Stat me

Literally batman.

he does though.

And he uses it to fuck his waifu, who was a fictional person that he helped to make real.

Is Armsmaster the real winner of Worm?

He is indeed, him and Tattletale

Filthy fucking Robosexual.

I wonder if she vibrates, if you know what I mean.

There, pic related is from a recent thread.

We need more Mannequin artwork. Underrated character

Post more stuff that will devour my life like Worm did.

pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2013/12/17/bonds-1-1/

There's a link for Twig in there too methinks.

I already read it. It was alright, but it wasn't Worm. I don't get what the fuss is about over Twig. I dropped it after arc 9.

Anyway, pretty much the only other things that have provoked a Worm-style obsession in me are Metal Gear and One Piece, the latter of which is actually rather similar to Worm in style, if you think about it.

>Pact

I need a platform to vent.

Pact was very much the same as Worm for me. Started off really good, then once things really got going it began to decline. Worm went bad for me when it became less of a superhero/villain story and when Wildbow started layering the action and misery on really thick, too thick for me. I still finished it, even though I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as I had at the beginning. That's not to say that it had no redeeming qualities. Wildbow does amazing world building, and his side characters are very cool and interesting, in some cases more so than the main characters.

For Pact, I really enjoyed the first 5-6 arcs. The magic was cool and worked in a way that had more of a basis in real world myths of magic, characters were cool and interesting, and the world building was amazing. I enjoyed the conflicts and Blake's struggles, even though I didn't like Rose. She and Blake had no chemistry, Blake hardly ever listened to her, and the only power she had was the power Blake had when she was gone. So why was she even there? My favorite parts of the story were when Blake tackled Pauz and the Hyena alone, and actually managed it.

But after that, Wildbow started slipping into what I see as his bad habits. Jumping right into the contest with Conquest right on the heels of the three tasks was just too much, again layering the action on too thick, making it a slog. Then after Void he made Blake into an Other, essentially swapping his place with Rose, which I hated, especially since I wanted a story about a magic user, not a bogeyman, and I didn't like the magic Rose used, on top of not liking Rose at all.

By this point I figured Pact was going down a road I wouldn't enjoy following. So I bit the bullet and dropped it. I spoilered myself to see if I would regret it, and I can say I made the right choice. It just wasn't for me.

Twig ended up the same way for me, although I dropped it more unintentionally.

/rant

No, no, I know where yo're coming from. I will say that I appreciate Pact for being an unconventional experience. It starts off as promising and original urban fantasy, and before you know it, it becomes a weird horror story about how terrible life is.

Can someone explain to me what the appeal of Twig is? The worldbuilding is practically nonexistent when compared with Wildbow's other works, and the characters don't seem nearly as compelling as people claim. When I dropped it, the plot had pretty much just been a repetitive slog.

I hope Wildbow makes as much money off of Worm as he can, because it seems to me that he may not be able to replicate his original success.

>yo're
Is this shame that I feel enough to trigger over?

He's making Worm 2 once he gets the original ready for release, hopefully he unfucks the pacing in the process
honestly his stories being a fucking train of bad shit happening is his most glaring flaw, if he masters pacing, he could be up there with the big guys as an author.

>before you know it, it becomes a weird horror story about how terrible life is.
You could say the same thing about everything he writes, really. Even the early drafts of Worm, the ones that focused on Panacea and Glory Girl, ended up with Amy going full S-class threat.

>Can someone explain to me what the appeal of Twig is?
I liked it at first because it was something of a novel experience. I just liked all the cool shit in it, and I liked Sylvester as a protagonist. I wound up dropping it though, around the point where they had to deal with all those assassins and shit. Just thought I'd take a break from slogging through the excessive amount of intense situations, only to never start reading it again.

I don't think he's going to fix his pacing issues. He's done it in all of his stories.

Probably not.

I hope if wildbow ever makes that rewrite, he will remove Alexandria being killed by taylor, that was literally the worst part of the entire story.

They know Taylor used her bugs to almost kill Triumph from asphyxiation, they know she can sting people to death with her bugs, so what the greatest Alexandria do? She taunts Taylor, give huge hints to her only weakness, and then taunts her even further by bringing the dead bodies of her teammates.

Absolutely genial, alexandria was stupid enough to not even use a gas mask or have any tinker tool bullshit on her to kill the bugs instantly, she knew the building was full of people who Taylor could sting to death, and such deaths would damage the image of the prt even further, and yet she did nothing to prevent any of that.

