Lycanthromancer
The Arcane Fuzz
- Location
- USA
Probably because it's actually dead.
Also, it's Worm. Everyone has the decision-making abilities of a comatose sea slug.
Ship of Fools: A Taylor Varga Omake (Complete)
- Thread starter Derek M
- Start date
- Crossover
Also, it's Worm. Everyone has the decision-making abilities of a comatose sea slug.
Which is an awesome way to do severe damage against a multidimensional -whatever- as well as bypassing a lot different defenses, and is completely and utterly useless against anything that isn't multidimensional, as then it effectively hits just the once and is no better than using an equal effect hitting a single "dimension".
Of course, if the author meant dimensions as in "spatial" rather than "parallell", well then it just becomes pure nonsense instead.
If the idea instead is that of extending the effect to the theoretical 9, 10, 11, 13 or whatever dimensions our own reality may be made up of according to physicists playing with maths after having a few drinks too many, the multidimension effect that is superior against entities is lost(which begs the question, why would it then be their primary weapon against each other?), it bypasses even more defenses, but it would also not really do additional damage(hitting via multiple dimensions would mean the majority of impact and damage would happen in whatever dimension the target has the least resistance, but it wouldn't actually increase the raw damage potential of the weapon). Whatever the projectile "imbued" with Sting would still be what hits, if whatever it hits has enough armour to tank a hit in 3D, then it will tank it equally well in 11D, as the attack cannot bypass armour without also bypassing the target itself.
And Varga pretty much IS armour. Not to mention essentially IS magic. And the baseline for magic is that it tells physics to go cry in the corner. Entities are supposedly 100% limited by physics, no matter how much shard bullshit they can pull.
So, regardless of whether it's the first or third version that is supposed to be how it works, against Varga it is outright weak. It's like trying to sink an aircraft carrier with flamethrowers, doesn't matter how effective the weapon might be againsttheir intended target, it's mostly ineffective against THIS target.
And as i already wrote, is there anything at all in canon that says there's just ONE of "Sting" per entity? Or that Lily specifically has Scion's Sting? The answer to either can be "no" without any change to canon unless it is stated otherwise somehere i don't know about. And an entity having only a single Sting sounds unlikely to say the least.
Varga plays with spatial dimensions. Not with "parallell worlds" dimensions. Two entirely different things. Entities exists across multiple dimensions, Varga does not(probably COULD, if he put some effort into it(as Taylor Varga's trick with having multiple bodies in different places(though with limitations that may make doing it crossdimensionally impossible) is already partway to doing it), but why ever would he?).
Neruz
Rogue Spiderbanana
- Location
- The Land of Fire and Poison
That is a good question, from carefully reading the relevant parts of the story (mostly Interlude 29) I think it's because Eden fucked up when she bumped uglies with Abaddon: She gave up part of her precognition power\cluster to Abaddon (possibly by accident) and then used the damaged power to simulate the optimal future before fixing it, then she got distracted rearranging shards and whatnot so that by the time she finally got around to using one of Abaddon's powers to fix\replace her precognition power, it was already too late. She didn't realize she had fucked up and overshot the 'land safely' step of the plan because of the damaged precognition power, and so when she got Abaddon's power into place the simulation of the optimal future promptly failed because she could no longer land safely.
In short; she was flying blind and fixed her blindness just in time to see herself crash.
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- Location
- Maryland
This. I made an effort to convey this, and I'm pleased that it was comprehensible.
Here are the things to remember about Varga:
1) In the anime, he's literally magic Godzilla. That, by itself, is ridiculously OP in the context of the show. That's canon.
2) In the Taylor Varga FanFic, the author took the approach of MAGIC trumps POWERS trumps PHYSICS. Powers are bullshit. Varga magic is bullshit extended into an eldritch dimension that seems to be both perfectly straight and bent at right angles simultaneously, while also smelling of burning quinoa and hemp.
Here are some things to remember about the Worm entities:
1) As written in canon, they are powerful as hell, but over-specialized, overly dependent upon rigging the powers game, and basically use hiding as their primary defensive tactic.
