Sharks:
Sent in by “fixed your map (fixedyourmap@map.com)”.they say
“fixed your map”
Oh, yeah, that’s right… Halvdan Sivertsen lives in Bodø!
That was such good timing. 😛
I actually love it from a writing standpoint. We finally get a thorough explanation of why the aftermath is what sucks with the Simurgh, and that’s when she fucks off and leaves behind an eerie and extremely ominous silence. It’s a really effective way for her to sign off and put the reader in the mindset of the characters.
I was expecting more of a reaction to the “it keeps happening” in this chapter. Is that not a hip cool meme anymore?
I guess I was too swept up in the drama of the moment for that to really register. Now, though, I can’t help picturing the Simurgh falling down an endless staircase. 😛
Or pushing someone (Jess?) down it, I suppose, but the Simurgh being the one falling is funnier to me.
So now that you have a bit more context, any new thoughts regarding the Simurgh intercepting Amy’s message to Dragon?
Mmmm… not really. I probably would have some if I hadn’t been spoiled on most of this reveal since before that actually happened. Though I suspect I would’ve started theorizing about it during that scene, so who knows, maybe my new thoughts would just be “Called it!”
Sharks (possibly quoting the submitter of the first one):
Now it’s your turn.
Can’t it be motherfucking both things?
With villains like the Simurgh, it can be hard to draw a line between what is and what isn’t part of their plot, even for them. If they’re powerful enough, you can find yourself in a situation where literally everything that happens is by their design, even though the characters have their own wills and motivations.
I love it. Have I mentioned that omniscient villains are among my favorite?
(In fact, between this, one of the few things I know about Pact, and to a lesser extent Marquis, I know Wildbow has separately touched on many of the different things I love about one of my favorite antagonists in any fiction: Doc Scratch from Homestuck.)
On the subject of whether or not Cauldron is responsible for the majority of Earth-Bet capes, you might want to have another look at Alexandria’s interlude, because that point is specifically brought up there. Look at the conversation starting with “It’s not my proposal. Alexandria?”. Cauldron clients may have outnumbered natural triggers at the start, but the rate of triggers events was growing way faster than Cauldron could keep up with.
The Doctor cut in, “And I’m producing more heroes than villains. For now, the proportion favors us, and you’ve been able to keep the criminal element in line. For the most part. But even as I expand my operations, I have come to the realization that I can only produce so much. And the rate of parahuman growth is expanding. The next twenty years are projected to produce a total number of six hundred and fifty thousand people with powers, worldwide.”
Alexandria spoke, “I’ve looked at the numbers, at the growth, the trends, checked and double checked them. Even if the rate decreases, we’re going to get outpaced and we’re going to get outpaced hard. The people with trigger events will outnumber the Doctor’s clients, and we’ll wind up with three to ten villains for every hero that steps forward.”
Ooh, right, there we have it.
This also kind of suggests that Cauldron would focus their efforts towards one world for the sake of filling it with heroes, but this is when Legend and Eidolon are present, so the Doctor is likely misrepresenting some of her intentions and moral compass as being better than they really are.
By Oriscratch.
Ooh, this is really cool, nice work!
I feel like one of Wildbow’s strengths as a writer is his ability to make it clear how utterly terrifying nearly every superpower can be if wielded by somebody malicious enough, and that the section of 17.5 from “There’s got to be something-” to That silence was broken when Jess began to sob. demonstrates it pretty well. If it wasn’t so spoilery it would make a good sample to show off to anybody you’re trying to convince to read Worm.
Yeah, I’d have to agree with that. The powers aren’t usually the problem, it’s the way they’re used, and the way they’re used can be fucking horrifying.
Hey go back and read the three words after ‘“I don’t get it,” Luke said.’
This is the real reason Jess took the elevator in 17.1.
👍
…
👍
By CPericardium.
“We will build a seawall, and Leviathan will pay for it.”
“I could shoot Skitter in a burning building and I wouldn’t lose henchpeople.”
