#worm analysis

[estavionpira]

There's a point to be made about how Broadcast makes Jack Slash a better slasher villain in particular. Appearing from around corners at the least opportune moments, always managing to survive things that really should have killed him, coming back for rounds two and three and four and five. And looking at the slasher movie pipeline makes it even more blatant - how many Scream movies are we on now? As long as Ghostface keeps producing this much conflict, the shards are never gonna let him get killed off.

There's a broader idea that all of the Slaughterhouse members represent a broader kind of horror movie villain, hence why they posed such a smaller threat during the S9K arc - it wasn't Alien anymore, it was Alien vs. Predator, and the same characters which proved arc-defining threats in the beginning got mowed down by the dozens during S9K, just due to the genre shift.

Likewise, Jack cementing himself as no longer the leader of a band of murderers, but as the head of a small army of capes put him in a position where he could actually die. Killing Mike Meyers as he skulks around your house is practically impossible, but killing the leader of an evil army is par for the course - and with Theo going through a whole arc leading up to his fight with Jack, it became an inevitability.

I think this is one of the things that makes the Black Knight so interesting to me - it's established that Broadcast is maximally effective at working within its genre: strolling in, hunting down isolated targets and being able to survive the fallout when it all comes crashing down - and squaring that with someone who has actual goals and limitations to work within outside of just blowing everything up and running away is very interesting. How would Jack Slash work with teammates he can't just push in front of a blow aimed at him? How does Broadcast keep him alive when "create a crisis and escape in the chaos" stops being an option? How will he work closely enough within his idiom for Broadcast to keep him pushing through without leaning into it too hard and having the heroes drop the hammer on him?

Crucially, going too big and getting killed by the rules of the new genre he's forced himself into is an inevitability without a colossal shift to his characterization. While Bonesaw grew as a person, allowing her to escape her horror movie idiom into the recovering abuse victim Riley, with all the narrative possibilities that come with that, and Harbinger escaped his into the aggressively anti-kayfabe Number Man (and died an appropriately mundane death for it in Ward), an inability to conceptualize himself as having the ability to do anything differently is key to Jack's character. Even as the Black Knight, he'd be spurred on by a desire to mark himself into history, go too big (with knowledge of his power, he might try to fight an endbringer, or reveal Eden), and get swatted like a bug for trying to force himself into a type of story where Mike Meyers isn't fated to live forever.

[movedtophthalos-blues]

This train of thought is so narrow fandom wise but I can’t get it out of my head SO

What Fears would the Undersiders be avatars of because Phthalo can’t stop thinking about a worm/tma crossover!!

Lisa- starting off, lisa would obviously be the eye, BUT I think also a little bit of the web because of the way she has her thumb in every pie. Also I think it goes without saying that she would definitely kick ass as the archivist. Plot over within 5 business days.

Taylor- oh my dear sweet Taytay,, the corruption. I mean,, she literally controls bugs it’s practically handed to you. Maybe the web as well? Probably less than Lisa. Definitely a smidge of the lonely in the beginning but not to the point of avatarhood. Also, just like Lisa, if she was archivist no one. Would survive. She would’ve Gertrude’d that shit so fast..

Brian- the dark. Do I really need to elaborate? Moving on.

Aisha- ok this one took a bit of thought because my first instinct is the stranger, BUT her background and story would also make her super duper susceptible to the lonely and maybe even the vast almost? I think really she’d be lonely especially since she has the disappearing/being forgotten gimmick, which Martin pulled off as well.

Alec- ok I’m not an Alec connoisseur like some, but my gut wants to say the web or the spiral. I’m leaning towards web, power wise, but the way he effects people and especially considering the shadow stalker arc, I feel like the spiral would take him very easily, like scary easy. He’s also fairly good at lying/apathy just due to circumstance, so that would also align with the spiral and the web

Rachel- the hunt. I think that’s obvious. But I also almost want to say the slaughter as well, almost a crossing over grey area. The hunt is obviously going to be the strongest of the two considering. Dog powers. Also I think she would make the BEST Daisy.

If any interest comes of this I also want to do the s9 and maybe a few others, also I’m planning on maybe drawing them as avatars maybe

[artbyblastweave]

To be honest, while I know that you've discussed a Worm/Marvel "crossover" before, considering how unusually different both Ultimate Universes are from mainline Marvel, how would a crossover with Worm go for those?

(Side note: I'm mainly asking for the potential thought experiment of: what if Cauldron met the Maker and all of the immense bullshit that would result from that.)

