/wg/ - Weaver Dice/Worm General #6: Good Girl Edition

Man, sometimes I love how art can improve my mental image of a character.

And sometimes there's art like this, which makes everyone look completely ridiculous.
I mean, yeah, realistically they would look this dorky. But it's a fucking superhero setting, so I would prefer a bit more high quality outfits.

Granted this is from before Skitter made them proper outfits and they all had to scramble something together themselves.

Why is Taylor's mouth exposed?

Bad fanart.

My favorite pic ever, because it shows how scary can Total Arthropod Control be. With the canvas being restricted to a head shot.

is it ever really said if it's exposed or not in any version of skitter?

I am very bad about remembering such details and searching for them in Worm may prove a fruitless week

Literally all the costumes are wrong.
Taylor had a full mask, only the back of her head was exposed. Plus, why the hell would she have shitty leather straps holding the wrist guards on?
Bitch worse skirts
Grue wore a motorcycle helmet.
Tattletale had an eye on her boobs

I guess Imp and Regent are close.

>why the hell would she have shitty leather straps holding the wrist guards on?
or it's badly dyed silk?
and buckles are simple as far as costume components go.

There's a quote about something like that here...

STRANGERS: docs.google.com/document/d/1CykV5BgK2EFY4v_cuUXJFpU1Ye3mIRV-VaHEUZxZO4k/edit

The Shaker-Stranger Combination

Shaker-Stranger combinations are the ones where the walls are closing in, metaphorically speaking. The attention is environmental or abstract enough to have no source that can be pointed to. Hallucinations, paranoia, or places with extreme negative connotations will produce this sort of effect. The idea of being watched or having attention directed at an individual may be purely in the triggeree’s head, or it may be real. A young lady finds one hidden camera set in her room, and starts tearing the room apart, finding one, then another, then another. A paranoid agoraphobe who hasn’t stepped foot outside their apartment in a year is convinced the murmuring on the other side of the walls is all the neighbors talking about them, and it gets louder and louder until they trigger.

The core idea with the power is that a Shaker effect is delivered, but the result is Stranger-ish. Area effect coverage with individuals affected, distractions, or avenues for entry. Examples include perception altering gas clouds, forcefield constructs that help provide cover or mislead pursuers, and area-effect gravity tilts that allow alternate forms of approach/access. In devising the power, the idea is to have a shaker vector for a stranger effect. Such powers are rarely directly damaging, and are often very effective against a crowd.

>Grue wore a motorcycle helmet.
Actually, he later wore a demon mask Taylor made for him.

and before that he wore a plain black motorcycle helmet, vented along the sides to release his darkness

>Tattletale had an eye on her boobs
She has that in the picture, all the rest seems true though.

Yeah but she also made him a new costume alltogether, here he is still wearing a leather jacket so this is probably from before then.

Almost makes me think that Brian was also being abused by moms boyfriends when he was younger.
I read this theory somewhere that Brian seeing Aisha like that reminded him of his own abuse and his power is supposed to hide himself away just as much as it's supposed to hide his sister.

Well that's just fucked.

Such is life in the Worm zone.

Some years ago, something bad happened to you. A kidnapping, a fire that disfigured you, or a mugging turning wrong and crippling you. Your life changed after that, and didn’t know how to cope. You still have nightmares and panic attacks. But you have friends and a family that loves and supports you, even when you play up your still very raw trauma.

Your father was there. He hadn’t been able to save your, or take you out the house—and he felt powerless. He is your father, and he failed at protecting you. He threw himself into his work (he is a criminal lawyer), to help with the bills and stave off the guilt gnawing at him. And then that case came. The one that he couldn’t pass, the one that he needed to win. It involved somebody who had suffered just like you. He couldn’t protect you, but he would protect them.

And he did. He won it, and the victim had tears in their eyes when the final verdict was uttered. There was a light back in your father’s eyes that you hadn’t noticed had disappeared. A lightening in his step. He smiled more, and you smiled more too, a heavy weight lifted in both of your hearts.

He called you one night, when you were staying late at your friend’s house, telling you with a flat voice to stay there. It wasn’t until the morning came, and with them stricken-looking police officers, that you remembered the odd tone of his voice. The cops are speaking, telling you your family died, murdered, by the criminal who your father had put behind bars—that they've escaped. That he had hunted down your sister. That you and everybody around you was in danger. You trigger.

•

So, what do you think? Shaker, Thinker? What kind of themes do you see in that trigger?

Powergen time, baby!

How far could Armsy really go if given unlimited resources? I mean Mannequin's specialty doesn't sound like much at a glance, but the guy was complete and utter bullshit i6t took a reality rewriting bomb to kill him.

