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Consider the economic chaos that our earth just experienced due to a single boat getting stuck for less than a week. Now consider what villains and endbringers have been doing for decades. The least realistic thing about Earth Bet is just how well it's doing.
 
Pethrai Darkos said:
Except not really. There's two methods of creating a setting when it comes to superhero stories: there's the Marvel approach, which has Spider-man in New York City and the X-Mansion just outside of North Salem, and there's the DC approach, with Batman in Gotham and Superman in Metropolis. Both of these are valid and it doesn't mean that the DC America is any less like our world than Marvel America.
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Except that "Earth 33" of DC comics is explicitly the closest thing to our world that they have, and it has a superhero (Ultra Comics). Meanwhile Earth 1218 of the Marvel universe explicitly our universe, with Earth 12180, Earth 38119, and Earth TRN565 being close analogs (TRN565's only difference is the existence of Qwen "Qwenpool" Poole). So yes, there IS a distinct difference between the Marvel and DC approaches, and Worm is more similar to the DC approach.

MaskedCritic said:
...have you ever, you know, read anything Marvel or DC? Because those Americas are absolutely nothing like ours.

Nobody in DC understands the concept of self defense or gun ownership, or else the Joker would've been dead several times over, because he'd be guaranteed to run into some nutjob with a gun, running around hurting people in a big city like he does. There are more guns owned in the US than there are people to own them!

Marvel, on the other hand, has government-sanctioned genocidal robot death patrols running about the place on a regular basis... and they only ever go after one minority group. Anybody who's ever paid attention to history knows that bigotry doesn't work like that, one group doesn't gather all the hate and leave none for anybody else. Somebody would have set the Sentinels on Black people, or Asian people, or Jewish people, at some point.

And that's just two easy examples...
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The minority thing is at least partially explained by a psionically-active hive-mind bacteria that infects Humans, but is unable to affect people with an active X-gene. People of sufficient willpower, such as most of the ones that become superheroes, are able to resist its manipulations, but it doesn't care about them since it can still live in their bodies. Mutants are literally unable to be infected, through unknown means other than the X-gene activation causes it.

But yeah, even if people didn't have self-defense laws and such, the Joker would have had an "accident", or would "resist arrest", and tragically die. And nothing of value would be lost, though some other manifestation of the Gotham Curse would arise, anything from a resurgence of the gangs to a new Joker. In fact, that is commonly thought to be the reason for the Joker's conflicting origin stories: they aren't all the same man, but they are all The Joker.
 
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karloss99 said:
Uhhh... Worm-verse US is in the middle of, for all indents and purposes, an armed rebellion. Quite a few of them, in fact.
The issue is that the groups involved are using the kind of firepower that the US army has basically no chance against, and so all they can do is politely ask the law-abiding superhumans if they could please come work for this one federal branch that is failingtrying to keep the country from falling apart entirely.
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I don't think we know about proper armed rebellions, do we? Well, a couple, but they're very special cases. (Nilbog qualifies.)

What villains mostly do falls under simple (sometimes organized) crime, or occasionally cult-like activities. They don't claim sovereign territory or wage war against the government, they just break laws (and hurt people) and fight back if you try to stop them. Which means that while between the Protectorate and the armed forces the US government might have the firepower to win a pitched battle, it doesn't have a battle. Nor does it really even have an insurgency to try to suppress. It's mostly just got grassroots crime grown to a fairly absurd scale.
Zummers said:
Consider the economic chaos that our earth just experienced due to a single boat getting stuck for less than a week. Now consider what villains and endbringers have been doing for decades. The least realistic thing about Earth Bet is just how well it's doing.
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RL economies are more fragile than they have to be, because it's cheaper that way and we've structured our economic system such that that argument wins out. But I think your point stands.
 
mp3.1415player said:
Well, one could take the reasonable view that Earth Bet is in fact not something that diverged from our world only in the 1980s, but much earlier than that. After all, there is no 200+ year old city called Brockton Bay in our world, is there? So logically if they have one, and Earth Aleph does too, neither one can be our world or anything like it.

