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An Imago of Rust and Crimson (Worm crossover)

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Winged One said:
You know, if it was anyone but Taylor who decided that stealing from the sweatshop-supplied store was moral because fuck them, I'd probably agree with them. But coming from the Rationalization Queen Admin... yeah.

Also, I expect that the boredom didn't dissuade the security guards because that was why they were fucking with the skateboarder in the first place.
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I wouldn't look at stealing from the clothes store for moral slippage. I would look at her trying to mind-control people - even if you think it's ok (which is pretty morally questionable to began with), she doesn't yet know if her influence is damaging in some way... so she tries it on a mall guard?

EarthScorpion said:
Justice/Pride. Explains everything. Including her capacity to keep going through anything; she's just spending willpower earned from constantly indulging in her virtue and vice alike.
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Taylor is Heart of Flint done right to me. She just keep doubling down and doubling down till what she does in the name of her goal is utterly at odds with her goal and her convictions. She's so focused on the long term that she loses sight of the short, of everything and everyone she's burning along the way.
 
I think Taylor's being unfair to the Endbringer prepardness. After all, in order to survive long enough to become a refugee (or when trapped in a quarantine zone), you need to have supplies and a plan. On Earth Bet, prepping is actually useful instead of something crazy people do! Well... okay, 90% of paranoid-level prepping beyond having the kind of go bag you should have even in a non-Endbringer world is somewhere between 'useless' and 'actively harmful', and most of that remaining 10% comes from living in some bunker far from any bodies of water or other targets. You'd probably be better off with some MREs, a map, and a good mountain bike.
 
TheLastOne said:
I wouldn't look at stealing from the clothes store for moral slippage. I would look at her trying to mind-control people - even if you think it's ok (which is pretty morally questionable to began with), she doesn't yet know if her influence is damaging in some way... so she tries it on a mall guard?
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Well, I overlooked it because it was an attempt to save a kid from a beating, but that's also a good point. It hadn't even occurred to me that she could harm anyone but herself like that by accident.
 
Winged One said:
Well, I overlooked it because it was an attempt to save a kid from a beating, but that's also a good point. It hadn't even occurred to me that she could harm anyone but herself like that by accident.
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Yeah, as Earthscorpion said, nWoD, she's Pride/Justice, even if she isn't what you usually think of when you pick Pride as a vice.
 
TheAnt said:
I mean from now on will people who use that store's restroom have panic attacks because she pinned her panic attack there?
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I doubt it. Her creations have shown themselves unable to act on their own when she's bound them with chains. I can't see how being nailed to the ceiling would be any different. If anything, it would be even less able to act.

Also, going by the others, it'll probably dissipate in less than a day.
 
Stormseed said:
It seems to me like she could be Fortitude/Pride just as easily.
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Fortitude is about enduring because enduring matters, a kind of personal toughness founded in willpower. Taylor spends the entire story suicidal, looking for a cause worth killing herself for. She's about the last person to pick Fortitude. On the flip side, she always has a cause she's crusading for, something worth burning herself out on.
 
CircleTheSkies said:
What this brings to mind is the fantasy book "The Sword of Shannara", where the sword that can destroy the lord of evil simply forces the truth upon people (in the case of the bad guy, he was literally kept alive through self-deception... so the truth is fatal to him). The catch is that to use it, the wielder too has to face its power.

And all those little self-deceptions in life, all the painful realizations that the mind blunts, all the failures and petty maliciousnesses... well, it's apparently not fun to have all those illusions stripped from you. And if you reject it, then the sword doesn't work against other people.
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That series might not be the best example, given how absolutely fucking terrible and lacking in self-awareness it was. Objectivism ho!

Terry Brooks said:
Nicci had no compunction about what she was doing. She knew that there was no moral equivalence between her inflicting torture and the Imperial Order doing what might on the surface seem like the same thing. But her purpose in using it was solely to save innocent lives. The Imperial Order used torture as a means of subjugation and conquest, as a tool to strike fear into their enemies.

The Imperial Order used torture because they had no regard at all for human life. Nicci was using it because she did. While at one time she would have seen no difference, since coming to embrace life she saw all the difference in the world.
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I should note that there's no sense of irony, there.

