[Discord]
Sharks:
Finally able to actually read it —Wait, what’s that about a minor’s forehead? I think I’m forgetting something there.
That’s in reference to her battle w/ Bitch against the E88.
When she uses the swarm clones for the first time, she collapses her swarm onto one of the E88 members and cuts him with her knife, particularly along the forehead.Krixwell:
Ohhh, right! Damn, that’s a throwbackSharks:
Yep!
Threw me for a second too, reading along
Asks about the hiatus
There are a lot of these that aren’t relevant to answer anymore, so I’m going to skim through them a bit and respond collectively at the end.
You’re still alive, right?
Still having issues?
Sorry if this is a bother, but could we have an update on how you’re doing?
How long until more Worm reviews?
So, how things going for you?
I hope the blog isn’t dead. It’s pretty much the only in-depth Worm liveblog left. All the other ones I can find are unfinished and abandoned.
I know it’s April Fool’s, but that being the first thing posted in two and a half months kinda hurts me in my soul
I enjoyed the April Fools blog (yes, it got me), and I’m definitely looking forward to more livebloggigoodness. Stay well, be safe, and Happy Easter (if that’s a thing you even sorta celebrate (if not, have some candy anyway)).
Miss you! Still hoping you come back!
Hope you’re doing alright! I miss seeing your blogs ♥
Seriously, you alive? It’s been a while with no news.
Hi, sorry to bother you if things aren’t goin well, but is everyhing alright? You haven’t posted anything in a while.
How are things going for you these days? Hope you held up okay. Things are looking better!
Hey Krixwell, you doing ok?
Hope this picks up again someday!
Hope you’re doing well dude
Is Krixwell doing alright? 😦
I’m back and I’m doing well and I am so sorry if I made any of you worry. I’ve had a liveblogger just outright vanish on her audience (and even on her screener, just… totally gone) before and I know how bad that feels. I’m… not going to apologize for the hiatus itself, but I am genuinely sorry for not communicating better about it over the months.
I also want to thank all of you for sending messages like these, or messages in general. I would not make it this far in Worm without asks, because the reminder that there are real people on the other side of the screen who care about this little project of mine is incredibly motivating.
If the arc thoughts are a stumbling block because you don’t know what to say, if it helps you could just not do them? I’m sure the majority of us wouldn’t mind not having them this time if it would help get you back into the swing of things. Maybe starting the next liveblog will help your brain out.
Hope you’re still doing ok. As far as the arc thoughts hang up, this arc ends very abruptly, on a cliffhanger, in the middle of a fight. You could definitely wait on arc thoughts until after the fight or the next arc is over.
Assuming the Arc 18 arc thoughts are still where the block is, maybe just skip them? I think you can safely assume people won’t min if it means that the read continues.
This is ultimately what I ended up independently deciding on, but it’s still nice to see there was support for it before I did it.
holy shit you’re back
I’m back!!
Krixwell!!!! I missed you and I’m glad you took time for yourself even if you technically could’ve been liveblogging. Here’s to better mental health in 2022 and more Worm shenanigans!
*raises his glass of champagne soda in toast* To 2022 and Worm!
Thanks for returning! I was checking your website, like, every week) My life was kinda rough last year, I had a breakup and was depressed, your return is actually one of the biggest positive highlights of last several months for me. Damn, Worm content actually makes me feel nostalgic. I should probably do a reread and finally read a sequel.
I’m sorry to hear that! I hope my little shenanigans here can continue to help in whatever way they can, and that you have a better 2022.
Hey Krix, I assume if you’re reading this you’re back to live logging, I want you to know that plenty of us are still here, you needed time and that’s fine. Welcome Back (Alexa play ‘With Arms Wide Open’ by Creed). I guess I should have a question or something, Why are the K6BD and stuff still in the Worm Category, is it for people with alerts set up or something (I’m new to these kinds of setups)?
Thank you!
Re: K6BD, the reason it’s in the Worm category is that rather than “everything directly Worm-related”, the Worm category was intended to cover an era of the blog, allowing chronological overview of everything I did here while reading Worm. Meanwhile the K6BD blogs are classed as a type of bonus post.