I am sure taunting a girl with emotional issues by using her dead teammates is going to work wonders with no massive loss of life as a side effect, brilliant idea.

I doubt the rewrite would be so radical.

If it is, I would want a lot more than just that changed.

>Taylor makes a big show of swallowing her pride after she's exposed
>actually doesn't swallow her pride
>instead opts to entrench herself further into what she had already acknowledged was a fucked situation
>all because she feels like she is "right" and the heroes are "wrong"
>story decides to back up her biases instead of showing that they are biases

Oh and

>wants to save Dinah
>plans to do this by relying on the goodwill of a man she knows is willing to kidnap, abuse, and ensnare a little girl
>instead of turning herself in at a time where she would get the best deal
>nope let's just keep working for this psycho and not tell the actual good guys vital information
>story decides to portray this as the only decent option instead of a retarded decision made by a dumb teenager

I literally cannot reread Worm past arc 9 because of this shit.

>>story decides to back up her biases instead of showing that they are biases
This was part of the point of the story in the first place - that the villains are sometimes better than the heroes, or that the heroes are sometimes worse than the villains. Worm tries very very hard for moral ambiguity, and does so by making everything shit.

>>Dinah stuff
You're biased here in that you basically disagree with what the author believes makes the most sense. It's too debatable because we don't really know how this would hash out as we have zero real world references. Even if we did, realism isn't usually important, believability is. Anyway, my real point was that this whole situation mostly exists for the same reason as the above: moral ambiguity, a dark story, etc.

Worm does go for moral ambiguity, except for when it doesn't. At times it can be entirely one sided in how it portrays things, usually by making Taylor right, and somebody else (usually the heroes/PRT) wrong.

>Dinah stuff
Well I stand by my bias then, because it didn't work out in the story. I still think it was incredibly arrogant and obnoxious, and made even more so because the story never considers that another option might have been the right one. Taylor ingratiating herself to Coil was shown to be the "only way". The least shittiest option, if you will.

I mostly agree with you. Worm has a lot of issues that it disguises by drawing the reader into a complex and intricate world and pushing them along a rollercoaster of increasingly intense situations (I think the author actually gets pretty into it and enjoys it a lot, which is nice to see if true).

If you're taking issue with it displaying and enforcing the heroes as wrong, it's because the author expects readers (rightfully so, and I believe you're actually a good example) to be biased to agree with the shiny, clean, and good old heroes to begin with, and wants to overcome that by beating them down harder than the villains. I think the up and down and back and forth of the drama and "how low can they go"/"how bad can things get" is also generally appealing and entertaining for people.

As for the Dinah situation, that's fair, I think this is why a collaborative effort, including good editing/revision, is a very worthwhile investment. And we are on Veeky Forums, the board of collaborative storytelling.

Mm. Some of this is excused by Tattletale being explicitly manipulating Taylor... but that raises some of the same problems that the existence of Contessa does.

On that topic, personally I'd love if Contessa were cut out entirely and Accord filled her role of master planner. Though that may be because I felt he was far too interesting to end up a footnote victim of a "random dice roll generated" Endbringer fight.

It's not really the heroes being wrong that bothers me. In the early parts of the story I really enjoyed how Worm kind of peeled back the shiny cover that the PRT tries to slap on the heroes, showing Armsmaster to be a career hero dickhead and Glory Girl as an example of how having great power with no consequences can fuck somebody up. And of course the Shadow Stalker situation, how the system sheltered her from justice.

What really gets my goat is how the story unashamedly backs Taylor up, and that it does that by shitting on the heroes is just kind of a symptom of that.

I also thought it was weird that Blake had an ugly girls fetish. Not really a complaint, just weird.

To anyone who has played Weaver Dice (or just in general used Worms trigger event system to figure out superpowers), how do you handle players getting powers that don't translate well into tabletop roleplaying?

Powers like the ones Faultline or Glory Girl have are pretty straight forward to translate into gaming, "this one can cut trough anything non-organic she touches and the other one's a flying brick with a simple emotion control aura" but what about the more out there powers like Coils time splitting shenanigans?
If a player had that power you'd have to make the entire group run every encounter twice if the one player is feeling like splitting the timelines.

Do you restrict such powers from even existing when you brainstorm something out of the trigger event, making sure that the end result is something that won't be a pain in the ass to use for the campaign or do you allow it for the sake of creativity since interesting and unique powers are a big part of worm?

I wouldn't allow it. Something might be cool and creative, but if it makes the campaign difficult to run smoothly it quickly becomes more trouble than it's worth.

