Tag: Steven Universe

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krixwell-liveblogs: Garnet: Tattletale. Always knows more than she lets on. Amethyst: Regent. The reckless, laid-back one with an origin they’re not too proud of. Pearl: Grue. The cautious team mom. Steven: Gallant. Really good with emotions, puts others first. Connie: Charlotte. The sensible mundane who isn’t afraid to stand up. Lapis: Panacea. See above. Peridot: […]

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Garnet: Tattletale. Always knows more than she lets on. Amethyst: Regent. The reckless, laid-back one with an origin they’re not too proud of. Pearl: Grue. The cautious team mom. Steven: Gallant. Really good with emotions, puts others first. Connie: Charlotte. The sensible mundane who isn’t afraid to stand up. Lapis: Panacea. See above. Peridot: Parian. […]

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It was Siberian.  One of the first direct confrontations, more than a decade ago.  It hadn’t gone well.

Oh, I was right the first time.

Fair enough. I suppose Siberian would also stay put because of having a victim to eat.

But what was up with the bit about drainage? Did they expect her to dig her way through the pipes, breaking them up in the process?

The Protectorate had been smaller, then.  The lead group had consisted of four members.  Legend, Alexandria, Eidolon and Hero.

…Hero.

How fucking generic can you get??

Hero had been the first tinker to take the spotlight, so early to the game that he could get away with taking a name that basic and iconic.

I’m not sure why you’d want to, besides having little imagination or wanting to brag that you’re the Hero.

He’d sported golden armor, a jetpack, and a tool for every occasion.

Go go Hero!

…I suppose Inspector Gadget is what you’d get if Bonesaw got her hands on Hero.

His career had been cut short when Siberian tore him limb from limb in a sudden frenzy of blood and savagery.  He’d been scooped up by Eidolon, who tried to heal him, who continued to hold the man as he joined in the ensuing conflict.

“I guess I’m just too tough to cry.”
“Just today you were crying about Hero.”
“He doesn’t have any limbs!”

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loreweaver-universe: every window within a forty-mile radius of my current position has functionally ceased to exist as a window and can now be more accurately described as “potential shivs”, “the cronch”, “anti-foot countermeasures”, and/or “boy howdy do I hope they never find me” Looks like we found one of the men who bought Shatterbird’s power.

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None of my teammates were moving, either.

If I had the ability to use my power properly, I might have done something with the smoking vials that Bonesaw had left behind.  Used loops of silk to drag them away, perhaps.  I didn’t.

Where would you drag them?

My power was clumsy, now, a brute force weapon at best.

Taylor is good at the discrete, calculated uses of her power, but now she needs to figure out how to use brute force to its best effect.

And hell, I was just so tired.  Physically, mentally, emotionally.  So many burdens on my shoulders, so many failures that had cost so much.

And she may need to deal with this first, perhaps have a paralyzed meditation session.

She needs to take a moment to think of just flexibility love and trust.

We had fucked up here, had underestimated Bonesaw.  I’d gone with Trickster’s plan to set Hookwolf’s contingent against the Nine and buy us the chance to infiltrate and rescue Brian, even though I’d known the strategy had too many holes, too many unpredictable variables. 

Coddammit, Taylor, you’re gonna blame yourself for that too?

I mean, the decision to go attempt to get Bonesaw to fix Grue, that I could understand blaming yourself for, but this is a stretch, Taylor.

I’d been too tired to think of something else, too preoccupied and impatient because Brian was in enemy hands.

It’s a bit of a vicious cycle when she puts it like this, considering that one of the main reasons she’s so tired is that she’s blaming herself for so much.

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Btw, just to let you know, a lot of people stopped reading Worm because of this chapter, considered the darkest one so far. Why the people stopped reading? Because Evil won and Good (compared with Nine, Undersiders/Travelers con be considered “good’) lost and many people were disappointed, disgusted and disturbed. I hope you’re not going to stop, right?

Definitely not.

I mean, like another ask puts it,

Things are fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked.

and what’s happened to Grue is very much an awful, dark fate that may be irreversible, but I don’t think Evil Has Won just yet.

This wasn’t the end of this particular part of the story, unless I have a surprise end-of-Arc waiting for me instead of 13.9 (that would feel wrong, I think), and there’s still time to turn this around. If not to a victory, then at least to a draw.

(Incidentally, a draw is exactly what happened after the chapter that I do feel is even darker than this one, not in concept for a particular scene or event so much as for the overall feel of the chapter: 8.3. I do realize I was affected by the slowed pace liveblogging causes during that one, but it does feel so thoroughly hopeless. Like a war zone.)

Also, I haven’t in a long time been under the impression that the Undersiders would be narratively immune to the horrible things that can happen in this story forever. (You may remember how I was very much prepared for Wildbow to potentially kill off one or more of them as early as Extermination.) So to me, what’s happening to Grue doesn’t so much feel like a “OH COD HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN TO ONE OF THE MAIN PROTAGONISTS” as a “oh hey, there we go, something like this was bound to happen sooner or later”.

