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Or it could be changed in editing after it's done.
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Oct 7, 2013 09:13
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Or these unfinished plot threads could be the seeds for future works set in the Worm universe. It's been known to happen. Wheel of Time did it (though Jordan died before writing any of the outriggers). Malazan did it, and in fact left so much unfinished there are two authors working in that universe right now. I'll be satisfied if we see Taylor's arc come to a conclusion -- which means dealing with that little problem they've had for a few arcs now, which can definitely be wrapped up by arc 30 if that's where Wildbow chooses to end it.
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Oct 7, 2013 14:21
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It's worth noting that some of the danglers are sequel hooks - in particular, the Sleeper has been revealed to be included specifically as a sequel hook IIRC.
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Oct 7, 2013 18:51
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And it has been stated that almost every character had their own story and were all in contention to be the main character of what turned into Worm. So there is plenty of material that could be adapted and turned into side stories/sequels/whatever.
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Oct 7, 2013 21:57
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I look forward to my Lung/Taylor romantic dramedy. Which part of him will she remove next, is this the time he finally kills her...
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Oct 7, 2013 22:47
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Venom 29.9 Spoilers: "And then it all went wrong." Oh gently caress, oh gently caress, oh gently caress. I'm pretty sure this is going to be bad. A mass-manipulation power without any sort of regulation?
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Oct 8, 2013 05:19
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OmniBeer posted:Venom 29.9 Spoilers: I am loving hoping that Scion kills panacea right now or something because the other options are so so so hosed up. Holy poo poo this loving cliffhanger holy loving poo poo.
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Oct 8, 2013 05:29
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Then Taylor was everyone, and everyone was Taylor. Because she controlled them all like the bugs they now were before her.
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Oct 8, 2013 05:42
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OmniBeer posted:Venom 29.9 Spoilers: Why should this be bad? I'm pretty sure the Rule of Cool was originally written with the upcoming scenes in mind. (29.9) If Taylor can control more than just bugs, her encyclopedic knowledge of so many capes' powers and her ability to plan could make her very dangerous to Scion. On one hand, it could be quite effective. On the other hand, more than a little bit monstrous. (Very Nietzsche-esque, though, with plenty of opportunities for abyss-staring.) Really enjoying how appropriate the title change winds up being.
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Oct 8, 2013 05:42
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Grundulum posted:Why should this be bad? I'm pretty sure the Rule of Cool was originally written with the upcoming scenes in mind. (29.9) If Taylor can control more than just bugs, her encyclopedic knowledge of so many capes' powers and her ability to plan could make her very dangerous to Scion. On one hand, it could be quite effective. On the other hand, more than a little bit monstrous. (Very Nietzsche-esque, though, with plenty of opportunities for abyss-staring.) Then he nukes her from high orbit? Though given which shard she's supposed to have, and what it does... she might well be able to turn his powers off or limit them in some ways. Or take the limits off everyone elses'
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Oct 8, 2013 05:49
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I'm of the opinion her being called the Queen/Administrator has significance so maybe she will end up controlling the heroes. How does Dinah know Taylor's future anyway, given that her power works based on specific questions?
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Oct 8, 2013 05:56
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TOOT BOOT posted:I'm of the opinion her being called the Queen/Administrator has significance so maybe she will end up controlling the heroes. She's allowed to come up with the questions herself. We saw that during the interlude when she'd lie to Coil about how many questions she could answer; she always saved at least one for herself to ask "What are the odds I ever get let go?" Edit: Correction. Looks like she didn't lie, she just put herself through some extra pain to ask. Grundulum fucked around with this message at 06:03 on Oct 8, 2013 |
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Oct 8, 2013 06:00
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Assuming that Panacea can actually undo Zion's crippling of Taylor's shard (I really don't see a reason to believe that this is possible) then Taylor is about to be in control of every Shard on earth, maybe barring Zion's own shards. She'd basically become a new entity, and the thing that creates a buffer between Zion and his own adopted humanity is his power. It's not hard to believe that the same thing would be true for Taylor. Either way it's basically Taylor's death, and as much as I'm aware that self sacrifice is totally something Taylor is capable of, I really don't want bad things to happen to her even for good reasons. Even with all of that this still feels like too easy an answer. This also complicates the entire question of what the gently caress the Simurgh is up to, and I don't buy that the Simurgh doesn't play a key role in the end of this. TOOT BOOT posted:How does Dinah know Taylor's future anyway, given that her power works based on specific questions? Dinah can ask her own questions, it's just harder on her to use her power herself. And it makes excellent sense that she'd ask herself questions about those she meets/interacts with while in captivity. I'd imagine she probably got a lot of really hard messed up answers when she asked questions about Taylor. NecroMonster fucked around with this message at 06:25 on Oct 8, 2013 |
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Oct 8, 2013 06:04
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Oh holy loving shitballs  . TOOT BOOT posted:How does Dinah know Taylor's future anyway, given that her power works based on specific questions? As I recall, she gets glimpses of what happens in each possible future, and they arrange themselves as a mosaic that she can tell the relative sizes of. My guess would be the only way she saw them not getting curbstomped was by Taylor doing something like this.