I don't think I'm totally capable of answering the back half of this ask because I haven't read The Maker comprehensively- Aside from his pre-heel turn stint in Ultimate FF, It's basically only Secret Wars, a couple of the times Ewing used him, and the current New Ultimate Universe.

So what I find interesting about this prospect is that Worm and Ultimate Marvel are very aesthetically compatible, right, you aren't going to drop one character into the other's setting and have them constantly going "what the fuck is going on" the way you would if we subbed in 616 Marvel at it's most four-color. But the worldbuilding and themes are actually very divergent in ways that are interesting to look at. Namely-

Worm is a grim, grim setting, but it's also attempting to replicate the status quo at Marvel and DC where, despite occasional attempts at government sanction or integration, there's fundamentally a weirdly high cultural tolerance for independent vigilantism as long as the person doing it is wearing a costume. Their version of Registration- The Protectorate- is a very carrot heavy initiative, when we see Kid Win making the recruitment pitch to Chariot it's all about the support you get, the funding, the backup, the PR help. Individual street level heroes get nailed to the wall or hung out to dry all the time, but collectively, they're granted a lot of discretion in that they're allowed to exist at all. And the fundamental reason for this is that the government is scared of them. They might be able to smack down individual upstarts who try to go full warlord or revolutionary, but they don't control the overall distribution of powers and there are so many of these assholes, three-quarters of whom go career criminal due to some combination of trauma, material want, neuroticism or ideology. So any set of norms that gets as many of these people as possible to behave in a slightly-less-antisocial manner is something that they're going to roll with. Worm is a world held hostage by the typical superhero paradigm, buckling under its weight. Crucial to this dynamic is that powers aren't a man-made phenomenon, and they're barely a man-influenced phenomenon via Cauldron.

But with the Ultimate Universe, a major pillar of the deconstruction and the worldbuilding is that superheroes would not be allowed to operate in the typical wild west paradigm. There's a much stronger divide between sanctioned heroes (The Ultimates, The Fantastic Four), grey-zone heroes like the X-Men, and then the out-and-out outlaw street level heroes like Daredevil and Spider-Man. A major plot point is that Nick Fury and his spooks very predictably figure out who Spider-Man is almost immediately; he's only able to continue operating as a street-level hero in the usual manner due to Fury's implicit sanction, because Fury is trying to groom him to eventually join The Ultimates. Moreover, a lot of the rest of the street-level capes (as depicted in Millar's Ultimates) are cast as genuinely incompetent puds, only not cracked down on because there's no real reason to. (Note that I have a seething hatred for this particular beat in practice because it deprived us of an Ultimate Luke Cage worth having, but I get what Millar was gesturing at with it.) All of this, likewise, is downstream of the fact that powers are almost totally a man-made phenomenon, with almost all superhumans being downstream of Military-Industrial Complex attempts at reproducing Captain America; it's not an out-of-control supernatural phenomena that they're trying to get in on, It's a government-made phenomenon that leaks like a sieve and eventually spirals out of control. The Ultimate Universe is fundamentally about Hubris in a way that Worm isn't.

Both settings converge on a state of societal collapse due to the advent of superpowers; Ultimate Marvel was gesturing at an impending superhuman-driven World-War Three for a while before things spiraled into the comparably destructive nonsense of Ultimatum, The Maker, The (partial?) balkanization of the U.S. and the rest of the crisis cavalcade that led into the 2015 Secret Wars and the total destruction of that universe. Worm suffered the much more tightly-directed Apocalyptic Bad Time with which we're all familiar.

As for a crossover premise, I'd have to say that post-gm Taylor getting marooned on 1610 and winding up in the orbit of 1610 Peter Parker specifically- as opposed to the MCU or 616 versions, with whom I've seen this done- is an underexamined hook. Ultimate Spidey represents a deft integration of Peter's best and worst personality traits. The early-run ditko-style dickishness is recontextualized as an anger about the state of the world, the crazy-making sense that bullies and dictators appear to have free run of the world and nobody but him is doing anything about it. Which, given the state of The Ultimate Universe, falls in the middle ground between typical teenaged myopia and a sober assessment of what he's up against.

Remind you of anyone?

