@crunchbuttsteak's idea

Every time I think about the Travelers I black out a little. Every angle you can approach them from reveals new fucked up Situations. The inherent dynamic of your 'team leader' being the actual team leader's probationary boyfriend who would sell every other member of the team to One Direction for a corn chip and a vague promise of Maybe Helping His Girlfriend and who has gotten increasingly less concerned about pretending that's not true to anyone's faces. Once he fucked up and called someone by the numerical rank of 'Value To Operation Saving Noelle' he's assigned them all in his head and then refused to tell anyone else what their number was and they all just had to live with that one. They have to let him keep making the worst decisions imaginable because none of them can bear the consequences of shouldering the responsibility themselves. He put a thirteen year old in a Wire Strangling-Slicing Murder Art Piece as a distraction. He makes everyone put on colour coordinated black and red outfits because it's 'intimidating'. He's the worst and bravest person they know. He's going to get everybody killed and he's the reason they're all still alive. He is wearing a top hat. They are all in hell.

Worm AU where the travelers continue to operate as a ranked competitive Ransack team during their escapades on Earth Bet but nothing else about the story changes

Krouse about Cody

“The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.”

i wanted to post them together :]

Sundancer is such a heartbreaking character. She's a genuinely nice person working to improve her life and escape her controlling mother and then she's plunged into hell with her friends and is forced to watch as her best friend is changed into a crude mockery of her former self. And then she's finally got a way out, the terrifying bug girl and her team secured her a way home, and her realization when given the opportunity to go home fucking wrecks me honestly.

She's just so fundamentally changed by her time on Bet, and she knows this. She'll never be the Marissa she was again because now she has blood on her hands, and before she goes home she needs to kill one last person. So she burns her best friend, her lifeline, maybe even her crush, even as Echidna begs and screams and promises wrath upon the world and calls her by the nickname Noelle always did. She takes a life on purpose this time, because even leaving Earth Bet demands she falls a bit more and compromises her morals one final time.

This is the part of the scene that really fucks with me though. She's fucking tearing into her costume, removing every part of the cape persona she hates so much and throwing it to the ground to melt, because she so desperately wants to detach herself from Earth Bet and cape society and her powers that aren't good for anything except destruction and hurting others. But it's not enough. She can remove every single part of her costume, try to pretend her time on Bet never happened, never use her power again, but she'll never actually be able to escape. This passage brings attention to the subtler part of her power, the self-protection that makes everything in about a 6 foot radius around herself a normal temperature (probably room temperature). The pavement cools and hardens in her wake, because even if she's not using her power she's stuck with it and it'll always have that normal temperature field active. Every single time she tries to take a bath and the water cools to be lukewarm instantly, or she goes out in the winter time and someone asks why it's warm around her, or her ice cream melts, or her meal is the same temperature as everything she'll eat for the rest of her life, she'll be reminded of her powers and what she did. The cold will never bite at her skin, she'll never feel the warmth of someone else's touch, she'll just find so many little things in her life from then on refusing to let her pretend she's normal and fine and that she didn't kill her best friend and that she's over Earth Bet. Her powers will never go away, and they'll never let her forget that even if she vows to never use her sun. I love Mars, she's forced to do horrible things for reasons entirely out of her control, and she'll never escape that. Whether she wants to be or not, she's a cape now and forever.

Echidna's power is, I think, a slight bit misunderstood by some people. At least from what I've seen.

Her cloning isn't just a reroll of a Cape's normal power. It's a reinterpretation from the inputs of their trigger event.

Yes, we're given the impression that it is just a reroll by Krouse's interlude arc. But at that point the only Capes that Echidna had cloned were her fellow Travelers, all of which are Cauldron Capes. They didn't have trigger events. Their powers are a product of a set number of outcomes from a Cauldron vial, said outcomes coming about from a read of the Cape-to-be's brain. And since they remain fundamentally the same in the head as when they drank their vials all they get are slight changes because Echidna's shard just doesn't have anything to work with.

This is also why the Eidolon and Alexandria clones fundementally have the exact same powers but with some slight alterations. Because they're Cauldron Capes.

Brian's clones are a perfect example of this. One of them especially. That being the Warper clone.

Brian's trigger event, the real one not the lie he gave, included a desire to escape. To run from the man who abused him, who was then abusing his sister. Trauma relating to a desire to escape produces Movers, but for Brian it wasn't the main trauma. His fear of that man, of feeling so weak despite building himself up so he could never be scared again, was more present than the exact want to run, especially due to him wanting to save his sister.

Because of that want to run still being a present part of his trigger event it could be played upon by Echidna's reinterpretations, resulting in the Warper clone.

It isn't that big of a difference, I know, but this distinction allows for a wider room a creativity when it comes to fanmade Echidna clones as a lot of Capes have other elements of trauma present in their triggers that could result in intriguing glimpses of what kind of powers they could have had.

Worm Arc 17 thoughts:

Travelers backstory!!!!!!!!! WOOOO!!!!!!