Conflating “Worm content” and “Worm-era content” may have been a mistake, though. I may do some restructuring at some point to create a separate Worm content category.
Other asks
Since you shared the description of Photopia the patron sent you, would you mind sharing the descriptions for the other list items? For the ones I already know, I want to see how they were presented to you, and for the ones I don’t know, maybe I’ll be convinced to pick them up.
No problem! I still have the file on my desktop, and I don’t see any reason to keep it private. I would have made each of these public if I picked them anyway, like I did with the Photopia one.
[K6BD patron’s list of one-off proposals]
1. “Chili and the Chocolate Factory: Fudge Revelation” chapter 1 by gazemaize (2020) – 5919 words – this is a Willy Wonka fanfic / sequel which I think you would enjoy since you’ve hinted at being a bit of a wonka scholar. Won’t say anything about it other than that it’s a wild ride and the first chapter is mostly non-horrifying. Just for reference, the entire fic is 23 chapters / 85K words.
2. “Death Billiards” – anime short film – 25 minutes – Madhouse (2015). My favorite short film of any sort. This one’s a bit obscure because there was never an official English release (or any other language besides Japanese) so unless you’ve learned Japanese offscreen this would be a fansub thing, fortunately, there’s a decent-quality fansub on YouTube so that would be the path of least resistance. The premise/setting was later expanded into a TV anime “Death Parade” which is also good and significantly less obscure (even has an English dub), but I think starting with the film is a much better idea and I will fight anybody who disagrees.
3. “Fine Structure” first 2 or 3 chapters – by qntm / Sam Hughes (2006). This is a highly ambitious sci-fi web serial by the author of the somewhat better-known web serial “Ra”, who also wrote a bunch of well-regarded SCP Foundation stuff. Opening chapters seem like standalone short stories until everything starts to tie together. First chapter is a very short prologue, chapter 1+2 is 5311 words which is a bit short but adding chapter 3 would bring it up to 9233 words which would be pretty long so either way is fine with me. As web serials go, this is a baby at a mere ~100K words I think?
4. “American Vandal” season 1 episode 1 – Netflix original series (2017). First episode is 35 minutes long but end credits could be safely skipped. This is an odd choice but liveblogging it would be funny as hell and the less you know the funnier it would be. That’s really all there is to say on the matter.
5. “Photopia” by Adam Cadre (1998) – this is a long shot because it’s outside the scope of your Patreon guidelines but I’m throwing it in anyway for your consideration. You’re familiar with the concept of “text adventures” I’m sure. You might not be aware that people have just kept on making them this entire time, but they’re all artsy & pretentious now and you have to call them “interactive fiction” or people get upset (god help you if you call them ‘games’). Anyway, this is one of them, often regarded as one of the greatest of all time, or at least an ideal starting point to the genre, and I’m in general agreement. This one is very short – likely under an hour for a normal first-time playthrough, obviously slower if you’re liveblogging it but I think the time investment would be pretty similar to what you’ve been doing. This one is basically pure narrative, no real puzzles of any substance, so you’re not likely to get stuck at any point (maybe one point if you’re not paying attention). In the author’s own words: “Game or story? Story; almost no gamelike elements. Easy or difficult? Easy to make progress, but may be confusing at first. Good for newcomers? Yes.” Can be played through a web browser but there’s a slightly enhanced version (very neat) that would require installing a Glulx interpreter, a safe and painless process.
I hope you find something you like!
The hot new fandom meme / headcanon is that Shatterbird destroyed the PRT coffee machine and many of the subsequent events in Brockton Bay are a consequence of that. Many tired / irritable people, yes? Have fun with that.
Pfft.
There’s also Dave from accounting who narrowly dodged the glass-splosion by dropping to the floor, only to get covered in hot coffee and trigger with coffee powers.
