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An Imago of Rust and Crimson (Worm crossover)

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WILL NEVER COME TO BE!​
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​
Heh.

But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the Judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.
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... Mount Zion, with its assembly of angels.

Heh.

(Also, my first thought when I read that was "Hebert, chapter 12 point 22-24." Except that's the wrong numbers for Speck. :p )
 
Yak said:
What is this? If you mean gangster or wannabe gangster, then use that.

The word "ganger" has nothing to do with street gangs, and every time I see it used on SB I think "dawwww, what a cute little writer with his words". However, when I see EarthScorpion use it, then I know the disease has gone too far. I don't know who started using it in place of "gangster", but it was probably the same little blossom who decided to have Taylor fight "druggies". Sure, druggies is a real word, but it makes the story sound like it's written by a nine year old. Ganger is both childish and nonsensical.
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No, it's a real word, it just doesn't see much use anymore. Means basically the same thing a foreman.
 
Xicree said:
Ninety nine knights of the air ride super high-tech jet fighters
Everyone's a super hero
Everyone's a Captain Kirk
With orders to identify, to clarify and classify
Scrambling in the summer sky
As ninety-nine red balloons go by
Ninety-nine red balloons go by...



And when its all over and we're standing pretty... in the dust that was a city.
If I could find a souvenir, Just to prove the world was here,


And here is a red balloon... I think of you and let it go...
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EarthScorpion said:
It would have probably have looked like me swaddled in a pile of blankets and thick clothes, with a pair of glowing eyes inside the shadows of its hood.
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...well, that's adorable. And therefore probably not producible by Taylor's powers.

Among the cool things in the chapter is Taylor finding an evil that, while mundane, is still somewhat setting-specific.

I wonder if the people chained by love and the people chained by hate are the same pair. And if either has anything to do with the sweatshop.

Did Taylor use the Other Place to translate street preacher rambling into a slightly coherent statement? Impressive.
 
sopchoppy said:
a contraction of gang banger?
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Yes, it should probably be gangbanger even, not gangster. Well, given that they're in suits, they might have the right connections to the actual Mafia to be called gangsters, but I kinda doubt it.
 
Yak said:
What is this? If you mean gangster or wannabe gangster, then use that.

The word "ganger" has nothing to do with street gangs, and every time I see it used on SB I think "dawwww, what a cute little writer with his words". However, when I see EarthScorpion use it, then I know the disease has gone too far. I don't know who started using it in place of "gangster", but it was probably the same little blossom who decided to have Taylor fight "druggies". Sure, druggies is a real word, but it makes the story sound like it's written by a nine year old. Ganger is both childish and nonsensical.
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I don't know where you're getting your usage information, to make such broad claims about word usage, in a fictitious world even. Urbandictionary, maybe? Gangster is last-millenium word, and in New England I never heard it used to refer to ethnic gang members. Gangbangers was used, but it's faintly archaic, more often than not when I heard/read about gang related activity that was how it was referred to. "gang related". More than than that would be kinda.. I dunno, alarmist? Impolite?

Gangers is a credible contraction/slur for the setting. Druggies is a normal term that's used extensively real-world and you probably need to get off the internet if you think otherwise.
 
The problem is that ganger already has another meaning, one unrelated to street gangs. And also sounds terrible, as well as making me think doppelgänger thanks to that one doctor who episode.
 
Seeing Taylor being negatively affected by her own otherworld-viewing power was kind of sad... believable and kinda inevitable, but still sad. There's a danger of a form of confirmation bias there I think, especially if the cynicism the otherworld displays is formed from Taylor's own (as a disclaimer I know basically nothing of nWoD; I am going only off what we've seen in this fic - what the Otherworld is based on from there I haven't a clue). The candy bar really highlighted it; when she's seeing anything in the world, she's usually comparing it off against the Otherworld version and going '...yeah, that's true'. It's automatically shifting her perception of the world across into the negative (or... further across into the negative); it's a little like depression in a lot of ways.

...So in other words, you've given Taylor superpowered depression. You bastard. You clever, evil bastard.

