Worm and Ward discussion and debate thread

[DraconianGreed]

I guess to keep track of them? It does seem pretty pointless though and possibly counterproductive to their whole secrecy thing. Same goes for them selling powers to be honest.

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Cauldron just didn't know that Scion is a depressed idiot, right? They only knew that he had an aversion to looking where there's concentrations of case-53s which are like hosts who wear the Thinker's entrails, I guess.
Did Cauldron memory-wipe every case-53 in fear of them revealing cauldron has access to other dimensions to Scion or something? Why did they release the case-53s in the first place then...?

Really the biggest issue for me right now, is I am trying to come up with a reason other than stupid-evilness as for why Cauldron wiped Sveta's memory. In my fic, a version of her gets her memories back, but since my mc isn't an SI they're finding out about Cauldron from her perspective.
Stole her(him at first I guess) from her world before she died, experimented on her and then wiped her memories.
Could they not find a use for her? She lived in a cell anyway, so it would be better for her to be cauldron where they might get a loyal minion a la the way Coil kept Echidna/Noelle under control.

Like seriously. I can either have it be that they took one look at Sveta and then wordlessly had the Slug get to work on her (incongruous with how they have a living mass of air guarding cauldron's main base.) or make Sveta into a Goku expy where pre-memory wipe she was just uncontrollably enraged or something.
Even then, why did they release Sveta afterward?

Was the release of the case-53s all bids to give some potential cape a bad day so that Cauldron could incidentally create a powerful cape for the final fight? Since Victoria exists with her having budded off of Dean, a vial cape, Cauldron should have sent the case-53s in endless droves against cape families with third-generation capes and such like Aster.

No seriously, what the fuck was Cauldron doing letting Jack Slash get away with his crap? The only powerful capes he ever made that could be useful were like two! And cauldron didn't even make use of them! Jesus Christ! I'd like to buff Jack so that he becomes a cognito-hazard even for Contessa but then what's the point of Doctor Mother? Am I going to have to just scape goat Doctor Mother or something?

One of Cauldron's biggest mistakes was letting Jack Slash keep Bonesaw. The second Bonesaw demonstrated her ability to mess with powers, Contessa should have made plans for stealing her from Jack Slash. Or if Jack Slash really was such a threat with Broadcast, have Doctor Mother put together a team of military contractors to pull an extraction.
So many problems would be solved by Bonesaw. Its not even funny. There had to be striker powers that would let her operate even on someone like Weld. I think the only cape Bonesaw might find impossible to mess with would be Dragon since her corona pollentia was probably a mass of incomprehensible code.
But that's not what my mc could gripe about since they wouldn't know about Bonesaw's abilities.

Also, Nepea-5 makes no sense, it completely ignores the economic principle with comparative advantages. I guess it might have helped the PRT and Protectorate form but that's the only utility it had. Cauldron was extremely dumb for ripping out one of the ways humanity reached the heights it did as a possibility from all capes. Greed makes for a powerful driving force.

Could you tell I was/am losing my mind writing this?

I guess my only option is to turn Jack into a cognitohazard even for Contessa. So maybe Cauldron would never have known to steal Bonesaw. That leaves the Case-53 issue, though. I could just have Cauldron not notice what possibilities Victoria's existence hints at and/or its impossible to bud off of case-53s since they happen in the first place because of faulty Firmament connections. Still, that means none of the case-53s should have been released.
That leaves me with... just have Cauldron releasing Case-53s out of the goodness of their hearts....? Seriously? What kind of incompetent "necessary-evil" are they?

 

[Enohthree]

No seriously, what the fuck was Cauldron doing letting Jack Slash get away with his crap? The only powerful capes he ever made that could be useful were like two! And cauldron didn't even make use of them! Jesus Christ! I'd like to buff Jack so that he becomes a cognito-hazard even for Contessa but then what's the point of Doctor Mother? Am I going to have to just scape goat Doctor Mother or something?

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The weird thing about this is the fact that Doctor Mother, right after Hero dies and Alexandria is recovering from having her eye gouged out, floats the idea of leaving the Slaughterhouse 9 be so that they can make more capes with their atrocities. Alexandria's response is no, they're not going to do that. That would be dumb. They're going to deal with them.

