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Cauldron’s funny in this regard, first because all of its members can fit in a minivan and because literally 90% of their capacity relies on Contessa; when she has to fake her death and can’t intervene Cauldron stops existing within a handful of hours.

And their plan is also based on the bus factor; they let the apocalypse happen early because every 2-3 months a bus crashes and every bus maybe contains the person who can kill Scion. And they are vindicated in this; Foil, Tattletale and Weaver all could have died in any of the 8+ Endbringer fights they went to, and very likely would have eventually died in one of the dozens they would have gone through if Cauldron stopped Jack from setting off Scion

This discussion of superhero logistics reminds me of an element of Worm's background worldbuilding that I've always found really interesting, which is that the heroes are running out of teleporters. They had a cloak-style mass teleporter, Strider, who was apparently indispensable for troop deployment at Endbringer fights, but he didn't get the hell out of dodge in time so by the Behemoth fight they mention having to seriously kludge other not-as-good powers to get everyone on-site on time. No one dies forever in comics so the question of "what are the risks of one guy's powers becoming indispensable to our organization" isn't as salient, but here goes Worm, gesturing at the idea that you might just get super fucking unlucky because you became organizationally dependent on a couple golden gooses who you inexplicably keep bringing to live fire situations. If they weren't hard to replace, they wouldn't exactly be superheroes, would they?

But didn't have a single period

As stress is a factor in recovery, Taylor was concussed for almost the entirety of Worm.

Glow-Worm P.3

I'm a fan of this one. I enjoyed the anti-cape discussion, and I find the discussion of the amnesty both interesting and realistic. A blanket amnesty would be controversial, as it would allow criminals to escape justice for their actions and for criminal organisations to regather their strength in the light. But it is also necessary because the heroes need all the manpower they can get and the criminal justice system barely exists. Similarly, its pragmatic to provide villains with accommodations as a bribe to not engage in criminal activities, but it is also manifestly unfair. I like how Swansong promotes the pragmatic view while also establishing her personality and her need to be respected and feared.

Her and Victoria also have good chemistry

Valkyrie awkwardly not acknowledging her past is also fun and hopefully thematically relevant

I am also required to point out the oddness of "Chief Armstrong"; his title and him giving a statement on the applicability of the amnesty to two specific capes implies that he is in a position of authority within the Wardens, which doesn't work because the Wardens, as stated in both Worm and Ward, are without civilian oversight. Plus 1 to both inconsistency counters.

Internal Inconsistency Counter: 6 (+1)

Inconsistency with Worm Counter: 1 (+1)

Thinkin’ About Alexandria

An important thing to keep in mind about Alexandria, I think, is that she (and the rest of Cauldron’s inner circle) have been sticking like glue to an organizational schema she developed when she was fifteen, using power-assisted cognition but the life-skills, worldview and experience of a fifteen year old; I think this goes a long way towards explaining why her mindset was finding the most efficient way to martially oppose villains instead of, say, finding a way to financially disincentivize villainy through social safety nets. (alternatively, she wanted society to be a thunderdome of sorts to get everyone trained up for gold morning, but that’s got just as many holes that could be explained by being fifteen.)

Her power answered her fear that she’d die without getting to grow and change by arresting all her biological processes and permanently locking her into her late-teens-early-twenties; she has to pretend in order to seem as old as she actually is. Her cognition is completely offloaded to her power; her brain is vulnerable, but it isn’t clear if she’s actually doing any thinking with that thing. Unmovable, unbreakable, clad in fortress imagery, sticking like glue to a specific plan, and a specific value (they’ll be alive, that’s all that matters) derived from her own root fear of death, her preference for mutation over death by cancer, which she projects onto everyone else in the world and uses to justify everything she does to them. Incredible calculative power, incredible resources, incredible martial power, and a fighting style that, to my recollection, consists of hitting the other guy until they stop moving.

So, you know, conclusion number one that I’m drawing from all of this is that Alexandria is Taylor with all the world’s resources at her back and no one to ever tell her no. Conclusion two is that Alexandria is subtly in the same kind of power-induced arrested development as Contessa; she’s got the brains and the brawn to think up and execute bad plans perfectly, she faces no criticism or scrutiny, she (usually) faces no consequences. She’s not “stand-on-a-beach-for-three-days-in-a-stupor” levels of brainscorched by her power but there’s a real degree to which I read the training wheels as never having come off with her. I get a vibe of R/Iamverysmart permeating Cauldron’s set-up and self-assuredness, and this is part of why.

Conclusion three (the big obvious one) is that she’s a metaphor for institutional inertia. When she dies and the Protectorate uses her as a scapegoat for everything that’s wrong with them it’s very obviously self-serving but it’s also not, like. Incorrect. She’s a synecdoche for everything wrong with the system. Rigid, inflexible, callous, arguably necessary but nearly impossible to remove or change or challenge.

And then she gets replaced by a guy whose whole schtick is that he can mix and match the best properties of wildly different component elements on the fly to create the best possible response to any problem.

I should be excited to read Ward. There’s so much potential in a sequel to Worm. I care about the returning characters and I really, really, really liked what the epilogue of Worm set up. I’m maybe one of a handful of people that like Teacher (as of his epilogue). I love the idea of a work set in the portal ridden ruins of New York. The tension created by the amnesty and of the Wardens attempting to police this new world. And fundamentally, it’s incredibly interesting to move from a work where the world was slowly ending, to one where the world has ended, but which is no longer on the path to ending.

And yet, I’m aware that this potential is, at least partially, squandered. The evocative picture of New York replaced by the amorphous, placeless City. The problems of resource distribution mentioned and yet never fully integrated into the narrative. The apocalypse cult going through the apocalypse mostly unchanged.

Still I’ll read it. Who knows, maybe I’ll love it

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.

To add another dumb poll to my tumblr

I have decided to randomly generate worm ships. I rolled from a list of 114 worm characters, creating 36 ships and picking 12 of the funniest weirdest easiest to title most interesting. Most of them were not good, but that's the risk of random chance

I rejected any that wouldn't fit explicitly stated (to my knowledge) canon sexualities, and any that resulted in illegal pairings.

I gave each a silly little subtitle. Not a ship name.

I'm pretty sure I already know who's gonna win.

Also I rejected Lung x Marquis because that was a definite win. Best gay male ship in worm except for Kevin Norton x Scion. The random number generator also kept giving me Citrine, it thinks she's a casonova. I legit rolled Skitterxpanacea at one point.

Also I'm not separating tohu and bohu.

As we head into issue 6, wherein “Magnus and Heavy’s 18-years-in-the-making plans for world-domination are revealed” I think it’s worthwhile to remember that some of the most dangerous times in the Cold War was when one side erroneously believed that nuclear war was something they could win, or would soon be able to win (see, eg the Star Wars Defence system). Nuclear peace was enforced by MAD, and so too is the continuing peace between the Superpowers, but MAD breaks down the instant one side thinks they can win, that action stops being lose-lose.

Heavy thought conflict between him and The Major would be lose-lose; an instant after he learned otherwise The Major was a ball of meat.

In issue 6 Heavy and Magnus will think they can win. How many will die proving them wrong?

god i love imp (big spoilers)

you know, the more i think about worm, the more i realize that aside from skitter, imp is one of the best fleshed out characters. and the amazing thing is how her characterization is all in the background where people don’t notice it. just like imp herself.

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