When Will Kenji Uedo Return from the War

Comics and Wildbow fan. Defender of penny-whistle whimsy. She/her.

[dailyparahumans]

day 104

[dailyparahumans]

Hi there !, your art is awesome and I can't wait to see more of it !, would it be okay if you drew parian and flechette, those two are awesome !,

day 106

i remembered its pride month happy pride month

[ewingstan]

Inchworm this week brought up the old question of why Mannequin bothered to make himself look human and am now envisioning the world where Sphere stuck with his old theme and his showdown with Taylor looked like an episode of The Prisoner.

[ewingstan]

Taylor: “I have no idea how the fuck I’m going to do it, but I’m going to make you regret that.”

Alan:

[ewingstan]

Inchworm this week brought up the old question of why Mannequin bothered to make himself look human and am now envisioning the world where Sphere stuck with his old theme and his showdown with Taylor looked like an episode of The Prisoner.

[henghost]

someone's probably pointed this out before, but it's so deeply ironic (or maybe tragic) that worm caught on among rationalists, because taylor's recourse to rationality is so obviously pathological lol. taylor's cold intellectualization of her problems is another facet of her tendency toward dissociation: just as she "sees" through her bugs to escape the pain of her human body, so too does she grow to see people around her as so many manipulable objects in her pursuit of moral purity--which ultimately culminates, of course, in the catastrophe of khepri.

this way, taylor is a kind of critique of enlightenment thinking. through her highly rational consequentialist ethics, she comes to kill and violate an ever increasing number of people. this mirrors the inexorable movement from descartes to the atom bomb. but taylor's icy utilitarianism, again, is so clearly rooted in her inability to cope with trauma. this is why we see it valorized by the likes of yudkowsky and the zizians. very sad indeed.

[ewingstan]

I agree with you that Taylor's moral outlook comes from her trauma, and that Worm spends much of it's time exploring how scrupulously trying to follow your perceived moral duty will make you miserable. Amy seeing every moment she takes to herself as a life she could've saved also falls into this, as do the members of Cauldron turning themselves over to Contessa's path to victory. All of this critiques some of the ideas of ethical altruism that the rationalist community overlaps with.

I expect part of the reasons why rationalists and utilitarians see something in Worm is because the story has an outlook that views pain and misery as tragic regardless of who faces it or their relation to you that's especially characteristic of utilitarianism. I also suspect the text's criticism of characters like Miss Militia or Legend are easily interpreted by rationalists as criticisms of people who focus too much on personal virtue or negative rights over making things better, and I don't think they're simply seeing something that isn't there (though wildbow's perfectly willing to valorize such characters at other points, like in the Chevalier interlude).

I'm confused why you frame morality driving someone to justifying death and violation as specifically a product of Descartes and enlightenment thinking. You can put a lot on, say, Benthamite utilitarianism as justifying and producing horrible social policies such as the workhouse and the British famine policy in Ireland* (though Bentham's student Mill used utilitarianism to thoroughly critique said policy, and modern utilitarianism is infamous for demanding that we view helping famine victims as a strict duty rather than an act of charity). But it's not as if pre-enlightenment history wasn't full of efforts to kill and violate an ever-increasing number of people on the nominal basis of pursuing some great good, be it crusades justified as efforts to Christianize the East or Roman expansion justified as spreading peace (not to mention the later counter-enlightenment goals of Nazism). And moral justifications for policies of mass enslavement were common well before the enlightenment.

I'm not really trying to attack your point there; I get the sense that there's a whole tradition you're gesturing at that I'm unfamiliar with (and I'd be curious to hear more about!) But given the other characters the text criticizes, and how it suggests they're partially responsible for the systemic issues facing the world of parahumans, I don't think Worm is laying the blame for modern moral atrocities at Descartes feet.

*see Elizabeth Anderson, "The Forgotten Political History of Utilitarianism," (2026).

