Monster

[Unity_Seven]

Keep in mind Worm is effectively a first draft that had a truly batshit crazy update schedule. Much as I can enjoy some of the characters and ideas, it does not make a coherent whole. That sort of thing takes time and editing, and trying to slavishly adhere to something that is undercooked/contradicts itself is a path to madness.

That's not even getting into the way it portrays drugs and addiction. At least from what I remember it had issues...

 

[Nyarky]

Wildbow has explicitly said the intention is that PtV ceasing to help Fortuna at the last second wasn't 'Eden quickly modified PtV' but rather was 'PtV was never going to finish helping Fortuna kill Eden, even though it happily took her 99.9% of the way through a plan for doing exactly that'.

Click to shrink...

So Wildbow has written a WOG that says that we were supposed to read the exact opposite of what was written out of something.

Typical, that guy really has a problem with that. From Valefor not being pathetic to Amy apparently having been a monster all along, this isn't the first time the story is better off completely ignoring what he says about it outside of it.

 

[Unity_Seven]

So Wildbow has written a WOG that says that we were supposed to read the exact opposite of what was written out of something.

Typical, that guy really has a problem with that. From Valefor not being pathetic to Amy apparently having been a monster all along, this isn't the first time the story is better off completely ignoring what he says about it outside of it.

Click to shrink...

It's one of the problems I've always had wanting to do any kind of writing for Worm - the broad strokes stuff is cool but once you start digging into details it goes to shit. I would need to spend so much time re-writing and tweaking and retconning and cutting stuff down that ultimately I think I'd be better off just trying to write something of my own instead. Trying to lean on the worldbuilding is like leaning on a rotted out wall. Trying to follow use the canon timeline as a guide is a shitshow pretty much right after Leviathan, IMO. I would pretty much have to write out Contessa, Lisa (and Coil to an extent) almost completely since their power is just plot contrivance and trying to write super-smart characters is kind of a no-no since it nearly always comes off as bullshit.

 

[Ghoul King]

Ongoing adventures in collating and better organizing my notes have led me to rediscover a thing I totally forgot I did: death rolls for the Nine attack!

Okay, I should explain a couple things here.

First of all, I've mentioned using dice to determine outcomes of large-scale actions like Endbringer attacks so I can avoid the usual Writing Fails like 'very few people with names and faces die' and other implausible outcomes showing clear author bias. This is one such set of dice rolls!

I've avoided posting these publicly in ongoing stories because they constitute spoilers even in cases where the event that was rolled for has already occurred. For example, in Exploding Canon I've intended to post its death rolls someday, but I'd like to be finished with that story first, or at least have reached some point where 'and this guy is definitely dead because dice' isn't a meaningful spoiler.

This one is an exception, though, because of point two:

Monster started out very Stations Of Canon-y. I rolled dice for Leviathan's attack and then the Nine's attack, because I was thinking Taylor would kill Nilbog, kill Heartbreaker, then probably kill one or two Villains in Brockton Bay before Canonical Leviathan Attack interrupted things, and of course the Nine would follow up just like in canon.

This was actually rolled sometime after I decided Cherie would seek out Taylor, but before she started taking dynamite to all my pretty little rails. I was basically going 'okay, so she joins up with Taylor, and this makes Taylor more effective at hunting down Kaiser or Lung or something in their civilian ID?' (I hadn't yet written the face-grabbing scene and was in fact not really thinking of the Unwritten Rules at all at this stage in my writing)

Here's those rolls, with my attendant personal notes and zero changes made. (By which I mean 'I wrote this stuff to make sense to me, not to readers, so it might be pretty opaque or confusing to others')

Spoiler: Death Rolls for the Nine attack

Next I'm going to be doing Slaughterhouse 9-related rolls. I also need to work out whether they have a Cherish-equivalent, are just down one relative to canon, or have more than one "replacement".

The Slaughterhouse Nine, in canon, before Cherish joined was: Jack Slash, Bonesaw, Mannequin, Crawler, Shatterbird, the Siberian, Burnscar, and Hatchet Face. (Cherish killed Hatchet Face to get into the Slaughterhouse 9) That suggests that in Monster it would be that list, unless they recruit somebody else.

OK, I'm going to make three rolls, all on D100.

Roll 1: Does the character interact with the Slaughterhouse 9 at all. I might waive the result on some characters, but this is fairly basic. 75 and below means they interact with the Slaughterhouse 9.

Roll 2: Assuming the character meets the Slaughterhouse 9, are they a focus or are they suffering sort of incidentally. 20 and below means that one or more Slaughterhouse 9 members have a specific interest in them.

Roll 3: Do they die (Or suffer a fate worse than death), assuming they meet. 75 and below means at least an injury, 40 and below means they die, 20 and below means it gets worse.

(These rolls all don't matter, whoops)

Monster: 1, 33, 19. Shit. Good news: the Slaughterhouse Nine aren't here for her. Bad news: they still do something terrible to her.

Cherie: 77, 64, 44. Oddly enough, she never meets them. Hmm.

Über: 62, 97, 20. Worse.

