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Starfinder (Worm/Starfinder RPG)

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Jack is still alive despite the S9 getting wrecked a while ago?!? I mean, a lot of members survived the first missile, but... even Jack shouldn't be able to survive for long unless he managed to recruit a mass teleporter immediately afterwards, or resorted to killing himself and having Bonesaw resurrect him.

Post-missile, the obvious strategy would be for the S9 to split up... but Jack's influence would wane if they did that. So he'd have to expend extra effort holding them together, and extra effort surviving any attacks, including ones that weren't coordinated with the PRT, and any surprises he could pull off would be much more limited. I expected Jack to die within a week or two of the first missile. Then again, I'm fuzzy on the timeline. This was the 8th chapter after the chapter where the MC found out that the S9 got hit by the military.

In the MC's shoes, once JackFinder hit the news I'd have put a post on PHO with some suggested best-practices for fighting Jack ("No parahumans should be in command roles of any force taking the field against Jack Slash. All information known to parahumans in the vicinity of Jack Slash should be considered compromised." etc).

Bowlerhat Guy said:
"For me, the fire never goes away. I'm always aware of at least one fire. Always. Something is always wrong somewhere, the world could always end, the city could always explode, the gangs could always decide to ruin my day. All the time. Forever. For me? You guys are the television," I finished, doing my best to get across the sheer anxiety that knowing the world is going to end caused me on a day to day basis.
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Such a thing would be impossible for my mind. I'd forget about the fire within an hour of focusing on the TV. It might take longer if I was only pretending to look at the television, but not that much longer. I'd remember the fire again later of course, but I'd forget it on a regular basis. I think most people's minds would have trouble remembering it all the time.
 
Honestly, I don't think being dragged into uncomfortable social events by Vicky is good for John's mental health. Saying no to her in order to go tinker/exercise can't be worse for his state of mind than what just went down.

The right answer probably isn't "cut ties entirely", but Vicky really isn't helping here by forcing John to attend a Dallon family dinner with Dean, who hates his guts as a surprise guest. I'm really hoping that John will be able to set some healthy boundaries, but I wouldn't get my hopes up.

I think Vicky is typically a good friend to John, despite everything, but this was not a smart play on her part.
 
MilitantBird said:
Honestly, I don't think being dragged into uncomfortable social events by Vicky is good for John's mental health. Saying no to her in order to go tinker/exercise can't be worse for his state of mind than what just went down.

The right answer probably isn't "cut ties entirely", but Vicky really isn't helping here by forcing John to attend a Dallon family dinner with Dean, who hates his guts as a surprise guest. I'm really hoping that John will be able to set some healthy boundaries, but I wouldn't get my hopes up.

I think Vicky is typically a good friend to John, despite everything, but this was not a smart play on her part.
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John really needs to socialize more. But (a) dealing with adults he wants to impress (so they buy his stuff) and he cares about their opinion of him (since they're his friends' parents) and (b) dealing with Dean are really not the way to get him to de-stress.
 
Since this isn't canon-Worm, there's also a decent chance that someone at the PRT will realize what in general is going on, and do something actually helpful to John's mental state.
 
I mean, the real issue here is that he's using his obligation to try and save the world as an excuse to avoid uncomfortable social situations; basically as a crutch to hide from his problems. It would be one thing if he was intentionally forgoing relationships to tinker, but he instead used it as an excuse to quickly leave a social event and basically was begging Merlin to give him something to distract himself with.

That he managed to run into Sarah and save her from Coil is a complete accident.
 
Raichu1972 said:
I mean, the real issue here is that he's using his obligation to try and save the world as an excuse to avoid uncomfortable social situations; basically as a crutch to hide from his problems. It would be one thing if he was intentionally forgoing relationships to tinker, but he instead used it as an excuse to quickly leave a social event and basically was begging Merlin to give him something to distract himself with.

That he managed to run into Sarah and save her from Coil is a complete accident.
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Given the amount of stress he was under, and the amount of stress the event was adding to him, just calling it 'uncomfortable' seems like downplaying too much.
 
Forcing an introvert(?) like John into uncomfortable social interactions is a fucking stupid move on Vicky's part ngl.

You don't force shit that doesn't fit. It's like forcing a large peg into a smaller hole. It would only work if you whittle down the peg or make the hole larger. And her methods right now would end up with a broken peg or a deformed hole.

Also, iirc, Merlin is still sending out Jack's coordinates on PHO in random hours once per day.
 
Nulthazor said:
She got an entirely different power thanks to the butterfly effect. Instead of having Biokinesis she has a Shapeshifting Minion that can take any shape she needs.
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She needs her minion to do this.

MilitantBird said:
It would help, but getting starships with enough firepower to take on Endbringers faster is inarguably more important.
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Pretty sure, from both canon and WoG, that that's a bad idea. The amount of power needed to do so would vaporise the Earth while leaving the Endbringers there. Need to break the core while ignoring the body.

EDIT: Took out stuff posted in wrong thread.
 
