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Magical Girl Lyrical Taylor (Worm/Nanoha)

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Marsyas said:
Powers aren't the be all end all. Yes, Masters and Strangers are a thing. Yes, they are a bloody nightmare. Yes, if they have to, law enforcement personnel will shoot to kill. If the Fallen were going around actively Mastering and murdering law enforcement agents, law enforcement agencies are unlikely to make any effort to bring them in alive. Furthermore, other criminal groups are probably not going to want to have anything to do a bunch of cop-killers and mind-rapists who worship the Endbringers. ... which, if we follow the Westboro Baptist connection, makes sense.

I wouldn't be surprised if local villain groups decide to cooperate with law enforcement to get rid of the Fallen when they come to town. ... sort of like what happened in canon, but with less "oh shit, oh shit!" *runs* *explosions* *BEES*
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Except, when Lord Mindrape is being backed up by Edgy McInvincible, and Dark Blaster, the odds turn against you. Normal people just plain do not stand a chance against coordinated parahumans, particularly when they have numbers on their side. Law enforcement has no problem not bringing in normal criminals alive, because said normal criminals gang of friends is unlikely to level a city in response.
 
serra2 said:
Except, when Lord Mindrape is being backed up by Edgy McInvincible, and Dark Blaster, the odds turn against you. Normal people just plain do not stand a chance against coordinated parahumans, particularly when they have numbers on their side. Law enforcement has no problem not bringing in normal criminals alive, because said normal criminals gang of friends is unlikely to level a city in response.
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If parahuman criminal gangs were willing to level cities, then either they would have been killed off the moment governments realized that they were capable of doing so or human society would have already fallen; a situation in which villains act as organized terrorist cells going around nuking entire cities is either going to end with the bloody deaths of those villains or the fall of civilization.

Far more likely, the criminal gangs are going to act like actual criminal groups. They aren't revolutionaries. They have a vested interest in the status quo: they need it to remain in place so they can exploit it. Groups like the Slaughterhouse Nine that are primarily interested in being murderhobos *can't* be the norm, because if they are, they're rapidly going to destroy the system they benefit from. In the same way, if Lung really is willing to burn down huge sections of the city at the slightest provocation, then you're going to end up with a burnt out husk of a city in short order and nobody will be able to live there. There's a critical mass level of murderhoboity beyond which the entire system just collapses into a Hobbesian nightmare of MURDER-DEATH-KILL worthy of Garth Ennis at his most vomit-inducingly-shitdarkian. And while that might be hella X-TREME, it doesn't leave you with a functional world even in the short term.
 
Marsyas said:
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And that is Worm's biggest faux pas. It's a shit hole where the enivitable collapse of human society and civilization is just that, enivitable. You have the murderhobos and psychopaths who don't care about anyone weaker than them. You have the endbringers destroying major cities and killing thousands, including the heroes and villains that fight them three times a year, and then at the very end, Zion and his multidimensional genocide/suicide.

I almost feel bad for wildbow. He kept making more and more powerful things and people, to the point where, from what i understand, it took literally mindcontrolling every powered being in the local dimensional cluster to kill Zion. I wonder if there was ever a point he sat back and realized he had wrote himself into a corner?

I suppose in someway, the absolute fuckery and destruction of the local civilization is planned, or at least expected with the levels of powers handed out and the method of doing so. Add in cauldron, the Simurgh, corruption on all levels of authority all over the world, and Earth Bet is doomed.

I think marsyas is right that there are some people, both without powers and those with (The Undersiders before Taylor) that would rather not rock the boat, and those that really wanted to make the world better by hunting down the slaughterhouse, or the fallen, or whatever group there is...but with the forces arrayed against them I feel like anything more than phyrric victories for truth and justice is impossible.

Of course, this isn't canon worm. This is Marsyas's story, and he has the right to play the story how he wants, I don't see a problem with him changing some things around, or refusing to use things that are only mentioned in notes or even brought up in-story. At least as long as they are within the bounds of logic of the story. So if Marsyas wants more criminals to not be gung-ho in destroying cities, or that local law enforcement can call in major back-up in the form of nearby or specific heroes to confront capes who are too blatant in their destruction, I say that makes more than enough sense. Horrible and dangerous villians get sent to the Birdcage after all, so someone has to be fighting and stopping them.
 