Bitch: 45, 15, 71. So basically canon, aside from the other Undersiders being dead.

Tattletale: 98, 12, 87. Dodges the bullet outright.

Barker: 2, 90, 29. Dead. Entirely incidentally, too.

Dinah Alcott: 88, 78, 13. Never sees the Slaughterhouse 9 at all, outside of her visions.

Trainwreck: 28, 75, 18. Worse.

Noelle: 98, 85, 86. Entirely uninvolved.

Ballistic: 59, 30, 42. Ouchies.

Sundancer: 17, 100, 5. Worse.

Trickster: 78, 5, 10. Never sees the S9. Presumably stays with Noelle, and for some reason the S9 don't care this time.

Lung: 8, 93, 57. Sounds about right, assuming he's still around.

Bakuda: 39, 76, 75. Wow, really? She meets the S9 and ends up only mildly injured?

Oni Lee: 78, 36, 36. Never meets the S9, oddly enough.

Kaiser: 3, 7, 56. Marked by one of the S9 as a potential recruit... gets through with only minor injuries, the smug bastard.

Alabaster: 33, 35, 31. Dead.

Cricket: 33, 70, 29. Dead.

Crusader: 97, 15, 91. He's fine.

Fog: 62, 98, 70. Minor injuries, largely ignored.

Locust: (AKA canon Night with Skitter's powers) 82, 62, 15. Somehow avoids the S9's notice completely -probably because she's recuperating and only interacting via her bugs anyway.

Fenja: 85, 51, 11. Never sees them.

Menja: 75, 98, 38. Dead. Probably by guarding Kaiser. Fenja lost her eye, was recuperating from the infection?

Hookwolf: 65, 44, 55. Nothing he can't handle. They're not here for him, either.

Krieg: 50, 39, 45. He's fine.

Rune: 94, 14, 91. Never sees them.

Stormtiger: 2, 16, 8. Worse. And they were here for him, too.

Othala: 33, 99, 26. Dead.

Victor: 40, 51, 96. Everything's perfect! Except for his wife being dead.

Purity: 71, 88, 22. Dead.

Aster: (Purity's baby) 8, 46, 5. Worse.

Theo Anders: (AKA Golem, later on) 76, 59, 58. Somewhere off with his dad when Purity and Aster have Bad Things happen to them, and never actually meets the S9 himself.

Skidmark: 7, 21, 23. Dead.

Squealer: 65, 68, 31. Dead.

Armsmaster: 36, 21, 71. Minor injuries, they're not even here for him.

Miss Militia: 61, 94, 33. Dead.

Battery: 41, 53, 21. Dead.

Velocity: 91, 38, 65. Never even sees them -probably off somewhere else entirely.

Dauntless: 64, 9, 15. Worse. Manipulated into joining the S9 somehow. He was one of their chosen targets.

Weld: 92, 3, 31. Also never even encounters them. Wait, really?

Clockblocker: 94, 97, 28. Never even sees them.

Browbeat: 88, 85, 54. Seriously, are they keeping the Wards away from the S9?

Vista: 10, 70, 83. Encounters them, suffers no injury, the little badass!

Gallant: 32, 73, 12. Worse. Oh, this is why the other Wards are being kept away -something awful happened to Gallant when he was on patrol with Vista, and while she came away from it fine physically, something beyond horrifying was done to Gallant, scarring Vista mentally.

Kid Win: 83, 56, 14. Never even sees them.

Shadow Stalker: 23, 32, 32. Dead. Shadow Stalker died because she actually tried to assassinate one of the Nine, and it went badly. Probably Jack. And now I'm thinking Sophia's corpse is what clues Taylor into her status as a Ward.

Scrub: (Needs a new name) 23, 28, 78. Not one injury, just a terrifying encounter.

Lady Photon: 86, 40, 16. Never sees them.

Flashbang: 94, 18, 94. Also never sees them.

Laserdream: 1, 33, 47. He's not happy, but nothing terrible happened to him.

Shielder: 61, 47, 35. Dead.

Brandish: 13, 91, 19. Worse.

Manpower: 74, 53, 76. Mint condition, goes unnoticed by the S9, barely.

Glory Girl: 76, 19, 80. Never sees them.

Panacea: 93, 76, 12. Never sees them.

Danny Hebert: 23, 33, 56. Close Encounters Of The Scary Kind.

Emma Barnes: 67, 35, 27. Dead. Oh shit, Sophia talked her into coming with and they both ended up dead!

Flechette: 86, 78, 15. Never sees them.

Madison: 60, 39, 41. Injured incidentally.

Mrs. Knott: (Taylor's homeroom and computer science teacher) 84, 58, 95. Fine.

Faultline: 55, 41, 47. Injured.

Gregor: 13, 60, 54. Nothing he can't handle.

Newter: 17, 26, 34. Dead.

Labyrinth: 20, 28, 47. Ow.

Shamrock: 65, 57, 2. Worse.

Spitfire: 49, 95, 73. Minor injuries.

---

In summary: unless I count the ones that didn't meet the S9 but got a "targeted" success, there's like two people who the S9 were here for...