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Prince Charon said:
Since this isn't canon-Worm, there's also a decent chance that someone at the PRT will realize what in general is going on, and do something actually helpful to John's mental state.
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It would be nice if Armsmaster or Miss Militia managed to notice "one of our wards hates the other one's guts" and tells Gallant to knock it off. It would be a pretty good way to resolve things, actually, and it'd fit thematically with John needing to get rid of his Worm-canon preconceptions about the PRT.

He's got a pretty good rapport with Armsmaster. I can see why he wouldn't think to go to authority, because he's socially inept and Gallant is socially adept, but saying "one of my coworkers hates me and keeps trying to convince everyone that I'm an antisocial psychopath" to Armsmaster would probably work.
 
Bowlerhat Guy said:
"For me, the fire never goes away. I'm always aware of at least one fire. Always. Something is always wrong somewhere, the world could always end, the city could always explode, the gangs could always decide to ruin my day. All the time. Forever. For me? You guys are the television," I finished, doing my best to get across the sheer anxiety that knowing the world is going to end caused me on a day to day basis.
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Classic Samaritan Syndrome. The PTSD symptoms are a direct consequence.

John needs to do his best to save the world, but never rests, so stress builds up, leading to being unable to do his best, leading to not saving the world. A negative cycle.

All his friends see it. They offer a way out, to de-stress the way they do. Doesn't work. John is primed to blow.

And Dean is there, trying to be nice, but John is stressed out and confrontational. An argument happens, stress accumulates, John tilts towards a breakdown.

So he retreats into trying to save the world. A problem he's more comfortable with. His vice.

Note how PTSD restricts his tactical choices and distracts him. That's the negative cycle. Bad feelings leads to bad performance leads to worse feelings and worse performance and so on.

Enter Tattletale, a specialist in breaking people. I think their interaction will go in a positive direction, but it could go either way. At worst, John becomes Tattletale's pet. There's a fun parallel.

Nice chapter. Thanks for writing.

Bowlerhat Guy said:
I heard the shrill screech of a woman not too far in the distance.
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Bowlerhat Guy said:
How the hell did Coil afford lasers for this many guys?
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Araurlis said:
Is Galant socially adept?

Sure, he grew up in the right crowd to learn the social niceties but in canon he did miss the fact that Sophia was a psychopath despite having his 'Emotion Vision'.
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Knowing what emotion someone is feeling doesn't mean he knows why they are feeling it. And unless he saw Sophia hurting someone and saw enough glee and sadism to justify raising his concerns with superiors, he would just think that she's a bitch, the same as all the other Wards already thought.
 
Araurlis said:
Is Galant socially adept?
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Yes and no.
He has a problem with identifying why people are feeling whatever emotions he sees (such as with Amy's feelings), but he does have enough social skills to get Amy to open up and share how she really feels about her power, even bringing her from "too terrified of what Tattletale said in the bank to talk about it" to "determined to share everything she can about Tattletale".

"So you're an open book to me. I know you're scared. No… you're terrified, and that's why you're not talking."
She sighed and sat on the bed, as far from Gallant as she could.
"I never wanted these powers. I never wanted powers, period."
...
Every head in the room turned as Panacea picked up the marker by the computers. With a grim expression on her face, she began filling in Tattletale's section of the whiteboard.
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Honestly, re-reading his Interlude kind of makes me think he's getting a bad treatment in this fic.
 
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Lokimotion said:
Knowing what emotion someone is feeling doesn't mean he knows why they are feeling it.
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Edison_Trent said:
He has a problem with identifying why people are feeling whatever emotions he sees (such as with Amy's feelings)
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And that is a major problem - he's making assumptions about people based upon what he 'sees' and acting as if those assumptions are true rather than actively finding out what the truth is.

Edison_Trent said:
but he does have enough social skills to get Amy to open up and share how she really feels about her power, even bringing her from "to terrified of what Tattletale said in the bank to talk about it" to "determined to share everything she can about Tattletale".
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And yet he never found out that the way Amy felt whenever she saw him with Vicky together was because she was obsessed with Vicky. He just assumed that she wanted him as well and was jealous of Vicky rather than using those social skills to find out.

Same as what's he's doing with the MC - making assumptions but not actually talking.

So, socially adept but ignorant/arrogant teenager.
 
Araurlis said:
He just assumed that she wanted him as well and was jealous of Vicky rather than using those social skills to find out.
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He did ask. He straight up said:

[Amy talking about Lisa in the Bank]
"That smug little monster threatened to tear my sister and I apart using yet another thing I didn't want, another thing I had no control over."

Gallant started to speak, then stopped.

"What?"

"Does… does this have anything to do with the, erm, rather strong feelings you have towards me?"

Panacea went still.

"I'm sorry," he hurried to say, "I shouldn't have brought it up."

"You shouldn't have," she stood up and started towards the door.
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Amy not saying "Yeah, I feel jealousy and hate towards you because I'm in love with my step-sister and Tattletale was threatening to reveal it." is NOT Dean's fault.
Professional therapists would have trouble getting that out of someone.
As always, the biggest problems in Worm are usually solved by open and honest communication.
 
