They're Silly

NGL gang when I read Worm I was surprised how ultimately understandable Amy's actions were.

Keep in mind I haven't read Ward yet so I don't know all of it but in Worm Amy is clearly shown to have not been hardened enough to handle the high stakes situations that parahumans deal with everyday (y'know like a normal person) and parahumans are known to have their powers pop off without them wanting it. As well as how she was later being deliberately pushed by people who's probably some of the best non-master manipulators.

What I had heard was a repressed and predatory lesbian brainwashing and raping her sister. What I read was a frightened woman pulled too thin to think, being human, and failing because of that.

Taylor the Survivor

This is a key moment for Taylor's character arc, helping her dad salvage what they can in the aftermath of the endbringer attack. The high school insecurities are just a memory and stepped fully into her role as a masked parahuman. She's growing into her potential, even as the line between Taylor and Skitter begin to merge in dangerous ways. Physically at ease and confident; I wanted to include the knife she wore but it didn't work with this pose.

That being said, I don't know why it struck such a visual chord with me. Emma seeing her old victim from the car was just a vivid scene to me, I knew I had to draw her.

staring into the distance. butch autistic doggirl. who has a girl who's obsessed with her collared. and wildbow thinks she's supposed to be straight. and he did all that on accident.

Kid Ignition had five lines this issue and four of them were disparaging of his life and/or of Heavy.

Once Kid gets a taste of freedom I doubt he'd ever want to be bound again

I'm honestly less interested in, "Is Kid Ignition really as powerful as Heavy thinks?" and more in, "Is Kid Ignition really as loyal and obedient as Heavy thinks?" I guess an exact repeat of The Major would be poetically ironic or something. But from a character standpoint, I really just want to see Kid lashing out at his controlling, high-pressure parents like basically every teenager since the concept of teenagerhood was invented. Except, of course, he's not your average kid.

Finally done with finals and need to draw one of the blorbos

Have we talked about how Taylor has common themes with each teammate when she meets them and they foreshadow something about her final form as Khepri? (Also ship names being based on bug things makes me feel wickedly gleeful)

• Taylor + Lisa = SmugBug = uncanny insights, could be mistaken for precognition ; reckless self endangerment

• Taylor + Rachel = WolfSpider = sudden not-necessarily-proportional violence ; brain no longer maps to human interaction

• Taylor + Grue = Dark&Creepy = obfuscation, macho power displays ; power theft

• Taylor + Regent = QueenBee = false sense of emotional detachment ; controlling people but not their minds

• Taylor + Imp = Fly On The Wall = unobtrusively spies on others ; forgetting

I think that the Power Fantasy wants us to understand the characters as they are in 1999. They know what happened, they know the world made it out alive, and thus so do we. But they also look back upon the past through the lens of the present.

We see the Tokyo event as Masumi does; an episode of dissociation, Etienne reaching out to her, and violence instilled into a single memory.

The Cuban missile crisis and New Mexico festival massacre are seen through Valentina's eyes, as remembered in the present.

The killing of the Major is seen through Jacky's eyes, and thus there is an emphasis on the violence of the act, and on the elements that will come to make him regret it. And obviously, Jacky's memories of the early Pyramid is distorted and simplified, not quasi-photorealistic like the other, more flashblub memories. Eliza is pure white.

And, of course, knowing how the crises of the past went puts us into the headspace of the superpowers in the present; neither they nor us know if this crisis is one they will get through. Compare the hypothetical linear Power Fantasy; crisis after crisis is resolved without the destruction of the world. What would mark the 1999 crises as any different?

I was talking to some people about the narrative effect of the issue #3 timeline in The Power Fantasy and the phrase that comes to my mind is "disaster voyeurism". If the story had started in 1945 and proceeded linearly, we'd arrive at each of the events on the timeline and not know what would happen or even if the world would survive. But with TPF's actual nonlinear structure, we know the world persists at least until 1999, and also that it faces these very specific crises.

I feel like that shifts the whole tone of these events. I know they're going to be awful, but I'm also really curious what happens, and the knowledge that "the world and all the main characters survive" puts a little distance between me and the nerve-wracking suspense of not knowing what happens. Someone on Discord described it as "anti-immersive"- not the exact word I'd choose, as I do feel immersed in the story in a lot of ways. But I see what they mean, in that I can look at past events with mixed eagerness and dread, rather than just dread like the characters must feel.

Not gonna lie, really looking forward to next issue when we get to see Heavy and the Major square up for a continent destroying battle, only for Heavy to effortlessly yeets him into the sun.

if worm happens after wildbow develops ward/weaverdice power sensibilities she never meets the undersiders. lung doesn't hear her stepping onto the gravel roof because his trigger only has like light thinker notes tbh. and he's already a brute/changer, blaster with mover notes, that's already a lot, we should trim down, we should trim this down. Really drive at the cocaine elements of his trigger