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Flames (Worm AU)

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Frankly I like it. I generally don't like torture scenes, but this does seem to kind of fit with her MO (and the flames may or may not be influencing her personality) so it makes sense. I don't think going any farther would help her cause any, and if you wanted a specific reason you could have tattletale mention in a later chapter that she talked her down from a bigger display. Anyways, a certain amount of torture benefits her cause, but too much could cause repercussions from the public and PRT as well.

Keep on keeping on! I'm looking forwards to more!
 
TheObserver said:
Oh I understood that, it's just that Bakuda would have gone to the Birdcage anyway, and if they talked on TV about her crimes the inmates would have known anyway. It does seem that Taylor didn't add much to what is already coming.
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Umm well maybe? I.... you know I'm not quite sure what to say to that. In canon Bakuda seemed to be getting by just as well as any of the other inmates before Lung murdered her, but that could just be Wildbow dropping the ball. Not all news of the outside world makes it into the birdcage I would think, only whatever makes the international headlines really given the cage is in Canada... right? Taylor's message would be news station catnip and even if it wasn't someone will notice the brand sooner or later. So it's definitely assured now. Though your point does have me a bit stumped as she really should have had a harsher reception waiting for her in canon too and I'd like to take that up with Wildbow at some point because now I'm actually curious about that...

It does, if nothing else, tell everyone still free that hurting kids will earn them Taylor's personal attention and she's willing to inflict fates worse than death on those who test her.

Sorry it disapointed you but I do think I'm going to let the scene stand as is.
 
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I can imagine several people's reaction to this.

"It's the Marquis all over again."

Meanwhile... Brandish is twitching.
 
Fencer said:
I thought the end result was fairly well implied with what she said but I'll make it clear. The birdcage is a male and female prison which means there is prostitution going on. Generally even hardened criminals take a very dim view of fellow inmates who hurt or go after kids. People get beaten and killed for stuff like that. Taylor just offered up Bakuda as a sex slave/punching bag for every inmate in the birdcage.
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It was obvious, it is also too intellectual, long term and vague to fit either your Trigger warning or more importantly Taylor's apparently vengeful mood.
It also relies on Taylor knowing more about the birdcage than she should.

Fencer said:
Umm well maybe? I.... you know I'm not quite sure what to say to that. In canon Bakuda seemed to be getting by just as well as any of the other inmates before Lung murdered her
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Something which happened very quickly after she arrived in the prison, and Lung mentions he paid Lustrum to be able to kill Bakuda, which given Dragon trusted Lustrum to protect Canary would be very unusual for her.

Basically Bakuda's crimes were disgusting enough to make a rabid feminist that protected Canary to sell Bakuda to a man she knew was going to kill her.


Fencer said:
Sorry it disapointed you but I do think I'm going to let the scene stand as is.
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I wouldn't say it disappointed, it was a bit jarring in that it doesn't match Taylor's rage (demonstrated when dealing with the minions).
 
Now I want to see/read the reactions of the inmates in the Birdcage, knowing what they are getting courtesy of a Brockton Bay Villain as a gift.
 
Red Shirt said:
Now I want to see/read the reactions of the inmates in the Birdcage, knowing what they are getting courtesy of a Brockton Bay Villain as a gift.
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I'll start you off then...

Acidbath: Fuck yeah! This bitch puts them through the ringer! In fact {Insert Offensive Prison Slang Regarding Bakuda} you know what i'm saying!?
 
Red Shirt said:
Now I want to see/read the reactions of the inmates in the Birdcage, knowing what they are getting courtesy of a Brockton Bay Villain as a gift.
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Alright lets see how I handle this

in cell block M
Marquis- "Huh about time someone took responsibility for that city, wonder if shes friends

and in block F
Lustrum- "huh deja vu I feel like I've met that young woman before..."
Flashbacks to a old friends crazier stunts
shivers "god I hope not or I'm glad I'm in jail"

....I really don't know where that came from
 
Cell Block M: "LESS FILLING!"

Cell Block F: "TASTES GREAT!"

