- Location
- UK
Sticky v key? That happened to me on a recent update to.
Avatar Taylor (Worm/A:TLA)
- Thread starter Dalxein
- Start date
- Crossover Archive
idk why but i would love since taylor is kinda the avatar if she didnt start her own superhero group but created by giving bending to normal people like the show they could only bend a single element. cuz it would add intrigue and such like "is she another teacher?" or something.
- Location
- Oregon
While this is a thing Taylor will eventually be capable of, it is both a fair ways off, and won't result in a competent super team immediately.
Granted benders are going to start from scratch, and could take years or even decades to master their new powers.
Fencer
Writer
- Location
- 2nd shift
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Computers are weird. Don't sweet it.
on topic, hate ziz fights on principal and this is going to suck for Taylor. She's not there to rescue people she's their to wall off a damn city... that's not going to sit well with her.
I think you posted 2 copies of this
Huh? Armsmaster was at Madison, the last Simurgh attack before this one.
And why not Tinkers, specifically? It's not like they restrict people from Simurgh fights based on how dangerous they'd be if they turned, or the Triumvirate couldn't go.
Fencer
Writer
- Location
- 2nd shift
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Ziz can mimic tinker tech. Bringing tinkers to her fights is the same as giving her more weapons or at least options. Dunno about policies for the fights in or out if canon though. Think that's more up to the author.
Nobody knows that in-universe, though. Madison was the first fight she ever used that ability, and as far as anyone would be able to tell just from looking, she just straight-up has Tinker powers the same way she has Master powers. The "use mental abilities from nearby capes" thing is WoG.
- Location
- Oregon
We the readers know this to be true, and I feel fairly confident the Protectorate would have figured it out after at least a dozen Simurgh attacks.
At the attack, or at the event? Either way, this is the first I've heard of it.
My gut reaction to the 'Madison was the last Simurgh attack' part was that it was ridiculous, since there were like six attacks unaccounted for in the list, right? But looking further and actually counting, there were only two that are complete blanks. We know they don't keep to a particular order, so it being "Simurgh (Madison), Behemoth, Leviathan, Behemoth (Confirmed November, but no location), Simurgh (Canberra)" isn't impossible.
The first time she used which ability? Because I could see it being the first time they obviously identified her pulling from a specific Tinker's tech, but I doubt she'd go almost eight years without breaking out Tinkering, period.
I suppose at this point I'm giving the PRT more credit than they've really earned, but a big theme of the Canberra update was showing that the PRT isn't too dumb to exist without continual upkeep from Contessa fiats. Brockton Bay is just an especially bad example to pull from to base opinions on, for the whole.
- Location
- Florida
Just a thought after looking at the Skill Tree, and I don't know if anyone else had already suggested it, but maybe Taylor could get blue fire like Azula? She'd definitely get some looks for tossing around flames of that color and heat, and it would probably just be an upgrade to her existing firebending skills once she unlocked it.
Crazael
Rehydrated Demon King
- Location
- Lost to the vagaries of time.
I have always strongly held the belief that the PRT is generally competent at their job and that while there are clearly examples like Brokton Bay, they are the exception, not the rule. It is, after all, explicitly an outlier.
Yeah, the rule of thumb is that each Endbringer attacks slightly more than once a year, on average. The Simurgh has probably only had like 10-12 attacks at this point, total.
When she activates the portal machine in Madison:
The second character delivers an impromptu lecture on the history of the Simurgh earlier in the chapter, she keeps up on the news.Migration 17.2 said:
And for the record, no one identified her as pulling from a specific Tinker's tech here, even out of universe. There's no known interdimensional-portal Tinker for her to have pulled from, so presumably he was recently-triggered or from another dimension, or something.
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- Location
- Oregon
QA has memories from a good number of prior Avatars, but they're mostly disjointed and tend to be from more emotional moments that resonated with the Avatar Spirit (As a whole, including Raava and all the accumulated lives) the most. After filtering out the less useful ones (Romantic moments, sexual encounters, children being born, marriages, deaths...) she's left with a bevy of stressful fights and training that she can pass on to Taylor. Every Avatar has gone through the 'Learn the elements' dance after all, so that resonates fairly well even without the emotional component. They do tend to blur together a bit, though. Tay might not notice the same training shifting locations or body structures the perspective is from, attributing it to dreams generally not making sense.
This was brought up, and put to a vote. It also sparked a bit of an argument, since Azula has that blue fire because she is a literal Special...
Anyway, it was decided to keep to normal colored fire for now. I reserve the right to hold another vote after especially traumatic fire-related events, or after the Firebending tree is maxed out to some degree.
Yerp. I feel the same, which is why events involving the entire organization will tend to be better organized and operated than smaller-scale operations around the Bay.
It also plays a bit of a role in how thoroughly snubbed the BB team is. XD
That is flat-out incorrect. Haywire's portals, at least the one to Aleph, is common knowledge. Fics often have her attacking Madison specifically because there's a cache of his old tech there either locked up or being researched, though I wouldn't be surprised if that was fanon.
It feels really weird, but I'm willing to believe that Ziz canonically did not tinker for her first ten or so attacks. Having already committed something like 30K words to potentially false pretenses leads me to consider disregarding canon in this instance, rather than rewrite a significant chunk of Arc 2. I'll have to give it some thought and a bit of research before deciding on anything.
- Location
- Florida
Alright, thank you for letting me know Dalxein. I'll also go ahead and say that the fic is really great so far and is a lot of fun to read, so thank you very much for writing it.