About Gregor playing the role of the client – it wasn’t a role, it was genuine. Back in Gregor’s interlude (Interlude 5) it was mentioned that Gregor has been taking a smaller share of his earnings from the group and that money went toward investigating case 53s. Which led to Shamrock, Dealer and now this. So Gregor really is the client hiring Faultline’s group here.
Oh yeah, that was a thing.
Though as far as I remember, I didn’t mean to suggest he was roleplaying, as in being facetiously in that role. I literally meant he was the one with the role of client. I think. Been a while.
Oh damn, somehow I’d never realized the significance of Dr Foster’s password. Good catch.
Who needs six words when you can have one password?
There’s so much unstated backstory in that one password alone and I kind of love it.
Maybe Shamrock likes that Gregor wears fishnet…
Spitfire: Can’t believe he walks around like that. [gags a little] You can see everything.
Shamrock, licking her lips: Yes. You can see everything…
You talking about the Classification Ratings is so frustrating, because you get so close, yet so far in understanding what they actually are and thus how they’re useful. And no, I don’t consider this spoiler.
When you say ratings, you mean specifically the numbers, right?
See, I do think they’re useful. The problem is we the audience lack most of the reference points the characters have for actually making use of them, and that combined with the difficulties of measuring the strength of a power in the first place (due to the sheer variety and versatility of different powers) makes it hard to internalize what they actually mean most of the time.
Obviously a 10 is strong in that power. How strong does that mean? Fuck if I know most of the time. That goes double for anything on the middle of the scale.
On top of it all, the ratings are applied to classifications that are often not based on the actual details of the power, but on the usage in combat — Bitch has a Master rating despite her power technically being more along the lines of Breaker or Shaker, which means her Master rating is presumably based on how well she utilizes the dogs in combat, not on the as-close-to-objective-as-you-can-get “strength” of the power she applies to them.
But it’s useful to the characters because they know what a Tinker 6 does. They know roughly what to expect from a Shaker 9.
It’s also useful to Wildbow, I’d imagine, for keeping track of the general power level of so many characters. He’s probably got it all written down somewhere, which means he too has a much greater pool of references than we do.
So yes, I question the usefulness of the ratings sometimes, but mostly to us.
Here’s how the arc’s interludes were actually numbered on the table of contents: 18.x, 18.y, 18.z, 18.z, 18.z. (Contrast with arc 15 which went 15.x, 15.y, 15.z, 15.x)
Pfffft. This is why you start on A! Even 18.x, 18.y, 18.z, 18.a, 18.b would be better than this.
Character tags: Abhorror, Charlatan, Gross, Scurry, Temblor, Vizier.
The clones tagged this time were Abhorror, Charlatan, Gross, Scurry, Temblor, and Vizier. Care to guess who is who?
Oh my cod I kind of called one of them in the middle of the hiatus, didn’t I?
I did name this track as an alternative to “Skitter”, after all…
Let’s see, for the rest of them:
- Vizier is clearly Regent.
- Googling the word “temblor” gives me a list of recent earthquakes so I’m gonna say that’s Tecton.
- Grace’s clones being called Gross is just delightful.
- I wanna say Abhorror is Grue, because, well, the original grues are horrors.
- Which leaves Charlatan… I can’t find a sixth type of clone besides the dogs, bugs and bacteria, but Sharks said another ask did list who was who (held back so I could try on my own). The already absurd and impractical idea that formed in my head just now of Tattletale being replaced by a clone over the course of the battle without anyone noticing would make that list a spoiler. Hmm.
Echidna was a popular fan name that Wildbow decided to canonize.
Huh, really? It’s a well-picked one, then. It fits so well in so many ways that it’s hard to believe Greek Echidna wasn’t a part of the design from the beginning. The only reason I just noticed that now was because I finally looked up Greek Echidna and learned more about her, and the fattening that has the potential to make Noelle snakelike in the long run has been there since the start.
“Just look at what Victor can pull off […]”. I only remember him getting his ass kicked by the Undersiders without putting up much of a fight and then making steady progress on cracking the encryption on the stolen data (but without actually getting concrete results or big breakthroughs or anything). Have I forgotten a scene where Victor actually did something impressive? I can’t even remember him doing anything successfully really.
