User:FossilLord/sandbox2

should the charecter pages be broken up? can this be copied we are doing something like it with identity segmentation manton and siberian, noelle and echidna, Alexandria and rebecca costa-brown.

Important piece and text surrounding it digging into welds core personality

Question for Wildbow (underconstruction)
does accord purchase the same vials each time he needs to replace an ambassador? find and cite Blasto's interlude with the lizard mask guy accord's interlude and meeting with the number man possibly citrine's debrief by brian and taylor undersiders vs. the teeth and lizardtails debut

Extinction 27.5 “Sveta idolizes me. She sees me as a hero, a spokesperson for our kind. Her therapist asked me to come visit, because she heard about what happened in the Echidna attack, what Cauldron was doing. All of her progress, gone. So her therapist wanted her hero to show up. Give her guidance, support. It worked.”

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” I asked.

---

Weld was shaking his head. “She thinks I’m fearless, but I’m not. I don’t have any hormones, any real heart that can pound, adrenaline to flow through my veins. But I still feel fear, still feel despair. I can’t jump into the water and sink to some point lower than mount Everest is tall, spending months or years without any goddamn music. So I stay here and… I try to convince them to leave. I’m a coward in the end, putting them at risk because I’m scared I’ll sink.”

Sentinel 9.2 Foil pulled Parian away from bambina before the fight with leviathan started

Sentinel 9.3 Three crime scenes that are early evidence of the slaughterhouse nine are in the city.

Snare 13.5 She broke the lingering silence, “Coil told me that people would leave me alone if I got powerful enough. If I had allies, if I had money, if I scared my enemies enough.”

Info afterwards is useful for how Taylor sees Rachel

power in this battle you’re talking about, everyone loses.”

The Travelers were way, way too fond of that line.

Everyone losses keeps coming up again and again

scenes

Snare 13.6: Medic guy brooks knows about brown recluse a being a protein based venom

Prey 14.9: Agnostia?

This chapter shows battery being attacked by mechanical spiders. Note that bonesaw has dozens of spiders

14.10 jack believes that the concept of family was distant for panacea

Alexandria interlude: Haywire was active before 1988 that means his stuff was it in storage for for over two decades

Stuff on Taylor's powers Spiders usually weave silk at certain times in their life, www.wired.com/2009/09/spider-silk/ And there is generally a limit, given that she is able to create massive amounts of silk anyway it is likely that taylor could tweak the spiders biology to make them constantly produce silk, while giving them the necessary nutrients to produce it through other controlled invertebrates.

Based on this she is likly able to create swarms of locusts by tweaking grasshopper biology, artificially creating the conditions that causes grasshoppers to morph into locusts in the first place. Thank Wildbow that she is herroic in the first place.

Insects generally have bad eyesight: http://www.scienceshorts.com/021218.htm

New project focusing on the drafts page

The post in question<ref name="9.x">Prey 14.8</ref> Some of this was mentioned before, but I don't remember if it was all gathered in one place, so...I'm gathering it in one place. From the Chapter 14.8 comments:

Regarding #5, the Undersiders were a relatively late creation in the setting. In terms of general progression, just going by story title (skipping stories below 5 pages in length and the ones I have handwritten on paper rather than hard drive)…

Runechild, Runechild v2, Guts & Glory, Guts & Glory v2, The Events Leading Up to That Thursday (TELUTTT), TELUTTT v2, Supreme Earth, Cat and the Canary, The Wards, TELUTTT v3, Guts & Glory v3, Finding Fault, Sovrano Academy, Lucky Girl, Heartbreaker, Sovrano v2, Dealer, Versus Dragon, Ziggurat, Ward v2, Daddy, Doll, Caprice, Travelers, Guts & Glory v4, Circus Triumph, Slaughterhouse, Grue, Grue v2, Schism/TELUTTT v4, Circus vs. Elite…

And it’s only with that last one that the Undersiders appear at all (BItch makes first appearance, Regent is conceptualized but not a member of the team, Ditto for Grue, Tattletale not conceptualized at that point).

Taylor/Skitter didn’t even appear until the Undersiders had made their third appearance in my stories, and she was a background character in a rewrite of Circus vs. Elite. I got back to her in a roundabout way, but it took a while. The result of bad (if well intentioned) advice.

TL;DR: No, they weren’t in the original conception of the Guts & Glory storyline.

