Hi everyone! I noticed that people at this forum were discussing my Worm fanfic Weaver Nine, and a lot of people said they liked it. Thank you very much!

A lot of people also had useful critical comments and suggestions. Again, thank you very much! It's useful and interesting feedback, especially since it gives a new perspective from the reader comments on spacebattles (e.g. spacebattles has more munchkin-type comments on power vs. power interactions, darklordpotter has more reader-experience type comments about the thrust of the plot and narrative, though both sites have both types of comments).

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Also, since some of the people found some parts of the fic a bit off-putting/jarring/SOD-breaking, I wanted to explain where I was coming from. Argh, this next part ended up being really long, but please believe me that I'm not trying to be vituperative or get into a drawn-out argument here! It's just that I thought about these issues a lot when writing the story, so I ended up writing a pretty detailed explanation here.

First of all, a general thing about why the Leviathan fight is so grim and/or long and/or has such an overpowered enemy. Those are partly stylistic choices about the tone and length I like for big battle scenes. But they are also partly accidental. Somehow battle scenes seem quick and to the point when I imagine in my mind, but they turn out much, much longer on paper! Believe it or not, I originally thought that the Jack parts of the Leviathan fight could be covered in two chapters, but it somehow expanded into six! (chapters 3.6-3.11). Argh. So those of you who say the fight seemed really long - you're right, it kind of got out of control!

Okay, about the details. Before I go on, I want to make it clear that I don't think anyone here is wrong in their interpretations. I personally think canon was ambiguous on these points, so there are a big range of possible interpretations, and IMO the ones people wrote here on this site fit very well into the 'plausible' range. I just want to explain my own thinking, so that even if you don't agree with my interpretation, you can hopefully at least see where I'm coming from!

Overall, I've been consistently surprised how diverse the reader interpretations of canon are! There are a bunch of times in the story where I ran into a point that seemed a bit ambiguous to me in canon, and I had to choose what way to handle it. There's always a big split - some readers say "that's so different from canon it breaks my SOD!" and others say "yeah, that's just the kind of thing I was expecting!".

That tells me that it would be impossible to choose any single interpretation that would match all the readers' expectations, but at least I haven't gone too far outside the realm of plausibility - the reader split has usually been close to a 70/30 plausible/implausible ratio, rather than a 0/100 ratio. Still, I still feel bad for readers who get shafted because the interpretation I chose was too far away from their own and it broke their SOD. Sorry!

So without further ado...

Hmm, the Simurgh case depends on your interpretation of whether the Simurgh has any reason to hold back against the Yangban. Remember that she's not just planning to win against Scion, she's also planning beyond. In any case, I thought of it as more of a 'default mode' or 'minimal effort' decision. The Simurgh could beat the Yangban easily with her publicly known powers, so she didn't bother using anything special.

In general, we do know that some canon Endbringers can bypass the Manton effect. Tohu almost certainly can, by copying powers from Manton-breaking capes (e.g. she could copy Narwahl's Manton-breaking forcefields). And Behemoth definitely breaks the Manton effect. You need to have immunity or very high durability like Alexandria to survive Behemoth's death aura or his energy attacks.

Now, given the above...in Weaver Nine Jack put forward the idea that Endbringers could switch roles: in this case, Leviathan switching from his normal 'city-killer mode' into a 'hero-killer mode' like Behemoth. From that point of view, giving 'hero-killer Leviathan' a close-range Manton-breaking death aura seemed to me like a simple case of following 'hero-killer Behemoth's example. I was actually worried that readers would think it was too close to canon rather than anything really new or creative!

Why did I use that mode-switching idea? It's actually because of exactly the reason that you said about power levels. I was always impressed by the idea of the Endbringers, and I thought that the humans never really got close to killing them in canon without Scion's help. So I wanted to use my story to depict what it would be like to beat an Endbringer when he was really pressed, when he was really pulling out all the stops to try to survive. But I didn't want to simply give Leviathan a big boost in raw power - exactly as you said, going too far beyond the canon power depiction would be tricky to write well.

So instead I tried to write the Endbringer's 'last resort' to be flexibility rather than raw power, having Leviathan try to escape his bonds by switching into a 'hero-killer' mode. The reason why it worked so well for Leviathan, why it let him kill so many defending capes, wasn't because of a boost in raw power - IMO he's actually not much more powerful than, say, canon Behemoth if he was using his powers to maximal effect. The reason it worked was because he took the capes by surprise by switching to new power set before they knew how to defend themselves. The best capes had been lured inside his death aura, and the rest didn't realize his long-ranged attack abilities.

If they had known his 'hero-killer' power set ahead of time, they would have known to treat him more like Behemoth - how to stay far away from him, how to (try to) dodge and take cover from his ranged attacks, etc. - and it wouldn't have gone so badly for them.