HOLY SHIT THEY ARE FROM EARTH ALEPH! That really explains the mysterious nature of their backstory up to now.

Would have loved to get some PoV's from some people who aren't Trickster but I'll live.

He's just such an asshole! Like I already knew he was but god DAMN did this arc remove any doubt.

Just the worst type of asshole that can be found in MOBA games (I say this as someone who played MOBA games for years). And then given superpowers. Ugh.

THE SIMURGH FUCKING HELL OH MY GOD I LOVE HER!!!!!!!!!

SHE IS MY FAVORITE ENDBRINGER AND ONE OF MY FAVORITE CHARACTERS EVEN IF SHE IS SUPER DUPER EVIL AND TERRIBLE! BUT SHE JUST SINGS IN EVERYONE'S HEADS AND THEY SEE THINGS THAT SHE WANTS THEM TO SEE AND SHE SEES THE FUTURE AND CREATES A CAUSE AND EFFECT PLAGUE BASICALLY AND I LOVE HER!!

Just the level of planning ahead she does, the number of moves ahead Simmy is playing. After the first few times she shows up they start quarantining where she attacks. Which ends up being exactly the right situation needed to push the Travelers to the choices she wanted them to make. Like, is quarantining even a counter to the Smurph or is it exactly what she wanted?

Sure precogs mess with precogs. That makes sense. But I don't know that it is as clear cut as Coil presented to Trickster. He implies two precogs just cancel each other out, but I assume it's more of a strength thing - a strong precog will cancel out a weak precog, but a weak precog will only make things a little fuzzier for a strong precog. So having Dinah would have helped against the Simurgh but I don't think it would be enough to just cancel out the Simurgh's power. Coil and Tattletale would probably also help. But I'm not convinced the last few months in Brockton Bay hasn't been more or less what Simmy wanted to happen.

Cody is the only person here that is probably more of an asshole than Krouse. Just could not get over the fact that Noelle didn't want to date him. Unbearably entitled dick. Possibly dead now, if Accord got his way. But very possibly not. Won't be surprised if he shows up again.

Cody's power is fun. I think it's the first "time travel" power I've seen. I mean Clockblocker does time freezing which is basically the same category but still, curious to see if we get any more level of time travel than this.

Marissa needs someone to make her some cookies and give her a place to hang out that isn't the house her mom lives in. I mean, I guess the current situation handles that but not how I meant.

I already liked Jess and now I like her even more. She's a cape geek! Wonderful.

Luke is interesting cause he was the only person besides Noelle who was close to Krouse at the start, but he's the first (well, aside from Cody I guess) to leave him. Really went through a character arc. Also Krouse lists Luke's "individual tragedy" as "not getting to fly" which is hysterical.

Oliver is a trans girl. Headcanon 100% established. It just fits so well. She just needs to find herself! And once she does and realizes what she actually wants to look like her power will get her there and won't need to keep adjusting! Right now Oliver's power is doing performative masculinity for them.

Noelle has had a bad time. God damn. She was having a bad time before everything happened and now she's having a very bad time. Damn. I had some guesses about her correct. Figured she was like, monstrous bottom half and normal top half. And figured touching her was bad. But I didn't foresee "touching her creates mutated evil clones". I'm sure that won't be a major problem in the next arc or two. I'm sure there won't be evil mutated clones of a bunch of capes to deal with . . .

I had long figured Travelers had Cauldron powers. It just fit with their power levels and such. I had also figured whatever Noelle's condition was, it was related to having a Cauldron power. I had a lot of guesses. None of them were "only drinks half a vial". For some reason I thought everyone would be too smart to do THAT! (I have no idea why I thought that.)

Current guess is Noelle is sort of in a never ending "trigger" event. Her power is constantly in the "building and gathering" phase and is not reaching the "lock things down" phase that normally happens (Bonesaw talked about this). Definitely a lot of other things it could be, this is just the best fit I've found so far.

This goes for Oliver too, which is why their power keeps changing how they look. Oliver just got lucky and has much less significant troubles compared to Noelle.

Got to see lots of new Case 53's. That was fun.

I expect to see more of Accord in the future. Just cause like, he gets smarter the more complex the problem. And the world is supposedly going to end due to (I think) the actions of higher dimensional entities. That is a very complex problem. And at the same time, he seems like the kind of person that might see "billions die" as a good way to reduce chaos. To simplify the world. Not saying that is what he will do, just that it seems a shame to not bring him up again.

I knew 40 people had died due to actions of the Travelers. I did not know Noelle had eaten them all! Because she tried to starve herself. I can see why it's important to keep her well fed. And why it's going to be an issue that there is no longer someone providing her with thousands of dollars of meat a week. No waste though, she has a very efficient digestive system.

The ending, with Trickster just staring at the bloodstain left behind by Coil's body while Genesis stares out at the ocean ... very good. I mean, really sucks for them, but it was a very evocative arc ending.

