Exploding Canon (Worm SI)

[Ghoul King]

Of course, then you have to figure out where the hell she was putting all these thousands of tiny black widow condos....

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She kept them spread out in the woods (?) nearby, actually.

This raises questions about how fast Wildbow is expecting them to travel, unseen, and the story still implies that she's packing more into the area than would naturally occur even though they're cannibals, so it's still got problems, but it's not as questionable as you make it sound.

Eh? I'm having difficulty seeing why this is consequential (especially compared to the whole 'Amy Dallon: Amateur Hostage Negotiator' thing, which in retrospect is increasingly yeah, geez). Like, Taylor didn't need to bring all black widows, sure, but she also had no reason to believe bringing any amount of them could possibly result in any unintended harm, so bringing a crapload to better sell the bluff intended to preserve the hostage's safety doesn't strike me as irresponsible.

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This is... unless I'm badly misremembering, the second time she's brought her bugs into a combat situation. They're untested. She doesn't know exactly how her power is going to perform in combat, and she knows that she doesn't know that.

Think of how, later on in the story, her bugs are doing things like producing contraptions without her explicit instructions, a thing she had never known about before and was quite startled by.

Yeah, we know nothing went wrong, and we know, after more than a million words, that her bugs never do anything she was actively unhappy with (That she noticed!) at any point in the story, but who's to say her control is always as good as it's been so far?

Further, I brought up "her being knocked out" precisely because she does already know that she loses control if she loses consciousness. Now, this falls under "most people model their plans under a best-case scenario" so it's not like it's an unusual failing for her to be having, but it's still the case that she has all the information to realize this is a worrisome possibility, and it's wholly unnecessary for her purposes to use actual black widows on everyone.

On top of all that? If she'd used essentially-harmless black spiders for most/all the hostages? Amy would've known. It probably would've gotten to the Protectorate in the debriefing. They might've started wondering if maybe bug-girl isn't as ruthless as they ultimately conclude she is.

It's this moment that I can't help, knowing how Wildbow has written so many scenes, wondering if basically the reason it played out the way it did was so Wildbow could justify Everything Going Wrong in a way the audience wouldn't question. Because yeah, if her public debut is Definitely For Realz As Confirmed By Panacea dropping actual black widows on the hostages? It makes a lot of sense for the PRT/Protectorate to be going "What kind of teen does that?" and leaning toward thinking "a disturbing/disturbed vicious thug who doesn't care if people die in the course of her actions."

Whereas if she was -as Tattletale had just been telling her about- been clearly playing at the role of villain while actually being careful to minimize harm?... that would set a rather different starting tone for interpreting Bug Girl's actions.

 

[Imrix]

Probably because your bros in a villain team might have your back against the Nine or any similar threat, while official PRT policy seems to be to write you off as an acceptable loss. Also because after even a brief villain career you can probably afford somewhat better gear than a crossbow and grappling hook if you choose to attend out of town Endbringer fights.

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Nope. When S-Class threats roll around, a villain can rely on their 'bros' in their team, and only their team; the PRT can rely on reinforcements shuttled in from across the country. As, indeed, we see them do.

Likewise, Taylor gives a substantially atypical view of how much money and gear you can afford after 'a brief villain career'. Like, it's a major recurring point that if you trigger as a Tinker, you basically have to join an existing local power player to get the kind of funding you need to actually do anything. Taylor joins the Undersiders, who have the incredibly generous funding of Coil, and by the time Leviathan rolls around the closest thing they have to sweet gear is Taylor's spidersilk costumes. Meanwhile, Foil/Flechette has a tinkertech arbalest and Gallant gets freaking power armour, while both of them are still Wards.

If you want backup, join the PRT. If you want money, join the PRT. If you want swanky toys, join the PRT. If you want respectability, join the PRT. The fact that so many regular people do not do this, people seemingly lacking in major ideological reasons to avoid taking a fat government paycheck and benefits package, is a major element of Worm that just doesn't jive with reality, and often serves as evidence of Wildbow's apparent incomprehension at the idea of competent authority figures or institutions.

