I just came across the word “panacea” in a video about traffic lights… it’s the first time I’ve actually heard it said out loud, and it seems I might’ve been reading/pronouncing it wrong all along.

I’ve been calling Amy Dallon “pan-AY-sha”, rhyming with a large eastern continent and Brian’s sister.

The guy in the video says “pan-a-SEE-a”, rhyming with, uh… “via”?

I suppose the latter is probably the more etymologically justifiable pronunciation, given Greek, but I hope what I’ve been saying is also valid when it’s used in English. Because honestly, “pan-a-SEE-a” just sounds horrible.

…okay, so, looking it up, Wikipedia and Wiktionary support the “pan-a-SEE-a” pronunciation for the English usage meaning a cure-all, but notably, the Greek spelling of the goddess’ name the word derives from is “Πανάκεια” – “Panakeia”.

Google Translate’s Greek TTS pronounces that “pahn-EYE-key-ah”.

How does the fandom usually think/say it when talking about Amy? Is there any word of god on how the characters – especially Amy – say it, and/or how Wildbow says it?

(Y’know, this kind of thing is part of why I specified that Potence, while his name comes from French, pronounces it the way you would the English word with the same spelling. )

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Asks!

First off, some that came directly from the K6BD patron:

1. Best demiurge?

So far I’m thinking Gog-Agog, Queen of Worms. She’s got that fun unhingedness to her, and the worm-based biology is cool.

I also like Big Red, better known as Jagganoth.

2. You didn’t really comment on the visuals of the “prophecy mural” on 4-77, it’s a bit small so you might have to zoom, but see any familiar / unfamiliar faces?

Hmm, let’s see…

We’ve got Zoss at the bottom middle… Above him is presumably-Allison with a bitchin’ red cloak and a crown halo of her own, flanked by Ciocie and an angel who appears to be White Chain. Interesting – that seems to suggest White Chain might find their way back into the party at some point. More peripherally, we have Jagganoth and Mottom, a birdlike being which may be one of the thus-far-unseen Demiurges, and the beggarknight. And whoever those people below Jagganoth are.

I like that Allison appears to be standing on Zoss’… Magus Gate? which in turn seems to be supported on Zoss’ back. Symbolic of the way Zoss helps her succeed him?

3. A FYI, the red-masked character on the book 2 cover is from the original forum comic, I think maybe the only other character besides Allison to make it across.

Ooh, that’s kinda promising. Carrying over suggests they’re interesting to the author.

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Other asks!

About the giant spider math: The 67 AU number must have not accounted for “normal shape”. 1 billion metric tons = 10^15 g, and a black widow weighs ~1g with a body size of ~1 cm (excluding legs). 10^15 cm = ~67 AU, but that just scales the spider lengthwise (or the length of spiders laid end-to-end to equal the mass). Taking the cube root of 10^15 gives us 10^5 cm = 1km for the body size of a proportional spider.

Re: spider volume, the earth’s ocean is estimated to have approximately 300 million cubic miles of water by volume. If you took all that water and pull it all into a tower (say, because you were an ungodly powerful alien hydrokineticist trying to make an elevator home) with a square base of one mile by one mile, it would be 300 million miles tall. If you were to condense that to one foot by one foot at the base, it would be almost one light year. Condensing mass gets crazy.

That guy who did the black widow calculations seems to have done a direct correlation between length and mass. But that’s not right, because mass should vary with *volume*. I calculate that such a spider should only be about 2.5 km in length.

Yeah, these values make a lot more sense.

[meme]

Colin: *unfunny joke*
Dragon: [series of images showing an enormous plane opening up in the front to let out a helicopter, captioned with increasing laughter]

Plot twist: That’s an attack helicopter and it’s headed for Defiant’s position.

Worm: The love story between an AI and a cyborg, constantly interrupted by the bad live decisions of a bullied high-school girl

How rude of the high school girl.

Interesting. I just unintentionally always assume the protagonists will somehow muddle through, even if bad things happen to them. So I assumed Taylor would somehow deal with the dragon-suits, which was easier that I expected. But I never considered how that would look from the outside, and how it would make Dragon feel. She just got her million dollar suits, equipped for fights with kaijus, trashed by a girl with a mere 2 months experience. Is Dragon really as prepared as she thinks she is?

Clearly not for dealing with Skitter, that’s for sure.

But yeah, Skitter’s supposed to be a mere bug compared to some of the threats these things were supposed to go up against, yet she beat them while at type disadvantage against every one of them.

That’s the thing with superpowers, though. They’re so varied and versatile that clean power comparisons are a completely arbitrary and impractical idea most of the time. That’s part of why the PRT gives ratings on a per-classification basis, but even a 1:1 comparison by battle between two capes with the same classification but different ratings shows that it just doesn’t work like that. Skitter would fairly easily beat Regent in a fight, if it came down to it, as long as he didn’t have multiple powered puppets with him.

(This is why I never bother with the numbers when classifying a power.)