What would happen to Colin if he cut the brakes that are his budget and PR shit?

What are some good ideas for a game set in Africa? I'm thinking a game of aspiring warlords could be fun or a group of freedom fighters trying to get their people out could be fun.

Nanomachines.

Eeehhh
Themes I see?
Hmm, impending/looming threat, fairly vague/distant threat.
Nothing for Brute/Blaster/Shaker/Striker to really go off of...
I see a good 'prey' theme, I guess? It doesn't really smell like any particular type to me... it's as much tinker as thinker as stranger as breaker...

Defiant.

Very likely to be Blaster. Shaker, Breaker, and Thinker have possibilities too. Here's a rough idea:
>The ability to shoot fireballs that lock onto and hunt down anyone you focus on
>the more you know about the target the faster and stronger the fireball gets
>start out at painful burns for complete strangers and ends up as complete atomization for people he intimately knows
So it's a basic bitch Blaster power, but he can hunt down anyone with just a photo or even a written description, and in a fight he can track people no matter where they go and hound them with inescapable burns until they can't run anymore.

>Ash Beast accidentally some tinker warlord who didn't leave his workshop in time
>Power Gap
>It begins

Found it.

Generally speaking, a power has a twist to it, something that takes it one half-step beyond the norm for superheroes. There also tends to be an irony to them, an integral factor or element that loops back to point to the character, typically their traumas or weaknesses.
With a character like Spiderman or Superman or the Flash, you generally have a pivotal moment that carries them forward, up, and above. The background, the character, and the power are all independent facets. The flash is a forensic scientist, he was zapped by lightning while showered with chemicals, and he runs fast.
In the Wormverse you have Taylor, who was trodden on, treated in a disgusting way, and her power perpetually leaves her underestimated and unnerves those around her, maintaining a distance. Her power is hers.
Tattletale was destroyed when she missed the details pointing to her brother's imminent suicide. Her power leaves her constantly grasping for more information and never quite having it all, teetering on that same brink. Give her powers to Taylor and Taylor's to Tattletale and it doesn't quite fit.
Grue was abused by his mother's boyfriend when he was young, and fought to develop the strength and fortitude to never be that weak again. To go to help his sister with the same man, and to see the house and be brought back to his weakest, darkest moment, the man's eyes on him, he found the power to immerse the world in darkness. Environment and malign attention and the desire to protect his sister all factored into his power being what it was.
Generally speaking, in other settings the powers are a tool the character possesses, and the story is driven by the character & that character's identity. You can (and many have) swap out powers and still maintain the core conceit. In Worm, in addition to that little twist or complication, the character and the power are intertwined.

skitter had a full mask

What's every ones thoughts on nerfing Panacea and Bonesaw? Being able to make plagues on whim is quite a bit too much in opinion and I feel they should be scaled back drastically.

I got a superpower I came up with vacuuming my apartment...

Mr. Meta

if given suitable time to "read" on a person he can "recall" all the things about them that would have been mentioned in a fictional narrative up to the current point. this includes interludes which may not include the person he's read, but, either feature discussions about that person, or plans that relate to that person.

but he can only recall as well as most people can recall reading a book, imperfectly, and the "writing style" changes from person to person, sometimes waxing poetic, other times so bland and tasteless as to be rendered a grey mess.

is this dumb or is it not too bad?

it's a thinker power on par with tattletale as far as I can tell...

nah, they're NPCs let them keep the power and simply let it alone at "they are unlikely to do this thing"

tfw lurking /v/ all day for about 3 days to get in the mindset to write Uber and 1337 right

help

The unwanted attantion from the killers looks like Stranger.
You didn't really specify what the earlier trauma was implying that the detail isn't as important as the fact that there simply was something, based on that and your examples I'll just say something hard to define happened so Breaker.
Also the way the police worded it, "you and everybody around you is in danger" would probably make the character feel guilty about having involved more innocent people in his troubles so there could be an area-of-effect Shaker power in the mix too.

As for themes, besides the guilt I've mentioned it also seems to be about justice and protecting others. The triggered couldn't be protected by someone close to him which made everyone sad, then someone close to him managed to protect someone else so now everyone was happy, finally that person had to pay with his and his families life for protecting someone.

Don't really know where to go from here, from the top of my head maybe the triggered can create, or perhaps even dissolve themselve into, a field in which people can conceal themselves in but the application hurts the user in some way, playing on the "protecting others at the cost of your own well being" theme or something like that.