Which leads yet again to the same thing I've said many times before; The odd thing about the Worm world isn't that it diverges from ours, it's that it diverges far too little from ours considering that it's obviously not all that closely related...

Of course you can just shrug and say that is the gift of story telling, you get to change things around :)
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Jacen1 said:
For those questioning the legality of teens signing an NDA, in this setting it seems to be so, as Amy is stated to have signed several. Since such has come up in other Worm fanfics, this is either a popular fanon or indeed canon. I for one do not care which.

For those who question the constitutionality of the laws in question, let me point out that the Supreme Court alone has the power to declare a law unconstitutional, and they are not required to weigh in on all challenges to a law, and further require a challenge before they can judge if a law is constitutional. Ergo, if no challenge has occurred, or if the Supreme Court chooses not to weigh in, an unconstitutional law can remain on the books indefinitely.

As to there being an armed insurrection in Worm... tricky. We don't see enough to judge beyond the local level. However, a cabal of idiots have insured the might of the U.S. military cannot be brought to bare... except in this story, where DARPA the the POTUS have cut that cabal's agency out of the loop in order to protect the most important person on the planet...
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So really in worm-verse, the US Supreme Court probably doesn't have the power to be the ultimate judge of what's constitutional(judicial review). Also, i'd assume Cauldron had it's claws in SCOTUS as well. They seemed to be able to get whatever they wanted, if Contessa was really able to prevent sniping monsters... excuse me Parahumans who made poor choices... from becoming a wide spread "solution"...

Judicial Review is a power that SCOTUS simply decided they had during Marbury vs Madison. And since it embarrassed the Federalists, Congress (who had a democratic-republican majority... Madison's party) and President Jefferson didn't say anything. When SCOTUS started striking down laws as unconstitutional, the other branches couldn't say "That is not a power given to you by the constitution" because they tacitly agreed it was in SCOTUS's power.
 
mp3.1415player said:
What, in any way, makes you think the US Constitution in Earth Bet in 2011 is the same as it is in our world? Canon Worm shows many places where accepted practice there is clearly unconstitutional here, two examples being kill orders and birdcage sentences. And even here, the constitution has been so watered down as far as enforcement goes over the years that quite a few things which are meant by it aren't actually enacted in the spirit of the thing...
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...kill orders aren't unconstitutional though? Like, they're not just legal, we have established precedent for them dating back to basically the very beginning of the nation. Birdcage is a bit more of a grey area, but it's also not clearly unconstitutional. You don't actually hit blatantly unconstitutional until you reach NEPEA and the like.
 
MaskedCritic said:
...have you ever, you know, read anything Marvel or DC? Because those Americas are absolutely nothing like ours.

Nobody in DC understands the concept of self defense or gun ownership, or else the Joker would've been dead several times over, because he'd be guaranteed to run into some nutjob with a gun, running around hurting people in a big city like he does. There are more guns owned in the US than there are people to own them!

Marvel, on the other hand, has government-sanctioned genocidal robot death patrols running about the place on a regular basis... and they only ever go after one minority group. Anybody who's ever paid attention to history knows that bigotry doesn't work like that, one group doesn't gather all the hate and leave none for anybody else. Somebody would have set the Sentinels on Black people, or Asian people, or Jewish people, at some point.

And that's just two easy examples...
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Jordisk said:
But yeah, even if people didn't have self-defense laws and such, the Joker would have had an "accident", or would "resist arrest", and tragically die. And nothing of value would be lost, though some other manifestation of the Gotham Curse would arise, anything from a resurgence of the gangs to a new Joker. In fact, that is commonly thought to be the reason for the Joker's conflicting origin stories: they aren't all the same man, but they are all The Joker.
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I'm going to point out that there have been multiple Jokers. Three of them, in fact. Also, the Joker is quite possibly a curse on Gotham according to DC Comics.

