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An Imago of Rust and Crimson (Worm crossover)

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But have you seen his running mate? Everything's black and white to her, and once she digs her heels in you just can't move her. I wish he'd taken the other guy on instead: at least he could see the world in shades of grey, even if he was a little stuck in the past.
 
ExplBean said:
I think it's interesting that Taylor sees this entire sequence as damaging to her relationship with Danny, when from another point of view its the exact opposite. Taylor's lying about the trouble she's up to, sure, but to "make up" for it she's more emotionally open with him- she's not afraid to admit she's exhausted, and they joke around during the car ride. The car ride especially is interesting; for the reader it's in-character worldbuilding, but this is also Danny showing a side of himself that Taylor never sees. He talks about Annette, which has been verboten in the Hebert household since her death. Taylor picks up on his bitterness, but anyone talking politics in a dystopia is bound to get a bit salty about it, and again he's not cutting the discussion off and bottling it up to hide that from her.

There was another section on the politics of this particular dystopia, but I thought the better of it.

Anyway, point is, things are a little better between Danny and Taylor now than they were before the hospital, and it might have broken both of them out of the emotional rut they'd fallen into.
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I would note the teeny tiny bit of inconsistency in Danny's account. According to him, "Anyway, the worst I got up to was some vandalism and… okay, we scrapped a bit with the police, but they started it! We were just protesting and then they started up with the tear gas and the water cannons", but Annette '''"...was throwing petrol bombs at them." He sighed. "She was always more of a radical than me," he added. "She had such beautiful eyes behind her army surplus gas mask. And those outfits that her and her friends were wearing were really flattering."''' Looks like she was coming awfully prepared for it to have been a totally unprovoked police "starting it".

But he's not even pretending to be an objective source. He's an old embittered unionist who views Reagan in a way very similar to the way that old embittered British unionists view Thatcher. And there are people around who would call him a dangerous left-wing radical or a socialist, and he was the more moderate of him and Annette [1], who was a legit extremist.

And then as things turned sour and the backlash came (especially after Reagan got assassinated and turned into a martyr by it), the two of them had to go and get jobs, and leave the street protest stage behind. If she hadn't met Danny, Annette might well have gone even more extreme, but as it was he pulled her back. And then Taylor showed up, and so did the Endbringers, and suddenly the paradigm totally changed and too-vocal dissent could be shouted down by "we have to stand together to defend against the Endbringers", and Danny was left to stew on the way that everything seemed to be getting worse even as the rich got richer and still benefited from the parahuman revolution, while everyone else got screwed over and any attempts to criticise it could be shouted down.

And then Annette died, and he all-but fell apart, and by the time he painfully pulled himself back together, he had a teenage daughter he didn't know how to handle who wouldn't talk to him about anything.

[1] As an English professor, the texts she set students certainly hinted at her still-held, albeit moderated, beliefs. Taylor was read a lot of books [2] as a child which were intended to leave her a socially conscious individual. This... uh, appears to have been largely unsuccessful overtly, but may have primed her with an instinctual tendency to go "Screw the Man if he's oppressing people! Society should be more fair and equal!". Or that might just be her.

[2] Not including her old copy of the Anarchist's Cookbook, luckily. That's still up in storage.
 
I might as well post this since I neglected to say it earlier to make a silly joke, but I do really like the idea of supervillains (or at least, the supervillain aesthetic) being seen as counterculture. It just... makes sense.

Also, speculation: If Leviathan attacked elsewhere, does that mean the Simurgh is free to visit Brockton Bay for the next Endbringer attack?

The Simurgh is, as far as I can tell, most people's (including myself, actually) favorite Endbringer, and I admit that I am rather interested in how you would portray her, considering that Aeon Entelechy Evangelion was the first fic of yours that I've read.

But then, considering your other comments about street level superheroing, there's always a chance that an Endbringer won't up and attack Brockton Bay. I mean, it's not like there aren't plenty of opportunities for stories without everything in the city going all apocalyptic.

Unless I misunderstood your comments on that front. (Don't think I saw anyone speculating on this before me, though I might be mistaken.)

Ah well.
 
Sir Bill said:
I might as well post this since I neglected to say it earlier to make a silly joke, but I do really like the idea of supervillains (or at least, the supervillain aesthetic) being seen as counterculture. It just... makes sense.
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I know, right? It even means there's a reason so many villains (especially female ones) look like goth fetish models, and why corsets and S&M themes are so big. :)

Sir Bill said:
Also, speculation: If Leviathan attacked elsewhere, does that mean the Simurgh is free to visit Brockton Bay for the next Endbringer attack?
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Nah, man, don't you know? She's already there. You know, just chillaxing and carrying out some trolling.

