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My Life as a Teenage Juggernaut... (Worm AU x Marvel)

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arromdee said:
For all that Wildbow claims Contessa is constantly stopping emergencies, she hasn't gone after Heartbreaker, Mama Mathers, or the Siberian. Taylor destroying some streets to get a snack is less threatening than those.
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In order:
Heartbreaker never went after anyone Cauldron thinks is useful enough to warrant that response, and generally kept to 'small scale' stuff. He's just not on the level Cauldron would call an emergency. (If he went after, say, Alexandria; then he'd die very quickly.)
Mama Mathers only has powers due to drinking a Cauldron vial, and does jobs for them. She's one of their people, though not in the 'inner circle'.
Siberian is considered to be likely one of their best shots at taking on Scion.

What Cauldron would consider an emergency is anything that would endanger their primary goal, which is keeping the human race from ending. Anything else can be ignored - or even encouraged, since that could cause more people to trigger and increase the number of people who might be able to face Scion.
It's very much an 'ends justify the means' mentality.
 
ehow567 said:
Doesn't he have, like politicians and celebrities with "dead man switches."
Otherwise I would use a Barrett M82A1 .50 cal from at least 1 mile or 1.6 kilometers away.
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I know he does in certain fics, which is why Dragon in Mauling Snarks dropped him off in the middle of the ocean, in a steel box that was guaranteed to hold structural integrity even after the plane crashed while still freely letting water in, while he was wearing a shock collar that was 75% C4 by weight. She professed to be disappointed that the Guild wouldn't be able to collect on his bounties, but doing so would set his thralls off, whereas in current circumstances he was just going to vanish.

Because Dragon was a good girl who looked after her Mother, the Ward Maul (no points for guessing Maul's real name).
 
Contessa according to Wildbow spends all her time doing the following tasks:

1. Prevent anyone from learning Cauldron exists via killing anyone who learns of their existence
2. Getting the word out that Cauldron exists so they can sell powers
3. Preventing any normal human from managing to kill a parahuman with a gun
4. Propping up legitimate governments world wide to stabilize society
5. Propping up criminal organizations world wide to stabilize society
6. Whatever the frell her path is saying needs to be done to actually form an "army" to beat Zion.

Yes, that should be multiple tasks that take 100% of your time, each, to be able to accomplish part of the tasks. And yes several of those tasks are mutually exclusive with other tasks. For example keeping legitimate government running and keeping criminal organizations going, both with the goal of "stabilizing" society. Or letting people learn of Cauldron's existence to generate clients, while simultaneously murdering anyone who learns about Cauldron. Task 1 in canon was only dropped because it apparently was now taking all of Contessa's time to the exclusion of any other tasks after Cauldron's existence was revealed on a live national broadcast.
 
Just send in a sniper. Heartbreaker's power works on his line of sight; a sniper shoots from far enough range that it wouldn't be a problem.
The real problem is the thralls in positions of power that he canonically has to watch out for that sort of thing. Which is solved by getting a thinker involved.
I have not found anything that suggests that Contessa would try to stop that from happening. The only reason I can see her doing so would be if he was somehow able to affect the fight against Scion, which I very much doubt.
 
PhoebusArtemis said:
Just send in a sniper. Heartbreaker's power works on his line of sight; a sniper shoots from far enough range that it wouldn't be a problem.
The real problem is the thralls in positions of power that he canonically has to watch out for that sort of thing. Which is solved by getting a thinker involved.
I have not found anything that suggests that Contessa would try to stop that from happening. The only reason I can see her doing so would be if he was somehow able to affect the fight against Scion, which I very much doubt.
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Heartbreaker is a parahuman. This is the entire reason Contessa would stop anyone, even the Canadian military or the police, from sniping him. Parahumans being killed by bullets would destroy the "it takes a parahuman to fight a parahuman" myth that Cauldron has fostered ever since the first known parahuman got killed by a rando with a pipe. Unless the person pulling the trigger is a parahuman themself with gun related powers, it would set a precedent that Cauldron really don't want.
 