…you know what, that’s fair.
In the comments of this chapter, Wildbow said Noelle’s issue actually is anorexia. Which is weird, not just because of the vomiting aspect of the power that you pointed out, but also Migration 17.2 contained such an obvious bulimia hint (the five paragraphs starting with ‘Something nearby screeched’ and ending with ‘not even lucid’, if you’re curious). A lot of people pick up on the hints of it being an eating disorder before reading her interlude, but that section ensures nobody guesses the right one.
About the “disease”- bulimia fits her power more, but anorexia fits better into what she says about herself and into Simurgh’s manipulations. She says she picks at her food and Marisa gets on her case about eating – indicating she isn’t really eating much, which is anorexia. As for Simurgh, Noelle was shown visions of the worst moments. If she’s anorexic, she wouldn’t want to eat properly. Like for example finding excuses to only eat (or drink) half the Cauldron vial instead of the full thing.
“also it’s bulimia, not anorexia, isn’t it. Dammit, her whole thing is eating things and vomiting them back up! Of fucking course she’s bulimic!” Or maybe it was anorexia, and her power “solved” it by making it super bulimia instead!
Huh. That is incredibly weird.
It’s interesting to look at the clone behaviors from Echidna’s POV, since outside of the inherently hostile context, they seem to be weirdly… in character? The Skitter clone even has enough normalacy to smile and be worried about Noelle, and the Alec clone was seemingly just as snarky, so they’re just… inherently made to be hyper hostile to the original and friendly to Noelle with no other mental changes, which is odd
I like the way it was described at one point, that their “priorities” get flipped around. But yeah, this seems like a good way of looking at it too. Seems like the power of a girl whose friends were all assholes…
Whoops I forgot that Krixwell didn’t want to know the names of clones. Sorry about that, and I hope that you had a better memory than I did, Sharks!
You’re good, as far as I recall the rule of thumb I settled on was that their existence and powers need to not be spoilery. I do like comparing how I name them (dumb but unique per clone) vs how Wildbow names them (more serious and same name for each).
Why is Noelle having flashbacks? What is her “other half” that she refers to, which seems to do things autopilot during the flashbacks? Also, the September Blues song reminded me of two Avery Brothers songs, November Blue and Denouncing November Blue.
Was this sent before I finished her Interlude? I feel that answered this pretty well. The “other half” seems to be her passenger, seemingly an incubating Dandelion that landed in the wrong head and is salty about it.
I’m also not sure what you’re referring to by “the September Blues song”.
Wildbow actually made his own April Fool’s chapter for once. It’s for [one of the next WB books. can’t remember if you want the titles] though.
Ooh, that’s fun! Embrace the silly!
Re: future book titles, I don’t mind knowing them. He’s writing the Pact sequel briefly known as Poof now, right? I forget what it ended up being called when he changed it.
I’m confused by something you said about The Simurgh, could you recap what you know about her (and also your theories about her)?
Alright, let’s see:
- The Simurgh is the “youngest” Endbringer.
- She first appeared over a village in Switzerland sometime after 1996. (I forget specific years all the time but I just saw something reminding me that 1996 was when Leviathan showed up.) People from this village went on to spread misfortune.
- Her powers include but are possibly not limited to:
- Flight
- Telekinesis
- Standard Endbringer toughness, but weaker than the other two
- Telepathic noise
- Telepathic flashback inception
- Disturbing signals
- Detailed (near-)omniscience and future awareness covering multiple realities
- The last one allows her to tell exactly what she needs to do to cause the most damage and best further the Endbringers’ goals in the long term, allowing tiny adjustments to snowball into greater events. Much of the plot since Arc 5 or so has had her influence on it, with the placement of the Travelers in Brockton Bay, and Echidna’s rampage and whatever it leads to were likely some of her major goals.
- This ability is vulnerable to interference by other seers, such as Dinah. The reverse also applies; the Simurgh’s interference can throw off Dinah’s numbers.
