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Me, Myself, and I (Worm)

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Doomed Patrol 0-6a: Retreat and Reckoning
  • Threadmarks
    • [X] Disengage and go into a Tactical Retreat. And try to cover your tracks.
    -[X] Tomorrow, check PHO and/or other cape related information sites to see if this whole thing is mentioned anywhere

    What are we doing here? Taylor asked. Why are we fighting these people?

    Weaver said they were robbing the casino, didn't she?

    She said the Undersiders robbed the casino in her world. Weaver, are these the Undersiders?

    I am fairly confident that one of them is Grue.

    So, no.

    Probably not.

    And they haven't actually started robbing the casino, Skein added.

    So...how about we back off, make sure they don't start robbing the casino as soon as we're out of sight, and then head back?

    ...I really don't want to end my first patrol like that.

    Would you rather end it by fighting people who might not be criminals?

    No. Ugh.

    Taylor backed off. She retreated to the woods behind the casino, pulled bugs off the Undersiders, and checked herself to see if the mystery darkness guy had hurt her.

    You're fine, Weaver said.

    Taylor felt Lotophage's uncertainty. She'll be pretty sore next week.

    Well, yeah. But it's just some pain and bruises. She doesn't even have any sprained joints.

    You're sure? My shoulder hurts like hell.

    Yeah, it's fine. You might have bruises all down your arms, but they'll be fine.

    I think your standards of "fine" are a bit warped.

    Welcome to the cape world.

    You don't need to be so fatalistic about it.

    As the Taylors discussed whether Taylor's injuries were serious or not, Grue's darkness dissipated. Taylor saw no sign of the Undersiders.

    Should we go home now?

    Yeah. Try to get some sleep tonight.

    So Taylor flew back home. It was an uneventful flight. Weaver apologized, saying something that Taylor wasn't paying enough attention to remember.

    It was almost 3 AM when she got home. Thank god tomorrow's Sunday and I can sleep in.

    She stumbled into the basement, stripped off her costume, stuffed everything into the coal chute, and went to bed.

    This could have gone better.


    Taylor's alarm went off at 6:30 the next morning like normal. She tried to sleep a little longer, but after maybe ten minutes of lying in bed, she gave up.

    Wandering downstairs, she checked the news on her phone. After some searching, she found a brief story about a clash between an unknown parahuman and a group called Penumbra.

    Called it.

    What do you know about Penumbra? Weaver asked.

    I don't think I've heard of them before today.

    The news story had a few blurry pictures of Taylor and the mysterious shadow guy, apparently stills from the Ruby Dreams's security cameras, and some vague speculation about who the new cape could be. Parahumans Online had a short thread about the news, but it looked like at least half of it was people arguing whether her drones were laser guns or not.

    Dad was already cooking bacon and French toast when Taylor got into the kitchen. He turned his head as she came through the doorway. "Morning, Taylor."

    "Morning," Taylor grunted.

    "Everything alright today?"

    "Just didn't sleep well."

    "Ah." He turned back to the bacon. "You know, you could try to sleep in some. It's Sunday today."

    Taylor shrugged and tried to remember what Weaver said when she suggested the morning jogs. "I need to keep exercising every day. If I don't, it'll get harder to do tomorrow."

    Dad shrugged. "You've got your pepper spray, right?"

    You left it in your utility belt.

    Thanks, Lotophage. "I'll grab it before I go."

    "Alright." Dad served the food, but paused before sitting down. "I heard you come in late last night."

    Taylor bit her lip.

    You were restless and went on a walk.

    No! Just tell him you were out being a superhero.

    Have you told your dad?

    ...I haven't gone on patrol, either.

    I'm with Cirrus on this one. Do as we say, not as we did.

    Did none of me tell Dad about our powers before we absolutely had to?

    I didn't want to worry him.

    I get that, but...that's kind of sad.

    So I should tell him?

    ...Maybe. He's your dad, its your choice.

    [X] Say you were restless [Lotophage]
    [X] Tell Dad you're a superhero [Well-meaning hypocrites]
    [X] Write-in [MOB]

    After much thought, I decided that posting a short update was better than either cramming useless fluff in, skipping over this conversation, or having Taylor make a decision in it without player input.