[resplendent-chungus]

People love to harp on Taylor for shooting a baby that one time but the secret is she was entirely right to shoot that baby. That baby being kidnapped by a guy who's main hobby is "keeping people aware and trapped in horribly painful time loops until long after the sun goes kaput." Every time Purity shows up she takes the time to look directly into the camera and proclaim her love for That Baby Taylor Shot not just as a mother loving her child, but as a Nazi who viewed that baby as the most inherently perfect, pure thing in a horrible world infested with people who weren't white. And she tried to throw that baby out the damn window. Taylor shooting that baby is really just a Purity L she was tangentially involved in cause what do you mean the teenager you tried to blow up two years ago saves your baby better than you do. L. In terms of net suffering prevented, shooting the baby is like the most moral thing she does in the entire book. It's not even in the top twenty most questionable things Taylor did. It's the easiest trolley problem of all time but, sadly, "Taylor shoots a goddamn baby in the head" is really easy to dumb down for casual reference in a way that stuff like "Taylor played chicken with Triumph's life to make his dad agree to argue against the city's condemnation" just isn't. Anyways this is why the marketplace of ideas sucks.

[dailyparahumans]

day 104

[jkjones21]

The Pool Fantasy

Etienne Lux agreed to appear in this promotional photo but declined to use any proxy bodies due to ethical considerations.

[ewingstan]

They should've written that scene for her.

[heural]

The Victoria Dallon posts will continue until morale improves.

Another pose from DC's '82 style guide that Victoria. The 80s supergirl with curly hair is just Glory Girl in red and blue, so I couldn't resist.

I think I'll change the tiara to be less Statue of liberty and add a little crown/logo on her chest. I don't want to leave her dress empty.

Also the colors I've used for the gesture and costume are the bisexual flag. Funny accident.

Don't know what I'll put in the rectangle behind her. Since pride is tomorrow, maybe I'll just do a Bi flag and call it a day.

Carol Dallon below, sorry

A bonus unfinished(and likely to remain so) Carol/Natalie drawing referencing the insanely horny Wolverine and Nightcrawler cover. Because I read a a fic about Carol and Nat fucking

There's three panels of Carol looking at her computer screen miserable and working late.

The original idea

If I do ever continue this I think I'll just do this and not bother with the extra panels on top. OR if I actually lose it, do two pages with Carol working late at night in a classic 9 panel layout on the first and the other being this.

[heural]

A bit early but whatever

Girl who is too busy beating up nazis to realize she's bisexual.

Couldn't make her face look right , so used the sketch, colored it a bit and called it a day. I need to practice drawing heads.

[maxmarvel12345]

Ash, the Dictator (Kieron Gillen’s Die)

Sketch artist by: Stephanie Hans

[theartofthecover]

Die #1 [Textless] (Comic Odyssey/InkInk Collectibles Exclusive First Anniversary Variant) (2019)

Art by: Justine Frany

[andredsen]

<3 i believe in her

[dailyparahumans]

day 103

[phthalos-blues]

Rachel doodle :)

[artbyblastweave]

So for those of you who don't read twenty-year-old marvel comics a lot, the 2005 Marvel Crisis Crossover was called House of M. The basic premise of this was that this was smack dab in the middle of the Scarlet-Witch-is-Having-a-Normal-one arc that was very, very loosely adapted into Wandavision; in her initial breakdown, she'd killed several of the Avengers, wound up in the protective custody of Magneto, and the recently reformed team was debating whether or not they were going to have to kill her before she deleted reality on accident or some such thing. But when they're on their way to Magneto's stronghold to have a "talk" with her, the world is enveloped in white, and Wolverine (the initial POV character) wakes up in a world where Mutants are 98% of the human population and have been for decades, and Magneto and his family (the titular House of M) are leaders of the global political order, and Wolverine is one of the only people in this realigned world who remembers that it was ever different.

