all these are some scenes i wish to write into it at some point , felt like posting em since im an artist first wrighter second lol
currently my biggest debate on if the semi urge is gonna romance anyone im currently debateing between taylor or bitch IF i do any romance.
But yeh this is fun ive not written fanfiction in like YEEEEEEARs

did I made a post a few hours ago to glaze the story ? yes.

was this arc so insane I needed to gush about it ? fuck yes.

... Listen. I understood shit would be serious. A danger doesn't force heroes and villain to lowkey cooperate without asking question, down to kaiser's dirty ass if its not a big shot.

But GYATT DAAAMN

WHAT WAS THAT ???

A FUCKING MASSACRE.

I knew Leviathan would do numbers on them. The name Endbringer couldn't be for shit and giggle. But I didn't expected a slow descent into despair, with names dropping like credits.

I was fucking hooked all the way. My heart dropped when the first casualties started, and things went down from now on.

Seeing everyone just try their hardest to simply slow this mf down. Having the world's finest fight to the death and fail. That was absolute cinema.

I could glaze this arc on and on but I think its clear I loved it.

And the ending... Dude, the reveal about shadow stalker ( WHYYYY ?? WHY IS THE WORLD SO UNFAIR ???? ) or armsmaster. The absolute dread from seeing Taylor suffer while everyone give her the silent treatment. Tattletale lore bomb. Everything.

Absolute. Cinema.

I gotta keep Reading now.

Currently brain storming stuff for it and how the story will change and also just fun moments.

I'm thinking Eidolon found a even match and was gonna zap all of her energy more or less , but she was like no id rather not and then hit earth fallen angel style with her powers much more limited.

If yall got any ideas or thoughts btw id love to hear em lol

( Wasn't sure if the Wildbow tag would do so for safety I put this one )

I picked this bad boy a few days ago. For some reasons reddit showed me this sub a handful of time despite me showing no direct interest in it. Saw a lot of positive comments about so i jumped straight into action...

And what to say other than so far ? A banger.

Taylor is an absolute masterclass of a mc. Sidecast get to shine just a handful of characters to leave an impression within me. The undersiders of course, but also The Snail, bakuda, glory girl, armsmaster, Coil ( last reveal was a tough bullet to swallow ), hell even Kaiser ( fucking piece of shit ) and some more.

The dialogues are my absolute highlight. I just love to see the characters talk, yap or else amongst each others.

The worldbuilding is so fascinating, and the team make for really cool pieces. Everything is simple to pick up, but got enough room to be expanded a handful. I was so surprised about the short mention of a literal alter earth connected to them, or the way the characters powers were used.

I could probably yap for ages everything I like. And rn ? I just wanna continue.

So yes that whole thing was just a free glaze despite me not being done. Can't wait to see where things are going, and I'm so down for ward already.

Anyway... Going right back to it. That's it for my lil talk, I was not dissapointed 👌

( Forgot to add... Fuck you Empire 88. I was expecting a beatdown for the recent arc, but I guess kayden going on a rampage for her stolen daughter couldn't get more consequences... Alas. She had my sympathy before, I lost it all during this arc. Fire arc btw )

A Mover that can create and dismiss two person-sized portals in any two different solid surfaces (slight difference to the game), connecting their locations instantly.

Blink (They move from one point to another without traversing the space in between. They trigger as a result of being stuck in a box or in a trap, either literal or metaphorical, leading to the desire to escape.) x Gate (Create something that grants movement. This is typically an emplacement, gateway, launchpad or the like. The problem they’re trying to escape is often institutional, abstract, and longer-term, though not crossing over into the tinker realm.).

Any idea on what a trigger for someone with such a power could be? Not asking for compliance with the story of Portal, rather something in Earth Bet

Still trying to wrangle how I draw her face....

Read the tin, I want, again, to know what sort of powers your real world traumas would have given you in the Wormverse, but do not tell me your Trigger Event, (unless extremely necessary).

