is not to enter SCP-9518’s containment chamber, except for D-class staff sent to provide food or perform repairs to the chamber after attempted breaches.
Description: SCP-9518 is a humanoid appearing to be a ragged human man in his middle years. Within a limited radius, SCP-9518 is capable of summoning or dismissing a single instance of the projection designated as SCP-9518-1. SCP-9518 appears to have full control over SCP-9518-1’s movements.
SCP-9518-1 appears in the shape of a nude female humanoid, but its coloration consists of black and white stripes. SCP-9518-1 is solid, but has proven immune to all tested methods of harming it or moving it against its will, including the effects of other anomalies. When hostile, SCP-9518-1 displays superhuman strength and speed, and can effortlessly barrel through all restraints.
SCP-9518 itself has not displayed similar attributes.
I just ran into the phrase “got a bee up her nose” (used figuratively) in The Wheel of Time. Dammit, Taylor!
Through some shenanigans involving Google Translate and the “see also” section on a Wikipedia disambiguation page, Marquis came up in a conversation about international dubs of The Nightmare Before Christmas.
And hey, what better Worm character to play Jack Skellington, right?
Oogie Boogie is just a regular sack of bugs puppeteered by a behind-the-scenes Skitter.
Time for asks!
“I’ve now renamed the ‘Uncategorized’ category to ‘argh krix fix your categories'” Why not “aargh krix…”, just in case?
You make a valid point, in case I create any top-level categories beginning with A…
I suppose I should’ve mentioned that even though “arc” goes before “argh” alphabetically, the “argh” category still get sorted above the Arc categories. That’s because there’s a nested category system in place, and the Arc categories are subcategories to “Worm”, which in turn is a subcategory to “Krixwell liveblogs”, so for the purposes of this, the Arc tags are sorted under K.
Good that you’re back! – I honestly expected a much stronger reaction to Taylor almost letting Triumph die, especially because the reason behind all this is clearly way more villainous than the bank. There she was undercover and didn’t want to be arrested, here she uses terror and intimidation to get a politician do as she says.
I think the main reason this didn’t hit quite as hard as what happened at the bank was that at the bank, it was a new side of Taylor we were seeing, so I wasn’t prepared for it. Here, it’s a side we’ve been seeing for a good while (since, well, 3.9 – it’s the same side), just turned up in intensity to an all-time high.
I’d even argue that Taylor’s reasons for doing this are better than those she had in the bank, even though she went to even more unnecessary extremes.
It’s a little disingenuous to put “was undercover and didn’t want to be arrested” and “uses terror and intimidation to get a politician [to] do as she says” on the same level – the former is why she did what she did in 3.9, the latter is what she did in 15.9. The why of 15.9, when pulled back to a similar degree, is that she needed to pull off this mission for Coil in order to further her employment and plots to improve the city, and avoid getting killed.
But yeah, Taylor’s stooped to a new low and I’m interested to see how she copes with that going forward.
At least this time she actually did apologize. 😛
I absolutely love this fight scene. How she calmly and systematically deduces identities and powers, tries and discards different strategies and defeats two experienced heroes alone. The difference between this and the first Lung fight is like day and night! She is clearly more powerful, but you can show where she learned every trick until now. This is how you show a superhuman getting better with their power. No random power-ups, just sheer skill.
Our little bug has come so far!
This is one thing I love about Worm. Its focus isn’t on raw power, it’s always on creativity and skill.
Raw power from fictional characters doesn’t impress me much on its own, and straight power-ups in some works don’t mean anything.
But in Worm, even when a protagonist does get a big ol’ power-up, it’s in a way that doesn’t make you go “oh, his darkness is stronger now, neat”, but rather “ooh, he can borrow powers from the people in his darkness now, that’s interesting“. It changes up how he can contribute in a way that can’t just be expressed in meaningless numbers.
And in line with the meaninglessness of those numbers, any given fight in Worm is a lot more engaging when you go into it thinking “how will Skitter solve this puzzle” rather than “can Skitter be more powerful than her enemies”. In a lot of cases, she isn’t, but where some genres would have her lose and then show her training to become more powerful for a rematch, here instead we get to see her flex her creativity and win against the odds suggested by raw power.
With Taylor, we see her gradually get slightly stronger with her power, sure, but the slightly growing range isn’t nearly as important as the skills and tricks she picked up along the way, and her growing creativity. Like you say, 15.9 showcases a lot of this beautifully. 🙂
Maxima is like a combination of Alexandria and Purity, and Anvil is like a better Assault. But even the average super is stronger than the average parahuman, because most have flight and/or a basic brute power, which would be single powers in Worm. Halo is of course very powerful by Worm standards, her shield should be able to tank Endbringer blows given what it withheld til now. Now I want to see a crossover where characters from both universes meet, sadly nothing seems written so far 😦
Yeah, Halo seems to be really powerful even by Grrl Power standards, which as you say are a little higher than Worm standards, and she’s only getting started on that skill tree of hers…
Then again, don’t get me started on Chrona.