(If anyone’s interested, I can give details on any of the titles above, what they were about and/or why they were relevant in the creation of Worm. Pretty crazy nostalgic for me.) If you feel like it, certainly. I’m always one to be interested in that kind of thing. Personally I am rather interested in Guts and Glory, and who the different ideas for the protagonists were at different stages. Glory Girl and Panacea always struck me as two of the most interesting side characters. I loved Gallant and really like(d) the Wards team dynamic as well. Well, I could go on for a while listing the side characters I like, so I will stop now. @ Wyldcard4, re: Guts & Glory…

The first draft extended from the day that The Brockton Bay Brigade found Amy to the day she got her powers. Kind of unique among those early stories because it remained relatively unscathed through multiple drafts & the worldbuilding that followed. Almost to the point that I could point to it and call it all canon. This was where I first introduced the Nine. Jack (Jack Knife), Crawler (‘Skitter’) and Shatterbird (‘Breaker’) and Mannequin were all in the group, more or less as they are here, along with others that included Nice Guy and Murder Rat. Glory Girl got sliced up by Jack, Amy had her trigger event, healed her sister and the tide was turned enough that the Nine retreated for another day.

The second draft took place much later. Amy discovers who her dad is, and much as she does in Worm, she begins breaking down, the facade she had up begins to crack. Marquis was introduced here, and the family was fleshed out.

The third draft was pretty much an attempt to join the previous drafts together, with material to flesh them out and fill in the gap. Victoria’s relationship with Gallant was built here, but he was different. He had a friend who had the emotion reading ability (who was set up with Amy) while his own abilities were a little more offensive, and he played up the gentleman angle more. I tried my hand at the ending, decided it was too dark, and basically gave up on Guts and Glory at that point. Definitely interesting. Of course, going to assume the ending of the third draft was either Amy going to the Birdcage or Amy mindraping Glory Girl permanently until I get counter evidence. Because I am like that.

I do consider the idea of Amy dating an emotion reader quite interesting. Wouldn’t call it dating, haha. She was nervous/resentful about the forced double-date, and the empath’s first reaction on seeing her was to tell her to chill, there were no expectations, and they should hang out as friends.

In retrospect, I should have involved him more in the same way I’ve sort of involved the Undersiders here. @ Wyldcard4, who the protagonists were:

Runechild: Runechild. Think amateur Dr. Strange. Never made it into Worm, though I stole one of her powers for Rune. Runechild v2 featured Dragon and the Dragonslayers (Dragon recruiting the junior hero to help her), making Dragon the oldest character in Worm.

Guts & Glory: Amy Dallon/Victoria – Guts and Glory swapped focus between the two with each chapter.

TELUTTT: Each draft featured rotating viewpoints attempting to incorporate everyone I’d added into the story by that point in one overarching story. First draft focused heavily on Faultline, introduced Scion, Legend, Narwhal, Hero, Alexandria and a major heroine named Mary Sue. Introduced Faultline’s crew, which was composed of Newter, Slug (Gregor), Spitfire and a scandanavian girl with Genesis’ power. Later drafts introduced Endbringers, Dauntless, and Cauldron.

Supreme Earth: Ramrod.

Cat & The Canary: Canary, obviously.

The Wards: Aegis. He was sometimes a girl. I went back and forth.

Finding Fault: Faultline, again. She was the go-to protagonist for a while.

Sovrano Academy: Regent. Very different person, same power as demonstrated in the Parasite arc, not the general use ‘I make them twitch/convulse’ power. Attending a cutthroat school for villains with Bonesaw as a classmate.

Lucky Girl: Shamrock. I can note it’s only around here that the setting started coming together with a place for each of the major players.

Heartbreaker: Cherish

Sovrano v2: Caprice

Dealer: The Dealer/Battery

Doll: Parian

Caprice: Caprice

Travelers: Trickster. Others are as seen in Worm.

Circus Triumph/Circus vs. Elite: Circus

Slaughterhouse: Burnscar

Schism/TELUTT v4: Everyone. Mary Sue gets a sex change and becomes Eidolon. Same power, minus the ‘everyone adores me’ aura (unless he needs it). TELUTTT – One of the cases where I can’t really tell you the story, because some of it extends into spoiler territory. It took place in an earlier timeline (which is why Hero appeared more), stretching from a point before Faultline’s group was brought together, her forming her gang, and all that.

Aegis – well, I was cognizant of the fact that, then, pretty much every notable character I’d done was female. Runechild, Victoria, Amy, Dragon, Narwhal, Mary Sue, Faultline… I think writing from the female perspective is easier on a level, because the emotions aren’t held back, and, heck, I find girls more interesting anyways. But it was getting to the point where it was ridiculous, so I started experimenting on that front.

Mary Sue/Eidolon – See the bit on Aegis, above. The change was made last minute – even as I got four or five arcs into Worm, I was debating whether it would be Mary Sue or Eidolon in this universe. The decider pushing me to make the change was (as with Slug/Gregor, Disaster Area/Faultline) that the name was already taken.