Dauntless (Mannequin) Joined

Stormtiger (Shatterbird) Joined

Kaiser (Jack) Minor injuries

Bitch (Siberian) Minor injuries

OK, so four people.

The "got missed" potential options include...

Flashbang

Rune

Crusader

Trickster

Which puts it at a nice even 8... so, maybe pull out the "got missed" rolls in this case to fill things out.

An unvarnished look at part of my internal writing/thinking process!

Among other points, you can see pretty clearly me doing what I've laid out before of engaging in deduction, where I look at results and fill in with a story for why these outcomes happen. Sophia and Emma both are killed by the dice, and so I decide this means Sophia got herself killed with recklessness and brought Emma along with her, getting her killed too. The Wards end up mostly not meeting the Nine, but one Ward has a horrible fate, so I decide that Ward got hit by the Nine and the Protectorate tried to keep the other Wards away in response to that horrific fate.

I don't precisely regret derailing things from the picture painted by these dice rolls, but I am vaguely annoyed that I rolled A Terrible Fate for Taylor and then derailed from implementing it? Though, admittedly, I did have her second trigger when attacking the Nine...

It is nice not having to figure out how Taylor got wrecked by the Nine while Cherie somehow never met them. That was genuinely an aspect of the rolls I was basically expecting to have to fudge. (By which I mean 'completely ignore')

But wait! There's more!

See, I haven't talked about this before, but reading Wormfic got me annoyed with how the Nine tend to be handled, in that in canon we do in fact know individual Nine members are dying pretty much constantly, and realistically I'd expect a certain rate of horrible death for them just from things like 'new triggers are impossible to predict and plan for'. The Nine in fanfic-land, when they show up at all, tend to either be widely Big Threats That Are Difficult To Put Down, or pretty clearly get organized in a hierarchy patterned after canon outcomes. (eg Jack Slash tends to survive, or if he does die he's the toughest Nine member to kill. And not because these fanfics are running with the ridiculous 'Jack's minor Thinker power out-PtVs PtV' WoG) They rarely have organic or chaotic outcomes like I'd realistically expect. (And narratively prefer: plot armor is lame!)

So I not only rolled for the victims of the Nine, I rolled for the Nine themselves.

Spoiler: The Nine themselves

S9 Rolls

I roll one die. 75 and up means they escape essentially unscathed. 50 and up means they escape alive, but aren't particularly happy. Below 50 means they die.

Jack Slash: 32. Dead.

Bonesaw: 40. Dead.

Crawler: 5. Super Dead.

Shatterbird: 52. Barely escapes Brockton Bay alive.

Mannequin: 1. The Deadest.

The Siberian: 47. Dead.

Burnscar: 63. Ouchies.

Hatchet Face: 17. Dead.

Murder Rat: 7. Dead.

Pagoda (Hybrid regenerator): 94. Intact. Fuck.

The Slaughterhouse Nine are broken, with only Shatterbird liable to have any chance of even trying to continue the organization. Which, to be fair, Dauntless and Stormtiger joined, so they're actually down to 4 people, not two. Of course, holding the group together is a different matter... This is interesting, and weirdly enough I can buy it with the Monster+Pride combo.

I'm slightly more sad I ended up wholly derailing this one. The timeline where Shatterbird, Burnscar, and Pagoda are the only survivors and strive to maintain the Nine actually sounds pretty neat? But then again, I already have two backburner projects starring the Nine, so I certainly wouldn't have also put serious attention on them past their attack in Monster, so I guess it's not like it really is a notable loss.

...

Incidentally, I keep saying Cherie derails my plans, and I mean it. This is probably a couple hours of work I dumped because Organic Writing Cherie has no respect for the stations of canon!

 

[Ashaeron]

Is this list missing Assault or did I forget something story specific?

 

[Ghoul King]

Is this list missing Assault or did I forget something story specific?

Click to shrink...

He died at Ellisburg. That was rolled in a list I'm not yet disclosing! But Assault's death has been revealed within Monster itself.

 

[Balthanon]

in that in canon we do in fact know individual Nine members are dying pretty much constantly

Click to shrink...

I was looking at this for a quest I'm running and the funny thing is that going by the Wiki, since Bonesaw joined the "dying pretty much constantly" only applies to like... 2 members of the 9. 7 out of the 9 listed as being in the group as of 2005 were in Brockton Bay in 2011. Hatchet Face was dead, technically, but that happened like a month earlier.

Not sure how accurate the wiki actually is (I don't think all of the 9 were identified in Riley's interlude and I didn't dig for any WoG it was pulled from), but I honestly find that a slightly amusing idea and actually relatively believable given how good she is as a healer. It also explains why they're packed to the brim with tinkertech upgrades if Bonesaw is constantly replacing parts in people who would have died. It is a bit less believable that Brockton wiped out all but three essentially though given that record.