 

[Stahor]

Whereas if she was -as Tattletale had just been telling her about- been clearly playing at the role of villain while actually being careful to minimize harm?... that would set a rather different starting tone for interpreting Bug Girl's actions.

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Note that her view of bugs are significantly changed from baseline by QA. See "You guys want spidersilk suits? No problem, i just bring 50k black widows in our living space and let them weave, it will be done in a jiffy.".

 

[Quantumsheep]

This is... unless I'm badly misremembering, the second time she's brought her bugs into a combat situation. They're untested. She doesn't know exactly how her power is going to perform in combat, and she knows that she doesn't know that.

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I would agree with you if I thought she had any plausible reason to expect that her powers would suddenly start working differently in combat, but she really, really doesn't, as far as I can see. By the point of the bank she'd had both an extremely intense live-fire exercise with Lung and more than three continuous months of practice, including multiple high stress bullying situations, and over all that time her power always behaved perfectly consistently. If canon had been written so that she was going into the bank scene suddenly going "I can't trust my power to be reliable here" and letting that dictate what she brought in, I wouldn't have had the slightest idea what she was talking about and thought that she was being more than a little paranoid.

If you want backup, join the PRT. If you want money, join the PRT. If you want swanky toys, join the PRT. If you want respectability, join the PRT. The fact that so many regular people, people seemingly lacking in major ideological reasons to avoid taking a fat government paycheck, is a major element of Worm that just doesn't jive with reality, and often serves as evidence of Wildbow's apparent incomprehension at the idea of competent authority figures or institutions.

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The Undersiders (Brian excepting, because what the hell, Brian) are a decent example of one attempted explanation, where those who trigger often do so because they come from a context that makes getting into law enforcement a rather poor fit. Another is that joining the PRT comes with the expectation that you'll be earning your paycheck by, among other things, fighting violent criminals and dangerous villains, which I imagine many people would rather not make a staple of their career. Of course, villains usually seem to wind up doing that too, but hey, I guess they're theoretically allowed to go 'Screw this' and leave if they really want to?

 

[Gourd]

If you want backup, join the PRT. If you want money, join the PRT. If you want swanky toys, join the PRT. If you want respectability, join the PRT. The fact that so many regular people do not do this, people seemingly lacking in major ideological reasons to avoid taking a fat government paycheck and benefits package, is a major element of Worm that just doesn't jive with reality, and often serves as evidence of Wildbow's apparent incomprehension at the idea of competent authority figures or institutions.

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Something something shards something something conflict drive something something Cauldron.
Although my reaction to the Worm setting would be if I ended up in it with powers "what is the best position I can get as far away from these crazy front lines as possible oh dear god I am not a fighter" followed by a string of incomprehensible panicking expletives. (I've seriously wondered if someone who's read Worm could possibly trigger from the shock of realizing they're in Worm on Earth Bet, with the survival figures that indicates.)

 

[Terrabrand]

puts a smile on my face to see that somebody made 'oni-lady' a tag for this thread.

 

[Imrix]

The Undersiders (Brian excepting, because what the hell, Brian) are a decent example of one attempted explanation, where those who trigger often do so because they come from a context that makes getting into law enforcement a rather poor fit.

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Fair point (although I might argue Tattletale, and possibly even Bitch if I wanted to compare her to Shadow Stalker).

Another is that joining the PRT comes with the expectation that you'll be earning your paycheck by, among other things, fighting violent criminals and dangerous villains, which I imagine many people would rather not make a staple of their career. Of course, villains usually seem to wind up doing that too, but hey, I guess they're theoretically allowed to go 'Screw this' and leave if they really want to?