Point of fact, Jason Todd killed one of the 3 Jokers, and one of the Jokers killed the 3rd one.
 
Pethrai Darkos said:
Both of these are valid and it doesn't mean that the DC America is any less like our world than Marvel America.
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In DC, the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution allows costumed crime fighters to testify in costume and not reveal their identity. In Marvel, which did NOT have a history of costumed crime fighters going back at least to the revolutionary war, the Thirteenth Amendment bars Slavery, as it does in out world.

It's safe to say a version of Earth with different cities will also have a sufficiently different history that it's constitution need not be the same.

QED.
 
mp3.1415player said:
Well, one could take the reasonable view that Earth Bet is in fact not something that diverged from our world only in the 1980s, but much earlier than that. After all, there is no 200+ year old city called Brockton Bay in our world, is there? So logically if they have one, and Earth Aleph does too, neither one can be our world or anything like it.
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Bet and Aleph split off from each other when Scion showed up. Both of those and "canon" Earth must have split off way, way before that.
 
Heimlan's revised therium (Spellings?) states that realities create the writers who who write about them (by meta stuff) so by extension all the worlds with Capes (DC, Marvel, Watchdogs, Worm, Miraculous Ladybug, ect) are all earths that exist - The events that lead to such divergent timelines must be both widespread and , most importantly, Formative - as in far enough into the past as to alter how the worlds themselves work.
 
mp3.1415player said:
Well, one could take the reasonable view that Earth Bet is in fact not something that diverged from our world only in the 1980s, but much earlier than that. After all, there is no 200+ year old city called Brockton Bay in our world, is there? So logically if they have one, and Earth Aleph does too, neither one can be our world or anything like it.
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Technically your looking for Newburyport, Massachusetts. Which could arguably ,with its costal geography be considered a parallel Brockton...or Innsmouth.
 
Reishin Amara said:
Technically your looking for Newburyport, Massachusetts. Which could arguably ,with its costal geography be considered a parallel Brockton...or Innsmouth.
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No, that doesn't work. NOAA Chart 13282 shows that waterway being nowhere near deep enough for commercial shipping. It would have had to be massively and thoroughly dredged to have a dockworker's association the size of the one in Brockton Bay.
 
OstermanA said:
No, that doesn't work. NOAA Chart 13282 shows that waterway being nowhere near deep enough for commercial shipping. It would have had to be massively and thoroughly dredged to have a dockworker's association the size of the one in Brockton Bay.
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How about New Haven, Connecticut then? And I never thought to look at the water depth...and technically I was looking for a comparison to Innsmouth...which would then be compared to Brockton because both are Bay locations you never want to go to.
 
Reishin Amara said:
How about New Haven, Connecticut then? And I never thought to look at the water depth...and technically I was looking for a comparison to Innsmouth...which would then be compared to Brockton because both are Bay locations you never want to go to.
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Nah, the mouth is the wrong shape to be blocked by a container ship going aground. Too much of the port facility wouldn't be blocked. It's also highly unlikely that Brockton Bay is set on a navigable river, as trade up-river would also want to have the container ship cleared. If enough cities were depending on it, then it would happen. That it wasn't cleared basically means that only a very few cities are effected. Ergo, non-navigable. Not sure where the best place for such a port would be.

If I had to make a guess, it would be that Brockton is set in the vicinity of Kington and Plymouth, Massachusetts. It's a large bay, no navigable river, and a tanker could conceivably settle to block the navigable part of the mouth. It's also about 30 miles from Boston, which is consistent there, too.

NOAA chart 13246 covers Duxbury Bay, Kingston Bay, and Plymouth Harbor.
 