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Oct 8, 2013 06:21
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It seems more likely that Gilag or whatever her name is will become the new (fake) second entity than Taylor.
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Oct 8, 2013 14:59
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Simurgh: Just As Planned I see how Simurgh got past Scion's precognition. His 'path to victory' was based on reuniting with his mate, thus anything that happened after wasn't covered. What happened was Panacea got her setup by Simurgh engineering things so that she got sent to the Birdcage through the works of the S9, and kept there by the tweaked message that Dragon would otherwise have gotten. Later on, Taylor was manipulated with the one "Sorry" at the right time, place and state of mind. Tattletale was likely guided to where she wasn't going to interrupt this in the same stroke. That manipulation in turn, kicks in this chapter, when that one word proved the tipping point to Taylor taking the plunge to unlock her powers. AND while Simurgh is singing in the background, causing no doubt, some kind of disruption to the two brain surgeons. Yet to figure out what roll the air gun plays in this though.
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Oct 8, 2013 15:41
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veekie posted:Simurgh: Just As Planned Wild Mass Guess: The air gun isn't important. It's the glass chamber that she hid in the Doctor Mother interlude. I've been speculating that we've seen the progression of the Three that stood out to Echidna: 3. Eidolen - Failed and Dead - Had access to multiple abilities but no control over which ones 2. Grue - Failed and Gave Up - Can access multiple abilities with control but only one at a time 1. Taylor - Either Failed and Some State that is Not Dead and Not Given Up or ? - Perhaps she can access multiple abilities with control and more than one at a time? If Taylor's unlocking or whatever Panacea is doing to her leads her to the ability to Administrate shards, could it be as a call back to her first Trigger that she is overwhelmed by all the Shards she can sense around her? Where she can't understand this new sense other than it's all around her and there's too much and it's pressing into her mind and so on... And then Simurgh swoops in, TKs her into the glass chamber with air, and flies out to orbit to let Taylor decompress in an area where she can't feel every Shard until she can regain control of herself.
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Oct 8, 2013 16:23
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The problem with all of this stuff is that Panacea really shouldn't be able to alter shards, because she doesn't have access to them. She can only manipulate the brains of the person the shard is connected to, which really shouldn't be able to do much more than a second trigger event can do in the first place, and Taylor already had her second trigger event in the locker. Taylor's second trigger is the reason she has so much more control over her bugs than Aiden has over his birds. The limits on Taylor's power that Panacea could theoretically break are well... limited. Area, types of animals. While Taylor could theoretically beat Zion if she had perfect control of every cape (and those cape's powers) on the planet, I'm not sure that would really work either. Force as an answer to Zion just feels off. On top of all of that we've got whatever is up with Imp, no closure to the whole Shadow Stalker deal, and two or three very powerful behind the scenes manipulators (Teacher, Simurgh, and Contessa) still kicking around, with the third Entity still looming over everything on top of that. So I really don't think Taylor getting the power to fight Zion in a strait up battle is going to happen on the first chapter of the last arc. No, my bet (and I have to admit, hope) is something is going to happen to break Panacea and Taylor up before Panacea can actually do anything to Taylor.