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Yeah, but it's also worth keeping in mind that this is another place where canon gives an atypical impression, because outside Brockton Bay if you join the Wards, you mostly don't expect to fight violent criminals. The fact that the Brockton Bay PRT uses Wards on patrols is meant to be evidence of how fraught their situation is; most of the country uses Wards as, basically, Superhero School. You show up, you go to classes on first aid, power testing, law codes, sparring, maybe a 'patrol' that's actually showing your flag around the safe parts of town, then you clock off, go home and be a teenager. Maybe you get in a couple fights a month, if that. By the time you actually join the Protectorate proper, you'dve had years of training - and I think I remember reading that joining the Protectorate isn't actually mandatory after completing Wards training.

By contrast, our introduction to the Undersiders has them first caught up in a violent gang war with Lung, and their first example of doing a job is robbing a bank. White-collar criminals they ain't, and while it's true that Brockton Bay is far more violent and cape-crowded than most cities, it's equally true that the Undersiders style themselves as low-key burglars who get by on trying to avoid fights.

 

[consequences]

Nope. When S-Class threats roll around, a villain can rely on their 'bros' in their team, and only their team; the PRT can rely on reinforcements shuttled in from across the country. As, indeed, we see them do.

Likewise, Taylor gives a substantially atypical view of how much money and gear you can afford after 'a brief villain career'. Like, it's a major recurring point that if you trigger as a Tinker, you basically have to join an existing local power player to get the kind of funding you need to actually do anything. Taylor joins the Undersiders, who have the incredibly generous funding of Coil, and by the time Leviathan rolls around the closest thing they have to sweet gear is Taylor's spidersilk costumes. Meanwhile, Foil/Flechette has a tinkertech arbalest and Gallant gets freaking power armour, while both of them are still Wards.

If you want backup, join the PRT. If you want money, join the PRT. If you want swanky toys, join the PRT. If you want respectability, join the PRT. The fact that so many regular people do not do this, people seemingly lacking in major ideological reasons to avoid taking a fat government paycheck and benefits package, is a major element of Worm that just doesn't jive with reality, and often serves as evidence of Wildbow's apparent incomprehension at the idea of competent authority figures or institutions.

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So, Miss Militia was lying to Taylor to make the PRT look worse than they are when explaining how official policy is to not drop the hammer on the Nine why exactly?

 

[Terrabrand]

So, Miss Militia was lying to Taylor to make the PRT look worse than they are when explaining how official policy is to not drop the hammer on the Nine why exactly?

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'it does not work' is not 'we leave our dudes out to dry'.

Fucking Legend showed up to help- how is that not 'when S class threats show up, Protectorate can count on broad reinforcements'? Serious question.

 

[serra2]

So, Miss Militia was lying to Taylor to make the PRT look worse than they are when explaining how official policy is to not drop the hammer on the Nine why exactly?

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Because "dropping the hammer" on lil Miss "I hid Bio-bombs in multiple locations, don't interfere or they go off" and Lady "Invicible Cannibal Catgirl" works in what scenario?

And "dropping the hammer" worked out so well for Taylor "I required a Deus ex Machina to avoid me and everyone I care about from getting killed".

 

[Revlid]

To be honest, I'd always assumed Amy just went around giving each individual spider the arachnid equivalent of locked-in syndrome.

Re-reading the chapter reveals she was outright able to rig them into giving Taylor headaches when she tried to grab them, so who knows what's up with that.

 

[Quantumsheep]

Fair point (although I might argue Tattletale, and possibly even Bitch if I wanted to compare her to Shadow Stalker).

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Oh, Tattletale could almost certainly have gotten into the PRT if she wanted - she can't be unaware that stealing from your parents and running away from home isn't nearly enough to disqualify you, and with the precedent Madcap and the like set it's hard to argue even Tattletale of a few months into canon would've been refused if she seemed sincere enough, considering how valuable her power is. The trick is that going legit would immediately mean having to deal with her legal guardians again, which I'm fairly sure is a non-starter so far as she's concerned. Plus, given the reason she ran away from them in the first place, it's hard for me to imagine her voluntarily joining any organization where most of the point is exploiting her for her power. Being relegated to a subordinate, largely powerless underling that nobody really listens to in a sprawling inefficient bureaucracy and/or think tank would probably drive her (and everybody around her) up the wall and through the ceiling.