“Despite the constant negative press coilfefe”
“She does have a very nice figure. I’ve said if she weren’t my pet, perhaps I’d be dating her.”
“Jemily Piggot is disgusting, I mean, both inside and out. You take a look at her, she’s a slob, she talks like a truck driver. …If I were running the PRT, I’d fire Jemily. I mean, I’d look at her right in that fat, ugly face of hers, I’d say, ‘Jemily, you’re fired.’ We’re all a little chubby, but Jemily’s just worse than most of us. But it’s not the chubbiness – Jemily is a very unattractive person, both inside and out. Jemily’s a person that’s very lucky to have her girlfriend. And she better be careful, or I’ll send one of my friends over to pick up her girlfriend – why would she stay with Jemily if she had another choice?”
“And he referred to my hands, if they are small, something else must be small. I guarantee you there’s no problem. I guarantee. I assure you the snake on my costume is a better match.”
“I don’t know Max Anders. I don’t believe I have ever met him. I’m pretty sure I didn’t meet him. And I just don’t know anything about him.”
“I watched when the Protectorate HQ came tumbling down. And I watched on the Boardwalk, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down.”
“She had the height, she had the beauty, she had the black and white striped skin – the whole thing. She was crazy, but these are minor details.”
“You know, it really doesn’t matter what the media write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass. Isn’t that right, pet?”
“Scion may have had a bad past. Who knows, you know? He may have had some, I think, accusations made. Didn’t he have a couple things in his past?”
“This was the originally projected path of Leviathan in its early stages. As you can see, almost all models predicted him to go through Massachusetts also hitting New Hampshire and Vermont. I accept the Fake News apologies!”
*visiting the Ship Graveyard* “Whose boat is this boat?”
…
Point is, good art. 😛 I love how done everyone looks, especially Dinah.
“Wasn’t Professor Haywire from Earth-Bet?” WoG is that he was. And that he was also from Earth Aleph. And another unnamed Earth. Because he was actually three alternates version of the same person who triggered with a Tinker power and got their minds interconnected through dimensions. Powers can be fun like that.
Oooh, that’s pretty good.
I have a bone to pick with you. Your “Older Posts” button always says “Older Posts” regardless of chronological sorting.
Huh. That’s strange. I wonder if there’s some way to change that, perhaps with CSS. I might look into that.
(as in the previous part of this post was written Dec 9, while this is being written Jan 12)
Hi. Happy new decade!
I believe I owe you all an explanation on the blog proper, especially those of you who haven’t been following along on Twitter.
The main reason for my recent absence was technical difficulties. The battery on my laptop got busted in early December, and while I was able to use the laptop while it was connected by cable, it only took a slight twitch of the cable to cut power to it completely, which already made me lose a few of those Trump quote jokes up there (because clearly what we needed was more of those).
I decided I couldn’t take the risk of that happening during one of the K6BD posts, so I decided to hold off on liveblogging until I got a replacement battery. But I was underestimating how long it would take for the battery to make it from China to Norway through the Christmas season. (Probably should’ve just gone to a local electronics store, but that would be a lot more expensive.)
About a month after ordering the battery, it finally arrived… a week ago. Thing is, it arrived just as I got sick. Nothing too bad, just a flu as far as I can tell, but it still knocked me out of commission for the week. I’m still coughing, but it’s getting significantly better now, so it’s time to get back to the blog.
The biggest consequence all of this has for the blog going forward: I never got to do the K6BD post for December, and since I did do a Worm post in December before all this battery business kicked off, I do owe the patron a K6BD post for January as well. As a result, we’re doing two K6BD posts in a row before returning to Worm.
(Note: If this means there’s no Worm in January, there won’t be K6BD in February. This is a consequence of how my Patreon works that I’ve liked from the start specifically because of how it prevents a situation like this one from trapping me in a loop of K6BD debt.)
Now, before I move on to Allison, I do believe I have a month’s worth of asks to catch up on.
Asks! Again!
By crabbmanboi
Leviathan-chan: It’s NOT LIKE I wanna D-Drown You or anything! B-BAKA!