I don’t think Colin really appreciates that Dragon lets him modify her code. Sure, some of it is born of pragmatism because she wants those restrictions gone, but she still shows him a massive amount of trust. It’s super intimate and in real life there is no equivalent to trusting someone else to modify your mind, the very thing which makes you you. I’m sure she has backups and safeguards and she is looking over his shoulder, but nevertheless.

There is a near-equivalent, though: Brain neurosurgery. And it’s a really scary thing to go through, I’d imagine, for exactly these reasons.

But let’s keep in mind that Colin, for all that he is a Tinker and probably has some experience with coding for his inventions, is no professional computer neurosurgeon (or “programmer”, as someone less intellectual might say). It’s like trusting your heart surgeon friend to rewire your brain.

At least Colin shows a healthy fear of mucking it up.

Jvgu Xevkjryy cerqvpgvat gur Geniryref rirel fvatyr vagreyhqr, V nz trggvat zber naq zber ulcrq sbe gur zbzrag bs ernyvmngvba va nep friragrra.

Translate here.

Do you think Defiant is successfully pulling off his attempt at Top 10 Anime Redemption Arcs?

He’s in a weird spot. He’s showing only a little remorse for his actions (he’s almost more remorseful over the things I didn’t blame him for) and admits he would do the same thing over again, but his actions were somewhat justifiable for the greater good and he’s been a sincerely good guy since we started seeing his perspective afterwards.

He made mistakes, just like Taylor.

So yeah, I think he’s one of the most redeemed characters here, though he stays in a gray area that fits Worm.

And my case for him being a Vriska is stronger than ever.

Colin is definitively the smartest character; he figured out that you can exploit a loophole in the narrative medium simply by changing your name, enabling a bypass of the one-interlude limit.

Clever indeed!

But hey, he always did have a talent for getting more things (Colin Interludes) into other things (the story) than there should reasonably be room for, too…

Whose Detroit playthrough did you watch? If you weren’t aware, Connor’s actor did several playthroughs and they were awesome.

It was RTGame’s playthrough. Playlist here. 🙂

Connor’s actor playing through the story sounds like fun. I imagine there’s, like, tidbits of behind-the-scenes every time a Connor scene happens?

from LHC, sending this through your screener to be sure it’s okay: there’s a specific Worm character who hasn’t been introduced to you yet that I have now spontaneously fancast as Patton Oswalt

(Context: LHC and I discussed Patton Oswalt recently in a non-Worm context. It was particularly about his voice work, so this might not involve the character’s appearance… Also this is technically spoilers, but Sharks decided to let it be since it was so incredibly vague, and I’m alright with that decision.)

Now you’ve got me picturing the Patton Oswalt characters we discussed – Quibble Pants, Jesse Minecraft and Beta-7 – adapted to Worm… and possibly fused into one hivemind being…

An awkward but snarky hiveminded chatterbox who cares a lot about his friends?

(“No an engel” by benzimo)

Pfffft!

Not to be insensitive, but do you think you could talk with your KSBD Patron about adjusting the schedule of it? Maybe doing fewer pages at a time or switching to biminthly or something? To be frank, you update rarely enough that monthly KSBD has basically cut your worm output in half and it’s just kind of a shame.

Hmm. I don’t think fewer pages at a time would have a noticeable impact if not for my already slower-than-usual speed, which I don’t believe is primarily caused by the K6BD blogs. Hopefully the upcoming few weeks will help me get back on track with that.

Bimonthly doesn’t work well with how Patreon works.

In any case, this has been a big experiment from the start. I think whenever the current setup I have with the K6BD patron ends (one way or another), I will probably remove the custom liveblog tier and refocus my liveblogging on Worm, rather than begin another bonus liveblog series. (Maybe I’ll replace it with a reaction video tier? That would take up significantly less of my time.)

Long-term, what are you expecting of Worm? It does seem that Coil isn’t so big in the long run, so what do you expect will fuel conflict after him?

The obvious answers are Cauldron and the Final Threat, but not necessarily immediately. We’ve been building up Cauldron’s importance recently to the point where almost every Interlude touches on them in some way, and when the Undersiders decide it’s time to take down Coil (such as if Coil refuses to honor his deal with Taylor), that’ll mess with Cauldron’s plans.

Cauldron aren’t the type to come after Skitter and co. for revenge, but they are likely to try to cut their losses by putting the Undersiders in Coil’s position. Suddenly they have to deal with running a city without Coil’s help and guidance and while being manipulated from the shadows.

Eventually that should come to the Undersiders’ attention, but in the meantime, they will likely have to deal with other threats from outside Brockton Bay as well as figure out how to fund their control of the city (assuming they don’t end up with Coil’s money). Perhaps the scope will expand outwards a bit, too – we’re headed towards a planet-scale threat finale, but most of the story’s conflict is still on the city level. That’s tiny, in the grand scheme of things.

Whatever happens ought to be interesting, in any case.