Pretty determined rapist to get through all that. Have to admire his gumption, if not his life choices.

>Have to admire his gumption
>his
what makes you think it was a MAN?

Statistics.

Being a fucking idiot that does things that are actually detrimental to the cause helps.

>inb4 "for browsing /v/, or for getting into the mindset of U&L?"
Yes.

Did Uber and Leet actually have true fans? Taylor made it seem like everyone was only watching their streams to watch them fail but surely they must have had some people who believed in them.
The thought that they didn't know that everybody is making fun of them seems fun but unlikely.

>Being a fucking idiot that does things that are actually detrimental to the cause helps.

yeah, thats why im brow...

>>inb4 "for browsing /v/, or for getting into the mindset of U&L?"
>Yes.

I think were on the same page

Is there anyone Tattletale can't verbally destroy?

It does remind me of Breaker but his personality is all about trying to achieve perfetction at every cost. But I can think of a way to make the achieved perfection ironic, after all powers aren't supposed to actually help with the trigger all that much.

Wildbow
because he's deaf

People who literally just don't give a fuck about anything, like Jack Slash for example.
Actually I think most of S9 went off of the deep end far enough that well chosen words won't hurt them.

wait really?

Speaking of Jack Slash, anyone else notice people on Spacebattles really REALLY bitch about the S9?

it's almost like people didn't find the psychopathic killers likable or something.

Ish, mostly. He has an implant. I wonder if that's the reason for his motif of communication.

They bitch about Cauldron more.

South African mercs fighting fookin parahumans. Bonus points of there's an elderly Rhodesian vet in your group.

Alternatively, you play as a parahuman recently triggered after the Rwandan genocide and is now part of the glorious cluster fuck that is the first and second Congo war, aka Africa's equivalent of ww1 and ww2.

Things that cause Spacebattlers to trigger:
1.) S9 even being mentioned
2.) "The Diary isn't evidence"
3.) "Cauldron did nothing wrong"
4.) Piggot doing anything
5.) Sophia doing anything except dying
6.) Emma doing anything except dying
7.) Madison being straight

They're just big Assault/Battery shippers and are understandably mad about what happened in canon.

But they're already married why do they need to ship?

Because 'til death do us part, which is exactly what happened.

>"The Diary isn't evidence"
what diary?
am I forgetting something?

>emma
I kind of prefer the thought that she tried in earnest to off herself, failed, and was forced to stay in a mental hospital tormented for the rest of her days by the thought of the monster she was responsible for creating.

the log book of abuse Taylor kept in her closet that every single hacky fanfic writer brings up as if it's some sort of magic anti bully bullet.

oh that.
no, it's not evidence. it's a first person account.
it isn't evidence of anything.

and honestly the soul-rending thing for me was that when you bring an account like that to a school administrator they are as dismissive as the ones in Worm...reading that for me was awful bceause it was true...

I lost a lot of respect with wildbow when he made it a very clear the disregard was exclusively because of sophia

How lonely was she?

It wasn't exclusively because of Sophia. It was because, as far as can be told, the school went easy on all of the capes to appease the PRT. And, why lose respect for Wildbow for that? Honestly, it's a pretty realistic portrayal of how the situation might have gone down if it happened in "real" life. A school like that is, by necessity, going to side with the money. PLus, we have no idea what other pressures the principal might have been under beyond financial.

Extremely. She couldn't have any kind of romantic relationship because she knew too much about anyone she might get close to. Friendship was the best she could do, and even that could be difficult for her.

of course it isn't evidence!
But spacebattlers are immune to logic, and have no knowledge what so ever of the legal system (being more-or-less entirely coddled white people who've never had a real interaction with the law)
So bringing up that her little log book isn't worth the paper it's printed on makes them lose their minds.

Follow the money. Parent makes donations? Kid gets a free pass. Parent owns a business that cut the school a deal on something? Kid gets a free pass. Or allows the use of something they own, free of charge, for an event? Kid gets a free pass. Government grant money? Kid gets a free pass.

Children of business owners, farm owners, and kids in special ed or sports are handed preferential treatment on a silver platter, and it's kind of terrible to watch. I am speaking from experience, yes. Why do you ask?

>the school went easy on all of the capes to appease the PRT.
that school had one cape and 2 non-capes responsible...

>A school like that is, by necessity, going to side with the money.
school like that(recall that it WASN'T the cape-specific academy) is going to side with what causes the least problems. it means that they'd slide it under the rug and forget about it unless there was clear evidence. there wasn't money involved IIRC...