Marsyas said:
If parahuman criminal gangs were willing to level cities, then either they would have been killed off the moment governments realized that they were capable of doing so or human society would have already fallen; a situation in which villains act as organized terrorist cells going around nuking entire cities is either going to end with the bloody deaths of those villains or the fall of civilization.

Far more likely, the criminal gangs are going to act like actual criminal groups. They aren't revolutionaries. They have a vested interest in the status quo: they need it to remain in place so they can exploit it. Groups like the Slaughterhouse Nine that are primarily interested in being murderhobos *can't* be the norm, because if they are, they're rapidly going to destroy the system they benefit from. In the same way, if Lung really is willing to burn down huge sections of the city at the slightest provocation, then you're going to end up with a burnt out husk of a city in short order and nobody will be able to live there. There's a critical mass level of murderhoboity beyond which the entire system just collapses into a Hobbesian nightmare of MURDER-DEATH-KILL worthy of Garth Ennis at his most vomit-inducingly-shitdarkian. And while that might be hella X-TREME, it doesn't leave you with a functional world even in the short term.
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...Have you, like, read Worm? Because that is kind of the point. Society is falling apart at the seams, and is only really holding together because the vast majority of parahumans have a tough time working together. The Protectorate maintains a lid on things via numbers and covert help from Cauldron, but time and attrition are slowly eating away at them. Combine that with the rising numbers of parahumans as 2nd, 3rd, and 4th gen starts coming into view, and you have a recipe for disaster.
 
Zedman7054 said:
I almost feel bad for wildbow. He kept making more and more powerful things and people, to the point where, from what i understand, it took literally mindcontrolling every powered being in the local dimensional cluster to kill Zion. I wonder if there was ever a point he sat back and realized he had wrote himself into a corner?
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IIRC, that was the whole point. He repeatedly wrote himself into corners on purpose just so he would have to bullshit a way back out. For obvious reasons, this is a habit that should be limited to experimental one-shots and not epic-length works.

Edit: Citation!
 
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Marsyas said:
If parahuman criminal gangs were willing to level cities, then either they would have been killed off the moment governments realized that they were capable of doing so or human society would have already fallen; a situation in which villains act as organized terrorist cells going around nuking entire cities is either going to end with the bloody deaths of those villains or the fall of civilization.

Far more likely, the criminal gangs are going to act like actual criminal groups. They aren't revolutionaries. They have a vested interest in the status quo: they need it to remain in place so they can exploit it. Groups like the Slaughterhouse Nine that are primarily interested in being murderhobos *can't* be the norm, because if they are, they're rapidly going to destroy the system they benefit from. In the same way, if Lung really is willing to burn down huge sections of the city at the slightest provocation, then you're going to end up with a burnt out husk of a city in short order and nobody will be able to live there. There's a critical mass level of murderhoboity beyond which the entire system just collapses into a Hobbesian nightmare of MURDER-DEATH-KILL worthy of Garth Ennis at his most vomit-inducingly-shitdarkian. And while that might be hella X-TREME, it doesn't leave you with a functional world even in the short term.
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That's where villains looking to keep said system up and running start preying on the 'anarchist' villains. And when things get big enough, Cauldron starts pulling strings.
SwiftRosenthal said:
IIRC, that was the whole point. He repeatedly wrote himself into corners on purpose just so he would have to bullshit a way back out
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Way to misrepresent the section in question.
Emphasis mine said:
Wildbow: I write myself into corners. A character has a certain set of skills, they have strengths and weaknesses. Take that character, and thrust them into a scene where their weaknesses are highlighted and they can't draw on their full strengths. How do they cope? I force myself to look through the character's eyes, look at what they have available to them, and look for alternate angles. Some of the best cliffhangers and tricks in Worm or Pact (and perhaps Twig too, though it's early days still) came from scenes where I had no idea how the characters would survive the encounter before I started the chapter. Of course, it's important that a writer not twist events to make things easier on the character, and if I can't think of a solution, then the character shouldn't be able to either – and the character suffers accordingly.
I think this is what makes some scenes so intense for the reader. The character is struggling to survive and the desperate gambits we see are echoed by my writerly desperation to figure out a way to keep things going.
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It's his talent at putting himself in the heads of the characters. Frankly, if you wanted to cast Wildbow in a negative light, you should have gone with this on the S9:
Why did I give them two unstoppable guys?
I'm a sadist. I admit it. I've got a bit of a streak of schadenfreude in me. I enjoy being mean to my characters.
But I'm also glad when they rise above whatever I've decided to inflict on them, so it tends to balance out, thankfully.
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He is intentionally hard on the characters, and sometimes it doesn't work out. That's an accurate statement. Claiming he's making shit out of this air is not.
 
