How The Nocturnal Bottleneck And Nipples Make Us Human

Number one takeaway I had from worm was... damn these bitches gay

controversial opinion: i really like when worm characters have crisies about the whole "alien supercomputer is in my brain and subconsciously influencing me, i can't trust my own mind" thing BUT i think that it takes away from worm's theme of how trauma affects people on a deep level if shards are ACTUALLY seriously interfering with how people act.

I love the way taylor makes decisions like a cornered animal I love her desperation I love the way she has been slowly whittled down to a viciousness that she can never escape I love her analytic mind I love her willingness to escalate I love the way she will do what no one else will for better or for worse

Something I haven’t really seen talked about is how the Undersiders mirror Taylor’s bullies.

Obviously, each member of the trio torments Taylor differently: Madison creates little annoyances and pranks, Sophia is animalistically violent (predator-prey) (obviously this is part of the bad racial politics of worm) and Emma engages in psychological warfare based upon specific knowledge of her victim.

Meanwhile, in the Undersiders, you have Regent, who causes little slip-ups in his opponents, Bitch, who is animalistically violent (dog) and Tattletale, who engages is psychological warfare based upon specific knowledge of her victims. And in Grue, you have a Mr Gladly; an authority figure who is meant to reign his charges in but whom fails utterly after making only token efforts.

And Taylor is completely fine with this! I don't think she even really notices, let alone cares, because, with the exception of Bitch (whom she establishes dominance over), this isn't turned against her. Taylor holds a knife to Amy's throat while Tattletale threatens to ruin her life, and she doesn't even have a second thought.

I think that the Power Fantasy wants us to understand the characters as they are in 1999. They know what happened, they know the world made it out alive, and thus so do we. But they also look back upon the past through the lens of the present.

We see the Tokyo event as Masumi does; an episode of dissociation, Etienne reaching out to her, and violence instilled into a single memory.

The Cuban missile crisis and New Mexico festival massacre are seen through Valentina's eyes, as remembered in the present.

The killing of the Major is seen through Jacky's eyes, and thus there is an emphasis on the violence of the act, and on the elements that will come to make him regret it. And obviously, Jacky's memories of the early Pyramid is distorted and simplified, not quasi-photorealistic like the other, more flashblub memories. Eliza is pure white.

And, of course, knowing how the crises of the past went puts us into the headspace of the superpowers in the present; neither they nor us know if this crisis is one they will get through. Compare the hypothetical linear Power Fantasy; crisis after crisis is resolved without the destruction of the world. What would mark the 1999 crises as any different?

I was talking to some people about the narrative effect of the issue #3 timeline in The Power Fantasy and the phrase that comes to my mind is "disaster voyeurism". If the story had started in 1945 and proceeded linearly, we'd arrive at each of the events on the timeline and not know what would happen or even if the world would survive. But with TPF's actual nonlinear structure, we know the world persists at least until 1999, and also that it faces these very specific crises.

I feel like that shifts the whole tone of these events. I know they're going to be awful, but I'm also really curious what happens, and the knowledge that "the world and all the main characters survive" puts a little distance between me and the nerve-wracking suspense of not knowing what happens. Someone on Discord described it as "anti-immersive"- not the exact word I'd choose, as I do feel immersed in the story in a lot of ways. But I see what they mean, in that I can look at past events with mixed eagerness and dread, rather than just dread like the characters must feel.

America's modern psychic shields are Magnus's Numinous tech, which implies that they didn't have shielding prior to Magnus's rightward shift and his involvement with America. So when then, did Etienne not stop the New Mexico Festival Massacre, or at least warn Valentina? Was it a deliberate attempt to alienate her from America? Or was he even hoping that they would succeed? The balancing act would be easier with one less Superpower around, even if its Valentina, but I think they're were still too close at that point for Etienne to do that.

And more importantly, how did he explain this lapse to Valentina?

The Chicago Wards would be a good team; shakers (and those that can function as shakers) would be best for the format considering the versatility they offer

You could make a pretty good Worm game with the bones of Tactical Breach Wizards

Grue: A little too general as a ward or weaverdice power, especially with the side effects of "blocks other non-visible EM radiation" and "messes with breaker powers". The EM blocking could be made more obvious, and/or rely more on Brian's conscious thought; "i'm blocking radio" "they're not using radio they're using microwave transmission" "fuck". It's also a little easy in terms of control, and this might be fixed by making it un-malleable (so he can't make distracting shadow-duplicates, it's just smoke that expands a little once he's created it).

Tattletale: In terms of weaverdice trigger-gen Lisa would be a master/thinker, so a social thinker fits. Her "super deduction" should be restricted down to people's tells only, and maybe other things that are directly connected to a relationship, or something social. She can still kind of do things like know people's powers, but only by reading what people think those powers are. Some kind of resource mechanic to feed her power might also be necessary, but lets leave it there for now.