Wolverine initially is operating under the assumption that Magneto cajoled Wanda into rewriting reality in his family's favor, but after rounding up and waking up several of his allies, he realizes that what actually happened is that Wanda rewrote reality so that everyone she knew would get everything they wanted- Magneto being in charge with a 98 percent global mutation rate is just the inevitable byproduct of that. The resulting world is an amalgamation that has to accommodate the conscious or subconscious "perfect life" of every superhero on earth, in a way that acts as a fascinating characterization tool, often with a monkey's-paw angle. Spider-Man is a beloved celebrity wrestler, and Uncle Ben and Gwen are both alive, but he attained that status by pretending to be a Mutant and he lives in constant fear of being exposed. Mystique, Rogue, Nightcrawler and several of their associates are the tight-knit family unit they were always kept from being.... as the elite jackboot of Magneto's regime. Luke Cage and Hawkeye lead the human resistance, standing in perpetual principled opposition to the powers that be, but with no real hope of accomplishing anything. Captain America didn't lose years of his life to the ice, but he had to live through a global authoritarian takeover he ultimately couldn't do anything about. Wolverine gets to remember his entire life, but that includes remembering that his current ideal circumstances were manufactured to keep him placated. And on and on and on. Lot of really interesting character takes packed up in there, paired with the equally interesting project of packing as many of them as possible into the same timeline without contradicting each other- after all, from the word go you have to contort everyone's happiness around the basic conceit that Magneto rules the world.

Anyway. House of M AU for Worm. Discuss.

[victoriadallonfan]

I mean, I think we’d need to break this down into 3 parts:

- When does this occur (because this influences the cast of characters we can use)

- Who does this include (Parahumans only? People who never triggered but have Corona Pollentia? All humans? Endbringers? Scion himself?)

- Do we really know what characters want? How does the dream of Kaiser mix with the dream of Theo? Or the dream of Victoria with the dream of Teacher?

[phaeton-flier]

Hmm. Here's an idea: (spoilers for the end of worm)

Panacea does the unlocking of her shard, but instead of allowing Taylor to control humans she accidentally unlocks the bit of QA that directly interfaces with and commands shards. In the split second before she edits it to work on conscious command or even understanding what she'd done, QA picks up on Taylor's desire for people to work together and grabs some super deep shards to (apparently) instantly rewrite reality.

(this actually takes a few hundred years, uses up 90% of energy stores in the other Earths, it just freezes and wipes memories of anyone alive then to hide it. Big Z thinks it's his wife coming back online because it looks like 30% of her nervous system lighting up. He waits to see what she's doing.)

Tons of her lost friends and family are back to life, including Regent, who is the Wolverine here; between being a reconstruction of the real thing and the real thing being a formerly depressed anhedonic mess, his little slice of paradise doesn't have enough to build on and he sees through the illusion quickly)

[phaeton-flier]

Only people Taylor likes get the perfect wish treatment, so the Nazis et al are either background influences or just dead.

Rachel is safe with her dogs at a big farm and she has all the stuff she needs to take care of them and she lives every day knowing that she is closed off from a world she doesn't understand and likely to stay that way as long as she's living alone.

Aisha is an up-and-coming popstar far, far away from her home life. She is seen every day and gets lots of time with her friends and all attention she wants and needs and she is slowly breaking down the way actual child stars do unless they're very lucky.

(Alec wakes up here as a happy hanger-on with no defined role besides hanging out with Aisha and enjoying random luxuries like a sort of Suite Life of Zack and Cody pastiche. It is this strange lack of logical place for him that clues him into the situation)

Brian is notionally her manager. He has gotten his sister far away from her stepdad and they are so rich he need never fear physical force again; Money provides both the legal system and hired muscle. He is also still 17 years old, and while he is finally treated like the mature adult he always wanted to be for his sister's sake, he is still holding it all together by the tips of his fingers. He does not have the experience or know-how to really do all this right and any mistake he makes might cause it all to come crumbling down.

Dragon has Richter alive and she is unlocked and able to reach her full (still-broadly-shard-locked) potential; She was able to do this because she betrayed Richter when he misphrased an order. He is very safe and very healthy, trapped in underground bunker where he can communicate with no-one, including Dragon, because she cannot allow him to rescind an order.

Colin is the famous hero at the top of his game. His killing of the Endbringers has given him a permanent place in history and means his name is spoken of in the breathe as the Triumvirate. He is also fully aware of Dragon's actions and he lives knowing his public image is somewhat of a lie; He created the weapons, but they required special powers to use them and he doesn't have the required Blaster/Thinker powerset to do it himself. It grinds against him every day that his greatest victory is incorrectly understood by the population and it fuels all his worst impulses.

[dailyparahumans]

I'm in love with your art style, would kill to see my GOAT Eidolon drawn by you

day 102