Meridian_Prime
Died an ugly death by back-catalogue.
- Location
- United Kingdom
- Pronouns
- She/Her
So first up this is easily one of my favourite ongoing fics period, let alone Worm fics. Consistently great writing, compelling plot, and characters that feel like so much more than cardboard cutouts. Just wanted to put that out there, this story is great and you should feel great about it.
More specifically, I wanted to highlight how much I've been enjoying the Rune subplot. It's the most janky, flawed, and human redemption arc I've seen for a nazi in Worm, moving forward in ways I don't expect and taking its time in others, and that makes it feel way more realistic than it otherwise would.
Good stuff, friend.
More specifically, I wanted to highlight how much I've been enjoying the Rune subplot. It's the most janky, flawed, and human redemption arc I've seen for a nazi in Worm, moving forward in ways I don't expect and taking its time in others, and that makes it feel way more realistic than it otherwise would.
Good stuff, friend.
Sure Haywire is a portal tinker, but he's long dead, so irrelevant to the point.
I thought you were going with the WoG about her using the mental abilities of nearby capes? I don't see how a cache of a dead guy's tech- almost certainly having decayed into uselessness from a lack of maintenance, since his shard isn't massaging physics for it anymore- and which doesn't even exist in canon- could allow her to use its creator's powers. Wildbow describes it as a purely mental ability.
Oh, well never mind, if that's actually an important part of your plot then by all means, just declare it true by fiat. I just assumed it was an irrelevant little bit of lore.
To be honest, if you'd had Taylor just narrate offhand that Tinkers were restricted from Simurgh fights I probably wouldn't have paid particular attention, it was just the juxtaposition of "Even I, an aspiring hero who is so incurious I haven't bothered to look up the names of the biggest group of capes in my hometown, even I know [thing no one knows in canon]" that made it so unintentionally hilarious it stuck in my head.
Anyway, if in your canon they figured out that the Simurgh definitely was copying from a relevant Tinker in Madison, it makes sense they'd have a new rule for Canberra. It makes a little less sense that Taylor would know about it, but I guess they'd want to publicize the rule so indie Tinkers know to run instead of fight.
That said, that does mean that Dragon can't participate any more, which puts a big hitch in the command and control (and the suicide switches, which she controlled manually).
...Actually, wait, why did the Simurgh never just set off the bomb collars herself? Since they know her TK is fine enough to do electronics mid-battle.
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- Location
- US
When you get right down to it, all endbringer fights are absurd. A macrodynakinetic only takes damage if they feel like it. A being that can propel themselves to orbit and back repeatedly will never be caught by anything short of hypersonic. A macro hydro kinetic that makes landfall is patently sandbagging.
Fun fact I was recently reminded of, two of Leviathan's confirmed attack locations are Madrid and Hyderabad, hundreds of miles from the shore. I can't help but think that the start and end of the attack must look ridiculous, just him superspeed jogging through the countryside for twenty minutes in either direction. (He's 'faster than any speedster' while underwater, but just really really fast on land.)
Fencer
Writer
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- 2nd shift
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Are the cities next to rivers? There were a few mentions of him traveling up rivers for attacks. Which is honestly worse because he probably flooded both sides of those rivers all the way to his targets.
None that I can find, in canon or WoG.
Hyderabad, yes, one that's ten feet deep for much of its length; Madrid, basically no, but there's some rivers nearby so yes, the river highway thing would obviously work better than scampering at high speed overland for an incongruously long period of time, if you really want to ruin my funny mental image.
Regardless, the idea that Leviathan summons his ominous unnatural stormcloud over a city 300 miles from the sea, then speedboats his way face-first up 400 miles of river, is still pretty dang odd. I guess that's what Legend meant by a "hard target".
- Location
- Earth
Out of everything about Worm, the Endbringers are the things that make the least sense. I'm most likely wrong here, but they attack every three months or so, are more or less invincible, and are protected by WoG basically.
How is there even a story anymore? Wouldn't they just have killed the world already at the very starting point of the story?
Fencer
Writer
- Location
- 2nd shift
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Worm was supposed to be some kind of superhero deconstruction.... instead Wildbow just tried to justify every genre cliche and introduced Kaju as a reason for revolving door prisons and not smacking down the villains when they crop up. Of course rather than making Kaju that can be killed with a bit of difficulty spawn semi regularly he made endbringers.... because Wildbow's not happy unless the setting is horrifically depressing.
Scions even worse really. Seriously if the man needed a source of powers there was no reason the entities needed to be genocidal. They could have just been really neutral scientist that gave powers and observed. don't even need to change their mission just cut out the whole wipe out the species bullshit so that no one needed to fight them.
I like to refer to the Endbringer's high-density body thing as Plot Armor. It makes it clearer what should and shouldn't be allowed to affect it: is this attack strong enough to pierce Plot Armor? (The answer is no.)
There's only been fifty or so Endbringer attacks total, and not all of those result in the destruction of a city. London and NYC were both attacked by Behemoth and rebuilt (somehow...); plus one of Behemoth's listed attacks is on Vanderhoof, a village in Canada consisting of less than 5000 people.
They really don't seem to be prioritizing by loss of life.
- Location
- Earth
I think this is why I enjoy Worm like I do Touhou. I like the things that come from its existant more than the actual product. Like, take out Scion and the Plot Reapers, and things are still dark enough that you have a good story. With them it's just the impossible odds of a Godzilla movie where the humans are fighting it or that one plot point in Star Wars Episode 9. And any actual victory feels like a copout or just a Deus Ex Machina asspull.