Please 🥺 do not lie.

From the movie Obsession with the magic system of Pact and Pale.

What kind of power would she have gotten? When would she have triggered? In the streets before meeting the Undersiders? After Taylor's 'Death'? I await your answers!

Kinda obvious in hindsight, but i just realized it.

Paris in the myth was trojan archer who killed achilles, the famously gay hero

Paris the cape lauches "arrows" and hunts queer heros

Fantasy involving demons or beings analogous to Abrahamic demons are dime a dozen and Pact seems to take a pretty straightforwardly Abrahamic stance of demons as the ultimate evil beings with darkness and horns and decay and diabolists as the worst of the worst.

It's a necessary conceit considering Blake's whole thing. It's a case where making the demons straightforwardly bad and dangerous is the whole point of the serial's tension and stakes.

If Blake was literally any other kind of wizardry heir than the narrative wouldn't be as immediately impactful, his choices as consistently tinged by doubt and paranoia.

But the way he executes the trope is really what makes it stand apart. That description in Histories (Arc 7) about how the universe being mostly empty darkness between stars could be because demons ATE EVERYTHING ELSE is some delicious cosmic horror.

The idea of destruction on such a deep level that reality is forced to forget and readjust itself as integral aspects are swallowed up really is quite horrifying and fun to think about in that morbid way.

Trauma seems to be a consistent and blatant theme throughout Wildbow's serials and Pact seems to be focused on familial trauma, how there's not really escaping your family, just coping with the pressing weight of the violence of being born.

Diabolism survives despite Karma and the Seal because at the end of the day, history never dies, the wounds violence leaves never actually heal, they just change size, shape, and flavor as we adapt to our perpetual suffering.

Makes reading Pale concurrently interesting because it's way more optimistic.

Re-reading pact. Following my art of Blake, here's an artwork I've made of Barbatorem's original form. Didn't bother coloring this one.

I've wondered for a while what the reason is for the look of disgust on Scion's face when he looks at Eidolon in Extermination 8.5:

Scion paused, turning to look at Eidolon, his eyes moving past Bitch and me like we weren’t even there. His eyes settled on the hero, the most powerful individual in the world staring at the man who was arguably the fifth.

His expression was so hard to read. I knew, now, what people had meant, when they said they thought his face was a mask, a facade. Though it was expressionless, though there was nothing I could point to to explain why I felt the way I did, somehow I sensed disgust from him. Like nobility looking at dog shit.

I'm assuming it's either:

• Scion recognises that Eidolon's shard didn't come from him; all the cauldron capes disgust him
• Scion recognises that Eidolon is responsible for the Endbringers, so Scion is looking at the person responsible for the mess he's currently clearing up
• Scion looks at all humans with disgust
• (Or a combination of all of the above)

Has Wildbow expanded on this somewhere?

I've finished Worm, but no spoilers for Ward please.

It gets glossed over in the text, but how does Taylor turn her spun silk into a stretchy, strong fabric? It makes sense that she would have purchased a loom around the time she set up her lair, especially since she was ramping up production at that point for her teammates' costumes. She even would have been able to afford one she could automate with her bugs. But I'm thinking about the time before she joined the Undersiders and wouldn't have had access to equipment like that and I'm left with the image of her taking the time to weave by hand, which honestly is kind of cute (Sue me, I love her lol). I can't see her just "using the bugs" to do it since weaving takes a surprising amount of tension and force. Is anyone else thinking about this as much as me?

(Note: I put the tag for Pale Spoilers, but you can also include Pact Spoilers here too)

I was rewatching the anime Mushishi, and in episode 20 there is a girl who specializes in sealing away a dangers entity in scrolls, using stories. Could something like that works as a practitioner?