Bitch and Shadow Stalker are pretty similar but ultimately not a good comparison in this sense, I don't think. Sophia's pretty messed up, and obviously so to anybody who knows her, but she's still able to function well enough in polite society to be one of the dominant players in her high school social scene, serve as a Ward (who do interact with the public, not just patrol, see the slapping Emma in the mall scene), and be on the track team. Bitch, by contrast, has a hard time functioning socially even by the standards of the Undersiders, even after she's known and lived with them for months. I can't imagine her lasting in the Protectorate for any length of time, let alone seeking them out voluntarily.

 

[Ghoul King]

Re-reading the chapter reveals she was outright able to rig them into giving Taylor headaches when she tried to grab them, so who knows what's up with that.

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Space Whale Magic.

(This is one of those plotpoints I accepted when it happened but look back on and wonder how the heck this is supposed to fit into broader/later canon. Did the Entities install receiver nodes into everything Taylor can control when she triggered, and Amy is detecting and manipulating that? Do bugs in Taylor's range grow a receiver node spontaneously? Is Amy's shard just directly talking to Taylor's shard and going "My host thinks they should be able to provide feedback pain or something to your host? Do that please" and QA goes "Sounds logical. Done." I can sort of stretch for explanations that fit everything, but they're all explanations unsupported by the text and sort of... contrary to Entity operational procedure)

(I've seriously wondered if someone who's read Worm could possibly trigger from the shock of realizing they're in Worm on Earth Bet, with the survival figures that indicates.)

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Lesse... you're trapped in a shitty situation you can't get out of, which is placing tremendous emotional and physical stress upon you quite abruptly, which the Entities can trivially give an ironic power -dimension hopping, but not anything that can get you home, say- that produces the illusion of helping you while not actually helping you.

Yeah, so long as they plug you in shortly after you arrive? Definitely plausible.

Just a question of personality at that point.

 

[Gourd]

Lesse... you're trapped in a shitty situation you can't get out of, which is placing tremendous emotional and physical stress upon you quite abruptly, which the Entities can trivially give an ironic power -dimension hopping, but not anything that can get you home, say- that produces the illusion of helping you while not actually helping you.

Yeah, so long as they plug you in shortly after you arrive? Definitely plausible.

Just a question of personality at that point.

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Given I'm a neurotic panicky mess at the best of times? I'd put money on in that scenario the possibility of me double triggering from the realization I have powers... and therefore the ridiculous conflict drive probably forcing me to do stupid things with them and oh god I'm going to get forced into a gang or the PRT (especially since as a SI I'm an illegal alien) and I've got some chronic health problems that will probably make me doing anything with this power people would let me do effectively due to the Rogue stigmata difficult at best and I'm probably going to feel responsible enough to get involved anyway...

At this point, I think the probable result of this event is that I curl up in a ball and end up getting myself killed off somehow fast or hiding under a rock, while the actual point of divergence is the Simurgh or whoever chucked me at Earth Bet so I'd trigger and cause some nearby important cape to pass out at a crucial moment.

 

[Quantumsheep]

Space Whale Magic.

(This is one of those plotpoints I accepted when it happened but look back on and wonder how the heck this is supposed to fit into broader/later canon. Did the Entities install receiver nodes into everything Taylor can control when she triggered, and Amy is detecting and manipulating that? Do bugs in Taylor's range grow a receiver node spontaneously? Is Amy's shard just directly talking to Taylor's shard and going "My host thinks they should be able to provide feedback pain or something to your host? Do that please" and QA goes "Sounds logical. Done." I can sort of stretch for explanations that fit everything, but they're all explanations unsupported by the text and sort of... contrary to Entity operational procedure)

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The explanation Taylor gave at the time always more or less made sense to me?