serra2 said:
...Have you, like, read Worm? Because that is kind of the point. Society is falling apart at the seams, and is only really holding together because the vast majority of parahumans have a tough time working together. The Protectorate maintains a lid on things via numbers and covert help from Cauldron, but time and attrition are slowly eating away at them. Combine that with the rising numbers of parahumans as 2nd, 3rd, and 4th gen starts coming into view, and you have a recipe for disaster.
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It's mostly the Endbringers that are bringing about the end of the world. The villain gangs make things rough, but it's a manageable level of rough. Whenever anyone sticks their head up too much, they tend to get slapped with an S-rank threat level and either put down hard or cordoned off in an isolated area where they can do no harm. The Slaughterhouse 9 were infamous for being able to make it in spite of having a massive target on their heads, but even they were constantly losing members and having to find replacements, and until the Slaughterhouse 9000 incident their actions, while terrible, were usually targeted and of relatively limited scope. Remember, when a parahuman gets too out of control, it's not just the Protectorate that cracks down on them, the other villains want them dead too. There's a reason that society is still holding together.

Zedman7054 said:
I almost feel bad for wildbow. He kept making more and more powerful things and people, to the point where, from what i understand, it took literally mindcontrolling every powered being in the local dimensional cluster to kill Zion. I wonder if there was ever a point he sat back and realized he had wrote himself into a corner?
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As I understand, Zion was a character even before Skitter was. Wildbow did a lot of drafts from various characters' perspectives before finally settling on Taylor and actually writing Worm proper, which is part of why the world is so fleshed-out with so many interesting characters with their own personal stories going on. So I think it's safe to say that he didn't accidentally end up with Zion after writing to that point and saying "Gee, I wonder what I can throw against Taylor that's even more powerful?" It was inevitable from the start that the story would get to that point.
 
VirusLord said:
It's mostly the Endbringers that are bringing about the end of the world. The villain gangs make things rough, but it's a manageable level of rough. Whenever anyone sticks their head up too much, they tend to get slapped with an S-rank threat level and either put down hard or cordoned off in an isolated area where they can do no harm. The Slaughterhouse 9 were infamous for being able to make it in spite of having a massive target on their heads, but even they were constantly losing members and having to find replacements, and until the Slaughterhouse 9000 incident their actions, while terrible, were usually targeted and of relatively limited scope. Remember, when a parahuman gets too out of control, it's not just the Protectorate that cracks down on them, the other villains want them dead too. There's a reason that society is still holding together.
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Not really, the Endbringers only really hastened things slightly. Parahumans are, by a rule, unstable individuals even before they get their powers. Shards deliberately target people very likely to use their powers and get into conflict, and tend to urge them forward once triggered. Cauldron pretty much had a 20 year deadline to take care of Zion, because by then their just would not be any structure left to manage the parahumans they need to fight.

The hard ones who are cordoned off are cordoned because they decided not to move. The never beat Nilbog, or any of the other S Class parahumans that Wildbow mentioned in that one post I just can't find right now on mobile, all they did was build a wall and hope they did not try to leave. This assumes that there is game-balance between parahumans, but canon shows us, in the example of Greyboy, Eidoleon, and Glastig that this just plain is not a thing. There are a fair number of parahumans who just plain don't give a shit about any of the rules, because they pretty much win any fight.
 