Worm is a setting that needs a good bit of creative oversight from the GM to work well as an RPG. You need the powers to be able to be creatively used, interact interestingly with the locals, have limitations, and work well with the narrative you're going.

If you want it to run well and smoothly there already needs to be communication between GM and players regarding powers and motivations and making sure everything meshes.

Some powers, like Coil's as you mentioned, as far better suited for something like a solo campaign or as an NPC. Having the campaign not be a total pain in the ass is important.

Someone having Coils power could actually work fairly well in an 1 on 1 game where there is no one else to annoy.

I guess it depends case on case on just how much extra work a power needs and how willing they players are to work around it.

Although now that I think about it Coils power is just about the only one that comes to mind that actually seems annoying for other players too, all other problematic powers I can think of really are only problems for the GM.
Like Tattletales power requiring the GM to plan ahead or improvise tons of additional information for all kinds of things should the player use their power, which doesn't really affect other players.

Yeah, it sucked that Accord got got. I still like the way it was done though, with the Simurgh doing her part to sabotage the defense of an attack that wouldn't happen until years later.

The Simurgh is a right cunt is what she is, at least Levi and Behemoth had the courtesy of killing you instead of fucking you up for the rest of your life in ways you won't even notice until it's too late.

>the story unashamedly backs Taylor up
Can you explain what you mean by this? I don't really get this impression.

She's right practically all the time, and only because the situation in the world is so fucked it makes the heroes' and the PRT's approach unsustainable.

Her antagonists are almost always shown to be unlikable, evil assholes. This wasn't bad early on, since Taylor's conflicts came not just from her antagonists, but also her own bad decisions. When you get to the later parts though, where Coil is revealed to be psycho and Tagg and Alexandra are shown off as big bullies, it's pretty obvious that it's done to push you further into Taylor's camp.

The only flaws that anyone can point out in her actions are her predisposition towards excessive force and that villains are emulating her takeover approach, and not being as nice about it. Neither have much weight for me because violence is shown to be necessary in the setting, and I don't believe people should be held responsible for the actions of others.

For a setting that supposedly revolves around dubious morality, Worm has no problem showing who is right and who is wrong, and who is good and who is bad.

So when Taylor talks with Glastig Uaine in 27.4, she mentions 7 shards in particular which are integral to the entities' cycle:

>There are others who stand shoulder to shoulder with us, but queen is the wrong word, Administrator. The champion, the high priest, the observer, the shaper, the demesnes-keeper. Why do you ask?”

As far as I know these shards correspond to the following capes:
Faery Queen - Glastig Uaine
Administrator - Taylor
Champion -?
High Priest - Eidolon
Observer - clairvoyant?
Shaper - Panacea?
Demesnes-keeper - ?

Well, there is Cauldron and the rest of the PRT...

Explain?

They're very morally ambiguous, and presented as such. All you've done is looked at the least morally grey aspects of Worm and gone "look at how little moral ambiguity there is."

My main gripe is the lack of moral ambiguity regarding Taylor and her antagonists. Since the setting and story are focused on Taylor and friends 90% of the time, that doesn't make for a lot of moral ambiguity.

I could just as easily say that all you've done is looked at the most morally grey aspects of Worm and gone "look at all that moral ambiguity".

As someone who sees Taylor as petty, evil, and unjustified, I think you're just seeing your own biases at work. It's not the story's fault that you happen to agree with Taylor. It gives you plenty of reasons to disagree with her. The moral concerns in Worm extend beyond simple utilitarianism, so it isn't agreeing with Taylor just because her tactics work more often than they don't. If you're unhappy that Taylor is as successful as she is, that's another debate.

>utilitarianism
I should say "consequentialism," excuse me.

Cyberarms, Cyberlegs, Cybercalves, Cyberdick, Cyber-everything. All the Skillpoints in Halberds. All of them.

Shut the fuck up Saint.

Robot poontang best poontang

Remember that Alexandria has never been seriously hurt by anything except the Siberian since she got her powers. It's very much believable that she thought that no matter what Taylor tried, she could take it. She wanted to taunt her into an attack so they would have an excuse to get rid of her for good. As for the collateral damage, it's entirely possible that Alexandria is aware of that and simply doesn't give a fuck.

Champion - My money is on Defiant/Armsmaster

Demesnes-keeper - Doormaker

>It's very much believable that she thought that no matter what Taylor tried, she could take it.
So she thought she couldn't suffocate? Despite her admitting that it's one of the few ways she could be killed?