Very Fast Krixwell Blogging at Incredible Hihg Speed
Yeah, sheesh, I was quite surprised to find that 5.9, a ~4.9k word chapter, only took me about three hours. The Skyrim soundtrack didn’t even finish before I did.
5.10, at ~5.9k, was a little slower, but I also took a food break somewhere in there, so I’m not sure exactly how long it took. Still, 11k words in 9 hours certainly ain’t bad.
I don’t know exactly why this happened – it could be a result of being glad to be back, or a result of the lack of post breaks giving me fewer excuses to take short breaks before continuing, or both, or something entirely different. If we’re lucky, it’s primarily the latter of those two things, in which case it’ll likely keep up. 🙂
Upcoming interlude is the last chapter of arc 15, so looking forward to arc thoughts after that! 🙂
Nice! 😀
Colony has generally been one of the arcs I just haven’t thought about very much, so I’m really thankful for your liveblog slowing things down and forcing me to think harder about it.
*slows it down even more than usual by taking half a year to complete it*
Glad to be able to help! Like I’ve mentioned before, doing this for myself is one of the reasons I liveblog in the first place, so it’s nice to know the benefit can spread out a little too. 🙂
Your wordpress TOC link to arc 8 still links to the arc 6 category.
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Great to have you back! In 15.9 you accidentally copied the same block twice: “Two possibilities, each requiring very different tactics to handle. I set my bugs on her and her alone in the hopes of forcing her hand. Atlas had returned to my side, and I made sure to collect Triumph’s phone before climbing on.”
Whoops! Fixed, thanks. 🙂
In the case of the latter, fixing it led me to notice an interesting thing:
Since I’m on my phone, I had to get my Worm tab to the right chapter (in retrospect I could’ve gone via my liveblog of it) and decided to use the ToC. I very carefully scrolled down to Arc 15 and saw that Interlude 15b was labeled not with “Brian”, but “a guy with the second trigger event”.
I suppose Wildbow decided that “second trigger events happen” is a smaller spoiler than “Brian survives Snare”, which I’m inclined to agree with.
I appreciate this decision, even though I’m carefully avoiding looking at any part of the ToC I haven’t reached anyway (this is the first time I even got close to looking at Arc 15) and I’d still consider “15b is from Brian’s POV” a spoiler until I was reading it.
I follow you via an RSS feed. Is there any reason to stay subscribed to the Tumblr blog, now that the WordPress blog is up and running? I don’t want to miss anything, but there’s not much reason to keep both in my feed, as far as I can tell, right?
I’ve been thinking of maybe using the Tumblr for the sort of info that isn’t useful to archival readers or important enough to require a proper post here – e.g. updates on when you can expect posts, delays, letting you know when I’ve done a session but not finished the chapter, etc.
I’ve also set up a Twitter account which will be for the same thing (posts to WordPress or the Tumblr will both be shared to the Twitter) and which will probably be embedded on a page on this site, like this:
I’m pretty much just working on figuring out where I’ll put that, or if I should just put a link directly to the Twitter page in the header (alongside one to the Tumblr, of course).
Whether any of that is worth keeping the RSS feed for the Tumblr, or adding the one for the Twitter, is up to you.
Welcome back! I still believe your sudden hiatus was a bit too extreme as a reaction to the news, but I’m really glad that you managed to finish the migration just as you wanted, that you’re pumped to continue, and that you’re already enjoying it. “Keep reading, Krixwell Tarly.”
Perhaps it was a tad extreme, but it was founded in a distrust in the continued existence of the site I was on, and a distrust in the site keeping any new content I added, so I really didn’t know how long I could afford to put off the migration. It’s unfortunate, but I found it necessary.
But yeah, feels really good to be done with that. 🙂
I was sent a sizable batch of hilarious Worm memes by namerequired! Thank you! 😛
(I’m sorry, there are way too many for me to transcribe here. Maybe later.)
*shimmy shimmy*
I’m glad to see the fandom gave “Take that, you worm!” the memetic status it deserves for its intense lack of subtlety. 😛
And before you know it your sister is just one big tangle of gay shit.
Atlas is well and good, but be careful about giving Skitter access to an eight-story crustacean!
Galaxy brain: The moral of Worm is “Take that, you worm!”
Lots of fun ones here! 😛
Shortly after seeing all those memes, I also came across this unrelated tweet screenshot on Tumblr:
Pumpkin Spiceotope (@BuckyIsotope):
CAPTAIN AMERICA: *punches guy* Take that villain
CAPTAIN BRITAIN: *punches guy* Take that guvnor
CAPTAIN CANADA: *punches guy* I am so sorry
THE WINTER SOLDIER: *punches Taylor* Take that you worm
Krixwell Liveblogs 