2) Scion in particular is portrayed as borderline mentally challenged. He spend years doing what a random homeless person tells him to do because he literally cannot come up with a plan without his Thinker half. Even his combat tactics are uninspired and basically amount to lashing out with semi-random powers. Hell, any of us on this forum could probably do a better job of using his abilities with a smidgen of thought.
So, how do you make a fight between Scion and Varga interesting? It's not going to be because of a chess-like dance between two ultra-powerful beings. Of course, until he actually fought him, Varga couldn't be sure exactly how capable Scion would be, hence the overkill of dumping a bunch of anti-matter warheads on his head.
Edit: As an additional note -- the destruction of the UK was part of a sequence where Scion basically was doing the opposite of the specific acts he did as a hero because Jack Slash told him too. He couldn't even be creatively destructive, but had to undo things based upon the random acts of heroism he did at a different human's prompting. I have to wonder if he deliberately flew around as part of Gold Morning and stranded random house pets in trees when he wasn't causing massive death.
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Neruz
Rogue Spiderbanana
- Location
- The Land of Fire and Poison
Entities are dumb, even by the standards of Entities, Zion is dumb. Any fight against anything even remotely close to Zion's degree of power is going to go poorly for him, because he is an idiot. The fact that he was defeated in canon worm by a bunch of hosts using his own powers against him really hammers that point home; Zion is stupid. He should not have lost the fight against Khepri, he had every possible advantage and he squandered it all in his moronic idiocy. When operating inside the predefined rules and limitations set by the Thinker, Zion is a frighteningly capable opponent. But on his own, operating outside intended parameters without Thinker support? He's bloody useless.
As a species, the Entities have always solved all their problems through brute force processing. They have gotten really, really good at brute force processing, but at the end of the day brute force processing only gets you so far. Much like Evolution (a process that they effectively ape in their attempts to defy Entropy) the Entities produce results that work, but are not necessarily very good. They are very nearly mindless, it is only their incredibly absurd mass of sheer processing power that lets them demonstrate the appearance of intelligence, and even that is deeply lacking. Abaddon was different in that respect, but Eden and Zion had mentally stagnated for so long that they effectively became unthinking robots in every way that matters.
Zion is a colossally gargantuan hammer, and like a huge hammer he is really fucking dangerous if he hits you, but if you don't let him hit you then he really doesn't have any way to respond to that.
As a species, the Entities have always solved all their problems through brute force processing. They have gotten really, really good at brute force processing, but at the end of the day brute force processing only gets you so far. Much like Evolution (a process that they effectively ape in their attempts to defy Entropy) the Entities produce results that work, but are not necessarily very good. They are very nearly mindless, it is only their incredibly absurd mass of sheer processing power that lets them demonstrate the appearance of intelligence, and even that is deeply lacking. Abaddon was different in that respect, but Eden and Zion had mentally stagnated for so long that they effectively became unthinking robots in every way that matters.
Zion is a colossally gargantuan hammer, and like a huge hammer he is really fucking dangerous if he hits you, but if you don't let him hit you then he really doesn't have any way to respond to that.
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- Location
- Lake superior, Minoc
Zion is a giant dirty space sponge spread out over many copies of the same world.
The are the one trick pony that's been left alone to long. As soon as the crew for Trek tech or any of the expansive ones like that, it's an easy problem to solve.
Don't even need to do it the fun way with wizard Godzilla. All they need to do is shut those trillion of portals large and microscopic.
Give the local walls of reality a little boost, all the ports slam shut. Suddenly it goes from dangerous entity to a spreading pile of nasty goop spread over various places. For trek its probably something like "Propagating harmonic subspace reinforcement." high chance of using the deflector dish to do it.
The are the one trick pony that's been left alone to long. As soon as the crew for Trek tech or any of the expansive ones like that, it's an easy problem to solve.
Don't even need to do it the fun way with wizard Godzilla. All they need to do is shut those trillion of portals large and microscopic.
Give the local walls of reality a little boost, all the ports slam shut. Suddenly it goes from dangerous entity to a spreading pile of nasty goop spread over various places. For trek its probably something like "Propagating harmonic subspace reinforcement." high chance of using the deflector dish to do it.