I just want to comment that I will be kind of miffed if Taylor is at all ok with the ring around the roses that just happened.
It was convoluted, mostly pointless and showed that she doesn't really seem to have the loyalty of her team.

Unless this is a metaphor for politics, which I'm guessing it is.
Even then, metaphor or not, Lisa decided that going behind her 'Leaders' back and co-ordinating with someone she's known for all of a couple of days is preferable to just talking to Taylor.

This is how you break friendships Lisa.
 
Taylor: "You could have just talked to me. I would have listened."

Hayate: "Taylor, you're an adrenaline junkie with teenage hormones and more firepower than most national militaries. You would never have listened."

Lisa: "I mean, yeah, I *could* have just talked to you and brought you in on how I was arranging events... but then I wouldn't have been able to look like the smartest person in the room while simultaneously undermining your ability to trust me!"

Taylor: "... God damn it." *beat* "Oh well. At least I have a backup smart blonde waiting in the wings to take your place. Hey Fate, want to hang out?"

Fate: "YES!" *beat* "... Um. I mean, yeah, I guess that would be cool." *is so lonely*
 
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Marsyas said:
Taylor: "... God damn it." *beat* "Oh well. At least I have a backup smart blonde waiting in the wings to take your place. Hey Fate, want to hang out?"

Fate: "YES!" *beat* "... Um. I mean, yeah, I guess that would be cool." *is so lonely*
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That was a sneaky edit, but this brings me great joy.
 
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Does the Empire 88 know that Taylor has a better claim to the title of Kaiser than Max does? If not, how will they react when they find out?
 
bissek said:
Does the Empire 88 know that Taylor has a better claim to the title of Kaiser than Max does? If not, how will they react when they find out?
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In the Blue Beetle comics the metahumans who want the name of a deseased villain (or neutral) get into the ring and fight it out for the street cred and any cool gimmick on the other hand names of heroes without a sidekick or heir on the other hand are giving the name by commarades as honoring the legacy.

In hero vs villain naming I think the usual practice is that the new contender give the holder of the desired name the most brutal and humiliating beating possible, so that the shame of it is the only thing remaining on the minds of the people of the loser. Somehow I don' think Taylor would have any problems continuing the tradition against a nazi.
 
Marsyas said:
Taylor: "You could have just talked to me. I would have listened."

Hayate: "Taylor, you're an adrenaline junkie with teenage hormones and more firepower than most national militaries. You would never have listened."

Lisa: "I mean, yeah, I *could* have just talked to you and brought you in on how I was arranging events... but then I wouldn't have been able to look like the smartest person in the room while simultaneously undermining your ability to trust me!"

Taylor: "... God damn it." *beat* "Oh well. At least I have a backup smart blonde waiting in the wings to take your place. Hey Fate, want to hang out?"

Fate: "YES!" *beat* "... Um. I mean, yeah, I guess that would be cool." *is so lonely*
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"I'm very sorry Lisa, but if you have to choose between smart blondes, you always choose the one who can also give orbital support fire. It's simply logical"
 
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Rune
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    • This is the first of a series of mini-interludes. There are going to be four or five of them, each dealing with some part of the the period between 6.10 and the next chapter. I intend to have the first two posted shortly, with the rest to follow as they are ready.

    So.

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    Magical Girl Lyrical Taylor
    (Worm/Nanoha)
    by P.H. Wise

    Mini-Interlude: Rune

    Disclaimer: The following is a fanfic. Worm belongs to Wildbow. The Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha franchise is owned by various corporate entities. Please support the official release.

    Thanks to Cailin for beta-reading

    -------------

    "... Our top story tonight is the successful negotiation of a ceasefire between the South Korea and the CUI after two weeks of mobilization and sometimes bitter skirmishes along the border between South Korea and China's newly annexed North Korean province. State Department officials tell us that China agreed to the ceasefire in exchange for a seat at the table in the ongoing talks with the Administration Bureau…"

    The sound of the television was background noise to Rune, something she didn't consciously attend to. The volume was low; Kaiser had turned it down when she had come in.