 

[daniel_gudman]

See, I haven't talked about this before, but reading Wormfic got me annoyed with how the Nine tend to be handled, in that in canon we do in fact know individual Nine members are dying pretty much constantly, and realistically I'd expect a certain rate of horrible death for them just from things like 'new triggers are impossible to predict and plan for'. The Nine in fanfic-land, when they show up at all, tend to either be widely Big Threats That Are Difficult To Put Down, or pretty clearly get organized in a hierarchy patterned after canon outcomes. (eg Jack Slash tends to survive, or if he does die he's the toughest Nine member to kill. And not because these fanfics are running with the ridiculous 'Jack's minor Thinker power out-PtVs PtV' WoG) They rarely have organic or chaotic outcomes like I'd realistically expect. (And narratively prefer: plot armor is lame!)

Click to shrink...

Honestly I assumed that the Nine are sorted, approximately, into three internal factions: Invincible, Protected, and Chaff.

There are two members of the Nine who are essentially invincible: Siberian and Crawler. They can evenly trade blows with the Triumvirate, and could believably win basically any fight they have and take extraordinary prepared measures to counter them.

Meanwhile, there are Protected members, who are deliberately kept alive by the Invincibles: at first this was just Jack Slash, who mostly got into that position with psychological tricks, and then spent a lot of time holding hands with Siberian so she could keep him safe. Later, they added Bonesaw, who got promoted to Protected because Siberian adopted her.

And the last category of Nine is the Chaff: psychos who have lifespan measured in weeks, or maybe months. Hatchetface, Burnscar, and Shatterbird are in this category. These guys die, a lot, frequently. Mannequin is tough enough that he's kinda starting to climb out of Chaff and towards Invincible, and promoting yourself to Invincible is the high-priority life goal of all the Chaff in the Nine.

So my impression of how the Nine were 'supposed' to work is that the Chaff members are constantly dying and having to be replaced, and that the gimmick where they showed up to BB and forced a bunch of parahumans to 'test in' as Candidates? I assumed that was their main gimmick as a Comic Book Terrorist Organization. They are just constantly cycling through the Chaff Members, and the horror of the Nine is split twofold: if you're a Normie you're afraid of getting used as meat in their fucked up recruitment games, and if you're a Parahuman you're afraid of getting forced to participate in their fucked up recruitment games. (And as Balth indicated, adding Bonesaw really slowed down the turnover of Chaff.)

 

[Ghoul King]

I was looking at this for a quest I'm running and the funny thing is that going by the Wiki, since Bonesaw joined the "dying pretty much constantly" only applies to like... 2 members of the 9. 7 out of the 9 listed as being in the group as of 2005 were in Brockton Bay in 2011. Hatchet Face was dead, technically, but that happened like a month earlier.

Not sure how accurate the wiki actually is (I don't think all of the 9 were identified in Riley's interlude and I didn't dig for any WoG it was pulled from), but I honestly find that a slightly amusing idea and actually relatively believable given how good she is as a healer. It also explains why they're packed to the brim with tinkertech upgrades if Bonesaw is constantly replacing parts in people who would have died. It is a bit less believable that Brockton wiped out all but three essentially though given that record.

Click to shrink...

Bonesaw's Interlude tells us that...

King
Screamer
Harbinger
Breed
Crimson
Gray Boy
Nyx
Psychosoma

... are the 'original members', then says...

With many, many more besides. She looked down the length of the room. Most members of the Nine had lasted only weeks or months. She could count the ones who'd lasted longer than that on the one hand. A shame she didn't have samples for all of the past members, but she had most of the good ones.

Click to shrink...

... that there were a lot of dead Nine members who lasted weeks to months.

As far as who was in the group when they picked up Bonesaw, only Jack and Chuckles are directly confirmed. Winter is presented ambiguously, where she was Hatchet Face's predecessor and must've been in the group at the some time as Crimson, implying one of the two must've been in for a pretty long time.

Ah, just found where the wiki gets its listing for 2005: Wildbow directly said on a site, "Jack, Crimson, Mannequin, Shatterbird, Winter, Chuckles, Crawler, Siberian, Hatchet Face" would be the members in 2005. And that Bonesaw replaces Winter.

So... yes, in spite of Bonesaw's Interlude directly telling us most Nine members died constantly in her personal experience ('count on one hand' for longer than weeks/months! When Jack, her, Siberian, Shatterbird, Crawler, Hatchet Face, and Winter and/or Crimson is already 7 at minimum!), Wildbow's intended list is in fact that only three 'slots' changed at all after she joined, and only two of those slots could possibly have been regularly replaced. (Because Hatchet Face doesn't die until shortly before the Nine hit Brockton Bay) So the Nine were basically static for six years. Somehow.

sigh

(On a different note, I'd forgotten that Bonesaw's Interlude has her thinking "It was interfering with the cloning process, as the passenger's typically indistinct and subtle influence on the subject was becoming rather dramatic." at one point; yeah, Worm unambiguously intends for shard influence to normally be very mild/non-obvious, contrasting heavily with Ward's presentation of shard influence)

Honestly I assumed that the Nine are sorted, approximately, into three internal factions: Invincible, Protected, and Chaff.