Skitter: Mostly fine, but only because she's a double trigger. Maybe she could face down a trump who un-does this, to give her a control system with different "modes" like Aiden/Chicken Little? Alternatively maybe restrict her in terms of which arthropods she can control (only spiders, or only insects), or make her control range be shaped like winslow high school (rectangular, she is at corner point of it and has to swing it around to decide where to control/attack) instead of spherical.

Bitch: Weaverdice character creation says that a Master "creates minions or has a means of compelling others to take certain actions". As Rachel is doing neither of those things (her dogs already exist!) she needs either a real master power to control/influence her dogs, or she needs a different trigger, to make her a "TWOxNINE" trump. Maybe her foster mother was a parahuman?

Imp: Since her trigger was a very "immediate, in-your-face threat", she should be a striker. Maybe she can create weapons like a swords of shadow that create an amnesia effect on hit? This would give Aisha more control over her amnesia effect, but would be more in-keeping with weaverdice power-gen rules.

Regent: He can't actually fully control anyone, and can only jerk one limb at a time, distracting people instead of controlling them, like the younger heartbroken in Ward.

you know what. im going to follow my heart so we can move on with the wormread and just copy-paste what i said about danny in chapter 6.9 on discord with some minimal editing because it's not pretty but the general thesis is there and i don't feel like making it into proper paragraph form

okay so the thing thats fucking killing me abotu 6.9 is that danny is literally like. he tries to call taylor a nickname only her mom called her once he realizes he's fucked up bad and is trying to recover whichi s insane [because it's obviously going to be upsetting to her by reminding her of her mom being gone, and it also indicates that his fall-back for something going wrong w/ taylor is to try to appeal to her by poorly copying someone else's parenting style] and he also randomly tells her about how her mom wanted to move her a grade ahead but he wanted her to stay in school with emma to make her happy. and he's been Stewing On That despite knowing it's objectively not his fault (and i am reminded of how in his interlude he spends time Stewing about how he wishes annette were there to give advice) and he also cops up to the fact that that the whole thing about "being her parent and not her ally" (<- demented thing to say for obvious reasons) wherein he locks her in a room and demands emotional vulnerability from her even as she's becoming visibly upset & compares his actions to emma's was her grandmother's idea and then. here's the real kicker. once lisa shows up and prepares to take taylor away there are any number of actions a parent confident that they're doing the right thing for their child would normally do in response--not, like, Good actions, but things that a parent would be likely to pull. threatening to call the cops bc blah blah you're my daughter, wanting to speak to lisa's parents, any form of power move pulled over these two teenage girls but instead he speaks to lisa like she's an equal authority over taylor and seriously asks if she's "okay with this" (i should remind you of the concussion chapter where lisa is doing some insane power move shit over taylors dad covertly establishing herself as more competent at caring 4 her than him lmao) which is just like. it's so glaringly wildly obvious how this guy has Zero confidence in himself as a parent so he generally does nothing and then while he's doing nothing he oscillates btwn rationalizing it to himself as allowing her privacy/dignity, getting angry at himself/calling himself a coward, or getting mad at TAYLOR and blaming HER for not being the one to take initiation to be vulnerable with him and, like. he literally does make functional decisions prior to this for a bit! he's good and supportive at the meeting with the school board about the bullying!!! but it doesn't immediately solve literal years of distance between them that have led to taylor having to take decisionmaking for her wellbeing entirely into her own hands w/o being able to tell him about it [& having literally no route for human connection or support other than the undersiders] so he just completely crumbles on his own calls and seeks out/takes completely shit advice from taylor's grandma instead so i very much think what's insinuated here is like. especially given that he knows he has anger issues and never wants to Be Scary with them. he might have frequently leaned on annette for parenting decisions before she died and/or is really fucking haunted by the time(s) he didn't listen to her and it went wrong and now that she's gone he's just kinda floundering and trying to toss the baton for parental decisionmaking onto anyone else, including, at one point, the literal teenage girl who shows up to help taylor run away from his house. insane ! also. thinking about how taylor says her grandma (maternal) never liked her dad. that man would literally rather talk to the mother of his dead wife, who hates him, and take her advice than go 'yeah ithink im gonna keep using my own judgement for compassion towards my daughter' fucking worst anyones ever done it this guy has the spine of a twizzler it's great

...and then doing All That & severely triggering taylor's trauma from the bullying in the process completely shatters any trust he had built with her, catalyzing her realization that she wants to be able to have meaningful relationships with the undersiders & leading to her running away to leave with them! i don't think anyone can say for sure whether or not danny Not doing this would have led to taylor turning the undersiders in before realizing that she would regret it, but oh fucking boy does he make SURE she doesn't go thru with it. and it would be bad to call the cops on a bunch of systematically neglected traumatized teenagers regardless of how much crime they're doing so you know what maybe we should actually thank danny for his Shit Parenting stopping taylor from being a narc

its weird how on top of the official limits on the number of new doctors, we ALSO make becoming a doctor needlessly terrible. it could be like normal grad school! and they'd be just as qualified. we just torture them for no reason. if we removed both lmiiters we could have like double the doctors just as qualified