Nano Soldier
Seeker of Freedom
- Location
- Stoke, England, United Kingdom
I freely admit that I just love the idea of a near Eldritch creature like Scion being not just stupid but possibly even mentally handicapped by its races standards.
It just tickles my funny bone.
It just tickles my funny bone.
I want to read that fic. Scion is beaten because people keep rescuing all the cats he's putting in trees, and he keeps going around putting them back, leaving him with no time to actually do anything else.
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Or, for bigger areas of effect, employ subspace weapons until subspace gives up and closes down (the side-effect of making warp impossible - I don't think you'd get a good connection through this).
- Location
- The general area. Possibly behind you.
I wouldn't think so as the detached Shards that are the ones linked to Parahumans wouldn't have been touched by the attack on Zion himself. It would certainly cause issues with the Shard network itself, but the Shards themselves should be intact and functional.
And there are ways around the network problem...
New triggers could be something of an issue, as was indeed the case in canon Worm after the destruction of Zion.
- Location
- On the sofa. (Probably)
This I want to read, Eden and Zion near the Earth 4 hundred years later than canon and find humanity as a Star Trek civ. They have no choice but to land as they have nearly expended their energy. They start sending out Shards and Starfleet or some other human organisation notices the weirdness in 'subspace'. The Enterprise shows up, speaks some technobabble after a few days of scanning and then suddenly the enteties lose connection to their released shards. Every scientist is thrilled to have new stuff to science and Eden and Zion die inglorious deaths.
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Jonn Wolfe
(Verified Sarcastic) (Not a Wolf)
- Location
- Beyond Sanity Since 1971
I am now picturing Zion as a yap-yap anklebiter. You suck. :lol
- Location
- Maryland
- Location
- Canada
This I want to read, Eden and Zion near the Earth 4 hundred years later than canon and find humanity as a Star Trek civ. They have no choice but to land as they have nearly expended their energy. They start sending out Shards and Starfleet or some other human organisation notices the weirdness in 'subspace'. The Enterprise shows up, speaks some technobabble after a few days of scanning and then suddenly the enteties lose connection to their released shards. Every scientist is thrilled to have new stuff to science and Eden and Zion die inglorious deaths.
Especially if you apply Doc Brown Federation SCIENCE!
- Location
- USA
Are her kidneys fixed in this universe?
FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
I believe she was convinced to use a One Shot before a briefing. Maybe.
- Location
- Seattle, Washington, USA
Amusing mental image: Varga uses blast voice. Kaiju hands him a gigantic breath mint.
M. H. Fuzzball
Aperture Science-certified Horrible Person
- Location
- Sector 2814
Saurial gave her one at their first meeting and flat out told her that they wouldn't continue the briefing until she used it, because they didn't have time to deal with her having a heart attack over what she was about to learn.
- Location
- Dallas, TX
Is it fair to hold writers of a Worm crossover fanfic to the canon of Ward? Personally, if I were writing a Worm story, I wouldn't consider Ward canon; I'd barely consider Worm canon.
On top of that, it's heavily implied that Zion is incredibly depressed and wants to die. I think Worm was structured that way to tie into its general "everything is awful" theme. It brings the conclusion of Worm right back to the beginning of the story. Taylor gains the powers that eventually allow her to kill Zion from being the victim of an act of vicious bullying. And she ultimately saves humanity by helping to bully Zion into allowing himself to be killed. And then get shot in the head twice for her trouble.
Hooray for the good guys & etc.
That was an omake to TV and not in this story
Taylor Varga (Worm/Luna Varga) - Crossover | Page 1297
- Location
- Maryland
It's interesting to me that one of the powers Taylor Varga clearly doesn't have is infinite patience. That's usually expressed as giving second chances but not third.