There are two members of the Nine who are essentially invincible: Siberian and Crawler. They can evenly trade blows with the Triumvirate, and could believably win basically any fight they have and take extraordinary prepared measures to counter them.

Meanwhile, there are Protected members, who are deliberately kept alive by the Invincibles: at first this was just Jack Slash, who mostly got into that position with psychological tricks, and then spent a lot of time holding hands with Siberian so she could keep him safe. Later, they added Bonesaw, who got promoted to Protected because Siberian adopted her.

And the last category of Nine is the Chaff: psychos who have lifespan measured in weeks, or maybe months. Hatchetface, Burnscar, and Shatterbird are in this category. These guys die, a lot, frequently. Mannequin is tough enough that he's kinda starting to climb out of Chaff and towards Invincible, and promoting yourself to Invincible is the high-priority life goal of all the Chaff in the Nine.

So my impression of how the Nine were 'supposed' to work is that the Chaff members are constantly dying and having to be replaced, and that the gimmick where they showed up to BB and forced a bunch of parahumans to 'test in' as Candidates? I assumed that was their main gimmick as a Comic Book Terrorist Organization. They are just constantly cycling through the Chaff Members, and the horror of the Nine is split twofold: if you're a Normie you're afraid of getting used as meat in their fucked up recruitment games, and if you're a Parahuman you're afraid of getting forced to participate in their fucked up recruitment games. (And as Balth indicated, adding Bonesaw really slowed down the turnover of Chaff.)

Click to shrink...

Bafflingly, WoG is that Shatterbird and Hatchet Face are Not Chaff. Somehow. (Seriously, how is Shatterbird supposed to have survived so long?? Hatchet Face I'd buy if his Brute rating is seriously impressive, but Shatterbird is basically a plain human as far as survivability, and was surviving for some period before Bonesaw could've possibly enhanced her!)

My own internal approach to conceptualizing the Nine isn't perfectly analogous to your description, as for one thing I took seriously the fact that eg Grey Boy died well before canon starts and so figured even Invincible folks died periodically, just more on the scale of 'dies two or three years after joining' rather than 'dies the very next time the Nine get into a cape fight', but broadly I'd say your conceptualization seems... basically how most fans read the Nine? And reasonably coherent to the actual on-screen facts. (And strongly the basis of a backburner project that's hung forever because Contessa is narrative poison)

Not compatible with WoG statements, but as usual Wildbow's WoGs are just bizarrely at odds with what he actually wrote, so whatever.

 

[065tdsa]

I always figured Jack protected Shatterbird for a while since she's just so handy to have with how she kills people, creates terror and fucks up communications infrastructure, until he got bored of her always killing or injuring people before he and the others get around to fucking with them.

Shatterbird is, by all indications in the actual text, something of an overproud moron who thinks she's already unkillable, so there's really no way she could have made it for long otherwise.

 

[daniel_gudman]

yeah, Worm unambiguously intends for shard influence to normally be very mild/non-obvious, contrasting heavily with Ward's presentation of shard influence

Click to shrink...

Honestly this isn't even a plot hole, exactly; in that Worm is set when all the shards are part of a psychic gestalt conciousnesses, where that gestalt getting killed was like the climax of Worm. So afterwards, when individual shards are no longer being suppressed, controlled, or coordinated, after that they can individually act however they want, which would apparently mean more direct interference in their hosts' lives.

I dunno Wildbow really thought it through enough to explicitly say "oh yeah Shards behaved a lot differently after Worm, because of the Warrior getting it's ticket punched," when that would very elegantly explain why Shards are acting totally different later.

Bafflingly, WoG is that Shatterbird and Hatchet Face are Not Chaff. Somehow. (Seriously, how is Shatterbird supposed to have survived so long?? Hatchet Face I'd buy if his Brute rating is seriously impressive,

Click to shrink...

The funny thing is that, as the guy who got whacked off-screen in backstory before the Nine even showed up, to explain how the New Guy joined; Hatchet Face is the clearest, most unequivocal example of a "Chaff" character we have. Honestly I kindof think what's going on is that Wildbow made up a bunch of Little Guys and then liked his Little Guys too much to say "lol yeah these ones are disposable trash that only exist to get knocked over" even when that 's what they actually were, so he contradicted himself because the actual overarching story he told with his Little Guys didn't really match the story he had in mind about each of his Little Guys.

And like yeah the "Invincible" describes people with "how long until they get Whacked" measured in years or decades instead of like, weeks or months, it's not supposed to be an absolute categorical difference.

 

[Ghoul King]

I always figured Jack protected Shatterbird for a while since she's just so handy to have with how she kills people, creates terror and fucks up communications infrastructure, until he got bored of her always killing or injuring people before he and the others get around to fucking with them.

Shatterbird is, by all indications in the actual text, something of an overproud moron who thinks she's already unkillable, so there's really no way she could have made it for long otherwise.

Click to shrink...

