Dreams of Tomorrow (Worm/Supergirl)

[simianpower]

Sorry for the late reply. I didn't see this until now. I'm not on this site as much as I used to be due to the mods being... extra.

Pretty sure the justification was in the chapter that I used that Kara can't accelerate FTL in atmosphere without buildup. She got away with it here because she started out of atmosphere and could adjust her molecular structure so she didn't cause the atmosphere to ignite.

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It was mentioned that she had to adjust her molecular structure to accelerate that much... it was NOT mentioned, that I can recall, that she did so outside the atmosphere. Maybe that was just me reading it wrong, but I didn't pick up that she did so, or even could do so, outside the atmosphere.

As for the lasers, Superman/Supergirl punching lasers is a time honored tradition? I did that here explicitly as a call back to that. It's just a thing they can do.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpOF6Br3tOk

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Well... huh. I never saw anything like that, and if I had my response would be the same as it was to you: man, that's dumb as hell! (I may be biased since I heavily used lasers in the lab for years.)

You're not the first to comment on the crystal thing, I am still in debate on changing that.

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Yeah, since it hasn't actually had any plot relevance so far I'd strongly recommend either removing that, or adding a paragraph where maybe the (real) Simurgh's wing clips her belt or pocket or whatever. If it's just stone that wouldn't work since she's dragged through buildings, but the real wing is far harder than that. Maybe she even fights to get the crystal back but gets dogpiled or something. But having it just wind up magically in the Simurgh's hands just seems off for several reasons.

This ties back to her having to hold back not to cause collateral. Basically she has no idea exactly how strong or durable Levi is so she has to test that to figure it out. if she goes all out, she risks hurting the planet itself. That was the logic I have been using in most of these fights. Kara can end most of the fights very easily but not without a ton of collateral damage.

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But she doesn't need to accelerate anywhere close to FTL, though. She was "a red blur" against Leviathan throughout most of that fight, and if she'd just done that she'd still have gotten to BB before it did, assuming she didn't just pluck it out of the ocean. And from there she could've simply picked it up and carried it off to space where there wouldn't be any collateral damage, and it wouldn't have had a chance to kidnap a hostage to make her go easy on it. She already knows that Endbringers are dangers to the entire planet (see: Simurgh laser) AND that they can survive and fight in space. AND she's easily fast enough to keep punting it toward space even if it uses some waterfall shenanigans to try diverting course. We saw her do it.

she wasn't sure of what the Endbringers could really do, nor if she a killer. Going for the kill is not how she operates.

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There I have to disagree with you. She does know from fighting Simmy what they can do, and their very name says what they're for. She knows that Leviathan has sunk entire islands. Honestly, if she's not willing to "kill" that, then, again, this isn't the story for me. Holding back against people is one thing. Holding back against engines of annihilation is just dumb.

I have been very polite and open to criticism, there is no need to be rude about this.

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Fair enough. Must've been my frustration coming through. My bad.

I don't think I can be blamed for this one at all?

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No, not particularly. But one of the functions of fanfics is fixing the stupid things in canon stories, and this is one of those utterly stupid things that has never made any sense. "Doctor" "Mother" is dead weight after the one moment she had when Eden died, yet for some reason she's leading a multiversal effort she not only has no qualifications to even be involved in, but also sucks at leading. I've seen a few fanfics that address that issue, but not many.

In general, the problem is that you've shown that Kara can fairly easily overpower and kill Leviathan, and the fact that she plays with it first just rubs me the wrong way. There's no good reason for that except to have a long fight scene. She has the capability, she has the reason (they destroy cities every few months), she has the very recent experience against the Simurgh... and yet she still holds back until it has a hostage. If you want a curb-stompy Kryptonian in Worm, let her curb stomp! Nerfing her and then un-nerfing her as pre-determined plot requires is what drove me away from the story.