Tattletale was still focusing the laser pointer on Panacea's hood. Since I was the only person in a position to see it, it could only be for my benefit. I pulled the hood back, investigated the interior and found nothing. But on the nape of her neck, I spotted one of my black widow spiders.

I pulled it off her gently, and felt the pain in my head worsen with the contact, the movement. Either by impulse or by reflex as I flinched at the pain, I crushed it between my fingers.
Immediately, the pain in my head dropped to a fraction of what it had been. The relief was so intense it was almost euphoric.

I still didn't fully grasp what Panacea done, but I was getting a good picture of it. She'd somehow sensed what I was doing to control the spider, then altered things so the spider wasn't sending me the right information. A continuous loop of the wrong information, like when thieves in the movies spliced a video camera feed to repeat the same segment over and over. Either by accident or design, it had exponentially increased the interference every time my power reached for the arachnids in question. All building up to a metaphorical short circuit of my power.

I could barely fathom the subtleties and delicacy that would have required to set up.

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Amy 'sensing what I was doing to control the spider' is confusing (see also: whatever the hell happened when she touched Glaistig) and leads me to believe Taylor's control functions something like I imagine Regent's must, where his Passenger uses dimensional magic to generate nerve signals in the chosen target, while at the same time reading their sensory data and transferring that over to him (and all the while somehow altering his brain/consciousness so that all the extra data is comprehensible to him).

Of course, I have no clue why Amy would be able to perceive that reading process taking place. But assuming Taylor shares the senses of her bugs isn't a huge leap, especially if she can percieve the nerve signals that are controlling their bodies. So granting that for now, the process would seem to be something like 1. Amy senses the bugs on her, 2. senses that they're being controlled directly, 3. surmises that their controller probably receives sensory feedback as a consequence of that control, 4. then alters the neurology of their senses to create a shitload of feedback loops and junk data, which it turns out gives Taylor crippling headaches because she still hasn't practiced enough with bug senses beyond touch. Which... sounds basically plausible to me? More or less? It doesn't strain my SoD, anyway, considering what Amy's power is supposed to be.

This does absolutely nothing to explain how the fuck she knew that would work out the way it did, of course, or thought it was a good idea to experiment in the middle of a hostage crisis if she didn't, but I think the underlying mechanics are more or less sound.

 

[Ghoul King]

The explanation Taylor gave at the time always more or less made sense to me?

Amy 'sensing what I was doing to control the spider' is confusing (see also: whatever the hell happened when she touched Glaistig) and leads me to believe Taylor's control functions something like I imagine Regent's must, where his Passenger uses dimensional magic to generate nerve signals in the chosen target, while at the same time reading their sensory data and transferring that over to him (and all the while somehow altering his brain/consciousness so that all the extra data is comprehensible to him).

Of course, I have no clue why Amy would be able to perceive that reading process taking place. But assuming Taylor shares the senses of her bugs isn't a huge leap, especially if she can percieve the nerve signals that are controlling their bodies. So granting that for now, the process would seem to be something like 1. Amy senses the bugs on her, 2. senses that they're being controlled directly, 3. surmises that their controller probably receives sensory feedback as a consequence of that control, 4. then alters the neurology of their senses to create a shitload of feedback loops and junk data, which it turns out gives Taylor crippling headaches because she still hasn't practiced enough with bug senses beyond touch. Which... sounds basically plausible to me? More or less? It doesn't strain my SoD, anyway, considering what Amy's power is supposed to be.

This does absolutely nothing to explain how the fuck she knew that would work out the way it did, of course, or thought it was a good idea to experiment in the middle of a hostage crisis if she didn't, but I think the underlying mechanics are more or less sound.

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Taylor's able to control millions of bugs without any problem, no overload, no headaches. Even this early in canon, she's not suffering headaches from too high a load or the like. So... what is Amy doing to make the sensory information overwhelming/otherwise debilitating? Is QA somehow aware of the disconnect between what the bugs are reporting and what's actually going on and then punishing Taylor for that via headache for... some reason? Is Amy making the bugs generate "too much" information, in which case why would that work? Is she making them feed the information in some weird way along the lines of "I can taste the sounds", in which case... um... I guess that's possible, but how would Amy know that affects Taylor's control negatively?...