Sovrano – I agree on the school thing, Spaceman. I think I was writing it more to get a sense of why people did it in the first place, and to try my hand at it, than to tell a story I wanted to tell. I wasn’t that into it, and it was kind of a slog. Not a lot to say. It was fairly early into my stint of writing for the genre, and I was mainly exploring things. Supreme Earth was an alternate reality that featured villains operating like terrorist cells, destablizing society in ways that were both major and minor (from offing world leaders to destroying city power grids), and putting the world in a situation where they were dependent on superhumans to get energy, food and safety. Basically put, a world with superhumans that had no superheroes. Takeover on a global level, with non-superhumans as second class citizens.

Ramrod was kind of similar to Skitter in that she was an (arguably) good person in a cynical – she was new to her powers, entering the Supreme’s organization from the ground level, but her priorities were mainly ensuring that her family was taken care of. As she ascended in the ranks, keeping that perspective would have been the main challenge. In terms of the greater plot, there was the question of why the villains were so organized and why Goddess, the leader of the superhumans, was able to keep every superhuman in line.

As far as I’m concerned, Supreme Earth is canon in the Wormverse. It probably won’t ever show its face, but it’s an alternate reality that falls in close parallel with Worm’s. Beyond the use of the name Ramrod, Supreme Earth’s characters weren’t really reused (though I think Regent might have poked his head in for one draft). Well, there -is- a wiki. Just nobody’s really contributing. Some people, like Valravn, are creating the pages, but there’s no synposis – it’s just a framework. I’m grateful for his work and for the ability to reference it (which I use sometimes), but it’s thin as resources go. The deal I made at the time of the wiki’s conception still stands. If people edit the actual character/chapter pages, I’ll add trivia, detail and author’s notes.

Versus Dragon: If I remember right, it was the first chapter featuring Circus. You’ll notice she recurs – she was a protagonist for a stretch. She, a ‘Miss Miasma’ (tinker specializing in gases) and ‘Highbrow’ (with Browbeat’s powers) robbing a bank when Dragon shows up. The approach was very different (kick the door in, and they ran instead of trying to fight, despite being a more offensive team than the Undersiders, ironically) but I did use the same blueprints for the bank layout.

Ziggurat – Junior villains take advantage of a Endbringer attack to take over a city, trapping the residents in a ring of stone walls. Switched perspectives from the villains to the heroes (protagonist was Narwhal) fighting Hadhayosh, with the idea that it would merge together into a singular storyline where Narwhal tries to deal with the captured city. I think I might’ve done a second version with some civilians in the mix, just to show the effect on them, then dropped it quickly. Relevance? Well, I think it marks one of my first in-setting attempts to show a hostile takeover by villains (Supreme Earth was such on a much larger scale) and their attempts to manage a city once they’d seized it. Why didn’t it work? Narwhal was too powerful for a protagonist, and the length would have put it into an awkward place, too long for a short story and too short for a novel or even a novella. Once I realized that, I lost steam.

Daddy featured Triumph, who wasn’t in the Protectorate (he wasn’t until this draft of Worm, in fact) – or more specifically, his daughter. An attempt at a real-world perspective on what it’s like to live with a superhero and the difficulties of managing real life. If it resembles any chapter, it’s close to the first interlude (though she knew what her dad was doing) Even now I picture where Triumph’s daughter is when I mention him, even if he’s sort of a background character. I’m imagining he’s still in the city. A similar scene appeared in the fourth and final stab at Guts & Glory, featuring Victoria and Amy (the latter of which didn’t have powers) after Brandish came home to tell them Flashbang was cut up by Murder Rat.

Armsmaster… hard to pin down. He was one of those characters where his name kept cropping up but he didn’t have a fixed place for a long time, and even his powers were free to change from iteration to iteration. (Bonesaw’s probably the biggest offender here – she must have appeared in no less than ten different teams/places with a variety of names & variants on her power). He didn’t interact with Dragon until this version of Worm. Dragon might have been a tinker who turned herself into an AI out of necessity, but the details would be in one of the notebooks I’ve got on my shelf, so it would take time to dig up.-->

https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2012/09/29/prey-14-8/#comment-4510 Sometimes I need to think on something for a while. Let ideas steep in my head. I keep some of the more curious and interesting things as tidbits I can draw on at a later date. Prosopagnosia was one – I once considered writing a sort of modern alternate reality setting where every country had a monarchy, politics were literally cutthroat and the protagonist was a prince with prosopagnosia. The inability to recognize people.

So it was floating somewhere around my brain over the past few weeks, and I was thinking about the plague in terms of what the Nine would choose and why (trying to meet many of the points raised by Tattletale/Skitter/Grue in the discussion at the chapter’s beginning), just sort of letting my brain free-range for things that might work, and it sort of clicked. Some research and broadening of the effect, and I settled on it (with, admittedly, a bit of nervousness that it would make Taylor appear uncharacteristically stupid – the response to the chapter so far has assuaged that worry).

Then I thought of how it could be taken one step further. I think I was in the shower, and I just let out an evil laugh.

I like those moments. One of the reasons I write.

References

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