Don't forget he's also skeletally thin as his own war wounds from Ellisburg (presumably? He's noted as having his ribs visible)
Brockton's Celestial Forge (Worm/Jumpchain)
- Thread starter LordRoustabout
- Start date
Don't forget he's also skeletally thin as his own war wounds from Ellisburg (presumably? He's noted as having his ribs visible)
Hot Take for the wildebow weirdness that has no reason not to be canon-
A specialist shared deployed to a nonstandard host as one of the few deployed Eden shard that maintains a Clark Kent field for other shards. Enough that only specific action is enough to have a chance. And the weirdness slips out of everyone's head and the people strong enough to be immune are also arrogant enough to credit their power being strong enough to correlate all these things, but really it's because Alexandria's offloaded brain is immune to the fuckery crippling muggles and weaker capes
A specialist shared deployed to a nonstandard host as one of the few deployed Eden shard that maintains a Clark Kent field for other shards. Enough that only specific action is enough to have a chance. And the weirdness slips out of everyone's head and the people strong enough to be immune are also arrogant enough to credit their power being strong enough to correlate all these things, but really it's because Alexandria's offloaded brain is immune to the fuckery crippling muggles and weaker capes
Visible ribs doesn't mean skeletally thin, does it?
Maybe for the lower couple of ribs. But any others? Yes, it does. Look at Christian Bale in The Machinist (2004). To get to the point where you could see his ribs while he was slouching, he looks like he was in a concentration camp for a few months. You can take certain poses to emphasize your ribs against your skin, but if the are visible while standing straight and sitting down, you cant have anything but the bare minimum of muscle and fat over them.
Personally I missed where it was mentioned that Calvert was black, so my mental image of him was of Moff Tarkin from Rogue One, only taller, thinner and with a military high and tight haircut. Yes, that includes the not quite right feeling from the CGI. For Peter Cushing playing Tarkin, if you hollow out his face just a little bit more it come very close to a death head skull face.
Last edited:
MagicalAmbitions
the rose in your vase
- Pronouns
- She/Her
i was confused by bits of this post - could you elaborate on what exactly this clark kent field is intended to be doing in this description? is it obscuring the identities of capes, obscuring information about shards, or something else?
what does "enough that only specific action is enough to have a chance" mean? what exactly is the specific action you had in mind, and what does this give one a chance At?
Was just reading back a bit and found this.
Did anyone at the time think this was actually going to happen? Normally when you see Chekhov's gun it's mounted on the mantelpiece, not mentioned in passing as a joke by the Protagonist.
Last edited:
It prevents memory links forming between "Tall and Skeletal Villain" and Random Guy.
Only discrete, intentional action would start to uncover an identity, since Eden saw hidden IDs as a useful experiment angle.
___
Nullius in verba
- Location
- a Pale Blue Dot
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
S9: *enters city limits*
Joe:
State limits, to be more specific. The moment they enter New Hampshire.
According to their counter-Thinker countermeasures as being acceptable to not destabilise the local situation further.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The worm memes subreddit is a degenerate hive of scum and villainy but it is also where I learned that Calvert is taller than the average NBA player (6'6")
I always just assumed that Wildbow's physical descriptions were about as accurate as G.R.R. Martin's. "Let's make Winterfell's walls 80 ft tall. Then I'll have a bunch of Ironborn THROW grappling hooks with attached ropes up to the top of the wall then climb silently up the walls in the dark while wearing their full armor and weapons."
I stumbled across saw a U.S. Naval Academy paper which discussed the vertical launch of a grappling hook. Basically, the launched hook would have to overcome its own gravity to reach the top of the wall, would have to overcome the gravity upon the rope, AND overcome the tension from the rope. But a launch of 100 m/s could achieve it.
It's not like a fastball in baseball is usually less than 40 m/s.
Sorry, misplaced rant over. A lot of authors rush through parts of their stories and the lack of focus can be obvious. Even some of my favorite authors make glaringly obvious mistakes. 😓
However, redirecting back to your comment, that is very interesting info about the Undersiders' and Coil's exact physical descriptions. I hadn't noticed how extreme the details truly were.
Last edited:
As a bit of commentary and to play Devil's Advocate on Wildbow's height scaling being off, Taylor is a bit of an unreliable narrator and it's possible she's heavily exaggerating Brian's height, the size of Leviathan/the length of his tail or any other description she gives. Corroborating descriptions from others are probably the best way to verify that.
Boston games was 2006 Fleur's death on the timeline is noted to be years after that.
2007 actually but that makes Fleur's death weird since it would imply New Wave's movement was a big deal for more then five years and still never went anywhere. Also Amy indicates she would have had to have been younger then she was.
Last edited:
I personally got the impression that the New Wave movement was never a big deal. Or at least nothing past a local level. Local political scene has something big happen to it but never spreads further than that.
ExploerTM
Ruin has found you at last!
- Location
- Russia, Perm
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
I think thats the point. New Wave was active for this long and never went anywhere. Dead on arrival basically.
Well, it's like Chubster said in his interludes; New Wave made headlines, did speaking tours, then just as some people were seriously considering following suit, Fleur happened and the essence of the Movement died with her, as everyone's fears were proven completely correct.
Honestly speaking I'd consider it a pretty bad thing anyway cause well of their 4 kids having open ids directly caused 2 arguably even 3 of their triggers which serves to show the downsides and we don't even know what or when Shielder's was.