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Oct 8, 2013 19:43
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NecroMonster posted:The problem with all of this stuff is that Panacea really shouldn't be able to alter shards, because she doesn't have access to them. She can only manipulate the brains of the person the shard is connected to, which really shouldn't be able to do much more than a second trigger event can do in the first place, and Taylor already had her second trigger event in the locker. Taylor's second trigger is the reason she has so much more control over her bugs than Aiden has over his birds. The limits on Taylor's power that Panacea could theoretically break are well... limited. Area, types of animals. While Taylor could theoretically beat Zion if she had perfect control of every cape (and those cape's powers) on the planet, I'm not sure that would really work either. Force as an answer to Zion just feels off. Is it confirmed that Taylor's second trigger happened in the locker? I was assuming it was Bakuda's bomb - the first time she found she could use her bugs to hear things, the first time her bugs started doing things while she's unconscious, and just this chapter she mentioned it was when she started to develop her superhuman pain tolerance. Thematically it lines up pretty well with her first trigger - using her bugs' senses as a form of escapism when she can't deal with her real senses.
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Oct 8, 2013 20:43
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Maybe Taylor will get the ability to gift shards/powers to people. 
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Oct 8, 2013 20:47
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I'm thinking more likely that Simurgh singing right now is Relevant. What did the bird do.
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Oct 8, 2013 20:56
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Squinty posted:Is it confirmed that Taylor's second trigger happened in the locker? I was assuming it was Bakuda's bomb - the first time she found she could use her bugs to hear things, the first time her bugs started doing things while she's unconscious, and just this chapter she mentioned it was when she started to develop her superhuman pain tolerance. Thematically it lines up pretty well with her first trigger - using her bugs' senses as a form of escapism when she can't deal with her real senses. Triggers are always accompanied by the visions when they happen in real time, but the visions are (almost) never remembered when recounting those triggers. Taylor saw no visions during the Bakuda attack, and Taylor recounted no visions during her locker trigger. There is room for a second trigger to have happened during only one of these events. veekie posted:I'm thinking more likely that Simurgh singing right now is Relevant. What did the bird do. Something, we don't have many clues, but she has to have done something. The clues we have thus far are; reminding Lisa of her brothers suicide, reminding Taylor of Dinah's words, hiding a metal capped three foot diameter seven foot long glass tube in a giant blow dryer, killing Accord, creating Echidna, driving Alan Gramme insane, messing with Panacea's warning, and a whole lot of maybe warping peoples minds such that they got in Taylor's way or revealed Cauldron's secrets. The problem is, without some sort of Motive, it's basically impossible to tell what a precognative is up to by examining their actions. But we do know that nothing The Simurgh does is random or accidental. NecroMonster fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Oct 8, 2013 |
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Oct 8, 2013 20:57
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NecroMonster posted:Triggers are always accompanied by the visions when they happen in real time, but the visions are (almost) never remembered when recounting those triggers. Taylor saw no visions during the Bakuda attack, and Taylor recounted no visions during her locker trigger. There is room for a second trigger to have happened during only one of these events. She also is entirely responsible for the Travelers, which I realise you covered in killing Accord and Echidna, but there is always Trickster being part of Teacher's group which might come into play later. Or the fact that there are several highly powered capes in Earth Aleph now. Who knows!
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Oct 8, 2013 23:06
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NecroMonster posted:hiding a metal capped three foot diameter seven foot long glass tube in a giant blow dryer Sudden realization. That's the usual dimensions of the peoplejars you see in various media isn't it? A glass tube which fits one person, capped with metal and usually filled with suspicious liquid.
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Oct 8, 2013 23:20
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veekie posted:Sudden realization. That's the usual dimensions of the peoplejars you see in various media isn't it? A glass tube which fits one person, capped with metal and usually filled with suspicious liquid. The Simurgh is either cloning Taylor because she's about ready to destroy herself, and she's used her power to also completely copy the personality, etc, so it'll be identical... or, the Simurgh is going to take her into space and away from all the poo poo up there so she can decompress once she has limitless person control power. Kind of like when she was hospitalized right after getting her powers because she couldn't think through them (this is also when she had her second trigger).
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Oct 8, 2013 23:38
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veekie posted:Sudden realization. That's the usual dimensions of the peoplejars you see in various media isn't it? A glass tube which fits one person, capped with metal and usually filled with suspicious liquid. Oh it's deffo so sort of peoplejar for sure, the question is just what the christ a monster like the Simurgh plans to do with the loving thing.
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Oct 9, 2013 01:16
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I swear to Zion, if WildBow doesn't give us a chapter from either Taylor's point of view or someone in the thick of this most recent development I am going to throw a motherfucking temper tantrum.