If you're interested in a more detailed explanation of this point of view, you can see this post and this post

Hmm, again it depends on your interpretation. I agree that your interpretation of that canon scene is totally reasonable - it's fair to conclude that Leviathan gets badly hurt by anything that stabs his core.

My interpretation was always very different. Remember, that wasn't just anything stabbing him. That was a special tinkertech sword created by the Simurgh of all people; and its purpose wasn't even to hurt him, but apparently to reprogram him. IMO Leviathan's reaction to that special weapon hitting his core doesn't tell us much about how he would react to other weapons.

I always interpreted that scene to mean that Leviathan wasn't hurt at all by the sword, he just seemed temporarily weakened because he was in the midst of being reprogrammed. Like a computer that takes a minute to become responsive again after you reboot it.

We don't have a great answer about how vulnerable the cores are in canon. The only time we really see an Endbringer die in canon is when Scion disintegrates the last part of Behemoth with a beam. It's not strong evidence either way, but if Scion was really trying to kill Behemoth, and Endbringers could be killed by damaging their core one or two times, then he could have just done that instead of punching Behemoth lots of times, ripping it in half, and finally bathing the core in one of his beams until it was totally disintegrated. Same thing for canon Scion vs. the Endbringers in the final fight. It's not strong evidence because Scion wasn't exactly making optimal use of his abilities for most of the fight, but he spends an awful lot of time sparring with them even though he has attacks that can damage their cores. If they had a 'one hit to the core = debilitation' weakness, he could have theoretically won the fight quickly with a few well-placed shots.

I guess it depends on your interpretation of canon abilities, and of the purpose of the Endbringers.

Remember that Fletchette's power perfectly pierces all of their layers. So if what you're saying is true, she could kill an Endbringer with one or two lucky shots!

Then canon Fletchette could have killed Leviathan in Brockton Bay (or debilitated him enough to go for the kill) if she had lucked out and happened to aim at his core instead of shooting him in the head. Heck, if you believe that Tattletale's power can infer the core's true location, then in canon the capes had a pretty good chance of killing Leviathan in Brockton Bay, if only Tattletale hadn't been hit by a wave early on that knocked her out of the fight. Tattletale's power could have told her the core's location after a few minutes of observation (like in the Behemoth fight) and told her that Fletchette's power was piercing Leviathan better than anything else. Tattletale would tell the heroes, Fletchette would shoot the core, and bam!

That scenario, well...it could be true, but I personally found it pretty odd that someone would put giant superweapons on Earth that are supposed to have an important role, go to great lengths to make them practically invulnerable to everything...and then give one person on Earth a power that can kill them in one hit with a lucky shot. And even if that scenario was true, it seemed odd to me that canon Leviathan, after getting shot by Fletchette in Brockton Bay and presumably knowing that his secret weakness was standing next to him, doesn't do anything to directly attack her, or to run away, or otherwise indicate that he feels endangered. Instead her kneels down and does an indiscriminate landscape destruction attack, making an earthquake and a big lake. Seems more to me like a generic 'I've taken damage, I'll escalate my city-killing' reaction, rather than the 'My secret weakness that can kill me in one hit is standing right next to me, oh my God!' reaction that I would have if I was in Leviathan's place!

Well, maybe I'm arguing this too strongly. Even with that interpretation, I can think of various reasons to justify why all that stuff would have happened in canon. But maybe you can see where I'm coming from

(A funny note: Now that I think about it, I'm not sure if canon Fletchette's power would hurt an Endbringer core at all! I'm pretty sure that's fanon. We never saw her use her power to hit the core, just to pierce and cut of limbs. And if you look closely, there are all sorts of ways to stop Fletchette's power in canon. Grabbing the unaffected part of the projectile like Scion did in the final fight, time distortions like Gray Boy's gray zones, Number Man's dodging, Trickster's power oddly enough (in chapter 9.3: "Flechette moved to shoot, then reconsidered, threw a handful of darts at Trickster instead. The darts disappeared in midair, and splinters of wood and small stones dropped straight out of the air where they had been."), etc. It's within the range of possibility that some of the Endbringers have powers to stop her shots, or that Endbringer cores could stop her power like they stopped Chevalier's power.)

(Ha, you can see that I have a huge weakness for spacebattles-like power levels thinking)

Hmm, again, I'm surprised how different peoples' interpretations are! My line of thinking was like this:

In canon, when the energy-themed Endbringer Behemoth is dying, he pulls out a suicide attack. A new use of his power that turns what's left of his body into an energy bomb. Basically the same as his normal 'shoot energy' ability, but supercharged. They have Scion (and Grue and Eidolon) around to stop the attack, so it doesn't go off.