    This should have been quick to write, but unfortunately I have a chronic inability to focus on one thing at a time.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • [:V] Daddy I have to tell you something, I have head friends. And they want to say me to ask you "Yo dud, was sup?"

    [X] Tell Dad you're a superhero [Well-meaning hypocrites]
    Most of Taylor that hadn't done this regretted it,

    ___
    Taylor hadn't felt any emotion strongly every since her mom died.
    But now she was absolutely seething with anger at Emma.
    "This flute would sell for a lot of money" Emma said with a great amount longing.
    Every since Taylor had gotten home from summer camp Emma had been acting strange.

    She didn't know what to do.
    She searched her mind and remembered a bit of advice.
    Taylor crossed her arms counted to ten to calm herself down and firmly asked "Stop, I do not like this, give my flute back."

    "Sorry." Emma said handing the flute back to Taylor "But I don't "
    "Then just say no to drugs" Taylor answered.

    "It can't be that simple, right?" Emma asked Mindlessly grabbing a pill
    "Yes, Emma it can be that easy you just have to say no"
    "Repeat after me then" Taylor said "No!"
    "No!" Emma repeated "Holy Scion, it actually worked, why did I ever like this stuff in the first place!" She screeched dumping the pill in the trash.

    I had an idea of a Master/Trump Taylor, cape name Refusal running spouting standard campaign slogans, that nobody believes to actually work like; "Just say no to drugs", "If somebody is being mean to your cross your arms count to ten and tell them that you don't like it" or "Don't give in to pear pressure, speak up if you think that something is bad, you are probably not alone."
    It takes one person, " If the recipient can then master somebody including themselves into responding reasonably to by following that advice.

    It only works on people who can feel some semblance of empathy or guilt though so Coil, Bakuda and Hookwolf are immune to the effect.
    I wanted to write a scene where Refusal's Kaiser was only a Nazi he was afraid of his fathers underlings and came out of the closet and reformed the Empire with the help of Refusal, but I couldn't get that to work.

    It could be fun to play Refusal of against Wonder Weapon.
     
    [X] Tell Dad you're a superhero [Well-meaning hypocrites]

    Come on, one of us has to do this!

    (Now we get to see how the author/universe has Danny. Is he overprotective? Does this wake him from his canon depression? We shall see.)
     
    Well, as the Big J himself said; "Do as I say, not as I do"

    [X] Tell Dad you're a superhero [Well-meaning hypocrites]
     
    [X] Say you were restless [Lotophage]

    I have to say i really do hate when in a story Taylor immediately tells Danny about her cape life, where's the drama in that! It just causes Taylor to limit herself because Danny will always want to know what she is doing and completely cuts us off from taking more dubious actions because now Danny is breathing down our neck. Like I get why Taylor should tell Danny but i almost always internally cringe when Taylor ropes him into the story and he becomes a big part of it, he's just not that interesting of a character imo.
     
    Doomed Patrol 0-6b: A Path Chosen
  • Threadmarks
    • [X] Tell Dad you're a superhero [Well-meaning hypocrites]

    Taylor took a deep breath. It was easy to think that she should tell her dad, but actually finding the words was another thing entirely. She took a deep breath.

    [Guts, Tricky—Success!]

    "...Dad, I'm a superhero."

    "Sorry?"

    Try hovering?

    No, that sounds dumb. "I...I got superpowers a couple months ago, and I've been preparing to...do superhero things since then. Last night, I...tried to do superhero things."

    Dad frowned. Taylor wasn't sure if he believed her or not. "Why didn't you tell me about this before?"

    "I didn't want to worry you. But if you heard me going out in the middle of the night, you're going to be worried either way, so…"

    Dad took a bite of French toast and chewed it longer than he really had to. "I didn't expect that answer."

    Taylor started eating.

    "How did it go?" Dad asked.

    "Mm?"

    "The...superhero things."

    Taylor swallowed a mouthful of bacon. "Um. Not great? I almost fought some people who I thought were villains but might not have been."

    "Almost fought?"

    "I...sort of freaked them out, realized they weren't actually robbing the casino. Then both of us ran away."

    "Are you alright?"

    Taylor nodded. "I think so, yeah. Bruises, but that's about it."

    "That's good." Dad finished his orange juice.

    That...could have gone a lot worse.