A cutiepie!
I like how true it stays to Leviathan while embracing the anime schoolgirl style. It’s a well-balanced gijinka. 🙂
So if Levvy is a tsundere, what dere types might the other two be? I’m gonna tentatively say the Simurgh would be a kuudere or a sadodere, and I’m gonna ignore all reason and assign Behemoth as a 45-foot obsidian dandere because that contrast is hilarious.
(In the process of writing that comment, I found a hilariously vandalized wiki article. It might be fixed by the time you get to read this, I don’t know, but right now a bunch of the sadoderes in this list are from Spongebob and its many new spinoffs, such as Queen Spongebob’s Blade.)
*krixwell* more like *wemissyouwell* amirite? Seriously, hope everything’s going okay!
I’ve got my battery and I’m beginning to Getwell, so yeah, things are looking up. 🙂
Merry Christmas, Sharks and Krixwell!
Merry Krixwell!
Happy New Year, Sharks and Krixwell!
Merry belated Krixwell and a happy new shark, everyone!
(“Merry Krixwell” is actually one of my recurring Christmas nicknames on Discord… though sometimes it’s Krixmas instead.)
If your heart’s not in it anymore, just tell us.
It’s not like that. I wouldn’t string you along if it did end up like that, but I really do enjoy liveblogging. It’s mostly just become harder to fit into my schedule.
hello sir do you believe that sans undertale could beat skitter parahuman in a fight
Hmm. I’m leaning towards no.
The reason being that Sans has very little Hope and relies on dodging and powerful attacks. He’s a glass cannon, and Taylor has plenty of ways to prevent him from dodging.
Sans’ other advantage besides his damage output is that he’s made of bone and doesn’t have reason to care too much if stuff gets into his mouth or countless other holes, leaving Taylor with nowhere to strike directly with her bugs. But the thing is, enemies that no-sell stinging and the like is something Taylor has lots of experience with. She knows exactly how to deal with that by now.
Which means the outcome of this battle largely depends on Taylor’s survival of Sans’ attacks. It’s hard to tell what the exact nature of Sans’ magic attacks would be compared to other things Taylor has endured, but she has much better armor than Chara does in the Sans battle (even if her LOVE is lower), and has tanked hits from Mannequin and blasts from Legend (in the latter case, they were in “thousand cuts” mode, but still). She also has a dodge bonus from her swarm warning her of incoming attacks before they hit. (Gaster Blasters might be an issue as they’d lower her swarm count and be harder to dodge than the bones.)
I wonder if Sans is light enough to lift and drop, using her bugs to draw silk between his ribs…
AI shenanigans
13 of 55 dril_gpt2 tweets I’ve assigned re:Worm and Ward:
So before I continue to the rest of this ask, a little context. This is from LHC, whom I’d talked to about this on Discord before he sent in the ask.
@dril_gpt2 is a neural network robot trained to reproduce the genius of legendary Twitter user @dril, the latter of whom is known for such beautiful quotes as “IF THE ZOO BANS ME FOR HOLLERING AT THE ANIMALS I WILL FACE GOD AND WALK BACKWARDS INTO HELL”. It’s remarkably hard to tell them apart sometimes.
In fact, let’s show the relevant bits of the conversation:
[Discord]
LHC:
Just assigned 55 dril_gpt2 tweets to characters from Worm and WardKrixwell:
[custom laughing emote]
That’s a mood
*goes looking through the account a little more than he had time for at first, with his own characters and characters from Worm and Homestuck and probably other things in mind*LHC:
ooh, wonder if you’ll hit any of the same Worm ones[…]
LHC:
of the 55 tweets I picked out
– 2 of them are meta, and one of the meta choices is not at all spoilery for you while the other one is quasispoilery for you
– of the remaining 53 that are for actual characters, ~13 of them are non-spoilery for you and ~40 of them are spoilery for you although I’d probably cut that down to 11 non-spoilery ones to exercise maximum caution
(so actually 11 non-spoilery ones, 2 quasi-spoilery ones, 40 spoilery ones)[…]
LHC:
Gonna send you the 12 choices I’ve deemed non-spoilery (1 about Wildbow, 11 about characters) through your inbox[…]
LHC:
Wait, miscounted somehow, I’m sending you 13Krixwell:
It’s a baker’s 12 choices[…]
Krixwell:
Emma Barnes, TV series edition https://twitter.com/dril_gpt2/status/1210131637650042881?s=19LHC:
and you have stumbled upon one of my choices
Okay, with that out of the way, let’s take a look at LHC’s choices!