So in Weaver Nine, when the water-themed Endbringer is dying, he pulls out a suicide attack. A new use of his power that turns what's left of his body into a water bomb. Basically the same as his normal 'gush water' ability, but supercharged. They don't have Scion to stop the attack, so it goes off.

I was actually hesitant to write it because it seemed almost too straightforward and close to canon to me, so it's interesting that some people saw it as such a big departure!

(detail note: you may ask: why didn't the portals get cancelled when they destroyed the last piece of Leviathan's body? My interpretation of the scene is thus: the last fragment of the core broke apart into tiny sparks, each of which used a suicide attack to destroy itself in exchange for opening a portal to release some water. Each spark disappeared when it expended its power but the portals took time to open, so there was a time lag between the time when the portals were triggered and the time when the portals opened. I can see how someone might find that way of doing it off-putting, though.)

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Anyway, the short story is: thank you for your compliments and your useful feedback! Even if I have different interpretations sometimes, I try to give it a lot of thought.






---------- Post automerged at 10:43 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:03 AM ----------
Edit: haha, since the topic of this post is pretty different from the previous one I thought it was better to separate them, but it looks like the forum has other ides.


In the spirit of offering useful comments of my own:

I agree. That's the approach I took in my own fic. I think there are some good locker/other trigger scenes, but now that a lot of them have been written, it's hard to make a new one non-formulaic enough to stay interesting.

You could also just have Leviathan attack elsewhere! In canon the Endbringers have an aura of unpredictability and ineffability, so it wouldn't be surprising if they attacked elsewhere. I'm sure they have plenty of juicy targets around the world to choose from.

Or you could have a different Endbringer attack Brockton Bay instead of Leviathan. It would probably be Behemoth, since the most recent attack before Brockton Bay was done by the Simurgh (see Interlude 19).

That's a good idea! Actually, I'm not sure if you even need flashbacks. Depending on how you handle the fic, you could also just explain parts of Taylor's power as you go - either during her planning sessions before a mission, or as things happen during the mission.

Like in canon Worm - wildbow skipped the locker scene and early powers testing, and just gives partial explanations of Taylor's powers in the scene in the school bathroom and during her planning for her first mission. For some parts of her abilities she doesn't even give a mental explanation or preface before using them, you just find out about them by seeing her use them in action. "I reached out to my swarm and directed them to do X...".

The key is to think carefully about foreshadowing any aspect of a power that is important for a plot-critical moment. e.g. in canon, Taylor finds out that her bugs tend to keep following her commands even after they leave her control radius. She never really uses it much, but chapters later that quirk in her ability is what lets her kill Alexandria. It would have felt cheap if that quirk just showed up out of nowhere, but because it was foreshadowed even that tiny amount, it felt much more plausible.

Hmm, in my own fic it was easier because they were the same powers as canon, but I tried to add 'original flavor' and explain them a bit. I had Jack Slash explain parts of his power by having him and Rune hold a brainstorming session about how to use their powers together. They both already knew the basics of each others' powers, but they still ended up mentioning the basics as side-notes while they brainstormed about the more esoteric parts of their powers.

So, that's another way to avoid "powers exposition for the purpose of powers exposition" - you can have characters having a plot-relevant conversation about some other topic, and have their powers and limitations come up in a 'by the way' manner during the discussion.

Anyway, good luck!

 

Holy moly Wall of Text.

http://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/working-title-worm-au.305014/

notes made a follow up to cenotaph.

 

@Thinekr6
Nice to see you on DLP!
I can't post on Spacebattles because I don't have an account and account registration is locked, so I post my commments here.

I agree, your interpretation doesn't go directly against canon, but I found it a little off-putting. But the rest of the story, particularly Jack, Good Girl, and Armsmaster, more than make up for it. I like that side of the story more than I like the S9, honestly.

Re: Flechette and Endbringers


Well, normally, Flechette herself is useless against an Endbringers. She'll get one good shot off at them, they notice it damages them or penetrates pretty well, and then they start dodging or killing her instead of tanking her hits like everyone else's.

Behemoth can saturate the area with radiation, Leviathan can flood or just kill her with speed, and the Simurgh can dodge anything that comes close. So she's not a risk to them in any meaningful way. In canon, when she fires at Leviathan, she doesn't pose a risk because at no point in the battle, with the exception of being trapped by Clockblocker, is Leviathan ever incapable of dodging Flechette's shot.

Behemoth presumably decides that risk of her shooting his core is minimal, and is right, since no one until Chevalier (with Tattletale's help) tries to attack his sternum (where the core is located).