FaerieKnight79 said:
Heartbreaker is a parahuman. This is the entire reason Contessa would stop anyone, even the Canadian military or the police, from sniping him. Parahumans being killed by bullets would destroy the "it takes a parahuman to fight a parahuman" myth that Cauldron has fostered ever since the first known parahuman got killed by a rando with a pipe. Unless the person pulling the trigger is a parahuman themself with gun related powers, it would set a precedent that Cauldron really don't want.
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I have looked, and not found anything to support this claim that it would be Contessa would stop parahumans from being killed by regular humans.
What I find more likely is that the line of thinking was pushed through by Alexandria via the PRT claiming anything that even remotely had to do with parahumans. Which would include the deaths of parahumans. Since she is the Chief Director, it would be easy for her to set this sort of narrative.
Contessa is just one person - holding to the idea that she does everything like that means that she would have to have the power to be in multiple places at one time, which is just not the case. It is true that she might do it for those that would have had an impact that the PRT could not cover up; but otherwise, I don't think she did that much for said narrative.
 
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ehow567 said:
Doesn't he have, like politicians and celebrities with "dead man switches."
Otherwise I would use a Barrett M82A1 .50 cal from at least 1 mile or 1.6 kilometers away.
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Only a .50 cal? There's an Anti-Material rifle that uses 1.5 inch ultra high velocity AP rounds (it also comes in a 2.5 inch high explosive variant btw). I'd think that would be significantly more appropriate (and longer ranged too).
 
grommile said:
Heartbreaker isn't a Brute, so .50 BMG to the head or chest will kill him (and with a good sniper rather than anti-materiel rifle, hitting him from two miles away is achievable).
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Shot to the heart will kill him, but before he dies, he *might* be able to get a command pushed out to someone. Taking out his head, and corona, would be an immediate disconnect from his shard, and make it unlikely he'd even be able to process that he was shot, mainly because his brain would be liquefied.

My question about masters, and even someone like Teacher, is whether or not they maintain a constant 'link' to their enthralled targets. In other words, does killing a master like Heartbreaker or Teacher get felt by the people that have been mastered? Or, is it that embedded commands get acted upon when they find out their master is dead? If it's the former, you're pretty well screwed as soon as the target is dead. If it's the latter, then suppressing news of their death wouldn't be that hard.
 
grommile said:
Heartbreaker isn't a Brute, so .50 BMG to the head or chest will kill him (and with a good sniper rather than anti-materiel rifle, hitting him from two miles away is achievable).
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The mystique of the sniper is one shot, one kill (or more), from a distance and preferably without even being noticed aside from someone losing their cranial integrity...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Message to Alexandr Strelnikov: My esteemed Mister Strelnikov, I know that someone of your profession values discretion above all else. But I have to honestly say... screw that! I mean, come on; one bullet, halfway across town, and you blew Ron Trevio's head clean off. You, sir, are an artist. Are all the assassins from Russia as good as you? I seriously doubt it. But listen--your secret's safe with me. Eddie Winter, signing off - Eddie Winter's Holotape 0, a plot element in the Fallout 4 quest Long Time Coming
 
Assembler Maniac said:
My question about masters, and even someone like Teacher, is whether or not they maintain a constant 'link' to their enthralled targets.
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Depends on the Master.

Like, Heartbreaker is a line-of-sight-only emotion controller. He can make you love him more than you love breathing (unless your own shard fucks with your emotional responses, like Regent), but to make you do anything specific he has to actually tell you what he wants done.
 
FaerieKnight79 said:
Contessa according to Wildbow spends all her time doing the following tasks:

1. Prevent anyone from learning Cauldron exists via killing anyone who learns of their existence
2. Getting the word out that Cauldron exists so they can sell powers
3. Preventing any normal human from managing to kill a parahuman with a gun
4. Propping up legitimate governments world wide to stabilize society
5. Propping up criminal organizations world wide to stabilize society
6. Whatever the frell her path is saying needs to be done to actually form an "army" to beat Zion.