The multiverse concept really throws that into the spotlight, however. It's one thing to give Cauldron, or Bonesaw, or Lung, the opportunity to repent and redeem themselves. If you visit ten different Worm-style universes in a row, though, then how sick do you have to be of putting up with Alexandria's inherent superiority complex, or Lung's hyper-aggressive medieval thinking, or Bonesaw's mental programming from Jack? How many iterations get even first chances? I get tired of dealing with repetitive bullshit from people, and if they had twin siblings with the same issues, I don't know how much slack I would be able to cut the sibling...
Having said that, if you just take a "nuke 'em from orbit," approach to groups like the Slaughterhouse Nine, then you run into problems when you go to evil goatee world and the same folks are heroes fighting against the evil Triumvirate, etc.
In one of mp3.1415player's omakes, they go to a Worm-verse on the day of the locker incident, which prompts a speed run. The comment toward Alexandria was -- "what type of Alexandria are you?" That implies that they tend to fall into predictable patterns, but isn't that by itself potentially a trap? What happens when you go to a world where Alexandria is actually this world's version of Siberian -- a projection by William Manton? Or what if her mind has been taken over by Eden, and Cauldron is explicitly following the entities' agenda? (Actually, if Contessa were really taken over by Eden, then that would make the plot of Worm make a lot more sense in some ways...)
Chaos theory suggests that as soon as a universe "branches," so to speak, then it will evolve in unpredictable ways. I, and a lot of authors, are probably vastly oversimplifying things for the sake of narrative convenience.
The multiverse concept really throws that into the spotlight, however. It's one thing to give Cauldron, or Bonesaw, or Lung, the opportunity to repent and redeem themselves. If you visit ten different Worm-style universes in a row, though, then how sick do you have to be of putting up with Alexandria's inherent superiority complex, or Lung's hyper-aggressive medieval thinking, or Bonesaw's mental programming from Jack? How many iterations get even first chances? I get tired of dealing with repetitive bullshit from people, and if they had twin siblings with the same issues, I don't know how much slack I would be able to cut the sibling...
Having said that, if you just take a "nuke 'em from orbit," approach to groups like the Slaughterhouse Nine, then you run into problems when you go to evil goatee world and the same folks are heroes fighting against the evil Triumvirate, etc.
In one of mp3.1415player's omakes, they go to a Worm-verse on the day of the locker incident, which prompts a speed run. The comment toward Alexandria was -- "what type of Alexandria are you?" That implies that they tend to fall into predictable patterns, but isn't that by itself potentially a trap? What happens when you go to a world where Alexandria is actually this world's version of Siberian -- a projection by William Manton? Or what if her mind has been taken over by Eden, and Cauldron is explicitly following the entities' agenda? (Actually, if Contessa were really taken over by Eden, then that would make the plot of Worm make a lot more sense in some ways...)
Chaos theory suggests that as soon as a universe "branches," so to speak, then it will evolve in unpredictable ways. I, and a lot of authors, are probably vastly oversimplifying things for the sake of narrative convenience.
Neruz
Rogue Spiderbanana
- Location
- The Land of Fire and Poison
Honestly, if I had access to near-infinite alternate realities of that type, I would inevitably end up growing myself an evil goatee and giving world conquest a try at least once, if only to find out whether the end result of that path would be a net gain or loss for humanity as a whole.
As for predictable patterns; duck theory.
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it might be an evil killbot in disguise, but it's probably a duck. If possible, seek verification of duckery, but in the absence of evidence to the contrary assume duck unless proven otherwise.
Occasionally it will turn out to be a duck-shaped killbot, but usually not.
As for predictable patterns; duck theory.
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it might be an evil killbot in disguise, but it's probably a duck. If possible, seek verification of duckery, but in the absence of evidence to the contrary assume duck unless proven otherwise.
Occasionally it will turn out to be a duck-shaped killbot, but usually not.
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FaerieKnight79
Verified Pixie
- Location
- The Internet
Unless it turns out to be a duck shaped mongoose.
Past a certain point you gotta start setting up self-perpetuating mechanisms for this stuff. Take all the reformed Alexandrias, give them wormhole tech, and let them sort out their alternate selves. Let them retire from self reformation and stuff so they don't get burnt out, and step in if your Council of Alexandrias start growing goatees and taking over universes.