>we have no idea what other pressures the principal might have been under beyond financial.
only pressures for that faculty was the PRT

>tattletits
yeah, she had it pretty tragic; lonely is all she gets.
unless she finds that 1 in 10 million person that never speaks untruth or tries to deceive.

but then she'd probably think he was some kind of Trump-rated cape weasling up to her

>being more-or-less entirely coddled white people who've never had a real interaction with the law
as one of these I'd like to say that we aren't all like that.

>as one of these I'd like to say that we aren't all like that.
a SBer, or a coddled white person?
It's not *just* about money. I went to high school with a girl who's father was the local Fire Marshal. it's amazing how many surprise inspections one school can /totally coincidentally/ get when you try to discipline one little brat...
ronerey and sad and arone. I bet she couldn't even masturbate without getting squicked out by her power.

Oops. It's been a while. I forgot that Taylor went to the non-cape school. Ignore my post.

As for Tattletits, even someone who never lies wouldn't work. She's almost automatically clued in on all of a person's most deep seated flaws, no matter how major or petty. It's physically impossible for her to ignore them the way normal people can.
No, the only boyfriend she'll ever be able to have has "Made in Taiwan" printed on him.

I ask because it makes no sense to lose respect for Wildbow for depicting such a thing in his story. Did you lose respect for him for depicting unnecessary violence, torture and murder? Frankly, I rank all of those higher on the Horrible Things scale than a corrupt school administration.

He's not advocating for any of these things, merely using them as plot points in his story. Why "lose respect" for that?

No, but lacking other sources, following the scent of greased palms and dollar bills will usually tell you exactly what you need to know.

I live in a fairly large mid-Southern city of ~50-60,000. During high school, one of my worst bullies was someone that was, more than likely, a second cousin of mine. We shared a last name, but his dad was successful, owned a business, while my parents had, up until my dad went blind, both worked, and he was on a sports team, while I buried my nose in a book and tried to ignore the fact that everyone else existed.

But, like the entire rest of my immediate family, I have a temper that doesn't abide chicanery.

Different user, man. Just jumped in in the last little bit to look for cape ideas, saw something tangentially related to some experiences I have, and posted.

Sorry for the confusion.

>a SBer, or a coddled white person?
coddled white person

>fire marshal
the local DA's kid was in my school.
but she wasn't a little shit
that was the local oil-industry leaders Non-crippled son(the crippled one was bro as shit though...)

>to have has "Made in Taiwan" printed on him.
Germany and Switzerland produce better in terms of quality...

>Why "lose respect" for that?
it was the implication I took away that all of the ignored bullying was only because of ShadowStalker

>and he was on a sports team,
fortunately my HS sports teams were laughing stocks in the region, and they new they couldn't successfully bully.

unfortunately that meant that most of the bullies in my school were on all of the academic teams instead

Ah. Never mind, then. I'll just slither back into my hole.
(It's cool, sandy and comfy in there. I heartily recommend getting one of your own.)

They are merely an extension of she-who-must-not-be-named, only pure author fiat allows them to exist. That's fine for allowing fringe bullshit s-class threats that exist outside the story, but directly having characters interact with pointless props is a waste of time.
Literally any regular asshole with a high-power rifle can kill half the S9. Wildbow wanted a story about para-humans and purposefully ignored the ravening hordes of normals that would descend upon the squishy villains; Kill-worthy Villains with brute ratings that allow them to withstand basic miltary style attacks are rare, only Cauldrons idiotic fomenting of the unwritten rules and propaganda perpetuating the "weakness" of normals allow them to exist.

>(It's cool, sandy and comfy in there. I heartily recommend getting one of your own.)
I prefer my nest up a breeze-rocked tree personally, but I can see the appeal of a cool sandy hole...

>Literally any regular asshole with a high-power rifle can kill half the S9.
debatable, that asshole would need to know where to be to make those shots, and unless they killed BoneSaw AND Mannequin in rapid succession their targets would just get right back up again...

Dude, half of them are immune to almost everything, and after bonesaw the other half are basically cyber-zombies. they're durable as fuck and pack massive firepower.

>Mannequin cyborgs Jack
>Bonesaw makes strings of flesh that touch the Mannequin blades

Behold the King of MurderHoboken.

>Literally any regular asshole with a high-power rifle can kill half the S9.
Not really. Plus, members of the nine die *all the time* that's why the nine have had something like 2 dozen different members over the years. In fact, only Jack is from the originals.
As for killing half the current crop:
Siberian? nope, Breaker:You betcha no one knows the seekit, not even Jack
Crawler? Nope, he's rated Brute: Yes.
Hatchet Face? Nope
Mannequin? Nope.
Shatterbird? ... maybe. I'm not sure how much the glass would protect her, but you'd better hope you're not lookin' down a scope at her.
The rest? Bonesaw'd to the point where they're basically Adam ala Deus Ex.