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Oct 12, 2013 02:15
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why oh WHY posted:I swear to Zion, if WildBow doesn't give us a chapter from either Taylor's point of view or someone in the thick of this most recent development I am going to throw a motherfucking temper tantrum. Just wait till we get Leviathan's thoughts about being used as a missile weapon.
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Oct 12, 2013 02:20
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We've had some 10+ arcs before but the last 5 or so arcs are all really short. That was a hell of a cliff-hanger to leave us on though, so I'm also gonna flip a table if it's not 29.10 tonight!
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Oct 12, 2013 03:59
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Faldoncow posted:We've had some 10+ arcs before but the last 5 or so arcs are all really short. That was a hell of a cliff-hanger to leave us on though, so I'm also gonna flip a table if it's not 29.10 tonight! Bonus Episode: Scion trapped under rubble just thinking random thoughts.
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Oct 12, 2013 04:18
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The best follow up to a huge cliff hanger is, of course, an even bigger cliff hanger. Graarwrgh. Also Trickster is "back", that little poo poo.
Faldoncow fucked around with this message at 05:29 on Oct 12, 2013 |
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Oct 12, 2013 05:27
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Worm; Oh jesus what did you do Taylor.
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Oct 12, 2013 05:35
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i wonder if Taylor will end up being a bigger threat than Zion, or maybe they will mutually annihilate each other. I noticed in a comment on the last update wildbow made a comment indicating we were approaching the end of Taylors story so the next arc might be the last. i hope the end is satisfying after reading 1.5m words...
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Oct 12, 2013 07:16
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NecroMonster posted:Worm; Oh jesus what did you do Taylor. Why do you assume that the character who held up her picture is necessarily acting in the best interests of humanity?
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Oct 12, 2013 08:00
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Grundulum posted:Why do you assume that the character who held up her picture is necessarily acting in the best interests of humanity? Yeah, of the people we see here, they are pretty much all problem cases. And not the useful kind of problems either.
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Oct 12, 2013 09:09
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So... Second Entity and Contessa interlude. It transpires the second entity hosed up and accidentally dropped the 'see the path to victory' shard. And I still can't figure out what the everloving gently caress is up with Doctor Mother.
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Oct 12, 2013 11:56
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thespaceinvader posted:So... Second Entity and Contessa interlude. It transpires the second entity hosed up and accidentally dropped the 'see the path to victory' shard. And I still can't figure out what the everloving gently caress is up with Doctor Mother. What's your question/to figure out? Is there something I'm not picking up on?
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Oct 12, 2013 13:58
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I don't know, I may have misread something. Or it's possible I just misinterpreted the line about 'her skin being the strangest black colour' as being unnaturally black, rather than just the reaction of a kid who's never seen a black person before.
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Oct 12, 2013 14:11
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thespaceinvader posted:I don't know, I may have misread something. Or it's possible I just misinterpreted the line about 'her skin being the strangest black colour' as being unnaturally black, rather than just the reaction of a kid who's never seen a black person before. Looks like Contessa is from an Earth where civilization never developed very far, nor internationalized. She'd probably never seen anyone outside her own race before.
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Oct 12, 2013 15:37
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thespaceinvader posted:So... Second Entity and Contessa interlude. It transpires the second entity hosed up and accidentally dropped the 'see the path to victory' shard. It's even better than that Eden basically asked this cool new shard she found how to complete the worm life cycle without the inevitable bit where existence fills up with worms and dies anyway, and the shard went "here watch this vision!" and so Eden watched that vision, was distracted, and crashed face first into the planet, lost the shard, which was immediately picked up by a little girl, who came strait for Eden's struggling body and killed her, and then began a long term plan to defeat Zion. We also know that this shard, which was apparently stronger than Eden's original version, doesn't give answers that aren't asked for. If you ask how to climb a mountain it'll tell you where to put your hands and feet, but it isn't going to tell you why you should put them there unless you ask. And honestly, it works so well why question the answers it gives? The shard has been working on making what Eden wanted happen the whole time. Think about the differences between the future Eden saw and what actually happened. No Cauldron. No Hero, Eidolon, Legend, or Alexandria. No Coil. No mass cooperation. No Taylor. Jack is a "good guy". No Eden to interfere. Sorry the answer to your question involved you smashing face first into a planet Eden.
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Oct 12, 2013 19:07
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