She thougth she would be able to deal with whatever Taylor might try to make her suffocate. She didn't expect that the bugs could make their way past her windpipe. She didn't expect just how terrifyied and panicked she would be by getting her mouth filled with bugs. She was simply arrogant.

And that isn't even touching on the fact that she might just have been there because Contessa told her to. For all we know, the whole situation at the PRT headquarters could have been engineered by Cauldron. It sure as hell was what Dinah thought was best.

What role exactly do Tinker shards have in the entities body, why do they even bother harvesting advanced technology from intelligent civilisations?

It's not like they can actively use much of it like what the hell are these giant planet sized space whales going to do with a tiny ray gun? They don't even have arms.

Or do Tinkers really just purely exist to cause more conflict on worlds the entities occupy?

I should clarify, I don't agree with Taylor or think she is a good person. What I'm getting at is how the story stacks things in her favor, perception-wise. So yeah, being successful is a part of that. The story portrays her as knowing better and as having the moral highground. I don't think she does, but when nearly all you see of the PRT are obstinate dickhead bullies or people focused on the wrong thing (Piggot, Tagg, the third director, Glenn, etc) and when nearly all her antagonists are shown to be evil psychos (Coil, S9, etc) it is quite clear how the story wants you to feel about things. The story itself is biased, if that makes sense.

And thanks to how absolutely fucked things are, there's no wiggle room. It's Taylor's way or die. The ending of the story is the ultimate example of this.

If you had to create a slaughterhouse 9 from scratch what would you give them for powers?

You'd need someone capable of wrangling and keeping a group of homicidal psychopaths pointed in the same direction.

Some form of medic to keep more squishy members from being dropped at an unsustainable rate.

At least one member thats too dangerous for larger organizations to consider attacking for fear of the cost of taking them out.

Maybe they can use the technology in their systems somehow. Who is to say they are purely organical beings as we know them?

What about Cauldron? Purity? Accord? Trickster? They all have redeeming qualities, despite qualifying as Antagonists. So do Piggot and Glenn. The only psychopaths are the S9. Coil is an asshole, but he is simply efficient and doesn't have a conscience. The entities don't have human emotions at all. And Taylor admits, in the end, that she has made mistakes, that there were other ways. Taylor is depicted as a good person, which is rare enough in the Wormverse, but she is by no means perfect

The three you described are Jack, Bonesaw and the Siberian, the three integral members of the S9. Without them, there are no S9 in the way we saw them in Worm. The other members are explicitly interchangable. Their powers aren't all that important in themselves, they each just need to be insane and twisted in their own, unique way.

I agree with the first and third one but I'd say the second one can be even more generalized into anyone who can provide lots of utility of any kind that the whole team profits from, though it still sounds like a role that is best suited for a Tinker and/or Trump (of which Bonesaw was both).

I want to play a game where my character's power is blatantly stolen from the Latest Zelda.
He can temporarily stop things in time, but any momentum acted upon those objects effects them all at once when the time-stop runs out.

Stasis is such a cool ability in BotW

Observer could be Dinah.
I really want Nilbog's Shard to be an important one, just due to how batshit crazy it is. It's like a god damn Raid Boss just plopped into the middle of the seting.

twig is better
people have bad taste

>Cauldron
Not really an antagonist I like, because if it weren't for the end of the world situation they would be outright evil. I absolutely hate "save the world" plots unless they are in high fantasy.
Cauldron is a very lazy kind of morally grey. You can easily handwave their more nefarious actions by saying it was all necessary to save all of reality, and you would be right because of Contessa and her PtV shard.

>Purity
Purity isn't much of an antagonist to Taylor, and she doesn't show up much. I also wouldn't slate her as morally grey. She is a racist supervillain. A humanized one, sure, but ultimately she doesn't have enough redeeming qualities to outweigh that. That's just how I feel about it though, and I won't say you're wrong for feeling differently. I don't want to come off like I'm just obstinately slapping down your points.

>Accord
Very psycho, but again not much of an antagonist to Taylor. Closer to an ally, actually, since he helps her endeavors against the Teeth and lends himself to the Behemoth defense.

>Trickster
I would say Trickster is a good antagonist, as he's just kind of a jerk who wants to look out for himself and his people. Mainly Noelle. He's characterized pretty well so you know where he's coming from.