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In this fic at least, it's a fairly large east-facing bay relatively close to Boston, based on what our lizard-obsessed author has said.
My headcanon is that Aleph and Bet diverged from IRL back in the least Ice Age and Brockton Bay is the result of different glacial erosion/deposition patterns resulting in a navigable bay near Portsmouth, NH. Defined by three moraines, this bay would have two sections, the southern supporting the Boardwalk and some fishing docks, while the deeper northern lobe served as the main port district prior the narrow entrance being blocked. The Rig is off the north side of the prominent southern moraine, just inside the bay mouth.
 
Sandy River DL said:
In this fic at least, it's a fairly large east-facing bay relatively close to Boston, based on what our lizard-obsessed author has said.
My headcanon is that Aleph and Bet diverged from IRL back in the least Ice Age and Brockton Bay is the result of different glacial erosion/deposition patterns resulting in a navigable bay near Portsmouth, NH. Defined by three moraines, this bay would have two sections, the southern supporting the Boardwalk and some fishing docks, while the deeper northern lobe served as the main port district prior the narrow entrance being blocked. The Rig is off the north side of the prominent southern moraine, just inside the bay mouth.
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Again, canonically, Aleph and Bet diverged when Scion showed up. There's definitely a Brockton Bay on Aleph. Aleph, however, is not the same as our Earth.
 
OstermanA said:
Again, canonically, Aleph and Bet diverged when Scion showed up. There's definitely a Brockton Bay on Aleph. Aleph, however, is not the same as our Earth.
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Yes, that is what their post said? They said that the realities known as Aleph and Bet split off from our reality during the last ice age, so some time between 10k and 2.5m years ago, most likely more towards the 10k side.
FaerieKnight79 said:
I'm going to point out that there have been multiple Jokers. Three of them, in fact. Also, the Joker is quite possibly a curse on Gotham according to DC Comics.

Point of fact, Jason Todd killed one of the 3 Jokers, and one of the Jokers killed the 3rd one.
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And in at least Batman Beyond, one of the Robins (Tim Drake, I believe) became the Joker.
 
Brockton Bay is clearly supported by sleeping elder gods' dreams. That's the real reason Taylor Hebert beats Scion: she's partially the dream of Cthulhu or Azathoth or something like that.
 
kaosisreality said:
Brockton Bay is clearly supported by sleeping elder gods' dreams. That's the real reason Taylor Hebert beats Scion: she's partially the dream of Cthulhu or Azathoth or something like that.
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Emrakul has escaped from Innistrad's moon and created Talor to relieve boredome!!

*SIGHS* IGNORE HIM. HE'S TIRED AND NEEDS TO SLEEP. *POINTED GLARE AT Avniel* YOU. SLEEP. NOW. YOU'RE STARTING TO SOUND LIKE VOID COWBOY.

Fine. Fine. Going to bed now...
 
MaskedCritic said:
Nobody in DC understands the concept of self defense or gun ownership, or else the Joker would've been dead several times over, because he'd be guaranteed to run into some nutjob with a gun, running around hurting people in a big city like he does. There are more guns owned in the US than there are people to own them!
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and you don't understand DC comics. The Joker IS dead several times over.
 
In fact, the whole Darkest Night storyline was a capstone to all the various times DC heroes and villains died and came back, and was intended as a storyline to finally close the gates of death so any future character deaths would actually be meaningful. Yes, that includes both Aquaman and Green Arrow. Heck, even Batman has managed to cheat the reaper a few times.
 
In 2016 they revealed that Joker is probably immortal and unkillable. At least the original one is. There were two other Jokers also running around (the original mobster/mastermind Joker and the Silver Age criminal prankster with a fondness for oversized props). The modern criminally insane "thinks he's funny" Joker is considered the "original" one, and is the only one of the 3 Jokers still alive.
 
So in other words all this "Haha! DC people are so stupid for not just headshotting the Joker!" is one again internet tough guys lacking any clue what they are talking about, on multiple levels, and they deserve to be mercilessly mocked for it.
 
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