And re: Flechette's power overcoming the defense of the core. I think if you look at the description of Flechette's power from Scion's POV, there's no other way to play her power other than it overcoming every other. Gray Boy counters her (in my headcanon) by looping the part of the dart that isn't affected by her power since she consistently mentions that affecting the whole dart throws off her aim. Everyone else tries to dodge her shots. Its worth noting that the only thing that Scion bothered to dodge instead of just blithely tanking is a projectile from Foil. So I'd put money on Sting>all else.

Other than power level stuff, other comments:

Loving Jack, Good Girl, Armsmaster and your interpretation of Jack's power. His social sense with capes is fun to read and heartwarming when used to do good. I think one of your strong points is character interaction; after Leviathan, focusing on that would be awesome.

 

Whelp. I just read through the Stronger thread on Sufficient Velocity and have now determined that it's going straight to munchkinville. I expect that by the time Leviathan would hit in canon (dunno whether it will happen in this fic), Taylor will be strong enough to take on Lung single handedly. I'll keep reading in the vain hope that it doesn't go that far, but I'm not confident.

 

I posted my long critique in the Go Gently thread. 80% chance that the author passive-aggressively tells me to fuck off while surrounded by her cheering teenage readers. But if there's even a chance my critique can improve her writing, I'll accept being pelted by rocks.

 

After reading the response from the author, Go Gently will be incredible if she can pull it off. With the writing indicated, I see no reason at all why she couldn't.

Also, I'm regretting spoiling myself now. That was a silly choice.

 

I've been wondering - how do you guys keep track of fic updates on spacebattles? I've just been keeping the story thread open in a tab and checking every now and then, but that gets old quickly when I'm keeping track of 3-4 different stories. Is there some sort of function that alerts you when a new chapter has been posted that you can use without being a member over there?

Anyway I imagine there has to some way more efficient to keep track of stories. I wish people would just post there stories to FF.net sometimes - the more time I spend on spacebattles, the more I grow to dislike it.

 

This is why I like Sufficient Velocity.You can just set threads to "Watch" and get updates by email or the next time you visit. Or you can get updates when you post or are quoted or your posts are liked. Love that forum.

Most of the stories on SB are reposted there (except Weaver Nine *looks at Thinker6*) so it's pretty convenient.

 

Sweet, I might check that out then. Thanks. I assume I'll have to make an account? Also, does it notify you every time someone posts in the thread or is there an option for updates only on posts by the author/updates?

 

Have to make an account.

It notifies you whenever someone posted with their name. The email just sends you the post.

It's not ideal for some authors -the author of Heavenly Thunder is deeply involved in the comedy improv going on in his thread- but it's the closest thing I can think of. It helps cut down the time you spend looking through dead fics.

 

Ha! Good timing. I just got help from the SufficientVelocity mods to repost my stories there.

On both spacebattles and sufficientveloctiy, there's a function to 'watch' threads. You get a notification whenever anyone makes a post in the thread. Both forums also have a function to 'follow' users. I haven't used it, but I think you get a notification whenever that user makes a post.

I wish there was a function like you just suggested, where you 'follow' a specific author ONLY inside a specific thread. So that I get notified with new chapter updates but not EVERY time that author makes a post anywhere on the site. I don't know of any such function, unfortunately.

 

Yeah, I'm starting to think that too. Crossovers have gotten really annoying recently, the same with alt-powersets. This fandom is pretty lacking in stories that don't do either of those things. Go Gently seemed like a very light crossover, and that was fine with me, but it's way more heavy than I expected and that's just blah.

 

Go Gently has updated, and the plot has thickened.

 

A bit cracky, but as long as the author can make the Welcome to Brockton Bay radio show funny, I'll keep loving this story.

 

Finally caught up on Go Ge fly and I liked it. Lung getting revenge for Taylor was kind of hilarious and I'm enjoying a light hearted Worm fic.

 

http://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/weaver-nine-worm-fanfic-au-thread-2.304177/page-17

Weaver nine updated ^_^

We finally find out what happened to Danny











next chapter

 

Go Gently has updated, and it looks like the crossover with welcome to nightvale is starting to kick in.

 

Tranquil Abyss

A Worm and Fate/Hollow Ataraxia crossover. Taylor is Angra Mainyu, basically. Five or so parts so far, and all of them on the first page IIRC. Taylor gets some much needed revenge, and scares the pants off of everyone else. The rest of the (15 page) thread is usual Spacebattles.

On Her Matriarch's Secret Service

Cauldron decides that the best thing about Skitter turning herself in is that it gives them a chance to recruit her. Only three chapters so far, but they are good. It looks like Cauldron is setting Taylor up to be their go-to wetworks operative. I'm really looking forward to where this one is going.

 

There's one other chapter for Tranquil Abyss, though it's just an interlude with different perspectives, no real progress. There's an index half way through the first page which isn't posted on the top for some reason.