>Piggot and Glenn
Piggot is one of the antagonists who are easy to hate. She might ultimately have good goals, but she is shown as a mean and unlikable bigot, and the only reason I can think why she would be portrayed like that is an effort to keep you from agreeing with her. Glenn isn't really an antagonist, but I see him as an example of the PRT being focused on superfluous things. That wouldn't be the case if there weren't more immediate threats to deal with though.

>Coil
>simply efficient and doesn't have a conscience
The guy routinely murders people he labels as unimportant in alternate realities, and not having a conscience is a part of being a psychopath.

cont.

>The entities don't have human emotions at all
Then how did they bully Scion into oblivion?

Checkmate, atheists.

>And Taylor admits, in the end, that she has made mistakes, that there were other ways
Yes, she has made mistakes throughout the story, but as for other ways, we have no way of really knowing. That's not what's important here though, because in the thick of it it certainly did not feel that way. Not to me, at least.

What do you make of the first half of Drone 23.4 (Taylor's session with Yamada), then? Its portrayal of Taylor is not particularly positive, and given that it was supposedly one of Wildbow's favorite chapters, I find it hard to believe that he intended or unintentionally crafted a bias in her favor in the way you mean. Furthermore, it's not as if Taylor isn't constantly questioning herself. If the story sets things up in Taylor's favor at all, then it's probably so that the realization that maybe she wasn't so right will hit harder.

There are quite a few examples of antagonists who don't fit the scheme you've described. Even some of those would have arguably been more effective if they hadn't been stopped (Coil's Brockton Bay would have probably improved the quality of life of its residents).

I don't see how setting a story in a messed up situation contributes to a bias. It's not as if these kinds of scenarios don't frequently arise irl. If I hear a story like Miss Militia's in which a resident of a foreign nation at war manages to save their village by blowing up the nearest enemy outpost in the news, I doubt I'll think that they're being portrayed favorably. It's a description that leaves judgment up to the reader.

So basically Clockblocker's power with one change?

Couple of changes actually, and I imagine it wouldn't be as "all powerful" as Clockblocker's power.

Champion is almost certainly contessa, second guess would be Lung.

>Then how did they bully Scion into oblivion?
>Checkmate, atheists.
Scion was running human_emulator.exe and forgot to terminate the process when it started to affect other runtimes
Like staring at your computer temp overheating instead of immediately diving to rip the plug out

You're misunderstanding me. I know Taylor isn't perfect, I just don't think the story does a good job of ambiguous morality in the later arcs when it comes to her. The setting basically takes an "ends justify the means" approach to the bad things she does.

It says as much on the front page.

>As she risks life and limb, Taylor faces the dilemma of having to do the wrong things for the right reasons

I also doubt that Coil would have been a benevolent dictator, and remember that he was basically a puppet for Cauldron and their experiments.

I am quiet sure that is was in fact very important though I have no idea where to find that particular WOG.

Anyway here's what I remember, basically Nilbogs shard is a disaster failsafe system in case the species that the entities are currently occupying fucks up majorly and wipes itself out, either completely going extinct or just losing enough of their own that the cycle would have problems continueing.
That shard would be used to create horrible bastard carricatures of the originals which would become the new dominant species on the planet and continue the cycle by giving them new shards.

It's pretty fucking neat honestly, just imagine the hellhole that would be our earth if every single creature was the type of abomination that Nilbog produced.

Now this is just me bullshitting, but I suspect that the entities, should they ever have to use that shard, would try to create the same scenario we saw in the interlude that showed our world if Eden had survived.
We saw that their plan for humanity was that we would be split into a few giant nations that are in a constant state of war for dominance, now consider how Nilbogs creatures were completely loyal to him and how Nilbog at all times was desperate for biological material that he needed to sustain his servants.
The entities would probably select a few people like Nilbog to become the last of the original species, feed them all the other people that weren't so lucky to be selected and then pit all the leaders against each other in a war for bio material for maximum conflict.
Considering how all the creature that die can be recycled by one of the leaders, the process would be pretty efficient material wise.

Also a reminder that Nilbog fucked his creatures and it was implied that his favourite fuck toy was the one that was modeled to be a little girl in toddler age

>Piggot and Glenn
I don't know what's all that wrong with piggot. She doesn't like parahumans, but we understand why, I don't really see a reason to hate her. She even seems to respect Skitter in a weird way. Glenn is doing an act, he isn't even dislikable after one gets to know him.