In fact, rereading it, the intent seems to be that Amy has given them "looping instruction", overriding Taylor's control -which would be consistent with Atlas' "autopilot" later on- and that for some reason having bugs have looping instructions A: overrides Taylor's control and B: causes a headache for... some reason.

So... seriously, I can't fit this scene into larger canon, not even getting into whether it makes sense for Amy to be inclined to do it let alone realize she can. How is Amy providing "looping instructions"?? We're basically back to my original question of "Are there receiver nodes in Taylor's bugs, which Panacea can detect, intuitively understand their mechanics because lolpower, and then rewire at will?" Because seriously, what is her power doing, that is purely rooted in biological manipulation, and produces this result, and is consistent with the Entity metaphysics?

 

[Iarna]

Space Whale Magic.

(This is one of those plotpoints I accepted when it happened but look back on and wonder how the heck this is supposed to fit into broader/later canon. Did the Entities install receiver nodes into everything Taylor can control when she triggered, and Amy is detecting and manipulating that? Do bugs in Taylor's range grow a receiver node spontaneously? Is Amy's shard just directly talking to Taylor's shard and going "My host thinks they should be able to provide feedback pain or something to your host? Do that please" and QA goes "Sounds logical. Done." I can sort of stretch for explanations that fit everything, but they're all explanations unsupported by the text and sort of... contrary to Entity operational procedure)

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All the limitations are completely arbitrary so why not. It's annoying though, because I'd like there to be a logic to it and not just be "a shard said so". But hoping for logic, no…

For example, Valefor. He can give orders to anyone he can make eye contact with who can hear him. The first part makes some sense, the shard is using eye contact to read his intent. But the "can hear him" part … um, so the shard apparently scans the brains of EVERYONE in whatever his range is (I guess limited by eyesight) and then checks to see if they heard the order. Only if they heard the order does his shard go in and edit _their_ brains to match it. So it has to do _way_ more work to impose his weird arbitrary rules. What's more the order can be to think/feel/remember things. So while there may be no telepathy powers in worm, clearly the shards have them and can use them, with random humans. And if they can, it starts to beg the question of why there are brain structures at all for powers? If they can read the brain of the person their host is looking at, can't they read the brain of their host without having any weird brain tumors?

 

[Quantumsheep]

Is she making them feed the information in some weird way along the lines of "I can taste the sounds", in which case... um... I guess that's possible, but how would Amy know that affects Taylor's control negatively?...

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Something like that would be my guess, yeah. She wouldn't have any way of knowing that would work, as far as I can tell, but if she's throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks, it seems like a pretty obvious thing to try.

 

[NemoMarx]

Because seriously, what is her power doing, that is purely rooted in biological manipulation

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Simplest way to create looping instructions would be to rewire the brain to do it? Like the bugs keep their instincts, enough that Taylor isn't thinking about how to fly them and so on, just providing high level commands.

So Amy can somehow precisely alter what those are, and make the autonomous processes of all the bugs turn into locking up, maybe?

 

[PhDEevee]

Hmm. The Panacea/bug control conversation is quite interesting. It isn't what happened in canon, but it'd make more sense to me if Amy was fiddling with the bugs' neurology in order to see if she could disrupt Skitter's control of the bugs sitting on her skin, and hits upon something that works - i.e., the bugs now straddle the line between 'simple enough for Taylor to control' and 'too complicated', and the headache and fuzziness Taylor experiences is from QA throwing errors at her.

But yeah, for someone absolutely terrified of her own powers, Amy doing that kind of advanced manipulation of bugs casually seems rather weird.

 

[WyldCard4]

Certainly, if Lois Lane wants she can then pretend like the act of defending yourself from a godlike being is no longer morally valid because it interrupted your robbery attempt, but if she does she's a heinous monster.