I'm a bad bad boy.​
 
Fencer said:
Edit: particularly given the woman is a tinker. She might as well be a mortal among demigods down there so long as they keep her away from any tools or tech.
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IIRC, before Lung killed her, she'd managed to assemble a bomb out of some bits & bobs including a spring from her mattress. Tinkers gonna tinker.

Jonn Wolfe said:
I can imagine several people's reaction to this.

"It's the Marquis all over again."
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"That could be a good thing, man. Marquis was a criminal, yeah, but he was civilized. Not like what we've got nowadays. A rage dragon, an army of Nazis, and some bottom-feeding druggies. Marquis had Rules, and he stuck to them. Rumor has it even the Slaughterhouse Nine couldn't force Marquis to break his own rules, and boy did Jack Slash try."

TheUnicorn said:
Basically Bakuda's crimes were disgusting enough to make a rabid feminist that protected Canary to sell Bakuda to a man she knew was going to kill her.
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Apples and oranges, IMHO. In a stressful moment, Canary accidentally Mastered her asshole ex-boyfriend into cutting off his own unit, and then got railroaded in a trial that was blatantly illegal with a ridiculous number of civil rights violations thanks to an incompetent/crooked attorney that was assigned to her without her consent. Bakuda, OTOH, gleefully kidnapped people and installed cortex bombs to force them to obey her, and she turned a little girl into glass just for shits & giggles. and blew the heck out of Brockton Bay in a horrific bombing campign that would've made the Unabomber green with envy

Edited to confine my arguments to canon events
 
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JumperPrime said:
That could be a good thing, man.
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Oh, I'm not saying it's a bad thing. I'm just thinking a lot of the Adults who remember Marquis are going to make comparisons. And since she went public with her punishment, people are going to think she's claiming territory.

And oh dear... Uhm... How much do you wanna bet that Myrddin is going to be headed to BB after that goes nationwide? :o
 
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In cannon Bakuda was able to leverage her Tinker powers by being able to fix the cages TVs, with this little display Taylor has painted a target on Bakuda. When she goes to the Birdcage everyone is gonna know who she is, and have their own takes on the situation. One way or another Taylor has made Bakudas stay at the cage much worse by putting her in the spotlight. Would not be surprised if some of the more fucked up inmates demanded access to Morganas "gift". Bakuda is likely going to get traded around the cage for about a week before she dies, simply because of the interest that Taylor generated.
 
JumperPrime said:
The way I read your earlier post, it sounded like you did:
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no, not at all. If anything I was pointing out how different they are from one another, but my main thrust was that Bakuda, despite being nominally very valuable to her cell block was thrown to Lung very shortly after she arrived in the Birdcage, i.e regardless of what Taylor did she wasn't going to survive long in the Birdcage.
 
There was something I read once, on how to destroy the pride of a warrior born...
I believe this comes from The Wheel of Time book series; a proud warrior was captured after he and his fellows began to slaughter villagers, a former blacksmith turned reluctant leader decided he had no choice but to send a message to warriors kin. Raising his great axe, the leader swiftly removed the warrior's arms, so he could no longer wield his spear, another swing and the warrior's legs were removed, so he could no longer run home to his land, and then a knife was used to remove the warrior's tongue, so he could no longer spread hate through his voice. Finally the leader had the warrior's wounds treated, and ordered that the warrior be left in a public place with nothing but the cloths on his back and a tin cup at his feet. Thus everyday, for the rest of the proud warrior's life, he would receive nothing but pity and scorn from the same people he sought to conquer... The broken pride of a once mighty warrior.
Now if you apply that to a Tinker like Bakuda....
 
Wow..Both better and worse than what I thought would happen...

See, I thought Taylor was going to be almost entirely non-physical in this..and break Bakuda.

I honestly thought that she would go for some true fuckery by blocking Bakuda's control of her conscious muscles. She would still breathe, eat, see, hear, feel, and maybe even flinch and blink. But she would be completely unable to move her body. No arms, legs, mouth, tongue, nose, or ANYTHING.

That alone would drive people to true insanity. ...But what if you did that to a Tinker? The ideas, the urge to build, to FIGHT...and be unable to do anything. Not even kill herself.