 

[Rapidfyrez]

*Snipped*

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Just gonna put an ordered list here instead of trying to individually quote your stuff for my own sanity lol

1. The mods being extra was one of the reasons why I left this site for like, three years. Understandable.
2. This is fair, I can go back and adjust it as needed to make it more clear. The hard part about writer/reader dichotomy is that I know all the ins and outs on how things work and can forget to include bits that make it more apparent. Also related to this is that the entire process is difficult for a Kryptonian in general, painful even. It requires intense focus and screwing up can cause a lot of pain, so she can't use it if she's disoriented. Like say, from an entire ocean trying to kill and drown her.
3. Superman/Supergirl just break physics and run on rule of cool, but that one is 100% down to personal preference.
4. For the crystal thing, what if the Simurgh simply took a drop of blood instead? Her laser did hit hard enough to draw a tiny bit of blood and would still serve the purpose of being bad news later down the line.
5. So this one is kind of funny actually because I originally did have a reason why Kara couldn't just grab and yeet Levi into the sun. Two actually. One, she can see the exotic energy the Endbringers use and has no idea how that could react to being sent into the sun and won't take that risk. Two, I was going to have it, for extra body horror and to show the Endbringers as more eldritch, where Leviathan would just shed bits of its body whenever Kara tried to grapple or throw it around and then quickly regrow what was left. The idea was that Leviathan was shedding decades off its accumulated energy to do this, to really emphasize how much of a threat Kara is. This wound up getting cut because it came off as awkward and slowed the pacing down on what was already a bloated chapter.
   
   The only reason Kara wasn't speed blitzing him was because he was just fast enough that he could keep her relatively disoriented and unable to hit the speeds needed to easily outspeed him. You'll note the moment Kara does manage to land a genuine punch, it almost kills him and he completely changes tactics. Basically what I was going for was that the Endbringers had to play smarter and around Kara's own limitations moral and physical to survive.
6. This ties into why Kara was holding back. Because they were fighting on Earth, the amount of power she can bring to bear is, relatively, limited. She doesn't actually know the full upper limits of what the Endbringers can do (The Simurgh was never actually at her fight with Kara) so she has to test the waters, see how far she can go. This is made worse by the fact that they are strong enough to give her pause. So she needed time to figure out how strong was strong enough to deal with the Endbringers and this is where Kara's relative inexperience comes to play.
   
   Kara's only been doing this for three years compared to the decades Kal has been by this point. She has a good grasp on her power, but most of the foes she's used to dealing with are not as overtly destructive as the Endbringers. Leviathan taking Danny hostage actually wound up working against it because the prolonged fight (Which I'll note, not a single casualty from Leviathans attack came from their fight, it was from panic and Leviathan's initial landfall) because it gave Kara time to really figure out exactly how hard she could go on him without causing collateral. Note that the moment she freed Danny, the fight was over. If Ziz was ever stupid enough to show her face, Kara would 100% end it in an instant now that she has an idea of what to expect.
7. As for the Doctor Mother thing, her role as the leader and in charge of Cauldron is pretty simple to justify. She holds the leash on Contessa. Those two founded the entire organization to begin with and she was the one directing Contessa after PTV got nerfed. That is how I viewed it anyway. Also removing her would be enough of a change to things in canon that I am just not interested in trying to fill in the gaps on in a story that is supposed to be a crossover between the Wormverse as it is not how we wish it could be.

Honestly these issues do seem to still fall on me just not expanding more on Kara's mindset in the fight. Why she was holding back, what she was trying to figure out when dealing with leviathan. The issue was never if she had enough power to beat him, it was how much power was needed to beat him without breaking the world she is fighting to protect. That and cutting what was, in hindsight, a pretty key aspect of the fight that kept him in the game. That is my bad.