To be fair, the state of Brockton / the world is depressing but Taylor's 'Let's See What Silent Hill Would Do' perception filter really isn't helping. And, as noted, she can only see it and have it constantly pushed in her face much like the preacher and the sweatshop (I admit I was expecting a drug factory from the otherworld imagery; that it's an even more mundane form of evil just made it worse in a way) but can't really do anything about it without taking some insane risks given her power doesn't come with a manual, and if it did it would probably come in hypercynical gibberish written on human skin.

On the inverse of course, it's because it's highlighting these things she's thinking of / flailing about at attempting ways to fix or at least investigate them, which she wouldn't do were she still ignorant. And because it's so overt she can step back and recognise the differences, though there's still going to be crossover bleed since it only ever shows the negative side of things from what we can see (I refuse to believe the butterflies in the psychiatric ward are the only hopeful spot in all of Brockton). Personally I'm just kind of hoping she'll team up with someone - Undersiders, the Wards, Coil, whoever - soon; she might well prove completely useless at the actual fightey-stabbey-punchey side of things, but this Herbert would make once spectacular form of Mission Control, and then she can start seeing real results from her interventions.

EDIT:

SolipsistSerpen said:
I can't tell if that's a British term or just an exceptionally rare one for people who aren't nautical. Taylor did grow up around the docks, so if it's the latter, it would be appropriate for her to use. It's certainly not something I can recall ever hearing someone say out loud but I don't live on the coast, so I can't say. Fortunately, google came to my rescue as far as understanding goes, but I seem to recall EarthScorpion saying something about wanting to cut out his use of British terms when writing Taylor's POV, so it would be good if someone more experienced with docks could weigh in.
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'Bollards' in England are actually just 'street posts' of the sort to keep cars from driving down certain places; you'd find them in any city. Were it a mooring bollard you'd... well, you'd be on a dock, since you tie ships to it.
 
SolipsistSerpen said:
But she is on the docks. Ah well, the fact it has an extra more flexible meaning in England inclines me to think it is using that one.
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Well I mean literally 'at the sea edge'. As in 'the part where the ships park' not 'a street in a docktown'. Unless the other side of the street is at the water's edge (which wouldn't make a lot of sense) it wouldn't be a mooring bollard.
 
CyganAngel said:
No, I'm fairly sure Carrnage is right. He writes fusions, not crossovers; background aspects of the Worm-verse have been changed to accommodate the added elements of the World of Darkness.

It isn't a straight cross; that would involve leaving the background elements the same, or only slightly changed, and pushing the crossed elements into the story. I'm fairly sure I've seen ES_Corp mention his disdain for such approaches in the past, preferring to fuse the two settings together rather than attempt to force the two together despite incompatibilities.

Then again, given his apparent disdain for Worm's setting, I'm fairly sure those changes would be evident regardless of whether this was a crossover or a fusion.
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The one is a subset of the other. As evidenced by the thread title.

For something more immediately relevant to the fic: if ES actually is trying to cut down on the Britishisms when using Taylor's POV, a very simple thing that needs doing is to Ctrl-F any instance of "Mum" and replace it with "Mom".

Does anyone have any idea what exactly might have gone wrong with Taylor's spying attempt at the end there?
 
Satori said:
The problem is that ganger already has another meaning, one unrelated to street gangs. And also sounds terrible, as well as making me think doppelgänger thanks to that one doctor who episode.
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More importantly, the real meaning of the word ganger is one that Taylor, as the child of a union organiser, might actually know.
 
EarthScorpion said:
Do you really think the Other Place would be so generous to how it portrays his collection of dolls, whose brains he's stuck his sordid hands into and prodded?
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On the one hand, they could be like the chocolate bar wrapper ("LOVE FEELS GOOD"), on the other hand if you change people such that they are compelled to act in a way that horrifies themselves that's pretty horrific ... but if you change someone to the extent that they are not horrified, but rather are compelled to act in ways that they enjoy and that fulfills them, that sounds borderline utopian.

So his power probably doesn't work like that at all.
 
EarthScorpion said:
Do you really think the Other Place would be so generous to how it portrays his collection of dolls, whose brains he's stuck his sordid hands into and prodded?
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Let me guess, Taylor would see them perfectly happy and alright, but see a thread or something like that, connecting them to Heartbreaker. Or that thread is wrapping around them to give a image that they are happy?
 