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What the hell? If you point a gun at Lois Lane you are threatening Lois's life. You do not get a legal excuse for carrying a weapon if say, your job is being a drug dealer, even though being a drug dealer is a dangerous job, because you don't have a right to be dealing drugs in the first place. Committing further crimes because a crime is being rendered difficult is punished more harshly, not treated as a mitigating circumstance. Escalating a situation when you are doing something that is already illegal doesn't have any defense, particularly when one can surrender. A random bank robber can surrender safely to Kal-El, and surrendering to Glory Girl instead of holding a knife to her sister would also be a comparatively safe call.

 

[Terrabrand]

What the hell? If you point a gun at Lois Lane you are threatening Lois's life. You do not get a legal excuse for carrying a weapon if say, your job is being a drug dealer, even though being a drug dealer is a dangerous job, because you don't have a right to be dealing drugs in the first place. Committing further crimes because a crime is being rendered difficult is punished more harshly, not treated as a mitigating circumstance. Escalating a situation when you are doing something that is already illegal doesn't have any defense, particularly when one can surrender. A random bank robber can surrender safely to Kal-El, and surrendering to Glory Girl instead of holding a knife to her sister would also be a comparatively safe call.

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Please don't strawman- Ghoul King explicitly included in the example the point of Superman first threatening their lives, which throws it into more grey zone territory. If you think 'surrender' is death, it's not the safer option.

 

[Quantumsheep]

Please don't strawman- Ghoul King explicitly included in the example the point of Superman first threatening their lives, which throws it into more grey zone territory. If you think 'surrender' is death, it's not the safer option.

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Um, yeah, about that.

"Drop the knife and surrender, and I'll make sure you get leniency."

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Wyldcard isn't strawmanning, he's pointing out that in both scenarios, 'surrender=death' is not actually remotely the case.

 

[Ghoul King]

All the limitations are completely arbitrary so why not. It's annoying though, because I'd like there to be a logic to it and not just be "a shard said so". But hoping for logic, no…

For example, Valefor. He can give orders to anyone he can make eye contact with who can hear him. The first part makes some sense, the shard is using eye contact to read his intent. But the "can hear him" part … um, so the shard apparently scans the brains of EVERYONE in whatever his range is (I guess limited by eyesight) and then checks to see if they heard the order. Only if they heard the order does his shard go in and edit _their_ brains to match it. So it has to do _way_ more work to impose his weird arbitrary rules. What's more the order can be to think/feel/remember things. So while there may be no telepathy powers in worm, clearly the shards have them and can use them, with random humans. And if they can, it starts to beg the question of why there are brain structures at all for powers? If they can read the brain of the person their host is looking at, can't they read the brain of their host without having any weird brain tumors?

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I'm willing to accept that the brain structure thing is more a convenience than an actual necessity for the shards.

It only starts to break down for me when that factoid gets used to try to justify stuff like the Slaughterhouse Nine Thousand arc.

Simplest way to create looping instructions would be to rewire the brain to do it? Like the bugs keep their instincts, enough that Taylor isn't thinking about how to fly them and so on, just providing high level commands.

So Amy can somehow precisely alter what those are, and make the autonomous processes of all the bugs turn into locking up, maybe?

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Yeah, except Taylor can overrule and control non-conscious (?) processes in bugs. She can force them into breeding season state!

Now Amy can instead, like, alter their physical construction such that they can't move, but why would looping instructions cause Taylor headaches? If it's just a biological imperative, it should bother Taylor to the exact same extent that any recurring impulses (eg hunger) have. So. Not at all? And Amy making the bugs physically unable to move shouldn't provide any kind of weird feedback mechanism/headache.

Not only that, but Taylor's control over all her bugs gets worse with each of these spiders, and worse still each time she tries to give orders to one of them. Why? It can't be the headaches, because once we get further along in Worm we see that no amount of pain or misery has any real effect on her swarms, except in the sense that apparently she shunts emotions into it. So... Amy must be having them produce some kind of jamming mechanism for Taylor's control signal?... I guess?