- Given when you’re asking it’s likely you’re thinking about my comment about Imp affecting the Simurgh. My thinking there is that if Imp’s power works on the Simurgh, some of her planning might be thrown off by her omniscience not accounting for Imp’s presence. This on top of seers like Dinah could be part of the key to subverting her plans down the line, and Regent might even start beating the Simurgh in their chess-by-mail games.
Picturey stuff
“Probably Getting Waaaaasted”, by CPericardium
Where were you when Oddvar Brå broke his staff?
That Contessa shrug in the background has great potential as a Discord emote. Good stuff.
Original art by VanillaBean_MTG, editing by Amargosamountain.
You know what, I’d watch it.
adslk;jasl;kdjgals;kdgjas;lkdgj meme seen on a Worm Discord
[edited opening to Gestation 1.1]
A young woman sits in a crowded classroom. It just so happens that today, the 8th of April, 2011, is this young woman’s birthday. Though it was fifteen years ago she was given life, it is only today she will be given a name. What will the name of this young woman be?
> Enter name.
[STINKBUG BEESWAX]
[TRY AGAIN, SMARTASS]
High art by CPericardium
These are really high quality pieces, but you just know these are some of the tamer ones in his catalogue. The Tinglers of Earth Bet would certainly include ones about things like Endbringers, monstrous C53s, Oni Lee’s doomed selves, Tinkertech sex toys and a lot of anthropomorphized powers. Notably a lot of capes can relate to his bestseller “Pounded In The Butt By My Own Butt Pounding Power”.
Under Tattletale’s leadership, Coil’s former assets have a dedicated Tingler budget.
to be fair, they really shouldn’t have picked this hotel to stay at
Four out of five stars, would get brutally attacked at again.
“Local Trump points a young boy towards his hotel room”, by VikungaVikunga
This is a significant improvement to the movie, certainly.
by CPericardium
Contessa: (pleading emoji)
Alexandria: What the fuck is (pleading emoji) use your words I don’t speak bottom
🥺 pleeeease learn to speak bottom ahajslhflahsh 🥺
by glowspiders
Some love for Fugly Bob’s!
Interesting that Parian gets to join the full time Undersiders in this shot. Nice.
by comfortable-regret
Skitter: I don’t need friends, they disappoint me,”
I get the sense that this is a reference I don’t understand, but that is still a quality expression in panel 1, and I like the little antennae on her costume in panel 2.
by beleg_tal
Leet Plays Minecraft (Part 1): Check out this epic redstone setup, took me nearly an hour this morni…
Leet Plays Minecraft (Part 2): This stupid piston thing just won’t work no matter what I do adsfads…
Beautiful.
For those who don’t do Minecraft, redstone is basically electric engineering within the game, and that first thumbnail? That’s what a “simple” computer looks like in Minecraft, and it usually takes significantly longer than an hour to build.
Meanwhile in the second thumbnail, everything would work fine if the piston (the top block) was one block further down or the redstone line fed into the second block in the pillar instead of the bottom block.
by CPericardium under the alias Pervycardium
コンテッサは壁ドンに全然整わなかったです。
Tattletale blowing up Coil’s base.
Such a waste of an awesome evil lair.
“The Locker” by AdaptionVFX
This is damn high quality, even when accidentally watched with inverted colors. Excellent work on the parts of everyone involved! Could really feel the scene.
“glory girl in wormfic be like” by Pericardium
Oh, hey, Ames. Oh, me? Just beating up Nazis and random villains helping old grannies across the street, the usual. What’s up with you?
[Discord]
Sharks:
And for the final media posts, a VERY special piece of art by a VERY special artist.
“Summer Is”, drawn by J.C. McCrae as part of a first grade assessment!
Heh, man knew what he was about early!
And he’s not wrong. Summer is… overrated.
Although it’s been way better since I got my insectophobia under control, early in the liveblog’s run. Hypnotism works, if you suffer from a phobia or similar issues, I recommend giving it a chance.
Krixwell Liveblogs 