Well, I guess it also depends what user means by what you mean by "high powered rifle". Does that take something like an anti-materiel rifle into consideration?

The 16-inchers off an Iowa are technically rifles.

Well, what's, "high-powered," usually mean in Worm? That's right. Tinker-tech. So, either a man-portable rail-rifle capable of breaking the sound barrier several times over with some kind of meta-material/non-crystalline camera-based video scope, or something like in Evangelion, with the giant lightning/plasma rifle that took the entire electrical power of Tokyo-2 to fire that they used to take down Ramiel. Just, y'know, people-sized.

That hair looks like a granny, not like Taylor "My only feminine characteristic is my hair" Hebert.

Settings where powers are not part of a character are just shit.
They don't have to fit the character, but they have to be part of them.
A telekinetic is bound to us their powers for household chores. Someone with super durability will inevitably find the joys of dropping from rooftops for superpowered parkour. Expert sharpshooter will throw trash with super precision into trashcans.

Characters that just seem to randomly gain their powers when the supernatural comes knocking, and then lose them again to re-engage their mundane lives, are the worst.

No, what they *really* bitch about is the Empire 88.
Every. Single. Fucking. Thread. will have some asshat proclaim their grudge for the Nazis, even when they are shown in the thread's story to be THE MOST REASONABLE FACTION.
This is Worm, the setting where the Neonazi gang might actually be the most civilized one.

Seriously, it gets on my fucking nerves.

They would have for sure. Gotta take shit Taylor says with a grain of salt half the time, because she really was kind of stupid and pretty ignorant.

>No, the only boyfriend she'll ever be able to have has "Made in Taiwan" printed on him.
You would get triggered by the disturbing stories of the workers at the dildo factory etched into the structure of the product.

>and after bonesaw the other half are basically cyber-zombies
>Bonesaw is actually a Necrocybermancer with E.Y.E.-based cyber-tinkering

>it was the implication I took away that all of the ignored bullying was only because of ShadowStalker
I think this is fanon overreading, since in the actual text, when Taylor learns Sophia == Shadow Stalker, she goes "Hmm, was that why the school was so crappy about it? Oh, right, no, they're just lazy and incompetent."

You mean Taylor "Heeb" Hebert.

I doubt any true jew would be so keen to get blacked.

Man, I've played as a noble member of the Gesselschaft before. It got too real, man.

To be fair, there's Faultline's crew who are pretty polite and don't fuck around where they live, and most of the Protectorate/Wards are well-intentioned good people, just overworked as hell.

But I'll sure as hell take the Nazi's over the fucking dragon next door, or the drug peddlers, granted it helps that I'm white.

It's long curly hair, that's pretty feminine.

She never said she was pretty. And she was right.

>ronerey and sad and arone. I bet she couldn't even masturbate without getting squicked out by her power.

>tfw you will never rape and mindbreak smirkfu

She'd probably have you by the metaphorical balls before you got your pants off.

Wear earplugs till you gag her.

I'm honestly surprised how she survived until the end. You'd think that someone would go "Sorry, but you're too dangerous to live." and kill her. Especially since she has a habit of running her mouth.

Not only that but that she also survived all the times people actually were serious about shutting her up, Jack gave her half a Glasgow smile and Miss Milita even stuck her gun up Tats smug hole.

People bitch about TayTay's plot armor, but it an't got shit on Tattletwats.

Wasn't the bigger factor in them ignoring it was the fact that Emma's dad was a lawyer or someone important?

Taylor's supposition and Fannon.
It never really comes up until after Taylor punches Emma in the face in the mall And, frankly, there isn't a whole hell of a lot a lawyer can actually do to a school - they have carte blanche to violate the "rights" of their students (minors don't really have rights anyway) rights you don't have in a school setting: protection from searches and seizures, right to trial, right to attorney/council, right to appeal. Schools are a dictatorship and their discipline procedures exist by-and-large outside the legal system, except when they feel like calling in the police to really fuck a kid over.

>their discipline procedures exist by-and-large outside the legal system
They absolutely do not.

Yes they do.
If the principal decides you did something, he can suspend you. You get no trial, no evidence is presented, no witnesses, no council. You can appeal it to... the school board. Who will do nothing.
It exists totally separate from the legal system, they can bring in the legal system *in addition* to all else, but school discipline is it's own world.

Unless you live in not-America I guess, no idea how that works.