Something like that would be my guess, yeah. She wouldn't have any way of knowing that would work, as far as I can tell, but if she's throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks, it seems like a pretty obvious thing to try.

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Part of my issue is there's the question of why QA would pass that on in a way that would make Taylor have headaches, and then as I just outlined the canon evidence later on is that headaches wouldn't effect her control at all, so even if I accept this premise, the scene still doesn't fit.

What the hell? If you point a gun at Lois Lane you are threatening Lois's life. You do not get a legal excuse for carrying a weapon if say, your job is being a drug dealer, even though being a drug dealer is a dangerous job, because you don't have a right to be dealing drugs in the first place. Committing further crimes because a crime is being rendered difficult is punished more harshly, not treated as a mitigating circumstance. Escalating a situation when you are doing something that is already illegal doesn't have any defense, particularly when one can surrender. A random bank robber can surrender safely to Kal-El, and surrendering to Glory Girl instead of holding a knife to her sister would also be a comparatively safe call.

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A random robber who just got informed by Superman that Superman intends to render them into a paste is someone you can surrender to?

You're missing the part where I'm saying Superman is the escalation in this scenario.

By a similar token, Glory Girl wasn't making things out as "okay, come on, surrender before I'm forced to hurt you."

This is what happens:

It's humiliating to admit, but I nearly wet myself. I'm not sure my reaction would have been much different if she didn't have a power that made her flat out terrifying. Literally, that's what her power did. Had I done something heinous in a past life, to deserve going up against Lung on my first time out in costume, and Glory Girl on my second?

"Hey sis," Glory Girl tilted her head to one side, to look at the brown haired girl, "You okay?"

The girl, who could be none other than Amy Dallon, Panacea when she was in costume, offered Glory Girl a beaming smile, "I am now."

Glory Girl's sister had been among the hostages. Damn it. At least I knew who she was now. She could heal with a touch, and if what she'd done to my powers was any indication, that wasn't the full extent of her abilities. Glory Girl and Panacea were celebrities, even if Panacea had generally avoided the spotlight as of late. They were among the most famous of the local heroes, arguably among the most powerful of the kid capes, they were pissed at me, and I was stuck in a room with them.

And my powers weren't working.

Glory Girl stepped towards me, and I scrambled for Panacea.

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Taylor is helpless (power not working), under the influence of Glory Girl's aura (Thus not entirely rational, and Glory Girl really ought to know this), and Glory Girl steps forward, apparently intending to attack her.

Taylor then takes Panacea hostage.

Ah, but Glory Girl does, later, with the knife to Panacea's throat, offer:

"Drop the knife and surrender, and I'll make sure you get leniency."

"I've read up on the law enough that I know you don't have the power to make any deals," I said, "No go."

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a deal Taylor knows she can't actually offer.

So Glory Girl lies to her in an attempt to get her to let go of her hostage, after Panacea and Glory Girl have just spent a while messing with her head.

So the flow of events looks an awful lot like Glory Girl was going straight for the physical violence and only considered alternatives once her sister's life was in danger, at which point? Lies.

Yyyyeah this sounds like someone I want to surrender to.

Not.

 

[Genial Precis]

Part of my issue is there's the question of why QA would pass that on in a way that would make Taylor have headaches, and then as I just outlined the canon evidence later on is that headaches wouldn't effect her control at all, so even if I accept this premise, the scene still doesn't fit.

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Taylor gets headaches from bug vision, so there are clearly conditions under which her shard decides to give her headaches as a result of things the bugs' nervous systems do. That returns it to plausibility that Amy just screwed with their nervous systems until Taylor responded in some way that was visible to Amy, which Taylor may or may not have been aware of.

I decline to comment on or even investigate whether canon contradicts this seemingly-reasonable explanation. My own predilection is to ignore canon once I come up with an explanation that fits this well.