I think cannon Dean saw emotions as clouds of colors, but he only knows what color matches which emotion through trial and error.

His power didn't come with a manual. He only has his best guess, based on the biggest splotch of cloudy stuff.

So he's not a mind reader.
 
Ablative Id said:
I think cannon Dean saw emotions as clouds of colors, but he only knows what color matches which emotion through trial and error.

His power didn't come with a manual. He only has his best guess, based on the biggest splotch of cloudy stuff.

So he's not a mind reader.
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Yeah, I read that Amy scene as Dean somewhat pompously assuming she was jealous because *Amy wanted Dean from Vicky* and not the more incestuous interpretation - since I'm almost positive that would have been alot more Disturbing and alot harder to just shrug and let go for Dean if it had occurred to him. He can't really tell what direction or who the target of an emotion is.

Its pretty universal to Worm that people with thinker powers almost always get hoisted by their own petards, as it were - making critical mistakes due to over reliance or excessive confidence in their power
 
Bowlerhat Guy said:
Yeah, I read that Amy scene as Dean somewhat pompously assuming she was jealous because *Amy wanted Dean from Vicky* and not the more incestuous interpretation - since I'm almost positive that would have been alot more Disturbing and alot harder to just shrug and let go for Dean if it had occurred to him. He can't really tell what direction or who the target of an emotion is.

Its pretty universal to Worm that people with thinker powers almost always get hoisted by their own petards, as it were - making critical mistakes due to over reliance or excessive confidence in their power
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To be perfectly honest, Dean spends most of his time with Amy when he's also around Vicky, they probably don't spend a lot of time together alone and…honestly even for Parahumans Amy's incestuous desire for her sister is fucked up.

No sane person is going to assume someone wants to fuck their own sister. Dean, while he's somewhat arrogant and a rich kid who brought his powers, is probably one of the most sane characters in the first web novel
 
McLuvin said:
No sane person is going to assume someone wants to fuck their own sister. Dean, while he's somewhat arrogant and a rich kid who brought his powers, is probably one of the most sane characters in the first web novel
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Yeah a lot of people are like "man Dean is so bad at this, how did he miss it", but IDK if I was an empath, I'd probably assume jealousy = GF's sister wants me, not jealousy = wincest.

Even the ancillary emotions kind of back this up. Shame = Amy's ashamed she wants to steal Vicky's BF. Disgust = same. Anger/dislike of Dean = she's mad that Dean is accidentally driving a wedge between the sisters. And so on.

I'm not sure there's a set of emotions where Dean should've been like "oh yeah, Amy's totally into her sister, that's so obvious".
 
While it initially gives the impression of Amy wanting Dean, the later revelations of her being in love with Victoria put that conversation in a whole new light, and Wildbow did confirm that Dean was fully aware of what the real situation was. He knew that Amy hated him and was in love with Victoria, it's just a fucking awkward thing to bring up. He tried to gently bring it up after the bank robbery, she reacted badly, so he backed off. There is WoG that he would have tried again later (because he knew how bad of a headspace she was in) and if everything hadn't gone shit-sideways with Bakuda and Leviathan and Dean dying, then he probably would have been able to talk her through it.

The whole 'Dean is socially useless' fanon stems from people using the later revelation to look at Amy's words in a new way, but then not also doing the same to Dean. IMO, it's pretty obvious in retrospect that Dean knows, since having a crush on her sister's boyfriend really wouldn't be a family destroying revelation. Victoria herself suspected that and didn't seem to view it as a big deal at all.
 
Welp, RIP Dean/Vicky. I know John thinks of them like the eternal pairing they are in worm, but this is them at their beginning and Dean is being, understandbly, a very immature and jealous teen right now.

Here's hoping he and Lisa get along, but with her power being a Dick it's likely telling the worst things possible about him, still him placing yet another girl on the team will probably just intensify the Vicky and Emma brawl, probably become the Vicky, Emma and Lisa brawl.
 
Ablative Id said:
Classic Samaritan Syndrome. The PTSD symptoms are a direct consequence.

John needs to do his best to save the world, but never rests, so stress builds up, leading to being unable to do his best, leading to not saving the world. A negative cycle.

All his friends see it. They offer a way out, to de-stress the way they do. Doesn't work. John is primed to blow.

And Dean is there, trying to be nice, but John is stressed out and confrontational. An argument happens, stress accumulates, John tilts towards a breakdown.
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Dean isn't there trying to be nice though. He's there not trusting and generally hating John. That's been made clear multiple times including a Dean perspective interlude chapter.
 
jjffjhjf said:
Dean isn't there trying to be nice though. He's there not trusting and generally hating John. That's been made clear multiple times including a Dean perspective interlude chapter.
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Dean wasn't hostile. John was. We see things from John's perspective, so that colors everything.

John could have let it go. He didn't.

You could argue that Dean was sarcastic, which John thinks. But either way, John's started the confrontation.
 
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