    Could have gone better, Lotophage grumbled.

    How?

    "So, what are you doing next?" Dad asked. "With the...superhero stuff. Going to join a team?"

    "I...wasn't planning to. I mean, I don't have plans to. Join a team."

    Dad frowned. "Why not?"

    "Ah...I…"

    Does your Dad know about the bullying?

    Taylor had to stop herself from nodding. More or less, yeah.

    Just say something about being worried there'll be another Sophia in the Wards. Another bunch of cliquish teens, who might treat you like garbage, only with superpowers.

    "The hero teams...they're like their own closed-off social groups. Fighting villains with a team would be safer, but I'd still have to work with the heroes when I'm not fighting villains, and that might be...less...good. Like the stuff at school. School is good, learning is good, but the people I'm in school with…"

    [Social+Persuasion, Average—Critical success!]

    Dad sighs. "You have a point. We don't know what's behind the mask of most superheroes, do we?"

    Taylor shook her head. "It would be nice to have a team I could trust, but...well, I don't know if I can trust everyone."

    "Yeah."

    They quietly finished breakfast. Taylor waited for her dad to say something, but he didn't.

    Finally, as he was gathering the dishes and putting them in the dishwasher, he spoke up. "We'll talk about this more later. Right now...I'm not even sure what questions to ask."

    Taylor nodded. "Yeah. Alright." She hurried downstairs to get the pepper spray.

    I can relate. Weaver paused. Until last night, I...didn't treat this as seriously as I should have. Part of me thought it wasn't even real—that it was a dream, my subconscious giving me a second chance. Or something.

    Oh.

    But I won't let that happen again. This isn't my dream, it's your reality. I'm going to start treating it like that.

    And I'll stop assuming Weaver knows what she's talking about.

    ...

    Taylor dug the pepper spray out of her utility belt and stuck it in her pocket, then went back upstairs.

    That was a joke. At least, it—

    I mean, I can't really argue. Last night's debacle happened because we all collectively assumed I knew what I was talking about.

    At least you had a plan.

    It was a bad plan. A plan that made us overconfident, made us rush into a fight we shouldn't have started. Weaver sighed.

    Taylor went out the front door and started jogging. So...what next?

    We shouldn't patrol again until we've talked more with Dad.

    Well, yeah. But is there anything we should actively do before then?

    We need information. All of us probably have subtly wrong assumptions about what's going on in your world, and we're going to keep making dumb mistakes if we don't fix that.

    Alright. What do you need to know?

    The most obvious thing would be figuring out the cape scene in your world. Who do we need to look out for, who can we provisionally trust. The big names.

    Let's see. There's Watcher, Hallow, Kaiser and Iron Rain, Prin Something-or-other, probably Le—

    Do you have their powers and associates memorized?

    Huh? Of course not.

    Then just jog. We'll look up that stuff when we get back.

    Taylor nodded, and kept moving.

    Confessing to Dad: Guts, Tricky
    (1,6): 4—Success!

    Convincing Dad that you're better without a team: Social+Persuasion (Weaver), Average
    (1,4): 4—Success!
    Check for critical: 4—Critical success!
    I never did the vote-counting post, did I? Oh well.
    The Quest format introduces some structural complications to a narrative. A character making a significant decision—like the heroine informing a loved one about her secret nighttime activities—can make for a solid arc conclusion. But those kinds of decisions necessarily need to happen at the beginning of a Quest chapter, because the players need to be able to vote on the decision.

    Also, wow, you're lucky today. Not that these were super-critical rolls, but still. That's plenty of good 4's.

    Alright, this isn't exactly a normal decision, but it's something I'd like to ask your opinion about.
    I plan to have this Quest broken up into rough "arcs," each arc covering a chunk of relevant actions/decisions Taylor makes. In between the arcs, I plan to write interludes from the perspective of one of the other Taylors. How well this will hold up in the future is yet to be seen, but it looks viable for now.
    So! As you might have guessed, the next post is going to involve a bit of exposition about the other capes in this Brockton Bay. My question is simple. Should I make that an Informative threadmark and have the Interlude be set after that, or should I make the Interlude exposition-y?
     