    Her inattention to the television was perhaps understandable; she both looked and felt like she had been hit by a truck. Since Othala had died in the battle against Behemoth, the Empire wasn't able to bounce back from injuries the way it used to, and that was just one more reason that Rune really missed the old days.

    Things had been better. The Empire had felt like her family, then. Kaiser had seemed like a man who deserved her loyalty, then.

    "And did this, quote, 'weirdo buff purple haired girl' say anything before she began the process of beating an entire arena's worth of pit fighters and spectators unconscious?" Kaiser asked. He sounded annoyed, and that was never a good sign. Anything that broke Kaiser's composure was not good.

    It had been insane. The girl, who hadn't bothered with a mask, had been some ridiculous combination of brute, striker, and mover. She'd moved like a hummingbird on speed, beaten Rune black and blue, had taken obvious pleasure in using Alabaster as a human punching bag, and had only retreated after slugging it out with Hookwolf long enough for reinforcements to arrive.

    Rune nodded, and it hurt to nod. "Yeah. She said, 'down with the False Kaiser.'"

    Kaiser let out a long breath. "Another one," he said.

    "Yeah." Kaiser looked at her sharply. "Yes, sir," she corrected. "She was the strongest one yet. If they keep coming, sir, I don't know how much longer…"

    "Leave me," Kaiser interrupted.

    Rune stopped talking. She didn't want to, but she did. Something in her chest tightened. She clenched her fists until her fingernails bit into her flesh and her palms bled. Then she turned and left him to his dark, shuttered room and the murmur of television newscasters.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Min
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    • Mini-Interlude: Min

    -----------

    The voices of a double-dozen news anchors from a double-dozen holographic monitors all blended together into what to anyone without the kind of parallel processing power Min had would have perceived as a cacophony, a buzz more like an insect hive than distinct efforts at communication, individual voices occasionally breaking through the din for the length of a word or two before sinking back into incomprehensibilty, but Min followed each one without difficulty. She sat, pixie-sized, in a teacup filled with tiny cushions set on the counter in Precia's kitchen. Well, in the kitchen that was at Precia's home, anyway. Taylor had come to visit Fate, and the two of them were off doing mad science or looking at clothes or maybe kissing or whatever it was two girls did when they went up to be by themselves in one of their rooms. Hopefully it was kissing; Taylor's life was depressingly free of romance, and based on what she knew about humans, Min was certain Taylor and Fate would be a good match.

    Admittedly, the internet had odd and sometimes contradictory ideas about what was normal behavior between girls, but Min was pretty sure being invited up to another girl's room was a prelude to kissing. Some of what the internet thought was normal she'd asked Aunt Dragon about, and the other AI had laughed for almost two full seconds, which was basically an eternity. Min had been so embarrassed that she hadn't followed up on the questions to get definitive answers, and she was regretting that now. … damn it, she really wanted to know what was going on up there. She knew she could easily just use her sensors to watch the pair, but she was pretty sure that was cheating.

    Arf sat on the counter beside Min's teacup; and if Min wasn't entirely sure if the new Arf was exactly the same person as the old one, she was close enough, and Min knew that she wasn't in a position to throw stones. Arf wore the form of a child version of herself, was still in her pajamas despite it being five minutes past noon, and she was munching on some reheated pancakes.

    "Are you actually watching all that?" Arf asked.

    Min nodded. "Listening, too."

    "Why?"

    "I like to know what people are thinking."

    Arf raised an eyebrow. "Couldn't you use a spell for that?"

    Min shook her head. "Telepathy protocols are annoyingly difficult to hack. I could do it, I guess, but brute forcing a connection to someone's brain might damage them."

    There was a brief silence between them.

    "Taylor told you not to?" Arf asked.

    Min scowled. "Taylor told me not to," she confirmed.

    Arf smirked and went back to her meal.

    There was a muffled laugh from upstairs, followed by a thump, and Min looked up hopefully, and Arf noticed. After a minute or two, her curiosity got to be too much. She activated her sensor feed and examined what Taylor and Fate were doing.

    Damn it. They were just playing some stupid video game about flying magical girls.

    Arf was looking at her. One of the wolf-girl's eyebrows was raised in a flawless impersonation of Mr. Spock.