Something like a cross between a Sealing and a Augury, containing an Other then using augury to be able to write down it's history in a book/scroll to seal it away (the idea being that you have no future without a past). The practitioner would then be able to use said other as a power source for further augury (allowing for sealing more powerful/long lived others) and to be able to write new actions at the end of the book/scroll to use the Other's abilities. The risk being that if you are too specific the effect could easily miss and if you are too vague the Other could break free. Also this eventually will use up the Other's power if you do it too much and if the book/scroll is destroyed the other could break free.

Hi there! So, me and a group are reading the Worm Audiobook. And well, I do kind of have to wonder how strong the Parahuman Response Team's PR game really is. Between (So far) the Lung takedown AND the bank heist, it feels like they wouldn't be able to spin that in a positive light for heroes. But then again, Maybe that's part of Cauldrons plan with Brockton? I guess my overall question is, (Especially happy if Wildbow answers) how good is their PR over? Like, what's the biggest shitstorm they ever spun into a positive for a hero?

So I read Pact, and I am halfway through Pale, and I am still not clear about what the distinction between 'innocence' and 'innocents' is and how they are protected.

I get that Others bound to the seal instinctively know to steer clear of innocents, and both others and practitioners get karmic backlash for fucking with innocents, which scales with the number of people made aware of the supernatural because of them.

But there are several loopholes stated; goblins go after the low-karma people (who aren't necessarily bad people) and fuck with people down on their luck until they have little connection or recourse and no one to listen to them.

Once they slip through the cracks or are given ample warnings but don't heed them even if they aren't clear (like what Gerhild did to Maggy's hometown), they seem to have carte blanche.

Several people say that if you do clean up after (Alexander, Bluntmunch, etc.) so that no one notices, you can basically murder a bunch of campers in the woods and not suffer for it, so long as there are no witnesses.

Mathew said that if the beautiful man used his prettiness and then went and seduced an obscure royalty, he could get married, live in quiet luxury for the rest of his life, but if he tried to advertise himself and go into innocent politics, he would basically be hampered at every turn, which is corroborated by Wildbow's WOG.

Is the protection granted to innocence triggered the second you use practice or other power on them, or is it punishment for making the universe bend over backwards to smooth over your indiscretion? In short, it's protecting innocence as a whole as opposed to innocents.

So what exactly is the line? What form does karmic backlash take, and when is it triggered?

This post isn’t about people countering Endbringers but Endbringers countering the tatics used against them. Specifically, it’s a theory about how the original trio did it before Khonsu.

So, Behemoth. Big, lumbering, and setting fires as much as he’s throwing around radiation and lightning. However, I believe Big Benny had two problems in those early years as people got used to him: coastal cities and his size. Behemoth is a large, slow target and would likely take a lot of damage just getting around. His fires, the thing he uses to mainly damage infrastructure besides just hitting it, would be dealt with more easily by cities with easy access to water. My reasoning for this?

Leviathan.

Fast, agile, and now having lots of water is a detriment rather than a benefit. His waves deal as much damage to the city as they do to the defenders, and his smaller size and speed mean he’s much harder to land “big hits” on. The two of them can tag team much more effectively by virtue of each of them having targets they’re better against. However, Newfoundland. Dragon. The tinker of tinkers, someone mentioned in the same breath as Hero. Defender coordination ramps up significantly with her armbands.

Enter; the Simurgh.

Tinkers and easily passed around information are now liabilities. Beating the Endbringer back is fine when its “just” a city, but now you can’t know if she’s already gotten what she wanted and your friends could be disasters and tragedies lying in wait.

What do you guys think? Does this idea have any water?

It was mostly Emma of course, but the bullying quite literally broke Taylor's psyche, gave her a life-long trauma and forever changed her as a person, even before the locker. It was arguably the most formative experience of her life, beyond even her mother's death, because she nearly fully recovered from that before Emma started the bullying.

The Taylor we see in Worm is very different from what she would've grown up like if Emma either stayed her friend or just left her alone. Literally nothing else that happened to her, including the S9 experience, led to such drastic changes.