Which is why it may not affect me as strongly as it maybe should, besides my usual tendency to take the gore in stride.

But in itself,

Is what happened to Grue the most horrifying scene in Worm so far? If not, what is?

this is certainly up there.

…along with what Taylor did to Clockblocker in Agitation. No, seriously, I haven’t just been playing that up for comedy, I genuinely find the idea of getting insects in every orifice and under the eyelids incredibly uncomfortable, even after the insect phobia I had when I first read that chapter was cured.

But hey, I’m admittedly biased on that one, and even then Grue is definitely worse off. At least for Clockblocker it was just for ten minutes or so, and his organs stayed where they were supposed to be.

I guess you could say that this scene was pretty… gruesome

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I dunno if this is the right blog to talk about it (somehow, this has started turning into a SU discourse -_-) but Lapis never used the whole ocean in a fight- she only used small pieces of it that hit with great force, as it was practical for her. The ocean pillar was not a weapon for her, One water punch, water bubble, water chain or water clone pretty much won any comfortation, due to the fact that it seemed to have a lot of force behind it considering the gems are superhuman and all. Incidentally puts all the more meaning on Blue Diamond shrugging these attacks off. Again, apologies for this being wholly unrelated with the main content of your liveblog, but I felt like I had to sent it, so, uhhh… to make it relevant…. Papradascha x Tattletale crossover crackfic?

True, she didn’t ever use all that much water in a fight, though I don’t think there’s much reason to believe she couldn’t if she wanted to (like you seem to be pointing out, she didn’t need to). The best argument for that would be her not escalating against Blue when the chains failed, but while she couldn’t exactly go all out either due to the risk of collateral damage. Though there was room to up the game a bit.

Also, don’t worry, it’s not like this is the most off-topic we’ve ever gotten. 😛

But yeah… crackfic, you say?

A Vision of Love or some stupid title like that

Lisa was incredibly intrigued.

And scared, of course. It wasn’t every day you accidentally fell through a hole in reality, and even her power couldn’t tell her whether she might ever get back home. Of course that bothered her. She really hoped her friends were okay.

But she was distracted from her worries by the best of headaches. She was learning so much with every minute she spent exploring the strange new world the hole had spit her out on, and even though she was wearing herself out using her power so much, she just couldn’t stop.

Unusual rock colors, futuristic buildings: Not Earth.
Rocky, dead terrain: Planet doesn’t have organic life.
No organic life, citylike architecture: Does have inorganic life.

That was the first thing her power had told her about this place. She had soon found some of the inorganic life. She watched them from hiding because her power immediately told her they’d likely be hostile, another thing she was less worried about than she probably should be, but it was enough for her to determine that they were extremely interesting both biologically (if you could use that word about custom-grown beings made of gemstones and hard light projections) and culturally.

Large quantity of similar individuals: Caste-based system, each caste has a specific purpose.
Only unique individual in sight: Rare gem, Sapphire.
No visible eyes: Seer archetype, can see the future.
Rare gem: Gems exist in different rarities depending on factors such as material availability–

Lisa had been studying her surroundings for seventeen minutes (she wasn’t wearing a watch, but she didn’t need to) before she ran into the first robotic drone. Based on her power’s comments about how common they were during her dash to the hiding spot behind the nearest protruding rock formation, she figured she’d been lucky it took that long. She felt even luckier when she learned the drone couldn’t sense her.

Her smile faded when she realized her foothold was giving way under her. Lisa went tumbling backwards into a hole she hadn’t noticed earlier, half sliding and half falling down a tunnel that seemed to stretched a good way downwards.

Long tunnel, falling: Whoops.

Lisa came to her senses after…

Waking up: Spent one minute and fifty two seconds unconscious.
Unconsciousness: Caused by five hard hits to the head.

…two minutes. Great, as if her head wasn’t already hurting enough. It was probably best to limit the use of her power a bit. She groaned, keeping her eyes shut.

“Are you alright?” came a voice. A Gem?

“Are you unhurt?” followed the same voice immediately after, but Lisa could’ve sworn it wasn’t the same person who said it. She had heard Gems of the same castes speak with similar voices, but this felt different somehow.

“No, no, no, no, what do we do?! What if they’ve found us?” A third – second? – voice, this one panicky.

Lisa kept her eyes closed. For all she knew right now, opening them might cause the Gems to panic even more than the third… second… last one already was, which might be bad. She was better off using her power to find out more first, headache or no headache.

Similar voices: Two voices, one body.

Thank you, power, that clears up so much, she thought sarcastically.

“Calm down, Rhodonite,” said one of the similar voices.

“Relax,” said the other, “I don’t think she’s one of their weapons.”

Panicked, “they’ve found us”: Fearful, group is in hiding.
In hiding, weapons: Persecuted by governing caste, would be killed if found.

Maybe that meant they’d be peaceful.

“Iiiii thiiiiink the Ruuuuutiiiiile twiiiiins aaaaare riiiiight,” a fourth voice droned, deep and slow as molasses. If she talks like that all the time she’s going to be so annoying, Lisa mused.