Mostly she just hangs around the Docks, but she sometimes goes and has a burger at Fugly Bob's. She's a burger snob. Had a few McDonalds in her time, not a fan - not least because she knew she wouldn't like it before she ate it. She also goes shopping quite a lot, even though it can sometimes be a bit of a pain to find something that fits. Those who know her say she has an excellent eye for clothes, and is pretty good at putting on her own makeup, even without a mirror.

It's amazing that no one has noticed the Endbringer among their midst, but eh, humans. What're you gonna do? :p
 
Peanuckle said:
When faced with conundrums like this, I put them firmly out of my mind and wait for an in-story reveal.

No point spinning the wheels when there's no real info.
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Agreed let's talk about serious info revealed. EarthScorpion killed Reagan! McCarthy was right. Bloody writers, commie infiltrators all of them. I don't dare to ask what happened to Thatcher... :p

But seriously, I'm curious to see what the full ramifications from THAT were, I can imagine that's why the far right has all that traction, aside from all the other problems already mentioned. (Martyr Reagan, brr. He's already hailed as a saint by the American right in the real world...)
 
The Nomad said:
Still loving the atmosphere and Taylor's power. So Mastigos'y !

By the way ES, regarding your Manton-Li-Bahti (modified) classification, would you like to share its main axes with us? Or is your stance on this "show, don't tell"?

(Also, it appears that, according to a Worm Quest that Wildbow wrote, the PRT classification once had over thirty categories but the current one is the product of trimming it to the 'tried and true' essentials.)
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It'll come up when the DHS PPD shows up. Probably after an interlude. But here's a basic description of kind of the operating principles, just so anyone who actually has police or military experience can point out if I'm just talking crazy-talk with my attempts to make a semi-convincing radio code system for reporting powers and effects.

Suffice to say, it isn't PR friendly, is very much jargon, and much like police radio codes, exists to convey necessary information in a way which minimises risk of confusion over a potentially noisy line, and allows you to easily ask for more information. However, much like how "a myocardial infarction" conveys far more information to a doctor than "a problem with his heart", so does "Range codes are Romeo Dash Two and Alfa Dash One and target's a Purple" (in this case, that their power is effective to about the range of a handgun, and has an area-of-effect-component of around a metre, and that the power affects both animate and inanimate objects and that they cannot affect themselves with it) tell you much more than "he's a Blaster-3" (which only tells you that they have some kind of ranged attack which is kinda dangerous). [1] The canon system doesn't let you ask "how far should we split up so they can't take several of us down in a blast" or "how far can they sense the location of all human minds" without asking that question, rather than just asking for their Alfa code.

It has a much more... effects-based approach to powers. Someone who can set fire to people with a touch, and someone who can throw fireballs have the same Papa-code under this, but one has Romeo-0 and the other a non-zero Romeo, while in canon, one is a Striker and the other is a Blaster.

Also, it entirely uses colours, numbers, and the Nato phonetic alphabet, so there's no risk of a hurried warning down a line of "Watch out, they have a Thinker" being mistaken for "Watch out, they have a Tinker".

Yes, it's jargon, like I said. Hence why the media still uses the old system, which is nice and evocative and friendly and easy for amateurs to understand, but gets cops killed because they heard "Tinker", were worried about a gadgeteer and ended up against someone whose power was to see perfectly in the dark and see possible trajectories.

[1] So, yeah, from that much, you can see out that Romeo is range, and goes from Romeo-o which is "touch range" to Romeo-10 which is "no known limits", and Alfa is "area of effect", going from Alfa-0 (single target) to Alfa-10 (global-scale). These two are separated because you need to treat someone with a on-self kill aura with a range of 1 metre differently from someone who can throw 1m blast radius kill orbs. And their Manton limitations are given with a colour (and that Purple is a mix of Red and Blue, animate and inanimate). Other codes include the Papa-code for the power, and the Tango-code for the overall threat rating (which does the overall summing up).
 
EarthScorpion said:
Snip
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Huh, so what would canon Taylor be under this system? In canon, she was Master 8 with a thinker rating somewhere between 1 and 3 because of how much information she could pull from her subjects.
 
TheLastOne said:
Huh, so what would canon Taylor be under this system? In canon, she was Master 8 with a thinker rating somewhere between 1 and 3 because of how much information she could pull from her subjects.
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It's not quite finished yet, but she'd have Red as her Manton colour, Papa-(some number code indicating controls target) [1], a second Papa code for "remote viewing", Romeo-0-Alfa-5 or so (area of effect power centred on self with range measured in hundreds of metres), and her formal file would probably have a Yellow-Papa-(multitasking) attached, but that'd be secondary information. Oh, and her Tango rating would steadily escalate.

You'd also probably call in the Papas with the Manton colour attached, to make it clearer to the listener that she can control non-human living beings of some kind and see through their senses. So Red-Papa-(number1) Red-Papa-(number2)... and then probably have to clarify that it's "bugs, insects, spiders... things like that" anyway. Because at some point, you just have to use words.