I think this is probably why fandom tends to interpret Jack as fond of Shatterbird, yeah. My own impression is that he didn't care for her at all -though I'm not up for doing the digging right now to check what gave me that impression- and so had always figured she'd been with the group long enough for the Scream to be an established bit of routine but not much longer than that. (I sort of figured she'd managed to last somewhere between 1 and 2 years before Brockton Bay, with my imagined timetable for Big Nine Events being that they happen about once a month on average)

I dunno Wildbow really thought it through enough to explicitly say "oh yeah Shards behaved a lot differently after Worm, because of the Warrior getting it's ticket punched," when that would very elegantly explain why Shards are acting totally different later.

Click to shrink...

Ward has everybody who's supposed to know anything about powers describe Current Shard/Parahuman Dynamics as This Is How Things Have Always Worked For Everyone Everywhere. So, no, that's not what's intended, full stop.

One of my big criticisms of Ward is in fact that it gives itself perfect opportunities to explain a number of the severe discrepancies between Worm and Ward (Scion is dead! Powers have changed their behavior!) and somehow not only fails to explicitly capitalize on those opportunities but in fact goes out of its way to explicitly shoot down any ability to accidentally read the writing as intelligent by assembling sensible headcanons you don't even realize are headcanons. ("Scion is dead! Powers have only changed their behaviors in these specific ways we're expressly calling out! All the other differences are How Things Have Always Been!")

The funny thing is that, as the guy who got whacked off-screen in backstory before the Nine even showed up, to explain how the New Guy joined; Hatchet Face is the clearest, most unequivocal example of a "Chaff" character we have. Honestly I kindof think what's going on is that Wildbow made up a bunch of Little Guys and then liked his Little Guys too much to say "lol yeah these ones are disposable trash that only exist to get knocked over" even when that 's what they actually were, so he contradicted himself because the actual overarching story he told with his Little Guys didn't really match the story he had in mind about each of his Little Guys.

Click to shrink...

That's what I initially assumed, and would still assume with most writers, but Wildbow is in general prone to really bizarre, obviously contradictory notions like this, and with digging into things to assemble the prior post I ran across him referencing having notes and whatnot, where he's indicating he had this aspect of the timeline set up before we saw them in Worm itself. So I'm just sighing and defaulting to assuming this Reasonable Theory is incorrect, about 40% because it is a Reasonable Theory and those so rarely match to Wildbow's actual writing process, and about 60% because I've got evidence suggesting the Reasonable Theory is specifically incorrect here.

 

[toy]

Grey Boy died well before canon starts and so figured even Invincible folks died periodically

Click to shrink...

Didn't GB specifically have to get Contessa'd offscreen, making him a questionable metric for upper tier s9 survivability? I might be mixing up canon and fanfics on this, but I could've swore he got pathed into GU killing him because his theoretical value against Scion started to be outweighed by all the capes he was trapping in time bubbles. Which then itself loops back around to the whole 'wtf Cauldron' conversation since it seems easier and safer to drop him into an alternate earth through a Door like a loony toons portable hole rather than hand his power over to a differently unstable serial killer, but I dunno 🤷‍♀️

 

[spacemonkey37]

That's what I initially assumed, and would still assume with most writers, but Wildbow is in general prone to really bizarre, obviously contradictory notions like this,

Click to shrink...

I think the best example of this might actually be Noelle. In the flashbacks, it's implied that she had an eating disorder, and then she got a power that required her to eat people and then vomit up clones of them. This is clearly meant to indicate that she was bulimic, right? The metaphor couldn't be more blatant.

Well, no, apparently. Wildbow said somewhere that Noelle was meant to have an eating disorder, but it somehow wasn't bulimia.

 

[SolipsistSerpent]

I think this is probably why fandom tends to interpret Jack as fond of Shatterbird, yeah. My own impression is that he didn't care for her at all -though I'm not up for doing the digging right now to check what gave me that impression- and so had always figured she'd been with the group long enough for the Scream to be an established bit of routine but not much longer than that. (I sort of figured she'd managed to last somewhere between 1 and 2 years before Brockton Bay, with my imagined timetable for Big Nine Events being that they happen about once a month on average)

Click to shrink...

In his interlude he thinks always opening their attacks with her screaming has become boring and gives the impression he's thinking of having her replaced ie letting her die. However, this doesn't rule out him having been fond of her sheer destructiveness when she first joined.

 

[Nyarky]

Didn't GB specifically have to get Contessa'd offscreen, making him a questionable metric for upper tier s9 survivability? I might be mixing up canon and fanfics on this, but I could've swore he got pathed into GU killing him because his theoretical value against Scion started to be outweighed by all the capes he was trapping in time bubbles. Which then itself loops back around to the whole 'wtf Cauldron' conversation since it seems easier and safer to drop him into an alternate earth through a Door like a loony toons portable hole rather than hand his power over to a differently unstable serial killer, but I dunno 🤷‍♀️

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I don't remember any talks about this in canon itself, I think it is fanon.

I think the best example of this might actually be Noelle. In the flashbacks, it's implied that she had an eating disorder, and then she got a power that required her to eat people and then vomit up clones of them. This is clearly meant to indicate that she was bulimic, right? The metaphor couldn't be more blatant.