Yes, that should be multiple tasks that take 100% of your time, each, to be able to accomplish part of the tasks. And yes several of those tasks are mutually exclusive with other tasks. For example keeping legitimate government running and keeping criminal organizations going, both with the goal of "stabilizing" society. Or letting people learn of Cauldron's existence to generate clients, while simultaneously murdering anyone who learns about Cauldron. Task 1 in canon was only dropped because it apparently was now taking all of Contessa's time to the exclusion of any other tasks after Cauldron's existence was revealed on a live national broadcast.
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So she's Cauldron's intelligence head. And nowhere does it say she does all that 100% by herself. I'd be shocked if she doesn't have a few dozen alias's that she uses to work assets in the Government, PRT, hero, and villain sphere's.
 
I don't call him a hack for screwing things up - in my story Enterprise, only a reread has kept me from having the same person undergo the same thing twice, namely being healed of the same thing. I call him a hack for writing a world where you know it will end badly because 'realism'. An author who insists that they're writing a 'realistic' world is invariably going to have everything go wrong that CAN go wrong, because in the 'real' world, NOTHING ever goes right for the good guys. And wildbow decided that wasn't enough and dialed it to twenty (screw turning it merely to eleven), which is why so many call the story Grimderp.

(Despite evidence to the contrary, such as the guy who was officially dead for about fourteen minutes, and when he got out of the hospital, he bought a scratch lottery ticket and won a huge sum. When the local news interviewed him, they asked him to buy another one as an example of what had happened - and on camera, he won another large jackpot. He needed that money, and used it for good purposes. So yeah, good stuff happens to good guys.)
 
Let's not have another argument about Wildbow and his alleged skill (or lack thereof) as an author/researcher/mathematician, shall we? We all have our opinions on that.

I have re-read Scaling Up a number of times to keep things straight, and to fish out little details from what's been established, then record that in my notes. Usually, it's a last name of someone, or some minor event that I'm referring to. Like the names of the Nycaloths and Arcanaloths that absconded with Emma and Sophia, or Charinida's hench-elves. (Note to self, need to rewrite the first three arcs, up to the point I got an editor.)

My Life as a Teenage Juggernaut and Mobile Escalation Skitter Gundam (probably) aren't gonna suffer from Taylor-Varga-ism (that is, they won't be doorstoppers, and will probably be 200-300K words when finished). I'm hoping that the people who read them find them fun, engaging stories.

The key thing to keep in mind is that Worm is an interesting setting, with interesting characters. It's amusing to see the various ways that authors handle the problems and characters the setting presents.
 
I feel the best fanfiction tends to come from the most flawed IPs. Worm is a setting with tremendous potential, but with flaws so big we feel compelled to remake it, hopefully better than the original. Wildbow's skill or lack thereof, and our opinions on what should have been, are, ultimately, opinions, which is what makes arguments about them frustrating cycles of arguments that convince few people to take up new views.
 
Wyrd said:
I feel the best fanfiction tends to come from the most flawed IPs.
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a lot of fanfics have some flavour of 'i can do it better/i can fix it' in them, the more issues an IP has, the more an author has to work with. the logic checks out.
not touching the rest of the comment, just saw the first sentence and agreed with it, and felt like sharing.
 
I don't consider Wildbow to be a hack because of making stupid mistakes. I have other reasons for thinking it. That said, I too regularly reread previously written stuff while working on a story. Especially if you've been writing it for a while, that's practically required. Otherwise, how would you keep strait what's happened? It doesn't matter if you're a "seat of your pants" type writer or a "do extensive world building and plot planning" type writer. Either way, unless you write the entire thing in one single sitting, you'll probably have to reread a few times and take notes.
 
I feel like Wildblow is creative and is actually really good at characterization when he actually bothers to try

He can be decent at everything else

His primary problem is his world-view, how it affects his perspective as the writer and how that carries over and colors what he writes, which tends to affect every aspect of his writing
 
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