Holy shit, I get dark when I lack sleep. Great story, definitely watching, very satisfying Bakuda defeat!
 
Wonder what Coil is thinking right about now. On one hand, the Undersiders are developing a reputation suitable to his long term goals -on the other, if Morganna ever finds out what he´s done to one Dinah Alcott...
 
Fencer said:
Then Grue launched into his short, prepared speech on proper hostage etiquette and how we would be gone shortly. That was my que
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A "cue" is a prompt to start. A "queue" is a line waiting for something. "Que" is Spanish for "what?"

Fencer said:
"What, you thought what's happening in Africa can't happen here?"
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Fencer said:
Miss Militia was starting to look pretty pale under her scarf.
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The over-the-top emotional reactions from seasoned heroes are a bit much. Taylor's Big Cathartic Speech listed no new facts, only a conclusion following simple inductive reasoning from facts everybody knows. So, anybody who's not stupid already thought it about as likely before her speech as they do after.

Also, it's a bit cringey when the Edgy Protagonist has a Big Cathartic Speech and everyone reacts exactly like she hoped they would, as if they only exist as cardboard cut-outs to reflect her magnificence.

Aside from those moments, though, nice work! Very entertaining OP setting-stomp.
 
I don't like her going on tv to make a big production of things or branding Bakuda. If her goal is to gather as much resources as possible to survive the fall of civilization with whoever she chooses, she's set herself back majorly as she's basically just encouraged villains and the government to go after her more seriously. Plus she's set herself up as someone who will go after child abusers now. Either she's got to live up to it, which becomes a distraction from her goals, or the entire thing was pointless.

As for addressing the people in the Birdcage and saying she's sending them a gift in the form of a child abuser? They already have child abusers there like Crane the Harmonious. Probably others also. Other than the normal power plays in the Birdcage among villains, it doesn't matter to the residents and they're probably looking at her as someone who's just trying to hard to seem scary.
 
sandmanwake said:
I don't like her going on tv to make a big production of things or branding Bakuda. If her goal is to gather as much resources as possible to survive the fall of civilization with whoever she chooses, she's set herself back majorly as she's basically just encouraged villains and the government to go after her more seriously.
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Grue would agree that reputation is important. Morganna just raised her profile, yes, but in a good way. She left the mad-bomber tinker for the Protectorate to take into custody, humiliated but otherwise intact. The Protectorate CAN'T go full-force on her, since then people will say they're jealous that she did what they couldn't. She's also drawn a line in the sand that Kaiser can respect, you don't want to use children as artillery shells, it's a bad idea on multiple levels and now Morganna's taken a public stand on it as well.

sandmanwake said:
As for addressing the people in the Birdcage and saying she's sending them a gift in the form of a child abuser? They already have child abusers there like Crane the Harmonious. Probably others also. Other than the normal power plays in the Birdcage among villains, it doesn't matter to the residents and they're probably looking at her as someone who's just trying to hard to seem scary.
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I suspect that even Crane the Harmoniius will not like Bakuda. She may have turned children into weapons, but she didn't set them to self-destruct by default.
 
JumperPrime said:
I suspect that even Crane the Harmonious will not like Bakuda. She may have turned children into weapons, but she didn't set them to self-destruct by default.
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Crane was abusive, but in a way that can be rationalized by her and others. Bakuda has no way to justify her actions besides viewing children as weapons.

Also holy shit I had forgotten how much I want a Crane the Harmonious fic.
 
So, Taylor is a promoter of that special kind of evil...well I'm not on her side anymore and MM needs to put a round in to her head. Also I think people are forgetting that Crane the Harmonious is a serial rapest/pedo, so Bakuda is not as evil as that.
 
Blight609 said:
So, Taylor is a promoter of that special kind of evil...well I'm not on her side anymore and MM needs to put a round in to her head. Also I think people are forgetting that Crane the Harmonious is a serial rapest/pedo, so Bakuda is not as evil as that.
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Honestly after having several people ask me if that was it across two websites I'm honestly glad to hear someone apposed to what Taylor did. Really I was expecting a lot more reactions in line with yours.
 
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