Well, no, apparently. Wildbow said somewhere that Noelle was meant to have an eating disorder, but it somehow wasn't bulimia.

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I saw an argument that explains the fact that for once, Wildbow is right and Noelle doesn't read as Bulimic when you know the actual symptoms of both this eating disorder and the ones for anorexia in the worm wiki, quoting:

"I'm inclined to disagree with the bulimia diagnosis, and go with anorexia instead, based on this clue: "The way she picked at her food, the way Marissa got on her case about eating?"

Bulimics don't pick at food. They eat it. Then they throw it up to get rid of it, so it can't make them "fatter". Anorexics don't want to eat food at all, so that it can't make them "fatter". The quote above implies that Mars was getting on her case about needing to eat more, not eating in general. Hence, the anorexia diagnosis.

And, of course, anorexia is all about control as well — the same as bulimia, since controlling one's food intake is not just about trying to keep from being "fat", but actually having something, anything to control at all.

Also, as JGuy pointed out, she did try to starve herself to gain control of her situation."

I did check the symptoms for Anorexia, as well as the scene it talks about, it checks out.

 

[spacemonkey37]

I did check the symptoms for Anorexia, it checks out.

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Sure, that fits with what we see of Noelle's behavior, but that description can actually match bulimia, too. Bulimia can sometimes present as cycles of binge eating and fasting.

But my point is that if Noelle's power wasn't meant to represent bulimia, why did it involve eating and then regurgitating? That's the essential symptom of bulimia, so why make it work that way if it wasn't supposed to indicate bulimia?

 

[Ghoul King]

Didn't GB specifically have to get Contessa'd offscreen, making him a questionable metric for upper tier s9 survivability? I might be mixing up canon and fanfics on this, but I could've swore he got pathed into GU killing him because his theoretical value against Scion started to be outweighed by all the capes he was trapping in time bubbles. Which then itself loops back around to the whole 'wtf Cauldron' conversation since it seems easier and safer to drop him into an alternate earth through a Door like a loony toons portable hole rather than hand his power over to a differently unstable serial killer, but I dunno 🤷‍♀️

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As far as I recall, canon itself doesn't suggest Glaistig Uaine was used by Cauldron deliberately. I don't think I've seen a WoG to that effect either, but I also stopped paying much attention to WoGs years ago, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if such a WoG has happened.

That said, the situation is sort of fucked regardless, because either Cauldron came up with a janky solution to Grey Boy, or they just... ignored him and let it play out? This is one of many ways PtV is narrative poison; because it inevitably means almost everything is at least tacitly Contessa Endorsed This Outcome. So fanon arriving at such theories is kind of... fundamentally correct?

I think the best example of this might actually be Noelle. In the flashbacks, it's implied that she had an eating disorder, and then she got a power that required to eat people and then vomit up clones of them. This is clearly meant to indicate that she was bulimic, right? The metaphor couldn't be more blatant.

Well, no, apparently. Wildbow said somewhere that Noelle was meant to have an eating disorder, but it somehow wasn't bulimia.

Click to shrink...

... that's kind of amazing in a really morbid way. I'm terrible at picking up on that kind of thing (To an extent because I hate such metaphor usage) and I still picked up on that read all on my own. (On my second read, specifically) She's got some of the real-life behavioral hints, aspects of how her friends respond to her suggest they're watchful for exactly this, and then... yeah, she has a uncontrolled-consumption/regurgitation superpower! One that leaves her feeling like a hideous monster! This is literally what I'd expect a bulimic person to come up with for metaphorizing their experience!

(This conversation is giving me new insight into one of my best-developed backburner projects, which is neat. Maybe it'll actually get to a release state someday...)

 

[bahamutrocks]

Sure, that fits with what we see of Noelle's behavior, but that description can actually match bulimia, too. Bulimia can sometimes present as cycles of binge eating and fasting.

But my point is that if Noelle's power wasn't meant to represent bulimia, why did it involve eating and then regurgitating? That's the essential symptom of bulimia, so why make it work that way if it wasn't supposed to indicate bulimia?

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I mean, it works as a metaphor for anorexia as well? Anorexia is a refusal to eat in an attempt to stay thin. Noelle's powers drive her to consume ever increasing amounts of food, and make her grow bigger and bigger over time. I can see what you mean about the spitting up clones paralleling bulimia but just because a plot element can be taken as representing something, doesn't mean it necessarily does represent that. Given the anorexia parallel I mentioned, eating capes is a reasonable way for her power to capture material for clones, and since the story wouldn't work as well if the eaten capes were killed, there are basically two ways for them to come out. While Wildbow doesn't shy away from gross powers (Breed), I feel like this way is better than the other way for the capes and their clones to come out.

 

[Baron Steakpuncher]

If I were to do a headcanon then of the 9's Brockton Bay roster, i'd say Jack, Siberian and maybe Bonesaw are the current long-term members of the 9 who've been around more than 5 years and proven legendarily tough to kill.

Mannequin and Crawler, and to a lesser extent Shatterbird would be the three who are edging towards the 2-4 year mark enough to be known constants, but aren't yet at the point of being legendarily horrible like Siberian or Bonesaw.