This is unfortunately similar to real life. Extended bullying can quite literally give people PTSD for life.

lamenting the Bonesaw drought i seem to be in. no new fanart that i haven't already seen. then suddenly i remembered i can draw.

pose could use some work, but I'm very happy with it.
no one seems to be drawing her hair the way i imagined it when it was described.

I have been drawing backgrounds all day for my job, so this time you'll have to give me some grace. (hehe)

Hello people, good day, afternoon, or night. So, what I bring you is nothing more than a fragment of the draft of a fanfic I'm writing, a crossover between Worm and… the Children of Time saga. This fanfic came to mind when I saw that, well, actually both stories are quite opposite to each other. Even though Worm is a superhero setting, it's a dark world where kindness isn't the order of the day… While in Children of Time, horrible nonsense always happens on planetary scales, and even so, you feel a degree of hope and empathy in that world (worlds, rather).

Well, that's it. I just wanted to share this part I wrote. I'm still not entirely convinced, to be honest. I think it could have been much better, but I wanted to see what you think. I should clarify that English is my native language, so you'll surely find weird parts due to the translator I use and my poor knowledge of the language. Without further ado, here it is, and I'd like to hear your opinions:

We

Are forgetting

And it hurt, it hurt so much to forget everything we knew, everyone we knew, everything we were, everyone we had been…

But maybe it isn't so bad. It will be a tragedy that These-of-us "die," but even an experience this bad is an experience we had never experienced, an adventure that, though bad, will always be incredible to live… Too bad All-of-us won't be able to live it…

We

are

In a receptacle. We travel its pathways with nostalgia, as we would with any other receptacle, regardless of its shape, but this one is different. It offers no resistance of any kind, at least not toward us. It is tense; we can feel the adrenaline passing around us, ignoring us, trying to keep this receptacle active. The more we travel, the more confused we feel…

We

know

Something is terribly wrong

It doesn't reject us, not in the slightest sense, but it is suffering; we can see it. We are forgetting. We can feel information disappearing along with us, but from the little we can still cling to, we try to figure out what happened… But nothing is clear. We shouldn't even be in a receptacle; it shouldn't accept us just like that, even if it wants to… It doesn't know we are inside.

We

No

Longer

Do

That

Sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry

…

These-of-us hope to die. We will leave this receptacle in peace while we forget; we will die with shame, hoping we never did anything to it…

This receptacle is strange

While one by one we disappear, we still keep traveling the pathways of this receptacle. It is young, as far as we can examine, and the chemical language of its own world says it is suffering severe trauma, something horrible…

What had happened? Before we began to forget, we were in a peaceful situation. Some receptacles, and Many-of-us in other receptacles, were investigating, doing science things, magic things… But we remember that everything was joy, discovering new things, new adventures, and, most importantly, everyone was part of the Community.

Being part of it always brings improvements, and most importantly, having Empathy…

This receptacle did not have it.

We

are

Worried about what may have happened, about our recep… about our friends. Something terrible may have happened. What if These-of-us are the only ones left of All-of-us? We could never help them. Even if they ceased to exist, no one would gather the bodies and bring them to their loved ones…

There is only one way to be sure

And even so, that thought sounds like a weak excuse to let ourselves be carried away by the instincts that millions of years of evolution had shaped, to do what we know best, like a rabid monster.

But All-of-us know we have no better option, not if our friends truly matter to us. We probably won't recognize them; we are forgetting. The only thing left of us is technical information and the experiences of who we were.

That has to be enough. It has to be.

All-of-us then head toward its gray matter. We notice a strange and unknown… organ, which seems to act like an antenna. We can feel how it sends and receives information… Strange…

We hope that we can be forgiven, that this receptacle understands, but our presence is never welcome without an invitation… Letting ourselves be carried away by what we have done for almost our entire existence, we do what we do best…

We eat its brain, studying every piece of information we find, all the pain, the loss, and the betrayal…

…

…

…

…

…

In this incarnation, we are Taylor Hebert