EDIT: Whoops! Seems I mixed up two authors named Terry who wrote fantasy books involving objective truth that started with "The Sword of". Consider this a printed retraction. I'll leave the link up, though - it's good for a laugh or making yourself angry, depending on what sort of person you are (or you might not see the problem with the content, in which case you probably need to see a therapist and get an Ayn Rand detox).
 
Dain said:
I'm sure that in a world in which parahuman powers are well-known and accepted, half a dozen items of clothing disappearing shortly after a weirdly behaving teenager handled them wouldn't draw any suspicion at all from whoever investigates the tapes after the theft has been noticed.
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Petty retail shoplifting is such a poor use for a superpower that honestly I bet nobody would expect a parahuman to do that, or at least not do it enough to bother with expensive countermeasures.

it's like how the liquor stores in my area don't actually put up a huge bulletproof wall, even though guns exist in my city, and there are liquor stores in some other areas do have huge bulletproof walls. The ones in my area don't expect to be robbed often enough that the added security would be worth the expected value loss to theft, even though armed robber is technically possible. Likewise, the stores on the boardwalk might not expect superpower shoplifting.

Dain said:
Attacking a security guard with boredom powers is basically the weakest possible attack Taylor could have come up with in any conceivable universe. Being able to endure large amounts of boredom while staying on task is basically the single most important job requirement after all. I imagine it's about as effective as attacking an office worker with email memos.
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It might make them less enthusiastic about beating up that skater, which was her goal.

Unless physical violence is how they usually deal with boredom, of course. That would be quite a dark setting.
 
Just a quick question: Gallant can somehow see/sense emotions, soo....what would happen if he ever comes into sensing range of one of her constructs? Will he notice an emotion without someone being there to be the source?

If so, than he will probably be freaked out quitre a bit. And repeatedly trigger the Master/Stranger protocols as emotions without a visible perosn would indicate something along thos lines. Fun stuff. Even more so if he stumbles across one of Taylers little problems nailed to a wall somewhere. He is probably one of the few capes cpable of getting some info about how her powers work. Besides TT of course though her reaction will be even funnier (to us at least) as she gets way mor indepth than Gallant.
 
Dain said:
I assumed that they were 'merely' dragging him off the Boardwalk and out of the pedestrian area.
Well, it would really be quite a dark setting if those thugs were in the habit of beating up random passer-bys for minor infractions, during the day on a tourist strip. The world would have to be really coming apart at the seems for them to be able to get away with that. At least I hope so.
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Wormverse/WoD crossover.
 
TheLastOne said:
Yeah, as Earthscorpion said, nWoD, she's Pride/Justice, even if she isn't what you usually think of when you pick Pride as a vice.
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Incidentally, the apple hasn't fallen too far from the tree, because Danny (at least as how I'm writing him in Imago) is Justice/Wrath. It's just he tries so hard to not indulge in his vice, and even when he tries to make the world a better place, he gets beaten down by failure.

(It is not impossible Annette was Hope/Envy, thinking things will turn out for the best, but also sort of wanting to take some people down a peg or four.)

zergloli said:
Petty retail shoplifting is such a poor use for a superpower that honestly I bet nobody would expect a parahuman to do that, or at least not do it enough to bother with expensive countermeasures.
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Once again, we see the way that Imago!Taylor exceeds even canon with her descent into the dark side of things. A monstrous dragon man as her first combat encounter? Pah! In Imago, she bravely ran away from a security guard and his scary dog! And who needs to rob banks as part of your first criminal act when you can carry out acts of shoplifting.
 
TheAnt said:
I just reread the chapter and this sentence gives so many implications that was only briefly discussed in the comments of worm. Parahumans are the norm now. Which means that any piece of work or fiction that is trying to be "realistic" or supposedly takes place in the real world has parahumans in them in this universe. Granted far different timeline so many things will probably have never been made but imagine the possibilities. Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, True Detectives, Stephen King, Law and Order, Big Bang theory even crap like Twilight would be written or created with parahumans and the Endbringers existing! The vampires are a hunted species treated like a threat similar to the Endbringers in Twilight, Walter White or Jessie becomes a supervillain in Breaking Bad, Shedlon is nerdy version of accord in his show, Law and Order deals with crime in the aftermath of an attack on new york by an Endbringer. I'm tempted to create a new thread just imagining popular media in the wormverse.
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If you do, I'd like a link, please.
 