Then you have Burnscar, Hatchet Face and Cherish who act as the "New arrivals, soon to be killed by random chance unless extremely lucky" where the lifespan is weeks or months.

With the key being that in a given year, between 3 and 5 of those slots not occupied by Jack, Siberian or Bonesaw are likely to need replacing. So the Nine in a good year might keep 2/3rds of its roster, and in a bad year might go through the bottom 2-3 places about a dozen times.

 

[bahamutrocks]

If I were to do a headcanon then of the 9's Brockton Bay roster, i'd say Jack, Siberian and maybe Bonesaw are the current long-term members of the 9 who've been around more than 5 years and proven legendarily tough to kill.

Mannequin and Crawler, and to a lesser extent Shatterbird would be the three who are edging towards the 2-4 year mark enough to be known constants, but aren't yet at the point of being legendarily horrible like Siberian or Bonesaw.

Then you have Burnscar, Hatchet Face and Cherish who act as the "New arrivals, soon to be killed by random chance unless extremely lucky" where the lifespan is weeks or months.

With the key being that in a given year, between 3 and 5 of those slots not occupied by Jack, Siberian or Bonesaw are likely to need replacing. So the Nine in a good year might keep 2/3rds of its roster, and in a bad year might go through the bottom 2-3 places about a dozen times.

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I generally think of the 9 as having 3 tiers, based mainly on how much Jack likes them in the group. First there are the "permanent" members, the ones who Jack would be genuinely annoyed if they died. So himself, Siberian, maybe Mannequin and Bonesaw is heading I that direction if she isn't already there, given how much attention Jack gives her.

Then there are the long-term members, like Shatterbird, Crawler and Hatchetface. These are the ones who are entertaining enough that Jack keeps them around, but he expects them to die eventually and would probably push things along if they stubbornly cling to life. Shatterbird's scream was a good trick, enough to make her a valuable member, but Jack was getting bored by the time canon came along and probably would have arranged an accident for her if she had lasted much past Brockton Bay.

And then there are the seat fillers. The ones who are basically just there because Slaughterhouse Seven or Eight doesn't sound as cool. Cherish and Burnscar. Jack's main hope for them is that they die entertaining deaths (or fates worse than) once he finds a possible replacement, preferably doing a lot of damage when they do. And as with cherish, there's a good chance he'll take care of this himself if he sees a good opportunity.

Admittedly, this is just my own interpretation, but it makes sense I think. Obviously he wants to keep powerful capes around but just Siberian gives the Nine a lot of punch, so he probably rates the others based on entertainment value first and foremost. He obviously invests a lot of effort into moulding Bonesaw, and he seems to be a bit more genial, in his own dickish way, with Mannequin than the rest, though that could just be my imagination. And on the other end, he obviously doesn't consider Cherish a "true" member of the Nine and the same could probably be said of Burnscar. He'll make use of them and get what entertainment he can, but I'm surprised he bothers to remember their names.

 

[Balthanon]

hand his power over to a differently unstable serial killer, but I dunno

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To be fair, she ultimately ended up being a relatively stable serial killer all told given that she sat tamely in the Birdcage for a couple decades absorbing useful powers and doing nothing else more or less.

But my point is that if Noelle's power wasn't meant to represent bulimia, why did it involve eating and then regurgitating? That's the essential symptom of bulimia, so why make it work that way if it wasn't supposed to indicate bulimia?

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Honestly, I suspect it was mainly just because it was gross. It doesn't even seem to be the only way she clones either-- some of the early descriptions from the Travelers definitely seemed like just touching her was enough to pop a clone out without any mention of the vomiting them up being a thing. I kind of wonder if the vomiting part didn't really happen until she fully lost control and started outright eating the capes.

 

[Infinite Eyes]

To be fair, she ultimately ended up being a relatively stable serial killer all told given that she sat tamely in the Birdcage for a couple decades absorbing useful powers and doing nothing else more or less.

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There is the issue of the Fairy Queen potentially siding against humanity during Gold Morning. I recall there being some worry about that during the final arcs.

some of the early descriptions from the Travelers definitely seemed like just touching her was enough to pop a clone out without any mention of the vomiting them up being a thing.

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Yeah, Noelle could hardly have been eating people before she was physically big enough to do so.

The way she desperately avoided using her power but kept on growing larger and more disgusting anyways seems to match Anorexia trauma much better to me. The big S class battle where she finally lost it was only a small part of her time having powers.

 

[toy]

I don't remember any talks about this in canon itself, I think it is fanon.

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As far as I recall, canon itself doesn't suggest Glaistig Uaine was used by Cauldron deliberately. I don't think I've seen a WoG to that effect either, but I also stopped paying much attention to WoGs years ago, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if such a WoG has happened.

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Finally got around to looking it up. Turns out it was from one of wildbow's posts in a worm discussion thread on SB, so put as much canonocity on that as you feel like. Could've sworn it was mentioned in the story itself, but I guess I was wrong about that.