The Power Fantasy (2024) #6 And #2

1,680,000 words and Taylor never even considers dressing the bugs up in little outfits, let alone choreographing a song and dance number. Both of which well within her ability. That's what made her a villain protagonist.

I don't know I'm not done talking about it. It's insane that I can't just uninstall Edge or Copilot. That websites require my phone number to sign up. That people share their contacts to find their friends on social media.

I wouldn't use an adblocker if ads were just banners on the side funding a website I enjoy using and want to support. Ads pop up invasively and fill my whole screen, I misclick and get warped away to another page just for trying to read an article or get a recipe.

Every app shouldn't be like every other app. Instagram didn't need reels and a shop. TikTok doesn't need a store. Instagram doesn't need to be connected to Facebook. I don't want my apps to do everything, I want a hub for a specific thing, and I'll go to that place accordingly.

I love discord, but so much information gets lost to it. I don't want to join to view things. I want to lurk on forums. I want to be a user who can log in and join a conversation by replying to a thread, even if that conversation was two days ago. I know discord has threads, it's not the same. I don't want to have to verify my account with a phone number. I understand safety and digital concerns, but I'm concerned about information like that with leaks everywhere, even with password managers.

I shouldn't have to pay subscriptions to use services and get locked out of old versions. My old disk copy of photoshop should work. I should want to upgrade eventually because I like photoshop and supporting the business. Adobe is a whole other can of worms here.

Streaming is so splintered across everything. Shows release so fast. Things don't get physical releases. I can't stream a movie I own digitally to friends because the share-screen blocks it, even though I own two digital copies, even though I own a physical copy.

I have an iPod, and I had to install a third party OS to easily put my music on it without having to tangle with iTunes. Spotify bricked hardware I purchased because they were unwillingly to upkeep it. They don't pay their artists. iTunes isn't even iTunes anymore and Apple struggles to upkeep it.

My TV shows me ads on the home screen. My dad lost access to eBook he purchased because they were digital and got revoked by the company distributing them. Hitman 1-3 only runs online most of the time. Flash died and is staying alive because people love it and made efforts to keep it up.

I have to click "not now" and can't click "no". I don't just get emails, they want to text me to purchase things online too. My windows start search bar searches online, not just my computer. Everything is blindly called an app now. Everything wants me to upload to the cloud. These are good tools! But why am I forced to use them! Why am I not allowed to own or control them?

No more!!!!! I love my iPod with so much storage and FLAC files. I love having all my fics on my harddrive. I love having USBs and backups. I love running scripts to gut suck stuff out of my Windows computer I don't want that spies on me. I love having forums. I love sending letters. I love neocities and webpages and webrings. I will not be scanning QR codes. Please hand me a physical menu. If I didn't need a smartphone for work I'd get a "dumb" phone so fast. I want things to have buttons. I want to use a mouse. I want replaceable batteries. I want the right to repair. I grew up online and I won't forget how it was!

I believe you but this is insane to me because it’s explicitly a small village, the sort of place that the left is meant to view as a socially conservative backwater. That it’s not being presented negatively, by default in fixing it, is honestly kinda worrying re the state of the left

It says something that every single attempt to "fix" the cute witch in the alps game concept makes something that is vastly, vastly worse than the original idea, and sometimes is more actually fascist.

Mostly it's that the thing the Disco Elysium writers were going for is much harder than it looks from the outside. But also other things.

@the-joju-experience asked me about Issue 1, page 1 of The Power Fantasy, mentioning "the scale of the Superpowers in the image and the single intro line." It definitely is remarkable that these two incredibly powerful characters are kept small and in the corner of the panel- making them look like an afterthought to the peaceful, everyday city scene. For me it creates this sense of separation for the two Superpowers- their power makes them outsiders to the mundane world.

Sometimes smallness represents weakness or unimportance, but here I think it's more about them not centered in the image, because they're not really a part of this world. We see two laughing people much closer to the foreground, showing that this is the kind of thing people are doing on this lovely evening in the city. They're the rule- Valentina and Etienne are the exception.

The sense of the two Superpowers' isolation is reinforced by the lineart and color. Most of this page is packed full of vivid color and intricate detail, but right around Valentina and Etienne is a patch of gray. The ground under their feet, the wall behind Valentina, and the door just around the corner. It singles them out as not really part of this lovely evening scene. There's also a lot less detail drawn right around them- there's chalk drawings on the wall, sure, but notice how the bricks and stonework around the two of them drop out of view right next to them. In an image that's drawn with so much diligent attention to reality, Valentina and Etienne exist outside of that tangibly detailed world.