[f1rewalk3r]

worm is, by and large, a story about playing with common superhero tropes.

the trope i find the most interesting, is that of identity. that of masks.

when a character takes an alias, fans often can run away with it. we can see this in breaking bad with the oft-memed “this is the moment walt became heisneberg.” or star wars, with anakin vs darth vader. fans tend to see this alias as an entirely separate character, as someone whose actions are divorced from the original identity due to the construction of that mask.

but this is not the case. heisenberg is walt. walt is walt. heisenberg is the mask he wears, that he is a ruthless cold manipulative killer.

but he’s not. he’s an amateur. every time mike analyzes him, telling him he’s a time bomb, an idiot, mike is right. the viewer, and fandom, are tricked by the heisenberg’s persona. we can see this mask slip often, if we’re paying attention. moments where his manipulation is called out, and we can see the pure panic on his face. that panic is heisenberg. that panic is walt

similarly, vader is anakin. i don’t care about canon or non canon sith-magic psuedoscience. darth vader is anakin, consumed by grief, lashing out at the world due to the consequences of his own actions. (ignoring the nuances of palpy’s manipulation. this isnt a star wars lore post.)

worm, though, takes “what if you were the mask. what if the mask was you” one step further.

alec is jean paul, who is regent, who is hijack, who is one of heartbreaker’s children, forever and always, until only through a caring and loving hand he is able to step beyond, step out of cover, if you will, and be more then the mask. more than the identity. more than the power or attitude that labels him as a lazy sociopath. it is perhaps through this sacrifice that we see him at his most human.

tattletale is a mask for lisa is a mask for sarah. she can see, fundamentally, through and beyond the walls and masks that other people wear. their secrets, what they hide from others, what they hide from themselves. thus, she has no reason to let her own walls down. why would she need to? and thus, sarah fades away, and so does lisa, until there is only tattletale, exchanging snide comments with antares, the person who might possibly be able to understand her the most.

colin becomes so fixated on his own advancement in the prt that armsmaster burns down around him, leading him to fully enclose himself off from the world. despite this, and despite the parallels he has with the man who made him this way, he finds himself with connections. a surrogate daughter, a robot wife. he is the mask, but the mask is defiance against alan, against sphere, against mannequin. the mask says, “you are wrong. your ideology is wrong, your worldview is wrong, and in the face of a fate and world that is cold and uncaring, the only thing to do is to defy it.”

the slaughterhouse nine proudly wear the mask that says “you are your actions. so why not make those actions the worst and most harmful they can be?” the masks remain there, enforced by their leader, by the prt, by their own refusal to be anything but the worst they can be. only riley rises beyond bonesaw. only she is gently coaxed out of the shell she wears.

taylor.

oh taylor. sweetheart, beloved.

taylor, perhaps most out of all, becomes skitter. she becomes skitter to avoid being taylor, and when the prt and media decide to out skitter as taylor, she becomes weaver to avoid being skitter.

these identities are not taylor to taylor, they exist to bury taylor, to hide her deep inside. but only when she starts to become khepri does she reflect and realize.

despite all the talk about passenger influence, conflict drive, etc.

it was always taylor. she isn’t queen administrator becomes she had the QA shard. she has the QA shard because she is Queen Administrator.

it wasn’t QA that gave her the propensity to violence that sundancer flinches at. it was taylor. it always was taylor.

this is perhaps Worm’s central takeaway about identity. it’s one many fans and fanfic authors get wrong. that skitter subsumes taylor, that taylor is gone beneath that mask. but she doesnt, and she’s not.

it was always her. all along.

[faultlinescrew]

Faultline is portrayed as a pretty decent person in the narrative and compared to some other worm characters, yeah she could be far worse.

But her primary motivation is money, and she will put getting the bag before anything else. Not giving a shit about working with nazis as long as she and her team gets paid is the most obvious example I can give here.

Only looking into cauldron because one of her employees are paying her to do so, and from what I've read on the wiki (bc lord knows I'm not reading ward, so ward-heads if I get this bit wrong do let me know) is laundering merc money in a post apocalypse, which, y'know, that tracks.

Also, (not sure if this counts but I have to bring it up or I'll go mad) but she has a habit of picking up disenfranchised capes (case 53's, labyrinth, spitfire, ect) and giving them offers they can't refuse, so seeing as they do depend on her to pay them I do think there's a case to be made for her exploiting them to some degree.

Do I think that faultline thinks she's exploiting the rest of her crew? No not at all, (she probably doesn't consider herself morally bankrupt either).

She clearly cares for them but considers them as 'friends and employees', so as much as she likes the crew, they are assets to her mercenary business at the end of the day. And it shows in the way she treats them, pressing professionalism and training into the day to day.

Faultline is the owner of the Palaquin, owner of proxy businesses, the one handling all the jobs and money- shes their boss.

And if you go and throw out the power imbalance to found family all of them, well, I can't stop you, but I will probably click off of the fic.