Wildbow
https://twitter.com/dril_gpt2/status/1193996066473103360
i wrote the post. sorry everyone.
I might forgive you some day.
Emma
https://twitter.com/dril_gpt2/status/1210131637650042881
You fucking worm. Youre a foul, stinking rat. Fanart is pure garbage.
(this one was fairly obvious, really, no wonder it was the only one I connected to Worm)
Skitter, pre-Leviathan
https://twitter.com/dril_gpt2/status/1209285224292651009
my followers are wasting my time by asking me stupid shit like “where is my worm hole” and “where is my piss hole”
LHC, I think you’ve got this one backwards, unless Leviathan is the one asking and he’s asking about his own. Otherwise, this is Leviathan, pre-Skitter.
Bitch
https://twitter.com/dril_gpt2/status/1210408388036874241
you know society is ASS-FUCKED when people spend tens of millions of dollars to maim and disfigure their dogs in an effort to appear more “INTP”
As an INTP, I’m with Bitch on this one.
Panacea
https://twitter.com/dril_gpt2/status/1211711700526936064
im going to dress up like a nurse and perform emergency C-sections on the street to build self respect
Don’t forget to bring Greenfire to close the hole.
Coil, on Dinah
https://twitter.com/dril_gpt2/status/1200049453626843136
Everything you say is true and good. no exceptions
I don’t know about this assignment but at least it’s clearly not the other way around.
Miss Militia
https://twitter.com/dril_gpt2/status/1205101241119825922
the idea that i would ever lose my shit on the computer board game “minesweeper” is one of the most despicable maladies ive ever suffered
Oof. I honestly think she’d be really good at minesweeper though…
Skitter, post-Leviathan
https://twitter.com/dril_gpt2/status/1209252343776235520
to the guy who paid me to distribute free toilet paper to the homeless in my hometown: thanks for 00000000000 \000 \000 .
A nice visual representation of toilet paper or a weird robotic way of saying “nothing”? Your choice.
Jack Slash
https://twitter.com/dril_gpt2/status/1210100935277645824
the human mind… is a funny little thing… called A Mind
we live in a society
Crawler
https://twitter.com/dril_gpt2/status/1199988804121067521
my ass has become highly immunized against fungal infections, by ingesting fantastic amounts of kfc
You do you, Crawler.
Cherish
https://twitter.com/dril_gpt2/status/1203698246654103553
sending my most powerful kiss to any image of blue jeans because i just want to die by suicide because my brain and body are FUCKED
I have to admit Cherish x Piggot is not a ship I had considered.
Dragon
https://twitter.com/dril_gpt2/status/1199251445188612097https://twitter.com/dril_gpt2/status/1199251445188612097
…the US Navy’s newest computer chip can now program itself to ‘Play Pokemon’ and evolve into a Pokemon with it ….
Considering the implication that Dragon might have played Portal 2 or at least know memes from it… there’s a lot of fun to be had with this idea.
Simurgh
https://twitter.com/dril_gpt2/status/1195081720116207616
saddened to see that people woud gravitate towards gaming as a career path, rather than exclusively gravitate towards gaming during a time of crisis
At last, her true motivations revealed!
IF THE ANGELS STEAL MY BOYFRIEND FOR TRYING TO FUCK ME I WILL FACE THE CONQUERING KING AND FALL BACKWARDS INTO HEAVEN
Krixwell Liveblogs 