Slow speech: Grandmotherly, consists of six Gems, fusion.
Consists of six Gems: Gems can fuse their bodies and minds together.

Fusion? This species was so fascinating.

A chipper voice interrupted her musings. “I predict that the alien is about to wake up, but pretend to stay unconscious!”

“Wait, what?!” the panicked gem – Rhodonite? – said, startled.

Uh oh.

Prediction: Has the power to see the future, Sapphire.
Voice: Sexy.
Prediction already came true: Interaction with the world is delayed, defective. Only predicts the past.
Defective, persecuted: Governing caste persecutes defective gems.

Things were beginning to make– wait, what was that second thing?

…never mind. The jig was up, so she might as well open her eyes now. Lisa found that idea surprisingly appealing – for some reason, she really wanted to see the Sapphire.

She opened her eyes and was not disappointed.

When I woke up that morning, I had not thought I’d ever see Grue verbally chew out the leader of the Brockton Bay Protectorate, Miss Militia, swearing like a sailor. Seeing her stand there and take it was even lower on the list of things I’d expected out of the day.

Half an hour ago, the Protectorate had unexpectedly stepped into the middle of our carefully planned ambush against the Slaughterhouse Nine.

And, even worse, they’d been using bombs. Special bombs confiscated from Bakuda, like the ones I’d seen Miss Militia use against Leviathan. One of those bombs had apparently created a hole between realities, which Tattletale had fallen into in all the chaos.

And then the hole had closed, swallowing up my best friend. It was a wonder I wasn’t right there beside Grue, helping him chew out Miss Militia.

But it was all my fault. This entire ambush had been my idea, and Tattletale had paid the prize. Who knew what kind of horrors she might be experiencing in whatever world she had ended up in? Who knew if she’d ever co–

My train of thought was derailed by the sound of a zipper opening in the air above me. Before I could look up, I was pushed to the ground by something landing on top of me.

Or, someone? Fuck, are the Nine attacking back?

“Hey, Skitter! Guess who’s back!” It couldn’t be – Tattletale? I looked up to see her grin down at me in her usual vulpine fashion.

“We should get out of the way,” she continued, “I’ve got friends coming through.”

A minute later, everyone was staring at the space I had occupied, which now housed Tattletale and four – five? – aliens. One… or two… of them was shaped like the letter Y, with two upper bodies on one lower body. Another had four arms (on one torso this time) and four eyes and looked scared with all of them. The third was a grandmotherly caterpillar larger than Crawler.

The last one reminded me of Princess Peach, except her eyes were covered by her hair. She was holding hands with Tattletale. “Skitter,” Tattletale said, “meet my girlfriend, Padparadscha!”

Girlfriend?

“I’ve had a wonderful vision! We will use the Magic Zipper of Dayus X to go to Lisa’s marvelous home planet! We will all be free!”

“Love you too, hun,” said Tattletale and kissed Padparadscha on the cheek.

The end.

…I’m not a writer, okay? 😛

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I feel that you are overestimating Lapis power significantly. Lifting the ocean is well into the “Sci-fi writers have no sense of scale” part of the spectrum. Consider for instance both that if she had actually picked the ocean up it should have made a far far taller pillar by a longshot than was shown, but it would still have been as silly to think it could reach even the nearest star as it would be to think Connie could do it by tiptoeing.

It’s also the same sort of thinking that would push Ronaldo into being able to move at supersonic speed (because Lapis could lift Steven to the top of the water pillar quickly, steven could move visibly on said hand and Ronaldo hit Steven with a brick once). Thats just a danger of basing powerestimating on the most powerful feat shown once particularily while involving the entire planet/space. 

Instead I would base my estimates on her actual fights with the crystal gems/Jasper both fused and unfused, which would still make her a huge powerhouse by worm standards, outside of the probable reach of the undersiders, but less so.

That is a fair perspective. The alternative is that Lapis is holding back and/or not giving her all in fights like the one in Reunited, after all.

And hey, nobody ever accused this show of being consistent about scale… 😛

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More SU thoughts:

While Lapis may be more powerful than Leviathan in terms of hydrokinesis, I do still think Leviathan would win if it were between the two of them, at least if Lapis didn’t fly way out of reach quickly enough. Lapis is a glass cannon while Leviathan is practically invincible, and even if Lapis is immune to water attacks (unknown), Leviathan has attacks that don’t use the water, like using his claws or tail. Lapis, on the other hand, doesn’t have much in terms of non-watery attacks besides using water to levitate objects above a target and letting gravity do the rest – as far as we know, anyway.

However, if anyone can contain Leviathan, it’s probably Lapis. She has displayed the ability to keep people trapped in levitating bubbles of water (though Leviathan’s swimming speed might mess with that), and she has the power to make a city-sized one if she cares to. She can also make chains out of hardened water, which can be quite effective. She’d need to find a permanent place for him or keep sustaining these restraints, though. Maybe she could make him a little lake on a different planet?