Basically- I'd say this page illustrates how everyday life can be beautiful and peaceful, and how our two Superpowers are isolated from that life. This is the very first page of The Power Fantasy- nothing's been said or shown in-canon about their powers, or the burden of having those powers. But I think the visuals here do a lot to provide emotional context to Etienne saying, "Of course, the ethical thing to do is to take over the world."

Etienne himself is standing casually, and he's wearing fashionable but not outrageous clothes- his body alone doesn't make him look like he has godlike powers that would actually enable him to follow through on what he says. But the framing of the page tells us there's something different about him- something about him that sets him apart from those laughing background (foreground?) extras. He's visually not just here to have fun on this otherwise beautiful night- when he makes that big bold statement, it looks like a serious moment in an otherwise lighthearted world.

The dialogue of The Power Fantasy takes a few more pages to really drive the point home of how Valentina and Etienne's powers isolate them from the rest of humanity, as well as their own ability to be human and find joy. But the art has already started doing that in this very first image. I think, in some half-conscious way, I understood that all along- it's part of what makes the comic emotionally work. But, thanks to Joju for encouraging me to look close enough that I actually spelled it out to myself!

She’s up to Miss Militia’s interlude:

Deadpan: “the Endbringers. They seem bad”

Also deadpan: “What do I think about Dinah?” I’ve only known her for 5 seconds”

I somehow, in what was probably a moment of poor judgement, convinced my mother to read worm.

Highlights so far (shes on 7.10):

thinking Coil was spelt Coli and pronounced Coil-ee (she refuses to wear glasses)

not knowing the names of any characters

thinking Taylor is 'very practical' in reference to her cutting Lung's eyes out

just complete incomprehension at the incompetence of Taylor's teachers and the PRT

saying that she would have attacked the trio if she were Taylor

not catching any of the Wolfspider content (tbf, this is a bi woman who doesn't call herself queer because she has never been in a relationship with a woman, so her ability to detect queerness is hardly the best)

being very mad at me for not telling her why Emma is bullying Taylor

Anyway, shes only a chapter away from the Dinah reveal and a couple of chapters from Leviathan, so I'm quite excited.

This moment in particular is super special to me, out of all of worm. Is the starkest window into her inner world, this is probably the first and only time where she actually expresses out loud to another person the fact that she actually took some pride in being a bad ass supervillain, where she actually gloated about being "bad". She was aware of how deranged she was and she actually liked it a little.

This is a taylor we almost never get to see

Glow-Worm P.2

I liked this one. Tristan's interesting, and I enjoyed his dynamic with Moonsong. I find it very interesting that he was glad to have been dragged into GM, presumably meaning to have been controlled by Khepri.

This chapter also directly states that the City is "Almost like a city in Earth Bet", and points for self-awareness I guess, but god is it boring

Internal Inconsistency Counter: 5 (+0)

Inconsistency with Worm Counter: 0, but only because the city hasn't yet been confirmed to not be New York

My correct Amy opinions

Amy is characterised primarily by the belief that she is destined for evil. She believes this because of her 'evil pedigree', a belief caused by Carol's emotional neglect, her temptations, primarily her desire for her sister, her ability to fulfill her temptations, through her power, and her lack of enjoyment of doing good through healing.

She doesn't really desire to do good; her stated reason for continuing healing is that "people wouldn’t understand if she stopped" and she never wanted to be a hero. Healing is a crushing obligation. But she doesn't want to be evil or to hurt people, and so she tries delay and deny her own evilness. Her rules exist for the sole reason to help her resist temptation.

She doesn't seek help because she believes that it wouldn't help, because of her inherent evil.

She loves her sister, and doesn't want to disappoint her.

Amy's obviously a controversial figure, and there's a lot of room for interpretation, especially once you add Ward into the picture, but I think that the above should be an uncontroversial foundation for discussing Amy, and that you're probably wrong if you disagree

The thing with the epilogue, is that in 30.7 when Contessa asks whether Taylor was a monster, a bully, or whether she “was really a hero” I took it to mean that her decision on whether to save Taylor or not was based, at least partially, on the answer to that question. If this is accepted, then the answer to whether the epilogue is real is also the answer to whether she was ultimately a monster or a hero and vice versa.

whats the general consensus on wormblr about what happened to taylor? i dont see people talk about the final chapter very much, but when they do it seems they usually take the text at face value, that taylor is powerless and on earth aleph (my preferred interpretation). but elsewhere on the internet people discuss the wog more, and a lot more people seem to believe she died or is in a coma or something other than stuck on aleph.

Zion Worm 🤝 The Queen Power Fantasy

Mysterious alien entities who decide the uk really just needs to fucking go