For the record since someone will probably ask Crystal triggered first among them when she was out in town and some skinheads who had been roughed up by her parents the night before saw and recognised her so started chasing her hollering about all of the things they'd do to her when they caught her and at some point her feet left the ground and she started flying.
Vicky's is complicated because there was a lot of background stuff in terms of her parent's being extremely busy so not having time for her and there being a lot of pressure and expectations from people at school that she'd have powers which by the time she triggered had turned into a palpable sense of disappointment. Then it came to the big basketball match with her parents actually watching and one girl in the other team has an issue with Vicky or her parents so before the match is in her face hassling her which continues into the match with constant marking. Then in the finale minute of the game they were 1 point down and Vicky had seen her parents had lost interest in the game and weren't paying attention but she had the ball and was primed to shoot (remembering baskets are worth 2 or 3 points based on where from). However, that girl interrupted and knocked Vicky down to the ground (remembering basketball is a non contact sport) which was the final straw.
Amy's is a lot simpler she was at the mall with Vicky when a gang that existed then but aren't mentioned in worm bust in and shot Vicky so she was bleeding out on the ground having gotten through her shield. Vicky had triggered but I can't remember if they were seen in the crowd and flagged or if she'd started fighting them either way Vicky being Amy's sole positive relationship meant she triggered seeing her bleed out in possibly the only time a power actually directly solved the problem in the short term at least.
A lot of powers solve problems, just usually for the triggers that come in life-endangering situations. Miss Militia doesn't get exploded or shot, Purity gets to blast her way out of her car wreck, Dauntless gets to do an amateur C-section under a landslide that both his gf and baby survive. I think they also tend to have better views of their powers afterwards, since that first burst is life saving.
Yeah, the simpler the problem that causes the trigger, the better the power tends to be at solving it. Granted sometimes the power doesn't even seem to try to solve it, Grue's darkness power really had nothing to do with his trigger for example.
They do solve it but not directly Dauntless for example had the problem of his wife dying in the car and he got the enhancing power instead of healing or teleportation, Purity would still be horribly dehydrated and delirious plus I don't think we know what she does right after her trigger and Miss Militia was still surrounded by people forcing her into a minefield and got a power that let her fight her way out instead of something like teleportation to leave. Amy on the other hand was probably touching Vicky when she triggered so could heal her right away which is really as direct as it could get without being the kind of power the entities don't give out.
Miss Militia's trigger event was one part of the ongoing problem of her being a child-soldier sent to the front of the forces, while her 'superiors' stayed back to reap the benefits.
Her power… turned her into a more effective child-soldier, who wound up in the highly-visible & exposed front-line position of being a member of the inaugural Wards team, while her new 'superiors' stayed back to reap the benefits.
Purity went from 'trapped in the car' to 'trapped in the Empire'. Dauntless triggered because he didn't want to lose his girlfriend and child… and then his girlfriend immediately left him anyway. (And then his subsequent wife seemed to act more like a Manager/Agent than an actual partner — everyone is always more concerned with who he might become in future, rather than who he is right now.)
Worm-verse Powers don't fix problems. They paper over problems, and get you out of the current jam while exacerbating the underlying issue. A (very) short term benefit, with a (permanent) long term detriment. Kicking the can further down the road, rather than actually dumping it in the recycling.
Last edited:
- Location
- Behind you
Fanon, thought I remember there being some actual basis to it. Maybe in Piggot's flashback?
Amy is 17 allegedly, same as Vicky, but IIRC her dad says she is 16 when she ends up in the Birdcage.
It's always kinda freaky to check out the characters ages, like Danny being in his late 30s-early 40s, or Aisha being 13, or Lily being almost 18 before the time timeskip. I could have swear she was 16! Hell, I always imagined the Frowny Frown Hat Woman (Fortuna) to be in her 30s at most, but nope, she is older than Danny!
While we are at it, look at the PRT, how old do you think it is? About 30 years? WRONG! It's freaking half that! It isn't even allowed to drive yet!
fanon she was actually just from a place that had their kids rounded up and forced into a minefield to be minesweepers.
Really the freaky age thing is Lily being 17 and Sabah who she then dates logically being at least 21. Fortuna was a kid when Eden crashed in 1982 at the latest so by 2011 she kind of has to be around 40 at the youngest. For the prt they were announced at the very end of 93 in response to Behemoth's first atk and canon starts at the start of April 2011 so practically speaking they are also 17.
My personal gripes about the age thing would be how scion is known to be outside the galaxy in 1980 and found moping over the ocean in 1982 with it being unknown how long he was moping before he was stumbled on. Yet despite this mere 31 year at most divergence you have things like the Herren clan, Heartbreaker and the Fallen having kids who were born into their compounds but are upper teens if not low 20s which is particularly weird for the Fallen given again endbringers don't show up until the end of 93 and even then it was Behemoth doing only 1 atk every 8 odd months for the first few years.
Additionally, there's the whole attitude the prt and parahuman scientists have of absolute confidence in their knowledge of powers despite having had so little time to properly study them as until Vikare died in 89 it wasn't even known capes were human and all the massive holes in their knowledge and lack of evidence in some areas such as the fact that as far as they know there are no 3rd gen capes but they are all convinced their theories are correct and squabble over them.
Not Fanon, but also not in the main text; it was a Word-Of-God statement.