She's probably one of the characters whose description gets the least clarity added (and probably loses some) under this system, I must admit. On the other hand, Bitch's code now clearly indicates that she enhances her Red non-human targets with the same powers a Yellow human "Brute" would self-apply, and that's immediately helpful, because it tells you to look for highly enhanced non-human minions.

[1] Notably, you can see that the same Papa code for Scarlet would be "controls humans", and for Blue would be "controls areas of the environment in some way". It's probably a prank to get newbs on the force to call in a Yellow Papa-(that code)-1, though, because that would mean "controls their own body", and thus is also much like getting people to call in reports on powers like photoscience, thermiscience and tactikinesis.
 
EarthScorpion said:
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[1] Notably, you can see that the same Papa code for Scarlet would be "controls humans", and for Blue would be "controls areas of the environment in some way". It's probably a prank to get newbs on the force to call in a Yellow Papa-(that code)-1, though, because that would mean "controls their own body", and thus is also much like getting people to call in reports on powers like photoscience, thermiscience and tactikinesis.
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I remember those guys. They started that huge Dihydrogen Monoxide scare a few years back. The jerks.
 
EarthScorpion said:
snip classification system.
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Yeah, this is great. :D Some confusion though. Is Red the color for all kinds of animate or just non-human animate? If it is the former then 'Red' for Bitch would not convey the 'non-human' information but if it is the latter then it would convey misleading information in your first example.
 
Academia Nut said:
The funny thing is that I can just about picture someone with some sort of ability where they are in fact puppetting their own body. Like someone quadriplegic who triggered and now moves by indirectly controlling their own body, having little to no pain reception. I'm sure there are other ways that could arise to create a situation where use of that code was in fact legit, which could then cause all sorts of confusion since it has always been a prank before.
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To be fair, from an outside perspective - and the only one really relevant to the cops on the ground - that would only be visible as reduced pain reception (unless the 'can move own body' part of said situation includes things like flight, odd movement or teleportation though I'd assume there are dedicated codes for that) and probably fall under some other category.
 
Salbazier said:
Yeah, this is great. :D Some confusion though. Is Red the color for all kinds of animate or just non-human animate? If it is the former then 'Red' for Bitch would not convey the 'non-human' information but if it is the latter then it would convey misleading information in your first example.
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That's a deliberate in-universe patch later applied to the original model - I've mentioned use of "Scarlet" to cover specifically human-affecters in passing. In theory, Red/Yellow/Blue is a logically sound organic/self/inorganic divide, and a human controller should be flagged as Red-Human, just as Skitter is Red-Bugs-and-stuff and Bitch is Red-Dogs. In practice, humans tend to go "fuck fuck fuck he can affect humans SCARLET". Technically, there's also Crimson for animals only (or else people would assume all callings in of Red are animals-only), but the way it tends to work out, someone would call in Bitch as Red-Canines, but Regent as Scarlet.

Academia Nut said:
The funny thing is that I can just about picture someone with some sort of ability where they are in fact puppetting their own body. Like someone quadriplegic who triggered and now moves by indirectly controlling their own body, having little to no pain reception. I'm sure there are other ways that could arise to create a situation where use of that code was in fact legit, which could then cause all sorts of confusion since it has always been a prank before.
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Yeah, Khepri was doing that to herself at the end. Of course, since she was also controlling other humans she'd be Scarlet-Yellow (keeping in with the theme that humans for some reason feel "can affect humans" is vitally important for some powers [1]).

[1] For some reason, Red tends to just get used for things like "can dissolve humans in the area to tang". Goddamn Japanese parahumans. Why are they all so crazy?
 
EarthScorpion said:
That's a deliberate in-universe patch later applied to the original model - I've mentioned use of "Scarlet" to cover specifically human-affecters in passing. In theory, Red/Yellow/Blue is a logically sound organic/self/inorganic divide, and a human controller should be flagged as Red-Human, just as Skitter is Red-Bugs-and-stuff and Bitch is Red-Dogs. In practice, humans tend to go "fuck fuck fuck he can affect humans SCARLET". Technically, there's also Crimson for animals only (or else people would assume all callings in of Red are animals-only), but the way it tends to work out, someone would call in Bitch as Red-Canines, but Regent as Scarlet
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So, the pattern is like shade of [primary color] = subtype of [type] and combinations of colors = combination of types, right?. Black would then mean 'Everything'.

[1] For some reason, Red tends to just get used for things like "can dissolve humans in the area to tang". Goddamn Japanese parahumans. Why are they all so crazy?
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Totally off topic, I've only just now wonder what 'tang' actually means (other than LCL)
 
Salbazier said:
So, the pattern is like shade of [primary color] = subtype of [type] and combinations of colors = combination of types, right?. Black would then mean 'Everything'.




Totally off topic, I've only just now wonder what 'tang' actually means (other than LCL)
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Powdered orange drink.
 
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