>Coil
He never allows his escapes to interfere with his work. And not having a conscience is still different from murdering people for the Lulz

>Then how did they bully Scion into oblivion?
They do have emotions, but not in the way humans do. Maybe I phrased it wrong, what I meant is that they are entirely alien and assigning things such as good or evil to them is pointless

I'm not saying those guys or any of the other people on my list are good people, they just aren't just one-dimensional, psychopathic assholes. There aren't any good guys in the Wormverse, but there aren't many purely evil ones either. Some are just worse then others.The only pure psychopaths are the S9. which, if you ask me, are very well depicted and actually terrifying psychopaths. The PRT may be fucked in the head, but what about the heroes working for them? Some of them are good people, and Taylor does end up fighting them, so I don't think the Protectorate/PRT as a whole qualifies as "evil psychos". Coil is debatable, but at worst he is a well-intentioned extremist since he genuinely wants to turn the city around.

>And Taylor admits, in the end, that she has made mistakes, that there were other ways

Almost betraying the Undersiders was a mistake. Robbing the bank was a mistake. Letting Grue get caught was a mistake. Not telling her dad was a mistake. Those sure as hell felt like mistakes to me at the time.

Yet you didn't actually provide justification. I wonder if your attitude represents the rest of Twig's fanbase. When I try to see what people enjoy about Twig, it's pretty much this:
>prose
>characters
>character interactions
>shipping
>cake
>I just like biopunk

I find this underwhelming, especially since I didn't have a problem with the writing, characters, or character interactions in Worm and actually find it all stale and overdone in Twig. Also, if I wanted that, I would go to Veeky Forums. What I do want is extensive worldbuilding, which Twig does not even begin to provide, as of arc 9, anyway.

That quote is basically just for advertising. It doesn't necessarily reflect the story or the author's opinions, and I think it might have been fan-made, although I don't recall.

No, I don't understand you. What would the story look like if it didn't have this hypothetical bias you're describing (in the later arcs, for clarity)?

Will Twig also give me the anxiety I had while reading Worm?
I recently finished Worm and while I enjoyed it I don't think I could ever go through it again with the constant fucking tension, felt like I was going to get a heart attack after Taylor fucked up Coils mercenaries and then Coil himself only to go to his base and find out they are going have to fight Enchidna.

Also, I should point out that the tagline says that her actions are wrong, so I don't see how that constitutes an "ends-justify-the-means" attitude.

>I don't know what's all that wrong with piggot
I see her as a kind of a bitch, which I think is unnecessary.
>Glenn
I don't have a problem with Glenn's character, but it's easy for Taylor's frustration with him and the PRT's rules to transfer to the reader.

>Coil
He might not murder people for the lulz, but he is a psychopath. No conscience, narcissistic, and prone to violent and aggressive outbursts that he shows in his "escapes". Edgy serial killers aren't the only kind of psychopaths.

>Entities
I was just joking with you really. I don't include the entities in my complaints.

>Protectorate/PRT
I did not call the Protectorate anything, and from we see of the PRT it is corrupt from its foundation and has some very mean and nasty people in charge of it. They aren't psychos, and I didn't call them such.

>S9
Very well done, I agree. But still not morally ambiguous.

>Almost betraying the Undersiders was a mistake.
I think that joining the Undersiders in the first place was the real mistake, and not turning herself in and betraying them and Coil was another mistake.

If you wanted to flavor it some, then you could make it more like Foxy's power from One Piece (pretty much the same thing, but instead of stopping things, it slows them down considerably).

>That quote is basically just for advertising
Is it false advertising then?

>What would the story look like
Coil wouldn't be a psycho.
PRT would not be shown to incompetent and corrupt to the core.
Taylor would have turned herself in instead of going back to the Undersiders.
No end of the world shit.
And all the changes that those changes imply.

so I don't see how that constitutes an "ends-justify-the-means" attitude
Doing the wrong things for the right reasons is literally the definition of a ends justify the means attitude.

There was also the discussion with Clockblocker before fighting Echidna, where Taylor can't really argue against his point that she's done more harm than good. Her point was that she was trying to do good, but even she has to admit that she might not have.

What genre you looking for, senpai? Superhero shit?

>a kind of a bitch
The story pretty much encourages you to see Taylor this way as well.
>it's easy for Taylor's frustration[...]to transfer to the reader
You're complaining that the protagonist isn't completely objective?

I'm trying to take you seriously, but your complaints appear to be getting increasingly nonsensical.

>I see her as a kind of a bitch, which I think is unnecessary.

And just how is she a bitch? She isn't nice, she doesn't play fair, that doesn't make her a bitch.