And then it's canon times and Jack Slash has apparently just gotten away with his nonsense despite this actively being rejected by the Hard Woman making Hard Decisions?

 

[DraconianGreed]

The weird thing about this is the fact that Doctor Mother, right after Hero dies and Alexandria is recovering from having her eye gouged out, floats the idea of leaving the Slaughterhouse 9 be so that they can make more capes with their atrocities. Alexandria's response is no, they're not going to do that. That would be dumb. They're going to deal with them.

And then it's canon times and Jack Slash has apparently just gotten away with his nonsense despite this actively being rejected by the Hard Woman making Hard Decisions?

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Hwhy?
Now I know almost all the blame lies on the fucking idiot that is Doctor Mother...
Doesn't she cuss out the case-53s or something equally ridiculous?
Eh at least I know where my plot is going now.

In the end, I guess its all Harry Potter Adult/Teacher syndrome.

 

[Vanbers]

The weird thing about this is the fact that Doctor Mother, right after Hero dies and Alexandria is recovering from having her eye gouged out, floats the idea of leaving the Slaughterhouse 9 be so that they can make more capes with their atrocities. Alexandria's response is no, they're not going to do that. That would be dumb. They're going to deal with them.

And then it's canon times and Jack Slash has apparently just gotten away with his nonsense despite this actively being rejected by the Hard Woman making Hard Decisions?

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Hwhy?
Now I know almost all the blame lies on the fucking idiot that is Doctor Mother...
Doesn't she cuss out the case-53s or something equally rediculous?
Eh at least I know where my plot is going now.

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Something something Broadcast trumps Contessa, probably.

Like, Broadcast keeps whispering "Hey man, so we're cool, yeah? My Host is great, no need to add killing him as a step in your plans, right?" to PTV.

 

[DraconianGreed]

Something something Broadcast trumps Contessa, probably.

Like, Broadcast keeps whispering "Hey man, so we're cool, yeah? My Host is great, no need to add killing him as a step in your plans, right?" to PTV.

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That's what I'm going to do, but it still makes Cauldron look fucking incompetent. All of their thinking shouldn't rely on a black-boxed AI with dubious motivations.

Wasn't there a fic where Contessa goes to meet some economics or history professor and she realizes her PtV is actually path to pyrrhic victory? That was a cool moment.

 

[Lykaia]

Hwhy?
Now I know almost all the blame lies on the fucking idiot that is Doctor Mother...
Doesn't she cuss out the case-53s or something equally rediculous?
Eh at least I know where my plot is going now.

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It's because they chose the worst possible time to screw over Cauldron. Also, Cauldron regards Sveta along with the vast majority of Case 53 subjects as being utterly worthless with them at best being cannon fodder against Scion to buy a few seconds for somebody actually useful.

 

[DraconianGreed]

It's because they chose the worst possible time to screw over Cauldron. Also, Cauldron regards Sveta along with the vast majority of Case 53 subjects as being utterly worthless with them at best being cannon fodder against Scion to buy a few seconds for somebody actually useful.

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So they shot themselves in the foot with needless contempt for their victims? I know what I must do now.

 

[OverReactionGuy]

I'd like to buff Jack so that he becomes a cognito-hazard even for Contessa but then what's the point of Doctor Mother?

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I think way back that wog was Jack would beat Contessa in a fight.

Probably because Jack has the most plot armor.

-edit-

I mean, he also basically ruins every fanfic he's in too.

-edit-

well, the ones that don't straight up kill him right away and allow him to get away with so much shit.

 

[DraconianGreed]

I was going to try converting the costs of powers available on CYOA power lists into years of shard power. Essentially something like 270 years of power would equal to only so many points.
My idea was to think of all the CYOA powers being held by a single being to be the equivalent of Zion and Eden, but that gives me two ways of adding up their holistic power at cycle start:
The 5200 capes who fought in Gold Morning times 300(for years of power for each shard)
or
6.98 billion capes from considering Cauldron's logic for the terminus project times 300

If having Gold morning happen earlier was considered optimal by all the powerful thinkers then what was the reason behind Cauldron doing terminus? That just seems like a waste of resources to me when they should be more worried about surviving the eldritch god that is Zion.

I guess they only had to give Coil his one vial, but still... that simulation ability seems like something they could have used for so many other things.