Renu said:
Actually, wouldn't it be easier for Taylor to beat Lung than a regular security guard, since his powers rely on feelings, and... yeah, other place?
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He runs off of conflict (and anticipation thereof), not the emotions such conflict might dredge up. She could probably fuck with his ability to build a charge by anticipating future conflict, but that wouldn't help if he was already fighting her.
 
Renu said:
He must feel some shonen thing like "the will to fight", no?
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No if he's in a fight, his power grows. If he sees people fighting his powers grows. If he thinks there might be a fight in the future his power charges up allowing him to grow faster when he's actually in the fight.
 
The Nomad said:
It could be Paradox backlash, but also scouring her own Pattern for Mana (I think even with Space favored, Apportation and Teleportation spells cost Mana to initiate, but I could be misremembering).
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It does cost mana, but there is simpler solution: Taylor's powers put stress on her body, plain and simple. This is an nWoD fusion, not a crossover; Taylor is not a mage, she is like a mage, with Goetic powers. Mana may well not exist in this setting.
 
EarthScorpion said:
Once again, we see the way that Imago!Taylor exceeds even canon with her descent into the dark side of things. A monstrous dragon man as her first combat encounter? Pah! In Imago, she bravely ran away from a security guard and his scary dog! And who needs to rob banks as part of your first criminal act when you can carry out acts of shoplifting.
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I'm sorry. You said that before but I can't see that as her first "night out"; first "encounter", yes, but she was utterly unprepared and, in true Taylor fashion, just jumped in. In other words, "canon!Taylor" didn't face a monstrous dragon man, "canon!Taylor with a mask" did. Three months of preparation might not have been much, but the mask was important. We're seeing her quite a bit earlier than in canon.
 
Trier said:
I'm sorry. You said that before but I can't see that as her first "night out"; first "encounter", yes, but she was utterly unprepared and, in true Taylor fashion, just jumped in. In other words, "canon!Taylor" didn't face a monstrous dragon man, "canon!Taylor with a mask" did. Three months of preparation might not have been much, but the mask was important. We're seeing her quite a bit earlier than in canon.
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... yes.

That's why I said "combat encounter", not "night out". Because, you know, words mean things.
 
EarthScorpion said:
That's why I said "combat encounter", not "night out". Because, you know, words mean things.
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She wasn't there to fight; if things had gone a smidgen worse, she might not have stood a chance. It was her first encounter with the (slum? dark? parahuman? criminal?) world, and she had to escape, but it wasn't combat. Her first night out won't have to have combat. The distinction is between Worm!Taylor's first night/combat and Imago!Taylor's first exposure to the criminal world. Parahuman Imago!Taylor hasn't done much of anything yet; her power is much less intuitive than in canon and needs more training/grinding.

But for being her first step into darkness, Taylor here was actually worse off. A dragon man thrashing about after saying he'd kill kids? Okay. A distinct enemy, trained assailants ready, justice and pride motivating, etc., and the scene's set. A sweatshop seen in the OP? Yeah. Has anyone actually seen the real thing? I'll stop here.
 
TheAnt said:
Here you go:Popular media in the Wormverse

I agree with the more training. Though I thought it was cannon that a parahuman's connection to their passenger increases through stressful situations so just getting into the thick of things would be better than grinding. We know that her minions can move a book and teleport pieces of clothing. I doubt earth scorpion would let her bypass the manton effect as it would be too gamebreaking. Otherwise she could teleport pieces of your body out of you or move a blood vessel in the brain around which would weigh less than a book.

At the very least Taylor will be smart next time, sending sniffer to scout out the place beforehand, getting a good overview of the place including the personnel and schedule so she isn't surprised this time. She is a Thinker, so having more information is always good.
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She already violates the manton effect with her powers. This very chapter she used her powers on a random security guard and she had already use them on her mother's flute. She can affect animate objects and inanimate ones. In canon!Worm, where the idea of "multiple powers" is essentially an illusion, she would be counted as violating manton effect.

Edit: Also, she uses her powers on herself all the time, so other general limitations like "using you powers either on oneself or others" don't seem to apply to her either.
 
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