> I don't have a problem with Glenn's character

Or maybe it's supposed to point out that you can't always judge people at first glance and Taylor is wrong sometimes too?

>He might not murder people for the lulz
He still is trying to make the city a better place. Taylor really is just going up against him because of Dinah, so it is very much a personal matter instead of a case of right vs wrong.

>I did not call the Protectorate anything
You can't really look at the Protectorate and the PRT as seperate entities. They tried that, it didn't work. They are an antagonist, they aren't evil psychoes. You stated nearly all her antagonists are.

>S9
The S9 aren't morally ambigious, I didn't say they were. They are supposed to be the monsters, a good story is allowed to have some real monsters that are just terrifying without any redeeming qualities that would make them seem more human.

> I think that joining the Undersiders in the first place was the real mistake
Maybe, but I'm trying to see the things from Taylors perspective. Joining the Undersiders in the first place isn't a mistake from her point of view, the other things are.

Okay, not the same dude, but I think the issue you're having is that you just don't understand Taylor. I don't really want to get into a huge thing about it, but if you want to see things from her perspective, try thinking more short term. She's a depressed person, so she has trouble seeing the long term. When she's presented with an issue she gravitates toward the most immediate solution. More than that, she tends to view things from a perspective of preventing loss rather than achieving gain. She wants to *stop* bad things from happening (to her and others), but doesn't really think about how to actually make things better.

Hm, I think I'll have to stop arguing with you. Looking at your examples, I find that I can't determine what your problem with the story actually is, and it's pointless if I can't understand your viewpoint.

If the ends justify the means, then the actions become the right things, don't they?

>And just how is she a bitch?
She is literally shown to be a parahuman bigot, and her general attitude and demeanor strike me as her being a bitch.

>Or maybe it's supposed to point out that you can't always judge people at first glance and Taylor is wrong sometimes too?
What does this have to do with anything I said about him?

>He still is trying to make the city a better place
No, he's trying to control it. He even states himself that any clean-up efforts would be done to serve his ego. We'll never know anyhow, and I'm basing my opinion and what we see of him in story, not what could have been.

>You can't really look at the Protectorate and the PRT as seperate entities
Watch me.

>You stated nearly all her antagonists are.
I actually said the PRT were obstinate dickhead bullies, and I'm of course referring to all the directors we've had a good look at. I didn't include them in the psycho antagonist part like I did Coil and the S9.

>The S9 aren't morally ambigious, I didn't say they were
Then we're in agreement.

>Taylor's perspective
I don't care about Taylor's perspective. I care about the story's perspective of her.

No, not really. As I said, the other things that have provoked obsessions in me are Metal Gear and One Piece. I don't really know what the three have in common. I suppose they're action-oriented, have colorful casts, and tell epic-style stories, but there's no guarantee that any of those things is the real trigger for me.

Basically, post stuff you like, and I can sort it myself, I guess. Generally, I'll probably be more likely to enjoy recommendations from fans of Worm than from the general population, you know?

>If the ends justify the means, then the actions become the right things, don't they?
It's debatable, and involves a lot of arguing the finer points of ethics and results that I don't want to get into.

My problem with the story is that Taylor makes a bunch of bad decisions, and the story justifies them, making them seem like not bad decisions.

It is confusing.

>My problem with the story is that Taylor makes a bunch of bad decisions, and the story justifies them, making them seem like not bad decisions.

I'd argue that is isn't the case. What Taylor gets are bad situations, and she has to choose from a number of decisions with various levels of bad consequences. There's really no point in the story where she's just free to make her own choices, or chart her own path. The closest we see to her genuinely making her own choices are the initial decision to join the Undersiders, the choice to turn them in or join them 'for real', her decision to leave them after she finds out about Dinah, and her eventual choice to turn herself in to the PRT. Even then, all of those choices are the result of external circumstances to at least some extent.

Pretty much every other decision in the story is the result of circumstance that are genuinely out of her control, and usually it's her trying to salvage a shitty situation.

Oh well. I'm getting tired of explaining it, but it's just my interpretation.

I could complain about Pact some, if you want.

So what was so bad about the territory of the various Undersiders? I can see a case for Rachel being unacceptable but none of the other Undersiders save Regent seem too terribly fucked up.

>I could complain about Pact some, if you want.
Oh, please do.

>She is literally shown to be a parahuman bigot
Yes she is. It's her defining negative quality. Aside from that, she is merciless and does what she thinks is necessary. That's all what I can see. Now think of someone else like that who isn't depicted as a bitch according to you.