Now I realize I can just have 300 years equal however many points a CYOA character starts with, but my confusion with why Terminus project happened still exists. I get it can all be dismissed as "Wildbow wrote himself into a corner like Kishimoto," but I think that's a boring and useless doylist answer. I would like a Watsonian answer.

Huh... I guess the Thinkers saw the rate of increase of capes slowing down and realized the number of capes would peak so prolonging the end was deemed suboptimal. Maybe Cauldron started the Terminus Project before realizing they needed to trigger Gold Morning sooner rather than later.

 

[T-bone]

I would like to give a idea for you all. My idea is a Worm react fic to Selector's Haze Gray from FanFiction. I am not good at writing stories but am good at giving ideas, as I keep hitting writer's block after writing out part of it. I would like if people adopted my stories but I have low hopes they will be completed.

 

[Splattered Cloak]

(Moving from another thread, where Worm canon debate would be off-topic)

I Think the wording should more along the lines of being the 'premiere' employer. As for size, well canon appears to pretty much have no information on any of that industry worldbuilding, so it's up to the author to decide how large and impactful medhall is for Brockton Bay. Personally, for a port city that no longer has a port, and figuring that pharmaceutical companies are not small, I'm of the opinion that Medhall may be a smaller fish in the US, but the largest fish in Brockton Bay.

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True, we have very little industry worldbuilding. We do have a statement that the top industries (from the perspective of a teenager) don't include medical:

When the import/export business in Brockton Bay had dried up, there had been a whole lot of people who were suddenly out of work. The richest and most resourceful people in town had managed to make more money, turning the city's resources towards tech and banking, but all of the people who had been employed on the ships and in the warehouses had few options left to them.

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(To be fair, we never see any "tech" businesses in canon, other than Dragon's. But someone has to be making all of those burner phones, just to start with.)

Beyond that, the company is run from a multi-story building downtown, just like many others:

She returned Downtown. It was hard to navigate the streets from so high up, even if they were roads she traveled on a daily basis as her uncostumed self. From here, the buildings all looked the same, with mirrored outsides and gravel rooftops. Twice, she circled around the top floors of the wrong buildings, looking for the logo set on the side of the building would mark Max's building apart from the others.

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This supports the idea that it's a significant organization in the city, but not one that stands out from the crowd.

It does seem to grant its CEO enough for a very comfortable but not extravagant living:

Max Anders, president and chief executive officer of Medhall Corporation, a pharmaceuticals company based in Brockton Bay. Father of a Theodore Richard Anders and an Aster Klara Anders. Twice divorced, currently living in a penthouse apartment downtown. Drives a black BMW.

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But it's small enough to mostly hire criminals:

Every piece of information connected to others. Even the info on the mooks like the ones I had met earlier with Kaiser's business, showing how they were employed as low level employees of Medhall and its derivative businesses. It seemed like everyone had a criminal record except the people at the top.

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To be fair, the information wouldn't have listed the employees without records, and most of those crimes would've been related to E88 or its rhetoric.

The "derivative businesses" note is interesting. That probably includes Krieg's pharmacy chain:

Krieg was alleged to be a James Fliescher. Head of a pharmacy chain, in turn connected to Medhall.

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I wouldn't be surprised if several of these businesses share the building with Medhall, and all kind of work together as one system under multiple names. Splitting up like that would also reduce the official attention that should've revealed the connections between Medhall and Empire 88 long ago.

We also get a glimpse that Dinah, the mayor's niece, didn't know anything about Medhall:

"Hey, Dinah, since I can't see, can you do me a favor and tell me if you see anything around here that says 'Medhall'?"

"Medhall? No. I don't think so. Why?"

"These guys are too comfortable around supervillains, and this place is too expensive. Medhall was the company that Kaiser ran, and he also ran the biggest gang of villains in town, before Leviathan came. I'm just wondering if this was the place the white supremacists went to when they needed medical care."

"Oh. I don't know."

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(Granted, she's twelve, and was far too focused on Coil.)

Finally, 90% of pharmaceutical firms (1679 out of 1857, as of 2017) have fewer than 500 employees. The big companies have a disproportionately larger share of the revenue and attention, but small companies tend to drive more innovation. Most companies, it turns out, are nearly invisible.