Silver W. King said:
Let me guess, Taylor would see them perfectly happy and alright, but see a thread or something like that, connecting them to Heartbreaker. Or that thread is wrapping around them to give a image that they are happy?
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I'm not sure there's a need to guess when I described them as "dolls, whose brains he's stuck his sordid hands into and prodded", honestly. Especially when the Other Place is so brutally uncompromising in pulling dirty little secrets and personality facets to the fore in the form of metaphor, something like "someone made me into their puppet by fucking with my brain so I loved them unconditionally" basically writes itself.
 
Renu said:
I really hope the "fucking with brains" part won't be shown litterally...
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*rolls eyes*

Please, credit me some taste - and awareness of forum rules.

No, honestly, to be blunt Heartbreaker is almost certainly already dead in Imago. Not only does he have a wonderful mix of "far too dangerous to let live", "useless in Endbringer fights - and possibly even an active security risk if he shows up" and "squishy" - what, you think anyone actually wants him alive? Nation states have this thing about people who are flagrant security risks, and for their part, you think the villain community will gather around to make a fuss about him being hunted down by remote-operated drones? That the over-half-female villain community will kick up a fuss about such a squalid, disgusting little man who might use his power on them being killed from a long way away?

I don't. I think a hell of a lot of people on both sides of the law would be glad to see someone like that dead, and that's a very precarious position for someone to be in.

To blunt, everyone gets to feel morally righteous by killing Heartbreaker, and personal feelings of moral righteousness incentivise a lot of human behaviour. For some reason, "Cops and Robbers" is a much more appealing metaphor than "Cops and Rapists". No one wants to see themselves as the villain, after all, and Heartbreaker is viscerally disgusting. And his death reminded the criminal community that there's a difference between "doing what normal criminals do, but with superpowers on your side" and what he was doing.

And now all that's left is his legacy.
 
EarthScorpion said:
I'm not sure there's a need to guess when I described them as "dolls, whose brains he's stuck his sordid hands into and prodded", honestly. Especially when the Other Place is so brutally uncompromising in pulling dirty little secrets and personality facets to the fore in the form of metaphor, something like "someone made me into their puppet by fucking with my brain so I loved them unconditionally" basically writes itself.
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Porcelain faced doll masks over people with removed skullcaps and exposed brains which writhe and twist into vapid smiles while in human hands float ominously over them, plucking and shifting large and small needles which stick out from them at bizarre angles. And over those another pair of hands directing and controlling their boneless motions like marionettes in a puppet show.

Tear tracts lead down from their eyes even as the mask continues its vapid smile.


Or at least that's the kind of thing that comes to mind for me when you say this. Probably with an emphasis on their ruined state via clouts of dirt, rust, or damage in contrast with maybe fresh cleaned clothing adorning them.
 
redaeth said:
The reason Heartbreaker wasn't killed in canon is because he had mind-wammied several capes and the fear that his death would mean they would go and avenge him. The reason Imp got away with it was because of her Stranger ability.
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So, they forgot that she killed him, basically.
 
redaeth said:
The reason Heartbreaker wasn't killed in canon is because he had mind-wammied several capes and the fear that his death would mean they would go and avenge him. The reason Imp got away with it was because of her Stranger ability.
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That would have had to been a rather eclectic band of murder death, and protection for them not to kill them all any way.
 
redaeth said:
So you would have a government condone the murders of innocent people? I can really see that going over well.
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Eh not it's just there are a lot of villanous Female tinker who would think "Yeah I would so totally beg you to do that for me." Then proceed to deepstriking him.
 
Mutton said:
I kind of went with the background assumption that Heartbreaker was doing work for Cauldron on the side, so he was more quarantined than anything else from the government's perspective. Since let's face it, he could be really useful if you have some way of controlling him.
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...that does sound like something Cauldron would do, admittedly. I think he'd be more useful as a human sacrifice for the political goals his death advanced in Imago, but I admit my bias toward assholes like Heartbreaker dying.

Perhaps Cauldron doesn't exist in Imago, or perhaps they extracted a useful price for the privilege of ridding the world of Heartbreaker.
 
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