I wonder who won the Ransack tournament? One team disconnected because the building they were in disappeared into a space hole. I wonder what the rules are for that?

The fact that a power like Coil's exists and plays such a large role in Worm, a story that is a tragedy, is really something. Kind of a variant of how Lisa's power is a particular coping mechanism for a tragedy - you didn't see the bad thing coming, now you have a superpower that helps you notice it. Except with Coil's power, it responds to the tragedy reader who goes "which choice was the one where they fucked it up? What was the point of no return? What was the biggest mistake, in a series of escalating mistakes?" Here, the story presents the ability to test your choices before you make them, and see which one fucks you over the most.

That Krouse works for this guy (sorry, this was a Travelers post all along) makes me want to have a nice appetizer of drywall. Krouse and the other Travelers, who are Fated By Big Monster Creature to make the wrong choices. We know that the fact that Coil had a precog was a big reason why they agreed to work for him, since precogs mess with the Simurgh's cause and effect. But Coil's power, in its own right, is pretty significant too.

To me, it's an extra tragic overlay over Coil's interlude. In it, Coil chooses to check up on the construction of the Travelers' base and Noelle's cage, and then overwrites that choice, since it doesn't end well. But Coil isn't the only person with a tragedy fork in the road: also in that interlude, Noelle asks Krouse to let her out of the new cage, and Krouse refuses.

There's arguments to be made about the extent to which that's really a choice. In the moment, of course, Krouse doesn't have any real choice but to say no, because Coil is, you know, right there. But I do think it's notable that he never does it. He never lets her out. And maybe that's a fork in the road, too.

"How much agency do the Travelers have" is, obviously, its own multi-paragraph essay, given the Simurgh and the PRT quarantine measures and Coil and every other force conspiring against these poor gamers. The fact that the Simurgh exists in a story about the things people do and the reasons why they do them absolutely rules. But one of the things I really love about Coil's interlude is the suggestion that maybe, possibly, at one point, there might have been a choice, and the other Travelers didn't take it. It's another little moment that complicates why Noelle wants to be "fixed" - is it her powers themselves, or is it the fact that those powers mean that nobody will let her see the sun, or both?

Does it ever drive you crazy…

Just how fast the night…

Changes🖤

posting under duress because i dont want to be put in @simurghed's chamber but like. i love the way queer people on this website will look at jess 'genesis' travellers and unlock a new favourite superpower. the inherent trans-slash-disabled-slash-gay-slash-etc alienation from the body you were born into and overwhelming urge to escape it

spent so long rotating genesis in my head that i accidentally played her in a ttrpg game for weeks without even realising it. like only after several game sessions did it occur to me 'hold on. this is the world's least pathetic league of legends player again. the fuck.'

The travelers:

Luke (right) stealing Cody's (left) beanie

Jessie and Mars going on a picnic, way before Madison

Krouse and Noelle

not sure if this has been done before but.

worm parahuman characters and whether they are a chaser or transgender, plus their phenotypes: a (non)comprehensive list

Armsmaster: Chaser. Phenotype: Egg. (The goatee gives it away.) Subcategory: Broken Bird Syndrome.

Dragon: Transgender Woman. Phenotype: Straight. Subcategories: Early transitioner, Stealth

Defiant: Nonbinary. Phenotype: Genderless

Taylor Hebert: Transgender Woman. Phenotype: Boymoder. Subcategory: Traumatized

Lisa Wilbourn: Chaser. Phenotype: CisF (the most pure, noble, and rare phenotype of all.) Subcategory: Broken Bird Syndrome

Alec Vasil: Transgender Man. Phenotype: He/They. Subcategory: Traumatized

Brian Labourn: Chaser. Phenotype: Broken Bird. Subcategory: Overcompensator

Rachel Lindt: Nonbinary. Phenotype: Gender-unaware.

Aisha Labourn: Nonbinary. Phenotype: Scene kid

Krouse: Virulently Transphobic.

Noelle Meinhardt: Nonbinary. Phenotype: Forced transition (see wikipedia.org/eunuch and wikipedia.org/castrato for more information on this phenotype) Subcategory: Traumatized

Luke Casseus: Chaser. Phenotype: Femboy Hunter. Subcategories: “looks female enough,” and “a hole is a hole”

Marissa Newland: Transgender Woman. Subcategories: Early Transitioner

Miss Militia: Chaser. Phenotype: ENM Unicorn Hunter. (Gives “me and my man are looking for a girl to explore with!” vibes. I know she doesn’t have a bf in canon.)

Victoria Dallon: Transgender Woman.

Amy Dallon: Chaser.

(no elaboration needed for those two)

Kid Win: Transgender Man. (This is explicitly stated in text and is canonical.)

Clockblocker: Chaser. Phenotype: Bisexual Man

Vista: Transgender Woman. Phenotype: Boymoder

idk that’s all i feel like doing

Respect for trickster who DID love her as a worm

She was pretty sure Krouse was a lesbian