    "What?" Min asked.

    Arf rolled her eyes and said nothing. In Fate's room, the girls continued their video-game battle, each one using an avatar that had a close approximation of the other's actual powerset.

    Min sighed.

    "... Myrddin, the Protectorate's newly appointed envoy to the Administration Bureau, held a press conference earlier tod--" Another voice rose to drown out the first: "Alien abduction: fact or fiction? And is the Administration Bureau really to blame? Our guests today definitely think so--" still more voices rose. After another few moments, Arf offered Min some of her pancakes.

    Min took what was to her a giant sized piece of pancake and began to gnaw on it; her face brightened almost immediately at the taste of warm pancake, butter, and maple syrup.

    Despite being reheated from breakfast, it was really, really good.
     
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    • Cauldron
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    • Mini-Interlude: Cauldron

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    The laboratory was well lit. The whine of fluorescent lights hung steadily in the air, permeating the place like a scent. It was sterile, cold, white and blue. Rebecca Costa-Brown, dressed in her iconic Alexandria costume minus the helmet, watched the proceedings from where she stood leaning against the far wall.

    A dark skinned woman with long hair stood over the operating table. She wore a full biohazard suit.

    Doctor. Mother.

    Contessa was with her. She, too, wore a biohazard suit.

    They were attaching Eidolon's head to his new body.

    The process was grotesque, and only required a small amount of assistance from the two women. Every now and again they would cut away some cancerous seeming growth or gangrenous pseudo-limb that sprouted from where there shouldn't be a limb. Fleshy tendrils roped their way from Eidolon's severed head down into the body, writhing beneath the skin as he conducted the assimilation of the new flesh.

    Sometimes the tendrils tore awful gashes in the flesh, and Contessa or the Doctor would be there with a Tinker device to regenerate the damage while Eidolon focused on the assimilation itself.

    Rebecca knew she didn't actually have to watch. Didn't need to observe. David was in good hands. She watched anyway. It was a very human delusion: the notion that if you turned your back, everything would go to hell, that your personal attention was the only thing between your cause and disaster.

    Another cut. Another cancerous mass separated from the body. The mass began to wither and turn grey like all the others.

    The operation went on.

    The Endbringers were dead or driven off. The thought was still incredible to her. A thing which she had never really believed possible, and now they lived in a world without Endbringers. Not that she was relaxing; for all she knew, there were a dozen more waiting in the wings just as bad as the first three. But it felt good, and the thought distracted her from the grotesqueries going on upon the operating table, at least a little bit.

    Zion was still the greater threat, of course. And the involvement of magical influences had destabilized things. But they had a plan to deal with that. If all went well…

    Then it was done. The surgery was completed. Eidolon's flesh stopped writhing. The last incisions sealed themselves shut. Contessa and Doctor Mother drew away.

    Eidolon raised his hand in front of his eyes, clenched and unclenched his fist, and smiled.

    "Thank you," he said, and his voice was a hoarse and uncertain thing; these vocal cords had never been used before.

    Doctor Mother didn't acknowledge his thanks. She was already on her way out, but she called over her shoulder: "David, when you are ready, come and see me. We have much work to do, and too much has been allowed that we should never have let slip."

    He looked to Rebecca and to Contessa. "How do I look?" he asked.

    Contessa eyed him. "Head and shoulders above the man you used to be."

    David looked vaguely offended by the pun, but Rebecca smirked. "Try not to lose your head the next time you get into a fight," she said.

    "You could try sticking your neck out a little less," Contessa added.

    Before, he had only looked vaguely offended: now, David looked down right put upon. Doctor Mother ignored the byplay, though. She stepped through the door and closed it behind her.

    "Are you two finished?" David asked.

    "More or less," Contessa answered.

    "I'm done," Rebecca said. It felt good to smile. God knew they'd had little enough reason to for a very long time, and now… even knowing that the worst was still to come, it felt like a weight had been lifted. "David?" she asked.

    He looked up.

    "It's good to have you back," she said.

    David sat up slowly, tested his fingers, stretched, and smiled. "Good to be back," he said.
     
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