  • Threadmarks
    • GreatWyrmGold said:
    Just say something about being worried there'll be another Sophia in the Wards. Another bunch of cliquish teens, who might treat you like garbage, only with superpowers.
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    I felt that's kind of rich coming from Weaver....did she ever interact with the Brockton Bay Wards apart from Sophia in canon or paint the lot as Sophia and start over with the Chicago Wards?
    Would love to see Weaver proven wrong....but Watcher, Hallow, Kaiser and Iron Rain make this more AU then i expected as the canon kids might end up somewhere else which make this interesting.

    Interlude exposition-y is fine.
     
    Jrin said:
    I felt that's kind of rich coming from Weaver....did she ever interact with the Brockton Bay Wards apart from Sophia in canon or paint the lot as Sophia and start over with the Chicago Wards?
    Click to expand...
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    Aside from occasional clashes with them as Skitter, she did work with them a couple of times onscreen and possibly during the timeskip.

    But she is also aware that a literal other Sophia—the Sophia of host!Taylor's world—could be in the Wards.
     
    GreatWyrmGold said:
    So! As you might have guessed, the next post is going to involve a bit of exposition about the other capes in this Brockton Bay. My question is simple. Should I make that an Informative threadmark and have the Interlude be set after that, or should I make the Interlude exposition-y?
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Depends. Is this something that we'll need to reference in the future, some kind of Dramatis Personae that is going to be updated as the story progresses? Then it better have its own threadmark. Otherwise exposition via interlude might be preferable.
     
    I think the interlude being exposition-y would work best if the Taylors were providing commentary and discussing with each other, but that can happen after we're given the relevant information in an informational threadmark 'off-screen'—which is basically the first option, I think, so my vote's for that: informational threadmark exposition dump and then interlude.

    Fun quest, thanks for writing!
     
    Interlude E (the E stands for Exposition)
  • Threadmarks
    • Lotophage was nervous. The host Taylor's world's Dad had finally finished printing off whatever he was planning to read, so the family computer was finally free for them to do some proper research.

    While we're loading Wikicape, Cyan said, would our host like to run down the big teams?

    Um, I guess? The big hero teams around here are the Protectorate and Haven, but I think there's another one.

    And the big villain teams?

    Empire Eighty-Eight.

    ...that's it?

    Basically, yeah. There's a couple of other teams, and a bunch of gangs with a superpowered villain or two, but it's basically just the Empire.

    Jesus Horatio Christ.

    "Horatio"?

    What?

    It's not normally for a city to only have Nazis in it.

    There aren't only Nazis. There's only, like twenty of them.

    That's more Nazis than there were villains in my Brockton Bay for a while. Right after the third S-class threat in five weeks, but still.

    Lotophage imagined rolling her eyes, trying to project that intention at Weaver. I still don't believe that actually happened.

    Meanwhile, the host had pulled up Brockton Bay's page on her world's cape wiki and scrolled down to the section on parahuman-associated groups. Not for the first time, Lotophage wondered why the Protectorate and Wards were always treated as separate teams when everyone knew the Wards were basically just the Protectorate's junior division.

    Look, under 'Other,' Cirrus said. "Penumbra."

    Learning about togues isn't a priority, Weaver said. Let's see what this world's Empire 88 has.

    Alright. She opened their page; Lotophage's eye was immediately drawn to the list of members. Kaiser. Iron Rain. Stormtiger. Alabaster. Black Sun. Cricket. Drache. Fenja. Fog. Hookwolf. Ignis Crux. Krieg. Menja. Night. Nighthawk. Oathkeeper. Othala. Purity. Victor.

    ...you weren't exaggerating, huh.

    Yikes.

    This is a lot.

    ...let's just look at the team summary.

    The host Taylor scrolled through the page. Reading, presumably, but quickly reading things she mostly already knew. Lotophage tried to keep up. The Empire lead a semi-secret national villain group called the National Alliance, and drew on that support to enforce a near-monopoly on the underworld in and around Brockton Bay. They kept away any major supervillains from out of town, and do everything they can to break up or recruit local villains forming their own teams.

    One villain team with that much power over Brockton Bay...

    ...

    And it's the Nazis, of all villains.

    Yeah. Not sure I want to mess with them.

    No. Definitely not. Just the thought of fighting nineteen supervillains at once...terrifying.