[evilwizardcrab]

so one common analysis I've seen on worm is that getting powers ultimately drives you to recreate your trigger event and - as of arc 15 - that is absolutely 1000% true for taylor.

like, bugs are Gross and Weird, Controlling them is going to make you look Gross and Weird, Taylors bullies treated her as Gross and Weird.

but to seriously analyse this here, what is one thing bugs are heavily symbolically tied to? Filth. Dirt, disease, rot, uncleansliness, disgust. Beezlebub and the rotting pigs head in Lord of the flies. And the thing is, anyone who weilds bugs as their power is inherently going to carry those connotations with them. You can't have swarms of inscets hovering above your head and not looks at least partially like a walking corpse, can't command hoards of arachnids to create miles of silk and not appear like a harbinger of phobias and disgust. Taylor is the Swarm, something I've seen said before but just think about what that means about how she sees through the eyes of hovering pests, feels them wirth in the dirt and bite off flesh with their mandibles and feast on filth and crawl over everything and how she feels blind when separated from her bugs because she is the infestation she is the disgust, her powers made it insperable from her being.

And thats something that's openly acknowledged, both in universe and out. People freaking out at her powers, fandom calling her a little bug freak of a girl but when you think about it there's something so tragic about that. Like, even if she joined the wards and used her powers in a less ruthless way (which she wouldn't because why would she? the bugs are a part of her) she's still the bug girl, even if on an internal level she is one with the infestation. and she doesn't even notice, truly, how disturbing it is because its a part of her now and wether personally or socially, how powers have always made her a little bit of a freak, a little bit of am outcast. a worm, wirthing on the pavement that you try not to look at too heard because it grosses you out.

and thats not even getting into the Master element of her power, how a large part of her trigger was everyone ignoring her in the locker and now she has help! she will never be alone or helpless like that again! there will always be things there to look out for her! but also its not human and the consistent usage of said power leads to her more alone than she's ever been, in part because she no longer experiences reality like them.

or even on a simple level how just. how many bugs must she have felt crawl over her skin, how much rot and disgust pressed up to her, breathing and crawling with it while she was in that locker? and how many times now has she recreated that, hiding hundreds of incects under her clothes or masking her face with a Swarm of bugs. how many times have taylors powers inadvertently made her the same disgusting, isolated and ignored bug of a girl she was that day?

[yugonostalgia2019]

How do you make it through the Slaughterhouse Nine clone arc? It just feels like endless “who would win” mashing your dolls against each other hypotheticals? Nine cherishes could beat three teams working together, etc—feels like it’s impossible to care about any of the characters involved and what happens

Great question! See I also didn't appreciate the S9k arc until my 2nd read-through. It definitely suffers the most from the missing 2 Chicago Wards arcs that should've been written - the abrupt transition really throws off the otherwise very well paced book

However, the S9k arc is really important for *Taylor*

Remember that no one but Cauldron knows anything about GM - Taylor's acting hypothesis is that Jack will cause a 2nd trigger during his mayhem that ends the world. So this moment is EVERYTHING that Taylor has been working towards for over two years - the reason she left the Undersiders, the reason she works her Wards to the bone, the reason she's been on a one-girl crusade to make allies and break uncooperatives. So in a lot of ways, it's Taylor's time to shine. She took Dinah's 'prophesy' more seriously than anyone, Chevalier lets her take the lead, and we get to see her at her most badass.

Jack, on the other hand, is in it for the fun and chaos - he treats 8 out of each 9 clones as totally expendable - it's boring to have more than one crawler or more than one Winter - his ideal scenario is watching the fireworks as 8/9ths of them die, and taking one of each remainder and creating a much more tightly focused marauding band.

Meanwhile, we get to see Dragon unleash her full potential, after years of incremental freedom she can undercut the S9 at all fronts - the 8 cherishes are a great example - Jack wasn't counting on Dragon's progress so those 8 cherishes on the bus were intercepted long before they reached their destination and started wreaking havoc.

Plus, there was a lot of cool & tense shit that you just gotta enjoy, before the real tragedies begin

[thesecuritysleuth]

Sunday Round Up - 8th of September 2019

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Sunday Round up for this week!

Articles:

Im publishing an infosec book

4 Ways That Your Digital Forensics Software Tool Should Adapt to Your Workflow

Forbix worm analysis. It is still alive (:

Breaking Algorithms - SMT Solvers for WebApp Security

nmap get all active online ips from specific network

If you found some other interesting stuff this week feel free to leave a link to it in the comments section. Otherwise feel free to check out the last roundup here.

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