 

[simianpower]

Just gonna put an ordered list here instead of trying to individually quote your stuff for my own sanity lol

1. The mods being extra was one of the reasons why I left this site for like, three years. Understandable.
2. This is fair, I can go back and adjust it as needed to make it more clear. The hard part about writer/reader dichotomy is that I know all the ins and outs on how things work and can forget to include bits that make it more apparent. Also related to this is that the entire process is difficult for a Kryptonian in general, painful even. It requires intense focus and screwing up can cause a lot of pain, so she can't use it if she's disoriented. Like say, from an entire ocean trying to kill and drown her.
3. Superman/Supergirl just break physics and run on rule of cool, but that one is 100% down to personal preference.
4. For the crystal thing, what if the Simurgh simply took a drop of blood instead? Her laser did hit hard enough to draw a tiny bit of blood and would still serve the purpose of being bad news later down the line.
5. So this one is kind of funny actually because I originally did have a reason why Kara couldn't just grab and yeet Levi into the sun. Two actually. One, she can see the exotic energy the Endbringers use and has no idea how that could react to being sent into the sun and won't take that risk. Two, I was going to have it, for extra body horror and to show the Endbringers as more eldritch, where Leviathan would just shed bits of its body whenever Kara tried to grapple or throw it around and then quickly regrow what was left. The idea was that Leviathan was shedding decades off its accumulated energy to do this, to really emphasize how much of a threat Kara is. This wound up getting cut because it came off as awkward and slowed the pacing down on what was already a bloated chapter.
   
   The only reason Kara wasn't speed blitzing him was because he was just fast enough that he could keep her relatively disoriented and unable to hit the speeds needed to easily outspeed him. You'll note the moment Kara does manage to land a genuine punch, it almost kills him and he completely changes tactics. Basically what I was going for was that the Endbringers had to play smarter and around Kara's own limitations moral and physical to survive.
6. This ties into why Kara was holding back. Because they were fighting on Earth, the amount of power she can bring to bear is, relatively, limited. She doesn't actually know the full upper limits of what the Endbringers can do (The Simurgh was never actually at her fight with Kara) so she has to test the waters, see how far she can go. This is made worse by the fact that they are strong enough to give her pause. So she needed time to figure out how strong was strong enough to deal with the Endbringers and this is where Kara's relative inexperience comes to play.
   
   Kara's only been doing this for three years compared to the decades Kal has been by this point. She has a good grasp on her power, but most of the foes she's used to dealing with are not as overtly destructive as the Endbringers. Leviathan taking Danny hostage actually wound up working against it because the prolonged fight (Which I'll note, not a single casualty from Leviathans attack came from their fight, it was from panic and Leviathan's initial landfall) because it gave Kara time to really figure out exactly how hard she could go on him without causing collateral. Note that the moment she freed Danny, the fight was over. If Ziz was ever stupid enough to show her face, Kara would 100% end it in an instant now that she has an idea of what to expect.
7. As for the Doctor Mother thing, her role as the leader and in charge of Cauldron is pretty simple to justify. She holds the leash on Contessa. Those two founded the entire organization to begin with and she was the one directing Contessa after PTV got nerfed. That is how I viewed it anyway. Also removing her would be enough of a change to things in canon that I am just not interested in trying to fill in the gaps on in a story that is supposed to be a crossover between the Wormverse as it is not how we wish it could be.

Honestly these issues do seem to still fall on me just not expanding more on Kara's mindset in the fight. Why she was holding back, what she was trying to figure out when dealing with leviathan. The issue was never if she had enough power to beat him, it was how much power was needed to beat him without breaking the world she is fighting to protect. That and cutting what was, in hindsight, a pretty key aspect of the fight that kept him in the game. That is my bad.

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2, 4-7: True. I think in general a bit more of the "why" would help. In (4), the blood would work just fine, though it won't really give Simmy a grasp on the Kryptonian tech, which is what I thought you were going for.

1, 3: Yeah, it is what it is, I guess. Nothing to do about either one.

 

[Rapidfyrez]

2, 4-7: True. I think in general a bit more of the "why" would help. In (4), the blood would work just fine, though it won't really give Simmy a grasp on the Kryptonian tech, which is what I thought you were going for.

1, 3: Yeah, it is what it is, I guess. Nothing to do about either one.

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The general idea was more that the Simurgh is taking steps to learn what Kara is, period. She's a complete OCP, something new that defies their understanding of how the world works. Even just getting a blood sample was worth the risk.

I will have to go back and readjust what you pointed out though. I really do appreciate it, thank you!