    So. Other villain teams?

    There aren't a lot. The big ones are G-for-Me and those—

    Hold on, G-what?

    Ah. They call it The G4me, but spelled with a four instead of the A. So people make fun of it by—

    Please tell me that Leet and Uber aren't one of the strongest villain teams in your Brockton Bay, right after Empire 88.

    They kinda are, though? At least, ever since Leet recruited those other tinkers. Whats-their-names...Turbo and Gear or something?

    No offense, but I hate your timeline.

    I'm confused, Skein said. What's wrong with those guys?

    Please tell me Leet's as lame as he is in my world. If Leet was the second-biggest threat in this world's Brockton Bay, then maybe they could find a way to handle its biggest threat.

    I don't know know what your Leet is like. The host opened The G4me's wiki page. One of the photos had what looked like dozens of little robots—little more than a tinker-tube with legs, but numerous. And almost all identical.

    I guess not.

    Your Leet can't make robots?

    Not this many, Weaver said. Definitely not like that. Fucking tinkers.

    I'm sort of a tinker, technically.

    Wonder Weapon's the tinker.

    Fair point.

    So, um... Lotophage checked the image caption and winced. These "aimbots"...G-for-me uses them a lot?

    Yeah. They're usually themed to fit whatever caper they're working on, providing a lot of their muscle.

    If I had to guess, either Leet's just a robot tinker, or he's somehow using the tinkers he's working with to overcome his limitations.

    I have no idea what Leet is supposed to be like, Skein said, but I can't help but notice that G4me has someone called "Softlock"?

    I think he's newer, the host said. He freezes people he touches. Let's not get touched by him.

    After skimming The G4me's page a bit longer—they seemed about as absurd as the Leet and Uber Lotophage was familiar with, just more successful—Lotophage decided she would rather not dwell on these annoyingly unpredictable (yet somehow successful) supervillains longer than she had to. There were a lot of groups listed under "Villains".

    Huh? Oh, yeah. Lots of gangs have one or two superpowered people in them. And then there's that one group—what're they called— She backed up a page. Oh, "the Palanquin group".

    If I assumed they were a group of mercenaries including a couple of Case 53's, how close would I be?

    ...what's a Case 53?

    ...I think it's something in Gary? Might be confusing it with Case 63, though.

    The monstrous parahumans with the—a distinctive brand on them.

    Case 44 in my world.

    Whatever. Are they mercenaries with mutant capes?

    Just the one mutant, actually. But otherwise, yeah, I think so.

    They glanced at the Palanquin group's page briefly, and at the other listed "villain groups" and independent villains. Gold Coin, the Red Dragon Syndicate, Knarly Knaves, Soldat, Captains of the Hill. Madcap, Ringmistress, Lothario, Hellhound.

    If these villain groups are so weak, why doesn't the Empire just wipe them out?

    I think they all band together when the Empire tries? They only have one or two villains each, but that adds up to a lot. Especially when one of them hires the Palanquin group. I think the Empire still outnumbers them in parahumans, but the Empire doesn't want an all-out war, either.

    A mutually-assured destruction, cold war kind of situation?

    Not quite...a lukewarm war, maybe? The Empire's people attack the other gangs when they see an opportunity. But I guess they don't attack enough to make a war? It usually isn't front page news or anything...

    We need to start paying more attention to the news.

    Yeah.

    After flipping through the villain pages for a bit, they decided to look over the heroes.

    The Protectorate was familiar, of course. Aside from the fact that it was lead by someone named Watcher instead of Chevalier.

    Where's Armsmaster? Weaver asked. Who's this Watcher guy?

    There was some scandal a few years ago; I don't remember what. Sabotage or something.

    Really?

    You're surprised an Armsmaster had shady dealings?

    ...I guess I'm more surprised that he was caught.

    Watcher took over after that. I don't know much about him; he's not a front-line kind of hero. He has some mental power, I think?

    The Protectorate's roster was...odd. Lotophage knew Triumph as a Ward, Miss Militia and Rook should be in other branches, and she didn't recognize any of the other names. The only Ward she recognized, not counting Triumph, was their leader—Browbeat.

    Why does that name sound familiar?

    You've been a hero for a while. It's not that weird that you'd forget people occasionally.

    Weren't they both Wards, though?