>What does this have to do with anything I said about him?
>when nearly all you see of the PRT are obstinate dickhead bullies or people focused on the wrong thing (Piggot, Tagg, the third director, Glenn, etc)

He is a member of the PRT. He seems like a fat bureaucrat. We learn he isn't, Taylor finds out she misjudged.

>No, he's trying to control it.
So? Taylor even originally joined up with him because she thought he would be good for the city. Her confrontation with him had personal reasons, and you could argue that the fate of one girl is less important than the fate of the city. Was fighting him really the right choice at the time, even from a purely moral perspective?

>Watch me.
Taylor gets in trouble with the PRT directors and winds up fighting people like Dragon, MM and CB who aren't bad people in any sense of the word. Try to seperate that. She wanted to the heroes to get more independend of the
PRT, it doesn't work out.

>Taylor's perspective
Alright, the points I counted still mostly stand. She shouldn't have tried to betray the Undersiders (or not joined them in the first place), she shouldn't have let Grue run away from the S9 on his own, she should have told her Dad who she was earlier.

Well, apart from Taylor and Rachael we don't know a huge amount about their territories. That said, the issue was never the quality of life in their territories, but the fact that those territories encompassed the entire city.

It won't be as substantial as my Worm complaints, as I dropped it when it started getting really bad for me. But here goes.

I hate Rose. Hate, hate, hate her. She and Blake had no chemistry, she wasn't likable, and I honestly couldn't see what good she did the plot, as the power she has is just power she takes from Blake (yes, I know this because they are essentially two halves of the same person, I don't like that either). The story would have been better for me if she weren't in it and the protagonist was just the original person. Evan was a much better partner for Blake, and actually provided unique help, on top of being an actually good character.

Hated that Wildbow once again decided that the best way to do a thrill ride is to take off the brakes. Three back to back intense action scenes (that I enjoyed) and then a long ass final action scene (that I did not enjoy)? No thanks Wildbow, fix your pacing issues.

Hated that Blake was made into an Other and fucking stripped of his practitioner status, and that he swapped places with Rose. Still the protagonist, but in more a sidekick capacity. Did not like it. A very radical change to a premise that I enjoyed.

Hated that Blake dragged a bunch of his friends into his fucked up situation with him. Struck me as very dumb and selfish.

Thought it was weird that Blake had a fetish for ugly girls.

And that's about all the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Definitely most of them overall though.

Reading it seemed to be more a question of who was in charge as opposed to who was doing the most good. An ego clash.

Not an ego clash, I'd say. The government is obviously going to be against villains running a city, and they're never going to accept it if they can possibly avoid it. As to the clash between the gangs, that was Coil's bid to take over, and you could argue that was ego-driven.

Not an ego clash so much as a law clash. The Undersiders, one and all, are confirmed violent criminals. They've all assaulted heroes and some of them are murderers. Letting them run things is out of the question.

The heroes would have moved on them sooner, but they already had their hands full with the overtly violent gangs and relief aid. They also couldn't risk resources on their territories, because like Piggot said, how would they know they would be safe?

>Your parents are filthy rich assholes that always pushed you towards succeeding at at anything you try
>strict education where only a perfect score is acceptable, if you aren't the MVP in your sports team you are not going to get food at home etc.
>they don't even do it out of a false sense of thinking this is good for you, they just want you to be a pretty trophy they can brag about amongst their friends
>some of those friends even get inspired to do the same thing with their children
>your parents are getting desperate for ways to make you even better than those children, they get struck by brilliance as they figure out the one thing that undoubtedly elevate you above the others
>what is more bragworthy than a child with superpowers, after all?
>they didn't know what it takes to make a person trigger, and after researching and finding out decided not to care
>bring in various expensive torture experts to make extra sure
>you endure torture of all kinds with no results, parents are getting anxious
>you actually know what a trigger event is and constantly wishing for one so that the pain stops is ensuring that you aren't getting one
>One day during a meeting your parents find out that another child already got powers even without being tortured, turns out the regular stress was enough for them
>they admit absolute defeat and stop caring, pay a cape that can wipe memories to make you forget everything that happened so you can't expose them for what they did
>that cape is a Jack Slash tier asshole that knew what was being done to you and decided to do something what she considered playing a prank on a couple rich assholes
>she only erased your knowledge about trigger events, the moment her power hits you all the things that happened flood in and you trigger

What powers do you get?
I'm kind of afraid that I made this too edgy

>Worm
>too edgy