    Browbeat might not have been a Ward in her timeline, maybe?

    That just left two teams—Haven, which Lotophage had heard of, and Sacred Heart, which she hadn't.

    Haven's a pretty well-established team, the host explained. Mostly in the South, but they set up a team here when I was little—around when Immaculata added that new wing—and it's been doing pretty well.

    She opened Haven's page. Half a dozen dorky Haven codenames were listed under their Brockton Bay branch.

    Sacred Heart's really new, and pretty small; I think they wanted to be the "hip" version of Haven, but, um… Well, Relic and Urielle are both pretty strong, so maybe the team will go somewhere.

    That just leaves Penumbra.

    Right.

    The first thing Lotophage noticed on the Penumbra page was the edit lock. Only confirmed editors were allowed to change anything, apparently.

    Huh.

    I knew it. These are the guys from last night.

    Lotophage looked at the picture for the team. It was hard to what anyone in the picture looked like, mostly because of the darkness surrounding them. Darkness a lot like "Grue"'s from last night. But the team didn't list a Grue—just a Gefaer, a Black Denarius, and a Shadow Stalker.

    Who wrote this? "Penumbra is a parahuman team engaged in vigilante activities"? There's a word for that.

    I'm guessing there was an edit war over this. Lower down, it says there've been allegations that they robbed some businesses, mostly from businesses suspected to be associated with white nationalist groups...it just screams "We don't want people to get mad at how we phrased this" to me.

    So...we fought some people who probably hate Empire 88, but a lot of people on the Internet argue about what else they stand for?

    Even more than people on the Internet usually argue about that stuff, yeah.

    Well. Between the villains, heroes, and status-actively-debated, there's certainly a lot of people I've never heard of. Or can't trust what I've heard of.

    Yeah. We should take notes.

    Learning is half of planning, Lotophage said, agreeing. And a good plan is much more than half the battle.

    Sweet Scion, my notes are a mess. I should have sorted them out ages ago. Ideally before I started the Quest, but if not then before I was going to explain anything about the wider city.

    And filled in more of the gaps I hadn't filled in. I've filled in most of the gaps now, but there are still some gaping ones (like characters' codenames). I'll be posting an informative post with more detailed information about all known Brockton Bay capes, once I've finished those last details.

    Speaking of codenames, I probably should have checked whether it was practical to keep up Leet and Uber's naming gimmick for any number of teammates before giving them a bunch of teammates. I'm not really happy with Gear (it's a reference to Metal Gear, Xenogears, etc), but I can't think of anything better for a robo-tinker. (Aside from "bot," but I wanted to use that for the robots G4me makes and it would be weird to equate one of the team's tinkers to their mindless creations.)

    Of course, even once I had enough information for a summary, I had to figure out a way to convey it interestingly. Justify making this an Interlude. I had vague ideas how to do that, but only vague ones. And transitioning from one segment to another was tricky. And by the end I just wanted to be done.

    Hopefully this interlude gave you...a better sense of context than a dry informational post would have?

    In short, I'm glad I tried this, because now I know why it's a bad idea. (And, as a corollary, when it might not be.)


    Also, the reveal that Penumbra is a vigilante group lets me more fully explain what was going on in that encounter.

    The original plan—way back when I was imagining how this Quest might go—was to have Taylor encounter Penumbra out on patrol. She'd notice Grue's darkness, the players would naturally assume it was the Undersiders, and get into combat with a bunch of heroes (or at least hero-adjacent capes), who naturally assume Taylor's a villain. When Shadow Stalker shot Taylor, the players would be surprised and confused, and anyone who hadn't caught on yet would realize this isn't Wildbow's world.

    But I didn't adjust this plan when I realized Ruby Dreams was decently outside of town, and only after I got to the point of saying "This world's Grue is here" did I realize it would be really weird for them to patrol outside the city. So I had to make up another reason for them to be out there under cover of Grue's darkness, adjust their behavior accordingly, and quite frankly I'm glad you bailed before you got any real clues towards the reason I made up because it was kinda dumb and now I can pretend it wasn't.

    Next will be a drier, more proper-nouns-ey Informative Threadmark.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Huh. Well this Brockton Bay sure is… something.

    Overall this looks pretty good for us. Bunch of small time villains to bully for practice and just the one big gang so there's no chance of a major gang war getting set off by a sudden power imbalance like in canon when Skitter took down Lung between the E88, ABB, and Merchants.

    E88 would have to take a serious blow for the various smaller villains to actually to actually get the impetus to start to put some genuine pressure on them and for a war to start in earnest. We can probably afford to whittle the E88 roster down a fair bit before anything serious kicks off in that regard.

    Also no mention of Coil so either A. he's even more of an unknown than canon or B. he ain't here… Boston maybe? We'll see.
     
    UlseDovThur said:
    Also no mention of Coil so either A. he's even more of an unknown than canon or B. he ain't here… Boston maybe? We'll see.
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    He might just have a different name. He could be behind Gold Coin, or this world's version of Soldat.

    If he's not, I agree that this is good for us. A bigger E88 with nationwide reach isn't great, but unless some of Black Sun, Drache, Ignis Crux, Nighthawk or Oathkeeper are incredibly heavy hitters, they're probably still nowhere near as bad as Coil, with his world class Thinker power, nigh limitless material resources, and pet S-class threat in his basement.
     
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    Bigger Nazi presence means more Nazi's to punch.

    Sacred heart sounds a bit christian if not for Uriel. If Haven came from the deep south and Sacred heart is a haven spin off then maybe Haven is a religious organization too?
     
    With our luck, Coil is probably Watcher. Also, I see Dennis is with G4me? And lmao Browbeat continues to be forgotten. I'm gonna be so sad if Vista is a Nazi here. New Wave is non-existent in this timeline; same with the Marche? Or have they just been enveloped into different teams/names.

    Have any of our Taylors had a not-antagonistic relationship with Shadow Stalker? Lotophage had Chevalier as her PRT branch leader, which seems much luckier than the Taylors who had Armsmaster. Wait, where's Dragon? Is The Guild still a thing? They're more international, so I didn't really expect them to be listed here, but also with Armsmaster, I'm a bit worried about Dragon.

    Anywho, thanks for writing!
     
    SoaringJe said:
    Wait, where's Dragon? Is The Guild still a thing? They're more international, so I didn't really expect them to be listed here, but also with Armsmaster, I'm a bit worried about Dragon.
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    Ha ha I am nowhere near ready to talk about the global cape scene in this Earth.

    Also, my attempts to come up with neo-Nazi supervillain names have really screwed with my search history.
     
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    Alright, finally caught up to this! (I'm a little embarrassed to say I put off reading Taylor confessing to her dad for a while out of fear of secondhand social anxiety. :oops:)

    Really psyched I called Shadow Stalker being on the not!Undersiders.

    ...Didn't call them being a vigilante team, though. This is... significantly more of an AU than expected. The Empire having consolidated their power sounds Bad with a capital B, especially for... well, anyone who isn't white and straight. Like, for example, Grue and Shadow Stalker.

    I admit my understanding of the balance of power in canon isn't airtight, but my understand was that the heros being willing to work together and the villains not was a big factor. That's why nobody wanted to push the villains far enough to make them all team up or cut loose. If more than half of them are all under the same umbrella already...

    (Also, just realized: depending on what flavor of Christianity the local branch of Haven subscribes to, I would NOT want to be LGBTQ+ in Brockton Bay in this timeline. The villains being mostly Nazis and the heros being half, say, bible-belt? Brrr.)
     
    Speculating on the names a bit:

    The Red Dragon Syndicate might be Lung's gang.
    Turbo and Gear might be Squealer

    Gold coin sounds as if they either formed around thinker, or a 'mutant cape'/changer

    Relic sounds like a Tinker.

    And I'm drawing blanks on the rest of the unknowns.
     
    So, Sacred Heart did exist in canon. The only things we know about them come from Switch Hitter, a heroine from the endgame of Ward, who was formerly a member of Sacred Heart under a different name, with a warrior-angel theme. She ended up leaving because she was bisexual and was bullied for it by her teammates, which does not say great things about Sacred Heart in general.

    If we end up seeing a member of Sacred Heart with an angel costume and a pair of weapons, one a shiny gold and then other dark and filled with galaxy-like light patterns, that would be her. Given AU we can't assume that she'll be the same person though.
     
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